Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Alexis code named dot Holiday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are you.
Speaker 4: You are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want.
Speaker 2: You to know.
Speaker 3: It is Thursday evening, which means it's time for some
Speaker 3: listener mail, some letters from home. We're gonna hear a
Speaker 3: bunch of voicemails. We're gonna learn about bridges and coincidences.
Speaker 3: We're going to learn about impossible propulsion that may be possible.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have some crucial updates on an ongoing investigation.
Speaker 3: And we'll end with a lot of thank yous and
Speaker 3: maybe some jokes. When you are walking by the gallows
Speaker 3: of modern civilization, strolling through the graveyard of society, we
Speaker 3: lift our voices. We can't help sing or whistle or
Speaker 3: maybe make sport? What sports?
Speaker 4: What you play?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 5: A veritable field of dreams is what we were all
Speaker 5: about here. I've never seen that movie. Have you guys
Speaker 5: seen Field of Dreams? Starting with the baseball ghosts?
Speaker 4: Is that the deal?
Speaker 3: He's during the halcyon days of the Coostner Garth Brooks era.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, So are the ghosts?
Speaker 5: Do they appear as like apparitions like force ghosts in
Speaker 5: the Star Wars movies?
Speaker 4: What do they look like when you meet these baseball ghosts?
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil it for you, man, fild
Speaker 3: the field.
Speaker 4: Fair enough, we'll come.
Speaker 5: Well, we're talking about baseball a little bit, and we're
Speaker 5: also talking about super fun sites and how the Twain meets.
Speaker 5: And remember how I joked about how when I first
Speaker 5: started hearing about super fun sites, for the longest time,
Speaker 5: I thought they were saying super fun sites, which one
Speaker 5: could apply that designation to a baseball field. So let's
Speaker 5: hear from one of our regular contributors, GP Scooch Gents.
Speaker 5: In a recent episode, you asked for our stories and
Speaker 5: experience with local superfund or hazardous waste sites. Well, I
Speaker 5: do have quite a few acres on which we live,
Speaker 5: so not exactly in my backyard, but there are actually
Speaker 5: two such sites nearby about six miles from our home
Speaker 5: is a former lead mine. Actually pretty common in this
Speaker 5: part of southwest Missouri. This one, However, in Aurora, Missouri,
Speaker 5: has am I allowed.
Speaker 4: To say Missouri? Is that like? Sounds like I'm being
Speaker 4: too colloquial, Isn't.
Speaker 5: It's American English? Okay, we'll just go for it. I
Speaker 5: don't know why I'm saying it. I feel like I'm
Speaker 5: pronouncing it the way the locals pronounced.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna go with that.
Speaker 5: In Aurora, Missouri has never been completely sealed and the
Speaker 5: surround in grounds completely cleaned, So naturally the city built
Speaker 5: a park bordering the site, including a baseball field we
Speaker 5: used at the high school when I was teaching slash
Speaker 5: coaching there. The area was clearly marked and signage advised
Speaker 5: everyone to keep out. This meant most foul balls and
Speaker 5: some home runs hit out of the field along the
Speaker 5: first base side wound up inside the perimeter of the
Speaker 5: old mine.
Speaker 4: There are two big problems here.
Speaker 5: Baseballs are not inexpensive, and schools have budgets. There was
Speaker 5: no way to just leave them within sight. Also rare
Speaker 5: is the parent who does not wish to have their
Speaker 5: son's home run baseball as a Trophy. It became necessary
Speaker 5: to station an adult each game to be the official
Speaker 5: baseball retriever from the restricted area. Oof do they issue
Speaker 5: them has bat suits?
Speaker 4: Holy Cow.
Speaker 5: More importantly, twelve miles away is the community of Verona Fair, Verona, Missouri.
Speaker 5: In the nineteen seventies, the chemical dioxin caused the evacuation
Speaker 5: and federal buy out of the Saint Louis suburb of
Speaker 5: Times Beach. I do not remember if you or the
Speaker 5: stuff you should know guys did an episode on this.
Speaker 5: It was one of the first superfund sites and the
Speaker 5: town was destroyed and the soil to something like four
Speaker 5: feet deep was removed and incinerated. The area is now
Speaker 5: yes a park. The contamination had been caused by road
Speaker 5: oil sprayed regularly to keep down the dust of the
Speaker 5: dirt and gravel roads. While all of this was discovered
Speaker 5: in the investigation, it was also discovered the dioxin originally
Speaker 5: was sold to the company doing the spraying by a
Speaker 5: chemical company in Verona, where the dioxin infused oil was
Speaker 5: a waste product. This plant still exists and operates today. Yes,
Speaker 5: cleanup was done, but over the last fifty years it
Speaker 5: has experienced a series of problems. In twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 5: EPA investigated the area and found remnants of agent orange.
Speaker 5: In twenty twenty two, the EPA issued sixteen citations against
Speaker 5: the plant and its safety programs. In twenty twenty too,
Speaker 5: Pro Publica identified the area as a toxic air pollution hotspot,
Speaker 5: and in twenty twenty three, the EPA again sent representatives
Speaker 5: to Verona to hear concerns about the Pro Publica and
Speaker 5: other reports to help explain the higher than average rates
Speaker 5: of cancer in the small town heard this story before
Speaker 5: through all owners. The problems continue. The state and federal
Speaker 5: government are involved, but as of just last year, cancer
Speaker 5: rates and violations both continue. My personal opinion is that
Speaker 5: if the products produced at the plant helped cause the
Speaker 5: evacuation of a community on the other side of the state,
Speaker 5: the originator of such substances might require a little more supervision, inspection,
Speaker 5: and involvement by regulatory agencies. Still, GP scoochs here and
Speaker 5: use what you will, and we will and we did.
