Casey Wants to Believe

Summary

Hyperfixed Podcast Episode Summary: "Casey Wants to Believe"

Release Date: December 5, 2024

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Casey Wants to Believe," host Alex Goldman delves into an intriguing mystery presented by a listener named Casey. This episode showcases Alex's dedication to solving listeners' unique problems, blending meticulous research with engaging storytelling.

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Meet Casey: The Obsessive Librarian

Casey, a librarian at a small liberal arts college, embodies the archetype of a "gentle giant" with a passion for obscure history. Described as having "real gentle giant vibes, kind of reminds me of a Viking" (03:51), Casey's enthusiasm for research is evident from the outset.

Notable Quote:

“I love research. That is a big part of why I became a librarian, as I, for as long as I've been on the Internet, have loved going down the rabbit holes.” – Casey [04:24]

Casey's dedication extends beyond typical librarianship; he avidly edits Wikipedia entries, focusing on lesser-known sports figures to enrich their online presence. His commitment to uncovering hidden narratives sets the stage for the central mystery of the episode.

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The Mysterious Diarrhea Button

Casey's predicament revolves around a peculiar button he discovered during his internship at the Busy Beaver Button Museum in Chicago. Unlike standard museum artifacts, this button advertises "our new diarrhea inducing chili cheese fries," accompanied by specific curl text detailing an address: "Big Chub Chats Down Home Ranch Style Kitchen, 35th and Main, Custer City, Oklahoma" (09:37).

Notable Quote:

“I was looking at a list of buttons and just scrolling through because you got to pick randomly, and my eye caught the word diarrhea... I put my name next to it to claim it, and I'm off to the races on this thing.” – Casey [08:38]

The anomaly lies in the button's advertising language and the fictitious address, which Casey soon discovers does not exist upon further investigation. Despite multiple search attempts, including using quotation marks and exploring Google Maps, no trace of "Big Chub Chats Down Home Ranch Style Kitchen" or a 35th Street in Custer City, Oklahoma, is found (09:55).

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The Investigation Begins

Determined to uncover the button's origins, Casey embarks on an exhaustive research journey. He explores newspaper archives and reaches out to local Facebook pages, but his efforts yield no results, deepening the mystery. This relentless pursuit fascinates Alex, who becomes enraptured by the enigmatic nature of the button.

Notable Quote:

“This is the problem I was born to solve.” – Alex Goldman [14:26]

The episode captures Alex's growing obsession, likening their quest to an Indiana Jones adventure, albeit grounded in the seemingly mundane world of button collecting.

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Connecting with the Busy Beaver Button Museum

Emma Cortland, the producer of Hyperfixed, contacts Kristen Carter, co-founder of the Busy Beaver Button Museum. Kristen provides insights into the American history of buttons, highlighting their role as enduring souvenirs dating back to George Washington's inauguration (19:09).

Notable Quote:

“The goal of the button museum is to tell as much American history as possible through pin back buttons.” – Kristen Carter [19:33]

Despite the museum's extensive collection of 160,000 buttons, the specific "diarrhea inducing chili cheese fries" button remains elusive. Kristen reveals the challenges of cataloging such a vast collection with limited staff, explaining how the button's back text may have been intended to add authenticity and confusion for future discoverers (22:18).

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Unveiling the Button's Creator

The breakthrough comes when Emma contacts Nick Rawley, the individual who created the infamous button. Nick shares the inspiration behind his unconventional design—a desire to craft a button that would perplex and amuse future finders.

Notable Quotes:

“I wanted to make a button that someone would find 25 years later and be like, what the hell is this? Why would any restaurant use the word diarrhea on a button?” – Nick Rawley [23:24]

Nick explains that the button was a creative experiment born from observing patrons who overindulged in spicy food, leading to uncomfortable consequences. By embedding a fictitious address, he ensured the button's back story would remain a tantalizing enigma.

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Resolution and Legacy

With Nick's revelation, Casey's obsession finds closure. He receives a limited edition "Big Chub Chet's Ask Me about our Diarrhea Inducing Chili Cheese Fries" button, fulfilling his quest and immortalizing his dedication.

Notable Quote:

“I am so happy to have to have an end to this. Now I can go on to the next inane mystery that I need to solve.” – Casey [33:03]

In a heartwarming conclusion, the Busy Beaver Button Museum updates the button's entry to honor Casey's persistent investigation, ensuring his story becomes part of the museum's rich tapestry.

