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 the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission
Speaker 4: Control Decant. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this
Speaker 4: the stuff they don't want you to know. This evening
Speaker 4: is the top of the week. That means it's time
Speaker 4: for some news, but not perhaps the news you would
Speaker 4: see on your typical Reddit feed. We are instead exploring
Speaker 4: what we like to call strange news. We're going to
Speaker 4: talk a little bit about cryptids. I have a have
Speaker 4: a big soapbox on this one because I think maybe cryptids.
Speaker 4: Maybe we're not finding cryptids because we're giving them insulting names.
Speaker 4: Calling someone bigfoot and wondering why they don't want to
Speaker 4: hang out with you is kind of rude. You know
Speaker 4: what makes the lockness monster a monster? That's unfair. Bigfoots
Speaker 4: feed are objectively big?
Speaker 3: Or are they? Maybe it's a misnomer entirely.
Speaker 4: Who are we to judge? The next thing we're going
Speaker 4: to look at as well. We're going to solve the
Speaker 4: mystery of flattery associates, which we mentioned on a previous
Speaker 4: Strange News segment. Before we do any of that, we're
Speaker 4: going to dive into a bit of neuroscience. We are
Speaker 4: going to witness with you how much human civilization still
Speaker 4: has to learn about the human brain. And its safe
Speaker 4: to say there's a heck of a recent plot twist.
Speaker 4: Maybe we start there, Maybe we travel down south passe Equator,
Speaker 4: go visit some of our friends and fellow conspiracy realist
Speaker 4: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're heading down under again. Everybody get hyped. We're
Speaker 2: heading to the southeastern coast of Australia, to the state
Speaker 2: of New South Wales. Guys, that's the home of Sydney
Speaker 2: and Canbra or Canbra if you live in the area. Look,
Speaker 2: if you were gonna take a test right now and
Speaker 2: somebody said, hey, what's the capital of Australia, you know
Speaker 2: what I'd say, Sydney. What would you guys say, Queensland?
Speaker 3: Is that a place in Australia?
Speaker 2: It is a place. Melbourne is another really good guess.
Speaker 2: But Canbra is the capital of Australia. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like the Washington DC of Australia news.
Speaker 2: To me, just wanted to share that because I was
Speaker 2: excited about learning it. Okay, so that's where we're heading.
Speaker 2: We're gonna tell you a little story about a woman
Speaker 2: who experienced some stuff in January twenty twenty one. This
Speaker 2: sixty four year old woman who lives in this area
Speaker 2: was suffering through three weeks of abdominal pain, diarrhea, a
Speaker 2: constant dry cough, fever, and night sweats. This is early
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, guys. So with those stinky symptoms, what
Speaker 2: might you think is going on? Goh, vide right, seems
Speaker 2: like a virus, seems like something maybe even she ate right,
Speaker 2: But then her symptoms started to evolve to become more neurological.
Speaker 2: She started experiencing quote forgetfulness and depression. Some might think, oh,
Speaker 2: that's associated with feeling so crappy all the time, like
Speaker 2: this is awful. You might feel some of this stuff,
Speaker 2: but the forgetfulness is a little weird. So she gets
Speaker 2: admitted to the hospital. She receives a brain scan, an MRI,
Speaker 2: and it reveals quote an atypical lesion within the right
Speaker 2: frontal lobe of her brain. So that's not good. What
Speaker 2: do you think about when you hear a strangely on
Speaker 2: your brain?
Speaker 4: One would automatically think cancer.
Speaker 2: Cancer, right, that's where my head goes, and I'm we
Speaker 2: can only assume that that's where this patient's head went.
Speaker 2: It's really scary stuff.
Speaker 4: Especially if she checked WebMD wherever's cancer rights.
Speaker 2: But anytime a doctor scans your brain and says, hey,
Speaker 2: there's something abnormal, that's just kind of what we've been
Speaker 2: trained to think.
Speaker 4: It's the most likely cause.
Speaker 2: Unless it's some kind of traumatic brain injury, right where
Speaker 2: you get a scan and it shows what is that
Speaker 2: called CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy or something.
Speaker 4: Like that, right, right, But an MRI would also give
Speaker 4: enough information to a doctor to differentiate between the two.
Speaker 2: Right, And in this case, nobody knew. And this is
Speaker 2: the scariest part. This patient lived with that stuff for
Speaker 2: over a year and a half before she finally, in
Speaker 2: June twenty twenty two, underwent a brain biopsy at Canbra
Speaker 2: Hospital to investigate this thing, what's going on in her brain?
Speaker 2: And the neurosurgeon who performed this procedure, doctor har Pria
Speaker 2: Bondi Bandi Bandi. She spoke with this outfit called DW
Speaker 2: News on Tuesday, August twenty ninth, that's yesterday as we
Speaker 2: record this. And this is a pretty long quote from her.
Speaker 2: It's directly from that DW News interview. You can watch
Speaker 2: it right now. But this is what that biopsy discovered quote,
Speaker 2: and this is a great way to set this up.
Speaker 2: She says, neurosurgery is exceptionally planned. We very rarely find
Speaker 2: something we're not expecting to find. During this case, we
Speaker 2: did an open biopsy of the skull. We opened up
Speaker 2: the normal tissues that I mean, that's including the skull itself,
Speaker 2: then the normal tissues that we normally do. We found
Speaker 2: an abnormal brain. It looked a little bit discolored. The
Speaker 2: doctor had taken a few samples just a few millimeters
Speaker 2: off of the top there, and they didn't look abnormal.
Speaker 2: So there they've got this woman's skull open, looking at
Speaker 2: her brain. It looks discolored, but it's not you know,
Speaker 2: there's nothing else crazy going on. So this doctor then
Speaker 2: decides they're going to actually dissect a part of the
Speaker 2: brain that is looking abnormal that you know, might need
Speaker 2: to be removed if it's in fact a tumor. Right,
Speaker 2: So she begins the process of dissecting very carefully this
Speaker 2: part of the brain because they noticed She noticed that
Speaker 2: it was behaving very much like a tumor, whatever it was.
