Campfire Stories with true crime writer James Renner: Porchlight Project, The Great Forgetting, Lisa Pruett

Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of Scary Stories We Tell. I am one of your hosts, Chris. Sorry, I had like a total freeze because I moved the screen and like the stuff what han disappeared? Yet anyway, restart, you can just go ahead and get just pretend like I said what I said, and then just pick it up from there. And I'm your other host who finally decided to show up for an episode Jess fired.

And on this episode of Scary Stories We Tell, we are joined by our good friend. He is an investigative journalist. Him and I share something in common that I will bring up that he may not know, which is we are both technically part of the Dollar Baby Program, though we never got to direct ours because we did ours in March of twenty twenties and we got the paperwork back. Oh well, wasn't that a shame? That's crazy.

He is the lord Commander that I watch, your friend and mine true crime author extraordinaire, mister James Renner, Thank you, thank you. I want to hear a little bit more about that. So the Dollar Baby Program, of course, being this thing that Stephen King has where you can get the rights to one of his stories for a dollar for one year, and I adapted a short story of his called All That You Love Will Be Carried Away back in two thousand and five, starring Bob Briggs, and we also had Michael Stanley you're playing a cop, and Harvey peak Car did a little cameo, what was the story that you were going to do morning deliveries milkman number one of all the things, and we, I mean, we got the paperwork, we sent him the money, and then literally the pandemic happened.

I was just like, oh, I guess this isn't happening now that you can't get a grace period, you should you should still go through with it. I think we were all everybody this way. I think that as they would say, the ship has sailed, Yeah, sure, sure, the opportunity was there. And then it's not a name, that's an obscure Stephen King's story. And I'm pretty well versed in Stephen King.

But remind me what is the premise of that. Yeah, I can't remember that. I can see to that one. I believe it's something about like it's a it's a guy who's doing deliveries and then his friend that he's delivering for it turns out he's a murderer or something. I don't even I'm honestly, I've not thought too much about it because it's kind of a It's one of those things where it's like, man, that was fun.

All I remember is we were doing a more of an updated take on it, and it was one of those stories from Skeleton Crew that's like we read all of them, were like, nobody in their right mind would try to adapt this one. So let's do this one. Yeah, and like perfect, right, and so we had a script together and everything, but yeah, so but you you actually made yours. So yeah, we got. We got really lucky with it because it premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival in two thousand and five.

So that was a lot of fun. We got we got to go up to Montreal. But weird thing about the Montreal Film Festival that year was it was I don't ask me why, but it was like they were rushing to put it together. There's some I don't know, they had taken a break or had moved the dates or whatever, so the filmmakers didn't get to know when their piece was playing until the day that the festival started the festivals ten days long, so we got up there in day one to find out that it wasn't going to show until like the second to the last day of the film festival. So I couldn't stay up there that long, you know, And I was like, I think twenty four, twenty five years old at the time, and I just couldn't swing it.

So I missed the showing, but it was you know, I got to go to the opening night gallon stuff and that was fun. But James, you're not You're not known for your dollar Baby film. I think you're known more for your your exploits in the world of true crime and being an investigative journalists. So since the last time we talked, give us kind of a little updated. But it's been keeping you busy around via true crime circles as it were.

Yeah, well back in two thousand, I guess it was twenty twenty one. The late fall. I started a new podcast called True Crime This Week. That is I was surprised that nobody was doing it. It's it's kind of a wrap up on all the big true crime stories of the week.

It comes out on Friday mornings. Um anywhere you get podcasts and uh it's you know, about a half an hour long, and I, um, you know you can tune in and hear all the true crime stories that you miss that will probably one day be Netflix specials and um. And the second half is always updates on cold cases and uh weird news and things like that. Have you have you enjoyed doing the podcast gig as a as a weekly podcast or have you enjoyed it? I have?

Yeah. It takes uh, you know, it takes a lot of work. You know, it's pretty much a full, full day thing. On Thursdays, I do it and I'm writing all day and then I record late at night so it can come out on Friday morning. Um.

And you know, I uh it keeps me up to date on on everything that's going on, which is fun. Um. You know, I just try to have fun with it and and you know, slide in some jokes every once in a while and keep it lighthearted. You know. I don't do a lot of stuff on you know, crimes against kids or anything like that, but I try to pick the topical stories and then the stories of interest.

Um. But it's it's been good, It's it's building, it's it's fun to watch. You know, the audience grows slowly, you know, every week, and uh, you know, just trying to, um, yeah, do something, just trying to do something a little different with it. When I saw your show and I realized that there wasn't a thing like that, I was as shocked as you were, Like, how was there not a last week tonight for crime? Yes, it's uh, which is exactly you know, kind of what I modeled it off of.

Um, you know, I think I could. I was picking it up when I listened to it. Let me put it that way. It was the way it was being received, at least by me, the audience of one receiving it that way. But I totally picked up on it.

Thanks, thanks, um. And I have a new I found a new home for my books. Um Um. I my kind of a big transition. My literary agent retired and went into the world of podcasting, and so I was scrambling to get a new literary agent and right as I was coming out with a new book, and luckily it all kind of came together in a really nice way.

I've got a nice new agent and a new editor at Kensington, and the editor who's Michael Hamilton is her name, and she's kind of a legend in the business, and she's worked with a lot of the big true crime authors. And so my first book for her is called Little Crazy Children, and it comes out June twenty seven, and I've already signed with her for the next two books. So I should have a book coming out just about every year for the next three years. M seeuing yourself over here. I like it.

I'm trying, knock on wood, you know, Hell yeah, dude, A book a year. I mean that that keeps you, That keeps you in a conversation that a lot of people have a hard time being part of which is like a person who is seen as a I guess and an expert, but as an expert who is continually there kind of and rule adjacent at I'm trying. I'm trying, uh yeah, but you know every day I'm hustling. Um. Oh yeah, hell yeah, man manum.

Before before we go further into the true crime stuff, I did want to ask to touch on, just for a moment um, any new information that you could share with us about Byron Priest, because that was the last thing we talked about. I finally, I don't know if Jess told you I saw one of those books in person at a Price Books in Texas. They were selling it for five hundred dollars. Oh my god, I almost bought it. I almost thought it.

I mean it's I mean, it's one of those things where like I will probably never see it again in its original form. And it was just like the guy like, let let me touch it, let me hold it out of the case. And it was damn, this is wild. And I saw the price and I was like, no, fucking wild, this is really wild. He knows what he has for sure.

Yeah, you know, I you know. So Byron wrote this book, The Secret, back in eighty two, and inside the book are puzzles and the poems that lead you to the location of twelve buried keys. And these keys are all over the country. And last time we talked, I had made a documentary on this subject, and I went all I had traveled all over the country trying to dig up these keys. Unfortunately never got one.

