Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We are joined as always with our super producer Dylan
Speaker 4: the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You
Speaker 4: are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 4: want you to know. If you are listening to our
Speaker 4: strange news program the evening it comes out, Welcome to Monday,
Speaker 4: November eleventh. We have a lot of strange news to
Speaker 4: get to tonight. Thought maybe we could start with a
Speaker 4: little bit of good news for our cold open. Did
Speaker 4: you guys remember our earlier brief conversation about the mystery
Speaker 4: song that was played in Germany?
Speaker 5: I do not recall.
Speaker 4: All Right, So, decades ago a German team recorded a
Speaker 4: song that they heard on a radio.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: You know how listeners of a certain age might have
Speaker 4: a cassette tape that you used to record radio broadcast live.
Speaker 4: This has become the most mysterious song on the Internet,
Speaker 4: and it was finally solved quite recently by a couple
Speaker 4: of intrepid researchers on Reddit. The name of the song
Speaker 4: to spoil it is Subways of the Mind by a
Speaker 4: band named f e X And I don't know if
Speaker 4: you guys just real quick for a cold open. If
Speaker 4: you guys are okay with it, can we play a
Speaker 4: brief clip of this song? I want to see if
Speaker 4: it's familiar. Absolutely, that's just the opening part. Quick question.
Speaker 4: Does that sound familiar to either of you guys?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 2: Is it a U two song?
Speaker 6: It just sounds vaguely late eighties. I don't know, kind
Speaker 6: of new wave issue. Well, I don't remember the context
Speaker 6: of this. Where were people hearing this? What's the mystery?
Speaker 6: And why should people care?
Speaker 4: Yes, people care because people like mysteries, and we care
Speaker 4: because we like good news and we like mysteries being solved.
Speaker 4: This first came into the zeitgeist in two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: Internet user Darius S recorded this from a radio broadcast
Speaker 4: in Germany and posted it on a website that tracks
Speaker 4: down mysterious songs, and people have been looking for it forever.
Speaker 4: It went viral again in twenty nineteen when I think
Speaker 4: a kid in Brazil uploaded the song to YouTube, and
Speaker 4: everybody was trying to figure out where the song came from.
Speaker 4: We do know it was a band named f EX.
Speaker 4: The song is called Subways of the Mind, and one
Speaker 4: of the members of the band, Michael Hadrick, who is
Speaker 4: sixty eight years old, now released the song confirmed the identity.
Speaker 4: So one mystery solved a little bit of good news.
Speaker 2: Oh ray, can you imagine having some song that you
Speaker 2: recorded with a band like twenty something years ago, maybe
Speaker 2: even more, and it gets resurfaced and who is this?
Speaker 2: It's amazing and it's just something you did in basement.
Speaker 6: It was me or maybe it was just like a
Speaker 6: non hit. I mean, it sounds professional. It sounds like,
Speaker 6: you know, like I said, like mid late eighties kind
Speaker 6: of stuff. But what's the country of origin of this band?
Speaker 4: The country of origin is Germany.
Speaker 5: Oh, there you go.
Speaker 6: It sounds yeah, one d percent And the name FMEX
Speaker 6: is very kind of kroud rock vibes. But that's so funny.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, there's a million songs that probably
Speaker 6: were like micro hits or underground hits in other countries
Speaker 6: that most of the world is just blissfully unaware of.
Speaker 5: And so I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's interesting that it became such a thing, because I'm
Speaker 6: sure we could find any number of examples of this.
Speaker 4: So this time, of all times, we wanted to start
Speaker 4: off strange news with a bit of good news. We're
Speaker 4: going to get to a lot more less happy solved mysteries.
Speaker 4: There's a mystery in Oklahoma. Uh, there is a bit
Speaker 4: of hard justice on the part of one or Northern
Speaker 4: Europe's favorite furniture manufacturers. But before we do any of that,
Speaker 4: we're gonna pause for a word from our sponsors on
Speaker 4: our cold open And when we return, we're going to
Speaker 4: talk squirrels.
Speaker 6: And we have returned with today's first piece of strange news,
Speaker 6: and along with it, before we get into it, I
Speaker 6: would like to put forth a theory.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 6: I think that a viral internet squirrel may have swayed
Speaker 6: the presidential election here in the United States.
Speaker 5: You guys know about Peanut.
Speaker 2: You know, I've heard the name, and I've seen it
Speaker 2: in headlines for a couple of days. Now. I have
Speaker 2: no idea who this person character.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, sure, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the squirrel doesn't necessarily have personhood, as is evidence
Speaker 6: by the way the government treated it. But he does
Speaker 6: have a person, a quite beefy fellow, often shirtless, by
Speaker 6: the name of Mark Longo, who resides in a beautiful
Speaker 6: countryside part of I believe upstate New York.
Speaker 5: Called Pine City.
Speaker 6: It is, in fact, y'all against the laws of New
Speaker 6: York State to possess or to keep, to have as
Speaker 6: a pet what would be considered a wild animal like
Speaker 6: a squirrel peanut. The squirrel was rescued several years back
Speaker 6: when Mark witnessed its mother being hit by a vehicle
Speaker 6: and the tiny squirrel known as a kit by the way,
Speaker 6: didn't know that. That's the thing I learned from a
Speaker 6: really great article on vox by alex Abad Santos, leaving
Speaker 6: the little peanut, who was nameless at the time, for dead,
Speaker 6: I believe, with the piece of his little tail severed
Speaker 6: by the accident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, it's said.
Speaker 6: So, Mark, who has a passion for mussels and tattoos
Speaker 6: as and animals, scooped up the little guy and brought
Speaker 6: him home and nursed him back to health and kept
Speaker 6: him indoors in his home, which is quite a sizable
Speaker 6: piece of property. It's referred to in a lot of
Speaker 6: the reporting as a farm there in Pine City, New York.
Speaker 5: But the big part of the story, there's a couple.
Speaker 6: This is sort of a multi pronged story, is that
Speaker 6: the New York Department of Environmental Conservation conducted a raid
Speaker 6: on Longo's property there in Pine City, New York, because
Speaker 6: of reports that Longo was keeping wild animals as pets.
Speaker 6: In this particular case, the wild animals in question are
Speaker 6: Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon. Fred the raccoon
Speaker 6: did not, however, play into the election results, I would argue.
Speaker 6: In conducting this raid, officers involved were told basically that
Speaker 6: there was a potentially dangerous wild animal or animals on
Speaker 6: the property. A big issue here is the potential for rabies.
