Speaker 1: Friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist. Back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: towards the very end of the year, guys, as we
Speaker 1: were gearing up for as we were gearing up for
Speaker 1: what they call Thanksgiving in the United States, we had
Speaker 1: a really deep conversation about natural disasters and revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when empires deal with something like a major flood
Speaker 2: and it destroys infrastructure, right, But then we've got historians, anthropologists,
Speaker 2: all these folks coming through trying to understand what happened
Speaker 2: to an ancient civilization, And often it's thought that it
Speaker 2: was a rival civilization, somebody that tried to just take
Speaker 2: over and raise a city.
Speaker 3: Let's say, but what if it was just the weather slash,
Speaker 3: the climate slash, some disaster.
Speaker 4: I was just saying to a really interesting interview with
Speaker 4: a famous production designer named Jack Fisk, who worked on
Speaker 4: on the recent Marty Supreme and a lot of Terrence
Speaker 4: Malick movies. And he's just a really fascinating dude and
Speaker 4: a great historian because a big part of what he
Speaker 4: does as a production designer is look into historical references
Speaker 4: and photos and just understanding how to create the world
Speaker 4: of very specific times and history and he pointed out
Speaker 4: that at the end of the day, what makes the
Speaker 4: most perfect storm no pun intended circumstances for a revolution
Speaker 4: is when people can no longer feed their children, is
Speaker 4: when people can no longer have the things they need
Speaker 4: to survive. Not ideology that's almost like a luxury. We
Speaker 4: are talking about situations, circumstances that lead people to revolt
Speaker 4: because they are not able to live.
Speaker 1: And as we find in tonight's classic episode, multiple investigations
Speaker 1: with the benefit of retrospect have found a troubling correlation
Speaker 1: that not all revelations are falls or rises of empires
Speaker 1: are necessarily the fault of the humans involved. That's so nuts.
Speaker 1: Like the natural world, you might be one hurricane away
Speaker 1: from living in a different country. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Whoa's roll it.
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 iHeart Radio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We're joyed as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Mission Control. Decades most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. We've got a real optimistic one today,
Speaker 1: my friends. We're talking about the hazard of natural disaster.
Speaker 1: And this was inspired in part by some earlier conversations
Speaker 1: we had on and off air, but most recently it
Speaker 1: was inspired by a moment in our episode on the
Speaker 1: Bronze Age collapse where we found that several different scientists
Speaker 1: propose a volcanic eruption in Iceland, of all places, may
Speaker 1: have played a direct role in that that collapse that
Speaker 1: went across multiple large civilizations. And one of the questions
Speaker 1: we asked is how could this have such a tremendous
Speaker 1: impact on these civilizations?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a real Who done it? It turns out
Speaker 4: it was people?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, well people were the ones in the end
Speaker 3: who you know well to who would hold a weapon
Speaker 3: and attack right someone? But where we're looking at the
Speaker 3: root causes of what what made those people decide that
Speaker 3: it was the correct time to attack a city, to
Speaker 3: revolt to a good point, and it has all you know,
Speaker 3: it kind of harkens back to a couple other episodes
Speaker 3: ben that we did in the past, so specifically thinking
Speaker 3: about the solar activity and mass excitability and humans how
Speaker 3: we react to solar changes, as well as the episode
Speaker 3: Can Weather Make You Crazy, where we looked at how
Speaker 3: weather itself can affect our minds and our moods and
Speaker 3: our decision making. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on.
Speaker 1: Here and that's one of that's still one of my
Speaker 1: favorite titles of a show we've done. I think it
Speaker 1: was we called the Solar Excitability one Slaves to the Sun,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a nineteen seventies band or maybe.
Speaker 4: Like a.
Speaker 1: Oh what's what's that Australia.
Speaker 3: Group Anti Donna?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh no, Silver Empire of the Sun. Yes, their
Speaker 1: album would be Slaves to the Sun. But you guys
Speaker 1: are right, and there are other examples of this. But
Speaker 1: first we need to examine what we mean when we
Speaker 1: say natural disaster. So here are the facts.
Speaker 4: Really quickly, just as a caveat. This isn't a leaf
Speaker 4: blower today, folks. But there is a small screaming child
Speaker 4: in my house. So if you hear that, just know
Speaker 4: knowing it's okay, everything's fine. My daughter is babysitting for
Speaker 4: her little sister in the other room, and I don't
Speaker 4: have the heart to go down there and tell them
Speaker 4: to keep it to pipe down. I'm gonna text them shush,
Speaker 4: see what happens. But just wanted to put that out there.
Speaker 3: Speaking of natural disasters, I'm just kidding. Your child is
Speaker 3: just natural disaster.
Speaker 4: She is an unnatural abomination. That is what she is.
Speaker 1: Okay, So back to natural disasters. We all use this
Speaker 1: phrase all the time, and we have a pretty good
Speaker 1: sense of what it means. It's a catastrophic event that
Speaker 1: comes from the natural processes of planet Earth. Earth was
Speaker 1: doing this stuff all the time. We only call it
Speaker 1: a disaster because it's bad for humanity. It's still you know,
Speaker 1: we're a very small piece of this. This includes all
Speaker 1: the stuff you've heard before, all the biblical fire and
Speaker 1: brimstone things, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and
Speaker 1: so on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even wildfires can be put in there, especially if
Speaker 3: they are caused by lightning and drought conditions. And in
Speaker 3: previous episodes, we've explored humanity's ongoing conflict with these things
Speaker 3: that we consider natural disasters, including the question of whether
Speaker 3: or not in the past, at some point we have
Speaker 3: found a way to harness these things to send them
Speaker 3: out against a country with which we are having conflict, right,
Speaker 3: or whether or not we can to harness the weather
Speaker 3: in some other way for a good purpose. And you know,
Speaker 3: you may remember cloud seeding as something we explored, even
Speaker 3: how something that doesn't seem connected to this topic, like
Speaker 3: fracking can actually cause things like earthquakes, and you know
Speaker 3: that's some creepy stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, and I was being a smart alec at the
Speaker 4: top of the show and I said, it's a who
Speaker 4: done It turns out it was people. I was just,
Speaker 4: you know, winking and nodding at climate change. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can call it a natural disaster all day long,
Speaker 4: but the activities of humans, to a varying degree depending
Speaker 4: on which scientist you ask, probably has something to do
Speaker 4: with the frequency of these natural disasters.
Speaker 3: That's all frequency and severity, right, Yes, so it goes.