Got to hang out with Josh Gates for an episode of his show, and I think we were really close to getting the one in Milwaukee, but we got hit by a crazy storm that forced us to shut down. And but since we've last talked, a third key was found in Boston, and this fan of the secret, he had this walk, you know, he'd walked to work every day along the same route and he had gotten in his mind mind that there was a key buried underneath home plate at I think it was home plate, maybe it was second one of the one of the bases in this baseball field near his house. And one day he was walking to work and there was a construction crew out there and they were they were going to redo the baseball field, and so he ran over to the construction foreman and said, Hey, this is gonna sound really strange, but I think there's buried treasure on that field, and if you do find something, here's my number, right, Like I would, you know, I'd be I'd want in on the treasure.

Though, I think if I were in the foreman, yeah, you know, and in Boston, you know they're not. I'm surprised. The guy's just like, you know, get away from you know, yeah, like if we find something, it's mine, like right. But they did find something, and then they they called him right away and they realized that it was the treasure. So um he called Josh Gates.

Josh Gates flew in and they unearthed the cask and found the third key. And so now there are still nine somewhere around the country. Um. If you go onto the websites devoted to the secret, they've essentially narrowed it down to the likely cities that they're in. Um.

Although one is still contested. It could either be Saint Louis, Missouri, or Quebec City, Montreal, or in Montreal up in Canada, and I lean more towards Canada. I think it's up there. Um So, yeah, one was found and the hunt is still on. I've gotten to know one of Byron's daughters, Cara, pretty well.

She's now running Emma Robert's production company, and we're trying to find something to work on together. Um so. Um. You know, it's just the whole experience introduced me to a lot of really interesting people, and I think about Byron's family quite a bit. Um.

So it's a it's it was. It's really a really fun project to work on because it was a little different than you know, the sad true crime stuff that I tend to work. So, speaking of that sad true crime, I was just at the same. No, we can circle right back to Shaker Heights. Sure.

So yeah. This new book that's coming out in June is it's called Little Crazy Children, and which is from It's from a quote from The Crucible, which is, and I'm paraphrasing here we are in the Crucible, of course, is about the Salem which trials, and the quote is something like, we are as we always were in Salem, but now the little Crazy Children are holding the keys to the Kingdom. And it's about The book is about the murder of Lisa Pruitt, who was sixteen years old in nineteen ninety. She just got in her driver's license, but she made plans to sneak out of the house that night and ride her bike over to her boyfriend's place. His parents lived in a mansion at the corner of South Woodland and Lee.

His dad was in charge of the if I'm getting this right, the pediatric unit at the Cleveland Clinic. He was high up in Cleveland Clinic. I guess we should say, for those of you who aren't familiar with Shaker Heights in Ohio, it's all mansions, like big, big mansions, very very rich neighborhood. Not the place that you'd expect a young girl to be murdered, and she was stabbed close to like thirty times. She was stabbed to death.

Her body was found about thirty feet from her boyfriend's back door on the day that he got out of the mental hospital, and he would write her letters while he was in there that literally said quote, you know, stay away from me when I get out. I don't want to kill you. And so after all that, like a day after the murder, a lot of friends of the boyfriend went to the police and said, Hey, it can't be the boyfriend. He's you know, he's such a nice guy. It's got to be this kid, Kevin Young that we got to school with because he wears men's alloqut T shirts and it's just really strange.

And unfortunately the police kind of went with it, and when after this kid, there's no evidence ever linking him to the crime, but they eventually did put him on trial. He was acquitted, but everybody in Shaker Heights pretty much to this day thinks that he did it and just got away with it because he got a fancy lawyer. And so I went into it hoping to exonerate Kevin Young, which I think I did, and to find the real killer. And I was sure that I was going to find this evidence. And I figured the boyfriend would make a really good suspect, right, I mean, he had to.

And what shocked me was a couple weeks into my research, I came across the name of another young man who was at the scene of the murder. The night of the murder. He was at the scene, he places himself there, and the police knew about this kid, and the prosecutor did, and they never shared it with the defense. They never They kind of hit it. He's a much better suspect, And once I started looking into him, it's it's one of those things where you're peeling back the layers of the onion and just all this stuff comes out.

Where about five years before, four or five years before Lisa was murdered, eight doors north of where she was her body was found, there was a double murder Philip and Dorothy Porter, who were I think in their seventies early eighties now. Philip Porter was the former executive editor at The Playing Dealer and Dorothy was an artist, a renowned artist, and somebody snuck into their house and stabbed them to death. One night Philip was found in his bed. It appeared as though Dorothy interrupted this person as they came into the house, because she was she was found downstairs. Whoever did it came in through the kitchen window, which is relatively small, and and must have left that same way because the house was locked from the inside.

When so it's one of those closed room mysteries, right, And so I find this young man who was at the scene of Louse's murder the knight of the murder, and he lived right behind the porters. And not only that, he's the only witness in the porter's case. When I pulled the police reports, his name was right there because the police were interviewing people, and he came and said, oh, yeah, I saw a black guy running away from the house that night. And if you're from Shaker, all you have to do is say, you know, I saw a black guy running away from this crime. And that's all the police here after that.

Yeah. Yeah. So suddenly he's this one person is the only link to three of these murders, and I think he I think he did all three. Um. I went to hes he passed away.

Unfortunately in twenty seventeen, essentially drank himself to death. And I tracked down his common law wife, who they had a daughter, and that's who he was living with the last few years of his life. And I went to her. I didn't think she talked to me, but she was. She welcomed me in.

She lives in Twinsburg and welcomed me into her apartment and we sat and we talked for a while, and finally I just came out and asked her. I said, do you think do you think your husband killed Lisa Pruett? And she thought for a second and she said, well, let me tell you a story. She said, when he was in preschool, kid another boy pushed him down on the playground and he didn't do anything, he didn't react. But when lunchtime came around, he sat next to this boy and when the other boy was distracted and looked the other way, he poured comment cleaner into the kid's sandwich and he almost died, he said it.

And he was like that his entire life, That's just who he was. She said, absolutely, I think he killed Lisa, and he probably killed the elderly couple too. Wow. Yeah, So it was quite a trip writing that book. I'm hoping that when it comes out, it reopens the investigation and forces Shaker Heights Police to test the because they have they at least have evidence in the porter's case that would have DNA on it.

And if if they could show that this kid killed the elderly couple, then you know he almost certainly killed Lisa too. Right. Wow, Well that's exciting. I'm looking forward to reading that. And so you were talking about a kind of a little bit about how this book came to be before we started on what the book is.

How what's different about how this book came to be as opposed to to other ones that you've put out. Yeah, well, one thing is it was something I always wanted to get to um and then I had an experience similar to what you dealt with with those Dollar babies where U I had a TV series that was about to film and it was based on an article that I had written, and it was I had planned to live in New Orleans for a month and a half and we had we had cast it. Melissa Leo was playing the lead, and Tet Donovan was in it and a couple other really great actors. And I think that was right before we talked last, because I remember, I think, yeah, you even I this just sounds remember you mentioning New Orleans for whatever reason, like, yeah, that had to have been around the time we last spoke.

Yep. So um, it was all ready to go. We were in New Orleans and we were three days away from shooting, and it was March thirteen, twenty twenty, and uh it was. It was a Friday. And of course the next day they shut down the city and then they shut down production.

