Thinking Sideways: Toynbee Tiles

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking sideways. I don't you never know what story is
of things. We simply don't know the answer to toy
the idea in movie two thousand one resurrect dead on
planet Jupiter um and and but it's a gas planet,

(00:27):
and it's like, what's going on here? You're like Sherlock
Holmes on a cocaine bender. No, You've got notes and
hastily written notes every what is okay? Okay, you're a
little too into this in your forehead. Just the thing
is is that this is one of those mysteries that

(00:50):
so many people have dealt into, and I feel like
there's like a curse attached to it, like you just
fall into it. It's like it never It's like Alice
in the looking glass. It's just how many more metaphors
can I come up? I really don't know. Yeah, and
you just fall in and there's no you know, I
I know. I was expressing to Steve earlier that I
don't know if I'm really ready for this, just because

(01:13):
there's so much information out there. It's been going on
for so long you can't do anything about it. But
I really want to talk about this one because it's
like one of my favorite mysteries, and I feel like
it's time, but I'm so sorry I can't make it through.
Let's talk about you're gonna help me with us, because
if we're going to solve it, I don't want to

(01:38):
solve it. I really want to solve it. It's the thing, Okay.
The thing about this mystery is that it seems like
there's just an obvious answer, right. It's one of those
ones where you like, you read through it and you're like, well,
I'm just I'm I'm like an idiot, Like I'm clearly
I'm just not making the right connections, Like there should
be a really simple answer at this, but there's just not. No. No,

(01:59):
I can perspective there is a simple answer. Somebody's making
these things and putting them out there, right, but who
and why? And that's let's start the beginning. There are
for dear friends who are listening today alright and don't
know what's going on. Okay, so what's your This is, well,
this is Thinking Sideways the podcast. I'm so sorry everyone.

(02:22):
My name is Devin, and I'm joined as always by
and we're gonna go out of mystery. By now, you
probably know we're going to do the toy be tiles.
So these tiles, um they're sometimes called plaques started showing
up maybe in the early nineteen eighties, definitely, people can

(02:43):
pretty solidly recall in like three these things cropping up.
But for sure there were recorded sightings in the early nineties.
So theyve been around, what they've been around a while,
happening a while, I should say happening I think, been
around because it's often a lot of times they have
been around for a while, but sometimes they haven't, and
that's kind of well, you know, they could be one

(03:03):
of them could be around for a long time before
you even notice it. You know, the one that's over
near my house, it's seventh in Hawthorne, which I went
and looked at today that it actually is there. It's
still there. Yeah, but I've been I've been driving over
that thing and passed that thing forgot for years now,
never even noticed because they you know, that's kind of
part of it. They crop up in the middle of

(03:24):
asphalt streets or sidewalks, but but more they crop up
in the street kind of places where you don't necessarily
see them. Um and by the way, yeah, and as
it's because you know, as it's gotten more recent, it's
kind of we we see them more in visible pedestrian spaces.
We'll talk about this in a little bit. It's a

(03:46):
big there's a distinction. Okay, most of them are are
just this phrase to be idea in movie two thousand
one resurrect dead on planet Jupiter. The most common variations
you'll see are instead of in movie, it will say
in Cubricks two thousand one, because he directed it the
movie and I think he wrote it to things a

(04:12):
little mysterious to me is this two thousand one resurrect
down on Jupiter. I mean, in the movie they go
to Jupiter, but they're not going there to resurrect the dead. Well,
we'll talk about this. There's so much to talk about
with So officially we kind of consider anything that cropped up,
not anything, but most of them that cropped up until
about two thousand two to be old style or original tiles.

(04:36):
And then since two thousand to a lot of um
copycats have kind of cropped up. You know, the ones
here are considered to be copycats UM, and that I
think is due in part to the fact that forums
got ahold of her some somehow realized how these were
being done. And they posted on the Internet, so people
who were toying be tile enthusiasts now knew how they

(05:00):
were made, how to make them themselves. And we're kind
of going out and copying and propagating the it becomes
a movement. Yes, it makes sense. Yeah, street art absolutely.
I'm actually thinking about creating one myself. I did in college. Yeah,
I did um in Illinois. Is it still there? I

(05:20):
have no idea. He was never on Google street View.
I guess we'll start by talking about how they're made,
because that's the simplest thing to attack in this whole situation.
It's the simplest thing to attack. And I understand that
this is, you know, again propagating the mystery a little bit.

(05:41):
You know, we're about to say to all of our
millions of viewers or listeners, at least one percent of
whom we're going to want to run right out totally.
So now you'll know how to do it, not that. Yeah,
and it's not that you couldn't just google it before.
So they're they're actually made of linoleum linolium tiles, just
like you can buy at home depot um. The theory

(06:02):
is and again, since you know that it's pretty easy
to tell. You just carve out your message in the linoleum.
And the older style ones, we're really colorful and kind
of like look like mosaics and we'll we'll post pictures
of these so you can kind of see. But they're
really beautiful. Yeah, they're kind of. But so the older ones,
I mean like they had like color the letters in.

(06:26):
Now did they just lay lay the cut out lin
only on top of another piece of material to get
the color or did they actually cut out different colored pieces.
So essentially what you do is you put down a
piece of tar paper, which is what they use when
you're reroofing when you put shingles on, and you can
again you can just get it at home deepot or whatever.
So you get a layer of tar paper, which they

(06:48):
also used to patch cement and asphall cracks. Um. You
lay that down and then you would cut out your
basic outline so you're big, you're like main color of
the tile, and then you cut out the little bits,
carve out, carve out the letters and stick them in
the holes um and then you put a bunch of
Olmoer's glue on there and all over it. You just

(07:10):
like it's like making a sandwich a little bit, Yeah,
and you just like smother your mayonnaise or jam or
whatever it is in there, and then you use asphalt
crack filler as well a little bit, and then you
stick another layer of tar paper on there, and you've
got yourself a little like sandwich packet. Well, and I
think I think the answer Joe's question is, and it

(07:34):
took me a while to figure this out. You're talking
about the original ones were much more colorful. Yeah, because
what somebody was doing was carving the letters out and
making a negative space in the linoleum and then adding
a positive and then cutting out another piece of linoleum
that was the letter in laying in there to make
the positive. It would be that hard. Actually, you could
use it as a stencil, extremely time consumed. If you

(07:58):
think about that, I carved the letter are, and then
I've got to carve the letter are smaller and in
relatively the same shape proportionately to fit in there. So
if the leg or the curve is too big, i
gotta go back and shave it down to get them
all in there. And you know, the really interesting thing.
The other thing that you kind of notice is as

(08:18):
you start to look at the pictures of these tiles,
you can kind of instinctively know if it's an original
or copycat because there's really distinct handwriting that goes with
the very obvious style. It's really really obvious, and it's
really consistent. It's not like an amateur carver. And even
and we'll get into this, there are these like original

(08:40):
like trial runs that were found and you look at
them and you're like, oh, that's the guy, Like that
was made by the same person. And there's there's the screeds,
which are just tons and tons of little writing that
it's just so much and it's a very consistent style.
So the style is the key, Yeah, it absolutely is.

(09:01):
Um it's it's like a fingerprint. Yeah, I think I
think that's true. And the guy, the guy who does
a squeeze sounds like a little bit unbalanced. Well, so yeah,
we call those man I'm in it, you guys, I'm
in it. Those are called they're referred to most often
as the manifesto tiles, and we'll talk about that but
a little bit later. But so they've floated this theory

(09:22):
that the person the tyler will refer to this person
as the Tyler. You often see that kind of in
the net sphere, the infosphere, and we don't actually, we
don't have a verified name. Yeah, there's and and it's
pretty widely accepted that it was just one person. So

(09:44):
we'll just go ahead and throw that out there in
the beginning. So there was this theory that the Tyler
had a car that was missing a floorboard, so you
would just you would drop your little sandwich packet and it
it would go and then drive away. And the way
when I did, it would know did you cut a
hole in the bottom of your card? I didn't have.