Speaker 6: During the course of executing this, I guess, search warrant
Speaker 6: or raid or what have you. Peanut the squirrel did
Speaker 6: bite one of the officers, which I don't know if
Speaker 6: it was that or if this was their intention the
Speaker 6: whole time, but let's just say, for the purpose of
Speaker 6: telling a story, led to the officers taking Peanut and
Speaker 6: Fred away from the property. And unfortunately I'm not quite
Speaker 6: sure about I believe is that this is also the
Speaker 6: case with Fred. They were youthanized. Both of these Both
Speaker 6: of these animals were euthanized. Peanut had, in the course
Speaker 6: of his time with Mark amassed hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 6: Internet followers, had had an account all his own where
Speaker 6: he would be seen doing fun stuff with his his
Speaker 6: you know person, Mark, while Mark was often shirtless or
Speaker 6: you know me, perhaps wearing a little bit of risque
Speaker 6: outfits or in certain poses. And apparently, you know, everyone
Speaker 6: loves a good Instagram or social media account devoted to
Speaker 6: a pet, but it would seem that the owner was
Speaker 6: also part of the draw of this particular account, because
Speaker 6: it was often them hanging out together. And an interesting
Speaker 6: twist on this is that Mark Longo kind of parlayed
Speaker 6: the success of this Instagram account with Peanut the Squirrel
Speaker 6: and to it equally if not more successful account and
Speaker 6: a much more lucrative only fans account going by the
Speaker 6: name Squirrel Daddy. Uh So, Yeah, Mark a long ago
Speaker 6: and I believe and his wife you know, filmed and
Speaker 6: uploaded and served to their subscribers videos of them you know,
Speaker 6: having sex together, guy selling it old man, then doing
Speaker 6: doing sex acts with one another, which of course is
Speaker 6: completely legal and absolutely within you know their rights to
Speaker 6: do it. It has become a significant source of income
Speaker 6: for folks that do this, and and obviously there are
Speaker 6: some people who have a problem with this. I am
Speaker 6: certainly not one of them. It is important to know, sir.
Speaker 6: I thank you, Matt. I was about to say, it
Speaker 6: is important to note that the squirrel had nothing to
Speaker 6: do with any of these videos. The squirrel specifically, it
Speaker 6: was only featured on the Peanut the Squirrel Instagram account.
Speaker 6: And just really quickly, just to give you a sense
Speaker 6: of scale of peanuts popularity, uh seven and twenty thousand
Speaker 6: Instagram followers as p dash nutt like sort of like
Speaker 6: the bass player for three to eleven.
Speaker 4: You might wondering, Yeah, just interject, Yeah, I only know
Speaker 4: about your earlier question you asked. I only know about
Speaker 4: Peanut because of the Instagram account, which I found in
Speaker 4: endearing and in Longo's defense, Noel, I am under the
Speaker 4: impression that he released the animal, released Peanut into his
Speaker 4: backyard and did the right thing, tried to find a shelter,
Speaker 4: Peanut returned, which launches the sawga.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, Ben, that's that's entirely true. He did make every
Speaker 6: effort beyond what you were even describing to seek out
Speaker 6: an animal shelter or refuge that would take Peanut the squirrel,
Speaker 6: But when none could be found who would take Peanut in,
Speaker 6: he decided to take care of him himself. And he
Speaker 6: you know, did feature him on this Instagram account. They're
Speaker 6: often posing together doing fun, cute things. And he also
Speaker 6: was able to parlay his success on the Only Fans
Speaker 6: account into starting an animal refuge of his own. They know,
Speaker 6: when he found that there was nowhere there was no
Speaker 6: room at the end for Peanut the squirrel and Fred
Speaker 6: the raccoon, he decided to take it upon himself and
Speaker 6: use some of his uh, you know, funds that he
Speaker 6: was receiving from from all this Internet stuff and open
Speaker 6: his own shelter, which I think is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's incredible.
Speaker 4: The Peanuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary. I do think it's
Speaker 4: a noble pursuit.
Speaker 5: It's a noble pursuit and an amazing name.
Speaker 6: And when the news came out that Peanut the Squirrel
Speaker 6: had been taken, it was not an initially released.
Speaker 5: That he had been euthanized.
Speaker 6: There was quite a you know, a stir created on
Speaker 6: the Internet and a lot of people banded together and
Speaker 6: started a go fund me with the express purpose of collecting.
Speaker 5: Money that Longo.
Speaker 6: Could use it if he needed to pay for legal
Speaker 6: defense to defend himself. And this is a statement from
Speaker 6: the DEEC. On October thirty, ath DC seized a raccoon
Speaker 6: and squirrel sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential
Speaker 6: for human exposure to rabies. In addition, a person involved
Speaker 6: with the investigation was bitten by the squirrel to test
Speaker 6: for rabies. Both animals were euthanized. And there's there's a
Speaker 6: pretty telling quote from the Vox article that I mentioned
Speaker 6: where the author alex Abod Santos references something that one
Speaker 6: of his colleagues said. A colleague by the name of
Speaker 6: Karen Landren, who's an MD with training as a physician
Speaker 6: and epidemiologist. She pointed out that it seems like the
Speaker 6: DEEC may have overstepped a little bit or and measures
Speaker 6: that were not necessary. She described them as over aggressive.
Speaker 6: I'll just read from the quote from the piece. Longo
Speaker 6: had been raising peanut in his home for over seven years.
Speaker 6: If the squirrel were acting rabid, he would have had
Speaker 6: a short lifespan.
Speaker 5: The animal was also captive.
Speaker 6: She pointed out and could have had his blood tested
Speaker 6: without being killed. Quoting an interview from The New York
Speaker 6: Post with Longo himself, he refers to the raid like this.
Speaker 6: They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated
Speaker 6: this raid like I was a drug dealer. The raid
Speaker 6: apparently went on for upwards of four hours, close to
Speaker 6: five hours, is what's being described, And it seems like
Speaker 6: they turned his house over and were pretty aggressive. So
Speaker 6: the question becomes was just kind of too full. We'll
Speaker 6: get to the little political twists at the end. But
Speaker 6: who ratted out Longo? Who had it in for Peanut
Speaker 6: the squirrel?
Speaker 4: It's interesting too, and I'm glad that you're starting with
Speaker 4: that one, because we could say, for many of us
Speaker 4: in the audience this evening, you probably know someone who
Speaker 4: has for some reason taken in what a non domesticated animal, right,
Speaker 4: perhaps a corvid, perhaps raccoon, perhaps a squirrel. I would
Speaker 4: pause it and correct me if I'm speaking out of
Speaker 4: school here, I would posit. At least part of this
Speaker 4: is due to the phenomenal success of the account on
Speaker 4: social media, by which I mean the Squirrel's account, not
Speaker 4: the only fans account.
Speaker 6: That is exactly right, Ben, and that's what Longo himself
Speaker 6: seems to believe there's a New York But he did
Speaker 6: a couple of interviews with The New York Post, which
Speaker 6: we'll come into play a little bit when we talk
Speaker 6: briefly about this political twist that I keep referencing. He
Speaker 6: had this to say, maybe it's someone who thinks I
Speaker 6: used this place to make a lot of money. Mark
Speaker 6: said of his rescue farm, did this do wonders to
Speaker 6: my only fans? Absolutely, it's making a lot of money
Speaker 6: from this.
Speaker 5: So he seems to.
