Thinking Sideways: The Count St. Germain

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't never stories of things we simply
don't know the answer too. Well. Hello there, welcome again
to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, joined as

(00:25):
always by Devin and Steve, and as you know, if
well if you've never listened to us before, what we
do is we solved unsolved mysteries. We find a mystery,
we pounded into the ground until it finally christ no Moss,
no Moss, and then we tell you how to find
us on Stitcher and iTunes and stuff. He's playing. Yeah,
that's the worst description of the show I've ever heard.

(00:47):
Episodes we haven't solved anything. Always saw the few we
solve loss Boi Larry, No, no, we didn't solve that one.
I think we did well. Okay, according to Joe, if
we solved them all, fine, yeah, not actually what happens okay,
But occasionally we'll shed a little a little bit of
ray of light on something, you know, we might add
something to it. Okay, Well, so let's let's move ahead

(01:09):
here and let's talk about our weekly mystery here. The
mystery is the Count of Saint Germain. I know some
of you may have heard of this guy. I've heard
of the liquor St. Germaine. Uh, this this show was,
or this idea was actually a listener's suggestion unfortunately, was
suggested by a whole bunch of listeners and not just one.

(01:30):
And so usually we give acknowledgement, but in this case
we're not going to be. You know who you are,
I know who you are, and thanks a lot, but
I would say fortunately, not unfortunately. Yeah, this is a
good one. Yeah, Yeah, it's an interesting story. So the
Count of Saint Germaine. Nobody knows precisely when he was born.
Some sorts of say seventeen ten, some seventeen twelve, some

(01:51):
say sixteen nineties, some say before Christ. Yeah. He was
a European dude who claimed he was the son of
Prince France. Sists the second Racozi and I'm sure Mr
pronouncing that of Transylvania. He was prominent in high society
in the eighteenth centuries, particularly in France, but in other
places too. He hobnobbed with a lot of famous people,

(02:12):
including King's Louis the fifteenth and Louis the sixteenth of France. Voltaire,
he probably heard of him. Uh, Giacomo Cassanova, you've heard
of Casanova, I'm sure. And in fact, Cassanova mentioned the
count in his memoirs. He does, he does, and also
Catherine the Great of Russia and lots and lots of
other people. Supposedly st booked lots of languages very fluently. Um,

(02:35):
and he played the violet in the harpsichord like a master.
He wrote, He wrote opera songs and stuff like that.
I mean, um, he was the guy was the word
of thinking of Paula Math. The guy was like, you know,
kind of like Benjamin Franklin. That was some of those
guys and just geniuses. It all kinds of different things. Now,
he knew a lot about science and philosophy, and Prince
Charles of Hess Castles in Germany apparently said that he

(02:59):
was quote one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived,
unquote what else. He was into alchemy and he claimed
to have had great success. He claimed to have invented
all kinds of little powders that would make you immortal
and stuff like that. So basically he was kind of
like the full package, I know. And yeah, great conversationalist,
charming fellow. Lots of people reported, you know, hanging with

(03:21):
him and enjoying his company a whole lot. He was
apparently rich, never short on cash, which is why people
hung out with him. Probably he was hanging out with
royalty and so they weren't hurt for cash either. Oddly,
no one or at least very few people, ever saw
him eat any food. He would have dinner with people
and he would just spend a whole time talking and
not eat a single thing. Did he drink I don't know.

(03:44):
Probably presumably. Presumably did also something about him drinking a
special tea. Yeah, I was noted in some of the writings,
and that was the only thing I ever saw. He
supposedly invented something called Russian and Russian tea. Uh. He
also apparently abstained from sex. He didn't, even though women
found it very very charming. He didn't actually pursue women

(04:07):
or have a wife or a girlfriend or anything like that.
He also was rumored to have been a member of
some secret societies like the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, the Knights, Templar,
and some other ones. All the big ones, all the
big scary ones, the illumina. Yeah, I know, and it

(04:28):
seems to me that he had He played a fairly
major part in shaping European politics in the eighteenth century.
But his biggest claim to fame is for being immortal.
Oh yeah, well, if not immortal, very long live, extremely
long lived. Yeah. As I said earlier, his data birth
was put it around seventeen ten, maybe seventeen twelve. Accounts,

(04:51):
very nobody really knows, and that the count was notoriously
hard to pin down and stuff like that. He didn't
exactly say when he was born, or where he was
born or thing. There's only later in life that they
told Prince Charles of hes Cassal that he had been
he was the son of Prince Francis, the second of Transylvania.
But other than that, he tended to a vague questions
about his origins. But there were people who have said

(05:14):
that they knew him in seventeen ten and at the
time he was around forty five years old. Yeah, yeah,
I know. Another guy and the guy who was called
Baron von Stoch said that he knew the Count between
the year seventeen fifteen to seventeen twenty three, and he
was about forty five then. And in seventeen thirty five,

(05:35):
a guy named Mona and French guy saw him in
Holland apparently had seen it sometime in the far our
previous past, like seventeen ten, and Standing reported he had
an aged a day that time. So that's odd, that's
kind of strange. Was he the original Benjamin Button? Is
that he was just aging backwards? We could have been that. Yeah,
I think it's it's it was he was in stasis,

