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 this 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 Nolan.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis codename Doc
Speaker 4: Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this
Speaker 4: the stuff they don't want you to know. Congratulations fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realist. We have made it closer to the end
Speaker 4: of February and as a bit of a small celebration
Speaker 4: here we are sharing the stories of our fellow listeners.
Speaker 4: We are going to learn about one of our favorite things, uh,
Speaker 4: fast food conspiracies.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: We are going to dive into an incredibly troubling story
Speaker 4: about uh, about true crime that remains unanswered today. Before
Speaker 4: we do any of that, we're going to go to
Speaker 4: our voicemail banks with an excellent question about street lights.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, street what's the song with street lights people?
Speaker 3: Okay, just to find em?
Speaker 2: Is that what it is?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, street lights, guys, let's hear from Matt. Not this
Speaker 2: one of a different, Matt, traffic lights or street lights?
Speaker 2: Street lights? Baby, Okay, got it?
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, all lights can be street lights. You know
Speaker 4: what I mean?
Speaker 2: These are the lamps that illuminate streets and roads in
Speaker 2: your part of town.
Speaker 3: Guaranteed.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 7: Hi, my name's Matt, Matthew matthas all good. I was
Speaker 7: wondering if you can help me research the purples that
Speaker 7: are appearing.
Speaker 6: Near like rest areas and main off ramps off of
Speaker 6: highways and interstates. I live up in Washington's Olympic Peninsula,
Speaker 6: and I've noticed there's lights close to the Walmart. I
Speaker 6: drove my son to Oregon and there's purple lights near
Speaker 6: the rest area. And be honest with you, they're quite
Speaker 6: helpful because if you know there's purple lights, you can
Speaker 6: pull over and hit the rest area. So I was
Speaker 6: wondering why nobody talks about it. I talked with my
Speaker 6: thirteen year old son about it. You know, the entire drive,
Speaker 6: well not the entire drive, but nonetheless, can you help
Speaker 6: me figure out what's going on? Because I think it's
Speaker 6: a good idea, but some people may not like it.
Speaker 6: All right, guys, love your show, haven't missed them one
Speaker 6: trust me. It's part of my life that I can't
Speaker 6: get rid of, kind of like my finger. So uh, steph,
Speaker 6: you don't want to know you're my pinky finger, and
Speaker 6: I won't pitch you off ever. All right, love guys, bye.
Speaker 3: Just just don't cross the y.
Speaker 4: That's a very very interesting reference, Matt Matthias or Matthew.
Speaker 2: Isn't it?
Speaker 5: You know? I think the reason that I was confused
Speaker 5: or I was asking about traffic lights because in my mind,
Speaker 5: I'm like, what if there was a fourth color of
Speaker 5: traffic light it was purple and then and then they
Speaker 5: were just spontaneously doing that without being programmed.
Speaker 3: Or having the right color lens to you, So, oh
Speaker 3: that will is wild. Why wouldn't this be happening? This
Speaker 3: is very interesting.
Speaker 4: Also, to be clear, I could have totally been in
Speaker 4: one of these environments and had no idea.
Speaker 3: Ah because of the color.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, well purple would signify turn around, right, so
Speaker 2: it's like go slow down, stop turn around.
Speaker 4: Purple might just be like vibe it, you know, vibe
Speaker 4: it out, feel, vibe it out, you know, situational awareness.
Speaker 4: See if the other countries are cool. But this is
Speaker 4: not what we're talking about. We're not talking about traffic lights, right, Matt,
Speaker 4: we're talking I'm gonna call you Matt Prime for this.
Speaker 4: We're talking about we're talking about just your conventional like
Speaker 4: in the West, you often see iodine sort of colored lights,
Speaker 4: right like.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, for a long time, there was a very
Speaker 2: specific kind of orange e glow that street lights had,
Speaker 2: and pretty much every city in at least the United
Speaker 2: States a lot of countries states have their own kind
Speaker 2: of thing because everybody's got their own little contracts, right
Speaker 2: with a company that provides specific bulbs for specific light
Speaker 2: fixtures that all get you know, they're all the same,
Speaker 2: and they get set up along all the streets. Often
Speaker 2: it's even by a municipality sometimes like it's the local government.
Speaker 2: In this case, we are talking about LED lights, the
Speaker 2: new fangled LED lights that are coming out that everybody's seeing, buddy,
Speaker 2: which I love, by the way, I love the other day.
Speaker 5: They don't get hot, they can be like every color.
Speaker 5: I'm a big fan of the Hue light system. I
Speaker 5: got them all over my house and they're really neat
Speaker 5: and very powerful.
Speaker 4: And that's short for light emitting diode.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it's they're electric. I don't know they're electronic lights. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not burning anything, right, And even with an incandescent bulb,
Speaker 2: you're not like those. You're not burning a filament or
Speaker 2: a piece of metal or substance that's in there. It's
Speaker 2: just a diode that goes woo, there's light here when
Speaker 2: you shoot, Like.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Cartel, your touch.
Speaker 5: It's just so impressive because typically we think of light
Speaker 5: as being associated with heat, but not the case with these.
Speaker 5: I mean, you can leave the LEDs on indefinitely and
Speaker 5: they won't produce any heat at all.
Speaker 4: Yes, well I think they have a heat sink, right,
Speaker 4: because they're semiconductors, I guess.
