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, my.
Speaker 3: Name is Nola. They called me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Speaker 4: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: If you are listening to our strange news program the
Speaker 4: evening it comes out, let us welcome you to February third,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five. Guys, we're more than one month into
Speaker 4: the new year.
Speaker 3: How are we feeling old?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that same feeling. It doesn't feel like a
Speaker 2: month should have gone by since the time we celebrated
Speaker 2: New Year. So it's just odd.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, some of us celebrate, some observe some of us.
Speaker 4: A fellow conspiracy realists who are a little bit older
Speaker 4: in the crowd may have taken a nap and woken
Speaker 4: up around eleven forty nine pm December thirty first, just
Speaker 4: to mark the passage of the New year, and then
Speaker 4: went back to sleep. The New Cycle. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 4: was me.
Speaker 3: That was me.
Speaker 4: The New Cycle, however, does not stop. We have so
Speaker 4: much stuff to share with you. We're going to learn
Speaker 4: a little bit about Sasquatch allegations and consequences thereof. We're
Speaker 4: going to talk about some videos. We have to talk
Speaker 4: about some recent dangerous moves in the world of politics
Speaker 4: and in the world of science, as well as the
Speaker 4: realm of spirituality. Before we do any of that, I
Speaker 4: do have to give, perhaps out of the Blue shout
Speaker 4: out to China's rule of law. It's a big problem
Speaker 4: to keep police accountable in any country you visit. And recently,
Speaker 4: you guys, the government of China SmackDown one of their
Speaker 4: law enforcement officers. Did you hear about this?
Speaker 3: Physically gave him a backhand.
Speaker 4: Well, he lost his bonus. The thing is, he's not
Speaker 4: a human police officer. He is a Corgie named Fushi
Speaker 4: and Fuji translates the lucky boy.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, what's the deal? Why are they picking
Speaker 3: on Fuji?
Speaker 5: Right? Right?
Speaker 4: So, what happened to the back of the Blue China? It
Speaker 4: appears that Fuji, who has become an Internet sensation, did
Speaker 4: violate the terms of his employment. He is an explosive
Speaker 4: searching dog. We're not sure the correct term the Chinese
Speaker 4: government would use. Yeah, he's a corky.
Speaker 3: So okay, I guess they're really leaning into the aesthetics
Speaker 3: for their bomb dogs. They're going for the cute factor.
Speaker 3: It would see and say that's a cute dog.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And like a lot of law enforcement there he
Speaker 4: gets a year end bonus, or he would have, because
Speaker 4: you see, just recently he was supposed to be given
Speaker 4: a lavish gift package including Harrying pumpkin soup, dumplings, meatballs
Speaker 4: made of rabbit, some Chinese other Chinese delicacies.
Speaker 3: I would eat all of those things, just saying, you.
Speaker 4: Know, you know what I mean. And now we're going
Speaker 4: to go real quick to euro News with Oman al
Speaker 4: Ya Yai, who tells us that this poor guy, this
Speaker 4: poor officer, did not in fact receive his bonus because
Speaker 4: of his his on the job behavior, which included taking
Speaker 4: naps and peen in his football.
Speaker 5: Bad boy I love all Matt shaking his head right there.
Speaker 3: You're so disappointed. And food is it? Fuji? Yeah? Fui?
Speaker 2: See Officer Meadow who hangs out in my precinct last
Speaker 2: night she decided that she's going to jump on the
Speaker 2: counter and eat half of a frozen pizza before it
Speaker 2: made it way into the oven. The encounter.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah for a big dog.
Speaker 2: Wo is currently incarcerated in dogjail, and she's going to
Speaker 2: be there for the remainder of probably this afternoon.
Speaker 3: Actually met also true. What if Fuji and MoU Dang
Speaker 3: got together? Do you think that'd be fun? That could
Speaker 3: be an Internet sensation of its own, like a crossover
Speaker 3: of viral animals. Hope.
Speaker 4: So justice for Meadow, This for Fuji, who had all
Speaker 4: of their rewards removed confiscated on camera. We're talking about Fujai,
Speaker 4: not not Meadow, who was a US operative.
Speaker 3: They shamed him publicly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know what shame on you, Meadow. You
Speaker 2: were caught red snouted.
Speaker 5: Okay for anyone who doesn't know, Meadow is a fair
Speaker 5: haired dog.
Speaker 2: Yes, so it really was stark, Yes, And I was
Speaker 2: at the I was going grocery shopping. Well, Grandma and
Speaker 2: my son were playing. Oh no, they had no idea
Speaker 2: what was happening.
Speaker 3: Meadow. Deprive your family of a delicious frozen pizza. Snatched
Speaker 3: it right out of the mouth of your child.
Speaker 5: Yeah, with this, With this, uh, you know, we know
Speaker 5: Meadow will make restitution and be a return to her
Speaker 5: position as a valued member of the community.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 4: We are also going to pause for a word from
Speaker 4: our sponsor, and we're going to return with more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we have returned a breaking story. If we could, Dylan,
Speaker 4: please get a breaking news cube.
Speaker 3: Awesome street read all about it.
Speaker 4: Let's get into it. Yeah, let's get into it this way.
Speaker 4: We all remember the seminal American Western Tombstone, right, of.
Speaker 3: Course, also a very popular brand of frozen pizza callback.
Speaker 4: Yes, callback, well done. We also remember, of course, the
Speaker 4: breakout character, the breakout star of Tombstone, Doc.
Speaker 3: Holiday, portrayed by Val Kilmer. He's all of our huckleberries.
Speaker 3: I believe our.
Speaker 4: Good friend Alexis agreed to go by the moniker Doc
Speaker 4: Holiday so long as we only introduced her as code
Speaker 4: name Doc Holiday sometimes Doc when we were hanging out, right,
Speaker 4: and Doc Holiday from Tombstone suffers from what was called consumption.
Speaker 4: Consumption is the street name of that era for tuberculosis.
Speaker 4: Tuberculosis is a very nasty disease, and we often think
Speaker 4: of it as a condition that is relegated to the past. However,
Speaker 4: as we have learned recently and want to report now,
Speaker 4: the United States of America is currently experiencing the largest
Speaker 4: outbreak of tuberculosis in all of this young nation's history.
Speaker 4: And it's happening right now as we record in Kansas.
Speaker 3: Wait, we're in Kansas. I didn't think we were in Kansas, and.
Speaker 4: We're not in Kansas anymore, but we're talking about Kansas.
Speaker 3: It does seem like this is another and a series
Speaker 3: of stories about supposedly eradicated diseases popping up seems a
Speaker 3: little on the scary side. I don't want to be alarmist,
Speaker 3: but didn't we also just discover a new case of
Speaker 3: measles here in Georgia for the first time in decades.
Speaker 4: As well as AVM flu. It's coming back. We have
Speaker 4: to talk about this larger context. Let's drill down to
Speaker 4: the Topeka Capital Journal as well as Esquire, which has
Speaker 4: published a pretty good summation of this. Both sources quote
Speaker 4: Ashley Goss, who is Deputy Secretary at the Kansas Department
Speaker 4: of Health and Environment. Speaking to the Senate just yesterday.
Speaker 4: Goss noted that public health officials have documented sixty six
Speaker 4: active cases of tuberculosis in Kansas City, Kansas since twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, in addition to seventy nine what they call
Speaker 4: latent infections. Most of the cases have been focused in
Speaker 4: a single area in Wyna Dot County, with a handful
Speaker 4: in nearby Johnson County. And the crazy thing is, if
Speaker 4: you go to the CDC numbers, this outbreak dates back
Speaker 4: to twenty twenty one. Apparently they just stopped giving public
Speaker 4: reports on this kind of thing for a while. Now,
Speaker 4: what does this mean for all of us listening tonight?
