Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul, Mission Control decad. Most importantly, you are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: We were talking about this a little bit off air.
Speaker 3: What is your favorite fruit, gentlemen.
Speaker 4: I like a raspberry.
Speaker 5: It's a nice fresh raspberry fresh quotation fingers, I guess today,
Speaker 5: but I usually don't have too much trouble with getting
Speaker 5: a nice juicy raspberry. I also used to be really
Speaker 5: kind of freaked out by strawberries, but now I love them.
Speaker 4: When they're when they're right.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna explain what freaked me out. It's too
Speaker 4: too random.
Speaker 2: Okay, strawberries. I'm changing mind from our discussion, by the way,
Speaker 2: because I forgot about a delicious, juicy, incredible black or
Speaker 2: red grape that is probably one of my favorites.
Speaker 4: I don't f with grapes. I don't know.
Speaker 5: With grapes, something about the pop. It's a texture for me. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it gets to me.
Speaker 2: Naturally ripened grape.
Speaker 3: The caviare of the vine, they call it. No one
Speaker 3: calls it that.
Speaker 2: What's yours?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, well, I'm super basic, Matt. I'm glad you asked. Obviously.
Speaker 3: The pineapple, that's not basic at all. That's the fanciest
Speaker 3: of fruits. We'll get into it later.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, for a lot of people, the idea
Speaker 3: of buying produce is I think for most people across
Speaker 3: the globe, the idea of buying produce, vegetable or fruit
Speaker 3: is a basic day to day thing. Here in the
Speaker 3: United States, it can be difficult to buy fresh food.
Speaker 3: Depending on where you live, finding fresh food can be
Speaker 3: darn near impossible, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, I live in kind of
Speaker 5: a bit of a food desert. But luckily I have
Speaker 5: a car and they are amazing grocery stores just you know,
Speaker 5: ten fifteen minutes away. But some gas stations and areas
Speaker 5: like that will have like the sad bowl of fruit,
Speaker 5: the kind of withered bananas. You know, you know it,
Speaker 5: you hate to see it, but some people that is
Speaker 5: you know the access they have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and every once in a while you'll get to
Speaker 2: go to that glorious mecha of partner swapping Trader Joe's
Speaker 2: and really get some good stuff.
Speaker 4: M you go for your fresh produce.
Speaker 2: That's where apples hang out upside down.
Speaker 4: Maybe the.
Speaker 3: Okay, that was a good one. That's a good joke. Also,
Speaker 3: tonight's episode is based on a conversation we had off
Speaker 3: air about something that went viral on TikTok, the idea
Speaker 3: that a peel is meant to somehow conspire against you
Speaker 3: when you buy produce.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. Okay, produce it's a big term, right,
Speaker 3: it's a big word. It means a lot of stuff,
Speaker 3: every kind of fruit, vegetable, grain, oat, you could imagine. Basically,
Speaker 3: if it's not an animal, then it's produce, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it's not an animal and it's not processed.
Speaker 3: Important point, Matt. If if it's an orange by itself,
Speaker 3: it's produce. If it is a carton of orange juice,
Speaker 3: then it is no longer produce.
Speaker 5: Right, even if it's in you know, like fresh squeezed, right,
Speaker 5: because it is processed. I mean, even just the active
Speaker 5: squeezing as a form of processing, even if it's not
Speaker 5: like that kind that comes from the dreaded concentrates.
Speaker 3: What a great point, though, because if if produce is packaged,
Speaker 3: like the sad banana right in its own ziploc bag
Speaker 3: or whatever. If produce is packaged, it can still be produce.
Speaker 3: If the pineapple is cut and put a little plastic cup,
Speaker 3: it can still be pineapple. I think it's when the
Speaker 3: thing itself is messed with that means it's no longer produce.
Speaker 3: Would we say that's accurate.
Speaker 4: That's my understanding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. But it's hard to get into
Speaker 2: also because if you think about something, I'm going to
Speaker 2: say the brand name like Quaker oats, right that you
Speaker 2: get in the large container, those are oats. Those are
Speaker 2: mostly unprocessed test but they have been They've gone through
Speaker 2: lots of processes. I guess no, they are processed.
Speaker 5: I'm wrong, Okay, But Matt, I see what you're thinking
Speaker 5: on that, because it's a little confusing because to me,
Speaker 5: if it was a freshly squeezed orange juice, then to me,
Speaker 5: that would it's like not processed in a way that
Speaker 5: involves other substances. It's just you know, taking the essence
Speaker 5: of a thing and like turning it into a different
Speaker 5: like consistency. It's like mashing a potato, it's still a potato.
Speaker 2: Well, it's so complicated because there's so many different types
Speaker 2: of processed orange juicing you can do. Right, we did
Speaker 2: that whole episode we talked about. I think it is
Speaker 2: simply orange, the one that completely breaks down the orange
Speaker 2: and all of it into all of its constituent parts
Speaker 2: and then recombines them magically in a way that makes
Speaker 2: the perfect orange juice.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, what does my simply orange do that? I
Speaker 5: don't like the sound of that.
Speaker 3: Well, it's the problem is it's not simple.
Speaker 2: It is just oranges.
Speaker 4: It's just not simple.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's kind of like how the Quaker oats guy
Speaker 3: gets younger every ten years. Have you noticed that he
Speaker 3: used to be old as hell? Now he's like a
Speaker 3: waiter in Los Angeles? It's nuts.
Speaker 5: Is this like the fly type situation where they put
Speaker 5: the orange into like a giant, weird portal machine and
Speaker 5: it just like breaks it apart into its atoms and
Speaker 5: puts it back together. God forbid a fly or some
Speaker 5: other creature should get into the simply orange juicing the
Speaker 5: machine simply fly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So the US has an ongoing problematic love affair with
Speaker 3: hyper sweetened, heavily processed food. But the US is still
Speaker 3: a global player in produce, and it imports a ton
Speaker 3: of stuff. A lot of it comes from Mexico, Peru, Chile, Guatemala,
Speaker 3: Costa Rica, and those same countries also send a lot
Speaker 3: of vegetables to the United States. So the idea is,
Speaker 3: if it's not an animal, if it's not heavily processed,
Speaker 3: if it is fruit or veg it is produce.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the World Health Organization, you know them, they recommend
Speaker 2: people consume four hundred grams of fruits and vegetables every day.
Speaker 2: Four hundred grams. It's a lot of grams mm hm.