(10:06):
That's good. That's good. Okay. So it hits the ground.
So it hits the ground, and then the heat of
the tires driving over it, uh, kind of embeds it
in the asphalt. It just like deep deep embeds it
and then eventually wears the tar paper part away after
all of the like tar and asphalt and glue have
solidified into the been pushed around because they're they're they're

(10:30):
it's it's kind of a sticky liquid way to say it.
So it gets pushed away from the base material totally
on the top. Yeah, so it all gets embedded and
then it'll wear a wait at the paper, so they
just eventually kind of reveal themselves, which is really cool
if you think about it, and really ingenious. Yeah, super
super smart. Yeah, I think that I don't think that

(10:53):
I would go to the lengths of cutting ahold the
bottom of my car though. I think I just like
roll down my window and drop it out that way.
You have the thing about a car with a hole
in the floorboard, is nobody plans to have that, but
you end up with it because I hadn't. I had
a car that I discovered had a hole in the
floorboard once and I wasn't planning on habit it. But
once I had it, I had it. So I don't
know how how much I like this theory, to be

(11:15):
totally honest with you. Um, there's a there's a dropping
it through the floorboard thing. There's a documentary that we're
going to like refer a lot to in this because
it's kind of like the end all be all of
information on the TONB tiles. It's called Resurrect Dead, and
they talk a lot about this car as it refers
to the person that they think is responsible for this.

(11:35):
They find a car they did not, but they have
descriptions of it, and it's a crazy well car. But
I think, you know, in some instances that makes sense.
But to say that that's how this person exclusively did that,
I just don't think that's the case. I don't. I
just don't. Can I can I break in here for
a second, because this is the thing that we've We've

(11:57):
had a couple of stories where there's been documentaries out
there about him. I know the last one we did Hubert,
there was a documentary that was done. And the thing
that I always I want to bring bring up and
and make people think about, is that when you watch
a documentary, they have come to a conclusion typically of

(12:18):
what the answer is gonna be, at least for the
most part. So they're going to bring that stuff to
the forefront. And it's a little frustrating to me at
times because I don't always agree with it, and I
don't always think the logic is sound, And I think
that it's very easy for folks to go and let's say,

(12:38):
watch this documentary and say, oh, well, that's the absolute answer.
But I still see some holes and not that these
guys didn't do a ton of leg work. They did,
And again I think you know, if you watch this movie,
you will get exactly the idea of what I was
just talking about earlier, is you fall down this rabbit hole.
And even you know, they're an instance where a guy

(13:01):
comes in and he's like a total skeptic and he
like doesn't totally he's not really into the idea, and
by the end of it, he's like one of the
only people who still like involved in the whole situation.
But I think you just you don't. I think there
is that feeling of thinking, well, there must just be
this really simple answer it or just like that I'm
just too stupid to see. And that's that's what drives
me crazy sometimes when we see these documentaries, which are

(13:23):
well made. I'm not going to knock on them, but
then you start thinking about it after the facts. Well, okay,
so I agenda is not the right word to use,
but they have an agenda that they that they are
putting forward and that's what they're going to support. But
that doesn't mean that that's the only or the absolute
or correct answer, right right Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt,

(13:46):
but I just I had to say that because we've
had this come up a couple of times. I agree, yeah,
and I think it's it's worth saying for sure. They
the theory kind of commonly accepted knowledge is that there's
about a hundred and fifty like old style tiles, originals
originals essentially that people have have identified, and you know,

(14:07):
there may be more that nobody's ever seen. They may
have gotten destroyed before anybody ever had to see them,
because they're getting well. And the thing of it that's
really interesting is that it's it almost seems like it's
a really big effort to pave over these things. There
have been cities who like Chicago, for instance, which is

(14:28):
where these majority of them started out at, right, Philadelphia, Philadelphia,
you're right, but Chicago saw like two of them and
they were like, Nope, this is a huge act of vandalism.
We will do everything we can to pave over them
and destroy them. When truly, I mean, it's not destroying
the street. Like if I were a conspiracy theory not

(14:49):
it would totally feed into my conspiracy theory because it's
like a couple of tiles in the middle of the street.
It's not like gang graffiti like written on the side
of like some giant tourist trap or anything like that,
and now the government suppressing it. Yeah, I mean a
little bit. It's a lot of money to repay the street, Like,

(15:10):
it cost a lot of money to even just repay
a tiny little bit of street. And these are just
like chilling in the middle of the street. They're not like,
it's not a problem, see the infrastructure, you know, it's
not dangerous. Well, they're just some little graffiti's but graffiti
on a wall could be thought of the same way.
Don't appreciate it because that's not what that surfaces intended for.

(15:34):
I understand both sides just have to Yeah, no, I
think that's totally fair, because I don't want to say
this is like a conspiracy thing, because I listen to
the show. You know, I'm not a conspiracy person, But
I do want to say that the level that some
cities have gone to to say we're getting rid of
this stuff, it's it's a little crazy anyway. So there

(15:57):
are three hundred like copycats so far that they seen
um and we talked a little bit about what they
look like. There's this group called the House of Hades,
and they've been credited with at least a hundred of
the copycats and they're the ones who are doing it
in Portland, and the message is different. Often uh it

(16:20):
often says something about House of Hades. There's also the
Cult of the Hellian who are kind of the same
thing as the House of Hades, and they're they're doing
a lot of copycats as well. But it's just I mean,
you could do it individually. The thing is is that
to do it individually it costs a lot of money
because you have to get a whole role of our paper, okay,
and that's like fifty bucks of pop. And then you
gotta get linoleum, and then you have to get a

(16:41):
different color olium, and then you have to invest the
time and energy to like carve it. Just to have
said like, oh, I was like one tiny little part
of this movement that somebody may never see, that's not
something a lot of people do. So this guy, the
guy the tyler must have been like in home construction.
Just kidding, but actually that would make sense. So maybe
although to do like a hundred and fifty of them, Well,

(17:03):
but if you've got if you're working on jobs and
you're just collecting scraps, yeah, that suddenly affords you this
hobby at no cost your time. Yeah, or if you
like have a lot of time to like walk around
and just like pick up. Because you walk up to
URF and you say, hey, man, can I have like
a little piece of your tar paper? They're like, yeah,

(17:24):
it's in the trash taking what they or they don't
even notice or at late night and you go into
a dumpster. Not a big deal. The well actually, and
there's there are stores where you can actually buy you know,
scraps of various things like this. There's one that's not
very far away from here that has a lot of
stuff like that. You can you can buy small leftover

(17:45):
chunks of stuff like that because it's yeah, and they
make they make a little money off the whole thing,
and it doesn't go into the landfill. Yeah, for sure.
So this is um, this is what the House of
Hades tiles kind of look like. I didn't ever get
to connect and maybe that's just because I missed it.
But is the House of Hades something to do with
the original tiles or is it just some offshoot group

(18:09):
that just picked it up and took it. No, it's
a it's an offshoot group. And you can see they're
very clearly made with will post pictures. Of course they're
very clearly made with just like single tiles or double
wide of like just a floor tile. They just went
to like house deepot, home depot or something. And so
this one reads, there's often do reads House of Hades.