(05:56):
not aging backwards. Like I have seen you in twenty
years and you look younger. It's wow, you look exactly
the same. You know, it's probably one of those portrait
of Dorian Gray kind of delos are made a pact
with the devil or just Kiana Reeves. Yeah, I know.
Quick aside here he went by a lot of different names,

(06:18):
which is not unusual time. Apparently some of his alias
were the Marquis de Montferrat, Count de bellamar Chevalier, Count Velden,
Comptes Saltikov, graph Stars zar again okay, Graf Zarog, and

(06:40):
Prince Rocoisie And I mispronounced most of those. I'm sure
you did miles better than I. Ever, it looks like
the rumors of his immortality. Nobody can say exactly when
they seemed to have started, but They may have begun
in seventeen sixty in Paris. A certain countess of one
Georgie had owned the count in Venice in seventeen ten, apparently,

(07:04):
and when she met him again, she was amazed to
see that he hadn't aged at all, and asked him
if it was his if it was his father that
she had known in Venice, and he said no, that
it was it was he who had known her. And
apparently he was able to discuss in enough detail with
her what the things that had had they had done
together in Venice that she was convinced that it wasn't him,
just saying, yeah, that was me. Yeah. He recounted conversation

(07:27):
and events and stuff that they together. Yeah, she was
She was amazed and said he couldn't She couldn't quite
believe it, and uh, you just said, my mom, I
am very old, so maybe it was. So I'm gonna
go to his life a little bit here. He traveled
a lot in the in the year seventeen thirty seven
seventeen forty two, he was in Persia studying alchemy. Yeah,

(07:50):
and then when he returned he went to their side. Well,
And when he was in Persia he was good friends
with the show. If he hung with the show, Yeah,
he's hob nobbing with the elite of wherever he's at. Yeah,
wherever he goes, he seems to work his way right in.
In the mid seventeen forties, he lived in England for
a while. He was arrested in seventeen forty five on

(08:12):
suspicion of espionage, but they didn't have anything to really
hold him on, so they let him go. And who
knows he might have been spying. He showed up in
France in about seventeen forty eight and worked his way
into the court of Louis the fifteenth, and Louis the
fifteenth was sent him on diplomatic missions, so yeah, maybe
he made it. Might have been a spy. Yeah, he
could have been a spy. I mean, diplomats always often

(08:34):
do spy. Yeah, that's that. Those two are kind of
synonymous with each other, especially at that Yeah. Yeahs now,
technically technically supposedly, well, there's still plenty of people in
the embassy were spies, but not all of them are evidently. Yeah,
in seventeen fifty five. He went to India. In seventeen

(08:56):
sixty during the Seven Years War, he went to Holland
where he tried to open negotiations supposedly in between Britain
and France. The British ambassador wouldn't deal with him unless
he had credentials. It came directly from Louis fifteen. Now,
which war was it that was going on at that time,
the Seven Years War? Seven? I couldn't remember exactly which one,
but he was there what two or three years into

(09:18):
the war? Uh, yeah, I think about it hadn't reached it.
There was a title of seven years and yeah, now
at that point in time, it was about halfways you know,
maybe four years in I think, and uh, it was
destined to go on a little bit longer, unorginnately. Yeah.
I actually learned something interesting recently, which is that the
the French and Indian War you've heard about, Yeah, it

(09:40):
was actually part of the Seven Years War, the Seven
Years War actually how uh This basically the Seven Years
War was a clash between miscellaneous European powers that took
place all over the world. It took place some of
the classes took place in Europe, some took place in
North America and Central America. They were all, I mean,
there are all kinds of battlefields in the Seven Years War,

(10:02):
which I had not known. I've got to read a
book about the war, because yeah, I was gonna say, so, basically,
if their forces ran into each other, they immediately started fighting. Yeah,
They're like brothers in a bar basically. So yeah, the
Seven Years of War. I am going to read a
book about that and get back to you guys. At

(10:22):
this time, there was a certain plotter whose name I'm
not going to try to It was the Duke, the Duke.
The Sasse is French for hazard, So so that this
this this schemer, this plotter, the Duke of Hazard, convinced
Louis the fifties to disavow Saint Germain and the request

(10:45):
his his arrest and extradition by the Dutch. The Dutch
saw this is just internal French politics and they didn't
really want to get involved. So they saw for what
it was. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, So instead of instead
of extraditing back to France, they they got the British
ambassador hall Ind to issue the Count a British passport,

(11:07):
which they called it a blank passport, a passport so
you could fill it any name he wanted to use.
I wish I could do that. You didn't have to
have an It wasn't like it was issued and had
a photograph in it and all of that. It just
said who you were, you could steal somebody's for all you. Oh,
I know, and they would accept it. That's crazy. Yeah,
it's kind of crazy. Also crazy, is right. Britain was like, oh, hey,

(11:30):
we're gonna arrest you because years later Yeah, and then
years later, oh here's here's actually just a blank passport. Yeah,
we're over it. People were more relaxed back I read
and apparently this is should I read it? You know

(11:51):
the books Master Master in Commander series, but Patrick, what's
his name? That the book the film Master in Commander. Yeah,
and they were actually there any recreations of that period
in history during the Napoleonic Wars and his uh there
there they get captured our heroes and there and the
crew get captured by the French, and the French let