Speaker 3: GP.
Speaker 4: This is fabulous.
Speaker 5: Not fabulous in the content of what this means, but
Speaker 5: this is exactly the kind of stuff we were looking for.
Speaker 4: Like, what is it like to live around this stuff.
Speaker 5: What does the government to do with these as they
Speaker 5: pertain to communities? And in this situation, it sure feels
Speaker 5: like just kind of building something on top of it
Speaker 5: that like kids are going to be playing in. It's
Speaker 5: very dystopian feeling to me. I don't know, maybe I'm
Speaker 5: overreacting a little bit, but I don't think so. I
Speaker 5: don't think you are a lot like brushing it under.
Speaker 3: The rug, you know, right, Yeah, And we heard from
Speaker 3: we heard from Scooch quite recently as well, GGP Scooch
Speaker 3: who hipped us to an obscene clone fall, which still
Speaker 3: it's a great shaggy dog story, but we know this
Speaker 3: is we know this is serious business, Scooch. And you
Speaker 3: know this may be in reaction to letter from another
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist about the Westlake landfill. There are tons of
Speaker 3: these things, and a lot of them don't make any
Speaker 3: national news. Like to your point, no, we need need
Speaker 3: the public to be more aware of these things because often,
Speaker 3: you know, often the way you hide this sort of
Speaker 3: stuff from your constituency or your municipality is to make
Speaker 3: it one of the public commons, right, make it a
Speaker 3: public area. Here is a park, Here is where all
Speaker 3: the kids can go play. It's tough.
Speaker 5: Well, the implication being it's fine, right, because we wouldn't
Speaker 5: have done this if it weren't fine, because this is
Speaker 5: the most vulnerable of our population that we're telling it's
Speaker 5: okay to go there.
Speaker 4: And yet the whole.
Speaker 5: Baseball retrieval thing, for some reason, it makes me think
Speaker 5: of the sandlot. You know, there is that neighbor with
Speaker 5: the big scary dog, and in order to get the
Speaker 5: balls they had.
Speaker 4: To like go, you know, do battle with this giant
Speaker 4: monster kind of mutant dog.
Speaker 5: I just can't imagine how comfortable these parents or teachers
Speaker 5: would be having to go scavenge and what they know
Speaker 5: is a potentially contaminated area just to get back a baseball.
Speaker 3: Recently, I think, just as Reesay is a few years ago,
Speaker 3: was twenty twenty one, I think the US Supreme Court
Speaker 3: made an increasingly rare unanimous ruling regarding superfund sites and
Speaker 3: the Clean Water Act all to say, people know there
Speaker 3: is a problem, right, and the time window on this
Speaker 3: problem could be quite elongated, right because exposure to some
Speaker 3: of the chemicals or contamination of superfund sites, the bill
Speaker 3: doesn't come do there sometimes for decades? Right, But you know,
Speaker 3: trust us, it's fine, take your kids to the playground.
Speaker 5: Well, I just found an EPA dot gov page where
Speaker 5: you can search for superfund sites near you, and I
Speaker 5: just narrowed it down to Georgia. And I guess I
Speaker 5: had to have known this when I was working for
Speaker 5: public radio back in the day. But Augusta, which is
Speaker 5: where I was stationed and where I grew up, it
Speaker 5: seems like it comes up on the list more than
Speaker 5: just about any other place in the state.
Speaker 4: There's I think five, let's see.
Speaker 5: There's only one in Atlanta, in Fulton County, the west
Speaker 5: side lead plant, and that's the only I'm not seeing
Speaker 5: any in like adjacent counties here in Atlanta.
Speaker 4: One in Athens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, the whole deal with these is
Speaker 5: like we don't really know what the long term ramifications
Speaker 5: of some of the stuff is. And we often see
Speaker 5: scientists and researchers trying to draw lines between these sites
Speaker 5: and rates of cancer, and they're often a little bit
Speaker 5: hard to kind of draw those direct lines, the direct correlations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a super fun site, to be clear, is
Speaker 3: is not always contaminated with the same kind of nasty stuff. Right.
Speaker 3: It's a group term similar to saying cancer or saying chair.
Speaker 3: So the contamination in one site may indeed be more
Speaker 3: dangerous than the contamination in another site, or it may
Speaker 3: have a different set of deleitaria health effects. So there's
Speaker 3: it's rough and it's terrifying because again of that of
Speaker 3: that window of time to your point, No, yes, there
Speaker 3: are searchable databases, but a lot of it is not
Speaker 3: out there in your face. Right, these kind of warnings,
Speaker 3: I would argue, you do need to be out there
Speaker 3: in your face. You need to know immediately your location,
Speaker 3: your proximity two a super fun site, and your possible
Speaker 3: exposure to anything within that site, because they're also not
Speaker 3: all cleaned up to the same level, that's.
Speaker 5: Right, and also to know what the cleanup efforts ongoing,
Speaker 5: you know, look like or if they are ongoing.
Speaker 4: And I'm sorry I misspoke.
Speaker 5: Augusta has three, but it does seem to be one
Speaker 5: of the most super funded cities in the state of Georgia.
Speaker 5: Cedar Town is another one that has three as well.
Speaker 5: But that's the maximum number that I'm seeing on this list,
Speaker 5: and of the overall number in the entire list, it
Speaker 5: looks like there's oney nine hundred and one.
