Cost of Adventure

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Today's podcast will feature four stories about adventures that go wrong.

The audio from all four of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called Bungee.

and it's about a couple who decides to go bungee jumping, but it does not go as planned.

The second story you'll hear is called Geocaching, and it's about four young people who explore this underground tunnel during a scavenger hunt.

The third story you'll hear is called 127 Hours, and it's about a man on a solo hike who is forced to make a gruesome decision.

And the fourth and final story you'll hear is called Headcount, and it's about this group of boys who go for a hike, and at first, everything is going great until they realize their headcount is off.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the Wright podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So if that's of interest to you, please offer to give the follow button some acupuncture.

But after you put all the needles in their back, just leave.

Okay, let's get into our first story called Bungie.

It begins here.

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Just outside of the popular tourist town of Amaga in northern Colombia lies this thick green jungle.

And if you know where to look, there is actually a walking path that leads you from Amaga deep into this jungle.

And if you keep going, it will bring you all the way to this terrifying, enormous old railroad bridge that spans this huge ravine.

Now, this bridge is no longer used by trains.

It's been decommissioned.

However, since its decommissioning, there's actually been, ironically, more traffic on this bridge, although it is the foot traffic variety.

People come out to this bridge to go bungee jumping.

Bungee jumping is a thrill-seeking activity where people will leap off of high places like this bridge, and they'll jump with an elastic rope tied to their ankles.

And so this rope has been very carefully measured so that when it is fully stretched all the way out, it ensures whoever has jumped will still not impact the ground.

Back in early July of 2021, a 25-year-old Colombian lawyer named Yasinha Gomez, who lived about an hour north of Amaga in the larger city of Medellin, she told her boyfriend that she wanted to go bungee jumping.

This was something Yesinha had talked about for a long time, wanting to go bungee jumping, but every time it became a real thing and they were actually going to go do it, she would back down because she was just too scared.

But for whatever reason, in July of 2021, Yesinha had the confidence and the courage to actually see this thing through.

And so her boyfriend, when he heard how serious she was, he capitalized on the opportunity because he had never bungee jumped before and he really wanted to, but he couldn't without his girlfriend.

And so now it seemed like she was serious.

And so right away he called the Omaga Bungee Jumping Company to book a slot for he and Yesinia to jump off of their bridge.

So on the day they were supposed to jump, which was Sunday, July 18th, Yesinia and her boyfriend hopped in their car and they drove an hour south to Omaga.

And when they got there, they found the walking trail and they made their way out to this bridge.

And when they get out to this bridge, they are amazed at the number of people who were already in line on this bridge waiting to jump off of it.

They knew this was a popular spot, but perhaps they didn't realize just how popular it was.

And so Yesinia and her boyfriend, they get in line behind the nearly 100 other jumpers ahead of them, and they proceed to wait.

And over the next several hours, Yesinia and her boyfriend would have front row seats to all of the jumpers ahead of them jumping off the bridge.

Now, it seems like Yesinia in her mind believed she would arrive at this bridge, and very quickly, she and her boyfriend would leap off, and it would be great and so much fun.

But now, they've been forced to wait for a really long time.

And this whole time, they're watching other people jump.

And Yesinia is starting to panic.

Suddenly, Bungie jumping looked terrifying.

It did not look like something she wanted to do.

And so she was beginning to second guess her decision.

And so her boyfriend, he's trying to calm her down and he's telling her, oh, it's totally safe.

Look at all these people who have jumped.

They're all fine.

They're all smiling.

They're so happy.

You're going to be so proud of yourself.

But despite his best efforts to calm his girlfriend down, Yesenia just could not calm down.

But she did tell her boyfriend that she's not about to back down.

She's going to go through with this.

And so several hours went by, this totally high stress, anxious waiting period.

And then finally, Yasinya and her boyfriend reached the front of the line, at which point the staff members who've been doing this all day long, they signal the two to step forward and get their harnesses on.

And so Yasinya and her boyfriend, they make their way to the edge of the platform, so they're looking out over this ravine, and the staff members are putting on their harnesses and getting them ready.

