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 Nol.
Speaker 3: They call me Bed.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code
Speaker 4: named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You
Speaker 4: are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
Speaker 4: you to know. It's the top of the week. As
Speaker 4: we hurtle headlong towards the end of February, our summer
Speaker 4: plans are ruined. North Korea has closed down their airbnbs. Catch, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's something we all took. We all took an l
Speaker 4: on that one. There are so many things occurring around
Speaker 4: the world world today. We're going to explore several of them.
Speaker 4: We're going to explore a lawyer who saved the day,
Speaker 4: a new cryptid just dropped. And before we do any
Speaker 4: of that, we were thinking we might travel to Chernobyl.
Speaker 3: Oh, why not? Maybe they have an airbnbs available there. Perhaps, No, No,
Speaker 3: it's the next thing. Let's start getting some tourist traffic
Speaker 3: over there at Chernobyl. No, not so much for humans,
Speaker 3: but for wildlife. As we've talked about numerous times on
Speaker 3: the show, it's a flourishing but very diverse ecosystem with
Speaker 3: numerous species of you know, insects, plants, fauna, megafauna, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean stuff that could you know, be considered almost
Speaker 3: approaching cryptids, especially when we start to talk about some
Speaker 3: of the ways that the radiation that the legacy radiation
Speaker 3: from that Chernobyl exclusion zone has affected some of these creatures. Today,
Speaker 3: we are specifically talking about the wolf population there and
Speaker 3: how exposure long term generational exposure. After all, the Chernobyl
Speaker 3: catastrophe where one of the reactors there near Pripiat, Ukraine, exploded,
Speaker 3: more than two hundred thousand people were evacuated and created
Speaker 3: these exclusion zones. That was back in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: So we are at a place now where we're actually
Speaker 3: starting to kind of see almost evolutionary results from the
Speaker 3: exposure that these creatures have had to this legacy radiation. Specifically, today,
Speaker 3: we're looking at a study that has come out from
Speaker 3: a researcher by the name Well actually there's a couple
Speaker 3: of researchers we're talking about today. One is by the
Speaker 3: name of Shane Campbell Staton, who is a fellow at
Speaker 3: the Princeton Evolutionary Biology Labs, I suppose you could call it.
Speaker 3: There is also another fellow researcher by the name of
Speaker 3: care In Love, and they have been studying the effects
Speaker 3: of the radiation in this exclusion zone or these exclusion
Speaker 3: zones on the wolf population. And one thing that has
Speaker 3: come out very recently, I believe in the last couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, is the idea that wolves, the wolf population
Speaker 3: in Belarus's exclusion zone, have started to develop parts of
Speaker 3: their genome that are resistant to cancer. Good news, because
Speaker 3: this is the kind of thing that can be studied
Speaker 3: and can potentially be harnessed and used, you know, in
Speaker 3: cancer research for humans. Really fascinating stuff. There's a really
Speaker 3: great NPR interview where Love and their fellow Princeton evolutionary biologist,
Speaker 3: Shane Campbell Statton, they gave to NPR where they talk
Speaker 3: about this research. Campbell Staton said in the interview that
Speaker 3: the exclusion zone are quote home to everything from amphibians,
Speaker 3: insects and birds to megafauna, so things like European bison,
Speaker 3: bore apex predators like wolves. Gray wolves in particular, they say,
Speaker 3: offer a really interesting opportunity to understand the impacts of chronic,
Speaker 3: low dose, multigenerational exposure to ionizing radiation because of the
Speaker 3: role that they play in their ecosystem. Going on to quote,
Speaker 3: there may be genetic variation within the wolf population that
Speaker 3: may allow some individuals to be more resistant or resilient
Speaker 3: in the face of that radiation, in which case they
Speaker 3: may still get cancer at the same rate, but it
Speaker 3: may not impact their function as much as it would
Speaker 3: an individual outside of the exclusion zone. They're just able
Speaker 3: to take that burden better for some reason, or it
Speaker 3: could be resistance and despite that pressure, that radiation exposure,
Speaker 3: they just don't get cancer as much.
Speaker 4: Interesting too, doctor loves study focuses on wolf blood, I think,
Speaker 4: and it descends from a like earlier studies on different
Speaker 4: fauna in the exclusion zone. And I love that you're
Speaker 4: pointing out the earlier work we did on the damage
Speaker 4: that human beings or human populations posed to wild animals,
Speaker 4: wasn't it It wasn't too long ago know that some
Speaker 4: study found that humans were more dangerous to animals in
Speaker 4: chernoble than the radiation. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I don't have that exact data
Speaker 3: in front of me, but what is interesting is the
Speaker 3: lack of humans in these exclusion zones, which is largely
Speaker 3: what's allowed these populations of wildlife and flora to flourish
Speaker 3: kind of untouched. And it also offers a really unique
Speaker 3: research opportunity to you know, take a look at how
Speaker 3: these these species are developing, because again, you know, we're
Speaker 3: looking at decades of data now, so you could consider
Speaker 3: this as the researchers do multi generational exposure to this
Speaker 3: low level radiation they're starting, they're seeing. The report says
Speaker 3: that they're seeing very similar kind of resistance that you
Speaker 3: might see in a cancer patient undergoing radiation therapy, which
Speaker 3: which makes sense because radiation therapy, chemo treatments and stuff
Speaker 3: is exposure to low level radiation that that you know,
Speaker 3: obviously it does make people quite sick, but long term
Speaker 3: it can cause the body to reject the cancer cells,
Speaker 3: you know, and to sort of, yeah, to kind of
Speaker 3: evolve in its own way as a result of being
Speaker 3: exposed to that. I mean, I guess maybe evolve is
Speaker 3: the wrong word, because that's a much shorter timeline. You
Speaker 3: know that these these individuals undergoing that kind of treatment
Speaker 3: are exposed to stuff. This is like the kind of
Speaker 3: thing where we're seeing natural selection at play, where the
Speaker 3: wolves that remain are the ones that have that adaptation
Speaker 3: that allows them to be much more resilient to cancer
Speaker 3: and tumor growth.
Speaker 5: It's so weird, like resilient to cancer and yet you're
Speaker 5: still being irradiated. What are the other big problems that
Speaker 5: come with radiation. I thought cancer was one of the
Speaker 5: big things that radiation could cause, and just destruction of cells.
