Casey Wants to Believe
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Hi, this is alex. Um it's been a minute, I think, about two and a half years to be exact. Um the recent time here is because I wanted to share an episode of the new show that i'm working on which is called hyper fixed, if you like.

Super tex support IT is basically the same thing except that is no longer limited to just take issues if you have any kind of problem, whether it's silly or serious, as long as there's a story to be told or some kind of hidden system to uncover, I will try to solve IT. This is the forth episode of the show. And while this one is definitely on the silver side of things, we're working on problems like why the us.

Has a different system of measurement than everyone else, why refrigerators and grocery stores don't have doors, whether to have kids in a world that feels so deeply out of control, the Price availability of passion fruit in the us. All of these are problems that we are either currently trying to solve or we have already put out an episode. Hyper fix is distributed through radio topia, which makes unbelievable shows like ear hustle, song exploded and Normal gossip.

But we're completely independent. I run the show by myself with two other producers and a courtland in the morrie tes. And we are working pretty hand to mouth in order to make the show viable.

We have a free feed where you can hear a new episode every other week and a premium feed that has bonus episodes on the off weeks. If you subscribed to the premium feet at hyper fix podd com, you'll get access to those bonus episodes as well as monthly maze. The hyperlinks discord and a whole bunch of other stuff were working on.

But if not, that stuff interests you. That's fine. There's a lot of other ways you can help that don't cost any money.

You can tell your friends, you can post about IT online or most importantly, you can submit a problem of your own that I can try and help yourself. Okay, so here's the episode. Thank you so much for giving this a chance.

I am incredibly excited to be making radio again, and I hope you enjoy IT. Hey, this is alex. This may be an unusual content wording as there's nothing like there's matic ally inappropriate in this episode.

I mean, I do see the effort a couple times, but that's not particularly out of the ordinary for the show. However, in this episode, we say the word diaries a lot, like seriously a lot. So if you're listening with children or like me, you have the mind of a child.

Just don't say IT in what you. This is hyper fixed on this show, listeners writing with problems being small, and I solve them, or at least I try. And if I don't, I give a good reason why I can. This week, casey wants to believe.

Oh my god, dude, I even telling everybody about this one.

Oh, good you too.

This is casey. He's a librarian at a small liberal arts college. He's got real gentle giant fives.

Kind of reminds me of viking. And I know this is a Young show. We're only on our four episode, but he has admitted maybe my favorite problem of all time.

It's going to be hard to talk. I am so excited. This is the problem I was born to solve.

Man, I am very happy to 的。

But before we get into that, there's a few more things about casey. I think you need to know. The first is that he loves research.

I love research.

C tojo.

that is a big part of why I became a library. And as I, for as long as I ve been on the internet, have loved going down rabid holes in a spare time.

casey loves digging around on the internet for information he can use to edit with a pedia tries, especially the sports centuries. But here's the second thing you should know about casey. He's not into the icons, the wain, great skies, the Michael Jordans, the time brides. He's into the real obscure ones. I really .

enjoy finding a lesser on player or coach or team that has a page that has one or two sentences. If we've all seen the wikipedia page with one sentence, and even if I had four, five sentences to that, at least there's something else out there. Little more information out about that person team. Um so the buttons is the same thing.

the button. This is the third thing you should know about casey, back in twenty twenty, just before he finished up his library science degree, he was looking for an internship, and then, keeping with his personality, he wasn't interested in locking down the time berdy of library science internships, you know, the new york public library, library of congress. So when he saw a listening for an internship at a place called the busy beaver button museum, he knew he had to apply just to make sure our listeners aren't picturing like, you know, the buttons on their pants. Can you describe the button we're talking yeah .

that they question a lot. When I said I was doing research for a button company, these are the buttons which would get pin to a shirt or your backpack, or a gene jacket if you are call enough to have one. Back in the eighties.

I still have A G jacket with over. And I think that cool. I can believe only four epo des into the show, and I guess they're already making fun of me anyway.

The busy beef of button museum is based in chicago. Part of IT is an e commerce custom button business, and the other part is a nonprofit museum. That's the part that casey work for.

And we've have thousands of buttons theyve gotten this donations and collected over the years, and they're trying to get them online under their website.