Speaker 1: I would be careful with the word harness, however, because
Speaker 1: harness could mean a couple of things. It could mean
Speaker 1: opportunism after a disaster strikes, and it could mean to
Speaker 1: the extreme degree, which I think we've proven fairly conclusively,
Speaker 1: manufacturing of disaster. I would point to cloud seeding operations
Speaker 1: on the US side in the Vietnam War as a
Speaker 1: weaponized weather. That's an example of creating natural disasters in
Speaker 1: that case, specifically flooding. And to the point about fracking
Speaker 1: that you make mat which I greatly appreciate. We don't
Speaker 1: have evidence that someone purposefully created earthquakes with fracking, but
Speaker 1: we do have evidence that fracking has an unforeseen side effect,
Speaker 1: which is increasing the likelihood of earthquakes by a measurable amount.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think. I think by using hardness, I was
Speaker 3: going back to some of the allegations about Tesla and
Speaker 3: building a machine that could actually create an earthquake that
Speaker 3: we looked at a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wordcliff Tower is related to that, I believe. And
Speaker 1: you know, the thing about Tesla that still bugs me
Speaker 1: is what happened to his notes after he passed away.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the big, big piece of that conspiracy.
Speaker 1: So here's something that a lot of people throughout history
Speaker 1: have had a big problem with in the world of
Speaker 1: natural disasters. It's this, natural disasters are non discriminatory. A
Speaker 1: hurricane doesn't just hit the poor zip codes, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. An earthquake doesn't not shake a church
Speaker 1: or a mansion. It shakes everything that it hits, so
Speaker 1: we as humans just simply try to survive when these
Speaker 1: things strike, get ourselves back together and sol draw on.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of something. I can't remember which show
Speaker 1: I talked about this honor or whether it was just
Speaker 1: us hanging out off air, but it reminds me of
Speaker 1: how humbling birds are for humanity. Think about it. We
Speaker 1: have so much technology. We can take people to the Moon.
Speaker 1: For Pete's sake, we are gone to as a spe
Speaker 1: ses accomplish our first round trip to an asteroid, which
Speaker 1: started in twenty sixteen. Just landed took a sample of
Speaker 1: an asteroid. It'll be back in twenty twenty three. But
Speaker 1: there's one thing we can't do. We can't stop birds
Speaker 1: from crapping on things. We haven't figured it out. The
Speaker 1: closest technology we have for that is either eradicating birds,
Speaker 1: which I know you're on board with NOL, or building roofs.
Speaker 1: So the natural.
Speaker 4: Umbrellas you know, the umbrella is a second, A strong second.
Speaker 1: I feel like an umbrella is a portable roof.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Do you know what when you put it like that,
Speaker 3: you got me well, and there are there are specific
Speaker 3: things you can put on let's say, railings in other
Speaker 3: places that will prevent birds from landing there, or will
Speaker 3: discourage birds from landing in certain areas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you see them in like subway stations or signage
Speaker 4: for storefronts and strip malls and things like that. They're
Speaker 4: like little.
Speaker 3: Spikes, but that can't stop from the poop from coming out.
Speaker 1: Oh streets our example too, because when we think about
Speaker 1: that building, those deterrents on benches or statues, or the
Speaker 1: eaves of roofs and buildings, it's a lot like the
Speaker 1: way we would try to build levees, right, we try
Speaker 1: to shore up a coastline. We can't stop a hurricane
Speaker 1: anymore than we can stop birds from pooping everywhere. We
Speaker 1: can only try to mitigate the disaster and the potential aftermath.
Speaker 1: So that's why the bulk of scientific research into natural
Speaker 1: disaster it doesn't really it doesn't really hinge on how
Speaker 1: we can stop these historically, It hinges on how we
Speaker 1: can predict when these unavoidable events will occur. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, absolutely, Yeah, there's no way to stop that
Speaker 3: volcano from erupting currently, unless you know, you toss a
Speaker 3: nuke down there and just classify the whole situation, which
Speaker 3: you know is an option I guess at some point.
Speaker 3: And every time it happens, we're seeing especially this year,
Speaker 3: my goodness, we are seeing it in the United States
Speaker 3: happen time and time again. A terrible natural disaster occurs.
Speaker 3: We have somewhat of an outlook on it. We know
Speaker 3: it's coming for at least a week, few days, maybe,
Speaker 3: especially with the hurricanes that have been just pummeling the
Speaker 3: Gulf Coast in other areas, and it rolls through, power
Speaker 3: goes out for a lot of people, People lose their
Speaker 3: homes to terrible tragedies on a personal human level. And
Speaker 3: then as a whole, society picks itself up as much
Speaker 3: as it can, allocates disaster funds as much as it can,
Speaker 3: and as much as the governments of various states and
Speaker 3: other places localities will allow, and then we just keep
Speaker 3: going until another one.
Speaker 1: Hits yep, and we hope that we can use our
Speaker 1: previous experience to better handle these once again unavoidable could catastrophees.
Speaker 1: It's it sounds pretty fatalistic, right. It's an existential crisis
Speaker 1: of some sort. We're always as humans dealing with natural disaster.
Speaker 1: We have a lot in common with the story of Sisyphus.
Speaker 1: We just keep rolling that great stone we call civilization
Speaker 1: to the top of a hill to watch it fall
Speaker 1: back down again and start from square one, pick ourselves up,
Speaker 1: stumble along, and we still, you know, try to build
Speaker 1: things that will last. There's something beautiful about that when
Speaker 1: we consider that all of civilization is a lot more
Speaker 1: like one of those meditative Buddhist sand paintings than we
Speaker 1: would like to suppose. It gets wiped away so easily,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: I recently rewatched the anime film Akira, which is all
Speaker 4: about the destruction of Tokyo and rebuilding of Neo Tokyo,
Speaker 4: and it's really fair. Thing is I watched a little
Speaker 4: mini documentary about how Japanese culture and their attitude toward
Speaker 4: technology and their pop culture and in anime and their
Speaker 4: film world is very much driven by the fact that
Speaker 4: they were in large places blown up, you know, by
Speaker 4: the United States with the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Speaker 4: And what an interesting cultural benchmark to affect the way
Speaker 4: you think about technology, especially having to completely kind of
Speaker 4: rebuild society and rely very heavily on technology, but also
Speaker 4: kind of fear it in a weird way. I thought
Speaker 4: that was a really interesting point in the documentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that line of reasoning before.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's a really compelling theory
Speaker 1: that has a lot of sand to it. We see
Speaker 1: in there a microcosm of a larger historical trend, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's one that continues today. It's one that is
Speaker 1: not going to stop. Every single year, natural disasters wreak
Speaker 1: billions upon billions of dollars worth of damage across this planet.
