Stuff You Should Know - What happened to the lost colony at Roanoke?

Episode Date: June 4, 2013

Before Jamestown became the first successful English colony in the New World, an entire group of settlers vanished. For the last 430 years, Roanoke has been an American mystery. Learn the theories of what became of the lost colonists in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and do not include pending transactions or any other purchases you make before the end of the billing period. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and we know where he is right now. He's just sitting there. Groot Owen. That's the best way to say that word. It does. It sounds like a...

We'll get to it obviously. It does sound like a very spooky ominous thing to carve on a tree. Yeah, especially because it was carved on a tree by missing people, vanished people. People are like, what? But historians are like, yeah, that's exactly how you say it. I can't wait for this one. Well, you're right here. You don't have to wait. Let's experience. No, I was saying that historians are saying that.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So Chuck. Yes. Have you ever been to Roanoke, Virginia? I've been through there, yeah. And like a dummy, I thought that might have been where the settlement was. Well, it's not just you, man.

I wrote this article. Yeah. What happened in the Lost Colony at Roanoke. Yeah. And I forgot that it wasn't Roanoke, Virginia. What we're talking about is Roanoke, North Carolina, which is an island that's part of the Outer Banks. Yeah, very lovely.

And Virginia was very heavily settled. So it's not like, you know, it wasn't Roanoke, Utah. Right. So I'm giving ourselves a break for getting that confused. I bet a lot of people think it might be Virginia. Well, plus also the Roanoke Colony was the first English settlement in the New World. And Roanoke, Virginia is not too far away from it. Yeah.

They moved on to Jamestown to found that that was the first successful English colony. Right. It's all the press. Yeah. So you can, you know, understand why you or anybody else, including me, would think we were talking about Roanoke, Virginia. Sure. But that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about Roanoke, North Carolina. Yeah. And it was settled in three waves. And all three of them were at the behest of one guy named Sir Walter Raleigh. Yeah. Sir Walter Raleigh had something that a lot of other people wanted. He was born a commoner. Chutzpah.

That pride. Yeah. He was dammably proud. I understand. Yeah. A biography cites him as to his decline. An eventual beheading. Yeah.

But he was a big favorite of Queen Elizabeth I. And he was a member of her court. And she gave him the patent to any English settlement in the New World. Like he had it wide open. As long as there weren't other Christians settled on a piece of land. Yeah. He could have a crack at it and get, he would own it. Well, she was very concerned about the native peoples though, right?

No. No. Okay. Sorry, I was that confused. No, it was specifically other Christians. So basically she was saying like the Spaniards are already there in Florida. Steer clear of those guys. Yeah.

The French, they're into like Beaver Pelt. So they're probably going to be a little north. Maybe you should go North Carolina. Go try that. And so Raleigh did. He didn't go. He went later on. But he sent a first wave an expedition in early 1580 something.

Yes. I don't have the date there for this one. But the first 1585. That was the first real attempt at a settlement. The first one was just like an expedition lake just to go check out. Oh, good place. So pre 1585. Right.

So 1585. That was the first attempt to actually settle the island of Ronan. Yeah. And it was just dudes on this trip. It wasn't like families and kids and things like that. It was just some dudes. Yep. Adventurous guys.

A lot of them soldiers. Among them was a guy named John White who was an artist who ended up making a lot of the well the first maps of the new world English maps were drawn by John White. And he was really good at it. Yeah. And I think he was promised 500 acres in the end. Like, hey, if you go set this thing up and it takes you can pick out 500 choice acres for yourself.

Yeah. So he's like a lot of land. It's a good deal. Let's go. Yeah. Now, John White was a pretty good guy from what I understand. The problem was he wasn't leading that 1585 expedition. He was just a member of it.

Yeah. He the guy who was leading it was a dude named Ralph Lane. And Ralph Lane was a really brutal jerk. Yeah. Initially the Indians, the local tribes, the Sikoden tribe. Right. Yeah. They were friendly to the first expeditionary group.

The first planters is what they're called. Yeah. To their detriment, of course. Yeah. So Ralph White routinely holds their leaders hostage in exchange for food, kills indiscriminately. Yeah. Even though they're relying on these very people to teach them the ways and how to grow these new crops and things that they had no idea about how to survive there.

Right. They depended on them and killed them at the same time. Right. Well, eventually, after a while, the Sikoden tribe said, you know what? To hell with you, buddy. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah.