Speaker 4: Sterility would be one. Sterility would be one. There's the
Speaker 4: possibility to also limit reproduction through tumors that interfere with
Speaker 4: the natural lifespan of the of the creature. To your point, Noel,
Speaker 4: I believe check me on this, folks, but I believe
Speaker 4: a gray wolf has a relatively short lifespan in comparison
Speaker 4: to other large fauna. So if there's a reproductive advantage
Speaker 4: to surviving the exposure of radiation and chernobyl, then it
Speaker 4: does make sense that they could breed for that trait.
Speaker 4: I think they're like they're living there, the wolves with
Speaker 4: something like six plus times the safe amount of radiation
Speaker 4: for life form. And so if they are, if they
Speaker 4: are surviving, what we have to remember is there's probably
Speaker 4: a pretty high rate of attrition. There are probably a
Speaker 4: lot of pups in a litter that aren't making it
Speaker 4: to reproductive age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then that's I think that's where we're able.
Speaker 3: And again no evolutionary biology background here is going you know,
Speaker 3: from what the experts are saying, and I hope that
Speaker 3: we're interpreting it correctly. I think between the three of
Speaker 3: us we are. But that's where you start to see
Speaker 3: that natural selection at play. Like the individuals that are
Speaker 3: born that have that trait, they're the ones that survive longer.
Speaker 3: Because to your point, then you know about the impact
Speaker 3: of humans. One of the researchers had this to say,
Speaker 3: Campbell Statton, that a wolf living within that Chernobyl exclusion
Speaker 3: zone might have to deal with these potential pressures from cancer,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't have to deal with pressures from say hunting,
Speaker 3: for example. And I'm just going to go and read
Speaker 3: the quote as they say it better than I could paraphrase.
Speaker 3: And it may be that the release from that hunting pressure,
Speaker 3: that separation from humans, turns out to be a much
Speaker 3: better thing than having to deal with cancer, which is
Speaker 3: kind of messed up. That's part of the quote, but
Speaker 3: I completely concur with that.
Speaker 4: It's true though. Look at the biodiversity and the DMZ.
Speaker 4: Look at the way the natural world quickly recovered a
Speaker 4: bit of its population when humans were locked down during COVID. Right,
Speaker 4: if you take the human species out of the equation,
Speaker 4: then Earth grows back pretty quickly. Also, were we didn't
Speaker 4: we talk about years years ago? Didn't we talk about
Speaker 4: the wild bars that were running around?
Speaker 3: And then you know, obviously the wild bares are known
Speaker 3: for digging for you know, truffles and such, maybe specific
Speaker 3: ones that are good at being for truffles, but they
Speaker 3: do root and a lot of times the soil content,
Speaker 3: you know, deeper down does have you know, higher levels
Speaker 3: of radiation. So that was why we were seeing higher
Speaker 3: instances of irradiated bores, you know, from that same Chernobyl
Speaker 3: exclusion zone. Like I was saying earlier, there are implications
Speaker 3: on human healthcare, you know in this Campbell Statin said.
Speaker 3: By the way, the interview on NPR was on a
Speaker 3: show called Shortwave, and so you can probably just google
Speaker 3: the name of the researchers and shortwave and find the
Speaker 3: entire transcription or probably even the audio in PR is
Speaker 3: pretty good about that, but it says Campbell. Statin told
Speaker 3: the interviewer that they are starting to collaborate with cancer
Speaker 3: biologists and cancer medication and treatment companies to help interpret
Speaker 3: all of this data and to quote them try to
Speaker 3: figure out if there are any directly translatable differences that
Speaker 3: may offer novel therapeutic targets for cancer and humans, for instance.
Speaker 3: And one interesting thing about this too is the pandemic
Speaker 3: and also the fact that this area is in fact
Speaker 3: not safe for humans has caused this research to be
Speaker 3: a little on the slow going side. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of a bummer because they probably could have
Speaker 3: been a little further along than they are, but because
Speaker 3: of these conditions, they're having to kind of take it.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit slow and steady.
Speaker 4: It's cool stuff though, even if the research is stymied,
Speaker 4: it just shows us yet again the natural world is astonishing.
Speaker 4: You know, I wonder too, this makes me think, I
Speaker 4: wonder if it were possible if there were a world
Speaker 4: wherein we could find an area with high diversity of
Speaker 4: natural floora and fauna and then just kick all the
Speaker 4: humans out, like, don't even national park, it don't have visitors,
Speaker 4: just say no, humans can go here for a secon
Speaker 4: century and see what happens.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that you say that, Ben, especially since
Speaker 3: we recently did an episode on national parks and just
Speaker 3: like the whole I know you mentioned that just now,
Speaker 3: but it is there is a conceptual kind of similarity
Speaker 3: there because if it weren't for people going to bat
Speaker 3: for the need for national parks and to have these
Speaker 3: areas be protected, commerce and you know, just the need
Speaker 3: to develop every possible inch of land would have just
Speaker 3: inevitably bulldozed those places. So it requires that kind of
Speaker 3: forward thinking, you know, to really have that kind of
Speaker 3: flexibility to have these places protected. And I think you
Speaker 3: could apply that to areas of research if there was
Speaker 3: potential for real, long term studies that could you know,
Speaker 3: benefit humanity. I also wanted to mention too. I mentioned
Speaker 3: the pandemic and also just the general danger of this
Speaker 3: place to humans. But let's not forget Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 3: That's a big, you know issue in this So it
Speaker 3: is again another human intervention that has led to it
Speaker 3: being difficult to continue this research just as quickly as
Speaker 3: it might be good to.
Speaker 4: Do bangor interview from the Swanson Air though, Huh do
Speaker 4: you guys watch that?
Speaker 3: Oh no, I don't think so.
Speaker 4: Tucker Carlson Uh went for Yeah, went full for an
Speaker 4: asset and one of the the most like Tim Hideker
Speaker 4: level interviews with a dictator. And it's just a masterclass
Speaker 4: in how not to do interviews and boot licking.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he interviewed Putin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he interviewed Putin. It's it's a cute Okay, Well
Speaker 4: the pronunciation may be in dispute, but uh dispute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he so.
Speaker 4: In the interview, Uh, Tucker Carlson, the famous Swanson Air
Speaker 4: is asking questions directly, and you know it's it's quite
Speaker 4: rare for Putin to have those direct one to one interviews.
Speaker 3: They'll only do it with friendlies. You know, folks were
Speaker 3: going to be in his corner to some degree. I
Speaker 3: mean right, I kind.
