Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
Speaker 1: me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Speaker 1: Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. Uh, this is our This episode reminds me
Speaker 1: of the original Iron Chef. Do you guys remember the
Speaker 1: original Iron Chef? Yes, yes, which is literally translates to
Speaker 1: go kitchen uh uh. Every time the every every time
Speaker 1: the chairman had a it was introducing a theme ingredient.
Speaker 1: The chairman would have this, um, this weird kind of
Speaker 1: vague speech about it, which we're gonna skip because we're
Speaker 1: not Iron Chef, and then the host would host would
Speaker 1: come in like the voiceover guy and extol the virtues
Speaker 1: of whatever this was, whether it was you know, avocados, eels,
Speaker 1: or in this case eggs. So just to do that
Speaker 1: really quickly, Oh the humble egg. Look upon its simplicity,
Speaker 1: you'll discover brilliance. The shape evolved to withstand me read
Speaker 1: precious the material inside a culinary helen of Troy, a
Speaker 1: yoke that launched a thousand dishes, you know, And it
Speaker 1: goes on and on. I'm keeping it short because I
Speaker 1: know I want to make sure I don't bore you out.
Speaker 1: I mean, but eggs, right, we don't think about that.
Speaker 1: We've talked about them in the past. We talked about
Speaker 1: him on a previous a couple of previous segments. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think we're we're not all on the same
Speaker 1: page about eggs, right, or in the same nest about them.
Speaker 1: Like some of us love them, some of us take
Speaker 1: them or leave them. But they're they're fun to cook
Speaker 1: at least, right, and you can do them hundreds of ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just saw on Instagram video on how you can cure
Speaker 1: egg yolks in hot sauce, and then you get this
Speaker 1: like hot sauce jammy kind of solidified egg yolk you
Speaker 1: can spread on toast, which to some people would sound disgusting,
Speaker 1: but I was intrigued. That sounds pretty gross to me.
Speaker 1: I would try, you know what I mean. But I tried,
Speaker 1: Like the kool Aid pickles, too, So my bar is
Speaker 1: very low for what alterna away. Yeah, I think to
Speaker 1: some people just any level of undercooked egg is a
Speaker 1: red flag. And I mean there's good precedent for that.
Speaker 1: You know, we always heard of salmonella, but yet somehow
Speaker 1: we've kind of gotten past that where undercooked eggs are
Speaker 1: like okay or are they well? Also depends on people.
Speaker 1: People would say it depends on the quality of the egg.
Speaker 1: The way of which was weird. And you know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna touch on a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are going to be very familiar to people who raise
Speaker 1: their own eggs or work in uh that particular aspect
Speaker 1: of factory farming, but may not be common knowledge to
Speaker 1: the average person. Right, Like this is weird. It could
Speaker 1: Eggs can be an ingredient, they could be a side dish,
Speaker 1: they could be a main dish. Like you pointed out,
Speaker 1: you can do all sorts of interesting things with them,
Speaker 1: even if they're not tasty things. Uh. And now it
Speaker 1: shouldn't surprise us that eggs have become the source of
Speaker 1: not one, but several conspiracy theories. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: d egg distinction. Uh, We're not talking like bringing bringing
Speaker 1: back you know, dodo eggs. We're not talking about factory farming,
Speaker 1: which is very real and horrific thing. We're talking about
Speaker 1: different theory. It's something that a lot of our fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy realists have asked us and reached out to us
Speaker 1: about recently. Wire eggs. So it's suddenly so expensive, Sorry
Speaker 1: for the pot to get better. What's at the heart
Speaker 1: of the great egg expiracy? Etcetera, etcetera, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts. Yes, you have likely heard about this.
Speaker 1: It's being reported everywhere. There's something wrong with the chickens
Speaker 1: or there's something wrong with the egg. Which one came first?
Speaker 1: It's the immortal question. It's true. Um, that's because eggs
Speaker 1: are in everything or a lot of things, you know,
Speaker 1: as like a binding agent. You know, they're in cakes
Speaker 1: to help kind of you know, solidify the mixture and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff and help it rise and all
Speaker 1: of that. They're absolutely ubiquitous. Just about everyone has at
Speaker 1: least at some point in their life tried an egg. Um,
Speaker 1: so we all pretty much know what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: Culinarily speaking, Yeah, we don't need to spend time explaining
Speaker 1: what eggs are. But if you you got this far
Speaker 1: in your life to where you you listen to a
Speaker 1: show like this and you've never heard the idea of
Speaker 1: an egg honestly, congratulations. I don't know how you mini
Speaker 1: max your stats into that one, but that's amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like like you said, no, eggs are ubiquitous most people,
Speaker 1: probably even before they make a conscious dietary decision like
Speaker 1: I will be vegan or I will you know, uh
Speaker 1: not consume eggs somehow. You probably ate one in childhood
Speaker 1: or it was definitely an ingredient. And egg prices are
Speaker 1: getting Paul, we might need some womp bumps on this eggstreme. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's so weird. For about forty years in the United States,
Speaker 1: egg prices have been relatively stable. That meant that supply
Speaker 1: and demand had kind of been in sync, just like
Speaker 1: a boy band. And they were also um, one of
Speaker 1: the most reliably cheap foods or inexpensive things you could
Speaker 1: buy at the grocery store. You have a emily, you
Speaker 1: need protein, but you can't afford um. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't afford like meat, beef or chicken or whatever. You
Speaker 1: can't buy the chicken, but you can probably swing the
Speaker 1: cost of of the eggs if you don't want to
Speaker 1: eat beans. Another, and and over over the history, even
Speaker 1: since we've been alive, we've seen egg prices fluctuate a
Speaker 1: couple of times, but usually it's something within the the larger,
Speaker 1: bigger picture of the environment that affects the price of
Speaker 1: the eggs, Like when there's a large Avian flu outbreak
Speaker 1: where you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of
Speaker 1: chickens are affected and have to be either killed, you know,
Speaker 1: by these larger factory farms that provide so many of
Speaker 1: the eggs that we that we consume across the world,
Speaker 1: especially in the United States. Um or if there's some
Speaker 1: other environmental factor affecting probably the chickens and not so
Speaker 1: much the eggs, because and that could be something like
Speaker 1: avian flu, right, yeah, I mean, and the eggs certainly
Speaker 1: got its own picture on the old food pyramid. Um
Speaker 1: it is. It has definitely been considered since as we know,
Speaker 1: the impetus for that whole food pyramid thing came from
Speaker 1: kind of economic hardship and the idea of what is
Speaker 1: the most affordable food. So eggs have long been a
Speaker 1: staple food because of their relative affordability. Like you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: M m yeah, and this this also comes with a
Speaker 1: high nutritional value right now. Sometimes, especially in the United States,
Speaker 1: it can be tough to get past the spin of
Speaker 1: different trade groups where when when we're talking about how
Speaker 1: good or bad and actual food stuff is for you, Like,
Speaker 1: it might sound weird if you're not from the US,
Speaker 1: but here in the United States you will you will
Speaker 1: see commercials that are not for a specific brand of anything.
