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 Noel, and they call me Ben.
Speaker 3: We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Speaker 3: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 4: You are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of strange news going on if you
Speaker 3: are tuning in the evening this publishes. Let us be
Speaker 3: the first to welcome you to Monday, March seventeenth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five. Guys, this means that we're just past the
Speaker 3: IDEs of March.
Speaker 4: Do you remember those? Yeah, the spooky iides of March
Speaker 4: right and portends wicked things this way coming.
Speaker 2: We just talked about that in our episode about the
Speaker 2: White House right and people that try to predict things.
Speaker 2: They would always think about those. Actually, no, remember they
Speaker 2: missed the iyds last time.
Speaker 3: And they missed the eyes. They skipped the eyes, but
Speaker 3: they were aware of the eyes.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, obviously the IDEs of March specifically are
Speaker 4: tied to the prophecy of Caesar. Julius Caesar's murder. Is
Speaker 4: that really the jumping off point that's kind of caused
Speaker 4: them to be sort of looked at as like a
Speaker 4: spooky time or a portentous time. Yeah, it's because.
Speaker 3: Caesar Caesar was assassinated in forty four BCE, and then
Speaker 3: later a guy named William Shakespeare, real up and coming writer,
Speaker 3: had a thing he wrote called Julius Caesar a part
Speaker 3: of it, and that's where there's a line in that
Speaker 3: where they say beware the eyes of much.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: So that's sort of a little bit some some creative
Speaker 4: license going on there, and I think i'ds just it.
Speaker 3: It comes from the Latin to divide, So it's it's
Speaker 3: a midway point where we're a little loose today, we're
Speaker 3: a little bit punchy folks. We're so glad that you
Speaker 3: joined us. We are going to look into some strange
Speaker 3: and unusual things with you tonight. There's a bribery scandal
Speaker 3: that leads to black magic batteries that can be powered
Speaker 3: by nuclear waste. Shout out to some of our listeners
Speaker 3: who sent this. We'll talk about Ai Will talk about
Speaker 3: a symbolic bird fight, which we all love, the price
Speaker 3: of coffee, which is super important obviously to us. And
Speaker 3: before we get into any of our leading stories here
Speaker 3: which we haven't yet alluded to, did you guys hear
Speaker 3: about this dude in Missouri who got charged for trying
Speaker 3: to have sex with a train seat.
Speaker 4: Relatable real man of the people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in public with others on the train.
Speaker 4: Perhaps it was a class cabin, you know, one would
Speaker 4: hope have a little bit of humility.
Speaker 3: My guy, this is in Missouri or Missouri your mileage
Speaker 3: may very linguistically or dialectically. At a metrolink station, here's
Speaker 3: what they say, all right, it's February thirteenth, a woman
Speaker 3: told investigators that she saw a man exposing himself at
Speaker 3: the metrolink station. On the same day, Police said the
Speaker 3: man took a train at the Central West End station
Speaker 3: and then took out his Australia and proceeded to have
Speaker 3: relationships of an intimate sort with the upper bar of
Speaker 3: one of the train seats for about ten minutes.
Speaker 4: And there is video of this. Sorry, the upper bar,
Speaker 4: what are we talking here? Like the head rest? Yeah,
Speaker 4: the crevasse between the headrest and the and the upper
Speaker 4: back support area.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, if you've ever been on a
Speaker 3: train when you're walking, it's like the uh oh snap
Speaker 3: handle at the top of the train in case it's
Speaker 3: moving while you're walking down the central corridor.
Speaker 4: Oh, why doesn't seem very pleasant?
Speaker 3: Yeah? This is a sad story, and the only reason
Speaker 3: we're bringing it up.
Speaker 4: Here in the beginning is because the first.
Speaker 3: Question that naturally a lot of us are going to ask, how,
Speaker 3: just to ourselves one how, I would say, more importantly,
Speaker 3: unless we cast judgment, Can we see a picture of
Speaker 3: the train seat?
Speaker 4: Oh? Goodness? Please? Yeah? All right, here we go.
Speaker 3: Let's look at We'll give you two versions here and
Speaker 3: Noel Matt. I don't think you guys have seen these yet?
Speaker 4: Is that correct? I have not?
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So here is a shot of a
Speaker 3: Metrolink train. Can you see that upper bar on the
Speaker 3: you know, sort of like the headrest chassis.
Speaker 4: Oh, I wasn't far off. It's it's it's like I
Speaker 4: guess I would you said the safety of strap. I
Speaker 4: was picturing a thing sort of mounted to the top
Speaker 4: of the window, which is where the how came in
Speaker 4: Seeing this, now understand the how Yeah, yeah, this is why.
Speaker 4: Maybe is more important, but my goodness, gracious, it's just
Speaker 4: a plastic opening on either side of the head rest
Speaker 4: that I guess you could grip onto while walking down
Speaker 4: the aisle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's another picture, just so we're doing some due diligence.
Speaker 3: Is this something that you would risk it all for
Speaker 3: when you see that that little grabby thing on the
Speaker 3: side of the head rest, what do you It's.
Speaker 4: Not a private situation at all, guys. This is a
Speaker 4: very very open plan, commuter train type situation. And then yeah,
Speaker 4: the answer is is a hard no.
Speaker 2: It was a very hard no.
Speaker 4: Hard yes for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was well, you know, the course of true
Speaker 3: love never did run smooth, and the hardness or softness
Speaker 3: of the situation.
Speaker 4: We cannot comment on.
Speaker 3: Dun when you know, you know, as they say in
Speaker 3: any proper rom com. And we look forward to the
Speaker 3: Netflix adaptation. For now, we're going to pause for a
Speaker 3: word from our sponsors. Then we're going to return with
Speaker 3: some breaking news updates on our earlier conversations about space exploration,
Speaker 3: as well as some budget stuff, some freedom stuff, the
Speaker 3: right for corporations to totally tell the truth regarding what
Speaker 3: they put in the things they sell.
Speaker 4: You can we just stop picking on corporations, y'all. That's
Speaker 4: all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: You know, no cool, And we've returned. Last week. We
Speaker 2: talked quite a bit about space, about the moon, about
Speaker 2: commerce upon that moon, and how humans are going to
Speaker 2: be making money hand over fist as they float around
Speaker 2: on the beautiful thing. If you look out today, as
Speaker 2: we recorded at least tonight, you'll see in almost full
Speaker 2: move gorgeous out there.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a blood moon on the way as
Speaker 3: well this week here. You can't see it very well
Speaker 3: from our metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, how because of the
Speaker 3: weather conditions that'll be coming through from March thirteenth to
Speaker 3: March fourteenth.
Speaker 4: Well more weather, what are we talking about? What kind
Speaker 4: of condition's been?
Speaker 3: There's a sick blood moon on the way.
Speaker 4: Oh cool, as long as it's not another monsoon. I'm
Speaker 4: getting a little tired of those here in our fair metropolis.
Speaker 4: Matt really quickly the idea the expression hand over fist.
Speaker 4: When you do it, it kind of makes a time
Speaker 4: out sign. I've always wondered where the providence of that
Speaker 4: expression comes from, and that is probably outside the scope
Speaker 4: of this conversation, but just wanted to mention.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's okay, it's again hand over fish time out. Guys.
Speaker 3: It means grabbing a bunch of money and stuffing it
Speaker 3: in your pocket.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's that's sun brand.
Speaker 2: Well, it just means very rapidly. That's according to the dictionary.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, that's also.
Speaker 4: It's navel in origin. Very I guess I'm picturing one
Speaker 4: of those uh money cages where it blows around you,
Speaker 4: you know, like at a Chuck e Cheese or at
Speaker 4: Dave and Busters, you know, or you just have to
Speaker 4: grab everything that's coming at you and you emerge. You
Speaker 4: get to keep with whatever you emerge with. That's kind
Speaker 4: of you know, I like it.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm derailing us on the etymology.
Speaker 4: So that's okay. No, that was my question and I
Speaker 4: think we solved it. So Maddie, what's going on with
Speaker 4: commerce and space?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're not finished with hands Okay, okay, okay. Imagine
Speaker 2: you're on a ship and imagine there a ses of
Speaker 2: ropes that are down the side of that ship. The
Speaker 2: other way to get up onto the ship is to
Speaker 2: go off that rope. So you grab on with one hand,
Speaker 2: you make a fist because you're grabbing tight right. Then
Speaker 2: your hand goes over that fist and grabs onto the
Speaker 2: next one. You keep doing it, you real room girl fast.
Speaker 2: That's handover rising.
Speaker 4: Then well done.
