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I'm Mr. Ballin and this is the wired autocomplete interview. I was like, dude, flannels. You can just rotate the color and then you have a new outfit every day. All right. How did Mr. Ballin get started? It was sort of accidental. Uh I got out of the military in 2017. I was a Navy Seal. I tried my hand in social media. Nothing worked. Uh but then sort of on a whim in 2020 um I told a story on this new platform Tik Tok about these missing hikers and it went super viral and I thought it was really cool. I love telling stories. The rest is history I guess. How did Mr.
Ballin get his name? There is a story but it's just sort of random. there's like this almost hidden community of aspiring Navy Seals, like civilians that want to be Navy Seals, and they're all pretty acutely aware of who has gotten out of the SEAL teams, like who has an Instagram account that was a former Navy Seal. And these aspiring, you know, Navy Seals will often send messages to those folks. And my username, uh, at the time when I just got out of the military was John B. Allen 416, but there was no punctuation in my name. And if you didn't know me, it would look like my name is John Balin416. And all these kids who were very respectfully asking me questions like, "Excuse me, Mr. Ballin. I have a
question about becoming a Navy Seal. They're very proper in their DMs to me." And then I uh I took the username and ran with it. How does Mr. Ballin find stories? I just Googled. I mean, really, it's that simple. I spent a lot of time looking for stories that way, but now we have a whole team dedicated to several series that do lots of Googling themselves and original research, but started with just thinking of a cool idea and googling it. Next, how does Mr. Ballin go viral? I don't know. How does Wired go viral? I mean, this thing goes viral all the time, I think, in part because the format's really like simple to understand, right? Like the reason this interview style works so well is
you see an image before you've even watched the video. You know what it is and then if the format delivers in quality, people stick around. And so going viral on the internet is as much about getting people's attention long enough to get them to click something as it is about making good content. It's an imprecise science, but that's that's the gist. Done. All right, next board. Where did Mr. Ballin grow up? I grew up in Quinsey, Massachusetts. Not to be confused with Quincy, sports centric town. Like Red Sox was a religion. Lots of street fighting. That was a big part of growing up. I'll tell a quick little story. Uh when I was a sophomore in high school, I made the mistake of being in
the same study hall as a girl whose boyfriend was the captain of the hockey team. I sat next to her in the study hall. Big mistake. Okay. And I was called over the weekend by representatives for the hockey player and said, "Hey, Paul wants to fight you." And I knowing the culture of Quinsey, Massachusetts, knew that this was not the time to say, "I have no idea why you're upset with me. I didn't do anything." Instead, you immediately accept the fight. And so, we set the fight. It's not going to happen right away. It's like in 3 weeks we're going to fight. We'd pass each other in the halls at school. I thought I was like really tough. And so, I remember I was like talking a big game. And Paul wasn't
Paul, you know, despite calling me out, was sort of nonchalant about it. And we go out to this field and there's literally hundreds of kids that have gone to this fight and Paul's late, like he doesn't show up on time. And I'm like, "This guy's scared of me. It's pathetic." And then Paul rolls up like 20 minutes later, calm as can be. And I had this line and I throw my dukes up and I'm like, "Wa, we're young, motherfucker." And then he gets up to me and proceeds to beat the living crap out of me in front of everyone. Didn't get a punch off, nothing. that everybody heard my big line and it was so egregious that my teachers made fun of me for that line the next day. Where is Mr. Ballin
Studios? We're in the uh the New York City area. It's sort of like a hole-in-the-wall spot. All right. Next. Where did Mr. Ballin serve? So, as soon as I graduated, I enlisted in the Navy. And then the training takes two years to get through and become a Navy Seal if you're successful. Wouldn't say I was the best in the class, but I was good enough. And so 2012 I checked into my team in Virginia and then I went to Afghanistan in 2013 and then I was in South America in 2015 and then I was medically retired shortly after that. Last question to the board. Where does Mr. Ballin get his flannels? So I wear flannels in every single video.
