bradley bradley stop messing around put on your uh put on your professional podcast hat we only got one shot uh to get this right uh i i haven’t i have no idea what i’m doing i uh [ __ ] i wonder what this button does

oh that was pretty cool got any more buttons

zoom does not like my nice webcam so it’s using my laptop’s webcam so i apologize for the low quality wow you can change it from from the one side it’s highlighting your dimple yeah it’s it’s my good side yeah okay hold on all right let me get my height already here last time i did this with josh i was i had the camera put the camera up on a brick because i thought they wanted a long shot but then that looked like i was in a basement or something yeah so so somebody released a tweet today that said uh we we think that they’re going to do two more secret episodes on expedition unknown i haven’t heard anything whether he brings me in or not i don’t know you know it’s it’s whatever i think serves a story that they’re trying to they’re trying to write i think uh we had a you know a great time he did so many things in such a short time for that brooklyn episode where they uh presented the award to jason jason was his name yeah jason krupat yeah who won the uh or who didn’t win but who discovered the boston treasure and i mean he flew them from boston and then he went to new york you know i was coming in and the other two guys from cleveland were um brian ryan and andy and then they brought the other two guys in from uh chicago so that was a pretty pretty cool production that they were able to do and photograph it there we had to be very careful with the historical society there because i mean i left like a camera bag on a table and it had leather on it so they were concerned that my camera bag didn’t damage the leather table top there i mean everything was like antique

it was like something that i kept at nemo’s uh library but that was like the perfect finale to that whole series like first episodes just an introduction to the hunt second episode you try to find a cask and you can’t third episodes you find a cast so you get the chicago guys the cleveland guys sandy the kids you all together to meet up yeah i think i think it was fine the thing i found just kind of funny is how um uh what was his name again uh jason jason’s right okay was was kind of i don’t want to say he was luck screen josh but he was telling him he was saying you know people are just overthinking this thing and then i point out how it spells boston across that’s the bottom of the page you know and it’s like see maybe even overthought that part a little bit too much so it was uh it was a neat episode and i think uh uh what i liked about it is that as i mentioned i don’t know where the the treasures are or where they’re buried except for cleveland i knew where cleveland’s was that was it that’s the only one i went to um but that uh when jason was going over some of the clues it ignited some of my memories of the uh of these packets of info that that byron was sent to me and so when you see that cover and you see the the those things hang every there’s a name for them the panels of fabric that are hanging off your sleeves the shapes in there are the shapes of the flags on the wiring side that’s across the bay from the uh you know from that ball field and uh i had mentioned as i mentioned to other people in the past that uh mention this to josh about you know somewhere in some construction site some guy’s gonna run across one of these and not know what he has but thank god jason beat him to it and it couldn’t have been the timing on that i mean it does read um kind of like a you know kind of like a movie and stuff so it was a um pretty exciting night i thought you know but uh you know it was uh it was kind of kind of an interesting thing with all the uh all the symbolism that was involved and how they they walk through uh you know the parks there and i’m trying to think where else the arc of the hair did mimic the um uh what do you call the uh baseball diamond yeah the baseball diamond and uh i’m trying to think what else that they had there they had this the sculpture oh against the building too and kind of byron was notorious for doing that you know he picked those words off that that building and what people have to remember well i can’t really aid them in their um their uh treasure hunts directly because because of legal reasons uh you know you have to think like byron how he had to bury them he had to be and jason may mention this about he had to be in and out very quickly you know he had to be able to go in in a clandestine type fashion and dig a hole very quickly and uh put the treasure box in there now you were with him right when he was uh burying the cask in cleveland in the greek cultural gardens was that kind of like what it was like he just ran and dug a hole and then he was out super quick what i remember uh about the cleveland treasury he was very quick and i was i was operating as lookout and when i went back there to see where he had buried it i could not tell where he buried it and he had just he had just dug that hole there was not even any fresh dark darker dirt because of the moisture from him digging down it was just like like nothing had happened wow and it was like it was pretty pretty magical and i mean he this was done in a different time i’m sure like you have to you know i don’t want people damaging places digging up digging up things without permission i mean in some areas if you look cross-eyed at a tree they’re going to arrest you you know so um i think uh those were different times when byron was burying these treasures and uh when you when you think about it uh you know they were things were much more relaxed even though there was an environmental movement and there weren’t as as many as you know protect our parks kind of uh ordinances and uh rules and laws you know we could hitchhike around the country back then and you could kind of camp out along the river and nobody would really kind of say anything you know and uh like like that’s a good point though uh it wasn’t much different time back then everything was a lot safer people didn’t really pay as much attention in the parks now like what searchers are running into is say you live in new york and you want to solve the puzzle in san francisco yeah you fly over there but how do you get tools like how do you take a six-foot shovel through tsa like how did byron do that you know he a lot of times he flew to some places and he had you know he had this little shovel with him and uh sometimes it was a larger several sometimes it was a little military shovel you know i’m sure you the boy scouts know you know that type of shovel so yeah sandy told a story about that like after one of her after their first date he pulled out this little foldable shovel and went out and buried a cat it’s funny too that she because i remember when he first started seeing i was and i would actually i didn’t realize that i was hanging out with byron about the same time that he met sandy and uh so i would stay at his apartment there and sometimes i had use of his apartment when he was when he was away which was great because it was almost like having my own apartment in new york to pretend it was but he would call if i were if we were there together uh you know i was down on the couch and he would look we would go out to dinner and stuff and get back in about i think it was around 12 at night he called sandy who was a publicist for bantam books at the time i think and she was working out of her out of the west coast office in san francisco so um he was calling her religiously every night like at 12 o’clock at night you know i’d go out on his balcony and have a smoke and stuff and he went up over here with the grits he was so gracious to let me stay at his place uh there but those are the good old times it was new york was interesting it was you know it was taxi driver new york with all the steam coming up the steam still comes up on the pipes there but there was a certain danger and rawness to new york city at that time it was very colorful very you know always see something interesting happening on the streets there so every once in a while when i post something uh i want to thank you guys to george ward and my son kit for being the surrogates for my facebook page that i don’t really i access i can see what everybody else sees but uh allow me they post my things and sometimes relay messages and you’re very welcome so uh john one of the biggest questions that sergers have right now um everybody sort of wants a copy of this book they want a copy of the first edition book because the pictures are vivid uh it’s really valuable it’s kind of rare but all they can do more of them at my house by the way and the japanese edition i found my japanese edition finally well you can sell them if you want to influx the cash because they’re kind of expensive um on to i i don’t i don’t have much left you know from that from these times you know i mean i i’m still trying to find the preliminary drives anyway so go ahead you were you’re well so what the the thing that people can get their hands on anybody can go to barnes and noble and buy one of these like 15 reprint copies of the books from from ibooks but the biggest question that everybody has is can you use those like can you see everything in the images that you need to see to solve the puzzle i could i would always say high-res is better higher resolution is better if the the printing is up not up to snuff or if they’re printed on an inferior stock it it may impinge on uh some of the some of the visual those maybe some of the tinier ones so unless they up the paper stock in that uh version i’ve never seen one so i can’t really make it an accurate assessment enough oh no that’s okay that’s okay don’t want to give that any money huh i feel the same way i get enough things in by some of the people who are still don’t believe i don’t know uh where the treasures are they they somehow are uh still don’t believe me so they send me their solutions i just got a fedex the other week and saying this poor guy has like spent money on a fedex delivery and i’m like dude i don’t know where they are you know you you’re better off uh contacting john colby and i think it’s brick tower press over there in the in the hamptons so uh anyway uh the i think higher all i can say in a general statement the higher resolution the better okay sometimes it seems like there’s some pretty good scans online you know and uh most books magazines if they’re high res they’re only printed to a maximum of uh 300 dpi 350 dpi for actual physical print and that’s even back then on uh on the stock that we use and we did use a coated stock on the inside of the book the cover too was a little discouraging because that cover is so big that i painted all these details in there and when they put it even on the cover which is one of the larger reproductions of the book is the cover um something’s really shrunk down all the little reflections and the iris of the eyes has disappeared and the you know the tear ducts and things like that aren’t shown that’s why when josh sees the thing he said they’re so much sharper and different in real life is because i would always kind of go beyond what the the printing was then and even now and i also worked larger usually you try to work towards what size reproduction it’s going to ultimately end up being but i had this i have this view of like i sell to collectors i collect my work and you know some of my paintings are good enough to you know not that i put them over a fireplace mantle but they’re you know they’re fireplace mantel worthy as far as size or god forbid if they they match their couch or something like that you know back of their couch but uh um so yeah some of them have more detail than even we were able to capture in them but the crucial things were there okay so um i think like i said i can’t i can’t uh comment on the on the new version uh it seems like uh people on amazon are complaining about it from one of some of the uh comments that i hear from some of the the buyers the purchasers of that book and uh that’s one of their main complaints that some of the mechanic the mechanical production pages are kind of offset within the book and that the um the the reproductions aren’t quite up to snuff you know that they need to be uh a little bit better so but that’s what i’ve heard i can’t they’re literally the easiest way to explain them to you is they’re they seem like they’re scanned on a regular scanner and then printed out on a laser printer like they’re dark and muddy very dark yeah and i don’t know if they’re taking them down to local kinkos or not so another thing that irritates new searchers is we often refer to these paintings by city so if we’re talking about painting number one we refer to it as the san francisco painting and that irritates people because some people think that’s in like peoria or wherever are we able to name any of them i know we’ve got castle hat we’ve got medieval scarecrow but are there are there names for any of the others no i never really titled them and i i always thought that’s that’s up to the uh to the people seeking the treasure i mean whatever um um you know um what am i trying to say on that outline whatever um legend you know you’re trying to use for your own treasure solve is uh is up to you i know noticed a lot of them uh like you said are being identified by city but you know i’ve gotten some uh things that peop people that have sent me or they’ve mailed them to me um the uh common knowledge of what city that may be sometimes it’s a different city yeah and i think it’s a different city and they’re entitled to that i mean that’s the whole the whole thing here of activating people’s brains and researching you know history and whatever it takes to get there um and they’re entitled to their own opinion you know so i guess the the next question um i guess the biggest question is um are the cities that are commonly accepted correct we’ve tried to work this out for a while we know that um that byron confirmed new york had a cask uh so he confirmed houston had a cast sean kelly confirmed montreal had a cask sandy sandy confirmed it on a video that’s on youtube um she confirmed san francisco and you confirm milwaukee the only cities that are left are charleston roanoke new orleans and st augustine are any of those correct

