The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 241: The Maddest March Ever

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Scott Flansburg, aka the Human Calculator, makes a repeat appearance to bring breaking news on his quest for truth regarding the real origins of basketball.

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Here on the way I heard it with episode number 140. One is it? Or two? 141. No, it's not. It's 241. Oh, f.

Yeah, it's 241. I was so busy worried about the one. I forgot the two. Yeah. It's always good. to have a producer with me. Just keeping an eye on things, you know, making sure.

Somebody else sweating the details. If we had started at zero, I would have worked it out. But we started with one. We didn't start with a zero episode. That was our problem, yeah. We're going to talk at length in this episode about all of the problems that happen

when you don't start with zero. It's episode two for one. Chuck came up with the title just seconds ago, the maddest March ever. March Madness is just around the corner, or maybe it's happening as we speak right now, who knows, but in real time, our next guest, well, our only guest on this episode. Has a lot to say about basketball, a lot to say about math, a lot to say about zero, a lot to say about time and space. And if any of this sounds familiar, it's because you may have heard him on here before. What was that episode?

Do you remember? Like 181? Why am I asking you? What do you know about that? I believe it was 218, but give me just one second to confirm. No, no, you're right. It was 218. And that's when we introduced to you, my old friend Scott Flansberg, the human calculator,

who has spent his whole life on a mission. Scott's been on a mission to change the way people add, subtract, multiply, divide. He wants to change our relationship with math, with numbers, wants to change the education system, wants to change the way we keep track of time. He's created a new calendar. He's always pushing the rock up the hill. And I had him on the podcast a few months ago back in September of last year because he has taken on another mission.

He's trying to get the Basketball Hall of Fame moved, really, from Springfield, Massachusetts to his hometown of Herkimer, New York. He's trying to bring attention to the guy who actually invented basketball as opposed to the person who we all believe invented the game of basketball. Yeah, that's what he says, but between us, I'm pretty sure he wants to move the whole museum to Hercimer. This is such an interesting topic to me. And if you're listening to this going, why should I care? I don't care about basketball.

I don't care about those crooks in bed with the Chinese. I don't care about all the woke nonsense, blah, blah, blah. It's not about that. Nope. This is about history. It's about correcting a misconception in Scott's mind and the mind of many. other people too, because basketball is largely attributed and accredited to Dr. James Naismith nearly 130 years ago. But there's another narrative that's gained a lot of attention.

And I don't know about you, Chuck, but wouldn't it be funny if the entire history of this thing is rewritten because of a podcast that Scott did here back in September? That would be amazing. I would feel like we've really changed something in the world. Or we've brought truth to the world, Mike. That's my goal. Because up to this point, up to this point, we just feel like a couple of guys sipping a whiskey catching up every week. But in fact, we might actually change something with this one. Because if the origins of basketball are fundamentally wrong and that misconception can be corrected, well then, who knows? Maybe we'll be back for another month of the way I heard it. What else could we change? What other industry could we have a drastic effect on?

Now, this is it. It's basketball. We're one and done. That's it. We're one and out. Yeah. Anyway, it's a great conversation with my old friend, Scott Flansberg, who I think I was right when I said it in our conversation. The only returned guest we've ever had except for my mother. So far. You know, I was a little nervous, actually, because the first conversation with him was so good. I didn't know what we could possibly do to improve a lot of things.

Well, he's bringing an update. And it's a major update. Yeah. We talked about all this. a few months back, and now the national press is paying attention. Major sports figures are paying attention. He's poked the bear, and he's got some people really upset in Springfield. But in the end, the truth will out. And we're going to talk a little bit about a new book that Chuck and I just got an advanced copy of, and we each started. It's called Naismith, N-A-I-S-M-Y-T-H. This is the culmination of the last couple of years of work.

He partnered with a couple of Ukrainian authors, and they've got a book on the market that spells the whole thing out. It's a heck of a tale, and it's a super fun conversation. Chuck, you want to add anything before I throw to the episode? I believe they're Canadians, eh? They're from Ukrainian ancestry, but actually Canadians. You know? Yeah, well, you know what?

Are we all really from anywhere? Are we all from everywhere? Walk it back far enough. We're all from Africa. I'm in an ukrainer. I don't think that's proper German, but. Well, as long as we're going to invoke the name of that country, I sure do hope things end as well as they possibly can over there.

It's not the subject of this conversation, but you can't just say Ukraine in the preamble and not acknowledge world events. Well, I tried to make a Canadian, man, but you went with the Ukraine. You know, you said Ukrainian guys. Yeah, well, you diluted it. You just confuse me, but now it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that and whatever. It's the Great American Melting Pot. This is the way I heard it, episode number 241.

And it is, and my humble estimation, the maddest March ever. Thank you, Ross. See you. Chuck, do you feel better knowing Ross is back there manipulating things, turning buttons? I mean, does it give you renewed hope and the fidelity of what's about to happen? Just honestly gives me somebody to blame when it goes wrong. So either way, it's good. Which brings us to today's guests, if there's anyone to blame for either the brevity or the redundancy of the podcast you're about to hear, it would be Scott Flansberg.

Scott, I think you're the only person, Chuck, tell me if I'm wrong, but with the exception of my mother, who has been a repeat guest. I am beyond honored. Wow. Thank you, gentlemen. That means the world to me. Mike, I'm telling you, the response from the first episode that we did was, absolutely incredible for you have no idea the impact you guys could have on a little village in upstate New York near the Adirondacks that's been silent for 70 years so thank you guys

little village you're making it sound like they're carrying the water from the well and stuff vote that barge lift that veil yeah you know what I listened to what we did back in what was it September maybe October it was September because it was the same day that Alice Cooper performed in Utica right next door right Well, here's a humble brag, if you've never heard one. I listened to that episode, really for the first time this morning. We've got so much stuff going on. I can't even listen to my own podcast.

Modesty aside, I thought I was pretty good. I thought I crushed it. It was fun, dude, and I've known you for a long time. And, of course, it goes without saying you were going to be a fascinating guest, anybody on a mission to change the way we count and keep track of time is always going to have something new to say. But I was a little nervous because, as I told you offline, this is not really a current events podcast, certainly not a political podcast. But we are interested in, how do we say it, Chuck, futile causes. Quicksonic endeavors. Yes. Yes. You take big swings. And we did

that podcast, and I loved everything you had to say, I just listened to myself warning you that there was going to be pushback. Look, I'm actually surprised how many people listened to this thing and the amount of feedback we got from everything you had to say. But let's start with your village, because most people talk about the place where they came from as a town or a city or a zip code on a map, but you go with village, which makes me think we're a click away from a hamlet. So, How were things up there in the hamlet of Herkimer? Well, this little village has less than 10,000 people, and the population has not fluctuated more than 10% in the past five, six decades.

