They Don't Love You Like I Love You: Map Crimes

0:00 Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

0:03 Zarin. Elizabeth. Zoan.

0:06 I got a quick question for you, pal.

0:08 I've got a slow answer for you. Buddy old pal.

0:10 Do you know what's ridiculous?

0:12 I was hoping that was the question because I do have an answer for this one. So I was doing some research on the story I told you recently, and I was looking through. Which story was that? About the beef pirates. Oh, okay. New Jersey. The other day. Yeah, in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area. And I saw this headline and I was like, wait, what? And the headline is this.

0:32 Deer are all over New Jersey roads looking for sex, state officials warned.

0:37 What?

0:38 That's what I did. I was like, what the hell? So it turns out that the story, they were warning New Jersey drivers that on November 1st, we're going to change the time and they would put them in like, you know, direct conflict with the mating habits of the New Jersey deer and they don't want, who happen to often apparently come down to roads. Do it in the road.

0:59 They'll be like, hey, what's going on over there? Why don't we do it in the road? Yeah, you a little horny? You horny too? Go cross the road. Put your life in your hands. So yeah, so these like, these stags and does are coming down to the road and like doing whatever they do. And it's like white-tailed deer.

1:14 And it's really dangerous, as you know, from being down south, like how it is, right? Oh, yeah. With the deer.

1:19 Everywhere.

1:20 Come the fall, it's like someone you know is getting in an accident. Oh, yeah, totally. And apparently, according to State Farm, one in 226 drivers in the Garden State have a chance of an animal collision in October through December. Yeah. And most of those crashes, about 41%, come in November. So that's like... Look out on the roads for horny deer if you're out there. I just want everyone to be safe. So keep your eye out for some stag with a look in his eye because he don't know what he's going to do next.

1:50 You smell the cologne.

1:51 There you go. Ridiculous, right?

1:53 That is ridiculous.

1:56 Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Please.

1:58 Losing your way with maps.

2:01 Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

2:22 This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always 99% murder-free and 100% ridiculous.

2:33 You heard the nice lady, always. Always. All right, let's talk about maps. Like this song by the- No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yes.

2:41 Like, let's have a frank discussion about wayfinding.

2:45 Oh.

2:45 Yeah.

2:46 You know I keep paper maps in my car.

2:49 We've talked about our fondness for paper maps, you know. We each used to have those Thomas.

2:54 Brothers maps in our car back in the day.

2:56 I've got like a giant California Atlas, like a spiral bound one.

3:02 Totally.

3:02 I got a bunch of AAA maps and a Thomas guide for the LA County that I still haven't thrown away. And I don't even live there anymore.

3:08 Yeah.

3:08 But you got to just keep it under the seat. You never know. It's an emergency. I like the spiral bound because then you don't have to try and fold them back up from whence they came.

3:17 Totally. And it's also like the cookbooks where you can lay it down pretty much flat. Yeah, exactly.

3:21 Right across the dashboard. As much as I do love online map, mapetry. Do you? I love a physical map, but like here's the thing I love about online maps.

3:31 Please.

3:32 I sound like an old person who's just discovered these.

3:34 The online maps.

3:35 So I know that people have been doing this for ages, but I started putting my destination into Google Maps if I'm driving like at least 30 minutes away.

3:42 Uh-huh. Right?

3:43 Even if I know exactly how to get where I'm going.

3:46 Sure.

3:46 Because they'll reroute you. Google Maps will reroute you to get around stuff in traffic.

3:51 You do it for traffic warnings? Yeah. So I was driving the.

3:53 Other day on a trip that would normally be about like an hour and a half. I knew exactly where I was going.

3:57 Sure.

3:58 I'm like, Google Maps is out there telling me there's cops up ahead. Like, okay, whatever.

4:02 Who cares?

4:03 And then it was like, here, get off the freeway here.

4:06 I'm like, Google, we don't normally do that. I thought like only Waze did. I didn't know Google did that. No.

4:10 And I said, you're crazy for this one, Googs. And I did as I was told. And so did like a handful of other drivers. We're getting off at this random exit in the middle of nowhere. So we dip around on back roads and such.

4:21 And I get a glimpse.

4:22 Over at Highway 80 parking lot. Parking lot.

4:25 Saved you.

4:26 Me and the pack were sidestepping the whole thing. A paper map can't do that for you.

4:30 No, but you know what can do that? Spider sense.

4:34 Completely.

4:34 No, but honestly, what I do, as you well know from driving with me, is as soon as I see brake lights, I just get off. And I'll just find my way on backcountry roads because I know a lot of them. I'm like, we'll figure this out. If I can.

4:45 Avoid getting on the freeway, I will. So if I can take surface streets places and it's going to take me twice as long, that's totally fine.

4:52 Oh, yeah. I got very used to that in L.A. I knew all, especially going to Orange County. I didn't want to be on any of those southern freeways. But also, by the way, with the thing with Google Maps, only thing I ever use that for is I will look right at the beginning because you've taught me you can see the traffic if it's red. Yeah. And so now I just look to see if there's any red on the route I plan to go. And then I toss my phone away. You just don't go? No, of course I go. I'm just like, I'm not leaving the house.

5:15 We're using a Zarin route.

5:18 Driving through people's yards.

5:21 So, okay, back to paper maps. Please. The old ones.

5:24 I mean, like, really old ones are collector's items.

5:27 Really? Are they? Yeah.

5:29 Major pieces of history.

5:31 Like, how old are we talking?

5:32 I'm talking about, like, a couple hundred years old.

5:34 Oh, sure.

5:34 Not like, oh, this 1984 map of Contra Costa County.

5:38 That's what I thought for a second. I'm like, are there map collectors? Like, the really old ones from, like, 1995.

5:41 Exactly.

5:45 No, old, old, like real old.

5:48 There are Thomas, like AAA map collectors.

5:52 People collect everything.

5:53 I've got legitimately go in like my little home office. I have like, you know, California maps from the 60s. That's my version of like ancient collection maps.

6:03 Sure. I get you. All right.

6:05 So these are pieces of history is what.

6:08 I'm talking about. Like the Piri Res map.

6:10 Yeah, it makes sense that people would collect them. The Babylonian map of the world that's located in the British Museum is often called the oldest world map.

6:20 Oh, I think it's one, yeah.

6:21 It's clay tablets. So we don't have clay tablet maps in our cars. It's a schematic world map from like 6th century BCE.

6:29 Okay.

6:30 You could probably pick up a chunk of that at Hobby Lobby. It's a cosmological map, not a navigation tool. The Carta Pisana is probably, they're thinking it's like around 1300. That's at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Oldest surviving nautical chart. So it has no known ancestors. There aren't any that we can find that are older. But it already has the grid of circles and compass directions that you see on later charts.

6:58 Yeah.

6:59 And, like, it was crazy accurate about the Mediterranean. The Atlantic part of it, not so good.

7:05 Of course not, yeah. It's basically a map of the Mediterranean.

7:08 Yeah, these are based on, like, sailors and merchants' firsthand observations. You know, Genoa, Venice.

7:17 Big places, Majorca. Oh, yeah.