Speaker 4: Of tell you he's got he still has some old
Speaker 4: spooky moves, like he does some old KGB stuff where
Speaker 4: it's like you slide in personal details and he mentions
Speaker 4: the time Tucker Carlson attempted to apply to the CIA
Speaker 4: and got rejected, just like just as like a sneak
Speaker 4: disc a little little.
Speaker 3: Little subtweet there. Ye, speaking of which, isn't he still
Speaker 3: doing his show on X fka Twitter? Is that still happening?
Speaker 3: Because I imagined because remember how it was like not
Speaker 3: to sideline. I think we're pretty much done with the
Speaker 3: story here. But the viewing numbers for Tucker Carlson's show
Speaker 3: on Twitter or on X were like overly, wildly inflated
Speaker 3: because of what X counts as a view. There's a
Speaker 3: discrepancy between a view and an impression where they can
Speaker 3: say Tucker Carlson's getting one hundred gazillion trillion views, but
Speaker 3: it's just because they're embedding it on like everybody's timeline,
Speaker 3: so someone just scrolls past it and it auto plays.
Speaker 3: That counts as a view. So they're like wildly inflated
Speaker 3: numbers because you know, based on that, they're saying that
Speaker 3: his numbers are higher than the most recent Super Bowl,
Speaker 3: which apparently was the largest viewing numbers in network television history.
Speaker 3: I want to say, yeah, go Toller Swift, right, that
Speaker 3: was crazy.
Speaker 4: Usher is so good at concerts. Did you notice he
Speaker 4: had a football game before and after his concert.
Speaker 3: It was wild.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, I'm a dumb dumb? Was any good?
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 2: Was it any good?
Speaker 4: It was good?
Speaker 3: It was a two thousands Schmorgus board, you know, of
Speaker 3: all the hits. I believe we had a lot of
Speaker 3: the atl favorites, like Ludacrous main appearance Alicia Keys isn't
Speaker 3: really Atlanta, but it's part of that kind of two
Speaker 3: thousands scene. Yeah, No, I think he represented I thought
Speaker 3: it was good.
Speaker 4: Jermaine Dupree shouted out one of my favorite commercials of
Speaker 4: all time. He had his berries and crea cause play.
Speaker 4: I am not kidding you. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Was it a real reference or was it just a
Speaker 3: similarities that you could not ignore. I might just be.
Speaker 4: Seeing patterns where none exist.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great commercial, by the way, some of
Speaker 4: the best work star Burst and has ever done. It
Speaker 4: inspired an episode of Thirteen Days of Halloween. Noel, I
Speaker 4: wonder to sew it up. What do you see as
Speaker 4: the future here for the wild Wolves of Chernobyl? Do
Speaker 4: you see it as informing cancer research for humans? How
Speaker 4: long do you think these wolves have before humans encroach
Speaker 4: again upon their territory?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. It's a good question. Again, there
Speaker 3: is sort of a built in like you can't really
Speaker 3: go there and and and it's like land that nobody wants, right,
Speaker 3: like that other episode that we did recently. I think
Speaker 3: because of its irradiatedness, it has to be looked at
Speaker 3: differently than other land. And I think for research and
Speaker 3: how a radiation affects these creatures and how that can
Speaker 3: then be applied to you know, studying their their genome
Speaker 3: and their biology. I think that's a built in kind
Speaker 3: of safeguard against humans that could potentially, you know, if
Speaker 3: it's only these researchers so and then again you start
Speaker 3: they say they're talking to cancer companies and big pharmaceutical companies,
Speaker 3: you could then start seeing real encroachment, you know, and
Speaker 3: just you know, dissecting the hell out of these animals.
Speaker 3: But if the intention is right, which it seems like
Speaker 3: it is, and it doesn't go off the rails, and
Speaker 3: I think it could be a good thing. But I
Speaker 3: don't know. I leave it to humans to screw it up.
Speaker 3: But what do you think, Matt.
Speaker 5: I just love the idea of being resistant to cancer,
Speaker 5: and if that means long period of minor exposure to
Speaker 5: radiation for everyone in my family for the next.
Speaker 2: Two hundred years.
Speaker 5: Then maybe let's go for it, but I would say
Speaker 5: probably not.
Speaker 3: Doesn't it remind you, guys a little bit of like
Speaker 3: a vaccine or an antidote, where it's like, the thing
Speaker 3: that gives you the disease is also the thing in
Speaker 3: small amounts that can cure you of it or that
Speaker 3: can condition your body against it. Yeah. It again, I'm
Speaker 3: not a scientist in disrespect in any respect, but it
Speaker 3: does kind of remind me of that, you know, or
Speaker 3: like the idea of eating drinking a little bit of
Speaker 3: snake them, you know, to steal yourself against a particular
Speaker 3: type of snake bite. Anyway, last thing, did you guys
Speaker 3: see the Michael Sarah skin cream commercial that was broad?
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 3: My favorite part is just like a unicorn, dolphin, narwhale
Speaker 3: or something, and he's like singing beautiful mystical songs to it.
Speaker 3: I'm telling our story exactly. Yes, he must prs it
Speaker 3: to the cream. And then he's like climbing a mountain,
Speaker 3: like a cliff side, and he reaches into his little
Speaker 3: bag of chalk and it's just the cream and he
Speaker 3: wipes it on the sun. I just love that, you know.
Speaker 3: I'm all about celebrities doing interesting actors and artists doing
Speaker 3: weird stuff like that and getting paid so that they
Speaker 3: can make whatever weird passion projects they want to. I
Speaker 3: think that's pretty cool. I'm all about it.
Speaker 2: Do you see who directed that commercial?
Speaker 3: Is it somebody interesting?
Speaker 2: Timinary?
Speaker 3: Oh? I thought it was beautiful. I had no idea.
Speaker 3: Good for them, man, get that super Bowl money? And
Speaker 3: last thing, did you see Yay's seven million dollar super
Speaker 3: Bowl ad that he shot on his phone for zero dollars? No?
Speaker 4: Is it about his rampant anti semitism.
Speaker 3: He doesn't mention it directly, but he does say that
Speaker 3: he's got some shoes for sale if anyone's interested. He goes,
Speaker 3: you didn't go to whatever website that is. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to give it here, but.
