From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hey, welcome back, all righty. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are in our Palo Alto studios. COVID is still going on, so all of the interviews continue to be remote, but we're excited to have a CUBE alumni. He hasn't been on for a long time, but this guy has been in the weeds of the storage industry for a very, very long time and we're happy to have him on and get an update because there continues to be a lot of exciting developments. He's Phil Bollinger. He is the SVP and general manager, data center business unit from Western Digital, joining us, I think from Colorado. So, Phil, great to see you. How's the weather in Colorado today? Hi, Jeff, it's great to be here. Well, it's a hot dry summer here, I'm sure, like a lot of places. Yeah, enjoying the summer through these unusual times. It is unusual times, but fortunately there's great things like the internet and heavy duty compute and store out there so we can get together this way. So let's jump into it. You've been in the business a long time, you've been at Western Digital, you were at EMC, you worked on Icelon and you were at storage companies before that and you've seen kind of this never-ending up-and-to-the-right slope that we see kind of ad nauseam in terms of the amount of storage demands. It's not going anywhere, but up in please increase complexity in terms of unstructured data, sources of data, speed of data, you know, all the kind of classic big Vs of big data. So I wonder before we jump into specifics, if you can kind of share your perspective because you've been kind of sitting in the catboard seat and Western Digital is a really unique company.  So you guys are really seeing and ultimately all this compute's got to put this data somewhere and a whole lot of it's sitting on Western Digital. Yeah, it's a great intro there. Yeah, it's been interesting, you know, through my career, I've seen a lot of advances in storage technology, speeds and feeds like we often say, but the advancement through mechanical innovation, electrical innovation, chemistry, physics, just the relentless growth of data has been driven in many ways by the relentless acceleration and innovation of our ability to store that data. And that's been a very virtuous cycle through what for me has been more than 30 years in enterprise storage. There are some really interesting changes going on though. I think if you think about it in a relatively short amount of time, data has gone from just kind of this artifact of our digital lives to the very engine that's driving the global economy. Our jobs, our relationships, our health, our security, they all kind of depend on data now and for most companies, kind of irrespective of size, how you use data, how you store it, how you monetize it, how you use it to make better decisions to improve products and services. You know, it becomes not just a matter of whether your company's going to thrive or not, but in many industries, it's almost an existential question. Is your company going to be around in the future? And it depends on how well you're using data. So this drive to capitalize on the value of data is pretty significant. Yeah, it's a really interesting topic. We've had a number of conversations around trying to get like a book value of data, if you will. And I think there's a lot of conversations, whether it's a counting kind of way or finance or kind of a good will of how do you value this data? But I think we see it intrinsically in a lot of the big companies that are really data-based, like the Facebooks and the Amazons and the Netflix and the Googles and those types of companies where it's really easy to see. And if you see, you know, the valuation that they have compared to their book value of assets, right? It's really baked into there. So it's fundamental to going forward. And then we have this thing called COVID hit, which you know, I'm sure you've seen all the media on social media, right? What drove your digital transformation? The CEO, the CMO, the board or COVID-19. And it became this light switch moment where your opportunities to think about it are no more. You've got to jump in with both feet. And it's really interesting to your point that it's the ability to store this and think about it now differently as an asset driving business value versus a cost that IT has to accommodate to put this stuff somewhere. So it's a really different kind of a mind shift and really changes the investment equation for companies like Western Digital about how people should invest in higher performance and higher capacity and, you know, more unified and kind of democratizing the accessibility that data to a much greater set of people with tools that can now, you know, start making much more business line and inline decisions than just the data science, you know, kind of a mahogany row. Yeah, I'd like, as you mentioned, Jeff, I heard at Western Digital, we have such a unique kind of perch in the industry to see all the dynamics in the OEM space and the hyperscale space and the channel really across to all the global economies about this growth of data. I have worked at several companies and have been familiar with what I would have called big data projects and fleets in the past, but at Western Digital, you have to move the decimal point, you know, quite a few digits to the right to get the perspective that we have on just the volume of data that the world is just relentlessly and satiably consuming. Just a couple examples for our drive projects we're working on now, our capacity enterprise drive projects, you know, we used to do business case analyses and look at their life cycle capacities and we measured them in exabytes and not anymore, now we're talking about zettabytes. We're actually measuring capacity enterprise drive families in terms of how many zettabytes they're going to ship in their life cycle. And if we look at just the consumption of this data, the last 12 months of industry TAM for capacity enterprise, compared to the 12 months prior to that, that annual growth rate was north of 60%. And so it's rare to see industries that are growing at that pace. And so the world is just consuming immense amounts of data. And as you mentioned, the COVID dynamics have been both an accelerant in some areas as well as headwinds and others, but it's certainly accelerated digital transformation. I think a lot of companies were talking about digital transformation and hybrid models and COVID has really accelerated that. And it's certainly driving, continues to drive just this relentless need to store and access and take advantage of data. Yeah. Well, Phil, in advance of this interview, I pulled up the old chart, right? With all the different bytes, right? Kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, exabytes and zettabytes. And just per the Wikipedia page, what is a zettabyte? It's as much information as there are grains of sand in all the world's beaches for one zettabyte. And you're talking about thinking in terms of those units. I mean, that is just mind boggling to think that that is the scale in which we're operating. It's really hard to get your head wrapped around a zettabyte of storage. I think a lot of the industry thinks when we say zettabyte scale era, that it's just a buzzword. But I'm here to say it's a real thing where we're measuring projects in terms of zettabytes. That's amazing. Let's jump into some of the technology. So I've been fortunate enough here at theCUBE to be there at a couple of major announcements along the way. We talked before, we turned the cameras on. The helium announcement and having the hard drive sit in the fish bowl to get all types of interesting benefits from this less dense air. That is helium versus oxygen. I was down at the mammur and hammer announcement, which was pretty interesting. Big, big heavy technology moves there to again increase the capacity of the hard drives based systems. You guys are doing a lot of stuff on risk five. I know as an open source projects, you guys have a lot of things happening. But now there's this new thing. This new thing called zoned storage. So first of all, before we get into a why, do we need zoned storage? And really what does it now bring to the table in terms of a capability? Yeah, great question, Jeff. So why now, right? As I mentioned, storage, I've been at storage for quite some time. In the last, let's just say in the last decade, we've seen the advent of the hyperscale model and certainly the, a whole nother explosion level of data and just the veracity with which the hyperscalers can create and consume and process and monetize data. And of course, with that has also come a lot of innovation, frankly, in the compute space around how to process that data and moving from, what was just a general purpose CPU model to GPUs and DPUs and so we've seen a lot of innovation on that side, but frankly, in the storage side, we haven't seen much change at all in terms of how operating systems, applications, file systems, how they actually use the storage or communicate with the storage. And sure, we've seen advances in storage capacities. Hard drives have gone from two to four to eight to 10 to 14, 16, and now are leading 18 and 20 terabyte hard drives. And similarly on the SSD side, now we're dealing with capacities of seven and 15 and 30 terabytes. So things have gotten larger, as you would expect. And some interfaces have improved. I think NVMe, which we'll talk about has been a nice advance in the industry. It's really now brought a very modern, scalable, low latency, multi-threaded interface to a NAND flash to take advantage of the inherent performance of transistor-based persistent storage. But really, when you think about it, it hasn't changed a lot. And so, but what has changed is workloads. One thing that definitely has evolved in the space of the last decade or so is this, the thing that's driving a lot of this explosion of data in the industry is around workloads that I would characterize as sequential in nature. They're securely captured and written. They also have a very consistent life cycle. So you would write them in a big chunk. You would read them maybe in smaller pieces, but the life cycle of that data, we can treat more as a chunk of data. But the problem is applications, operating systems, file systems continue to interface with storage using paradigms that are many decades old. The old 512 byte or even 4K sector size constructs were developed in the hard drive industry just as convenient paradigms to structure what is an unstructured sea of magnetic grains into something structured that can be used to store and access data. But the reality is, when we talk about SSDs, structure really matters. And so what has changed in the industry is the workloads are driving very, very fresh looks at how more intelligence can be applied to that application OS storage device interface to drive much greater efficiency. Right. So there's two things going on here that I want to drill down on. On one hand, you talked about kind of the introduction of NAND and Flash and treating it like you did, generically you did a regular hard drive, but you could get away and you could do some things because the interface wasn't taking full advantage of the speed that was capable in the NAND. But NVMe has changed that and now forced, you know, kind of getting rid of some of those inefficient processes that you could live with. So it's just kind of classic next level step up in capabilities. One is you get the better media, you just kind of plug it into the old way. Now actually you're starting to put in processes that take full advantage of the speed that that Flash has.  