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.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 4: superproducer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you
Speaker 4: are you are here. That makes this the stuff they
Speaker 4: don't want you to know. It is the top of
Speaker 4: the week as we hurdle headlong through March.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: We have some adventures that will catch you up on
Speaker 4: in the near future, but for now, there is so
Speaker 4: much strange stuff happening. There are people smuggling things as ever,
Speaker 4: but maybe not the things would expect. We are going
Speaker 4: to I don't want to say it, but we might
Speaker 4: have some hot takes on the Red Sea. We'll get
Speaker 4: to it later. For now, we have to address, of course,
Speaker 4: one of the most pressing issues in the world of
Speaker 4: conspiracy and international discourse in the modern day. Let's go
Speaker 4: to you, Noel. You're a fan of Charlie and Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 4: We've talked about role.
Speaker 6: Doll Yeah, I'm a big fan of roll Doll's books,
Speaker 6: especially the creepy ones. And I'm with folks that are
Speaker 6: saying that even the slightly has an age super well
Speaker 6: stuff should not be like rewritten.
Speaker 3: I think that's weird.
Speaker 6: I think once we start doing that, it's like a
Speaker 6: real slippery slope. So just getting my soapbox moment and
Speaker 6: on that. But I'm also a fan of the Gene
Speaker 6: Wilder movie. I think the very of its age.
Speaker 3: You know, the the chocolate waterfall looks like diarrhea. That's true.
Speaker 4: It's also very stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: There is no earthly way of no.
Speaker 3: That's true. That's the tunnel.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Tunnel of Doom also taken reappropriated by Marilyn
Speaker 6: Manson for the video for his hit song Dope hat
Speaker 6: off of Smell that Smells Like Children the Portrait of
Speaker 6: an American Family, And I believe on that record too.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry I'm showing my former Manson I roots there's
Speaker 6: a sample, or at least he does the there's no
Speaker 6: earthly way of knowing and the rowers keep hol ring.
Speaker 6: But he doesn't like a horrible Marilyn Manson kind of way.
Speaker 6: That guy sucks. He's done terrible things. Not a good dude.
Speaker 6: But anyway, yeah, I think you know, roll Doahll looms large.
Speaker 6: He's become such a institution in Hollywood with you know,
Speaker 6: remakes and some of them good, some of them not
Speaker 6: so good. I thought the Tim Burton Charlie and the
Speaker 6: Chocolate Factory was quite bad.
Speaker 3: But then there was a little run of some of
Speaker 3: the short.
Speaker 6: Stories that were done by Wes Anderson is short films,
Speaker 6: and all of those are excellent. They're just really, really
Speaker 6: really what Henry Sugar I believe was one where the
Speaker 6: sets kind of move and it's just it really hits
Speaker 6: the spirit of the whimsy of a roll doll.
Speaker 5: And this is big money, you guys.
Speaker 6: I mean, we have got the Timothy chalomet reboot of
Speaker 6: the franchise, you know, with him as the star of
Speaker 6: those young Wonka with sort of a backstory, and people
Speaker 6: are you tend to capitalize on that, as was the
Speaker 6: case in Scotland in Glasgow, to be more precise, where
Speaker 6: a you know, you see these things all the time,
Speaker 6: stuffs to some better than others, things like the Museum
Speaker 6: of ice Cream or they're like.
Speaker 3: The Balloon Museum, often that you have museums and.
Speaker 5: Then we're like van Go the experience, there's.
Speaker 4: Sort of experience a change.
Speaker 2: But those are really cool.
Speaker 5: Some of them are better than others.
Speaker 6: I heard the van Go one sucked and was like
Speaker 6: kind of mid you know, and just was a little
Speaker 6: bit underwhelming. And they're often quite expensive, and they're often
Speaker 6: set up in these massive industrial warehouse spaces and they
Speaker 6: travel around depending on their success, you know, you might
Speaker 6: be coming to a town near you some kind.
Speaker 3: Of roadshow version of it. You know.
Speaker 6: Miao Wolf is a great example of an excellent one
Speaker 6: that is like so immersive. We went to the one
Speaker 6: in Vegas. But they also have franchises of these, you know,
Speaker 6: in other countries and other cities. But in Glasgow, something
Speaker 6: called Willie's Chocolate Experience was scheduled to run for two
Speaker 6: days only, February twenty fourth and twenty fifth, promising all
Speaker 6: sorts of wonders you know to the good people of
Speaker 6: Glasgow and their and their children.
Speaker 3: I think the website has yeah, oh yeah, no it has,
Speaker 3: and it's still up.
Speaker 6: And this event was promoted by a company with a
Speaker 6: really awesome name for this show, House of Illuminati folks.
Speaker 6: No joke curated or created this event, and they promoted
Speaker 6: it as being a cutting edge experience that uses artificial
Speaker 6: intelligence for scripting and for concept design and all this stuff,
Speaker 6: and on their website or whatever wherever this stuff was
Speaker 6: posted originally, now it's kind of been screenshotted and posted
Speaker 6: all over the place. They have some of these AI
Speaker 6: generated images which are just like the quintessential kind of
Speaker 6: sort of psychedelic nightmare fuel that you'd imagine an AI
Speaker 6: would spit out when asked to reproduce Willy Wonka escapes,
Speaker 6: you know, where things are just like a little too twisty,
Speaker 6: the lollipops, you know, spiral off into oblivion and kind
Speaker 6: of awkward and uncomfortable ways.
Speaker 4: And things look a little too wormy, kind of almost mansonesque, well.
Speaker 3: Very much so.
Speaker 6: I mean, there is a macabre quality to what they're
Speaker 6: trying to pitch as this wondrous thing, and that extends
Speaker 6: very much to the text on some of these images
Speaker 6: that you can still find anywhere.
Speaker 3: People are referring to this stuff as cursed.
Speaker 6: But the initial text on this kind of you know,
Speaker 6: digital promo flyer thing promises the fun following cat gigating
Speaker 6: live performances, catchy tons XR surgery, lollipops, and a paradise
Speaker 6: of sweet teats, and.
Speaker 3: It's at the top. It's got a big banner saying
Speaker 3: in chair and in ing intertainment, in char in ining entertainment,
Speaker 3: and all.
Speaker 6: This stuff was put out there like they didn't prove
Speaker 6: read it or something. Again this we're you know, we're
Speaker 6: proponents of using stuff as tools. AI has the potential
Speaker 6: to be an interesting thing in the hands of the
Speaker 6: right people.
Speaker 3: When you just feed it.
Speaker 6: Nonsense and say do a thing like this and don't
Speaker 6: have any oversight, you're gonna get cat gagating and in
Speaker 6: char in in ing entertainment and apparently a paradise of
Speaker 6: sweet teats. So all this was promised for the I
Speaker 6: believe nominal fee of around forty five dollars American. I
Speaker 6: think it was maybe thirty five pounds something like that
Speaker 6: or thirty five euro.
Speaker 4: You're right, thirty five British pounds. So because it's Scotland,
Speaker 4: so forty four dollars fifty eight cents US.