And after that, the 100, I think it was 100 people, right? For the 1585 expedition. Yes, 100 men. Yeah. After 10 months, they were like, we need food and we're going to die. So let's just go back to England. Yeah. I should have waited.

Yeah, because I think like two weeks later, a supply ship came. Yeah, so it would have been okay. Yeah, they would have been at least, but at the same time, they were basically at war with the surrounding like all the surrounding tribes. Not all of them were friendly off the bat, but by the end of the 10 months, all of them hated this group of 100 Englishmen. Yeah. So they leave, they go back and we're always like, that was a pretty good attempt, but

I think we can do better. Maybe we need some women, some children. And John White, I like the cut of your jib. So you lead this one. Yeah, let's just make a go of it as like a real settlement. Not just adventuring dudes, but let's really try and settle this place as a colony of families and people. Yes.

So the 1587 expedition is what it's called was I think 118 people, including John White, led by John White, who was now the governor. And they came back and they were actually not supposed to stay at Roanoke. It was obvious to everybody, this was a bad place to be, the Indians hated everybody. Yeah. Well, I guess it was sort of obvious. It was not. So it wasn't a safe place to be.

And I think they originally intended to move a little further up into the Chesapeake, but they ended up in Roanoke Island, I guess to check on some soldiers. Yeah. And we'll get to the little mystery. There's a little mystery there that we'll get to later, right? On why they stayed there. Right. And I should say that there were soldiers on Roanoke because that supply ship that came

two weeks later left 15 men to keep an English presence in the new world. Yeah. And I think all they found was the bones of one body, right? Yeah. One single body. And the other 14 were missing. Missing and gone. But that was not the lost colony of Roanoke.

Oh, no. No, no. That was just some soldiers. No. The 117, I think you said 118, it says 117. Well, I don't think it's wide or not. No, I think it wasn't because white was heard from again. So I think it was 118 at least.

Okay. Give or take, let's say. They settle there. They build their little two story cottages. They meet some friendlies. Yeah. They actually turned the tide and made the Sikoden tribe nice again. Yeah.

They met some not so friendlies that tended to just sort of leave them alone, though, at least at first. Yeah. They were also with the Powhatan who were on an island called Croton. Yeah, which is now Hatteras. Right. Croton, like we said, we'll figure in here in a second. Yeah.

So they were doing pretty well, but they were in for hard times right off the bat. They arrived in July, which is past the planning season, so they had no crops right off the bat. Yeah, which is later than they were supposed to arrive, which is part of the mystery that is yet to be revealed. Yes. They were initially confronted with hostile Indians. They managed to turn the tide, but there were some delightful things that happened.

For example, John White's granddaughter, Virginia Dare, became the first English child born in the New World. Yeah, delightful for a moment. Tragic in the end, but even though they did make friends with the Powhatans, they were essentially dependent on England still, which is important because without that, John White might have stayed. If they would have been fully self-sufficient at that point, he might have stuck around. Although he may have met the same mysterious fate as the other lost folks.

Yeah, and I think that the mystery might not have been quite as mysterious without John White to report it initially. Yeah, maybe so. He leaves to go back to England the same year that the 1587 colony was established. They say that- To get provisions. Right. Yeah.

They say that he was delayed in getting back because the English and the Spanish went to war. Yeah, dude, it took him three years. Three years. He finally got back in 1590. I don't know what he expected. Did he expect them to be thriving? I guess that's what he was hoping for.

I'm sure he was hoping for it, but at the very least, he was expecting for some evidence of what became of them. He heard something. When he landed in 1590 back on Roanoke, he was confronted with a mystery that's lasted for 400-something years, 423 years. Yes. What he arrived back to was no people, no bones, no bodies, no clothing, no supplies, no buildings.

Yeah. Nothing except for what, the remnants of a wall or a fort? A fort that hadn't been there when he left, so they had assembled a fort in that and basically a fort meaning just some pikes surrounding the settlement. The problem was the settlement was gone. Everything. There weren't burned out shells. There weren't tumbled down buildings.

He said his quote was that they'd been taken down, so they disassembled the buildings. Yeah. It wasn't like any signs of a war had gone on and that there was a massacre that had taken place and that they burned their huts and assaulted the people and killed them and left their bones. It was like they just left. Right. There was no evidence of murder.

