My Terrifying (and Oddly Funny) 25 Hours Kidnapped in New York

Summary

What It Was Like

Episode: My Terrifying (and Oddly Funny) 25 Hours Kidnapped in New York
Host: Julian Morgans
Guest: Stanley Elpert
Date: June 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features Stanley Elpert, a lawyer who vividly recounts his harrowing 25-hour experience of being kidnapped off a New York street in 1998. Far from a straightforward crime story, Stanley’s retelling is laced with dark humor and unexpected camaraderie, as he navigates captivity using wit, empathy, and the skills honed from years as a federal prosecutor. The episode explores not only the terror of the ordeal but also the human quirks and absurdities found within a life-or-death situation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Stanley’s Background & The Night of the Kidnapping

• Introducing Stanley: Grew up in Brooklyn, lower middle-class background, became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. Known as a hard worker with a good social life. (05:40)
• Setting the Scene: Evening of his 38th birthday in 1998; returned from a dull date and escorted another woman home from the subway—feeling upbeat just before being abducted. (06:35)
• First Contact: At 10th Street and 5th Avenue, he feels a tug on his elbow, turns, and finds two armed men (one with a machine gun) ordering him into a car. (07:40)

Immediate Reactions & Impulse Management

• Shock and Survival: Stanley likens the initial shock to plunging into freezing water—paralyzing, but not immediately panicked. He knows there’s nothing he can do as both guns are on him. (08:34)
• Coping Mechanisms: He instinctively avoids eye contact so as not to challenge his captors and quickly decides to cooperate (giving up his ATM code) to avoid instant danger. (09:28)
• Using Humor to Humanize: Stanley cracks jokes early, despite conventional wisdom. He finds that humor, especially with cultural roots in Jewish resilience, can help create a human bond with his kidnappers. (12:27)

Understanding His Kidnappers

• Profiles:
  • Lucky: The leader—a college student studying criminal justice and working as a pimp, particularly exploiting underage girls.
  • Ren & Sen: Street-level thugs, impulsive and rough around the edges.
  • Girls: Teenage prostitutes, victims themselves, coerced but also complicit.
• Layers of Victimhood: Stanley empathizes with the girls, seeing them as secondary victims of Lucky’s manipulation. (19:46)

Life Inside the Kidnap Apartment

• First Hours: Blindfolded, placed on a mattress in a Brooklyn apartment, surrounded by the gang and girls. Refuses to remove his shoes as a psychological tactic—“I was never going to leave that place if I did.” (22:40)

• Strange Hospitality: Despite being a hostage, Stanley is offered Snapple, food (even a choice of turkey sandwich over ham), weed (which he declines), and, surprisingly, a sexual favor as a “birthday present.” (24:09)

  • Quote: “Oh, shit, we kidnapped the motherfucker on his birthday!” (26:50, unnamed kidnapper)
  • Quote: “I had to negotiate my way out of it... given the circumstances that I'm in, I'd really rather not.” (27:24, Stanley)

• Surreal Interactions: The captors oscillate between threats and almost party-like banter, making jokes, imitating Jamaican accents, and treating Stanley with unexpected camaraderie.

  • Quote: “We give you food. We offer you weed, we offer you a blowjob. What kind of robbery is this anyway?” (33:39, Ren)

Gathering Clues & Clinging to Control

• Hyper-Vigilance: Stanley memorizes everything he can—voices, movement, snippets of conversations, the pattern on staircase tiles, and even fragments of phone numbers. (25:21)
• Purposeful Compliance: He becomes the gang’s “friend,” providing legal advice and respectful conversation to deescalate tension and keep himself safe. (43:30)

The Release

• Uncertainty Mounts: Over 25 hours pass, with changing shifts of captors and increasing uncertainty about Lucky’s whereabouts and intentions.
• Critical Confrontation: Lucky asks, “If you had the chance to put me away for life, would you do it?”
  • Stanley replies carefully to keep hope of release alive: “So far... you haven’t hurt me. So far. You say you're going to release me soon on the street, unharmed. I don't think this has to go any further.” (36:20)
• The Long Ride: Blindfolded and fearing for his life, Stanley is eventually driven to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. He is given $20 for cab fare and told to walk—only realizing he’s truly free after cautiously removing his blindfold. (42:12)
  • Quote: “That was the happiest moment of my life. I was about to be murdered, and I wasn’t.” (42:13, Stanley)

Police, Aftermath, and Justice

• Returning to the World: Stanley’s friends, police, and the FBI are already at his apartment, certain he is dead. His hostage story initially seems too bizarre to be true to investigators. (47:47)

• Crime-Solving: Stanley’s clues—particularly a partial phone number and details of the apartment—lead to a rapid multi-agency investigation. Linking his case to another recent abduction helps crack the case. (49:26)

  • Quote: “When the records came back from the phone company, they showed several calls to and from 91769, etc. And that was Lucky's cell phone.” (50:41, Stanley)

• Sentencing: The kidnappers receive 15-19 years to life. Stanley feels relief and satisfaction, seeing their incarceration as protecting others from similar fates. (51:40)

Reflection & Recovery

• Aftereffects: Stanley experiences anxiety and hyper-awareness after the experience—buys a dog for companionship and security—but ultimately reframes it as a powerful motivator to live fully and directly. (53:19)
  • Quote: “It was really a wake up call to live my life as fully as I know how to live it.” (55:49, Stanley)
• No PTSD: Stanley avoids PTSD by maintaining a tiny sense of internal power—staying mentally active and gathering clues, rather than succumbing to total helplessness. (56:10)
  • Quote: “Inside my own brain, I was exercising whatever tiny strand of power I could find.” (56:20, Stanley)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Power of Humor in Crisis:

  • “You survive adversity through humor.” (13:01, Stanley)

• Absurdity Amidst Danger:

  • “What kind of robbery is this anyway?” (33:39, Ren)

• Facing Death and Freedom:

  • “I ran for the street... I ran a couple blocks over to 7th Avenue... That was the happiest moment of my life.” (42:13, Stanley)

• Life Philosophies Post-Kidnapping:

