Speaker 1: So true story.
Speaker 2: Perhaps not a story the Jedi will tell you, Fellow
Speaker 2: conspiracy realist. Back in the day, we went on a
Speaker 2: tour across the northeast part of the United States, and
Speaker 2: we decided what better to talk about than the conspiracy
Speaker 2: surrounding the Federal Reserve. That's our classic episode this week.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we're talking about the creature from Jekyl Island
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: Love it shout out nineteen thirteen.
Speaker 2: This is also, if I recall correctly, this is also
Speaker 2: the time we were very taken with Hobo code and then
Speaker 2: we were also, oh I found we found that toybee
Speaker 2: tile here in Atlanta. Yeah, we just we squeezed that into.
Speaker 4: This is really great.
Speaker 3: And I honestly can't remember which city this recording is from,
Speaker 3: or like when whichever one this is from. We had
Speaker 3: such a great time touring around the northeast of these
Speaker 3: good United States talking about the system that kind of
Speaker 3: controls the money here in a weird way. Uh, we
Speaker 3: can't wait for you to hear this. We had a
Speaker 3: great time.
Speaker 4: Hello, hello, hello, welcome.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, you guys, we did it. We came
Speaker 2: to our hometown and a crowd showed up to see
Speaker 2: us live.
Speaker 1: How are you doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Sunday.
Speaker 1: It is all right. We had to check earlier. We
Speaker 1: have no idea what day it is. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's been a bit of a blur.
Speaker 2: It's been a bit of a it's been a bit
Speaker 2: of a blur. But we want to thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming out. Is astonishing to us to record
Speaker 2: in our hometown live now this is this is the
Speaker 2: last show of our tour and we saved it for
Speaker 2: you for Atlanta. I like your hat, by the way.
Speaker 2: And we went We went to a bunch of places, really, Yeah.
Speaker 1: We did.
Speaker 5: My favorite highlight of the tour was having a lobster
Speaker 5: role at a dive bar in Boston, because that's the thing.
Speaker 5: They're just lousy with lobsters there and at Yeah, and
Speaker 5: then yesterday I almost died. I choked on a bone
Speaker 5: from a fish at a tire restaurant and had a
Speaker 5: panic attack. But these guys got me through it. And
Speaker 5: now here I am to be with you fine people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We played a show in Arlington at this old theater
Speaker 3: and it was beautiful because all of the seats were
Speaker 3: like old office chairs that have been just discarded by someone.
Speaker 3: But they just purchased them all or found them on
Speaker 3: the side of the road and just filled the entire
Speaker 3: theater with them.
Speaker 5: And then there were remnants, like there were weird piles
Speaker 5: of them just in the corners.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there were weird tables.
Speaker 2: It looked like we were going to do a meeting
Speaker 2: for the United Nations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It's like one of those like the Buckhead Theater, I forget,
Speaker 3: not the Bucket theater.
Speaker 4: It's one of the old like the Pisa or something, one.
Speaker 3: Of the newer movie theaters that actually has food there too,
Speaker 3: so you're sitting in these seats and ordering food.
Speaker 4: It was just an odd experience.
Speaker 1: Was it was.
Speaker 5: It as odd as the one in Boston where there
Speaker 5: was a kid's parkour class going on outside of our.
Speaker 1: Which was great.
Speaker 2: It was fantastic. Those kids have moves. We tried to
Speaker 2: hang with.
Speaker 1: Them, Yeah, they weren't having it.
Speaker 5: Literally just ch opened the door to the dressing room
Speaker 5: and there's just like these little tiny midget people just
Speaker 5: zooming bye, like like tires and like you know, bars
Speaker 5: and stuff.
Speaker 1: It was pretty wild.
Speaker 2: But they did actually say parkour while they were j Yeah.
Speaker 3: But now we're in a place called Terminal West, which
Speaker 3: rules do you do?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 3: Guys ever come out here to see shows like music,
Speaker 3: awesome live shows.
Speaker 4: We're on that stage right now.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, uh oh, and we're supposed to do a show.
Speaker 1: That's why we're.
Speaker 3: Here, right, Okay, let's let's get started. Yeah, yeah, welcome
Speaker 3: back to the show.
Speaker 2: My name is Matt, my name is not and they
Speaker 2: called me Ben. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 2: and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 1: We're joined also by our super producer, Paul, Paul Mission
Speaker 1: Control Decad. Hey, were you still please let us embarrass you.
Speaker 1: This guy makes our show. This guy makes our show happen.
Speaker 2: He we continually cajole him to get on microphone with us.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I know, but but.
Speaker 3: Then he's surrounded by a lot of other house stuff works.
Speaker 2: Oh I see you them, I see some celebrities in
Speaker 2: the crowd. Can I get your autograph later? Guys, I
Speaker 2: don't want to make it weird, but you.
Speaker 1: Know, okay, I made it all right?
Speaker 2: Well, well yes, Paul mission Control decand uh, we're finally back.
Speaker 2: And we were on the road for a while and
Speaker 2: we had these bizarre adventures, roaming through New England, roaming
Speaker 2: through through historic places. Every city we have been to,
Speaker 2: including Atlanta, has has a few things in common. Right,
Speaker 2: There's a there's a bunch of graffiti everywhere. Oddly enough,
Speaker 2: there's a regional Federal Reserve Bank, which in every city
Speaker 2: we went to, in every single one. And when we
Speaker 2: were thinking about our show, we we started we started brainstorming,
Speaker 2: and we were we were thinking about hidden things, signs, symbols,
Speaker 2: secret languages, and we were wondering how they came to
Speaker 2: be and why and what they mean, and more so,
Speaker 2: why do some of the world's most powerful, influential institutions
Speaker 2: use secret signs, codes, signals, languages every year, every month,
Speaker 2: every week, every day.
Speaker 3: Ben, are you talking about the shadowy organization that operates
Speaker 3: out of that five sided buildings over near Arlington, Virginia
Speaker 3: where we were. That has absolutely nothing to do with pentagrams.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean there are a lot of buildings.
Speaker 1: With five sides.
Speaker 5: I hear it has a subway and a Best Buy.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's true. The branding is part of
Speaker 5: it as well.
Speaker 1: Right, right, It's true.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Matt, the Pentagon is arguably involved Okay,
Speaker 2: but that comes later, I think, right, I will wait,
Speaker 2: do we want to call it foreshadowing?
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, we'll call it foreshadowing.
Speaker 2: So we're hoping that you join us today as we
Speaker 2: dive into the strange stories of these signs, languages, signals,
Speaker 2: and symbols that allegedly influence us everywhere we go.
Speaker 5: And the institutions are one of them anyway, that just
Speaker 5: loves them.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely so. Okay, So this is a modern city.
Speaker 2: Atlanta is a pretty big city, and every time you
Speaker 2: walk through any modern city in the US or abroad,
Speaker 2: we are inundated with literally millions of images of mess right,
Speaker 2: and they're non consensual. You don't wake up in the
Speaker 2: morning and agree to see twelve thousand billboards.
Speaker 1: You just have to go do something.
Speaker 2: And we had a time a while back, Matt, you
Speaker 2: and I years ago had a fool's errand where we said,
Speaker 2: you know what, we're gonna wake up tomorrow. We're going
Speaker 2: to count every single advertisement that we see during the day.
Speaker 3: We really did it, and we got to about two
Speaker 3: hundred or so. I think both of us maxed out
Speaker 3: around that range two hundred three hundred range.
Speaker 2: I gave up at eleven thirty five am.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was rough, and it's just crazy.
Speaker 3: And a lot of its logos that are kind of
Speaker 3: unassuming that you just notice on the side or on
Speaker 3: somebody's shirt or a hat, sir, awesome shirt, And it
Speaker 3: could just be as simple as a letter or something
Speaker 3: like that, or like if it's a logo, you look
Speaker 3: at something like we all know this the FedEx logo
Speaker 3: that has that secret arrow in there, or the Amazon
Speaker 3: logo that also has a not so secret arrow.
Speaker 2: It's got a smile that starts at where starts at
Speaker 2: like a yeah, and it goes to Z.
Speaker 3: Lets you know you can get everything online right. All
Speaker 3: you need is a tiny little symbol that lets you
Speaker 3: know exactly what something is and you don't have to
Speaker 3: communicate with words beyond.
Speaker 5: That, and the smile just lets you know that everything's cool.
Speaker 5: Amazon is a completely innocious organization that just means the
Speaker 5: best for you, and one that story goods and servicesn't
Speaker 5: be able to buy your laundry detergent with the push
Speaker 5: of a button. It's a fantastic company. I'm a fan.
Speaker 2: We're getting those drones for you, says Jeff Bezos. But
Speaker 2: but this, this is weird because it goes beyond advertisements.
Speaker 2: There is a great deal of money and time spent
Speaker 2: to create logos that you know, FedEx has letters in it, right,
Speaker 2: Amazon also has letters in it. But the parts of
Speaker 2: our brain that are being engaged when we see these
Speaker 2: logos are non verbal things. They're not they're not the
Speaker 2: language part of our brain, you know. What they are
Speaker 2: instead are imagistic, symbolic things.
Speaker 5: We're meant to connect with you, like on almost emotional,
Speaker 5: kind of prioritial level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely your primal level. And we thought,
Speaker 2: how far does this go?
Speaker 4: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, We've all seen mad Men or read the Wikipedia
Speaker 2: entries about it, I'm sure so.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 2: We know that advertising is historically huge industry, but the
Speaker 2: idea of secret symbols, secret signs, secret languages goes far
Speaker 2: beyond advertising. It predates it. We wanted to find an
Speaker 2: example for you, and we wanted to start with something
Speaker 2: that used to be alarmingly cartoonishly common. It's something you
Speaker 2: may not have heard of in the modern day. The
Speaker 2: name sounds a bit silly, but here we go. It's
Speaker 2: Hobo code. Hobo code.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 5: You got to enunciate it because we had a couple
Speaker 5: of shows when people didn't know what we were saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here's the thing.
Speaker 5: The it does sound kind of like it could be
Speaker 5: like the name of like some kind of prog band's
Speaker 5: concept album.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, so kind of like concept EP or something
Speaker 2: mobo code.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no, it's not.
Speaker 5: It's actually an entire kind of cryptographic language, and it
Speaker 5: surround the world of the hobo, which you may know
Speaker 5: today as being a bit of a pejorative or something
Speaker 5: you might say to your you know, significant other if
Speaker 5: they're not dressed well or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's weird.
Speaker 2: It's an anachronistic, Like some of us are here with
Speaker 2: our significant others. If you're ever in a fight with
Speaker 2: them and you call them a hobo, then they're.
Speaker 1: Just like out of the argument. They don't understand what's
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 4: Why would you say that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, They're like, what year is it? Tim?
Speaker 2: I apologize if anyone here is named Tim. But the
Speaker 2: idea of this goes back to a part of American
Speaker 2: history that we don't often talk about outside of maybe
Speaker 2: middle school, high school, the Great Depression, The world of
Speaker 2: the hobo itinerant workers without homes who had to leave
Speaker 2: their communities due to the fact that there were no
Speaker 2: means of sustainable employment. This world is often romanticized nowadays.
Speaker 5: Right you got you got the guy with the bendle,
Speaker 5: then the stick with the bag and like the crumpled hat,
Speaker 5: maybe a pipe or something, trusty dog riding the rails.
Speaker 1: Not a care in the world.
Speaker 5: Only kind of a lot of cares in the world,
Speaker 5: because the world, as it turns out, was a terrifying,
Speaker 5: terrifying place.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they find themselves in that position, not of
Speaker 3: any real action that they took. Perhaps it's something that
Speaker 3: was kind of forced on them. If you don't have
Speaker 3: a home, then this is this is kind of what.
Speaker 2: You do, and it's a it's a brutal and demanding existence.
Speaker 2: And the problem with this is we don't know too
Speaker 2: much about this community because it was largely an oral tradition.
Speaker 2: These people weren't buying wings of museums, they weren't financing
Speaker 2: some sort of scholarship program. You can find some interviews,
Speaker 2: you can find a couple of books by some intrepid journalists,
Speaker 2: and you can hear some i'll say it, creepy songs
Speaker 2: that stayed in the American song book.
Speaker 4: They they might actually know rock Handy mount.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no one up north does.
Speaker 4: Nobody knows this song?
Speaker 3: Are people in this audience, No, rock Candy Mountain, Rock
Speaker 3: Candy Mountains.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, tell them.
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's uh the song, the version of it
Speaker 2: you hear has one verse xcised from from what will
Speaker 2: typically play on auto you know, blue bluegrass kind of stations. Yes,
Speaker 2: the last verse is it turns out the entire song
Speaker 2: is a message from a hobo to a young runaway child,
Speaker 2: and the last verse is the child saying, I am
Speaker 2: not going to let you take what you call it,
Speaker 2: no hobo hobo heaven.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that's what the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: But now now you're making it makes it sound like
Speaker 5: hobo's were like evil or something.
Speaker 1: That's not true.
Speaker 5: No, they were just they were just people, which is
Speaker 5: but this is this is the story of an evil hobo.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so, but the idea is.
Speaker 5: Really that the Big Rock Candy Mountain is sort of
Speaker 5: like the thing you have to look forward to in
Speaker 5: this you know, hard fought life is basically the afterlife,
Speaker 5: because that's about the best you're gonna get. But in
Speaker 5: the meantime, Before this happens, there were some pretty powerful
Speaker 5: symbols that were created to help communicate conditions in this
Speaker 5: community that was known as the Brotherhood of Yeah, the
Speaker 5: Brotherhood of the Frate right exactly, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So you can google Big Rock, Candy Mountain full lyrics
Speaker 2: just by the way, we're not gonna recite them. But this,
Speaker 2: this message, the system of symbols existed for five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people in the early nineteen hundreds and had spiked
Speaker 2: to seven hundred thousand by nineteen eleven. By the Great Depression,
Speaker 2: the number exploded and we reached we reached something called
Speaker 2: peak hobo.
Speaker 1: That's the official term, that's the scientific term.
Speaker 2: And while these people were on the rails, living on
Speaker 2: the fringes of a society that did not want them around,
Speaker 2: they devised a system that that we would not recognize
Speaker 2: to communicate with one another. And this this system, this system.
Speaker 1: Was meant to.
Speaker 2: Warn other travelers, other people in this brotherhood that you
Speaker 2: mentioned about the conditions of the town they would find,
Speaker 2: or about the things that would be beneficial, or to
Speaker 2: be a system of warnings, right, And it didn't use words.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's this is highly important because a lot of
Speaker 3: this population was either illiterate or they were speaking different languages,
Speaker 3: so there wasn't a whole lot of common from a
Speaker 3: language perspective. So it like, did you call it hoboglyphs already? No,
Speaker 3: but that is like hieroglyphics in a way, because it is.
