This is Love

The Treasure Hunt

34 min
Feb 4, 20263 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

This episode chronicles Forrest Fenn's decade-long treasure hunt in the Rocky Mountains, which captivated millions of people and inspired treasure hunter Justin Posey to spend 700+ days searching. After the treasure was found in 2020 by medical student Jack Stoof, Posey purchased it and subsequently launched his own treasure hunt with comparable valuables hidden in the American West.

Insights
  • Treasure hunts can generate massive cultural engagement and tourism impact (the 'Forrest Fenn Effect' boosted Santa Fe tourism), but without clear resolution mechanisms, they create information voids that fuel conspiracy theories and public frustration.
  • Adventure and obsession exist on a spectrum—the line between healthy passion and destructive obsession is thin, and large-scale hunts can lead to financial ruin, relationship breakdown, and loss of life despite organizers' disclaimers.
  • The gamification of real-world exploration taps into fundamental human drives (the thrill of the chase, discovery, adventure) that can override rational risk assessment, particularly when social proof and community engagement amplify participation.
  • Transparency and closure matter: Fenn's refusal to disclose the treasure's location created lasting frustration for searchers, demonstrating that incomplete information resolution can undermine trust and satisfaction even after the primary objective is achieved.
  • Successful treasure hunt design requires balancing accessibility with challenge—Fenn's vague clues and wide geographic range created both appeal and frustration, while clear boundaries (elevation, terrain restrictions) help manage participant safety expectations.
Trends
Gamified real-world experiences and alternate reality games (ARGs) as engagement mechanisms with significant cultural and economic spillover effectsCommunity-driven problem-solving through distributed networks (Reddit forums, blogs, Facebook groups) enabling crowdsourced analysis of complex puzzlesThe monetization of obsession: treasure hunts and similar challenges generating secondary markets (merchandise, tourism, media rights, auction sales)Risk liability in experiential marketing: organizers facing pressure to call off activities due to participant injuries/deaths, raising questions about duty of care vs. personal responsibilitySuccessor/copycat models: successful treasure hunts inspiring new iterations with refined mechanics (clearer boundaries, defined timelines, explicit safety measures)The role of memoir and narrative in creating engagement: Fenn's book as both puzzle source and emotional connection point, demonstrating publishing as a distribution mechanism for experiential challengesDecentralized treasure hunt platforms: emergence of websites and communities dedicated to treasure hunt coordination, creating infrastructure for future hunts
Topics
Treasure Hunt Design and MechanicsCommunity Engagement and GamificationRisk Management in Experiential MarketingCryptography and Puzzle SolvingTourism Impact and Economic SpilloverInformation Asymmetry and Conspiracy TheoriesObsession vs. Healthy PassionMemoir Publishing as Marketing ToolDistributed Problem-Solving NetworksLiability and Duty of Care in Adventure ActivitiesArtifact Collecting and CurationClosure and Narrative ResolutionSuccessor Product DevelopmentSocial Media and Community CoordinationMonetization of Collectibles and Artifacts
Companies
Shopify
E-commerce platform sponsor mentioned in pre-roll ad, offering templates and tools for online store creation.
Indeed
Job recruitment platform sponsor offering sponsored job postings to reach quality candidates more effectively.
People
Forrest Fenn
Art dealer and treasure hunt creator who hid a million-dollar treasure in the Rocky Mountains with a poem containing ...
Justin Posey
Software engineer and primary subject who spent 700+ days searching for Fenn's treasure and later created his own tre...
Jack Stoof
Medical student who discovered Forrest Fenn's treasure in 2020 and later sold it to Justin Posey.
Doc Noss
Treasure hunter who reportedly discovered the Victorio Peak treasure in 1937, influencing Posey's childhood obsession.
Dale Neitzel
Treasure hunting blogger who ran a website that Forrest Fenn followed and where Justin Posey posted his theories.
Byron Price
Treasure hunt organizer who hid 12 ceramic boxes containing keys across the U.S. and Canada in 1982.
Quotes
"An obsession is just love that forgot to be reasonable."
