Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Introducing TOO MUCH MONEY

00:00:00.000 here's a crazy thing that i just did i went and i made another podcast yeah you know i'm just over

00:00:10.580 here making all the podcasts writing all the books not being a trad wife i'm doing it i'm

00:00:16.620 doing it all this new one is called too much money and i'm dropping it in the feed today so

00:00:22.900 you can take a listen this is just the first episode if you love it you can go over to the

00:00:28.000 Too Much Money feed wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. I like to describe it a little bit

00:00:34.080 like maintenance phase, but for ridiculous things that rich people do with their money.

00:00:40.580 I'm doing it with my friend Dori Shafreer, who many of you know from the hit podcast Forever 35.

00:00:47.500 I adore Dori. And she and I have been talking for a while about how we're obsessed with the

00:00:52.980 ridiculous things that rich people do with their money. I mean, rich people spend their money 0.54

00:00:57.680 in real stupid ways. Real stupid. And we're going to get into all of it. And we're going to tell 1.00

00:01:03.780 you the backstory behind it, which is the most fun part of this. We're talking stories like

00:01:10.440 $500 million yachts, auctions where people buy quarter million dollar dinosaur skulls,

00:01:18.240 or also years-long feuds with their neighbors over ocean views that involve blaring the song

00:01:25.340 Gilligan's Island through the night. Rich people be crazy. And Dory and I truly believe 0.97

00:01:34.380 that there may be a thing as being too damn rich.

00:01:55.340 Oh, destiny will not buy back your soul.

00:02:04.760 Hello, welcome to Too Much Money, the podcast that asks, does being a billionaire make you 0.90

00:02:10.660 crazy or do you need to be crazy to be a billionaire? I'm Dori Shafriar.

00:02:15.240 And I'm Jo Piazza.

00:02:16.940 And we're your hosts.

00:02:19.180 We are not billionaires.

00:02:21.880 We're not billionaires. We're fascinated by billionaires.

00:02:24.380 But, Jo, I guess we should kind of officially introduce ourselves before we do get into it.

00:02:32.780 So, as I said, I'm Jo Piazza.

00:02:35.720 I'm an author and a podcast host of the shows Under the Influence and Committed.

00:02:40.560 I have a new novel coming out in April, which is the best thing I've ever written, called The Sicilian Inheritance.

00:02:46.320 It's available for pre-order now.

00:02:48.320 And my most recent book, You Were Always Mine, came out last spring.

00:02:54.380 And it is great, which I can say because I read it and I hosted a book event.

00:03:00.240 You hosted my book event at a very posh bookstore that was situated in between some of the most expensive dress shops in Los Angeles.

00:03:12.620 It was surrounded by $1,000 dresses that I could not afford, but that I also think I could have gotten dupes for at Target.

00:03:19.960 totally billionaires definitely shop at Brentwood Country Mart totally like without a doubt

00:03:26.700 without um I am Dory Shafrir I'm the co-host of Forever 35 and Matt and Dory's Excellent Adventure

00:03:33.360 also the author of a novel called Startup and a memoir called Thanks for Waiting the Joy and

00:03:39.820 Weirdness of Being a Late Bloomer I read a lot about the silly things that rich people do and

00:03:48.420 it usually makes me angry but i can't stop i know i know i it's become this kind of a guilty pleasure

00:03:57.060 yes to go down deep wikipedia rabbit holes uh to just see like what are the crazy things that rich

00:04:06.600 people do with their money and i think about it a lot because i have i have a normal person job i'm

00:04:13.740 I'm a I'm a writer and, you know, have three kids and think constantly like what what would I do if I were even a millionaire?

00:04:25.360 Right. I'm like, I just like to make sure I can pay for college and some vacation.

00:04:32.340 Totally. Yeah. It's it's pretty wild.

