CLASSIC: Who killed John Parsons Wheeler?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "CLASSIC: Who killed John Parsons Wheeler?"

Podcast: Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
Date: August 11, 2026
Hosts: Ben, Matt, Noel
Episode Theme: The mysterious, unsolved murder of John Parsons Wheeler III—an influential American defense insider whose bizarre 2010 death remains surrounded in secrecy, conspiracy, and unanswered questions.

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deep into the life, career, and mysterious death of John Parsons Wheeler III (Jack Wheeler), a highly respected figure in U.S. military and government circles. The hosts unpack the timeline leading to his shocking demise—his body discovered in a landfill—and explore the swirling theories about whether his death was the result of random violence, personal vendetta, or something more shadowy involving state actors or intelligence agencies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Was John Parsons Wheeler III? (04:19–14:12)

• Background: Born in 1944 in Texas, Wheeler came from a long line of military men and attended West Point (US Military Academy).
• Career Highlights:
  • Served in Vietnam as a staff officer.
  • Education from Harvard (MBA) and Yale (Law).
  • Worked in "white shoe" DC law firms and for the SEC, tackling insider trading.
  • Instrumental in the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
  • Consulting roles with Amtrak, MADD, and three Republican administrations (Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr.).
  • President/CEO roles at various nonprofits (e.g., Vietnam Children’s Fund, Earth Conservation Corps).
  • Specialized in turning around failing businesses (e.g., Macy’s out of bankruptcy).
  • Late-career focus on cybersecurity with Mitre Corporation.
• Personal Struggles: Diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, noted for driven, frenetic work style.

"He was accepted by the often invisible ruling class of this country. And he moved extensively in this circle." — Ben (07:43)

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2. The Events Leading to Wheeler’s Death (14:12–31:29)

Discovery of the Body (14:12–19:51)

• On December 31, 2010, Wheeler’s body was found in the Cherry Island landfill near Wilmington, Delaware, having been ejected from a garbage truck.
• He was identified by his West Point ring and clothing; valuables (ring, Rolex, cash) were still on his body.

The Surreal Timeline (19:51–38:53)

• December 28: Wheeler travels to DC, says he’s working on an important project for Mitre. Last communicates with wife; they argue about his plans.
• That night: Neighbor witnesses a "darkened silhouette" lighting what appeared to be small smoke bombs at a house under construction—a site Wheeler was contesting due to a historic preservation dispute.
• Physical evidence: Wheeler’s phone is found at that site; open book at his home ("The Long Gray Line") and apparent break-in with odd disturbances but nothing stolen.
• Surveillance: CCTV and eyewitnesses see Wheeler disoriented, at times clutching a shoe, claiming robbery, and seeking help or a ride.
• Baffling behaviors: Wanders into pharmacies, law offices, changes into a hoodie reportedly not his, asks for train fare, seems dazed and possibly hunted.

"It's a nexus of speculation and there's a really, there's a disturbing part here that I wish some of those documentaries...spent more time on..." — Ben (49:09)

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3. Crime Scene Puzzles and Open Questions (38:53–57:55)

Inexplicable Details

• Physical injuries: Blunt force trauma, possibly a beating severe enough to induce heart attack.
• Possessions left: No theft of watch, ring, cash, or valuables at home.
• The missing briefcase: Wheeler was never without his briefcase, which vanished.
• Was Wheeler hunted or hiding? Behavioral patterns suggest he was either pursued or felt endangered.
• Unreleased footage: Though Wilmington is covered in cameras, authorities have only made public limited surveillance.

Theories Explored (44:05–57:55)

• Random crime gone awry? Unlikely, given valuables were left.
• Personal vendetta? Conflict over the construction site or past professional enemies.
• Espionage/corporate intrigue? Wheeler’s Mitre work may have made him a target for foreign entities or created internal enemies.
• Government cover-up? Investigation slow-walked; some officials advised police not to "go overboard" (Wilmington City Councilman Kevin Kelly, 55:48).
• Mental health crisis? Hosts consider possibility of manic episode or disorientation leading to accidental death.

"This appears to be a man on the run. He is either being hunted or believes he is being hunted, or possibly at some parts of the timeline, he himself is hunting someone." — Ben (47:14)

"It reminds me of a show that I worked on, Murder in Oregon...when he was killed, it was chalked up to being a mugging...But guess what was missing when they found his body? A briefcase full of presentation materials." — Noel (53:37)

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4. Theories & Final Mysteries (57:58–65:42)

'Here's Where it Gets Crazy'

• The hosts raise the probabilities of state actors being involved, the influence (or manipulation) of the investigation, possibility of lingering enemies from Wheeler’s defense consulting, and the missing briefcase potentially containing secrets valuable enough to kill for.
• Toxicology reports have never been made public.
• Hosts compare the case to that of Elisa Lam (another unsolved high-profile, mysterious death).

Notable Quotes

• "There’s something about the story the US government actively does not want you to know." – Ben (51:48)
• "Going even further than stonewall, you could almost say manipulated or compromised." – Noel (51:53)
• "If there’s an exact time of death, that has also not been released...a Wilmington city councilman named Kevin Kelly told police not to, quote, go overboard in investigating this man’s death." – Ben (55:48)
• "Something about this, if not the direct murder or homicide or accidental death, something about this appears orchestrated." – Ben (64:44)
• "I think everybody is at a loss to explain this. A lot of the things we just mentioned are currently equally plausible or equally possible, I should say." – Ben (65:39)

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Notable/Standout Segments & Timestamps

• Who was Wheeler and why he matters: 04:19–13:45
• Description of Wheeler's death and discovery: 14:12–19:51
• Timeline unraveling and scene details: 22:50–38:53
  • Eyewitness detail: “A man, methodically lighting what looked like small balls of fire...” – Noel (23:29)
• Unresolved mysteries and gaps in the case: 44:05–53:37
• Discussion of government/investigation transparency: 49:09–53:37, 55:48
• Discussion about possible accidental death in a dumpster: 61:31–63:16

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Episode Tone & Style

• Tone: Deeply curious, speculative, analytical, and at times skeptical but empathetic to Wheeler and his family.
• The hosts maintain a blend of fact-based reporting, open-ended theorizing, and listener engagement—consistently using humor and references familiar to their “conspiracy realist” audience.

