9: BONUS EP - Unsung Heroes

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Speaker 25 Novel

Speaker 25 greetings. You have reached the phone number of Tamerlane, real-life supervillain.
Please leave a message so we can stay in touch. And most importantly, stay evil.

Speaker 5 This is Tamerlane, a real-life supervillain whose bonkers online videos caught our attention. So we reached out to him, and he agreed to chat with us from his secret lair.

Speaker 26 I had to get all dolled up for you today and put on my best leather.

Speaker 5 Tamerlane did our interview in his full supervillain regalia. If you listen carefully, you can hear his leather pants squeaking.
He has a shaved head and a beard dyed bright red.

Speaker 5 He wears a metal gauntlet on one hand and he accents his look with a gold grill over his teeth and a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

Speaker 26 Well, I just think aviators just say to me, douchebag.

Speaker 26 When I see people on aviators,

Speaker 26 don't you think they look douchey? I do. They're like trying excessively hard to be cool, so I adopted that as my own.

Speaker 5 Tamerlane took his name from a Turco-Mongol conqueror who rampaged across Central Asia in the 14th century.

Speaker 26 He would leave pyres of humans' heads outside of cities that he was going to sack and lay siege to. And I think he left a clear message, so he was a good inspiration for me.

Speaker 5 But Tamerlane doesn't only take inspiration from ancient warriors.

Speaker 26 As a child, I was a huge fan of Mr. T.

Speaker 26 So he was a little bit of an inspiration to me as as well.

Speaker 5 And in his more introspective moments, Tamerlane would say his persona came from even closer to home.

Speaker 26 Was there some sort of Nietzschean monster within us all? Some sort of

Speaker 26 Carl Jung's belief in the shadow self? Yes, I would say that

Speaker 26 the disconnect I had with my own family and my own father helped create this character.

Speaker 26 Also, my disappointment in society, trying to be a good citizen, trying to do the right thing and get a nine-to-five job and work 40 hours a week and be an obedient servant of the fascio capitalist system.

Speaker 26 I think failing at that, and again my disconnect from my family, yes, helped create this character.

Speaker 5 As you might have gathered from his voicemail, an affinity for bloodthirsty warlords, Tamerlane identifies as a real-life supervillain.

Speaker 5 And a bit like Rex Velvet, he sees it as his duty to offer a kind of meta-commentary on the superhero world.

Speaker 26 I was at home one day and I was stroking my beloved pet and I noticed on the news a story came on about real-life superheroes.

Speaker 26 And mostly it would seem that these real-life superheroes spent their time handing out sandwiches and warm socks.

Speaker 26 And I thought to myself, what arrogance. How dare they go around calling themselves real-life superheroes when they set the bar so low?

Speaker 26 So I said to myself, well, self, you are a real-life super villain by comparison so from that day forth i made it my goal to become the best real-life super villain i could become tamerlane isn't above his own heroics when the moment calls for it one time he says he got into a fight with a wolverine impersonator at a nightclub it was a party and he was like squirting tequila and to uh to the mouths of miners and he had a microphone i thought it would be a good idea to take it from him.

Speaker 26 So I took his microphone and began writing through the nightclub saying, A supervillain's up in here running this bitch.

Speaker 26 He didn't like that, and he tackled me from behind.

Speaker 5 His other hobbies include protesting against what he calls his enemies: insurrectionists, fascists, Republicans,

Speaker 26 Christians, even, dare I say.

Speaker 5 He also runs a supervillain YouTube channel where he reviews fast food.

Speaker 26 All right, guys, we're off to get some dessert.

Speaker 10 This is the Dairy Queen, yeah

Speaker 5 he starred in short films and he does charity work.

Speaker 26 My charity is save the chips.org. Being that I am an anthropology major I have a very close affinity to our chimpanzee cousins.

Speaker 5 We didn't get to hear from Tamerlane in the main series because Tamerlane isn't a part of the Seattle superhero scene. He's from Miami.

Speaker 5 He's just one of many people all over America and the world who've taken up a cape or mask, or in this case, a pair pair of leather trousers, and joined the real-life superhero community.

Speaker 5 In the course of making the superhero complex, I met a lot more than just Phoenix and his crew.

Speaker 5 So, in this bonus episode, I wanted to fire up the Batmobile one more time and take you on a whistle-stop tour of the rest of this wild world and the folks like Tamerlane who inhabit it.

Speaker 5 I'm David Weinberg, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, this is the Superhero Complex, episode 9, Unsung Heroes.

Speaker 5 One person who got to know the real-life superhero world as well as I did is writer and broadcaster John Ronson, who we heard from in episode four.

