Oh What A Time... - #47 Criminals (Part 2)
Episode Date: May 20, 2024This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed from yesterday! It’s time to take a look at some of the most infamous criminals history has to offer; the story of Bonnie and Clyde, the infamous Al Capon...e and American crime boss Arnold ‘The Brain’ Rothstein. Also.. What were you doing during the great storms of the past? If you’ve got anything on that or anything at all! Do send us an email at: hello@ohwhatatime.com If you're impatient and want both parts in one lovely go next time plus a whole lot more(!), why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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All right, welcome to part two of Criminals.
Let's crack on.
All right, I'm here to tell you about notorious gangster Al Capone.
He came up a little bit in our Alcatraz episodes, Great Escapes,
because he was once a prisoner at Alcatraz.
But let's give you the backstory now.
Born Alphonse Gabriel Capone, born the 17th of January 1899 in Brooklyn.
His parents came from just outside Naples.
His father was a barber.
His mother a seamstress.
The older Capones, they arrived in New York in 1893 and they settled in Navy Street.
And that is where Al grew up.
And when he was 11 years old, they moved to the Park Slope area of Brooklyn,
which is now one of New York's most desirable neighbourhoods.
He must have looked great.
If his father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, he must have looked great.
That's a great point.
Amazing clothes, fantastic hair.
Well, funnily enough, he was known for dressing really well.
Oh, really?
His nickname was Snorky, and he was known for being sharply dressed.
Of course, his other nickname was Scarface,
which referred to his facial scars that he got from being slashed with a knife.
But that was the nickname he hated.
If you get in your one-day time machine, you meet Al Capone,
do not call him Scarface. That is the nickname he doesn. If you get in your one-day time machine, you meet Al Capone, do not call him Scarface.
That is the nickname he doesn't like.
Call him Alan.
Alan!
Alan, so good to see you, Alan.
Alan Capone.
It completely changes it, doesn't it, Alan?
What does Alan Capone sound like?
Hello, Alan Capone.
I'm an independent financial advisor.
I've been an IFA for about 20 years now.
And I love it.
It's just I'm not affiliated with anyone, so I don't take commission.
I just give good, honest advice.
And the thing is, the amount of exams an IFA's got to sit these days,
it's like I never left school, honestly.
This is my wife, Karen Capone.
She's a lovely girl. We've been together since we were 12. This is my wife, Karen Capone. She's a lovely...
And we've been together since we were 17.
Oh, Alan.
Little Al Capone.
He was a member of some small street gangs growing up in the city of New York.
His membership included a membership of the Bowery Boys,
the Brooklyn Rippers, and the Five Points Gang.
In 1919, Al Capone moved from New York to Chicago,
where he was employed as an enforcer for the local boss, Big Jim Colosimo.
That is a good name.
That is a great name.
And as part of his duties, Capone served as a brothel bouncer.
But Capone was heavily involved in the bootlegging business.
This is the era, of course, of Prohibition.
And he worked alongside his mentor john torio john torio is
very he's a very interesting character i'm going to talk about talk about him in a second so john
to road
deaf and this this chicago gangster of the 1920s i can categorically state was not a judge and
master chef um yeah john torio he was kind of of the mentor of Al Capone and Al Capone worked
under John Torrio. Al Capone had also had legitimate business dealings in Chicago. He
was a boxing promoter as well. Torrio took over Big Jim Colosimo's empire in 1920 when the latter
was murdered. Big Jim Colosimo murdered probably on the orders of Al Capone. Wow.
By 1925, five years after Colosmo was executed,
Capone had risen to the top.
But this is the interesting thing about John Torrio, his mentor.
In January that year, John Torrio was shot and almost assassinated and he fled to New York to recuperate.
And while he was in New York, he decided,
I'm done with being a criminal, I'm done with being a gangster.
He handed over the
reins to al capone and he famously said these words it's all yours al me i'm quitting it's
europe for me he handed over to al capone an empire worth about 70 million dollars a year
which is the equivalent today of 1.3 billion dollars per year no that is the scale of the chicago crime outfit that al capone
inherited so let me tell you i had no idea it was that sort of think about it bootlegging in
prohibition that alone like you basically own all of the booze brands. Wow. So he's like mortgage free, isn't he? You can always tell.
