Part One: The Naturopathic Doctor Who Bombed a Plane

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history.

And we've got, we've got a fun one for you this week, folks. I know it's been a rough year. We've been there's been a lot of pedophiles. I'm not just talking about the US government. I'm talking about on the podcast.

We've been covering a lot of pedophiles. And part because there's a lot of pedophiles in the US government to be fair. But this week, thank god, we're handling just an honest, simple grifter. You know, one of the good decent conmen who makes this podcast in this nation possible. And to talk with me about just a corn fed, a good old fashioned down-home con artist.

Brandy, posey, brandy, your comedian. And you run your own comedy record label and you've got an album, milk job that's out right now.

Right now, right now, maybe hell yeah.

Welcome to show, Brandy, how you, how you doing, how you've been since last we talked. I've been good also keeping up on the pedophile news and probably keeping up with the pedophiles. Yeah, grinding my teeth as much as you imagine. Yeah, yeah, it's frustrating to be aware of the world these days. I don't recommend it.

“Instead, why don't you, what do we all just sink into a story of days gone by?”

And talk about a conman from like a family of conmen, this will be a nice one, everybody. I hope, I hope you all enjoy it. Is this about a big ol' boy? It feels like you're about to tell me the story of the big ol' boys. The big ol' boys? Who the hell are the big ol' boys?

From Duck Tales? Oh, no, no, no. This is much worse. Oh, okay, great, great. Two percent. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter.

And I'm my podcast, two percent. I've worked on the science of Neville toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern worry. Get yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%, that's TWO percent on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. You get your podcasts. Hey, it was good, you're listening and I learned the hard way with your favorite therapist or host-care games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really

not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing, and how many men carry a suit or armament. It's similar to the world that you're not to be played with, and just because you have

“the capability that does not mean that you need to.”

Listen to learn the hard way on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctorate this particular test twice in silence, correct?

I doctorate the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Regulaspianne, I'm imagining. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap. Laura, Scott State Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves.

We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're talking about a guy named Robert Spears, who was one of the first natural paths. He was very influential figure in the first wave.

You have two big waves of natural pathie. As like a discipline, one that kind of goes up from the start of the century until polio vaccines become a thing and people are like alternative medicine.

“Why would we ever not want modern vaccinations in the like?”

Then you've got one that kind of crops up more recently in the 70s. So there's like a split between the two. We'll be talking about both this con man who spoilers why in some committing some pretty serious plane crimes at the end of his life.

But before you get to the mass murder, there's a lot of cons.

“So this should just be a fun episode for everybody.”

We're talking about if you were heard of Robert Spears, that name, I don't know. No, old Bobby has not crossed my path. That's good. Well, we're going to talk about him. But before we talk about him, we've got a little mini BTB episode because I want to talk

about the birth of natural apathy as like a field of endeavor, of work, of quote unquote medicine. And you really got to keep the quote unquote there when you're talking about this period of time for share. The guy who most get often gets credit for starting a naturopathic medicine as a discipline

was a German born American with an amazing name.

The guy most often described as the founder of naturopathy was Dr. Benedict Lust. Oh, man. A doctor. A doctor. Not a doctor.

Not a doctor. Not a doctor.

“And to be fair, he didn't claim to be a medical doctor, but Dr. Lust is just really funny.”

Like I had the, I prefer that I'll give him the stolen valor if I get to say Dr. Lust a bunch. Does this whole thing start with boner pills? Is that where we start? Is that, that's not.

John, you was just, doesn't, I mean, I'm sure he sold some weird boner medicine. Don't get me wrong. He was selling like quack medical treatments in the early 1900s. He must have been. But I also think he was a legitimate believer.

That's something.

This first couple generations of guys who become like the naturopathic, like movement, the

first naturopathic crusaders. They're like true believers. They're not guys selling snake. Well, I mean, they're selling snake. Well, a lot of the time, but they truly seem to believe in it generally.

“Oh, I guess like at the same time, like what is actual medicine doing?”

Right. We're past now much. But we're like, yeah, we got the nails and the sprinkles. As we'll talk about, they are still doing some skull nailing. One of the problems with modern medicine at this period of time is we've just now.

But the time you're starting in like the early 1900s, you're really starting to get the first wave of mass produced high quality pharmaceutical drugs. Unfortunately, you don't have like the basis of knowledge about like when those are good and when those like wind up being worse for everybody in a lot of cases. So you have a shit load of people being over prescribed like, oh, you're four year

old's coffin. Here's some heroin. He'll, that'll get a right back to baseline. Yeah. He'll give it a four year old heroin.

So, if you're someone who's saying, I'm against, I think doctors use too many drugs. I want like a non drug solution in the 1900s, a lot of times you'll be doing better by going with like a quack doctor just because they're only feeding you homeopathic medicine as opposed to straight heroin and cocaine, which has some negative health consequences. So it is more blurry when you're talking about the difference between alternative medicine

and whatever that, that kind of shit and like the AMA, like there's not as much of a gap between them as there will come to be in the modern era, so doctor Benedict Lust, again, not a doctor was born in middle-box, but in Germany in 1872. So he's like a year younger than Germany itself. As a young man or child, it's a little unclear in my sources, let's get sick.

He contracts tuberculosis and at the time, by 1872, it's not as much of a death sentence as it had been like a generation before, but a lot of people are still dying from tuberculosis. So if you get diagnosed with it, you know, there's a pretty good chance you're not coming through the other side, but Lust takes a treatment that's coming Vogue at the time. It is known as the water cure.

This was largely the invention of a pre-snamed Sebastian Nipe, but Nipe had discovered a book that some even older guy had written on curing disease via cold water pledges. You even see this today in a lot like the podcast, right, health and fluisters, everybody. RFK loves the cold plunge. People have been doing this for way more than 100 years, like 100 and almost 200 years.

There have been guys advocating for cold plungers basically as treatment for different illnesses.

Now in Nipe's time, which is, again, the mid-1800s, tuberculosis was even more so a death sentence. And so he had gotten sick before Lust gets sick. The guy who treats him also gets tuberculosis as a young man, and he finds this book and writes, quote, "I clung to it like a drowning man."

He later wrote, "It became in a short time the staff supporting the invalid. Today it is the lifeboat that was sent to me by a merciful providence in the nick of time in the hour of extreme peril." And so Nipe gets given what he thinks is a death sentence, this tuberculosis diagnosis, and he gets better, and he gets better while taking the water cure.

Now does he just, does he recover because of that? Or does he just recover while he does that? You know, Nipe obviously credits his recovery to the water cure because he makes his whole life

From here on out, the rest of his days. He's like a practitioner of this thing.

