Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. My name is Ben, my name is Noel Um.
Speaker 1: And you've had spicy honey, Ben? Yes, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I can put you in a kind of coffee. It
Speaker 1: makes it like a spicy coffee, or you put it
Speaker 1: on some some chicken, like a hot chicken kind of situation.
Speaker 1: It's it's good stuff. You know who else is pretty good? Noel.
Speaker 1: That's our super producer, Casey Pegrom and spicy and spicy indeed. Now,
Speaker 1: have you ever been in a situation where a stranger
Speaker 1: approaches you and there seems to be this instant chemistry,
Speaker 1: this instant connection you just as they say? Click? Have
Speaker 1: already asked me if I've ever been propositioned? I'm asking, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it was a proposition. How'd your story turned out?
Speaker 1: It was an indecent proposal, Ben, That's what it was.
Speaker 1: You were in an indecent proposal situation. It was indecently
Speaker 1: proposed to yes, and I accepted. How do it work out?
Speaker 1: It was very indecent. I can't go into it. Here's
Speaker 1: the family show. It's weird. Because hopefully in this situation
Speaker 1: that was not a proposal, was indecent for for hopefully
Speaker 1: some family friendly reasons. You know, maybe you guys just
Speaker 1: liked each other. You just sat around and told a
Speaker 1: lot of really blue jokes. Okay, that makes sense. Sometimes
Speaker 1: when people get hit upon or propositioned out of the blue,
Speaker 1: there is an ulterior motive involved. Wait a minute, people
Speaker 1: aren't always as they seem. Then that's true and all
Speaker 1: today's episode is about spycraft, but maybe not in the
Speaker 1: way you think. It turns out that one of the
Speaker 1: most famous espionage strategies in history is seducing someone. There's
Speaker 1: you know, have you ever seen the show Americans The Americans?
Speaker 1: I haven't, but I've been told that it's quite good
Speaker 1: and that I should watch it. Well, I don't like
Speaker 1: tell people what they should do, but I enjoyed the show.
Speaker 1: I should get me to a television um situation right now, Casey,
Speaker 1: have you seen The Americans? I have not. No, I
Speaker 1: didn't really watch TV shows much. Do you know. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot for me to check out a TV series.
Speaker 1: So um, nothing against the Americans? What about Law and Order?
Speaker 1: You ever seen that a few times? Yeah? Casey on
Speaker 1: the case. So the trade name for this kind of
Speaker 1: spycraft via seduction is the honey trap. Yep. And spies
Speaker 1: use their sexual prowess, their charisma and you know that
Speaker 1: thrill of living life on the edge as baitd This
Speaker 1: is like, you know how there have been rumors bouncing
Speaker 1: around for months, if not years, about the concept of compromat. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: well what what is that? Also known as compromand I
Speaker 1: think they're the same thing, and it's just the idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically just blackmail material, right, It's like
Speaker 1: when someone is compromised, um, whether you know something about
Speaker 1: a crime they've committed, or you have, let's say, a
Speaker 1: tape of them getting pete on um or some such
Speaker 1: other nefarious behavior that would be considered compromat or compromont.
Speaker 1: Are they just different tenses? Why are there two different words?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question. I know comproima is the Russian
Speaker 1: phrase which has been picked up by the US media
Speaker 1: even has been making the rounds much more these days
Speaker 1: than I've ever heard it in the past in terms
Speaker 1: of like in the parlance of our times, to quote
Speaker 1: the Big Lebowski. But there's a really I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the film, but it's got a Jennifer Lawrence in and
Speaker 1: I believe it's called Red Sparrow if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: and she plays a Russian spy that is like trained
Speaker 1: in these sexual wiles. It's literally a school for young
Speaker 1: women that are trained to do this very thing. It's
Speaker 1: a huge plot point in the Americans without spoiling it,
Speaker 1: The Americans is about sleeper agents living in the US,
Speaker 1: And in both Red Sparrow and The Americans, there's this
Speaker 1: method of spycraft via seduction employed called honey traps, or
Speaker 1: you may have heard it referred to as honey pots.
