(whimsical theme playing)
John Wilson: Hey, New York.
When you go to a party,
you never want to show up empty-handed.
There are a lot of different things
that you can bring to express your gratitude
for having been invited somewhere.
But if you're not careful,
you can totally misjudge the event
and, and, and bring something completely inappropriate.
And then, you'll just be embarrassed
that you even tried to do something nice to begin with.
But the universal expectation
is that you'll show up with a bottle of wine.
This may seem like a simple task,
but if you don't know anything about wine,
making a selection can be a confusing experience.
And if you make the mistake of asking for a recommendation,
you usually receive, uh, a response like this.
So here, we have a Chablis.
This is a Premier Cru. So, there are nine Grand Crus
and 14 Premier Crus in this area.
Uh, these tannins are fantastic,
especially when you have some very bold...
big foods, you know?
Jumilla is interesting.
They grow a grape called Monastrell.
But not all bruts are the same.
You have sort of a vegetal characteristic to them.
We always joke around in the industry, you know,
could you imagine that you were in a place like Pomerol,
and the folks in Pauillac said,
"Hey! Were are you at the Gran Cru meeting?"
And they say, "What meeting?" "Oh, too bad!"
(laugh) You know, the wines in Pomerol
are very, very good, and they should be considered...
Wilson: And at that point, you're half an hour late to the party.
So, you just grab something at random with a nice label
and bring it to your friend's house
and put it with the rest of the other bottles.
You try to have a good time like everybody else,
but you can't help but wonder why your bottle
is always the last one picked,
and you wish you knew what you did wrong.
The world of wine may feel like an exclusive club
with a thousand passwords to enter.
But maybe if you learned a thing or two,
you'd never be stressed about wine ever again.
So, stick with me and I'll show you how to convince anyone
that you know a thing or two about wine.
-(subway rumbling) -(playing glass harp)
Now, a good first step
is to learn a few select words
of, of wine vocabulary,
so you can sound like you know what you're talking about.
(glass harp music)
Uh, a dry white is a white wine
with low sugar content like a Chardonnay.
(clears throat)
If a wine coats your mouth after drinking it,
you can say it has an oily finish.
A popular kind of red wine is a pinot.
And a natural wine is made with as few steps as possible
between harvesting and consumption.
(clears throat) Straight from the source.
The legs are the drops
that form along the edge of your glass
after you swirl it around a bit.
Some legs are a little hard to interpret,
but if you're afraid of saying the wrong thing
when describing them, you can always just say,
nice legs,
and everyone will accept that as an appropriate response.
Nice legs.
Nice ones.
Supposedly, the older a wine gets,
the better it tastes.
And a lot of the best ones have aged for decades.
But if you're nervous about consuming a piece of history,
a good idea is to train with someone
who's made a hobby out of eating really old stuff.
MRE Man: This is essentially every generation
of long-range patrol ration,
up until about the mid-1980s.
The experience of eating really old, expired food
-can go several ways. -Wilson: Mm-hmm.
If you eat something that is really rancid
and the oils have gone off end,
it has this very odd sensation
that I'd never experienced in my life
up until the point of eating something
that's really old like that. And that is a numbness.
So, the whole inside of your mouth,
your tongue, your throat, your gums,
all that will go completely numb and you can't really feel it,
and it feels like your tongue is swelling a little bit.
This is going to be most likely mid-1960s,
'64, '65.
So, this is definitely a Vietnam-era ration.
Wilson: Okay.
The back part here.
Wilson: Wow...
This is the main entree for the ration.
It is vacuum-sealed.
Wilson: What is it?
Beef with rice.
Wilson: Oh, okay.
MRE Man: And that feels to be in great condition.
Wilson: Okay.
Hey, how's it going? I'm John.
Woman: Squirrel is not good,
-I wouldn't recommend it. -Wilson: Um...
I drank a SlimFast that came from Big Lots.
It was expired, and I bought it expired.
It was expired at the grocery-- at the store.
And, um, so it stayed in my refrigerator for a while,
and I took it to work one day, and I drank the whole thing,
and it was full of rust, and it made me really sick.