Speaker 1: The wealthy, the poor alike, any religion, any any set
Speaker 1: of values doesn't matter when the hurricane or the tsunami
Speaker 1: comes calling. In fact, they have brought so much damage
Speaker 1: that it's difficult to estimate the exact cost. There's one
Speaker 1: stat that's interesting and still just a ballpark. From nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five to nineteen ninety four, studies show that natural
Speaker 1: disasters cost about thirty six billion dollars a year. Now,
Speaker 1: from two thousand and five to twenty fourteen, the damage
Speaker 1: inflicted is around one hundred and forty two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: So that means a couple of things. If we want
Speaker 1: to unpack it. First, it means that we have more
Speaker 1: stuff to wreck, right. We also have more inflation in general,
Speaker 1: that's a trend, So we just have more potential or
Speaker 1: more I guess liability or risk people might call it.
Speaker 1: But secondly, it means that things are increasing. Inflation alone
Speaker 1: cannot explain this cost, and studies indicate the damage wrought
Speaker 1: by natural disasters may go much much further than a
Speaker 1: financial bottom line.
Speaker 4: But what if revolutions are caused not just by human factors,
Speaker 4: but somehow guided by the planet itself. Well, we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about that very thing after a quick word
Speaker 4: from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. So are we accusing Earth
Speaker 1: itself of conspiring defoement revolution? Yes, it sounds I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are. It might sound preposterous, But the scary thing
Speaker 1: is this does seem to be the case. There's a
Speaker 1: fascinating paper about this very thing. It's called Natural Disasters
Speaker 1: and the Risk of Violent Civil Conflict by researchers Philip
Speaker 1: Nell and Margaline Righarts.
Speaker 3: Yes, and in this study they argue that the occurrences
Speaker 3: of natural disasters such as an earthquake maybe or a
Speaker 3: volcanic eruption, maybe a flood, let's say a hurricane, anything
Speaker 3: really anything at all, a heat wave, an epidemic, massive
Speaker 3: forest fires, a plague, all of this stuff. Whenever there's
Speaker 3: something like that occurring, it is going to increase the
Speaker 3: possibility of some kind of violent conflict within society, or
Speaker 3: at least the the risk of something like that occurring.
Speaker 3: And at first you think, no, there's no way those
Speaker 3: things could be connected, but then you start going down
Speaker 3: just go, just go down the pathways of your mind
Speaker 3: a little bit and imagine how much tension something like
Speaker 3: that causes within a society and everything from any kind
Speaker 3: of government, religious, whatever, whatever the controlling powers are, and
Speaker 3: the people as well as the people with each other,
Speaker 3: the inner conflicts. It's it makes so much sense when
Speaker 3: you if you allow yourself to really to think about it.
Speaker 3: I don't know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Bah wait, but wait, guys, aren't we in the middle
Speaker 4: of a disaster and uh uprising or fine?
Speaker 3: Everything's fine, everything's fine.
Speaker 4: It feels like you just describe what's going on in
Speaker 4: our world literally right now. I'm just okay, all right,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna let it go.
Speaker 1: Arguably, humans are the disaster, uh if you look at
Speaker 1: the planet overall, which I know sounds sanctimonious. So let's
Speaker 1: say the disasters that are humans. I like where you're
Speaker 1: going though, Matt, Could you trace this out because are
Speaker 1: you saying there's some sort of pattern?
Speaker 3: Perhaps I'm saying there's definitely a pattern, you guys, if
Speaker 3: you take a look at the study, or at least
Speaker 3: what they did for this study. They took data from
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty seven political units from the year
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty to two thousand, and they were just going
Speaker 3: through and systematically exploring the relationship between natural disasters, occurrences
Speaker 3: of any natural disaster, and violent uprisings or civil civil
Speaker 3: conflict within a society. Right, how do these things work together?
Speaker 3: And they found something pretty terrifying. We've actually got a
Speaker 3: quote from it right here.
Speaker 4: Yes, it says natural disasters significantly increase the risk of
Speaker 4: violent civil conflict both in the short and medium term,
Speaker 4: specifically in low and middle end countries that have intermediate
Speaker 4: to high levels of inequality jeez. Okay, mixed political regimes jeez,
Speaker 4: and sluggish economic growth. Rapid onset disasters related to geology
Speaker 4: and climate seem to pose the highest overall risk, but
Speaker 4: different dynamics apply it to what they call minor and
Speaker 4: major conflicts.
Speaker 1: So let me let me walk us back here for
Speaker 1: a second. There are some important things political units. That's
Speaker 1: an umbrella term, or I guess for this show, it's
Speaker 1: a portable roof term. It describes everything from a local
Speaker 1: tribe or a community to something like the British Empire,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And that is where we
Speaker 1: see the different dynamics they're sketching out to what they
Speaker 1: would call minor and major conflicts, so like a regional,
Speaker 1: short lived conflict between two tribes or a major multi
Speaker 1: party conflict like World War two or something. And of course, yes,
Speaker 1: their study only goes back to nineteen fifty, so this
Speaker 1: is post World War two. But we know from previous
Speaker 1: episodes and from a wealth of other research that this
Speaker 1: is at best a cover version of a very old
Speaker 1: original song of terror and heartbreak. We looked at earlier civilizations,
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations that mysteriously disappeared for centuries. People thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this group of highly advanced people just left this
Speaker 1: metropolis they worked so hard on because they got tired
Speaker 1: of it. Maybe they just said, you know what, it's
Speaker 1: time for a new chapter. But later studies have shown
Speaker 1: that disaster plays a huge role in this. Like what's
Speaker 1: the example of Khmer Empire in modern day Cambodia. There's
Speaker 1: this beautiful former metropolis called Angkor Watts, which you can
Speaker 1: visit today. For a very long time, people didn't know
Speaker 1: exactly why ankor Watt went into decline, but now we're
Speaker 1: pretty sure that it collapsed due to prolonged drought. The
Speaker 1: weather changed, and when the weather changed, the people had
Speaker 1: to change their routine and their lives and the rules
Speaker 1: of the governing system at that time, those rules no
Speaker 1: longer applied because they were not able to address the
Speaker 1: problems people were having, and so the empire collapsed.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, no, that's that's a really great point. Well,
Speaker 3: and you know, we talked about this. We keep mentioning
Speaker 3: of the Bronze Age collapse something like that, where we
Speaker 3: we thought, or the belief was that somehow this volcanic
Speaker 3: eruption way over in Iceland had something to do with it.
Speaker 3: And as we explored it, we realized that it's not
Speaker 3: just because a volcano exploded, Like the volcano exploding it
Speaker 3: in itself is not what caused the revolutions and the
Speaker 3: uprisings to occur. It was almost like dominoes were set
Speaker 3: up for collapse to occur. They're all just sitting there
Speaker 3: waiting for something to knock them all down. And that
Speaker 3: volcano just went up boot And we're gonna get into
Speaker 3: more details about that here in just a moment. But
Speaker 3: the the you know, one of the first things we
Speaker 3: need to talk about is the limited lifespan over you know,
Speaker 3: the past several millennia of a civilization, of a large civilis,
Speaker 3: especially of an empire, something large and unwieldy, and we've
Speaker 3: seen some things in the past, We've looked at it,
Speaker 3: but it's, uh, there's this tendency for empires, for big ones,
Speaker 3: the collapse a bit of a bit of a schedule. There,
Speaker 3: a bit of a cycle that happens.