Speaker 2: And you know what we got. We've read ads for
Speaker 2: a company before that makes fruits and vegetables in pills,
Speaker 2: because it's so difficult for many of us to actually
Speaker 2: get that much of fruits and vegetables in our diet
Speaker 2: every day as we're going around. Maybe if you're on
Speaker 2: the go a lot and you're choosing deep fast food,
Speaker 2: which I am highly guilty of, not easy to get
Speaker 2: those those fresh vegetables and fruits into you. But there
Speaker 2: are companies out there that offer alternative ways to get
Speaker 2: that stuff into you, but often beats the real thing.
Speaker 3: The real thing being fresh fruits and vegetables. I imagine,
Speaker 3: right one.
Speaker 4: Would real once again in quotation fish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Asian Pacific region dominates the fresh fruits market.
Speaker 3: That population imports the most fresh fruits. If you ask
Speaker 3: your non US friends, they will have some pretty not
Speaker 3: great opinions about fruit and veg in the United States.
Speaker 3: Like and we've seen it. If you travel to a
Speaker 3: different country, Noel, you can speak to this, Like in Spain.
Speaker 2: The.
Speaker 3: Typical raspberry or the typical strawberry, or just the typical
Speaker 3: asparagus is a little bit different from the kind of
Speaker 3: stuff you would eat in the United States.
Speaker 5: Well, it's just everywhere they have these massive like city markets,
Speaker 5: you know, and it's so much more walkable and bustible
Speaker 5: and you know, public transportable city And then I imagine
Speaker 5: in the outskirts in Spain and around Europe, you know,
Speaker 5: it's almost even more prevalent in terms of being able
Speaker 5: to get access to fresh fruits and vegetables because there's
Speaker 5: such a you know, agrarian kind of you know, economy
Speaker 5: and agrarian sort of culture there. But here in America
Speaker 5: it's very spotty. It's very you know, kind of patchy,
Speaker 5: I guess would be a better word.
Speaker 4: Well, we just.
Speaker 2: Talked about how we didn't say this. By the way,
Speaker 2: only one in ten Americans actually get four hundred grams
Speaker 2: of fresh fruits and vegetables every day, So we're not
Speaker 2: we're already kind of not doing a great job getting
Speaker 2: the stuff in US, but we're also not doing a
Speaker 2: great job making the stuff. As we said, we import
Speaker 2: most of the fresh fruits and vegetables that we have
Speaker 2: in grocery stores, and really think about, how do I
Speaker 2: get a bunch of fresh strawberries grown and then shipped
Speaker 2: from another country to the United States through all of
Speaker 2: those avenues you on ships, on trains, maybe on boats,
Speaker 2: whatever you got to do to get at someplace, temperature
Speaker 2: controlling the thing the entire time, and then when it
Speaker 2: hits the store it's supposed to be fresh.
Speaker 3: Dude.
Speaker 5: I mean, I had a grocery car full of Costco
Speaker 5: stuff yesterday and had to go straight to an appointment
Speaker 5: and was literally worried that them sitting in the hot
Speaker 5: car for a couple hours was.
Speaker 4: Going to be you know, bad news.
Speaker 5: I mean, I just it boggles my mind how we
Speaker 5: depend on that level of infrastructure and like you know,
Speaker 5: it's the word logistics to get this stuff. God knows
Speaker 5: how many miles you know, from origin point to our
Speaker 5: fruit baskets, fruit boats.
Speaker 3: That's awesome though, that you had that, You had those
Speaker 3: vegetables or those fruits in your car. You had a
Speaker 3: mobile greenhouse, you know what I mean. People used to
Speaker 3: kill each other to have that capability.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I had a cucumber melt when I was in Ohio.
Speaker 2: It excited from the time somehow, like yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it was frozen or something. And when I picked it
Speaker 2: up at the little island grocery store that I was at,
Speaker 2: it feels great. I was like, oh, it's got some
Speaker 2: good tension in this cucuver, got it in the car,
Speaker 2: got it back to the house, put it in the fridge,
Speaker 2: walked away for a second, came back, went to cut
Speaker 2: it for my son, and the dang thing was melted.
Speaker 2: It was it became it became like gelatinous. Weird grossroth Man.
Speaker 4: But like that's the thing too.
Speaker 5: It's not sufficient to just freeze things, uh, to transport
Speaker 5: them those long distances, because that creates a different product,
Speaker 5: that creates a different consistency. And when you buy frozen
Speaker 5: berries or frozen vegetables, that's one type of thing, and
Speaker 5: you know what consistency you're gonna get. But the presumption
Speaker 5: when you're buying stuff that's in your you know, produce
Speaker 5: department in the grocery store, is that it hasn't been frozen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the idea.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: In earlier evenings, people were only able to eat stuff
Speaker 3: that grew near them. This is nuts. No one ever
Speaker 3: thinks about it. We got all these stereotypes about Irish
Speaker 3: people and potatoes. Your Irish ancestors, if you go far
Speaker 3: enough back, they would have been thoroughly.
Speaker 4: Baffled by the idea of a potato, the modern potato.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they would have not known what was going on.
Speaker 3: You're Italian, Korean, or Chinese predecessors, depending on your lineage,
Speaker 3: They would have lost their minds if they saw a tomato.
Speaker 3: Italy is still dealing with that as a culture and
Speaker 3: as a cuisine. The idea of getting local and regional
Speaker 3: and global trade networks changed the interaction of humans with produce.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's nuts. Check out the episode on
Speaker 3: the Colombian Exchange. Check out our our earlier episode on corn.
Speaker 3: Corn has a ridiculous history.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Man, once they started doing Freak on a leash and
Speaker 5: all over t RL, it was over for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then they made a podcast, did they? Yeah,
Speaker 2: acorns ridiculous history.
Speaker 5: What I'll recall having a co host who is in
Speaker 5: the band corn or who is an anthropomorphized piece of corn.
Speaker 3: Just no, geez, thanks, no in the oh, let's be really,
Speaker 3: you're in either of those things.
Speaker 4: You're You're just well.
Speaker 3: I do think I rap a little bit better than
Speaker 3: Jonathan Davis, but it's more of a than a rap, right,
Speaker 3: He's talent to man, he's down to man. In the
Speaker 3: modern evenings, developed countries have leveraged logistics to send all
Speaker 3: the stuff that you could not get in your neck
Speaker 3: of the global woods are the planet stuff that you
Speaker 3: simply would have read about, you know, for centuries before
Speaker 3: about what will we say the mid eighteen hundreds is
Speaker 3: when it really became popularized for the average person. Fruits, vegetables,
Speaker 3: grains across the planet. Now they're delivered directly to your door,
Speaker 3: even when they grow out of season. You can also
Speaker 3: make this stuff shelf stable, and you can only do
Speaker 3: it because there are some monopolies. There's a little bit
Speaker 3: of a corporatism involved. I think what we're saying is
Speaker 3: there is a hidden price to this convenience. What do
Speaker 3: we mean by hidden price? Well, I mean I guess
Speaker 3: it depends on who you ask.