“And this is, oh, it's just, it's just FYI to the listeners if you want to look in”

this guy's name is spelled K and E I P P. Yeah. Just a Nipe. And Nipe. Yeah.

Gotcha. Now is the water cure just drinking water a thing? No. It's like a clue. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Like guys are doing today, right? Where you get like this bucket of ice water and you plunge yourself in for whatever period of time.

From an article in the Journal of Integral Medicine by Susanna Saranko, quote, "Building from this little book, Nipe eventually modified the cold water baths to what became his signature treatment." The shower baths are gushes, which he administered with a simple garden watering can. By pouring water on the subject, the quicker reaction is brought on then by bathing.

Pouring was father-night special method. The object of all cold water applications is to cause a stimulation in the circulation of the blood and they must last only long enough for this reaction to take place. Night paid close attention to the primary and secondary reactions caused by cold water on warm skin.

And part of why this is so popular is that ice bathing or what he's doing, which is like pouring cold water on you because he says it causes the reaction faster. It has a physiological effect. It does measurable things to your body, right?

That said, it is never neither ice bathing or any other kind of cold water exposure has

been shown to treat or cure tuberculosis. There's no documentation of this working. However, there's a couple of things going on because both night and lust will credit getting better from TB to this cold blunch type thing basically. And first off, in the 1800s, a lot of people are misdiagnosed when they're diagnosed with TB.

A lot of deaths that are just credited to tuberculosis were something else and doctors were worse at diagnosing stuff back then, right? And secondly, without treatment, a decent number of people survive tuberculosis. I'm not saying don't get your tuberculosis treated, but I did find a 2023 article in the Journal of tuberculosis and lung disease, which notes that about 40% of TB patients in 2021 weren't

diagnosed or treated, and that 10-year survival rate without any kind of medical treatment are about 40% which is less, people who don't seek medical care, or are a lot less likely to survive tuberculosis. Please, if you get TB, seek treatment. But it's not crazy that two dudes might have gotten sick and just gotten over it.

More or less intact because that happens sometimes, right? It's just, you know, the human body be doing shit, people don't respond the same way to every disease.

Yeah, we're a powerful little machine that wants to live.

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes your body just pulls through. Yeah, cool people did cool stuff listeners. They're very familiar with front of the pod tuberculosis because almost every episode

it comes in and either kill your villain or kills our hero.

“That's what I was like before modern medicine, and where we're going right back to that”

period of time. Do you worry, you give out of K another year or two? Yeah. I'm really, rather not. I'm excited for the white handkerchiefs, the people cough a little bit, but it's too

now to be made out of plastic. I'm already stopping. Yeah. Yeah. Gone are the days of the cotton hanky.

No, no, it's got to be plastic for maybe. So cold water immersion does because this is something people are advocating today. It does, again, have observable and measurable physiological effects. Some studies have suggested can help treat chronic immune inflammation and have a beneficial impact on stress.

However, number one, there's negative health consequences. It can raise your heart rate to degree that can cause cardiac events in people. There are like health nuts who have died doing cold blunders because it shocks their heart. Also, per an article in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health Quote, many of the

health benefits claimed from regular cold water exposure may not be causal and may instead be explained by other factors. In other words, most of the studies that suggested to benefit are flawed in some way. There's not, I'm not saying there's no bit, there are maybe some benefits, and especially because of the way to affect your heart and circulation, people with certain conditions might

benefit from cold water plunges. But the science today is far from certain on this and it's surely not curing tuberculosis, right? No. But they have a lot less data back then.

So it is more forgivable. I don't think night is a con man.

“I think he truly believes this saved his life and he's doing his best to help other people,”

right? And I think the same is going to be true of the future doctor, not a doctor, lust, because he falls in love with this stuff.

When he goes to night's clinic, which is basically a spa, night's doing these cold water

exposure things. He's also giving people herbal medicine, there's a lot of teas involved, and Dr. lust falls in love with this. This is his first hit of what we today called alternative medicine. This is the very first gaspings of that, and lust is immediately like, oh, this is my

whole life. Right here, baby. I'm going to make this everything to me. Well, and it also makes sense that that time it was like that or chimney sweep, right?

I mean, Jesus Christ, I mean, television really go in yet.

Exactly. I'm just sitting in a nice place that has some nice teas and things like that. It's like, I'm going to maybe feel better than what I'm doing at 20 hours shift in the factory. Now, me, I would live at the pharmacy.

I would be buying that heroin cough syrup every day of the week, and if only, if only. So lust moves to the United States near the end of the 1800s. And by that period of time, before we're really into the 1900s, even the U.S. Particularly New York has become kind of this globally recognized mecha for nonsense medicine. Like, we Americans, we're on the ground floor of cell and bullshit to people and claiming

it. I mean, maybe six to 1901, lust because as soon as he moves there, and he starts training in a couple of different like quasi-medical fields, one of which, so he trains as an osteopath, an osteopathy and osteopathy is a difficult case to talk about. We're not going to be giving it enough attention today.

“If you run into someone who is an osteopath, they're probably a real doctor, right?”

Probably, or it is largely a real type of medicine today. But it was founded decades ago by an untrained amateur who felt that all disease was caused by misplaced or deranged bones, but from Quackwatch, Quackwatch writes, quote, and most diseases were cureable by manipulation of deranged as place bones, nerves, muscles, removing all obstructions, thereby setting the machinery of life moving.

His autobiography, the founder of osteopathy, states that he caused a bald-headed man to grow hair three inches long in one week, and that he could shake a child and stop scarlet fever, crook, dith area, and cure warping cough in three days by a ring of its neck. He was antagonistic towards the drug practices of his day and regarded surgery as a last resort.

Rejected as a cultist by organized medicine, he founded the first osteopathic medical

school in Kirk'sville, Missouri, in 1892. This will not be the last time Missouri shows up in these episodes. Oh, that's a huge shame of that kid. Wow. Your baby's got a poop and cough.

Let me ring their neck. That'll fix them. Absolutely. The James Bond of Doctors is crazy how many people who call them Stove's Doctors still think like, "Oh, your kids cough in too much.

I got to basically break their spine. You got to let me get my hands around that fucking neck and just really throttle it like a son of a bitch." Like, that's still a lot of guys who say that their doctors today, they paralyzed kids all the time.

Abuse the child until they say they're okay. Yeah. So now that said, as wild as that last paragraph was, from this point, osteopathy develops after this and to again, what is today a largely real field of medicine. There are still some quacks who call themselves osteopaths, but over time the good osteopaths

who cared about evidence-based care one out over the bad ones, I think.

