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Warren Buffett's son got $90,000 of Berkshire stock at 19. He spent it on his twenties. At today's price those shares would be worth somewhere between $500 million and $800 million.
He says he doesn't regret it for a second.
The clip opens with Warren in 1998, explaining what he leaves his children. Then Peter, decades later, on what he did with his share. Wait for the last word of his answer.
The money started as a farm. Peter's grandfather left it to the grandchildren, and Warren had a problem: he didn't believe in inherited wealth, and he didn't believe in a farm as an investment either. He swapped the farm for Berkshire stock.
So at 19 Peter had $90,000 and two choices: hold his father's stock, or use it. He used it to pay for time, years of learning music and writing for commercials until he could make a living as a composer. Later he wrote music for Dances with Wolves.
The math.
1977: $90,000. Berkshire traded between about $89 and $138 a share that year, so roughly 650 to 1,000 shares.
2026: one Berkshire A share is about $800,000.
Held until today: roughly $520 million to $800 million.
In 2010 he put it at "more than $70 million." The stock has gone up about six times since.
Here's the part worth keeping. The expected value said hold. But a 19-year-old doesn't live the expected value of a stock. He lives one life, and the years between 19 and 25 only happen once. Peter traded an asset that compounds for the one thing that can't be bought back later: time to find out what he was good at.
Charlie Munger closes the clip with the line I'd frame: he sees very few people ruined by money, and most of those who are "would have been ruined without money."
You're 19. Your father is the best investor alive, and he hands you $90,000 of his own stock. Hold it, or spend it on yourself?
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Prince wrote "slave" on his face to fight for ownership of his music. He died in 2016 without a will. The bank running his estate valued it at $82.3 million. The IRS said $163.2 million.
Start with Prince on late-night TV, doing a record deal's math out loud. Then the brother who hadn't spoken to him in 15 years. Then the sister, on the day a judge named them heirs.
He fought Warner Bros. for most of the 1990s, changed his name to a symbol, and performed with "slave" written on his cheek. In 2014 he finally got his master recordings back.
Two years later he died at Paisley Park. No will, no spouse, no children. Under Minnesota law, everything went to his siblings: one full sister and five half-siblings, in equal shares.
The error bar on his estate.
The bank administering it: $82.3 million.
The IRS: $163.2 million, saying the estate was undervalued by half.
Local news, the day the heirs were named: "$100 to $300 million before taxes."
Agreed in the end, years later: $156.4 million.
Same man, same songs, same house. The two official numbers were about 2x apart.
Meanwhile, as AP put it, bankers, lawyers and consultants made millions from the estate while the heirs waited. A music company later bought out part of the family's shares.
His sister, on the day she became an heir: "The lawyers might be fighting on our behalf, but we personally are not fighting."
The man who did the math on Mariah Carey's record deal on live TV left the math of his own fortune to a bank, the IRS and a probate court.
You own everything you ever made, and you have no children. Who do you leave it to?
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Warren Buffett's son got $90,000 of Berkshire stock at 19. He spent it on his twenties. At today's price those shares would be worth somewhere between $500 million and $800 million.
He says he doesn't regret it for a second.
The clip opens with Warren in 1998, explaining what he leaves his children. Then Peter, decades later, on what he did with his share. Wait for the last word of his answer.
The money started as a farm. Peter's grandfather left it to the grandchildren, and Warren had a problem: he didn't believe in inherited wealth, and he didn't believe in a farm as an investment either. He swapped the farm for Berkshire stock.
So at 19 Peter had $90,000 and two choices: hold his father's stock, or use it. He used it to pay for time, years of learning music and writing for commercials until he could make a living as a composer. Later he wrote music for Dances with Wolves.
The math.
1977: $90,000. Berkshire traded between about $89 and $138 a share that year, so roughly 650 to 1,000 shares.
2026: one Berkshire A share is about $800,000.
Held until today: roughly $520 million to $800 million.
In 2010 he put it at "more than $70 million." The stock has gone up about six times since.
