Live in Austin: Bats, Lizardman, Rosabel, & The Yogurt Shop Murders

you better have a good reason for ringing me hi my little fresh apple pie i feel that's uninspired hayden i don't mean to put you on the spot but rob and i are about to go on stage in austin texas and i'm just wondering what you can tell us about your knowledge of of austin what just now are you recording this like am i on the screen being like here's what i know about your beautiful city what i know about austin so when i when someone says austin to me i think small liberal enclave in the heart of like gun-toting country and western uh uh ford ranger truck driving kill you for not supporting donald trump america and then they have this tiny little blue tinted enclave where people are kind of like fearfully cowering or looking at everything around them that is that right is that austin yeah that sounds about right and joe rogan lives here as well oh yeah because i mean he's right wing but like he there's only so far that he's willing to go he's i'll go to texas but i don't want to get too far in i don't have to associate with the deepest level of my fan base well my hayden my only regret about being here is that you're not here with us but it's nice to know that you're in new zealand you know keeping things down there you know is that really a regret of yours david hey man i didn't even get asked whether i could get on a plane but now you're saying that you regret that well don't tell me something show me where's the action i'm not just about words you know what i resolved recently i'm like i've got to be nicer on this podcast and i feel like this hasn't been the conversation where i pulled it off i'm a flightless bird touchdown in america i'm a flightless bird touchdown in america thank you so much and thank you to a beautiful audience who is already cheering and stoking our egos already thank you we've been here rob and i have been here for a couple of days now and i'd say all in all pretty happy to be here would you agree yeah i love austin it's a pleasure to be here this isn't as hot as it gets but i've been very sweaty and when i put these crocs on this morning with bare feet it was like a squelchy kind of a vibe pretty quickly which is nasty so i've got socks on to sort of tame them slightly just curious how many days in a row have you worn those shorts i love these shorts probably about day 10 why not oh didn't like that underwear on the underwear is being changed okay i don't think you need to wash a short all that often maybe we disagree now i'm you know we we played salt lake city a couple of days ago and that was a lot of fun but this particular show i'm excited about because well when where do we begin we love austin we love austin for one thing we do it's fucking great we wanted to do something special and we started a patreon recently and we had a series of goals that we wanted to hit so i can't remember what they were patreon.com slash flightless bird it's great bonus uh 1 000 subscribers we did a lord of the rings screening yes which is yet to happen but we've finally found a cinema that will play it unfortunately because i fucking hate lord of the rings uh 1500 we get to crack an egg on your head and fly rosabelle here yes so we have done the egg crack already and that was awful um but a lot of fun but we wanted to do something special and we did a series of goals that we wanted to hit so we wanted to sort out the rosabelle being in america situation and so we've fucking done it rosabelle fucking incredible rosabelle it's deeply annoying when she gets the louder cheer than us we do the podcast rob and i you just swoop in and take no rosabelle it's a she's fucking amazing she's the best i know this we all know this so just first rosabelle welcome thank you so exciting you look you really look like you belong here i bought this cowboy hat from alan's boots and i went in to also get a cowboy hat and the guy got out the tape and sort of measured my head also and kind of looked like a bit shocked and my head is basically too big to fit a cowboy hat on and that's why i don't have one and they also looked quite weird on you i didn't it didn't work at all right horrific yeah i was hoping for some sort of like from you some sort of like thumbs up but you sort of looked horrified every hat i put on anyway uh your journey here has been kind of comical originally we'd booked you on a 12-hour flight from auckland to los angeles and i was like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry where i was going to meet you i'm going to spend the night in l.a and then come here the next day in new zealand our national carrier decided just to cancel the flight a couple of days beforehand well this all happened the morning of our utah show the morning of the utah show very stressful we had to rebook rosabelle on sort of like a trip from hell and so rosabelle got up at 3 a.m in new zealand went to the airport flew four hours to melbourne had a seven hour stopover at the they lost her luggage immediately and then flew into austin and so basically while rob and i had an entire day and a show and a beautiful sleep and a whole other day rosabelle was just like in the air but she made it i made it it was worth it now we um we like to sort of explore each city that we're in and we we have done that us three and we usually have a big projector we don't have one of those so we took photos of our trip around your beautiful city and have printed them out kind of like we're doing a school presentation which is quite weird but we're going to see how it goes and so we're gonna we're gonna figure out how we do this so this i just really like this um i have a big love of internet cafes no idea if this is accurate or not but i'm really excited to think that this could be the first internet cafe in austin possibly in the united states and the fact it still exists is fucking amazing internet cafes are very special in my heart and austin has one and i'm very happy about this now this was a real blow we got on with claude and all the ais and the googles and we said like what do we do in austin this one might be your fault though no don't put this on me i think we put in the wrong address because this is supposed to take us to a fairy village at bolden creek oh this is that this no no okay okay i understand okay i get this now this was an alleyway behind the alamo draft house yeah called like some toys scattered around yeah called fairy ave the least special place i've ever been this was our second stop and we got pretty discouraged yeah it was bad oh but there is a completely different place okay yes i'm not going to take the blame for it it looks much cooler okay well my mistake don't go to that ave because it's rubbish what's happening here barbecue rosabelle this was your first ever barbecue experience i'm curious what you thought of it overall i thought it was very delicious it was i wanted to be able to eat more but i couldn't we have us oh yeah yeah it's intense um what happened here us eating barbecue oh yeah look at that look at all that meat look at all that meat i don't know how you do it like how often do you eat this shit like is it once a week once a month once a year because it did it completely ruined i think all of us for the day delicious but it's like it's all it's it gets you and then all the sides once you're full with mac and cheese it's probably similar to deep dish pizza in chicago you get that once a year yeah i could feel my heart like really struggling just to get through it but i did have this encounter which is i don't know if it's good or bad okay what do we think can we like who's into it and who's not so let's have it into it who's not into it yeah i mean it's incredible he i mean he's a fascinating character he came to new zealand and sold out three shows at our biggest stadium so like the world is into this man for some reason um he's got an incredibly small over time he's changed his sort of look and he's changed his sort of look and he's changed his sort of look and he's i think he's probably a closet trumper but i might be wrong on that but that's just my suspicion in saying that Oh, there's some debate out there, maybe. Maybe it's not. But he's one of those people that doesn't ever talk to it. You know, the Grammys afterwards, he was like, I don't want to talk about this. But I approached him. I said, can I have a photo? You seem nice, you know. He wanted the photo with me. That was a real situation. He texted that to me. And then we printed it on a massive poster. This is your. Yeah. So that was buying the hat. And I was going to get a cool top, but I decided not to because I love my Goosebumps tops so much. This presentation is actually going quite well. And I like the teamwork that's happening between the two of you. I'm a fan. Oh, look at this. Okay, so basically, Rosabelle and I are staying in. What's it called, Rosabelle? Pig Parlour. Pig Parlour. And we're essentially in a pig pen. And so we wake up each day. Rosabelle's room's here. Mine's here. And there's just a pig that lives. Because we're actually inside the pig pen in our little house. And so we wake up to a pig snuffling around. And we've also found we wake up to the neighbourhood people coming in to visit the pig. And if we don't shut out, like, the blinds, you wake up and there's a pig and a bunch of kids, like, looking in at you, sleeping. Quite weird. But overall, very positive. Overall, I support it completely. It's caricature. Yeah. We went and got. A caricature done. Always risky. You know, always risky. But I'm kind of curious what. And this was under the Bat Bridge, of