Speaker 2: So then she goes in with foceps, you guys, specific
Speaker 2: tumor holding forceps, and she started to lift something out
Speaker 2: from this patient's brain and she says, it was quote,
Speaker 2: something that definitely was not what I was expecting. It
Speaker 2: was a linear, squiggling line. My junior doctor said, is
Speaker 2: that an artery because that's what it looked like, And
Speaker 2: I said, it's not an artery. We're nowhere near any arteries.
Speaker 2: And then I noticed it was moving and I immediately went,
Speaker 2: just please get it out of my four steps. We
Speaker 2: rapidly put it into a pathology pot, just a small
Speaker 2: little container there, and it was, in fact, a vigorously
Speaker 2: wiggling worm. Just gonna let that sit for a second.
Speaker 2: They pulled a worm out of this patient's brain. We're
Speaker 2: not talking like squigging around the top of the skull
Speaker 2: kind of area around. It was inside the folds of
Speaker 2: the brain.
Speaker 4: Now was the patient.
Speaker 2: According to the guardian, the patient is recovering well and
Speaker 2: is still being regularly monitored. But all seems to be okay.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get in that because it seems like at
Speaker 2: least doctors, when they started figuring out what this thing was,
Speaker 2: why it was there, how it got there. The belief
Speaker 2: is that there was some kind of prior immuno compromise
Speaker 2: that occurred in this patient that allowed this specific infection
Speaker 2: to occur. But let's talk about what that infection is.
Speaker 2: How the heck do you get a worm in your brain? Well,
Speaker 2: specifically a nematode. This is a nematode, not a worm,
Speaker 2: realm kind of a worm. It's a round worm, right, exactly,
Speaker 2: a specific type of worm. It was three inches in length,
Speaker 2: it was bright red three inches by the way, it
Speaker 2: is about eight centimeters. And the doctor's you know, the
Speaker 2: neurosurgeon pulls a worm out of a brain, You go,
Speaker 2: I deal with brains, not worms. What the heck is
Speaker 2: this thing? So they start literally opening textbooks trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what the heck this species is, why it's there,
Speaker 2: how it got there. They're stumped. They call a specialist
Speaker 2: who deals in parasitic creatures, and they almost immediately go, oh, Wow,
Speaker 2: I know exactly what that is.
Speaker 4: That's just love it. I love it. It's like, damn it, Jim.
Speaker 4: I'm a neurosurgeon, not a helmanthologist, which is the word
Speaker 4: for a study of worms.
Speaker 2: There you go, There you go.
Speaker 3: Nematods can typically be microscopic as well, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: And even nematodes come in all shapes and sizes. There's
Speaker 2: a really great website you can go to for Australian
Speaker 2: species called, Oh it's got a terrible title here, it's
Speaker 2: the Atlas of Living Australia. So maybe search that. You
Speaker 2: can find it and it actually gives you, like the
Speaker 2: kingdom phylum class goes all the way down to the species.
Speaker 2: It's really great. Nematoda is a phylum, so just below
Speaker 2: animal kingdom when it comes to classification.
Speaker 4: Oh and let me correct myself here. Sorry, I don't
Speaker 4: want to mislead anybody. I am incorrect. Partially, I believe
Speaker 4: hellmanthology in specific is the study of parasitic worms, so
Speaker 4: hashtag not all worms.
Speaker 2: Even more specific and even better for this story, ben perfect.
Speaker 2: So this thing is called in Opeta Scaris Robert. See
Speaker 2: that's how I'm gonna say it, or it could be Roberts.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, who is either a genius helmonthologist or a
Speaker 5: kind of dirty person.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but this thing, this Roberts. It's a round
Speaker 2: worm usually found in snakes, specifically pythons that are you know,
Speaker 2: in various parts of the world, but this these specifically
Speaker 2: in this part of Australia around the lakes like the
Speaker 2: fresh waters in this area, and this Canberra hospital patient.
Speaker 2: According to everyone that's reporting, especially the people who discovered it, uh,
Speaker 2: this is the first, like the world's first case of
Speaker 2: this type of parasite being found not only in a
Speaker 2: human but in a human brain. Yeehaw, everybody.
Speaker 3: Do we have theories?
Speaker 2: Yes, there are theories, okay, okay. So kind of similarly
Speaker 2: to our previous little story out of Australia with fung guy,
Speaker 2: this deals with somebody who is going out and finding
Speaker 2: food growing just naturally where it grows foraging stuff called
Speaker 2: warrigal greens. Warrigal greens, it's also called grass. It's kind
Speaker 2: of like spinach. It's what it's been compared to in
Speaker 2: the news a lot. But it grows around specific lakes
Speaker 2: in this region of Australia, and this patient would go
Speaker 2: out forage some of that stuff, clean it properly, you know,
Speaker 2: probably boil it in preparation for cooking, and eat it.
Speaker 2: The thought, or the hypothesis at least, is that some python,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the pythons that hang out in
Speaker 2: this grass as well, they shed one of these parasites
Speaker 2: because they get infected with these parasites. And the patient
Speaker 2: somehow interacted with grass that had this stuff shed on it,
Speaker 2: and it got into her system in one way or
Speaker 2: the other. Right, probably not through the cooking or preparation
Speaker 2: or anything, but prior to that, like when you're rummaging
Speaker 2: around in the grass trying to actually collect some of it,
Speaker 2: or potentially it transferred some kind of egg right to
Speaker 2: like a kischen utensil and just went in her mouth.
