I Hate Mysteries

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ike Sriskandarajah filling in for Ira Glass. Calm bodies, calm voices, calm minds. It's calm, for now, in this second grade classroom in Cold Spring, New York. There are about a dozen kids sitting close around a rug, knees touching. Let's listen to the sound of the bell. These kids are getting ready for a very particular lesson. It's one that I heard about from my coworker, Nadia. I asked my wife, who's a teacher, and she knew about it, too. And a friend of mine says he still remembers this lesson from when he was in third grade. It stuck with him. And I wanted to see this rite of passage play out for myself. All right, so the game we're going to play today is called What's in the Box? Have you played this game before? Yes. It's a guessing game that's kind of famous here. Miss Maria, the director of the Manitou School, holds up a white cardboard box about the size of a shoe box. So I have put something in this box, and you can't break it by shaking it, so you can shake it, you can move it. And we're going to pass the box around, and you're going to tell me what you think is in the box, okay? The kids seem amused. They want to try. She passes the box to the child on her left. The kid shakes it a little. Legos. A stapler? Hm. Maybe. Marbles and balls. Marbles and balls, hm. As the box makes it around the 13 students, strategies start to emerge. One thoughtful little girl in purple glasses and snow boots shakes it real hard. That doesn't get her any closer. The next time around, she takes off her own beaded necklace. Shakes that close to her ears. Then, she closes her eyes and shakes the box. Okay, definitely not what I thought. The rattles are different. Nobody has gotten it. Feels like it's time to bring in a dedicated professional in the answers getting business. And the kids allow it. Can I shake the box? You guys don't mind? So I pick up the box. And they're right. It's about the weight of a toy, maybe the size of a fist or two, with smaller things rattling inside that object. Eureka. Okay, is it like a toy car with gumballs in it? That's a really good guess. But not good enough. Three times around the class, and nobody has guessed it. At this point, the kids are done. They're ready to find out. And that's when Miss Maria does something the kids do not see coming. Cool, well, thank you for playing. Thank you for showing me. I didn't say I was going to tell you what it was. The game is about guessing. It's not about knowing. She doesn't tell them. She was never going to. Miss Maria takes the box away. And the kids are stunned. No more tries. No answer. That's it? They're not sure what to make of it. Now, if hearing this makes you mad, if you're thinking, hey, that is not what school's about. School's about finding answers to your questions. Miss Maria agrees, but she thinks this is important to learn, too. She wants them to learn how to endure the discomfort of not knowing. She's trying to prepare these kids for life. And that's the case she makes to them. And sometimes we all have things that we can't know. Sometimes because Miss Maria won't open the box. But more often because it's just impossible to know, right? Like your parents can't tell you certain things. Or you can't get into somebody else's head. Or you just can't know the reason for why something happened. So learning to live with that discomfort of not knowing is a really important thing. And that's part of what we were practicing here today. Sure, but the box is right there. It's just behind Miss Maria on the floor. The answer is inside. Just like all the other answers that powerful forces in our world are withholding from us. These kids and this journalist aren't having it. Miss Maria's worthy lesson is overcome by a much stronger human impulse. The desire to know what's in the box. I want to know what it is. Is it important? Yes. No, otherwise I'll keep wondering and I don't like mysteries. Why would you keep wondering? Because I would want to know what it is. No, we don't want. We need. Oh, you need to know it. We need to know. And I get sick when I'm wondering. You get sick? I don't like surprises. I'm allergic to wondering. I'm allergic to wondering. Miss Maria tries to bring the class back from the brink of anaphylactic shock. They talk about techniques to deal with the discomfort. They stand up and try to shake their body loose of the tension. Do you feel better? No. Having shaken it off like a box? No? No. No? We feel better when you open the box. Okay. Apparently, this is not an uncommon reaction. Miss Maria told me years ago she remembers when an entire class worked together to steal the box. The most trustworthy kids told her there was a plumbing emergency in the girls' bathroom, while another classmate snuck into the office, Ocean's Eleven style. The heist was foiled, and then the box was moved to a secure location. And just earlier today, Miss Maria was showing some of the teachers the mystery box before class. They made their guesses, and then she caught one of them trying to sneak a peek. The mystery, it can get to you, not only if you're seven, but especially if you're seven. These kids, they see the future, an inscrutable world of infinite unanswerable questions, and they say no. It's going to leave us wondering for the rest of our lives. The rest of your life? Yes. What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? Miss Maria is just leading this lesson. The regular classroom teacher wants to have kids who aren't freaking out and distracted the rest of the day. She would love this to end. So in a shocking turn of events, Miss Maria caves to the mystery. You're going to feel better when I open the box. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Doc. Here we go. This is the big reveal. She opens the box and shows the kids what's inside. I wish I would never have guessed. But you? You can wait a little longer, right? Today, we'll hear people who stare at the giant question mark and plunge themselves deep into the unknown. What lies on the other side? You want to know? Do you really want to know what's in the box? Stay with us. It's Word for This American Life and the following message come from AT&T. AT&T believes that hearing a voice can change everything. Whether it's a favorite podcast, saved voicemail, or a call with someone close, familiar voices can bring connection and comfort. This holiday season, AT&T encourages the sharing of voices through a call, a voicemail, or a voice note because every conversation can create lasting connection. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Support for This American Life comes from Superhuman, the AI productivity suite that gives you superpowers everywhere you work. With Grammarly, Mail, and Coda coming together, you get proactive help across your workflow so you can outsmart the chaos. Experience AI that proactively helps you go from to-do to done faster. Friendly share Superhuman potential today. Learn more at superhuman.com slash podcast. That's superhuman.com slash podcast. It's This American Life, today's show, I hate mysteries. Act one, the master blaster digging up Mount Shasta. That hole is deep because it has to be. A while back, filmmaker Elijah Sullivan decided he was going to get to the bottom of a very strange event that happened in his hometown. Timber workers going through a national forest found an incredibly deep hole in the ground. Nobody could tell who had dug it, or why, or what they were looking for. Everyone in town had a theory, and some of those theories were really wild. Elijah could not stop thinking about this hole. He'd been working on a documentary about it for about nine years when someone got in touch with him who claimed to be one of the diggers. Here's Elijah. His name was Brett. He said that, depending on certain circumstances, like the statute of limitations, he was open to talking. He told pieces of the story before over beers. So I got him a beer, an old one from the fridge. It still tastes good, it's been in my fridge for like three years. I'm not afraid of a skunky beer, man. Do you feel like launching into the story now? Yeah, yeah. Do you want to say it? Yes, sir. All right, you ready? Yes. All right. For the next two hours or so, over skunky beer, Brett told me his tale. The story I'd been waiting so long to hear. The story of the hole. It started in 2009, right after the Great Recession. Brett was just out of high school, living in Northern California and looking for work. As a kid, he said, he had never really fit in and had been kind of heading down a bad path. But he loved the outdoors. He'd worked for the California Conservation Corps and later trained to fight forest fires, which he was excited about. But his crew wasn't getting called up. He spent months looking for other jobs. Then he came across this listing on a message board. I looked, and there was a job opening, and it said, building a fence line in Mount Shasta. I called the number, and the guy answers, and he goes, how old are you? I tell him, I'm like, I'm like 19. He's like, ooh, you have your own tools, your own gear, gloves, boots. I'm like, yeah. He goes, how fast can you be at Mount Shasta? I'm like, well, I'm in Redding. I can make it in like 45 minutes around there. He says, okay, go to this hotel, and a guy is going to meet you in the lobby. He'll give you a room. We meet up with the work crew in the morning and then go out and build this fence. And I'm like, all right, cool, sounds good. So I put the last $40 I had to my name in my gas tank and drove my truck up to Mount Shasta. Mount Shasta is this 14,000-foot snow-capped stratovolcano near the Oregon border with a small town nestled at its base. I've lived there basically my whole life. Brett arrived in the evening, pulling into a hotel in Mount Shasta City right off of the freeway. As promised, there was a guy waiting for him. He seemed like the foreman of a crew. And I think he was, he had to have been around like late 20s, maybe like 27, a younger guy in shape, covered in tattoos, very forward, very disciplined. And he just walked out and he was wearing basketball shorts and flip-flops. And he goes, here's your key, this is your room, meet the guys in the parking lot at this time in the morning. And I'm like, okay. Finally, a job. Not only a job, but it paid well. And it got him out of Redding. They even gave him his own hotel room and a per diem. The next morning I wake up, there's a van, everyone's got milk jugs of water and stuff like that. And I meet up with them and they're all bullshit. And I can tell they've been doing it for a little while, but I didn't know how long. And so I get in this van with these complete strangers and we start driving up towards the mountain. And I remember driving back roads and then we pull over in the middle of nowhere and there's a trail at the tree line. And I get out and we start walking and I'm like, where are we going? We're building a fence. So we start walking and walking and walking. And eventually I'm like, all right guys, where's the fence? And I get laughed at. And I'm like, what's going on? And they're like, they told you a fence? And I'm like, yeah, I can string a fence. And they go, that's funny. I got told I was putting a barn up and another guy said something else. Another guy said something else. And I'm like, okay, now I'm far from home. I'm walking what feels like a couple of miles down this trail into the wilderness, but guys, I don't know. And they're laughing at me, telling me I've been lying to you about why I'm here. And that's when we got up on the hole. The hole. The mouth of it was enormous, at least 10 by 12 feet. And it was deep, like a vertical mine shaft without any wooden beams holding it up. Just sheer walls. Off to one side was a huge pile of dirt. Above there was a steel cable with a pulley strung between trees. A few feet down was a boulder the size of a small car sitting on a ledge, and then a ladder leading down into the darkness. I'm looking in the hole and everybody's getting ready and I'm asking what's going on. They're like, we're digging. And I'm like, for what? And he's like, well, we don't exactly know. We were told if we found something weird that we pull it out and we're going to give it to Joseph. Joseph was the guy running everything. Brett said he looked like a flatlander, meaning not from the mountains. And he completely stood out because all of us were blue-collar workers and we're there in boots, jeans, cut-up shirts, and he was in a full suit. Had dress shoes, full suit, up to the nines. And he'd walk that trail with us every single day, completely dressed. Somehow, all this weirdness, the guy in the suit, being lied to, digging for something mysterious, Brett says he just kind of went with it. Maybe because he was surrounded by adults who had accepted it. He told me he didn't want to be the young guy asking too many questions. And also, he needed the money. Workers disappeared down the hole to work in Paris. They used pickaxes to loosen dirt and fill five-gallon buckets. Brett was told to stand at the edge of the hole and to hoist the buckets up. A plunge into the hole seemed likely to prove fatal, so Brett tethered himself to a tree just in case. The simplicity of the work was satisfying, even validating. He'd been on trail crews before, so he knew more about this kind of work than most guys. For example, before Brett got there the crew had run into a boulder in the hole and hadn't known what to do. The main boulder