Kit Palencar
Okay

George Ward
dear mister, I’m too big to answer my DMs this will be the last message I ever send your ass. It’s been six minutes. He’s

still a reply.

I don’t deserve it. I know you’ve got my last two solutions. I drew the angles on a perfect

Brett Zingler
Do you guys want to hear about my dream? I had a dream about the secret, like a month ago. You guys want to hear about this? Or no? Are you scared? A little bit?

George Ward
Just a little. Okay,

Brett Zingler
so you’re gonna hear about it anyway. Okay, so check this out. So I am dead. Okay, so there’s a dream that I had. And I’m out in Golden Gate Park, digging in the music concourse? About three or 4am. So it’s pitch black out there. And I’m digging. And I assume I have a permit, although this was me being asleep. So maybe they give like sleep permits from the dream police or something like that. But so I’m out there, I’m out there. Digging and this tiny little light shows up off in the distance and it starts getting bigger and brighter and bigger and brighter until suddenly, it is a group of people next to me. And who does it turn out to be? None other than the Fruit of the Loom guys?

Kit Palencar
The big hole in

Brett Zingler
the grave skies, and they start screaming at me. And so you know, long story short, I wake up in the hospital the next day. No, that didn’t that part didn’t happen. Then the long story short is I screamed and ran and woke up, like out of breath all freaked out. So can you guys interpret that for me?

Kit Palencar
Buy new underwear.

George Ward
I think it’s your subconscious telling you that you’re obsessed with bananas and grapes. Or whatever reason.

Brett Zingler
That could be although I ran don’t forget the running part. What about what about getting a permit? To dig in your sleep? Where do you? Where do you register for that? Who can issue that

George Ward
the psychiatric ward that’s where you should go,

Kit Palencar
Freddie? Pretty good

Brett Zingler
with that the Fruit of the Loom segment has ended. Thank you very much, guys appreciate it.

George Ward
I’m gonna put that in the podcast.

Brett Zingler
There’s my there’s my that was my dream. My dreams are

Kit Palencar
a lot more exciting than mine. I had a dream about roasting a chicken. And I’ve never done that before in my life. And that was the dream. That was it.

Brett Zingler
Wait, you’ve never roasted a chicken before? No,

Kit Palencar
never.

Brett Zingler
Never a whole chicken? Or you’ve never dreamed about it?

Kit Palencar
Both I’ve never done either.

Brett Zingler
Wow, that’s amazing. Dude, you gotta roasted chicken.

George Ward
What do you need in your house? Like just Spaghettios must be

Kit Palencar
happy no man I cook the most delicious food well she’s a vegetarian. So I made this like rice and bean and vegetable kind of Mexican enchilada filling and you know put some spices in and stuff and then you know put them in tortilla shells and fresh tomato and lettuce and sour cream and you know made these like vegetarian burrito flakes. Sauteed some potatoes to put those in there. So I cook

Brett Zingler
you’re one of those healthy dudes. Yeah.

Kit Palencar
Her I love cooking.

Brett Zingler
They have nice skin.

Kit Palencar
The other day.

George Ward
124 pounds.

Brett Zingler
Their jeans fit.

George Ward
Me I eat meat with ice cream. Ice cream on my beat.

Kit Palencar
Yo fuck a one steak sauce man. Nice Cream.

Brett Zingler
Rocky Road. Just cut out the middleman. Yeah, exactly. Thermal tracks more

Kit Palencar
like steak tracks I’m gonna get my cup of coffee real quick. It’s like a three second walk. I’ll be right back.

Brett Zingler
Yeah, please do you’re gonna need it for this. I got ya 4am today. Wi Fi. I

George Ward
mean, I didn’t. Why would you do that?

Brett Zingler
Terrible. Okay, yeah, it was terrible. I just I woke up so wide awake and and just you know, usually you get up at four from anxiety or something and you’re like, Oh, I’m tired of going back to bed. I got up at four. I was ready to go. And it’s four o’clock now. And I’m kind of feeling that feeling the pain.

George Ward
I’m used to that though. Like, I wake up at four o’clock every single morning. I’m at work at five in the morning, and I don’t get off until six or seven. Every single day

Brett Zingler
sounds hideous.

Kit Palencar
Yeah, it takes about six or seven minutes to get off is

George Ward
when kids like I woke up really early to afternoon, went to Starbucks.

Kit Palencar
That’s what I do. Every time I go to work, I wake up at one or two and then it’s like, I gotta be at work at three and it’s like, I’ve worked all night.

George Ward
I’ve got my free mocha frappuccino. It’s okay.

Brett Zingler
When you ate when you guys get to my age, you will not be able to do that anymore. Trust me. And speaking of my age, there was an awesome episode from EU that had a ton of stuff from when I grew up in it.

George Ward
Yeah. 80 stuff. So I guess we’re in we’re in the podcast. I tried to figure out I’ll figure out I really I really liked that episode. It was good. I liked it for more than just because Palenque car was in it though, because it had a lot of people that like I grew up on like Lea Thompson. She was hot then she’s hot. Now

Brett Zingler
she doesn’t hold any bars. In terms of interviews. I liked it. I said she’s got to, she’s sassy.

Kit Palencar
You know, I had to watch it or I had to go look up. Like oh, Back to the Future and then compare it to what the interviewer had. And I was shocked at kinda like they got it a little bit right but she looks away hotter than like, you know what she looked like in the movies when she was old. It was really crazy to see that.

George Ward
These like these interviews that people are since the since the shutdown and everything Josh gates obviously like nobody who does TV can go anywhere. So they’re doing all these phone interviews, these zoom interviews, and they’re really good. Like they’re more interesting than I thought they would be telling the whole interview about the Goonies. It was great.

Brett Zingler
I thought it was awesome. What? Who’s the Bill and Ted guy? Alex winter. Yeah, he goes, he said something. He said the next episode is going to be Dickensian. I’m like it. It’s really there’s going to be like a Dickens theme in this. That’s interesting, but I’m looking forward to that.

George Ward
Did you know that kid’s dad has some art and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey?

Kit Palencar
You know, I was gonna say that. And I thought that was really interesting. And I don’t know if you guys know the story, but they they use it without permission. I think it was a painting of what a Minotaur and it was a scene where the Grim Reaper is like doing some stuff. I think I haven’t seen that movie in such a long time. If you someone else I’ll take over

George Ward
awesome. So there’s a seance scene and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, right? It’s where Bill’s stepmom who went to high school with them. They’re trying to talk to the dead, right? Well, their target is just insanely like famous people anyway, Bill and Ted are dead. So their spirits come in they haunt the seance. And she opens this book, I think it’s called the Book of evil or the book of witchcraft or something, and just opens it flat on the table and there’s a jonji Palenque are painting. So because I’m the stupid secret nerd, I like went and looked and it looks like jjp sold that painting to a publisher for Stephen King. And it was in a book, I think it was nightmares and dreamscapes. But I could be different and they just sort of reskin that book for the for the movie. Awesome. Yeah. So well, you know, we’re little time.

Brett Zingler
So do they owe us money for using that?

George Ward
I don’t know if you’re aware, but just because we like Alan Carr’s money

Brett Zingler
did you like my use of wheat? Okay, quick quiz for you guys. It’s not even really a quiz. Just a question. Better rank rank these Keanu Reeves movies. Okay. Bill and Ted’s the matrix. Point Break. Point. One.

Kit Palencar
Oh, man.

Brett Zingler
That’s hard.

Kit Palencar
Not even speed. Speed isn’t even at this

Brett Zingler
speed. There was too much bus driving in that there was public public transportation movies. I’m gonna tell you, I don’t know a bus that goes fast. Anyway. No, those are your choices.

Kit Palencar
I’d say matrix first. You have the Bill and Ted’s And then point break. Hmm,

George Ward
I don’t know. I’m all about some point break quick break was pretty good. Yeah. Then then the matrix probably and then Bill and said,

Brett Zingler
I’m virtual tie for point break. And matrix matrix is pretty much one of my all time favorite movies though. And then Bill and Ted’s third note No. No offense to our friend who was getting interviewed though. What did you say his name was? Alex? Alex. winter, winter. Yeah. Good movie. Yeah.

George Ward
There was a lot of throwbacks in that show that were really really good though.

Brett Zingler
All those games, you have no idea, although, like, you guys are thinking, Wow, that’s fascinating history. And I’m going like I’m still living in that world. I never moved past the 80s. Right. So I have a bunch of those games. Still those handhelds like Simon and stuff, the little football game, the orange like rectangular thing,

Kit Palencar
it’s you can sell on there. I actually own one of those is the first computer I ever owned, and I got it from I think the middle school my brother was going to cool. It’s an old Mac classic. And, you know, it was when you had to boot Windows are not windows. Oh god, I’m gonna get sued by Apple for that. You had to boot system seven on a floppy disk. And then you had to take it out. And then you could put in like Microsoft Word or asteroids or, or something. It was such a cool computer had like 512 kilobytes of memory or something like that. Cool. Super old school, old stuff.

Brett Zingler
You could you could basically like, bring up a spreadsheet in it. That’s about all it did pretty much all day. You might be able to edit may not crash may or may not crash. That’s cool. So I’ve got

George Ward
my Rachel one day came home from work and brought home and Atari computer. Like back when Atari video games were awesome. Like a new. They also made computers and I forget which computer it was. But I still have it. And I spent a week getting that computer online. And actually got it to connect to the internet. It took like a week. No. Yeah, really. Old software’s awesome.

Brett Zingler
Did you send a fax?

George Ward
No, I didn’t. I got it online. And it couldn’t do anything. Like all it could do be connected. Browse website, you couldn’t do anything. I could ping another IP address. And that’s it. It’s like

Brett Zingler
I’m spent Oh my goodness.

George Ward
I took it all apart. I put it on a shelf and it’s still on so that anybody wants to get online at like 12.2 kbps or whatever. I can hook you up. Thank you. So anyway, so the new episode was preceded by the Boston episode, which they recut and they added some stuff. It seemed like a lot of the points that were made in the podcast episodes sort of carried over into that.

Brett Zingler
Some additional scenes.

George Ward
Yeah, they’re there. It’s weird to me, right? Like the Boston episodes come out. And JJ jjp said that the Boston fun was authentic. Joellen trilling said the Boston fun was authentic. Yeah, Sandy. If she knows anything, said the Boston fine was authentic. But people still sort of doubt that which is is super weird to me. So since this is as close as we’re gonna get, this is closest wherever we’re gonna get to in a row. This is this this moment right now is the closest we’re ever gonna get to having like, someone who can definitively say that this is not fake. Kit. I’m sure your dad has talked about Boston. Has he ever said that? It was fake?

Kit Palencar
I don’t think so. I anything he talks about is definitely not fake. i Everything is intentional. What he did, and sometimes it’s like, intentionally misleading. Like, there’s some guy.

George Ward
I mean, the I mean, the find in general, like, he seems like the kind of person where if EU came up and said, We found this in a ballpark. And he knew it wasn’t in a ballpark. He would call you would call bullshit. Right? Has he ever has there any been any kind of hint with him that that cast that they pulled it out of the ground wasn’t authentic?

Kit Palencar
No, I don’t think so. At all. No, I think that you’ll notice when you when you ask him certain questions, or you know if you if you’re onto something and you ask him a question, or he’s either quiet about it, or he denies it, and then his face gets really red. Yeah, yeah, it was really funny. Like watching that episode about I forgot what they said but he you know, he’s like, no, no, no, no. So read

Brett Zingler
What when his face turns red? Does it mean that he’s lying? Or does it mean? He’s embarrassed? Or what

George Ward
is it? That means that you’ve pissed him off? Okay? And you don’t want to see him pistol, okay?