Speaker 1: There for the idea of something like just milk. You know,
Speaker 1: someone's just like, hey, you got milk, and that was
Speaker 1: a whole thing and it was just celebrities with milk mustaches.
Speaker 1: No one questioned it. Remember the eggs song that eggs
Speaker 1: from my head down to my legs, scrambled off fried
Speaker 1: with some bacon on the side. I love eggs. That
Speaker 1: was the thing. I don't know what to do with that.
Speaker 1: All sad it it's gramed, it's salad and scrambled eggs
Speaker 1: at the same time. That's weird. The reason that theme
Speaker 1: song is toss, salad and scrambled eggs is because, um,
Speaker 1: I think the producers or the legal department would not
Speaker 1: allow the theme song to be about mental health. But still,
Speaker 1: I mean, only people with mental health problems eat sauce,
Speaker 1: salad and scrambled eggs. That's I just remember the other
Speaker 1: white meat that was pork. Yeah, yeah, it's so it's
Speaker 1: to me, it's so funny. I love the idea, Like,
Speaker 1: that's such a the also random meats, right, that's such
Speaker 1: a whimsical billionaire thing to do to say, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take out a ton of It's actually on my
Speaker 1: list of things to do as a weird billionaire is
Speaker 1: to take out a ton of ads for something that
Speaker 1: doesn't specifically sell anything. It's just the idea, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like have the Goodyear blimp flying over
Speaker 1: a stadium and the trailer thing at the end of
Speaker 1: it just says, tacos are okay three out of five.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean is forever we go, We'll
Speaker 1: take oh diamonds, check out our diamond episode. Yeah this
Speaker 1: um okay. I think all of us love food episodes.
Speaker 1: And you know, whether you love eggs or whether you
Speaker 1: don't eat them due to like health concerns or due
Speaker 1: to um moral concerns, or whether you're like I am.
Speaker 1: You know the uh and the epitome of the of
Speaker 1: the egg eating human. You know that they do have
Speaker 1: some advantages, and they've been around for a long time.
Speaker 1: They've got nutritional advantages, a lot of bang fear buck
Speaker 1: energy wise, and they have This has been the case
Speaker 1: for so long, decades and decades and decades that eggs
Speaker 1: would become a key part of cocktail economics, right, dinner
Speaker 1: table economics, they we'll call it. When you hear economists
Speaker 1: talking about stuff like the price of a loaf of
Speaker 1: bread and you know, a jug of milk and a
Speaker 1: dozen eggs, they're usually again here in the States, they're
Speaker 1: usually quoting the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which talks about
Speaker 1: something called the consumer Price Index or cp I, which
Speaker 1: is a good measure of inflation, or one of the
Speaker 1: most at least understandable and bandied about measures of inflation.
Speaker 1: It's really interest interest thing to me. The c p
Speaker 1: I is basically, what do you need to bake a
Speaker 1: simple cake? Yeah? And what are the prices of all
Speaker 1: those things? It's weird to think about it. That's just
Speaker 1: the way I see it in my head. Uh, But yeah,
Speaker 1: the CPI is something we could go super deep into
Speaker 1: if we wanted to. Guys, we want to do that
Speaker 1: today might be another bag of badgers. Honestly, yeah, it
Speaker 1: feels okay, okay, how is the price of badgers faring
Speaker 1: these days? If that may be so bold, there's solid
Speaker 1: investment there there there. You know zoologists, you're calling them
Speaker 1: the first crypto nice crypto zoologists. Yeah, you got it,
Speaker 1: you got it. All right, Well, let's let's talk. Let's really,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how much it costs to buy some
Speaker 1: eggs right now, because I joked a while ago. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the episode, but I joked
Speaker 1: about how the price of eggs were just fine, everything's
Speaker 1: fine with the price of eggs, and it was, like,
Speaker 1: I want to say, end of last year. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. Whoops, I mean how much egg cost
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars tinted egg? Michael uh so in yeah,
Speaker 1: in the price of a dozen eggs. Let's step back
Speaker 1: for a second. First, you need to know that things
Speaker 1: are different from how they were in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: In the egg world, not all eggs are created equal,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, you can now if
Speaker 1: you have the gumption and the means, you could buy
Speaker 1: an ostrich egg, which is a very weird flex but
Speaker 1: you know, you do you uh you can. You can
Speaker 1: also see all kinds of organic or um free range
Speaker 1: or pasture raised eggs. It's very very different stuff. Eggs
Speaker 1: that you don't have to refrigerate because they still have
Speaker 1: their they're covering their casing on. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: eggs that you get farm fresh you don't have to
Speaker 1: refrigerate like like that. Actually have my house a nice
Speaker 1: little like um, what's it called ceramic egg holder, and
Speaker 1: my my partner gets fresh eggs from from a friend
Speaker 1: and we will just leave them out. And that's a
Speaker 1: thing that used to see that a lot more in
Speaker 1: the olden days. You know, people leaving like butter out
Speaker 1: on the counter and also you know eggs, and so
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to I think we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: some of the eggs eistential differences between different types of eggs.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you it doesn't get better, Paul, You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to. You might have uh worn off the keys
Speaker 1: on the wamp womp button here, but in in we
Speaker 1: know that if you were buying a dozen large Grade
Speaker 1: A eggs as rated by the U S D A H,
Speaker 1: then in most cities that would that would run you
Speaker 1: about eighty four cents. Can I ask you, Ben, what
Speaker 1: where do all the Grade B, C and D eggs go?
Speaker 1: Did those go down the bad egg shoot? Like I
Speaker 1: really wanting? But I mean, you know, the implication is
Speaker 1: that there are other grades of eggs, and are those
Speaker 1: perhaps used as ingredients and not sold on their own
Speaker 1: like in pre made stuff. Is this something we should investigate?
Speaker 1: I want to know where all the sub A eggs
Speaker 1: end up. I think they go into UM kind of
Speaker 1: secondary products, so like egg liquids maybe, or dried egg products,
Speaker 1: so they go to astronauts. Sorry astronauts, you've got the
Speaker 1: crappy freeze dried eggs, but thanks for being one of
Speaker 1: the best parts of humanity. I think they're also the
Speaker 1: um U s d A has a way of rating
Speaker 1: eggs similar to Willy Wonka, where you know they got
Speaker 1: most of their ideas from UM. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they go. I think it's rare that you would find
Speaker 1: like a dozen Grade B eggs, and it's really good
Speaker 1: marketing to walk into a store and say, well, I
Speaker 1: buy Grade A in your spot on. Then they do
Speaker 1: go into liquid eggs, which is referred to as breaking
Speaker 1: stock and also for baking pre made baking mixes and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, or more assembly line baking kind of
Speaker 1: situations like pre made cakes and cookies and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So they're not like bad. They just have thinner whites
Speaker 1: and less symmetrical yolks. But they're not there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with them, they just aren't as pretty. What kind of
Speaker 1: stop body shaving eggs did not approve? I also just
Speaker 1: want to add, but even speaking of all the varieties
Speaker 1: of eggs, you even in some regular grocery stores you
Speaker 1: can buy like quail eggs or duck eggs. They are
Speaker 1: really yummy and interesting, you know, for things like tartars
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But you are seeing them more often,
Speaker 1: not just in specialty stores. I found that kind of interesting. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it's a different world from the eighties, right uh.