course. I'm curious, like, who they got best there. Oh, you like it. That's so nice. I mean, it is sweet. Can you tell who's who? Yeah, okay. All right. It's a winner. We'll give this away to someone afterwards. We'll give all of these away. Maybe we'll give these posters away. We'll decide. We'll decide which one you want to hang on the wall. Oh. The bats. The bats. My God. You have such. I mean, I. My relationship with bats is interesting, because, of course, we don't really get a lot of them in New Zealand. We have bats, but not the volume that you have here. All of us witnessed this for the first time, which you have probably all seen, these bats heading off at night. It was fucking incredible. Like, it was mind-blowing. The best thing about your city are these bats. And just. It was like they never ended. It just. The line of bats kept going, and going, and going, and going. You know this, because you live here, and you've seen it. But legitimately, incredibly, incredibly special. There was also another quite weird thing that happened, where a bunch of. We looked. Like, Roosevelt was standing there, and we looked above Roosevelt, and she had a massive swarm of, like, gnats around her head. 200 gnats. And we're like, why are they there? And then she moved, and they'd follow her. It was like a cartoon. She walked all the way down to the sidewalk and back, and they followed her. And it was. Just this most incredible thing. And apparently, gnats are attracted to black. And Roosevelt was wearing this outfit pretty much. And it was just an incredible thing to witness. Anyway. So we had the joy of gnats and bats at the same time. Loved it a lot. Rob, I feel like you should talk to this beautiful establishment. We did dinner at Uchiko. It's always my favorite place to come here. I feel very lucky. I was delicious. I'm very lucky to do the show with Rob, because I don't really understand where to go as far as food goes. He always takes me to these amazing sort of dates. Delicious. Yeah. Thank you, Robert. We did Uchiko, and we did Hestia. And today, I went to McDonald's and had a cheeseburger. I'm sorry. And that completes. That went quite well, I think. Yeah. This kind of. It worked quite well. We have a very packed show, so forgive me if I start talking incredibly fast here. But we're going to begin. the show with. Should we do Austin Mann? Yeah. Austin Mann's one. So the gimmick, you know, you have Florida Mann. We like to look at what men are doing in the city that we're in. Do you have our first headline, Robert? So Austin Mann faces several felony charges after Chicago police said he tried to steal a sprinter van carrying eight dogs inside from the front of a Lincoln Park pet salon earlier this week. That was just the headline. It's like pretty much the entire story. So this happened March 4th this year. And Austin Mann faces several felony charges after Chicago police said he tried to steal a sprinter van carrying eight dogs from a pet salon. Edwin has been charged with one felony count each, a possession of a stolen vehicle, possession of burglary tools, and possessing a stolen or altered title and registration. He's also charged with 10 misdemeanor charges, including cruelty to animals and criminal trespass. Police were called to the 2200 block of North Clybound Avenue just before 9 a.m. Clybourne. Clybourne. We've been there. What? That's right across the street from Pequod's. Oh, get out. Yeah. So this is an Austin Mann that traveled to your favorite city. Yes. And to my favorite pizza place, I think. Hmm. A van was reported stolen belonging to Marque's Castle of Dogs that was parked outside Animal Lover's Pet Salon to drop off eight four-legged clients to their owners. I like it when journalists get creative. Instead of saying dogs, say four-legged clients. After 11 a.m., police got a tip that the van was spotted in Albany Park. They swarmed. The man was caught. The dogs were returned. It was a labradoodle, a mini-dachshund, a mountain dog, an Aussie mix, a sheep dog, a lab mix, and two huskies. It was just complete joy, said Tom, at the moment he was reunited with his 14-year-old dog, Max. He's one of the family. There's a photo of him crying, being interviewed. Really sweet. A good ending. Sweet story. A good ending. All right. Austin Mann charged. Austin Mann charged after allegedly stomping on a person's head at Austin Central Library. Not good. We love libraries. They're one of our favorite. I also can't say the word. I say library. It should be library. I miss an A and an R. An Austin man is facing felony charges following an alleged assault at the Austin Central Library on Wednesday. This happened March 12, 2026. According to the Austin Police Department, officers responded to a call reporting a male stomping on another person's head on the fourth floor. At the library, officers arrived, and they learned that Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis, who had been at the library for a community meeting, had already detained the suspect. So it was all sorted. Great ending to it all. The guy that was stomped was fine. I mean, not fine. He didn't die. He was all right. I'd hate to have my head stomped. All right. Our next headline. Next one. Austin Mann seen swinging from downtown Austin Crane. I like this one. I like a daredevil. This happened May 1st. Downtown Austin skyline turned into the backdrop of a jaw-dropping stunt on Easter Sunday when an Austin man was spotted swinging from a construction crane atop a high-rise under construction. It was above Republic Square. Stunned onlookers made the whole thing quickly go viral with their video. Witnesses described the scene as both mesmerizing and terrifying. It's a great combo. The individual who appeared to be holding a selfie stick, made several wide swings from the crane arm hundreds of feet above the ground before climbing down a ladder attached to the crane and entering the building. It was one heck of a rope swing, said Sidney Lee, another eyewitness. Did you see he had the selfie pole too? I want to see his perspective. Can you try that with an American accent? People don't like it. I'll do it from the safety of our studio. Not when I can get, not when I can get. It was one heck of a rope swing. I want to know how I got up there. I mean, did you see the selfie pole too? Thank you. Thank you. And what I found interesting about this is there's apparently a shit ton of people in Austin that get up on cranes and swing around. In 2023, a man climbed a crane, near 7th and, I'm going to butcher this, Guadalupe, prompting a police response. The year before that, another individual was arrested for trespassing up to Scalia, bringing a crane along West 4th. There were more in previous years. So, congratulations. Do you guys have cranes in New Zealand? Do we have them? Yes. The reason originally we had the idea of having Roosevelt and Hayden at the beginning of an episode was just to balance out the misinformation about the country that I tend to spread. We do have cranes. All right. Austin Mann grows backyard cornhole tournament into an annual tradition. Do you know about cornhole? Yeah, we have cornhole. Oh, David did not. Cornhole, you throw a ball through a hole in a bit of wood. Beanbag. Oh. Sorry, a beanbag? Yeah. Was ball the problem? Yeah. Oh, come on. Jesus. May 26, 2025. Austin Mann, Scott Nelson's annual cornhole tournament started out in his backyard on Memorial Day around five years ago. Now, almost 100 visitors come out to participate from across Minnesota. Iowa and Wisconsin. Previously, he says the cap has been set at 30 teams, but to fit everyone in this year, he decided to move the event to Lafayette Park. This year, he says 47 teams came out to play. That's the end of the story. That's a positive one. Final headline. Austin Mann sets world record for finishing Austin Marathon while dribbling a basketball. Oh, February 18, 2024. Yeah. And Austin Mann is now a new world record holder. Ben Duong, 24, finished with a time of one hour, 21 minutes, 37 seconds at Sunday's Austin Marathon, which is impressive, but not as impressive as his shattering of a prior world record. He set a new mark recognized by the Guinness World Records by becoming the fastest person ever to finish a marathon while dribbling a ball. The article is so long, but that's pretty much it. It was sponsored by the San Antonio Spurs. Yeah. He said, it doesn't feel real. I'm honestly in disbelief. I'm shaking. He told the statesman after the race, we're here. We made it here. I couldn't have done it without my family, all my friends, everyone who supported me. Americans can be so beautifully earnest, even when talking about a very funny world record attempt. I struggle with Guinness World Records because they're, some of them are sort of, this isn't quite impressive, but some of them are just so incredibly made up. It's like, we should set a world record for flying Roosevelt here. That hasn't happened before. Most hours traveled. Yeah, it's true. How long? Like 30 something, 30 plus hours? Yeah. So yeah, Austin Mann overall, not that deranged. Didn't love the head stomp, love the crane swing and the basketball dribbling. Already I'm panicking because we're slightly, we're blowing out already. We're okay? We're good. I get very finicky about the time. I've got a little watch here and everything. We're going to do a weirdest things segment. Yeah. Before the show, some of you stole the cards and ran away with them. Some of you filled them in, but we have a very special guest to deliver the cards so we can learn from you, our beautiful audience, about what makes Austin so special. Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Vincent. Do you want to kick this off, Roosevelt? We're just here to learn. Actually, oh, I like this. Awful. And confusing. Do you want to read from that little top section? Yes. Okay. What's the weirdest thing about this city? Full moon party at Barton. Full moon party at Barton Springs. Oh. The funny thing about it, you've got, you pay to get into that main bit, but then I noticed as I was leaving the other day, there's like another section, which is like the delinquents or something. It's like, it looked way more fun. So you don't have to pay to go there? You can just jump in outside of the fence? Yeah. Looked good. Rob? Frisbee Dan and sun god rivalry at San Marcos River. Oh, we like that. Don't know what that means. I'm deeply confused. No toilet seat covers anywhere. What is, I thought I knew what this was initially, but I don't understand this. What is a toilet seat cover? It's like the top of the toilet. Right. So you don't fall in. No, it's the paper. There's like paper that come, do you not have this in New Zealand? I don't know. What are you talking about? The paper that comes with. It's a paper covering that you can take out and put down on the toilet seat. Why? For germs. Oh, so that your butt skin doesn't touch the plastic. Yes. Ha. I don't think I've ever seen that in, what cities have it? Every city. Really? Yeah. And you're using it? Sure. Wow. I squat, so I'm hovering over. Well, you can use the paper and then you don't have to squat. Ha. And what do you do with the paper afterwards? Do you flush it? Flush it. It's flushable. It goes right in. That's wild. Okay. Austin doesn't have those apparently. Rosabelle? Okay. This one's quite long. It's quite long. And it has a trigger warning, but I don't know what the trigger warning is. We can all be surprised together. It's always worrying, isn't it? I know. Who are we triggering? It could be anything. This is another Barton one. On the Barton Creek green belt for many years, there's been an all green life-sized humanoid thing hanging from a tree along the trail. Think the green man, something and always sunny, head to toe, spandex. It's bright green. It's scary as fuck. And no matter how many times I see it, I always think it's tragically a real person. Huh. Okay. So sort of a body hanging from a tree. Yeah. And spandex. And it's always sunny, green spandex suit. Okay. Have you seen this? Nope. Okay. Weird. North versus south tug of war over the river in the 80s. And Eeyore's birthday party every year. With drugs in drum circles, but also child friendly. Doesn't sound, does not sound accurate, but also does sound quite fun. Grackle parties in every H-E-B, or is it H-E-B? That big grocery store. So the grackles, am I right in understanding that instead of pigeons, you have grackles? What a wild, I wonder when they decided, like all the pigeons are like, when we're getting out of town, the grackles are moving in. We like grackles, right? Yeah. No, they're great birds. Big fan. Big fan. I'm taking an H-E-B. Oh, we've gone, we've been. Hmm. This is heavy. Rosabelle, should we do one more round? Okay. I like this one. Waymo. Oh. I've never been in a driverless car before. I can't tell if it's scary or cool. Yeah. Should we? Should we reveal? Should we do one at some point? Yes. Okay. We'll do a Waymo. No. No. Okay. Feel it's polarizing, Waymo. Robert? Hippie Hollow. What is Hippie Hollow? Nudist. Nudist. That's cool. If you haven't seen episode six of The Neighbour Show on HBO, please watch it. This is a great nudist episode. Blows my mind. Wish I'd made it. Grasping at previous identity with onslaught of tech conservatives moving in. Yeah. I mean, it is weird. It's more annoying than weird. But, yeah, true. So it's a low one to end on. But an accurate thing that seems to be happening. But here we go. I think this segment worked quite well. Thank you, Roosevelt, for taking part. God, you're good. You really, like, you bring, you bring the tone of all of us up, Roosevelt. Just having your presence here. We're going to bring you back. Clap Roosevelt off. She's coming back. Don't worry. Now, the first thing I ever really knew about Austin was all the bats living under the bridge. And initially, I was incredibly worried because of the whole rabies thing. If you listen to the rabies episode of the show, you'll know why. Well, it turns out no group of mammals has been more misunderstood, needlessly feared, or intensely persecuted in the United States than the bat. Maybe the raccoon, I feel, is close. But bat's number one. Possum, I think. Possums. Yeah, true, actually. Yeah, we got some groans for that. And relying. Groans for that? Groans. Oh, groans, yeah. No, they're beautiful animals. Relying on a powerful combination of science, viewer knowledge, and photography, Merlin Tuttle's Bat Conservation is helping save millions of the little fuzzy freaks and protect public health by teaching people to live harmoniously with them. Tonight, I'm incredibly honoured and happy to welcome the man behind Merlin Tuttle's Bat Conservation, Mr. Merlin Tuttle. I'm so incredibly thrilled to have you here, Merlin. And, you know, when I was organising this with you, the tricky thing was about getting you here is that you were on, of course, an overseas sort of bat expedition. And I understand you got back fairly recently? Just 11 days ago. Welcome back. I'm still having a little bit of trouble realising that it's night. There's an 11-hour time zone change. Well, thanks for coming and agreeing to do this, despite the time zone difference. I am curious, you know, we saw the bats doing that thing a couple of nights ago for the first time. But essentially, you're the man who is responsible for the bats even being there, which blows my mind. I know you're probably sick of the story. But can you just talk to what brought you to Austin and what your focus was? Well, the bats brought me to Austin. I was very happily employed in Milwaukee. And I had just gotten into conserving bats when all of a sudden there were media headlines from coast to coast in the US about how hundreds of thousands of rabid bats were invading and attacking the citizens of Austin. And, of course, I had to come investigate that. And at the time, there were even major posters showing terrified people fleeing bats. People were signing petitions to have the bats eradicated. And I came to a very different conclusion. I decided that the bats were a goldmine of opportunity and moved to Austin to take advantage of it. Which is a baller move to make when you've got that much public distaste for this creature, I guess. Like, did you know how hard this was going to be? Well, at the time that I decided to devote full time to conserving bats, most Americans would have rather paid to kill a bat than to save a bat. moving to austin to headquarter my new efforts was deemed to be insane i mean after all you go to the city where everybody supposedly is being attacked and hates bats uh to found an organization to educate people that bats are valuable but actually since the bats arrived very conservatively they have attracted more than 200 million dollars in tourism to you to austin what what did you do to help turn public opinion on bats i simply showed people real bats and told them the truth i mean in 65 years of studying bats in 45 countries often surrounded by millions in caves i have never seen aggressive bat i've never been attacked never been bitten unprovokedly nor has anybody at the bridge you been attacked or contracted disease from a bat stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house relax and let kroger delivery handle your grocery shopping this week we start with only the freshest items then carefully pack your order in our refrigerated trucks and our cool trucks keep your food fresh right to your door fresh grocery is your way with kroger delivery and right now you can save twenty dollars on your first delivery order kroger fresh for everyone what what would you say is the biggest misconception about bats in general that you butt up against well the biggest misconception is that they're dangerous harbingers of dread disease and they're not good for you and they're not good for you and they're not good for you and diseases all the speculation is pretty much nothing more than speculation for example you hear about bats being rabid but only one to two people in all the u.s. and canada combined die of any disease from a bat each year and those are always people who picked up a sick one got bitten and didn't do anything about it so in the end you need to be careful and you need to be careful and you need to put risk from bats in perspective we're told bats are dangerous because you might get rabies from one but in fact only one to two people annually die of rabies or any other disease from a bat in america forty-five people die being outright attacked by a neighborhood dog and before we go on and rampage against dogs because they're supposedly dangerous we might consider that as a dangerous fact that our spouses kill us off the rate of about a thousand a year so if you're brave enough to own a dog and get married you certainly should be brave enough to tolerate bad and that's how you win people over to bat so what as far as you know i almost feel like your job you could look at what you do instead of going i'll get like your job here in austin you've done you've done the job so incredibly well what is next for you like what excites you about this field because you've achieved your goal of winning austin and the states over to bat so what now we've made a lot of progress