they had dug around at one point. And I remember asking, why didn't you go through it? And them looking at me kind of weird, and they're like, well, how would we go through it? We've tried. I'm like, well, how'd you try? And we brought a battery-powered jackhammer up here, and I'm like, how'd you, and the wheelbarrows and carrying, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, you drill into it using leaves and feathers and you split the rock in multiple sections and it'll break. And once, like, his eyes lit up, it was like, okay, this young kid might know a few things. Any time anyone had an idea to improve their digging operation, Joseph, the guy in the suit running things, would head down the trail back into town for supplies. He had a credit card, which Brett called the magic card. Joseph was like, I've been given this card, whatever we need to make this happen, I will swipe it. And he was swiping that card, and infinite money to make this happen. Brett quickly fell into a routine. He would ride up the mountain every morning, tie himself to the tree, pull buckets all day, then go back to his hotel. The others would go to the bar or to get food, and Brett would just go to the gas station or back to his room. Then they would start again in the morning, week after week. With every bucket he pulled, he watched the hole get deeper. One day, it was finally Brett's turn to work in the hole. They kept that shaft very square, I mean, you could look up at the top of the hole and see the iron veins. When the sun would come over the top, it was beautiful, when the sun would come over and the light would shine into the hole, you could see iron veins all the way down the sides. Maybe the adventure made it easier not to think about the bigger questions, like what they were doing there. Speaking up might have meant going back to Redding. At least he was outside. Like, nature's my thing, I'm peaceful, I'm calm, I'm happy. And maybe that was how I justified part of it. You know, it was good for me to be up on that mountain every day. And maybe that's what, it wasn't just being naive, it was overlooking circumstances, because I was out there every day. Going up and down the trail was, you know, it was like seven dwarfs. We're laughing, tools over our shoulders, jugs of water, you know, they had milk jugs, I had this little smart water bottle that I'd carry with me. And laughing, it was constant, like somebody would say something on the line, you'd be walking and turn your head back and, you know, get back in the conversation, get out there. And I started making friends a little bit with people, there's a couple guys in the crew that were cool to me, kind of took me under their wing, cooler older guys. And for me at that time, like trying to find my place in the world, and like a bunch of older guys being like, this kid's the kid. And I was like, I'm in, let's do it. You know, like that praise went, at that time in my life, went a long ways for me, you know. So that smoothed over the edges quite a bit in the beginning. But it didn't last forever. As the summer wore on, the adventure wore off. The deeper they went, the harder it was to dig. Sometimes the hole would fill up with bees. As it got deeper, they had to add things to reach the bottom. There was a rope to get into the hole, then a chain leading to two ladders tied together. Brett occasionally would help with the digging, but mostly he was above ground, pulling the buckets up, which meant he had a bunch of time to be around Joseph. I had a feeling that Joseph was not the one calling the shots. He was the representative for somebody. And I would ask questions a little bit on who was running this, and very circular conversation, was not getting a lot of answers. Joseph used to get these phone calls. You know, we would go a couple days without finding anything. And then he'd get a call on his cell phone, an old flip phone back then, and he'd, you could just tell his demeanor would change. Phone would ring. He'd pull the phone out, take a breath, walk like 10 feet out in the woods, and he'd have this phone call. And you'd see him in the bushes. It's not on a trail. He's standing in bushes, in nice leathers, flat shoes, and in a suit, kind of like pacing around in circles a little bit, kicking the ground, lots of nodding. And he'd come back and take a deep breath, like, and then try, like, okay, guys, let's keep going. It's like, we haven't stopped. So there was definitely some type of driving force that he was getting from the organization he worked with. And it was almost a, don't come back unless you find it. And we started getting worried, especially when we knew how important this thing that we didn't know what it was, was to them, that what happens when we find it? You know, uh, when the older guys started getting scared, that's when it started coming out in me. Because there was moments where Joseph wasn't necessarily totally with us walking up the trail. And that's when we started having these conversations. There had been so much time to think, to imagine where this was going, what they were doing, why they were doing it. Brett wondered if the people funding it had some mining license that was about to expire. That would explain why they were in a rush, but not all the other weirdness. Like, whatever we're doing is shady, at least. I don't even know if the word illegal was thrown around, but this is shady. And that's when I found out a couple of guys were like, look, I'm going to bring a gun up with me. I remember one of them was like, dude, if we find it, what if they kick us in the hole? I'm standing next to that hole all day long. There's already guys in it. There's a gigantic boulder on the edge. I think it was a chain was holding it in place, maybe. All of us were in the hole, around the hole. It would have been very easy to push us in. Brett started to think about bailing. I asked Brett why he hadn't before. Part of it was that he just wanted to know what they were digging for. The answer to the mystery. Now he wasn't so sure he wanted to know. Anytime they found anything that might be something, it was carefully inspected by a guy named Cokie. Brett said Cokie was an old Navy vet, more of a blue collar guy like the other workers, and reminded Brett of his grandfather. Everything they found in the hole went to Cokie, and at some point they started finding these rocks. Kind of sizable, maybe twice as big as a basketball, and they all looked similar. Cokie would crack them open. They weren't allowed to look. And then towards the end, it was like we were finding more of it. And then I can't remember if it was mostly one day where we pulled a bunch out. I just remember pulling buckets and hearing dudes yell. And then trying to get them out, handed