They said, hey, this is only going to be two weeks, We'll be right back here. And that two weeks became two years. And so when I got back home, I had nothing to do, Like my slate was completely empty for the next few months, and I had amassed, slowly gathered thousands of pages of documents on the Lisa pruitcase because I knew i'd get around to it one day. And just like you know, Meredith, just in Twilight Zone, you know, finally I had time enough at last, and so I started going through the notes and slowly putting this book together. And so if not for COVID, if not for the failure of one project, this never would have happened.

And I never would have found this other suspect in the in the notes, at least not any anytime soon. Um. So it kind of a neat way that it all came together. Um and uh yeah, that's that's what I did during It was essentially my COVID project. Um and uh yeah, it was.

The book is it's a little different from what I've done before. And you know, there's I'm you know, I tend to write true crime memoirs where I'm talking about how I'm investigating in the danger that I get into and the misadventures, and that's in there. But it's in the very last part. Um, it's divided into three sections. You've got the investigation and it takes you through it's kind of through the eyes of the police as they're investigating the murder.

And then you have the trial and it's all that courtroom drama from the play interview of the lawyers. And then you have the third section, which is my investigation all these years later. Um. So yeah, it's a it's a little different, but that's that's how it's how it came together this time. Great, Chris, did you have anymore?

Yeah? I was on that articular Okay, yeah, I was I was. I'm going to ask you, so you kind of mentioned It's it seems that you know, you've you've spoken with some people that knew this person and all that. You know, like you've mentioned some of the other cases you've talked about. I mean, you know, the Amy Mahalovic case.

I think that's the first thing we ever talked about, the three of us. And sure, you know you wrote that that book back in oh six, and then you know it's twenty twenty three now with this coming out, you know, writing about a case that doesn't have a conclusion versus a case that again, you seemingly are kind of coming into a point where you feel like you kind of can say who you think did it and why and how and what their reasoning is. Can I tell me a little bit about the difference between those two things, and is one more rewarding than the other or does it? Does it even matter to you as someone who's you know, thrown yourself into true crime. Yeah, well it's just as soon as the case is solved, I lose interest.

So the cases that interest me enough to spend time to write a book on are all unsolved. And it really is. It's not something that's done in true crime. A lot, a lot of the true crime books that you'll find in the bookstore shelves are about cases that are solved for many reasons because you'll have access to a lot more documents that way, because usually once cases solved, the documents become public record, all of them, so there's a lot more to work with. And also legally it's a lot easier because if you know, for my books, when I'm writing about an unsolved case, there's a huge there's a very intense legal review that happens because you know, we can't come out and say somebody did it, you know, without you know, without evidence, and you know, I'm not going to come out and say somebody did it if if they haven't been arrested.

You know, I have my thoughts, but I've done this long enough to know that even when somebody looks one hundred percent guilty, there's still a possibility that some other weird answers. So um, you know that it's it's it's more difficult, I think, to write about unsolved mysteries, but it's also the only type of true crime that I I really like, So I keep you know, somebody posted on Twitter, um, yesterday they had found uh, they'd found True Crime Atic, my last true crime book at a for five dollars at a used bookstore in Pasadena and made some comment about how, um, you can't wait to read about another case that James didn't solve or like something something like that, or you know, and and I realized, I've kind of made a career out of, um, not solving cases.

You don't want to be you don't want to be a Gray Smith though, where you claim to know the answer and then it gets picked apart by people on the internet twenty years later, because you know, but that's like, in my opinion, that's like the big unsolved crime case that has the big unsolved book is Zodiac and I mean Gray Smith, I mean went through all those machinations, like you said, where you know, he can't say the name of the person because the Priscilla alive, and then he writes the second book to reveal who it is, and then it all gets picked apart by people on the internet fifteen years later. It's like, you know, it's like it's hard to kind of I feel like it would be hard to balance the two, especially also the chatter people going, oh, it's another unsolved case.

How else do they get solved unless people have an active discussion about right, exactly, Yeah, And I mean unsolved mysteries exists for a reason. Most of all we talk about on this show is about stuff that's not you know, really solvable or approvable, but not all but also you know, not entirely disprovable either, So it's just the fun mystery of life. I think there's something uniquely human about an unsolved mystery and wanting to try to put together that puzzle and you know, thinking that you might be smarter than anybody else. That's that's right about the case. Um, yeah, I grew up on unsolved mysteries.

I loved unsolved mysteries, and I didn't grow up on solved mysteries, right, I don't think that would be as fun of a TV show. So so, kind of keeping with the theme, you know, of things that are uniquely human, you were also working on some science fiction, uh, dealing with the themes of memory and identity and what we perceive as reality all things very uniquely humans. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was called The Great Forgetting. Can you tell us a little bit about what that was.

Yeah, so The Great Forgetting. It was my second novel, and there's there's a few stories about The Great Forgetting. But what's interesting is it was It's one of those books that I'm going to sound pretentious, but I think it was a little ahead of its time, which which I think hurt the book because now you go on TikTok and there's this whole movement going on right now. I don't know how have you guys looked into or discussed Tartaria. No, no, you got to look into it.

So the idea is that there was a chunk of human history sometime in the eighteen hundreds where there was an advanced civilization that essentially took over the world called Tartaria, and they built these huge structures that still stand to this day in all over the world, like in Chicago, in San Francisco, all throughout the Old World, and that it's the same type of architecture that it's the only thing that remains. And the idea is that they were so evil when we defeated them that we rewrote human history to completely wipe them out of history. But we still have some of their old architecture hanging around, and some signs that they existed. They're on some old maps and things like that. So it's a trippy conspiracy.

But I didn't know anything about that. Yeah, when I wrote The Great Forgetting in twenty fifteen, and it's a very similar idea. My idea behind the book is that there was one hundred years of human history that we as a world society decided to forget about because it was so bad, and so we kind of reset the clock. Is it now it should be? We're living in it?

Yeah, yeah, And you know, remember this book came out right before Trump was elected, so I certainly would have changed things around since then. And you know, so the clock kind of reset in nineteen sixty four and we decided to forget all this stuff. And the stories about this history teacher from Lakewood who starts putting together the pieces and goes on a grand adventure to try to wake up the world about this conspiracy, and there's you know a lot of fun themes it um. You know, it's it's pretty much a love letter to conspiracy theories because it's kind of like it takes all the really cool conspiracies and says that they're all connected into this grand conspiracy. That is the great for kidding.

So you have chem trails and fluoride in the water, making people forget, and um, you know things like ape human hybrids that the Nazis were fiddling around with. Jesse talked about those on his show. Really yeah. Humanzies, yeah, humanzies. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the only other time I've heard anybody bring that up is right now. And you know, oddly enough, there is some legitimate evidence to suggest that, well, they absolutely tried to do it. Oh yeah, that's for sure. There is some evidence to suggest that they were successful a couple times.

Um, It's it's pretty trippy, but I don't know how much I believe it, but they certainly were trying and uh yeah, so that's what the Great forgettings about. Um. One other little story about that book is, you know, it is the second book in a two book contractum, which you know it was. It's like I sold that book without anybody reading it, just on an idea, and then I had to go write it. And it was like handing the keys to the car to your teenage kid, and so I just I just went all out and I turned when I turned the manuscript in it was it was.