Speaker 6: And the AI part, you know, also was promoted as
Speaker 6: being the source of the scripting for the actors. This
Speaker 6: is this is not like an AI, you know, virtual
Speaker 6: reality experience. This is like a brick and mortar pop
Speaker 6: up type experience that they're promising to recreate this stuff,
Speaker 6: you know, that's depicted in these really kind of wormy,
Speaker 6: disturbing images. I'm looking at one right now, and I
Speaker 6: just it's got real sandworm vibes and like you look
Speaker 6: in the in the bushes and they're these bunny rabbits,
Speaker 6: but they look like they're smiling with like really rancid,
Speaker 6: like twenty teeth almost Like again, I'm looking at it,
Speaker 6: not zoomed in, but you know the way AI does
Speaker 6: where it'll just kind of one part of something will
Speaker 6: be just a little smeared or a little kind of
Speaker 6: wonky and not ripe wonky.
Speaker 5: That's appropriate, but AnyWho.
Speaker 6: The scripting for this was also generated by AI and
Speaker 6: was meant to be memorized by the actors who were
Speaker 6: hired and showed up the day before the launch of
Speaker 6: the thing, and Ben pointed out off air that there's
Speaker 6: some amazing accounts for some of these actors who were
Speaker 6: just trying to make a day rate, you know, for
Speaker 6: doing this thing.
Speaker 3: They didn't know much about it.
Speaker 6: They showed up assuming that the thing hadn't been completed
Speaker 6: a lot of times these things, you know, if you've
Speaker 6: ever been to a circus even or like Cirqa Sola,
Speaker 6: they're building that stuff up to the wire a lot
Speaker 6: of times the day before, like before. That's not to
Speaker 6: malign Sirk to Sole. They probably have it up longer
Speaker 6: than that, but for some of these maybe lower budget things,
Speaker 6: you know, time and personnel are at a premium, so
Speaker 6: they're trying to maximize that. These actors were giving them
Speaker 6: the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3: However, when the day one game and.
Speaker 6: Families and their kids were streaming in to this industrial warehouse,
Speaker 6: there wasn't any change from what they had witnessed the
Speaker 6: night before, which was kind of these scantily decorated walls
Speaker 6: with these like backdrops that are just comically small, whereas
Speaker 6: it's almost like they just took some of these AI
Speaker 6: images and you know, printed them on fabric but not
Speaker 6: very big. And it's in the middle of a giant
Speaker 6: bear like rock looking wall, like a concrete looking slab wall.
Speaker 6: There's like a rainbow entryway that you can see the
Speaker 6: seam on it. There's a lab they call the Imagination
Speaker 6: Lab where they are these OPA lumpa type things which
Speaker 6: are called I believe in the script are called wonka
Speaker 6: doodles or wonky doodles, something to that effect. And the
Speaker 6: image I believe that first went viral, which is a
Speaker 6: term that I hate, but you get what it means,
Speaker 6: was an image of this young woman playing an opa
Speaker 6: lumpa and looking really bummed out, surrounded by what appears
Speaker 6: to be the things that you would find in a
Speaker 6: meth lab.
Speaker 7: I was just gonna say, the way, the way I'm
Speaker 7: looking at it, from the images that are available that
Speaker 7: I've seen mostly on X, it looks like if I,
Speaker 7: Matt Frederick, decided to like make my son a birthday
Speaker 7: party inside a giant warehouse and I could only access
Speaker 7: the things that I, as Matt Frederick, could access and
Speaker 7: like find in a couple of days and like throw together.
Speaker 7: It just it feels exactly like that, like objection.
Speaker 4: Objection, you, Matt Frederick would do a much better job.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: I think it would be really close to this, guys.
Speaker 7: I would find somebody to be like, hey, can I
Speaker 7: give you four to five dollars to like pretend to
Speaker 7: be whatever you just said.
Speaker 3: Doodle and do Let's not forget about the unknown who
Speaker 3: was named the unknown because his name is unknown. This
Speaker 3: is all stuff that the AI script generated.
Speaker 6: We're gonna do a little reading because Gizmoto has the
Speaker 6: whole thing linked out and posted and it all checks
Speaker 6: with what we've We've heard the actors describing, you know,
Speaker 6: and the little bits of commentary they've offered to the
Speaker 6: whole thing. But it was apparently so bad that parents,
Speaker 6: like their kids were crying because this unknown thing, which
Speaker 6: is just like a person wearing like a spooky robe
Speaker 6: kind of and like one of those silver masks that
Speaker 6: you get in like spirit Halloween and like at a wig,
Speaker 6: does a really serious jump scare.
Speaker 5: I didn't sign up for a job. I don't like
Speaker 5: jump scares.
Speaker 6: I'm forty year old man and I don't go to
Speaker 6: haunted houses because jump scares freaked me out. So I
Speaker 6: would have been her to too, because apparently the kids
Speaker 6: were in tears. Not to mention, once they made it
Speaker 6: through that traumatic event, they were only given a single
Speaker 6: jelly bean and a half a glass of like Tesco
Speaker 6: brand lemonade. It's wow. And that's the image of the
Speaker 6: Opa Loipa. The wind viral is the station where the
Speaker 6: jelly beans were handed and there's images because people.
Speaker 3: Were taking videos with their phones just.
Speaker 6: To document this debacle for posterity, I guess, to back
Speaker 6: up their claims, their eventual claims to the police.
Speaker 3: And you can see this person taking.
Speaker 6: Like the tiniest little jelly bean and placing it in
Speaker 6: the hand of a child.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's sad stuff, you guys.
Speaker 6: I don't know what am I missing anything with this setup.
Speaker 5: It's been described as the fire Festival for kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the the one of the actors I think it's
Speaker 4: Kirsty Patterson that portrays the sad Yeah, is actually doing
Speaker 4: their best. And there was a later interview with The Independent.
Speaker 4: I want to say where several of the actors are
Speaker 4: actually one of the actors who played Willie McDuff.
Speaker 5: He's the one. Yeah, because they did it only for
Speaker 5: like half a day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they talked about it and they have this classic
Speaker 4: moment where they're like, well, we uh, we knew it
Speaker 4: was messed up, so we went to the pub and
Speaker 4: let it blow over. But they they got the job offer,
Speaker 4: you know, a side unseen from like indeed dot com
Speaker 4: or something, And I think there was in the beginning
Speaker 4: a bit of a bit of a trend toward vilifying
Speaker 4: those actors who were just trying to work. They were not, Like,
Speaker 4: they were not the boardroom of the what is it know,
Speaker 4: the house of House of Illuminati. Yeah, they were not.
Speaker 4: They were hired guns on this one. And I just
Speaker 4: want to give a shout out to Patterson because it
Speaker 4: sounds like, outside of those viral clips, it sounds like
Speaker 4: she was doing her best in a weird situation and
Speaker 4: peek behind the curtain. I know, Matt, Nolan and I
Speaker 4: and Doc I would hazard you as well, have found
Speaker 4: ourselves in weird situations where we have to do strange things. Matt,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking specifically about the time we were explaining cryptids
Speaker 4: to a bunch of raucous kids in Maryland and they
Speaker 4: were yelling at us because they knew we had a monkey.