i don’t know okay uh i think uh i think they are i think they are i mean i’m trying to remember uh we have the uh i think i think they are i think i think they are they’re pretty they have uh a couple of the things that i see i have seen people um post online they seem to be going in the right direction for the the right cities for the right image some of them are very um obvious yeah there’s others aren’t but uh they’re they’re they’re pretty much you know people been working on this for a number of decades now so i think they’ve discerned the uh the general geographical location nice okay well that’s super helpful yeah well that’s it’s interesting because it took so long to do that um it didn’t really yeah it really wasn’t like no no it was uh it’s like 2 000 was it five i think it was 2005 when robert fox found uh the latitude and longitude coordinates and paintings yeah and that was when like everything just sort of changed for the secret we all of a sudden really yeah when did this happen 2005. i think it was 2005. it was after they found cleveland right okay um he found the latitude and longitude coordinates which looking back on it is the simplest thing you know it’s like why didn’t i think of that um and then once that happened we knew what cities went with what’s paintings but we didn’t know which verses went you know um

which leads me to the next question is that seems like a simple thing and if we can’t even figure that out are we doing this puzzle wrong have we have we sort of brute forced ourselves into the middle of the puzzle and skipped i mentioned uh i don’t know if i mentioned this to josh i’ve talked to a few people on this uh i mean here’s not something that’s going to bake your noodle as the oracle would say is that the you know the first painting the last painting are arches and they’re both coastal paintings yeah there’s a lot there’s a lot of little does that mean does that mean that they’re that these paintings go in a chronological order from west to east or east to west you know or do you do west east and then east to west back and then somehow do some other kind of flip thing you know so yes so i i mentioned so we did we do meet ups in different um different suspected cities with the community and um it’s a lot of fun and uh during our san francisco meetup um we had a conversation about the moons in the background of the painting and the fact that there’s 11 moons and this is your first painting and my interpretation of that which is probably way off base it’s just my interpretation of the art was that these 11 moons are the other 11 worlds that you’re going to go to throughout your journey in the secret

different uh another thing i was trying to think yeah okay but that’s that was kind of my uh my interpretation of it i i enjoy thinking of it that way yeah i feel like john’s just gonna have fun going i don’t know man i don’t know i can’t i mean