7:19 Later excelled in those. Anyway, so the highest price paid for any map is likely the $ 1, 507 million. Waldseemüller world map.

7:31 Ah.

7:31 Waldseemüller.

7:33 It was bought by the Library of Congress for $ 10 million from a German prince.

7:38 Hmm.

7:39 The kiss of a prince.

7:40 Wow.

7:41 And then there was, like, one that went for $ 2 million at Christie's in December 2010. That was, like, a private auction one. That was a 1784 map of the U.S.

7:53 Oh, okay.

7:54 So, anyway, this whole, like, high-end antique map collecting and dealing. It's a very small world.

8:00 I imagine.

8:01 Yeah, a lot of private sales that are never publicly disclosed. And when you have that kind of money involved, crime isn't far behind.

8:09 Ah, yes.

8:10 Criminals are going to steal them.

8:11 They're also going to fake them. And that is what.

8:13 I'm here to talk to you about today.

8:15 Map forgers? Yeah. Let's start with the Vinland map. Okay.

8:19 So that's a parchment world map about the size of a placemat. that appeared to show a pre-Columbian coast of North America.

8:27 Okay.

8:29 And it labels a landmass on there, Vinlanda Insula, southwest of Greenland, and it's supposed to date from 1440.

8:38 Okay, so like Leif Erikson. Yes. Okay.

8:40 This is like for decades, people looked to this map as proof that Norse voyagers reached the New World before Columbus.

8:47 Gotcha.

8:48 But like maybe not so much, right?

8:49 Maybe not. Maybe it went off of like a word of mouth.

8:52 The map first surfaced in 1957. And there was this London map dealer, Irving Davis. He went to try and sell it to the British Museum on behalf of this Spanish-Italian dealer named Enzo Farolli.

9:09 He came. Enzo Ferroli is so close to Enzo Ferrari.

9:13 It's like Enzo Ferroli. So it was like this really thin volume. It had a genuine medieval text with it. The Tartar Relation. Historia Tartarorum.

9:27 Okay.

9:27 So that's this medieval text about the Mongols. Oh, nice. And it's an account of the journey by two Polish clerics. into the lands of Genghis Khan in the mid-1200s.

9:37 Huh. Are they, like, going to, like, steal silk?

9:40 Probably, but that's a buddy movie right there.

9:42 Oh, my God. There's so many of those great Central Asian movies. Start writing it. Start writing it. I'm telling you.

9:46 Two Polish priests heading up to— The.

9:48 Most overlooked history is Central Asia. Yep.

9:51 There it is.

9:51 The look you give me. Sure. Are you going on about Central Asia again, Sure, pal.

9:56 It's nothing, got nothing on Pope Leo X. All right, so the copy.

10:01 Of- The Medici Pope, hey. Paisan.

10:04 So the Vinland map arrived with also a 15th century manuscript, not the original of this, you know, Tartar relation. And radiocarbon dating of its paper and parchment put it at about like 1400, 1460.

10:18 Wow.

10:21 So the British Museum, they're like, you know, thanks for the offer, but we're going to pass. There's no provenance. And this is not original binding.

10:30 So good luck with this. And we couldn't steal it.

10:32 And we didn't steal it ourselves.

10:34 So off you go. We like free.

10:39 Lawrence Witten, who's a New Haven rare book dealer and Yale alumnus, he bought it. He paid the guy $ 3, 500 for it.

10:48 That's actually much less than I thought. Out the door, right? Yeah.

10:51 So Witten has the map. He turns around, tries to sell it to Yale. Yale's like, I can't afford that asking price.

10:57 $ 3, 500?

10:58 No, he wanted like $ 300, 000 for it.

11:00 Oh, dear God. A little bit of a markup, right? Sir, sir.

11:04 So Yale's like, God, that looks really great, but that's too rich for our blood.

11:08 Yeah.

11:09 BS. But then Paul Mellon stepped in. Paul Mellon, a Yale alum philanthropist and thoroughbred racehorse breeder.

11:17 Okay.

11:18 Paul Mellon heir to one of America's greatest business fortunes.

11:21 Yes, like in the Mellon Carnegie.

11:23 Paul Mellon, whose money came from the Mellon Bank. created by his grandpapa, Thomas Mellon, his father, Andrew W.

11:30 Mellon, and his uncle, Richard B.

11:32 Mellon.

11:32 Big in Pittsburgh area. Yes.

11:36 So 1957, around this time, Fortune put together its first list of wealthiest Americans. And they estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister, and his cousins were among the richest eight people in the United States. And their fortunes were around $ 500 million each then. That's like $ 6 billion today.

11:54 So they're like the Waltons family of that time. We're like, everyone's billionaires. Thanks, Grandpa.

12:00 And so Paul Mellon used a little of that cash, $ 300, 000, to buy the map for Yale. But he's like, only if it can be authenticated. And then that authentication, though, has to be conducted in secrecy. See, because Mellon's like, this is super important. I know this is important. We're talking like the earliest map that like unambiguously shows America.

12:26 So he, or I should say the earliest European map.

12:29 Yes, it indicates America.

12:31 So he wanted to keep a lid on it while a scholarly book was being put together.

12:35 Okay.

12:37 And so this like pretty much rules out consulting outside specialists. So the authors were Raleigh Skelton.

12:46 Not the Raleigh Skelton.

12:48 George Painter of the British Museum. Those two. Skelton and Painter? Skelton and Painter of the British Museum.

12:53 Oh, we're having a good party.

12:54 And Yale librarian Thomas Marston.

12:56 Okay.

12:57 Yeah, it's a rip-roaring. So of the three, only Skelton had a ton of expertise relevant to the issues with the map. And so they published this book about the Vinland map and the Tartar relation in 1965 on October 11th, the eve of Columbus Day.

13:14 Oh, that's cute. Thumb your nose. And then the.

13:17 Map was presented to the world as genuine. They're like, we've proven it. The key piece of their case was that There were wormhole patterns that linked the map to the Tartar relation text and to a fragment of a medieval encyclopedia, the Speculum Historial.

13:34 Okay.

13:35 So Marston picked up a special acquisition. He got his mitts on like a dilapidated medieval copy of part of the Speculum. And it was written on a mix of parchment and paper sheets. And it turned out to be this key. to the Vinland map, the wormholes match. So then they figure, okay, actually, the speculum historale was like, that had the map in it. That was the front part.

14:03 And then the relation was at the end.

14:05 Okay, interesting. And so these indicators- And the worm's like, I'm eating my way through. He's like, nom, nom, nom, the hungry little caterpillar. Totally.

14:11 And so they're like, okay, so that connects them. They all three go together. But then people are like, really? That does not make any sense at all.

14:18 At all. I'm people. Yeah.

14:20 So the Smithsonian held this like 1966 conference.

14:24 Oh, like a forensic examination?

14:26 I think it was about like maps in general, but then they're like, let's pick on these guys.

14:31 This will be fun.

14:32 And so one of them stood up and was like, you know what I don't like? The secrecy. And another one stands up. Yeah, I don't like the shaky provenance. And then someone like straightens their glass. I don't like the discrepancies in the text.