So, you know, what did NVMe force you to think about in terms of maximizing, you know, kind of the return on the NAND and Flash? Yeah, NVMe, which, you know, we've been involved in the standardization of, I think it's been a very successful effort, but we have to remember NVMe is about a decade old, you know, or even more when the original work started around defining this interface. And, but it's been very successful. You know, the NVMe standards bodies very productive, you know, cross company effort. It's really driven a significant change. And what we see now is the rapid adoption of NVMe in all data center architectures, whether it's very large hyperscale to, you know, classic on-prem enterprise to even, you know, smaller applications. It's just a very efficient interface mechanism for connecting SSDs into a server, you know. So, we continue to see evolution in NVMe, which is great. And we'll talk about ZNS today as one of those evolutions. We're also very keenly interested in NVMe protocol over fabrics. And so one of the things that Western Digital has been talking about a lot lately is incorporating NVMe over fabrics as a mechanism for now connecting shared storage into multiple host architectures. We think this is a very attractive way to build shared storage architectures of the future that are scalable, that are composable, that really have a lot more agility with respect to rack level infrastructure and applying that infrastructure to applications. Right. Now, one thing that might strike some people as kind of counterintuitive is within this zone storage and zoning off parts of the media to think of the data also kind of in these big chunks is it feels contrary to kind of the atomization that we're seeing in the rest of the data center, right? So smaller units of compute, smaller units of store so that you can assemble and disassemble them in different quantities as needed. So what was the special attribute that you had to think about and actually come back and provide a benefit in actually kind of re-chunking, if you will, in these zones versus trying to get as atomic as possible? Yeah, it's a great question, Jeff. And I think it's maybe not intuitive in terms of why zone storage actually creates a more efficient storage paradigm when you're storing stuff essentially in larger blocks of data. But this is really where the intersection of structure and workload and sort of the nature of the data all come together. If you turn back the clock, maybe four or five years when SMR hard drives, host manager SMR hard drives first emerged on the scene, this was really taking advantage of the fact that the right head on a hard disk drive is larger than the read head or the read head can be much smaller. And so then the notion of overlapping or shingling the data on the drive, giving the read head a smaller target to read, but the writer a larger right pad to write the data could actually, what we found was it increases our real density significantly. And so that was really the emergence of this notion of sequentially written larger blocks of data being actually much more efficiently stored when you think about physically how it's being stored. What is very new now and really gaining a lot of traction is the SSD corollary to SMR and the hard drive. On the SSD side, we have the ZNS specification which is very similarly where you divide up the namespace of an SSD into fixed size zones. And those zones are written sequentially, but now those zones are intimately tied to the underlying physical architecture of the NAND itself, the dies, the planes, the read pages, the erase pages, so that in treating data as a block, you're actually eliminating a lot of the complexity and the work that an SSD has to do to emulate a legacy hard drive. And in doing so, you're increasing performance and endurance and the predictable performance of the device. I just love the way that you kind of twist the lens on the problem and on one hand, by rule, just looking at my notes here, the zone storage devices, the ZSDs, introduce a number of restrictions and limitations and rules that are outside the full capabilities of what you might do. But in doing so, in aggregate, the efficiency and the performance of the system in the whole is much, much better even though when you first look at it, you think it's more of a limiter, but it's actually opens up. I wonder if there's any kind of performance stats you can share or any kind of empirical data just to get people kind of a feel for what that comes out as. So if you think about the potential of zone storage in general, and when again, when I talk about zone storage, there's two components. There's an HDD component of zone storage that we refer to as SMR, and there's an SSD version of that that we call ZNS. So you think about SMR, the value proposition there is additional capacity. So effectively in the same drive architecture with roughly the same bill of material used to build the drive, we can overlap or shingle the data on the drive and generate for the customer additional capacity. Today, with our 1820 terabyte offerings that's on the order of just over 10%, but that delta is going to increase significantly going forward to 20% or more. And when you think about a hyperscale customer that has not hundreds or thousands of racks, but tens of thousands of racks, a 10 or 20% improvement in effective capacity is a tremendous TCO benefit. And the reason we do that is obvious. I mean, the economic paradigm that drives large at scale data centers is total cost of ownership, both acquisition costs and operating costs. And if you can put more storage in a square tile of data center space, you're going to generally use less power, you're going to run it more efficiently, you're actually from an acquisition cost, you're getting a more efficient purchase of that capacity. And in doing that, our innovation, we benefit from it and our customers benefit from it. So that the value proposition for zone storage in capacity enterprise HDV is very clear, it's additional capacity. The exciting thing is in the SSD side of things for ZNS, it actually opens up even more value proposition for the customer. Because SSDs have had to emulate hard drives, there's been a lot of inefficiency and complexity inside an enterprise SSD dealing with things like garbage collection and right amplification, reducing the endurance of the device. You have to over provision. You have to insert as much as 20, 25, even 28% additional NAND bits inside the device just to allow for that extra space, the working space to deal with, with delete of data that are smaller than the block of race that the device supports. And so you have to do a lot of reading and writing of data and cleaning up. It creates for a very complex environment. ZNS by mapping the zone size with the physical structure of the SSD, essentially eliminates garbage collection. It reduces over provisioning by as much as 10X. And so if you were over provisioning by 20 or 25% in an enterprise SSD and a ZNS SSD, that can be one or 2%. The other thing we have to keep in mind is, enterprise SSDs typically incorporate DRAM and that DRAM is used to help manage all those dynamics that I just mentioned. But with a much simpler structure where the pointers to the data can be managed without all that DRAM, we can actually reduce the amount of DRAM in an enterprise SSD by as much as 8X. And if you think about the bill of material of an enterprise SSD, DRAM is number two on the list in terms of the most expensive bomb components. So ZNS and SSDs actually have a significant customer, total cost of ownership impact. It's an exciting standard. And now that we have the standard ratified through the NVMe working group, it can really accelerate the development of the software ecosystem around. Right. So let's shift gears and talk a little bit about less about the tech and more about the customers and the implementation of this. So are there, you talk kind of generally, but are there certain types of workloads that you're seeing in the marketplace where this is a better fit or is it just really the big heavy lifts where they just need more and this is better? And then secondly, within these both hyperscale companies as well as just regular enterprises that are also seeing their data demands grow dramatically, are you seeing that this is a solution that they want to bring in for kind of the marginal, kind of next data center, extension of their data center or their next cloud region or are they doing lift and shift and ripping stuff out or do they have enough? Do they have enough data growth organically that there's plenty of new stuff that they can put in these new systems? Yeah, well, the large customers don't rip and shift. They ride their assets for a long life cycle because with the relentless growth of data, you're primarily investing to handle what's coming in over the transom. But we're seeing solid adoption. And in SMR, as you know, we've been working on that for a number of years. We've got significant interest in investment, co-investment, R engineering and our customer's engineering adapting the application environments to take advantage of SMR. The great thing is now that