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Conclusion

"Casey Wants to Believe" is a testament to the podcast's mission: unraveling the obscure and transforming minor annoyances into captivating narratives. Through Casey's story, Alex Goldman illustrates the allure of hidden histories and the profound satisfaction derived from solving intricate puzzles.

Final Notable Quote:

“With the blessing of everyone involved in this story, we've been given the go ahead to make a limited second pressing of the Big Chubb Chet's Ask Me about our Diarrhea Inducing Chili Cheese Fries button.” – Alex Goldman [33:18]

Listeners are invited to become Hyperfixed Premium members for exclusive content and memorabilia, continuing the tradition of engaging deeply with the show's unique investigative spirit.

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Relevant Links:

• Get Your Button: hyperfixedpod.com/button
• Become a Premium Member: hyperfixedpod.com
• Busy Beaver Button Museum: [e-mail]

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This episode of Hyperfixed is proudly part of the Radiotopia network by PRX. Discover more at radiotopia.fm.

Transcript

[Alex Goldman]

Hey, this is Alex. I'm appearing on the top of the show in what would be an ad slot to tell you about the Radiotopia annual fund drive. And look, I know this is a little weird because for one, I'm already asking you for money. I'm asking you to become a Hyperfixed member at the end of every episode. And two, my show just started and now I've asked you for money two different ways. I'm very sensitive to that. But let me explain why I am doing this. Just getting this show off the ground has taken almost two years, and it has been frustrating and sometimes exhausting. At my lowest point, I was applying for communications and public relations jobs at tech companies. Can you imagine? I am, like, way too unhinged for that. But a huge part of actually getting the show in production was Radiotopia. And being a member of the slate of shows on Radiotopia means a lot to me. It's not like I just say this show's a proud member of Radiotopia in the credits because they tell me to. I mean, they do tell me to. But it's also true. I am on a network with Ear Hustle, Song Exploder, the Memory palace, the Kitchen Sisters, shows that I have always looked up to as inspiration. And even though I remain independent and the owner of Hyperfixed, Radiotopia helps me with things that I absolutely couldn't do on my own. Ad sales, marketing, tech stuff. The other day, Radiotopia executive producer Audrey Mardovich helped me find an engineer to mix the first couple of episodes of Hyperfixed. It's not even really her job. She was just being cool. What I'm trying to say is that this show would not function without Radiotopia. And they are able to function in large part because listeners like you support them during their annual fundraiser. And that money gets shared directly with all the shows in the network. We have a goal right now of reaching 2024 donors by the end of this year, and we can't get there without you. Every gift makes a difference and is a vote of confidence in our independent model, which I truly believe is the only way forward for shows like Hyperfixed. So please head to Radiotopia fm. Donate and seriously, thank you so much. This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Hey, this is Alex. This may be an unusual content warning as there's nothing like thematically inappropriate in this episode. I mean, I do say the F word a couple times, but that's not particularly out of the ordinary for this show. However, in this episode, we say the word diarrhea a lot. Like seriously a lot. So if you're listening with children or like me, you have the mind of a child, just don't say I didn't warn you. This is hyperfixed on this show. Listeners write in with problems big and small, and I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, I give a good reason why I can't. This week, Casey wants to believe. Oh my God, dude, I have been telling everybody about this one.

[Casey]

Oh, good, you too, huh?

[Alex Goldman]

This is Casey. He's a librarian at a small liberal arts college. He's got real gentle giant vibes. Kind of reminds me of a Viking. And I know this is a young show, we're only on our fourth episode, but he has submitted maybe my favorite problem of all time. It's going to be hard to top. I'm so excited. This is the problem I was born to solve.

[Casey]

Man, I am very happy to hear that.

[Alex Goldman]

But before we get into that, there's a few more things about Casey I think you need to know. The first is that he loves research.

[Casey]

I love research.

[Alex Goldman]

See? Told you.

[Casey]

That is a big part of why I became a librarian, as I, for as long as I've been on the Internet, have loved going down the rabbit holes.

[Alex Goldman]

In his spare time, Casey loves digging around on the Internet for information he can use to edit Wikipedia entries, especially the sports entries. But here's the second thing you should know about Casey. He's not into the icons. The Wayne Gretzky's, the Michael Jordans, the Tom Brady's. He's into the real obscure ones.

