Humans really love a hobby and it seems the more obscure the hobby, the more obsessed we become. But if you’re looking for the gold medal in obscure and obsessive, you need look no further than Victorian salmon fly-tying.
Back in the Victorian era ‘recipes’ for the perfect fly-tying involved the most exotic of materials - fancy threads, unusual bits of fur and, most importantly, exotic and rare feathers.
Of course you’d imagine the point of creating these elaborate flys is to sucker in the biggest possible fish.
But salmon don’t give a shit about the colour or the beauty of flies. They eat anything that looks and behaves insectish.
But people that got into this hobby, didn’t use them to fish. Don’t be ridiculous. The idea of dropping one of their creations into the water - better yet having it scarfed down by a gross fish - was horrifying. The same goes for today. The overwhelming majority of the 21st-century fly-tyers have no idea how to fish. It’s all about bragging rights and respect or something…
And one of the most infamous-and-modern fly-tying obsessed humans goes by the name of Edwin Rist. Rist came across fly-tying when he was 10 years old and became infatuated with tying the old Victorian recipes that called for the most exotic feathers you can imagine. Hanging out on the internet forums, Edwin quickly realized such fancy ingredients don’t come cheap.
Luckily young Edwin had another obsession to distract him from elaborate fly-tying pursuits: he was also a prodigy flautist. But to be a truly competitive flute-guy, he needed a bloody excellent flute. And they too are not cheap. So, after getting into the Royal Academy of music he started to think…how could he make some serious cash?
It’s here we meet the collections of Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist, illustrator and Charles Darwin competitor. In the mid 1800s Wallace had murdered (sorry) collected a huge variety of critters, including many thousands of birds. Most of his collection went to The Natural History Museum at Tring.
This collection is of immense historical significance, and contains specimens that are exceedingly rare and irreplaceable. But when Rist found out about this collection he thought, damn that’s a lot of delicious, and lucrative, fly-tying feathers.
So to further his flute career, he did the obvious thing: he hatched a plan to rob the museum and sell the feathers on the infamous dark-feather fly-tying under-web.
But how did it all play out? Did Edwin do the deed? Did he flog enough feathers to buy his dream flute? And …did he get away with it?
Previous episode mentioned:
SOURCES:
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (2019) Kirk Wallace Johnson
One Obsessed Musician, 299 Birds, and a Very Weird Crime (National Geographic)
The Great Feather Heist: The curious case of a young American’s brazen raid on a British museum’s priceless collection (Smithsonian)
Why The Feather Heist is the Most Bizarre Heist Story You'll Ever Read (Literature Lust)
Bird skins stolen in museum raid (BBC August 2009)
On the Hunt for Hundreds of Rare Birds Stolen From a Museum (Audubon)
Musician sentenced for rare bird skins theft (BBC April 8, 2011)
Natural History Museum thief ordered to pay thousands (BBC July 30, 2011)
Alfred Russel Wallace (Wikipedia)
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Will 00:00
We've all got hobbies, we've all got those things outside work and you know the family responsibilities that sit in our mind and take us places where we just do it for the joy of it. But sometimes those hobbies can take us to dark places, places that we shouldn't really go. So here's the question for you. How far would you let your hobby quest take you?
Rod 00:27
The people William of the Victorian era. Oh, cool. They had many quirks,
Will 00:32
big moustaches, big hats. Enormous dresses, horse and carriage.
Rod 00:37
Look, some of that would just be called clothing and transport. I don't know if you call those quirks. Okay, all right, depending on current Victorian cows and look at them with their pants, and their ways of getting around. Yeah, fair enough. But they also had beyond quirks obsessions. And I know you know this, you've told me many Victorian obsessions, and they're into weird things like one of them. Death and public executions. These things were quite intriguing to such folk.
Will 01:01
Yeah, well, they'd probably be intriguing to us. I wouldn't want to go I'm just saying that I know that there would be folk in society now. Who would still be down for a bit of public execution? Horrible, horrible, but it's not like death isn't a morbid fascination for us now to taxidermy. Yeah, that's gross. That is freaking weird. .
Rod 01:23
Freak show. The Occult got really big there at the time. And look basically they're really into anything other than anything exotic. They were even more so maybe than we are because they didn't have the interview.
Will 01:36
Yeah, they would have loved podcast back then. Give me some weird stuff podcast.
Rod 01:40
There's some you don't hear much. There's an obsession that I'd never heard about till I started reading about this episode. Fishing flies. You know the flies that you use economy one the water trouts in the salmons go yum.
Will 01:52
Okay, now I get it but they got to the point of obsessed with it.
Rod 01:55
Oh, God. Yes. Oh, God. Yes. So natural history was all the rage back then. And we know this but a subset of gentleman, obviously gentleman because women didn't have time to have hobbies or obsessions. Don't be sexist. I assume they did too. Oh, no, this is me just channelling the past. Some of them became Apple infatuated with this art which became to become to known but nothing came to me edgier. Victorian salmon fly tying. You know, you've heard it Florian salmon fly time, we've all read the books or seen the movie. So all around this Victorian world fishing hooks were elaborately decorated, I mean, elaborately decorated. I'll show you a picture in a little bit. brilliantly coloured feathers, bits of fur and specialty threads. So they're almost like jewellery. But you know, with official kinit
Will 02:40
and jewellery that you chuck into the water to catch fish,
Rod 02:43
They were very ornamental, really pretty and could cost a frickin Mater like in today's dollars, some of them the ingredients etc. could cost 1000s? Really? Yes. 1000s. Yeah. In today's money, so back then.