Speaker 3: Which doesn't cover the full extent of possibly contaminated sites
Speaker 3: in the US, because I think it did. Super funds
Speaker 3: didn't become a thing until nineteen eighty, which was a
Speaker 3: long time ago now, but still there was also a
Speaker 3: lot of other dirty stuff. The soil was sour around
Speaker 3: the US well before nineteen eighty.
Speaker 5: Well, these are the ones that get that designation, and
Speaker 5: there's obviously some bureaucratic red tape that has to be
Speaker 5: you know, sifted through to even get these to be recognized.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if anybody has been able to lobby
Speaker 3: or buy their way out of a super fun designation,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 5: Or certainly a good question, ben, because do you get
Speaker 5: wind No one intend that, I guess if we're talking
Speaker 5: about fallout or the way contamination can spread, of this
Speaker 5: in advance and then kind of try to call in
Speaker 5: a favor. Certainly wouldn't be a good look if the
Speaker 5: public found out. But again, these are exactly making front
Speaker 5: page headlines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are, I guess. Unfortunately, there are entities or
Speaker 3: groups that would prefer you not know about a local
Speaker 3: superfund site, or prefer that something not be designated as one.
Speaker 3: But probably the most important part of this conversation. Is
Speaker 3: that searchable database that you brought up there at all?
Speaker 3: Can you tell people the easiest way to find it? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I just googled superfund sites, you know, and this EPA
Speaker 5: list came right up, and you can search it by
Speaker 5: state and by keyword. And like I said, it's not
Speaker 5: a massive I mean, you know, two thousand roughly, it's
Speaker 5: pretty big number in terms of this kind of thing,
Speaker 5: I guess, but it's maybe I would have thought there
Speaker 5: might have been more. But you can search and make
Speaker 5: sure that you know where they are in your area.
Speaker 4: But I don't know what do you guys think about?
Speaker 5: Like again, all super fund the sites aren't created equal,
Speaker 5: and you know, one would hope that if they're building
Speaker 5: a baseball field or a park that the areas adjacent
Speaker 5: to them would.
Speaker 4: Be like an outright death trap.
Speaker 5: But do we trust them to make that assessments or
Speaker 5: what do you guys think?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: There are two there are two main paths that the
Speaker 3: Congressional Act, like the super Fund deal allows for the
Speaker 3: first is what's removable, what's called removable actions. That's the
Speaker 3: more short term where you just take the dirty stuff out.
Speaker 3: And then there are remedial actions which are more long term,
Speaker 3: which is where you try to uh, you attempt to
Speaker 3: make the thing a usable piece of land again, right,
Speaker 3: this this remediation which they try to make the potentially
Speaker 3: responsible party or PRP pay for it, you know, the
Speaker 3: person or the group who did the pollution. So in theory,
Speaker 3: when things are properly cleaned out and brought back to
Speaker 3: some kind of baseline of safety in theory, then that
Speaker 3: land and all the stuff around it is okay, is safe.
Speaker 3: The problem is how often does the practice jibe with
Speaker 3: the theory, right or the letters of the law.
Speaker 5: I think that's very well said Ben Matt. You got
Speaker 5: anything else to add before we take a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to shoot people over to that pro
Speaker 2: publica piece that was talked about in the message. It
Speaker 2: is titled quote when Home is a Toxic hot Spot.
Speaker 2: It was written December fifteenth, twenty twenty one, and it's
Speaker 2: a rather extensive piece on Verona, Missouri there and just
Speaker 2: what the folks were going through at the time, just
Speaker 2: being aware of these substances, you know, in the air,
Speaker 2: in the soil, in the water, and not being able
Speaker 2: to do anything about it, but still having to just
Speaker 2: live your life.
Speaker 5: That's the thing too you mentioned in the soil, because
Speaker 5: a lot of these things can leach into the soil,
Speaker 5: and you know, of course they take tests over time
Speaker 5: to make sure that the levels are allowable or like
Speaker 5: within certain acceptable you know, ranges or whatever.
Speaker 4: But some of these pits that they you know, bury
Speaker 4: some of.
Speaker 5: These materials, and certainly that was the case in one
Speaker 5: near where I was growing up in Augusta. They have
Speaker 5: these linings that can over time be compromised and can leak.
Speaker 5: So even if that the lining or whatever is the mitigation,
Speaker 5: it has to be maintained and has to be like
Speaker 5: checked on. And sometimes you know, with budgets and stuff
Speaker 5: and just shuffling and bureaucracy, sometimes those things can't fall
Speaker 5: between the cracks. So yeah, just something to keep an
Speaker 5: eye on. Well, let's take a quick break, have a
Speaker 5: word from one of our sponsors, and then come back
Speaker 5: with another piece of listener mail.
Speaker 2: And we've returned. We're gonna jump to the phone lines
Speaker 2: and hear first from Joe.
Speaker 6: Say, man, no one, Ben, I had a thing I'd
Speaker 6: like you guys to look into. My name's Joe from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 6: I am seeming to be the only one that finds
Speaker 6: it extremely coincident that on January twenty eighth of twenty two,
Speaker 6: there is a bridge in a area of Pittsburgh that
Speaker 6: collapsed early in the morning. And usually this bridge has
Speaker 6: massive amounts of traffic. There was like three there was
Speaker 6: a uh, you know, a mass transit bus, and then
Speaker 6: two passenger vehicles on this bridge when this bridge collapsed.
Speaker 6: The coincidental part about it is President Joe Biden was
Speaker 6: flying to Pittsburgh that morning to pitch his infrastructure bill.
