Something You Should Know - Invisible Dangers in Your Home & Fascinating Stories That Are Strange But True

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Have you ever had “one of those days”? You know those days when everything seems to go wrong and you can’t help but think about how wrong everything is going? This episode begins with a simple yet effective technique for you to use the next time you have one of those days. Source: Judith Orloff, M.D. author of Positive Energy (https://amzn.to/2KHzr3K) Dust, mold, dust mites, spiders, bugs and other things are lurking in your home. Are they dangerous? Quite possibly, according to Jeffrey May, a certified as a microbial consultant and an indoor air quality professional who specializes in identifying the causes of mold, odor, and moisture problems in homes, schools, and offices. He and his wife Connie are authors of the book My House is Killing Me! (https://amzn.to/3l84PF9). Jeffrey joins me to explain what these dangers are and what you should do about them. Even people who don’t mind cleaning would still probably prefer to do it quicker and more efficiently. Listen as I offer some sure-fire cleaning techniques that will help you do just that. They come from one of the nation’s leading cleaning experts Don Aslett author of No Time to Clean. (https://amzn.to/3fy5i2f) How did a parrot actually solve a murder? How could someone be so gullible that they actually believed that investing in an idea from a prince from Venus was a smart thing to do? Did you hear the story about the woman who survived the sinking of the Titanic as well as the accidents on Titanic’s 2 sister ships? These are just some of the strange but true stories you will hear from Steve Silverman, host of The Useless Information podcast (https://uselessinformation.org) and author of the book The Flip Side of History (https://amzn.to/3l7htEb).  PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! https://monday.com One platform, better teamwork - First 2 weeks free! https://bestfiends.com Download Best Fiends FREE today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! https://www.walgreens.com/topic/promotion/mywalgreens.jsp Shop, Save & Stay Well - Join for free at myWalgreens.com https://deals.dell.com/en-us or 1-800-BUY DELL for the best savings available now! https://www.bluenile.com Use Promo Code: SYSK to get $50 off orders of $500 or more at BlueNile.com! Get great cardio and strength training! Go to JoinFightCamp.com/something for free shipping and a gift worth $109 https://joinfightcamp.com/?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=Radio&utm_campaign=Something_You_Should_Know&utm_term=know&utm_content= Get 12 weeks of The New Yorker magazine for just $6 and a free tote bag at NewYorker.com/something and use Promo Code: SOMETHING https://subscribe.newyorker.com/subscribe/newyorker/133107?source=cm_paid_other_podcast_12f6_SOMETHING&pos_name=SOMETHING Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, how to instantly make things better when you're having

one of those days. Then, the invaders in your house that can affect your health, like dust, mold, even spiders. One interesting thing, a lot of people think that spiders are a good thing to have in a house, you know, but if you have a lot of spiders, that means that you have a lot of live bugs. Spiders only eat living insects, so if you have a lot of spiders, you have a lot of bugs. Also, three techniques to make cleaning your house easier and more efficient, and strange but true tales that will have you on the edge of your seat.

This is a story about the Titanic. It involves a woman named Violet Jessup. She was a stewardess on the three sister ships. The Olympic, the Titanic was the second, and the third was supposed to be the gigantic. So she's the only woman to survive the accidents of the three sister ships. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker.

Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. So I'm sure you've had one of those days. In fact, I'm pretty sure you've had more than one of one of those days where everything seems to be going wrong. You can't think about anything other than how wrong everything is going and it just gets worse. So how do you turn that around? Well, there is a technique that is so simple yet amazingly

effective. And here's what you do. You stop the negative thinking and focus on one positive or beautiful thing in your life, and then another one, and then another one. And while you're doing that, you breathe deeply. If you do this for a few minutes, that's it. This technique was developed by Dr. Judith Orloff. She says by forcing yourself to shift from negative to positive thoughts, it breaks that cycle of constantly thinking how horrible everything is. I've actually tried this and it really does work because what this technique does is it takes advantage of the fact that your mind can only focus on one thing at a time. So if you focus on something positive, you, by definition, cannot think those negative thoughts. The downward spiral then stops, and then you become more objective about everything,

and life seems a little more manageable. And that is something you should know. You have probably heard it said that indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air, and that indoor air has the potential to cause all sorts of health problems, like allergies and asthma. And you've likely heard stories about dust mites and animal dander and how gross that all can be.