Speaker 1: These tactics have been around for a long, long long time.
Speaker 1: In fact, as our pal Gabe pointed out off air,
Speaker 1: the earliest honey trap on record. Maybe this is how
Speaker 1: old it is, it's biblical. One of the oldest ones
Speaker 1: that we know of is the anecdotal betrayal of Sampson
Speaker 1: by Delilah. Yeah, that's a classic story, um, And then
Speaker 1: what is it She like sneaks in and cuts his
Speaker 1: hair wherein all of his magical strongman powers lie in
Speaker 1: exchange for eleven hundred pieces of silver. That's right, And
Speaker 1: then I think he gets his head lopped off at
Speaker 1: some point. That may be in a different story, though
Speaker 1: Solomn is the one who has Sampson's head cut off,
Speaker 1: and so whether or not there was a real Sampson
Speaker 1: and a real Delilah and real superpower hair, we know
Speaker 1: that this practice has continued and continues even in the
Speaker 1: present day. Every single intelligence agency across the planet did
Speaker 1: something like this, but it was an especially common practice
Speaker 1: in China and in Russia. For all our US listeners,
Speaker 1: The Central Intelligence Agency does not officially comment on whether
Speaker 1: it's agents use sexuality to get info, but off the record,
Speaker 1: some retired CIA folks say it could happen. Today. We'd
Speaker 1: like to just present a few cases of honey traps.
Speaker 1: This is really a situation in which the truth is
Speaker 1: stranger than fiction. We we talked about Sampson, but let's
Speaker 1: dive into mada Ha and really quickly. It was not
Speaker 1: Solomon them to do with Sampson. That was John the
Speaker 1: Baptist who she had beheaded. And in the opera Ptolemy,
Speaker 1: she sings a really creepy aria to his severed head. Um.
Speaker 1: So sorry, excuse me for mixing all my stories there.
Speaker 1: Please continue, But so Mata Hari you may have heard
Speaker 1: the phrase before. M A t a h a r I.
Speaker 1: Mata Harry was Dutch woman who had a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: wild life. She had spent a few years as a
Speaker 1: dancer in Java in Indonesia. During World War One, she
Speaker 1: was arrested because the French forces had discovered that a
Speaker 1: German military official in Spain was sending her money. They
Speaker 1: caught the telegrams intercepted. She was accused of passing uh
Speaker 1: secrets to the Germans, French secrets to the Germans, um
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, secrets that she had potentially gotten
Speaker 1: by um, you know, working her mojo on certain French
Speaker 1: political officials and military officials as well. So she went
Speaker 1: on trial and um Mada Harri defended herself quite quite vocally,
Speaker 1: quite robustly. It was an interesting defense too, it really was.
Speaker 1: She said that she was this attache is which is
Speaker 1: like a staffer for a diplomat or an ambassador, that
Speaker 1: she was his mistress and that he was just sending
Speaker 1: her like you know, sugar daddy type gifts exactly. She said,
Speaker 1: no spycraft, just a little bit of slee's baggery. Her
Speaker 1: arguments did not win over the judges. She was executed
Speaker 1: on October fifteenth, nineteen seventeen, by firing squad and a
Speaker 1: nice little detail here, she refused to be blindfolded. She
Speaker 1: wanted to see it coming. After the close of the war,
Speaker 1: the French forces admitted that they didn't really have any
Speaker 1: evidence against her. Most modern historians have concluded that she
Speaker 1: wasn't shot because she was running a honey trap, but
Speaker 1: she was instead executed to send a message to anyone
Speaker 1: who might follow her example. So the lesson here is
Speaker 1: that looking as the one is participating in a honey
Speaker 1: trap is as dangerous as actually being in one. And
Speaker 1: we have so many examples of these. A lot of
Speaker 1: them occurred during wartime. Actually, a lot of the ones
Speaker 1: we know about occurred during wartime. Because again, this stuff
Speaker 1: is maybe still happening today. I mean, I have no
Speaker 1: doubt that it's I mean, it's it's tales old as time.