14:45 I'm like, let's get him. Nerd fight. I don't really know what came from that.

14:50 But then in 1974, these chemists, a chemist couple, Walter and Lucy McCrone.

14:55 You know they're fun.

14:56 Cute.

14:57 Right?

14:58 They reported that the MAPS ink contained anitase, which is a form of titanium dioxide that was first used commercially in the 1920s.

15:07 I'd say probably not used in the medieval period. Yeah. So Yale's like, all right, fine. It's fine. fine so then like that cute chemistry couple doomed us.

15:17 Wanting to beat the dead horse thomas cahill this dude in 1987 does his.

15:22 Study he's like let me get some shots in but he's.

15:25 Like actually no hold on hold on the titanium can be explained away there's an innocent explanation There's chemicals all over the place, you guys.

15:34 Sure. Okay.

15:35 Guys, who among us? And then, so that was like floated out there and Yale's like, well, maybe, maybe we did mess up. But then 2002, these two chemists, Robin Clark and Catherine Brown, I don't know if they had something going on on the side.

15:49 They're like, you know what?

15:50 You're full of it.

15:51 So everyone's fighting, right?

15:52 Everyone's going nuts. The final word came down.

15:54 I love all these buzzkill comments.

15:57 Totally. 2021, Yale conservators and conservation scientists examined the whole document with tools that hadn't been available.

16:06 That were just brand new. Okay.

16:08 And because earlier studies only were like testing little specific things.

16:13 Now we got like spectra microscopes. They're like throw the whole thing in there.

16:16 Macro X-ray fluorescence scanning.

16:18 There we go. There it is.

16:19 Produced an element map of the entire sheet.

16:22 Oh, hell yeah.

16:23 And so they had like little to no iron, sulfur, or copper. And like medieval iron gall ink would have that.

16:31 Yeah, of course.

16:31 Yeah. And there was titanium like all throughout it, all.

16:34 Over the place. Okay. Way too much. Just spurred all over the place. Ramen. What did you rub it on titanium? Ramen.

16:41 R-A-M-A-N.

16:42 Okay.

16:42 Not like eating ramen.

16:44 Yes. Ramen.

16:46 Microscopy. Confirmed that the titanium was anatase, like they had said back in the.

16:51 Yes, back in the 20s. Yeah.

16:53 And then an electron microscope showed particles that looked a lot like pigment that was commercially produced in Norway in 1923. Like, they went deep CSI on this one.

17:03 Good for them.

17:04 And they compared the map... with 50 other genuine 15th century manuscript fragments that were in Yale's collection. They're like, oh, I'm going to compare it with your own house. Use your own stuff. And those had like way more iron, hardly any titanium. And so then the team also found evidence of intent. So a Latin note on the back of the map was written in medieval ink, and it originally read something like second part of the third part of the speculum, like just like a hey.

17:34 Sure. And it had been overwritten.

17:36 In titanium ink to read as if it were binding instructions that would place the map with the speculum historale.

17:44 Oh, okay.

17:45 And so Yale's curator said this suggests a motive to deceive. Obviously, they wrote over— Yeah, totally. And then— but they said the evidence doesn't show who did it, just that they wanted to do it.

17:57 Other documents weren't forged.

17:59 The radiocarbon dating placed the parchment and the paper— Of the speculum and the tartar relation at like 1400. And then, you know, we have those matching wormholes. So they think that the map's parchment was probably like an end sheet from the volumes. They pulled a blank page out of it and then drew a map on it.

18:17 Okay.

18:18 And so as far as the forger goes, the most developed theory comes from Kirsten Siever. She wrote a book in 2004, Maps, Myths, and Men.

18:30 Three things I don't trust.

18:32 My time on dating apps. Argues that Joseph Fisher, a German Jesuit cartographer who was born in 1858, is behind this whole thing. And she said there was one error on the map that that traces to a 1765 treatise. And she's like, so obviously there's the modern origin. And then people are like, oh my God, you did such a good job. But like the Fisher part, it's not really landing. So they thought like, okay, you've got a case, but why Fisher? Why Joseph Fisher? And so then later research on the provenance suggests that it was, you know, unlikely to have been in Fisher's possession. Then they start pointing in another priest who, A Dominican friar, Luca Jelic.

19:16 But they couldn't confirm anything with him. They're just throwing aspersions at everybody.

19:20 They're like, he wrote in his diary he loves maps. Probably him.

19:22 So we know that the Norse did reach North America, but not because of the map.

19:26 And they called it Vinland when they got their settlement.

19:28 Right. We have the archaeological site in Newfoundland, you know, and independently confirmed Viking settlement. The Vinland map is in Yale's Beinecke Library.

19:38 They kept it.

19:39 Yeah, they kept it.

19:40 It's still there.

19:41 So we have a faked map. Elizabeth, do you have a stolen map or two for me? Yeah, Elizabeth, I do. First some ads.

20:08 Zarin. I'm waiting to hear you do more of an impression of me. That was fantastic, by the way. Hey, Elizabeth. Hey, what's up? Hey, how you doing? That's what I sound like.

20:16 I'm getting my car and drive.

20:18 Drive too fast.

20:20 Look out, kids.

20:21 Old people. No.

20:22 Are you sitting down?

20:23 No.

20:24 Okay, good. Do you want me to sit down?

20:25 No. I want to hit you with what may be one of the waspiest names I've ever heard in a dog's age.

20:33 What do you got? E.

20:34 Forbes Smiley III.

20:37 Smiley with an E? S-M-I-L-E-Y. Yes. E. Forbes Smiley. E. Forbes Smiley III. The third.

20:45 Okay.

20:45 They call him Trip. Woo, Trip Smiley.

20:50 He has a fancy name, but he wasn't a fancy lad.

20:52 Oh, he faked this.

20:54 He grew up firmly middle class. Very New England, though.

20:57 He wanted the associations that that name would suggest.

20:59 He didn't choose his own name. We don't choose our own names.

21:01 But the E part. Yeah, he liked Forbes. Yeah, Forbes. I mean, come on. Forbes, that's old money. He grew up in very New England, small.

21:08 Town New Hampshire. His dad was an engineer for a defense contractor. Forbes was born in 1956. So we're at like peak defense contractor time.

21:19 And New Hampshire is like the Alabama of the New England area. It's a lot of hunting and rural and like, leave me alone. You know, don't come around here. I've been to New Hampshire a bunch. And like, I'm like, oh, this is so different than Vermont. Yeah, right.

21:31 So here's Forbes, right? In New Hampshire, quiet kid. He's into books, history. He's like a little Niles Crane is how I imagine him. And like, okay, here's one. A childhood hobby of his was building ships and bottles.

21:47 That's. Like that takes patience. Oh, hell yeah. I couldn't do it. No. Have you tried? I've tried doing it.

21:53 I've not tried, but just imagining like fine motor skills and patience.

21:56 Yes. And then like the gentle pulling of like when you're setting the mast or whatever. Yeah, no.

22:01 So much swearing coming from me if I were trying to do that.