Speaker 1: And if you fast forward to two thousand, you'll see
Speaker 1: the exact same garden variety dozen grade eight eggs now
Speaker 1: cost one cents, so they've gone up seven cents, and
Speaker 1: you know, for a lot of people, especially in three
Speaker 1: you would say seven cents. When's the last time I
Speaker 1: had I even like held a nickel in two pennies
Speaker 1: in my hand? Why do we even still make pennies,
Speaker 1: you know, which is a great question. Uh, so that
Speaker 1: businessmen can use them for power moves on there. That's
Speaker 1: finely as pennies. But but let's talk about that. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about the the average price from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: to two right, And that doesn't mean that that was
Speaker 1: just the price the whole time and it just rose
Speaker 1: a little bit to get up to that number. The
Speaker 1: price fluctuated, right, and you just imagine it like a
Speaker 1: little wave that's going along the price of eggs, just
Speaker 1: depending on what's going on. So the price of eggs
Speaker 1: between nineteen eighty and two thousand hit a high of
Speaker 1: one dollar thirty two cents and a low of sixty
Speaker 1: eight cents. So that's that whole supply demand thing kind
Speaker 1: of giving, pushing and uh, moving around a bit until
Speaker 1: you end up with that average of cents. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there would so there were similar conversations, to be clear,
Speaker 1: between night and two thousand, Like in that twenty year
Speaker 1: inter interval, there were conversations where people were being if
Speaker 1: you'll pardon me a little bit chicken little about the
Speaker 1: price of eggs, and they would hit, you know, this
Speaker 1: high of a dollar thirty two and people would say,
Speaker 1: what does this mean? You know what I mean, the
Speaker 1: end is nigh. Let's look at another like, you have
Speaker 1: to take the long view with this. So two thousand,
Speaker 1: the price of those eggs again, not the fancy eggs,
Speaker 1: not not the fancy eggs with the nice drawings on
Speaker 1: the on the packaging and all that, all that white
Speaker 1: eggs right with with the like styrene containers that are
Speaker 1: going to outlive civilization. Yes, so like yeah, I love
Speaker 1: thinking about that. So um, those eggs continue to increase
Speaker 1: in price, and over time steadily we're looking at a rise,
Speaker 1: not just sort of a you know, like an up
Speaker 1: and down graph like a heartbeat. Uh. They go from
Speaker 1: cents in two thousand to two dollars and nineties seven
Speaker 1: cents in September. Unt your earlier point, Matt. That's when
Speaker 1: another variable intervened. Avian flew a bird flew outbreak right,
Speaker 1: oh man. No, no one knew how COVID nineteen would
Speaker 1: impact the world comparatively a much less substantial flu. But
Speaker 1: not to diminish that people died from Avian flu. You know,
Speaker 1: there were definitely fatalities and also it certainly put a
Speaker 1: hitch in in some economics as well with this sole
Speaker 1: egg situation. And you may remember that outbreak I believe,
Speaker 1: is it H five N two talked about. I can't
Speaker 1: remember if that was the outbreak. It's a deep cut yeah,
Speaker 1: H five into Uh. This was found throughout the Midwest
Speaker 1: US in UM chicken and turkey farms. Wow, meadows really
Speaker 1: excited about that. Okay, no leave it in UM. But
Speaker 1: but we're gonna get into it today. Because avian flues
Speaker 1: are very common, unfortunately common. There are outbreaks, not on
Speaker 1: a yearly basis necessarily, but I don't know. I can't
Speaker 1: put a number to it because I wouldn't be accurate,
Speaker 1: but I'd say on an average of like every five
Speaker 1: years you hear about a major avian flu outbreak of
Speaker 1: some sort. Yeah, And part of that goes into you know, uh,
Speaker 1: factory farming practices, right, like the the the closeness, the
Speaker 1: the constant over medication. I mean, the way creatures are
Speaker 1: bread It's it's really gross. And don't they don't they
Speaker 1: feed them with like crushed up egg shells as well?
Speaker 1: It doesn't that go into the tap and that's bad,
Speaker 1: I think in terms of long you know, long term
Speaker 1: health effects you know, to the birds. Let's get these
Speaker 1: birds prions. So prices remain stable then, but they're at
Speaker 1: a new normal. The days of a d four cents
Speaker 1: egg cartons are gone and prices are stable. But there's
Speaker 1: another bird flu outbreak like you alluded to, Matt in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. Uh, there's another peak in twenty twenty due
Speaker 1: Judy COVID pandemic. But a few years ago everything seemed
Speaker 1: to change. October, the average price of a dozen eggs
Speaker 1: in US cities hit three dollars and forty two cents nationally,
Speaker 1: and in some places people saw a dozen eggs cost
Speaker 1: four dollars or more. So this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that would even give Patrick Bateman from American Psycho
Speaker 1: a pause. You know, he probably had someone go to
Speaker 1: the grocery store, but even even he would have thought,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. Yeah, I kind of imagine Patrick Bateman
Speaker 1: maybe being in the same boat as a Lucille Blue,
Speaker 1: maybe having zero idea how much anything costs outside of
Speaker 1: like a roll Ac, you know, or a Rolls Royce.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean it's a lot. But my mind
Speaker 1: immediately does also say three bucks or something that's relatively
Speaker 1: stable and lasts you quite a long time. Isn't like insane,
Speaker 1: But maybe that's me speaking out of school. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is more the sticker shock of
Speaker 1: the rise, but not necessarily the actual number, because you know,
Speaker 1: buy a dozen eggs, it'll last me easily a week,
Speaker 1: if not more. I sometimes worry that I I will
Speaker 1: have eggs in my fridge I have gone bad because
Speaker 1: I don't use them enough. So I'll sometimes just by
Speaker 1: half a dozen eggs. I do that too. I'm right
Speaker 1: there with you, guys, because I don't personally uh I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'll eat pretty much anything, but I don't personally
Speaker 1: love eggs, which I think is why I'm good at
Speaker 1: cooking them. I have sort of this dispassionate objectivity. Uh
Speaker 1: So I'll do a Gordon Ramsey move with it. But
Speaker 1: you can admire their versatility. Well that's a good yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good way to check someone's culinary chops,
Speaker 1: just to to get them to scramble some eggs or
Speaker 1: make a quick omelet. And if they can't do that
Speaker 1: and they overcook them or make them rubbery, then they're there.
Speaker 1: There's chefs I've eaten some of the uh the best
Speaker 1: eggs of my life quite recently. But you know how
Speaker 1: it is, like, Okay, you go to a function and
Speaker 1: and someone says, oh, and there's an omelet bar. That's
Speaker 1: always a disappointment to me. It's like, really, I could
Speaker 1: have eaten before I came, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do with this omelet at seven pm? Whatever?