Justin Posey
"The thrill was in the chase, and I loved that and still do."
Forrest Fenn
"I feel like a treasure hunt is a love letter written to strangers."
Justin Posey
"If you put too many guardrails on an adventure, then it fails or ceases to be an adventure."
Forrest Fenn
"It's kind of strange. You spend years training for some kind of esoteric Olympics and then they just say, yeah, that event's canceled."
Justin Posey
Full Transcript
When you run a business, you want the right tools. Enter Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to brands just getting started. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style. So if you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into... with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. Go to Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. Power your business with the platform trusted by millions today. In 2012, Justin Posey's wife showed him a magazine article that she thought he'd be interested in. That was really the start of an obsession. The article was about a treasure hunt, started two years earlier, by a man named Forrest Fenn. He said that he'd hidden a box filled with more than a million dollars of items. A 17th century Spanish ring, turquoise beads, gold nuggets, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and lots of gold coins. And he hid the treasure somewhere in the Rockies, and he published a poem that had nine clues in it. And he told everybody that if you decipher the nine clues, you could find the treasure. The first clue in the poem said to begin, quote, where warm waters halt. It continued, and take it in the canyon down, not far, but too far to walk, put in below the home of Brown. And the poem finished, so hear me all and listen good. Your effort will be worth the cold. If you are brave and in the wood, I give you title to the gold. I have recited that poem more times than I care to admit. I don't even understand where I, I can't even imagine where I would start. Well, that's actually the tricky part about Forrest's adventure that he set up, is that the poem could be made to fit such a wide range of locations. Forrest Fenn told one reporter that he thought it would take a thousand years for someone to find his treasure. You know, I think I spent the better part of a decade looking for that treasure. And there's thousands of miles of wrong guesses. And I don't, I think I'd do every one of them again. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love. Forrest Fenn was almost 80 years old when he announced that he'd hidden a treasure. Before that, he'd been known mostly as an art dealer in Santa Fe. His clients included Cher, Ralph Lauren, and Jackie Onassis. He specialized in Native American artifacts and Southwestern art. In the art business, I love to find a great painting. But there was a letdown after I found it because the chase was over. This is Forrest Fenn being interviewed on the show Report from Santa Fe. Anybody can sell a great painting, but not everybody can find one. The thrill was in the chase, and I loved that and still do. Forrest Fenn's career was at times controversial. His house was once raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into illegally traded artifacts. He also bought a Native American ruin near Santa Fe and excavated it himself. He was often called eccentric. He had a pet alligator named Beowulf that he hand-fed. In 1988, he was diagnosed with cancer and given a 20% chance of survival. I think that really struck him, and he really started thinking about his own mortality and how he wanted to go out of this world. And from that was born this treasure hunt that he created. He bought a bronze Romanesque chest. He said he paid $25,000 for it and started filling it with items from his own personal collection. What I told myself was that when I was building this thing was I've had so much fun over the decades, six decades, collecting these things. Now, if I've got to go, why not pass it on to someone else? Let somebody else have the same kind of fun that I have had. Forrest Fenn recovered from cancer, and in 2010, he self-published a memoir called The Thrill of the Chase, about his life and about his treasure hunt. It was only sold at one bookstore in Santa Fe. The book ended with the poem that contained the clues to where his treasure was hidden. He wrote that the treasure was hidden somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe. At first, the hunt was mostly a local story. But then, a few years after Forrest Fenn published his book, national news outlets started to cover it. A Newsweek piece quoted Forrest saying that he wrote his book for, quote, every redneck out there with a pickup truck, six kids, just lost his job, his wife, and lacks adventure. At one point, he also said he made his hunt to, quote, get kids off the couch, away from their texting machines, and into the mountains. He even started going on the Today Show to give out extra clues. Forrest is here with the clue. Forrest, take it away. The treasure is not in the graveyard. You call that a clue? That's a clue. Is it a good clue? I don't know. What do you think? I don't know. Matt and Savannah, what do you think? He was very good with