There was no evidence of a hasty exit. There was no evidence that they were following fish around the country. Right. Had they settled in Vermont maybe. You know, no patchouli. Right. There was no sign of distress. Apparently, they had an agreed upon symbol if John White came back and they were under

duress or had been under duress. Yeah. They were supposed to carve a Maltese cross in the somewhere. Right. Well, they didn't carve a Maltese cross. They carved Croatoan, so they had an opportunity to carve something. But they didn't carve the distress signal. They carved Croatoan.

Yeah. Which to me, and if I was John White, I would think the same thing. That means, hey, no distress. I guess they went to Croatoan. Where the Indians that we're friendly with lived. Yeah. It makes good sense. And I think it was Croatoan in one tree and then CRO.

In a post on the fort. Just Cro. Yeah. But it didn't say like Cro. Like they're like, no, nothing like that. Okay. No. It was more just like, we already carved it once.

Yeah. Or maybe those that they had a carving race. Maybe so. You know. Diddy Johnson carved it quickly. Yeah. And Virginia Dair is terrible at carving. Well, because she was three.

Right. Yeah. Well, you should never put a three-year-old up against an adult good wife. Yeah. Or never give a three-old a knife. Yeah. I think that's the key. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes.

They can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call. Like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

How's that New Year's resolution coming along? I know the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement while you're not alone. If you haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money Can Help. That's right.

We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now. And we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff.

If, let's say you've had a particularly spend-thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, John White is like, okay, well, this is really weird. Everybody's vanished.

He's probably sad. Yeah. And he goes, okay, I'm going back to England. History is not necessarily treated John White well. Historians, I should say. Oh, yeah. He's been described at turns as paranoid, which we'll get into. Yeah.

And also, it's a little flaky. At the very least, my interpretation of John White is that he didn't stand up to people like maybe he should have. So, the sailors that he's with, that he sailed back with provisions to Roanoke with, said, hey, man, I think a storm's coming. Let's just get out of here. So, he never went to Croatoan to find out what happened to the colonists. Yeah, for 15, 21 years, there were no expeditions to find out what happened. It wasn't until Jamestown in 1607 that they finally started looking and then making a habit of when they came across Native tribes,

saying, hey, you see a bunch of white people around here? Yeah. And actually, there had been some proposed expeditions that people had carried out, but they never actually went to search for them. They just used it as an excuse for piracy. Right. But yeah, once Jamestown settled, one of the main things they did was question local Indians, and they actually got some pretty intriguing answers. Yeah.

Like, well, they also found some pretty intriguing things like Indians with gray eyes and a boy with blonde hair. Yeah. But in Native American clothing. Yeah, they're like, hey kid, come over here and the kid takes off. Yeah, they didn't get a chance to question them, right? Right. They were apparently like eyewitness reports from reliable Jamestown planners. Yeah.

So, and then from the local tribes, they found that there were supposedly people who lived in two-story stone structures with that shrews. Yeah. Very English. Totally unique to the English. Yeah. There were supposedly people who spoke English and like read the Bible who lived, you know, further down the coast, but they never found any of them. And part of the problem too that we should point out is that they aren't exactly sure because of poor record keeping exactly, exactly where the settlement was to begin with. Right.

So they didn't know where to look. White, I think, had said it was further north on the island where the original dudes were adventuring. Right. And I think a Spanish dude had said, no, it's more toward the center of the island, and they found evidence of like cannons and things there. So they think it might have been there. Yeah. And they think that possibly the settlement is now underwater. Like there's been massive erosion on the island since the 16th century.

It was only 12 miles long though, but of course back then that's a bigger search area than they were capable of, you know. Yeah. Well, they also think though that in the last 400 years, as much as a quarter mile of the coast is eroded inland. Yeah. And that, yeah, it's very possible the settlement's underwater now. Interesting. And I watched a little YouTube thing on this. It was kind of a silly show, but there was one cool part where this tree expert said that you can drill into the core of a tree and study how much rainfall has historically that area has gotten.

And they found this, you know, tree that was like 500 years old drilled into the core and found that the biggest drought of the past 800 years occurred then. Right. They walked right into it. It was just not a good situation. Of course that didn't prove anything, but it was a nice little footnote. Yeah. What was silly about it? Did they break into dance and song here?