Speaker 5 John hung out with real-life superheroes from across America. But like me, his introduction to this weird and wild world started in Seattle in true Phoenix Jones style.

Speaker 29 The first time I met him, it was in the emergency room. I got off the plane in Seattle and got a message that he'd been shot, I think.

Speaker 29 Stabbed. My first thought, of course, was, oh, shit, I've just traveled from Britain and he's been stabbed.

Speaker 29 So that's how empathetic I was after a 12-hour flight so I got to the emergency room and he's there in a superhero outfit in the emergency room and he had been stabbed but he's like it's okay you know I was stabbed earlier tonight but I'm gonna go out and patrol some more and I'm like are you sure and then the doctor came in and asked him about his family doctor and he named his pediatrician and I said are you a child but it turns out you can he was like 23 and you can be with your pediatrician until you're 24, apparently, in America.

Speaker 29 I did say to him, look, you've just been stabbed. Are you sure that you want to patrol? Like, I can honestly wait till tomorrow night.
He's like, no, you know, I'm fine. We're going out.

Speaker 5 A couple of nights later, they went on the patrol where they'd ultimately face down the crack dealers in Belltown.

Speaker 5 But before that epic showdown, John said Phoenix was clutching at straws, trying to find crimes to thwart.

Speaker 29 Phoenix saw somebody pass a baggie to someone else, and he went yahtzee and ran across the road and said,

Speaker 29 sir,

Speaker 29 it's kind of stupid. Superhero outfit, sir, can I see that baggie?

Speaker 29 And

Speaker 29 it was pretzels.

Speaker 29 And he was like, so disappointed.

Speaker 5 I was jealous that John had even this experience while on patrol with Phoenix. I wasn't so lucky.
We never even encountered a bag of salty snacks being exchanged suspiciously.

Speaker 5 Comparing notes on Phoenix Jones wasn't the only reason I wanted to talk to John.

Speaker 5 He spent a lot of time with other different real-life superheroes too, and I was curious to learn what he'd made of the whole scene. He told me in his experience, they fell into two camps.

Speaker 29 You've got the sort of Phoenix-type ones who are into the costumes. Sometimes they even have like the special weapons like the web gun or the grappling hooks.
So you've got that sort,

Speaker 29 of which Phoenix

Speaker 29 was the clear like leader. And they all looked up to him.
He had the best costume, he was the most charismatic. That lot were quite camp.

Speaker 29 I remember we were looking at this group of crack addicts that they wanted to break up at the bus stop at three in the morning.

Speaker 29 And the crack addicts were like looking at us and the superheroes were like murmuring to each other. And the crack addicts were presumably thinking, you know, what are they saying to each other?

Speaker 29 And what the superheroes were saying to each other was,

Speaker 29 oh, I love your black and yellow color scheme. The yellow really pops.

Speaker 29 So they were, so you had that genre of superhero who were all pretty delightful, even though I didn't agree with what they were doing. But then you had this other sort who I thought were much worse.

Speaker 5 John told me he'd met some superheroes who represented the second camp when he was in New York City.

Speaker 5 He went on patrol with a group called the New York Initiative, and they left him feeling deeply uncomfortable.

Speaker 29 They were barely superheroes at all. What they really were were vigilantes.

Speaker 29 They didn't make much of an effort with the color scheme. It was more just balaclavas.

Speaker 29 And they wanted to break up drug dealers in Washington Square Park. But it was only when they ran towards this guy with lights, like flashlights.
I mean, they were terrifying this guy.

Speaker 29 They surrounded this guy and they had like floodlights and were like lit him up.

Speaker 29 And the poor guy was like running away, saying, You don't know me, you don't know anything about me, you don't know why I'm here.

Speaker 29 You know, this guy, and I was on his side, and this guy was selling weed to the students at NYU, and they did all of that,

Speaker 29 you know, terrifying the life out of this poor guy with lights and shaming

Speaker 29 for weed.

Speaker 29 Now, a few years later, weed's legal and you can stand in Washington Square Park and smoke weed and the police are fine because it's legal to do it. So I had a very bad vibe with them.

Speaker 29 I thought they were very unpleasant. Because after my piece came out, this one guy who was the ringleader

Speaker 29 of the New York crew was like really angry. It was like, you know, let's get Ronson.

Speaker 29 And I remember somebody said to me, oh, he's really troubled.

Speaker 5 I never encountered this type of superhero in Seattle. Everyone I talked to seemed to be more of the Phoenix camp, well-meaning folks who seemed to have their hearts in the right place.

Speaker 5 But John wasn't just uncomfortable with the real-life superheroes he met in New York. He thinks the whole movement is flawed.

