The Likker King of Appalachia: Popcorn Sutton

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Hi, Sar Elizabeth.

How are you.

I'm doing pretty well about you?

I am well good.

I like your striped pants. There's like things that they give to like convicts in the nineteen thirties, a changing very fun and ridiculous. It really is.

Thank you, Ridiculous Crimes. You know it's ridiculous, Oh man pants.

Well, you know how I like history, right, I do know that, and I'm often reading about random things, and so I went down this rabbit hole and I thought i'd share it with you. So the founder of the Chinese Han Empire, and it's like the ethnic honor the largest majority in China. So when they basically took over the area and launched the Han Empire, this was like two O two BC, right, right, But the guy who founded the Han Empire, the first emperor, was this guy

Right.

They're like, you must have been on it. So what does he do. He switches sides and he joins the rebels, and they're like, man, this guy's good. He's a quick thinker. They make him the leader. And so then from that point on he joins what ends up being part of the rebel army because there's all these warring states in

Prison guard to emperor. Yes, that's amazing.

And this is like the one like when we talk about like China extends back. This is the point they're talking about other than the Yellow Emperor, which is like the real starting point. But this is like when the Han Empire. So this is like, you know, China's history was.

Basically you're in the long haul.

I just love that story. I'm with you fellas, like they're gonna kill me, so I guess I'm with you, Emperor. Boom, ridiculous.

That's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Fighting the revenuers?

Oh yeah, oh.

Yeah, this is ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis and cons It's always always ninety nine percent murder free and one percent ridiculous.

I know you always heard that we.

Talked about moonshiners before. Oh yeah, you have basically homemade illegal liquor.

Yeah, corn liquor, corn liquor.

So when we talk about moonshine, we think about the Appalachian region. That's the stronghold.

I think of my dad's family.

You think your dad's family. Moon Shining in Appalachia has a really rich and fascinating history. It's tied to the culture, the economics, and that like rebel ethos of the communities. They're outsiders and they know it and then they like kind of revel in it.

Yes, and it's also, by the way, as I pointed out with my dad's family, this is true of Black and White and the Apple Asian region. It's like the re we all know.

Yeah, totally. So let's start with how Moonshine got its start. Let me tell you, Saren Scott's Irish immigrants settled in the region in the eighteenth century, and they brought with them all these old traditions of distilling whiskey from their homelands. So remember whiskey with an e is from Ireland or the US whiskey with no e is from Scotland. Yes, and as Mike Myers used to say in the old SNL sketch, all things Scottish, if it's not Scottish, it's crap.

I've heard this, Yeah, nor are the Irish.

You know, the SNP Scottish National Party has called for another independence referendum and the Scottish Parliament endorsed it. Labor parties against it. So we shall see. And I've heard over and over that Scotland and Catalonia will be the tipping points in terms of independence in Europe, so like if they leave the UK and Spain respectively, then all these other areas will fill out suit. Anyway, let's go

Yeah, they used it to pay things like this is a standing bit of Congress.

Yeah, because if there's a surplus of grain, especially corn, they had to use it or lose it. So it doesn't keep and it takes up a ton of room. But if you distill it into liquor, you can solve both of those problems. It's you know, store, it's keeps longer, totally make new friends. So this new tax would have like absolutely wrecked the economy in Appalachia. You had to pay the tax in cash, and they didn't have cash. They just had hooch. The good folks of the mountains

Ninety two, calling out the militia.

They called up the state militias from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, Come on, boys. In the fall of seventeen ninety four, Washington led thirteen thousand Delitia men into western Pennsylvania. So let's back up a second. Four hundred armed rebels, thirteen thousand militia men.

I know they got long rifles, but that's going to be a wha. Yeah.

Yeah.

That was actually the only time a sitting US president has ever led troops in the field. And then it's all talk after that. And so this shut the rebellion down with a quickness. Obviously, one hundred and fifty rebels were arrested, two got convicted of treason, but they were later pardoned and the tax stood. Then we're going to jump forward eighteen sixty two the Revenue Act, and that was passed to fund the Civil War, like we're constantly

Totally, and also a connection like both of the land and with the tradition of your family. So it's like, who are you to get.

Involved the exactly. And then prohibition came and so that was championed by Protestant temperance movements in the region. Yeah, but it was also this cash cow for the Moonshiners. They're like, we love prot Yeah sure, so they're the demand for illegal mountain made whiskey just skyrock yeah.