00:04:35.880 I also just in terms of how we know each other I feel like I should say that we knew each other

00:04:43.620 in college yeah it's been a long time it's been a long time and I it's a couple of decades now

00:04:51.900 oh yeah since we were in the college yeah yeah yeah but then we also just kept like

00:04:59.040 crossing paths intersecting in New York media yes you would start a job somewhere and then I

00:05:04.600 would start a job some somewhere and we would overlap for a week or two yes like I feel like

00:05:09.500 we never really worked at the same place but like we worked at the same places at different times

00:05:14.500 yes yes yeah um and then and now all of those places no longer exist essentially so yeah because

00:05:21.580 literally yeah literally and here we are podcasting yeah because we pivoted we did we pivoted

00:05:28.380 we're constantly chasing the next thing um yeah yeah as as if one of those things might

00:05:35.760 make us billionaires right we never pivoted to video we did not no no but i have a i have a face

00:05:43.060 for for audio so i'm i prefer i prefer an audio medium you don't but i prefer yeah like i think

00:05:53.140 just not having to have your face out there is not having your face out there no i prefer to

00:05:58.280 be i prefer uh in my in my jammies medium is what i prefer a thousand percent i mean i'm

00:06:05.660 in just showered wet hair media so but you look fantastic oh well thank you thank you so much

00:06:13.380 thank you so much um all right well kate oh my god this is gonna be weird you're not it's gonna

00:06:20.560 be weird you are totally gonna call me by essentially your ex-boyfriend's name all the

00:06:27.500 yes your current boyfriend you're like hey john or hey john what oh my god um well i'll try not

00:06:35.380 to make this super it's all right i love you know i love kate if you want to call me kate

00:06:39.260 i'll take it on this show you're kate that's your name that's your new name oh gosh okay joe

00:06:50.640 yes today i don't we're not actually talking about a technical billionaire but we are talking

00:06:56.140 about a very wealthy person we're talking about multi-millionaires i think you know when we say

00:07:01.500 billionaires we're talking about very rich humans yeah it's more of a catch-all it's a colloquialism

00:07:08.300 the thing is these billionaires and millionaires they love to spend their money on things that are

00:07:15.860 otherwise unattainable to the average human the things that they consider treasure yes

00:07:25.720 Yes, I'm so excited to talk about this.

00:07:27.980 Go on, please.

00:07:29.800 There is no greater treasure hunt, probably, in all of the world

00:07:35.060 than the search for dinosaurs, for dinosaur fossils.

00:07:42.580 This could not interest me less.

00:07:46.760 Not this conversation, but the dinosaur fossils,

00:07:49.600 like the idea that I would spend my time and money

00:07:52.020 looking for dinosaur fossils if I were very wealthy

00:07:54.280 not even remotely on the list of things that i would want to spend my money on and i have

00:08:03.360 a dinosaur obsessed six-year-old so i spend probably 50 of my mental energy hearing about

00:08:13.960 dinosaurs and being quizzed on dinosaurs and so okay dinosaurs are now just woven into the fabric

00:08:21.980 of my DNA in such a way that I actually, I resent dinosaurs as a species or a genus or whatever

00:08:29.760 they are. So I think, I think it is even more ridiculous to spend money on what are essentially

00:08:37.160 million year old rocks. If there's a paleontologist listening to this, 0.64

00:08:41.740 I'm sorry. I just have to speak my truth. I'm sorry. And also, can you explain? I just,

00:08:50.040 maybe they could call us maybe they could call us we could do a episode and talk about how

00:08:55.520 rich men in particular desperately want to own these million year old rocks that aren't even

00:09:04.180 really dinosaurs and just and and touch they want to put something adjacent to a tyrannosaurus rex

00:09:12.140 in their house or in their office i think because it makes them feel like they have big dinosaur

00:09:18.620 energy that's interesting that's interesting if you could be dinosaur adjacent right gives you

00:09:29.000 power in a way there was no one more terrifying or powerful than a t-rex no and if you can own

00:09:38.320 those t-rex fossils then you too are terrifying and powerful rich man yeah yeah and we're gonna

00:09:47.640 we're gonna get into that i am i have got a story about a bunch of rich guys paying a lot of money

00:09:53.760 for some t-rex bones but first before we get to that i want to i just want to talk a little bit

00:09:59.700 about the rich person dinosaur market because it exists fossils are an actual commodity right days