It's just paralyzed. And it was an industrial hub. It's on the Erie Canal, the New York State Thruway. Everything goes through here. And we're right between Syracuse and Albany. So we have every reason to be a major economic impact zone in our county and our community. for whatever reason, even though we're the middle of the county, we cannot seem to get momentum here. You sent me a book called Naismith, M-Y-T-H, very clever title, insinuating, of course, that the legend around Naismith,

the largely accredited inventor of basketball, is in fact a myth. And I'm really enjoying the book. I haven't finished it yet, but it seems like it's a book you could have written. And of course, I want to get to all the basketball stuff, but I didn't realize just reading through the first couple of chapters how pivotal that part of New York was. To your point, you're right there on the Mohawk. I mean, it's basically the Erie Canal. So much stuff happened up there. And I think we now call it the Rust Belt somewhat tragically.

But it was the center of everything once upon a time. It all happened. Everything went through here, including imagine this in Herkimer, this. little village in upstate New York in 1891, that Thomas Edison and Tesla were cruising through here on the Erie Canal to go from the city over to Niagara Falls to work on electricity. Herkimer was right in the middle and in this village at that time was a man known as HMQ, Henry M. Quackenbush, who had over 50 patents including stuff, just everyday stuff you'd never think of nutcracker, extension ladder, simple things, but also very, very, very, you know,

interesting things like the first Zephalopod in America. If you remember what a Zephalopod is, it's the original big bike with one big wheel and one little wheel. So Mr. Quackenbush was a very industrial man, and that's what attracted so many people here, including that

Thomas Edison chose Herkimer, the village, to test his arc lighting system before he went to the World Fair in Chicago. Did you know that the Zeplepod and a lot of other early prototypes for what we know is bicycle, today were invented as a result of a volcano on the other side of the world. It was that giant eruption,

what was it, Chuck, not Krakatoa, but Vesuvius. No, after that. Back in Indonesia, it'll come to me in a second. It plunged the earth into a summer of darkness. The sun never shown. It was the same year that Mary Shelley wound up writing Frankenstein. A lot of interesting things happened. that year, including snow in July in parts of New England, the crops died and a lot of horses died because they just weren't able to eat. And so people were like, we need a better way to get around. Cephalopod. Tambora. Yeah, Tambora. Tambora was the name of the volcano. But I digress. Here you are, trying to change the way people track time and count numbers, reflecting on your little hamlet, your village, at the center of all things, you've gone back to your

hometown to tilt once again at windmills. What's changed in the five or six months since I saw you last? Well, the one dynamic I didn't mention to you guys is that there were two brothers that were working on a book about the Herkimer basketball story. And what happened to them was they were living in Kansas in 2010. And they wrote an article doubting the origin. of basketballs and the Naismith narrative. And a couple months later, another reporter in Kansas City followed up with an interview of Dr. Naismith's grandson and he mentioned this book and story.

And Dr. Naismith's grandson got very upset and threatened if anybody else brings up the Herkimer story that he will personally kick their butt. And he wants Herkimer out of his life and on and on. So these two brothers get sort of blackboard, in Kansas, you know, because it's where Naismith is. Are these the Frosty Brothers, is it? Fosty Brothers. F-O-S-T-Y.

And they wrote a book called Black Ice, which showed how the history of ice had a lot to do with other than white people playing hockey. And so they sort of got whitewashed through the years. And so they did this amazing book and changed how the history of hockey will be told forever. And what happened was they left Kansas City after this happened. And I contacted them 18 months ago when I started working on this, and I found them through searching on Google and such. And I reached out to them and said, hey, I'm here.

I'm going to try to prove this Herkimer story that basketball was invented here. How far along were you guys on the book and how close could you be? And they were just wrapping up a project and said, we would love to sit down and go through it. And so they've been working on this day and night for the past 18 months, 16 months maybe. And when they called me three weeks ago and said, it's done, we're ready. and they gave us one more week to submit evidence. And we found two earth-shattering pieces of evidence,

and I'll explain why in a minute. But these two brothers are Ukrainian. They're from Canada, Canadian-Ukrainian brothers, and to do Black Ice and now to get a chance to rewrite the history of basketball, after what they experienced with Dr. Naismith's grandson just seems like it's coming full circle. Yeah.

And I've been reading something about Ukraine and the headlines here of late. It must be an amazingly fascinating time for these two. Fascinating indeed. And you know, we've got to be sensitive to these things, obviously, because of the situation around the world. And I know this is a sensitive subject to take a 130-year-old myth that has been conceived as truth and to just destroy that narrative. But we have the physical evidence to prove that. Well, I want you to walk me through it, like you did last time, with special emphasis on the new stuff. But I want to say, too, that the

reason you're that rare, rare species of return guest here on the Humble podcast is because what you're trying to do, well, let's just say you're in good company or company anyway. Like, right, we're, we're living in a time when if people don't really like the story that they're hearing from the past, then they'll identify the statute that best commemorates it and pull it the hell down. Right. Right. Like on the one hand, no one is hesitating to do whatever they can to change the present to reflect a better version of the past they would like to recall. I don't know if that relates directly to what's going on here, but I do think it's a good indicator of just how hard it can be to correct a mistake once it takes root. And that's basically what you're arguing, right? It's a fundamental belief and you're poking the bear.

Well, there's two angles we had to come at it with. One, look at Naismith's narrative. Forget everything else. Just how did he invent basketball? And if you just forget about Herkimer for a minute, just look at Naismith's patterns. Originally, he invented basketball in less than an hour and wrote down the rules because he had to have him for a class one day.

And by the time down the road, The story, the narrative has changed half a dozen times on how basketball was invented. Was it one hour, one day, one week, one month? It kept changing. And so we're just showing that. We're not interpreting it. We're just laying out the facts of his experience. And also at the end, when Naismith's family auctioned off the rules, this is almost 100 years later, okay, we found evidence that this was a cover job back in 1892, 93, when they first introduced basketball. and we found a document that absolutely shows it. It's in the book.

It'll blow your mind, but it's basically a disclaimer from a Naismith's boss explaining how they could get away with saying that they invented basketball and how they use the word invent. And so what had happened to you guys is basketball was introduced in January 92 and it just started snowballing so quick. And they started getting questioned over and over again, who invented basketball? How did it come about? And finally, by January of 93, they put out this statement that went into all the YMCA publications. That was just like a disclaimer that said, hey, you know, I was sitting around one night talking to Dr. Naismith, who's too modest to talk about his invention of basketball. And we were talking about the word invention.

And on and on it goes to explain how they could talk to themselves into convincing themselves that they had invented basketball because they might have made an edit or a modification to something that they had received. So that's how ugly this could get. But on the Naismith side, you can see throughout his life that it doesn't add up. And the rules being changed in 1992. And then his family or someone changed the rules, the original rules, before they were auctioned off for $4 million, where the date on the bottom of it used to say February 1892 forever. But for some reason, when it went to auction to Sotheby's, it went December 1891. And you can clearly see that someone changed the date.

And I believe it's because Herkimer had a picture of a team holding a basketball from their first team. And it says, 91, 92. And they couldn't explain that away. And so that's what happened. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do.