we've got the NVMe, the ZNS standard ratified now in the NVMe working group. We've got a very similar and all approved now situation where we've got SMR standards that have been approved for some time in the SATA and SCSI standards. Now we've got the same thing in the NVMe standard. And the great thing is once a company goes through the lift, so to speak, to adapt an application file system, operating system, ecosystem to zone storage, it pretty much works seamlessly between HDD and SSD. And so it's not an incremental investment when you're switching technologies. And obviously the early adopters of these technologies are going to be the large companies who design their own infrastructure, who have mega fleets of racks of infrastructure where these efficiencies really, really make a difference in terms of how they can monetize that data, how they compete against the landscape of competitors they have for companies that are totally reliant on kind of off the shelf standard applications. That adoption curve is going to be longer, of course, because there are some software changes that you need to adapt to to enable zone storage. One of the things Western Digital has done and taken the lead on is creating a landing page for the industry with zonestorage.io. It's a webpage that's actually an area where many companies can contribute open source tools, code, validation environments, technical documentation. It's not a market-tearing website. It's really a website built to land actual open source content that companies can use and leverage and contribute to to accelerate the engineering work to adapt software stacks to zone storage devices and to share those things. Let me just follow up on that because again, you've been around for a while and get your perspective on the power of open source. And it used to be the best secrets, the best IP were closely guarded and held inside. And now really we're in an age where it's not necessarily. And the brilliant minds and use cases and people out there, just by definition, it's more groups of engineers, more engineers outside your building than inside your building. And how that's really changed kind of a strategy in terms of development when you can leverage open source. Yeah, open source clearly has accelerated innovation across the industry in so many ways. And it's the paradigm around which companies have built business models and innovated on top of it. I think it's always important as a company to understand what value add you're bringing and what value add the customers want to pay for. What unmet needs in your customers are you trying to solve for? And what's the best mechanism to do that? And do you want to spend your R&D recreating things or leveraging what's available and innovating on top of it? It's all about ecosystem. I mean, the days where a single company can vertically integrate top to bottom, a complete end solution. Those are fewer and far between. I think it's about collaboration and building ecosystems and operating within those. Yeah, it's such an interesting change. And one more thing again to get your perspective, you run the data center group, but there's this little thing happening out there that we see growing IoT in the internet of things and the industrial internet of things and edge computing as we try to move more compute and store and power kind of outside the pristine world of the data center and out towards where this data is being collected and processed when you've got latency issues and all kinds of reasons to start to shift the balance of where the compute is or where the store and the reliance on the network. So when you look back from a storage perspective in your history in this industry and you start to see that basically everything is now going to be connected, generating data and a lot of it is even open source. I talked to a company the other day doing kind of open source computer vision on surveillance video. So the amount of stuff coming off of these machines is growing in crazy ways. At the same time, it can't all be processed at the data center. It can't all be kind of shipped back and then have a decision and then ship that information back out too. So when you sit back and look at edge from your kind of historical perspective, what goes through your mind? What gets you excited? What are some of the opportunities that you see that maybe the layman is not paying close enough attention to? Yeah, it's really an exciting time in storage. I get asked that question from time to time having been in storage for more than 30 years. What was the most interesting time? And there's been a lot of them, but I wouldn't trade today's environment for any other in terms of just the velocity with which data is evolving and how it's being used and where it's being used. The TCO equation may describe what a data center looks like, but data locality will determine where it's located. And we're excited about the edge opportunity. We see that as a pretty significant meaningful part of the TAM as we look out three to five years. Certainly 5G is driving much of that. I think just anytime you speed up the speed of the connected fabric, you're going to increase storage and increase the processing of the data. So the edge opportunity is very interesting to us. We think a lot of it is driven by low latency workloads. So the concept of NVMe is very appropriate for that. We think, in general, SSDs deployed in edge data centers defined as anywhere from a meter to a few kilometers from the source of the data. We think that's going to be a very strong paradigm. The workloads you mentioned, especially IoT, just machine-generated data in general now, I believe, has eclipsed human-generated data in terms of just the amount of data stored. And so we think that curve is just going to keep going in terms of machine-generated data. Much of that data is so well-suited for zone storage because it's sequential. It's sequentially written. It's captured. And it has a very consistent and homogeneous lifecycle associated with it. So we think what's going on with zone storage in general and ZNSNSMR specifically are well-suited for where a lot of the data growth is happening. And certainly, we're going to see a lot of that at the edge. Well, Phil, it's always great to talk to somebody who's been in the same industry for 30 years and is excited about today and the future. And as excited as they have been throughout their whole career. So that really bodes well for you, bodes well for Western Digital. And we'll just keep hoping the smart people that you guys have over there keep working on the software and the physics and the mechanical engineer to keep moving this stuff along. It's just amazing and just relentless. Yeah, it is relentless. What's exciting to me in particular, Jeff, is we've driven storage advancements largely through, as I said, a number of engineering disciplines. And those are still going to be important going forward, the chemistry, the physics, the electrical, the hardware capabilities. But I think as widely recognized in the industry, that it's a diminishing curve. I mean, the amount of energy, the amount of engineering effort, investment, the cost and complexity of these products to get to that next capacity step is getting more difficult, not less. And so things like zone storage, where we now bring intelligent data placement to this paradigm, is what I think makes this current juncture that we're at very exciting. Right, right. Well, it's applied AI, right? Ultimately, you're going to have more and more compute power driving the storage process and how that stuff is managed. And as more cycles become available and they're cheaper and ultimately compute gets cheaper and cheaper, as you said, you guys just keep finding new ways to move the curve. And we didn't even get into the totally new material science, which is also coming down the pike at some point in time. Well, it's been great to catch up with you. I really enjoy the Western Digital story. I've been fortunate to sit in on a couple chapters. So again, congrats to you. And we'll continue to watch and look forward to our next update. Hopefully it won't be another four years. OK, thanks, Jeff. I really appreciate the time. All right, thanks a lot. All right, he's Phil. I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.


Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode... Learning of other races and cultures has been something man has sought knowledge of ever since they first discovered other races and cultures existed. But that's the thing. You have to know those races and cultures existed in the first place. And there is one race known as the Ogar that very few know about, and it has been practically wiped from history. Lakes are often scenes of brutal crimes and dumping grounds for murder victims, but you don't often hear of the lake itself being a murderer. But one lake killed 1,700 people in a single night. Imagine moving into a new home, only to realize it already has a resident ghost living there. But not only that, but the ghost enjoys having full-blown two-way conversations with you through the walls. In 1593, a Spanish soldier named Gil Perez claimed that he traveled over 9,000 miles in just a few seconds. Supposedly he disappeared in Manila and appeared in Mexico. Is there any truth to the story or evidence to back up his claim? But first, a streamed sighting took place in 1970 in Hiroshima Prefecture, and the way it's described, it sounds like Japan might have its very own Sasquatch. And now, decades later, that beast might save the town it was spotted in. We begin with that story.  