(18:31):
I make and glue tiles with the bones of dead journalists,
which is a reference to what is referred to as
the side tiles from the tiles and we'll talk about Yeah,
we'll talk about these because it's um there are a
lot of things that take this from being an art
project to being legitimate somebody trying to get their message

(18:53):
across the only way they can figure out how to
do it. Um. So the House of Hades does tiles
like that. It's just like to color is kind of
a lot of work, but like not the most work
as opposed to like this is one of the original
tiles and it's multiple colors and beautiful so much really

(19:15):
like a lot of work. And you can even see
while the House of Hades tries to emulate the way
that the handwriting is I'm going to call it handwriting,
it's it's still not quite the same. It's for me
when I see this text done because of how consistent
it is. I'm surprised that I have never come across

(19:38):
a toy be font. To be quite honest, I'm surprised
nobody has turned this into a font because it is
so consistent. You look at the d's, the a's, the
t are these things john very precisely East Tide. I
would guess that if I didn't know better, I would
say that somebody had to die to stamp these things

(19:59):
out with. Maybe night that might have made a stencil
set that very well could be. Yeah, but you know,
actually that's that suggests an idea. I think that since
this is not copyrighted, nobody else it, why don't we
invent that fonte a lot of money? You know, No,
I don't because I made before, and trust me, you
don't want to do it, and I don't want to

(20:20):
make money off of anything tany be related all. I
just don't. So, so I guess like mystery solved, right,
It was like one guy just like dropping some tiles
in between. We don't know who it is, but whatever, Okay,
just kidding, So Joe, I know this was your question,
is what do they mean? Because they think taken at

(20:41):
face value, it's just like a weird note, right, Okay, okay,
So Toynbee was like this, there were a couple of
different people that it might have referred to, and two
thousand one of Space Odyssey. It's just like a Stanley
Hurick film, and like there's nothing really about resurrecting the
dead jupe Her and Jupiter, Like what a weird place.

(21:02):
It's just a gas planet there. Yeah, it's weird. So
so you know, actually, um, I'm reminded. This reminds me
of what is the word for those puzzles where you
take a bunch of words and you take the letgers
of those words and rearrange them. Okay, grammatically, okay, So

(21:22):
this looks to me like an anagram. It looks like
somebody has taken some words and rearrange the letters into
these sort of meaningless phrases. So that's really interesting. And
that's actually not a theory that I've seen I have before. Really, Yes,
I've read stuff that Toynbee can be rearranged into I
think teen Boy, and they've gone people have gone through

(21:46):
and taken everything in it and rearranged it to make
different And there's multiple variances on the messages that don't
make any more sense. Well, so there they can do it.
This is the thing that I want to say. The
other thing I want to say about this is that
there I hesitate to say wrong answers, but there are
so many wrong answers out there about the Twin be Tiles.

(22:08):
They're just are I mean, you know, people are like,
we was aliens, No it wasn't. Well it's a Soviet conspiracy. Well,
I mean maybe it might have been, you know, oh
it was just a journalist. Oh, it's just some dudes
art project. And there are just so many answers that
are really they feed into the conspiracy theory aspect um.

(22:31):
They're just crazy talk. I mean, there are so many weird,
wrong answers, and I would put the kind of anagram
theory into in my mind a wrong answer, if only
because you can only really rearrange one line to make
more sense than it makes. Right. Now, that's exactly right.

(22:53):
It doesn't make any more sense to be teen boy. Yeah, yeah,
exactly what it could be though that it's not not
a word by a word thing. So in other words,
the letters that go into toy B, which could be
re arranged to be team boy, might form be mixed
together with letters from other words in this phrase to
make good other words. But but when they're done, and

(23:14):
I think this is one of the things that people
grab onto each line when you see them on the
different tiles, sometimes they're they're very blocked. So two words,
three words, two words, three words. Um, it's not like
a high coup, but it's very organized in that manner,
and so it makes one think that, Okay, well, if

(23:35):
I'm going to rearrange this, then I have to do
it a line by line because they're always written the
same way. It's never Toynbee idea in toy be idea,
and you know, you see where I'm heading with this.
They never they never get interjected into a different line.

(23:56):
So then it would be a little strange to say, oh, well,
you can mix and match them across the whole thing,
because it's it's just distinctly and when they're done in
the colors, the colors sometimes are done in blocks, so
toin the idea, the outside frame of it is one color.
In movie two thousand one is in another color, so
they're very distinctly blocked out. It's very organized and methodical

(24:22):
that way. So that's why I don't know that it
could be an anagram where you just take all the
letters in this and make a whole new statement from anywhere.
Take the J from Jupiter and it goes into the
first line that I have a hard time following. That. Also,
we can make sense out of this somewhat, I mean
a little bit. I think, Um. Actually, you know, as

(24:46):
we said, there's documentaries and they decide, well, it's just this,
and but I think that there's some really strong evidence
for this kind of following the same kind of thread. Um,
so we'll just kind of jump into it. The people
generally feel and I feel that this is true, is
that Toynbee refers to Arnold Toynbee, who was a kind

(25:08):
of general historian of human existence, one of those historians
that don't really exist anymore. He was just like, oh humans, yeah,
let's talk about all of it. And it was a
little volume set. Yeah, and it was and it was
really philosophical as well as historic. Well, and that was

(25:28):
the writing of the time totally. So he wrote this
book called Experiences and there's a really long quote from it. Joe,
can you read this, because I think you probably better
and kept encapsulate Arnold Toynbee how to read. That's true. Yeah,
so take it away. No one has ever been or

(25:50):
ever met a living human soul without a body. Someone
who accepts as I myself do, taking it on trust,
the present day scientific account of the universe may find
it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead,
can come to life again. And this this is jumping
a little bit ahead, but there were these media packets

(26:10):
that were circulated that were attributed to the Tyler with
this group that he's associated with called the Minority Alliance,
which we're not even going to get into. And this
is pre the Tiles. This is pre the Tiles. And
this is one of those things that if you're really
interested in this mystery, you should go out and research this.
But I just don't think there's value in us sitting

(26:33):
here and talking about it. For there's a there's so
much information, So I think I think what I think
what you're getting at is we're trying to give kind
of the surface overview. Otherwise this would be a four
hour episode more than because we can dive in, as
you said, and we'll go down that and have to

(26:53):
come back out and go down and this yeah, I
had to stop reading on this. So anyways, there's a
early account of the like pre tile formation of this
kind of Toynbee idea situation attributed to this group called
the Minority Association. Will maybe get a little bit into

(27:15):
that a little bit later, but for now, just I
just believe me. It is the thing. And they circulated
these kind of media packets which we're only able to
be tracked down from one person um, but they had
this quote. It had a more expansive version of this
quote in it. So okay, so pause on that idea

(27:37):
for a second. Next idea two one. You know in
movie two thousand one, right, so at the at the
end of that movie, you guys remember it, right, this movie.
I did not get this movie. Yes, we talked about
it when I watched it for the first time ever,
because I just recently watched it. I don't get that movie.