“That's how the articles they've read make it seem.”

I'm not a doctor except for a new jersey, right? But, Dr. Lust is studying osteopathy when it is still firmly in its quack era. He also studies chiropractic medicine and takes classes on that. And if you remember our episodes on the history of chiropractic, it was founded by a guy who learned the secrets of spinal manipulation from a ghost that is where chiropractic medicine

comes from.

Oh, wow, yeah, amazing stuff happening in the early late 1800s and early 1900s.

So yeah, Lust gets into chiropractic, osteopathy and he starts exploring botanical medicines you know, what people would call like plant-based medicines and he gets interested in the emerging field of what comes known as physical culture. Bernard McFadden who we've done episodes on is a major factor in this. He and Lust are kind of contemporaries and they're writing about health and about a lot of

shit RFK is in, it's like, how can you stay looking buff longer if you're redude, you know? Like how can you, how can you get big biceps? Like what kind of chemicals will make it easier for me to keep muscle on? I feel like you're trying to convince me that RFK Jr might actually be a time traveler from this area.

“That's the only way he actually makes sense, right?”

This ideology is firmly rooted in the early, first 20 years of the 20th century. Now Lust is one of those guys who binges on French medical treatments. He's not discriminating, he likes it all. He's taken sun baths, you know, the moderate equivalent would be modern equivalent would be those guys who like expose their assholes to direct some lights for health reasons.

He's exploring electro therapy, he's like shocking himself to make himself feel better. He's crucially what kind of makes Lust a trailblazer is he's putting all of these different quack treatments together and he's mixing them with like cold water therapy and herbalism and he's looking at it all as one connected field, not a bunch of separate things.

And that's a new idea. Previously, most of these old-time medical grifters aren't seeing themselves as part of like a large movement that includes a bunch of different kinds of treatment.

They're like, no, the secret is electro therapy.

The secret is what a therapy, the secret is they've got their thing and that's the thing that they're trying to sell and Lust is like, no, no, this works a lot better if everybody is connected and we're all part of like a united front pushing all these French treatments that the real doctors don't want you to have access to. Right?

He's unionizing the quacks, he's kind of unionizing the quacks, yeah, that's basically Dr. Lust's story. In 1901, Dr. Lust starts collaborating with a group of fellow travelers to set out the underlying theory behind their new discipline, which doesn't have a name yet, but they're firmly

“in opposition to what they call the drugists, right?”

Today, the term that like these folks uses allopaths to refer to like real doctors, but we call real doctors, but they're calling them basically drugists, right? And the critique they're making, which is to a degree valid in the time, is that real doctors just want to dope you the fuck up and a lot of real doctors are just doping you the fuck up.

That's not an unfair critique of the day that doesn't make what they're selling work any better, but it is sometimes less harmful, right? Sometimes if your doctors prescribing you like fucking arsenic and your fake doctors prescribing you fucking homeopathic arsenic, which is just water, you're better off with homeopathic arsenic.

You know, 100% yeah. So the central tenant that Dr. Lust and his colleagues land on is this. The body can repair itself, and that rather than treating sickness, physician should seek to restore balance to the body so that it can cure its own illnesses, right? And it can avoid getting sick because of the body stays in balance, then it won't

get ill. The website in the health facts has a good summary of what Lust eventually comes to believe and push to make the center of natural apathy as a discipline. Dr. Lust was opposed to the processing of foods because such manufacture tends to destroy their true nutritional values.

He was opposed to the administrations of all drugs in narcotics because they are a natural elements which the human body is not capable of assimilating. He's opposed to the regimentation of the American people under medically controlled experiments because such legislation will wipe out other methods of treatment and bring an estimable damage to the health of every man, woman, and child affected.

He's opposed to any legislation which in practice would prevent a family from attending to its own ills or the choosing by such family of any type of treatment it might desire because such legislation restricts personal liberty and tends to take from the American people to write to use the beneficial home spun efficient remedies which have been handed down from generation to generation.

He is just RFK, it's just RFK, right?

“I don't think you should be able to tell people that anything they believe is medicine”

isn't medicine. That's a crime. That's the only crime, not selling nonsense is medicine. Now the name naturopathy is actually coined by a married physician couple, the doctor's John and Sophie Sheel who are kind of colleagues and contemporaries of doctor lust.

They come up with the name in 1902 and lust buys it from them. He purchases the naming rights because as soon as he hears naturopathy he's like, "I can't beat that. That's the best marketing name for this thing that we're doing." That's how we're real, and it is a good name, it's a really good name.

I don't know why but like 1902 seems really early for buying naming rights. Yeah. No, this man is committed, he's convinced and honestly it works like he is a visionary when it comes to this shit.

So lust opens a school for naturopaths and he opens what's probably the first health

food store in the world.

“I think it's in New York, but he opens like a health food store in like 1908, right?”

In the fucking start of the century. So that stuff goes back quite a while. God, I don't even want to think about how bad this guy's deodorant was. Oh my god. Oh, just the Naturopath started just a solid crystal.

No, it's literally emeralds, he's just rubbing it in there, to do anything. As naturopathy evolves, it becomes clear that its practitioners all share one curious trait, a distrustary than a hatred of medical drugs in an often heedless embrace of every conceivable non-drug therapy, often to absurd ends. Now, again, in the way lust frames this is like people have a right to use the home

spun treatments that their ancestors have been using for generations. That's not what's primarily being marketed by the naturopaths. They're into a lot of expensive and sane, quack treatments. Take area of pathy. Area of pathy is a treatment that starts from the premise that in this is true, heat can

reduce pain. Right? Probably experience this. In some way, it's a pretty common thing to deal with like inflammation, joint pain, all that sort of stuff.

People have known this basically forever.

If you've ever heard of like an old-timey treatment, the mustard plaster, where they'll put like this plaster of mustard on your naked chest, it's because that like burns and the heat offers like a relief from some kind like chest cold symptoms and stuff.

at least.

“Area of pathy takes this concept up to 11 and incorporates what was literally called”

the name of the device used for area of pathy is a human bake oven as a treatment. They're literally putting people into actual ovens and at like oven temperatures. I need to show you, so if he's going to put on screen if you're watching this, a 1912 ad published in the Calgary Harald and I'll read the ad to you. It's got a picture in the center, but it looks like a fucking iron lung, but it's an oven

that everything with the person's head goes inside and it says rheumatism, possibly killed by the human bake oven, can you take 500 degrees Fahrenheit, try 500, that's crazy, that's you shouldn't take 500, no absolutely not. I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay, five hundred and then burn your face off. That's well and excess of what I've read most of these treatments were usually people seem

to be slow-cooked from anywhere from like 280 degrees Fahrenheit, which seems to have been like the most common 280 to 300 degrees is like a normal temperature and most for most people doing this, the high temperature is up to like 400 degrees, but obviously is that ad shows.