them off, they get pulled over that little platform built up by the dirt we had pulled out. And Cokie had turned his back to us. We kind of looked away. He split a couple of them. Brett says for the first time, Joseph and Cokie's faces lit up. And I think, I think they sent us home. And we never called it early. Brett went back to his hotel. What just happened? I thought I was coming back the next day. I just was like, if we found what they're looking for, why are we leaving? So that's why I went back to my hotel room, like laying in bed, really like what's going on? Like if I got myself into something, and that's when I got the phone call in the middle of the night. It was the crew lead. He said he would give Brett $200 to drive up the mountain with him and gather all the rocks they had found in the hole, just the two of them, right now. Brett agreed. He told me it was stupid of him to go, but he thought, let's get this done and then the job will be over with. We loaded up my truck and went up the mountain in the middle of the night. It would have been around midnight. I parked my truck at the bottom. We busted out one Rubbermaid trash can and he looked at me and he's like, this is what we're going to do. We're going to put this trash can in between us. We're going to take our belts off and we're going to loop it through the handles. And each one of us is going to put our belt on our shoulder. We'll take as many down as we can. We hiked up there and that's what we did. We went to the pile of rocks that were ranging from like here to about here. And we put as many in there as we could. And we do this shoulder test, pick it up, we can get it off the ground. And if we could, it was like, all right, buddy, let's go. And we went down the trail, loaded my truck, came back up, did it again, over and over and over again, aching. And we kept a pace and we made lap after lap. I mean, just bleeding sweat coming down that mountain. And by the time we were done, my back of my truck was full. I had an old 89 Chevy and I flattened my leafs and I blew out my brakes on the way down. I barely made it down that mountain without losing control at the bottom. The two of them drove the rocks to a rental storage place. Joseph was there waiting. So was a U-Haul truck. Then it was really solidified that this is done. Because when they cracked it back and I saw they had a wooden frame to the inside for one little cradle for each rock. And they were ready to go. Like, I don't remember the drivers getting out. I don't know who was driving them. And we picked those rocks up, we put them in there and Joseph shook my hand and he was happy. He was happy. The stress was off. Whatever stress was on him, he had accomplished it. And then I had heard, I either overheard or he told me that they're going to Florida. And they left. Brett didn't realize until an hour or two later that they hadn't paid him the $200. Later that summer, timber workers stumbled across the hole while marking trees. It was in a national forest, and it's illegal to dig without a permit. The hole looked to be about 60 feet deep. I spoke to one ranger who said it was the damnedest thing he had ever seen in his Forest Service career. The Mount Shasta Herald ran an article in October, U.S. Forest Service Investigating Hole on Mount Shasta. The article had a photo of the hole. At the bottom was Brett's bottle of smart water. Gawkers kept gathering to look at the hole, so the Forest Service filled it back in. By the time I saw the spot a few years later, the trail had faded. But the trees still had scars from the cable, and there was a five-gallon bucket lying around. Every time I visited, it was in a different spot. And one day it was gone. At the time, all we had was wild speculation. There were three plausible theories. The first was gold. I heard rumors about an underground river of gold. Maybe a treasure map purchased in a bar. But I talked to the geology instructor at the local community college, who pointed out that Mount Shasta was actually a volcano, and volcanoes don't have gold in them. So that theory was out. The second was Native American artifacts. Unfortunately, this is incredibly common in the U.S. I asked some state police officers and experts on investigating looters. But nobody had heard of looters digging 60 feet straight down. So the looting theory was out too. That leaves the third theory. It's something we locals discuss the most. But Brett isn't from here. He didn't hear about it until midway through the dig, when he went home for the weekend. He was drinking beer with some friends on their porch, and telling them about the job he was doing on Mount Shasta. And I start getting into the details of it, and everybody gets kind of quieter and quieter, and I hear this noise from above me, because it was a multi-story, I think it was a two-story apartment complex. I hear it, oh! And then, like, footsteps moving. And then I hear it running through one of the apartment complexes, coming down the stairs, and it was this really spun-out woman that came out holding a book. So she goes, sorry, I've been listening to you, and saying, but this is what's going on. And she hands me this book about Mount Shasta, and starts going through the pages, and finds this chapter on St. Germain. And she goes, do you know what this is? And I'm like, no. And she's like, okay. And I started reading it. And that's when it clicked. The Count of St. Germain was a real historical figure from the 1700s. Some people believed he was immortal. An American mining engineer named Guy Ballard claimed he met St. Germain in 1930, here on the mountain. Ballard said he was hiking, and St. Germain appeared multiple times, once offering him a crystal cup filled with a clear, sparkling liquid. This encounter inspired Ballard and his wife Edna to found a New Age religion called the I Am Activity. That's two words, I AM, all caps. Ballard died in 1939, but the I Am Activity still has members all over the world. Around the same time Guy Ballard says he met St. Germain, a book was published called Lemuria, Lost Continent of the Pacific. It had a chapter that claimed there was a hidden city under Mount Shasta, inhabited by some of the last remaining members of a sunken continent. People have been looking for the entrance of the city ever since. The book is not related to St. Germain, but added to the myth of the mountain. Not everyone comes to Mount Shasta for Lemuria or St. Germain. Some are just looking for purpose, or community. My parents were seekers. They moved us to Mount Shasta from Massachusetts when I was six. So to me, this made total sense, that the hole had something to do with all these stories. Eventually, I tracked down and spoke to three other people who had helped dig the hole. One