Episode 18 Lou Pearlman + The Bone Wars

Quit playing games with my heart.

We are diving into Bec's (they/them) totally embarrassing obsession with boybands from the 90s, namely the bands created, managed and exploited by one Lou Perlman. Lou's entire life was a Ponzi scheme it seems, and even while creating culture defining bands, behind the scenes, he was ripping off every single person he came into contact with.

Then Adam (he/him) teaches us about the most petty palaeontologists in history. These two men take "frenemies" to a whole new level. Foiling one another at every turn, paying off locals and even going so far as to hinder the pursuit of scientific discovery all in the name of being able to say they were there first.

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Bec's Sources:

https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/celebrity-mugshots/lou-pearlman/

Documentary on Youtube

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/apr/09/the-boy-band-con-lou-pearlman-story-youtube-documentary-nsync-backstreet-boys

Adam's Sources:

• The 20-Year Bone Wars That Changed History
• O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope: A Rivalry

Make sure to follow us on instagram @unscrupulouspod and send us an email at unscrupulouspod@gmail.com

Transcript

[00:00:30.530] - Bec Rose
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Unscrupulous, the podcast where we talk dishonest folks whose victims always live to tell the tale. I am one half of a duo. My name is Bec Rose, and I'm looking at the beautiful village witch himself, Adam Lawlor.

[00:00:52.490] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, I love it. Thank you very much.

[00:00:54.740] - Bec Rose
Adam shirts says village witch. And I just need to blow up your spot because I think it's cool.

[00:01:00.450] - Adam Lawlor
It's my favorite sweater.

[00:01:01.870] - Bec Rose
I think I want to be a witch as well. So we'll be that duo.

[00:01:07.290] - Adam Lawlor
I love it.

[00:01:07.990] - Bec Rose
A witchy show

[00:01:08.850] - Adam Lawlor
Done.

[00:01:12.150] - Bec Rose
I'm just going to get real cozy because I am so goddamn excited to talk to you about my tale. Like, I'm trying to stay cool. Not something I've been known to do. Be cool. Either in temperature or in societal terms. Adam

[00:01:40.350] - Adam Lawlor
Bec.

[00:01:41.410] - Bec Rose
Adam candice lawler. I assume.

[00:01:47.090] - Adam Lawlor
A wild swing and it's out of the park.

[00:01:52.610] - Bec Rose
What is your middle name?

[00:01:52.930] - Adam Lawlor
I don't have one.

[00:01:54.040] - Bec Rose
Oh, yeah, you British bougie bitch. So it could be Candace.

[00:02:00.230] - Adam Lawlor
It could be.

[00:02:01.100] - Bec Rose
I literally wrote in my notes. The first line of my notes is Adam Candace Lawler.

[00:02:08.970] - Adam Lawlor
Perfect.

[00:02:09.820] - Bec Rose
Let me ask you this. BSB versus N*sync. Who are we going with?

[00:02:18.970] - Adam Lawlor
I got to go. BSB.

[00:02:20.470] - Bec Rose
Okay. Same hard same.

[00:02:23.680] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:02:26.190] - Bec Rose
Now, as you may or may not know, they were created and managed by the same person. Did you know that?

[00:02:35.330] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, I forgot about this.

[00:02:38.500] - Bec Rose
Lou swamp ass perlman. He looks like the human equivalent of swamp ass.

[00:02:47.110] - Adam Lawlor
Perfect.

[00:02:47.830] - Bec Rose
Have you seen a picture of him?

[00:02:49.430] - Adam Lawlor
No.

[00:02:50.010] - Bec Rose
Give a goog.

[00:02:51.830] - Adam Lawlor
Googing now.

[00:02:54.950] - Bec Rose
So you're telling me, though, you did know this fact at one point, you just forgot?

[00:02:59.530] - Adam Lawlor
Yes.

[00:03:00.120] - Bec Rose
So does that mean you know the story I'm about to tell you?

[00:03:02.860] - Adam Lawlor
I don't think so. I do not know. And I feel like I tried to engage with this story when it came. I don't even remember where it came out.

[00:03:11.940] - Bec Rose
I remember talking about it in elementary school because I was a hard Backstreet Boy. And my friend group, we were hard Backstreet Boy. I in fact, wanted to look like Nick Carter and did for a little bit. I had a mushroom cut that I begged for. I think I maybe have have said on the pod I don't know. Yeah, so I remember when this a little bit when it happened.

[00:03:40.230] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. And I knew nothing about it. I was a BSB fan for sure. Theirs was one of ...

[00:03:48.880] - Bec Rose
Should we maybe say BSB stands for Backstreet Boys? Do you think there's anyone listening who doesn't know that?

[00:03:52.890] - Adam Lawlor
I would hope not.

[00:03:54.700] - Bec Rose
Okay? We're talking Backstreet Boys or Nsyncs? First of all, I would love to know people's thoughts because he kind of had to be one or the other for some reason. Did you see his face?

[00:04:06.830] - Adam Lawlor
I did.

[00:04:07.540] - Bec Rose
Does he look like the human equivalent of swamp ass?

[00:04:10.300] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, he looks like he made up character in, like, a movie.

[00:04:16.110] - Bec Rose
Yeah, but a villain who smells like salami.

[00:04:19.870] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, obviously.

[00:04:21.190] - Bec Rose
But in a bad way. Should I have not waited for you to take a sip of something?

[00:04:31.030] - Adam Lawlor
I was just about to, so it was perfectly timed. Excellent.

[00:04:35.130] - Bec Rose
So Lou was born in 1954 in Queens, New York.

[00:04:40.670] - Adam Lawlor
He's a queen's boy.

[00:04:42.490] - Bec Rose
Exactly. The king of queens himself.

[00:04:46.730] - Adam Lawlor
Kevin James.

[00:04:47.670] - Bec Rose
Kevin James. Thank you. So Lou has this reputation of being that kid who exaggerated. He would tell these stories that they just always made him sound a little bit more important than he was. So when he told people his cousin was Art Garfunkel, everyone rolled at their eyes. Turns out, though, that one was true.

[00:05:15.360] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:05:17.350] - Bec Rose
Art Garfunkel shows up to lose bar Mitzvah, and all of his friends pick their jaws up off the floor. So he was able to use this one sincere connection to boost his other exaggerations.

[00:05:35.450] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:05:36.300] - Bec Rose
Perhaps the pattern of behavior we will see repeated down the road.

[00:05:42.270] - Adam Lawlor
Foreshadowing, perhaps titillation.

[00:05:47.150] - Bec Rose
So another thing about Lou is, growing up, he was a big fan of aviation, and specifically, blimps.

[00:05:55.330] - Adam Lawlor
Interesting.

[00:05:56.450] - Bec Rose
He's a blimp boy.

[00:05:58.000] - Adam Lawlor
A Blimpy boy flying through the sky fancy free.

[00:06:08.870] - Bec Rose
What do you mean?

[00:06:09.430] - Adam Lawlor
Is there any reason for it? It's a blimp.

[00:06:12.170] - Bec Rose
Explain his interest to me. I don't know. He thought they looked like angels flying through the sky. He just was like, that's God's gift to us, to look up and remember.

[00:06:30.110] - Adam Lawlor
Look up and remember God and blimps.

[00:06:33.300] - Bec Rose
Alike and human ingenuity. I have no idea why he was interested in blimps. Probably because they're kind of cool, but also a little outdated. So, anyways, he continues to be slimy as he grows up. The quickest aside, I watched a documentary on this for work purposes.

[00:06:59.920] - Adam Lawlor
Adam yep.

[00:07:02.320] - Bec Rose
None of this was for my enjoyment or personal pleasure. In boy band of the night.

[00:07:10.970] - Adam Lawlor
We hate this.

[00:07:13.850] - Bec Rose
There was no pleasure involved. Okay. So the documentary, which I didn't write down the title of, but I do have a link to it, it's like the Boy Band fraud or something, but it was made by Rand Bath.

[00:07:30.850] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:07:31.640] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So he interviews a bunch of people who knew Lou through all these different times in his life. So we'll meet a bunch of people who saw different sides of him, but we do meet his childhood friend who he shared this passion with, and they go into business together. The friend describes him as a brother, and Lou fucks him over again and again.

[00:07:57.340] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, my God. That's rough.

[00:07:59.950] - Bec Rose
Yeah. The guy is like, he took my life. It's so sad. The two work together when they get older, and this dude is so sweet and wholesome, and Lou just sucks. And so at one point, Lou rents out an advertisement for Jordash on one of his blimps. Here's the issue. The blimp doesn't exist, so he uses the money from Jordash to get the blimp made, but it's, like, shitty. And so it crashes basically immediately after takeoff, which kind of seems like the point because Lou very quickly gets the insurance money on.

[00:08:44.790] - Adam Lawlor
Yep, yep.

[00:08:46.790] - Bec Rose
He can't pay Jordash back because the money's gone. And so Jordash Sues lou Lou sues them. And this goes on for five years in the court whoa. To which Lou perlman is rewarded $2.5 million in damages.

[00:09:06.190] - Adam Lawlor
No way.

[00:09:10.450] - Bec Rose
Yeah, so he's icky. And I meant to write this in my notes, but that friend talks about how we'll get into oh, actually, no, I guess this kind of works instead. They love planes together, and a friend made these model airplanes that were quite tiny. And Lou goes to the airport, and he takes off the little sticker on the side, and he puts one that says Transcontinental Air, which is a business he's starting, like, an airline. And he holds the plane ever so slightly so you can't see his picture, like, his fingers, and it looks like the plane is taking off and landing. So it looks like there is a plane that exists that says Transcontinental Air. It does not.