in austin but bats are right now officially acknowledged as being the most endangered mammals in america they're not doing as well as we think they're doing there used to be vast numbers of bats in fact in many parts of america bats filled our night skies on a par with passenger pigeons by day and we're dealing with only small fractions of former numbers in most places even at the bridge in austin i remember when i first came here i could take pictures of five columns going out at once and that is now a very rare event do you know why this is happening or are there multiple reasons well there's many reasons careless use of wind power is killing hundreds of thousands annually and to give you a bit of an idea of why this matters here in texas just one site i spent more than 20 years leading efforts to protect bracken cave this cave contains 10 to 20 million bats and those bats eat a hundred tons of insects nine times a day and that's just one of the reasons why bats are so deadly imagine what texas would be like with a hundred tons of extra insects i don't want to witness that ever yeah just think of how many insects it would take to make a pound and and in fact the texas parks and wildlife department estimates that our bats save farmers 1.4 billion dollars a summer holy yeah what can we do what can people do out there to help on an individual basis or is it more about lobbying on a bigger level well much of what i've accomplished in the world has come from people helping me i can always use help i just got back from thailand where i was delighted to share with some of our members some from right here in austin a village where 45 years ago i convinced the monks that owned a cave that if they would protect it so that the bats could repopulate that they could make a very good income from that they did and today there are millions of bats in that cave and the bats are they're selling their guano fertilizer for two hundred thousand dollars a year they're protecting crops saving three hundred thousand a year and then they're selling their guano fertilizer for two hundred thousand dollars a year and then they're selling their guano fertilizer for two hundred thousand dollars a year and then they're and they're inviting all kinds of tourism just like you see in austin and so this one thai village is now benefiting by more than a half million dollars annually and a lot of that bat money is going to the local school and in honor of what the bats are doing for the school the principal teachers and students all wear bat t-shirts to school one day a week really you're you're really good at coming up with like very savvy practical ways to change people's perceptions like even making like a monetary thing it's pretty great i have an approach to getting people to do what i want them to do for the environment my approach is winning friends instead of battles too often we who care about the environment attack those who have made mistakes as though they were evil or something oil drillers miners loggers and so on and so forth and so on and so we tend to too easily consider them almost evil because they're destroying the world but we forget that they're our employees they're supporting our lifestyles and when we just fight them as being bad guys we just up the price of living for ourselves just imagine what the world would be like if we would be a little more accommodating to accept people who have made mistakes in the past and look only at what they could do in the future and you know if we had 10 percent of what we now spend on litigation about the environment imagine the progress we could make in saving the environment finally i'm just curious in the first place before you came to austin why bats like was there a moment where like a young you when you were like 10 was saw this bat and was like that's my thing there wasn't a particular moment i started out scaring the dickens out of my mother dragging sizable snakes into the house from there i went to interesting seashells and then shrews and finally in high school i lived near a bat cave and became very curious because the bats were showing up only in the spring and fall but all the books that i could find said that this species of bat lived in one cave year around so i got my mother to drive me to the smithsonian where i met with some of the authors of the books and they were impressed gave me some bat band said see if you can figure out where they go and i have been sometimes called merlin overkill tuttle i i abandoned 42 000 bats and ended up studying them for 20 years that was the beginning of my concern for bats but after i got my phd and got a full-time job where I was actually paid to go wherever I wanted study baths as long as I wanted and come home when I whenever I felt like it that job was strictly it just a lot of fun and and hard work but fun hard work yeah so as I did research worldwide over a period of a decade I kept seeing how important bats are to the well-being of humans and yet how often people will kill bats out of ignorance as almost happened here in Austin and so I finally one day got up the nerve and announced that I was quitting my full-time research job to go out and help conserve bats and everybody didn't just think so they knew I was insane when I did that but and especially when I did that and then moved to Austin to center my efforts but I did it because I had a very strong belief that saving bats is critical to our future bats are absolutely essential in keeping insect pests in control pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds and rainforests we hear a lot now about global warming and weather change and how planting trees can help that but the way to plant trees is to conserve bats yeah throughout the tropical and subtropical world where deforestation has had the biggest impact on our weather many of the bats that are the world's foremost seed dispersers and and reforesters are now threatened with extinction so there's a lot of work yet to be done and I'm hoping to through my legacy leave Austin as a place where people from around the world can learn not to fear bats and can learn the value of conserving bats yeah I'm in awe of your work thank you so much for coming and talking to us about your work and I'm just amazed you're here I watch those bats do their thing and I'm like oh my god you're here tomorrow you're the guy that is responsible for this so I just in the response from people here I'm sure you know that you're here tomorrow you're the guy that is responsible for this so just in the response from people here I'm sure you know this but like people are so in admiration of what you do thank you so much for your weird obsession with these fuzzy little freaks I didn't appreciate you I didn't do it all myself I've had a lot of help from people like you and I really appreciate that help and look forward to making even more progress in the future thank you Merlin thank you so much thank you all right we are taking a real um I mean sort of similar yes it makes sense yeah it sort of does batman we're going sort of from a batman to a lizard man he probably doesn't really need an introduction eric sprague is he's the lizard man because he looks a lot like a lizard um and here and here he is I'm incredibly um glad to have him here live with us um he's a sideshow performer uh best known for his body modification including as you can see sharpened teeth lizard-like skin bifurcated tongue a word I struggle saying subdermal implants and green inked lips lizard man aka eric welcome thank you thank you thank you thank you oh hot mic I mean where to begin um I'm sort of a big I'm curious about the culture of sort of sideshows and this idea of freak shows in america and that kind of thing I'm wondering what put you on this path towards where we are right now because not everyone goes down this path right this is this is a uh not a well-worn path that I've taken now but there is there is a path like I do see myself as part of a historical tradition's not the right word but uh lineage of fully tattooed and modified performers throughout history going back to uh it's probably the archetype for the modern tattooed man the way that everybody thinks about the tattooed man at a sideshow or a circus historically was a man who's called the tattooed greek prince he used a lot of other names constantine constantentious uh but essentially he was the first person to think oh you know when they bring back tattooed natives from polynesia and around the world people go really nuts for that and they pay a lot of money to go see them this is you know in victorian england throughout history leading up to like the 17 1800s and he went what if I went and got completely tattooed and just exhibited myself but he's very smart about it because he said I gotta have a story right so he came up with this complete bullshit story about being abducted while sailing and forcibly to he said that he was given a choice of how he would die and one of the ways to die was to be tattooed to death by a harem of virgins whoa yeah so but he survived and they were so impressed that he was given one of the virgins as a wife and allowed to live there and he lived there and this is all you know his story but then he comes back he comes back home and he tells this whole story so he sold this fictional account and that became the archetype you get completely tattooed and then you would sell your story and it was usually a story of a shipwrecked or a person being abducted it gets not fun if you're sensitive to sort of historical issues of racial issues and exploitation even getting into the 90s we had there's