the puzzle would would honestly be ruined for everybody if it was just given away some we don’t want that i can’t remember some of the stuff that byron and i taught i mean we worked on this thing i was still a senior at columbus college art and design and uh i started the first initial um paintings i think it may have been the going with the dragon on her robe i’m not going to say any locations and um uh i think castle hat was in there was was kind of second i had then moved i moved i went back i i went with my tail between my legs back to my parents house set up my studio in the front living room and um started to complete the series in in there so uh we we had work buyer and i had worked on this for so long and it discussed so many different angles and in fact i think i was still working on stuff while he was burying these things and he’d call back and i think he would have an idea on something and then i’d say hey byron what about this and he’d say go with that and he’d say i said you you know pack it in the mail and i’d get some photos and he said put this in put that in but do this and i try a few things to disguise things and then we would go from there you know and i can say that right and uh just we just went on for a year i remember flying into new york a couple times and we had a we had a good time we had a a meeting with the writers and with joe allen was there and john perrard and sean sean kelly ted mann yep those guys are funny because one of them had just come off the movie i think uh animal house or was starting it and another guy was working for national lampoon so you know there was always about some good one-liners there and that and uh so i forget it was your question was i’m starting to get off on the tan engineer i’m kind of going back to my memory to the to sitting in these restaurants on the corner some corner restaurant on the east side you know honestly forget my question i’d rather hear this story you know eat you know eating food and talking about stuff and then a lot of what byron and i did the other people would be kind of they were working on their part of the book so byron would work with them and they would come to me and then we would work together privately even from overton or or perrard or lloyd overton i think who else was in there so it seems like from all the people that we’ve talked to about this book and i think you’ve said something similar it seems like byron treated this sort of like the us government treated the what is the sr 71 blackbird where everybody sort of knew their part yeah yeah well they didn’t know what their part was they knew they were building a part they didn’t know what it was for i always have this feeling and this is just my own my own uh uh curiosity that somehow the front part of the book is tied in with the treasure part it seems like there’s like when you look at the book there’s two parts you have your field guide to the fair people and the contemporary versions like the tupper werewolf or the maitre demon and typographical tears this is when we had typewriters and not computers and uh so but there’s so there was something about that and i remember bringing up but i said byron let me just discard this other stuff and just let’s let’s do a treasure book let’s make it more elaborate let’s make it uh more like uh like kit williams masquerade which is one of the inspirations for the secret and uh he said no this has got to be in there we have to do this part so now whether the book company was saying look it’s got to be more than just this little 12-page thing you know it’s got to be bigger so so he came up with this uh you know brought ted manning and the writers in and uh byron is kind of this conduit you know publisher that coordinator like herding cats i guess you could say anyway and uh then we had this other part of the book but i always thought somehow how he wrote these things and some of the um the names on this and how he’d work with these guys if he somehow has hidden something in there i mean this is gonna another thing bake your noodles that maybe there’s some code in the actual writing after after he edited it you know like the first letter of every third word you know you know some kind of like you know uh enigma yeah you know old machine type type thing going on so that was one of my my uh getting back to the sr-71 but yeah we he would only give me certain parts he knew the whole thing and uh everybody knows the story the sr-71 was each manufacturer got a different part they even created a company to buy titanium from the russians who they ultimately ended up using the plane to spy on so um you know that they used for the hall on that but uh yeah it was kind of like that so like i tell people i don’t know where they are cleveland was the only one like i said i acted as lookout i didn’t even know what side he buried it under i mean when andy and uh this is the other guy’s name andy brian ryan ryan found it um you know they went to the one side and then they went to the other side i didn’t even know what side he buried in when he buried it yeah so he was very crafty yes it seems so it seems so yeah it’s so we’ve often pointed out it’s kind of weird that that book the back part of the book is not written like a regular book it’s uh instead of one page it’s there’s two columns of text on each page which is odd like no other books really written like that so there has to be some sort of reason you’re right there is isn’t there yeah there’s not just like paragraph paragraph that’s two it’s two columns yeah okay yeah the formatting is very unique yeah yeah now you have to talk alex j the designer about that yeah alex says he doesn’t remember alex i think alex is a mason or something like that you know he’s put some things in there i’m skipping oh god you’re going to get us in trouble um well talking about uh seek clues being possibly in other places uh during your interview with josh gates um recently you talked about your your artwork with all of the trees and the the box and kind of you’re in the background and that’s really sparked a fire in the community talking about all of your works and where there are hidden to the secret and everything and so um if you wouldn’t mind expounding upon that comment from the show and maybe helping us um i have to think about that it’s very interesting that’s stupid no i i think uh uh okay i’ve paid um homage to uh byron and and subsequent work some of my paintings are i guess you could say are autobiographical uh they’re then i do hide things in them repeatedly i sometimes even swear at people in them and some of the small highlights of them or give people the finger or say hi there’s different things that are actually written in there but there are also uh other visual and illusionistic symbols that are in the uh or in the images i remember uh