[Casey]

I really enjoy finding a lesser known player or coach or team that has a page that has one or two sentences. If we've. We've all seen the Wikipedia page with one sent. And even if I add four or five sentences to that, at least there's something else out there, a little more information out about that person. Team. So the buttons is the same thing.

[Alex Goldman]

The buttons. This is the third thing you should know about Casey. Back in 2020, just before he finished up his library science degree, he was looking for an internship. And in keeping with his personality, he wasn't interested in locking down the Tom Brady of library science internships. You know, the new York Public Library, Library of Congress. So when he saw a listing for an internship at a place called the Busy Beaver Button Museum, he knew he had to apply just to make sure our listeners aren't picturing, like, you know, the buttons on their pants. Can you describe the buttons we're talking about?

[Casey]

Yeah, I got that question a lot when I said I was doing research for a button company. These are the buttons which would get pinned to a shirt or your backpack or a jean jacket if you were cool enough to have one back in the 80s.

[Alex Goldman]

I still have a jean jacket with pins all over it, and I still think that I'm very cool.

[Casey]

And you definitely are.

[Alex Goldman]

I can't believe we're only four episodes into this show and the guests are already making fun of me. Anyway, the Busy Beaver Button Museum is based in Chicago. Part of it is an E commerce custom button business, and the other part is a nonprofit museum. That's the part that Casey worked for.

[Casey]

And they have thousands of buttons they've gotten as donations and collected over the years, and they're trying to get them online onto their website.

[Alex Goldman]

I went onto this website while I was talking to Casey, and the collection is actually pretty amazing. There are buttons for everything from political candidates to party caterers, buttons for 7Up and AIDS awareness, a novelty troll doll button with a wisp of hair that stretches out from the top, and a button commemorating the 1896 meeting of the Iowa State Medical Society. It's so funny. Like, all of these buttons have, like, a little bit of history. Like, I'm looking at one right now. It's a fast food restaurant that was owned by Mike Ditka called Ditka Dogs.

[Casey]

Yeah, there's some fascinating stuff in there.

[Alex Goldman]

Casey's job was to research the history of the buttons in the archive, and then he'd put together a write up of where they came from, and then a picture of the button, and his historical synopsis would become a page on the Busy Beaver website.

[Casey]

And there's a massive database. When I started this internship, of all the buttons you could pick from, and I did not pick the ones that said vote for Ike.

[Alex Goldman]

Of course he didn't. Just, like with those Wikipedia entries, just, like with his choice of internships, Casey picked the most niche, obscure buttons he could possibly find. What is it about you that makes you want to preserve that stuff?

[Casey]

I think a lot of it is my own personality, my own experiences. I was a college football player, but I played at a very small Division 3 college, so I was never on television. Yeah, I think Just never really having been in huge major limelight kind of draws me to these smaller stories, which can be just as interesting. Just because they weren't on ESPN or there's not a book written about this button doesn't mean there's not some interest there that could be entertaining or informative for somebody else.

[Alex Goldman]

This is a very admirable, very Goldmanesque way of approaching the world. And it's also precisely what led Casey to the problem we're talking about today. Okay, so just to set the scene for you, Casey's at home. This is a remote internship. So he's doing this whole thing from his bedroom, and he's sitting at the computer with this massive list of unidentified buttons open in front of him.

[Casey]

I was looking at a list of buttons and just scrolling through because you got to pick randomly, and my eye caught the word diarrhea.

[Alex Goldman]

So unless you're a medical professional, diarrhea isn't one of those words you typically encounter in a work setting. So Casey stopped scrolling and read the rest of the button, which said, ask me about our new diarrhea inducing chili cheese fries.

[Casey]

And for me, it was a say no more moment. I put my name next to it to claim it, and I'm off to the races on this thing.

[Alex Goldman]

So Casey's goal is to figure out as much as he can about where this thing came from and why it was made. And he has some clues to help him figure it out.

[Casey]

It does have the name of the business in what's called the curl text. Yes, it's a very technical term that we use in the, in the button industry.

[Alex Goldman]

Curl text is the industry's term for the little bits of writing that curl over the edge of the button. So you can really only see it if you're looking at the back of the button. It's also sometimes called RIM text.

[Casey]

The curl text reads, Big Chub Chats Down Home ranch style kitchen, 35th and Main, Custer City, Oklahoma.