And the whole time, Yasinya, she's starting to get tunnel vision, her heart is racing, she's totally panicked.

She doesn't think this is fun at all.

She just wants to get this over with.

And then at some point, one of the staff members finally says, Okay, jump.

And so, Yasinya jumps.

Except, it would turn out Yesinia had made a mistake.

That staff member who had said, okay, jump, was talking to her boyfriend, not Yesinia.

However, Yesinia, in her totally panicked state, had just not understood and had leapt, believing they were telling her to jump.

However, the staff members had only put her harness on.

They had not attached the actual elastic rope to her ankles.

And so when Yesinia jumped, there was nothing stopping her from smashing into the ground.

And so as soon as she leapt off the bridge, her boyfriend ripped off all of his gear and he ran down the bridge.

He leapt over the railing and he ran down the hillside all the way to the bottom of this ravine.

But when he finally got to his girlfriend, it was already too late.

She was already gone.

It would later be determined Yesinia did not die from impacting the ground.

She actually died from a heart attack she suffered on the fall down.

Which means she must have realized after she jumped that she jumped too early, that she she did not have the bungee cord attached to her legs.

And so, literally, the fear of what was about to happen to her killed her.

Our next story is called geocaching.

On May 2nd, 2000, at approximately midnight Eastern Standard Time, the U.S.

government discontinued its use of selective availability.

Selective availability was the intentional degradation of public GPS signals.

It guaranteed that civilian GPS users would not be able to pinpoint locations on a map using their GPS.

They could get to within maybe 50 to 100 meters, but that was the best they could do.

Prior to the year 2000, there was some concern that if you gave the general public the ability to use GPS to precisely locate things on a map, that that presented an elevated national security risk.

But that line of thinking became antiquated, and so on May 2nd, just after midnight, the so-called Great Blue Switch, as GPS enthusiasts referred to it, was flipped, and instantly tens of thousands of GPS receivers received this incredible upgrade.

People who were following this development were eager to test out this new capability, capability.

And one such GPS enthusiast, a guy named Dave Ulmer, who lived in Oregon, decided he wanted to create a sort of GPS treasure hunt.

So he got this box and inside of it he put a notebook and a pen and he brought it out to the middle of the woods in Oregon and he got the precise GPS coordinates of where he put it.

And he took those coordinates and he went to an online forum and he posted the coordinates and he said, go to these coordinates and when you get there, if you find what you're looking for, there'll be a notebook.

Record yourself in the notebook and i'll be out there to check who's done this and if your name's in there i'll give you credit on this forum and so this treasure hunt went viral and lots of people all over the world thought it was a really cool idea to use this new gps technology to create treasure hunts all over the world so people started hiding not just treasure chests with notebooks but all sorts of random things all over the world and then posting their coordinates online for people to find This activity was given a name, geocaching, and it's alive and well today and it's streamlined on the official geocaching app.

But as geocaching has evolved over the years, so too has the level of difficulty at finding some of these caches.

Sometimes it requires geocachers to climb mountains, other times it requires them to dive underwater, and in one case, geocachers in the Czech Republic had to climb into this strictly off-limits 5-kilometer-long underground tunnel where the only two entry points were on the two extreme ends.

And to get to the geocache, you had to go to the middle of the tunnel.

And of course, periodically, periodically, this tunnel completely floods.

On June 9th, 2018, four geocachers in the Czech Republic decided, you know what, we're going to go down into that tunnel and we're going to get that geocache.

So they made their way over to the Mitolsky Brook tunnel, which was one of the two entry points, and they climbed down inside.

The reason this tunnel periodically floods is because rainwater gets dumped in there, and the second entry point is literally sitting in a lake.

There is literally water sitting right up against the lip of this entry point.

So even light rain will get the lake to rise just enough to where all the lake water pours into this tunnel.

And so the day these four geocachers are going into this tunnel, the weather forecast called for torrential downpours, flash flooding, and either these four geocachers were not paying attention to the weather, or they somehow thought this wouldn't affect their ability to get this geocache.

