Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to.
Speaker 2: Know it is.
Speaker 3: You know, we're getting into January as you hear this
Speaker 3: on Monday twenty twenty four. Still nuts to say, and
Speaker 3: there is so much strange news in the world. As
Speaker 3: we record, we're going to explore all sorts of bizarre things.
Speaker 3: We're gonna mention a lot of stories on the way.
Speaker 3: But tonight, folks, we're going to talk about some secrets
Speaker 3: in space. We're going to talk about airbnb, the value
Speaker 3: proposition being what if you went to a hotel but
Speaker 3: you also had to clean it.
Speaker 4: Or at the very least pay to clean it.
Speaker 3: And before we do any of that, we're going to
Speaker 3: intro our first story for this segment with a lovely
Speaker 3: little piece of music. Are you guys. Ready, I'm quite excited.
Speaker 3: Not so ready, Matt, you're feeling good on this one.
Speaker 2: I don't know yet.
Speaker 4: There we go, Here we are.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna stop it there? Okay, so we could still
Speaker 3: play it safe. I think we can all guess the
Speaker 3: beginning just from that slight snatch of music.
Speaker 4: I mean it made me pump my arms furiously like
Speaker 4: a little cartoon guy. You know we pretending to be
Speaker 4: steering a steamboat.
Speaker 3: You're right, it is of Montreal.
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh, I was genuinely attempting to ascertain what I
Speaker 2: was hearing, Like, what were those instruments? If you guys
Speaker 2: had to say, what were they?
Speaker 4: They're called the tooty pipes. Pipes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, theies.
Speaker 2: H are you guys saying actual words? Are you messing
Speaker 2: with me? There?
Speaker 5: So I would say some sort of I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: this is what what are we talking about?
Speaker 4: The twenties?
Speaker 3: So that is a That is the intro music for
Speaker 3: a short film that changed the world, Steamboat Willie, which
Speaker 3: premiered in nineteen twenty eight. It features non speaking versions
Speaker 3: of two very popular anthropomorphic rodents, Mickey and many Mouse.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: There's a ton of stuff to be said about Steamboat
Speaker 3: Willie about the way it was inspired by previous works
Speaker 3: like the A Singer and so on. But what we
Speaker 3: need to know for now is that, according to some
Speaker 3: of the boffins at at Duke University, January first was
Speaker 3: celebrated as public Domain Day. We joke about Disney pretty
Speaker 3: often on this show, all in good fun if the
Speaker 3: lawyers are listening. But despite decades of efforts to control
Speaker 3: this depiction of this cartoon, Mouse Steamboat Willie officially has
Speaker 3: entered public domain. And that's one of the big stories
Speaker 3: going around in the West. There's a lot of noise
Speaker 3: and misinformation going around about it. So we thought what
Speaker 3: better way to kick off this evening than to talk
Speaker 3: about this idea of Mickey Mouse is officially free or
Speaker 3: is he connected? A dund.
Speaker 4: Perfect thank you for that might even be copy copyrighted. No,
Speaker 4: I don't know, that might been in public demand. It
Speaker 4: sounds like something that would have been like premiered to
Speaker 4: the visual of a young Maiden tied to some train tracks.
Speaker 4: But Matt really quickly to answer your question. Probably if
Speaker 4: it's the twenties, that sound very much air moving through pipes,
Speaker 4: so probably a calliope, one of those cranky circus type instruments,
Speaker 4: you know, sort of like mechanical flutes. But wow, yeah, Ben,
Speaker 4: So I've heard some of the scuttle. But that I've
Speaker 4: heard is that, like, first of all, it is this
Speaker 4: version of Mickey Mouse visually and Minny Mouse. But somehow
Speaker 4: they've managed to stay grasping on at least intellectual property
Speaker 4: wise to the gloves.
Speaker 5: What's up with that they're wearing gloves in this short
Speaker 5: So let me go.
Speaker 3: Back to the beginning where we're going here, the Steamboat Willie,
Speaker 3: you're right, is a early depiction of Mickey Mouse. It
Speaker 3: is not the same thing. And one thing a lot
Speaker 3: of people are getting mixed up with here is the
Speaker 3: difference between what is called the trademark and what is
Speaker 3: called a copyright. A copyright expires, a trademark does not. Also,
Speaker 3: this only applies to United States law. Under current US law,
Speaker 3: anything that was released between nineteen twenty four and nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight is copyrighted for ninety five years. This doesn't
Speaker 3: just include things like Steamboat Willie. It includes things like
Speaker 3: novels like DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, films like Charlie
Speaker 3: Chaplin's the circus, but far and away. The Michael Jordan
Speaker 3: of all this previously non public domain stuff is our boy,
Speaker 3: Steamboat Willie, and you can see it now wherever you
Speaker 3: like to watch stuff, probably YouTube. Check out our episode
Speaker 3: on YouTube. This cartoon's pretty short. It shows Mickey Mouse
Speaker 3: on a steamboat and he's whistling and he's getting into
Speaker 3: high jinks with the captain of the boat, who is
Speaker 3: a cat named Pete.
Speaker 2: Wait then Pete the cat is also because it wasn't
Speaker 2: Pete the cat used a lot after this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in various iterations, but I mean, yeah, he was.
Speaker 4: Certainly this is like a proto version of that kind
Speaker 4: of bully cat character, sort of like the Blue Do
Speaker 4: to Popeye. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, I mean there was also entering.
Speaker 4: The public domain soon by the way, Popeye. That's coming
Speaker 4: up real soon, but please sorry.
Speaker 3: There are a ton of misconceptions about what just happened.
Speaker 3: First off, Steamboat Willie was not the first cartoon to
Speaker 3: use synchronize sound if you're looking at the history of
Speaker 3: invention here. But a lot of people, including your faithful
Speaker 3: correspondence fellow conspiracy realists, have wondered why Disney was able
Speaker 3: to bend the rules of copyright law for so long.
Speaker 3: It happened a couple of times, to be honest with you.