Some people are going way further than that and it's not always the whole body ovens,

some smaller contraptions were used to target a single part of the body, like this easy leg bake oven, so if he's going to show you, which just, I mean it almost looks like one of those cuffs you put your arm in and it's on it, but I can see how you just kind of jam your leg in there and it just like bakes the shit out of it, I turn my knee into a brownie. Let's go.

Wow. What a choice. This must have hurt and killed people. I haven't run into stories of that, you shouldn't be baked, like they're definitely

“our people getting burns because again, you shouldn't be baked every time you're, I think”

we'll tell you that now, is that like 500 degrees is too much for any part of your body. You're cooked meat. I don't even know that my oven actually goes up to 500 degrees. You probably shouldn't be cooking meat at 500 degrees. That's really your baby's cough out of the fridge.

I really go up like 400. No, seriously. That's crazy. Like I'm like a hot sauna. I like a sauna.

Yeah. That is a whole different ball game from this. This is crazy. That's another fucking level of batshit. Now, natural paths were also known to advocate astral healing and zodiac therapy, which

is basically someone giving someone tea based on their horoscope, and there are a bunch

of weirder treatments that Quackwatch collected for an article on this, like quote "blood washing with herbs," auto therapy, which is quote "treatment with potions made from the patients infected tissues or excretions," and auto-heemic therapy, which involves a solution made by modifying and potentizing a few drops of the patient's blood. Great.

Wow. Matt, honestly. But seriously, shout out to him for being able to sell somebody's shit back to themselves. Oh, yeah. That is absolutely.

A hell of a sin. Your own blood, selling your own blood, that man, you made that, bro. Yeah. That's crazy. Wow.

Now, to be totally fair to Dr. Luston as colleagues, it's like 120 something years ago.

Again, real doctors aren't always a lot better than the Quacks.

And the natural paths, you know, they have some points in this era, but what's happening is you're going to start not long after this period seeing the development of like real medical science, like things that people dot medicine from 1900 to like 1960 probably gets better faster than it has it like any other point in history. I, you'd be hard pressed.

I mean, maybe the like 60 years after that, but even then I don't think we had jumps quite as big as that leap from in 1900, a lot of people are still basically living the

“same with similar medical access to what they would have had like the 1600s, right?”

You know, a lot of parts of the world. There's not massive differences from how shit would have been like the Enlightenment era in terms of the average person's access to good medicine to, by 1950 to 60, even people out in the sticks have a much better access to real quality medicine and to doctors who actually know something meaningful about how disease spreads.

And you have the ability to actually prevent a lot of these diseases for the first time. And that's going to be disastrous for this first wave of naturopaths, right? Is that especially from like 40 to 60? It becomes really impossible to deny that like, okay, well, the people who use the naturopaths are still getting sick and dying from all of like the weird plagues going around and the

people who are getting vaccinated don't are living. Yeah. Well, it's also funny. We've got a World War II happening during this time. Right.

Right. And the idea of being like, uh, here's like a tea for your leg that got blown off. It's not a magnetic. Okay. What about this?

Aconations. That's good. It's been reduced by a thousand gallons of water. Oh no, again, you bled out. You bled right out.

That was a memorial hit. Did I review? Did I review?

But also like the pit. It's literally this. No.

It's literally this modern classic.

You would love it. It's great. Also Harry Styles in it. Elliot. Great.

Good for Harry Styles.

“So, you know, and it's also important note that one of the key differences, one of the reasons that like osteopathy becomes more of a real, becomes a real discipline.”

And the reason that medicine, you know, in 1900 and 1920, maybe a lot of doctors aren't really much better than the nature of paths. That changes too. Because the, the real doctors, even if they start from position of believing a lot of bullshit, are doing what you ought to do, which is you document, okay, we prescribe this treatment to this many people. And oh, actually it turns out that after a year or two, there was no difference between them and the people who didn't get a treatment or between them and the people who got this other treatment that's cheaper.

Or, you know, whatever, you prune away, you find out, oh, some stuff we can see isn't working.

So we're not going to do that anymore. And some stuff, the consequences of getting people these medicines, even if they work immediately, is worse than, you know, giving them this alternative, so we're going to do that. And the, the field gets better, and we get a lot better at medicine over time. Natural path, these problem, and the reason why it doesn't really go down this same road is that it was fundamentally created and always run primarily by a bunch of weird little guides and girls who each had their own specific kind of alternative or quack therapy.

Like water therapy or blood washing, and they were primarily getting into the naturopathy, not because they saw themselves as sight, they're mostly not like lust. They don't see themselves as scientists who are part of a movement, they've got a thing to sell. And if that's the attitude you approach your discipline from, that's not conducive to good science. Yeah, you're coming at it. Yeah, scientific method versus the vibe. Right. Just a word to talk. And versus I'm already, if this doesn't treat this disease, I'm out a shitload of money like I'm ruined.

Like this, I have to be able to sell this, even if I realize it doesn't work after a while, because I'm, I'm pot committed to this shit.

“Speaking of pot committed, you know who's pot committed to this podcast?”

Our sponsors. Oh, very nice. He's ah, yeah, they can't get away from us now. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, an on my podcast 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

All be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the in practical and the way to complex pseudo science that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Let yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled healthier person. Listen to 2%, that's TWO% on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

One never mess with a country girl. He plays stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anison Field, and in this new season of the girlfriends. Oh my god, this is the same man. A group of women discovered they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought how could this happen to me.

The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh hell no, I vowed, I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the I-Hart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, former Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.

“You doctor this particular test twice in selling stress?”

I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Some like the greatest disinfectant. They would uncover a disturbing pattern.

Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at America, for County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice has served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trap podcast on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?”

Or when Kyle Hay said that George Bush didn't know I'd black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the look-back at a podcast. I'm Sam Jay and I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a hair, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the eighties. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just 'cause of crack.

[laughter] I'm down to talk about crackle-day, but yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack.

So I'm starting to see that there's a throughline. We also have eight on the table. [laughter] Why are you finishing that sentence? Yes.

I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really, yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people

in American history. Listen to look back at it on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you go get your podcasts. And we're back. We're back, and we're talking about natural paths.