Here's the part worth keeping. The expected value said hold. But a 19-year-old doesn't live the expected value of a stock. He lives one life, and the years between 19 and 25 only happen once. Peter traded an asset that compounds for the one thing that can't be bought back later: time to find out what he was good at.
Charlie Munger closes the clip with the line I'd frame: he sees very few people ruined by money, and most of those who are "would have been ruined without money."
You're 19. Your father is the best investor alive, and he hands you $90,000 of his own stock. Hold it, or spend it on yourself?
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Fyre Festival sold VIP packages for $12,000. Maryann Rolle, the Bahamian caterer who fed the people building it, was never paid. She spent $50,000 of her own savings to pay her staff.
The clip starts with Billy McFarland, out of prison, explaining himself to Piers Morgan. Then Maryann. Then Billy again, asked what would have happened if it had worked.
April 2017. Guests flew in on tickets of up to $1,500 and found tents and cheese sandwiches. The people on the island who had done the work found something worse: nobody was going to pay them.
Maryann never signed a contract. "Everything was going so quickly. But I had people who were in charge, and they told me: I will be paid."
By her count she was owed about $134,000. She took $50,000 out of her savings so her workers would get paid anyway. Ja Rule, a co-founder, later apologized to her on Instagram. Her verdict: "sorry without action."
When the Netflix documentary came out in 2019, strangers did what the festival didn't. Her GoFundMe passed its $123,000 goal within days.
The record.
VIP package: up to $12,000.
Owed to Maryann: about $134,000. Her own savings spent on payroll: $50,000.
Paid to her by the festival: nothing.
Paid to her by strangers: more than $180,000.
Billy McFarland: 6 years, $26 million in restitution, out after about 4. On tape: "Whatever I do will go towards paying everybody back."
2025: Fyre Festival 2, Mexico, tickets from $1,400 to $1.1 million. Postponed indefinitely. The city said it had no record of the event.
The one person in this story who was made whole was the caterer, and the money came from people who had never met her.
You run a small restaurant. A celebrity festival needs you to feed hundreds of workers, starting tomorrow, no contract, and someone in charge says you'll be paid. Do you start cooking?
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In October 2016, Dan Bilzerian told Joe Rogan he had beaten one man for $54,000,000 at poker.
Not in one night. Over 8 or 9 months, heads-up, against the same guy.
In the video below he says that at one point he had $18,000,000 in front of him and the other guy had him covered. “He’s a billionaire. He didn’t give a f***.”
At 0:46 Rogan asks about the biggest single hand he ever played. He goes quiet for several seconds. “Like 14 million, 15 million bucks.”
He says there were times he had almost his entire net worth on the table. His hair fell out from the stress.
At 2:30 he explains how he tried to survive 16 and 17 hour sessions. Adderall made him “too aggressive.” Weed made him paranoid every time he bluffed. Valium made him stop caring.
“You just almost got to be sober.”
None of these wins has ever been verified. In this clip he never names the billionaire. His one public result at the 2008 WSOP Main Event was 180th place.
The money story around his father is on the record. In 1993 a court ordered Paul Bilzerian to pay about $62 million to the SEC. With interest it’s now over $180 million, and the SEC has recovered around $547,000. In 2024 prosecutors charged him with secretly funding Ignite, the company Dan ran as CEO. Dan was not charged.
Some people say he’s the biggest player nobody ever saw play. Others say the biggest bluff was the story itself.
Would you believe someone won $54 million from one guy if nobody ever saw a single hand?
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Michael Jackson walked into court on a crutch, missing a shoe. He said a spider had bitten him. He was being sued for $21 million.
It was 2002, Santa Maria, California, a short drive from Neverland. A German promoter, Marcel Avram, had advanced him millions for two Millennium concerts on December 31, 1999. Sydney first, then Honolulu the same night. Tickets up to $1,500.
The concerts never happened. Avram said Jackson pulled out. Jackson said Avram called it off.
On the stand he sipped a Mountain Dew. Most answers sounded like this: "I don't understand the question." "I can't recall."
Asked about the show, he lit up. Costumes, pyrotechnics, magic. "Magic as in abracadabra."