words. Oftentimes he would say things that would sound very provocative, but once you actually dove into what he said, you'd realize, well, this actually doesn't help me as much as I thought it would. Other clues included that the treasure was hidden higher than 5,000 feet above sea level, but below 10,200 feet. And it wasn't hidden in a mine or a tunnel or inside a structure. Forrest told one interviewer that it was more than 300 miles west of Toledo. He also warned people to not go where a 79- or 80-year-old man couldn't go. A lot of people started hunting for the treasure and coming to Santa Fe. The Santa Fe New Mexican published an article about Santa Fe's booming tourism industry, calling it the Forrest Fenn Effect. A local restaurant even had a sandwich named Forrest Fenn. Forrest Fenn often spent time at the bookstore in Santa Fe, where his book was sold, collected works, talking with treasure hunters who had come to town. That's where Justin Posey first met him. I really didn't expect to run into him there. I was perusing the shelves, and I heard him first. It was a very familiar voice, and I looked up and saw him sitting at a table. And I just remember I got immediately very sweaty. And I thought, oh my gosh. You know, I'm very keen on not invading the privacy of others. And I thought, well, I should just buy my book and get out of here. And so I waited in line, and I purchased the book. But as I headed toward the door, I looked back, and he was right next to me, headed toward the same door. So I thought, well, it's now or never. And so I stopped and turned around and shook his hand and introduced myself. We actually talked more about fishing than anything else, but I did work up the courage to ask him if he really thought someone could actually find this treasure And he said absolutely He says you just the kind of guy that could find it It's sitting out there right now, and you just need to put the clues together and go get it. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. Justin Posey grew up in Arizona, but in the summers, he would go visit his grandparents in southern New Mexico. They lived near a place called Victorio Peak, where it was rumored a treasure was hidden. First time I heard about it was actually at my grandparents in New Mexico. They were sitting around the back porch at night. It was really adult talk, but I always liked to kind of sneak out there and see what I could overhear. And that's when I first heard about it. The Victoria Peak treasure was said to have been first discovered in 1937 by a man named Doc Noss. It was inside of a hidden cave and included gold coins, artifacts, old letters, and thousands of gold bars. There were 27 skeletons inside the cave, too. Two years later, Doc Noss hired an engineer to dynamite the entrance of the cave to make it larger. But instead, the entrance collapsed. The treasure was lost inside Victorio Peak. People spent decades trying to find it again. And it was just this enthralling concept that there's a treasure trove that could conceivably exist and be found by a normal person. Did you think you could find it? I did. I really did. I thought there's no reason why somebody couldn't do the diligence to track it down. It all but consumed my childhood. Of course, I was very young and naive at the time. It only came to realization later that it was on a military base, which actually really complicates things. Victorio Peak became part of the Army's White Sands Missile Range in 1955. Justin says he tried all kinds of ways to get in. He says he even took a tour of the military base, hoping he could sneak off, but quickly got caught. Eventually, Justin moved on to other things. He was interested in metalworking, cryptography, computers, and magic. He became a software engineer and enjoyed hiking and fishing. But then, when he was in his late 20s, he heard about Forrest Fenn's treasure and decided to look for it. My first trip was actually to Yellowstone. What made you go to Yellowstone first? Well, there was a chapter in his book. If I recall, the title was In Love with Yellowstone. I mean, he dedicated a good chunk of the book to the North and to Yellowstone, and it was very clear it held a special place in his heart. In fact, it seemed almost too obvious, but of course Yellowstone is quite large. It's a lot of search territory, but it was a starting point. Justin started in an area of Yellowstone called Boiling River. He thought that maybe the part of the poem about begin where warm waters halt could apply to that area. What would a typical day of searching look like? Would you have an idea of an area you were going? Tell me about a typical day. A typical day for me, let's say it's a weekend. I would still have my day jobs. It would be going out to the location and doing kind of a deep dive and trying to understand, is this a place that feels like Forrest Fenn? Does it make sense logistically? He hid it when he was 79 or 80 years old. So, you know, the super rough terrain or, you know, scaling mountains or anything like that was certainly not on the table. And so it turns out that, you know, very quickly you can get to an area in person and evaluate it and say, is this worth further consideration