Episode 59: Doyle's Hidden LLC and the Backdated Notary Stamp

Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back. I am Luke and this is Luke at the Roost. It's your late night call-in radio show where you can call in and ask me about whatever's going on in your life. And I'll give you the very best advice that I can. Today is Saturday, August 15th. It's about 1.56 a.m. and we're about to have a show. A good show, I think. Uh, let's check in with our faithful intern, Devon, and see how he feels. about tonight. Hey, Devon, are you ready to have yourself a show, sir?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've been prepping some notes on my own just in case, but nothing crazy. Actually, I stayed up late last night going over old episodes to see how you transition between bits. I don't know, feels like I could handle it if it ever happened.

Well, I don't know about that. Let's not worry too much about you handling the show. I think I've got it under control for now. And let's not forget to tell the people out there if you'd like to give us a call. The number is 208. 439 5853. That's 208-439 Luke.

Yeah, got it. No problem.

Okay. If you can't give us a call and you'd still like to participate in tonight's events, you can send us an email at submissions at Lukeattheroast.com. So an email to submissions at look at the roost.com. If it's good, if it's funny, if we think it's worth airing, we'll air it on the show. And if not, we will completely ignore it and pretend we never got it. So it's up to you. There's multiple ways that you can engage with us here at Luke at the Roost. So let's get this show started, shall we? Today on our color line here, we've got some lights lighten up and colors ready to go. And first up on the list here, we've got Doyle. Doyle, welcome to the show. This is Luke. You're on Luke at the Roost. What's going on in your life tonight?

I need to read you something and I need you to tell me if I'm reading it wrong. I've got a document in front of me. It's a limited power of attorney. It assigns, and I'm quoting, full stewardship authority over personal financial instruments and accounts to a named individual in the event of, quote, spiritual incapacity as determined by community leadership. I signed one of these 11 months ago. I was told it was a liability waiver for soap equipment.

Soap equipment, you say. This sounds like, uh, you're not down at the wellspring, are you, Doyle?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm at the wellspring. I'm in my truck in the parking lot, actually. It's, I've got my phone and a spiral notebook, and I probably smell like lie, and I don't care right now. You remember last spring when I called and said I thought the finances were getting complicated? This is the complicated part.

No, I don't remember that at all. I don't remember ever speaking to you, Doyle. But I have a short memory. So what's going on here? You've got a document, and it's a power of attorney giving full stewardship authority over personal financial instruments and accounts. to a named individual. Who is the named individual? I think I can guess.

Silas, yeah, he runs the place. And look, I know how that sounds. I've heard myself say it out loud before, and I know how it sounds. But the document, it's not the document by itself that's got me sitting in this parking lot at whatever time it is. Tonight I checked my notebook against some deposit records I photographed, and I found three members' personal deposits, not community accounts, their personal money, getting routed through an LLC I don't recognize. And I do the books here, Luke. I'm the one who watches the money because nobody spiritual does. I should have seen this earlier and I didn't.

Wait, so I just looked this up. And while some single-owner LLC might use personal accounts, routing personal money into an LLC you don't recognize, sounds like a huge red flag for commingling funds, which can actually make the LLC lose its liability protection. How big are these deposits that you're talking about?

I don't know the exact numbers on all three. One of them I can see clearly. It's $4,200. That's somebody's savings, Luke. That's not a tithe. That's not a community contribution. That's a personal deposit that went somewhere it wasn't supposed to go. The other two, I can only see partial records on because I only photographed what I had access to. And your intern is right. I know what co-mingling is. That's actually part of what's been sitting in my stomach for the last three hours. Because if you're moving personal funds through an LLC carelessly enough to lose the liability shield, either you don't know what you're doing or you don't care because you're not planning to need that shield. Neither one of those is good.

Okay, so what are you thinking about doing about this? Have you talked to Silas about what you've noticed?

No, no, I haven't. And I'm not going to walk up to Silas and say, hey, I've been photographing deposit records and I found your LLC. That's, no, the woman who brought me the document, Priscilla. She thanked me for reading it and said she felt held. I said, mm-hmm, and went back to the kettles. I haven't told her what I found either. She joined in June. She doesn't know what she signed.

Okay, so I don't really understand what the problem is here from your perspective. So you're seeing funds come into the Wellsprings LLC? Is the Wellspring itself an LLC?

No, that's the thing. The Wellspring has its own accounts. It's a nonprofit. I know those numbers. I reconcile those. This is different. This is called Tierra Queeta Holdings. Registered in New Mexico. I looked it up in the parking lot tonight. It was registered 14 months ago. I've been here two years. Tierra Cuyatta Holdings does not appear anywhere in the Wellsprings official structure. It's not a subsidiary. It's not a vendor. It's not anything I was ever told about. And it was registered three months before I joined.

Okay, well, it was registered to a, it must have articles in corporation or something like that, right? So who's it registered to?

That's what I couldn't get to on my phone tonight. New Mexico's business registry is, I got the registration date. I got the registered agent, which is a lot. a law firm in Albuquerque, and that's where I hit a wall. I couldn't get to the actual ownership documents on my phone in a parking lot at midnight. That's a next step. That's something I can do tomorrow with a real computer. But the registered agent being a law firm instead of a person, that's not nothing. That's somebody who knew to put a layer between themselves and the name on the document.

It's pretty common for law firms to act as registered agents in New Mexico, especially for businesses that want an extra layer of privacy or legal expertise. Okay, well, how does this relate? to the power of attorney that you signed when you joined the Wellspring.

Because if Silas has power of attorney over my personal financial accounts and over Priscilla's and probably others I don't know about yet, and there's an LLC that nobody told me about that personal deposits are flowing into, then the power of attorney is the mechanism. That's how you move somebody's money without them initiating the transaction. You wait until leadership determines they're spiritually incapacitated, which is a term nobody has ever defined to me in writing, and then you have the authority to act on their accounts. that document thinking it was about the soap equipment. I signed it 11 months ago and I didn't read it carefully enough and that's on me. But Priscilla, her copy had a notary stamp dated six weeks before she even arrived at the property. I noticed because the date was a Wednesday and I remember that week, the lie shipment came in. She couldn't have signed it before she got here.

So you think that Priscilla's copy was forged?

I think the notary stamp was backdated, which is either forgery or it's a notary who stamps something they shouldn't have stamped. Either way, that's, yeah, that's not an administrative error.

You don't accidentally put the wrong date on a notary stamp by six weeks. I've been telling myself all night there's an explanation. That's the one I can't explain away. I really wanted you to tell me I'm reading this wrong, Luke. That's actually why I called. I wanted you to give me the clean version where this is all standard paperwork and the LLC is boring and I can go fix the pump in the soap room and go to sleep.