And now, since so many of us are spending more time at home inside, let's take a closer look at all these things and find out just how gross it really is, how concerned we should be, and what we can do about it. With Jeffrey May. Jeffrey is a certified microbial consultant and indoor air quality professional. He specializes in identifying the causes of mold, odor, and moisture problems in homes, schools, and offices. He and his wife Connie, who is a certified indoor air quality technician, are authors

of a couple of books, including My House is Killing Me, A Complete Guide to a Healthier Indoor Environment. Hi, Jeffrey. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. And so just how big a problem is indoor air? Should we be concerned about it? Is there much we can do about it?

Well, I think it's a manageable problem, but it's definitely a problem. A lot of people get pretty sick from the indoor air, depending on where it's coming from. So it's definitely an issue. And what's inside and outside is actually very different. And so when you say people get sick from it, and it is a problem. From what? What's causing the problem? Well, you can either have particles that are allergens or gases and vapors. So, you know, for example, now people are inside and they're using a lot of hand sanitizer. And if I test for chemicals in the air now, I'm finding lots of alcohol in the air and fragrance chemicals, and some people are actually bothered by the fragrances.

So people, if they're going to clean their hands, you can use soap and water. It works great. You don't have to use alcohol in your own home. And so, for example, if you've got hand sanitizer in the house and you're using it a lot and now you've got alcohol in the air, so what? What's the harm? Well, it's not so much harm, but it adds to the sort of total content of chemicals in the air. I don't think that the alcohol itself is so much of a problem, but there are a lot of people who are sensitized to fragrances and they are quite you know they get

irritated by the by the fragrances is there's like a general recommendation on keeping the air in your house or the or not just the air but the the pollution whatever it is is there a general recommendation of how to do that, or is every problem very specific? I guess the general recommendation is keeping a house clean. You know that old saying, cleanliness is next to godliness. I mean, dust has all the sort of evil things that people think can be in a house. So the less dust you have, the less chances are that you'll be breathing things in. So let's talk about dust. What is dust?

Dust. It's my favorite topic. Dust, believe it or not, it's mostly human skin. We lose about 30 grams a month of skin. And then there's lint fibers, and then if you have pets, there's going to be dog dander. Why is dead skin cells a problem? The skin is protein, basically. It's food. And, you know, if you would, nobody would go and spread, you know, food around their house, you know, sugar or anything. So in a sense, it's food for all of these, what they call micro arthropods. There are these small, almost invisible insects that eat the skin scales.

And so if you have a lot of skin, then you have a lot of food for things to eat. So I often, like if I look in a closet and there's fresh dust there, it's gray. And if it's, you know, on a baseboard and it's been there for a long time, there'll be a lot of sort of yellow spots in there. And those yellow spots are just bug poop, all of the things that have been foraging on the food. So you want to have as little dust in your house as possible. Well, that's really gross and disgusting. It is gross and disgusting, but it happens to be the hard truth. And a lot of people, you know, those droppings make people sick. I mean, a lot of people go to the doctor and they say, oh, you know, you're allergic to, you know, dust. Well, in fact, it's what's in the dust. It's mostly these micro arthropod

droppings, and that includes dust mites and book lice and, you know, a host of other things that are crawling around that we can't see. I think there's a pretty good understanding that dust is a problem. And I know a lot of people buy air filters for their house, put them in bedrooms and living rooms to filter the air to get the dust out. Is that a good idea? Well, I think air filtration is important. The most important thing is to get rid of the source of the problem. Like if you've got dust mites in a pillow or a

bed, if you put an air filter in a room, it's not going to help you while you're in bed. So air filters are great. They really do clean the air. But if you disturb a source, such as a carpet or a mattress, then you're going to have that exposure and the filter isn't really going to help. But they do help in terms of getting dust out of the air. Oh, yeah, absolutely. They get the dust out of the air, but I don't know if it can get it out of the air fast enough before it settles. So, you know, vacuuming is really is the key. And I always recommend that people use a HEPA vacuum with a HEPA filter, H-E-P-A. And those are the best kinds of filters because they don't,

the vacuum cleaners aren't leaky. Like I've actually had clients who were very sick because they had people come in to clean their house and the vacuum cleaner they had used in another house where people had cats and this other family was very allergic to cats. So it's a good idea to get a decent vacuum cleaner. So let's talk about pets. When you bring a pet, a dog or a cat or a hamster or a bunny, into a house, what does that add to the problem of indoor air? The most important thing, as far as the air quality goes, it brings in dander. And the dander particles are just skin flakes that have allergen on them, the oils from the pet skin.

