What if you could buy an entire company without spending a single dollar of your own money — by using the company's own cash to pay for itself?

Ever wondered if you could buy a company using that company's own money? In the summer of 1997, a group of European businessmen did exactly that — and it's one of the wildest financial cons you've never heard of. This week the guys dig into the Trustor scandal, a mind-bending corporate takeover masterminded from behind bars by a Danish tax attorney turned convicted fraudster named Joachim Posner, the "ghost" who talked through his cousin so no one would know he was involved. Using a five-day payment gap and a loophole in loosened 90s European regulations, the crew took controlling shares of the investment firm Trustor, funneled the company's own assets through a fresh Barclays account, and paid the previous owner with his own money. Meanwhile two of the conspirators fled to the French Riviera and torched 50 million euros in two months — matching Ferraris (one immediately lost), 408 bottles of champagne, a yacht with a helicopter pad, and buying out an entire Versace store down to the light bulbs. It's absurd, it's insane, and it ends with plastic surgery in Brazil, a decade on the run, and a Netflix documentary confession. If you like learning and laughing a whole lot while you do, this one's a wild ride.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: ⁠⁠https://tilln.com/trustor⁠⁠

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Watch this next: Frank Abagnale Jr - Scammed His Way into a Movie → ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGe0qUCN-IU⁠⁠

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What if a billionaire could just... buy a chunk of an island, wall it off, and write his own laws? No pesky government, no red tape, no rules.

Ever wondered what happens when a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a 16-year-old's sci-fi novel, and a pile of crypto billionaires collide on a beautiful island in Honduras? This week Jaron and Tim dive into Prospera — a real-life "charter city" on Roatan where you don't just move in, you sign an "agreement of coexistence," pay laughably tiny taxes, and literally pick which nation's regulations you want to live under. It sounds like a libertarian dream until you learn how an ancestral village called Crawfish Rock got tricked into signing away their land, why the community fought back and elected a president who campaigned on shutting it down, and how the whole thing survived anyway thanks to buried contract clauses, international investment treaties, and a jaw-dropping $10.7 billion lawsuit — roughly two-thirds of Honduras's entire annual budget. Along the way you'll hear about taser-knife fights, unregulated gene therapies, Bitcoin as legal tender, cartoon-villain investors like Peter Thiel and Roger Stone, and the genuinely unsettling movement to try this on U.S. National Parkland. It's a wild, funny, occasionally rage-inducing look at what "no rules" actually costs — and who ends up paying for it.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: ⁠⁠https://tilln.com/prospera⁠⁠

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What if the only way to escape a mob hit was to erase yourself completely — no name, no memory, no identity — and hope the government would hand you a fresh start? For one man, that gamble became a decade-long nightmare.

In 2004, a Burger King employee in Richmond Hill, Georgia, showed up for the 5 a.m. shift and found a naked man behind the dumpster — no ID, severe cataracts, and no memory of who he was. He couldn't even give a name, so the hospital started calling him BK Doe, and eventually he became "Benjaman Kyle" (yes, spelled with that weird extra N). For over a decade, this guy lived as a legal ghost: no Social Security number, no job, no home, bouncing through shelters, Reddit threads, Dr. Phil, and even Jeff Probst's daytime talk show, all while begging anyone to recognize him. But when a team of real documentary filmmakers dug in, the story cracked wide open — a birth name (William Burgess Powell), a horrifically abusive childhood in Lafayette, Indiana, a red station wagon ditched in the woods in 1976, a Chicago-connected crime family, and a chilling comment at the edge of a Colorado cliff about the perfect place to hide a body. Jaron and Tim spiral through Bruce Willis bits, John Madden impressions, and wacky inflatable arm guys before landing on a genuinely mind-bending question: did this man fake amnesia to escape the mob — and where did he vanish to this time?

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: ⁠⁠https://tilln.com/benjamankyle⁠⁠

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Ever heard of a mint cake? Not the candy — the digital dessert that triggered one of the wildest speculative financial bubbles in gaming history.

