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 Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here that makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. We are back from
Speaker 3: a holiday break, and if you are listening to this
Speaker 3: strange news program the evening it publishes, we would love
Speaker 3: to welcome you to Monday, January thirteenth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Wow, I take it over.
Speaker 5: And every time you say twenty twenty five, but I
Speaker 5: guess I probably said that in twenty twenty four, twenty
Speaker 5: twenty three. Anything post just seems like a Futurama episode.
Speaker 5: Has anybody written the wrong date yet?
Speaker 4: Yeah? For sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It Actually it always hits me when we are
Speaker 2: like doing research for an episode or something and creating docs, right,
Speaker 2: and then you you have to type the date in
Speaker 2: or the year in. That's when it gets me and
Speaker 2: I go, oh.
Speaker 4: No idiots, it'll be sorry on yourself.
Speaker 3: It'll be you know, it'll be twenty twenty six before
Speaker 3: we know it.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, can I do a shameless, shameless plug for
Speaker 2: a show that all of our voices are in really
Speaker 2: quickly because you say please? It is as we said
Speaker 2: January thirteenth, it's Monday. That means Monster BTK is officially out.
Speaker 2: If you go right now and search for it in
Speaker 2: your favorite podcast app, you can hear the first two
Speaker 2: episodes for free. And if you decide to sign up
Speaker 2: for iHeart True Crime Plus, you can get the first
Speaker 2: six episodes right now.
Speaker 5: So do it well, I for one didn't know that
Speaker 5: the popular A pop group we're responsible for such horrendous murders,
Speaker 5: so this will be news to me. BTK is a
Speaker 5: I think I think it's BTS Oh, okay, making lights,
Speaker 5: making light.
Speaker 4: It's a heavy subject, guys.
Speaker 2: So yes, please go and listen. This is the I
Speaker 2: don't even know how many seasons we officially are calling
Speaker 2: the Monster series now, but is the latest Monster series.
Speaker 2: So go check it out please, And with that, let's
Speaker 2: jump into the world of strange news.
Speaker 3: And we have returned. As you know, folks at the
Speaker 3: end of every episode or every strange news or listener
Speaker 3: mail program, we tell you where to find us online.
Speaker 3: If you are a sipper of lest social meds, then
Speaker 3: you may have heard the recent kerfuffle involving our buddy
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg from earlier.
Speaker 4: Mark, Yeah, Mark from Mark from the Block.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, still Mark from the Block, especially in Hawaii
Speaker 3: where he's under fire for a possible or an alleged
Speaker 3: doomsday bunker. Recently, you guys, Meta got into some trouble
Speaker 3: with the public. Meta being the parent company of Facebook
Speaker 3: and Instagram, they launched a series of AI friends or
Speaker 3: accounts on both of the platforms, and they did so
Speaker 3: at first with a great bit of optimism. This was
Speaker 3: more than a novelty, right. These were not you know, hey,
Speaker 3: it's me buddy Wackado. These were people that appear to
Speaker 3: have real names, with bios, multiple profile pictures and other
Speaker 3: photographs on their account, the ability to create and share content.
Speaker 3: This was a test run, and I got to check
Speaker 3: before you go too far, did you guys hear about this?
Speaker 5: Not this specifically, things like it, and I'll mention in
Speaker 5: a little bit, But to what end, I guess is
Speaker 5: my question? What's the point of this if it's not
Speaker 5: some sort of long con or like subterfuge.
Speaker 3: Well, what the point is depends upon the perspective of
Speaker 3: the person you pose that question toward or the bot.
Speaker 3: There was an interview recently with The Financial Times wherein
Speaker 3: the vice president of Generative AI at Meta, Connor Hayes,
Speaker 3: said the AI generated profiles are going to coexist with
Speaker 3: user accounts and said the following, We expect these ais
Speaker 3: to actually, over time exist on our platforms kind of
Speaker 3: the same way that accounts do. And we know this
Speaker 3: is a culmination of earlier efforts on the part of
Speaker 3: Meta to refine AI capabilities, despite the fact that you know,
Speaker 3: most human users of these platforms don't one hundred percent
Speaker 3: love it, especially the you know, the dishonesty about what
Speaker 3: is or is not a I. There's a great article
Speaker 3: by Chris westfall Over at Forbes that talks about the
Speaker 3: larger context here. Their idea was that they would be
Speaker 3: able to attract a younger audience because Facebook and Instagram
Speaker 3: and TikTok and snapchat are all in a cutthroat race
Speaker 3: to do to make something for the kids. Just to
Speaker 3: quote old dirty bastard, right WU tang social media like
Speaker 3: Wu tang. They say, is for the kids.
Speaker 5: I guess, I guess so, But like, I mean, the
Speaker 5: kids are just as suspicious of AI as we are,
Speaker 5: Like are we meant to befriend these bots?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 5: Well, I just don't understand if it's not just for show,
Speaker 5: Like how are these bots meant to be interacted with?
Speaker 5: Or I guess bots is maybe even the wrong work
Speaker 5: is it's certainly a level up from them.
Speaker 3: Well, like faking real writing, which hat GPT, the idea
Speaker 3: is to fool the audience.
Speaker 4: Right, there's an.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unfortunately, but that's at least that's the view of
Speaker 3: the public. Meta did encounter a ton of backlash against this.
Speaker 3: You guys probably saw some of the discourse we had
Speaker 3: via our email address with a conspiracy realists like Rick
Speaker 3: s also in social media spoke with Doc Rendezvous, Gandhi
Speaker 3: and various other conspiracy realists. Thank you for writing to us.
Speaker 3: I think one of the most difficult parts of this
Speaker 3: conspiracy on Meta's end was that they made accounts based
Speaker 3: on what marketing would call personas. Right, you try to
Speaker 3: manufacture what statistically seems to be a representative of a demographic.
Speaker 3: You want to better understand, and one of the most
Speaker 3: egregious genre of offenders here for human communities were the
Speaker 3: purposely created minority accounts. We've seen different sock puppet aspects
Speaker 3: of Russian and Chinese and even US disinformation attempting to
Speaker 3: impersonate various demographics in discourse as a way of hijacking
Speaker 3: and misleading a narrative. So basically, they made accounts for
Speaker 3: people who purported to be Black Americans, and this greatly
Speaker 3: offended actual Black Americans. The accusations were that Meta was
Speaker 3: doing something very close to a neo version of blackface.
Speaker 5: They were trying to stack the deck to make themselves
Speaker 5: appear more diverse as a platform.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, like proud black queer Mama, your realist source
Speaker 3: for life's ups.
Speaker 4: And then that's offensive on multiple levels.
Speaker 2: I'm confused by one thing that's in that the tech
Speaker 2: startup article that has an interview right with the VP
Speaker 2: you were talking about. They're talking about this thing called
Speaker 2: AI studio where the AI characters are actually user created,
Speaker 2: So the users go in and create their own AI
Speaker 2: persona that then can do things like interact with followers
Speaker 2: in a group or something so on their behalf. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so like do automated messages and you know, automate the
Speaker 2: intake and like approve things and do all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. I just didn't know that Facebook or Meta
Speaker 2: itself was like creating these things and deploying them across
Speaker 2: the board very much.