Them and the Canadians were like, okay, I love this.

So we had these like one small family stills in the Holler are suddenly shipping out to big cities Chicago, New York. The criming became organized, and so you once had a bartering tool, now it's just a straight up industry. Prohibition ends, but the fight with the government continues. So booze was legal right all of a sudden, But the stills were still operating outside the law, and there was this like total cat and mouse game between the ATF that was called the Alcohol Tax Unit. Then and all

Go Watch Thunder Road to Robert Mitchell.

Yeah, because they souped up their cars to outrun the revenuers. But then they just started racing each other. That's the natural instinct for and bragging rights. So by the seventies and eighties, nineteen seventies and eighties, improved roads, economic development programs, changing culture, Like we're kind of bringing about like the death knell to traditional moonshining. So this romantic outlaw image was fading as the practice became more associated with organized crime. Still,

Get out of town Wi Hopcornton Hopcorn Sutton.

He was born in nineteen forty se Joe Biden besties Total besties, popcorn. They fought, pulled out blades.

He was born to go back to Delaware.

He was born in nineteen forty six in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. And that's sort of between Asheville, North Carolina and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Yeah, right next to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And it was originally Cherokee Country. So according to the Assembly magazine quote, his family had been in western North Carolina in the area of Hemphill and Kataluchi, as he put it in one interview, quote, as long as time lasted. And so they lived off the land.

Yeah, yeah, not even by like the amount he pulls, No.

By the hour. So Maggie Valley, which has a population of about seventeen hundred people today, that at the time was pretty much a crossroads. And now it's been developed out first in the sixties because they put in an amusement park, an amusement that closed in two thousand and three, but then as the Chattaloochi Ski Area. That's the entry point to it. So that's where they get, like there's motels.

And all that the beginning of the tourists.

Yes, yes, but back when popcorn was a pop there was only a small store which had one phone located within the store. That was the one phone in two Yeah, popcorn told people that the only time anyone used it was to ring up the undertaker when someone died. It was like the sole purpose of the phone. So there is young Popcorn in Maggie Valley. When he was just five years old, he was taught a trade. Five moonshininge. That's how old he was when someone took him to

You've seen the cool maps they do where people got to settle in Americas from the Aisles. You see, like this big arrow go right from there to the Appolis exactly.

So, like the Scots were in the Ulster Counties and they're starving. The Catholics don't want them there, and the Anglicans who ran the place didn't want them there either. No one wanted them. So they ran off to the American colonies and no one wanted them there. Yeah, and so they headed for the hills like Appalachian Piedmont regions. It was rough living and that's when they like really developed backwoods living. You know, corn liquor because they didn't

Zaren Elizabeth thereon right.

It's nineteen sixties, okay, that's where we are right now. That's when Popcorn Sutton hit his stride making the legal hoops in Appalachia. He got away with it for a bit, but then he got busted. In the early seventies.

He was like deep in the woods, oh yeah, because you can always think and see the if you're burning the fire, wach you're still the smoke will go up. So they used to look for the smoke in the woods. You like that shouldn't be got to go like way.

Oh yeah, so per the Greenville Sun quote. In nineteen seventy five, Sutton was convicted in US District court on numerous federal charges relating to the manufacturing and possession of an unregistered still, having distilling apparatus, and untaxed liquor. He was given probation not good. Yeah, And then he got pinched again in nineteen eighty and this time it was on a felony drug offense. He got a five year suspended sentence.

Do you know what the drug was?

I'm going to guess weed, so he.

Said, nineteen eighty so I had to open up, yeah, right to the floor. Question.

He got five years suspended sentence. That's not bad. And then five years later he actually went to prison for the first time. Nineteen eighty five, he got convicted of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

Was another Sikes popcorn machine.

I think it was a human popcorn. Enough, he's back out. So during the eighties and nineties, he like late eighties nineties, he went somewhat legit. He ran a junk shop on the outskirts of Cherokee, North Carolina. And when I say junk shop, I'm talking like old appliances, all these old dusty bottles.

Folk arts, like stuff in a parking lot.

Basically old fill in the blank.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like this still got some life in it.

Yes, And you know it's like a dusty store. You walk in and immediately you're like sneezing.

In nineteen eighty seven printer and he's like, you still got some life in it. You used matrix.

Like stores like this litter the rural South.