So these geocachers get down into the tunnel and they start making their way towards the center to collect their prize when outside, it starts pouring rain.

It rained so much, so fast, that the lake entrance started dumping tens of thousands of gallons of water in on one side.

And then on the other side, where this other entrance was at the bottom of a hill, you had all this water rushing in.

So it was like two huge waves of water crashing in on them.

And in fact, the survivors would say, because they were right towards the middle of the tunnel, they heard what sounded like a car was getting closer and closer and closer.

And that's when they realized it was two waves of water crashing in on them.

In a panic, they turned and started running back towards the entrance they came in on.

But as they're running, they're hit with this wave and two of the geocachers got sucked underneath.

And the other two were pushed up and were basically body surfing their way towards the lake entrance.

And so as they're moving forward, the wave from the lake comes in and hits them, and now the water is dangerously close to the ceiling.

And the two that have been pushed towards the lake entrance, they don't know what's happened to the other two, but they're just swimming as fast as they can towards the lake entrance.

And they swam almost two kilometers in this tunnel as the water got higher and higher and higher, and they're barely able to breathe.

By the end, they only had about a couple inches of clearance by the time they got to the lake.

And they finally pop out and they get in the lake.

And then, luckily, there was someone that saw them and brought their boat over and picked them up.

As for their two friends, unfortunately, they didn't get out of there in time and they both drowned.

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Our next story is called 127 Hours.

While he was in college at Carnegie Mellon University, Aaron Ralston studied mechanical engineering, French, and piano.

And then upon graduation, he moved to the the southwest and took a job as an engineer.

But five years into his corporate job, he realized he hated it, and so he quit and moved to Colorado to pursue his real passion in life, which was mountain climbing.

On April 25th, 2003, Ralston takes a trip to Utah where he plans to explore the Canyonlands National Park.

He slept in his truck that night, and the next morning at about 9.15 a.m., he gets up, and it's this beautiful Saturday morning.

He hops on his bike, and he bikes 15 miles to Blue John Canyon.

The canyon was an 11 mile gorge that at certain places was as narrow as three feet across.

And so Aaron locks up his bike and he begins walking through this canyon.

About six hours later at 2.45 p.m., Aaron is right at this section of the gorge that's getting really, really narrow and below him is about 100 feet down to the bottom of the desert floor.

He was going to walk with both feet on either wall because it was so narrow and kind of spider-man his way through this section of the canyon.

But as he began that maneuver, a huge 800-pound boulder became dislodged above him and it comes tumbling down and he barely gets out of the way, but it lands on his arm and it pins his arm against the wall and he can't move and he's suspended 100 feet off the ground and he's 20 miles away from the nearest paved road.

Immediately he tries to pull his hand free and push the rock off, but it's not going anywhere.

And that's when it dawns on him that he didn't tell anybody he was going to be in this gorge today.

No one knows he's here and he's so far away from anyone that can help him and he doesn't have a cell phone, doesn't have a radio, he's got no way to communicate with anyone who could potentially help him.

Now the position he was in was not him dangling by his arm 100 feet off the ground.

He was able to position himself against the rocks where he wasn't dangling.

He was able to sit fairly comfortably besides his arm being crushed.

And he was able to use the rock that actually had pinned him there as a sort of table or something to lean up against.

And after he calms down a little bit, after a few minutes, he reaches back and he pulls his bag out in front and he starts taking inventory of what he has.

And all he had was 12 ounces of water, so just a single water bottle, and he had two burritos and some candy bar crumbs.

That was all he had.

In terms of tools, all he had was this crummy multi-tool.

And it did have a little knife that extended off the end.

And almost immediately he takes that multi-tool and begins chopping away at this boulder to try to see if he can maybe crack it and push half of it off.

But he's finding out very quickly that it's completely futile.

It is not moving.

It is an enormous boulder.

It's not going anywhere.

He cannot possibly break it with this crappy little multi-tool.

As the sun began to set, Aaron started thinking really seriously about trying to cut his arm off.

But again, all he has is this multi-tool and this crappy little dull knife.