  • “If I love people, I tell them that I love them. If I don't like them, I don't waste my time sitting around... It was really a wake up call to live my life as fully as I know how to live it.” (55:31, Stanley)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 05:26 – Stanley introduces himself and his character/background
• 06:35 – The night of the abduction: context and mood
• 07:40 – First moment of being kidnapped, emotional shock
• 09:28 – Cooperating with the kidnappers, survival mindsets
• 12:27 – Using humor to humanize himself
• 14:13 – Growing up in Brooklyn, familiarity with crime
• 18:07 – First descriptions of the kidnappers and the apartment
• 22:40 – Life in the apartment, food, psychological tactics
• 24:09 – Introduction of the girls, more clues
• 26:50 – “It’s your birthday!” darkly comic moments
• 31:43 – The request for a turkey sandwich
• 33:39 – Ren's joke about weird hospitality
• 36:20 – Lucky’s pivotal question: would Stanley prosecute him if free?
• 42:12 – Stanley’s release in Prospect Park
• 47:47 – Police, friends, FBI reconstruct the story
• 49:26 – How Stanley’s clues cracked the case
• 51:40 – Reflections on sentencing, desires for justice/community safety
• 53:19 – PTSD, internal power, building resilience
• 55:49 – Embracing life fully after surviving trauma

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Tone & Delivery

Stanley is an engaging, self-deprecating, and exceptionally detail-focused storyteller. He sprinkles gallows humor and wry observations throughout even the most distressing moments. Julian, the host, maintains an empathetic but curious tone, encouraging retrospective insight and sharing in the surreal absurdities of Stanley’s ordeal.

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Final Thoughts

Stanley’s story is more than a crime snapshot. It’s an exploration of survival, human connection under duress, and the psychological strategies people use in the face of existential threat. His experience, simultaneously terrifying and bizarrely comedic, offers unique lessons in presence, humor, adaptability, and the persistent quest for meaning and agency—even in utter powerlessness. For those interested in the full, detailed story, Stanley has authored a book—The Birthday Party—which further expands on these incredible events.

Recommended for anyone seeking a masterclass in survivor storytelling, showcasing not just resilience, but the peculiar truths of what it was like.

Transcript

[Stanley Elpert]

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[Julian Morgans]

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[Stanley Elpert]

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[Julian Morgans]

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[Stanley Elpert]

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[Julian Morgans]

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[Stanley Elpert]

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[Julian Morgans]

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[Unidentified Female Narrator]

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[Stanley Elpert]

I felt the tug on my elbow. There were two men behind me with an automatic machine gun sticking right in my stomach, and I was off for a big ride. Lucky the leader was a little different. His main business was pimping. The men started to play with me, you know, and they were like, you know, Stanley, tell us, what would you be doing right now if we hadn't picked you up on the street? And I said, well, actually, later on today I would be going out to a concert with my friends because it's my birthday. And they thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. They just started laughing, hysterical. And then they thought about it some more, and they were like, stanley, you deserve a present. How about a blowjob for your birthday?

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, I'm Julian Morgans, and you're listening to what It Was like, the show that asks people who have lived through big dramatic events what it was like. Hey, listeners, welcome back to what It Was Like. This week we're doing a kidnapping story. So on the eve of his 38th birthday in 1998, a man named Stanley Elpert was walking home from a slightly disappointing date when he was plucked off the street by three armed men, bundled into a car, and taken to an apartment in Brooklyn. Stanley spent the next 25 hours there blindfolded in the corner of this room. So I guess on the surface, this is a survival story, and it's a pretty great one. Stanley is a lawyer, and he used his very well practiced verbal skills to keep himself alive. But for me, the most interesting thing about this story is the unintentional front row seats that Stanley got to the lives of the men who'd kidnapped him. Brooklyn was a pretty rough place in the 90s, and these guys were in the middle of that world, and they just kept living their lives around him, eating food, fighting, partying, having sex blindfolded. Stanley heard the whole thing, which is disturbing in places, but pretty funny in others. Stanley is a very good storyteller, as you're about to hear, and he's good at bringing the details to life. Now, before we get into that, just a quick little plug for our subscriber episode. This week we're going to hear an Australian ghost story from a listener who lived with her husband on a remote Queensland farm until a strange series of events drove them out of the house. It's a very unsettling little tale, and it's there right now for subscribers. But for everyone, here is Stanley Elpert with his story of a birthday abduction. Hey, Stan, welcome to the show.

[Stanley Elpert]

Oh, thanks so much, Julian, for having me on your podcast.

[Julian Morgans]

The pleasure is all mine. So let's start with a very quick couple of dot points on who you are and how your friends would describe you.

[Stanley Elpert]

I'm a guy who grew up in Brooklyn. A lot of time spent on the streets, sort of lower middle class Brooklynite, worked very hard to go through college, worked very hard through law school. And at the time of the events that you're going to talk to me about. I was an assistant U.S. attorney, which is a federal prosecutor out of the Eastern District of New York. We take down a lot of bad people on both the civil and the criminal sides.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, and back in 1998 when this all went down, how was your life?

[Stanley Elpert]

I mean, one of the questions that everyone asked was, you're 38 years old. Why the heck aren't you married yet? So I was still a single guy out and about in Manhattan, but I had a great life. You know, lots of friends, parties to go to, movies, concerts. So my life was, was quite good.

[Julian Morgans]

And what were you doing the day you were kidnapped?

[Stanley Elpert]

Well, often enough I was fixed up on dates. People thought that they would finally take me off of the single market to give all the women of New York a sigh of relief. So someone had fixed me up on a date. I don't think she liked me. And I wasn't really feeling it either. So I came back downtown on the subway train. And that's where I met another woman on the train and then walked her home toward her apartment in the West Village.

[Julian Morgans]

Stan, chivalry not dead.

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so what happened after you dropped her off?

[Stanley Elpert]

Well, she went up the stairs to her railroad flat apartment and I walked down the street and I was feeling really in a great mood. I met a. A very nice young woman on the, on the train. I had gotten her business card. And the street was very, very empty and quiet because it was 11 o' clock at night and it was freezing.

[Julian Morgans]

And what was the first indication that you had that something unusual was happening?

[Stanley Elpert]

As I reached the corner of 10th street and 5th Avenue in Greenwich Village, from behind, I felt the tug on my elbow. I spun around. There were two men behind me with an automatic machine gun. You know, I wasn't a big expert in guns, but it was probably a TEC9 machine gun sticking, sticking right in my stomach. And they said, move, move. And they, they shoved me into the street. And then sitting there waiting was a brand new Lexus. And, and they told me to get in the car. They pushed me into the back seat, they shut the door, and I was off for a big ride.

[Julian Morgans]

Do you remember your response, your emotional state in that first minute?