Speaker 3: It's it's you've you've likened it before to the IKEA, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The IKEA instruction manual.
Speaker 2: Right, we've all bought disappppointing furniture, like we know what
Speaker 2: that is. You know there there are no words. Those
Speaker 2: say manuals are printed and distributed across the globe because
Speaker 2: everyone can get that that awkward humanoid figure in their
Speaker 2: awkward buddy.
Speaker 4: Yeah you don't.
Speaker 3: You don't need words for it, right, That's the whole
Speaker 3: point of.
Speaker 2: This, and that is the one indisputable concrete remnant of
Speaker 2: this community, this thing called hobo code. Let's do you
Speaker 2: guys want to do some examples? Yeah, what hobo code?
Speaker 3: Isle's So, let's say you're going into a new town
Speaker 3: and you're looking for food as you may want to do,
Speaker 3: as we all usually want to do, and there somebody
Speaker 3: has come along and found a good free food source
Speaker 3: from some building or some group of people that lives
Speaker 3: in an area. So you'll you'd note this to anyone
Speaker 3: else who comes after you by making a tea. Except
Speaker 3: it's not just any t it's like a box and
Speaker 3: then another box.
Speaker 4: It looks similar to tetris the good pieces, you know,
Speaker 4: the law, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Important ones, you know. But that's kind of cool. So
Speaker 3: if you if you note that somewhere in your town,
Speaker 3: perhaps this means there's a good source of free food there.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: There was even like a variation of it where I
Speaker 5: believe it had a cross up on the side, which
Speaker 5: implied that if you talk religion or like kind of
Speaker 5: act like you're in to Jesus, that they will give
Speaker 5: you free food.
Speaker 1: So that's another important little tip.
Speaker 5: We have another one that would warn people about the
Speaker 5: state of like natural resources, like a water supply that
Speaker 5: may have been like tainted.
Speaker 1: So that would be a squiggly line with.
Speaker 5: Like another line on top and another line on the bottom,
Speaker 5: and that'll let them know to like avoid this well
Speaker 5: because it will make you intensely ill.
Speaker 1: Right, good stuff to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, need food, need water. I'm going to give you
Speaker 3: some warnings just so you know.
Speaker 2: And the people who lived in these communities would have
Speaker 2: no idea what these symbols were. I mean a capital T.
Speaker 2: You would just be like, wow, that guy's name must
Speaker 2: be Tim. Again, I hope no one here his name Tim.
Speaker 5: And they also like, it's not like it was alarmingly
Speaker 5: large or like printed in some super central place. It
Speaker 5: would be in a place that these folks would maybe
Speaker 5: know where to look for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and kind of temporary with like chalk or coal
Speaker 3: or something that was readily available.
Speaker 2: And there was a darker side to this as well,
Speaker 2: because in many cases, perhaps a preponderance of cases, these
Speaker 2: symbols were meant to warn to warn other travelers of danger.
Speaker 2: There would be something that looks like a square, but
Speaker 2: it's turned on a corner, so it's sort of a
Speaker 2: diamond and it has one line going up, and that
Speaker 2: meant be out of this town by sundown, be ready
Speaker 2: to defend yourself. There's no way someone could guess that, right,
Speaker 2: I mean no.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing too about this language and the
Speaker 5: way it evolves. It was experiential, so you know, these
Speaker 5: folks would have to have these experiences enough to the
Speaker 5: point where it would spread and they would know to
Speaker 5: look for these symbols because it wouldn't just happen overnight,
Speaker 5: because some of them you could kind of ikia and
Speaker 5: figure out, oh, I think this is what this means.
Speaker 5: But ones like this, we're a little bit more shrouded
Speaker 5: and kind of mystery.
Speaker 2: And law enforcement plays a big role. Series of interlocking
Speaker 2: circles mean handcuffs or law enforcement will put you in
Speaker 2: a chain gang. I like the point that you bring
Speaker 2: up here, Nol, because although the term hobo code is
Speaker 2: very fun to say, try it at home, the reality
Speaker 2: of this is that this was a language built on
Speaker 2: tragedy and suffering and blood. And it sounds like a
Speaker 2: neat historical footnote. But here's the thing. These secret messages
Speaker 2: exist today. People are still alive.
Speaker 1: Thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2: Of people are riding the rails, are living on the
Speaker 2: fringes of society and using new iterations of this code
Speaker 2: to communicate.
Speaker 5: So Atlanta's got a pretty decent train hopping community. If
Speaker 5: you've ever been to a little Five Points like that,
Speaker 5: you see the folks with like the dogs, with the
Speaker 5: bandanas and stuff. I mean, that's sort of that's like
Speaker 5: a modern hobo.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding.
Speaker 5: And I grew up with kids like that that would
Speaker 5: hop trains and made a whole way of life around it,
Speaker 5: and they kind of carry on some of these traditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So does this mean that the world of secret
Speaker 2: symbols and languages is relegated to people who are maybe
Speaker 2: burnouts or on the lamb or living on the fringes
Speaker 2: of society. Have we solved it?
Speaker 1: Is it? Yes?
Speaker 4: We have?
Speaker 3: Okay, and that concludes the show. So really, guys, thank
Speaker 3: you coming, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's disappointing.
Speaker 4: Oh are we gonna keep going?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah we should, We probably should. But it's true, it's
Speaker 2: not that simple. Secret symbols also exist in the world
Speaker 2: of art, right, yes, we we explored things in the past,
Speaker 2: like the toinbee tiles. What are those about?
Speaker 3: There are these weird linonelym art pieces that get pushed
Speaker 3: into the ground in asphalt on streets in mostly Philadelphia
Speaker 3: and New York and other places like that, And it
Speaker 3: says toynbe Idea in movie two thousand and one resurrect
Speaker 3: dead on Jupiter.
Speaker 4: Cool, right, really cool.
Speaker 5: There's a couple other flavors of them, as well as
Speaker 5: as the teg But I mean that this is the
Speaker 5: main idea that toinby idea.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it's we don't know, we don't know
Speaker 2: who makes them, it's it's in English, it's using in
Speaker 2: the alphabet. Well, does it mean that toy Bee felt
Speaker 2: like he was plagiarized by Stanley Kubrick in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one Space Odyssey?
Speaker 1: Was there resurrecting of dead on Jupiter and Space?
Speaker 2: Really really not in the inta theatrical release. But then
Speaker 2: there are other works of art like the Codex Seraphinais
Speaker 2: or the Yeah Yeah, they're purposely created to have some
Speaker 2: sort of inscrutable language, and they are known to be
Speaker 2: works of fiction. So does that mean then that the
Speaker 2: world of Secret Signs and Symbols is relegated to relatively
Speaker 2: cerebral works of art or the fringes of mainstream culture.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say no this time because I feel like
Speaker 3: that's probably a better answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can move on, we can move forward to
Speaker 1: the next thing that they're relegated to. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the world of Secret Symbols actually goes much much, much,
Speaker 2: much much deeper. In fact, as we all came to
Speaker 2: Terminal West tonight, we may well have carried some of
Speaker 2: the world's most famous agglomerations of secret symbols with us
Speaker 2: in our pockets, in our wallets, and our purses, in
Speaker 2: our fanny packs. I hear those are making a comeback.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of the fanny pack.
Speaker 5: I mean it's a utilitarian yet stylish accessory. And I
Speaker 5: have no problem with the fanny pack. You can wear
Speaker 5: it on the side, it on the back, wear it
Speaker 5: on the front.
Speaker 2: What so, according to numerous critics, the most powerful secret symbols.
Speaker 1: Anti fanny pack? Man, what's your problem? Because we already
Speaker 1: we already got you a present?
Speaker 3: Are you gonna?
Speaker 4: Are you serious?
Speaker 1: It's a Gucci bag.
Speaker 3: It's okay, I would wear, I would wear, but.
Speaker 2: It will just please really really good. Yeah, please exercise.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, you got okay when we get the
Speaker 2: fanny pack. But uh, but it does go much deeper
Speaker 2: because these secret symbols, the people who argue are are
Speaker 2: the most powerful in our world today, are on something
Speaker 2: we and you and your fellow Americans carry with you
Speaker 2: every single moment theoretically, and it's a weird thing. It's
Speaker 2: a really dirty thing. About forty percent of it carries
Speaker 2: traces of fecal matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true, but
Speaker 2: as we are recording this right now, statistically speaking, people
Speaker 2: are literally murdering one another for a chance.
Speaker 1: To touch it.
Speaker 2: Just you wait, right, eighty percent of it carries traces
Speaker 2: of cocaine. These are both conservative estimates, by the way,
Speaker 2: despite the fact that possession of this drug carries very
Speaker 2: harsh consequences conspiracy realists, we are talking about by far,
Speaker 2: the most ubiquitous medium for hidden symbols in the Western world.
Speaker 2: It is the US dollar. Feel free to take one
Speaker 2: out after you heard the statistics about shit, and if
Speaker 2: you have it, check the designs as well.
Speaker 1: Story it smells. You don't have to. Oh my god, dude,
Speaker 1: did you not hear the stats? Ready?
Speaker 4: Ago?
Speaker 1: Are you're not paying a.
Speaker 4: Sixty doesn't contain?
Speaker 5: Okay, well, I mean it's better than that I heard
Speaker 5: was like one hundred and twenty percent cocaine.
Speaker 1: That checks out? You do, do you? But I'm gonna yeah.
Speaker 2: So if you've if you've seen the back of one
Speaker 2: dollar bill, If you have, your odds are pretty good
Speaker 2: as far as not touching poop on balance, If you
Speaker 2: want to hold this with us, uh, if you've ever
Speaker 2: seen the back of this bill, one thing will immediately
Speaker 2: stick out. It's engraved with a gigantic stone pyramid, similar
Speaker 2: to what you would see in Egypt. There's a desert,
Speaker 2: the whole nine. That's weird.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so regular and just a giant pyramid. It's fine,
Speaker 3: it's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Pyramids are like a classic move architecturally speaking, right, dude, yes,
Speaker 2: but there's something different about this pyramid.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Instead of a normal capstone, there's a floating capstone suspended
Speaker 2: in mid air with this all seen eye just sort
Speaker 2: of staring out at you, kind of like the uh,
Speaker 2: the Eye of Souron and Lord of the Rings. Yeah,
Speaker 2: mystical shit. Yeah, I mean it's weird. It's not quite
Speaker 2: on brand with the US. It really does stare right
Speaker 2: right at you and like.
Speaker 5: It follows you when you move around the room, which
Speaker 5: is weird considering how small it is.
Speaker 2: Right right, and this symbol, this symbol has several names.
Speaker 2: One of the most popular names comes from Christian mythology.
Speaker 2: It's called the Eye of Providence. And usually when we
Speaker 2: are looking into early Christian mythology and folklore, we defer
Speaker 2: to Matt. So Matt, okay, not to put you on
Speaker 2: the spot, but to put you on the spot in
Speaker 2: front of a bunch of people. What's the eye of Providence?
Speaker 3: Oh well, in this case, we're talking about the symbol
Speaker 3: of a triangle. Right, triangle has three angles to it,
Speaker 3: three sides. M What could that mean? It's probably the
Speaker 3: three aspects of God? Right, father son, you can say
Speaker 3: it with me? Holy Spirit?
Speaker 1: Why does Holy Spirit get too? They said, people do that.
Speaker 1: It's goods. There's this.
Speaker 2: One of the first known appearances of this comes in
Speaker 2: a painting called The Supper of Emmaeus, created by a
Speaker 2: guy named Caravaggio for the Carthusians in like.
Speaker 1: Fifteen twenty five. But it's not super blatant.
Speaker 5: Oh this is the one though, that contains that there's
Speaker 5: rays of light that we talked about. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mentioned exactly that emanating from this this triangle, and
Speaker 5: this painting is what first featured that in Like, I
Speaker 5: think it's a reflection through a glass or something. It's
Speaker 5: pretty subtle, but it's meant to be like this divine
Speaker 5: light of Christ.
Speaker 2: Somewhat cool, you might say, occluded. Yeah, So if you
Speaker 2: go even further back in history you will see that
Speaker 2: this wasn't always called the eye of Providence. It does
Speaker 2: have some sort of folkloric precedence. Let's say in Egypt.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, you're talking about the eye of Horace.
Speaker 3: I am a different god horse, a sky god, sky
Speaker 3: god that was represented by that eye. You've probably seen
Speaker 3: it before. It looks like it has some really killer
Speaker 3: eyeshadow going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've probably seen its, like a smoky eye. It
Speaker 1: is really nice smoke, sultry. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot from my wife about eyeshadow. It's important,
Speaker 3: it's important stuff. But this, this horse, this god horse
Speaker 3: is also sometimes often depicted as a falcon. Uh, you're alive, well,
Speaker 3: and you may you may notice on the other side
Speaker 3: of the bill that we're going to talk about a
Speaker 3: little later. Uh, there's a big old eagle hanging out.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 7: Hm.
Speaker 5: You think he's got a name, like an official name
Speaker 5: in the parlance of this this symbolism and imagery.
Speaker 2: What greg Gregory Gregory? Okay, Yeah, that checks out. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so Gregory the Eagle, Gregory the Eagle. Let's fast forward
Speaker 2: to the United States. How did this weird symbol end
Speaker 2: up on the dollars that we're trading and apparently pooping
Speaker 2: on every day? It's weird. Sorry, it wasn't always there.
Speaker 2: The eye itself was not originally on the dollar. The
Speaker 2: pyramid and the Eye are both part of a much
Speaker 2: older thing called the Great Seal. Way back in seventeen
Speaker 2: seventy six, around July fourth Surprise, Benjamin Franklin and John
Speaker 2: Adams and a few others were thinking to each other,
Speaker 2: how do we make these thirteen states look more like
Speaker 2: more legit?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like how do we we want to make an impression?
Speaker 1: You know what? We should we branding. We need branding.
Speaker 2: We should get a stamp, you guys, like, let's stamp
Speaker 2: some stuff, you know. And so they came up with
Speaker 2: this Great Seal. It's approved on what June twentieth, seventeen eighty.
Speaker 4: Two, correct.
Speaker 3: And these symbols themselves are supposed to reflect the beliefs
Speaker 3: of the founding fathers, some pretty standard I would say,
Speaker 3: beliefs when you're creating a new country.
Speaker 4: What are these beliefs?