Speaker 1: Some people would argue that's the case. Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can read studies that attempt to treat empires like
Speaker 1: natural disasters in the following ways. They assume that empires
Speaker 1: are unavoidable and that the collapse of empires is also
Speaker 1: likewise unavoidable. And so if these two assumptions hold true,
Speaker 1: then researchers find themselves attempting to do the same thing
Speaker 1: that scientists concerned with disaster do. They ask themselves, how
Speaker 1: can we predict this, how can we model it? How
Speaker 1: can we mitigate the collapse of a civilization. That's where
Speaker 1: we come into the varying theories that civilizations may have
Speaker 1: some sort of expiration date. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: numbers that we hear thrown around pretty often is something
Speaker 1: like two hundred, two hundred and fifty years. That should
Speaker 1: really bother every US resident in the audience today, because
Speaker 1: the US celebrated its bicentennial in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: Hey, but we're not an empire, right, It's not like
Speaker 3: we've got troops stationed all over the planet and control
Speaker 3: a bunch of other territories. Wait a second, I want.
Speaker 4: To really quickly the idea of empires being inevitable.
Speaker 3: Is that sort of just a.
Speaker 4: Product of like human nature and never having enough and
Speaker 4: just the idea that someone's eventually gonna slide into an
Speaker 4: empire building role just out of here, you know, megalomania?
Speaker 4: Or is it a matter of like organization of society
Speaker 4: and making sure everyone has everything they need. Because I
Speaker 4: feel like civilization and empires aren't the same thing true.
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of very uncivilized empires. Kidding
Speaker 1: with that one. Yeah, it's an excellent question, Noel. So
Speaker 1: you will find the argument that empires do not exist
Speaker 1: in the modern day, that instead we are a somewhat
Speaker 1: conflicted global group of one hundred and ninety something countries, right,
Speaker 1: and that those countries maybe nations, They may be civilizations,
Speaker 1: they are not empires. We were talking about this off air. However,
Speaker 1: I would argue that empires haven't gone away, they have evolved.
Speaker 1: A corporation can function the way that an empire does, right.
Speaker 1: A financial institution of a large enough size also functions
Speaker 1: as an empire, so we.
Speaker 4: Could almost call them like shadow empire is in some
Speaker 4: way interesting.
Speaker 1: And this goes into what we would define as an empire.
Speaker 1: And I know that there are a lot of pr
Speaker 1: departments in various corporations, maybe not in iHeart that would
Speaker 1: object to being defined as an empire. An empire is
Speaker 1: technically a large group of states or countries under a
Speaker 1: single authority. So the UN is not an empire because
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the powers of action and oversight that
Speaker 1: a single a single ruling force would have. But the
Speaker 1: British empire was an empire because technically speaking, if the
Speaker 1: monarch said I want to destroy this nation in the Commonwealth,
Speaker 1: or i've you know, I've never been to India, but
Speaker 1: they should do what I say, then that's an empire.
Speaker 1: And banks can do that.
Speaker 3: And there is a great article you can read on
Speaker 3: this specific subject. It's on foreign policy. It's called Empires
Speaker 3: with Expiration Dates. Fantastic, creepy article from two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: We'd recommend it. But there's a quote from that article
Speaker 3: that I want to read right now, which I think
Speaker 3: applies to all of this quote. An empire sick will
Speaker 3: come into existence and endure so long as the benefits
Speaker 3: of exerting power over foreign peoples exceed the cost of
Speaker 3: doing so in the eyes of the imperialists, and so
Speaker 3: long as the benefits of accepting dominance by a foreign
Speaker 3: people exceed the costs of resistance in the eyes of
Speaker 3: the subjects. So it no mystery there. But just think
Speaker 3: about it, and again it makes so much sense. But
Speaker 3: maybe when we're in the midst of struggling for the
Speaker 3: every day, we forget this concept that if the system
Speaker 3: that's set in place of control and power, it doesn't
Speaker 3: work for everybody at least to an extent, you're going
Speaker 3: to have problems with the subjugated.
Speaker 1: Essentially true, and that applies, I mean, that's a macro
Speaker 1: level view. I would argue it applies to the micro
Speaker 1: level of individual human psychology. We are programmed, arguably hardwired
Speaker 1: to avoid change until the pain of change becomes less
Speaker 1: than the pain of the status quo.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: That's honestly, that's where rock bottom is described as sometimes
Speaker 1: And now the question is do empires hit a rock bottom?
Speaker 1: And I love that you bring up this quote, Matt,
Speaker 1: because it clearly, it clearly points to that cost benefit
Speaker 1: analysis that happens for every individual on any given date,
Speaker 1: and ultimately for every nation, every civilization, every what do
Speaker 1: we call it? Political unit? Here we go, that's the umbrella.
Speaker 1: So now that we have this, we know that historically
Speaker 1: there is a correlation, a dark butterfly effect, right of
Speaker 1: an eruption and a country people have never visited leading
Speaker 1: to the collapse of their day to day lives of civilization.
Speaker 1: We have to ask ourselves where are we in media
Speaker 1: arrests here because we're part of this story, and that
Speaker 1: means that it's on us to figure out what happens
Speaker 1: as disasters accelerate? What are we talking about. We'll tell
Speaker 1: you after a word from our sponsor. So back to
Speaker 1: natural disaster's fall of civilization. There's a huge elephant, an
Speaker 1: enormous badger in the global bag or the room, and
Speaker 1: it's simply this. If we have compelling evidence that natural
Speaker 1: disasters can lead to violent revolution, then what can we
Speaker 1: extrapolate from this information in a world where the frequency
Speaker 1: of some natural disasters is provably inarguably accelerating.
Speaker 4: So just to kind of break it down a little bit,
Speaker 4: if floods and famine lead to violence and instability, and
Speaker 4: floods and famine both seem set to happen, then we
Speaker 4: can assume violence and instability in turn will accompany it.