And he's thinking, there's no way I can cut through my arm.

There's bone in there.

I can't possibly saw through the bone.

And so very disheartened, he puts his multi-tool away and he begins to nurse the water and slowly eat the food and thinks maybe some miracle will happen where over the next couple of days someone will be within earshot.

I can yell to them and they can come get me or maybe someone will see me when they're hiking overhead.

I can just wait it out.

But by the fifth day he had run out of water.

He was becoming delirious.

He was actually drinking his own urine at this point and he expected to die overnight.

And so with his multi-tool, he etched his name into the rock and then underneath it he etched the date he expected to die, which was the next day and then after that he put his multi-tool down and he did have a camera with limited battery and he pulled that out and selfie style he filmed goodbyes to his family my name's Erwin Ralston

my parents are Donald Larry Ralston of England Colorado

whoever finds this please make an attempt to get it to them

Be sure of it, I would appreciate it.

After he was done filming, he put the camera away and he leaned up against the rock and fully expected to die.

But he starts to have this really intense dream where he sees himself playing with a child and he's missing his right arm.

And he takes that as a sign that he's supposed to chop his arm off and get out of here alive and go start a family.

And so he wakes up from this dream and suddenly all he wants to do is survive.

And he looks at his arm, which is already starting to decompose at this point.

And he thinks to himself, I know I can't cut through bone, but what if I'm able to break my arm clean through?

I can take this blade and cut through the break in the bone.

And so he began testing using the edge of the rock as a fulcrum to see if he'd be able to break his arm using the torque of pushing it over the edge of the rock.

And when he started to sense it was possible, he took a deep breath and then he broke his arm, takes his multi-tool, and over the next hour, he would painstakingly saw through his entire arm.

Once his arm was free, he couldn't couldn't believe it.

He actually smiled when he saw his arm still pinned underneath the rock because of his sheer will to live at this point.

And high on adrenaline, he climbed these 65 feet out of this canyon with his one arm.

He gets to the trail and he runs six miles and he happens to run into a group of hikers.

They give him food and water and they're totally alarmed by him, but they're happy to help him.

They call 911 and medics arrive and they save Aaron's life.

Following Aaron Ralston's rescue, they went back to retrieve his arm.

But in order to move that boulder, they had to bring out 13 Park Rangers, a hydraulic jack and a winch and all this heavy equipment, and they were barely able to move it.

And they told Aaron, had you still been in place, there's no way we could have placed the equipment without killing you.

So basically, you had to cut your arm off in order to get out of there.

There was no other way out.

And so for Aaron, I'm sure that felt pretty good to feel like you cut your arm off and that was the right decision.

They would take his arm and they would cremate it and give the ashes to Aaron.

And Aaron, after having his cremated arm for a couple of days, decided, no, I need to put this where it belongs.

And so Aaron went back out to the canyon where he had been trapped and he scattered his ashes over the boulder that had nearly killed him.

In 2010, Aaron's ordeal was turned into a huge blockbuster movie called 127 Hours, where James Franco plays Aaron Ralston in the movie and it's an incredible movie, albeit it's pretty hard to watch.

Aaron Ralston himself the movie, although it's a drama, is pretty much a documentary because James Franco does an incredible job portraying his emotions and what it was actually like to be trapped underneath this boulder for five days.

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The fourth and final story of today's episode is called Headcount.

At around 2 p.m.

on September 24th, 2017, a 17-year-old college student named Sanjay climbed up onto this boulder that was right off to the side of this hiking trail that he was on.

Sanjay was on a day trip with about 20 of his friends from college, and they were in this part of southern India that was really famous for its long winding trails and all these boulders that kind of sat off to the side of the trails.

And then at the end of these trails that are in this part of India is this beautiful ancient Hindu temple that a lot of people will go and take pictures in front of and go inside of.

And so that was where Sanjay and his friends were ultimately headed was this temple.

And from the boulder that Sanjay had just climbed up on, he looked up the trail.

And from his view now, which was now slightly higher, he could actually see just barely the top of this temple.

And so he was really excited about going to see it.

And he couldn't believe how close they were.