Speaker 3: Independence, enlightenment, Right, these are important things. But those two
Speaker 3: ideas have something in common with a lot of movements,
Speaker 3: or a big movement that was occurring around that same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone in the audience right now is like Freemasons,
Speaker 2: I know it. I know they were free. I see, Yeah,
Speaker 2: thanks for coming, Matt.
Speaker 4: Do we have any freemasons?
Speaker 1: Is it your grandpapa freemason?
Speaker 3: Now there was some association with my family.
Speaker 1: Is that all you can say?
Speaker 3: That's all I'm gonna say.
Speaker 2: We asked him this question every show. I'm cool though,
Speaker 2: I'm cool. Yeah, yeah, because is it like copper rules?
Speaker 2: Do you have to tell us that you're a mason
Speaker 2: if we ask them?
Speaker 1: All? Right? Moving on, moving on.
Speaker 2: So, the front of the seal, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 2: depicts a bald eagle holding an olive branch and one
Speaker 2: claw and and arrows in the other right, piece of
Speaker 2: war cool, I get it. Dichotomies. That's tight. But the
Speaker 2: but the reverse side, the back of the seal is
Speaker 2: what shows the pyramid and the eye. And the founding
Speaker 2: fathers said, oh, this represents strength and durability. And they're like,
Speaker 2: why is the cap still floating? That's weird And they're like, ah,
Speaker 2: it's because the pyramid's unfinished, because you guys, the nation's unfinished.
Speaker 2: And they were and Benjamin Franklin is probably like, oh,
Speaker 2: think about it, because he's totally that type.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Yeah, he was kind of
Speaker 1: an actually kind of dude. He was, so actually that's
Speaker 1: like his thing.
Speaker 2: So if you go to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing,
Speaker 2: those are the people who make these coupons today. If
Speaker 2: you go to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, you'll
Speaker 2: find it's not on the official tour.
Speaker 1: Are you taking this tour?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it cool? Yeah?
Speaker 2: It's dope, man, Okay, I should go. Yeah, you should
Speaker 2: stally go take a date or something.
Speaker 5: But what what question do I ask to get like
Speaker 5: the real line, not just the official party line.
Speaker 1: Who do I talk to? And what do I say? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, if you find one of the employees just sort
Speaker 2: of hanging out off the record, they're like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: subway or five guys.
Speaker 5: Because they're underpaid and they're just willing to dish. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: so yeah, what do they say?
Speaker 2: And then probably you're you're really good with strangers, they
Speaker 2: probably want to talk to and that's very kind.
Speaker 1: That's true, it's true. What's what's the uficial?
Speaker 2: Okay? So the unofficial stuff is pretty much the party
Speaker 2: line we discussed earlier. The pyramids meant in some way
Speaker 2: to symbolize the lasting power of the US, similar to
Speaker 2: the way the Pyramids of Old with the test of
Speaker 2: time time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you.
Speaker 4: Know, you know what I found out today.
Speaker 3: If you go to the Federal Reserve in Atlanta and
Speaker 3: you take a tour, it's the National Monetary Museum. You
Speaker 3: actually will they'll give you a bag of money when
Speaker 3: you leave.
Speaker 2: Shredd up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it shredded though.
Speaker 1: That kind of sucks, but that's kind of interesting, right.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: You can't like, you can't like tape it back together.
Speaker 2: You you have to be very good.
Speaker 5: It's probably really thin shreds. They probably have really solid
Speaker 5: industrial shredders there.
Speaker 1: They would have to. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, let us know if you do tape back a
Speaker 2: dollar and tell us where to bring them. Just by
Speaker 2: the way. Uh So the actual dollar, the actual dollar,
Speaker 2: the one you saw, pyramid eagle, all the weird stuff.
Speaker 2: There's a hidden owl or spider in there as well.
Speaker 2: It didn't come about until nineteen thirty five. There's a
Speaker 2: guy named Henry Wallace, and he is the Secretary of Agriculture,
Speaker 2: which has nothing to do with anything under President Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: And he sees a pamphlet on the Great Seal, and
Speaker 2: we have a factually accurate historical reenactment of this. He
Speaker 2: walks up to the President and he's like, hey, Rosie boy,
Speaker 2: you know I saw this thing about the Great Seal.
Speaker 2: It's got the motto it's a novas Ordo seclorum now
Speaker 2: Order of the Ages. That's kind of like you think you.
Speaker 1: Know, what was he like in the Mafia?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this version. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he's like, it's like new Deal of the Ages.
Speaker 2: This is perfect.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then Roosevelt says, never call me Rosie boy
Speaker 5: ever again.
Speaker 1: And then he punches in, but he's like, but cool, idea,
Speaker 1: I like this, let's go for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Wallace is like, you know, we should put
Speaker 2: that on a coin or something. That would be dope.
Speaker 2: People love that kind of thing, you know. And then
Speaker 2: Roosevelt they're collectible. They're collectible, you know, they're like the
Speaker 2: original POGs.
Speaker 5: But no, no, Roosevelt says, I will do you one better,
Speaker 5: my good sir, And he says, we're going to put
Speaker 5: it on the most circulated piece of American currency that exists,
Speaker 5: which is the dollar.
Speaker 3: Yes, in this case the one dollar silver certificate.
Speaker 2: Right, which means that in nineteen thirty five, when this
Speaker 2: thing came out theoretically on paper and hopefully in practice,
Speaker 2: you could walk to some point and you could be like,
Speaker 2: here's the thing, give me this much silver, and they
Speaker 2: would be like, well, he's got the certificate or she's
Speaker 2: got the certificate. They would give you silver, which was
Speaker 2: a big deal. I guess yeah, you could.
Speaker 3: You could kill a lot of werewolves if you had
Speaker 3: enough dollars.
Speaker 1: Huge problem. There was a werewolf epidemic in this Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was hard time.
Speaker 2: It's true. There's a documentary about that properly. But so
Speaker 2: so now the question is there are no more silver certificates, right,
Speaker 2: at least actionable silver certificates.
Speaker 1: So what does this.
Speaker 2: Dollar that we've been discussing stand for, like in the
Speaker 2: real world old what is its value based on?
Speaker 4: It's a fiat currency.
Speaker 3: I know everybody in this room knows this, but we're
Speaker 3: gonna talk about it because we really got to hit
Speaker 3: it home for the rest of this episode.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, currency is not an automobile.
Speaker 3: No, No, it's not beautiful, cute little automobiles. You'll you'll
Speaker 3: often hear people talk about this, how the US dollar
Speaker 3: is a fiat currency, and that just means that the
Speaker 3: what this is worth. It's not backed up by any
Speaker 3: kind of metal or anything like that. It's just it
Speaker 3: has value because some authority figure in this case, a government,
Speaker 3: says that it has value. It's literally a faith rectangle.
Speaker 3: That's what this is.
Speaker 1: It's an article of faith.
Speaker 2: We all agreed, and I don't want to call anybody out,
Speaker 2: so I'll call all of us out. We all agreed
Speaker 2: to continue to do agree that this thing is worth
Speaker 2: a thing. We're like, everybody wants to be cool, everybody
Speaker 2: wants to fit in. Someone's like, hey, I have like
Speaker 2: twenty of these, and we're all like, oh, nice, good job.
Speaker 2: That's way better than a bed bath and beyond coupon,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, has some really cool stuff.
Speaker 2: They do have some steals, they have some buys.
Speaker 3: If you're like my friend Alex over there, you can
Speaker 3: gather up like one hundred two hundred thousand.
Speaker 4: Of these and they will give you a house. Isn't
Speaker 4: that crazy?
Speaker 5: But if you paid in singles, can you imagine paying
Speaker 5: for a house with dollars like in a big giant sack.
Speaker 1: Yes, that would be a ball or move. I have
Speaker 1: to say they'd have to.
Speaker 2: Take it, but they would probably be like, oh, so
Speaker 2: what drugs do you say?
Speaker 1: They'd make a face.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, those dollars would probably be like ninety percent cocaine.
Speaker 2: But it's imperative and crucial to remember that despite the
Speaker 2: symbols this bears US currency, itself is a symbol of
Speaker 2: something else, the power behind the paper, if you will.
Speaker 2: It's it's something that is a boogeyman in so many
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories ever since it's creation. It's something we call
Speaker 2: the US Federal Reserve.
Speaker 3: And we're going to talk about the Federal Reserve. Right
Speaker 3: after a quick word from our.
Speaker 2: Sponsor, we're live, okay, Oh oh yeah, jeez, I keep
Speaker 2: for okay, all right, it's.
Speaker 1: Really hard to break these habits. You know.
Speaker 5: We usually we usually do this show like in a
Speaker 5: in like a weird shipping container with no windows. I
Speaker 5: don't really even know what time of day it is,
Speaker 5: and we get an electric shock delivered to us by
Speaker 5: Paul to break. So we're kind of like Pavlovian dogs
Speaker 5: of podcasting.
Speaker 2: Behaviorism, Like we're so trained when we're just hanging out,
Speaker 2: we take commercial.
Speaker 1: Breaks, but we're back, but we're back. We're back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So here's how it started.
Speaker 2: The US has an incredibly muddy history with the idea
Speaker 2: of central banks. That's what the Federal Reserve is. A
Speaker 2: central bank is just a financial institution that's supposed to
Speaker 2: make sure the coupons a country uses will retain the
Speaker 2: same value they had yesterday and have it in the
Speaker 2: present day and have something like that tomorrow.
Speaker 5: You made a face, But that's that was the train.
Speaker 5: There's a train like right up there, and it occasionally
Speaker 5: goes squeeze.
Speaker 3: Well, I was trying to focus on what Ben was saying,
Speaker 3: but yeah, the train freaked me out there.
Speaker 1: A little bit. We'll go, we'll go look for hobo
Speaker 1: code later.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So so the FED, it turns out, is not not
Speaker 2: the first central bank.
Speaker 1: In fact, it is the third. It's the third.
Speaker 2: Try that our country has made of this, and the
Speaker 2: the first one dates all the way back to Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 4: Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 5: You know, I think I figured out why lind Manuel
Speaker 5: Miranda decided to write a musical about Alexander Hamilton, because
Speaker 5: just the cadence of saying that name is just perfect.
Speaker 1: Alexander, It's beautiful, It's.
Speaker 5: Just a perfect name for a musical.
Speaker 2: Yeah done, And you know, we all recognize Alexander Hamilton
Speaker 2: from his recent renaissance in the world of musicals. It
Speaker 2: turns out as a real person, actually did some stuff.
Speaker 2: Was a It was the first Secretary of the Treasury,
Speaker 2: and was super was was super perplexed and worried. After
Speaker 2: the Revolutionary War, which on the other side of the
Speaker 2: pond they call the America War of Independence, somebody asked
Speaker 2: us that earlier, that's the actual It wasn't the peasants uprising, that's.
Speaker 1: But it's still referred to that probably in some circles.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, sure. And and so Hamilton believed that the
Speaker 2: US needed some sort of banking authority because otherwise he
Speaker 2: thought the country would be doomed. It turns out that
Speaker 2: wars are crazy expensive, you know. And he envisioned this
Speaker 2: bank as quote, a profit making institution, with private shareholders
Speaker 2: holding full fifths of its stock and dilecting full fifths
Speaker 2: of its directors.
Speaker 1: It was just the ways all of our twist or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this and this version is okay, it's pretty much twist.
Speaker 1: I like you.
Speaker 3: This is highly important, though, Let's not lose any of this.
Speaker 3: A profit making institution, first of all, and four fifths
Speaker 3: of its directors. It's stock and directors would be private shareholders.
Speaker 3: Four fifths. That's a lot of private interest in this
Speaker 3: giant profit making bank.
Speaker 2: That that means, I mean, that is important, Matt. That
Speaker 2: means that only twenty percent of the steering wheel and
Speaker 2: they would have no idea what a steering wheel is.
Speaker 2: Let's just be clear. It means like twenty percent of
Speaker 2: the steering wheel belongs to the country affected by this concept.
Speaker 2: And so we would imagine that Hamilton and co. Had
Speaker 2: to come up with a really good pitch for this, right.
Speaker 2: They were like, we need a name, like a real
Speaker 2: banger name. It's it's the first It's the first central
Speaker 2: Bank of the US. It's the first bank, first Bank,
Speaker 2: first Bank.
Speaker 4: How about the first bank?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, great idea, right, drop it, Mike. It's so
Speaker 2: they were like, that's the best, that's the best. A
Speaker 2: burst of creativity.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean it's descriptive, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 5: guess they were just trying to be mutilitarian with their
Speaker 5: naming conventions. And we'll see this carry on throughout the story.
Speaker 5: But there were people who opposed this idea. We had
Speaker 5: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They were super against it, but
Speaker 5: despite their outrage, it was passed. It was created. In
Speaker 5: seventeen ninety one, Congress granted the Bank of the United States,
Speaker 5: the First Bank, a twenty year charter and to try it.
Speaker 1: Out, just to try it out, just give it a go.
Speaker 1: Just twenty. That's twenty. That's not a commitment, right, twenty.
Speaker 3: So then the bank's charter comes up, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in eighteen eleven, but this time James Madison is president.
Speaker 2: This guy knows how to hold a grudge. He says,
Speaker 2: no way, not happening. I'm in charge now. I don't
Speaker 2: know what a steering will is, but I'm probably at it.
Speaker 2: And we're not going to extend this bank. We are
Speaker 2: firing the bank. Critics were on his side. They said
Speaker 2: this was this was in furious to economic growth, it
Speaker 2: was holding the nation back. But there's something else. This
Speaker 2: is crazy that you won't find with a lot unless
Speaker 2: you dig into it a little bit. Remember how we
Speaker 2: talked earlier about four fifths of the First Bank being
Speaker 2: held by private interests. Of that, of that eighty percent,
Speaker 2: two thirds of the bank was owned by private British
Speaker 2: and British interest Like, I'm stuttering a little because.
Speaker 1: It's weird, right, It's like that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Like imagine it's like imagine you get divorced with from
Speaker 2: someone and you're like, you know, we've we've gotten divorced. Uh,
Speaker 2: we should get a credit card.
Speaker 1: Yeah, joint bank account.
Speaker 5: Here, here's the keys to my house and you can,
Speaker 5: you know, have like three fifths of my cat.
Speaker 4: That sounds great, let's do it.
Speaker 1: What a plan, right, And.
Speaker 3: That's mind blowing to me. I had never known that
Speaker 3: ever before. And it makes sense because a lot of
Speaker 3: the money was was in British hands at this time, right,
Speaker 3: but still to allow it to occur seems atrocious.
Speaker 4: Well that's just me.
Speaker 2: Maybe, and discontinues for about a year. In eighteen twelve,
Speaker 2: something occurs with another very creative name.