Speaker 1: It works, right, Like, why why would it not be happening.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty pretty confident that our government is doing this
Speaker 1: all the time. But who am I to say that's
Speaker 1: not what we're here for today. Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the story of Nora Estoga, who was able to seduce
Speaker 1: a Nicaraguan general and then assassinate him. That's a part
Speaker 1: of it too. We haven't even talked about the the
Speaker 1: ability to lure people into compromising situations, not just to
Speaker 1: you know, steal secrets from them or to get comprom
Speaker 1: mot on them, but to actually kill them. And there's
Speaker 1: another example here and Israeli technician Mordechai Venunu, who is
Speaker 1: most famous or infamous for whistle blowing about Israel's nuclear capabilities.
Speaker 1: When he spilled the atomic beans in he ran away,
Speaker 1: left the country and went to London, and there he
Speaker 1: was seduced by a woman who led him to Israeli
Speaker 1: intelligence assets in Rome. This is under massad, correct. Massad
Speaker 1: is the intelligence agencies, and they they caught him. I mean,
Speaker 1: we know honey pots can occur with a number of
Speaker 1: ultimate goals. One to assassinate people, to uh to to
Speaker 1: kidnap them or or you know, gain custody of them.
Speaker 1: The third and perhaps one of the most insidious, is
Speaker 1: to control people over time. We're talking about blackmail, like
Speaker 1: long term, long game like that's that. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: being that beholden to somebody else where You just couldn't
Speaker 1: live your normal life, you had to like literally live
Speaker 1: for another person or another organization at some point when
Speaker 1: you just have to get in front of it, just
Speaker 1: tell your spouse, Look, I messed up, But I don't
Speaker 1: want to ruin the country think that you would think
Speaker 1: that maybe you know, there's there are there are worse
Speaker 1: things than being told you're cheating on your spouse, though,
Speaker 1: and I imagine some of those triggers might be pulled
Speaker 1: as well, like you know, threatening to kill family members.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's outside of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: My favorite honey pot story of all time, and I
Speaker 1: know we had talked about this off air. So there
Speaker 1: was this Indonesian president, Ahmed Sukarno. He was the victim,
Speaker 1: the quote unquote victim of a honey pot blackmail attempt
Speaker 1: by the kgb U SSR. They made a videotape of
Speaker 1: him being intimate with several Russian women disguised as flight attendants.
Speaker 1: So this is very not safe for work in s
Speaker 1: f W. Here's the thing though, when they came to
Speaker 1: him and they said, you know, didn't I don't know,
Speaker 1: we have video of you. He he was like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let me let me see the video. Like we do
Speaker 1: not think it would be pleased if this gets out.
Speaker 1: And then he watched the video and he was over
Speaker 1: the moon. He was like, oh, awesome, you guys filmed it.
Speaker 1: I look great. He was like, I look great. Can
Speaker 1: I have copies of this because I want to show
Speaker 1: it to the crew. And then so basically he just
Speaker 1: needn't care. He didn't care at all, but he was
Speaker 1: proud and he was like, oh, ahead, distribute, It'll make
Speaker 1: me look like a real ball ar. Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a weird set of priorities. That's the most famous case
Speaker 1: of it backfiring. So we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: bedrooms today and now let's talk about them in a
Speaker 1: little more of a of a wholesome way, a platonic way.
Speaker 1: If you will, yes, yes, if you will. Do you
Speaker 1: have a relationship with your bed, Ben, I have a
Speaker 1: deep and abiding relationship with my bed because I've finally
Speaker 1: met the mattress for me. It's a Casper mattress, which
Speaker 1: I've had for a number of years now, and I
Speaker 1: love it. And I think you have one too. I
Speaker 1: do have one, and I'll tell you I slept on
Speaker 1: a non Casper mattress last night. My friend and I
Speaker 1: woke up with all kinds of cricks and cracks and aches.