Speaker 6: Believe that there were forces within the New York City
Speaker 6: government that had a problem with what he was doing.
Speaker 6: He says, I had my own kind of squirrel dat account,
Speaker 6: my own Instagram. I just tagged my squirrel dat account
Speaker 6: from the peanut video I posted, so it gets double
Speaker 6: the clip views every once in a while, a shirtless photo.
Speaker 6: But I completely separated myself from the entire thing. Obviously,
Speaker 6: people were going to find both and try to associate them,
Speaker 6: whether or not it's somebody within the New York City
Speaker 6: government or it's.
Speaker 5: Just a prudish neighbor.
Speaker 6: Apparently one thing that sort of tripped his Spidey senses
Speaker 6: or smell tests when they arrived at his property. One
Speaker 6: of the first questions that was asked of him was
Speaker 6: do you have any cameras on the property, which he
Speaker 6: believes was a reference to the adult material that he
Speaker 6: was filming there. He also mentioned that he and his
Speaker 6: wife sometimes babysit the neighbor's kids, and he's wondered if
Speaker 6: someone felt as though he and his wife were exposing
Speaker 6: children to adult material, which again I think it's you know,
Speaker 6: I hope as a society we're past thinking that just
Speaker 6: because someone you know does sex work, or someone you
Speaker 6: know does adult content or something, that they are somehow
Speaker 6: unfit to do normal human things, you know, like like
Speaker 6: deal with children or like have children of their own.
Speaker 5: I just think that's a really outdated model.
Speaker 6: And certainly we know there are issues, there are problems
Speaker 6: with people who do take advantage of children, and we
Speaker 6: know these cases exist, but I do not think they
Speaker 6: are you know, one and the same. And so it
Speaker 6: does seem like maybe someone jumped to that conclusion and
Speaker 6: ratted him out. So I think that's a pretty valid theory.
Speaker 5: What do you guys think.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm stuck on this concept that you,
Speaker 2: as a government organization have to go in there and
Speaker 2: remove these wild animals, even though they're clearly domesticated, even
Speaker 2: though from you know, babies, they've been raised around humans,
Speaker 2: technically tamed. You're right, tamed. Yeah, I mean, you're you're correct,
Speaker 2: but I guess. I mean, if it's been in an
Speaker 2: environment with humans, it's used to being fed by humans
Speaker 2: and around humans, and it's not just running out in
Speaker 2: the woods all the time, there's a very low likelihood
Speaker 2: that it's been exposed to anything that would give it rabies.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Also, I mean the point that the Vox article made
Speaker 6: about how long he'd been keeping it and how you
Speaker 6: know if it had rabies, it probably would have died already.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and if you go into a house during a
Speaker 2: raid situation, you are risking It doesn't matter how domesticated
Speaker 2: any animal is. If there's a bunch of people that
Speaker 2: are kind of big and scary and look scary coming
Speaker 2: into a house, you risk getting bitten by whatever creature.
Speaker 6: Longo himself actually said he had been bitten multiple times
Speaker 6: by peanuts. You know, I'm not certainly not from being
Speaker 6: I mean, the guy is a little big, he ain't scary,
Speaker 6: though he's seems like a lovely dude. But it happens squirrels.
Speaker 6: No matter how much you domesticate them or, as you
Speaker 6: put Ben, tame them, you can't always get all of
Speaker 6: that wild out of them. So there's going to be
Speaker 6: a little nip every now and then. I mean, it
Speaker 6: happens with my cats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, then I guess it's on the human being
Speaker 2: that's keeping that animal to decide. And it seems as
Speaker 2: the longo made those decisions Ben, as you pointed out right,
Speaker 2: and those attempts to do the right thing. Oh, it's
Speaker 2: so weird. It seems like an unnecessary situation.
Speaker 4: Definitely, definitely a interesting expenditure of finite government resources right
Speaker 4: to get this one person. And I just I'm not
Speaker 4: the kind of person who looks at people on Instagram,
Speaker 4: much more affiliated with legatant policies. And then cute animals
Speaker 4: are kind of I think way for many viewers to
Speaker 4: sort of disassociate Peanut, by the way, I think was
Speaker 4: largely innocent in this whole debacle. But Noel, I'm sorry
Speaker 4: for derailing us to make us go a little longer
Speaker 4: at all. You said that you feel in this a
Speaker 4: political bent. Could you describe it?
Speaker 5: Wus yeah, I mean, I'm joking.
Speaker 6: You know, obviously we just experienced a pretty divisive election
Speaker 6: cycle here in the United States, whichever side of the
Speaker 6: isle you happened to fall. But the individuals, you know,
Speaker 6: who were campaigning on the right side of the isle,
Speaker 6: did seem in the last days before the presidential election
Speaker 6: to kind of glom onto this whole peanut thing, Peanut
Speaker 6: the Squirrel, and use it as an example of government overreach.
Speaker 6: Like you know, Elon Musk said at a rally type
Speaker 6: event that it was absurd that the government could come
Speaker 6: into your home and steal your pet and have it killed.
Speaker 6: And vice president to be a vice presidential candidate at
Speaker 6: the time, JD.
Speaker 5: Vance said something very similar.
Speaker 6: About how they killed they killed Peanut the squirrel, kind
Speaker 6: of likening this government agency, you know, the DEEC, to
Speaker 6: the Democratic Party, which is an over reach in and
Speaker 6: of itself. I think we could all agree, but it's
Speaker 6: an interesting talking point. There was even rumor floating around
Speaker 6: and a fake what was determined to be fake press
Speaker 6: release from the former president Donald Trump himself mentioning Peanut
Speaker 6: the Squirrel, But then the Trump camp came out and
Speaker 6: said that that was fake, even though it did bear
Speaker 6: whatever a logo kind of.
Speaker 5: See anyone can mock that up on photoshops.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I'm you know, obviously I'm joking a little
Speaker 6: bit when I say that Peanut the squirrel swayed the election.
Speaker 5: But it is interesting, especially given.
Speaker 6: Some of the rhetoric around, you know, migrants eating pets
Speaker 6: and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: That they would choose to go this route as a
Speaker 5: talking point. I did. I couldn't help but find it
Speaker 5: a little amusing.
Speaker 2: Dang well, no matter how you feel about the election,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter who won, because in the end, lockeed Martin, RTX,
Speaker 2: Northrop Grumman, and Boeing are still in charge. Sorry, not
Speaker 2: really kind of.
Speaker 5: I couldn't agree with you more, Matt.
Speaker 6: I've never had had a particular fondness for either side
Speaker 6: of the political spectrum.
Speaker 5: I just think the whole thing is rigged. So let
Speaker 5: this be an opportunity to put that out right now.
Speaker 6: And I think Peanut the Squirrel should be an apolitical issue.
Speaker 6: Let's just remember Peanut the Squirrel as he lived, wearing
Speaker 6: a cute little cowboy hat and hanging around with a
Speaker 6: big old bear. So with that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 5: Here are worth from our sponsor, and then we'll return
Speaker 5: with more strange news.