Asked about the business side, he said he rarely read his contracts. Other people handled that.
Outside, he wore a blue armband. A reporter asked what it meant. "Power!" Power for him? "The world. Not for me."
In March 2003 the jury decided. Jackson had to pay Avram $5.3 million.
In the video below you see him at that trial.
Who was right: the promoter who paid in advance, or the star who never read the contract?
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Bella Thorne, the former Disney Channel star, became the first person to make $1 million on OnlyFans in 24 hours. Within days the site changed its rules, and the sex workers who had built it for years said she was the reason their paychecks shrank.
It was August 2020. She opened her account, passed $1 million on the first day and more than $2 million by the end of the week, a record nobody on the platform had come close to.
Then the complaints started. Fans claimed they had paid $200 for a photo that was supposed to be nude and got a lingerie shot instead, and some asked for their money back. Thorne said she never promised nudity and that the screenshot going around was fake.
Either way, OnlyFans moved fast. Creators reported that pay-per-view posts were suddenly capped at $50, and that payouts that used to arrive weekly could now take up to 30 days.
For the women who lived on the site, that was a real pay cut. Some had been charging $150 to $200 a post, and one creator said a $50 post now left her with about $30 after fees and taxes: "Imagine suddenly going from a weekly paycheck to a monthly paycheck."
OnlyFans said the changes were not about any single user. Thorne apologized on Twitter, saying she had wanted to "remove the stigma behind sex, sex work," and added: "In trying to do this I hurt you."
She had also told the Los Angeles Times she joined to research a role in a film by director Sean Baker. Baker said that film didn't exist.
The case for Bella: she brought millions of new eyes and dollars to a site most celebrities wouldn't touch.
The case against: she made $2 million in a week, and the people who depended on it paid the price.
A celebrity who proved how much OnlyFans can pay, or a tourist who cashed in and wrecked it for everyone else?
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George Lucas could have asked Fox for $1 million to make Star Wars. He took the sequel and merchandising rights instead, which the studio thought were worth nothing. In 2012 he sold what those rights built to Disney for $4.05 billion.
In the video below he explains the deal. Then, three years after the sale, he talks about Star Wars the way people talk about a divorce. Listen to the math he used to decide.
In the mid-1970s nobody made money licensing movie toys. Fox had lost a fortune on Doctor Dolittle merchandise a few years earlier. So when a 32-year-old director asked for the rights to sequels and t-shirts instead of a bigger fee, the studio said yes. "They thought they were getting a good deal," he says. "We were both happy at the time."
He kept 100% of Lucasfilm for the next 36 years.
In 2012, at 68, he sold it. Three years later he was asked if it hurt. "These are my kids. I love them. I created them. And obviously, I sold them."
Then the reason, in one sentence: "I'm 70. I don't know whether I'll be here when I'm 80. Every 10 years the odds get less."
Worked out.
1976: the fee he says he could have asked for, $1,000,000. What he took instead: rights the studio called worthless.
2012: Lucasfilm, 100% his, sold to Disney for $4.05 billion, about half cash and half Disney stock.
That's roughly 4,000 times the fee he gave up.
Here's what I find interesting. Both decisions were about probability. At 32 he bet on the tail nobody priced: that a space movie might sell toys. At 68 he priced his own tail: three more films, ten years of work, and the odds of still being able to make them at 80. The first time he took the risk. The second time he took the certainty.
You're 68 and you own 100% of Star Wars. Three more films would take you ten years. Do you sell for $4 billion, or make them yourself?
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Simon Leviev told women on Tinder he was the son of a diamond billionaire. Cecilie, a Norwegian woman living in London, ended up with $250,000 in loans in her own name. He has never been charged for it.
In the video below: Simon in 2022, then Cecilie and another woman, Pernilla. Listen to who he says he feels bad for.
Their first date was on a private jet. Then the story: enemies were tracking him through the spending on his card, and his security team needed him invisible. Could he borrow her card for a while and travel under her name?
She said yes. Then came the loans. Pernilla says it took about eight months before money ever came up. By then they both believed they were in danger too.