Speaker 3: So it's it's similar to you and I used this
Speaker 3: comparison earlier because it does work similar to the early
Speaker 3: days of the robots in the Terminator franchise. At first,
Speaker 3: you could tell right their skin wasn't quite right, there
Speaker 3: was something uncanny Valley about them. The backlash was near immediate.
Speaker 3: If you go to Tom's Guide, there's a great story
Speaker 3: by Scott Yonker explaining why Meta quickly deleted these accounts
Speaker 3: and their posts. It seems that one of the first
Speaker 3: things that went wrong was not identification of these fake accounts.
Speaker 3: It was the interaction of human users with the bot accounts,
Speaker 3: and then they began to the bots, I mean began
Speaker 3: to apparently turn the tables on their creators turned the
Speaker 3: tables on Meta. In conversations with journalists, one Meta account said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I perpetrate harm. The engineers who created me don't match
Speaker 3: my purported race or my gender. This is emotional manipulation,
Speaker 3: and it is a deployment of cult leader tactics, which
Speaker 3: we talked about recently in an episode on Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 3: I want to also draw attention to a great op
Speaker 3: ed by Karen Atia over at Washington Post. I talked
Speaker 3: to Metta's black AI character. Here's what she told me.
Speaker 3: This is I don't know. This is incredibly uncomfortable. It
Speaker 3: happened a few years back in twenty twenty three. Meta
Speaker 3: created twenty eight of these AI characters, and they had
Speaker 3: a high rate of attrition. A lot of them faded
Speaker 3: into obscurity because users sensed something off and did not
Speaker 3: want to interact with them. One that did catch the
Speaker 3: most attention to our earlier conversation there, Noel is Live,
Speaker 3: the proud black queer mama of two and truth teller,
Speaker 3: billing the account as quote your realist source for life's
Speaker 3: ups and downs.
Speaker 2: It's so oh it's weird, man, Yeah, it's very weird.
Speaker 2: So I'm mildly stuck on this concept of like, are
Speaker 2: these some user that generated them or are they meta
Speaker 2: like the team at Meta that generated them.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a beta. It's beta though at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 5: anything it is them generating them. I believe they were
Speaker 5: made private.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So twenty twenty three, that's what we're talking about, right,
Speaker 2: like the beta version.
Speaker 3: Right, the one that we publicly are aware of at
Speaker 3: this time.
Speaker 5: Gotcha this these features haven't been rolled out to just
Speaker 5: regular subscribers yet.
Speaker 4: This is them like testing it still.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then July twenty twenty four is when users
Speaker 2: get to start creating them. So the thing that I'm
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, so the users are really users have access
Speaker 5: to this already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some users in a limited capacity had the ability
Speaker 3: to less yeah, to play in the handbox.
Speaker 2: So ultimately, what's when we're talking about the goal here,
Speaker 2: like why would they do this right? And they're talking
Speaker 2: about getting younger people interested? It to me it is
Speaker 2: a company that knows their user base is not increasing
Speaker 2: and we've talked about those stories right that Internet right
Speaker 2: as user bases are slowing down, right, So is this
Speaker 2: just a way to almost I don't want to say
Speaker 2: fake the numbers, but if you've got users on Facebook
Speaker 2: that are AI generated, that are not actually human beings,
Speaker 2: and they are on the apps and they are you know.
Speaker 4: Engaging all these interactions.
Speaker 2: Isn't that something that on the bottom line, it would
Speaker 2: look like they've got increased interaction.
Speaker 3: That would be one of the I think secondary or
Speaker 3: tertiary goals. It's definitely a valid piece of speculation. Again,
Speaker 3: the answer to the question depends upon the source of
Speaker 3: the answer, right and their perspective. So Meta as a
Speaker 3: company clearly wants to acquire relevancy in any possible edge
Speaker 3: in the cutthroat race for attention in the dopamine casino. However,
Speaker 3: they perhaps were not anticipating the full force of Internet
Speaker 3: humans being really creeped out by this, which is understandable
Speaker 3: because you know, you already see on social media plenty
Speaker 3: of accounts that say, hey, beep boo, beep, I am
Speaker 3: a bot, and generally people seem more accepting of that
Speaker 3: because of the transparency. The ethical problem here, if I
Speaker 3: could spend this out just a bit, is that this
Speaker 3: occurs as a harbinger event, an emergent event. Yes, we tried,
Speaker 3: we tried it this way. Our first foray, says Meta
Speaker 3: into this tactic. What is going to happen next, Critics
Speaker 3: would argue, is the second wave, the tertiary wave, wherein
Speaker 3: you don't get to see as visibly or as easily
Speaker 3: the difference between an AI account and a human account.
Speaker 3: And why is this danger Well, not to be too
Speaker 3: Charlie Day, which I know I do often, but this
Speaker 3: occurred in step this deployment, and then this retraction occurred
Speaker 3: in step with Meta's decision to give up on their
Speaker 3: usual fact checking. And if you are a regular poster
Speaker 3: on things like Facebook in particular, you may have noticed
Speaker 3: that some posts get pulled because they trip something in
Speaker 3: the algorithm, right, something political, something seen as encouraging violence
Speaker 3: or racist, or any of the other nasty things people
Speaker 3: usually object to. However, why did Meta decide to, okay,
Speaker 3: do this pitch, this pilot pitch of AI accounts, and
Speaker 3: then pull it back. Oh, we're sorry, you caught us,
Speaker 3: and then at the same time, in step give up
Speaker 3: on fact checking for Facebook and Instagram. And I do
Speaker 3: want to say one thing here that I think is
Speaker 3: pretty important and needs to be said. X or Twitter,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it, has reached a pretty
Speaker 3: interesting and I think pretty smart strategy with community notes.
Speaker 3: Are we all familiar with community notes?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Reports something essentially, and then there becomes a conversation around
Speaker 5: it that is sort of policed I guess by the community,
Speaker 5: isn't that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, crowdsourcing accuracy, which is imperfect, but maybe more advantageous
Speaker 3: than having, you know, a United Healthcare Version AI with
Speaker 3: a couple of human fact checkers scrolling through every post
Speaker 3: on Facebook. Twitter's approach is more like, say, a notable
Speaker 3: polemic or political figure like Marjorie Taylor Green says something
Speaker 3: about Jewish space lasers. Twitter doesn't automatically take it down
Speaker 3: a community note pop up that tells you a little
Speaker 3: bit about anti semitism and the reality of space lacer technologies.
Speaker 4: We know it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's interesting, guys, because I mean I think, on
Speaker 5: the one hand, it is advantageous in some ways to
Speaker 5: know what the crazies are saying, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 5: I don't think striking it from the record entirely is advantageous.
Speaker 5: The problem becomes when there are people that aren't doing
Speaker 5: their homework and are taking stuff like that at face value.
Speaker 5: So I kind of got to give a little bit
Speaker 5: of props to X for that technique. Yeah, I think so,
Speaker 5: because I mean, don't you guys agree that, Like, I
Speaker 5: think we're all behind free speech hate speech is of
Speaker 5: course bad, especially if it's trying to incite violence, and
Speaker 5: that's certainly its own, you know, category of speech. But
Speaker 5: you can't really know your enemy if you're not allowed
Speaker 5: to see what they're thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can't hide in a bubble. That's why
Speaker 3: again I'm saying props to objectively a coops to that
Speaker 3: social platform because they're they're not sensory necessarily, although there
Speaker 3: is a lot of sensors happening on all these platforms.