[Alex Goldman]

Now, given this wealth of information, this should be a quick assignment. Casey has the name of the restaurant, he has its location, and he has the name of a very unique menu item. The aforementioned diarrhea inducing chili cheese fries. This should all be Googleable, but it isn't.

[Casey]

If you make a Google search for ask me about our new diary inducing chili cheese fries, you get WebMD, you get message boards about how these chili cheese fries gave me this condition.

[Alex Goldman]

So Casey tries putting quotation marks around the search to make sure that he gets results with those words. Exactly.

[Casey]

It may be one of the Few times Google says, no, there's nothing here.

[Alex Goldman]

So then he tries searching the curl text. He searches Big Chubb Chat's down home ranch style kitchen.

[Casey]

Again, nothing's out there. If you go to Google Maps and look at Custer City, Oklahoma, you'll notice there's not even a 35th Main Street.

[Alex Goldman]

There is a main street in Custer City that's bisected by numbered streets, but they stop at 9th street, not 35th Street. And just to be clear, Custer City is small. According to the 2020 census, the population is 367. On his quest to find Big Chub Chets, Casey searched through newspaper archives. He contacted the official Custer City Facebook page, but he always came back empty handed.

[Casey]

That's honestly where this, for my research, kind of stopped. I did spend a little time trying to find out if there was another city in Oklahoma that was previously named Custer City, but changed its name. And I think at that point I realized I was a little bit too close to Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind with the newspapers on the wall and the red string connecting them.

[Alex Goldman]

This all happened back in 2020, more than four years ago. And Casey is still thinking about this button. It's become such a preoccupation for him that his brother made him a poster like the one that Mulder had on the X Files that says I want to believe with a UFO on it. Except instead of a blurry flying saucer image, it's a photo of this button. Casey sent us a picture of the poster. It's hanging above his desk at home. Do you have a theory, any theory about where this came from?

[Casey]

I have a couple, and they're kind of sad.

[Alex Goldman]

Uh, oh my.

[Casey]

I guess my theory, and there's two different ways to look at it, is that this was just made as a practice, either for a class, like a Photoshop class or a marketing class. And the assignment was make a button advertising something. It's make a fictional restaurant or make a fictional company. And this is what the student did. I don't think it's outlandish to think that this. Ask me about our diarrhea chili cheese fries is something that was just made for fun.

[Alex Goldman]

But then why would there be the curl text?

[Casey]

That's. That's the biggest mistake.

[Alex Goldman]

That's the detail that doesn't make any sense because I was sitting there thinking, like, mate, what if, what if like, someone made like a, like a student film and they had to, you know, make this button for it? But then why would there be an address on it? That part Makes no sense that, that.

[Casey]

That level of detail, like the Stanley Kubrick level of detail and a movie.

[Alex Goldman]

Prop and, and they chose to locate whatever this, this fucking place in the middle of nowhere. No one knows that Custer city exists because 300 something people live there. Hold on, what did the census say? It's on the. It's 300 at the time of the 2020 census.

[Casey]

Yeah, it's a very, it's a very small place. I, I'm not even sure that they could handle something like Big Chub Chet's down home ranch style kitchen. If we're being honest.

[Alex Goldman]

I understand that this is not an important problem. In fact, it may be the least important problem I've ever attempted to solve. But when Casey sent me a link to the button's website and I saw the mysterious diarrhea button for the first time, I could feel it pulling me in. I was helpless to its charms. For better or worse, I do believe this is my fate. That these are the stories I was put on earth to tell. I think we can figure it out. I think we've got to be able to figure it out. Someone out there made this thing. Not only did someone out there make it, but they, like, designed it.

[Casey]

Yeah, it's not bad looking either. If you zoom in on it, it's a decent. It's a decent photo. There's no pixelation. It's a well done piece of art, I would say.

[Alex Goldman]

There's even a little drop shadow under the text.

[Casey]

Right.

[Alex Goldman]

It really looks disgusting, though. It looks, it looks super gross. It does look like a river of molten cheese and then some meat at the bottom. It looks. And it is very close up. It's pretty. It's a pretty gross one.

[Casey]

It's way too close up.

[Alex Goldman]

Oh, my God. This is, this is the problem that I was born to solve. This is the only thing that I've ever wanted in my life, is to solve this problem.

[Casey]

Oh, brother. Let's do this.