Speaker 1: It was not fun, and it really made me realize
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Speaker 1: and me get the best rest of your life one
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Speaker 1: We spend one third of our lives sleeping, so shouldn't
Speaker 1: we at least try to be comfortable for that thirty
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Speaker 1: the code ridiculous at checkout. While we're on Russian uh noll?
Speaker 1: Is it true that the Russian government perfected a trap?
Speaker 1: They certainly made it into a bit of an art form.
Speaker 1: There's a really interesting quote from a former KGB agent
Speaker 1: saying that the Soviet intelligence agencies didn't ask Russian women
Speaker 1: to stand up for their country, but asked them to
Speaker 1: lay down. Yeah. And again, like we're talking about that
Speaker 1: movie read Sparrow. Uh. The idea of the Sparrow School.
Speaker 1: It trained these young, very intelligent women to use their
Speaker 1: bodies in their intellect kind of like as like a
Speaker 1: super weapon, you know. Um So it absolutely was a
Speaker 1: part of of their their tactics. And and a particularly
Speaker 1: famous Cold War spy case UH involves Clayton Loan Tree,
Speaker 1: who was a Marine Corps guard security guard who was
Speaker 1: taken in by a female Soviet officer and then um
Speaker 1: was forced to share classified documents through a honeypot type scheme.
Speaker 1: Uh and in nine seven he was convicted of espionage,
Speaker 1: the first Marine convicted of espionage. Yep, gosh, can you
Speaker 1: imagine the shame I mean, you know what I mean
Speaker 1: like and to be exposed like that, and to be literally,
Speaker 1: you know, put on trial by your own country who
Speaker 1: you like, you know, believed in enough to join the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps to serve I feel like I'm I'm already
Speaker 1: immune to any kind of honey pot or compromat because
Speaker 1: you know, anytime someone hits on me, I feel like
Speaker 1: we're both just very disappointed. In general, don't sell yourself Shore.
Speaker 1: You could be compromised, thanks man, thank you. You could
Speaker 1: be indecently proposed to Well, technically it's possible, because you
Speaker 1: know this. This tactic on the Russian side did not
Speaker 1: disappear with the fall of the Soviet Union. Recently, a
Speaker 1: political satirist in Russia, a guy named Viktor Schindarrovich and
Speaker 1: I'm butchering the Russian there he was filmed cheating on
Speaker 1: his spouse with a young woman whose name was Katya,
Speaker 1: and weirdly enough, the same young woman, the same Katya
Speaker 1: had also seduced like six other critics of the government.
Speaker 1: And then there was another series of traps. One appeared
Speaker 1: to catch an American diplomat in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: The State Department says that that episode was fabricated, that
Speaker 1: nothing actually happened, but the government of Russia made it
Speaker 1: up for some reason. And Russia is not the only, uh,
Speaker 1: not the only game in town here. It's true. UM.
Speaker 1: China was recently discovered UM to be using this technique
Speaker 1: as well. Though you got to imagine that, you know,
Speaker 1: again Taylor, as old as time, I could imagine it
Speaker 1: going back to much much farther in the past than this.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand nine it was discovered that Deputy
Speaker 1: Mayor of London, Ian Clement, was actually drugged UM and
Speaker 1: deuce the old one to punch in a hotel room
Speaker 1: in Beijing. Um. When he awakened, he found that his
Speaker 1: BlackBerry was gone um. And then he admitted that he
Speaker 1: quote fell for the oldest trick in the book, Which
Speaker 1: is why I find it hard to believe that that
Speaker 1: we're just now saying oh, yeah, China does this too. Um,
Speaker 1: that seems like a little bit uh like, um duh.