Speaker 6: What better way to get to, you know, chum up
Speaker 6: support for your infrastructure bill than the city you're going
Speaker 6: to to pitch your bill has a bridge collapse. I
Speaker 6: found it extremely odd. I've had a few people that
Speaker 6: I've spoke to. I've also emailed multiple podcasts about this.
Speaker 6: Can't seem to get anybody to look into it. Don't
Speaker 6: think I'm crazy, but just not a coincidence.
Speaker 3: Thank you, m thank you for calling. Ten people were injured,
Speaker 3: but non fatally if I recall correctly.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can find an article right now in whereas
Speaker 2: this Pittsburgh magazine and it says ten people escape serious
Speaker 2: injury and Forbes Avenue fo r Bes Avenue bridge collapse
Speaker 2: and that is a bridge that goes over a place
Speaker 2: called fern Hollow f e r n h o Lllow
Speaker 2: Creek that it really did collapse on the morning that
Speaker 2: President Joe Biden actually was headed to Pittsburgh to go
Speaker 2: and pitch his infrastructure bill. And there is a picture
Speaker 2: you can find on Getty Images of President Biden standing
Speaker 2: there shaking hands with somebody and the background is the
Speaker 2: collapsed bridge.
Speaker 3: You can also see video of it on New York Times.
Speaker 3: I mean, this was pub was pretty widely. You can
Speaker 3: see the immediate aftermath, and we're just very fortunate no
Speaker 3: one died because it's heinus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there really is a You can see a picture
Speaker 2: of the bus, the red bus that fell down and
Speaker 2: one of the passenger vehicles that landed or ended up
Speaker 2: on its roof like laying on the ground. It looks horrifying.
Speaker 2: It looks like people died, but again thankfully they did not.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, perhaps an opportunistic photo op, but it
Speaker 5: does appear that this bridge should have been condemned many
Speaker 5: years prior because of disrepair and issues.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well, you see, here's the problem. We've been
Speaker 2: talking about infrastructure in the United States for how many
Speaker 2: years now, guys.
Speaker 3: I mean when we first started the video series, it
Speaker 3: was one of the things I was going to write
Speaker 3: an episode about it. But for a long time, the
Speaker 3: American public didn't care, right, Yeah, and that's hopefully slowly changing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we have on the audio side of this,
Speaker 3: as a group, we've been talking about infrastructure for quite
Speaker 3: some time. And thankful, by the way for anybody else
Speaker 3: who does so. You know, John Oliver did a great
Speaker 3: piece of it on it last week tonight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just the need to revamp a lot of
Speaker 2: the bridges. I mean really it's bridges, roads, what levies,
Speaker 2: all kinds of things that exist in states across the
Speaker 2: United States. That water wire, oh yeah, how everything It
Speaker 2: all requires constant upkeep just to make sure things are
Speaker 2: running smoothly. But often state and federal budgets go to
Speaker 2: other things because other things take priority over the stuff
Speaker 2: that's already working. Right, That's at least the perception that
Speaker 2: often occurs in our own minds, because you don't think
Speaker 2: about the bridge when you go over it. If you're
Speaker 2: going across Spaghetti Junction here in Atlanta, you do.
Speaker 4: Sometimes No, I do I do it, freaks.
Speaker 3: I've walked the length of the highest one non consensually.
Speaker 3: And I wish more people thought about the fact that
Speaker 3: they are in a very dangerous situation. No matter what,
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't matter if you have easy listening
Speaker 3: playing in your car, you know what I mean. You're
Speaker 3: at a high speed in some tight curves, and you know,
Speaker 3: the rule with driving and playing the dark lottery of
Speaker 3: traffic is always you can do your best, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't really matter. If you do your best, it matters
Speaker 3: that everybody else adheres to him. I don't know, man.
Speaker 3: You know, we were doing a live tour a while back,
Speaker 3: and a bridge on I eighty five here in our
Speaker 3: fair metropolis, a segment of that just collapsed under I'll
Speaker 3: still say it murky circumstance, as of.
Speaker 5: Some fire that happened underneath it, like weakened it or
Speaker 5: something that was supposedly caused by a errant crack pipe,
Speaker 5: if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Shopping cart on fire and then and you.
Speaker 2: Know the mark still video of that incident.
Speaker 3: By the way, Yeah, the murky part of that. Even if,
Speaker 3: even if that those official public conclusions are true in
Speaker 3: the ID five case, how horrifying is it that that
Speaker 3: bridge was hanging on by such a thread, Like how
Speaker 3: many bridges in America are one crack pipe on the
Speaker 3: underbelly away from collapsing? Right now?
Speaker 2: Well, that's the whole point of this. Okay, let's get
Speaker 2: back to this Forbes Avenue Bridge again. That's going over
Speaker 2: that place called fern Hollow Creek in Pittsburgh that collapsed
Speaker 2: the day President Biden showed up. According to the Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: Dot this bridge is owned by the City of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: It was built in nineteen seventy and it had a
Speaker 2: very recent inspection report as of that date in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two that rated both its deck and its superstructure
Speaker 2: the entirety of it as quote poor, which is not good.
Speaker 2: And it's one of eighty bridges in that county, Allegheny County,
Speaker 2: that were rated as in poor condition overall. So one
Speaker 2: of eighty in that one county, one of them collapsed.
Speaker 2: It just happened to be, you know, perfect timing somehow.
Speaker 2: I don't know, guys, I don't think it's a matter
Speaker 2: of I mean, it is a coincidence, but I don't
Speaker 2: think it's a matter of like collapsing a bridge on purpose.