Speaker 4: Oh the War of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a war, and they were like what
Speaker 2: do we call it? So in eighteen twelve, President Madison
Speaker 2: changes his mind and he says, I might not fully
Speaker 2: agree with this thing, but we need something, we need something.
Speaker 5: Well, it was because things have been relatively chill and
Speaker 5: you know, there was peace time, and it was like,
Speaker 5: you know, we don't need this bank, We're fine without it.
Speaker 5: And then almost as though they were a pattern. War
Speaker 5: flares up again, it's like, ah shit, we got to
Speaker 5: figure out how to finance this. It's almost as that
Speaker 5: we need some kind of central bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we'll make another one right right exactly, And
Speaker 2: that's that's what they do. And they say, we can
Speaker 2: only imagine. They say, well, that was that was kind
Speaker 2: of dry the first run. That was of it's weird
Speaker 2: that war turns out to be expensive. You don't really
Speaker 2: get a price break.
Speaker 1: Who knew.
Speaker 2: And they're like, we need a better name, though, We
Speaker 2: need a name that will inspire creativity, ambition, entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1: The second Bank, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 2: So in a burst of creativity, they're like, let's call
Speaker 2: it the second Bank.
Speaker 1: And you know what you're getting, you know, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's what it says.
Speaker 2: The ten right this last to eighteen thirty two branch
Speaker 2: at President Andrew Jackson is in office and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: this is malarkey.
Speaker 1: I'm done with it. We're out of this.
Speaker 2: As a result, the US had no central bank from
Speaker 2: the mid eighteen thirties to nineteen thirteen, and during this
Speaker 2: time numerous terrible, terrible things occurred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were just crashes all over the place. We
Speaker 3: don't even have to ramble them off. But it's like
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy three, eighteen eighty four, eighteen ninety three, nineteen
Speaker 3: oh one, nineteen oh three, and then this thing happens
Speaker 3: in nineteen oh seven, called the Panic of nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 3: which would lead to some serious, serious problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: It was sort of the feather on the financial camel's
Speaker 2: back and the government, uh, the people in the government
Speaker 2: looked around at each other, and they were like, umph,
Speaker 2: something must be done for umph. And as so often
Speaker 2: happens in American politics, everyone could agree there was a problem,
Speaker 2: no one could agree how to solve it, and they
Speaker 2: all hated each other.
Speaker 3: That doesn't sound familiar at all.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, So it was even a matter of calling
Speaker 2: one party corrupt or one group corrupt.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was a matter of which pocket you were in there. Well,
Speaker 2: you're in the pocket a special interest. Well you're in
Speaker 2: the pocket of those fat cats at Wall Street. Well
Speaker 2: I don't know which pocket you're in, but screw that pocket,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And this also trickled down to, like, you know, the citizenship.
Speaker 5: I mean, people distrusted these fat cat bankers as you
Speaker 5: refer to them a lot, and it was just there
Speaker 5: was no support for this kind of situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The years leading up to this, like
Speaker 2: we've we've seen political satire cartoons in the New Yorker
Speaker 2: and stuff. Back then they were insane, They were not subtle.
Speaker 2: There was again like this top hat, monocled cane, sword
Speaker 2: wielding banker guy coming out to Midwest America putting his
Speaker 2: hand wrist deep in a baby's mouth pulling out food,
Speaker 2: and people were like, what could be done?
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't google those propaganda campaigns, Okay.
Speaker 4: They just don't.
Speaker 2: They're pretty racist. And there were also there were also
Speaker 2: crazy protests, public outcry, what are we going to do?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? The nineteen thirties sees the
Speaker 2: rise of a very serious progressive movement, and it's often
Speaker 2: ignored in history books today. But even more importantly, the
Speaker 2: same captains of industry, the same political titans who in
Speaker 2: public hated and vilified one another, were meeting behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: away from the public eye, and just a little bit,
Speaker 2: just a little bit of a quieter pitch. They were
Speaker 2: going for something must be done up.
Speaker 5: We should maybe like do it so that it lines
Speaker 5: our pockets and our political cronies pockets, and our banking
Speaker 5: bro buddy pockets. Because we're all in a pocket, right,
Speaker 5: everyone in a pocket we're.
Speaker 1: Sticking with for the rest of this show.
Speaker 5: So a guy named us, this is an important character
Speaker 5: in the story, guy named Senator Nelson Aldrich. In nineteen
Speaker 5: oh eight, he gathered a group of said banking bros
Speaker 5: and political cronies. Uh, and he called it the National
Speaker 5: Monetary Commission. And the idea was to study potential economic reforms,
Speaker 5: reforms to the financial system.
Speaker 3: And there's nothing wrong with that, right, Sure, something must
Speaker 3: be done. Okay, let's take some action. Let's let's bring
Speaker 3: private and public interest together and figure out what needs
Speaker 3: to be done.
Speaker 4: A noble pursuit, there we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, chin up right, And so for two years, the
Speaker 2: National Monetary Commission investigates this idea of central banks in
Speaker 2: another country? How do you replicate that? How do I
Speaker 2: don't want to be too divisive yet and say, I
Speaker 2: think they were like, how do you make money off this?
Speaker 2: As Noel was saying in November of nineteen ten. Two
Speaker 2: years later, Senator Nelson, we'll just call him by his
Speaker 2: first name for now and I'll come into play later.
Speaker 2: Nelson is in the midst of financial disaster. People are
Speaker 2: literally starving, and he says, you know what, I know,
Speaker 2: I'm a senator and it's my job to take care
Speaker 2: of the American public. But I'm going to take some
Speaker 2: me time, you know, like I'm gonna like, when's the
Speaker 2: last time you just travel for fun? I'm gonna take
Speaker 2: a field trip. And this wasn't widely reported in the
Speaker 2: papers of the time. The few reporters who did bother
Speaker 2: to ask were told that he was going on a
Speaker 2: duck hunt, not the Nintendo game that wasn't around. He
Speaker 2: was going. He was like, yeah, the country's burned. They're
Speaker 2: like the country's burning. And he's like, yeah, but you know,
Speaker 2: like mallards, they just get to me.
Speaker 3: As long as he had that dog, I mean, that's fine, right,
Speaker 3: that dog was.
Speaker 1: That dog was an asshole, man, that guy.
Speaker 2: You can control it with the second player controlling, Yeah,
Speaker 2: how is you could control the ducks? The dog just
Speaker 2: shows up like Clippy and Microsoft. The dog's just a dick,
Speaker 2: don't the ducks with the second controller. Yes, we should
Speaker 2: do a show about this. We should do a Nintendo conspiracy.
Speaker 5: We should play it too, But for now we're talking
Speaker 5: about an actual duck hunt, or you know, at least
Speaker 5: the notion of an actual ducks.
Speaker 1: So where is he conducting this duck So.
Speaker 5: You guys have heard of a place called Jeckyll Island?
Speaker 5: Have you guys heard of this place? Is any It
Speaker 5: would have been.
Speaker 2: Where Georgia I went once you went, Well, I didn't
Speaker 2: hang out there. I can't get in and hang out.
Speaker 5: What do you mean you just like we're doing like recon.
Speaker 5: You were just like checking it out, like peeking through
Speaker 5: the I was in the area, hedge maze like I
Speaker 5: was in the area. This is a different show. But
Speaker 5: Jackal Island, what's that? If you're not familiar with Jackal Island,
Speaker 5: it is still and certainly was even more so than
Speaker 5: and incredibly opulent get away for the super super super
Speaker 5: one percent of the one percent of the one percent
Speaker 5: rich to you know, go do their things and maybe
Speaker 5: have secret meetings and pretend duck hunts.
Speaker 1: Well, woa WHOA Okay?
Speaker 2: So, in their defense, by the way, Nelson takes five
Speaker 2: of his buddies, which we'll get to. In their defense,
Speaker 2: this was not an obviously fake cover story.
Speaker 1: There is a duck hunting season.
Speaker 2: It starts in November around this time, stops for a
Speaker 2: little bit, it resumes from December to January. So maybe
Speaker 2: they were maybe they were hunting ducks.
Speaker 3: Maybe they were like in the end, it doesn't matter, right, right,
Speaker 3: So these his five buddies.
Speaker 2: It turns out, surprise, surprise, I hope this is not
Speaker 2: a Shyamalan move for everybody. It turns out that they
Speaker 2: were very prominent in the world of private banking, and
Speaker 2: they were very active at the thing Noel mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: the National Monetary Commission. And despite the fact that these
Speaker 2: fellows had enormous power here in the US and abroad,
Speaker 2: they were afraid to be seen hanging out with each other.
Speaker 2: So one by so, Nelson Aldrich hooks up this really
Speaker 2: sick customized railcar like it's it's got mahogany, it's got chrome,
Speaker 2: it's very it's flashy, and he decides the best way
Speaker 2: to hide it is to hook it up to a
Speaker 2: train in New Jersey, and one by one, these prominent
Speaker 2: titans and captains of industry sneak onto the train, not
Speaker 2: not using their names, and because.
Speaker 1: I think they had they had to have at least
Speaker 1: like one servant.
Speaker 5: I think they definitely pared down the staff, which was
Speaker 5: that was huge for them, right.
Speaker 1: The whole thing.
Speaker 5: They had to use only their first name because they
Speaker 5: wanted to maintain some level of anonymity. So who's in there, Yeah,
Speaker 5: so undercover of night, one at a time, these guys
Speaker 5: sneak into this railcar. We've got Frank Vanderlip of National
Speaker 5: City Bank, Henry Davison of Morgan Bank. We've got Paul
Speaker 5: Warburg of the kun Lobe Investment House. These are all
Speaker 5: names that stick around to this day and companies that
Speaker 5: have on through various name changes but are still basically
Speaker 5: doing the same thing. We've got Apat Andrews from earlier,
Speaker 5: who was then the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department.
Speaker 5: And we also have Arthur B. Shelton who was the
Speaker 5: Secretary of that National Monetary Commission that was kind of
Speaker 5: doing some of the legwork that led up to this meeting.
Speaker 2: And they know they may have actually haunted Ducks, but
Speaker 2: on the way they by the time they were done,
Speaker 2: they had discussed and formulated a plan in secret to
Speaker 2: create another central bank. And they were like, ah, the
Speaker 2: two times that's a gimme. But Hey, lucky number three,
Speaker 2: right right, And we've got a question. Why was this
Speaker 2: meeting held in secret?
Speaker 4: Well, the biggest thing is that they knew.
Speaker 3: Can we've kind of just touched on it, but they
Speaker 3: knew that if word got out that they were trying
Speaker 3: to present this kind of idea from both a private
Speaker 3: and public side, the House of Representatives, the people that
Speaker 3: actually represented the public of the United States, would absolutely
Speaker 3: shut this thing down before it even became a thing, right,
Speaker 3: So they had to keep it as secret as possible.
Speaker 3: And then we're gonna find out a little later because
Speaker 3: it does happen spoiler alert. The way they got it
Speaker 3: past was a little.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well, I mean it makes sense it was
Speaker 2: associated any anything associated with fat Wait, okay, I gotta stop,
Speaker 2: all right, So I've been using the phrase fat cat
Speaker 2: a lot tonight, and I want to apologize. I do
Speaker 2: have a fat cat at home, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to be disrespectful. His name is mister Jackpots. I will
Speaker 2: show you pictures on Instagram after the show if you wish.
Speaker 5: So you should come up with a new word then,
Speaker 5: So you're kind of like not throwing your sweet boys
Speaker 5: under the bus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A big feline I don't know. We just reinvested
Speaker 2: your etch time, just like anti fat cat prejudice.
Speaker 1: Right there we are. So it's true.
Speaker 2: Though, Matt, like they knew that this would immediately be
Speaker 2: dead in the water, and that is why they held
Speaker 2: this meeting secret. But holding this meeting in secret in
Speaker 2: nineteen ten this results in a breeding ground for speculation,
Speaker 2: right rumor metastasizes, it becomes conspiracy theory because no one
Speaker 2: knows what's going on. But since we have decided to
Speaker 2: be here tonight, we won't be conspiracy theorists. Let's be
Speaker 2: conspiracy realists. And that means that we can't believe we're
Speaker 2: except a bunch of speculation without fact. So here's a
Speaker 2: fact for you. There's a fact we found. These guys
Speaker 2: did not admit that this meeting ever happened for years
Speaker 2: and years and years. It was not until the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties in the depression where with like one or two
Speaker 2: of them said, uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this thing happened.
Speaker 2: We didn't really hunt ducks. That was just we thought
Speaker 2: it sounded cool.
Speaker 5: But yeah, and they call themselves the First Names Club,
Speaker 5: like we mentioned. So by the end of that time,
Speaker 5: on Jackie at Aldrich and all his guys had developed
Speaker 5: this plan for a Reserve Association of America, which would
Speaker 5: be a single central bank with branches across the country.
Speaker 5: And then on December twenty third of nineteen thirteen, Woodrow
Speaker 5: Wilson agreed, he signed the Federal Reserve into existence.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was it's December twenty third. This tricky thing.
Speaker 2: A lot of a lot of legislators are at home
Speaker 2: with their families or back in their home state, and
Speaker 2: there's a tricky thing here. So they said, the federal
Speaker 2: reserve banks, the regional reserve banks like the one that's here,
Speaker 2: I would be owned not by individuals but by commercial banks.
Speaker 2: So this means that there's not like, you look responsible,
Speaker 2: but you can't go by a regional reserve bank. And
Speaker 2: I'm sorry that you had to learn it here, but
Speaker 2: neither can. I not feel bad. But the thing is
Speaker 2: these banks would be coordinated by a committee that's kind
Speaker 2: of sort of appointed by the president.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they get a list, right, that's kind of
Speaker 3: the idea. Just slide a list across the table, be
Speaker 3: like just pick like seven, cool, all right, cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So then it goes to who really owns this thing?
Speaker 2: Who owns this gargatuan thing. The officials governing parts of
Speaker 2: the system can own interest, in particular commercial banks, but
Speaker 2: no one officially actually owns those shit riddle dollars that
Speaker 2: we all just robbed at the beginning of the show.
Speaker 2: In fact, the FED considers itself independent.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is this is important, and this it's
Speaker 3: mind blowing. Okay, And I'm trying really hard not to
Speaker 3: just be infuriated throughout this entire show. I have been
Speaker 3: during every show that we've done so far. In this Okay,
Speaker 3: The Federal Reserve says the terms of the members of
Speaker 3: the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms. Now,
Speaker 3: when you hear this at face value, you could say, oh,
Speaker 3: this is very reassuring. This means that no matter who's
Speaker 3: in the White House, no matter how much I like
Speaker 3: him or her, no matter how long they are in
Speaker 3: the White House, no matter which Senator or House of
Speaker 3: Representatives person gets elected, my money is safe with the
Speaker 3: Federal Reserve.