Speaker 29 I don't believe in real-life superheroing. Like, I don't think it's something that people should do.

Speaker 29 Look, the real police of flawed do, but they're flawed in a different way. And quite often, when we try and better the justice system,

Speaker 25 we

Speaker 29 bring new problems to it. You see that with social media shaming, and

Speaker 29 I think you see it with the real-life superheroes. So, one of the main things is just that they're too into it.
And when you're too into something,

Speaker 29 that's when the problems start. That's when you commit miscarriages of justice.

Speaker 29 So, that was my main animus: that there were two into it. They were into the fame.
It was like a badge of honor to thwart a crime. And I don't think crime fighters should feel about crime that way.

Speaker 29 It should be more pragmatic and by the book.

Speaker 5 I found this to be true for Phoenix Jones as well. I think his desire for fame and compulsion to find crime don't serve him well and his attempt to live up to the ideals of a superhero.

Speaker 5 But despite John's reservations about the real-life superhero community's crime crime-fighting tactics, he told me that Phoenix was his favorite out of all the heroes he met.

Speaker 29 Phoenix was the best. I mean, that's why you're doing him.
He was just the most charismatic, funny, charming. Inevitably, then, some of them will be like angry and troubled.

Speaker 29 And he didn't feel like that. Some of them would be like nerdy

Speaker 29 kind of misfits.

Speaker 29 And I think Phoenix was a misfit, but not in a kind of gamer type.

Speaker 29 I mean, I'm sure he is a gamer, but he wasn't like one of those sort of nerdy guys who just spends two logs sitting in front of his computer and decides to like buy an outfit and go out and do it on the streets.

Speaker 29 Of which there were other superheroes who were like that,

Speaker 29 you know, a little out of shape, and you could tell that they were just passing through.

Speaker 5 I asked John if he still thought of Phoenix that way, even after his 2021 conviction on drug conspiracy charges.

Speaker 29 I was genuinely startled and saddened. Like, like everyone, one of my least favorite things is hypocrisy.
And obviously, the first thing you think is, well, is he a hypocrite?

Speaker 29 But mainly, I just felt sad. Like, I know from spending that time with Phoenix that he's a sweet guy, he wants to do good.
You know, Phoenix is a very unique person.

Speaker 29 He's this sort of weird kind of specialness to to him. It feels like

Speaker 29 it's a little sullied now

Speaker 29 because we wanted him to be, he was setting himself up as pure

Speaker 29 and we wanted him to be pure.

Speaker 5 John said that compared to the New York superheroes who just seemed angry and vengeful when they chased down drug dealers, Phoenix had seemed a lot more idealistic.

Speaker 5 In fact, John said when they faced off with the crack dealers on the patrol we heard about in episode four, he really felt Phoenix was genuine.

Speaker 29 The conversation that I overheard with the crack dealer was like, I've got no choice. This is how I feed my family.
I've got no choice. And Phoenix was like, sir, you do have a choice.

Speaker 29 And was like, they're trying to be a positive influence. And I'm sure that was real.
That was part of what attracted him to us. was that he was innocent and sweet and pure.
And yeah, he was goofy.

Speaker 29 And yeah, there were definitely some bad sides to what he did, getting too into it. But there was a kind of goofiness and a purity to him.
And the problem with the drug allegation

Speaker 29 is that it's not pure anymore. It's like hypocritical.
And I heard that now people yell hypocrite at him as he walks down the street in Seattle.

Speaker 29 Now, my guess is that there's a complicated set of circumstances as to why he ended up in that situation. But the problem is no one likes hypocrisy.

Speaker 5 That was the same problem I had with Phoenix. But John said that for all Phoenix's flaws, there was still one moment that stuck in his mind.

Speaker 29 My last memory of Phoenix were all of these kids just gathered around him, like so excited. Oh my god, it's Phoenix Jones, it's Phoenix Jones.
And he was a celebrity.

Speaker 29 As I walked away, I looked back and I saw these kids with Phoenix and I thought, well, he's no different to a superhero. He's giving these kids the same

Speaker 29 joy. that a real superhero would.
So he is a superhero in a way.

Speaker 5 For all the ups and downs in Phoenix's superhero career, there's no denying that he has genuinely inspired people along the way. And not just in the US.

Speaker 5 The superheroes John met and the ones I've spent time with in this series so far are all based in America.

Speaker 5 But since the heyday of the Rain City crew, the real-life superhero movement has gone international.

Speaker 5 It's time to meet the Cape Crusaders who are fighting crime all over the globe. That's coming up.

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Speaker 5 America may be the birthplace of the classic comic book superheroes and the country where the real-life superhero movement found its feet.