[Alex Goldman]

The obvious first step was to reach out to the Busy Beaver Button Museum and ask them if they knew anything about where this button came from. And in my dream version of this call, they would tell us they knew the name of the person who donated the button. And then we would call that person and ask where they got it. And then that person would tell us where they got the button. And on and on we'd go like that, meeting fascinating people along the way until we finally found our way to Big Chub Chad himself and our very own plates of diarrhea inducing chili cheese fries. But that's not quite how things worked out.

[Kristen Carter]

This viewer book company. This is Kristen. How may I help you?

[Emma Cortland]

Hi, Kristen. I think that you're the person I was calling to find out how to get in touch with. My name is Emma Cortland. I'm a podcast producer.

[Alex Goldman]

And when Hyperfix producer Emma Cortland called the Busy Beavers main line, the person who answered was actually one of its co founders, Kristen Carter. Kristen founded Busy Beaver buttons back in 1995, and she launched the museum in 2010. Each side has its own archive, and between the two of them, the Busy beaver has about 160,000 buttons in their collection. And yet, when Emma asked about the diarrhea button, Kristen knew exactly what she was asking about and who made it. After the break, Busy Beaver co founder Kristin Carter, who pretty much shares a name with the creator of the X Files, Chris Carter, connects us with the mystery button maker.

[Tim Harford]

We're supposed to learn from our own mistakes, that other people's errors can be instructive, too. From efforts to control the weather that went disastrously awry to the untimely death of the Segway boss, history is a treasure trove of mishaps and meltdowns that can teach us all. I'm Tim Harford, host of Cautionary Tales, the podcast that mines the greatest fiascos of the past for their most valuable lessons. Listen to Cautionary Tales wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alex Goldman]

Welcome back to the show.

[Emma Cortland]

I will say, at the time, it felt like the worst news I could possibly hear.

[Alex Goldman]

Again, this is Hyperfix producer Emma Cortland.

[Emma Cortland]

I mean, I think we were all a little heartbroken. I don't know if you remember this, Alex, but you actually got sick, like, right after this, and I don't think that's entirely a coincidence.

[Alex Goldman]

My heart couldn't take finding out the answer to this button not being exactly the way I imagined it in my head. So before the break, Emma called Busy Beaver and its founder, Kristin Carter, said that she knew who made the diarrhea button. And the reason she knew is because he was an employee. And, yeah, I may have had a moment of like, okay, nothing means anything. Let us never speak of the diarrhea button again. Let's move on to another story and toss this one in the dustbin.

[Emma Cortland]

You were sad.

[Alex Goldman]

It just felt like, oh, this is so magical. This is such a weird object. This is like if they made Indiana Jones set in modern day, I would be Indiana Jones and this would be the object I was searching for. Except it turned out not to be the Ark of the Covenant or the. What is the thing that he gets in Last Crusade? The Holy Grail. No, the Holy Grail.

[Casey]

The monkey.

[Alex Goldman]

He goes to find a monkey? No, he goes to find the Holy Grail. It's a little bit more important. So it's not the Ark of the Covenant, it's not the Holy Grail. It's just not magical.

[Emma Cortland]

I know, and I definitely felt a lot of what you were feeling. But I think the reason that I wanted to keep working on this was because it still felt unresolved to me. Like, why did they assign an intern to log and archive this button if they knew it was made by an employee? Right.

[Alex Goldman]

Not only that, like, they didn't give him any information about it. So if it was made by an employee, they didn't let him know. And, like, again, why is there curl text with the name of a business and a location that doesn't exist?

[Emma Cortland]

Right. So while you were sick, I decided to reach back out to Kristen and.

[Alex Goldman]

Like, what did you find out?

[Emma Cortland]

Well, first of all, I learned that buttons are truly an American art form. Like jazz.

[Kristen Carter]

Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, they were invented in Newark, New Jersey, in 1896.

[Emma Cortland]

That's so bananas.

[Kristen Carter]

So, yeah, we trace the lineage back to George Washington's inauguration. So when he was inaugurated, everyone was like, hey, we started a country. Let's make souvenirs. So they made all these different souvenir, like, buttons that have different engraving or stamps on them.

[Emma Cortland]

Like, we need to let people know.

[Kristen Carter]

I mean, the goal of the button museum is to tell as much American history as possible through pin back buttons.

[Alex Goldman]

I like that you went into this conversation as if you were planning to demand answers and then immediately were just like, oh, my God, buttons are wonderful. I love them so much.

