Speaker 1: Tonight's classic episode all about celebrities. This is one for
Speaker 1: the pop culture fans in the crowd. We went through
Speaker 1: a Beatles phase a while back to where we were
Speaker 1: asking ourselves, oh gosh, we did a video about it.
Speaker 1: Did the real Paul McCartney get replaced?
Speaker 2: Turn me on dead man? He was the Walrus? He
Speaker 2: is the Walrus?
Speaker 1: Or is he the Walrus?
Speaker 2: Is that the one? No? Yeah, we did that, But
Speaker 2: we also did the audition tape wherein we imply that Ben,
Speaker 2: you and I have been replaced by agents of some sort.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that, yeah, and everybody has these crazy theories too,
Speaker 1: about not just celebrities, not just your Taylor Swift's, but
Speaker 1: also your notable historical figures. You're a Saddam Hussein's, you know,
Speaker 1: the great villains of history. Now, in this classic episode,
Speaker 1: we're looking at fact fiction and plausibility of the idea
Speaker 1: of body doubles, and also, would you ever get a
Speaker 1: body double if the situation wation presented, I'd consider it.
Speaker 1: I feel like the best way to do it, the
Speaker 1: honest way to do it, is just to have an
Speaker 1: identical twin.
Speaker 2: I think how everyone can't be so lucky?
Speaker 1: Yeah, not yet.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel
Speaker 2: is on an adventure.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission Control Decat most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. We have a special guest of sorts today, Matt.
Speaker 2: We do. We have JJ Posway. He's a new producer
Speaker 2: here at the iHeart Radio Network, the iHeart Radio Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: That's a hard shrug you're doing there, man.
Speaker 2: Whatever this thing is they we're a part of, is
Speaker 2: called Yeah, it's pretty pretty awesome. It's good to have
Speaker 2: you here. JJ. Apparently he knew like what this show
Speaker 2: was before getting.
Speaker 1: Here, right, and we're still friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, he's like trip. He hasn't looked me
Speaker 2: in the eye yet, just because I kind of like
Speaker 2: ran into the studio right before we hit record. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I can't see him because my view of JJ. Oh, Okay,
Speaker 2: he's looking at me oh gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well you've got sort of blue steel vibe
Speaker 1: going on today, so I can see how people would be,
Speaker 1: you know, gotcha a little bit intimidated.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the blue steel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going for kind of an eye of the
Speaker 1: tiger thing and I'm sort of doing it. I'm pulling
Speaker 1: it off kind of.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm seeing the intensity. So just to check
Speaker 2: in with you, everything's good. We just had our big
Speaker 2: July fourth, like I guess, weekend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have some some traveler that I need
Speaker 1: to catch up on. But yeah, July fourth, woo woo America. Right.
Speaker 1: I hope you had a good weekend as well. And
Speaker 1: if you are listening in a different country, July fourth,
Speaker 1: I think it's weird for us to assume everybody knows this.
Speaker 1: July fourth is when the United States celebrates independence from Britain, right,
Speaker 1: And the way in which the US most often tends
Speaker 1: to celebrate this day is through getting kind of drunk,
Speaker 1: lighting fireworks, and having barbecues.
Speaker 2: There you go, and that's what some of us did.
Speaker 1: That's very diplomatic. How are you guys doing out there
Speaker 1: in the booth? Thumbs up, thumbs.
Speaker 2: Down, thumbs up all the way combs up.
Speaker 1: That's great. And how are you doing, folks out there
Speaker 1: listening to day? Do you have something on your mind?
Speaker 1: How We're going to investigate some pretty interesting stuff here
Speaker 1: that may be familiar to some of us. If at
Speaker 1: any time while we're exploring this strange rabbit hole, the
Speaker 1: spirit so moves you when you have something on your
Speaker 1: mind that you want to tell us and you don't
Speaker 1: want to have to type it out, they have no fear.
Speaker 1: You can pause the show. We'll wait for you, and
Speaker 1: you can give us a call.
Speaker 2: You can call us at one eight three three s
Speaker 2: wk'll you'll figure it out. You'll hear Ben on there.
Speaker 2: You'll know you're in the right place.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we've established the rules of the call.
Speaker 1: I lied such that at this point, you know, fill
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah, all you have to do is call so.
Speaker 2: So we talked at the top here just about how
Speaker 2: honestly odd it is when someone I can't speak for you, Ben,
Speaker 2: but it's an odd experience when someone recognizes your voice.
Speaker 2: And on this show it's only happened to me a
Speaker 2: handful of times. I'm assuming that it's happened to you
Speaker 2: more because you had a visual present on this show
Speaker 2: for so long, and so many people watch those videos.
Speaker 2: But today we're talking about the concept of being known,
Speaker 2: of being recognized right.
Speaker 1: To the nth degree. As indeed, Matt, we were talking
Speaker 1: about the concept of celebrity. Celebrity is really bizarre when
Speaker 1: you think about it. Since before the dawn of recorded
Speaker 1: human history, we've looked to place our beliefs and our
Speaker 1: values on the form of a familiar face, something that
Speaker 1: is like us. Abstract ideas were all well and good
Speaker 1: on their own, but generally speaking, humans like other humans
Speaker 1: or things that look like humans, and they want that
Speaker 1: to be sort of a code rack upon which ideas hang,
Speaker 1: something with which we can directly identify. So for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, maybe during the Cold War in the West,
Speaker 1: when they thought of communism, they didn't think of a
Speaker 1: bunch of ideals written by some stuffy, old dead European folks.
Speaker 1: They thought about specific propaganda image, maybe a soldier in
Speaker 1: red marching or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are a symbol seeking being, the human is
Speaker 2: and the celebrities a lot of times are the representations
Speaker 2: of from propaganda are ways for us to quickly organize
Speaker 2: the way we feel about something, or the way we
Speaker 2: should feel about something, or the way we actually do
Speaker 2: feel about something or someone right.
Speaker 1: And we can be blinded by this too, which is
Speaker 1: a bit of a different bag of badgers for us.
Speaker 1: We can be blinded by this in strange ways, and
Speaker 1: our brains are pretty good at making things seem normal.
Speaker 1: So picture, imagine your mind, the most famous person you
Speaker 1: can think of, the most famous person caveat who is
Speaker 1: alive today. If that person said something that jibe with
Speaker 1: what they usually say, their diehard supporters are more likely
Speaker 1: to go along with it because they identify with the
Speaker 1: person first interesting and the idea that they have. You know,
Speaker 1: they can be led along or led astray someone say,
Speaker 1: just by the way in which that person with whom
Speaker 1: they identify says or explains a certain thing. And this
Speaker 1: is why human beings love the concept of celebrities. In
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, celebrities today are similar to deities
Speaker 1: in ancient times. You know, people obsess over them. We
Speaker 1: perform certain rituals, and that doesn't necessarily mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you're sacrificing a goat to Neil de grass Tyson or
Speaker 1: Bill Hie or something It.