Speaker 3: One of the more recent ones was in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: when Disney extended copyright law from seventy five years to
Speaker 3: ninety five years of exclusivity in what is now known
Speaker 3: as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. And it's not known
Speaker 3: that's the street name and it's not a compliment. This also,
Speaker 3: we should say, includes the animation what is It Playing?
Speaker 4: Crazy?
Speaker 3: P L a n E. You can now use all
Speaker 3: of these depictions without permission from Disney proper, but there
Speaker 3: are a ton of caveats, and you have to be
Speaker 3: careful with those. You can't You can't, for instance, use
Speaker 3: the more modern depictions of Mickey Mouse because those are
Speaker 3: still trademarked. You can't use the Disney logo with the
Speaker 3: Mouseketeer ears because Disney's rights to those never expire. And
Speaker 3: there's a lot of stuff going on here that I
Speaker 3: think it's fair to say this is some stuff that
Speaker 3: Disney doesn't want you to know. Definitely, the lawyers don't
Speaker 3: want people to know until they get their fees. And
Speaker 3: lawyers are about to make a ton of money off
Speaker 3: of this, Like here's here's one question for the group.
Speaker 3: Is Disney not being a tad hypocritical about public domain?
Speaker 3: Did Disney not make literal billions of dollars off of
Speaker 3: public domain stories such as Cinderella insert pretty much any
Speaker 3: Western fairy tale here, snow White and the Seven Dwarves,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Like where do they get off? Is a
Speaker 3: question the public is asking, what do you guys think
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 4: I'll tell you where they get off the bank. That's
Speaker 4: where cash all those mouse checks. I don't know. To me,
Speaker 4: it's more it's less about making money and more about
Speaker 4: protecting their brand because there's such a target, you know,
Speaker 4: for parody and for outright mockery, that it's kind of
Speaker 4: easy for people to take something like this and use
Speaker 4: it as an excuse to drag the Disney brand through
Speaker 4: the mud. And whether or not it's like the current
Speaker 4: Mickey Mouse version or not that's available to do that with.
Speaker 4: I do think they are going to still try to
Speaker 4: be pretty litigious with this stuff and have been in
Speaker 4: the past. There's this guy in Athens, Georgia who's a
Speaker 4: screen printer who used to do these weirdo kind of
Speaker 4: twisted Mickey Mouse prints and put them on T shirts,
Speaker 4: and the Mouse lawyers found him, this little hipster niche
Speaker 4: screen printer guy in Athens, Georgia. I'd send him multiple
Speaker 4: season assists letters, so, you know, and they were sort
Speaker 4: of like it would be like his head would be
Speaker 4: on his butt and I, you know, the weird things
Speaker 4: zis would be mixed up in the wrong order or
Speaker 4: something like that, or parts would be reversed. And yeah,
Speaker 4: he had to stop doing that for fear of, you know,
Speaker 4: being sued out of existence. This guy could couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to fight the mouse lawyers.
Speaker 3: There's also just an interject here, there's also the very
Speaker 3: very real observation that the lawyers have to justify their employment.
Speaker 3: Bill blowers are a big deal, so they are incentivized
Speaker 3: to send c and ds.
Speaker 5: For sure.
Speaker 2: I want to get back to the question you post
Speaker 2: been thank you just about using using stuff that has
Speaker 2: entered the public domain to create new things that are
Speaker 2: not necessarily an update. Like in the case of Disney,
Speaker 2: they're updating those old tales, right, putting their own spin
Speaker 2: on it and inserting their own characters which were copyrightable. Right,
Speaker 2: So now it is a Mickey and Donald adventure and
Speaker 2: not you know, the original characters that went on whatever
Speaker 2: whatever adventure. So that is a in a way, a
Speaker 2: money grab to create a marketable, copyrightable thing that can
Speaker 2: then become a film, it can become a TV show,
Speaker 2: it can become a comic book. It's that makes sense
Speaker 2: to use then their characters that they've created. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's I don't think humans are meant to be
Speaker 2: alive long enough and have institutions that last long enough
Speaker 2: to where that ninety five years is an issue. Does
Speaker 2: that make sense?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3: There's also it may sound like we are splitting hairs.
Speaker 3: That's what people do in these sorts of legal arguments.
Speaker 3: You don't just split hairs. You talk about small nuances
Speaker 3: like the design of an eye, right, whether or not
Speaker 3: color is applied. The post nineteen twenty eight Mickey Mouse
Speaker 3: is still very much Disney's the pre nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 3: or nineteen twenty eight, and before Mickey Mouse, that is
Speaker 3: fair game. Another big exception, another big big asterisk, which
Speaker 3: is probably gonna trip some people up. One cannot use
Speaker 3: steamboat Willie or Mini or what's the other guy, peg
Speaker 3: Leg Pete the captain one cannot use them in a
Speaker 3: way that appears to imply that Disney has co signed
Speaker 3: whatever you're doing. And that part, actually, I hate to
Speaker 3: sound like the bad cop here, that part is a
Speaker 3: pretty good argument because copyright trademark this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: These laws exist for a reason. If you used, for example,
Speaker 3: a depiction of Mickey Mouse to appear as though it
Speaker 3: were endorsing evil, evil things. You know, if it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: the Kick Puppies campaign twenty twenty four or Project twenty
Speaker 3: to twenty five and the Big Old Picture Mickey Mouse
Speaker 3: co signing evil stuff, then Disney would be within their
Speaker 3: rights to say, hey, don't associate us with your weird
Speaker 3: puppy kicking endeavors.
Speaker 4: But what about this like kind of fly by Night
Speaker 4: like horror video game that is already you know, making
Speaker 4: the rounds and similar to the one of the Yeah,
Speaker 4: very simply when the Poo was a film was a
Speaker 4: really really bad slasher film. It was called like Blood
Speaker 4: and Honey. There are apparently already no less than two
Speaker 4: early Mickey Mouse depictions that are going to be featured
Speaker 4: in horror films. And then there was this very clearly
Speaker 4: slapped together shoot them up kind of Resident Evil type
Speaker 4: video game. I mean, I guess my question is where
Speaker 4: is the line drawn, Like if you're showing a beloved
Speaker 4: spokes mouse, you know, for a company like that murdering teenagers,
Speaker 4: is that that different than having him saying it's okay
Speaker 4: to kick puppies? Like, at what point is it satire
Speaker 4: or entertainment? And what point is it actually telling co
Speaker 4: signing these kind of actions.