No. The guy on the show, he's like, you know, one of these like history detectives and he rented, you know, the little paragliders that have a fan attached to your back. He's like, I wanted to get an aerial view. So, like, dude, you just wanted to ride around on that thing. Like you got absolutely nothing from this. I wanted to get an aerial view. Yeah. And afterward we learned nothing about it.

Right. And they were like, boy, you know, that's a sure good way to see the island. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, it was silly. And it was not a discovery network. So I can say that. So Chuck. Yes, Josh.

The colonists are lost. The colony is lost. No one has any idea where it is. And they've even found parts of the 1585 colony. Yeah, they found the guy's ring, right? Yeah, they found the first scientific laboratory ever created in the New World by Thomas Harriet. So they found, like, other stuff. They just can't find the 1587 one, which is weird.

But there are a lot of theories abounding for what happened to the colonists. And I think it's awesome that there are none that fully explain what happened. I love historical mystery. I think it's cool. I like it when they're solved and I like it when they're unsolved. Yeah. This one's like as American as it gets. This is an American mystery.

That's right. One clue that White wrote down a bunch of stuff in a letter, obviously, when he went to check things out, and one thing he said that is pretty key was that they moved 50 miles into the main, which everyone took to mean into the main part of North Carolina inland into the forest. Right. But now they think maybe he meant, like, to the main toward Chesapeake. Yeah.

That or if you look at the distance between Crowatoan and Roanoke, it's 50 miles. Yeah. So they could have just assimilated with a friendly tribe and mixed their races and eventually became an altogether new race of sorts. Well, yeah, and there's actually a tribe that counts part of its origin story as the Roanoke settlers. The Lumbies. Yeah, the Lumbie tribe of Robeson County, North Carolina.

See, this sounds really compelling to me. It does. If you ask the average Lumbie, depending on who you ask, you're going to get like a, yeah, of course, or a, no, that's not the case. Oh, really? Yeah. It just depends. The tribe's divided as to whether or not they assimilated the Roanoke colonists or not.

But there are some pretty tantalizing evidence. For example, apparently as early as 1719, some members of the Lumbie tribe had surnames that were the same as some of the lost colonists, like Hyatt, Dial, Taylor. I think if a Native American walks to you and says, hey, Jim Taylor, nice to meet you. In 1719. Is that Bermuda grass? Like they could read. They could read.

You know, that stuff turns brown in the winter. Not a fan. They spoke English and could like read and write, I think, right? Yeah. They were familiar with the Bible. Yeah. So come on. Well, here's the thing.

Whether or not that is, if that happened in 1719, yeah, that's pretty compelling evidence. But there was still a hundred years of exposure that could have happened little by little. Yeah. You could still account for it. If you ask me, I think the Lumbie connection's pretty, it's pretty interesting at the very least. Maybe some of them went that way. You know?

It's possible. No one, you know, they had to stay together. No, not necessarily. But I think with the tribe, it's kind of like, well, these are our origins or they're not our origins. Well, that's true because they're a distinct, they're a distinct group. I get that. As I understand it, some folks say that they were killed by the Spanish.

They definitely knew that they were there because one of the, one of the dudes on the Roanoke expedition, when they stopped off in Puerto Rico, said, hey, let me get off here because it's really nice. That's probably what the real intent was. But why did he say he was going to say, Darby Glenn said that he was going to take on supplies? Sure. But either way, I'm going to stay here with the supplies. Yeah.

For a while. Either way, he stayed there and told the Spanish, hey, yeah, like we're settling right up there on that island there in Roanoke. So they, the Spanish knew where they were for sure. We know that. And here is why that's weird. They weren't supposed to settle in Roanoke. That's right.

They didn't know that they were going to settle in Roanoke. No, they weren't supposed to. They were supposed to be in Chesapeake, so herein is the first clue to the mystery. So there's a Johns Hopkins trained anthropologist named Lee Miller who came up with this idea that the Roanoke colony was sabotaged by rivals of Sir Walter Raleigh who resented him for his patent and wanted to get it themselves, and they thought that maybe by proving that he couldn't possibly establish an English colony in the New World, they could get the patent.

Yeah. And sabotage in the way of their ship's captain potentially, was it Fernandez? Yes. Was paid off maybe, and he did a lot of mysterious things, like took way too much time to do some basic charting and seamanship when he should have been super experienced. Well not only that. Delaying things. He knew the area, and he spent, I think, 36 days off the coast of Cape Fear to get his

bearings, and like we said that the colonists were delivered to the New World after the planting season, so there's no way they could plant. Getting a drought and to an area that was known to be, you know, violent and hostile, so. Right, Roanoke. Some people got off and said, you know what, everybody get off here, I'll see you guys later, and they left, and they weren't supposed to be there, and he basically stranded them there in a hostile area after planting season with limited supplies.