And those allergens last a very, very long time. When I look at samples from homes where there hasn't been a pet for years, I will still find pet dander from the pet that was there, you know, could be 10 years back. What about mold? Is mold a real problem? Well, it's a very big problem. And the mold is in the air. It just comes in with the air. The spores are there. And then if it lands on a suitable substrate and it's damp, it can start to grow.

So people worry so much about mold exposure. It's not a problem in the dust, really. I mean, it's not growing in the dust necessarily, but if you have a lot of mold spores in the air, they're in the dust. They can be just vacuumed up, and that's the end of the problem. On the other hand, if you have a leak somewhere and there's wet drywall or something like that, then you can actually have mold growth. And if that gets disturbed, then the spores get into the air. And depending on what it is and the allergy problems that somebody has, that could cause some difficulty. So mold isn't inherently dangerous to everybody.

It's only inherently dangerous to people who are sensitive to it. I would say by and large that's true. And the only, again, exception would be eating moldy foods. So as a matter of fact, I've looked at some teas that people have, and some of these organic teas, I just take the tea bag and I shake it over an air sampler, and the only thing that comes out is mold spores. So, tea is made from leaves, and if you don't dry the leaves properly, they get moldy. So, you can have a lot of mold from tea, or even, I've had peanuts that were moldy, you know. With everybody being very concerned about the coronavirus, what do we know about what works and what doesn't work in terms of getting rid of it? You know, it's interesting. It's not so much a problem of getting rid of the

virus as it is of just, you know, sort of protecting yourself. I mean, I think the virus doesn't last very long on surfaces. It really gives its transmission from person to person primarily. And so the most important thing that, you know, people can do is to wear a mask. And what's important about that, and I mean, I see a lot of people wearing masks, they don't cover their noses up or the masks aren't tight around the side or the nose. So it's important to wear a mask that is tight around the nose and tight around the sides.

And that really, that protects the user. It also will protect people if you have a cough, it catches the droplets. So that's important. I think there's a general belief that having indoor plants is good for air quality. Is that true? Or can plants bring in bugs and things into your house? Well, they can. I mean, I've seen people who over watered plants and they had mold in the floor and all kinds of bugs and mold on the outsides of the plants. I mean, they're not much, you know, I don't think they're so much a problem, although there's a ficus

benjamina can cause serious allergy problems. But there was an EPA thing or somebody did a test years ago and they claimed that the plants clean the air. But there was a really well-known air quality fellow named Fad Goder. She died a few years ago. But he showed that it was the potting soil that took all the formaldehyde out, not the leaves themselves. So plants are nice to look at and nice to have. But as far as sort of purifying the air, it's the soil that does the job. not the leaves themselves. So plants are nice to look at and nice to have, but as far as sort of purifying the air, it's the soil that does the job.

We're talking about how to keep your indoor environment safe, healthy, and clean, and we're talking about it with Jeffrey May, a certified microbial consultant and indoor air quality professional. He is also author of the book, My House is Killing Me, a complete guide to a healthier indoor environment. Hi, this is Rob Benedict.

And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors,

and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly

about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Jeffrey, everybody has bugs in their house. Spiders, you know, flies come into the house. Is that good or bad or doesn't matter? So one interesting thing, like a lot of people think that spiders are a good thing to have in a house, you know, but if you have a lot of spiders, that means that you have a lot of live bugs. Spiders only eat living insects. And so if you have a lot of spiders, you have a lot of bugs. So we at one time had a lot of spiders in our basement, and I put in a really good dehumidifier,

and we stopped having spiders because the dry air killed off the bugs, and then there was nothing for the spiders to eat. What about dust mites? How bad are they? Can you even see them? I mean, are they invisible to the naked eye? You could see a dust mite crawling on a piece of black paper, but they're not active unless the relative humidity is 70% or higher. So you don't find them in a dry, you'll never see them in a dry environment. The place you'll find them is in a bed. This is very interesting. I did

an experiment one time where I measured the relative humidity in the bed. And so it's the relative humidity under the covers in some random place is pretty much the same as it is outdoors in the bedroom. But under your body where you're sweating, there's a much higher moisture content. And so the dust mites are in the mattress and they wait for you to come to bed. And do what? Well, there's only a couple of things that dust mites do. They don't bite. They just reproduce, but their fecal pellets are extremely allergenic. It's the largest cause of asthma in the world.