Speaker 1: I think? I think the omelet bar flex is just
Speaker 1: that you have a human who's there to cater to
Speaker 1: your every omelet whim. You want some mushrooms in it,
Speaker 1: some Parma ham perhaps, you know, the world is your omelets,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, can I just can you just give
Speaker 1: me a play like with some ham and just throw
Speaker 1: the mushrooms on it? Man, I'm not I'm not trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, hassle you here. I will shoot you. I
Speaker 1: don't want your court of steps. Get out of here
Speaker 1: really quickly. You can mentioned court of Stupps. I just
Speaker 1: heard an ad for some sort of mushroomy supplement product
Speaker 1: and they very proudly advertised that court Acceps were one
Speaker 1: of them. I don't think they got the memo about
Speaker 1: the last of us. I wonder if that company is
Speaker 1: doing damage control, and they're like, please do not mention courts,
Speaker 1: do not mention the Last of Us and the same
Speaker 1: breath as our product. You gotta get your body used
Speaker 1: to him now, so later, like like the dread pirate
Speaker 1: Roberts and Princess Bride, like accumulate or acquire a tolerance.
Speaker 1: But also also, you know what, I'm gonna say this,
Speaker 1: since I was, I was giving eggs a hard time. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe Last of Us is a lot of anti court
Speaker 1: ACEPS propaganda because what like, look, humans are really crap
Speaker 1: in the bed, So what what if there were some
Speaker 1: sort of fungal hive mind that was a little bit
Speaker 1: more civilized, you know, like it wasn't all rampaging, zombie,
Speaker 1: ever expanding kind of thing, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like what if this is just like take over one
Speaker 1: country and then it's like, hey, also I've been a
Speaker 1: you know, plausible fusion and space power. The reason why
Speaker 1: cort acepts doesn't work in humans is because of our temperature. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it. There's been recent reporting in major news outlets
Speaker 1: about how fungus is starting to be able, Certain types
Speaker 1: of fungus, certain species are and now able to live
Speaker 1: in warmer environments. And that's the whole thing we talked
Speaker 1: about recently on Strange News about how fungus is spreading
Speaker 1: in the soil and to different places where it shouldn't be. Guys,
Speaker 1: it's coming. Are you saying there's fungus among us? Yes,
Speaker 1: and it will be inside us and in our mouths
Speaker 1: and when we go in to kiss people, it's going
Speaker 1: to come out of our mouths into their mouths. Tight
Speaker 1: all right, you know, no, I'm not here to king shame.
Speaker 1: Uh So, like the there's also just talking about fungal
Speaker 1: intelligence are not quite but related. You know, this stuff
Speaker 1: is so intelligent. Slime mold in this amazing experiment was
Speaker 1: just dropped into a a system with no connecting dots
Speaker 1: and it recreated the most efficient way to connect those dots,
Speaker 1: which was Japan's rail system. Like it just it just
Speaker 1: figured it out. And it doesn't have a brain or
Speaker 1: anything like a brain. It's amazing than a brain. It's
Speaker 1: a hive mind forward to the future. And and so anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what discourage you there. Let's talk more about cortescepts
Speaker 1: in the future. To took a little eggs scursion. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: one of us so I mean, look, it's still it's
Speaker 1: historically shocking, right when when you see from this span
Speaker 1: of forty years you see this stability all of a
Speaker 1: sudden go out the window. Why are eggs incredibly expensive? Uh?
Speaker 1: In December of last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Speaker 1: found egg prices had jumped by in just one year
Speaker 1: October to October. And then UH found another statistic from
Speaker 1: STATISTICA that looked at December to December and found egg
Speaker 1: prices rose by sixty So whatever acceleration is happening is
Speaker 1: happening such that it's gaining speed between October November December.
Speaker 1: And so there's kind of you know how like oil
Speaker 1: has different grades, and there are different ways to rate
Speaker 1: average oil prices futures, right, futures. Yeah, and the the
Speaker 1: idea of like sweet crude versus you know, other stuff
Speaker 1: that's not as cool as sweet. Definitely not as sweet,
Speaker 1: but just as crude. Uh, there are there's something like
Speaker 1: that in the world of eggs. Midwest large eggs are
Speaker 1: are kind of the benchmark for eggs sold, you know,
Speaker 1: by the dozen and shells, and they hit five dollars
Speaker 1: and forty six cents per dozen, meaning that you could buy. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you could buy a king's ransom of eggs
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties for for what one doesn't cost
Speaker 1: you today, even adjusting for inflation, pandemic supply chains, bird flu, etcetera.
Speaker 1: This was unexpected. Sorry, moving on, so here we are here,
Speaker 1: we are I know we're going along with the setup,
Speaker 1: but this is worth it. In the past few weeks,
Speaker 1: there have been tons and tons of social media posts,
Speaker 1: including viral TikTok videos, that have claimed to discover a genuine,
Speaker 1: vast conspiracy to raise the price of eggs or eliminate
Speaker 1: consumers ability to create eggs on their own. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they've accused everyone from huge food companies to a course
Speaker 1: can uh, to big Pharma, and to of course, reigning
Speaker 1: conspiracy King Bill Gates. Uh you know he held that
Speaker 1: title play well, he holds that title on our show, right.
Speaker 1: Um we if you have a better title for Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: please let us know. Uh conspiracy and I heard radio
Speaker 1: dot com. But that's our question today. Could there be
Speaker 1: more to the story than the good old economic conspiracy
Speaker 1: of supply and demand, which I positive is a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that and more after a quick word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, Big Egg. We're back. I love the
Speaker 1: idea of big egg. Oh yeah, that's the biggest, the
Speaker 1: biggest of egg, the Dodo egg. Great reason, Like Matt,
Speaker 1: I gave you a hard time for it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's bring back the Dodos. We can, we can, we
Speaker 1: can end world hunger those giant eggs. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: you just had a couple of Dodos giant egg That's
Speaker 1: all you need. That's all you need for the whole week,
Speaker 1: Giant Toto eggs and the flintstones. And here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy. All right, there's mainstream theories, conspiracy theories, you
Speaker 1: can call them, about eggs. One of the one of
Speaker 1: the main proponents of this is uh, Fox News correspondent
Speaker 1: and the heir to the Swanson food empire, Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson blames the Biden administration and says the mass
Speaker 1: media apparently everyone except for Fox News, UH is ignoring this.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want us to to misquote the guy,
Speaker 1: so went ahead and pulled like an excerpt, kind of
Speaker 1: the thesis statement of what he's been saying on his program.
Speaker 1: Here's what he says about He said he says the
Speaker 1: problem is with the chicken feed, and he's basing I
Speaker 1: think a lot of his claims on those social media
Speaker 1: posts we mentioned. He says, some of them, some chicken
Speaker 1: farmers have noticed something odd. Their chickens aren't laying eggs
Speaker 1: or as many eggs. And these chickens don't appear sick
Speaker 1: with avian flu. They're not dying, they're still alive. They're
Speaker 1: just not producing eggs. Now, healthy hens lay eggs on
Speaker 1: a regular basis every twenty four to twenty six hours.
Speaker 1: But suddenly chicken owners all over the country, not all
Speaker 1: of them, but a lot of them are reporting they're
Speaker 1: not getting any eggs or as many. So what's causing that?
