The Puzzle of the All-American BBQ Scrubber

24:59It's just like, I don't know. He just, John just feels like American is baseball and apple pie. Dustin and John hit it off. And John told him there's this invention he dreamed up, a new kind of barbecue grill accessory. He said, hey, I've got this idea for a grill scrubber.

25:21A lot of people don't know this, but when you clean your grill, a lot of people use these metal brushes. Yeah. And he explained, there's this problem that happens. They'll tell you they've had people come in the door that have this problem. The metal bristles on a grill scrubber. Yeah, this is the thing where the barbecue scrubbers that look like, it's like a toilet brush scrubber, but it's more coarse and metal. Yeah. So those bristles, the little bristles. Wire bristles will come off on the grill, and then they'll go into the food that people are grilling, and then people eat the burger or whatever they're cooking.

25:57And then those bristles will get caught in their throat or go down to their stomach, their colon or whatever. So these metal wires get in people's mouths and they get seriously injured. And it's not something you can just, oh, let me just get the wire out. You have to go to the doctor and you have to get it out. And one of the hardest things to do is even figure out that's what it is. So they have to do x-rays and a lot of times they'll do CT scans to figure out like, oh, there's wire in this person. And so he said, hey, what if we invented one that didn't do that? And he didn't really tell me his full idea at first.

26:32He was like, I just have this idea. And then later on, as we kind of gained trust with each other, he revealed to me he wants to make a chainmail grill scrubber. So instead of like brushes, like little wire brushes, he's got little links. You know, like a knight in shining armor wears chainmail. You know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, but put that at the end of a grill scrubber and that would clean the grill. That was his idea. A better barbecue scrubber, one that does not send a small but meaningful percentage of its customer base to the emergency room with little metal wires in their esophagus.

27:04Destin liked it. And John told him he even had a prototype he was excited to show him. And when he showed me the prototype, it looks, it looks weird. Like the first prototype, I'm just going to level with you. It looks like some kind of sex toy or something. It's not. And I just looked and I was like, that's not what you want to sell, John. You don't want to do that. And so I was like, man, can I take a crack at this? Destin wanted to help with the barbecue scrubber, redesign it so it less resembled a sex toy, and turn it into an actual sellable product. And Destin, of course, had his own motive for getting involved.

27:42Destin's dream is not just that the scrubber would work or that lots of people would buy it, but that crucially, this barbecue scrubber will be 100 % made in America. Sometimes someone will say a product is made in America, but they could just mean assembled here from foreign parts, the last two puzzle pieces put together in this country, which is not Destin's dream. He wants it so that the handle of the scrubber will be from metal cut in America. He wants it to be stamped into a handle-like shape in America. He wants it to be attached to the chainmail scrubby part in America. and he wants the scrubby part made here too.

28:18This is the part that everybody, I mean, most any expert will tell you, it's just not logical. The problem is American wages are much higher than wages in countries like China, which pushes up prices for truly American-made goods. And American consumers, like everybody else, we just want to buy things that are inexpensive. So the era of American manufacturing is just mostly over. You'll hear this from smart people on the right, smart people on the left, that manufacturing jobs like the ones Destin's parents had are mostly not coming back. And the only people pretending otherwise are tariff-loving populists.

28:54Except that's not quite true, because Destin is not talking about tariffs. He's just stubbornly asking if something could be made in America, even just one time. Of course, Destin is somewhat unusual. John, his new business partner in this, much more normal. John just wanted to build a damn scrubber. So back to this first prototype they were looking at together. John tells Dustin that the chain mail he sourced for it, he got that from a supplier in China. That's what John was doing with a lot of his stuff. He's like, hey, I've got a guy in China. We can just make stuff. And I said, hey, I would love to work with you, but I really want to make a thing in America.

29:34Okay. And when you say like when he would manufacture something, he would have a guy in China. It's never occurred to me to think about how this works. How does he find his guy in China? And how does he connect with the guy in China? Dude, this is a rabbit hole, man. So basically, people that want things manufactured usually find a person overseas that can help them make it. The problem is, once you have something built overseas, they tool up a factory there to do it. And so yes, they'll make you your widget that you can sell. However, on Saturday night, they're going to run more widgets and they're going to backdoor you on Amazon and they're going to make counterfeit versions of your thing.