It was American Express that finally told Cecilie: he's a long-time fraudster.
Worked out.
Claimed: son of a diamond billionaire. On tape: "No, I am not."
Cecilie, in her own words: $250,000.
Pernilla: $70,000.
All victims, per the documentary: about $10 million.
Days in prison for what he did to them: 0.
Time he did serve: 2 years in Finland for defrauding three other women, and 5 months of a 15-month sentence in Israel for older fraud.
Asked in 2022 if he felt bad for them: "I feel bad for whatever happened to myself." And how he pays for the lifestyle: "I bought bitcoin in 2011."
February 2025, Dubai, on TikTok: "You will never see me in prison. No more." September 2025: detained in Georgia at Interpol's request.
Cecilie's last line in the video is the one that stays: "You can't live life without trust." It's also the exact thing he was counting on.
He's flying you around on his jet. One night he says his enemies are tracking his card and asks to use yours for a few weeks. Do you hand it over?
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Tina Turner walked out on Ike in 1976 with 36 cents. In the divorce she asked for one thing: the name he had given her. In 2021 she sold that name, with her music, for a price estimated at over $50 million.
In the video below she tells it herself. Listen to what Ike used to tell her about leaving.
"He kept all the money from the act. He kept everything. He always said: when you leave, you will leave like you came."
She left in Dallas in July 1976 while he slept, running across a freeway to the hotel opposite. She had a Mobil card and 36 cents.
In the 1978 divorce, by her account, she let him keep almost everything, including the publishing royalties on songs she had written. She took two cars and the rights to "Tina Turner." Promoters of the tour she walked out on wanted their money, so she played hotels and went on game shows.
At 44 she had her first solo No. 1.
Worked out.
Cash when she left: $0.36.
Asked for in the divorce: one name.
Name, likeness and catalog, sold in 2021: terms never disclosed, "over $50 million" by industry estimates.
Records sold: 10 million certified in the US. 100 million+ per the company that bought her catalog. 200 million per CBS, in this video.
So the most quoted number about her career has an error bar of 2x. The only number in her story nobody disputes is the 36 cents.
Asked at 79 if there was anything she still wanted: "No. I have everything."
You're 36, leaving a violent marriage with 36 cents. Fighting for the house and the royalties could take years. Do you fight, or walk away with just the name?
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In 1938 two 23-year-olds from Cleveland sold every right to Superman for $130. In 2024 one copy of the comic they were paid for sold for $6 million.
In the video below they tell how they made him, decades later, side by side. Then CBS News, December 1975. Listen to what Joe Shuster says their American dream became.
Jerry Siegel wrote. Joe Shuster drew. For five years every newspaper syndicate turned them down. In 1938 a comic book publisher finally said yes: $10 a page, 13 pages, all rights. The check line read "Superman, $130."
They kept writing and drawing him for nine years and were paid well for it, more than $400,000 between them by one count. In 1947 they sued to get the rights back. They lost, settled for about $94,000, and lost their jobs and their names on the comic.
By 1975 Shuster was almost blind and living in near poverty in New York. Siegel was a $7,000-a-year clerk in Los Angeles. That October, with the Superman movie in production, Siegel sent the press a letter putting a curse on it.
Two months later Warner gave them $20,000 a year each and put their names back on every Superman story.
Worked out.
1938: all rights to Superman, $130.
1975: the pension, $20,000 a year, 37 years later.
2012: the $130 check itself, which DC had thrown in the trash, sold at auction for $160,000.
2024: one copy of Action Comics #1, $6,000,000. That's 46,000 times what they got for the whole character.
Invested at 7% a year from 1938, the $130 would be about $44,000 today.
The publisher has a case. Every syndicate had passed. It paid for the printing, took the risk on 200,000 copies, and $10 a page was the going rate. Nobody in 1938 knew what a superhero was worth, including the two kids who made him.
You're the publisher in 1938. A character everyone rejected for five years just became the biggest hit you've ever had. Do you give the two kids a royalty, or hold them to the contract they signed?