Speaker 5 But all over the world, there are thriving pockets of superhero activity.

Speaker 5 Who knows? Maybe there's even a masked Avenger in your neighborhood, sneaking out late at night in a cape and mask to ward off muggers or clean up the streets.

Speaker 5 So, first stop on our superhero world tour is Japan.

Speaker 33 I guess there are about 40 heroes in Japan.

Speaker 5 This is Clean Panther. She wears a blue, red, and black kimono and a futuristic yellow panther mask that covers her whole head.

Speaker 5 Japan has the biggest real-life superhero scene I encountered outside of America.

Speaker 5 But whereas the groups I met in Seattle were into crime fighting and homeless outreach, the big focus in Japan is picking up litter. That's how Clean Panther got her name.

Speaker 33 My main activity is clean up town,

Speaker 33 so named Clean, and also combined with Panther. I love Black Panther, the Marvel superhero.

Speaker 5 Clean Panther and her superhero crew go on litter patrols, picking up trash in Nagoya, Japan's fourth largest city.

Speaker 5 They're just some of many heroes with names like Hell Hero, Clean Arrow, and Maroon Sparrow. who gear up in fantastical masks and body armor to tidy up their cities.

Speaker 5 For Phoenix Jones, a patrol that isn't focused on taking out bad guys is a patrol wasted. So I can imagine he wouldn't fit in too well with the Japanese scene.
But they do have one thing in common.

Speaker 5 The real-life superheroes of Japan are great at social media. They post videos of themselves cleaning up their towns, shot like an action film with a comic book movie soundtrack.

Speaker 5 Over in Europe, they have their own superheroes too.

Speaker 8 Well, of course I can't give you my real name, but but I go by it as the Incredible Spider.

Speaker 5 The Incredible Spider is from the Netherlands. He likes to keep his superhero activities on the down low, so he asked us to disguise his voice.

Speaker 8 I want to protect myself and the people I love.

Speaker 8 I don't say that I work outside of the law, but sometimes it really has its benefits to not work specifically by the law, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 5 He says he divides his time between online vigilanteism and real-life street patrols. And his costume is a tribute to his favorite superhero, Spider-Man.

Speaker 8 He was basically the one character that really inspired me to do more to do all this. And it's also a symbol that people trust, people feel safe around Spider-Man.

Speaker 5 He wears a red suit with a white spider on the chest over stab-proof armor and a homemade protective spider mask. He even builds his own Spider-Man inspired gadgets, like a DIY web slinger.

Speaker 8 I got some web shooters with a food that has like a pepper spray mixture in it. So if somebody were to attack me, I can like simply pepper spray them and they wouldn't see it.

Speaker 8 Like it's all covered in the suit so people wouldn't see come in.

Speaker 5 The Incredible Spider has a pretty defined aesthetic, albeit one that borrows heavily from one of fiction's most well-known superheroes. It's not easy to come up with your own superhero identity.

Speaker 5 Sometimes it takes time to refine it. There's also another Dutch superhero who went through a lot of different alter egos before he ultimately landed on the perfect alias.

Speaker 34 My first alias I've used was Blue Tornado. I was called Blue Tornado because those were the only two English words I knew back at the time.

Speaker 5 After that, it was Black Shadow. Then Green Assassin for a while.

Speaker 34 I just jumped to my closet like, what's the most superhero combination of clothes I have right now? And it was an all-black suit and that's when I started Shadow Panther.

Speaker 34 And Shadow Panther was the alias I've actually

Speaker 34 got arrested with because they thought I was trouble.

Speaker 5 This was a few years ago when Shadow Panther was around 17.

Speaker 34 I was walking through a park because the killer clown hype was

Speaker 34 raging back then.

Speaker 5 If the killer clown hype passed you by, it was an international hoax that got a lot of traction around 2016.

Speaker 5 There were rumors and news stories about evil clowns popping up all over the world who supposedly preyed on children.

Speaker 34 And it was like, hey, I'm going out there in the park trying to catch killer clowns. And I had this like huge iron bar with me to protect myself, you know.

Speaker 34 And this couple of guys came by and they asked me what I was doing. So I just started explaining.

Speaker 5 So the two guys called the police who weren't impressed.

Speaker 5 And what I would give to have been there to see Shadow Panther decked out in his full costume, explaining to the cops that he was there to fight off killer clowns.

Speaker 34 I tried to mimic like a Panther's face, but it kind of was like a snake face.

Speaker 34 It had like little teeth at the mouth opening and stuff and safety goggles in it. It was completely made of trash bags and duct tape.

Speaker 5 That run-in with the cops was basically the end of the Shadow Panther era. Now he's known as Blood Slash and he says he's given up on ridding the world of killer clowns.