Speaker 1: Just gonna go out on a limb and say, if
Speaker 1: you are an important diplomat, if you are a government
Speaker 1: military official, or a corporate tycoon, and you're hanging out
Speaker 1: at a hotel bar, just be skeptical, use critical thinking
Speaker 1: when someone sidles up to you. Now, I know it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're you know, being a bit restrictive because
Speaker 1: so far stories have all been about dudes being seduced. However,
Speaker 1: make no mistake, women have also been the targets of
Speaker 1: honey trap operations. Are you talking about spymaster Devolf? Yes, yes, indeed, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. During the Cold War, East German intelligence chief
Speaker 1: Marcus Wolff sent uh agents of Stazi, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of these intelligence agency names are new to me.
Speaker 1: Stazi would have been the East German intelligence agencies that
Speaker 1: correct sent agents of Stazi um called Romeo spies love
Speaker 1: that uh into West Germany to work their masculine wiles
Speaker 1: on powerful women and uh and and get at those
Speaker 1: uh those secrets. Yep. And this was a smaller part
Speaker 1: of his larger operation. You see this spymaster Marcus Wolf
Speaker 1: ran the largest honey trap operation that we know of
Speaker 1: in human history. In the nineteen fifties. Wolf had this thought,
Speaker 1: he said, huh, there are a lot of dead german Men.
Speaker 1: He said, a lot of the German Men who would
Speaker 1: be of marrying age have died during World War Two.
Speaker 1: And more and more German women are becoming professionals, are
Speaker 1: pursuing higher echelons of government and industry. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, that it's lonely at the top. Maybe
Speaker 1: we could, maybe we could work something out. Maybe we
Speaker 1: could send a few, you know, interesting young men of
Speaker 1: charm and intrigue to talk to these lonely folks at
Speaker 1: the height of industry. So he set up this special
Speaker 1: department of the Stazi, and he staffed it with his
Speaker 1: most intelligent officers, but also the most handsome. Those are
Speaker 1: the ones you're talking about, right, and all the Romeo spies.
Speaker 1: It is, indeed, and there's a really a great history
Speaker 1: account of this on Foreign policy dot com, The History
Speaker 1: of the honey Trap that I highly recommend checking out.
Speaker 1: And um, I think they might be using a little
Speaker 1: body dub duble entendre here when they say that thanks
Speaker 1: to the Romeo spies and their honey traps, the Stasi
Speaker 1: penetrated most levels of the West German government and industry.
Speaker 1: Or maybe that's just my filthy, filthy mind. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: maybe you're getting honey trapped with that article. Don't let
Speaker 1: them get in your head, you know what's true. At
Speaker 1: one point, the East Germans even um sent spies to
Speaker 1: infiltrate NATO and was able to extract some very crucial
Speaker 1: information on the Western deployment of of nukes. Well you
Speaker 1: know how they got caught right this, this scheme was
Speaker 1: going gangbusters until it became useless. And pretty quickly, West
Speaker 1: German counterintelligence authorities figured out that you could tell a
Speaker 1: Romeo spy by the haircut. No lie, it sounds so simple,
Speaker 1: but the spies had these practical short back insides haircuts
Speaker 1: similar not quite a high and type, but you know,
Speaker 1: a clean cut haircut. And in West Germany the hairstyles
Speaker 1: tended to be more elaborate and more complete aided, so
Speaker 1: like pompadours, it was a whole thing West German haircuts.
Speaker 1: So counter intelligence officers would get the would get the
Speaker 1: heads up from a guard at a train, at a
Speaker 1: train station or on the train and then they would fall.
Speaker 1: They'd be like follow that haircut, and the intelligence agencies
Speaker 1: would follow the spy and they would arrest them as
Speaker 1: soon as they did something wrong, because they had to
Speaker 1: wait for them to do something wrong. Yes, and three
Speaker 1: of these women were rooted out and uh, and they
Speaker 1: went on trial, but they didn't really get the book
Speaker 1: thrown at them so much as just a little slap
Speaker 1: on the wrist. I think. Um, one of them who
Speaker 1: got into West German intelligence got six and a half years.