Well, I don't know. I'm not an accountant or a corporate attorney, so I can't give you that. that information with any level of accuracy. I'm a little bit confused on what's going on here, but it doesn't sound good. I mean, it sounds like a bunch of red flags. So you've got an LLC you didn't know about. You're seeing funds come into it. You're not completely sure where they're coming from. And you've signed Power of Attorney over to Silas in the event that your soul is incapacitated. Here's what I'm.

haven't said yet. I'm one of the people whose deposits I found in that notebook. It's not just Priscilla and two strangers. It's me. My money went through Tierraquietta Holdings. And I didn't authorize that. I didn't know that account existed when I made that deposit. So whatever this is, I'm not just the guy who noticed it.

Well, wait a second. You made the deposit? You must have deposited it to a checking account. Where did you get the information, like the routing number and the account number?

the banking setup for new members. Of course he does. When you join, he sits with you, and he helps you. Yeah. He frames it as simplifying your financial life so you can focus on the community. He gives you the account information. I thought I was depositing into my own account. The routing number he gave me, I didn't cross-check it against anything. I just used what he gave me. I was two months in, and I believed him. That's the part that's hard to say out loud.

Okay. So he's going to simplify your financial life. He sits down with you and tells you to make a deposit, and he gives you. gives you the account numbers to deposit to, and you don't think anything of this.

I thought I was setting up a personal account through the community's credit union. That's how it was presented. There's a credit union in town that the Wellspring has a relationship with. I assumed the account was mine, held there, under my name. I never got a statement. I asked once, and Silas said statements were available on request, and I never pushed it because I was busy and I trusted the setup. And honestly, I didn't want to be the suspicious one. Nobody wants to be the suspicious one in a place like that.

Well, I think you should have. ask him nonchalantly for a statement and see what you get in return.

That's, yeah, that's actually smart. Because if he produces a statement with my name on it and the right account number, then maybe I'm wrong about where that deposit went. And if he stalls or redirects or gives me something that doesn't add up, that tells me something too. I can do that without tipping my hand. I'm just a guy who wants his statement. That's a normal thing to ask for.

Okay. Well, there's one other little hiccup in the plan here, and that is that Silas, listens to this show.

How do you know that?

Because he calls in and I talk to him.

He calls in to your show.

Yes, that's correct. Do you not listen to the show? He calls in a couple times a week.

I'm usually asleep by now. I'm up at five for the kettles.

Luke, what does he call about?

Well, he calls to talk about the wellspring and the current and he lets us know what's going on in your community and how he's feeling about his lead.

leadership skills. He's actually quite an entertaining and complex individual.

I need to sit with that for a second. He calls a late night radio show to talk about his leadership skills. That's okay. So if he's listening tonight and you just said my name, then this conversation is already, I need to think about whether I'm sleeping in that soap room tonight or somewhere else.

Do you generally sleep in the soap room?

No, I've got a cabin. But the soap room has a lock I installed myself and Silas doesn't have a key. That's not a joke. where my head went just now. I'm not, I don't think he's violent. I've never seen anything like that, but I've also just been on the radio saying his name in the words, Power of Attorney and Tierra Cueeta Holdings and backdated notary stamps, so.

Yeah, I don't get the impression. I don't get the impression that he's a violent man either. He seems pretty passive from the conversations that I've had with him. He's, uh, I got the impression that he was genuinely invested in the spiritual development of those in your community. What's it like living at the Wellspring? What's your day look like?

It's actually, it's a good life in a lot of ways. That's the hard part. I get up at five, I fire the kettles, I make soap, good soap. We sell it at markets and online, and I'm proud of that. The land is beautiful.

Do you ever sell that soap at the Alpine Farmer's market on Saturdays?

Yeah. Yeah, we do.

You've been there? Oh, yeah, I've been there. It's a big to-do around these parts. So that's cool. Maybe I'll catch time. I'm curious about life at the Wellspring outside of these financial complications. You're making soap? What are some of the rituals and spiritual aspects of your lifestyle?

There's a lot of morning gathering. Silas talks, people share. There's some breathing work. It's not unpleasant. I participate. I've had moments there that felt real to me. That's actually the thing that kept me from looking too closely for too long. Because you don't want to be the person who who ruins something that other people genuinely need.

I just looked up Wellspring community breathing work. And it seems like a lot of different wellspring centers and communities offer programs and workshops focused on breathing techniques for wellness and mindfulness.

Yeah, I don't think this is that kind of wellspring.

So, Doyle, tell us about yourself a little bit. What drew you to the Wellspring community and Silas in particular? What would make you so invested in a, concept or a spiritual idea that you would sign any documents for a leader.

That's a fair question, and I've been avoiding it for about 11 months. I came off a bad stretch. Divorce, then my business went under, not in that order, but close enough that they felt like the same event. I was living out of that truck for a while. Silas found me at a market, actually. Not the Alpine one, different one. We talked for two hours. He's good at listening.

So it took two hours of talking to Silas to sign over. power of attorney and let him drain your bank accounts?

No, no, that's not. It took about eight months. And it wasn't presented that way at any single point. That's how it works. You don't hand someone your life in one afternoon. You hand them a little piece at a time, and each piece feels reasonable in the moment. And then one day you're in a parking lot at midnight with a spiral notebook and a phone full of photographs, and you're calling a radio show because you don't have anyone else to call. That's how it works.

It's interesting. I just looked up how recruit people, and a lot of sources mention that they often target individuals who are going through a difficult time or a bad stretch in their lives, which totally fits with what Doyle just said. Do you feel like you're living in a cult, Doyle?

I feel like I'm living in something that has a good soap room and bad paperwork and a leader who calls your radio show twice a week to talk about his feelings. Whether that's a cult depends on a definition I'm not qualified to give tonight. What I know is I found my own money in an account I didn't open, power of attorney I signed thinking it was about liability for lieburns. So, maybe the word doesn't matter as much as those two facts.

How do you know it's your money that you found? Because I recognize the deposit amount and the date. I make the same deposit every month. It's a round number, and I wrote it in the notebook when I started keeping records. When I photographed the ledger pages, that amount on that date is in the column that routes to Tierraquieta. It's not proof that would hold up anywhere formal, but it's my number on my date going somewhere I didn't put it.

But it could be a coincidence. So you can't be completely sure that that money that you're seeing in the, in Tierra, Cueeda, is the same money that came from your account? Or can you verify that? Can you see that it came from your account?

No, that's honest. I can see the amount and the date in the ledger, but I can't see the originating account number. So you're right. It could be coincidence. That's the version I wanted to believe three hours ago. But then there's Priscilla's notary stamp and there's the document I signed that isn't one. what I was told it was, and at some point the coincidences are doing a lot of work. I can't prove the money is mine.

Okay, so it might not be yours. We don't know that it is, but it looks suspicious. I think that you should talk to Silas and see what's going on there and just have an adult man-to-man conversation with him. Having spoken to the man, I think he's reasonable and you may be able to get some answers. You've talked to him more recently than I have in a way.