(12:13):
them go. If about just said you have to promise
not to take part in anymore fighting in the war,
and we'll let you go and we won't keep we
won't keep you captive. And so I said, okay, and
so and they and they honored the request. They didn't
take part in any more battles. They just they just
kicked back and watched the war go on around them.
So things were just a little bit different back. I
can't no, not quiet. Okay, that was an annoying a side,

(12:37):
I apologize. So he, on his blank passport, got to
travel to Britain and escape the clutches of Louis the
fifteen and all of the court intrigues there. Yeah. Nice, Okay.
Two years later he goes to Russia, where supposedly he
he knew Catherine the Great and he was involved in
the conspiracy to overthrow Zar Peter the Third and placed

(12:59):
Catherine the Great on the throne. And apparently that that
did happen, Did it did happen? It was involved. Supposedly
He also later advised the commander of the Imperial Russian
Armies in their war against Turkey, so he was, among
everything else, he's a great strategist, he's, yeah, I mean,
because he's figuring out how to how to maneuver political

(13:19):
stuff around as well as armies and forces on the
field of battle. I guess some could argue to a
suspicious degree, yeah, right, that it almost seems less that
he is good at strategy and more that he just
knows what's going to happen. M that's possible, little prescient. Yeah,

(13:41):
that's he did make some predictions. He made all kinds
of interesting predictions and a lot of which came true. Yeah,
but we're gonna talk about that in the theories. Okay, sorry,
no words. In seventeen seventy four, you return to France
Louis the sixteenth, wasn't that one power along with Marie Antoinette,
he agedly at this point warned them that a revolution

(14:02):
was to come about fifteen years in the future. You
all know how that ended. Yeah, that did not end well?
Uh yeah, yeah, I know that went on for Yeah,
should not end well for a lot of people that
were previously in power and a lot of other people. Decides.
Blood flowed freely. Let's just say it was here for liberty,
a galaze, fra turnity. Yeah, okay, still happening apparently, Yeah,

(14:27):
in this room in seventeen seventy five. This is one
source that I found and I just haven't seen this
anywhere else but this one. Oh yeah, I remember this. Yeah.
He claims that the count was in America, where he
was known as the professor, and supposedly he was involved
with all of our revolutionary founding father guys. And in
the seventeen seventy six he supposedly give a very stirring

(14:49):
speech and Independence Hall to the assembled delegates who are
about to sign the Declaration of Independence. That sounds like
somebody trying to prove that he's the doctor. I was
seeking the same thing and held back time. Yeah, but
I think about this because I mean, at the time
these guys are putting their names on what was the
treason this document, I mean, they were risking their lives
absolutely and their fortunes by doing this, and apparently their

(15:11):
morale was kind of so so, so it might be
the Count bucked up the morale sufficiently with his stirring
speed that he actually caused that declaration to be signed
and House America had come into being. Have you, either
of you watched the Uh it's Paul Giamati and I
cannot think of it's a it's a not a it's

(15:32):
a mini series basically, but it's like five or six
one hour long episode. I want to see that, but
I have not seen it. But they do a really
good job of illustrating what we were talking about of
all of the the reluctance and the infighting and the
hesitance of wait, are we really going to leave England?

(15:54):
You realize what this is gonna do to us. And
it's the first time that it. I mean, I've read
about it. I think we've all read about it, but
it's hard to imagine. But they get some great actors
and he's like, oh, I totally get this. I feel
really dumb for not figuring that out ahead of time.
How disturbing that idea would have to be at that time?
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean I think that there

(16:15):
was I think a lot of people who, you know,
if you read our history books to considered kind of
traitorous because they sided with the Brits. But you can
see how they would feel some loyalty to the crown.
I am a descendant of one of the Declarations of
Independence signers, so a bit of a yeah, yeah, he's
my dad exactly, so yeah, yeah, but yeah, anyway, it

(16:36):
was it was not a given that we were going
to achieve our independence at that time. So it was
a pretty brave deal in those ways, and we have
the count to thank for this. I can feel like
he shoehorned into that story. I think so too. Ellent
mar either way, in seventeen seventy nine, and I'm leaving
a lot out of his timeline. He actually was bouncing

(16:56):
around all over. The timeline is a maze easingly dense. Yeah,
and considering how slow travel was in those days, I mean,
he really got around. It's amazing. Halfway around the world
in seventeen seventy nine. Now he went to Hamburg, Germany
and became buds with Prince Charles of Hesse Castle, who
I talked about earlier. Uh, And that he lived as

(17:19):
a guest in the princess castle at an unpronounceable town
and I'm gonna call it eerd Okay, we'll call it that.
According to local records, he died there February seventeen eighty four.
He left me had some clothes, little cash, personal items

(17:39):
like combs and razors and stuff like that, but no gold,
no jewels or anything else particularly valuable. So that's where
our story ends. Yeah, but not quite. Yeah, it turns
out he returns from the dead in seventeen eighty five. Now,
remember he died in seventeen eighty four. He shows up

(17:59):
at the mass on a convention in Paris apparently was
actually on the registry there and everything, So that's interesting.
I supposedly in se six he had a meeting with
the Empress of Russia, presumably as Catherine the Grade presumed,
I don't uh. In seventeen eight cents, a letter to
Louis sixteenth and lo Intoinette was with with a warning,