Speaker 2: And we've returned, guys, I've got two very specific stories.
Speaker 2: I guess, well, before you get into those, let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and say, because I don't think we've mentioned this yet.
Speaker 2: We talked about the Boeing strikes in a couple of
Speaker 2: Strange News episodes where we just kind of mentioned it
Speaker 2: because it was one of the factors going into Boeing's
Speaker 2: woes at the time. But the machinist strike has officially
Speaker 2: ended and there's a contract that has been accepted, So
Speaker 2: Gay at least, I don't know, that's good news right
Speaker 2: for now. Gay for now, the people who assemble the
Speaker 2: planes for Boeing are actually gonna see some positive stuff
Speaker 2: in their life, and it's been mostly negative, especially if
Speaker 2: they ever picked up a newspaper or you know, looked online,
Speaker 2: just the general rhetoric about the company they toil for.
Speaker 2: So that's a positive thing for a lot of human
Speaker 2: beings on the planet, and hopefully it means good things
Speaker 2: for Boeing in general and the planes that you know,
Speaker 2: when we fly through the air sometimes we get on
Speaker 2: those planes.
Speaker 4: And if I could say just very quickly to interject
Speaker 4: the machinists who are part of this contract back and forth.
Speaker 4: When you read those damaging headlines about Boeing or the
Speaker 4: news about things messing up, it's not really those machinist's faults.
Speaker 4: So Boeing is a big, big company. Please don't please
Speaker 4: don't lump them in with the actual problems, which are
Speaker 4: indeed structural and systemic.
Speaker 2: Absolutely is the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Speaker 2: Definitely not the same thing we've talked about on the show.
Speaker 2: But if you look past the headline and any of
Speaker 2: the articles written about Boeing's woes, it all has to
Speaker 2: do with manufactured parts that are generally manufactured in far
Speaker 2: flung areas of the world and then sent into one
Speaker 2: of the major Boeing facilities where they get assembled. Right,
Speaker 2: it's not the same thing. Okay, here we go. First story, guys,
Speaker 2: I did not know this was a thing until it
Speaker 2: landed on the reddit ar news page that I browse obsessively.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you guys do the same. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to read the headline IKEA will pay six million euros
Speaker 2: to East German prisoners what forced to build their furniture
Speaker 2: in a landmark move.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I need more context, Dan, this is wild sounding.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, when's the last time you heard
Speaker 2: East Germany or or anything East german Men in a
Speaker 2: news article outside of the piece on history, right outside
Speaker 2: of a piece on the Cold War?
Speaker 5: I didn't even clock that detail, Matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so that first of all, you go, what
Speaker 2: and six million euros? That seems like a lot, not
Speaker 2: a crazy amount for a huge corporation like Ikea, but
Speaker 2: I mean that's that's a significant amount of money. Prisoners.
Speaker 2: What are we talking about here? I guess we can
Speaker 2: just start by I don't know, do you guys just
Speaker 2: want to give a quick overview on what East Germany was,
Speaker 2: how it became a thing, and then why there would
Speaker 2: be a lot of prisoners involved in that state.
Speaker 6: I'm talking about like East and West Berlin, right, I
Speaker 6: mean with the wall, yes, and then one side being
Speaker 6: under Soviet control, on the other side being German.
Speaker 2: Correct. And in East Germany there were a lot of issues.
Speaker 2: A lot of it had to do with the newly
Speaker 2: imposed government structure, of the societal structure that rested on
Speaker 2: one side of that wall versus the other. And in
Speaker 2: the East German side it was. It was communists. That
Speaker 2: word is so strange, and it's been it's been used
Speaker 2: and weaponized and manipulated so much. But it was the
Speaker 2: Soviet controlled side of a split city and the country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just real quick, the name of that is the
Speaker 4: German Democratic Republic from nineteen forty nine to nineteen ninety,
Speaker 4: which means several of our fellow conspiracy realists listening tonight,
Speaker 4: remember when the wall.
Speaker 3: Fell and Mabe I got a piece of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of us are lucky enough to have a
Speaker 4: little chunk of history in the form of debris from
Speaker 4: the Berlin Wall. To your point, Matt, the question about
Speaker 4: prison labor goes to the massive surveillance state that was
Speaker 4: active in that vassal organization because the GDR was very
Speaker 4: much a puppet of the Soviet Union, and as a result,
Speaker 4: any descent or suspected descent you got cracked down on,
Speaker 4: you got locked up, and just like here in the
Speaker 4: United States, when you get locked up, the labor laws
Speaker 4: don't really apply, so they'll put you to work.
Speaker 5: It's fascinating.
Speaker 6: The whole part of the story with the Stazi, you know,
Speaker 6: like the secret police, and I was in Berlin a
Speaker 6: few years ago for the first time in my life
Speaker 6: and with the dear friend Frank of the Friend of
Speaker 6: the Show, and we went to the Stasi Museum, which
Speaker 6: is actually housed in this compound in Berlin, which would
Speaker 6: have been East Berlin where actually you know, functioned at
Speaker 6: the time. It's like an office park, and they kept
Speaker 6: a lot of the furniture the same, and you can look.
Speaker 5: It's really cool if anyone's.
Speaker 6: Ever there, highly record checking out, but they demonstrate and
Speaker 6: have on display a lot of the crazy kind of
Speaker 6: trade craft spy gear that they used.
Speaker 4: And just one last point there too, to interject quickly,
Speaker 4: you can see the economic consequences of that Cold War divide.
Speaker 4: Even now like East Berlin and East Germany are still
Speaker 4: struggling with some things from that time because history is
Speaker 4: way closer than it looks in the rear view mirror.
Speaker 2: Oh jeez, Okay, So let's take these things and then
Speaker 2: connect them somehow to IKEA. So there were a lot
Speaker 2: of human beings that opposed that force the Stazi, this
Speaker 2: this overwhelming thing that is telling you what you can do,
Speaker 2: what you can say, what you can think, really.
Speaker 4: Not even opposed, just had things that were off message
Speaker 4: and the Stasi found it out.
Speaker 2: That's a really great way to put it. People who
Speaker 2: were just living their lives and now this new machine
Speaker 2: is in and says your life doesn't match up with
Speaker 2: our machine. Something that's got to give. We're going to
Speaker 2: send you to prison. As you said there, Ben, you
Speaker 2: would literally go to prison for doing things, stuff that
Speaker 2: like we've heard of in I was gonna say in
Speaker 2: China and the DPRK, places where when you when you
Speaker 2: say things you're not really supposed to say out loud
Speaker 2: out even you could get in trouble to the point
Speaker 2: where you might wind up in a jail, a prison,
Speaker 2: or in a camp. Essentially that is for manufacturing, like
Speaker 2: literally a factory, a prison factory. So that's all occurring.