(27:57):
So at the end, the protagonist like sees himself dying
and then suddenly he's like he's dying and then there's
this light and he's like a fetus and an embryo
again like a baby, and he like floats off into
space and it's like super weird. A lot of people. Yeah,
people kind of refer to this as like a proto

(28:20):
religious like ending to a movie, or a protoo religious
experience of watching this movie. For instance. Well, I never
really got that whole baby thing if that was him
or if that was just representing the rebirth of the
human race. I've heard that it's a metaphor of you know,
he it was he was found by aliens when he
went through the wormhole for lack of a better better term,

(28:41):
and then they didn't know what to do with him.
And then when they died, they figured out how to
bring it back, and they figured out how to get
him back where he'd come from. So then they were
taking him back to Earth. And it's like, wow, how
did you draw that conclusion? Yea, my understanding of the
whole thing, And because I read the book as well
as saw the movie and that did even that didn't
make the whole baby in the sky thing any more

(29:02):
comprehensible than But yeah, he goes through the sky. Yeah,
he does go through some worms, and he winds up
in this in this place of aliens who he never sees.
By the way, they and they've actually built a room
form actually a series of rooms like a nice little
apartment for him, just and and nothing actually works as advertised,

(29:23):
like the doors don't open, the drawers and stuff like that,
but it looks just like a normal, nice, nice quality
apartment or something like that. And apparently he lives out
the rest of his days there in captivity with the aliens. Okay, yeah,
and so so okay, so let's um just trust some
people on an interpretation of the end of this movie,

(29:49):
because I think we all can kind that, Like I
can watch that a million times and still be like,
I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So
there are some kind of especially taken in contact with
the Toynbee tiles and the toy Bee kind of phies
sort of situations. So if you merge these two things

(30:09):
together and add a little bit of Christian flavor of
our own, which is definitely referred to in the manifesto
and often the side tiles kind of heaven idea, we
can kind of think of what happened at the end
of two thousand one as being human and science, or
maybe alien and science resurrection or reanimation of human molecules

(30:35):
as whole humans in space, therefore creating heaven and space,
fulfilling God's like quote unquote promise to resurrect dead people
after heaven in heaven. Right, So so we would do
that through we would fulfill his promise as humans through

(30:56):
science which he gave us. Okay, these are all like,
this is like the train of thought. We're following through
that train of thought, the Toynbee resurrection, once dead can
come alive again a human without a soul, without a
body two thousand one curate kind of saying, oh, well,

(31:17):
obviously we're going to resurrect ourselves in space in Jupiter,
which is where they went. It was Project Jupiter in
two thousand one. So maybe the movie is about humans
being resurrected in Jupiter, which is you know, if you just, like,
according to some documents that have been procured, um, if

(31:39):
you would just you know, like put an oxygen bomb
on Jupiter, it would turn into a totally human hospitable environment. Yeah. No,
obviously that's a problem. But that Jupiter would become heaven
in space and we would be able to resurrect are
dead there and that would be heaven. It's a heck
of a son that, Yeah, that would be Um. I mean,

(32:03):
I don't know I don't remember what the gravity is
on Jupiter, but it's staggeringly higher than ours is. So yeah,
the theory is the visibility is terrible. But I did
think it was interesting to think about. And this is
something that's been discovered since this whole like two doesn't
want everything, is that it turns out that one of

(32:25):
Jupiter's moons may actually be a fairly viable terraforming place.
And I could be misremembering this, but it's like almost
an ice planet, and they think that there's actually like
surface underneath there. So it's got a lot of water
and it's like a surface, so like if we could
just dry it out a little bit, I don't think
the Yeah, I mean, it's never gonna be habitable with

(32:47):
an atmosphere, and the only the only planet really we
have any chance of terraforming could be Mars. It's it's
because they because it's covered in ice, they can tell
that there's some They believe that there's some kind of
either tectonic or tidal forces being exerted on the planet
because of the way that the ice moves and cracks

(33:10):
and breaks, and they believe that it's liquid underneath, and
so it's some more, it's just so much of terraforming
as it's plausible to actually have life on it. It's
in the fluid or water underneath this ice. Plus uh
you know. The other thing of note and interest about

(33:30):
it is it might might make a really nice little resource.
I mean, if you have space qualities out there, it's
full of water, methane, whatever, those are highly useful things. Yeah, yeah,
probably so. I you know, I guess that was my
own little interesting tidbit that like, okay, Jupiter, probably not
like but something really close to Jupiter maybe probably not again,

(33:52):
but who knows. You know, it's only been like what
forty years since fifty years since uh two one came out,
it's been it came out in years, So in that
amount of time we've done incredible things. So who's to say,
you know, another forty five years another whatever, we wouldn't

(34:12):
be like, oh no, obviously we're going to colonize europea
like duh, or it was Mars all along, you know,
who knows? Who knows? So we're good with kind of
what it might mean, right, I mean, I guess I'm
not good with it, but I can understand. I mean,
the better theory, No, no, I don't have a theory.
I think that this one. The theories are kind of

(34:35):
far fetched, at least from my perspective, okay, but the
message is so vague that the far fetched idea is
the closest to being plausible. So when I say I'm
not okay with it, it's just because it doesn't make
sense to me. The whole thing still is just really

(34:55):
really odd to me. It really, you're right, does make
no sense. I mean, this message makes no sense, and
let's just some sort of a code. Yeah, So I guess, um,
I think that this interpretation, when you can kind of
take it in with this overarching idea of who may

(35:19):
have done them and felt, yeah, I guess in the context,
makes some sense. You know, there's these side tiles that
crop ups. You see these pictures, It's like a license
plate sized tile that has the like four lines the
toy idea in two thousand one space or not two
s in cubics, or a movie two thousand one resurrected

(35:40):
on planet Jupiter. And then there are these like little
side messages and they are often I think, more interesting,
You're more informative. It's super repetitive. Okay, So like here's
a picture of like one of the original ones, and
we can see if we can see the what are

(36:00):
you doing kind of looking at it from different angle?
That's why I'm turning my head like this, because I'm
trying to I'm just trying to see if there's perhaps
something that we're missing. Maybe it's a draw exactly what,
because you feel like it's like it's one of those
mysteries where you feel like the answer is on the
tip of your brain, right, It's like there's an obvious

(36:21):
answer here that we are just too dumb to see.
Don't you feel that way right now? Do you remember
in the nineties when those those images were being everybody
was selling and it was just a super fine print
of some repetitive pattern, and you were supposed to stare
at it for about five minutes and the real image

(36:43):
would hop forward. Ye see it, because the way it was,
I think, I think that's where Joe might be heading here.
I still figured out, yeah, but I don't see the schooner.
But this phenomena is exactly what I'm talking about. When
you like start to get into this, you just keep thinking, well,

(37:07):
there's got to be something that somebody missed or we're
just like overlooking the obvious answer. That's not. Yeah, there isn't.
I mean, I suppose that you could say, is that
if you look at the wide outline part, but it
almost looks like it's sort of a crude drawing of
a zigaratte. And I don't know if you and you've

(37:28):
heard the story, of course about the Tower of Babel,
which really wasn't a tower at all. It was a
cigarette yea, and a cigarette is zigarette is like a
sort of like like flattened pyramids popular ancient civilizations in
the Middle East. You know, the Tower of Babble was
basically about the collapse of a civilization. Um and to

(37:50):
one of recurring themes, was spent a lot of time
thinking about and writing about how civilizations collapse and why
the why civilizations parish, you know, why they flourished for
a while and then eventually they crumble and they go away. Okay,
it's a long shot. I know, it's got as much

(38:11):
validity as anything else that we've come across here so far,
so I'm I'm willing to back it. That's a message
about Babel. Can you understand the message now? Yeah? Yeah,
of course not we're going to crumble. So okay, side
texts is where we were starting before I got off

(38:32):
on my little tangent there. Sorry about that again. You know,
they're they're pretty interesting, um, and a lot of the
old original tiles, the old style tiles are pretty destroyed
at this point. I mean, Lilyam isn't the most durable
when they're in the middle of the street, and when
cities are like really actively trying to cover them up. Well,

(38:54):
let's even talk about I mean, you see some of
the photos and you can tell that the main exterior,
your piece of linolium has worn or been pulled away,
and all this left are the letters and then they
start moving on that that tar substrate and suddenly it
looks like alphabet soup because they're all just jammed together