Speaker 34 I'm there to help people out with small things, pointing the directions and stuff.

Speaker 34 And if trouble is going down, I'm trying to be there to be one of the people that has their phone in their hands, calls the alarm number,

Speaker 34 that kind of things.

Speaker 5 I have to say, to me, the name Blood Slash doesn't really say, I'm your friendly neighborhood helper warden. But maybe it won't be the final alias this intrepid hero tries on for size.

Speaker 5 If he ever decided to take up the good old iron bar again and head to Seattle, I think Blood Slash would find a kindred spirit in Midnight Jack.

Speaker 5 After all, once upon a time, Jack was just a guy in a mask hiding in a bush with a baseball bat.

Speaker 5 Over in Mexico, the scene is a little different. Mexico is home to one of my favorite offshoots of the real-life superhero world.
Meet political scientist Jorge Canez.

Speaker 7 AKA El Piatonito.

Speaker 5 Jorge studied urban planning and transportation in college. When he was growing up in Mexico City, he discovered his true passion in life, road safety.

Speaker 7 We built cities for cars, motorized cities, metal machines in the streets, killing everyone, literally.

Speaker 5 Jorge struggled to get other people as fired up about infrastructure as he was.

Speaker 7 You know, it could be boring to talk about pedestrians with people, and nobody will read an academic paper about pedestrian road safety.

Speaker 5 Then, one night, Jorge and his best friend went to catch a Lucha Libre wrestling match. It was something they did all the time, but that night was different.

Speaker 5 Jorge watched the masked Luchador fighters throw each other around the ring and their gleaming costumes, and a crazy idea popped into his head.

Speaker 7 We need to do something fun.

Speaker 7 Why not after the match, we buy a cape and a mask and go out to the streets to fight for the rights of pedestrians?

Speaker 5 And just like that, a new hero was born. El Peatonito.
That's Spanish for the pedestrian. For his first few outings, El Peatonito wore a $5 cape,

Speaker 5 but then he got an upgrade.

Speaker 7 My brother helped me with the design of the mask. It's a crosswalk with a pedestrian.

Speaker 7 I told my grandmother to help me design my cape, and my cape has white and black stripes. just like a pedestrian crosswalk.

Speaker 5 With his new super suit, El Peatonito set out to brave the onslaught of rush hour in Mexico City.

Speaker 5 He wove through road-raging drivers and toxic exhaust fumes with his black and white crosswalk cape streaming out behind him.

Speaker 7 I push back cars that are obstructing the crosswalk.

Speaker 7 I paint sidewalks and I paint crosswalks and bikeways without any permits. And

Speaker 7 my most controversial action in the streets is to walk on top of the cars parked on the sidewalk. Because the sidewalk is a space of pedestrians.

Speaker 7 My mother tells me that I can get in trouble with the owner of the cars.

Speaker 5 El Peatonito has a lot in common with the real-life superheroes I met in the U.S., but he prefers a different label.

Speaker 7 I don't like too much the word superhero. I feel it sounds pretentious, I don't know, but I like more in Spanish the word luchador.

Speaker 7 It's a fighter, a fighter of the streets.

Speaker 5 Lucha libre wrestling started out in the late 19th century and it's famous for its high-flying takedowns and masked fighters who wear brightly colored capes.

Speaker 5 Each luchador creates their own superhero-esque persona. Some of them symbolize good and some embody evil.

Speaker 7 It's a message that we always have this struggle with the two sides of humanity, you know, we are all good and evil by nature.

Speaker 25 And this

Speaker 7 representation with luchadores, with these wrestlers with colorful masks and capes, and it's a great way to express this internal battle of human beings.

Speaker 5 Just like the real-life superheroes who came before Phoenix Jones, El Peatonito has his own cape-wearing predecessors in Mexico too.

Speaker 5 In the late 1980s, a luchador in red tights and a gold cape named Super Barrio Gomez fought for affordable housing after thousands of people were left homeless by an earthquake in Mexico City.

Speaker 5 But El Peotenito's main inspiration was a man named Antanas Mokas. He was a mathematician and philosopher with thick glasses and a sandy beard.

Speaker 5 He roamed the city of Bogotá, Colombia in red spandex underpants and a cape with a letter C painted across his chest. It stood for Super Civico, Super Citizen.

Speaker 5 His central mission was to use his superpowers of comedy and performance to get people fired up about important issues.

Speaker 5 He even turned up on TV naked, apart from his superhero logo, and took a shower to protest the lack of clean water in the city.

Speaker 5 And then, in 1995, he ran for mayor of Bogota.

