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Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where

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Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories

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Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make

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Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In our last episode, The

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Speaker 1: new Sphere, we took a bit of a dive into

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Speaker 1: the digital world to look at some of the ways

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Speaker 1: in which the Internet might be impacting our way of life,

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Speaker 1: and in particular the way in which we receive and

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Speaker 1: share information, as explored in the episode The Myth that

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Speaker 1: the slender Man has been considered by some academics to

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Speaker 1: constitute a new form of folklore, which, due to the

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Speaker 1: rapidity and mechanics of how we communicate online, can quickly

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Speaker 1: embed itself in collective cultures. One of the frequent criticisms

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Speaker 1: of where we are now in terms of our relationship

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Speaker 1: to the net is its propensity to fuel and spread

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Speaker 1: fake news and provide of an error of truth to

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Speaker 1: completely fictitious events. As the Internet becomes our public forum

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Speaker 1: for sharing and discussing ideas, more often than not it

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Speaker 1: is through this portal that we develop much of our

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Speaker 1: sense of the world, as such, as demonstrated by the

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Speaker 1: attempted murder of Paint and Loutner in twenty twelve. What

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Speaker 1: achieves validity online can quickly achieve solidity in the real world.

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Speaker 1: It isn't only since the invention of the Internet, of course,

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Speaker 1: that people have behaved and acted based on fallacious information, however,

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Speaker 1: such as the global reach and speed with which information

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Speaker 1: can spread online, not to mention the self reflective manner

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Speaker 1: in which many of our social media platforms collate the

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Speaker 1: information that we see. Never before have we been so

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Speaker 1: susceptible to misinformation. The so called slender Man stabbing was

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Speaker 1: not the first incident of its kind, and it certainly

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Speaker 1: wasn't the last. It all started with a text, or

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Speaker 1: rather a series of texts, sent to multiple women by

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Speaker 1: former member of the US House of Representatives Antony Wiener,

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Speaker 1: back in early twenty thirteen. The then forty seven year

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Speaker 1: old Wiener, who was married at the time to political

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Speaker 1: staffer whom Abadin, was fighting for his professional and personal life,

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Speaker 1: having been publicly outed for engaging in numerous cases of

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Speaker 1: extramarital sexting. Despite the embarrassment to his partner and the

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Speaker 1: derailing of his career as a public servant by twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: the incident was finally beginning to fade from the news

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Speaker 1: cycle as the far more pressing issue of who between

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Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was going to win the

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Speaker 1: presidency that year held the nation in its grip. But

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Speaker 1: then in August of that year, it happened again, only

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Speaker 1: this time things were a little different. By then, whom

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Speaker 1: Abadin was acting as a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton

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Speaker 1: in what remains one of the most bitterly fought and

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Speaker 1: closely contested presidential elections of living memory. What also made

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Speaker 1: it more complicated was that one of the individuals that

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Speaker 1: Weena was found to have been sexting was only fifteen

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Speaker 1: years old. Weena was subsequently investigated by the FBI for

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Speaker 1: the offense of transferring obscene material to a minor, and

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Speaker 1: as a result, had various communication devices confiscated, including a

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Speaker 1: laptop which he shared with his wife. Earlier that year,

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Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton was very publicly investigated by the FBI for

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Speaker 1: failing to disclose thousands of emails she sent vi a

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Speaker 1: private email server. As a result, a number of Clinton's

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Speaker 1: opponents accused her of deliberately trying to hide incriminating evidence.

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Speaker 1: During her time as a public servant, Clinton had long

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Speaker 1: been considered a shady operator by many who opposed her

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Speaker 1: run for the presidency, but now there appeared to be

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Speaker 1: some legitimacy to their claims. The FBI's investigation, however, centered

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Speaker 1: on the more practical issue of whether Clinton had sent

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Speaker 1: classified information outside of the official channels, either negligently or

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Speaker 1: to deliberately hide it from the official archive, either of

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Speaker 1: which would constitute a federal offense. In the end, however,

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Speaker 1: the FBI dropped their investigation when it was concluded that

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Speaker 1: no offense had been committed. The story, it seemed, was finished.