Speaker 2: We'll have to let the courts figure it out.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, Matt. That is where the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know naturally leads in this situation.
Speaker 3: I want to shout out a great write up by
Speaker 3: Jess weatherbed Over at The Verge. I also want to
Speaker 3: shout out for anybody who really wants to get in
Speaker 3: the weeds. Reason dot com by Joe Lancaster has a
Speaker 3: great is a great article on this which says Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouse is now in the public domain dot dot dot,
Speaker 3: well sort of, and this The issues here are myriad.
Speaker 3: They extend in so many directions, just like a slime
Speaker 3: mold mapping out the Tokyo railway system. To your earlier question,
Speaker 3: there artistic merit parody versus propaganda horror movies or you know,
Speaker 3: one off flash games, et cetera. It's not a flash game,
Speaker 3: but you know what I mean, the indie games. Then
Speaker 3: what we have to look at is the original intent
Speaker 3: of copyright law. To your previous excellent point, Matt, copyright
Speaker 3: law was intended to contribute to the public domain. It
Speaker 3: was intended ultimately to give a creator a window of
Speaker 3: time to get their bag essentially, and then for that
Speaker 3: to enter into the zeitgey such that it could be
Speaker 3: used to inspire to create more works of unique cultural
Speaker 3: import And the argument goes by kicking the can down
Speaker 3: the road not once but twice. By the way, the
Speaker 3: mouse proper was able to stymy this creativity. And I
Speaker 3: want to give again a big shout out. I don't
Speaker 3: think I named it earlier. Jennifer Jenkins, who is the
Speaker 3: director of the Duke Center for the Study of the
Speaker 3: Public Domain, wrote an excellent article that you can read
Speaker 3: at a web dot law dot Duke dot edu right now.
Speaker 3: And Jenkins in this part doesn't just list off all
Speaker 3: the stuff that entered the public domain on January first,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, but also pays special attention to the
Speaker 3: importance of public domain in the world of creativity. We
Speaker 3: talk about it occasionally on this show. You know, what
Speaker 3: makes something an homage, what makes something plagiarism? You know,
Speaker 3: And that's to your earlier question. That's one of those things.
Speaker 3: Like the judge who decided whether or not Ulysses was pornographic.
Speaker 3: The ruling was, well, I know it when I see it,
Speaker 3: and legally that doesn't hold water.
Speaker 4: I sort of maybe jumped the gun when I asked
Speaker 4: earlier about like the gloves, Like what about some of
Speaker 4: the features of Mickey Mouse as we kind of know
Speaker 4: him today. I found an article referencing a twenty twelve
Speaker 4: Reuters piece that cited a poster touting Mickey Mouse as
Speaker 4: the quote World's funniest cartoon, which, how I think Mickey
Speaker 4: Mouse is really cute. I've never really thought of him
Speaker 4: as being particularly funny, but I guess it was a
Speaker 4: different time. But that dates back to nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 4: and the poster. While the film you know then was
Speaker 4: black and white, the posters in color, and Mickey is
Speaker 4: wearing his signature red short with the two little dots
Speaker 4: on the front and yellow gloves, which I know became
Speaker 4: white if I'm not mistaken. Later down the Road.
Speaker 5: So do you know if that is lumped in with
Speaker 5: this or is that also.
Speaker 4: Something in the court You're gonna have to decide, like,
Speaker 4: is the color version also up for grabs or is
Speaker 4: it just the black and white version as featured in
Speaker 4: Steamboat Willie or do we not quite it.
Speaker 3: Is conclusively simply the black and white version as depicted
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty eight and earlier, which again includes more
Speaker 3: than just Steamboat Willie. It includes playing Crazy, and I
Speaker 3: believe right in fellow conspiracy realist conspiracy di iHeartRadio dot Com,
Speaker 3: I believe it also includes a third piece that was
Speaker 3: not distributed or was not widely distributed, which I learned
Speaker 3: about or is reading history of the Disney dynasty or empire.
Speaker 2: But then now we're on a rolling yearly Disney property
Speaker 2: you like release of copyright, right, I mean every year.
Speaker 2: Now it's like we hit that threshold and now more
Speaker 2: and more characters are going to be in the public domain.
Speaker 3: And to the earlier question, the differences, which may seem
Speaker 3: small to the average consumer, are huge in the courtroom
Speaker 3: colorization mentioned earlier, Uh, the design of eyes like Disney
Speaker 3: has gotten in front of this because Disney has for
Speaker 3: quite some time been proactively sort of revitalizing or reimagining
Speaker 3: Mickey and it's you could argue the conspiracy here is
Speaker 3: to further distance the modern Mickey from the steamboat Willie
Speaker 3: origin such that they become two distinct legal entities.
Speaker 4: Well it's funny too. Outside of branding, Mickey Mouse hasn't
Speaker 4: exactly been like a hot character, you know, for a
Speaker 4: long time, hasn't really been featured in any movies, you know,
Speaker 4: really or any of the like big tentpole things. He's
Speaker 4: in a couple of the rides at Disney, but they're
Speaker 4: even those are sort of throwback, kind of like vintage feeling.
Speaker 4: And if anyone's been to Disney World or Land recently,
Speaker 4: you'll notice that they've really pivoted away from Mickey Mouse
Speaker 4: as being the kind of spokes perst creature and now
Speaker 4: it's this dragon called Figment. And that was very calculated,
Speaker 4: you know, knowing that all of these changes were coming.