30:12Oh, so if I had an idea for a better barbecue scrubber I could get it more cheaply made in China but then because I'm not there someone will just come in and make knockoffs but they're not even knockoffs because it's being made in the exact same factory. A thousand percent. I know a friend that makes tractor parts and he used to get the castings made in Turkey for example. It was for a specific tractor. And he realized, I have to name the part something else. Because if I say, this is a water pump for a Ford whatever tractor, he would make the castings. And suddenly on the internet, up would pop a, hey, do you guys want water pump housings for a Ford whatever tractor?

30:51This whole backdoor market would start. So he started naming the part something weird. These are rotor girders. And that would work? Yeah, it works. So there's this whole thing that happens with manufacturing where, yes, you can get things made somewhere else. And yes, it's way less expensive. But ultimately, you will be undermined. And it's a strange thing. And so the question is, why don't we make it in America? Why don't we? This question of Dustin's, he was able to infect John with it. Enough so that John set aside his normal entrepreneurial instincts to join Destin on his quixotic mission.

31:32We're going to follow along. And to start, you just have to imagine the thing they're trying to make. The prototype is basically two main parts. One is the handle. You can just imagine the handle on a toilet brush. And that is connected to part two, the scrubby part. It's a circular disc. It sort of looks like a hockey puck that's been wrapped in chain mail. Those are the two main parts. And in early 2021, Destin begins the design process for real, turning that first rough draft idea into a more sophisticated prototype. So the first thing I did is I went to my computer, and I used computer-aided design software, and I designed the scrubber.

32:11The thought was, we have the chain mail, and we need a squishy thing to put behind the chain mail, and we want to use the least amount of material possible. I saw a video of Destin's computer screen that showed him designing the puck in the design software CAD. And so there's certain shapes that pack together really well. And a hexagon is one of the most efficient shapes that you can do what's called tessellations. And I remember being irritated in the CAD because you'd think that would be a really easy thing to do. Just say, make me a honeycomb. But it turns out there's not an easy way to do that in CAD.

32:48It was a puzzle. Frustrating at first. But then Destin found himself losing track of time the way you do when you're working on any good puzzle. Flow is the best way to describe it. Yeah. You start to have really, really serious opinions about fillet radiuses. And as an engineer, I love this part. For Destin, the next step was to take these 3D printed parts and find someone who could build an injection mold. The injection mold lets you make plastic parts at scale by filling a cavity with hot plastic that then cools. The handle of your toothbrush, probably, somewhere in a factory in China. An injection mold shaped like that handle makes handle after handle after handle.

33:29So Destin wants to find someone who can make an injection mold shaped like his barbecue scrubber parts, but who is based in America. Early 2021, Destin and his partner John visit an injection mold company that's not too far from them. I went to this facility and I said, hey, we've designed this thing. I 3D printed it. This is what it looks like. Can you please make us a lot of these? We want to make a mold, and we want to make these at your facility. And the guy goes, sure, no problem. And we said, oh, by the way, we want to make the mold in America. We want everything about this to be done in America.

34:02And they said, we can't do that. Because normally what they would do is they would have a guy in China. The guy in China would make the mold, send the mold to the plant in America, and then they would make the plastic part in America? Yes. when he said, we don't make the mold in America, that's the moment I realized we were screwed. Because you have manufacturing and then you have tooling, and the tooling is what makes the manufacturing work. What's the difference between manufacturing and tooling? Tooling, those are the tools. They're usually custom tools that go into the machines that make things.

34:36So when you were a little dabby, it's like the machine that makes the snack cakes, the tool is the tooling, and then the snack cakes are the product of the tool machine? Correct. Yeah, and so there's this whole industry called tool and die. It's a skilled trade. Just one more example, in case you are as unfamiliar with this as I was. Picture a factory that's making spoons. The spoon starts out as a blank piece of metal, but there's a machine, like a cookie cutter, and a thing pushing the metal into the cookie cutter that shapes it into a spoon. that machine is the tool and die. In Germany, they have very specific programs where you will learn how to make tools for manufacturing.

35:20In the U.S., we have that too, but it's not as strong as they do over in Germany. But my dad used to be a tool and die guy. He used to work in tool and gauge and tool and die. And so they said, yeah, we can't make the injection mold. We send that off and we'll get that back from China and then we'll run your part. And then I realized you're sending all the intellectual property overseas and they're making it. So while they're set up to make the tool, they'll just make two. And so I said, we don't want to do that. We want to make it in America. And he almost laughed at me. He's like, yeah, you don't understand.