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Speaker 1: That was until the FBI opened up Weener's laptop, only

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Speaker 1: to find a whole host of further email exchanges between

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Speaker 1: whomer Abodin and Hillary Clinton that had not previously been investigated.

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Speaker 1: A few days after this story broke erupting from somewhere

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Speaker 1: out of the intersection between the sordid nature of Weener's crime,

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Speaker 1: his relationship to whomer Abodin, and in turn, her connection

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Speaker 1: to Hillary Clinton, a strange rumor began to grow on line.

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Speaker 1: On October thirtieth, twenty sixteen, the following message was published

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Speaker 1: on Twitter via the handle at David Goldberg n Y.

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Speaker 1: Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Whomer's emails point to

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Speaker 1: a pedophilia ring, and Hillary Clinton is at the center

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Speaker 1: in the febrile atmosphere of such a bitterly fought presidential election,

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Speaker 1: where so many of those on each side of the

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Speaker 1: political divide saw the prospect of a failed outcome for

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Speaker 1: their candidate as nothing less than an existential catastrophe. At

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Speaker 1: David goldberg Enwyse tweet seemed to strike a nerve. Before

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Speaker 1: long it had been retweeted six thousand times, But then

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Speaker 1: it began to snowball and gain traction elsewhere, most notably

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Speaker 1: in the forums of Reddit and the infamous online messaging

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Speaker 1: board four Chan. Then, almost as if it were part

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Speaker 1: of some kind of co ordinated campaign, another series of

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Speaker 1: emails was suddenly exposed, this time belonging to John Podesta,

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Speaker 1: the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. Podesta's emails had actually

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Speaker 1: been hacked back in March of that year by a

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Speaker 1: cyber spine group based out of Russia known as Fancy Bare. However,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until late October that twenty thousand pages of

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Speaker 1: emails from Podesta's account appeared on wikileaques. Just as the

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Speaker 1: rumors about the apparent Hillary Clinton led chart sex rig

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Speaker 1: were beginning to spiral out of control. Hidden among John

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Speaker 1: Podesta's emails was a message sent in June twenty fifteen

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Speaker 1: from the artist Marina Abramovitch to John's brother, Tony Podest,

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Speaker 1: a well known Democratic Party donor. It said, Dear Tony,

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Speaker 1: I am so looking forward to the spirit cooking dinner

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Speaker 1: at my place. Do you think you'll be able to

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Speaker 1: let me know if your brother is joining? Or my love, Marina,

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Speaker 1: what was spirit cooking exactly? Some people began to wander.

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Speaker 1: A quick search of the term brought up a piece

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Speaker 1: of art by the same name, which was made by

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Speaker 1: A Bramovich back in nineteen ninety six. The piece was

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Speaker 1: essentially a cookbook full of pseudo aphrodisiac recipes, containing strange

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Speaker 1: instructions like how the reader should sprinkle fresh morning yurine

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Speaker 1: over nightmare dreams, or to mix fresh breast milk with

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Speaker 1: fresh sperm milk on earthquake nights. One also encouraged the

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Speaker 1: reader to cut deep lee into the middle finger of

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Speaker 1: your left hand with a sharp knife and eat the pain.

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Speaker 1: The work was designed purely as a way to provoke

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Speaker 1: and evoke thoughts about the body. To some, However, its

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Speaker 1: true meaning was something entirely different. Clearly, they believed Abramovich

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Speaker 1: was some kind of monstrous satanic occultist, and her connection

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Speaker 1: to Hillary Clinton via the Podesta Brothers was irrefutable evidence

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Speaker 1: that something very disturbing was going on at the heart

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Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. It was Friday November fourth in

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Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, less than a week before the presidential elections,

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Speaker 1: when James Alaphantus suddenly noticed a string of strange comments

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Speaker 1: on his Instagram account accusing him of being a pedophile.