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Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash row. watch what happens. Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. It's just amazing, man. You've been peeling back the layers of the onion and I've been waiting to see if you either hit oil or if it's just a dry hole. You know, that's why we wanted to have you on before, because if there was something there, I knew it was going to blow up. So with this book coming out, are people finally starting to pay attention to this thing?

Yes, the response I've gotten from this few people that have read it are blown away and believe it's going to change everything. And that's very high-profile people that I can't mention, but we've sent it to some very select people to make sure everything was right and that we notified the proper people ahead of time before this came out and as it came out. And so, yeah, it's been a very sensitive procedure. We've had meetings with the Hall of Fame. We discussed this.

There's a couple other issues, guys. I just want to bring up with the Naismith side. Before we even talk about Lambert Will and the Herkimer story, is that Lambert Will's family had these heirlooms, these things, these little objects that were 100 years old from their granddad's first game in Herkimer. And in 1992, when the Springfield Basketball Hall of Fame was going to do the 100-year celebration of basketball, they solicited that stuff from the Lambert Will family. The Lambert Will family was so excited because the Lambert Will has never been mentioned in the Hall of Fame up to this point.

And so they go there, they give them the stuff. They show up for a celebration, a ceremony, to induct it a few days later. It's all under glass in the middle of this room. And there's an extra piece of paper in there that states something about the team being other than 91-92, that it was 92-93. And we have the video of the ceremony. And you can see that they have to take that out because the Will family is pretty upset. Well, they have the ceremony.

It's a private ceremony. Place was closed. 30 people of the Will family. They leave. And when they went back to see the display weeks or months later, it was gone. They asked for it. What happened to it was going to be displayed again, didn't get any clear answers. And that was 30 years ago.

And to this day, that exhibit, that display has never been seen by the Will family. So, okay, somebody's listening to this guaranteed and they're a little confused because they didn't go back and they didn't listen to the first episode. But just to do a little housekeeping, the Hall of Fame for the NBA is in Springfield, Massachusetts. Not the NBA. Sorry, Mike. The Hall of Fame is for basketball of all levels, not the NFL. NBA. The NBA does not have a Hall of Fame. Interesting. Okay. So all of basketball is represented in the town of Springfield, Massachusetts, where Dr. James Naismith taught briefly for a couple years, right? While he was doing that,

a young kid named Lambert Will, 16 years old, athletic director at the YMCA in your little village of Herkimer. the first time I read about the controversy, it really felt like the way I heard it. It felt like he said, she said. It felt like people of goodwill on parallel paths. You know, they talk about a, what do they call it, like a hive mentality. When multiple people are working on the same thing at the same time, but never really get together. But nevertheless, come up with the same thing, right? Like with semiconductors, Robert Noyes and Kilby working thousands of,

of miles apart basically came to the same kind of thing. I figured that's what happened with basketball. People were exchanging ideas and look, really no harm, no foul, no pun intended, but the more I read about it and the more I talk to you, I'm starting to understand why his great-grandson is so pissed off. I don't know that you can say this is an honest misunderstanding. This just looks more and more like a deliberate attempt to rewrite history and defraud Will of his legacy. In several generations, this happened in 1891, 92. This happened in 1952, when they decided somebody was going to build a Hall of Fame for basketball, the Hercimer guys, Alamber Will, and Frank J. Baslow, who wrote the book, I grew up with basketball to explain this whole story in

the first place, went to Springfield to fight to get the... the Hall of Fame in Herkimer because up until 1952, it was undisputed. It really wasn't talked about. Naismith was like the grand promoter of basketball. Lambert Will just sort of disappeared. He was a volunteer at the YMCA. Before he invented basketball, he helped a friend set up a trip from Herkimer, New York, to Santa Monica to take a Zepplepod across country.

He did that when he was 15 years old. 16. He advanced basketball. 18. He takes a year off and travels the country. And then he goes in the Spanish-American War and serves for a couple of years. And he comes back here and moves into the village next tour called Little Falls. And he runs a design print shop for over 30, almost 40 years.

What's bizarre, guys, is this whole time, Mike, since the day zero, I've been talking to about this. I kept saying to you 1891, 1891, we have spent the last two years of our forensic research and investigation focusing on 1891, certain dates, February 7th, February 21st, looking for anything. The last week we could find evidence, I walked upstairs into the attic of the Herkimer Historical Society on Main Street, less than 300 yards from where the first game happened. And I was told a section number, a book number, and a page number. And if I could find that, it had an article that would help us. And so I spent days up there, and we couldn't find it. Finally, I just said, I'm going to go through every scrapbook.

And I just grabbed one randomly. It was my grandma's old favorite number. I put it to the side, and it felt like she was sitting next to me. She passed a few years ago. but it was a freaky moment, and I finished going through everything else. I walked over to the window and I opened it up to page 40. It was supposed to be there, and it's not there. And I'm all bummed out.

And I just flipped through and I catch something, a glance something, and I flipped to page 14, and there it is, an article that is the 50-year reunion of these guys from Herkimer and Little Falls that played their first game back in February 1891. Now, they decided to celebrate it in 1940 because Lambert Will and his crew believe they had invented basketball in the fall of 1890. They were playing basketball in the fall of 1890. They just had the first official game in February of 1891. So when they had their fifth year reunion, they chose to do it in 1940. That's why we never found anything.

And when we recalibrated for the 1940 date instead of the 41, everything opened up. And now you see all that evidence in the book, including local articles that show there's no way that two dozen guys held a conspiracy for 50 years over a date that still wasn't being disputed when they had the party. Wow. Okay. Why should I care if I'm not a big basketball fan? It's been over 100 years. Multiple generations have come and gone. A lot of people look at basketball today and they're like, oh, God, give me a break. It's all so overpaid and all so woke and all so, right? Help me care about why you've dedicated your life in the last couple of years to get. getting to the nub of this. First and foremost, just to set the record straight, Mike. I love logic. I love order. And to me, when I started diving into this story,

I saw all the chaos that was created by Springfield that created this veil that made it harder and harder as time went by. And as we kept finding more evidence in Herkimer, I kept saying, holy cow, this really could be almost at a conspiracy level because Naismiths' boss, Gulloch, was a very motivated man. And when you look into that guy and you see

how they work together. They had some nefarious activities. The book also covers Naismith's other inventions that he claims to have, and they're very bizarre to say the least and how they're presented. So it goes on and on, but the reason I want you to care is because imagine Hercimer being deprived this story and this credit for 130 years. We live 28 miles from Cooperstown, New York, where the Baseball Hall of Fame is, the most idyllic village in the upstate New York area, probably, with an incredible amount of history. We are 28 miles away on Route 28, and we deserve to have a basketball museum,

at least here, to celebrate the history that happened here, including the first rim, the first net, the first game, the first backboard. I want to jump in on that why a person should care, because I'm a guy who doesn't really follow basketball. I'm more of a hockey guy. As soon as I discovered hockey, you know, The gag I always say to people when they ask about basketball, I say any game you can score 100 points in can't be all that hard.