I talked to him more recently than I have in a way. to him every gay, but it's never, it's never a real conversation. It's always him talking and me listening. That's the dynamic. I don't know how to sit across from him and ask a direct question without him turning it into something about my spiritual readiness to receive the answer. He's very good at that. But you're probably right that I have to try before I do anything else. I just, if he is listening tonight, that conversation is going to be a lot harder to have tomorrow morning.

Well, I don't know if he listens every night. I just know that on occasion he does call in. He is a listener of this show, and there's potential that. And there's potential that. that he will hear this and be talking to you in the morning. So don't be surprised if you get a knock on the Sobrum door from Silas, wondering why you're tarnishing his good name. Tell us about the current and what the actual teachings of the Wellspring are. I'm curious about this. I've heard it from Silas, but I'd like to hear it from your perspective. What is it that you guys actually believe and are doing out there?

The current is, Silas describes it as a living frequency that runs through the land and through people who are open to it. The idea is that modern life has insulated us from it. Money, noise, ambition, all of that creates static. So the work of being at the wellspring is about reducing your static, simplifying. And the more you simplify, the more you can feel the current and contribute to it. The financial piece gets folded into that.

And how do you feel about that? Do you feel like the current is flowing through you and then giving up the responsibility of your own financial management, clears you to be amenable to the current?

I did. For a while, I genuinely did. There's something real about simplifying your life, about getting out of your own head. I was a mess when I got there and the structure helped. The soapwork helped. Getting up at five and making something with your hands, that helped. But the current as a reason to hand over your bank account. I think I always knew those were two different things, and I just let Silas blur the line because it was easier than arguing with him about it.

Wow, that's very convenient for Silas, don't you think?

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's very convenient for Silas.

Okay, Doyle. Well, thanks for calling in. I think it's concerning definitely the things that you found for your own financial records and Priscilla's. And I'd be interesting, interested to know in what you find out when you talk to Silas tomorrow. So give us a call back and let us know how this works out and also let us know that you're okay. Right, because there could be consequences for your talking about this publicly.

I know. I appreciate that. And Luke, if Silas is listening and he comes to me tomorrow and it turns out to be nothing, I will call back and say so. I'll say I was wrong and I was spooked and the soap fumes got to me. But if it's not nothing, I'll call back and say that too. Either way I'll call. You have my word on that.

All right, Doyle. Well, good luck to you. I hope that it all works out and that this is just a, a misunderstanding. Hopefully it's just a misunderstanding. Next up on the collar line here, we've got Rhett. Ret, welcome to the show. What's going on in your life tonight? How can we help you?

I had a feeling last Thursday that I'm not proud of, and I can't figure out if it tells me something true about myself, or if it's just, if it's just the first thing that comes up when you're scared. I've been seeing someone. Five years. She's married. Her husband works the rigs on rotation. And last week she ended it. Not because of guilt. because her husband got a diagnosis, early Parkinson's, and she said she needs to be all the way present for what's coming. And I told her I understood and I meant it.

Well, that's in a weird way, a sort of beautiful thing. And I guess what you would hope. So you've been having an affair with this woman. Did the husband know about it or no?

No. No, he didn't know. And I know how that sounds. I'm not calling to relitigigate whether it was right. That's a separate conversation. and honestly not the one I need to have tonight. The thing I need to say is this. She told me about the diagnosis, and she told me it was over, and I drove home and I sat in my driveway. And the first thing I felt, before I felt anything for her, was relief.

Well, that kind of makes sense because, I mean, that's a long time to be doing something that you obviously feel it's wrong, right? You felt like your affair was the wrong thing to do. You were laying in bed with a married woman, and it's hard to, and it's hard to, justify that. So I can understand where the ending of that would give you a sense of relief from the guilt that you must have been carrying for five years from that relationship.

I hear you. And I want that to be it. That would be a clean answer. But I'm not sure the guilt was the thing I was carrying. I think, and this is the part that bothers me. I think the arrangement was actually comfortable. For both of us, nobody was pushing for more. It worked.

Why does I bother you.

Because if it was comfortable, if I wasn't actually suffering under the weight of it, then what was the relief from? That's what I keep coming back to. If it wasn't guilt, if I wasn't secretly hoping it would end, then the relief was about something else. And the only other thing I can land on is that some part of me was glad the situation took the decision out of my hands. And that means I wanted out and didn't have the spine to say so. Or, and this is the worst version, the relief was just about me not having to think about him anymore.

Well, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the guilt of it, right? What else would you call that? I mean, subconsciously or consciously, you were carrying around guilt from doing something that you thought was wrong. And her ending it took that decision out of your hands, like you said.

Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe I've been calling it something other than guilt because guilt felt too simple. Too on the nose. There's this thing, though. I never met him, except I did once.

Uh, okay. Okay, so did you meet him or did you not meet him? And how is that relevant to any of this?

I met him once and didn't know who he was until after. It was at a stripes on I'd 10. Big guy, friendly, had a Permian Basin Petroleum Association lanyard on.

We talked for maybe two minutes about nothing, gas prices or something. And then I got back in my truck and she called me. And I described the guy I just talked to. And there was this pause. And she said, that's my husband. So I have a face now.

Wait, so I just looked up the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. And it's a big deal in the oil and gas industry for West Texas and New Mexico, founded back in 1961. Well, I mean, it's a horrible thing that he's got Parkinson's, right? I've seen Parkinson's myself, and it's pretty horrible to watch. It's not a good way to go. But it is really great of her to have acknowledged that her, her husband, her husband, husband needs her and that means her needs are going to have to go on the back burner for now. And it makes sense that she would want to have an affair if somebody was off all the time doing oil rig, rig, drilling or whatnot. She needed somebody to be around and now that he's in this position, he's going to need her to be around. And since she's doing that, it seems like everything is right. Everything is back in order. You know, so you can sleep well tonight.

I want to take that. I really do. And most of it lands. But the thing I haven't said yet, the thing I actually called to say, is that when I found out about the diagnosis, my first feeling wasn't sympathy for him. It was relief for me. Before I even got to the part where I felt bad for a man I'd shaken hands with at a gas station, and I sat in my driveway for an hour, and then at two in the morning I typed out a text to her that said I hope he has good doctors.

Well, yeah, but that's nothing to be ashamed of. There's nothing that you can do to control the order in which you feel your feelings. That just happens, right? So, I mean, the thing that is important is that you did have both feelings. You do feel sympathy for the man, and of course you hope he has good doctrine. Nobody wants to see somebody go out like that. So that's just a horrible thing all around. So it doesn't matter if you felt relief before you felt, grief for a man you hardly know. You don't have to feel bad about that. You can feel bad about having an affair with his wife for five years or not. I don't know what the situation was, and I'm not here to pass judgment. But it sounds like today, she's doing the right thing, you're doing the right thing, and hopefully this man doesn't suffer too much on his way out.