Speaker 4: It means that, like you said, Noel, these seemingly these infections,
Speaker 4: these diseases that were once thought to be historical footnotes
Speaker 4: or historical horrors, are very real. They're very much in play,
Speaker 4: and we now have to ask, you know, why is
Speaker 4: this happening now? And how can the United States address it,
Speaker 4: especially given all the recent proposed cuts to public health
Speaker 4: and to the funding thereof.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really it's upsetting. Do we know how many
Speaker 2: infections they are tracking like actively?
Speaker 3: We know that they are.
Speaker 4: We know that local medical professionals on the ground are
Speaker 4: attempting to compile at exhaust of list. But it's incredibly
Speaker 4: tough because the recent presidential administration has paused all public
Speaker 4: messaging from the CDC.
Speaker 2: Oh geez.
Speaker 3: And if I'm not mistaken, it seems to be focused
Speaker 3: or the case is largely focused in what's called by
Speaker 3: the CDC and at risk community in a densely populated
Speaker 3: urban area.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and people are attempting to quell public outcry or
Speaker 4: alarmism by noting there's a very low risk of infection
Speaker 4: to the general public in these communities. However, tuberculosis is
Speaker 4: caused by bacteria. It's caused by Micobacterium toulosis, and it
Speaker 4: spreads through the air when someone actively infected coughs or
Speaker 4: speaks too close to you, which may remind some of
Speaker 4: us of a thing that happened just a few years
Speaker 4: back and continues today. It rhymes with bovid.
Speaker 2: Mmmm. Hey. And speaking of guys, do you mind if
Speaker 2: we throw in another little thing that's happening with the
Speaker 2: Department of Health and Homeland Security or whatever it's called
Speaker 2: Health in Human Services.
Speaker 3: I think that's still Oh, we must, we must.
Speaker 2: It's not Homeland Security. Sorry, I see HS. And that's
Speaker 2: what I think about. There was there was a very
Speaker 2: recent story before or maybe during the spending freezes then
Speaker 2: all the chaos that's kind of happening on the American
Speaker 2: political front. Health and Human Services announced that they were
Speaker 2: going to provide a five hundred and ninety million dollars
Speaker 2: grant injection, if you will, into Maderna to develop a
Speaker 2: vaccine specifically or vaccines, the same mRNA vaccines that you
Speaker 2: for COVID, this time for bird flu. And it's this
Speaker 2: weird place that we're in that we're kind of talking about,
Speaker 2: hinting at where we are unsure as the public and
Speaker 2: as people who are consuming the news on whether or
Speaker 2: not that kind of money is still going to get
Speaker 2: injected into a company like Maderna and whether or not
Speaker 2: that research is going to happen. But it is a
Speaker 2: bit I don't know. It weirds me out knowing that
Speaker 2: there's over half a billion dollars going from the government
Speaker 2: to Maderna for bird flu.
Speaker 4: Right because it's a private entity, and I want, Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're going to explore that larger context as well. We
Speaker 4: do have to point out before anybody gets too spooked
Speaker 4: by this, there is a vaccine for tuberculosis. It is
Speaker 4: not commonly used in the United States, and we do
Speaker 4: know quite a bit about I like the phrase consumption.
Speaker 4: We do know quite a bit about it because of
Speaker 4: its historical it's historical villainy. You know you are at
Speaker 4: a higher risk of tuberculosis if you travel to countries
Speaker 4: or regions of the world where TV is common, or
Speaker 4: if you live and work in settings like prisons, nursing homes,
Speaker 4: elder care facilities, homeless shelters. Obviously, if you hang out
Speaker 4: with someone who has active tuberculosis, or if you have
Speaker 4: weakened immune systems due to health conditions or medications, you
Speaker 4: may be taking Why are these notes important? That last one,
Speaker 4: that last footnote there is crucial because a lot of
Speaker 4: people right now have a weakened immune system due to
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen and they may not be aware of.
Speaker 3: Long COVID right after whatever the knock on effects.
Speaker 4: Just so they may not be aware of the full
Speaker 4: consequence of this. Because you can feel better when you
Speaker 4: are not actually better. Please do check this out. Our
Speaker 4: thoughts go out with everybody in Kansas, every honestly everybody
Speaker 4: across the world, because it seems like these infectious diseases
Speaker 4: of old are simply increasing. And I have a question
Speaker 4: for you, guys, is this increased perception of an outbreak
Speaker 4: due to the hazards of modern civilization. Is it due
Speaker 4: to better reporting methods or are we looking at a
Speaker 4: genuine rise in infections of various things across the board.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a little weird because tuberculosis, as you said,
Speaker 2: is a bacteria based disease, and a lot of the
Speaker 2: things we've been nervous about or hearing a lot about,
Speaker 2: have been viral infections, right, So fighting it is a
Speaker 2: little different. Preparing for it is a little different. And
Speaker 2: you know, with tuberculosis, every kid theoretically gets a BacT
Speaker 2: for that when you're coming up. That's one of those
Speaker 2: things that's in the you know, if you think about
Speaker 2: the MMR and all these other things that you get
Speaker 2: when your child is coming up. As an American, if
Speaker 2: you've got healthcare, they recommend all these vaccines to you,
Speaker 2: and this is one of them. It reminds me of
Speaker 2: the time when anti vaccination prior to COVID nineteen was happening,
Speaker 2: right when that was very popular, and there were these
Speaker 2: pocket outbreaks of things like tuberculosis and other diseases that
Speaker 2: were eradicated. But they're very small usually and taking care
Speaker 2: of pretty quickly, so it does hope. It does feel
Speaker 2: like that's kind of what this is an isolated incident
Speaker 2: in one place to me, at least.
Speaker 4: That would be the hope.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: We know that last year, in twenty twenty four, the
Speaker 4: US saw around eight seven hundred cases of tuberculosis, and
Speaker 4: we're pulling these stats from the CDC. We know that
Speaker 4: tubercular has been steadily declining at least in the US
Speaker 4: since the nineteen nineties. However, rates have been increasing troublingly
Speaker 4: enough over two thousand and one to twenty and twenty
Speaker 4: three slight lull in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five baby rull the dice. The problem with tuberculosis is
Speaker 4: it's not a bacterial infection that just you know, makes
Speaker 4: you poop or need to drink more water, have a
Speaker 4: bad time. It can kill people and.
Speaker 3: Just really quickly. You know, you had mentioned been the pause,
Speaker 3: the you know, government mandated pause on mass communications from
Speaker 3: the CDC, mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services,
Speaker 3: and you know that is meant to be temporary while
Speaker 3: you know, the new administration installs a new head of
Speaker 3: HHS and that is potentially going to be our fk Junior,
Speaker 3: Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who, as you know, a bit
Speaker 3: of a sordid past in his perspective on certain vaccinations.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, whatever your personal beliefs are about vaccinations,
Speaker 3: I think we can all agree that some of them
Speaker 3: are pretty important. And he has also, you know, done
Speaker 3: some slightly dubious, no more than slightly dubious financial dealings,
Speaker 3: in depriving people of HPV vaccine in an efforts to
Speaker 3: enrich himself. There was some sort of a case against
Speaker 3: merk the pharmaceutical company that produces this drug, and he
Speaker 3: essentially benefited from it. And I just wanted to point
Speaker 3: out that his cousin, Caroline Kennedy recently published a pretty
Speaker 3: scathing open letter describing him as unfit for the job
Speaker 3: and as being a predator and talking about his past,
Speaker 3: you know, dalliances with drug addiction and how he's describes
Speaker 3: him as a dangerous attention seeker with dangerous views on vaccinations,
Speaker 3: and describes him someone who's unfit to be the nation's
Speaker 3: health secretary. So I just thought worth mentioning that with
Speaker 3: these kinds of things on the rise, it does seem
Speaker 3: like it would be great to have someone in charge
Speaker 3: that believes in science.
