17. Pimping the Palencars

by | May 15, 2019 | 0 comments

Season 02 Episode 03

Pimping the Palencars

The podcast team took a trip to meet JJP! There are so many things we couldn’t tell you in this episode, but we tried to drop as many hints as we could. Pay attention and figure out what they are. From art critiques to digging holes, from EU to people who think we are idiots. The podcast has become a puzzle, Enjoy!

George Ward
Hey guys welcome to another episode of The Secret Podcast. I’m here with Bradley and Brett. So we had we had a pretty big trip recently. We’re gonna talk about we made a trip to Cleveland. That was kind of fun. How was your weekend? Brett? Did you get to meet Alan Carr?

Brett Zingler
No, I actually did not. I met a few other people but their names were not Palin car us is

George Ward
what we meant some Palin cars. Just say no, just to rub it in a little bit.

Brett Zingler
I’m just a little bit jealous, and I can’t wait to hear about it.

George Ward
So I’ve got some really weird news. Somebody just before we started recording, somebody sent me a message that one of the members of our Facebook team was possibly shot in New Orleans while looking for the treasure a couple of days ago said the story was they were they were metal detecting in a park looking for the cask. And that they were shot. The person said that the person shot was sort of lived to look for for the cast. It was a big part of their life. And I don’t have any updates about I don’t know any details. It’s just sort of what I’m hearing now. I just wanted to just just push some safety. Like don’t don’t like, I know, it’s a big thing. Now with you know, getting permission from Parks and parks aren’t being cooperative. So people are going out at like three o’clock in the morning to dig out their spots and parks. Your your life’s not worth a cask man, don’t New Orleans is a crazy place. Don’t go out digging in the middle of a random Park. And like the Treme at three o’clock in the morning, think just be safe. take somebody with you something I don’t know, I don’t even know how to avoid this.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, be safe, be smart. Use common sense and take somebody with you. Part of this whole adventure is you know, making friends getting out there with family don’t don’t go out at 2am by yourself, no matter where you are. Take Take a friend with you. Take a light with you. headlamps are a great idea. Make sure you can see what’s going on and make sure people can see you. I agree

Brett Zingler
with both you guys. And I think it’s just like anything, if you’re gonna go out and do anything at two or three o’clock in the morning and in a major city especially but anywhere you got to be careful about it. And I’m really you know, this is a tight community. We all care about each other, and we help each other. And if I know we don’t have any details, but I really hope this is untrue. But if it is true, I just want to express our condolences from the podcast. And you know if there’s anything obviously that we can do to help out we’re there for you. But again, just to reiterate, well put yourself in harm’s way. Yeah, it’s

George Ward
important to remember like, well, this is a great hunt to us. And it’s a very innocent hunt, right? It brings people joy and it brings people happiness. But at the end of the day, some of these are pretty dangerous cities like New York City, it’s Manhattan in the middle of the night, New Orleans, New Orleans is one of most violent cities in the country. So it’s Milwaukee Boston, like these are, these can be dangerous places. So just err on the side of safety.

Bradley Hodges
George and I were were doing a little investigating at a site. And we stumbled across somebody it was pitch black outside, they did not have a light. Luckily, we did no idea to this day why they were out there or if it was a person or a ghost, but we stumbled upon somebody and scared the absolute daylights out of myself. And I think George as well.

George Ward
Oh, dude, it was it was so scary. We were walking down it was in a fairly, it’s a place that during the day the public is going to be right and there are chairs. And this person was just sitting in a chair in the middle of this park. And we’re walking around, we’re talking we got our flashlights out and all of a sudden you just hear a hobo. And this dude that stood up looks like he was like six and a half foot tall. It was the scariest thing. Yeah.

Bradley Hodges
If I wasn’t there with George, I would have probably just died of a heart attack on spot. But luckily, I was there with somebody. So I felt a lot safer. And I just said hey, how’s it go? And he kept walking?

George Ward
I mean, speaking of that, me and Rachel had been digging out and St. Augustine in the middle of the night and like two drunk dudes pull up in a car and start like they didn’t see me because I was digging they saw Rachel. So they pull up and start like talking shit to Rachel. And then I pull out like I kind of wander out from the woods. I don’t know man. People are weird and the city These are weird and you’re out there in the middle of the night. God only knows what can

Brett Zingler
happen. The only time that I’ve ever dug at night is with you, George in New Orleans, oddly enough, yeah, in New Orleans and St. Augustine. And probably just like Rachel, I felt a lot safer with you around. I’ve gone out by myself during the day. But you know, I certainly would not go out by myself. But, you know, all of this is, you know, I don’t want to sound flippant about what happened. And I’m really feel awful. And I just want to tell our community and our friends, just be careful and be safe. It’s a terrible thing that that happened.

George Ward
So I’m the I’m the dumb one. Like, I’m the do as I say, not as I do, guy, because what was it the the time that I went to New Orleans before, when before you and I went was the time where I like, was digging, there was a bunch of homeless dudes around and I asked one of them to hold my GoPro and take a picture of me like, that was dumb. Yeah, remember that not everyone out in the middle of a big city at two o’clock in the morning, are there for the same reasons you are.

Brett Zingler
So we hate starting this podcast on on sort of a down note. But you know, we do want to make sure that it’s the first thing we say because we think it’s important. Yeah. And so everybody be safe out there and bring a friend and you know, don’t do crazy things at two o’clock in the morning. Yeah. And

Bradley Hodges
if you’re gonna go digging, and you don’t have somebody just reach out on the group, there were everywhere. There’s somebody that will go with you. That’s right.

George Ward
Yeah, man. If you’re in St. Augustine, I think there’s enough people who have dug in St. Augustine little to verify, if you want to go out digging somewhere at two o’clock in the morning, and St. Augustine call me and I’ll come and there’s somebody in every city who will do that.

Brett Zingler
Okay, let’s move on to another quick, transitional topic.

George Ward
So we set up a, we set up a voicemail number, essentially, the number is 386-227-7821. Call in, leave us a message with your name, and you know, any questions you have anything you want to talk about. And if you want, we we will call you, we’ll talk to you or we’ll text you or whatever we can. Maybe if you leave your solve, you want to talk about your soul on the show, we can have you call in whatever you want to do. I mean, it’s a new, it’s just a new thing that we’re trying out a lot of people have sent messages on Facebook, you know, asking for our opinion. And we figured why not give it more direct approach. We can actually talk about it. Right, we could go through your whole solve if you want to, and just talk about the pros and the cons, whatever you’d like. What we’d

Brett Zingler
love to have people do is ask questions, tell us about your song, leave us your phone number if you want to. And we’ll get some people will call back and actually talk through yourself, you know, none of us probably have any better answers than than you do. But at least we can discuss it in an open forum and have it be a little bit more fun. But we got we got five or six voicemails within the first several hours of being open. We got

George Ward
it, we got several within the first hours of being posted. So it’s great,

Brett Zingler
great, we’re pumped. So please do call in. And it’s really exciting. And then, you know, as always, we’re open to answering questions. So if you want to post them in the Facebook groups and the podcast page, whatever you want post questions, we’ll try to get to them. If we think we have a somewhat decent answer, we’ll we’ll try to we’ll try to address it.

George Ward
Yeah. And in addition to that, I feel like the the community has given me a lot over the past year or so. And I kind of wanted to give something back to the community. We went up and met with jjp recently at one of his galleries and got a bunch of stuff signed. And we’ve decided to give away some of the signs stuff just for free, you don’t have to pay anything. We’ve got three different it’s like artworks printed artworks that are signed by jjp we’re gonna give one to some random person that likes the secret podcasts, Facebook page, one to a random person who likes the secret podcast Instagram account, and one to a random person who likes the secret podcast or subscribes to the secret podcast on YouTube. Whoa, and and then we have an actual print. Sort of it’s on paper. And it’s not huge, but it’s something that you cannot you absolutely cannot get unless you see jjp in person. It’s one of his prints that he sells it shows signed by jjp we’re gonna give one of those to one of our Patreon members Patreon is is like a platform that allows you that one This one cost money. Patreon is a platform that allows you to sort of support projects or communities that you like. And it’s varying in fees you can join for like $1 a month you can join for $20 a month it’s totally up to you. And all of that money goes back into the show like we got to get bread a new mic so we’re gonna get bread a new mic, or hey, where are all these all these trips we’re taking we’re taking a lot of trips recently, man number Want to get the sign? There’s a bunch of people who want us to go out and dig their spots for some reason. So like people who live in Alaska want something dug up in Houston. And they don’t know anybody in Houston. So they’re asking us to do it. So that money is going to be put towards that. It’s not like lining our pockets or anything. So anyway, the one the big print that you can only get from jjp himself, and I believe it was like, $300 to buy it, I think so what he said, I’m not real sure. We’re gonna give that away to a Patreon

Brett Zingler
member, how so what’s the format? How are we going to do it, we’re just going to pick them at random and

George Ward
pick them at random. There’s just like we did with the Japanese book, there’s websites online, where you just go and you put everybody’s name in it like this, this last one. We already said, we’d let you choose somebody from the Facebook page to give the the first one away to so I’ll just later on, you can just randomly pick a name, like, go to the Facebook page and the first name you see or whatever. Just pick somebody and give it away. But the others we’re gonna put in a random generator and just let it let it do its thing. Cool.