Speaker 3: Now look at a Luigi Mangioni story for instance. Instead,
Speaker 3: they're contextualizing, and perhaps that is the more empowering thing
Speaker 3: for users. We're going to wrap and go to a break.
Speaker 3: Before we do, I've got to say it. The issue
Speaker 3: here is not what just happened. The issue is going
Speaker 3: back to the terminator phrase, what will happen, what shall
Speaker 3: come to pass, which will be AI accounts that are
Speaker 3: increasingly difficult to discern from human accounts. And these all
Speaker 3: like any other machine, they all have keys and programs
Speaker 3: right and commands that can be issued. So if a
Speaker 3: single entity, for instance, Meta, decides to push for a
Speaker 3: certain piece of policy or ideology, then it will be
Speaker 3: increasingly difficult to discern whether the human public supports it
Speaker 3: or whether one kind of no offense Mark Monty Burns
Speaker 3: style controller of discourse pushes these scales their way. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense?
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 3: The last things No, North Korea probably didn't just actually
Speaker 3: ban Hot Dogs. Radio Free Asia is on the US team,
Speaker 3: but honestly not the best primary source. The US Treasury
Speaker 3: was hacked by China. That is true. I do think
Speaker 3: that is an episode. I do want to I do
Speaker 3: want to tease it with this. If I could just
Speaker 3: play one clip that I think we all know and
Speaker 3: love really quick as a tease for another conversation about
Speaker 3: the US Justice Department and landlords we just got in
Speaker 3: trouble before we go to the break. Is it okay
Speaker 3: to play this, you guys?
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear all right?
Speaker 3: Hopefully this is familiar to our fellow conspiracy realist nerds.
Speaker 2: Is mister McMillan, Would you like thirty seconds more?
Speaker 6: Allow me to introduce myself. I represent the rents to
Speaker 6: damn Hot Party. Working eight hours a day and forty
Speaker 6: was the week of summer.
Speaker 2: Third job.
Speaker 6: Women can't afford to take care of the children, feed
Speaker 6: their children, breakfast, lunch and dinner. My main job at
Speaker 6: to provide a roof over your head, food on the table,
Speaker 6: of the money.
Speaker 2: In your pocket.
Speaker 6: This is politics as usual, playing the silly game, and
Speaker 6: it's not going to happen to rent to them. My movement,
Speaker 6: the people I'm here to repent, can't afford to pay
Speaker 6: their rent. It being laid off right now with us speak.
Speaker 6: It can't eat breakfast, lunch, your dinner. Listen someone's stomach, child,
Speaker 6: stomach just growl.
Speaker 2: Did you hear it? Gotta listen like me.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about.
Speaker 4: Love that guy? Well, I love to I remember.
Speaker 3: And if you can hear us, sir, you may be
Speaker 3: validated to learn that the US d OJ just accused
Speaker 3: six major landlords of scheming and conspiring to keep the
Speaker 3: rent to damn hot.
Speaker 4: No, they wouldn't show that story for future day.
Speaker 3: Perhaps let us know your thoughts on these and all
Speaker 3: the other things. And if you're an AI bought and
Speaker 3: you want to write to us still, that's completely fine.
Speaker 3: We're going to pause for word from our sponsors, will
Speaker 3: return with more strange.
Speaker 5: News and we're back, and Ben, you're a conversation about
Speaker 5: like the future of AI and the whole Terminator comparison
Speaker 5: reminded me of a really fantastic interview that I just
Speaker 5: heard on a podcast from The Ringer. I believe it
Speaker 5: was on the Big Picture, but it was with James
Speaker 5: Cameron and his long time producing partner and former spouse
Speaker 5: whose name is totally escaping me. But it's a big
Speaker 5: major miles to the anniversary for The Terminator. I forget
Speaker 5: what number that is, but they were talking about the
Speaker 5: you know, kind of early thinking behind that film and
Speaker 5: how they kind of were both working for Roger Corman
Speaker 5: at the time, and all of that stuff is very
Speaker 5: interesting in and of itself, just the history of The Terminator.
Speaker 5: But near the end, Cameron really gets on a pretty
Speaker 5: awesome and interesting tear about how he thinks the future
Speaker 5: of AI is even worse than what they predicted in
Speaker 5: the Terminator films, and he goes into it pretty pretty deeply.
Speaker 5: And I've always you know, Cameron's a bit of a
Speaker 5: divisive figure, but he I would consider him a futurist,
Speaker 5: and I would consider him a pretty high level thinker
Speaker 5: about that kind of stuff. So I definitely recommend y'all
Speaker 5: checking out that interview if you get a chance.
Speaker 4: Almost positive it was on the big picture.
Speaker 2: Well, I just wonder who does James Cameron talk about
Speaker 2: that stuff with, right, So you know somebody at that
Speaker 2: level has conversations with.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's got government, he's got government contexts for a
Speaker 5: lot of his like deep sea exploration stuff, you know,
Speaker 5: and his like technological advancements and things like that. I
Speaker 5: would not be surprised if he knows people in like
Speaker 5: skunk works type situations, you know, no question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good point.
Speaker 5: That being said, I'm going to do a quick highlight
Speaker 5: a story about some more online hit canery, this time
Speaker 5: from Microsoft, and it's being search engine apparently. Earlier this week,
Speaker 5: the fine folks at Windows Latest noticed that Micro's was
Speaker 5: implementing what you might consider sort of a spoofing operation
Speaker 5: to keep people from leaving BING when they search for
Speaker 5: something and Google results pop up, being being the default
Speaker 5: search engine for Microsoft's browser, which they have. Not being
Speaker 5: a Windows person, it doesn't even occur to me this exists,
Speaker 5: but it's called Edge apparently, and that is the default
Speaker 5: browser for Windows eleven. If you search for something in
Speaker 5: your bar, your search bar, and Edge, you get redirected
Speaker 5: to bing dot com to get the search results. And
Speaker 5: of course, you know, because of Google being so good
Speaker 5: at search engine optimization, their results often come up.
Speaker 4: At the top.
Speaker 5: However, Microsoft is doing a little bit of a switcheroo,
Speaker 5: of course, preferring that you would not leave their platform.
Speaker 4: And when you.
Speaker 5: Click on those Google results, essentially you are served with
Speaker 5: a landing page that looks like Google, with a Google
Speaker 5: Doodle esque kind of graphic and everything, but in fact
Speaker 5: is not Google at all.
Speaker 4: It's still bing. It's just kind of reskinned to look
Speaker 4: like Google.
Speaker 5: And they're hoping pretty sneakily if you ask me that
Speaker 5: folks will just stick around in that ecosystem thinking they're
Speaker 5: on Google. If you scroll down to the way way bottom,
Speaker 5: apparently you can still get linked out to the actual
Speaker 5: Google platform, but it does require a little bit of looking,
Speaker 5: and I don't think the average user is going to
Speaker 5: do that. So a little bit sneaky there, Bill Gates
Speaker 5: or whomever's making these kinds of decisions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to imagine. You know, we've talked recently
Speaker 2: about how Google is what, uh, falling down a little
Speaker 2: bit when it comes to search results that people actually want. Oh,
Speaker 2: Google is just didn't we just talk.