35:50You clearly don't understand how this works. And I said, well, there's got to be somebody here that makes it. And he said, good luck. And that terrified me. It actually terrified me because it made me realize if we can't make the tools to make our parts, then China has us. Yeah. or whoever has us. This was a light bulb moment for me in the conversation. The problem is not just that we've forgotten a lot about how to make things in America, it's that we're also forgetting how to make the things that make the things. Meaning, in our factories, there are machines. The machines build the parts that the workers assemble into American products.

36:29But the people who know how to handle the tooling to make those parts, I was beginning to realize that in America, those people are disappearing. And I was like, this is what my dad did, and the people I grew up with, this is what they did. Why can't we do it? And so I kind of went on this little mini quest to find somebody that could do this. Can you introduce yourself? Say who you are and what you do. I am Chris Robeson. I am the president and owner of the Robeson Company. So I found a guy that could do it. He's an old school guy. He was from Pennsylvania. He moved down to Alabama, and he has an injection molding facility, but he knows how to make molds.

37:08How long have you been making molds? I've been doing this for 47 years. Wow. And do you remember when the business first started moving to China? Do you remember the first time you saw that begin to happen? We started feeling that about 12 years ago. I would say it really started to hit about 10 years ago where we were seeing a lot of stuff. And we were doing quotings for new tooling projects only to find out that they went overseas for them. and some of them even approached us by saying, well, you know, we got these molds in from China and they need to be groomed. Would you be interested in that?

37:42And I go, no. If we're not building them, we're not going to service them. That's the way we've taken our stand on trying to keep everything in-house in the U.S. Chris said there used to be lots of tool and dye makers back where he's from in Erie, Pennsylvania. They're mostly gone now. Many of them were his competitors, but also his friends. And with them, this whole part of the chain, parents teaching their kids, adults teaching their apprentices, Chris has watched as that chain's been broken. And why is that happening now? Like, why is that sort of family chain getting broken at exactly this moment in time?

38:23I don't see that willingness to go into vocational education. People do not want to go into tool and dye making. We have a hard time finding tool and die makers. They don't want to go into a four-year tool and die apprenticeship because that means they've got to take extra classes and they're not going to see the pay scale until they get to be a journeyman tool and die maker, where if somebody can come out of a tech school and make, you know,$25,$30 an hour and all he has to do is press a button on a CNC, hey, it's hard to turn away. You can see this in the numbers. nearly half of the remaining workers in American manufacturing plan to retire in the next 20 years.

39:07And they're not being replaced by some wave of Gen Zers. The average American manufacturing worker is 44 years old. No one on the line, presumably, is calling anything goaded. There's very little rizzing up transpiring. Destin told me before he'd started working on the scrubber, he'd had one understanding of why people did not manufacture in America. But as he worked on it, he understood a different logic. One which he found much bleaker. The argument to get things made in China was, well, you get it made in China because it's cheaper. That's what the argument has always been. And then I realized, oh, that's not the argument anymore.

39:43Now the argument is we can't do it because we've been outsourcing it for so long, we've lost the skills. And the old guy didn't train the young guy. And men and women working in factories haven't learned the skills because the people that knew how to do it have retired. Yeah. And so that's not something you can fix overnight. Because when I was an intern, the older engineer taught me how to do things. Tool and die interns. There's a program called Journeyman and Apprentice. If they don't have somebody teaching them, we just skip that generation. And that doesn't just come back. You have to have somebody to teach you that stuff.

40:20And so the reason it's so scary is because it made me realize, in America, we like to push paper around and make money on things. But if we're not actually able to produce, what do you have? I asked Chris Robeson how he felt about all this. You'll have to forgive, like, the corniness of this question, but does it make you feel sad just to be a person who has this knowledge without an immediate person to be teaching it to? I feel like a dinosaur, quite frankly. I am. I am almost 70 years old. I've trained the person I have working for me now, and he wants to actually take over my business someday.

41:00But as far as education, I just don't see the same quality coming out of the tech schools that I'd like to see in an apprenticeship. But a lot of it comes down to people don't want to work with their hands. They can spend time in front of a computer. They're happy as a clam. Also, the high schools don't push it either. They're more aimed at trying to fill the academic roles as opposed to the vocational roles. And I got to be honest, you know, even though I'm my age, I thought about that too. Why am I doing this when I can certainly go somewhere else and make about two grand a week and be a lot happier?