Tom's dream of
becoming mortgage free.
Whenever we discuss anything
fantastical, it's bubbling
under the surface. Was Al Capone mortgage
free?
Rothschild, was he mortgage
free? It's the main reason I
dreamed of being a footballer
when I was a teenager
was it one day
I'd get to be mortgage free
Alexander Selkirk
the guy that based
Robinson Crusoe
was he mortgage free
I suppose
well he was free
if you're living
on a desert island
you are free of a mortgage
I suppose
so let me go back
to John Torrio
so he was shot
nearly assassinated
and he just decided
do you know what
I don't want to be
a gangster anymore and he's such an interesting character because so how rarely do you hear a
story of a gangster and they actually kind of make it out of being a criminal scot-free John
Torrio was described by the US Treasury official called Elmer Irie as being the biggest gangster
in America and he wrote this US treasury official he was the
smartest and I dare say the best of all the hoodlums best referring to talents not morals
Torrio when he decided I'm done with crime he left the US with his wife and mother in 1925 to Italy
but when in 1928 Mussolini started going after the mafia, he came back to the US.
And in 1929, he decided,
I'm going to create a national body
to prevent huge inter-gang wars
amongst the big American mafia crime families.
And it was his idea to create the National Crime Syndicate.
He actually came up with that idea and he implemented it.
How interesting.
But one thing I thought is,
why are you calling it the National Crime Syndicate?
You know, like, if that does go to trial.
Also, how hard is it going to be to book somewhere for Christmas under that name?
Exactly. Call it, I don't know,
call it the Chocolate Raisin Consortium or something,
just to really put people off the scent.
I think people are going to become really interested as to what that is
that is if anything's gonna draw in fascinated eyes if people go have you heard they've set
up something called the chocolate chocolate covered raisins are are nice it's one of the
best foods um i think you're right though chris what's interesting about that very briefly is
i assume you couldn't really leave no organized crime that way. I thought he was just in. So he creates a national crime syndicate in 1929.
In his whole career, he got one conviction,
which was, like Capone, for income tax evasion in 1939.
He served two years, got out, lived until he was 75 years old,
and he died having a heart attack in a barber's chair waiting for a haircut.
So he kind of made it out.
Wow.
And that haircut was
from al capone's father is that the link is that what you're saying oh no i've got i've got also
taking you back a couple of minutes elmer that's a name you don't hear yeah anymore isn't it
fudge really killed off really ruined that for everyone back to capone once in charge he was
notoriously ruthless any business
that tried to avoid dealing with him was soon blown up protection rackets uh brothels gambling
prohibition he's involved with everything um many of Chicago's brothels were uh were down to
Capone's activities in May 1926 the Chicago Daily Worker reported there was an entire village where gangsters rule and Scarface Al Capone was absolutely in charge.
They wrote, this Caponeville was home to a notorious resort known as the Stockade.
Despite his notoriety in the newspaper, this is what blows my mind about Capone.
He's got all this notoriety, but people still wanted to be his friend he had many kind of mates who were
legitimate businessmen and he said he was quite a public facing individual and said i'm giving the
people what they want i'm satisfying a public demand in the wake of the wall street crash and
the onset of depression he opened up soup kitchens and provided a degree of charity to the unemployed
as well if you're if you're making 1.4 billion a year you could be up you could be opening lobster
kitchens it doesn't need to be soup. You can
really properly give the
people what they want. A little
insight into what Tom would be doing. The lobster kitchens
open. It would be absolutely lovely. You come
down, choose your own lobster.
It'd be great. I'd have some sides as well
by the way. It wouldn't just be lobster.
And that's in a restaurant that is mortgage
free.
Really puts it into perspective, doesn't it?
He was also mates, famously, with the Deputy Commissioner of Police, John Steege.
Capone had his hands in labour unions as well,
including many of the Chicago branches of the American Federation of Labour.
He was also big political allies with the Republican mayor of the city, William Hale Thompson.