So the AMA guys, and Dr. Lustay have a lot of teeth, and they do not take kindly to a bunch of weird ass hippie types, taking patients and claiming to treat disease. The AMA declares war on Dr. Lust, and they managed to score some real hits.

Pernarticle in the Journal of Applied Natural Medicine, Lust was arrested 14 times and find what's $500 because a dirty woman's sleuth of the medical trust, the American Medical Association, with an unspeakable name, took an electric light bath in his institution.

Now, that's from a naturopathic publication, quoting a naturopath. I want to know more about this dirty woman's sleuth of the medical trust. The medical trust is trust-busting as popular in this era.

This is the Teddy Roosevelt era.

When some of this is gone, or when a lot of these people's political awakening is.

“So, you know, that's why they're framing it that way.”

But I looked into this, and it turns out that in 1921, Lust was arrested for committing criminal libel against Francis Binsericke, or Binsekri, that's the unspeakably named woman, who worked as a detective for the AMA. Lust wrote that she was a disgrace to American womanhood,

and to the free soil of America on which she treads. I don't want to hear her story, man. He got some of the medical issues with women. Wow. Well, because she's, they've got her trying to bust,

trying to prove that Lust and his followers are representing themselves as doctors. Right? Or a legally claiming to be treating diseases in a way that exceeds what they're free to do. Right?

Obviously, freedom of speech and shit, you have some room. We have a lot more room today, even, to sell like quack treatments, but you can't say certain things. Just to say that quote. A disgrace to American womanhood into the free soil of America,

on which she treads hot, loving. Yeah. Great tattoo. Great t-shirt. Every woman I've ever loved.

Yeah.

“I want to see a film noir movie about this woman just like in her office,”

smoking a cigarette, and just like somebody comes in with a bag of their own blood, and was like, "Yeah. I need help, detective. Let's go." Yeah.

So these guys are all getting arrested to shit load for practicing medicine without a license. Which is actually why Dr. Lust buys the rights to the word naturopathy. So his people will have something else. He'll call themselves that's decidedly not a doctor,

and thus much more defensible. And that actually works really well. Do they have a seal? The way that doctors have a seal? I was just a shocker in the middle.

They've got a logo. Yeah. They've got a logo. They've got paperwork that they're issuing, because he's handing out licenses for naturopathy doctors.

Right? And once they start bringing themselves that way, judges tend to agree. Even when they're still sentencing him, he was told by one judge.

There's no evidence that you practice medicine to help yourself out as a physician, but we find you just the same. And the naturopathy point is like look at the injustice of the system. And I see this as a judge being like,

"Yeah, man, you technically figured out how not to say the words that would have definitely been illegal, but you were for sure representing yourself as a doctor and selling medicine. And I'm just going to find you anyway,

because I know you're guilty, because you are, because you were a doctor Lust, by the way. No matter how much flag the AMA through his way, naturopathy kept struggling forwards, from the 20s to the 30s,

that allowed naturopaths and other drugless healers to practice.

“Perquac watch, however, as modern medicine developed,”

many of these laws were repealed, and all but a few male-order schools ceased operations. The doctor of naturopathy, indeed agree, was still available at several chiropractic colleges, but by 1957, the last of these colleges stopped issuing it.

The national college of naturopathic medicine was founded in 1956 in Portland, Oregon, but until the mid-1970s had very few students. From 1968, the average enrollment was eight, and the total number of graduates was 16.

So again, there's a gap like a generation from between the first and second wave of naturopaths. It makes, by the way, Portland, Oregon, where naturopathy, like it's second wave started, the seeds of its rebirth just had an outbreak

of measles, trace to a safe way, and it's not because people can't afford that. We can't afford vaccines.

“That's not if you look at where the fucking viral outbreaks”

of cured diseases occur in Portland, it tends to be more affluent neighborhoods who are choosing not to take vaccinations.

You can always get an organ to come up

if it's like a weird medical thing. Yeah, you're a very tiny cold. Bolshevik medicine stuff. Hey, ancient white supremacy, modern white supremacy. I love my adopted home.

Oregon's like, hey, hey, how you doing? Hey, hi. We're keeping it weird, man. Hey, you're crazy, aren't you? Welcome to Portland.

Yeah, but our weather rocks. It is nice, great weather. So, we hate fun. Yeah. The weather today is so good, you guys.

It's awesome. It's like a good thing to keep our recent sunny. It's great. It's perfect. I'm wearing t-shirts.

Summer, fire season, this year's going to be a nightmare, though. Yeah, anyway, that's an important point. Just if you talk about naturopathy today, there are some differences, because there's like a break of a generation between two fields. I think a lot of the same problems are still present. An issue of, you know, at least with this first wave.

The very first naturopathy, Dr. Lust, I think really believed in what they were doing.

A big part of the problem is a huge amount of like the second wave,

are just people who realize, oh, this movement, it connects me to a huge base of people I can sell nonsense to.

“And that's what they, and that's definitely a lot of the founders too.”

It's, it's, maybe I'm wrong about Lust being in this genuinely. Like, I honestly can't tell with him. But it seems like he's somebody who like really does think this all works. And that's not going to be the case with our actual subject of this week, Robert Spears. Yeah.

Again, as the guy we're talking about this week. Yeah, or the very least, like, Lust believed it at the very, for some period of time, it clearly, he clearly was a believer and who knows what he's been later. But, you know, I mean, you're not going to go through all of this trouble necessarily. If you don't have true belief behind that for something right, right.

That's, that's tend to be how I think about it too. And yeah, so Robert Vernon Spears, the guy we're actually talking about, was born on June 26th, 1894 in Casville, Missouri. See, I said we get back to Missouri, and we sure as hell did. It's actually going to show up a few more times in these episodes.

He does not, however, born under the name Robert Vernon Spears. This is one of our classic command stories where this guy has like 30 or so serious names. By which, I mean, a name that he had like, he had took real efforts to falsify his his own. He's got documents for these names. He's got dozens of them.

This guy goes through so many fucking names. He was probably born Clyde Stringer or Clyde Porter. But even that, I have to put a probably on because Clyde slash Robert's mother is a woman we just know of as Matilda. And she writes her kid as a name. She gives him a different name on different government documents because she's also a con woman.

And so from the beginning, she's like setting her son up for success being like, I'm going to make sure nobody ever knows what your name is, boy. Like, this will be this will really benefit you down the line. There's not a clean paper trail for your life. That's not going to be FCO for 150 years.