But I know that's not true. Anyway, but I am a lover of truth, right? And to me, Scott, it feels like you are on a mission to find the truth. And I did read the forward in the first couple of chapters of this book this morning. And I jotted this down from Drakeford Levi, which is in the forward or the introduction. and he said, a truth lives forever. You can hide the truth, ignore the truth, deny the truth, bury the truth, or rewrite the truth. But in the end, after you are gone, the truth will reemerge.

It will continue to exist and will one day prevail. For truth never dies, truth lives forever. And that just stuck with me. And I was like, that is so true. It feels so true. And that's why I think what you're doing is amazing. And I'm excited for you. Thank you, Chuck. And imagine the Fossey brothers, George and Daryl Fosty.

You know, in 2010, Kansas... I love their ice cream, by the way. And, you know, they've gone through so much. And when they did Black Ice, they went through a lot. Imagine what they're expecting to go through this. And at this time in the world history, where, you know, what's happening in the Ukraine. Did you read Black Ice? Not all of it, but enough of it where I was excited to meet these guys because you could tell there's no

drama, they don't add anything. They just tell the truth and make sure everybody can understand it. That's what it felt like in a little bit that I've read so far of this book. And it makes me want to read Black Ice since I am a hockey fan. Yeah, you'll be amazed. Everything between the truth and the lie is the way we hurt it or the way somebody heard it or the way somebody told it. And having watched the State of the Union recently and paying attention as best I can to, oh, just call it the miasma of fake news, counterbalanced with the certainty of the people who make it, it really does start to feel like nowadays

the narrative that gets accepted is the loudest narrative, right? It's the one that gets repeated. And the more you repeat a thing, no matter how crazy it is, the more you repeat it, the deeper the hook sets and the harder it is to pull that, thing out of the flesh. This is a 130-year-old hook, brother. It's sunk in deep. Well, you know,

you host a show that gets into that pretty well, too. So when this unraveled or came together, I guess, for Herkimer, I couldn't believe it, guys. I mean, literally, I still remember the moment I found that article after 18 months of looking for the wrong date and then to find it in the wrong book, in the wrong section on the wrong page, I still feel like it's a miracle. And I'm telling you guys, I jumped in my car and drove to Utica, which is about 20 minutes away from here, and I went downstairs into the micro-feesh of the newspaper to make sure it wasn't fake news or manufactured by somebody in Herkimer. And I got to tell you, when I saw that micro-fiche, it was part of a paper in 1940 before anybody ever questioned any of this. After 18 months of hoping and wishing that there was something to this, that's the moment where I knew I quit thinking about proving it and

started thinking about, holy cow, what we got here? How is this going to come out? I'm not looking at it like a lie. I'm looking at it like somebody put the truth in the wrong place. It's interesting, you guys. I'm going to just share a couple things that we cover in the book extensively, but I think you need to know about. In our research, we found that there's the original publication from Springfield called the Triangle that James Naismith was the editor of. And so when he received any stories and put him in there, it could have included the rules of basketball from Lambert Will and Hercimer and just he put his name on it because he was editor and next thing you know so maybe he's somewhat innocent but when you see the other letter in January of 1893 from his boss

Golick trying to defend him you can see that there's a clear they already know something's going to they just wanted to protect themselves if people figured it out tell me more about this guy gollick and his relationship with Naismith and why I mean they are you saying in this thing that they flat out took Lambert will's idea or that Lambert improved upon a notion so much so that it's rightfully his. I still can't figure out which is which. So originally we thought it was a notion based upon a request from Springfield looking for a winter game that they had basic rules for.

And that's the way the Basel book prefaces it. And so that's for the first year and a half, or a year and three months. That's the way I thought it was. But then we realized that's not the case. And then we found a file from the publishing of Frank J. Baselow's book, I grew up with basketball, and we got all the records from their communications. And inside that, we found an affidavit signed by Lambert Will and a picture of him and the judge and Frank Baselow stating exactly the rules that were sent, the dates that the games were played.

Lambert Will sat down and wrote this out, signed his name to it. And they used that as evidence to go to Springfield to fight for the Hall of Fame. in 1952. So Lambert turns out to be just a straight shooter. And Chuck, you said something earlier about their scoring 100 points. We've got to spend a lot of time with Lambert Will's family.

And they tell a story about one of the grandkids sit next to Lambert Will at a basketball game in upstate New York. And his kid asked him, did you think the game would be like this? And he goes, it's just getting too easy to score. There shouldn't be that many points. You're right on, Chuck.

Yeah, give me a two-to-one hockey game. I love that. Yeah. Scottie, you said something, and Chuck, you'll appreciate this too, I think, at least if you're curious about how this guy's mind works, you said that because there was some confusion in the very earliest part of the timeline, what we're talking about right now, that everything that followed was logically out of sync as a result. I remember the day you told me we were walking on a beach somewhere. I guess it was in Marina Del Rey. And the level of agitation that you possessed when you were

trying to explain that the reason nobody can add, subtract, multiply, or divide properly in their head is because they count wrong. They start with one, and they should start with zero. And if you start with zero, of course, everything will add back up and down to nine. And if you don't, nothing makes any sense at all. It's a very, very different topic, but I'm struck by the fact that you were agitated in the same exact way for the same exact reason. Well, what happened, you guys? There's a local radio show guy here named Bill Keeler. We know each other for 40 years, and I was just visiting Herkimer's maybe three years ago when my grandma was having trouble. He said to me, hey, if you go on Wikipedia, you'll see that the most Wikipedia person from Herkimer, New York,

is you. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I thought there'd be General Herkimer, Henry M. Quagam Bush. There's a whole bunch of really cool dudes and girls that have done some cool stuff here that sort of linked a sense of responsibility to me. And I asked that question, what can I do to help my village since I'm sort of connected to it now? And sure enough, not six months later, my grandma is passing and I'm here and I had to spend more time here, and that's the beginning of this road. And then when COVID hit, as the human calculator, I couldn't do corporate gigs anymore. They weren't happening and school visits quit happening. I had some time down and I said, you know what, I would go spend Hyman Hercimer and see if I can prove that this book is true because if it is,

our village deserves to be like Cooperstown. And if it's not, let's dispel it, get rid of it, and move on. So it just all worked together for good for me then. And if it does become like Cooperstown, what does that mean, practically speaking for the people who call it home? Yeah, it's very exciting because it's a very depressed. You go down Main Street, it's rough guys. I mean, I grew up here. The school where I discovered I was the human calculator. When I was nine years old,

there's 100 yards from where basketball was invented. Literally right across the street, it was originally in high school where the first high school basketball game happened because the kids from the YMCA were right across the street. And my dad worked on Main Street at Montgomery Awards right there. The library, the Basel Library is right next door. It was half my childhood.

was right there the same exact block where Lambert Will worked at a bicycle shop and volunteered at the YMCA, all within the same three buildings. Can you describe that moment for you when you were a kid in school that day, when you realized for the first time that your brain was different than other people's and you could do a thing that nobody around you could do? Yeah, it was a crazy moment in that school right there on Main Street, Herkimer. our teacher had written down four two-digit numbers. We had to add together where we had to do a thing called the carry, where it would add up to more than 10. You had to write a one and all that. And I was not paying attention.