of them said they had been paid by a believer in St. Germain, and described what they were looking for as gold plutonium. He said something about it being used to power Lemurian cities. The other two diggers mentioned uranium. None of it made sense, but it always pointed back to the stories about the mountain. I did try to contact the IAM activity a couple of times, but the person who answered the phone told me that my message probably wouldn't be returned. It wasn't. After that last scary night on the mountain, Brett drove straight home to his mom's in Redding. I just couldn't believe all this had happened. And then plus, I hadn't slept. And I got back. I hadn't been telling my mom what I'd been doing. You know, I told her I was working. And I remember I called my dad. My mom is a sweetheart, and she's always been the one that's let me run a little crazy, but has been my stone. And my dad is a lot like me. And I started telling him what I'd been doing, and he got upset. And I remember that was the final thing where it was like, when he got was like, you cannot do stuff like that. Like, you have to realize what you just did. And I'm very happy you're safe. But that could have gone very bad. And like, you can no longer go through life being naive like that. And I was happy. I remember I picked up my skateboard, met my friends, and spent like a week off gas and just letting all that go. And then once you're out of that mindset, you're not around those people. Then you start realizing like, what were we really doing? Like, what did I let someone talk me into? Am I liable for anything? And that's why it was really chilling when I got that phone call. I can't remember how long it was. I'm trying to think it had it was after the summer. Maybe it was around the fall. And I had a call came through that I didn't recognize the number and answered it. And I recognized the voice instantly. That stoic, man of few words voice telling me we're going back. And I remember being like, good luck, because I'm not going. After that, Brett joined the military and rarely comes back to the area. Like many before him, he had come down from the mountain with a wild story. He still thinks about it. There are times when I'm out elk hunting or something, I'm breaking brush off trail, and I'll see, I'll come up over a hill and you'll see a false summit or a gully in the ground or something like that. You start seeing my brain will put shit together. When the landscapes just right and the sun hits them, I'm on the right slope. And yeah, things in the environment landscapes are piecing together and I can picture it again. That'll be with me forever. If you met Joseph again, would you have anything you'd want to say to him? Man, I'd ask why. I'd take everything I just said and I'm like, am I right? Is this what you were doing? Is this the motivation? Was it this church? Is all the things, these little details that I put together from things you've said, things I've heard, things I saw, like, what weren't you telling me? And then the next thing is, what did we find? Because I saw it. It didn't seem like something that was worth doing what we did. Am I wrong? I wondered about those things too. A strange final footnote to this story is that the Forest Service did find the person they think is responsible for the hole. Their local Forest Service law enforcement officer, Carmen Kinch, told me she did a bunch of sleuthing and figured out what hotel the workers had been staying in. And from the hotel, the name of the person who had paid for the rooms. She said the person said they had been looking for gold and paid a fine, but couldn't give me the person's name. And without a name, I haven't been able to find any core records, though I tried for years. These days, I'm not looking so hard anymore. I've had to accept that you just don't always get to the bottom of everything. Sometimes when you open the box, inside, there's just another box. Elijah Sullivan. His documentary is called The Hole Story. It's showing at film festivals and he's looking for a distributor. Special thanks to Benjamin Bombard, who told us about the documentary. When we were putting together today's show, we heard from lots of people who have mysteries in their lives that they can't get out of their head. And one of them came from Lauren Peterson, who read a story with a mystery in it that stuck with her. So for years, I have been plagued by a New York Times article by Katie Weaver, who's writing I love, where she went to a glitter factory and toured the glitter factory. And while Katie was on this tour, the glitter factory spokesperson said, you'll never guess which industry buys the most glitter and then wouldn't tell her. No matter how many times the reporter asked, the spokesperson said, we can never tell you. And for years, I have been desperate to know who is this secret consumer of glitter. What could it possibly be? You need to know. Need to know. And I think the piece came out around Christmas, I want to say. So this was also the number one topic of conversation among my family and extended family for that entire Christmas. Everything we thought of, you know, it either didn't seem like it would be big enough or there was no reason that they wouldn't want us to know. Like if it was cosmetic, why couldn't why couldn't they say that on the record? So it can't be that. But is it like why is your toothpaste so sparkly? Could it be is it the fluoride or is it glitter from the glitter factory? Her wife thought it could be the U.S. military. She'd heard they drop metallic material from planes sometimes to scramble radar. How many people were in on this? My mom is one of eight. So that's a big family on that side. We definitely talked about it. Plus some friends. I have a group text where every once in a while one of us will put forward a new theory to this day. So let's say we're looking at 20 people who I'm regularly bringing this up to. I once brought it up to someone who I was sitting next to on an airplane. I occasionally will just go back and look at the Reddit forums where people are trying to figure out the answer. Like, what could it possibly be? And what if I told you we have the answer? My jaw dropped. How did you find out? Would you just open your phone and type in the word glitter mystery? Yeah, yeah, I will. And not for the first time, I might add. Okay, when you Google glitter mystery, the very first thing that comes up after the AI is the mystery of the largest glitter purchaser has been solved. The post is a link to a 2019 podcast that broke the news of the mystery buyer. There's a long Reddit discussion about the answer. But somehow, Lauren had never seen it. But somehow, Lauren had never seen it. So I told her. The largest buyer of glitter is