Brett Zingler
I’m up for it. That’s a lot of pressure. And so you guys took a trip. So about a couple of weeks ago, we were going to record this podcast and have it in the books but we decided to pause because you guys, were going to go on a trip the two of you tell us a little bit more about what you were up to up and up in good old Cleveland.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, we had a blast. It was a lot of fun. I was lucky enough George met me here at our house, we got to hang out and then we caravan up to Cleveland and got to go to a first before the show we got in touch with Kitt. And found out it was going to be there as well. And got to got to meet JP and kids and see JJ PS artwork firsthand. And boy, I cannot recommend it enough. If you don’t own origins yet, find a copy it his work is amazing. It gives you a nice dive into his history, his inspirations, his thoughts on art, a lot of his works, you know from the beginning to more recently, and just getting to see those paintings in person was, it was a real treat. My wife and I’s personal favorite piece is called becoming human. look it up online. It’s an absolutely amazing piece. And it does not do the actual piece justice by any stretch of the imagination. The first thing JJ P actually said whenever we were talking about the piece was can you see the detail that you’re missing when you’re looking in the book or online? Absolutely. I did not know this. I learned this from gJp. Apparently, whenever his works are being published, whoever’s working for the publishing company will actually airbrush the art after the fact really takes a lot away from it. So that that was my personal favorite treat was getting to see that piece and getting to talk to JJ P about it. If anybody wants to bump me $18,000 You know, I’d be happy to give that wonderful piece out.

Brett Zingler
That’s awesome. What so what predicated the trip? Was there some sort of event going on or so what happened

George Ward
was Bradley stumbled upon a exhibition that jgP was doing jjp was doing sort of a gallery opening with some of his paintings. And he was just like, I gotta go. And I kind of decided to tag along with him. And that was, that was kind of the start of it. We made a plan and we just had it up there. But then when we got there, there were you know, there were other things we wanted to do. But the main focus was going to that exhibit we figured seeing JJ PS art in person, you know, might might help in Well, number one, we’re both huge fans, right? So we just wanted to see JJ PS art, but then seeing them in person, you sort of get a feel for how he paints and what he does. And you know, how his style work.

Brett Zingler
Did you guys so when you walked in, was he there? I mean, there’s obviously the first time you guys met him,

Bradley Hodges
though? Yeah. Oh man talking about magical moment. So George, myself, Rachel and Laura, my wife, we were standing kind of at the entrance of the gallery talking about you know, what we just seen talking about the the spread that was available, there was food snacks for somebody who is retiring, and then jjp just kind of swifts by walks in walks right by us and we all just kind of took a moment. You could just kind of see all of our heads turning the exact same time. Like did that just really happen? It was crazy.

George Ward
We saw kit there and we walked up the kit kit super friendly, super gracious. Like it was just it was a great night.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, I can’t speak more finally a kid. Just super friendly. It’s super kind want to To make sure that I pointed out the my favorite piece of artwork, and he brought me over to it. And he’s like, I want to point out a few details that you might not have noticed. And, you know, just just really made sure that our experience was was rich as it could be. And it was. So it thank you very much.

George Ward
Yeah, except for the time he sort of threw me under the bus where he was like, Hey, if you met my dad, I was like, no chance to meet your dad. So we both walked over to JJ PJ JPS hanging out with his friends talking. Kit taps his dad on the shoulder and goes this dude that made the axes and then dipped out he was gone. And I’m standing there with my mouth wide open. Like, Hi, my name is George. I like i What do you say? What do you say to jjp? Like he’s talking to his friends. His kid introduces you to him. What do you say? Hello.

Brett Zingler
I’m the guy that sent you a weapon. Yeah. But it

George Ward
was it was great. They were all super gracious. jjp stuck around and talk to us about his art for a while after, after the show. Right? He stayed around for another like, half hour after everybody had left. And we were just talking about his art.

Brett Zingler
And so in, in looking at his art, what parallels Did you find between what’s in the secret and what he had on display? And did you Did you learn anything?

George Ward
That dude really does love dots. Like all of his paintings have dots in them? I can’t I’m so tired of the dots, the dragons made out of dots, or Gadon or whatever drawn with dots, everything’s got dots in it.

Brett Zingler
Did you count all the dots?

George Ward
I did. And it didn’t help. It didn’t help at all. It doesn’t help. It’s just dots dots everywhere. My life is plugged in dots along with dots.

Bradley Hodges
I’m sure we’ve all noticed the blue highlighting in the secrets. And it’s always been discussed whether or not that is something that’s important. Is that a clue? And if you get to know JJ PS artwork, a lot of his artwork, like he has a piece called return to the king. And it was an illustration done for The Hobbit series. And you take a look at that and the the main characters, calves like an aura of blue kind of luminescence. And we talked to JJ P about that. And he made it very clear that it’s it’s just you know, to highlight the piece of art, the main focus of the art, it’s actually kind of, I don’t say religious, he made it a point to say as a spiritual sense to it. If you go into churches that are highly decorated, you’ll see something very similar. And that was kind of his way to put that into his art. He’s very inspired by Salvador Dali, that’s one of his favorite artists, which by the way, Salvador Dali’s birthday, happy birthday. And and so that’s something he took away from Salvador Dali’s art as well. And that’s one of my favorite things about his paintings. Is that luminescence? Because it really just adds a nice flair. without overpowering the the image

Brett Zingler
I tell you guys, I always thought that that was just to delineate why at first, I thought when I first looked at the images in the secret, I thought it was to, to highlight a certain thing, because it’s super, super important. And then I started looking around at all, you know, going through all of the images, and I thought that that blue luminescence was then just to delineate colors, right. So if something is something is if the forefront picture is black, and the thing behind it as black, you have to use some sort of blue hue around the object in front to make sure that you can see it correctly and see the delineation. But it sounds like he’s, that’s just a stylistic effect, right.

George Ward
I don’t know, man come in, like as I don’t want to call myself an artist, because I’m not. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. But but coming from the background of trying to art. I used to think that jjp paints in washes, right, he doesn’t paint like Bob Ross, where you take a big dollop of paint on your brush and just smear it on the canvas. He waters stuff down so much that it’s super transparent. Right, so you put a layer of, of paint on the canvas, and it’s, it’s almost clear, and then you put 10 or 12 more layers of that same paint and you start to see a color, right. So that’s the way jjp paints and I always thought because of those washes, you’re not getting a super crisp, sort of outline, you’re getting a little bit of bleeding, because you’re not putting the maybe you’re not putting the layers on in exactly the right place, or exactly the same place. So like an arm if you’re painting an arm on someone, it tends to sort of bleed out. So I always thought maybe that blue was to highlight where the edge actually is because of the washes, but having him sit and explain that it’s, you know, religiously inspired or what from inspired from religious art or whatever those those auras and the hues in religious art are important, right? They do denote important things of the paintings. So I don’t think there’s really an answer as to whether or not it is or isn’t important. I think he’s just left us more confused. It’s still an argument to make, whether or not it’s just a style or if it’s his style, because it’s important. I don’t know

Brett Zingler
faults, actually, that gives a little bit of more definition to what we’re looking at at the images and in the secret.

George Ward
Yeah, but it doesn’t really give us an answer. It doesn’t really say, like, the argument has always been, is this stuff important? And arguments? Yes, no, whatever. There’s been arguments for both. And jjp gave us an answer. And it left us with the same argument. Like we’re, we’re still we’re at the same place, we started out. And for me, it helps

Brett Zingler
a little bit, because it makes me think while it’s not just to delineate kind of what I was saying earlier, it’s not just to delineate image for an image to back image, there’s actually more to it.