Speaker 4: That's all yeah, And that's I think a salient point there, Noel,
Speaker 4: because again, what we're seeing here, the reason we're bringing
Speaker 4: this into our Strange News program now is because these
Speaker 4: kinds of infections, any kind of communicable disease, it doesn't
Speaker 4: really vote, it doesn't really practice a border necessarily, except
Speaker 4: for apparently foot and mouth disease in the Darien Gap
Speaker 4: check out our series on that. Instead, what it shows
Speaker 4: us is there is tremendous advantage to having someone at
Speaker 4: the watchtower, someone who can see the overall lay of
Speaker 4: the land, the forest that is comprised of the these
Speaker 4: various outbreaks. And it's safe and easy and dismissive maybe
Speaker 4: to hold these very limited things and say nothing will
Speaker 4: go wrong because it's not affecting you right now. However,
Speaker 4: we do have to flag this kind of stuff because
Speaker 4: if there is not a larger scope possible to monitor
Speaker 4: this stuff, then they can quickly these infections can quickly
Speaker 4: become a true health crisis, and no one knows when
Speaker 4: that will stop or how to build sort of a
Speaker 4: medical firebreak for it. Right now, as as we speak,
Speaker 4: the tuberculosis cases in Kansas will hopefully be contained. Our
Speaker 4: thoughts go out to everyone who is struggling with this.
Speaker 4: It does paint a larger contact. And we'll just tease
Speaker 4: this for a moment. What happens if the US becomes
Speaker 4: Balkanized the way Putin and Alexander Dugan always wanted it
Speaker 4: to be. In foundations of geopolitics? What happens if a
Speaker 4: state succeeds. We hear this all the time again, just
Speaker 4: to tease it's happening again, you guys, there's something moving
Speaker 4: on the ballot over in California for California, one of
Speaker 4: our favorite states, to secede from the US in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty eight, just a qulsome fear. I don't think it's
Speaker 4: gonna happen. Do you guys think it will happen?
Speaker 3: Ever, it takes a lot, right, I mean, what's the
Speaker 3: mechanism in place for doing something like that?
Speaker 4: There is none, and I think so there is no
Speaker 4: legal mechanism to secede. It only happens via force, really
Speaker 4: and without consent from the federal government. But the pickle
Speaker 4: of it is the bag of badgers here is that
Speaker 4: you can put anything on a ballot in a democracy
Speaker 4: if you wanted to say all Frisbees will be replaced
Speaker 4: with case ideas and that will be the law of
Speaker 4: what's a fun state Delaware.
Speaker 5: Then everybody at Dell State, right, everybody at Delaware could
Speaker 5: be totally on board with voting.
Speaker 4: For a thing, and then the courts could smack it down.
Speaker 4: So again, to sort of reassure all our fellow listeners here,
Speaker 4: we don't think states will succeed. Forces in Texas have
Speaker 4: certainly tried and will likely try again in the near future,
Speaker 4: but for now it seems like it will not work. However,
Speaker 4: the news can be confusing. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 4: that we do this program every week. Even your local
Speaker 4: ice cream truck may come under suspicion in these chaotic times.
Speaker 4: With that, we're going to pause for a word from
Speaker 4: our sponsors and will return with more strange news.
Speaker 3: And we have returned and been the perfect tease for
Speaker 3: a pretty bizarre story that on its surface is you know,
Speaker 3: kind of offbeat and a little bit light, but it
Speaker 3: sort of speaks to so much larger issues, first and
Speaker 3: foremost being the widespread proliferation of misinformation on social media.
Speaker 3: Viral posts on various social media platforms identified a Las
Speaker 3: Vegas ice cream truck with an admittedly law enforcement adjacent
Speaker 3: theme as being a vehicle belonging to Immigration and Customs
Speaker 3: Enforcement or ice. It led to the owner of the truck,
Speaker 3: Billy Settle Myers, a former mechanic who went into you
Speaker 3: actually built the truck and designed it and gave it
Speaker 3: this kind of law enforcement vibe as a way of
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's a little odd. I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 3: but he did.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 3: Seems like his heart was in the right place. He
Speaker 3: felt that there was a need for a feeling of
Speaker 3: safety around ice cream trucks. You know, this being a
Speaker 3: trusted ice cream truck, and even potentially folks seeing his
Speaker 3: vehicle from a distance in traffic might be more likely
Speaker 3: to drive safely, you know, in certain neighborhoods where the
Speaker 3: ice cream truck would be roaming, which is of course
Speaker 3: the kind of areas where there would be school children
Speaker 3: walking home from school every day. This is what he
Speaker 3: had to say about this case, Ice and Border Patrol
Speaker 3: don't use trucks from nineteen eighty five. The name of
Speaker 3: his company is ice Cream Patrol. A person posted on
Speaker 3: social media video of Settle Meyer's truck driving into a
Speaker 3: neighborhood with a caption, please be on the lookout for
Speaker 3: ice cream trucks. They play music to get people to
Speaker 3: come outside. This is actually so sick. Other people reposted
Speaker 3: this image with other captions including, you know, warnings about
Speaker 3: impending mass raids and deportations and of course with the
Speaker 3: way things are going with the new administration, these are
Speaker 3: very legitimate fears, and so it it. You know, I
Speaker 3: can understand why people might assume this, but as with
Speaker 3: the fires in Los Angeles, it's just so easy for
Speaker 3: this kind of misinformation to spread and for people to
Speaker 3: repost it instantly as fact. And it just points out
Speaker 3: once again how important it is to do your own
Speaker 3: research because it put this man in jeopardy, you know,
Speaker 3: at risk, because ICE is not a very popular agency,
Speaker 3: and they are beginning to appear, as you know, a
Speaker 3: very aggressive enforcement wing of an administration that is not
Speaker 3: is openly very you know, unkind in rhetoric and in
Speaker 3: policy to immigrants and know, legal or illegal or otherwise.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes they get kind of lumped up into the same
Speaker 3: bucket and treated whatever their legal status might be. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot, a lot of folks very very upset
Speaker 3: about the heightened kind of temperature of this rhetoric that
Speaker 3: could potentially put immigrants who are here very legally at
Speaker 3: risk alongside folks who are here potentially illegally.
Speaker 2: I bet that ice cream truck gets a lot of
Speaker 2: business rolling up and down you know, the Vegas Strip
Speaker 2: life for real, just like oh ice cream? Yeah, I
Speaker 2: imagine a lot of people going for it.
Speaker 4: I mean, we understand the fear too, right, because that
Speaker 4: is this is occurring during the time of great and
Speaker 4: not unvalid paranoia. You know who hasn't heard an ice
Speaker 4: cream truck and thought, yeah, I'll get myself a treat,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I still I don't know
Speaker 4: about you guys. I barely even eat ice cream, and
Speaker 4: I still get excited just to hear one roll down
Speaker 4: the street.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It's such a percible, spontaneous human opportunities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well, Settlemyer, I had this to say. I
Speaker 3: kind of feel like a target. People have to stop
Speaker 3: and realize with social media, how many people are going
Speaker 3: to see their video and the repercussions from it are dangerous. Possibly, thankfully,
Speaker 3: of all the wonderful customers I have in this neighborhood.