-Wilson: Oh, no. -I had the worst headache.
I had to go home sick that day.
♪ ♪
MRE Man: You see, the rice is sort of swimming in the liquid now.
That does not look the best. (laugh)
(spoon scraping pan)
So, it has sort of a... a mustiness.
-Wilson: Musty? -Yeah, a little bit.
It tastes cardboard-like,
I would explain it.
Sort of a, a paper-type taste to it.
Wilson: When you're consuming a rare treat,
make sure to take note of every flavor and sensation,
so everyone knows how much pleasure
you're getting out of it.
It still has a meaty chew to it.
One of those bites I had had a, had a--
was sort of a grisly piece in it, too, so I, I--
I don't think they were really that concerned
about how good of quality meat
they were giving the soldiers anyway.
Like, you know, they were kind of just grounding it all up
and not really caring what they were putting in there.
(Wilson gags)
Wilson: Wait, yeah, I, I think I just...
I think I found one of the grisly pieces of meat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're in there.
Wilson: That's not bad.
If it's completely edible and you can finish it,
-it doesn't get any better than that. -Wilson: Wow.
Now that you're comfortable consuming old stuff,
the next step is to learn how to use your nose
to enhance the whole experience.
So, practice with someone
who's a little more advanced than you.
A lot of dark fruits, some... plum.
(sniffing)
Maybe a little oak.
Wilson: It seems like being able to smell the ingredients
is, is a big part of it.
And it's easier than you think to get it wrong.
Wow. Uh...
(sniffing)
Melon?
What do you smell?
-Wilson: Yeah, I'll go with that. -(laughs)
You see how easy it is to influence?
I don't smell no damn melon!
I don't smell anything! See how easy-- (laughing)
See how easy it is to fool somebody in, in wine?
I don't smell-- All I smell is alcohol.
-(sniffs) -(Wilson laughing)
Wilson: So, to avoid being completely humiliated,
it's a good idea to try to sharpen your sense of smell.
Thankfully, New York is a carnival of aromas,
and the more exotic you can find,
the more sophisticated your nose will become.
Smell that.
Can you smell that?
Ooh! Two-for-one.
But after a while,
you start to run out of new things to smell.
So, you gotta find new smells in different places
that you didn't think of before.
Can I smell some of the bread?
(Baker speaking)
Wilson: Uh, nothing.
What does that stuff smell like?
(sniffs)
Wilson: Cool.
(sniffing)
Does, does, like, does the wood have a scent at all?
Uh, not that I know of. I don't believe so.
-Wilson: Oh, so it's odorless. -Yes.
-Wilson: Oh... -Some bowling balls do actually have scents.
-Wilson: Really? -Yeah.
This one smells like orange coffee cake.
-Wilson: That smells like orange? -Yes, sir.
Wilson: Like, was there a demand for, for a smelly bowling ball?
No, it's just their trademark thing.
It's kinda what they're known for.
You know, it's what, what's unique about that company
is they decide to do that. And it's just...
Most people tend to like it, you know?
Wilson: You've never smelled anything quite like it before.
So, if you wanna become a master of scent,
you gotta go straight to the source.
♪ ♪
Storm Bowling Rep: We're at the manufacturing plant
for Storm Bowling Products, and we're actually the only company
that manufactures bowling balls
with fragrance in the cover stock.
The scent is already in those tubes,
in that liquid cover stock right now as it's being poured.
And then in about 10 minutes,
it will actually get hard enough
for us to take out of the mold and put 'em on the rack here
-just to cure a little bit. -Oh!
And here, look who we have here.
-Wilson: Oh my goodness. -Rep: This is the owner, Bill Chrisman.
This is just posters and things we've done,
articles on me.
This is a Pepsi ball I built for Pepsi.
-Wilson: Who's this guy? -That's Jack Daniels.
Rep: So we'll basically keep firing these balls in here,
and you can see they come out.
There's some buffing wheels and some compound in there.
The citrus fragrances, there's lemon, there's caramel,
there's coffee cake, there's orange.
It'll match the color, and we try and match
the theme of the bowling ball.
-It goes along with the marketing theme as well. -Wilson: Wow.