George Ward
Something that’s interesting about this right is that the more we sort of learn about the secret, the more religion plays into it. Months and months and months and months ago, one of the members of the Facebook page made a pretty good argument that the the fair folks tale in the beginning of the book directly correlated with the 12 tribes of Israel, right. And the person I can’t remember who made it, was it Gabby or think it was Gabby, she put out a huge PDF, right? Like, how different aspects of the shields of each tribe were represented in each painting. And it was sort of dismissed. But the more that we learn about these, the more religions playing a weird role. And that’s something that needs to be taken another look at

Brett Zingler
agreed. Did you ask him about that? Yeah, yeah, we did. That’s not going in the pocket.

Bradley Hodges
So I’d like to mention so George was talking about technique just few moments ago. And one of the biggest treats that we got, while we were there, as kit was so graciously, graciously invited us to attend one of his classes. Kitt teaches professionally, not only at the college, but also at the Cleveland Museum of Art. And we got to sit in on one of his acrylic classes, and just getting to see him in action. And getting to see his technique, going to work was just an absolute treat. You’re learning about what Giorgio is talking about washes, different layers of paint to create the you know, the final piece. One of my favorites, things that he taught me during that was be a master of your tools. Don’t let your tools rule you rule your tools. For instance, you know, don’t be afraid to turn your piece upside down, if it’s going to make it easier to paint that way. If you have a dull pencil, sharpen it, don’t lose your lines, etc, etc. So don’t be a lazy painter. And don’t let your piece you know rule how you how you paint. And also, don’t be afraid to make a mistake, it was awesome just to see him take a toothbrush and dip it in paint, and then dip it in water and then sprinkle it onto the painting. And just the fact that that added, made all the difference it was it was amazing to watch that. And so it was very gracious of him to allow us to do that. And it was it was a great opportunity for me to learn. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. Giorgio may have to disagree with you, you are an amazing artist. And I love it every time you post work, please keep it up. But that was an amazing experience for me to learn from

George Ward
if you have a chance to take when it gets classes, I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you they’re cheap. They’re not, but they’re worth every single dollar. It’s so helpful just to get in the mind of a painter and figure out not just why something was painted, but how it was painted. The process of the painting is just as important as a finished product, at least sometimes I think especially with the secret knowing knowing how the secret paintings were painted, could give you a you know, a glimpse into where clues are laid out how they’re laid out, maybe how they’re painted a little differently, that kind of thing, if that makes sense. But there’s no way to really know that unless you know the process of the painting.

Bradley Hodges
Another treat that I got to experience while we were there at the art museum. They were selling JPS Game of Thrones calendar, and I’ll be honest, I’m ashamed of myself. I didn’t buy it when it came out. Because a I’ve never seen Game of Thrones and B. I thought hey, it’s a calendar. It can’t be that great. Guys, I’m telling you I’m dead wrong. And if you haven’t already purchased this calendar, you need to go out and buy it. The artwork in this calendar is absolutely breathtaking. Whether you enjoy Game of Thrones or not. This is frameable work go out by calendar by to one to keep wonder frame but it’s it’s it’s absolutely amazing. Plus, there’s one frame that Kitt posed for was was the man Otto for for jjp to paint, and I think you’ll really really enjoy that one.

George Ward
Yeah, JP made a big point to talk about the pig’s ass a lot. He calls it that’s the painting that get modeled for it. He calls it the pig’s ass. And he talks about the game of thrones people being like, Why? Why would you? Why would we put a pig’s ass in the calendar? It’s a great painting. It’s we got a copy of it signed actually by Kitt.

Brett Zingler
Awesome. Yeah. So today, I learned that jjp likes to openly promote the big SAS. And also Bradley is, I think the only person on the planet that has not seen Game of Thrones.

George Ward
I feel like we’re just pimping the pilot cars right now, by his book. There’s my favorite painting, there was called Ghost punch. And it was like $60,000 by cool, we

Brett Zingler
got to crowdfund that.

George Ward
I got to buy like an original Palin car, though. And that was super cool. It was kit it was one of kits, paintings, the painting that we watched kit eight, I got to buy, like and I love it, because it’s just fruit. It’s like an orange and an apple and a pear. And that’s all it is. But it’s done by kit. And it’s done like the thing that I love about kids art is it’s it’s angry, right kids art is angry and vicious and like hard. So even even looking at fruit you can tell kit that it because the fruit like the the lines are just so hard and crisp. And it’s it’s hard to explain, but I love it.

Brett Zingler
What’s the major difference between the two of their styles?

George Ward
Kit paints and oil? Yes. I think that’s like, kids paintings are very, they’re not. They’re not fast, like, but they’re, they’re harsh. They show like, like, I don’t know, I’m not an art critic, but I would say Kitts paintings are kind of angsty, they’re very angry, with very hard, crisp lines and very deep dark colors, where jjp stuff is very, like, you know, 1000s and 1000s of layers of washes to make intricate tiny details kind of

Bradley Hodges
thing. While we’re in pimping the ballot cars. I like that that should be TV show pimping the ballot cars. So jjp will have a shop open again in the future online, where he plans on selling prints that he has decided to do this in house. And this is something I learned a speaking about a little bit earlier about publishers, airbrushing his work and then printing and then selling. And he was not a big fan of that. So he has set up at his his studio where he is now able to replicate his own works and do his own prints. So he’s we’re not losing that quality of the original painting, and who he’ll have a site up sooner than later where he’s going to be selling those. And in the meantime, while we’re waiting on that kit, pal and car.com You can’t you don’t just have to take our word for it, go to his website, he has all of his works there. He has his charcoal, he has his oils, and they’re all breathtaking.

Brett Zingler
You know, the average person can’t get up to Cleveland and go check this stuff out and talk to them. Like how can we you know, how can people like me own a piece of that?

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, according to kit, the large majority of the pieces he puts on his website are for sale. So if you see a piece that really moves you, private message him, email him, and you know, he’ll probably work something out with you.

George Ward
And if you want to buy an actual jjp, and you’ve got $40,000, I’m sure you can figure out a way to get in touch.

Brett Zingler
I’m ready to go. I got my credit card ready. Okay, so what I thought we touch on now is talked about your guys, so your guys, you guys went to Cleveland, and then you went out and you went to the actual big site where one of the tasks was found. Is that right?

George Ward
Well, why not? Right? I mean, if you’re in Cleveland, you might as well go to the Cleveland dig site. I mean, it’s it’s really good. To get a sense of how the puzzle worked. Like you already know the answer, you know, the solution to the puzzle. It’s a really good idea to you know, sort of walk through it and see exactly how it worked. Like that’s definitely going to help you in the rest of the puzzle. So if you’re ever in Cleveland, you’re ever in Chicago, stop by click the cultural garden, stop by Grant Park and just walk through the puzzle and see exactly how it works. It’ll give you tips to how the rest of them work, I assure you. But yeah, and another thing was when Byron when Brian dug in Cleveland, he left like had his cast in the hole. His cast was broken, it was destroyed. And when he went to try to put it back together, he only had literally like half of the pieces. So we figured we try to find some of them. So we dug up half of the planter the cultural garden is trying to find more pieces of the cask and I don’t I don’t know that we found any we found some that kind of look like it right Brad but not

Bradley Hodges
Oh, George. We found enough to make three cats. Six.

George Ward
Well, the cool. The cool thing about the cultural Gardens is it’s it’s a, it’s a planter, right? And it’s, it’s all like, I mean, it’s Clay, but it’s clay that’s been gone through and most of the rocks are gone out of it, you’re not going to be hitting huge boulders or really even little pebbles. So we just kind of went through and anything that we found, we pulled out, we pulled out glass, we pulled out parts of the walls facade, we pulled out little rocks. And I don’t know, there were a couple of pieces where I would say, yeah, maybe that’s part of the cask. I don’t know, we still have to have them looked at.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, well, we’ll post photos of what we found. And yeah, the glass was one of my favorite finds, there were some really interesting pieces of glass. And I’m not talking about Plexiglas, I’m talking about green glass, brown glass. But one of my favorite pieces was a piece of clear glass with a nice hexagon, old design on it, and the word cola. No telling how long that’s been there. But it’s a really neat little piece. And I think my wife is actually gonna help me put together a nice little art tribute to our venture with the stones we found in the broken pieces of glass.

Brett Zingler
Did you guys run into any people that were wondering what you were doing digging in a planter out there?

Bradley Hodges
No, we actually had a park employee walk right past us and didn’t even give us a good second glance. We called ahead, we, you know, we’re advocates of getting permission. So we called. And we told them exactly what we want to do want to know when you know if we could, when would be the best time etc. And they pretty much told us Hey, as long as there’s not an event going on, because when you go to visit that you’ll you’ll see it’s a nice place for a wedding. And a lot of events happen right at that spot. This as long as the events not going on. Nobody cares. Just don’t don’t mess up the plants and don’t make a mess. Just clean up after yourselves. So that’s what we did. And indeed, nobody care.