Speaker 4: They didn't want to, you know, have their branded kind
Speaker 4: of spokes character be something that could even remotely be
Speaker 4: you know, lampooned in the public domain. And to my
Speaker 4: previous thing about the color poster, some sources put it
Speaker 4: in nineteen twenty eight, but a lot of others put
Speaker 4: it in nineteen twenty nine to nineteen thirty, so I
Speaker 4: do think that that might come up. But it does
Speaker 4: appear that if it was even a year later, then
Speaker 4: what you're talking about ben that the call the color
Speaker 4: stuff is off the table.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of stuff on the docket again
Speaker 3: in court law and order. The mouseum, what we're going
Speaker 3: to see here is somewhat precedented or predicated by the
Speaker 3: case that we the public saw with Wennie the Pooh,
Speaker 3: which entered the domain in the public domain in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. This is overall a win for creativity. We
Speaker 3: could argue this is very much not a David versus
Speaker 3: Goliath situation. If anything, it's one mouse versus another mouse.
Speaker 3: To be very clear, the later versions of Mickey Mouse
Speaker 3: that we're released after nineteen twenty eight are still tightly
Speaker 3: controlled by the Disney Corporation. With that being said, we
Speaker 3: can't wait to see what happens next. We're going to
Speaker 3: keep an eye on this, and we would love your
Speaker 3: opinion too. We've got a lot of fellow conspiracy realists
Speaker 3: who are in the field of art, in the field
Speaker 3: of creative expression of music and of litigation. So let
Speaker 3: us know directly, folks, we can't wait to hear from you.
Speaker 3: We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more strange.
Speaker 4: News, and we're back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I've got mouse on the brain. That's gonna be
Speaker 4: a fun one to follow, especially as we see people
Speaker 4: test it right testing it with their parodies and memes.
Speaker 4: The explosion of memes has already been delightful thing to behold.
Speaker 4: Apparently they've been just really quickly. The steamboat Willie is
Speaker 4: still in the blacklist. I guess whatever algorithm for YouTube
Speaker 4: because like a YouTube show that I was watching, the
Speaker 4: covers it said they tried it or they had read
Speaker 4: somebody had tried it and they still got got knocked
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 3: So if I saw a video as well where somebody
Speaker 3: did the whistle and got a CND, but those are
Speaker 3: often automated.
Speaker 4: They got to update the system or whatever.
Speaker 2: But yeah, really quickly, before we move on, I was
Speaker 2: playing this game Cuphead with my son and my mother
Speaker 2: early super hard, very cool looking literally today, and she
Speaker 2: she mentioned, why does that look so familiar? When we
Speaker 2: were fighting one of the bosses in the game, and
Speaker 2: then she began recalling the nineteen thirties, like early nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties cartoons that were the inspirations for a lot of
Speaker 2: this game, the Cupheads animation and characters.
Speaker 4: Tune Heads from the ink Well type stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she matched up like everyone, and it was specific
Speaker 2: like motions that some of the characters were doing. She's like, wait,
Speaker 2: I I know that she was having basically flashbacks from
Speaker 2: her childhood and it was very wiggly emotions, very.
Speaker 3: Like whoo, that's very powerful, right the flower that yeah,
Speaker 3: flower that kind of like hot and it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Hands down in a very specific way.
Speaker 6: In the medical Carrot, you know, yeah, chet out, Saint
Speaker 6: James Infirmary, check out all of the early twenties and
Speaker 6: thirties cartoons before you know, big censorship stepped in.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there's like character named Bimbo that she like,
Speaker 2: Tilver reminds me of Bimbo.
Speaker 3: We got anyway, this is all way before Airbnb, But
Speaker 3: I imagine you're allowed to watch some of these cartoons there.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, one would hope you can. Yeah. Also, we
Speaker 4: haven't really talked about this, but there is apparently a
Speaker 4: conspiracy afoot that a lot of airbnbs have cameras in them,
Speaker 4: and they're watching you the whole time and potentially even
Speaker 4: streaming you in places you know, I mean one would
Speaker 4: hope not, but there is I did find that you'll
Speaker 4: appreciate this, Ben. There is a hotel I want to say,
Speaker 4: either in Japan or in South Korea where it's got
Speaker 4: absurdly low cost per night if you agree to be
Speaker 4: streamed the entire time you were there, and the only
Speaker 4: room that is off limits for streaming is the literal toilet.
Speaker 4: So there's that.
Speaker 5: We're not talking about that, right, We're not talking about that.
Speaker 4: Kind of airbnb scam, though I don't doubt that that's
Speaker 4: the case of the benefit. It was you that kind
Speaker 4: of woke me from my complacency and that, yeah, there
Speaker 4: probably are cameras. They're either at the very least emotion
Speaker 4: sensitive to make sure you're not like vandalizing or stealing
Speaker 4: their stuff. But it could be up to way worse
Speaker 4: shenanigans than that. But today we were talking about one
Speaker 4: particularly egregious case of Airbnb fraud perpetrated by a gentleman
Speaker 4: by the name of Shrey Goel, who is being charged
Speaker 4: for running a Airbnb scam across one hundred properties that
Speaker 4: he owned in the United States, racking up profits of
Speaker 4: in the neighborhood of eight point five million dollars. If
Speaker 4: anyone has seen the frankly incredible movie Barbarian that came out,
Speaker 4: I believe it was last year, really really cool movie.
Speaker 4: The sort of I guess, what's the word, the kind
Speaker 4: of initiating action I guess of the film has to
Speaker 4: do with an airbnb that is double booked. One of
Speaker 4: the main characters shows up at the airbnb, there's already
Speaker 4: someone in there. It's in a really rough neighborhood. They
Speaker 4: come to an agreement and they agree to kind of
Speaker 4: bunk there together, and you kind of think the inciting incident,
Speaker 4: that's the word I'm looking for. You kind of think
Speaker 4: this is going to be what the movie's about, but
Speaker 4: it actually ends up being about something completely different. But
Speaker 4: it did get me thinking, like, I wonder how often
Speaker 4: this happens. You know, people are double booked in an airbnb. Well,
Speaker 4: apparently that is what Shrey Goell, who is a self
Speaker 4: described visionary real estate tycoon I guess, or a visionary
Speaker 4: in real estate. This is exactly what this person was
Speaker 4: banking on a that people would think it was much
Speaker 4: more common than it actually was, and b that they
Speaker 4: wouldn't necessarily report it. Apparently he's being indicted, by the way.