I went on to this website when I was started to casey, and the collection is actually pretty amazing. Their buttons for everything from political candidates to party caters buttons for seven up and aid awareness, a novelty troll doll button with a whip of hair that stretches out from the top, and a button commemorating the hundred and ninety six meeting of the IOS state medical society. It's so funny y like all of these button have like a little bit history like i'm looking at one right now is a fast food that is own by mike ca call dica dogs.

There's some fascinating ff in there.

Case's job was to research the history of the buttons in the archive and then he'd put together right up where they came from, and then a picture of the button in his historical synapse. Sis would become a page on the busy beaver website.

and there's a massive database when I started this internship of all the buttons you can pick from, and I did not pick the ones that said, vote for eke.

Of course he didn't. Just like with those wikipedia injuries, just like with his trace of internships, casey, pick the most niche of scar button he could possibly find. What is IT about you that makes you want to preserve that stuff? I think a lot of .

IT is my own personalities, my own experiences. I was a college football player, but I played a fairy small division three college so I was never on television yeah I think just never really having been in huge major limelight um kind of drive. Ask me to these smaller stories which can be just as interesting just because they weren't any S P N. There's not a book written about this button doesn't mean there's not something interest there that could be um entertaining or informative for somebody else.

This is a very admirable, very golden east way of approaching the world. And it's also precisely what LED casey to the problem we're talking about today. Okay, so just to set the scene for you cases at home, this is a remote internship. So she's doing this whole thing from his bedroom and be sitting at the computer with this massive list of uni dense fied buttons open in front of him.

I was looking at a list of buttons and just scrolling through because you got to pick randomly. And my eye caught the work diary.

So unless you're medical, professional diary isn't one of those words you typically encounter in a work setting. So casey stops throwing and read the rest of the button, which said, asked me about our new dire a inducing chili cheese fries.

And for me, that was a say no more moment. I put my name next to a declaiming, and i'm, after the race, is on this thing.

So cases goal is to figure out as much as he can about where this thing came from and why IT was made. And he has some clues to help and figure IT out.

IT does have the name of the business and what's called the curl text. Yes, it's a very technical term that we use in the in the button industry.

Curl text is the industry's term for the little bit of writing that curl over the edge of the button. So you can really only see IT if you're looking at the back of the button, is also sometimes called rem text.

The current text reads, big sub chat downland style kitchen, thirty fifth and main cuter city o globe.

Now, given this wealth of information, this should be a quick assignment. Casey has the name of the restaurant, he has its location, and he has the name of a very unique menu item. The afa mentioned dia inducing chili cheese fries. This should all be google able, but IT isn't.

If you make a google search for, ask me about our new area inducing choice for you get web M D. Um you get message boards about how these chili cheese fries gave me this condition.

So casey tries putting quotation Marks around the search to make sure that he gets results with those words exactly, maybe one a few times google says, no, there's nothing here. So then he try searching the current text. He searches big job chats, downs ranch style kitchen.

Again, nothing out there. If you go to google maps and look at customer city, oklahoma, you'll notice there's not even a thirty fifth main street.

There is a main street in customer city that's bisected by number streets, but they stop at nine street, not thirty history. And just to be clear, faster city is small. According to the twenty twenty cents. The population is three hundred and sixty seven on his quest to find big job jets, casey search through newspaper archives, he contacted the official customer city facebook page, but he always came back empty handed.

That's honestly where this, for my research, kind of stopped. I didn't spend a little time trying to find out if there was another city in oklahoma. I named custom city, but changed his name. And I think at that point I realized I was a little bit too close to Russell crow in a beautiful mind with the newspapers on the wall and the red string thing.

This all happened back in twenty, twenty, more than four years ago. And casey is still thinking about this. Button is becomes such a preoccupation for him that his brother made him a poster like the one that mulder head on the x files that says, I want to believe with the UFO on IT, except instead of a blurry flying saucer image, is a photo of this button.

Casey sent us a picture of the poster. It's hanging above his desk at home. Do you have a theory, any theory, about where this came from?

A couple and they kind of sad, I guess, my theory. And there are two different ways to look at IT that this was just made as a practice, either for a class like a photoshop class or a marketing class. And the assignment was make a button advertising something.