Speaker 3: Again, it's Cronenberg body horror stuff right here.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well, and it would explain why she had
Speaker 2: such abdominal pains and problems right prior to her having
Speaker 2: brain issues and you know, feeling forgetful and feeling depressed
Speaker 2: and something's wrong. It started probably in her system somewhere else.
Speaker 2: The big question is how in the heck did it
Speaker 2: get into her brain?
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, what's the pathway from the abdominal tracts to
Speaker 3: the brain. There really isn't one.
Speaker 2: I don't think, Well that's the old Look, this is
Speaker 2: where I don't understand, and I haven't seen it written about.
Speaker 2: But questions about the blood brain barrier and what like?
Speaker 2: What could actually pass through that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Could an egg? Like could one of these eggs somehow
Speaker 2: through the process of the reproduction of this thing, Could
Speaker 2: it get through there and then live? Who knows? The
Speaker 2: Guardian has been snowed to BBC News ABC Australian broadcasting company.
Speaker 2: Nobody is given a good explanation of how the heck
Speaker 2: it actually happened, Right, everybody's got a hypothesis because it's
Speaker 2: the only case and we don't have all the information.
Speaker 2: It should be noted that this patient is being treated
Speaker 2: or had to be treated on a continual basis after this,
Speaker 2: for other eggs that potentially infected her body from this
Speaker 2: same species, right, so stuff that could be in the
Speaker 2: liver as well or just sticking around in other parts
Speaker 2: of her body. But it's weird because this is the
Speaker 2: first human patient that's ever been treated with the stuff
Speaker 2: that you would need to kill off. This parasite usually
Speaker 2: that's more of a veterinary thing for again, pythons and snakes.
Speaker 2: So oh yeah, Koalas have been infected with this thing.
Speaker 2: There are several other.
Speaker 3: Do you guys remember the show called The Koala Show.
Speaker 3: It was a show on like Nick Junior about like
Speaker 3: a young girl and her imaginary friends who are Koalas
Speaker 3: from a magical Koala land. That's what I think of
Speaker 3: when I think of Koala's.
Speaker 2: So nice, I have focus, I like them, I still
Speaker 2: like them, but okay, I gotta leave you with two things.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: There's a professor named Peter Calligan I think is how
Speaker 2: you'd say his name. He's an infectious disease physician. He's
Speaker 2: not involved in this case whatsoever, but he was interviewed
Speaker 2: I think it was for the Guardian for this and
Speaker 2: he makes he makes the note that some cases of
Speaker 2: this type of zoonotic disease may never be diagnosed if
Speaker 2: they are rare, and physicians don't know what the heck
Speaker 2: they're looking for, because a physician, as we've talked about before,
Speaker 2: only knows what they've learned, what they've encountered before, what's
Speaker 2: in a book that they've been taught. If it's not
Speaker 2: in there, and if it's not part of your experience
Speaker 2: as a physician, you may like look right over something right,
Speaker 2: which is kind of what happened to this patient. And
Speaker 2: Professor Calligan has this last thing, this little quote for
Speaker 2: our nightmares quote. Sometimes people die with the cause never
Speaker 2: being found. Good night, everybody. Now, I'm just show you,
Speaker 2: but there's one last thing to look up, and I
Speaker 2: think this is the true stuff they don't want you
Speaker 2: to know. There's an article from ABC News that's the
Speaker 2: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, from July thirty first, twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: about a round worm that was discovered in the permafrost
Speaker 2: of Siberia in twenty eighteen. It emerged living alive from
Speaker 2: the permafrost and it is believed to be forty six
Speaker 2: thousand years old. So a nematode, not this exact species,
Speaker 2: but a very similar round worm that lived that long,
Speaker 2: that has who knows what other stuff going on with it,
Speaker 2: and these things as the ice melts whatever, you know,
Speaker 2: different types of things are going to be emerging. Oh
Speaker 2: what happens if that emerging occurs, I don't know, a
Speaker 2: little further south in Australia, hmmm, Oh goodness, right down
Speaker 2: in Antarctica. Oh nos, so hey, we've got that to
Speaker 2: look forward to again. Sleep tight, everybody, We'll be right
Speaker 2: back with more strange news.
Speaker 3: We returned with more strange news this time and old favorites.
Speaker 3: An old favorite, A blast from the past, one of
Speaker 3: the original Cryptid Trading cards old NeSSI, yeah, you guys
Speaker 3: remembers my memory of I think I went to Scotland
Speaker 3: once when I was very little and don't remember it.
Speaker 3: My mom always used to tell the story about, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I went to England and Scotland when I
Speaker 3: was a kid, and that I pooped my pants all
Speaker 3: over the country and she loved telling that story. So
Speaker 3: that's I was a small child. But my point is
Speaker 3: that I from that sojourn, I ended up with a
Speaker 3: stuffed animal that was a Lockness monster wearing one of
Speaker 3: those hats this signature Scottish. Is it called a tam
Speaker 3: you know, one of those kind of what's the word
Speaker 3: like kind of not Paisley, that's not it at all,
Speaker 3: like a tartan. I don't know. It's just the hat.
Speaker 3: It looks kind of like a beret, but it's got
Speaker 3: the red and black stripes on it and then like
Speaker 3: kind of a ball in the middle. It was a
Speaker 3: little nessy stuffy that had that, and I think you
Speaker 3: could wind it up and it would play a little song.
Speaker 3: I no longer have that, but I have the memory,
Speaker 3: and that's all that really matters. Just like most of
Speaker 3: us in this conspiracy realist community probably have our own
Speaker 3: special memories of the loch Ness monster. And Ben, you
Speaker 3: set it up beautifully and you had a really on
Speaker 3: point tweet about this. It's a little bit derisive to
Speaker 3: call this creature a monster right off the rip. It
Speaker 3: never hurt nobody. We don't know about any ill will
Speaker 3: that this. You know, it has always been described to me,
Speaker 3: or at least in the lore, as sort of a
Speaker 3: gentle giant of the depths.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, it's nice to think of it that way.