George Ward
It’s kind of nice.

Brett Zingler
So, so nothing, nothing of note so far. Or maybe or maybe not. Or what do you guys think? What do you guys think that you have found? little piece?

Bradley Hodges
It’s possible, I did reach out to Brian and ask if he would be okay, if I sent him the pieces we found. And so you can compare? I haven’t gotten a response yet. But as soon as I do, if he’s okay with that, we’ll get his opinion and see what he thinks. But yeah, I mean, there’s there are some pieces that could be it, but it’s real hard to say, Yeah,

George Ward
minutes, spent 40 years, man, it’s, they’re all caked up with clay and mud. And there’s some that are shaped. They’re not rocks, like I don’t know what they are, but they’re not rocks.

Bradley Hodges
If that helps, there was a moment that I really, really appreciated when, if you’ve researched Cleveland, you’ve seen the photos of Brian. And after he finds his cast, he goes over to the fountain and he’s washing his cast off in the fountain. And there was a moment where George and I were washing these pieces off in the fountain. It was a special moment because we’re doing exactly what Brian did. And it was It felt nice.

Brett Zingler
That’s if anything we’re getting from this is just we’re getting brought together as friends. And that’s kind of a that’s sort of a cool call back to Brian and Andy. That’s awesome. So in terms of going in finding that location where the actual cast was, did you guys learn anything about what you know what goes into the other puzzles, or what went into that puzzle? Or I

George Ward
think we learned some little, tiny little hints. We kind of confirmed that the words on the monument being backwards in the words in the verse was what told you you needed to, you know, reverse the left or right counting of the bricks in Cleveland. So that was helpful to know that that’s how that twist was solved. We found out that MLK Boulevard is. So in the painting for Cleveland, inside the fountain thing in the painting. There’s a bell with the L sitting everybody always thought it was Liberty Bell. Obviously, we found out that MLK Boulevard just used to be called Liberty Boulevard. And just either just prior to or right after the book was published, it was changed over to MLK Boulevard so that that clue was sort of pointing towards that pointing towards Liberty Boulevard. So it was it was a couple of little just clarifications that sort of helped out a little

Bradley Hodges
things out really, really helps us appreciate. Byron really did a good job of putting these puzzles together. Because it for a while there, especially for Cleveland. It looked like Oh, did he make a mistake? Was this just bad puzzle making that you had to count the other direction. But in this visit, we were able to discover know that this was 100% intentional, and Bayern was a master of his craft and putting these puzzles together everything had a reason and one thing I really loved about learning Is that when that road changed from Liberty to MLK Byron’s response was? That’s great. It’s gonna be even harder.

Brett Zingler
Wow. Okay. doesn’t mess with anything. Any any of the unfound ones? Yeah,

George Ward
I think it does. So I mean, we were able to talk to JJ pay a little bit right. And we didn’t really ask him for any clues. I mean, I always feel like if you this is a puzzle, right? If you’re asking for clues, that’s kind of cheating. And why cheat? But we wanted to know about Byron is me, especially because I feel like in this community, I get asked a lot like, what would Byron do? Would Byron do this? Or would Byron do that? And I have to make judgment calls? Like would Byron destroy National Park? Would Byron break into a would Byron break into the fountain of youth in the middle of the night to bury a cask? I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Byron, but I have to make this judgment call. So it’s a big deal to me to try to find out something about Byron. So I had a little conversation with JP, about Byron, and one of the things that I found out was that nothing in this puzzle is accidental. Nothing. Nothing is accidental. He did not make a mistake, like in Cleveland, that wasn’t a mistake. You had to figure that out. So that was something very important that we learned. No, this wasn’t like a fly by night. I just want to make some money on a book. Know, contrary to what I’ve been telling people for years now, Byron wasn’t just a bad Puzzle Maker. Like what he said was intentional. So if there’s something in the book, it’s correct. Like there’s no accident

Brett Zingler
there’s no randomness, there’s no accidents. It’s it’s there. Fraud there.

George Ward
Yeah, this puzzle was was done meticulously. You need what is there? There are no accidents.

Brett Zingler
I’m not sure what I like, better. Yeah, I

George Ward
mean, either random, like, it kind of threw me for a loop. Right. I’ve gone this entire time just going oh, Byron’s just bad at puzzles. Finding out he’s not it’s kind of a world changer.

Brett Zingler
Yeah. It really is. It’s slightly distressing, yet encouraging at the same time, because I’ve gone this whole time thinking that there’s some master plan behind this whole thing. And if we just figure it out, it’s going to unlock everything. Right. And I’m a little bit encouraged to hear that there is some sort of master plan behind the whole thing.

George Ward
Do we want to talk at all about expedition unknown?

Brett Zingler
What would you want to talk about?

George Ward
No, I mean, it was an article in the paper, it seems like we can’t not talk about

Brett Zingler
it. What? Okay, what’s the article say? Well,

George Ward
there was there was an article published recently that expedition unknown would be digging in White Point gardens, apparently, I mean, Expedition unknown is making a new episode. I mean, it’s been kind of rumored, right. That expedition was making a new episode. But this kind of confirms it. They’re actually making a new episode. And it’s going to feature Charleston, somebody

Bradley Hodges
on Facebook posted that another person posted an Instagram. I know it’s a he said, she said, but somebody posted on Instagram, a selfie with Josh gates somewhere in Charleston.

George Ward
Yeah. And there’s, there’s another guy that’s been pushing pretty hard that they’re digging one of his salts, they’re using I think it’s verse seven to dig near the sundial. I mean, he’s published that everywhere. So I guess it’s okay to talk about right. So so there’s a guy, and he’s been he’s posted it on quest for treasure. He posted it on Instagram, posted it on Facebook, that he sent in his solved expedition unknown, and that’s what they’re digging up. And I don’t I mean, I, you know, Far be it for me to tell anybody that they’re wrong. But it’s, it’s not right. It’s, I don’t understand it, I guess is what I’m saying. I’m trying to find the salt. So they’re using verse they’re using verse five, right? They’re using Lane 222, you’ll see an arc of lights, weights and verse extended, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he’s digging at the end of white point gardens where the compasses, and the just the gist of it is, at a certain time on a certain date. You know, with the sun in a certain place, it’s going to give you a shadow where you have to walk a certain mount of feet away from the shadow to dig in this one. Like it’s one of those it’s kind of far reaching, right. It’s hard to explain to people,

Bradley Hodges
I, I see where he went wrong. See what he’s doing is he’s using that with a book called Masquerade. He just needs to stick to the secret. He’s mixing up his hands. He’s mixing them up.

George Ward
I don’t I don’t get it like that. So there’s been a bunch of questions recently, like, how did we pair each painting with each city? How did we pair each other As with each city, and it’s pretty basic, right? When it comes down to paintings, it’s really easy. There’s latitude and longitude coordinates. Like if we didn’t know there were latitude and longitude coordinates, it would be difficult. In some cases, Charleston is not one of the cases where it would be difficult. In the painting, there is a giant picture of Charleston. So we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, this huge lion painting, that’s the Charleston painting. But when you when you get into verses, it’s a little trickier. At least it was for a while until, you know, Google came out. The way people put these, the majority of these verses together, was they just started Googling them. Like in Charleston in Cleveland, right? Cleveland was found because some guy randomly Googled, so creates Pindar and appellees. Right? We found that monument that link to the painting there you go, boom. Charleston’s easy to like. I think it was Forrest blight who found the book abroad in America. Right Charleston in New Orleans verse have two very specific lines in them. They have the Charleston has Edwin and edweena, named after him, New Orleans has. Here’s the sovereign people who build palaces to shelter their heads for the night. Both of those lines come from a very specific book that come from abroad in America. And both of those lines talk about their respective cities. That specific the here’s a sovereign people who build palaces to shelter their heads for the night is talking about the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans. That being in that, that line coming from a book talking about New Orleans being in a verse, it’s fairly obvious that that’s talking about New Orleans. And it’s the same for Charleston, Charleston, has got Edwin and edweena, named after him in the same book and abroad in America, it talks about to two children, Edwin ended, we’re not being named after someone, we can if if the book has a quote, If the secret has a quote from a book, that puts something in a very specific city, and then it has another one, putting in another you can trust, both of those are going to put you in the correct cities right? To top it off. The Charleston verse has made 1913, which is a direct quote to another, to a monument and white point gardens, like these. This is how the verses got put to the cities, little things that couldn’t be coincidences, right? This verse or this line from this verse being on this monument, this line from this verse being in this part, that they’re pretty set in stone, you can’t just swap them around. Because if you if you swap in the Montreal verse For Charleston, all of a sudden, the Charleston verses gotta go somewhere, and Montreal doesn’t have verse. Like, you can’t swap one with the other without swapping everything around. And it ultimately doesn’t make sense. It stops making sense. It’s just it’s, it’s weird to me that, like some things you can argue you can argue, you can argue Montreal, I think you can argue the verse and the painting, if you want to.