Speaker 2: Can be as simple as checking your Instagram stories every
Speaker 2: day or every couple of hours, or something.
Speaker 1: Right right, Or you always listen to a song by
Speaker 1: your favorite musician when you're about to do a thing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like you always play on
Speaker 1: the Road Again by Willie Nelson when you're on a
Speaker 1: road trip.
Speaker 2: So that's the first track at least, right.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, So when we perform these rituals, we feel
Speaker 1: a genuine personal connection with entities that we may have
Speaker 1: never met and may well never meet an hour lifetime.
Speaker 2: And who may not be anything like the representation that
Speaker 2: exists on whatever medium you're consuming exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's no wonder then that the world of celebrity
Speaker 1: is also a world rife with conspiracy. A while back,
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring this to your attention. A while back, Matt,
Speaker 1: you and I did a strange video which I still
Speaker 1: think holds up. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but in
Speaker 1: that video we have this sort of meet the team
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, And in there you have you
Speaker 1: built this great chart supporting the notion that Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: had died and been replaced by someone else. Do you
Speaker 1: remember this?
Speaker 2: I do remember this and shout out to Diana, my wife,
Speaker 2: because she gave me most of the information that was
Speaker 2: included in that. She helped me build that thing. She
Speaker 2: is she has an obsession like we're talking about with
Speaker 2: the Beatles, whether living or dead, and she knows so much.
Speaker 2: She basically was like, oh, yeah, well, here's all the things.
Speaker 2: You just put this on there, put that on there all,
Speaker 2: cut all this stuff out here. You got it.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, man, that's awesome. That video is still around
Speaker 1: on our YouTube channel, which I missed, by the way,
Speaker 1: for some reason. The main thing I remember about that
Speaker 1: video is you holding some kind of pipe, yes, and
Speaker 1: looking and explaining this conspiracy thing to me, and then
Speaker 1: we're in a bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we realized we're in a bathroom and you've been
Speaker 2: urinating the entire time.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. As it cuts over, spoil h it
Speaker 1: is safe for work. We should say that we thought
Speaker 1: that was hilarious and we hope you enjoy it. Maybe
Speaker 1: some of our fellow longtime listeners in the audience remember
Speaker 1: that when today we are diving back into the world
Speaker 1: of celebrity conspiracy, specifically the idea that some of the
Speaker 1: world's most famous people have been secretly replaced by lookalikes,
Speaker 1: body doubles, dappel gangers.
Speaker 2: Oooh, dappele gangers. Can I say it? So? Guess what?
Speaker 2: Here are the facts? Just doesn't sound the same when
Speaker 2: we've got it, here are the facts. When we hear
Speaker 2: that word celebrity, you know, we've been talking about this
Speaker 2: whole time. We're all on the same page. We understand
Speaker 2: what that is. Somebody who is known a famous person
Speaker 2: and athlete, a musician, an actor, maybe even one of
Speaker 2: those insta fluencers. I don't even know how you say it.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's good that I did. That's great. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: I like that exactly.
Speaker 2: But but there's a there's a thing here and it's
Speaker 2: tough to differentiate, but we're gonna try and do it.
Speaker 2: Here between someone being capital F famous, it's not really capital,
Speaker 2: but let's just use a capital F as in this
Speaker 2: person is known throughout the world for some reason as
Speaker 2: a human person that does things, but then an internet
Speaker 2: famous person that is slightly different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would, I would say so, I would completely
Speaker 1: agree with that. So we're talking maybe about athletes, musicians,
Speaker 1: actors and so on. That's often what we mean, right,
Speaker 1: when we say, as you say, capital F famous or
Speaker 1: heads of states or heads of religions, people.
Speaker 2: Who are photographed by other people all the time.
Speaker 1: And then we have and then we have the thing
Speaker 1: where people are maybe more famous in a specific field.
Speaker 1: That's probably where I would put what we call instafluencers
Speaker 1: or very very well known YouTubers who focus on a
Speaker 1: specific thing, right, And of course we have to be honest.
Speaker 1: Podcasters fall in that. There are some, there are some
Speaker 1: maybe they count as capital F famous people who are
Speaker 1: also podcasters, but they're not famous for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense thinking about Will Ferrell right there.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he'll get into
Speaker 1: podcasts right now, I think it's just Ron Burgundy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So. So it's strange, and it's also it's a bit
Speaker 1: unsettling the idea or the notion of celebrity because it
Speaker 1: places hierarchical value on people in a way that should
Speaker 1: not really exist. Absolutely, So, with all that in mind,
Speaker 1: if we do a very broad definition, if we sort
Speaker 1: of mash up those kind of known in their field
Speaker 1: people and the worldwide known people, you know, the Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's and so on. If you smash them all together
Speaker 1: into one thing. We can ask ourselves how many people
Speaker 1: in this world, in one way or another would be
Speaker 1: considered famous. It's really really tough to tell. Some, like
Speaker 1: you said, Matt, are known worldwide as a kind of
Speaker 1: eternal position, like the pope changes, but everybody is aware
Speaker 1: of the idea of the pope. Yeah, the pope is
Speaker 1: very very well known, not always very very popular, but
Speaker 1: very very well known. And some people are known more
Speaker 1: in their field of expertise. What's someone who would be
Speaker 1: really specific field of expertise?
Speaker 2: We know, I'm thinking of scientists a lot of times,
Speaker 2: or like perhaps an FBI investigator that is known in
Speaker 2: the true crime world and or the law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Feel great, okay, I've got one. How about Nobel Prize winners.
Speaker 1: So there's an American astrophysicist, John C. Mather, who essentially
Speaker 1: proved that the Big Bang was real, not just the theory.
Speaker 1: He is very well known in his field. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's difficult because if you ask the average
Speaker 1: this is not a ding on the average person. If
Speaker 1: you ask the average person name your two favorite astrophysicists,
Speaker 1: they might have a tough time. Yeah, because most people's
Speaker 1: conversations are not going to relate to that on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis. So we have experts in their field,
Speaker 1: we have worldwide famous, and then we have some infamous
Speaker 1: people like the child molester Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, hey, it's
Speaker 1: not alleged. We don't have to say alleged.
Speaker 2: Let's do an anti shout out to you, Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 2: for possibly actually facing charges and going to jail. Maybe
Speaker 2: this time.
Speaker 1: Will we'll see. I think at this point the money
Speaker 1: matters less than the potential co conspirators who could be indicted.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to be too skeptical
Speaker 1: about it, but it's just so well rare for people
Speaker 1: at that level to go to jail.
Speaker 2: And especially after what happened last time that we have
Speaker 2: a whole episode on about if you're interested, but beware
Speaker 2: you will throw things as you're listening.