Speaker 2: That's a lovely sentiment, but we don't know what happens
Speaker 2: in those depths.
Speaker 3: That's true. I know this is sort of maybe like
Speaker 3: a thing you could apply to cryptids in general, but like,
Speaker 3: what are your memories and relationship with the old NeSSI.
Speaker 3: Let's just go with NeSSI, which I think maybe is
Speaker 3: a response to the monster conundrum. Just going by NeSSI.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, thanks for asking. Yeah, the thing with cryptids,
Speaker 4: that's one of the sort of holy trinity of the
Speaker 4: popular triumvirate of cryptids. For kids growing up in the West,
Speaker 4: you will usually hear about Bigfoot, the lockness Monster, and
Speaker 4: then you get the one wild Guard. If you're in
Speaker 4: West Virginia, it might be the Mothman. If you are
Speaker 4: in parts of Florida, it might be the swamp or
Speaker 4: the skunk ape. It might be Laurona, your favorite ghost.
Speaker 4: The thing about both big and NeSSI is that it
Speaker 4: seems at first Blush a possible or plausible occurrence, because
Speaker 4: the real argument is a relic population right of some
Speaker 4: creature that has got extinct in other parts of the world.
Speaker 4: And the locks, which are basically lakes no offense Scotland.
Speaker 4: The locks are things that formed quite some time ago.
Speaker 4: So the question is is there a lock that is
Speaker 4: large enough and deep enough to function as a goldfish
Speaker 4: bowl for lack of a better word, for some sort
Speaker 4: of creature that exists nowhere else. And before we lest
Speaker 4: we throw throw the NeSSI out with the bathwater here
Speaker 4: or throw the nematode out with the brain, we have
Speaker 4: to remember that for many, many years the mammoth only
Speaker 4: existed on a couple of isolated parts of the globe,
Speaker 4: so it is theoretically possible for something we would consider
Speaker 4: encryptid to be alive in the modern day. I have
Speaker 4: to ask you, Nol you told us your memories of Scotland. Matt,
Speaker 4: you got a like a NeSSI story. Have you been
Speaker 4: to Scotland?
Speaker 3: I have done.
Speaker 2: No, No, I have no idea. I haven't heard about
Speaker 2: NeSSI in a while. So what's the scoop?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, to Ben's point about the this
Speaker 3: is the first thing that popped into my mind, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, how big is Loch Ness At its deepest
Speaker 3: point it is two hundred and thirty meters or one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty six fathoms or seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: five feet, which is apparently deeper than the North Sea.
Speaker 3: So it is the second deepest loch in Scotland after
Speaker 3: locke More Are and a bunch of NeSSI enthusiasts, NeSSI hunters,
Speaker 3: NeSSI truthers have been busy over the past weekend when
Speaker 3: the largest gathering of lockaness hunters NeSSI hunters assembled, you know,
Speaker 3: to have an exploration and obviously to your point, Matt,
Speaker 3: it really hasn't been a whole lot of nessy news
Speaker 3: in a very long time. The most famous picture of it,
Speaker 3: I think, the only one of note I believe, came
Speaker 3: out in like the thirties and has largely been debunked,
Speaker 3: and you know, is believed to be a hoax. You know,
Speaker 3: the one classic always associated with any kind of cryptid
Speaker 3: imagery and documentaries or whatever. It's a black and white
Speaker 3: photo of a long neck thing sticking up out.
Speaker 4: Of the water or a guy doing a shadow puppet.
Speaker 4: It's nineteen thirty four. Yeah, technology was not.
Speaker 3: It's true what it is, though, Remember there was a
Speaker 3: really great story. Gosh, now I'm forgetting. We talked to
Speaker 3: a really lovely person once on this podcast who had
Speaker 3: a show that kind of debunked urban legend. Matt. It
Speaker 3: may have been someone that you hooked us up with
Speaker 3: and did a story about these fairies. These photographs of
Speaker 3: fairies in like the forties or fifties that these young
Speaker 3: girls totally faked using analog photography and like little cutouts
Speaker 3: and stuff. But they had such depth and clarity and
Speaker 3: they were just so remarkable that people truly believed them,
Speaker 3: and it was also a small village in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm totally spacing on the name of the
Speaker 3: podcast and the village, but to your point, Ben, yeah,
Speaker 3: it can be done. But I don't recall, maybe y'all
Speaker 3: do how this was debunked or if it was mainly
Speaker 3: just kind of popular wisdom points to it probably isn't authentic,
Speaker 3: But I don't know that there's any like, you know, aha,
Speaker 3: moment of this is who did it and how they
Speaker 3: did it?
Speaker 4: The reported Fay photograph or.
Speaker 3: No, no, the NeSSI photograph.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original one was nineteen thirty four. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: that was like the super popular one, and it was
Speaker 2: in the nineties, I think almost exactly sixty years later
Speaker 2: that it was discovered to be a tour bot. Right,
Speaker 2: and there's like something applied to a toy boat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got it. But can you say toy boat five
Speaker 3: times fast? That's the question?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, toy boat five times fast. You Also, this
Speaker 4: famous photograph comes out shortly after the mainstreaming of prehistoric
Speaker 4: cryptids with the nineteen thirty three debut of King Kong,
Speaker 4: and so the public is primed to learn more about
Speaker 4: things that seem exotic to them. And then, just like
Speaker 4: so many other local regional legends, the people in the
Speaker 4: area realized this is pretty great for tourism, so he.
Speaker 3: Ben nailed it. Yeah, no, no, I mean just in general,
Speaker 3: that's obviously true. And what better reason to I mean, obviously, exploration, discovery, whatever.
Speaker 3: Maybe you know, hopefully they find the thing that'd be cool.