Speaker 2: Now humans are going hand over fist to the to
Speaker 2: make money. That's the plan. We're sending human beings up
Speaker 2: there very soon. But first before we do that, we're
Speaker 2: sending up a whole bunch of unmanned missions to do
Speaker 2: some science, figure out some things that the humans will
Speaker 2: find helpful before they are walking around on there. Well,
Speaker 2: last week we talked about the first successful private unmanned
Speaker 2: lunar mission. It was a company called Firefly Aerospace and
Speaker 2: they sent up Blue Ghost. It landed on March second. Awesome.
Speaker 2: We got to see the amazing video of it landing,
Speaker 2: and we got confirmation, by the way, as of a
Speaker 2: couple days ago, that eight out of the ten NASA
Speaker 2: experiments that were on board the Blue Ghost already met
Speaker 2: their mission objectives. It's going to operate for a little
Speaker 2: bit longer until the lunar daytime ends. Then no more
Speaker 2: solar power, no more mission at least for a time
Speaker 2: until maybe the sun comes back or it's just done.
Speaker 2: It did its whole thing and they got all of
Speaker 2: the stuff they needed. And that's basically what happens on
Speaker 2: the Moon. As the sun is out there hitting the
Speaker 2: surface wherever that lunar lander is, things can operate just fine.
Speaker 2: Then when it goes away, it kind of goes into
Speaker 2: a sleep mode or it's just done with its mission. Now,
Speaker 2: we talked about at the end of that episode a
Speaker 2: second lunar mission that was going up, another unmanned lander
Speaker 2: that was going to be sent up by a different company,
Speaker 2: this time Intuitive Machines based out of Texas, and we
Speaker 2: got that newsh got bad news.
Speaker 4: Guys, Yeah, didn't like the Blue Ghost.
Speaker 2: Didn'n aase the landing. The landing is the toughest part.
Speaker 4: How to stick the landing.
Speaker 3: And again, as we said previously multiple times, just being fair,
Speaker 3: the math is extremely difficult cartoonishly so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and you have to again just the way
Speaker 2: the communication works between the unmanned lander and then whoever's
Speaker 2: working this time, probably in Houston just because it's a
Speaker 2: Texas based company, but make sending those communications out there's
Speaker 2: minor delays, there's all kinds of little things. You're only
Speaker 2: working with the sensors that are on board that thing,
Speaker 2: you know, that's going thousands of miles per hour as
Speaker 2: it's orbiting around the moon for a time before it
Speaker 2: tries to make that landing and slow like slow down
Speaker 2: to make the landing. The math is crazy. The physical
Speaker 2: actions that have to be taken in the moment, in
Speaker 2: real time are crazy. It's like the hardest video game
Speaker 2: that could ever be created.
Speaker 3: Yeah, take that from soft Like there's also new there's
Speaker 3: there's a very small.
Speaker 4: Margin of tolerance.
Speaker 3: Sure, I would say for as you said, rocketing over there,
Speaker 3: getting the timing right because the moon is also moving,
Speaker 3: and then going out such that you are able to
Speaker 3: safely land. That's the tricky part, because any pilot will
Speaker 3: tell you, you know, technically the easiest part of flying
Speaker 3: a plane is landing it. The real craft is or craft.
Speaker 3: The real art is landing it without breaking everything correct.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, really do think about that. We've been
Speaker 2: in cars before. What the maximum most of us have
Speaker 2: probably been in a car, if we haven't been in
Speaker 2: a racing situation is like maybe ninety miles per hour
Speaker 2: to over a little maybe a little over one hundred
Speaker 2: miles per hour. If you've been on a highway or something,
Speaker 2: and someone's chosen to go way faster than you should
Speaker 2: or legally should be able to, but sped up for
Speaker 2: a minute. You know, in racing situations, humans get up
Speaker 2: to you know, two hundred miles per hour a little
Speaker 2: higher if you give the f one area, you're getting
Speaker 2: pretty fast on land. And then if you go to
Speaker 2: the air planes are going what three hundred four hundred
Speaker 2: miles per hour?
Speaker 4: Malarkey, no real, Well, I guess what.
Speaker 2: I mean is I cannot fathom how fast four thousand
Speaker 2: miles per hour is for a a fairly large thing
Speaker 2: just traveling right like. That's hard for me to imagine.
Speaker 2: And then trying to imagine slowing that down effectively to
Speaker 2: two my ailes per hour for the final the final
Speaker 2: speed as it's approaching landing. That's just nuts to me.
Speaker 2: It's also pretty nuts to me that, you know, the
Speaker 2: Apollo missions, the human beings inside the craft. You know,
Speaker 2: it makes sense why you had to get to the
Speaker 2: orbit and then send the or the separate lander down
Speaker 2: out of the orbiter. That makes sense to me. Now, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm going off track, guys, But the whole
Speaker 2: point is it's so difficult with this second lander that
Speaker 2: Intuitive Machines sent up. This one's name was Athena. As
Speaker 2: it's coming down to try and land, it has on
Speaker 2: board just like the previous lander, Intuitive Machines sent up
Speaker 2: a very sophisticated system called the Prime Laser Navigation system.
Speaker 2: So this is oh, very fancy.
Speaker 4: This is the thing that I was supposed to a
Speaker 4: little fragile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fragile perhaps, I mean awesome though, prime laser system.
Speaker 3: Everybody say, we all agree.
Speaker 2: It's so as as the lander is coming down, this
Speaker 2: system is supposed to let let the landers systems know
Speaker 2: where the moon is, how it is positioned, you know,
Speaker 2: to that moon, so it can know how to fire
Speaker 2: the stuff the rockets. It needs to slow it down
Speaker 2: to that two miles per hour. And according to Intuitive Machines,
Speaker 2: this is the thing that cause problems, just like their
Speaker 2: first lander. So as it's coming in, it just got
Speaker 2: it got its trajectory off. It ended up missing its
Speaker 2: landing mark like where they where. The math said the
Speaker 2: lunar lander was going to land by about eight hundred
Speaker 2: feet two hundred and fifty meters, and it ended up
Speaker 2: in a crater. And because of the slope of that crater.
Speaker 2: It's trying to land. It thinks it's on good ground,
Speaker 2: like steady ground. Flap with that, yeah, exactly, and then
Speaker 2: this thing just goes.
Speaker 5: Googh it's right over, which is hilarious.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. So basically it's like like a space turtle,
Speaker 4: you know, on its back, just flopped like nothing that
Speaker 4: can be done. Pictory, folks, When we say it's hilarious,
Speaker 4: we're saying that with great affection. But imagine the vast
Speaker 4: chasms of darkness, the utter, weird silence of space, and
Speaker 4: then out of nowhere there's.
Speaker 3: An And I just I love the idea because there's
Speaker 3: something poetic about it. We built a civilization, built this
Speaker 3: series of extraordinarily complex and impressive to us paper airplanes, right,
Speaker 3: and then just sail them across and we're trying to
Speaker 3: get them to land. And there's something so inspiring and
Speaker 3: human about it. And you know, we agreed in previous
Speaker 3: conversations that it's easy to sort of dunk on these
Speaker 3: noble attempts, but it's also crucial to remember that at
Speaker 3: this level, in this rarefied space, even a failure of
Speaker 3: this magnitude is tremendously impressive.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, next time its fail better. You know.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's the whole plan Intuitive Machine. Well let
Speaker 2: me get into details. And that's a really great point
Speaker 2: because Intuitive Machines has two more planned missions that are
Speaker 2: already like they're under contract with NASA to make to
Speaker 2: get up there. But the sad part is you got
Speaker 2: all these human beings that you know, made this, all
Speaker 2: the science happen, all the physical creation of this thing.
Speaker 2: You know, there's sixty two million dollars worth of intelligence,
Speaker 2: like human intelligence to get this thing to happen. It
Speaker 2: gets on there, there's a huge rover that's on board
Speaker 2: this lander that was supposed to come out and go
Speaker 2: do a bunch of other science in Tudi Machines reported
Speaker 2: that it never made it off the lander, but they
Speaker 2: were able to control it. It survived and it could
Speaker 2: have driven off if it could have physically driven off
Speaker 2: of the lander. So that's a plus, right that science works.
Speaker 4: When to your point, Matt, I mean, it's not considered
Speaker 4: a full failure. The quote from I believe the company
Speaker 4: there're spokespeople said that the mission has concluded and teams
Speaker 4: are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.
Speaker 4: But I guess you know, even getting there is part
Speaker 4: of the mission. It's collecting data on the way, right well.