Speaker 5: As we've been talking about, the logistical magic trick that
Speaker 5: is the appearance of all of these perishable items from
Speaker 5: wherever might actually not just be a simple product of
Speaker 5: all of those moving parts combined.
Speaker 4: It's the greatest, something greater than some of those parts.
Speaker 5: It might actually be something that can't be explained by planes, trains,
Speaker 5: and automobiles and cargo ships and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 5: It gets us all of these products that we enjoy
Speaker 5: and or depend on. What if the methods that we're
Speaker 5: used to preserve all this stuff turned out to actually
Speaker 5: be an issue in and of itself, you know what.
Speaker 4: If it was unsafe?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because you're you're either in order to achieve
Speaker 2: the goal of how do I make this tomato more
Speaker 2: shelf stable for a longer period of time or this
Speaker 2: apple to survive longer on the shelf at my local
Speaker 2: food dealer. Well, I can either genetically modify the actual
Speaker 2: seed and the plant that you know, the tree that
Speaker 2: grows the apple, and I can change its traits if
Speaker 2: I want to. I can apply some kind of product,
Speaker 2: chemical thing to that apple once it's grown, to make
Speaker 2: sure the exterior of it is safe, right, because that
Speaker 2: if you're messing with genetics, that's the interior you're messing with.
Speaker 2: If you're spraying it with something that's the exterior, like
Speaker 2: a coding of some sort, like we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about today, or it can get it can get
Speaker 2: even weirder. You can artificially do things to these plants
Speaker 2: to make them ready to go once they hit the shelves,
Speaker 2: but not ready to go when they're inside their transport vehicles.
Speaker 3: What if there is a conspiracy afoot will pause for
Speaker 3: a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: This is perfect. This is the claim that went viral
Speaker 3: on social media platforms. It grew like mint and that
Speaker 3: is a joke for everybody who has had to deal
Speaker 3: with mint in their garden. On TikTok, which is kind
Speaker 3: of the new version of old tabloids like National Enquirer
Speaker 3: or Weekly World News. They're the ones who published stories
Speaker 3: about bat Boy and so on, or like Elvis is alive,
Speaker 3: he lives in Minnesota and is very good at line dancing.
Speaker 5: But now there's like a new bat Boy every five seconds.
Speaker 5: And it's not just the product of one, you know,
Speaker 5: weird publication concocting a bizarre story to sell papers. It's
Speaker 5: like this whole echo chamber and that just you know,
Speaker 5: it's like self perpetuates. It's bizarre. Sorry, we're not here
Speaker 5: to litigate TikTok and the internet today, but you're pointing
Speaker 5: that out then, I think that's really spot on, and
Speaker 5: it really made me kind of triggered me.
Speaker 4: It made my brain twitch a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why can't he just be a batperson?
Speaker 5: You know, he stayed a boy forever. We would see
Speaker 5: when does he become When does he finally become a batman?
Speaker 4: Batman.
Speaker 3: The claims that we're seeing on TikTok center on the
Speaker 3: idea of preservation coding in general, the concept that substances
Speaker 3: applied to fruits will keep them edible. From as you
Speaker 3: were saying, Matt, the long travel from point A to
Speaker 3: point Z, and as we're recording this. On the evening
Speaker 3: of August twenty six, twenty twenty four, we see a
Speaker 3: lot of social media accounts claiming a specific company called
Speaker 3: a Peel get It are part of a grand conspiracy
Speaker 3: to absolutely screw over innocent fans of produce. It's your name, though, Yeah,
Speaker 3: can we spell it out?
Speaker 4: S p e e L? I mean I got?
Speaker 5: I guess is that it meant to be a pun like, Hey,
Speaker 5: we are Appealing as a company, but we also deal
Speaker 5: in things that have a peel. It's, to your point,
Speaker 5: been the more innocuous and maybe silly the name, perhaps
Speaker 5: sometimes the more nefarious the edens.
Speaker 2: Okay, so how do we hear about this? Guess what?
Speaker 2: TikTok tck talk.
Speaker 4: So it's news and fake news at the same time.
Speaker 2: I don't understand there's an actual company that makes a thing.
Speaker 2: It's not called appeal appeals. The company they make what's
Speaker 2: the name of the thing they make?
Speaker 3: Eddie peel eddie d p E E L.
Speaker 4: Is that a play on Oedipus? Is there?
Speaker 2: Some it's edible? But this the idea is real. This
Speaker 2: is a coating that is supposed to help protect the
Speaker 2: produce as it's either traveling to protect it from animals
Speaker 2: and other pests and things like that. It is like
Speaker 2: armor for your apples, baby, and it's real and it's
Speaker 2: a thing. The TikTok comes in where there are multiple
Speaker 2: creators making multiple videos that point to this specific company
Speaker 2: and this substance as being extremely dangerous for human health.
Speaker 2: And then they take it a step further and say,
Speaker 2: not only is it dangerous, it is being purposefully produced
Speaker 2: by somebody like the infamous Bill Gates that created Microsoft
Speaker 2: and now wants to kill everyone.
Speaker 4: That monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, him and Melinda made a foundation just to ruin
Speaker 3: your day by doing things like eradicating malaria communicable disease.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say this.
Speaker 5: I don't want to like sound like I'm being codd
Speaker 5: or something like that. I am inherently suspicious of all
Speaker 5: people with that degree of wealth.
Speaker 4: So like, I.
Speaker 5: Do think that maybe on the service what they're doing
Speaker 5: is like quote unquote good, but I also don't really know,
Speaker 5: and I have to have it as a healthy amount
Speaker 5: of skepticism for these types of things with this sort
Speaker 5: of front of ultimate magnanimity, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I think that's a universal thing. You're not alone.
Speaker 3: I think most people should be that way. It's not
Speaker 3: a singular thing because you know, you see these billionaires
Speaker 3: and you think, when's the last time they saw a nickel?
Speaker 3: When's the last time they held a coin and thought,
Speaker 3: do I need this coin later?
Speaker 2: I got. I would love it if Bill Gates like
Speaker 2: just rolled around with a couple of twenties in his
Speaker 2: pocket and just paid in cash for things whenever he could.
Speaker 2: That would just make me so happy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, he only eats McDonald's though. When you hear that,
Speaker 4: like he really loves McDonald's.