(39:15):
and it's unreadable. So yeah, these things, I'm guessing what
they have a two year three year life show, well
at the best. So I guess that's kind of part
of it is that there are some that are in
like Philly Philadelphia that have been around since the eighties.
Probably depends on the amount of traffic they they're not. Um,

(39:35):
Philadelphia isn't actively trying to pave over them. And Philadelphia
is one of those places where they don't pave a
lot have money for they don't really have that. So
and Philadelphia is the epicenter of these It is I
think accepted at this point. I would say pretty much
everybody agrees that the Tyler lived in Philadelphia. And probably yeah,

(40:02):
and we'll talk a little bit, isn't Bruce Willis from Philadelphia? Yeah,
I think we solved it. Yeah, so okay, Chile hard Um.
So there are these little side guys. So, like one
of them says, and this is like a really destroyed tile, um,

(40:24):
but somehow the sidebar has stuck around more than the tile.
This one says, I'm only one man. When I got
a fatal disease, they gloated, enjoy over its death. It's death. Yeah.
So another one says you must make in glue tiles
you as media is and there's like a missing chunk,

(40:45):
and then it says you must make in glue tile
you must as media ussa. And then another one, which
is really interesting, it says, I'm only one man, and
when I caught a fatal disease, they gloated over its death.
That's when I it's broken up. They I think it's
begged them not to destroy thank you and something because

(41:11):
it's again it's it's just it's like that, it's just like,
come off the Yeah, these side tiles are just really
really interesting. Um well, it seems like the side tiles
are where the personality of the tyler actually comes through
paroid personality. So yeah, so the side tiles and then

(41:33):
particularly the what they call the manifesto tile are what
for me makes this a real thing because I think
it's very easy to look at these tiles and say, oh,
this is someone's art project, right is it was the
early eighties too, Like early odds, there's a time when
a lot of people are doing experimental surrealist art. All right,

(41:54):
So it's just somebody who's like got an art project
going on. They've got some kind of nonsense phrase that
they're just regurgitating over and over again. Let's say that
they're putting down knowing that people who got a puzzle
overord for totally for years. Yeah. So the manifesto, you
guys have both seen that it's a set of four
linoleum tiles and it has hundreds of words on it.

(42:18):
And I have a transcript of what it says um,
but it's really paranoid, and I think it's worth hearing.
So Steve, Yeah, I can run this. Not that I'm
the paranoid of the group. Well you might be, though,
No I'm not. Stop looking, No I'm not. Really. Yeah,

(42:42):
let's let's go ahead and do this. So John Knight,
owner of the Philadelphia Inquired Hell you and Jew, who's
hated this movement's guts for years, takes money from the
mafia to make the mafia look good in his newspapers,
so he has the mafia in his back pocket. John
Knight sent the mafia to murder me in May. There's

(43:05):
an unreadable bit. Journalists, all of them gloated in my
face about my death and night ritters great power to destroy.
In fact, John Knight went into helly and binge of
joy over Night Ritters great power to destroy. I secured
house with blast doors and fled the country. In June,

(43:27):
NBC attorneys, journalists, and security officials at Rockefeller Center fraudulently
something has disappeared Under the Freedom of Information Act. All
orders of NBC executives got the US Federal District Attorney's
opposite office, and I got the FBI to get interpolled
to establish task force that located me in Dover, England,

(43:52):
when back Home, Inquirer got union goons from their own
employer union to send out a sports journalists who with
baseball bat bashed in lights and windows of neighborhood cars
as well as men outside my house. They stationed there
still waiting for me. NBC, CBS, Group, W, Westinghouse, Time, Time, Warner, Fox, Universal,

(44:18):
all of the Cult of the Hellion each were much
worse than night Ridder ever, was mostly Hellion Jews. When
k y W and n By, NBC executives told John Knight,
the whole coven gloated on how their Soviet pals had
found a way to turn it into a that's a

(44:43):
little bit paranoid and that's that's that's that's that's a screen.
That's not a manifesto to me, that's a screen that's
definitely paranoise. Well what did that? What did that appear?
It was discovered in seven and I think it looked
like it was a little aged aged. So this it's
it's had it had been about let's just say twelve,

(45:05):
the fifteen years before from the originals to when this
happened I'm I'm encapsulating start to win that one totally. Um. Yes.
So And the other thing that strikes me about this
is that, like you know, you're talking how the handwriting
looks really really like the handwriting is really consistent throughout
all of the original like old style and hand writing,

(45:27):
and this is also super consistent. But this is not
a planned This is not something that somebody writes and
then reads and it's like yeah that reads well, this
is something that somebody like scribbles out this carson as
they go with carving as they went. Totally um. And

(45:47):
handwriting is still like really consistent, and it's so paranoid.
And this is on what I look at in the pictures.
It looks like it's it's for one foot square tie els.
Would that be pretty close to accurate? Yeah? So they're
like a standard um like a linoleum tiles by eight

(46:08):
or twelve twelve something like that. So I mean it's this,
all of that text is in a sixteen by sixteen
or twenty four by twenty four inch square area and
it's actually it turns out legible, yeah, totally legible. And
this is where in Philadelphia. Yeah. So the the other
really interesting thing about this whole situation is that in

(46:32):
ninety three there was a small little article published in
the Philadelphia Inquirer about the ideas of the Minority Association
and the Toynbee idea to resurrect Dead on Jupiter ideas resurrected. Yeah,
so this whole like the idea, right, Toybee idea here

(46:55):
space odyssey, this has been propagated ostensibly for a while before.
And there was an article written in the Inquirer that
was a reference to Philadelphia based campaign to resurrect Dead
on Jupiter that didn't ever, it didn't reference the tiles,
but it may have been pre tiles um and all
of the ideas that were spoken about in this article

(47:18):
in the Inquirer, which they referenced in the manifesto. Tiles
pretty frequently are there. That's odd. So I don't know
how the article talked about this idea to resurrected it,
but it didn't actually mentions. Okay, so the article again
it's this like little, this little tidbit of prehistory, and

(47:39):
the only place I've ever heard of it is in
this documentary and in this group that did this research
for this documentary. In the like prehistory of the tiles
in the Minority Association Umn. They went deep down the
rabbit hole. Again. I will direct you to said documentary.
If you're really interested in this, be aware that your

(48:01):
life will be sucked in. You may. But they found
this article in the Inquirer, and I think it was
titled you want to run that by me? Again? Yes,
it had this interview, not interview, but it had this
information from a guy who had written in from He

(48:22):
claimed to be from the Minority Association. Uh. And he
said his name was Joe Morocco, Morosco, Morosco, James Morosco,
I'm sorry, and he was part of this group called
the Minority Association and they were working on a campaign
to resurrect dead people on planet Jupiter. And it was

(48:42):
like a four paragraph long maybe at the most article.
It wasn't real big. But the fact that the manifesto
like kind of schizoid like ramblings of a crazy person
talk about the Inquirer that much is very interesting to me,
because is um as far as I understand it, those

(49:03):
that wasn't made public, like they didn't make the archives
public until early two thousand's and I could be wrong
about that, but that's just as far as I know.
So that's interesting to me. That's an interesting little like pin.
I don't have a good answer. I don't have a
good reason. Yeah, except that they may be the same person. Yeah, yeah,

(49:24):
I don't know that that one's a I know that
in the documentary that is a giant leap for them.
I'm not sure. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not so convinced.
But that's just because this thing is so fragmented. Yeah,
it is really fragmented. And you know, when you try
to make sense out of something like this, you have

(49:46):
to accept the fact also that it sounds like whoever
created these things was probably mentally imbalanced. So trying to
make sense out of insanity can can really kind of
drive you insane. Yeah. Maybe. Well, and the other the
other dangerous part about and we've I know, all three
of us have fallen in this. When researching something is