[00:10:04.290] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Wow. I'm already loving this. This guy jumped, like, right into the cartoon reality of a con man that exists in everybody's head. That's wild.

[00:10:16.370] - Bec Rose
Yeah. I don't mean to keep harping on the way he looks, because no judgment of how people look. He's just one of those people who he looks as slimy as he behaves. Like, just even the way he dresses and I don't know, just his attitude and the air around him.

[00:10:42.060] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:10:43.310] - Bec Rose
You can feel the self loathing.

[00:10:45.950] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it's wild.

[00:10:48.280] - Bec Rose
So he creates this airline, Transcontinental Air, and he's chartering private jets. So basically, he's, like, chartering them and he's renting them and then renting them out. Just it's ridiculous. Everything's a speed. But one of them is apparently chartered out to New Kids on the blog. And Lou realizes he wants to get into the boy band.

[00:11:14.950] - Adam Lawlor
About what? About, like, was it just, like, he knew they were famous, or was it, like, a light bulb moment?

[00:11:22.300] - Bec Rose
It was a light bulb moment. He sees the lapse of luxury. He sees the screaming fans. He sees an opportunity to be like, why am I in the air when I could be on the ground surrounded by teenage boys?

[00:11:38.430] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, boy.

[00:11:39.970] - Bec Rose
Yeah. He went from being a Blimp boy to a boy band boy. No, I regret that joke because it didn't land. Okay, so next he creates transcontinental records.

[00:12:00.310] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:12:01.030] - Bec Rose
He loves transcontinental. He sticks with it.

[00:12:03.990] - Adam Lawlor
Well, it's all over the country.

[00:12:05.990] - Bec Rose
It's Trans. It's all over the I love it. It could be all over Canada, the continent. Adam that's true.

[00:12:16.880] - Adam Lawlor
It's everywhere.

[00:12:19.870] - Bec Rose
So he creates this record group. He still has, like, the airline going on on the side. This is like being yachted within it. He creates this little DOP group you might have heard of known as the Backstreet Boys.

[00:12:33.930] - Adam Lawlor
The Backstreet Boys.

[00:12:39.170] - Bec Rose
Do you have a favorite? Backstreet Boy?

[00:12:42.130] - Adam Lawlor
You know what? It was always Brian.

[00:12:45.350] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Okay. So I was watching I saw music videos that part was for me of Backstreet Boys, and I was watching, like, old stuff that I remember watching on VHS and, like, dying at how beautiful I thought Nick was. Now. I'm like, no, it's Brian. And also Kevin. But I think it's because they look more like men.

[00:13:13.550] - Adam Lawlor
I'm an is true. It's like, the closest approximation to what would have been. Okay. Yeah.

[00:13:21.440] - Bec Rose
I feel like I looked at Nick and I was like, I want to look like that. So I think I'm attracted to him, but I just want to look like him. And then now I'm like, Ryan was, like, doing these backflips, and I'm into it.

[00:13:36.140] - Adam Lawlor
I think he was like was he the shortest Backstreet Boy?

[00:13:39.580] - Bec Rose
He was the shortest of the boys. He and Kevin are cousins.

[00:13:45.350] - Adam Lawlor
I did not know that.

[00:13:46.490] - Bec Rose
Oh, I'm so glad to be the one to tell you that. Info the shock on your face. Now, this has nothing to do with the Lou Perlman story, but I highly recommend everyone watches the Backstreet Boy documentary that is not about anything except the woes of their Backstreet Boy, like, bandmate drama. Because they're still together. Yeah, but in the preview, Brian is like, what do you do when you're a grown man in a boy band?

[00:14:19.010] - Adam Lawlor
Well, I mean, what did you do the first time, Brian? I highly recommend a okay, interesting.

[00:14:26.470] - Bec Rose
So Lou puts in $3 million into a talent search to find five young boys.

[00:14:34.150] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:14:35.210] - Bec Rose
He just was going to emulate the equation. That was New Kids on the Block.

[00:14:45.350] - Adam Lawlor
Right. He's never creative in any of his it always feels like it highly involves the creativity of someone else.

[00:14:57.230] - Bec Rose
100%. You are 100% right on that. But he did change culture. It's wild. That is true. But I totally agree with you.

[00:15:10.880] - Adam Lawlor
I was just thinking because he's just following the formula exactly.

[00:15:15.860] - Bec Rose
Formula. That was the word. Thank you. I'm like acquaint.

[00:15:18.300] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, you're so welcome.

[00:15:21.190] - Bec Rose
Yeah, they talk about that in the documentary, too. It's funny. They talk about how, like, it's either three or five, and they all have distinct personalities. Amazing. So Lou had moved this entire operation to Orlando, Florida, the land of opportunity, because apparently that's where a lot of young talent lives because a lot of people are going to work at Disneyland and Disney World or whatever. One's in Florida.

[00:15:50.580] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:15:52.020] - Bec Rose
And that's where many of them were working, was, like, at Disney World as, like, Aladdin or something in shows like singing and dancing and doing backlits. And, um yeah, he goes there, he does his talent search, and he picks them. He puts them through this boot camp. He has them over to his house where they can bond. And of course, his house is anything a young teen would want, including slimy, gross things. Yeah. Again, it's not in where I saw it. I feel like it was in the Backstreet Boy documentary. Specific one. But they do talk about the first time they stopped porn. Like, Lou showed it to them. He was trying to be their friend, and there are accusations that come up. So a little bit of a trick or winning there. I don't get too into it, but, yeah, he's dicky. So, yeah. The house, though, is just like a theme park. And AJ. Tells this story about how him and Nick have, like, a joint birthday party and the rock shows up. It's a 90s dream for them.

[00:17:16.220] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It's like a fantasy.

[00:17:19.440] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So the success of them is, like, almost instant. They go over to European markets, which I didn't fully realize, but makes sense now that I think about the discography. So they started in Europe. They put out at least one record there, and then they put out an American one, and it was just, like, top of the chart.

[00:17:40.070] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:17:40.710] - Bec Rose
I wrote in my notes they started in European markets and then came over to America, stealing all of our hearts. So I saw them in concert.

[00:17:51.190] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:17:53.220] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. It was amazing. The Black and Blue album.

[00:17:57.510] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, good one.

[00:17:58.700] - Bec Rose
And AJ. Comes out guys, I'm not telling any of the story about Looper Alban. I'm just talking about the Backstreet Boys. So AJ. Comes out, and he's, like, talking to the audience. It's in between songs. Like, they've done a couple, and he makes a joke about how he's losing his hair because he dyes it so much. Because I don't know if you remember AJ. Being the bad boy. Always had different definitely.

[00:18:18.750] - Adam Lawlor
And then spiky, bearded.

[00:18:22.350] - Bec Rose
Yeah, that's face hair. We're just talking specifically about head hair. That was what we did. But, yes, you're right. He did have the facial hair. Anyways, he's talking to the crowd, and his phone rings, and he's like, oh, my God, guys, this is so embarrassing. And then he picks it up, and the call begins. That song, and it was incredible.

[00:18:44.950] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, boy.

[00:18:46.630] - Bec Rose
Let me tell you a story about the call that changed my destiny. Incredible.

[00:18:53.430] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, good.

[00:18:54.000] - Bec Rose
Anyway, Lou is working them to the bone. And just, like, seeing the success and money potential, he decides to secretly create Backstreet Boys'own competition. He starts auditioning for NSYNC, but keeps it totally on the DL. In the documentary, Lance talks about how Lou didn't want anyone to know that he was doing this, and so they were written in code in the schedule, like, when stuff was going on.

[00:19:27.400] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:19:28.840] - Bec Rose
Yeah. He did not want to unveil this until he was ready.

[00:19:33.030] - Adam Lawlor
Right. So did he I guess he would have stayed out of the spotlight with the Backstreet Boys, right? Yeah.

[00:19:46.730] - Bec Rose
No, he was huge in the spotlight. There's so many pictures of them together. Yeah. He thought of himself both financially and mentally, as the 6th member of the band.

[00:20:01.630] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:20:04.610] - Bec Rose
So he makes NSYNC. They go through the same boot camp as Backstreet Boys. And the boot camp is stuff like learning how to sing without losing their breath while dancing and stuff. So the success for them is a bit slower, but it's kind of steady. And then one day there's this special that is cited as the big spark for Instinct. There was this Disney concert that the Backstreet Boys were meant to do, but they're, like, super burnt out and they end up refusing. And so Lou's like, well, I'll get NSYNC to do it. And the special blows up.

[00:20:48.430] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:20:49.300] - Bec Rose
The concert and their music videos keep getting requested over and over and over again, both NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. And this leads to the creation of TRL. Yeah. And I don't know if you remember this, but there are big fights over sides of NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. And I didn't really realize how much in interviews, too, they would have to talk about being compared to each other.

[00:21:14.070] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:21:14.470] - Bec Rose
But they were created by the same person.

[00:21:17.450] - Adam Lawlor
Do you think he also had a hand in 100% yeah. In the hatred of either side as well.

[00:21:26.730] - Bec Rose
And they talk about that he's badmouthing them to each other. All the Backstreet Boys don't know anything. All the Instinct Boys like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's trying to create this fire.

[00:21:39.390] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:21:40.260] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Just very manipulative.

[00:21:42.290] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, that's okay.