Something I hadn't really thought about is like well what do I wear? I'm like putting myself on camera multiple times a week. I can't wear the same outfit every day. But I was like dude flannels. You just rotate the color and then you have a new outfit every day. I think my wife was just getting them at like Target and then uh fans began sending me flannels, like homemade flannels. Some were pretty incredible. There you go. All right, next board. Here we go. Uh, what's in the basement, Mr. Balin? I told four stories on our tour in 2024, and the final story, it is called What's in the Basement? It's about Daniel Lant. Uh, basically this
family in Massachusetts began hearing all these strange sounds coming from their basement. They couldn't pinpoint what it was. There was a recent death in the family. The kids believed it was like their mom, their deceased mom, like being in touch with them or something. Over the course of weeks and months, the tapping sounds, they just persist, ultimately culminating in the girls telling their dad that like, "No, we think someone's down there. He thinks the kids are doing it, that they're playing up this ruse that their mother is like coming back from the dead. Well, lo and behold, when police get involved, when there was like uh what appeared to be a break-in the house, uh they discovered a hole in the
wall in the basement behind the washing machine. And there was a tunnel in the wall that led to this back corner and huddled in the corner. The end. Gotcha. And huddled in the corner was this 16-year-old kid named Daniel Lant. He was wearing a dress. He had clown makeup painted to his face. He had a hatchet. And he had been living in the family's walls for upwards of a year because he believed one of the daughters had spurned his advances. And so his retaliation was to sneak into their house and live in their walls. He would be pulled out. Luckily, no one got hurt in that family. But he's let out. And while he's out on bail essentially, he breaks into another family's home, but he kills the entire family. So Daniel
Lant is in the basement. What is Mr. Ballin's favorite story? One of the stories that really stands out to me is the Ellie Loel story. So, there's this woman, she's got this dream life, she's a lawyer, she lives in Connecticut. This is like in the early 90s, but one day she starts feeling sick and she can't tell like what's making her sick. She goes to the doctor. They're like, "Oh, you're overworking yourself." Over several weeks and months when it starts affecting, you know, her ability to be a mom, her ability to be a wife. She's not able to go to work. People began to believe she was lying, like her own husband, you know, believe she was lying and her kids as well. and it created real tension in her family. She gets
divorced and then at about the 15-year mark, whatever this mystery illness was, it began to progress. So, she went into to see the doctor one time and they actually said, "Look, we don't know what's doing this, but we think you're going to die." And Ellie was actually relieved. She actually doesn't tell her ex-husband. She doesn't even tell her kids. She hires an endof life care person and she goes to Southern California, a place that was a big part of her childhood. She lays in bed for 3 days and she doesn't die. And so she says to her end of life care person, you know, why don't we just go outside for a walk and take a little break and then I'll come back and die. And they
eventually turn onto this street that had this wooden fence that lined up against this beautiful field full of flowers and tall grass. She tells the care person like, "I just want to stay here for a second and just take this all in." She hears buzzing over her head and she looks up and she sees there's a bee. But then a moment later, the buzzing that she heard gets a lot louder. And she looks up and she sees there's now a swarm of not just bees, but African killer bees. And the bees just like came down. They descended and began stinging Ellie Loel in her face over and over again. She can't really run away. And the end of life care person scoops her up and he's running with her. She's still getting
stung and she's screaming at him, "Don't bring me to the hospital." So he runs her back to the house. He puts her back in her bed and she's covered in beastings and she's just like, "At least this way, this should, you know, expedite my demise." But for the next 3 days, so these three subsequent days, she doesn't die. In fact, she begins to feel like the chronic joint pain and some of the other just chronic issues she's had now for 15 years are starting to fade. And so she began doing some research and she discovered that there was this study that was done in the '9s in Australia where these scientists believed patients with Lyme disease could be cured if they were stung by certain bees. It would turn out 15 years earlier she Ellie was bitten by a tick.