Speaker 1: Clearly something is causing that. Some have concluded their chicken
Speaker 1: feed may be responsible. Some have right, uh so some
Speaker 1: it's weird because in some people, well, to my mind,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what's happening, right, And I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: I always trying to picture how else I would say that,
Speaker 1: because when you look at those social media videos, it's
Speaker 1: not every account that has chickens and egg laying chickens,
Speaker 1: but it is some of them. Yeah, so would you
Speaker 1: say a few but it's more than a few. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was just weird because I, you know,
Speaker 1: like I disagree with Tucker Carlson on many, many most
Speaker 1: things and dislike the way he presents things. But I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this feels right to me. But just
Speaker 1: and again, you know that's part of critical thought, right
Speaker 1: you if you have disagreed with someone in the past,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you should automatically throw out whatever else
Speaker 1: they're saying. There's a reason, people, there's a reason that
Speaker 1: broken clocks are right twice a day, right to use
Speaker 1: the old, to use the old figures speech here, adult chestnut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are the poet w s merwindn't say a quotation
Speaker 1: is a a quotation is a good substitute for wit
Speaker 1: or something like that. I'm so, I'm aware of the
Speaker 1: danger of those kind of cliches, but yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a really important point, Matt, And I don't know the
Speaker 1: better way to say it either. Uh. But Carlson does
Speaker 1: a couple of things. He also brings up a recent
Speaker 1: fire in Connecticut where a number of chickens died. Right,
Speaker 1: and the number of chickens varies, but it was a
Speaker 1: lot of birds, and he says, Hey, it's it's strange
Speaker 1: that meet other media companies don't cover this. They don't
Speaker 1: think it's a story at all. And this reminded me
Speaker 1: immediately of the allegations that there was a coordinated attack
Speaker 1: on the US food supply infrastructure. We did a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty dope piece on this that has yet to make
Speaker 1: it out into the public. Um. Well, we can't really
Speaker 1: spoil it, but hopefully it gets there one day and
Speaker 1: then you know. Side note, if you're looking for coordinated
Speaker 1: infrastructure attacks, you should be more worried about your local
Speaker 1: power grid because that's where people are gonna go, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's way easier than getting into the water or
Speaker 1: waste treatment plant. And it's not as um mouse trappy
Speaker 1: and complicated as attacking the food the food grid. But
Speaker 1: well why not just attack the feed grid? There we go,
Speaker 1: ding ding ding. Yes, Okay, so there's that. This is
Speaker 1: the biggest theory, and this is what um pundits like
Speaker 1: Carlson are referring to the dominant version of this theory,
Speaker 1: which I know makes it sound like a strain of COVID,
Speaker 1: but whatever is. Basically the gist is this large food
Speaker 1: manufacturers have conspired to make consumer owned chickens incapable of
Speaker 1: laying eggs by putting some nefarious, dodgy stuff in the
Speaker 1: chicken feed, forcing those people to buy eggs from the
Speaker 1: grocery store while increasing the price of eggs with the
Speaker 1: goal of ensuring higher profits and making the overall population
Speaker 1: increasingly less self sufficient in general. Yeah, the concept here
Speaker 1: for me is to target any operation that buys feed
Speaker 1: of in smaller amounts than what the absolute largest amount
Speaker 1: of feed you can buy would be for these these
Speaker 1: huge factory farm operations. Right, so you target any and
Speaker 1: this is this is me theorizing about the theory. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not Matt saying things that are absolutely true
Speaker 1: or proven. I think the conspiracy theory here is to
Speaker 1: target anyone that is lower than a large farm. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nailed it, because why would they target themselves? Right?
Speaker 1: The ideas, So, the idea would be for for this
Speaker 1: to be true, then there would have to be some
Speaker 1: other feed that is not sold on the market, that
Speaker 1: has kept internal that only only the um culprits use.
Speaker 1: And this this has gone everywhere of places like TikTok personally,
Speaker 1: or I would say largely because in my opinion. At
Speaker 1: least it's got something really clever. It's based in a
Speaker 1: true conspiracy. They're not really that many food manufacturers that
Speaker 1: what seems to be a diverse marketplace full of a
Speaker 1: thousands of competing brands is really when you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a theater played out for you every
Speaker 1: time you visit the grocery store. Yeah, it's packaged, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and sold to you as something different. But
Speaker 1: it's all kind of coming from just a handful of
Speaker 1: places a hundred percent. It's a if we want to
Speaker 1: make another another dated reference, uh, it's like that movie,
Speaker 1: or it's like the recent reboot of Nutty Professor where
Speaker 1: the main cast is all played by Eddie Murphy. Right,
Speaker 1: it looks I mean it's recent compared to the original
Speaker 1: Nutting Is that Flubber? Yeah yeah, and there was also
Speaker 1: the Robin Williams one. It was just called flubber. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor came out in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six. Yeah. Wow, Okay, wait, time isn't real. No,
Speaker 1: it's an illusion and the first week were only sure
Speaker 1: his eggs as eggs. The Nutty Professor movie storry Eddie
Speaker 1: Murphy came out nineteen hundred ninety six and it was
Speaker 1: based on nineteen sixty three Nutty Professor. Okay, cool, we
Speaker 1: sorted that out. That's the burning question that made everybody
Speaker 1: listen to this episode. They were like, I know it's
Speaker 1: his eggs in the title, but they're going to get
Speaker 1: to the Nutty Professor. I trust these guys. And if
Speaker 1: you want to feel really old and weird and how
Speaker 1: time is ephemeral, the distance between that original version and
Speaker 1: the Eddie Murphy version isn't that far off between the
Speaker 1: distance from the Eddie Murphy version. And yeah, don't forget
Speaker 1: about the clumps, guys. Yeah, So there's this idea that
Speaker 1: just a few companies own a load of stuff and
Speaker 1: they're not really transparent about it. That's real. That is
Speaker 1: not a theory. That is a genuine conspiracy, and it
Speaker 1: is enacted upon you every time you go to a
Speaker 1: grocery store or your local bodega. But let's start there.
Speaker 1: Who manufactures chicken feed? Then there's one TikTok account in
Speaker 1: particular that went viral about the chicken feed conspiracy that
Speaker 1: several of our fellow conspiracy realists sent in as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I think some of us sent in
Speaker 1: several different takes on this, and and matt Um and no,
Speaker 1: I think we all we all watched some of these
Speaker 1: uh and they have variations, but the variations on a
Speaker 1: theme m in one in particular that's up pretty frequently.
Speaker 1: We've got a host with her own chickens who claims
Speaker 1: her crew has stopped laying eggs, and voice is concerned
Speaker 1: that large companies might be putting something in the feed
Speaker 1: to prevent the hens from lane from going back to
Speaker 1: laying eggs. And then this host goes on to trace
Speaker 1: the shell of companies and brands that produced the feed
Speaker 1: she's been getting for chickens, going from Purina Mills to
Speaker 1: Land Lakes, to Calmine Foods and so on. The tracing
Speaker 1: of these companies is largely correct, yes, X, until you
Speaker 1: get to the purenas of it all, because I know
Speaker 1: there's like multiple companies within Purina, and there's one that
Speaker 1: one that deals with cat and dog food and then
Speaker 1: Purina that's specifically for large scale animal feed. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the Purina Mills is the um is that feed thing.