And Capone actually gave him a quarter of a million dollars for Thompson's mayoral run in 1927, which almost
certainly pushed him over the line to win that one. But the big turning point for Capone came
in 1929 when he set in motion the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Do we know about this?
Not really, no.
I do know about this. I know about this and the fact that he died of syphilis. They are the two Capone facts that I think everyone
knows. Yeah. The method of the St Valentine's Day Massacre sticks in my mind so vividly.
So what he did is he had a rival gang, the North Side Gang, who rivals it for bootlegging
booze, obviously. And what he did is he figured out where the HQ was,
he stalked it for a bit,
and he arranged that people in his crew,
dressed as police officers,
fake raided them
and got them all to line up against a wall,
at which point they queued in gunmen
who mowed them all down with machine gun fire and shotguns.
Oh, wow.
That is brutal.
So he completely mowed them all down.
And it was the public outcry which followed that,
which meant Capone had real eyes on him.
And it was a real pressure to be investigated.
Wow.
Alan Capone would not do that.
There's no way Alan Capone would do anything as awful as that.
Al, though.
That's the thing about American gangsterism
that sticks in the mind the most,
the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
The fact it was that they thought they were getting raided by police, turn away and face the war and then they're getting gunned down. Blimey.
Brutal.
President Herbert Hoover set in motion the successful federal efforts to imprison Capone for his crimes.
But famously, the other big thing on top of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, it is that they got him on tax evasion. He had hundreds and hundreds of other crimes
that he would have committed
and people really knew about,
from murder to traffic violations.
5,000 violations of prohibition laws
are on his list as well.
But they got him on tax evasion.
And at his medical examination
following his incarceration
at Atlanta Penitentiary in 1932,
it was discovered that he was absolutely riddled with sexually transmitted diseases.
Most notably syphilis.
Really?
As Ellis says.
Well, well, well.
Did you know this?
That once he was inside, he started suffering from the effects of cocaine withdrawal as well.
His body was a husk of a thing by the time he went to Alcatraz in 1934.
And he remained in Alcatraz until 1939,
where he was allowed to play a banjo and he was allowed to compose songs.
And that made me think, if you were locked in Alcatraz with a banjo,
do either of you believe you could come up with a half-decent EP?
Not with my dick sore from syphilis.
That's a title track, isn't it?
All of my songs would be about cream.
I think I could...
This probably might sound a bit arrogant.
Write one of the most important albums of the last century.
Yeah.
To answer your question, yeah.
Ever since I read in Q Magazine that Bon Iver composed that album forever, forever ago,
he locked himself in a hut for a winter and wrote that whole album.
It's a great album.
Well, he spent a whole year doing it, didn't he?
Yeah, he locked away in a wood cabin writing.
So I think about that all the time.
But Capone had that opportunity, but alas, he didn't create something that was going to go to bed.
We're just doing the podcast version aren't we?
I'm in my attic right now
making the great
light-hearted crime podcast.
Al Capone livid at you Ellis
he's your podcasting at half ten
at night and he wants to go to bed.
Stop podcasting.
They got him on tax evasion
and he had syphilis yeah i suppose is that because
it's something you can more easily follow there's a trail to tax evasion whereas i suppose with
murder and all sorts of stuff it's just other people saying that's nothing to do with me but
clearly the money yes i suppose maybe it's an easier thing to to sort of get someone on possibly
because the evidence is there yeah i think you're you're right. You could just, I mean,
how much money was he making?
What was it again?
$1.3 billion a year.
He didn't, yeah, also this is crucial.
He didn't need to be avoiding his tax
if you're making 1.3 billion.
Just pay the tax.
You've got enough left over.
He's got to be on 50% tax rate by then, isn't he?
Super tax.
But that's okay.
£515 million pounds a year whatever
you're left with is enough to be going i'm fine with that yeah exactly um so he was released from
prison in 1939 and that's when he began formal treatment for his syphilis which was by now
advanced and his mental capacities were according to medical records significantly reduced um his
final days were spent at Miami Beach.
And it was there in January 1947 that he suffered a debilitating stroke.