[00:21:45.730] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So this is going on for, like, three years. NSYNC is working nonstop. And as their success grows from this oh, sorry. This is going on for, like, three years. NSYNC is working nonstop after the success of their first album. But here's The Catcher, they have not been paid yet.

[00:22:10.010] - Adam Lawlor
What?

[00:22:11.050] - Bec Rose
They are going out. It's not that they're not experiencing things. Like they're going to hotels, they're getting dinners, but it's, like, seemingly free to them. They're being given these things and parties as well and all this stuff. So the boys and the parents, they're just living it up, doing their lives, but they haven't been paid. And so one night, Lou is going to take everyone out to dinner and present them with their checks. And they're so excited. And Lance describes sitting there and getting the envelope, and he opens it up and his face drops. Because after working every single day for the last three years having concerts like top selling albums, each person was given a check for a mere $10,000.

[00:23:11.390] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:23:13.550] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:23:15.390] - Adam Lawlor
Something, right?

[00:23:18.750] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So the two bands end up actually doing, like, a show together. And it's funny because they're also managed by the same people who aren't like there's a management team okay. Which includes, like, three people, at least that we saw in the documentary. And all three people work with both bands.

[00:23:45.610] - Adam Lawlor
Right. Okay.

[00:23:47.360] - Bec Rose
And they talk about doing a show together, and they start hearing the boys talking in the bus to each other, and the talk of money comes up, of course. And they start realizing putting stories together. They describe that Brian comes on the bus the next day and it's like, hi, everybody. Hello. We will be suing Lou now. And Brian is the one who got a lawyer. Backstreet Boys were the first ones to end up bringing legal action, and Brian was the one to bring the lawyer aboard and being like, oh, fuck no.

[00:24:26.310] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:24:27.300] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So, yeah, with the two swapping stories, it became clear like Lou was taking everyone for a ride. Basically, what had happened is that when he had them sign the contract, he had made himself 6th member of both bands. Meaning he got one 6th of all the money. Yeah. So I don't know a lot about music industry and all this stuff, but obviously he's not recording the music, he's not doing the concerts, he's not learning the choreography, he's not doing the music videos. He should be paid, but not an equal.

[00:25:17.010] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:25:17.350] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So all these hotels and restaurants and parties that they're thanking Lou for, they are paying for it. Yes. Both bands are feeling the weight of this. And like I said, Backstreet Boys files first. So by the end of everything, every single group that Lou managed, which ends up being quite a few, except for like, two of them, all sued for fraud and misrepresentation.

[00:25:50.850] - Adam Lawlor
Awesome.

[00:25:51.380] - Bec Rose
Good for that. Did that sentence make sense?

[00:25:54.530] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:25:55.000] - Bec Rose
Okay, so every single one of those lawsuits were either settled out of court or lost by Liz. He did not win anything. All right, so obviously the documentary is mainly about these two bands, and so they both decided to handle it a little differently. Backstreet Boys, they set up an account that was dedicated for Lou. They put the money in there. Once his amount was done, they paid him, he was gone. Sayonara gotcha NSYNC had amazing lawyers who found a stipulation in a contract in a fine print that said that they had to be signed to an American label, but he had signed them to, like, a European label, so they were able to absolve the contract.

[00:26:48.530] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Okay.

[00:26:50.920] - Bec Rose
Yeah. And there's this little bit where they're waiting for the judge's decision and Lou's like, I'm in sync. Like I created them. They're just blah, blah, blah, like I'm a part of the band, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, saying his side. And the judge is like, sir, you are a member of the boy band. And she's like, I don't think so. My daughter has a poster of these five frosted tip fine gentlemen on her wall. Not.

[00:27:21.790] - Adam Lawlor
You had control over that stuff, Lou. I know you did. You should have put yourself in there.

[00:27:25.790] - Bec Rose
You should have background. Yeah, he was just like, I'm the asterisk of, like, in between the N and the enhance depict. There I am. And so she ends up siding with the band.

[00:27:42.380] - Adam Lawlor
Right?

[00:27:42.960] - Bec Rose
But this time it's around 2002. He isn't managing either band anymore.

[00:27:47.920] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:27:48.440] - Bec Rose
And he purchases a talent scouting agency that was already being investigated by the FBI when he decided to perfect to.

[00:27:57.930] - Adam Lawlor
Come on board the best time.

[00:28:00.730] - Bec Rose
Really? He saw it and he's like, these are my people, I know how this works. So lou. Yeah. Joining this already fraudulent team doesn't really help the business too. A, it had like a type of name or basically it had a hyperlink on Wikipedia that it was like a mail photo fraud. And so basically it was like a talent agency where they would need money. You need to give us money for headshots and all this stuff. And they would take the money and they wouldn't get job offers, they wouldn't get the headshots, they wouldn't see a return on their investment. So yeah, that happens. And then they also get like a ton of job postings that are taken down from Monster.com and stuff that were for the talent agency. It was all fake.

[00:28:57.390] - Adam Lawlor
Okay, so they weren't sending him headshots or anything like that. It's not like he's just collecting.

[00:29:04.410] - Bec Rose
No, it wasn't pictures of kids. No, it wasn't that kind of situation. It was more just like have you always wanted to model an ad?

[00:29:15.360] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Fill out this form and send us this.

[00:29:18.240] - Bec Rose
Exactly. They'd go to make it out to cash. Yeah. So while he's being sued and dealing with the FBI, he is still creating bands with the same formula. He makes a girl version, he makes a Hispanic version. He starts the TV show making the band. Do you remember that show?

[00:29:44.650] - Adam Lawlor
I do.

[00:29:45.550] - Bec Rose
With Otown Malik dream.

[00:29:52.670] - Adam Lawlor
Otown. Wow.

[00:29:54.050] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Otown. I wonder what the O stands for.

[00:29:59.970] - Adam Lawlor
Ohio.

[00:30:02.050] - Bec Rose
It's probably Ohio. That's a good guess. For sure.

[00:30:06.690] - Adam Lawlor
Definitely. Or on a metapea. I thought so.

[00:30:16.470] - Bec Rose
No confidence. So one of the guys from Otown, he actually talks about how on day one of being with Lou on the show and stuff, lou is being pulled away from meetings to talk to lawyers and the like. He is actively in court battles and still churning things out and somehow he's still able to make people believe him and invest in him.

[00:30:54.630] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It's so obviously slimy in every aspect that I'm like I'm almost impressed at this point.

[00:31:06.020] - Bec Rose
Exactly. Honestly. Yeah. And I think it's again, that kind of nod back to the beginning of like well, he did have a level of authenticity. Backstreet Boys and instincts were objectfully successful. He is objectfully related to our garfunkel, therefore. Yeah, like his shit slimy. But those things were right.

[00:31:30.430] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:31:31.220] - Bec Rose
And for someone who wants to be famous actually, like that guy who talked about the cops being there from day one, angel Ashley or Ashley Angel or something.

[00:31:48.400] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:31:48.960] - Bec Rose
But he says how Lou Proman walks by and it was like, oh my God, guys, that's proman. Like he is a celebrity to people who want to be famous because they know what he can bring them. But this is also kind of when the end of that era of boy band is kind of yeah. Even though we obviously sell boy bands, it's just kind of different kind. So yeah, he's using the glamour of fame and shiny things to convince people that he does have money and therefore you should give him your money. So then we all have money.

[00:32:25.630] - Adam Lawlor
That makes sense.

[00:32:26.830] - Bec Rose
I think that's how richness works.

[00:32:29.020] - Adam Lawlor
No questions. Money to us all.

[00:32:32.610] - Bec Rose
That's got to be it. It's like an oprah situation. You get money, you get money. You get money. Give me money.

[00:32:39.890] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Everybody look under. You will find money. Then you will pass that money up to the front of the room and.

[00:32:47.910] - Bec Rose
You will get searched upon exit to make sure you didn't take any money.

[00:32:54.070] - Adam Lawlor
In a way, it's like we all got rich tonight.

[00:32:58.970] - Bec Rose
Yeah. I feel God in the chili. So then in 2006, it comes out that for the past 20 years, blue has been running the longest running Ponzi scheme ever. Again, history.

[00:33:19.790] - Adam Lawlor
What?

[00:33:20.830] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So again, say what you will about Lou and this kind of music, it changed culture. And Lou was using his newfound reputation to get investors and banks in on a variety of other businesses that he made up that were completely fake.

[00:33:43.590] - Adam Lawlor
What?

[00:33:44.180] - Bec Rose
There was Transcontinental Airlines Incorporated.

[00:33:49.610] - Adam Lawlor
Very different from the first Transcontinental Airline.

[00:33:52.710] - Bec Rose
Well, hold that thought because there is still TransCon Records and of course Transcontinental International Incorporated.

[00:34:03.230] - Adam Lawlor
Right. The business that does the jobs, internationally speaking. That's right.

[00:34:10.240] - Bec Rose
Perfect. All three existed solely on paper.

[00:34:17.410] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:34:18.200] - Bec Rose
He was falsifying paperwork from the FBI. He was falsifying fake statements, anything to make it seem like he was swimming in cash scrooge McDuck style.

[00:34:32.630] - Adam Lawlor
That is ridiculous.

[00:34:35.690] - Bec Rose
Yeah. The truth is he is obviously hemorrhaging money. And so where the Ponzi scheme of it comes in, why he was able to be sued for that part of it is because he would defraud person A and then he would defraud person B and use the money from person B to pay off person A and then defraud person C to pay off person B. But oh shit, now I need person D to get person he just has to keep defrauding people to pay off the previous person.