It was around a thousand pages, and um, the editor and agent they were like, no, nobody, nobody reads books this long. There's no way we could publish this. Um. They gave me a couple of options. The one option that we that we kind of thought about for a minute was turning it into a trilogy, uh and making it yam.

But I didn't want to do that. So I spent nine months editing my own manuscript down from a thousand pages to um about four hundred and fifty. And that hurts so like shit that it's a huge like a whole nother You took a whole other book out of your book. Yeah, I did. Yeah, if I ever, if I ever make it big time, UM, you know, I do want to do like a complete, uncut version of that book, even if I have to like put it through like a small press or you know, self published or something that's wild.

Holy. I mean that's so it's not one to It wasn't one to one A thousand was it? Because it's like it's like a thousand pages thousand pages printed right? No, it's like, um, it would have been probably about between seven hundred and fifty and eight hundred pages printed. Wow.

Yeah, only only Stephen Kings allowed to write that long. We all know. Yeah, that's exactly that is verbatim what I was told, right, Stephen King is allowed to write that long? Yes, yeah, yeah. So what so in this in this world of conspiracy theories, I'm curious, what is what is your favorite conspiracy theory?

Conspiracy? Honestly, right now, it's probably this Tartaria stuff and that there was this global um power superpower that you know, that that we decided to wipe completely out of history. I really like that idea. Um So I think if The Great Forgetting had come out in the last you know, if it came out now, I think it would do a lot better because it could tie in with that that Tartaria has a huge fan base right now. It's like, and it's only going to get bigger in the next six months to a year, so definitely dive into it.

It's it's pretty on TikTok. There's this guy who he h he's a young man from England and he has this TikTok series on Tartaria. But he's so I can't tell if he's if he legitimately believes in this or if he's just having fun, but it's so fun to watch. Um he you know, he has these things that he says, like, um, you know, he'll start off and he'll show you these these pieces of architecture that are supposed to be from Tartarian. He's like, way so serious and he's like, oh, I got your ass.

And then then I'll show you like, um, you know there's these mud floods that buried some of the houses, you know, whenever they're this big war was with the civilization, and he'll be like, oh my ditty, oh my days. And he's super fun to listen to. So it's like a conspiracy of absence then, which is like the most the most fun conspiracy. Something's going on and it can't prove it. We can't prove it, improve it, we can't ever prove it because the whole conspiracy centers around the fact that it is intentionally gone.

Yes, exactly right, hard hard one to disprove. Yeah, the best kind though almost the kind that can't be disproven at all, the best kind of conspiracy and a harm more fish one. So so James less contemporary is is there is there a conspiracy theory of all of them that that that you are, that is your favorite less you know less maybe specifically right now, but because I mean we're we have a we have a long way along many years of conspiracy theories, right yeah. Yeah. Um, well, you know I did a deep dive into nine to eleven when I was working at scene, um a couple of years, just a couple of years after it happened, and I spoke to uh, one of the main people behind the nine to eleven report, and uh, you know, he convinced me that Building seven was intentionally brought down.

Um, you know, there's no doubt that you know, al Qaeda and you know, the the terrorists brought down the twin Towers, but Building seven should not have. I'm totally convinced Building seven should not have collapsed and that it was allowed or intentionally brought down. But I think that's the conspiracy within nine to eleven that it gets missed. I I'm so with you. That's like when I say I believe the nine to eleven conspiracy, that it's that and only that it's Building seven, Like there's no way, there's no way.

Yeah, And I don't think they they knew that the attack was going to happen or that it was going to happen there, and they let people die. I think there were just some people that took advantage of that situation and they're like, look, we got this opportunity, let's just pull it and uh, you know, sweep this. You know, what we have in this building just never existed now and it's just a bunch of like tax information and all kinds of just paperwork. Like, that's not a fun conspiracy to just blow up a building to destroy paperwork? Like what fun is that in a digital age?

Yeah, I mean the fun is that it allows you to make about a trillion dollars disappear without any sort of paper trail. Yeah, I mean that's not that's not an exciting nine to eleven conspiracy. I mean that's not jet be or no still be, not as not as sex sexy. Yeah, no, you know, I think I think that's up. Yeah.

Well, but I think also it also speaks to this bigger idea of hopefully the narrative on conspiracy theories kind of maybe shifting and looking less at the because again, like when you talk about the conspiracy behind like say someone like JFK right, for me, it's less about who pulled the trigger and how many people were trying to pull the trigger at once, right, because like, yeah, somebody pulled the trigger and he is dead, but like how many people were trying to do the same thing and got there? Yeah? Yeah, and and like because I honestly, you know, I think the like similar to nine to eleven, the JFK at least conspiracy theory now isn't maybe it's not whether or not Oswald killed him, but how many other people were indey Plaza at the time trying to do the exact same thing, people behind the curtain, Yeah, exactly.

The craziest theory I've heard about that is that Oswald shot Kennedy and he and he lived and went on to serve another term, and somehow that put us on track to a very dangerous place. And so um, you have like five or six time travelers that came back and we're all trying to shoot him at once. That the cover and then that's an amazing yeah, and then kind of overdid it and had to disappear really quickly. The craziest one that I ever heard, I don't know if if y'all saw this, it was that one of the secret service agents shot him by accident. Yes, that'd be terrible.

I mean that's like I mean that for me is like, oh my god, Like like that scene in pulp fiction with the guy in the back turns around. Oops, it's just the president this time. Yep. Major cover up. Now they were sign outside outside of is this a dead president storage?

I don't know. But but speaking of cover ups and things that people don't like to talk about, I know your work happening. Now you're writing a new book. Oh yeah, Oh cool, I'm an Eagle Scout. Yikes.

Oh great. I mean I don't give a shit, Like, yeah, they've come a long way. And by that, I mean maybe you don't get kicked out for being gay anymore. But there was a kid in my fucking troop who got kicked out for being gay. Oh really Yeah, it was like mm hmmm, so yikes.

So the book is it's it's about, um, it's about the Boy Scouts in general and the history of it that most people, I think, you know, the Boy Scouts have become such a tradition in America that we don't think about where it came from or how it started or what it's about. Um. So it's it's about all that, but it's also a very personal book because it's about the summer that I spent as a camp counselor at this place called Seven Ranges Scout Reservation, which is the biggest boy Scout camp in Ohio. And I was a counselor there one summer in nineteen ninety five when I was seventeen, and that summer a bunch of crazy stuff happened, one of them being one of the one of the counselors, a staff member sexually assaulted a teenage boy, and then one home and killed himself.

And that happened about, yeah, in the middle of summer. And then it's it's there's a lot there that's about this secret society within the Seven Ranges called Pipestone. And here's what Pipestones all about. And I can't believe this is still going on or ever went on, but it's been going on for about seventy years. So it's this.

On Friday nights, they take boys as young as eleven out into the woods behind camp and about midnight and you run through these trails and then they take you to the ceremonial ring where these skulls of dead animals cows mostly, I think, are on poles around this circular clearing. There's a big fire in the middle. Then you've got all these white, middle aged guys who have painted their bodies red like Native Americans, and they've got the red face on as well, and you know, some of them have the chief feathers. And you take the boy and he's forced to kneel in between the legs of the chief and then forced to drink this stuff called bittricks, which is a very bitter substance, and you can't spit it out or you got to start over.