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Suggested Theories & Takeaways

• Wheeler’s death remains a true mystery. Theories range from a personal dispute or mental health crisis to espionage or a government cover-up. The missing briefcase and incomplete public disclosure deepen the suspicion.
• The hosts encourage listeners to consider all plausible scenarios given the incomplete evidence and unresolved elements—and to contribute what they know or believe to the ongoing conversation.

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Memorable Moments

• "Maybe Wheeler himself is panicked or he’s hurried for some reason. Because when people are hurrying from their own house, they don’t always close the windows or the doors...the logic is, it’s my house. I’ll just come back and do it." — Ben (30:17)
• "There’s a mystery here. We know his records for cab calls. We have interviews with cab drivers who spoke with him. We know his records for emails and text. But after he reported his phone being stolen, it’s not clear where he was sending these other emails from or how he was sending them..." — Ben (34:08)
• "It’s quite possible...that maybe he was beaten before, maybe was beaten near to the point of death and then escaped into a dumpster to hide. It is possible. Again, all the things that we’re saying right now are possible but not proven." — Ben (63:16)

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Listener Call-to-Action

• Listeners are urged to join the discussion on social media, send in their theories, or contact the show with tips or information.
• Podcast community is commended for helping to keep cold cases alive.

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For further research:

• The Long Gray Line by Rick Atkinson (background on Wheeler and his West Point class)
• 2020 episode of Unsolved Mysteries (Netflix) on Wheeler’s case

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Summary prepared by Stuff They Don't Want You To Know podcast summarizer — for anyone seeking clarity on the bizarre, unresolved death of John Parsons Wheeler III.

Transcript

[Ben]

Fellow conspiracy realist, here's a story the Jedi may not tell you. It's about a guy named John Parsons Wheeler iii, or Jack to his pals.

[Matt]

Now, this guy Jack Wheeler, as you said, who is he?

[Ben]

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a question that everybody asks themselves in the mirror. This is a question Jack probably asked himself because before his untimely demise, he was a silent kingmaker in the defense world of the United States. He worked with three different presidential administrations. He was also very well known for philanthropy. But then a strange series of events led to his passing.

[Matt]

Oh my God. An old Politico article from 2011 about how he died from blunt force trauma and how that was like, what? How did he die like that?

[Ben]

How did such an important guy get found in a landfill?

[Noel]

Yeah.

[Matt]

Oh, I can't wait for this one. Let's revisit.

[Noel]

Yes,

[Ben]

this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Fellow conspiracy realist, it's time to talk about your secret late night Internet searches.

[Noel]

I'm guilty of them for sure. Some of these specifically, you know, like bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy butt,

[Matt]

trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it and it never works.

[Ben]

Thankfully, there's good news. That good news is Amazon Health AI, right?

[Noel]

It can connect your symptoms with your medical history and can even give you on the spot care 24 7.

[Matt]

So call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here.

[Ben]

Healthcare just got less painful.

[Noel]

You know, we've all tumbled down an Internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose and it usually leaves us more anxious than inform.

[Matt]

Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know it's real, what's exaggerated and what's just wrong?

[Ben]

Health versus Hype from the American Medical Association. They break it all down with the Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who

[Noel]

talks to doctors, influencers and real people trying these trends not to cancel them, but to understand them.

[Matt]

Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters.

[Ben]

So listen to Health versus Hype wherever you find your favorite shows.

[Carrie Brownstein]

Hey, Portlandia fans, Kerry Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

[Fred Armisen]

The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form.

[Carrie Brownstein]

We're launching Podlandia AO Rewatch our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

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And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Krisel, the the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

[Carrie Brownstein]

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[Matt]

Well, I thought you were all going

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I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia AO rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Julie Pinero]

On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

[Danielle Fishel]

Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of no.

[Julie Pinero]

I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben]

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartradio.

[Matt]

Hello. Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

[Noel]

My name is Noel.

[Ben]

They called me Ben. We are joined, as always, with our super producer Paul Mission Control decent here in spirit. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We are delving into a true unsolved mystery today. If you're a younger person, you might not have heard of John Parsons Wheeler the third, unless you saw the recent Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries. It's a story that largely disappeared from mass media headlines in a very weird way. I mean, you've heard of Elisa Lam, but have you heard of John Parsons Wheeler? Here are the facts. First things first. Whether or not you have ever heard of this man, if you live in the U.S. his career has probably impacted you in some way. He's one of those guys who, it seems like since his early days, he was destined for the heights of the military political class.

[Noel]

Oh, yeah, an absolute heavyweight and a sharp guy to boot. John Parsons was Wheeler III, Jack to his pals, was born on December 14, 1944, in Laredo, Texas. And he was, to some degree, kind of destined to follow in the footsteps of those that came before him in his family line and was, in fact, groomed for the type of illustrious political and military career many would only ever dream of. He came from a long line of these career military men, including one relative who served in both the Confederate army and. And Then later the United States Army.

[Matt]

Yeah, he ended up going to the U.S. military Academy, which you may know as West Point. That's the way it's generally referred to. Very prestigious place if you were going to go that route. And then he was a fire control platoon leader in New Jersey back in the mid to late 60s. And he ended up getting a Bachelor of Science degree from that institution.

[Ben]

Yeah. Important note about his classmates, his cohort at West Point. Many of these men would go on to lose their lives in Vietnam. And his experiences with the war had a tremendous influence on his career, his personal beliefs, and possibly debatably, the end of his life. This class at West Point is documented in a book written by former Washington Post journalist named Rick Atkinson. The name of the book is the Long Gray Line. This book spends a lot of time on Wheeler himself, if you read it, and Wheeler had a copy of it at his home. He served as a staff officer in Vietnam. He served with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He served with the Joint Staff before he left service in 1971. His schooling is particularly interesting because it was his gateway to the upper echelons of American society. He enrolled in Harvard business school in 69, got a master's in Business Admin. He got a degree in law from Yale in 75. And he worked with fancy law firms in D.C. the ones that kind of blur the line between private and public power. They're often called white shoe law firms. You may hear them referred to as such. He served as a clerk for George E. McKinnon. He was a high level official for the SEC, securities and Exchange Commission. This guy had his finger in a lot of pies. He was during his time at the sec. Side note, he was investigating major cases of insider trading. So long story short, he was accepted by the often invisible ruling class of this country. And he moved extensively in this circle.