Speaker 2: Oh dude, you know he's got like he rents.
Speaker 5: It out and there's an entire fancy like Michigan Star
Speaker 5: restaurant for some event and had his people call out
Speaker 5: and bring him in McDonald's.
Speaker 4: He didn't like, it's a thing.
Speaker 3: Does Melinda know?
Speaker 5: Imagine she fully supports him and all of this. It
Speaker 5: is funny though, considering what we're talking about, right, But
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 2: You didn't they get a divorce.
Speaker 3: I am that's a difficult man to be, I imagine statistically.
Speaker 4: Yes, I don't know the answer to that, but uh, we'll.
Speaker 3: Have to look it up. I think we've got we've
Speaker 3: got some top man on it, Uh, the Bill and
Speaker 3: Melinda Gates Foundation was was funny.
Speaker 4: Had no idea. I had no idea.
Speaker 3: Well, you're you're my top guy. You're on it, said,
Speaker 3: we had top guys on it. I'm the guy in
Speaker 3: the chair, so all right. So the Bill m Melinda
Speaker 3: Gates Foundation is a classic villain in a lot of
Speaker 3: this conspiracy folklore. And the concept here is that a
Speaker 3: peel through the technology Eddie Peel or the proprietary coding
Speaker 3: is somehow after you any one who is not a billionaire,
Speaker 3: and they're the implications like why why would these people
Speaker 3: do this? The implication is that eating this produce coded
Speaker 3: with this stuff will either lead to sterilization or increase
Speaker 3: your chances of cancer, decrease your intelligence, or it will
Speaker 3: make you addicted to consuming insert product here, which is
Speaker 3: these are heavy claims, right, have you guys encountered any
Speaker 3: of this? Like these claims? First off, have you encountered
Speaker 3: these claims? And then secondly, do you believe any of them?
Speaker 2: First of all, I would say I encountered it for
Speaker 2: the first time on Instagram on reels and it was
Speaker 2: specifically talking about appeal, which then led me down the
Speaker 2: rabbit hole of trying to really understand what the heck
Speaker 2: it is because the coaching, because it was one of
Speaker 2: those videos that you'll see all over the place where
Speaker 2: there's an AI voice reading captions that are on the
Speaker 2: screen with some what seem like random imagery, sometimes maybe
Speaker 2: even stock imagery, and you're just trying to discern if
Speaker 2: any of it's true or real, and it's pretty disturbing.
Speaker 2: I would say the Gates Foundation thing does go back
Speaker 2: to the population control theories that touch a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of other hypotheses and theories that are out there about
Speaker 2: connecting docts that aren't necessarily there. But it's one of
Speaker 2: those things that feel it feels like it could be
Speaker 2: real just enough that it piques your interest, and I
Speaker 2: think that's one of the reasons that it got shared
Speaker 2: so many times, at least the particular one that I saw.
Speaker 5: And not to make this about those AI generated stories,
Speaker 5: but aren't those, in a way just sort of the
Speaker 5: new version of those clickbait, little stubby kind of stories
Speaker 5: that were like a paragraph followed by fifteen ads and
Speaker 5: then another little paragraph, And they're usually about celebrity nonsense
Speaker 5: or some kind of sex tape or this kind of conspiracy,
Speaker 5: you know, spreading. But it's interesting because I've gotten the
Speaker 5: point where when I hear that voice and I think
Speaker 5: it's one of those.
Speaker 4: I just am like, Nope, I just can't. It's it's
Speaker 4: bad news.
Speaker 3: I love those voices. I sit through them because it's
Speaker 3: something where it's like, it's like the apple considered apple
Speaker 3: pong apples are from Cosaics song why did Jennifer Lopez
Speaker 3: divorce bin Off from? It's a bunch of weird stock images.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a it's a strange Rorshach test, And
Speaker 3: most of what we're seeing here vibes with as you
Speaker 3: were saying, Matt, the earlier accusations against the Gates Foundation.
Speaker 3: It returns to the idea that obscenely wealthy people are
Speaker 3: in some sort of cabul to engage with law scale
Speaker 3: population control, and the concept there also arrives at the
Speaker 3: idea of removing the ability to think right. Similar with
Speaker 3: or similar to, I should say, fluoride poisoning conspiracies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we know that there are provable aspects of this,
Speaker 3: such as the lead poisoning hypothesis. I don't think it
Speaker 3: was on purpose, but lead exposure plausibly led to jeez,
Speaker 3: plausibly created some crimes. It's scary stuff, you know, It's
Speaker 3: not coming from a clear blue sky. Maybe the most
Speaker 3: important thing to remember is that wealthy people are no
Speaker 3: more intelligent than the average person. That's the assumption of
Speaker 3: these conspiracies, the assignation of some sort of grand chess
Speaker 3: Master Kissinger level four D chess. It's just I don't know, man,
Speaker 3: Most people are the same everywhere you go.
Speaker 5: I just think in general, it's yeah, to your point,
Speaker 5: then you're right. People are just a little more straightforward
Speaker 5: than that.
Speaker 2: It's a weird thing because this does feel like a
Speaker 2: It's not an altruistic thing. Let's not pretend anything about that.
Speaker 2: This is a for profit company that is making a
Speaker 2: thing that is going to make lots and lots of money,
Speaker 2: and has been making lots of money since. By the way,
Speaker 2: I think twenty eighteen is around the first time I
Speaker 2: remember hearing about Appeal when it was associated with avocados
Speaker 2: and NBC was talking about it, and everybody was like,
Speaker 2: it wasn't even a big deal. Nobody knew, nobody really cared.
Speaker 2: It was just, oh, here's a way to preserve a
Speaker 2: couple of different types of produce a little bit longer
Speaker 2: with this coding. But in the end it feels like
Speaker 2: a good thing. It is a good thing. I think,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think Bill Gates is trying to kill everyone.
Speaker 4: I think that's probably the most likely scenario.
Speaker 2: By the way, did you guys did you hear? According
Speaker 2: to Vanity Fair and Melinda Gates his own words, well,
Speaker 2: the main reason she divorced Bill was because of his
Speaker 2: work with a guy who had an island. Ooh know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about? She names names, She says, like,
Speaker 2: because one of the reasons, one of a myriad number
Speaker 2: of reasons that she divorced Bill is because of his
Speaker 2: work with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 4: Yeah from earlier, Yeah, jeff from earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's from March of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: I had not heard that, Matt.