(50:07):
we see, let's say, a hint of a name, and
we and I'm simplifying this greatly, but we get a
name in our head of how it should be spelled,
and so we are madly researching that spelling of that name,

(50:28):
not taking into consideration that Moroscoe could be spelled differently
because in the movie they make a point there's one
guy named James Morosco in the area that they can find,
and he's nowhere near where he's supposed to be. But
then you go and you think, well, they keep spelling
it one way. Well, I can think of when I

(50:48):
looked at the name, about three or four different ways
that I could perceive that being spelled. So then what
happens and then it branches out and it gets even harder,
particularly if it was like a phone interview, and I
don't know that that was ever specified. And again this
is this this kind of like pre tile situation that

(51:09):
I don't I really don't think we should go too
far into. I think we're already going there. We have
been a little bit. So I guess the only place
that this leaves us is to talk about who may
have done this right, who this person might be according
to that manifesto. Maybe so I guess there are three

(51:29):
kind of good suspects that they talk about, and they
talk about this in the documentary, but they also like
just wide why it's widely accepted that these are kind
of the three main people. One is called Railroad Joe.
One is James Moresco, and one is a man by
the name of Sevy Verna. So why should we believe

(51:52):
that any of these guys did it. Well, we'll get
into that in like literally right now, Okay, perfect alright,
railroad Joe. Okay. I guess I should preface this all
by saying there was a tile found in South America
and it was the first and only accepted original or
old style tile to have been found outside of the US. Okay,

(52:14):
and it had a po box and a street address
in Philadelphia, which then everybody's lashed onto, yes to find
their point of origin, because I mean it makes sense, right, Like, Okay, yes,
we're dealing with potentially a mentally unhinged person. But why
would somebody write down just like a random street address

(52:36):
in Philadelphia and leave it in South America attached to
this idea unless they wanted people to pay attention to
that street address. Well, but I wanted to harass the
person I was about to say, unless they consider the
person that's there to be an enemy of some kind,
and then this is a great way to get revenge.

(52:57):
That's true, South America. Traveling all the way to South
America to do that it's not that's a little weird.
It's a little weird. Well, but you know, I mean,
stranger things have happened. But I'm just saying, and again,
this is one of those things, Okay, but we're always
looking at it as at face value. This is truthful

(53:17):
in terms of I put this down so you'll find me,
instead of subterfuge. I'm gonna put this down so you
don't find me. But now you're gonna bug the heck
out of this guy who has been my mortal enemy.
So yes, my counter to that is that if you
walk in within like a three block radius of this place,

(53:41):
you find these little trial runs of the tiles. They're
just little like bits of linoleum or kind of like nonsense,
just letter engravings that are embedded in the asphalt. They're tiny,
they're little scraps, they're cast offs, both in the three
block radius of this one apartment. And yeah, of course,
if you that's the greatest form of misdirection is to

(54:04):
name the suspect and then start dropping clues around or
evidence around that suspect. That's true. I'm not buying into that,
but I'm going to take the skeptic standpoint on this
and say, if we're gonna run, if I'm going to
run with the I did this to get that guy,

(54:25):
I'm gonna do it. Well, you know what, It's really easy.
Once a month, I go to his neighborhood and just
drop some of my scrap garbage that I've been making
these with and just walk away. Yeah, and looking they're
all knugging at his door. That's awesome. That's totally true.
I think that's a great point to bring up, because
I think that's a point that's not brought up enough. However,

(54:46):
since I'm presenting this history, I have to take the
totally believers to okay. So um, there's been a lot
of research done in this area, and as far as
any and he can remember, there's only been to people
who ever lived in this this at this address. One
was railroad Joe. That's what they call him. I don't

(55:07):
remember his whole name. I don't think it's super important.
That was what everybody called. Everybody calls him railroad Joe
because he worked on a railroad. Out on a railroad.
It's a tongue twister for me, I'm sorry, on conway
rail or conrail. So one of the things they talked
about with this guy is that they do some familial
research on him, and his family were gravestone engravers. So

(55:34):
that's a let's look pretty easy to make, you know,
somebody handwriting and totally be a quick carver. Right, It's
not like this would be taking new days to do
because you might be great at it might just take
you an hour or two or maybe less. Also, Conrail
at the time that this man was working for Conrail, Uh,

(55:55):
their railway lines perfectly mirrored the spread of where the
original tiles have all been found, so all of the
major city. Okay, but wait, no, that's not true. Act,
so it only goes as far south as Conrail went.
It only goes as far west as Conrail went, and
it stopped in every single major city which major city, okay,

(56:18):
major city. However, in the same in the same time
that he was working for this rail system, there's an
article to prove this that names him by name as
the railway foreman for Conrail. Conrail was shipping a telescope
that was made in Philadelphia to South America where they
found that one tile. Conrail was Apparently they were yeah,

(56:45):
I don't remember if they were building it or if
they were involved in there. Somehow they were involved because
there was an article that was written about the shipping
of this telescope and that this guy was named Railroad
Joe was named by first and last name as being
the railway foreman for this project. So that's an interesting

(57:06):
The only thing about this is that Railway Joe, Railroad
Joe died. Okay, there's a problem. When did the Chile appear.
It was in the early eighties. He would have been alive,
but their tiles have been dated too much later than

(57:27):
that in the correct style. In the correct style, it
would have been the original ones. So he would have
had been laying them past the grave, which doesn't seem
super likely. That's maybe he was successful. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think he's been. He's been traveling for commuting, if

(57:48):
you will. So James Moresco, next one who's named in
the he's named in the Inquirer article. He's also okay,
So I guess we do have to delve a little
bit into this back history of the Minority Association. And
there was this press packet that went out and there
were these wheat paste posters that went up in the

(58:09):
early eighties. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a wheat
paste poster is literally you slap paste when you're in
grade school paste. It's some version of that onto a
poster and then just slapping against the wall to adhere
it rather than using a staple or tape or something
like that. That's what a wheat paste posters. Yeah, okay,

(58:31):
just making sure I was under are the ones that
like stick up for years and years? Yeah, you cannot
because they're sealed, and okay, you got it. Just making
sure I understood that. And where did disappear in Philadelphia?
In kind of like lower income hubs, so like greyhound stations,
union station, things like that. And they had the same
messaging that the tiles do. And that's about as far

(58:54):
as I'm willing really to go in. It wasn't the
same verbiage, but the same idea, same idea. Okay. So
the Minority Association is fairly widely accepted to be the
predecessor to these tiles, and on all of the media information,
they had this press packet that we talked about a

(59:14):
little bit earlier. The name that appears is James Moresco.
He's a good candidate, so he was the spokesman. He
was there. He was there's publicity manager essentially, but you know,
as we were just talking a client, he probably served
as in every every SEP. Actually he probably was the
entire organization. Here's the thing is that actually he didn't.

(59:37):
It was him and his brother and his his brother's
wife and like one other person. And there's actually apparently
some kind of signed documentation of this that there were
more than just him involved. Anyways, Um, so there's been
some searches on this name based on any information that

(59:59):
could be gained from the journalist that wrote this article.
And there was one guy named James Moresco who would
have been in his seventies. He's the one you read
about when you just do like a prolifer google search
on Toynbe tiles, because he's the one that comes up there.