Speaker 1: To it, right, And maybe it'll be like the Westminster
Speaker 1: the Westminster child abuse circle where they tossed out a
Speaker 1: few scapegoats posthumously. Yeah, and then the people who are
Speaker 1: implicated were also the people investigating it and nothing ever changed.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I you know, hope springs Eternal anyway,
Speaker 1: So we've got those people infamous, the villains, the well
Speaker 1: known experts in their field, the worldwide. Everybody knows who
Speaker 1: that is kind of people. How do we tell how
Speaker 1: many people in the world are those sorts of folks?
Speaker 2: Well, we have some help here in this quest, even
Speaker 2: if it's not the perfect examination of it, it's it's
Speaker 2: getting us somewhere. Right. There's this mathematician named Samuel Arbsman
Speaker 2: who who took a pretty interesting approach in back in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. He looked at Wikipedia and they have this
Speaker 2: thing on there called living People. It's a category in
Speaker 2: which you can kind of search and navigate through. And
Speaker 2: at the time that the count in twenty thirteen, the
Speaker 2: number of living people was just over six hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: six hundred and four than one hundred and seventy four.
Speaker 2: And he, you know, he even admitted when with his
Speaker 2: own study and everything he was doing, that Wikipedia's notability
Speaker 2: standard was pretty low as when it came to like
Speaker 2: who is famous, who is not famous? Who is worthy
Speaker 2: of being on Wikipedia?
Speaker 1: Right, some of our coworkers are in Wikipedia. I don't
Speaker 1: think we are, but so our coworkers.
Speaker 2: Are, Yeah, we are not. Josh and Chuck. I believe
Speaker 2: we're on there, and I think maybe Holly and Tracy.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. The question here is how many of
Speaker 1: these over six hundred thousand people has everyone heard of?
Speaker 1: Could one person have heard of them all? That is doubtful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1: So many people. But with this in mind, we can
Speaker 1: at least, as Arbsman puts it, get a hint of understanding.
Speaker 1: We can we can get a little bit of a
Speaker 1: spider sense or a guestimate about how common fame is
Speaker 1: in the world. And so here's how his shortcut works.
Speaker 1: He divided the famous people count by the global population
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, which was seven point h six billion, approximately,
Speaker 1: and then with that math he got the number of
Speaker 1: point zero zero eighty six percent, so much less than
Speaker 1: one percent, which is probably good for everybody's sanity, right,
Speaker 1: and probably bad for the celebrity stalker industry, but you know,
Speaker 1: they're just gonna have to deal with it. This number
Speaker 1: is not ironclad by any means, but it's still pretty
Speaker 1: fascinating because it tells us when we're talking about possible
Speaker 1: celebrity doppelgangers, we're also talking about a very small subset
Speaker 1: of an already very tiny slice of humanity, and based
Speaker 1: on that fact alone, we might think initially, we might
Speaker 1: think it would be easy to spot an impersonator or
Speaker 1: a replacement. You know, there's someone saying, I am the
Speaker 1: number one Carly ray Jepson fan. Is that a person?
Speaker 2: I think so. I don't know who it is, but
Speaker 2: I've heard that name before.
Speaker 1: Okay, so someone loves this person, Carl ray Jepson. They say,
Speaker 1: I've got all of her albums or videos, whatever she's
Speaker 1: done it. If it's in the public sphere, then I
Speaker 1: have it, says the super fan. So I would notice
Speaker 1: immediately change even if those filthy, casual Carly ray Jepson
Speaker 1: fans don't understand the magnitude of my work. Then we
Speaker 1: could go a bit further and assume the average living
Speaker 1: celebrity will tend to be photographed and filmed more often
Speaker 1: than the average non celebrity.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I mean it would have to be, or
Speaker 2: would it. Yes. So a lot of the things we've
Speaker 2: been discussing thus far are our assumptions. We're making assumptions
Speaker 2: based on evidence and numbers and our own experiences, but
Speaker 2: they are assumptions. But really, think about it. If we're
Speaker 2: talking about the current president, or any president, or maybe
Speaker 2: some daytime news hosts. Many, many famous people have entire
Speaker 2: groups of people, teams who are controlling their images. They
Speaker 2: have offices built around managing the icon that is their
Speaker 2: very own celebrity, that is a pr little gem or
Speaker 2: something that they get to show around. And it may
Speaker 2: actually be easier for a celebrity to be replaced because
Speaker 2: in many ways they've already been replaced by all of
Speaker 2: these images of themselves, these versions, these virtual versions of
Speaker 2: themselves that are out there. Sure, you know, they've had
Speaker 2: different haircuts over you know, the time that they've been famous.
Speaker 2: They wear a lot of different outfits, They go to
Speaker 2: all these different places and do different things.
Speaker 1: Celebrities, Yeah, I think it's a good point. Hon of
Speaker 1: celebrities are more tightly controlled than one might imagine. When
Speaker 1: we say replaced, we don't necessarily mean somebody's cutting off
Speaker 1: their fingers one by one and sticking other people's fingers
Speaker 1: on their hands, but that would be interesting.
Speaker 2: They live by scripts a lot of times, right, even
Speaker 2: if it's not their own intention.
Speaker 1: Like their words may not be their own. Their words
Speaker 1: may be written by publicists or speech writers or social
Speaker 1: media gurus. Their candids are often carefully orchestrated by professional photographers,
Speaker 1: and their trends and attitudes or their public stances may
Speaker 1: be dictated by deep dive marketing research indicating the most
Speaker 1: attention grabbing responses, opinions, or hot takes of the day.
Speaker 2: Or for some movie that they're about to put out,
Speaker 2: they have to say certain things or be careful not
Speaker 2: to say other things.
Speaker 1: So it might not be as difficult for a celebrity
Speaker 1: to be taken out and replaced. It might not be
Speaker 1: as difficult as it initially sounds, because let's admit it
Speaker 1: sounds kind of out there. But the question today is
Speaker 1: could it really happen? Could some celebrity known around the
Speaker 1: world actually be replaced? And if so, how and if
Speaker 1: so why?
Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about that after a quick
Speaker 2: word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. We were talking about this
Speaker 1: earlier off air. Body doubles are real.
Speaker 2: This stuff happened, yeah, oh for real, in in two places.
Speaker 2: And the first one is one that you already know about.
Speaker 2: There are body doubles in Hollywood in filmmaking, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good call.
Speaker 2: When when you're thinking about stunt doubles and stand ins.
Speaker 2: There are there are people whose job it is to
Speaker 2: look like a celebrity and either stand in light to
Speaker 2: make sure that it looks good with the costume or something.
Speaker 2: And then also people who get paid to do very dangerous,
Speaker 2: sometimes terrifying things, and they look like at least similar to.
Speaker 1: A celebrity exactly, and they're but they're publicly acknowledged.