Will 02:55
Damn I know that I know that people spend money on their hobbies. Yeah. And you kind of flag whales. Whales don't have hobbies? No, I'm just saying I'm saying like the $1,000. That's for catching a whale or something like that something big. You need a big fly to catch a whale. That's why it might cost $1,000. You know, it looks like krill or something like that. Or
Rod 03:14
dynamite with krill painted on the side. never suspected thing. He kind of pointed to this a moment ago. you'd assume the point of this elaborate fly tying was to catch the biggest sucker possible the biggest fish and get hands on at the tastiest. Yeah, with the most glorious eager is always better. Okay. But the problem was already not the problem. The interesting thing was the people who are obsessed with flies, almost invariably or very frequently weren't even Fisher folk. They didn't fish.
Will 03:38
Are you serious? Yeah. It's like that people that collect the toys but keep them in the boxes, the brand new Optimus Prime or something like that. And you keep it inside the cellophane wrap or something good to play with. Exactly. So it's I just do the flys. I'm not interested in actually using them
Rod 03:51
or do the smart thing buy to play with one you gotta play. Steve Austin action $6 Million Man figure. And the other one stares from the screen going.
Will 04:00
Collecting is a really hard place for me. I like objects. No, I don't Well, look, there's a bit of my brain that I have suppressed a lot.
Rod 04:08
Oh you liked them too much. Yeah. You're an addict.
Will 04:11
as a kid, I could understand all of this. Like, I'd be like all over that. I'd love to you know, have the have the giantest all of the transformers and Yeah, you look at them. You sit there and you have some for playing and some for looking. I understand.
Rod 04:22
So you realise if you bought one. Infinities tomorrow? Yeah, there's no stopping. Yeah, I understand. There's no way to get to I'm like that with some things. So yeah, they didn't generally tend to be efficient folk. Also, the idea basically, of dropping one of their elaborate collaborations into the water seem crazy. And of course, the most exotic of these because like in any game when people are competing, the stakes go up. Okay, so you needed the most exquisite, exotic materials to make these flies. So super fancy threads, unusual bits of fur, and also exotic and rare feathers. These were particularly popular. So today for For example, because people still do it the cream of the crop of one of these flyers, like I was saying could cost you literally 1000s just to buy the elements to make it could cost you a few 1000 bucks. Okay, I've got a link to a website here that actually there's the 25 steps to make this particular flow. And I'm like, Oh, my God, and I watched the first three pictures went, I just don't care anymore. You stopped a psych. First you get this little string and you wind cautiously like you're making some kind of radio transmitter coil with a fishing line around the thing. And it's like, and that still barely does anything. You've been a maker in the past. Yeah. Back into making I have made. So yeah, they wanted really eccentric stuff, or at least, you know, exotic stuff. And it could cost a lot. So you can imagine some of the folks would be tempted to go to unusual lengths to get themselves. What are we talking? So I'm going to tell you now. So as you ask about how far did they go, strap in and I shall let you know.
Will 06:09
Welcome to The Wholesome Show, the podcast that exotically tickles the whole of science. I'm Will Grant.
Rod 06:16
I'm Rod Lamberts, and I am not into fly tying, but I could be convinced and dissuaded
Will 06:22
I'm down with beautiful objects, though.
Rod 06:24
Just not owning them or having them in your house. No, no, they're,
Will 06:26
they belong in a museum. They do, like beautiful objects,
Rod 06:29
You're Harrison Ford, they belong in a museum,
Will 06:32
I will allow some beautiful objects. I just, I just get scared that I'll turn around and and I'm a hoarder
Rod 06:38
You do have three hat behind you that I am worried about
Will 06:42
and I got a delivery of a weird, beautiful object that I am looking forward to. Yeah, so I do like an occasional weird, beautiful object. I just, I just get scared smoking notes. I get scared that I will turn around and I am crawling over piles of newspaper to go to the toilet.
Rod 06:58
That's how it happens. Yeah, you know, the other way to go to the toilet. You don't crawl over the news. But you go through the door.
Will 07:02
No, no. This is what I'm worried about this. I'm deeply worried. Like I you see those shows about hoarders.
Rod 07:09
I'm fascinated by them and hugely fat people.
Will 07:13
But they worry me that that worries me.
Rod 07:16
very poor and a bag, seal it up and throw them in what used to be the lounge room now that's fine. That's fine. It could be hoarding poo or paperclips. You're equally disgusted.
Will 07:29
Not quite equally. Close. It's close.
Rod 07:33
So a lot of what I'm going to tell you comes from it's snippets from a book by a guy called Kirk Wallace Johnson or particularly interviews with him and chats about, I'm not going to tell you the title the book yet because it'll just ruin the surprise. So but we'll get to it at the end. So an interview with Johnson begins talking about his background, how did he come to this kind of material? So he really needed apparently to find a way to unwind after he'd been involved in quite heavy work. And I don't mean lifting as just stressful. He served in Iraq with the US Agency for International Development in Baghdad and then Fallujah. Yeah. Okay. And he was the the first coordinator for the reconstruction.
Will 08:09
So basically bombs going off. There's people dying. Yes. I understand
Rod 08:13
Hugs on every corner. You want to unwind. Yeah. So he came home and he said, Look, the only way I could escape and get some calm in my mind was to go fly fishing. I was obsessed with it as a young teenager when we go and visit the coast is all Canberrans dim and fishing off the rocks, mesmerised by it.