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Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and six, Alaphantus and his then

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Speaker 1: business partner, Carol Greenwood opened a pizza rear and ping

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Speaker 1: pong venue at fifty thirty seven Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington,

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Speaker 1: d C. They named it Comet Ping Pong. By twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: Comt Ping Pong had cemented itself as one of the

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Speaker 1: trendier spots in the area with its raw, hipster esthetic,

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Speaker 1: live music events, and gourmet pizza menu. As revealed in

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Speaker 1: the Podesta emails, Comet Ping Pong had also been touted

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Speaker 1: as a possible venue to host a political fundraise of

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Speaker 1: that year for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Alaphantas's boyfriend also

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Speaker 1: happened to be David Brock, founder of the media watchdog

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Speaker 1: group Media Matters for America and one of the most

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Speaker 1: influential figures in the Democratic Party around that time. Confused

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Speaker 1: by the sudden spate of accusatory messages, Alaphantus showed them

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Speaker 1: to some of his younger staff members, who promptly went

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Speaker 1: on line to see if they could get to the

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Speaker 1: bottom of it. What they found astonished them. Due to

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Speaker 1: its mention in John Podesta's emails, Comet Ping Pong had

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Speaker 1: been pulled into the sex's ring rumors too. Alaphantus's instagram

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Speaker 1: had subsequently been scoured for evidence of involvement in satanism

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Speaker 1: or pedophilia, and so too was the pizzeria and everything

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Speaker 1: connected to it, from the layout of the menus to

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Speaker 1: the restaurant's interior design. Anything from a picture of a

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Speaker 1: toddler standing in a supermarket shopping basket posted to Aliphantus's

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Speaker 1: Instagram to a mural painted on the restaurant walls six

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Speaker 1: years previously were confirmed as evidence that Comet Ping Pong

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Speaker 1: was being used as the key venue for the Satanic

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Speaker 1: child abuse. Some even began to speculate that the mere

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Speaker 1: mention of cheese pizza anywhere was code for child pornography.

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Speaker 1: Three days after James Aliphantus was first called a pedophile,

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Speaker 1: online hashtag pizza gate appeared for the first time on Twitter.

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Speaker 1: This was tweeted thousands of times over the next few

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Speaker 1: days and weeks, most prominently by what were later found

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Speaker 1: to be bots running through servers coming out of the

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Speaker 1: Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam. Hillary Clinton would go on

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Speaker 1: to lose the twenty sixteen election, though there has been

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Speaker 1: much debate about the true impact of the reopening of

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Speaker 1: the investigation into her emails only six weeks before the election.

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Speaker 1: Since the margin by which she lost was so slim,

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Speaker 1: many have argued, not unreasonably, that the investigation cost her

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Speaker 1: the presidency. If some were hoping that her loss would

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Speaker 1: put an end to the Bizaar pizza Gate conspiracy, however,

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Speaker 1: they would be very much mistaken. Soon the conspiracy was

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Speaker 1: jumping from online forums to full scale reports from various

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Speaker 1: citizen journalist organizations like Alex Jones's info Wars, which gleefully

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Speaker 1: promoted the story. One info War's video titled Pizza Gate

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Speaker 1: is Real was watched over two million times. On November sixteenth,

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Speaker 1: the online provocateur, often described as an old right political activist,

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Speaker 1: Jack but Sobiec, streamed alive video of himself visiting the pizzeria,

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Speaker 1: where he then proceeded to film an innocent children's party

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Speaker 1: taking place in the restaurant's back room. Though he found

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Speaker 1: no evidence of a satanic child abuse ring, many praised

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Speaker 1: him online for his supposedly valiant efforts to get to

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Speaker 1: the truth of the rumors. The following day, the website

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Speaker 1: to the Vigilante Citizen published an article forensically detailing the

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Speaker 1: various pieces of apparent evidence that the restaurant had links

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Speaker 1: to a child's sex ring. Once again, pictures of children

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Speaker 1: taken from James Alifantas's instagram were highlighted, as well as

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Speaker 1: the imagery used in Comet Ping Pong's menu and branding.