Speaker 2: I've got a warehouse in Oakland.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, yeah, that guy sucks. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if you guys know the Anthony Fantano, the YouTube record
Speaker 3: review guy they called the Needle Drop, very very popular
Speaker 3: influential music critic. He called Kanye's new record Vultures unreview
Speaker 3: you able because of all of the the issues around
Speaker 3: him as an individual where you can't really review his
Speaker 3: art without taking any of this stuff into consideration. And
Speaker 3: the fact that he's basically now that he's finally gone
Speaker 3: too far with all of this stuff. Whether or not
Speaker 3: it was real or an Andy kaufmanesque stunt irrelevant at
Speaker 3: this point because now he's just trying to own it
Speaker 3: and acting like he meant it all along and that
Speaker 3: he was being canceled and he's a victim. I just
Speaker 3: think it's comical and the guy just needs to go
Speaker 3: away for a while.
Speaker 2: No opinion really.
Speaker 3: Fair, no need to have one. Fantano doesn't well, he
Speaker 3: did me and gave a seven minute little speech about it,
Speaker 3: and I thought he had some good points. But guys,
Speaker 3: what do you say We take a quick break here,
Speaker 3: a word from our sponsor, and then come back with
Speaker 3: some more strange news.
Speaker 5: And we've returned. Gentlemen, we are traveling to Charlotte, North
Speaker 5: Carolina today for this story, and we're gonna meet a
Speaker 5: group called the Hands Law Firm. They're in Charlotte, North Carolina,
Speaker 5: and I'm gonna go ahead and stop right now because
Speaker 5: I have to get this out. When I hear Hands
Speaker 5: lawyers like the Hands Law Firm. Do you guys think
Speaker 5: of anything? I have a very specific picture in my mind.
Speaker 4: I gotta tell you, I think of the hand from
Speaker 4: Marvel comic books. I also think of you're in good
Speaker 4: hands with all State. What are you hand? Reaching out?
Speaker 5: Matt Kelly, Jack Kelly, would it be okay if you
Speaker 5: your hands on.
Speaker 3: Top of my.
Speaker 4: Philip legendary legend?
Speaker 3: For some reason, I picture the Weird Stalker movie The
Speaker 3: Hand that Rocks the Cradle from the nineties. Oh wow, okay, interesting,
Speaker 3: nothing to do with lawyer, just about psychos.
Speaker 4: Really, Jack Kelly fascinating, fascinating character. Yeah, so, Matt, it
Speaker 4: sounds like it took you a second off that initial
Speaker 4: reaction to to get to this story because these are
Speaker 4: not like sketchy, touching lawyer.
Speaker 5: This is actually a fantastic law firm that I can't
Speaker 5: say anything bad about. They're amazing the Hands Law Firm
Speaker 5: in Charlotte, North Carolina. But I had to do a
Speaker 5: shout out to Andrew Friedman, who's the actor who portrays
Speaker 5: Jack Kelly first, because that's just what came into my mind.
Speaker 4: Absolute legend.
Speaker 5: So this law firm and specifically an attorney who is
Speaker 5: I don't know if this person's a partner there or
Speaker 5: just an attorney there. I couldn't ascertain that from their website.
Speaker 5: But one of the attorneys, Charles W. Chuck hands the
Speaker 5: third esquire, which is so close right, stuff should know, right.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a joke name for Chuck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, okay, wait wait wait wait wait Chuck is
Speaker 4: in air quotes. Yeah, that's the familial term is friends
Speaker 4: give his last name is hands plural? Is that correct?
Speaker 5: Charles hands their Yeah, Esquire, This is an attorney who
Speaker 5: works there. So two shoutouts one to this.
Speaker 3: By the way, it's like a professional, little little addendum, right,
Speaker 3: isn't that Usually with the official version of what s fire.
Speaker 4: Is, it's an honorific that can go like I guess
Speaker 4: you could call a courtesy title. It works differently in
Speaker 4: the US versus in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 5: So Charles known as Charlie to his friends, not Chuck.
Speaker 5: I put the chuck in there because of the Charles W.
Speaker 5: Which is real.
Speaker 3: Is there a Charles Charlie rule, the Brookie rule? Rack.
Speaker 4: I'm sure he has opinions.
Speaker 5: Sorry, everybody, We're gonna get to the story now, all right.
Speaker 5: The hands law firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, received recently
Speaker 5: an application from a homeowner to refinance their mortgage, just
Speaker 5: like they had countless times in the past. This application
Speaker 5: came from a mister Samuel Hellmick, who happens to own
Speaker 5: a home in the Highland Creek area, which is northeast
Speaker 5: of the city, just outside their like perimeter highway. Most
Speaker 5: big cities have a perimeter highway that kind of goes
Speaker 5: around the outside. This is right in the northeast area
Speaker 5: of that perimeter. This application was for a quote cash
Speaker 5: out refinance. This is a type of loan where a
Speaker 5: homeowner borrows additional money on top of that big mortgage
Speaker 5: loan that they've got. They take it from usually the
Speaker 5: same bank as their mortgage lender, sometimes from a secondary bank,
Speaker 5: but either way, it's on top of that mortgage and
Speaker 5: it's based on the present value of the home versus
Speaker 5: how much that homeowner owes on that big old mortgage loan.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay, so the discrepancy there, the margin between the
Speaker 4: two numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 5: Like if let's say you've got a four hundred let's
Speaker 5: say five hundred thousand dollars house, you've paid one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars off on that house. You can borrow from
Speaker 5: that one hundred thousand dollars in what's called equity. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so that's what this is. The home owner would get
Speaker 5: cash and then extra money would be put into that
Speaker 5: mortgage loan, which means like a monthly payment would get higher.
Speaker 3: It was a home equity loan basically, right, it is.
Speaker 5: It's a home equity loan, but it's specifically a cash
Speaker 5: out refinance, so you would get a huge lump sum
Speaker 5: of money.
Speaker 4: Ooh, I got it, Hey Matt, what could go wrong?
Speaker 5: Okay, well, let's see. Let's find out. When the hands
Speaker 5: law firm got this application, it looked pretty good. It
Speaker 5: included all of Samuel's identifying information, including his driver's license
Speaker 5: with the photo, his tax returned from the previous year,
Speaker 5: all of his banking information for where the money would
Speaker 5: get transferred to. But there was something that was a
Speaker 5: little off. According to this application, Samuel had already paid
Speaker 5: off his mortgage in full. So the law firm was
Speaker 5: trying to ascertain, why are you trying to refinance your
Speaker 5: home when you've already paid off your mortgage.
Speaker 3: But you could do that, you could average that as
Speaker 3: an asset and get a line of credit against your asset.