It's a huge problem, and it's just that most bug droppings have enzymes on them, and the enzymes are extremely allergenic. I remember hearing somebody talk about how that if you weighed your mattress when you got it and you weigh it 10 years later, it's going to weigh a couple of pounds or more than it did when you bought it because of all the dead dust mites and dust mite poop that's now in your mattress. Is that true? That's just baloney. It's not true. It really is a shame. It's just not true. I mean, the way you prevent dust mite infestations is by putting a dust mite cover on a mattress. So this is interesting. I had asthma and allergy to mites, and I would get into bed and cough and had all kinds of problems.

And I tested the dust from the mattress. This is years ago before I did my own sort of microscopy, and it was a very high level of dust mite allergen. And we put a cover on the bed, and I never had another problem after that. So what's very important, there are different kinds of covers out there and some of them are just woven, tightly woven fabric and others have polyurethane plastic liner on the inside. And if you've got a lot of dust mites in your mattress and you put one of those just strictly cotton or polyester covers on,

it doesn't stop all the allergens. I actually looked at, you know, with a microscope, looked at the fabric, and you can see there are holes in the fabric where things can get through. So the most effective one is a very thin layer of polyurethane plastic on the inside. If you have pillows, though, on your bed for a couple of years, is it likely then that that pillow is full of dust mites? No, maybe. As I said, you know, maybe only a third of the things get that infested.

I think it depends on how you sleep. A good example, if you go, you see, dust mites need moisture. They have all the, you know, there's a lot of skin scales in the dust, as we said, and they're in the pillow and they're in the mattress, but they need moisture. They have all the, you know, there's a lot of skin scales in the dust, as we said, and they're in the pillow and they're in the mattress, but they need moisture. So if you go to bed with wet hair or you sweat a lot, you're going to have a lot of mites. For example, when my son was little, he would sleep under piles of blankets, and he'd wake up sweating. Well, that's what those mites needed, and that's what got that problem going.

Oh. So if you sweat a lot, you're probably what those mites needed, and that's what got that problem going. Oh. So if you sweat a lot, you're probably attracting dust mites. Well, you will provide an environment for them that's more suitable. And the thing is, the way they reproduce is that a male inseminates a female, and she stores the sperm for her lifetime. It's called a gravid female. And so she can then inseminate herself for an entire lifetime. So the way dust mite infestations travel is you get a gravid female on your clothing and then you drop it off somewhere in your bed or your couch. So that's how they get around.

I never sit on anything with a cushion if I go into anybody's house. Really? Well, I try and sit, let's put it this way, I try and sit on leather or wood. Yeah. Well, and also because if there's dust mites, when you sit on a cushion, all the allergens, the air gets compressed, and so then the dust comes flying out, so it gets into the air. So what else about this, about people's homes, do you find that people don't realize or that's

really important, or just anything else that we haven't talked about that you think people really need to be aware of? Well, I think a lot of people worry about, you know, mold in their bathrooms. And everyone's answer really is to put in an exhaust fan or a better exhaust fan. And that's just, it doesn't cut it, in my opinion. You know, the first thing you want to do is to squeegee all the water off of the walls. And that gets rid of most of the water that would normally evaporate and give you the, you know, walls. And that gets rid of most of the water that would normally evaporate and give you the moisture. And then you can operate an oscillating fan and that will dry

the walls out. We have actually a fan in our bathroom at the ceiling that blows air down and it dries that shower out within an hour or two. So you need air movement to dry things. And then you can, if you, let's say you dry yourself off, your towel is soaking wet, you hang it up in the bathroom, all that moisture has to evaporate. So you can take the towel and put it in the dryer or put it in a different room, and that would give you less moisture.