22:04 Yeah. Yeah, no.

22:06 He was a long, he came from this longtime New England family, like Connecticut Yankees and lots of congregational ministers going back through the generations.

22:15 Oh, interesting.

22:16 In fact, for a while, he thought he wanted to be a minister.

22:19 Okay.

22:19 Like, just like his grandpappy. So, he went off to Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, spent a semester there, and then noped out. He's like, this is not for me. So, then he goes off to Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Oh, yeah. And like, listen, look out, ladies, because he took up juggling and the baritone sax when.

22:39 He was there. Why are you so mean? By the way, do you know that I both took sax lessons and... And can juggle. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. All I hear is this guy's a real.

22:49 He also, he drove around in a checkered cab.

22:51 Oh my God, I love this guy. It's basically you. I'm such a fan of this guy.

22:54 He was, here's actually, this is now as I'm like going through my notes. He once lost a ton of weight by eating nothing but popcorn for a month. The Zarin Burnett story.

23:04 You would totally do that. And I could manage eating only one food for a month. You could.

23:08 So basically this guy's awesome.

23:10 No, I wouldn't go that far.

23:11 He's like playing the saxophone, juggling, driving a cab.

23:14 He's unique.

23:14 He still studied religion there, but not like as a trade.

23:18 Okay.

23:18 He added classics and history, and then he picked up another hobby, Zarin.

23:23 Oh, I cannot wait. What was it? Building dollhouses. Yes. In his back of his checker cab, he's got a couple doll houses in like mid-build. He builds it and then he.

23:34 Just stands on the street corner playing the saxophone to it. So according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, quote, he designed and built a large Victorian dollhouse, two and a half feet high and three feet by four and a half feet at its base, with miniature parquet floors and other fine details for the former Northampton toy store H.L. Childs and Sons. The Gazette wrote about the house, which was displayed for years in the store's front window in October 1977 and again in September 1983. At the time, it was valued at $ 10, 000. Wow.

24:06 You know what's the hard part about building those type of dollhouses? Getting it in the bottle. That's good. Thank you. That's really good. Your face told me that.

24:16 That's good. Apparently, the owner of the store just refused to sell it.

24:21 He's like, it's too beautiful. Oh, he's like, he's put it in the window. He's like, everyone walks by and they go, how did you get this beautiful house? They're like, who made this?

24:27 And they're like, you hear in the distance.

24:28 Duke Silver. The builder's out back.

24:32 Duke Silver made it.

24:33 Just look for the checker cast.

24:35 This guy has patient hobbies.

24:37 Yes.

24:37 I mean, can you imagine the time and attention to detail and discipline that took? Miniature parquet floors.

24:43 I think my man got a touch of the tism. Well, you know, who doesn't? Yeah, right? No, I'm just saying, as somebody with a touch, I'm like, I recognize.

24:51 So he loved these careful items, objects that take meticulous care, specialized knowledge. So it made sense that his first job out of college in 1979, when he was 23, was working at the New York City luxury department store B. Altman & Company.

25:07 Oh, of course. Yeah.

25:08 They sold all manner of like genteel upscale goods, including maps. they had a map department and not like a AAA kiosk, like maps as art.

25:18 And like big maps, like ones you could put on a wall, suitable for framing.

25:21 It wasn't like a well-known art dealership, though. According to the New Yorker, quote, the people who bought antique maps at B. Altman were not sophisticated collectors. They might be buying a wedding gift, a tastefully framed map of the Missouri Territory for a couple settling in St.

25:37 Louis.

25:38 But the head of the map department, Rosene Slipher, was a serious collector and.

25:43 An independent scholar.

25:44 So yeah, this is exactly what you're like, a big map, like it's a gift. And so Forbes dove right in. Like he got immersed in, And he was obsessed with this niche interest.

25:55 That's right up his alley. 100%.

25:57 And he became this like expert, autodidact expert. So he went to New York map dealers and like studied all of their inventory. And he spent like a ton of time at the New York Public Library in their map and rare book room.

26:11 Yeah.

26:12 And it was through his job at the department store that he met Norman Leventhal. Now, Leventhal was this like super wealthy Boston real estate guy.

26:21 Hmm.

26:21 And his work focused on making public spaces really inviting and lush for all citizens.

26:28 Oh, I love that.

26:29 That was one of the emphases that he had.

26:31 Yeah, he's like the commons. Yeah, and he was a big map guy. Okay, of course. He's a classy guy. Yeah, right?

26:38 2004, he partnered with the Boston Public Library to create the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center. And this opened up 250,000 maps and atlases for access to the public.

26:49 Good on you, bro.

26:50 Yeah, he wanted kids, everyday people to like fall in love with maps like he did.

26:54 Give the people the maps.

26:55 Yeah, so let's go back. We're back into the, you know, 80s, early 80s. So Forbes met Leventhal. And at this point, Leventhal was early in his obsession with maps. He was just starting to build a collection. And Forbes heard that Leventhal was on the lookout for antique maps of New England and the Boston area. And Forbes is like, I can deliver.

27:18 So B.

27:18 Altman, the store, got purchased by an investment group, and they pretty much ran it into the ground.

27:24 Ah, private equity in the 80s. That's why they called it Corporate Raiders.

27:26 Yes.

27:27 A much more suitable name.

27:29 When the store closed, Forbes hung his own shingle and opened a gallery in Midtown Manhattan.

27:34 Okay, good.

27:35 And then he wound up establishing a private office on the Upper East Side. Like, he was fancy. His main client? Norman Leventhal.

27:42 Oh, yeah.

27:44 So pretty soon, though, Forbes, like, built up this reputation for dealing in really expensive rare maps, and the collectors came to him.

27:52 Back to the New.

27:52 Yorker, quote, he tended to concentrate on a few wealthy clients, serious collectors like Norman Leventhal and Lawrence Slaughter, helping them to focus their interests, educate their tastes, and shape their legacies.

28:19 So... He's like part of the curatorial arts. Yes. Oh, yes. I've got a couple of very select clientele.

28:25 It's very private.

28:26 Yeah.

28:26 So Leventhal, he's on a mission to create like the deepest Boston map collection ever. So he got the main stuff pretty quickly, but then he's like desperate to track down rare and more expensive maps. And those aren't easy to come by. And most of them are at museums or libraries, not with private collectors. That's the big problem.

28:45 And apparently the collectors refer to the stuff that's of that caliber that's in private collections as the float that you can like kind of pick off rather than the stuff that's in, you know, museums.

28:58 So I'm imagining like old like Quaker families and some of the earliest Protestants in the like, you know, the Bay Colony. Sure. We've been here since it was. Yeah. Okay.

29:09 Yeah. And so Forbes, he's all about setting up strong relationships with clients. And he also established himself as like a true scholar. So he got deep into the history of the maps, like all the elements of cartography, the various languages, the nuances and the art of it all. But at the same time, like he knew how to run a business.

29:28 It's a rare combination. Yeah.

29:30 So his areas of expertise were the Age of Discovery and colonial New England.

29:35 And he was an expert.