Speaker 5: Right, it can, but generally you wouldn't, as this application
Speaker 5: was attempting to get all of the cash, all of
Speaker 5: your home's worth out in a refinancing. In this case,
Speaker 5: it would have been around four hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 5: dollars in cash that would have been taken out of,
Speaker 5: you know, the value of the home, the equity, and
Speaker 5: then the homeowner would have had to make three thousand
Speaker 5: dollars monthly payments over the course of the next you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Like starting everywhere one.
Speaker 3: No, it's like literally having your back to zero with
Speaker 3: your mortgage.
Speaker 5: Right. Yeah, why would you do that, right, rather than
Speaker 5: as a homeowner, sell your ledgy right or rented out.
Speaker 4: The only other yeah, rent, renting and selling. The only
Speaker 4: other answer would be if you were active in investing
Speaker 4: and you had a surefire thing that maybe that could
Speaker 4: beat the return rate, which is still very dodgy. That's
Speaker 4: just the casino.
Speaker 5: I don't think you would do that at the full price.
Speaker 5: You might do half the worth of your home or something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It seems the law firm saw it as a big
Speaker 5: red flag. They're like this seems weird. So they decided, hey,
Speaker 5: we should discuss this with Samuel before we move forward.
Speaker 5: Because we've got the application. All we have to do
Speaker 5: is rubber stamp it, and this thing's gone right. All
Speaker 5: that money gets taken out or the bank loans all
Speaker 5: of that money by putting it into the account that
Speaker 5: was provided, and Samuel now has big old payments he's
Speaker 5: got to make. So the law firm attempted to hold
Speaker 5: a zoom meeting with Samuel, which he didn't show up to.
Speaker 5: They thought, man, that's weird. This is such a big
Speaker 5: money move. You'd think this guy would be more engaged. Okay,
Speaker 5: So our hero, Charles w Charlie Hands, the third Esquire,
Speaker 5: took matters into his own hands, and and he drove
Speaker 5: through Charlotte traffic all the way up there to Samiel's
Speaker 5: front door. He knocked on it, and he met Samuel
Speaker 5: in person. Here is a quote from Charles quote. The
Speaker 5: face of the homeowner matched the face that we had
Speaker 5: on the driver's license that was sent to us online.
Speaker 5: But the homeowner had no idea who we were and
Speaker 5: didn't know anything about a refinance with us at all.
Speaker 5: I don't love it, Yes, and when Samuel has reached
Speaker 5: out to by w SOOCTV Action nine News.
Speaker 2: There's a reporter there named Jason.
Speaker 5: He reached out to the homeowner, and the homeowner it
Speaker 5: was just like, uh, nope, not this home, No, no thanks,
Speaker 5: basically again in the opinion that I think many of
Speaker 5: us would have. Once mortgage has been paid off, you're
Speaker 5: good to go. Big moves don't exist anymore. We're smooth
Speaker 5: salein from here.
Speaker 3: Again. You can use that asset to leverage and to
Speaker 3: get credit and also your credits spectacular it paid off
Speaker 3: home of that, you know, an investment of that amount.
Speaker 4: Of Also also, bad faith actors successfully count on people
Speaker 4: to make that assumption that things are done when things
Speaker 4: haven't ended right right.
Speaker 5: Patience goes a long way when you've got bad intentions.
Speaker 5: So this right here, guys, this is a pretty simple
Speaker 5: story just to show this kind of thing is going
Speaker 5: to be happening more and more. You think of all
Speaker 5: those hacks we've talked about where like super super sensitive
Speaker 5: information has been leaked right from pretty much every like
Speaker 5: everybody's sure this kind of thing like getting a hold
Speaker 5: of a copy of a driver's license or a copy
Speaker 5: of a tax return with how much how many of
Speaker 5: us do our taxes online now with all.
Speaker 3: These city number whatever it might be.
Speaker 5: Well, and they're sharing all of that information with all
Speaker 5: these other third parties right that we've talked about last year.
Speaker 5: It's just it's so dangero, So what the heck can
Speaker 5: we do. We've talked about it a couple of times
Speaker 5: of things that we can do to protect ourselves. And
Speaker 5: this is also coming from WSOCTV. One of the main
Speaker 5: things you can do is freeze your credit. It's like
Speaker 5: it's fairly easy to do. You just tell everybody who's
Speaker 5: involved with your credit that you're not going to be
Speaker 5: making any big moves until you let them know, and
Speaker 5: then you can unfreeze your credit and make a move.
Speaker 5: But other than that, nobody can touch like take a
Speaker 5: loan out in your name or anything like that.
Speaker 3: It's like a bigger picture version of like putting a
Speaker 3: hold on your debit card or something if there's suspicious activity.
Speaker 4: Yes, it should also be your default position because the
Speaker 4: credit system, at least here in the United States is
Speaker 4: obtuse and difficult to navigate by design, So it's kind
Speaker 4: of like trigger discipline. If you're not going to pull
Speaker 4: the trigger. You don't put your finger on the trigger
Speaker 4: ever at all. And so you should always have your
Speaker 4: credit frozen if possible, and then go and unfreeze it.
Speaker 4: Because if you really need to your appoint Matt, if
Speaker 4: you really need to make that move, then you're already
Speaker 4: give me on the phone. You're already gonna have a
Speaker 4: series of boring conversations. So just make make a couple
Speaker 4: more phone calls. That's the only difference, and it can
Speaker 4: save you a lot, a lot of trouble.
Speaker 5: It just becomes step one, no, and it's pretty easy.
Speaker 5: And if you have a you know, if you have
Speaker 5: something like LifeLock with Norton, you it's literally a button
Speaker 5: you can push, which is pretty crazy. We have been
Speaker 5: sponsored by them in the past. I don't know if
Speaker 5: we're sponsored by them right now, but we've gotten to
Speaker 5: use that. I'm just using it as an example here.
Speaker 5: We are not currently sponsored by them.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: So the other thing, guys, and I'm super guilty of this,
Speaker 5: getting junk mail what you think is junk mail, and
Speaker 5: then either shredding it or tearing it up and throw
Speaker 5: it in the trash.
Speaker 3: I almost miss Jerry Summons because it's just on a
Speaker 3: tiny little postcard thing that's mixed in with a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of other stuff that just looks like spam mail.
Speaker 4: You know, yes, do you guys keep a po bucks
Speaker 4: or do you use your actual domastle.
Speaker 3: Actual But I genuinely generally just ignore paper mail like bad.