And the following day, he had a heart attack.
And at 7.25, he died on the 25th of January 1947.
But yes, I go back to the central point of this.
At his peak, he oversaw a crime empire
that was generating $1.3 dollars in today's terms per year
incredible
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Arnold Rothstein is a man better known by names invented by someone else.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, he was called Mayor Wolfsheim,
and to Damon Runyon, he was Nathan Detroit, or simply The Brain.
Now, Rothstein, have you read The Great Gatsby?
I haven't, actually, no.
I mean, everyone says it's incredible.
Oh, yeah, I haven't.
The great works, isn't it?
But for some reason, I've just never been drawn to it.
Do you know what?
I read The Great Gatsby when I was younger
and didn't really get it.
And then I read it when I was about 35
and really, really got it.
Really?
And it's interesting when that happens sometimes.
I remember I read The Catcher in the Rye
when I was about 16,
which is really when you're meant to read it
and really loved it.
And I read it when I was 28
and got a completely different thing out of it and then read it when i was 28 and got a completely different
thing out of it and then read it again about 10 years after that it's quite interesting how
obviously the text remains the same but you're the person who's changing that is really interesting
i in general i'm drawn to books about hardship and people struggling i don't know why i think
it was like the struggling gatsby or something that, I might read it but there's something about this opulence
and success, I'm not normally drawn
to those characters
The Road is one of my favourite books
I love those sort of books, I find those fascinating
It's a great novel about regret
though
The Great Gatsby
when you tap into the regret of it
I think that is
by the time you're older and you've got regrets in your life.
The regretful Gatsby.
That's what I should call it, then I'd be in.
Call it the regretful Gatsby and I'd buy a copy.
Yeah, Tom, do you extrapolate what an entire book's about
purely from its title?
Yes, yes, yeah, that's all.
Give me a book and I'll tell you what it's about.
Yeah, because Tom does judge a book by its cover.
Give me any book, give me a title.
The Moby Dick.
No, let's not get into that one.
Anyway, back to the history.
Rothstein was born into a respectable Jewish family in Manhattan in 1882.
His older brother went on to train as a rabbi.
Normal parents, mother called Esther, father was called Abraham.
So from this background, there's no inkling of a criminal life.
Certainly not the criminal life that was to come.
So Abraham, his old man, was in fact a legitimate businessman,
very upright, upstanding character.
He served as chairman of the board at New York's Beth Israel Hospital.
The one-time Democratic presidential candidate and New York governor, Al Smith,
called the older Rothstein Abe the Just.
So at the moment, you're thinking, he's going to be a good guy.
He's going to be an upstanding guy.
That's what it seems to be hinting at.
But Arnold had other ideas.
He flunked out of school and instead he turned to gambling.
As he said later, I always did it.
I can't remember when I didn't.
I think I gambled because I loved the excitement.
Nothing else mattered.
Now eventually he turned gambling into a career.
In 1910, aged 28, Rothstein opened a casino
in the heart of Manhattan's red-light district, Tenderloin.
He also ran a corrupt race course in Maryland.
By 1912, aged 30, he was a millionaire.
Tom, he was mortgage-free.
It's just, it's written in the stars for you.
All you need to do is open a casino and a corrupt race course
and you too could be mortgage free.
You don't need to be making podcasts and writing jokes for other people.
Dear listeners, it's been lovely spending this time with you,
but I'm now...
I'm off to run a corrupt race course.
I need to work out, what's that game First to 21?
That's quite a good one, isn't it?
That with the cards.
Blackjack. Blackjack.
Blackjack. That'll be the main one I do.
God, I just had a vision then, Tom, of you turning up in Las Vegas going, can I play
Count to 21, please?
You don't sound
like a natural. Let me
tell you something. What I am actually doing,
above the table, it'll say First to 21, and people
will go in and think, this casino has no idea
what they're doing. Luring them into a false sense of security.
They're parting with their money.
Very good.
Give it three weeks, I'm mortgage-free.
Very, very nice.
Now then, through his contacts,
and now obviously he had deep pockets
because he was a millionaire,
he was able to influence the direction of sport.