Speaker 1: It's not not really slept on the wrist, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly better than death, I guess um. And that was
Speaker 1: largely because of public um kind of sympathy towards her.
Speaker 1: In West Germany. Um, they kind of identified with these women. Volf,
Speaker 1: the spy master in question, was on trial twice and
Speaker 1: this is after the collapse of communism, but he only
Speaker 1: got a two year sentence that had been suspended. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's really interesting to me. The guy that kind
Speaker 1: of like mastermind this whole thing got maybe the most
Speaker 1: lenient sentence of all. And he's a complicated character. He
Speaker 1: went on to pursue a second career as an author.
Speaker 1: He is anomalous amidst the players in the intelligence game
Speaker 1: Spy Masters, because he published an autobiography called Man Without
Speaker 1: a Face, great title, and in this he attempts to
Speaker 1: set the record straight more or less, or at least
Speaker 1: rationalize his actions. He said he never put pressure on
Speaker 1: any officers to use honeypot tactics in the course of
Speaker 1: their work. He said it was up to their discretion.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, they were sharp operators who realized that
Speaker 1: a lot can be with sex. This is true in
Speaker 1: business and espionage because it opens up channels of communication
Speaker 1: more quickly than other approaches. And of course, he said,
Speaker 1: as long as there is espionage, there will be Romeos
Speaker 1: seducing unsuspecting targets with access to secrets. And here's where
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of trying to redeem himself a little.
Speaker 1: He says, Look, look, look, I was running an intelligence service,
Speaker 1: not a lonely hearts club. So he's like, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not a matchmaker. I'm not telling people to date each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was something of a of an espionage pimp type figure,
Speaker 1: though in a way Honey, yeah, I don't think you
Speaker 1: can distance yourself in that way now, what do you
Speaker 1: think Ben was? James Bond a Romeo spy. He used
Speaker 1: seduction quite often on powerful women. James Bond was a
Speaker 1: terrible spy. He was a bad He says his name
Speaker 1: every time he meets people. That's true, and I you've
Speaker 1: mentioned them before. But but he's double O seven. Maybe
Speaker 1: his name really is I don't know, Like I wonder
Speaker 1: you know, there's a new Bond film coming up. Is
Speaker 1: it still with Daniel Craig. I think there's I think
Speaker 1: there's a new Bond who is going out. The rumor
Speaker 1: I heard is there's a female Bond. That's right. I
Speaker 1: think it's Daniel Craig and this kind of new person.
Speaker 1: So he's gonna pass the torch. Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: I think that's the idea. Anyway, Casey on the case, yea, indeed,
Speaker 1: we've got to check it out. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The new ones with Craig are okay. They're kind of fun.
Speaker 1: I like James Bond, I like I like seeing a
Speaker 1: terrible spy. But the action sequences are great and I
Speaker 1: love some intrigue. Remember that Guy Mad's Michelson playing right
Speaker 1: is one of Casey Pegram's French associates. It's la bouche
Speaker 1: And what does the chef mean? Does that mean like
Speaker 1: c h I F F R E. Yeah, he chief,
Speaker 1: which in French means like digits. It's literally kind of
Speaker 1: the numeral the zero to nine that that you would
Speaker 1: right to represent a number, but it can also mean
Speaker 1: like figures, statistics, you know, quarterly results, something like that
Speaker 1: would be less chief. Um. Yeah, it's it's surprisingly nuanced
Speaker 1: in French. There's like the namba, which is like the number,
Speaker 1: new mail hole which is also kind of like number,
Speaker 1: but would be more like for addresses and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh. And then les Chief which again digits
Speaker 1: and uh, figures and that kind of thing. And he's
Speaker 1: like a big gambler in the casino reale, So that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Casey on the case, big time, double triple case.