Speaker 7 He won the election and he was mayor of Bogotá. And during his administration,

Speaker 7 he fired all the corrupt transit police and he hired mimes to control traffic.

Speaker 5 You heard that right. He hired 420 mimes with white painted faces and fluorescent dungarees.

Speaker 5 They fanned out across the city, mocking people who broke traffic laws and helping pedestrians cross the roads. The result was a 50% drop in traffic fatalities.

Speaker 5 And this superhero mayor, Super Civico, also brought down homicide rates by 70% with his other unusual policies. At one point, he got 45,000 citizens to gather in the streets and inflate balloons.

Speaker 5 They were painted with the image of someone who they felt had persecuted them in some way. Together, the citizens popped the balloons in a form of citywide performance therapy.

Speaker 7 I had the privilege to talk with him about this, and he told me that it's a way to have a civic theater in the streets. You know, people love to see a theater

Speaker 7 and spectacles in the streets and that's a great way to send a message in a peaceful way. And then I decided like we need a pedestrian superhero in Mexico City.

Speaker 5 This is a world I desperately want to live in. One where our philosopher mayor wears a cape to celebrate the humble citizen.

Speaker 5 A city run by a visionary leader who hires hundreds of mimes as traffic police.

Speaker 5 What a beautiful sight that must have been.

Speaker 5 Why can't we have that? I would even settle for a world in which one of my elected officials was a real-life supervillain, like, oh, I don't know, Lord Mole.

Speaker 35 I've got an old Russian tank commander's helmet and a big overcoat and goggles, obviously, because Mole is a mole.

Speaker 35 He's short-sighted, but he needs the glasses and the goggles because he also is a scientist.

Speaker 5 Despite his supposedly villainous persona, Lord Mole is actually a good guy.

Speaker 5 He spends a lot of his time out on the streets of Birmingham, England, doing homeless outreach or charity fundraising with his son, who is also a real-life superhero.

Speaker 35 My son, Andrew, was being called ElectroKid by the other heroes because of all of the treatment that he'd had in hospital for a brain tumor.

Speaker 35 and then Electro Lad as he got a bit older and then he became Proton because of the Proton Beam Therapy. So our favourite organisation to raise money for is the Birmingham Children's Hospital.

Speaker 5 Lord Mole runs a real-life superhero collective called the UK Initiative. It's part of a larger superhero network called the Initiative, which exists all over the world.

Speaker 35 We've got groups in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, South America and obviously the UK.

Speaker 5 As it turned out, two of the leaders were only a few hours away from me, just outside of San Francisco. So what's it like to run the real-life equivalent of an international Avengers squad?

Speaker 5 That's coming up.

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Speaker 27 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Speaker 5 If the real-life superhero movement has a spiritual home, it's a bakery in the Bay Area called Superhero Desserts.

Speaker 5 You'll find it in a red brick building with a glass fridge out front full of cakes with elaborate fondant toppings. Inside it's cozy.

Speaker 5 There are fairy lights hanging up and photos on the walls of people dressed up in superhero costumes. It's run by Edwina and Mike, aka Rock and Roll and Nightbug.

Speaker 5 If you catch them in costume, Nightbug is decked out in red and black with a smooth red mask that covers his whole face and and black mesh holes over his eyes.

Speaker 5 Rock and roll likes to switch up her look, but you might find her with long bright pink hair, knee-high black boots, and a purple cape.

Speaker 5 They're two of the leaders of a global superhero network with chapters all over the world called the Initiative.

Speaker 5 They're also husband and wife, but they didn't start out their real-life superhero journey together.

Speaker 37 I had been doing it without

Speaker 37 the wife's knowledge because I had figured, well, you know what? If they are completely crazy and I go out twice and I'm like, this is not for me, I can just forget the whole thing ever happened.

Speaker 5 Nightbug had heard about some heroes in his neighborhood doing costumed safety patrols and he wanted to check it out. So one night he pulled on a mask and snuck out to join them.

Speaker 5 Several patrols later, Nightbug figured it was time to let his wife in on the secret.

Speaker 38 And he said, okay, you know, I know I told you about this movie I want you to come see. It's called Superheroes.

Speaker 38 And so we went to this theater, The Roxy, in San Francisco, and there were all these weird guys standing around in costume outside. And I thought, why do you guys really take these shows seriously?

Speaker 38 You're all dressed up.

Speaker 5 It turned out the movie was a documentary.

Speaker 38 I realized, oh my God, this is about people who are trying to be real life superheroes. And the arc of the movie is beautiful in that you're laughing at these people at first.

Speaker 38 You're ridiculing them, you know, with the rest of the audience.