Speaker 2: I think it's just actually the state of a lot
Speaker 2: of the infrastructure.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I'd agree with that.
Speaker 5: It would be the kind of place where it would
Speaker 5: make sense already to visit. But I bet there were
Speaker 5: some people on Biden's team.
Speaker 4: That were like, yes, that's a win.
Speaker 2: Oh sure.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So here's here's a helpful rubric or heuristic for thinking
Speaker 3: through these kind of things. When we question coincidence or
Speaker 3: causation or conspiracy, correlation, et cetera, we have to also
Speaker 3: ask ourselves what else happened on that day? Right if
Speaker 3: the president time had not visited on that day. Pittsburgh's
Speaker 3: a big city, and it is quite possible that we
Speaker 3: could draw another troubling correlation between some other event that
Speaker 3: happened in Pittsburgh at that time. I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: is the case. I'm just saying that's a helpful critical
Speaker 3: thinking approach to some of this stuff. To Knowles's point
Speaker 3: about opportunism, yeah I agree, absolutely, But opportunism is not
Speaker 3: the same thing as conspiracy. It's just a cynical coattail
Speaker 3: writing of disaster.
Speaker 2: Quick snap that picture. Let's go all right, guys, do
Speaker 2: you think we have time for one more before we
Speaker 2: get out of this segment. I think, so okay, here
Speaker 2: we go. Let's jump to Matt the firefighter.
Speaker 8: I got, I got you. Dylan's been listen to see
Speaker 8: for a long time, for several years now. Just wanted
Speaker 8: to give you a shot. My name's Matt. I am
Speaker 8: a firefighter, been a firefighter for about twelve years. One
Speaker 8: thing that they might not want us to know is
Speaker 8: that firefighter turnout gear has a chemical called pithos fas.
Speaker 8: It is a known carcinogen. It causes cancer in firefighters.
Speaker 8: And all of our turnout gear, the gear that we
Speaker 8: wear whenever we go into fires as p pass in it.
Speaker 8: It is causing us cancer. They know that it does this,
Speaker 8: and yet they have no turnout gear that's n FPA approved.
Speaker 8: That NFPA is National Fire Protection Agency. They create the
Speaker 8: national standards for our turnout.
Speaker 7: Gears as well as.
Speaker 8: Many many other topics. But anyways, they know that our
Speaker 8: turnout gear causes cancer, and we still have no alternative.
Speaker 8: We have no alternative turnout gear that we can purchase
Speaker 8: and wear that is NFPA approved, that does not cause cancer,
Speaker 8: that does not have p foss in it. So I
Speaker 8: encourage you guys to look into that and to do
Speaker 8: an episode on that because it's a it's a big
Speaker 8: deal firefighters have. Depending on study you read, firefighters have
Speaker 8: between a two hundred to three and fifty percent increase
Speaker 8: chance of catching cancer because of the work we do.
Speaker 8: And I think that this is something that people should
Speaker 8: know about. Thank you for hearing me out. Wish you
Speaker 8: guys the boss, love your work. I'm going to continue
Speaker 8: listening to you guys. Good luck to you, talk to you.
Speaker 3: Later, and good luck to you. Matt the firefighter. Thank
Speaker 3: you for being a firefighter. I think there's some of
Speaker 3: the most unappreciated professionals in society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Matt. Thank you for letting us know about that. Previously,
Speaker 2: when we've talked about these forever chemicals like the per
Speaker 2: and poly fluoro alcohol substances that's p FOSS. When we've
Speaker 2: talked about those in the past, we've talked about all
Speaker 2: the stuff that they're in, including well mostly we've talked
Speaker 2: about firefighting chemicals. Right, the foams that are often used
Speaker 2: in the process of fighting a fire. Someone something a
Speaker 2: firefighter would wield.
Speaker 3: Right suppression flame Retardan says they were called as a
Speaker 3: general term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. We talked about those things and how dangerous
Speaker 2: they can be if you get exposed to them. A lot.
Speaker 2: One thing we didn't consider what the firefighter is actually
Speaker 2: wearing on their body. It makes sense that these pieces
Speaker 2: of heavy clothing would also be treated with something like
Speaker 2: this that would be again a repellent or a retardant
Speaker 2: of fire. Oh my gosh, you guys in what was
Speaker 2: the thing that Matt referenced? The National Fire Protection Association.
Speaker 2: It's a thing you can look up right now, and
Speaker 2: recently several organizations, including NIST put out let's see this
Speaker 2: is January twenty sixteen, they put out a report about
Speaker 2: how wear and tear on firefighter's warrant equipment is going
Speaker 2: to actually cause those pieces of equipment to release even
Speaker 2: more forever chemicals than the firefighter is already being exposed
Speaker 2: to just by wearing them consistently, and it's just increasing
Speaker 2: the potential to have cancer. It's like the increasing your
Speaker 2: probability that you will one day develop cancer.
Speaker 4: It does appear.
Speaker 5: There's a pretty significant class action lawsuit against pfast manufacturers,
Speaker 5: with thousands of firefighters across.
Speaker 4: The country suing.
Speaker 5: I believe three M is one of the parties named
Speaker 5: to manufacture these types of chemicals, and I believe the
Speaker 5: FDA only recently just pass something that limits the amount
Speaker 5: of the stuff that can be in drinking water, which
Speaker 5: seems like we're behind the times.