boats. Boats? Yeah, boats. They use it for their paint. Sparkly? I mean, I guess they are. Why don't they want us to know? Why does it have to be a secret? And not like, so not like military grade boats. Like just regular, regular boats. May I ask you, are you happy that you know? No. Such a disappointing answer. And I kind of wish I still thought that the US military was glitter bombing other nations. Everything that glitters is not boat. But a lot of it is. Lauren was not the only person disappointed in the answer. On Reddit, there were even people who worked in the marine paint industry who knew they used lots of glitter. But they were also hoping the answer was something else. Mysteries are like that. Once you have the answer, the sparkle disappears. The biggest glitter buyer was originally uncovered by the podcast Endless Thread. We reached out to Glitter X, the company profiled in the New York Times story. They declined to confirm if their biggest buyer is boats. They are still committed to the mystery. Coming up, did we just become best friends or am I being kidnapped? That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. 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What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank for details. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. It's This American Life. I'm Ike Sriskumdarajah sitting in for Ira Glass. Today, I hate mysteries. Stories of people grappling with the unknown that's right in front of them. Act Two. Who are the people in your neighborhood? The mystery that I want solved most urgently right now is what happens when the full force of the federal government arrives on my block. I happen to live in a neighborhood in New York City that is half foreign-born. Given the national tour of Border Patrol, ICE, and sometimes the National Guard, it seems like they could come here. They just closed their operation late last week in Chicago. Operation Midway Blitz. According to DHS, they arrested 5,000 people in the Chicago area. Immigration arrests didn't stop after that. They're just not at the rate they've been at in the past two months. We can get some sense from videos on the news and social media about what happened in Chicago. People dragged out of cars, chased into daycares, neighborhoods tear-gassed. But what is it really like to live in a neighborhood like that day to day? So we called one of our former colleagues, Michelle Navarro. She grew up on the southwest side of Chicago, a Mexican part of town, and she still lives there. Here's Michelle. She changed some of the names in this story. I've been getting this question a lot. People from out of state have been hitting me up, asking me, are you good? They want to know what it's like here. They want to know if the videos and the things they've read are how it's actually playing out. I haven't known what to say. I had to go back through my phone to know what just happened because it's been hard to remember. I've been scrolling back through my text messages, through the half sentences I wrote in my Notes app, the videos I saved on my phone. I need them to remember my own life because I don't even know. They launched Operation Midway Blitz in early September. That is when they started to bounce between neighborhoods. Back of the Yards, Brighton Park, Gage Park, Little Village, Pilsen, Little Village, and Back of the Yards again. In little over a week, more than 500 people were detained. It was a free-for-all, a purge. There's no other way to describe it. And when they take people, they vanish. They're out as a family at Millennium Park on a Sunday. They're waiting for the bus, taking the trash out, selling tamales. Then men in ski masks and mismatched tactical gear appear. And then they're gone. My phone is like a catalog, an archive, of how we try to keep living our lives. This is what I found. Scrolling back to the early days, to when they started grabbing people from the street, there's a text confirming my nail appointment at Jessica's Nail Spa. Wednesday, September 17th. 17th, 2025, 5.30 p.m. See you soon, Michelle Navarro. I remember that day. That weekend, I was hosting a party for my roommate's birthday. I'm used to being welcomed to the nail salon with laughter and loud Spanish love ballads. I'm a regular. They usually tease me. Let me guess, red, square tip? But this time, when I approached the salon and I pulled on the door to find it locked, I watched their heads lift in unison. I saw relief when they realized it was just me. I know all the women who work here. We usually ask each other about work, about boyfriends, about family. This time, we didn't. We waited, as we always do now, to see who was gonna bring it up first. It was them. They tell me they think about it all day. They heard ice was spotted in the marshal's parking lot that morning, about a block over, where they often leave their cars. It's where they must walk to after work. I asked my nail tech, Sara, about her daughter and her son in hopes of something lighter. She begins to tell me a story about her son's elementary school. She said that during class, kids could hear the screams of someone being taken right outside of the school building. The school administration later wrote to those parents that someone not connected to the school was detained outside by federal agents. They reassured parents that students would be safe in class and that parents would be safe at drop-off and pick-up. But the next day, out of about 30 kids in her son's class, only three showed up. She stops filing my nails. She looks up at me. What do you think I should do? Should I send them to school? For that moment, I imagine she's my mother, that I'm her eight-year-old son, seeing masked, militarized men taking her away. I tell her, if you're scared, don't take them. The following morning, while I'm getting ready for work, I wonder if she's dressing her children for school or if she plans to take my unqualified advice. It's all I can think of for the rest of the day. The most surprising thing about masked men running around your neighborhood and terrorizing your people is realizing that the world doesn't stop. You still have to clock in for your job. You still need groceries. You still have to make small talk. Another text I found on my phone with a guy from Hinge, October 22nd. He wants to get coffee in Pilsen this weekend, but we're having trouble finding a time that works. He works at a factory nearby. He texts me that ICE agents are outside his job and he's covering for coworkers without papers. He keeps having to change the time. I tell him, no worries. He texts, they're just grabbing people and waiting for people to leave work. So now we're telling the night shift to stay home. I hate it here. We never met up that