Bradley Hodges
Well, we know there’s one in St. Louis. Yeah. So well,

George Ward
St. Louis is weird, right? Like St. Louis is in the book. St. Louis is in the secret and multiple, multiple times. And Byron Preiss did an interview in St. Louis. I’m like, I’m, I’m confused. Why isn’t there one in St. Louis? Is there one in St. Louis, you could still argue Montreal is St. Louis. But you really can’t argue Charleston. You can’t argue Fort Sumter and the latitude and longitude in the painting. You can’t argue the quote from LeBron America. You can’t argue may 1913 on the monument, you just you can’t. There’s no way to argue it. It seems so obvious. Why would you use anything else?

Brett Zingler
Right. Yeah, I don’t think you can argue San Francisco either. It’s

George Ward
like Houston. You can’t argue the 92 You can’t argue that

Brett Zingler
now. And the fact that Byron himself said that there is one in Houston, and that we weren’t too far away from it, right?

George Ward
Yeah, yeah. So so there’s this, there’s this person. I’m gonna read you a comment from the from the website. There’s this person Her name is Jackie. She’s been posting a lot on on 12 treasures.com. And her recent recent comment is I’ll just read it verbatim. Listening to Houston podcast, Byron Preiss was pissed. Pissed because no one read the fucking book. It’s been 30 years and no one bothers to read the book you telling everyone fuck the story in the book has nothing to do with the hunt. He wrote the book to teach people about events and people and movements that made America the President’s democracy explores Native Americans the abolitionist the suffer just writers and wars, but fuck that. Don’t bother to figure out the puzzle, get a shovel and dig up a zoo because there’s a camel in the picture. By the way, the camel is a reference to the United States camel court of Arizona. He was pissed. Hell, I’m pissed at you telling people to get a shovel and start digging. You’re not even in the right state. I can’t Don’t listen anymore your podcast look, Houston. Oh my god, Houston is the one city where Byron Price said, Yep, you’re in the right place. It’s the one city where Byron Price said yet it wouldn’t be a waste of time to dig there. Right? You have a verse with the same number as the train that’s sitting in the park, you have a painting with the latitude and longitude coordinates for Houston. Like, I get it the book. It’s not that the book doesn’t matter, right. And I have told people I was like, You don’t you don’t really need the book. You just need the paintings and the verses Byron said, you just need the painting and the verses the book helps. Like there is a there is an overarching puzzle to the book. That helps. But just because I think her argument is and the beginning of the book, there is a map of where the fair people came from and where they went, right. And her argument is, where they went is where you’re supposed to be digging, but that’s not really the case.

Brett Zingler
Well, that isn’t the case. And the other thing is that we have to found casks, right. We’ve got Chicago, we’ve got Cleveland. I would say those make her argument null and void.

George Ward
Yeah, I don’t. Chicago and Cleveland weren’t in were they in the fair people’s voyage? I’m not even sure I’d have to look that up.

Brett Zingler
I didn’t see him in there. I’d Not that I recall. But the point is, is that, you know, it’s like, yet another case of somebody coming in and telling us, you know, reporting everybody how wrong everybody is without really saying why they’re wrong.

George Ward
I guess, man, people fixate on one little thing with the puzzle, right? And they do it they, you have to take this puzzle as a whole. You have to take each city as a whole people focus on like, like South Carolina has a citadel. And there’s a verse that talks about a citadel. Let’s put them both together. But that’s not like it doesn’t. There’s more convincing things in other verses, right? There’s, there’s threads that connect everything together. And all of those threads have to be connected, or like, it can’t just be one. It’s got to be multiple, or it just doesn’t work. It just falls on its face.

Brett Zingler
That’s right. That’s right. Now I am under the impression that there is a possibility, we have one or two of the vert, you know, the common knowledge, or the commonly held theories are that you know, this verse that’s with the city, I think a few of the verses might have some, you know, could be swapped in as some of the other to some of the other cities. But in general, I pretty much agree with the commonly held knowledge, right? And I got to

George Ward
be tricky to swap a verse, right? You could argue you could argue locations a little bit, you could argue that the Montreal verse and the Montreal painting point to a different city, but so over the years, these have been put together in the way that makes most sense within the puzzle. And if you change one thing, you basically have to change it. All. Right, you basically have to say, the latitude and longitude, that doesn’t matter. Right? The stuff that’s on in the Charleston versus on the Charleston monuments, that doesn’t matter. The you have to say that the quotes from abroad in America that’s, you know, that’s a coincidence, the quotes from Moby Dick, and you know, the cast being in Hermann Park, that’s a coincidence, you have to say all of these things are coincidence, just so you’re one thread will work. Right? Just so you’re one little idea, just so you can change everything around because of your one idea. It doesn’t make any sense.

Brett Zingler
That’s called looking at it like a scavenger hunt rather than an actual puzzle.

George Ward
Right? And I get it, man, you get this idea in your head. And it’s happened to me so many times, you get this idea in your head, and you’re like, I’m the first person that’s found this and everybody else is wrong. And I’ve got to tell everybody, I mean, you’ve got to take everything in context. You’ve got to take the picture as a whole you can’t just look at this one little thing.

Bradley Hodges
So on top of that

George Ward
yeah, I don’t think we can say that.

Brett Zingler
We shouldn’t say that. Yeah, it’s cool. Shit. I would love to say that though. I totally on morale. Man.

George Ward
I would have to get permission and I don’t even want to begin that conversation. No

Bradley Hodges
worries. While we’re on topic of the book, and reading from cover to cover, yes, that that is something I completely agree with her about. You want to get this book 12 treasures.com You can see I believe we Have the entire book available there. And you read the stories. I mean, it’s entertaining. First of all, there’s some great laughs But yes, you’ve read it from cover to cover. There. There is a the whole book is the past. Yeah.

George Ward
And it’s like, I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s not a great book. Like it’s not like it. It’s tough to get through in some points, because it’s written in a difficult way. And it’s written in a weird way. It’s written in a way that someone who’s making a puzzle would write a book. Right? Some of it doesn’t make sense. There’s words that probably shouldn’t be there. There’s some stuff that’s misspelled. There’s some punctuation that’s used in a weird way. There’s some weird call outs to odd people that you wouldn’t expect. And there’s quotes from random books that you wouldn’t expect.

Brett Zingler
Exactly. George, and I hate to cut you off there. But that is why I think there is an overarching puzzle in the entire book. No, there,

George Ward
there totally is. And and everything’s written in a formulaic way, right? Everything is formula, when you go to the back of the book, it’s choppy,

Brett Zingler
it’s organized in a certain way. There are sections set up in certain ways, because there’s call outs within the text outside of the verse and the images that when combined, give you hints. Yeah,

George Ward
I mean, like, when you go into the back of the book, like the guide to the fair folk, right? Everything’s set up in sections, you’ve got range habitats, history spotters, tips, you’ve got these for each of these, each of these fair folk, you know, that are referenced some of them referenced throughout the story. We know for a fact at the beginning of the book that we know for a fact that the what we call the minor images, the images that are in the back of the book, we know for a fact that some of them contain heads, right? Because we found, we found some of them. We know for a fact that the art in the borders of the beginning of the book contains sense. There’s one just randomly page, I don’t know if 33 has a picture of a moccasin with an eagle on it, that eagle is, you know, featured prominently on a sign at the the Children’s Zoo and in Hermann Park, right? We know there are hints all throughout the book. Right? It’s It’s It’s foolish to just focus on the verse in the paintings. I say that knowing full well that I’ve told people all you need are the verse in the paintings. But I guess, in some ways, that’s true, too. Right? Like, Brian, Andy, and the guys who request for treasure, they found Cleveland with just the verse in the painting, robbing Eric found, found Chicago with just the verse in the painting. But we also know that these clearly you don’t need them. Right? Well, you might, you might, because we know that there’s sort of a hierarchy to the puzzles, right? We know that some are harder than the others. So maybe there are some that you don’t need anything from the book. Maybe there are some you need every

Brett Zingler
okay, but worked. Cleveland and Chicago and the hierarchy of difficulty supposed to be a little bit harder than some of the ones that haven’t been

George Ward
found. I mean, nobody really knows, right? Nobody really knows what that hierarchy is. nobody’s figured it out. And maybe the book tells you who knows

Brett Zingler
where wasn’t ranked on the, the, the, the value of the jewel.