Trust me, being able to become a new person by skipping counties is going to be much more beneficial than name recognition. In the life you're going to lead my son. Well, and it's fine. I will say if this kid was born a Clyde, I have a little bit of respect for Matilda. Oh, born Clyde Clyde Clyde to the bone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love to hear about a Clyde who identifies as a Robert. That's as great. Yeah, well, it comes to later. Yeah, Alan Logan, author of the Spears biography self-styled, just notes that Matilda,

his mom was, quote, a woman who also used many names and changed her own identity as circumstances dictated. She claimed her child was the son of a farmer named George Stringer from northeast Oklahoma,

which is where George was born and where he was raised for the first three years of his life.

They raised him for the first few years of his life in Oklahoma, then they moved up to Missouri.

“And his mom uses the surname Smith on her marriage certificate to George.”

But she had been using the name Jenkins, most of the time prior to that. So even her husband knows she's given two different options as to her maiden name. And her headstone would give yet another last name. This was a slippery woman and she would pass those traits onto her son. Her marriage to George did not last long.

After a year, she was caught having an affair with some other dude. And so she takes Clyde in the night and abandoned George who files for divorce. This is also going to leave a mark on Clyde. He's going to not have the best record of sticking around from marriages as we'll talk about. And he kind of inherited that from his mom.

Yeah. But I love this woman as like the morey already. She's amazing.

The medical detective lady.

I would really like to see their house across. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, these two characters were born for each other. Yeah.

“So after leaving her husband behind, Matilda would tell her son that George had quote,”

"diet of pneumonia." But Alan Logan writes, it is not entirely clear who she was telling Clyde had died of pneumonia because we don't actually know who Clyde thought his father was. Right? Like, we just have some old paperwork.

So it's not entirely clear who Clyde's dad was or who she told him it was. Matilda moved through men at a rapid pace. Right. So. Hell yeah, Matilda.

I mean, don't, you know, you got a little kid. So I got questions. But also like for Clyde. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's living in your life. She's living in a lot of men are having the male version of this life, which is much more common.

“So you have to stand a woman who's willing to like break free from tradition”

and really like really just be like a very masculine kind of scumbag. And honestly, I appreciate that. You know, it's nice to see. You know, the glass gutter is just as important as the glass. Right.

I think the glass gutter matters just as much as the glass sealer would have the right to be scumbags to. Matilda, we salute you. You know who else is a scumbag? Nope. That's not good.

Same thing. I like the roof over my head. Sure. Well, anyway, here's ads. Okay.

2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Eastern. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our

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Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships. And you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule 1 never mess with a country girl.

He plays stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule 2 never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriend's. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girl Friends. Oh my god, this is the same man.

A group of women discovered they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought how could this happen to me. The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh hell no, I vowed I will be his last target.

He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to The Girl Friends, trust me babe. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctor this particular task twice in selling stress. I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.

Some likes the greatest disinfectant.

Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Break a recipe and I can imagine it. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap.

Laura Scott still police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at a Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice has served in Arizona. Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?”

Oh, what when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people? I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the look-back at a podcast. I'm Sam J.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick you here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the eighths.

To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just 'cause of crack. [laughter] I'm down to talk about crackle, David. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode

where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a throughline. We also have eggs on the table. [laughter] Why are you finishing that sentence?

[laughter] Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really, yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.

Listen to look back at it on the "I Heart Radio" app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, and we're talking about whether or not our advertisers just come back. So if he says no, I say I don't know.

Who is right? Probably Sophie. Legally, I think I have to say that. He's out. In 1899, Matilda, who is just going through this carousel

of men and cities with her young son. In 1899, she married an elderly farmer. She's pretty cool. Not a great mom. It doesn't do a good job raising this kid,

but pretty cool to read about her. But she thought I'm in trotting and I appreciate that. She married a civil war veteran with lifelong injuries and a drinking problem to match. And he's got a kid that she winds up,

well, she winds up having a kid. I don't think it's his.

“I think she cheats on him, and she has a kid with somebody else,”

and he gets pissed, so he bounces in 1902, and now she's a single mother of two. As a result, Clyde experiences deep poverty

for basically his entire childhood.

His mom has only able to keep them fed and sheltered by moving constantly from town to town and conning strangers to stay alive. I want to read a quote from the book's self-styled. As they moved from place to place,

he saw Matilda retelling their story and remaking her identity. She used different names when it suited her. Clyde may have absorbed more from his mother than she realized, including the seeds of his own restless wanderlust,

and the ease of taking on aliases. This is just he was like made in a lab to be a con man, basically. Matilda eventually marries again and the family's settles in prior Oklahoma, merging the families of two single parents

who now had six kids between them. This marriage doesn't work out either, and when things get bad enough that Clyde doesn't want to be there anymore, he realizes kind of by his adolescence. I can just leave.

Like there's a train station in town, and he figures out when he's like 12 or 13, I just bounce on a train and go away for a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, like if I don't want to be around here, and I can just visit new places

and then I can come back whenever I'm ready, they'll take me back, and he loves the freedom of the road. And he starts in order to fund these trips. He doesn't want to work,

so he starts committing petty crimes. Well, he's away to pay his way, you know? I know a lot of friends who have gone through versions of this period in their life.

“Oh yeah, we've all got a couple of crusties in our past, right?”

Yeah, yeah. Now this behavior ultimately gets him in trouble when he's like a teenager, and he gets sent away to a reformatory school for some time. However long he's at this reform school by age 16,

he is out because he gets in trouble for passing bad checks, and then using the ill-gotten money to buy nice clothes and stay in hotels. And he's like paying in check for hotel stays

and for clothes for more than their worth, so he can get cash back. Basically, that's a big part of the scam. It's a lot easier to do this stuff, although he still gets caught every single time, right?

Right? That said, this is a time in which the authorities are a lot likely to look the other way at formal charges if people can work things out themselves. Basically, if you get caught,

a cop is likely to just kind of like drop things as long as you're both white people, right? If like two white dudes will do a great, okay, he made it right. We don't need to go any further.

Usually, they'll just be like fine with it. Right? That's a lot more common in this era. So he's like a raster testing the fence too.

What can I get away with?

“And part of what he learns is he's really charming.”

Clyde is deeply charismatic. And so people are kind of like, often willing to forgive him. Because as soon as he gets caught, every time he'll say, "Oh, yep, I did it.

This is what I did." And he'll like apologize. And as a result, I think that in his youth kind of keeps him from catching serious charges until he turns 18.

So Clyde, one of the things about Clyde is he fucking loves trains. Very relatable, right? On four days, he loves trains because of the crime potential

inherent in those trains. And he's been observing employees at the local railroad company, M.K.T. Cash checks. And he also, one of his friends,

I think works for M.K.T. and his dad, his friend's dad, had worked there for a while. And so he like talks to that guy and plays him for information about

how the checking check writing process works

“for M.K.T. employees at the M.K.T. Bank.”