weekend. Everyone is talking about rules, but there doesn't seem to be any. Our mayor, organizers, and legal advocates have said that ICE and Border Patrol can't do a number of things. They can't go on private property. They can't go on city property. They can't throw tear gas in our neighborhoods, right outside of people's homes, but they continue to do so. Four days after the start of this operation, they shoot and kill a man in Franklin Park. Not long after, just two miles from where I live, they shoot a woman five times. The Department of Homeland Security keeps talking about people who broke the law, who are here illegally, who committed crimes, but they target all of us. Anyone who is brown, anyone who speaks Spanish, or just lives here. If you get picked up, you could spend a day or a week in detention. So we can't let people outside by themselves anymore. Even those of us with papers, with legal status, are on high alert. They roll up on us in parking lots, on people's front yards, outside of schools, and ask, are you from here? Are you from here? Other moments from my phone. On October 4th, there's a video from my friend Bianca. We've all been friends since sixth grade. Bianca's a realtor now. She's in her car, in between showings. She says, guys, this is so sad. Families who I sold houses to last year are calling me now, asking me to put those same houses back in the market. They're heading back to Mexico. A home in the United States was a dream they finally realized. They were just crying of happiness not that long ago, she says, and now they have to let it go. October 25th, an invite to Gabby's annual Halloween party. She called it a Halloween to remember. After a few hours into the party, I look around and ask where Yasmin is. Gabby looks at me. Yasmin can't come out right now. Oh shit, I forgot. She's undocumented. I felt so stupid. I felt so careless. Before the end of the party, Gabby makes sure each guest leaves with a goodie bag, which contains two pieces of chocolate, skittles, a whistle you can wear around your neck, and a small home printed booklet instructing you on what to do when you spot ICE. Form a crowd, stay loud, the cover says. Code one, ICE nearby. Blow in a broken rhythm. Pre, pre, pre. This alerts the community that ICE agents are in the area. Code red. Blow in a continuous steady rhythm when ICE is attaining someone. The last page reads, protect each other, always. Happy Halloween, I guess. I look back at my call log. There's a list of calls in quick succession one day at 1.26 p.m. To my mom, and then to her neighbors. I remember exactly what these calls are. I'd seen a post that ICE was two blocks away from my parents' house. I called my mom. I know, she said, there was nonstop honking about 20 minutes ago. That's a thing now. I don't know if she's still on the phone, but I'm sure she's on the phone right now. That's a thing now. People honking to alert everyone that ICE is right here. And cars follow behind them until they can't. Where's dad? I asked. He's working. My dad calls me later on his way home from work. I tell him our neighbors are safe. Then I say, dad, you can't go to the swap meet anymore. The owner had said he wanted to keep people safe, but he didn't. More than 20 federal agents took 15 people. That's my dad's spot. It's where he goes for random parts and hardware. But I told him no more swap-o-rama. He agreed he'd find a different place to do his shopping. October 20th. ICE got to my dad anyway. There's a text from my sister at 10.46 a.m. ICE jumped out on Luis. I don't know who he's with. Luis is my sister's husband, and he works landscaping with my dad. I wrote on all caps, where, right now? My mom messages me. La migra le llego a tu papa. My dad was shoveling someone's front lawn. When he looked up from his shovel, ICE was right there, the agents just a few feet away. Four cars stood in the middle of the street. One of the agents gripped his co-worker's shoulder. Do you all have papers? They all said they did. They think that because no one tried to run, the agents let them continue working. So they did. Going back through these messages now, I forgot how mad I got at my sister. I was alarmed. My sister seemed to move on quickly when she learned Luis and my dad were fine, which I found annoying. I kept asking her, where are they now? Are they together? Had they called the rapid response hotline to report ICE presence in the neighborhood? Taken down license plate numbers or makes and models of the cars? Information that could help other people at risk in the area. My sister texts, I am telling you what I know. I am working and they are working. I don't know how much communication you think I'm getting. My reply, bro, this is a stop work matter. Five weeks into the operation, I saw a cheap flight out of Chicago to New York. I decided to take it, get away for a few days. Part of me felt guilty for leaving. Part of me felt like I should take the chance before it got worse. I spent the weekend with my friends in their living rooms, going on walks, to dinner. Nothing about their lives had changed. It was unsettling. I told them how my body tenses up now when I hear a long car horn. How I look into car windows for masked agents. And that when we get a community alert reporting ICE on our phones, we think of every person we know who lives or works around there. How we text and call immediately or show up, worried that the other person won't be there. I told them that I was in a special case, that this is what everyone I know feels. Outside of Chicago, it was easier to answer the question, what it's like there. From outside, I could see how much we've adapted, how different everything is now, how extreme things have gotten. It's what I could see going back through my phone, that this thing has bled into every single corner of our daily lives, our commutes, our jobs, our families, our dates and parties, and every single conversation. One last moment I found going through my phone, a text from my relative. One last moment I found going through my phone, a text from my relative. She wanted me to know that ICE was at the corner by the pizzeria where a cousin works. My cousin is the last one in my family who hasn't gotten his papers. I jumped off the train and took one going the other way. I ran down the street. If ICE was here, then I had just missed them. My cousin had recently told his mom, my aunt, that if they ever came in and took him, it'd be all right with him. I'm not running, he'd said. Don't say that, she responded. She was upset that he had brought it up. My mother is upset by this too. She told me the story over the phone. Let him have his peace, I told her. Perhaps he was just trying to prepare his mother and himself for something he couldn't