Somehow nobody caught it. She had Lyme disease and was in the terminal stage and then basically accidentally conducted this experiment with bees on herself. And now Ellie Loel tours the country advocating for beastings. What is Mr. Ballin's scariest video? There's this one video. Do you know how to get to Bell's Canyon? And it's about this guy, this banker who goes every year out to Washington State to go hiking by himself. The first night he's he's made his campfire. He's got his tent made and he hears like movement in the woods behind him. He's looking around him. He can't see anyone. There's nobody out here. He hears a voice and the voice just calls out, "Hey, do you know how to get to Bell's Canyon and he
turns and this man wanders out of the woods and he's illuminated by the little fire light that he's got. Before he can really even react to this guy, the guy just turns and runs off into the woods. He goes deeper into the woods. So farther away from his car, he's now like 2 days in. And that night, he's sitting around his campfire. And what is he? Do you know how to get to Bell's Canyon? It's the same dude. Dude, I was zigzagging through the woods like there's you had to be following me. The next morning he gets up and he's running through the woods. He's he's panicking and he's trying to get back to his car,
but it takes days to get there. And on his return, he like would periodically look over and he sees this dude like running in the woods keeping track and then finally Mark finally runs out. He gets in his car and he's fine. But the the magic of that story is that really nothing happens. But it's it's like the theater of the mind. The idea that there could be like crazy people out there that are watching us, like that alone is such psychological torture for most people that it just plays, it plays with your mind. Not really the most scary, but perhaps the most memorable and certainly the most memed amongst the Mr. Ballin community. What will Mr.
Ballin cover? The magic of Mr. Ballin in some ways rests on these stories are crazy, but they happened. Like that's really important. And then secondarily, um I'm a father of three kids. I cover lots of horrible stories, but I just can't cover like harm to kids. Too difficult for me. What will Mr. Ballin cover next? We have a new graphic novel coming out at the end of the year in October called The Terror Within that has nine stories in there. That's going to be great. And that's that one. How are we doing for time? Am I going too slow? Not for me. Okay, you're good. Does Mr. Ballin believe in the paranormal? I've certainly come across, let's call it, like accounts of things that have happened that make you
question what's out there. However, I've also come across an ungodly number of uncredible stories of people purporting that this really happened and this is paranormal and it like definitely didn't. And so, I am more skeptical in some ways now than I was before I started. Does Mr. Ballin investigate? We do our own original investigation. Not a ton of it, but we do. We have people going out to courouses and getting, you know, court dockets and doing some original research. But do I literally go out and literally investigate? I don't know. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'll leave it to your imagination. Does Mr.
Ballin have a podcast? I do. So, this whole thing began on TikTok and then we also developed a podcast back in I think it was 2022 on what we call Valentine's Day in the strange, dark, and mysterious community. It was just Valentine's Day, but we made it Valentine's Day. And here you go. I'm going to toss the board. Why does Mr. Ballin hate the like button? In the beginning of making YouTube videos, I used to think it was so goofy is the video starts and they give you like a little hook like today we're going to do this or I'm going to tell you about this and then there's always like a little pause and it's like, but before we do, go ahead and smash that like button and subscribe to the channel. And then they're like boom,
on to the content. And I remember thinking like how silly that was. What I learned from talking to some of these creators is that even though it seems sort of odd to be telling people to do that, it actually disproportionately makes people like and subscribe to your channel. But I was like, ah, it's kind of cheesy. Like, how could I do this in a way that is both accomplishing the goal of getting people to like and subscribe and also be sort of memorable in and of itself? And I began coming up with these weird like no context bizarre scenarios for the like button. Like before we get into the story, go ahead and uh give the like button a nice brand new cone of cotton candy. But before
they take a bite, knock it into a puddle. But like there's no context. If you've arrived on the channel, this is on podcast and on YouTube, everywhere you see Mr. Balling content, you'll always get like a new totally unhinged random thing we're going to do to the like button that ranges from nuisance stuff to full-blown just like violence towards the like button. Mr. Ball and Harrison Ford. This probably is like the other story I could have said was my favorite. This kid who was hiking with his boy scouts. This is like in the '9s. A storm rolled in, an unexpected storm. This is out, I think, in Washington State. They decide to ride it out and stay out in the woods cuz they're pretty far out there. But it
turned into like a blizzard. Uh, one of the kids got separated from the group and he couldn't find his way back. He winds up taking shelter in a cave, this 12-year-old kid, and he's like pretty much thinks he's going to die and no one can find him. the storm had cleared up, but it was still quite a bit of snow on the ground. And at some point, he hears a helicopter and it's, you know, flying up ahead. And he's like, "Oh, there's the search party. They've come to find me." And he runs out into the woods. And he looks up, there's a clearing, and he sees this helicopter, and he's waving. And so the helicopter lands over in the field. And you can imagine who's flying that helicopter.