Will 08:21
It's beautiful. I'm not a fishing person, a fish stirrer. But I do like eating fish. But the idea of standing in a river and it's just completely calm. That it does look amongst the most meditative of your killing sports. a little bit of extreme sports. You could die fishing off the rocks and they go
Rod 08:45
we had a crack a few times. The problem was then catching them. I'm like, I don't want to kill it, dad. Really? Yeah, cuz I don't like killing. I act like I do. Obviously. I'm a tough guy, but actually I don't like killing. Johnson goes on. He was in northern New Mexico. And he'd hired a guide. And that guide was saying, Okay, I'm gonna open up my fly box. And he pulled out a Victorian salmon flow that he tied himself still around. They make them
Will 09:08
Okay, so it's a Victorian design. Yeah, so not not an antique? Yeah. 150 year old fly
Rod 09:14
I don't believe so. They did not specify I don't think you keep that in your tackle box. I have no idea. Johnson says look, I've never seen anything like it. Like he was totally stunned. And so he's having a chat with a guide and the guide tells him some stories. In particular a story about a a young now infamous fly tire. Okay, a fella called Edwin Rist, the story of Edwin wrist via Mr. Johnson. He was born in 1989. So we're talking you know, today's dollars. He was described as studious and intelligent, homeschooled by parents who bred Labradoodles.
Will 09:44
So they described him as studious and intelligent, no the Labradoodle's did. The fish smart. But still, still, I'm just saying that the description of studious and intelligent should come from an outside source like your teachers or something like that.
Rod 09:59
My kid's very studious and intelligent. He's eating his own poo and he's 14 studiously they're in New York City when they were doing this pa apparently a beyond his own parents had quite a good brain very good with his hands. And also a flute prodigy. Oh, okay. Which again sounds to me like an old school euphemism for something else, but it doesn't but it's not they just play the flute. Flute but prodigy like not ridiculously prodigy usually.
Will 10:26
That's pretty obviously.
Rod 10:27
No, prodigious things a lot. Prodigy means good. Alright, you got me there. You got about time I had a when, when he was around 10 He saw a video about fly tying. And apparently it was mesmerised. He's like, Oh, that's even better than fluting. So he apparently ransacked the house and was hunting for materials. He had to start telling his own toys like this is on Yeah. Okay.
Will 10:46
How old was he? 10 like 10 Year 10 year olds get obsessions?
Rod 10:50
They do, tThey do. So he's definitely already started to become obsessed, like straight off the bat into it. So he started doing trout flies, but apparently they're fairly ugly and brown. And they're supposed to look like actual insects and you use them.
Will 11:02
Hang on so so just just point of order here. Yeah, we have flies that are specific to different fish you like so they're eating different types of insects is what we're saying here and you know, very mimicking Yeah, yeah. Okay,
Rod 11:14
that's, but that's if you're using them. And there's a line between people who use them and people who just make them beautiful.
Will 11:21
Okay, fair enough.
Rod 11:22
But all right, the trout trout flies in comparison to kind of brown and frumpy like, just like, you know, some bug that would land on the surface of a river somewhere then they because you want them to actually eat
Will 11:30
How lame but if you're not using them, why not just go wild anyway, I don't know. And put a hook in like a pile of gaudy garbage. And look, yeah, I made a fly. And it's like, it's not going to catch anything.
Rod 11:41
Add like a mechanical noisemaking machine. Exactly. Something Exactly. Explodes maybe on impact. So He then started going to conferences and competing in fly tying festivals around New England. So this guy is all in and one of the shows he came across a master salmon fly tire. Of course, he apparently had 60 or so shockingly beautiful flies. Okay, shocking. I'm shocked at the beauty. It's made me a little bit.
Will 12:09
Look I'm anticipating looking at some of these pictures now. And I bet to be shocked. I want it to feel like a horror movie. Like I want to I want to feel a heart attack straightaway and how beautiful these things are gonna be let down. It seemed I was gonna be left down. Cos..
Rod 12:22
I feel terrible.
Will 12:23
I have never I have never thought that shockingly beautiful would fit into overlapping with fish fly. No. Who would in my mind,
Rod 12:32
Neither would I. This is news to me too. So apparently these flies employed up to a dozen species of bird feathers wrapped in intricate patterns. So bird feathers wrapped in intricate patterns. And apparently this is when something screeched in young wrists brain, he started to take lessons to master the craft. Like apparently he was fucking good at it. Yeah, this guy was good. And he started to dream about being able to tie the old recipes. They called them recipes for how to tie all the
Will 12:59
recipes like he wants to go back. He's like, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna do the recipes from 1500 He's doing
Rod 13:05
but the recipes are for flys. So he was obsessed. It's what he want to do. And then his obsession went further and he's like, this is excellent, but I don't have the authentic feathers.
Will 13:14
Okay, I don't have the feathers. Okay, cool. i That's fine. No, I'm worried now.
Rod 13:19
No, it's fine. Like I'll show you a picture now because I've made you wait too long. This is what I'm about to talk about the thing it's the blue the major trends chatter and that's that's obviously not a well printed piece of work but it's pretty amazing
Will 13:32
I'm not quite down with shockingly beautiful but I'm up there on yeah, that's that is an interesting object.
Rod 13:38
It's colourful and delicious. There's no question like it's engaging to look at.
Will 13:42
Yeah, and if I was a salmon chomping that fucker like you'd be too shocked, too shocked to eat no, no, I wouldn't I know I'd be shocked I'd be hungry. I'd be hungry look at all those colours they look like tasty colours
Rod 13:54
Christ I'm hungry now to stop and get a snack. That's very nice fly. Quite remarkable. And when you see them a whole bunch them all lined up you kind of know that they are pretty to look at you know, I'd buy the fly t shirt
Will 14:06
if you're on holiday and you happen to walk into you know small town and you walk into the Fly Fishing Museum and you go pretty look at and then you go and have lunch. Yes, this is clearly nature is producing something awesome that is designed to be looked at. You know, we spoke very recently about dazzle there is the black and white stripes their nature is producing bright colours there that are designed to make the ladybirds horny yes and so obviously that that's cross species. Yes. So now he has done that and then we've gone and recipe that up into something that's even more we've improved nature again, we've murdered the boy bird once again we've improved taking taken his clothes and put them in an elaborate pattern with a nice now keep them in a box with a sharp spike there.