Kit Palencar
It’s either pissed off, or we’ll see when he’s like, pissed off at me, his face doesn’t get really red, because he’s getting it all out. You know, he’s vocalizing it. So it’s there’s nothing building up. I think that when you’re on a something you’re on the one of this is secrets that I think is. When you’re on to something, yeah, like, oh, shit, you know, like, they’re finding me out and I got to see as hard as a rock. And not, you know, say anything, not hers or rock like that. You know, I mean, like, you got to stay quiet. And you have to write and you have to back up, like, you know, right. We said years ago about, you know, he doesn’t tell my mom anything, he doesn’t tell me anything. Right. It’s true. It’s true. 100%. And I think when when you’re close to something he wants so badly, to tell you that you’re onto something. And he wants so badly to, to, you know, help people out. But he can’t because he’s honoring Byron, and, you know, he made this agreement. And it’s like, not a blood oath, but it’s pretty fucking close. And so he’s just trying to be as respectful as possible. And he doesn’t, you know, it’s also really fun, I think to see how many people are looking for this. And if you were to give it all away, what’s the fun in that?

George Ward
Yeah.

Brett Zingler
That’s totally, totally. And I didn’t mean, by the way, I didn’t mean lying. I mean, he’s a he’s a he’s a hard read. Let’s just put it that. Absolutely. Yeah. And I can’t tell whether he’s speaking out of the side of his mouth sometimes. Or he’s like, confirming something. I know. We’re all in the same boat. And it sounds like Kitt. You are, you know, you’re also in the same boat. He does a lot of that. Yeah.

George Ward
It’s It’s weird how many people don’t understand all of that, like jjp said, he’s not going to tell you anything. He’s never like he’s given away hints, but never doesn’t seem to be really anything direct and super helpful, and always tends to be stuff that we already kind of knew, you know, he said, he’s not going to help you. He never really gives you any hints. He often these, he seems to often be misleading. And he asks very explicitly for people to leave him alone. And yet people still message him. Like the amount of messages that you get to the ballot car.

Kit Palencar
And you see him too, right. Yeah, I

George Ward
see him too. It’s crazy. You get like three

or four a day, if not worse.

What’s weird to me is like, they’ll send a message. And it’ll be like, I know, you said not to message you. But I want to talk about but I’m doing it anyway. I want to talk to you about Jacksonville, Florida is my garbage, right? And then kids response is always so kind, like, I don’t know. I’m

Kit Palencar
surprised. It’s Starbucks. All right, like my patience for people has gone up significantly since I started, I was always a patient person. But Starbucks has really helped me out with just like, Yeah, okay, you know, we’ll we’ll work through that. Well, you know, here’s this, how about this, you know,

George Ward
it’s always it’s always like, Hi, this is kid dad doesn’t read these or I can’t help you with this secret. I can’t tell you anything. He’s not going to tell you anything. I can’t forward your message along. And it’s always like, cool kid. I got it. But here’s my

Kit Palencar
and then they sent me a PDF or something. I’m like, I’ll look at it. Okay. And then it’s like, you know, my secrets now, and I’m like, I It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that. I just don’t have any interest in being like, hey, look, what Jonathan, you know, has to say about this. I don’t really care.

George Ward
Dude, that’s a real problem, though. Like we get we people threaten to sue us over that. Yeah, we like lawsuit threats. It’s not like

Brett Zingler
yeah, no ever threatens to sue me. And I kind of like that. And it’s because I’m not important enough.

Kit Palencar
It’s your so important. You’re like Josh gates. People can’t reach

Brett Zingler
you. I’m basically untouchable. That’s yeah, yes. You have to go through a mountain of men to get to me

George Ward
to get to Brett you got to go. I am the mountain of a man so

Brett Zingler
to speak. No bounce is high enough except for the one I’m on. Okay, so let’s see here. Okay, so by the way, okay, so we got through all of the awesome ad stuff totally into that I love you know, that’s all the music I listened to. And all the stuff I do is all based on the ad so that was like perfect primer for me. So Oh, I do have a question. So the can we get to the interview part? Have we started the interview part? Okay, so a couple of things I have questions about does is wearing a mask and a costume. Something that jjp would do just for fun? Or would he do that to lead us down some path? Or what was the origin of that?

George Ward
It’s odd that you have to ask this question and I know why. Because someone on Facebook thanks, John Palancar wearing the Ahmed das mask or whatever was, right. Yes. Oh my god.

Kit Palencar
I think that’s, it’s, it’s just for fun. He’s a really zany character, especially I feel like when he knows he’s gonna be on TV, or he’s wacky in a different sense. And yeah, it’s like our Christmas photo one year was we all dressed up as pirates. He’s got all sorts of costumes and cloaks. And you he bought some, like, masks recently, like not recently in the last couple of years. And I think those are gonna be making an appearance and sometimes at work. But I think it was just for fun. Weekend, just the mysterious kind of figure.

Brett Zingler
Yes. So we can put that to rest. We don’t have to have any more comments about that the costume was

Kit Palencar
right. She’ll read into the mask like is ties into the secret good.

George Ward
He’s just, he’s just used to wearing his mask right now, which you all should as well, right?

Brett Zingler
Yes, exactly. And then another seemingly popular subject is the trash on the floor, the placement, the placement and type of trash. That may not be trash, somebody called a trash, right, but it might be just how his studio is aware of

George Ward
what it is he was trying to tell you exactly where the Houston Cask is. See, if you line up all of the paintings that were back with respective and then you take your your protractor, you need them wrote,

Brett Zingler
mute, this guy can’t. He’s done this as well. Okay.

Kit Palencar
So if you zoom in on one of those pieces of paper, and then hit the Enhance button on your keyboard, because everybody’s doing it has an enhanced button. It’ll reveal the exact coordinates to it. No. Studio is it’s a studio. My studio looks the same. There’s there’s clippings of paper, there’s old checks, there’s, you know, tear offs from a sketchbook. I’ve worked over there a couple of times, for the most recent time was I had to build a frame for a painting and I was over there, and I couldn’t work in it. There was so much shit everywhere. Not to say that he’s a messy person. He’s not at all. But it’s a studio. It’s dirty. If you go over there barefoot, your feet are gonna be black on the bottom. But I had to sweep up stuff and it was all just like, you know, foam from building crates, or, or saw dust. You know, bits of paper. And yeah, thank me for cleaning up the studio a little bit. But it’s interesting to see it gets used. That’s just a good thing. I noticed seeing that stuff on the floor. It’s fine.

George Ward
Yeah, and artist studio is like a artist version of a man cave or like a woodshop or whatever. You do your work down there and you don’t care about cleaning up later.

Kit Palencar
Right? Because it’s not like nobody goes into that studio. Yeah, just your space. Right? You know, sometimes if I have to, I’m like, Hey, Dad, can I have your studio kid? He’s like, Ah, why? You know, oh, I need a fucking sanding block, you know? And he’s like, okay, you know, just don’t don’t touch anything. So it’s I don’t know, it’s space.

George Ward
I like knowing that John Palin cars studio is locked, even when he is at home, and no one else is nice.

Brett Zingler
It’s locked, and he’s lying when he go. And when he goes in there, he has to wear that costume with that man. Really? Yes.

George Ward
This exact thing is going to be the bane of his existence, though. Because he’s involved in this hunt. He’s not going to be able to say anything in the future that people aren’t going to think like people are going to take every single little thing he does

Brett Zingler
he’s going to do more. Yes gonna do it more just to get us we can’t let him know that we think this

Kit Palencar
I agree. I think that he’s going to start you know doing some some more stuff that might be now that he knows you know, that this says attention. Not that he’s he’s doing it to get more exposure, but I think he likes to hide stuff. He’s always hidden stuff in paintings and in work, whether it has to do with the secret or not. And I think that the newer stuff, or maybe those stuff since the secret that was news to me, totally news to me that, you know, I had every doubt that, you know, he told me he was done with that, you know, that was part of his life. He doesn’t really know articularly think those are good paintings that he did for the secret from that he’s moved on. I thought he was totally done with him to hear that, you know, there’s still some stuff you know in there is in the newer stuff that applies to it. That was news to me.

George Ward
Yeah, but how far does that go? Right? Like we’ve seen that painting. Oh god, I had the name of that painting. It was in spectrum it won an award music and Revit was amusing reverie. Yeah, was the name of that painting. We’ve he showed that painting and said there was something about the secret and it but the it he pointed out that it obviously has a cask in it. Right? It was painted shortly after Byron’s death. Does it go any further than that? Does it have to like, I’m sure he’s not hiding maps of these casks, cities and Aragon? You know what I’m saying? Like, it doesn’t have to go further than I was thinking about my friend when I made this painting. So I put a little thing in it, you know, in honor of him.

Kit Palencar
Yeah, I think that the Eragon painting that he had, you know, displayed, I think that was just like another like, Hey, this is also what else I’ve done. Or this is what you might know me from is this, you know, huge book that I forgot how old Christopher Paoli and he was when he wrote that book place like the teen or something like that. Incredible following behind that book. I think that was another turning point in his career. And I remember when my my dad did that amusing reverie painting. And it was strange to me because it didn’t get shipped out anywhere usually, like, you know, you’d, you’d like contract me for a pose or something, he would do photograph sketches. And then you know, you finish it in a couple of days, and then send it off and, you know, get scanned and printed on a book cover or something. But that didn’t happen with this, this painting. And I was like, Why? Why did he do this painting. And it was hanging up at the top of the stairs of the little landing on the second floor of my parents house. And I don’t think it’s there anymore. I haven’t seen in a while. But I always was like, What’s this open box thing? You know, I know kind of what that’s going for. And I was just like, this doesn’t mean anything.

George Ward
It wasn’t even to the show. That was one of the elements we have to know that he hasn’t needed and take it to the show.

Kit Palencar
Right? I can’t believe that, you know, maybe that was just one of his is more personal fine art works. Yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that he does that you there’s no photographs of, or you know, it’s still in progress. And they’re beautiful paintings. And I don’t know if he just has to finish them or they’re not ready yet. Or he had a change of heart when he was doing them. But that was one of those paintings where it’s like, maybe he was thinking about something, you know, we need to add to it to get it out.

George Ward
It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. I guess why it’s won awards. It’s a beautiful painting.

Kit Palencar
I’ll be sure to forward that to. Ill thank you very much for that.

George Ward
So let’s let’s talk about process a little bit. Because people have always, people have looked at these paintings really, really hard. And they see things inside of these paintings, which could be a result of the process of making a painting. Could you sort of run us through the process that your dad would use? Or that you that really any artist would use to create a work like is in the secret? I mean, when when you when you start obviously you would make a sketch? Is that the first step just a sketch? Yeah, I

Kit Palencar
think that sketches I wish I, I could have seen really how much work went into these paintings. But we are only left with the final product, but I’m sure there were tons of sketches and different compositions and you know, things that you know, look too fussy or too busy or too simple or too complex. I think that at least the sketching stage, you work through a lot of that. And, you know, you’ll do maybe five sketches for one painting, and then you you pick out the two best sketches, and then you do two more sketches of those two sketches, and then you get down to one and then you do a sick ass drawing of that one sketch and then you use that for reference for the first sketch that you might project on to a surface or a substrate or you might hit you know, free draw Got your hand draw onto the, whatever the support is that you’re working on. And then you just go from there. I don’t want to overload process stuff right now. But no, no. And I would say that’s the first step is sketches.

George Ward
So what does what does your dad do or normally do does he project on to say he paints on board, right, he doesn’t paint on canvas.