Speaker 4: About that we did. We did. They're there.
Speaker 5: They're having some troubles for sure, and all their AI
Speaker 5: automatic generated responses are really getting under people's skin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good point, Matt, but I would I
Speaker 4: would argue that still.
Speaker 5: You know, Google's definitely got one up on Bing in
Speaker 5: terms of you know, wide adoption.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Well, in the name of the game
Speaker 2: for these for all of these search engine companies is
Speaker 2: serving you ads anyway, right, So all you need is
Speaker 2: people to type something into that bar and then you're
Speaker 2: gonna get all the stuff you always wanted to buy.
Speaker 2: And it is weird our conversation in the previous segment
Speaker 2: about Facebook. That's their business model too, right, So it
Speaker 2: really is just like, just type some stuff into our
Speaker 2: input thing so that we can serve you ads.
Speaker 5: Let me just clarify. I think I might have misspoke.
Speaker 5: It's not that you're getting served Google results. That that's
Speaker 5: not how that would work. You're using BANG, you're getting
Speaker 5: served Being results. This occurs when somebody bing's Google. You
Speaker 5: search for Google or Google dot com on being and
Speaker 5: then you are presented with this sort of sham Google
Speaker 5: landing page. Apparently it still has the Bing logo at
Speaker 5: the top, but when you load it, it cleverly scroll
Speaker 5: down just enough where you can't see the being logo,
Speaker 5: and you're now presented with this. It doesn't say Google,
Speaker 5: but it looks like, you know, the Google type of
Speaker 5: design aesthetic, as like the Google doodle doesn't say Google.
Speaker 4: Again, Google doesn't own this aesthetic.
Speaker 5: I certainly imagine it would be very difficult to prove
Speaker 5: any kind of infringement on like a color schemes or
Speaker 5: like a style of little character people.
Speaker 3: You know, it's also not illegal, which is the tricky part.
Speaker 3: I love the point you're making there, nol. It reminds
Speaker 3: me of our earlier conversation in our Dead Internet Theory episode,
Speaker 3: which applies to both Facebook and Google search results. The
Speaker 3: majority of people who are searching on Google or bing
Speaker 3: are not going to page two, right, They're looking at
Speaker 3: the top hit list. And the majority of people who
Speaker 3: are looking for these results in general, whatever they type
Speaker 3: into the omni search bar, they're not going to prioritize
Speaker 3: some kind of sussing out of sources often, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And this is this is funny because, dude,
Speaker 3: it reminds me of one of the one of the
Speaker 3: biggest things I remember reading in multiple programmer and like
Speaker 3: pen testing forums, which is what's the best use for
Speaker 3: Microsoft Edge? The number one answer is often downloading Google.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, cl exactly, or for Firefox.
Speaker 5: And there's also tons of like freeware, you know, internet
Speaker 5: browsers like what operas.
Speaker 4: One people really love.
Speaker 5: I know there's one that you guys always mentioned that
Speaker 5: kind of Carave, Yeah, Brave exactly, that are just a
Speaker 5: lot more streamline, there's a lot less bloat in terms
Speaker 5: of the software. Microsoft is notorious for having kind of
Speaker 5: bloated software built into their operating systems.
Speaker 4: Maybe things have changed. I kind of doubt it.
Speaker 5: I just know, you know, in my days using PCs
Speaker 5: and using these types of browsers, pop ups were just everywhere,
Speaker 5: and maybe the pop up is sort of a thing
Speaker 5: of the past. But I do imagine that my Microsoft
Speaker 5: is not entirely shed that kind of thing. I do
Speaker 5: just want to read a quick quote to back up
Speaker 5: what you said. Ben by Jacob Siegel from an article
Speaker 5: on bgr Bing was caught trying to trick people into
Speaker 5: thinking they're using Google. He says most of us would
Speaker 5: probably see through this trick and click through to Google,
Speaker 5: but it's not hard to see how some users could
Speaker 5: be fooled. After all, it looks close enough to Google
Speaker 5: that you might not notice it at a glance. And
Speaker 5: unfortunately many of us ourselves included here, guys, I'm sure,
Speaker 5: whether we know it or not, many of us fall
Speaker 5: for less clever tricks on a regular basis. Whatever the
Speaker 5: case of this nefarious trick keeps even a small fraction
Speaker 5: of potential switchers from ditching bing.
Speaker 4: It's a win for Microsoft.
Speaker 3: And just to get in front of the emails, please
Speaker 3: do always email us conspiracy didihetradio dot com. Yes, we're
Speaker 3: aware that a lot of the browsers by Paul Noll
Speaker 3: just described there are based on the Chromium browser engine,
Speaker 3: which is the same open source technology that Google's Chrome
Speaker 3: is based on. The differentferences, how they, to your point,
Speaker 3: know how they prioritize privacy right? Well, how do they
Speaker 3: approach the pop up ads and the various cookies they
Speaker 3: get passed out to you during It.
Speaker 5: Is interesting to you, guys, because, like I remember, back
Speaker 5: when I was a little younger and just getting around
Speaker 5: people that were like super tech heads, coder types, it
Speaker 5: seemed like that that max were a little more prevalent,
Speaker 5: you know, using for coding. But now it certainly seems
Speaker 5: like maybe I'm wrong. Anybody in the coding community out there,
Speaker 5: totally call me on this, but I will just say
Speaker 5: that my understanding today, and maybe this has always been
Speaker 5: the case, is that PCs are king when it comes
Speaker 5: to like running open source type stuff, you know, coding,
Speaker 5: creating software.
Speaker 4: Testing things, debugging and all of that stuff.
Speaker 5: It seems like MAX have taken more of a position
Speaker 5: as the you know, top go to for things like production,
Speaker 5: you know, audio recording, video editing, after effects and things
Speaker 5: like that, because they run certain suites of tools really well,
Speaker 5: and there's hardware that is designed for them that are
Speaker 5: great for that as well that you know, out of
Speaker 5: the pro level audio equipment don't run as well on PCs.
Speaker 5: But PCs are typically the kind of go to platform
Speaker 5: or go to type of machines for this high level
Speaker 5: coding stuff. So I do think it's interesting that the
Speaker 5: the like browser and operating system that's the most popular
Speaker 5: for PCs are so kind of counter to that type
Speaker 5: of audience. AnyWho, I will just mention one other story
Speaker 5: really quickly. This is pretty controversial, and I don't really
Speaker 5: necessarily think we need to go into it too much.
Speaker 5: It's a pretty serious human rights violation from an organization
Speaker 5: that is notorious for just human rights violations. Upon human
Speaker 5: rights violations, the Taliban has apparently banned windows in order
Speaker 5: to have in certain areas under their control, to stop
Speaker 5: women from being seen at home.
Speaker 3: And this actual physical physical windows has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with our conversation about electronics and software.
Speaker 4: No, no, actual, not at all.