George Ward
Yeah, but that doesn’t make any sense. Right? Like, okay, yeah, I got it. It’s raked, ranked on the value of the jewel but only the person who has the jewel knows what the value is a huge emerald is going to be worth more than a tiny dime.

Brett Zingler
Exactly. And that’s one thing up for debate. I know that that that is one of the commonly held theories that it ranks in terms of difficulty in terms of the relative value of the gym associated with the city. But you know, San Francisco is the pearl. And supposedly the pearl is the lowest in value. Yeah, but

George Ward
in the book in the book, it shows gems in the book, right. And it doesn’t just show one pearl, it shows a pearl necklace and it would be kind of foolish, just the Angie one pearl if you found a cask. I mean, you don’t really No, I mean, I don’t think that was when Byron said that it was ranked in terms of value of the gems. I don’t think that was his way of saying here’s how you can rank each individual the difficulty of each individual, each individual city and put them in order. I think what he is trying to say is like when you’re solving this, your reward is is directly related to how much you have to put into the puzzle if you just happen to be working on the one in New York and that’s the one that’s worth the most you’re gonna get the most reward. He didn’t want us to rank them in order of easiest hardest. He just wanted to reward the person with the value of the work that they put into the puzzle. I don’t think you’ll ever know the ranking until they’re all solved and you’re well even then you won’t know because we’ll probably don’t have as original gems. You probably don’t know how much each one’s worth.

Brett Zingler
Yeah Oh, and by the way, difficulty is relative, especially now, so we’re 40 years out thing like that. Like, who knows what’s the most difficult at this point and it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean? It doesn’t it doesn’t really matter if you’re an easy puzzle to solve San Francisco is not easy. It’s not easiest. And and, you know, if you think it is then then then go grab it, but I don’t you know, I don’t think San Francisco is an easier puzzle than it. Yeah.

George Ward
Could you imagine how hard before Google came around? And before we found a bra in America, you imagine how hard it would be to take the New Orleans verse and pare it to New Orleans just because of you know, the jewels are bound or whatever like no, it took us it took us getting that quote. That quote from abroad America to go this is New Orleans. I mean, a place where jewels about 15 rows down to the ground like that could be anywhere.

Brett Zingler
The the obscure literary references in this thing are mind boggling. And it really scares me. I consider myself a fairly well read person. Emphasis on the fairly I mean, like the person that found that hats off

George Ward
to that would be forest blade.

Brett Zingler
Forest blight. We love you. You’re amazing. Like

George Ward
a librarian for the secret everything that’s ever like he’s got it all. He’s he’s the one that found medieval Scarecrow and the Japanese like he finds everything like him and Golden Gate should be like a superhero duo.

Brett Zingler
Hey, brother, I have a question for you. I’m putting you on the spot. What’s the next task that’s going to be found?

Bradley Hodges
Oh, that’s easy. That is going to be St. Augustine. I have no bold variable.

George Ward
I’m gonna break a fucking leg finding that one.

Brett Zingler
Who’s going to be is it going to be George or somebody else?

Bradley Hodges
It’s going to be George and whoever he goes out digging with me somebody else man. I’m in Georgia. It’s okay to break leg because you’re gonna take it with you. And they’re gonna call 911 for you.

Brett Zingler
It’s gonna be George with a candlestick in the ballroom.

Bradley Hodges
Yeah, absolutely. I would say, but roadex off limits, guys. I feel like I have Roanoke in the bag. But fortunately, that bad boy is off limits. So thanks to whoever destroyed the park during the break. And hopefully we can we can mend ways with the park and, and get back out there and work on that. But since that’s off limits, I’m saying St. Augustine

George Ward
last started from Roanoke. They’ve got cameras on all the trails, they’ve got cameras out in the common areas. They’ve got cameras at the Overlook. They’ve got like a seismic monitor that that tells you when you I don’t even know how that shit works. But they’ve got something that tells them when digging is occurring. They’ve got constant monitoring. They’ve got people constantly wandering around monitoring the area. They have Rangers that are dressed as just tourists like it’s crazy out there right now. Please leave Roanoke. Hello.

Brett Zingler
Yeah. Don’t touch Roanoke. or San Francisco. Just kidding. I just want to be the birth in a band San Francisco. It’s never gonna happen. Right?

Bradley Hodges
has been found. Yeah.

George Ward
The Frenchman beat you to it. It sucks that, like, the one thing that I hate more than anything is that up until a year and a half ago. Every single park was, you know, they weren’t super accommodating. But they were okay. He wanted. Like I used to tell people like I can I can give you permission because I’ve never had a problem before. Like I just call a dude. And he lets you dig. Now. It’s really hard like nobody, because people just go in and just destroy things whenever they want. Nobody is being cooperative. Every single city is cut off. You can’t do anything in Charleston. Like New York. New Orleans officially won’t let you do anything. Milwaukee won’t let you do anything New York won’t let you do anything. Boston won’t even Boston won’t even talk to Boston won’t even talk to EU. That’s how bad it is like Josh gates is from Boston. He wants nothing more than to dig up the Boston cask and they’re like no even filming and paying us money. You can’t do anything here. The Fountain of Youth shut down. That’s that’s probably the most heartbreaking because John Fraser loves this hunt. John Fraser loves it to the core it says like it, it brings him so much joy. And that part’s just shut down. Like it kills me man. It kills me that we’ve just we’ve destroyed the reputation of the hunt. It’s so bad that these parks are just like, No, we’re not going to deal with it anymore.

Bradley Hodges
So when George I dug in Cleveland to search for the the possible rim Since this is how I handled it, we took some buckets. There were some nice mulch over the over the soil. So we collected the mulch first, put it in a bucket, did our digging, refilled our holes in, made sure we didn’t get dirt everywhere we made nice little piles. It’s always an even if I did, if you’re going to be doing some more ticket talk with you, if you don’t have an easy place to put the soil, the soil on the tarp, make sure you fill that hole back in, make sure it’s nice and even just like it was we poured the mulch back on, you couldn’t even tell we were there. Do the same. Be respectful. These parks, these landmarks. These are beautiful places. If you get to the cultural gardens, don’t just go to see that plot. Visit the entire cultural gardens. When you go to Roanoke, don’t go to dig. But when you go to Roanoke, take time, walk around the entire park, go to Elizabeth and gardens, learn the rich history. Go to the the festival park right across the way from from the fort Raleigh. There’s rich history, there’s beautiful artwork for you guys to go out there and see and enjoy. That’s the reward of the hunt, in my personal opinion, making these friends getting to experience these places and learning about where we all came from.

George Ward
And I’ll give you I’ll give you a hint, like a lot of people have asked me how you get permission. And I’ll just tell people, because maybe it’ll help you. back years and years and years and years ago, I worked for Parks and Rec in Florida. And I worked for a park that was archaeologically sensitive. It was an Indian burial ground. That was all it was, it was a big, huge empty field with an Indian burial ground right in the middle of the huge mound. When you’re in Florida, Florida super flat. And when you see these random hills just out in the middle of nowhere odds are Indians are buried there, what they do is they would they would dig a little bit of a hole, they would bury their dead. And then they would cover them in oyster shells. And they would just keep making layers. And it would it would end up in this big hill of just oyster shells and dead people basically. So I always preface with and when I when I asked for permission, I say hey, this is why I want to dig. I know it sounds a little crazy or whatever. But I give them like a snippet of of my reasoning. And then I tell them, This is what I want to do. I want to bring in a shovel and I want to dig x size of a hole. I’ll have a bucket with a sifter, which is basically like a little metal great that you pour the dirt into and that like the dirt falls to the sifter and anything that’s like a rock or a bone or an artifact or whatever stays on top. Right. So you take all that stuff that stays on top, you put it to the side, you dig your hole until the bucket is full, you put your your dirt back in the hole, like you leave it as if you had never been there. And then anything you find you just get back to the park. Right? If you come in with a plan like that, if you tell them this is this is how I want to dig but this is also how I want to protect your your land, they’re more than likely going to you know, they’re going to see that you’re serious about number one protecting the park and, and doing things efficiently, you got a better chance than if you’re just like, hey, there’s a treasure in your park and I want to come dig up the whole area.

