Secret Mall Apartment: How an Artist Lived in a Mall for 4 Years Without Getting Caught

[00:00:00] Adam Cox: They haven't even got like a, an en suite.

[00:00:03] Kyle Risi: No, they don't. They have none of this. All they have is a void in between kind of two shops.

[00:00:07] Adam Cox: I'm trying to work out Is it dark? Is it, it's probably dusty and it's

[00:00:10] Kyle Risi: very dark. Very dusty. Loads of screws everywhere. Zip ties, chip packets. I guess they could fashion a little blanket, like one of those emergency blankets.

[00:00:18] Kyle Risi: You know, Like when your house is burnt down and the fire brigade comes. Yeah. And they're like, oh, are you cold? Why are you always cold? There's just been a fire. And they drape you with one of those tinfoil blankets to keep you warm.

[00:00:54] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives [00:01:00] you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:04] Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:10] Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your ring master for this episode.

[00:01:13] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox. Your physiotherapist for the contortionist team.

[00:01:17] Adam Cox: They need some work doing after their show.

[00:01:19] Kyle Risi: Do they? They've got tough, tough joints.

[00:01:21] Adam Cox: Think of all the like positions they get themselves into. Sometimes I have to actually flatten them out after a show.

[00:01:27] Kyle Risi: Is it Especially after reverse cowgirl deposition. Especially after reverse cowgirl and doggy style. And that's the only two positions I know.

[00:01:35] Adam Cox: That's not what contortionists do.

[00:01:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah, but you're you, you're the physiotherapist, Uhhuh. Hey, it depends what age you are, right? If you are encroaching on 75, reverse cowgirl is an accomplishment,

[00:01:47] Adam Cox: I'll say.

[00:01:48] Kyle Risi: So if you can help with the physiotherapy, for all of our freaks out there, we are encroaching 75 and need some de stiffening of the joints. You are our man.

[00:01:57] Adam Cox: Yeah. Adam Cox physiotherapist keeping [00:02:00] 75 year olds still doing nimble reverse cowgirl. That can be my slogan. Oh, my fan.

[00:02:06] Kyle Risi: These intros always just devolving into just nonsense.

[00:02:10] Adam Cox: I, I thought that was generally the point.

[00:02:12] Kyle Risi: I didn't realize that we'd built a brand on that.

[00:02:14] Kyle Risi: Anyway, before we dive in, a quick heads up. For all of our lovely freaks out there, remember that signing up to our Patreon gets you early access to next week's episode and in entire seven days before anyone else. And it's always completely free of charge. And if you want even more, you can become a certified freak for a small monthly subscription that will unlock all of our unreleased episodes an entire six weeks before anyone else.

[00:02:36] Kyle Risi: And this is literally the best way to support the compendium

[00:02:39] Adam Cox: and while you're at it, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. Your support really does help us reach more people who just like you, love a good tale of the unexpected.

[00:02:51] Kyle Risi: And the thing is that we ask every week, and I promise you every time we ask, it works. People follow and people leave us reviews. And so keep them coming because it really does help. [00:03:00] We are getting a whole lot of new listeners every week because of you guys.

[00:03:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. Thank you so much.

[00:03:05] Kyle Risi: Alright. Freaks. That is enough of the housekeeping Adam, today we are diving into an assembly of hidden habitats and artistic rebellion.

[00:03:14] Adam Cox: Okay. Yeah. I've got nothing. Is it about badges going wild?

[00:03:20] Kyle Risi: Right?

[00:03:20] Adam Cox: If they have got like rabies and they're going around biting people, I reckon there's a story there. Kyle.

[00:03:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Animal true crime.

[00:03:27] Kyle Risi: That's it. Adam, today I want to tell you the story that was every kid's fantasy growing up. Do you ever remember imagining yourself being locked in a shopping mall all on your own, able to roam free wherever you wanted to go and do whatever you wanted to do without the risk of ever being caught?

[00:03:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, actually. 'cause I used to be the Disney store in the shopping mall

[00:03:47] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:03:47] Adam Cox: Near us when growing up and they used to have this giant mound of teddy bears that I always wish I could just like dive into. That's what I would do.

[00:03:56] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And you could probably disguise yourself inside that kind of heap, [00:04:00] especially if it was around about the time that Up was released. Mm-hmm. Because you remember Russell, everyone used to say that you looked like Russell.

[00:04:05] Adam Cox: By everyone you mean you

[00:04:06] Kyle Risi: And everyone else. You are the spiting image of Russell, especially as a child. It's either that or Knickknack from, uh, the the Bond movies.

[00:04:14] Adam Cox: Yes. All right. Moving on.

[00:04:15] Kyle Risi: So if you wanted to kind of like hide in the store. You could have disguised yourself as a Russell doll.

[00:04:20] Adam Cox: I could have done, but I didn't. So what would you wanna do in a shopping mall then?

[00:04:24] Kyle Risi: Well, the thing is, I used to fantasize about having the power of invisibility and being able to walk into like Woolworths and no one was able to see me and I would just be able to take whatever I wanted and I just stuffed the things under my jumper, which would then make it obviously completely invisible and then I would just walk out.

[00:04:38] Adam Cox: Oh, so stealing. You wanted to steal?

[00:04:41] Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, I used to fantasize about stealing all the time and I'm not a stealer. Uh, The only time I've ever stolen, I remember we went into the equivalent of Woolworths in South Africa, and I remember stealing a pair of Barbie scissors.

[00:04:53] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:04:53] Kyle Risi: And we got home. Mom was like, where did you get these from? And I just was like, oh, I took them from the store. And my mom was like, well that's [00:05:00] stealing. So she gave me this big old, like little pep talk about how it was wrong to steal. And then she was like, we need to make this right.

[00:05:06] Kyle Risi: So we're gonna go back to the store and we're gonna tell the manager that you have taken these and that you're very sorry and you'd like to give them back.

[00:05:13] Kyle Risi: So we went back to the store and we called the manager and we had a chat with him. My mom explained to him what had happened and then I said I was really sorry to hand them over.

[00:05:23] Kyle Risi: And he was really mad and he was really serious. And he was like, I'm gonna have to call the cops.

[00:05:27] Kyle Risi: So there's the lesson for you. Don't ever try to do the right thing. It will backfire. Another time that that happened was I. Really needed a wee. We were walking back from the shop and my mom was like, just wee behind that bush over there.

[00:05:39] Kyle Risi: And as I was weeing, the guy came home and he drove into his driveway and there was I peeing. And my mom was obviously all really embarrassed to try and explain it. And he was so angry. So angry that he was like he was gonna have to call the security guard.

[00:05:53] Adam Cox: Yeah, because you're peeing on his property.

[00:05:55] Kyle Risi: I was a 5-year-old. What did you expect me to do?

[00:05:57] Adam Cox: Your mom knew that that guy was like turning [00:06:00] around the corner in his car and it was like, oh, this'll be fun.

[00:06:02] Kyle Risi: Oh God. Do you think my mom's that vindictive?

[00:06:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. And then also I think on the, the scissors front, I think she was just more ashamed that you stole Barbie scissors. And she was like, let's go back to the store and we'll steal you a proper pair.

[00:06:13] Kyle Risi: That was my Prince's era and I'm not gonna apologize for it.

[00:06:16] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:06:17] Kyle Risi: But another fantasy I had is, again, going back to stealing. I would imagine walking behind the checkout counter, obviously completely invisible. I'd wait until the till was open and I'd just take like words of cash and again, stick it under my jumper because of course it would turn invisible.

[00:06:30] Kyle Risi: And then I'd just walk out and then impressed all my friends with, how rich I was. I loved it. Wow.

[00:06:35] Kyle Risi: But what I'm talking about specifically is being locked in a mall overnight. And the question is, how would this even work, especially today with all the security cameras and the guard patrolling around at night, so I don't think in today's society that fantasy would ever play out as we imagined, like 23 years ago. Mm-hmm. Do you know what I mean? You'd be busted pretty fast.

[00:06:58] Kyle Risi: I think the only way that this would [00:07:00] work would be if there was some sort of zombie apocalypse, but even then you run the risk of being avs by some zombies like in the last of us, right?

[00:07:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's always a shopping mall where there's zombies, right? Yeah. Let's hide from them. 'cause you think, oh, they don't like to shop,

[00:07:15] Kyle Risi: but they do like to shop 'cause they're always in there. That's, but in spite of obviously the challenges, this is exactly what a group of artists did in Rhode Island in 2003. They'd recently, been evicted from the artist's commune where they were living inside an old mill. When they got the idea for a social experiment to prove a theory that a human being could feasibly live inside a mall full time, and I'm talking 24 hours a day, where they would eat, sleep, shower, exercise, all in the mall.

[00:07:43] Kyle Risi: Anything that they needed had to be acquired within them all. And the plan was that they would do this for seven days. The experiment proved so successful and so easy that they decided to extend their goal, and by the time they'd finally got busted, they had been living [00:08:00] undetected in the Providence Mall in Rhode Island for four years.

[00:08:04] Adam Cox: What? Four years? Mm-hmm. They were, how did that even happen,

[00:08:09] Kyle Risi: Adam? That's literally the point of the story. I'm gonna tell you everything you need to know. Adam, today on the Compendium, I'm gonna be telling you about this incredible story of how Michael Townend, a young tape artist and a group of his mates set out to prove that human beings could indeed live inside a mall.

[00:08:27] Kyle Risi: I'm assuming, just based on what I've just said, you've never heard this story before,

[00:08:31] Adam Cox: never heard this story before.

[00:08:32] Kyle Risi: I heard this story about six years ago, but very recently, a documentary has just been released like literally this month, and it's in the theaters everywhere. That pretty much tells this entire story. But today I am gonna tell you the story from my vantage point.

[00:08:45] Adam Cox: It's gotta be a good shopping mall though. Because I'm thinking it's gonna need like a bed store. It's gonna need like somewhere for food, obviously. Yeah. Fresh food and then, I don't know, maybe like a gym. Mm-hmm. And obviously clothes. Yes, that's it. And maybe some [00:09:00] toys, and a

[00:09:01] Kyle Risi: candy shop. Yeah, some candy.

[00:09:03] Adam Cox: A news agent.

[00:09:04] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. To get the daily news TVs, right? Yes, exactly. Okay. Exactly. All these things. It's a state-of-the-art mall, which I'm gonna tell you all about.

[00:09:12] Kyle Risi: But today our story centers around a young artist called Michael Town, said he was born in December of 1966, and he grew up in West Windsor.

[00:09:21] Kyle Risi: That's New Jersey. Not a huge amount happens there, but from an historic viewpoint, this is where a few very important people and events took place in the early history of kind of the United States, like Civil War kind of stuff. Right. And the era he grew up kind of reminds me of like Stars Hollow.

[00:09:36] Kyle Risi: And I know that you absolutely hate this show, but it's, that's the fictional town from the Kilmore girls. Oh God. So if you picture those kind of quat wooden, uh, new England style buildings with kind of a local diner and a town hall. That's the kind of vibe that he grew up in. But forget all of that because it's irrelevant 'cause he moves away.

[00:09:53] Kyle Risi: And throughout his childhood, he's super into comic books that serves as a major source of [00:10:00] inspiration for him. When he's seven years old, he wins an art contest, which is when he decides that he's going to become an artist when he finally grows up.

[00:10:09] Kyle Risi: But after winning, he's left absolutely devastated when he finds out that the win was based purely on luck rather than merit. And so years later, he says that this was the moment that dictated his entire trajectory of his life. Yet it was all based on a lie, which I just think is really funny.

[00:10:25] Kyle Risi: So what did he, was he struggling to find the meaning of life?

[00:10:28] He had an existential crisis, basically. Existential. Existential. Yeah. I just imagine him like the rain's falling down, dripping down the window, and he's just staring out, going,

[00:10:37] Adam Cox: my whole life's been a lie.

[00:10:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Complete lie. But he does get his first break when he's given the chance to write and illustrate his own children's book. It's called Billy Tattle in say, cheese. And it's really charming. You can actually still buy this book after all these years. This was like in 1989, and it's basically a feel good story about Billy Tattle, who was a kid who comes up with a plan to make this year's school photo unforgettable, [00:11:00] and it's about his plan to trick his mom into letting him get a mohawk basically.

[00:11:03] Kyle Risi: In 1989, he finally moves to Rhode Island to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. And on his very first night, he and a group of newly met classmates start experimenting with painter's tape as like a drawing tool, literally using tape to draw lines on their dorm room wall.

[00:11:21] Kyle Risi: And that moment ends up defining the kind of artists that he ends up becoming throughout his entire career. And from then. Everything he does throughout college revolves around this passion for creating art with what is essentially masking tape.

[00:11:35] Adam Cox: I was just trying to picture that. Like it doesn't feel like it's easy to work with.

[00:11:39] Kyle Risi: It seems pretty damn easy to me. All you gotta do is just follow a line and then just tape the tape down

[00:11:44] Kyle Risi: yeah. If you were trying to, I don't know, make a person's face mm-hmm. Out of masking tape, I dunno how that would work.

[00:11:50] I'm assuming that he's mastered the technique, right? But the thing is though, what is wild is that most people, they go to art school to explore different mediums and styles to work out what they [00:12:00] wanna specialize in, whether or not a sculpture or fine art, or abstract art, whatever it might be.

[00:12:04] Kyle Risi: And then after four years you leave college still not knowing the direction that you wanna take.

[00:12:09] Kyle Risi: But for Michael, this all clicks. On day one, he just knew I'm gonna be a tape artist. Which I think is pretty incredible. I left college not knowing what I wanted to do, even though I decided to do computer science.

[00:12:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. But I feel like that's a lot of people. It's good. Yeah. It's very rare people just fumble their way through life going, uh, with regret and everything else.

[00:12:27] Kyle Risi: That's the thing though, it's such a lie. People are like, oh, you gotta work out what you want to do. But the reality is there's like 40, 50 year olds out there that still dunno what they want to do.

[00:12:34] Adam Cox: They're just chasing the paycheck.

[00:12:36] Kyle Risi: so Basically his work involves creating these massive murals, both on interior and exterior buildings, sometimes as high as 50 feet tall. And they stretch like sometimes over like 200 feet wide. And the process is always highly collaborative.

[00:12:48] Kyle Risi: So he very rarely works on his own. Teamwork is at the heart of everything that he does, often involving people that he just met, or complete strangers that are just jumping in to help him build these muriels.

[00:12:58] Kyle Risi: But everything he creates [00:13:00] is only ever meant to be temporary. So a key part of the process is actually tearing down the muriels together, just a few hours after putting them up, which just feels such a shame to me, especially considering how many hours people would spend creating these only to rip them down.

[00:13:13] Adam Cox: Yeah. Especially after a few hours, yeah, you'd want to appreciate it for some time. Mm-hmm. Unless it's not very good and that's why they're tearing it down.

[00:13:19] Kyle Risi: They are typically really incredible. And keep in mind this, he was doing all this before, it was. Easy to document the process with photos and videos. At best, they were left with just a handful of photos and maybe a few seconds of film, and this was back in the day when digital cameras could only like record in short bursts like 30 seconds with a maximum kind of storage, like 30 minutes.

[00:13:37] Kyle Risi: So he never really ended up with much footage to show for their efforts as well, which kind of just adds more salt into that wound.

[00:13:45] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then I guess art takes all forms, right? So It's the experience, it's the people getting together.

[00:13:50] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And that's exactly the point of his tape art essentially. But what is really interesting is that there's limitation with digital cameras, like in the late 1990s and early two [00:14:00] thousands wasn't. Because of the technology , like memory cards were big enough and cameras were definitely capable of recording longer videos.

[00:14:07] Kyle Risi: The real reason for the cap was actually a legal reason because cameras and video cameras were taxed differently back then, and so manufacturers intentionally limited the recording time to avoid pushing cameras into the high tax bracket.

[00:14:18] Adam Cox: Oh, so like a regular camera, digital camera? Mm-hmm. Um, if you allow it to record more footage or longer duration, it would then be a video recorder, which then has a big attacks.

[00:14:27] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Ah,

[00:14:29] Adam Cox: Isn't that weird? That

[00:14:30] Kyle Risi: So anyway, after graduation, Michael is commissioned for several, like really powerful and meaningful projects. One of them was this large tape mural on a children's hospital ward, in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

[00:14:43] Kyle Risi: He also took part in a project in New York creating 490 life-sized silhouette portraits to represent some of the people who lost their lives in nine 11. And they were just all be dotted around Manhattan Island. And then just a few days later, they would just all be ripped down again.

[00:14:57] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And I guess it's easy 'cause it's painter tape, right? How easy is [00:15:00] that to just peel off? I guess if you didn't pull it down it would just kind of eventually just fly off or, or Or peel off. Or peel off naturally.

[00:15:06] Adam Cox: Are they all different like colors,

[00:15:08] Kyle Risi: yeah, typically some of the murals I've seen would be a kind of blues and greens. Okay. So the typical painters tape that you would see, but I'm assuming he could get different colors as well. There's also beige.

[00:15:17] Adam Cox: That's why I was thinking was he just using that on white canvas or whatever and I just thought, would that look good? But now in understand there's more color to it then. Yeah.

[00:15:24] Kyle Risi: He's also worked with major clients like IBM, Siemens, Hasbro, and even Disney. He runs workshops and team building initiatives that in total have involved over 50,000 individuals.

[00:15:33] Kyle Risi: But the consistent focus is always the same. And that is to bring different communities together under a shared collaborative goal of making something beautiful out of painters tape. And to say something about that collaborative spirit of humanity. Mm-hmm. So he's definitely an interesting artist that's definitely created a niche for himself in this world of tape art.

[00:15:54] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:15:54] Kyle Risi: But back when he was a student, Michael was drawn to an area of providence called [00:16:00] Ville, which was a neighborhood that had become kind of the heart of the providence, creative kind of scene, if you will.

[00:16:07] Kyle Risi: And in the early 20th century, the area was kind of typically packed with factories and mill from its industrial heyday. But after the war, pretty much all of that industry just disappeared, leaving behind a lot of empty buildings. So struggling to fill them. Landlords would kinda rent them out super cheap. So a lot of students and creatives were attracted to the area, and so over time, the entire neighborhood transformed into this vibrant, artsy neighborhood full of live music venues, quirky bars, offbeat restaurants. Kind of like East London spirit fields before it got really super commercialized.

[00:16:38] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. Because it is really expensive now, isn't it? Mm-hmm. But back in the day, it was easy for kind of people to just move in and set up startups and things like that. Yeah. So yeah, that's the kind of vibe that we're going for here.

[00:16:47] Kyle Risi: Michael gets involved with an artist commune called Fought Thunder, and that was situated in an old mill that offered studio space for artists in a kind of a collaborative environment.

[00:16:57] Kyle Risi: They also held gigs there. There was a bar, there was a [00:17:00] restaurant. It also offered living space. And so this is where Michael ends up living.

[00:17:03] Kyle Risi: In the late 1990s and early two thousands, Providence launches a citywide rejuvenation project that was focused on expanding the downtown area. They were redeveloping some of the historic buildings. They were gonna be spending millions of dollars uncovering kind of portions of the historic rivers that had been buried during the industrial era, and their plan was to build these really beautiful kind of river walks and add more vibrant public spaces in the community.

[00:17:26] Kyle Risi: And the centerpiece of all of this was going to be a brand new mall. It was gonna be called the Providence Place Mall, which was set to cost $460 million and was intended to be kind of like a, a super regional shopping destination. Meaning that it would have literally everything that a consumer could possibly want, all in one location.

[00:17:46] Adam Cox: Sure.

[00:17:47] Kyle Risi: And the site of the mall was huge. It was coming in at like 13 kind of acres. It was roughly the size of kind of the Louvre in Paris. Oh wow. Yeah, so and that's one of the biggest museums on the planet.

[00:17:58] Kyle Risi: So this is a big lot. And the mall [00:18:00] was gonna provide 3000 construction jobs another 3000 permanent jobs once the mall actually opened. They estimated that it was gonna be attracting at least 15 million shoppers every single year. So this was gonna be massive for the local economy.

[00:18:13] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:13] Kyle Risi: And while this sounds great, it was also controversial because after the mall was finished, developers started looking at the surrounding areas for other opportunities. And that meant that nearby areas like Ville, where the Thought Thunder Commune was located was now a prime target for redevelopment.

[00:18:31] Kyle Risi: And so projects were proposed and approved and slowly tenants were sent their eviction notices and Michael was about to lose both his community and his home.

[00:18:40] Adam Cox: Oh. Sad, isn't it? Yeah. Just for some commercial development and all that sort of stuff.

[00:18:45] Kyle Risi: And that's the thing, this happens all over the world, these gentrification kind of projects where you end up displacing a lot of people that have pretty much called those areas home.

[00:18:54] Kyle Risi: Now, of course, Michael is not probably from a poor background. Mm-hmm. But you also gotta remember that there will [00:19:00] be people that, that are from poorer backgrounds and poorer demographics that do call those areas home and they're probably gonna be evicted.

[00:19:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. And they probably don't wanna move. They're, you know, they live there all their life.

[00:19:11] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And here's the kicker for Thunder wasn't going to be gentrified into kind of a more upscale building. They were literally gonna tear it down and turn it into a parking lot. Oh, so it was like Joni Mitchell was right. Like you pay paradise and you literally put up a parking lot.

[00:19:25] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:19:25] Kyle Risi: So around this time in 2003, the Providence Place more had finally opened and plans were announced that fought Thunder was going to be torn down. So Michael and his wife, Adriana and a few other artists were kind of lamenting this transformation that they were seeing sweeping through the city, and they kind of watched many of their friends and beloved businesses leave for the suburban areas because they just couldn't afford to live in the city anymore.

[00:19:48] Kyle Risi: While they're discussing this, Michael hears a radio ad featuring a woman talking very enthusiastically about how awesome the new mall was and how great it would be if she could just live in the mall and just never [00:20:00] have to leave.

[00:20:00] Adam Cox: Right. Okay.

[00:20:01] Kyle Risi: So they start joking that the rising costs of all this gentrification would eventually reach a point where the only way they could literally live in the city would be if they lived inside of a mall.

[00:20:12] Kyle Risi: So they got to joking about where they would sleep and how they would eat, and of course where they would shower if this was a reality.

[00:20:18] Adam Cox: And then did it get to a point where they were like, hang on a minute, that's not a bad idea.

[00:20:23] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Pretty much But the thing is though, we talked about this at the top of the show, it's one thing to fantasize about spending a night in a mall, but it's an entirely other thing to imagine physically living there permanently. Because there are actual logistical issues involved in Yeah.

[00:20:36] Adam Cox: I mean, to do it for a week sounds plausible. Mm-hmm. To do it for four years. Exactly.

[00:20:41] Kyle Risi: But Michael got to thinking that maybe this woman was onto something. He remembered something that he had seen a few years earlier when Providence Place Mall was still under construction.

[00:20:51] Adam Cox: Was it like a secret room or, I don't know. Some, some like beds

[00:20:55] Kyle Risi: kind of. So Michael often used to commute past the site and over the [00:21:00] months he watched it slowly started to take shape and began to notice some really peculiar architectural features. For starters, like the plot of land was oddly shaped running right through the middle of the plot was a river, which meant that the building would inevitably have a number of architectural kind of challenges that it would need to accommodate just to get around the fact that there's a literal river running right through the plot.

[00:21:21] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:22] Kyle Risi: He would kind of play this game where he would try to imagine what the different spaces were gonna be intended for. Like you're spotting things like the loading bay and the basement between the mall, the parking lot, and the kind of the skeletal outlines of the future shops that would eventually be encased in the the malls kind of outer shell.

[00:21:37] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:38] Kyle Risi: But there were also some spaces that he just couldn't quite place. There were these large voids that were really bizarrely shaped and sort of, kind of tucked between the mall's internal structures, which he called these nowhere spaces that just didn't seem to have any meaningful kind of purpose at all.

[00:21:53] Adam Cox: So he could just tell that that was gonna be like an empty space, like a store room maybe, or something.

[00:21:57] Kyle Risi: Not even a store room. If you [00:22:00] imagine like you have a set of square blocks and you line them all up next to each other, and those are gonna be the actual individual stores. Mm-hmm. And because it's a weird plot, if you kinda arrange them, like maybe in a semicircle, there's gonna be these weird angular gaps between places and you can't physically use them for anything.

[00:22:16] Kyle Risi: So when they finally put the shell over the building, those gaps will still exist, but they need to seal them off because they're not usable space. In a way. Right?

[00:22:25] Adam Cox: So they're gonna be quite narrow gaps, is that what I'm seeing?

[00:22:28] Kyle Risi: Kind of not, and not necessarily narrow. They could be narrow in some places, but they could also be very wide in other places depending on the internal structure.

[00:22:34] Kyle Risi: So one area that stood out in particular was a spot where the outer walls were supposed to meet to form kind of a corner, but they hadn't quite connected, so kind of left this big narrow gap between them. In reality, these nowhere spaces were simply unintentional byproducts of the more layout and the challenging plot of land that they had to contend with. And They were just formed when the surrounding kind of planned areas didn't quite fit together perfectly. Eventually though, the more was completed. [00:23:00] Michael never bothered to check to see what they ended up doing about these kinda weird gaps and these voids.

[00:23:05] Kyle Risi: He just assumed that they sealed them off somehow. And that the architects had just decided to sacrifice those spaces just in order to fit everything inside this weird plot of land.

[00:23:14] Adam Cox: That does seem a bit odd because I feel like an architect would never do that. They would always make use of that space. Because you think they could have fit another shop in there or mm-hmm. I dunno. They would've been more accommodating. But it doesn't sound like this was an accident. It just, they were just a bit wasteful with the space.

[00:23:28] Kyle Risi: Quite possibly. I'm not an architect, I'm not gonna pretend that I am. I dunno. Maybe this happens way more. Um, So who knows?

[00:23:35] Adam Cox: So you saying if I go to my shopping mall now mm-hmm. There could be some hidden spaces in there.

[00:23:40] Kyle Risi: 100%. I know for a fact that there are, because like 20 years ago, we were doing an event and we needed some movie posters, and I had a friend who worked at the View Cinema in the Castle Mall.

[00:23:50] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And they offered to kind of like set us up and I went down to pick them up and she took me out through the , fire escape, we ended up in this weird corridor, which was a cinder block corridor that you walk [00:24:00] down. And that is essentially a void between the view cinema and whatever is the next store around. So there are these voids and corridors that just exist all throughout the Castle Mall.

[00:24:10] Adam Cox: Weird.

[00:24:11] Kyle Risi: It is weird, but I guess you have to, in order to fit everything together inside the shell of the Castle Mall, you have to sacrifice some space really that can't really be used by anyone.

[00:24:22] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

[00:24:23] Kyle Risi: So like I said, the mall was completed. Michael just assumed that these voids had been sealed up in some way. He never really thought about it too much more, but the memory always just lingered in the back of his mind. So when him and his friends were joking about the logistics of what it would be like to live inside a mall, Michael tells them about how he watched the mall being constructed and how he observed these nowhere spaces being built into the framework, and that if they did live inside a mall, this would've been the perfect place, but. He now figured, of course, they've all just been sealed up, right?

[00:24:54] Adam Cox: You would think.

[00:24:55] Kyle Risi: You would think so from there, the casual joking started to turn into actual plans to see [00:25:00] if they could spend an entire week living full-time in the Providence Place Mall. They then decide that this would actually be a perfect social experiment where they could make a statement about how residential and commercial properties can actually come together.

[00:25:12] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:25:13] Kyle Risi: So the figure, they could shower at the gym, which is exactly what you said. They agreed that they could eat all their meals at their food courts and they could use the public toilets whenever they needed. And the aim would be to see if they could exist inside the mall for seven days straight without ever needing to leave.

[00:25:26] Kyle Risi: So anything that they needed, they would acquire inside the mall.

[00:25:29] Adam Cox: That makes sense. But where are they gonna sleep?

[00:25:31] Kyle Risi: Well, that's the thing, right? They make a list of everything that they'll need to bring with them versus what they would actually be able to buy at the stores. They realized, of course, that the biggest hurdle was gonna be working out where they were gonna sleep. They didn't kind of like the idea of sleeping on a hard concrete floor while longingly gazing at a showroom filled with soft mattresses that would kind of like torture for them.

[00:25:49] Adam Cox: Yeah, if there's like mattress man there, then of course you'd buy a mattress.

[00:25:53] Kyle Risi: But the thing is though, where are you gonna store the mattress? Because the security guard's gonna come along and go, this is a state-of-the-art mall. Why have you [00:26:00] just put a mattress in this doorway?

[00:26:01] Adam Cox: Right. Okay. So they're thinking they're just gonna sleep out in the open. Exactly. Not in one of these nowhere spaces on a bench

[00:26:07] Kyle Risi: or something like that. Right, exactly. But it is at this point that Michael goes back to wondering if those weird nowhere spaces had actually ended up getting sealed off at any point. If they hadn't, then those spaces would be perfect for them to sleep at night without having to fear about being kicked out by security. And they could probably fashion something a little more comfortable for them during their seven day stay.

[00:26:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay. I guess it's not gonna be too homely, but if you've got like a comfy bed to sleep on, it's dark.

[00:26:32] Kyle Risi: You just need privacy, I think. Yeah. That's it. And you need protection from a security guard. I guess.

[00:26:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. And just like kids like jumping on you.

[00:26:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. No one takes kindly to like a tent in the middle of a. a mall, right?

[00:26:43] Adam Cox: No, I don't think people take kindly tents anywhere. That's not camping.

[00:26:46] Kyle Risi: Remember we went to that, anniversary party last Friday? Mm-hmm. And as we were walking along, on the sidewalk, which is very narrow. In Norwich, it was like maybe two foot.

[00:26:56] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:26:56] Kyle Risi: And there was a bloody tent pitched up right there on the sidewalk.

[00:26:59] Adam Cox: Yeah. Which [00:27:00] is obviously sad 'cause someone is, homeless or whatever. But it's just a really odd spot. Like you'd think you'd find somewhere that's, I dunno, in a park or somewhere that's a little bit more, there's

[00:27:08] Kyle Risi: a little park around the corner.

[00:27:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. But no, just on the road.

[00:27:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Very strange. I hope they're okay though.

[00:27:14] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:27:14] Kyle Risi: Anyway, so Michael and Adriana, armed with a couple torches, they head down to the mall and sure enough, beneath the movie theater, next to the parking lot on the outside of the mall, they find a narrow gap between two internal structures.

[00:27:26] Kyle Risi: It's about kind of 30 centimeters wide, barely noticeable unless you know exactly what you're looking for, which makes it really easy to miss, especially for like the more staff and the security. They were both slender enough that all it took was them kind of turning sideways and then carefully shuffling through this gap.

[00:27:41] Kyle Risi: And on the other side, they then find themselves in this really dark, empty space. They're connected to a network of accidental narrow corridors that winded between the mall's internal structures, which then led to like a series of chambers each with varying sizes and heights and shapes, et cetera.

[00:27:58] Adam Cox: Right. Okay. So they've gone into this [00:28:00] nothing space. Mm-hmm. And then connected to that is a load of other nothing spaces. Yeah.

[00:28:04] Kyle Risi: It's just a network of corridors and voids and spaces all between these internal structures. Really bizarre.

[00:28:11] Adam Cox: And is there like proper doors and stuff like that where people could walk through?

[00:28:15] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. No. Some of them might lead to like a fire escape. Yeah. Or like to the car park exit or whatever it might be. But largely they're just empty spaces. And like I said, in my mind, I vividly have this mental picture because of that time when I went to the Castle Mall to pick up those movie posters. This is what it was like. It was just these cinder block voids between these different buildings inside the mall. It was very strange. So I have this vivid picture of exactly what they're seeing .

[00:28:40] Kyle Risi: And remember at this point, the mall is barely five years old, right? Michael and Adriana are like the first people to ever set foot in these little hidden areas. Also scattered across the floor are like leftover building materials. There's screws, there's zip ties, there's the old crisp packet.

[00:28:54] Kyle Risi: Essentially anything that the builders didn't bother clearing out, because I guess the space was never meant to be accessed by the public or even by [00:29:00] staff, right?

[00:29:00] Adam Cox: Yeah. But your thought they would've cleaned up after themselves.

[00:29:03] Kyle Risi: Oh, Adam.

[00:29:03] Kyle Risi: When we were buying our house and waiting for it to be built, every time we'd come and visit it, there would always be like fag packets and crisp packets. Yeah, that's right. And all sorts of junk everywhere. And sometimes when we were digging in the garden, we'd lift up some topsoil and we'd find a chip packet.

[00:29:17] Adam Cox: That's true. I forgot about that. This house is built on chip packets. Exactly.

[00:29:22] Kyle Risi: So as they explore deeper, they eventually came to like this L-shaped void, roughly the size of a literal apartment. And they instantly knew that they'd hit the jackpot because this would be exactly what they needed if they wanted to shelter away from public view.

[00:29:36] Adam Cox: Yeah. But it's not like a sealed off area. No. They've squeezed through this gap. Mm-hmm. But it's not like they've gone into this nice room or anything like that.

[00:29:43] Kyle Risi: No. It's literally just a void in between this mall. But they also do discover that the void also connects directly into the mall through another abandoned accidental corridor on the inside.

[00:29:54] Kyle Risi: So this was perfect. They could access it from both the outside and also on the inside of the mall,

[00:29:59] Adam Cox: so [00:30:00] does that mean then what you just said there, that they could go hide in the void, wait for the, the mall to shut down and then they can then make their way back into the mall at nighttime?

[00:30:09] Kyle Risi: I guess so, yeah. Interesting. Hmm. So I think this is a perfect opportunity to take a quick break, and when we get back, Michael and the team are gonna be moving into Providence more.

[00:30:22] Kyle Risi: So Adam, we're back. Thinking,

[00:30:26] Adam Cox: I'm thinking this sounds like the worst holiday ever.

[00:30:30] Kyle Risi: Why?

[00:30:30] Adam Cox: Well, okay. I know it's an experiment. Mm-hmm. But I don't know. They haven't got a proper bed. Yep. They haven't got like room service.

[00:30:37] Kyle Risi: Because that's just standard. Right.

[00:30:41] Adam Cox: They haven't even got like a, an en suite.

[00:30:43] Kyle Risi: No, they don't. They have none of this. All they have is a void in between kind of two shops.

[00:30:47] Adam Cox: And is it, I'm trying to work out Is it dark? Is it, it's probably dusty and it's

[00:30:50] Kyle Risi: very dark. Very dusty. Loads of screws everywhere. Zip ties, chip packets. I guess they could fashion a little blanket, like one of those emergency blankets.

[00:30:58] Kyle Risi: You know, Like when your house is burnt [00:31:00] down and the fire brigade comes. Yeah. And they're like, oh, are you cold? Why are you always cold? There's just been a fire. And they drape you with one of those tinfoil blankets to keep you warm.

[00:31:08] Adam Cox: Well, I guess, uh. I guess for them they're thinking this is just gonna be a weak sort of experiment. Mm-hmm. So at that point it, it's fine.

[00:31:14] Kyle Risi: Luxury is not their objective here. Right? Yeah. And

[00:31:17] Adam Cox: they're not telling anyone about this, right? They're doing this in secrecy. They're telling a few people, but they're not actually telling them all. Like, Oh, hey, we're just gonna camp out here. Don't mind us.

[00:31:25] Kyle Risi: No, they're not telling them all. So when they first stopped planning, there were kind of four or five of them. But as they start getting more serious, this eventually grows to like a little group of eight who are all up for kind of the challenge of seeing if they can live inside Providence more for seven days.

[00:31:40] Kyle Risi: They give themselves a bit of a, a kind of a group name, which they call, they're a cult called the, the trauma kit. Which basically means children of the ruins. Okay. Which seems appropriate at first until you realize that trauma, akin is a German word for orphan children who had to fend for themselves in the bombed out [00:32:00] cities following World War ii.

[00:32:01] Kyle Risi: That was not tasteful. No, it's not. So they're kind of drawing a parallel between war orphans and how they were kind of emerging from the rubble of Fort Thunder and their demolition and how they were trying to now fend for themselves. So like it's the same, but it's, it's also a little bit different.

[00:32:18] Adam Cox: I mean, it's a lot different. This just feels like a group of students on a gap yard trying to do something like out there.

[00:32:24] Kyle Risi: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I see where they're going with it, but maybe a little bit tone deaf when you really think about it

[00:32:31] Adam Cox: a little. Come on.

[00:32:33] Kyle Risi: So Michael and Adriana, they report back to the others about what they had found, and this is when their mission objective changes the challenge. Was no longer to see if they could stay in the mall for a week. They were going to secretly set up a permanent residence and live there until either they got caught or got bored.

[00:32:50] Adam Cox: Okay. So have they even managed a week at this point? No. Still blands, so, so they're already talking about mo like actually moving in, like,

[00:32:57] Kyle Risi: well, I think they, that they can see the [00:33:00] potential in this void, right?

[00:33:01] Adam Cox: Sure. Put on a new throw on this pea pile of dust, um, you know, get, get some drapes.

[00:33:07] Kyle Risi: So they decide from the onset that in order for this to be a success, they need to make sure that they weren't going to draw too much attention to themselves. I. They decide that not everyone can live in the mall at the same time. Instead, they create this rotor where a couple of them will each get the chance to spend a few weeks there before handing over to the next group.

[00:33:23] Kyle Risi: And in the rotor, they also kind of allocate various chores for each of the group, uh, members to do, to ensure the void remains clean and tidy. And from there they start clearing out all the debris that was left behind by the construction work by stuffing their backpacks or screws and chip packets and bits of wood or whatever

[00:33:39] Kyle Risi: it and then using the same backpacks, they would then sneak in all the essentials that they needed. aside from the essentials, they agree that as part of their social experiment, they'll purchase everything else they needed from the actual mall itself. To preserve the mall ecosystem, and maintain the integrity of what they were trying to prove.

[00:33:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. To get the full mall experience.

[00:33:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. You've gotta get the full mall experience. Yeah. [00:34:00] So they purchase extension cords and they tap into the mall's electricity supply, which one set up. They used to then power lamps and a small heater again bought from the mall for a bed. They build a makeshift base at a cinder blocks. They buy a mattress from 40 winks, and by the time this is done, they had a space that was sparse, but it was a comfortable setup.

[00:34:20] Adam Cox: Interesting. So what were the essentials that they brought in?

[00:34:23] Kyle Risi: Like toothpaste? Toothbrushes.

[00:34:25] Adam Cox: They couldn't have got that from them all.

[00:34:26] Kyle Risi: Um. I guess they, maybe they did. What can't you buy at a mall? Um, especially this is meant to be a super regional mall, right? Yeah. Where you can get everything you need.

[00:34:34] Adam Cox: And back then malls were really good now, not quite as good unless you live in a big city. Yeah. Now it's like phone shops, charity shops. Yeah. There's only so much you can sweet shops. Yeah. You can't make a meal for a whole week at Poundland.

[00:34:47] Adam Cox: Hey, challenge accepted. Do you remember our mate, we probably shouldn't say this on the podcast, so scrap her name, I'll change her name. Her name's Sally. So Sally would host these international students, and she literally bought a [00:35:00] house to accommodate these students downstairs on the ground floor.

[00:35:03] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Where she would have four bunk beds that she'd put in this tiny, tiny room so she could host four people. She had a little shower and a little kind of kitchenette. And she would then go to Asda and she would buy like. A whole bag of like chicken nuggets and some fries, and she would calculate that she could feed each child for 75 p.

[00:35:22] Adam Cox: Yeah. A meal. She was like crunching the numbers. Yeah. She worked

[00:35:25] Kyle Risi: out that each shower would cost 50 p.

[00:35:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. And they're only allowed a shower a day.

[00:35:29] Kyle Risi: One shower a day, and she would then get paid like 20 pounds per day. So she would really make her profit margins go. And because of what she did, she managed to put both their kids through private school.

[00:35:39] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:35:39] Kyle Risi: The savviest woman I've ever met in my life. So sally could do it. Yeah. Sally could do a whole Christmas dinner from Poundland.

[00:35:46] Adam Cox: Yeah, she probably could. To be fair, the students would always love the meals, or that's what they used to say to them because they weren't allowed. Junk food at home.

[00:35:54] Kyle Risi: Exactly. She was like a and 'cause they all come from wealthy families, right? Because they're exchange students, so they never got to eat like pizza every night or [00:36:00] chicken nuggets and she would get five star reviews. Yeah. They just loved her. And she just let them do whatever they wanted. She just didn't give a shit.

[00:36:06] Adam Cox: It's probably why English food gets a really bad rap because people like Sally like cooking the worst base food ever.

[00:36:13] Kyle Risi: So over the next few weeks they stick to the roster where only a few of them will be staying in the apartment at any one time before handing the keys over to the next team. It works really well for Michael because he's of course traveling around quite a bit during this period, teaching kind of people how to do these tech URIs, et cetera.

[00:36:28] Kyle Risi: And at first they pour a lot of time and energy into making various improvements to their, essentially their apartment.

[00:36:34] Kyle Risi: But eventually they realize that they need to kind of balance this, that constant risk of potentially being caught. Like it becomes like this mindset, yes, we want to live somewhere nice, but we don't wanna put too much effort and love into it because of course we could be out the door like tomorrow. It's like a how you would treat a rental, essentially.

[00:36:52] Adam Cox: Yeah. So they're thinking about getting a new skylight, I don't know, maybe an extension. Mm-hmm. Knocking down a wall Exactly. Of the void. How much effort can you put [00:37:00] into this space?

[00:37:00] Kyle Risi: Oh dear Adam. Of course, one week turns into two weeks. Two weeks turns into four, and eventually six months goes by and no one's discovered them. How, and at this point is when their attitudes start to shift. If this was gonna be a long-term thing, then a bed and a couple of lambs just wasn't gonna cut it.

[00:37:19] Kyle Risi: No. the first thing that they focus on is adding more of a sense of privacy throughout the space that they've built. They literally build a few compartment walls outta cinder blocks, and inside one of those walls, they install a literal door to secure the space.

[00:37:34] Kyle Risi: So they now have a closed off space in here. Right. Next comes the kitchen. They build a fully kited out kitchen with a fridge and cooking appliances. No way. Then they bring in a four piece couch complete with a loveseat. They add a garden rug. They bring in a dining table and a coffee table to finish off the living area.

[00:37:52] Kyle Risi: They then decorate the space with various potter plants hang framed artwork on the wall. They bring in a TV and a PlayStation for entertainment during kind of [00:38:00] hours where kind of the border just roaming this 13 acre kind of mall

[00:38:04] Adam Cox: uhhuh.

[00:38:04] Kyle Risi: What's incredible is that you'd expect them to get noticed, especially like dragging like a sofa or a mattress through them all, right?

[00:38:12] Adam Cox: yeah. I can't believe they managed to. Do that. I mean, one pot plants, I can't imagine there's like proper daylight.

[00:38:17] Kyle Risi: No, not really. They're probably fake plants, I guess. Fine.

[00:38:20] Kyle Risi: And two. Or you accept they're gonna die just like we do.

[00:38:23] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:38:24] Kyle Risi: We gotta buy you, you puke, you're pretty, you're nice, but you are gonna die if you come home with us. And the plant's like, take me home.

[00:38:29] Adam Cox: The other thing is if there's sandwich in between some shops, I dunno how close they are to like, I dunno, people that own these shops. Mm-hmm. But are they gonna be like, do they have to keep quiet or can they be quite noisy and stuff like that?

[00:38:41] Kyle Risi: So first of all, when it comes to physically being seen, dragging a mattress or a sofa through the mall, right? They're in a mall that's sells sofas and sales mattresses. So you couldn't be any less outer place.

[00:38:52] Adam Cox: I guess so. But you're carrying a sofa, I imagine like the, the shop clerk is are you sure you don't wanna get this delivered to me?

[00:38:57] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They're like, no, no, no, it's fine. We'll, we'll take

[00:38:59] Adam Cox: it. We're already down the road. [00:39:00] Yeah. But we,

[00:39:00] Kyle Risi: we used to live in the city and I used to do that all the time. We bought a Chester draw from losers and they were like, that's fine. Do you wanna get that delivered? And I was like, no, me and my mate will carry it. So we did like a proper Ross and Rachel where we walked four blocks.

[00:39:12] Kyle Risi: I did have to convince the clerk that me and Miguel were sleeping together and that we had had sex 294 times.

[00:39:18] Adam Cox: Of course,

[00:39:20] Kyle Risi: of course. No friends reference there for you. But yeah. So it wouldn't really look outta place, I don't think.

[00:39:26] Adam Cox: I guess so. Hmm. And then does this, mall actually shut down at night? Like it wasn't open in to 24 hours?

[00:39:33] Kyle Risi: It did shut down at night. Yes. Okay. So there'll be a quiet period where kind of the security guards would be patrolling, but all the shops would be shut and stuff.

[00:39:39] Adam Cox: Fine. And so at that point, they obviously do have to be quite quiet out the way so they don't get caught or ushered out.

[00:39:44] Kyle Risi: Well, that's the thing. As for the noise from their construction, remember they built a literal wall and they installed doors. It wasn't an issue for one. The space was really well insulated and second, they were tucked deep within the kind of the bones of the building.

[00:39:56] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:39:56] Kyle Risi: But as a precaution though, they did agree that they would only do work [00:40:00] during the day. So it could be disguised with the natural bustle of the mall and any sounds, but honestly they really didn't need to.

[00:40:06] Adam Cox: I know. 'cause I think like these shop owners would be like, do you hear rats and like people like scurrying around and stuff like that. But Exactly.

[00:40:11] Kyle Risi: Then it's not your problem. Yeah. Because you'll be like, oh, it's probably in the walls, or it's probably another store. But again, when you've got the music playing, you've got loads of punters coming in and out. You're not gonna notice any of that noise.

[00:40:22] Adam Cox: But did some of the shop owners like know what was going on? Or like, there's this rumor, did you know that there's people that live in this mall? I haven't seen them. The borough is, yeah,

[00:40:30] Kyle Risi: I dunno. There's a couple of good theories that we'll come onto later on. Okay. I don't wanna spoiler ship because I don't give any credence to those theories, but they do have one rule though, right? And that is to always dress like you're supposed to be at the mall. Like it was their way of blending in and since obviously they didn't have a toilet in their apartment, even like quick trips to go for a quick pee or to grab a pint of milk or whatever, you couldn't just nip out in your joggers and your flip flops.

[00:40:57] Adam Cox: Right. I was saying like that they can put on [00:41:00] their dressing gown. Yeah. And then walk to one of the shops,

[00:41:02] Kyle Risi: and this is like the late nineties, early two thousands at a time when going to the mall is where you dressed up. Right? Right. This is where you wore your best. You don't go in just joggers, if you wanted to nip out to go to the toilet, you had to put on your Hollister, kind of like polo top.

[00:41:16] Kyle Risi: You had to put on your big buckle belt spike up your hair. You You couldn't leave the apartment without doing your hair.

[00:41:21] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's, a lot of work just to nip out.

[00:41:24] Kyle Risi: So as more time passes, the apartment doesn't just become comfortable. It starts to kind of feel a little bit luxurious. They bring in a glass and timber credenza to display all of their China and their beautiful crystal stemware that they've collected over the months.

[00:41:36] Adam Cox: Nice. And did they have like a, I dunno, a, a display of stuff they stole from the wall?

[00:41:41] Kyle Risi: No, I don't think they stole anything. I think they did try to do an honest job. Okay. About it. I mean, there are some images mannequins in their apartment where they've kind of arranged, like silent, like little roommates. Mm-hmm. It looks like they've made them themselves. Oh, okay. So they've got like no head, but they're clearly made outta paper and share. They're fully dressed, they'll sitting on the [00:42:00] sofa or whatever like that. But I don't think they stole anything.

[00:42:02] Adam Cox: Well, apart from the electricity and True. Not paying any taxes and stuff like that. True.

[00:42:07] Kyle Risi: And squatting,

[00:42:09] Adam Cox: uh, did they actually have jobs at this point? Because I guess they needed to furnish this space.

[00:42:13] Adam Cox: Well, Michael had a job, didn't he? Yes. Yeah.

[00:42:14] Kyle Risi: And I guess the others were just living off their student loans, I guess. Oh, okay. Who knows, huh?

[00:42:19] Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, aside from plumbing and natural lights, they had for all intents and purposes, created a fully functioning, extremely comfortable apartment. The space itself was like 800 square feet, which is quite large. Like To put that into perspective. A flat in London of this size would easily cost like 2000 pounds a month.

[00:42:35] Adam Cox: Yeah. And they're

[00:42:35] Kyle Risi: paying nothing. They're paying zero money. So going back to the original question, can human beings live inside the mall? The answer was clearly yes. But since they still had been caught, the question now evolved into something else entirely. How luxuriously can human beings live inside the mall

[00:42:53] Adam Cox: and how long can they do it before they get detected?

[00:42:55] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So do you wanna see some images of it? Maybe you can tell our freaks of the show what kind of [00:43:00] vibe you're getting from these images.

[00:43:01] Adam Cox: Yeah, because it sounds like initially it was a bit like they are squatting and now it sounds like opulence.

[00:43:06] Adam Cox: Well, this one, they've got a Christmas tree. Mm-hmm. Of course they're gonna celebrate. That looks fairly well lit. It doesn't look dingy. It's got like that kind of, those pipes or tubes with covered in foil,

[00:43:17] Kyle Risi: which is very in now. Yeah. It's very industrial. Look industrial, you know,

[00:43:20] Adam Cox: it's got an industrial look, but it still looks quite warm and nice.

[00:43:24] Kyle Risi: See the wall that they've built and they've literally installed an, a door in there to secure the space.

[00:43:28] Adam Cox: That is the tiniest tv. Mind you,

[00:43:30] Kyle Risi: it's very small.

[00:43:31] Adam Cox: Like, I don't think they made TVs that small.

[00:43:33] Kyle Risi: But you gotta remember, they've only got like a small gap that they can fit through like 30 centimeters wide.

[00:43:37] Kyle Risi: So Yeah. But they can't exactly fit a flat screen unless you turn it sideways.

[00:43:41] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then how did they get the, so r and I would've thought it's true through the, I have no idea. The fire exit or something?

[00:43:45] Kyle Risi: Possibly. Yeah.

[00:43:46] Adam Cox: Okay. There's the door. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. And the breeze blocks that they made. Oh yeah.

[00:43:50] Adam Cox: Oh. That's a mannequin that they made. Yeah. Oh yeah. You can tell it's paper mache.

[00:43:53] Kyle Risi: Yes. It's incredible, isn't it? They did all of that themselves.

[00:43:57] Adam Cox: Yeah, it's not as big as I thought it was gonna be, [00:44:00] but it does look home. Do you know what it looks like? It looks like a, a set for like a soap or something.

[00:44:05] Adam Cox: Does that make sense?

[00:44:06] Kyle Risi: No. Okay. No, it doesn't.

[00:44:08] Adam Cox: It looks like it should be like a TV set in the way that it's kind of dressed because, you know, I think it's the lighting. It just looks a little bit off, but it looks homely.

[00:44:15] Kyle Risi: Great. So now you have the sense, of the vibe that we're dealing with here. And so in their pursuit to start making the apartment as luxurious as possible, they start making plans to add a second bedroom. Their intention is to install floorboards throughout the entire space. And they even start exploring how they can tap into the Moore's plumbing system so they can install a fully flushing toilet.

[00:44:34] Adam Cox: How could But where's all your poo gonna go? I can't picture it.

[00:44:37] Kyle Risi: They haven't done it just yet. They still need to work it out. But that is the dream. And the thing is though, like if they can achieve that, then the apartment would be fully self-contained.

[00:44:45] Kyle Risi: They wouldn't have to keep getting dressed every time they just needed to go to the The toilet.

[00:44:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. But what about showering? They still needed to, to go to the gym, to shower.

[00:44:52] Kyle Risi: Well, if they can tap into the plumbing, then maybe they can also install a shower. They need to also make a drain, I guess.

[00:44:57] Adam Cox: And then running water. I guess you could get like a [00:45:00] fountain, but now they're gonna go for a full on sink.

[00:45:01] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Who knows. Wow. So by this point it's 2007 it's been four years since they moved in. They do have a little bit of a mishap One evening the rostered groups staying there at the time had come back from a long day of roaming the mort to find that someone had kicked in the door the outside.

[00:45:17] Adam Cox: So someone's found their place. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:45:19] Kyle Risi: When they go in, they discover that someone has stolen their PlayStation, but also a bunch of other things that they wouldn't expect a thief to actually take. Whoever broke in had taken some of the artworks off the wall that they'd been using to decorate.

[00:45:32] Kyle Risi: They also took part of a tape mural that Michael had erected, and also they took a photo album, but they didn't take anything else. Like they didn't take the tv, they didn't take anything else of value. Mm-hmm. That was laying around the apartment. And of course this totally freaks 'em out.

[00:45:47] Adam Cox: It's like a personal attack, I think if someone's just gone to take the artwork, then maybe they know who's staying there.

[00:45:54] Kyle Risi: That's the sense that they're getting here. That is it someone that we know? Have we told the wrong person?

[00:45:59] Kyle Risi: [00:46:00] Yeah, because it's been going for four years. They're extremely proud of this experiment. So of course they have told people, so Michael calls an emergency meeting with the rest of the TAM end.

[00:46:08] Kyle Risi: They wonder if maybe it was someone they knew, possibly someone that they told about the experiment. They just can't work it out. So they agree that they need to tighten up security and if they were going to keep the experiment going for as long as possible, they needed to commit to not telling anyone else about what they were doing.

[00:46:23] Kyle Risi: And there was absolutely no more bringing guests back to the apartment. So it was like, do not speak about the secret apartment. It's like FY Club. Exactly.

[00:46:32] Kyle Risi: So several weeks go by. There's no new break-ins. Michael has a fellow installation artist and a close friend visiting from Hong Kong, and he's itching to tell her about the Secret Mall apartment, knowing that she'd be seriously impressed by this.

[00:46:44] Kyle Risi: So without telling anyone, decides that he's gonna break the rules a little bit and he's gonna bring her to the secret apartment just as once.

[00:46:51] Kyle Risi: He walks her through, obviously their plans for the second bedroom, the possibility of installing floorboards, and maybe the logistics are tapping into the Moore's Plumbing.

[00:46:59] Kyle Risi: [00:47:00] Just as they're heading out the door, they hear voices on the other side, followed by the unmistakable crackling. Walkie talkies.

[00:47:07] Adam Cox: Oh, security. Mm-hmm.

[00:47:09] Kyle Risi: They both freeze seconds later the door bursts open and in walk three very angry looking men from more management.

[00:47:16] Adam Cox: To be fair, if I was a security guard and that, you're like, what the hell is this?

[00:47:21] Kyle Risi: Exactly, exactly. Michael doesn't know what to do, so he just simply raises his arms. He smiles and says, surprise. And then he is mate from Hong Kong, is like, what the fuck is going on? Or she's like, yeah, this is art.

[00:47:35] Kyle Risi: This is art right here.

[00:47:37] Adam Cox: I'm part of this art.

[00:47:39] Kyle Risi: So neither of them try to resist or escape. They fully cooperate and they follow the men down to the more security office where they wait for the police to arrive, and shortly after that, they're both arrested for trespassing.

[00:47:49] Kyle Risi: While they're waiting, Michael discovers that the break in that they experienced a few weeks earlier were actually two brand new security guards that had been employed just a few weeks back. And so [00:48:00] they were there and they were very smug about being the ones to discover the secret apartments.

[00:48:05] Adam Cox: Oh, so security had known for a couple of weeks then?

[00:48:08] Kyle Risi: Yes. Basically they had spotted the token members entering and extinct from the same access point that no one else seemed to be using. Mm-hmm. After a bit of investigating, they stumbled upon obviously the cinder block wall, the locked door. So they busted it obviously open. Once they were inside, they took any items that they thought might help them identify who they were.

[00:48:27] Kyle Risi: That's why they took the photo album and obviously some of the tape off the wall. But the reason why they took the PlayStation was because they figured that they could log into some of the games to see if there were any details within the game that might indicate who they actually were. So it's like That's smart.

[00:48:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It was, this was also back in the day before, it was all like connected to the internet so they were purely relying on usernames and what you might have called your character or whatever.

[00:48:48] Adam Cox: Hmm. That's a stretch.

[00:48:49] Kyle Risi: Well, like if you're playing like the Sims.

[00:48:51] Adam Cox: Yeah. But you by like a nickname or something, or

[00:48:53] Kyle Risi: Possibly They didn't find anything. Okay. Basically. And so the more security, they just waited until they spotted someone else entering the space [00:49:00] while they were on shift. Mm-hmm. And bingo. Eventually they see Michael and Jaffa sneaking in.

[00:49:04] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:49:04] Kyle Risi: So Michael and Jaffa, they're both taken down to the police station for questioning. Jaffa is quickly released since obviously they realized that she was just not involved. But Michael has to spend the night in jail and the next day the more decides that they were going to come after Michael. And they insisted that he be charged with every single felony that they could think of breaking and entering destruction of property, disturbing the peace, and causing a safety risk.

[00:49:26] Adam Cox: Did he disturb any peace? I feels like no one knew that they were there for four years.

[00:49:30] Kyle Risi: Exactly, so he is issued his court date shortly thereafter. And when he was in court, it was kinda one of those court sessions where it's just kinda like one in one out and the judge just gets a list of the cases that he is gonna be seen that day.

[00:49:43] Kyle Risi: And so he can see the charges, but he doesn't really know what's going on until obviously the defendant is standing in front of him. Mm-hmm. Essentially.

[00:49:49] Kyle Risi: So when it's Michael's turn, the judge listens to the evidence being presented by the Moore's lawyers and you see the judge's face just contort with confusion.

[00:49:57] Kyle Risi: And then finally he just cuts off the lawyer and he is like, what you [00:50:00] and your friends did was very weird, but this is not a crime.

[00:50:04] Adam Cox: That's the thing. Like, yeah, you okay, you shouldn't have been on there. You might have stolen or, you know, put up the electricity bill. Exactly. And actually, yeah, I've got better things to be doing.

[00:50:12] Kyle Risi: Exactly. He does say there's no proof of theft, there's no proof of vandalism, there's no proof of breaking or entering. He says at best. What you've done is trespassing, but that's just a misdemeanor. And so I'm gonna have to ask you to leave my courtroom.

[00:50:26] Kyle Risi: So basically he's literally just sentenced to a slap on the wrist.

[00:50:29] Adam Cox: Well, I mean, I think that's fair.

[00:50:31] Kyle Risi: I think so. Obviously this is a huge relief to Michael who later says that he could tell from the judge's slight smile on his face that he was somewhat impressed with what he had actually finished to do.

[00:50:39] Adam Cox: Yeah, anyone should be.

[00:50:41] Kyle Risi: So Michael was free, the charges were dropped and he didn't even have to pay a fine, but the more was then forced to go through the humiliation of handing back all of his stuff, which they were not happy about.

[00:50:51] Kyle Risi: The only card that they really had to play at this point, which they did in a really smug fashion, was issue. Michael, with a lifetime ban,

[00:50:58] Adam Cox: you're [00:51:00] not allowed back here.

[00:51:00] Kyle Risi: You're not allowed back. And they made it clear that if he ever came anywhere near the perimeter, that he would be arrested immediately.

[00:51:06] Kyle Risi: And so Michael was added to the list of 665 other people who'd already been banned for them all, which are mostly just like 15-year-old kids who'd been busted for skateboarding or rollerblading on the premises.

[00:51:17] Adam Cox: Is this photo on a wall or something? That's That's quite a lot of people.

[00:51:20] Kyle Risi: It is like, I'm like, what? Maybe just scan through. Yeah. You can come in and believe it or not, up until January, 2025, Michael has never been back.

[00:51:29] Adam Cox: Wow. And so he got away with that for four years. But he didn't live there like ongoing for four years, or no one did. They had like stints?

[00:51:35] Adam Cox: Exactly. Because Michael was traveling, he was a professional artist at the time. Mm-hmm. Going all over the world doing his tape art. So there was always someone living there.

[00:51:42] Because I was just trying to think. 'cause you'd be living in the mall. Mm-hmm. And then you'd move out once the next group moves in, so then you're gonna be going, you're paying rent or living with your parents or something.

[00:51:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And the thing is though, you gotta remember that this wasn't about evading or getting cheap rent. It was a social experiment.

[00:51:55] Adam Cox: Yeah, I, that's, that's a fair point. I just wondered if they were trying to do this to save money as [00:52:00] well, but actually, okay, fine.

[00:52:01] Kyle Risi: So after he was acquitted, the story ends up attracting a huge amount of media attention. Michael and Adriana were the only two original artists whose identities were known at the time. The others kind of chose to stay anonymous, and so Michael and Adriana ended up being the face of this incredible story as a way to promote their tape art business.

[00:52:18] Kyle Risi: They did all the rounds on various TV shows, and did various newspaper interviews and they're all really cool to read.

[00:52:23] Kyle Risi: I'll link to a couple that I found and I'll put them in the show notes, but what made me really sad is that they so clearly absolutely adored living there. Like it really seemed like this was a really defining era of their lives. They talked about how it was such a shame that they got busted because in their minds they wanted to continue building this ultimate adult for house, implementing all the different improvements that they had planned.

[00:52:45] Kyle Risi: And they even joked about eventually bringing their own kids there and potentially even passing it down to the next generation, which I mean is very much a a 20-year-old kind of mentality, but it meant something to them.

[00:52:55] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess it's kinda like when you're at university where you're staying in halls or [00:53:00] like a student house, which.

[00:53:01] Adam Cox: Isn't that great realistically, but there's like a charm to it. And you have all these memories and stuff like that, that is actually quite a special place for you. And, but yeah, to raise kids though, I don't know. Yeah.

[00:53:12] Kyle Risi: Come on kids. It's, it's our two weeks. It's time to go to McDonald's. Yay. Going to the mattress store.

[00:53:19] Kyle Risi: So after all this was over, Michael did feel compelled to issue a public apology to the mall and the police. And so on his blog, he posts this really lengthy statement That 100% is funnier if you try and read it with a sarcastic tone in a, he apologizes to the Providence Police for wasting their time to the security guards who were forced to look really incompetent, which he says wasn't his intention.

[00:53:39] Kyle Risi: to obviously the more owners for making them feel like they were being disrespected. You can read it obviously for yourself on trauma kin.com, but make sure if you do that, you read it with, that's kind of sarcastic. Tone in mind is really funny.

[00:53:50] Kyle Risi: and of course through the story brings a whole new level of awareness to Michael's tape our business.

[00:53:55] Kyle Risi: And like we discussed earlier on, it's not just Michael erecting these tape muriels, it's [00:54:00] extremely collaborative. And as a teacher, he's really effective in helping people understand what it truly means to operate as part of a team. And so for this reason as well as hospitals and charities, big businesses invite him to do team building workshops at their organizations.

[00:54:14] Kyle Risi: But when Michael arrives at these locations, he has no idea what he's physically gonna make. All he has is just a blank canvas in the form of a wall on the inside or the outside of a building. It's all about that community collaboration, where it's the general public or the corporate employees that decide what they're gonna build. They decide what their motivations are gonna be and what their methods are gonna be, and of course what they're gonna build. And it's just Michael that facilitates that process of them bringing it to life.

[00:54:39] Kyle Risi: So it's really cool what he's doing, and so under Michael's guidance, they build these really incredible muriels, which they just end up tearing down like mere hours later.

[00:54:47] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's still weird, but

[00:54:49] Kyle Risi: it is weird. But I guess it's, we are now living in a time where you can better document a lot of that stuff anyway. Yeah. So you do leave with some really incredible footage, I guess maybe even a time lapse.

[00:54:57] Adam Cox: Yeah, maybe It's all about being present in the moment. [00:55:00]

[00:55:00] Kyle Risi: It is. And working as a team Adam. Mm-hmm.

[00:55:02] Adam Cox: Does he go around other shopping malls now and go like, Hmm, I wonder where I could build a little place to live?

[00:55:08] Kyle Risi: Maybe. I think he's now outgrown that. Right. Um, he does a really brilliant Ted talk as well where he talks about what he does and obviously how he fosters this collaboration process. And he's really inspiring.

[00:55:18] Kyle Risi: It's probably one of my favorite TED Talks that I've ever watched, and I know like there's not that much glamor in tape art, but definitely watch his Ted Talk.

[00:55:25] Kyle Risi: It is really inspiring, especially like how noble he is as well, and the work that he does. It comes from such an altruistic place.

[00:55:32] Kyle Risi: I also was expecting him to have written a memoir about this whole experience, but as of 2025, there doesn't appear to be any plans to do so, which I mean is a shame. I would love to have read that, that memoir.

[00:55:42] Adam Cox: Yeah, that would be really good. I think it would be, it could be called Sticking It to the Man.

[00:55:47] Kyle Risi: Ah.

[00:55:48] Adam Cox: Or, and it could be turned into a comedy show. I think a sitcom, I feel like it's perfect for a sitcom, maybe like one or two series. I don't feel like it could go on much longer than that.

[00:55:56] Adam Cox: For four years. Four Seasons. In this episode we are gonna work out how [00:56:00] to get a couch in it, should we get copyright for that in case he does do it?

[00:56:03] Kyle Risi: We could buy the name for it, sticking it to the man and be like, Hey,

[00:56:06] Adam Cox: yeah, Michael, you can't have that.

[00:56:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. Pay us. thing is that over the years he has been approached by like 30 different directors all wanting to make a film about this, but Michael has rejected every single one of them because they were mostly interested in what they did rather than the message behind why the artist did what they did.

[00:56:21] Adam Cox: Right. Okay.

[00:56:23] Kyle Risi: Eventually, though, by chance, Michael does meet a director called Jeremy Workman in Greece when he is doing a tape Muriel. And unlike the others, Jeremy is genuinely interested in the message and not just the prankish nature of kind of like living in a mall.

[00:56:35] Kyle Risi: And so after 15 years, Michael finally agrees to work towards making a documentary, which would focus on obviously the creation and maintenance of the apartment, but also the themes of urban transformation and gentrification and the kind of corporate resistance at the heart of the story. And so on the 21st of March, 2025, a documentary film called, secret Mall apartment was released in theaters, and I haven't seen it yet, but. It does have a hundred percent on [00:57:00] Rotten Tomatoes.

[00:57:00] Adam Cox: That's pretty impressive. Do they recreate or do they revisit their space? Are they allowed to? 'cause he's not allowed on the mall, so they couldn't have done

[00:57:07] Kyle Risi: Up until this point. He wasn't. But yeah, basically it's just a Talking Heads documentary. Mm-hmm. And I guess there's maybe loads of recreated kind of footage from what they did and how they did it. But they do have some footage, which I guess is gonna be part of the documentary, but it looks incredible. And what I like is it does center on kind of the themes that they're trying to explore, like gentrification and kind of corporate resistance and things like that.

[00:57:29] Kyle Risi: So it looks pretty damn good.

[00:57:31] Adam Cox: And I wanna know how you make a paper mache mannequin,

[00:57:33] Kyle Risi: do you think they molded out of their own body?

[00:57:35] Adam Cox: Yeah. And 'cause they were wearing their clothes, like they fit just perfectly.

[00:57:39] Kyle Risi: Might find out if you watch the documentary.

[00:57:41] Kyle Risi: Of course, Michael does have a website called trauma kin.com. It's not really being looked after, but it does showcase some really interesting photographs of the apartment of course all of Michael's really great artwork he does in kind of the tape art world. But recently in March, 2025, after 18 years, the mall ban was actually lifted [00:58:00] and he can now return to Providence Mall. And on top of that, he's been given permission to create a tape art mural in that same mall.

[00:58:08] Adam Cox: Interesting. I kind of feel like that mall is now famous for this. I feel like they should recreate that space and almost like people lived in this mall, not to kind of like encourage it again, but that's quite a unique piece of history.

[00:58:19] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And I think that's what they realized as well. 'cause they changed management and so the new management decided that actually this is part of the rich history of the mall. So actually let's lift the ban. We've got the documentary coming out, it's gonna attract a lot more kind of, fame for the mall as well. So obviously self-interest there.

[00:58:36] Kyle Risi: But yeah, Michael has been back to the mall and they did let him visit the spot where the old apartment was and it is just now a big empty void from what I could tell from the, the, I think that's where it was.

[00:58:46] Kyle Risi: But they've cleared everything out.

[00:58:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. I felt like they should recreate it and people can go visit and be like, wow. Yeah, see how these people lived.

[00:58:54] Kyle Risi: And again, a testament to how much this meant to Michael, because when he was in there, he described it as like a strange act of [00:59:00] closure, going to visit that space.

[00:59:01] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Which is a shame. Like when you are at university and you are in those formative years, the things that you do and the experiences that you experience, they do kind of stay with you. They are really important to you. So I can completely understand what he must be feeling in that moment. Revisiting that empty space.

[00:59:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. You You built that with your friends and stuff, so. Yeah,

[00:59:19] Kyle Risi: exactly. And Adam, that is a story of Michael Townsend and the trauma end and therefore year stint in the Secret Mall apartment.

[00:59:28] Adam Cox: That is very cool. Did not know that existed. And I think 'cause we cover quite a few dark stories, it's nice to cover something that's quite.

[00:59:36] Adam Cox: I don't know, whimsical and just fun, wholesome, I'd call it wholesome. Wholesome,

[00:59:40] Kyle Risi: yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:41] Kyle Risi: Before we do wrap up, I did read on Reddit and I dunno how true this is. And I really hope it's not. But apparently since all of this came out in 2007, a couple people on Reddit have claimed that they were friends with the security guards that were working at the mall at the time.

[00:59:53] Kyle Risi: apparently it was common knowledge that most of the securities guards were in on this. And actually just turning a blind [01:00:00] eye as long as they got to use the space as a secondary break room to take extra unscheduled breaks.

[01:00:05] Adam Cox: Oh really?

[01:00:06] Kyle Risi: So basically they would just say, I'm off to do a perimeter check. And then they would just go hang out and play Grand Theft Auto a bit.

[01:00:11] Adam Cox: And that's why they stole the PlayStation because they were like gonna get rid of their um, their high score. their high score.

[01:00:16] Kyle Risi: The thing is though, I don't know how true their claim is, but consider that the people who busted the apartment were actually two brand new security guards who had only been working at them mall for a short time.

[01:00:26] Kyle Risi: So it's entirely possible that maybe they weren't briefed yet or trusted yet to be in on this little secret. I don't want to believe it at all. I choosing not to believe that I can't verify that 'cause that's just people talking shit on the internet.

[01:00:39] Adam Cox: Maybe, although I can sort of buy it because I just thought if you're a security guard and you're there every day, sure you can have some regulars that walk through, but you're gonna spot certain people.

[01:00:48] Adam Cox: You're like, you are here every day at 9:00 AM

[01:00:50] Kyle Risi: If does seem plausible, and you're right, but Michael hasn't said that's the case. Mm-hmm. And I choose to believe Michael. I trust Michael. He seems like a genuine, honest, nice guy.

[01:00:59] Adam Cox: [01:01:00] Okay.

[01:01:00] Kyle Risi: Okay. Anyway, yeah. So should we run the, the outro for this week?

[01:01:05] Kyle Risi: Let's do it.

[01:01:06] Kyle Risi: That brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things. We really hope you enjoyed today's episode.

[01:01:15] Adam Cox: If today's episode sparked your curiosity, do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show

[01:01:24] Kyle Risi: and for our dedicated freaks out there, do not forget that next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and it is always completely free to access.

[01:01:32] Adam Cox: And if you want even more, then join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content and get sneak peek at what's coming next. We'd love for you to join our growing community.

[01:01:44] Kyle Risi: New episodes drop every Tuesday. And until then, remember, shit, I didn't get an out show for this week.

[01:01:49] Kyle Risi: Uh, don't build a secret mall apartment.

[01:01:51] Kyle Risi: See you next time.

[01:01:53] Kyle Risi: See ya. [01:02:00]