[00:35:14.550] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:35:17.430] - Bec Rose
He was declaring bankruptcy to banks but then telling other people he's making a ton of money. And on the outside he's just like living luxuriously. Like he has a crazy mansion, like I said, the theme park. He is affiliated with the Rock.

[00:35:33.850] - Adam Lawlor
What?

[00:35:34.440] - Bec Rose
Do you remember the rock?

[00:35:36.670] - Adam Lawlor
Dwayne The Rock johnson.

[00:35:39.110] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:35:39.560] - Adam Lawlor
Yes.

[00:35:40.040] - Bec Rose
And rock fizzles or something.

[00:35:43.310] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?

[00:35:46.040] - Bec Rose
Is it a fart?

[00:35:48.670] - Adam Lawlor
I never thought so. But now I think that is canonically.

[00:35:53.630] - Bec Rose
What it was did.

[00:35:55.730] - Adam Lawlor
It's the fart joke that's heard around.

[00:35:58.960] - Bec Rose
The world silently but deadly. Yeah. His house is described as a theme park for kids. And like I did say before, I'm not going to get too far into it. But there is some Michael Jackson vibes here. The documentary is compared to finding Neverland as well.

[00:36:24.800] - Adam Lawlor
Interesting.

[00:36:25.560] - Bec Rose
Okay, so there have been accusations against him, but unlike the fraud charges, they are way less substantiated. Gotcha there was one band member who went on Howard Stern and told this story about trying to touch the band members inappropriately and get them to touch him inappropriately. And like I said, that little story about the first time I saw porn, lou showed it to like clearly there was inappropriate things going.

[00:37:00.290] - Adam Lawlor
It was, it was almost like he was grooming them in every other sense. It almost makes sense then that there would be that sexual aspect as well.

[00:37:14.970] - Bec Rose
I think the hard part too is like the quote unquote, more famous people or guess like more household names. They have said I didn't experience it or I didn't see things.

[00:37:28.030] - Adam Lawlor
Right?

[00:37:29.150] - Bec Rose
Yeah, but he is gross and horrible and they believe victims and fuck that guy. So in 2007, he comes under investigation. He had originally told Florida state officials, oh, wait, so it came out in 2006 about the Palm be sued. So the next year he's under investigation and they're going to file charges. He had originally told Florida state officials that the money that he was investing was being put into a company called German Savings.

[00:38:05.690] - Adam Lawlor
Ah, it's a perfect savings because it's German. Because it's German.

[00:38:11.030] - Bec Rose
Deutschland Savings. So unable to locate the company for state officials begin searching for this fake accounting firm.

[00:38:21.640] - Adam Lawlor
It's probably in Germany, guys, I think.

[00:38:23.990] - Bec Rose
You should look for it. So they're looking. That made no sense, that sentence I just said words. They begin searching for the accounting firm that had prepared Lou's financial statements. And they traced the records to two addresses. The first address is in South Florida where there was no accounting firm.

[00:38:47.540] - Adam Lawlor
Of course.

[00:38:48.280] - Bec Rose
The second location shared the same address as the fictitious German Savings.

[00:38:55.370] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:38:56.490] - Bec Rose
And this address was tied to a remote answering machine service that was paid for by investors.

[00:39:08.030] - Adam Lawlor
The web. That is happening.

[00:39:11.360] - Bec Rose
Yeah. And they barely had to pull a string for it to unravel. Like oh, German savings. That sounds fake. Let's just look into who filed your tax form and like, oh, can't find that.

[00:39:23.240] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. This is not even like a years long thing. It's like step one, go to door, ask if crime. Step two. No, step two, man said crime.

[00:39:36.630] - Bec Rose
Man played crime.

[00:39:40.310] - Adam Lawlor
Man did crime. It's so wild that he's not even bothering to conceal any of this.

[00:39:51.090] - Bec Rose
No, he's not. It's all smoke and mirrors. And I think what we learn time and time again is people aren't expecting to be lied to. He also gave the illusion of I'll throw money at the problem. Don't worry, things are all fine. And they called him like Jovial, which is always the fat funny man compliment. But they talk about how funny is until you double cross. Him, and then he becomes someone else.

[00:40:26.730] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:40:27.450] - Bec Rose
I can understand. And people want the lives he's promising and he can deliver.

[00:40:35.210] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It's so like using the power of public opinion to sway other people's lives.

[00:40:48.460] - Bec Rose
Absolutely. And defraud people who don't have the so. So Florida regulations declared that the parent company, which was Transcontinental International, that was like the pop mom and pop one, the parent company, and then the ones underneath.

[00:41:06.710] - Adam Lawlor
Do you think if he was allowed to keep going, it just would have kept adding bigger things to the name?

[00:41:12.180] - Bec Rose
Transcontinental worldwide international.

[00:41:15.950] - Adam Lawlor
Worldwide globe.

[00:41:19.050] - Bec Rose
Transcontinental International. Worldwide Global, Incorporated. Yeah. They declare it's a fraud and that nearly $95 million was collected that he had stolen from collectors, that it was gone.

[00:41:35.540] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:41:35.980] - Bec Rose
All gone. So Lou, he had filed for bankruptcy from all of his fake companies, and they had gone to his home to start repossessing things, only to realize that all of the art and memorabilia is fake.

[00:41:53.350] - Adam Lawlor
Of course it is.

[00:41:55.110] - Bec Rose
And Lou is just gone. He is spotted all over the world. Of course he had to go to German savings checking on yeah.

[00:42:05.830] - Adam Lawlor
Got to go there.

[00:42:07.850] - Bec Rose
But eventually they get a credible note that he's in Bali. And it's funny because the FBI agent said at first that he thought the email was from.

[00:42:21.370] - Adam Lawlor
At this point in your like, every time your captain comes into the room and you're like, that's fucking Lou in a suit, how constructed would you see reality around you? Like, at some point, you have to be like, everybody in this room with me right now is being puppeteered by yeah.

[00:42:47.750] - Bec Rose
So he is thinking, this is who has written to him. And so he's just know. Just tell Lou he's not in any know. There's two sides to every story. We just want to make sure he's safe. And he's, like, just lull him into a false sense of security.

[00:43:07.130] - Adam Lawlor
Sorry. Who are they saying is calling him?

[00:43:12.510] - Bec Rose
Calling who? The FBI?

[00:43:14.830] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:43:16.430] - Bec Rose
They just think it's a source, and they assume at first that the source is Lou. It is not. So they end up looking to it a bit more and are like, okay, this is a credible source. Some FBI agents go out to Bali, but they apparently arrive a little early, and you can't start the day without a hearty breakfast. Obvious the most important meal of the day. So they go to a restaurant, and it just happens to be the same restaurant that is being patroned by one Lou Perlman. So the guy who had sent the source saying that he had seen Lou in Bali, he sends a picture to the police and is like, guys, he's here. Come get yeah. In the picture, it's the FBI agents eating their like, they're so close, they literally could have patted their mouths with the napkins, got up, been like, oh, excuse me. Starting to hit your chair. Actually, while I have your attention, I will need to be putting you under arrest. Whoa.

[00:44:33.990] - Adam Lawlor
That feels like a scene from a Coen brothers movie.

[00:44:38.950] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God, that is perfect. And it was weird because when the guy's telling the story, he thinks, like, cute. He's like, so that was, like, a pretty good little easy one for us. And I'm like, no, that's an embarrassing story for you. Yeah. Good Lord. Lou goes without a scene, finishes up his breakfast sausage, and they let him or sorry, they don't let him go. They leave with him. So while in custody, he is still trying to scheme away. He requests Internet access to promote another band.

[00:45:17.510] - Adam Lawlor
He's just straight up like, I do have another band, though.

[00:45:21.400] - Bec Rose
I have a request. I need to get on MySpace to write a forum post. I don't know anything about MySpace.

[00:45:31.690] - Adam Lawlor
He had to go on MySpace to reorder his list of topics.

[00:45:35.830] - Bec Rose
Exactly. This is denied. The judge was not into another boy band.

[00:45:48.670] - Adam Lawlor
What year was this?

[00:45:50.290] - Bec Rose
2007. 2008.

[00:45:53.760] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:45:55.410] - Bec Rose
Yeah. He gets sentenced to how long, do you think?

[00:46:02.290] - Adam Lawlor
Hmm, I'm gonna say five years.

[00:46:10.310] - Bec Rose
He is sentenced to 25 years on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding.

[00:46:22.730] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:46:23.770] - Bec Rose
The judge said to Lou, for every $1 million that you pay back to a victim, I will take one month off of your sentence. Lou did not give any money back.

[00:46:40.210] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, boy.

[00:46:43.570] - Bec Rose
So his health had not been great. He suffered a stroke shortly after getting into prison, and ultimately, eight years into his sentence, he died wow. Of natural causes.

[00:46:57.770] - Adam Lawlor
Right. So that's is this 2016, then, that he dies?

[00:47:02.880] - Bec Rose
I believe it was 2016, yeah.

[00:47:04.780] - Adam Lawlor
Wow. Okay. That is so much more recent than yeah.

[00:47:09.370] - Bec Rose
So to end things on a nice note, documentary, like I said many times, made by Lance Bath, obviously a lot of the perspective is from the Instinct boys. So the whole thing had happened just after their first like, they had only had one album out, and this whole thing closed up.