Speaker 2: And this is nineteen forty nine to nineteen ninety. So
Speaker 2: one of the things that the government over East Germany
Speaker 2: realized is that we've got all these prisoners, we can
Speaker 2: use their bodies literally as a machine to create stuff,
Speaker 2: to manufacture goods. And they made a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Think in your mind to maybe news stories you've heard
Speaker 2: growing up about places, I mean places all over the
Speaker 2: country like India, China, Taiwan, Malaysia countries where there is
Speaker 2: access to relatively cheap labor compared to other countries in
Speaker 2: the world. Manufacturers, big corporations across the world look to
Speaker 2: places like that to have parts manufactured and then have
Speaker 2: those parts shipped over to other factories where they're assembled,
Speaker 2: just like in the Boeing thing we were talking about,
Speaker 2: because you can get those individual parts often for much
Speaker 2: less money, right at the cost of human lives. Really,
Speaker 2: your product gets to be cheaper, and that is exactly
Speaker 2: what East Germany realized they could do with their prison population,
Speaker 2: and corporations, big companies across the world, not just Ikea,
Speaker 2: realized that they could have stuff manufactured on the cheap
Speaker 2: in these prisons and they would make gangbusters with the MSRP.
Speaker 6: But Matt, I think I might have a question that
Speaker 6: some of our listeners might be having as well. Don't
Speaker 6: we assemble Ikia furniture ourselves once we buy it?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: But what well, that is absolutely correct. You, as the
Speaker 2: end user of much of Ikea furniture and goods, assemble them.
Speaker 2: But the individual slats on a bed you buy from
Speaker 2: Ikea have to be produced specifically to order, right, The
Speaker 2: smaller pieces of metal and other pieces of wood and plastic,
Speaker 2: and all those things have to be assembled somewhere in
Speaker 2: a factory. Those were the things, the smaller things that
Speaker 2: were being assembled by prisoner labor. So it was a
Speaker 2: known thing that prison labor was used in a lot
Speaker 2: of these different companies. But other companies, you know, especially
Speaker 2: like Ikea that has a long history, some of them
Speaker 2: didn't even necessarily realize that this had been occurring. And
Speaker 2: that's whether or not you believe, you know, the official
Speaker 2: statements of giant corporations. But Ikea especially said they were
Speaker 2: unaware of this until they were notified, and then they
Speaker 2: had Ernst and Jung do a full audit of their company,
Speaker 2: full investigation, and they found that as recently as the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and eighties, prisoners were producing furniture for.
Speaker 4: Ikea, and that investigation only began in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Correct, correct, very recently, well, fairly recently. And only now
Speaker 2: after all of this investigation is Ikea saying, hey, we're
Speaker 2: willing to compensate victims of this practice.
Speaker 6: But is there I mean, maybe I'm barking up the
Speaker 6: wrong tree here, but in the United States, well, it's
Speaker 6: not particularly a good pr look for a corporation to
Speaker 6: be found to be using prison labor.
Speaker 5: It's not illegal.
Speaker 6: So as the law, I don't understand what is creating
Speaker 6: this need to compensate. It just seems more like a
Speaker 6: PR debacle. But like we hear all the time about
Speaker 6: prison labor being used for private industry here in America.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not about it being illegal at least if
Speaker 2: you listen to you know, folks from Ikea who are
Speaker 2: representing the company we're talking about this, and folks from
Speaker 2: the Union of Victims Associations of Communist Dictatorship or the UOGK,
Speaker 2: which has also been it's been quoted as something else
Speaker 2: in other places. That's according to CNN.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you go to European sources or UK sources
Speaker 4: because they're different now apparently you will see it also
Speaker 4: referred to as the Union of Victims Associations of Communist tyranny.
Speaker 5: Got you.
Speaker 2: Oh, But the whole point is it's not illegal. It's
Speaker 2: like shame, right, It's like our company did something shame
Speaker 2: the PR.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Ikea is not legally compelled to donate this. H
Speaker 4: what'd you say, Matt, six million euro.
Speaker 2: Six million euros exactly, it's towards a new government fund
Speaker 2: that's being established for compensation specifically for victims of East
Speaker 2: German dictators.
Speaker 6: And I'm not meaning to completely belittle the company of
Speaker 6: Ikea by saying it's a PR move. I mean there's
Speaker 6: more to it than that. I've always found Ikea. I mean,
Speaker 6: as far as corporations ago, I don't have much bad
Speaker 6: to say about Ikea.
Speaker 5: I think they're pretty cool.
Speaker 6: I like going to Ikea, I like their products, and
Speaker 6: it does seem like they pay their employees well. And
Speaker 6: I've never really heard too much scuttle but about you know,
Speaker 6: nastiness on the corporate level.
Speaker 4: So the cafeteria slaps are so good. You know, I
Speaker 4: still think the guy who lived in Ikea for a
Speaker 4: while is a ridiculous hero. Shout out to you man
Speaker 4: for getting away with it. But also, you know, internal motivations.
Speaker 4: Aside whether or not this is a PR stunt, it
Speaker 4: is still ethically a good thing to do.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think so, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: And let's actually look at the words officially from Ikea.
Speaker 2: This is from Walter Kadener, who's CEO and Chief Sustainability
Speaker 2: Officer at Ikea Germany. This is a quote We deeply
Speaker 2: regret that products for IKEA were also produced by political
Speaker 2: prisoners in the GDR. Since it has become known, IKEA
Speaker 2: has consistently worked to clarify the situation. We have given
Speaker 2: our word to those affected that we will participate in
Speaker 2: providing support. We therefore welcome the implementation of the Hardship
Speaker 2: Fund and are pleased to be able to keep our promise,
Speaker 2: which is kind of cool.
Speaker 6: I think it's really cool as far as corporate acts go,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean, it does seem pretty relatively humanitarian.
Speaker 5: We made a mistake, We're going to make it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it is weird too because in those prisons, guys,
Speaker 2: it's not just you know, political prisoners that opposed the thing.
Speaker 2: It's also people that likely should have been imprisoned because
Speaker 2: of crimes. So it's like it is, you know, it
Speaker 2: all becomes a very uh, you know, a complicated situation.
Speaker 2: The thing that we need to keep in mind and
Speaker 2: to think about for future episodes and maybe updates, guys,
Speaker 2: is that according to Rayner Wagner, who is the uo
Speaker 2: KG chair, and that's the organization that is you know,
Speaker 2: looking into this stuff and trying to figure out which corporations.
Speaker 2: We're doing this, he says, this is just the tip
Speaker 2: of the iceberg. He's saying that there are a lot
Speaker 2: of other companies that benefited specifically from this prisoner labor,
Speaker 2: and others need to at least be thinking about it.
Speaker 4: And let's also point out, folks, we are well aware.
Speaker 4: I don't think we did an episode on this or
Speaker 4: even a conversation in Strange News, but we are well
Speaker 4: well aware that the founder of Ikea was an absolute
Speaker 4: genius at dodging taxes for a long long time, and
Speaker 4: for a time he was the eighth wealthiest person in
Speaker 4: the world so far as the public news. So we're
Speaker 4: not saying Ikea is perfect. We're saying it appears they
Speaker 4: did the right thing in this instance.