Speaker 4: On this one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that stuff is in everything there was
Speaker 2: These forever chemicals were found in sources of water that
Speaker 2: should not have any forever chemicals in them, because that
Speaker 2: water is theoretically dropping from the sky from clouds and
Speaker 2: rain water into sources higher up, like in mountains, that
Speaker 2: go into springs that then flow down and get filtered naturally,
Speaker 2: and yet somehow there's still p foss in them.
Speaker 4: Yikes.
Speaker 2: You can read a statement, actually a joint statement from
Speaker 2: the International Association of Firefighters or the IAFF and the
Speaker 2: Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association that discusses this exact thing. Again.
Speaker 2: It's going to just what do What do you do?
Speaker 2: As Matt the firefighter, when you know the stuff you're
Speaker 2: going to wear to go fight a fire is probably
Speaker 2: going to contribute to you getting cancer one day, And
Speaker 2: right now, there is, as Matt said, nothing else you
Speaker 2: can do, because you can't just wear civ's or regular
Speaker 2: clothes when you go into fight a fire, because those
Speaker 2: are flammable. We need an alternative basically, So this is
Speaker 2: a call to all you entrepreneurs out there who are
Speaker 2: good in textiles or maybe have some friends or family
Speaker 2: in the textiles industry. Create something new that firefighters can
Speaker 2: wear that don't have these specific chemical treatments. That's all
Speaker 2: I've got. Guys, you're here all right, And with that
Speaker 2: we will take a break and then hear more messages
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 3: And we have returned at the conclusion of our weekly
Speaker 3: listener mail. We wanted to begin with a critical update.
Speaker 3: If you just had this on in the background and
Speaker 3: you were, you know, kind of tuning out. We've all
Speaker 3: been there, please snap in the fingers conspiracy realist, hear
Speaker 3: us and hear us Well, I'd like to play a
Speaker 3: message from Rob with a crucial update on something that
Speaker 3: I know has been on everybody's mind.
Speaker 7: Here we go, Hey, guys, this is Rob from the
Speaker 7: Armpit of the Midwest. Just an observation here. I'm watching
Speaker 7: Rebel Moon Part two and I just wanted to chime
Speaker 7: in on the humble Farmer. Within the first thirty seconds
Speaker 7: of this movie, the word humble was uttered and I
Speaker 7: couldn't help but remember your fine episodes, the Humble Farmer
Speaker 7: has been mentioned. Just made me laugh, made me laugh
Speaker 7: pretty hard.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That is why you tune in, folks for
Speaker 3: the up to the minute breaking news on the Humble Farmer.
Speaker 3: We brought the Scargiver back. Did you see that? That's
Speaker 3: the name of I saw the second part. It's getting
Speaker 3: rebel Moon to the scar Giver.
Speaker 2: Rob, the same guy you called it about Hard Candy
Speaker 2: last week.
Speaker 3: Rob. Appreciate your update there and thank you on behalf
Speaker 3: of everybody tuning in. Honestly behind the curtain and I
Speaker 3: just put that in because I love those updates.
Speaker 4: It's the Humble Farmer effect.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it is. It is. Ask your sociologist friends
Speaker 3: about it. We have something else that I think maybe
Speaker 3: a future episode. Would love to hear your thoughts, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist. It comes from Secret Soup Can. Secret Soup Can,
Speaker 3: you said the following, Good morning, lads, I ran across
Speaker 3: this article this morning. What do you think? Love the show?
Speaker 3: Keep up the great work. Secret soup Can sent us
Speaker 3: a link that you can and should read if you
Speaker 3: are interested at all In the following conversation. It comes
Speaker 3: to us from the debrief dot Org NASA veterans, propellantless
Speaker 3: propulsion drive that physics says shouldn't work, just produced enough
Speaker 3: thrust to overcome Earth's gravity. This is big if true.
Speaker 2: Both WHOA Sorry, I've read the same article and I
Speaker 2: don't think I just don't believe it until I see
Speaker 2: it happen.
Speaker 3: That's the thing too, right. This is something I think
Speaker 3: is good for us to unpack because what was it
Speaker 3: the em drive a few years back, the electromagnetic drive
Speaker 3: that was supposed to revolutionari space exploration. This is the
Speaker 3: story of a guy. This one is a story of a
Speaker 3: guy named doctor Charles Buller Bueller Bueller, Yeah, rus who's
Speaker 3: they is a NASA engineer and the co founder of
Speaker 3: an organization called Exodus Propulsion Technologies. And their claims are
Speaker 3: pretty extraordinary and thus far they have not been universally confirmed.
Speaker 3: Let's just give you a piece from what the doctor said.
Speaker 3: He is a NASA engineer, He's not just some random
Speaker 3: guy that he told the debrief the following quote. The
Speaker 3: most important message to convey to the public is that
Speaker 3: a major discovery occurred. This discovery of a new force
Speaker 3: is fundamental in that electric fields alone can generate a
Speaker 3: sustainable force onto an object and allow center of mass
Speaker 3: translation of said object without expelling mass. All right, just
Speaker 3: unpack that current. That's not a thing outside of science fiction,
Speaker 3: like the idea of this technology. I'm with you there, Matt.
Speaker 3: I also thought this felt a little bit vaporware, like
Speaker 3: we were talking about biotech earlier, expelling mass meaning.
Speaker 2: What Well, like, okay, imagine you're burning jet fuel, right,
Speaker 2: you watch the launch of anything that's going to escape
Speaker 2: Earth's gravitational poll. It is shoving shoving stuff out the
Speaker 2: tail end right through the form of gas that's ignited.