[00:47:27.900] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:47:28.530] - Bec Rose
The record company sided with Lou, and they said, you have maybe two records left in you. They had no support. They're like, you're not going to succeed. So they sever ties with him. Their next album comes out, no strings attached.

[00:47:45.430] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, boy.

[00:47:46.600] - Bec Rose
Seems like this breakup song, and it sort of is, but it was their freedom from this horrible dude, and they were wildly successful, way more successful than they had been under his thumb. And that's the story of Lou swamp ass.

[00:48:05.770] - Adam Lawlor
That was like yeah, it was plato's, ideal, con man story.

[00:48:14.750] - Bec Rose
Wild.

[00:48:15.670] - Adam Lawlor
It has everything.

[00:48:17.440] - Bec Rose
But the thing is, as wild as it is, there's a lot of stuff that I feel like happens behind the scenes. Almost like it came out like, oh, by the way, for the past 20 years, this has been going on. There wasn't a ton of signs. There were definitely signs. And he screwed people over along the way. But a lot of it happened behind the public eye. And given the year that it happened as well, there's all this stuff that we just have to kind of hear about. In summation, after the.

[00:48:54.250] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:48:54.970] - Bec Rose
That was despicable lou.

[00:48:59.610] - Adam Lawlor
It really was. Like, all of it was just do you think that he got something like, he got a pleasure out of it and then it kind of went into debt because of that? Or do you think he was just, like, straight up doing it for the money, but running so many scams that he never had any money? Did it scratch an itch for him, do you think?

[00:49:29.240] - Bec Rose
I think it was the superiority. I think it was the people relying on him, looking up to him. Him just, like, wanting more and more and more and more and being able to get it. That guy that he fucked over, his friend, who, like I said, he took pictures of the plane and their business failed together. He talks about how Lou was really aggressive with him at certain points, and then once he had no one else, lou was acting like they were best friends and nothing had happened. I think he was just a shell of a person who just did what he wanted in the whim of the moment to get what he wanted and would tell himself any reality to make it okay.

[00:50:16.710] - Adam Lawlor
Right. Was, like, one step ahead of everybody else, but not in a good way. Just because he's already running his next scam to throw at everybody else behind him.

[00:50:30.540] - Bec Rose
Exactly. Yeah. And he would placate those in the moment to get what he wanted. And the moment, like, the second they were no longer providing him something. He was evil and angry and scary, and he threatened violence. There is one woman who talks about him saying, basically, let's hope nothing happens to you. And she's like, Do I know that he's capable of hurting me? No. Was I scared shitless. Yes.

[00:51:02.690] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:51:03.730] - Bec Rose
And he wanted people, like, to sign NDAs. And people were like.

[00:51:10.470] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:51:11.190] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:51:13.110] - Adam Lawlor
That was wild. Start to finish. I loved it. Thank you very much.

[00:51:17.050] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. No problem. Everyone, please, I'd love to know. In sync for Backstreet Boys, who were your faves?

[00:51:26.650] - Adam Lawlor
We'll do a social poll.

[00:51:28.370] - Bec Rose
We will do a social poll. My favorite, since everyone is asking, when I was a child, because I had to rank things, it went Nick, Brian, AJ, Kevin, Howie. Howie, because I hated Howie.

[00:51:46.150] - Adam Lawlor
But now Howie was just, like, in the marketing. He's just like the fifth one.

[00:51:52.550] - Bec Rose
Here's the thing, though. If you watch the Backstreet Boy documentary, he was meant to be the lead until Brian came in. Mind blown.

[00:52:08.250] - Adam Lawlor
That's wild.

[00:52:09.310] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I agree. I feel like Kevin and Howie always seemed so quiet, and they never really contributed to much, but I do.

[00:52:16.970] - Adam Lawlor
He's always in the background. Kevin was like, play the piano.

[00:52:21.630] - Bec Rose
Yes. Kevin was kind of like the dad of the group.

[00:52:25.310] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Sensitive dad.

[00:52:26.870] - Bec Rose
And AJ. Tells a story about basically AJ. Kept missing things because of his drug problem and his addiction. And he had missed this event. And Kevin went to the hotel and was basically like, I wash my hands of you because I cannot watch you kill yourself anymore. And AJ. Was like, watching Kevin's disappointment is what made me need to go to like he saved my life because.

[00:53:00.170] - Adam Lawlor
He really was the one they would turn to, I guess, behind the scenes.

[00:53:06.560] - Bec Rose
Yeah. And Kevin's dad had died right before. And so Lou was a father figure to these boys. And they came from tough situations, some of them. And Nick Carter famously came from a really tough situation with his parents. I think that him and Aaron were emancipated from their parents. Aaron is in the documentary as well. Like the boy band Con one. And he is not well in like he is defending Lou. He is really aggressive at the accusations towards Lou. Yeah. It's really sad.

[00:53:47.930] - Adam Lawlor
So bizarre.

[00:53:50.970] - Bec Rose
I also remember listening to Aaron Carter's I Want Candy CD at recess because you can hear Nick talking at the beginning. And we were very.

[00:54:03.390] - Adam Lawlor
To get that like, straight into the veins. Uncut. Nick Carter.

[00:54:10.510] - Bec Rose
It was Nick just talking. Just being a brother.

[00:54:14.290] - Adam Lawlor
Just being a brother.

[00:54:15.850] - Bec Rose
This was before House of Carter days, which I did not watch because that's when it became less yeah. And a lot more scary.

[00:54:26.470] - Adam Lawlor
Very much so.

[00:54:27.560] - Bec Rose
Because when I was a kid, I did not think these people were like, having sex and doing drugs. It's sometimes a little shocking for me to be like even AJ having addiction issues in my head. I'm like, you guys just drank orange juice like me.

[00:54:42.810] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:54:45.610] - Bec Rose
We were all just out here drinking our Sunny D, dreaming about what life was going to be like. Come on. Sunny D graduated from grade eight.

[00:54:57.230] - Adam Lawlor
What more do you want?

[00:54:58.530] - Bec Rose
Apparently sexual deviation.

[00:55:02.530] - Adam Lawlor
Wow. And cocaine.

[00:55:05.320] - Bec Rose
Cocaine. It was actually really funny because I rewatched the Backstreet Back music video today when they're in the haunted house, which I believe they filmed that music video in the same house that they did Casper, like 1995 Casper or whatever. And Brian is just doing flips behind everyone's scenes. But they do it like they put it in reverse so it looks just like a little bit weirder. But oh, God. The graphics. Also, why did those lyrics say, I'm asexual it was for children?

[00:55:46.030] - Adam Lawlor
I think the better question is why did the next lyrics say, yeah.

[00:55:50.560] - Bec Rose
All of it was yeah. Am I original? Yeah. Am I the only one? Yeah, of course. Sexual? Yeah.

[00:56:06.050] - Adam Lawlor
That's for you to decide.

[00:56:08.620] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Carter.

[00:56:25.050] - Adam Lawlor
My story is so weirdly different from your story.

[00:56:32.400] - Bec Rose
We're going to really struggle to find a matching scene at the end.

[00:56:36.030] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. There's like little bits here and there but I'm interested in what we say. Science is a noble pursuit. Discovering the truth is put above everything else. The personal needs take a backseat to the furthering of human knowledge. It's the tool to better our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe and the universe itself. Scientific advancement is a beautiful thing, except sometimes when it isn't. Any of that because of a couple of petty so and SOS trying really hard to be the best dinosaur boy that ever lived.

[00:57:24.750] - Bec Rose
Okay.

[00:57:26.110] - Adam Lawlor
My story is about O. C. Marsh and Ed Cope and what history has come to call the Bone Wars.

[00:57:37.010] - Bec Rose
Okay.

[00:57:38.690] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:57:39.280] - Bec Rose
Boner wars. Let's go.

[00:57:44.230] - Adam Lawlor
So Edward Drinker Cope was born on July 20, 1840, to a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His dad was determined that Edward received the same education that he got and wanted Edward to one day be a, quote, gentleman farmer, which I looked up, is basically a rich man who farms for fun. So it sounds like the coolest person in the world to just be around and interact with.

[00:58:20.660] - Bec Rose
I'm not going to lie. When you said gentleman farmer, I thought of the gentleman pirate means death. I've been watching a lot of what we do in the shadows. That's where my break went. But just like, oh, my side hustle. My main hustle is gentlemanly duty.

[00:58:41.130] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:58:44.230] - Bec Rose
Farming.

[00:58:48.010] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It has to be said as, like, a question.

[00:58:51.530] - Bec Rose
I wear my overalls and my wrist.

[00:59:03.470] - Adam Lawlor
Edward was not into the idea of being a gentleman farmer.

[00:59:09.310] - Bec Rose
Who would?

[00:59:10.020] - Adam Lawlor
But right. In one of his letters, he referred to the whole farming thing as dreadfully boring. Like, he just did not want to do it.

[00:59:20.840] - Bec Rose
Imagine if he only wanted to farm but not be a gentleman. His dad. No, this collar stew stiff dad.

[00:59:36.730] - Adam Lawlor
But while he's getting his education, he really does fall in love with the scientific aspects of it. He visited different historic sites and frequently went to the Natural Sciences Museum. He eventually is given a package of land because his dad is so very determined. He's like, Look, I know you love science, son. This land is here now, and it's not going to farm itself.

[01:00:01.890] - Bec Rose
Gentlemanly scientifically, you should become a farmer.