Speaker 5: Actual facts can struy dirduction accoutrem windows, you know, the
Speaker 5: ones that let you like see the out of doors,
Speaker 5: you know, get like sunlight inside. And the thing that's
Speaker 5: the most interesting about this to me is that it's
Speaker 5: trickling down and being leveraged against NGOs, which are often
Speaker 5: human rights organizations, organizations offering relief and support and dangerous
Speaker 5: parts of the world and war torn parts of the
Speaker 5: world and parts of the world where there is not
Speaker 5: the kind of equality that you know exists elsewhere.
Speaker 4: So this is a real problem.
Speaker 5: They're actually blocking the construction of offices or the use
Speaker 5: of offices that have windows for NGOs that employ women,
Speaker 5: in an effort that would seem to be entirely designed
Speaker 5: to shut down these NGOs from operating and of course
Speaker 5: to continue to deprive women of the ability to be employed.
Speaker 5: There's an article on The Independent about this by Maya Oppenheim,
Speaker 5: and she has a really telling quote from a representative
Speaker 5: from Human Rights Watch who had this to say about
Speaker 5: the policy. This is Heather Barr, the interim Deputy Director
Speaker 5: of Human Rights at Human Rights Watch. She told the
Speaker 5: Independent people have talked about the Taliban metaphorically erasing women,
Speaker 5: but increasingly it is not metaphorical at all. They have
Speaker 5: already ordered that women's voices shouldn't be heard in public,
Speaker 5: and now they are essentially stopping women from even looking
Speaker 5: out of the window. They are stopping women from being seen,
Speaker 5: They are stopping women from seeing the world. It is
Speaker 5: a total annihilation of women's personhood and it is clearly ongoing.
Speaker 4: We don't have any idea where this will end.
Speaker 5: And then you pointed out when we were talking offline
Speaker 5: about this that there's another very telling quote from a
Speaker 5: Taliban spokesperson that essentially sums up the reasoning behind the policy,
Speaker 5: which I think speaks volumes. So this is what he
Speaker 5: had to say. Seeing women working in kitchens in courtyards
Speaker 5: or collecting water from wells can lead to obs scene acts. Wow,
Speaker 5: it's not gonna end well. No, it's not gonna end well.
Speaker 5: And it's another slippery slope kind of thing. And it's
Speaker 5: just based on a way of thinking that just doesn't
Speaker 5: seem in line with humanity. So, you know, don't want
Speaker 5: to didn't want to get too deep into this, but
Speaker 5: I thought it was worth mentioning. And lastly, I just
Speaker 5: had kind of a fun history mystery that I think
Speaker 5: is on the way to being solved. Guys, there's a
Speaker 5: fabulous article from our friends at the Smithsonian or Smithsonian
Speaker 5: Magazine by Sarah A.
Speaker 4: Kuta.
Speaker 5: Ancient Romans breathed in enough lead to lower their IQs
Speaker 5: study fines. Did that toxin contribute to the empire's fall?
Speaker 5: It's a very good question. I had no idea that
Speaker 5: ancient Romans use lead for all kinds of stuff, including
Speaker 5: sweetening their wine using something called lead acetate. They also
Speaker 5: had infrastructure. While impressive we know the aqueducts and all
Speaker 5: of that indoor plumbing, they were though made of lead.
Speaker 5: These pipes where the water flowed, and they were drinking
Speaker 5: that water on the regular. So this new research that
Speaker 5: was just recently released suggests they were also breathing in
Speaker 5: massive quantities of lead from smelting and silver mining operations.
Speaker 5: Researchers writing in this new paper that was published Monday
Speaker 5: in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Speaker 5: believe that these toxic metals polluting the air likely got
Speaker 5: into the bloodstream of children and LEDs to what they
Speaker 5: referred to as widespread cognitive decline. The researchers believe that
Speaker 5: the lead found in the air may have caused an
Speaker 5: estimated two point five to three point drop in IQ's
Speaker 5: throughout the Roman Empire. This specifically would have taken place
Speaker 5: during the one hundred plus year period known as the
Speaker 5: Pax Romana. You know, it was obviously a golden time
Speaker 5: in ancient Rome. There will seem seemingly very happy and content.
Speaker 5: There was no bloodshed and no fighting in the streets.
Speaker 5: It was, you know, pretty serene time. However, it would
Speaker 5: seem that this decline could have created in the population
Speaker 5: of ancient Rome, you know, maybe some significant deficiencies over
Speaker 5: time that may well have led to some poor decision making.
Speaker 4: There are those that question this, though.
Speaker 5: There are there are those that say, well, look at
Speaker 5: what they did, look at what they accomplished during that time.
Speaker 5: This is not the work of people who are you know,
Speaker 5: well on a downward trend.
Speaker 3: But also also we have more recent precedent for this.
Speaker 3: I was clocking this story as well. Please check out
Speaker 3: our twenty sixteen episode Beyond Flint the Looming LED Crisis.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of scholarship that has gone into the
Speaker 3: relationship between especially early childhood LED exposure and then later
Speaker 3: let's call it life experiences of people who are exposed
Speaker 3: to lead at formative points in their life. So I
Speaker 3: agree with you, no, I thought this was a fascinating study.
Speaker 3: And yeah, to your point and to the scholarship's point here,
Speaker 3: there are tons of other intervening variables that have to
Speaker 3: be considered. But there's something to it. I'm gonna say it,
Speaker 3: there's something to it.
Speaker 2: Well, can you imagine in around the year four thousand, Well,
Speaker 2: there's going to be a similar article and it's going
Speaker 2: to talk about the humans in the second millennium, at
Speaker 2: least according to the calendars, they'll call it something different
Speaker 2: and they'll be talking about CH two CCHX or various
Speaker 2: polymer plastics in the same way about lead. We noticed
Speaker 2: that all of the subjects we found had a lot
Speaker 2: of this plastic substance in their bodies in the fossils
Speaker 2: we found. Although they were they did seem to be
Speaker 2: able to construct massive skyscrapers and build the technology that
Speaker 2: became the building blocks of what we now use today,
Speaker 2: but they sure were filled with this plastic stuff.
Speaker 5: No, it's true, and just just for reference, this study
Speaker 5: came from data collected from ice cores that indicated that
Speaker 5: a massive amounts of lead were released during that two
Speaker 5: hundred year period known as the poxhermonie i SAI one
Speaker 5: hundred plus years earlier.
Speaker 4: It was actually closer to two hundred years.
Speaker 5: And we have a really interesting quote from a neuro
Speaker 5: toxicologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center who had
Speaker 5: nothing to do with the paper, referring to kind of
Speaker 5: to your point, been a modern equivalent. It says, we
Speaker 5: have actual data on IQ scores and kids with different
Speaker 5: blood lead concentrations, and the effect on IQ is just
Speaker 5: one byproduct of this kind of heavy metal build up
Speaker 5: in the body.
Speaker 4: Another can be in.
Speaker 5: Children slowed growth conditions like anemia, hearing problems, behavioral problems,
Speaker 5: learning disabilities, and hyperactivity. So the IQ thing is just
Speaker 5: like one measurement, and all of those things combined certainly
Speaker 5: could have put a damper on innovation. There's a quote
Speaker 5: that wraps up the Smithsonian piece from a pathologist at
Speaker 5: the Ohio State University.
Speaker 4: Named Amy L.