[Stanley Elpert]

I think if you, I think if you jump off a rock and, and land in ice cold, freezing water, you may get a sense of it. In other words, it was a state of shock. Did I immediately feel the terror? Not exactly. It was happening quickly. I certainly knew that I couldn't do much about it. They had two guns on me, so there was really nothing I could do. And, yeah, it was just a frozen place in time, a feeling of shock. And then once I was in the car with the door shut, I don't know if I'm allowed to curse on your show, but I knew I was really.

[Julian Morgans]

Go ahead.

[Stanley Elpert]

In a lot of trouble.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, okay, wow. So just take me through it, you know, what happened next.

[Stanley Elpert]

So they shut the door. Even as I talk to you now, I can feel it. I can feel that feeling of going back to there. The leader of the gang was sitting in the driver's seat. He immediately took charge. First of all, he started to drive. They had already taken my wallet. And he said, stanley, let me tell you what's going to happen. We're going to take you to the bank. What's your cash machine card number? Which I immediately gave to them. It was completely intuitive to just cooperate immediately because they had all the power, I had none. And I gave them the number. He said, we're going to take you to the bank and we're going to withdraw money and you better cooperate with us. So I did just that. He then drove through Greenwich Village. He made a couple of turns and then he was headed up 6th Avenue. He stopped at the corner and left the two other criminals in the car while he went into the bank to use my cash machine card. So I'm sitting there in the car and first of all, I made sure from the start not to look at them. I mean, I did see their faces for a brief moment, but I made sure not to raise my eyes and look them directly in the eyes. I didn't want them to feel that I was challenging them. So I sat there at the corner of 6th Avenue and 23rd street with my eyes down. And, you know, the two thugs were chit chatting. Then the leader, the biggest thug, the guy who had the machine gun on me on the street, came back into the car and he said, whoa, boy, Stanley, what do you do for a living? Because even though I worked for the government, I was a very careful saver. And I had about $100,000 in my savings account, but they were limited because you can only withdraw $1,000 a day from the account in, you know, in the States at that time. So I had already taken out $200. I bought concert tickets because the next day was my birthday. And so he could only get $800. So he was trying to figure out how he could get more money. So he asked well, Stanley, do you have a girlfriend? No. Do you have a wife? No. Do you have any kids? No. How old are you? 38 years old. To which the leader of the gang, you know, said, what the hell have you been doing, man? You're 38 years old. You ain't got no wife, you ain't got no kids. You got all this money in the bank. What the hell is going on with you, Stanley? So I said, you should ask my parents. They've been wondering the same thing.

[Julian Morgans]

Nice.

[Stanley Elpert]

Now, you might ask, why would some guy. And you know, I worked as a federal prosecutor. You might ask, well, why would somebody in that situation start telling jokes? What's wrong with you? And one of the answers is, I immediately felt on instinct that if I could do anything to humanize myself, that that would be helpful to me. Now, you could be very wrong, because I know now that experts say that you should not use humor until at least about an hour have gone by, and only then if you're absolutely sure it won't backfire on you. But I wasn't an expert at the time. I was sitting there in a car, and naturally I told the one liner. You know, the other thing which really did become an issue later is I'm Jewish. And the Jews have survived many, many empires that oppressed them. And those empires are gone, but the Jewish people are still here. And one of the ways that it's built into the bones of a Jewish person is you survive adversity through humor.

[Julian Morgans]

That's nice. That's a great little piece of, like, historical. Very old historical context. And, you know, I can see that pride as well. It's nice. And I guess I've heard you say in other interviews that you'd sort of grown up on the rough streets of Brooklyn. This wasn't the first time you'd had a weapon pointed at you. This wasn't the first time you'd survived a mugging. So in some ways, did this sort of situation feel familiar? And I don't know, Just talk to me about that for a moment.

[Stanley Elpert]

I had been assaulted for my money many times growing up in Brooklyn. In those days, there was tremendous crime. So the Brooklyn that I grew up in was filled with crime. And, you know, I dealt with it, whether by dodging it, running, negotiating, sometimes fighting. I understood the psychology, even though it was a different psychology than mine.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, okay, so continue running me through the story. The boss comes back from the cash machine, and he's like, wow, Stan, you got some money? What have you been doing with your Life. What do you do next?

[Stanley Elpert]

You know, As I sat there in the car, I was hoping that the cops would drive by and see me and rescue me from the situation. But that didn't happen. So the leader thought about it. His name was Lucky. You know, his nickname is street name. He thought about it and he said, you know what? We're going to take you to an apartment where we're gonna hold you, and tomorrow morning you're gonna work with us and help us get your money out of the bank. Right, the hundred thousand dollars or so that I had saved up. So we started to drive down 23rd street towards the west side. The leader, Lucky, ordered one of the henchmen that was sitting next to me. I think it was a guy whose street name was Ren. He said, blindfold him. Ren took my scarf off and tied it around my eyes. And then they got to the west side. And even though I'm blindfolded, I know which direction we're going in. A few minutes later, I could hear the tires going over the metal. That would be one of the east river bridges. Whether it was the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge, I didn't know. And the leader started talking about how they needed to stop at a gas station to buy duct tape to tie me up. Apparently, they weren't considering a full blown kidnapping. And as time went by, it seems that because I wasn't fighting or yelling or arguing, he no longer saw the need for the duct tape. So he just drove. I could tell we were going somewhere in Brooklyn, Queens, you know, which would have taken you over the same bridge. But I wasn't sure where. I knew how long we had driven, so that gave me some idea of where we could be. And eventually he stopped the car. The three guys get out of the car, they hustled me up the stairs, they pushed me blindfolded still through a railroad flat apartment. And then they put me down on a mattress.

[Julian Morgans]

Were you making a conscientious effort to trace the route that you'd come through with various, you know, like the sound of the tires on the bridge. Were you trying to figure out where you were?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah. So if you. If you ask a bear to eat salmon, it's pretty intuitive. He's going to eat salmon. So if you capture a lawyer who also works at the U.S. attorney's office. Kind of can't help myself.

[Julian Morgans]

I love the way that you're redirecting all of these skills that you'd learned in this career that's got nothing to do with getting kidnapped. It's not like you're a war correspondent or something. You know, you're a lawyer working in an office, and yet somehow you've got this sort of toolbox of skills which is quite well suited for this environment you find yourself in.