(18:24):
which is, let's let's remember it's only a year until
the start of the French Revolution. I'm not going to
read the entire letter because it's kind of long. Let
read the first cents or two. The time is fast
approaching when imprudent France surround have been misfortune, she might
have spared herself will call to mind such hell as
Dante painted, and on and on and on from there.
It's pretty dire. Yeah, it's not not a happy letter. Yeah. Anyway, So,

(18:48):
and they apparently didn't heed his warning, and maybe maybe
there were a wasn't much they could do in seventeen
in seventeen to other people reported running into them. Also,
I'm not gonna tell you their names because I can't
pronounce him. Yeah, they ran into him. So they saw
him somewhere and talked to him, ran into him, or

(19:10):
saw him at a distance. Now they the first one
claims to have spoken to him. Another one claims to
have met with him, and he said, oh, this is
an interesting one to His name is Baron Lyndon. He
was he met with him, and the count said that
he was on his way out of Europe, headed for
the him in las quote, I will rest, I must

(19:30):
rest exactly in eighty five years, will people again set
eyes on me? Farewell words of the count. But he
must have five, because he actually shut up a little
earlier in that. But yeah, he had a flair for
the dramatic. You guys have noticed that. Yeah, maybe him
in eighty five days could have been Yeah. In late

(19:54):
seventeen eighty nine, the counts Is said another name I
don't know how to pronounce. I'm just gonna I'm just
gonna murder it here it said dott him yor Doti
mayor I don't know the best, Okay. So she got
a letter from saying the sun had set in the
French monarchy and it was too late. His hands were
tied by quote once stronger than myself unquote, he prophecied

(20:16):
the death of Marie Antoinette, the ruin of the royal family,
and the rise of Napoleon. So yeah, this guy must
have had a time machine. Huh yeah, Yeah. Marty mcclaude
gave him a book of history, one of the two. Yeah.
In he again wrote a letter with the prophetic warning
about Marie Antoinette's death, said in her fate would be

(20:39):
death and that's how it turned out to be. And
the countess asked, this is again in the countess with
the unpronounceable name asked if she would see him again
after he gave her the prophecy, and he replied five
more times, do not wish for a sixth Apparently that
means a sixth time it's going to be when she dies. Yeah,
I know. So the first of the six was the
assassination of Marie Antoinette Monce she ran into him again.

(21:02):
Another in englishman saw him in seventeen inter prison in France.
In seventeen nine, he was seen by that same count
as we just talked about at the eighteenth Premier of
Leu sixteenth that was a cut data and which Napoleon
overtook the French consulates and began his cue. So most
of these are that that one countess saying oh I

(21:24):
saw him again, right, Well, are they substantiated by other
people at the same time? Is that there are other
people who were also saying, oh yeah, I saw him
too and it was a weird sing. Well there are
actually I'm going to skip over some of the rest
of this particular countesses things. Uh In. Albert Vandam, who's
an Englishman, wrote in his memoirs and talked about a

(21:47):
person who bore a lot of resemblance to the Count
of Saint Germain. But he called himself Major Fraser. But
he but he just sounds a lot like him. But
we'll skip that because he didn't actually say it was
Saint Germaine, so no more of that. And he met
with a certain Lord Lytton whose full name is Edward
George Earl Lytton Boulward Lytton. Yeah, not at all. I

(22:11):
hate to be a kid, have to learn how to
write all of that. Imagine that every time he signed
a check somehow, I don't think there was much check
signing happening, probably not. But Lord Lytton was an English politician,
poet and a novelist. He was very popular and he
coined some really kind of that's the word I'm thinking

(22:32):
of cliche phrases these days, whereas like the Great un Washed,
the pant is mightier than the sword. Yeah, but apparently
so this is the guy who said that he met
with the count. He was seen in eighteen sixty seven
and a meeting for the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Milan, Italy.
In eighteen seventy Napoleon third was became so interested in

(22:53):
this undying count that he had a special commission put
together to gather information. They were stationed at the Hotel
de Villa in eighteen seventy one. The hotel to be
a burnt down, destroying all the records. So apparently an
arsonist or just trying to hide his trail. Eighteen seventy
seven he was seen in Milan, Italy again at a

(23:13):
Freemason meeting in somebody named Annie Bastant claimed to have
met the count in e Also, somebody didn't mentioned Blovatsky
claimed to have met the Count and said that she
was in frequent contact with him. So hang on just
a second. I again, I just want to clarify. So
we've got the and these are a couple of things.
So is he identifying himself as the Count, or just

(23:39):
people say, no, that looks like the Count. Well that
is the deal. Now, I think in these cases there
there these are people who say they met with him
in other ways. They didn't just run into him or
see him in the street, They actually met with him
and apparently I wait, wait, wait, when was the last
one that you just said? What was the date on that?
That was eight ninety six. I think he would have

(24:01):
been in his nineties, He would have been, he would
have been would have been a d That's where I'm saying.
It's like, well, these people couldn't have met him before.
There's no possible way that these regular human people could
have met him before. So I'm just trying to figure