Speaker 3: That's wild pretty recent. The foundation continues, though, because we
Speaker 3: have to realize at that financial threshold, the institution acquires
Speaker 3: a life of its own right, so such that a
Speaker 3: Bill and Melinda could pass away and a Bill and
Speaker 3: Melinda Foundation could theoretically soldier on. After intense research, the
Speaker 3: three of us could find no actionable intelligence indicating that
Speaker 3: appeal was part of a grand scheme to poison, sterilize,
Speaker 3: or dumb people down via preservation methods, just like the
Speaker 3: eradication of communicable disease. It appears that the Foundation itself
Speaker 3: was it was donating to things right, It wasn't necessarily
Speaker 3: leading research. What most likely happened is someone went into
Speaker 3: a boardroom and pitched an idea and someone said yes, right,
Speaker 3: and the Foundation therefore assigned some money to it. But
Speaker 3: we like a face on our villains. We like someone
Speaker 3: that we can look at when we have a problem.
Speaker 3: It's weird because I love that you were pointing out, Matt,
Speaker 3: how we had the appeal technology as a civilization back
Speaker 3: in what did you say twenty eighteen?
Speaker 2: Twenty eighteen is when I first read about it. I
Speaker 2: think maybe it's been around for longer than that. But
Speaker 2: James Rogers is the guy's name who created appeal and
Speaker 2: then it got backed by at least you know, the
Speaker 2: Gates money, and that was a while ago.
Speaker 3: And it is an iteration on a theme. We're going
Speaker 3: to pause for a word from our sponsors, and then
Speaker 3: when we come back, we're going to learn some weirder
Speaker 3: stuff about fruit preservation, produce preservation, that goes far, far
Speaker 3: far before Bill Gates ever clicked a mouse clicked at
Speaker 3: a window. What is our best? Bill Gates stroke.
Speaker 4: Looked out, O wind, there we go.
Speaker 3: We've returned. Here's the truth. People have been coating produce
Speaker 3: with artificial protective layers for like a thousand years minimum.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's look at apples as a great example. In
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen, a piece in The Atlantic by Julia Phillips
Speaker 5: pointed out that apples that you pick right from a
Speaker 5: tree are you know, dirty. I mean, anything that grows
Speaker 5: out of the ground's gonna gross out of dirt. It's
Speaker 5: gonna and you have a little dirt on it. They
Speaker 5: are often scarred, pock marked. They're out there in the nature.
Speaker 5: There might be worms, there might be you know, animals
Speaker 5: taking a little bite or whatever. Most plants are able
Speaker 5: to house organisms when they're left to their own devices
Speaker 5: in the wild, you know. But also like for the
Speaker 5: most part of the animals that are eating these things,
Speaker 5: or if they're growing wild, they're not exactly the same
Speaker 5: as like the American consumer in terms of like their
Speaker 5: expectation of perfection.
Speaker 2: Very true, there's also something to think about here with apples.
Speaker 2: If an apple falls from the tree on which it
Speaker 2: was grown and then hits the ground. Yes, it could
Speaker 2: be dirty. Yes, you might not even use that in
Speaker 2: the you know, the bushels of apples that you're collecting.
Speaker 2: But when do you pick the apple? When is the
Speaker 2: apple fresh and ready and ripe to be picked and
Speaker 2: then sold. That is a whole other question we're going
Speaker 2: to get into here, because when if you pick it
Speaker 2: at the right time, it is almost ripe enough to
Speaker 2: be on the shelf.
Speaker 3: But the right time, yeah.
Speaker 2: Just don't ripe enough to make it on those trips.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So again, you want to use something like this technology
Speaker 2: like appeal to keep the apple safe and long enough
Speaker 2: and worm free until you can get it right at
Speaker 2: there at time and then send it off.
Speaker 5: It's sort of like taking a steak off of the
Speaker 5: grill before it's done cooking, because it's going to continue cooking.
Speaker 5: It's like timing is everything. And I saw a really
Speaker 5: interesting interview with Neil de grass Tyson or he was
Speaker 5: speaking to Anthony Bourdain who posed this notion to you know,
Speaker 5: to the grass Tyson that seemed to kind of blow
Speaker 5: his mind, which usually it's the other way around in
Speaker 5: terms of minds being blown. But Bourdain said that food
Speaker 5: in general and throughout history, it's it's all about getting
Speaker 5: it at the perfect.
Speaker 4: Level of decay. Yeah, like everything is decaying.
Speaker 5: And then like when you find the quote, even the
Speaker 5: word ripe is often used to refer to like corpses,
Speaker 5: because it is a measure of level of decay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ethylene concentration. If you think about a banana,
Speaker 2: the reason why the color change on the outside, it
Speaker 2: is this cool little signal to let the user of
Speaker 2: said banana to know when it's time. Same to do
Speaker 2: with the squishiness of that banana. It's time to eat
Speaker 2: this thing now. But it's not really for that. That's
Speaker 2: the that's the banana naturally decaying and let you know,
Speaker 2: letting loose some of these chemicals that break down the substances.
Speaker 2: That's why it smells good. That's why it tastes good.
Speaker 3: It's the advertisement to the rest of the natural world.
Speaker 3: Eat me, come here, Yes, let's me spread my seeds, yes,
Speaker 3: and poop the seeds.
Speaker 4: Suctive, It's true.
Speaker 3: It's true. Also, unless we slutshame produce here. There there
Speaker 3: is also there is also a fascinating thing with ethylene
Speaker 3: that will get into later. We need to understand there
Speaker 3: is a reason that certain fruits in particular will accelerate
Speaker 3: the ripening process, or the entropy. That's what we're dancing around,
Speaker 3: the entropy of other pieces of the natural world. Folks
Speaker 3: try to preserve this. By folks, I mean humans. The
Speaker 3: first US patent for coating fruits with wax. It dates
Speaker 3: back to nineteen twenty two in the United States. It's
Speaker 3: a mixture of your old school paraffin, wax and kerosene.
Speaker 3: It's made by a guy named Ernest Brogden, and absolutely
Speaker 3: no one thought it was weird that it was spraying
Speaker 3: fruit with kerosene. They were like, right on, man, now
Speaker 3: I can have apples a little later. No, I can
Speaker 3: have some pears that are not immediately going bad.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the thing too.
Speaker 5: If you buy stuff like that fruit and vegetables from
Speaker 5: your local farmers market or from like a farm stand
Speaker 5: or whatever, and you're not used to doing that, they're
Speaker 5: gonna go bad in a day or so. You know
Speaker 5: they're gonna go bad in just a couple of days.