Oh yeah, they're not. They're little central California.

And like more eclectic neighborhoods elsewhere, but they're in essence dust factor. Yes, let's just be real. And so in addition to selling all this old stuff, though, he also sold new bruise.

New bruise bottles.

Of moonshine were sold out of the back of the store. So it's kind of like this speakeasy setup. You had to know that he had it, and he had to trust that you were cool about it. But then someone squealed and the revenue one revenuers came a colin, you know, someone I'm going to get you nineteen ninety.

Eight damn revenue.

Uh, And they hit the jack pot in that picker's paradise in the store, they came across popcorn still and sixty gallons of white lightning.

He had to still in his store, like in the basement.

So, according to the Smoky Mountains National Park Blog, yes, quote, while operating a distilling unit and selling illegal alcohol is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine up to ten thousand dollars. Popcorn Suddon was not initially sent to jail. The judge instead put him on probation and offered him an out with a suspended sentence.

You know, fair enough, hard well, there.

Must have been something really charming about old Popcorn.

I was wondering.

And when you look at his picture, you see that he's every inch the stereotypical old moonshiner.

Does he even have the long beard?

Oh yeah, there's this one shot of him. He's like sitting in a chair, he's holding a jar moonshine, and he looks like an Appalachian philosopher king. Okay, he looks like he lost a bet with a taxidermist because his hat is like this leather contraption that a raccoon died on top of, and it's decorated with feathers that were stolen from a parrot who was probably like relieved to be rid of them. And you talked about like the

Just creeping down.

It's like a tumbleweed that settled down and like got married and raised a family there. And then he's got these overalls on. Right, It's like that's the official uniform of men who have zero interest in your opinions. So many pairs of overalls he's got, like the plaid flannel shirts. There's forty seven different colors and none of them were coordinated. And to be together, it's Phil Billie's chic. He's iconic. So I can see how people just couldn't make themselves

Character as a local color and through.

The Assembly magazine describes him as sort of holding court in his junk shop. Nice and per the New York Times quote, he lived in a cluttered cabin on a wooded hill, where he also built his stills, gave pistols to the incoming sheriffs, and fathered so many children that no one has any idea of the exact accounting.

Fathered so many children, really using the word father, little colonels, colonels throughout the countries, the children like a biblical spreading seed.

I've made all kinds of liquor in my time, Hapcorn says, tending the still. I've made the fighting kind, the love and kind, the crime kind. I even made some one time and sold to this couple. They was happily married. Next damn week they was divorced. Yeah, the marriage buster, the bestseller. So here's this guy. He's in his fifties, but he looks way older.

I'm thinking love seventies.

Oh yeah, Sinna's a rail He's got the droopy overalls, a floppy hat. He walks all bent over from like years and years of carrying heavy bags of sugar up to his stills in the mountains. It is the age of like seven.

So like the Warner Brothers animators who did like like all the old cartoons, will.

Be like, he is our role model completely. He's weathered, yeah, and he looks like he's from this other time. But he's still He had a cell phone and he watched TV.

I knew he did that.

He just had like the old timey aesthetic.

Yeah, he was walking tradition.

Yes, he restored a model.

T Oh, really he drove it around.

He would look.

Super on brand if he actually drove it around. No, he it was garaged up and like he only took it out on special occasions.

His investment property.

Yeah, on the front bumper he painted mom corn in all caps in front of the passenger seat and popcorn in front of the driver's seats, just like hand painted.

No.

Instead, he ran around in a nineteen eighty two Ford Fairmount.

Then he turned into a tutor.

A Tudor. Yeah, it looks like it has a massive engine and like if you glance quickly out of the corner of your eye, you might think it's an El Camino. Like it kind of has that long like the back windows just like a slice of glass really, and the trunk is like super long. So he got that car by trading three gallons of moonshine for it. He called it his three jug car, and he sold He sold half gallon jars of corn liquor to a tourist for twenty five bucks a pop, so that car ran him

People come in. There was like, oh said, like a blossoming of interest in Chicago.

No, just you know those in the know. Wait, he entered into the Ridiculous Crime Book Club in nineteen ninety nine when he's self published Me and My Liquor spelled l I k K E R.

Oh I I K K E R.

Yeah, Okay, yeah. The New York Times described it as quote a rambling, obscene and often hilarious account of his life in the trade.

So it was like in the trade.