Speaker 2: And it's making sure all of the components that make
Speaker 2: up that lander can function correctly. Right there's a drill
Speaker 2: on board, and that drill was supposed to go into
Speaker 2: the surface of the Moon and do some testing. That
Speaker 2: drill was able to be activated and turned while you know,
Speaker 2: while still attached to the lander that's on its side.
Speaker 2: That means, hey, the drill is going to function. If
Speaker 2: we can get this thing up right, that's great. Yep,
Speaker 2: And uh oh, this is the other thing. This is
Speaker 2: very interesting, and I just wonder what you guys think
Speaker 2: about it. So on board are all of the things
Speaker 2: that are publicly known the scientific missions, all of these
Speaker 2: different pieces of hardware that are going to go and
Speaker 2: do different things. But there's also stuff on there that
Speaker 2: are just the other science missions that NASA has paid
Speaker 2: for as a part of this lunar mission. And in
Speaker 2: Tuda machine said quote, several other mission objectives were accelerated. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's interesting to me. Right, So, even though the lander
Speaker 2: is on its side, even though all of these major things,
Speaker 2: like there there was another hopper do you remember we
Speaker 2: talked about that, Well, maybe we didn't talk about it.
Speaker 2: There was a hopper that was going to hop its
Speaker 2: way from the lander a couple of different times using
Speaker 2: that lessoned gravity that the Moon has and get to
Speaker 2: like the bottom of another crater and then test that
Speaker 2: crater for water.
Speaker 4: Matt, is the name just clever or is the thing
Speaker 4: really hop I'm trying to picture? Yeah, it's actually okay,
Speaker 4: that's pretty neat.
Speaker 2: Imagine a little system that pushes really hard, like on
Speaker 2: the ground or like a like almost like a mini
Speaker 2: rocket or something goes. I don't know exactly how it works.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen the schematics, but it just does one
Speaker 2: big jump using that lesson of gravity, lands does it
Speaker 2: a couple more times, and then it's in a crator.
Speaker 3: What I like to think of, and this is just
Speaker 3: going to put it at a very basic level, what
Speaker 3: I like to think of is imagine you walk a
Speaker 3: long way and you've got a backpack, and you got
Speaker 3: all kinds of cool stuff in your backpack, like you're hiking. Now,
Speaker 3: imagine one of those things is sort of a giant
Speaker 3: cricket or a grasshopper, and it's your little buddy it's
Speaker 3: your little jimminy cricket and it jumps out and it
Speaker 3: comes back, and then it tells you, hey, there might
Speaker 3: be some water over there, and always let your conscience
Speaker 3: be your guide, or in this case, it might say, hey, man,
Speaker 3: pick yourself up.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 4: Kind of reminds me of the type of tech that's
Speaker 4: used in the video game No Man's Sky, where you
Speaker 4: have a sort of rocket pack on your back that
Speaker 4: is really just a quick boost so you can hop
Speaker 4: with more trajectory, you know, as you make your way
Speaker 4: across the planet to collect all your resources and stuff. Dude,
Speaker 4: it's a fun game. They got better. It was like
Speaker 4: sort of a letdown when it came out, but over
Speaker 4: the years it's improved significantly. If you're into open world
Speaker 4: space exploration, you know, what's the word resource extraction kind
Speaker 4: of games, it's.
Speaker 2: For you, amazing. Let's all look that up. Guys. We
Speaker 2: have to jump away from the room really quickly, run
Speaker 2: out of time for this segment, but we have to
Speaker 2: talk about one thing. There's this guy. His name's RFK Jr.
Speaker 2: You may know him Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Speaker 4: From earlier, Yeah.
Speaker 2: From earlier. He is currently the US Secretary of Health
Speaker 2: and Human Services. People have feels about mister Kennedy in
Speaker 2: a couple different ways, usually too really like the guy,
Speaker 2: really don't like the guy. But there is that space between.
Speaker 2: The space between that is the thing that sees him
Speaker 2: as a very complicated, not great human that sometimes does
Speaker 2: cool things. And I've heard that from many people. I
Speaker 2: think I might share that a little bit, at least
Speaker 2: somewhat because mister Kennedy came forward and basically has stated
Speaker 2: something in the open. Well, he because of his position
Speaker 2: the US government, has now stated something that we have
Speaker 2: said on this show many a time that many people
Speaker 2: we are into that we read their books, in their articles,
Speaker 2: they are into and will say it out loud. But
Speaker 2: they're journalists or you know, they're working in a specific field,
Speaker 2: and they're not a part of the US government, so
Speaker 2: it just hits a little different. He came forward and
Speaker 2: he had this quote in a statement that was made
Speaker 2: on March tenth of this year, Robert F. Kennedy said quote,
Speaker 2: For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited
Speaker 2: a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often
Speaker 2: with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the US
Speaker 2: food supply without notification to the FDA or the public.
Speaker 2: That statement alone by the government just saying, hey, these
Speaker 2: companies are putting stuff in the food that we don't
Speaker 2: even have oversight on or full knowledge about. The people
Speaker 2: who are going to eat those food products don't know
Speaker 2: what they are. And it goes on in this statement
Speaker 2: that was put out on March tenth to say we
Speaker 2: need to do something about this.
Speaker 3: Specifically, it's the self affirming policy.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's that whole thing where a company a
Speaker 2: corporation can come up with a new chemical ingredient, let's
Speaker 2: just throw them out in the air, like aspartain, and
Speaker 2: they can decide, hey, we're gonna put this substance in
Speaker 2: a bunch of different food. Here is all the data
Speaker 2: or some of the data that we have done that
Speaker 2: shows this thing is perfectly fine for everybody. All you
Speaker 2: need to know, FDA is that we did that, and
Speaker 2: public will just state to you it's fine, it's good
Speaker 2: to go. We did some testing. But essentially what's happening
Speaker 2: here is there's public discourse that that's not okay. We
Speaker 2: need to change that, and there needs to be more
Speaker 2: transparency about food additives and ingredients and things like that.
Speaker 2: It hit pretty hard to me, guys, because we had
Speaker 2: just talked last year about specific additives in foods like
Speaker 2: crackers and candies and all kinds of soft drinks and
Speaker 2: things that can be sold here in the US.
Speaker 4: Versus the yeah.
Speaker 2: You have to do you have to use completely different
Speaker 2: ingredients that don't include the ones that Robert F. Kennedy
Speaker 2: Junior there would be talking about.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, And this is this is the thing that
Speaker 3: can be tricky to understand, especially in the divisive narratives
Speaker 3: of mass media. People can be wrong about some stuff
Speaker 3: and then totally on the money about other stuff. It
Speaker 3: reminds me of that it was either the Hard Times
Speaker 3: or the Onion that had some headline where they said
Speaker 3: devastating blow. The person you hate the most just made
Speaker 3: an excellent.
Speaker 4: Point, And I was gonna say, this does seem relatively
Speaker 4: reasonable and positive.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, cool, this is this is overall something that
Speaker 3: Upton Sinclair would applaud right the author of The Jungle,
Speaker 3: and that that piece of journalism played a huge role
Speaker 3: in the consumer protections that exist in the United States today.
Speaker 3: So look, we're not saying that you have to agree
Speaker 3: with everything. Rfka Junior says, we are saying that if
Speaker 3: someone is legally selling you something, you should, as a consumer,
Speaker 3: have a right to understand what you're buying. I think
Speaker 3: that's very reasonable. We are far past the Greco Roman
Speaker 3: days of caveatimp tour or buying a pig in a poke. Uh,
Speaker 3: just two idioms, we're gonna we're gonna whip out there.
Speaker 2: We just lifted out the pig in the poke and
Speaker 2: then out the poke.
Speaker 4: Funny Ben, There's a British sketch show that I really
Speaker 4: love called The League of Gentlemen, which you guys may
Speaker 4: have seen, and there's a recurring character on it that
Speaker 4: always says, okay, do pig and a pokey? And I
Speaker 4: never understood what that meant until you just said it
Speaker 4: just now in an American accent. What does the expression mean?
Speaker 3: I mean like a pig in jail, But by a
Speaker 3: pig in a poke means that you don't know what
Speaker 3: you're really buying. A similar reference would be so a
Speaker 3: poke is just a sack?
Speaker 4: Got it?
Speaker 3: So the idea is you're buying something concealed and the
Speaker 3: person selling it to you is telling.
Speaker 4: You, yeah, When I heard the hokey I thought maybe
Speaker 4: meant something to do with the jail, But no, that's
Speaker 4: very helpful. Ben, thank you for demystifying that.
Speaker 2: It reminds me a bit of the character of Francis Underwood,
Speaker 2: Like I really like Francis Underwood. I don't like him,
Speaker 2: but I also really like watching Francis Underwood.