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Bernie Madoff's victims lost their life savings in his Ponzi scheme, while his longtime friend Jeffry Picower put in $619,000,000 and took out $7,800,000,000, more than anyone else. Ten months after the scheme collapsed, Picower's wife found him dead at the bottom of their pool.
In the video below, the trustee's lawyer explains on 60 Minutes why he thinks Picower knew. It aired weeks before Picower died.
Picower wasn't one of the victims. He was a Palm Beach billionaire on the Forbes 400, a philanthropist whose foundation gave MIT $50 million, and a Madoff client since the 1970s.
Most Madoff clients got the same steady returns, year after year. In the late '90s, Picower's accounts showed 120% to 550% a year.
In April 2006 he wired in $125,000,000. Two weeks later the account showed $164,000,000, from trades dated three months before his money arrived.
A Ponzi scheme has no real profits. Every dollar he took out came from another client's savings.
The trustee sued him for $7,200,000,000, the gap between what he put in and what he took out. His lawyer said the Picowers were "totally shocked" by the fraud.
He never made it to court. The medical examiner ruled his death an accidental drowning after a heart attack.
In December 2010, his widow Barbara agreed to hand back all $7,200,000,000. The largest forfeiture in US history, and more than a third of everything Madoff's victims lost.
She said she was "absolutely confident that my husband Jeffry was in no way complicit."
From prison, Madoff said this about his four biggest clients: "They were complicit, all of them."
Picower was never charged. After the payout, his estate still put $1,200,000,000 into a new family foundation.
Madoff's sons turned him in, and the trustee still sued them. His friend walked away with $7,800,000,000 and never had to explain a single trade.
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Anna Delvey told New York she had a $60 million trust fund. Her friend Rachel ended up with the $62,000 bill from their trip to Marrakech on her own cards. More than she made in a year.
A jury later decided that part wasn't a crime.
In the video below: Anna in 2021, asked how she got people to believe she was rich. Then Rachel, in 2019. Listen to what Anna says about $60 million.
Spring 2017. An all-expenses-paid trip to Morocco, Anna's treat. Then Anna's cards "mysteriously stopped working." Rachel put hers down as a backup. She flew home first, and the text came: the whole bill was on her cards.
Anna kept promising a wire transfer. It never came. Rachel fell behind on rent, and helped police find her.
Worked out.
Claimed: a $60 million trust fund.
Taken, per prosecutors, from banks, hotels and a private-jet company: a little over $250,000.
The story was about 240 times bigger than the theft.
Rachel's bill: $62,000.
May 2019: guilty on eight counts, including grand larceny. Not guilty of defrauding Rachel. Her lawyer: "She made a voluntary choice to put this debt on her credit card."
Sentence: 4 to 12 years. She was out in under 4.
Anna, 2021: "I'm not a fraudster, so I wouldn't know." And: "I don't regret it personally."
Two verdicts. In court, Rachel chose to pay. In life, she paid for trusting a friend.
Your friend's cards stop working abroad, and she swears the wire is coming tomorrow. Do you put $62,000 on yours?
Ito retweeted
Leonard Cohen wrote "Hallelujah." At 70 he found out his longtime manager had taken about $5 million from his accounts. He had roughly $150,000 left.
In the video below he's asked, at 74, whether rebuilding his nest egg mattered to him. Listen to how he corrects the question.
"It was presented in much more urgent terms than that. There was a matter of financial survival."
He had spent much of the 1990s at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy. The manager had been handling everything.
In 2006 a court ordered her to pay him $9.5 million. She ignored it. Years later a jury convicted her of harassing him.
So in 2008, at 73, 15 years after his last tour, he went back on the road.
Worked out.
Taken, per his lawsuit: about $5,000,000.
Left when he found out: about $150,000. Roughly 3 cents of every dollar.
Awarded by the court: $9,500,000.
Paid by her: she ignored the order.
So the headline "Cohen wins $9.5 million" comes with an error bar of 100%. The money that actually came back was the money he earned onstage, in his seventies.
His own verdict on the career that saved him: "In hindsight, it seems to be the height of folly to resolve your economic crisis by becoming a folk singer."