right about the time i was working uh finishing up with the secret i started working for time life books and we worked on a series of books called the enchanted world i worked on about 10 of the 16 volumes and so their books on dragons and ghosts and night creatures and uh wizards and witches i think was the first book and one of the books was uh mythical beasts was one of them and it was a did an opinion of a minotaur which coincidentally which i thought josh would bring this up the image i did of the minotaur uh appeared in the movie uh the second bill and ted movie villain says journey yeah it’s in the seance scene and if you look in the sand scene and she opens up the page look there’s this horned figure in there and it’s actually a minotaur but they took they took it as a demon and so it’s in black and white on the page of this magical book and bill and ted are like circling the table and they have his his mom or something has has read this book for the stance whatever that is and uh in that nose of that minotaur when i did this for time-life book i put a uterus with fallopian tubes an egg in there and i told them after the fact i told the art director publisher everybody and they were like are you kid and they’re like and then it’s like the thing you can’t unsee what you see so subsequently i started hiding things and and then i did another book of dragons and uh on the back of uh the anatomy of the dragon on the back i put a lady part and uh they didn’t see it at first until i pointed it out and then of course they can’t unsee it so and they they still continue to hire me so it was funny because then i would start hiding stuff in and this is kind of an offshoot of uh the things i used to do early on you know in high school and there was a book called um sexual sublimation in advertising or something like that some guy had these really far-out theories that every advertisement you see had hidden genitals and all kinds of stuff in it i think and uh so i read that in high school i was like you know i think he’s stretching in this one but you know you look in the bubbles of a of a um you know a pint of beer or something and there would be some weird symbols or something in there and sometimes a guy really stretched it but with that and just i’ve always liked symbolic paintings that the paintings are hieronymus bosch and uh bruegel and uh a few other davinci or not davinci but salvador dali was another very early influence in his his way of uh um doing illusionistic things so for example like the hallucinogenic tory adore you know we could see a man’s face in the venus de milo’s body and uh so all these things kind of combined and i think one reason one of the when byron and i first met i had won the top student award at the society of illustrators student competition in new york got a scholarship to paris france and uh to study at the illustrators workshop there but uh byron had seen my work and i think that put him on to uh some of the symbolic thing for the secret because he saw that i had some kind of symbols and things in there and hit things and then he picked up on it he’s a pretty smart guy he could really kind of zone in on something and um i actually signed my first uh job with him a contract there i met with him in new york before i flew on to paris france that year and uh um so it was i was often on running with him but uh yeah so getting back to your uh symbolic thing yes there’s many symbols hidden in my stuff and some of them may relate to the secret some of them may not some of them are personal um autobiographical uh you can in fact if you even look at the uh the long uh they’re called pant when they panel the art on the uh hp lovecraft pieces you know there’s plenty of things that are in there some of them are personal some of them are um to do with the stories you know a lot of those were that was in the anthology of h.p lovecraft’s work so if you look at those covers some of those are symbols from the stories but some of them are uh some i think it’s the uh muse and reverie cover for charles de lent that’s directly kind of related to the secret a little bit i could say a little box there in the little the little figure there you know kind of going off and uh trying to think if there’s any shovel in there i don’t think there’s a shovel on that one so but uh you know i have to still keep the mystery going i think uh you know i einstein said the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious and i think it’s true and there’s something that tickles your brain you know or you you see something that you know

that you can’t quite see just yet but it gets your curiosity up and the the the pursuit of the solution is sometimes an extremely beautiful thing to do and to experience so i really appreciate you expounding upon that um you you mentioned a little bit earlier that somebody uh sent you a fedex box and that you receive all sorts of things fedex letter that kind of thing yeah yeah so why don’t we touch on maybe crazy people or people that are overly enthusiastic contacting you and sending you things and i don’t know i might call them crazy i think some of them are maybe frustrated i don’t know uh i my understanding is is that the new version of the book has a a form and back to send your solve in it and if they that’s john colby’s responsibility to respond to those and i don’t know if he only responds to the positive ones and maybe nobody has solved anything you know i don’t know where that goes they send me stuff and i don’t know how i can help him legally i am since the property of the book has been purchased by another business entity the contract’s intellectual property everything involved with this book is under brick tower press and john colby’s umbrella since he purchased byron’s properties after his uh his untimely death and uh so i can’t really say anything so when people send me uh call me that i’ve had him call my house i’ve had him send me packets in the mail you know you can find out where anybody lives nowadays i guess on the net which i have i don’t know how to respond to them at first you know i could respectfully call them and stuff and some of them don’t believe me they think i think too because i i’m kind of dangling things in front of people’s faces as far as some of the clues and the symbol stuff and everything but that keeps it interesting i think and uh i think you always have to keep hope alive and i think but some of these people have to realize that i um i can’t help them both legally and i just don’t know where the treasures are i mean i’ve said that repeatedly i can remember like when i talk about uh jason krupat and the boston

treasure that was solved when he started mentioning some of these things i remember you know i can go back to a few fragments of conversations i had with byron for a packet that he sent me or remember now the photo of like old ironside and stuff and i remember telling him byron i can’t put this boat in if i put it in if people are gonna know right away what we’re talking about you know so i said how about this so i put in the cycles how do you say that’s a situation yeah yeah and that word the little pinafores or whatever the tiny flags are and still make it look like some type of celtic design and uh working in with the spelling of boss and also you know there’s a there was a number of things where he were clues and things are blended that i’ve completely forgotten about you know and it was very like i said it’s very fluid he was off doing his thing we were talking i was saying i was sending him work he was burying treasures you know there was a lot of stuff going on in and on top of it it was you know 40 plus years ago you know i challenge anybody to remember all these little kind of um intimate details of how you’ve done something you know from more than 40 years ago i can remember big things about certain things but like i said i remember the one time i got i was burning clues in my kitchen in columbus before i moved to an apartment i remember almost getting sick to my stomach i had so much smoke in the apartment and in my kitchen because i had a steel bucket there i was burning these things in and um i actually got like nauseous and thank god nobody called the police because or the fire department because there was a lot of smoke coming out of my kitchen window and uh we didn’t have fire this is before smoke detectors so that was one episode where and with those clues being burned my memories went out with a lot of those too so you know i like to tell people this uh you and i we don’t talk often but we talk a decent amount i live in st augustine there’s a cask in st augustine and that cask is not on my mantel if you won’t give me a clue i don’t know that you’re going to give random other people a clue so like i don’t know yeah i can’t i can’t do that i mean i think well it would ruin the puzzle right like what’s the point of a puzzle like you know i i was jerking around with josh and then he sent me that beautiful shot of you know i don’t know if you saw that on the thing yeah the actual i have the uncensored shot but i i i came up with some clues for him and i just you know i i did a i did a rhyme and he was like going with it i’m like oh [ __ ] i better stop this because i want to and sure enough i got that that picture of that it’s with this sound man mike and uh brian is the camera guy and they’re a great group of people though i mean when they were here at the studio they uh they’re just very professional we had a good time we i’m on maybe a minute and a half on that episode that first episode and i i’m trying to think it’s like they were here for like six hours we had coffee and donuts and we were hanging out and

well my neighbors didn’t know what the heck was going on because it’s like a three try head up like a panel box truck and there was a van and all these people piled there were two producers standing outside the studio with dark coats on they look like fbi agents yeah i thought i think they probably thought yeah that guy finally got busted he’s probably got to grow operation in that building out there in bed