Speaker 3: They came to my defense and I really appreciate that
Speaker 3: a lot. And again to your point, Bent, it is true.
Speaker 3: Last week, as of our recording of this episode, the
Speaker 3: actual ice arrested about twelve hundred people across cities in
Speaker 3: the United States, including Chicago and Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: And Atlanta and Atlanta we talked about that in part
Speaker 4: two of our episode on the Darien Gap.
Speaker 3: Please, that's absolutely correct. There are, however, no indications of
Speaker 3: these types of arrest taking place at that scale in
Speaker 3: Las Vegas, and a lot of the social media posts
Speaker 3: indicating that this truck was a checkpoint indicated some sort
Speaker 3: of checkpoints and there are none of those two be
Speaker 3: found in the Las Vegas Valley. So, you know, I
Speaker 3: think it speaks to as we as we're saying, misinformation
Speaker 3: spreading wildly, you know, on social media and across the
Speaker 3: internet being so important, as I was guilty of with
Speaker 3: the with the fire buckets thing, so easy, especially in
Speaker 3: a time of heightened paranoia and concern and your heart
Speaker 3: being in the right place, to just repost something like
Speaker 3: this or talk about it on a podcast. It's just
Speaker 3: more important than ever just to do your vetting and
Speaker 3: double check your sources and make sure that this stuff
Speaker 3: is real, lest you put an agency like the the
Speaker 3: Los Angeles Fire Department in harm's way. You know, people
Speaker 3: who are trying to do good work, or an individual
Speaker 3: who's just trying to sell some ice cream. I'm just
Speaker 3: an ice cream man, That's what he said. So moving
Speaker 3: on to an interesting story for me, because I just
Speaker 3: watched the film The Taking of Pellam one two three,
Speaker 3: which is a fabulous this nineteen seventies heist movie about
Speaker 3: a subway train that is hijacked in New York City
Speaker 3: by some nasty dudes who hold the passenger's hostage and
Speaker 3: are asking for a million dollars from the city government.
Speaker 3: If they don't get it, and the time that they've allotted,
Speaker 3: they are going to execute a passenger every minute on
Speaker 3: a minute.
Speaker 4: Past and soft note for everybody just now hearing about
Speaker 4: this film, which I believe we mentioned on a previous recording,
Speaker 4: I sure did a million dollars was a lot more
Speaker 4: money back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. It's just a great film if you're into
Speaker 3: like things like Dog Day Afternoon and you know, just
Speaker 3: I don't know. The seventies are such a golden era
Speaker 3: for the cinema verite kind of stuff, and it is
Speaker 3: a heist movie, but it's very funny, it's very exciting.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel dated at all, and it just really
Speaker 3: kind of made me focus in on this story is
Speaker 3: it's not about a hostage taking situation, but it is
Speaker 3: about a situation that maybe happens more than we might realize.
Speaker 3: A New York City R train from the New York
Speaker 3: MTA was stolen and taken for a joy ride very recently.
Speaker 3: The theft was discovered Saturday, as we record, by the NYPD,
Speaker 3: and according to the police, MTA employees told officers that
Speaker 3: people had entered an unoccupied train that was being stored
Speaker 3: on a type of track that isn't connected to the
Speaker 3: main you know, transit lines. It's sort of like a
Speaker 3: I don't know, like a waypoint, sort of like a
Speaker 3: little hub where out of service trains are kept. It
Speaker 3: was operated for only a short distance, and the assailants
Speaker 3: also broke numerous train car windows. They also blacked out
Speaker 3: on board cameras using sharpies, which I thought was an
Speaker 3: interesting move. I haven't really heard about that one, but
Speaker 3: you know, you heard you see it in the heist
Speaker 3: movies A lot of times they use like spray paint,
Speaker 3: but Sharpie's works just as well. There is a video
Speaker 3: shared on social media that shows them inside the conductor's cabin,
Speaker 3: which is of course where the throttle is for the
Speaker 3: train that operates it allows it to speed up and
Speaker 3: slow down. There are, of course, as you'll see in
Speaker 3: taking a PELM one two three if you check it out,
Speaker 3: safeguards in place to keep collisions from happening, to keep
Speaker 3: trains from exceeding certain speeds, et cetera. While they're doing this,
Speaker 3: one of the assailants or I guess the suspects, is
Speaker 3: seen operating the controls, while another one sits on the
Speaker 3: very front open door of the train with his legs
Speaker 3: dangling over the tracks, with a third person standing behind him.
Speaker 3: All of this is really echoes Pellam one two three,
Speaker 3: except there aren't any automatic weapons and no one was
Speaker 3: on board the train, thankfully. The NYPD said the R
Speaker 3: train was left secured on what's called a layup track
Speaker 3: at the seventy first Avenue station in Queens, and again
Speaker 3: that is something that's used for storage of trains when
Speaker 3: they're not in service. The R train number was ninety
Speaker 3: one oh eight. It was left secured but unattended by
Speaker 3: MTA personnel. It would seem that the thieves had knowledge
Speaker 3: of operating these vehicles accessing them. It would appear that
Speaker 3: it was accessed us using MTA keys. So is it
Speaker 3: an inside job? Again? Tell them one, two, three yo
Speaker 3: where they stolen. It doesn't seem like a crime of opportunity.
Speaker 3: It's really odd how much forethought must have gone into
Speaker 3: this for something as boneheaded as a joy ride. Transportation
Speaker 3: expert Robert Paswell told CBS News they obviously knew something
Speaker 3: about both where the train was and how to operate
Speaker 3: the train and how to get the keys. Once you
Speaker 3: start it, he says, it's just a simple throttle, and
Speaker 3: you use the throttle to move it and to slow
Speaker 3: it down. The social media video that I mentioned also
Speaker 3: does show the train being operated at a super high
Speaker 3: rate of speed, though briefly and authority say the intruders
Speaker 3: were wearing black masks and black clothes and they did
Speaker 3: cover the camera lens. As I mentioned, Once MTA workers
Speaker 3: determined that the train had moved by monitoring, you know,
Speaker 3: they've got like a blip on these maps for every
Speaker 3: train in the system. They went to the Queen's train
Speaker 3: Yard to check it out and analyze its black box data.
Speaker 3: This after the suspects had fled the scene in order
Speaker 3: to figure out where it had been taken for how
Speaker 3: long you know, if it had gone elsewhere beyond where
Speaker 3: it was left. One last thing, An MCA spokesperson said,
Speaker 3: New York City Transit is working with the NYPD on
Speaker 3: their investigation of this incident. And as I mentioned at
Speaker 3: the top, this isn't the first time this happened. In
Speaker 3: September of last year, two teenagers tried to operate unoccupied train,
Speaker 3: also in Queens and ended up crashing it. They damaged
Speaker 3: the car. They were seventeen. They were charged with reckless
Speaker 3: endangerment and criminal mischief in the incident. It does also
Speaker 3: appear that this case is being treated similarly as a
Speaker 3: case of reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. What do you
Speaker 3: guys think about that sort of a pointless heist, Like,
Speaker 3: what do they gain from this? They're dressing like they're
Speaker 3: out to steal something, But is there something that we're missing?
Speaker 3: Is there something that they did again very pealam one
Speaker 3: two three, beyond the eyes and knowledge of the MTA
Speaker 3: and the NYPD is this some sort of subterfuge, some
Speaker 3: sort of diversion, so they were like pulling off some
Speaker 3: other crime. My mind boggles at it.