This week Jaron and Tim go deep — like 99 Fletching deep — into RuneScape, the game that was basically "a chat room with armor" for a generation of middle schoolers. But this isn't just nostalgia. It's the insane true story of the Mint Cake bubble, a full-blown speculative frenzy that played out entirely inside a video game. It starts with a humble side-quest snack worth about 1,000 gold, follows Jagex's desperate attempts to stop scammers, bots, and inflation with the Grand Exchange and the dreaded balanced trade update, and then explodes when a shadowy group of wealthy merchants decide to pump the Mint Cake into "the next big rare." Prices rocketed from 1,000 gp to 30 million. People flexed their stacks like status symbols. Real money changed hands. And then a single line of code from a moderator named Mod Ash popped the whole thing overnight, wiping out fortunes. The best part? The origin story traces back to an inside joke between a player named Meatloaf Man and his girlfriend. It's tulip mania, the housing bubble, and Bitcoin — all inside RuneScape. If you like learning and laughing a whole lot while you do, this one's a wild ride.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: ⁠⁠https://tilln.com/mintcakes⁠⁠

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Watch this next: Tulip Mania → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW7q2yLfbUQ&t=1219s&pp=ygURdGlsbG4gdHVsaXAgbWFuaWE%3D

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What if the summer you spent chasing Pikachu in the park was actually you volunteering to build a global military mapping system? Yeah. That happened.

Ever wondered where Google Earth actually came from? Buckle up, because this one goes to some wild places. This week Jaron and Tim dig into John Hanke, the University of Texas grad who helped build one of the very first MMOs (Meridian 59), then pivoted to a tiny startup called Keyhole that was basically Google Earth before Google Earth existed. Nobody wanted it — realtors shrugged, civic planners laughed — until the War on Terror hit and cable news made satellite imagery a household thing overnight. Then Google bought them, Street View was born, and Hanke spun off Niantic to make augmented-reality games like Ingress and, eventually, the cultural tidal wave that was Pokémon GO. But here's the mind-bending part: those AR mapping tasks where you filmed statues to make Pikachu climb them? That was 30 billion user scans of the planet, feeding a visual positioning system now partnered with defense contractors, Palantir, and a CIA-linked investment firm called In-Q-Tel. It's a story about maps, video games, and the uncomfortable truth that the coolest thing you loved might have quietly become something else entirely. Fascinating, hilarious, and just a little bit horrifying.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: ⁠⁠https://tilln.com/johnhanke⁠⁠

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Watch this next: Pokemon → https://youtu.be/V-H81cGo1nk?si=6l0jiWoe6twAoqeu

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What happened to the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett? We dive into the disappearance of the man who obsessed over the mysterious Lost City of Z.

In this episode, we unpack the fascinating life and final expedition of Percy Fawcett, the British explorer who vanished in the Amazon rainforest while searching for the fabled Lost City of Z. Beyond the mystery, we examine Fawcett's real-world history as a mapmaker and military man, the intense mythology surrounding El Dorado, and how modern Lidar technology is completely rewriting our understanding of ancient civilizations in the Amazon. We discuss the theories behind his disappearance—from tribal encounters to starvation—and explore why his story remains a captivating chapter in exploration history. Whether you are a history buff, a fan of true-life mystery, or simply curious about lost worlds and archaeological breakthroughs, this video provides a deep dive into how new scientific tools are finally uncovering what was once thought to be myth. Join us as we look at the legacy of Fawcett, the reality of the Amazonian landscape, and why the search for the 'Lost City of Z' continues to fascinate the modern world.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: https://tilln.com/percyfawcett

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Watch this next: Forrest Fenn's Treasure → https://youtu.be/DCVhUATqeo4?si=03E9xREQPtC5a6M1

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Was the Winchester Mystery House a ghost-trapping labyrinth or a feat of architectural genius? We uncover the truth behind the Winchester legend.