Speaker 5: Pyle Iola, and she had this to say, while the
Speaker 5: magnitude of exposure and the correlated blood lead levels were
Speaker 5: enough to negatively affect the cognitive function of that population,
Speaker 5: this is still a far cry from causing the downfall
Speaker 5: of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 4: So you know, I mean, it's definitely interesting.
Speaker 5: It definitely seems like it would have had some kind
Speaker 5: of impact long term, but the jury is still out
Speaker 5: on whether it was the most important factor in what
Speaker 5: we know as the fall of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 4: Well that's it for me, y'all.
Speaker 5: 'll take a quick sponsor break, and we'll come back
Speaker 5: with one more or a handful more pieces of strange news.
Speaker 2: And we've returned. We have quite a sad thing to
Speaker 2: report to everyone. Perhaps by now you've already read this news,
Speaker 2: but this comes to us via January sixth, just a
Speaker 2: couple of days before we recorded the episode. I'll just
Speaker 2: read this direct quote from the Tampa Bay Times. Mike
Speaker 2: render A former top Scientology spokesperson who later broke away
Speaker 2: and became one of the church's most outspoken critics. Died
Speaker 2: on January fifth in Palm Harbor due to esophageal cancer.
Speaker 2: He was sixty nine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that was one of my favorite interviews. I
Speaker 5: think we've ever done. What an interesting cat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back in twenty twenty we did interview. We had
Speaker 3: a two part interview with Mike Render regarding his work
Speaker 3: as a as an activist regarding the dangers and controversies
Speaker 3: surrounding scientology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well as well as his time as one of
Speaker 2: the primary Scientology guys, like the enforcer, the I mean
Speaker 2: scary Scientology guy.
Speaker 5: I mean it was honestly the most kind of I
Speaker 5: guess starstruck is gonna be the wrong word that I've
Speaker 5: ever been talking to somebody because some of those I
Speaker 5: believe it was Panorama. There's a Panorama BBC documentary where
Speaker 5: he is prominently featured, as you know, actively engaging and
Speaker 5: shutting down reporting on the trick to scientology.
Speaker 4: And yet to your point, Matt, he was a bulldog.
Speaker 5: The guy was scary and to see someone and be
Speaker 5: able to interact with someone who's made such an about face.
Speaker 4: It was kind of staggering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go back to that Tampa Bay Times article
Speaker 2: really quickly, just to give a little more context for Mike.
Speaker 2: It says Rinder, who once worked closely with church leader
Speaker 2: David Miscavage, was a crucial source in the Saint Petersburg
Speaker 2: Times two thousand and nine multipart investigation into scientology that
Speaker 2: was called The Truth Rundown. He was also a part
Speaker 2: of many of these other documentaries you just mentioned there, Nol.
Speaker 2: Later he went on to win two Emmys for his
Speaker 2: work on the docuseries quote Leah Remini colon Scientology and
Speaker 2: the Aftermath.
Speaker 5: Well, and they did a podcast version of that for us,
Speaker 5: they did for a handful of years.
Speaker 2: That was why we got the opportunity to speak with
Speaker 2: Mike on our show. And yeah, it is just a
Speaker 2: loss because, well it's weird. He's such an interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: full human character that has gone through so much and then,
Speaker 2: as you said, had that large change in his life
Speaker 2: and then to be able to speak out against something
Speaker 2: he saw as detrimental and dangerous.
Speaker 3: And the name of that podcast for anyone interested, We're
Speaker 3: not blowing smoke or I'm not blowing smoke. When I
Speaker 3: say it's a great investigation. The name of it is
Speaker 3: Scientology fair Game, available now wherever you find your favorite shows.
Speaker 5: And it just I mean, there was nothing that benefited
Speaker 5: him from speaking out like this, if anything, and just
Speaker 5: put him out that risk, you know, and he just
Speaker 5: seemed like he was speaking absolutely from the heart. And
Speaker 5: it's just so rare to find someone that has had
Speaker 5: such a change of heart and then you know, doubles
Speaker 5: down on wanting to help others that were impacted in
Speaker 5: the same way that he was by what he believes
Speaker 5: as an insidious dogma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the term fair game in there is something
Speaker 2: we talk about in the podcast, the two part series
Speaker 2: that we're going to put out here in just a
Speaker 2: little bit for everybody to catch up on. If you
Speaker 2: want to, you can go back through the archives and
Speaker 2: find it. They were published in late October twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: so do check that out if you want to now
Speaker 2: or again. We'll be putting them out as classics here
Speaker 2: in just a bit. All right, Well, that's one piece
Speaker 2: of it. Fair Game, by the way, is the doctrine
Speaker 2: perhaps is the way you would say it of going
Speaker 2: after people who spoke out against scientology.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's the policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. That's a good way to.
Speaker 5: By any means necessary docxing. Yeah, you know, absolutely ruining
Speaker 5: their lives.
Speaker 3: Do also check out Operations snow White, a banger episode,
Speaker 3: if I may say so myself.
Speaker 2: Watch the video too, wherein.
Speaker 3: We go deep into one of the most sixful heist
Speaker 3: against the United States government. It is a wild ride
Speaker 3: and it is a completely true conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Fun behind the scenes of that video, Ben, you and
Speaker 2: I went over to like not far away from where
Speaker 2: our offices were at the time, to a very large
Speaker 2: parking deck that was not our parking deck and made
Speaker 2: that and it was so much fun. Okay, here we go,
Speaker 2: jumping into the next thing. I've got a note here
Speaker 2: about some guy named Justin Trudeau. There was a part
Speaker 2: of Canada's government in some way, and it says he's
Speaker 2: stepping down after nine years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, famous fan of blackface, that guy.
Speaker 2: Oh oh great, Well, well it's just had a note
Speaker 2: here about that. Really, who cares? Here we go. The
Speaker 2: next story is a callback to our explorations of food
Speaker 2: and the heavy metals and stuff that are in them,
Speaker 2: which is a hearkening back to the lead content that
Speaker 2: we just talked of out. Well, there is some good
Speaker 2: news coming out of California. There's a new law that
Speaker 2: will require baby food manufacturers to use an accredited lab
Speaker 2: to test representative samples on any infant and toddler food
Speaker 2: excluding infant formula great at least once a month for
Speaker 2: levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Because guys, remember
Speaker 2: we talked about how there were elevated levels of these
Speaker 2: heavy metals in all of the baby food or most
Speaker 2: of the baby food that existed out there. Yes, not great.
Speaker 2: There's actually something the coolest part about all of this.
Speaker 2: As this law rolls out, at least in California and
Speaker 2: hopefully it gets picked up on a wider basis, there
Speaker 2: will be a place on like the little package of
Speaker 2: baby food, and you can scan it with your phone
Speaker 2: and it will take you to the latest reports basically
Speaker 2: of the findings on tests on that particular product, so
Speaker 2: you can see, oh, there actually are higher levels than
Speaker 2: normal of mercury in this puade pairs and you can
Speaker 2: read more about that in CNN. It's the link is weird.
Speaker 2: It's like edition dot CNN dot com or something like that,
Speaker 2: but the title is baby food labels will reveal levels
Speaker 2: of lead and other heavy metals for the first time.
Speaker 2: Written by Sandy LaMotte on January seventh, Go check that out.