And she saw that and she picked me to go up to the board to show how to do this one. And I was busted. And I'm walking up to the board. I'm a little stressed out. You know, the girl I had a crush on is right there. I mean, you know, all these things are going through your brain. And I walk up to the board and I don't know what to do. And for some reason it hit me,

I learned how to read left to right. So I must have to do this left to right. So I started in the tens and I just added it up going down the columns backwards. I just went 10, 20, 30, 40, 45, 48, 50, 52. I said 52 and she goes, well, you're right. But how did you get that answer? Where's your carry? And I go, I don't even know what you're talking about.

What's it carry? So that's how that started. And then everything I would learn in math class, I would sit there and figure out or see an easier way to get the answer. and by fifth grade, Mr. Potter just sat me down and said, hey, man, if you figure something out, you'd come over to me and show me, and if I can prove that it works algebraically, I'll let you teach it to the rest of the class. And since that day, I've been working out methods to figure out the easiest way to get the answer when it comes to numbers. If you didn't have pencil and paper

or an abacus, and all you had was your brain, I've discovered the most efficient routes to get her done that way. Not just with numbers, though. And this is why. why you're you. That same annoyance, agitation obviously applies to the calendar. We talked about that a lot last time, but it also applies to exactly what you're doing now. You're looking for the simplest, best explanation. You're still asking the world, Carrie, what are you talking about? Where's your carry? I'm trying to tell you that basketball happened here. You're just trying to get to the beginning. I guess the next question has to be, who else is paying attention? The book is out and that's great, has the press reached out?

Are they taking it? What's the next level? The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before.

with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. in high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode.

Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself. And see, too, how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively

moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash Mike. That's skillsusa.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S.S. Skills, U.S.S.

USA. Yeah, we've had good local press here in upstate New York between Syracuse and Albany. They've been very generous with us. It's got the story out there, but everybody hasn't read the book because it's a hardcover, and Amazon just started selling hard covers, and so it takes up to 30 days to get the book.

We are releasing the paperback version immediately because it needs to be in the hands of people to read. But we've sent the book to some serious VIPs to review because we want a chance to sit on with the Hall of Fame again that we already have a few times to go over this, to see what our options are. And I've asked them to consider putting together a neutral board of historians to review the five criteria that they demanded of us to prove that

the game happened in Herkimer in 1891, I would ask them to match that and come up with their five to prove they had a game in 1892. We found more evidence for our game than they have for their game. So where's the national press? Where are the big newspapers of record? Where's ESPN? Okay, let's talk about ESPN, you guys. Chuck, you're going to love this, okay? Do you guys know that if you want to submit it to a story, the ESPN, you know what they tell you? They do not take unsolicited stories. So I don't know how they're sourcing their news, but obviously I couldn't get through that way. So I got through to a friend of mine who's a reporter and we'll see if anything happens.

But as of today, nothing. I've reached out to all major networks and publications. And we have one publication that's a major newspaper that is bringing a team here to Herkimer next week, right before the Herkimer Originals go to the playoffs of the American Basketball Association, and they're going to cover this book and the originals and get the story out there on a very high level. You know, we got a friend, a recent friend of the podcast, a terrific writer named Selena Zito, who was on a couple of weeks ago, and Selena writes, she has a column called The Middle of Somewhere,

because her basic operating belief is that everywhere is the middle of somewhere. There's no such thing as the middle of nowhere. And it occurs to me that I bet a lot of people who have driven through the mulal, hawk and probably go right past herkimer and go yeah yeah herkimer it's in the middle of nowhere up there she would love this story she loves your people she loves a good david and goliath tale and that's kind of what this is so if you want i mean she's probably listening to this right now actually but i'd be happy to reach out see if there's something there i've already called her so oh did you know yes i've already called her you guys thank you guys so much it's bizarre mike you know i have a interesting

of friends and the book is dedicated to Alice Cooper. He, Vincent Fernier, we should say. He doesn't know it yet. He'll find out when he hears his podcast. But, you know, I sent him the book to read because he came up with the term originals and made the O look like a ribbon and net. So he really kicked us off. And what's bizarre is he's also the one who got me on the nine thing on nine-nine when I discovered the pattern about the number nine. And then Alice and I were together on 9-11. Alice was with me when I got the team and he called them the originals, like all these bizarre moments that Alice is there. And I can't give him enough credit because he's a mentor, he's a friend. You know, he taught me to appreciate golf.

And I just can't believe how it's all come together, guys. It's really surreal. I'm doing my best to keep my mind together to present this. But at the end of the day, guys, there's just two things to think about the Naismith angle and the Springfield YMCA and how they covered up the story for 130 years and the Naismith family. and Lambert Will, being a good old kid, just did his thing, didn't care about getting fame or anything like that. And so we fought for the Hall of Fame in 1956 in Springfield, and we lost. And one of the reasons was because of money. Herkimer didn't have any money, just like we still don't.

So I started the Herkimer 9 Foundation. And our goal is to revitalize this village, not the village all completely, but this block in Herkimer, where Mr. Quackenbush's factory is, where the YM's, and where the Basel Library is, because that's where this all happened. And those buildings are still in existence today from the late 1800s. And so the Herkimer 9 Foundation, our mission is to celebrate these three men and revitalize the village through the story. Do you think that there's going to be a village pushback from the village of Springfield?

How deeply do you think people feel in terms of their identity? to basketball, their story, the Hall of Fame is there, is your ultimate goal to get it replaced or sort of duplicated? I mean, what do you do? The evidence demands a verdict, right? You're saying basically that you now have what amounts to a smoking gun that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all of this, all of this is a giant error from the jump.

So how do you fix it? first thing I would suggest after we meet with the Hall of Fame in Springfield College is if the evidence stands up and we believe it will, we would suggest them to take the Naismith name off of the Basketball Hall of Fame. All other Hall of Fame on the planet Earth do not include a person's name. Only the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield includes a person's name, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. So that would be an easy fix there. Sorry, but why. How did that happen? Why is that the only Hall of Fame with a person's surname on it? That was a screaming sign to me that there was something nefarious happening. Just like you said,

the more you say it, the more is real. And so you couldn't talk about the Basketball Hall of Fame without saying Ney Smith's name just to grind it into your brain. And so I believe that would serve quite a purpose just doing that. Now, as far as the location of the Hall of Fame, I'm excited that we might even be able to talk about having something here in Herkimer comparable to a Hall of Fame or a museum for Lambert Will, at least, with an event center to promote junior basketball because that's what he was a teenager. And maybe keep it in Springfield. I don't know. It's out of my hands. We're open to anything, obviously, because we have nothing.