But drying the bathroom out is important. And I guess before you use an oscillating fan, you want to make sure you clean the mold up so you don't blow it around. So the exhaust fan isn't doing much? No, it doesn't. The exhaust fan, it takes the steam out of the shower, but once that's gone, really you're left with all those drops of water hanging everywhere, and those drops of water don't evaporate unless there's this air movement. Is there

anything else about indoor air particularly something people can do about it about indoor air that maybe we don't know that we should know? Well I guess with the holidays coming up a lot of people are going to be burning candles. And I always tell people to avoid burning jar candles because one of the things that people like about jar candles is that they flicker all the time. And as the flame flickers, it causes incomplete combustion and you get soot. And that's why as you burn a jar candle, the whole rim gets black. And all of that soot goes into the air. And there have been thousands and thousands of homes that have been stained by soot from jar candles. The soot particles are not healthy to breathe.

And I actually burned a jar candle in a room. I measured the particle count outside before and after, and the particle count was a couple hundred thousand per cubic foot of air, and after the candle burned overnight, it was over 10 million particles. So the soot particles are in the air, and they're not healthy to breathe. Well, this has all been very interesting and very helpful and kind of gross, but I guess it's important that we know all this. Jeffrey May is my guest.

He's a certified microbial consultant and indoor air quality professional. And his book is called My House is Killing Me, A Complete Guide to a Healthier Indoor Environment. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, Jeff. All right. Thank you very much, Mike. It was fun.

It was great. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts For Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong Each week we deliver four fun-filled shows In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas With hilariously honest advice

Then we have But Am I Wrong Which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice Plus, we share our hot takes on current events Then tune in to see you next Tuesday For our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Every once in a while, I like to wander off the beaten path and talk about some interesting and unusual topics that aren't necessarily useful, but pretty interesting and fascinating nevertheless. Which brings me to my next guest, Steve Silverman. Steve is a science teacher and podcaster who began collecting interesting and unusual true stories to share with his students. He also shares these stories on his podcast, which is called the Useless Information Podcast. And some of the stories are also in his book called The Flipside of History. Hey, Steve, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me on.

Sure. So let's get right into some of these great true stories you've uncovered. And let's start with the Green Parrot Murder. This is from 1942. It took place in Harlem, of course, in New York City, at a place called the Green Parrot Bar and Grill. And it was owned by a guy named Max Geller. And you have to imagine this bar and grill is just packed with people.

Someone comes in and shoots Max Geller and he drops dead. And not a single person could say what happened. They asked 20 different people and they got 20 different stories. No one could say for sure who came in, what he looked like, how it happened. And they're investigating this thing for quite a while. The only one who was talking was the green parrot for whom the bar was named after. And the parrot just kept repeating, it's murder, robber, robber. It's murder, robber, robber. And this is going on for a while. And one day, one of the investigators is saying, maybe it's not saying it's murder, robber, robber. Maybe it's telling us who the person was who committed the crime.

Maybe it's saying it's murder, robber, robber. They investigated. There were only two robbers that patronized the bar. It took them a whole year, but they found this guy named Robert Butler in Baltimore, and he had committed the murder. So the parrot actually turned in this guy, Robert Butler, and he got seven to 15 years at Sing Sing. Talk about the Crayola Caper. That's an interesting one. So this story occurs in 1973, and oddly, it takes place at the Concord Hotel, which was in walking distance of where I grew up. And one day they receive a letter in the mail and it was signed by someone named Crayola, you know, of the crayon fame.

And he demanded $320,000 be delivered to a phone booth on Fifth Avenue in New York City. And he warned them not to contact the FBI. If they did, he threatened to lace all the water and coffee at the hotel with LSD. Anyway, so of course, the Concord did contact the FBI, just as they were warned not to do, and they sent in an agent who posed as a Concord employee. The phone rang. Then, of course, they played this game of going from phone booth to phone booth to phone booth until finally they ended up in Grand Central Station. And the FBI agent was told to slip the bag through a broken window at the base of one of the bathroom doors.

And they did that. And then, of course, the FBI come running in and they found out the door was locked. It was locked from the inside. What they didn't know was that the person on the other side was able to escape up a service staircase to another level and got away. Now, what the people who did this didn't know was that it was fake money. And of course, they put a tracking device in. So Crayola sent an angry letter to the FBI, demanded the release of Timothy Leary,

who was the LSD guru at that time. And nothing happened. So he went to Jack Anderson, who was a famous columnist back then, and told him his story. But Jack Anderson and his staff were like, well, we need some proof. And by then, the FBI kind of figured out who it was. So this guy, Crayola, sent his accomplice to get the letter out of a safe deposit box in New York City. And as he was exiting the bank, they snatched, you know, they snabbed him and, you know, arrested him.