-(sniffs) Ooh, yeah. -Rep: Yeah?
Wilson: That smells like a cherry Coke.
Yeah, like a cherry Coke almost.
-It does. -Yeah.
-See that right there? That's a poster we did. -Wilson: Uh-huh.
-Chrisman: Okay? Right here. See this? -Wilson: Okay. Uh-huh.
Chrisman: We had 30-plus phone calls,
50- or 60-plus emails.
-Wilson: Oh, really? Just for that? -Chrisman: Yeah.
-It's pornographic. -Wilson: Um...
He continued the tour in, in the lobby,
but, uh, when he was talking to you,
one of his employees walked in, uh,
with a, a special treat.
What are you drinking right there?
Wilson: Oh. What does it taste like?
Wilson: He had a whole flight of them
that he was gonna try his at desk,
and it seemed like more of a lifestyle
than, than just a drink to him.
I drink Rockstars and hang out, and,
you know, we go to Rockstar events like, you know, they do...
they do a lot of off-road stuff like out in Tooele
and places like that. So, yeah, we go to different events
where Rockstar's kinda sponsored.
Wilson: Wow.
♪ ♪
You used to drink energy drinks all the time,
and you remember really liking it.
You didn't have to study anything to enjoy them,
and making a selection was always effortless.
But as you got older, you stopped drinking them entirely
because you felt like your taste
needed to evolve for some reason.
It's been a long time since you've had one,
and you kind of wish that drinking wine
could be this simple.
But since you've worked so hard to educate yourself,
you might as well put it to use
at a wine tasting on a boat,
uh, where you should hopefully be able to fit right in.
You settle down and get a spot with a good view of the city,
and you're excited to finally show off
everything that you learned.
And they said, "What Grand Cru meeting?"
Because I guess the people from...
Pau-- from Pauillac...
because their stuff isn't Grand Cru.
-No, theirs is all Grand Cru. -Wilson: Oh, the other way...
It's the other way around in Pomerol.
Pomerol has no Grand Cru. (laughs)
Wilson: Okay, I mixed it up.
And when they bought you a few different kinds of wine,
you, you still don't really know how to describe them.
So instead, you just end up agreeing
with what everyone else says.
First thing I always smell with Kerner is that almond.
-Yes. Absolutely. -You get that almond, almond smell.
-Wilson: Uh-huh. -And then you get, you get
this kind of sage and alp--
-Alpine notes. -Wilson: Alpine.
-Notes of the, of the woods, and the... -Wilson: Yeah.
And it seemed like the more you agreed with everyone,
the more they treated you like one of their own.
It felt kind of weird lying to these people,
but maybe there's just some part of you
that always just wants to fit in.
No matter what.
♪ ♪
In my first week of college,
I was looking to make friends, and someone in my dorm room
told me that it was cool to join an a cappella group.
I was really suggestible,
and all I needed was a single person
to tell me what to do.
So, the next morning, I went to tryouts
and actually made it into one of the groups.
They were called the
and we sang mostly classic rock songs.
I immediately thought it was kind of lame,
and I kept thinking of ways to leave.
But the people in the group kept reassuring me
that what we were doing was cool,
uh, so I stayed.
Even though I made a few really good friends there,
I was kind of embarrassed the whole time.
And then one day, we were invited
to an a cappella summit in Albany
that was hosted by a group that we had never heard of before.
And the whole thing took place
in a windowless building called The Egg.
The event was called A Cappella Innovations,
and it was hosted by a man named Keith.
He didn't have any background in a cappella,
but his bio said that he was one of the world's
top three problem solvers.
Whatever that meant.
He lurked around the venue all weekend,
giving lofty speeches
about the transformative power of a cappella.
And at one point, even asked us
for our Social Security numbers for some reason.
This is some of the only existing video of the event,
and I'm actually in it, right, right there.
The master of ceremonies was a woman named Allison Mack,
who I knew from that TV show "Smallville,"
even, even though I had never watched it.
I think the value of a cappella in the world
is it's just, it's another form of human expression.
It's another example of the beauty
that we can build as human beings.