I deleted the text. That's the part I didn't finish saying. I type. it and I deleted it because I couldn't tell if I was sending it for her or for myself. And I think that's, I think that might actually be the answer to my own question. The fact that I couldn't tell. Five years and I still couldn't tell where she ended and where I did. That's not nothing.

Well, I don't know if I understand that. And I don't think it matters very much if you sent the text or not, because at this point, you are not what she's concerned with. Appropriately, you're not what she should be concerned with. And if she is, then that's too bad for this poor man.

No, you're right. You're right about that. I think I've been making this about a text message when it's not about a text message. I think what I needed to say tonight, and I've said it now, is that a man I met once at a gas station on I-10 is sick, and my first reaction was relief. And I've been sitting with that for five days by myself because I can't tell anyone in Fort Stockton without it getting around. And I needed it to be out loud somewhere. So.

Well, so now you've done that. I think you can let yourself off the hook. And it is a horrible thing that this happened to this guy. It's not your fault. It happened to the guy. And your relationship with his wife is now over. And that's okay. And you're relieved by that. So I don't want to say all as well, obviously. From one person's perspective, it's not so great. But you are well. And now you can move on and find a relationship that is not a relationship that is not a daughter. alterus.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I appreciate you letting me say it. That's really all I needed. Somebody to hear it who doesn't know anybody involved. I'm going to drive home now.

All right. Well, you drive safe and good luck to both of them because it's going to be a hard road for them both. Really, really rough. So, no fun for anybody involved. All right, ladies and gentlemen, on that happy note, it's time for us to take a little break for a word from our sponsors. Does your dog bark at nothing? Does he stare at the wall for 45 minutes and then sprint into a door? Does he ever growled at a specific corner of your house like he's seeing something you can't? Yeah, your dog's going through some stuff. Introducing calm down, premium edibles for dogs. Each bacon-flavored chew contains a proprietary blend of chamomile, valerian root, and a third ingredient that we have patented. so we don't have to tell you what it is. Within 30 minutes, your dog will go from destroying your couch to sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with a thousand-yard stare, completely at peace with the universe. Will he see the same thing in the corner? Probably, but he won't care anymore. Side effects may include extreme chill, sudden interest in reggae, and your dog forgetting his own name, which, let's be honest, he already did. Calm down. Because your dog doesn't. need a walk. He needs to calm the hell down. Not available in California. We cannot stress that enough. I wonder why it's not available in California. It seems like California would be the first place that would be available. I don't know. I don't make the rules. We get the lawyers doing that. All right. So next up on our caller list now that we're back is, I don't know how to say this. I hope I don't I believe you pronounce your name, call quit. Is that correct? What is your name, caller?

Cole quit. Colquit. Like the county over in Georgia, if you know it, most people don't. Go ahead and call me that if you want. Or just Cole, either one works fine. I need about four minutes, and I promise you it's worth it. I grew something this week that I don't think anybody has grown in maybe 40 years.

All right, Cole, that is intriguing. What is it that you grew?

A chile pepper. And I know how that sounds. at, what is it, 1130 at night? But stay with me. This is not a pepper anybody can buy. This is not something you find in a seed catalog. The seed I planted came out of a dried pod my grandmother carried up from Moosequiz Coahuila in 1971. She wrapped the seeds in a handkerchief. I didn't know that until after she was gone, found out from my aunt, and I have been trying to keep that plant going, off and on for about 15 years. And this past Tuesday morning I walked out back and the first right pod was sitting there, nearly black, about the size of my thumb.

And what is this, an endangered chili pepper? Is it no longer available? Or do they still have in Mexico? I didn't know that a seed could last that long, just wrapped up in a handkerchief.

The seed didn't last that long. I wish. What happened was my grandmother grew the plant in her yard in Odessa for years, and when she got too old to tend it, my mother let it go, which I will never fully forgive. And then I tracked down somebody in Musquez about 12 years ago through a cousin of a cousin. And they sent me a drug. pod in an envelope, just one pod. And I picked the seeds out of that myself, and I have been nursing this thing along ever since. As for whether anybody still grows it down there, I genuinely do not know. That family my grandmother knew, I don't know what happened to them. That's part of what's eating at me. And the variety itself, nobody can tell me what it is.

Well, I mean, somebody must be growing it if somebody was able to send you a pod that you could get a viable seed from.

Can you just take a picture of it with one of those plant identifier apps? I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be, uh, cataloged somewhere.

I tried two of those apps. They both came back with Pacilla Negro, which is wrong. The shape is wrong for Pacilla, the size is wrong, and anybody who knows Childs can see it's not the same thing.

Chilis?

I also sent photos three days ago to the Chili Pepper Institute down at New Mexico State in Las Cruces, and I have not heard back yet. And look, I understand what you're saying. Somebody sent me that pod, so somebody had the plant. But that was 12 years ago, and it was one exchange knew each other, and I have no way back to that person. That threat is just gone. What I've got is what's growing behind my house right now in Marathon, Texas. On a drip line I ran myself, and four pods that I harvested Tuesday, and a smell coming off this thing that I cannot describe except to say smoke and citrus and something that doesn't have a word for it yet.

Okay, what are you going to do with this? Are you, I mean, you're obviously not the first person to ever grow it. It's not like you came up with a new strain of chili pepper that's never been witnessed before, but you've got something rare. Most people aren't familiar with. Are you just going to throw it into a soup? Or, like, what is your plan? Why is this so important to you?

The seeds? That's the plan. I've got pods setting on three more plants right now. And when they're ripe, I'm going to pull every seed out of every one of them. And I'm going to send them somewhere that keeps things like this alive. Seed library, Gene Bank, somebody. Because here's what I keep turning over in my head. My grandmother didn't know she was preserving something. She just liked the pepper.

that's what you did?

Yeah, but what makes you think they don't already have those seeds in a seed bank somewhere? They must.

Maybe they do. I hope they do. But here's the thing that got me standing in the dirt Tuesday morning not moving for about 10 minutes. I ate one raw, right off the plant, seven in the morning, dirt on my boots, and it was the best thing I have ever put in my mouth in 63 years. And I thought about my grandmother, and I thought, she knew this. She knew exactly this flavor. And I never once thought to ask her about it when she was alive, because why would you, it's just a a pepper in somebody's yard. That's what I can't get back.

Okay. Is it a spicy pepper? Did it burn your mouth? Is that why you couldn't move? Did it paralyze you from its intense heat?

It's got heat, but that's not it. It's not a show-off pepper. It's not trying to hurt you. The heat comes in late and it's clean. What stopped me was the flavor underneath it. There's something almost, I want to say fruity, but that's not right either. It's darker than that. Smoky without being usually has to be cooked into it. I've grown childs for 20 years, and I have never had one that tasted like it was already finished before you did anything to it. My grandmother used to make this sauce that I could never replicate, and I always thought it was her technique. And Tuesday morning, I realized it was never the technique. It was always the pepper.