(24:24):
out if they're saying that it's the Count because a
he said he's the Count, be they've seen a painting
of him and the likeness is striking, or if it's
just anecdotal, you know. I'm just I'm trying to understand
because I could never get a good handle on why

(24:44):
they I said, oh, yeah, he was the Count. What
what drove that? Well? I kind of suspect that the
hand I'm half serious here. I suspect that there was
probably a standing joke among the nobility and the higher
higher classes in Europe about the Count. I think he
became kind of famous, and I think that maybe it

(25:07):
was just a joke that you run into somebody say hey,
seen the Count and say, oh, yeah, you know, I
saw the Count at a Rosa Crucian convention in Boden, Boden,
and I just thought, it's all just a joke. It
could become the Dozki's guy. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I
mean maybe that's just maybe as as simple as that.
But you're right, I mean at a certain point, I mean,
when it's like seventee, well, sure he could still be
alive and there'd be people around who knew him, so

(25:30):
that all makes sense. But then when you're getting up
to the you know, like you know, the closing of
the nineteenth century, that's a little different. But yeah, that's
that's what I could never get a clear line on
was how what what interaction when it was written down
and then transcribed and rewritten, YadA, YadA, YadA, What what

(25:50):
actually happened? And yeah, I know that the records are
a little sparse and inconclusive, and we're probably not going
to get the answer to my question. That is driving
the bonkers, but I got to ask it anyway. Yeah,
there's uh, there is a ton of stuff on the
internet about this guy. I mean, he's really really excited

(26:10):
a lot of people's interests, and so you know, as
you know, the more more web pages there are, the
more opportunities for what's the word of embellishment, Yeah, mischief
business Yeah, trolling, Yeah, trolling, there's that. But here's the deal,
and this is what we really need to figure out
is that if the count truly is immortal, that means

(26:32):
he's still alive today, and that means at least one
of these websites is his website. We need to figure
out which one that is one it is. It's probably
that one that had the purple background with the purple
text on. Yeah, it's probably that one. Yeah, probably made
that one for himself. Yeah, I don't know. It's got

(26:53):
to be a way to figure out which one is
account's website, and then we'll deal with that in the
future research. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I'll just spit out a
couple more things here. There was a strange encounter of
World War One in August nineteen fourteen, two Bavarian soldiers
captured a man in Alsas. During the interrogation uh their

(27:14):
prisoner well started got irritable and starting to rail about
the futility of the war, and he told his captors
throw it down your guns. The war will end in
nineteen eighteen with defeat for the German nation and her allies.
And then he said everyone will be a millionaire after
the war. This is something I think somebody made up. Actually, yeah, yeah,

(27:35):
it's too easy. Yeah, everyone will be a millionaire after
the war. There'll be so much money in circulation, people
will throw it from windows and no one will bother
to pick it up. You'll need to carry it around
a wheelbarrel to buyleaf of bread. Which is actually that's true.
It's totally true because when the German economy was collapsing
and inflation was running rampant, but nobody kept cash. You know,

(27:58):
it was worthless. I mean they made the was the
million dollar mark or whatever it was the market was, yeah, yeah, yeah,
they you know, actually it was a hundred thousands and
a million because it was just so worthless that it
took so much to buy so little that nobody could

(28:19):
carry it. Yeah, I think it was only very recently
in time that Zimbabwe started publicly and started printing their
million million dollar note million Zimbabwean dollars or whatever they are,
because became so worthless. I would love to have a
million dollar bill, wouldn't it be cool? Well, you know
those those old notes, I mean, people literally were burning

(28:39):
them to heat their homes, that's how little value they had.
And very few of them have survived the value of
those bills. Now, those weird denominations that they kept putting
out just because of inflation our collector's item, and they
were worth a lot of money. And I've seen pictures

(29:00):
on it, and it's amazing to see a not a
not a joke, but a true note that has that
many zeroes on it, and it looks like monopoly money
because it's just got such a huge number written on it.
It's really it's it's sad. My My uncle was in
the war and in Europe um and he brought back

(29:23):
the only supnero brought back that I know. There's a
Walter automatic pistol, which he gave to me years ago,
So that was nice of him. I thought it was
a really generous gift actually, but I really wish he'd
picked up a few of those notes and brought those
back and given those to me too. That would have
been cool. Yeah. I believe it's what they thought was
worth anything, and it wasn't the note. Yeah. Any who, again,

(29:45):
let's go back to our story. H some other meetings,
but I'm not gonna like beat on this too much.
In August nineteen, a guy named Guy Bollard supposedly met
him on Mount Shasta in California, and it started the
the I AM activity, which you can if you google that.
There's a wiki page on it. I AM and AM
stands for Ascended Master. Yeah, I know, yeah, he's an

(30:08):
ascended being. Essentially there was. He was also supposedly spotted
in in nineteen sixties at a conference in Berlin. Um
so and last of all and seventy two again named
Richard Champery, when on French television claiming to be the
count that was discredited. Didn't. He said he knew how
to turn led into gold and he did it in

(30:29):
front of everybody on a camp stove over something like that. Yeah,
I would like to I'd like to be able to
do that. Yeah, me too, man. Yeah, it didn't turn
out very well for him. No, I'm shocked he I
don't know. Everybody turned against him because they knew what
it fraud he was and he ended up committing suicide,
which was terrible. Yeah, I know, it just goes to show. Yeah,