Speaker 4: That is a true story, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 7: I'm thinking about the time I worked at a private
Speaker 7: club and I got paid to pretend I was Middle
Speaker 7: Eastern and WHOA, yes.
Speaker 4: Are you not Middle Eastern?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 7: No, at least I don't think so. But maybe aren't
Speaker 7: we all in some way? But what I'm what I'm
Speaker 7: saying is like I just I've been in a situation
Speaker 7: where I was getting paid, I was acting, and I
Speaker 7: thought I was doing great when I was a kid.
Speaker 7: When I was a kid, But if you look back
Speaker 7: at it, it's like, what is happening right now?
Speaker 5: I didn't have to do anything problematic.
Speaker 6: I don't think that I can recall, but I worked
Speaker 6: for a children's science center for a time where I
Speaker 6: did like the science show or you did the you know,
Speaker 6: the static electricity on the balloon and things like that with.
Speaker 3: Kids, and it was fun. It was a glorious time,
Speaker 3: but you know, it's stressful. Kids are kids are tough.
Speaker 6: Kids are a tough audience and it takes, you know,
Speaker 6: a lot of planning and coordination to make them happy
Speaker 6: at an event like this and this kid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, still, I still do career days at public schools
Speaker 4: by far the toughest crowd ever.
Speaker 7: Can I just say I pushed that thought, that memory
Speaker 7: out of my head ben doing that performance. So the
Speaker 7: kid with the kids, specifically with the the monkey.
Speaker 5: God, that one you tend to be Middle East.
Speaker 4: It's back.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, oh God.
Speaker 4: And I came up under the auspice of the grand
Speaker 4: old opry. Let's move on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to This is a really great
Speaker 3: uh X.
Speaker 6: Is that what you call the individual things? From a
Speaker 6: user name at Cheerwine who sums it up beautifully. You're
Speaker 6: six years old, you live in Glasgow. You are told
Speaker 6: you will be meeting Willie Wonka eating chocolate. You arrive,
Speaker 6: you are given a single jelly bean buttered popcorn flavor.
Speaker 6: The Baba Duke is there.
Speaker 4: Because to your point, Noel, there is a jump scare there.
Speaker 4: That is something that would be I don't want to
Speaker 4: say it should be verboten, but one would imagine if
Speaker 4: one were a parent. It's the kind of thing you,
Speaker 4: as a parent would want to know your kids are
Speaker 4: encountering before you go into it. So they got a
Speaker 4: hard time and we get it. The four of us
Speaker 4: get it, folks, and probably you listening along at home.
Speaker 4: Live productions are tough, right, theater is tough, But it's
Speaker 4: also fire Festival. That's the best. Oh yeah, Firefest for kids.
Speaker 6: Just to wrap it up, you know, it's when you
Speaker 6: read the scripts, which I just wanted to read, a
Speaker 6: tiny little exert of again fully generated by a I
Speaker 6: clearly not edit it at all. After the fact, it
Speaker 6: paints a pretty cool picture that I'm sure would have
Speaker 6: been really neat if they executed it. There's magical bubbles
Speaker 6: popping and you know, twinkling lights in the sky.
Speaker 5: There's a spooky forest.
Speaker 3: There's a confrontation between the Unknown, who, by the way,
Speaker 3: is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls
Speaker 3: of the chocolate factory and is Willy there's always not
Speaker 3: even Willy Wonker. By the way, he's Willy McDuff.
Speaker 6: I need to mention that is sworn enemy, right, this
Speaker 6: evil chocolate maker.
Speaker 3: Who lives in the walls.
Speaker 6: There's some stuff that they have this confrontation at the
Speaker 6: end of the script that involves this you know, Terrry Potter.
Speaker 3: Style battle of shooting powers at each other or whatever.
Speaker 6: And then it ends with the Unknown being vacuumed up
Speaker 6: by a giant vacuum cleaner. Because, by the way, the
Speaker 6: coveted item like which you'll remember from the film and
Speaker 6: the book, the Everlasting Gobstopper that Charlie you know, is
Speaker 6: supposed to steal and give to slug Worth and that's
Speaker 6: how he passes the test to win the factory. In
Speaker 6: this one, it's something called Willie's anti graffiti Gobstopper, which
Speaker 6: tighties up everywhere whenever you eat it. It also somehow
Speaker 6: tighties up helps mums and dads, but mostly mums. It
Speaker 6: says all this in the script, so it's a there's
Speaker 6: there's a message here too about kids cleaning their rooms,
Speaker 6: but really quickly. This is how the script describes this relationship.
Speaker 5: This fiendish foe is long coveted.
Speaker 3: This is Willy speaking my way.
Speaker 6: One of my most cherished creations, the anti graffiti Gobstopper,
Speaker 6: a marvel of confectionery science designs to aid oh, not
Speaker 6: just any soul, but the tireless guardians of cleanliness are
Speaker 6: beloved mums and yes, dad's true, but especially mums from
Speaker 6: the endless scourge of dirty socks trun about by youthful adventurers.
Speaker 6: And there's a joke about viagra kind of and it's
Speaker 6: oh and the stage directions alone are worth the price
Speaker 6: of admission. But I think we could talk about this
Speaker 6: for way too long that I will. I think we'll
Speaker 6: put a put a stop on it right now.
Speaker 3: But geez, what a what a fun you know, relatively harmless.
Speaker 3: I guess this is part of what makes it so fun.
Speaker 3: I think I think the people are probably going to
Speaker 3: get their money back. They weren't you know, conned out
Speaker 3: of thousands and kept hostage on an island, like with
Speaker 3: fire festivals, So it seems a little less, you know,
Speaker 3: less of an inconvenient There were people that came, you know,
Speaker 3: on trains from far away who are now demanding their
Speaker 3: train fare be refunded as well by the House of Illuminati,
Speaker 3: the founder of which made a statement apologizing said that
Speaker 3: the holographic equipment didn't come in in time.
Speaker 6: It's just what led it to be the sad display
Speaker 6: that it ultimately was.
Speaker 3: So there you go live and learn.
Speaker 6: Oh and by the way, there's also apparently a film
Speaker 6: and production already about the Unknown, because he was the
Speaker 6: hit of the whole charade. Let's take a quick break here,
Speaker 6: a word from our sponsors, and then we'll be back
Speaker 6: with another piece of strange news.
Speaker 7: And we've returned. Hey, before we get to the main store,
Speaker 7: I want to talk about guys. Did you hear the
Speaker 7: one about the snowmobile lawsuit against the government.
Speaker 4: Yeah, watch where you park your copters.
Speaker 5: I thought it was a joke set up.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 7: No, well, it's this weird situation there's some like actual
Speaker 7: injury involved in Again, just a weird situation. So in
Speaker 7: March twenty nineteen, this Massachusetts based attorney named Jess Smith
Speaker 7: was writing his snowmobile through this place called Albert Farms.