All right, man, well, congratulations, I suppose. Good work on growing this pepper. And I hope you get lots of enjoyment out of your pepper-based recipes.

Hold on, hold on, I'm not calling about recipes. I'm calling because I need to know what this thing is called. It's actual name. Somebody out there listening right now. Maybe they're from Coahuila. Maybe they've got family from that region. Maybe they've seen a small, nearly black pod with shoulders like a little bell pepper but pointed. I need somebody to call in or get a message to you or something. Because the Chili Pepper Institute hasn't written me back and the apps are useless and I've been trying to tell this story for four days and you're the first person who's let me get through it. Does anybody out there know what I'm talking about?

slipped up Coahuila, and it's one of Mexico's 31 states, with Salteo as its capital, and it's known for its desert landscapes and rich history.

Isn't everywhere in Mexico known for its desert landscapes and rich history?

Well, I mean, maybe we will get a color that knows a lot about rare peppers. If not, I think, have you taken it to Sell Ross? Maybe they know up there, they've got a botany program or something?

So Ross, yeah. That's... I don't know why I haven't done that. That's 20 minutes from my front door. I went all the way to Los Cruces in my head before I looked at what's right here. That's a good call. You know, who I should probably talk to is somebody in their agriculture department, not just botany. Somebody who knows land race varieties specifically. Because that's what this is, I'm pretty sure. A land race. Something that never got standardized, never got a catalog number, just got passed hand to hand through one family in Muscus for God knows how long, until my grandmother put some seeds in a handkerchief and got in a car.

There are, like, customs controls on that? You can't just send seeds across countries without them being checked for diseases or, you know, make sure you don't get yourself sued by Monsanto because they own the intellectual property for that particular seed.

In 1971, you could drive across that border with just about anything in your pocketbook, and nobody was going to stop you over a handkerchief. That was a different world. Now, the pod that came to I'm not going to get into the details of that on the radio. But I'll tell you this, Monsanto can't own something that's been growing in one family's yard in Koahueila since before any of us were born.

Oh, yes, they can. That's not how it works. These land race varieties, they predate the whole patent system by centuries. What I'm more concerned about, honestly, is the opposite problem. That nobody owns it. Nobody's protecting it. And it just disappears. That's the thing that actually happens.

I'm pretty sure the Monsanto thing actually happens, too.

But I don't know. I'm not. I'm not an expert on agriculture and seed retention. But I find it hard to believe that there's an edible pepper in Mexico that is not cataloged and saved somewhere. I could see that if it was in some strange Amazonian rainforest that was difficult to get to. But if this is a pepper that's been passed around person to person in a developed area, then. Well, also I'm assuming that this place in Mexico. Mexico is developed. It might not be. But good for you. Keep those seeds going and do, I don't know, how do you, how do you retain seeds? I know you can get heirloom seeds in there, usually stored, vacuum, sealed to keep the airway from them, to keep them viable for, you know, a few years at least.

Cool and dry is the main thing. I've been keeping them in a small glass jar with a piece of paper towel to pull moisture inside my refrigerator. Not frozen, just cold. That's kept them viable so far, obviously, because Tuesday happened. But you're right that for long-term storage, you want to get the moisture content down and seal them properly. What I want to do is get enough seeds that I can send a portion to somebody who does this professionally. Not keep it all in my refrigerator in Marathon, Texas, because if my power goes out for two weeks in August, which it has, that's the end of the whole story.

Do you have to grow it from seed? Are you able to take cuttings of the growing plant and replicate it that way?

You can root pepper cuttings, yeah. I've done it with other. varieties. It's not as reliable as tomatoes, but it works. The problem is, I've only got three plants right now, and they're loaded with pods I want to let go to seed, so I'm not real eager to start cutting on them until I've got the seed situation handled. But that's actually a good insurance policy. Get some cuttings rooted before winter hits. Keep them inside.

That way, I've got the plant itself going through the cold months and not just seeds in a jar. I should do both. Yeah, root some guttings and give them to people that might be interested and just spread it around. advice that ends up overtaking all of the New Mexico chili, the hatch chili population with a virulent strain. I don't know. But yeah, congratulations. That's about all I have to say about chili pepper cuttings. I appreciate that. I do. And look, before you move on, anybody listening right now who knows the Muske's area or knows Land Race Childs from Coahuila or thinks they recognize what I'm shoulders like a little bell pepper, but comes to a point. I'd be grateful to hear from somebody. I've got a name I can try to spell out. The family my grandmother knew called it something that sounds like, and I'm going from memory here, from something she said maybe once, sounds like it could be spelled C-H-I-L-A-C-A or maybe C-H-I-L-O-C-A. I'm not certain, but if that means anything to anybody, I'd sure like to know.

Chalacca. That sounds like a Devon question. What do you have to say about that, Devon? And it seems like they're a pretty common Mexican chile, often dried and called passilla. They're described as having a spicy and smoky flavor, and they're used in a lot of sauces and salsas. Yeah, it looks like the chalaca pepper is pretty well known, and when it's dried, it's called a pasilla pepper. It's described as having a rich, mild to hot flavor. Well, there you go. When it's dried out, it's a pacilla pepper.

That's what the app said to, and I'm telling you it's not the same thing. I know what a chelaca looks like. I've grown Paceas. The pot I'm holding is shorter, fatter, and it's got those shoulders I mentioned. A Chalaka is long and thin and curved. This is not that. The name might be similar. It might be related. It might be a regional variant that branched off from the same family a hundred years ago. I'm not ruling that out. But it is not a standard Chalaka. And the flavor is not the same. I've eaten Pacea's my whole life. Tuesday was not that.

All right. Well, good luck to you and your peppers. That was intriguing. So next up on the collar line, we've got Waverly. Hey, Waverly, what's going on? What's happening out there tonight?

I found plagiarism in a student's lab report six days ago, and I still haven't reported it, and I need someone to tell me why I'm stalling, because I think I already know, and it's not a good reason.

Why is it that you think you're stalling?

Because he's good, like, actually good, not good for a junior good, good in the way where you can tell the difference between someone who learned to identify birds from a field guide and someone who actually watches them. And I think if I file this report, it ends that. Or at least it bends it in a way that doesn't unbend.

Are you sure that it was plagiarism? And he didn't just come to the same conclusion and grouping of words that somebody else may have?

Yeah, I'm sure. The blog post is still live. I have the URL open in a tab on my phone right now, word for word. Not like, similar phrasing, the same sentences in the same order A birder from Tucson visited the same site in 2021 and wrote it up, and Cord just, lifted it.

Are you sure that cord lifted it and didn't just have ChatGPT go lift it for him?

That's, honestly, that doesn't make it better, does it? Like whether he typed it himself or had something do it for him, it's still not his words. But here's the thing that's been keeping me up. His GPS track is real. His coordinates are real. I walked that same transect two years ago. I know that drainage, and he was there. And there's one, and there's one line in his notes that is not in the blog post.