(30:53):
be honest, don't don't troll the world. Let's get in
some theories to what the count was all about. Was
he immortal or not? So the first theory is is, yeah,
he was just immortal. Don't have any thoughts on that. Well,
there's a lot of stories about supposed immortal beings through

(31:14):
history that that is kind of a consistent theme, and
we can bring it to modern times with things like
doctor Who's we've been joking about or the Highlander things
like that. You know, these guys are from way back
on and have lived far far in the future. But
it's not quite credible. No, because here's the thing. Okay, this,

(31:35):
this is something I've always had a problem with with,
say the Highlander series. I swear I've seen episodes of
that where they were sick. But let's just say they
don't get sick, so they don't get diseases or even worse,
sexually transmitted diseases. But let's just say they get a
hand chopped off. Now you get to go through and

(31:56):
I mean this, this doesn't make sense. You're not very
well brushed up on your doctor who Cannon, are you? No,
I'm not. Yeah, because he loses a hand, because that
to me is, while still far flung, a little more grounded. Obviously,

(32:17):
obviously the Highlander guy accounts from the same sort of
class of beings as a doctor. So you can regenerate too. Yeah, yeah,
he's a time ward too. I just counterpoint with Kiana
Reeves just constantly. No, I mean genuinely. I mean Patiana
actually actually does look a little older, Nies, he looks
a little older than he used to. That's definitely true.

(32:37):
I guess it's not serious. I'm not serious. I don't
don't actually think Kiana Reeves is immortal. He doesn't age
a lot, but that's explained by a lot of different things.
But I do think to percent discount the idea of
immortal beings in our world is I'm not willing to
totally discount it. I think there are a lot of

(33:00):
weird things in our world, and I just you know, yeah,
but I'm kind of wondering what because part of the
aging process isn't just breakdown and sell regeneration and stuff
like that, but also just gravity. That's why you get like,
you know, you get kind of jowelly or and saggy
or as you get older. It's not just because you're
aging because of gravity. So imagine what a twenty year

(33:22):
old person would look like like, you know, yeah, yeah.
But the thing is, I've got an uncle who I've
known for, you know, thirty some years that he's been
in my family. And that guy you see a picture

(33:43):
of him twenty years ago and now, and he looks
maybe ten pounds heavier, but otherwise identical. So there are
people who don't appear to his age as much as others.
And I wonder if maybe that's part of it. Where
all your friends are working in the field or all

(34:03):
your servants are toiling and they're killing themselves and they're
aging quite rapidly, and then you've got this one guy
who's gotta live in the life of luxury and he
kind of hits his stride of what he's gonna look
like at about thirty. But it really hasn't done any
strenuous outdoor activity through years, but stayed in okay, shape,
he's gonna look the same for all intents and purposes.

(34:25):
And people's memories are notoriously shoddy, so they won't notice
the one the couple of bags that you have that
aren't that big compared to when they saw you twenty
years ago and you had none under your eyes. It's
also possible to count lied about stuff like when Yeah,
when he was in Vanics, for example, and him at
that counts as who had known him supposedly, maybe it

(34:48):
really was his father that she had known and he
just lied to her about it. Also, even a portrait
of Dorian Gray we kind of mentioned before too. Maybe
you just have a painting that ages for you, Yeah,
that takes care of gravity. That would be kind of cool.
Magic is a thing. Who do I get to go
for you? For one of them? I don't know. Well,
let's move on to our next theory. This has actually

(35:10):
been posted. Some people have actually suggested this that he
is the wandering Jew. Yeah, explained everybody, who the wandering
Jew is, Yeah, the wandering Jew is. Apparently there was
a Jewish guy who when Jesus was heading off to
his crucifixion, carrying his cross as some Jewish guy taunted him,
so Jew, and so Jesus threw a curse on the

(35:32):
wandering Jew, which is that he was to walk the
earth until he returns until the second coming of Christ.
So the wandering Jew wasn't quite immortal. He's gonna die
sometime when Jesus comes back, but in the meantime, he's
stuck on this planet. So the wandering Jews who he is.
But there's not nothing ever said about him not aging.
He just test to live that long, that's true. I mean,

(35:54):
maybe he has to spend like the you know, the
next ten thousand years in her rest home. Yeah, that's depressing,
that would be Oh Jesus, your mean, actually, the wandering
Jew thing didn't even come into into currency until I
to think the thirteenth century. It's not like that's documented
or anything like that. Right that that was a story

(36:15):
that that got spun up. But this whole thing about
this is my whole thing about immortality. And people always glamorize, Oh,
if I was a vampire and live forever, if I
was immortal, or however whatever way they go about becoming immortal,
nobody ever thinks about it. And And I've seen this dramatize

(36:36):
in a number of places of what a lonely freaking
existence that would have to be after about the first
hundred and fifty years. That's why you find your tribe.
Man maybe, but you know everybody, you know, everything you're
used to, it's gone, new friends. But I think about,