Speaker 7: It's an airfield in Worthington, Massachusetts. It's at night. He's
Speaker 7: had like one or two beers at least according to
Speaker 7: his statement. He's not drunk at it by any means,
Speaker 7: at least according to him. But he's riding a snowmobile
Speaker 7: at night, and he's going really fast, and unbeknownst to Jeff,
Speaker 7: on the trail, there was a parked, non illuminated black
Speaker 7: Hawk helicopter.
Speaker 4: Okay, just continue, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do
Speaker 4: the thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll do the thing that we'll talk about really quick.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So, according to the story, the crew of that
Speaker 7: Blackhawk helicopter was just doing what they were told. They
Speaker 7: flew down from New York's Fort Drum for a night
Speaker 7: training exercise at this airfield. But Jeff had no idea
Speaker 7: that was happening. Jeff was just riding along with a snowmobile.
Speaker 7: He collided with the tail end of the chopper, literally
Speaker 7: the tail of the chopper flew through the air, broke
Speaker 7: a dozen ribs, punctured along suffered severe internal bleeding.
Speaker 4: Hadn't used his left arm at all.
Speaker 7: He had to be airlifted to a trauma center. Lost
Speaker 7: the use of his left arm. He's gone through numerous surgeries,
Speaker 7: and he's been living on federal assistance since the crash
Speaker 7: and living with his parents. So messed up, right, And
Speaker 7: he has been suing the US government for quite a while.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 7: The suit is he's looking for nine point five million
Speaker 7: dollars in damages to cover all the medical expenses, lost wages, and,
Speaker 7: according to him and his attorneys, to hold the military
Speaker 7: responsible for parking a blacked out black Hawk on an
Speaker 7: active snowmobile trail.
Speaker 2: That was fun to say, perry to it.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I don't know any thoughts, guys. I just
Speaker 7: I think it's crazy that I don't know. You would never,
Speaker 7: at least I would never expect to encounter a blacked
Speaker 7: out black Hawk like that in a place where I
Speaker 7: thought it was okay to just take a vehicle.
Speaker 6: And I'm sorry, just to clarify, this is a stealth craft.
Speaker 6: So if it's blacked out, right, is it like really
Speaker 6: hard to see, is that?
Speaker 3: Or what's more, it's.
Speaker 4: More that it's not illuminating. Yes. So given the given
Speaker 4: the weather at the time and the time of night,
Speaker 4: and given given Smith's expectation, right, the argument is reasonable expectation.
Speaker 4: So you could say, for instance, if we if we
Speaker 4: finally pulled the trigger on Buy and our bunk out
Speaker 4: out in the mountains, and then we're all having a
Speaker 4: good time on our four wheelers and all of a
Speaker 4: sudden one of us four wheeling in the dark smacks
Speaker 4: up against a thing. Yeah, and that thing is owned
Speaker 4: by the US government. With whom does the liability?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: With whom does the liability fall? Is it Uncle Sam?
Speaker 4: Or is it the person on the on the other vehicle?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 3: I mean it like you said, it's active.
Speaker 6: It's sort of the equivalent of parking an invisible truck,
Speaker 6: like in the middle of the road.
Speaker 5: I mean, think, I'm sorry, I'm leaning into the stealth thing.
Speaker 6: I know it's not invisible, but it is dark, very
Speaker 6: darkly colored, and if the lights are completely off, you
Speaker 6: would not see that coming, especially if it were white
Speaker 6: out e type conditions like it might be. You know,
Speaker 6: you'd sleek it be at full speed I mean, that's
Speaker 6: obviously what happened.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, let's think through analogy too, just to just to
Speaker 4: interject this. Let's say, for instance, let's change the circumstances
Speaker 4: a little bit, just at context to the legal argument.
Speaker 4: So what if you are this guy is on Smith
Speaker 4: is on an established snowmobile trail. Okay, he's not just
Speaker 4: freestyling it through the woods. This is an established snowmobile trail,
Speaker 4: and there is an unexpected anomalous vehicle directly in that path. So,
Speaker 4: for instance, think of for anybody who's a fan of
Speaker 4: off roading, for anybody who's a fan of driving around
Speaker 4: unpaved streets. You know, let's say you were doing something
Speaker 4: like that, and you know what, here's a better way.
Speaker 4: Let's say you're on a state road and you're driving
Speaker 4: home and it's late at night, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: there's a there's a jet in the middle of the
Speaker 4: road you're driving on, and you just go over a
Speaker 4: turn or you hit a hill the wrong way and
Speaker 4: you don't have time to veer. For anybody who rides
Speaker 4: a snowmobile, you know that it is very difficult to
Speaker 4: like quote unquote stop on a dime. So in that case. Again,
Speaker 4: who is liable in that situation?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 6: Is this one of those situations though, where it's like
Speaker 6: the government doesn't make mistakes, this is not.
Speaker 5: Our fault because we refuse to own up to it.
Speaker 3: Well, we were never there. I don't know, Like, what
Speaker 3: are they saying?
Speaker 7: So so the government this has been going on again.
Speaker 7: It started in twenty nineteen, right, so the government has
Speaker 7: attempted to outright dismiss the entire case based on some
Speaker 7: older some older laws and just some older rulings like
Speaker 7: the Federal Tort Claims Act. Because the reason why the
Speaker 7: helicopter was there was a policy decision, had nothing to
Speaker 7: do with the crew. The crew had no idea that
Speaker 7: they were landing in this area that was an active
Speaker 7: snowmobile route. They're saying that, oh, in our policies, there's
Speaker 7: nothing that requires that crew who's running that helicopter to
Speaker 7: illuminate it. That's that we don't have anything that states
Speaker 7: that we didn't know nothing, we did nothing wrong. It's
Speaker 7: it's Smith's fault for driving sixty five miles per hour
Speaker 7: on a snowmobile, which is really fast.
Speaker 5: It's fast.
Speaker 3: Are there posted limits on these types of motorways.
Speaker 4: Whoa fun police?
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: No, you're right, you're right. That's an excellent question. Also,
Speaker 4: also there's another question too, like if there were and
Speaker 4: I don't know how far the courts will go in
Speaker 4: entertaining this, But to the point about illumination, right, Like
Speaker 4: what illumination would have mattered? Is it? Sort of? Because
Speaker 4: this was not a planned landing, right Like, they weren't
Speaker 4: this It wasn't part of their immediate mission to land there.
Speaker 4: It's something they had to do, so.
Speaker 3: It's an emergency maneuver of some kinds.
Speaker 7: No, it was part of a night training, right that
Speaker 7: might I don't mean to contradict, I just I think
Speaker 7: this was night training.
Speaker 3: Why didn't they park on the shoulder?
Speaker 7: Well, the argument is that the crew had no idea
Speaker 7: where the tail of the craft was was actually on
Speaker 7: this active trail, right, And.
Speaker 4: It makes sense that the crew would not know that.