Rod 14:49
Kill something else as well.
Will 14:51
Suck it boy birds.
Rod 14:52
good. What do humans do the ship the stuff you can think of? Let's make it worse. So you can You get the feathers right? He's like I wear the feathers. How do I get the authentic feathers? I cannot make a recipe without the right ingredients.
Will 15:04
I need some Dodo? Yes, exactly. This one needs the head of a dodo. And, and the teeth of a sabre toothed tiger and and a mastodon
Rod 15:13
Feet of a dog. So he started to hang out online with the fly tying community because he didn't know Facebook started started his first time ever online was looking at flyers. So um, he's hanging out with these people on the internet. And it turns out all these people are completely nuts about rare feathers because they want to recreate these Victorian recipes too. And the language they use is language of addiction obsession they're like I just must have you know they really have gotten today a hungry
Will 15:37
yeah, you're on a hobby quest. Yeah. And it becomes something more than more than work it becomes really important ,
Rod 15:44
Yeah very important. And they're almost as one source puts it, they have an all observe and almost religious adherence to 19th century texts written by the English by people like these are these are two classics. I'm sure you've heard these names, George Kelson or Major John Popkin Trahan who taught that
Will 16:02
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, George, whatever your name is, but major Popkin is the one that I'm going to first like if they're the two books of Victorian life. We're gonna pop as they're sitting on the shelf major Popkin? That sounds awesome. That sounds so Victorian Queen Victoria had that one. She's
Rod 16:17
Major popkin will actually. So he's one of the most famous flowers he's done. An infamous in this community is the chatter, which is that was representational. And it has so many feathers from what the flight is called the Blue chatter, that they are quite scarce. And you could at the moment, or at least sorry, early 2000s need about two grand to get the goods. Yeah. Wow. To make one. Not to buy one.
Will 16:40
The blue chatterer it does exist. And we and we do have systems for gathering blue chatterer of feathers.
Rod 16:46
It appears so systems is doing a lot of heavy lifting of channels, let's say channels. So interestingly, though, it turns out these flys don't look like anything salmons would normally see in nature.
Will 16:56
No, okay. They just That's why they're suddenly hungry.
Rod 16:59
Well apparently they don't give a shit either. They'll eat anything. It looks vaguely like an insect. They don't care if it's colourful or brown. They're like fucking great. I'm hungry. Let's get into it.
Will 17:07
So this has nothing to do with the salmon anymore. Not at all. Not a lot going on. Here. I'm thinking this is this is triggering the salmon psychology you've got you've got the salmon whisperer, who's got down into the salmons Brian has got chat like it's going to have to be some combination of blue yellow, orange striped some black and white that will make the salmon fish shit its pants.
Rod 17:26
Spiny fin orange to make them in constantly hungry.
Will 17:29
They will go out of control. They will murder each other to get the nut doesn't matter.
Rod 17:34
I don't have the brown one. It's closer.
Will 17:36
So this is just a bunch of blokes, probably blokes let's
Rod 17:39
I think it's safe to say blokes there might be the occasional non bloke but not many. Someone says look like the seven can't tell the difference between a spangled Katinka plume and a cat's hairball? Neither could I because I don't know. Maybe a spangled Katina plan looks like Katinka made up but but apparently the overwhelming majority of 21st century flow ties like rest, no idea how to fish. It's just all about bragging rights. Look how awesome my spangled contemporaries. So just a short but relevant digression speaking of obsession with feathers and birds and natural phenomenon. Alfred Russel Wallace a you'd know Wallace you know, the acclaimed British naturalist explorer, a geographer, anthropologist, biologist, etc, etc. He independently came up with a theory of evolution without chuckles rival to Charles Darwin. Yes. But Charles was apparently far more strongly self promoting etc. And he didn't say that's the thing. You got to self promote. I mean, not that we would do that we would never stoop but others so he was also an obsessed man, not with fly tying but particularly birds and feathers as well as beetles and all kinds of crap because right into all of it. And he was really into collecting this stuff, you know, for research and knowledge. So in 1854, or from 1854, he spent eight years they call you in the Malay area Malaysia and Indonesia today, looking at Wildlife paddling around in rivers and particularly looking after one of the most sought after creatures of the day the bird of paradise looking for looking for
Will 19:03
Yeah, look, the bird of paradise is a glorious looking bird. Yeah, I got I got a picture of one. Like if one was to be a taxidermist, yes, then that would be murder and stuff then that would be the trophy bird I would say
Rod 19:15
Well this one's a shitty picture of that is not a bird of paradise is a king king bird of paradise, which is the one who's particularly into why is it got a feather hanging up backwards? Like a little microphone right over its head. Its feathers on backwards? Yeah,
Will 19:29
that's ridiculous.
Rod 19:30
Yeah, but it's kooky. I mean look at it someone just said we've got a bunch of different colours leftover put them all on this bird.
Will 19:35
Those blue feet. Yeah, some fancy blue feet. Oh, look, I don't love the bird. The proportions aren't quite right. I am not deformed if I was to draw it is wacky that is for sure.
Rod 19:46
Yeah, but it's paradise so that's good.
Will 19:49
What is it have a microphone hanging over its head.