And in the end, they arrested three people. But the main person was a guy named John Calvin Van Orsdale. And he got two years in prison for doing it. Well, it sounds like a movie plot, like, and not even a particularly good movie plot of, you know, we need money or we're going to do this horrible thing and don't call the police. Of course, you call the police. Well, the interesting thing is that that was one of his claims when he went to court that this was all to expose the FBI for their corruption. And it was the basis for a book that he was writing. Tell the story of the Salem Trade School football team.

The story takes place in the 1920s out near Boston. There's a school called the Salem Trade School, and they were without a doubt the worst high school football team in the Boston region. There was no one worse than them. Now, in those days, schools didn't pay for their football teams, for their sports. Basically, the admission that people paid at the gates was split between the two teams. So everybody wanted to play Salem trade. You were guaranteed to win. So basically, their coach would call up their coach, arrange it all in play, and they were guaranteed to win.

This is going on for about five or six years. And then right before the stock market crashed in early October, they won their first game. And you'd think that people would be going crazy. After six years, Salem Trade finally won a game. It turns out when they investigated, there was no school. It was a made-up school. They basically recruited some guys. They were probably between 18 and 21, 22 years old.

And they were splitting the receipts from the gate with them. And these guys, they weren't even in high school and they were just going around playing team after team. And once it was exposed, you think that would have been the end of it. But again, they were guaranteed gate admission at these games. So for another couple of years, they kept doing it. Since you've been doing this for a long time now, what is the craziest story you've ever found? Okay, so I've been collecting these for about 30 years. And honestly, I don't think there's anyone more bizarre than what is known as the murder of Michael Malloy, which took place in 1933 in the Bronx. This is during Prohibition.

So, of course, you know, there were no bars. There were speakeasies. Everything was done in secrecy. And the owner of this bar needed some quick cash. Basically, they knew that Prohibition was coming to an end and they'd be out of business. So they needed some quick cash. And they came up with this crazy idea. What you do is you find some guy who looks like he's in really, really bad shape, and you bump him off. You take life insurance policies out on him, and you bump him off. Then, of course, you'll get the proceeds from the life insurance. There was this guy named Michael Malloy. He kept coming into the bar. He was probably about maybe around 60 years old. He was in really sad shape. They figured, hey, we'll just give him an open tab, and he'll drink

himself to death. They did that. Night after night, they're giving him more and more alcohol. It did nothing. So after about a week of doing this, they realized they needed to up the ante somehow. And so they started spiking the drinks with antifreeze, turpentine, horse liniment, rat poison, so on. And that wasn't working. So then they decided to put some oysters and clams and soak it in antifreeze and let him eat that. Didn't work. They let a sardine sandwich rot away till it was almost inedible. Well, he gobbled it down and did fine. At one point, they even took the can from the sardines and ground it up, added it to the sandwich, and put tax onto the sandwich. And he ate that, and there was no problem.

So then what happened over time is they kept bringing in another person, another person, and they brought in a taxi driver. And they decided to get Michael Malloy really, really drunk until he passed out. So they put him into the back of the taxi cab. They took him out to the middle of nowhere, and they ran him over. They got the cab up to high speed, ran him over and they killed him. At least they thought they did. And just to make sure they did it right, they went around and they ran over him a second time. And so now they're certain that Michael Malloy's dead. All they have to do is cash in, take in the life insurance policies and cash in. But they had no proof that he had died. They knew he was dead, but where was he? They checked all the hospitals. They checked the morgue.

No records of him anywhere. So they got another guy and they put the fake ID on him saying he was Michael Malloy and ran him over. But unfortunately, he survived. Well, after about three weeks, guess who comes wandering into the bar? There's Michael Malloy. And he's all bandaged up. And he's saying, I got hit by a car, but I didn't have any money. So the hospital just kind of took me in as a charity case. So now they say, we got to kill this guy outright. So they took him up to one of the guy's rooms.