A nighttime drive on a mountain path half a century ago led to a legend that forever changed this community and could now be instrumental in its survival. On the evening of July 20, 1970, a man in a pickup truck in Saizhou, a northern town of Hiroshima Prefecture, came across a rather unsettling sight, an ape-like creature walking on a mountainside. After word spread about the encounter, other locals came forward with their own reports of an animal walking upright. Their descriptions were similar. The beast was around 1.6 meters tall, with a gorilla-like body and a face shaped like an inverted triangle. The locals started calling the creature Hibagon, a reference to Hiba Mountain in the town. Did Japan have its own Bigfoot or Sasquatch? News and entertainment media began flooding the small towns surrounded by mountains to find out. The locals' lives were turned upside down by the sudden attention, but that was only the beginning of Hibagon Fever. Saizhou Town, today's Saizhoucho district in the city of Shobara and the Hiroshima Prefecture, became inseparable from the creature. Residents today still talk about the legend of Hibagon. Siko Fujikawa, 56, was a first-year elementary pupil when Hibagon Fever took the town by storm. Fujikawa recalls that when he and his fellow students walked home from school in a group, they often found themselves pestered by questions from adults. Have you seen any holes around here, the grown-ups asked the children in hopes of finding a trace of Hibagon or its den? Fujikawa said those days were surreal. Some residents believed that Hibagon represented a symbol of disapproval for the huge recreational facilities under construction in the area, including camping grounds. The god of Hibamountain sent Hibagon to haunt us, one theory went. But Fujikawa mentioned another less spiritual school of thought. According to a rumor, a gorilla had escaped from Asazu in the city of Hiroshima, which is 90 km from Saizhou. And I heard that's Hibagon's true identity, Fujikawa said. We were scared of Hibagon, but it was all in good fun. It's a sweet memory indeed. Katsuyuki Egi, 76, was a young employee at the Saizhou town government office when he was called to the mayor's office in August of 1970. It was right after a local newspaper, the Chugoku Shimbun, ran a story about a Hibagon sighting in the town. It's good that Hibagon is making it to the newspapers, but the bewildered mayor said, Hibagon fever was rising, and day and night reporters hounded residents who said that they'd witnessed the beast. Some reporters even knocked on doors at night or trespassed on fields interfering with farm work. The townsfolk began grumbling about the intense and constant national attention on Saizhou. The Saizhou government decided to create a post to handle the issue of anthropoid apes. Egi was appointed to the position. His work included interviewing people who reported seeing Hibagon and handling inquiries and requests from visiting media and student members of a university exploring club. Egi was previously in charge of tax services, so the topic of anthropoid apes was completely out of his domain. But it was fun, he said. My job was kind of like a jack of all trades. Looking back, I'd say it was a once in a lifetime experience. Back then, residents in some part of the mountain town did not have access to television. Egi himself never watched TV until he graduated from high school. His first job at the town government office, in fact, was to install TV antennas in the mountains. Hibagon fever, which coincided with the high growth period of the post-war Japanese economy, spread the use of televisions in Saizhou. Residents became glued to the tube and started enjoying the fame again, exclaiming, for example, my neighbor was on TV. The town government, in the meantime, came up with a unique policy to pay 5,000 yen, or $48, for each resident who spotted the creature. The money was to make up for inconvenience caused by a Hibagon sighting. It was an exceptional offer, considering the starting monthly salary for a town government employee back then was $14,900 yen, Egi said. Although the payments raised suspicions of bogus sightings, Egi personally knew some of the witnesses very well. They were above lying, I can tell you that, he said. By October 1974, the town office had received 29 reports about Hibagon appearing in the wild, but then the sightings completely stopped. Hibagon fever is over, the town officially declared in June 1975, five years after the first sighting. Hibagon was never caught, even on film. The creature's true identity has remained wrapped in mystery. Hibagon is a symbol of our town, said Egi, who still lives in the area. I'm blessed with six grandchildren. I believe Hibagon, too, was living peacefully, somewhere deep in the mountains, surrounded by grandchildren, he said. Egi's sentiment is reflected all around the Saijocho district. A character resembling Hibagon is ubiquitous in such places as gas stations, bus stops and souvenir shops. The young generation may not be familiar with Hibagon at all, but Saijo is the town of Hibagon, said Kazuo Yamaguchi, 49, who heads the non-profit organization Saijo Sightseeing Association. Yamaguchi was born and raised in Saijo, but he spent his high school and college days in Hiroshima City. He was only an infant when Hibagon fever reached its peak, but he said he feels so proud of having Hibagon in his hometown. In 2005, Saijo merged with other municipalities and became part of the city of Shobara. At the end of June, 3,262 people lived in the Saijocho district, 35% decrease from the population 20 years ago. As part of revitalization efforts in 2020, Yamaguchi's organization and the city government hosted many events to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Hibagon sighting. Tours to places where Hibagon was seen were on the agenda, but they sadly had to be canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Yamaguchi hosted an online tour to Hibagon-related locations and sightseeing spots, with Eggy serving as a tour guide. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll learn about the ogar, a long-lost race that has been practically wiped from history. Over 1,700 people were murdered in a single night, not by a man or a beast, but by a body of water that exploded. And a couple move into a home only to find a presence living in the walls and wanting to communicate with them, not just through noises and talking, but even through singing. These stories and more coming up. My doc agrees that I need to lose a few pounds. I knew that going in, but he also told me that the meds I'm taking for my type 2 diabetes aren't going to do me much good if I finish each meal with ice cream or cheesecake. I kind of knew that in advance, too. But cutting back on carbs and sugars is a lot easier said than done. I've tried a lot of protein bars while on the road, but I swear it's like eating non-sweetened chocolate-dusted particle board. But now I travel with built bars. Built bars taste like candy bars. In fact, I'm now using them for my dessert. And in about 150 calories per bar, less than 3 grams of sugar, up to 19 grams of protein, I can satisfy my sweet cravings guilt-free. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash built in Try a Box. You can go for a variety pack of several flavors to try or pick and choose to build a box of your own.  That's WeirdDarkness.com slash built. The Ogars were a little-known race that has been virtually unheard of. As you're about to find out, though, the Ogars were unique in a number of ways, despite being almost obliterated from history. There was a reason why people shouldn't learn about their existence, but there are those who have kept the memory of the Ogars alive. They have passed on their stories to future generations, hoping the truth about the Ogars would survive. There was once physical evidence that confirmed the existence of the Ogars, but their burials were deliberately destroyed. It's a remarkable ancient story that gives us much to ponder. During excavations in a small village in Romania, peasants found dozens of giant skeletons and prehistoric solar calendars created by an unknown race. What happened to these giant bones? One man who participated in the digs revealed a massive cover-up. Giants were by no means only mythological beings. Even in more modern times, there is evidence people of incredible stature can exist. According to our knowledge, Robert Pershing Wadlow, also known as the Giant of Illinois, was the tallest man who ever lived. When Robert died in 1940, he was entombed in a coffin 10 feet long and weighing a thousand pounds, requiring a dozen pallbearers and eight other assistants. Another interesting giant who we know with certainty did exist was Chiang Wu Gao, also known by his stage name, Chiang. The Chinese Giant was born in China in the 1840s and was roughly eight foot in height. He first began showing himself in London around 1865. There are many other examples of modern giants who walked the earth not so long ago. So if they can be found in modern times, why shouldn't they have been a part of earth's ancient history? It's no secret that remains of giants have been discovered worldwide. It's also an unfortunate fact that there has been a massive cover-up to deny the world any knowledge of these immense skeletons. Ever since the first giant bones were unearthed, scientists, historians, and archaeologists have all been involved in debunking the existence of this powerful ancient race that once almost ruled the world. Bones of giants have been deliberately destroyed, hidden in secret vaults or simply labeled as remains of long-extinct animals like, for example, dinosaurs. Our search for traces of giants takes us to Romania in Eastern Europe. We learn from Romanian mythology that earth was inhabited by different humanoid races in the past. At the beginning, the Ogars walked the earth. However, they resembled deformed humans and they disappeared eventually. In numerous sacred ancient texts, myths and legends relate how the gods attempted on several occasions to create intelligent beings. Were the Ogars perhaps an early failed genetic experiment conducted by ancient gods or did they suffer from a genetic disorder inherited at birth? Ancient Romanian stories tell that after the Ogars vanished, giants suddenly appeared. They rebelled against God and were sentenced to die during the flood. After the giants, humans started ruling the planet. However, humans will eventually be replaced with lajini, a race of small stature beings who have a good soul and are pleasing to the gods. Although many graves of giants have been discovered across the world, it is not often we encounter people who have participated in the excavations and can tell the public about what they have seen with their own eyes. Ionita Florea, who is today an old man, has been involved in several archaeological excavations in Romania. Romania has a long tradition of giants. For some reason, no one knows why giants were nicknamed Jews. One possible explanation could be that people call them Jews is because these beings came from Israel. Did the mysterious pre-edemic didanum race that originated from Israel visit Romania? The didanum people were ancestors of the Nephilim