[Matt]

Well, and he's also, if anyone knew of his work, if you're imagining the people on the other side of those investigations, he was already potentially making enemies. Just putting it out there.

[Ben]

Yeah, great point, Matt. Let's talk a little bit about his career, because the space he occupies is a bit alien, I think, to a lot of the general public. You could describe him as a defense consultant, but that is a very vague term.

[Noel]

Yeah, it seems almost like a gray area kind of where it could encompass a whole lot of things that maybe aren't public knowledge.

[Ben]

Yeah, exactly, Noel. So he was known for working in that often unexamined liminal space between the Feds and private Companies and then charities and nonprofits. And of course, as longtime listeners know, some of those organizations, not all, but some of them, are much more closely related than they would have you believe, according to, you know, their FAQs on their websites. For most of the people in the U.S. wheeler's most notable well known work is his assistance in the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. in 1984. He's instrumental in making that happen. He worked for a cavalcade of different institutions and organizations. Amtrak, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, three different Republican administrations, Reagan and then Bush, and then Bush again when that guy put his son into office. And he also worked for the Mitre Corporation. Remember that last one? It's going to be important later. His career was not without controversy, especially moving in and out of so many institutions. Maybe we can talk a little bit about his roles with charities and with businesses as well.

[Matt]

He was extremely active in various nonprofits, I think that's probably the way to put it. Very specialized nonprofits. And he was the founder and CEO of this thing called Vietnam Children's Fund. By many accounts, at least if you look online, appears to be a great organization, at least the forward facing things about it. He worked with President Bush, like we said, the father, to create this thing called the Earth Conservation Corps. He also served as president and CEO of the Deafness Research Foundation. I mean, just listen to what we're saying here. This man was nonstop working with organizations that appear to be for the greater good, at least that's the way it seems. He also had a really solid rep for. Oh yeah, this is great. Solid rep for turning failing businesses around. Now that sounds great, right? On paper, but when you turn a failing business around, what does that really mean?

[Ben]

Right.

[Matt]

What do you have to do to turn a failing business around?

[Noel]

It's when you start hearing corporate buzzwords like pivot, you know.

[Dr. James Stapp]

Yeah.

[Matt]

And it could be, and it could be everything from specializing in making a company specialize in one small thing that is a profit center and then getting rid of a whole bunch of other things that a company does, such as the case with Macy's. Macy's, you'll remember from the mall when you were a kid and some places now I think they're Macy's, unless they're all gone, I can't remember. But he turned that business around. He got them out of bankruptcy.

[Ben]

Right. Which may have entailed layoffs. That's, that's the elephant in the room, the badger in the bag there. Under euphemisms like streamlining, pivoting or focusing. But he did manage to right the ship. Small note about Vietnam Children's Fund, by the way. They build elementary schools in Vietnam and they do a pretty great job at it. They're still around if you want to learn more, you can. You can just find them online. But perhaps the most unpredictable aspect of Wheeler's post military career was this late stage professional plot twist. He was well into his 60s when he developed an intense interest in cybersecurity. And that's what led him to the Mitre Corporation. It also turned him into one of those guys who always has a briefcase, inexplicably. Always has a briefcase.

[Host of Therapy Gecko]

This.

[Matt]

And what's in there, huh?

[Carrie Brownstein]

Huh?

[Matt]

Who knows?

[Ben]

No telling. No, literally, we don't know. But behind the scenes, you know, we have to realize that this, this person was a human being and he struggled with his own demons. He suffered from depression and bipolar disorder. That's not speculation. He received diagnosis in this regard. And this resulted in these bouts of frenetic action and then unpredictable at times, drastic mood swings. But you know who's perfect?

[Matt]

Well, he's clearly a workaholic, right? And I'm sure in many ways that helped him. At least if you watched the, I think we mentioned it, the Unsolved Mysteries episode as well as you read online, stuff that has been written by his wife, he thrived quite a bit from that energy that he got, not necessarily from bipolar disorder, but just that existed within him inherently.

[Ben]

Right? Right. Someone defining themselves by their continual actions. Right. There must always be a goal to pursue. He's not really a kickback and smell the morning dew with a nice hot cup of coffee kind of guy. He's got stuff to do. But given his track record and given the success and the benefits of the work he does, his legacy seems assured. Until one strange day in November, very last day of 2010, December 31st. There are some workers at the Cherry island landfill near Wilmington, Virginia. They see the body of an elderly man plummet from the back of a garbage truck onto a heap of trash. This turns out to be the body of John Parsons Wheeler III. He was 66 years old. Today's episode. What happened? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor.

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[Dr. James Stapp]

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[Danielle Fishel]

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[Caller on Therapy Gecko]

I am talking to a felon right now with face tattoos, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

[Host of Therapy Gecko]

That was a caller from my podcast, Therapy Gecko, where I speak with anonymous callers about their problems, relationships, and anything else in the depths of their mind. It all happens on my show, Therapy Gecko, where we have real conversations just like this.

[Caller on Therapy Gecko]

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[Host of Therapy Gecko]

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[Ben]

Here's where it gets crazy. Officially, this death has been ruled a homicide. However, it is a homicide that comes with a lot of unanswered questions. And the further you dig into this story, the stranger it becomes. So maybe we start with the relevant details. Should we start with the landfill? What do you think?

[Noel]

I think that's a perfect place to start. When these workers found Wheeler's body, he had the look of having been severely beaten. He was wearing a white shirt, black pants, and a black jacket. And an important detail, he was wearing a class of 1966 ring from the West Point Military Academy. And the thing that was unusual about it is that he still had things like that clearly very valuable ring that any average street mugger would have taken. Not to mention the absolute lack of care that went into, quote, disposing of this body. I mean, it was really just dumped in plain view.

[Matt]

We're going to talk about this later on. But just to end up where his body ended up, it was either someone taking great care to put a body in a dumpster and hope that it would never be discovered again because it is actually quite unlikely that they would have discovered him amongst all the trash that was dumped that day from. From the truck. The other, the other side of the coin is if his body was dumped by somebody or just put into a dumpster like that. You're right that there's a lack of care in that. I don't know. It's weird. It's both sides, right? It's a lack of care, but it's also, it appears to show intent. I guess if someone actually did put him in there to try and hide a body.