(01:00:20):
That's the one that they say. But he would have
been in his seventies or eighties when the tiles were
being laid. But we think he's the best candidate. It's
because again this is where I say spelling right. Alternately,
the theory was floated, and I think this is probably
the strongest theory, is that it was a pseudo name.
M hmm. Yeah, And that it was actually the guy

(01:00:44):
who lived at the address after Railroad Joe died, named
sevy Verna, who was has been discounted because his mother
says he has a lung disease. Therefore he's never been
able to travel. He's bit of a shot. He's totally
he's a super shut in, which he really ever sees

(01:01:04):
him could make it possible that he is or completely
plausible that he isn't. He was attacked in the in
in his home over this. He was not over this,
it was over a different dispute ute because of that,
he it has been documented by his neighbors that he

(01:01:28):
put up plywood in his windows and barred his door
just like that manifesto says the person did. He's really
really smart apparently and totally a shut in and kind
of crazy. He apparently drove a car that was missing
a fourboard um and also had this giant antenna that

(01:01:48):
broadcasted like a kind of pirate radio short wave thing.
And again that's something that like I don't even want
to touch. But the short wave connection, short wave connection,
if you're super interested, go look it up. There's no
that's so far down there. That's another at least. Yeah. Additionally,

(01:02:09):
in these papers that were uncovered of this original kind
of minority association situation, all of the all of the
references to themselves referred to James Moresco, with one exception
that appears to be a typo which refers to themselves
as Sevrino virna. So we messed up and broke characters

(01:02:33):
way there. It's that's what that infers. Yeah, so it
seems to be a fairly strong connection to this guy
who lives in the place where the tile referred people.
He's kind of crazy, he's kind of a shut in,
and the neighbors kind of describe him as this without
it seems, knowing anything about the situation. You know, these

(01:02:54):
are people you say, hey, tell me, can you tell
me a little about this guy? And they say, oh, yeah,
he's um, he's really really smart, and he's kind of shutting,
he's really shy, he's very scared. Oh and he drove
this car that like I think like the bottom rusted out,
like just to kind of tell people how eccentric this
guy was, without having knowledge of the fact that people
think that he's the tyler. And again, this is hard

(01:03:15):
to verify this, right, Okay. You and I talked about
this before we started recording to night, is that this
is one of those A plus F draws conclusion of
c kind of scenarios to me, which is not always
the right way to approach it, but it's the easy

(01:03:36):
thing to see and go to. The example. The example
that you and I talked about is in the documentary
they talk about where some of them the text could
come from, and there was that play or was it
a play? Yeah, David Mammitt, Yeah, Free Am is the
name of it, which all it's a play. It's a

(01:03:57):
two man play about somebody calling into a radio DJ
and spouting all these crazy ideas, which are very in
line with some of the stuff. Yeah, it's very very close. Okay,
Well I'm going to make a jump in the same
kind of logical quell. Okay, and I guess we should

(01:04:17):
like add caveat to that is that David Mammett believes
that these tiles are a homage to his play, So
let's just throw that out there. Yeah, but I'm I'm
just trying to get across this why people jump to
say it's sevy. Is this this basic I'm following this
train and it just seems so easy. Okay, Well, when
I was watching the documentary, one of the guys and
I think it's I can't remember who it was. Just

(01:04:40):
as he finds a freshly laid tile that has been
on the ground for minutes because he peels at a party,
discovers it and he says, I was I went to
the store and it must have been about four am
in the morning, and then I found this. Okay, well,

(01:05:00):
I can run this logic that says, well, they're following
part of that. They're now incorporating the play which is
called four am, which is supposed to be the time
that this call was made in this call in show,
and whoever is doing this is now as an homage
following that and dropping these things at four a m.
And now let's go okay, well to me, okay, well,

(01:05:20):
let's just follow well, okay, yeah, you can see the
logic in that, and that could get build steam and
get built upon. But it's a connection that is very,
very loose, and I think that it's only by the
pounding of feet on top of it that it gets
so strong. So that's that's my thing. When everybody says

(01:05:41):
the sevy, I actually feel bad for seven. Well, and
so here's my thing about Sevy is his mother says
that he has this this long disease, and the tiles
very clearly refer to this man having a terminal disease
of some kind and struggling with the idea of death.

(01:06:03):
And I think that the man that you've described as
this kind of manic, reclusive, really smart, the kind of
scared man who may have signed kind of mental thing,
who's also struggling with a terminal illness. He I just think,
I just feel like he really fits the image that
you have of the kind of person that would make

(01:06:24):
these tiles. Yeah. Again, my problem is you've built that.
They totally built that image, and and and it's it's
it's almost too conveniently molded. That's my problem. That's totally
it's almost seems too easy. Absolutely, So let me ter
up for a second. So this guy is how old now?

(01:06:46):
And is he's still alive? Yeah, he's um, I think
in his but he would have been in his early
twenties when these things first started kind of which was
the eighties. Yeah, mid seventies when all this stuff happens. Okay,
and so and then he moved in after um Roadroad,

(01:07:10):
after Railroad Joe, he moved in there or maybe earlier.
I don't know. I don't know that, I haven't seen
the record. He maybe that Railroad Joe moved out to
live in a facility while he died or something. But
in the Railroad Joe was remembered to have lived there
in the very early eighties at the very least. Yeah, yeah,
so so interesting. Yeah, I wonder if Railroad Joe maybe

(01:07:32):
laid some of the original ones down for the year
funt of it and then moved out lesson on those
materials behind. Maybe it was just a continuation, and you know,
that was that was the thought that came to me
as well as that, like how convenient that these two
people who like the story is totally kind of a
little bit fit, Like maybe they knew each other maybe,

(01:07:53):
like how did he find this place? You know? Like
how did were they friends? Did they like we can
say that maybe they were both is the Minority Association
said the name of it? They were both in it,
and Joe started it and created the template and then
somebody else picked it up, whether it was SEVN or
somebody else. You know, if he creates a template then
you just start following the template. And if you follow

(01:08:16):
a template, after enough time, you don't need the template.
You can do it freehand. After years of doing this
kind of thing, and then when they start doing a
little little side tiles or the manifesto, you just automatically
carve in that manner. Because I'm holding this let's just
say it's a box dive, because that's what I would
carve littally in with. Okay, it's a box life. I

(01:08:37):
hold box knife and I cut this way every time,
and then just being bang boom, and just you just
automatically muscle memory. Yeah. So I guess for me, I
have this picture, and I've always had this picture of
this person who feels like they've discovered the answer to
eternal human life, and whether that's all legitimate discovery or not,

(01:09:03):
but the rest of us are just too dumb to
catch on totally. It's again it goes back to that feeling.
It's kind of just this overarching feeling of like frustration
with this case, either on any side of it, even
if it's the person of the tyler, right, I feel
that there's this like feeling of frustration because one of
the side tiles says, kill all journalists, I beg you.