His notoriety grew in 1919
when it was alleged
that he caused the Black Sox scandal
in baseball's World Series,
paying members of the Chicago White Sox
to throw the series
and allow the Cincinnati Reds to win.
Rothstein had, of course,
bet on the latter happening
and so he made a fortune.
Now, the 1919 Black Sox scandal
is one of those things that if like any person was born in
the uk you watch a lot of hollywood films growing up it crops up all the time yeah it still has such
a massive impact on american culture i think the black sock scandal so what was you saying was this
the the final that was thrown? Yeah, the World Series.
I mean, that is huge, isn't it?
Yeah.
Because what's interesting about that is you are asking athletes who have got to the pinnacle.
This is the thing you've been working for.
It's not just throwing a league game, which you can then maybe rectify in time.
You've reached the World Series, and you are choosing to throw that.
That's what's amazing.
It's massive.
I mean, the Champions League final in football
would be the equivalent, I suppose.
Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is the thing you've dreamed of your whole life
and now you're going, well, I'll do that.
And also there are names like Shoeless Joe Jackson.
They're kind of, I don't know, I'm not a big baseball fan,
but I do know of Shoeless Joe Jackson. We just sound of, I don't know, I'm not a big baseball fan, but I do know of shoeless Joe Jackson.
We just sound like he needed the money.
To be fair to him.
And next season he's new shoes
Joe Jackson.
Yeah, if he was shoeless Kevin De Bruyne
he'd be like, fine.
Shoeless Vinicius Jr.
It's Trouserless Steve I felt for.
Take the money, Steve.
Trouserless Joe.
Trouserless Joe.
Yeah.
I'm coming round to this now.
Now, Rothstein tried a similar thing
with the Welsh box of Freddie Welsh,
offering large sums of money to the world champion to throw fights.
But in this case, Welsh refused, which is incredible.
Yeah.
Bit of pride there, Al.
Look at that.
I love that.
Yeah.
He was a Welsh world champion.
He was born in Pont-a-Prix, made his fortune in America.
And yeah, he was offered money by Al Rothstein, turned it down.
I must admit, I've got an incredible amount of respect and admiration for that now with the
advent of prohibition Rothstein turned his hand to bootlegging he bought up high quality alcohol
in Britain Canada and the West Indies and he imported it into the United States paying bribes
where necessary smuggling where he could get away with it. But Rothstein realised that every gangster was going to get in
on booze, so he turned instead
to narcotics. By the mid-1920s,
he was the leading
drugs kingpin in the USA, specialising
in heroin. As the US
Attorney General Charles Tuttle said in
1927, the entire dope
traffic in the United States is being directed
from one source, Arnold
Rothstein.
Wow.
So the entire drug traffic?
Certainly in heroin, yeah.
That's incredible.
Okay, yeah.
So he had associates travel to Asia and Europe to buy supplies and ship them to America, where another set of associates would establish supply chains.
No use of the word associates and not friends there.
Difficult to be mates with someone who's in charge of that kind of stuff.
You're an associate, an acquaintance.
Where another set of associates would establish supply chains,
not only in New York, but also in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and beyond.
So Al Capone's cocaine habit was at one time supplied by Rothstein's Enterprise.
Wow.
I mean, it's just the magnitude of it.
Yeah.
That's the incredible thing.
So, pen portraits describe a man who travelled around New York City
in a Rolls Royce, dressed in the finest clothes,
maintained his office at Lindy's restaurant on Broadway.
Why would you maintain your office at a restaurant?
Yeah.
Get an office space that's got a canteen.
It would be so annoying. The lack of privacy. Yeah. Get an office space that's got a canteen.
It would be so annoying.
The lack of privacy.
And also the smells, the constant smells from what's been cooked.
I lived above a dominoes once.
It was one of the worst years of my life.
Yeah, I lived next door to a chip shop.
And it just meant that I ate chips every day.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I doubled in size, yeah.