a tattooed woman in the America that her original story was that her parents had tattooed her to prevent Native Americans from kidnapping her as they crossed the west in America yeah so there's some not nice stuff that's in there but that general archetype was the story that was sold to people and those were the ones that did the best so when I looked historically at people that had chosen to do what I was choosing to do said well who had the best success and it was these outlandish stories and characters so what obviously your lizard man but like what was your like big thought and story behind doing what you do because obviously it's also a process it's not like you write this overnight it's been a long investment in this yeah did you plan it all out it's been a great investment of time and planning as well yeah so I had I first kind of had the idea of transforming and tattooing my entire body when I was about 18 it wasn't until I was 21 that I spent three years sort of thinking about it rethinking it planning it conceptualizing it that I actually started to get into the actual process of having the work done and I was like I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this done and probably say that old story was I figured out or I thought I'd figured out it did turn out to work out for me pretty well was that I couldn't sell a story of force a bit that wasn't going to fly in you know 1990s America even though I did have one circus that I worked with where the guy suggested he goes what if we say that you were kidnapped by hillbilly rednecks in a trailer park and they did this to you to make you a pet well say it happened in Florida they wanted to make their own tater man right that that was legitimately a thing that was pitched as a business idea by real people who do this stuff for a living in the 90s but I figured to take more of a postmodern approach where they say I'm just going to honestly explain my motivations and ideas as an artist and go out and say this is what I'm trying to do and I'm trying to do it to entertain and to provoke thought right and I was lucky enough that that resonated well enough that I've had a career now for 30 years being weird for money what was is there a particular part of the process what what stresses me out about you mostly the filed down teeth ah yes and the implants and the implants and the under the eyebrows like was there a particular thing that was difficult or dicey to do well so my implants are the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my life now I'm someone who has had several near-death experiences and worked as a stunt performer for 30 years so most painful means it's the only time in my life that I both hallucinated and vomited as a result of pain Jesus it's a six-hour operation with no anesthetic well and yeah is it it you invented the tongue well so tongue splitting was always sort of an underground urban legend in body modification can you show us the time yeah I like to say that I tongues of muscle so you have to exercise it I have four exercises I like to do with my tongues very simple I give them each names they go from easiest to hardest the first one goes like this you call that one the oh they call that one the open and close it's a lot like oral applause if you think about it some of you need more time to think about it that's okay second one I'm going to show you this one's much more difficult I call this one the up and down yeah ladies and statistically ten percent of the men now that I have your attention watch what happens when I do those two moves at the same time I call this one the crossover oh I don't like that all right I I save the best for last this the piece the resistance I it took me two years to learn how to do this fourth move two years and even with all that time I never thought of the right name for it until the night my wife told me what she calls it this one is called the Oh My God Concerned you told me you bought a box of things And I'm not quite sure Because you obviously do some stuff as well When you're performing So I don't quite know what's happening here I kind of want to get Rosabelle back out to sit In the middle If Rosabelle's there I think come back Rosabelle I want you to see this Because I think it's I just think it's You're in America for a short time Rosabelle You can help that's great Just hold that right there Don't move it Thanks Rosabelle and I'm sorry Or am I Also I will say part of the Joy of Rosabelle being here is that Hayden isn't Okay a beer is happening Can I talk to you while that's up your nose Oh absolutely yeah We can just have a conversation Okay that's fine Rob did you have any questions for this big lizard Sat on the couch No Are you done like do you have more Things you want to do to your To your body or are we there Well so I've completed Everything I set out to do originally But you know along the way more options have Occurred and there are things that If they become technologically viable That I would like to look into Like a tail maybe A tail has been on the list for a long time But we can't quite do the sort of tail That I would want really Let me see I think there's a little air in my stomach I might be able to blow a couple bubbles in there Oh yeah it's going to be Hard to see out there isn't it One of the big ones and I have talked with a couple of researchers About this is a bioluminescent Glow is something that I've really Wanted to look into That would be pretty great Now what is happening right now I can see Okay that's a syringe We've got the tube down into my Via my nose nasal gastric tube Down into my stomach The beer is kind of slowly draining Right now with gravity but we're going to give it a little push Yeah I just hold that steady I really struggle with body stuff It's like Oh Rosabelle Oh Yeah I'll tell you what here Now take it like that now just push Push hard push hard Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh so that's all going Oh the air you can hear it right here sitting next to me It's hard to hear over there You hear the air burbling That's going into the stomach right now Yeah there you go you're all the way down there Yeah Yeah Okay How does that Does that feel like a pressure when that has An odd feeling It is a bit of an odd feeling when I first started out it was very odd Because my stomach goes from empty to full very quickly There's a lot of carbonation in there And you can get drunk You can get drunk from that Oh It was a non-alcoholic beer I actually did I quit drinking in 2020 Right but this isn't technically Drinking this is injecting What happens Now What we do now is if you just grab that handle And just pull out yeah Yeah Pull out Keep going There you go Give it a little more pull Hold on for just a second Go ahead let me take this Now if you look closely You see how it changes color when it hits the stomach Content down there And it doesn't always come back up alone There's some do you see that Is that a nose hair or a sea monkey I can't tell Yeah so that's that stomach contents Plus the beer that's just been in there Yeah that's my day's stomach contents Right there You can just hang on to that again just for a second To free up my hands Hold on He's gonna drink it I hate that I hate that So much Just a little pressure on that now If you wouldn't mind pouring me a little drink there There you go That's it push down hard Push down hard It's chunky you gotta push hard There's a thickness to it That you really don't appreciate That you've done it a few times Keep going Keep going Keep going Keep going all right that should be good right there hang on pull out just a little bit because i need to i need to make sure this is clear before i put that in it david how much to take a sip of that no no no i'm not doing it there's not it's not a pressure from the audience thing that's not working that is so intense so uh if you're wondering how you ended up here we got to go back a little ways to the early 90s when a man named matt the tube crowley an original member of the jim rose circus invented the act that he got his name from the tube it would go on to be nicknamed bile beer at lollapalooza and several stars of the time including eddie vetter flea chris cornell all drank matt crowley's bile beer now when matt retired from the jim rose circus the bile beer act was taken over by the enigma so you might know him he used to live here in austin as well when the enigma left the jim rose circus i was called upon to be the third person in history to learn and perform this act this was in 1998 since that time everyone else has quit so i hold the distinction of having pumped my stomach more times than anyone else known in the history of the world that's the guinness world record that should be in there oh really it's the bouquet i can smell it i'm not handling this well i know you know most people like their their beer cold but i do prefer mine body temperature it's it's like good sake 98.6 right here thank you so much i want to get rid of you thank you lizard man i'm so incredibly hung over today and that was awful everything about that you're amazing though like thank you so much for being here i have about a million more my absolute pleasure uh do you feel okay after that like i do feel okay i feel pretty good actually yeah yeah okay so it's been in it's been out and it's back in again it's recycling go green oh my fucking god uh look thank you i'm gonna get people to clap you off because i want to get the fuck out of here we're gonna have you back at the end for a q a so if you have questions throw them up oh my god i i really appreciate you um being