Rod 19:51
I think it's to attact the ladies.
Will 19:53
Of course it's so attractive ladies know, maybe or something else? I don't know. Caterpillars. Yeah. Like the caravan was getting transferred a lot. Reading light. I might say hypnosis sort of little thing. I can't talk anymore. It's like an angler fish you know the angler fish above their head
Rod 20:06
Back then, they were not really that well known and he was in fact one of the first western naturalists to see that in the wild is off the some islands off the coast of New Guinea. So the male as we've just looked at, then there'll be a picture of the man has brilliant read back what breasts long tail feathers at the end, which looked like two coin shaped iridescent emerald feathers. Apparently the Emerald, you know, they look pretty cool. So by the time he'd left the area, the Malaya and New Guinean area, he'd collected more than 125,000 specimens. He's murdered and boxed a lot of things.
Will 20:40
So okay, scientists, that yes, you want to get some sort of statistical pattern, so you can't just get one
Rod 20:47
no one known in more than 100,000.
Will 20:50
When do you stop when you just just keep getting more
Rod 20:53
you stop at 125,000? Jesus Christ. I mean, Wallace has taught us nothing if he hasn't taught us that.
Will 20:59
How many were there in the wild? I'm guessing 126,000?
Rod 21:02
Yes, probably. I mean, these weren't only these birds. He was all kinds of critters beetles, butterflies, birds. All right, five species of the bird.
Will 21:10
So he's gonna He's like, no, no, he's getting two of each. And that's all
Rod 21:13
more than two, but is getting a bunch of a lot.
Will 21:17
This is suitcases back like, like heading back to London or whatever. And he's got suitcases, declared 5000 dead birds.
Rod 21:26
You got the wrong question. I got nothing I shouldn't declare. So yeah, five species from the bird of paradise family. That's just one of the many but collected not just one of them. He had a few of each, like there were 10s of them. So some of the stuff that he'd accumulated went to private collectors, he sold them. But in 1873, he sold his personal stash of two and a half 1000 exotic bird specimens. Which a lot of this would include like bird skins, you know, with the feathers on and stuff but skins because that's how they look in the wild. And he sold them to the Natural History Museum in London. But they ended up at a branch of this museum 30 miles away in a city known as trim. The branch of this museum is called the tree. Okay, there's a reason for this.
Will 22:08
First of all, first of all, you know, famed naturalist goes hunting in exotic parts, brings back a fuckload of exotic beautiful looking birds. And you go, Cool. That's for our big red Museum. That's the number two museum Yeah, you didn't get into the good museum with that.
Rod 22:24
None other reasons. Apparently, during the Blitz, the main museum got bombed like 28 times. And so someone stashed all this stuff in a truck and went get them out of it. Okay, fair enough. And they stayed. So, but this museum was recently acquired by the National Museum, but it was used use Rothschild money.
Will 22:41
Okay, in Venice. A lot of museums
Rod 22:44
That museum not only having all of waltzes heaps of walls to stuff it has the largest zoological collection amassed ever by one human, which was Lionel Walter Rothschild Lord Himself. Really? Yeah, he had a huge collection of just all kinds of zoological stuff.
Will 22:59
Yeah, look, I mean, we've spoken about collectors before. And I think we've we've barely even scratched the sides of that. I assume once you get into a lot of money. Yeah, well, what am I gonna do? I might as well collect stuff, kill it and put it in my house.
Rod 23:12
Yeah. Or garage and I'll buy every Ferrari. Yes, because I want to know the difference. Yeah, this one's wheel slightly smaller. He apparently spent most if not a large share, at least of the family fortune collecting basically trying to get everything that ever lived.
Will 23:29
I've never I've never gotten around to telling the story but you know that you know one of Darwin and Wallace's contemporaries was the guy that that wanted to eat one of everything Yeah. And and I love that hats off that that is an awesome
Rod 23:41
there is a Brando movie with Matthew Broderick where they were trying to do that and Matthew Broderick was charged I think with bringing it was like a freaking Komodo dragon or something like in a New York cab to this exotic dining club. Oh, God. very obscure movie. I watched it years ago. I was like, No, that was odd. But they tried to exotic weird shit. So Lionel Rothschild was also a hint on the eccentric side. Yeah, amazing. I know. Amazing. So he collected kangaroos, dingoes, Cassowaries giant tortoises, and they would roam around the grounds of his ancestral seat. Yeah, you just let the castaway roll around. I mean, that's what you do. It's smart. They're very time. He also trained a bunch of zebras and rode one to Buckingham Palace. So he had a carriage drawn by zebra Z right?
Will 24:24
Now, that's cool. That's cool. That's not eccentric. It's just, I've got enough zebras. And I feel like this would be a nice way to arrive. So and they
Rod 24:31
And they seem bored. Yeah, basically, everything they get their hands on was ultimately stuffed, mounted and encased in floor to ceiling displays in this gallery of the tree bears, crocodiles and even unfortunately, domestic dogs and other such things, but you basically stuffed them out of them in the tree. Also, the tree is the second largest ornithological collection of birds like orthotic collection in the world. Okay, like even to date. I don't know what the first one is before you ask because
Will 24:56
let's let's assume even today, I don't think that that title it has changed or will change Seems like like I think I think the glory days of catching ship and stuffing it full of peanuts and putting it on display
Rod 25:08
Peanuts.
Will 25:09
I don't know what they put in
Rod 25:10
soybeans now.
Will 25:11
Sure. I don't know what they put it in. But I think I think the high point of that might have been in this summer that you're talking about, Oh, yeah. Or the low point whatever it is, we have peaked. Yes, we've reached peak. I don't think there are many scientists now who put in their, their grant funding application, I want to get 125,000 things and heard of them and bring them back.