Speaker 3: I gotta do better because you know, it's it's so
Speaker 3: annoying because there's all these companies that print things to
Speaker 3: make it look like important mail, so you get desensitized
Speaker 3: to it. It's like, oh haha, nice try you know
Speaker 3: the government, your name or current resident.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I get a lot of weird correspondence with uh,
Speaker 4: with all sorts of stuff. I open all of it.
Speaker 4: You know, we read every piece of mail we get.
Speaker 4: That's a great point, man, That's what we kind of
Speaker 4: have to do.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 5: That's exactly the advice that we are giving to you here,
Speaker 5: and is what Jason said on his article there, open everything,
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter. Just open it, take a look at it.
Speaker 5: If your name is on there, look at it. Even
Speaker 5: if you are like ninety percent sure this is crap. Yeah,
Speaker 5: just give it a quick peruse.
Speaker 4: Actually, if it's slightly misspelled by the way, just like
Speaker 4: a low key good side of the unethical life hack thing.
Speaker 4: If you get an email that is or like sorry,
Speaker 4: you get a piece of correspondence that is to like
Speaker 4: bat medric or whatever, you need to open that one first.
Speaker 3: But also it's like, I think we're so used to
Speaker 3: like everything being a call or a text or an email.
Speaker 3: There are old school institutions that don't do that at all.
Speaker 3: They only correspond via the US mail. So if you're
Speaker 3: not looking for that or you're not paying attention, you
Speaker 3: could miss that stuff easily. I was realized that I
Speaker 3: wasn't covered by insurance for two entire months for my
Speaker 3: home because for whatever reason, something happened and my policy
Speaker 3: was canceled because I did not realize I had to
Speaker 3: renew it, and they gave me that correspondence via the
Speaker 3: US mail and no call, no text, no email, nothing.
Speaker 3: So I was if that's it happened during those two months,
Speaker 3: I would have been in big trouble.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Part of the reason for that, by the way, the
Speaker 4: reticence to engage in new technology, like part of the
Speaker 4: reason some of these institutions cling towards the USPS specifically
Speaker 4: is that messing with postal service correspondence is a very
Speaker 4: serious crime, and it actually doesn't apply the same way
Speaker 4: in things like email or even private carriers like your
Speaker 4: local UPS or FedEx.
Speaker 3: So did you guys know that it's there is a
Speaker 3: separate rate in the US mail for media mail like
Speaker 3: sending like you know, a tape or a CD or whatever,
Speaker 3: and that if they open it and they find out
Speaker 3: that you've written a correspondence in there, they'll charge you
Speaker 3: extra postage. This is irrelevant. I just found that out,
Speaker 3: and I think that's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Don't be doing that.
Speaker 3: Don't be doing that. Is that cow for cute little
Speaker 3: notes in your mixtape?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 3: Is that? Is that? I got a one?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 5: Great area. I would say, speak to my attorney, Jack Kelly,
Speaker 5: mister Hans. But there's not much else to say here
Speaker 5: besides keep an eye on that kind of stuff because
Speaker 5: it's going to be happening more. Thank you to the
Speaker 5: Hands Law Firm and Charles W. Charlie Hans and David W.
Speaker 5: Hands Bro.
Speaker 3: Do you think that do you think they're like the
Speaker 3: tagline is you're in good hands.
Speaker 5: Oh come on, come on, guys, come on, come on.
Speaker 5: It's really cool. It's David and Charles hands doing their thing.
Speaker 5: All right, we'll be right back with more strange news, and.
Speaker 4: We've returned code named Doc. Could I get something like
Speaker 4: a gunshot? Perfect? Could I get something like an airhorn? Yeah, guys,
Speaker 4: a new crip. It just dropped. And it's one of
Speaker 4: the strangest ones that we have encountered. I hit you
Speaker 4: guys up over a group chat when I had a
Speaker 4: different phone, and I was startled to find that the
Speaker 4: newest strangest life form discovered by the human species is
Speaker 4: with us on the show now. And folks, there is
Speaker 4: a higher than fifty percent chance it's with you as
Speaker 4: you listen.
Speaker 3: Tarry as well, Spooky ghosts is a crypt possession.
Speaker 4: This is well, well it was. It was a cryptid.
Speaker 4: It was suspected. Let's introduce everybody to the obelisk, all right,
Speaker 4: how conspiratorial?
Speaker 3: So stand thousand one.
Speaker 4: Stanford University researchers recently discovered, through some very smart boffin exercises,
Speaker 4: they recently discovered that there is a life form that
Speaker 4: humans were not aware of that exist largely in side
Speaker 4: human mouths and guts in your microbiome. And we all
Speaker 4: know that science continues to sort of wrestle with the
Speaker 4: implications of the microbiome in the human intestine today, Like,
Speaker 4: we don't understand how it can affect things, but it
Speaker 4: can affect behavior, it can affect the immune system, It
Speaker 4: can even affect physiology. It may have epigenetic consequences. So
Speaker 4: these folks went even further into this. They wrote a
Speaker 4: great article, or they wrote a great study that's in
Speaker 4: what we call preprint, meaning it hasn't been pure reviewed yet.
Speaker 4: But what they've found is that there are tiny, tiny,
Speaker 4: tiny bits of are in a collections that are even
Speaker 4: smaller than viruses. They're called viroids. Now, if we step
Speaker 4: back for a second and stay on viruses, as we've
Speaker 4: discussed in previous episodes, viruses are on the very edge
Speaker 4: of what humans consider an active life form, right because
Speaker 4: viruses cannot reproduce without a host. They don't obviously seem
Speaker 4: to have like dreams or ideology or anything, but they
Speaker 4: can replicate. Viroids are a step smaller than that. I
Speaker 4: had never heard of viroids before, Had you guys ever
Speaker 4: heard of this?
Speaker 3: No? No, And the and the image on one of
Speaker 3: the links that you sent Ben from Popular Mechanics. The
Speaker 3: thing looks like a black hole in your body.
Speaker 2: Is that crazing?
Speaker 3: It doesn't the same thing, is it? It's I don't know.
Speaker 3: It looks like an obelisk to me.
Speaker 5: No, it looks like it looks like a dark spot.
Speaker 5: I was looking at the other objects in here that
Speaker 5: look like obelisks to me. Sorry, No, I just don't know.
Speaker 3: You have a black hole in your body.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they don't quite have it. Hey, we've got to
Speaker 4: be the black holes we want to see in the world, right.
