Howdy, y'all. It is Jeffrey Cranor. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Night Vale you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026, and I'm here to tell you we're gonna be in Europe. If you want to see Night Vale live, and you're gonna be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May.
We're gonna be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to welcometonightvale.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is our newest Night Vale live show, Murder Night in Blood Force.
It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Disporition, and starring Jessica Nicole.
So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you wanna hear us talk about other things? We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Night Vale for all of your Night Vale needs.
You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single episode in order of Welcome to Night Vale. Also, we have Random Horror Number 9. That is me and Night Vale star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do Best Worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDb, the worst rated on IMDb, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middleest rated on IMDb.
So check out all of those at nightvalepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcasts. And hey, thanks. The suffocation of the ego, the eternal silence of the void, faceless, yet screaming, and now serving orange wine on tap. Welcome to Night Vale.
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Money is available in handy ones, fives, sixes, eights, and now twenties. Money may be habit forming. Symptoms may include avarice, lack of introspection, and frequent substitution of the phrase intelligent for wealthy. Please ask your doctor if money is right for you, and nod with considerable vigor when your doctor asks if you think money will complete you.
We have a visitor who I'm just now learning about. I've been handed a note by my new intern, Gustav. Gustav says station management has ordered him to bring this guest immediately to the studio. Gustav, are you missing an eye?
Gustav is nodding. Okay, let's see. The note says, it says to please welcome... What?
Wow. I mean, wow. Gustav, is this real? Okay, it is my honor and my privilege to welcome to the show Hugh Jackman.
Hi. Wait, you're not the Hugh Jackman, right? I like to think I am. Yeah, you're not.
But my children think I'm the real Hugh Jackman. Your children are wrong. But go on, Mr. Hugh Jackman.
My name is Hugh Jackman and... But not the Hugh Jackman. Here's my card. Oh, Hugh's business card is a hologram.
He's projected straight onto my fingers. It says he's the senior vice president in charge of dreamfluencing at Egemony. It's pronounced Egemony. Oh, so it sounds just like hedge.
I'm here to solve the funny little mystery. I just need to open my briefcase here. Take a look at this. Oh, well, that's a Playboy magazine.
Yes, December 1969. It had the pictorial on Bond girls, in case you don't remember. Oh, I can see that. Oh, and there's also a feature on architect Mies van der Rohe.
I'll take your word for it, Mr. Palmer. I only read Playboy for the advertisements, like this one, the one for Canadian Club. Okay, listeners, Mr.
Jackman is showing me a full-page ad that features six people hiking in dense-looking woods, and two of them are carrying a sling of some sort, and in the sling is... A case of Canadian Club whiskey. Uh-huh. The headline reads, On October 13, 1969, we hid a case of Canadian Club deep in the Amazon jungle.
Here's how you can find it. Well, let's see. Well, this is actually quite entertaining. There are clues and maps and...
Is that an acrostic? It is an acrostic. Very good, Mr. Palmer.
It's a clue to where the case was buried. Now, from 1967 to 1973, Hiram Walker Distilled Spirits DBA Canadian Club ran a contest where they hid 21 cases of Canadian Club whiskey throughout the world, from the densest alleys of Jakarta to the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the cable car tracks of San Francisco, on cobblestone streets in London, under 30 feet of water in the Great Barrier Reef. They ran ads with clues about how to find them, and find them, the people of the world did. Every single case was recovered.
That's remarkable. Mr. Palmer, we hid a case under the ice caps of the North Pole, and people found it. We dropped one on Mount Everest.
Mountains. So, why do you think people wanted to find them so badly? As far as we can tell, it has to do with people's desire to have alcohol. Ironically, it sank the contest.
People weren't buying Canadian Club. They figured that it was way cheaper and more fun to get a yacht and sail to the Cayman Islands and snorkel under the security fences of the International Monetary Fund and then, you know, like, remove a case from the International Monetary Fund's mom's poolside refrigerator. And that's exactly what happened to case number 17. So, sales plummeted, but later, Hiram Walker merged with Gooderham & Worts, which was acquired by Bacardi Constellation Brands, which is now an acquisition of our little tech startup, Egemony.
Now, excuse me, but what does Egemony do? We dreamfluence. Got it. It turns out, there's one further case of Canadian Club.
It's been hidden for over 40 years, right here in Night Vale. Here's the ad. This is the November 1973 issue of Playboy. Go on, read it.
On August 30th, we hid a case of Canadian Club in Night Vale. Here's how to find it. But, Mr. Jackman, the rest of the ad is blank.
We at Egemony, after some internal discussion, believe that might be why the case was never found. There seems to have been some kind of event at the printers that month. Fran Lebowitz's interview with progressive rock band Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman is perfectly fine for its first 37 pages, but then devolves into a series of umlauts. Little Annie Fanny, generally a lighthearted and adorably misogynistic comic strip, was just panel after panel of umlauts.
And, Mr. Palmer, look at the pictorial on men's golf pants. Ah! Yeah, I know.
We're not really sure what happened there. Further, you'll see that every cartoon has the same punchline. Oh, yeah. Here's a bride on her wedding day and her mother is telling her, it's under Cecil's desk.
Same punchline is on page 23 with the desert island and page 74 here, the two cowboys at the saloon. It's under Cecil's desk. That is so odd. So, Mr.
Jackman, why does Egemony want to find this case of liquor? We thought it would be... fun. Can I look under your desk?
Why? The case is under your desk. Yeah, but this desk wasn't even here in 1973. So you're telling us, me, no?