Speaker 1: Regular Perenia is owned by Nestley, not Land of Lakes
Speaker 1: both of them originate from a company called Rolston Purina
Speaker 1: back in theres. This is how they get you. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean is that I don't get it
Speaker 1: owned by the shine Heart wig company, all of which
Speaker 1: are of course owned by shine Heart Porcelain Wigs. Yes,
Speaker 1: I and Ben I would agree. That's that's one of
Speaker 1: the primary, let's say, styles of videos. So we've seen
Speaker 1: that one in particular, but then a lot of them are,
Speaker 1: as you said, just somebody who has chickens, usually a
Speaker 1: small flock that they used to grow their own eggs.
Speaker 1: And the most common thing I've heard been is, uh,
Speaker 1: the chickens just stopped laying eggs a while back. We
Speaker 1: just haven't gotten eggs since you know this X time, right,
Speaker 1: And we switched the feed last week or yesterday or
Speaker 1: whatever time ago they switched the feed. Now our chickens
Speaker 1: are laying eggs. And then here and then usually here's
Speaker 1: an example of what the new feed looks like, that
Speaker 1: we now created our house rather than the store bought kind.
Speaker 1: That's the one I've seen, right, Yeah, I've seen that. Um,
Speaker 1: I almost want to call the genre now I've seen
Speaker 1: that that as well, where someone is saying I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give you a grand conspiracy necessarily, but here's
Speaker 1: what's happening in my neck of the woods, which is
Speaker 1: totally awesome, super valid stuff that if we want to
Speaker 1: play along at home with this idea of evil company conspiracy,
Speaker 1: let's go bigger. Because one thing a lot of these
Speaker 1: videos don't mention is that they're of the top ten
Speaker 1: animal feed manufacturers in the world, only three are based
Speaker 1: in the United States. Number one is called CP Group.
Speaker 1: They're out of Thailand. Number two is New Hope leh Uh,
Speaker 1: which is out of China, and number three is Cargill,
Speaker 1: which is out of the US. And there are another
Speaker 1: company that owns tons and tons of stuff. Purina is
Speaker 1: only number four, meaning that if you are buying animal
Speaker 1: feed in the United States, statistically, you're more likely to
Speaker 1: be buying it from Cargill, right unless you shop at
Speaker 1: one of these stores. There's several around here where I'm
Speaker 1: living right now, guys that specialize in feed. And I
Speaker 1: took a little walk through there and Purina was one
Speaker 1: of the primary brands, at least on display. I noticed there. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it might be like a pepsi coke thing, there
Speaker 1: might be kind of a soft regional monopoly, right. Well,
Speaker 1: and I'm especially thinking if you're buying enough feed for
Speaker 1: a small flock of chickens at your home, right country, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't got to buy the giant barrels of it.
Speaker 1: You just you know, buy enough to feed your chickens
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks. Yeah, And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a great point because again,
Speaker 1: a lot of this goes back to the divide between
Speaker 1: commercial manufacturers and people at home who want to be
Speaker 1: maybe in their mind a little more healthy or a
Speaker 1: little more self sufficient, both of which are absolutely admirable goals.
Speaker 1: But we've got to drill down into the way things
Speaker 1: are versus the way things are portrayed, right on both
Speaker 1: both sides of this argument. The folks who are saying
Speaker 1: everything is dire and disastrous and the folks who are
Speaker 1: saying everything's fine, don't look behind the curtain, don't check
Speaker 1: in the henhouse to keep walking. Yeah, So with that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break to hear from our pals
Speaker 1: at Big Egg, and then we'll be back. And we
Speaker 1: have returned. So one of the things that we've we
Speaker 1: laid out here is that, despite the way it might
Speaker 1: be portrayed in some of these videos or some of
Speaker 1: these reports, again with the best of intentions, Perina and
Speaker 1: its ultimate owners are not the largest outfits on the
Speaker 1: block at this point. Stories of switching from one feet
Speaker 1: to another to encourage laying of eggs, they seem really good, right,
Speaker 1: and they they seem positive. They end on an inspirational
Speaker 1: or cautionary note, which is a really good kind of
Speaker 1: It's like a good mouth feel for your mind. Uh
Speaker 1: in the end with a C T A often yes,
Speaker 1: like here's something you can do right, which popularizes them.
Speaker 1: You want to share it? Hey, do you have do
Speaker 1: you know anybody that has chickens? You should watch this.
Speaker 1: So people are even like dog and cat food, there's
Speaker 1: different kinds that are like, you know, shiny coat or
Speaker 1: what ever it might be. And maybe if your dog
Speaker 1: is by the way, Matt, you you recommended uh fish
Speaker 1: oil for preventing dog shedding, and let me tell you, buddy,
Speaker 1: We've been using that on our geriatric dog Jude and
Speaker 1: the shedding has almost disappeared. It's kind of miraculous. So
Speaker 1: uh the day, thanks you for that, as do I
Speaker 1: UM big win there, but again, you see these different
Speaker 1: varieties of animal feed um for various dietary reasons, perhaps
Speaker 1: sensitive stomach and things like that. So why wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be the case with with chickens to you know, encourage
Speaker 1: certain um digestive behaviors or perhaps better egg laying practices. Well,
Speaker 1: and this is what I'm finding right now, guys, whole
Speaker 1: green feed. I'm seeing mash, I'm seeing pellets, I'm seeing crumbles,
Speaker 1: and I know nothing about actual chicken feed and what
Speaker 1: it looks like or what's inside of it. But I
Speaker 1: went to uh, what is this backyard chicken coops dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also go to trade groups like the American
Speaker 1: Feed Industry Association or if yea UH to learn more
Speaker 1: about various types of livestock feed. And no, I believe
Speaker 1: you are to a degree cred Now. I I wasn't
Speaker 1: in the fish oil conversations. I I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: but I do know that, UM, yeah, there will be
Speaker 1: different There are different varieties of feed that are not
Speaker 1: just based on shape, but also based on content, right,
Speaker 1: And that's a big thing that people are doing with
Speaker 1: their homemade feed. Is there exercising the ingredients that they
Speaker 1: feel maybe nefarious. Yeah, absolutely, it's content. And the stage
Speaker 1: of your chickens are at. Are they chicks? Did you
Speaker 1: buy a bunch of chicks and they're growing, or do
Speaker 1: you have new chicks that are growing. There's a feed
Speaker 1: for that. Do you have chicks that are trying to
Speaker 1: lay eggs, there's a feed for that. And I think
Speaker 1: that is the feed that most people are focusing on,
Speaker 1: the layer feed, like as in chicken egg layer feed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this look. Uh. The other thing is that these
Speaker 1: videos don't have They typically do not include the controls
Speaker 1: you would expect in an experiment, right the and when
Speaker 1: we say controls, that means what you want to do
Speaker 1: is make sure that everything about a situation is the
Speaker 1: same except for the one thing you want to test,
Speaker 1: the one variable you want to fox with, and that
Speaker 1: variable would be the feed or ingredients in the feed.