Rod 25:32
Like, I want to mount the Beatles.
Will 25:35
I want to check if species X is going extinct by killing all of them, and then seeing how they go
Rod 25:41
scientific whaling. How will we understand how many of them are left if we don't murder a bunch to check all these creatures, they're in the train, but the train has this giant ornithological collection. It basically has 95% of all known bird species, like 750,000 examples. That's amazing. Yep. And they are, of course, stored in metal drawers labelled with scientific names and in storerooms off limits to the public.
Will 26:05
Yeah, well, you wouldn't want the public to see them.
Rod 26:06
Fuck, no, that's nice to have them. Exactly. True collectors. So that's a little bit of history, which is great. Right? That's great. I'm glad you didn't question me. What's it got to do with a 22 year old American fly tire guy living in New York now? I'm worried. Nothing does. So you remember how he was not only a fly guy? He was very into the flute?
Will 26:26
Yes, I do. I do. So that anyone that
Rod 26:29
Yeah, I kind of became his day job. And he went to London to study the Royal Academy of Music to play the flute, which is very expensive show. So his family weren't super wealthy, even though the liberal doodle businesses obviously with bajillions. Yeah, there's a limit though. Yeah. And Bristol. So realised if he wanted to be a truly competitive flute guy, he'd need a really good flute. Like I Googled really good flutes. That's actually typed. So first, search on 25 grand plus, like, of course, yeah, they're not cheap.
Will 26:58
No, any any musical instrument? If you type in really good in front of it. Yeah, it puts a zero or two zeros.
Rod 27:04
And that's what I was looking for. Like, okay, what are we talking? So 25k At least? And you start to think that's too much money? How can I make some money? Then you had an inspiration? I'll break into the tree. I'll steal a bunch of exotic feathers. And I'll sell them to the online fly tying community. Oh, my God, genius. I mean, that is thinking, No, that is a man with a big brain studious and intelligent, the heist. So he starts off he writes a letter to the Turing posing. He's a fake name. And he says, I'm a student photographer. Can I have access to the place? Okay. Permission granted, time to case the joint.
Will 27:40
That's not a hard hard ask nicely. out there on the look that look out for this you wouldn't expect and photographers? Sure, yeah. Do some wildlife photography with the taxi domain. It's something
Rod 27:52
not in sight. So jumped on a train. About 45 minute ride from London goes to the tree took shitloads of photos of many of the birds but also the hallways, locations of cabinets and the entry and exit points. Just casing the place. So the next few months, he plans his heist. And he cuttingly saved in a Word document called plan for museum invasion.
Will 28:14
I know I know that a lot of crimes these days are solved by just looking through some Google searches. You know, it's like, like, how do I execute my husband? Don't Don't
Rod 28:27
Murder weapons cheap.
Will 28:30
You got to go to the library here. Gotta go old school.
Rod 28:34
Hey mate can I borrow your phone? Yeah, fair enough. So he also on this plan for the museum invasion dock. He had a shopping list of things it needs so like a diamond glass cutter. Okay. wire cutter 1000s of Ziploc bags to sell the stuff to the fly tires. And a pair of latex gloves he stole from his doctor because he can't buy those.
Will 28:55
No that would be impossible when we get you. What's that over there? You're gonna get a taste for stealing.
Rod 28:59
And that's true. He's warming up. Yeah. So there's a great national geographic story on this that also involves interviewees interviews with the original author of the book. So the night of June 23 2009. Risk does a concert in London. Then he gets on a train told us off to the train.
Will 29:15
This is beautiful, though, the idea of the concert flautist weaving into the cat burglar is just beautiful.
Rod 29:22
So when he arrives, he drags his empty suitcase but some sources say it's a duffel bag and a backpack but I think suitcase is funnier. It varies. He drags it up a dark alley that runs behind the museum. He climbs up snip subway barbed wire and then tries to cut glass away from a window which didn't work so smash that with a rock instead. Practical, he then wedges the suitcase and or duffle bag backpack through the opening climbs in and then he was there for four hours stealing 299 bird skins.
Will 29:52
I assume it's not the first 299 he finds he's looking for the good ones
Rod 29:55
he's making he's picking Yeah cuz he's he's got to fly tying community to titillate. And apparently he lost track of time so badly that he missed the last train back to London. He was getting the train. Yeah, train, because who would suspect you?
Will 30:09
I just I just don't want to do any of my crimes and rely on public transport. Yeah, and it's late again, I just I just feel that you don't want to be caught in that moment of going, Ah, I gotta wait for the train.
Rod 30:19
I'm gonna wait for the 231 by Bristol. So I'm here to spend the night a few miles away from the crime scene with his depending on the estimates, maybe up to a million dollars worth of bird stuff in a suitcase. Yeah, he's very selective of the pilfering, as you suggested. So he left the adult male drab stuff. He left the juveniles and the female stuff. He focused on things like quit soils from South America quit soils and cuttings. bowerbirds from India, crows birds of paradise that Alfred was Wallace hedgerows crows. He couldn't possibly get crows anywhere. Indian crows though. Apparently they're different. Okay, so some of Wallace's birds of paradise stuff, etc. From New Guinea floods those as well. Why is it so easy?
Will 30:58
Because they had never thought anyone would try and steal this stuff. Hey, and they didn't have security.
Rod 31:03
Now there's a security guard. Yeah, go. But he didn't find Rist that night. Yes, I'm getting that I think a little bit of napping. Now apparently an alarm went off in a different part of the museum. But the God didn't hear that. And there is a lot of the quote, there's dispute over whether he was watching a soccer match at the time, which of course the museum emphatically denies this is late at night. Well, yeah, it's not in the afternoon. So did he get away with it?