41:41And why didn't you do it? I love what I do. I love the creativity. I love the aspect that I can help somebody design something and go from concept to completion to actually get a plastic part. That's one of the things that's sort of fun with doing the scrubber. You know, we got a chance to go right from conception and work with those guys to make it happen. And that's a lot of fun. When Chris was in college, he spent a summer working at a machine shop because he just wasn't enjoying school anymore. In the shop, he discovered the joy of working with his hands, of creating things that wouldn't exist otherwise.

42:17He and I talked for almost an hour, and the subject of tariffs never came up, or really politics at all. Chris did say if he was in charge, the change he'd want to make would be more education, support for young people looking for apprenticeships, maybe trying to remove some of the stigma we've attached to the skilled trades. It made me think about the friends I have raising teenagers, who've told me how much they wish there were just more options for working with your hands in America. How not everybody wants a desk job.

42:48A funny thing, Chris Robeson, he actually didn't end up just making molds for Destin, but teaching Destin how to make them himself, which Destin obviously was excited to do.

43:01There's video of this. Destin wearing safety glasses, a CNC mill behind him. All right, here we go. I've been doing a test cut for almost 20 hours. She is almost done. Can't see in there just yet. He's standing next to a monitor with his G-code scrolling across it. Almost a million lines of G-code. The machine turns off. Dustin opens the plexiglass doors to the mill and puts his hands in. Oh, Nellie. How does she look? Oh, wow. Okay. You see it, a shiny circular metal part with a hexagonal pattern cut out of it. Physical proof for Dustin that his code works. This is a big deal. This is a very big deal.

43:53All right. We can make things now. People can't tell us now anymore. We can make whatever we want. This is huge. The joy in Dustin's voice, I think anybody who's had the privilege of seeing something that existed as an idea in their head become actually real, it's just a very human kind of joy, this feeling of creation. By February 2022, the scrubber's plastic parts now have a full chain of people and knowledge behind them. They are ready. But the scrubber has a bunch of non-plastic parts, and those we know need to be made in America as well. For instance, the scrubber design calls for a big bolt to connect the scrubby part to the handle.

44:31A bolt. A bolt that goes on the thing. It's a quarter-twenty stainless steel, one-inch long bolt. The simplest mechanical object. I put out a tweet. It said, I'm looking for an American manufacturer for this bolt. And the quotes I got from overseas are like nine cents a bolt. Yeah. The cheapest I'm getting over here is the absolute cheapest is a quarter. So it's 3X. Yeah. But most people are coming in at 50 cents. And so, as a businessman, John and I disagree on this. So, John's the business guy. I'm the engineer. Yeah. And so, John's like, hey, man, I'm just being real with you. From a business perspective, we're stupid for doing this.

45:18Also, we have to do it if we ever want manufacturing to work in America. And so, we're making the decision to buy the more expensive Bolt just to have them made in America. You guys are being vegans about this. Yeah. Maybe I am. I think ultimately I want the skills to be in America. That's what I want. Yes. Because I see them going away and I want to bridge the gap. And so I want people to learn the skills again. And in order to do that, you have to be a little bit of a hard tail about it. And for you, it's not. You're not like, I really want to make a barbecue scrubber because I want to make a giant briefcase full of money for my barbecue scrubber.

45:56You're like, people need jobs. They need things to do. They need skills. I'm going to create something that gets made here so that those things happen. My wife, we do this yearly meeting, and I said, yeah, we're still not in the positive on the scrubber thing. And she burst out laughing. And it was me and a couple of people at the table. I was like, I'm sorry, darling, why are you laughing? And she goes, oh, I'm sorry. We've lost an incredible amount of money on this. But we ultimately think it's going to be worth it in the long run. So it required an incredible initial investment. And no, this is not about money.

46:30This is about something I'm passionate about. And on paper, it's stupid. It's really stupid to try to do it this way. We could have already sold scrubbers two years ago if we had just done it the way everybody does it. But I've just been very principled. I don't know. I like to imagine it being principled, but it's probably stubborn is probably the real word. I don't know the difference between those two things. I don't know. But the deal is it has to make money because people will not make things in America if it doesn't make money. So the goal of this project is to prove that you can make something in America that will make money.

47:05I want to show, yes, you can do it, and it's smart. It's in your best interest to do it. Because then you have a person in your hometown that has the skills, and the next thing you come up with, you can go to them and ask them to do it.