Speaker 4: That is the hypothesis here, and it would seem it
Speaker 4: is a correct hypothesis at least based on these patterns
Speaker 4: that we've been looking at. So a topical paper from
Speaker 4: the Independent Evaluation of Asian Development Bank. Then I believe
Speaker 4: you gave this one high marks for its awkward name,
Speaker 4: but high levels of rigor and its research. This paper
Speaker 4: showed that climate related disasters are indeed on the rise,
Speaker 4: specifically as such and here's a quote from the paper
Speaker 4: Intense climate related disasters. Floods, storms, droughts, and heat waves
Speaker 4: have been on the rise worldwide. At the same time
Speaker 4: and coupled with an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in
Speaker 4: the atmosphere, temperature on average has been rising, have been
Speaker 4: Temperatures have been rising and are becoming this yes, enmeshed,
Speaker 4: and are becoming more variable and more extreme. I think
Speaker 4: even just observationally, we've all seen that here in Georgia,
Speaker 4: summers are hotter, winters feel colder from year to year.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any question about that. Just from
Speaker 4: like going outside, Temperatures on average have been rising and
Speaker 4: are becoming more variable and more extreme. Rainfall has also
Speaker 4: been more variable and more extreme. And it goes on
Speaker 4: to consider some main risk factors behind these these observable features.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the biggest problems is so many people
Speaker 3: live near a coast, and when you've got natural disasters,
Speaker 3: many of them being generated you know, out in the
Speaker 3: ocean and then making their way in, that's a problem
Speaker 3: when there's so many people concentrated along the shores of
Speaker 3: that ocean. That is a especially in the especially in
Speaker 3: the case of hurricanes. You've got a hurricane generator. It's
Speaker 3: just out there a little bit and you're right next
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then and then consider So there's important
Speaker 1: point in this examination this paper the phrase more variable
Speaker 1: and more extreme. Right, having too much water can be
Speaker 1: as dangerous as not having enough. We we're seeing ongoing
Speaker 1: transformation of ecosystems, right, desertification of some areas. But then
Speaker 1: we're also seeing areas transform in terms of monsoon frequency
Speaker 1: and cadence, which is enormously dangerous because these are, to
Speaker 1: your point, Matt, heavily populated areas historically in the span
Speaker 1: of human civilization in the first few seasons. Of course,
Speaker 1: you want your characters to live by a coast. There
Speaker 1: are immense resources there, and now that's coming back to
Speaker 1: bite us. So there is rising population exposure. There's also
Speaker 1: greater population vulnerability with If you are listening to this
Speaker 1: the year that we recorded in twenty twenty, then the
Speaker 1: odds are that you are going to be alive when
Speaker 1: regions of Earth become uninhabitable without technology, and we're going
Speaker 1: to see a rise of a new kind of inequality.
Speaker 1: Climate change will not really be an argument. It will
Speaker 1: be something that people all acknowledge, and people who deny
Speaker 1: it will be seeing the way that folks look at
Speaker 1: flat earthers today. People will be talking more about climate
Speaker 1: in equality because think about this, all right, So the
Speaker 1: Middle East big, like the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia, inhospitable,
Speaker 1: already very very hot, very arid. It's tough to live
Speaker 1: there without technology. Right, It's tough to live in a
Speaker 1: lot of places in the Middle East without technology. Now,
Speaker 1: consider that the temperature increases that we're reaching, like the
Speaker 1: what's called the wet bulb temperature increases. That means that
Speaker 1: the temperature is so hot that your insides are essentially
Speaker 1: cooking and will and you will be dead within hours
Speaker 1: if you are outside. What does this mean for the
Speaker 1: people who can afford air conditioning versus the people who cannot.
Speaker 1: It is literally a matter of life and death. And
Speaker 1: it will happen within your lifetime, hopefully not to you,
Speaker 1: hopefully not to any of your loved ones. But the
Speaker 1: math is there, and the math is frightening. The next question,
Speaker 1: what does this mean for everybody? Because you might think,
Speaker 1: just like the people back during the Late Bronze Age,
Speaker 1: even if they were aware of iceland, which I don't
Speaker 1: think they were. But you may think, well, I live
Speaker 1: in I live in Chicago or something. I live in
Speaker 1: the interior of Canada, so I don't have to really
Speaker 1: worry about rising coastlines, and if the temperature rises, it'll
Speaker 1: still be livable because the area where I live is
Speaker 1: seasonally very cold. The problem still exists because if these
Speaker 1: predictions are correct, then the next several decades may well
Speaker 1: be defined by periods of widespread, violent conflict. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. You don't have to be in an
Speaker 1: uninhabitable part of Florida for your for your day to
Speaker 1: day life to be affected by the collapse of the
Speaker 1: United States. I'm being very dystopian. I'm not saying that'll happen.
Speaker 3: Well, you you are being dystopian, but it's also almost
Speaker 3: it's almost the cold hard facts of what will happen
Speaker 3: if we can we continue to see a rise in
Speaker 3: the variability and extreme nature of the natural disasters that
Speaker 3: are headed our way. Because we're not just talking about flooding,
Speaker 3: We're not just talking about drought. We're talking about not
Speaker 3: being able to grow crops and not being able to
Speaker 3: feed everyone. And it doesn't matter if there's a Kroger
Speaker 3: or a what uh piggly wiggly down the street from you,
Speaker 3: if there are no suppliers of food getting food to
Speaker 3: that pigley wiggly.
Speaker 4: But why the the aversion to accepting climate science, Like
Speaker 4: if this literally means the downfall of civilization as we
Speaker 4: know it. Even people in power and giant corporations that
Speaker 4: seem to be the ones that are pushing for these
Speaker 4: kinds of deregulations to sell more you know, oil or whatever,
Speaker 4: even that seems short sighted because if there's no people
Speaker 4: that are alive to drive cars, you know, who's going
Speaker 4: to buy their product? Like the whole focusing on today
Speaker 4: rather than tomorrow just seems obviously it's unsustainable, but just
Speaker 4: seems shortsighted, even in a greed way, like don't you
Speaker 4: want to make more money off people? Shouldn't we figure
Speaker 4: out how to sustain this crazy thing we call the
Speaker 4: human race so that we can keep selling them.
Speaker 1: It's a cost benefit analysis for sure, because there are
Speaker 1: several conspiracies here. First, many multinational conglomerations knew about this,
Speaker 1: They knew it was coming right, They even funded some
Speaker 1: of the studies that proved it to be the case.
Speaker 1: And then they just didn't talk about it. Instead, they
Speaker 1: quietly began working on new revenue streams.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: We it's tough because we're asking about self interest, and
Speaker 1: whenever we ask about self interest, we have to remember
Speaker 1: that every human being is capable of very dangerous things.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest, most dangerous things that every
Speaker 1: human being is capable of is phenomenal rationalization. It's a
Speaker 1: mental Parker, Right. No one thinks they're the bad guy.