[Emma Cortland]

I don't know how someone could not fall in love with the fact that America invented buttons because it needed party favors at its, like, little celebration. I think that's adorable. But honestly, it was a dozen things. Kristen told me that the button community has, like, this council of elders, the apic. They have a Facebook page where you can post questions about the origins of different buttons and they'll help you figure it out because that's just what they like to do. And some of the most interesting stuff on the Busy Bieber's website has been submitted randomly by people outside of the museum.

[Kristen Carter]

We do get people often like, saying, hey, I know about this button, you know, Or I know about the backstory of this button. And even more frequently, we have people Googling themselves themselves or Googling something they did and finding the button that matched what they were doing.

[Emma Cortland]

This happened with the Grateful Dead button. Apparently, there's only one Grateful Dead button that's considered authentic. It's designed by this guy named Gil Sanchez.

[Kristen Carter]

And his son looked it up, and he gave us all sorts of information, and it was a lot of stuff that collectors didn't know. So, like that one, we learned that there were 300 in the first run, and that was the only run. And somebody redid those buttons, but they took Gil Sanchez's name off so collectors will know which is which.

[Emma Cortland]

So when Kristen says the museum is using buttons to preserve history, she's talking about these little relics of the past, these individual stories and expressions that might otherwise have been forgotten. And, yeah, that's just very romantic to me.

[Alex Goldman]

Okay, so, I mean, I get it. I see why that you found passion in the button universe. But, like, if she already knew where this button came from, how did it end up on the list of buttons to research?

[Emma Cortland]

Oh, yeah. Okay. So the short version of this is that the museum is a very small operation. There's only one librarian, she works part time, and there are tens of thousands of buttons waiting to be cataloged. So when an in house button makes it into the museum collection, which almost never happens, it may be years before she gets a chance to photograph and measure it. And since there's already very little crossover between the e commerce business and the nonprofit, by the time this one wound up in the research pile, the story of its origin had been lost to time. The other thing that happened is that while Kristen was on the call with me, she got an email from this guy who made the button. His name is Nick Rawley. Apparently, she'd written to him about the curl text, which, remember, is also called rimtext.

[Kristen Carter]

I just heard back from him about why the back RIM text? If you want to hear it?

[Emma Cortland]

Yes, please.

[Kristen Carter]

So he says the RIM text was to help legitimize the button. So if someone found it 25 years later, it would only further them to further them to question if it was, in fact, a real place.

[Alex Goldman]

Why does he want people to question if it's a real place?

[Emma Cortland]

That's what I wanted to know as well. So I asked Kristen if she would put me in touch with him. She connected us over email. And, Alex, I am so glad I talked to this guy, because that magic you thought we lost, it turns out it was there the whole time.

[Nick Rawley]

This sounds ridiculous to say out loud, but this conversation we're having is like the fate of the button.

[Emma Cortland]

This is Nick Rowley, the man behind the diarrhea button. He spoke to us on a call with his friend Eric Harms, who helped him with the visual design of the button. So if you hear some stickering in the background, that's Eric.

[Nick Rawley]

It's like a dream come true for this to come full circle.

[Emma Cortland]

Oh, my God.

[Nick Rawley]

Because that was the intention of it in a way.

[Emma Cortland]

Nick is a huge collector of things. Even before he worked at the Busy Beaver, he had a ton of buttons. And of all his collectibles, his absolute favorites were the ones that made him wonder, like, why in the world did someone make this? So when he came to work at the Busy Beaver, he found himself surrounded by all of these people who were investigating the kind of weird stuff that he was into. Nick got inspired to make a button that gave someone else the feeling that he got when he discovered his favorite buttons.

[Nick Rawley]

I think, honestly, if I'm being perfectly honest, I think this came to me one night stoned on a couch in my living room in my 20s, like trying to just come up with something ridiculous. And the dietary habits of my friends in their 20s was also inspiring to it. We knew a bar that would have free wings every Friday night if you got one beer. So for like 20 somethings in dudes, it was like, let's go buy one beer, nurse it, and just eat 100 wings. And then these guys are. Everyone's disgusting. Some of these dudes are getting like tummy aches. I won't go into the details of it, but it's not agreeing with them. So it kind of. That made me think about it a little bit. Cheese fries seemed better. But the deeper idea, which is the true beauty of you coming to us to talk about this, but the actual, and this was the idea from the get go, was I love buttons. I've got a. You know, people got junk drawers, stuff like that's where buttons go. They get lost in time. People forget about them. They get sometimes preserved. And you find buttons later on and you're like, oh, I never even heard of this political candidate, or what's this for? I wanted to make a button that someone would find 25 years later and be like, what the hell is this? Why would any restaurant use the word diarrhea on a button? That has to be one of the worst words you could ever use to try to sell food. You gotta be kidding me.