Kit Palencar
He paints on a number of things. And he gave me a piece of, I have it sitting behind me. I don’t know if they even make it anymore. It’s like a Strathmore illustration board. But he used to paint and I don’t think he does anymore. But you know, like foam core, like foam board. It’s like quarter inch thick. It’s like got ply on both sides, he would get that specially mounted with like a kind of a, an absorbance. Like rag board that was like attached to the foam core. And it kind of handled like watercolor paper, but it also kind of took the abuse that like some panel can take. So like layering, and using wet washes was never an issue. But he’s definitely done paintings on. Like, plywood, like a certain kind of plywood, whether it’s a birch, he likes maple. Like the the painting stasis, I think was done on three quarter inch birch plywood. And the painting is like, you know, 20 pounds or something like that without the frame. So I think it determines or cost is an issue of what you paint on how accessible it is, is another thing. And I think the overall mood or feeling of the piece is important for you know what you start out as? I just want to know how badly these were done. What was good. You know, what was going through your head? How did you hide stuff? I don’t even care where they are. I don’t care where they were buried. I just want to know what you were thinking and you know, how intelligent do you have to be to subtly but obviously, hide some stuff in there. Like there’s some stuff in these paintings. That staring us right in the face. And it’s so obvious, but we just overthink it to the point where it’s like, it’s not a thing anymore.

George Ward
Yeah. I mean, that baseball, that that home plate in Boston, that was genius. Who was genius, the way you hit that? And how anybody could think to hide that like that? I have no idea. But it was genius.

Kit Palencar
Yeah, it’s it’s the little things like that, you know, I was always told less is more by him when I when I would make less this week.

George Ward
Yeah, there’s two, there’s, there’s two things if I could ever get that man on a podcast that I would love to ask him about. Number one, he told some stories about Byron that were just hilarious. And you can tell that, that he knows that he you could tell he cared about him, you could tell he was a friend. And I would love to just hear those stories. But number two, I would love for him to like you were saying before it gets to explain some of the paintings that are solved, like explain his thought process behind making the Chicago painting, which it seems like he’s proud of that painting by itself, you know, apart from this project, but then I guess like Brett said it would it would ruin some of the others. So it’s not a question you could ask him.

Kit Palencar
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think that a magician never reveals the secrets, even if someone else has figured it out. Yeah. You know, we all know how card tricks work. We all know, sleight of hand, but what’s the fun and then go into a magic show. And knowing how he’s doing all these tricks, you’re not going to be amazed you’re not going to be wild, you’re not going to be filled with a sense of mystery or, or treasure finding or this, you know, this kind of fire inside of you. That’s like the thrill of the hunt. And this excitement, you’re not going to feel that if you know how things work and I think that’s really important to the rest of them. And I don’t think he’ll he’ll talk at all until you know, the day he fucking croaks unless all 12 are found. Then he might say you know, you know this was that this was the Boston Pops with the bird and popping the bubble whatever. I think that would still always be mute about that. See, it

George Ward
all makes no sense.

Brett Zingler
I’m finding some pups Yeah, well, I mean, I would never figure figure that out. But yeah, I know. I’m the opposite. See, I need I enjoy a magic show more when I know what how they’re doing it.

George Ward
You and half a Facebook apparently. Yes. So Judging from his job Give me some heads. Give me Give me hints. Just kidding. I think the one main point that I wanted to get to with the process thing, though, was a lot of people look at the details of these paintings, they zoom in, and they see what is essentially texture. And they think that that’s a clue like this little piece of texture is or the outline of a park, or whatever. So does your dad use anything like Jesso, or any kind of prep for his paintings, anything that he paints on, that’s not just smooth board, you see what I’m saying?

Kit Palencar
Yeah, just so you, I feel like it’s on panel or something. This goes for any artists you put down Jesso first, it acts as a support for the paint to adhere to, and you don’t want it to smooth, because then the paint won’t stick to it. And if you put like another layer down, it will just rub right off. Like I’ve done panels before with like, 10 coats of Jesso, where I wet sanded in between everyone, and I was so proud of it. And it was as smooth as glass and then I painted on it. So everything just rubbed right off on the next layer. And I was like, ah shit. But in terms of textural effects, I don’t want to talk about every little thing he does, or certain techniques, but what I can say is, you know, using things like a toothbrush, or splattering, or you know, if you take a you know, I can talk about one technique that I actually figured out that my dad does in some paintings is put down a a wash of color, in this case, it was acrylic, I put it down on a panel. And then I took a spray bottle with distilled water, and I spritzed the painting, not directly, I kind of sprayed it from above and let it float down onto it. And then I took a very soft bristle brush like a Hake brush. They’re very, they’re known for being very soft and holding a lot of liquid. And I took that brush and I just tapped it. And it picked up where the little droplets of water were. And it created this really super cool, like speckled effect that happened so quickly. And so easily. I was like, Man, if I did three layers of this down on one thing, it would look totally super cool. And interesting. But, you know, I can tell you that there are things like, if you look at the ceiling of your home, right now, if you look up, there’s probably some sort of texture on it. So that’s done with like, mud, or whatever they call it. They put that on the ceiling. And then they take like a stamper with and they put a plastic bag around it. And they just push it up into the ceiling. And you get that that texture. So stuff like that might have been used to create certain textures with, you know, matte medium, or gloss polymer, or any sort of acrylic medium. That is clear.

George Ward
And by the way, when it comes to making these paintings, we don’t necessarily know if we’re asking you for information we shouldn’t be. So if we are just avoid it.

Kit Palencar
Okay, I think this stuff is like if it’s a technical secrets, but a lot of people should know about this stuff. And I think it’s how he does it. You know, it’s not what he does. It’s how he does it. That’s yeah, it’s still a mystery to me.

George Ward
Yeah, okay, good. All right. So. So there we go. A lot of some of some of the texture that we see in these paintings could just be technique, it could be the way he just the way he does the paintings. It’s not necessarily a clue, basically as what we’re getting into. But we did learn something weird, something that sort of took me by surprise and, and blew my mind a little bit. These paint paintings don’t all have dig indicators, which is crazy to me. Like we’ve we’ve we’ve spent 40 years now, thinking that once you get to the end of the verse, you’re gonna see something that’s going to tell you where to dig. And we learned that’s just not the case.

Kit Palencar
I don’t know. I don’t think so. Right. Go ahead.

Brett Zingler
So let’s, I hate saying this phrase, but let’s unpack that momentarily. Okay, so what, what, what specifically did he say?

George Ward
Oh, God, I’d have to go get the script. Somebody uploaded.

Brett Zingler
I don’t have it in front of me. I thought you might know it. I put you on the spot. Kid. What did he say?

Kit Palencar
I don’t I don’t know.

Brett Zingler
He said he said something to the effect of so there’s a bit there. It leads me to believe there’s a visual marker right where the box is buried. That’s what he said. And jjp said That’s incorrect.

Kit Palencar
And that’s where he says Something about using different optics, right in different things to look at a painting.

Brett Zingler
He went on a little bit a little bit later to say that but basically the point, right, but the point was that, you know, Josh was asking, oh, cool. So there’s something in the, in the image that I can that I’ll spot. Now, the problem was is the way that he word phrased it exactly. So he said, quote unquote, right where the box is buried,

George Ward
I’ll read you the quote. So Josh asked. Now one of the big clues hidden in this painting, of course, is on our sleeve, we have home plate, and then you showed a picture of the home plate. Where we have the cast was actually buried, where the cast was actually buried is hidden on her sleeve that leads me to believe that in every single one of these paintings, there is a visual marker that is basically right where the box is buried. Would you confirm that? And jjp says you would be completely wrong, which I guess I can see your point, because you could see like the fence posts in Chicago, for instance, from where you were digging, but it wasn’t right where you were digging,

Brett Zingler
not technically, right. And so where is right, where does that mean? 50 feet away? Or does right? Where mean six inches away?

George Ward
Yeah, it wasn’t you weren’t digging at the fence posts, but you could see it is one of those. It’s one of those things where Palancar is is he just screwing with us? Or is he telling us the absolute truth? Right, but then you have stuff like New York, where there’s nothing obvious in that painting that you could dig next to? Well, you know, that you that you know of yet I guess that we know, yeah, yeah, right. In Boston, we didn’t know about home plate really, until so. Who knows?

Brett Zingler
Here’s my question about all that. He also says, or it’s also been claimed over and over, that he doesn’t know where they’re buried. So if he doesn’t know where they’re buried, how does he know there’s not a visual indicator nearby?

George Ward
I mean, that’s a good question.

Kit Palencar
It is a very, very good question. I think that he kind of maybe gave a little bit more of a hint when he started talking about how to look at the paintings. Like, for instance, God, I’m looking at the Houston one right now. And there might not be a visual indicator of where it’s buried. But it might be something else words literal, like the genie or let’s say the camel, maybe you, you know, the first takes you to a place and you look around and there’s like camel street or something?

George Ward
Didn’t you say you say or? Right? Didn’t you say Euston was your favorite painting?

Kit Palencar
It used to be I always thought Cleveland was my favorite one. Because I can vividly remember being a little kid and getting a little motion, I’m sorry. You know, he showed me the painting. And he was like, hey, look, here’s the Terminal Tower, you know, and here’s the outline of Ohio. And I just remember being a little kid and, and, you know, see him that shit. And that just got ingrained into my brain. And you know, I forgot about it for, you know, a decade, a decade and a half until, you know, all this stuff started. Yeah, until I got to Facebook. Yeah. I think Cleveland always be my, my, my top pick.

George Ward
Well, I don’t know how to follow that up. But I was gonna say the odd thing about Houston, is this the only one that uses perspective?

Kit Palencar
Will because it sends a verse to right.

George Ward
Yeah, perspective should not be lost. And it’s the only painting that uses perspectives leads me to believe that perspective has to be important. And that gems in a very weird place. And that painting, you know, it’s just haphazardly placed. Right next to a pillar.

Kit Palencar
I think that there’s all sorts of weird, like, there’s the one column that’s smooth. And then the other one is, you know, serrated. It’s got different it looks like a handle to something in there. There’s, there’s like one you know, thing of trim around the bottom of the frontmost pillar, and then there’s two on the the one farther back. I don’t know. I wish I did. But I think there’s the visual markers that were in the paintings, you know, like, Cleveland had the fountain or whatever. Chicago had the fence post. I think that as time went on, since we now know that these were painted and we’re finding them in order from like, being simple to more complex, I think that they started to get a little bit more cocky or maybe not cocky, but more confident and like, Hey, how can we say? Or how can we show where it’s buried? By using a different methodology? Like whether it’s trigonometry or you know, he said, geographical astronomical, topographical, mechanical. How else? Are they using wordplay? To give us a visual representation of what something is?

Brett Zingler
Every way you could think of and then some, yeah. Is the answer to that one. I mean, there’s,

George Ward
I mean, it’s that whole the Boston Pops. So we’re making fun of earlier that blew my mind, because we had never really looked at any of his paintings. That way. We had never looked at elements of his painting, trying to tell you, not a story, but give you you know,

Brett Zingler
well, doing the Rebus know, the Rebus the Milwaukee is kind of a shout out to that, you know. So, I have a question. Okay. So, we did not come to a conclusion on whether there really are visual indicators from the image nearby where the casks are.