And you and I know, Mike, that, well, Chuck, you know this. We talked about it briefly last time we talked before the show, but nothing changes if nothing changes. Right. And so taking Naismith off of the Hall of Fame creates the story that allows us the room in that world to tell the Lambert Will story, including him being so sure of the first date, Feb 7, 1891, because it was his mother's birthday. And later on, his mother ends up knitting the first net and is known as the Betsy Ross of basketball. You don't hear that stuff in the Springfield narrative. No, no, I guess not. And we can talk about the calendar thing.

I'd like an update on that too, but the fact that you've dedicated so much of your life to finding a better way to track time. And here you are in this current fight that basically all comes back to a date, right? The disputes over a date. It really is impossible to talk to you without reflecting on the passing of time and the moments that matter and your constant attempt to make more sense out of this thing. How much longer do we have to suffer through this Gregorian calendar? About 10 months, because 2023 is the next time that my calendar lines up with your calendar, the Gregorian calendar. By that, I mean, my calendar works best if my zero day is on a Sunday, because then all the one days are on Mondays. And the two days are on Tuesdays and so on.

So it makes the year so simplistic. So next year, I mean, people can download it for free now at my website. And if you just start right now your schedule for 2023 on this calendar, put your bills down there, your personal stuff, whatever you want, you will start to see patterns explode off these pages of 28-day grids where every month is the same four weeks with the same name of the day of the week on each number of each day. It will revolutionize our relationship with time. And Mike, as a coincidence, how bizarre is it that my two big project,

coming up this year are obviously basketball and my calendar and my human calculator thing, but basketball and the calendar. Basketball started with 13 rules that were changed in auctioned off for $4 million. I have a 13-month calendar. And so the number 13 is my lucky number, and it was the first number I noticed that adds back down to nine. So to me, 13 is special. And that again, real quick, for people who just have absolutely no idea what you're going on about. How does 13 add back down to nine? Oh, yeah. So the secret to numbers is every number higher than nine has a simple pattern in it that makes it add down to nine. And when I say add down, let's just use the number 11 as an example. 11 is one, one. You would write one, one. The next step is just adding up all those digits. So one plus one is two. And now subtract that total you got from the number we started at. So 11 minus two is nine. Try that with the number 10, one, zero. One plus zero.

is 1, 10 minus 1 is 9. So try 12, 1 2, 1 plus 2 is 3, 12 minus 3 is 9. So now Chuck, pick a random two-digit number and I'll do it for you. 62. 6 and 2 is 8. 62, takeaway 8 is 54, 5 and 4 is 9. So everybody listening to the podcast right now, just think of your age and now add those two digits together and take that total and subtract it from your age. And the answer you get will be a two-digit number that adds up to nine. And this is a simple pattern that I believe exists to awaken the calculator in the human mind because now every number becomes a lesson. So I challenge people listening if you got kids in the car and they're around nine years old, if you see a speed limit sign that says

55, if your kid can say to you 55, five and five is 10, and then plug it in and say 55 minus 10, and get 45 and recognize that that answer, 4 or 5 adds up to 9, then this is a simple diagnostic tool for teachers and parents to help fill in those gaps so kids can become numerate and have a basic foundation of number sense. So then they can learn math, because right now they're just memorizing some stuff. There's no logic, and then it all falls apart

by the time it comes to logic and algebra. Because if the number you wind up with doesn't add up to 9, then you know you made a mistake somewhere along the line. Something's wrong. Where's your carry, right? Yeah, exactly. Perfect, Mike. And now think about this.

Use the number 11 as an example. That number was designed to teach every human being one plus one. We've memorized its two. We've counted objects to see if it's two. We used a calculator recently and punched in one plus one. And if it's wired right, it might tell you it's two. But there's no logical check. if one plus one is two.

You've got to memorize it or live it. But now there's a logical check. Start at the number 11. You think one and one is two. Now instead of the other stuff, let's plug it in. 11 take away two is nine. If you get nine, everything is fine. It's a simple checker for the human brain.

And to prove how powerful it is, let's make a mistake. Let's use 11, but we're tired and Chuck thinks one plus one is three. I've been there. Let's plug it in. 11 minus 3 is 8. it's not nine, so one in one can't be three. Two and two is four. Check it. 22 minus four is 18. That answer, one eight adds up to nine, so everything is fine. Five and five is ten because 55 minus ten is 45. It's a simple check. It's a scale. No different than learning music, guys. If you want to learn

math, music and math, right? Think of this. If you start at the number 10, it just start doing the simple exercise and do 11, 12, 13, 14. You are introducing yourself your brain to every basic math fact using a pattern and a language instead of just memorizing stuff. The only problem is if Chuck thinks one and one is three, he's never going to be able to subtract that to get down to the wrong answer. Yeah, that's not up to him. It's up to his people around him, his teachers and parents, to realize something's wrong.

I got a problem with a 13-month calendar because I think people will revolt against it because that's one more rent check every year. Disagree, Chuck. I think it's the exact opposite. If you have a mortgage payment, let's say you've got a mortgage, okay? Let's just use a round number, $100,000. And you're paying on that interest, right? You pay 12 payments per year. If you were making 13 payments per year, it would decrease the amount of interest you pay over

time. And so it is disadvantageous to banks to consider using this 1328 calendar because they don't make more money, they lose money. It goes back into the consumer instead of the institution. I agree with that. That's why I didn't use mortgage as an example. I used rent. Yeah.

Well, with rent, actually, it makes it easier because now it's more predictable. Some of your months are 30 days, 31, 28, 29. Now with incredible predictability, paychecks aren't going to fall on the weekend where you might not get it in the bank until the Monday or Tuesday after. There's all these things that are eliminated because of the order. instead of this chaos. The first would always be a Monday, right? Yes, and the fifth is always a Friday. The 12th is always a Friday. I mean, that's pretty cool. It would just make life so simple. The 13-month, 28-day calendar has been around. I mean, it's like the Mayan calendar, right? It's a version of it. Yours is the human calendar. How is it different than all of the other attempts to simplify this Rubik's cube of ambiguity? Yeah, there's a couple 1328 calendars out there.

The Mayan calendars won, and they had a zero day, but they didn't call it the zero day. They called it the day out of time, and that's how they referred to it. There were a couple calendar enthusiasts in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that made it all the way to the UN to introduce a new calendar, and it had 30 days with five bonus days. It was called the World Calendar. It wasn't that mathematically efficient. This calendar is called the human calculator calendar, and it's the first zero-based calendar in that there's 13 months, but they're numbered zero through 12. So there's a zero month, and that's how you can sneak in the zero day. So when you count zero, everything lines up.