And then he brings out a human skull and the kid looks inside the skull to find the password for the next year, and the first password is secrecy. And that after all the kids go through the ceremony, the chief gives the speech about the importance of secrecy, even keeping secrets from your parents, and it kind of starts the um. You know, it instills this idea of keeping secrets, which which allowed a lot of other bad things to happen. UM. And you go back to camp and you can take there's five years of pipestone.

You get a little piece of this pipe stone every year until you get the full pipestone at year five. And at the end of the ceremony every year there's this big speech and uh, by the by the chief, and the fourth year speech starts out verbatim, and here's here's how they started out, or did when I went through it. Masturbation leads to curiosity, and then they talk about the dangers and these kids at that point are as young as thirteen fourteen years old. Um, the dangers of of masturbation and how you shouldn't do it, um and um, and how homosexual homosexuality um is immoral and leads to UM an immature life and an unfulfilled life, and how you should not do that, and how you should put that in the past, and even friendships with the same sex you should be putting in the past by then.

And it's terribly, terribly damaging generations of kids. And I wrote about this, not to the extent that I'm writing right now, but I wrote about it in an article for Seeing back in two thousand and five. And at that time they promised me that they were going to change the speeches and make pipe Stone safer. And as I'm researching this book, I you know, just a couple of weeks ago found out that they never in facted that. So the timing is actually really good.

You know what's going on inside the book by Scots right now is they were sued pretty much into bankruptcy and they are settling with all these abuse victims. And the news hasn't cotton up with this yet, but I believe they will soon because people are comparing this to the Catholic the Catholic Church abuse scandal, but nobody's looked at the numbers because it's exponentially worse than what happened in the Catholic Church. Because in the United States there where eleven thousand victims that came forward to sue the Catholic Church. So far in the last few years with the Boy Scouts, ninety two thousand kids have come forward to sue the Boy Scouts of America only So it's fuck, it's exponentially worse than what happened in the Catholic Church.

And that's because Catholic churches it's one segment of the population, right, it's Catholics. The Boy Scouts is non denominational, and it's America. Yeah, so we like just thinking about those numbers and for every kid that did come forward and is getting a settlement, there's I tell you, there's like six to eight more that have kept quiet. So the numbers are staggering. And there's a bill that's going through the Ohio House right now that will get rid of the statute of limitations for people suing the Boy Scouts.

And I was interviewing the state representative about this, and um, I found out that there was a hearing on Tuesday, as in like two days from now, and I said, Hey, do you need any other people talking about this? And she said yeah. So I kind of accidentally stumbled into this and I'm testifying in front of the Ohio houseow on Tuesday. Oh shit, wow, Well we'll see. It's the book is definitely going to make some waves, I think, and uh um, you know it's it's it's going to talk about the crimes that happened at the summer camp that year and and things that I've gone through, and I'm a um, you know, I'm I'm not making it a secret.

I'm a survivor of abuse within the in the Boys Scouts and uh um, you know, so it's it's deeply personal and you know, it's it's a true crime book that all the crimes that happened were me or my friends. So it's a little different than the stuff they're written about before. Wow, well, thank you for sharing with us about this project. And sure, yeah, I can't I can't wait to see what waves it makes, quite honestly deserved waves. Yeah, because I didn't experience any of that, and I don't know if anyone in my troop did.

But to think about the scale of just where I grew up and the amount of kids that I knew were in it, like, I mean, yeah, it's horrifying, Like horrifying is not even the right word. Like, yeah, you know, I'm learning a lot too about just the history of scouting, And you know, what was really what I found very interesting that makes a lot of sense now is that, um, you know, scouting was founded around nineteen ten, and it was specifically m at that time. You know, we we tend to think that the things that are happening now are are just you know, didn't happen back then. But back at that moment in history, there was this huge push towards liberalism, um, and people were becoming more and more liberal and the conservatives got scared and they wanted a way to create a new generation of conservative minded people, and that is how the Boy Scouts were founded.

It was specifically with the purpose of instilling conservative values into kids before they were old enough to vote, before they were old enough to become political. So it was you know, we think about that now and think about like, if liberals decided to put together an organization to teach kids liberal values, I mean, the world would freak out, This country would freak out, right. That's that's what the Boy Scouts is. It's it's an indoctrination, indoctrination through the way of fun. It's about fun indoctrination.

It's about I mean, I mean, I mean nods and but I mean I don't look like you. I mean you were in it, James, just like I was, like, that's the whole thing is like, it's fun indoctrination. It's indoctrination dressed up. But it's like pseudo it's pseudo military. And it is also pseudo.

I mean it's not it's probably were pseudo religious now than it was when I was in it or when you were in it. But like lo, they meet in churches, churches are often the ones sponsoring these fucking organizations. Like it's not a surprise they say, do my duty to God in my country. They say God before they say most anything else. And I have a lot of fond memories, I honestly do.

I have a lot of fond memories from Scouts. I met some great friends, and um, it taught me self reliance, and it's probably one of the reasons that i've I've I've been successful, and but so did some good things. But looking back, you know, overall, I mean, just the anti LGBTQ stuff is sickening. And uh, what we didn't realize when we were in it, um was that it was quietly being run by the Church of Latter day Saints. It was it was run by the Mormons.

Brother man, I knew that when I was in Scouts. I will tell you that, Oh, brother man, there were so many Mormon kids. More, every single Mormon kid I knew was in Scouts, and their brothers were in Scouts, and their sisters were in grow Scouts. But that mattered less. But every Mormon kid I knew, every Mormon kid I grew up with, is an Eagle Scout and was an Eagle Scout before I was sure they automatically get signed up if you're in the or not now because once the boy Scouts started letting in transgender um UM teenagers, they that was the final straw for the Mormons and they cut ties.

But up until three years ago, it was it was run every every Mormon boy was automatically signed up. We would joke about it all the time like that if we if there was anything that like the dirty secrets, that definitely had to run in with the LGBTQ thing in my troop. But also knew so many kids there was Mormon. Where'd you grow up out of North Texas? Oh?

Okay, wow, I don't hear the twang and your voice? Did you get rid of it? I could? I could turn it on and off after you get a couple drinks in. Oh I Oh, I just I do.

I do imitations and voices a lot, so like I've just learned how to like just try to have like some something that don't have a whole lot enough to it nice. But no, But I mean I knew a lot of Mormon kids that were Scouts to the point where like, yeah, it was like a running joke in my troop. It's like, oh, that's the Mormon troop. That's the troop of all the Mormon kids. Like and they were they were the Eagle Scout factories.

They were just pumping out the Eagle Scouts. Yeah sure, yeah, yeah man Scout. Yeah, Scouts is fucked up. Like I I like, like yourself, I have some positive memories. But I was bullied a lot.

I was bullied in Scouts more than I was bullied in school. That's bizarre. I mean, tell me about it, because if now, I would whoop every ass that came my way. But but think, but yeah, I was bullied in Scouts more so in my in my troop, the boy Scouts were where the nerds would go to find uh, you know, so that we weren't bullied. Oh I was being bullied by loser kids.