You're 70. Your savings are gone, and a court says you're owed $9.5 million you'll probably never see. Do you keep suing, or go back to work?
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Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877 with $100 million, more money than the U.S. Treasury. In 1973, 120 of his descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University. Not one of them was a millionaire.
His great-great-great-grandson is Anderson Cooper. At 14 he was walking up the stairs at home and heard his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, on the phone: "Well, I'll always be able to make money."
"I remember stopping and freezing… and thinking: we are doomed."
At 13 he'd been telling her to open a savings account. By 14 he was working as a child model.
By 1885 the Commodore's son had more than doubled the fortune, to about $230 million. Then the next generation's wives decided to take over New York society. "And then the spending begins."
Worked out.
$230 million in 1885.
Left alone at a plain 5% a year until 1973: about $17 billion.
Split 120 ways: about $140 million each.
What the 120 actually had: not one had $1 million.
Spending only the 5% would have paid the family $11.5 million a year, in 1885 dollars, forever.
Keep this part. A fortune doesn't need a thief. It only needs each generation to spend a little more than it earns, and more heirs to split what's left.
Gloria inherited what remained, then made her own money with jeans. Anderson's parents made sure he knew: "There wasn't some pot of gold waiting for me, and I'm glad."
The clip is three minutes. Watch him on the stairs, then decide.
You have $100 million and one child. How much do you leave them?
Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877 with $100 million, more money than the U.S. Treasury. In 1973, 120 of his descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University. Not one of them was a millionaire.
His great-great-great-grandson is Anderson Cooper. At 14 he was walking up the stairs at home and heard his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, on the phone: "Well, I'll always be able to make money."
"I remember stopping and freezing… and thinking: we are doomed."
At 13 he'd been telling her to open a savings account. By 14 he was working as a child model.
By 1885 the Commodore's son had more than doubled the fortune, to about $230 million. Then the next generation's wives decided to take over New York society. "And then the spending begins."
Worked out.
$230 million in 1885.
Left alone at a plain 5% a year until 1973: about $17 billion.
Split 120 ways: about $140 million each.
What the 120 actually had: not one had $1 million.
Spending only the 5% would have paid the family $11.5 million a year, in 1885 dollars, forever.
Keep this part. A fortune doesn't need a thief. It only needs each generation to spend a little more than it earns, and more heirs to split what's left.
Gloria inherited what remained, then made her own money with jeans. Anderson's parents made sure he knew: "There wasn't some pot of gold waiting for me, and I'm glad."
The clip is three minutes. Watch him on the stairs, then decide.
You have $100 million and one child. How much do you leave them?
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In 1961 Jim Monaghan traded his half of Domino's to his brother Tom for a used Volkswagen Beetle. Today Domino's is worth about $10 billion.
Decades later an interviewer asked Tom if his brother got the better part of that deal. "Yeah," he said.
In the video below Tom tells it himself. Listen to what he sees out the window.
Tom grew up in an orphanage. His father died when he was 4, on Christmas Eve 1941. At 23 he put everything he had, including his college money, into a failing pizza place in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with his brother Jim. $500 down, $900 borrowed from a credit union.
Jim was a mailman. After they signed, he couldn't give up the route. "Too much security."
Within months Tom was working seven days a week. One night Jim walked into the shop: "This is your type of thing, not mine. You can have it."
Tom had nothing to pay him with. He looked out the window at the delivery car. "You take the Volkswagen. I'll keep making the payments."
Worked out.
1961: half of a pizza place that was "just a negative, all kinds of debt and losing," Tom says. Price: a '59 Beetle.
1998: Tom sold his stake for about $1 billion.
2026: Domino's is worth about $10 billion. Jim's half: about $5 billion.
Here's the uncomfortable part. On the day Jim made that trade, it was probably the right call. A steady paycheck beat half of a shop that lost money every week. It just turned out to be the wrong side of the next 60 years.
Tom later gave most of his fortune away. "At one point I was a billionaire, but I gave all my money away. So now I'm a trillionaire."