[Ben]

Yeah, that's the thing. It's alarmingly easy to dispose of an organism in a landfill, especially a large one. You just, you have to work out the timing and you have to, you know, like the day of the week when a lot of dumps come in, things like that. This should not be confused or mistaken. As confused for mistaken as advice on where to put bodies. We are not giving you that. We are saying that the average, I would say not, not pre planned or orchestrated mugging or murder doesn't usually result in, in the perpetrator having the presence of mind to dispose of the body. You know what I mean? If you are robbing someone, the robbery goes wrong and you stab them, wound them, maim them or shoot them, your first instinct is going to be to leave the scene immediately rather than sit around and think, hey, should I stash this in some bushes, Assassin's Creed style, or something like that. It just, it doesn't often happen that way. So Wilmington is on the case. Authorities contact the police in New Castle, Delaware, where the Wheeler family has a second home. And the Virginia police informed the Delaware police of this a few days earlier, just after Christmas, around December 28th, Wheeler had told his wife he had to spend a few days working on an important project at the Mitre Corporation. He told her he'd be staying at the Metropolitan Club in downtown Washington. And they argued about this. We know they argued. This is not speculation because we can see the email and text records. And he was emphasizing this was important. He even talked to his therapist about the argument. He was trying to. Trying to smooth things out diplomatically until the point that he fell completely out of contact with her. And then police found a series of phone calls that made this seem like more than an accidental death or a mugging.

[Noel]

That's right. But more than, you know, offering any real solutions. It just raised a significant number of new questions to the circumstances surrounding Wheeler's death. One call from December 28, the day Wheeler traveled to Washington, D.C. came from a resident of Newcastle named Scott Morris, who saw at 11:30pm what he described as, quote, the darkened silhouette of a man standing in the frame of the house under construction across the street, methodically lighting what looked like small balls of fire and tossing them onto the floor.

[Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff]

Huh.

[Noel]

Really descriptive and kind of eerie. The police called to the scene, didn't find any damage of note, but Morris remained disturbed by what he saw. The sense of desperation and the purpose of what was going on in this scene really stuck with him. He Described it as creepy. He says the figure appeared very calm, and when he finished, he turned very deliberately and walked away toward the path along the Delaware River.

[Ben]

Yeah. So we know the thing about eyewitness accounts is that they're essentially combo meals.

[Caller on Therapy Gecko]

Right?

[Ben]

The main entree in these combo meals is going to be the factual description of what happened. But the side order, the fries and the drink are the person's own perspective and opinion put upon what they saw. So, yes, for Morris, this appears to be purposeful. He somehow, from body language, because he didn't speak to this person, he somehow believed or got the sense that they were quite deliberate. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are because he didn't talk to them. Right. And he didn't see who it was. That's a hugely important detail here, but another hugely important detail. That construction site was something Wheeler was involved in in an antagonistic way. It was part of an on. He was part of an ongoing legal dispute over the construction of this particular house. And he was going hard on the paint, too. He hated the idea of it being built. Partially, yes. It would block his. His home's view of the land and the water. But from his perspective, at least the way he explained it, the area was historic because back in the day, early colonists and then later revolutionaries built a defense battery on that land. So to him, building anything on that land, other than perhaps a monument to those earlier forces was profoundly offensive. It was a kind of sacrilege. But then we have to ask ourselves, was that sincere or was that just like his rationalization for this construction that he hated? You know what I mean? Anyway, he was involved.

[Matt]

Well, he was involved, and he was trying to stop it. His wife says that he was essentially on a mission to stop this thing. And we know from. Just from his past life and his actions, everything that he's done, he sees something as a goal and he goes for it. And that's like. Again, like his mission. Right? So you can imagine that he was very feeling very, very strongly about this. And from. From what I've read this, this incident appears to have been like smoke bombs that weren't gonna. Didn't seem to cause any damage, really, to the house. Didn't seem to cause anything else besides this disturbance. But the weird thing is that John Wheeler's cellular phone was recovered in that house, the house that was under construction where the silhouetted man or person lighting smoke bombs was found or was seen, let's say. Very strange.

[Ben]

Yeah. Leaving the accusations of his involvement or his guilt in this instance, Leaving those all to the side. The timeline becomes really weird when we think about when he had the phone and when he didn't. How the phone got from him to that place in place on the banks there. And then there is another call. Police discover on December 30, the day before Wheeler's body is found. There's a guy named Rob Dill. D I L L He is one of the Wheeler's neighbors there in Newcastle. And he reports that someone has broken into the Wheeler's home. I believe he's the same neighbor also who said they had a TV on very loud. When he knew there was no one home, he was just doing the thing neighbors do, keeping an eye on the house. He had noticed a window ajar in the Wheeler house. And the exterior door, the storm door was closed, but the interior door was also ajar. And then he found some weird, weird stuff. When he went into the interior, there was a disarray in the kitchen. You know, like somebody had been rooting through things in a hurried manner. John had a ceremonial sword and shield. They were covered with powder by the sink. Rob Dill notices a footprint in powder in front of the sink. And when the police show up, the weird thing is that nothing seems to have been stolen. Stuff was messed with, but no one, no one took expensive electronics. No one took, you know, some of the art that the Wheelers had. The. The kind of stuff would normally steal if you were just a garden variety B and E dude. But there was one detail that caught their attention. Amid all this disarray. Investigators found a book on the kitchen counter. The book was open as if someone had been reading it before they left. Can you guess what the book is? If you guessed the long gray line, you are correct.

[Matt]

Yeah, man. And just the fact that his ceremonial sword and shield were hanging out down there, I mean, that's a. It's weird. Spices, some comet maybe, or whatever the white substance was. And those things. I don't know. It's weird. It's tough because initially what that sounds like to me is frantically searching for something in your own house and then maybe finding it or not finding it and getting upset and leaving.

[Julie Pinero]

That's.

[Ben]

Where's the turmeric? Forget this.

[Matt]

Or, you know, there's something. I've hidden something, or I know I've hidden something, but I'm not sure where it is. I think it might be under the sink and like just pulling everything frantically out from drawers and from under the sink. I don't know. That's what it sounds like. To me, rather like, as you said, for all the reasons you've already stated, Ben, rather than someone coming into the house and robbing it. Unless they were just trying to leave a message of some sort.

[Ben]

Right. Unless there was possibly someone from his past.

[Caller on Therapy Gecko]

Right.