Speaker 4: But then the reason I'm getting to the illumination argument
Speaker 4: is like to Nole's question about pulling over on the
Speaker 4: side of the road versus just stopping a broke down
Speaker 4: car on the highway. If you when we have a
Speaker 4: lot of fellow conspiracy realists who drive semi semi trucks, right,
Speaker 4: so like there is a well established operation for landing,
Speaker 4: and if this is training, then you know you would
Speaker 4: enact that operation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You got to rehearse before you go live. In those
Speaker 4: cases where you have a car pulled over, you have
Speaker 4: all kinds of emergency flares and things like that. So
Speaker 4: for anyone driving a tractor trailer a semi you know
Speaker 4: that if there are engine problems, mobility problems, you have
Speaker 4: a set of procedures, things like road flares or even
Speaker 4: the little triangles you're supposed to set in some columns
Speaker 4: the vehicle.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and saw those at walmartin places for non commercial vehicles,
Speaker 7: like for your vehicle that they just flash red lights,
Speaker 7: but they're sufficiently bright to warn people.
Speaker 2: And that's all that's about.
Speaker 4: That's the question, Matt, Like at this, I don't know
Speaker 4: much about the We know it was night, we know
Speaker 4: it was snowing. Was there any was there any illumination
Speaker 4: that would have mattered?
Speaker 7: I would argue if I was Smith's attorney that yes,
Speaker 7: even if he's traveling sixty five miles per hour, if
Speaker 7: he sees something glowing even slightly on the snow like that,
Speaker 7: because the ground is covered in snow, so it's gonna
Speaker 7: be way more reflective any light that you put out there, right,
Speaker 7: I think he would have time to at least moved,
Speaker 7: you know, away a bit to the left, let's say,
Speaker 7: a couple of feet, because he only clipped a very
Speaker 7: tail end of that machine.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I think as attorneys have a point there. Yes, but
Speaker 7: but again, this these are these are military professionals training
Speaker 7: for a specific situation where you're going in at night
Speaker 7: in the dark. So they're doing what they're supposed to
Speaker 7: be doing to train correctly.
Speaker 3: I don't is this your main story, Matt.
Speaker 2: No, But that's okay. This was this. I like talking
Speaker 2: about this with you guys.
Speaker 3: It's good.
Speaker 5: I didn't realize it was going to generate so much conversation.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of questions. I just I feel like
Speaker 5: they have to be liable.
Speaker 6: It certainly say this seems like they were following procedure,
Speaker 6: you know, if that's what matters, if they determined that
Speaker 6: they did not follow protocol, because it seems like anything
Speaker 6: outside of that isn't going to matter.
Speaker 4: Well, it also goes I think there's a reasonable Again,
Speaker 4: we are not lawyers, uh, I think there is in
Speaker 4: this country. I think there is a reasonable expectation that
Speaker 4: you could argue here right like this, this community seems
Speaker 4: to be unaware that there were training exercises happening, right
Speaker 4: And then you know, you can already kind of game
Speaker 4: out the back and forth of it. But what you
Speaker 4: can't get around is the idea that a totally innocent
Speaker 4: dude just having a sick time on a snowmobile got
Speaker 4: his life ruined, And he got his life ruined when
Speaker 4: he was doing the right things. He was just riding
Speaker 4: a snowmobile on an established trail for that he was
Speaker 4: going to go home, he was going to have a
Speaker 4: great night. And now he is probably up to his
Speaker 4: neck in medical debt, combined with a multi year struggle
Speaker 4: legally against one of the most powerful entities in the world,
Speaker 4: which is the United States government, And that seems pretty well.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm putting an editorial thumb on the scale, but I.
Speaker 6: Don't editorially speaking, though, doesn't it seem like at this
Speaker 6: point they would just help him out for optics alone,
Speaker 6: Like why does the go do they always have to
Speaker 6: be right? Why can't they just be like you know what?
Speaker 6: It was a it was a bit of a whoopsie.
Speaker 6: You know we're gonna help you out with these bills.
Speaker 4: Oh, and get in front of this question. The snowmobile
Speaker 4: does have lights, Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, snowmobile has lights. But again, you're going through
Speaker 7: forested areas that have openings where there's way more field
Speaker 7: basically covered in snow than trees.
Speaker 5: And dense trees. Right turns like probably hairpin turns.
Speaker 4: Who knows, and shout out to the crew because they
Speaker 4: when they heard that smack, they got out immediately and
Speaker 4: started helping the guy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the first responders were the guys who were who
Speaker 7: were training, and thankfully they knew, you know, things like
Speaker 7: first response to somebody who's injured like that. They couldn't
Speaker 7: immediately save him, save him like and just fix all
Speaker 7: his problems, but they were able to at least triage
Speaker 7: him enough to get him on a flight to because
Speaker 7: I think that he had to get airlifted almost immediately
Speaker 7: again because internal bleeding, punctured.
Speaker 3: Lung, doesn't broken ribs.
Speaker 7: Yikes, guys, we're barely going to touch the other story,
Speaker 7: but let's do it so at least we talked about
Speaker 7: it a bit. We have a first here in these
Speaker 7: old United States. Firsts don't come along very often anymore.
Speaker 7: But we've got one, the first person in the United
Speaker 7: States to be prosecuted for smuggling greenhouse gases into the
Speaker 7: United States. What it's happening right now? Southern District of California.
Speaker 4: Okay, wait wait, smuggling gases into the US.
Speaker 7: Not yes, yes, specifically hydrofloral carbons.
Speaker 3: Oh, we don't like those. They're bad for the ozone layer.
Speaker 4: Oh those are so tight, man, I'm.
Speaker 3: Sorry to what end if I might ask?
Speaker 7: Well, this person, his name is Michael Hart. He's fifty
Speaker 7: eight years old. He lives in San Diego. He is accused,
Speaker 7: He stands accused of bringing those hydrofluoro carbons in and
Speaker 7: then selling them on Facebook marketplace. So at least according
Speaker 7: to all of these documents, it's saying that he put
Speaker 7: these hydrofluorocarbons and containers into his car, covered them up
Speaker 7: so he could get past you know, I guess customs
Speaker 7: as you go through the border right there when you
Speaker 7: get the check, the border check, and then basically held
Speaker 7: them until he could sell them on Facebook.
Speaker 4: Facebook.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, man, okay, granddad.
Speaker 7: Well, but I mean that's a way to sell things.
Speaker 7: That's a viable way to sell things.
Speaker 5: These do when to get scammed. It's terrible on there.
Speaker 3: Oh really, Oh dude, I've never.
Speaker 6: Had selling some furniture on Facebook Marketplace and I got
Speaker 6: way more bots, you know, then I got actual people.
Speaker 3: Just I sort of never do it again.
Speaker 7: Well I've not learned my lesson yet. I'm gonna try
Speaker 7: one day. I'm sure I'll forget that you said that,
Speaker 7: but I can't. I look forward to it. But this person,
Speaker 7: Michael Hart, he faces thirteen separate charges. Just going to
Speaker 7: give you a couple of them, conspiracy, importation contrary to law,
Speaker 7: multiple counts of selling imported merchandise contrary to law, and
Speaker 7: criminal forfeiture. He could face decades in prison if convicted
Speaker 7: on any one of the charges related to illegal importation
Speaker 7: of hydro floro carbons. And we have to just bring
Speaker 7: this up, guys. This all has to do with a
Speaker 7: newish thing from twenty twenty. It was a law that
Speaker 7: arose in twenty twenty called the aim Act. Aim Act.