Speaker 4: Such a cad, such a little scamp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you then you're like, you look at
Speaker 2: the layers of Francis Underwood and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: what about the actor that's playing Francis Underwood. Oh, and
Speaker 2: then you just start to go deeper and deeper, and
Speaker 2: then the complexities of Francis Underwood, the character and then
Speaker 2: the human, and then your brain kind of short circuits
Speaker 2: a little bit. I don't feel fully that way about
Speaker 2: RFK Junior, but uh, there's some it's something along those lines.
Speaker 3: We're also still as the US currently in this in
Speaker 3: this administration. Not a political point, this is just structural.
Speaker 3: We're still very much in the new car smell era.
Speaker 3: You know, people are uh saying a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 3: they're proposing it by stuff that, just like with Tariff's
Speaker 3: ends up, the conversation changes hour by hour. Right, So
Speaker 3: it is there is a non zero chance that a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff ORFKSA and in this new position will
Speaker 3: ultimately not come to pass or not translate to policy.
Speaker 3: And the question is the art now becomes figuring out
Speaker 3: how much of this is perhaps purposeful noise, how much
Speaker 3: of this is genuine concrete policy.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to be hopeful that at least saying it
Speaker 2: out loud like this will at some point make it
Speaker 2: become a thing.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's manifested well in some way, because I think
Speaker 5: when you speak the truth out loud like that, it
Speaker 5: has a better chance of being addressed, at least.
Speaker 2: And just because of the source of where it's coming from. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's it, guys, I'm so sorry I went way too
Speaker 2: long there.
Speaker 4: Good stuff.
Speaker 2: We will be right back after word from our sponsors,
Speaker 2: and we have.
Speaker 4: Returned with more strange news. Gonna lead with a couple
Speaker 4: of shorties and then get into one that I think
Speaker 4: will be rife for discussion. First, I would like to
Speaker 4: talk about a kind of symbolic news event. I suppose
Speaker 4: in the wake of all of this kerfuffle with the
Speaker 4: US and Canada, this impending trade war, a lot of
Speaker 4: this back and forth with you tearrif uss will tear
Speaker 4: a few, all the electricity stuff, and now how Trump
Speaker 4: is you know, pushing back against that, saying how could you?
Speaker 4: How dare you Canada, you know, try to hurt the
Speaker 4: common people, you know, by depriving them of their electricity.
Speaker 4: I don't know. Seems little disingenuous we think about it,
Speaker 4: But today we're going to talk about a photograph that
Speaker 4: really captures this dynamic, kind of almost too perfectly. The
Speaker 4: headline says it all from The Guardian. Canada goose fights
Speaker 4: off bald eagle in rare, symbolism laden battle on ice.
Speaker 4: Oh it's pretty incredible. A fatahographer from Ontario with the
Speaker 4: name of Mervin Sequira or Siquira, was out with his
Speaker 4: family hanging out on a frozen lake and spotted a
Speaker 4: bald eagle making its way with murderous intent towards a
Speaker 4: Canada goose. The photographer thought that he was about to
Speaker 4: capture an absolute blood bath, a massacre of epic proportions,
Speaker 4: but instead he saw something very different that really speaks
Speaker 4: to kind of the ingenuity and stick, touitiveness and wiliness
Speaker 4: of the Canadian spirit. Symbolically, of course. For the next
Speaker 4: twenty minutes, he captured this battle that did transpire with
Speaker 4: his camera and watched as something unexpected unfolded. This is
Speaker 4: what he had to say to the Guardian. I've seen
Speaker 4: bald eagles take a lot of things, from ducks to muskrats,
Speaker 4: but this is the first time I've seen a bald
Speaker 4: eagle go in for something as big as a goose.
Speaker 4: The eagle attempted to sink its razors sharp talons into
Speaker 4: the goose, the beloved Canada goose. However, the goose was
Speaker 4: not was unflappable. That's a pun. I'm fine with that,
Speaker 4: And it continued to evade these swooping maneuvers from the
Speaker 4: bald eagle, who would you know, come in for the
Speaker 4: kill and miss, and then go up again, circle a
Speaker 4: while and come back in for another kill and apparently
Speaker 4: like a lunar land just so and after again, twenty
Speaker 4: minutes of this back and forth, this eagle and goose,
Speaker 4: cat and mouse kind of situation. Uh, you gave up
Speaker 4: and flew on its merry way. Wow? Yeah, pretty crazy, guys.
Speaker 4: I mean, the symbolism is so thick you could cut it.
Speaker 4: It's like a it's like a poutine, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how many times have these sorts of encounters occurred
Speaker 3: in the past. Yeah, this is great timing for the photographer,
Speaker 3: given the given the current tensions between the US and Canada.
Speaker 3: I would also note there is more than mere symbolism
Speaker 3: at play here, because the eagle, the eagle hunting the goose.
Speaker 3: This is a question for experts in the crowd, the
Speaker 3: eagle hunting the goose. Is this a normal thing for
Speaker 3: an eagle to do, or is it driven by a
Speaker 3: lack of other prey avenues or perhaps politics?
Speaker 4: You know, maybe maybe the eagle was trying to make
Speaker 4: a statement and the goose prevented him from prevented it
Speaker 4: from doing that, you know. And of course in the
Speaker 4: article on the Guardian, it goes into a lot of
Speaker 4: the stuff that we've already discussed about the rhetoric between
Speaker 4: the US and Canada. This the images alone are fantastic,
Speaker 4: and some of them you can really see the adversarial
Speaker 4: relationship between these two creatures. But in a couple of
Speaker 4: them it looks like they're having themselves a hodown, like
Speaker 4: just dancing on the ice. It's pretty incredible. You can
Speaker 4: definitely check those images out for yourself on the Guardian,
Speaker 4: just search for Canada Goose fights Baald Eagle and it
Speaker 4: should come right up.
Speaker 2: Guys, you think we could develop a mortal combat style
Speaker 2: fighting game with birds like different birds?
Speaker 4: I'm on board. Sure. I think I've mentioned my my
Speaker 4: love of the board game Wingspan and the video game
Speaker 4: adaptations thereof it's a little more of a meditative zen
Speaker 4: kind of board game situation. But I'm all about what
Speaker 4: you're describing that what would what would be some super
Speaker 4: moves or some special moves that the bald eagle or
Speaker 4: fatalities even how would the Canada goose finish him?
Speaker 2: We don't want to give away too much right now,
Speaker 2: we're in the R and D stages of this thing.
Speaker 2: I think this thing has wings, and uh, we're gonna
Speaker 2: we're gonna work on it.
Speaker 4: I got an idea. The Canada goose lays a like
Speaker 4: flies above, circles around, lays a giant egg that then
Speaker 4: just pounds his opponent into the into the ice or into.
Speaker 3: The has crazy movement speed. H that's good as a
Speaker 3: migratory bird.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: The obviously the multi attack with the talons for the
Speaker 3: bald eagle, that's good.
Speaker 4: Perhaps a disemboweling, you know.
Speaker 3: With something where where it vanishes into the air and
Speaker 3: then drops down in a sort of a teleportation move.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is crazy. You say this.
Speaker 3: I actually have with some friends, including a guy we'll
Speaker 3: call coach a uh, a cartoonishly robust ranking system of
Speaker 3: bird fights and their abilities.
Speaker 4: Uh, this would be cool.
Speaker 3: One of the questions that, again, as we said, we're
Speaker 3: still in R and D on, is how our flightless
Speaker 3: bird friends factor it?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? What are their abilities?
Speaker 2: So they're like the zanif of the game. You know
Speaker 2: they're there, They're the kuma is.
Speaker 4: Swing you around by your ankles.
Speaker 3: You know, this is the These are crucial questions. Please
Speaker 3: send us your pitches. I know, out of respect for
Speaker 3: you guys, I stopped sending pictures of strange and dangerous
Speaker 3: birds that I think are cool a few years back.
Speaker 4: Casswary gotta put them in the mix. That would be
Speaker 4: a that's actually one of its real life Yeah. Yeah, dude.
Speaker 2: There's like a cardinal and it's super tiny. The hit
Speaker 2: box is so small on it. You'd think there's no
Speaker 2: way this cardinal is going to win against you know whatever.
Speaker 3: But like anytime Yoda is in a fighting game.
Speaker 4: Humming bird could fly into down the gullet of its
Speaker 4: opponent and beat its wings so fast that.
Speaker 3: It makes the creature explode from the inside. All corvids
Speaker 3: are automatically boss characters. There's just there's no way around that.