Speaker 2: They're publicly acknowledged, but you won't know who they are
Speaker 2: unless you're a huge fan of stunt doubles or you
Speaker 2: know a person of a celebrity and also know their
Speaker 2: stunt double or team of stunt doubles. But but in
Speaker 2: there's another case here in it's politics, and that's when
Speaker 2: you have a huge state actor, a figure that's known really,
Speaker 2: really well, but is also in danger of being assassinated
Speaker 2: or at least harmed.
Speaker 1: Right, right, So one of the most famous cases would
Speaker 1: be Joseph Stalin. He was a real pill. He implemented
Speaker 1: controversial plots against citizens of the Soviet Union, even ministers
Speaker 1: and folks who are in his inner.
Speaker 2: Circle, the place that he was the leader.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, people who opposed him were executed after a
Speaker 1: fake trial on a good day. Other days they just disappeared,
Speaker 1: and we mean disappeared from history. They were removed from
Speaker 1: official photographs, real devious stuff. Stalin increased the role of
Speaker 1: the Soviet secret police as he became the absolute power
Speaker 1: in the thirties, and it made sense for him to
Speaker 1: use these political decoys because he was protecting himself from
Speaker 1: his growing list of enemies. We don't know how many
Speaker 1: body doubles he had. He definitely had more than one.
Speaker 1: We know about two for sure. One was a double
Speaker 1: named Rashid, and he was dismissed from the army because
Speaker 1: he looked too much like Stalin. He went home, a
Speaker 1: government agent came to recruit him, and he became a
Speaker 1: sit in for the dictator at meetings and banquets. Somehow
Speaker 1: he survived being in close proximity to Stalin, and he
Speaker 1: died in nineteen ninety one at the ripe old age
Speaker 1: of ninety three. So well done, Rashid, good job staying alive.
Speaker 1: We also, I do have to mention, we also have
Speaker 1: a episode of ridiculous history that's entirely about body doubles
Speaker 1: in the political sphere. So it always into a little
Speaker 1: bit more of this. But he is again just one
Speaker 1: of Stalin's body doubles. There's one that's a little more
Speaker 1: well known.
Speaker 2: I would say, oh, yeah, somebody, how do you say
Speaker 2: his name, Felix Dadev Dadeese.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you can head on over and listen to
Speaker 2: that episode of Ridiculous History now, or you can hear
Speaker 2: this abridged version right now.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is one small fact about Dadyev. He was
Speaker 1: so good that in nineteen forty five he was flown
Speaker 1: to Yalta and he met with President Roosevelt and Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Churchill, whoa after the after the during the post
Speaker 1: war organ reorganization.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, was it was it as the double?
Speaker 1: It was Stalin? They thought they.
Speaker 2: Thought he was Stalin.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, which I mean, well done. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is one example. But then we also have
Speaker 1: the examples from the Middle East, most famously Iraq.
Speaker 2: Yes, Saddam Hussein and one of his sons were really
Speaker 2: really big big body double fans. Let's see, let's see,
Speaker 2: we've got some quotes here that come from inverse. This
Speaker 2: is the late Iraqi dictator reportedly employed a roster of
Speaker 2: body doubles. When you know, when he was ruling. And
Speaker 2: when we say roster here, we're not talking about one
Speaker 2: or two really good body doubles. We're talking about a dozen, dozens,
Speaker 2: perhaps of people who looked similarly enough to him that
Speaker 2: they were employed throughout his rule.
Speaker 1: Right. He was a prolific fan of body doubles, and
Speaker 1: people would observe this, keep a very very close eye
Speaker 1: on it, especially his tensions were ratcheting up in that
Speaker 1: part of the world, and they would they would read
Speaker 1: some more or less kind of read tea leaves and
Speaker 1: try to interpret smaller clues like the way his bodyguards acted.
Speaker 1: You know, did they act differently around the true dictator
Speaker 1: than they did around his body double. Saddam was reportedly
Speaker 1: possessed of a little bit of an ego. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he was a big fan of close ups, and so
Speaker 1: people began to think, well, if he doesn't get his
Speaker 1: close up in during one of his many speeches and proclamations,
Speaker 1: that means it's a body double. People are so worried
Speaker 1: about this that in two thousand and three, when he
Speaker 1: was captured, then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had to
Speaker 1: like go out and address concerns that they may have
Speaker 1: nabbed at decoy and was you know, they were figuring
Speaker 1: out ways to determine whether this was the real Saddam
Speaker 1: Mussin and this practice continued.
Speaker 2: Oh and just to jump in there, I remember in
Speaker 2: two thousand and three when Saddam was captured, thinking that's
Speaker 2: not the real Saddam Hussein. And I was very skeptical
Speaker 2: of it. But I didn't I didn't know. I wasn't
Speaker 2: thinking about it at that level at this point, but
Speaker 2: I was aware just through pop culture that that Saddam
Speaker 2: Mussein did employ body doubles.
Speaker 1: And his oldest son, Oude Hussein was a monster, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't have anything to do with his practice. It
Speaker 1: looks like he learned from dear old dad and and
Speaker 1: he started using body doubles as well. There was a
Speaker 1: guy named Latif who said he went to school with
Speaker 1: Ude Hussang and in nineteen eighty eight he was enlisted
Speaker 1: to be Uday's body double non consensually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because in Iraq there's this mandatory thing where you
Speaker 2: have to join the military when you reach a certain age,
Speaker 2: and Uday's body double was basically told, yeah, you are
Speaker 2: going to join as Ude, and that's it.
Speaker 1: That's what's what that's what's happening. Yeah, and the guy
Speaker 1: who was Uday's body double survived, escaped to rock and
Speaker 1: there was even a movie made about his story called
Speaker 1: The Devil's Double.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, yeah, he is one man, the
Speaker 2: person that we're talking about. Sure, and he had some
Speaker 2: stories to tell. He had a lot of claims and
Speaker 2: it's difficult to you know, back a lot of that
Speaker 2: up with hard facts. But again, this is a person
Speaker 2: who expec sperienced them and then his claiming to have
Speaker 2: experienced them. But he said he got shot over twenty
Speaker 2: five times twenty how many times?
Speaker 1: Twenty six times?
Speaker 2: Twenty six times while he was impersonating the son of
Speaker 2: the Iraqi dictator as well as something else crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: He was describing Ouday as essentially someone who was off
Speaker 2: his rocker.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, incredibly violent and enjoyed torturing people, like really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's tough because that's one person's opinion.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about him. I've seen other documentation
Speaker 2: of other people claiming very similar things, so I'm inclined
Speaker 2: to believe it.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's very fair of you. I just want to
Speaker 1: go on record he did Yeah, torture be abominable, unforgivable things.