Speaker 5: So all I know is that, you know, I can
Speaker 5: leave my hue stuff on and it's still remain They
Speaker 5: remain cool to the touch. So it's impressive technology, and
Speaker 5: it's you know, and they're being used more and more
Speaker 5: in film production and then like light shows, and they're
Speaker 5: better for the environment because they last a lot longer,
Speaker 5: you know, all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: But why are they purple?
Speaker 3: Though? Yeah, good question?
Speaker 2: Why are they purple? There are a ton of conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories rolling around on ye old Internet about why these
Speaker 2: purple lights are occurring. On interstates and rest what do
Speaker 2: we call rest stations rest areas across the United States.
Speaker 2: They've been seen in Washington State, Greensboro, Alabama, Wichita, Kansas, Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: and yes, boys, Atlanta, Georgia. They've been seen pretty much
Speaker 2: in every major city. And there's a reason for it,
Speaker 2: and it has to do with the way LEDs have
Speaker 2: evolved and the technology used to turn the the light
Speaker 2: that's coming out of the actual that's being emitted from
Speaker 2: the actual LED. How to turn that this pleasant kind
Speaker 2: of bluish white color that we're all kind of now
Speaker 2: used to, or even a slightly more orange white color. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: so we know RGB. What's RGB, guys.
Speaker 5: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Roy J.
Speaker 2: Bib besides red, black and green, which I think we
Speaker 2: all know is very important, but also there's sorry Ben
Speaker 2: shut out. But it is red, blue green, and that
Speaker 2: is the light spectrum, right, that's how we view light now.
Speaker 2: It was discovered quite a while back that if you
Speaker 2: took a blue LED, right, an LED that is designed
Speaker 2: to give off blue light exclusively, then you put it
Speaker 2: in a bit of a vacuum, right, seal it up
Speaker 2: and inside that vacuum, you put some phosphor, this yellow phosphor,
Speaker 2: you can create this exact hue of white that you're
Speaker 2: looking for. And you only need one blue LED rather
Speaker 2: than a series of LEDs that would create white light
Speaker 2: when it shines through.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: And the great thing is, guys, you could manufacture that
Speaker 2: white LED light a lot cheaper than if you put
Speaker 2: a more complicated series of LEDs into one bulb. Right,
Speaker 2: So you're gonna save a ton of money and be
Speaker 2: able to sell a cheaper bulb if you use this
Speaker 2: blue LED yellow phosphor combination. And that is a thing
Speaker 2: that a company figured out how to do this. It's
Speaker 2: an Acuity sub brand called American Electric Lighting. Acuity is
Speaker 2: like this huge company that controls a lot of the
Speaker 2: LED game that's going on right now. It's huge. We
Speaker 2: need to actually look into them just a little bit,
Speaker 2: but it's a huge company. American Electric Lighting is their
Speaker 2: sub brand, and they created these LED bulbs, and these
Speaker 2: LED bulbs. Boys, the reason why it's purple, it's so simple,
Speaker 2: and it's really kind of sad. The container that's on
Speaker 2: top of that blue LED is starting to fray and
Speaker 2: break away, so more and more blue light is escaping
Speaker 2: and it's creating this purple hue, so you're still getting
Speaker 2: some of the yellow coverage, which is it's just changing
Speaker 2: the basically the color temperature of the light.
Speaker 5: So it's a design flaw essentially in the.
Speaker 4: Case not planned ops lessons.
Speaker 2: Well allegedly it's not planned ops lescence according to the
Speaker 2: major stories, and there's not a ton coming out of
Speaker 2: the company Aquit that owns the sub brand, but it
Speaker 2: is just a flaw in the manufacturing process. So they
Speaker 2: these things were supposed to last significantly longer, but they
Speaker 2: did not, And across not only the US, but in Vancouver,
Speaker 2: in parts of Canada and other places where these same
Speaker 2: bulbs have been shipped, they're all experiencing it. So there's
Speaker 2: basically a great purpling that is occurring and will continue
Speaker 2: to occur until these led bulbs get replaced, which is happening,
Speaker 2: by the way, in across the United States.
Speaker 5: I don't really fully understand the tech behind this, but
Speaker 5: I do know that you know Phillips another you know
Speaker 5: Lighting Mega Megalith that makes the hue bulbs. You can
Speaker 5: buy bulbs that only do white, and they're significantly cheaper
Speaker 5: than the ones that do like every color, which is,
Speaker 5: you know, the hue bulbs that I have in my system.
Speaker 5: So I'm wondering if it's a similar deal with those
Speaker 5: where I guess the color changing ones have some sort
Speaker 5: of series of LED lights that can then combine in
Speaker 5: various mixes to create whatever color and blend that you're
Speaker 5: looking for.
Speaker 2: There are a lot more components in a bulb like that, right,
Speaker 2: which means there are significantly more expensive to manufacture, which
Speaker 2: means the price point for the end user is quite
Speaker 2: a bit higher. Phillips bulbs, they're not as a big
Speaker 2: player in the game anymore because they make these what
Speaker 2: a lot of people consider higher quality bulbs because they're
Speaker 2: more expensive because they're more components within them. These are
Speaker 2: like if you imagine if you've ever been to a
Speaker 2: home depot or or Lows are one of those places.