[Ben]

This is the thing. We don't know what page the book was on. You know, when it was open, was it indicating a specific, somehow significant passage? Unknown at this time. But then also, we see an alternate possibility that maybe Wheeler himself is panicked or he's hurried for some reason. Because when people are hurrying from their own house, they don't always close the windows or the doors.

[Danielle Fishel]

Right.

[Ben]

Because the logic is, it's my house. I'll just come back and do it. Right. So the initial investigations tell us increasingly strange things. On January 3, just a few days after the discovery of his body, UPI reported Wheeler's death was ruled a homicide. But a friend of his that he knew through the legal circles he moved in noted, this is just not the kind of guy who gets murdered. This is not the kind of guy you find in a landfill. But the official cause of death, again, is homicide. And that was specified in several obituaries that came out shortly after.

[Noel]

So according to his obituary in the Washington Post. Well, I'll just read you a quote. The cause of death was blunt force trauma inflicted by unknown assailants in Wilmington, Delaware, not far from his home in New Castle, Delaware. But as these investigations continued, many more troubling details started to rise to the surface. Wheeler seemed to not only have been beaten, but beaten to the point of, like, the beating inducing a heart attack, you can only imagine. And several eyewitnesses would report that Wheeler had been seen in really rough shape, holding a shoe, his shoe, stumbling around under duress in Wilmington, Delaware. He was telling people in this Unsolved Mysteries that we talked about at the top of the show, they interview some of the folks that saw him. And he claimed to have lost his briefcase, or rather, even more so, had it stolen.

[Matt]

Yeah, that's what he told a parking lot attendant.

[Noel]

That's right. And he kept repeating it like he was in some kind of fugue state. Whether it's suffering from some sort of mental breakdown or just days from having been attacked or disheveled and all that. But the plot does thicken. There's some footage you can see he's on camera from his kind of, you know, wander. And you can see he's just kind of pacing around frantically. He's holding the shoe. It almost looks like he's mumbling to himself. He looks very disoriented on these CCTV videos and he claims to have been robbed and needed a ride out of town.

[Matt]

And this is my side note here, but when you first look at the footage, you see an elderly man that does appear to be out of sorts for one reason or another. And in my mind initially what I see is disorientation, like a disoriented person, maybe I don't know where I am. I'm confused about what's going on and why I'm here. That's what it looks like. But according to people who knew him well, there's several interviews outside of that Unsolved Mysteries show that include his wife and several people that knew him and his wife speaking about others words. But they all say that he looked in distress, as though he was. What did they. I think, Ben, you kind of put it that way. Hunting or being hunted, essentially like he was in distress for one reason or another. That's their opinion, right?

[Ben]

Yeah. And that's a phrase we'll use later in the episode because it does encapsulate exactly how he. How he was behaving. And again, we see the issue with eyewitness reports. People are putting their own perspective over the events, or it's a better way to say it is they're seeing the same events through the lens of their own perspective and their preconceptions. Here's the thing. This doesn't appear to have come out of nowhere because email records show that on December 29 he had contacted his colleagues at the Mitre Corporation reporting a home break in. He said that his cell phone had been stolen, his badge, his ID badge, his security fob and his briefcase. There's a mystery here. We know his records for cab calls. We have interviews with cab drivers who spoke with him. We know his records for emails and text. But after he reported his phone being stolen, it's not clear where he was sending these other emails from or how he was sending them. Was it an Internet cafe or something like that? We simply do not know. There are no further reports of him until 6pm when he walked into the nearby Happy Harry's Pharmacy. This was like his, you know, it's like his CVS or his Walgreens down the street or Rite Aid, I guess, depending on where you live. Duane Reade, if you're in New York, I'm just naming pharmacies at this point, but he knows the people who work there. He is friends with one of the pharmacists and he comes in and he asks this guy if he can get a ride to Wilmington, and multiple times people try to offer him assistance. And for varying reasons, he always turns the assistants down. It's strange.

[Matt]

Did we talk about why he wants to go to Willington, at least according to that documentary or that Unsolved Mysteries episode? It's because his car was parked somewhere where he left his car parked somewhere, and he wanted to go find it, but he wasn't quite sure where it is. And according to his wife and others, he was constantly losing his car, essentially after he would park it.

[Ben]

Yeah, D.C. is a tough place to park in. I mean, a lot of the Northeast in general. But also he was doing something that I think will be familiar to a lot of people who park their car for a long time during quarantine. He just hadn't been around his car for a minute. Right. So he wasn't quite sure where he put it. That doesn't. The important thing here is that's losing your car in that way is not indicative of an unwell mental state.

[Matt]

Yes. And that's the story that he was giving to people for the reason to get to that area. But we're not. I don't know, we can't definitively prove that's why he needed to get to Wilmington.

[Ben]

Right. Just that that's what he said to some people, but not all. That's a very good point. So he looks particularly rough when he's in one parking lot talking to this parking attendant. He has one shoe on, the other is ripped and in his hand. And it turns out that he is in the wrong deck. His car is in a different nearby parking deck. He eventually leaves the scene. There are no further sightings of him until December 30th when he visits a high rise to speak with a senior partner at a law firm. He leaves before he actually meets with this person. But he also, according to someone else in the office, asked for money to take the train somewhere before he left. Surveillance cameras captured him exiting the building. He was walking east toward a place called Rodney Square. And this leads. If you walk past Rodney Square, this leads to an area of the city that is known for historically high rates of crime. That footage is the last time John Parsons Wheeler is seen alive.

[Matt]

The next morning, he's found dead in that landfill. It is interesting to note as well, it appears that he may have spent the night underneath that building where there are. There's a series of tunnels essentially that go throughout the area. And he was definitely seen on camera down there. And he was also seen in the same clothes he was wearing earlier. And then when he exited the building, somehow or for some reason, he had gotten a hold of a black hoodie.

[Ben]

Right.

[Matt]

Put that on and wore that out of the building the next night.

[Noel]

And then folks who knew him, his wife, for example, who were interviewed for that unsolved mystery episode, said that was just completely out of character for him. It's not something he would have ever

[Matt]

worn, but it was also very cold, for sure.

[Noel]

But it's like it didn't belong to him. He got it from somebody or somewhere, found it or something.