Speaker 3: Is that fair to say, guys?
Speaker 5: I think so.
Speaker 6: And I was just going to say, I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: by many metrics and the ability to figure out ways
Speaker 6: around paying more tax is considered, you know, good business.
Speaker 6: I'm not saying I agree with that, but that is
Speaker 6: certainly a perspective, and it's certainly not illegal unless it's
Speaker 6: done illegally, which is called tax fraud or tax evasion.
Speaker 2: There we go, guys, there's another story here that I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about, but we don't have time. So
Speaker 2: and guys, I think I saw a listener mail message
Speaker 2: come in about that, So why do we save that
Speaker 2: for our listener mail episode?
Speaker 5: I thought I taught a putty that it.
Speaker 2: Has to do with some weird resignations. We'll get into
Speaker 2: it for now. Let's hear a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and we'll be right back with more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we have returned for the final act of our
Speaker 4: weekly strange news segment. Let's do a cavalcade of some
Speaker 4: good stories, some bad stories, some wild stories, dare we
Speaker 4: call them strange? We were talking about this a little
Speaker 4: bit offline in a group chat that we engage in occasionally.
Speaker 4: The US Department of Justice says they caught a guy
Speaker 4: who was going to use a quote weapon of mass
Speaker 4: destruction to destroy an energy facility in Nashville.
Speaker 3: This is Skylar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's what Skyler said when they caught him.
Speaker 5: Okay, seriously, I love it.
Speaker 4: May as well, because we're looking at a situation that
Speaker 4: might not get as widely reported for a little while.
Speaker 4: There's a lot going on here in our neck of
Speaker 4: the Global Woods. A twenty four year old from Columbia, Tennessee,
Speaker 4: Skyler Philippi phi l Ippi, was arrested by the FEDS
Speaker 4: and charged with this attempt to use a drone laden
Speaker 4: with explosives to destroy an energy facility basically a power
Speaker 4: plant out in the Nashville, Tennessee area.
Speaker 2: Uh, we're calling that. They they called that a weapon
Speaker 2: of mass destruction.
Speaker 5: It was C four. Oh god.
Speaker 4: Oh. Actually, the way it's reported by the DOJ is
Speaker 4: this kid believed it was C four because the C four,
Speaker 4: or the purported C four was supplied by the federal
Speaker 4: government itself.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just like an M eight inside some clay.
Speaker 4: By undercover agents. Yeah, we're talking about this. This feels
Speaker 4: like maybe he got played from the jump pretty well.
Speaker 3: And it reminded me.
Speaker 4: Wanted to share this with the group because it reminded
Speaker 4: me of our earlier episode years back, even before we're
Speaker 4: doing strange news and listener mail segments on whether the
Speaker 4: FBI is manufacturing terrorist Yeah, remember that with the with
Speaker 4: the mosque where they tried to radicalize and make some
Speaker 4: some guy went to a mosque, they tried to make
Speaker 4: him a terrorist through some undercover stuff, and then the
Speaker 4: mosque reported it to the FBI who was running that
Speaker 4: same agent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, I remember that. It sticks in your
Speaker 2: mind because it just feels like such a strange tactic.
Speaker 2: But I remember that also happening with what would be
Speaker 2: called white supremacist groups or like white nationalist groups, where
Speaker 2: somebody goes in and says, hey, I got a lot
Speaker 2: of explosives, and it's an FBI agent, And like, what
Speaker 2: happens if that FBI agent doesn't go in there and says, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got explosives? Do they ever come up with that
Speaker 2: on their own?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Especially considered? I mean, because at that point you'd be
Speaker 4: looking at some homemade stuff, or you'd be looking at
Speaker 4: a military supply chain, which is not impossible unfortunately, but
Speaker 4: you could track.
Speaker 2: That stuff, right maybe at least coming you know, if
Speaker 2: somebody's ordering a bunch of fertilizer and stuff, and I'm
Speaker 2: assuming the Bureau is watching that stuff pretty closely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's their job to do that, right.
Speaker 4: So this guy, I love that you bring up, well,
Speaker 4: I don't love it, but it's very accurate. They're bringing
Speaker 4: up white supremacist ideology. Scalar Philippi was uh, came onto
Speaker 4: the FBI's grid, you know, across the five Eyes or
Speaker 4: the Eye of sour on there, because of comments online,
Speaker 4: because of associations with known white power groups, because of
Speaker 4: a manifesto that he shared in part with the undercover
Speaker 4: FBI agents who contacted him.
Speaker 5: I love a good manifesto. I's just putting that out there.
Speaker 5: I've been writing this thing.
Speaker 6: Hey, you gotta have some craft, you know. I mean,
Speaker 6: I hate a bus snoozer of a manifesto.
Speaker 2: You know, hit asking for notes on your manifest.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't that be fine?
Speaker 3: This guy had no opsec.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: We haven't read the manifesto in full at the time
Speaker 4: of this recording. I don't believe the full language has
Speaker 4: been released to the public, probably because he just got
Speaker 4: arrested and has not yet been convicted. He definitely did
Speaker 4: not vet the undercover agents who this is the pickle
Speaker 4: of it, all right. So they find this guy, this
Speaker 4: young man twenty four years old again and they have
Speaker 4: embedded undercover operatives who are befriending him, glad handing him
Speaker 4: and saying, hey, we love your writing. We have a
Speaker 4: couple of notes, but you know it would be dope.
Speaker 4: Tell us if you're actually planning to do something.
Speaker 3: And then this.
Speaker 4: Guy said, yeah, I am, I just need the following things.
Speaker 4: And then an undercover operative said, that's interesting that you're
Speaker 4: looking for that, because it turns out maybe we can
Speaker 4: help you. So they got to the side of the
Speaker 4: power station where this guy's going to do the attack,
Speaker 4: and he was there with two undercover agents and then
Speaker 4: they waited until they definitely saw like he thought it
Speaker 4: was real, whether or not it was real as something
Speaker 4: will come, you know, come to light. Later he thought
Speaker 4: he really had a drone with these explosives, is about
Speaker 4: to take it off, you know, puld my beer watch
Speaker 4: this guy's and fly it into this power station, which
Speaker 4: would have been terrible for Nashville. And then they arrested him.
Speaker 4: They let him it all the way to that point.
Speaker 5: I clever or.
Speaker 2: SD like, think about the investigation. That's the best evans
Speaker 2: you have. This guy thought he was doing the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I didn't realize he was only twenty four years old.
Speaker 4: They had to show the intent, which, again to previous conversations,
Speaker 4: is one of the difficult things to prove. Is this
Speaker 4: just an armchair internet troll? Is this an actionable threat?
Speaker 5: Is this a political act?
Speaker 4: Though Ben, it's a political act that the vast majority
Speaker 4: of a marias would not agree with or understand. Well,
Speaker 4: this guy's super into you know, white supremacy and like
Speaker 4: the the Nordic oded myths, which are totally unrelated to
Speaker 4: white supremacy.