Bradley Hodges
There’s an old saying that you may have read on a park site at some point or something. But it’s very simple. It’s a little cheesy, but it’s a great takeaway. Take nothing and leave only footsteps. Yeah. Now of course we find the cast take it. But other than that take nothing and leave only footsteps.

George Ward
And that’s, that’s the thing that I see that most people have a problem with, they go in to these parks with this grand, grand idea, right? Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s this grand, huge idea. Like, Hey, I found this treasure in your park and blah, blah, blah. And they they just blow it up. And they they sort of whether they want to or not. They sound kind of crazy to the parks department because the parks department didn’t know anything about these, you know, they don’t they don’t care. They just they don’t want extra work. They don’t want their parks damaged. So if you go in with a, like a cohesive plan, and you tell them this is how I want to do it, this is how I want to protect your park, that’s your best

Brett Zingler
bet. The you know, the other thing is that people don’t really they’re not we’re none of us in this community are like professional diggers, so we don’t really know. So we’re if you’re going to sneak into a place at three o’clock in the morning and expect to like be pulling out some caskets that was buried there like you know 40 years ago, it’s probably not going to happen you really got to plan it. You got to know what your spot is. These things are smallish, relative to the area that you’re searching in. And you know, don’t just grab a shovel shovel and go like dig somewhere. You really got to figure out the puzzle first Yeah, but

George Ward
I mean I know I get I get just go in and dig into. Like if you got an idea by all means go dig it but get permission and be like respectful about it. Like I think if you’re passionate about your spot, you can make someone else passionate about your spot and you can do it without coming across as crazy. is easy. And you can do it without destroying the park. And doing all that together, they’ll probably let you dig. But it’s when you come in just guns blazing, like I’m gonna do this whatever. Or if you’ve, you know, went to the park and put a probe in the ground 1000 times in the park rangers have come by and seeing that someone’s been probing and then you’re like, you know what to come to your park. Now they’re not gonna let you do it. Like, you have to show respect for the parks.

Brett Zingler
Okay, so I got I got a couple of questions from the website, or you guys, do you guys gonna answer a couple questions from from listeners? Let’s do it. Bradley, this one is for you. Devin asks, If I am new to this hunt? How should I first get going with it? And what should be my approach is crucial is a big question.

Bradley Hodges
So Devin, the first thing I would say and we kind of covered it earlier is make sure you read the book, take a look at the images, take a look at the verses read through the book. It’s not an easy read. Some of it’s very enjoyable some of it, you’re wondering why it’s there. But read the book. And before you start reading other people’s solves and other people’s ideas. Start with a fresh slate. See what you can come up with. And then after you’ve given it some thought, you know, pick your favorite image, your favorite verse, come up with something. Talk to a friend, talk to somebody on the Facebook page and say, Hey, this is what I think. And share your thoughts. Don’t be afraid if somebody wants to play devil’s advocate with you. And you know, help you think through your verse. Think through yourself. Because that’s what we’re here for. If if we all just had absolutely your right to every solve, then we wouldn’t be doing each other any favors, we wouldn’t get anywhere. So be open to feedback. And most of all, have fun with it. Include your family, include your friends, and just have a lot of fun with it.

George Ward
Yeah, if you come out, like fuck you, you’re wrong. And I found the key to this odds are you’re gonna be ignored, right? Like, God, I can’t, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, you know, fuck you, everything you’ve said is wrong.

Brett Zingler
So you shouldn’t come in, horns out thinking, I have been studying this for 20 minutes. And I already know where a cask is. And you guys are all wrong. And I’m right. And here’s why everything is great in my world, and why you guys all suck, you’re probably not going to be well received in any of the forums that we’ve got, right? So just do your homework and really understand like, go back and look at what other people have. have guessed before and have, have other people solves and get an understanding for it. And just come in, come in being cool and ask for criticism, and people will will be cool to you. If you’re if you’re an asshole. And you come in and you say I know where it is. And you guys are all wrong and Haha, then expect to get treated with some disdain.

George Ward
Yeah, but in this in the same in the same vein, if you’re an old Hunter, keep in mind that this puzzle is fluid, right? We’re we’re constantly learning new things about this puzzle that negate things that we knew, you know, two weeks ago, a lot of the stuff that we told you in the earlier podcasts, within a year and a half, we found out that sheds wrong, right? A lot of the things that we knew for a fact five years ago, wrong, completely wrong. So also keep, like you can’t just say this is a this is an established fact. And anything that contradicts that is wrong. You have to remember that this puzzle is constantly evolving, the more information we find the more the puzzle changes. So some of our established facts will turn out to be wrong. So you have to keep an open mind.

Brett Zingler
So this is a good segue into another question that we got from Jess, is the wiki a good place to go find information? What do you guys think?

George Ward
I mean, nobody’s a fan of the wiki.

Bradley Hodges
So I think the wiki is is a good place to pull some ideas. It’s i The wiki presents their information as this is the actual answer. It’s 100%. Guaranteed we know it’s correct. The wiki is not dug up any casks. So that’s for itself. But it doesn’t it I would not tell you don’t go there. But just when you go there, read the information with a grain of salt.

Brett Zingler
Good call. The images on the wiki are about as good as you can get online.

George Ward
Now they’re really bad.

Bradley Hodges
Well, treasures.com George painstakingly re scanned everything in. If you want to put up a billboard of your favorite image. You can do that?

Brett Zingler
Well, when I first started looking I went to the wiki and If I had seen a whole bunch of like images elsewhere, and the high quality ones were on the wiki were the ones that were the best ones that like, Yeah, but

George Ward
there they weren’t. The colors weren’t correct for the book. And they weren’t in a really high resolution that the the images that are on the wiki are probably over 10 years old. They were done by I forget who did them on quest for treasure, and they were just sort of modified the wiki has got a weird history, and that it started out as this really community based thing and it was just sort of taken over by one dude. And now it’s populated by that one dudes ideas. And that one dude is sort of stuck in his ideas, like any evidence to the contrary of his ideas doesn’t get published, you don’t see that. So when he tells you one of his songs in Charleston says that the cask was buried at the cap stamp, right where the cap sand monument was in Charleston, but that the cap stands when the cap st monument was removed. The wiki says that they dug up the area around the footer, and all of that dirt was removed in the cask was probably destroyed when they reinstalled the new footers or whatever. On 12 treasures. There’s an article about the removal for the capstan, which says that an archaeologist was there, an archaeologist did the digging, they just dug underneath the footer of the old cap, Stan. And they catalog every single thing that they found, they found a piece of pottery, they found a couple of bones and they found a piece of jewelry. And that was absolutely it. They didn’t touch any other area, nothing else was found. That opens up that whole area again, like it’s possible the gasket is there. Who knows. But the wiki won’t tell you that they just sit on it was removed when you know they dug up the footer. That’s that’s what’s bad about the wiki. It doesn’t change. Like what’s what’s there is whatever the guy who owns it believes.

Brett Zingler
Here’s what I’m arguing for puleston That’s first starting, which is what I was doing, like three years ago, 12 treasures wasn’t around. Right. And the only other place that you could go find information was what something offer, there was, you know, a little bit of random information there. But also q 14, right? So the place where I can go to find sort of unfettered on thrashed information and look at pretty decent images where I couldn’t find anywhere else. What was the wiki? Right? I’m not arguing that that that that guy has got like, he goes the cask, you know, if you read all of the print in there he goes, Oh, the cask is likely in the blah, blah, blah, or the the cask is likely here? Or this hint is likely that likely, likely likely, right? Totally disagree with all that. But if you want to look at kind of some arguments for things and some ways that people like sort of dissect some of the images, he’s got the grid system, you guys know what I’m talking about. For all, you know, it’s not it’s not awful, it’s not an awful place, but at least go look, see the history of it. And then And then, and then come to 12 treasures and see all the awesome images that we have.

George Ward
To two years ago, two and a half years ago, whatever the wiki was great, because it was just populated by information from people for key for T quiet, the people on quest for treasure would find something new, and they would put it on the wiki. And that’s what would happen. And then when expedition unknown came out, everybody sort of flooded the wiki. And the wiki sort of changed in into its, you know, it’s set in stone. This is what’s this this? Like, I I don’t know, I don’t, I wouldn’t say if you’re a new person getting into the hunt, I would not say go to the wiki.

Bradley Hodges
Here’s my personal story and my experience with the wiki. Before we had 12 treasures before I knew about q 40. The wiki was my resource. And for those of you that don’t know, Roanoke is is the puzzle I spend the most time with I’m most interested in. And so this is the wiki. And the wiki tells you it’s buried under the CR o tree or next to it in the theater in Roanoke. So when my wife and I took our first trip out there, I said hey, why don’t we go check out the theater and see what’s going on. So you walk up to the tree, the tree is not on ground. There is no ground. It’s it’s on a wooden raised platform that’s covered with a very fine layer of dirt. For theatrical purposes. It’s not possible to bury anything there. So whoever put that together on wiki and said this, this is the song I’ve just never even visited the site. And that’s when I say, hey, maybe this isn’t the best resource.