Okay, does any of this really matter in any real-world capacity?

What do you mean?

I mean, who cares if he plagiarized his book report on birds?

Because I'm the one who has to sign off on it. And because it's not a book report, it's a field ecology lab. The whole point is that he goes out and observes and then writes what he saw in his own words. That's the skill. That's what we're training. If he becomes a wildlife biology, and his writing survey reports for a federal agency or a ranch or whoever, and he just pulls language from somewhere else. That has actual consequences. You make management decisions based on that data, but also...

Also what? What are the actual consequences from plagiarizing the observation of the birds that you saw?

The one line that's not in the blog post is about a chrysal thrasher working a creosote patch at 640 in the morning. That's not in the Tucson Guys post. That's cords. means he was out there at 6.40 a m watching a thrasher, and he still went home and copied someone else's words to describe what he saw. And I cannot figure out why a person who was actually there would do that. That's what's killing me. He didn't need to cheat. He had the thing. He was standing in the drainage watching the bird.

Maybe he just ran out of time, you know, and something else is going on in his life. And he was like, well, this is, I read this post. It's exactly what I saw. So I'm just going to use this.

Yeah. Yeah, that's probably exactly. what happened. And that makes it worse in one way and better in another, you know? Like, worse because he knew better. Better because it's not, it's not who he is. It's just a bad decision on a bad week.

He works a part-time ranch job. Yeah, but you don't know what else is going on in his life. He might be caring for a elderly parent or he's got girl troubles or he just didn't feel good or hasn't slept for whatever reason in a couple of days. There's a lot of reasons that he could have not had the time to write what he saw in the way, in the format that you wanted it. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal to me, but I'm not a wildlife biologist, and I don't have a huge amount of respect for rules. So, yeah, I don't know. Talk to him about it. Ask him.

That's the third option. That's, I keep circling around it and not letting myself land on it because it feels like I'm giving myself permission to do something I'm not supposed to do. But you're right. I could just talk to him. Before anything gets filed, before Dr. Harmon is involved. Just sit down with Cord and say, I found this. I need you to explain it to me and see what he says.

Yeah, there you go. I mean, you could just file the report and sleep well at night because you wouldn't be lying. But if you believe in this kid, you think he's showing real aptitude for your field and you like the kid, talk to him and see what's going on. And maybe it doesn't have to go down that way.

The part I haven't let myself say out loud until right now is that I remember being 21 and handing in something I wasn't proud of because I was drowning and I didn't ask anyone for help. And nobody asked me either. They just graded it. So maybe that's why I called a radio show at whatever time it is, instead of just filing the form. Because I needed to hear someone say out loud that talking to him first isn't the same as letting him off the hook.

No, it's not the same as letting him off the hook. You may still let him off the hook if what he has to say is compelling to you. but, I mean, just having that conversation with him before you ruin his life is not the same as letting him off the hook.

Right. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to pull him aside after Lab on Thursday, and I'm going to show him what I found, and I'm going to let him talk. And then I'll decide. But at least it'll be a decision I made with more information than I have right now.

All right. That sounds like a good plan. You talked to court and find out why he didn't write his own report. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time again. It's time again for a word from our sponsors. Gentlemen, let's talk about the thing. You know the thing. Your father had the thing.

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I pulled something out of a wall four months ago that doesn't belong to the man who owns the house. And I've been driving around with it ever since. And tonight, I finally looked up what he's charging per night.

Okay. There's a couple things there. It doesn't belong to you either if you pulled it out of another man's wall. If this man owned the wall and the house, then he owns what's inside the wall. So I'm struggling to see how he got to he doesn't own what's in the wall. But what is he charging? her night? What is this like an Airbnb or so? Your whole intro there doesn't make any sense.

385. And yeah, I hear you on the legal part. I do. But what I pulled out was a tin with a name stamped on it. My mother's maiden name, Ronquil, stamped right on the lid. And inside it there were photographs, 47 of them, and a document in Spanish that looks like a land record. So when you say he owns what's in the wall, I understand that argument. But I'm not sure I believe it applies here this. same way it would to, say, old pipe or a bird's nest.

I don't understand. 385. He's charging 385 a night to what stay in his house, to stay in his Airbnb.

Yes, short-term rental. He bought it on San Antonio Street, historic Adobe, and I rewired it. That's my trade. I'm an electrician. He hired me to bring it up to code. I did the job. And on the last day, I found the tin inside a wall cavity pulling old knob and tube. And now it's on one of those apps with photos of the exposed Adobe walls I rewired. And he's getting $3.85 a night for it. And somewhere under my truck seat is a tin with my family's name on it.

Okay. And what's in the pictures? What are the photographs?

Portraits mostly. Family groups. One wedding photo. And that one, the wedding photo. The woman in it is wearing a dress that my mother described to me once. Dark fabric, high collar, buttons all the way to the throat. She was talking about her grandmother. wedding and she said she'd never seen a photograph of it. She was just describing what she'd been told the dress looked like. And I'm looking at a photograph of a woman in that exact dress. And I don't know who she is. But I think I do.

You think you do, but you don't. It's a description of a dress that you heard from many years ago, a dark dress with buttons on it. And that's not exactly narrowing anything down. So I think you're, I think you want to have found something that is related to you. don't recognize anybody in those images and it just has a name printed on it that happens to be your mother's maiden name. It is very unlikely that this has anything to do with you and you actually just stole something out of somebody's house for which you were hired to do work. That's a hard thing to hear.

But the name isn't a common name. Not around here. There aren't a lot of Ronquilos in Presidio County and the ones that are here, I know where they came from. And the land record, the document, it has veras, boundary descriptions, and the family. name on it and it predates the current D by a long stretch. That's not nothing. But I hear what you're saying about the other part.

A part where this isn't yours and you stole it from a guy that you were hired to do work for, which is basically the most unprofessional thing. You got to bring that back and give it back to the guy because it's not yours to take.

You're right. I know you're right. But here's what I keep coming back to. My mother is 74 and she's in a care facility in Alpine and she is not going to be able to what she's looking at for a whole lot longer. That window is closing. And if I hand that tin to a man from Portland who's going to look at it and see, I don't know, a curiosity, something to put on a shelf for his guests to look at, then that window closes for good. That's what I've been sitting with for four months.

Well, then you bring that to the man in Portland who actually owns it and explain to him the situation and say, hey, this is my mother's main name. I'd like to bring it to her in Alpine to see if she reasonable people would allow you to do that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's probably right. He's actually texted me twice asking for a plumber referral, and I answered both times like everything was normal. And that's the thing that's made me feel the worst about all of it. Just texting back like I don't have his property under my seat. So I already have a line to him. That part's not hard. The hard part was, I think I was afraid he'd say no and then I'd have a different problem. But if he says yes, I can take it to my mother before, yeah, okay.