control. Let him have that. I stood outside the pizzeria that day, catching my breath. I peered through the glass until I caught a glimpse of him in the back of the kitchen. I waved and pretended I was only walking by. For once, I avoided the conversation completely, for my sake and for his. And I think we both felt relieved. That story was from Michelle Navarro. She's a writer and a producer on CityCastChicago, a daily news podcast. It was edited by Hannah Jaffe-Wold. We just have a few minutes left in the show. We'll leave you with one last story. Act three, come Mr. Cab Driver, won't you turn that music up? It comes from comedian Muhannad El-Sheikhi, who found himself trapped in an uncomfortable mystery in the backseat of a cab. Most recently, I decided I need to work more on my small talk. So I was like, you know what, if I do take a Lyft or an Uber next time, I'm gonna talk to the driver. I'm gonna find a topic and I'll run with it. And I get into this man's car, and like two minutes in, he starts playing music. And every song he played was something I really liked. So I was like, I gotta let him know. So after each song, I would say, dude, this is a great song. Or I'd say, oh wow, look at that. He's doing it again. And I did that for a while, like 20 minutes of me doing that. And that man did not respond to me once. Well, I'm a man on a mission, I'll get to him. But then I swear to God, the music stops, and the thing he starts playing next was my stand-up comedy on the speakers. And I've never been more terrified in my life. Because I was like, I didn't even check if it was my car or not. Like I left the building and I was like, this seems completely fine. And I got in, so I had to check in from the back. And I was like, hey man, hi, do you know who this is? And he was like, what? I was like, the guy doing stand-up on the speakers, do you know who that is? And he was like, no. And I was like, well, it's me. And he replied, well, that's good for you. I was like, oh, you're kidnapping me and gaslighting me? This is crazy. And then I really thought something bad was about to happen, but then he drove me to the location I gave him. And I did say that out loud. I was like, oh, this is the location I gave you. And he was like, yeah, that's how this usually works. And I was like, dude, not to be rude or anything, but like, are you fucking with me? What is this? What is going on tonight? And he was like, what? And I was like, are there cameras around? Is this gonna be on like YouTube or something? What is going on? And he was like, sir, I just want you to leave my car. And I was like, oh, I'm the crazy person here. Oh, I see how it is. Okay, I'm the weird. Just so you know, whatever this is, you got me. This will haunt me for the rest of my life. I will never forget you. Is that what you want? And then I started leaving the car. I took my backpack and then I pulled my phone out of the charger. What? What I should know, as some of you know, doubles as an OX cord sometimes. So it's been my phone connected to the speakers this whole time. And now there's a guy in New York City who thinks I'm an absolute psychopath. Because what happened was, I got into this man's car, this stranger's car, and I played my own music for 20 minutes. And then after each song that I played, I said, what a great song, man. Look at that, he's doing it again. And then I played my own stand-up. And then I said, hey man, excuse me, do you recognize the voice? Yes, you boy right here, it is me. You're getting a good deal here, I'll tell you that. People usually pay to hear this voice, you're getting this for free? Are there cameras around? Is this gonna be on YouTube where it belongs? I surely hope so. I have not talked to people since, so I think this is it for me. You guys have been an amazing crowd, thank you so much, have a good night. Thank you. Muhannad El Sheikhi is currently on tour. To see where he's performing next, check out his website, muhannadelsheikhi.com. ♪ I gotta know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ This little boy I gotta know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ I gotta know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ I gotta know why it pulls me so ♪ ♪ When you touch me with your hand ♪ ♪ I get a feeling up and down my spine, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Tell me baby that I can't seem to understand ♪ ♪ Someone help me please, I'm in misery ♪ ♪ I gotta know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ Well, this episode was produced by me, the other people who helped put together today's show include Thea Benen, Michael Kamate, Emmanuel Jochi, Suzanne Gabber, Sophie Gill, Tobin Lowe, Miki Meek, Catherine Raimondo, Stowe Nelson, Adia Raymond, Marisa Robertson-Texter, Anthony Roman, Ryan Rummery, Francis Swanson, Christopher Switala, Lily Sullivan, Julie Whittaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor, Sara Abdu-Rahman, our senior editor, David Kestenbaum, and our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks to Mark Fleming, Maria Roman-Garcia, Belle Woods, Jen Tonks, Maria Stein-Marison, Aaron Mahalitz, and the second graders at Manitou School. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. Please consider supporting the show as a This American Life partner. You'll get bonus episodes, I did one, ad-free listening, and more. To join, go to thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Our episode, The Hand That Rocks the Gavel, was just selected by Apple as one of the best podcast episodes of 2025. That episode is all about immigration judges who almost never speak to the press. If you missed it, check it out. It was released September 21st. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Ira is out this week, but ever since I told him about the mystery box, he's been leaving me voice messages. What is it? What is it? What is it? And to reward you all for enduring the mystery, we have a special guest to announce the contents of the box, Mr. Tory Malatia. Will you tell the people what's in the box? Your mama. Yeah, it's a bottle of Advil. I'm Ike Sriskandarajah. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of this American life. My heart's in pain, can't do a job I'm paying. I gotta know, yeah, yeah, yeah. To help myself, I gotta know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta know, I gotta know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you love me, baby. This message comes from Squarespace, offering a library of professionally designed website templates. Grow your business with a customizable website. Visit squarespace.com slash NPR for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This message comes from ShipBob. 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