here for this um we have our our final interview subject for for the rest of the show so i'm gonna have you back at the end for a q a so if you have any questions for the night austin has some pretty gnarly true crime stories going on i think you stay roosevelt no i'm supposed to talk to her now a little interview yeah i'm just so worried about the time we got we're good we got time we got time yeah we got time we're on schedule roosevelt you're here we flew you all the way here my god i didn't prepare any tricks something i thought we could talk about because i like in the world of the podcast you are this wonderful person and i the other end of the line that picks up and puts up with us um but you also have an entire other life where you were creating and making amazing things and i wanted to talk to you about one of your projects that you did in manchester a show you put on that i found the whole concept incredibly fascinating what was it called an inheritance and can you just talk about the concept about the show and what this idea was yeah so i made this work with two london-based artists andy field and darlington who also do a lot of work with young people and previously in alter or done a few installations with young people as well public art installations and andy becky and i met during the pandemic because they were meant to bring a show to alter about our borders were closed and so i was there on the ground director for a show called news news news which is where a whole bunch of eight-year-olds make a live 6 p.m news bullet and stream it and it's actually it's amazing it was an amazing work to work on because kids can ask adults anything and adults can't be mad about it so i remember there was one kid who was interviewed the mayor and he was just like why don't you care about homeless people yeah and yeah he had to answer it um so that's how andy becky and i met and then during the pandemic we started chatting about this new show i also lost heaps of work during that time because we couldn't really be in theaters or galleries and so i was doing a lot of work with local iwi or like maori tribes and a lot of them were talking about their hundred year plan which was kind of a new idea to me to think that far ahead so anyway the idea of an inheritance is we worked with 500 young people across greater manchester to create an inheritance for children 100 years from now and it's mostly knowledge based some of it's really silly like really bad jokes and tips for how to get out of doing homework uh what to do if someone at school is mean to you but some of it's also really profound like you know are there still refugees in the future do you still have flowers are you happy and the gallery that we presented the inheritance in is actually going to store it for 100 years and represent it for its intended recipients which will be such a bizarre thing to see what happens in the future i think it's going to be a really big thing to see what happens in the future i think it's going to be a really big thing to see what happens in the future i think it's going to be a really big thing to see what happens in the future i think it's going to be a really big thing up to those original predictions and questions and what is entirely different as well yeah yeah well one of the parts of the installation is we worked with a amazing um sound composer who david's also worked with lachlan anderson and we worked with the kids to identify sounds they thought wouldn't exist in 100 years which was already such a buzzy conversation because they were like well we won't hear wind in 100 years because everything will be controlled by wind robots so the sound of wind the sound of a diesel car like a petrol car the sound of a frying pan because everything will just come fully formed yeah so yeah it's just like it's fascinating thinking about how smart kids are and how often we do not take them seriously in in spaces that are deemed for adults yeah was there anything you had to say no to them that they wanted to put in oh there was some really complicated pictures for how to do tiktok dances that we were like kids in the future aren't going to understand that that's probably it did it make you overall did you come out of it thinking yeah holy shit like the kids are okay and like these are good brains or was it like because also the other aspect of it's like they're also you're looking at it and some of these kids are seeing incredibly depressing futures as well which is surreal yeah we often work with eight and nine-year-olds because that's the age at which you have the strongest like black and white moral like sense of justice and so it was really profound we did we did this work we were working with the young people around 2024 25 and uh the number of kids who were talking about palestine who were worried about world war three did make me feel i mean made me feel really sad that that's something that's so present in their mind but also made me feel hopeful about the future and i i saw the i was in manchester i saw the work and it was fucking amazing and i wanted to travel because you could do this more right this could be in other places technically this model that's the idea yeah that's so cool rosabelle you're i just you're so smart and you blow my mind and i can't believe you put up with me calling you with like stupid questions and most of the time you pick up the phone it blows my mind because i think you're calling for friendship sometimes i am rosabelle thank you so much we're going to have you back at the very end for a q and a you're the best stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house now at kroger your points add up to more ways to save every trip use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump you can even save up to thirty five dollars on your next fill up same points more choices and with low prices on fresh quality food plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop your dollar goes further redeem your points online or in the app kroger fresh for everyone restrictions apply c-sider store for details our final um guests of the night quite a packed topic quite intense a lot of true crime in austin going on and there's kind of two stories i want to talk about here in this final interview number one the rainy street ripper essentially in 2022 six bodies of men with similar physical descriptions were found in a concentrated area of ladybird lake here in austin the following year five more bodies turned up as the death toll rose locals couldn't help but wonder if there was some kind of serial killer involved and so the idea of the rainy street ripper was born so the death toll rose locals couldn't help but wonder if there was some kind of serial killer involved so there's the rainy street ripper case i'm talking about and then there's another case the yogurt shop murders and 91 14-inch girls were working a strip mall yogurt shop they were shot and killed and it became austin's most well-known cold case it remained unsold for over three decades until last year when the case was finally solved so you got these two cases one was thought to be a serial killer and probably definitely isn't the other no one knew what the end up being a serial killer so to talk about this who knows this space incredibly well is kim rosmo he's a professor in the school of criminal justice and criminology uh-oh did i say something wrong oh your professor that's fucking cool we've got your professor he's back um he's a professor and the school of criminal justice and criminology at texas state university and a retired detective inspector from the vancouver police department he knows both cases well kim rosmo welcome to the stage now thank you so much for being here these are two quite chunky cases but what i like about it is that one of these things was thought to be a serial killer and you poking around and that indicated it wasn't and then you had this other case that no one knew what was going on did he end up being a serial killer where do we even begin well i guess it's always about the next case so the focus needs to be on true crime real crime not social media creations because a serial murder case is going to cost tens of millions of dollars which is taxpayers dollars and unless you want your tax dollars to go up you are diverting stuff away from real crimes if you're pursuing chimeras and myths so that was part of the focus i had as a detective inspector with vancouver i had a big case that i had involvement with regarding a number of women who'd gone missing street sex trade workers and there was disagreement of whether they were just missing traveling or they actually had been victimized and we analyzed it statistically and concluded no these are very likely the victims of a serial killer and they were the pig farm serial killers became known canada's biggest serial murder case so i wanted to apply the same techniques to the missing women case i mean sorry to that we're using the missing women case but the same techniques that were used there on the rainy street ripper and i talked to the chief of the austin police department they agreed to cooperate i said whatever we find we have to agree is going to be disclosed to the public they were very happy with that and um turned out we didn't find any evidence any indicators the drowning rates in austin are just normal what you would typically expect we also found about a dozen other cases and we found that the missing women case was not a missing women case the missing women cases from the new england serial killer to the smiley face serial killer to the recent houston bayou