Speaker 4: That sounds lovely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate to ah you here, but that's also
Speaker 2: kind of terrifying, isn't it, Because what they're old.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Another way to look at it is they're saying, no
Speaker 2: matter who you vote for, no matter who's in charge,
Speaker 2: we're in charge of the money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you know you can vote, that's cute. Yeah.
Speaker 5: There was a quote from Alan Greenspan, who is the
Speaker 5: Chairman of the FED and you've heard of. He said
Speaker 5: something to the effect of there is no government body,
Speaker 5: there is no elected official that can do anything about
Speaker 5: any of the decisions we make. He just very brazenly
Speaker 5: said that out loud and like, yeah, So that's the
Speaker 5: vibe that we're working with with the FED here.
Speaker 2: It's been to be reassuring. So officially, this system is
Speaker 2: a bulwark, right, That's what it provides. It stabilizes these
Speaker 2: faith rectangles. I love that phrase, thank you for me.
Speaker 2: That Matt made that one though, was great. And it
Speaker 2: stabilizes the dollar against the ups and downs of the uncarrying, chaotic, ridiculous,
Speaker 2: horrible place that we live in. And the thing is,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what you would believe. It was created
Speaker 2: without the consent of the American public. No one voted
Speaker 2: on it, no one can vote on it. It is
Speaker 2: also arguably one of the most powerful financial institutions in
Speaker 2: the world. Pyramid lidless eye creepy Latin catchphrases, the whole nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah and ah oh man, I'm just gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 3: bring it back to this. In the more than one
Speaker 3: hundred years following its creation, more and more people are
Speaker 3: asking is there more to this story? Is it just
Speaker 3: this organization that exists outside of the control of the
Speaker 3: voting people of the United States, or is it more sinister?
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: Yes, I love it when he does that. I love it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's true. It's true. We're going into crazy territory now.
Speaker 2: So I hope you're comfortable, because maybe it'll be uncomfortable
Speaker 2: at the end of this. The most popular and most prevalent,
Speaker 2: most prominent conspiracy theory about the Federal Reserve is that
Speaker 2: rather than mitigating or preventing financial disaster, the Fed creates
Speaker 2: financial catastrophe to it manipulates the money supply for the
Speaker 2: benefit of member banks and most importantly, the shareholders or
Speaker 2: the owners of those member banks. So no one can
Speaker 2: own a regional reserve bank, but anyone can buy shares
Speaker 2: in a commercial bank. It's just a question of how
Speaker 2: many you own. And this argument, uh, this argument proposes
Speaker 2: that we the public are taught that financial disasters occur
Speaker 2: through two things, accident or incompetence subprime loans, right, right,
Speaker 2: And the argument is that the opposite is the case.
Speaker 2: And this is a really weird one to us because
Speaker 2: it unites people across a political divide.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does. By the way, we've been on
Speaker 3: the road a lot. Has something been happening with the
Speaker 3: stock market. We haven't exactly been keeping up, but I
Speaker 3: just noticed all the lines were read when I looked
Speaker 3: at my phone earlier.
Speaker 4: Everything's okay, We're all okay.
Speaker 5: We still my mom sent me a text about it
Speaker 5: and said that my inheritance was dwindling away as we speaks.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I'm gonna have to make this podcast game.
Speaker 1: With it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's weird, though, because this is this is a conspiratorial
Speaker 2: belief that unites people on either side of the sort
Speaker 2: of circusy political dichotomy. And you will find people who
Speaker 2: consider themselves libertarians and the like, yeah, I read in
Speaker 2: the FED that's messed up. But then there are people
Speaker 2: on the far left who are like, you know, eat
Speaker 2: the rich, screw the FED, let's just get rid of it.
Speaker 2: And they're like, you know what, You're right once again.
Speaker 2: Everyone can agree that there is a problem, no one
Speaker 2: can agree how to solve it. Harm harrumph. The most
Speaker 2: famous stories or conspiratorial beliefs about the Federal Reserve come
Speaker 2: from a specific book.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's called The Creature from Jekyl Island by this
Speaker 3: author named G. Edward Griffin.
Speaker 5: Like a like a black lagoon kind of situation, or no,
Speaker 5: or the creature is the Fed I get it.
Speaker 3: I got it in that meeting and it emerged, and
Speaker 3: then it got on that rail car and it headed
Speaker 3: back towards New York.
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm making all that up.
Speaker 1: But I can imagine listen to it.
Speaker 4: I can imagine it.
Speaker 3: So he considers the Federal Reserve more than just this
Speaker 3: simple tool to control Americans via debt.
Speaker 4: We're not controlled by debt. We're fine.
Speaker 3: Nobody has any student loans or mortgages here. We're good.
Speaker 4: We're good.
Speaker 2: Oh my my my girlfriend is here tonight.
Speaker 1: Hey Brandy.
Speaker 2: Can everybody say hey Brandy, Oh, hey Brandy. Hey uh
Speaker 2: and uh. We've had some tension because my my primary
Speaker 2: girlfriend is Sally May. It was accustomed to a certain
Speaker 2: leg Oh I'm gonna pay for that.
Speaker 1: One's Sally may anymore.
Speaker 5: It's something called Navviant just kind of came out of
Speaker 5: nowhere and all of a sudden, it's like it's not
Speaker 5: Sally anymore. Now, it's now it's Naviant. I guess I
Speaker 5: have no choice but to pay Navviant now. But you know, right,
Speaker 5: and the.
Speaker 2: Ideal with Creature from Jackal Island is that this this
Speaker 2: practice has been expanded and franchised out to other countries,
Speaker 2: and that the Federal Reserve is using the practice of
Speaker 2: deceiving people through chickanery, which we looked up earlier.
Speaker 1: It's a new word for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is this people or state actors to fall into
Speaker 2: debt and then using that to using that debt to
Speaker 2: control the actions of those countries. But he's got a
Speaker 2: lot of critics, Griffin has a ton of critics.
Speaker 5: Well, and wouldn't that kind of be the way that
Speaker 5: the British interests that you know, we're part of the
Speaker 5: original First Bank or whatever, could have potentially exercised that
Speaker 5: kind of control back over the colonies right by having
Speaker 5: that much of a steak in the First Bank.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's possible.
Speaker 3: The problem that we're running into here is that g
Speaker 3: Griffin took that train. Sorry, I got to make a tea.
Speaker 3: There's some delicious food here or there. I guess they
Speaker 3: stopped serving it.
Speaker 1: Wait, what's the what's what's the beef though?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the beef is Let me just recalibrate here.
Speaker 3: He took he took the pearl that's at the center
Speaker 3: of the oyster of that that nineteen ten secret meeting,
Speaker 3: and then he created a whole bunch of stuff around
Speaker 3: it that he kind of it's not necessarily pulling out
Speaker 3: of thin air, but he's creating a conspiracy from that
Speaker 3: real thing.
Speaker 1: He's engaging in some what iffery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's dangerous, it's dangerous. I'm gonna get off my soapbox.
Speaker 3: Let's keep going with the show.
Speaker 1: Do you want to do you want a soapboxes?
Speaker 4: No, No, it's fine.
Speaker 5: Sure, it's just a dangerous s Matth's Soapbox is a
Speaker 5: segment that we will have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just happens a lot these days where there
Speaker 3: is this one little grain of truth which is on
Speaker 3: the show. It's what we try and do we find
Speaker 3: that grain of truth. Right, that's the most interesting thing
Speaker 3: for me personally. And this guy did that. But then
Speaker 3: he just kept going down a rabbit hole, and he
Speaker 3: wrote this book that is fascinating, but a lot of
Speaker 3: it probably is in it's just not factual.
Speaker 2: And the most one of the most salient questions that
Speaker 2: you get from this book if you read it, is
Speaker 2: the essential thing. The gi just boils down to this,
Speaker 2: could someone act purposefully and successfully manipulate something as gargantuan
Speaker 2: as the US economy and therefore, you know, the international economy.
Speaker 2: The answer to that is yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely
Speaker 2: to a scary degree, Like think a war and Buffett
Speaker 2: he could tweet today and sink a company, It's true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Or you got like Jeff Bezos or Carlos slim
Speaker 5: Halu or any of these other profoundly disgustingly rich human
Speaker 5: people that can, like you said, just by communicating their
Speaker 5: intent to do something, or you know, they're some kind
Speaker 5: of diversification that might happen. It can change the entire
Speaker 5: course of at least segments of the economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the question. Though The question then is
Speaker 2: does it mean that the FED could do the same thing.
Speaker 2: The FED is a group of people, and there are
Speaker 2: multiple avenues of oversight, and I'm not going to presume
Speaker 2: to know about your friends. But have you ever tried
Speaker 2: to order pizza with a group of a or more people?
Speaker 2: It gets really nasty, really quickly. And and that's just pizza.
Speaker 2: That's just like the argument over whether or not someone
Speaker 2: likes pepperoni or is gluten free. And this is this
Speaker 2: is talking about one of the most important financial instruments
Speaker 2: in the world. So it's it's kinda I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's it's kind of difficult to digest it. But but
Speaker 2: we found another we found another conspiracy theory. This is
Speaker 2: I would say this is like my second favorite.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, this is a this is a great one.
Speaker 3: We've done an episode that kind of touched on this
Speaker 3: before in the past. But again, it kind of goes
Speaker 3: back to where you were talking about nol the whether
Speaker 3: or not there's British control over their former colonies.
Speaker 1: Still, yeah, the idea is that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in this one, the Federal Reserve is now
Speaker 2: a foreign banking institution is controlled by the British, and
Speaker 2: the British are still super pissed about the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 2: It's like they're main thing. They're like, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of problems, but damn it, it's time to go back,
Speaker 2: you know, and someone's like, hey, maybe we should fix unemployment. Hey,
Speaker 2: maybe we should look at immigration. And then like the
Speaker 2: Queen turns around in a swivel chair and it's like, no,
Speaker 2: let's be weird, putting me back my colonies right And
Speaker 2: in this, in this idea, it goes a step further
Speaker 2: and they'll say, oh no, no, no, no, no, no
Speaker 2: no no, Matt nol Ben Michigan control. This is not
Speaker 2: a matter of the queen. It's a matter of the
Speaker 2: true power behind the throne in the in the world
Speaker 2: of the United Kingdom. It is the Rothschild family. You
Speaker 2: knew they were gonna be here at some point.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, there are a lot of just the the
Speaker 3: targets that are aimed at with a lot of these conspiracies.
Speaker 3: The Federal Reserve of the Rothschild's Britain. We're hitting them
Speaker 3: all tonight. It's a real just doing the hits.
Speaker 1: Folks.
Speaker 2: We had a Rothschild actually, or somebody said they were
Speaker 2: a Rothschild a few cities ago.
Speaker 5: But who are the Rothschilds. Yeah, so it was a
Speaker 5: huge influential family. That is the very old family as well,
Speaker 5: founded by Mayor Armshell rothschild, and they amassed enormous amounts
Speaker 5: of wealth in multiple areas segments including finance of course,
Speaker 5: but also over the generations.
Speaker 1: They've diversified in a very big way.
Speaker 5: They're active in wine and technology, mining, the bond market,
Speaker 5: arms trade, just about anything you can think of, they've
Speaker 5: probably got their hands in it in one I mean,
Speaker 5: it's a huge family as well, and they're so diversified
Speaker 5: and spread out with the various members of the family
Speaker 5: it's almost tough to kind of trace the money and
Speaker 5: understand exactly how much the entire family is worth and
Speaker 5: how much influence they wield exactly.
Speaker 4: And this is a huge deal.
Speaker 3: My dad is in the audience tonight and he was
Speaker 3: an accountant at this private club for a while, and
Speaker 3: he can tell you the difference between old money and
Speaker 3: new money, and with old money, it's all of these
Speaker 3: it's just a tiered succession of inheriting fortunes and each
Speaker 3: one just then becomes another fortune. And then the fortune
Speaker 3: just spreads out to this point where you go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll join that club for fifty thousand dollars, no problem.
Speaker 4: And that kind of wealth is it's intense.
Speaker 2: And then but this goes back to the same question.
Speaker 2: This presumes that this family, this large influential family, somehow
Speaker 2: cooperates and moves in unison like what happens today. You
Speaker 2: get together once a year and they're like, Oh, what's
Speaker 2: our what's our weird thing gonna be this time? You know,
Speaker 2: I doubt I don't know your relatives, but I have
Speaker 2: never been that cooperative with my own. Again, that pizza
Speaker 2: example comes from US.
Speaker 5: It was like utter financial control of an entire country's
Speaker 5: monetary system on the table for you and your family.
Speaker 5: I mean, I figure it out, You might figure it out.
Speaker 5: I make some concessions.
Speaker 2: We can maybe swing Tennessee. But but this is interesting
Speaker 2: because there's a paradox in this idea.
Speaker 1: There's a bit of double thing.
Speaker 2: Right. The same people who say, oh, the UK wants
Speaker 2: to control the US because they are still, again for
Speaker 2: some reason, cartoonishly pissed about the Revolutionary War, they will
Speaker 2: also say, but the United Kingdom doesn't really control itself.
Speaker 2: It's owned by this elite banking cabal, and they're the
Speaker 2: ones who are really who are really making the decisions,
Speaker 2: And that sort of invalidates the beginning of their idea.
Speaker 2: That means that this in this conspiracy, it's really an
Speaker 2: economic proxy war between like one family and then maybe
Speaker 2: a couple of families here in the US. It doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense, but the Rothschild family shows up in so
Speaker 2: many of these stories, so many pieces of this folklore tradition.
Speaker 2: We have a we have one that we found that
Speaker 2: we really enjoy and it doesn't take place on land.
Speaker 2: It does feature the rothchilds. It takes place at sea.
Speaker 1: We barbershop quartet this one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the trio Conspiracy Etsy Conspiracy Atsy.
Speaker 1: Mats. You have a beautiful singing voice. I was not prepared.
Speaker 1: I did not prepare them for that.
Speaker 5: I just totally pulled that out and you guys really
Speaker 5: did a good job.
Speaker 1: Thank you for hearing me.
Speaker 2: On WHOA trout the b that's conspiracy with it s
Speaker 2: e a at the end of the way, And we're
Speaker 2: not talking about the conspiracy cruise, which is apparently a thing.