Speaker 4: Guys, possibly as a personal fan of the concept of
Speaker 4: Okham's razor. Sometimes people just take a joy ride, right,
Speaker 4: That's that's the reason why we have that word in
Speaker 4: this language. We we can often assign a larger thing.
Speaker 4: And I do think your your question is incredibly valid there.
Speaker 4: It is quite possible that there were there were other
Speaker 4: factors at play, maybe that are not being reported by
Speaker 4: the media. I would argue, however, that with the information
Speaker 4: we have, it seems that this was a dumb stunt.
Speaker 4: And it further seems that, like you said, the most
Speaker 4: instructive part about this is to realize these kinds of
Speaker 4: situations occur way more often than one might assume.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not any anything to I just I gosh, it
Speaker 3: just seems like a lot of effort to go to
Speaker 3: to find the proprietary keys, to get into this thing,
Speaker 3: to know where it's hanging out, to take it for
Speaker 3: such a brief joy ride, and to be all masked
Speaker 3: up and doing all this haisty stuff. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe you're right, Ben, it is the simplest possibility, you know,
Speaker 3: being the most likely. But Matt, you got anything to add.
Speaker 2: I'm too much of an old man to even consider
Speaker 2: this really, because in my mind, it's something you do
Speaker 2: in the days of social media for clout and for
Speaker 2: to show a video to your friends. That's all. It
Speaker 2: seems like to me.
Speaker 4: Like TikTokers who are walking into people's houses in London
Speaker 4: just to film themselves there with no ulterior motive other
Speaker 4: than getting scores in the dopamine casino.
Speaker 3: Quite possible. Gosh, guys, it didn't even occur to me that.
Speaker 3: I mean, who would have been around to film the
Speaker 3: video other than the crew themselves.
Speaker 2: The heist crew, And that's what they're right.
Speaker 3: Didn't did not even cross my mind. Of course, that's
Speaker 3: what happened. It was a total internet clout fiasco. It
Speaker 3: seems most likely to me. You're right that they did
Speaker 3: it for clout, did it for clicks. But also they
Speaker 3: can't claim it. I wonder where it was posted. I mean,
Speaker 3: it had to have been posted anonymously.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, that's what That's what was happening on TikTok
Speaker 2: with all the kias that were getting boosted for a
Speaker 2: long time there, you would take a video of yourself
Speaker 2: boosting a Kia and that was the exciting thing that
Speaker 2: you got to show off.
Speaker 3: I don't know, nor guys. No, no, you're you're you're
Speaker 3: get off, get right off our lawn. You you kids?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, it does. The CBS News article, by the way,
Speaker 3: just mentioned that the thieves posted the joy ride on
Speaker 3: social media, but I don't have a link to the
Speaker 3: original post. It's been like screen grabbed, so I'm not
Speaker 3: quite sure if they claimed credit for it or if
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously they're still being saw it, you know.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: There there was a comment from a commuter talking about
Speaker 3: how dangerous this could have potentially been for just you know,
Speaker 3: MTA users. Imagine somebody is in front of the train
Speaker 3: right now and they're hanging off and then say the
Speaker 3: train stops, they can fall on the tracks and the
Speaker 3: train would run over them. It would be over social
Speaker 3: media too much of the phone, said another commuter. And
Speaker 3: then they do mention that if you see something, say something.
Speaker 3: NYPD's got a crime stopper hotline one e one hundred
Speaker 3: and five seven seven tips or for Spanish language one
Speaker 3: eight eight five seven piece stop. I think I'm at time, guys,
Speaker 3: I did just want to mention another story really quickly,
Speaker 3: just about search for Sasquatch causing a dude in Canada
Speaker 3: in British Columbia to essentially lose his seeking of alimony
Speaker 3: of spousal support because in his search for Sasquatch he
Speaker 3: went on a camp out trip with an ex girlfriend,
Speaker 3: to which his wife responded with the suing for divorce.
Speaker 3: He also claimed that injuries from subsequent Sasquatch expeditions caused
Speaker 3: him to not be able to work, and therefore claimed
Speaker 3: that he deserved spousal support. The judge, however, indicated that
Speaker 3: with all of this time you're spending searching for the Bigfoot,
Speaker 3: you probably could have spent that time working. Also, in
Speaker 3: court documents, the gentleman claimed to have a above average
Speaker 3: IQ to be quite the smarty pants, and the judge
Speaker 3: also claimed that if you're so smart, these injuries should
Speaker 3: not prevent you from getting like a desk job or something.
Speaker 3: Not to mention the sizeable collection of sasquatch books and
Speaker 3: memorabilia paraphernalia femera that he seemed to possess that you know,
Speaker 3: probably relatively valuable as well, so sort of a silly story.
Speaker 3: But you know, if you're gonna hunt for sasquatch, do it,
Speaker 3: do it on your own time. I guess, don't bring
Speaker 3: the courts into it. Probably not the best move on
Speaker 3: this guy's part.
Speaker 2: Oh you guys, I just heard there's that gathering of
Speaker 2: the in the desert thing that's happening again this year,
Speaker 2: and I think Bakara David Bcaerr is going to be
Speaker 2: there this year. Guy from Expedition Bigfoot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, over the check out our earlier interview with him
Speaker 4: a few years back. What a tree storyteller.
Speaker 3: Not really past the story, No, But if you're ever
Speaker 3: passing through the North Georgia Mountains around about l a j.
Speaker 3: Check out Expedition Bigfoot. It's super cool and worth your time.
Speaker 3: Well that's it for me, y'all. Let's take a quick
Speaker 3: break here, a word from our sponsor, and then come
Speaker 3: back with some more strange news.
Speaker 2: And we've returned, let's get a little doomsday music. It
Speaker 2: is with a heavy heart that I report it is
Speaker 2: now eighty nine seconds to midnight according to the Bulletin
Speaker 2: of Atomic Scientists.
Speaker 3: Well that's no time at all, Matt.
Speaker 2: Eighty nine second, less than a minute and a half. Oh,
Speaker 2: dear gentlemen, what is the bulletin of Atomic Scientists?
Speaker 4: I'm so glad you asked, Matt. The bulletin of Atomic
Speaker 4: Scientists goes back to the idea of doomsday clock, right,
Speaker 4: which was created created in the wake of nuclear weaponry
Speaker 4: deployment what we'll call the atomic age and generally now
Speaker 4: are pal Jack O'Brien. I was talking with him about
Speaker 4: this earlier. He has some strong feelings about the doomsday clock.
Speaker 4: But the bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, I would say,
Speaker 4: is legit because they are performing a public service. They
Speaker 4: want people to know about threats to humanity overall capital
Speaker 4: h humanity from things like nuclear weapons, also things like
Speaker 4: climate chaos, and perhaps increasingly important in these our modern evenings,
Speaker 4: emerging technologies, including so called artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, There you go. Is founded in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five. You can think of the Bulletin of
Speaker 2: the Atomic Scientists and their doomsday clock as the long
Speaker 2: tail regret of the folks who developed the nuclear weapon
Speaker 2: or you know, the hydrogen bomb. You know, it's literally
Speaker 2: Einstein and Oppenheimer and the folks at I think it
Speaker 2: is the University of Chicago who actually developed this stuff
Speaker 2: through the Manhattan Project. And what they do is they've
Speaker 2: got a clock that says, hey, this is how close
Speaker 2: we are to well, at first it was to nuclear devastation,
Speaker 2: to some form of global nuclear catastrophe, but now they
Speaker 2: take into account basically all of the things that humans
Speaker 2: are doing and they kind of tally those together, and
Speaker 2: the clock represents how close we are to destroying ourselves
Speaker 2: essentially or the planet entire eighty nine seconds. The move
Speaker 2: is literally one second. It was ninety seconds to midnight,
Speaker 2: And the folks at the bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Speaker 2: are essentially saying, hey, everybody, even a one second move
Speaker 2: at this time is a big deal, and we are
Speaker 2: just signaling that there are unmistakable this is a quote
Speaker 2: unmistakable signs of danger that national leaders and societies are
Speaker 2: failing to change course on. Yeah, just pointing that out there.