Speaker 4: So the this research out of Stanford University found that
Speaker 4: this biological entity is probably the closest to a viroid.
Speaker 4: But if a virus is on one side of a
Speaker 4: spectrum and a viroid is on the other, these things
Speaker 4: are sort of a missing link, and they organize into
Speaker 4: strands of RNA, but they don't have a protein coat
Speaker 4: that would protect them the way other larger actual life
Speaker 4: forms do. And it gets even weirder. These researchers just
Speaker 4: from doing some forensic database searching, which again they did
Speaker 4: in a brilliant way, they found that there are already
Speaker 4: almost thirty thousand distinct types of this life form that
Speaker 4: they can identify in humans alone. So don't know how
Speaker 4: much is in other mammals. Perhaps we don't know what
Speaker 4: the effects of these things are. We don't know how
Speaker 4: long they've been in humans, probably quite a while, and
Speaker 4: we don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: This is so weird, right, like, just how do we
Speaker 2: just now find these?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: We've been looking through microscopes for a long time, and
Speaker 5: crazy powerful microscopes. We're editing stuff on the nano scale
Speaker 5: and building structures on the nano scale, and these things
Speaker 5: have just been like.
Speaker 4: Just hang, yeah, yeah, just hanging, just hanging. So let's
Speaker 4: give a shout out to the authors. There are quite
Speaker 4: a few people who wrote this, Ivan in Zeludev, Robert C. Edgar,
Speaker 4: Maria Jose Lopez Galiano, Marcos de la Pagna, Artem Babian,
Speaker 4: Amy s Bot, Andrew Z Fire And I saved Andrew's
Speaker 4: name for the end because I.
Speaker 3: Ahrns for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, air horns, let's do it. So what they did
Speaker 4: is they looked in to these massive data sets of
Speaker 4: microbiome studies in human beings and they said seven percent
Speaker 4: of the microbiome studies from the samples from the human
Speaker 4: gut had this weird, inexplicable thing. Fifty percent of the
Speaker 4: data sets, again from around the world, ethnicity, demographic notwithstanding,
Speaker 4: fifty percent had these obelisks in them, which means that
Speaker 4: everybody listening now. I don't want to say infected. I
Speaker 4: don't want to scare people, but they're in you man,
Speaker 4: the calls coming from inside the house. And to your question, Matt,
Speaker 4: the reason these seem to have been overlooked for so long,
Speaker 4: even with the skyrocketing interest in the human microbiome, it's
Speaker 4: because these obelisks are so dissimilar to anything that has
Speaker 4: been described as a life form in the history of
Speaker 4: human side. I wish that we had at this point
Speaker 4: some some more data on what the implications or the
Speaker 4: effects could be. You know, we know there's good gut microbes.
Speaker 4: We know there are bad gut microbes. We don't know
Speaker 4: about the obelisk. They're like a new character in Act three.
Speaker 4: We know that they're like a virus always needs a host,
Speaker 4: and these viroid like things may be similar. We know
Speaker 4: that they are often going to be hosted by different
Speaker 4: types of bacteria. One in particular, an ingredient in dental
Speaker 4: plaque called Streptococcus seguinous. So brush your teeth if you
Speaker 4: don't want the opolisk blood.
Speaker 5: Bacteria ben This is so it's not that I'm feeling
Speaker 5: skeptical about this because I'm looking at all the sources
Speaker 5: you've sent and everything looks legit. Everything looks like like
Speaker 5: it's real. But one of the stories for last week
Speaker 5: that I was thinking about maybe be talking about was
Speaker 5: a story from The Guardian titled the situation has become appalling.
Speaker 5: Fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point, and
Speaker 5: it was all about how like last year there were
Speaker 5: over ten thousand major retractions in huge scientific journals, that's correct, Yeah,
Speaker 5: where there was a like they had to just completely
Speaker 5: remove papers that were published in these in these journals
Speaker 5: because they were they were fraudulent in one way or another, right,
Speaker 5: Which is like, I'm not saying this has anything to
Speaker 5: do with that. What I mean is I've got this
Speaker 5: lens that has been over my eyes for the past
Speaker 5: week or so thinking about this stuff, and this new
Speaker 5: thing is so mind blowing that my brain is kind
Speaker 5: of just going, WHOA, which is it?
Speaker 4: Isn't it? Yeah, isn't it? Oh gosh, I read a
Speaker 4: story with this guy too. He needs a shout out
Speaker 4: sholto David an unemployed scientist who has been instrumental in
Speaker 4: pouring over research and scientific papers, and he's one of
Speaker 4: the folks who is leading the charge on sussing out
Speaker 4: errors in academic journals. Everybody, please do check out our
Speaker 4: episode previously well and some of the stuff they don't
Speaker 4: want you to know about how the academic journal sausage
Speaker 4: gets made. We promise you it's it's weird. But I
Speaker 4: see what you're say in Matt, there's this there's this
Speaker 4: disonance sometimes between the actual science that is done, the
Speaker 4: way it is interpreted, and the way that it is
Speaker 4: reported in popular media. We also are well aware that
Speaker 4: there is an at time conspiratorial hierarchy over the existence
Speaker 4: of scientific journals. I am hoping that we can return
Speaker 4: to this story in the future and figure out what
Speaker 4: the obelisk mean for the human experiment. Do they mean that, like,
Speaker 4: is it some sort of evolutionary vestige that has no
Speaker 4: real reverence, no harm, or no benefit to humans. Is
Speaker 4: it something that we don't understand yet that may be
Speaker 4: affecting behavior or growth or reproduction in some way? What
Speaker 4: happens when you make out with people?
Speaker 3: Do you trade that modo? Now? I gotta say, Ben,
Speaker 3: I really appreciate you catching this in terms of a cryptid,
Speaker 3: because we never really think about cryptids being like undiscovered
Speaker 3: microbes or like things in our bodies. But you know,
Speaker 3: let's let's let's give credit where credit is due. They
Speaker 3: are biological beings, so they should be considered on the.
Speaker 4: Table for cryptid conversation. So well done, sir, Oh, thank you, sir.