00:10:09.280 okay um so i'm just going to go through a couple of big sales for you okay and the and these are

00:10:16.540 not museum sales, because that's a different thing when a museum acquires a fossil. These

00:10:22.420 are private collectors who are paying a lot of money to be dinosaur adjacent. There's one very

00:10:30.240 recent one. Sotheby's actually sold a fossil of something called a Gorgosaurus, which I have not

00:10:38.640 heard of but it's a relative of the t-rex for 6.1 million dollars

00:10:46.760 wow that pause is intense wow you're digesting this you're taking i don't even know what to say

00:10:59.180 there's nothing to say it was sold for private ownership the buyer hasn't been revealed but

00:11:04.500 That's one of the biggest private dinosaur purchases.

00:11:09.560 There was also a private bidder who bought an Allosaurus and a Diplodocus.

00:11:16.060 For those of you not in the know, those are both the...

00:11:18.820 Actually, no, the Diplodocus is a sauropod and the Allosaurus is a theropod.

00:11:23.940 So it's like a salt and pepper shaker of fossils.

00:11:26.680 You have one of each, a meat eater and a planty.

00:11:31.260 And those sold for $1.6 million each in Paris.

00:11:34.500 paris by the way is a place where these auctions to take place and then you have christy's saying

00:11:42.020 it is interesting right but it also i think it has to do it's it's very old world and we saw a lot of

00:11:49.260 the early explorers coming from europe and being financed by european governments and this just

00:11:56.180 feels like the next level of hunting for buried treasure. And I think in future episodes, we

00:12:04.740 definitely have to get into all of the money you spent on great archaeological spy. And we're

00:12:11.200 going to, we're going to do a whole episode how much people have spent searching for the Holy

00:12:14.380 Grail for sure. Wow. Okay. Okay. So Joe, just do you have a profile of who these people are?

00:12:26.180 So they're typically multi, multi, big time millionaires. The vast, I'm going to say the vast majority of them are men because I have not found a woman who is acquiring these bones, like an individual, not a museum who's acquiring the bones.

00:12:45.600 they tend to be in industries like commercial real estate development or very high-profile

00:12:55.380 corporate attorney and the particular case that we are going to talk about today

00:13:04.240 it actually all began with a t-rex skeleton a rich real estate developer who wanted to show

00:13:14.280 off that skeleton in his office in new york city and that office this is the part that i love as a

00:13:22.480 former gossip columnist in new york city used to be in a former new york city nightclub

00:13:27.660 which one i think it was tunnel i think it was inside the old tunnel over by the west side highway

00:13:37.760 okay and this is a rich real estate developer because i would say nothing makes you want to 0.97

00:13:44.840 buy a luxury apartment building like seeing a fucking t-rex skeleton in the middle of their 0.97

00:13:50.360 office like what does that broadcast when you have that just sitting there yeah that's real 0.99

00:14:00.280 that's real fuck you energy is what that is and totally this real estate developer's name

00:14:05.500 is coleman burke he is and he bid on the skeleton and one uh from heritage he he bid on the skeleton 0.99

00:14:17.540 from a place called heritage auctions in new york city and this was a nearly complete fossil again

00:14:25.960 not the real bones just rocks of something called the tarbosaurus batar it's essentially

00:14:35.020 tyrannosaurus rex like all the dinosaurs have a gazillion different names for our intents and

00:14:40.880 purposes this is a fancy t-rex from mongolia and there's a great book on this by an author named

00:14:50.640 page williams amazing reporter a great storyteller and her book is called the dinosaur artist

00:14:56.240 obsession betrayal and the quest for earth's ultimate trophy

00:15:01.900 oh okay i'm interested i'm intrigued it's a sexy title yes she wrote all about how

00:15:13.880 this fossil called which they called the t-batar so we're not going to call it the t-rex but

00:15:19.940 picture the t-rex in in your head that scene in jurassic park where the t-rex the t-rex actually

00:15:26.040 eats the attorney in jurassic park out of the porta potty he's hiding in the porta potty

00:15:31.800 So I'm picturing that.