Well, I'm telling you to ask station management. Oh, I will. I mean, they'll make you fill out a form. And they can also create fire with their minds.
Also, they've eaten people before for way less. Hey, Gustav, Gustav, come in here and show Hugh what station management did to your eye. Oh, my. That is disgusting.
Okay, that's enough, Gustav. Oh, I am prepared. I'm familiar with your station management and not afraid of them. Eunice, Lily, Agatha, DeMarcus, and Jad are old friends of mine.
Who? Have you never learned the names of your supervisors, Mr. Palmer? You need a team-building retreat.
I'll be back. You haven't seen the last of me. Yeah, well, you aren't even the real Hugh Jackman. I don't trust that man.
I need to figure out what to do next. We'll be back after this. Life is meaningless. There are no guiding principles, nor rewards, nor punishments for how to live.
Just flashes of pain or joy, which are only neurotic messages, not actual experiences. Even pondering why we exist is a rudderless journey. So consciousness is a means to no end. The sheriff's secret police would like to acknowledge that hearing this will ruin your day.
However, they are further authorized to announce that nothing we have learned about nature describes the process that occurs without purpose. We can point to a fish's fin and understand what function it serves. A monkey's fur, a starfish's many arms, the acorns in your Uncle Simon's branchy beard that explode outward as stabbing bristles whenever Uncle Pardon? 40 years?
Well, no, not really. I raised a family. I shot a guy once. But you're stalling, Cecil.
I'm not stalling. But, you know, we really should get to today's weather. And we're back. Have you looked under the...?
No, I've not looked under my desk. Come on, Cecil. Wait. Why does Mr.
Jackman want this so badly? It's why they put cases everywhere on the planet. They knew that leaving an item in place long enough allows it to absorb the spirit of the area. That case is now infused with the soul of Night Vale.
No one actually recovered those other cases. Igimony recovered them after they bought all the other parent companies of Canadian Club. They're going to send out one of their corporate prize contest and sweepstakes buzz marketing street teams to dreamfluence anyone who stands in their way. If Igimony finds it before you do, they will drink Night Vale's soul.
The same way they've drunk the soul of all the other cities. Wait, that makes no sense. They've recovered a bunch of these across the world. Are you saying that Manhattan, San Francisco, London, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Cayman Islands don't have souls anymore?
Cecil. Oh my God, you're right. Okay. All right.
I'm going to look. I am looking under my desk. And I am finding nothing. There's nothing under here.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, oh, oh, wait. What?
A pushpin. A red one. And it's holding an envelope to the underside of the desk. Is it manila?
Yes. And it's addressed to me. There's a, there's a letter inside. It's written on papyrus and you can tell it's very old because it's written in cursive.
Um, it says, Dear Cecil, how are you? We are fine. We're sorry we didn't write earlier, but we were unlearning our destinies. We had to unlearn so many things.
Small steps, then larger ones, then larger until we were almost flying, but not quite flying because we had to unlearn our expectations and then unlearn our limitations. So we gave up on flying because that turns out not to work regardless of your expectations and no matter what you unlearn. So we relearned what we needed to. We've relearned so many essential things, Cecil, about work and love and complaining about work and love.
And, oh, and we took the case of booze. If you want to find us, you'll know us by our sign. And then it's signed with a smear of foam. Now wait, this isn't just any foam.
It's... Hold on. Cappuccino. Oh my goodness.
I have to tell Miss Wilkes that... I'm still here. Oh, Miss Wilkes, I know where the case of Canadian club is. Where?
It's in the cavelands outside of town. It's been taken by the baristas. Cecil, this is the worst possible news. The baristas are no match for buzz marketing street teams.
The baristas are gentle people, soft of spirit and jolly of countenance, whose dreams are only influenced by the purest of loves, not crowdsourced manipulations. The baristas are rosy cheeked and innocent. They gamble like lambs. Cecil, you've got to warn them.
Okay, I will. I will. Thank you, Miss Wilkes. Listeners, this is terrible.
I don't know what to do. I don't like warning people about things. I mean, warnings lead to consequences. And we all know how much I avoid consequences.
In fact, there's only one way to be thoroughly insulated from consequence. And that's to accumulate enough money. But I don't have any money. As station management recently switched their payroll protocol from cash to Twitter followers and Groupon's for local spas.
So I'm kind of screwed. Think, Cecil, think. Think, think, think, think, think. Stay tuned next for the sounds of chewing amplified to the threshold of pain.
Good night, Night Vale. Good night. Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Night Vale Presents. This episode was written by Glenn David Gold with Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and produced by Joseph Fink.
The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. The voice of Hugh Jackman was Hunter Canning. The voice of Missy was Lucia Struss. Original music by Disparition.
All of it can be found at disparition.info or at disparition.bandcamp.com. This episode's weather was Lost Everything by Mary Eppworth. Find out more at maryeppworth.com. Comments, questions?
Email us at info at welcometonightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at Night Vale Radio or have a dream in which you get a paper cut and a rich, dark soil pours out. Check out welcometonightvale.com for more information on this show and the 27 city book tour for our new novel from the world of Welcome to Night Vale, It Devours, which is currently happening right now. Today's proverb, people always say, before I die, as if they haven't already begun the process. Are you squeamish about horror movies, but kind of want to know what happens?
Or are you a horror lover who likes thoughtful conversation about your favorite genre? Join me, Jeffrey Cranor, and my friend from Welcome to Night Vale, Cecil Baldwin, for our weekly podcast, Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where we watch and discuss horror movies in a random order. Fine, here's the short version. Random Horror 9, wherever you get your podcasts.
Boo.