you know because they were just legalized in fact i just got i got a i just got contacted i have to respond to them i got contacted by uh the medical grow operation here in ohio they want me to come up maybe work collaborate with them on some kind of corporate identity thing and stuff and it’s probably from seeing the work the secret because they did a review of this book at the toronto star when it was first came out up in toronto and the guy liking my work to head shop art so i can i can see that it’s a fair it’s a fair assessment you know it would need to be in uh crushed velvet and black light responses yeah right yeah if you could put one of these paintings on crushed velvet that’d be great that’s the prince you should sell the black like do you uh do you have a favorite of these paintings i i know you’ve said that they’re your earlier work and they’re not your favorite paintings that you’ve ever done you know overall but out of the 12 do you have a do you have a favorite favorite gosh i i do like the castle half painting you’ve used that on t-shirts and promos and that was i i shouldn’t give any one of those those were those were put on a t-shirt i was artist guest of honor at

yeah because i did another one in northwest con and they used oh no they used another one from another one of the the strange protruster tails um yeah those were put on there they were um trying to think what else they were on buttons too i think you know no in fact i think i so i gave uh um i was a little sad but i gave uh a secret button to uh to josh gates after we did our thing in boston i wanted to have a little special memories of it and it was a button that byron gave me but i realized byron gave me two so i just found another one i have one and josh gates has one and he had handed these out um when i think the book was done but while we were working on it too we had a top secret stamp that said the secret so every time i did something whether it was a drawing or uh at the back of the painting and stamped it with this uh rubber stamp that said the secret so everything had a had a stamp on it and that was kind of a kind of a cool thing i i think i got off the track here again guys no no it’s okay were you saying that you still have that stamp i can’t no it’s got to be around somewhere i know i didn’t i didn’t get rid of it the reason we ask you is uh because we recently uh came into uh possession of a piece of memorabilia that has that stamp on it and we’re trying to have the stamp reproduced just so we can have fun with it yeah um that’s a piece of memory for it but yeah we had one made but it’s a little different oh yeah it came out horribly wrong um i think i don’t know look it was uh new times roman or something like that yeah it’s a it’s it’s that simple script it’s there’s nothing special about it it’s printed really well i mean sometimes a couple you know i would test it out and stuff and a lot of times near the end it was just like okay put something on this you know like two or three times on the back of the painting or the drawing whatever it was you know became part of that whole whole thing it irritates stamp makers because it’s in reverse right it’s just a big blop of ink and they’re like etching this is going to be a pain in the ass and they can’t really yeah i can see i don’t know where mine is i have to look for it i know i didn’t throw it out i did find the one button though which i was happy because i i i mean i wanted josh to have it because i think you know it’s just the promotion and being able to keep what byron did yeah a lot and how the community like you know we’ve we’ve talked about how it’s brought people together and relationships and maybe even marriages and uh friendships and things like that and i think that’s a cool part of this whole thing as long as you don’t damage anything you know and like i said you don’t get permission to dig if you have to yeah have a good good location

so yeah george and i are a prime example of uh the friendship the illustration you were just speaking of yeah that’s how that’s how we ended up meeting and um we’ve become very good friends since at two o’clock in the morning in the middle of fort raleigh national park

and then me and rachel we’ve decided that we can’t wait for a cask anymore i don’t know if i told you that bradley we’re gonna get married sometime next year the end of next year oh wow that’s exciting yeah i can’t i can’t do it and and i was talking to john about something too like um if i find something if i find a cask everybody’s just gonna say i cheated so it’s like i can’t i can’t really even dig anymore so yeah

yes so next year we’re gonna get married we’re gonna make jon come though you’re gonna have to fly down you’re gonna have to come to florida this pandemic thing is going it’s been oh yeah but it is because i gotta i hopefully have a like i supposed to be teaching at a university on the east coast here in the fall i’m gonna be a visiting visiting artist there so well speaking speaking of that uh you’re your number one fan linda spaulding whom i know i know you know that name i just heard that she she asked if you have any uh if you you have any traveling shows or you’re gonna have your paintings traveling around anytime in the near future well um right now i have to like i said i i may have a um a solo show here in uh 20 2022 in on the east coast but i’m going to hold off on that just to make sure everything goes right here because things are so tentative with the universities and teaching and uh how they’re setting things up it looks like you know things are going to get close back to normal by the time we fall rolls around yeah if everybody gets their vaccines and i mean we’ll still be walking around like a bunch of uh outlaws with masks on and stuff but uh i think uh i think they’ll be more relaxed until they

get down to a certain uh case counter i think i think in ohio here they want to lift all restrictions once we get down to uh so many cases per 100 000 people we get below a certain amount then they probably think they got it on the run but you know now they’re talking about the new variants but who’s to say you know people say things all the time and uh even though a lot of people have passed away because of this we’re still behind where they said we would be yeah you’ve often told me that uh byron’s goal in writing this was that he he wanted to write it in a way that a handicapped person in a library could could solve the book and could find the treasures and even in the back of the book the the form kind of insinuates that that that should be the case that someone without going to any of these cities should be able to figure out the exact dig spot and then explain it in a way that fits you know in a paragraph um but the thing that we’ve never been able to figure out is what age group he was looking at was he was he targeting children did he think children could sit in a library and and figure this out or was it more geared towards adults do you know what age group byron had in mind when he was writing this book or what age group it was marketed towards you know it’s funny because usually when you when you do a book proposal and byron was also was called the book packager you know he was the uh kind of central hub to coordinate authors and writers and you know he would work with arthur c clarke or ray bradbury but he’d bring in an illustrator and they ever get everybody to work together um and usually when you do that you have a target audience then you’re trying to direct that book toward but this uh i think you know i think it was a little bit older audience maybe mid teens and up and if you notice the first treasure was found by some young teenage boys but it also speaks to a little bit older a crowd because i mean when you have a character called the tupper werewolf i think a housewife could at the time without sounding sexist or anything could could identify with that or a typographical terror and i’m trying to think you know uh record collectors we try to hit on everybody in that field guide section of the book and uh i think it was anybody from like i said teens and probably young adult and up that would that would be a fan of the book i think he saw the appeal of kit williams masquerade book and that went over from little kids all the way in fact that you know some of the illustrations are very colorful and almost like children’s book type illustrations anyway so um that book appealed to a vast variety of people but i kind of think that we never really talked about um what the target audience was it was all about uh constructing these paintings at least from my point of view and um working with these clues and how diabolical we could be as far as how how clever and how we could change it up so that one solve would not a clue a treasure would be solved in exactly the same way as another even though there was a framework there maybe would uh would the seasoned artist the now john palinkar if you had to do this again what what would you have done differently if if if the seasoned artist did it rather than the young john valencia i would have spent more time on some of the some of the covers and put more in there i think i i would have probably we would have needed a little bit more time too i think to really to really make uh make them even deeper the both the verses and the uh the clues now by by that i mean you know maybe more resolution on a clue that would that would uh take a person step by step and maybe by the solving of one clue would lead on to enough to another clue and that’s kind of what has happened in a direct way i mean andy and what’s his name again brian brian andy and brian zinn uh i know they’re andy’s gonna get a kick out of this because everybody remembers that we were staying at the same hotel there in new york before we went over to brooklyn and it was like we could have dinner together and they didn’t let us know we were there together we could have a great time alone i ate like really hot szechuan or hot chocolate anyway um what was your question again you were talking about what would you do differently i would have done uh even more complex paintings and would have egged byron on to do even more detailed verses so that they were um just more just more detail so things that would maybe have also been which