Speaker 2: It's happening. It's a quote stark signal because the world
Speaker 2: is already perilously close to the precipice. Isn't that poetic? Yikes,
Speaker 2: Before we get into the reason, like one of the
Speaker 2: major reasons I think this is important to what it's
Speaker 2: something Ben just hinted at let's give a quick update
Speaker 2: on a story that we did in the past on
Speaker 2: the Sodo Lithium Christiane Vite. Oh. This is a series
Speaker 2: of episodes that we put out not long ago about
Speaker 2: a Catholic sect in Peru that had a lot of problems.
Speaker 2: Their leader, Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo was kicked out of
Speaker 2: the group by papal decree as an excite the Vatican side.
Speaker 2: I like, yeah, the Vatican said, hey, you got to
Speaker 2: get out. He was kicked out back in August of
Speaker 2: last year, but the organization stuck around. And the reason
Speaker 2: why we're bringing up is because as of January twenty third,
Speaker 2: as reported by CNN and Christopher Lamb, the Pope has
Speaker 2: officially dissolved the entire Sodolidium Christiane Vite. So the entire
Speaker 2: organization is now dissolved. And as we said in that episode,
Speaker 2: at one point they had around twenty thousand members, and
Speaker 2: you know that had dwindled a bit after all of
Speaker 2: the stuff about them in the news and specifically about Figari,
Speaker 2: and now they're just gone, which is just a weird
Speaker 2: thing to think the Pope can reach out and say, hey,
Speaker 2: this entire thing is now void and you can no
Speaker 2: longer do stuff if there's abuse going on, and it
Speaker 2: seems like, well, maybe if he can do that, couldn't
Speaker 2: he stop abuses elsewhere? Just an excellent question with a
Speaker 2: tip of the old whatever that thing is on his head,
Speaker 2: the seoun.
Speaker 4: Tip of the cone. Yeah, yeah, it's an excellent question.
Speaker 4: And please do check out our earlier work on this
Speaker 4: because it's quite disturbing. It brought up a lot of
Speaker 4: questions for us and our fellow listeners. When we were
Speaker 4: exploring this, what we saw was for brief recap, what
Speaker 4: we saw was this gradation of investigations and bureaucracy bedeviling
Speaker 4: honestly at every step, real results from those investigations. And
Speaker 4: as we had discussed earlier, Fagari went through several different
Speaker 4: iterations of punishment. And when we ended the episode, when
Speaker 4: we ended our exploration, this group was still around. This
Speaker 4: group had not been officially kicked out, and what they
Speaker 4: had already done. We get into the weeds a little
Speaker 4: bit on the concept of lay organizations, meaning organizations within
Speaker 4: Catholicism that are not headed by clergy. We got into
Speaker 4: the weeds of just how ah, I hate to say it,
Speaker 4: how hair splittingly tedious. It seemed to be from the Vatican,
Speaker 4: from the Holy See to figure out how they would
Speaker 4: address these very well proven, very well documented cases of
Speaker 4: a system of abuse. So overall, it does seem to
Speaker 4: be very good news at least that Pope Francis and
Speaker 4: the Vatican made this move. But you know, I remember
Speaker 4: we're talking about this, guys. It's better late than never.
Speaker 4: But also is it not very late for that decision
Speaker 4: to be made. I mean, Matt, do we know what
Speaker 4: may have inspired this dissolution of the group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Pope grewsome balls and said I'm going to
Speaker 2: take action. That's what happened. And we knew, we knew.
Speaker 4: He had balls because of that special chair you have
Speaker 4: to sit in.
Speaker 2: Oh don't. I don't know about those special chairs. All
Speaker 2: I'm saying is, and that's why I think it's important,
Speaker 2: is because this is a positive move for for somebody
Speaker 2: in that high seat to be able to say, hey,
Speaker 2: this is going to be over now. And we've seen, actually,
Speaker 2: this Pope take a couple of actions like that already,
Speaker 2: So hopefully it's a trend that moves towards fixing major
Speaker 2: issues that occur within the church. In organizations attached to
Speaker 2: the church.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it does seem like, with the gravity
Speaker 3: of this kind of stuff and just the nature of
Speaker 3: leadership and the Catholic Church, the too little, too late
Speaker 3: argument is tough because it takes the right person to
Speaker 3: come along and actually make effect change, you know, like
Speaker 3: you have to have a hope that is progressive enough
Speaker 3: and that sees this stuff is important enough to address,
Speaker 3: and you're not always going to have that. So I
Speaker 3: don't think I think it's a very positive thing, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me see it's positive, it is. The question
Speaker 4: is better late than ever. There's also the larger question
Speaker 4: of which I think you're you're you're alluding to so
Speaker 4: excellently here, Matt. The the Solidita is sort of we
Speaker 4: could think of it as a franchise or a spin
Speaker 4: off right of Catholicism overall. The question then becomes for
Speaker 4: a lot of survivors of abuse, what next, you know,
Speaker 4: your holiness? Will will there be will they be similar
Speaker 4: scrutiny and accountability applied to the calls that were coming
Speaker 4: from inside the house more directly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's the hope, right, And with regards to Fagari,
Speaker 2: his attorney reached out to CNN or CNN reached out
Speaker 2: his attorney responded, and the attorney emphasized that Fagari quote
Speaker 2: maintains his innocence and pointed out that he has not
Speaker 2: been convicted in a court of law for the allegations,
Speaker 2: which is another issue we talked about in the show.
Speaker 3: Right, he kind of just got this permanent vacation right
Speaker 3: more or less?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because a lot of parallel court system. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because in a lot of the issues that we're talking
Speaker 2: about here and the potential things for the Catholic Church
Speaker 2: to handle, they would handle them internally and there was
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of it would not be happening
Speaker 2: in a court of law. The hope is that that
Speaker 2: might change again, just hoping.
Speaker 4: There's so much maybe the right word is inertia, maybe
Speaker 4: the right word is momentum, But there's so much internal
Speaker 4: theft that occurs within Catholicism and within a lot of
Speaker 4: spiritual hierarchies of this size, where the first question people
Speaker 4: ask is sometimes not we how do we protect the innocent,
Speaker 4: but first it's how do we protect our institution? How
Speaker 4: do we protect the church? You know, it reminds me
Speaker 4: of for anybody's read the stand by Stephen King. There's
Speaker 4: a moment where the US government decides to cover up
Speaker 4: an outbreak of a very dangerous infection, and one of
Speaker 4: the kind of JSOK guys at the top says, if
Speaker 4: you find something terrible has happened to your institution, which
Speaker 4: is your parent, yes you will, you will address the tragedy,
Speaker 4: but first you cover your parent's body. And that's a
Speaker 4: terrifying thing because it is quite apt in these sorts
Speaker 4: of social dynamics, I would argue.