It's make a fictional restaurant or make a fiction al company. And this is what the student did. I don't think it's outlandish to think that this asked me about our area. Choose prize is something that was just made for fun.

But then why would there be the context .

that's that's the biggest?

Is that the detail that doesn't make any sense? Because I was sitting there thinking, like if what if like someone made like a like a student film and they had to, you know, make this button for IT, but then why would there be an address on IT? That part makes no sense.

Level of the like the the couple c level of detail and a movie prop.

And and they chose to locate whatever this this fuck in place in the middle of nowhere. No one knows that customer city exists because three hundred something people live there. Hold on, what did the same to say? It's three hundred and sixty seven people at the time of the twenty twenty .

senses yeah it's a it's a very small place like i'm not even sure that they could handle something like big tub chats down home and style kitchen. And after being honest.

I understand that this is not an important problem. In fact, IT may be the least important problem i've ever attempted to solve. But when casey sent me a link to the buttons website and I saw the mysterious area button for the first time, I could feel that pulling me in, I was helpless to its charms.

For Better or worse, I do believe this is my fate, that these are the stories I was put on earth to tale. I think we can figure that out, that we've got ta be able to figured out someone out there are made this thing. Not only that, someone out there are make IT.

but they like design IT. Yeah, it's not Better looking either if you zoom in on IT is a decent it's a decent photo. There's no pix zillah. It's it's a well done piece of art. I would say .

there's even a little drop shadow under the tax, right? IT really looks disgusting though IT looks IT looks supergrass IT does look like a river of molten cheese and then some meat at the bottom IT looks and IT is very close up. It's pretty.

pretty gross. It's way to close up.

Oh my god, I this is, this is the problem that I was born to solve. This is the only thing that i've ever wanted in my life is to solve this problem.

Brother, let's do this.

The obvious first step was to reach out to the busy beef rebutting museum and ask them if they knew anything about where this button came from. And in my dream version of this call, they would tell us they knew the name of the person who donate the button. And then we would call that person and ask where they got IT.

And then that person would tell us where they got the button. And on and on, we go like that, meeting fascinating people along the way, until we finally found our way to big job chat himself in our very own plates of area inducing chili cheese fries. But that's not quite how things worked out.

This view companies with Christian.

how many of you? Hi, i'm Christine. I think that you're the person I was calling to find out how to get in touch with. My name is aac tln M, A podcast producer.

And when hyperfine producer ammar tln called the busy beavers s mainline, the person who answered was actually one of its cofounder, ers, Christian Carter. Christian founded busy beaver button back in one thousand nine hundred ninety five, and SHE launched the museum in two thousand and ten. Each side has its own archive, and between the two of them, busy beaver has about one hundred and sixty thousand buttons in their collection. And yet, when emc asked about the diary button, Christian exactly what he was asking about and who made IT.

After the break, busy leaver cofounder Christian Carter, who pretty much shares the name with the creator of the x piles, Chris Carter, connect us with the mystery bone maker.

Welcome back to the show. I will say at the time, I felt like the worst news I could possibly hear again.

This is hyperfine producer ama courtland.

I mean, I think we were all a little heart broken. I don't know if you remember this, alex, but you actually got sick like right after this. And I don't think that's entirely .

a coincidence. My heart couldn't take, finding out the answer to this button, not being exactly the way I imagined in my head. So before the break, am a called busy beaver and its founder, Christian Carter said that he knew who made the area a button.

And the reason he knew is because he was an employee. And yeah, I may have had a moment of like, okay, nothing means anything. Let us never speak of the diary button n again. Let's move on to another story and toss this.

One of the dust in you .

were sad IT just felt like, oh, this is so magically, al, this is such a weird object. This is like if they made inDiana Jones, said, in modern day, I would be inDiana Jones, and this would be the object I was searching for. IT turned out not to be the ark of the covenant or the, what is the thing that he gets in glasses?

Sade, the the holy grail, no, the holy grail. A monkey goes to find a monkey. No, you going to find the holly grail.

It's a little bit more important. So it's not the art of the government is not the holy grail. It's just not magical, are you?