or not? And if it was, then great. It would be a place where I would continue to return. And probably the last ditch effort would be, if you feel still confident in a location, was what I call the grid search. And that was, it's not fun. It's rigorous. You're literally walking a grid pattern and analyzing it and saying, is there anything in this very specific spot that makes sense? If not, move on to the next square and then just rinse and repeat. Eventually, Justin searched outside of Yellowstone, too, in parts of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and New Mexico. He even trained his dog, Tucker, to help him look for the bronze treasure box. I ordered these long bronze rods, and I cut them up into small bits. And I used to place them alongside his treats that I would hide out in the yard and so on. Over time, you phase out the treat, and he would just find the bronze. But the worry remained, is he just smelling my scent on the bronze? Justin started wearing gloves when he'd bury the bronze for Tucker. Then he started having other people bury the bronze, so there was no way his scent could be on it. Eventually, he went into the mountains and buried bronze pieces at several locations and left them for a year. I had them marked on my GPS so I knew the exact location of each of them. And so I took him out the next year in the spring, and we walked through it from end to end. Tucker found all of the pieces. I was really kind of blown away at the end of that day and I felt like I had almost developed a secret weapon in the treasure hunt. But Justin couldn't take Tucker everywhere. In Yellowstone, for example, dogs aren't allowed outside of designated areas. Justin started following treasure hunting blogs where people would post about their ideas and where they'd been looking. There were Reddit forums and Facebook groups, too. People called themselves chasers after the title of Forrest Fenn's book, The Thrill of the Chase. There was one website in particular, run by a treasure hunter named Dale Neitzel, that Forrest Fenn was said to follow. Eventually, Justin posted there about his own theories about where the treasure might be. And within the first few minutes, Forrest actually commented on it. I think he said, wow, wow. And I thought, well, why did he say this? Wow, wow. Is it because it's so bad or so good or something totally different? And at some point, he actually, we had a phone conversation. He called me about it. And I was just, you know, just reeling from that conversation. I was on my way to work. I certainly didn't anticipate it. I had to pull over, you know, take this call. And, you know, he had just kind of talked about the love for the area that I had been searching in Wyoming and said that he and his friend George had collected buffalo skulls there when they were younger. And it didn't give me any hints or anything like that, but I was really left to marinate on that conversation for many, many months. Justin says he looked for the treasure, along with his family and friends, in hundreds of different places. I think I spent a total of probably 700 or 800 days on the ground actually looking for this thing. Did you get the sense that a lot of the searchers, and maybe even you, were addicted to this? That a fair question I mean what is an obsession I think an obsession is just love that forgot to be reasonable And there were a lot of people that loved to do this and I was certainly one of them But I think there's probably a fine line between obsession and love. In 2019, a psychologist who surveyed Fenn treasure seekers wrote that, quote, Some searchers have been in the chase approaching a decade now, without apparent disillusionment. They also estimated that there were up to 2 million people who were involved in some way in looking for Fenn's treasure. It was reported that some people quit their jobs to look for the treasure. People went into debt or bankruptcy. Marriages ended. People were arrested while looking for the treasure, for digging in protected areas, and for breaking into Forrest Fenn's home. Treasure hunters also got into trouble for getting stuck in dangerous places, needing to be rescued by park rangers and helicopter crews. And several people died while hunting for the treasure. Even though Forrest Fenn said publicly that it wasn't hidden in, quote, dangerous terrain, one man fell off a cliff, one drowned in the Rio Grande, and another was presumed to have drowned in the Arkansas River. Another person died from hypothermia. People started to ask Forrest Fenn to call off the hunt, including the New Mexico State Police Chief, but Forrest refused. I think the analogy he used is, well, if somebody drowns in a swimming pool, should we drain all the swimming pools or should we teach people to swim? and if you put too many guardrails on an adventure, then it fails or ceases to be an adventure. If there is no element of danger or perceived danger, is it an adventure at all? There have been other famous treasure hunts that have gone on for decades. In 1967, Whiskey Brand Canadian Club started a hunt called Hide a Case. They claim to have hidden 25 cases of whiskey in remote locations around the world, including at the North Pole