Speaker 3: By the way, I have to.
Speaker 6: Do with power stations, though, is he just trying to
Speaker 6: plunge us into a world of darkness?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 6: Is this prophecy wish fulfillments?
Speaker 2: Like the idea is is chaos ensues if you've got
Speaker 2: darkness for an an elongated period of time.
Speaker 5: I'm I guess.
Speaker 3: Yes, the idea that's chaos.
Speaker 5: But that affects the white people too, y'all. I don't understand.
Speaker 5: This seems very misplaced, you know. I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I don't know why I'm trying to identify with the
Speaker 6: motives of a seemingly mentally unwell person.
Speaker 4: Well, it's it's interesting for that to be mentioned because
Speaker 4: it shows us the dearth of long term planning for
Speaker 4: that kind of thing, because a lot of times in
Speaker 4: these sorts of groups, uh, the plan will be to
Speaker 4: create chaos and then know that you're in group can
Speaker 4: have their compound or their safe place for some sort
Speaker 4: of time and then it's just I don't know.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, it a diversion where you then do a
Speaker 6: second thing, or is the first thing the only thing?
Speaker 5: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's interesting too, because if you were operating in a
Speaker 4: domestic terrorism kind of apparatus, then you wouldn't want everybody
Speaker 4: to know what everybody else is doing. So maybe this
Speaker 4: kid was a pawn in a larger plot, which is
Speaker 4: quite possible. We know that bomb threats have been called
Speaker 4: in across multiple states in the US quite recently, and
Speaker 4: a lot of those have been traced to surprise Russian
Speaker 4: email domains.
Speaker 3: This also comes from the FBI.
Speaker 6: Also heard today, I just mean a little bit unrelated,
Speaker 6: but related that there were some attempts at voter disruption
Speaker 6: of polling place disruption, calling in bomb threats that were
Speaker 6: traced back to Russian operatives.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So what we know is the FBI in advance of
Speaker 4: this election, which was for any non US conspiracy realists,
Speaker 4: it kind of took over the news for a second.
Speaker 4: In advance of this election for many different government positions,
Speaker 4: the most notable of one, which would be the president
Speaker 4: of the United States. The FBI said that there were
Speaker 4: bomb threats targeting polling sites in multiple states that appear
Speaker 4: to be first non credible, but two effective enough to
Speaker 4: interfere with the voting process, and three pretty.
Speaker 3: Much coming from Russia.
Speaker 4: And this happens in step with weaponize social media and AI.
Speaker 4: It really like, without getting to ideological, if we're talking
Speaker 4: about the operational aspect of this, we have to acknowledge
Speaker 4: that this kind of interference is going to continue, not
Speaker 4: just in the US, but across multiple countries in multiple ways.
Speaker 4: China's big in the game. We know a lot of
Speaker 4: the Russian money hasn't stopped in terms of like be
Speaker 4: concerned about elections in Central Europe, for instance, be concerned
Speaker 4: about elections in Latin America. These conspiracies are real.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially given the regime change on
Speaker 6: the way here in the United States, and you know,
Speaker 6: the incoming president's relationship with Russia and the fact that
Speaker 6: they were often trying to prop him up and help
Speaker 6: out his cause. I do wonder if this relationship is
Speaker 6: going to be more one of foreign policy manipulation rather
Speaker 6: than stuff within the United States.
Speaker 2: I wish we could just do that thing where everybody,
Speaker 2: let's countries vote on their own but then we see
Speaker 2: what happens in places like Venezuela, where you know, maybe
Speaker 2: that's happening and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I want more funny crime.
Speaker 4: Is the thing moving on? Because I know right at
Speaker 4: the time, here's a funny crime that I really liked.
Speaker 4: There were these hackers over in France just a few
Speaker 4: days ago who hacked Schneider Electric, big electric company, energy
Speaker 4: company in France, and they stole something like forty gigs
Speaker 4: of data from this engineering energy group. They penetrated what's
Speaker 4: called their GRAS system j I r A might be
Speaker 4: familiar to a lot of us from back in the day.
Speaker 4: They when they broke in, they said, all right, we're
Speaker 4: doing ransomware. This is a cyber heist. You have to
Speaker 4: give us a ransom the equivalent of one hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty five thousand US dollars in bum bum bum bagets.
Speaker 5: Like the bread or is this some currency that I'm
Speaker 5: not aware?
Speaker 3: Hope it's the bread.
Speaker 5: That's a lot of Now, well that is a lot
Speaker 5: of bagats.
Speaker 2: Hold on, is this a language joke? Like? Is it
Speaker 2: a joke?
Speaker 3: I think it's for the lulls.
Speaker 4: I think they wanted actual bagets, and they said, look, you,
Speaker 4: if you admit that we breached your system, then we're
Speaker 4: going to cut the ransom in half. If you go public,
Speaker 4: the ransom demand will be increased or decreased. Excuse me
Speaker 4: to sixty two, five hundred US dollars worth of baguettes
Speaker 4: and credit where it is due. I would love to
Speaker 4: give a fantastic shout out to our pal Mark Tyson
Speaker 4: over at Tom's Hardware for the best line of this.
Speaker 4: When he's talking about the proposed reduction in ransom for
Speaker 4: going public, he said, even with a fifty deduction, that's
Speaker 4: still a lot of dough his back as his bread.
Speaker 4: It's a bread joke.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, that's yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 6: I don't think you could use that many bagats without
Speaker 6: them getting stale.
Speaker 5: I think you'd run up against that problem.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: You'd have to do some crew tion action.
Speaker 5: Oh that means good. You could toast them and in
Speaker 5: giant some sort of industrial kitchen situation, or perhaps pass
Speaker 5: them out to like a like a Robin Hood type
Speaker 5: situation or Jesus.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Ben, I just read the subtitle of that article.
Speaker 5: Cake.
Speaker 2: Can you read that?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Thank you for pointing out Matt, hand over the dough
Speaker 4: or your forty gigabytes of secret data.
Speaker 3: Is toast stand that's good and tennessee.
Speaker 4: Palin triforce, please please give us some weird sound cues
Speaker 4: on that one.
Speaker 5: Your bag ats all your life.
Speaker 4: There's one last weird crime that we should talk about
Speaker 4: very briefly. It is conspiratorial. It is indeed strange news.
Speaker 4: If we travel over to Equatorial Guinea, we'll see that.
Speaker 4: Just yesterday, as we record, the government authorities have said
Speaker 4: they're going to install surveillance cameras in pretty much all
Speaker 4: the government offices in response to a sex scandal with
Speaker 4: a government official who slept with hundreds of people and
Speaker 4: were slept with a bunch of people and recorded hundreds
Speaker 4: of sex videos. This is Baltasar Ebang in Goonga, the
Speaker 4: director of the country's National Financial Investigation Agency, just got suspended.
