Futility Closet

Sometimes in our research we come across stories that are regarded as true but that we can't fully verify. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll share two such stories from the 1920s, about a pair of New York fruit dealers and a mythologized bank robber, and discuss the strength of the evidence behind them. We'll also salute a retiring cat and puzzle over a heartless spouse. Intro: English essayist A.C. Benson dreamed poems. Robert Patch patented a toy truck at age 5. Sources for our feature on the Fortunato brothers and Herman Lamm: Walter Mittelstaedt, Herman 'Baron' Lamm, the Father of Modern Bank Robbery, 2012. L.R. Kirchner, Robbing Banks: An American History 1831-1999, 2003. William J. Helmer and Rick Mattix, Public Enemies: America's Criminal Past, 1919-1940, 1998. John Toland, The Dillinger Days, 1963. Bryan Burrough, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, 2009. John Belle and Maxinne Rhea Leighton, Grand Central: Gateway to a Million Li