But as he was standing on this boulder staring at the top of the temple, he also realized that kind of off to the side of the temple, basically right next to it, was this beautiful pool of water with a big wall around it and cement steps leading into it.

I mean, it kind of looked like a swimming pool.

And so because Sanjay and his friends had been hiking all day to this point, and it was really hot out, Sanjay really liked the idea of going swimming.

And so he actually jumped off the boulder and just started running towards the temple and this pool.

And he was yelling to his friends as he did, like, hey, I'm going to go swimming.

And so he ran, not to the temple, but to this random pool of water that was next to it.

And he got to the steps and he immediately took off his shirt and he pulled his phone out of his pocket and he put it on the steps.

And then he walked his way into the water and turned around, hoping to see his friends coming after him.

And sure enough, all of his friends were smiling and laughing and running after him, ripping their shirts off, putting their phones down, and jumping in too.

And so pretty soon, this very quiet, peaceful pool next to this temple was packed full of very rowdy and crazy college kids.

Now, to be clear, this pool of water was not intended to be a swimming area.

It was dug about 300 years earlier for this temple, and many people began to view this pool of water as sacred because they believed it could cure diseases.

And so what Sanjay and his friends were doing was totally taboo and not allowed.

But I can promise you, Sanjay and his friends did not care.

They were having a great time.

And in fact, Sanjay was having such a great time that when he turned around and looked back up the steps they'd all charged in on, he saw one of his friends, whose name was Vishwas, was standing up out of the water reading what looked like a plaque about this pool of water.

And Sanjay hated the idea of one of their buddies not getting to experience this fun.

And so Sanjay, a little out of pocket, yelled out to Vishwas, like, hey, stop reading that and get in the water.

Let's go.

What are you doing?

And Vishwas was obviously kind of embarrassed to be called out so publicly in front of the, you know, 19 other kids that were there.

They're all looking up at him expectantly now, like, yeah, get in here, man.

And Vishwas, he's like, okay, fine.

And so he took off his shirt, put his phone down as well, and he got in the water with all of them.

And very shortly after he did that, Sanjay kind of forgot about him and decided, hey, this would be a great time to take a photo of everybody here, you know, memorialize this amazing trip.

And so, Sanjay, he waded over to the steps, he grabbed his phone, he came back towards the group, and, you know, he's looking at this big, rowdy crowd of his friends who are totally not paying attention to him.

And he's saying, hey, guys, come over here.

I want to take your photo, you know, gather up.

I'll take a photo of all of us.

And so it took a couple of minutes, but eventually, you know, all these kids got in frame.

And Sanjay, you know, he held the phone out, made sure everybody was there.

And they all smiled and he took a picture.

And then after he took the picture, Sanjay put his phone back on the steps and returned to just splashing and goofing around with his friends.

About an hour later, Sanjay and his friends had left the pool and were now in the temple and were just walking around exploring.

But eventually, Sanjay just got tired of looking inside the temple.

It was not very interesting to him.

And so he eventually just went outside again and sat down on this low wall that was right outside the temple.

And because he knew his friends would not be done for at least, you know, 15 or 20 minutes or so, he just pulled out his phone and began kind of scrolling through social media and, you know, doing what we all do on our phones.

But eventually, Sanjay opened up his photo album to look at all the photos he had taken during the hike in, and then also that picture in the pool, and then also some pictures he took inside of the temple.

And so he pulls up his pictures and just kind of starts scrolling through them, and he eventually reaches the photo that he took, selfie style, in the pool with all of his friends together.

And so he opens that picture up and he looks at it and he smiles because it definitely was the best picture he took.

You know, he got all his buddies in frame.

Everybody seems so happy.

But as Sanjay was looking at this photo, he realized there was something odd about it.

There was just something in this photo that just seemed like it shouldn't be.

And as he looked more closely at it, the smile on his face faded and he began to panic just a little bit.

He didn't know if what he was looking at was real or not, but he knew he had to go find out.

And so Sanjay put his phone away and he looked up and began looking around outside the temple at all the other people who had left, and many of them included his friends, and they were walking around, talking in groups or whatever.