Speaker 7: It gives the EPA the authority to reduce production of
Speaker 7: hydrofluoric carbons reduce consumption. I'm not sure how you do
Speaker 7: that of hydrofluoral carbons. Those are the two main things
Speaker 7: that this Amact does, right, hydrofluorocarbons you may remember as
Speaker 7: connected to or related to another thing. What have they
Speaker 7: called ben CFC's CFCs.
Speaker 3: Carbons.
Speaker 7: Yes, so these are refrigerants that you will find in
Speaker 7: your refrigerator. Everybody, right now, you've got some of these
Speaker 7: in your house. Do you have an air conditioner in
Speaker 7: your house? You probably have some of these gases that
Speaker 7: are you know, in strategic places in your house. They
Speaker 7: have to do with cooling it and.
Speaker 3: They're not illegal in that sense, or they're being phased
Speaker 3: out or what.
Speaker 6: I'm still a little confused about what the law is
Speaker 6: around these substances. Well, and a man who's paying for
Speaker 6: this stuff on Facebook marketplace?
Speaker 3: And why? I'm sorry if that's too many questions.
Speaker 7: I think, and I don't know, I haven't seen the
Speaker 7: details like that are this granular. But I think if
Speaker 7: you're in the market for hfc's or CFCs like this,
Speaker 7: you're probably working on air conditioners or or some kind
Speaker 7: of home HVAC systems as your job. Because those refrigerants
Speaker 7: are extremely expensive and you often have to go to
Speaker 7: somebody's house if you're a service person and refill the
Speaker 7: refrigerants within their AC system or their refrigerator.
Speaker 3: And maybe getting them through legal means requires a lot
Speaker 3: of licensing and hoops and stuff like that, and this
Speaker 3: is just a quicker route.
Speaker 7: To that theoretically, or it's a way for.
Speaker 8: Him to make money, right, he can buy Yeah, but
Speaker 8: the reason that people would buy it rather than go
Speaker 8: through the proper channels is because it's either cheaper or
Speaker 8: easier to get and they don't have to, you know.
Speaker 3: Fill out some forms or something. Maybe I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's just the thought.
Speaker 7: Theoretically it would it would be easier to buy it
Speaker 7: on Facebook marketplace like that, then go through all the channels.
Speaker 7: I'm assuming, but I don't know that for sure. We're
Speaker 7: gonna check back in on this and see how this
Speaker 7: first turns out. He recently appeared in federal court. He
Speaker 7: pleaded not guilty this week as we record this, and
Speaker 7: he's going to be showing back up on March twenty
Speaker 7: fifth to hang out with the US District Judge Jeffrey Miller.
Speaker 3: Exciting stuff, everybody, All.
Speaker 7: Right, let us know if you hear anything about this,
Speaker 7: or if you hear anything about hfc's and this new
Speaker 7: aim act, and we'll be right back with more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we have returned. Fellow conspiracy realists. You may recall
Speaker 4: that not too long ago we covered the concept of
Speaker 4: the fragile thing that makes the current world run the Internet.
Speaker 4: Before we get to that, because it is going to
Speaker 4: be a bit of a weird bummer, a bit of
Speaker 4: a mystery, I wanted to share with you, guys Matt's
Speaker 4: nooel dot. I wanted to share some quick things. One
Speaker 4: thing to talk about which may be good news. Did you,
Speaker 4: guys hear that credit card fees are going to get
Speaker 4: capped in the United States?
Speaker 2: Is it actually happening.
Speaker 4: It's something that will hopefully happen late. Fees with credit
Speaker 4: cards are going to be capped at eight dollars instead
Speaker 4: of the average of thirty two dollars per overdraw. And
Speaker 4: given the serious rate of credit card interest in the
Speaker 4: US and the accelerating economic inequality, I think that's a
Speaker 4: good thing if you have I'm mainly bringing this up
Speaker 4: as a mention, fellow conspiracy realist, if you have a
Speaker 4: credit card debt of any sort, please do pay it
Speaker 4: off as soon as you can. That stuff is predatory.
Speaker 4: No hyperbole there, right, Like, we've all seen that happen
Speaker 4: to people.
Speaker 3: We know.
Speaker 7: It's such a tough situation because they rack up so quickly.
Speaker 7: The way our society functions now, you'll you'll throw your
Speaker 7: credit card at things and you will not realize you've
Speaker 7: racked up one hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, three hundred dollars,
Speaker 7: and you're like, oh crap, how did I spend that
Speaker 7: much money? And I swear it's because of that disconnect
Speaker 7: now with the card or our phone or whatever the
Speaker 7: electronic transaction is. Now, it's so easy to over to
Speaker 7: overspend I guess right, or.
Speaker 4: Even to be forced in a situation where that is
Speaker 4: your only strategic move. Hopefully that is good news these
Speaker 4: write to us. I think there's a credit card episode
Speaker 4: that might be on the way. Whether it's ridiculous history
Speaker 4: or stuff they don't want you to know, we can
Speaker 4: say for sure, the way credit cards work, and the
Speaker 4: way indeed credit as a concept works, is something they
Speaker 4: don't want you to know. In the West, ask yourself,
Speaker 4: why don't you get financial literacy as a core class
Speaker 4: in high school?
Speaker 2: Because you're a battery man.
Speaker 3: That's all you are.
Speaker 7: We need to talk about capital one buying discover that's
Speaker 7: a huge deal.
Speaker 4: Shut it down. No, the show's over thirty five year. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 4: so that is hopefully good news. Also, in a stunningly
Speaker 4: late to the game opinion, the London School of Economics
Speaker 4: has concluded the thing called trickle down economics aka what
Speaker 4: is it? Horses and sparrow economics as it was once
Speaker 4: called aka tax cuts for the wealthy, turns out it
Speaker 4: doesn't work. Oh they figured it out, Happy twenty twenty
Speaker 4: four London School of Economics, lasting before we get to
Speaker 4: the main store.
Speaker 7: But Ben, Ben, you feed the horses, the horses poop,
Speaker 7: then the sparrows are satisfied.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it trickles down.
Speaker 5: Oh through, it trickles through.
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 4: Well, gravity wise, I guess, because the horse's mouth is
Speaker 4: further from the poop.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 4: This was one of the bedrocks of Reaganomics, and it
Speaker 4: turns out what it was a grift the whole time.
Speaker 4: And it's a griff that continues today with disastrous consequences
Speaker 4: for everyone listening. Even if you are benefiting from it
Speaker 4: in a short term environment, there is a long term
Speaker 4: there is a horizon ahead and this makes me think
Speaker 4: of something. Ah, guys, I don't know if we'll get
Speaker 4: to the main story, but it is important. We'll have
Speaker 4: to at least mention it. There's something on my mind.
Speaker 4: We all of us on the show now, we live
Speaker 4: in urban or suburban environments. Do you, guys hear car
Speaker 4: alarms often?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I always assume it's mine.