Speaker 1: But we don't see all these things being controlled for
Speaker 1: in a lot of these videos. And the tricky part
Speaker 1: there is that decrease in egg output can be affected
Speaker 1: or infected by all sorts of stuff bad nutrition, Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's feed really related, but also temperature can affect
Speaker 1: whether or not chicken will lay an egg. Parasites, viruses.
Speaker 1: Stress on chicken can also influence things. Um, there could
Speaker 1: be hormonal changes, which again could be food related. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there's the idea of we should hear from some
Speaker 1: more people. I know we've got a lot of uh
Speaker 1: can fellow conspiracy realist who owned chickens. So let's hear
Speaker 1: your stories, folks. What what you think about this, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna shift what you think about the feed because
Speaker 1: we're gonna shift to another thing. It's a little more
Speaker 1: out there, Big Farmer and the COVID cure, which is
Speaker 1: a great name for a Southern rock band, but also
Speaker 1: a totally other brand, a totally different branch of chicken theory.
Speaker 1: There's the idea that powerful okay just set up the
Speaker 1: goal post here. Uh, there's this idea that one eggs
Speaker 1: provide a natural protection from coronavirus. So this theory accepts
Speaker 1: the covid is real. Two powerful pharmaceutical interest are purposely
Speaker 1: pushing eggs off of grocery shells, disincentivizing people from buying
Speaker 1: them because they don't want folks to know that eggs
Speaker 1: can cure coronavirus. Those are the basics. What do we think, um, okay,
Speaker 1: so what do we know about eggs preventing coronavirus? I
Speaker 1: have not that's new to me. Yeah, it's it's new. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's new to me as well. Uh. And it's not true.
Speaker 1: Is the issue? This is conclusively there's no sand to it. Well,
Speaker 1: but then we got a problem here already. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a tough it's a tall milkshake, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And if we're wrong, if there is solid proof the
Speaker 1: eggs prevent corona virus, then please please do reach out
Speaker 1: and touch space, you know, uh and let us let
Speaker 1: us know. Yeah, uh, touch wood as they used to
Speaker 1: say back in the day for superstitious and touch eggs.
Speaker 1: Smooth as eggs. Smooth as eggs. Oh, your rown personal
Speaker 1: guiche is right' that's the winner. And here's another another
Speaker 1: kind of out there theory, the idea this is related
Speaker 1: to coronavirus as well, which so why we're grouping them together.
Speaker 1: The idea that chicken feet is being adulterated, contaminated, injected
Speaker 1: with m R in a such that it is altering
Speaker 1: the nature of the chickens who consume it such that
Speaker 1: they no longer create eggs. So this has a lot
Speaker 1: in common with the idea that um COVID nineteen vaccines
Speaker 1: would alter the the genetic makeup of people who got vaccinated.
Speaker 1: M So we were Maderna vaxing the chickens through their
Speaker 1: feed somehow, Yes, because that's the most direct way to
Speaker 1: affect things. There's absolutely nothing that could go wrong. Like
Speaker 1: Mitchell and website and their conspiracy theory um sketches, what
Speaker 1: we're looking at is a watertight hit. Um. Guys Avian
Speaker 1: flu is on the rise. It's a real problem right now,
Speaker 1: how are we going to get this mr NA and
Speaker 1: these chickens. Well, first we need to make a virus,
Speaker 1: so it's like, go on, whether it's a virus for
Speaker 1: humans is the thing? Ah, Then we can test out
Speaker 1: our new vaccine technology, which includes gene therapy on the
Speaker 1: humans first, because as we know, the ruling class of
Speaker 1: chickens will of course never consent to experiment it on
Speaker 1: chickens first. Right, Okay, well we solved it. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is where alright, So these things are all in the air.
Speaker 1: And of course, anytime m r NA is brought up
Speaker 1: in a conspiratorial tone, Bill Gates gets mentioned, right, and
Speaker 1: the idea is that he is somehow participated in this.
Speaker 1: The evidence pointing to him being related. It all goes
Speaker 1: back to stuff that we explore in our book. Stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Uh, we did find
Speaker 1: a We did find something funny. We mentioned a FEA
Speaker 1: or a f I, a American Feed Industry association. They
Speaker 1: got so heated up about all this stuff that they
Speaker 1: wrote a blog post just a few days before we
Speaker 1: recorded this, and the title sounds so irritated. Did because
Speaker 1: it's like it's in all caps the website. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: there isn't a conspiracy around in chicken feed and reduced
Speaker 1: egg production, you fools. Well, yeah, according to you, Victoria,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just choking. I editorialized that, you fools bit,
Speaker 1: but it's implied heavily. Yeah, guys, I honestly don't know
Speaker 1: enough about this stuff. Like I'm sorry, I'm going back
Speaker 1: over this concept of of m r n A somehow
Speaker 1: getting into feed, like as ribonucleic acid in the feed.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about gene therapy. I don't know
Speaker 1: enough about how it functions when you shoot it into
Speaker 1: your arm with the Maderna vaccine and your you know,
Speaker 1: your body changes to manufacture the stuff to prevent you
Speaker 1: from getting sick from coronavirus. How could that same type
Speaker 1: of substance work through the digestive tract. I just don't understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how's it even possible? Also? To what end is this?
Speaker 1: You know? That's usually the question that I asked first
Speaker 1: with a lot of these conspiracy and I think we
Speaker 1: all do, is what what's the point? What is this
Speaker 1: meants to accomplish? It's just sort of cool to have secrets.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm plagiarizing Mitchell and web There. No, no, it's
Speaker 1: a great question, like, to what end? Right? What? Why
Speaker 1: are we doing this? The RNA thing? Maybe we can
Speaker 1: feel some of the questions here, Matt. The RNA thing
Speaker 1: comes from comes from social media. There's no there's no
Speaker 1: scholarly paper on it, at least not that I could find.
Speaker 1: There was no substance of study. What I did see
Speaker 1: was a lot of TikTok stuff, a lot of Facebook
Speaker 1: videos where people are claiming that quote. They're saying things
Speaker 1: like I'm just pulling this from the USA Today articles
Speaker 1: saying the same stuff quote. I found plenty of information
Speaker 1: about using RNA sequencing and feed and dealing with chickens
Speaker 1: that this could be potentially it uh, and they there's
Speaker 1: a narrator on this TikTok and you see screenshots of
Speaker 1: very scientific looking studies on the feed. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: matter at all. Uh. The issue is RNA is not
Speaker 1: an ingredient and chicken feed and it doesn't need to be.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to inject RNA into chickens, you would
Speaker 1: be in the catbird seat because RNA is already in chickens. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's more to modify MR kind of thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's just some disconnect in understanding here, um
Speaker 1: in people who are you know, postulating that this is
Speaker 1: what's happening. But I think there's also a disconnecting how
Speaker 1: it's being explained, because yes, RNA is in everything, DNA
Speaker 1: is in everything, but modifying it is a new technology
Speaker 1: that has emerged, and you know, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: does freak me out a little bit. Same not saying
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this theory is true about the feed,
Speaker 1: you know, changing the chickens somehow, But I think sometimes
Speaker 1: it's being downplayed so hard by people who are like, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work that way. They're kind of like not
Speaker 1: necessarily in this post, but I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to make anyone feel dumb for not understanding the same
Speaker 1: way that I don't understand that makes sense, Like I
Speaker 1: think it's it's a it's a general lack of understanding.