00:15:32.840 That's what this guy bought.

00:15:34.480 He bought the T-Batar for $1.05 million so that he could put it in the Terminal Warehouse

00:15:46.740 building where he had his offices on 12th Avenue, the former home of Tunnel Nightclub.

00:15:51.960 He bought it at an auction.

00:15:53.420 He didn't think there was anything dodgy about it.

00:15:57.040 as page williams recounts in her book with one of the greatest book names of all time

00:16:01.920 the person that actually brought the t batar skeleton to the u.s may not have obtained it

00:16:12.960 legally and so that brings us to this question of this entire underground rich dude dinosaur

00:16:23.220 commodities market that i'm so excited to talk about yes yes and here in the u.s because there

00:16:32.200 are so many rich dudes who want to obtain their dinosaur adjacent power there was one man who was

00:16:40.500 bringing the skeletons here and his name is eric prokopi he was essentially a dinosaur bone

00:16:48.360 lipper. He got them from other places, brought them here. He refurbished him. He got them all

00:16:56.140 shiny and pretty. Not a paleontologist, by the way. This individual is not a paleontologist.

00:17:05.480 Okay. He's like the tiger king of dinosaur bones. I really like that analogy, Dory.

00:17:15.000 Yeah. Thank you, Joe.

00:17:16.900 Yeah.

00:17:18.360 We're thinking much in the way that the Tiger King was not a zoologist or a biologist.

00:17:26.480 No, not at all.

00:17:27.800 Eric Procopy was not a paleontologist.

00:17:32.000 He was, when he was a little boy, he really liked fossils, much like my son.

00:17:39.420 Maybe this whole episode is a cautionary tale for me as a parent.

00:17:43.380 but eric prokopi has been he'd been collecting fossils since he was a kid and he eventually

00:17:52.900 found a way to get fossils into the united states that would not otherwise be allowed to be here

00:18:02.120 now much like precious archaeological artifacts when fossils are acquired from certain countries

00:18:11.360 those countries say, hey, please don't take our natural resources. Please don't take things

00:18:18.260 out of our ground that belong to us. We'd like to keep them here. And Mongolia is one of those

00:18:25.680 countries. And Mongolia also, by the way, has one of the greatest collections of dinosaur bones

00:18:32.560 in the world. It's Mongolia and the Western United States. Tons, tons of dinosaur bones.

00:18:39.020 They have a good rock formation shelf-y geological system happening over there.

00:18:45.700 Got it. Okay.

00:18:46.800 Yeah. I am very knowledgeable about this.

00:18:50.060 But Mongolia does not want random white dudes coming, taking their fossils, and then reselling them at a markup. 0.99

00:19:01.000 So it is illegal to take dinosaur bones out of Mongolia and bring them to the United States. 0.98

00:19:07.460 That makes sense to me, right?

00:19:09.020 Yes, but that, okay, first of all, that seems to have not stopped a lot of people.

00:19:16.580 Second of all, we should take a short, and then I have some questions for you,

00:19:20.820 mostly involving how you would get all of this stuff on, do you take it on a plane?

00:19:29.440 Like, how does that work?

00:19:31.120 The answer's going to surprise you.

00:19:33.140 Okay, I can't wait. 0.99

00:19:35.280 If I were a listener, I'd be on the edge of my fucking seat right now. 0.99

00:19:39.020 Right? Totally. This is a great story. It's a great story. 1.00

00:19:45.560 Oh, and one more thing. We have an email, too much money pod at gmail.com. That's too much

00:19:53.580 money pod at gmail.com. Send us ideas for things that you want us to talk about thoughts on the

00:20:00.040 episodes. I don't know anything. Email us too much money pod at gmail.com.