Speaker 2: And I just did this for my parents, like a
Speaker 2: couple of weekends ago. I bought like a sixteen pack
Speaker 2: of bulbs, you know, and you're going to replace all
Speaker 2: the bulbs in a house that's got old incandescent. Still,
Speaker 2: they're super cheap compared to like any of the other
Speaker 2: major LED bulbs.
Speaker 4: Especially if you buy in bulk.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I did something recently. I was not caught up with
Speaker 4: light technology because I'm not a friend of the lights.
Speaker 4: But but I've found a it's a dumb story. I
Speaker 4: want to be too versatile here, but I'll show you
Speaker 4: guys a picture. I replaced a bunch of lights with
Speaker 4: LED ones, and I got the wrong wattage, and so
Speaker 4: now it looks like there's a dexter level like crime
Speaker 4: scene lit up whenever I turned on this thing in
Speaker 4: the kitchen. The idea though with color, it's not hurting anyone, right,
Speaker 4: Matt Prime, Then Matt Matthias.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not hurting anyone. And as Matthias said, it
Speaker 2: actually was super helpful because I knew where the rest
Speaker 2: areas were because I could see them way down the highway.
Speaker 2: I mean, but again, it's kind of the point. The
Speaker 2: point is to be able to see the sign that
Speaker 2: says rest area and to be able to allegedly legibly
Speaker 2: read that and then get to where the rest area is. Sure,
Speaker 2: but you know this is also happening in neighborhoods. So
Speaker 2: you guys, especially here in Atlanta, on some of the streets,
Speaker 2: if you're in I'm just trying to think of areas
Speaker 2: like East Atlanta when you're rolling through and there are
Speaker 2: purple lights, and it just looks eerie and strange, like
Speaker 2: it shouldn't be that.
Speaker 5: Way, especially on a foggy night, which is.
Speaker 2: Why there are conspiracy theories like, oh, they're marking. They're
Speaker 2: marking areas of like high vaccinations, or they're marking areas.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere. There's all kinds of theories out there about
Speaker 2: what these purple lights could mean. Some of them said, uh,
Speaker 2: what was one. Oh, if you've received the vaccine, you
Speaker 2: will glow underneath these purple lights, and that's how that
Speaker 2: and receive five G.
Speaker 4: I like how straightforward that is, you know, it's very efficacious. Also,
Speaker 4: I think I know the part of East Atlanta that
Speaker 4: you're talking about, Matt and our Fair Metropolis. I thought
Speaker 4: the lights were blue because I had earlier, oh god,
Speaker 4: years back, I had you know, I couldn't tell if
Speaker 4: they were purple, but I had been in a blue
Speaker 4: street light situation. You guys know, I'm activitate quite often,
Speaker 4: and I've found like.
Speaker 2: Those are red lights.
Speaker 3: Men.
Speaker 4: You would have to tell You would have to be
Speaker 4: there to tell me, because I wouldn't know. But I
Speaker 4: could see blue. Okay, Uh, there's the there's this thing
Speaker 4: that's been going for a number of years. There is
Speaker 4: a widespread belief that a couple of municipalities in the world,
Speaker 4: particularly in East Asia and uh, I want to say
Speaker 4: Western Europe, replace their typically yellow street lights with blue
Speaker 4: lights in an attempt to reduce crime and also suicide rates.
Speaker 4: Have you guys ever heard that?
Speaker 5: No, I guess it reminds me of those lights that
Speaker 5: people buy and places where it stays dark for early
Speaker 5: long time to keep you from being depressed the sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it does remind me of some of the psychologies,
Speaker 2: the psychological studies on color, like with restaurants and element.
Speaker 3: Yellows and hungry.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me, like, I wonder how hard that
Speaker 2: science is, but but it is, you know, it seems
Speaker 2: like something to rock hard.
Speaker 4: So it's like Tokyo, Tokyo and Glasgow in Scotland. Well,
Speaker 4: Tokyo and Japan, Glasgow in Scotland. Sorry, apologies if there's
Speaker 4: a town called Glasgow, Japan. You know, we all need
Speaker 4: to learn more about geography, I guess. But I read
Speaker 4: that this this delations purposeful installation of blue colored street
Speaker 4: lights had reduced crime. And so when I first heard
Speaker 4: this idea you introduced this to Matt Prime and Matthias
Speaker 4: about purpling of lights, I wondered whether it was purpleseful
Speaker 4: give me that, give me that, uh, give me that.
Speaker 5: I was going to ask too, I'm speaking of lighting conspiracies.
Speaker 5: Are are incandescent bulbs still being produced? And if so, yes,
Speaker 5: what is the reason for purchasing those? Ever over the
Speaker 5: much more cost effective and energy efficient LED.
Speaker 4: Bulbs short form affordability? It just costs less that at
Speaker 4: the front it hazard.
Speaker 5: Because you know, I mean, for a while, there was
Speaker 5: probably resistance uh not to make an electrical pun two
Speaker 5: LED bulbs, you know from more lets. I guacy manufacturers
Speaker 5: until they were able to get on the LED train themselves,
Speaker 5: and then you know, start pivoting their business model to those.
Speaker 2: I'll just give you an example of my parents. Literally
Speaker 2: a couple of weekends ago, I went up there. I
Speaker 2: noticed that several of their bulbs were out up in
Speaker 2: their upstairs bedroom, and I was like, huh, that's weird.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hey, mom, do you have any more lights?
Speaker 6: Mom?