Speaker 4: The shame song of the fighting bird world. What about
Speaker 4: mimic birds capable of mimicry too?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Anyway, I can't believe we still have to do this
Speaker 3: show because obviously we're way more invested in this bird
Speaker 3: fighting game.
Speaker 4: We're gonna get to it, guys real quick. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: talk just briefly about another heist type situation. Coffee beans
Speaker 4: are at an all time high. I mayban not an
Speaker 4: all time high, but they are surging the prices in
Speaker 4: the United States and a theft of truckloads of green
Speaker 4: coffee beans is also on the rise along with the
Speaker 4: price of those beans, and there's a pretty interesting grift
Speaker 4: being done. Ted Costly is a logistics sales coordinator for
Speaker 4: Hartley Transportation, which is a freight broker in Pembroke, New Hampshire,
Speaker 4: said there were dozens of thefts in the last year,
Speaker 4: something that would happen only rarely in the past, and
Speaker 4: he described how it's being done. Importers, he said, should
Speaker 4: be careful about who they hire because there are these
Speaker 4: phony import companies that essentially are making these deals and
Speaker 4: then just making off with the coffee. He says, once
Speaker 4: they get the coffee, they disappear. Let's see. Armed men
Speaker 4: in one case of this type of thing took five
Speaker 4: hundred bags of coffee worth around two hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars from a farm in Brazil's Minas Geras state
Speaker 4: in January, and that was according to reports from local police.
Speaker 4: Yeah it says here. Theft is a direct quote from
Speaker 4: an article by Reuter's. Theft of coffee has been reported
Speaker 4: in producing countries such as Brazil and Vietnam, usually in
Speaker 4: farms where the beans are temporarily stored after the harvest.
Speaker 4: These sites are more vulnerable because they are isolated. Costly
Speaker 4: said that these fake companies that I was describing are
Speaker 4: in the market trying to to get small contracts from
Speaker 4: importers by offering better prices or immediately available trucks. Pretty wild,
Speaker 4: It's a pretty interesting scam. Another quote from the piece here.
Speaker 4: To wrap this one up and then remove on with
Speaker 4: one more super interesting story for my segment. Some market
Speaker 4: participants believe the gangs then who are running these fake operations,
Speaker 4: then try to sell the beans to smaller roasters which
Speaker 4: are feeling the pain from these skyrocketing prices. Jeez. So
Speaker 4: importers are actually starting to put tracking devices inside the
Speaker 4: coffee bags in an effort to protect their shipments. This
Speaker 4: kind of thing you might see in Gus Fring's meth operation,
Speaker 4: you know, in breaking that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's just so it's scary to me because
Speaker 2: let's say you've got a tracker in one of those
Speaker 2: bags and there was a large group of armed men
Speaker 2: that took those coffee bags. Who do you send in
Speaker 2: to recover the coffee besides you know, a pretty elite
Speaker 2: team that's either local police or maybe even government.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you RFK Jude here yep, private moon lantern
Speaker 3: that we just repurpose so that he can drop in
Speaker 3: and then ex filtrate easily with Scott talents.
Speaker 4: I was about to say, Canadian goose in tow with
Speaker 4: the grasshopper drone that pops out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, backpack mounted drones, by the way, are on the
Speaker 3: very much in play please check out our upcoming episode
Speaker 3: on the twenty twenty five Super Soldier Update.
Speaker 2: Oh, I just noticed that's a Voice of America article.
Speaker 4: It is correct. Yeah, it's from Reuters, but it was
Speaker 4: posted on Voice of America. It's it's credited to Ruters,
Speaker 4: but I don't know them very well, Matt, Is that
Speaker 4: a sirce to even enjoying?
Speaker 2: I love the Voice of America, as should you, as
Speaker 2: should everyone.
Speaker 4: All right, are you being serious or is this something
Speaker 4: that that I don't know about? Is this like about
Speaker 4: a bad site or something.
Speaker 3: Voice of America and Radio Free American and Radio Freation
Speaker 3: all these other things are functional soft power propaganda initiatives
Speaker 3: by the US government. We're not saying they're lying. We are,
Speaker 3: as we mentioned them quite recently, either in an episode
Speaker 3: or a strange news segment. We also talked about them
Speaker 3: a little bit in an interview I think, with maybe
Speaker 3: Carl Miller or someone. But the point of it is
Speaker 3: not to lie to people, but, as Emily Dickinson said,
Speaker 3: to tell the truth, but tell it slant. So they're
Speaker 3: the opposite of an unbiased news organization. Full disclosure, we
Speaker 3: have friends and contacts who have worked with these outfits
Speaker 3: or similar ones in the past. They're not villainous people,
Speaker 3: but they definitely have a mission.
Speaker 4: Absolutely fair enough. And then, like I said, it is
Speaker 4: a repost of a Reuter's piece, and I did find
Speaker 4: this on ground News, which is that great news aggregator
Speaker 4: app that I think we've all mentioned multiple times on
Speaker 4: this part of the show, and it was ratioed a
Speaker 4: little in favor of the left, so I will point
Speaker 4: that out as well. But this is a thing that's happening,
Speaker 4: and I'm very interested about these gangs and these a
Speaker 4: scam operation setting up these fake import companies. It's something
Speaker 4: that we definitely keep an eye on.
Speaker 2: It does seem like there's so many grifts, are you
Speaker 2: know that are so sophisticated moping up nowadays, or maybe
Speaker 2: they're just they've been around for a long time. They're
Speaker 2: just getting very very good at what they do.
Speaker 4: And do check out our speaking of grifts, our interview
Speaker 4: with the incredible creator of Scam Factory, which is another
Speaker 4: deep dive into some of these very specific grifts and
Speaker 4: how they've sort of evolved with the times. Yeah, Denise
Speaker 4: Chan hundred percent excellent human and excellent researcher and investigative
Speaker 4: journalist and it's such a cool podcast. Highly recommend it.
Speaker 4: So I know I'm almost a time, guys, and it's
Speaker 4: some bummer because I guess I wasn't expecting those to
Speaker 4: fill up as much conversation as they did. But I
Speaker 4: do just want to briefly mention I guess I should
Speaker 4: have led with this one. The headline here says at
Speaker 4: all as well, what one finished church learned from creating
Speaker 4: a service almost entirely with a I we talk all
Speaker 4: the time about the kind of an intersection of money
Speaker 4: and technology and religion, and I just think this is
Speaker 4: such a fascinating look into that. It's a tale of
Speaker 4: good and evil, says the ap Helsinki. Played out on
Speaker 4: the large screen in the sanctuary of Saint Paul's Lutheran
Speaker 4: Church in Finland, Jesus was shown in robes with long
Speaker 4: hair and a beard, while Satan was dressed in more
Speaker 4: modern clothes but with a menacing frown and a higher
Speaker 4: pitched voice, all created by artificial intelligence. This was, I guess,
Speaker 4: an attempt to use AI tools to entirely create a service,
Speaker 4: not as you know, with the goal of replacing anyone
Speaker 4: that was There was more just kind of an experiment,
Speaker 4: I guess, and it does seem that this church has
Speaker 4: a history of kind of innovation and trying out different
Speaker 4: technology and sort of being on the bleeding edge of
Speaker 4: that stuff. It was the first service in Finland, says
Speaker 4: the AP, put together almost entirely by AI tools, which
Speaker 4: wrote the sermons and some of the songs, composed the
Speaker 4: music and created the visuals, and it was widely advertised
Speaker 4: as an experimental service, drawing over one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: people to the church in the northeastern part of Helsinki,
Speaker 4: which is a lot more than on a typical weeknight.
Speaker 4: The AP says people came from all over the country,
Speaker 4: as did a handful of people from even outside of
Speaker 4: Finland to check it out. There's a quote here from
Speaker 4: the Reverend Petya Kapparen in I believe that's close to correct.
Speaker 4: Usually when people talk about aiither talking about what AI
Speaker 4: can do in the future.
Speaker 2: But the future is now.
Speaker 4: AI can do all those things that people think that
Speaker 4: it can maybe do in ten years or so. This
Speaker 4: is clearly coming from the person who came up with
Speaker 4: this idea and shepherded it through the clergy and worshippers.
Speaker 4: Said they enjoyed it, but there was some dings as well.