[Stanley Elpert]

I had some skills that were pretty well suited to a kidnapping.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow. And I know that you're blindfolded at this moment, but could you just describe your understanding of your kidnappers at this point?

[Stanley Elpert]

In the car, I could see the leader, Lucky, only from the back of his head. He didn't seem like a big guy or a small guy. He just seemed regular size. The guy who put the gun in my face in the car, his name was Sen. He was obviously a big and sort of built guy. And the guy next to me in the backseat, the one who blindfolded me, named Ren.

[Julian Morgans]

And am I imagining like sort of slick mob, kind of like organized crime kind of guys? Or is this more sort of like street hoodlums who are into like petty crime and graffiti?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah. What a great question. Because the two thugs that were working for the leader or with the leader, Ren and Sen, they were definitely street level New York City thug types. Lucky, the leader, was a little different. He was well spoken. He ran the. The whole kidnapping as though he were a businessman managing both his thugs. And me, I found out later that he was attending a local college and studying criminal justice.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow.

[Stanley Elpert]

And he also had a fiance. So, you know, during the time that I spent in that apartment, he said he was going to go out and spend time with his fiance and then he would come back. Of course, he was also getting some on the side. I haven't mentioned the girls in the apartment yet, but they were prostitutes. And Lucky was. Both had a fiance and was getting some on the side.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so he was a bit of a pimp as well.

[Stanley Elpert]

Oh, his main business. His main business was pimping. Pimping 16 year old girls. These are 16 year old black girls who were, in my mind, although they cooperated with the kidnapping, were very much victims of this evil leader of the gang. They didn't deserve that for a minute. They were really in captivity in a way also. And again, as you ask me more about the story, of course they cooperated. So I understand they committed crimes and they deserved some punishment for that. But. But mostly those girls were victims.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break, but stick around because we'll be back with more what it was like Foreign. Powers, the world's best podcasts. Here's the show that we recommend.

[Stanley Elpert]

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[Stanley Elpert]

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[Stanley Elpert]

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[Julian Morgans]

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[Stanley Elpert]

You know, they were buzzing around the apartment, all excited because they just brought home this fabulous catch, which was me. And that went on for a little bit and then eventually they started to settle down. They told me to take off my shoes. So again, I'm not specifically trained in what to do in this situation, but in my head, if I took off my shoes, I was never going to leave that place. In other words, it was a psychological thing. If I show them that I'm not taking off my shoes, that might incline them slightly more to letting me walk out of there. So I didn't. So then they're still sort of buzzing about. And then they decided to go out for food and they asked me if I'd like some McDonald's still. When they came back, they brought me a bottle of Snapple iced tea. And they put it in front of me, and they said, here, Stanley, we got you something to drink. By now, I had actually been with them for a couple of hours. So I actually was thirsty and getting a little bit weak. So I opened the bottle, and you could hear the click of a bottle that hasn't been tampered with opening up. So I went ahead and drank the iced tea.

[Julian Morgans]

What time was it?

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

Now?

[Julian Morgans]

This must have been early in the morning.

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah, you've got to be at about something like 1:30am okay. So the three of them were there in the apartment at first, but soon after we landed there, the three girls came in. And, you know, they didn't say anything about walking the streets or working as prostitutes. I didn't learn that until a little bit later. What they did say, as soon as they walked in, they were like, what the hell are you guys doing? What have you brought back back here, you know, into our place? So they were pretty shocked. And then Ren, the big thug, he said, well, don't worry about it. We're going to use this to get some money. And then the girls were like, well, you got to pay us for the taxi that we took over here. And this was Ren and Sent. They were like, oh, yeah, yeah, sweetheart, that's not a problem. One of the women said it was $16.40 for us to take the taxi. And they had already said, from lower Manhattan. So, boom, I clicked that into my head, because if I didn't get killed, I was starting to gather clues. If you take lower Manhattan and you draw a circle of how far you can get, for $16.40, you would get a little closer to where they kept me.

[Julian Morgans]

Hmm, that's great.

[Stanley Elpert]

Okay.

[Julian Morgans]

And so how did this conversation evolve?

[Stanley Elpert]

The young women or girls, because they were very young, criticizing the young men for what they had done. And then not much longer, they started smoking weed. One of the guys asked me if I wanted to smoke. I never really partook of that anyway. But now I'm a federal prosecutor. I can't do it, you know, even if I wanted to, which I didn't, but I can't do it. So I just said, no, thanks a lot, you know, Appreciate it. And a little while later, I could hear the sounds of sexual acts occurring in the room around me, you know, very close to where I was. And of course, that was where I said, well, you know, thank you, God, for blindfolds, because I was thrilled to not be seeing what I was hearing. You know, the men were feeling good they'd had. They'd smoke weed, they'd had sex. You know, people feel relaxed and they feel good after those two things. So the men started to play with me, you know, like a cat would play with a toy. And. And they were like, you know, stanley, tell us, what would you be doing right now if we hadn't picked you up on the street? And I said, well, actually later on today, I would be going out to a concert with my friends because it's my birthday. And they thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. They just started laughing, hysterical. Oh, shit. We kidnapped the motherfucker on his birthday. And then they thought about it some more, and again, they're feeling good, they've smoked. They were like, stanley, you know, it's your birthday, you deserve a present. How about one of these girls for your birthday? How about a blowjob for your birthday? So I, I had to negotiate my way out of it. So I said, you know what? I'm quite sure that your, Your girls are beautiful, that they're wonderful, but given the circumstances that I'm in, yeah, I'd really rather not.

[Julian Morgans]

Well phrased, I'd say that you tap danced through that one pretty well.

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah, I appreciate it, Julian. You know, look, I. The whole way through this, I was fighting for my life. You know, I knew these guys could kill me in a second. People get killed all the time in New York City, and I was just tap dancing for my life.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd say so. So you turned down this poison chalice birthday gift and. And that was received fairly well. What happened next?