And Sanjay, he began looking at all of his friends, and he would stare at their faces.

He was looking for something, but he didn't see what he was looking for.

And so after scanning the entire outside and not feeling satisfied, Sanjay got up and speedwalked back into the temple and began going into each and every room, looking at every single person he encountered.

And when he would find one of his friends, he would stare at their face.

And when he didn't find what he was looking for, he just kept on going to every single room until finally he reached the last room of the the temple and he found the last of his friends and he looked at their faces and still he did not see what he was looking for.

And so now Sanjay is truly panicked.

He's actually horrified at this point.

He runs back outside and he finds their college professor who had come along to sort of chaperone the trip.

And he ran up to this professor and he pulled out his phone.

He opened up that photo of them in the pool and Sanjay pointed out the strange thing about this photo.

And so the professor, he began looking at the photo too, and right away he also could see this very strange thing that seemed very out of place.

And so the professor asked Sanjay a few follow-up questions, you know, about like what Sanjay had done since discovering this.

And after Sanjay said, you know, I've been all over the temple.

I still can't figure it out.

And so the professor knew the police would have to get involved.

And so the professor got in touch with police.

And so the police came out to the temple not long after that.

And the students, so Sanjay and all of his friends had been instructed to stay right by the temple.

Do not go down to the pool.

Stay up here.

Let the police handle it.

And so when the police came in, they came running by the group and Sanjay and his friends are just kind of watching anxiously, waiting to see what happens.

And then as the officers went down to the pool, from where Sanjay and his friends were standing, they actually did not have a clear view.

The temple itself blocked their view, so they could not see the pool, but they could hear what the officers were doing.

And at first, as Sanjay and his friends are standing there really nervously, they don't hear anything down at the pool.

But then they hear one of the officers shout something out like he's found something, and then Sanjay and his friends heard all this splashing as clearly officers were jumping into the pool.

And it was at this moment when Sanjay heard that splashing that he knew the thing he saw in this photo, it had to be real.

As horrible as that was, it had to be real.

The reason why Sanjay's friend, Vishwas, was not in the water with everybody else, you know, why he was up reading that plaque about the history of this pool, was because Vishwas Vishwas did not know how to swim, but he didn't tell anyone.

Nobody knew this.

And so he was probably kind of embarrassed about it.

And so maybe was reading this plaque as sort of a way to, you know, act distracted, like the plaque is the reason he's not swimming.

But then when Sanjay, who meant no harm by this, but he yelled out to Vishwas, hey, come on, dude, get in here.

Come swimming with us.

You know, because he did it so publicly in front of all the other friends, it seems like Vishwas felt very pressured into getting into the water.

And that's what he did.

Instead of telling anybody that he could not swim, he just kind of shrugged, took off his shirt, pulled his phone out of his pocket, put it on the ground, and waded into the water.

And as soon as he did, the entire group just kind of went back to goofing around and splashing and being totally chaotic.

And then when Sanjay was like, hey, let's take that photo, he really did manage to get all of his friends in frame somehow.

Except One of them was Vishwas, and you can only see the top of his head.

It's because he was drowning in the background of that photo, just nobody knew it.

And so obviously, an hour later, when Sanjay's looking at this photo, he sees the top of Vishwas' head and he's like, wait a minute, is he goofing around or is he drowning?

And then he ran all around the temple looking for Vishwas.

He wanted to prove that he was not in the pool still, that he was up here.

But then after searching the entire area and not finding Vishwas, he went to his professor, they called the police, and the discovery was made.

And unfortunately, by the time police pulled Vichwas out of the water, he was already deceased.

A quick note about our stories.

They are all based on true events.

But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr.

Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr.

Ballin.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bone.

Research and fact-checking by Shelly Hsu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.

Audio editing and post-produced by Witt Lacasio and Cole Lacasio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins.

Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner.

Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr.

Ballin podcast.

If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcasts.

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All All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts.

To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr.

Ballin.

So, that's going to do it.

I really appreciate your support.

Until next time, see ya.

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