47:20What Destin's talking about building here, really, it's manufacturing capacity. It's funny, for people who want tariffs, Part of the idea is that tariffs might force Americans to build more capacity. If foreign goods were more expensive to buy, more people might do what Destin's just doing voluntarily. Training people, tooling up factories, creating the infrastructure you need to build stuff. Finding an injection mold person in America. A bolt person in America. Actually, this brings us to our next person. A handle person in America. Okay, for the metal handle, you got to have a person that can cut them out with a laser cutter.

47:59People can imagine that. But the building of the die that stamps the handles, that's a whole person. And there's this really beautiful moment where we go work with this facility and we pay them for the tool. It was like$30 ,000 to make the tool. It's very expensive. And so we pay them for this tool. we go all the way through the process and the guy's name is Logan we go to the facility and we're like hey we're going to make a part we're finally going to make a part and we go there and he loads a flat piece of metal and he hits the button and the press comes down ka-chunk

48:37so cool can I grab it? yeah pull straight out wow and then he takes it out and he moves it to the next station it's a multi-station tool yeah and he goes all the way to the end and he pulls it out and he holds it up and it's done. And I look at him and I said, hey, is this the first tool you ever made? He designed and built the tool. He said, yeah, this is the first one I've ever done. This is the first one you've made? Yes, sir. And how long did it take you? About six weeks. So are you been training him? I've helped. He's a lot of helped. So do you feel like you know how to do the next one now?

49:13As long as I got friends to go by, I can build it. Yes, sir. Really? Did you ever think you would have this skill? I never knew anything like this really existed. During high school and everything, I didn't know what I was going to do. I started out up here as just a press operator, actually running these presses and got the opportunity to move over as an apprentice. And I've enjoyed it every season. It's all the hands-on stuff, learning stuff every day. I've really enjoyed it ever since I've been over there. That's fun. You never know this, standing in the store, mindlessly comparing different barbecue scrubbers, what any of this had meant to one American engineer or to Logan, the young worker here.

49:54But the scrubber now has an American-made handle. Once Destin and his partner John have all their pieces, they put them all together. Now they're just beta testing the hell out of it. They get it in the hands of as many people as they can. There's this very sweet video of John's mom outside, her grandson watching, as she, this small woman holding this very large barbecue scrubber, tests it on a dirty barbecue grill and then gives her verdict. Is it working? Yeah. This is great. Dustin and John have a working barbecue scrubber. They've patented it. And in November 2024, they finally start assembling it in batches.

50:30And once you have all the parts, where does the thing get assembled into one thing? We're doing it in our hometown. Okay. Yeah, we're literally doing it in our hometown. So the puck and the chainmail and everything, we have a place where we send them, and we're paying a subcontractor to assemble those components out of state, but in America. So we take the chainmail and the puck and the rubber and all that. They assemble those. They bring it back. We get the handles, laser the brand on the handles, and then we assemble them all there at the facility where we ship them out. And how many people work at the facility?

51:05Right now, there's five or six, depending on, you know, we bring people in. A lot of times, college kids that are home from school in the summer. Destin shared a video. It depicts some of the most adorable child labor you've ever seen. Destin's young son in one corner of the warehouse, boxing up scrubbers. You got the assembly line going right ahead of Destin. So this is my son packing them up. What do you think? It's good. It's good. These are some going out. This is me and John's boys over here doing this. Wait, are y 'all taking a break? A short distance away, John's teenagers are also working.

51:41They're sitting down, tying on tags, and putting American flag stickers on the barbecue scrubbers. What's going on? What's going on? Are you taking a break? I'm going to fall asleep. It's funny seeing these American teenagers on an assembly line instead of, I don't know, playing Fortnite. They look maybe a little bored, but they're being good sports. Oh man, you're applying stickers. You feel patriotic when you do that? Yes, very patriotic. God bless America. Boxes, yes, I can make you more boxes. You'll have somebody getting out a handle, tying a string on it, and somebody puts the puck on, and somebody puts a little sticker on it.

52:17Yeah. And so we have a little assembly line that's very inefficient. It's just kind of bootstrapping right now. So Destin has the product he's stubbornly insisted on. a barbecue scrubber that was both made and assembled in America. We're going to take a short break and then come back to the final part of our question. Will anybody really buy this thing?