Speaker 2: This is basically saying that nothing is going out the
Speaker 2: tail end. It's just turned on and then the flow
Speaker 2: of what electrons.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just goes. It's like cold fusion esque kind
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like all the good stuff.
Speaker 5: Without any of the bad stuff or any of the
Speaker 5: byproducts or violent reactions.
Speaker 2: I don't want to know, get me wrong. I think
Speaker 2: it's amazing, Like, oh yeah, sweet, just just show show me,
Speaker 2: don't tell me.
Speaker 4: That's all fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to document his team's discovery and to in an
Speaker 3: attempt to show the process behind their work. This guy
Speaker 3: who's leading the charge over at Exodus, which is again
Speaker 3: a private company. He presented his findings at something that
Speaker 3: I was not aware of, the Alternative Propulsion Energy Conference
Speaker 3: or APEC, not to be confused with OPEK. This has
Speaker 3: a lot of career engineers and then it has a
Speaker 3: lot of what we'll call enthusiasts, right, interested people. They
Speaker 3: may not have a degree, they may not work from
Speaker 3: NASA or a defense corporation, but they are intensely interested
Speaker 3: in the concept of new propulsion technology. The debrief once
Speaker 3: referred to this as the world's most exclusive and strange
Speaker 3: anti gravity club, which sounds like it'd be cool to
Speaker 3: go to. At one point we went to a Muffon
Speaker 3: conference before that was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we can get an invite APEC, send it
Speaker 2: our way.
Speaker 3: We're talking specifically to you, Tim.
Speaker 4: Ventura doesn't anti gravity just in general.
Speaker 5: I know it describes a concept of defying gravity through
Speaker 5: various means, but in my mind it immediately conjures hovercrafts
Speaker 5: or like magical flying cars.
Speaker 3: The Nazi bell or something luck so on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know hovercrafts are real, but the idea of
Speaker 5: being able to float without any byproduct, so just kind
Speaker 5: of like whatever it might be, electromagnetic or otherwise.
Speaker 4: Right, things that don't exist is.
Speaker 3: What I'm getting at, things that have not been proven
Speaker 3: to exist, right, even if and even that might be
Speaker 3: a little bit too careful on our part, But if
Speaker 3: we look at his background, we do know that he
Speaker 3: is the top expert at NASA in something called electrostatics.
Speaker 3: And again he's very careful to say, you know, this
Speaker 3: endeavor is not affiliated with my day job, but he
Speaker 3: does work with concepts that apparently he informed his work
Speaker 3: on this apulsion alternative, and he says, we've been looking
Speaker 3: into this. They call it propellantless propulsion, and they said
Speaker 3: they've been working on it for over twenty years and
Speaker 3: they found the answer under their proverbial noses electrostatics, which
Speaker 3: he had already been working on. And I don't know,
Speaker 3: Like I've looked into it, and I see a lot
Speaker 3: of excitement, I see a lot of sound and fury.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it signifies. We also saw different
Speaker 3: phases of testing that they rolled out, like testing in
Speaker 3: a vacuum. We saw an explanation of the materials that
Speaker 3: they try to use to create this reaction or this phenomenon,
Speaker 3: and they started seeing precipitous results in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Just for context here, this article from the debrief was
Speaker 3: published on April nineteenth, twenty twenty four. I'm hesitant to
Speaker 3: get too into the needs of the technology without a
Speaker 3: lot more research on our end, Like I think this
Speaker 3: could be an episode or the overall idea of the
Speaker 3: alternative propulsion industry.
Speaker 4: Isn't it being described as a new force?
Speaker 3: That's yeah, yeah, he said that quote. Yeah, capital in
Speaker 3: capital f new force, which sounds cool. You know, it
Speaker 3: sounds like it's in the Star Wars franchise. I mean,
Speaker 3: watch it.
Speaker 4: I will say that.
Speaker 5: You know, electrostatic energy is interesting, and I've seen it
Speaker 5: certainly on small scales, right, like if it's what I'm
Speaker 5: thinking of, like even just in terms of like static
Speaker 5: electricity delivering a shock or being able to charge a
Speaker 5: balloon and have it kind of like propel. You know,
Speaker 5: it's magnetized essentially using electrostatic force. If I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 5: I'm not a scientist here, but it's I don't quite
Speaker 5: and maybe it's not for me to understand understand how
Speaker 5: that could be scaled in such a way where anything
Speaker 5: in its path wouldn't be obliterated.
Speaker 3: There's another aspect to it too. You know, we always
Speaker 3: want to dig when we hear about a private company.
Speaker 3: If you go to their website, their website is pretty
Speaker 3: much like a dummy site with a place where you
Speaker 3: can put your email. You're not going to see, at
Speaker 3: least on that site, You're not going to see a
Speaker 3: bunch of information about showing your work means methods testing.
Speaker 3: The debrief article is actually much more, much more in
Speaker 3: depth than the website, And that doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 3: inherently fake. It just means that we the public need
Speaker 3: the information explained in a way that the layperson can understand.
Speaker 3: Because full disclosure, folks, the four of us recording this evening,
Speaker 3: and like maybe you listeny along at home, we do
Speaker 3: not have expertise in the bleeding edge of electrostatic science.
Speaker 3: I think we understand it clearly.
Speaker 4: That's the case.
Speaker 5: From my hand fisted attempt at describing, not at all.
Speaker 5: And when you do dig for information on this, you
Speaker 5: kind of see the same press release regurgitated a bunch
Speaker 5: of times and with some questions like from the debrief,
Speaker 5: but no real data or video or anything tangible to
Speaker 5: back it up.