George Ward
And I don’t think we’re gonna have to, and to say that, I think John could be telling the truth in saying that he doesn’t know where these are. But he can also be telling the truth and saying, like, I know, there’s no visual indicators. I mean, just because John knows what he put in these paintings. Doesn’t necessarily mean he knows where Byron buried because Exactly, exactly he can he can look at that fence post and say, Yeah, I put that there, that fence post is important. But he might not know why exact fence post is important. Exactly. So it’s, it’s like, it’s, it’s great to see, it’s great to have him give interviews, and it’s great to hear, you know, his thoughts on this. But it’s always important to take it with a little bit of a grain of salt, because we don’t know for a fact exactly what he knows. You know, we don’t know if he’s purposefully trying to mislead people. We don’t know if he, we just don’t know if he actually knows the answers.

Brett Zingler
There are people that never mince words. jjp is a master word mincer? Yes, that’s the way I I just can’t I can’t get a read on

George Ward
him. But he’s, I mean, he’s just so good at hiding hiding stuff. And it’s like, he’s hidden. He has hidden stuff in his paintings. While I guess since the secret, there’s no real. Like he had skulls in his paintings, right? He had he hides other things in his paintings. Yes, but I can’t I can’t see him. I can’t see him hiding secrets to the secret and a painting 20 years later, I just can’t see him doing it. I don’t know.

Brett Zingler
Did you try as

Kit Palencar
you might think he might do it as a tribute to the secret. But not like a like a hey, here’s a little helping him. I think that it’s maybe just a remembrance or an honoring of, of, you know, maybe what gave him the start to his entire career as an illustrator and a painter. Right? Right. Not that say that the secret was the start. But that was a pretty big fucking project. I think if I was like, 20 What 2524 Straight out of fucking college getting that kind of work. I would take it. Yeah, I think that that is a huge thing to happen in anybody’s career.

Brett Zingler
And here’s the other thing. Sorry to interrupt again. The other thing is that what if he, he I make some shout out or some illusion in his painting that he doesn’t realize is going to open up Pandora’s box and and like a cause somebody to solve it and then he’s going to be kicking himself. You know what I mean? Like I did you got like, for example, he’s What did he say? Count the trees Count. Count the pine trees and that thing, right? So I counted them. Just so you guys know, as I’m sure. So it looks to be seven tree tops. One looks like a branch though. But then there’s like 80 tree trunks and it’s impossible to count those so I don’t know. The hands. To me sort of looked like an allusion to San Francisco possibly or New York. There’s a circle in the middle. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s anything in there.

George Ward
Somebody said to the tree trunks look like they spell out fifth. I I don’t know. I mean, the another point that we’re completely missing here is is a lot of things are similar in his later paintings like, there’s, there’s a painting he did have a train for The Dark Tower series. I think it was a Dark Tower series. Yeah, the Stephen King book. And there’s a Rosen that looks exactly like the rose in San Francisco. And then he did a painting called Satan’s dark School, where the mountains look just like the mountains in the San Francisco painting. But those mountains look just like what is it a Da Vinci painting? This is another? So there are similarities between his secret paintings and some of his other paintings. But is that because of his style? Or is it because he’s trying to give some sort of homage? It’s like, once we start looking at paintings that aren’t secret paintings, we’re getting into a weird, slippery slope. You know, there’s no way for us to know what’s what I think

Kit Palencar
it gets really. It it’s easy to get to complicate something that doesn’t need to be complicated. Like what did he say about something being complex, but not complicated? Yes. Or something? Yeah, I think that that. That is one of the biggest hints that he could give us in the secret.

Brett Zingler
Totally, totally. I think you’re are you talking about? George the DaVinci? Virgin?

George Ward
Yes. And the rock the Virgin on the rocks?

Brett Zingler
Virgin and Robertson Martini? Rocks, something like that. Virgin in the rock or virgin? Virgin of the rocks? Yes.

George Ward
And it would know this.

Kit Palencar
Yeah. i Yeah, it’s it’s. It’s one of those.

George Ward
Yeah, I mean, I can’t We can’t figure out these 12 paintings. I don’t want to try to figure out to one hour.

Brett Zingler
Yes. But I and and I, but I’m going to agree with your conclusion. George, I think that you said earlier, which is like it’s on it’s kind of unreasonable to think that he’s been doing, you know, he’s been hiding super obscure clues and all of his paintings for 40 years now as a shout out to the secret. I mean, he, you know, he moved on at some point. And

George Ward
if you can find something that helps you, you know, more power to you. But like I said, I can’t figure out that’s well, I don’t want to figure out through under others. He did tell he did tell Josh gates though. He was closer than he’s ever been in Milwaukee, which was rather interesting. I don’t know. I don’t know if I would go on national TV and say that unless I knew it for a fact.

Brett Zingler
That was interesting. I felt like it. Like he was actually telling him you were close. For one of the first times I’ve heard him say something. I was actually convinced that the thing he was saying was actually not ingest or had some double entendre?

George Ward
Yeah. Yeah. I think he was just being honest.

Brett Zingler
You were close. Which is cool. Actually, it was a pretty pretty. I mean, I was convinced it was there anyway. But it’s a pretty nice piece of

George Ward
Well, I mean, I think it did something that he didn’t realize it was going to do, where it cemented a verse with a painting and a city and a park. Like it took to me anyway, that one little comment, took all of those arguments off the table. Now all of a sudden that verse is with that painting, and that goes to Milwaukee in that park.

Brett Zingler
Well, you know, what else it does is, it flies in the face of the concept that he doesn’t know where any of them are buried.

George Ward
Well, maybe. But it could also be he knows that that lion is important. He knows that he painted that lion. And since Josh Gates was close to that lion, he’s closer than he’s ever been before. Because he knows the things that he painted it in Charleston, aren’t, you know, like Josh gates wasn’t close to anything that he painted in Charleston. And Josh gates wasn’t close to anything that he painted in San Francisco. But he knows that he painted that line. You know, so Josh had to be on the right track. Yes. And the only way you can get to that line is with that painting. And that verse. It makes perfect sense with that painting in that verse.

Brett Zingler
I agree. I agree with that. But I just there’s still some contradictions going on here. But hey, it’s complex, but not complicated. Yeah, right. So I guess this is what we’re what we have to work with he sure with those words out like he had them scripted didn’t need the mathematical optical astronomical geographical tub like he was rapping topographical like like a Hamilton. We were watching Hamilton. It was amazing.

George Ward
Yeah. He was channeling his inner Blackalicious. Yeah, that’s a rapper for those who don’t know.

Brett Zingler
He. It was cool. It was clear to

George Ward
something. Yeah. Yeah, I just thought then it was a good interview. It was a really good interview, I think. But I think like, people are gonna take what they want from it, you know, like weird we got our opinions, other people have their opinions and other we say is going to change anybody else’s opinion. So, I don’t know, does

Brett Zingler
does each puzzle have one of these words associated with it?

George Ward
That that would be interesting. I mean, we can point out, we can point out a lot of stuff, right? Optics, New York obviously has some some optics decimal stuff going on Coldplay, there? For sure. Yeah. Charleston, Charleston, it seems like you have to manipulate the painting in some way view it at some sort of angle that could be mechanical. You know, everything in the world. It’s got historical and they’ve all got moons. So what did the moon nobody’s ever figured out what the moon’s mean? Mathematical, I’m lost. If there’s a mathematical puzzle, I’m done. I can’t, I can’t do it.

Kit Palencar
Well, maybe something simple, like, add up these these numbers and divide them by how many columns are are or some shit, like get a number? Who knows just have to be, I guess, open and willing to try anything and everything?

Brett Zingler
Pretty much pretty much there’s no method to the madness. So we’ve got to we’ve got to try everything. But yeah, that would be cool. Or you, you know, you just add up nine, eight and two and do something

Kit Palencar
with that. And then you get six five you know, yummy bird. And, you know, right,

Brett Zingler
here’s your prize. Congratulations. So but i thought i But didn’t you guys feel like I’m sorry if I interrupted something? Okay. Didn’t you guys feel like that came off, though really smoothly. And like he like almost like it was he’s reading it from a piece of paper. But I was watching him and he wasn’t reading anything.

George Ward
He could have been that could have been take 12 though. Like, we have no idea where it was on that cutting room floor. It’s magic. Yeah.

Kit Palencar
Well, when he talks about something that he knows and understands, he rattles that shit off so fast. Because it’s, it’s something that is true. A he’s not one of He’s not one to read off of a script, or type stuff up beforehand, and then read it. Not to say he’s unprepared. But you know, there are countless times I remember him rushing to get ready because he had to be at the airport. And he’s got to be at this gate, you know, this time, and I got to take him there. And now my schedule is fun, because I got to, you know, whatever. I don’t think preparedness is is something that is incredibly important to him.

George Ward
You’re always prepared when you know what you’re talking about. Right? Right.

Kit Palencar
Yes, that’s Yeah. Wonderful point.

Brett Zingler
He’s, he’s prepared, but he’s not scripted. Yeah, is what you’re what you’re getting at. And then this was I don’t think we talked about this yet. What about the order of the finds? That’s interesting, right? or interesting? That is really cool. And he thinks he thinks or he knows. Roanoke is next.

George Ward
While it was next in the order that he painted. I don’t know, if he went into the order of the difficulty. I don’t necessarily know if he painted them in order of difficulty. But like it was saying earlier, as you go through and create puzzles, you learn new tricks, and you try out new things. And it would follow that, you know, they’re learning more stuff. They’re putting more stuff in, and they’re gonna get harder as they go along. So it kind of does follow the next one would be the next hardest. And that would be Roanoke. Which means it’s supposed to be super easy. And we’re just dumb.

Brett Zingler
Or fourth, fourth, fourth easiest. Yeah. Right. For Yeah. For the easiest for easiest. But I guess, but it’s so look. Boston gets found with it. I guess. I don’t know, it depends on what you think about the proposed solve that we have. Part of me thinks that Boston got solved with a backhoe and a construction crew. How does that play into his order? I know Jason was down there and said, Yeah, hey, this is, you know, keep an eye out for this. And this is where I think it is. And this is why and that’s fine. But still, you know,

George Ward
I mean, we’ve got we got we got 1000s of people now that are looking for these things. You know, it’s not just the 20 dudes on queue for tea anymore, right? There’s 1000s of people out there looking for these things. And it took an excavator to find this one. And the one before that was on the opposite side of the planner than where it was supposed to be. So I don’t know. These are what we get ourselves

Brett Zingler
into. Ridiculous. Kit. Tell us. Tell us the answers.

George Ward
Yeah, Is all of them all? Okay,

Kit Palencar
let’s go ahead and start with Florida. It’s the GPS coordinates are. Let me

Brett Zingler
this is happening.

Kit Palencar
I wish I, you know, I don’t wish I knew

George Ward
no, no, it would take away it would take away the magic. Right? Yeah. So. So kit, we’ve had you on the podcast a couple of times. And we’ve always talked about your dad. And we’ve never talked about you. And I would love to if you’re willing.