Speaker 38 And then you see the sacrifices they make, the determination, and just the dedication they have by the end of it you're rooting for these guys i was and so was the audience by the sound of it they were all clapping at the end after the credits rolled some of the people who'd come dressed up in costumes assembled at the front of the movie theater for the director's q a nightbug said he needed to use the bathroom the questions happen he's not back 10 minutes later i'm going oh my gosh is he okay i'm looking at my watch and this guy in this costume walks up right to the front of the theater where the other heroes are, and he takes his place.

Speaker 38 And they go, hey guys, this is Nightbug. I went to the back, and I was going looking for just any man to go into the bathroom and check on my husband.
And then I hear my husband's voice.

Speaker 38 And I go, oh, thank goodness. And I turn around, but it's not my husband talking.
It's Nightbug.

Speaker 38 I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. And I was speechless.
I couldn't believe it. So that's how I was introduced to it.

Speaker 5 After that, were you like, oh, this is great? Or you're like, I don't know about this.

Speaker 38 Oh, my God. And immediately, immediately, the same things were running through my head.
Oh my God. How long has he been doing this? How did he keep this from me? And I love this.

Speaker 38 How can I get into it?

Speaker 5 Edwina, soon to be known as Rock and Roll, was pretty well qualified for superhero work.

Speaker 38 We've been martial artists and instructors for decades now. And I was the head of security for a nightclub in San Francisco.
It felt like being a bouncer, but for the entire city of San Francisco.

Speaker 5 These days, Nightbug and Rock and Roll are something of a superhero power couple. They founded the California chapter of the International Superhero Group, the Initiative, in 2011.

Speaker 5 Thirteen more initiative chapters have sprung up since.

Speaker 5 As it happens, the New York branch of the initiative is the same group John Ronson went on patrol with, though a lot of the membership has turned over since then.

Speaker 5 From their base in California, Rock and Roll and Nightbug have become magnets for aspiring superheroes all over the world.

Speaker 37 We used to get several emails a month from people who are like, oh yeah, I can move things with my mind. You know,

Speaker 37 oh, yeah, can you demonstrate that? Oh no, no, I can't do it over video because

Speaker 37 there's always some excuse.

Speaker 38 I think it's a masterpiece of an understatement to say that we get a few. We get like out of 10 people, I'd say seven of people are just unrealistic about.

Speaker 38 Dudes, we don't go out taking down drug lords. It's not what we do.
You'll find out really quickly that you don't actually have superpowers.

Speaker 5 To make sure their budding recruits stay grounded on this plane of reality, Rock and Roll and Nightbug run a Facebook page where they and other veteran superheroes offer advice.

Speaker 5 They even have their own podcast called Heroes 101.

Speaker 5 The initiative wasn't the only reason I wanted to talk to Rock and Roll and Nightbug. Phoenix Jones repeatedly claimed to be the only true real-life superhero, one who was flawless at crime fighting.

Speaker 5 But as you know, I had my doubts. So every time I interviewed a superhero for this series, I asked them who they thought was the best example of a real-life superhero out there today.

Speaker 5 And again and again, people told me rock and roll and nightbug.

Speaker 5 So I was curious to meet them and find out what they were up to. Turns out it was a lot.
They started out doing community outreach to unhoused people in their community every week.

Speaker 26 We were going broke, to put it plainly.

Speaker 38 We'd make 200 burritos and, you know, every week and then bring them out with socks and water and everything else. And pretty soon we went we can't do this anymore.

Speaker 5 At the time rock and roll had been watching a lot of the Great British Baking Show.

Speaker 38 And so I was baking so much that my friends were going you know if your family's getting sick of all the sugar and you can't do anything with it why don't you just have a pop-up?

Speaker 38 Take the money and do something good with it. Oh my god, there you go.

Speaker 5 That's how their bakery superhero desserts was born. 15% of their profits go to fund superhero community outreach events every month.

Speaker 38 We had 50 people the last time, 60 people the time before, and they all got together wearing superhero costumes and making burritos and things together.

Speaker 5 They also carry out safety patrols, run free self-defense classes, and according to their website, they've personally collected 11,000 used needles from the streets of California.

Speaker 5 When I talked to Rock and Roll and Nightbug about the Seattle superhero scene, They told me they were close with Evo and Crystal Marks, and they were big fans of Red Ranger too.

Speaker 5 But they were less complimentary about our old friend, Phoenix Jones.

Speaker 38 To be perfectly blunt, and Phoenix knows this, we've said it before to him, Phoenix has a kind heart, but Phoenix has made a lot of really bad decisions.

Speaker 38 It's sad that he's the biggest name you see, but,

Speaker 38 you know, we don't want people thinking the rest of us are like him.