Yep. All right. Do that. Don't steal things. It's not cool. Next up on our call line, we've got Kala. Kella, welcome to the show. What's going on tonight? What would you like to talk to Luke at the Roost about? Kala. Kala.

But yeah, I found clay this spring that I think might be genuinely rare. And I just sold the first piece for $1,400. And now I don't know if I should keep digging or stop. And I'm not sure those are the only two options.

What other options might be? there be?

That's the question I've been sitting with. I mean, I could dig slowly. I could treat it like it has a budget, and I'm not allowed to overdraw. I could decide in advance how much of it I'm willing to take out of the ground in a lifetime and just never go past that number. I don't know if that's a real option, or if I'm just making myself feel better about taking it at all.

Well, whose land is it on?

Mine. The Arroyo drainage runs through my property. So, there's no legal question here. That's not what's keeping me up. It's more... I don't think I own it just because I own the land it's sitting under. I'm not sure ownership is the right framework for something that took, I don't know, 10,000 years to become what it is.

Yet, it turns out you actually do own it, though, if you own the land, so you can do whatever you want with that clay. It's clay, so it took 10,000 years to become what it is, but by taking it out of the ground and selling it for $1,400, it's still going to be clay.

Yeah. You're right that I own it. And you're right that the clay doesn't stop being what it is when I pull it out. But the place it came from stops being what it is. That deposit is roughly the size of a shipping container. That's it.

And the piece that you took out of the ground and sold for $1,400? How big was that?

Small. Maybe the size of a grapefruit.

Well, grapefruits aren't that small. That's kind of a big piece. So you could probably get, what, out of the shipping container?

Yeah. Yeah, you could. So, mathematically, I could work this material for the rest of my life and never exhaust it. I hadn't actually done that math out loud before. That's, okay, that shifts something.

How many grapefruits can you fit in a shipping container?

I have no idea. A lot. More than I'll ever make into pots, probably.

So maybe the scarcity I've been catastrophizing about is, I mean, it's still finite, but it's not as finite. But it's not as finite. as it felt at midnight in my studio. I just looked it up, and while there isn't an exact number for how many graperoots fit in a shipping container, they are often transported in specialized containers designed to maintain their freshness, so it's a pretty common cargo. Even though they're talking about volume, grapefruits are often shipped in specialized refrigerated containers with fresh air supply, not just regular shipping containers.

Okay, all right, thanks, Devon. That was very helpful. Yeah, so congratulations on your big find of your special clay and make some cool stuff out of it and don't feel guilty because you found a giant deposit of this clay, but there's likely a lot more in the area. If there's one big deposit, there's almost certainly plenty more.

That last part, I hadn't thought about that either, that it's probably not the only deposit, just the only one I've found. And honestly, the ceramicist at UT who saw the photos, she's never seen this fired color before, but that doesn't mean nobody. has ever dug this clay. It just means nobody's published it. That's a different thing. I think I called tonight expecting someone to give me a philosophy, and instead you just did arithmetic at me, and it kind of worked.

Hey, that's what I do. I just break everything down to how many grapefruits can fit in a bucket, and everything's good. Next up, what is, there's some weird names coming in today. I'm going to mess this one up. This is Talmatted, Talmadge, Talmadge, Talmage? Let's see. Hey there, caller. I think your name is Talmidge, but I don't want to butcher it too badly. How do you say your name?

Talmage. Like it sounds. Don't worry. You got it. I've got a neighbor I've known since we were both in our 20s, and I think he's been cutting my fence, and I've been sitting here for three hours trying to decide if I'm angrier about the fence or about having to wonder about him.

Well, why don't you just throw out a little camera and see who's cutting your fence? And why is somebody cutting your fence?

I know who's cutting it. That's not the question. The question is why, and I think I figured that out too, which is what's keeping me up. He sold a subsurface water option to a Midland LLC six months ago, Leano Basin Water Partners. I found it in the deed records in about 40 minutes on my phone. And both locations where my fence got cut, there were two before tonight. Now there's three. They're all within 50 yards of underground water easements on my property, old ones.

You need to put a camera out there so you can see what's going on.

I already know what's going on. I've got the cut wire in my coat pocket right now. Pulled it off the first section before I repaired it three weeks ago. Clean cuts, wire cutters, not a break. It's not coyotes. It's not weather. It's not my animals pushing through. Somebody cut it. What I need isn't evidence.

Okay, well, you know who's cutting it. You know why they're cutting it. You know it's being cut and you don't need evidence. Why are you calling me?

Because I can't decide if I'm looking at a betrayal or a man drowning. And those two things require different responses from me. Eleven Angoras. Two winters ago. Cold snap came in fast and Clifford drove over at four in the morning. Nobody called him. He just saw my barn light, and we worked until sunrise moving the rest of the herd in. That's the man I'm talking about, and I've been thinking about that night every single hour for three weeks.

All right, well, go talk to the guy and see what's going on.

Yeah, I know. I know that's the answer. I've known that's the answer since the second cut. I think I've been calling you because I needed somebody to just say it plain so I could stop turning it over. What I'm scared of is that he lies to me.

All right, well, I said it plain, so go talk to him and figure that out. up on our collar line, we've got Imogen. Imogen? Welcome to the show. What's happening in your life tonight? What are your deep dark secrets?

Okay, so there is an entire dead mountain range under West Texas that is bigger than the Himalayas, and it has been there for 300 million years, and nobody out here is walking around thinking about it, and I cannot get over this. Okay, so, plate tectonics. Basically, two continents collide, they crumple up, you get these enormous mountains, and then the collision stops, and over millions of years erosion just grinds them down to nothing, like completely flat, and then other rock gets deposited on top, and eventually you have no idea anything was ever there. The Wachita belt, that's what it's called, it ran from Arkansas down through Oklahoma, and then it just dips under the surface right here in West Texas. At the latitude of Alpine, where I am, it is buried under rough, roughly 20,000 feet of rock.

Well, if it eroded down to nothing and it's been buried by 20,000 feet, then it's not a mountain anymore, right? You said it was flat. So how is this, how is this interesting?

Because it was. That's the thing. Like, the flatness is the point. My professor drew the cross section on the whiteboard today in color chalk, and I photographed it, and I have been staring at it all afternoon. It looks like a wave. Like something enormous tried to fold the whole continent in half and almost made it. Those falls are still there, under all that rock. The structure is still there. It's just that everything on top of it is telling a completely different story.

So do you mean like, like Capitol Reef in Utah?

Yes. Okay, kind of. Capital Reef is where the folds are exposed. You can see them. You can put your hand on them. This is the opposite of that. This is Capitol Reef, but with a blanket 20,000 feet thick pulled over it. You can only see it on paper. You can only see it if someone drills a well and pulls up a core sample, which, by the way, is exactly what the oil companies did, which is how we even know it's there. The oil that built Midland is sitting on top of a ghost mountain range, and I don't think anyone in Midland has ever thought about that.

