This message comes from Fred Hutch Cancer Center, whose discovery of bone marrow transplants has saved over a million lives worldwide.
Learn how this and other breakthroughs impact the world at fredhutch .org slash look beyond.
Just a quick warning, this episode talks about sex and sex work.
It's an economic show after all.
This is Planet Money from NPR.
On the morning of October 30, 2024, Mark Longo was doing what he does most mornings.
He was at his animal sanctuary on a farm in upstate New York, feeding the several hundred horses and goats and pygmy donkeys he's rescued, many of which he and his wife have saved from the slaughterhouse.
So where were you when the raid began?
I was at the end of the driveway in the beginning.
That is when Mark saw something strange and menacing approaching the property.
A convoy of SUVs with New York state government decals on the door.
They're from an agency called the DEC.
What does DEC stand for?
Department of Environmental Conservation.
One of these Department of Environmental Conservation officers gets out of the car and tells Mark they'd come to his farm in order to take somebody into custody.
And then he produced a search warrant.
But the warrant wasn't for Mark or his wife or any of the people on the farm.
The warrant was for a squirrel named Peanut.
And I remember I got a call off to my wife to say, they're here, hide the animals.
And I tried to buy myself some time to maybe figure out what's going on here.
What was going on here was that Mark's pet squirrel, Peanut, had become one of the most famous squirrels in the world.
Thanks to social media, Peanut had reached the status of animal influencer.
He had over a million followers on Instagram and TikTok.
But as the DEC officers reminded Mark, it is illegal in the state of New York to keep wildlife as a pet without a special permit, a permit that Mark did not have.
The DEC said they'd received several complaints, and based on dozens of extremely popular and frankly quite adorable videos on Peanut's social media page, the officers had determined that both Peanut and a relatively newly acquired raccoon named Fred were somewhere on the premises.
Over the next several hours, DEC officers made Mark and his wife stand by as they scoured the property in search of Mark's celebrity squirrel.
Until finally, I was midway on the staircase.
I had three cops to my right.
I had three to my left.
And one of them yelled, I found peanut.
I found the squirrel.
And I said, listen, guys, like I'll take peanut.
I apologize. I'll put him in the car and I'll drive him to Connecticut.
You'll never see him again.
And the guy to my right, I'll never forget this the day I die.
He looked at me dead in my eyes and said, it was a squirrel.
Now it's a raccoon.
When is this snowball effect going to stop?
The DEC officers did not let Mark take Peanut out of state.
Instead, they took Peanut and Fred into custody.
And after a few days of waiting and wondering where they'd been taken, a local news reporter calls Mark with some unsettling news.
Day three comes around, I get a phone call from our local news station from a gentleman that's in tears, and he's like, Mark, I don't know how to tell you, but they're gone.
We reached out to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, but they didn't get back to us.
According to a statement from the department, Peanut had bitten someone involved with the investigation.
And as part of a protocol to test whether Peanut or Fred had rabies, both of them had been euthanized.
And I remember just like feeling nothing, not even anger, like nothing, just sitting there as a shell of a human being, not really believing it because this is a movie story, right?
This is just straight out of, you know, a s*** film.
And I found out. I remember hanging up the phone, and there was a couple volunteers there, and they killed them.
And they started to cry, and I walked away.
Mark takes to social media to tell the world what had happened.
And pretty soon, the story goes absolutely viral.
My phone started buzzing.
TMZ's calling. You know, every major news outlet wants this story.
And that's when it just went nuts.
And then you're hearing Elon Musk talk about it, And you're hearing, you know, J .D.
Vance and now Trump Jr.
And it turned into like a political stunt.
Our government will let in 600 ,000 criminals across our border.
But if someone has a pet squirrel without a permit, they go in there and kill the squirrel.
That's the Democrat Party.
But it also turned into one of the biggest tragedies in 2024.
You know, my squirrel sits next to Harambee now.