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00:23:21.500 the secrets of dinosaur transport

00:23:26.140 the sea and it's a big secretive network they brought the dinosaur bones here and remember

00:23:35.640 these are big animals the biggest creatures that ever roamed to the earth through ups apparently

00:23:41.940 my god yeah i good for you okay great apparently the dinosaurs the dinosaur bones arrived in

00:23:55.200 florida where eric prokopi lives and again he's a florida man are you surprised that he's a florida

00:24:00.680 man look i'm sorry to say that i'm not surprised no no so he got more than 3 000 pounds of bones

00:24:13.580 delivered just to his house and he like cleaned them up and spiffed them up in his backyard

00:24:21.720 workshop which the new yorker makes sure to point out was right next to his saltwater swimming pool

00:24:27.940 oh okay yeah it's just i'm just and you're just picturing a guy

00:24:36.500 uncreate it's an that would be the ultimate unboxing video actually if you got a major

00:24:42.740 oh my god yes 3 000 pounds of dinosaur fossils yes yeah and getting them here even though they

00:24:54.420 were apparently able to be shipped through ups which is the same way that i'll send out a copy

00:25:02.220 of my book later this afternoon go into the ups store and talk to dave the ups guy they had to

00:25:08.020 through a lot of troops before they got them here. So Eric Procopy had to find a fossil dealer

00:25:14.300 in Japan who then had a source inside Mongolia so that ultimately he could say, oh, these aren't,

00:25:23.500 oh, they're not from Mongolia where it's illegal to steal these things. They're from,

00:25:28.640 they're coming from Japan. Or he would mark a box that said fossil reptiles instead of, say,

00:25:36.920 tyrannosaurus rex so that no one would be or any the any the wiser and so that they would

00:25:45.900 the bones would be able to be shipped over here to to the u.s wow yeah but this whole thing

00:25:55.580 fell apart in october of 2012 when a whole group of federal agents and sheriff's deputies in florida

00:26:06.320 showed up at her pre copy's house where he was probably either swimming in his saltwater pool

00:26:12.100 or fucking around with dinosaur bones in his backyard and they built a case against him 0.63

00:26:20.480 they call him essentially a one-man black market of dinosaur rocks dinosaur fossils the new yorker 0.95

00:26:31.160 has done several pieces about it that i just love they've covered it really well and like we said

00:26:38.520 earlier there's an incredible book about this that i recommend anyone reading by page williams

00:26:46.260 the dinosaur artist obsession betrayal and the quest for earth's ultimate trophy that i really

00:26:52.400 hope someone has bought the movie rights to because yeah this feels like it could be

00:27:03.380 a really good movie and who could we get to star in this movie

00:27:12.580 hmm someone like a real leading man figure in hollywood but someone like maybe a little

00:27:20.640 quirky someone who's also maybe been in other films about ancient artifacts and yep about

00:27:32.940 treasure about treasure who could that be joe i think it's nicholas cage dory i think

00:27:41.180 it is the one and only nicholas cage wow nick cage now joe does nick cage have any

00:27:53.160 does he have any interest in dinosaurs and dinosaur bones here's the thing dory

00:28:00.600 nick cage loves dinosaur bones he loves dinosaur bones so much

00:28:10.000 oh no that when this case was being investigated they uncovered that a dinosaur skull that nick

00:28:23.040 cage had purchased may have been acquired by similar illegal means oh nick nick nick like

00:28:35.040 i was just gonna say is it really like his fault he bought it from an auction house it's not like

00:28:39.820 he went and dug around and shipped stuff to himself via UPS.

00:28:45.140 He bought it through a legitimate source, right?

00:28:49.680 He did. He did.

00:28:50.720 And so let me back up a little bit and tell you the story

00:28:53.060 because I did lead too quickly.

00:28:54.480 I was just, I was so excited to lead you down the next primrose path

00:28:59.420 that I didn't tell you the whole story, which is a good one,

00:29:03.440 which you know that I am completely burnt out on celebrity stories

00:29:09.200 because I read about them so long,

00:29:10.480 but there's some that I just love,

00:29:12.900 that I love and that I tell over and over again.

00:29:16.340 Okay, so this story,

00:29:17.680 which I've been dining out on since it happened,

00:29:19.800 is back in 2007,

00:29:23.440 mega millionaire actor Nick Cage

00:29:26.720 paid more than a quarter million dollars

00:29:29.320 for a single dinosaur skull.