[01:00:09.570] - Adam Lawlor
But he just rents it out and uses the money to fund his education further. After his dad stops paying, he gets into different scientific societies, and he can start publishing his own papers. He ends up focusing on reptiles and amphibians. And in 1863, during the American Civil War, he heads to Europe to tour the top scientific societies and museums of the day.

[01:00:38.660] - Bec Rose
He just didn't have to participate in the Civil War, and he was just like, I'm going to go be a gentlemanly scholar.

[01:00:45.080] - Adam Lawlor
Basically, like, he just left. And in the winter of 1863, he finds himself in Berlin, Germany, and ready for a new science adventure.

[01:00:58.850] - Bec Rose
He's like the Indiana Jones lab coat.

[01:01:03.090] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. Osnil charles Marsh.

[01:01:07.850] - Bec Rose
Sure.

[01:01:08.950] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Was born on October 20, 931, in Lockport, New York, to what a lot of articles call, quote, modest means. But his uncle, who died when Osnia was three, was George Peabody of the name Peabody fame, and was absurdly wealthy philanthropist. And the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale is named after him from the donation he gave. It's weird to me that a lot of the sources are like, it's modest, but he clearly had stuff paid for.

[01:01:52.550] - Bec Rose
By but modest to me is like, I would think, like, upper middle class.

[01:01:58.630] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, that's interesting. Okay.

[01:02:01.910] - Bec Rose
To me, doesn't sound like poor, but is that how you took it?

[01:02:10.970] - Adam Lawlor
I took it as in the way that you would be odly. Insulting in an aristocratic sense. The character in the movie who says it, and you're like, I know this is my nephew.

[01:02:27.110] - Bec Rose
Insulting me comes from modest news.

[01:02:33.010] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Or like, oh, I love your small house. It's so modest. It just feels like that to me. But you might be right. Like, it might be a different marker of class than what I'm thinking.

[01:02:47.770] - Bec Rose
Who knows? We don't know anything. But also, I would say that if a relative is rich, that really doesn't mean what if there was a rift in the family? Just because someone has crazy money doesn't.

[01:03:04.900] - Adam Lawlor
Mean he could have necessarily yeah, it's very true, but in this case, he.

[01:03:11.440] - Bec Rose
Absolutely oh, I see what you're you're saying. It's misleading that he did have support.

[01:03:18.270] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It's just a weird thing to pin it on, and it's in several write ups, and it's just really strange.

[01:03:25.970] - Bec Rose
And we've spent just enough time focusing on it not too much at all.

[01:03:33.750] - Adam Lawlor
So he lives a privileged life, and he ends up studying a bunch of topics. He studies anatomy, natural history, and he ends up settling on paleontology. The study of Dino Sours.

[01:03:49.290] - Bec Rose
Please. Ross Geller of Friends of Paleontologists. We all know what paleontology is.

[01:03:56.570] - Adam Lawlor
True. But sometimes when Emma's Rewatching friends, I can only focus on the fact that Ross is clearly a very broken man.

[01:04:06.000] - Bec Rose
He definitely is. But in a funny way, you know how we know it's funny? The audience laughs when we're supposed to laugh.

[01:04:19.330] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, very amusing.

[01:04:20.700] - Bec Rose
That's how we know that his sadness and depression is amusing. For us.

[01:04:26.150] - Adam Lawlor
It's great. Paleontology at this time was a really new field. It was named only nine years before Othmeal was born.

[01:04:39.910] - Bec Rose
Can you spell his name?

[01:04:42.330] - Adam Lawlor
Othnielo.

[01:04:46.120] - Bec Rose
Okay.

[01:04:47.660] - Adam Lawlor
Yes. So by the time of Osneal's specialization, I'm going to call him Marsh from now on.

[01:04:59.460] - Bec Rose
It's much easier.

[01:05:01.970] - Adam Lawlor
Maybe it'll slip up now and then if I'm feeling spicy, but by the time of Marcia's specialization, there were just a handful of known dinosaurs, like, named we know that there's these like it's so few in a lot of scientific societies, there's maybe, like, six or seven.

[01:05:25.350] - Bec Rose
Okay. How many are there now?

[01:05:28.490] - Adam Lawlor
Hundreds. Hundreds? Yeah. Maybe even thousands. I'm not really sure. On the current number of them to continue his studies and in a large part to avoid being conscripted into the American Civil War. Othnil heads to Europe.

[01:05:46.980] - Bec Rose
Sounds like it's funny.

[01:05:48.910] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Specifically, he finds himself in Berlin in 1861. Here in Berlin in 1864, the two men meet and bond over their shared passion. Dinosaurs, the thunder lizards.

[01:06:10.870] - Bec Rose
It's just like a trex ripping on a guitar with his kind of Redding.

[01:06:17.050] - Adam Lawlor
I love it. The guitar is human sized so he gets full range. They actually spend some days in each other's company. Marsh giving Cope a little tour of the city because he hasn't been there as long as Marsh has. And in their careers, they even named some discoveries after each other at first.

[01:06:38.670] - Bec Rose
Did they at one point share a.

[01:06:45.070] - Adam Lawlor
Now now that you're thinking that the rest of the story is going to be so hot, but they had really different personalities. Marsh was introverted. Yeah, that's fair. He was very methodical. But Cope was pretty hot tempered, like very headstrong, very passionate. Yeah. But he also would just like he's the kind of person who's also looking for arguments. Yeah. So both men part on decent enough terms, they end up converging or they start working on their own fossil digs. The Bone Wars have a vague and fairly legendary start.

[01:07:43.560] - Bec Rose
You have to stop calling them the Bone Wars.

[01:07:46.140] - Adam Lawlor
Adam oh, it's great.

[01:07:47.960] - Bec Rose
There is a porn name, Bone Wars.

[01:07:50.000] - Adam Lawlor
There has to be, there has to be. In 1871, the two Copen Marsh have a mutual connection working in a bone bed. Yeah.

[01:08:03.880] - Bec Rose
That's where the kiss was shared in the bone.

[01:08:06.970] - Adam Lawlor
The secret kiss in the bone bed.

[01:08:09.200] - Bec Rose
That's a euphemism for them getting down the bone bed off. Neil.

[01:08:19.710] - Adam Lawlor
So they both come, they see the site and they leave.

[01:08:23.120] - Bec Rose
Amicably wait, what the fuck's a bone bed?

[01:08:25.890] - Adam Lawlor
It's like a discovery of a certain area where there's a high concentration of fossils.

[01:08:31.480] - Bec Rose
Okay, so they're digging away in a shared bone bed, glances pinkies.

[01:08:39.510] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. Taking your shirt off and just like pickaxe.

[01:08:45.420] - Bec Rose
Oh, hell yeah.

[01:08:49.290] - Adam Lawlor
However, before Marsh leaves, he secretly bribes the crew at the site to divert any fossils supposed to be sent to Cope to Marsh instead.

[01:09:03.940] - Bec Rose
Had they been feuding at all?

[01:09:06.990] - Adam Lawlor
This is the weird part. This seems to be like the solid point of what happened that Marsh just decided this. They just both had these hype. I honestly do think they might have both been just starting very passionate about dinosaur fossil. And then it is possible that that passion turned to obsession and then it turned personal.

[01:09:33.850] - Bec Rose
Okay.

[01:09:34.540] - Adam Lawlor
But it could also be that they kind of never really clicked and just kind of like socially could be frenemies.

[01:09:43.590] - Bec Rose
With each other, turned to enemies.

[01:09:46.010] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. By the end. Maybe to lovers.

[01:09:49.530] - Bec Rose
Lovers turn to scorned lovers.

[01:09:54.670] - Adam Lawlor
So this obviously isn't a great move. And starts them getting very public about their attitudes towards each other. Everything that either publishes is immediately attacked by the other. Their relationship deteriorates fast. A legendary aspect of the start of these bone wars involves a pointed attack on Cope. He had discovered an Elasmosaurus, which is a dinosaur. He built it to its completion. It's like a really cool looking specimen from the drawings at the time, but it's an aquatic creature. It's got a short neck and a long tail and coat publicly unveils it. And Marsh also very publicly pointed out that the vertebra were articulated incorrectly. Essentially, Marsh calls Cope out for putting the head on the wrong end of the dinosaur.

[01:10:54.270] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God.

[01:10:56.850] - Adam Lawlor
It turns out that the Elasmosaurus actually has a very short tail and a very long neck.

[01:11:02.120] - Bec Rose
Oh, no.

[01:11:02.950] - Adam Lawlor
So he was correct. Cope is humiliated, and he actually tries to buy up all the copies of the journals that were publishing.

[01:11:15.450] - Bec Rose
Is it really that embarrassing?

[01:11:17.860] - Adam Lawlor
It's just like, these men are so stoically stuck in there, like, I need to be best boy.

[01:11:27.630] - Bec Rose
It is why my reputation as dinosaur dude is very important to me. Exactly.

[01:11:35.070] - Adam Lawlor
So he's not totally successful with this. A lot of it gets out, but whatever really starts the avalanche, it does not stop after this point. In the 1870s, multiple bone beds are discovered in the American West, and Cope and Marsh are all about that dinosaur life, so they follow the bones. In 1877, Marsh gets a letter from a school teacher named Arthur Lakes telling him that he had essentially just stumbled upon a bone bed and sent him a sample of one of the fossils he found.

[01:12:17.240] - Bec Rose
He sent him a sample of his own bone bed?

[01:12:20.190] - Adam Lawlor
Of his own bone bed. Scandalous. Marsh, as is his way, apparently pays the man $100 to keep it quiet, which is about $2,500 today. Yeah. Lake, though, had already sent some samples to both Marj and Cop.