[Ben]

Yeah. Or maybe picked it up, paid cash, because he did have cash on him to the very end of his life and beyond. So when his body is found at the landfill, police in Newark, New Jersey, end up taking the case because there's evidence that the trash truck that had his body in it made stops in Newark, which means that Wheeler's body somehow ended up in a dumpster about 30, 13 miles away from where he was last seen on video or where he's last provably seen. As far as the information law enforcement has released, how much have they released? Not all of it. Not by a long shot. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and then we're going to dive into some of the theories and remaining questions regarding the death of John Parsons wheeler.

[Dr. James Stapp]

Hi, I'm Dr. James Stout. You might know me as a host of the podcast It Could Happen Here. I'm hosting a brand new show called Natural Causes where we explain how going outside is political and look at how we can live together with nature and take care of one another in a world that's on fire.

[Danielle Fishel]

You know, we feel uncomfortable saying something like culture and wildlife, but that's what it is.

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[Danielle Fishel]

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[Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff]

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[Noel]

You know when you get that feeling like you just. I don't want to be here. I want to get out.

[Ben]

I kind of want to go home.

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[Caller on Therapy Gecko]

I am talking to a felon right now with face tattoos and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

[Host of Therapy Gecko]

That was a caller from my podcast Therapy Gecko, where I speak with anonymous callers about their problems, relationships and anything else in the depths of their mind. It all happens on my show Therapy Gecko, where we have real conversations just like this.

[Caller on Therapy Gecko]

Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend Pre chew spicy food and kind of baby bird it into my mouth. Is that weird?

[Host of Therapy Gecko]

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[Ben]

We're back. Earlier we noted that whomever was throwing smoke bombs at that construction site, whoever they were, they weren't throwing explosives. You know, this wasn't C4. They weren't lighting fires. These smoke bombs didn't really have the capacity to do permanent damage.

[Noel]

No, I mean, we kind of all know what smoke bombs are. They're the kind of things you can buy at a joke shop or a fireworks shop. And they're sort of considered like the wimpiest of fireworks. But they make cool plumes of colored smoke, which you would have thought that the eyewitness people would have mentioned. The smoke bombs. I mean, they put out a lot of smoke and it's usually brightly colored, like blues or purples or pinks or whatever.

[Matt]

But it was at 11, 11:30pm when that was happening.

[Noel]

That's right. It was described as being silhouetted. So when there wouldn't, you would have had to have some direct light to see the effects there. But you're right. I mean, these things, they don't even really explode. They just kind of. You light the fuse and it sparks and then once it hits, it really just starts shooting out the smoke. So they wouldn't have done any damage. You can't really do a thing with smoke bombs other than, you know, disappear if you're like a cool ninja or something.

[Ben]

So could he have made an enemy? I mean, he's definitely involved. Or someone definitely wanted it to look as if he were involved because his cell phone ends up at the construction site. So did he lie to the Mitre Corporation and say that he had lost his cell phone prior to this to try to escape culpability? Did someone steal his cell phone and put it at the construction site? That's kind of complicated frame up, isn't it? There would have to be a compelling reason to do that.

[Matt]

Or was the smoke bomb a signal for a meeting? You know, like was. I mean, that sounds silly, but maybe the smoke bomb at a construction site was maybe the construction site was a quiet place to meet that he thought would be, you know, he'd be able to have a confidential conversation. There's another question, like when you're talking about the Mitre Corporation materials, and I don't mean, you know, I don't want to put anything on John. I don't know what he was doing or what his motivations were, but I can imagine all of those assets for a company could be valuable to somebody, right?

[Ben]

You're absolutely right. There's something else here. You know, we see a couple of points where this could have been a simple robbery or a series of unfortunate, completely mundane, non espionage related events. But there are some problems with that too. So first, as you had pointed out earlier, Matt, the body has things on it that a mugger would have stolen. Very nice Rolex watch. He's got that class ring from West Point. He still has cold hard cash on his person. Why would robbers leave all those things on a victim? If robbers. They were. If there were robbers at his home, what were they looking for? It was certainly not high end art. It was not electronics. Other valuables, none of those were touched. They were just searching frantically for turmeric, apparently. But the problem here is one of geography. Honestly, it's a series of bizarre disturbances. And even if you do the footwork and look through the documented timeline of where he went and when, you'll see that this appears to be a man on the run. He is either being hunted or believes he is being hunted, or possibly at some parts of the timeline, he himself is hunting someone. Which leads us to ask the question, are we talking about murder for hire?

[Noel]

I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, you mentioned completely correctly, Ben, like the way this man looks, the way he's pacing in this bathroom, it's like he's hiding from somebody. It's like he's trying to escape some unseen assailant. You know, I mean, that really, that's how it rings for me. I don't know if you guys read it that way, but I really got strong vibes that he was being chased.

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, I can imagine it. We have to wonder. And again, I end up going back to the Mitre Corporation because he only worked for them for what, two years? A year or two years? 2009, I think. 2010 until his death. He was just a consultant with them. And who knows what consulting work for the Mitre Corporation actually looks like. Who knows what information he was dealing with and had privileged knowledge to and of gosh, I have to put a giant. It's not an allegedly. It's my own thoughts. And I wonder if his work with the Mitre Corporation had something to do with this.

[Ben]

Yeah, I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility at all. Because at this point, at this point, the US intelligence community is well aware of the asymmetrical information warfare that countries like Russia and China and the DPRK or North Korea are actively waging against the U.S. and to be fair, the U.S. is doing the same thing with those countries, with countries in the Middle East. I mean, take a map, spin it around and just throw a random dart at it and you'll probably hit a country that the US is spying on. So there are a lot of state level actors that would be very interested in his work at Mitre Corporation. This takes me back to that point we made earlier about having a lot of potential enemies because he had a lot of potential projects. It's a nexus of speculation and there's a really, there's a disturbing part here that I wish some of those documentaries we mentioned spent more time on. And it's this. So we've talked about CCTV before, closed circuit television. This stuff is, you know, generally right now, it's not all interconnected, right? So like the pizza shop on one side of the street may have a couple of security cameras, and the Cupcake Factory or whatever on the other side of the street may have their own set of cameras and. But they don't really share data. The thing is, law enforcement can legally obtain those, especially in the case of an investigation of a heinous crime like a murder. Wilmington in particular is inundated with cameras. It is lousy with cameras. There's so, so many. And we know that therefore there has to be more footage of John Parsons Wheeler on that faithful night. But if you look at law enforcement statements, you just don't see that footage. You don't see the vast majority of what could be out there. And looking at the facts alone, it's plausible that this investigation was at some point and from some high level, stonewalled. Now, that doesn't mean that someone you know working for Mitre killed him or working for the CIA or some other intelligence organization. It just means that whoever murdered Wheeler and whatever their motivations for doing so were, there's something about the story the US government actively does not want you to know.