and Rhafiam who were giants. The country s most famous giant was called Novak. He fought several battles against a dragon that tried to harm people. Novak finally defeated the dragon that fled and left a trail on earth. Ionita Florea tells of an old place called Nusetful. It s a town in Bihor County, western Transylvania, Romania. Its name means walnut trees. From his parents, Ionita Florea learned that this place was once inhabited by huge giants. For a long time, Ionita Florea did not believe all those stories about giants, but everything changed when he unearthed very large bones himself. In 1926, a Decian fortress that was very unusual in size and much larger than accepted was discovered in Argedeva Vasil Parvan. The archaeologist in charge of the excavation was convinced that he had found the first capital of Brabista. Excavations were carried out several times until the year 2000. Later it turned out that the fortress was in fact the first citadel of Brabista. The king who united all the Decian tribes and ruled half of Europe between 82 BC and 44 BC. Between 1946 and 1956 archaeologists and peasants who helped with the dig discovered 80 skeletons of giants. The remains were of humanoids who had been between 4 and 7 feet tall. Ionita Florea, who had participated in the excavations for three years, tells his story of what really happened at Argedeva. I began to dig here in 1947, he said, with a team of archaeologists. They employed about 30 people in the village. I was the youngest of all being only 18 years. They paid us about $9 to $12 per day, U.S. I was poor at the time and I needed work. I could buy almost 1 kg of corn for the money. Once after I dug to a depth of 4 feet, I unearthed a giant skull. It was two or three times the size of an ordinary human. I went and told Dinu Viroceti, one of the archaeologists, about my discovery. As soon as I showed him the skull, all villagers were immediately sent home and the archaeologists continued to dig on their own. I saw how they put the bones of the giants on a truck and drove away. I did not know where they took the skeletons or what happened to them. What Ionita Florea relates is just one of many dreadful cover-ups undertaken by so-called men of science who are determined to deny generation after generation the right to learn the true history of our planet. Voltaire was certainly correct when he declared that history is the lie commonly agreed upon. In Africa, the people of Cameroon, especially those who live along the shores of Lake Nios, know very well the story of an evil spirit which emerged from the lake, killing all those who lived near it. While this was a legend shared and passed across from one generation to another, the truth of the matter was that the bad lake was in actual fact a killer lake that at one point in its wake killed more than 1,700 people and over 3,000 animals around the lake in just one night. On August 21, 1986, Lake Nios experienced one of the strangest natural disasters in history, from which over 1,746 people suffocated in one night. How Did This Happen? Scientific reports can note that Lake Nios was formed in a volcanic crater created about 400 years ago. Crater lakes normally contain high levels of carbon dioxide, CO2, formed by the volcanic activity happening miles beneath them. Under normal circumstances, this gas is released over time as the lake turns over. That's not how Lake Nios worked, however. Instead of releasing the gas, the lake was storing it, dissolving the CO2 in the calm waters. Pressurized to the physical limit, Lake Nios was a ticking time bomb in waiting. On a fateful night, something triggered a commotion in the lake that's not known what the prompt was, landslide, small volcanic eruption, or small cold rain falling on the edge of a lake, whatever the cause, the effect was catastrophic. The lake exploded like the bomb it was, sending a fountain of water over 300 feet into the air, creating a mini tsunami. Although the water was lethal, more fatal was the gas that masked the countryside. This kind of explosion is known as a limbnic eruption. In about 20 seconds, some 1.2 cubic kilometers of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere. The result was instant death as oxygen was squeezed out of the affected areas. The wave of the poisonous gas spread in the villages around the lake. All fire and flames were immediately extinguished, spelling doom in the area. In a matter of minutes, people and animals perished. The villages of Nios, Cam, Chah, and Subam were wiped out. In a nearby village, out of 800 people only 6 survived, and according to a report, those who did survive escaped to higher ground on motorcycles. Many people died in their sleep without ever knowing what hit them. Others met their death at their doorsteps, on their way out to find out the cause of the loud sound they had earlier heard. In that period, the normally calm and clear blue waters turned into a deep red, as if symbolizing the number of people and animals that had swallowed in the violence. Science, however, explains that the deep red color was a result of iron stirred up from the bottom. In a bid to avert future explosions, the lake needed to be degassed especially because deeper studies of the lake revealed that there was more CO2 forming at the depth in the lake that could react again. In 2001, an electronic pump that would simulate an eruption was sunk in an effort to degas the lake. A pipe has been installed in lake Nios that runs vertically between the lake bottom and the surface. The pipe allows the gas to escape at a regular rate. Due to the pressurized nature of the gas, the water comes out of the event in a rather lovely CO2-powered jet of water. While this has been working over the years, there is a need to do more because according to the reports, the CO2 saturation in the lake has gone high again. If it exploded, it would cause a double disaster of both flooding and gassing simultaneously. Lake Kivu and Rwanda, which also happens to be created through volcanic explosions just like Lake Cameroon, has been shown to have a historical record of causing creatures in the lake to go extinct, approximately every 1,000 years. According to scientists, a volcanic disturbance on the lake could cause much more harm and destruction than witnessed in Nios. But the Rwanda government, with support from foreign organizations, are exploiting the lake's underneath resources such as methane to produce electricity. By doing so, Rwanda is reducing the pressure from below the lake with the name of reducing the risk of a catastrophic event. If an explosion ever happened at Lake Kivu, more than 2 million that live along the shores would succumb to the deadly gases. For now, the three lakes are still and nobody knows when the disaster will strike again. Governments and foreign organizations are, however, employing every effort necessary to avert the calamities that could be brought about by explosions in the volcanic lakes. It was March 1934, and Mr. and Mrs. Wilkie, a couple in their 80s, along with their 9-year-old granddaughter, Bunty Ross, were living in Tarvis, a small village in Aberdeenshire in northeast Scotland, and had been living there for the past four months. Shortly after moving into Gateside Croft, the Wilkie's began to hear a voice coming from the walls. At first they were alarmed, but soon they were on conversational terms with their unexpected lodger. The following exchange between Mr. Wilkie and The Beastie, as it became known, was reported in Dundee's The Courier Advertiser newspaper. Mr. Wilkie asked, What are you? Have you four legs? And the voice replied, I Have you a tail? No, but I have a beak. In addition to answering the Wilkie's questions, the Beastie, which spoke in a broad-buckin dialect, could repeat the alphabet, count to 90, say the Lord's Prayer, and would sing a bicycle made for two, and the hymn Jesus Loves Me. When news of the Wilkie's strange and talented ghost, for that's how it was being reported, reached the village and beyond, it brought a steady stream of visitors to their home. The Beastie wasn't shy, and it seems no one left the Croft without having heard it speak. It could be quite direct, and would often call out anyone it felt was asking too much about its identity. For the most part, though, the Beastie had a wicked sense of humor, as illustrated by this exchange with a local curiosity seeker. A woman said, I'll need to be going down the road now, and I'll come home with you. Indeed, you will know, do that. At that, she grabbed her hat and coat and ran out of the house. While the newspapers were reporting this as a haunting, and it seems that the Wilkie's believed that something supernatural was going on, according to the courier and advertiser, the general opinion is that a trick is being played on the old folks.  Within a few days of the Beastie making the news, it suddenly stopped talking. The Evening Telegraph of March 26 reported, the voice died on Tuesday night, and the family here are at a loss to explain the reason. It would be another two days before it was revealed that the voice had stopped because the mystery had been solved. The voice belonged to Bunty, the Wilkie's granddaughter. Exactly how this was discovered is not clear. There are at least three accounts, and while each account credits one of Bunty's teachers with solving the mystery, they vary in how the teacher made the discovery. According to the Evening Telegraph, the teacher became suspicious during a reading lesson after Bunty lapsed unconsciously into the voice. The teacher noticed something unusual about her voice and became convinced that the little girl was a ventriloquist, explained the Telegraph, when questioned Bunty, a bright youngster admitted that she was the voice. Another newspaper for which I failed to note any details claimed that the voice had followed Bunty to school, and while the class was being entertained by the Beastie, one of the teachers was closely watching Bunty. The account that appeared in the Aberdeen Press and Journal on March 29 seemed to suggest that something more troubling than a practical joke was going on. A child in genuine distress, perhaps? When she first attended Barthol Chapel School some months ago, she was a fluent speaker and reader. Last week, however, she developed a serious stammer, some of her words being entirely incoherent. In consequence of inquiries then made, it was found that she possessed a