Speaker 2: You got lights? She's like, oh, yeah, I got some bulbs.
Speaker 2: She brings to me a box of bulbs that I
Speaker 2: think she's had since nineteen ninety six or something, and
Speaker 2: they are all incandescent bulbs. And I go and I
Speaker 2: unscrew a couple in the bedroom. They're all incandescent bulbs.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, what is happening here?
Speaker 3: Did you not get the memo?
Speaker 2: And she had a box full of working incandescent bulbs
Speaker 2: that she just kept around that for one reason or another.
Speaker 2: I guess they just if you buy like a pack
Speaker 2: of four, but you only need two or three, the
Speaker 2: extra one goes in this box or something. I wonder
Speaker 2: how many people are still, you know, doing that.
Speaker 5: Working through their giant bulk purchases these replacement balls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Surprising they lasted that long, though, Matt, Dude, you know,
Speaker 5: because they typically don't have that long of a life.
Speaker 2: I'm being facetious when I say since ninety six.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's really quite insane how much longer led
Speaker 5: bulbs last. I mean it's borderline like forever. It's kind
Speaker 5: of crazy how long those things last.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agreed. So really, guys, in conclusion, there's
Speaker 2: not much to this. I highly recommend everybody read The
Speaker 2: Great Purpling from Adam Rodgers, writing for Business Insider, was
Speaker 2: published on November twenty ninth, twenty twenty two. Fantastic read
Speaker 2: The Great Purpling, and according to that, reports of these
Speaker 2: purple street lights have been coming through since twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: roughly from everywhere, from Ireland, Florida, North Carolina, New Mexico.
Speaker 2: Just everybody is getting these lights. So I don't think
Speaker 2: it's anything to worry about.
Speaker 5: It really more speaks to the skin ale of the
Speaker 5: company that we're talking about, which is probably one reason
Speaker 5: why it's smart to be smart on our end to
Speaker 5: look into that. You know, when you have like a
Speaker 5: company like that that's just spreading their wares, you know,
Speaker 5: internationally like that and then has this inherent design flaw
Speaker 5: that starts to get people freaking out.
Speaker 4: And I'm concused myself, but I think it's super cool.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say good.
Speaker 4: If I can't see it, it sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, to Ben's point, like, should we have some cities
Speaker 2: that are this like black light kind of color or
Speaker 2: a city that's like got it's a laser tag, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: like that's this is the hue of what Charleston South Carolina.
Speaker 5: That's a really good idea interesting choice. It's like the
Speaker 5: choice of Christmas decorations in a downtown municipality.
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it would be cool identity. What would your
Speaker 2: cities color be? Let us know. We'll tell you how
Speaker 2: to contact us at the end of this. We'll be
Speaker 2: right now, sponsors.
Speaker 5: And we've returned with another message from you. This message
Speaker 5: comes to us from k Night k and I ght.
Speaker 3: I think that's a nickname. But this is a fun one.
Speaker 3: Here we go.
Speaker 5: Hey, guys, love the podcast. I've got a funny one
Speaker 5: for you. I've worked jobs wherein my car was my desk.
Speaker 5: Driving around involved taking my lunches at various fast food
Speaker 5: joints to save time. During COVID years, I found myself
Speaker 5: noticing a weird trend. Mind you, this is purely anecdotal,
Speaker 5: but when I would order extra ranch at places like
Speaker 5: Burger King, I'd almost always have to go back inside
Speaker 5: after it was left out of my bag, or would
Speaker 5: just huff to myself a disappointment and drive away in
Speaker 5: defeat with my sauceless fries. Supply chain shortages were and
Speaker 5: still are a thing, but I started to wonder do
Speaker 5: some restaurants do this on purpose? Do some big chains
Speaker 5: do this to make millions? Here's where it gets interesting. BK,
Speaker 5: that's Burger King charges anywhere from ten to twenty five
Speaker 5: cents per ranch pack. I imagine other drive through restaurants
Speaker 5: are comparable. Let's assume some math here, based on at
Speaker 5: least some realism. BK sells two point one billion whoppers
Speaker 5: per year. Let's assume roughly half of them are meals
Speaker 5: with a medium fry. Let's then assume about a quarter
Speaker 5: of those are meals with an extra sauce, Because what
Speaker 5: monster eats fries without sauce. That's two hundred and sixty
Speaker 5: two million, five hundred thousand BK meals with sauce added
Speaker 5: on at for simple mathsake, an average of ten cents
Speaker 5: per ranch or buffalo, et cetera dipping sauce. That's a
Speaker 5: profit margin of twenty six million, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: thousand dollars on sauce. And I imagine the sauce is
Speaker 5: peanuts on the margins to produce. Let's say for each
Speaker 5: ten cent ranch pack, a penny was needed to produce it.
Speaker 5: That still leaves us with an incredible net profit of
Speaker 5: over twenty million on sauce backs sold per year. If
Speaker 5: you're burger king in the midst of a supply chain shortage. However,
Speaker 5: would you really want to be making twenty million when
Speaker 5: you could recoup the lost funds by basically selling the
Speaker 5: sauce and not giving it out. Let's imagine as a
Speaker 5: hypothetical that one out of every ten customers is accidentally
Speaker 5: robbed of their sauce due to a drive through worker
Speaker 5: honestly forgetting to add it. Let's be honest, they are
Speaker 5: doing intense work on their feet on the daily and
Speaker 5: genuinely forget about sauces at times. Let's also assume for
Speaker 5: complicated orders, another sauce on average is lost. Then let's
Speaker 5: assume a manager, to make up lost revenue, encourages its
Speaker 5: staff to forget on purpose one sauce per ten customers.