And then he forges the name of his friend and a check payable to himself. And I'm gonna quote from Alan Logan's book here. His real audacity wasn't taking that forged check to his friend's father.

The M.K.T. rail road agent who cashed it for him. The check was only for $9.233 today, but the thrill of it was priceless. The M.K.T. rail road was enraged

by the outrageous stunt. They deployed special agent porem to give chase.

As Spears made his first known headlines,

described as the gilded youth. Clyde Stranger from prior Oklahoma. When they finally caught up with him in June, 1913, the newspapers reported how special agent porem had traced him

from Kansas City to Oklahoma City and across the state, East and West. He was finally found at Murdoch, Kansas, hunting for work in a harvest field. First off, that's a long way to chase a guy

for $9. Really says a lot about how little there was to do back there. Like, you are going to the ins of the earth for nine bucks.

It's the principal, I'm sure. What the guy would say? It's giving comic book. The gilded youth. Yeah, the gilded youth.

Yeah, that's it. He doesn't have a comic book. He style nickname. Very catch me if you can of him too. It feels.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm texting Leo Deo. Like, this is like a Leo Deo type guy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, although again, Frank Abigail,

the real guy behind catch me if you can, was an absolute fraud. Like, that the stuff in the movie didn't happen. He was mostly just creeping on ladies. Oh, you know, movie is the biggest kind of all.

That's right. That's right. It's the final level of guns. So Clyde does more than a year behind bars. He's sentenced to prison.

And he's not released until August 31, 1914. And as soon as he's free, he establishes a pattern of behavior. That's going to be with him for the next half century. I consider going straight, maybe briefly toy with the idea.

And then he would immediately commit a series of daring frauds. And assorted small towns of cities across Oklahoma and the middle states. And he's just going to like commit a bunch of fraud. And then fucking get arrested periodically in a pattern. This becomes like the normal like tempo of life for him for the next several years.

Right. Is he'll commit a bunch of petty fraud. Mostly passing bad checks and stealing merchandise from like different retailers. He worked with over the years. And he'll get caught and he'll get in some trouble.

He'll either talk his way out or he'll do a little time. And then he's back on the road. I imagine he also has like a bunch of babies and maybe mama's all over the country during this day. Maybe. Well, he does he has some.

He does have a couple of kids that he abandons. Like I think like three of the course of this story. He also has a lot of wives that he abandons as we'll talk about. So within three years by 1917, he's a wanted man again. So when he moved to callings worth Oklahoma,

he changed his last name to from stringer to porter and figured that'll be good enough. Nobody's got to guess that Clyde Stringer's Clyde Porter. That's not gonna. It's impossible for people to. To such out.

Um, and then he passes another series of bad checks and he has to steal a car to flee town. Clyde drove the car to a train station and left it parked outside with a note being like, Here's who this car belongs to. I'm sorry I had to take it.

“You know, this is where you should return it to, you know.”

So the cops ultimately raid Clyde's home and they find a bunch of stolen property and a huge number of forged checks. These were of such high quality that businesses started posting copies of Clyde's bad checks to warn their employees about what to look for when trying to spot bad checks, right? That like these are the archetypal bad checks.

So you should you should familiarize yourself with them. Clyde.

He goes on the run for a few more months, but as is always the case,

he can't avoid the temptation to visit his family and friends. And he gets caught in Toledo operating under yet another fake name. And he's visiting a sister. Uh, and that fake name is Charles Howard. He shows up in court dressed per the Tulsa Daily World to the nines and a dark suit.

White turned down collar and multicolored silk tie. It was his second attempt to win a reputation in the bad check line. So they're always kind of he's handsome and he's well dressed. And the newspapers always write about that. And it starts to, there's this big, it's going to be even bigger than the 30s.

That's huge in American pop culture. And because Clyde is handsome and he's mostly robbing banks and he's not doing it violently. A lot of people kind of like him. Like the news is interested in any Clyde crime story. Because he's this really likable criminal figure.

People want to hear about. When does Bonnie and Clyde happen? Because that's a different Clyde that rob bags. That's going to be in the 30s. Totally different Clyde.

And then he, this Clyde's going by Robert by then. That's a smart guy to get out of the Clyde business by the time there's that other Clyde. Yeah, exactly. He's a fuck hack. And I think there's a strategy here.

“I think he knew he was going to get caught when he stole that card.”

I get away. And I think the note he leaves is part of his,

his image campaign basically that like if I leave a note in there.

Tell him how to return it to its owner. That'll go better for me when I ultimately wind up in front of a judge. And it does work for him. He winds up in front of a judge. And his biography of Clyde Logan notes.

Alan Logan notes that most of Clyde's victims in this period didn't press charges. And many who did still described him as basically a good guy. I think we're like, well, I think he's a really good guy. He just fucked up here. And I, I'm still pressing charges.

And keeping with tradition, these recent charges are ultimately dropped. Which Logan claims is due to a technicality. I'm not sure if that's accurate vanishing act, which is another book about Robert Spears/Clide. The author of that Jerry Jamison suggests something different.

Quote the judge let Charles Howard off easy. Siding the thoughtful note he had left in the stolen car. This time, however, he suggested the young man join other American Patriots fighting and you're up during the Great War.

So basically Clyde gets off, but on the condition that he joined the army.

And go fight in World War I, right? That's kind of what happens here. This judge is like, you're a good young man.

“What if you just go into the trenches for a little while?”

How does that sound to you? Let's see how your stationary gets you out of this one, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. He's trying to be nice.

Not traditionally a nice thing to do. Makes someone go to World War I. But Clyde does join. He signs up. He joins the army.

And he uses a fake name to join the army. And this name he picks. I think because he's like, this gives me a chance to establish the name. I'm going to be known by for the rest of my life.

So when he's joined the army, he goes by the name Robert Vernon Spears, which is absolutely

a fake name. But that's most of his life. He's going to keep going by Robert Vernon Spears. As soon as he signed up, just a few days before he reported for duty, Spears befriended another recruit, CS Gilbert.

And the two went partying before handing their lives over to the army. True to form, Spears told his new friend, hey, this is crazy. But I'm like, bro, right now.

“Is there any chance you could like front me some money so we could like party?”

I'll totally get you back. And Gilbert's like, of course, man, we're going to be fighting in the trenches together. I got like two grand in my pocket. I'll take care of us. And the two spend like two days partying and drinking and going to strip clubs.