ventriloquial voice. Following Bunty's confession, other details began to emerge that appeared to confirm her guilt. The Aberdeen Press and Journal reported on a separate incident that happened one day when Bunty and a classmate were walking home from school. Seemingly, a voice began to talk to them from the ditch at the side of the road. When the classmate became frightened, Bunty told her it was just a trick. And it seems that the locals, well, most of them, were now claiming that they had never been fooled by Bunty's antics. Two of those locals were Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Sinclair, both of whom had made multiple visits to the craft to hear the voice. According to Bonner and Sinclair, the Beastie never spoke until Bunty was in bed. And when it spoke, Bunty always had her face covered, with a book, a newspaper or a knitting pattern, and her head could be seen to move as the Beastie spoke. Anyone was of Kent it was her, said Mrs. Sinclair. So was Bunty responsible for the voice? So why did she do it? How did she do it? Unfortunately, Bunty's willingness to talk about the voice ended with her confession. She never spoke of it again. On trying to get her to talk about it, a reporter from the Aberdeen Press and Journal wrote, She simply smiled but would not speak a word. She would not even reveal how she came to use her unnatural voice. But it is almost certain that she never saw a professional ventriloquist on the stage. Eleanor Castel, also of the Aberdeen Press and Journal, got the same response from Bunty. And though the girl was happy to spend time with the journalist, she would not talk about the voice. However, spending time with Bunty did give Castel some valuable insight into the girl's incredibly lonely life. She told me she had a cat, a black one, and its name was Topsy, but this was her only playmate. There was no school fellow who came to share her romps. She spent all her spare time with the old couple. Despite having made a full confession to responsible persons, there were some, including her grandparents, who refused to believe that Bunty had been behind the voice. Bunty had nothing to do with it. Mr. Wilkie told Castel, I tell you it was a beastie this was a no-wall. Lizzie Stott, who worked on a neighboring farm, also firmly believed that Bunty was innocent. In fact, Castel noted that nothing would shake her, Stott, from her conviction that a supernatural agency had been at work. So why were the Wilkie's and Mrs. Stott so confident that Bunty was innocent? It seems that they all had encounters with the beastie at the Croft while Bunty was away at school. And that, to the best of my knowledge, was the end of the Tarva's Beastie story. Coming up, if you're a fan of the Neverglades Mysteries series that I've been releasing once in a while on Creepypasta Thursdays, you'll want to listen through the end of the Chamber of Comments because there's a little piece of news about the Neverglades you might want to hear. But first, in 1593, a Spanish soldier named Gil Perez claimed that he traveled over 9,000 miles in just a few seconds. Supposedly, he disappeared in Manila and appeared in Mexico. Is there any truth to that story or evidence to back up his claim? That story is up next, When Weird Darkness Returns. Here it comes, my favorite part. Have you ever noticed that when George Bailey is on the bridge, it doesn't start snowing again until after he says, Aw, man, the power's out. No problem, because you're prepared with the Patriot Power Generator from Four Patriots. While the rest of the city is dealing with the weather outside is frightful, you can have the power that's so delightful inside your home. Flip to switch and suddenly you're back to the TV and radio for weather updates, your space heaters are keeping you toasty warm, your phones and laptops are charged, your fridge is still running, and you're back to watching It's a Wonderful Life in Time to Hear at a Boy Clarence. The Patriot Power Generator has zero fumes, so you can use it indoors and it's solar, so if the outage lasts a while, you're still good to go. Grab a Patriot Power Cell CX-2 and everybody can charge up at the same time. Don't let the unexpected put your family in danger. Grab a Patriot Power Generator today at fourpatriots.com slash weird. That's the number for Patriots.com slash weird. Free shipping for orders over $97.  Visit fourpatriots.com slash weird for the Patriot Power Generator, the Patriot Power Cell CX, and more. That's the number for Patriots.com slash weird. In fiction, ESP, time travel and teleportation are common story arcs. Just try counting how many books, movies or television shows were released just the last year or so that feature time-defying tropes. And why not? It's a fascinating concept, especially since physicists say it's completely possible. Most times, however, the truth is stranger than fiction. Take, for example, the Möbrily-Jordain incident, in which two emin, Charlotte and Möbrily and Eleanor Jordain, claimed to have time traveled while visiting the Palace of Versailles in 1901. The story goes that after they got lost while walking through the gardens to the Pettit Trionon, the two noticed that everything looked out of the ordinary, as if they were in a living picture. They even claimed to have come across Marie Antoinette, insinuating that they'd experienced a haunting or they had time traveled to the 18th century. Though the incident has been repeatedly debunked and labeled a hoax, it's still something to think about. While the Möbrily-Jordain incident remains to be one of the most well-known supernatural urban legends, years before there was the mysterious case of Spanish soldier Gil Perez, who allegedly teleported from Manila to Mexico in the 16th century. Gil Perez was a Spanish soldier during the early years of Spain's rule in the Philippines. As a member of the Guardia Civil, he worked for the Gobernador General as a palace guard. One day, however, in October 1593, the 7th Gobernador General, Gomez Perez Das Meringues, was assassinated by Chinese pirates during an expedition. Das Meringues' death made for quite a hectic time, considering he hadn't decided on a successor with several prominent Spaniards vying for the spot. With such tense conditions, Perez was guarding the Palace when he reportedly began to feel dizzy and exhausted. He then leaned against the wall and dozed off for a few seconds, but when he opened his eyes, he was surprised to see that he was in a completely different place. When he asked to buy standard where he was, he was told that he was in Plaza Mayor, now known as Zucalo in Mexico City. Soon, guards in New Spain got wind of Perez thanks to his claims and his strange Manila uniform. He was brought to the authorities, including the viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco, whose palace was where he was transported to. Though understandably shocked, Perez managed to answer all of their queries in great detail, including the assassination of Das Meringues, which, since it had only happened the night before, would not be proven until months later. While the viceroy was pleased with Perez' explanations, it was only time until religious officials got involved. He was turned over to the Holy Office of the Inquisition, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition, for further questioning. From Mexico, he was taken to Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, where he was placed in jail for desertion and for being a servant of the devil. As a loyal and decorated soldier, Perez took everything in stride and cooperated with the authorities. He was even said that he preferred being jailed over fighting the jungle man of the Philippines. Eventually, he was found to be a devout Christian and, coupled with his good conduct, he was in charge with any crime. But still, the authorities didn't know what to do with the unique situation and kept him imprisoned until they came to a solid decision. One day, Spanish galleon arrived in Acapulco to reveal all of Perez' claims about the Gorbinador General were true. He was recalled to Mexico, where some of the passengers even recognized him as a palace guard. With this, he was freed and sent back on the next ship to Manila. Perez' story has since become legend. It's been recounted in books and stories by several authors, including American folklorist Thomas Alibon Jean Vie, Washington Irving, Luis Gonzalez Abregon, Gaspar de San Agostín, Antonio de Morgue and even José Rizal. The tale may seem far-fetched, but centuries later, people are still trying to explain it. Maybe a visit to the Palacio del Gorbinador, the site of the former residence of the Gorbinador General during the Spanish colonial era in Intramuros, will have to do for now. Thanks for listening. If you like the podcast, please tell someone about it. Recommend weird darkness to your friends, family and co-workers who love the paranormal, horror stories or true crime like you do. Every time you share the podcast with someone new, it helps spread the word about the show, and a growing audience makes it possible for me to keep doing the podcast. Plus, telling others about weird darkness also helps get the word out about resources that are available for those who suffer from depression, so please share the podcast with someone today. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story on the website and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Big Foot of Hiroshima was written by Kohei Higashitani. The Mystery of the Ogars was written by Ellen Lloyd. The Lake Exploded was written by Christina Skelton. The Beastie in the Walls is from Forty in Ireland, and the Man Who Teleported was written by Poillo Chua. And now that we are coming out of the dark, I will leave you with a little light. Jonah 2 verse 6, To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in forever, but you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. And a final thought, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt, I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.