Speaker 5: And that might be surprising to some people who are
Speaker 5: used to only buying fruits and vegetables from like a
Speaker 5: giant conglomo you know, groceries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most fruits do this on their own. They manufacture
Speaker 3: or generate their own protective covering. It's a it's a
Speaker 3: talcum esque powder made of fat crystals. That's why, like
Speaker 3: to our earlier example, when you're picking apples from your
Speaker 3: proverbial tree, they look all pock marked and scarred and
Speaker 3: a little bit dusty. Even if you can't find a
Speaker 3: source of dust, they're generating that covering. It's similar to
Speaker 3: how chicken eggs need to be refrigerated in, as you said,
Speaker 3: a conglomcose store if you purchase them from there. But
Speaker 3: if you purchased chicken eggs from a guy who just
Speaker 3: grows chickens, you don't have to refrigerate them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they're better, Boy, are they better? Like I'm
Speaker 5: sorry not to be that guy, but they do taste different.
Speaker 5: They've got a different color. There's just a vibe to
Speaker 5: them that feels much better. And I, you know, I
Speaker 5: do my best to buy the nicer eggs, I guess
Speaker 5: from the grocery store or the brown kind of quote
Speaker 5: unquote cage free ones. But we even know that those
Speaker 5: situations are not what they seem. You know, the notion
Speaker 5: of cage free. It's sort of like loaded like it
Speaker 5: actually means sure, they're not like in like sharing a
Speaker 5: single cage with like hundreds of chickens. But they're also
Speaker 5: not just like roaming the wild, you know, hills, like
Speaker 5: foraging on grain or whatever.
Speaker 2: Let's also put out here, we're talking about this kerosene
Speaker 2: wax mixture that was applied to the exterior of fruits
Speaker 2: to theoretically preserve them a little bit longer there, and
Speaker 2: they make their own essentially protective coating. Many fruits do,
Speaker 2: and vegetables many of them even have a protective coating
Speaker 2: like a peel or you know, an exoskeleton of sorts,
Speaker 2: like a banana, like an avocado like something like that.
Speaker 2: But that isn't always sufficient to prevent oxidation. And again,
Speaker 2: some of those natural Again, I keep using ethylene concentrations
Speaker 2: because one of the things I looked at, I think
Speaker 2: Pharmisen one of the things they talked about ethylene a lot.
Speaker 2: And as you said, Ben, we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: ethylene gas in a second, because that stuff is dangerous
Speaker 2: in my opinion. But the oh, where was I going?
Speaker 2: Matt you were going somewhere. We were going to talk about.
Speaker 2: One of the other big problems that we've had with
Speaker 2: produce is humanity's attempts to prevent pests from eating all
Speaker 2: that fruit. We're talking about stuff that's on the outsides
Speaker 2: of the fruit, something like an orange. Well, you spray
Speaker 2: some of that stuff down with pesticides, at least historically humans,
Speaker 2: and a lot of that stuff is so dangerous and
Speaker 2: bad for us, even though we have to trust the
Speaker 2: FDA is saying the concentrations are whatever it is, that's
Speaker 2: safe for us. It's fine, sure, sure, but there are substances,
Speaker 2: dangerous substances that have been sprayed on our produce for decades.
Speaker 2: And I would say, gentlemen, we grew up eating a
Speaker 2: lot of that pest aside on our fruits and bench oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look how we turned out. Not great?
Speaker 3: Ah, we're doing all right.
Speaker 4: Joke.
Speaker 3: Also, we grew up in the time where the FDA's
Speaker 3: rationale was something like, spray whatever you want on the
Speaker 3: surface of the produce. It has a peal. You just
Speaker 3: peel off the orange. Yeah, peel you know.
Speaker 2: Or you're gonna wash it. Duh, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are they gonna do use lemons? S Are
Speaker 3: they fancy?
Speaker 4: This is America? Oh I love lemons. Do you guys
Speaker 4: have like a hardcore policy on washing your produce? Yes?
Speaker 2: I wash it every every goal piece, even if it
Speaker 2: says we washed it three times.
Speaker 4: You're good smart. It was just interested in your a
Speaker 4: stance on this.
Speaker 3: I use water when I wash it.
Speaker 2: Ooh that's a hot take.
Speaker 4: That wait way to hire as you're plumbing, jesezu.
Speaker 3: This so the concept of a peel the company, right,
Speaker 3: not the concept of a peel on a piece of produce,
Speaker 3: the brand a peel as a threat. It went viral
Speaker 3: on social media for a couple of reasons, and one
Speaker 3: of the primary reasons is the visibility of the sticker,
Speaker 3: which is actually EPI peel. That's the sticker people were
Speaker 3: looking at. And it's kind of similar to how folks
Speaker 3: would allege that Nabisco was some sort of flagship of
Speaker 3: a Freemason based Illuminati cabal because of the little stamp
Speaker 3: on the Oreo cookies or the you.
Speaker 4: Know, there's kind of a seal. Yeah, yeah, I've never
Speaker 4: really examined it very closely. Is it nefarious?
Speaker 5: And it's it's it's literally a thing you would stamp
Speaker 5: on a cookie to make it distinctive.
Speaker 3: But the idea is uh. The The argument here is
Speaker 3: that one could, if one has the right perspective, immediately
Speaker 3: identify conspiracy. The problem is, real conspiracies don't advertise themselves.
Speaker 3: Real conspiracies don't have a big symbol that says, hey,
Speaker 3: look at me, I'm doing evil things. Real conspiracies hide themselves,
Speaker 3: just like the monopolization of food. Shout out to Dole,
Speaker 3: Shout out to Nestle, Shout out to kelen Nova right,
Speaker 3: shout out to those guys who buy Kelenova recently.
Speaker 5: Oh it was now that was your story from Strange News?
Speaker 4: Was Mars Mars?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, shout a little family outfit than Mars Corporation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mom and pop.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go ahead and quickly say exactly what appeal is.
Speaker 2: And I think we can use cucumbers, even though it's
Speaker 2: not the best example because appeal has mostly been used
Speaker 2: so far, at least in places like Tescos on different
Speaker 2: types of oranges like mandarins and avocados specifically. But in
Speaker 2: the United States, they ran tests with this substance, this
Speaker 2: coating on cucumbers, and guys have you ever bought a
Speaker 2: hothouse cucumber that is wrapped in a really tight plastic wrapping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's illegal for you to ask me that.
Speaker 4: It's like shrink crap.
Speaker 2: Whenever I'm buying cucumbers for like my son and I,
Speaker 2: I will buy that specific type of cucumber. It doesn't
Speaker 2: matter where it's from. I look for the one that's
Speaker 2: basically plastic wrapped, and I don't think twice about it.