Will 31:28
I doubt it because currently he's being talked about. Are you saying he's he's live living somewhere on the land with his, his loot of bird feathers? He's like smog, and he's and he's got he's got a giant pile of bird feathers that are worth millions of dollars. No, he's in jail. Of course he's in jail. He did not get away with it.
Rod 31:46
I'll tell you after the break. Yeah, so you got busted, took months for the museum to even notice the bird skins were stolen.
Will 31:52
That's the big gap here. I see. That would be the broken window. In your broken window. You go okay, something happened. But then you go, Alright, we've got 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of drawers. Who's Who's checking them? No one's checking them?
Rod 32:04
No, because they're safe. It's secure. And no one's looking at them because that's just for having me. So when the museum finally found out that they were freaked out, like holy shit, what's going on? So at the time this was happening, Richard lane, who's the Director of Science at the museum, he's declared the skins were of immense historical importance. These birds are extremely scarce. And they're scarce in collections videoed in the wild. So at all very rare. Our utmost priority, he says is working with the police to return these specimens to the national collections, so they can be used by future scientists future I
Will 32:35
get it I get that's why you collect exactly for the future for the future. Someday, someone might want this.
Rod 32:41
No, no one wants them now just for the heck of the future. Maybe so eventually, it seems like a long time later, months and months later, a detective starts cruising the online fly tying forums, which I think is amazing. Like, what a connection to make,
Will 32:55
look, look a whole bunch of birds goes missing. What do you think I'm thinking straightaway? Okay, we're fetishist or there's some sort of money where would the money be and the it would track back to fly fishing I think pretty quickly.
Rod 33:08
I do wonder I mean, because it's not really an investigation undertaken myself nor thought about. He starts looking around and he gets on to some of the you know, the forums, he finds out that some of these feathers came from the stolen birds of the bird skins. So after 15 months of investigation wrist was arrested at his apartment in London, and charged being the mastermind of this crime, the evidence he was surrounded by ziplock bags jammed with 1000s of iridescent feathers and cardboard boxes that remained the skins.
Will 33:36
I told you, you should have put him in his bed surround Borg. He could just lie on them for those
Rod 33:40
long it was delicious. This one's gonna be a chunk.
Will 33:44
I believe it.
Rod 33:46
He confessed immediately. Now what are you gonna do? Not mine.
Will 33:50
I this my flatmates
Rod 33:51
this morning for a friend. They're not mine. These now they've even I'm not touching them. They were here when I moved there and not only talking about so it goes to court in 2011. So it's couple years later, he pleads guilty to burglary and money laundering.
Will 34:04
I'm surprised at the money laundering. I get the burglary.
Rod 34:06
Yeah but he never served jail time. So he was ordered to pay 125,000 pounds out of the proceeds of crime act because that's the amount they estimate he made by selling skins and feathers and stuff online. Okay, so we had a 12 month jail sentence which is suspended for two years and a supervision order for 12 months. So I don't know what that means. But let's English English law must be kind of in trouble, but he's not in jail. Yeah. And he was ordered to pay back the money. So he had about 13 Half 1000 pounds ready to pay and he had six months to pay the rest if he didn't do so he was supposed to go to jail.
Will 34:37
I assume he's not allowed to pay the rest by selling some off some a little bit more.
Rod 34:41
I don't see that specified. So it seemed like I don't know. So he's got to give all of them back or rob a different place. We can't necessarily give them all back because he sold a bunch of them.
Will 34:49
Yeah, I know. But give the ones he's got back and you know, then other people are in trouble because they're possession of stolen goods. I gotta you know that's that's harder to get.
Rod 34:58
Imagine that because he didn't he didn't sell the whole skins Like he'd pull the feathers out so people be like, No, I got this feather elsewhere. It's not like they're microchipped. So it'd be very hard to prove if you've done bursting
Will 35:07
you wait, you gotta wait in the future all feathers will be on the blockchain. And then we'll know.
Rod 35:11
Non-fungible ticklers. Because he's obviously in danger going to prison. This is not going to work. So his lawyer argued that he had Asperger's syndrome at least if not stronger, okay. And that the whole caper was a James Bond fantasy gone wrong. Double Okay, still double Okay, still crime, still crime. And the diagnosis of Asperger's which is an interesting aside was from a psychologist who's Sacha Baron Cohen's cousin, so borax cousin, but a lot of people weren't happy with this whole diagnosis thing. So, Johnson, the author of the book that I'll tell you about, in a tick got the only interview with Rison, he only got one chance at this. And he says, is quoting him from an interview with the author himself. I say this with no axe to grind against Asperger's. I have people in my extended family who haven't been around the five or six hour mark of my interview,
Will 35:59
Couldn't you just say this guy was tedious? Yeah, he could. Like after around the five, six hour interview, I was sick of this interview. And it's this guy. Not all of those people who did this,
Rod 36:08
everyone else is fine.
Will 36:09
Could we just not do that?