And I always tell people, like, this shouldn't have been a story.
Did you ever imagine that Peanut might find an afterlife on the blockchain?
I didn't even know what the blockchain was.
I hadn't a clue. But you would find out?
I would soon find out.
Hello and welcome to Planet Money.
I'm Alexi Horowitz -Gazi.
You can think of the story of Peanut the Squirrel as a kind of modern parable.
A tale about how a chance encounter can change your life, bring you fame and fortune, But also how that attention can spin wildly out of your control.
Today on the show, how an anonymous baby rodent rose to become a world -famous animal influencer, then a political martyr, and finally, a piece of cryptocurrency worth billions of dollars, joining the ranks of Dogecoin, Hoctua, and President Donald Trump.
And what all of this says about the brave new, kind of terrifying attention economy we are all living in.
It's one of the bushiest tales we've ever told.
This message comes from Charles Schwab.
When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full -service wealth management and advice when you need it.
You can also invest on your own and trade on Thinkorswim.
Visit schwab .com to learn more.
This message comes from BetterHelp.
Think about the people who inspire you the most.
They don't have all the answers, but they probably do know how to ask for support when they need it.
Therapy can be a great way to find that support.
BetterHelp has experienced therapists who can help with challenges ranging from clinical issues to everyday stressors.
Build your support system at betterhelp .com slash NPR today to get 10 % off your first month.
This message comes from Mint Mobile.
Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right.
They offer premium wireless plans for less, and all plans include high -speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage.
See for yourself at MintMobile .com slash switch.
About a month ago, freelance reporter Nick Nevis and I took a trip to Peanuts Freedom Farm in upstate New York.
We were there to visit Mark Longo and see the tiny empire that his celebrity squirrels fame helped build, the house that Peanut built.
And in order to learn how Peanut's story began, Mark brought us to a special room that he's turned into a kind of memorial for his fallen friend.
Wow. The inner sanctum.
This is Peanut's room.
The room is filled with peanut memorabilia sent in by fans around the world.
The walls and ceilings are covered in newspaper clippings and drawings, and under glass, the pièce de résistance.
A tiny squirrel -sized, like, one -ounce cowboy hat.
The most iconic piece is in here, and it is your cowboy hat.
Now, the story of how this one squirrel rose from an anonymous street rodent to a world -famous animal influencer begins seven years ago, on a sunny spring day in midtown Manhattan.
Mark Longo was 27 back then, working as a building inspector on construction sites around New York.
When he comes across the body of a squirrel that had just been flattened by a car, and when he looks a little closer, he sees there's a tiny infant squirrel next to her.
And now I'm seeing this baby squirrel walk in the middle of the street, and he's looking at me.
He's only got one eye open.
And then he just made one hop and was down on my pant leg and just started to crawl up my leg.
So as he got closer, I kind of like brought him up into my hands and I put him in my hoodie.
Mark is a lifelong animal lover, doesn't want the squirrel to die.
So he brings it home and starts trying to figure out how to nurse it back to health.
The little guy seems to love peanuts at first, so that is what Mark names him.
But pretty soon, Peanut reveals himself to be a pretty picky eater.
The only way I can get him to eat was through, you know, mashing up an avocado in the powder.
And he would just stuff his face into it.
Classic millennial.
Yeah, literally like avocado toast.
It was 100 % his menu the whole time.
And as Peanut begins to grow, Mark starts to fold him more and more into his daily life.
You know, I played video games, he's in my pocket.
You know, I went to go to CVS, he's in my hoodie.
You know, I remember bringing him to PetSmart and put him in one of the hamster balls and he's running down the hall.
And the woman's like, oh, what do you have in there, a gerbil?
And I was like, yeah, sure, it's a gerbil.
You know, and there's Peanut running around, this little baby squirrel.
You know, and then we just started to, you know, take photos and videos of him.
Mark decides to start an Instagram account for Peanut.