Speaker 4: On December twenty eighth, Goel was indicted on wirefraud, aggravated
Speaker 4: identity theft, and criminal forfeiture by a grand jury and
Speaker 4: the Central Dish of California. Accused of running this scam
Speaker 4: since twenty eighteen, and the root of the grift is
Speaker 4: that he would intentionally double book guests at these you know,
Speaker 4: more than one hundred properties that he operates across the country,
Speaker 4: creating various excuses for why they were double booked, canceling
Speaker 4: reservations of the last minute, shifting people to other less desirable,
Speaker 4: desirable properties because as you know, a lot of times
Speaker 4: the last minute, you're gonna take whatever you can get.
Speaker 4: You know, you've made arrangements to have a place to stay,
Speaker 4: or much like in Barbarian, you got nowhere else to go.
Speaker 4: Maybe there's a convention in town. Your chances are you're
Speaker 4: not gonna die on that hill. And you might even
Speaker 4: not look askance at the situation if it doesn't if
Speaker 4: it's only happened to you once you know, and you're
Speaker 4: not identifying it as a pattern, you know, because I
Speaker 4: don't know about you guys, but I don't think I've
Speaker 4: ever rented an Airbnb from the same per sin more
Speaker 4: than once, except in the case of like a cabin
Speaker 4: in the mountains where there was a particularly neat one
Speaker 4: that I have bookmarked, you know.
Speaker 3: I have primarily because a known entity is going to
Speaker 3: be more predictable, better the devil one knows or the
Speaker 3: landlord one knows. And and also shout out to Zach Cregor.
Speaker 3: You know, Why does Know? Was a fantastic sketch comedy.
Speaker 3: And Zach Gregor is really in my opinion, he's the
Speaker 3: director and writer of Barbaria, and he really came into
Speaker 3: his own here. He I think he clearly got some
Speaker 3: uh is writing from a place of first hand experience,
Speaker 3: a bit with with the idea of airbnbs.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, and he's also another great example of how
Speaker 4: comedy and horror are kind of kindred spirits.
Speaker 3: And when he said there's the difference between horror and
Speaker 3: comedy is the music you nick.
Speaker 4: Could well, yeah, I disagree.
Speaker 5: So Joe Goel Joel, It's g o e L. He
Speaker 5: would do all kinds of clever little things, set up
Speaker 5: separate listings for the same properties at different prices, using
Speaker 5: different photographs, and then he'd cancel the lower priced booking,
Speaker 5: making some excuse that.
Speaker 4: There was flooding or there was some kind of issue
Speaker 4: with the electrical or the plumbing or whatever it might be.
Speaker 4: And then again, like I said before, would offer to
Speaker 4: switch them to another property. Often, and this is according
Speaker 4: to a really great article in Vice by Rashawn Abraham,
Speaker 4: often the properties that he would switch them to would
Speaker 4: be in various states of disrepair. You know, have kind
Speaker 4: of decaying furniture, cobwebs, sounds like some real gray gardens
Speaker 4: type stuff. Very interesting, but again you're kind of an
Speaker 4: over abearl. But that's at that point and you're kind
Speaker 4: of gonna take what you can get. But you know,
Speaker 4: if anyone's messed around much with Airbnb, will be places
Speaker 4: with cute names like Alex and Britney's Honeymoon Bungalow, you know,
Speaker 4: things like that the egg and honey Helm one hundred percent,
Speaker 4: and the idea being is to sell it as like
Speaker 4: this is a lived in, you know, home full of love,
Speaker 4: you know, and uh, it's it's you're literally staying in
Speaker 4: somebody's home. As we often find if we've, if we
Speaker 4: or you have have done much airbnbing, is.
Speaker 5: That people will exclusively.
Speaker 4: Airbnb certain properties and fill them up with like remember
Speaker 4: those the model homes and arrested development. They're filled with
Speaker 4: I think the joke who they were called like home
Speaker 4: fill or something like that, where it was just like
Speaker 4: kind of set decorating stuff like live, laugh, love kind
Speaker 4: of things you get. You know, some of them are
Speaker 4: like that man, some like you've never lived in this place.
Speaker 4: Super hosts.
Speaker 3: It's the stock images, you know, that's the landscapes, uh,
Speaker 3: the ornamental fake fruit and plants and so on. There's
Speaker 3: also a big podcast. I don't want Olive Garden to
Speaker 3: sue us, but the sentiment is there. Airbnb's value proposition
Speaker 3: was something like when you're here, your family right, you're
Speaker 3: at home. And the issue there is just set up
Speaker 3: real quick. Like. The issue is that people are being
Speaker 3: increasingly built, swindled, bamboozled in terms of surveillance, in terms
Speaker 3: of what is promised versus what is delivered, and in
Speaker 3: terms of what is expected from them as tenants. And
Speaker 3: I know we're going to get to it. But Noel,
Speaker 3: isn't this the result of a twenty nineteen like in
Speaker 3: depth investigation on this one guy.
Speaker 4: Precisely, and to your point, Ben, You're absolutely right, Like,
Speaker 4: I've certainly rented an Airbnb that I felt underdelivered on
Speaker 4: the promise of the description and the pictures, but it
Speaker 4: wasn't like gross, and it was a place to sleep
Speaker 4: and I was able to get in, so I wasn't
Speaker 4: gonna make a fuss.
Speaker 5: There's nothing that was fine.
Speaker 4: I've literally never had what I would consider like a
Speaker 4: hellish or like, you know, negative Airbnb experience, and even
Speaker 4: if I did find a place to be lacking, I
Speaker 4: would certainly never leave a bad review. I'm just not
Speaker 4: that kind of person, and I know there are people
Speaker 4: that are that kind of person. But my point is,
Speaker 4: I think Joel is coasting on that expectation that people
Speaker 4: who are now kind of used to somewhat of a
Speaker 4: lowered expectation concerning these airbnb experiences, because the value is
Speaker 4: the fact that you can get one at all, and
Speaker 4: that they're cheaper than a hotel, and that they're more
Speaker 4: accessible than a hotel, and in a lot of ways
Speaker 4: it's a better experience because you've got your own place
Speaker 4: to park, you don't have to worry about. I don't know,
Speaker 4: results may vary, but I do find that a lot
Speaker 4: of times depending on the city, and Airbnb is a
Speaker 4: great alternative to a hotel. And so I'm not gonna complain,
Speaker 4: but absolutely right, Ben, There was an in depth investigation
Speaker 4: by Ali Kanti in twenty nineteen that, yeah, like exposed this.
Speaker 4: I accidentally uncovered a nationwide scam on Airbnb for the
Speaker 4: Vice Money section. While searching for the person who grifted
Speaker 4: me in Chicago, I discovered just how easy it is
Speaker 4: for users of the short term.
Speaker 5: Rental platform to get exploited.
Speaker 4: So that's its own piece to definitely dig into, and
Speaker 4: I highly recommend that you can find that online as well.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it led to exactly this. This person is
Speaker 4: in big trouble. And just to give you a little
Speaker 4: bit more of a background on the investigative piece, Ali
Speaker 4: CONTI had been a victim of this double booking scam
Speaker 4: at one of this guy's properties in Chicago, got that
Speaker 4: suspicious last minute cancellation, but then was contacted by the FBI.
Speaker 4: Eventually after publishing this experience hadn't really gotten to the
Speaker 4: bottom of it, per se, but published the article that
Speaker 4: they identified as the pattern, and then we're like, we
Speaker 4: want to find out more mere days after the article
Speaker 4: was published. So this, yeah, I fit in with a
Speaker 4: much larger pattern of fraud with Airbnb. According to another report, Airbnb,
Speaker 4: Rising rent and the Housing Crisis in Los Angeles from
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen that sort of pointed out some of these
Speaker 4: problems they're sort of becoming, I guess, endemic of this
Speaker 4: system of temporary rentals.
Speaker 3: There's another thing if we want to be proactive and
Speaker 3: prepared for this. Obviously we're not accusing everybody who runs
Speaker 3: an Airbnb of doing these sorts of grifts, but there
Speaker 3: are a couple of things you can do to protect yourselves.
Speaker 3: Treat it like a rental car. Take photos when you
Speaker 3: get there. That's going to be huge because people have
Speaker 3: been both in the world of rental cars and in
Speaker 3: the world of hiring houses and rooms, people have been
Speaker 3: accused of damage that is not their responsibility. I would
Speaker 3: say also, the reviews are important, but as we see
Speaker 3: in this case, the reviews can be spoofed by dummy accounts.
Speaker 3: I'm not an agent a big hotel promise you that,
Speaker 3: but I do think it is very very important for
Speaker 3: us to realize that a lot of times people are
Speaker 3: going to leverage your trust, or they're going to leverage
Speaker 3: your expectations that everybody else will be a good faith actor,
Speaker 3: and that's simply not the case. The real big problem
Speaker 3: I would argue with airbnbs is that they're absolutely screwing
Speaker 3: out first time home buyers across the United States.
Speaker 4: Now, that's a really important thing to bring up. Ben.
Speaker 4: I know it's not related, but I feel like those
Speaker 4: I mean, well, especially the pattern, you know, it is related,
Speaker 4: and it's like a grift within a grift because as
Speaker 4: we know, you know, people are maybe more likely to
Speaker 4: hold on to properties if they have a way of
Speaker 4: just squeezing every last dime out of them, you know,
Speaker 4: and this is a good way of doing that. There
Speaker 4: are some districts that it has been outlawed entirely because
Speaker 4: it is technically running. It's like, what's the word sub leasing?
Speaker 4: I think subleasing is technically against the law in some places.
Speaker 4: You know, you're supposed to have a contract, you're supposed
Speaker 4: to have you know, signed documents with the tenant, and
Speaker 4: they're supposed to have certain rights. But by doing this,
Speaker 4: you're kind of waiving those rights. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: you really don't have any rights. All the rights lie
Speaker 4: with the person that's making the money and that has
Speaker 4: their finger on all the decisions.
Speaker 3: And in the interest of full representation, of course, yes,
Speaker 3: we do want to give some space to Goelle, who
Speaker 3: talked a little bit about this on x formerly known
Speaker 3: as Twitter, just a few days ago. Right, he came
Speaker 3: out and publicly stated something that sort of referred to this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of funny because when you look the
Speaker 4: way it's cited in this Vice article, it's really easy
Speaker 4: to misread his name as goal So it looks like
Speaker 4: it says goal posted to X, and there's nothing that
Speaker 4: This is a great example of moving goal posts. Is
Speaker 4: what this whole rental scam kind of Airbnb hole inability
Speaker 4: for regular people to buy a home is. It is
Speaker 4: that American dream goalpost just moving around, you know, to
Speaker 4: the point where you'll never be able to make a
Speaker 4: touchdown anyway. So Goel posted to X on December thirty.
Speaker 4: That's from the Vice article. Yesterday, it was an incredibly
Speaker 4: tough day for me. Well, I can't speak publicly about
Speaker 4: the circumstances I was heading to my condo feeling sorry
Speaker 4: for myself. He then says that after being awake for
Speaker 4: a relentless forty eight hours, he witnessed the aftermath of
Speaker 4: someone having jumped to their death. He then offers his
Speaker 4: support to my friends, family, and even the Twitter trolls.
Speaker 4: If you need someone to talk to, I'm here. Life
Speaker 4: can be tough, but it often brings on a expected
Speaker 4: moments of hope and clarity.
Speaker 2: Well, you know we we can talk to him right now.
Speaker 2: Did you see on his website that shares his name.
Speaker 2: You can make an appointment. You can schedule an appointment
Speaker 2: appointment with this guy at any time, and he's open.
Speaker 2: His calendar is open.
Speaker 3: I think, what if if the pattern holds true, then
Speaker 3: what what will occur is, uh, you will contact him,
Speaker 3: and then that listing will change and there will be
Speaker 3: someone who's named like Gray Shoals some circuit Gray Showell
Speaker 3: who will talk with you. But the subsidence of that
Speaker 3: tweet was this person's death put my problems into perspective,
Speaker 3: which is a super narcissistic way to talk about someone dying.
Speaker 4: Well, and there's those problems, by the way that he's referencing,
Speaker 4: are like, you know, if you go to his social
Speaker 4: media profile, he uh is pretty open about how his
Speaker 4: His bio said as that he dreamed at a young
Speaker 4: age of being a pirate searching for treasure, and that
Speaker 4: it implies that his real estate empire took a bit
Speaker 4: of a dive during the pandemic, that he was trying
Speaker 4: to kind of claw his way back into prominence by
Speaker 4: dipping his toes into AI and by quote building a
Speaker 4: company that aimed to revolutionize memoir sharing. So let's go
Speaker 4: and exploit people's life rights too while we're at it
Speaker 4: about that anyway.
Speaker 5: Doesn't seem like the best of dudes.
Speaker 4: Don't wish ill on anybody, but I'm glad that this
Speaker 4: that somebody got to the bottom of this, because you know,
Speaker 4: like I said, this is the kind of grift you
Speaker 4: wouldn't hit the same person with twice. If this happened
Speaker 4: to me once, I wouldn't think anything of it. I
Speaker 4: don't think I would have gone as far as our
Speaker 4: intrepid vice you know, investigative reporter and even looked much
Speaker 4: further into I would have just chalked it up as
Speaker 4: you know, a bad experience nestled within a sea of
Speaker 4: media Oker experiences and I would have moved on, but
Speaker 4: some people don't move on, and that's good. We need
Speaker 4: those people. What do you say we take a quick break,
Speaker 4: hear a word from our sponsor, and then come back
Speaker 4: with one more piece of strange news.
Speaker 2: All right, and we've returned, and we are going to
Speaker 2: tell a tale of two secret spacecraft. And this is
Speaker 2: something that we talked about not that long ago. In
Speaker 2: November of twenty twenty two, we discussed this thing called
Speaker 2: the X thirty seven. B. Guys, Oh, I'm so excited
Speaker 2: that this is in our world again. We've been following
Speaker 2: it since really, I think it was its maiden voyage
Speaker 2: up into space back in twenty ten, April twenty ten.
Speaker 5: When a sweet, sweet little plain right, we had assessed.
Speaker 2: That's when we were we were making videos for iTunes
Speaker 2: video back in the day. And we've been we've been
Speaker 2: watching this thing because even before that, in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: it was a project that was announced as a I
Speaker 2: guess a collab between NASA and Boeing to create a
Speaker 2: space plane. They called it like an experimental space plane. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what they called it back then. And then we
Speaker 2: watched as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, took
Speaker 2: it over in like two thousand and four, and we're
Speaker 2: just like, what's gonna happen with this thing? What's happening now?
Speaker 2: Where is it? And you know, when DARPA takes a
Speaker 2: hold of a project, it's so funny because often on
Speaker 2: their website they'll put a big picture of the project
Speaker 2: they're working on, or a representative picture of that project,
Speaker 2: and it'll give you some information about it, like not
Speaker 2: a ton what would you say, guys, Like a paragraph
Speaker 2: or a couple bullet points, a blurb, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it lets you know that it exists and it's happening.
Speaker 2: But we will, as the public, will never know what
Speaker 2: the advancements are at the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be like a series of bullet points
Speaker 3: with proposed objectives, which are going to be a rewording
Speaker 3: of the request for proposals exactly.
Speaker 2: So that happens in two thousand and four. Then in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, the Air Force gets a hold
Speaker 2: of this thing, or it looks at the X thirty
Speaker 2: seven A and the Air Force decides, Hey, we're going
Speaker 2: to make our own version of this thing, except you know,
Speaker 2: we're aiming for the stars and we're gonna slap a
Speaker 2: B on that thing. Which what did we say? The
Speaker 2: X thirty seven B stands for?
Speaker 3: Oh, there's so many directions we could go with this,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean clearly that the lame answer is boeing.
Speaker 3: But our collective theories are probably much more interesting.
Speaker 4: Right, boy, Baller, Matt, you said about Chigobawa, I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna lie. You got you gotta own it. Own it, Matt, about.
Speaker 2: Chiobawa, I think it just stands for the second iteration.
Speaker 5: Ah, it's so dull, but it also makes sense.
Speaker 4: I know, right.
Speaker 2: But as they developed it two thousand and six, launches
Speaker 2: for the first time in twenty ten. The reason why
Speaker 2: it's very interesting to us still on the show is
Speaker 2: that it is a secretive, very very secretive, highly classified
Speaker 2: autonomous space plane or spacecraft I guess. And when it
Speaker 2: first launched in twenty ten, it was up in the
Speaker 2: air for two hundred and twenty four days. Then the
Speaker 2: next time it launched in twenty eleven, it was up
Speaker 2: there for four hundred and sixty eight days, Then the
Speaker 2: next time six hundred and seventy four days, then seven
Speaker 2: hundred and eighteen days, then seven hundred and eighty days,
Speaker 2: and the last time that we talked about it, it
Speaker 2: had been up in space in low Earth orbit for
Speaker 2: nine hundred and eight days without returning to Earth, which
Speaker 2: is just insane. That's such a long time to have
Speaker 2: this autonomous spacecraft just flying around in orbit doing who
Speaker 2: knows what for classified reasons. And it's in the news
Speaker 2: again because on December twenty eighth it went up on
Speaker 2: its seventh official old mission or I guess officially acknowledged mission,
Speaker 2: and it's going to be up there for an undisclosed
Speaker 2: number of days. If you think about like nine hundred
Speaker 2: and eight days, that's that's like well over two years,
Speaker 2: two and a half years. This time, it could be
Speaker 2: up there for three years, so we won't see it
Speaker 2: until twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven. Who knows what
Speaker 2: it's doing. Who knows what it took with it, because
Speaker 2: remember last time we talked about it, the X thirty
Speaker 2: seven B has a cargo load, a payload of around
Speaker 2: the size of a Toyota Tacoma truck, right, so like
Speaker 2: the thing of a bed of a truck. It can
Speaker 2: carry things up there like small satellites, maybe even smaller
Speaker 2: versions of itself. How crazy would that be? And it's
Speaker 2: just going to be doing its thing and we won't
Speaker 2: know what's happening. But there are people on the ground
Speaker 2: who are not part of you know, space force, which
Speaker 2: is the controlling body of this machine now, or the
Speaker 2: air or DARPA or any of these. They are just citizens,
Speaker 2: sometimes scientists, sometimes enthusiasts of the skies. They are tracking
Speaker 2: these things, like tracking the X thirty seven B and
Speaker 2: tracking the shen Long which is China's answer essentially to
Speaker 2: the X thirty seven B Secret of spacecraft, which, guys,
Speaker 2: let me just throw it to you. What have you
Speaker 2: heard in the news recently about China's version shen Long?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's so bad that another country is
Speaker 3: doing the same thing as us.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes, I guess that is like the gist
Speaker 2: of a lot of the reporting.