Speaker 5 Rock and roll and Nightbug definitely fall into the category of superhero that Phoenix derisively calls real-life sandwich handlers.

Speaker 5 Though at times, Phoenix has apologized for these types of remarks and said he wants to be able to get along and work alongside all types of superheroes.

Speaker 5 But then he'll launch into a rant about how people who give out food and costumes are assholes. So it's hard to take him at his word when he claims to be above the petty superhero infighting.

Speaker 5 Rock and Roll and Nightbook told me they aren't interested in doing this work for glory or fame. Another accusation Phoenix often lobs at other superheroes.

Speaker 38 We try to hammer it into the community. Look, it's awful if you think about it to want to be someone's hero because you're essentially hoping that someone will have the worst day of their life.

Speaker 38 So for you to want to be, oh, I want to rescue someone today, just hope that everything's quiet. And if you happen to be there for someone, that's great for you, not so great for them.

Speaker 5 I think that is probably an ideal attitude that any superhero should have when they head out on a patrol of their community.

Speaker 5 At the end of the day, I would say that I'm a supporter of the real-life superhero community.

Speaker 5 I think if you're judging real-life superheroes solely on their ability to fight crime, I would say the movement as a whole has under-delivered on that promise.

Speaker 5 But I personally never had any experiences with the kind of superheroes John Ronson met, the ones whose hearts did not appear to be in the right place. So my take is a little different than his.

Speaker 5 I don't see the movement itself as flawed. I think any movement will have its bad apples, the ones who seem to be doing more harm than good.

Speaker 5 But at least in my experience, I think the vast majority of real-life superheroes do way more good for society than harm.

Speaker 5 It's hard to quantify just how much good they do, but attempts have been made.

Speaker 5 A 2016 study at the University of Sydney looked at real-life superheroes and found that on average, they spent 19 hours a week on superhero activity, which I assume is way more time than most people spend volunteering to help their own community.

Speaker 5 And I love the idea of every town having its own unique superheroes, its own home team, so to speak, instead of a superhero monoculture dominated by the large corporations that control the intellectual property of DC and Marvel.

Speaker 5 I'm all for the diversification of the superhero universe, and I wholeheartedly support people's individual expression. Who doesn't love seeing a kick-ass homemade costume?

Speaker 5 I wish there were more real-life superheroes in every city for kids to encounter out in the wild for the good humanitarian work they do and for the sheer joy of having eccentric characters roaming the streets living out their own fantasies of what it means to be a hero.

Speaker 5 The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by me, David Weinberg, and reported by me, Amalia Sortland, and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.

Speaker 5 Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien, and David Waters are executive producers. Fact-checking by Andrew Schwartz.
Production management from Cherie Houston, Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe.

Speaker 5 Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Rob Spate.

Speaker 5 Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.

Speaker 5 Original music is composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Meara, Katrina Norvell, Beth Ann McAluso, Oren Rosenbaum, Shelby Schenkman, and all the team at UTA.

Speaker 5 For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

Speaker 39 From SC, launched to legacy.com. Today we're speaking with Dr.
Robert Engelhorn, CEO and President of BMW Manufacturing. And today's topic is location.

Speaker 40 BMW South Carolina produces more BMWs than anywhere else in the world and has just doubled down on their South Carolina investment.

Speaker 39 So Dr. Engelhorn, first question, why South Carolina?

Speaker 41 South Carolina is a great place to be. Not only the sun, which is shining most of the time here, I like the food, I like the atmosphere and the friendliness.

Speaker 41 It's about really the pro-business attitude. Again, a very talented and skilled workhorse going the extra mile.
It's a fantastic place to be.

Speaker 39 You mentioned South Carolina's pro-business government.

Speaker 41 Tell me more about that. Since the beginning, the Department of Commerce is one of our closest partners here in South Carolina.
They're doing a fantastic job.

Speaker 41 And the last 30 years have been in a tremendous momentum of growth.

Speaker 41 Now, looking towards our future investments of 1.7 billion US dollars for electric vehicles here, and this wouldn't have been possible without them.

Speaker 40 If you'd like to hear more, visit sclaunchthelegacy.com.

Speaker 12 Hello.

Speaker 5 I'm a Marine.

Speaker 42 No matter how you served.

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Speaker 5 No matter what you're going through.

Speaker 42 I keep getting calls about the bills and I'm trying to get a job.

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Speaker 5 We are here for you.

Speaker 42 If you or a veteran in your life is experiencing thoughts of suicide, dial 988, then press 1 to reach the veterans crisis line.

Speaker 32 Hey guys, it's Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa. So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.

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Speaker 4 This episode is brought to you by PBS, home of Ken Burns.

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