He starts posting videos of Peanut wearing little costumes, like that cowboy hat, or a miniature ranger's jersey.
And a large majority of the time, it was absolute gold.
Peanut befriends Mark's cat, which people seem to love, and slowly but surely, Peanut's social media following starts to grow.
When did you first get the sense you might have a viral social media star on your hands?
It kind of just happened.
Mark says there was one video in particular that seemed to light up the internet, one where Peanut jumps from the top of the fridge and into Mark's hand in slow motion.
And this is where the story of Peanut the Squirrel meets the modern attention economy and the central question it raises.
When you have the world's attention, how do you actually turn that into money?
For a long time, attention, this scarce resource, was monopolized by newspapers and TV or radio companies who used the power of celebrity or news or scandal to draw in as many eyeballs as possible in order to sell ads.
But over the last couple decades, social media platforms have tweaked that model by essentially allowing anyone to be a miniature broadcaster.
Now someone or some creature can go from total anonymity to worldwide fame in just a couple hours.
Which is exactly what happened when Peanuts' first viral video popped off.
After that, a popular animal video website called The Dodo posted a video featuring Mark and Peanut.
Then the messages started rolling in.
Mark started getting calls from radio stations and TV shows from around the world.
We went on British TV and they deemed him the world's most famous squirrel.
And that's when his TikTok blew up.
And that's where, you know, 100 ,000 followers became a few million.
And we just kind of rolled with the wave.
Mark says Peanut warmed to this newfound limelight right away.
He was just a preternaturally charismatic mini fauna.
especially when the cameras were rolling.
I fist -pumped that squirrel so many damn times because he just nailed these interviews like it was something that he was meant to do.
Peanut knew how to turn on the charm.
Did he ever, you know, especially with ladies.
Like, he was a ladies' man.
Mark says his male friends would regularly post photos with Peanut on their online dating profiles to great success.
And for Mark himself, Peanut turned out to be the ultimate wingman.
I met my wife because of Peanut.
No way. My wife DM'd me on Peanuts' page, and that's how we met.
She ended up calling me wearing a flying squirrel costume.
And I was like, I think I'm in love with you.
Now, when it came to monetizing all this newfound attention, Mark says he never set out to make money off his tiny furry best friend.
But as Peanuts' profile grew in the attention economy of social media, all sorts of strange new opportunities started to present themselves.
Mostly nut -related.
An investing app called Acorns reached out, expressing some interest.
Mark and Peanut did some videos for a peanut butter company.
Also, a website called nuts .com.
Sorry, what is nuts .com?
So nuts .com is just a website where you can buy a variety of different nuts.
So definitely it worked out perfectly.
Now, Mark says there's just a natural limit to the kind of brand opportunities that'll flow to a squirrel.
Peanut wasn't exactly Kim Kardashian.
But. But. Mark and Peanut had gotten their first taste of the strange ways you can turn attention into money on the Internet.
Their first steps down the squirrel hole.
And then one day, Mark says, someone from the website Cameo reached out to get Peanut on the platform.
And this is the second big moment where Peanut's story intersects with the modern attention economy and how it's changed over the past decade.
For listeners who missed Cameo, this is a site that blew up during COVID lockdowns that allowed internet celebrities to monetize their very particular level of fame by offering these like customized little shout out videos to paying customers.
Like you could get your favorite side character from Seinfeld to wish your aunt Vovie a happy birthday.
So happy birthday, Vovie.
It's the soup Nazi from Seinfeld, remember me?
No soup for you. Hey, yo, what's up, peeps?
This is Sean Pratt.
I'm Lindsay Lohan. Hi, everybody.
Stormy Daniels here.
Hey, Ida. It's Sean Spicer.
Hey, Alyssa. John Lovitz here.
I want to congratulate you on graduating college.
Cameo was an innovation on the attention economy model because before, while creators had been able to make money through brand deals, it was the platforms like Instagram and YouTube that were making the lion's share of the profits from all this attention by using user data to sell targeted ads.