[01:12:45.510] - Bec Rose
I can promise not to tell him again if that works for you.

[01:12:51.910] - Adam Lawlor
It was so so because he didn't know if Marsh was going to be interested. And this school teacher was not keyed.

[01:13:01.440] - Bec Rose
Into the idea that each has a boner to have the bigger bone than the other.

[01:13:10.350] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. So when Marsh realized that Cope had already been sent samples of these fossils, he hurried west and sent an emissary to lock down the area.

[01:13:26.120] - Bec Rose
He just dips it, basically hold his arms out and be like, we've dipped this land.

[01:13:32.470] - Adam Lawlor
I was here first.

[01:13:33.500] - Bec Rose
I've licked all the rocks like a Karen standing in a parking lot being like, Pull in, Derek, pull in.

[01:13:44.550] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, God. It's wild. Cope, meanwhile, has been tipped off about another site, which he also had to hurry to, because Marsh did try to get to that one, too, before.

[01:13:58.890] - Bec Rose
Why can't you just each pick one?

[01:14:02.670] - Adam Lawlor
It's so wild.

[01:14:03.560] - Bec Rose
There's enough dinosaur bones for everybody.

[01:14:06.110] - Adam Lawlor
There's so many dinosaur bones, guys. At this time in America, the Union Pacific Railroad is being built. And at this point, in history, everybody knows about the rivalry between Cope and Marsh. It is quite public. It is not even like in academic journals. It's not something that you discover when you attend a conference. Every single person knows because they are really petty to each other. Two men who are working on the railroad using fake names reach out to Marsh about a place called Como Bluff, Wyoming. They said they found fossils already, but they need some money to keep this a secret from Cope.

[01:14:54.260] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. Hey, we heard that you like to monopolize bone beds. Money, please.

[01:15:02.670] - Adam Lawlor
And if no money, Cope money, it's bonkers. Marsh sends out one of his goons to pay the money and secure the site. Soon, Marsh has trains full of fossils heading his way, many of which are actually the first specimens of their kind.

[01:15:21.560] - Bec Rose
Wait, so he doesn't even care? He doesn't have to dig them up. He's like, just bring them to me.

[01:15:25.800] - Adam Lawlor
A lot of them, he's just like running the sites from afar. At this point, both Marsh and Cope, for some of them, they're around for some things, but they just oversee the process.

[01:15:37.340] - Bec Rose
In a lot of them just probably like a zoom call in or something.

[01:15:40.910] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. So word gets out about the arrangement between Marsh and the railroad workers, mainly because the railway employees tell a local newspaper about it.

[01:15:55.490] - Bec Rose
That'll do it.

[01:15:56.870] - Adam Lawlor
And in the story, they inflate the price that they asked for. They know that Cope is wealthier and may offer them even more money for their fines. Cope sends an agent, but the negotiations quickly crumble. Most sources say that it was possibly due to Cope's unwillingness to pay the high prices that they asked for. Lest you think this would stop Cope, he had another idea. He thought, I'm already I mean, I've got a guy there. So he just instructs his contact to straight up steal bones from the site oh, my God. And send them back to Cope. Still at Como Bluff, the railway workers are getting so tired of Marsha's habits. He was not the most pleasant human being in the world. He's not exactly the world's greatest boss neither. Yeah, that's true. The tipping point seems to be that Marsh paid on a schedule that roughly approximates to whenever he felt like it. And sometimes he did not feel like it. And one of the railway workers actually decides to switch sides and just starts working for Cope instead.

[01:17:18.340] - Bec Rose
I mean, if you're going to be so publicly petty, people are going to do yeah, yeah.

[01:17:25.470] - Adam Lawlor
Como Bluff then becomes the battlefield over which the wars are fought.

[01:17:32.510] - Bec Rose
Like dinosaur ribs at each other. Get out of here.

[01:17:37.010] - Adam Lawlor
It is literally possible.

[01:17:39.410] - Bec Rose
My God.

[01:17:42.130] - Adam Lawlor
Both men end up relocating westward and start to bring the noise. And by noise, I mean they would pay spies to give them information about one another's digs. They bribed employees for bones and to keep locations and finds a secret when moving along from a site. They would purposely fill in the site with loose dirt and rocks to delay any future excavations or deter them entirely.

[01:18:20.810] - Bec Rose
My God.

[01:18:22.370] - Adam Lawlor
They would steal each other's fossils. They would very childishly block access to sites in different ways. In one instance, Cope's worker locks marsh's worker out of the Como train station. So marsh's worker has to crate all his fossils outside on the tracks in the middle of winter.

[01:18:42.720] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God.

[01:18:44.390] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. At least once, the crews of both men fought each other by throwing rocks. The men would have their crews destroy small or damaged fossils just so the other couldn't get their hands.

[01:19:02.160] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God.

[01:19:04.510] - Adam Lawlor
As a lifelong dinosaur hunter or dinosaur.

[01:19:08.360] - Bec Rose
Hunter, I was going to say, no, they're gone. Adam, I'm afraid there's no reason to hunt.

[01:19:15.330] - Adam Lawlor
You're welcome. As a lifelong dinosaur lover who wants to be a paleontologist when he was five, but definitely couldn't because I realized I didn't like dry hands. This fact makes me so wildly sad.

[01:19:33.660] - Bec Rose
Absolutely.

[01:19:34.710] - Adam Lawlor
Like, what we might have lost it is maddening.

[01:19:38.960] - Bec Rose
But I feel like the way that we treated historical things is insane. Like, the fact that they would just open up mummies and stuff. Just the disrespect is in the name of entitlement. Also, I love that you wanted to be a paleontologist. I really wanted to be an archaeologist.

[01:20:02.770] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[01:20:04.690] - Bec Rose
Here we are doing this inside both of us. Both of us were like, our complexions actually can't really handle a lot of direct sunlight.

[01:20:18.150] - Adam Lawlor
I'm going to have to pet.

[01:20:19.740] - Bec Rose
I'm going to be an indoor cat instead.

[01:20:22.630] - Adam Lawlor
Are there any indoor fossils to have? You built any of these houses on Bone?

[01:20:32.880] - Bec Rose
Have you looked on Google? Or maybe there's like a game I could play on my phone that makes me feel like I'm digging up historic art.

[01:20:45.120] - Adam Lawlor
Be great. Just take this picture of me.

[01:20:49.760] - Bec Rose
Just listen to your wall talk about.

[01:20:51.700] - Adam Lawlor
It.

[01:20:55.250] - Bec Rose
From under a blanket. I'm literally lying in my bed under a blanket. I bought a lap desk so I could record a podcast from my bed like I'm a grandparent from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory saying I wanted to be an archaeologist. God damn it. I wouldn't have been able to carry the tools from the van to the site. I would have been complaining.

[01:21:19.050] - Adam Lawlor
I would have been like so this was day one, right? Getting them snacks to site. Did we bring more water than this?

[01:21:29.790] - Bec Rose
Okay, well, I brought extra water for me. I hear you forgot yours, but I brought extra for me.

[01:21:42.210] - Adam Lawlor
This whole time. They're also still publishing like Mad Men. They're trying to out discover each other, which means that so much of their writing is poorly done. It's rife with a lot of errors.

[01:21:54.850] - Bec Rose
I was going to ask, did it get to the point of lying and making things up?

[01:22:01.030] - Adam Lawlor
So there's differing opinions on this.

[01:22:04.570] - Bec Rose
Okay. But it wasn't. Like blatant.

[01:22:08.890] - Adam Lawlor
It wasn't blatant. It was just that from what I can tell, they were just making a lot of leaps. They weren't looking thoroughly enough because the point wasn't discovery, it was to discover first. And you wanted that published article and.

[01:22:24.290] - Bec Rose
That proved oh my God. All I can see is a comment section where it just says first everywhere. You remember people doing that?

[01:22:34.770] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. That's the exact two personalities. Martian, Cope, they are first people for sure.

[01:22:42.970] - Bec Rose
And when the person writes first but they're clearly not first. Oh, God, you're the 6th person writing first.

[01:22:55.370] - Adam Lawlor
By the 1880s, Marsh is coming out on top. Both men are running lower on funds, but Marsh still has funds for more workers at more dig sites. The Peabody name definitely helps with this influence too.

[01:23:12.450] - Bec Rose
Was he the one who had more money at the beginning that someone flipped to or was that correct?

[01:23:20.050] - Adam Lawlor
I believe he was just let me check this. He was related to the Peabody.

[01:23:28.170] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I know that. But you had said that one of them he switched because one had more money.

[01:23:35.430] - Adam Lawlor
Like a worker was like oh, the workers, yeah. So Cope was the one that the worker went to.

[01:23:42.870] - Bec Rose
They were paying all of these employees more money.

[01:23:47.290] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. Marsh has now become the head of the US Geological Survey. So he's getting government funds, he's got university funds, he's still getting a stream of cash. And Cope keeps publishing after every article. Marsh is waiting with his response, pointing out any errors in the research. Yes. In 1884, when Marsh is the head of the Geological Survey, the Geological Survey comes under investigation by the government about certain things that they did, how they acquired things. Cope goes around. He rounds up Marsh's former employees who agree to testify about Marsha's misdeeds.

[01:24:41.760] - Bec Rose
But Marsha is able to throw a skull at.

[01:24:48.490] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, it's just so funny.

[01:24:50.350] - Bec Rose
Now, boys, who started it on that day? That's basically what this person is doing.