[Stanley Elpert]

So the leader of the gang, Lucky, had said he was going to see his fiance. He said that he was going to come back. I think it was six, six in the morning. And he was gonna pick me up and take me back to where they'd grab me. So the night goes by, I'm up the whole night, I'm listening to a lot of snores. And then 6am comes and 7 and 9 and 11 and 1pm And Lucky hasn't shown up. And nobody in the room, not the male thugs from the street and not the three female prostitutes, nobody in the room has any idea where he's gone, what's happening. And actually going back a bit, you know, to about 8 in the morning, the two guys ran and send, oh, I've left out. A fourth man showed up late the first night. His name was, was Lewis and he was the person who had the lease on the apartment. So they were Essentially using his place as the base for their criminal activities. So at 8 in the morning, when Ren and Sen wanted to leave the place, they, you know, they were off to high school, right? They had to go to school. And they asked for Louis to hold the guns and to watch me while they left. So that happened. They exit stage left. And now it's about one in the afternoon and the girls are starting to get anxious. They're like, where the hell is Lucky? He said he was taking this guy back. He's not come back. You know, what, what's he doing? Louis was also getting, getting angry. Eddie started ranting about things that bothered him. He was talking about his father and his stepfather and how wicked they were and, you know, the things they'd done to hurt him. Anyway, eventually one of the girls decided she's gonna go down to the payphone on the corner and she's gonna call Lucky on his cell phone and she says, what's his number again? 91769. And then she stopped in the middle of the number. She stopped. 917 being the area code, 6, 9 being the first two, two digits of a seven digit phone number. She said, I think this guy is listening. I said, no, I'm not. No, I'm not listening. And she came over and I could feel her, I could feel the, the breeze from her hand waving in front of my blindfold. And then she, it seems she was satisfied with me saying that I wasn't listening and she, she walked out. So she went downstairs to call the leader. She couldn't get a hold of him. She still doesn't know when he's coming back. Ren and Sen are still out for the day. Then they were, they were hungry. I don't want to pass out from not eating, right? So they said they were going to a sandwich shop. They actually called it the Salam Shop. And I couldn't tell whether that was the actual name of the shop or whether that was just a nickname. But I also recorded that they said, stanley, we're going to get you something to eat and we're going to get you a ham and cheese sandwich. I'm Jewish, I don't eat ham and I don't eat meat with cheese. So like some sort of a bloody fool, I said, well, would you mind getting me turkey?

[Julian Morgans]

You can't afford to be too picky.

[Stanley Elpert]

Well, it was obviously from the standpoint of any casual observer, it was an incredibly stupid thing to do. How dare I demand the type of sandwich that I want? But that's what I did.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah.

[Stanley Elpert]

I got a lot of things right, but I didn't get everything right. I got some things wrong.

[Julian Morgans]

Well, I don't know. I think you kept God on your side. That might have been a key ingredient here. Did they give you a turkey sandwich?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah, they got me a turkey sandwich. I ate it.

[Julian Morgans]

How was it?

[Stanley Elpert]

Really delicious. Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

Your taste buds were functioning in these conditions?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah. So I ate, and, you know, we all hung out. But several hours later, the two thugs, Ren and Sen came back. They were feeling great. They were all flushed from their day out. You know, they asked the girls how Stanley's doing, and they took their guns back from Lewis. And it was only maybe an hour later that Lucky showed up. But anyway, before he showed up, we went through the same routine that we'd gone through the night before we. Which was weed sex. They were really feeling good again. I mean, they're getting money out of this, right? They're. They're taking money from the cash machine. A thousand bucks a day. I found out later that they were using my credit cards to buy expensive things around town. You know, they have sex with their girls again, and then the whole thing turned into like, a dinner party. You know, they started telling jokes. They started imitating a Jamaican accent, and, you know, this may have also been a mistake, but since they were on the roll with the humor, I started to imitate a Jamaican accent also, you know.

[Julian Morgans]

What were you guys talking about in Jamaican accents?

[Stanley Elpert]

Just talking smack, right? Just, you know, because they were high, and it was just, you know, some nonsense. Then Ren, who's sitting next to me, and I know at this point know who's who from them talking. He has a revelation. This may be the funniest line from the kidnapping. He says, what's going on here? We give you food. We offer you weed, we offer you a blowjob. What kind of robbery is this anyway? And you know what?

[Julian Morgans]

He's right.

[Stanley Elpert]

Of course I laughed, because that was another way to ingratiate myself with them, right? They tell a good joke. I want to laugh. But the fact is, is I thought that was actually quite funny. Even in that moment, I thought he was very funny. And then all of a sudden, you can hear the front door to the apartment open and close, and Lucky comes in, and boom, the party shut down.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, we're gonna take a quick ad break, but stick around because we'll be back with more. What

[Stanley Elpert]

foreign.

[Julian Morgans]

Powers? The world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

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[Stanley Elpert]

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[Stanley Elpert]

I couldn't see him. I couldn't see his reaction, but just from listening, you could tell he had kind of an edge in his voice. Like, what has been going on here while I, the boss, Mr. Lucky, have been away, you know, sort of a skepticism by the manager to his employees. So, you know, he sort of settled in then, you know, it may have been an hour or two later, he says, girls, it's time for me to take you out on the street. And Lucky said to me, you know what? After I put them out there, I'm going to come back here and I'm going to take you back to where we kidnapped you. And so the girls shuffle out and Lucky is right behind them. I can hear his footsteps. Then I can hear the footsteps stop and I can hear him turn around and he talks to me and he says, stanley, let me ask you a question. If you had the chance to put me away for life, would you do it? Well, this is a very tough question because if I say no, he's going to know I'm lying. I'm a flipping federal prosecutor, for God's sakes. He's going to know I'm bullshitting him. If I say yes, he's going to want to kill me. So I said, listen, you've treated me well. So far. You haven't hurt me. So far. You say you're going to release me soon on the street, unharmed. I don't think this has to go any further. And he sort of grunted. He seemed satisfied with the answer. He grunted and he left the apartment. Now, obviously, he's telling me that he's going to take me back to where he got me, but I don't know if that's true. He may take me out to an alley somewhere. There are plenty of alleys in New York, everywhere, and there are plenty of empty lots. And, you know, maybe he's going to shoot me dead and, you know, throw me behind a pile of garbage. So then it takes, I don't know, maybe half hour, 45 minutes. He comes back to the apartment. He says, let's go. And now all the kidding, all the joking around, all the friendliness with Stanley, it just goes out like air coming out of a balloon. So they pull me up off the mattress and they shuffle me out of the apartment, the two thugs pushing me from behind, and we go down the stairs in the building. By the way, when I was on the way in, I could see out the bottom of my blindfold and I memorized the pattern on the tiles. So again, if case I didn't get killed, that would be another clue. And I had counted the number of stairs going up to the third floor that we were on. I feel the cold air just enveloping me. And they hustle me into the backseat of the car, and Lucky starts to drive, and everyone is completely silent. So I have no idea whether they're planning to release me alive or take me someplace and shut me down for good. So we drive for about 20 minutes. And it was very clear to me that when Lucky stopped the car after 20 minutes, we were no place near where they had picked me up. And I hear Lucky get out of the car from the front. I can hear him walking around to the back of the car. I hear the trunk opening. In that moment, I was positive I was dead because we're nowhere near where he just promised he was going to take me. I thought he was going to kill me, but I was wrong. See, he had a broken window on the passenger side, and it was covered with plastic. And apparently he was making too much noise flapping in the wind. So all he was doing was getting some duct tape to tape up the plastic on the window. Overnight, while Lucky was at his fiance's house, somebody broke into his car, and they stole my wallet from Lucky's car. You know, got to tell all your Australian friends not to move to the States.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Your credit cards must have been getting absolutely rinsed.