and under Angel Falls in Venezuela. Sixteen cases have been found so far. A man named Byron Price hid 12 ceramic boxes containing keys across the U.S. and Canada in 1982. Anyone who found one was entitled to exchange it for a jewel. Byron Price died in 2005, and so far only three boxes have been found. And in the fall of 2024, a French treasure hunt called On the Trail of the Golden Owl ended when a buried owl statue was dug up after more than 30 years. How wild did your own theories get about where the treasure was and what the poem meant? I mean, there were certainly times where I would catch myself thinking, did I really just have that thought? Justin says he briefly wondered whether Forrest might have buried the treasure under a well-known rock in Yellowstone, which would have been illegal. He also looked for anagrams related to Forrest's poem, hidden geographic coordinates, and other encrypted clues. At one point, Justin even ran Forrest Fenn's interviews through a special facial recognition software he created that would look for subtle clues in Forrest's facial expressions. Afterward, he felt even more certain that Yellowstone was the place to look. And so I really intensified my search there based on that analysis. And then, in June of 2020, while he was heading back to Yellowstone to keep looking, Justin started getting messages on his phone. I had stopped in the night somewhere in North Texas, and my phone just blew up. And it was just a lot of people that I had been in contact with about the treasure hunt that said, is it true? Is it true? And I had to go on Fenn's site and it was there plain as day. He said that it had been found. And I was just, it was just such a bombshell moment for me. It's kind of strange. It almost feels like, you know, you spend years training for some kind of esoteric Olympics and then they just say, yeah, that event's canceled. We're not going to do that anymore. It was, gutting at the time, really gutting. We'll be right back. Support for This Is Love comes from Indeed. Right now, there's someone out there who could take your team to the next level, And you can find that person with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Sponsored Jobs gives your posting the best chance to be seen by quality candidates. And data shows it works. According to Indeed, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 90% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. All because you reach a bigger pool of people. Spend more time interviewing candidates who actually check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results now with Indeed-sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash ThisIsLove. You can go to Indeed.com slash ThisIsLove right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash ThisIsLove. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with Indeed. After Forrest Fenn's treasure was found, people were eager to know where it had been hidden and who had found it. But all Forrest Fenn would say was that the person who had found it was from, quote, back east. In a statement to blogger Dale Neitzel, he wrote that the treasure had not moved from the spot where he had hidden it ten years earlier, and that it was found, quote, under a canopy of stars in the lush forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains. But obviously that's a tremendous range. And so people were kind of left to their own devices. And I think, you know, with a void of information, conspiracy theories form very quickly and rumors. Some people theorized that Forrest Fenn had gotten tired of the hunt and had sent someone to go and get the treasure. Other people believed Forrest Fenn had never hidden a treasure at all. My thought was, well, we'll give it a few weeks or maybe a month and then we will find out. But we didn't. What a bummer, huh? That's an understatement, yeah. Forrest Fenn eventually announced that the treasure had been hidden somewhere in Wyoming and shared a close-up photo of the bronze box, opened on the ground filled with gold coins and gold pieces. And then, just three months after his treasure had been found, Forrest Fenn died. He was 90. Justin still wanted to know where the treasure had been hidden. He suspected that it had been in Yellowstone, near a place called Nine Mile Hole. It was a spot that Forrest Fenn had written about in his book He used to go fishing for trout there with his father Justin believed that the spot made sense with the clues in the poem Where warm water's halt could apply to the meeting an abrupt change in direction of two nearby rivers warmed by hot springs. Take it in the canyon down would mean following the canyon south from the meeting of those two rivers. and put in below the home of brown could mean the brown trout the fishing hole was known for. So Justin decided to go there and keep looking. You wouldn't find the treasure, but you had to find the spot. Yeah. There were a number of reasons why I felt that I had to keep looking, but it was really a function of closure. I really wanted to be able to stand in a very specific spot and say, yes, it was found here, and here's why. And there's enough proof to say with reasonable certainty that it really was right