(01:09:26):
And there's a fairly well documented history of somebody kind
of in the early eighties trying to reach out to
journalists to give this idea to them, to the media,
to the main media, large media. So I get this
image of this person who, for whatever reasons, is really
uncomfortable with the idea of death, like more uncomfortable than

(01:09:47):
the normal human being, right, And they that's fair. Some
people are some people aren't. And you get this idea
in your head and you think, oh my god, I
figured it out. I know, like obviously Hurick was trying
to tell us this Toynbe was trying to tell us this.
The answer to this is we just resurrect the death,

(01:10:07):
Like this is something that people have known about, you know.
Conspiracy theorists get these things in their head. They think
it's a moment of cla. People have known this forever,
but it's being kept from the general population for whatever reason.
And maybe it didn't start out that way. Maybe it
starts out with, oh my god, this is what this
person is trying to tell us. And you reach out
to the media and you say, hey, this is what

(01:10:28):
this person is trying to tell us, and the media says, Okay,
you're a crackpot, and you face this ridicule and this
like taunting, and since you're maybe a little crazy already,
it starts to cycle on itself. You reach out and
you say, hey, this idea and they say that idea
and you say, oh, they hate me, oh, and you

(01:10:49):
vilify them the more. I don't even think that's saying
that they're crazy or imbalanced. But if you're constantly being rejected,
it's rejection, is what it is. You're being rejected on
this idea that will push you to either stop or
go to greater and greater extremes to get your message. Well,
I think you become reactive and you vilify the people

(01:11:09):
who are saying no to you. So you come up
with this other method, and your other method happens to
be these tiles, and you start laying these tiles over
and over again because you feel like this is the
only way you can get out. And then suddenly, because
you're you don't you're so reactive and so close did
people start coming to you and saying, hey, we think

(01:11:30):
you're doing this, and you go, no, no, I know
I'm not doing that. Stay away from me because if
I tell you I'm doing that, You're going to make
fun of me. It's kind of illegal. You could be fine, sure,
but you know, I think that there are some people
who have approached him in this very really honest way
and he who and if it's that person or not,

(01:11:50):
it doesn't matter. But to like react that strongly of
no reaction, you know, like just a complete like shut down,
just shoves him back and never answers, the door pushes away,
and you have not done anything for the last what
fifteen years at this point, right, Who's two thousand two

(01:12:12):
was the last ten twelve years? And that could be
all of the attention. It could be that the person
that's really doing it has died. It could be if
we're if we're going to run down it, Sevy. It
might be that he's so afraid to do it anymore,
or maybe he's disillusioned because of the copycat I mean again,

(01:12:37):
there is a thousand It's like, you know, there's so
much a million different directions speculation, but so but the
thing about it is is like, you know, if he's
got some sort of message for the world about about
his ideas for resurrecting the dead. Then he could have
picked a better format than you know, viol on the street,

(01:12:58):
because I mean and and on an telligible messages. I mean,
if he really has something to tell us about this,
then he could write a book, you know, you could
write letters to the editor, write something that's coherence. Actually,
I can't believe I'm going to do this. Step up.
I'm going to step up and and defend s a
little bit on this, okay, or whoever whoever it is.

(01:13:20):
I can't. I can't write a book because nobody will
publish it, and I don't have the money to self publish.
I can write letters to the editor till I'm blue
in the face, but that doesn't mean that they're going
to publish it, because you know they get a gazillion
every day. But and let's go a step further from that, right, Okay,
So if we're going to go with the David Mammitt

(01:13:40):
play connection a little bit, right, because it is a
little uncanny. You start to read it, really is that
David Mammitt stuff, and read everything you can about the
Toybee tiles and it's like some of it is like
phrase for phrase. Okay, So David Mammitt said oh no,
there was no caller. This like totally came up. I
think actually these tiles are reference to my play. But

(01:14:01):
very early, like right after he published the play, he said, yeah,
I heard an interview on Larry King Live at like
four o'clock in the morning, and uh, that's where I
got this idea. So okay, So Sevy or whoever it is, right,
calls Larry King Live and gets this phone interview and
then there's nothing done about it. So he like writes
to some dude at the Inquirer and there's like a

(01:14:22):
little like super skeptical kind of making fun of him thing,
and he like writes other letters to the editor. People
are just like saying no, no, no, no, no, dismissed,
dismiss dismiss. So he does these paste four or the
wheat paste stuff, right, but that's coming down that's not
permanent enough for him. What else can I do? Oh well,
but these tiles in it's more permanent. It's a way

(01:14:46):
that he knows how to get his message across a
little bit. And it probably so the person who writes
that makes total sense. Let's let's be totally honest here.
I agree with that, But those four lines that makes
But have you considered another possibility, which is that the
guy wasn't insane, You just really hated pedestrians, and a

(01:15:08):
really great way to get get people run out because
they're gonna stop and look at this and scratch their
head and not even noticed that bus coming towards. The
old ones. The old style ones are like there was
one in the entrance to like a turnpike, Um tunnel,
Holland Tunnel, and then like another one in the middle
of a fruit a different freeway, and they're like in

(01:15:30):
the middle of the streets and stuff like that. They're
not just on pedestrians. And the news style ones are
almost a hud geared towards pedestrians there in the middle
of the street, but they're like turned so that a
pedestrian on the sidewalk could see it. Instead of being
geared towards like the traffic going down the street, they're
turned horizontally so that the pedestrians could read it from

(01:15:55):
the sidewalk or they're in the middle of a crosswalk,
or they're on a sidewalk. And one of the things
that mystifies me about the one around the hot torn
as it picked probably one of the most one of
the least pedestrian intensive scratches of the street. Yeah, there's
one on MLK on like one of the least pedestrian

(01:16:15):
intense spaces too. And that's the other kind of question
mark about this is that, like, okay, so you're doing
these tiles in the middle of a freeway, Like, who
the hell is going to see that? Like you might
drive over it and be like, oh, there was something there,
but you can't read those four lines while driving over it,
you know. And it's not geared towards that it's not

(01:16:36):
written the opposite the way that they do signs, like
you know, in the middle of the accident, could have dropped.
That was a couple of accidents, though, don't you think. Okay,
so let's let's run with the guy's got a hole
in the floorboard of his car and he's got a
stack of these things prepped. Yeah, and he takes a
corner a little too fast and he runs over a

(01:17:00):
coup and then the car goes from whoo, and the
top one off the stack slides off, and there's no
way he's going to stop to grab it. That was
go on, Oh, well, I would just say that that
happened to be a very lucky landing because it looks
really intentional. Yeah, not like in a weird little It

(01:17:22):
is a lucky landing. And our of course said it
would about that would have landed upside down and reverse lettering.
I don't feel like we're missing something obvious here, don't
I mean, don't you don't right now. I just feel
like the answer is like literally on the tip of
my brain. I feel like I'm missing all of it. Really,
I mean, I still don't understand what this is about. Yeah, Scott,

(01:17:46):
the whole thing is just goofy. Yeah. So not not
that sounds like I'm dismissing you or being a jerk.
I just in my head it's goofy. I don't care,
And this is you know, this is one There have
not been any listener suggestions for it, but it has
been like, literally since we started talking about doing this show,
you know, years ago, this has been one that I've

(01:18:09):
been thinking, I got to do that. And I was
just saying to Steve like literally an hour before we recorded,
I was like, I'm not ready. I can't do it, um.
And I think that's just kind of how it's always
going to be with this story. So I guess um,
if you want to check out the pictures of the

(01:18:30):
tiles or any of the links, UH will link the
documentary that we've been talking about. Um, you can find
all that stuff at our website, which is Thinking Sideways
podcast dot com. If you come up with a really
brilliant theory of some kind, please email us, like seriously,
please email us. UM. It's Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail

(01:18:52):
dot com. And by the way, if you are the tyler,
would you just as a as a little president, do
some of those tiles, a whole bunch of them thinking
Sideways and put them on the streets. We would really
appreciate it. That would be great awesome. You can also
you can always leave us a comment on our website
if you're listening there. UM, a lot of people are

(01:19:13):
trying to get in touch with us. With us that way,
we try to get back to you, you know, in
a fairly timely manner. UM. If you're not listening on
our website, you're probably listening on iTunes. You are leave
us a comment in a rating so that other people
can listen to us and find us. Find us on Facebook,
you can stream us on Stitcher. If you forget to
download us UM on any mobile ready device. Yeah, so

(01:19:39):
I guess my Yeah, I think so. I think that's
my feeling, right like, I can't verbalize it any better
than that, but so I'm tired of this story anyway. No,
this just doesn't deserve it, you right, Sorry, Sorry, I

(01:20:00):
think it's David Mabbott. You know that would be a
hell of a publicity stunt.