(36:57):
you know, think about this is mad And there was
I don't know if you ever watched that TV show
Alias No, I never watched that. That was actually kind
of fun. It was it was it was created by J. J. Abrams.
And there's this like, you know, uber bad guy whose
name I forget, and he's trying to amass all these
artifacts and stuff from this one particular you know, mad
medieval genius. The idea of being is if you get

(37:20):
all these together and I forget it's been a while
and and wave wave your hands over them and see
the right words, you achieve immortality. And so I think
that the ultimate episode, the ending episode of the show.
The spoilers, yeah, well, I mean everybody's gonna watch that show.
Has been years since the show was Yeah, And so

(37:42):
this guy goes into this cave and he and he
has shot is shot. Our heroine's father is also a
regularity in the series, and so he shot him and
left him for dead, but he's not quite dead. It
goes into this cave and and and finds this this
little room in the that's got you know, the final
piece he needs to achieve immortality. And then the achieves immortality,

(38:06):
and then suddenly Dad pops in the doorway and he's
got like a dynamite belt and blows it up and
kills he kills him. He dies, of course, and of
course the cave partially collapses, and so this guy who's
now immortal has to spend eternity trapped in a cavern

(38:26):
pinned under a boulder. Yeah, it was like the ultimate
come up. But anyway, I'm totally gonna go off the
yeare Yeah, Okay, So much of the wandering to a was,
as I said in my notes series, got black hair,
which is which is fair enough. But he was also
described as having pale skin, and especially in the days

(38:46):
of Jesus, the Jews did not have pale skin. No,
they look like little small Arabs. And the Arabs were
small back in those days too. I mean, this is
like two thousand years ago. Everybody's probably five ft three.
That was a tall person. I mean have you ever
ever seen like you go to England he sees do
you see these suits of armor that are on display. Yeah,

(39:07):
it's like these were the big guys. They're really big
guys that got to push everybody else around, and they're
about as tall as Devon. Yeah if everyone was my size. Yeah,
I know people were small back in the day. What's next, Okay,
our next theory suspended animation. Yeah, so the count we
can't would go out meet with people, you know, get

(39:27):
his face out there, you know, and then go back
to wherever and jump into his suspended animation capsule and
just you know, not age for twenty years. Yea, now
it is dumb. Just threw it in there. Next next
to one is time travel. Yeah, it was a time travel.
It would make sense. That would makes sense. He was
able to foresee things happen that happened in the future,

(39:48):
tried to warn people people. Yeah, he couldn't actually intervene,
but you know, yeah, so it's not like so he
in this scenario, he had a normal lifespan, but he
was able to spread it out very great number of
years because he was bouncing around between points and times
the important points. Yeah, so I'm assigning this one in Yeah,

(40:10):
I agree, yeah, no not just yeah, okay, yeah, okay,
uh next up, and then that kind of fits he
was a vampire because he didn't eat food, didn't have sex.
Oh yeah, you're right. I didn't know he could be
dead and he could be dead by he could have

(40:32):
got him. Yeah, I know. Uh so if he was
a vampire, that explains why he wouldn't eat food and
why he wasn't having sex with women. Yeah. And it
was also very pale. So this is going with the
glittery vampires, not the Dracula vampires. In other words, he
can go in the sun because but literally Bram Stoker

(40:53):
Dracula can't go in the sun and he burst into flame.
This guy is like hob nobbing and going around. I'm
assuming that if we you know, if you read some
of the accounts, he's hanging out in the day with
people's which makes me think that he's going the like
I said, the glittery vampire, like Twilight. Yeah, the Twilight Vampire.
Thank you, I have expunged the name of that series

(41:15):
from my brain. I'm glad I was able to put
it back in what show in fairness, Twilight is not
the first uh work to explore vampires as being able
to go into the daylight. Yeah, just saying I kind
of prefer vampires being kind of limited age. Yeah, it's

(41:35):
what was the other one? That Queen of the Dam
has some stuff in that too. There's a lot of
other I mean, I know that, like, well, if you
were like say of Lestat Stature, you know, then he
actually was able to go out in the sun and
toast himself and still survive it. But a young vampire
couldn't survive it. But that's but you have to argue,
if you know the Comte de Saint Germaine is vampire,

(41:59):
he's obviously of at least listat Stature. Well, yeah, of
course yea, And yeah, I don't know how much time
he spent, like you know, outside versus inside and all
that stuff. I think this has probably got the most
pop cultural references ever an episode. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Actually I never thought we'd talked about it. And rights book, Yeah,

(42:20):
actually her vampire books were pretty good and joy they
were entertaining. The next theory, he just told a lot
of tall tales. He's just a liar that could have
been Yeah, he made a lot of very dubious claims.
He told people that he was five hundred years old.
Voltaire called him the wonder man, and sarcastically, Castingova was
another doubter. Uh. He met the Count numerous times, and

(42:44):
he was as I said, was in his memoirs. The
Count was in Castanova's memoirs, that is, and here's a
small there's a small quote from he had more to say. Quote.
This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king
of impostors and quacks, would say, in an easy, assured manner,
that he was three years old, that he knew the
secret of the universal medicine, that he possessed a mastery

(43:07):
over nature, That he could melt diamonds, professing himself capable
of forming out of ten or twelve small diamonds one
large one of the finest water without any loss of weight.
All this he said, was a mere trifle to him.
Notwithstanding his boastings, his bare his bare face lies, and
his manifold eccentricities, I cannot say that I thought him offensive.