This other guy tells the Spanish where they are, maybe as a backup to make sure. Before they ever even went to Roanoke, they were on their way there. Yeah, so it's definitely hinky. Yeah, and Miller implicates a guy named Francis Wallingsham, I believe, and basically says this is the guy who was after Sir Walter Raleigh, and did all this, and found that Wallingsham rescued Fernandez, the pilot, from being hanged. So Fernandez literally owed this other guy his life. So who knows what he would have done.

That's possibly one of the first conspiracy conspiracies. Of the new world. Yeah. Of the among Europeans in the new world. For sure. And Miller also goes on to say that he thinks probably what literally happened to them despite whether they were set up or not to fail was that they were caught up in a shift of power among tribes, basically from, you know, the friendlies went away, the not-friendlies came

in, and that was a balance of power shifting, and they were kind of right in the middle of that. Well, they walked right into it. If they went into North Carolina in the forest, they walked right into the hands of some very hostile tribes who would have, according to Miller, killed all the men and sold all the women and children into slavery, and that they would have been traded up and down this network that spanned from Florida up to Virginia, the Chesapeake. And there's actually really tantalizing evidence, this other mystery, so there's a mystery on

a mystery. Yeah. It's, have you heard of the DARE stones? No. So from 1937 to 1941, 40 stones turned up from the North Carolina area all the way down to the Chattahoochee just outside of Atlanta, almost forming a trail. And they were etched granite stones that were written in Elizabethan English and said things like mark the death of Virginia DARE in 1591, all sorts of different, like, little messages.

Like the Toynbee tiles. Yeah. But leading from North Carolina to Atlanta and supposedly from the late 16th century. Yeah. So a lot of these are considered to be fake, if not all of them, but Bernal University up in Gainesville has all 40 of them in their collection, and apparently they're going back and reevaluating them because most people are like, those are frauds. Really?

Yeah, because the people who turned them up had no, they don't know Elizabethan English. They weren't trained in that at all. So it would have been right there kind of tough to carry out that hoax. Because it was North Georgia Hicks. But they think that some of the last ones were intentionally used to discredit people who were accusing Atlanta professors at Emory of trying to generate tourism to the area by saying the lost colonists ended up here. So come down here and run a cabin, you know.

But anyway, the Bernal University professors are going back and looking at each one on its own merit rather than related to the other 39 of them, from what I understand. So there's the darestones and it's possible that it kind of supports Lee Miller's hypothesis that they were traded and lived and left markings behind saying, hey, we were here. Well, I know that Miller was frustrated with when, was Miller here or she? She. I thought so. When she actually went to Roanoke and was just so frustrated like, because it's, you

know, like I said, 12 miles by, I think three miles, and she was just like, it's small. Like, where is the stuff? Yeah. Like, why can't we find anything? I think it's because they took off. It's been taken down. And then did you read this thing that I sent you? The new cleanup?

I really had a hard time understanding the significance of it. Are they saying that John White is saying here, this is where they were? I think here's, here's the deal. This group was established to try and figure this out, of course, and I think they were from England even, and they took a new look that they're called the First Colony Foundation. No, they're from North Carolina. Oh, they are. But they've been working with the British Museum that has that map.

So they found the 425-year-old map, they didn't find it. They took a new look at it and found that there were a couple of patches on the map, which basically, back then, you couldn't erase something and start over. You would do a little patch section and attach that to the map. One of the patches was just a mistake that was being corrected, and the other one didn't appear until they held it in front of a light box, so that's very mysterious. And they found evidence that they think concludes that they moved westward up the Albemarle sound to the confluence of the Chowen and Roanoke rivers, and the evidence is because what was

covered up was believed to be a symbol of a fort. So what they're saying is his intention, because this was a very detailed map, and it was a very important map. And it was drawn by John White, right? Yeah, drawn by John White, and it had been covered up for centuries until they found it, saying it's pretty clear that the intention was, hey, this is where we want to settle. This is where we're going to this fort. So are they saying that John White drew the map, and that was originally where they were

going to go before Fernandez stranded them? And so that's probably where the colonists went after they left Roanoke? I think so. Okay. I think that's what they're saying. They typically say that that was their original intent, but I think at some point while they were, before he left to go back to England, he said, let's go to this place and establish a fort.