Like it's like you know what I mean. It was like it's like it was like if you were in band and you were bullied, Like you're being bullied by the loser kids because like ban yeah, it's like same thing. I'm I'm so glad someone is taking to task the boy Scouts, like I really am. It's h it's putting a target on me. That that's a little scary, but I don't I think it'll be fine.

I don't think it'll be any worse than the more Murray case. Um. But uh, you know, and and it's a you know, it's a good fight to have. So well, I've been on lots of adventures because of this book already. I went last weekend, I was out in um Pipestone, Minnesota, buying a pipestone pipe from a Native American who carveted himself.

And um, you know, I'm looking into the books a lot about how to deal with trauma and how to deal with PTSD from the things we went through as kids. And so the week before that, I was in DC having psilocybin therapy. UM. And I can't recommend that out cool it it was amazing, um And I can't wait to I can't wait to write about it. But um, it's uh, you know, I tell you what that that should be legal everywhere because it's if you have you know, if you if you're dealing with PTSD, if you're dealing with substance abuse issues, and you get in those loops of thought, those um, you know, just cascading thoughts.

That's one thing. It does is it just kind of resets everything and those loops go away, UM, and the patterns of thought go away, and it's just kind of like, UM, you've reset and you feel good. So, if you don't mind me asking, because you're literally the first person who's ever mentioned this out loud, what what was that process? Light? So UM I went into UM.

UH. There's a man that I met up with there that has years of experience UM with therapy, and it's important that you do the therapy along with them, the solo cybin UM, and that you have somebody that's monitoring you and helping guide you. And so that's that's what I did. And there's this group called I think they're called Maps, but this whole group is put together to make this therapy available to veterans of war UM and what they think might be possible. And this is why Congress is looking at it seriously right now, is they believe that if they can treat they believe that they can treat soldiers with PTSD with psilocybin and make it possible for them to actually return to the battlefield.

UM. It's that powerful, that good, and that's what it did for the people I met with and um. So I was I went into this. I was in a room and there was a they had they had a playlist for this, so I was listening to music Native American music, African music, and I took it as chocolate. And there are places and actually in DC, it is decriminalized in DC, so what we were doing was legal.

But in other places like Oakland outside of San Francisco and Denver, you can actually buy this in dispensaries and they dose it in chocolate bars. So you can take one square the chocolate and that's essentially a microdose. You're not going to feel any of that crazy effects, but you're going to feel a little mood. You're gonna feel better, you're gonna have better mood. And so he gave me.

I took half the chocolate bar at first, and it's like any other edible where it takes about forty five minutes to really kick in. And so about an hour into it, an hour and fifteen minutes into it, I wasn't really feeling much. I was seeing a little bit of tracing and like like when he'd walk in front of lights, things like that, and so I took another like four or five square and then listen to the music. And that's when, probably about twenty minutes later is when things started getting weird and in a good way. And this music the best way I can.

You know, people say that you see see sound, and that's true, but it's not essentially seeing, because that's describing it through a different sense, right. It's trying to say you're seeing the sound, but it's almost like a different sense you're For me, I think it would be like what blind people would imagine site would be, if that makes any sense. And it felt like the music, this native American music, was being filtered through me, through all the experiences and memories that I've ever had and coming out as these visuals like light through a prism. And the visuals I got were very fabric based, so I was seeing giant quilts, you know, being constructed around me, and we we the therapy part of it.

He directed me towards some trauma and uh, you know that, And what I wanted to do was was get, you know, make a German into the book and deal with some trauma that I had through the boy Scouts. But you know, your mind takes it different ways. And what I relived was trauma that I experienced from us my stepmother actually, and uh, you know, when I was three, my parents divorced. My father married this woman who began hitting me with a closed fist when I was four years old. Um, and uh, so that memory kicked up and I was suddenly there.

And what happened was, you know, we we were talking through it, and I was watching as the scene played out, and the scene started being swallowed up by tentacles, which sounds scary, right, It sounds like a bad trip, But it was extremely calming because it was essentially like devouring the trauma, devouring this bad memory that I didn't have to deal with it anymore because it was being consumed. And so that was very profound, very interesting, and uh yeah, And so I finished up there and then I got an uber back to my hotel about twelve thirty one o'clock in the morning, and I thought I was done, but the full effect of the psilocybin kicked in in my hotel room, and I made the mistake of walking into the bathroom so freshen up, and I looked at myself in the mirror.

And what the stuff does is it takes away your subjectivity so and your ego. And so when you look at yourself in the mirror, you see yourself, I think for the first time as somebody else would see you. And I became fascinated with my gray hair and my age, and so I just stared and looked at myself, and then there I was like, wow, this is really fun, this is interesting. You know, in the hotels, they have those little round mirrors that sit on the counter that like magnify any everything. Well, I made the mistake of looking in there, and I looked so old, like I could see where the the the elasticity under my eyes was failing.

And so like I'm being I'm transfixed, and I'm like, well, I want to see what I look like from behind, you know. So I pick up that mirror and I aim it back so I can see and suddenly there's like four versions of me and all these mirrors, and I lost I lost track of which one was me, and so I was like stuck. I was stuck inside these mirrors for like twenty minutes and talking to myself and trying to like work my way out of the mirrors. So that was the craziest experience. That's yeah, I've never done Sila sillabin therapy.

I've done Sila sillabin. How did that? I have always been told not to look in the mirror. I love it. I think it's great.

I do. I feel I agree with you and that it does reset kind of just how you feel and I feel connected with certain things. Um. And it's definitely a different kind of trip than eddy, you know, other kind of you know, main popular hallucinogenic you know, like LST or something that's you know, that's a processed, chemical based thing that can provide all manner of trips and feelings. But you know, with Sila sillabin being a you know, natural product like it's, it does have a very like you said, very connected feeling.

You just feel very connected to things. And I also experience a lot of stuff textually when it comes to like the hallucinated like hallucinated nations with Sila sillabinum. One trip, I watched my partner and I watched the Crystal Light Aerobics Championship or other from the late eighties hosted by all I'm thick, and we watched it on like a VHS, so it was all grainy and whatever to begin with, and it was I felt like I was there and at one point it was paused. At one point it was paused, but I didn't feel like it was paused. Sure, but yeah, I've had, you know, other experiences that were like just more centered with myself and then just that that hyper fixation and where it sounds like it could be freaky anytime you describe it to people, like the the idea sounds very freaky.

But anytime I've done that or had experiences like that with Sila Sillabin, it still felt very good. And I will say that one experience that I have this recurring with Psila Sillabin experiences is just random crying but not feeling sad, but not like sad like my like, I'm not feeling the sadness that is coming with it, but there is like it is crying like or just like laughing, yeah, same thing and crying at the same time, not laughing so hard you cry, but laughing and crying at the same time. Yeah, I don't know what's And that's a very but it's also very it's a hugely releasing feel. Yeah, very yeah, cathartic, right, it's um. Yeah.