A spiral bound affair and tons of photos, tons, all black and white, and it was it's printed in this sort of comic sands font and it starts with a scan of his license to sell moonshine certificate from the National Moonshine Association, signed by the mayor of Maggie Valley.

Okay, here's this, Like any is this the governing body? Yes, okay, because it's like I.

Think I think he did. Here's how the narrative starts. Quote, this book is all true. There is not a damn thing in it that is not true. My name is Popcorn Sutton, and how old of my It ain't nobody's damn business. I've been making, drinking and selling liquor for now on forty years. My granddaddy made drink and sold liquor most of his life. People worry about liquor killing them. I don't, because my granddaddy is proof it won't. He smoked camel cigarettes just like I do. One after another.

I like a spirit, you know. I'm telling you this is a man who knows who he is, where he comes from, and where he's going.

There's this photo of a rough looking woman in a house dress and an old man seated next to her on a floral sofa.

So is this mom, Corny? No?

No, the old guy's smoking a cigarette. There's like an old vacuum cleaner in the background. Yeah, here's the caption. This is smut Web and his wife, Lucille. Smut is dead now. He's the one that teached me how to make a damn moonshine still a long time ago.

Smut wob.

Yeah he's dead now.

Case you're smutt case, here's your money now.

So the whole thing is like sitting listening to some guy ramble on a rocking chair on his front porch.

I love it.

And my time in the very rural South has made me very familiar with this type of socializing. I bet there's a lot of technical remembrances about the actual making of the liquor, and then there are all these like scattered rambling anecdotes. I'm gonna hit you with one more, okay please, I have been worried all day. My doctor come to see me yesterday and he told me, popcoin noticed the spelling. You have only sixty two years to live.

Was I do.

One time, me and Ken Moore was out one night. We had just got bought a brand new Ford car. I think it was a Toreno. We left Grassy Fork headed to Newport, got the Hartford and then on the I forty West, then onto the bluffting curve. Ken had that god damn Ford wide open. This is the first time I ever pulled a gun on a man to get him to slow down. I told Ken, if we are gonna die, by God, we're going together. I had

Anyway, anyway, I love a Claymore no relation to the munition, and Ken Moore, no relation to the truck.

All the boys you know they are.

One more. I was gonna ask, kidding me here you go.

There are two things that I don't want a goddamn thing to do with. That is bad moonshine and viagra. I drunk some bad liquor one time, and it came one tinker's damn killing me. I couldn't sleep, or I couldn't just buy god pass out. Anyway, I did go to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, but when I did wake up, I was in a daze. The bed I thought was by God spinning around and

Pills.

So he released his book, which I now own as a downloaded PDA. No, I'm not kidding you. Amazing y'all send it to you and Not long after that, in two thousand and two, Neil Hutchison made a documentary about Popcorn called This is the Last damn Run of Liquor I'll ever make. It's the name of it. A lot of Hutchinson's work is focused on like cultures and transition and all over the world, but a lot of it

Of course Tennessee.

Yeah so he was, he was writ Yeah, I love that, that's his name. And then there was a History Channel documentary in two thousand and seven. Mark Ramsey, who was a close friend of Popcorn's, told him, quote, old man, you can't be a movie star and make liquor too, and then Popcorn answered him, you can't sell it if nobody knows you got it, like fair enough. Yeah. So Popcorn was still a fixture in Maggie Valley, but by this time he'd moved to eastern Tennessee just over the

Irks when they got overrun by hippie outlaws, like we want to take a shot at this list e actually.

So like, of course, Bondcorn feels right at home naturally, and so he set up shop outside Parrottsville, Tennessee, population two hundred and seventeen. Wow, Parrotsville are just outside of it.

That's like seven families too.

Yeah, pretty much is home to Swaggerty Blockhouse. Okay, And a blockhouse is basically a building that's used as sort of like a fort with gun portals. And originally this one was supposed to have been built by a settler named James Swaggerty in seventeen eighty seven, but later inspection determined that it was actually a anti lever barn built by someone else in eighteen sixty, and it didn't stop it from being listed on the US National Register of

Oh that's a that's a good look.

Cute.

One of my favorite bars I go to has.

To the Alley in Oakland. You know, they're all it's like a fire trap. And so he also got himself a banjo. He paid eight grand for it.

Eight grand?

Could he play the banjo?

No? No?

Was it e scrugs banjo?