Speaker 4: What if they're I mean, that's the other thing. The
Speaker 4: safe answer is, what if they're just sort of hitching
Speaker 4: a ride in the in the biological credits of What
Speaker 4: Makes Your Life if You're human? You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: How sometimes you're watching the credits of a very long
Speaker 4: film and someone just slides in with one credit. What
Speaker 4: if that's what if that's the opolisk? What if they're
Speaker 4: just running the time out to stay as part of
Speaker 4: the franchise. I don't know. I don't know, but we
Speaker 4: do have a lot to learn about I don't know
Speaker 4: about the human question. It seems like the more humans
Speaker 4: learn about the very very big things and the very
Speaker 4: very small things, the more questions proliferate, like what would
Speaker 4: if we gamed this out? If we just played you know,
Speaker 4: sort of conspiracy cinematic universe here, what would be the
Speaker 4: coolest implication of an undiscovered life form in the human body?
Speaker 4: What would be like the coolest thing a superpower?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, we recently did a video
Speaker 3: which you can find and believe on Instagram and also
Speaker 3: YouTube shorts about the fungus space fungus right, and the
Speaker 3: idea of fungi fungi being alien beings that are really
Speaker 3: good at hitching rides, you know, out into space, and
Speaker 3: they're also like uniquely suited to exist out there. So this,
Speaker 3: to me is part of that same kind of conversation.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's very interesting stuff, Matt, What do
Speaker 3: you have?
Speaker 4: What kind of superpower would you want to discover with
Speaker 4: an obelisk population?
Speaker 5: Let's see, it's got minor amounts of genetic information. Certain
Speaker 5: obelisks can transfer rapid mutations into genetic material. So one
Speaker 5: of them would allow me to grow actual wings back
Speaker 5: here into it, thinking, I don't know, let's go, let's
Speaker 5: go full owl style wings with some big old feathers.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's what I want.
Speaker 3: Tight massive talents perhaps.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I don't want the talents. Some of
Speaker 5: the grab grabby hands.
Speaker 4: Got to get the thumbs.
Speaker 3: Classic owls are freaky, dude, the way they turn their
Speaker 3: heads three hundred and sixty degrees like Exorcist style. They're neary,
Speaker 3: scary guys, beautiful but also matt Your owl style wings
Speaker 3: would allow you to fly soundlessly.
Speaker 4: If your bones are also hollow.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it does does that too? Okay, called it.
Speaker 5: Let's let's change it up. Let's do super dense bones,
Speaker 5: dragon wings.
Speaker 4: Go for it now at the fire end too. It's
Speaker 4: like guacamole at the Chipotle of superpowers. I am good
Speaker 4: friends with a couple of owls in in my US neighborhood.
Speaker 3: Here we have a neighborhood owl as well. Ben.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hey, it might be the same one they get around,
Speaker 4: you know, uh soundlessly right right. They've sacrificed agility for stealth,
Speaker 4: which happens, you know. Aircraft are slowly learning to imitate
Speaker 4: things that birds and vented are discovered or evolved years
Speaker 4: and years ago. I do think we are on the
Speaker 4: verge of a fascinating exploration here. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 4: if you have types of obelisk life forms or viroids
Speaker 4: in your mouth or your gut, right now, they're probably
Speaker 4: not a forever gift. The Stanford boffins currently believe that
Speaker 4: you could harbor a single type of obelisk for maybe
Speaker 4: around a year. So we don't know how they transmit,
Speaker 4: we don't know where they've come from or where they're going,
Speaker 4: but we do know they're real and that that is
Speaker 4: a strange discovery. There's one one more thing I'd like
Speaker 4: to set up if we have time before we end today.
Speaker 4: Is that Okay, guys, it's a true crime story.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Please.
Speaker 4: So, just as we were coming into record this evening,
Speaker 4: we read some frankly disturbing news named Victoria Hill in
Speaker 4: Connecticut found out that her she purchased a DNA testing
Speaker 4: kid from twenty three and me, and she found out
Speaker 4: that she had many more siblings than she had ever thought.
Speaker 4: She has around twenty two and maybe more. And that's
Speaker 4: because she is a victim of what is now being
Speaker 4: called fertility fraud. Remember when we did the story about
Speaker 4: that guy who was like super into donating in sperm everywhere? Sure,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, yeah, it seems like it seems like there's
Speaker 4: another case of this. Hill found out that her biological
Speaker 4: father was not the guy she grew up with, but
Speaker 4: it was the fertility doctor who had been helping her
Speaker 4: mother to conceive. Further, she found that one of her
Speaker 4: newly discovered siblings was her former high school boyfriend.
Speaker 5: Okay, ye, heavy, heavy, Yeah, there's that podcast. I can't
Speaker 5: remember some Uh sick maybe is the name of the podcast.
Speaker 5: Some it's about a fertility doctor that was doing all
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And there's something there set.
Speaker 5: There's so many right now where it's like, fertility doctors
Speaker 5: be doing stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and apparently it's another problem of they do be
Speaker 4: doing stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sorry that was I'm so sorry. Guys.
Speaker 4: We do see though that it is another case of
Speaker 4: some of a flag I've been waving for years, which
Speaker 4: is legislation not catching up with technology. There are no
Speaker 4: there aren't really comprehensive laws against this kind of pretty
Speaker 4: serious crime with clear intergenerational consequences. I don't think lawmakers
Speaker 4: are very clear yet on how to how to legislate
Speaker 4: on it. But the a CNN investigation found that the
Speaker 4: majority of you states do not have laws against what
Speaker 4: we would call fertility fraud. And if you want some
Speaker 4: kind of justice, some kind of recourse, the doctors are
Speaker 4: bad faith actors that you're accusing. They have a huge
Speaker 4: advantage in court and it's very difficult to get them
Speaker 4: to even stop practicing, much less face criminal consequences. So
Speaker 4: if you'd like to read more about this, check out
Speaker 4: the excellent work by CNN which is ongoing now, the
Speaker 4: journalist Rob Kusnia, Alison Gordon, Nellie Black and kill law.
Speaker 4: This again, this is breaking news. The Valentine's Day timing
Speaker 4: is unfortunate. And with that, thank you, as always so
Speaker 4: much for tuning in this evening. Fellow conspiracy realist. We
Speaker 4: hope this finds you wealthy. We hope this finds you healthy.
Speaker 4: We hope you have made friends with the strange cryptids
Speaker 4: in your guts?
Speaker 3: Uh for that?
Speaker 4: Man? Oh yeah yeah, yeah yeah. Let us know what
Speaker 4: you think about any and all all of these tales.
Speaker 4: We try to be easy to find online, correct.
Speaker 3: You can find this at the handle conspiracy Stuff where
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Speaker 3: it gets crazy. We are also that handle on x FKA,
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