The next when I woke up in the morning I had, you know, the these dried streaks out, you know, from from my from my eyes because I was crying so much. Yeah, but it wasn't a bad cry like you were like you're saying exactly. Um, So they tell you to stay away from the mirrors because I missed somebody. Yeah, that seems like the warning of warnings. That's the number one thing, you know that for me, my main the warnings I got, you know before before trying anything to do with sila syllabin is very much the same warnings I get you get for any other kind of hallucinogenic is.

Also, here's the thing with mushrooms too. People recommend that you do them in the outside, like in an open space. I've never done that, just because I don't live in an area where I'm comfortable going at night. You know, during the day there's a ton of people in the parks. We have great parts here, shirt, but there's a ton of people and park rangers and at night, Fuck you, I'm not going out in the middle of the park and doing a position of the night.

Um So I have never experienced that. All of my experiences have been within a contained space. But I was always warned that you need to be in an environment that is clean to like your standard of queen like. It doesn't have to be spotless, just to where some things that you're not going to hyper fixate on a problem. Um.

So your environment is comfy, you have you know, your snacks, your water, your things that you need that they're they're readily available to you, so you don't have to go through too many steps to get to a place that you need. Um. And yeah, to avoid nars um and to just generally avoid things that you think could cause you to have a bad trip. Now for me, you know from people that would be like, don't watch scary movies when you're who's for me, that's comfortable. That's a fun time, right, Yeah, that's a fun time for me.

But for other people, I can see why it wouldn't be a fun time they also. I think what's what's very important, and I'm glad that we talked through this before, is to have a mantra in the back of your mind that just reminds you that everything you're experiencing is temporary. That this is that no matter how scary it gets or how weird it gets, it's temporary and you're gonna feel normal again. And I felt with Sila Sillabin. Yeah, with Sila Sillabin.

It's just it's it's a few hours maybe, like yeah, eight eight to you know, eight hours top. Yeah, I fold it with like LSD. You have to be careful because you don't know how much. If you don't necessarily know how much you're dosing, you could be dripping for like ten, twelve, fifteen hours, right, Like It's scary, yeah, and it would be exhausting, like absolutely just mentally physically exhausting because your brain, you know, all of your brain is firing so much faster and so much more powerfully than it's used to you. Just I can't imagine to come down on that being cool.

Yeah, but it was. It was. I found it to be very helpful, and I hope it gets to be you know, kind of open to more and more people, um soon, sooner than later, I think. I mean, it definitely is you know, like in some of the research that I've just been you know, staying up on with lealization as far as cannabis and other plant based medicines, go silas little bit is one that's definitely getting a lot more traction. I guess they're think in Pennsylvania they're actually working on some some stuff with that there, because yeah, it's starting to become decriminalized in certain good states across the country.

Because yeah, it's I I agree. I think it's great. And you know, like even the stuff that you can get, like even the mass room based stuff that you can buy like in stores, right, like the mushroom based coffee is the mushroom based drinks and stuff like that. I've gotten a few of those, and they do work too. They do have that kind of uplifting The biggest thing I can say about mushrooms, I was Sullivan, is that it just makes you feel happy even if you're having like a sad time, Like yeah, I think that's true.

Yeah, Yeah, It's like there's nothing to worry about. It reminds you that everything everything in my experience user discretion advice, Yeah, for sure, I've got it. Somehow, you reminded me of another story that I don't know fits in with many other places or people. So I gotta tell you the story. It was one of the craziest things that happened, you know, through I don't think I told this the last time it stopped me if I did.

But because I don't think it was that long ago. It's probably more like a year and a half ago. Anyways, I was out. I've got this little dog who's a shorty shit too half Yorky and uh you know, take him out at night before bed to do his business. And it's nine thirty at night, and take him out.

And I live on a one of the main roads here in Akron, and uh late at night, nobody's it's it's usually empty and uh so, but I can see this this main drag and I look up and I see My first thought is that what I'm seeing is a deer, and then I realize, oh, it's not a deer, and then get because of the way it's running. It's it's kind of like running on all fours um and it's lower to the ground. And then I thought, is that like a naked man like dashing down the road and one that's not that far from my house right, And I'm like, and then I realized no, because and then I see that it has a long bushy tail, and I'm like, what the hell is that? And and then it gets up up close to us and I grabbed the dog because I realize it's a it's a fun cougar.

Wait what like like like a mountain lion or something, and it's like just booking down Exchange right, and uh I could literally like two streets from my apartment. Like the story gets I eventually find out what it is, the story gets weirder. But um, so I I rushed inside and you know, I just you know, my good of my wife and kids. I'm like, You're never gonna believe what I just saw and they're like, yeah, right, you know you didn't see that. I'm like, I swear to God, I swear to God it was a giant cat that I saw, and uh, They're like no way.

So um the only thing I could think to do was go on to reddit on the Akron there's an Akron subreddit and I and I typed out, hey, did anybody has anybody seen a cougar running around Akron? And uh, you know, I get back comments like like yeah, there's cougars, cougars at the bar, all the tay Internet smart asses folks. But then the next day I get a message from a guy who works in animal control and Akron and he said, I think I know what you saw, he said. I was called out to a house on Merriman Road, one of the big mansions over there. Um, and they they they called me instead of the police because they had this animal that they shouldn't have had, but they were raising Yeah, you Ohioans with your illegal animals high.

It's just so easy. And I do here and turns out they had a servile cat that got the got out, they got loose, like, um, a day or two before I saw, And I'm sure that's what it was. I saw it on the on the road. But these servile cats can get pretty big, like the size are you pulling it up on? Yeah, and it's like a tall cat.

Yeah, it's like a cheetah with a cat like a cute kitty face right yep. And I can get to be the size of a really running at you like a Great Dane, Like it could be about the size of a Great Dane. And uh. And that's I'm sure that's what I saw. But it's so weird to like take your dog out for a walk and you see this giant cat, you know, running down the main road in Akron and nobody, nobody else.

So I was a little afraid because I didn't like, would it have eaten the little teeny time guaranteed? Yeah? Absolutely? I mean if a hawk, I mean you want to be worried about like hawks flying away with like chihuahuas and stuff like that, let alone a wild cat that has great Dane legs. Like.

So, yeah, weird stuff happens in Akron all the time. I was expecting it to be the return to the Loveland Frog. I thought, Yeah, I was out one night and all of a sudden I saw the frog following me home. You see my Loveland Frog poster behind me? I do, thank you?

Yeah. Next, you know about that Loveland Frog a lot. I really I think about that poor little frog man out there just sitting on the road, just waiting. That's another one of those stories that there's definitely some sort of truth. There's some nugget of truth in it that you know they saw something weird.

Yeah, right, Well, bringing it back to Akron and home before we wrap up for this podcast. Last time we talked, we talked about a project you'd been working on called the Porch Light Project. So if you could just like let maybe our new listeners know, let our old listeners know what that is and if there's any updates on it, yes, as we last spoke, sure and it's good timing on that. So the Porch Light Project is a nonprofit that I started in twenty nineteen along with a woman named Alexa Doubt from Kent State. We put this thing together and it was we What we do is we raise money for new DNA testing and genetic genealogy for cold cases in Ohio.