[Emma Cortland]

But it wasn't enough for someone to have that thought and then move on in order for the button to really capture the feeling Nick was going for. The person who found the diarrhea button would have to think it came from a real restaurant. So Nick took the idea to Eric Harms, who was one of the busy beavers in house designers at the time. And Eric said, you gotta add curl text.

[Casey]

We had to legitimize it somehow, right?

[Nick Rawley]

Yeah. A lot of businesses would put their addresses. And I just told, I think, Eric, you came up with that, right? I was like, just come up with a business in the middle of the country, so it seems like it'd be harder to find.

[Alex Goldman]

And that's how they came up with Custer City, Oklahoma.

[Emma Cortland]

Yep. I told them about Casey and they were absolutely delighted and they were really so delighted to know that this had worked out exactly the way they dreamed it would.

[Nick Rawley]

Well, it's. It is actually amazing. I am sorry that it isn't an actual restaurant for him. I know he would have loved that more than I feel sad for him in that sense. But selfishly, I don't know this dude, so who gives a shit?

[Emma Cortland]

He made me happy.

[Nick Rawley]

We'll talk, I guess afterwards and I'll send him. I'll find. I know I have some. So I'll send him some extras and some other fun buttons I made.

[Emma Cortland]

And I know that that was gonna mean so much to him because truthfully, not only has he had this obsession, but the only, like, the only manifestation of it has been this like shitty scan of it online. He's never held one of these buttons before. So. Alex, I know this is normally your line, but before I send you off to follow up with Casey, I want to ask you, knowing all of this, how do you feel?

[Alex Goldman]

Oh my God, dude. Magic restored. This is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a story with a journey. And this isn't just like a short. This isn't like a six week journey. This is like a 15 year journey. What more could I possibly ask for?

[Emma Cortland]

It really feels like when you were a child and your school project was to like build a time capsule where you buried all of the treasures that would tell you about the moment in time when you were doing that, and then someone actually dug it up and found it.

[Alex Goldman]

But not only that, like, this isn't even digging it up. It's like literally up on a website for us to look at. It is hidden in plain sight. I mean, I'm honestly kind of surprised it took this long for someone to find it.

[Emma Cortland]

One of the things that he kept saying to me over and over again was that he's just like, I anticipated this taking 25 years. I can't. I like, I can't believe I undershot. And he said, but I'm so glad that I'm of an age when I can still enjoy this.

[Alex Goldman]

With the complete answer in hand, it was time to go back to Casey.

[Casey]

I think one of the funniest emails I ever got was Emma's invite to this meeting. And it said, diarrhea follow up with Alex.

[Alex Goldman]

I mean, it. It really has made, like, for a lot of wonderful jokes, especially since, you know, there are people who are only passingly familiar with what we're working on, who are like members of our slack, like, Brave Master Cylinder who does music. So they'll see us. They'll see us feverishly typing in a channel called Diarrhea Button and be like, what the fuck is going on here?

[Casey]

That's great.

[Alex Goldman]

So I have some good news and I have some bad news. Okay, I'm going to start with the bad news, which is that you were very close to your answer. I told Casey that as soon as we reached out to the Busy Beaver, they told us that the button had not been made by a restaurant and that as far as they knew, there was no such thing as Big Chub Chet's Down Home Ranch Style Kitchen in Custer City or anywhere else. And Casey admitted he was bummed out by the news, but it was what he expected. But then I got to tell him the good news. During our first conversation, you told us that you strongly wanted this to be a restaurant, and more than that, you did not want it to have been a joke or a school project.

[Casey]

Right.

[Alex Goldman]

What I take that to mean is that, like, what you were afraid of is that this thing didn't have a story. Like, it didn't have anything interesting behind it.

[Casey]

Yeah, right, because if it was a school project or something, it was just a throwaway just to get the points for the assignment. And there's not anything all that interesting behind it, other than the design of it, I guess.