Kit Palencar
Sure. I’m older too. I don’t really I mean, this is your podcast. I mean, you guys talk about the secret. And I try to separate myself from being biased towards, you know, my data, right? I don’t want to talk about me the whole time, you know, or anything like that? Well,

George Ward
there’s one thing that I’m curious about. The people that that worked on this book have all stayed very far away from it. jjp is the probably the closest to going public with anything trilling doesn’t ever mention it. Sean and Ted, Don’t ever mention it. Over it’s and Lloyd doesn’t ever mention it. But you, I mean, I know you didn’t work on the secret, but you sort of grew up with it. In a way you grew up with these paintings in your house. And you have gotten interested? And I’m kind of curious why you’re interested in the secret? Is it because your dad worked on you want to sort of know about his work and his process? Or is the the puzzle just do you just want to solve the puzzle,

Kit Palencar
I just want to know how to hide things in paintings that people don’t know were there, but you know that they’re there. I think that symbolism. And you know, certain subtleties in our work are like those. I always wanted to have those aha moments in my work where it’s like, you look at something you’re like, oh, that that’s new to me, I didn’t see that before. And that’s what keeps you thinking about a painting or an image or something that you dream about is like the those aha moments, and I’m trying to work on hiding stuff. And in my, my own artwork, whether it’s about religion, I’ve been getting into a lot and you know, having things meaning certain things that, you know, I interpret them as, and I picked a religion because I grew up Catholic. And I think it’s something that I know I have faith in but I’m questioning it all the time. So I try to put my own spin on it whether like i There’s a charcoal drawing behind me of it was a lesson for my drawing class at the University of Akron, it was a canvas drop cloth up on the wall. And it was a lesson about light and, and you know, what happens when light hits a form. And I did this drawing, and, you know, my students were packing up their stuff and leaving, because class was over, but I didn’t care I just kept drawn through because I was like, This is fucking awesome. I could do this all day. And I finished it in like, I don’t know, another hours. So I stayed after to finish it. And I called it the call to Turin, because it’s my take on the Shroud of Turin, which is the cloth that, you know, Jesus’s faces in printed on. But do I buy that? I don’t know. It could just be a cloth, you know, you have to look into things and you have to believe them. And, you know, there might not be a hidden face in there. There might be who knows, you know, I could have put something in there. You know, it might just be up to your interpretation of it.

George Ward
The faith is what makes religion important, right? I mean, without faith, it’s just a book. But with faith, it could mean anything. It that’s what makes it special.

Kit Palencar
Right. And so, I guess I think it’s all about interpretation. For me, I guess, and I don’t know, I can’t remember the original question that you asked. Were totally off topic now.

George Ward
Well, it was about Catholic school kid. Could you tell us about Catholicism? Yeah, you know,

Kit Palencar
confessional booth a couple of times. And, you know, it was a fun, fun time.

George Ward
Rachel’s Catholic and it’s a religion. I’ve never I’ve never understood like, I love religion. I’m not a religious person by any means, but I love religion. And Catholicism is it’s fascinating. It’s I don’t under Sure. I don’t understand any of it. But it’s fascinating. Yeah, anyway,

Kit Palencar
the question was what growing up in these? Well, not why look at these things? Or why do I find it?

George Ward
Yeah. Why do you hunt? What got you into it? Other than, you know, wanting to understand your dad’s work more.

Kit Palencar
I don’t know, because I can’t legally hunt for this stuff and go and dig it up. And I can’t pursue this. Because if I did, that means, you know, my dad told me something about this. And this is where it’s buried, not to confirm or deny that he knows where these things are. Because I don’t think he, he does, he might have some general area that he knows, but he doesn’t know exactly where I, I’m hunting for this for this stuff. And I’ve loved looking for it. Because it’s so it’s such a mystery. It’s like, I want to know how these things were done. I’ve always been a researcher, I’ve always been a learner, I wish I could still be in school, even though I’m done. And I have two degrees, I wish I could still be in school because I love to learn. My brother and I, when we were little, he’s four years older than me. So when I was I don’t know, eight or nine, and he was, you know, 12 1314, we would take apart VCRs boom boxes, we put him back together, we’d learn how stuff worked, we would dissect things. And I still do that, you know, I tinker with computers, I, I tinker with airsoft guns, I don’t really play with airsoft guns anymore, because I don’t know, I don’t have anywhere to go with them. But I still take them apart. And I still learn how they work. I put them back together. So I think it’s just these are are paintings that I want to know how they they work. And, you know, I, I sometimes lose track of time when I look at these and I get off on weird tangents where I have like 10 tabs open right now of like, you know, Camel cigarettes and RJ Reynolds company. And where are they located? You know, South Mountain State Park. Looking at that now it’s in fucking I don’t even know where this is by Charlotte, North Carolina is this where the Houston painting who I don’t know, I’m just looking at shit. And I think that’s maybe the goal of the secret is, you figure out one thing, and it takes you to some part of, of you the United States where there was an important thing in history that encouraged us you to research about what happened in that area, or why it was important. And I think that’s what my dad was talking about when he said you know, geographical, topographical, mechanical, historical, they’re these things that you are kind of getting tricked into learning about and researching. That’s about how we are a nation, how we are, you know, what kind of laws do we have? I’m thinking about like the Pythagoras theorem, you know, is that in any of these paintings? That’s a Galileo, you know, what’s maybe, maybe the Roanoke one is about Galileo looking up into the stars, or sit through this window with his telescope and seeing meteors and, and, you know, is Jupiter, you know, what did GALILEO Discover? That’s what I’m thinking about all these important figures through history that we are tricked into learning about because there’s this incentive of finding a gemstone and, and being remembered for solving the secret.

Brett Zingler
And that’s the beauty of this thing in general that you just laid out there. Right, is that this thing is not only timeless, but it’s got this mystique to it that draws you in and drives you crazy. You know, and I think I think that the the more people that get introduced to it, the bigger that this thing is growing. And I you know, I can see I can look, I don’t like it when people go on the Facebook page and say I 100% solve this, but I could see why they would I mean, I want 100% solve something to you know what I mean? And I get thrilled when I find something new in here. It’s like, if you find one little thing in this it’s historic, you are forever a hero like the you know, finding the the longitude and latitude. Right. That is Robert Fox, right? Phoenix found right John Hart He found that found that leg heater,

George Ward
no someone else did. But you found enough stuff in Montreal where you can?

Brett Zingler
Yeah, yeah, Citadel and things like that. But point being, I want to be there. I want to I

George Ward
don’t know, and cool. I don’t know if it’s that man, I think, you know, with the people who come out and are like, you know, I sold everything, give me Josh gates his phone number, I’m gonna be famous and I’m gonna be teamed on TV. It’s that right. But I think for everybody else, even some of the oh my god, I solved this. It’s undeniable. I think what’s driving them is what Kitt was saying. It’s knowing how these work, it’s the mystery. You know, you get so involved in this, you want to know how it works, you want to learn everything. And once you think you’ve figured it out, you get so excited that you have to tell everybody, and I think I think that trips people up sometimes because they don’t realize, you know, not everybody thinks the same way that they go on Facebook or like I saw this.

Brett Zingler
And And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that’s awesome that people do that. I’m just I’m just saying I can understand an iota of where they’re coming from, because this thing is so mesmerizing, and so enveloping, like, I’ve just learned about this, I think, George, you told me about it. And it was like five or six years ago, something like that. Maybe not even that long. I don’t go a day without thinking about it. And I and I dream about it. To my detriment. So kit right there

George Ward
with you. Yeah. And if we get just after after we take one trip, I get to take a break. And that’s not gonna happen until next year at it. Fucking hate it. All right. I mean, I think I think we got everything that we need for for the episode, we went an hour and 40 minutes, so it’ll probably cut down to like an hour. And then I’ve got that I’ve got either I can pair the stuff I did with Bradley, because today’s Bradley’s birthday. I don’t know if you knew that.

Kit Palencar
Yeah, I texted him, I think earlier today. I can

George Ward
either because I did like an evening with him where I just talked about him. Like we just talked about his experience with the secret and why he loves everything I can eat if we need extra time. Or if we need to fill time. I can either cut that in or I’ve got that episode I did with William stout that I could cut in. But this I think this should be enough unless there was something you guys wanted to hit on.

Brett Zingler
We were going to think were we going to think some people. Do you want to just add that later? Yeah, I’ll add that make some donors? Right.

George Ward
Did you hear about that kid?

Kit Palencar
Know what happened?

George Ward
So the Facebook or not the Facebook 12 treasures. The podcast costs about $70 a month to maintain

Kit Palencar
Holy shit. And it’s for that whoever’s if that’s it’s George other people. It’s Thanks, George.

George Ward
Well, it was me. But we met Rachel and I just bought a house. And we’re closing on it. Like next week. So I was talking to Rachel about how to save some money. And one of my ideas was throw Google ads on the website. So I made a post on Facebook. And I was like, Hey, I’m thinking about throwing Google ads on 12 treasures because it costs x amount of money to run. It was like $1,400 a year. And then somebody said, start up a GoFundMe and we’ll donate. And we raised $1,500 In two hours. Holy shit. Yeah. One person donated $1,100

Kit Palencar
Holy fuck.

Brett Zingler
Somebody just don’t fuck out of us. I mean, yeah, so cool.

George Ward
I went out and I bought a bunch of I printed out a bunch of like, greeting cards, like, podcasts greeting cards. Yes, I got strippers. 1400 I printed out greeting cards. And I sent them to everybody that donated like a little note and in the person that there were two people that were special one, the guy that said started to go fund me, he posted the shit like four times on several different Facebook pages. And then there was the girl that donated the 1100 bucks and I sent them both. I had I had two of those cards that your dad gave me they were my last two with his signature on them. Because like the egg in the house. Yeah. I sent them those in the cards.

Kit Palencar
He still has that thing. It’s like a piece of shit plastic model or something. It’s in the house. The Yeah, it’s like the four column thing with like the weird arch thing, right? Is every time oh wait, meaning he did he did a number of egg egg things.

George Ward
This floating house with an egg inside of it. Okay, and he had they looked like they almost look like greeting cards that he had made but they had some old address on them on the bottom.

Kit Palencar
Like Middleburg heights or

George Ward
something. Yeah, that one? Yeah. It

Kit Palencar
was Middleburg heights. Mom’s his mom’s house.

George Ward
He signed three or four of them and gave them to me when we’re in Canton. And he asked me he was Like you can give these away if you want, but just cut the address off. So I don’t know. But yeah, it was it was amazing to me we rate it like, I couldn’t believe it.

Kit Palencar
Yeah, that’s cool. Thank you to whoever don’t yeah, that’s Yeah, awesome.

Brett Zingler
And you, you could probably fill in, you know, five minutes talking about that or something and, you know, community you could probably, you know, instead of having a clip in some previous interview, you know, maybe just find some filler, I could go back on and do some stuff. Kitt, you’re good at this dude. Yeah, there’s

George Ward
you’re really good to like,

Brett Zingler
why don’t you join us more often? You should?

Kit Palencar
Well, thanks, guys. I appreciate that. And I really appreciate you having me on. And I’m definitely open to talk. I love talking about stuff. I love. having discussions, I got really used to having discussions in grad school and talking about stuff that that people were interested in, in doing research. And all you got to do is ask and see if I’m free or not. I’m more than happy to keep doing this stuff. Or we’d love that once in a while. I don’t care.

Brett Zingler
Yeah, we’d love that. We, I think we only do these like once every month or so. And then. And the other thing is, like, we don’t have to talk about, let’s just, you know, the next topic that I want to do in depth is how do we pair you know, more for newbies, which is cool, because that’s probably 90% of the people who listen to us. But you know, like, how do we pair cities and verses and images? And what’s the, you know, what? It’s a it’s a heavy, it’s a big topic. And so it would be cool to have you just come in, talk to us about that and see if our logic is sound or see if the logic from the past years is it sounds something like that?

George Ward
Well, we know it is we just can’t say it. Right? Exactly. We know

Brett Zingler
it is but it’s it might be fun to like explore it and kind of like put some logic to it. Yeah. I don’t know what’s really cool. What’s up?

Kit Palencar
I see like, I’m like, I’m trying to think about things more. Literally, like that rhino in the fucking Houston painting going on. Right. I just Googled, like Rhino handle. And I see a cane that looks like became that’s in the Milwaukee one. And I’m just Yeah, I know. It’s weird. I don’t know how she crossed over.