Speaker 5: That brings us to seven sauces per ten ordered actually
Speaker 5: landing in the bag. That's thirty percent of the sauce
Speaker 5: profit million, eight hundred and seventy five thousand dollars being
Speaker 5: forgotten on purpose or with intention that that will be
Speaker 5: sold at that price without a need for profit loss
Speaker 5: due to supply. In essence, BK makes more than the
Speaker 5: twenty six million on the sauce. They make the grand
Speaker 5: total of over thirty million as a result of leaving
Speaker 5: it out of thirty percent of orders. This is a
Speaker 5: certified lost in the sauce moment that I thought you
Speaker 5: might enjoy. Feel free to call me Kilo on the air. Okay,
Speaker 5: there we go, where Kylo is what we were calling
Speaker 5: our friend here And if you use this and feel
Speaker 5: free to include everything above and wordsmith its if you
Speaker 5: need to keep up the great work.
Speaker 3: Figured this oddity of an idea would be.
Speaker 5: A nice respite from some of the more serious stuff
Speaker 5: take care woo interesting stuff. I mean, yeah, when you
Speaker 5: think about the scale of these types of you know, restaurants,
Speaker 5: these international conglomerates, and I never really thought about how
Speaker 5: the sauce adds up. I certainly have been to places
Speaker 5: that don't, at least on paper, charge you for every sauce.
Speaker 5: But there are certainly places that do you ask for
Speaker 5: extra sauce. And if you actually take the time to
Speaker 5: look at your itemized receipt, you'll see a couple of
Speaker 5: ten cent charges or whatever for the sauce.
Speaker 3: And especially if you're.
Speaker 5: At, like maybe a slightly more bespoke or upper end
Speaker 5: fast food place, they'll definitely charge you for the sauce,
Speaker 5: especially if they have like branded you know, you know,
Speaker 5: nice kind of proprietary sauces, like a Chick fil A
Speaker 5: or what have you. But what do you guys make
Speaker 5: of this idea of intentional leaving out of the sauce
Speaker 5: in order to recoup some of this stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think it's a little bit of
Speaker 3: a stretch.
Speaker 5: I think it's interesting to think about that.
Speaker 4: It is perhaps conspiratorial, and Kylo, I really appreciate your
Speaker 4: time here. It is, however, quite plausible in that we
Speaker 4: remember the franchise model rules of today, such that a
Speaker 4: lot of fast food enterprises, though they may seem uniform,
Speaker 4: are little fiefdoms regionally of their own. And that's why
Speaker 4: you hear little taglines like with participating locations right for
Speaker 4: any kind of deal, because ultimately those franchisees can make
Speaker 4: the decision over what gets charge. I also could argue
Speaker 4: like this is plausible due to the concept of shrink flation.
Speaker 4: You know, remember when nuggets went from x number to
Speaker 4: y number in some locations. That's because you know, increasingly
Speaker 4: As food cost skyrocket here in the US, people are
Speaker 4: going to fast food locations less often. It's kind of weird,
Speaker 4: you know, we see this trend that's been going on,
Speaker 4: like definitely definitely escalating during the pandemic. So I would say,
Speaker 4: is Burger king overall, Like are they having boardroom meetings
Speaker 4: where they're like, we got to start screwing people over
Speaker 4: on the sauces? Probably probably not, but are franchisees maybe
Speaker 4: doing that to save cost? I think it's quite well
Speaker 4: because we talked about it in the past. The restaurant
Speaker 4: business is tough. It's cut through and those margins are
Speaker 4: pretty slim unless you get to like Michelin star level.
Speaker 5: And Matt, I know you had a theory here or
Speaker 5: you were this was an incredulous I think maybe you were.
Speaker 5: You were a little skeptical. But I also want to
Speaker 5: point out that there are some overarching corporations that have
Speaker 5: a much stronger grasp over what their franchisees do and
Speaker 5: don't do. You know, where you really have to like
Speaker 5: fall in line and like do the things, do the promotions.
Speaker 5: And you're right, Ben, there are others where it is
Speaker 5: participating locations et cetera. But then you have stuff like
Speaker 5: Chick fil A, where I mean the uniformity in those
Speaker 5: locations are pretty across the board, you know. But Matt,
Speaker 5: what are your thoughts here on? Well, what could possibly
Speaker 5: be going on? Is this good intentioned forgetfulness, you know,
Speaker 5: or is there something deeper at play?
Speaker 2: I just would agree with what Ben was saying. I
Speaker 2: think you cannot account for the individual actions of someone
Speaker 2: who was working the line on burger king, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody who just may accidentally forget that one, but wouldn't
Speaker 2: forget the sauce every time, but once every twenty four
Speaker 2: forty orders forgets to put the sauce in the bag
Speaker 2: or something, right, I think that's what it is. That's
Speaker 2: what I've experienced. Sometimes I get a sauce, sometimes I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't feel like there's any big
Speaker 2: money grab here, because the money grab is charging ten
Speaker 2: to twenty five cents for a sauce packet like what
Speaker 2: Zaxby's does. Now that's another franchise, another brand.