Speaker 1: I'm the you know, like I'm one of those Captain
Speaker 1: Planet Villain CEOs and I'm saying, well, really, what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is helping everybody, if you think about it, right,
Speaker 1: And that's exactly That's exactly what happens. And it only
Speaker 1: works as long as those institutions are considered effective. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in terms of a corporation or company, the institution is
Speaker 1: considered effective if it remains profitable. So once it becomes
Speaker 1: less profitable for these kind of like mad cap adventures
Speaker 1: to continue, then of course they're going to turn their
Speaker 1: sales and head to a different direction. What's happening now
Speaker 1: To answer your question directly, in my opinion, this is
Speaker 1: just my opinion. It's happening now as far as denial
Speaker 1: of climate science is a conspiracy because the people who
Speaker 1: funded the studies that revealed a lot of these problems
Speaker 1: went on to fund Burnet's level PR campaigns to denigrate
Speaker 1: anybody who was pointing out the facts or to shift
Speaker 1: the blame at the very least, when we talked about
Speaker 1: plastics and the idea ever cycling, this all PR to
Speaker 1: shift the blame and the responsibility to consumers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and shout out to our episode with Amy Westervelt
Speaker 3: where we went into depth on on this very subject.
Speaker 3: Check that oen out if you want to learn more
Speaker 3: about that. What Ben was speaking about the companies knowing
Speaker 3: and willingly uh forgetting that those studies exist, their own
Speaker 3: studies that they were funding.
Speaker 4: Wait, what's that?
Speaker 1: It reminds you there's a quote I saw online recently.
Speaker 1: It was pretty great. It was just a fake headline
Speaker 1: where it said, h you can leave the door open
Speaker 1: a little bit according to new study by mosquitoes. We
Speaker 1: didn't write that, but that's like, you know, cats can
Speaker 1: have a little slammy according to new study.
Speaker 4: Bys just for a treat, just for a tree.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's where we're at, you know, and these
Speaker 1: conspiracies are there are conspiracies that we can then logically
Speaker 1: assume are occurring because the powers that be or the
Speaker 1: forces that we're aware of this before the average Jane
Speaker 1: or John or Joe or whatever. Those forces are planning
Speaker 1: in self interest. There are plans to make sure that
Speaker 1: these folks or their institutions, or their loved ones or
Speaker 1: what have you, are able to find a livable place
Speaker 1: that they do always have clean water and ac And
Speaker 1: I don't think we should have a problem with that.
Speaker 1: I just think it should apply to everybody. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's Pollyanna or whatever. But the truth of the matter is,
Speaker 1: we are going to see, we are already seen. We
Speaker 1: are going to see a massive rise in migration. People
Speaker 1: like the ones you mentioned, Matt, the populations living in
Speaker 1: the equator, living on coastlines, are going to desperately search
Speaker 1: for an escape from increasingly uninhabitable regions of the world.
Speaker 1: And the governments in place, and you know what, let's
Speaker 1: throw in, throw in the the corporations, let's throw in
Speaker 1: whatever kind of governing structure you want. The ones that
Speaker 1: are in place, many will be rendered either powerless, corrupt,
Speaker 1: or ineffective in combating this. And when those institutions erode,
Speaker 1: We're going to lose faith in authority. Why why should I?
Speaker 1: Why should I pay taxes? The world's burning down.
Speaker 4: I already got to feel that way. I don't feel
Speaker 4: like I get much benefit from the tax that I pay,
Speaker 4: you know, in terms of direct impact in my day
Speaker 4: to day life. You know, I still have garbage healthcare,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean, I don't want to sound like
Speaker 4: some kind of bleeding heart liberal comedy or something like that,
Speaker 4: but I honestly don't know where my tax money goes,
Speaker 4: and it certainly doesn't seem to go anywhere that actually
Speaker 4: helps me or my family.
Speaker 3: That's interesting that you say that and old because what
Speaker 3: we we have seen historically through some really interesting studies
Speaker 3: and an article that was published in Ours Technica about
Speaker 3: some studies that we're looking at that correlation that we've
Speaker 3: been talking about this whole episode natural disasters and how
Speaker 3: violence erupts because of or as a partial effect of
Speaker 3: that natural disaster. We've seen that the way a government
Speaker 3: or a governing institution responds to a natural disaster and
Speaker 3: the effects of it can have a may It can
Speaker 3: play a major role in the outcome. Even if there
Speaker 3: is a violent conflict that begins that response can temper it,
Speaker 3: stop it, or full nent it.
Speaker 4: Can we just address the elephant in the room real quick.
Speaker 4: I mean, is a virus a natural disaster? So sure
Speaker 4: we're in this and and and the way the government
Speaker 4: is or is not handling this, and the people's positions
Speaker 4: on how it was or was not handled is going
Speaker 4: to have an impact.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Matt, Matt brought this up at the top
Speaker 1: with that definition of what is a natural disaster, It's
Speaker 1: always been an epidemic or a pandemic. And again, the
Speaker 1: only option that human beings have is generally going to
Speaker 1: be to respond an attempt to mitigate. Matt, your note
Speaker 1: brings up two examples. I think we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about this off air. There's an example in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1: There's an example in a relatively recent US history. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, all US history is relatively recent so far.
Speaker 1: FDR attempting to mitigate the Great Depression unquestionably did some
Speaker 1: dictator stuff. It's just true. It doesn't matter if you
Speaker 1: love him or hate him. He did a lot of
Speaker 1: good things, and he did a lot of things that
Speaker 1: were governmentally speaking illegal. If we look at older examples.
Speaker 1: Then we see a really compelling one in Egypt during
Speaker 1: the forties and the thirties BCE. We see a government
Speaker 1: response to mass starvation, to plague, to run away inflation
Speaker 1: which people have always hated apparently, and Cleopatra queen like, yes,
Speaker 1: that Cleopatra was instrumental in quelling a revolt. She quelled
Speaker 1: this revolt that was, you know, inarguably caused in part
Speaker 1: by natural disaster. She quelled it not by killing all
Speaker 1: the protesters or something like that. She quelled it by
Speaker 1: going I guess, I guess we would say she went protectionist.
Speaker 1: I guess we could say, by our modern framework, which
Speaker 1: doesn't really apply, we could say that she took actions
Speaker 1: that would be described as socialists. So she was both
Speaker 1: with authoritarian and socialists at the same You see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like it's it's weird to put those boxes in.
Speaker 1: But she offered grain relief, like gave people free food.
Speaker 1: And then she banned all exports of food, which is cute.