George Ward
It’s always been assumed that the Houston one was buried in a zoo. There’s a zoo in a park. And they had rhinos, they had a camel. Yeah, that’s always been assumed that that’s what that is. And those, those columns there, there are perfect matches for those columns in the zoo. But the more we the more we learn, the more your dad jumps on TV, the more we learn that we could be. Even those exact matches could just be wrong. It could, you know, the two seas and Boston perfectly matched the globe, but it was just completely wrong. That wasn’t even what he was going for. Right. It’s weird. But anyway, it’s this is really weird. I

Brett Zingler
don’t get it. This is nobody gets it. I mean, maybe somebody does somewhere, but like, No, you’re you’re now that BP is gone. Your dad

Kit Palencar
is, is it?

Brett Zingler
He’s it. He’s what we got. He’s the he’s the like, the keeper of not even all of the secrets. And I

George Ward
feel so bad. I feel so bad for him, because he’s a genuinely sweet dude. You know, and like, like you were saying before? days ago, it doesn’t matter what you talk to him about. It doesn’t matter what anyone talks to him about. He has always got to keep in the back of his mind. These people could just be using, you know, and that’s gotta suck for somebody that somebody like your dad to always be second guessing everything, you know? Yeah. Hey, hi. I guess I guess we should do it. Another weird intro. Like this is part two of the new episode of The Secret podcast, which is weird. We kicked kid off and now we have Bradley. Yo, yo. So now we can talk about all the stuff that we can talk about what’s going on? What’s up?

Bradley Hodges
What’s up? What’s up, so I’m severely disappointed that John Wick was not a option in the counter reason movies. Because that’s the obvious number one.

Brett Zingler
Oh, um, do really I wouldn’t

George Ward
even say John wicks a Keanu Reeves movie like these have a they have a vibe. And he was just that he’s a good actor in those movies, but he’s not a good actor in the others like,

Brett Zingler
you know why he’s good in the matrix guys is because he barely says anything. He just looks good. And does action stuff and fights people and like takes pills and His mouth covers over with his skin. That’s why

George Ward
he’s good. There. His dialogue consists of like, I know kung fu. Exactly.

Bradley Hodges
That’s the one line. Everybody knows.

Brett Zingler
I know kung fu. Yeah, totally. So,

George Ward
so I have questions for everybody. Boy, how much do we think Alan Carr was just flat out screwing with everyone

Bradley Hodges
I’ve ever said no question about it. He there’s no way he put hints in the other paintings. That was a total troll.

George Ward
Yeah, there was no way. Yeah, I mean, I could see like, I could see that. I could see nods, you know, and I could see like, like, when I draw something, if I draw a flower, the next time I draw a flower is going to be kind of similar. You know what I’m saying? Because you draw things the same way. I could see that I could see little nods. The the painting the music, reverie, because it’s got a casket. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s an odd

Bradley Hodges
it’s got a box with a lid off of it. I’ve never read the book. I don’t know what it’s about. But it’s a stretch saying it’s definitely a cask.

Brett Zingler
Okay, all right. Definitely. Is not a word. Yeah, I that I would bet that I would not just don’t think

George Ward
I don’t think the man’s I don’t think the man spent the last 40 years going on and to put every end that I can and all of my paintings now. Right? Like I don’t, I don’t think he’s like, I’m gonna put the map of Lake Park in this tree limb. I just I can’t see him doing that.

Bradley Hodges
Not at all. I don’t see him sitting down and working on a piece that he’s been commissioned for and going, huh. Now, what am I going to put about the secret in this one?

Brett Zingler
How can I make this for the five or 6000 people that are on the Facebook page? What can I do to service them? I don’t think he’s, yeah, I don’t I’m pretty sure he’s not. He’s not doing that.

George Ward
Especially like the first 20 years of this. Like the first 30 years of this. It wasn’t even it wasn’t popular. He didn’t really even know people care.

Brett Zingler
That’s exactly right. You can totally ignore the first couple of decades, at least Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Maybe, maybe as it’s gained a little steam. Maybe? Then the nods in the painting. thing? I think the jury is out. Yeah. I’m not taking it seriously. Anyway,

George Ward
I guess we’ll find out

Bradley Hodges
what we can use his paintings for, as far as hints for the secrets, if you want to call it that is looking at his style, looking at things that he paints, how he paints them, and compare that to how he’s painted them in the secret paintings. And then look for the obvious differences. For instance, somebody posted in the Facebook group about one of the images, I think it’s kid or his brother was the model. He’s on a horse. He’s holding a shield and wearing armor. He’s like, okay, yes, we can look at this horse and look at the horse of the St. Augustine painting. And see this is how he paints horses. Now, what’s the obvious differences? Those are what we need to pay attention to? Yeah,

Brett Zingler
yeah. I agree with that. Stylistically. Real hints for the secret, though, like legit, like, count the trees. Oh, there are seven tree tops. Image seven, which actually is not named image seven. Anywhere like? Yeah, I don’t think so. Yeah,

George Ward
I don’t think it’s that stretchy now. But, you know, I mean, it’s, I guess it’s up to the viewer to decide. But I really feel like we can’t figure out the first 12 paintings I don’t want to spend the next 10 years trying to figure out if 40 More because this man paints oh my god, this man paints so many paintings. I know.

Brett Zingler
All of our attention now is going to go into a into another painting and I’m just not doing it. I’m not doing it. I looked at it. I thought it was interesting. Yeah. Did I did I try to find like, yes. Did I did I count the treetops? think there were seven and think that it was San Francisco based or something? Yeah, of course I did. But then I I’m glad I

Bradley Hodges
then you came to your senses. And I woke up.

Brett Zingler
Yes, it was. It was fantastic.

George Ward
I mean, I did. I did shoot out an email and asked to have some a little bit of clarification from the horse’s mouth. We’re still waiting on that. Busy I guess but we should have a little bit of clarification maybe. I think what do you what Bradley What do you think about the the dig dig side identifiers

Bradley Hodges
that’s actually exactly what I have next on my notes to talk about so thank you for asking me. So yeah, so I I’ve listened to the previous conversation that you guys had with kid and the logic that got tossed around between all three of you and so does he know where these are buried? Does that mean that he does or doesn’t? If he does or doesn’t know that these are in the paintings? I agree with the logic that yes, he can say, no, there are not digsite indicators and all the paintings without actually knowing where all the casts are buried because he was sent the hints. He knows what he put in the paintings. So it would seem to me that especially if one of the paintings is a puzzle type that, you know, he was throwing out there like astrological, then you know, there’s something we’ve got to figure out to find the dig site is maybe verse heavy versus painting heavy. So he can know that without knowing where they’re buried. I agree with that logic wholeheartedly. I’ve talked to the man and I have a, I have a feeling that I can somewhat decipher whenever he’s joshing it when he’s okay, no pun intended, when he’s kidding around, or whatever he’s like, this is this is my answer, because this is the truth. And when he said, No, you’re absolutely wrong. I feel like he was being honest. I feel like, we now know that some of the paintings don’t have big indicators. We don’t know which ones they are. But we know that if they don’t have big indicators, and that means they’re probably very verse heavy and the solve,

George Ward
I think there are things that we know about these paintings, right? There are things that we know, like, each painting tells you a city in one way or another. Each painting tells you a city, right? latitude and longitude coordinates rebuses. In some way, we know that each painting tells you here’s your city. And in there’s a category, there’s two categories. There’s the things we know about the painting things that we don’t. And I think, for the for the longest time, we had the dig indicator and the things we know. And I think there’s enough doubt now that we should take it and put it in the things you know, things we don’t know. Like maybe like New York doesn’t have a lot of stuff going on. We’ve we’ve we’ve been able to find what three or four things that we can say that’s obviously that in New York, maybe it doesn’t have an indicator that shows you exactly where to dig,

Brett Zingler
I cannot reconcile the thing, the things that I said before the two, the two trains of logic one, we’ve been operating all this time and actually preaching that stop bugging jjp. He doesn’t know where the where the actual casks are buried. Okay. The question was, are there dig spot indicators? Now, he could incorporate dig spot indicators in his paintings without knowing the spot.

George Ward
There’s a lot of what ifs here, like where we’re basing all of our assumptions on what we assume jjp used to paint these paintings we don’t know, right? Was he just given little things like here paint a painting with these four things in and he has no idea why those things are important. He’s just painted a painting with those four things I get I get the feeling from his interview that he knows more than that. But

Bradley Hodges
so for taking him at his word. And he says the there are all these different ways that you need to approach these puzzles, then that tells me that he knows the process. But it doesn’t necessarily know the end result. And if he knows the process that will, then that tells me that while he doesn’t know the results, he knows enough to know that the dig indicators are not necessarily in each painting for a very good reason. Because that’s not what you’re looking for. I mean, even if you look at Boston, right? I mean, the only thing in Boston was the home plate that was hitting right the home plate and the baseball fields kind of but the there none of the other things we’re looking for are in the painting to let us know that we’re in the right place. Yes, the word Boston, you’re just as a general area. But like if you think of Cleveland, your dig site is in the painting. If you think of Chicago, your dig site is in the painting.

Brett Zingler
How would you incorporate a dig spot indicator into your painting without knowing more or less what the dig spot is? Is that just by reprise saying, Hey, I buried it, you know, telling him verbally right? not providing any pictures or something like that, just telling him verbally like, I put it near this statue. So the statue, the statues arm needs to go there.

Bradley Hodges
Well, okay, so let’s take like New York, for example, right? It could be this total hypothetical, obviously, none of us know for sure. But just going with your line of thought Biden reaches out to him and says, Okay, here’s the deal. It’s in New York. And this is what I need you to put in this painting. I need you to put something that looks like the Statue of Liberty. I need you to get people in the New York state of mind. My versus gonna get them there. But this is what I need you to put in there.

George Ward
Something that I go back to buy now, Palin car and Josh gates, they’ve talked a little bit they’ve been on shows together. They’re friends, right? So Fallon car is gonna be a little he’s gonna play a little more with Josh right? But not so much in the first episode. In the first episode. They didn’t really know each other dude was just doing an interview. Right? And he said his quote From the first interview was I’ve tried to figure out some of these and even I don’t know, I even I can’t figure them out. And if he can’t figure them out, that leads me to believe he doesn’t like Brett was saying he doesn’t know the process. Right. And if he doesn’t know, the process, I he follows that he wouldn’t know where to dig it, you might, he might know where to like, around, like, it’s around this general area, like he might know, Milwaukee is somewhere in Lake Park. But he doesn’t know where and like Park

Brett Zingler
I, I, I’m taking him at his word. I don’t think he knows where they are. And I don’t think if he knows, necessarily, whether there are dig spot indicators in every painting, that’s just, that’s just what I take from the whole situation.

Bradley Hodges
And I take him at his word, when he says there are different ways that each one needs to be approached, and he gave us you know, a rather long list, I take I take I take that to be factual whether or not there’s some extra ones thrown in just to make it more difficult, which I don’t doubt sounds very jjp to me to do so. But for him to know, he can know the processes, without knowing the end result, he can know that. Okay, for these three puzzles, the process is the they’re gonna have to figure out that the the, it’s in this city, and then follow my painting. And actually know, this is here. For instance, the let’s let’s talk about Cleveland, right? So he knows he knew the process of Cleveland, it was his city, he put, in my opinion, put that together. So he knows how that works. And he knows those that dig spot, and he knows that his image is integral into that. Seek the columns for your search. Pindar appellees. Like, all of these are things that he knows were there. He knows what you need to find to get to there. Now New York, totally different story. He may know the process that you have to go through to find it. But he may not know where it is because half of that process, the the solve was Byron side, not his side.

George Ward
Gotcha. Yeah.