[Alex Goldman]

So the good news is this. I told Casey that we'd found the person who made the button, that he's a longtime button collector named Nick Rowley, and that when we asked him about the Diarrhea Button, he said it was like a dream come true. We told him all about how the button came to be, about how Nick's most treasured collectibles are the ones that make him wonder why in the world did someone decide to make this? And about how, when he got the opportunity to make a button, of his own. He wanted to make one that gave someone else the same feeling that his favorite buttons gave him. And what he said to us was, I wanted to make a button that someone would find 25 years later and be like, what the hell is this? Why would any restaurant use the word diarrhea on a button?

[Casey]

Wow. Mission accomplished.

[Alex Goldman]

So Nick was so glad to get this call, this call that he had been waiting for since 2010, assuming that he would never get. And as a gesture of gratitude, he wants to send you your very own diarrhea chili pudding.

[Casey]

Oh, my gosh. How many were made? Is this, like, one of one?

[Alex Goldman]

He made, like, 20. There were very few.

[Casey]

Whoa. That is an honor, and I will cherish it forever.

[Alex Goldman]

This one was a clear win. Nick was happy. Casey was happy. I was happy. But there was one more thing I wanted to share with Casey before I said goodbye. Very quickly, before we end the call, I just wanted to. Hold on just a second. I wanted to drop something in the chat for you. Okay. I was thinking about something that Casey had said on our first call about how part of the reason he was drawn to niche history was because he'd never really been in the spotlight before. And in the small way that I could, I wanted to do something to change that. I'm wondering if you could follow this link. Did I get it? Yeah. And just.

[Casey]

Shady link.

[Alex Goldman]

It is a very shady link. And just take a look at it and tell me what it. Can you read it for me?

[Casey]

But sure. I see the first thing I saw was my name, so I knew this wasn't the original text that I had came up with.

[Alex Goldman]

The link opens to the Busy Beaver website, the page for the diarrhea button that Casey has seen countless times before. Only now it's a little different.

[Casey]

Under additional information, where it used to say nothing, it now says, In 2024, this button became the subject of a podcast episode when a librarian named Casey Cost became obsessed with finding the person who made it.

[Alex Goldman]

A few days before this conversation, we wrote to Kristen and asked if we could update the entry for the diarrhea button. And she said, yeah, go for it. So now if you search for it, you'll see the story of this button with Casey's name right up top.

[Casey]

Well, that's fantastic. I am honored to be immortalized on the Busy Beaver Button Museum and to be part of this story. Wow. Thank you both. This is fantastic. What a cool. What a cool experience. I honestly thought I would never get the answer to this because it's so obsc.

[Alex Goldman]

I also thought that I'd never get the answer because there's two. That intersection does not exist. I was just like, what the. I was wondering if like, maybe there was like nuclear bomb testing going on on this part of the country and they just erased certain parts of the city by blowing it up. I had no idea.

[Casey]

Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I am so happy to have to have an end to this. Now I can go on to the next inane mystery that I need to solve.

[Alex Goldman]

You know, if you're just dedicated enough to that cause, you can make a whole career out of it. It's what I did. Casey is now in possession of his very own Big Chubb Chetz button. And with the blessing of everyone involved in this story, we've been given the go ahead to make a limited second pressing of the Big Chubb Chet's Ask Me about our Diarrhea Inducing Chili Cheese Fries button. If you go to hyperfixedpod.com button and get a Hyperfixed Premium membership, in addition to getting bonus episodes and all the other perks of being a premium podcast member, we will send you your very own Big Chub Chets button. And to make sure that button counterfeiters won't try and pass it off as a first pressing and sell it for an inflated price, we added Hyperfix Podcast 2024 to the curl text. Hyperfixed was produced by Emma Cortland, Sari Soffer Sukenik and Amore Yates. It was also edited by Emma Sari and Amore. This episode was hosted by Emma Cortland and me, Alex Goldman. The music is by the mysterious Brakemaster Cylinder and me. The show is engineered by Tony Williams Fact Checking by Sona Avakian. You can get bonus episodes. Join our Discord and much [e-mail] joy and if you want your very own Diarrhea button, you can get that as well as all the other [e-mail] button. But that's only for 500 people. And then it's gone forever. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from prx, a network of independent creator owned listener supported podcasts. Discover audio with Vision at Radiotopia fm. Last thing the Busy Beaver Button Museum is always looking for volunteers to help research the buttons in their collection. So if you're interested in helping out, you can email their Archive Manager and their internship [e-mail] thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week if you're a premium member, or a week after that if you're not. Take it easy. Radiotopia from PRX.