Speaker 3: But what other better reason to assemble such a long,
Speaker 3: large gathering of searchers than to make a little bit
Speaker 3: of news and get NeSSI back in the headlines. Alan McKenna,
Speaker 3: who's the head of something called the Lockness Exploration, which
Speaker 3: is an independent research group that's based in the area,
Speaker 3: planned this event and you know, looked at it as
Speaker 3: kind of a way to rally sort of hobbyist cryptid
Speaker 3: hunters in the area to come out, and I imagine
Speaker 3: people probably traveled, you know, for it as well. And
Speaker 3: McKenna is quoted as saying it's about inspiration and for
Speaker 3: very selfish reasons. I don't want the Lockness mystery or
Speaker 3: interest in Lockness itself to diminish in any way whatsoever
Speaker 3: at all. Guessing those selfish reasons may refer to the
Speaker 3: forty one pounds roughly that this type of tourism can
Speaker 3: bring into Scotland's economy. That's according to a twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: study by Scotland's Press and Journal newspaper. There's yeah, and
Speaker 3: there's an article that I'm looking at right now in
Speaker 3: NBC News the World section about this event. It's also
Speaker 3: been covered by Insider and a host of other outlets.
Speaker 3: So mission accomplished. You know, you made some headlines. And
Speaker 3: the funniest story that I did find though, was apparently
Speaker 3: a lot. At least I could pull it up. I
Speaker 3: seem to have closed this tab.
Speaker 2: Oh, here we go.
Speaker 3: Locknes' Monster Hunters say they heard mysterious glops underwater but
Speaker 3: forgot to plug in their recorder. No, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: can't remember if I was talking about this on the
Speaker 3: show or if it was off the show. But there
Speaker 3: is a really cool thing called a hydrophone, which is
Speaker 3: a microphone that you know, can record sounds underwater, and
Speaker 3: they're really pricey. Like there, it's not something that just
Speaker 3: like a you know, an enthusiast would probably want to
Speaker 3: invest in there like thousands of dollars for a good one.
Speaker 3: It's actually something that's used a lot in electronic music
Speaker 3: communities to make Yeah, you could drop an alka selser
Speaker 3: like a like a mentos into you know, a thing
Speaker 3: and makes crazy sounds.
Speaker 2: Well in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Speaker 4: Yes, Also that's one hundred unrelated but very important. Do
Speaker 4: you need to worry about cryptids that more than likely
Speaker 4: don't exist, or do you need to worry about animals
Speaker 4: that are very real and are incredibly threatened. I'm thinking
Speaker 4: of cetaceans, I'm thinking of whales. People tell you they
Speaker 4: don't know much about the life cycle of whales, and
Speaker 4: that is somewhat bullsh to be completely honest, the massive,
Speaker 4: the massive amount of signaling that goes out through the
Speaker 4: maritime environment of this planet. It's screwing over whales. That's
Speaker 4: that's basically it. Imagine someone continually screaming strange things into
Speaker 4: your ear. That's what's happening. Hydrophones are awesome, but hydrophones
Speaker 4: are picking up stuff that is bad for whales. The
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory, just to sew it up real quick, is
Speaker 4: that the investigation into the life cycle these beautiful creatures
Speaker 4: is somewhat stymied by geopolitical security concerns.
Speaker 3: No doubt, and also those sounds that you're talking about
Speaker 3: ben that are interfering with whale communication. It does seem
Speaker 3: to have finally driven some of them mad, or at
Speaker 3: the very least just they're sick and tired of it,
Speaker 3: and they are revolting, not as in like they're gross,
Speaker 3: they're revolting against humans. We've obviously covered multiple whale instances
Speaker 3: of Orca's menacing boats and other animals that are kind
Speaker 3: of saying enough is enough, humans, get off our collective lawn.
Speaker 3: But Yeah, the quote from Alan McKenna once again about
Speaker 3: the missed opportunity was this, we did hear something, he said.
Speaker 3: We heard four distinctive glops glops. We all got a
Speaker 3: bit excited, ran to make sure the recorder was on
Speaker 3: and it wasn't plugged in show like next time.
Speaker 2: It does remind me of the bloop that we've talked
Speaker 2: about before on the show.
Speaker 3: Is that the same as the what's the other one?
Speaker 1: The pang?
Speaker 3: Now the there's another sound, the woosh? The deep sea?
Speaker 3: Am I thinking of the deep sea bloop?
Speaker 4: Is most likely a very low register shifting of ice plates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what they say.
Speaker 4: Rights. It's Catulhu or the basis of the Katulhu legends,
Speaker 4: which were written in nearly nineteen hundreds by a problematic guy.
Speaker 3: But do you also another famous conspiracy sound that has
Speaker 3: a funny name that I'm totally spacing on right now.
Speaker 2: But the panged so familiar.
Speaker 3: It'll come to me when I don't care anymore. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. What do you guys think, Like, is
Speaker 3: this all just you know, do you think there's true
Speaker 3: believers out there? Do you think it's a mix of
Speaker 3: just folks that wanted to have a little, you know,
Speaker 3: day on the lock and do some people are bringing
Speaker 3: owns out? Apparently the weather was quite bad, but it
Speaker 3: still did occur. If they're ever going to find it,
Speaker 3: it's going to be now. I guess it is one
Speaker 3: of those things where it's sort of like, if they
Speaker 3: haven't found it yet, why and we've we've asked, we've
Speaker 3: asked and sort of answered that question. There certainly are
Speaker 3: places for things to scurry away and avoid being detected,
Speaker 3: but it just seems very unlikely that if something that
Speaker 3: large did exist, that it wouldn't have been discovered or
Speaker 3: you know, there'd be proof by now A pliosaur is,
Speaker 3: isn't that one of the theories.