Speaker 1: So this episode is a little weird for us because
Speaker 1: we usually like to examine things that happened before some
Speaker 1: time around the nineties. However, this is still occurring today.
Speaker 1: And a question that was on a lot of our
Speaker 1: fellow listeners minds here was almost certainly, were there any
Speaker 1: real red Sparrows. Was there any sands to this movie,
Speaker 1: any real life stuff? Not just single agents, but was
Speaker 1: there some sort of school. Well, according to Jason Matthews,
Speaker 1: who is a CIA veteran with more than thirty years
Speaker 1: in the game, Red Sparrow is somewhat real, or at
Speaker 1: least inspired by true events, the Soviet Union really did
Speaker 1: once run a school to train young women in being
Speaker 1: professional seducers of diplomats. Oh good, So I don't seem
Speaker 1: like a complete moron for referencing that movie several times.
Speaker 1: No No is prescient. And this is this is strange
Speaker 1: because it has a lot in common with what we
Speaker 1: see in the art of the con You know, when
Speaker 1: we see scam artists, they prey on people's baser desires
Speaker 1: and their human failings. So if you get anything from
Speaker 1: today's episode, first off, if a stranger comes up to
Speaker 1: you and is really trying to put the moves on you,
Speaker 1: just be aware that they might have an ulterior motive,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Not saying that love at
Speaker 1: first sight doesn't happen. It's just a thing you should
Speaker 1: think critically about. According to the Beatles, it happens all
Speaker 1: the time. I love at first sight. They believe it anyway,
Speaker 1: I I like to believe it. I would like to
Speaker 1: play I love the Beatles. Ben, Can I ask you
Speaker 1: a question, a personal question? Sure? Can you tell what
Speaker 1: my shirt is? Uh? It's a it's a painting. It
Speaker 1: looks almost like kind of like a mutant Simpson's on
Speaker 1: the couch situation. That's correct, it's cool. I really did it. Thanks, Casey,
Speaker 1: you're close to Ben Is. It is a painting, but
Speaker 1: like you can see Marge's hair there and like a
Speaker 1: weird blobby Bart and Lisa. I ordered this sight unseen
Speaker 1: off of an Instagram ad. I didn't even think it
Speaker 1: was gonna come, but it came. That's all I got.
Speaker 1: It's the power of shipping, power of shipping indeed, and
Speaker 1: the power of belief that good things will happen. Um.
Speaker 1: But you're right, Ben, it's important to keep your wits
Speaker 1: about you in these situations. You just you just can't
Speaker 1: take everything at face value. You don't want to like
Speaker 1: be suspicious of everyone that you meet and think that
Speaker 1: everyone that's showing any interest you is some kind of
Speaker 1: secret superspy. But you know, take care of yourselves out there, people,
Speaker 1: And let us know if you have ever witnessed a
Speaker 1: honey trap in operation. We totally understand if you would
Speaker 1: rather not disclose your full name, etcetera, etcetera. There are
Speaker 1: so many ways to get in touch with us. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter as Ridiculous History, Ridiculous
Speaker 1: History Show, or some derivation thereof. You can also follow
Speaker 1: us on our personal adventures. I'm on Instagram as at
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan and Twitter as at Ben Bowland hs W,
Speaker 1: and you can find me on Instagram exclusively at how
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown Big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
Speaker 1: our theme. Super producer Casey Pegram on the case left
Speaker 1: and right. Christopher Hasciot is here in spirit. Gabe Lozier
Speaker 1: Research Associate, We love you Eve's Jeff Cote. Of course,
Speaker 1: check out her history shows as well on our network.
Speaker 1: And where would we be without Young Quizzles a k a.
Speaker 1: The Quister a k a. Jonathan Strickling a k a.
Speaker 1: Quizzlers makes mouths happy? Remember that tagline for Twizzlers makes
Speaker 1: mouths happy. It's kind of clunky and it feels problem
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, We'll see you next time, folks. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit The I Heart radio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.