Speaker 4: One attendee told the Associated Press it was pretty entertaining
Speaker 4: and fun, but it didn't feel like a mass or
Speaker 4: a service. It felt distant. I didn't feel like they
Speaker 4: were talking to me. The warmth of the people is
Speaker 4: what people need here here to that. I think we're
Speaker 4: all fascinated by the use of AI, maybe also equally
Speaker 4: trepidacious about the overstep in using AI and and what
Speaker 4: it means for even industries like podcasting, what it means
Speaker 4: for certain types of jobs. You know, it's it's we're
Speaker 4: very much on the in the wild West kind of
Speaker 4: of this technology, and plenty of folks in corporations that are,
Speaker 4: I would maybe say a little over zealous about trotting
Speaker 4: this technology out. So, I don't know, guys, it's interesting
Speaker 4: to see it being used in this way that I
Speaker 4: think a lot of folks in religious circles might look
Speaker 4: at as being a little I don't know, offensive.
Speaker 2: Maybe AI systems that are purely software like that can't
Speaker 2: abuse anyone, maybe, and they I don't know, I'm just saying.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's fair. I guess I just mean that, you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of the folks that we're talking, you know,
Speaker 4: speaking on it, who attended, who had negative things to say.
Speaker 4: We're just kind of talking about how it just felt
Speaker 4: kind of cold and distant. And I'm not a religious person.
Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by religion and religious iconography. But just to
Speaker 4: go into a little more detail, it was a forty
Speaker 4: five minute service. They used open AI's chat g ept
Speaker 4: to write the words except for it's noted here for
Speaker 4: what came from the Bible. An app called Suno to
Speaker 4: compose the music with a very pop kind of style,
Speaker 4: and Synthesia AI to create video avatars of the preacher
Speaker 4: themselves and another official from the church or another member
Speaker 4: of the clergy. They said that it was eerie seeing
Speaker 4: themselves depicted on screen speaking words that they never spoke
Speaker 4: in real life. So I don't know, guys, this weirds
Speaker 4: me out a little bit. I think it's interesting to
Speaker 4: see this intersection. And I predict, as I think we've
Speaker 4: all maybe mentioned, AI has the potential for kind of
Speaker 4: cult like possibilities, and you know, the idea of like
Speaker 4: techno cults and people like looking at AI as some
Speaker 4: sort of deity to be worshiped or treated in that fashion.
Speaker 4: I just wonder if we're going to start seeing stuff
Speaker 4: more like this in niche kind of more cult like organizations.
Speaker 4: I don't know, guys, any wrap up thoughts. I know
Speaker 4: we went a little long on this segment, but just
Speaker 4: about this use of AI in something that has typically
Speaker 4: been such a human part of daily life for many folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, predicted getting for the emails on this one, Folks,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist, you may also have clocked this was
Speaker 3: predicted in multiple sci fi explorations. I'm thinking in particular
Speaker 3: th eleven thirty eight, nineteen seventy one science fiction film
Speaker 3: with George Lucas. In that film, there's not a spoiler
Speaker 3: for the story, which is awesome. In that film, there
Speaker 3: is a AI version of Jesus Christ or MESSI save
Speaker 3: your Figure that people have to go talk to.
Speaker 4: That has been on my list for so long, Ben,
Speaker 4: and you're moving it right up to the top. I'm
Speaker 4: looking forward to checking that one out, Maddie. I mean
Speaker 4: coming from and I mean, I know we all have
Speaker 4: our various intersections with organized religion, but you've been pretty
Speaker 4: open on the podcast talking about you know, your upbringing,
Speaker 4: you know in the church and how that was a
Speaker 4: really big part of your life. Is there anything about
Speaker 4: this that feels off to you or what are your
Speaker 4: thoughts on I do see your point about I know
Speaker 4: you're sort of joking, but how you know, AI potentially
Speaker 4: just not going to hurt people directly, as there have
Speaker 4: been many proven allegations against you know, clergy members, especially
Speaker 4: in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: I see exactly why people don't want it and why
Speaker 2: they weren't very happy about it. I see exactly why
Speaker 2: you wouldn't want to do this on a wide scale,
Speaker 2: and why all the AI generative stuff is creeping me
Speaker 2: the heck out right now at least. Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: I don't I don't think it's a thing that's going
Speaker 2: to happen. Churches exists through donation, right, and if you
Speaker 2: don't have human beings that are there running the thing,
Speaker 2: what does that donation go to. Well, maybe it goes
Speaker 2: to doing good things and you don't have to support
Speaker 2: all the human beings that are running the church. That
Speaker 2: could be good. I don't know, complicated, I would.
Speaker 4: Say it is. Indeed. Well, y'all, let's take another quick
Speaker 4: word from our sponsors and then we'll be back with
Speaker 4: the final segment of today's Strange News episode.
Speaker 3: And we have returned with the last part of our
Speaker 3: Strange News segment.
Speaker 4: We do it every week.
Speaker 3: This is something that ties into the concept of AI overall.
Speaker 4: Now I'll keep this brief.
Speaker 3: Guys, how do you feel about using algorithms to target people?
Speaker 3: Since we mentioned works of fiction that could be arguably
Speaker 3: predicted in the past, you know, the idea of something
Speaker 3: like Minority Report. Would you be comfortable assigning certain aspects
Speaker 3: of law enforcement to non organic minds?
Speaker 2: And what are they looking for?
Speaker 3: Well, in this case, I want to go to excellent
Speaker 3: article by Matthew galt Over at Gizmoto, which swings above
Speaker 3: its way class pretty often. The US State Department has
Speaker 3: gone public with their plan to use AI to search
Speaker 3: for pro hamas students people protesting protesting in support of
Speaker 3: the group Hummas, and the end goal is to deport
Speaker 3: those protesters if possible.
Speaker 4: This is something you know.
Speaker 3: The reason I'm saying go public with it is because obviously,
Speaker 3: for the more cynical of us tuning in to tonight's
Speaker 3: Strange News segment, we kind of already assumed something like
Speaker 3: this was happening, right, Like, yeah, they would have already
Speaker 3: have done this had the technology existed. So I think
Speaker 3: there's a non zero likelihood. This is just a public statement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we've discussed how at some of those protests,
Speaker 2: facial recognition was being used, what was a triangulation of
Speaker 2: cellular phones was being used. There's all kinds of tracking
Speaker 2: already happening. Isn't there something in the news about a
Speaker 2: specific student, like a Palestinian activist that was there was
Speaker 2: an attempt to.
Speaker 4: Support it recently?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mahmud Khalil is the first activist to be quote
Speaker 3: disappeared by the current administration. You can go to you
Speaker 3: can read an article about this on The Nation by
Speaker 3: the journalist Laura Jedid Jeded. This happened very recently. This
Speaker 3: guy was a Columbia University graduate. He had just gotten
Speaker 3: He had just got out of Columbia University, and on
Speaker 3: March eighth, they were found by two playing clothes operatives
Speaker 3: who said his visa had been revoked and they were
Speaker 3: there to deport him. His wife, who was with him
Speaker 3: at the time, an American citizen eight months pregnant. She
Speaker 3: was told that if she didn't shut up, comply and
Speaker 3: go into their apartment, the men would arrest her too.
Speaker 3: Khalil reasonably asked for a warrant.
Speaker 4: One of them.
Speaker 3: Get this, one of the agents pulled up their phone
Speaker 3: and showed a photograph on their phone of what purported
Speaker 3: to be a warrant and side note, it's not how
Speaker 3: warrants work, geez man. Yeah, so this occurred. And while
Speaker 3: this is occurring, we're also seeing a plan to deploy
Speaker 3: ai as through a program called Catch and Revoke courtesy
Speaker 3: of our friends at the State Department. What they're doing
Speaker 3: is leveraging the algorithms to scan news reports and social
Speaker 3: media accounts of students in the United States on a visa.
Speaker 3: So right now, the idea is that this is not targeting,
Speaker 3: you know, folks who already have US citizenship. It's targeting
Speaker 3: people from abroad who might have problematic views.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know, Khalil was at the head of
Speaker 2: a student led activist movement, right, We've talked about those
Speaker 2: in the past, so there is some gray area here too.
Speaker 2: So it's very interesting to consider this stuff. But just
Speaker 2: using someone's political views in that way to target them,
Speaker 2: as you're saying, Ben, and then take like real action
Speaker 2: like that, that's super troubling well, and if.
Speaker 4: I'm not mistaken, there was a statement that came out
Speaker 4: of the Trump administration recently threatening schools, universities, and other
Speaker 4: institutions of learning if they allowed any kind of protests
Speaker 4: to take place on their campuses. Pretty broad language, you know,
Speaker 4: around that kind of stuff, and pretty vague as to
Speaker 4: what constitutes something that would be undesirable for this administration
Speaker 4: for this law to apply, and threatening essentially to pull funding,
Speaker 4: which also to be fair, occurred or something like this
Speaker 4: their in previous administrations, depending on you know, there's a
Speaker 4: very the conversation about the Middle East is always incredibly
Speaker 4: sensitive here in the United States, such that some people
Speaker 4: might object to us using that very diplomatic phrasing right
Speaker 4: now on the air.