Speaker 4: That Mays's, Yeah, that was the most popular for a
Speaker 4: long time, the idea being that in the formation of
Speaker 4: what becomes the modern locks or lakes in Scotland uh
Speaker 4: and then also in Ireland, uh, the that there was
Speaker 4: some population that managed to get there and reproduce successfully
Speaker 4: while the land change. The problem is, from what folks
Speaker 4: know about this, there doesn't seem to be a likely
Speaker 4: There doesn't seem to be a likely way that those
Speaker 4: creatures at that time could have gotten into this place
Speaker 4: and survived. However, to answer your your earlier question from
Speaker 4: a minutes so ago, like the the idea of searching
Speaker 4: for it, Yeah, man, they're true believers out there, and yeah,
Speaker 4: there are people who are just having a fun time.
Speaker 4: That's a cool idea for a hangout time with your friends.
Speaker 4: And also there's the non zero chance that we learn
Speaker 4: something interesting. I think that's so cool. I'm so fox
Speaker 4: Mulder about it.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're on the right track. In the
Speaker 2: articles like for Reuters that were in about this, they
Speaker 2: discuss how there's some students who chose to write their
Speaker 2: essay on this particular thing. Right, So not only are
Speaker 2: they looking for NeSSI on this day, they're discovering history, right,
Speaker 2: They're what other kinds.
Speaker 3: Of learning about the ecosystem?
Speaker 2: Exactly the things you discover by searching for or encrypted,
Speaker 2: I think are they're plentiful and probably priceless.
Speaker 3: Transfer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the real monster was the friends we made along
Speaker 4: the way.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I think that that that that gets us
Speaker 3: wrapped for this one. Let's take a quick break here
Speaker 3: we're from our sponsor and uh and come back with
Speaker 3: one more piece of strange news.
Speaker 4: We have returned, and this is a bit of an
Speaker 4: update on an earlier strange News segment. As you may
Speaker 4: recall longtime fellow conspiracy realist, there has been for a
Speaker 4: number of years a somewhat sketchy company buying up a
Speaker 4: lot of land in California, land that is adjacent to
Speaker 4: a place called Travis Air Force Bace. Travis Air Force
Speaker 4: Space is a big deal, and this land, which is
Speaker 4: a bit northeast of the San Francisco Bay area, is
Speaker 4: also the kind of land you would ignore normally. It
Speaker 4: is what is called fallow farmland, meaning that it is
Speaker 4: appropriate for growing stuff, but often people aren't growing things there.
Speaker 4: So in our previous conversation previously on stuff they don't
Speaker 4: want you to know, we sorry, Matt I.
Speaker 2: Had a question about fallow just because in my head, again, guys,
Speaker 2: all of my knowledge comes from MTG vocabulary. In my head,
Speaker 2: fallow would mean like you can't grow on it. But
Speaker 2: it's but it's also like it just it could be
Speaker 2: potentially just nobody's been using it for that is that's right.
Speaker 4: Fallow is like a recovery period for the soil. So
Speaker 4: if you you know, depending on what you grow from
Speaker 4: the land, it may take certain nutrients, right, and that
Speaker 4: would mean that you cannot reasonably grow the same sort
Speaker 4: of crop continually over time. So with that idea, the
Speaker 4: concept is it's not as though you know a La
Speaker 4: pet cemetery, the soil is sa. It's more that, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's more right. It's more that it's more that you're saying,
Speaker 4: we want to grow this thing and we can't always
Speaker 4: grow it. And there's a lot of old technology around this.
Speaker 4: In Native American culture. You got the three sisters, right,
Speaker 4: these three different crops one can grow simultaneously in a
Speaker 4: way that allows the land to always grow. So anyway
Speaker 4: that stuff aside, there's this fallow farmland. There's this shady
Speaker 4: outfit that was based in Delaware is based in Delaware
Speaker 4: called Flannery Associates, and they bought fifty five thousand acres
Speaker 4: of mainly farmland, yeah, in northern California. And we were
Speaker 4: asking who is this and I actually I reached out
Speaker 4: to some folks offline who didn't know, and some of
Speaker 4: their guesses were because of the Air Force base. They
Speaker 4: were saying, possibly this is someone who is a former military,
Speaker 4: former USAF or something and they know something the public doesn't,
Speaker 4: so they're leveraging insider info, which happens all the time.
Speaker 2: Or like is it just the base or somebody representing
Speaker 2: the base, like trying to expand the crap out of it,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: Right without spooking out the hoy paloi and the folks
Speaker 4: living around the area. What we learned is that this
Speaker 4: group is backed by Silicon Valley investors, like a guy
Speaker 4: who is like venture capitalists, the guy who founded LinkedIn
Speaker 4: all these dudes. The point person for this is a
Speaker 4: guy named Yan Sravik thirty six years old, used to
Speaker 4: work for Goldman Sachs and oh yeah, yeah, so a
Speaker 4: few years back, this guy I began looking for investors
Speaker 4: and saying some of the same things that we've said
Speaker 4: on this show about the challenges faced by San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Right is geographically bound, you know. It is wrestling within equality,
Speaker 4: it's wrestling within stability. You can live pretty well if
Speaker 4: you make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year
Speaker 4: in most parts of the United States, but San Francisco
Speaker 4: is just not one of those parts. It certainly is not.
Speaker 4: And so the idea here is that this codeer Ee
Speaker 4: or this cabal of folks are going to start their
Speaker 4: new city, you know what I mean, like Bender in Futurama.
Speaker 4: We'll do our own thing, you know, with blackjack and
Speaker 4: other stuff. So Flannery Associates wants to build an entirely
Speaker 4: new city in this area. And they say, we're going
Speaker 4: to have orchards there, We're gonna have solar energy farms,
Speaker 4: We're gonna have tens upon thousands of new homes, and
Speaker 4: we're gonna have parks, We're gonna have open space. Can
Speaker 4: now that the news has gone public, I think, with
Speaker 4: the permission of the very wealthy people who are planning this,
Speaker 4: you can read about it in a great piece by
Speaker 4: the Verge, a great piece by the Guardian, a great
Speaker 4: piece by San Francisco Gate or SFGate as it's called.