Brett Zingler
So what you’re saying is that he could know whether there is a dig spot indicator, even in in a image, even if he doesn’t know where the dig spot is.

George Ward
I think what Bradley is trying to say is he could know how the verse works. But he doesn’t know where reverse work, right?

Bradley Hodges
He can have the equation but not have all the variables to solve the equation. Does that make sense?

Brett Zingler
Okay, all right. All right. I don’t know. I’m going I’m going simple. I don’t think he I don’t think he knows where they all are.

George Ward
I think there’s enough. There’s enough gray area here with where we take this out of the we know this pile?

Brett Zingler
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think, yeah. operative phrase. I

Bradley Hodges
mean, the best part about this episode, is that I know that Roanoke is gonna be the next one found. So there’s that because everything’s going in order. So that’s the best part of this the the episode for me.

Brett Zingler
Well, I’m gonna find San Francisco before that. So it’s a race.

Bradley Hodges
You can’t do that. You can’t do that.

Brett Zingler
You’ll throw the whole system I can. And I will, my friend.

Bradley Hodges
It’s written in the stars. Okay,

Brett Zingler
that’s that’s astronomical. It is. Astrological. Alright, sorry. Another vehicle. It’s

George Ward
those vehicles screwed up the Facebook group man.

Brett Zingler
Oh my God, because vehicle the hell out of us didn’t need we got tickled. We did. All right. I need to go get a beer. Give me two seconds. I’m getting a beer. That’s like, way too much for me to handle. Hold on. I’m back. Sorry. Well sneaked me for for a minute. Okay, cool.

George Ward
You got your beer. I don’t remember what we’re talking about. We’re talking

Bradley Hodges
about Roanoke being the next one to be found because that is the correct order.

George Ward
Okay, so San Francisco is going to be the next one to be found. No.

Bradley Hodges
So So I mean, do we do we take him at his word? Because I mean, that would be bizarre for him. Just to make that up. Right. Like, he likes to fuck with people.

Brett Zingler
Yeah. How does he remember what order he painted these?

George Ward
I mean, I remember what order? Oh,

Bradley Hodges
I think you’d remember that.

Brett Zingler
Okay. All right. All right. That’s fair. I’m not a painter. 40 years ago, I can barely remember what my name was back then. It might have been the same. It might have been different. I don’t remember. But do you see it? I’m saying like, okay, so. Okay. So let’s say he remembers that. But he also remembers the order of difficulty. I mean, so let’s do what yeah, you’re about to say the same thing as me. He must know the process.

George Ward
No, that’s, that’s that’s not what I was gonna say. I don’t know. I don’t remember if we touched on it. This is gonna suck because I don’t remember we touched on it the other day. It makes sense that they would be figuring these things out as they go along. It makes sense that they would be fun. Figuring out how to make puzzles as they go along. So, if you’re doing them in a certain order, it makes sense that they’re gonna get harder, the farther down you go, because they’re gonna be figuring out new ways to trick people, they’re gonna be figuring out new ways to lead people to certain things, right? They’re gonna be hiding new stuff in paintings. So it makes sense that the order he painted them is the order of difficulty, just because they’re just figuring out new things. Because he even said, he and he said before, like, he had a process with Byron, right? Like he would you would do a sketch. And then Byron would say, Well, why don’t you put this in, and then John would come up with an idea. And he would be like, well, this would be a cool way to hide something, then that idea could carry over and he could have new ideas. It makes sense.

Bradley Hodges
I think one of my, one of my favorite moments of jjp. And talking about the paintings was when we were talking about the the paintings on exhibition unknown on the first episode, and how they were in the background. And how we discovered there were things in the paintings that we didn’t know were there because they’re covered up in the book. And he the, the honest expression on his face was Holy shit. I didn’t really I didn’t even think about that. So this moment. And so we had a conversation about that and why those got covered up and one of his responses was, I was being bad. I was being a bad boy. I didn’t follow directions.

Brett Zingler
Oh my god. Okay, so Okay, here’s another thing then. So are the sounds like you two guys are confirming that there is an order of difficulty to these?

George Ward
I can’t confirm anything like I know.

Brett Zingler
I know. But you’re arguing that right now.

George Ward
I mean, I would assume

Bradley Hodges
I believe he knows the order in which they were painted. But I don’t know if I mean, yeah, okay. Okay. Yes. Because I do believe he knows the procedure and or the the equation as I said earlier, but not the variables. So yeah, I think he you know, x plus y is painting one, but then you need cosines and all this other crap, you need a ti 80 fun to figure out the you know, the 12 painting your nose.

Brett Zingler
Okay, okay, but Alright, so, in order for there to be an order of difficulty, there would have to be some sort of memorable legend for that. Don’t you think? Like, not really? How, okay, so can you just remember off the top of his head? Alright, so I’m gonna

George Ward
make a comment for Brett. I’m gonna make a comment for Brett. But it’s gonna need. I’m gonna need a little preface so that other people understand what we’re talking about here. Brett and I used to work on puzzles together. We made puzzles together with it with a team. It wasn’t just me and Brad, it was several people, but we made puzzles. Brett, do you remember when we used to work on those, and how we would come up with things sort of as time went on, we didn’t necessarily have a plan to make things harder. But we would come up with new ideas as a team. Like puzzle two would ultimately be harder than puzzle one because we came up with a new idea,

Brett Zingler
bro, I can’t even remember like what I did 20 minutes ago. Are you kidding me? No, no, I do. Okay. Yes. Yes. But okay. That was maybe three or four years ago, right? Just bear with me. Bear with me a couple of years ago. It’s not 40 years ago, a couple years ago. Can you name for me? The order of difficulty? And the and the remembering it by name. That Do you see what I’m saying? The the astronomical leap we need to take care for him to Okay, unless there is a simple legend by which the the these, these are rated by difficulty like the gym. Right? And maybe he just has the gym for the city, the more expensive it is. And he memorized the order of that maybe that’s a totally legit thing. I don’t

George Ward
know. I think going back to Bradley’s point, if you were to take all of those puzzles and put them down in front of me, and I know the process of how to solve them, but not necessarily the parts that you got to put together. But if I know the process, I think I can order them for you. And that’s something that jjp has that we don’t have. He’s got a visual to remember he’s got the paintings that he made. So he can sit there and his head and go the process for this was this. That was the easy one. And then this one came next because we did x and then this one came next because we did why?

Brett Zingler
Okay, but that still necessitates a, this is what I’m getting at. And I love it. I love hearing this because what I want is for there to truly be some figure out trouble, legend or path to these things. Do you see what I’m saying? So like, I hope I hope that that’s the case.

George Ward
If I see what you’re saying, in the puzzles that were used to, there would be a path, there would be a way. I don’t know how to explain that to other people, though

Brett Zingler
and incremental, you would take something from number one, you would build on it from number two, you would build on it for number three, they would have different processes. But in general, you were learning as you went, right? Or you were taking something from the previous puzzles. So I’m overthinking it. I know.

George Ward
I know. No, no, it just reminds me of a quest for treasure thread.

Brett Zingler
I’ve never been, I’ve never been on there.

Bradley Hodges
So obviously, I wasn’t a part of your guys’s team building these puzzles. So I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I get the gist of the conversation. But I can tell you that recently, I was lucky enough to have a Puzzle Maker reached out to me. And they were like, Hey, we’re putting together this. We wanted to run it by you. We wanted to get some feedback. So they sent me their initial thoughts. And they’re like, Okay, you know, this is what we’ve got so far. What do you think my wife and I worked on a little bit, and we were able to figure out some of the elements, some of the elements, we had no clue what was going on. And we gave them the feedback and thoughts that we had. And based off of that, they were able to understand, okay, you know, me as the puzzle Master, I understand where everything was going because I built this puzzle. But now that they got the feedback from me, then they were like, Okay, now I understand that while I thought this, that doesn’t really make sense from a reader standpoint, so I can alter this and change it in this way to make it more difficult or to make it more challenging or to make it more relevant. And as we work together, the puzzle kind of grew into something, you know, morphed and evolved. So I get the gist. From the conversation, you guys are having that it’s somewhat similar that as you’re working on these puzzles, they’re morphing. They’re evolving, you’re learning. You know how to put them together, how to make them more challenging. Maybe maybe just more doable. Who knows? But they’re evolving as you work on it?

Brett Zingler
Yeah. Okay. So totally. And you’re you’re hitting the nail on the head, to make a puzzle with several parts. So not just a one piece puzzle, right? Or challenge or what adventure, whatever it happens to be. It has to have a thread. Do you get what I’m saying? Like George, you know, yeah,

George Ward
I get what you’re saying they have to be connected in some way.

Brett Zingler
They have to be connected, because otherwise, it’s just a bunch of different puzzles. But there has to be a thread, right. So it’s just interesting and exciting to me to hear that there. There’s at least one thread for the puzzle solve solving part of it itself, not just these are. These aren’t these are part of this fairy lore. That’s just that’s just an overarching story theme. I’m talking about a verse and an image. And the fact that there’s some sort of correlation between the difficulty to these means to me that they’re, I mean, and it’s memorable to jjp, after all this time, means to me that there’s some that there’s some thread, and they aren’t just little individual things, I guess, I don’t know, I’m belaboring the point.

George Ward
So the thing that we have that we had the benefit of that the jjp and Byron didn’t have the benefit of was feedback, right? We, we were able to connect those things, because we like Bradley was saying saw how people are solving them. jjp and Byron didn’t have they didn’t have that they released their 12 puzzles all at once, you know, and it was their first time making puzzles. So did they have the forethought to think about how to lead from one end to the other? Or was it like, I know, I have to give these people certain information, I know I have to give them a, I know, I have to give them a city. I know I have to maybe give them a state. I know I have to narrow down the city a little bit. And I’ll figure out how to do that. One way and the first painting, but I can’t do that the same way in the second painting, so I got to figure out another way. But the easiest way was my first idea. So that’s going to be the first painting and then it’s going to get a little harder.

Bradley Hodges
I think that line of that line of thought makes sense and here’s why so let’s take what we know right so we we know Chicago was first from what we believe to be true or at least I believe to be true Chicago was also the first painting Chicago is also the easiest. Chicago has a ridiculous amount of landmark hints in the painting like it ridiculous amount including the you know a major building major the the water tower the major the what do you call it?

George Ward
The fence on fixture the bow? Well, I

Bradley Hodges
was gonna say this it’s fixture last week because that really I mean, it’s got the digs, Bobby Yeah. The Bowman major Two points of interest, I guess you could say I there’s a word that I can’t come up with right now, but so many visual clues. And then when you go to the verse, the only thing that the verse didn’t tell you was what these letters stand for. You figure out what the letters stand for, it tells you exactly how to get there, and exactly where it’s buried. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely the easiest, then we look at the next one that was found. And if we believe everything that we’ve been told to be true, then Okay, again, the painting has not as many. But a lot of image, a site image indicators, including the exact spot, and then the verse is pretty straightforward. But finding that area is going to be a little bit more difficult, in my opinion, I don’t think get as many people are going to know about the culture or Greek, cultural Greek gardens, as they are going to know about downtown Chicago. Yeah, you know your point. So it’s just ever so slightly difficult, but so similar, then we get to Boston. Okay. So there are a lot of things pointing us to Boston in general. But the only thing really pointing us in the image to the dig spot, is the home plate. And Boston is big on baseball, so it doesn’t tell us where to go. There’s no one home plate that that can look like, even if we pick up on the baseball field in the hair. That doesn’t take us to one picture of plates. There’s nothing in this painting that says it is cupola Park. Nothing, there’s nothing in there. That takes us to the exacting spot, we’ve got to rely on the verse and we’ve got to figure out what the verse means. And there’s still a line from the verse. No matter how you want to talk about the verse and how you get to the x. We still don’t know what the last line in the verse is really, therefore it’s all kind of up to then it could be this, it could be that. Is there a reason for that line? We don’t know. We probably will never know. But it’s it’s there. And then if we follow everything that JJ P has said to be true, then Roanoke is going to be our next most difficult. So if we look at Roanoke, we’ve got a map of the island. Right. And that’s going to be incredibly less known unless you are a history buff, and you’ve looked up there’s only people who are going to recognize that map of the island or people that have been or live near Roanoke Island. And you’re not going to see that and go oh my god, that’s Roanoke Island. Other than that, there’s really nothing else in the image that says, This is where we need to go. There’s no major buildings. There’s no major sites around the area. There’s not the Wright Brothers Memorial, yet. It’s arguably that there’s a top down to the Wright Brothers Memorial. Yes, I’ll buy that. But there’s nothing. You lose a lot of visual indicators. And then it’s very verse heavy.