Brett Zingler
Right? Right. But you got to figure that out on your own right and it just takes kind of incorporating multiple sources in order for you to Get educated enough on the hunt so that so that you understand that

George Ward
you don’t have to figure it out on your own anymore. We put a video walkthrough for Raleigh on on 12 treasures we showed you that it’s just on a platform of wood

Bradley Hodges
on our Facebook page is also a 360 walk around of the park as well.

Brett Zingler
So Debbie asked, is it worth buying an original oral? Can I get the information that I need from one of the reprints?

George Ward
So everybody asked that question, right. And the originals are gone for like I think one sold today for $350. Online. Like if you collect books, totally buy an original. You don’t collect books, don’t even worry about it. All of the book is online in PDF, like you can get it for free, you can download it from just about anywhere. Right? It’s fully available. So you get the story, you get all the words, the pictures are online, the pictures that you get on 12 treasures are like the pictures in the original book are no better than the pictures on 12 treasures. So there’s nothing lost. There’s nothing lost in those images. So if you want one, and you’re willing to shell out, you know, 300 bucks, totally get one. If not, don’t worry about it.

Brett Zingler
I’ve got an original and I have a reprint. I have to thank you George for the for the original that I have you got this for me and I totally appreciate it. The there is a crispness in the images, I would say from the original to the you know, compared to the to the reprint that you know, is superior in quality. But I think you could find those, I think you can find the exact same thing online. I like all there are for me from a nostalgia standpoint and from just you know, having it I like having I like having an original I

George Ward
mean, I’ve got I’ve got every copy of the secret that’s ever been published. Aside from the second printing of the first edition. I got the hardback I got the original I got all the Japanese. And I’m in the process of getting the crappy reprints now. So yeah, it’s important to me to have the originals, but not because they’re, you know, they’re better than what’s online. Like I got, I got some in front of me a couple of 4k monitors and 48 inch monitors, and I love being able to, you know, open the images on that, rather than looking at them as like seven inch pictures on a on a page, right? Especially for the people who think there are super tiny details that are hidden and weird orbs and stuff online. So way to go. I don’t I don’t think you’re missing anything. By not having the original. by only using what’s available online,

Bradley Hodges
I’d have to completely agree. You don’t need an original. If you are a collector. Absolutely. I am lucky enough to say I have an original again. Echoing Brett, thank you, George. He helped make that happen. jjp was gracious enough to sign it, as well as George’s copy why we were there. So it’s super special to me, it does not leave my bookshelf now. It’s actually not even on my bookshelf. It’s in a drawer that’s part of my bookshelf. So there’s not even there to collect us. And I only bring it out to show to friends and family. I highly recommend that you either buy a reprint or get the digital version of the reprint because when you are boots on the ground, it’s really nice to be able to pull out a book that you really don’t care if it gets dirty or muddy. But you can easily reference everything in the book while you’re out on site boots on the ground. So that’s why I want to reprint but know that the original is not necessary. But man I love it.

George Ward
I mean, I’ve got a I got a surface that’s got the PDF on it. So if I’m out like I take my surface with me and I can put but that’s not as it’s not as it’s not the same as having a book. Like even even just the reprints If all you’ve got is the reprints and then you’ve got the images from 12 treasures on your phone. You’re good. That’s all you need.

Brett Zingler
Good stuff. Okay, and finally, we had a question from Marilyn. She wants to know, she is she’s wants to go on a vacation. And it sounds like she’s going to go to Houston. Okay. If she’s going to bring her family on vacation but wants to dig while she’s there. Clearly she has to fly. How does she go dig with her families but

Bradley Hodges
a shovel plan, plan the vacation spend time with your friends and family and just make this part of that. Don’t Don’t center your entire trip around that don’t alienate your your friends and family while you’re there. It’s a quick way to make this something that people hate. Include your friends and family in this. Make it part of the trip. Make sure you invite them to go along with you. Enjoy the zoo enjoy the other things around there. Don’t make it just about the dig And as far as tools, obviously, you’re going to want, if you have a place you want to probe at or dig, you know, maybe if you have contacts there somebody can borrow from so you’re not spending money because I imagine I’ve never tried to fly with a shovel. But imagine it would be difficult, you can go to like REI or camping store and get the military folding shovel, which from what I understand. Maybe you can put that in your carrier, not your carry on, but your check baggage. And, you know, call well ahead of time and state your intentions to the park officials, and let them know why. Why you’re going to be there that you’re going to have your friends and family with you and that, you know, this is what you’re interested in doing. And you’re taking the advice that we talked about earlier about how to approach that topic with park officials so that you’re not cutting your vacation short and spending vacation money on bail.

George Ward
My two pieces of advice kind of harken back to what I said before. This, this crap loads of people in the Facebook page that are in Houston that’ll let you borrow a shovel. Just tell people hey, I’m going to Houston but I don’t have any tools. Somebody will let you borrow one. Or if you’re if you’re cool with the parks department and you’re getting permission, ask them to lend you a shovel. Like it’s the parks department. They’ve got them and they don’t mind. Like if you’re flying in from New Mexico to Houston and you want to dig a spot and they’re cool with you digging that spot. If you tell them hey, I can’t bring a shovel in the plane, can I borrow on yours, they’re gonna let you. So a, one of the community members will help you or be just ask the parks in the loan year one. Or you can or you go by when

Bradley Hodges
we know somebody that might have access to a backhoe.

George Ward
Yeah, yeah, you could rent a backhoe from any like, like Suncoast rentals, they’ll rent you a backhoe. And if you’re going to use them, feel free to stop in and check out the gorilla exhibit and see if they’re carrying around the ceramic box.

Brett Zingler
Very nice. Okay, I have one last question. It’s from Jerry in San Antonio, it has been difficult for me to get into queue for tea. I do not have a login or a password. What am I missing?

George Ward
Lots. You’re missing lots. It’s important to remember that this this treasure has gone on for years, years and 40 years. And the past 20 years of it is on that message board. So I mean, most of the most of the common knowledge now is out there. It’s easy to pick up on Facebook or you know, the podcasts or wherever. But the history of the hunt is equally important. And it’s all on that message board. Anybody who is in any way serious about this hunt, if you don’t have an account there, you’re missing out. So go get one it’s free, as opposed to something awful, which costs money. And I mean, like I like something awful. Because I know the people on there, but it’s not. You don’t need something awful. You need quest for treasure? Absolutely.

Bradley Hodges
So I took that question completely differently than George, whenever I heard what am I missing? I thought he was asking. I’m having trouble setting up a login, what am I missing? And the answer if it’s been a while since I set up my account, but the answer I think is unknown. Or we don’t know something’s

George Ward
out of that. Oh, the secret answer. So the question is, so when you’re setting up an account requests for treasure they have, they had a bad problem with spam. Recently, like, six, eight months ago, they had all these porn bots coming in and posts important links. And the the admin for quest for treasure is kind of hands off. His name’s Mark. He’s got other things going on. But he likes to keep the site active for people. So to combat the spam, he just set up a security question. And it’s a question that people who are into armchair treasure hunts know the answer to but somebody who just came in because they like an expedition unknown episode would not know the answer to it. The question is, where is the golden key buried? And nobody knows where the golden key is buried. So the answer is unknown. So when it asks you that question, just type in unknown and you’ll

Bradley Hodges
you’ll get right through. But I have to agree completely with George’s comments. That is a treasure trove of information. Q 40 in itself is a treasure hunt for clues. You can you can spend months years reading and it’s all worth it.

George Ward
Oh yeah, there’s 1000s and 1000s of pages.

Brett Zingler
What I thought was cool was when Brian and Andy found the Cleveland cask, all of the information, you know, thereafter was on there and they talked about, you know, finding the cask and how cool it was and I I think it’s fascinating. It’s a little bit hard to dig through and find all of The information that you want but there’s a lot of cool stuff in there so you know tread lightly, I guess is the

George Ward
they’re a little finicky on questor treasure kind of stay with their their stay with their posts format. And if you come out and you’re like everybody’s wrong and I know all the answer, they’re gonna destroy you later. Yeah. But, you know as long as you’re respectful, there’s a lot there’s a lot of good information on there especially from the past.

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George Ward
Brett Zingler
Bradley Hodges

 

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