And in those days, they had the gas hooked up to the wall. And they shoved it down his throat, turned on the gas. And after about 30 attempts on his life, they finally killed Michael Malloy. And one of the guys in on it was an undertaker. So they buried him, and they were about to put in the insurance money, but they couldn't keep their mouth shut. So they're like, did you hear anything? Did you hear anything? Next thing you know, the police hear about it.

They arrest the six guys. One of them died in prison. Another one turned state's witness. And the other four went to the electric chair at Sing Sing. Were there ever any theories as to why this guy was almost indestructible? Not really. I think it was more they were bumbling at it. They wanted to do it and not make it look like they did it.

It's hard to say. When I first came across the story, and I came across the story probably 27, 28 years ago, just a little blurb somewhere. And I live in Albany, New York. And in those days, you had to go use microfilm. You really couldn't do any research on the internet. So I drive over to SUNY Albany, University of Albany, and I went down to their basement. I pull up the microfilm of the New York Times, and I was shocked to see the story really was true. And it was front page headlines back then. Tell the story. It's kind of a weird story about the womanless library. So the story is from 1930 in Lamars, Iowa, and it involves an attorney named T.M. Zink.

And he was a very prominent attorney and very well known out there. And he suddenly died. And people in the community just loved him. So there's all these tributes in the newspaper to him. And it was a very sad moment for Lamar's. But then two days later, his will was revealed. And he was a lawyer and he's fairly wealthy. And When they revealed the contents of the will, all of a sudden, it became a story nationwide. Basically, he paid his daughter $5, which is about $75 today, and he left absolutely nothing to his second wife. In fact, for her to stay in the home, she had to pay him rent. Now, the remainder of his estate, which is in, they weren't sure exactly how much it was back then, but they valued it between $40,000 and $80,000 back then, which is

an incredible chunk today. He wanted it invested for 75 years. At the end of 75 years, all the money, all the interest that it earned would be used to build a public library. But here's the real catch. There had to be a sign above the door, above every door to the library that said, no women allowed. Not only no women allowed, but they couldn't be involved in the building of it, the designing of it, the operation. And it couldn't even have any work that was written by a woman in the library. Of course, the daughter challenged this and she actually won in court. You know, you sometimes wonder why or how people fall for scams,

like the Nigerian Prince email scam, or those calls from people claiming to be from the IRS, and they're going to come and arrest you if you don't pay them. And the reason that those scams are around is because if they call enough people, eventually somebody falls for it. And you have a story of a scam that, I mean, well, tell the story. This involves a guy named Harold Jesse Burney, and the story takes place actually over time from about 1953 to 1957. And he lived in Washington, D.C., and he had some patents on television antennas.

Keep in mind that the 50s television was relatively brand new. Now, his main financial backer was this woman named Pauline Goebel. And honestly, I have no idea where she got her money from. Anyway, in the summer of 1953, he told Pauline he needed to go to Delaware on some really important business. What she didn't know is that he went Pauline he needed to go to Delaware on some really important business. What she didn't know is that he went there and he met up with a couple and basically suckered them out of every penny they had. He took them for $22,000, claiming he had a device that could derive endless energy

from the atmosphere. Of course, that wasn't true. By the way, that would be over $200,000 today. It was quite a chunk of money he ripped them off for. Anyway, when he got back, he told Pauline that he was really on a secret mission with the US government. And he said, I have to entrust you these details. You can't tell anybody.

What he told her is one of the craziest stories and why she bought this. I wouldn't say she was really gullible, but she had to be somewhat gullible. He said that he went down to Washington DC to meet with government officials who took him out to see a flying saucer. And when he got out to the flying saucer, he met with a guy named Prince Eusebius from Venus. And suppose the United States wanted to establish a relationship with Venus. So E Ucelles told Bernie of this incredible device they had that could extract endless energy from the atmosphere. And of course, they needed investors. So, Pauline Goebel agreed to put in more money into it. So, in April 1955, Goebel gets a call that Bernie was really, really sick on Venus and he had died.