In this episode, we dive deep into the mysterious history of the Winchester Mystery House, one of the most famous haunted attractions in America. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester repeating rifle fortune, spent decades building a massive, sprawling mansion in San Jose that is filled with architectural oddities, from staircases leading to nowhere to doors opening into empty space. While folklore claims she built this bizarre maze to trap restless spirits haunted by her family's guns, the truth is far more complex. We analyze her life, the tragic loss of her family, and how rheumatoid arthritis may have driven her unconventional home designs. We also debunk the myths surrounding her supposed occult practices and explore how the mansion was turned into a commercialized tourist attraction. Whether you are interested in historical mysteries, architectural wonders, or the power of storytelling and marketing, this breakdown offers a fresh look at one of the world's most debated homes and its enduring, eerie legacy.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: https://tilln.com/winchester

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Watch this next: Latitude Society → https://youtu.be/jZbk5Nh5eNk?si=BDr9U5lmG7nNW2iC

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Discover the wild true story of Barry Minko, the teenage entrepreneur who built a $600 million corporate empire on a foundation of pure fraud. Dive into one of history’s most audacious Ponzi schemes.

In this episode, we break down the incredible life of Barry Minko, a man whose ambition at age thirteen spiraled into a nationwide criminal enterprise. Starting with a modest carpet cleaning business in the early 80s, Minko evolved into a master of deception, orchestrating elaborate insurance fraud, check kiting schemes, and corporate manipulation that eventually landed his company, ZZZZ Best, on the NASDAQ. We explore how he used extreme charisma to dupe bankers, the mob, and investors alike before his $600 million house of cards came crashing down. This deep dive covers the mechanics of his Ponzi scheme, his unusual relationship with a neo-Nazi associate, and his bizarre attempts at redemption. Whether you are interested in true crime, financial history, or the psychology of a grifter, this breakdown uncovers the meticulous planning and the inevitable downfall of a legendary con artist. Join us as we unpack the timeline of his crimes, his prison stints, and the lessons learned from one of the most unbelievable white-collar crime stories in American history.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: https://tilln.com/barryminkow

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Watch this next: McDonalds Monopoly → https://youtu.be/EnL8N8BhiSM?si=JP8A8bFHfctUvA4J

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What happens when massive talent meets an absolute business nightmare? Discover the wild story behind the iconic MacKenzie-Childs brand.

In this episode of Things I Learned Last Night, we dive deep into the fascinating and chaotic history of MacKenzie-Childs. From a modest start as a husband-and-wife pottery duo in rural New York to a globally recognized brand fueled by maximalist aesthetics, their journey is nothing short of a roller coaster. We break down how their commitment to the artisan Magelica technique—while revolutionary—left them vulnerable to the harsh realities of scaling and finance. This video explores the intersection of creative brilliance and corporate survival, highlighting the pivotal moments, including the devastating fire and the calculated takeover by Pleasant Roland, owner of American Girl. Whether you are a business enthusiast, a fan of home decor, or just love a good story of high stakes and high drama, you will gain insights into how the wrong business moves can turn a multimillion-dollar empire into a cautionary tale. Learn why scaling a creative business requires more than just passion and beautiful designs.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: https://tilln.com/mackenziechilds

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Watch this next: Nolan Bushnell → https://youtu.be/TptWgh8mzO8?si=Axb6Ls0HUFR9lN-O

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Discover the true story behind the Luddites, the 19th-century workers who rebelled against industrialization to save their livelihoods. Were they just anti-tech Luddites, or was it something more?

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode today!

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Episode link: https://tilln.com/luddites

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Watch this next: Carrie Nation → https://youtu.be/kr4m4Cq7wvw?si=RxjBU_PJ_7KuFQDG

Text TILLN to 66866 to become a patron and gain access to ad-free episodes, the exclusive discord, and earn discounts on TILLN Merch.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices