Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Man Who Can Find Anywhere About this episode He is a god of Google Maps — an internet legend for matching a single image with a far-flung location, in the blink of an eye. But Trevor Rainbolt never wanted to be an influencer. And for a while there, he'd never even left the United States. The 27-year-old college dropout who helped us find Bill Belichick's Ring camera finally links up with Pablo to tell the sports origin story of a modern creator — from Steph Curry meme lord and KD DMs to Travis Kelce matchmaker and alleged CIA agent — while opening his aperture to the world he's been studying... then accepting a special assignment.
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Transcript 9,159 words · 19 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:06 Pablo Torre? This is Thailand.
0:09 Pablo Torre? Nice. This is Israel.
0:13 Pablo Torre? Nice.
0:14 Speaker 00 Right after this ad.
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1:25 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes,
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2:22 Pablo Torre? Sign up for free at apollo.io. That's apollo.io.
2:34 Pablo Torre? Where are you right now? Can you say? Can you disclose your own geographic location?
2:39 Speaker 04 Can you guess? No, uh, the classic. That's my go-to.
2:44 Pablo Torre? You have a sofa behind you, and it is sparsely decorated. And there's an air conditioner above.
2:49 Speaker 04 There you go. Straight from... The AC's a good call. That's a good, uh... No, that's straight from my kid. I'm in Bangkok, so Bangkok, Thailand. I've been here for three years now, so...
3:00 Pablo Torre? This is long, long awaited, you being on the show.
3:03 Speaker 04 I'm a huge fan, so thanks for, uh... I've watched probably every episode, so this is kind of like, uh... This is surreal, I would say. This is also, I've only ever been on like, two podcasts before. This is like my second or third podcast ever, so... I hope it goes well.
3:18 Pablo Torre? It's an honor. It is an honor, and I want to explain to people how we met each other on the internet before we explain why you're in Bangkok, Thailand. Because, for people who don't know, it's funny for me to introduce you to anybody, but you're an internet legend.
3:32 Speaker 05 Finally tonight, a popular online geography game that takes players around the globe one Google Street View image at a time.
3:40 Speaker 06 We all know Rainbow by now. The geoguester savant who will more or less find anything and everything on Earth simply because he can.
3:47 Speaker 07 Social media videos of Rainbow playing the game at his desk have millions of views and legions of fans. Whether it's simply looking at the soil...
3:56 Speaker 04 This looks Nigerian.
4:00 Speaker 04 Okay, it's Benin. You get that red soil over near Benin and Ngu?
4:04 Speaker 07 Or pixelated details.
4:06 Speaker 04 Just Brazil, pretty free.
4:08 Speaker 07 Sometimes only seeing an image for a tenth of a second.
4:14 Pablo Torre? You are genuinely a person I am fascinated by. You're one of the greatest geo-guessers in the world. And you get dropped on a random road anywhere in the world on Google Maps, and you gotta guess where you are. Is that a fair summary for just what geo-guessing is as a concept?
4:30 Speaker 04 Basically, you get dropped on Google Street View. You get either one still shot, a 360 panorama, or you can like move around. But I like to play just like one still shot. And you use the context clues in that photo to make an educated guess where you are.
4:44 Pablo Torre? And so the origin story of how we first got in contact, it naturally involves Bill Belichick and Jordan Hudson. And so do you remember how you became aware that I was asking for your services?
4:58 Speaker 04 So this was probably back in May. And I remember opening up my phone, because I was in Nepal at the time, climbing. So I had like very little service. So I would get like service in and out. Like, and when I got service, I would get like so many notifications. And I remember, once I got service again, my phone like loaded all the notifications. They're like, Pablo Torre, you have to check the... I'm like, what is this?
5:21 Pablo Torre? We went from me desperately shouting out like your name and an email I sent to, I think, your manager on Pardon My Take.
5:30 Pablo Torre? Because I get this video, the Ring camera video, and I'm like, I don't have a good way of like nailing down geographically like whose house this even is, even if it's been identified by various tabloids as Jordan Hudson's house. And I don't want to take that for fact. So what I did before I logged on here is I emailed the manager of that guy, Rainbolt, who's the geo-guesser guy.
5:55 Speaker 08 Yeah, he's incredible.
5:56 Pablo Torre? And so I'm hoping if Rainbolt listens to this, please respond to your manager's email. I kind of need you to solve a mystery. Like, where was this camera? Who had access to it?
6:06 Speaker 04 So I go on Twitter and like search, and I see. And so I send you a DM, and I'm like, okay, this is something I can do. But like, I probably can't do it for like... Another week or so because I'm currently at like 14,000 feet in Nepal. I don't have, all I have is my phone with very little service and wifi. So we rain checked it, but we're able to get it done for you. So it was good.
6:27 Pablo Torre? We rainbolt checked it.
6:29 Speaker 04 There you go. Nice.
6:30 Pablo Torre? I want to say this with all sincerity, like an Avengers level international army of fellow geoguessers, because you were climbing in Nepal, who helped find the Airbnb that still gets brought up to me all of the time as this thing that I should be ashamed of finding and renting, as well as a thing that's maybe the most impressive thing I found out. And I have to just say, it's because of your band of people that came to my rescue.
6:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, I just connected the dots there. I had no idea you were going to go to that extent. So when I watched that for the first time when you posted, I was like, oh my God, this is like the best case scenario of like me connecting you with my friends to help you get this done. Cause I was like, this is better than anything I could have ever expected.
7:11 Pablo Torre? At this point, I decided to take a trip. You went to the town.
7:16 Speaker 09 Shut up Pablo.
7:17 Pablo Torre? You've been to this house?
7:18 Speaker 09 Shut up Pablo.
7:19 Pablo Torre? If you show me a Ring cam video with you.
7:20 Speaker 09 Oh Pablo, what the fuck? Pablo, what the fuck?
7:23 Pablo Torre? This is crazy.
7:25 Speaker 09 Pablo, what the fuck?
7:26 Pablo Torre? This is crazy. This is crazy. I don't understand what, I don't understand what's, I don't understand what podcast this is.
7:34 Speaker 09 Is this Truman Show? Is this World Truman Show?
7:37 Pablo Torre? Where are we?
7:38 Speaker 09 What's going on? Oh my God, what's going on?
7:45 Pablo Torre? What is this?
7:46 Speaker 09 Okay, I need a lot of answers now.
7:48 Pablo Torre? You went to the house and you have access to the footage from the Ring cam?
7:51 Speaker 09 Right, so the Ring camera, the footage must go to.
7:55 Speaker 04 So I'm more than happy to be a part of that.
7:59 Pablo Torre? But it's the spirit of like what your life's arc has been as I continue to find out stuff about you, which is that it starts on the internet, it starts diving into rabbit holes, and it is currently taking place in real life at the places you once only saw through your screen. And that part of your story is just, it's fucking mind blowing, man. The way that your life has shaped up.
8:22 Speaker 04 It feels like I've lived many lives in a very short amount of time, very quickly, so.
8:27 Pablo Torre? We also have just another mission for you today, by the way, if you're willing to take that on.
8:31 Speaker 04 Always.
8:49 Pablo Torre? I thought when I first encountered you that you may have grown up internationally, that you're like a European kid or something. I thought that your name Rainbolt was a pseudonym, and none of that turns out to be true.
9:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, I grew up in Flippin', Arkansas, population 1,357. There was like 18 people in my graduating class, same 18 people that were K through 12. I ended up switching schools my senior year, but Rainbolt's my actual last name. I had never left the US before I started playing Geoguess here. I had only ever traveled virtually through its review. So yeah, all those things kind of like came together, and I kind of always wanted to see the world.
9:31 Pablo Torre? Do you remember being radicalized into Arkansas football?
9:35 Speaker 04 It was the Bobby Petrino era.
9:40 Speaker 10 First of all, I'd just like to thank everybody that really has shown their support for me and my family.
9:46 Speaker 11 Coach Bobby Petrino didn't seem as though he was holding anything back when he addressed the media Tuesday.
9:51 Speaker 10 Quite an amazing medical staff that they put together in such a short period of time.
9:59 Speaker 11 Petrino was back at practice just two days after the crash that sent him to the hospital.
10:04 Speaker 10 I'm very fortunate. I feel very lucky to be here and be in good health.
10:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, I mean, I've grew up in Arkansas, saying my whole life, season tickets. So Flippin' was like probably about two, two and a half hours away from Fayetteville. So we'd make weekend trips. It was a good time. Sometimes it was a good time. We had, you know, we had Darren McFadden there at the time, but Felix Jones, but for the most part, it was, it was fun. Good memories.
10:31 Pablo Torre? I'm still realizing that the name of your town is literally Flippin', F-L-I-P-P-I-N.
10:37 Speaker 04 Yep, Flippin' High School.
10:38 Pablo Torre? There's a real untapped merch potential for your hometown, I feel like.
10:43 Speaker 04 I feel like once when I was in like middle school, I remember like Flippin' Church of God made it on like LND Generous, and I was like, this is the coolest thing that will ever happen. Like, we've officially made it.
10:54 Pablo Torre? Well, you know, so you mentioned Bobby Petrino. You realize that like the universe is also bringing us full circle because Bill Belichick has now hired as his offensive coordinator at the University of North Carolina Bobby Petrino.
11:06 Speaker 04 That is quite the universe. That's amazing.
11:09 Pablo Torre? You mean they're not talking about that in Thailand right now? They're not talking about how Bobby Petrino just got hired?
11:14 Speaker 04 You know, the forum boards here aren't kind of yet. No, sorry.
11:18 Pablo Torre? I was looking through your online footprint and the thing I found on, I mean, this is something that I still don't understand, but on an LSU message board, this is Tiger Droppings. You're familiar with this forum?
11:32 Speaker 04 I'm not at all.
11:33 Pablo Torre? Okay, so on-
11:34 Speaker 04 So you've done some digging that I'm unaware of. So this is, you're reverse, you're no carving me right now, so this is gonna be interesting.
11:41 Pablo Torre? So on this Tiger Droppings message board, on November 22nd, 2022, a user has an icon of the Razorback next to his username. Are you familiar with who that is? Oh my god.
11:53 Speaker 04 I'm not.
11:55 Pablo Torre? I'm, I think you're-
11:56 Speaker 04 This is all news.
11:57 Pablo Torre? I think you're finding out that your dad posted about you on this message board. And he says a couple of things, by the way, if this is in fact your dad.
12:07 Speaker 04 Wait, wait, wait. Why is my dad on LSU forum? That's a-
12:11 Pablo Torre? Well, so I'm like, why is he, why is, why is he posting on this forum? I don't know. I think he's also been radicalized in ways that you and I are both learning to understand. But the title is brag colon, "My 24-year-old son just started the adventure of a lifetime. #GoogleMaps #Geoguessr." And he goes on to talk about how you had a normal job, which we'll talk about in sports media, which also was jarring for me to learn. And he says this, quote, "We played Geoguessr, a game where you're dropped somewhere in the world on Google Street Maps and you guess where you are. When he was in high school and we picked it up again as a way to stay in touch every day. He got good, really good, really, really good. In his spare time, he started a TikTok account where he would post his better games and tips for new players. It took off. Long story short, he passed 1 million followers earlier this year.
12:55 Pablo Torre? Then he started a YouTube channel, Snap, Twitter, Instagram accounts. He quit his job last month. I'm with an agency. Is now making disgusting money." And then he goes on to say this. He describes himself as, quote, "A proud, thrilled, and a little terrified dad because you quit your job last month." This was as of November-
13:13 Speaker 04 Wow.
13:14 Pablo Torre? 2022.
13:15 Speaker 04 I-
13:17 Speaker 04 I have never, you know, that that definitely sounds like my dad. No, I'm not sure how you found that, but that's an amazing post. And yeah, I remember like pre-COVID or like right when COVID, I remember like, kind of like sending him my good guesses on Geoguessr. Like, like, look at this good Australia guess I had. This was before, like, uh, you know, I just like, I had never even posted a single video before. This was when it was still kind of just like a more of a pastime after work. So that was 2022, August around probably, yeah. The rest is history.
13:47 Pablo Torre? He goes on to describe, he's not your typical influencer. He spent countless hours mastering his craft and probably knows more geography than all but a handful of people in the world. And I think all of that honestly is true. And the first response is a guy with the username of Kafka. And it's just a photo. It's a photo of a University of Kentucky fan. And the words at the bottom in meme format are simply in all caps, like I give a [BLEEP].
14:12 Speaker 04 That's the best response possible for that, honestly. Because why is he posting that on an LST forum?
14:22 Pablo Torre? It's incredible. It's incredible. And it goes on. He goes on to, he goes on to just answer people in the comments and he's incredibly sweet. It goes on for nine pages, by the way. Like your dad is just like responding to people.
14:37 Speaker 04 You know, I'll let him live in that internet forum. I'll let him have that and he can defend me. I think I actually remember telling him at one point to stop responding to the comments somewhere. So this, this, this winds up.
14:48 Pablo Torre? This is also my parents' experience, me telling them, please stop reading. People being mad because I posted Bill Belichick shirtless Ring cam video and then recreated it on the same porch.
15:00 Speaker 04 Yep, universal.
15:01 Pablo Torre? You grew up though, yourself, like extremely online. So like this is your dad's internet. That's his corner of the internet, but your own.
15:08 Speaker 04 I was deep. Yeah, so.
15:12 Speaker 04 Where do I begin? So I remember in 2013, when I started an Instagram account, because I was, I don't remember exactly why, I think it was like Christmas break or something. And like, we went to like a family's like house, and I was like bored and like nothing to do. And I wanted to start posting videos about Stephen Curry. I think it was like right after the Nuggets series. I was like, I'm gonna make a Steph Curry fan page.
15:49 Speaker 04 And I became obsessed with like Instagram and like growing an Instagram account. To the point where, you know, every single day for, up until 2018, 19, I was posting, I mean, the page is still up, it's @CurryLegion. It is probably some very cringe 13-year-old LeBron hate.
16:12 Pablo Torre? Yes, I found that as well.
16:14 Speaker 04 It's still there, I'm not hiding from it, yeah.
16:16 Pablo Torre? I don't understand how you were able to go to school while maintaining this, at times very sincere, and at times very just like meme lord-brained account.
16:29 Speaker 04 Oh, I was like, dude, Warriors Twitter? Like, I was like 14, like on Warriors Twitter, like tweeting away, like with like Warriors World. That was my life, like I loved it though. Like, I was posting live highlights, I was skipping class to post like Steph Curry highlights when I was in college. It was a job too, I was making money. It actually, it was like the catalyst that I used to convince my parents to drop out of college, was that account. And my dad, like actually, he made me like write like a, I remember this specifically, he made me write like a business plan on like how I'd plan on making money from this account, like my two-year, five-year plan. It ended up working out, because it led to different opportunities, but I've always loved creating content.
17:11 Pablo Torre? Well, look, there's a lot of just like, you know, dancing Winnie the Pooh memes.
17:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:24 Speaker 04 I don't even know how to explain that. So it became an inside joke that every time the Warriors won a playoff game, I would just post winning the pool dancing. And so it became like a community inside joke that, yeah, whenever they won, I would post the video. But I haven't posted it probably. I'm still logged in, but I don't think I've posted in like four years, maybe.
17:42 Pablo Torre? You also were running, it turns out, according to our research, which is, again, extensive, @DurantLegion.
17:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I saw the business opportunity. And when KD signed, you know, July 4th, I was like, wait, I've always wanted, you know, I've always welcomed KD to the Warriors, obviously. And so when he signed, I made it Durant Legion. And then I had a friend on Twitter. We ran it together. So it was a collective effort. But that page ended up being followed by KD. I remember KD like DMing it a couple of times and being like, yeah, so I had like active convo in the DMs with KD in like 2017, something like that. It's crazy.
18:21 Pablo Torre? Did Steph ever follow the other account?
18:23 Speaker 04 You know what? No, no, that's okay, though. One day we'll, we'll look at the Steph notice.
18:27 Pablo Torre? I'm gonna, I'm gonna send, we're gonna send this to Steph Curry so he's aware of who has been running his most insane fan account. But I love, and it makes total sense that KD immediately was like, yeah.
18:40 Speaker 04 If you could name three players in the NBA that would be most likely to follow their fan account, KD is probably one of them.
18:48 Pablo Torre? But the idea that these fan accounts become an actual thing with a business plan that your dad is demanding from you, you realize pretty early on that the ability to like edit video in sports is gonna be a thing. It seems like the athletes that you knew were also pretty early to the fact that you were gonna be a thing.
19:06 Speaker 04 I transferred my senior of high school to us, to a high school called Spanish for Alabama in southern Alabama, like football country, you know, like. Friday Night Lights Central and I was like failing my math class and my teacher of the math class was a coach and so I ended up pitching to him that I did can I just like follow you guys to the games like post highlights and so I just went drove myself to their games, took notes of every single highlight, went through after clipped them and posted them to the Instagram and some of those athletes ended up becoming like NFL players that were like asking me in like 2017 if I could like make them like personal edits for their Instagram. One of them's on the Cowboys now.
19:50 Pablo Torre? Which player on the Cowboys?
19:52 Speaker 04 Jalen Tolbert was gaming me asking me for highlights on his Instagram that are probably still up there somewhere if you scroll down far enough.
19:58 Pablo Torre? And then how does this lead to, how does this lead to an actual business? What's your first real job?
20:04 Speaker 04 So I ended up selling the Curry Legion and Durant Legion pages to a company called Wave Sports and Entertainment in 2018, 2017, around that time and I slept on the CEO's couch for like a month and like just worked and just like hustled and like tried to prove myself because I had dropped out of college at that point. This wasn't in my five-year plan I pitched to my dad unfortunately, but uh, you know, I saw an opportunity and I took it, but I ended up, you know, working, I was their 11th or 12th full-time employee at Wave, you know, very successful there for five, five, six years and then, um, you know, then they got the New Heights podcast and they're having their success, which is great.
20:45 Pablo Torre? Well, this is, so this is, you, you joined Wave, which is otherwise known as the company that like put on Travis and Jason Kelsey's podcast, New Heights, and then became this thing that blew up that an army of Taylor Swift fans came to know and love. I would make the argument that I don't know if Travis Kelce's marriage to Taylor Swift happens if Rainbolt doesn't post continuously.
21:07 Speaker 04 There's a world where if I don't start Curry Legion, that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are, are not together. Let's just put that out there.
21:16 Speaker 04 It's not farfetched.
21:18 Pablo Torre? When does it happen when you realize I need to leave that job?
21:23 Speaker 04 I remember talking to my manager at the time, same one I have now. I was like, by the way, I'm never quitting my job. Like, I love it here. Like, I'm making great money. I'll never want to quit this job. I'm happy. And then I think I ended up quitting in August and I started my account in January. So within an eight-month period, the, I would say like the inflection point, though, was probably the New York Times article. And then I had the Ludwig collab around that same exact time. And I think those two things kind of like piggybacking off each other kind of like really catapulted me and like gave me enough confidence that I thought I could take a chance and see what I could do with it, so.
22:03 Pablo Torre? In July 2022, the New York Times covers you. It's about the existence of GeoGuessers. And you mentioned Ludwig, who's another GeoGuesser, competitive internationally known GeoGuesser.
22:13 Speaker 12 My favorite TikToker these days, it's this guy.
22:16 Speaker 11 Have you ever gotten a Snapchat from a girl?
22:18 Speaker 04 No, this is Thailand.
22:21 Speaker 04 Nice. This is Israel.
22:25 Speaker 04 Nice.
22:25 Speaker 12 GeoRainbolt, the absolute goat. Anyway, I did this, this little sneaky thing where I followed him and then, uh-oh, he followed me and now we follow each other. And I asked him if he wanted to stream with me tonight and he said yes. So tonight we are streaming with GeoRainbolt. His name's Trevor. I'm just gonna call him Trevor. I gotta call him GeoRainbolt. It's a crazy name to say.
22:49 Pablo Torre? How do you realize that there's a community for this thing? That you and your dad kind of started just playing for fun?
22:57 Speaker 04 So I didn't. When I first initially started posting, I was just posting my TikToks as like ways to share my videos with other people in the community. And then inherently GeoGuesser has like a virality thing to it. It's like everyone can relate to it. It's cool. It's Scoobal Maps. It's like, people love maps, you know? It all just kind of happened super quick.
23:19 Pablo Torre? Wait, hold on. He just very casually said, you know, maps are cool. I don't know if everybody grew up thinking, you know what? Maps are cool.
23:27 Speaker 04 You know, I didn't grow up thinking maps are cool. I, I, people think I'm like some geography wizard. I'm serious, I'm not. If you, if you give me a country that isn't on Street View, I am lost. My, my knowledge is, is strictly Street View countries. And so I think that's like a common misconception, but I'm not like a map nerd.
23:48 Pablo Torre? Can you describe the feeling though of like posting these clips of you guessing stuff? And then realizing that the audience was going to be there for this in ways that even Steph Curry and Kevin Durant fans were not?
24:02 Speaker 04 It's weird because I had always been going viral for like years, but it was never for myself. It was always making content under Steph Durant. So it was weird having my face and my name and my likeness attached to it. And that was like something that I initially had to be over because I'm like super, like five years ago, I'm like super, super like shy. I had no on camera presence, like I had no idea what I was doing. The best way to learn to you guess her was to stream it and then play with other people. And like in the community and they will all like give their guess, we can talk about together. So that was how that started. And so I never expected, you know, the first video goes viral with your face in it, you're like, oh no way, what have I done?
24:45 Speaker 04 And then you kind of have to, you get used to it, but I never wanted to be an influencer creator. That was never, I never started this as like a goal to, to make money. I remember specifically not wanting to and wanting to stop because I didn't want to, but it's cool. It's cool to be like a person that people can look to as like inspiration to like, learn about the world.
25:08 Pablo Torre? At least a little bit more inspiring than posting 50 dancing Winnie the Poos.
25:14 Speaker 04 When you keep going back to the Winnie, they listen to Winnie the Poos, we had great engagement. They were, they were a core to the community. And did you, did you at least listen to the song in the background?
25:30 Pablo Torre? It's been stuck in my head this entire interview, actually.
25:32 Speaker 04 Shout the football. Hey, I mean, that could also be a full circle moment, Mr. Worldwide.
25:36 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, the universe.
25:38 Speaker 04 There we go.
25:39 Pablo Torre? Clearly, clearly keeps winking at you.
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28:02 Pablo Torre? How do you describe the Geoguessing community? If you've never encountered the people who helped me solve that Bill Belichick thing, what are these people like?
28:10 Speaker 04 Honestly, they're like me and you. And I'm not just saying that as like me and you specifically because we like finding out things. But just like, they're passionate people that have a, you know, different people have different hyper fixations and we all happen to share a similar one. It could be playing the piano. We so happen to like finding things on Street View. People always ask me, when people come up to me in the street or like, you know, online, they always ask me like, so how do you do it? Like, how'd you get good? And I always just tell them, it's like,
28:39 Speaker 04 imagine you spent time trying to get a Call of Duty. It's the same thing. I just spent time trying to get a GeoGuesser. Anything I'm doing isn't like some superhuman ability. It's just I put time into it. And I think that's like, an important thing to know is it's normal.
28:53 Pablo Torre? Okay, so hold on, because I'm curious how you feel then when you're accused of cheating. What are the things that people have accused you of in terms of, he's not really doing this?
29:03 Speaker 04 Everything under the sun. I mean, looking at a different monitor, you know, AI. Yeah, someone else is playing for me. Well, the thing is, is it's very easy to cheat on GeoGuesser. It's like extremely easy to cheat.
29:19 Pablo Torre? So how, explain, how do you do it?
29:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, let me go ahead and explain to everyone. This is definitely helping my case. No, so in theory, right, the web browser, it's a web browser game. And so if, the way most people cheat on GeoGuesser, if you like play like an online game, is when you press F12, the coordinates have to be in the like code because it's pulling from Google API. So in theory, you can just pull the coordinates and people do that. That's how like most of the people cheat in GeoGuesser, but I mean, So I've done this live and then been to in-person events and whatever. So I've, yeah, but it is a very, it's a web, it's a web-based game. Like every game that has competitiveness and it has cheaters.
30:05 Pablo Torre? But I didn't realize that. So the F key, I mean, so with the F key, the function key on the keyboard, the F12 key just like pulls up the developer tools, basically. And you get to see in the code.
30:14 Speaker 04 Yeah. And it pulls the API of the Google. Yeah. And you can see the code. Yeah. It's, it's its own thing. So when I used to host tournaments, we would always have like screen sharing. So we would always prevent people from, you know, we would be able to see their screen. So when they are recording their, like in a tournament, we can see if they're opening up the coordinates or not.
30:34 Pablo Torre? The video that convinced me, because I wasn't sure when I first stumbled upon you, but then there's a video you posted that kind of like changed my entire thinking about this. And for the audio audiences, it'll be very helpful for them to hear and, and see on our YouTube channel. But it's a video you posted where you're blindfolded.
30:53 Pablo Torre? And a guy, one of your, one of your friends in this community apparently is just like reading descriptions of what the grass looks like. This one, very, very sandy, very white sand. And we got some dead like shrubs on both sides of the road.
31:08 Speaker 04 Let's go outside mound in Botswana.
31:11 Pablo Torre? Okay.
31:15 Pablo Torre? Nice.
31:16 Speaker 04 Nice.
31:16 Pablo Torre? So this one, looking cold, but also very desolate in terms of the landscape.
31:21 Speaker 04 You can actually get a lot of context on what the location looks like visually through another player's comms on within images. And I mentioned it very carefully too, another player. Because when another player is describing, they know what's meaningful in a description. Like if I was asked Pablo, like, hey, describe this for me. He's like, okay, there's a blue sky and a brown dirt, like, uh, you know? So the first thing that you look for is in any location is the road. Thailand has concrete roads, but like not every country has concrete roads and it has very distinct pavement. That's similar to the Philippines pavement, I would say. But they also drive left. So that distinguishes the difference. You have the road lines, double yellow road lines.
32:03 Speaker 04 You look towards the Teflon poles. So they have like similar poles to Sri Lanka. But I mean, I could talk about poles and vegetation and then you have the rubber trees. And if you want to guess more Eastern Thailand, you want more red soil. But also you're just looking at the location. This is like a thing that people, it's hard to comprehend. If you've looked at a location or a country 10,000 times, your brain knows what that country looks like. That's why when people watch my 0.1 second videos, they don't really understand it. But that's because your brain and its pattern recognition can pick up so quickly because it's seen something so close to that before.
32:42 Pablo Torre? You just referenced these videos, which were the thing that made me think at first like this guy is [bleep] with us. Because it's fractional, it's decimal points of a second.
32:53 Speaker 04 Probably like something over here.
32:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:58 Pablo Torre? It's just clicking in the card catalog of your brain. What I imagine people don't see is you just like walking through Google Maps.
33:08 Speaker 04 When I started traveling after I started posting videos, I've said this, people have laughed at me before, but it's genuinely how I feel. It feels like you're playing the game in person because you're so familiar with everything and everywhere you go. The world becomes smaller in a way and everything becomes so familiar. And I would only travel to places that have official Street View coverage because I felt familiar and like safer at these places because it was like, it's not so scary because I kind of knew what to expect. And so it kind of helped me like travel more. So I remember like going to like Northern Botswana because like I had seen this town before in Street View that I wanted to see because of the sand that you get in Northern Botswana. That's like the tall grass on the side of the roads in Northern Botswana.
33:53 Speaker 04 I wanted to see that in person. It sounds crazy, but it was familiar to me and that's why I wanted to see it.
33:59 Pablo Torre? I had not thought about this in those terms, but you're describing an itinerary that you built because of your intimate familiarity with the world as described on Google Street View. How did you decide that you were gonna go and do that?
34:13 Speaker 04 So I had another you guys referring that kind of convinced me. So I had just quit my job in LA. I was based in LA in Santa Monica for five years. This is 2022 and I was like, there's nothing tying me to LA anymore. There's nothing tying me to anywhere anymore. I can work anywhere with the income I'm making online. I mean, still post videos and upload wherever I want. And so I thought like, what, if you could do anything, what would you do? And that kind of is like how I felt. And so I had a Geoguessert friend in Germany. And he was like, just come to Germany. I was like, okay. So I sold everything and I went to Germany.
34:52 Speaker 04 And then I went to Portugal and then I went to, yeah, I just started going and I eventually went to Asia and did Asia and Australian and Africa. But it was, it was like a full 13 months of just traveling, only living out of a suitcase. And I had like six t-shirts, a pair of jeans and a jacket and a portable setup with my laptop. That's great.
35:14 Pablo Torre? You know, I imagine that this is an emotional experience to sort of encounter all of the places that you had been basically studying for that long.
35:22 Speaker 04 It was one of the like most life-changing experiences because I had never left the US. I have seen outside the US, but I had never left it. And you can only get so much out of some, out of a place through pixels. Like it, it only, you can see it, but you can't experience it. And so actually being there and like, the way I travel now is I find places on Google Maps and then go there. If I see an inspiration on Street View that I found like, this is such a cool location. They call them locks, like that's a cool lock. Well, I want to go to that lock, not that place, I want to go to that lock.
36:01 Speaker 04 Uh, so it's internal slang there, but uh, yeah, it's a, that's how I travel is inspiration through pixels.
36:09 Pablo Torre? Wh- what's the thing that you underrated when you first started doing this? You're like, oh, wow, the thing that I never really accounted for when I was doing this through pixels was this aspect of travel.
36:19 Speaker 04 And the easiest answer is the people. You know, you see the people, but you don't talk with the people. That's the, that's the beauty of traveling, in my opinion, is talking to the people and experiencing the, the, you know, the, the relationships and friendships you make with people as you, as you go to these cool locks. I go to them alone, but you don't leave alone, let's say. It's just a, you make friends.
36:40 Pablo Torre? Have, have people recognized you as a guy who is the Geoguessert guy?
36:45 Speaker 04 I get more recognized as the Cury Legion guy, but uh, no kidding.
36:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's the, are you the Google Maps guy? Are you the guy from TikTok? Yeah, some people think my name is George. Yeah, that's a common one.
36:59 Pablo Torre? Why?
36:59 Speaker 04 Because it's G O.
37:01 Pablo Torre? Oh.
37:01 Speaker 04 I think this is G E O R. And some people just misread it, so they're like, George. I'm like, oh.
37:07 Speaker 04 How's it going?
37:10 Pablo Torre? Among like the stuff that you have found out, my favorite location that you identified is the location for the LeBron James kid.
37:17 Speaker 04 That did happen.
37:22 Pablo Torre? As the foremost operator of a Steph Curry fan page, you going insanely viral for identifying the youngest fan of LeBron James is a little ironic.
37:33 Speaker 04 It is very ironic, especially if you look at my posts on Kray Legion from 2016, which is not the most. It's like the, it's like the Austin Reeves, uh, yeah, post. I don't know if you remember that, but.
37:45 Speaker 14 It's a picture of Kobe like this. And it's like, when I, when I need some rest, I put my phone to LeBron mode, no rings. I was like, [BLEEP].
37:56 Speaker 14 It's like, there's one of two things I could do. I could shut up and hope he don't see it, or I could call him over here and be like, look, man. And I did, I was like, man, come here. And he was like, what's up? He walks over there. I was a Kobe fan back in the day. I was like, I was [BLEEP] on you back in 2012. He just busted out live and he was like, I, I don't care about this.
38:16 Speaker 13 This is some random 14-year-old dude in Arkansas.
38:19 Speaker 14 Exactly. And then it happens to be my teammate.
38:23 Speaker 04 I knew Austin Reeves and his brother Spencer Reeves back in like, high school as well, because he grew up in Arkansas and he was, he played at flipping a lot. So I would always see him play. He was a Kobe guy, yeah.
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40:20 Pablo Torre? The question that people keep on bringing up when I tell them about you and the people who have seen the episode we did also, they wonder like, why aren't you like working for like, I don't know, like the CIA or something? Have people legitimately come to you for help on investigations?
40:36 Speaker 04 Not that I know of.
40:38 Pablo Torre? Just me? I'm the only one who was like, hey?
40:41 Speaker 04 Well, you're not the CIA, are you?
40:42 Pablo Torre? Well.
40:44 Speaker 04 That's a.
40:45 Pablo Torre? I can safely disclose that I am funded by not the CIA.
40:49 Speaker 04 No, I know. I'll stick to my finding LeBron James kid meme, okay? And Bill Belichick ring camera, there's a.
40:58 Pablo Torre? This is taking me all the way around to the realm of like actual governmental investigation and memes. Because the thing that I asked you for, which you were very kind to help me think through, and I think this is a good and helpful explanation of your process, by the way, was.
41:19 Pablo Torre? This photo from the Epstein files that we got. And so the Epstein files, people who are not familiar, when they publish this trove of documents, like, the Department of Justice does not provide any information, like, in captions or anything. It's just a code name on the bottom right. And so this is the code name E F T A zero zero zero zero three four three four. There's no surrounding information. And all I knew when I sent this to you was that this is a photo of Jeffrey Epstein, and he's in a row of chairs, of white chairs. And he's sitting next to a woman, who's sitting next to another woman. And that woman is named Abigail Wexner. And next to her is Les Wexner. And Les Wexner is very well-known now
42:04 Pablo Torre? because of the Epstein files release, especially as the billionaire former CEO of Victoria's Secret. And we've talked about him on the show before. And he's the sort of guy who gave Jeffrey Epstein power of attorney over his finances and helped, basically, build Jeffrey Epstein's financial empire to the point where now it's an issue, Rainbolt, that Les Wexner's name is on the Ohio State football building. And all these alumni have since demanded that they remove Les Wexner's name.
42:33 Speaker 15 Where's Wexner? Where are you? Show up. It's time. It's time to answer questions. This group, made up of former OSU athletes, believes the names of Leslie Wexner and Woody Hayes cannot coexist on the same building, and they want Wexner's name gone. Ohio State confirms the Wexner naming rights were paid for with two checks, one from Wexner Charitable Foundation and the other from the C O U Q Foundation that was controlled by Jeffrey Epstein, according to federal tax records. However, OSU says, quote, "An independent investigation found the 2007 gift originated from the Wexner Children's Trust and the Leslie Wexner Charitable Fund, and not from Jeffrey Epstein."
43:15 Pablo Torre? And so I sent you this photo of them in this row. They're kind of like in an audience. The only geographic reference is really a bunch of trees behind. And I said, can you help us find, like, where this photo was taken? Like, what is this? And so can you explain how you set out to answer this question?
43:33 Speaker 04 Yes. So you sent this to me, and I woke up and I saw it. I was like, this is the best text ever, to wake up to a challenge from Pablo. Like, amazing, let me start my day. So- When you're looking at any photo, the first thing that you have to understand is like, what's the context of the photo? And you look at everything that you can extrapolate from the image and you kind of just like compartmentalize it. So we could see the photo, we could see the attire they were wearing, we could see the setting with the white chairs and the people in the back and what they were wearing. And knowing, you know, Les Wexner and like doing very basic research, every single year he would host a event called the New Albany Classic that would bring people in and host
44:18 Speaker 04 like equestrian or like
44:20 Pablo Torre? Yes.
44:21 Speaker 04 It would have like different things like horse racing and like show running or fair event type stuff, maybe even more context on that, but.
44:28 Pablo Torre? No, it's sports. We're talking about horses now. We're now back to talking about sports. This is an equestrian event, it turns out, held every year for like 20 years. The Wexners are hosting a day of family fun at their home and everyone's invited.
44:41 Speaker 16 It's the New Albany Classic, of course. Next, I talk with Abigail Wexner about how this tradition has turned into a dream come true for some of the riders at this year's competition.
44:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was at his property or like close to his property slash on his property, I guess. And so that was my immediate thought was like, what's the most likely answer? And can we, does it look likely enough? And when you look at the trees in the back and I look at his property for a second, I see that the trees clearly look like similar trees enough to where it's worth investigating further to see if this is actually the one to one location. And look at all the photos to see if there's any type of videos on YouTube that had an angle that would help me confirm it because through satellite, the image wasn't close enough to confirm it through satellite. So through a David Archuleta performance at the New Albany Classic, there was a chair
45:33 Speaker 04 in the background that looked like the same chairs from the chairs in the Epstein Files location.
45:40 Speaker 04 And so I was like, okay, that's reason enough to continue thinking that this is the most probable location. So then I went to start confirming it more.
45:47 Pablo Torre? But just the chair, right? So like, the thing that about the chair that you noticed is what?
45:54 Speaker 04 This is the chair that it looked, it was a white chair that had the same design with the same screw. And so I was like, it's, but the thing is you can't confirm a location based off of a chair. Chairs are rented. Like, it could be someone else in Ohio that's renting out these chairs. So you want to actually find the location. So I did a deep dive. I went through some old articles and I found the old domain for the new Albanyclassic.com and then put that through the Wayback Machine. I think through like a 2002 archive gave me a map of the property and like where they would have been sitting. And so then I used that map plus another YouTube video that someone posted in, I think, 2009 that had
46:34 Speaker 04 like a slideshow of different photos from the event. And I was able to match the tree in the back with the Epstein file photo in Les Wexner's house.
46:48 Pablo Torre? But my favorite detail, even beyond the trees, is that you noticed something that I had missed. And so you're already like describing a bunch of stuff that I also try to do when I'm like trying to find stuff out. But your eye is so good because on Les Wexner's wrist, you noticed something that I did not.
47:10 Speaker 04 Yeah. So I mean, when I'm looking at the, like I said in the beginning, when you're looking at a photo, it's something that it's like, it's like a, it's a muscle that you have to, to train as you look at everything because literally everything is a hint. And so I was, at first I was going through the cup that Epstein was holding. It's like, maybe the cup is a hint. And while I was zooming in on the cup, I noticed behind the cup on Les's wrist, there, or there was a wristband that ended in IC.
47:40 Speaker 04 And so if you look at the IC font on the wristband, it also matches to the exact same font that ends the New Albany Classic branding. That also helps confirm the location.
47:52 Pablo Torre? Right.
47:53 Speaker 04 So it's just another additive.
47:54 Pablo Torre? Right, so, look, we're not able to say with, you know, full certainty that this is it, because I suppose they could have created like a soundstage and like recreated the New Albany Classic somewhere. That's still on the board, I guess.
48:08 Speaker 04 Yes. It's not 100% confirmed.
48:13 Pablo Torre? It seems extraordinarily likely that this was in fact, by the way, a grand pre-equestrian competition that was held every September for 20 years until 2018. And the event, as I was looking into this as well, the event was a fundraiser. It raised money for charity. And the charity was the Center for Family Safety and Healing.
48:34 Speaker 17 The New Albany Classic was held this weekend with the main attraction being the horse jumping competition. With more than 20,000 people expected, the Center for Family Safety and Healing is glad to be a part of the event.
48:46 Speaker 18 Mrs. Wexner decided to marry the love of horses with, you know, her horrible, you know, dislike of this issue of family violence. And she brought the two together and it's been magical.
48:57 Pablo Torre? All of which raises follow-up questions for us, by the way, because one of the things we're trying to do here is further explore Leslie Wexner, the billionaire in the photograph, because he says that he severed ties with Jeffrey Epstein on September 4th, 2007. And so we are always trying to triangulate, to what extent is the Jeffrey Epstein story a sports story? And who are the characters in it? And you helped us establish that one of the photos in the files was at what can only be safely described as a sports-related event.
49:33 Speaker 04 Horses.
49:34 Pablo Torre? Horses, man.
49:36 Speaker 04 I've been tagged and people have told me to, you know, take a look at Epstein files and try and geolocate. And I didn't know where to start. And some people were like, why don't you use your powers for good? So I'm at least happy I'm able to.
49:50 Speaker 04 Give my thoughts on this location at the new Albany Classic to help your, uh, to help your piece.
49:56 Pablo Torre? I think you've just officially just solidified your position as the Pablo Torre Finds Out geoguessing correspondent.
50:02 Speaker 04 I'm gonna change my LinkedIn to, to that. I, anything that you have is, I always love getting new challenges. That's what I wake up for every day is, uh, what's the challenge of the day? So whatever you got, send it to me.
50:15 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the five-year business plan is gonna be updated, uh, for your dad as we maybe figure out a way to take this all back towards Bobby Petrino.
50:24 Speaker 04 You know, maybe not.
50:28 Speaker 04 I'm, I'm okay with not taking it back to.
50:30 Pablo Torre? A guy, a guy with a very colorful and personal experience with a road.
50:36 Speaker 04 That is true.
50:37 Pablo Torre? I'm proud to report, though, that your dad has not stopped posting. He posted literally at 12:34 a.m. Eastern today on a different thread.
50:47 Speaker 04 You know, I wish I did know that.
50:59 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
51:05 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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