Speaker 1: We're talking repeat sexual assault. We're talking murdering people for
Speaker 1: them for the thrill of it, like the old Diet
Speaker 1: coke commercial jingle. It's not surprising that he would have
Speaker 1: a body double because there were many, many people who
Speaker 1: wanted him dead for his many many atrocities. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: just it's like to the point where it's a lot
Speaker 1: of work for one dude.
Speaker 2: Oh, dude, I hear you for me. It's trusting. You know,
Speaker 2: any Western source that would say that about somebody you
Speaker 2: know like that?
Speaker 1: I see a really good point.
Speaker 2: It's it's hard for me to know where the line
Speaker 2: is of what's true because I don't I don't disbelieve
Speaker 2: that he did some pretty terrible things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see, But was it exaggerated for propaganda purposes
Speaker 1: and so on? It's a good question. Uh. There is
Speaker 1: another question that we should address, which is how many
Speaker 1: more suspected body doubles are out there? According to Joe R. Reader,
Speaker 1: who is a former undersecretary for the US Army, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, he said that many many world
Speaker 1: leaders had used body doubles to escape capture. He said
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden used body doubles man Well Noriega, Fidel
Speaker 1: Castro and more. And there were even rumors that Hitler
Speaker 1: used a body double to escape death. That is a
Speaker 1: story for another day.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, we've got I'm pretty sure a whole
Speaker 2: episode on that. Check it out if you're if you're
Speaker 2: interested it, it's pretty compelling. I don't know, Argentina.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeh, Nazi Nazi Party members did escape there
Speaker 1: through the rat lines, right, they certainly did. So. We
Speaker 1: also know that body doubles were used in ancient times,
Speaker 1: not even really in ancient times. They were used up
Speaker 1: until the widespread dissemination of photography right and av equipment,
Speaker 1: So it became easier to say, oh, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I've seen a picture of the emperor. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: do not talk like him, you do not look like him, You, sir,
Speaker 1: are an impostor.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, basically, any way to record image or sound, right,
Speaker 2: because if you're just dealing with an illustration and a
Speaker 2: written document, even that has quotations or something in it,
Speaker 2: that's the only way to know the even the president
Speaker 2: like George Washington. Imagine how many people in the United
Speaker 2: States actually saw George Washington, and then most of what
Speaker 2: people in the public knew of him throughout the world
Speaker 2: were paintings, Yeah, illustrations, paintings, any image of him that
Speaker 2: was just created from another person's imagination through looking at
Speaker 2: him exactly.
Speaker 1: And now that we have access to these amazing surveillance
Speaker 1: devices called smartphones, yeah, it's very very easy to not
Speaker 1: only take pictures of people, but to find pictures of people,
Speaker 1: and they don't have to be famous. So it seems
Speaker 1: like we're back to square one. How would you effectively
Speaker 1: fool people if you were a politician and athlete, a musician,
Speaker 1: an actor, and so on and so on. In this
Speaker 1: world where it's much easier to verify this, it turns
Speaker 1: out that the same technology that made body doubles and
Speaker 1: impersonations more difficult for a time may make it much easier.
Speaker 1: And we'll we'll explore why after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's a bit of a bait and switch,
Speaker 1: because we have to get to celebrity body doubles. This
Speaker 1: is the meat of what we are. This is the
Speaker 1: meat of the conspiracy burger. Okay, I didn't eat lunch today.
Speaker 1: I'm just these are all going to be food comparisons.
Speaker 2: Me neither, and I'm right there with you. I would
Speaker 2: like to add some Bieber bacon on top of whatever
Speaker 2: this sandwich slash hamburger we're creating here. And really, there's
Speaker 2: an entire industry out there of people impersonating celebrities. Really yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's what we were talking about right before the
Speaker 2: break to your your phone, Instagram, Facebook, social media. On
Speaker 2: the streets of New York City, there are people in
Speaker 2: La my god, just everywhere. There are people who impersonate
Speaker 2: singers and go do shows. There are people who impersonate
Speaker 2: actors and do events.
Speaker 1: There are people who impersonate fictional characters. I have some
Speaker 1: pretty good friends.
Speaker 2: Who impersonate Bill Murray.
Speaker 1: Not yet, okay, no I had I think that was
Speaker 1: just him. I think that was Bill.
Speaker 2: Oh really, no one.
Speaker 1: Will ever believe us, I know, but I know some
Speaker 1: people who, for instance, appear at functions, children's parties and
Speaker 1: stuff as you know, Cinderella or as snow White or something.
Speaker 1: I also have friends who do this, yeah, and that
Speaker 1: that seems like a really wholesome gig. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about those kind of impersonators. We're not talking about someone
Speaker 1: who is doing a spot on kiss cover band or something.
Speaker 1: We're talking about impersonators who replace celebrities in a way
Speaker 1: for the purposes of crime. And this goes back to
Speaker 1: the Bieber bacon that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, more of
Speaker 1: a bi burrito, right it.
Speaker 2: Is a Yeah, the bi burrito comes after the bacon.
Speaker 2: So the bacon is actually it's terrible to call that
Speaker 2: because I'm a big fan of bacon. Big ups to you, Bacon,
Speaker 2: just for existing and being and even though you're terrible
Speaker 2: for me and for the environment and all of those things,
Speaker 2: thank you for providing your oils with which to cook
Speaker 2: other things. Okay, let's just go to get on here.
Speaker 2: So you may love Justin Bieber, you may loath him
Speaker 2: either way. There's no denying that this guy, the image
Speaker 2: of him, his voice, everything about him is extremely extremely popular,
Speaker 2: and specifically with younger women, younger girls, teenage girls in particular.
Speaker 2: And there's this man named Leem wirmi R. He's thirty,
Speaker 2: he was thirty four years old, and he really capitalized
Speaker 2: on Justin Bieber's popularity, and not in a good way.
Speaker 1: No, he would pretend to be this teenager Justin Bieber
Speaker 1: online and he would talk to teenage fans, and he
Speaker 1: would start hounding them for money and then explicit sexual
Speaker 1: videos of themselves. If they didn't send him money, then
Speaker 1: he would say that he was going to post their
Speaker 1: videos online. This guy's an uber creep, and you have
Speaker 1: to imagine how emotionally traumatizing that is. You're a huge
Speaker 1: super fan, it's your favorite singer, you have, like maybe
Speaker 1: it's your first crush or something, and you think that
Speaker 1: this person is asking you, an underage person, a child,
Speaker 1: for what nude videos or something. And then for some reason,
Speaker 1: this guy has got to be at least a multi millionaire,
Speaker 1: is shaking you down for cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully, you know, you'd think that someone would recognize that.
Speaker 2: But again, that kind of fog of celebrity, it's.