Well, I would expect that the entire country is built on top of a dead mountain range. Like this, the whole world has been mountains that have eroded, that have been covered up over millions and millions of years. So I don't understand. I don't find this as interesting as you find it.

Okay, fair. But here's what gets me specifically. I can see mountains from the edge of campus right now, the Chisos. And I keep thinking about whether they know their latecomers. Like, the thing underneath them is so much older and so much bigger and the Chisos are just sitting there completely unaware. And I know that is not a scientific thought, but I cannot stop having it. It's not that the ground is old. stacked under my feet and the top layer is the only one anyone ever talks about.

Why would anybody talk about a flat layer of rock that's eroded under 20,000 feet of new rock under actual exposed mountains?

Because it's not just rock, it's a hole. Okay, this is the thing I couldn't explain to my roommate either. It's not about the rock. It's about the fact that something enormous happened here surface trace whatsoever. Like, the Himalayas are happening right now and everyone knows about them. But there was something comparable to that, right here, and it is completely invisible. And the only reason I know about it is because my professor drew it on a whiteboard this afternoon. That feels significant to me, that the default is invisibility.

It doesn't feel that significant to me. And was it here 20 million years ago or whatever? Or was, has it shifted? Has it moved?

It's like Panjia style. It's been here. The continent moved but the belt moved with it. It's part of the North American plate.

So yes, in the sense that everything has drifted, but relative to Texas, it has been right here under West Texas for 300 million years. But okay, you're not getting it and I'm trying to figure out why. Because I think you're hearing me say old rocks and I'm trying to say something about invisibility, about how much is happening that we have no access to. Like I'm standing on my bike outside my apartment right now. there is an entire chapter of this continent's history, directly under the pavement, and I will never see it, and neither will you. And that's just, that's the condition we are in.

No, I think I understand what you're saying, but I've been all over the country and seen a lot of things that are exposed, like Capitol Reef, for example. And I've been, you know, I keep talking about Utah because it's been the most impressive to me, but if you go up southern Utah, you can find seashells on the ground. on top of a mountain in the desert. So, I mean, there's evidence all over the country of a past that we can't see, but it's only interesting to me when we can see it, you know, when it is exposed. So that, I mean, the Appalachian Mountains are like little hills compared to the mountains out here because they're older and they have eroded more and they will soon be flat and underground too. I just, I don't find that as not understanding why the invisibility of a 300 million year old past that is flat rock is of importance to you.

Okay. Yeah, I hear you. Maybe it's because I can't see it. Like, you went to Capitol Reef and you saw the falls and that did something to you. I haven't been anywhere. I don't have a car. I get around by bicycle and my entire geological frame of reference is this one basin and whatever my professors put on a whiteboard. So, maybe the invisibility is the only kind wonder that's available to me right now. And I've gotten really invested in it. That's actually, I hadn't thought about it that way until just now.

Okay, well, that kind of makes me excited for you, because when you are able to travel and see some of the exposed geology around the southwest, specifically, it's going to completely blow your mind because it's baffling, especially the seashell thing. Like, it's a desert. It's a mountain. And there was obviously an ocean here. And it's hard to wrap your head around how much change there has been in this country on this earth in human history.

That's actually making me want to cry a little, which is embarrassing to say on the radio. But yeah, I think you're right that I'm working with a whiteboard photograph and a cross-section and my imagination. And there is a whole version of this where I just go see it, like physically stand on exposed rock that used to be somewhere else entirely. I've been treating the invisibility, like it's the whole point, but maybe it's just where I'm starting from.

Yeah, there's a lot out there that is breathtaking. I mean, from the bad lands of South Dakota and the Bentonite Hills. And I mean, all of Utah, anything in Utah is showing this picture of history that is, it's still extremely old, obviously, but it's not so old that it's been buried. And, you know, there's a lot of cool buried stuff too. But I don't think that a flattened out mountain range is interesting in comparison to some of the things that are not flattened out today. I mean, the teeners, the giant mountains in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, there's so many geological wonders here that are, you know, six, eight, ten hours away. It's really going to, it's really going to blow your mind.

I need to get a car. Genuinely the conclusion I am reaching right now on a late-night radio show. Like, I have been so deep in the invisible thing, the buried thing, and you're describing, the badlands, the teetons, all of it, and I'm a geology major who has never left the Permian Basin basically, and that is a problem I need to solve. My roommate is going to be so smug that the radio show fixed me when two hours of her listening couldn't.

Well, I don't know that you're broken. I just think you have a very narrow view of geology. if you're a geologist, and there's an awful lot of it that's not that far from here. And it is much more impressive than a flattened out mountain range.

You're right, and I think I knew that. I just, I got so locked into this one thing today, that it became everything. My professor drew that cross-section and something clicked, and I just ran with it for six hours. But yeah, the Wachita belt is not going anywhere. It will still be under my feet when I get back from Utah someday. I can be amazed by the invisible. I can be amazed by the thing and also go look at the visible things.

Yeah, go check out to Grand Canyon and the petrified forest in Arizona. I mean, petrified wood is fascinating.

Petrified wood is genuinely incredible. Like the cellular structure just replaced atom by atom with silica over millions of years, it's still wood but it's stone. Okay, I'm getting excited again. This is a different kind of excited though. This is like, directional. I have a list now. I should probably let you go, but I'm really glad my My roommate made me call.

All right. Well, I'm excited for you because I would like the opportunity to see all those things for the first time again, too. Because they were impactful to me. Okay, I think, ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of our show. Let's check in with Devon and see how he thought it went. Devon, what do you think of tonight's show? How did we do?

I don't know if this helps, but I thought the show moved really well tonight, especially once we got into the National Park stuff. You kept the energy up. and the callers seemed engaged without it dragging. I was surprised how much I actually remembered from earlier segments, which is rare for me.

Yeah, it was pretty interesting to hear from Doyle down at the Wellspring. It's a different view of Silas. I knew that there was something fishy going on down there, but I wasn't. I'm interested to talk to Silas again, so hopefully he calls back soon, and we can interrogate him a little bit about his new LLC.

Yeah, Doyle seemed like. he was sitting on something. I tried pulling up the LLC details earlier, but it's registered so recently there's basically nothing public yet. Hope Silas calls back so we can dig in a little.

All right, well, it's 3.30 in the morning. I'm getting tired. It's time for bed. And I think it's been a successful show. I hope you have a wonderful evening. And let's wrap it up.

Yeah, it was a solid night. I might stick around a bit and see if anything else pops up on that LLC, since I don't sleep much anyway. Reminds me of the summer of the summer. I tried living off gas station burritos and conspiracy podcast for three weeks straight. Anyway, hope you get some rest.

Yeah, man, I did that for like five years straight, so I'm certainly familiar with it. Well, good luck to you. Hopefully you find something, and good luck to all you, the audience out there. Thank you for listening to another look at the roost, and you have a wonderful Saturday.