29:37 Again, the New Yorker, quote, He is known within the trade for having exceptionally fine judgment about maps and their value and for making subtle and arcane discoveries. He once demonstrated, for example, that Johann Reich's landmark Univers Saler Cogniti Orbis Tabula, Universal Chart of the Known World, which was published in Rome in 1507, was based not on Portuguese sources, as others believed, but on Spanish ones, including, in particular, Columbus's account of his fourth voyage. So I love he's like, actually, guys, like, so he's making all these discoveries. Everything's going swimmingly. Or was it?

30:14 Was it, Elizabeth?

30:15 The Daily Hampshire Gazette laid it out, Zarin. Quote, but even from the start, he had problems. Bouncing checks on occasion and taking on more debt than he can handle. At least in part because he was eager to present himself as highly successful.

30:28 So he's not as good at business as you reported.

30:30 So maybe he's like not that good at business.

30:33 And he sounds like he's a little self-conscious about being from the Alabama of the North. So he's putting on airs when he's hanging out with all these old blue bloods.

30:40 Totally, totally. E.

30:40 Forbes.

30:41 So yeah, he's not that great at business. Um, like an example of his not so great aside from bouncing checks, uh, he didn't have insurance and that became a problem when his office, as well as four other nearby galleries got burgled. He lost everything, all the maps that he had in his inventory at the time. It was like $ 250, 000 worth of maps. Um, you know, that's like three quarters of a million dollars today.

31:05 This wasn't an inside job. I should feel bad for him.

31:07 You should feel bad for him. Like everyone took a hit in this little area. Um, so he had to start from scratch. And this took a toll on his finances, obviously, so much so that he wound up closing up his office and running his business out of his house. And as the business struggled, people got tired of him being slow to pay or just like not paying at all.

31:26 I'll bring the maps to you if you want to buy.

31:28 Well, they're like cash.

31:30 You got it. Oh, I got you.

31:31 You got to give me cash for this right now. Like I'm not going to invoice you or that kind of thing. So like he had lost the trust of everybody.

31:38 I got you.

31:39 And at this point, like he's married. He and his wife are hoping to start a family. They moved out of their apartment on the Upper East Side. And in 1997, they bought a place on Martha's Vineyard. It wasn't a fancy place.

31:52 Martha's Vineyard was actually still not cheap, but it was still like you could get in.

31:55 But they did get in like the nicest area. It's called Up Island on like the west end of the island.

32:01 Okay.

32:02 So they put down, you know, $ 265, 000 on a wood shingle home. So that was their down payment.

32:09 Damn.

32:09 That's like putting $ 524, 000 down today. Yeah, that's ridiculous. On a wood shingle home, quote, shaped like a flying saucer on North Road in Chilmark.

32:19 What?

32:20 A flying saucer house. A wood shingled flying saucer house.

32:24 Go to the leeward side of the island. Look for a flying saucer. That's our place.

32:28 Like, yes, please. So things weren't all rosy on the vineyard. Not long after they moved, Forbes had to have open heart surgery.

32:36 Oh, damn.

32:37 His wife got pregnant and she stopped working so she could be a stay-at-home mom. They also, they had a place in Sebbeck, Maine. S-E-B-E-C.

32:47 Mainers.

32:47 I'm so sorry. I know.

32:49 Sebbeck, Sebbeck. Maine.

32:51 So it's this old house on like a good piece of land.

32:54 Now, do we get the idea that the wife came from money? I mean, I don't know. I don't know how they're like affording. No.

32:59 Well, the thing is they picked it up for a song.

33:02 Okay.

33:02 This thing was cheap as chips up there.

33:04 Sure. And it's like straight up rural. Super cute.

33:07 Like an old mill town right on the river. Population 665. But legitimately in the middle of nowhere.

33:14 Yeah.

33:14 Like it is way– I went Google Mappins and Street View, most of the places you can't drag the dude to the street.

33:21 Wow. So that's how rural we're talking.

33:24 In order to make ends meet, Forbes and his family, they'd spend summers in Maine and rent out the place on Martha's Vineyard to tourists.

33:31 Oh, in the summer, of course.

33:32 And that kept the mortgage paid and.

33:34 That kind of stuff. Smart.

33:35 So Forbes and the family, they loved their place in Maine. They loved the house so much. He worked really hard on renovating it and he wanted to become a part of the community. He opened a cafe and grocery store in what was once the town's general store. And then he bought like other buildings in town. He wanted to renovate them all and turn the place into an artist colony.

33:57 There's only like 665 people you said, so it's like, how many buildings do they have in this town? Not a whole lot. He's like the real estate magnate. He's the guy, yeah.

34:06 According to the Hartford Courant, quote, in back of Smiley's farmhouse, a treehouse made of windows and doors has pulleys for raising and lowering water balloons and catapults for slinging them. Periodically, the red barn nearby has been turned into a haunted house. a natural history museum, and a stage for putting on plays.

34:25 Inside the farmhouse, the playroom overflows with thrift store dress-up clothing. Now, there were a couple problems with the vision that Forbes had. To start, the property may have been cheap, but it still cost money.

34:37 A lot of upkeep, too.

34:38 And money isn't something that he really had.

34:40 No, yeah.

34:41 And then the other problem is that there were already people living in town. Like, for generations, right?

34:46 I imagine.

34:47 And they didn't particularly care for someone coming in and buying everything up and trying to make the town into something it wasn't and didn't want to be.

34:53 Oh, of course. Yeah. Hadn't thought about that. And the main people can be a little bit prickly from what I understand. A little bit. Understandably. Yeah.

35:00 You know, the store wasn't making money. I think people were like, I'm not going in there.

35:05 I got 10 fish at home. Right?

35:07 He had a bunch of legal bills thanks to all the zoning fights that he'd started.

35:11 Oh, no.

35:12 Yeah. And then there were the taxes. Like, he hadn't been paying them.

35:15 Okay. So on anything, not just property tax. Just in general.

35:18 I'm talking about, like, his income tax.

35:20 Any tax that came along. They put a lien.

35:22 The IRS put a lien on the Martha's Vineyard place.

35:24 Uh-huh.

35:25 He still had a vision, though. In summer of 2004, he tore down the Martha's Vineyard shingled spaceship. And of course, like, that doesn't get the IRS off your back. Bruh. I know. But he was actually looking to build a whole new modern house on the property.

35:40 With what? The trees?

35:42 I think he's thinking, like, what could make more rental.

35:45 Yeah, I guess where his mind is at. I know, but come on. I didn't hear that he had, like, oh, I can swing a hammer's talents. No, no, no.

35:52 But he did manage to pay off the IRS. He sold some of his land on the vineyard to a neighbor.

35:56 Okay.

35:57 And he was good at shuffling things around.

35:59 Yeah, a little borrow from Peter to pay Paul. Yeah, and he's meticulous. He has a vision.

36:03 He wants to execute it. He loved art and history and maps. He loved the life that he'd created for himself. He just had to find a way to make it sustainable.

36:11 Okay, I feel you. Yeah.

36:13 Let's stop for some ads here, Zarin. Take a breather. And when we come back, we'll see what Forbes had up his sleeve for his next act.