Speaker 4: They found four hundred sex videos of him in multiple women,
Speaker 4: some of them wives and relatives of other senior government officials.
Speaker 2: Wow, this guy had the riz.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there is and the goods I mean, I mean
Speaker 6: in terms of like using this as blackmail material, right,
Speaker 6: I would imagine let's go to ap news.
Speaker 4: They're still pretty legit by Emmanuel Dumanjong. Part of my
Speaker 4: pronunciation there, Emmanuel, it's t u m a n jo
Speaker 4: n g reported from Caberroon. It looks like the investigators
Speaker 4: searched this guy's computer in Gonga as part of a
Speaker 4: probe into alleged corruption and embezzlement, and while they were
Speaker 4: looking for financial crime, they found this horde of sexual content,
Speaker 4: more than four hundred individual videos. Unfortunately, it was not
Speaker 4: clear at this time if these sexual activities were consensual.
Speaker 4: It is not clear at this time if any women
Speaker 4: depicted in these videos, because it was all him with
Speaker 4: women had made formal complaints. This is yeah, this is
Speaker 4: incredibly chaotic news for.
Speaker 2: Getty because he's the National Financial Investiation Agency. So potentially,
Speaker 2: and this is full speculation on my part, he could
Speaker 2: be looking at let's say the husbands or the family
Speaker 2: members of some of these women and saying, hey, I've
Speaker 2: gotten you.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: And we also know, as this is still developing strange news,
Speaker 4: we also know that the Prosecutor General, speaking in public
Speaker 4: about this, Anatolio and zog Gimma said quote, the authorities
Speaker 4: want to establish whether the man deliberately used these relationships
Speaker 4: to spread a possible disease among the population.
Speaker 5: What yikes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And this is where we get the surveillance cameras.
Speaker 4: This is where we know that a lot of senior
Speaker 4: officials are incredibly upset. The Vice President's office recently said
Speaker 4: this denigrated the image of the country.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: These videos also flooded social media. Telecom companies have been
Speaker 4: asked to quote kurb the spread of this media. He
Speaker 4: is reportedly to the question about riz. He's reportedly nicknamed
Speaker 4: Beyo or Bello b E l l o, meaning beautiful, okay.
Speaker 3: Good looks. It's a rough one.
Speaker 4: It's also a scandal to the point where we don't
Speaker 4: know what the ultimate fall out would be. But I'm
Speaker 4: thinking it's something like what if the what if the
Speaker 4: head of the Federal Reserve got caught with all this stuff?
Speaker 4: You know, what would happen here in the States?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 4: We are not you know, none of us have been
Speaker 4: to Equatorial Getty. We want to hear your quite if
Speaker 4: you are from this part of the world or have
Speaker 4: spent some time there, because it's such a red meat story.
Speaker 4: Whenever they're they're these sexual allegations that you have to
Speaker 4: always wonder about timing, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 4: takes a while to make hundreds of these videos.
Speaker 5: Right, hmmm, yeah, well no, I don't think about either.
Speaker 6: But then the question is too, like where was he
Speaker 6: storing them that you have like private servers?
Speaker 5: What was the tech? I mean, maybe I'm overthinking it,
Speaker 5: but like, right, what was his long game?
Speaker 4: Is he cuckholding people just to be a jerk? You
Speaker 4: know what I mean? It reminds me of some allegations
Speaker 4: that came out with the recent Epstein recordings, which have
Speaker 4: you if you're not aware of, folks. A journalist named
Speaker 4: Wolfe has recently released recordings with the disgraced financier and
Speaker 4: child abuser and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and he got
Speaker 4: these recordings a few years back when he was interviewing
Speaker 4: Epstein about the subject of a book he wrote called
Speaker 4: Fire and Fury.
Speaker 2: Dude, and just to take it back in our own
Speaker 2: episode to make it a nice little circle. Cuckolding was
Speaker 2: one of the tactics that came forward to the FBI
Speaker 2: and other agencies used to infiltrate white supremacist groups and
Speaker 2: other like Black Panther movement and other things. They would
Speaker 2: do that on purpose.
Speaker 6: Well, and I think I know this term like and
Speaker 6: as like a kink, you know, or someone wants to
Speaker 6: watch someone else have sex with their partner, but it's
Speaker 6: all consensual.
Speaker 5: What do you mean by cuckolding in this term in
Speaker 5: this context?
Speaker 2: I don't think I understand in this case, like just
Speaker 2: infiltrating a relationship, right, so that specifically your target, I
Speaker 2: don't know, is weakened in some way psychologically.
Speaker 4: Well not just weakened psychologically, but weakened operationally. What's kind
Speaker 4: of like the best way to learn a foreign language
Speaker 4: is to begin a romantic relationship with someone who speaks
Speaker 4: that language. The best way to learn the inner workings
Speaker 4: of someone, if you're targeting them, is to get inner
Speaker 4: working source, and often that's someone in a romantic relationship
Speaker 4: with that person.
Speaker 2: It's like one of the most devious things a human
Speaker 2: could do. Congratulations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's also evil and psychologically damaging.
Speaker 3: Just be honest with people, you know.
Speaker 4: This is something that we're going to keep an eye on,
Speaker 4: just to see if there is a conspiracy afoot. What
Speaker 4: happens next? You tell us?
Speaker 3: Folks?
Speaker 4: Thank you so much as always for tuning in We
Speaker 4: wish you the best of Novembers. We'll be back soon
Speaker 4: to follow up on this and many stories we didn't
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Speaker 4: oh wait, the internet.
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Speaker 5: We are Conspiracy Stuff show guys.
Speaker 2: I saw a post on Instagram recently where it was
Speaker 2: somebody recounting a story from childhood when they went to
Speaker 2: an Italian restaurant with their family and the server came
Speaker 2: over and said, Hey, what's your name, and the kid
Speaker 2: just turns and says, call me Captain Ravioli. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: just thought it was so delightful. Hey, we have a
Speaker 2: phone number. It's one eight three three STDWYTK. It's a
Speaker 2: voicemail system, so when you call in, you only got
Speaker 2: three minutes. Say whatever you'd like do. Include a cool
Speaker 2: nickname for yourself, and let us know in the message
Speaker 2: if we can use your message and voice on the air.
Speaker 2: If you got more to say than can fit in
Speaker 2: a three minute voicemail, why not instead to send us
Speaker 2: a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
Speaker 4: we receive. Be well aware, yet I'm afraid sometimes the
Speaker 4: void writes back in the Wikipedia at the squirrel. If
Speaker 4: you are looking for some other animals to check out
Speaker 4: on social media amid all the recent doom scrolling, I
Speaker 4: would highly recommend one of my favorite pieces of Chinese propaganda,
Speaker 4: Xing Xing, the one Armed monkey spelled xi in g
Speaker 4: xin G. If you've got any other tips, or if
Speaker 4: you want us to bestow a nickname upon you, then
Speaker 4: join us out here in the dark. We read every
Speaker 4: single letter we get. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot.
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