The Equitable Society presents, This Is Your FBI. This Is Your FBI, an official broadcast from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, presented as a public service by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. To your FBI, you look for national security, and to the Equitable Society for Financial Security. These two great institutions are dedicated to the protection of you, your home, and your country. Tonight, as a departure, we bring you the preview of a sensational motion picture, The House on 92nd Street, produced by 20th Century Fox, with the actual cooperation of the FBI. It reveals the most daring espionage plot of World War II. This dramatic screenplay stars William Ith, Lloyd Nolan, and Sidney Hussle, and we have them here in person for our preview. This Is Your FBI presents, The House on 92nd Street. Back in 1939, the mechanized legions of Adolf Hitler were overrunning the face of Europe, crowding civilization into a dark corner. The ever-increasing number of Nazi booms in this country, the growing network of German spies, clearly indicated that Hitler would not staff at the borders of Europe, and so the FBI, always on the alert to protect the safety of the nation, went to work. Every known suspect was watched, their every move recorded for the files. The FBI could not declare open war against the treacherous Germans in this country, but it could and did keep a 24-hour watch on them, so that when the time came, those Nazis could do nothing to help Hitler make good his threat of. Yesterday, Germany, today, Europe, tomorrow, the world. As our story opens on an afternoon in the spring of 1939, William Dietrich, a good-looking, husky young man, is standing near a pole vaulting pit on a college athletic field. He's in track uniform, and as he flexes his muscles before making his first jump, his approach by two men. Are you William Dietrich? That's right. We would like to talk to you. What about? My name is William Gross. How do you do? And this is August Cloughman. How do you do? Hello, Mr. Cloughman. Dietrich, we came here to talk to you about, well, joining our society. What society is that? The German American society. Oh, you're a good German. Your parents came from Stuttgart. You should join us. Well, Dietrich, you're going to graduate in June? Yes, at least I think so. Well, would you like to take a trip back to Germany after you graduate? No, I couldn't afford it. I have to go to work when I leave here. Oh, the trip would cost you nothing. You would be paid, in fact. Paid? What would I have to do? Oh, go to school in Germany for three months? What kind of school? A place where you will learn how to help the fatherland. Oh. And when you're finished there, you come back here to work for Germany. William Dietrich was a first-generation American. And like most first-generation Americans of German descent, he was a loyal citizen of this country, not a loyal Nazi. He asked the representatives of the German American society to wait for his answer, because he had a plan. With that plan in mind, he telephoned the FBI in Washington. The next morning at FBI headquarters, William Dietrich was seated across the desk from Inspector George A. Briggs. Well, it's just about the whole story, Mr. Briggs. I see. I've had you checked since you called. You have? Yes. I find you can be trusted. And it's all set? I can really go? Oh, no, wait. Not so fast.  Well? If the Nazis should find out that you're working with us, they wouldn't think any more of killing you than of striking a match.  Yeah, I know that. And furthermore, the FBI doesn't command anyone to take his life in his hands. That's why I called you, Mr. Briggs. I understand. When did your, uh, your friends... when did you tell them that you'd let them know? Wednesday night? Well, you've got almost a full week to make up your mind. After you give them an answer, call, and let me know what that answer is. Mr. Briggs, I think I can save your phone call. I know what I'm gonna tell them. Then let's go to work. After his graduation, William Dietrich left for Germany. Arriving at Hamburg, he went to the famous Nazi school in that city, the school for spies and saboteurs. When he had learned his lessons well, he was ready to return to the United States. He was given counterfeit identification papers and some genuine credentials with which to introduce himself to the Nazi contact in New York. While he was still on the high seas, enroute back to New York from Lisbon, Inspector Briggs and a special agent named Walker were busy at the FBI headquarters in Washington. Here's a report you should see, Walker. Oh? What's it about? A man was hit by a cab in New York three days ago. Some papers were found on him that looked suspicious, so they sent them down to us. Mm-hmm. He was carrying a forged passport, but his fingerprints show that he was Captain Franz von Wirt. Well, he's one of that top men. He was. He died on the way to the hospital. I see. Anything come out of his papers? Yes. We sent one of the letters he was carrying to the laboratory. They found some numbers written between the lines and disappearing ink. Cryptoanalysis just broke it down. And? It said concentrate on process 97. That means nothing to me. It didn't to me either. So I called a meeting this morning of Army and Navy intelligence. I read them the message. Any response? Oh, plenty. Process 97 is our new secret weapon. Oh. Nobody was even supposed to know that we were working on it. What's our move? First, we've got to find out how much the Nazis know about it. And second, how they found out. Well, young Dietrich ought to be able to help us out on that one. Maybe, yes. His German credentials came in a clip of this morning. I haven't hear. Oh, read them to me, will you? They're in German. And translated they say, William Dietrich is specifically authorized to receive all reports for transmission direct. And that's the first paragraph. Uh-huh. Leave that one as it is. Right. Paragraph two says, you're instructed to look to him for all payments. Well, that's fine. That means that they've got to come to him. Leave that one alone, too. Okay. The last paragraph says, it is forbidden for him to have any contact with agents known to you. I don't like that. Now, let's see now. Have it changed to read, he is authorized to contact all agents known to you. Right. And after that, pack your bags. We're going to New York. A few days later, a Portuguese freighter came into New York Harbor. William Dietrich, one of the passengers, brought his luggage down under the pier, where it was checked by a customs inspector. The customs man was FBI Inspector George A. Briggs. As Briggs went through the bags, he quietly slipped Dietrich the new credentials. The forged credentials, which would give Nazi spy and counter-espionage agent William Dietrich more freedom. When he left the pier, Dietrich took a cab to the house on 92nd Street. There he rang the bell and was admitted into the ground floor dress shop, a dress shop run by Elsa Gebhardt. Or Elsa Gebhardt? That's right. Well, they didn't tell me you were so pretty. Who are they? Oh, pardon me. I'm sorry. My name is Bill Dietrich. Oh, I've been expecting you. Good. Here's a message for you from Colonel Strassen in Hamburg. Who's that, Elsa? This is William Dietrich. Ah, is he the new one? Yes, Max. He brought this message from Felix. He is William Dietrich. He's authorized to receive all reports for Transfusion Drake. He's authorized to pay RC. He's authorized. He's authorized to contact all agents known to me. That's what Colonel Strassen said. But I don't understand. He never sent anybody else with orders like that. I'm going to check these credentials. Oh. I'll write to a friend of mine in Argentina. He'll get the message through to Hamburg. Okay, but meanwhile, I've got to go to work. What do you want? A lot of parts to build a radio transmitter. Here's a list of what I need. Why don't you buy them yourself? I can't afford to be caught buying radio parts. It's right, Max. Here's the list. Get them. Okay. That will be all for now, Mr. Street. Very well. Don't go out through the front door. I'll then. Use this back door. I'll go out through the alley into 93rd Street. Okay. Goodbye, Mr. Scabard. Goodbye. Max. Yeah. Follow him. William Dietrich got his radio parts and set up a transmitter and a secluded house on Long Island. He never transmitted to Hamburg, though. Every message he sent was picked up by a nearby receiver. A receiver operated by the FBI. After all harmful portions of the message had been removed, he then short-waved the rest in proper code to Germany. One day at this radio shack, Dietrich received an urgent summons from Elsa Gebhardt. She had to see him immediately. An hour later, he was in the house on 92nd Street. Dietrich. Yeah? I have something that must be sent as quickly as possible. Where is it? Here, in this envelope. Okay. If we hadn't done anything else in all the years we've been working, this information would make the whole thing worthwhile. But these are almost all numbers. They don't make sense. They'll make enough sense in Hamburg. Okay.  Well, that's a tough assignment. Why? What makes it so tough? Well, I have to put all this in the code before I send it. That takes time. These are my orders. Well, why can't I just burn them when I'm finished? Because sometimes radio messages are garbled. When you're finished, I'll mail them to our drop in Argentina. It must get through. Can I come in? Yes, come ahead, Walker. Anything on those papers Dietrich sent in? Yes. I spoke to Dr. Appleton. He's head of the laboratory. Those papers are definitely on process 97. What's more, he said the experiments took place just two days ago. What do we do now? Dr. Appleton is going to work on the papers. He says if you change one number, it can throw the Germans off for a month.  