Speaker 1: Powerful, right, and some people start successful criminal careers by
Speaker 1: rinsing and repeating this sort of tactic. There's an person
Speaker 1: here named Emma Charlton who posed as a Vanity Fair
Speaker 1: editor and a winterer, the one occurs in that film
Speaker 1: The Devilwaar's Product. So Charleton tricked this guy into falling
Speaker 1: in love marrying her, and then she just robbed him blind.
Speaker 1: It turned out she had a long history of impersonating
Speaker 1: other people, some famous and fleecing, fleecing various dudes that
Speaker 1: thought they were in love with her. So those are
Speaker 1: pretty dark. That's still not quite what we're what we're
Speaker 1: getting at, right, Let's let's go to something a little
Speaker 1: bit softer just for a second, right, because people also
Speaker 1: impersonate celebrities for the purpose of pranking.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there was there was this thing that occurred
Speaker 2: back in twenty eighteen where this picture of Justin Bieber
Speaker 2: was going all around the internet. I think we may
Speaker 2: have mentioned it in passing before on this show.
Speaker 1: This is what I meant by bieber Rito, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Where it was a photograph of Justin Bieber wearing a hat, sunglasses,
Speaker 2: and a hoodie and he was eating a burrito from
Speaker 2: the center of the burrito rather than at one of
Speaker 2: the ends. And it was supposedly taken by some passerby
Speaker 2: while Justin Bieber was enjoying a burrito, just out in
Speaker 2: the park somewhere, and it got retweeted so many, like
Speaker 2: I don't even know exactly how many times, thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of times. It was posted on all kinds of
Speaker 2: different blogs, and it became I guess a trending thing
Speaker 2: that was occurring. But it turned out that it was
Speaker 2: literally just some pranksters that were pretending to be Justin
Speaker 2: Bieber and that's all it was the entire time. But
Speaker 2: you think that you'd think that with the number of
Speaker 2: people who know who this kid is. Who are this
Speaker 2: guy Justin Bieber? I guess he's a bit older now,
Speaker 2: but who know who he is? They know exactly what
Speaker 2: he looks like. You'd think that somebody somewhere would have
Speaker 2: figured out that that wasn't him. It didn't happen until
Speaker 2: these guys posted a YouTube video explaining exactly what they
Speaker 2: did and how they did it.
Speaker 1: Wow, weird. I guess the reaction was just so attention
Speaker 1: grabbing right.
Speaker 2: Well, and think about this around you, on your social media,
Speaker 2: whatever you're using, everyone is believing that this is an
Speaker 2: actual picture of Justin Bieber. So you almost don't even
Speaker 2: question or you don't question it whatsoever. You just take
Speaker 2: it for granted. Oh that's Justin Bieber. That's weird.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with you, Matt. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: lay it all out on the table. I can confess
Speaker 1: to you. I no ding on the guy, but I
Speaker 1: am not typically in a situation where my Bieber count
Speaker 1: is very very low on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2: Oh, you have your encounters with the Beebes. The Beebes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: is that a thing? The Beebster I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't know be Justin Oh.
Speaker 1: All right, well, you know, I wish him the best
Speaker 1: the luck in his career because it's tough work to
Speaker 1: be a musician.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you this, tremendous respect for Justin Bieber on
Speaker 2: this side over here. Even though he did he caught
Speaker 2: up doing a lot of things that has been That's
Speaker 2: a little kid that has been fighting through the music
Speaker 2: industry since he was a little kid.
Speaker 1: That's so very kind of you. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: I don't have a statement because I just don't know
Speaker 1: much about it. But we see how even a very
Speaker 1: well known person can be can be impersonated very deluiously.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't matter how famous you are. Maybe
Speaker 1: to your point about social media, it could make it easier.
Speaker 1: Now we get to the stuff that people will tend
Speaker 1: to dismiss out of hand. What if a celebrity was
Speaker 1: not consensually impersonated, right, What if they were murdered and
Speaker 1: replaced somehow taken out. This brings us to twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: when buzzfeeds Ryan Broderick found a Brazilian blog called Avril
Speaker 1: is Dead, referring to the musician Avril Levine. The idea
Speaker 1: is in the blog now. Avril Levine got famous in
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, and then she was emotionally overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Her grandfather passed away and she died by suicide right
Speaker 1: after the release of her first album, which was called
Speaker 1: let Go. Oddly enough, according to this theory, the record company,
Speaker 1: the record label did not let Go because the first
Speaker 1: album was so successful. They said, Okay, we can just
Speaker 1: get someone who looks kind of like her, a doppelganger,
Speaker 1: and keep the machine going, keep the money coming. In
Speaker 1: a little while later, Avril Levine finally addressed this idea,
Speaker 1: and she said in an interview on an Australian radio
Speaker 1: station KIS ten sixty five for anyone interested, nice the
Speaker 1: host aster, did you laugh at the rumors that went
Speaker 1: around where you no longer exist and there's a clone
Speaker 1: of you, to which Aril applies. Yes, some people think
Speaker 1: that I'm not the real me, which is so weird,
Speaker 1: Like why would they even think that. For supporters of
Speaker 1: this theory, there, you know, you're probably white knuckled right
Speaker 1: now with your hands on the steering wheel or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you're saying, of course, that's what the clone would
Speaker 1: say that the actor would say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But you know, as weird as it sounds,
Speaker 2: imagine just put yourself in the shoes of some record company.
Speaker 2: Now this is gonna sound weird, but just imagine this.
Speaker 2: You're the head of a record label. You just had
Speaker 2: one of the most popular albums ever come out, or
Speaker 2: at least within the past like a couple of years,
Speaker 2: come out on your label, and it's this one singer
Speaker 2: songwriter that is gonna make you. You know, they've made
Speaker 2: you millions of dollars. They're gonna make you millions and
Speaker 2: millions of dollars with their next album and everything. What
Speaker 2: if that person dies and it's kept quiet enough to
Speaker 2: where you think, well, maybe we can put out another album.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's insane to think about.
Speaker 1: Like, what would you do given the opportunity right now?
Speaker 2: Exactly, you already have millions of dollars, you're going you're
Speaker 2: set to make millions more, tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: What would you do to continue that money flowing in?
Speaker 2: I don't know. That's one of those age old questions.
Speaker 2: Why do powerful, old rich people do some of the
Speaker 2: things that they get accused of and sometimes convicted for sure? Anyway,
Speaker 2: so it goes to Black Mirror. Have you seen Season
Speaker 2: five Black Mirror?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: So there are only three episodes, but one of them
Speaker 2: features Miley Cyrus and in it she plays a pop
Speaker 2: star called Ashley Oh. And this pop star spoilers by
Speaker 2: the way ahead right after this.
Speaker 1: Cow down three two one spoilers.