Speaker 5: Well, and that probably just largely offsets the sauces that
Speaker 5: they give away for free, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: when they are able to recoup some of that by charging,
Speaker 5: because I've certainly been in situations where, again because of
Speaker 5: the individual choice or action of the employee, you aren't
Speaker 5: charged for the sauce, or perhaps you had to wait
Speaker 5: a little bit long, so they give you some sauces
Speaker 5: for free or whatever it might be, just to make
Speaker 5: you happy. But I'm also I think what I'm most
Speaker 5: taken by with this email is just all of the
Speaker 5: sauce math. I guess I never really thought about how
Speaker 5: much the sauces add up in theory, if you're charging
Speaker 5: what they actually you know, are supposed to charge for them,
Speaker 5: and then what the margins are on those sauces, because
Speaker 5: you know, individual packaging, as we know, is a quite
Speaker 5: wasteful and b can add up as well.
Speaker 2: But it's a little weird because the cost of producing
Speaker 2: that sauce per ounce or whatever is worked into I
Speaker 2: would say in this I'm spitballing here, but I would say,
Speaker 2: is worked into the cost of that meal that you're buying,
Speaker 2: or that's at those fries that you're ordering or whatever.
Speaker 2: And they're doing that on purpose, and they're probably slightly
Speaker 2: overestimating that would be the smart move, right because it's
Speaker 2: going to be negligible for the end user. You're gonna
Speaker 2: pay like five cents twenty cents more. It's not even
Speaker 2: gonna be a full twenty cents more. It'll be like
Speaker 2: five cents more.
Speaker 5: And we also know about how like you know, companies
Speaker 5: at this level of scale have things like breakage built
Speaker 5: in to their formulas about like things that don't get
Speaker 5: charged or they get stolen or whatever it might be.
Speaker 5: You know, like there's gonna be some stuff that's gonna
Speaker 5: fall off and that that's not going to ultimately be
Speaker 5: a source of revenue, you know, because of just the
Speaker 5: again the individual actions, and you're moving quickly. Like you said,
Speaker 5: these folks are very busy. They're working really hard and
Speaker 5: doing a lot of manual labor on their feet, and
Speaker 5: sometimes they might forget to put the sauce in completely unintentionally.
Speaker 5: But again, sometimes I've gotten bags from fast few places
Speaker 5: where they give you way too much sauce, you know,
Speaker 5: like then catch up packets, and I'm not I'm ashamed
Speaker 5: to say it, but it's just true that end up
Speaker 5: in the trash. And I almost wish they wouldn't give
Speaker 5: you that unless you requested it, because it feels wasteful
Speaker 5: on your part.
Speaker 3: As a consumer.
Speaker 5: I said, I've put those things in the fridge, but
Speaker 5: then I'm like, I'm not going to use these sauces
Speaker 5: that are in my fridge.
Speaker 3: It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 5: So I end up throwing them away when I'm clearing
Speaker 5: out my fridge later.
Speaker 2: I wonder if anybody else out there is getting the
Speaker 2: I don't know what you call this. I'm feeling an
Speaker 2: aversion to the word sauce right now, and I don't
Speaker 2: know why, but every every time we're saying it now,
Speaker 2: my body is irking.
Speaker 5: Sauce me up, baby. I don't know, is catch up
Speaker 5: a sauce? I guess technically, what does a sauce make a.
Speaker 3: Sauce the same thing? I don't know.
Speaker 5: These are the important questions to keep us up at
Speaker 5: night here and stuff they don't want you to know. Well, Kilo,
Speaker 5: definitely some food and sauce for thought here. So we
Speaker 5: kinda let Matt cringe his way into this here break
Speaker 5: and then we're gonna come back with one more message
Speaker 5: from you.
Speaker 4: And we have returned with a couple more messages. First,
Speaker 4: want to go to Curious in Seaattle. Curious in Seattle.
Speaker 4: You said, Hello, love your show. Have you ever done
Speaker 4: a deep dive into Thomas Wales, virual prosecutor was murdered
Speaker 4: in his Seattle home in two thousand and one, the
Speaker 4: case which remains unsolved to this day. Quick response, We
Speaker 4: have not Curious in Seattle, and thank you for bringing
Speaker 4: this to our attention. Curious, you continue saying, it's been
Speaker 4: so hard to keep up with the theories and plot
Speaker 4: twist and speculation of FBI informants and cover ups over
Speaker 4: the years, wondering if you have any thoughts. Let's start there.
Speaker 4: Have you guys heard the story of Thomas Crane Wales.
Speaker 5: No, but on a cursory Google it does seem that
Speaker 5: he was a big advocate for gun control, and I
Speaker 5: can only imagine that some of the conspiracy theories surrounding
Speaker 5: his demise might target folks that are not you know,
Speaker 5: about gun control, Matt.
Speaker 4: Is this one familiar to you?
Speaker 2: No, I'm checking it out the FBI website right now. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they have an open balance for information leading to
Speaker 4: leading to leaning to a conviction. The United States DOJ
Speaker 4: is offering a word up to two million dollars leading
Speaker 4: to the arrest and conviction of people responsible for the
Speaker 4: murder of this official. So let's go to the night
Speaker 4: of October eleventh, two thousand and one. It's a little
Speaker 4: bit before eleven pm. Thomas Crane Wales is in the
Speaker 4: basement of his home in Seattle, Washington, where he is
Speaker 4: currently working as an assistant US attorney, and he's been
Speaker 4: in that job for almost two decades. He's mainly focused
Speaker 4: on white collar crime cases. He was shot several times
Speaker 4: through the window of his basement office as he was
Speaker 4: sitting by his desk writing on his computer. This doesn't
Speaker 4: immediately kill him. He expires at a hospital the next day.