Speaker 1: Like imagine someone saying that. Imagine someone saying, like the
Speaker 1: US or China or any country, guatemalaut baton, whatever, people
Speaker 1: wouldn't ban food exports.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, absolutely, not, because again you're talking about money
Speaker 3: coming in, and what's the difference between money and grain, right,
Speaker 3: you can eat grain, you got to trade that money
Speaker 3: for something. And if everybody that you have direct connection
Speaker 3: to is dealing with drought conditions or in their in
Speaker 3: their case, it was natural disasters that caused the Nile
Speaker 3: River to not flood as much, so so that those
Speaker 3: floodwaters generally would be used to make the ground fertile
Speaker 3: for growing things. And when those floodwaters weren't coming in,
Speaker 3: it's very difficult to grow things, almost impossible in a
Speaker 3: lot of places. And if you've got a stack of
Speaker 3: cash and no grain and nobody's got grain, then you're
Speaker 3: out of luck. So it was actually a really smart
Speaker 3: thing to do. And I love what you're talking about there, Ben,
Speaker 3: just how interesting it is to consider it a socialist move,
Speaker 3: but how smart it was and how it was really
Speaker 3: the only thing you could do. We've got grains here,
Speaker 3: it's just we the state essentially controls them. And do
Speaker 3: we hold those for future need or power or do
Speaker 3: we begin doling them out and helping everyone.
Speaker 4: Well, full dystopian scenario like the coasts of the country,
Speaker 4: like fall into the sea, or become uninhabitable, and those
Speaker 4: people start going inland, but we can't sustain them. We
Speaker 4: don't have enough supplies to sustain them or enough infrastructure
Speaker 4: sustain them. Do we like wall them out?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: What, what's the worst case scenario in that situation?
Speaker 1: Well, how how far down the barrel do you want
Speaker 1: to go?
Speaker 4: Man, it's it's a medium dystopia. But this is a
Speaker 4: thing like, we can't there isn't another California to put
Speaker 4: California in, you know, And if you can't live there,
Speaker 4: where do you go?
Speaker 1: Well, it would in the case of the US, it
Speaker 1: would require a dramatic fundamental change in the policy of
Speaker 1: the country, and maybe not maybe not a good one
Speaker 1: because I want to be clear with that Egyptian example
Speaker 1: from thousands of years ago. I'm not coming out and
Speaker 1: saying like socialism would be the answer, because God knows,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of a lot of countries that
Speaker 1: did go full socialist and it did not work out.
Speaker 1: We still haven't found the best solution for managing large
Speaker 1: groups of people. The medium dystopian would be something like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say parts of the southwest, parts of the southeast
Speaker 1: become uninhabitable without the constant implementation of technology. You always
Speaker 1: have to have the ac or you will die something
Speaker 1: like that. So those people have to move somewhere. Let's
Speaker 1: make it medium high dystopia and say that also the
Speaker 1: San Andreas fault goes, and so we have one of
Speaker 1: the most populous states in the country turned into a
Speaker 1: chaotic disaster zone. All of those people from those three
Speaker 1: areas we just name, they have to go somewhere. The
Speaker 1: good news for the US is that it has a huge,
Speaker 1: relatively sparsely populated interior. So if we're just thinking like
Speaker 1: rules and red tape aside, where those people go. They
Speaker 1: go inland and they begin to populate places like South
Speaker 1: Dakota or North Dakota, you know, which only have a
Speaker 1: population in the hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 4: Right now, that's a really good point, Ben, I was
Speaker 4: thinking of that in the back of my mind. But okay,
Speaker 4: well that's I like that that. I mean, obviously we
Speaker 4: don't want the fault to erupt or whatever, but I
Speaker 4: like the at least people aren't gonna just drown or
Speaker 4: be walled out in no man's lands.
Speaker 3: But the migration is only half the battle. I mean,
Speaker 3: I hate going back to this all the time. But
Speaker 3: then food and water are your priorities. And you know,
Speaker 3: if you're talking about problems with water. We've discussed before
Speaker 3: the water wars that are inevitable that are headed our way.
Speaker 3: If you look at something as recent as the past
Speaker 3: I think month in a couple parts of Mexico where
Speaker 3: there are disputes between water trade. Essentially that's happening between
Speaker 3: the United States and Mexico where certain areas of Texas
Speaker 3: and water to Mexico, certain areas of Mexico send water
Speaker 3: to Texas. And very recently we're gonna hopefully talk about
Speaker 3: this in an upcoming episode, but a group a group
Speaker 3: of farmers went to a dam in Mexico and took
Speaker 3: over the dam and they prevented water in the river
Speaker 3: from flowing to Texas so that they could keep it
Speaker 3: because they were experiencing drought they needed water.
Speaker 4: Wellack, we have that with in Georgia, with the tri
Speaker 4: state water wars with Alabama and Florida. We've been seeing
Speaker 4: those conflicts for years. Well yeah, only one river.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in this case, we're talking about farmers who
Speaker 3: armed themselves to go take over a dam, right, yeah, Well,
Speaker 3: that's what we're talking about here though, violent conflict, where
Speaker 3: where on the individual level the decision is made if
Speaker 3: I do not act, myself or my family is in jeopardy.
Speaker 3: That's really what we're getting to here. That's when if
Speaker 3: the individual is deciding that, and there are enough individuals,
Speaker 3: it becomes an uprising of a sort, or a revolt
Speaker 3: or a revolution, or you know, fighting back against something
Speaker 3: that is seen as deciding to wield control over a group. Right,
Speaker 3: it's just it's scary.
Speaker 1: We also we also, in this medium spicy dystopian scenario,
Speaker 1: would inevitably see regardless of which country this occurred in,
Speaker 1: we would inevitably see a rise in militarism. Maybe not
Speaker 1: for the reasons you think. First yes, obviously to protect
Speaker 1: against adjacent countries invading for increasingly sparse resources. But secondly,
Speaker 1: because it's a solid job for people to get. It
Speaker 1: provides shelter, it provides food, it provides a degree of
Speaker 1: safety from whatever crazy social programs will be instituted.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing we'll see, of course, which
Speaker 1: we're already seeing, is dehumanization of people based on their location. Right,
Speaker 1: So like it has happened, It's not some nuts theory
Speaker 1: and it's not left wing or right wing. Like. Think
Speaker 1: about I'm sure I'm sure many of us listening you
Speaker 1: had to read the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Speaker 1: based on real events, right think about how dehumanized the
Speaker 1: people from Oklahoma were. The whole reason they were treated
Speaker 1: is less than human was because they were from Oklahoma
Speaker 1: at a time when being from Oklahoma sucked. They were
Speaker 1: called okie's not people.
Speaker 3: It's hard to wrap my head around that.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: Indeed, hey, shut out to all you okies out there.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, well, Oklahoma is a is a beautiful state. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I would I don't know, guys, I'm mistraveling. Should we
Speaker 1: try to get back on the road before the collapse
Speaker 1: of civilization? This is such an optimistic episode. We're past
Speaker 1: the tipping point. Disasters are on the rise. The only
Speaker 1: question now is the same questions as the talking heads
Speaker 1: would say, same as it ever was, how will humanity respond?