36:20 Yeah.

36:41 Zarin. Elizabeth.

36:43 So as previously mentioned, E. Forbes Smiley III loved maps.

36:48 Yes.

36:48 He studied them, sold them to collectors. And so he may have been focusing on his little magical place.

36:55 In Maine for a while, but the map thing never went away. just stayed in the back of his mind. He's like, I'm a map guy.

37:02 He's like, I sling maps for a living.

37:04 What do you do? I'm a map slinger.

37:05 Map slanger.

37:06 Map monger. He's a total map monger.

37:10 One place that he would often go was Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, where.

37:16 The Vinland map is located.

37:18 So when I got to this part of my research, Zarin, I looked into the place a little more, the Beinecke.

37:24 It looks amazing.

37:26 And I watched a short video about it.

37:29 Look at you.

37:29 Look at me watching videos.

37:31 Watching videos. Welcome to the 21st century, Elizabeth.

37:33 It was like a three-minute video. And I watched about a minute of half of it. So it was baby steps.

37:39 Baby steps. You got to start somewhere.

37:41 I know.

37:41 It's a gorgeous place. Incredible resource. Maybe you can Google Street View.

37:47 I was like, does this video have a transcript I can just scan really quickly?

37:50 Yeah.

37:51 So Forbes, he'd go there and put in requests for books. And something these books all had in common is that they were chock full of maps. So stuff like a world atlas compiled by Gerard de Jode, published in Antwerp in 1578. That was called Speculum Orbis Terrarum, Mirror of the World. It was super rare. There's only a dozen copies in the whole wide world. 90 hand-colored ornate maps up in there.

38:19 Those are amazing. Beautiful.

38:21 Richard Hakloyc's Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation. That was published in London in 1589. This is like.

38:31 What Drake saw. Yeah, exactly. Drake, the explorer. The explorer, yes.

38:35 Yeah.

38:36 Say Drake. Not the rapper with focal talents.

38:41 So those books were source material also for many of Shakespeare's.

38:45 Plays, including The Tempest. Oh, interesting.

38:48 And the Principal Navigations contains a jaw-dropper of a map up in there. It's Typus Orbis Terrarum, Image of the World. It was drawn by the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius. It has like these big dreamy clouds in it, a framed quotation from Cicero in the bottom cartouche.

39:06 Oh, I love that.

39:07 Like it's exactly as you'd picture like an ancient map.

39:10 It's got like sea serpents and like things like there be dragons here. Exactly.

39:15 Forbes also checked out Captain John Smith's advertisements for the unexperienced planters of New England or anywhere. published in London in 1631. He's like, I came back from the New World.

39:25 You want to know about it? Buy my map. He's like, guess what? I named this place New England. Everyone's like, real original, bro.

39:32 It's already got a name. So anyway, that one has like a really intricate folded map in it. And on the maps, there's a portrait of Captain Smith himself. He's like, if you're going to make a map, put me on there, baby.

39:44 And they're like, oh. I want one leg up standing on something. Yeah.

39:47 Like the artists are all rolling their eyes like, oh my God.

39:49 Oh, for Christ's sake.

39:51 So Forbes pulled Captain Luke Fox's Northwest Fox, published in London in 1635. That was the Fox. Luke Fox was the first European to circumnavigate Hudson Bay.

40:04 Oh, that's why it sounds familiar. There it is. Okay.

40:06 And the main map in Northwest Fox is called Part of America, Part of China.

40:13 Sure. What? He used.

40:15 He used a circumpolar projection to create it.

40:18 Okay, then that makes a little more sense.

40:19 He's looking for the Northwest Passage, right?

40:21 Yes, that makes more sense.

40:22 And, like, it's a really great example of confusion about just what he found when he went looking for it.

40:29 Like, this ain't China, son. You gotta go through Russia, bro.

40:33 So, the Smith and the Fox, they're worth about, like, 50 grand each.

40:38 The Hocklewt was, like, 78,000. That Dejaude.

40:42 With the double page world map, the big dog, $ 150, 000 book.

40:47 Wow.

40:47 And he's just, you know, plucking them and checking them out.

40:50 That's crazy that you can pluck and check these books out. Isn't that incredible? I thought you'd have to see it in the reading room, like with white gloves. No, you have to do that.

40:57 You're in the reading room.

40:58 You can't take it home. But I mean, like you're like able, I didn't mean like shake it out, take it home. But I mean, like they're able to check it out and there's not somebody like seated with you, like watching you go over this book. You just take it to the reading room. I'm going to go read in this corner. It's cool. It's cool. Exactly. I'm not bringing any coffee with me, so I should be fine.

41:14 Zarin, close your eyes.

41:16 Oh, my eyes are closed.

41:16 I want you to picture it.

41:18 Hell yeah.

41:24 It's Wednesday, June 8th, 2005. You are a staff member at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library. It's 11 a.m., and that's the time when you do a walkthrough of the library. Your footsteps muffle through the cavernous space. You cruise through the stacks and into the reading room, keeping an eye on things.

41:43 Maybe you find a.

41:44 Book that needs to be placed back where it came from, or there's a student with a question. You enter the reading room. It is quiet except for the occasional turn of a page. There are three people in here using the tables. A student pushes his chair back, stands, gently closes a heavy leather-bound volume, carefully lifts it from the rare book pillow on which.

42:05 It sits, and leaves the room.

42:07 You walk over to where he was sitting and push the chair back into the desk. You straighten the book pillow and glance toward the front of the room. Something catches your eye. It's a white tissue on the ground.

42:18 Gross.

42:19 But you can't imagine someone dropped it on purpose. It must have fallen from a pocket. Probably the older gentleman sitting at the table next to it. He's got four rare books on the desk in front of him. His head is down and he appears deep in thought. The tissue lays on the ground just behind him. But then you see something on the tissue. Something about the size of a pencil. Deep blue plastic and a silver tip.

42:42 An exacto knife. Your heart begins to pound. This is the last thing you want to see in a rare book room. No one should have an exacto knife anywhere in this building. You pad over and quickly scoop up the knife without him realizing it. He glances at you as you pass, but you keep up a swift yet unassuming pace. You pass the other patron in the room, a middle-aged woman pouring over some sort of poetry manuscript.

43:07 She furiously scrawls notes on a yellow legal pad, not looking up from the book. She is oblivious to you as you walk by. She's oblivious to everything but the text in the book in front of her. You exit the reading room and hurry to your office. First, you call over to the main library. You describe the man you saw. White guy, about six feet tall, gray hair, average build, wire-rimmed glasses. Looks like your basic waspy boomer. Forbes, smiley, your colleague at the Sterling Memorial Library says. It has to be him. He tells you that he suspected that Forbes had stolen some items out of books over at the main library, but he didn't have any evidence, so he had to let it go. You thank him and hang up. You dial the security office. Ralph Monterino, a

43:51 20-year vet of the team and the security supervisor, picks up. You quickly tell him what's happening. That there's a man in the reading room you think is stealing items from books. That you found the knife. The line disconnects. You stare at the receiver. Moments later, Ralph bursts confidently into your office.