horror i like to know who comes up with these names the names are always incredible and they're all again fabrication serial killers are a problem but they don't drown people they stab them they shoot them they strangle them but then you get something like the austin yogurt shop murders which were initially linked to four teenage boys kind of hung around in nearby mall and two of them were charged and convicted and spent years in prison for a crime they're innocent of and it turned out that there was a serial killer in town briefly who'd done other murders in other states and um that was a very difficult thing to put together so what we want to know is we got a new crime tomorrow what is it is it just an accidental drowning is it a murder one-off is it a serial killer and these are challenges they're analytic challenges they're procedural um and policy challenges, but we want to get it right. We need to find the truth, and we need to therefore focus our resources in things that will make the public safer. You came up with sort of an insane formula that's named after you, right? To sort of, am I correct? Yes. It's called? I think the internet dubbed it Roswell's algorithm. I looked at it. It looks incredibly complicated. Can you just briefly explain how that works and what it does? Yes. This is the core of what we call geographic profiling. So if you have an unsolved case, you've probably heard of psychological profiling or behavioral profiling, which is looking at the unsolved crimes and trying to figure out the who. Geographic profiling asks a parallel question. If we look at the actual locations of a series of crimes, what does that tell us about where the offender lives or is based? So in that way, we can actually manipulate a lot of data and search through such things. We applied it to the Rainy Street Ripper crimes, but it didn't show anything that made any sense. So that was just another angle to take a look at it. We sometimes get caught up in the television depictions of detectives, but it's all about information. They're usually team efforts. I have to give a lot of credit to Detective Dan Jackson of the Austin Police Department Cold Case Unit, who solved the case. And I met him a few years ago, and I had not been happy with some of the reactions of APD towards this case. They still seemed stuck on the four kids. And I talked to him. And he said, He said, I talked to Danny. He says, What do you think? And he says, I don't know. I have an open mind. I said, That's what I want to hear. So just really quickly, how did it get traced to that serial killer? Was it a bunch of random things? It was 30 years unsolved. Suddenly, last year, boom. You solve crimes through evidence, not through gut instinct and psychics or any of that stuff. And Danny was just reviewing the cases, noticed there was some ballistics evidence from a shell casing recovered from a drain. He wondered if there had been improvements in ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco Firearms Technology, submitted it. They got a match to another crime, I believe in Kentucky. And then through some DNA analysis, particularly forensic investigative genetic genealogy, where they can trace people through distant ancestors, they were able to link the crimes to a guy called Brash Shears, who turned out and committed at least eight murders and had moved around Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri. It was a very, um, horrible predator that had done all sorts of sexual assaults and murders. But he wasn't really on our radar screen in Texas. And now he's caught and not coming out again. He committed suicide some years ago. Fucking hell. So that's the end of that, though. There's a little, you always want to make them face justice, but I guess he's facing a different type of justice. Yeah. Americans who get caught often seem to do that. It's very frustrating. Epstein, et cetera. Rainy Street Ripper. Is it frustrating for you when like that legend is sort of set now? It's got like a catchy name, even though you have proven with your research that it is not a serial killer. That kind of idea sticks. Is that annoying to you when that sort of is out of the bag and it just is going to never go away? I think so. I mean, it's all about the truth. You don't get justice without the truth. And because you're not always at a crime scene, you can only work with the evidence and the information that you have. But if our focus is here when it should be here, because there are real risks, there are lots of something like 25,000 unsolved murders in Texas and about a quarter of a million unsolved murders in the entire United States. That's where our focus has to be. Not on something created on social media for clicks. They're monetized crime. And I really, as a former police officer who's actually been at these scenes, I get very resentful at people that try to monetize and commercialize crime, turn it, into entertainment and to clickbait. Cause there's, as somebody said there behind your tick talk is a real victim, a mother, a wife, daughter, sister. How do you find the obsession on with, with streamers, with true crime and that whole, the whole podcast scene and all of it? Do you find it? Is there any, like the good versus the not so good? Is there anything in that? Well, I would say as someone who works in the field as a professor, I think that's good. It's interesting. I, I think though, there are, there are focus. If you want to get a lot of interest, have an unsolved crime. Once you've solved the crime, for example, the golden state killer in California that got a lot of attention. And it all dropped off once they arrested D'Angelo. So you need a mystery. It's gotta be a high profile crime for whatever reason. And that's all fine. It's just sometimes like I currently am running a cold case investigations graduate course and the students handed in their last assignment, which was go to a social media site and find all the thinking errors that we've identified in wrongful convictions and see what they just it's I'm just marking them now and it's fascinating. So jumping to conclusions wrong assumptions what's called a suspect led investigation where rather than following the evidence you just look at the suspect and you try to find connections their tunnel vision confirmation bias these are all things that would just get you into a lot of trouble if they were out there. Yeah. Actually detectives would they seem to do it and then you've got on social media forms group think everyone if they step on a line someone will often try to bash them back into line and that's not healthy at all that's not a good valid discussion is in a row so is here tonight one of my doctoral students studying cold cases she said you know the people that post every now and then often have good comments valid concerns or things to think about the people that are posting all the time are the ones that are full of it. Yeah. More garbage in the mix with with the insane crime rates and unsolved unsolved crimes you mentioned earlier is there any hope of keeping up with this like obviously technology and understanding of how to solve crimes I imagine is getting better but also there's a lot of killing going on out there is it a losing kind of battle to get to the bottom of this stuff. So our murder rates actually peaked in 1991 so they're down considerably from that so we've got to put it in perspective. However. Certain groups are much higher risk so for example we found that if you are a street prostitute your murder risk rate is about 100 times that of the average woman so off the charts for certain people for most of us not so much but it's important to remember this is another frustrating point the number one group that research shows that will solve a crime are you the public it makes sense there's more of you out there you see things all the time number two group of patrol officers third group were detectives. So actually then have to pull it all together so it's all of our responsibility and it's not the police need to know we all need to do more and we need to cooperate in a professional logical fashion that is something I think we really need to think carefully about we also need to be concerned about high risk marginal groups who are often the ones that are most likely to be targeted for rape sexual assault robbery murder and one of the problems I had I mentioned the missing. Women case in Vancouver because they were aboriginal sex trade victims many of them know all of them drug addicted it was hard to get the system to respond accordingly yeah yeah you're just trapped in these systems all the time right biggest just finally biggest misconception when it comes to the kind of work that you do when it comes to investigating crimes I feel like I just have been brainwashed from watching every sort of drama and true crime show around is there something that like frustrates you. When you watch those shows and the way people perceive what you people that you do was I tell my students just because you watch law and order doesn't mean you know how to actually solve a case yeah yeah makes sense thank you so much I want you to stay here and thank you so much for coming. I want to bring all our guests back out again I think Marilyn might have because he's just got back from a bad expedition I think he's probably gone to bed but can everyone else. Come back because I want to open it up to you guys because I imagine you have questions for all of our guests tonight including I mean you can ask questions of Rob and I but I think these humans are much more interesting and so humans. The beer is the