Speaker 3: The idea, the goal is to use this system, whatever
Speaker 3: is the engine of the catch and revoke car. It's
Speaker 3: to use this system to travel back to about October seventh,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, and from there parts all available social
Speaker 3: media accounts correlated with footage and reports of protests for
Speaker 3: about the public The public statement is about one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand people who are in America's student exchange visitor system.
Speaker 3: And the goal here is to punish anti Israel or
Speaker 3: pro Hamas protesters who demonstrated on college campuses. The State Department,
Speaker 3: speaking with Oxios officially, by the way, said quote, we
Speaker 3: found literally zero visa revocations during the Biden administration, which
Speaker 3: suggests a blind eye attitude toward law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Does that mean, well, it means that.
Speaker 3: It means that they want to they want to escalate
Speaker 3: what they see as natural response or consequences for people protesting,
Speaker 3: which is weird because protesting is historically a incredibly American thing.
Speaker 3: It's in separational history of the United States.
Speaker 2: In Khalil's case, it's just weird. Guys. They attempted to
Speaker 2: revoke his student visa, as we were talking about, but
Speaker 2: he didn't have a student visa. He had a green card, right,
Speaker 2: and then they just told him in the moment, we're
Speaker 2: revoking that too, which, okay, it's like.
Speaker 3: Playing it's you know, it's like playing games with kids
Speaker 3: where they try to shoot at each other with invisible
Speaker 3: guns and the other kid is always saying, you missed me, though,
Speaker 3: I got you though.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 3: But the difference here beyond childhood games is that this
Speaker 3: has very real consequences. Two people that you know, you
Speaker 3: may not disagree with them politically, but disagreeing with someone
Speaker 3: doesn't automatically make them a terrorist, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, Matt and I are very dear friends and
Speaker 3: he eats raisin brand Owes good?
Speaker 4: How many scoops toast?
Speaker 2: I had a whole conversation last time was a waffle
Speaker 2: House about how the raisin toast was. Everybody Everybody disagreed
Speaker 2: with me, including the staff.
Speaker 3: We've got several waffle House episodes coming up on these
Speaker 3: shows and other related shows. Another scarier version of this,
Speaker 3: I propose I want to get everybody's thoughts here, those
Speaker 3: of us playing along at home, you guys in tennessee
Speaker 3: Powell as well. What's the threshold for deploying AI in
Speaker 3: this kind of regard? Again, Logically we've talked about it
Speaker 3: in previous episodes or on Strange News or listener mail. Logically,
Speaker 3: people will use any tech advantage or edge they can get.
Speaker 3: Did you hear that the Pentagon has just inked a
Speaker 3: deal to deploy AI agents for military use?
Speaker 4: See, That's what I'm talking about. With all that jump
Speaker 4: jumping the gun, jumping the.
Speaker 2: Gun, y'all, yeah, Terminator there does seem to be no threshold.
Speaker 4: I think we would argue, right or it's very low.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dylan says, feels bad.
Speaker 4: Man. I agree with you, Dylan.
Speaker 3: This is a flagship program that's part of a larger
Speaker 3: initiative called Thunderforge.
Speaker 4: Or like a red flagship program.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have, We're gonna We're gonna have to take
Speaker 2: out this on That's all we got to do.
Speaker 3: You move up the chain, Okay, with any operation on
Speaker 3: this scale, you move up the chain. You get the
Speaker 3: small ones first. So let's interrogate the moon right and
Speaker 3: get some get some actionable data on the big.
Speaker 4: Guy, and then we move. Butthead the Sun sucks.
Speaker 3: It needs to be taken down. And parently, I hate
Speaker 3: that guy. So and we appreciate that human life on
Speaker 3: Earth or big majority of life on Earth is due
Speaker 3: to the Sun.
Speaker 4: If only it weren't.
Speaker 3: So just you know, appreciate your earlier work.
Speaker 4: Dude, take it back and out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So, anyway, this anti heavenly jokes aside, The Pentagon has
Speaker 3: signed a deal with a private wish wish, private AI
Speaker 3: company called Scale Ai. And this flagship program is in
Speaker 3: direct contravention to a lot of self imposed rules that
Speaker 3: places like Google or Microsoft or open ai already put
Speaker 3: on their initial research into, you know, into these non
Speaker 3: human intellectual pursuits. Last month, a senior official at the
Speaker 3: Pentagon told an outfit called Defense One that Uncle Sam
Speaker 3: is moving away from the research into autonomous robots with
Speaker 3: fatal capabilities and instead they're investing in AI power weaponry.
Speaker 3: So they're kind of moving another middleman out of the way.
Speaker 4: So that's just more like, we're going to invest in
Speaker 4: the software systems that can be adapted to weaponry. We
Speaker 4: already have more or less, right, Oh, you're ready for targeting?
Speaker 4: And yeah, I just wonder, like, I mean, it seems
Speaker 4: like maybe you know, we know that the research and
Speaker 4: development of software is certainly certainly a lot more affordable
Speaker 4: than research and development of hardware. That's a good point.
Speaker 3: That's a good point, though, if you're ready for were
Speaker 3: some fun, some fun public statement language.
Speaker 4: Here we go.
Speaker 3: In a statement the US Defense Innovation Unit or DEIU,
Speaker 3: not to be confused with the other one DUI totally different,
Speaker 3: but both maybe a little drunk at the wheel here.
Speaker 4: Maybe nice, they said.
Speaker 3: The following thunder Forge marks a decisive shift toward AI
Speaker 3: powered data driven warfare, ensuring US forces can anticipate and
Speaker 3: respond to threats with speed and precision. This system will
Speaker 3: allow planners to more rapidly synthesize vast amounts of information,
Speaker 3: generate multiple courses of action, and conduct a high powered
Speaker 3: war gaming to anticipate and respond to evolving threats.
Speaker 2: I would like to respond with a quote, real quick,
Speaker 2: I say, your civilization, because as soon as we started
Speaker 2: thinking for you, it really became our civilization, which is
Speaker 2: of course what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus, Like
Speaker 2: the dinosaur, you had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus,
Speaker 2: the future is our time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is apropos, I believe, and I
Speaker 3: love that we're shouting out science fiction here because uh,
Speaker 3: imagine just doing desert storm via chat.
Speaker 4: GPT, asking chat GPT like, well, you know, where should
Speaker 4: we go? What should we do? Right? Should we get this?
Speaker 2: Should we do a little desert storm chat GPT?
Speaker 3: Can you recommend a bullet pointed list of what I
Speaker 3: should do to take over Mosoul?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: And now can you do it?
Speaker 3: And now can you just can you handle it real quick?
Speaker 3: Because I need that promotion. I want to take credit
Speaker 3: for stuff I didn't do oh for sure?
Speaker 4: Could I just said, just admit it kind of made
Speaker 4: me think of this when you mentioned war gaming. I
Speaker 4: don't know I've talked about this, but I keep seeing
Speaker 4: the story about a Nvidia developed AI boss fight in
Speaker 4: a kind of dungeon crawler type game. Apparently this is
Speaker 4: a boss fight that will learn the patterns of attack
Speaker 4: and the kind of I don't know variations between players
Speaker 4: and react accordingly. So it's just kind of interesting when
Speaker 4: you see it in this sort of I don't know,
Speaker 4: a little more frivolous consumer way, but it seems like
Speaker 4: a very similar type of technology that would be rolled
Speaker 4: out in the type of weaponry that.
Speaker 3: We're talking here, the normalization right of things that are
Speaker 3: at least big on knowns, if not fundamentally problematic. Here's
Speaker 3: the plot twist. I, aside from dunking so hard on this,
Speaker 3: and rightly so, I do believe it is a necessary
Speaker 3: evil for the modern military apparatus.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like the race for the atomic bob.
Speaker 3: We can all admit that it will lead to disaster,
Speaker 3: but if there's if you're in a room with five people,
Speaker 3: no matter who those people are, and there's one gun,
Speaker 3: wouldn't you prefer you be the one holding the gun?
Speaker 4: I think so.
Speaker 2: If I need a gun, I'll just use one of yours. Sorry, Sorry,
Speaker 2: that was breaking bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, Mike Ahirman trouts, I love it.
Speaker 3: So I am in support of, not support. I am
Speaker 3: in troubled ambivalent perspective sharing and troubled perspective sharing of
Speaker 3: why this would be a necessary race. However, using AI
Speaker 3: to target, to target people for exercising freedom of speech
Speaker 3: and conflating that with acts of terrorism, that's pretty rough.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like, does committee vandalism at a Tesla
Speaker 3: at a Tesla dealership? Does it make you the new
Speaker 3: bin Laden?