So he just didn't write down what he knew well enough? I think so. And they say they don't know why it was covered over with a patch, but they think that they could start looking there for maybe remnants. Yeah, supposedly it's under a subdivision and a golf course right now. Yes, good luck with that, excavating hole nine. But yeah, interesting, they seem, I was a little less moved by this like you, they seem to be really like, oh my God, the mystery has been solved.

There was a fort that they said that they were going to establish. Right, and they covered it up with a patch that has a different kind of fort drawn on it. Yeah, it could have been as simple as maybe they wanted to do that, but then they still ended up, you know, getting taken or going somewhere else. So who knows, we'll never know. We probably will never know. It's going to be one of those enduring mysteries, I love it.

I love it too Chuck, you know, yeah, you got anything else? I got to solve everything. People are crazy for that kind of thing. Oh yeah. You know, they love to know everything. It's like, chill out, all in good time, all in 400 and something years. If you want to know more about the Roanoke mystery, type that word into the search bar at HouseToForks.com that is R-O-A-N-O-K-E, not Virginia, North Carolina.

And it will bring up this article by me. And since I said me, it's time for message break, which begins with me. Stuff it should know. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. Because public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table.

Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that and I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops.

They're like looting. They're just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along?

Any other one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save for retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now and we want to see

you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering listener questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend-thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income.

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All right. I'm going to call this maybe the biggest nerd ever to write a new art show. I love this dude. Actually, he may not be nerdy at all. Hi, guys. It has to do with D&D again, though. After listening to D&D podcast, I wanted to share with you how you inspired the creation of Dungeons & Dragon-esque role-playing adventure.

Two weeks before Christmas vacation last year, I came down with the chicken pox. At 28, it is sort of a medical absurdity to every doctor, nurse, and colleague I came into contact with. It's also really dangerous, though, right? I think it's more, I don't know about dangerous, but I think it's more complicated for sure. Okay. All right. Sorry for the interrupt.

No, it's okay. Two weeks of being stuck at home, trying not to scratch, allowed my imagination to wander. I had a day where I listened to the singularity, holographic environments, and designing our children's podcast. Also, I watched two documentaries on the band Rush and the movie Blade Runner. Wow. This combination of science fiction ideologies sparked the idea for a story, but I needed some help writing it, so I created a role-playing game.

Dungeons & Dragons does not lend itself to futuristic technology, so I decided to create my own games and rules. I used a university as the dungeon, college majors as character classes, campus stereotypes as races, Rush song lyrics as puzzles, and stuff you should know podcasts for the storyline. Wow. One example of what we did with it, majors, technology-related field wizard, nursing healer, kinesiology, paladin, chemist, rogue thief, biology, druid, music major bard, theology, monk.

I have no idea what to even make of that deal. Yeah. Okay. So four college boys set out to save the world from Alex Lifeson and Getty Lee's genetically engineered Neil Peart, and to prevent the singularity from taking over the campus of Illinois State. Wow. Go Redbirds.

Other than the odd looks we received from the guy installing window treatments while we were playing the game was a great success, and I introduced four new people to the stuff you should know universe. So thanks for inspiring an awesome day and distracting me from the pups. That is from Matt McCully, math teacher at Woodstock High School in Illinois, and the cross country and track coach. Wow. So dude, I want to see this game, I want to play this game.

I want a figurine of me. Me too. Me and Getty Lee, like fighting druids. Yeah, or fighting one another. Yeah. With druids advancing on you. That's a sticky situation. Yeah, so that's quite a game, and that is quite an email, Matt.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Matt. You may be right, Chuck. If you want to let us know how nerdy you are, or how wonderful your imagination is, I guess it's another way to put it. Yeah, we love nerdy qualities, by the way, because we got an email for a young lady that took exception to me saying nerd and making all my little nerd places. But it's all good fun. We love it.

Yeah, get a sense of human nerds. Yeah. If you want to let us know how funny you are, how imaginative you are, how nerdy you are, whatever, we want to hear it, send us a very creative tweet to S-Y-S-K podcast, join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow, send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com, and join us on our website, doit, it's called stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. This podcast is brought to you by BASF, the chemical company.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed, they call civil asset fortune. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

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