And we got really lucky with our first case and we funded new DNA testing and genealogy for the Barbara Blatnick case, the sixteen year old or seventeen year old young woman who was abducted from Garfield Heights, Ohio, back in eighty seven and her body was found by Blossom and we were actually able to solve that case and it led to the arrest of this man named James as Tonic in twenty twenty and so we were off to a good start and since then we've solved a handful of cases and we were currently funding I think six six cases that are in different stages and actually tomorrow I am driving to Youngstown for a press conference because we are our genealogist and we now have a genealogist specifically working for Portraite, solved a John Doe case in uh in Youngstown.

Um, that's great, thanks, Yeah, they they so they're going to make the big announcement tomorrow on that. That's a good question. I don't have it in front of me. It's I think maybe twenty or thirty years okay, old. Um, yeah, So we're we're you know, we're having a lot of luck and and you know, we're, um, we can take on two or three more cases, but you know, we we totally rely on donations, and so if anybody's interested in helping out or just learning more, we're at Porchlight online dot org.

Um. And yeah, we'll definitely include that link on the show notes and everything when we thank you. I want to I do want to ask you, James, you know because again, like you've mentioned, this is it's it's essentially crowd you would say crowdfunded right in in a way. Sure. Uh, you know, have you noticed in doing this that there there seems to be once you, once you got the idea together what you're going to do and how you're going to put it into practice with some of these cases, have you found that things come together pretty easily once the right people are on it, or do you notice a lot of pushback or people just kind of waiting, like, what's taken you so long?

Why is you're finally here? Thank you? What's what's kind of been the response? Um, it's a little bit of all that. Yeah, it's it's just gone a lot better than I expected it would.

And you know, we don't have a lot of pushback. People are happy when they hear from us, and especially since you know the you know, we're saying that, you know, not only can we do this, but we're going to pay for it for you, so they've got really nothing to lose. It's just it's it's interesting to me because it seems like the private sector or crowdfunding maybe the future of getting the cold cases solved or at least helping augment what they I mean, again, the crime isn't stopping, right, Yeah, it shouldn't be that way, but but yeah, I think that's uh, you know, it's that seems to be the faster route to go these days, is the private the private sourcing of this, because you know, each case costs around six thousand dollars six to eight thousand dollars um and you know that's not a lot.

You know, when you think that that is going to give you an answer to a cold case, it doesn't seem like that much. But when you have a thousand cold cases to work on, you know that that that number becomes pretty staggering too. So hopefully the price will come down on that as the technology gets better. I think it will. But right now it's going up, not just because of inflation, but because people, you know, the people that kind of run these databases are realizing that they can make a lot of money because you know, there's so much interest in it right now, and and with and with these cold cases.

When you're when you're getting the DNA we the you're you're saying it's six to eight thousand dollars. Most of that is tied up in just the testing of the DNA, A lot of it's testing, yep. And then uh, you know, the genealogy can get to be expensive too. You know, you could pay somewhere around two to three thousand dollars for the genealogy because you know, in order to track the DNA down to the source, sometimes you have to spend hundreds of hours working through family trees and building out these family trees, and it's very tedious work and it takes a lot of time. Well, I mean that's why, that's why we unfortunately are having a people like you and everybody, not unfortunately, but unfortunately that you have to take over for people who should be doing that job.

But yeah, sure with time that they don't seem to have despair. Yea crime doesn't stop, right, I mean, yeah, there's a new case every day, I'm sure, and there's plenty of I mean, I mean, you know Portslide project more or less focused in Ohio, right, but I'm sure we're just just Ohio. But each state must have something similar, right or what you would think, But the case it's really not. Um, you know, I think we did a very smart thing by keeping it Ohio centric. But sure, because there's there's enough cases to work here on here forever.

But there's really not anything similar to what we do in other states yet. Um. You know, I have lofty goals of getting the porch light really you know, um self sufficient and you know, flush with grants and money, but I'm still a long ways. But you know, if we can get to that point, then we'd look at doing the same thing in other states, right, because I mean it's just makes sense, right, I Mean obviously, look, I live in a state much smaller than Ohio. I can only guess how many cold cases there are in Nebraska, but it's not it wouldn't be the the amount that there are in Ohio.

Right, Yeah, but I guarantee you there's enough John Doe's and Jane does sure, right, you know that, um, And those are just as rewarding to me as suspect cases because you're giving somebody their name back, right, So yeah, I guarantee, And every state has enough cases that something like Porchlight could go on for forever and in those so it's just a matter what would it take to get there? What would it take to money? Money? I'm trying. What we're trying to do now is figure out public grants and state grants so that um.

I mean, if the state of Ohio would just give us half a million dollars, we you know, we we'd solve all their cold cases for them. Um. But it's just getting to the point to convince them that you know, we're we're worth investing into. So it's a public I mean, it's it's a public good, right, Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a civil I mean I look at what you're doing in a lot of ways as a civil service, right, like you know, you know, there are many ways to serve the community without working for the you know, working directly in the bureaucracy of the community. And one of the ways is to put your talents to good use.

That's why I asked if there's a thing in other places, because I mean, we have a presence in Nebraska, you have it, a presence in Ohio. I know people that have presences in other states. Like to mobilize those people to get that moving in the right direction wouldn't be terribly hard outside of the financial part, because right, I mean, I think anyone worth anything in the true crime space would agree. We are doing this to hopefully help other people, yeah, yeah, and yeah, to find them, to find the bad guys for sure, right, or to do some good right because again, we're being given a platform here. We all have a platform to do something, to try and do something at least, so for sure, and with something like Porchlight, you're actually able to which is clearly must be beyond rewarding.

So it is, Yeah, it's when we get when we get one of these solves, which are few and far between, but they do happen, you know, like tomorrow, you know, it's gonna be great being at that press conference. So um yeah, yeah, check it out if you get a chance. It'll be on the news. A true point, there's been a lot of big big Jane does and John does solve. The Boy in the Box got solved a couple months ago, so yeah, yeah, the big ones.

Yeah, there's all the you know, it's it's actually making my real job, you know, writing about unsolved mysteries, um kind of uh, you know, it's it's going to make the job extinct because any any case with DNA's eventually it's going to be solved in the next few years. So right, good bad thing, right yeah right, thank you know, I'd be very happy to you know, just switch over and write fantasy, you know, for the rest of my life. So yeah, there you go. All right, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on again.

Thank You're going to wrap up here because I'm sure it's past most of our bed times. Um, so yeah, other than Porchway, where obviously people can probably find you pretty easily. But where would you like to direct people if they want to find you. Yeah, best place is probably just my website, which is James Renner dot com. Not Jeremy Renner he was Hawkeye in The Avengers, but James Renner dot com.

Yeah, everything's on great, what about you, Chris weirding Way Media. That's where you can find me, and that's where you can find Jess. That's where you can find all the things that we work on. Yeah, that's that's it. That's our network of mobilization.

It's just you know, listen to the goofy, weird shit that we make saying, hey, maybe we'll get at a porch light, a podcast that at something. Let's do something a little bit more productive. Come on, making people laugh ain't enough. No mystery is closed to an open mind. Two