[01:24:56.350] - Adam Lawlor
Was it him? It was him again, wasn't it? No.

[01:24:58.910] - Bec Rose
I don't care who started it's. The fact that you threw the skull second time and I'm not.

[01:25:07.890] - Adam Lawlor
Oh God, it is yeah, it's just bonkers. So he is trying to get them to tell Marsh's misdeeds in court, but Marsh ends up being able to basically keep this out of the papers and out of the public eye. All of his basically, yeah, like money and influence. Eventually, Cope ends up writing a piece in the New York Herald with his source being a journal he had been keeping for years, outlining all of Marsh's actions in Tom Foolery my source is.

[01:25:49.700] - Bec Rose
Myself from the Past.

[01:25:54.850] - Adam Lawlor
Marsh reads this and he writes a rebuttal piece in.

[01:25:59.030] - Bec Rose
The same paper himself.

[01:26:00.470] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, wait, Marsh is writing to Cope now.

[01:26:03.610] - Bec Rose
Got it.

[01:26:03.930] - Adam Lawlor
Thank you. And it basically amounted to a like nah, you actually so similar.

[01:26:12.410] - Bec Rose
Well, you threw the femur and that's why I threw this.

[01:26:15.580] - Adam Lawlor
Go good. This seems to be the end of the public's goodwill for both men.

[01:26:23.930] - Bec Rose
I'm shocked they had any until now.

[01:26:27.710] - Adam Lawlor
This seemed to be like was it.

[01:26:30.130] - Bec Rose
Like cute at one point?

[01:26:32.510] - Adam Lawlor
I think it was kind of funny. And there were more discoveries coming out, I think the discoveries outweighed any other stories and then this started just overshadowing everything and it's seen as embarrassing and childish to air these grievances so publicly.

[01:26:55.080] - Bec Rose
To all of us that way.

[01:26:57.350] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, all of these grievances are like there's legal stuff but there's personal stuff. It's completely devolved at this point. Not only that, but it causes massive damage between the scientific communities in the US and Europe because the latter now sees the former as immature and not partaking in serious science. So another setback to the potential discoveries that we could have knowledge of so much earlier. But basically these two huge scientific communities stopped communicating with each other for a long time. Cope gradually fell out of his successful career and he even at times had to sell portions of his personal fossil collection. By the time he died in 1897, he had had bad health for years. Both of the men had wasted all of the money they'd been given. But Cope not one to let a little thing like being dead stop him. He offers one more challenge, which is the most transparently immature one yet. In his will, he stipulated that his brain should be removed and studied. Not only that, but he needed Marsha's brain once Marsh died because Cope was confident his brain would be the bigger of the two.

[01:28:28.870] - Bec Rose
God. By brain he meant dick.

[01:28:31.730] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, why? It's wild. Marsh, probably seeing no point to the entire affair, just refused.

[01:28:39.750] - Bec Rose
I'm going to keep my brain, but thank you.

[01:28:42.440] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. So you can still find coke's head unexamined in the storage of the University of Pennsylvania.

[01:28:52.290] - Bec Rose
So they didn't even look at his brain like he wanted?

[01:28:55.370] - Adam Lawlor
No, they were only going to look at the brain if the other brain was coming their way.

[01:29:02.830] - Bec Rose
I want to know that I have the bigger brain. But if you can't see his brain, you can't see my brain. Don't look at I guys. Keep my skull on.

[01:29:17.650] - Adam Lawlor
Despite all of this, there is some good that comes. Of this entire period, no one looked at anyone's brain. No one looked at any brains. When the two men started their hunting, there's a handful of known dinosaurs combined with others efforts at the time. By the time they're finished their careers, we knew over a hundred some dinosaurs that we know today, thanks to the bonkers efforts of Marsh and Cope. Specifically diplodocus, allosaurus apatosaurus, otherwise known as brontosaurus, stegosaurus and triceratops.

[01:30:02.670] - Bec Rose
Jurassic park. Perfect.

[01:30:05.970] - Adam Lawlor
But that is the story of the Bone Wars.

[01:30:11.250] - Bec Rose
I fucking love that. Where did you find that?

[01:30:16.310] - Adam Lawlor
I have known about it for a while. I think I heard it maybe in a podcast years ago. But it wasn't even, like, the focus of the podcast. It was somebody made a comment that was like, oh, this reminds me of this story.

[01:30:29.580] - Bec Rose
This reminds me of the boner I mean, Bone War. Exactly. That is incredible.

[01:30:35.920] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. And I remembered it as I was making my list a while ago. I was like, oh, my God, this is such a wild time. There are so many other details. It's so intricate. They're playing political games and stuff. I gave you the sources, so we'll post those. But yeah, there's no lack of information out there about this story. There's actually, I think, a graphic novel even, called The Dinosaur.

[01:31:05.630] - Bec Rose
That would be cool.

[01:31:07.410] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. And so it's been written about a lot, but it's just one of those things that kind of I think it's out there, but it's one of a lot of the stories that don't fit into our agreed upon image of the time. So it's not that it's being kept a secret, but it's just that our brains kind of edited out as, like well, that's a weird tone that doesn't take place in this period.

[01:31:38.520] - Bec Rose
You guys are bringing a weird energy to dinosaur bone looking.

[01:31:43.090] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly.

[01:31:44.610] - Bec Rose
We're just into the book, guys. Why are we being such Eddie bitches?

[01:31:50.850] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it's bonkers.

[01:31:53.260] - Bec Rose
Okay. What is our theme? Well, New York. I did notice that we had two people from that is true.

[01:32:05.050] - Adam Lawlor
We did have a New York connection.

[01:32:06.410] - Bec Rose
But that's not really a great theme.

[01:32:11.610] - Adam Lawlor
But, like, maybe, like, very public downfalls.

[01:32:22.510] - Bec Rose
That's true. Falling from the public's eye.

[01:32:25.790] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[01:32:26.580] - Bec Rose
Men who were, like, a little slimy in their doings and rose to fame and then their color.

[01:32:40.930] - Adam Lawlor
I like it, though. It works.

[01:32:43.730] - Bec Rose
Except the thing is that when I think of Lou Perlman, I think part of it is also that it takes place in Florida, but I just feel, like, damp. And then when I think of dinosaur stuff, I feel like the desert.

[01:32:58.950] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[01:32:59.370] - Bec Rose
And I picture them in little colonial pantaloons in some cases.

[01:33:07.760] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. But it's so funny when you look them up because there's at least one drawing that I found of somebody made of the site when they're digging, and it's a really weird mix of, like, you're reading it through the lens of this story, but it's clearly, like, very fun. People are like, we're discovering cool stuff.

[01:33:29.000] - Bec Rose
Out here, but we're also fighting.

[01:33:32.050] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Very much fighting.

[01:33:34.460] - Bec Rose
Do they look like I'm kind of picturing, like, in the cartoon Tarzan?

[01:33:41.270] - Adam Lawlor
No, it's kind of no, that's like this is like not even you know.

[01:33:45.860] - Bec Rose
What I mean, though, with those big hats. What Jane looks like.

[01:33:48.470] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly. Yeah. Like the Jumanji guy, the hunter, the dad. Yes.

[01:33:54.890] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[01:33:55.290] - Adam Lawlor
I know exactly who you were thinking of. But no, wrong.

[01:33:58.520] - Bec Rose
That's what they look like.

[01:34:03.550] - Adam Lawlor
I mean, maybe they did wear those outfits, but any pictures that really exist of them, they are, like, full on gentlemanly, scholarly, suited up gentlemen. Non farmers, gentlemen. Non farmers.

[01:34:21.350] - Bec Rose
I mean, he did kill the land in some way.

[01:34:26.530] - Adam Lawlor
He did.

[01:34:27.030] - Bec Rose
I think his dad would be somewhat happy.

[01:34:32.550] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, is your dinosaur farm, son? Don't call it that, dad.

[01:34:38.450] - Bec Rose
Oh, sorry. Your bone bed. Thank you for respecting me and my scientific terms. Okay, so I love that. That was a this was one of our longer episodes. Yes, it was probably all the rants of me talking about Backstreet Boys, and I do apologize. Thank you, everyone for joining us. We are still on our mission of reaching our goal of 20 itunes comments or reviews. Reviews on itunes. We just want to hit the number 20. So if you feel so inclined, we would love if you go over and say maybe a thing or two that you enjoy about our podcast and hopefully we can get some other people finding us and listening to douchey men being douchey to other men.

[01:35:35.770] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, please.

[01:35:36.480] - Bec Rose
Male on male crime.

[01:35:38.730] - Adam Lawlor
Male on male crime. Cobbler on cobbler crime. Male on male crime. All that there's so many.

[01:35:46.020] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. Cobbler on Cobbler crime. It will never be the same. So, yeah, make sure you join us next week when we're going to talk more cobbler on Cobbler crime. Probably you'll find another Cobbler, too. A Cobbler pirate named Jocko. Those are all the inside jokes. All right, thank you so much. We'll see you next week.

[01:36:14.870] - Adam Lawlor
Thanks so much, everybody. Bye.

[01:36:20.330] - Bec Rose
Thank you so much for listening to Unscrupulous podcast. If you want to hear more from us, you can check us out on Instagram at unscrupulouspod. You could always send us an email with any of your case suggestions or just your admiration for us at unscrupulouspod@gmail.com. Make sure to check out our show notes where you can find information on where we got our resources today, and we will check you out next time.