here, which is actually a harder challenge as opposed to, it's like, how do you find where something used to be? Justin spent two more years looking for the treasure's hiding spot, along with a few other treasure hunters. Using the photo that Forrest Fenn had shared of the treasure chest, open on the ground, matching up fallen tree branches, dirt and twigs, Justin thinks they found the exact spot. And it's funny, you spend so much time trying to figure out where something is, you never think about how you're going to feel when you actually find it. How close had you gotten to it without, you know, knowing in the years before? Well, the very first year that I searched, I certainly searched that area. And I had grid-searched Nine Mile Hole area specifically at least twice. It's kind of silly now, but we were very close in the sense there was an opening of trees back behind the river there as you cross the river. And we had sat down and had lunch there one day. It turns out that it was actually buried at the edge of that clearing. But the odds of somebody actually finding it buried in a national park were absurdly low. But someone actually found it. It was a very impressive feat. Right after the treasure was found, another treasure hunter sued Forrest Fenn, as well as the unnamed treasure finder. The person filing the lawsuit said that the finder had hacked into her computer and stolen her solution, using it to find the treasure chest. In late 2020, the identity of the treasure finder was likely going to be made public through the lawsuit. So the finder decided to reveal their identity on their own terms. The lawsuit was dismissed a few months later. The finder's name was Jack Stoof He was a medical student who said he had student loans to pay off and said he would be selling the treasure He wrote, at the end of the day, for all our similarities Forrest and I couldn't be less alike when it comes to collecting I'm the kind of person who feels burdened by possessions He said he was storing it in a vault in New Mexico until it was sold Justin reached out to him and asked if he could buy Fenn's treasure Eventually, Jack Stoof said yes After he bought Fenn's treasure Justin put most of the items up for auction Hundreds of coins, gold jewelry, even a pair of scissors Justin says many of them were bought by their treasure hunters But he did keep a few things for himself and I combined them with a lot of other things that I had collected and purchased over the years. And, well, I put together a treasure and I hid it. Justin Posey announced his own treasure hunt in March of last year. I feel like a treasure hunt is a love letter written to strangers. I'm just giving people permission, you know, just to believe in something magical is still out there in the world. Like Forrest Fenn, he also wrote a memoir with a map and a poem with clues inside. Anyone can read the poem at the website treasure.quest. I'm looking at the poem right now. Is it Idaho? I haven't specified. It's actually part of the search area. I did put a map on the website to kind of define, you know, I say it's hidden in the American West, but what does that actually mean? So there is an illustrative map on there to show people. Does anyone else know where it is? Nobody else in the world knows where it is but me. I am the only person. He hasn't said what kind of container he's hidden his treasure in, or exactly how much the treasure is worth. I can't specify exact amounts, but to give you an example, there are multiple one kilogram gold bars in the treasure. And I think, gosh, based on the price of gold today, my guess is one of those bars is probably worth around $130,000 or $140,000. There's a sizable meteorite in there. And there are many, many one ounce gold coins from all around the world. There are other coins, too. like a rare silver coin from colonial America. I also included one of the first coins ever made by man. It's from the Lydian Empire. I think it's probably around 650 B.C. Justin also included a bracelet from Forrest Fenn's treasure. It looks like a dragon and is covered in diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. There's a lot of different items in there, and I think in total the treasure weighs about 60 pounds. and it's just sitting out there in the wilderness right now waiting for someone to go get it. How long do you think it'll take for someone to find it? I don't think it's going to be the type of treasure hunt that goes on for years. Frankly, I'm a little surprised it wasn't found yet. This Is Love is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. You can learn more about the show on our website, thisislovepodcast.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisislovepodcast.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus. now on Patreon. It's the very best way to support our work. You can listen to Criminal, This Is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes photos and videos, and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other criminal listeners. Learn more and sign up at patreon.com slash criminal. We're on Facebook and Instagram at This Is Love Show. This Is Love is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love.