Speaker 5: Really we've never been invited to participate on that, but
Speaker 5: we're talking about something else entirely. So there's this even
Speaker 5: more bonkers, in my opinion, conspiracy theory that the roth
Speaker 5: Child family in league with their banking crony and federal
Speaker 5: Reserve cheerleader JP Morgan was directly responsible for sinking a
Speaker 5: supposedly unsinkable ship. You may have seen a film about
Speaker 5: with the Heart of the Ocean and the hands on
Speaker 5: the Steamy Window and the New Drawings.
Speaker 1: And you love that.
Speaker 5: Well, I've really in this tour come to realize that
Speaker 5: I saw that movie like ten times when it came
Speaker 5: out in theaters, when I was like, you know, eleven
Speaker 5: or something, and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, why did I Why did eleven year old
Speaker 1: me like that movie so much? And we've traced it
Speaker 1: back to the New drawing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was the painting scene.
Speaker 1: Some boy called called out, somebody in the audience called
Speaker 1: me out, and it's like, you know what, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty much accurate.
Speaker 5: Although it is a beautiful love story, although it doesn't
Speaker 5: make sense though, why didn't she make room for dude?
Speaker 1: Okay? I said that like a million times. That's my
Speaker 1: main with She's just flary and you know, she's hogging
Speaker 1: the door. She lets Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2: Go, and let's be honest, he's not a super big guy.
Speaker 1: He could have fit on there.
Speaker 2: And I feel like she was just looking for a
Speaker 2: convenient into a romance.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it, she ghosted, she ghosted on.
Speaker 5: Him or James Cameron was looking for a convenient plot device.
Speaker 1: Oh that's my argument.
Speaker 2: I mean, how well did doors flow?
Speaker 4: What about that old couple though you remember?
Speaker 2: No, no, it's been a while, okay, so hey know
Speaker 2: what ship or are we talking about?
Speaker 5: Either this had the Titanic, the RMS Titanic, that's the
Speaker 5: full proper name. So if proved to be be true
Speaker 5: this thing, we're about to enter the realm of wild speculation.
Speaker 5: That's what this segment of the show is called. It's
Speaker 5: called the Realm of Wild Speculation aka.
Speaker 1: Conspiracy at C.
Speaker 5: So, if proved to be true, this would surely go
Speaker 5: down in history as like one of the most batshit,
Speaker 5: heavy handed or possibly genius assassinations in the history of
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 1: So let's let's jump. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's wade into these icy waters. Let's dive in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, So JP Morgan inco finance the International Mercantile
Speaker 5: Marine Company, which was an Atlantic shipping company that kind
Speaker 5: of strong armed its way into dominance in this industry
Speaker 5: by you know, doing what these kind of companies do
Speaker 5: absorbing some smaller, weaker shipping companies from America and Britain.
Speaker 5: One of the IMCC subsidiaries was a company called the
Speaker 5: White Star Line, which owned the RMS Titanic. So Morgan
Speaker 5: himself was actually booked to be on this doomed Maiden voyage,
Speaker 5: but he canceled at the last minute, citing like tummy
Speaker 5: troubles or something.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't feeling well. He was unwell.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's really sad, but you know, fortunately or unfortunately
Speaker 5: at for them, there were plenty of captains of industry
Speaker 5: and your fat cats been on this ship. Because Matt,
Speaker 5: you did a good job of describing this in the
Speaker 5: kind of context of this particular idea, you could look
Speaker 5: at this thing as like a giant honey trap for
Speaker 5: the affluent. Let's get them all here, get them all
Speaker 5: in one place, and then we'll take him out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we're gonna go along with this conspiracy theory,
Speaker 3: which is kind of ridiculous on the face of it,
Speaker 3: But if we go along with it, we're already there
Speaker 3: in the speculation part. But if we go along with it,
Speaker 3: this kind of could be a perfect trap because you're
Speaker 3: gonna have a lot of the people that you may
Speaker 3: want to target that don't hold the same beliefs about
Speaker 3: financial systems, you might get them on this ship. You
Speaker 3: actually have a pretty good chance of doing that, just
Speaker 3: because it was such a spectacle at the time, and
Speaker 3: the people that you're targeting are some of the most
Speaker 3: opulent and they want to do things like be on
Speaker 3: a Titanic. Okay, let's just put that out there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it could be a good trap.
Speaker 2: But okay, okay, So I'm sensing some sinister stuff here, nol.
Speaker 2: Who were they targeted? Were they targeting specific people?
Speaker 5: Well, there are the three main ones that are mentioned
Speaker 5: in the stuff that I've read about this story. But
Speaker 5: like you said, Matt, I mean, it was an absolute
Speaker 5: playground of the rich and powerful. So I think if
Speaker 5: there is any truth to this at all, it would
Speaker 5: be include people outside of this set. But we have
Speaker 5: Benjamin Guggenheim, who made a fortune in mining and smelting operations,
Speaker 5: is it or Strauss, who was the co owner of
Speaker 5: Macy's and also a powerful politician and a business And
Speaker 5: then John Jacob Astor, the fourth of the Astor family,
Speaker 5: which is one of the most powerful and wealthy families
Speaker 5: of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was a builder,
Speaker 5: a real estate tycoon, an investor, you name it. So
Speaker 5: these are the three that are cited. One thing that
Speaker 5: they have in common in everything we read about this
Speaker 5: is that they were against the Federal Reserve. They did
Speaker 5: not want this to happen, and they had enough clout
Speaker 5: and street cred to possibly fur their weight around and
Speaker 5: maybe stand in the way of this happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then all Morgan had to do is just
Speaker 3: strategically place that iceberg, and.
Speaker 4: It was all ahead, placed, right done, right ahead. We're good.
Speaker 1: Now, So how does this all shake up? Well, it
Speaker 1: speculated wildly. Mind you that one of the things that.
Speaker 5: These guys hadn't common, like you said, was opposition the
Speaker 5: Federal Reserve. I've also seen it as opposition to income tax,
Speaker 5: but those things are kind of conflated in this story.
Speaker 5: But the ship sank in April of nineteen twelve, and
Speaker 5: the FED was formed the very next year.
Speaker 1: So this here's the thing.
Speaker 5: That this proved to be financially disastrous for Morgan's company,
Speaker 5: the IMCC. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 5: So why would JP Morgan ruin his own company by
Speaker 5: sinking this unsingable shit.
Speaker 1: And how would he even do it?
Speaker 5: Because the arguments that I've seen were like he had
Speaker 5: to have influenced the captain of the ship to like
Speaker 5: mess up. And you know, there's also stories about how
Speaker 5: there weren't enough lifeboats that this thing was doomed to
Speaker 5: begin with. There were issues with like the technology where
Speaker 5: the compartments like magnetically sealed, like trapping.
Speaker 1: People, and all of this. I mean, it was a
Speaker 1: whole There's.
Speaker 5: All kinds of things just about the Titanic seeking in
Speaker 5: general that are.
Speaker 1: A little off.
Speaker 5: But why would he actively do this and cause the
Speaker 5: ruin of his own company and something that he would
Speaker 5: cause him to lose a lot of money. Does this
Speaker 5: mean that he absolutely had nothing to do with it
Speaker 5: or was it maybe like the perfect alibi?
Speaker 1: I think more likely the first one.
Speaker 5: But it's fun to think about, and like you were saying, Matt,
Speaker 5: with these seeds of truth.
Speaker 1: In these grains, this is one of those. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's some.
Speaker 5: It points to this idea of incredibly rich and powerful
Speaker 5: people going to any length that they need to to
Speaker 5: get their way, and this would, again, if proven to
Speaker 5: be true, would be a pretty elaborate Rube Goldberg esque
Speaker 5: example of that.
Speaker 3: You're making the evidence fit your narrative. Can you do
Speaker 3: this kind of thing?
Speaker 2: It's just so it's so weird because there were more
Speaker 2: than twenty two hundred people on the Titanic, and then
Speaker 2: if they're just killing, they're just seeking this.
Speaker 5: Ship to kill three people. What is that the cost
Speaker 5: of doing business? Yes, it's called collateral damage, my man.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the same way that a bank makes several
Speaker 2: billion dollars and they're like, we gotta find two hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars.
Speaker 5: She because given what we know about these how these
Speaker 5: like shadowy banking bros. Are able to rake in the
Speaker 5: profits off of the backs of American taxpayers, Maybe the
Speaker 5: loss of a little shipping company might be worth the
Speaker 5: exchange of utter control and domin and lifelong profits that
Speaker 5: no one can ever vote you out of making.
Speaker 1: So who knows? Sorrybe it is just the cost of
Speaker 1: doing business. Two questions? Got two questions? Okay, So.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it sound a little overcomplicated, Like couldn't they just
Speaker 2: poison someone or have like a horse accident or something.
Speaker 5: Well, it's like I said, I mean, these are the
Speaker 5: three that are named, but I mean that, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe they just wanted to like bump off, like all
Speaker 5: of these these fat cats.
Speaker 2: It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.
Speaker 1: That's probably true. I don't know.
Speaker 5: Now, this is definitely most likely completely bunk.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot of fun to talk about I.
Speaker 3: Want to think about. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: And when when you were you were doing this research,
Speaker 2: you found some unanswered questions, like about these three guys'
Speaker 2: stances too, right, Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 5: There was nothing like really out there that was them
Speaker 5: just like totally soapboxing about how they hated the Fed.
Speaker 5: There were just some things about like their business practices
Speaker 5: and their politics that were slightly anti Fed leaning. But
Speaker 5: it was a little unclear as to why these three
Speaker 5: guys in particular would have been the most problematic.
Speaker 2: But they did actually die on the boat.
Speaker 1: They did, in fact die on the boat. It's true.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 3: Let's move on to the next one. Boys, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Is it you here? Yeah, I'm going to talk to
Speaker 3: you about this. Remember we mentioned that five sided building
Speaker 3: called the Pentagon. Well, guess what, here's a conspiracy theory
Speaker 3: that perhaps the Federal Reserve exists in some way as
Speaker 3: an extension of the United States military. Oh okay, all right,
Speaker 3: now this is a little wick a noodle, but let's
Speaker 3: get into it. There's some compelling evidence that in several cases,
Speaker 3: this country has fought wars specifically to preserve the ascendancy
Speaker 3: of the US dollar. A lot of times we refer
Speaker 3: to it as the petro dollar because it's tied to
Speaker 3: oil in a lot of ways. We've gone over that
Speaker 3: before in an episode, or check it out if you
Speaker 3: want to learn more about that. But in this case,
Speaker 3: we're talking about evidence that's been provided by a gentleman
Speaker 3: an author named John Perkins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, you're talking about Confessions of an Economic
Speaker 2: hit Man. It's I would describe it as a book,
Speaker 2: you know, like it's it's he wrote it. It's there,
Speaker 2: but he makes some interesting observations. For years and years
Speaker 2: and years, Perkins worked in the quasi government quasi private
Speaker 2: sector as ostensibly an economists, but according to his recount
Speaker 2: of the events, his real job was to travel to
Speaker 2: developing countries and to broker huge loans for infrastructure repairs
Speaker 2: and to to beguile the people and lie to them
Speaker 2: essentially about about how effective or not effective This infrastructure
Speaker 2: would be in about how affordable or not affordable it
Speaker 2: would be. So just imagine you're in a place where
Speaker 2: the lights don't always work sometimes get the bad water
Speaker 2: right with the hobo code thing earlier, and then someone says, hey,
Speaker 2: not only can we give you clean water all the time,
Speaker 2: not only quin give you power all the time, but
Speaker 2: it will be a steal. It will be so great
Speaker 2: for your country. You will make so much money. And
Speaker 2: there's just like one small detail. We only accept payments
Speaker 2: in US dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just by the way, yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, like you might have your own currency. That's very endearing,
Speaker 2: good hustle, but we are a dollar business. And through
Speaker 2: the power of this economic influence, the argument goes, or
Speaker 2: his story goes, they brought other countries to heal and
Speaker 2: force them into deals with multinational US based conglomerates.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the whole point is that they're loaning you
Speaker 3: an ungodly amount of money you will never pay back.
Speaker 3: It sounds familiar, right, A lot of money that you'll
Speaker 3: never pay back, maybe thirty years maybe if you're lucky mortgage.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, anyway, if your a giant company, you're getting
Speaker 3: you know, perhaps billions of dollars in these US dollars
Speaker 3: that you don't have, that you're supposed to pay back somehow,
Speaker 3: and ultimately you just end up doing the bidding of
Speaker 3: whatever this lender wants you to do, at least within
Speaker 3: this the realm of this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: So it's actually not that implausible if you think about it.
Speaker 2: We don't have to agree with Perkins like forty thousand
Speaker 2: foot view, as they say in Corporate America. We don't
Speaker 2: have to agree with this big picture. The very disturbing
Speaker 2: thing about this is that several of the cases he
Speaker 2: recounts are true. They're absolutely true. Indonesia is a fantastic
Speaker 2: slash frightening example. Read the book, if you want, read
Speaker 2: the Wikipedia. I'm not gonna believe you about it. Just
Speaker 2: let us know what you think and think about how
Speaker 2: the actions of the FED and the actions of the
Speaker 2: US dollar affect countries abroad. The world is an increasingly
Speaker 2: smaller place. But speaking of fantastic segues, it turns out
Speaker 2: that we are headed toward the most wonderful time of
Speaker 2: the year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we only have a few days, right, Yes, it's
Speaker 3: twenty eighth right now.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what's your costume going to be?
Speaker 3: I'm buzz My wife is going to be Jesse, and
Speaker 3: my three year old son is going.
Speaker 4: To be Woody. Oh man, Yes, we're adorable.
Speaker 1: That is the cutest. That's right for us.
Speaker 2: The most wonderful time of the year is Halloween. So
Speaker 2: we wanted to save our last crazy notion, the craziest
Speaker 2: one we heard for the very end. And it's this. Okay,
Speaker 2: go with me here. Pretend we're all at the same
Speaker 2: bar and it's like two am right, Okay? So what if?
Speaker 2: What if? What if? What if the Federal Reserve, instead
Speaker 2: of a financial institution, is an occult institution?
Speaker 4: Oh shit, people really believe this.
Speaker 1: We didn't make this up.
Speaker 2: The idea is that what if every single dollar spent
Speaker 2: to treat it from one party to another is actually
Speaker 2: a spell. I'm not gonna this poop on it, man,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna.
Speaker 4: I want to cast a spell.
Speaker 2: So for some fringe researchers, this means that the Fed
Speaker 2: is way more Slytherin than systemic. It's been way more
Speaker 2: like Warlocky than White House, you know. And if the
Speaker 2: dollar is a spell cast by some strange cabal, then
Speaker 2: the following assumptions have to exist.