[Stanley Elpert]

Well, yeah, they. They bought some expensive things on my cards, including laptop computers and other such stuff. Anyways, he tapes up the plastic, he gets back in the car, and he keeps driving. Now, it's about another 15 minutes. He stops the car. I know we're. I still know we're not where they pick me up. We're not in Greenwich Village. Actually, Lucky told. I think it was sen. I'm not sure, sitting next to me this time on the right. He said, give him some money for cab fare. I think it was sen. He said, well, I don't have any cash so far. You've gotten the cash out of the. Out of the machines, Lucky. I don't have any cash. Eventually, one of them grumbled and sort of pulled a $20 bill and said, Here's 20. They gave it to me. Now, this was possibly a very good sign, but on the other hand, I thought maybe they were just trying to keep me calm and they were lying to me, and they were still going to take me outside and shoot me. So anyway, that guy, I think it was sent, he takes me out of the car, and he's holding the gun on me. I can hear it. And he tells me to walk. So I start walking one step after the other. I'm blindfolded. I'm walking somewhere outside, One step after the other after the other. I kind of thought that I may have heard the car quietly pull off, but I wasn't sure. Yeah, it was nighttime. It was windy. Anyway, after I'd taken about a dozen steps, I thought, you know what? You know, I may fall into a ditch or ravine, and maybe we're near the river somewhere. Maybe I'm about to go into the river. I thought it was enough, so I stopped walking, and I cried out in the cold night, are you there? And nobody answered. So I turned, I turned around, I ripped off the blindfold, and nobody was there.

[Julian Morgans]

Wow.

[Stanley Elpert]

And, Julian, that was the happiest moment of my life. I can imagine, because I was about to be murdered, and I wasn't.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, where were you?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah, so it was Prospect Park. I mean, I grew up in that park. I would constantly go there. I lived about 10 blocks from Prospect Park. I would go there all the time. And of course, we would get in street fights there. There were muggings there. But, you know, late at night in Prospect park is not a great place to be.

[Julian Morgans]

Could get kidnapped.

[Stanley Elpert]

I could have gotten mugged.

[Julian Morgans]

Luckily, you didn't have your bullet on you.

[Stanley Elpert]

Exactly. Anyway, I ran for the street. I ran a couple blocks over to 7th Avenue. This is Park Slope. Very, very fancy neighborhood these days. And I went to a pizza place and asked the guy if I could use his phone, to which he said, no way. I said, look, I've been kidnapped. I'm an assistant U.S. attorney. I was kidnapped, but they let me go. Can I use your phone? No. Because that's a New York attitude, right? Eventually, he let me use his phone, but not right away.

[Julian Morgans]

So before we go further, I'm fascinated. Why did they let you go?

[Stanley Elpert]

Two reasons, I think. One is that murdering a federal prosecutor, you know, and it took them a while to fully realize that that was my job, even though I told it to them. But they didn't quite understand it at first. But once they realized, you know, they went in my wallet and they pulled out my Department of Justice credit card, and they realized they had a problem, that they sort of kidnapped the wrong guy. So I think that was part of it, you know, that in their minds, there was no benefit and considerable detriment to be had if they killed me. And of course, they didn't realize that the whole time I'm in there, I'm gathering all these clues. They thought they would go uncaught. And of course, I said to them, you know, you say you're going to release me unharmed. I don't think this has to go any further. Well, I think they believed me. So I think that was a big part of it. The other part of it was I was so cooperative and so respectful and so decent to them, including. I gave legal advice. You know, Sen asked me some legal advice. He had been arrested in D.C. and he felt he'd been wrongly arrested, so he lied about his name. So he wanted to know if he could maintain a civil lawsuit against the cops. The point is, I bonded with them at every opportunity. I treated them with total respect. I spoke to them as I would speak to a peer, not as I would speak to someone younger than me, not as I would speak to someone who was a criminal, but just as a. As a friend. So I think by the time it was time to let me go, I think they didn't feel hostility towards me. I think they felt a certain bond with me, and I think they felt as if I were their friend and I wouldn't hurt them. So I think they felt safe letting me go. And, of course, they were wrong.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Okay, so take me through to that next chapter. I understand you went to the police, and the police didn't believe you?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah. So my birthday. My friends were meeting me at the Bottom Line that night. I had the tickets. They showed up there. I didn't show up. They were calling everybody. My parents, you know, anybody who they knew, who I was friends with. They couldn't get me. Eventually, they go to my apartment in the. You know, in The East Village, 4th Avenue and 10th street, you know, not that far from where I got picked up. And they got the super to break into the apartment. And, you know, the place sort of looked like maybe somebody had broken in and ransacked it. But then one of my friends said, no, this is the way he keeps it. And then they played my answering machine, and it had a couple of bone chilling messages, including from a woman who had found my credit card on the street in Brooklyn early that morning, and including one from the bank saying, there's been unusual activity on your cards. At that moment, my friends, some of whom were seasoned tough federal prosecutors, were pretty sure I was dead. You know, I wasn't at the office all day. Now they come to my apartment, They've got these crazy messages on my machine. They. They called the cops, they called the FBI. All of them congregated in my apartment, and they were starting to search for me. And then I'm at the pizza place in Park Slope. So after I call my father to make sure he's still alive. The kidnappers had threatened that if they didn't cooperate with them during the kidnapping and. And while they tried to steal more money from the bank, that. That they would go to my father's apartment and kill him by breaking every bone in his body. So my first call was to my father to see if he was okay. Eventually I got around to calling a friend who told me, you know what? There's a whole law enforcement thing going on at your apartment. So I called my own apartment, and sure enough, Richard Meade, one of the greatest special agents of the FBI, he picks up. And so they drove over to the pizza place and picked me up. And apparently I looked, you know, like some kind of a survivor of a disaster.