maybe met some misdirection in there or a misdirection with a good reflection that got you off into another area um and like i said that did happen with uh with andy and brian you had um there was it took the internet to solve that actually believe it or not and uh i don’t know if people know the story behind that but by them typing in the words for the one verse it pointed them to the general area and then things started to fall into place and so even then after all those years and they were how many years after that they finally took the internet and a vast amount of knowledge to kind of find to pin that down what those words actually meant so and i didn’t even know that see byron was looking around i didn’t even see him looking at that stuff when he was writing it down it was like he had that little book of his you know like the indiana jones book with the little rubber band strap around it you know and little notes in there and little diagrams and stuff and i hate the fact that it’s been 40 years these are unsolved and your response to that question was i would make him harder yeah by making them harder you make them easier one way you know it’s like you know who knows where byron’s book is you know i don’t know what is this yeah that’s it

you’re a diabolical youngster you’re right i’m gonna

okay so so the the inside joke um that george was touching on earlier was uh it’s you might say that andy is more charismatic than brian so everybody remembers andy’s name and not so much brian’s but brian was the one that was really into the puzzle and he was just kind of tagging along as a good friend andy what was it not summers what was andy’s last name abrams um abrams abrams okay yeah but i remember zim because invaders in or zim yes nice my cartoon that’s why i remember brian i i love that john palincar just referenced my favorite comic artist johann vasquez i love he did this thing called uh johnny the homicidal maniac before invaders in it was hilarious i didn’t know that i’m looking at uh some questions here too from there were a couple of uh questions about like you touched on becoming human because of the the there was a guy who was talking about the human geometries and such because he does chainsaw carving you know some people i do that because i do i work for you know i work from imagination from from life and from my own photo reference you know that’s i work from anything that i can get that’s that i have control of from the from the start so if i have a model come over you know i can do drawings from life and then i can take photos and work from both and have model come back over just now it’s a little bit different though with them with the copic stuff but um bradley john can read the facebook page yeah

well i’m right now no i copied and pasted these in there from last time um these are hidden clues and other paintings yeah she called it night why yeah that was the one i showed that was amusing rivery by charles glenn there are many things hidden in these paintings so just uh whether they apply to the secret or not is up to your interpretation kit told a really nice story about that painting he said it was it was odd because it was such a beautiful painting but he he didn’t think it had ever been shown or maybe it was only shown once or twice um he said it just hung at the top of your staircase no actually it was it was shown at the uh society of illustrators in new york and it actually won an award called the hamilton king award which is uh they say it’s for the best illustration done by a member of the society of illustrators for that year yeah so like a nice big metal and a big loose site block and stuff it’s presented at the uh um they only give out one a year and it’s i’m in with a really good group of illustrators uh and it’s presented at the president’s dinner where they have the hall of fame inductees you know you have people like norman rockwell in there and nc wyatt maxwell parish j.c line weindecker can go through a whole list of wow harvey dunn and parker and mark english

bernie fuchs a lot of these people don’t we’re some of the people i actually studied with in paris france but um yeah it’s uh it was a very kind of a special thing so that yeah it hangs off it’s only been i mean i think i it was in the canton museum of art show i think that you guys went to you know no i don’t remember seeing that there oh okay no that one then it was at this side it’s been shown at a couple of uh uh conventions i think i don’t think it’s been at any art school so i’ve done some exhibitions at smart schools and universities too he just figured it was very personal he said you paint a lot of things and then you hang them up and they’re personal and no one ever sees them yeah that’s right now until you know i get like the venue to show them and then i like i do the canton thing and they picked what they wanted to show at that and they bought one of them for their permanent collection there and uh oh what’d they buy they bought i they they got uh they for their acquisition they uh got a with um one of the three covers for a uh i’m trying to think uh cherry priest was the author they were they were the uh it was about ghosts of the old south actually

it was called not flesh nor feathers and it was uh trying to think so that one’s got some symbols in it too is it on display there now they bring it out every once in a while they brought it up they every once in a while they do what they show works from their permanent collection so they bring it out there it was brought out in the last one and it was at the show it was one of three covers at the at the show at the canton when you guys were there um but uh yeah they bring it out occasionally hopefully they hang it right next to their andrew wyatt and jamie wife at the museum by the by the uh andy warhol the andes speaking about award-winning art and shows unless i’m wrong i think the last exhibition of um your watercolor painting um that yeah that’s uh going to be in uh it’s the american watercolor society the 153rd international exhibit exhibit and it’s in martinsville virginia starting march 12th through may 1st unless that has changed yeah i think some i heard different things they’re still advertising the show that it’s during i heard that uh some of the other venues cancelled but then i heard that because of the pandemic but it seems like it’s moving through i was i felt very honored uh and privileged especially too winning the the gold medal in that show and being that’s the first time i ever entered the american watercolor society and they’re they’re a heck of a organization they’ve been around for as you mentioned 153 years this show has been going on and they’ve shown work by i think you know andrew wyatt and winslow homer john singer sergeant and it’s a uh is a very respectable some of the new maybe modern crowd would think it’s you know kind of old hat and you know nothing but uh full of a bunch of sunday painters but i can assure you it’s not there’s some very accomplished

artists in there my high school art teacher is a uh a distinguished fellow of the american watercolor society and my good friend dean mitchell is also on the board of directors there i think in a distinguished fellow i think he’s a they call it the dolphin award dolphin fellaini dolphins water i guess so those both those guys are high school our teacher and a good friend from college are both uh in there too you know i didn’t even know it at the time they weren’t on the jury so there’s nothing to rape or anything funny but you think that you know it’s like george finding the treasure or something that’s not not like that i hate the fact that i’m i’m essentially disbarred from this now yes yes you’re you’re uh you’ve been castrated i’m sorry