Cameo offered a way for niche celebrities to sell themselves directly to individual consumers.
Cameo would take a cut, 25 % to 30%, and in exchange, they would help their clients monetize their fame.
One big part of that puzzle was helping these micro -celebrities to figure out the right price to charge.
Early on, Cameo suggested people set their prices by calculating how much they are usually paid per minute, based on their salary.
Like, if you're an NBA star making $25 million a year, you should be making about $200 a minute, which could help you set your rate for a 30 -second birthday video.
Peanut, of course, did not have an annual salary that Mark could use to set a rate.
They kind of arbitrarily picked like 30 bucks a video.
But Mark says it wasn't about the money.
They were just happy to be there.
The coolest part about it was they were classifying Peanut as the same as, like, a lot of the celebrities that you see in movies.
Mark would dress Peanut up in costume and have him hold a little post -it note with whatever message had been ordered.
They did birthdays, Valentines, even a proposal.
With Cameo, they had taken their second step down the squirrel hole of the attention economy.
But Mark says Peanut only ended up selling a few Cameos a month.
Again, it's just hard for a rodent to compete with the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
The bigger acorn jackpot was still to come.
And it was actually Mark who had become the star of this next chapter.
He says it wasn't too long before he started to notice that a lot of the attention they were getting was directed toward him.
Mark is a buff guy, works out a lot, and he explains he'd often wear these tight -fitting gym pants in Peanuts videos.
The internet did what the internet does best and sexualized every ounce of that page, you know?
And it's like, oh, you hike up your pants.
I like where my pants are.
Again, it's just you're turning this story into something it's not.
They're accusing you of like thirst trapping?
Oh, 100%. I'm like, guys, you can go on any social media platform and literally see people naked.
If you're going to put me in the realm of thirst traps with a squirrel, I'm fully clothed, not showing off anything, and I'm just jumping around with a squirrel.
Get your head out of the gutter.
Enjoy the squirrel.
But thirst trap or not, Mark told us he soon got a message from a kind of surprising source, a manager representing performers on OnlyFans.
And this was Mark and Peanut's third step down the squirrel hole of the rapidly changing attention economy.
OnlyFans for the uninitiated is a video streaming platform where content creators make customized content for paying subscribers.
Mostly it's homemade adult content.
It's kind of like the Etsy of porn.
OnlyFans customers can subscribe to a performer's channel for a flat fee and then pay for premium perks like private video conversations with their favorite performer or access to increasingly intimate photos and videos.
Like Cameo, the idea behind the OnlyFans model was to allow performers to sell their content directly to fans.
Instead of selling targeted ads, OnlyFans takes a 20 % commission of what their customers spend and sends the rest to the performers.
For some creators, it's made digital sex work highly lucrative.
And that's why the OnlyFans talent manager first reached out to Mark.
They were like, listen, like, you might not understand your value on social media, but we do.
And you come off as a very innocent man with an animal.
Could you imagine if we were to kind of shift from A to Z and put you on OnlyFans, what you can make?
Successful OnlyFans performers can make six or even seven -figure salaries.
more than Mark was making as a building site inspector.
The manager told Mark if he could convert enough peanut fans from Instagram into paying customers on OnlyFans, they could make a killing.
So Mark went to his wife to talk about the idea of them starting their own page, making adult content together, and she was open to it.
Then he spoke with his parents and with his bosses at work to see if they would raise any major objections, and none of them did.
So I kind of just sat down and was like, you know what?
Let's give this a shot.
If this turns out to be something, then here's the start of a new chapter of our life.
If it gets shot down or it doesn't work, I'm naked on the internet.
Everybody's got the same parts.
Like, so what? And if you are wondering whether Peanut himself ever appeared on Mark's OnlyFans page, Mark says the answer is an emphatic no.
Peanut was never a part of any adult content.
Apparently, when you are building a social media empire consisting of both wholesome animal...