Speaker 2: So she gets placed in a medically induced coma by
Speaker 2: her management team essentially her aunt and some other people
Speaker 2: working for her, and then they want to replace this
Speaker 2: pop star with an AI. Essentially it's called Ashley Too,
Speaker 2: but it's created from this weird, little, compartmentalized, pr friendly
Speaker 2: version of Ashley Oh's personality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the the hardware they start off with is
Speaker 1: I very rarely use this word, but it's kind of cute.
Speaker 2: Oh the little tiny Yeah, No, I agreed, But in
Speaker 2: this case they're going to make use of holograms and
Speaker 2: Ashley Oh's personality to basically replace the pop star completely.
Speaker 2: And it feels a lot like this story with Avril Levine,
Speaker 2: like to continue the money flowing in, they would do
Speaker 2: whatever they needed to do to make this person at
Speaker 2: least seem real.
Speaker 1: Right, right, and they would be able to apply near
Speaker 1: future technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you know, but it's not the first
Speaker 2: time some pop star has been, you know, so accused
Speaker 2: of being not the.
Speaker 1: Real one, right, that's correct. This one is for you, Diana,
Speaker 1: although working with us on that previous video, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure you know all of all of this already, that's right.
Speaker 1: September nineteen sixty nine, a rumor that Paul McCartney, famed
Speaker 1: member of the Beatles, had died, began spreading across college
Speaker 1: campuses in the States. These rumors expanded. There was a
Speaker 1: snowball aggregate effect because people felt they were finding more
Speaker 1: and more clues hidden in album covers and in Beatles songs,
Speaker 1: and clue hunting was infectious, addictive, and fun. Within a
Speaker 1: few weeks, this blows up and its global for most people.
Speaker 1: This craze was short lived, and Paul McCartney, if it
Speaker 1: is him, has an interview where he says, no, I've
Speaker 1: been taking some family time. I've been in Scotland, Kenya,
Speaker 1: places like that go off the grid.
Speaker 2: Because you know, I'm massively rich, yeah, and I can
Speaker 2: just go places like that.
Speaker 1: John Lennon is very stressful to work with. That's pretty obvious.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, yeah, I know McCartney also has his quirks.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, that's true.
Speaker 2: Just to give John Lennon the benefit of a doubt, okay.
Speaker 1: Right, right, I mean right, that's that's true. Well, McCartney, though,
Speaker 1: he has this interview in Life magazine where he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, very much alave whatever and to Scotland, and
Speaker 1: despite denying the rumors of the exaggerated rumors of his
Speaker 1: death in a very Mark Twain esque way, McCartney still
Speaker 1: had to confront these things. People said that he was
Speaker 1: a lookalike. His real name was William Shears Campbell or
Speaker 1: William Shephard. William Campbell allegedly became Billy Shears on sarch Pepper,
Speaker 1: and William Shephard was supposedly the inspiration behind the continuing
Speaker 1: story of Bungalow Bill.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's a weird one buckalo Bill.
Speaker 2: We listened to a lot of Beatles at my house.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: So all of this stuff rings so true to me. Ah,
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: So how did this how did this one start?
Speaker 2: Oh? There's an article it's called is Beadle Paul McCartney Dead?
Speaker 2: And it was written September seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine this
Speaker 2: gentleman named Tim Harper, who was the editor of the
Speaker 2: Drake Times Delphic. It was a student newspaper of Drake
Speaker 2: University over in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, this article, it
Speaker 2: addressed the rumor, essentially the rumor mill that was kind
Speaker 2: of going around the school that all these clues, if
Speaker 2: you put them together, it means that Paul McCartney has
Speaker 2: somehow died. And let's let's look at some of these
Speaker 2: messages here. So it include a message that says, turn
Speaker 2: me on dead man. And this comes from the White
Speaker 2: album from the song Revolution nine. And it's when you
Speaker 2: play it backwards, it's that old backwards masking thing that
Speaker 2: we've talked about before. And this apparently if you like
Speaker 2: look at all of the rumors and the things that
Speaker 2: were published, if you try trace it all the way back,
Speaker 2: you get to this article, the.
Speaker 1: One that we just mentioned in Iowa, right right right
Speaker 1: by Tim Harper. So according to music journalist Merrill Nowden.
Speaker 1: This was the first published work on the idea that
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney was dead.
Speaker 2: Because of some backward masks lyrics, turn me on dead man.
Speaker 1: It's weird, yeah, weird flex So we have let's do
Speaker 1: one more example.
Speaker 2: What about Abby Road? He wasn't wearing shoes and he
Speaker 2: was smoking.
Speaker 1: What about Abby Road? I'm just saying, he standing with
Speaker 1: four people who all looked kind of alike. What you
Speaker 1: gotta differentiate yourself just Paul, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, man. What about that car crash?
Speaker 1: I don't know. He was in a car crash and
Speaker 1: his many So I've got to say a lot of
Speaker 1: people still think that is a fringe theory, among them
Speaker 1: being the man who, as we record this podcast, claims
Speaker 1: to be Paul McCartney. He would say he claims to
Speaker 1: be that because he is Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would.
Speaker 1: I I am profoundly inspired by your commitment to this.
Speaker 1: I know it's Do you seriously think it's the case?
Speaker 2: No, I don't.
Speaker 1: I will, I will. I will send you and Diana
Speaker 1: on an adventure in a foreign country. If it turns
Speaker 1: out that he is not really Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2: Okay, accepted, deal. I will work, which work now will
Speaker 2: be to prove that that is not Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1: So we'll do one more before Diana put me in
Speaker 1: the poorhouse, and that is Taylor Swift. People, this is
Speaker 1: a weird one. I found people were arguing, based entirely
Speaker 1: on the photographs, that Taylor Swift is in fact the
Speaker 1: clone of a former Satanic priestess. Yeah, as you do.
Speaker 1: This dates back to twenty eleven, and people will say
Speaker 1: that Swift is actually a clone of one Zena Levey,
Speaker 1: the daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan,
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: And there are a bunch of videos on YouTube comparing
Speaker 1: the two. I would suggest, I mean, take a look
Speaker 1: at them if you want. They don't look very similar.
Speaker 1: But a lot of that is interpretive and I.
Speaker 2: The beholder and so on.
Speaker 1: So right now, it doesn't seem that there's too much
Speaker 1: sand to the idea that celebrities could be killed, replaced,
Speaker 1: or taken out. We're not quite at that black mirror
Speaker 1: level yet.
Speaker 2: At least not in person.
Speaker 1: It is going to happen, though it's going to happen,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna maybe happen in person, But we are
Speaker 1: in the world of deep fakes. Is what is deep fake?
Speaker 1: Aside from another episode.
Speaker 2: Well, it's yeah. It's a way to digitally manipulate the
Speaker 2: sound and image on you know, in digital photography and audio,
Speaker 2: to make it seem as though a person, in this case,
Speaker 2: a celebrity or well known individual is saying or doing
Speaker 2: something that they are actually not. And it's quite effective.