Speaker 6: And it's weird that I don't actually know what mine
Speaker 6: sounds like, because they're all kind of different. But it's
Speaker 6: usually not, thankfully, But man, I do doc.
Speaker 4: Can we get a just a sample of like the
Speaker 4: stereotypical car alarm?
Speaker 2: Oh god, there it is.
Speaker 4: Everybody teamed out. They heard it, and they ignored it.
Speaker 7: So weirdly enough. Where I live now, I do not
Speaker 7: hear that. But if I'm in Atlanta, like we're going
Speaker 7: to a shoot or something like, definitely will just catch it.
Speaker 7: If I've got my windows down rolling through the Atlanta
Speaker 7: I hear those sounds all the time, appear appear up here.
Speaker 7: I hear what I think are house alarms in the
Speaker 7: distance because sound carries differently out here in the boon with.
Speaker 4: Less noise pollution.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I swear I hear you're also like penetrating
Speaker 6: no no, no, yes, yeah, like laser gun sounds.
Speaker 3: You know. Yes.
Speaker 4: I feel like if we if we all lived further
Speaker 4: out in this mountainous compound that I fantasize about increasingly,
Speaker 4: then we are are. A car alarm would be more effective,
Speaker 4: A house alarm would be more effective, even if it
Speaker 4: was just a recording of one of us yelling.
Speaker 7: Hey, seriously, some dudes out here yelling to call you guys.
Speaker 2: I just called.
Speaker 4: So. The problem is, and I think this is what
Speaker 4: we're getting at specifically here, Noel. The problem is that
Speaker 4: those things, when they become ubiquitous and familiar, just like
Speaker 4: when you're driving in the city, Matt, they're easy to ignore, right.
Speaker 4: They become part of your sort of sonic environment, like
Speaker 4: nol Win is, for instance, in your neck of the woods.
Speaker 4: When is the last time you heard a car alarm
Speaker 4: and went, holy smokes, I better go outside.
Speaker 5: Jimmy stuck in the well? I don't never. It's just annoyance, and.
Speaker 3: It is a it's noise pollution, that's all it is.
Speaker 4: So Unfortunately, a similar thing is happening in hospitals. Oh geez, yeah,
Speaker 4: the hospital.
Speaker 2: Wow, that Ben, I'm doing.
Speaker 4: A little conversational parkour. So we started with the good stuff.
Speaker 4: Now we're gonna do once like if you work in UH,
Speaker 4: if you were in the medical industry, if you work
Speaker 4: in hospitals in particular, first off, thank you. We recognize
Speaker 4: the caliber of your work, and we understand the emotional
Speaker 4: toll it has to take, an indeed, the physical toll,
Speaker 4: especially in an ongoing pandemic hospital workers. It turns out
Speaker 4: here up to one thousand alarm noises per shift. This
Speaker 4: is coming to us from New Atlas courtesy of Paul McClure,
Speaker 4: and this just came out this month as we record.
Speaker 4: And what happens when you hear all those beats, even
Speaker 4: if you are a trained professional, is that you will
Speaker 4: encounter semantic satiation, you know, or you.
Speaker 3: Will encounter centory overlook.
Speaker 4: So like semantic satiation is where you take a word
Speaker 4: like ambassador, and you just say it so often or
Speaker 4: hear it so often it loses its meaning. It becomes
Speaker 4: a series of just random noises.
Speaker 6: Say her a name in the mirror over and over again.
Speaker 6: It'll start to sound real weird in your head, like
Speaker 6: it's it's an interesting phenomenon. It doesn't even take that
Speaker 6: many times, and I can speak from personal experience so
Speaker 6: recently in a hospital with a loved one. These alarms
Speaker 6: happen all the time for pretty innocuous reasons too. They're
Speaker 6: not all coding events or like flatlining events. Some of
Speaker 6: them are just oh, the battery and the ivy.
Speaker 3: Pole to your place.
Speaker 6: And I had to go get someone several times, mainly
Speaker 6: because it was just obnoxious and we were you know,
Speaker 6: unpleasant in the room and they were none the wiser
Speaker 6: until I told them about it. But again, you have
Speaker 6: to assume there's you know, if it's really serious, it'll
Speaker 6: flash a light or do something extra, one would hope,
Speaker 6: but what are you finding?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 4: We always want to assume that there is someone at
Speaker 4: the wheel right, and unfortunately that is not always the case.
Speaker 4: As McLure points out McClure themselves being a former ICU
Speaker 4: Intensive care unit nurse. McClure points out that a study
Speaker 4: found in the journal Critical Care Medicine discovered that only
Speaker 4: fifteen percent of all of these alarms, all these hospital
Speaker 4: beeps in a critical care environment are quote clinically relevant,
Speaker 4: which means that you'll hear a ton of beeps, and
Speaker 4: only fifteen percent of them will be the hurry up
Speaker 4: and runs that will lead to what is portrayed as
Speaker 4: alarm fatigue desensitization. Just like if you live in a
Speaker 4: city you hear car alarms all the time, you think
Speaker 4: somebody just bumped into some other car when they were parking,
Speaker 4: somebody clicked their little keyfob wrong, and you might not
Speaker 4: immediately think a car is being broken into, or a
Speaker 4: serious situation and is escalating. I don't know, man, I
Speaker 4: just would to point that out. I don't know what
Speaker 4: to do with it. It's just it's getting to be
Speaker 4: rethinking a lot of things.
Speaker 7: We need a new position in all hospitals, and that
Speaker 7: is the alarm technician in the minder.
Speaker 4: Oh oh, town crier.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's all this person does. They just hear the beafs,
Speaker 7: they go check. Oh that's nothing, hear the beep, go check.
Speaker 2: Oh help. Hey, it's like our car alarm.
Speaker 7: Right, It's exactly like our car alarm.
Speaker 4: So I want to shout out two of the authors
Speaker 4: of the study that McClure also cites. These are Joseph
Speaker 4: Schlessinger and Michael Schutz, who are looking into just like
Speaker 4: with car alarms, they're looking into how changing those sonic
Speaker 4: notifications might help medical professionals be on the ball. Perhaps
Speaker 4: we could build a hierarchy of sound there, and perhaps
Speaker 4: that already exists. You know, this is something that we
Speaker 4: can only learn about, not being medical professionals. We can
Speaker 4: only learn about it through terrible personal experience, as you indicated,
Speaker 4: as we've all been in that situation at some point.
Speaker 4: Or we can learn about it through the magic of
Speaker 4: the internet un less noh oh, the pivot, yeah, the
Speaker 4: turn unless uh our internet gets cut off? Do you
Speaker 4: guys remember when we recently did that episode about undersea cables.
Speaker 3: Most definitely things about when you put in that context,
Speaker 3: but I'm not superversed on the nature of this region particularly,
Speaker 3: or like the conflicts that are going on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going to talk about the Red Sea as
Speaker 4: we end our recording here.
Speaker 7: Uh oh wait, that wasn't that the place that we
Speaker 7: focused on as being one of the most vulnerable areas?