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55:19Welcome back to the show. So, Destin and I met up late this January. He was visiting New York, and he came by the studio. And we looked at his barbecue scrubber together. Do you want to see that? You sent... I feel... Now I feel like I'm in an infomercial. I know. See, this is the part I don't like. The smarter scrubber. Destin and John are selling it direct for$59.99, which is expensive. You can buy a much cheaper wire scrubber on Amazon for$19.99, made in China. Although in Destin's sales pitch, he'll tell you that that one will probably break in a couple years, and it might leave metal wires in your stomach before it does.

55:58Will people pay for the smarter scrubber? I ask myself that, holding the finished product in my hand, thinking about all the people who had solved all the little problems to make it real. It has a very sturdy, it's a steel. Stainless steel. Very sturdy stainless steel handle. It feels like... Like a medieval weapon of war? No, I was going to say, it feels like something that you're not going to throw in the trash in 14 months. Like, there's so many things I buy off Amazon because I see some stupid ad for it. And it comes, and it's plasticky and broken. And then, like, it's too cheap to give away.

56:33And this feels like something that you would just have for a long time. Which, I don't know if it's the heft of it or the materials because it's, like, more metal than plastic. But it just feels like it was made to last. That was the goal. It's a weird thing to talk about, but we showed this to a guy that has a lot of products made overseas. And we said, hey, what do you think about this? He's a design guy. And we said, what are your thoughts on this thing? And he picked it up and he kind of like almost made fun of it. Because it's too heavy? He's like, this feels like something made in America.

57:10What does that mean? And I was like, you mean good? What does that mean? And he's like, it's just really like strong. And I was like, that's good, right? And he was like, yeah, I guess so. And I was like, I don't like you anymore. But it's just really, it's beefy, and it's made to not break. I am not a barbecue scrubber reviewer yet, but I like the beefy feel of the thing. It reminds me a little bit of how American cars used to be, back before they were all edgeless blobs. Dustin says if the smarter scrubber does succeed, He knows it'll be in no small part because he has something almost no other random American inventor starts with.

57:52A big megaphone. It's the only reason we can take the gamble like this. Because I have a YouTube channel and I can tell the story and the story hopefully will sell. But ultimately the product has to stand or fall on its own. It's going to come down to a lady in an aisle at a store in Iowa looking at two items on a shelf. and she's going to look at two products and she's going to make a decision. So I think the YouTube thing, the marketing power of YouTube, it's a big trend these days where creators, that's the gross term that people say for YouTube. There's this trend where people will make a product and try to like rake in a bunch of money based on their – But the product's always like, yeah, very bad, right?

58:36And so we're hoping to get it started with that, but ultimately it has to stand or fall on its own. The market's going to tell the truth. It's so scary. It's terrifying, dude. And the decision, like somebody puts two bolts in front of you. You can't tell the difference. You're like, hey, this one's— Feels more American. This one's 35 cents and this one's 9 cents. Tell me which one was in America. And you can't. And we're making the decision to do it. Like it doesn't make sense on paper what we're doing. But I think in the long run, I think it's smart. Like it's long-term thinking. and sometimes capitalism doesn't lend itself well to that because the most important rule is line go up.

59:20Yes. And so we're doing it backwards and I hope it works.

59:32We'll find out how realistic Destin's plan is soon. The Smarter Scrubber is quietly already for sale online, but this spring, Destin officially announces it to his YouTube channel, which is their real, actual marketing push. Right now, Destin and John, they're pretty far in the red. But the hope is that the smarter scrubber will sell, largely because Destin knows how to tell the story of why it should. If it works, it'll still just be one barbecue scrubber, just a single American-made product. But the hope is maybe this whole process, this story could be a kind of rough draft itself. For other American engineers, inventors, with ideas of their own, a process to look at, tweak, iterate on, improve.

1:00:17You never know. We'll see.

1:00:43Thank you.

1:01:18Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Truthy Pinnimananey, and is produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Additional production support by Sean Merchant. If you'd like to support this show, keep it alive, and get ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and the occasional bonus episode, please consider signing up for our Incognito Mode. You can learn more at searchengine.show. We are also about to launch our merch. I mentioned in our last episode, it's coming very soon.

1:01:54There will be a discount for Incognito Mode members. Our executive producer is Leah Reese Dennis. Thank you to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Peralo, and John Schmidt. and to the team at Odyssey. JD Crowley, Rob Mirandy, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at UTA. Follow and listen to Search Engine for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

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