I I definitely felt a lot of what you were feeling, but I think the reason that I wanted to keep working on this was because I still felt unresolved to me. Like why did they assign an intern to log in, archive this button if they knew I was made by an employee.

right? Not only that, like they didn't give him any information about IT. So if I was made by an employee, they didn't let him know. And like, again, why is their current text with the name of a business and a location that doesn't exist?

right? So while you were sick, I decided to reach back out, Christian.

And like, what did you find out?

Well, first of all, I learned to that buttons are truly an american art form like jazz.

Oh yeah, hundred person. I mean, they were invented in new ork, new jersey in one hundred and ninety six.

That's so bananas.

So yeah, we trace the in back to George washington s. inauguration. So when he was an did, everyone was like, hey, we started a country. Let's make souvenir. So they mean all these different souvenir, like buttons that have different and graving or or steps on, like.

we need to let people know. I mean.

the goal of the butter museum, this is tell as much american history as possible through pin back button.

I'd like that you went into the conversations if you are planning to demand answers, and then immediately, like, oh my god, button are wonderful.

I love I don't know how someone could not fall in love with the fact that amErica invented buttons because I needed party favors at. It's like little celebration. I think that's adorable.

But honestly, IT was a dozen things. Chris told me that the button community has, like this council of elders, the c. They have a facebook page where you can post questions about the origins of different buttons, and they'll you for you, IT out because that's just what they like to deal. And some of the most interesting stuff on the busy beef er's website has been submitted randomly ly by people outside of the museum.

We do get people often like saying, hey, I know about this button, you know, I know about the back story of this butter and even more frequent than even people google in themselves or googling something they did and finding the button that matched what they were doing.

This happened with the grateful did button. Apparently there's only one grateful ted button that's considered authentic, designed by this guy named girl.

Sanchez and his son looked IT up, and he gave us all sorts of information. And IT was a lot of stuff that collectors didn't know. So like that one, we learned that there were three hundred in the first run, and there was the only run. And somebody we did those button, but they took girl sanchez's name of, so collectors will know which.

Just so when Christian says the museum is using button to preserve history, she's talking about these little relics of the past, these individual stories and expressions that might otherwise have been forgotten. And yet that's just very romantic to me.

Okay, so I mean, I get IT. I see why that you found passion in the bottom universe. But like, if shared, I knew where this button came from. How did you end up on the list of button to research?

Oh yeah, okay. So the short version of this is that the museum is a very small Operation. There's only one library, SHE works part time, and there are tens of thousands of buttons waiting to be catalogue.

So when an in house button makes IT into the museum collection, which almost never happens, IT may be years before he gets a chance to photograph and measure IT. And since is already very little cross over between the e commerce business and the nonprofit. By the time this one grounded up in the research pile, the story of its origin had been lost to time.

The other thing that happened is that while Christina was on the call with me, he got an email from this guy who made the button. His name is nick roly. Apparently he'd written to him about the cruel text, which remember is also called rim text.

I just heard back from him about why the backroom text you want to hear. Yes, please. So he says the room text was to help legitimize the button. So someone found IT. Twenty five years later, IT would only further them to further them to question if I was, in fact, a real place.

Why does he want people to question if it's a real place?

That's what I want you to know as well. So I asked Christian if he would put me in touch with him. SHE connected us over email. And alex, I am so glad I talked to this guy because that magic you're thought we lost IT turns out he was there the whole time.

This sounds ridiculous to say aloud, but this conversation or having, is like the fate of the bottom.

This is Nicole, the man behind the diary button. He spoke to us in a call with his friend air arms, who helped him with the visual design of the button. So if you hear some stickery in the background.

that's eric. It's like a dream come true for this .

to cumbo certain.

oh my god.

because that was the intention of a, anyway.

nit is a huge collector of things. Even before he worked at the busy beaver, he had a ton of buttons. And of all his collectibles, his absolute favorites were the ones that made him wonder, like, why in the world did someone make this? So when he came to work at the busy beaver, he found the themselves surrounded by all of these people who were investigating the kind of weird stuff that he was into. Nick, I inspired to make a button that gave someone else the feeling that he got when he discovered his favorite buttons.