i don’t know how to say that your your treasure gonads have floating off in the air buddy you know your probe has been removed that’s all right oh really i mean because that’s what it’d be because somebody would see that and say oh he touched the palin cat people can’t get anybody i’ve got i got one dig left i started it a little while back and i didn’t get it complete and i’m going to finish that because i have documents that i’ve been doing it for two years hopefully we find something it’s my last shot well you have to you have to get somebody else to get up there yeah yeah well i got a team all right questions i have i have two more that i would like to touch on edit all this stuff out about the soundtrack stuff oh no i’m leaving it all in every bit of it

because i spent too much time on it my questions are kind of intertwined um so for those of us that are are big fans of your work john um the only opportunities we really have right now to buy your work and have it in our home um is either going out and finding the book um that you did the work for and buying the book or in one case we found that you did artwork for a video game oh geez um and so we go out and buy the video game oh my gosh i don’t think i don’t even have a copy of that i don’t think i have a high-res jpeg of it from the art director there i think vin diesel owns that painting too i think nice so my questions were going to be um just as far as video game goes is uh have you done artwork for any other video game no i uh there’s so many good people out there doing it a lot of them are doing it digitally and it translates all really well to the to the covers a few my friends are been doing some but i haven’t done many i think the last one i did was that riddick thing but uh then before that there was uh i did like a marjon game and it was done for electronic arts and that whole thing is kind of weird how those i know a number of art directors that are uh involved in that business one of them actually bought a painting when i was a guest visiting artist at the laguna college of art and design and he works for uh was it red star games or something like that or so i i think i just found your mahjong game i’m about to say it should be difficult for us to locate that it’s got like it looks like it’s got like a dragon and a bird yeah oh god wow yuck i have to buy a mahjong game now same here i just um i just bought uh uh dragon world the old commodore game um john perrar did the art for that so you know it’s funny i saw the guy working it’s very crude and when he i mean byron was really see there’s nothing with byron he was always reading if we went to the friars club which he was a member of and we would go there and uh go up to the bobby howe health club on the fifth floor and women are only allowed up to the third floor or second floor or something those are a bunch of naked old guys walking around on the fifth floor getting you know doing a steam or getting rubbed down or they’re working out in the weight room spending spend i don’t know how i got on this byron was always reading how did i get the [ __ ] sorry

no it’s okay it’s good i’m like draw you story what now oh i’m dragon world yeah how do i get from dragon world to up to the buddy how healthy well you just want to talk about sven and it’s fine yeah i draw you now

he was a very nice guy though very very respectful very thorough very thorough yeah yeah yeah yeah no but sven always made sure he had your fruit juice in this in the sauna

i give you juice i tried i tried to get perrard to talk about that to talk about making the digital art back in the 80s and he wouldn’t say when i went to byron we would we would go there but when um before we would go to the fire i don’t know how i got there i go to his office tonight a lot of times i would check in because i sometimes i’ve seen other publishers live in new york and i’m saying this place we’re working together but then i’m off other places sometimes i go into the museum or whatever and so we would uh but i dropped by his office to check in and he had this guy in a back room he was a young guy and he was writing code and i remember i said so look at this is how much i got so far and it’d be like a a kind of really pixelated dragon flying around with like a really pixelated full bolt of lightning coming down or something like that and i’m like oh wow that’s really neat you know it’s a great game i said we were still in the age of pawn it wasn’t even full metal gear or metal jacket or anything like that it was like pre this you know byron was that’s what i want to say because he was always reading at the friars cup he was always ahead of the curve and when he was doing these games um he was ahead of the curve on that a lot of people weren’t doing it he did fahrenheit 451 i think with ray bradbury and he did the dragon world his own book he did treasure island this guy designed these games in a little back office working on a mac computer you know an early early mac you know and we re we recoded all of those games and you can play them on our website for god’s sakes yep no there’s so much only one of them really so i mean he was ahead of so he was doing that and i you know he got into the dinosaur thing and i think that inspired spielberg to do the you know to do the jurassic park movies because byron said this book is a really neat look at dinosaurs we’re going to reveal all this new information about him and he was really happy because he got uh i don’t know three spreads in life magazine you have to understand life magazines this was the place to be a huge magazine so that when you opened up a spread of it you had 20 inches of you know yeah you in front of in front of whoever was looking at the main i think he had three spreads in there william stout was the artist that worked on that book byron was on the morning show with you know gene charlotte who used to be a film critic at the time and nbc or abc i can’t remember so he was getting a lot of press with this with this book so he was always and then you know spielberg years later does this uh jurassic park thing and he was always ahead of the curve so this you got guys you’re talking about the video games and you know that’s he was always reading and that’s what he would do a lot of his reading on the bike at the back to the friars club on the buddy howell health club on the fifth floor so i guess final question then we’ll let john go get worse yeah go work you’re organizing my studio hmm do you you said you don’t have a copy of this would you like me to send you a copy no no that’s okay that’s okay i don’t mind at all i would love some opportunity to give back i don’t have a games i don’t have i don’t have any game consoles here my sons have all the game consoles they have the whatever the latest sony is they have them you know they have them hooked up they play online they got their headsets on they swear at each other you know oh yeah this is um this is one thing that your son kit and i have in common very much so is the video game franchise doom oh yeah i have a huge collection of doom memorabilia and uh him and i send each other things pretty regularly a nice cabinet he got back there too and i can see i can only see a little bit i see bob white you got a bobble heads in there too oh yeah there’s a couple okay yeah but uh george you you were mentioning you had to find a question i did make it to the end of doom and the only reason why i played it because we were in between homes and we were renting a home and so we had satellite tv where we were in the unit that we got from uh dish unit he had a built-in doom game in it doom was in in the unit so we could play it i played it all the way to the end i saw the bloody rabbit or whatever that was at the end yep would i really got and we played it on a a small wireless keyboard that came with the uh um with it substituted for regular remote control that came with the dish unit and so you can use the different arrows and stuff it wasn’t even a game uh whatever you call a controller that’s awesome wow so it was i yeah and then i got see i get too obsessive about stuff it’s like i am with my art i can keep on working you know i can or my music i can be down there for seven or eight hours and my life’s like are you coming up yet it’s like no i still i’m working down here you know so if i’m in the studio in the same way and i will be the same with i mean i played dr mario i don’t know how many levels i got in you know it’s like i get the ocd clicked on there and i can’t get blinders on and i will conquer something until i can or i will work on something until i can master it so yeah that’s why i don’t get anyone near any of that fair enough stuff i think too i think it’s a real distraction with the young people today and i think they should quit it i think i don’t qualify as young anymore so i’m okay yeah i’m good i mean yeah but i’m not into that i i would obsess too much about it i’m into the music thing i’m into the i’m kind of a technology you know i mean i really like that stuff and i i think when it deals with music and it’s funny because in my art i’m all traditional and in my music i’m all digital it’s so it’s kind of you know that’s where i am more with the technology in art i still think we can uh painting uh right the old way is kind of you know my my students just called me i’ll be john kenobi