He just he thought it was like a good looking accessory.

He's like, this fits, this does he definitely is the way to atesterize his look.

And he prepaid for his funeral. So this was two thousand and six. He's sixty years old. He bought a coffin and then he ordered up his gravestone granted and engraved on it was the following epitaph, Popcorn says you. So this feels like the right time to take an ad break and think about how that might be the best grave marker ideas around. And when we returned Parrotsville.

Zaren Elizabeth.

All right, so we talk on popcorn. Sutton infamous moonshiner.

I'm so into this guy.

He moved to Parrot'sville, Tennessee, and it was there that he got three enormous stills running.

Oh, I thought you were going to say new baby lamas well.

Probably I'm going to assume yes. And those babies look so weird. They had beards. No, he had two eight hundred gallon jobs and the third one held one thousand and seven fifty gallons. Like chazam, that's some big stuff.

This is like, you know, enough water for a small town if you had no water tower.

He's like one of those AI centers. So he didn't he didn't do these the old fashioned way with the wood and the creek water. He ran these on unlighted gasoline. And it was there that he stored all his hoots jars in this stillhouse, as well as sacks of grain, a couple thousand pounds of sugar. So let's think about that gas, grain, sugar, Southern heats.

Everything you've said is explosive.

Yeah, it makes me think fire, either.

Fire or expos You've taken like, you know, non dairy creamer and waved it over like an open flame. Yes, yeah, can you realize, hey, kids, that's how bakeries catch fire. This flower has energy, sugar has energy. Will they will burn.

Sarren just taught all the children the trick of non dairy powdered non dairy creamer.

Yeah, shaking over an open flame and it'll first person that's flash like a magician doing magic tricks.

You're welcome, parents. So the Assembly magazine reported quote on April twenty fourth, two thousand and seven, a faulty wiring box ignited a fire in the stillhouse. There were dried out timbers, sacks of green and sugar and gasoline to feed the flame, and the fire was instantly out of control.

Oh, of course, Saren.

Close your eyes.

You picture it.

You are a firefighter with the Parrotsville Volunteer Fire Department. You're sitting in the back of your mechanic's garage, tinkering with a mini van someone brought in yesterday. As always, you have your police scanner radio on and the emergency alert pager on your belt. You're on call. The alarm sounds and you jump up, ready for action. Will it be a car accident, a heart attack?

Nope?

You trot toward your pickup truck, ready to head to the fire station and pick up the pumper truck. You glance at the pager and you see it fire. You look at the address.

Hello.

Oh. Eight or so minutes later, you're standing in front of the fire truck, staring at the giant column of black smoke rising out of Popcorn Sutton Stillhouse. Dagnavit. The fire chief is called in support from neighboring towns and districts, and you are sure they, as you did, are following the rising tower of smoke and embers to the scene. And you know the Sheriff's deputies are on their way too. You hear tires tearing up the gravel drive behind you.

Front of you.

Your fellow firefighters are doing their best to get an under controlled. You're manning the pump on the truck and backing up the chief as he tries to control the scene. Popcorn races up to you. He tells you he has three stills in there, plus a bunch of copper wire of dubious origin, bags of sugar, bunch of sour mash. You can't let the deputies see that stuff when they get here, he says, maybe just let it burn a son.

I got lucky on that one.

The revenuers are relentless. They kept an eye on Popcorn. And so a year after his sentencing on the fire case and he's on probe Yes Yes, ATF discovered that he had three stills again, and they came across this information when Popcorn sold two hundred gallons of corn liquor to an undercover agent. And Popcorn is like, look, i'll give you a deal. It's fifty dollars a gallon, and if you buy more than fifty gallons, the price goes down to thirty bucks a gallon. It's a good deal,

My dad moonshine, and it.

Was flavored stuff like I took a sip of the peach one.

Oh it burned.

It tasted terrible.

Yeah, moonshine. Guy tasted like old, like white lighting.

And yeah, I don't see the purpose of get it.

He gets to North Carolina to tell too much?

Ay right, we're just using vague eas So anyway, it wasn't just that the agent made the sale. He also got video and in it you can see like a bunch of guns in the background. Oh no, and then there's popcorn being popcorn. Like he danced while he talked to the guy, and he was waxing eloquent on the specifics of how one goes about making moonshine, just like

I can't believe he took him to. His mother loved more.