Speaker 2: I go, oh, that one's got to be fresh, super fresh.
Speaker 2: It's wrapped in plastic, and I chop it all up,
Speaker 2: send it all the way with my son to school,
Speaker 2: and I consume a bunch of it myself. Well, this
Speaker 2: appeal is just a coating. It would be a plasticless coating,
Speaker 2: which sounds good to my ears that you spray onto
Speaker 2: that cucumber, And it's made up of mono and diglycerides,
Speaker 2: which are those same fatty acids that create the natural
Speaker 2: coatings that most fruits and vegetables have. Yeah, so theoretically
Speaker 2: appeal is just a little extra natural coating, but it
Speaker 2: is manufactured vegetable fruit based mono and diglycerides.
Speaker 3: That's true. It also brings us to another part of
Speaker 3: the conversation. It is dangerously tempting to see a sticker
Speaker 3: on a thing, whether that be an apple, a cucumber,
Speaker 3: a banana and avocado, and immediately assume, Hey, I saw
Speaker 3: the sticker. I am included in this conspiracy. I am
Speaker 3: somehow read on. But to be clear, there are produce
Speaker 3: production conspiracies at play. They're not the kind of things
Speaker 3: you see advertised with a sticker. We have to talk
Speaker 3: about ethylene gas, the chemical name C two H four.
Speaker 3: It's a naturally occurring thing. It's what ripens fruit, what
Speaker 3: encourages uh to Anthony Bourdain's earlier point, the entropy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can also use ethylene gas in a Uh,
Speaker 2: you can introduce ethylene gas to produce in an environment.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Hey that's my son. Hey hey, he's behind me.
Speaker 2: He's excited.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: We're talking about fruits and vegetables. Writer, how much do
Speaker 2: you like those cucumbers we get, I won't wish if
Speaker 2: you salted, and how like good? They feel like they're
Speaker 2: like perfect? Thank you buddy. He left me hanging, no
Speaker 2: high five.
Speaker 3: That's okay, legend, absolute legend.
Speaker 2: So the ethylene gas is something you can do artificially.
Speaker 2: You can introduce that to Let's say you've got a
Speaker 2: truckload of I don't know, what's something, guys, bananas.
Speaker 3: Sham my truck of bananas. What am I gonna do?
Speaker 2: Well, you put it into you dropped that giant container
Speaker 2: or whatever, all those containers of bananas into a room.
Speaker 2: Then you release ethylene gas, and what that will do
Speaker 2: is artificially ripe in those bananas. But guess what, guys,
Speaker 2: ethylene gas doesn't penetrate all the way into the center
Speaker 2: of that delicious banana. What it does is it makes
Speaker 2: the exterior nice and ripe, to make it look like
Speaker 2: the bananas ready to eat, even though the inside says, oh, guys,
Speaker 2: i'd need another like five to seven days.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, one.
Speaker 5: Thing I noticed I was looking into some of this
Speaker 5: stuff was reports of people saying that they don't think
Speaker 5: fruit smells anyway anymore. And I think that is directly
Speaker 5: as a result because Matt, you had mentioned the ethylene
Speaker 5: that was naturally produced and the ripeness and the entropy
Speaker 5: and all that. That's where the smell comes from, That's
Speaker 5: where the taste comes from. If these things are being
Speaker 5: like artificiently ripe and somewhat, which totally makes sense. They
Speaker 5: would feel and react and smell and tastes differently, have
Speaker 5: a different texture.
Speaker 4: It's not cool.
Speaker 3: Well, it is different. I appreciate the point you're making there.
Speaker 3: Know about the smell versus the I guess, the mass
Speaker 3: market smell versus the farmer's market smell. That's something a
Speaker 3: lot of people in the US can differentiate from.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because the ethylene is the thing that makes
Speaker 2: it right. Well, we just talked about like that smell
Speaker 2: comes directly from the breakdown, and if the inside being
Speaker 2: broke down down.
Speaker 4: Then it's going to get a smell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fixing the outside of the house without repairing
Speaker 3: the interior. That's what's happening. And we see Also this
Speaker 3: is pro tip by the way, a fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 3: this is why you can accelerate the ripening of another
Speaker 3: fruit by sticking it in a paper bag with a banana.
Speaker 3: Tomatoes also exhibit a lot of eminy, I should say
Speaker 3: a lot of ethlenes. So you can put a tomato,
Speaker 3: buy something, and it will ripe in more quickly. If
Speaker 3: you have bananas that seem to be going bad at
Speaker 3: a cartoonish rate, you might have some tomatoes, buy them.
Speaker 3: Just check on that part. It's true, it's a pro tip.
Speaker 3: But scientists have known about this mechanism for more than
Speaker 3: I guess, technically in the West more than a century,
Speaker 3: but I would say more than several thousand years because
Speaker 3: people figure this out pretty quickly. The produce industry has
Speaker 3: leveraged this in fascinating problematic ways. We always say it
Speaker 3: here in English, one bad apple. It turns out the
Speaker 3: one over ripe apple emitting a lot of this gas.
Speaker 4: That's what spoils the bunch.
Speaker 3: That's what that's what's happening. There is science behind it.
Speaker 4: Love that did not know. I was today years old.
Speaker 5: I didn't know the banana trick either, Ben, But that's
Speaker 5: this is all good info. But man, I we talk
Speaker 5: a lot too about, like you know, artificially engineered seeds
Speaker 5: and things like that, and this just feels like an
Speaker 5: extension of that, you know, and like you know, the
Speaker 5: idea is it's not in the best interest of these
Speaker 5: big corporations for the fruit and the vegetables to be
Speaker 5: in their most natural state, because their priorities are more
Speaker 5: in how long can we hold onto these before we
Speaker 5: have to cut our losses.
Speaker 4: Now that's a big deal. I always think about that
Speaker 4: when I go into a grocery store.
Speaker 5: I'm like, how is this giant pile of avocados not
Speaker 5: just rotting?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 5: And sometimes they are, And I wonder what the spoilage
Speaker 5: rate for things like that are. And they're obviously people
Speaker 5: crunching numbers that are trying to increase those stats in
Speaker 5: their to their benefit.
Speaker 2: Because I want to bring up one other way that
Speaker 2: fruit can be artificially ripened. So say you you ship
Speaker 2: some stuff from Ecuador, it gets to the United States,
Speaker 2: gets to a shipping facility, and it's not ripe yet,
Speaker 2: it's not ready to go out. Another way to do
Speaker 2: it is to use calcium carbide, which it produces essentially
Speaker 2: a similar gas, not the same type of gas. I
Speaker 2: think it's called acetylene gas. It's kind of like ethylene gas,
Speaker 2: but not quite the same. And what goes in welding torches, Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: crash the job, but use of it for this process
Speaker 2: has been banned at least in the United States and
Speaker 2: in several other countries, but not in some uh. And
Speaker 2: it does the same exact thing where you get that
Speaker 2: exterior ripening, but the interior just isn't ready yet.
