Transcript
A (0:00)
Dude, this vault, this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. Isn't that crazy?
B (0:10)
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like, no days off on the road. Let's travel. We're gonna get a little current eventy, which we don't often, but I love current events, so I want to talk about a current event. So was it last night? Elon did this thing where he was, like, in Trump's office with, like, his kid, like, crawling all over him, climbing up on him, which is kind of funny. And he told this story about a mine where all the government files were. Did you hear what he said?
A (0:42)
I didn't hear what he said. I saw a photo of this place. It's, like, underground. Somebody said, oh, it's the bureaucratic gringotts from Harry Potter. It's like this underground bank vault.
B (0:54)
So Elon said something that I feel like it was, like, an offhanded comment, but it actually led me down this rabbit hole. Basically, they were asking him about how he was, like, getting rid of all these jobs, and he was like, yeah, I want to, like, actually retire more people. But I was told that I could only retire 10,000 people a month. And I was asking, well, why is that? And he said, well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, meaning it's literally on paper, and it's written down on a piece of paper, and then it goes down a mine. There's literally a limestone mine where all the paperwork for retired people who want to retire is where it's stored. And so in order to actually make this work, the speed that we can move, the limiting factor is the speed at which the line shaft, elevator can actually move down. Like. And you hear this story and you're like, what the hell are you talking about, man? And so I went down a rabbit hole, and I had to figure this out. So can I tell you a little story about not just this mine, but this whole company that operates.
A (1:52)
Yes.
B (1:53)
Around this? So Basically, in the 1920s, there is this guy who grew mushrooms. And I guess in order to grow mushrooms in the part of America where he was growing mushrooms, he had to grow them in a cave. And so he was the mushroom king of America at one point. He was the largest creator or grower of mushrooms in America. He was this German immigrant, and he was kind of like this, like, funny guy where, like, his advertisements, he Called himself the Mushroom King, whatever. And he had to rent a cave and grow mushrooms. And eventually he bought a cave, and that's where he grew mushrooms. And this cave that he bought was massive. It was a huge cave. And for some reason, starting in the 1950s, post World War II, those damn Europeans started undercutting them and started selling cheaper mushrooms. And he was like, my mushroom business is going to go under. I. This is not going to work. I got to figure out what to do. And so he bought a bank vault door that was $20,000 in 1950, and he installed it in his cave. He took out the mushrooms, and he installed this bank vault door. And he. And he went to a local bank and was like, hey, you guys have a lot of paperwork. You've got a lot of files that you have to store. I have the safest place on earth to store the. This paperwork. You want to, like, make a. Make a business deal. And so he changed his business and he started this thing called Iron Mountain. And it was called Iron Mountain because it was literally in, like, a. A mine that was like, they would use the. I don't know how this all works, but they would use, like, the. The rocks to make, like, iron. And. And he grew this thing like crazy. And so basically, this company, it's called Iron Mountain. Google Iron Mountain Market Cap.