He would be seen at the Astor or the waldorf with eminently prominent political figures it was said of him being seen mattered but it was also
dangerous so on the 4th november 1928 at the park central hotel in manhattan rothstein was gunned
down by a rival whom he never named and died a few days later apparently r Rothstein had gambled $320,000 and lost. He refused to pay and claimed
that it was all a fix. He was murdered to prove a point. That's a big call, isn't it?
Yeah.
As one press account said of him, a lust for risk vibrated in every corpuscle of his blood,
but he harnessed his emotions with nerves of steel wire. When others poured liquor down Wow.
So the guy was cool, calm and collected.
Yeah.
That's amazing, isn't it?
Yeah. It's interesting what isn't it? Yeah.
It's interesting what you're saying about the magnitude of it all.
Like, aside from the immorality of it all
and your moral compass being completely skewed,
the skills as a business person are amazing.
And as an administrator, yeah.
Exactly.
To run something like that.
I would not be good at being in charge of funneling all heroin into America.
No.
It doesn't feel like it's in my skill set.
I would like to see you try.
This sounds awful.
I haven't got the attention span.
Yeah.
I also don't know what heroin looks like, so it'd be the wrong thing.
The amount of times I'd be like, fuck, heroin in St. Louis.
I knew I was going to sort that out.
Sorry.
I tend to keep notes on my iPhone
and I thought I'd backed it up to the cloud.
Sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Now, he was also likely to dine on vegetarian cuisine too
as others tucked into red meat.
So quite an oddly clean living bloke.
But like Capone in Chicago, Rothstein nurtured political alliances,
chiefly through the Tammany Hall organisation,
which was closely linked to the New York Democratic Party.
And his death led to the Hall's rapid downfall
on the reforming Republican mayoralty of Fiorello LaGuardia in the 1930s and 1940s.
He also left behind another legacy.
It was his efforts that transformed organised crime from gangland activity
into a corporate world where money was at the heart of everything.
And to make money, he learnt how to play both sides against each other
until, of course, it all went wrong.
So a remarkably shrewd bloke.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'd never heard of him.
It's weird because, obviously, Al Capone.
Everyone's heard of Al Capone. But I'd never heard of him, so it's weird Because obviously Al Capone, everyone's heard of Al Capone
But I'd never heard of Arnold the Brain Rothstein
Yeah, I had no idea
I think that's what you want to be as a gangster, isn't it?
You want to operate quietly in the background
You don't want to be well-known
No, definitely not, yeah
What's that movie, American Gangster?
Is that what it's called?
Yes
Who's the lead in that?
Denzel Washington.
And he gets bought a very flashy coat, doesn't he?
That's exactly what I'm thinking about, Chris.
And he breaks his cardinal rule of not wearing flashy clothes,
and that leads to his downfall.
So he's photographed.
And I've ruined the film for anyone who hasn't seen it.
Shaking the hands of other people.
That's exactly it.
That is exactly what I'm thinking of.
Great movie. Check it out. If exactly what I'm thinking of. Great movie.
Check it out.
If you are a massive supplier of heroin,
you want to operate quietly in the background,
possibly as a podcaster slash comedy writer.
You don't want to wear anything flashy.
I'd go as far to say I would avoid any flashy.
I would be naked at all times.
I don't want to wear anything that suggests any wealth.
Dressing gown. Shoeless Tom Crane. Pantless Tom Crane. Yeah, exactly. be naked at all times so that i'm not i don't want to wear anything that suggests any wealth pantless tom crane yeah exactly that suggests i haven't got millions of drug money if you're
turning up in your underpants to a restaurant we'll go that guy's not there's no way he's
running heroin through britain he's not where's he hiding it for a start so i've absolutely loved that episode guys what a fun one i really enjoyed that
tempted by life of sort of of crime no it just seems so much hassle and obviously immoral.
But the hassle would be so stressful.
Well done for mopping that up.
That's good.
Just to make it clear that these are the views of historical criminals
and not the views of over-the-time.
We do not share their stance.
Before we say goodbye, I think it's only right
as an exciting little new feature when I
take
or one of us
takes back
10 subscribers
to the past
in the one day time machine
a little adventure
shall we see
where we're taking
the subscribers this week
you interested
oh I can't wait
I can't wait
I've taken them back
to 480 BC
ooh
to the battle
of Thermopylae do you Battle of Thermopylae.