Speaker 5: Well, it's like this idea of exchanging energy or somehow
Speaker 5: hoarding energy through the exchange of currency, which again has
Speaker 5: this imaginary value, and the one of the proponents of
Speaker 5: this theory talks about how it's all about like a
Speaker 5: dollar represents energy because when you are spending it, you
Speaker 5: are paying for a service or something that would require
Speaker 5: time to do or actual physical energy. So somehow this
Speaker 5: system they can harness this and kind of hoard it
Speaker 5: so where and use it for some purpose. But here
Speaker 5: here are the assumptions that what's the first one is
Speaker 5: that magic, at least this type of magic is real.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 5: We've got that reproducible, reproducible, right, yeah, We've got this
Speaker 5: idea secret group of people not only exist but cooperates.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about how hard cooperation can be. But
Speaker 1: to work this magic.
Speaker 5: And to crewe this energy from billions of other people,
Speaker 5: and that some portion of this can actually be stored
Speaker 5: and used in some nefarious way.
Speaker 3: You mean, like stored up in giant bank vaults in
Speaker 3: places where you could store all your energy, or maybe
Speaker 3: in the stock.
Speaker 2: Market or in the Illuminatus trilogy, that kind of energy
Speaker 2: is stored in the Pentagon from traffic does.
Speaker 1: Exactly what the different book, right.
Speaker 2: And a work of fiction as far as we know.
Speaker 2: But it's it's a tall order. This is spooky stuff,
Speaker 2: right to people who believe that the FED is actively
Speaker 2: some kind of u evil Harry Potter thing voldemortine it's
Speaker 2: way through the international financial system. The symbols on the
Speaker 2: dollar represents something else, entirely, something that the Bureau of
Speaker 2: Engraving does not mention in this idea. That all seen
Speaker 2: eye on the floating capstone is not the eye of Providence.
Speaker 1: Instead, it is the eye of Satan.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I watched you. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's the eye of Lucifer morning Star. And
Speaker 2: the light represents a different sort of illumination.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: In this case, it's it's Lucifer's light, right, the illuminated one,
Speaker 3: just like that illumination global unlimited that which, by the way,
Speaker 3: thanks you for all for joining us tonight. There is
Speaker 3: there is kind of a little ritual we have to
Speaker 3: do as we exit for them. We'll we'll talk about
Speaker 3: it later. Yeah, but you'll notice, you'll it'll be fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, but.
Speaker 2: This also this light result. This light is meant to
Speaker 2: symbolize in this idea, the light of the illuminated ones
Speaker 2: those who are aware of this mechanism. But the light
Speaker 2: has a double meaning to this idea, and it's the
Speaker 2: idea that you and us and your cousin that you
Speaker 2: probably should call check in on them after this show
Speaker 2: that we are ourselves transparent to this gaze and incapable
Speaker 2: of holding secrets. And then there's this whole other thing
Speaker 2: with the eagle right.
Speaker 3: Well, well, first of all, before we get to the eagle,
Speaker 3: just that whole idea that we can't hide anything from
Speaker 3: this organization or the most powerful people. Can we just
Speaker 3: one more time we talked about all the time we're
Speaker 3: all walking around with a SERI in our pockets. We
Speaker 3: get home, there's a Google Home hanging out there, and
Speaker 3: Alexa just chilling going, what's that you said?
Speaker 4: Oh, just keep talking, It's fine, just keep talking.
Speaker 3: I'm listening. I'm listening. Or you know, we've got a
Speaker 3: cat that I've got covered up by the way Ben
Speaker 3: has covered up Nole, Is you just covered up?
Speaker 7: Man?
Speaker 1: I don't care. You're going.
Speaker 5: They can have my precious data as long as I
Speaker 5: can play POKEMONO.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, we don't need we don't need this
Speaker 3: to be an all seeing eye and actuality.
Speaker 4: We're already doing it to ourselves. Bros.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, are you good? Fine, Let's just do
Speaker 6: what it keeps. Keep going good, keep going, doing a
Speaker 6: commercial breaker. It's way power.
Speaker 2: So the eagle, then, in this idea, this is a
Speaker 2: cult idea, is not the bald eagle. What do we
Speaker 2: call them, Gregory, It's not your pal greg Instead, it's
Speaker 2: an It's taken from ancient pagan symbolism. And people who
Speaker 2: believe this will say, well, well, you know, Nole, you
Speaker 2: know Matt that uh. That eagle was also used to
Speaker 2: signify the Roman Empire, and again it was used as
Speaker 2: a nikon for a certain German regime.
Speaker 1: Do you in World War Two? This is Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: talking here.
Speaker 2: This is this is a historically accurate Benjamin Franklin somehow
Speaker 2: aware of the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3: I told you, guys, the Hits, the Nazis made an appearance.
Speaker 2: They of course all the hits, and the Nazis were weird,
Speaker 2: just show up in.
Speaker 4: Everything, dude.
Speaker 3: The full society was a real thing, and there were
Speaker 3: some occult stuff going on there, a ridiculous thing.
Speaker 2: But this this also leads to differing more esoteric mentions
Speaker 2: of numbers because a lot of people believe in numerology
Speaker 2: as well, So it doesn't matter what you care about
Speaker 2: just aesthetically, there's a there's a shit ton of groupings
Speaker 2: of thirteen on the dollar, like they went all in.
Speaker 1: Are what are some examples?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we've got the thirteen stars, thirteen stripes in the flag,
Speaker 5: thirteen arrows that Greg is clutching in his little little
Speaker 5: eagle talents. We got thirteen leaves and berries in the
Speaker 5: olive branch, letters in the phrase give it to me
Speaker 5: Ben as miss aniid queptis, thank you Ben. And then
Speaker 5: we have we have also thirteen layers in that creepy pyramid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what else do we have thirteen of? When we
Speaker 3: founded this country? Colonies, so totally makes sense. It's fine,
Speaker 3: it's just thirteen colonies, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: But we're really like going down this numerological rabbit hole.
Speaker 5: Maybe the founding Father's like it's got to be thirteen. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you gotta have thirteen because that's how we're gonna make
Speaker 5: the spell work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so it was like, why are you freaking out?
Speaker 2: We got nine that's solid And they were like, no, man,
Speaker 2: we've got a thing we're gonna do later. But but
Speaker 2: to be absolutely clear, the off chance that someone is
Speaker 2: frightened about this, uh there.
Speaker 1: None of this stuff has been proven.
Speaker 2: None of this stuff has been proven in a way
Speaker 2: that people accept or at least when we say that,
Speaker 2: we mean that no one has come to us and said, ah, shit,
Speaker 2: you guys figured it out, you got me? Was it
Speaker 2: we had a good run? Was it thirteen? Where they're
Speaker 2: too many?
Speaker 3: Thirteen?
Speaker 2: We were worried about the thirteens, But my god, you guys.
Speaker 1: So no one has proven this.
Speaker 2: But it is true that the Federal Reserve was conceived
Speaker 2: and founded as the result of a genuine conspiracy, not
Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory. These people conspired to create this thing
Speaker 2: and then they covered it up effectively for years, and
Speaker 2: even today many of its operations are conducted in secret.
Speaker 2: So it's no wonder that the story here inevitably ends
Speaker 2: on some vital questions. Does the FED prevent disasters or
Speaker 2: does it create them?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And if it does create them, does it do so
Speaker 2: through honest mistakes, through incompetence or through design.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, Matt, dude, it's crazy. We can't do anything
Speaker 3: about this. Seriously, none of us sitting in this room
Speaker 3: could do anything about this.
Speaker 2: Ha ha.
Speaker 1: A fun show, you guys.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm sorry. Really just frustrates me to all.
Speaker 1: Hell.
Speaker 2: Well, it is true, man, I mean, either way, there's
Speaker 2: some We don't need magic to be real to know
Speaker 2: that there are problematic things here. There is a disturbing
Speaker 2: truth at the heart of these conspiracies. There's a bit
Speaker 2: of historical fact hidden in that fiduciary fiction. And the
Speaker 2: next time you pull out a dollar, think about it.
Speaker 2: Ask yourself what it may or may not represent, and
Speaker 2: how it impacts the world in which we live. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, the next time you walk by
Speaker 2: a strange bit of odd graffiti scrawled and sharpie or
Speaker 2: chalk or spray paint along a busy street, ask yourself
Speaker 2: whether it's a work of art a hidden message. If so,
Speaker 2: who is it meant for? What does it say? Is
Speaker 2: it something they don't want you to know? Okay, all right, Matt,
Speaker 2: So that's mostly the show, right, Yeah, it.
Speaker 4: Was pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed that but being on it and listening to it.
Speaker 2: Good job Ben, good job, good job, Dil, good job everybody. Also,
Speaker 2: we were probably doing a better job in that episode
Speaker 2: because Paul mission controlled DECANDT was at the show.
Speaker 4: And that's the whole reason. He just gave all the vibes.
Speaker 3: And it was the fifth iteration, the fifth time we
Speaker 3: had done it, so we had ironed it out a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh but there's one other thing. Yeah, we maybe we
Speaker 2: should have mentioned this at the top. We like to
Speaker 2: do sort of a Q and A thing at the
Speaker 2: end of a show, and we had a Q and
Speaker 2: A that took place not in Atlanta but earlier in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: And we really enjoyed this QA. At least we enjoyed
Speaker 2: doing it at the time. I haven't listened back yet.
Speaker 3: Oh it's great, Oh good, just so many good questions
Speaker 3: and passionate people. Probably it was my favorite QA as well.
Speaker 3: So we're going to listen to it now.
Speaker 1: Hey, hey guys, Hey man.
Speaker 4: Trevor.
Speaker 1: Hey, how's it going. Oh, it's going well.
Speaker 9: Going back to the beginning of the podcast, you guys
Speaker 9: were talking about the hobo symbols. Yes, so if stuff
Speaker 9: they don't want you to know how to hobo symbol,
Speaker 9: and you guys were going to post one on the
Speaker 9: outside of World Cafe Live after we leave here with
Speaker 9: that spray paint that didn't bring.
Speaker 4: Oh what would it look like? I can tell you
Speaker 4: what it would be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we cannot officially tell you it would be the first.
Speaker 2: We cannot officially tell you that it would definitely be.
Speaker 3: The first three alpha numeric letters from our phone number.
Speaker 4: Why that's t D.
Speaker 2: We cannot cannot officially tell you that would that that
Speaker 2: it would be something involving an eye in a triangle
Speaker 2: like and we cannot officially tell you that it would
Speaker 2: be something involving a triangle, all.
Speaker 4: Right, or maybe maybe Trevor, maybe it would be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, Here you go, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Redo, Redo, We cannot officially tell you it
Speaker 2: would be a six fingered tap.
Speaker 4: Thanks for coming true, Thanks Trevor.
Speaker 1: It was Hi. My name is Chris, Chris Listener. I
Speaker 1: was just wondering if, like with this.
Speaker 10: Theme of like Federal Reserve, you know, like control, like
Speaker 10: if this like you ever thought about like student loans
Speaker 10: as a way of like controlling I think about every.
Speaker 3: Dad, Yeah, dude, Yeah, student loans just like just like.
Speaker 10: A medical condition, like where it's like a form of control.
Speaker 10: But right, here's how you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm working on it, that is.
Speaker 2: But because I've got I've got I've got one long
Speaker 2: term relationship in my life.
Speaker 1: Uh it's my main girlfriend, Sally may still. Yeah, mine
Speaker 1: got sold. Mine's not even Sally anymore. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what it's called.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, but yeah, that's that's the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah Na, Yeah, Well that's that's I mean, that's an
Speaker 2: important question, and it is. It's strange because it will
Speaker 2: occasionally get reported, but it's crippling the growth of future generations.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 2: Have you ever had somebody who's older in your family,
Speaker 2: maybe a little stodgy, and they're like, well.
Speaker 11: When I was, when I was twenty eight, I had
Speaker 11: you know, like I had my job at the paint store,
Speaker 11: and I sold my first house and made it a rental,
Speaker 11: and then I bought a car, and I just you know,
Speaker 11: pooped everywhere.
Speaker 1: I don't know, pop a lot of poop.
Speaker 12: But but it's it's true if your's but if it's
Speaker 12: interesting that you asked this tonight because I looked into
Speaker 12: it and for that situation in post world.
Speaker 2: War two and the boom of the economy to exist.
Speaker 2: For someone making minimum wage to buy a house, have
Speaker 2: two point five kids, all that other census bullshit, the
Speaker 2: minimum wage would have to be slightly over forty five
Speaker 2: dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: That's how imprations worked out, right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't make that. Does anybody make that out here?
Speaker 3: They're not gonna say, oh, of course you do.
Speaker 1: You do.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's what they bill me for. They don't pay
Speaker 10: me that exactly.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's actually that's that's something that we've been
Speaker 2: putting a lot of digging into and we're we're hoping
Speaker 2: to do an episode on that pretty soon. Thank you
Speaker 2: for asking this question. As far as the implications of it,
Speaker 2: I would say, yes, it is. It is not a
Speaker 2: conspiracy theory. It is a conspiracy people are conspiring to
Speaker 2: privatize education. Like at the same time that student loans
Speaker 2: boomed and I'll get off my soapbox in a second,
Speaker 2: I hope you don't regret asking this. But at the
Speaker 2: same time that student loans began booming as an increasingly
Speaker 2: privatized industry, there also occurred this change in the zeitgeist
Speaker 2: wherein you were told we were all told that the
Speaker 2: only way you can have a life worth living in
Speaker 2: this country is if you can sign yourself to college,
Speaker 2: if you can sign yourself to grad school, if you
Speaker 2: don't go to trade school, if you like we we
Speaker 2: were taught to look down on people for that reason.
Speaker 2: And that's yeah, and that's that's insidious.
Speaker 4: And it's like it's.
Speaker 2: Going to affect us, it's straight up. Edward berde.
Speaker 1: Nice, I'm Lindsay. I'm here with Chris Lindsay.
Speaker 4: I've been listening for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: How do you guys stay optimistic? You dive into.
Speaker 5: Some of the things they bor on ridiculous or esoteric.
Speaker 10: But tonight you talked about a lot of things that
Speaker 10: affect us as citizens or just people.
Speaker 1: So how do you keep the optimism.
Speaker 2: With the show?
Speaker 1: And you seem optimistic?
Speaker 2: You have beer?
Speaker 1: No, I don't know. It's hard. It's hard.
Speaker 5: I mean I have a me and Matt have kids,
Speaker 5: and that makes it extra hard because it's all filtered
Speaker 5: through this notion of like what's it going to be
Speaker 5: like for my nine year old?
Speaker 1: And I'm constantly living in fear and dread.
Speaker 5: But you know, one day at a time, and I
Speaker 5: just I just I just have faith that my kid
Speaker 5: is smarter than me and it's gonna be like pluckier
Speaker 5: than me and just figure that ship out and just
Speaker 5: like navigate whatever.