(43:27):
In spite of my knowledge of what he was, and
in spite of my own feelings, I thought him an
astonishing man, as he was always astonishing me, and Cassanova
said that, right, we're not saying some puritan or yeah,
he said, yeah, this guy was just a crank and
a boster. So I gotta be honest. Anybody who says

(43:48):
they practice alchemy, Yeah, that just sounds like I tinker
in the garage and I play with these chemicals and
oh yeah, I can make goal gold out of lead,
and oh I made this a lixxir one time that
made me immortal, But I can't figure out how to
do it again, because of course I'm so brave. I

(44:09):
made this thing that I didn't know what it was
going to do, and then I drank it. Well, but
what if it's real? Though? No, but I mean genuinely,
think about if alchemy was real and people knew about it,
if you knew how to do that, would you be
broadcasting it everywhere and saying I know how to create
all this wealth? Or would you hold that in and
just secretly work your way up into the upper achalons

(44:30):
of society and just comfortably stay there. Yeah, you'd be
nuts to actually let that secret out, because if anybody
can make gold out of whatever, and then pretty soon
goal is not worth a thing. So yeah, you obviously
want to keep it close. Alchemy has got kind of
a poor track record. Yeah, I can see. Yeah, there's
been a what did Cassanova say, what's the term quacks? Yeah,

(44:51):
there's been a lot of quacks. Yeah. No, I mean
I understand the desire to create gold out of nothing
or lead or whatever, and a lot of people have
wasted a lot of time. I'm trying to do that.
I just continue to argue that if you were actually
successful with that, you wouldn't be trying to tell people
that you were doing it. You wouldn't know, you would
not tell people behind it. Same thing with the Diona.

(45:11):
I can take ten or twelve small diamond and yeah,
why would you do that? Yeah, and then you know
what you know, I mean, take a couple hundred diamonds
and make the Hope diamond out of it. That'd be cool. Yeah,
that'd be really awesome. See that. It's probably how the
Hope Diamond was formed. Yeah. And one last thing there
at the time was an English comedian who called himself
Lord Gower, who was at large in Paris, and he

(45:34):
used to impersonate the Count of Saint Germain in Paris saloons. Yeah,
and he made up even crazier stories, and the real
accounts like that he had advised Jesus and stuff like this,
and so let's stuff gets repeated around. Of course, next
thing you know, people are repeating it like it's true,
are mixed up with who said it, yeah and so
um and so. Yeah. I think this is all just

(45:57):
a big hoax. Yeah, I think, Yeah, I was gonna say,
I think it's stories mixed with stories, mixed with stories,
and once they get mixed up, you can never pull
them back apart. This guy is telling these tall tales,
this other guy is making fun of him, telling even
taller tales. And then it as Joe made the the

(46:21):
good observation of his saying I'm count Saint Germain is
a bit of a gag, just as fuel to the fun. Yeah,
I think I think that really, his legend probably was
such that I really do think that it probably became
a standing joke. You know, I see the count. Yeah,
I think that might have been a refrigerator running. Yeah,
I mean, I I love the idea of somebody being

(46:45):
I'm not gonna say immortal, but extremely long live. So
let's just say a lifespan of four hundred years. I really.
I mean, there's a little bit of romantic appeal in
terms of getting to see things and experience everything. So
I like the idea. I'm not going to discount the
idea at all, but I can't back it. Yeah, now

(47:09):
I can't either, so so sorry, I don't think it
was immortal. But anyway, if you are the real count
and you beg to differ, you can contact us via
email at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com and
really seriously, we would love to hear from you, and
we will totally totally et Crow on our show. Yeah,
we totally will. Uh, just a few other odds and

(47:33):
ends here. You can find our website also, it's Thinking
Sideways podcast dot com, where you can leave comments. You
can find our links to our episodes and and also
links to all the material that we cover in our episodes.
You can find us on iTunes that probably is where
you found us, but you can subscribe, leave us a review.

(47:53):
We're in a rating. We would really like that. You
can also stream us. There's a lot of different streaming places.
We used to say stitch here, but now just stream
us from anywhere. There's all kinds of places. Oh yeah,
I know, it's getting scary. Yeah. And of course you
can find us on Facebook. Find us, like us, friend us,

(48:14):
and you know, make comments. I don't know, make comments
or whatever. Yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever, what's going on with Facebook?
I do Facebook. I just account. Yeah, it's a live journal. Yeah,
oh my god. Now seriously, I don't. I just kind

(48:35):
of gotten away from Facebook. You know, I used to
be really into it, and I'm kind of over it now.
That's it's still I mean, it's it's fun to go
out there and read some of the stuff that some
of our our listeners leave for us. So check it
more off and then I check my own personal Facebook.
Oh and last of all, Twitter. Yes, we are on Twitter,
but we're a little different. We are thinking sideways. That's
thinking without the G so thinking sideways on Twitter. So

(48:57):
follow us on Twitter. And that's about it for this week.
So any for the thoughts. So awesome idea. Yeah, I
love the suggestion. Yeah, alright, alright, let's it for now.
Count please send us an email um and we'll see
you all next week. Bye bye everybody, Bye guys.