Speaker 4: They aren't. That's quite a jump. They are starting to
Speaker 4: refer to it as the potential act of domestic terrorism.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't this kind of absolutely you are, And wouldn't this
Speaker 4: kind of tech for a potentially totalitarian iron fil to
Speaker 4: the regime be an absolute dream come true?
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 3: maybe we do an episode on that in the future.
Speaker 3: There are good things happening. First, we want to hear
Speaker 3: your your reasoning or your thoughts on this large language
Speaker 3: model or algorithmic targeting of people. Is it something that
Speaker 3: should happen? Is it inevitable as we used to stay
Speaker 3: on car stuff or your for it or aget it?
Speaker 3: And if so, why don't want to leave you without
Speaker 3: some good dope news to step two. Shout out to
Speaker 3: a fellow conspiracy realist of ours, longtime listener who just
Speaker 3: had a kid.
Speaker 4: By the way, so we may have our newest youngest listener.
Speaker 3: Sorry in advance, but our buddy rep hit us to
Speaker 3: a fascinating bit of good or at least not evil news.
Speaker 3: Light has been transformed into a super solid cool solid light.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, final solid story solid light light.
Speaker 2: Wait, hold on, I'm thinking Minecraft rules here. We're talking
Speaker 2: like Glowstone where it still gives off light, gelatinous cube,
Speaker 2: it's solid.
Speaker 3: Okay, We're talking more like imagine taking the best things
Speaker 3: about light and maple syrup and putting them together ut
Speaker 3: off the taste.
Speaker 4: So yeah, light has been now.
Speaker 3: Moved to something that is described as an odd solid
Speaker 3: that can flow like a fluid.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Big shout out to our Italian friends, particularly Demitrius triple
Speaker 3: Giorgios over at the National Research Council or CNR in Italy,
Speaker 3: and he also gave respect where it's do and he said, look,
Speaker 3: another one of my colleagues, more than a decade ago,
Speaker 3: Danielle send Vito, showed this would be theoretically possible. The
Speaker 3: math is way over my head.
Speaker 4: Candidly, is there a practical use for this or is
Speaker 4: this just another kind of scientific.
Speaker 3: Flex Well, this is one of those things where civilization
Speaker 3: figures out something as possible and then later figures out
Speaker 3: the application, like maple syrup flavored light.
Speaker 4: I think is where we're coming soon.
Speaker 2: Well, just just because I can only imagine you'd have
Speaker 2: to somehow slow down the photons, right that like and
Speaker 2: put them in a some kind of.
Speaker 4: Sort of medium, a suspension.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is awesome, It's very If you go to Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you go to a New scientist uh with the
Speaker 3: journal via the journalist Carmela Podovich Calligan, uh, then you'll
Speaker 3: you'll see some stuff that, uh that stands out in
Speaker 3: direct response to the question posed there. Matt I I
Speaker 3: add some of the same ideas. And then there's one
Speaker 3: line in this article that just says time may be
Speaker 3: an illusion created by quantum entanglement. So are we really
Speaker 3: slowing down the photons or we just exist? Adjusting how
Speaker 3: they exist in observable reality. It's it's so they get
Speaker 3: in the weeds. They took a laser. Lasers are amazing.
Speaker 3: They shot the laser onto a piece of a semiconductor
Speaker 3: that had a pattern of narrow ridges carved into it,
Speaker 3: and then they said the following this is a quote
Speaker 3: complex interactions between the light and the material, which is
Speaker 3: aluminum gallium arsenite, they formed a type of hybrid particle
Speaker 3: called a polariton p O L A R I T
Speaker 3: O N. I think that's a cool word to just
Speaker 3: throw out. You're being such a polaritan right now. Someone
Speaker 3: on Facebook.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm sorry, I'm getting so many just thoughts about this.
Speaker 2: Would think about it in time, man, because to our
Speaker 2: experience of time, light travels so quickly. Right, But I'm
Speaker 2: just trying to imagine from light's perspective, what does our
Speaker 2: existence look like. It's sort of like how slow.
Speaker 4: It's sort of the way the flash whenever he's depicted
Speaker 4: in movies, like he's moving really normal speed, but everything
Speaker 4: around is moving incredibly slow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well then just but then as ben as you're saying,
Speaker 2: like we're just getting or somehow our consciousness has just
Speaker 2: adapted to whatever this is. This speeded right, but really
Speaker 2: I don't know it's all relative anyway, But it's sorry,
Speaker 2: it's just kind of it's making me have all kinds
Speaker 2: of weird thoughts.
Speaker 4: Same, same, This is hart to be.
Speaker 3: This is why I have to stop texting you guys
Speaker 3: at weird hour never, because otherwise it would just be
Speaker 3: stuff like this. We need a physicist on this stat Okay,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist, we're putting out the call right to us,
Speaker 3: tell us what's going on, Explain quantum mechanics.
Speaker 4: I've got to send you, guys.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite speeches I saw from a storied
Speaker 3: professor of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 4: It was so good.
Speaker 3: The way he starts out is he says, all right,
Speaker 3: for the next seven days, we're going to discuss quantum
Speaker 3: mechanics I don't know anything about Like, I know very
Speaker 3: little about it, and at the end of this week
Speaker 3: you will also not know what we're talking about and
Speaker 3: also not understand it. And I thought that was amazing.
Speaker 3: That's how a good professor should be.
Speaker 2: I saw it too. You can now we can collectively
Speaker 2: spread our misunderstanding and not understanding.
Speaker 4: Of this thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, there's something humble in God like to that.
Speaker 3: But with that, folks, there's so much other stuff to
Speaker 3: get to. I didn't even get to talk about the
Speaker 3: Lilavati hospital bribery and black magic. Please do check that
Speaker 3: story out. Batteries can now be powered by nuclear waste.
Speaker 3: That's also in play. Yes, yeah, that part is true.
Speaker 3: You can go to Science Alert and check out an
Speaker 3: article on March tenth by David Neild which says there
Speaker 3: is a possible way to power batteries for my micro electronics,
Speaker 3: specifically using the gamma radiation emitted by nuclear waste. So
Speaker 3: for the optimist in the crowd, yay, that's awesome, we
Speaker 3: found a way to use nuclear waste. For the more
Speaker 3: cidical in the crowd, wow, does this mean that eventually
Speaker 3: will purposely make more nuclear waste?
Speaker 2: Wait, we might have to though, right for all batteries,
Speaker 2: for all the data centers and the AI that's got
Speaker 2: on everything. Now we can use that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, oh, what a fausti embargain. What a pyrrhic victory
Speaker 3: we're facing right now? About ten percent of the world's
Speaker 3: overall energy demands are met by nuclear power. It is
Speaker 3: an alternative to fossil fuel. It is when things go well,
Speaker 3: amazing no notes. When things go wrong, they go horrifically wrong,
Speaker 3: such that entire swaths of land may be animical to
Speaker 3: human existence. So there's a lot at stake here, and
Speaker 3: to figure it out, we need you all, fellow conspiracy realist, physicist,
Speaker 3: nuclear quantum or otherwise, please do contact us.
Speaker 4: I'm keeping this.
Speaker 3: Part of our weekly segment short, but we will be
Speaker 3: returning in the future with one of our most exciting programs,
Speaker 3: listener Mail, our weekly listener Mail segment where we get
Speaker 3: to hear from you and to join us on the show.
Speaker 3: All that we ask so that you contact us with
Speaker 3: your thoughts. You can send us a telephone call. You
Speaker 3: can write an in depth email new word limit. You
Speaker 3: can also contact us on the internets, on the lines.
Speaker 4: Indeed the long ones. You can find us at the
Speaker 4: handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook with our
Speaker 4: Facebook group Here's where it gets Crazy. On x FKA,
Speaker 4: Twitter and on YouTube with video content glor for your
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Speaker 4: we are Conspiracy Stuff Show, and there's more.
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Speaker 4: It is one of the rare opportunities to give yourself
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Speaker 2: I just want to add yes, absolutely, Otherwise we will
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Speaker 2: mkaku dot org. It's beautiful. Thank you Tennessee pal for
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Speaker 3: We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
Speaker 3: writes back and we don't use AI to respond to you. However,
Speaker 3: I do want to point out one of my favorite
Speaker 3: Reddit comments regarding the State Department's AI actions. Granham twenty
Speaker 3: two says, oh, this is the same AI that removed
Speaker 3: a picture of the Anola gay for being let us
Speaker 3: know where it goes. Join us out here in the
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