Wilson: They were using this event to premiere
their own a cappella group called Simply Human,
which we were all supposed to be in awe of.
(gravelly singing)
(harmonizing)
♪ You walk the streets for money... ♪
Wilson: I can tell that they were
horrible watching it back now,
but for some reason, in the moment,
I genuinely thought they were just as good
as they said they were.
♪ Roxanne! ♪
(harmonizing)
♪ You don't have to sell your body to the night ♪
Wilson: When we finally had some downtime,
we decided to Google Keith
and everyone there for the first time.
Their organization was something called NXIVM,
and Keith was on a bunch of cult watch websites
for running multi-level marketing schemes.
We also read that some people even killed themselves
after taking his Executive Success programs,
and we all got really worried.
They had set up this event to groom undergraduate students
to join NXIVM.
In their eyes, being into a cappella
had pre-qualified us for a cult
because we were so eager to be accepted.
♪ ♪
At the closing night party,
we all decided to confront them.
We screamed at Allison Mack and Keith Raniere
in front of the rest of the a cappella groups,
and scrawled the names of the suicide victims
on the whiteboards that they had set up on the walls.
It caused a massive controversy in the a cappella community.
There was a really long thread
on the a cappella message board afterwards.
NXIVM tried to destroy our credibility
by accusing us of vandalizing our hotel room
that they rented for us.
They said we covered it with human waste
and they even contacted the dean of my college
to try to get me expelled.
At that point, the only way to stay in school
would be to personally apologize
to NXIVM over the phone,
uh, which, which I did.
After that whole incident,
I never got involved in a cappella ever again.
And from what I hear, neither did Keith.
(whimsical music playing)
My determination to understand wine
had sent me to tastings all across the country.
(inaudible)
But, no matter where I went or what I drank,
it still never felt natural to me.
Maybe it was a mistake
to even try to join this club.
Because if I finally entered wine society,
people might see me as an easy mark
for any number of dangerous propositions.
(inaudible)
I really didn't want to be a, a sheep like everyone else.
But I also didn't know how to opt out
and ignore wine completely.
When I was walking around the beach after a tasting,
I saw some people walking around
handing out drinks to everyone,
and they gave me one, too.
It was an energy drink.
When I cracked one open and took a sip,
I felt something I hadn't felt for a long time.
I didn't even have to look at the can
to know what flavor it was.
Conversation with everyone there was effortless.
And even though I didn't know anything about this stuff,
nobody tried to make me feel inferior.
-What's Frosé Rosé? -Frosé Rosé is like a...
strawberry tasting, kind of like Nerds...
(fades out)
Wilson: The whole event was actually a beach cleanup,
and it seemed like the company
had a, a really positive mission.
Who came up with this idea?
The owner is Jack Owoc. He's a South Florida native.
Wilson: Oh, really?
He's the CEO of the company,
and so, you know, everybody, everybody knows him.
Wilson: They all spoke highly of this man named Jack,
who was so down-to-Earth that he even
let his employees hang out at his house.
What's his house like?
Really?
Oh, really?
Wilson: None of the, the wine people
I, I met ever organized any beach cleanup.
And maybe I was wrong to give up energy drinks to begin with.
Maybe this Jack guy knew something
that all those wine people didn't,
and it made me really wanna meet him,
but, unfortunately, nobody would tell me
how to get in touch with him.
I sent him a message on Instagram,
but I, I didn't get a response.
Uh, but luckily, when I Googled his name,
I found an article about a, a, a mansion
that he had recently just purchased,
and it had his exact address.
I don't know if I would find him there
or if he would even let me in the door,
but I figured it was at least worth a shot.
So, I rented an automobile, and I set out to meet him.
(rumbling)
He lived far outside the city
in a secluded, gated community
that had its own security force.
Guard (on intercom): Good evening. Name or address of the per--
-(breaking up) --son you're-- -Wilson: Uh, Jack Owoc?
Guard (on intercom): Can I have your name or company's name?
Wilson: Uh, John Wilson?
Guard: Please continue to the gate. Have a good night.
Wilson (whispers): Oh my god...
(shifts into drive)
I hadn't planned any farther than that
because I, I genuinely expected to be turned away.