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Speaker 1: An image of two Ping Pong paddles crossed over at

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Speaker 1: the handle was alleged to be a clear nod to

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Speaker 1: the low go of a blue and pink heart tied together,

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Speaker 1: said to mean child lover in pedophile circles. By then,

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Speaker 1: the truth if it had ever mattered at all, was

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Speaker 1: completely irrelevant. Just through the sheer will of its believers

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Speaker 1: and the repeated proliferation of the rumors, the conspiracy had

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Speaker 1: taken on a life of its own. It had grown

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Speaker 1: arms and legs, and, like Freddy Krueger's tongue lapping out

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Speaker 1: from a phone in a teenager's dream, it was starting

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Speaker 1: to manifest in the real world. It began smallish at first,

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Speaker 1: with simple phone calls to the restaurant, with callers demanding

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Speaker 1: to know the truth about Hillary Clinton and the depraved

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Speaker 1: sex ring. Then came the death threats. Sometimes the phone

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Speaker 1: barely stopped ringing from opening to close. Early on December fourth,

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Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, twenty eight year old Edgar Madison Welch or

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Speaker 1: just Madison to his friends, woke up at his home

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Speaker 1: in Salisbury, North Carolina, and rolled out of bed. After

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Speaker 1: getting dressed, the father of two young daughters told his

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Speaker 1: girlfriend that he had some things to do and left

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Speaker 1: the house. From there, he took a three hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty mile drive to Washington, where, at some time just

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Speaker 1: before three pm, he parked up outside the Comet Ping

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Speaker 1: Pong pizzeria pulled an R fifteen assault rifle out of

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Speaker 1: the boot and proceeded to march into the restaurant. Inside.

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Speaker 1: Startled diners took one look at the rifle and dashed

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Speaker 1: outside to safety as Welch pressed on, clearly looking for something.

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Speaker 1: The man later said he'd simply driven there with the

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Speaker 1: intention of taking a look at the place for himself,

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Speaker 1: but by the time he arrived he changed his plans.

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Speaker 1: Spurred on by the thought of innocent children being sexually abused,

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Speaker 1: he decided to arm himself before stepping inside in case

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Speaker 1: anyone there needed rescuing. After pointing the gun at one

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Speaker 1: staff member, he continued into the ping pong room at

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Speaker 1: the back, and then on into the kitchen. One of

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Speaker 1: the many rumors about the venue was that located somewhere

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Speaker 1: within it was a secret room leading to a set

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Speaker 1: of tunnels that were used by members of the apparent

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Speaker 1: child sex ring to ferry live and dead children in

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Speaker 1: and out at the restaurant, but Welch found no such thing.

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Speaker 1: Police arrived soon after, and after a series of shots

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Speaker 1: were heard from inside, they shouted for Welch to give

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Speaker 1: himself up. The man did as they said, walking quietly

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Speaker 1: out of the restaurant with his head on his hands

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Speaker 1: and into the middle of the street, from where he

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Speaker 1: was handcuffed and arrested. When asked later why he didn't

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Speaker 1: think he'd found any abused children on the property, he

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Speaker 1: admitted that regrettably, the intel he had probably wasn't a

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Speaker 1: hundred percent. The story shocked the nation, while many who'd

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Speaker 1: previously advocated for the conspiracy were forced to face up

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Speaker 1: to the likely reality that Comet Ping Pong had not

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Speaker 1: been quite what they thought it was. It seemed then

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Speaker 1: the story might finally be put to bed, but then

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Speaker 1: something new came to light. Welch, it turned out, had

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Speaker 1: at one time been a bit part actor, and then

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Speaker 1: it all made sense again. His strange trip to the restaurant,

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Speaker 1: his arrest, and subsequent claim that there was nothing strange

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Speaker 1: going on at all and clearly all been an act.

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Speaker 1: Welch too, was one of them. Unexplained. The book and audiobook,

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Speaker 1: featuring stories that have never before been featured on the show,

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Speaker 1: is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes,

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Speaker 1: and Noble Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have unexplained,

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Speaker 1: including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain

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Speaker 1: Smith Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with

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Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on

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Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own

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Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can reach us online at

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Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and

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Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward slash Unexplained Podcast