Speaker 4: And to this year right now, in the beginning of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, this has never been solved. As we
Speaker 4: pointed out earlier, he was involved in gun control. But
Speaker 4: I got to tell you, guys, this is ping in
Speaker 4: my spidy sense. For everything that I've read about the story,
Speaker 4: it feels like there's something fishy at play, because whoever
Speaker 4: killed him was clearly executing a hit. It's fair to
Speaker 4: say like they knew enough about the layout of the
Speaker 4: house to avoid certain indicators they knew also, I don't know,
Speaker 4: but they also made dumb mistakes, like they left shell
Speaker 4: casings from the pistol behind.
Speaker 5: Interesting make of pistol, right, a Makarov pistol that apparently
Speaker 5: had some sort of aftermarket barrel. And I believe this
Speaker 5: individual was a big proponent of things like trigger locks.
Speaker 5: It was behind a referendum that would have required owners
Speaker 5: to use trigger lock and he was president of an
Speaker 5: organization called Ceasefire. So it does feel like the type
Speaker 5: of stuff that this killer used indicates that they would
Speaker 5: have been someone who vehemently opposed everything that this individual
Speaker 5: stood for.
Speaker 2: Well, politically, it would be a pretty smart thing to
Speaker 2: use as cover, right, someone to go killing look like a.
Speaker 3: Gun nut, just angry and you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: The FBI had a similar I don't want to say
Speaker 4: that was their conclusion yet, but they had a similar contemplation.
Speaker 4: I want to give a big thanks to the journalist
Speaker 4: over at the Seattle Times who you point out as
Speaker 4: well Curious in Seattle, especially Mike Carter, who had a
Speaker 4: piece that was originally published in twenty sixteen, and these
Speaker 4: pieces still remain relevant because there has been no results
Speaker 4: in the investigation. There are a couple people that I
Speaker 4: should say law enforcement liked for this, including an airplane
Speaker 4: pilot who is living in Bellevue or Bellevue, and this
Speaker 4: guy was prosecuted by Wales before Wales was killed. It's
Speaker 4: going back and forth. But this is like an active
Speaker 4: mystery that has not been solved. Cartels have been accused.
Speaker 4: There have also been lots of allegations of conspiracy, and
Speaker 4: I'm pretty convinced at this point they'll still got some
Speaker 4: strings out there. I'm pretty convinced that there is a
Speaker 4: group of people who knows the identity of the shooter,
Speaker 4: and I think the FBI might know who they are,
Speaker 4: but they can't move yet. Does that sound implausible?
Speaker 5: Not implausible at all, No, quite the opposite. There's an
Speaker 5: interesting little tidbit too about an FBI informant but who
Speaker 5: said that like his cell mate of his copped to
Speaker 5: the murder, but then upon being on the receiving end
Speaker 5: of a lie detector test, that was believed to have
Speaker 5: been a fabricated story. But again, we also know light
Speaker 5: detective tests are kind of pseudos.
Speaker 4: You're talking about Scott Lee Kimball.
Speaker 5: Scott Lee Kimball who apparently was to be a serial
Speaker 5: killer and FBI and format.
Speaker 3: That's a weird mix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's also not uncommon for somebody who's already
Speaker 2: incarcerated to cop to something.
Speaker 4: They'll do it for a hot lunch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, unfortunately, just to break the boredom.
Speaker 4: And so the information that we have discussed so far
Speaker 4: is incredibly easy to find. It's like in the Wikipedia articles.
Speaker 4: You don't even have to go to the talk tab.
Speaker 4: But the one of the other issues here is the
Speaker 4: idea of tracing back the firearms. Right we talked about
Speaker 4: that replacement gun barrel. You know, one of the big
Speaker 4: parts of the investigation into this two thousand and one
Speaker 4: assassination has been tracking down over two thousand and five
Speaker 4: hundred replacement gun barrels. And that's entirely because it may
Speaker 4: be it may be the break that investigators need in
Speaker 4: the case. And over the past fifteen years, FBI has
Speaker 4: been able to track down all of those gun barrels.
Speaker 4: There's like two thousand and six hundred to their very
Speaker 4: first buyer, who is either a gun dealer or purchaser.
Speaker 4: And the problem is they still didn't get an answer
Speaker 4: from it, so they don't know, Like it gets to
Speaker 4: a point where you don't know where else to look,
Speaker 4: which is why the reward for information keeps raising and raising.
Speaker 5: What would be the reason for replacing a barrel to
Speaker 5: increase the range or something like that, or would it
Speaker 5: be to obfuscate, you know, the original purchase so that
Speaker 5: you would because of the as we know, like barrels
Speaker 5: have different striations on bullets, and if you have an
Speaker 5: aftermarket barrel, then it would no longer be associated with
Speaker 5: whatever the original like logged purchase might be. Is that
Speaker 5: sort of the idea or maybe there's ucasion of the two.