[Noel]

Going even further than stonewall, you could almost say manipulated or compromised.

[Fred Armisen]

Right?

[Ben]

Yeah, maybe.

[Matt]

Can I, can I put something out there. If let. I'm gonna. This is. This is insane. I'm just gonna say it. Imagine the three of us. Imagine if for some reason iheart was out to get us. All of our devices are inextricably linked to iHeart. Doesn't mean they're tracking them necessarily. But any use that we would have on our machines, even on our phones, likely could be linked back to that company in some way. And if we needed to get away because we were being hunted for some reason, we're not, and we will Never Be by iHeart. A good. A good strategy may be to get rid of all of those potential links and devices.

[Ben]

Sure. Yeah.

[Matt]

So I'm imagining that there could be a scenario where John got rid of all of that Mitre Corporation stuff on purpose because he wasn't trying to get away from somebody else, he was maybe trying to get away from them.

[Ben]

Yeah, or maybe trying to do something like do a burn the village to save the village strategy and brick his devices. He would have known how to actually brick one, too, how to make that information as close to irretrievable as possible. But that missing briefcase, that's one of the keys here. He was never without it. It's never been found. All we know about what could have been in the briefcase is that it must have been related to his cybersecurity work at mitre. Well, not must have, but that's the most likely scenario. We just don't know.

[Noel]

You know, it reminds me of a show that I worked on, Murder in Oregon, about the. Well, I mean, it's conjectured by the folks who truly believe this is what happened, that this public official was assassinated because he knew too much about corruption in the Oregon State prison system. And when he was killed, it was chalked up to being a mugging. He was stabbed in the heart outside of his office building. But guess what was missing when they found his body. A briefcase full of presentation materials. Back then it would have been floppy disks before PowerPoint and cloud based stuff, and supposedly that was never recovered. And that had this presentation that he was about to give that was gonna blow the lid off of all this, like, literally cops, like smuggling meth out of prisons and into prisons and really horrible, gnarly stuff. You know, again, none of this has ever been proven, but the case seems really strong. And this really has the same ring of that to me.

[Matt]

And he was going to meet some people at that. The corporate offices right in that building.

[Ben]

Yeah, he had been in the. He had been meeting, wanting to meet with the legal team. He had also been around the dupont building at the same time. And again, he had emphasized to his family and to his colleagues that he had to work, even though it was like the end of the year, like he had to go in and knock out some incredibly crucial stuff. With Mitre, it is currently unknown whether the last several hours of his life were spent in Wilmington or in Newark. There's no conclusive murder scene that has been found, or at least there's none that's been discussed with the public. And if there's an exact time of death, that has also not been released. In fact, going to my earlier theory that there's some stonewalling or some obfuscation here, on January 8th of 2011, just a few days after his body was discovered, a Wilmington city councilman named Kevin Kelly told police not to, quote, go overboard in investigating this man's death. Yeah, right. That's weird. It's like, okay, yeah, look into this murder. But you guys don't make it a whole thing.

[Matt]

You know, just a high profile person who passed in a very strange way, and you say, don't. Don't worry about it.

[Ben]

Yeah, chill, bro. Right at the time of this recording, of our recording, any toxicology reports on Wheeler that may have indicated some kind of substance in his body, they are unavailable to the public. Medical examiners. I found a couple sources saying that the examiners indicated they either found no abnormal chemicals or nothing that played a role in his demise. Because we have to remember some substances can be metabolized very quickly and they'll still have damaging effects, but when you check the body afterwards, they'll be clean, you know, and they'll have appeared to die of something like asphyxiation or heart failure. Russia does polonium on purpose. It's so that, you know, it's Russia. There are other much, much less apparent substances.

[Matt]

What was the stuff Navalny got hit with in his underwear?

[Ben]

Novichok.

[Matt]

Novichok. That's the whole point. At least according to that phone call, if you believe it was. That it would be untraceable, you'd have no idea what happened.

[Ben]

Right, but then also, how much of an expert is that guy if he's gonna talk about that stuff on the phone?

[Matt]

Well, he saw. Yeah, okay, come on. He was allegedly, at least according to his belief, was talking to one of his handlers.

[Ben]

Okay, all right. But, yeah, all right, well, far be it for us to criticize someone else just trying to do their job. So in some ways, this case does bear similarities to that still Unsolved death of Elisa Lam. We have video footage. We have records of communication. What we do not have, however, is anything like an explanation.

[Matt]

Yeah, not even close.

[Ben]

And unlike the case of Lamb, it appears the world at large has moved on from the mysterious death of John Wheeler.

[Matt]

It really does seem that way.

[Noel]

I'm.

[Matt]

I'm thankful that Unsolved Mysteries came back with this episode because it feels like it's really jump started, at least discussion online in a lot of places. Because think, man, it's been 11, 10. 10 years. Almost 11 years. No, 11 years. God. Oh, it's just. It's been so long. And one of my big questions coming away from this after reading everything, watching all this stuff, there are two scenarios for me. One is that he really was going through some kind of mental state where he was either manic or super low, right? Where he was just going through something. Not confused is the wrong word, but he just. He was focused on other things. And what we see in the footage is him truly in a distressed, confused state, and he's not sure what's going on. He's trying to find his car. Then he gets lost. He has no way to communicate because he doesn't have a cell phone. He can't get back to his wife, who would be his mental rock, or another family member or somebody familiar that would kind of help him. And he's cold. He's in a different place. Maybe a car took him to Newark when he didn't expect to go to Newark for some reason, or somebody he got in a car with, with bad intentions took him to Newark instead of where he wanted to go. And, you know, that's one potential thing. And along with that is maybe he was cold and he climbed into a dumpster, which is a common thing that occurs when it's very, very cold outside and there's no other place to go. Dumpsters are used in that Unsolved Mysteries episode. There's a few people who work in that industry saying that, yeah, it's very common for us to load the truck up to one of these dumpsters. You put the forks in, and then somebody will pop out the top or jump out the side and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop. I'm in here. And I'm not saying that John would or wouldn't do that. It's just a real possibility. Right, right.