Speaker 4: They had, oh and Wall Street Journal, if you read
Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal. They got in trouble because they were
Speaker 4: coming up to these folks, these folks who owned this farmland.
Speaker 4: And even if those folks weren't trying to sell this
Speaker 4: flattery Associates group would come in through a fixer and
Speaker 4: they would say what's your price, And a lot of
Speaker 4: times people would say, what have you got? And that's
Speaker 4: what happened.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, some landowners were getting I'm seeing reported been this.
Speaker 2: Some people were getting like twice the amount of money
Speaker 2: their land was worth, three times the amount it was worth.
Speaker 4: Yes, one hundred percent they were. And then there was
Speaker 4: also Flannery is getting sued with out or getting hit
Speaker 4: with allegations that they were engaging in price fixing. There
Speaker 4: are counter lawsuits we hear where people are saying they
Speaker 4: were Essentially they felt like they were being intimidated or
Speaker 4: forced into selling their stuff. And now we know that
Speaker 4: the concept here is to for lack of a better phrase,
Speaker 4: and I'm just freestyling. They want to build a better
Speaker 4: San Francisco. And with that in mind, I have to
Speaker 4: ask you, guys, what do you think good idea.
Speaker 3: About it that are San Francisco like that regular people
Speaker 3: can afford? What do you think that one person's utopia
Speaker 3: as a person's dystopia, I would argue, I don't know, seems.
Speaker 2: Sus I'm just looking at the area from above, so
Speaker 2: just on Google maps here if you must know, I'm
Speaker 2: sure San Francisco, you know, right there like a peninsula
Speaker 2: hanging out, chilling, doing its thing, all the water around it.
Speaker 2: That's looking good. Now I'm coming up to Fairfield a
Speaker 2: little bit northeast or to look in at this this
Speaker 2: land that, at least from the sky on the satellite
Speaker 2: doesn't look that exciting.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's not very green, it's not desert. It's really just
Speaker 2: kind of in between somewhere, and I don't know, I
Speaker 2: can't imagine that being the next, you know, technology hub.
Speaker 4: It's a fixer you know what I mean, It's a
Speaker 4: fixer upper. Here's here's where it gets incredibly interesting. Is
Speaker 4: the primary goal truly to build a utopian city on
Speaker 4: a hill right like the Puritans of old? Or is
Speaker 4: this a way of securing access to resources that will
Speaker 4: be more important in the future, for instance, water rights?
Speaker 4: Is there some tasty groundwater, fossil water under there, or
Speaker 4: the rights to distribute that water, or is there maybe
Speaker 4: some amount of rare earth materials that will be suddenly
Speaker 4: affordable to extract once environmental regulations get further destabilized. This
Speaker 4: is all speculation, right, and this is all This is
Speaker 4: all stuff that is in play, but it's not proven.
Speaker 4: It's like the idea that NeSSI is real, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, it's cool to think about it.
Speaker 2: This isn't some kind of scheme like the billionaire thing
Speaker 2: to have. What is it altruism, with effective altruism one
Speaker 2: of those things.
Speaker 4: There be like a business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this isn't that is They're saying. This is for
Speaker 2: just regular old human beings to come and live and prosper.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The idea is that you too can be part
Speaker 4: of the dream. And the idea is that with their
Speaker 4: massive business expertise, this group represented by Flannery Associates, will
Speaker 4: be able to from the ground up rethink everything about
Speaker 4: a city. So they'll say, look, we we have lessons
Speaker 4: learned from San Francisco's approach to crime or San Francisco's
Speaker 4: approach to the unhoused, so we can figure out a
Speaker 4: new way and a lot of Silicon Valley luminaries are
Speaker 4: all about figuring out a new way. Quote unquote, I'll
Speaker 4: never forget the time. I'll never forget the time. It
Speaker 4: looked like some guys, let me give you this pitch
Speaker 4: because it was hilarious. There was some guys guys who said, hey,
Speaker 4: we all know our neighborhood has some work to do.
Speaker 4: And what we're thinking is, instead of you know, bowing
Speaker 4: before these municipalities that don't represent us, what if we
Speaker 4: started a thing where everybody in the community put in
Speaker 4: some amount of money and then we collectively use that
Speaker 4: to fix problems in our community. And these guys, I
Speaker 4: swear to God, did not know they had accidentally reinvented taxes.
Speaker 2: Are also like communism kind of yeah, yeah, you remember
Speaker 2: when those guys invented that new drink that was supposed
Speaker 2: to give you all your nutrients and they named it after.
Speaker 3: Soilent green as people.
Speaker 4: They didn't even make it people though. It's just like
Speaker 4: a bunch of amino acids and omoni mill.
Speaker 3: But also soilent on itself just makes me think of
Speaker 3: soiling oneself. That is what that brings to mind every
Speaker 3: time I hear soilent. I don't understand what they're going
Speaker 3: for with that, but it seems to be very popular.
Speaker 3: It is, I don't get it.
Speaker 4: There's also fuel, get it human fuel or manti.
Speaker 3: My favorite is the thing they serve in prisons, neutral loaf.
Speaker 3: You always point that one out, Ben, It's just a
Speaker 3: good it's good branding that you wouldn't think would be
Speaker 3: worth the time to brand something that's only served in prison.