I think, honestly, if i'm being problem, I think this came to me one night stone down a couch in my living room, in my point, is like trying to just come up with something ridiculous. And the dietary habits of my friends and their twenty was also inspiring to IT. We knew a bar that would have three wings every friday night if you ve got one beer.

So like one of some things in a dubs, that was like, let's go by four bear nurses and just eat one hundred wings and then this get to whatever is discussing someone is getting like Tommy A, I won't go into the details of, but it's not agreed with them. So I can think that made me think about A A, A little bit cheese fries seemed Better. But the deeper idea, which is the true beauty of you coming to us to talk about this, but the the actual, and this was the idea from the get go, was, I love buttons.

I've got to know people got junk, draw stuff like that for buttons ago. They get lost in time, people forget about them, and they get sometimes preserved. And you find buttons later on. And I go, I D never been heard, this political candidate, or what's this for?

I wanted to make a button that somebody would find twenty five years later and be like, what the hell is this? Why would any restaurant use the word diarra? That has to be one of the worst words you can ever use to try to sell food. You ve got to be kidding me.

But IT wasn't enough for someone to have that thought and then move on in order for the button to really capture the feeling that was going. For the person who found the area, button would have to think IT came from a real restaurant. So nick took the idea to eric arms, who was one of the busy beavers in house designers at the time, and I said, you gotta add coral text. gentis. Ed.

somehow? Yeah, a lot of businesses would .

put their addresses. And I just told there, I think eram up with that, right? I was like, just come up with the business in the middle of the country. So IT seems like you will be harder to find.

And that's how they came up with caster city, oklahoma.

Yeah, I told him about casey. And they were absolutely delighted and they were released. So delighted to know that this had worked out exactly the way they dreamed that would IT.

IT is actually amazing. I am sorry that IT is an an actual restaurant for him. I know he loved that morning. I feel sad for him in that sense. But seriously, I don't know the student and who gives you.

should he? We'll talk.

I guess, afterwards and I send him, i'll find I know I have some all of them of extras and some other fun button I made.

And I know that that was going to mean so much to him because earthly like not only because he had the subsection sion, but the only like, the only manifest of IT has been this like shit scan of IT online. He's never held one of these buttons before. So alex, I know this is Normally your line, but before I send you off to follow up with casey, I want to ask you, knowing all of this.

how do you feel? Oh my god, dude, magic restored. This is perfect.

This is exactly. I want that. I wanted a story with a journey.

And this isn't just like a short, this isn't like a six week journey. This is like a fifteen year journey. What more could I possibly ask for?

IT really feels like when you were a child and your school project was to, like, build a timetable. So where you buried all of the treasures that would tell you about the moment in time when you were doing that. And then someone actually dug IT up and found IT.

But not only that, like this doesn't even digging up. It's like a literally upon a website for us to look at. IT is hidden in plain site. I mean, i'm honestly kinder surprise IT took this one for someone to find IT.

One of the things that he kept saying to me over and over again was that he's just like, I anticipated this taking twenty five years I like, I can only buy undershot and he said, but i'm so glad that i'm of an age when I can still enjoy this.

With the complete answer in hand, I was time to go back to casey. I think one .

of the funniest emails ever got was amazed. Invite to this meeting and it's a diary follow up with alex.

I mean, IT IT really has made like for a lot of wonderful jokes, especially since, you know, there are people who are only passably familiar with what we're working on, who are like members of our slack, like brake mater cylinders, who does music. So see us, they'll see us fever sly typing in a channel called directly a button. And me like, what the fuck is going on .

here to create?

So I have some good news and I have some bad news, but i'm going to start with the bad news, which is that you were very close to your answer.

I told casey that as soon as we reached out to the busy beaver, they told us that the button had not been made by a restaurant and that as far as they knew, there is no such thing as big job chats down home rent style kitchen in customer city or anywhere else in case he admitted he was bumped out by the news, but he was what he expected. But then I got to tell him the good news. During our first conversation, you told us that you strongly wanted this to be a restaurant, and more than that, you did not want you to have been a joke. Our school project, what I take that to mean is that, like what you were afraid of is that this thing did not a story. Like, I didn't have anything interesting buying IT.

yeah, great. Because if he was a school project or something that was just a throwing just to get the points for the assignment. And there's not anything all they're interesting behind IT other than the design of. But I guess.

so the good news is this.