Speaker 4: But no way, no, really we did, right, Yes we did. Yeah, So,
Speaker 4: what's a what's like a quick, hot and dirty recap
Speaker 4: of under the internet communication?
Speaker 7: The Internet as you know it, I wherever you are
Speaker 7: on the continent which you live, it flows from your
Speaker 7: continent through these undersea cables that are buried or sometimes
Speaker 7: just hanging out at the bottom of the ocean, and
Speaker 7: it travels. Let's imagine all the way from North America
Speaker 7: to Africa, all the way from parts of what everywhere,
Speaker 7: Every continent basically is connected up through the snaking undersea
Speaker 7: cables and they are actually the Internet tubes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: If you imagine the server for whatever service you're using
Speaker 7: that you're accessing via the Internet isn't on the continent
Speaker 7: where you preside, then you are accessing that stuff from
Speaker 7: a server that is across these tubes.
Speaker 4: Perfect. Yeah. So on September twentieth and twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: as the Humans wreckon the calendar, we publish an episode
Speaker 4: about what we call the underwater Internet spoiler. That's a
Speaker 4: redundant phrase, just like vennumber or ATM machine, the Internet
Speaker 4: is underwater. And ever since the days of Samuel Morse
Speaker 4: and the Telegraph, that has been the case for global communication.
Speaker 4: Satellites are very important and also likewise fragile, but way
Speaker 4: more of your daily global online activity is going through
Speaker 4: tubes or depending on those undersea tubes. And recently that
Speaker 4: came to the four of the conversation because in the
Speaker 4: Red Sea several tubes got cut. There we're talking about
Speaker 4: the We'll give you the names of these lines and
Speaker 4: this comes to us from HGC Global Communications out of
Speaker 4: Hong Kong. One of the lines is Asia Africa Europe one,
Speaker 4: the other one is the Europe India Gateway, and then
Speaker 4: there's c COMM and TG in Golf. This affected twenty
Speaker 4: five percent of the Internet traffic flowing through the Red Sea.
Speaker 4: This is just like it might sound weird to talk
Speaker 4: about a bunch of zeros and ones on the same
Speaker 4: level of a mining resource or oil, but it's very
Speaker 4: much the case in global civilization to day.
Speaker 7: Because these are international, international transfers of money.
Speaker 3: Often.
Speaker 7: Yes, that's what's going through these That's one of the
Speaker 7: primary things that happens through these.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So what the initial reporting said, I never thought
Speaker 4: we'd be in this position, guys. The initial reporting says
Speaker 4: that the UTI forces in Yemen had purposely cut the cables,
Speaker 4: and to be completely transparent, in our previous episode, we
Speaker 4: pointed out the vulnerability and indeed you could argue that
Speaker 4: we dic did something like this occurring. However, also in
Speaker 4: fairness to our little initiative, here. We did not say
Speaker 4: we were going to do it. We didn't we didn't
Speaker 4: name any specific force that was going.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 4: We pointed out the vulnerability exist, right.
Speaker 5: Yes, I had to say yes.
Speaker 7: And just to be clear, we weren't the only people
Speaker 7: talking about that for the past couple of years, because
Speaker 7: it's just one of these things. It's like, once you
Speaker 7: realize that's how it happens and that's how vulnerable it is,
Speaker 7: I think it's right to say, hey, maybe we should
Speaker 7: find something to do because a ship's anchor like has
Speaker 7: breached these cables several times since we recorded that episode,
Speaker 7: just accidentally because they dropped anchor in the wrong.
Speaker 4: Place, and that is the most plausible explanation here. Again,
Speaker 4: we're not We're not making a larger comment regarding the
Speaker 4: current instability, the massacres against civilians and Yemen, nor are
Speaker 4: we talking about the other problems on the horizon for
Speaker 4: that region. What we're saying is it has always been
Speaker 4: a statistical inevitability. It has been a statistical certitude that
Speaker 4: something this crucial and this vulnerable would be damaged in
Speaker 4: the wake of chaos. And what most likely happened, as
Speaker 4: we in tonight's program. Is this no who These are
Speaker 4: targeting ships, killing some ships. And when these ships get hit,
Speaker 4: some of them are big old boys. And those big
Speaker 4: old boys have big old anchors, and those anchors when
Speaker 4: a ship is compromised, when it is damaged, those anchors
Speaker 4: just drag willy nilly across stuff. So what probably happened,
Speaker 4: best guess right now, what probably happened was a consequence,
Speaker 4: an unforeseen consequence occurred. And this is not again, this
Speaker 4: is not us defending anyone. If anything, this is us
Speaker 4: pointing out once again, when elephants make war, man, it's
Speaker 4: the grass. The grass is the first thing to go.
Speaker 4: Turns out, the same thing happens when they make love. Sorry,
Speaker 4: that's true. You know well, making love is kind of
Speaker 4: like making war.
Speaker 3: It's a little weird. It's not like a little person.
Speaker 5: To say that make love.
Speaker 3: It's as bad as make WHOOPI.
Speaker 7: Jeez with make love as war?
Speaker 3: Metal?
Speaker 4: Right, that is metal af radical affection, radical empathy. Uh.
Speaker 4: We want to hear your thoughts on this, folks. We
Speaker 4: want to hear your thoughts on the vulnerability of this
Speaker 4: fragile thing we call human civilization. We want to hear
Speaker 4: about the last time you encountered military craft in the wild.
Speaker 4: Out out to our fellow conspiracy realist who who hipped
Speaker 4: us to a very true story about aircraft being stored
Speaker 4: in a Walmart in the middle of nowhere. Uh and uh,
Speaker 4: we want to hear about your experience, uh in willy
Speaker 4: Wonka Land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you went.
Speaker 6: I mean it sounds like a lot of the reports
Speaker 6: back to are like, well that was worth. The price
Speaker 6: of admission is to be part of history.
Speaker 4: They would make money. Hand over AI fist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: They haven't quite figured out fists yet, are they. They
Speaker 5: still look a little.
Speaker 2: Hands in general?
Speaker 7: Can can you put your hands on top of my hands?
Speaker 2: Why a picture for the website?
Speaker 4: Why did that come to you so hard? That one guy?
Speaker 4: All right, Okay, well we're gonna we're gonna call it
Speaker 4: an evening. We're off to noctivigate. We hope you join us.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: Boy do we ever?
Speaker 6: You can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where
Speaker 6: we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 6: We are also conspiracy Stuff on YouTube, where we have amazing,
Speaker 6: exciting video content coming your way. We were all really
Speaker 6: in the tickled before this episode if you couldn't tell,
Speaker 6: because we were looking at some edits that Matt is
Speaker 6: working on for an upcoming video series hopefully that we
Speaker 6: are all just so excited about.
Speaker 5: So you'll see that on YouTube.
Speaker 6: You'll also see that stuff on Instagram and TikTok, where
Speaker 6: we exist at the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 7: Hey, do you want to call us? Call one eight
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Speaker 7: more to say than can fit in that voicemail, why
Speaker 7: not instead shoot us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are the folks who read every email we get,
Speaker 4: so long as those Internet cables work. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio
Speaker 4: dot com.
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