Speaker 2: I would agree, oh yeah with you there. So, guys,
Speaker 2: jumping back to the doomsday clock and this concept of
Speaker 2: eighty nine seconds to midnight, one of the existential threats
Speaker 2: that humanity faces is a general artificial intelligence man creating
Speaker 2: something that is synthetic, that is smarter than man, that
Speaker 2: is far more powerful than man, and that is connected
Speaker 2: or rather interconnected through various systems that we use for everything.
Speaker 2: That is one of the things that humans have to
Speaker 2: grapple with because that thing could spell our doom for doomsday. So,
Speaker 2: as you're hearing this on Monday, February third, the week before,
Speaker 2: some strange stuff happened. Some strange stuff got announced and
Speaker 2: the way that we exchange money and generate wealth out
Speaker 2: of nothing. That system was rocked a little bit, and
Speaker 2: that's it kind of gives us implications for the future.
Speaker 2: So let's dive in here to the old stock market
Speaker 2: and the I don't know, the race for general artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence and all of this stuff, and the people who
Speaker 2: want to use AI as the way to make money
Speaker 2: and make industry stronger, faster, and more efficient. So if
Speaker 2: you jump to the week before that is the week
Speaker 2: of Monday, January twenty seventh, and to even get to
Speaker 2: that week, we have to go one week prior to
Speaker 2: the week of January twentieth, so we start here. There
Speaker 2: was a massive rally on AI related stocks. Let's say
Speaker 2: that's chip makers. That's folks who are building the giant
Speaker 2: you know, the chat GPTs of the world. So the
Speaker 2: all of these companies, Microsoft, now everybody's kind of embroiled
Speaker 2: in figuring out how to make the data centers, how
Speaker 2: to get the power to the data centers, how to
Speaker 2: make the chips strong enough to make the AI systems function,
Speaker 2: and especially at scale, all of that. On the week
Speaker 2: of January twentieth, there was a huge stock rally because
Speaker 2: incoming US President Donald Trump announced this thing called Stargate,
Speaker 2: Another Stargate, a different stargate, Stargate, a new AI.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's not the movie. Yeah, it's the movie.
Speaker 2: No, it's not the movie. It's also not Project Stargate,
Speaker 2: which was the thing we talked about on this show before.
Speaker 2: This was a new adventure, let's call it a joint venture,
Speaker 2: which essentially was a five hundred billion dollar investment from
Speaker 2: the United States government into companies that are building infrastructure
Speaker 2: for AI. So it's a it's a private sector plan
Speaker 2: to inject half a trillion dollars. And it started out
Speaker 2: with one hundred billion dollars that would be given granted
Speaker 2: for this stuff, and then another four hundred billion dollars
Speaker 2: that would kind of be doled out over time as
Speaker 2: you know, specific subprojects within Project Stargate were we're doing
Speaker 2: really well well. So that was huge. And investors, you know,
Speaker 2: because anybody can just buy stock anybody that wants to.
Speaker 2: You could become an investor in an Nvidia if you
Speaker 2: want to. And boy, howdy have people been investing in Nvidia.
Speaker 3: Holy, it is a massive growth stock.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Up to this point, it's been like, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the hot buys of the past, you know, a
Speaker 3: handful of years.
Speaker 2: Right, specifically because they're building the chips, the computer chips,
Speaker 2: power processors that can function at speed and with enough
Speaker 2: of them connected together at scale to make these these
Speaker 2: things that will eventually be you know, general artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: very likely, but are right now used in these in
Speaker 2: these large language learning models like chat GBT. Well, that
Speaker 2: same week, this startup out of China called deep Seek,
Speaker 2: which is the origins are a bit unknown as a
Speaker 2: private company. Some of the folks involved are known, but really,
Speaker 2: like where are the money's coming from? Where, like what
Speaker 2: they want to do with it? Nobody knows, right, And yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: it's a little hush hush, and we are in this
Speaker 2: giant battle to make the best, fastest, cheapest version of
Speaker 2: this thing so that it can scale the fastest. Right. Well,
Speaker 2: they announced that they have a free AI assistant, a
Speaker 2: new version of their AI assistant that they've been developing
Speaker 2: for a long time that can use less data overall
Speaker 2: at a fraction of the cost of things like chat GPT.
Speaker 3: Well and a fraction of the necessary resources.
Speaker 2: Right passing and power.
Speaker 3: Right, this is all of the narrative, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and guys, by Monday, January twenty seventh, Deep
Speaker 2: Seek in this new AI they just announced had overtaken
Speaker 2: chat GPT and downloads from Apple's app store. So like that,
Speaker 2: like it just happened. It was they announced it, and
Speaker 2: then everybody downloaded it exactly and the big old pot.
Speaker 2: And when that occurred, it caused investors to get really
Speaker 2: afraid because all you know, if you imagine, like the
Speaker 2: big investors, not just individuals, these companies that have these
Speaker 2: these giant pools of money, they bought into Nvidia at
Speaker 2: such scale that a lot of them started scaling back
Speaker 2: just enough because they're not They didn't lose all their
Speaker 2: faith in Nvidia and all these other companies and Microsoft
Speaker 2: and Chat GPT, but they did think, oh, this could
Speaker 2: be the disruptor, the real disruptor, right a little bit.
Speaker 4: They chose a so think of it like a horse race.
Speaker 4: They chose their horse, and their horse was proprietary, closed source.
Speaker 4: And that is the fulcrum of the conversation now. And
Speaker 4: I love that we're getting to this because again, legislation
Speaker 4: as it stands is not equipped to handle or to
Speaker 4: really dress or litigate these sorts of technological breakthroughs, especially
Speaker 4: with everybody. Everybody is kind of playing uno are a
Speaker 4: card game with the pursuit of AGI artificial general intelligence.
Speaker 4: That's sort of the golden goose. That's the rough beast
Speaker 4: slouching toward Bethlehem. As I think was Yates would say,
Speaker 4: what are we learning here? We may be learning that.
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, it's Is it not a little
Speaker 4: bit hypocritical that inoal for some of the proprietary generators
Speaker 4: of llms like open ai to argue that deep seek
Speaker 4: is ripping them off.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, it's an arms race.
Speaker 3: But wasn't there a story that indicated that deep seek
Speaker 3: may well have been trained using some pre existing models.
Speaker 2: There's all kinds of scuttle butt occurring right now about
Speaker 2: that because they're not the only folks in town. Ali
Speaker 2: Baba just announce their own thing that is also cheaper
Speaker 2: and also you know, more efficient and can do all.
Speaker 3: This Baba being massive more like an Amazon kind of right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: PRC's Amazon basically.
Speaker 4: We Also I love arms race because I would say
Speaker 4: where it's it's a race to the bottom of affordability
Speaker 4: and a race to the top of accessibility.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it is.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating because there are very different ways to use
Speaker 2: this technology, reasons to arm you know, either a citizen
Speaker 2: or let's say an army, a navy with this type
Speaker 2: of this type of service. And the whole reason we're
Speaker 2: talking about and why it is kind of an arms race,
Speaker 2: because what if we learned over time when thinking about
Speaker 2: stuff like the Vietnam War, thinking about Afghanistan and the USSR,
Speaker 2: thinking about Ukraine right now and what's going on, the
Speaker 2: expenditure of resources by a large country group in power
Speaker 2: is often the way that country is drained of their
Speaker 2: military might because they have no more resources to put
Speaker 2: into manufacturing the weapons of war that would be used
Speaker 2: to fight. In this case, with this simple announcement and
Speaker 2: then everybody's reaction to that announcement, in Vidia lost in
Speaker 2: a single day five hundred and ninety three billion dollars
Speaker 2: worth of market value.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Matt, I'm sure you saw this is being
Speaker 4: called a Sputnik moment.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly, Like somebody they it's a brand new thing,
Speaker 2: but it's not really a brand new thing, which I
Speaker 2: don't know really, it's not really spending mo. It's a
Speaker 2: I would I would say.