Speaker 2: If you go back to twenty sixteen, I'm by the way,
Speaker 2: just watching Mister Robots season three, and back in season two,
Speaker 2: they had just a quick little piece of video that
Speaker 2: happens on a television screen where President Obama is talking
Speaker 2: and he mentions one of the characters, Tyrrell Wellick and
Speaker 2: it at the time in twenty sixteen, I remember being
Speaker 2: taken aback by it. I didn't understand, like, how did
Speaker 2: they get the president to say that? Why would they
Speaker 2: why would he agree to that? What do you pay
Speaker 2: a president when he makes a quick little cameo?
Speaker 1: At counterpoint, you don't pay presidents. You donate to their
Speaker 1: foundation's charities and campaign funds.
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go. No, I was perplexed
Speaker 2: by it, and I remember I think we even I
Speaker 2: can't remember We mentioned it on the show a like
Speaker 2: when it came out, but we have talked about it
Speaker 2: since then, and you can see there are YouTube channels
Speaker 2: online with the deep fakes that are super just believable
Speaker 2: and scary, putting other people's faces on bodies, making those
Speaker 2: bodies say things, putting words into the mouths of other
Speaker 2: people who are being interviewed. If you want to, let's
Speaker 2: just stay on the President Obama thing. If you go
Speaker 2: to twenty eighteen, two years later, after the Mister Robots
Speaker 2: Season two thing, you go to this video that Jordan
Speaker 2: Peel made and he impersonated President Obama quite a bit
Speaker 2: in his career, or he continues to do that, but
Speaker 2: for a while there was one of, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the funniest things he was doing, at least according
Speaker 2: to me, right, he nailed the voice, just so so
Speaker 2: good with the voice. Well, he made a video in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen of him talking and a deep faked video
Speaker 2: of President Obama saying all the things that Jordan Peele
Speaker 2: was saying. I remember that, yeah, And it was in
Speaker 2: warning to everyone that you have to really trust the
Speaker 2: news sources that you look at. You have to trust
Speaker 2: the videos you watch. Uh, huh, And it's becoming harder
Speaker 2: and harder to do that.
Speaker 1: I would say, ups, I always say you have to
Speaker 1: distrust more.
Speaker 2: So, well, yeah, you have to trust the humans that
Speaker 2: are behind the thing.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, you have to trust the source or you
Speaker 1: have to at least do your own due diligence on this.
Speaker 1: And Hollywood of course, very very excited over the moon
Speaker 1: about this. Can you imagine how much more affordable films
Speaker 1: will become? Why would you need to pay whomever you know,
Speaker 1: like Julia Roberts or Idris Elba? What would you need
Speaker 1: to pay them millions and millions of dollars every time
Speaker 1: you make a movie when you could just buy the
Speaker 1: rights to their likeness and their voice and then use
Speaker 1: deep fake technology. Holograms are there that they're pretty sophisticated,
Speaker 1: but we're not the point where they can replace human
Speaker 1: beings yet.
Speaker 2: Well, and at this point, almost all consumption occurs on
Speaker 2: our phones.
Speaker 1: True. Also, I gotta go on this one pitch. You
Speaker 1: got to pitch one thing, Okay, So imagine we combine
Speaker 1: deep fakes with AI kind of limited AI. This leads
Speaker 1: us to a strange place very very quickly. I have
Speaker 1: a prediction I predict that in the mid future, you know,
Speaker 1: midterm futures. So it's completely possible that we could democratize
Speaker 1: screenwriting and filmmaking in a very strange way, a way
Speaker 1: that would not require more than one human being to
Speaker 1: be involved. Imagine if you had something that was like
Speaker 1: Alexa or Siri or Google Home or whatever, and instead
Speaker 1: of just messing with audio, this would mess with audio
Speaker 1: and visual. So you could just say to it. You
Speaker 1: could say, hey, Google or Alexa, combine Police Academy for
Speaker 1: and just name another film. Back to the Future three
Speaker 1: and Back to the Future three. Just combine those together
Speaker 1: and make a film for me. And then this algorithm
Speaker 1: would be able to write the script for that that
Speaker 1: combines these things, take the references from the other visual aspects,
Speaker 1: and combine those so that we would have something like,
Speaker 1: you know, back to the Police Academy four or back
Speaker 1: to the Police Academy three, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow, or Police Academy to the you know, It's
Speaker 1: completely possible, And then that means the only human being
Speaker 1: involved in that entire process once this technology exists is
Speaker 1: the person who asks the question. And I think we're
Speaker 1: on the way there. Wow, pretty pretty stunning stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny too, because all you'd have to do
Speaker 2: is combine some of the top grossing films over the
Speaker 2: past fifty years basically, and then you could just have
Speaker 2: new hits and change the proper nouns.
Speaker 1: And script writing is so formulaic. Yeah, any ways, for
Speaker 1: a lot of those films. But it appears that at
Speaker 1: least for now, at least in the cases we've outlined,
Speaker 1: there's no solid proof of celebrities being actively murdered and replaced.
Speaker 1: Yet we do see the numerous possibilities for replacement, if
Speaker 1: not assassination, and we do know that there are likely
Speaker 1: body doubles out there in other forms other I mean,
Speaker 1: there's still bodies other forms or other applications would be
Speaker 1: a better way to say it.
Speaker 2: You know, I just have to say something here. I
Speaker 2: believe that a lot of these allegations that come up
Speaker 2: with body doubles, especially with celebrities who were younger women
Speaker 2: at the time when they became celebrities, like your Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift's and your Avril Levine's and all this, a lot
Speaker 2: of this feels like I don't want to say, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's body shaming, isn't the right term,
Speaker 2: but the disbelief that a celebrity, especially a female celebrity,
Speaker 2: looks differently than she did when she was, you know,
Speaker 2: seventeen eighteen, whenever she became popular or younger, I think
Speaker 2: has to do with our own perceptions of that and
Speaker 2: how we've been manipulated by media to view women as
Speaker 2: they age. Is that I feel like there's something there
Speaker 2: because there's there's an interview with Avril Levine where she
Speaker 2: was being asked, you know, have you heard the rumors
Speaker 2: that you were replaced in everything that we were discussing.
Speaker 2: In the images of her, she does not look like
Speaker 2: she did at least in to whatever that whenever she
Speaker 2: was interviewed twenty sixteen or something. She does not look
Speaker 2: anything like the Avril Levine that we all grew up
Speaker 2: watching on MTV. And it's just the nature of growing
Speaker 2: up and changing. And I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 2: there's something in there with the way we treat celebrities
Speaker 2: and follow them over all of this time that maybe
Speaker 2: we just lose sight of who the person is when
Speaker 2: you're looking at them.
Speaker 1: The fact that human beings age and change, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't see that, And that's our classic episode for this evening.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let
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