[Julian Morgans]

You were?

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah, I was, for sure. And then they took me to the 6th Precinct in the East Village in Manhattan, and they. They asked me my story for, you know, for hours. And then after they take you through the story, they take you through it again, because this way they can pick up on more details. But probably even more important, it's their way to find out whether you're lying. Because somebody who's lying is going to have a really hard time replicating the details that he just told you two hours ago. Yeah, but still, I found out months later, and Richie Mead told me this months later when I saw him at a dinner a few months later, he told me that. You don't know this, Stan, but when you told us that story, we thought you were lying. We thought you made the whole thing up. The details made no sense. Who kidnaps a federal prosecutor who takes him to an apartment and offers him a blowjob and gives him food and has this, you know, this big party with him and, you know, it just none of it made sense. What they thought probably had happened was, you know, that I was some guy who liked to present as respectable to the world. But the fact is I was probably cavorting with prostitutes at a motel up in the Bronx, probably doing my own drugs. Maybe I was at this big gay party that was going on in the West Village that weekend. You know, all of that was possible, but my story was not possible. They thought I was completely full of shit.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so maybe we'll just fast forward the next bit. But I understand within 48 hours, the police had apprehended this crew.

[Stanley Elpert]

Yes, yes. So they took all the clues that I'd get given them, tracked them down one by one. They actually, they had an. When they finally developed an idea of what general neighborhood I was probably in, they started looking at the buildings to see if they could notice the pattern on the tiles that I had described. You know, there were a lot of clues that I had. Each little clue was followed. But it turns out that the best clue I had, which I didn't realize was the best. Remember I told you I got the first few numbers of the leader of the gang's cell phone, 91769. And I thought that would just corroborate with the payphone near where they kept me. But it turned out to be a lot better than that. Because when I was in the kidnapping, in the beginning, they started calling me Steven. And I kept insisting, my name's not Steven, it's Stanley. And they laughed. They said, oh, yeah, yeah, Steven's the guy we did this to the other night. Because their scheme was to grab people on the street, get the cash machine card, go to the cash machine, withdraw what they could. That was their scheme. They kept me a lot longer because I had money in my savings account count. But the police reached out around the city and they found another incident where somebody had been taken to the cash regime and his name was Stephen. And guess what? When they grabbed Stephen, they stole his cell phone. Huh. Well, you can't subpoena anything with 91769, but if you got Steven's number, you can subpoena that number. And guess what? When the. When the records came back from the phone company, they showed several calls to and from 91769, etc. And that was Lucky's cell phone.

[Julian Morgans]

God, I love hearing these sort of Rubik's Cube stories of how police put all the clues together, and then, bing, there's the answer. So these guys got pretty lengthy sentences. How did you feel when that went down?

[Stanley Elpert]

The male perpetrators got between 19 and 15 years to life. So that means in New York State, you can theoretically serve a life sentence, but really nobody ever does. Right. So how did I feel at the time about such really tough sentences on those three men that grabbed me on the street with guns? I felt great. In my view, two things were happening. One and most important was we were protecting future victims. There was no question in my mind that when these guys got out, they would just start doing it again. No question. Particularly Lucky, the leader of the gang. Now, I can't tell you what he's doing today, and, you know, these guys are out by now, but. But at the moment, it was clear to me that that's what this guy was made of. You know, whether I was right or wrong, that was clear to me. And the thugs were the thugs. You know, they really didn't have much other choice. You know, Lucky had an education. He's driving around in a brand new Lexus. You know, I didn't have a car, but he did. So I felt great about the long sentences. The fact is, is they stuck a knife right below my heart. Maybe they didn't get me in the heart, but they stuck a knife in metaphorically. And they caused me a lot of pain. And I thought I was dead, even though, thank God I wasn't. And God bless them for not killing me. I got to give them. I got to give them credit where credit is due, but they needed to be taken off the street to not do it to anybody else.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. How did this event change the way you live?

[Stanley Elpert]

In the months after the kidnapping, I was afraid I would always go out on the street, but. But I was afraid, you know, certain neighborhoods that seemed a little wilder than others. I even got myself a dog, which was actually a great positive, because I thought, you know what? I've wanted a dog forever, I should get one and, you know, live my life. The way I want to live it. But the other thing the dog did was help me navigate the streets because I would be out on the streets walking all the time with my dog and, and it was a sense of security to be walking a dog. So at first I was afraid. Obviously they, they embedded a bit of anxiety in me that, you know, will never fully go away. But mostly the message that I took away from it and I realized this is different for everybody. But mostly for me, this was a very positive takeaway because Westerners don't really understand that they're gonna die. You know, if you're living poor in India, obviously India now has a lot of rich people. But if you're living poor in India, you understand you're gonna die. It might be the poison in the water that kills you, and it might be because you're sleeping on the street that you get killed, but you understand it. Westerners don't tend to understand it. We think we're going to live forever until finally towards the end, you know, a disease hits and we get it. So I finally understood that I'm going to die. And you can either take that and get terribly depressed and just give up on everything, or you can take the opposite conclusion. You can say, you know what, I've got X number of days left on this earth. What am I going to do with them? So what it's done for me, and I really have to, you know, send out a shout of thanks to Lucky Ren and Sen. What it's done for me is teach me to not get bogged down in the details, in the bullshit, to live my life the way I want to live it. If I want to get a dog, I'm getting a dog. If I want to go hiking on the weekend, I'm not going to say, oh gosh, I got a pay my bills this Sunday, I better not go on the hike. No, I'm going. If I love people, I tell them that I love them. If I don't like them, I don't waste my time sitting around, I don't say anything. It was really a wake up call to live my life as fully as I know how to live it.

[Julian Morgans]

So would you say that your life since this event has actually been better?

[Stanley Elpert]

Absolutely.

[Julian Morgans]

And I guess a key part of that is that you, you told me over the phone that you weren't traumatized, you didn't suffer from ptsd. Why is that?