00:29:34.520 One skull, one head.

00:29:35.980 200 more than 250 000 specifically this was a t-rex skull and it did happen in an auction

00:29:45.440 a very exclusive one for very exclusive rich people from the i am chate gallery okay the fun

00:29:55.340 part the even more fun part of this story is that it wasn't just nick page bidding on this

00:30:03.800 He was going head-to-head with Leo DiCaprio for this skull.

00:30:09.760 They both wanted it.

00:30:11.660 And so actually, honestly, in the screenplay version of this movie,

00:30:14.780 which I'm happy to write if someone would like to hire us to write it,

00:30:19.000 it could be a buddy movie with Nick Cage and Leo DiCaprio

00:30:23.660 because they're both very invested in this dinosaur head.

00:30:31.760 Wow. Okay.

00:30:33.800 Yeah, I guess if you're the kind of person that likes dinosaur heads, it was impressive.

00:30:38.980 It was allegedly 67 million years old.

00:30:44.040 Okay, that's old.

00:30:46.980 That's old, yeah.

00:30:48.660 It was a pretty complete old rock.

00:30:50.860 And to be fair, a quarter million dollars probably wasn't that much to Mr. Cage back in 2007

00:30:59.260 because that was the heyday renaissance of Nick Cage, if you will.

00:31:03.520 So National Treasure was 2004.

00:31:05.880 So, yeah.

00:31:06.560 There's three National Treasure movies in the franchise.

00:31:10.460 So this, and I know that National Treasure did very well overseas.

00:31:15.360 So Nicolas Cage was swimming in money come 2007 when he bid on this T-Rex head.

00:31:24.100 And he had also just played Johnny Blaze in a Marvel movie, you know, Ghost Rider,

00:31:30.900 where, according to IndieWire,

00:31:33.400 he probably got paid somewhere between $12 million and $20 million

00:31:36.980 plus back-end bonuses,

00:31:39.700 and the movie made more than $200 million worldwide.

00:31:42.280 So he was raking it in.

00:31:43.320 He was bringing in enough dough

00:31:46.180 to spend more than $250,000 on a dinosaur head.

00:31:53.580 Wow.

00:31:55.320 Yeah.

00:31:56.300 Yeah, but that wasn't...

00:31:57.460 Just because this is a show about people with too much money,

00:32:00.900 Yeah.

00:32:01.600 I like to talk about other things that people with too much money were spending their too much money on.

00:32:07.680 Because apparently in that year, he also bought three houses, 22 cars.

00:32:19.940 What?

00:32:21.360 22, including nine rolls for ice.

00:32:23.780 What?

00:32:25.300 What?

00:32:26.780 Joe, I'm sorry.

00:32:28.500 No one needs 22 cars.

00:32:30.280 no one needs nine rolls royces even if you're a car collector that's too many cars too many cars

00:32:38.000 t this podcast is tmm maybe one day we'll do a spin-off called tmc tmc many cars that is too

00:32:48.180 many cars oh so he had a he kind of he i don't want to like armchair diagnose him but it does

00:32:55.520 sound like he had a bit of a spending habit let's say a habit he liked a spending habit

00:33:02.580 he liked to buy weird stuff he did he did another thing that he apparently did at one point was

00:33:11.000 go on a holy grail search as one does and he spent a lot of money seeking out the mysterious

00:33:19.700 holy grail okay i just want to i just i have a like a little aside about this because 0.78

00:33:27.240 i know that we know that he bought the three homes the cars and like all the other shit because

00:33:35.100 his former business manager like submitted evidence now my understanding was that your 0.96

00:33:42.680 business manager was supposed to make sure this kind of shit didn't happen like when these 0.97

00:33:48.480 celebrities have business managers, all of their income goes to the business manager and the 1.00

00:33:54.000 business manager handles all of their accounts. So usually my understanding is that the, you know,

00:34:01.100 the Nick Cage goes to his business manager and is, I would like to buy a house. And the business

00:34:05.880 manager is, that's probably not a great idea because right now you only have $30 million and