[Ben]

Yeah, yeah, it's a real possibility, and it's an excellent point. We do also need to point out that, you know, the, the family, the survivors, his relatives, his friends, his Colleagues have all also, you know, done their best hiring investigators, putting out rewards for information. But still, at this point, there seem to be no leads. The craziest question is, could a government agency of some actor, some state actor or a faction thereof have targeted him for his extensive high level knowledge? He knew a lot of stuff.

[Matt]

Yeah, he did. Yeah, he really did.

[Ben]

But the thing is, he seems by all accounts to be a real company man. He's ideologically loyal. He doesn't seem like he's the type of. To divulge secret intelligence to spill the. To spill the espionage beans or anything like that. So then we have to ask. I don't want to get all Jacob's ladder with this, but we have to ask whether there might be a personal revenge motive at play. Could it have been something related to Vietnam? There's no solid proof or at all.

[Matt]

Or that house. Or the house, that house across the street where he was trying to shut that thing down. Yeah, I think that's a real possibility, that he made a personal enemy somehow, one way or another. The other thing I want to bring up with that dumpster, just really quickly. I'm sorry that I didn't finish that thought there. If you're in a dumpster like that, imagine the physics of one of these big forklift trucks picking up a dumpster. If you're inside of it and then dumping it forcefully into the back of a truck. Then also think about the fact that, that a lot of those dump trucks have a compressor function on purpose to compress trash. Imagine if you got stuck in there accidentally, are caught unawares, get dumped in there and then get crushed. To a certain extent, his. The injuries that are shown on that report, like crushed ribs, like he appeared to have been beaten up. But I'm wondering. This sounds so silly, and I don't mean to discount the work of any coroner, of any medical examiners, but I'm trying to imagine how much damage would be done to a human body if it went through that process. If you're in a lot of fairly malleable trash, how much would a human body actually get crushed? Would it be to the extent where you wouldn't recognize the damage was being done because you would have differing points hitting the body? Right. Like, I know it's weird to get into the physics of what that would be like, but I'm just in my mind, like, what if it was just him being in that compactor that caused the damage? Tell me if that's stupid. I don't know.

[Ben]

It's not stupid. At all. But even if the thing is, even if that's the case, it doesn't explain some of those other things leading up to demise. Right. So if it is something like that, it's still, I would say, no less tragic. That's a horrible way to go. Especially when you're already having what appears to be a very hectic and unpleasant series of days. Yeah, it's quite possible. It's also possible that maybe he was beaten before, maybe was beaten near to the point of death and then escaped into a dumpster to hide. It is possible. Again, all the things that we're saying right now are possible but not proven. You know, they're questions that have just become tougher to answer over time because again, in my opinion, something was up with the investigation on some level. What would you say about that, Matt?

[Matt]

Yeah, I mean, from what we found there from Kevin Kelly, that seems off. That seems really, really off. This was a high profile person that was, you know, appeared to be beloved in many circles, especially in the upper echelons of at least the Republican Party. If not, you know, the. Without using the phrase deep state, the non elected parts of the government.

[Ben]

Right, right. Yeah. One thing is for sure. Something about this, if not the direct murder or homicide or accidental death, something about this appears orchestrated. It appears that someone had a plan. And whatever this was, it was not a random break in and a random mugging. Something was at play. Something was afoot. But what? You know, Matt, I know we're in deep water here because we're exchanging theories, we're sharing possibilities, but without access to more information or a deathbed confession or something, I think everybody is at a loss to explain this. A lot of the things we just mentioned are currently equally plausible or equally possible, I should say.

[Matt]

Well, we want to know what you think. What happened to John Parsons Wheeler iii. Write to us. You can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter. We're conspiracy stuff at both of those. On Instagram, we are conspiracy stuff show. You can also head on over to our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. You like this? Just like our segment that's been on the show since the beginning. You can go over there and hang out with listeners just like you have discussions. You will be surprised at how excellent an online discussion can be about topics like this. It's wonderful. Highly recommend it.

[Ben]

Yeah. An update from. From the here's where it gets crazy front. Apparently there's talk about writing a stuff they don't want you to know piece of fan fiction. What? Yeah. Yep.

[Matt]

So is it romantic?

[Ben]

I don't know. We're not in charge of. This is from Holly, one of your fellow listeners. So we will be having it. We will be figuring it out at the same time you do. Folks, one nice note. It looks like this might be used potentially to raise money for some charities in the Marshall Islands.

[Matt]

Oh, wow.

[Ben]

So it could be for a good cause. But yeah, that's some of the stuff that you will see on. Here's Where It Gets Crazy. If you are not given to exploring social media. Totally get it. You can call us directly. We have a phone line that we are doing a great job at now keeping track of. It is 1833 std w y t K. You call, you'll hear a voicemail message telling you you're in the right place. You get three minutes. They belong to you. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the telephone law. But. But we do have a couple.

[Matt]

Except for.

[Ben]

Yeah, but we have a couple recommendations that may be helpful for you if you find yourself kind of like scrambling.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah. First thing, go ahead and tell us what you want us to call you on air. Doesn't have to be your real name. Whatever you want. Malkovich is fine. We'll just call everybody Malkovich. Then let us know if we can use your message on the air.

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[Matt]

I mean, if you call, I don't want to limit you. If you call in, we really want to use it on the air. Just let us know if it's okay. Then after that, tell us your message. Try and keep it as brief as you possibly can. If you end up needing to, you know, tell a longer story or something, we would recommend, rather than leaving it on the voicemail, go ahead and send us an email. And many of you have been doing this already. Thank you so much for listening and for just, you know, doing this. It really does help us out. We can. We can get through an email message pretty quickly. If you want to send us an email, it's really easy. Shoot us a message.

[Ben]

We are conspiracyiheartradio.com.

[Matt]

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[Carrie Brownstein]

Hey Portlandia fans Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

[Fred Armisen]

The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form.

[Carrie Brownstein]

We're launching Podlandia AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

[Fred Armisen]

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators and friends including director Jonathan Krisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

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Kyle is going for it. Here you fully improvised not just words, but a song.

[Matt]

Well, I thought you were all gonna write a song.

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I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia AO rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Julie Pinero]

On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

[Danielle Fishel]

Your du lingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you.

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I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Matt]

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode. We're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes Episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed and Mary Steenburgen Listen to Hollywood handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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