And Mike, like you were saying, all these things I'm recalibrating and I get to see things in a different way. It's almost like I get a different prescription lens in my glasses that allow me to zero in or focus on these things. And my passion for numbers is run since I was a little kid that I started the Herkimer 9 and the first basketball team in Herkimer was called the Herkimer 9 130 years ago. And that all comes together. I'm just having so much fun. I love that I have a God-given ability for numbers. But this basketball story, guys, I didn't see it coming.

I can't believe that I'm in the middle of this ruckus. And I don't know how it's going to unravel, but I do know that truth is on our side. How hard it was for the Naismith and the Springfields to disguise the truth or their story for so long is impressive. And I got lucky. And the three guys that wrote this book, George and Daryl Fausty and Brian Carroll, have spent 18 months consumed with this thing for 18 hours a day because we knew we were onto something so big that we didn't have time to explain it to anybody. We just had to keep diving and getting all this information and putting it together. And timing-wise, this is March Madness Week coming up, guys, the biggest basketball tournament in the world. It shows you how big of a sport this is.

And for Herkimer to be credited and included with this incredible sport would be a dream come true for me in the village in our county and, you know, upstate New York. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Rowe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired her. me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades.

In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwerworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants. thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at Noble Spirits.com. In fact, if you spend 100 bucks and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange-bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's Code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old fashions every time. It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite

whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirits.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirates.com. Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. You really can't script it, Chuck. On the one hand, he says there's no way he could have predicted or imagined himself at the center of such a quixotic tale. On the other hand, it's kind of inevitable. How could you not?

How could you not? Well, you guys asked me a great question on the last podcast, Mike. After I finished explaining the 13-month calendar you to you guys, well, you said, or Chuck might have sat. He goes, who do you call? And I said, well, I tried to call the Pope. You know what I mean? It's his calendar.

So awkward there. So I need to talk with the Pope and the chairman of the basketball Hall of Fame. You know, I know it's crazy guys. Believe me, I'm just sitting here like, what am I doing? But I really thought I was just going to be the human calculator for the rest of my life. And I love that so much. And the kids and the reaction. just a dream come true to inspire children with numbers.

So this is a whole other level, but we're going to use athletes to create math elites and bring it all together. Dude, I've always been interested, but I didn't really completely understand why until I went on my own quixotic mission. You know, MicroWorks is 14 years old this year. We exist for the purpose of attempting

to close America's skills gap. But you might as well put attempting in caps and then go ahead and highlight it in yellow and then circle it because I'm going to fail. I am never going to close the skills gap. However, in the attempt to do so, we've hooked up 1,400 kids with scholarships. We've impacted a lot of lives and we've helped change a conversation. The skills gap will never, ever close. I know that. And it used to depress me somewhat. But really, That's not the point at all. I don't think you're going to live to see people starting to count from zero.

And I don't think you're going to live to see your calendar completely enacted. One day it might be. I don't say any of this to be a downer about it at all. You're breaking his heart, Mike. You're breaking his heart. I'm just telling you. But the basketball thing, you might do it. You might get a full-on freaking monument in her.

Herkimer, you might get a national apology. You might get the ABA, the NBA, the NBA, you might get other acronyms from others. You might get true athletes and real lovers of sport to look at this whole thing and say, damn it, you know what? That was wrong and now it's right. And to Chuck's earlier point, anybody who appreciates that kind of justice, that level of, yep, we got it right. That's going to be very satisfying. And so, So the fact that if that happens, we played some modest role here on this humble podcast, that will please me to no end. More than you know, Mike, and to think that we met in the middle of the night on QVC and you were selling dolls and I was Stan Freeberg, the Abacus guy. You know.

Never got to be forget that one. No, it was good. It's a good one, man. But I do have two things there. You brought up the zero-to-nine thing in the calendar. I have to disagree with you there because. the national counting bee, being an annual event starting this fall, is going to change that. It's going to be an annual numeracy campaign that's going to revolutionize the way kids learn

how to count and celebrate the fastest counters in every country every year around the world. So that's going to happen in my lifetime, I pray. Calendar, I thought the same way you did, Mike. When I invented it in 1999, I, for the first 10 years, was spinning my wheels. How am I going to change the calendar? The Pope is not taking my calls. And 2012 was coming. My encounter was going to blow up.

I had to get it done before then, you know. So I had a sense of urgency. But then I had an epiphany about this one day. I was doing a walk on a beach in Australia. And it hit me like a thunderbolt out of the sky. You don't have to change the calendar, Scott. Right now on the planet Earth, there are about 41 calendars. And so you can wake up tomorrow morning and choose to use the Gregorian can.

calendar, the Chinese calendar, the Jewish calendar, there's 41 on the planet. So next year, in 2023, you'll be able to wake up and choose to use the human calculator calendar that makes sense to the brain and the body and allows us to tune into the most powerful force on the planet Earth other than love, which is time. Well, then what about truth? If we're going to talk about powerful forces, then not to get too esoteric here, but I get a little tired. of people searching for their truth, as if, you know, like we all get to think, ah, you know what? Yeah, Chuck is a one plus one is three guy. That's my truth, right? Me? Ah, I've looked at the whole gravity thing. I'm not buying it. So I'm going to go ahead and fly.

That's my truth. You know, I mean, it's kind of exhausting the idea that we can have over 40 calendars and everybody can feel good about the calendar they choose, okay, but at some point, it's not okay. At some point, the zero thing is not okay. It's not cool to ignore that, you know, and it's not cool to pretend that basketball wasn't invented in Herkimer. At some point in time, on somebody's calendar, attention must be paid. Back to the quote in the beginning of the book, I'm glad you read that, Chuck, because it's the truth. or later, sooner or later, the truth is going to, the truth will out. I just don't think we're going to be around to see it in most cases, but maybe we will be. And if we are, hey, we'll have a

parade. I'll have you back on the podcast three, four, 25 times. Maybe, you know, Chuck's out, you're in. I'm out. You guys, I don't think you can calculate the role you two have played in the last six months of my life, especially, since Mike and I talked about doing the first podcast because that was when it started. I knew we were onto something really heavy, and I didn't know how to handle it or process it, and I thought Mike could help me make sense of it.

And so, Chuck, you guys, let me say it, and having to listen to myself, try to explain it, gave me so much clarity on what gaps we're still missing and how to fill those. So I can't thank you guys enough for playing not only a vital role, but if you really think about it, as you guys were the first one. I mean, September 22nd for me was a day that I know changed my life forever because everybody

in Herkimer woke up the next day and said, wait, Mike Roe talked to Scott about Herkimer? I'm just telling you guys, that was a paradigm shift in Herkimer, New York that next day. So God bless you guys, I can't thank you enough. Thanks, Scott, if you can't calculate it. Yeah, right. Who are we going to get? Well, Scott, I just want to say, listen, I've been a fan of yours since day zero. Oh, thank you, Chuck.