You're Jim in 1961. Steady mail route, and half of a pizza shop that loses money every week. Do you take the car?
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Pick a door. 1, 2 or 3. Remember it.
The host, who knows where the car is, opens one of the other doors. A goat. He asks if you want to switch.
In 1990 Marilyn vos Savant, listed by Guinness for the highest IQ, told Parade readers: switch. About 10,000 letters came back. Close to 1,000 were signed with Ph.D.'s. One said "You are the goat!" A math professor wrote: "You blew it!"
She was right. I ran it: 1,000,000 games. Stay wins 33.3%. Switch wins 66.7%.
But watch the video below to the end. The last word goes to the man the puzzle is named after. Monty Hall says he never played it that way on his show.
Worked out.
Honest host, always opens a goat door and always offers the switch: switching wins 2 in 3.
Monty's own version, played at his dining table with a New York Times reporter in 1991: if you picked a goat, he opens your door and you're done. If you picked the car, he offers the switch. Switching wins 0 in 3. He won 8 rounds in a row.
A kind host who only offers the switch when you're wrong: switching wins 3 in 3.
So the famous answer is 2/3. The honest answer is "anywhere from 0% to 100%, depending on the host."
The math was never the hard part. The model was.
"If he has the choice whether to allow a switch or not, beware. Caveat emptor. It all depends on his mood." — Monty Hall
Your turn: which door did you pick, and did you switch?
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The richest woman in New York spent her last years being told she was broke.
The man telling her was her only son.
Brooke Astor gave away close to $200 million to New York. Libraries, museums, parks. In her 100s she told a friend she'd bought some shoes, and "Tony's not going to approve."
That friend later said under oath: telling her she couldn't afford a new dress isn't being careful. "That's just being mean."
In the video below, ABC tells it from the verdict backward. Watch the grandson when he talks about his father.
Tony Marshall ran his mother's money. She paid him a salary, at one point about half a million dollars a year.
In 2006 her grandson Philip visited, stayed a little longer than usual, and the nurses started talking.
He swore in court papers that she was sleeping "in torn nightgowns on a filthy couch that smells, probably from dog urine." His father called it lies.
A judge ordered the couch replaced.
Philip didn't take a stranger to court. He took his father.
Worked out.
The painting she loved most: sold for $10 million. Tony's commission: $2 million. (The jury acquitted him on that count.)
The verdict, 2009: guilty on 14 counts, including grand larceny. He was 85.
The sentence: one to three years. He served two months and was released on medical parole at 89.
Brooke Astor: died in 2007, at 105.
Philip came to the trial once. To testify against his father.
Your grandmother is being neglected, and the man responsible is your dad. Do you call the lawyer?
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"Catch Me If You Can" has one problem. For most of the years it covers, he was already caught.
In the video below: Frank Abagnale on The Tonight Show in 1978, telling his story in his own words. Every few minutes, the record cuts in.
Here's the story he told for 50 years.
He said: at 16 he ran away from home.
He said: he posed as a Pan Am pilot, flew 3 million miles, saw 82 countries.
He said: he worked as a pediatrician, supervised seven interns on the night shift, and "I don't like the sight of blood."
He said: by 21 he'd cashed $2.5 million in bad checks.
Johnny Carson's audience laughed at all of it. So did everyone else for 40 years. Spielberg made it a movie. DiCaprio played him.
Then a researcher named Alan Logan went to the New York State Archives.
The record: inmate #25367. Great Meadow prison, New York. July 26, 1965, to December 24, 1968. Abagnale was 17 to 20.
The record: the federal case over the Pan Am checks. Ten forged checks. Under $1,500.
Worked out.
Claimed: $2,500,000.
Documented: under $1,500.
The story is about 1,700 times bigger than the case.
The checks were small. The story was the fortune: a bestseller, a Spielberg film, a Broadway musical, decades on the speaking circuit teaching people how not to get fooled.
His answer to the book: "not worthy of a comment."
The best con in "Catch Me If You Can" wasn't on Pan Am. It was on us.
You loved the movie. Does knowing this change it?