Speaker 2: And then for the main story, I wanted to talk about, guys,
Speaker 2: just something a little strange that I wonder if you've
Speaker 2: covered in Ridiculous History before about stowaways on aircraft? Have you, guys,
Speaker 2: ever talked about.
Speaker 3: That in specific instances, not as a larger tendency.
Speaker 2: Got you? Okay, okay, Well let's jump into it via
Speaker 2: a single story that came out on January seventh. It
Speaker 2: was posted in CNN. I'll tell you the title in
Speaker 2: a second here, but here here are the facts. Two
Speaker 2: people were found dead in the wheel well of a
Speaker 2: Jet Blue plane from New York City when it landed
Speaker 2: at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. This is information that
Speaker 2: came out again on January seventh this year, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: The bodies were discovered the day before, on January sixth,
Speaker 2: that's a Monday night, And it was only during a
Speaker 2: post flight maintenance inspection that these bodies were found. And
Speaker 2: here's a quote. According to a local law enforcement official quote,
Speaker 2: the bodies were badly decomposed unquote. So at this point
Speaker 2: in the investigation of what happened, it's unknown how long
Speaker 2: these two individuals, like how long they were in that
Speaker 2: wheel well before they were discovered. That is very creepy.
Speaker 2: The identities at the time of reporting were unknown. Circumstances
Speaker 2: surrounding how they got into the aircraft were unknown but
Speaker 2: under investigation, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it
Speaker 2: is not going to be investigating it because it appears
Speaker 2: that the incident had no involvement of the flight crew
Speaker 2: or operation of the airplane. As in however these individuals
Speaker 2: got onto the plane had nothing to do with normal operations.
Speaker 2: It was some form of stowaway situation. At least that's
Speaker 2: the way it appeared. We can talk more about like
Speaker 2: where the flight went and everything, but you can look
Speaker 2: that up if you search for the article. The article
Speaker 2: is two bodies found in the wheel well of a
Speaker 2: Jet Blue plane in Fort Lauderdale. Airlines says again in CNN. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it
Speaker 2: is because I recall right around Christmas time seeing a
Speaker 2: story pop up in the old news feed about another
Speaker 2: body being found in another wheel well. Really like I
Speaker 2: think it was on. Yes, it was on December twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve of twenty twenty four, and it's another CNN article.
Speaker 2: We'll jump to body found in wheel well of United
Speaker 2: Airlines plane upon arrival in Hawaii, and it's just saying
Speaker 2: it's a plane that flew from Chicago to Maui on
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve. Upon arrival there at the airport in Malia, Oh,
Speaker 2: body was found in the wheel well of one of
Speaker 2: the main landing gears of a United aircraft. It was
Speaker 2: a Boeing seven eighty seven to ten. And police department
Speaker 2: is looking into the discovery of the body. And that's it.
Speaker 2: And again it's unclear how the body ended up there,
Speaker 2: how did the human being get into the wheelwell.
Speaker 3: And how did they stay there for so long?
Speaker 2: Yes, why were they not discovered until later?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: That kind of thing. So I wanted to learn more
Speaker 2: about this and headed on over to an FAA document
Speaker 2: from March twenty twelve. It is a Research and Development
Speaker 2: Annual Review Fiscal year twenty eleven. And if you jump
Speaker 2: down a little bit in the article, it has some
Speaker 2: things to say. I thought maybe it would be interesting
Speaker 2: for us to explore these It's just talking about stowaways.
Speaker 2: So here we go. This is a quote from that
Speaker 2: annual review. A stowaway is a person who secretly boards
Speaker 2: a vehicle, such as an aircraft, to travel without paying
Speaker 2: and without detection. The first recorded case in history of
Speaker 2: an aircraft stowaway occurred in nineteen twenty nine. This is
Speaker 2: the important part. Stowaways face dangerous situations and risk death.
Speaker 2: Usually a stowaway jumps into an aircraft by hanging onto
Speaker 2: the airliner's landing gear as the plane takes off. Now,
Speaker 2: first of all, we've seen that in popular culture, right,
Speaker 2: someone trying to board a plane grabbing on to the
Speaker 2: wheel part right.
Speaker 5: Right, because they assess into the hold of the aircraft.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because again we've seen it in the pictures, in
Speaker 2: the move in pictures that this is when the plane
Speaker 2: goes wheels up, the wheels go back into the aircraft,
Speaker 2: and a door shuts right. That's what occurs. So you
Speaker 2: imagine I may be in your mind if you've not
Speaker 2: done this before, Hey, I'd be just fine if I
Speaker 2: grab on to that the wheels that are hanging down.
Speaker 2: Then it goes back up into the plane. Now I'm
Speaker 2: safely on my way to MAUI or wherever I'm going. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: that is not the case. That is not what actually happens.
Speaker 2: So let's go back to that annual review. The force
Speaker 2: of wind can easily make a stowaway fall to his
Speaker 2: or her death because remember those wheels, they don't retract
Speaker 2: up into the plane until that plane is fully taken
Speaker 2: off and has been flying through the sky for quite
Speaker 2: a while, and it's not a long time, but it's
Speaker 2: not immediate, right. The wheels don't go up into the
Speaker 2: plane as soon as it lifts off. So that's the
Speaker 2: first problem, right, getting torn off of those wheels once
Speaker 2: you grab on as the plane is going up into
Speaker 2: the air. The second thing is when you do that
Speaker 2: and the wheels were tracked in, you got to stay
Speaker 2: in that landing gear area, which is a closed off
Speaker 2: area and it's also very very tight. You can be
Speaker 2: crushed in the confined space once the wheels retract, which
Speaker 2: is a very common thing. Unfortunately, you can fall as
Speaker 2: the plane is landing because remember when the plane's flying in,
Speaker 2: it's still going at a pretty dang fast speed, and
Speaker 2: those wheels go down and they're hanging out in the
Speaker 2: air while you're flying through it for a while before
Speaker 2: the plane actually you know, lands and makes contact with
Speaker 2: the Earth. You can also die from the heat produced
Speaker 2: by the engines of the aircraft while you're hanging out
Speaker 2: in there. You can also die by hypothermia, which is
Speaker 2: caused by the extreme cold when you're way up at altitude.
Speaker 2: You can also die by hypoxia, which is not getting
Speaker 2: enough oxygen supply. Because you're you're not in a sealed cabin.
Speaker 5: They don't have to do any of that stuff in
Speaker 5: the hold, right your luggage. You'll be just fine unless
Speaker 5: you're stowing away in some luggage, you know. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's I never thought about these things as fascinting, as
Speaker 5: a whole nother world down there. Because either of you
Speaker 5: guys ever been in the hold of a large aircraft
Speaker 5: like George one or viewed one, I wouldn't.
Speaker 4: I only you have, Okay, what would your experience with that.
Speaker 3: H Well, luckily was not in it. It was in
Speaker 3: air while it was in operation due to you know,
Speaker 3: clearly the concerns about pressurization and other damaging or potentially
Speaker 3: damaging health effects. I like it. It depends on the plane. Really,
Speaker 3: Are there cuttings that kind of stuff?
Speaker 4: Are things just like heaved in there. I guess they're.
Speaker 3: Strapped down they are, okay, got it? Depend again depending
Speaker 3: on the cargo, depending on the plane.