talk about the old ways so i still think there’s something honorable and something kind of primordial about working traditionally in the arts you know with paint and canvas or panel or paper and watercolor that can’t be replaced by some of these digital artists working on the screen i mean what they’re doing is beautiful you know the the the special effects and the art that they can do but i think some of them are missing out now by getting so much into the digital realm through the games and through the the art that there’s uh that they’re they’re missing uh they’re they’re missing activating a different part of their brain than what’s being activated by the technology so my uh my my last question it’s uh it might not even make the cut i don’t exactly know how to ask it um the secret kind of the secret kind of accomplished something that art generally doesn’t accomplish generally when you experience art you experience it in a 2d way you look at it at a book or you look at a painting and you appreciate it you appreciate the way it makes you feel you you sort of take the story that the artist wants to give you um but the secret you experience in the real world you you take you take the secret and you go out to different parks you experience adventures with your family things like that it just makes people experience the art in a different way i was curious if you thought of that when you were creating the secret and now as sort of a seasoned artist how does that make you feel that you’ve you’ve your art sends people out to experience the world that way oh geez i don’t know when i was working i didn’t think any of that at the time it was just like trying to do something cool something that was a little mischievous and uh

just try to you know clever and trying to do a good piece of art and they kind of vary in quality that’s why if i had a chance to do it again i’d approach them a little bit more spending a little more time on them as far as uh now it’s like in one way it’s like you know this is back 40 years ago i’m on to other things here so i feel in one way this is kind of pulling me back but you know i can appreciate uh what it’s done for some people you know where it’s it’s maybe frustrated some people it’s created friendships like with you guys and uh i think uh that’s that’s a good part people have learned a little bit about history jason krupat lost 40 pounds i got to get on his program because you know i’m kind of middle agent kind of sat too long at the easel i guess you could say and so

i mean it is neat to know that people have learned a little bit have gotten friendships and uh it’s astounds me that’s harry i’m talking about one of the earliest projects i ever worked on that has garnered this much attention i mean when i think about it i had worked through i mean i worked for american greetings at age 19 and i worked there and they bought some of you in my high school work for their corporate collection and then you know i freelanced for uh the studio uh there in art school you know i did stuff for procter and gamble and ncr and um huffy bikes and things like that and a number of other major commercial the very kind of commercial the ugly underbelly of commercial art i like to call it and then my first really kind of more artistic stuff that i got through new york byron was the first person to ever contact me out of out of new york and we worked on the distant stars project and then the secret was the second project we worked on and uh then i had already started doing stuff out in new york so it’s it’s uh in one way amazing to me that’s something i did that long ago has kind of come back to haunt me i guess but it’s also gratifying to see people engaged in the pursuit of treasures or using their brains and trying to figure this stuff out you know along the way you know having good friendships and relationships and going out to good dinners and experiencing some of these places aside from just looking for the treasures you know that there’s a there’s a whole other series of orbits that are around the the core of this uh of you know of the uh of the books so all right well we appreciate your time i don’t want to hold you up anymore unless there’s anything you want to say to the secret community uh no just uh treasures get permission don’t dig without permission i do not know the treasures do not send me any more things please just you know man hunt safely have a good time don’t be evil and be good be kind be excellent to each other man

oh look at that you gotta you got the you got the uh st augustine one i mean you have the yeah he does yeah so there is there is one thing bradley this is gonna be fun there’s john there’s one thing we like to do to our podcast guests what bradley and i are in a position where the community likes to come to us for advice and and we’ve been in this a lot so we know a lot of things so we like to ask our pod we like to give our podcast guests a chance off air not recorded to ask us one question that we will answer honestly so do you have any question about the secret that you would like to ask us yeah it’s hilarious because it’s you i don’t know what who is why haven’t you guys found one yet we’re we’re morons i’m not smart enough dude it’s as simple as that i couldn’t see a home plate that was in front of my eyes for years that’s why i’ve lived in augustine my entire life and i don’t even know where to start this puzzle i forgot that i even forgot about see i forgot that the sleeve thing and i remember i think byron’s saying do that i’m like where he goes that’ll work i said you think here and he goes that works so the home plate on the sleeve and i see it’s like one of those it was very fluid back and forth and stuff like that you know so but if byron and i were doing it this time we would definitely use the internet yeah the internet would be part of it in fact he would probably

hire a couple digital guys along with somebody like me that do print and within the printed paintings there would be some kind of clue to go to a url that would then open up to additional clues that might take you back to the book or to somewhere else that you would find something you know it could be really that could be really cool too bad you know it’s like anyway but yeah to answer your question we we love this thing we’ve been working like i said i live i’ve lived in this city my entire life i don’t even know where to start like i have a i have a secret tattoo i have no idea where to start like i’m just an idiot when it comes to this puzzle oh i don’t think you are i think you’re smarter than you think or that you’re like me to me but uh well that’s a nice compliment thank you it hasn’t helped me find a cast though i still can’t solve this puzzle um and thanks for taking time out of your day to do this interview i know uh you’re a busy man and and hopefully uh hopefully you had a good time i know we enjoyed it and hopefully everybody out there watching enjoyed it maybe we got some questions answered for you um helps you sort of narrow down your solutions or your ideas hopefully it helped out a little bit um if you wouldn’t mind throw a comment down below subscribe to the videos we don’t we don’t post stuff often on facebook or on uh youtube but when we do it’s usually pretty cool so hit the subscribe button if you want um check out the rest of our videos whatever you’d like to do bradley bradley uh hit a button play us out

chase man we gotta get you some cooler buttons