44:07 He's holding a small video camera. You follow him to the bank of large windows running the length of the reading room. You stand in the stacks as Ralph sets the camera on a shelf, facing it into the reading room, aimed directly at Forbes Smiley. Let's go, Ralph tells you. Back to your office. You look at your watch. It's noon.

44:27 Ralph picks up your office phone and dials. There's a pause, and then he speaks. Martin, it's Ralph. You need to get over to the Beinecke. We got a live one. So, Aaron, Ralph Monterino.

44:39 I love an exacto knife. Right? Right?

44:44 Ralph Monterino, he called the New Haven Police Department, talked to Detective Martin Buonfiglio.

44:50 Okay.

44:51 And so while he's on the phone with the detective, the camera's still recording back at the reading room.

44:56 Oh, nice.

44:56 And it wound up catching Forbes taking one of the maps out of the Dejaude Atlas.

45:01 Yeah.

45:01 And so like the super expensive one. So the staffer saw Forbes at 11. The detective rolled in around 2 o'clock. Forbes was still in the reading room when the detective got there.

45:11 Working slowly.

45:11 Yeah, he stayed there until around 3 o'clock. That whole time, staff and security are watching him. Then the detective followed him out. Per The New Yorker, quote, Bonfiglio tracked Smiley as he made his way through New Haven. Smiley went into the shop of the Yale Center for British Art, quickly exited, then doubled back and entered the museum. Buonfiglio followed him in. According to his affidavit, quote, I then spoke to Smiley and introduced myself. I identified myself as a police detective working for Yale University and asked him if he was just at Beinecke Library, where he replied yes.

45:46 Buonfiglio continued, I then showed Smiley the exacto knife blade that was wrapped in the white tissue and asked if the blade was his. Smiley became very nervous and replied yes. Yes, I must have dropped it.

45:58 I have a cold.

45:59 I then asked Smiley if I might look in his briefcase. Smiley said, of course.

46:04 I like to do bleedings. Right?

46:06 Juan Figlio found, quote, what appeared to be rare maps and documents. There were seven of them. He asked Smiley to return to the Beinecke with him. By the time they got there, another detective had determined that the copy of Smith's advertisements was missing its map.

46:21 Who?

46:23 I love that he's, like, dipping into, like, the various buildings and, like, trying to exit real quick. Like, he knows he's being followed. He knows, yeah. The person who follows him knows he knows he's being followed. Exactly. There's, like, all this theater.

46:34 So Forbes tells the detectives that those are his maps in the briefcase.

46:39 And he's like, why are you— These are my papers? What are you doing?

46:41 He's like, well, I brought them to the library because I wanted to compare them to the qualities of the ones in the library.

46:46 Doy. And they're like, eh.

46:49 And so, like, he's being questioned. Another officer sees a bulge in Forbes' blazer pocket. Of course he's wearing a blazer. And he's like, hey, what's that? Forbes is like, ooh, I forgot about that. That was the map from Smith's book. Like, just tucked in there.

47:05 Just rolled up.

47:08 He asked, like, well, where'd you get that one? Why'd you shove it in your pocket? And Forbes is like, um, I bought it from a London map dealer.

47:15 So glad you asked.

47:16 Detective's like, what's his name? Um, Philip Burden. He's like, all right, let's call Philip Burden. Forbes is like, ooh, okay, wait, maybe it was someone else.

47:23 I don't remember. It could have been Gary. Who's to say?

47:26 So Forbes Smiley III arrested for larceny in the first degree for stealing three maps from the Beinecke Library.

47:33 My man.

47:35 August 2005, he pleaded not guilty, and he got out on $ 175, 000 bail.

47:39 Okay.

47:39 This sent ripples through all the other New England libraries.

47:46 Like a lot of them knew Forbes. Yeah, I bet.

47:49 And so they all start checking their collections. Harvard College Library found that 13 maps were missing from their collection. And he's like, Forbes is like, all right, I stole eight of those.

48:00 Not all 13, but eight of them.

48:02 And he's like, including a map of the New World by Hernan Cortes from 1524.

48:06 Oh, wow.

48:07 Yeah, he's just going for like, going for broke.

48:09 Going for bread all the way.

48:10 June 2006, Forbes cuts a deal. He pleaded guilty, quote, to one count of theft of major artwork in the theft of a map from Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He later pleaded guilty to three larceny charges in state court on the other Yale thefts. In all, he copped to taking 97 maps in eight years. From the New York and Boston Public Libraries, the Newberry Library in Chicago, Harvard University Library, and the British Library in London.

48:40 He's like, you steal, I steal.

48:42 Let's go. Dude, that's like one map a month. Yeah.

48:45 $ 3 million worth of maps.

48:48 Ghetto. Wow. Good on him.

48:49 And he sold most of them to other dealers.

48:51 I mean, bad to do. And all but six have been recovered. All but six have been recovered? That's good. So no harm or damage is being done. No, no, no, no. Other than being separated from the book. Exactly.

49:01 Exactly.

49:01 So he cooperated with the FBI to find the maps. The FBI wrote, quote, Smiley was able to lead us to most of the dealers and collectors who originally purchased them. But returning the maps to their libraries and the original books they were stolen from proved much more difficult. These maps aren't vehicles with identification numbers. stamped on them, said FBI Special Agent Stephen J. Kelleher, who led the case out of the New Haven office. In most cases, they were trimmed, so they didn't even look like they came from books. Complicating the issue was the fact that some of the maps had different titles, many in Latin and and could have come from several known copies of the same book. As Smiley told us the libraries he targeted,

49:42 we called them to see if maps belonged to their collections. Many libraries weren't even aware they were missing any items since they didn't inventory their books frequently.

49:51 You know the last time someone took this book out.

49:53 Well, and they said like, okay, the libraries since then have been like, all right, we need to up our game on security and tracking.

49:59 Annual inventory, guys. Yeah.

50:01 So October 2006, Forbes gets sentenced to five years in prison.

50:05 Whoa.

50:06 He had to pay $ 2 million in restitution to the dealers to whom he sold the hot maps.

50:11 Okay. That makes sense.

50:12 And he had to give up any maps still in his possession.

50:15 Just any maps. We'll take them all. They like took them out of his glove box. You're not allowed to have maps. Yeah.

50:20 Yeah.

50:20 You lost your map privileges, son. Totally.

50:22 And so Forbes is like, all right, I'm going to have to sell the house on Martha's Vineyard and the one in Maine to pay everybody back. People are like, boo-hoo, do it.

50:30 Honey, I have some news. It's not good.

50:33 He did about two and a half years at Fort Devens Federal Prison in Ayer and then six months in a work release program on Cape Cod.

50:40 Can you imagine the party that the people in that main town had when they found out he was.

50:44 Being, like, the, like, subtle, like, gossip at the coffee shop and, like, the nasty comments they're making to each other on the boat docks about him?

50:53 People on, like, a lobster boat? Have you heard? Totally.

50:57 He got out January 15th, 2010. And as of a 2014 piece, it said that he was working as a web designer and landscaper on Martha's Vineyard. No word on where he is now.