[Stanley Elpert]

Well, that was an extremely lucky break. I think what the science says about PTSD is it comes primarily from sense of powerlessness so for the 25 hours that I was kept by those seven people, I was totally powerless. They could have killed me at any moment. They could have done whatever they wanted. I had nothing. There was nothing I could do. So in those 25 hours, objectively, I was powerless. But inside my own brain, I was exercising whatever tiny strand of power I could find, which is. I sat there gathering clues and by the time they let me go, I knew that I had enough clues that if I put it in the hands of the New York Police Department and the FBI, they'd be rounded up. And they were. So I was able, through gathering clues, but also through the negotiations that I've been telling you about, right? Being super friendly, being helpful, giving them legal advice, laughing at their jokes, showing them absolute respect. So all that negotiation gave me a bit of a sense of accomplishment even while I was in there. Plus, by staying calm, I managed to not get hit or cut. Right?

[Julian Morgans]

I think that is a fantastic lesson on how to retain power or maybe even regain power when it feels like you don't have any. But Stan, this has been fantastic and thank you so much for telling us your story. It's been really interesting.

[Stanley Elpert]

I really appreciate your having me on and I certainly appreciate it coming from very far away from where I live.

[Julian Morgans]

Thanks for listening. If you want more, I'd recommend tracking down Stanley's book. It's called the Birthday Party and it contains way more than we could fit into this episode. Stanley's a really funny writer and it's just, it's just a good cracking read and I'm going to link to it in the show notes. Now stick around because I'm going to play for you a sample of this week's subscriber episode. This is a ghost story from a woman who actually listens to the show. And she wrote in saying, hey, I used to live on this farm out here in Australia in, in Queensland. And we had to leave because it just got too weird. Here's a sneak preview.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

There were two more things that really spooked me. So one night I was home alone again. It was late. I remember all the lights were off in the house and I got up. I have bad insomnia so I'd get up as you do you check your kids. So I decided to get up out of bed. I went out of my bedroom and turned to go open the girls door to check on them and they were fine, they were sleeping, nothing weird happening. And I turned and I closed, went to close the door, it bounced. I turned around Looked at the door and something up the top of the door, like the top of the door caught my eye and it looked like a finger had curled around the top of the door. And I remember thinking, oh gosh, like no way that is happening. So I grabbed the door and I slammed it shut, hoping maybe to just. If there was a finger. Well, buh, bye finger. But I remember feeling annoyed and scared. So that was my first feeling of anger surrounding the house and what was happening. And I don't know why it made me angry really, because I don't know if it was a finger. It might have just been. I don't know what it might have been, but I remember feeling angry as well as anxious.

[Julian Morgans]

Seeing a finger curl around the top of a door when you're by yourself with kids. Oh, just generally.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

Really unsettling.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

But it looked like. Looked like my fingers like it just

[Julian Morgans]

hooked over a woman or a man.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

I lean towards a woman purely because of another thing that happened in the house.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

And I think I lean more towards a woman because it's surrounding the children. And I just in my head think that's more of a feminine characteristic to gravitate towards children.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, yeah, I feel like you're right. Okay. So what was the next thing that happened again?

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

House was dark. I was up in bed reading and my door was open. So I was sitting up in bed and my bed faced my doorway. I remember looking up and there was something there. There was. You've got the darkness around you, but there was dark, darker than the dark, a different shade of dark. And in my head it was lacy. If you were to reach out and touch this figure, this darkness, it would feel like lace. And it took on the form or it looked like the form to me of a woman and her head was slightly turned, looking towards my kid's door. And I jumped out of bed and ran towards this woman. And when I got there, I'm chasing nothing. There's nothing there. But I remember when she turned or when it turned and looked at the kids door, I was instantly angry and that's when I jumped out of bed and ran towards her, but there was nothing there.

[Julian Morgans]

Did you get any sort of impression of the face or the age of this character?

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

Oh, it looked like she was wearing what I would describe as a dress, but it wasn't like an old spooky dress. It was just a dress. No, that's just her hair. If she had hair, it would have been up in a bun or just off her face. Like there was no hair off, falling down her shoulders or anything, it was up. And I think that's how I was able to see her profile when her head or whatever it was shifted and looked towards the room because there was nothing hindering that view. There was no hair there. But I definitely pictured it or look at it as feminine.

[Julian Morgans]

That must have been really upsetting.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

Yeah, I think it was. Was more upsetting that there was a pattern to this stuff occurring as well. Like I knew when I was alone in that house and the sun went down something was going to happen and something was going to happen surrounding my children.

[Stanley Elpert]

Yeah.

[Julian Morgans]

And as a young mum or just any mum, like that's. That is the worst case scenario.

[Unidentified Female Narrator]

Yeah. And also I was in the middle of nowhere. If something did happen, there was no one there to help me. I think that thought really freaked me out as well.

[Julian Morgans]

That's this week's subscriber episode for the full thing. Subscribe now and you'll get a bonus episode straight into your ears every week. Thanks for listening. I'll see you all next week. What It Was like is produced by Rachel Tuffery. This episode was edited by Ellie Dickey, who also does our research. Our cover art is by Rich Akers. Our theme music was produced by Jimmy Saunders. And this whole thing has been a super real production.

[Stanley Elpert]

What makes a leader worth following?

[Julian Morgans]

What should you really care about in your job?

[Stanley Elpert]

As technology is changing so quickly, is it just gonna be about machines talking

[Julian Morgans]

to other mach machines?

[Stanley Elpert]

I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own, what would that take? What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together? These are the questions we answer each

[Julian Morgans]

week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler.

[Stanley Elpert]

Join us each week and subscribe at

[Julian Morgans]

your favorite podcast platform and YouTube. We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some

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of the best, and we'll try to figure this out together.

[Julian Morgans]

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Hey, Roger.

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occasional DTNs segment for our patrons over at patreon.com DTN but because of such

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up as a standalone show with even more reviewers and a wider range of products. And now, because of even greater feedback

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we've gotten since then, we're giving Live

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with it its own YouTube channel. Yay. It's still produced by the DTNS family of folks and friends. Nothing changes. Content wise, we'll be reviewing all the

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tech products, services and platforms that we

[Julian Morgans]

think you'll care about.

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We are also leaning on all of

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you, our community, for ideas and suggestions.

[Stanley Elpert]

Are you thinking about a new Smart Space speaker, Robo Vacuum modular laptop, kitchen gadget, or a software purchase for your next creative project? We'll live with it, so you stay informed. We've also heard you like our show to be easier to access on YouTube and especially easier for new subscribers to find us. So that's exactly what we're doing. Can't wait for you to join us for the next round of episodes. Subscribe now.

[Julian Morgans]

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