Do you know what Thermopylae is?
No.
Best known for its appearance in the film...
300?
300, exactly.
Yes!
Fire up the one-day time machine.
We will.
It's the one-day time machine.
It's the one-day time machine.
It's the one-day time machine.
It's the one-day time machine.
It's the one day time machine.
Okay, so the Spartans are fighting the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
And I have thrown our subscribers into the heat of battle alongside the tiny Spartan army.
So we'd like a little roll call of how our subscribers got on.
Okay?
Dominic Bailey didn't make it, unfortunately.
Died. Katie Dyer didn't make it. Didn't make it. Katie Dyer, I'm afraid, didn't make it unfortunately died Katie Dyer
didn't make it
didn't make it
Katie Dyer
I'm afraid
didn't make it either
Adrian Dalewood
didn't make it
these are people who
the question is
who survived the battle
Rob Easton
didn't make it
either
didn't survive
Gavin Duffy
he made it
but only because
he went to the
he went to the wrong
drop pin.
So he ended up just eating some squid in a quite nice taverna, which is all right.
So he actually had quite a nice time.
That sounds fantastic, yeah.
Ellen Mainwood, did she make it or not make it?
Did she survive this battle?
She had a nice glass of rosé.
And then she couldn't be bothered to have a main because she thought it was a backdoor.
So she had a nice pudding and then she had her arm blown off.
I'm afraid none of that didn't even make it to the restaurant.
She just didn't make it at all.
She was gone within seconds.
Luca Papaccio.
Now, this is an interesting one because Luca, we thought that he'd made it,
but then he started speaking Greek and we realised it was just someone who looked a bit like him.
It wasn't Luca.
Luca we found behind a bush and he hadn't made it him. It wasn't Luca. Luca we found behind a bush
and he hadn't made it either. Charlie McCormack.
Now this was a weird one. Charlie McCormack,
he ran off, but then his loincloth
fell down, he tripped over, bumped his head and he
didn't make it either. But in a way
it felt like justice because he'd fled
the battle. Can you see?
Yeah. There was a feeling amongst
the remaining group that that was probably for
the best. I've just realised that everything I've said has involved gunfire
and this is hundreds
of years before the gun was invented
So I'd like to retract
everything I've said
I mean centuries before the gun was invented
Sorry
Ellen Mainwood, she I'm afraid
didn't make it. Jessica Austin
Now Jessica hid in a bush
and then she appeared
and did this really
sort of cool
spinning sword chop thing
but sadly she missed
and just sort of
swiped the thin air
and Jessica didn't
make it either
unfortunately
so that's that
if you're interested though
I did make it
would you like to know
how I made it
how did I survive
the battle
against Sparta
did you spend
an hour in a urinal?
If I'm in a battle in Sparta, I don't need a urinal.
That's already done.
I made it because I just stayed in the one-day time
machine and I put the central locking on.
Just put the door on.
You were last out.
I called everybody out, everyone out.
I closed the door last morning.
Put it on Spotify
just had a nice time
drowned it out
lovely
if you would like
to be involved
and taken back
on a future
one day time machine
adventure
by Ellis
or Chris
or myself
then become a subscriber
it's another little benefit
and we will take you back
on an exciting journey
sometime in the future.
But there's a lot more benefits
to being a subscriber,
aren't there, Al?
What is there?
Well, you get two bonus episodes a month.
You also get ad-free episodes.
You get episodes a week early.
You just end up with a kind of
general sense of cool.
But actually, you can't really put a financial value general sense of cool. But actually, you can't
really put a financial value on.
But if you had to, it'd be £4.99 a month.
Oh yes, of course you can. £4.99
a month, yeah.
And you can guarantee to yourself
the respect of your peers
and work colleagues. So yeah,
it really, really is worth doing.
So go to owhwattatime.com
And thank you so much.
Whatever way you support the show, do email us.
Anything you want to send in our direction, we love to read it.
And we'll see you guys next week.
Goodbye.
Bye. Thank you.