beer is inside you still that's good it's all inside me do you have any questions. It's super bright but I think I can maybe see some hands like throw your hand up if you have a question right there just yell it out and I'll repeat it back. Yeah was it worse having an egg cracked on your head Rosabelle or helping Lizard Man take the beer out of his stomach two very normal things to say yeah yeah I don't know if anything will ever be as hurtful as when my close friend David cracked an egg on my head. Oh emotional damage wow thanks for that question okay hand in the air down here yeah Lizard Man how was your work with Ripley's believe it or not how was my work with Ripley's believe it or not I mean overall really good for me but there was a lot of back and forth over the years on different issues because before I started working with Ripley's in the late 90s early 2000s. they had pretty much completely moved away from, I guess, human talent. Like, they didn't deal with people anymore. There was more exhibits in the museums. And I led a very big push along with other people like Todd Rodman. I don't want to make this out like it was all me. But a lot of us were pushing for, like, hey, Ripley's is hitting right now with the TV show back in the early 2000s. Now is the perfect time to bring back what made Ripley's great, in my opinion, which are the stories, the people of Ripley's. They begrudgingly kind of came along. There were a lot of successes along the way. There were some misses, too. I would say that I don't want to ruin anyone's enjoyment of the company. But for me, it became very much a work environment. Like, at first, I came in as a kid who would watch Ripley's. And it was part of the big inspiration of why I do what I do and what I want to do. And, you know, then once I was inside and seeing how the sausage was made and being the sausage, wasn't that great? So that's why, like, right now, there are still statues of me in the museums that still use the content that they own. But I don't have a working, working relationship with them as a company at this point, which is primarily over things like creative differences and just business ethics, a way of doing things. I think it's a very contained answer. Yeah, I tried. I tried. I tried. Thank you. Right at the front here. So the question was, there is a very big body farm here in Texas. Does that bleed into your work at all? In a way, the body farm is run by a forensic anthropology center who actually have some of their graduate students in my current class. I have a lot of. I have a lot of respect for them. They are going to provide, just like a medical examiner or a DNA lab person, the core information that we need to think about crimes. And I think there's a lot of valuable information that their research can generate. And we are. We work with them tangentially. They're more of a hard science. We're a bit more of a social science. But what they do is great stuff. Anyone out there at the back? You just. Just yell it out. Yeah, how did I get my team to finish making Tickled when we were facing a lot of sort of legal suing and scare tactics? It was just. We were really pig-headed about it. And we were kind of curious. We were like, they're flying New Zealanders to LA to take part in competitive endurance tickling. I poked my nose in a little bit. The person running the competition, which was like all young male men tickling, got offended because they were like, you're gay. So you're evil. That was weird. And then they end up flying people from New York and lawyers to Auckland, New Zealand. It's like, of course, I'm like, they're forcing us to keep filming. So it's just like. And also the joy of being a journalist in New Zealand is like you get paid shit. So I had nothing to lose, really. It's not like. That's the joy when you're sort of a scrappy doc team or you're working on a story. If you don't have a lot of resources, there's not a lot to lose, really. Like, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? And so we pressed on. And I'm glad we did. Tickled is 10 years old this year, which is cool. I think it's on. I don't know where it is. It's on streaming. Google it. You'll find it. Hello. Sorry, what was that question? They want to know her email. Oh. Okay, look, this is a tease, okay? And you're going to hate me for this. I think we do that for Patreon. We need to survive this podcast. Like, it kind of needs to. Like, we're here. Rosabelle is here literally because of Patreon. Do it for Patreon! Yeah, so Patreon. We'll sort it out. You hear it? Yeah. Rosabelle, I saved you for another week. It's such a good email. It's horrific. It'll change the way you think about her. Other questions? Right there. Hi, me again. Your American Girl doll is named Summer, correct? Yeah, my American Girl doll is named Summer. Summer, yes. Did you pick her outfit tonight? Or. She travels with me everywhere. But does she wear the same outfit, or do you change it? Same outfit. Yeah, I only have the one outfit. You don't change your outfit? Yeah, I don't have a change of outfits. Even my Build-A-Bears have pajamas. I'll re. Look, I don't have the money involved to buy all the fits for Summer. Yeah, I'll think about getting some new fits. She's happy, though. She needs her same. Can you get shoes at some point? Yeah, I lost the shoes. I think your kid flushed them down the toilet. He did. Last time, yeah. Can you get a Patreon? Do you get her a wardrobe? That's a good idea. That's a good idea. How about this? You buy her a wardrobe, you get the email. There you go. Yeah, I like this. At the back. Yell it out. The question was, how is AI going to play into solving cases, helping or hindering or whatever? So, it's definitely a factor, and it's something we're currently exploring in terms of research and funding. The trouble is that AI needs to learn large. Large. Language models need to learn from what's on the internet. A lot of this stuff is not on the internet. Even if you have a case, and we have some student interns who are working with the Office of Attorney General's Cold Case Unit, they have to scan everything. Like, it's just papers in a box. And so you can't even get them into a computer, so to speak, let alone have AI look at them. I suspect that business is going to oversell what AI can do, but there'll be focused questions, especially regarding management of information, that is essential. And one of the slides I like to show my classes is a one case. It's called the Highway of Tears in British Columbia. And it's a room filled with boxes on multiple shelves. So, that is the case file for one investigation. So, this stuff is huge. AI can maybe help focus, and that will be valuable, but right now, it's still some ways away from actually being able to solve a case. We've got time for one final question. Rob and I, after the show, will come out by the T-shirts in 15 minutes. Let us, like, have a wee and debrief and that kind of thing. Thank you for coming and making us feel so welcome. My God, it's legitimately amazing. And mainly, I'm just so grateful that you're so kind to our guests and to Rosabelle. And I was so worried you were going to boo Rosabelle when she came out, but you were so happy. No, it's not Hayden. That wouldn't happen. Final question. Rob? No, you put--you choose. I'm really bad at choosing. Whoever's loudest out of you three. What subject are you most excited to cover or you haven't? I want to do something with guns in America because it's deranged, but also everything's been done already, and I'm just trying to find a fresh way in. There was an event I missed a couple of weeks ago in California, which is like a bunch of sort of gun enthusiasts with, like, the biggest guns. So, like, cannons and giant things. They all just meet in the desert and just fire things, like, into the-- I don't know, just into nothingness. And that seemed like a really interesting place because these were just people that loved the explosions of it all. But I didn't blame answer. I didn't go, "Maybe next year." But guns, is it? I'm trying to find a way into guns because that is about this country. You have some issues. And there's one very enthusiastic person here. Yes, yell it out. Oh, okay. So, have I solved the ghost in my apartment? Sometimes on this--. Sometimes on this podcast, I just talk shit, and I do wake up with theory, and there's no ghost. Ghosts aren't real. What the fuck? Like, clearly they're not real. I'm sorry, but it's like, it's very funny to me that I could just--. And the more I talked about it, and everyone was like, "Oh, my God, it's an old man that comes in." And I'm like, "Yeah, he's an old man. I got a witch in." And she said it was an old man, and it's like, "Clearly, no. No." But great question, and I'm sorry for talking shit on the show. Thank you for coming. So much. And thanks to all my wonderful guests. Austin, you're beautiful. Thank you so much. Endless summer escapes start here. Travel the worlds of Netflix IRL. Inspired by fan favorites like Stranger Things. And the best part? You get to see your favorite movies. You get to see your favorite shows. And you get to see your favorite shows. Inspired by fan favorites like Stranger Things and Squid Game. Brave the upside down. Face off with the front man. Play leveled up arcade games. Shop exclusive merch. And enjoy themed food and drinks. Beat the heat. Play, eat, and shop on repeat at Netflix House at Galleria Dallas. Bring your crew and save. Get your tickets today at netflix.com/house. Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill up. 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