Speaker 4: Well, Sputnik wasn't necessarily, I think, because there was a
Speaker 4: lot of technology leading to that, and that's what's leading
Speaker 4: to deep Seek. And you know, I love that we
Speaker 4: started this part with establishing the somewhat imaginative nature of
Speaker 4: investing in the stock market overall, because we're really quantifying
Speaker 4: faith in the ability of a company, are we not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, it is also weird that in Vidia's
Speaker 2: chips were used to build deep Seek, just the chips
Speaker 2: that were like a couple generations back that take a
Speaker 2: lot less power to function, and there's a couple other
Speaker 2: cool things about that.
Speaker 4: They're a lot less finicky as well because it's proven technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna give you a quote here that
Speaker 2: was in the Reuter's article. Reuter's article is deep Seek
Speaker 2: sparks AI stock sell off in video post record market
Speaker 2: cap loss, And here is a quote from Brian Jacobson,
Speaker 2: the chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. He said, quote,
Speaker 2: if it's true that deep seek is the proverbial better
Speaker 2: mouse trap that could disrupt the entire AI narrative that
Speaker 2: has helped drive the markets over the last two years. Again,
Speaker 2: all that money getting thrown at companies like in Vidia,
Speaker 2: it could mean less and for chips, less need for
Speaker 2: a massive buildout of power production to fuel the models,
Speaker 2: and less need for large scale data centers. Remember we
Speaker 2: talked about nuclear power plants coming back online just to
Speaker 2: fund these data centers, these massive servers that would fund
Speaker 2: these lms. It would, it would, So maybe that is
Speaker 2: why it's a spunding moment, because it would fully change
Speaker 2: all of these long term plans that are that are
Speaker 2: being put in place right now. And who knows. The
Speaker 2: scary thing to me, guys, is that that happened on Monday,
Speaker 2: January twenty seventh. Then the next day Tuesday in Vidio,
Speaker 2: stock rose back up, not fully to where it was,
Speaker 2: but it rose way back up, and then it fell again,
Speaker 2: and then it rose back up a little bit. And
Speaker 2: it does that and people are making fortunes and losing
Speaker 2: fortunes in days time because of human concepts of what
Speaker 2: is going to happen, just people's own nerves about what
Speaker 2: the future holds.
Speaker 4: Right, that's not even counting short selling, that's not even
Speaker 4: counting you know, the various different financial I almost said it,
Speaker 4: all right, the various different financial loop de loops you
Speaker 4: can do. You know it will slide a hand, close
Speaker 4: up magic of trading at the moment.
Speaker 2: And none of it is real money. It's all speculation
Speaker 2: that creates money in money, And dang, guys, if we
Speaker 2: can do that, you could we could literally solve the
Speaker 2: major problems that humanity faces right now.
Speaker 3: I feel you, man.
Speaker 4: I keep coming back to that too. I was I
Speaker 4: was re listening to because I'm actually a fan of
Speaker 4: our show. I was re listening to a conversation we
Speaker 4: had earlier last week about the nature of being a billionaire.
Speaker 4: Things are booming for billionaires right now. You have everybody's
Speaker 4: life is sort of a choose your own adventure paperback
Speaker 4: to give myself a dated reference, And if you're a billionaire,
Speaker 4: you have more choices for your adventures. So why not
Speaker 4: fund sanitation or literacy? Why not fight disease? Things like that?
Speaker 4: To your point, Matt, if this stuff is really as
Speaker 4: fabricated as it does as it does seem to be,
Speaker 4: then we have to ask about the ethical quandaries involved,
Speaker 4: you know, And I love that you're pointing out what's
Speaker 4: happening here. As a disruptor. Right, Imagine a great chess game, right,
Speaker 4: or maybe even think of Chinese checkers where you can
Speaker 4: have multiple players on the same board deep seek. For
Speaker 4: a lot of these folks privately, it's as though a
Speaker 4: cat walked up while you were playing the game and
Speaker 4: just went man at a bunch of the pieces on
Speaker 4: the board. Now what happened to all your careful plans.
Speaker 4: You've evolved a system that is inherently, inherently dependent upon
Speaker 4: the propriety nature of discovery, upon the idea of holding
Speaker 4: that from the greater public right such that it could
Speaker 4: be commodified or monetized. And someone else comes in and says, hey,
Speaker 4: this is a thing.
Speaker 3: We figured out.
Speaker 4: We leap frog the technology a little bit, and we
Speaker 4: made it not only cheaper for us to make, we
Speaker 4: made it open source. So hey, bud, if you've got
Speaker 4: some ideas, just drop by GitHub or whatever and post
Speaker 4: them and then maybe together we can make a better thing.
Speaker 4: If you have already expended a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of your nest egg, right, if you've already gambled on
Speaker 4: the idea that this proprietary stuff will be a faucet
Speaker 4: that you own a piece of, then this is a
Speaker 4: very dangerous thing, even if it ends up being better
Speaker 4: for the world overall. It's just such a contradictory cognitive
Speaker 4: place to be, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I'd like to end with a quote from
Speaker 2: John Mechlin, editor over at the Blotan of Atomic Scientists,
Speaker 2: and it's going to go back to that precipice quote,
Speaker 2: but it's the full quote, and I think this is
Speaker 2: what's most important here. Quote. In setting the clock to
Speaker 2: one second closer to midnight eighty nine seconds, we send
Speaker 2: a stark signal because the world is already perilously close
Speaker 2: to the precipice. A move of even a single second
Speaker 2: should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and
Speaker 2: an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing
Speaker 2: course increases the probability of global disaster. So we are
Speaker 2: literally we're counting in seconds now, guys, to potentially the end,
Speaker 2: not for not for you, not for me, for everybody.
Speaker 2: So just as we're thinking about all this stuff occurring,
Speaker 2: I don't know what we do to increase the positive
Speaker 2: thing and to increase the the hope that we can
Speaker 2: hold in ourselves that stuff's going to get better. But
Speaker 2: we need it, so let's do that.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you we should call Matt. We need Fujai
Speaker 4: on the case, there we go the lucky Chinese Quirgi cop.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm giving sub levity here because I agree
Speaker 4: with you, we need it. Each second is becoming more expensive,
Speaker 4: not only to exist within, but to reverse the course.
Speaker 4: What we're seeing are a wild agglomeration, or is a
Speaker 4: wild agglomeration of factors and aims that often contradict. And
Speaker 4: I keep saying it, but this is an elephant's making
Speaker 4: war situation, and it's very important to remember. If you're
Speaker 4: hearing this, you are the grass Andrew.
Speaker 2: And you're delicious for those elephants. You're so tasty.
Speaker 3: Speaking of this, we.
Speaker 4: Want to hang out with you, folks. Please do come
Speaker 4: check out our upcoming show on air Fest in Brooklyn.
Speaker 4: I can't believe it. We got in. You can check
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Speaker 4: check out our pal Ofira Eisenberg, whom I just love
Speaker 4: and did some great jokes recently. So I'm just talking
Speaker 4: about stuff that stood out to me and made me
Speaker 4: laugh in these times where we need a little bit
Speaker 4: of levity. Matt Frederick, how about.
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