Now, why some prince on Venus needs to pick up the phone and call her is was really, really sick on Venus and he had died. Now, why some prince on Venus needs to pick up the phone and call her is beyond me, but that was the claim. Anyway, months later, all of a sudden, he's regenerated. Basically, they had this ability to do that on Venus and he flew from Venus back to Texas and got in contact with her. And Pauline Goble provided him with another $10,000 for this invention that he had. Anyway, a few weeks go by and Bernie's real wife receives a package in the mail saying that he had died and it had his wallet and all his possessions in it. And she just didn't buy it. She knew he's a bit of a con man and she didn't buy it. She contacted the FBI and it took them about a year, but they

tracked him down and arrested him. And he was sentenced to 20 months to five years in federal prison. In the end, he took Pauline Goebel for $38,000 and the Delaware couple for 22,000. Adjusted for inflation, he basically took both of them for $570,000. Tell the story of Violet Jessup. This is a story about the Titanic. It involves a woman named Violet Jessup. She was a stewardess on the three sister ships. Most people don't realize there were three almost identical ships.

It was the Olympic, the Titanic was the second, and the third was supposed to be the gigantic. Now, basically, when the Olympic, which was the first of the three sister ships to be launched, Violet Jessup was a very young, attractive woman, and they wanted their best staff on their best ship. So they put Violet Jessup onto the Olympic, and on its fifth trip out, it crashed with a British cruiser and almost sank. So they limped it back to port, and they had to stop work on the second ship, which was the Titanic. In fact, I read that they took the propeller off of the Titanic and put it onto the Olympic so they could put it back out to sea. Of course, once the Titanic is finished, they transfer Violet Jessup from the Olympic to the Titanic. And she was on the very last lifeboat

to leave the Titanic. And she wasn't supposed to get on. She was just she was on the very last lifeboat to leave the Titanic. And she wasn't supposed to get on. She was just a worker on the ship. But basically, they couldn't convince people to get into the boat. So they asked her to get in and show people how to put on the life jacket and so on. And she did that. And of course, she was saved. Now, once she got to New York, her biggest regret was she didn't go back and get her toothbrush.

That was her biggest concern. Although I should point out that initially, there was supposedly no loss of life. It was only a few hours later that they started realizing that a lot of people had died. Anyway, so that's the first two sister ships. Now, World War I breaks out. So they stopped work on the Gigantic. I shouldn't say that. Basically, they changed the name of the Gigantic to the Britannic because Gigantic sounded too much like Titanic.

The war breaks out, and they turn the Britannic from a cruising ship into a hospital ship. When it was on its sixth voyage across the Aegean Sea, it hit a mine and started to sink. Violet knew exactly what to do. She runs back to her cabin. You can probably guess what she grabbed. She grabbed her toothbrush, jumped into the lifeboat, and they lowered down onto the water. And all of a sudden, she sees everybody in the lifeboat jumping out.

She turns around, and the captain decided to gun it towards shore and sees a giant impeller coming towards her. So she jumps out of the lifeboat also. She goes down, comes up, smashes her head into something, goes back down, finally gets her head above water, grabs someone else's life jacket, pulls herself afloat, and she just sees body parts all over the place. Somehow she had managed to survive. So she's the only woman to survive the accidents of the three sister ships. So I think it's a pretty cool story. Yeah, all I would say is if I saw her name on a ship I was getting on, I would not get on. Well, I do like your stories because they're in that vein of, you know, truth is often stranger than fiction. And many of your stories seem, frankly,

unbelievable, but you've done the research to prove that they're true. And they're really fun to listen to. Steve Silverman has been my guest. His podcast is called The Useless Information Podcast, and his book is The Flip Side of History. And there are links to both the podcast and the book in the show notes for this episode. Thanks for coming on today, Steve. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mike, for having me on the show. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed it. If you would like to spend less time cleaning and clean your home better, here are three suggestions from cleaning authority Don Aslett, author of the book No Time to Clean. Number one, 40% of the time you spend cleaning your home is likely because of clutter. If you get rid of the clutter or put it somewhere else,

you will drastically cut down the amount of time it takes to clean. If paper towels or newspaper are such a great way to wash windows, why is it you never see professional window washers using them? Because the best way to clean windows is a few drops of dishwashing liquid in a bucket of water and a very good squeegee, just like the pros use. Number three, carpet cleaning is really best left to professionals. Over 55% of people clean their own carpets by renting a machine at the supermarket.

It may be cheaper, but professionals usually do a better job and get up most of the moisture. It is one job not worth doing yourself. And that is something you should know. As someone who enjoys this podcast, and you must enjoy it because you made it all the way to the end of the episode, why not share it with someone you know so they too can enjoy this episode and we get to grow our audience. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide

when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer,

unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network.

At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.