Fuck up. True story. No, I really appreciate you, man. You are something. And if people want to get in touch with you or want to support this effort, what's the best way to do it? Herkimer9.org? Yeah, please, herkimer 9.org. We're a 501c3, and we've spent way too much money on this project over the past 18 months that people

in Herkimer are like, what are you spending money on? So that would be great. It's a $10 million project to clean up that. block, you know, it's old buildings and asbestos and all these things. So we're learning a lot. But the community's coming around us. We've got a million dollar grant to turn the Kwok and Bush factory into a steam learning center for kids and adults retraining. So Mike, we'll be echoing your mission in that building for eternity, buddy, because I can't think you know. That's another conversation, pal. But when that gets to the next level, there's a microworks

conversation to have about this. And I know I've been talking about it for years, but I'm going to get up there. If you can get this thing over the line or through the hoop, as it were, It's a show. It's an absolute show, and I can get a network to pay attention, and I can get this thing up somewhere. I think it's a great story, and I love that you're telling it. And you know what? One final thought, if I can bring this back to me for a moment, as you know, I've enjoyed doing. We can't stop them. Scott, don't try. I was thinking, I was at a cocktail party in Hollywood after a network up front, probably in 2007, and dirty jobs had become a thing. It wasn't quite at its zenith, but it was going there. And I'm wandering around, drinking a beer, just listening to random executives talking.

I went around the corner just in time to hear a guy, I won't mention his name, talking to two or three other people about the moment he created dirty jobs, which struck me as interesting, right? The way I heard it, it was my idea and I shopped a pilot. But whatever, I was curious to see how this version, of the story played out. I was driving down the highway, and I took my normal exit, and the traffic slowed a bit because there was some construction up in the intersection. And when the flagman waved me through, I was going at maybe two or three miles an hour, and I saw a fellow stick his

head out of the manhole. And he was covered, and God knows what, but he was smiling. And I said to myself, I wonder what his story is. What's going on down there, out of sight and out of mind? So I ran it up the flagpole and we had some auditions and Mike Roe came into our lives and the rest is history. And I'm just sitting there sipping my beer about eight feet behind him. And I really wasn't sure what to do. You know, part of me wanted to walk up and set the record straight. Part of me thought it might be fun to hit him over the head with the bottle of bud. I just walked away instead because I didn't know how to even broach it without being

a dick and I didn't really want to be a dick in front of all of these executives and industry types. But I had forgotten all about that, really, until I listened to you again, Chuck, read the intro to that book. How quickly the narrative can change. I mean, I'm not even dead. Hell, I'm still producing the show. I'm literally still shooting dirty jobs. And I'm telling you, in 2007, I listen.

to an origin story of that show, which I created for my granddad that I had never heard before. So if it can happen that fast, then what you're trying to do, setting a 130-year record straight, that, my friend, is Sisyphian, and I don't care which of the 41 calendars you look at, it's a puzzle of time and will. Lambert will, if you will. Oh, I see what you did there. That's good. That's good. And think about it, that you've never heard of Lambert Will. You know, talk about Black Ice and the Daryl and George Foster,

proven that black hockey players were around playing hockey long before all this organized stuff happened. And the way they did it, just a dream come true to get these guys involved. And, you know, Brian Carroll is born and raised in Herkimer, served in the Air Force, and then he helped these guys finish this book. And him and I've been here 18 months digging through all this stuff. And I'm telling you guys, as I'm doing the show with you guys today, I'm still blown away that I have the information to come here today and tell you guys what I'm telling you because it just seems surreal. Where can people get Naismith at this point?

Is it on Amazon? How do you do it? Amazon, and we'll have it available at herkimer 9.org. It'll be available at the Herkimer Diamond Mind. They're a sponsor of the originals. And Amazon, obviously, it'll be available on paperback, but we also have a hardcover available, and it will be on Kindle after that. N-A-I-S-H-M-Y-T-H. Dash, yep, M-Y-T-H in the middle, yep.

Myth. What's a difference between a hyphen and a dash? A spelling. And so it's N-S-M-S-M-Smith. I'll take care of the language, dude. You take care of the numbers and time on basketball. Leave me basic grammar and language. You asked him, man.

You asked. Basketball's stolen legacy. George and Darrell Foster and Brian Carroll. And you guys, thanks for plugging the Herkimer 9 Foundation because I'm telling you, when I started this 18 months ago, I thought I was crazy myself. So I know you guys did too.

It's really a dream come true. So you guys, thanks for your enthusiasm too. And Chuck, we're in the OG shirt today. I just want to thank you, man. Appreciate that. Thanks for giving it to me. You know what? We probably have your hat around here somewhere.

I got somebody. Oh, I got this guy. I got my studio. Hey, before we hang up, I heard you say when Alice Cooper listens to this podcast, he's going to know. And all I heard was Alice Cooper listens to this podcast? Listen, Alice is so excited about this project. You know, we've been friends for 30 years. We've played over 2,000 rounds of golf. He came up with the nine theory for me. You know, the Matrix that I invented. He was there when I invented the calendar. And now he invented the name of the basketball team,

the original. So I cannot give this guy enough credit, man. I mean, we got to get Alice Cooper on the show to tell us how he started dirty jobs, how he came up with dirty jobs. Mike didn't know and say, but it was Alice Cooper at that party. That was Alice Cooper from now. And just so you guys know, when I first called Mike about this a long time ago, I said, Mike, this story is about a dirty job about cleaning up the history of basketball. And I sort of said it kiddingly, Mike, but you don't realize the role you took and starting to clean this mess up. And so I'm very grateful. And Chuck, I appreciate your enthusiasm so much.

And you guys, help us get it out there. I appreciate the connections to get it to these two brothers, George and Darryl Fossey, should be on Good Morning America, Today Show, 60 minutes. They should be everywhere, no less just sitting at home wondering why nobody's calling. So we're excited about getting this out, and people are starting to call. But you guys, thanks again for being first. I've got my agenda, too. I do think this is going to blow up.

And I think one day when you are on one of the late shows or wherever you go, you're going to say, yeah, started with a podcast, my old buddy, Mike. Way leads on to way. Beautiful guys. Tell Alice, when you see him, not barely a week ago, I was driving along coming back. from the studio on an oldie station and 18 came on and I'm singing along you know with the windows down at the top of my lungs got to the high part something snapped in my throat I swallowed something warm I thought oh I felt like I ruptured my larynx singing along with 18 which by the way one plus eight equals nine what else do you need to know that's it 18 holes of golf and you know

the guy alice is 74 years old I'm playing in his celebrity golf tournament next month for solid rock Foundation. It's been 25 years. And he's on tour doing 100 shows this year. Amazing. Wow. Amazing. Wow, what a story he's got, too. His biography is incredible. You know what? If he's bored somewhere in the coming year, tell him he's welcome here anytime, and so are you, my friend. Thank you guys. Thank you so much for having me back. I feel like podcast royalty for a moment. It's just so grateful you guys. I'm glad you find the story worthy. Well, it's a pretty low bar, but you're always welcome, like I said. Thanks, Scott.

Don't hang up. We got to upload this mess. All right. See you, Scott. See you guys.