George Ward
Well, it’s arguable that the mace is the Wright Brothers Memorial, but just following along your line of thought that thing is so tiny, you would almost have to know what you were looking for to find it. Right. Right. You would have to be in the area to go oh, that’s kind of similar to the Wright Brothers Memorial.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, exactly. And then we have images that mean, things that are not landmarks like, Okay, you say the mace looks like it and some people think that I don’t agree with that. I think it’s Samuel mace. And that’s it. Yeah, I

George Ward
don’t disagree with that, either. Yeah, I’m just saying it’s arguable.

Bradley Hodges
Right? It’s arguable, but in so now we’re transitioning, right? We’re not looking at the painting just for image locators. We’re not looking at the painting to say, Okay, well, there’s this building. There’s this water fountain. We’re looking at the painting we’re like, Okay, well, here’s a mace. We’ve got Roanoke Island. We got this island. Samuel mace, we look a mais we’ve, uh, you know, whoever you come up to it. You know, I was lucky enough that this was already pinpointed Roanoke Island, what I’ve ever found out otherwise, I seriously doubt it. So I feel very grateful for the people that put the footwork in beforehand. But you get what I’m saying that now we’re working with a different style of puzzle, but somewhat evolved from the previous three. Not completely off base, but slightly harder.

George Ward
If there’s any more wordplay in these images, like in Boston, we’re screwed, right? I mean, Boston, but like if there’s any more Boston globes, or Boston Pops, we’re just screwed.

Brett Zingler
I guess, I guess one way that we could figure this out or not figure this out. But one approach we could take is like, what were the hardest pieces of what they did for the for the three solve ones, quote unquote, solved. And take the hardest pieces and try to apply that. Moving. Moving forward to the to Roanoke. Let’s just go to Roanoke. And you know what I mean?

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, I think the word plays is definitely in my opinion, the hardest, like when you talk about Phil at home, never occurred to me that that was home plate. Never occurred to me. But now I’m like, okay, okay, I see. I see what you did there. So let me look at the road puzzle. Okay, after circling the square, first seen standing last touch, I’m picking up what you’re putting down I’m just gonna Oh, you’re stepping in, you know,

Brett Zingler
it’s all Baseball.

Bradley Hodges
Baseball. I’m kidding. But I mean, the relevancy of, and kudos, by the way to everybody on the main page, but especially to my heart, the people on the Roanoke page, all the work that’s being done recently. Kudos to all of you, I’m you guys. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve just kind of started to lose my passion a little bit. I’m not gonna 100% lose it by any stretch of imagination, but it was starting to dwindle. And then I saw some of the work you guys are putting in, and man, I’m fired up. So thank you for the work you guys are putting in. And there’s some excellent ideas out there. A lot of people are are on the same page. And I’m digging it. Literally and figuratively. So let’s let’s get this thing found.

Brett Zingler
So real quick, I want to throw out. So I see a lot of people posting about keeping it simple. Have you guys been seeing this? The kiss?

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, keep it keep it kiss simple. Yeah,

George Ward
you guys are about to make me very angry, aren’t you? What’s that? About that make me very angry.

Brett Zingler
No, no. Well, I Okay. So I want to I want to go a little bit technical on Latin. And that and the what? Keeping it simple? Technically could mean so maybe I’m gonna go a little rhetorical on you guys. So you guys both know what outcomes razor is? Yes. All right. It in Latin. It’s it’s actually called Lex parsimony. I guess I’m I know, I’m Theca dicing cuz he could do these but which actually means entities should not be multiplied without necessity, right. But usually we paraphrase or comes razor by saying, the simplest explanation is most likely the right one. Right? Right. Sounds easy. And sounds like Okay, let’s take a step back. And the problem is, with all comes razor in this thing is we don’t really have a very much of a baseline to know what’s simple and what’s not simple. And if you can’t define simple. Here’s where we’re at. And if each one of these things is totally different, like jjp just said, astronomical and mathematical and geographical. And I’m in Hamilton, you know what I’m saying? You guys see where I’m going with this? Like, like, you can’t, you can’t just blanket say, oh comes razor must apply, because you need a definition of simple. And we don’t have it now. I will say though, the modernization of the things that we’re doing is our downfall. Yeah. Do you get what I’m saying? Like, I like that the like, if you were to take out of context, problem or puzzle solving, and take them from the 80s and place that and utilize things that never existed back then you will complicate the process. Some of it will be easier, but some of it will make will be more difficult. For example, Google Maps overhead. Oh, God, I you know what I mean, like that I agree with like, let’s take a step back. That’s not really a you know, that’s, like each one of these can’t be solved by taking some overhead Google Earth image.

Bradley Hodges
What you need is an overhead projector. Correct? Wrong overhead guys. Yes,

Brett Zingler
overhead this? Right, so So do you guys get where I’m going with that, for those of

Bradley Hodges
you that don’t know what that is, there used to be this thing. It was a metal box of the glass plate on top with a light behind it. And on top of it was a magnifying glass and another piece of glass on the other end, and when you put an image over the light, it would pick up the image and it would project it and make it bigger on the wall. It’s like your HD projector you watch movies in your backyard on but for the classroom.

Brett Zingler
Somebody feed that dog by the way. So yes, that’s what an overhead projector is. And the okay right so keeping it simple is relative.

Bradley Hodges
Okay, okay, we Yeah, it is relative, but I will also say this. He didn’t say that you solve them all in completely different ways. He did say he did say that there are different methods you can choose. That’s true. But I say that they you need to solve them all in completely different ways. It goes against the whole argument we just had

George Ward
you made you made a good point that nobody ever really defined keeping it simple, right? And I’m always the one that pushed it. So let me define what I think keeping it simple is okay. It’s it’s it’s super easy. It’s simple. It’s simple. It really

Brett Zingler
can’t wait to hear that So,

George Ward
so the these puzzles follow a path not like, not like a physical path that you have to walk down but like a metaphorical path, right? It follows step one, step two, step three, step four, that’s your path. Once you have to take a step away from one of those, you are no longer keeping it simple, right? Once you say, like Roanoke, the mace could mean Samuel, mais, and Samuel mace did X, Y, and Z. And that connects to B, C, and D, once you take the step away from Samuel mace directly, you’re no longer keeping it simple. I agree. Samuel may follow along to the next step. Right? Does that make sense? Any sort of any sort of degrees of separation from a clue that you go, you’re no longer keeping it simple. That’s always been what? How I’ve defined keeping things simple. Step one should apply to a step two should apply to B, step three should apply to C. And none of them should apply to like, B point four, two, or whatever your resume saying.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, absolutely. You don’t need to branch off that many times.

George Ward
I don’t necessarily think there should be any branches away from the path at all. I think it’s a straight, it’s a straight line from start to finish. Once you start branching off and going in other directions. You’re, you’re scrolling up.

Bradley Hodges
So like, for instance, we were talking about Boston, and we talked about the when Xena fine and Theca diseases on is when the theta font is north of 30 days, or whatever the quote is, I don’t have in front of me. So I agree with you. Yeah. So you don’t you only need one branch that One branch goes to the letter. And that’s it. Boom, done branch over? No, no,

George Ward
you don’t even need the letter. You don’t even need the letter to solve that. You that that that that verse gives you two people’s names. You don’t need to know their name. Like you don’t need to know anything about them at all. You don’t need to know that’s a quote from a letter. It literally tells you a place a direction and and a number. That’s all you need from that line.

Bradley Hodges
But that also ties that note. No, I disagree, because that ties it to Boston.

George Ward
But if you already know Boston, which we already know, because of the verse or because of the painting,

Bradley Hodges
right if you Yeah, I agree. Yeah. For assuming so again, this is your baseline right? So if we’re assuming that we already know it’s Boston, is my point.

Brett Zingler
Yes. If you already know Boston, okay, then maybe you have a quote unquote definition for simplest or simple. But if you um, your your look, your Hindsight is 2020 Right? Hey, I want to say for the record, by the way, at some point, I said Theca dies. I got gripped for that. And I listen, I made it up. I thought it was funny. Just for the record. I actually never really learn how to say say it. I don’t know how to say it does not exist.

Bradley Hodges
It’s lucky. Oh.

Brett Zingler
What? No. Okay, listen, I got nobody got it. And I was just joking. I know that that’s probably not the right explanation, but that’s what I went with. And I thought it was funny. Sometimes people don’t get my humor. Okay, but um, yeah, I never got a message about poop below poop poop was below below super fun to say I don’t care what that is.

Below below Hello Bradley. I need to know what you think about my dream.

Bradley Hodges
Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, your dream. I agree with which kits unique new underwear from a different brand. And here’s, you know, it may not even been for you that may have that that may have I may have manifested that dream in you. Because I’ve recently been unhappy with the way my underwear fits. And I don’t wear if I don’t wear for the loop. I wear Hanes so maybe I need to try Fruit of the Loom. Okay, maybe that’s what’s happened.

George Ward
Are you a tidy whities guy rather you seem like it’s no,

Bradley Hodges
no, no. I do Luxor bras. Okay, yeah. I don’t like I don’t like boxers because they’re just they they don’t help in any way shape or form. Other than a layer between you and your clothes. I don’t like briefs because I don’t need a hug all day long that area. boxer briefs keep you between you and your clothes and they just they they help and the support and they’re comfortable and they’re wonderful and I love them.

Brett Zingler
Okay, this is this is getting a little TMI. I will say that that as as a child, I wore whatever was given to me.

Bradley Hodges
I was under, all the way. Super. Yeah, same here. Yeah.

Brett Zingler
You totally Yeah, whatever. Whatever showed up in Christmas or birthday boxes is what went on my body or whatever my brother was wearing. Apart from underwear itself, usually my mind had gotten some underwear Hami downs you got. But fruit of the fruit of the looms were big time in my era, along with a lot of the other things that you guys saw on you. But yeah, maybe in some other episode, we can pursue this conversation a little bit further and really dig into the details and explore the space. What do you guys think? Maybe we do an underwear episode.

Bradley Hodges
Well, that’s what we’re always trying to figure out the cast are under were

Brett Zingler
Oh, my God. Near Yes. So that okay, that’s your interpretation.

Bradley Hodges
I think that’s what happened. Yeah, I’m going to get a loom DICOM whenever we’re done.

Brett Zingler
You are Freunde.

George Ward
Hey, guys, could you not mention Neil Rothstein during the podcast? Because Neil Rothstein said he was going to sue me if I said, the name Neil Rothstein during the podcast. So if you could try really hard just just not to say Neil Rothstein. So the Neil Rothstein doesn’t sue me. I’d appreciate it. Thanks.