00:34:10.920 this house that you want to buy is $75 million. I guess ultimately, if Nick, it's his money,

00:34:17.580 that cage can do what he wants with his money totally and i think yes a good business manager

00:34:22.980 says hey you already own 10 cars you don't need 12 more you already have seven rolls royces why

00:34:32.420 do you need nine but when essentially when the golden goose calls you and says daddy i need two

00:34:43.060 roll's royces and they're writing your tracks you're not a big gnome machine yeah

00:34:50.260 oh that is rough that is really rough now joe we should probably just take one more break

00:34:58.780 but i want to hear what happened to this fossil that nick cage bought the dinosaur does he have

00:35:08.500 it on display yeah the dinosaur does he have it on display or is it no longer in his possession

00:35:14.840 does he have it on display in one of his many homes yes all right we'll be right back

00:35:20.400 okay we're back joe i'm dying to know what is the status wait for it

00:35:44.900 he had to give it back oh no oh oh yes oh nick now it's all coming full circle

00:35:56.200 the skull was illegally obtained from mongolia oh and it came out during the investigation

00:36:10.820 of eric procopy who was arrested for smuggling illegal dinosaur bones

00:36:19.420 wow okay so it all comes back to procopy it all comes back to procopy and this massive

00:36:31.500 investigation. And so Procopy had to really spill the beans, not just on bones that he imported

00:36:41.920 and shipped via UPS to his backyard in Florida, but other networks that were bringing in

00:36:50.060 illegal dinosaur bones. And so as part of that investigation, the authorities told Nick Cage,

00:36:58.320 hey so sorry but this tyrannosaurus rex head actually belongs to the mongolian government 0.77

00:37:08.860 and they'd really like it back now so could you please give it back to them 0.90

00:37:13.020 so he had to give it back he had to give it back he would have been a real jerk if he hadn't if he 0.76

00:37:19.640 hadn't given it back and he talked did anything happen to the auction house as far as i can tell 0.77

00:37:26.240 no but Nick Cage would maybe like something to happen to the auction house because he told GQ

00:37:34.240 magazine he's hey I bought this skull legally from this auction house and when the Mongolian

00:37:42.840 government asked for it back I gave it to them but since I never got my money back somebody at

00:37:49.000 that auction house should be in jail you know what joe i don't necessarily disagree with him

00:37:56.720 i do think it's probably the job of auction houses to vet things yes exactly exactly

00:38:06.620 that's what i'm saying but i think that they're coming from sources that have tried to obscure

00:38:16.680 this market for so long that even the auction houses probably don't really know what they're

00:38:27.200 dealing with. You know what? I think that same as so many other, we're seeing this now with the way

00:38:34.200 that like a lot of museums are having to give back some of the things in their collections that

00:38:39.660 were essentially looted. I think this whole industry operated on a don't ask, don't tell

00:38:46.680 situation uh method for a long time for a very long time like unless the artifact

00:38:55.700 had like a blaring sign on it that was like illegally obtained everyone was it's fine

00:39:03.380 I'm sure it's fine I'm sure it's okay right it's totally the paperwork's a little questionable

00:39:09.760 the guy selling it to me has been in jail for a felony you know what I mean they just

00:39:14.760 turned a blind eye to a lot of things and now for a very long time and also the rules were

00:39:25.260 murkier perhaps murkier in the past and these things were not prosecuted as much as they were

00:39:30.180 in the past but whatever I think I do think Nick Cage it was not Nick Cage's responsibility to vet

00:39:38.060 the seller of no the skull no so i agree with him i also i agree also by the time this happened

00:39:47.160 nick cage probably could have used the money right to be fair nick cage could have used the money and

00:39:53.860 he still is a very rich person so let's not pretend that he's not a very rich person of course but he

00:39:59.640 had a am i remembering this correctly like he he like invested in real estate and then he did

00:40:08.780 lost a lot of his real estate when the market crashed and he like owes money to the irs like

00:40:16.040 he of course he still has a lot of money um we shouldn't feel badly for him but he could use the

00:40:23.860 money to be fair because at one point he did own apparently 15 different properties one of which

00:40:32.440 was a private island in the bahamas and also not one my friend but two european castles

00:40:43.000 wow again i feel like the guy has a spending problem i don't want to go any farther than that

00:40:51.280 I don't want to diagnose him with anything.