Speaker 5: You can replace it to improve accuracy. People have to
Speaker 5: replace it to improve safety because you know, a firearm
Speaker 5: and get a lot of wear. We're talking cracks, bulges, erosion.
Speaker 5: We're not firearm.
Speaker 4: Experts, but there are absolutely legitimate reasons to replace a barrel.
Speaker 4: And it's strange because I'm looking through this case curious
Speaker 4: in Seattle, and what I'm finding is that the FBI
Speaker 4: never really gave up on it, even when the leads
Speaker 4: were increasingly sparse or increasingly dead ends. They do think
Speaker 4: right now, or at least as sorry several years ago now.
Speaker 4: But as of twenty eighteen, the FBI concluded that there
Speaker 4: was a contract killer, There was an active operative, a
Speaker 4: professional hit man or a hit person who did the
Speaker 4: deed here.
Speaker 5: Is that what would put this in the jurisdiction of
Speaker 5: the FBI, the idea that it was a contract killer
Speaker 5: hired to assassinate a public official.
Speaker 4: I think it's more so that he was an assistant
Speaker 4: US attorney. I think this would be the only assassination
Speaker 4: of someone in that position in the history of the
Speaker 4: United States.
Speaker 2: Is it weird that it's exactly one month to the
Speaker 2: day September eleven attacks.
Speaker 4: I think that's I'm glad you bring that up, Matt,
Speaker 4: because there's also there's also the question of noise, like
Speaker 4: why don't more people know about this investigation. There are
Speaker 4: a lot of things that happened around two thousand.
Speaker 2: Don't know, that's weird to me. Okay, everything's fine.
Speaker 4: Everything's five.
Speaker 3: Is this an episode, guys? This is interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what I'm saying at the top. I do
Speaker 4: believe this is an episode. We know that right now
Speaker 4: there are there are still active questions to be answered.
Speaker 4: There was there was something that really stood out to me.
Speaker 4: There was an FBI official who didn't give their name,
Speaker 4: they were reported as an official quote familiar with the investigation,
Speaker 4: who said there is a very small group of people
Speaker 4: who knows what happened, and they never talk about it.
Speaker 4: So it sounds like it sounds like that pilot that
Speaker 4: I mentioned earlier, who was a strong suspect, sounds like
Speaker 4: he hasn't been really named in a lot of public
Speaker 4: reporting because he wasn't officially charged. So it's something where again,
Speaker 4: if you're one of the good guys, you have to
Speaker 4: fight by good guy rules.
Speaker 3: Did you mention Ben?
Speaker 5: In two thousand and seven, the FBI slashed the staff
Speaker 5: assigned to this case down to just two.
Speaker 4: I alluded to that earlier with the way they trimmed
Speaker 4: down stuff as the.
Speaker 5: Is that an indications you know what's going on or
Speaker 5: that it's no longer a priority?
Speaker 3: That was my wondering.
Speaker 4: It's indicative of the battle over resources, Like how how
Speaker 4: many hours of professional work can we put into something?
Speaker 4: Is the question they have to ask, and unfortunately the
Speaker 4: question they have to answer at every annual review. I
Speaker 4: don't know. This really caught me curious because I had
Speaker 4: not heard of this, and it sounds like none of
Speaker 4: us had. It does very much feel like an episode
Speaker 4: in the future, unless unless we can solve it right now.
Speaker 4: Can anybody anybody solve it?
Speaker 3: We need no probably not work shopping on this one.
Speaker 2: Guys, do you ever just sit in your house with
Speaker 2: a light on when it's super dark outside, just to
Speaker 2: like be a tempt the hit man outside? Come on,
Speaker 2: let's let's go.
Speaker 4: I sit in the dark inner room next to a
Speaker 4: room with the light on.
Speaker 5: Smart decoy. I late prone typically. Yeah, you guys, watch
Speaker 5: Mister and Missus Smith. By the way, the new uh
Speaker 5: Donald Glover reimagining of that movie with Brad Pitt and
Speaker 5: what's her face?
Speaker 3: Angelina Jolie.
Speaker 2: It's really good.
Speaker 3: And there's a whole episode with Ron Pearlman where.
Speaker 5: There's like they're protecting him and they're in this house
Speaker 5: and there's a potential of assassins, you know, shooting through
Speaker 5: windows and they have to be really thoughtful about the
Speaker 5: lights and all of that stuff. But I think it's
Speaker 5: really good, you guys, I highly recommend checking it out.
Speaker 4: And with the case of whales here, we know that
Speaker 4: there are I didn't understand this either. There are more
Speaker 4: investigative files and documents about this than there are over
Speaker 4: the n Ron case. WHOA do you remember the n
Speaker 4: Run case? You guys?
Speaker 2: Of course?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in a movie about that, right.
Speaker 2: Well, save it, Let's do an entire thing. This is
Speaker 2: a massive discussion.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think so too. Yeah, we got the micro
Speaker 5: version out of the way. Let's go for the macro
Speaker 5: version and a podcast platform near you very soon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll cut it off here. Thank you for tuning in, everybody.
Speaker 4: We can't wait to hear from you. We'd love to
Speaker 4: share your stories with your fellow conspiracy realist. Thank you
Speaker 4: to Kylo, Thank you to Matthias, Thank you to Curious
Speaker 4: in Seattle. If you would like to join the show,
Speaker 4: we can't wait to have you. We try to be
Speaker 4: easy to find online, boy do we ever.
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