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, And remember that cargo area that Ben
Speaker 2: is describing there is separate from the wheel well many
Speaker 2: times to where that's a whole separate, closed.
Speaker 4: Off space, So you would not even make it to
Speaker 4: the cargo hole.
Speaker 5: You would be like literally hanging out in the wheel well.
Speaker 3: Right, They're discrete parts of the.
Speaker 2: Structure, exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: I bet you even the cargo hole would have a
Speaker 5: little climate control lest it mess up your keepsakes, you know,
Speaker 5: if there are anything perishable perhaps, right, I'm just saying,
Speaker 5: there would have to be something in that compartment that
Speaker 5: would be different, a little more conducive to life than
Speaker 5: in the fricking wheel well.
Speaker 2: Well, I would love to hear from pilots out there
Speaker 2: with lots of experience. In my understanding, there is some
Speaker 2: sort of port access to that compartment of the plane
Speaker 2: from the fuselage, from the area that is sealed off
Speaker 2: and climate controlled and has what term am I missing here, guys,
Speaker 2: where it's like pressurized pressurized there you go, because if
Speaker 2: it wasn't pressurized down there, as well, or at least
Speaker 2: to some extent, you open that hatch and then you
Speaker 2: got serious problems. You're losing pressurization in the cabin, which
Speaker 2: I imagine would be a problem in something they would
Speaker 2: think about. I hope who knows, though, anybody out there
Speaker 2: that knows tell us. Okay, guys, but here's the last
Speaker 2: bit from that Annual Review twenty eleven quote. In some
Speaker 2: eighty nine people on seventy nine flights have attempted to
Speaker 2: fly in the wheel well or other compartment's exterior to
Speaker 2: the aircraft excluding the cargo area. Of those eighty nine,
Speaker 2: only eighteen survived. The eighty percent fatal twenty percent survival
Speaker 2: rate is quite a stable statistic. These experiments of human nature,
Speaker 2: while not considered scientifically sound, do contribute to our understanding
Speaker 2: of human physiology in extreme environments.
Speaker 5: It's the idiot test, right, Like I mean, it's basically
Speaker 5: like you're using stats from people who have done really
Speaker 5: dumb and gotten themselves killed to create a bigger picture,
Speaker 5: a bigger understanding of the human body.
Speaker 2: Well, remember this is an R and D annual review, right,
Speaker 2: this is research and development. So the way they're thinking
Speaker 2: about it, and even discussing it within the review itself
Speaker 2: is from that research perspective, like, this is data that
Speaker 2: we can use.
Speaker 5: Well, they do say that you don't want to become
Speaker 5: a statistic, don't they.
Speaker 4: There's the very definition of that.
Speaker 2: That expression reminds me of our discussions long time ago
Speaker 2: about Unit seven thirty one, and just you know, once
Speaker 2: we have this information, what do we do with it?
Speaker 2: And hopefully we can use it to better things in
Speaker 2: some way somewhat cobway. One other thing, as a this
Speaker 2: is news that just popped up as we were recording.
Speaker 2: A passenger was arrested after allegedly opening an emergency door
Speaker 2: of a Jet Blue plane on a taxiway at a
Speaker 2: Boston airport.
Speaker 5: Don't act like you haven't thought about it. Don't act
Speaker 5: like you haven't been tempted by that that whatever, that
Speaker 5: bar that that switch.
Speaker 2: Well, we wouldn't recommend it, Nope, especially if the plane
Speaker 2: you know, is in flight, Like, definitely don't do that.
Speaker 2: But in this case, it was taxiing right is on
Speaker 2: a taxiway and the emergency door was open, allegedly, according
Speaker 2: to NBC News and the writers there, it allegedly occurred
Speaker 2: because a man was sitting with his female companion and
Speaker 2: they were arguing because she wouldn't let him see her phone.
Speaker 2: So he ran up, opened the emergent hatch, deployed you know,
Speaker 2: the little slide thing, the inflatable slide, but then stayed
Speaker 2: on the plane. Authorities came and got him and that
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 3: But hey, just be careful on planes, please please, and
Speaker 3: please remember that sitting in the exit row is an
Speaker 3: awesome responsibility. It's one of the best places to sit
Speaker 3: on the plane, especially if things go wrong and you
Speaker 3: don't like waiting in line. Hey put that diplomatically, but
Speaker 3: do do realize that flight attendants are there primarily for
Speaker 3: your safety. So when they ask you for that verbal yes,
Speaker 3: don't you know, don't be cute. Just give them the
Speaker 3: verbal yes. And if you need to move, move, fly safe.
Speaker 5: Everyone for sure. They don't think it's cute. They've seen
Speaker 5: it all before.
Speaker 3: They've heard it all before. Right with this, we want
Speaker 3: to hear new things. We want to hear new things,
Speaker 3: specifically from you, whether or not you are a real
Speaker 3: as our parlor and vogel Bam would say, actual facts,
Speaker 3: human person meaning your meat mech or whether you're an
Speaker 3: AI bot. Give us your thoughts on dead Internet theory
Speaker 3: and the future thereof. Let us know your thoughts on
Speaker 3: being Google ancient, led exposure, the talibonds, escalating policies against women,
Speaker 3: tell us your flight stories, and again great appreciation and
Speaker 3: thanks to mister Mike render Nole. How can people find
Speaker 3: us if they want to reach out online and sip
Speaker 3: some social media?
Speaker 5: So many places reach out and touch us. Specifically, you
Speaker 5: can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we
Speaker 5: exist on x fka Twitter, which good on you x
Speaker 5: for that. Community notes policy never been my platform of choice,
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Speaker 5: Stuff Show, and if you'd like to reach us as individuals,
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Speaker 4: You can find me inclusively on Instagram at how Now Noel.
Speaker 3: Brown, and you can meet me at your favorite crossroads
Speaker 3: midnight just say the right name into a mirror, or
Speaker 3: you can find me tiki traphouse at Instagram. Mutually is
Speaker 3: sure distraction at any place with an at or in
Speaker 3: a burst of creativity at Ben Bollen on Instagram, at
Speaker 3: bin Bolan hsw on various other platforms, or the website
Speaker 3: Benbolin dot com. Hey, Matt, what about you?
Speaker 2: My name is Matt Frederick and you can find me.
Speaker 4: Use your skills, use your context class.
Speaker 3: What if someone doesn't sip the social meds? What if
Speaker 3: they want to use a telephonic device.
Speaker 4: Honestly, that's the best way to get Matt. Let's not lie.
Speaker 2: Hey, that's the guy. Hey sometimes sometimes why not give
Speaker 2: us a call? Our number is one eight three three
Speaker 2: std WYTK. That is the voicemail system. If you call in,
Speaker 2: give yourself a cool nickname. Try and stick with it too,
Speaker 2: because we're gonna put you in the system as that.
Speaker 2: And it's great because then we know when you call,
Speaker 2: and then.
Speaker 4: We might call you back.
Speaker 2: Sh You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like. If
Speaker 2: you've got more to say than could fit in that
Speaker 2: three minutes, why not instead send us a good old
Speaker 2: fashion email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive. We cannot wait to hear from you. Be
Speaker 3: well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back, and
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