Rod 36:12
So he says, Yeah, flight 56 hour mark of the interview? Is he just listing one by one each of the birds you can imagine in another bird and a small amount, says, Look, I don't want to sound like a jerk. He's saying this to Rist. And I'm not an expert in it. But you don't seem like you have Asperger's. You're not avoiding eye contact. You're clearly reading the subtext of my questions when I asked, like, I'm not convinced. And Johnson says, Look, he's paraphrasing what he was told by wrist. Basically, he said he became what he needed to become during that phase in his life, that he'd never had any issue with eye contact before or since just at the time just at the time. But then all of a sudden, he couldn't look in people's eyes. He started rocking back and forth. He hiked his voice up an octave or so. So to Johnson you said it's cleared guidance system? Yeah. Okay. During the trial also, wristed claims it was no big deal. Like what he did was no big deal because the transistor dusty old dump and there's nothing left to do with all this crap. It's just sitting in drawers. Thanks. So yeah, it's just sitting in drawers. Don't worry about it. People push back on that amazing. So for example, there's a BBC News report, the Director of Science, Richard Lane said at the time of the break in, they formed a part of a collection that had been assembled over roughly 350 years. Yeah, they were irreplaceable and literally priceless. And he said they like like they get requests for the collections from researchers and people all over the planet.
Will 37:29
There are plenty of museums of all sorts that have stuff that is not on public display, and just going is not on public display. So it's just sitting around. I should have I should have hidden Picasso's.
Rod 37:41
What if I could buy a flute with it? Yep. So the former head of Ornithology is retired at the time they spoke with Robert pretty Jones. He said that recent research into the feathers from this Museum's old collections 150 years worth of seabird collections helped demonstrate many things like rising levels of mercury in the ocean over that period.
Will 38:00
Okay. Yeah, sure. That's not as burn affects everything, collected them over that time.
Rod 38:03
Yeah. Also, the capacity of the skins to provide new and important information only increases over time not decreases. There's more stuff you can find, to do more science with them because because you've got a longer comparison, longer comparison, better equipment, etc. And then also these sorts of collections help looking for things like the effects of toxins like DDT on the development of birds.
Will 38:24
Yeah, okay. Okay. There's a lot you can do about it. So I didn't believe him anyway. Like, I think Rist was lying about a loss sitting around gathering dust, but no, there you go. It. They are important,
Rod 38:34
What's everyone so mad about, it's just shit in a draw? Johnson goes on and he sort of became the author became inadvertently involved in investigating this stuff, because he got so involved in what was going on. And as he put it in a net geo interviewing National Geographic, what animated my whole investigation was that these birds held answers to questions science hadn't even thought to ask it better yet, do so they had no clue what kind of technologies will exist in the future also, basically risk as he put it blew a huge hole in the scientific record. So that's a bummer. Thanks, fucker. How much did they recover? No much. So there's a bunch of BBC reports around the time of his trial, and they say some of the skins were sold on eBay. They reckon he made about 17,000 us and he did buy a new flute, but the investigation suggests that maybe 193 out of 299 may have been recovered of the skins, not the feathers, okay? But also you got to think about all the Ziploc bags full of loose feathers and fragments and things in one article. There was evidence that there was he'd stolen five Indian crow breastplates, a flame bowerbird cape, and it sliced off some of the exhibits or the samples, he'd severed patches containing some of the most desirable feathers from the original skin. So he'd mangled them. And they were probably thrown away and sitting in landfill somewhere. Just cut the bits off and set a bit chip. And again, Johnson, the author being interviewed he spoke to Robert pretty stone. So we mentioned earlier and Mark Adams, the senior curator for the birds music museum called If you want to figure out how many birds are still out there, how many bits are still out in the world? And he said to them, Look, have you ever thought about how he managed to get all the birds out logistically, like, move them around, and priests Jones, who was visibly upset, said, Look, I've thought about it a lot. We've got no evidence or knowledge of how we did it other than what he told police. They go on to say, Do you think he had an accomplice? He says, Well, we're not sure. But as you will know, Bruce Jones says Rist pleaded guilty. Therefore, they may not have bothered to investigate much further because he said, Look, I did it. So they just went alright, well slow down. But how many did you get again? He got to 99. So they got back, maybe a third.
Will 40:35
Okay, so So getting them out? I mean, a suitcase can fit 299 birds.
Rod 40:39
Yeah, but the yard is a bit ambiguous and might have also meant like get them out into the world like, not really further further afield. Yeah, it was ambiguous language. What was his website on the dark web nicked birds for fly to dark feather web, the syndicate of the black fellow. So what happened to Edwin, let me see you at least a Smithsonian Magazine Interview with Johnson again, this author risk never spent a single night in jail. He graduated from the Royal Academy. Oh, well, congratulations. I know, right? He's a he's a flautist plays the flute with orchestras through Germany under a different name. He also makes heavy metal flute videos. He he posted one on YouTube under the name Edwin Reinhardt, and he performed Metallica's Master of Puppets. This is how cool he looks as flute versions of master puppets is a screenshot from so you know, he's wearing the leather in the tank top and he's trying to is that a bass flute? Yeah, yeah, it's a big ass one with a curl in it go Damn, he's going for it.
Will 41:32
.Good on you buddy. Good on here. He did some crimes and got away with it.
Rod 41:37
lied about his neurodivergence and mangled some. I don't know about the line. Johnson really went into this, this or that. And look, I'll close with this a quote from Johnson. When I met him wrist I thought he was charming. In another life, we might have been friends. I think he's always the smartest person in the room. And that can be dangerous with the wrong circumstance. So he's clever bugger. And I often wonder why he agreed to do an interview with me, I think was partly because he wanted to see how much I knew and if he could outsmart me. So he's an alarmingly talented person who let his obsessions and greed destroy a promising future further, Feather. Flogger.
Will 42:11
That's fascinating though. Yeah, that's fascinating. These industries have bizarre little products. Yeah, I can understand and I can understand that you would. In your hobby, your desire you know, you desire after that thing that just ticks that box and you can understand then somewhere like this, because like, I know how to get them
Rod 42:27
What else we're going to do. I can't play the flute all the time. Let's go to tie my flys.