Speaker 1: And also when we have this kind of stuff that's
Speaker 1: fast tracked, and I know it's not new technology, but
Speaker 1: we've yet to have enough time to truly see the
Speaker 1: implications of of of jamming the stuff into our next
Speaker 1: you know. I mean that's the case with a lot
Speaker 1: of this kind of thing that you know, we won't
Speaker 1: truly see the big picture um uh results perhaps for
Speaker 1: for many many years. And you know they say there
Speaker 1: are none, but therein lies another example of trying to
Speaker 1: be you know, thoughtful. He's skeptical, right exactly. And you know,
Speaker 1: I appreciate these points because one of the things I
Speaker 1: looked into about this, with none of us being geneticists
Speaker 1: folks scandidly is I said, all right, well, we know
Speaker 1: that there is some sort of regulatory body, at least
Speaker 1: in the United States for this kind of this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, uh, and we know that oftentimes in the
Speaker 1: past they've been cartoonishly crooked and easily corrupted. That's why
Speaker 1: so many of the words on the front of your
Speaker 1: cereal boxes don't mean dick um. But so so I
Speaker 1: looked into this um and there are approved ingredients for
Speaker 1: commercial feed synthetic RNA, which is what I think we're
Speaker 1: talking about, right, lab lab modified RNA that could change, uh,
Speaker 1: change what the chickens do biologically. That is not an
Speaker 1: approved ingredient formmercial feed. But then again, knowing how crooked
Speaker 1: these institutions have been in the past, or how mislead
Speaker 1: they have been, right, Uh, it's easy to understand why
Speaker 1: people might say, well, how much do you trust or
Speaker 1: how much trust can you put in this? And again
Speaker 1: this is not a dying on the U s d
Speaker 1: A or the f d A. There are tons of
Speaker 1: people who are getting vastly underpaid to do their absolute
Speaker 1: best and it just happens that it just happens to
Speaker 1: be the case that in the past, very large financial
Speaker 1: interest have screwed over the consumer through those regulatory bodies.
Speaker 1: Those are simply facts they conspired to do. So it's
Speaker 1: not a theory. So you see why we have a
Speaker 1: hard time trusting this. But also it just seems like
Speaker 1: the the science there would have to be proven, or
Speaker 1: the suppositions would have to be proven. And I want
Speaker 1: to point out the ax the thing we always have
Speaker 1: to say about sources. If you already or convinced something's up,
Speaker 1: are you gonna believe this angry blog post by the
Speaker 1: American Feed Industry Association of all people, after we just
Speaker 1: dunked on the weird, weird practice of trade groups putting
Speaker 1: out commercials for themselves, like you can see why it
Speaker 1: would be tough to trust it, you know. And in
Speaker 1: this in this post, and I got not a ding
Speaker 1: on the writer who is doing nor on the experts
Speaker 1: that she's consulting. Victoria Brome is talking with an animal
Speaker 1: nutritionist named Paul Davis, and Paul Davis also works also
Speaker 1: as a colleague works with the a f i A
Speaker 1: and talks about some of these concerns and brought up
Speaker 1: some stuff where they talk about the inner related field
Speaker 1: of variables that can affect these things. And from Davis
Speaker 1: we find a blog post from a guy named Jason
Speaker 1: Lusk which points out a kind of an economic answer
Speaker 1: and ask the question that I think haunts everybody here.
Speaker 1: How can a small ish production in the supply of
Speaker 1: eggs have such a big impact on the price of eggs.
Speaker 1: Those prices, to be clear, increased six and lusk answer
Speaker 1: is that the demand is in elastic, meaning there aren't
Speaker 1: great substitutes for eggs, and people still buy eggs even
Speaker 1: when prices rise, so it takes a big increase for
Speaker 1: customers to cut back because people are again so used
Speaker 1: to eggs. But I I gotta say that answer. It's dry.
Speaker 1: It's as dry as overcooked scrambled eggs. Uh, And sometimes
Speaker 1: dry answers are the truth. But it feels like there's
Speaker 1: something to the concept of price gouging here just because
Speaker 1: and I know we're going along, we need to wrap
Speaker 1: this up. But so many companies have successfully gouged prices
Speaker 1: and they didn't step them back when things started to
Speaker 1: return to normalcy, you know what I mean, gas prices,
Speaker 1: that's a great example. Yeah, No, the price of gasolene
Speaker 1: does make sense there when it comes to how eggs
Speaker 1: have continued to be expensive. But it does. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It feels like something else is going is going on,
Speaker 1: because I would have to believe that there's such this
Speaker 1: large number of people reporting on social media about their
Speaker 1: chickens not laying eggs all of a sudden, and then
Speaker 1: changing the feet and now they're laying eggs again, I'd
Speaker 1: have to believe they're all lying. But also there are
Speaker 1: there also other conditions that like, you know, don't chickens
Speaker 1: have to be kind of comfortable to lay its, Like
Speaker 1: maybe maybe there's something to do with like climate, varia,
Speaker 1: gens and things, other conditional changes that aren't necessarily to
Speaker 1: do with their nutrition that could be causing some of
Speaker 1: these shortages extreme, right, but yeah, stress, temperature, even even
Speaker 1: changes in the chickens around them. Right, there are all
Speaker 1: sorts of factors they can in variables they can intervene here.
Speaker 1: But also another dangerous social media that we don't talk
Speaker 1: about too too often is that social media is a
Speaker 1: dopamine casino that is entirely based Yeah, tanking, and so
Speaker 1: it is. Also it's not only it's not only plausible,
Speaker 1: but it's almost certain that at least a few people
Speaker 1: kind of played up some stuff. It's like a trending
Speaker 1: topic or video or sound or one of those things.
Speaker 1: We're learning about this a lot. Yeah, we're we're cooking
Speaker 1: live on these uh. And I don't even like saying that.
Speaker 1: It does have to be said, but I don't like
Speaker 1: saying it because it sounds dangerously close to dismissing people
Speaker 1: who were giving the genuine account of their experience. That's
Speaker 1: not what we're doing. We're not saying everybody as a
Speaker 1: cloud chaser. We're just saying you have to be conscious
Speaker 1: of the dangers and pitfalls of social media. Right. But
Speaker 1: there does I mean it is inescapable. Uh, the the
Speaker 1: inflationary forces affecting eggs are real. Uh. The question is
Speaker 1: what I think? The question is what kind of conspiracy
Speaker 1: is a play? And maybe this is something our fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy realists can help us out with. Do you own eggs? Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's the new flex. Hey baby, I wanted some eggs?
Speaker 1: Check out my egg collection. Yeah, but definitely let us
Speaker 1: know about your egg collection. Do you got any golden ones?
Speaker 1: Perhaps some fabroge. You can find us on the internetural
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