Speaker 3: So I'm bringing this up because I think this would
Speaker 3: be thank you, Thank You, Secret Soup. I'm bringing this
Speaker 3: up because I think this is an episode based on
Speaker 3: the other similar efforts that have happened in recent years,
Speaker 3: like the em Drive the Quantum Drive, both of which
Speaker 3: remained very controversial. Apparently they got some level of result
Speaker 3: enough to encourage interest in the international sphere and in
Speaker 3: the sphere of investors, but neither of those have been
Speaker 3: tested in space. The Quantum drive got really close. There
Speaker 3: was a launch in November of twenty twenty three, but
Speaker 3: it was laid low. A failure the satellite's electric systems,
Speaker 3: unrelated to the drive, scuttled the test. And at the
Speaker 3: risk of sounding too cynical, it kind of calls to
Speaker 3: mind the similarities of apocalyptic cult leaders when they're like, Hey,
Speaker 3: the world was definitely going to end, but we got
Speaker 3: the dates wrong, So stick with me, stay in the cult,
Speaker 3: you know. And I'm not accusing these guys necessary. I'm
Speaker 3: not accusing these guys of being con artists. We haven't
Speaker 3: spoken with them at all. We just need much more information.
Speaker 3: And if anything, this is a clarion call to those
Speaker 3: of us playing along at home. If you have expertise
Speaker 3: in this material science, engineering, physics, propulsion. If you are
Speaker 3: a literal rocket scientist, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I just signed us up via their website
Speaker 2: that you mentioned Ben for their emails.
Speaker 5: I did just want to mention I found a conversation
Speaker 5: about this on Reddit and somebody sort.
Speaker 4: Of you know again, don't know. I can't really measure this.
Speaker 5: Person's bona fides, but said, the amount of force in
Speaker 5: the low Millan Newtons means that this whole setup is
Speaker 5: highly dubious, as that such a small force that anything
Speaker 5: can influence the measurement. I myself have had setups using
Speaker 5: electrostatic forces where the mere presence of my hand near
Speaker 5: the apparatus caused severe measurement errors at the Milan Newton level.
Speaker 5: Though to be fair, the actual forces I then measured
Speaker 5: were higher than the variance due to.
Speaker 4: That, so even that's way above my pay grade.
Speaker 5: But it does seem like they're smarter people than be
Speaker 5: out there asking questions about this debrief article.
Speaker 3: Well, human thought has no real concept of intelligence.
Speaker 4: They'll be yourself up fair, thanks.
Speaker 3: So, and with that, this is going to be an
Speaker 3: episode in the future. Your help, your expertise, folks, is
Speaker 3: invaluable that regard. We're going to end today with some
Speaker 3: letters from home. We had so many beautiful pieces of
Speaker 3: correspondence to our recent episode on supplements, so thank you.
Speaker 3: A partial list to Reds got which herbalist Luke Tokyoki
Speaker 3: Brocknest Commandant Squatch. That was a very interesting one. Tommy
Speaker 3: Saturday Morning Cartoons, the legend big Shucks. They called me,
Speaker 3: Frederick have confirmed that wasn't our pal Matt, Blue, Michelle,
Speaker 3: Licensed Mutant, Ninja, Turtle, Otter Dog, Anonymous, Corey call me,
Speaker 3: Al Baron, Eaton, Katie r In and Sosa hold the phone.
Speaker 3: We've got one returning person. You guys remember the person
Speaker 3: who used to write all those weird jokes to us?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I remember the name, but I remember the jokes.
Speaker 2: There was a sixty nine involved.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, nice, there was. This comes to us from
Speaker 3: down Low Joe, a subsidiary of Humorous Harry. That was
Speaker 3: the name. And he says, how about this Noel Matt
Speaker 3: picking number one through ten six. Okay, did you hear
Speaker 3: about the guy that left his smartphone on the stove?
Speaker 3: It ended up being a real burner phone. Doc. If
Speaker 3: I get like a rim shot and a groan. The
Speaker 3: Matt is scratching his forehead here. So Matt, why pick
Speaker 3: a number one? Th that's not six?
Speaker 2: Number one?
Speaker 3: Number one?
Speaker 4: Do you know what?
Speaker 2: Number two?
Speaker 3: Keep this part in because boy number one? All right,
Speaker 3: we can't win them all, humorous, Harry, Where do crabs
Speaker 3: go for a drink? You guys to this sand bar?
Speaker 4: Oh wow?
Speaker 3: Okay, folks with that, We're so glad and thankful to
Speaker 3: every person entity meet or otherwise crabs as well? You know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I've got a joke. I got a joke.
Speaker 2: What's worse than having a bunch of ants in your pants?
Speaker 2: A bunch of uncles?
Speaker 4: We were already?
Speaker 3: How do comedians play golf with comedy clubs? Okay, I
Speaker 3: think we're We've exercised our full budget of sound cues.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, joy the show. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for tuning in and tell us switch
Speaker 3: on your mind. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4: It's right.
Speaker 5: You can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
Speaker 5: we exist on Facebook, on YouTube and on x FKA, Twitter,
Speaker 5: on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 4: We are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: Hey, do you want to call us the way?
Speaker 4: Matt?
Speaker 2: And Joe did call one eight three three std WYTK.
Speaker 2: It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes. Give yourself
Speaker 2: a cool nickname and let us know if we can
Speaker 2: use your name and message on the air. If you
Speaker 2: don't like using your phone for such activities, why not
Speaker 2: use it to send us an email.
Speaker 3: We are the folks who read every single email we get.
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