Speaker 4: Sohow these folks spent hundreds of millions of dollars We're
Speaker 4: talking like north of eight hundred million dollars getting all
Speaker 4: this land and then it goes into the idea of
Speaker 4: your time horizon. Right. So one of the reasons that
Speaker 4: the wealthiest entities in terms of real estate are so
Speaker 4: wealthy is that if you are and I know this
Speaker 4: will sound old school conspiratorial, and I've been getting a
Speaker 4: lot of pressure not to use the sea word anymore,
Speaker 4: but this is true. The Crown of the United Kingdom, right,
Speaker 4: the Catholic Church, they're real estate giants because they can
Speaker 4: lose money for decades, right, they can hold on to
Speaker 4: something at a loss for centuries, And most entities, individuals,
Speaker 4: or institutions are simply not capable of doing that. Flannery
Speaker 4: Associates probably is so they can hold on to this
Speaker 4: land for a fallow period, whether that's economical or agricultural,
Speaker 4: and then they can be there when it matters, right. So,
Speaker 4: I don't know, Like, hey, I've looked into a little
Speaker 4: bit of the consideration for what is often called a
Speaker 4: utopian city. I don't know if I quite like the phrase,
Speaker 4: you guys, because the word utopia inherently means something that
Speaker 4: cannot exist, it is too perfect to exist. But if
Speaker 4: they can build a city that is equitable, if they
Speaker 4: can help people, maybe it'll work. It Just it smells
Speaker 4: like a company town to me. It smells like some
Speaker 4: other attempts top down in past civilizations and they didn't
Speaker 4: work out well.
Speaker 3: And doesn't a utopia or you know, in any form again,
Speaker 3: to your point, it's more of like a thought experiment
Speaker 3: than a real thing. Doesn't it usually involve some amount
Speaker 3: of exclusion, you know, of types of people or perhaps
Speaker 3: certain races, certain people of economic strata. I don't know.
Speaker 3: For some reason, in my mind, utopia always has a
Speaker 3: sinister undertone to it because of the fact that it
Speaker 3: usually is kind of eugenic in some way. I don't know,
Speaker 3: Maybe that's just my sci fi brain.
Speaker 1: No, I'm with you.
Speaker 4: It makes sense because, you know, it conjures fears of
Speaker 4: technocracy gone wrong. So technocracy is the idea that there
Speaker 4: is a cadre of very talented and successful technical people,
Speaker 4: engineers and so on, who are able to use their
Speaker 4: scientific understanding to create a better civilization. The problem with
Speaker 4: that is it naturally leads into it naturally leads into
Speaker 4: what we could call libertarianism gone wild. You know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I don't want I don't know about you, guys.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure we're on the same page, all of
Speaker 4: us listening tonight. I don't think we want a country
Speaker 4: where someone can be born into a tier of citizen,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Imagine going into the city
Speaker 4: right and you can unlock premium citizenship, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, Or you're born with signature citizenship or citizenship plus.
Speaker 4: This kind of stuff opens the door for it. I mean,
Speaker 4: right now, they're running into you know, the natural barriers,
Speaker 4: not just the people who don't want to sell their property,
Speaker 4: but they're also running into questions about pre existing municipalities.
Speaker 4: And this makes us think of the reedy Creek Improvement District.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, because Disney Disney did it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, guys. I think I'm drinking the
Speaker 2: soil in on this one. I think I want in.
Speaker 2: I want premium citizenship. Let's go blayers, Yeah, let's do this.
Speaker 2: And I'm really interested in other things, other projects that
Speaker 2: are supposedly like this, like the line in Saudi Arabia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know that it's probably far fetched that it actually
Speaker 2: works out in any way similar to how it's being
Speaker 2: projected right in the same way, if you get a
Speaker 2: deck for a new podcast, it's all shiny and it's like,
Speaker 2: this is what it's going to be. It's going to
Speaker 2: be incredible, and the thing in the end is like
Speaker 2: eighty five to ninety percent of like how pristine that was.
Speaker 2: That's I mean, I'm being honest, Like there's almost always
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: It's the pictures of Taco Bell food.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, yeah, so it's never gonna be the
Speaker 2: way it looks. But if we don't strive or let
Speaker 2: people with you know, ambition and money, strive to make
Speaker 2: improvements on things like what the heck are we going
Speaker 2: to do? Just be okay with the crap.
Speaker 4: That we got to quote Scottish poet going back to
Speaker 4: luckdust that love Robert Burns NaN's reach must exceed as
Speaker 4: grasp or else what's a heaven for?
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: But don't you think there's just kind of a general
Speaker 3: malaise or maybe not malays distrust towards these technocrats. Yeah
Speaker 3: there maybe gives pause to things. Yeah, yeah, making so.
Speaker 4: We have some questions here, and perhaps we will do
Speaker 4: an episode on this in the future, but for now,
Speaker 4: we are living in a time when history is being made.
Speaker 4: We know real estate is very sensitive in the US
Speaker 4: and the world. We also know I think we should
Speaker 4: do an episode on how of all things, private insurance
Speaker 4: companies are trying to warn people about climate change in
Speaker 4: the worst possible way, but they're doing their best. I
Speaker 4: suggest we pause for now, and we will absolutely will
Speaker 4: absolutely do an update if someone finds NeSSI we will.
Speaker 4: We're absolutely going to learn more about worms in the brain, Matt.
Speaker 4: We didn't even talk about whether some sort of alteration
Speaker 4: of ambient temperature may have something may have allowed that
Speaker 4: nematode egg to enter into a human body in a
Speaker 4: way that it happened before. Because pythons are native to Australia,
Speaker 4: I believe right, So people have run around and met
Speaker 4: those eggs before. I don't know, maybe it's a lottery anyway,
Speaker 4: So we're going to call it an evening. We're out
Speaker 4: to activigate and to call our friends at Flannery Associates.
Speaker 4: See how they're one hundred and fifty million dollar lawsuit
Speaker 4: against against those farmers are going And in the meantime,
Speaker 4: if you want to contact us, if you want to
Speaker 4: join up with the show, we cannot wait to hear
Speaker 4: from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: That's right. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy
Speaker 3: Stuff on Facebook, YouTube, and the social media network formerly
Speaker 3: known as Twitter, Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: Hey do you like to use your voice to call
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