It's Harrison Ford in his private helicopter, and he's, "Hey kid, are you all right back there?" And he flies him off to the hospital and saves his life. Mr. Ballin approach to storytelling. So much of the story like hinges on the delivery of the story. Realistically, I could tell a terribly written story and make you think it was a great story just cuz I'm going to sound convinced it's good. And I'm going to be fully committed to the story. Next, Mr. Ballin scoops. We were researching a case about a potential serial killer in New Bedford, Massachusetts. And it was this long unsolved case. And we got access to
this box of evidence that actually the families of the victims had held on to because police had stopped investigating it. There was like this brief release program in New Bedford for prisoners. Really highlevel offenders got to go home for the weekend with virtually no oversight. And during that time, a lot of people over the weekends would get murdered. It turned out there was this one guy who kept going out on this break every time somebody got killed. And the family is like, "No, like that's got to be him." But he's living his best life. He's like, "Ah, I didn't do that." But, uh, remains to be seen if that's true. Mr. Ballin, untold stories. I'd say most times if we've decided on a story, we're going to tell
it. But the one I always come back to is about Ernest Shackleton. The late 1800s. He was an explorer. If you were a known explorer at this time, you were like a big celebrity. He was notorious for being both an incredible leader of men, but he also was just always screwing up. Like he's like, "Oh, we're going to go to Antarctica." And they're like, "You better bring a lot of food for all these people." Ah, I got it covered. And then they like get halfway on their dog sled journey to wherever they're going. Ah, we ran out of food. But then he was so good at leading his men that they would come back, you know, nearly starve to death. So he decides to go to the South Pole to be the first one to do
a dog sled to the South Pole. except he mist times the ice flows. The boat gets frozen in the ice before they reach land. And he kept his crew alive for like 2 years. All of them survived and every day he had them. They had to shave. They had to like polish their boots. They had to do all the stuff to like keep them sane. But they loved Shackleton for it. He kept them in line. But famously, nobody was coming to rescue them. They didn't have a way out. And so eventually Shackleton's like, "Well, we've survived this long, but unless we find a way to leave, we're not going to we're going to die out here." And so he and like half the men took one of these big rowboats and they overland
carried like on their heads like 15 20 miles to the coast. Just picture like rolling waves like treacherous. There was a whailing station out on this island off in the distance. And he's like if we can just get there's going to be people at this whaling station but it was like a you know multi-day journey even with a compass and everything. And they all pile into this boat like 20 of them. They have no idea where they're going. dance this way. But they land on the wrong side of the island. They're like, "All right, well, the whailing station's on the other side of the island. We just have to hike this mountain, a mountain that, by the way, no one had ever successfully climbed. Everybody who had
tried climbing it had died." And they're like, "Well, we have no supplies, no food. We've been on the water for 2 weeks. We're basically nearly dead. We're just going to hike this mountain with no supplies." And so up the mountain they hike with like bare feet in some cases, and they get to the top unbelievably. And they realized this is so steep that we actually can't even really properly down climb. We have to sled down on our butts. And so Ernest Shackleton and his men with their huge beards and their ragged clothes sledded down the back side of this mountain. And this whailing station is not far from
the base of this mountain. And there's a family that lived there. There was this mother and father and their young daughter. And suddenly out of the mist comes these bedraggled men who were limping towards them. And she thought they were monsters. and they walk up and then suddenly the lead guy goes, "I'm Ernest Shackleton and I need your help." And they all lived. So, it's one of the greatest survival stories of all time. And you just got the uh the version I apparently have never told. There we go. Boom. All done. I hope I didn't ramble for too long. Hope you enjoyed it. Thank you very much. See you.