Speaker 3: What should we do?
Speaker 1: We've seen a bunch of different We seen a bunch
Speaker 1: of different good faith attempts to preserve empires, civilizations, community
Speaker 1: units during times of natural disaster, which we are in.
Speaker 1: We have not seen anything that's one hundred percent successfully reproducible.
Speaker 1: And that counts the far left stuff, the far right stuff,
Speaker 1: the crazy absolute power monarch just doing weird things. We
Speaker 1: don't have an answer, and we are standing on the
Speaker 1: train tracks, arguing often semantic in public discourse, while the
Speaker 1: train is coming for us and not slowing down. Okay,
Speaker 1: we need a positive note to end this.
Speaker 3: On Oh, Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping the.
Speaker 4: Place, bens and the way, and then when the rain.
Speaker 3: No droughts not.
Speaker 4: That's okay, y'all went fine, Oklahoma, Oklahoma.
Speaker 5: Okay, that's a perfect actually perfect thank you guys made
Speaker 5: my day. First, if you're listening, if you enjoyed that
Speaker 5: half as much as I did, then I think I
Speaker 5: think this may be a high point of your day.
Speaker 1: We want to know what you think. By the way,
Speaker 1: are you someone who has figured out a response to
Speaker 1: these things? Again, people too often get mired down in
Speaker 1: misleading labels and discourse. Natural disasters do not care really
Speaker 1: about any your personal information and your beliefs. They do
Speaker 1: not matter.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 1: The only thing it matters immediately is your location. But
Speaker 1: then as we see past a certain threshold, your location
Speaker 1: doesn't super matter either. You'll still be affected. So what
Speaker 1: are the answers? We're asking for help?
Speaker 3: Yeah, help us save you know, humanity. Okay, you can
Speaker 3: find us and write to us and give us your
Speaker 3: thoughts in many a place across the internet. Firstly, we
Speaker 3: are on Facebook and Twitter at Conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram,
Speaker 3: we are at Conspiracy Stuff show.
Speaker 4: Yes, and you also could find us on our favorite
Speaker 4: place on the internet, the Here's where it gets Crazy
Speaker 4: Facebook group, where all you have to do is answer
Speaker 4: a simple question, which is the naming one or two
Speaker 4: or three or anybody associated with the show. Ben always says,
Speaker 4: you can also just make us laugh, and I say,
Speaker 4: you can make a reference to something, let us know
Speaker 4: you're not a Russian bot. Whenever we approve people coming
Speaker 4: into the group, these go away, and occasionally we'll all
Speaker 4: screenshot the ones that we think are noteworthy. This one here,
Speaker 4: Matt Ben nole, security should be fixed. I was using
Speaker 4: Spanish knowing that Matt's wife is Cuban and that it
Speaker 4: might be indecipherable to a hacker or bot.
Speaker 3: Wow. Nice, How did you know that? Have I talked
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 4: This is actually?
Speaker 3: How much do people know about my life?
Speaker 4: Too much?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Are you not on the blog. Do you not read
Speaker 1: the blog anymore?
Speaker 3: I see it sometimes. I try to stay off of Facebook,
Speaker 3: as I hope you do. But if you don't and
Speaker 3: you do like Facebook, then go there. That's the right
Speaker 3: place to go.
Speaker 1: The blog is watchmatt Sleeping dot org. It is a nonprofit.
Speaker 4: Brought to you by simply Safe Home Security.
Speaker 3: I mean, I knew there were cameras all over the house.
Speaker 3: Uh my phone was bugged.
Speaker 4: But geez, you didn't know about this one, did you?
Speaker 3: Baby? Thanks You guys really means a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Yeah, we just want to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on you. The NSA intern Steve gave us that idea. Uh,
Speaker 1: so shout out to him. Uh And if you don't
Speaker 1: want to uh interact on social media, as Matt said,
Speaker 1: we one percent get it. You can give us a
Speaker 1: call toll free. I remember when people used to say
Speaker 1: toll free, back when there were tools like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're in totll free. We're one eight three three st
Speaker 1: d wytk uh speak your piece, speak your mind, give
Speaker 1: us suggestions for topics. React to this topic. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know the time is yours, conspiracy realist. The only thing
Speaker 1: we ask is that you let us know whether or
Speaker 1: not you are comfortable with us using your name or
Speaker 1: your voice on the air.
Speaker 3: That's right, hey, And guess what I have the best
Speaker 3: news for you all. The YouTube channel is going strong
Speaker 3: right now. You will see new videos posted there all
Speaker 3: the time. And by the way, this weekend, as we're
Speaker 3: recording this, we realized that our documentary short, one called
Speaker 3: etchten Secret the Georgia Guidestones, was just hanging out on
Speaker 3: the old YouTube channel, and guess what, we published it.
Speaker 3: And if you want to watch that, you can head
Speaker 3: over to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff right now.
Speaker 3: You can watch Nol's face talk about the Georgia guidestones
Speaker 3: and you can hear Ben's sweet voiceover that you've been missing.
Speaker 3: You can hear it right now. Just go to YouTube
Speaker 3: dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
Speaker 4: Dare we say, bearded face and dulcet tones.
Speaker 1: And while you're there, I tell you what's been making
Speaker 1: my day on that in particular, is the all the
Speaker 1: crow comments, all the corvid not COVID stories from ore
Speaker 1: a weird news piece which was really just an excuse
Speaker 1: for me to talk about crows. But cherry crow stories.
Speaker 3: You guys, I speaking of crow stories I dropped my
Speaker 3: son off at school this morning. Yeah, and as I'm leaving,
Speaker 3: I'm going through a little neighborhood to get out of
Speaker 3: the school area, a massive group of crows corvids. They
Speaker 3: were hanging out in the middle of the street a
Speaker 3: ton I'm gonna estimate three dozen, four dozen, and they
Speaker 3: were all I looked to be gathering food of some
Speaker 3: sort on the street. Because you know, we talked about
Speaker 3: this before, but there's an awareness that when a car's
Speaker 3: tires drive over nuts or certain things, they can get
Speaker 3: that meat out of there, so they'll drop it onto
Speaker 3: a street so that the cars can do their thing
Speaker 3: and they can get their food. They were doing that
Speaker 3: this morning.
Speaker 1: Amazing, amazing, you found a crow convention. You went to
Speaker 1: cro con accidentally?
Speaker 4: You know you sent them, Ben, don't be boy well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of speaking of sending things, if you don't care
Speaker 1: for phones, if you don't care for social media, and
Speaker 1: your wija board is broken or whatever, never fear. There
Speaker 1: is one way that you can always contact us twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. Send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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