00:40:53.420 But again, you don't need...

00:40:55.620 We're not doctors.

00:40:56.580 We're not doctors.

00:40:57.660 You don't need the nine Rolls Royces.

00:40:59.680 You don't need the two European castles.

00:41:02.000 It just seems excessive to me.

00:41:05.460 But I'm a mere mortal.

00:41:08.560 I am not a millionaire.

00:41:10.020 I'm not a billionaire.

00:41:12.240 Buying nine Rolls Royces is not even an option for me.

00:41:14.620 Maybe to him, buying nine Rolls Royces is like me having nine pairs of pants.

00:41:18.200 yes that is a really good analogy that's exactly what it's like it's the same as you having nine

00:41:27.520 pairs of pants or me having like two dough and dresses is the same as him having two european

00:41:38.740 castles totally you probably only need one and actually do you really need any no but he did

00:41:46.800 But that didn't go well for him.

00:41:48.840 It didn't.

00:41:49.600 So back in April of this year, he talked to 60 Minutes.

00:41:55.020 And I was way overinvested in real estate.

00:41:58.440 He owed something like $6 million to the IRS alone. 0.75

00:42:03.240 And when the real estate market crashed, he was screwed.

00:42:07.600 And he lost a lot of money. 0.75

00:42:11.660 Yeah.

00:42:12.380 so it sounds like he could probably stand being paid back this quarter of a million dollars for

00:42:18.740 the t-rex head that he had to give back to mongolia but yeah there's a little bit of a happy ending

00:42:24.500 here okay okay i'm ready for it not for nick cage oh not for nick cage but for mongolia which is

00:42:33.940 nice there's okay all right you know what in this whole story i am really rooting for mongolia the

00:42:40.600 most. Mongolia is the underdog. They're just trying to get their dinosaur skulls back.

00:42:47.120 They just want their rocks back. They just want their rocks back. They just want their

00:42:52.660 expensive rocks back. So because of this big investigation and because Prokopi did cooperate

00:42:59.700 with the authorities, all of these fossils have gone back to Mongolia. And there were so many

00:43:06.680 that it was enough for them to create

00:43:10.480 a whole new dinosaur museum in Ulaanbaatar.

00:43:14.740 Oh my gosh, that's cool.

00:43:17.940 Isn't that nice?

00:43:19.300 Again, I have no desire to go there or see.

00:43:22.140 I would like to go to Mongolia, to be clear.

00:43:24.140 I have no desire to go to a dinosaur museum.

00:43:27.140 This area of the world and this dinosaur museum

00:43:30.860 is on my son's top 10 places

00:43:33.780 he would like to travel in the world.

00:43:35.100 along with the field museum in chicago which has another famous tyrannosaurus rex

00:43:41.740 named so if anyone in mongolia is listening and you want us to come see your new dinosaur museum

00:43:48.600 charlie oster and i will fly there and we'll record some too much money

00:43:53.840 wow i'm excited for you i'm excited for him i'm excited for mongolia i'm excited for mongolia

00:44:04.480 Mongolia is the big winner here.

00:44:07.180 And when we started this episode, I'll bet you didn't think that Mongolia was going to be the big winner here.

00:44:13.160 You know what?

00:44:14.580 I didn't.

00:44:15.820 I didn't, Jo.

00:44:17.680 I think that, as we like to say, maybe you can be too rich.

00:44:25.080 Maybe you can be too rich.

00:44:26.640 Maybe you can be too rich.

00:44:28.680 Thanks for listening.

00:44:30.280 We'll talk to you all next week.

00:44:32.680 Talk soon.

00:44:33.440 too much money is hosted and produced by me dory shafrir and joe piazza music is by

00:44:40.440 lisa brenner and our network partner is a cast thanks for listening

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - November 14, 2023

Introducing TOO MUCH MONEY

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