But now that all the gates were open,
I had to go all the way.
(eerie music playing)
♪ ♪
As I slowly approached Jack's house,
there was a long line of cars outside of his place.
It seemed like he had a lot of company over,
and maybe that's why security let me through.
As I approached, it, it crossed my mind
that in the state of Florida,
I could be shot on sight for, for trespassing,
and, and it wouldn't even be a crime.
But, I had already come this far.
Um, so, I walked up to his front door
to see if I could make contact.
(party chatter)
As I stood in the doorway, I was trying to figure out
exactly what I was looking at.
It seemed like some kind of costume party,
and everyone was dressed for another century.
I immediately tried to hide in the, in the next room,
but as I rounded the corner,
I saw a man on a throne
who looked like all the photos of Jack I had seen.
(indistinct chatter)
I wasn't sure what to say,
but before I could think of anything,
he noticed that I was standing right behind him.
(Jack Owoc speaking)
Wilson: Here, I can show you my...
He was immediately suspicious of me,
but after I convinced him I was making a show for HBO,
he relaxed a bit and said I was welcome to hang out.
Tell me when you're recording, and I'll tell you...
Wilson: Okay, yeah, yeah. I'm recording right now.
(party chatter)
Alright, so here we are, we're having a big party today.
HBO just busted in the door,
but that's alright.
Bang. He wants to see inside the refrigerator,
so come on in.
So we have Rainbow Unicorn,
Cherry Blade Lemonade, all these new flavor inventions.
A recent release here called
Delish Strawberry Kiss.
Cotton Candy. And then we have our iced teas.
One, two, three...
(all speaking)
Wilson: Wow.
-So, what's going on? -Hi!
We're having a baby shower today for our fifth baby, Adaria.
-Wilson: Oh, really? -And it's also--
Well, it's actually called a baby sprinkle
for Adaria, and it's my birthday today, too.
I turned 36.
-Wilson: Oh, congratulations. -Thank you.
♪ ♪
I love it.
Wilson: I was hypnotized by Jack's charisma,
which seemed to have a powerful effect
on all the women and children he surrounded himself with.
♪ ♪
He made everything seem so simple.
There was only one truth in his world,
and every question had the same answer.
-Do you like wine? -Uh, we--
I like Bang Hard Seltzer that we just released.
-Wilson: Oh, cool. -Because it tastes good,
and it's all the same flavors that everybody's used to.
Wilson: It was becoming obvious that joining the Bang family
would come with unimaginable pleasures at my disposal.
We also have the-- this mansion we're building in the Keys
that will be officially the biggest house in the Keys.
20,000 square feet. It's on an island.
So, we'll have a big party here New Year's Eve.
Helicopters land and we own all that land over there, too.
So, it's gonna be a crazy party.
It'll be in my book coming out soon called "The Bang Anti-Diet"
with 1,144 scientific references.
Thirty university studies on our product,
with real human test subjects,
and peer-reviewed and published.
Wilson: And as we crossed the threshold into his inner sanctum,
I finally understood
what everyone had been talking about.
Wilson: Wow.
After being an outsider for so long in the world of wine,
I finally felt at home here.
This man had spent over an hour showing a complete stranger
every inch of his private life,
all while missing his own wife's birthday party.
And if that isn't the ultimate gift
you can offer someone, I don't know what is.
All (singing): Happy birthday to you!
-Thank you! -(applause, cheering)
(cheering)
Wilson: After the ceremony,
two upper-level members of the family
took down all my information
and told me that Jack would be in touch.
I wasn't sure what he had planned,
but it seemed like this was only the beginning.
♪ ♪
(inaudible)
We are a trusting species,
and sometimes we go to extremes to feel like we belong.
We distort ourselves to please others.
And the intense fear of being an outsider
can turn you into someone you barely recognize.
But if you're honest with yourself
about what you actually like,
you can get the best of both worlds.
Whoa.
Wilson: So don't worry about what people think
when you bring stuff to their party
because if they're your real friends,
they'll probably just say they like it anyway.
♪ ♪
This is John Wilson. Thanks for watching.
(glass harp music)
♪ ♪