Than eleven hundred gallons of sour mash, which would become one hundred and thirty gallons a hooch. So that's proof of not just possession but production everything. Government sees it all. Oh, they came in Chronicles Magazine reported quote following Popcorn's arrest ATF Special Agent James Kavanaugh proclaimed moonshine is romanticized in folklore and in the movies. The truth, though, is that moonshine is a dangerous health issue and breeds other crime. Oh sta ain't lyon.

I mean, yeah, sure, but like the dose makes the poison. Anything can be a criminal act or eything can be bad for your house. That's true if there's enough of it.

So Popcorn he pleads guilty to possessing firearms and illegally producing distilled spirits by distillation from mash and other material. H his lawyer was like begging the court, begging the judge.

Do not let him on the stand.

No, please, because he pleads guilty. He's like, he cannot do time. He's two weak, he won't survive it. He said that Popcorn was quote sixty two and looks like he's eighty two. So he begged the judge please give him probation.

Can you imagine how dehydrated his body? Oh my god, his entire life.

And so he then is like pleading his case for leniency. The Greenville Son described the scene quote Sutton, wearing overalls and a denim jacket, promised the court he would never again make whiskey, doing so as he stood with a walking cane during sentencing, and he said, I'd like to die at home rather than in a penitentiary.

Oh yes, please, come on, wouldn't so.

A bunch of Popcorn's neighbors in the area signed a petition asking the court to have mercy on Popcorn. Here's what they said. Quote, the undersigned are personally acquainted with Marvin Popcorn Sutton. We trust him in any matters of great importance in our everyday lives, and welcome him as a neighbor. Considering his basic nature, age, and significant medical problems, we asked the court to consider leniency in sentencing Popcorn,

I want to legal fielty.

So June Yeah. Basically January two thousand and nine, Popcorn got sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison, and the judge said he could quote self report to prison when notified, and until then he's under house arrest. Now his whole life, Popcorn had decided his own fate, like he'd set his own course. Laws be damned, society be damned. Good sense be damned.

And then.

He's confronted with a scenario that he couldn't work around and that he couldn't control. He found a way to choose his own path for the last time. On March sixteenth, two thousand and nine, just four days before he was supposed to report to prison, he connected the exhaust pipe of his forward to a hose and you can figure out the rest. So his daughter told the Knoxville News quote, nobody was going to tell him what to do. He did it his way. He always lived a death before

We handmake our labels.

Yeah, because it was like catching on culturally with the Mason Jar aesthetic and stuff and so this way, it's a quick way to do it too, because it goes straight to market. You don't have to age it. So Grocer told Halma Today this newspaper quote. He kept teaching me what he'd learned. He told me, no one else knows what you know, and he was methodical about passing

I've got to get my hands on some of this liquor with two k's enjoying myself a fine night in honor of popcorn.

Yeah, raised wind to pop p Oh.

I love his story. I mean, this is some real life Duke Brothers stuff, but I mean, like the outrageousness of it, the whole Uncle jessiness of it is just incredible.

Well, we talk so much about characters. We love the characters, and this guy's just pure character.

Yeah, he's got so much character enough for like two three people. Yes, exactly, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous takeway?

I you know, I think like he I just keep going back to character that he's He's this prototype and this almost stereotype, but you see all the little individual things he brings to the whole experience. And I know I've been sitting on this story for a while because of the way he went out. I wasn't sure if that was something to talk about, But then I thought no, you know that's part of his lord and his legend,

I don't imagine there was a lot of schooling involved, apprenticeship there, but none internships. It's very much a self directed path, very much, you know what.

I think I need that talk back, Dave.

Oh.

I like you, Hey, producer, Dave, Elizabeth and Zarin. This is Ada from Wyoming and I'm listening to your Pippin' Outlaw episode, and you were laughing about him joining the rodeo team. So I thought you'd find it amusing to know that my community college in my hometown lost some funding a few years ago and so they had to get rid of all the sports teams except for rodeo. So now the only sport we offer his rodeo, and it brings in a ton of people from Canada all over.

I love it. It's awesome and I love that it brings all these people in over the border. Hard draw community college sports, so big ups.

Hopefully they give out a really good belt.

You know they do. They got an awesome belt. That's it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and on Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime pod, email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and most importantly, download the free iHeart app and leave us a talkback. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Kombucha Brewer to

B Ridicous Crime Say It one More Timeous Crime.

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