51:09 I tried to find out.

51:11 Hope he's doing well.

51:12 Yeah, I'm rooting for the guy. Here's a postscript.

51:15 Rare Book Hub reported that as of 2013, quote, the FBI is still looking for the owners of 28 maps and books stolen by map seller E. Forbes Smiley sometime before 2006. Hmm. Among the items still seeking their owners are an 18th century United States map, a 1683 street plan for Philadelphia, Newfoundland maps from Jeffrey's Atlas, and several antiquarian books. So we know he didn't get these on the up and up. Come get your stuff, guys.

51:44 I was waiting for you to mention Marco Polo or something early. I know.

51:48 He's got the cuneiform tablet. In 2015, the Boston Globe reported that the Boston Public Library's map curator, Notice, quote, a rare map advertised in a New York antiques dealer's summer catalog. It was created by explorer Samuel D. Champlain in 1612 and provided a description of the New England coast and what would later become Canada. And like the map had defects, little chairs where it had been folded, that kind of thing. Here's the thing. Those markings, the little tear, like a little hole where it had been repaired, were the same as the ones on a digital image made from a negative the library kept after photographing the map in 1992 before it disappeared. So the map made its way back to the library, luckily. And you know

52:33 where it was put on display?

52:35 Where, Elizabeth? The Norman B.

52:36 Leventhal Map Center in the library's main branch.

52:39 Oh, the irony.

52:41 As of 2015, the Boston Public Library is still missing 34 maps. And they noted that, quote, in the overwhelming majority of the cases, Smiley was the only person to look at them.

52:52 Yeah, I'm sure. Like I said, I mean, how many people are checking these books out?

52:55 Right.

52:55 And then some of these buyers, I doubt, as you pointed out earlier, they're private collections. Like they basically start in private collections of like some families had them for generations. Now somebody's bought them. Oh, so they're like rich guy to rich guy. If they see the headline, they're like.

53:07 Oh.

53:07 Yeah, yeah.

53:08 They're not going to do anything.

53:09 I'm never going to mention that I bought hot masks.

53:10 Exactly.

53:11 Because one, they'll want to take them from me. Well, that's it.

53:14 Yeah, exactly. And you can't get the money back. How many houses can you sell?

53:18 Yeah, restitution. Exactly. So what's your takeaways, Aaron? Well, you know, sometimes we hear these crime stories. And I imagine this happens to me a little bit more often than you in this case. I go, ah, the road not taken. You know, like, I'm like, imagine selling hot maps. I'm like, I could have made a good long career selling hot maps.

53:37 It'd be so much fun. Hang out in these libraries. You bring in one little tool. You walk out in a blazer. I like blazers. I mean, this works for me.

53:46 This is so interesting with this road not taken, because this is exactly what I was thinking, but in a totally different way.

53:53 How so?

53:53 I'm reading about his life, and I'm thinking— I'm envious of people who can like go to school and focus on something that's just 100% interesting to them and then make that the career and not feel like a pressure of I got to get like a job job when I get out of here. And so, I mean, like I confess, like my degree was in poetry, English poetry.

54:18 Poetry, creative writing.

54:19 So it was like catered to what was interesting to me. Sure. But they don't hire poets, right?

54:24 Not anymore.

54:24 No.

54:25 Not many patrons out there.

54:26 Yeah. So I've had to like get jobs that need an English degree.

54:30 Yeah.

54:32 But I, you know, I guess it's part of it is it's like I really, really loved art history when I was in college. But I was like, you know, you got to be like from a rich family.

54:43 Yeah, unfortunately. We missed the window on that one.

54:45 Because you get your bachelor's, but then you got to go on and get like advanced degrees. And then you have to have these connections and being this kind of like, as far as I understand, I'm sure that people are like, no, Elizabeth, that's easy. But from what, from my understanding, like if you really want to go.

54:58 It's a disappearing career path.

55:00 It's a disappearing career path. And so there's a sort of luxury to that. And that's like a road not taken. Like what if I had like been able to just like, do something kind of curatorial, curatorial like that. I think, I don't think it would have been as interesting to me. So that's probably just like, you know, I had to do what really was truly interesting to me.

55:18 That has been a benefit.

55:19 I've made careers out of it. But yeah, that the road not taken is always interesting on these. And I love that you're like, I could be stealing maps. And I'm like, I could be, you know, finding the provenance of this map.

55:30 The hard story of working as a university press.

55:33 So then I'd be like, Zarin could be stealing my map.

55:35 Exactly. There we go. Tied together. There it is.

55:38 Dave, may I please have a talk back?

55:40 In October of 1989, I started a new job at a publishing house, and I got in trouble on my second day for wearing pants. Okay, see? What?

55:50 What?

55:50 89. 89?

55:54 89. That's what I'm talking about.

56:09 Wow. So like women get credit cards legally in 74. Right. But 15 years later, 89, still people are like, are you wearing pants? I'm not going to call the sheriff. How dare you? But you better not show up to our office again. That's nuts. Isn't that crazy? Speaking on behalf of people who are not women, I'm so sorry for like all of this. I don't know what we're thinking.

56:33 It's so ridiculous. It really is. I mean, like as somebody who doesn't have this directly affect them at all, I'm always astounded and I just get so angry when I'm like, wait, what? They did what? I'm sorry. I didn't notice this earlier, but that is nuts. We don't talk about it.

56:49 Thank you for sharing your story.

56:51 Publishing story. But 89.

56:53 89.

56:53 And in publishing. This is not like... This is a rather open-minded field. These are like what we would think of as being like, you know, not left-leaning, but at least more liberal-minded. Well, they're stuffy, though. Yeah, you'd have stuffy, but I'm saying... But these are not like... It's not like I was working in a small-town cop shop. Yeah.

57:08 You know, like... I.

57:10 This is stuff that gets erased. People don't talk about it.

57:13 And for the timescales, people don't realize how close a lot of these changes were. And they act like, oh, it's always been like this. I'm like, brother.

57:19 I'm going to lift my Yeti to Marie Pantalone.

57:23 For real.

57:24 Thank you for being a trailblazer. As someone who basically never wears skirts, I always wear pants.

57:30 I owe it all to you, Marie. That's crazy. I'm sorry.

57:34 That is it for today. You can find us online at RidiculousCrime.com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and on Instagram. You can email RidiculousCrime at gmail.com or leave a talk back on the iHeart app. Reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnett. Produced and edited by venerator dealer of vinyl state outline decals for the back windows of cars, Dave Kustin. Our ridiculous assistant is GPS voice model Terry Maldonado-Fong. Research is by irritated Maine villager Marissa Brown. The theme song is by guys who make sure to report cops on the highway to Google Maps, Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Botany 500. Producer Dave Kustin's wardrobe

58:17 is by Mr. Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkle Shot and Mr.

58:22 Andre.

58:23 Executive producers are founders of MapCon, the only rare and specialist map convention and cosplay experience.

58:30 Ben Bolin and Noel Brandt.

58:37 Ridiculous Crime. Say it one more time.

58:41 Ridiculous Crime.

58:43 Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.