I thought nobody working on the process was allowed to leave the plant. Nobody, but a few of the scientists. They can leave a couple of nights a week. But they're thoroughly searched before they go. Look, can you tell me what process 97 is? Well, I'll give it to you the way it was given to me. From what our scientists already know about its properties, it would devastate any city it was used against. Sounds like a death ray. I made the same guess. Is it right? No. Process 97 is an atomic bomb. We momentarily close the equitable society's presentation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation file on the house on 92nd Street. We will return to this case in just a moment. You know the old saying, there's safety in numbers. Well, that's exactly the kind of safety enjoyed by members of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. Each member of this society has three and a quarter million fellow members. From the premium dollars of this vast number of men and women has been built a gigantic protective fund. In managing this fund, the Equitable Society never forgets the principle of safety in numbers. So equitable dollars are put to work in a large number of different ways. In fact, it's difficult to mention the basic American industry in which equitable dollars do not play an important part. They are invested in farming and shipbuilding, in mining and railroading, in public utilities and steel mills, and hundreds of other worthwhile enterprises. Remember, complex as all these activities may be, the management of the Equitable Society has two simple objectives. First, to make it easy for those who become equitable members to gain security for themselves and their families. Second, to make sure that equitable funds are a force for good, always used to promote the industrial and financial health of this country. Thus, by serving its members, the Equitable Society serves America. And now, back to the FBI file on the House on 92nd Street, starring William Ith, Lloyd Nolan, and Sidney Hussle. On December 11, 1941, Adolf Hitler declared that a state of war now existed between the United States and Germany. The FBI immediately arrested most of the known enemy agents. But Elsa Gebhardt and Max Koburg were allowed to continue their work because the FBI had to know the very fate of the war we were fighting depended upon locating the leak through which Nazi Germany was getting the benefits of our experiments on the atomic bomb. Inspector Briggs in the FBI office in New York was trying to locate that leak. Briggs speaking. Inspector, this is Simmons. Yes? One of the scientists working on Process 97 is named Charles Aughton Roper. That's right. Well, he went out last night for a walk and he went into town. Here in Manhattan? Yes. Who was Louise Vaje? He used to go to it. No. Don't pick up Roper. But arrest Louise Vaje. Miss Vaje, we've just been wasting our time. But I've been telling you the truth. Listen. You once worked as a hairdresser on the North German Lloyd Liner Europa, correct? Yes. You used to bring over letters and mail them when you got ashore. Well, I never knew what was in them. They were letters of instructions to German agents in this country. And you were working as a courier for the German Secret Service. No. We also know that you became an American citizen and that Miss Vaje makes you a traitor. I have done nothing since the war began. I swear it. You have a friend who's a scientist. He's working for the government now. What's his name? I have no friend. He was at your home last night. His name is Charles Ogdenrober. Now, let's have your story. Briggs speaking. This is Bill Dietrich. Oh, hello, Bill. What do you mean? I got a message from Matt. What is it? Memory expert. Sorry? If that means what I think it does, Bill, this is the break we've been waiting for. Inspector Briggs was almost certain that Charles Ogdenrober was the memory expert. But he had to be sure. He checked Roper's birthplace, his college, his friends. Learning that years before he'd been in show business, he contacted many theatrical booking agents. In the office of one agent, a picture of Roper was found. A picture captioned, Charles Roper, memory wizard. That was the name of the act. And that was all Inspector Briggs needed. That afternoon at Dr. Appleton's laboratory. Dr. Appleton, why have I been brought here? This gentleman is from the FBI, Mr. Roper. The FBI? Mr. Roper, see if you recognize these photo stats. Why? Why, they're photo stats of the formula we worked on last week. I understand that you're one of the scientists privileged to leave the plant. A few evenings each week. Yes, sir. A week ago tonight, you went out, didn't you? A week ago tonight? Yes. Last Friday night? Yes, sir. I did go out. I visited a friend's house. What for? To play chess. What's your friend's name? I don't remember. Oh, come now, the great memory experts. Charles Ogden Roper, you can't remember your friend's name? It's Louise. Louise Vaja. How long have you known him? Three years. A week ago, Mr. Roper, $5,000 was paid into your bank account. Why? I sold some securities. Dr. Appleton, why does he ask me all these questions? This gentleman thinks you memorized parts of the formula before you left here. That's not true. And when you got to your friend's house, you set them down. No. We know all about you, Roper. We've traced you back to the day you were born. We even know the approximate date that you are scheduled to die. Die? Listen to this. It's an intercepted message direct from Germany. It says, remove the memory expert at the completion of his mission. Oh, what do you want to know? When did you make your last delivery? This morning, on my way back to work. Where did you make it? At a bookshop. Which one? Come on now, Roper. Talk up. Talk fast. Lang's bookshop, 59th Street. I put the material in a book, Spencer's first principles. What did you give him? What was it, Roper? It was the latest data on the final experiments. After Roper's confession that he was in league with a Nazi spy ring, the FBI went to Lang's bookstore on East 59th Street. Mr. Lang did not know anyone named Roper. He had never heard of anyone named Louise Vaja. His shop contained no copy of a book called Spencer's First Principles. It was gone. Is that you, Max? Yeah. Did you get the book? Uh-huh. Do you want me to take it to Dietrich? No. Why not? I received a letter from Argentine this morning about Dietrich. His credentials were forged. What? He's on his way here. I expect him any minute. Then I go to work on him, eh? No. Why not? He must be made to talk. I can make him talk. You'd kill him. That would serve no purpose. I have a much better plan. What? This hypodermic needle contains copolymer. It drugs part of the brain. Yeah? After three injections, he'll be answering questions. Oh. I'll allow you to put him in proper condition to receive the first injection. Thanks. See who it is. It's Dietrich. He's coming back to this room. Good. Let him in, Max. Hello. Come in, Dietrich. Oh, thanks. All right, Max. Now let's go to work. You swine talk. Stop it, Max. I'll give the medicine a chance to work. You see? He's coming out of it. Now he should talk. Dietrich. What is your real name? What is your real name? He's lying. Wait. Dietrich. You didn't send our messages to Hamburg, did you? Did you? You see, Max. It's working. Where did you send them? The... The... Max. Dietrich. Who did you send our messages to? Who are you working with? Answer me. Who are you? The house phone. Someone's in the shop. I'll take it. Yes? Who is this? What's the matter? It's the FBI. They have the house surrounded. What? Quick. Take all the papers. Throw them into the fireplace. What about him? Do as I say. You've got to get out of here. Now what do we do? Get your gun. Keep them out, Max. Keep them out, Max. You take care of those two assignments. Right. Bill. Bill. How is he? Well, he's passed out. He's evidently drugged. Look, you'd better get a doctor, Walker. I'll stay here. Okay. When he comes to, I want to be around to tell him that Process 97 still belongs to us. Thanks to the courageous work of the FBI, Process 97 remained in the possession of this country. Ultimately, it was used as the atomic bomb. Before and during this war, the FBI was able to protect this secret. But someday an enemy may discover the formula of atomic power in his own laboratories. If he does, and he decides to go to war, then World War III will be over in 15 minutes. The discovery of the atomic bomb places a tremendous responsibility on the people of the entire globe. It was true when the late Wendell Wilkie said, this is one world. Now in this atomic age, the countries of the Earth must get along together, because now it will be one world or none at all. You'll hear the disposition of this case in just a moment. Tonight, will you join the Equitable Society in a salute to an industry which will play a key role in building the better world of tomorrow? A salute to the scientists and workers in America's chemical industry. The outstanding wartime achievements of this industry are too numerous to mention. So let's take only one, the atomic bomb. The chemical industry made a major contribution toward unleashing the enormous power of the atomic bomb. Right now, this industry enters into your daily life in a thousand different ways. Consider the food you eat. Its growth was aided by chemical fertilizers and insecticides. The clothes on your back, the shoes on your feet, the ink in your fountain pen, the paint on your walls. To all these and scores of other articles of everyday use, chemicals and chemical research make vital contributions. And it is to the chemical industry that thousands of other industries look for expert aid in developing the improved post-war products that will make life happier and easier for all of us. Members of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States will be proud to learn that their premium dollars have helped finance this great industry and that over the years, Equitable Society funds have been invested in many of the great chemical plants that did so much to help win the war and will do even more to win the peace. Just as Equitable Society dollars were fighting dollars in wartime, so at all times they are security dollars for you, your home and your country. Elsa Gebhardt and her Confederate Max Koburg upon trial and conviction joined their fellow Nazi agents in a federal penitentiary. The incidents in tonight's Equitable Society's broadcast are taken from the 20th Century Fox exciting drama The House on 92nd Street, soon to be seen in all the nation's motion picture theaters starring William Ith, Lloyd Nolan, and Cygni Hussle. This breathtaking story will continue from the vials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, all names used are fictitious and any similarity thereof to the names of persons living or dead is accidental. Programs in this series of particular interest to service men and women are broadcast overseas through the facilities of the Armed Forces Radio Service. Tonight, the music was under the direction of Leith Stevens. The radio adaptation was by Jerry Lewis and your narrator was Reed Hadley. This Is Your FBI is a Jerry Divine production. This is Dick Joy speaking for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and inviting you to tune in again next week at the same time for This Is Your FBI. This is the American Broadcasting Company.