Speaker 1: Throws at her. And that's that's my optimism there.
Speaker 3: So I honestly have to say that it requires cognitive
Speaker 3: dissonance to continue. I'm being completely honest to know the
Speaker 3: things that we all in this room know and continue
Speaker 3: on as though everything is okay. We just can't. We
Speaker 3: kind of have to not look at it. And I
Speaker 3: think that's the way it's been for a long time
Speaker 3: for a lot of humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's literally our job to look at it.
Speaker 2: But we in particular, Yes, but that is that not
Speaker 2: a head in the sand.
Speaker 3: For me, it's video games, alcohol, and nicotine.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I have about three feelings a year. Optimism
Speaker 2: is not one anybody else somebody else. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for passing around.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you. This is fun. It's connecting us all.
Speaker 13: Hey guys, hey man, I'm in the construction industry. So
Speaker 13: to the student loan thing, we're now seeing a dip
Speaker 13: in available labor really because.
Speaker 4: Because of that idea.
Speaker 13: But uh, going back to the beginning, there's a great
Speaker 13: documentary about the toy and beetles called Resurrect Deadline.
Speaker 5: Starting everything from that. Yeah, it's a great film.
Speaker 1: It's really good film.
Speaker 13: Fan a ridiculous history.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, show everybody, everybody?
Speaker 1: Hello, thanks so much. Snow you know they didn't give
Speaker 1: us free t shirts? Can you believe that we had
Speaker 1: to buy our own because they print them on demand? Yes? Hello,
Speaker 1: hey switch?
Speaker 3: Oh there it's a switch on the bottom.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 7: Hello, my name's Kelsey. I have a question in regards
Speaker 7: to our conversation earlier about the Federal Reserve, so the
Speaker 7: errors that it makes. Do you think there's any possibility
Speaker 7: that good algorithms could offer a level of accountability for
Speaker 7: what they do?
Speaker 4: You you want to bring AI into this.
Speaker 1: It's slippery slope, my friends, It's already there.
Speaker 2: It's really it's that's a that's a wonderful question, because,
Speaker 2: regardless of how someone feels ethically about the concept of
Speaker 2: machine consciousness, which is not really where we're at now,
Speaker 2: a machine consciousness would be everybody thinking to some degree
Speaker 2: the way that we do. But what we have now
Speaker 2: when we say artificial intelligence, is we have things that
Speaker 2: are very good at solving specific problems. So like we
Speaker 2: can make the mind of something that could go through
Speaker 2: a maze or compare columns of data and answer questions
Speaker 2: in those parameters. We don't have anything that can do
Speaker 2: something like ask why, right.
Speaker 4: Are you a data scientist?
Speaker 7: Yeah right, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm a science, Technology and
Speaker 7: society major.
Speaker 4: Okay, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so to your question directly, the truth is that
Speaker 2: this sort of technology is inevitable, and in certain spheres
Speaker 2: it's much further along than some people might imagine. In
Speaker 2: the stock market, in the trading industry, a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of very quick calculations are made, but they're
Speaker 2: not made for a greater good. They're made for a
Speaker 2: profit margin for a specific group or in some cases
Speaker 2: an individual.
Speaker 5: Well, there has to be a philosophy behind how you
Speaker 5: use the algorithms to and that's sort of what the
Speaker 5: FED does.
Speaker 1: In some ways.
Speaker 5: It's like, what is the economic philosophy that we're chasing,
Speaker 5: and so how do we put these algorithms to work
Speaker 5: to that end?
Speaker 2: But it's kind of like the trolley problem with autonomous vehicles.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, there's a study that came out recently about autonomous
Speaker 2: self driving vehicles.
Speaker 1: The big question is if.
Speaker 2: They have to hit someone, How do they decide who
Speaker 2: to hit?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Is it a? Is it?
Speaker 2: Do they do they hit like an average person walking
Speaker 2: on the street? Ye?
Speaker 1: Or do they hit like right? Or do they hit
Speaker 1: they have a child?
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you mentioned that because I think I
Speaker 2: think who ever said that realized that there was a
Speaker 2: massive poll done.
Speaker 14: Recently and our species agreed overwhelmingly hit the elderly. Yeah,
Speaker 14: which is really cool for us right now, But keep
Speaker 14: in mind, we're going to be old when that stuff's everywhere.
Speaker 14: So so that same question applies to the Federal Reserve. Who, like,
Speaker 14: who profits from a certain area of stability?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: If if we can do if if we have an
Speaker 2: algorithm that tells us uh, uptick and interest here is
Speaker 2: very good for this specific part of the economy or
Speaker 2: this specific demographic they're in, but very bad for another demographic,
Speaker 2: then who who programs it to value you that question?
Speaker 2: Because again, we're a long way off from building an
Speaker 2: artificial mind that can ask why it's solving a problem.
Speaker 2: And so if that, if we have something steering the
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve before it can ask why it's doing something,
Speaker 2: then we are setting ourselves up for a very very
Speaker 2: interesting times, I believe is the euphemism.
Speaker 3: I would say the pattern recognition of machine learning could
Speaker 3: definitely have some help there to try and predict when
Speaker 3: financial institutions may be weak or be ready to crash,
Speaker 3: or then you know how much to the interest rate
Speaker 3: go up or how little, And you actually have just
Speaker 3: a machine that's doing that and looking at the patterns
Speaker 3: and not actually making decisions, but giving you feedback. I
Speaker 3: think that's a really good thing.
Speaker 2: Also, any AI algorithm run on the student loan problem
Speaker 2: would come to the same conclusions that we came to tonight.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that is true. Yeah, anybody else, anybody else?
Speaker 1: I see a hand over here?
Speaker 4: Cool? Oh, I see one over here too.
Speaker 3: We got we let's do where We've got one question
Speaker 3: here first and then you are next, sir, if you
Speaker 3: want to hang.
Speaker 15: Out A big fan, thanks man. Didn't finish college, so
Speaker 15: no loans. But so I love everything conspiracy, everything from aliens,
Speaker 15: do they exist? What are they really doing on plumb Island?
Speaker 15: Blah blah, But this one is the real one. If
Speaker 15: I think you know, it affects us in our everyday life.
Speaker 15: And so I've dove pretty deep on this and there's
Speaker 15: all these theories about and I don't know if you
Speaker 15: guys came across this in your research, but there were
Speaker 15: three presidents who made a really really hard push to
Speaker 15: get off the federal reserve. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 15: and they all have something in common.
Speaker 2: Like Executive Order eleven eleven sery I believe, yeah.
Speaker 15: Right right, And we're actually our sitting president has made
Speaker 15: some pretty forward comments about getting off the reserves.
Speaker 5: Forward comments that guys all class he has the decorum of.
Speaker 15: A set, but it's just kind of yeah, it makes
Speaker 15: you scratch your head a little bit, and it makes
Speaker 15: you curious, you know, like maybe there would be a
Speaker 15: pattern forming. If three isn't enough of a pattern.
Speaker 1: Get up to thirteen?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, thirteen?
Speaker 3: Right, then I would say that some of that executive
Speaker 3: order stuff in the theories, depending on where you're reading it,
Speaker 3: it isn't really based on the stuff that it says
Speaker 3: it's based on. There has more to do with what
Speaker 3: was it. The whole silver standard thing is a little
Speaker 3: more murky than what a lot of these websites claim
Speaker 3: it to be. Yeah, specifically with Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Well, also Kennedy had very few friends in the halls
Speaker 2: of power. It's kind of a situation where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: if he wasn't shot for one thing, here are the
Speaker 2: other other reasons, other multitudes of reasons that people decided
Speaker 2: it would be cool if he had a hole in
Speaker 2: his head, which I know is graphic, but that's what happened.
Speaker 2: That's what happens, harsh, That's what happens. But to your question,
Speaker 2: what's really interesting is Abraham Lincoln actually was, especially during
Speaker 2: the Civil War, very opposed to the interest rate that
Speaker 2: the nation was getting saddled with through banking.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of weird when we read when.
Speaker 2: It's kind of weird what parts of historical anecdotes are
Speaker 2: specified and what parts what characters are left blank or vague,
Speaker 2: because it's always like Lincoln was pissed that the US
Speaker 2: was going to be broke, Hamilton was pissed that the
Speaker 2: US owed money to whom. You know, those people aren't
Speaker 2: often named in specific or in particular. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to keep this thought you sent in my head if if,
Speaker 2: if something happens, and then I think we have a
Speaker 2: lot of dig in to do.
Speaker 1: But obviously I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't personally want just anyone in the world to
Speaker 2: get shot, although statistically many people did while we were
Speaker 2: recording this show.
Speaker 1: Too Dark. Sorry, guys, there are a lot of the guns.
Speaker 1: They have to hang out with me all the time.
Speaker 4: Here you go, I need another one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's let's let's take one more question and
Speaker 1: then we'll one more question, one more question.
Speaker 13: Are we doing?
Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, Hey, what's up?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 16: So first time? First time? So, Yes, this was pretty awesome.
Speaker 16: This was a birthday gift from my friend Aaron. It's
Speaker 16: my birthday, so let's give it.
Speaker 1: Hey, what's your what's your name?
Speaker 4: Mike on the counter?
Speaker 1: Three? Can everybody say Happy birthday? Mike? Okay? One two?
Speaker 16: My wife's birthday the same day.
Speaker 4: Two and her name is Kim, So Kim.
Speaker 1: On the counter.
Speaker 2: Three, Happy birthday, Mike and Kim ok sir one two three,
Speaker 2: Happy birthday, Mike, came, Kim.
Speaker 4: We didn't ask you how.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you very much, Mike.
Speaker 3: That was recorded. By the way we recorded. That's going
Speaker 3: to come out.
Speaker 16: It's being recorded by the girl that bought the tickets.
Speaker 1: Somebody, all right, what's up? What's up? Birthday man.
Speaker 16: So here's my question, and I have like seven hundred
Speaker 16: thousand questions after like being introduced to the world.
Speaker 3: That are you guys?
Speaker 1: But no, boy, all right here, it's going to be.
Speaker 16: A softball or it's going to be a curveball.
Speaker 2: So let's see, let's go.
Speaker 16: We started about twin be tiles, we started.
Speaker 4: About hobo code.
Speaker 8: How difficult is it to articulate the difference between hobo
Speaker 8: code and Hota cobe.
Speaker 4: A question? So thanks, guys, like.
Speaker 5: You just wanted a birthday wish.
Speaker 16: Seriously, the whole time you were talking, I thought it
Speaker 16: was Hoda Kobe.
Speaker 1: Uh is there is it a burning question?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: It's John? What's up John? It's John without an age?
Speaker 17: John without an age?
Speaker 4: Thank you?
Speaker 17: Okay, So about two days ago, three years ago, somebody
Speaker 17: won one point five billion.
Speaker 1: Dollars, right yeah, personally.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I wish it was me, But I think I
Speaker 17: could do more more good with more money than more power.
Speaker 17: Do you guys think that you could do more good
Speaker 17: with one point five billion in dollars? Or do you
Speaker 17: guys think you could do more good running a country,
Speaker 17: running a city because or more power.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll just start off and then you guys build
Speaker 3: really fast. I think the money is the power in
Speaker 3: this instance. Because we've said this before, Ben has this phrase,
Speaker 3: what is one of the biggest superpowers, the actual real
Speaker 3: superpower you can have?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, money, money, like is one of the.
Speaker 3: Real superpowers that exists because cut yeah, go.
Speaker 1: Ahead, go ahead, can I yeah, it's all such a
Speaker 1: nice said.
Speaker 2: All right, So I feel this is one of my
Speaker 2: three feelings though, it's that Batman is often built.
Speaker 1: I'm mean, I get to I'll make it quick.
Speaker 2: I know we have to pay and stuff, but uh,
Speaker 2: Batman is often built as this amazing superhero because he's
Speaker 2: the world's greatest detective and because he doesn't have superpowers,
Speaker 2: he has ingenuity that is utter. That's an utter line
Speaker 2: of horseshit. Because Bruce Wayne is a billionaire. He didn't
Speaker 2: build the suit himself. He didn't build the Batmobile. Instead,
Speaker 2: he paid someone to do it, which means that if
Speaker 2: you look at the way of functions, the use of
Speaker 2: money is just value over time. So he's functioning as
Speaker 2: a time traveler. He's doing things through the use of
Speaker 2: money that would have taken decades, decades and decades to do.
Speaker 2: So money may not equate one on one with power
Speaker 2: in all situations. However, money does equate to taking the
Speaker 2: hours of someone else's labor, which I'm not I'm not
Speaker 2: going in a socialist direction with this.
Speaker 1: That's just the way. That's just the way it is.
Speaker 2: If somebody is paid five dollars an hour or forty
Speaker 2: five dollars an hour, then that is just the price
Speaker 2: of an hour.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? A billionaire?
Speaker 17: Yeah, things you guys say, I will say. You guys
Speaker 17: do say that money corrupts?
Speaker 1: Yes, right, yes, So if you guys.
Speaker 17: Were one point five billion dollars rich, would that not
Speaker 17: corrupt you?
Speaker 1: Of course the lottery is terrible for people when they.
Speaker 4: Will win the lottery. Ever like that just save your life.
Speaker 1: I think it would corrupt me, to be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't know. You seem like a pretty cool dude. I try.
Speaker 3: Here. Here's here's my reasoning behind this and why I
Speaker 3: wanted to reference that, because if you're the leader of
Speaker 3: a country, there are so many condos on you on
Speaker 3: what you can and can't do, because there's so many
Speaker 3: interests that you have to look out for. And that's
Speaker 3: everything that's economic, that's the people who live in your country.
Speaker 3: That's medical. I mean, it's just it's literally all the
Speaker 3: things right that you have to deal with. If you
Speaker 3: just independently get several billion dollars one point five billion dollars,
Speaker 3: you can use that however you want.
Speaker 4: Really, you can trying to jump in.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna end on one thing, John,
Speaker 2: I think your question.
Speaker 1: I think the more I think.
Speaker 2: About it, I would I would go for I would
Speaker 2: go for power because if money is an idea, then
Speaker 2: a good idea can be money. So I would go
Speaker 2: I would go for a movement or an idea, not
Speaker 2: to start a cult.
Speaker 1: I don't know what about you and NOL. You want
Speaker 1: the last word, I'll start a call. All right, let's start. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: thank you so much.
Speaker 3: And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 3: have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
Speaker 3: get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 3: One of the best is to give us a call.
Speaker 3: Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
Speaker 3: don't want to do that, you can send us a
Speaker 3: good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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