Speaker 3: And it's important that we we mentioned this because so
Speaker 3: much goes into the stuff that you run into in
Speaker 3: your grocery store, folks. Perhaps one of the most dangerous
Speaker 3: conspiracies is this. There is a concerted effort afoot to
Speaker 3: make sure that you ignore the human cost of growing
Speaker 3: these things, of bringing them to you across the planet
Speaker 3: out of season in season. There is no proving conspiracy
Speaker 3: on the behalf of appeal or epipeal to sterilize people.
Speaker 3: There's no conspiracy to make you dumber other than the
Speaker 3: conspiracy that already existed, which is to make you ignore
Speaker 3: the human cost of these violent ends.
Speaker 5: Here here, And I think we maybe didn't mention one
Speaker 5: of the more I don't know easily dismissable. I think
Speaker 5: one could argue TikTok conspiracy theories here. The actual like,
Speaker 5: this is a piece of fruit that is fully made
Speaker 5: of some sort of polymer, and people, you know, there
Speaker 5: are videos of people like saying, look, I found this
Speaker 5: plastic piece of fruit in my order from the grocery store.
Speaker 5: Though I don't know, maybe it happens, maybe some slip in.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's a concerted effort for this, But
Speaker 5: what do you guys.
Speaker 3: Think, What does it taste like?
Speaker 2: The rubber? There are allegations that bananas, watermelons, a bunch
Speaker 2: of other types of fruits show up, people cut into
Speaker 2: them and show on these you know, TikTok or Instagram
Speaker 2: videos whatever it is cutting into the thing, and it
Speaker 2: does look like the meat of the watermelon is made
Speaker 2: of something else, or it is watermelon like and it's
Speaker 2: the right color, but it's not the right texture. And
Speaker 2: I would pause it that these artificial ripening techniques are
Speaker 2: one of the reasons that we are seeing an uptick
Speaker 2: in that kind of thing where that banana is not
Speaker 2: ready to eat for like a week or two. It
Speaker 2: wasn't ready to even be picked off of the banana
Speaker 2: plant yet, but the company needed to get that shipment
Speaker 2: out or else there's not going to be enough stuff
Speaker 2: on the store shelves.
Speaker 4: Well, I say this is a perfect example of that.
Speaker 5: This is the truth behind on the surface is just
Speaker 5: this easily clickable conspiracy theory, the idea that the fruit
Speaker 5: manufacturers are replacing the fruit.
Speaker 4: With fake fruit.
Speaker 5: That you know, it's much deeper and more specific than that,
Speaker 5: and rooted in the manufacturing process. But I don't think
Speaker 5: that dole are shipping out prop bananas.
Speaker 3: No, why would they. They'll just buy another country or
Speaker 3: overthrow a government.
Speaker 2: One other minor angle when it comes to that specific
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory isn't really related, but I think we should
Speaker 2: at least mention it here. And that is the fact
Speaker 2: that produce shipments coming in to the United States, so
Speaker 2: produce that the United States is importing are more and
Speaker 2: more being used by cartels and other organizations to ship narcotics.
Speaker 3: Speaking of watermelons, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well, watermelons, green beans, celery squash, holapanio paste, sugar, bananas.
Speaker 2: Really literally think of a shipment of produce, and there
Speaker 2: have been narcotics in vast quantities sent over in shipments
Speaker 2: of this, sometimes packaged separately, sometimes in the vats of
Speaker 2: jalapeno paste, like we're talking bricks of methamphetamine, and you know,
Speaker 2: giant bags of fentanyl or cocaine that has been made
Speaker 2: to look like watermelons, like fake paper watermelons.
Speaker 5: It's comical looking. I'm looking at the pictures right now.
Speaker 5: They look like they're paper maches.
Speaker 3: Do you guys want to know one that didn't make
Speaker 3: the news. Yeah, flower bulbs. There's a there's a huge,
Speaker 3: huge trade for flowers. The floral industry in the United
Speaker 3: States gets a lot of stuff from South and Central America.
Speaker 3: So wow, the you could bust, Well, you could if
Speaker 3: you were a villain, move things via flower bulb shipments
Speaker 3: because it was supposed to be fresh, meaning they get
Speaker 3: some expedited chipping. A couple of people got caught.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll give you an example from Atlanta from August
Speaker 2: thirteenth of this year, twenty twenty four, there was a
Speaker 2: huge shipment of celery that was going to a place
Speaker 2: called what is it Atlanta State Farmers Market in Forestworth Park.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you mentioned this on Strange News.
Speaker 2: Oh perfect. It was methamphetamine and it was packaged with
Speaker 2: the celery just kind of in there, but it was
Speaker 2: separated a little bit. The weird one came when I
Speaker 2: think it was right around that same time, August twenty second,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, there was a story about that the
Speaker 2: watermelons that were packaged that were fake watermelons that had
Speaker 2: a bunch of drugs in them, alongside regular watermelons that
Speaker 2: were meant to go to the store. Now, in both
Speaker 2: of those cases. Unfortunately, the real fruits had to get
Speaker 2: thrown away because they were potentially contaminated right by whoever
Speaker 2: was packaging those drugs. But I don't think I don't
Speaker 2: think this would explain fake looking tasting or fake textured fruit.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, unless there are like fake bananas
Speaker 2: that came through with a shipment along with the real bananas,
Speaker 2: and the fake ones were used to hide the drug
Speaker 2: shipment that went past you know, customs or something, and
Speaker 2: then somehow accidentally one of those a couple of crates
Speaker 2: of fake bananas got in with the real ones. But
Speaker 2: I don't think that happened.
Speaker 5: Aren't they like customs stickers like on those fake watermelons,
Speaker 5: or there's like tape wrapped around them?
Speaker 4: Is that real? Or is that? Like? Man, is that
Speaker 4: fake too? Like?
Speaker 5: I obviously made it pretty far through the the you know,
Speaker 5: the whole inspection process.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, let's do it this way. Have you ever
Speaker 3: eaten a banana only to find that it was methamphetamine?
Speaker 3: If so, write to us Illumination Global Unlimited, Brought to
Speaker 3: you by your friends at stuff they don't want you
Speaker 3: to know. We hope you enjoyed this episode. We can't
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