I told casey that we found the person who made the button, that he's a long time button collector named nic role, and that when we asked him about the diary button, he said he was like a dream come true. We told them all about how the button came to be, about how next most treasured collectibles are the ones that make him.

Wonder why in the world did someone decided make this? And about how, when he got the opportunity to make a lot of his zone he wanted to make, when they gave someone else the same feeling that his favor buttons gave him. And what he said to us was, I wanted to make a button that someone would find twenty five years later and be like, what the help is this? Why would any restaurant use the word diaries on a button?

wow. Mission was .

so glad to get this call, this call that he, he had been waiting for since two thousand ten, assuming that he would never get. And as a gesture of gratitude, he wants to send you europe very own diary, actually. Button.

oh my gosh. How many were made? That is this like .

one of one he made, like twenty, there were very few.

That is an utter, and I will share IT forever.

This one was a clear win. Nick was happy. Casey was happy. I was happy.

But there was one more thing I wanted to share with casey before I said goodbye very quickly before we end the call. I just wanted to hold on just a second. I wanted to drop something in the chat for you.

O, K, I was thinking about something that casey had said on our first call about how part of the reason he was drawn to ni history was because he never really been in the spotlight before. And in a small way that I could, I wanted to do something to change that. I'm wondering if you could follow this link.

Did I get IT? Yeah and just shady link. IT is a very shadi link. And just take a look at IT and tell me what I can. You read IT for me?

But sure, I see. The first thing I saw was my name, so I knew this wasn't the original text that I had came up with.

The link opens to the busy beaver website. The page for the diary about the casey has seen countless times before. Only now it's a little different .

under additional information where used to say nothing. IT now says in twenty twenty four, this button became the subject of a podcast episode when a librarian name, casey cost, became obsessed with finding the person who made IT cost.

A few days before this conversation, we wrote to Christian and asked if we could update the entry for the diary button. And SHE said, yeah, go for IT. So now if you search for IT, you'll see the story of this button with case's name.

red up top. That's fantastic. I am ordered to be immortalized the busy beaver button museum and to be part of the story.

Oh, thank you that this is fantastic. Got a cool what a cool experience. I honestly thought I would never get the answer to this because it's so obscure.

I also felt that i'd never get the answer because there's two that intersection does not exist. I was I was wondering, like maybe there was like nuclear bomb testing going on on this part of the country, and they just are raised certain parts of the city by blowing IT up. I had no idea.

Oh, I appreciate. Thank you so much. I am so happy to have to have an entered this. Now I can go on to .

the next in name .

mystery that I need to solve you.

If you if you're just dedicated enough to that cause you can make a whole career out of IT. It's what I did.

Casey is now in possession of his very own big job chats button, and with the blessing of everyone involved in the story we ve been given to go ahead to make a limited second pressing of the big job chats asked me about our diary at inducing chilly cheese prize. But if you go to hyper fixed pod dot com slashed button and get a hyper fixed premium membership, in addition to getting bonus episodes and all the other perks of being a premium podcast member, we will send you your very own big job chats button. And to make sure that button counter fitters won't try and pass that off as a first pressing and sell IT for an inflated Price, we added hyper fixed podcast twenty twenty four to the current text.

Hyper fix was produced by emc tent series softer schenk in a more ates was also edited by msa in a more this episode was hosted by ama courtland and me Alice sculpin. The music is by the mysterious break matter cylinder and mate. The show was engineered by tony Williams, fact checking by sona Aaron.

You can get bonus episode, join our discord and much more at hyper fix pod dot com flash joy. And if you want your very own diary button, you can get that as well as all the other stuff at a hyper fixed pod dot com slash button. But that's only for five hundred people.

And then it's gone for up. Hyper fix is a proud member of radio topia from P R X, A network of independent, creator owned, listener supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision and radio topia that FM last thing, the busy beaver button museum is always looking for volunteers to help research the button in their collection.

So if you're interested in helping out, you can email their archive manager in their internship coordinator at internship at button museum dot ork. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see next week of your premium member or a week after that if you're not take IT easy.