And at the end of it, when they're like sleeping in their hotel at night, Robert Spears steals his friend's cash and runs like fuck. Just as far as he can get before the cops catch him, which they do immediately. Spears can fess his and he hands over the money. But Gilbert refuses to press charges.

And in fact, he begs the cops to release his friend saying, I guess I like the guy. And besides, I'll be serving in the trenches with him. It's like if he got with the prison, you wouldn't. But Gilbert seems to be a very nice dude. Yeah.

Well, we're Gilbert, you need to go. You need a coat of meeting, buddy. You deserve a better friend, man. This guy is not your friend. There's like a local news story at the time with the title.

And freeze the one who robbed him, very cute, very fucking 1917. I don't know much about what Spears actually did with his time in World War I. Because he mostly lies about it later, right? We get very little detail about what his actual service is. It looks like he probably spent the last year of the war as an aviator sergeant in the

314th Aerospace Squadron, which was attached to the precursor of the British RAF. There's no evidence that he was a fighter pilot, but he pretends to have been a fighter pilot. As soon as he gets back, if you're going to be a hot man, what better job than fighter pilot. Right? Right?

I'm going to lie and say, you fought in the trenches, like a shrub. You want to be a pilot, baby? That's the sexy job, man. They got the aviators. Ain't nobody else who got the sunglasses?

Yeah. It's a mark of how fucking bullshit our era is. Even if you get trapped in one of these cool, like one of our modern 21st century wars. Like, the cool new technology is so lame to be the guy working with. Like, if in 1917, you're like, yeah, I'm a fighter pilot in Europe.

That's like cool as hell. In like 2026, you're like, yeah, I'm a drone pilot. I get away from me, bro. That's gross. Like, please tell me your games and kill them.

Get out of here. I don't want you to be in the same room as me. That's sick. Yeah. Like, not even cool enough to be a fighter.

It's, it's, it's a bummer.

That guy's sitting pretty.

“He's the only guy with an air to air kill in a long time.”

We do not do much of that anymore. Oh. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

So by this point in time, Spears, he goes over. He probably has pretty pedestrian service.

He comes back lying that he'd served as a first lieutenant.

And he'd survived all these harrowing duels in the skies above Western Europe. Until he was finally shot down and wounded. He returns to St. Louis after the war. And he starts telling the story to any woman who will listen. Right?

Like, that's stuff. Of course. I had a fake cane for a while. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. You got to doctor house that shit. It works great. Mm.

I almost as good as an eye patch. I only imagine this man like dating profile. Oh, it's a nightmare. Oh, my God. Not a word of it true.

He's got to. He's got to.

“So he got his fake credit score on there.”

Oh, yeah. Not real. Oh, my God. She's got some like Photoshop photos of him. Oh, incredible.

It's the best. Trust no man. Wow. Yeah. Number one, Chad.

So he ultimately wins the attention.

And then the handed marriage of a woman named Orah Clayton. Ron, girl. This is the start of what's going to be. No, don't worry Sophie. She's not going to need to.

This is going to be the start of a regular con act for Spears, which is he would and trance a young woman. He would ask for her hand and marriage. They would get married. And then in the night, he would steal everything in her house that wasn't nailed down and

run like fuck for a new town and start a whole new life. Oh, that's crazy. It's the group. I want to talk to you. I'm really happy.

I'm happy. He does this so many times. I don't know how many times in total, but it's like more than you have fingers on at least one hand. It might be like two or three hands worth of fake marriages.

He does it a lot. And he's just moving on. I'm sitting just at her state. How far is he going? Just down to town.

He's not always even leaving the county.

Sophie. It was a different time if you ran out of your mouth and running. You can live a whole new life. Prototypical. Oh, yeah.

It is fucked up, but it's pretty funny. So days after marrying and abandoning Orah, he asks Dorothy Hayes for her hand and marriage. And then he abandons her, it takes Oliver shit and drives out West. He just keeps doing this. He spends the early 20s conning a series of victims several of whom become his wives.

He does this in Seattle. He moves down to Portland, Oregon, and then through California, Nevada, Idaho, and ultimately winds up in Denver, Colorado. Wow. Wow.

Leaving, he's leaving a trail of heartbroken women who are also broke because he took all their money wherever he goes. And then he's the Tinder Swindler, he's the Tinder Swindler, but things, he kind of gets a reverse thrown at him when he, in Denver, he meets maybe his only real match, which is a young lady named Laura Myers, and she seems perfect for him.

She's beautiful. She's got a rich family that he can fleece for all their worth, so they get hitched and they book an expensive vacation, and Spears is like heading upstairs to get their luggage from the hotel that they've been staying in for the last couple of weeks, and Laura flips the script on him.

And by the time he comes downstairs with their luggage, she stole in all of his money and run for the hills. This is an hour after they get married. Like he gets me. Sure, the bad is fair play, mother fucker, Lauren got you number.

Ooh. Oh man. Dick's all is shit and bounds. Laura? Myers.

Feminist icon. Yeah. Laura Myers. Feminist icon. Wow.

And that even eats. That's the moment he actually fell in love. Yeah. Yeah. That's the moment.

The first time in your life. It is beautiful. You love to see, you know, the story into that way. Well, it middles that way. We haven't even gotten to him becoming a fucking naturopath yet.

There's a lot more left of the Robert Spears story, but not today, because we're at about an hour. So, yeah.

“I think, uh, Brady, you want to go out with any plugs here?”

Yeah. I have a new album. It's called Milk Job. I'm a stand up comedian. It's out on my record label that I started called Burn This Records that is trying

to bring more equity into the comedy space for DIY comedians all over the, uh, United States and world. Um, a big thing that you could do to help our label out is if you went to youtube.com/burnthis records and followed our label so I can monetize video. That would be a huge, huge, huge help.

I would really appreciate it. My album is going to be a special that comes out in April, so you'll be able to see it there as well, too. Um, and then I'm on van's work tomorrow, some are long doing comedy. So, uh, yeah, come say hi. Awesome.

Excellent. All right, everybody. Well, that's going to be all of it for all of us for it today at buying the bastards,

Why not on all of your different devices, just constantly have episodes of this show

playing on random loops. You don't even have to listen to it.

“Just always be playing our episodes, you know, break into your friends houses, do that”

with their electronics, too. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a fun way to do us a solid that will have no consequences for anybody breaking and entering is fine if you do it for a good cause. That's the, uh, our official behind the bastard stands. No, it is not.

Goodbye. Okay. Well, we're done.

So, feel free to disagree on this.

Bye. Behind the bastards is a production of coalsone media. For more from coalsone media, visit our website, coalsonemedia.com.

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