Speaker 3: I think that's there is some hypocrisy too.
Speaker 4: I'm personally enraged. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, Matt, do you want to do you want to
Speaker 3: let everybody know what shen long translates to in English?
Speaker 2: Ah? Yes, if shen Long was to X thirty seven
Speaker 2: B and the B stood for badass, which is how
Speaker 2: it should be. Shen Long literally translates to divine dragon,
Speaker 2: which is just like oh better, or yeah, it could
Speaker 2: be god dragon. Yeah, I've always seen divine for some
Speaker 2: reason in reporting I've looked at But this thing is
Speaker 2: on its third mission, right, It's gone up three or
Speaker 2: two times previously. Now it's on its third mission and
Speaker 2: it launched on December fourteenth, just you know, fourteen days
Speaker 2: prior to the X thirty seven BE going up there.
Speaker 2: And get this, the X thirty seven B was supposed
Speaker 2: to go up in early December, but got delayed due
Speaker 2: to some technical problems and weather issues. So theoretically shen
Speaker 2: Long was going to be launched almost to match X
Speaker 2: like literally to match X thirty seven be's launch, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it isn't. I think shen Long first went
Speaker 3: public in seven, but I don't it hadn't launched by them,
Speaker 3: But that's when the public found out about it.
Speaker 2: That's when the agencies there in China disclosed that they
Speaker 2: were working on a project, kind of the same way
Speaker 2: that in nineteen ninety nine when Boeing and NASA, Hey
Speaker 2: we've got this secret thing that we're working on.
Speaker 3: But I guess SCNP selth China Morning Post.
Speaker 4: I think probably, I guess it never occurred to me, guys.
Speaker 4: But in reference to this article, I saw a link
Speaker 4: to another article from the Space Desk. I guess of
Speaker 4: the Guardian quoting in a US official saying that we
Speaker 4: are definitely in a space race with China, and there
Speaker 4: are apparently plenty of reports indicating that China. Well, actually
Speaker 4: it was a former astronaut in Florida Senator Bill Nelson
Speaker 4: who is claiming that China is trying to go after
Speaker 4: the Moon and some of its resource rich areas. So
Speaker 4: make no mistake, says Nelson. We are in a space race.
Speaker 2: Yes, but with regards to these two specific craft, we
Speaker 2: are not talking about the Moon in any former measure,
Speaker 2: which is just an important distinction because I think some
Speaker 2: people often get the you know, mixed up. Right, We
Speaker 2: are talking about low Earth orbit. Every time the X
Speaker 2: thirty seven B has gone up into the sky or
Speaker 2: into space, I guess let's call it really just high
Speaker 2: up in the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Let's call it Bezos space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when it's in Bezos space. Every time it's launched,
Speaker 2: it's been in Bezos space. Low Earth orbit and the
Speaker 2: Shenlong same thing low Earth orbit when it's flying around,
Speaker 2: except for this time. The X thirty seven B was
Speaker 2: launched on a Falcon Is it a nine Falcon nine rocket?
Speaker 2: It's a Falcon heavy rocket that is a part of
Speaker 2: Elon Musk's thing, and it went it can well, let's
Speaker 2: put it this way. It can potentially reach geosynchronous orbit,
Speaker 2: which is higher up, more miles outward than low Earth orbit.
Speaker 2: And according to official sources, they won't say, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: X thirty seven B is going way up this time
Speaker 2: and it's gonna test stuff out there, but they'll say
Speaker 2: things like I have a quote here from a Guardian article.
Speaker 2: This is what the Pentagon, via the Air Force Rapid
Speaker 2: cap Abilities Office said, UH number Mission number seven will
Speaker 2: involve tests of quote new orbital regimes experimenting with future
Speaker 2: space domain awareness technologies.
Speaker 4: Dude, have you guys seen the BlackBerry movie about it yet?
Speaker 2: I want to see that.
Speaker 4: There's a really interesting thing that happens in it where
Speaker 4: BlackBerry was king and then all of a sudden, iPhone
Speaker 4: came out and immediately they had this prototy that they were,
Speaker 4: you know, pitching to investors, and they just slapped a
Speaker 4: screen on it as quickly as they freaking could you know,
Speaker 4: because so they could say, see, see we're doing the
Speaker 4: thing that they're doing too. That's this reeks of that
Speaker 4: kind of desperation a little bit, doesn't it.
Speaker 5: Do you know what you're getting at?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit. But also who knows there could
Speaker 2: be really important interesting stuff going on in there, besides
Speaker 2: figuring out how to kill satellites more efficiently, which we
Speaker 2: or capture right just grab them up. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't know. Just to that same Guardian
Speaker 2: article on less cite it here. The Guardian on December
Speaker 2: twenty eighth published this article with this title US Military's
Speaker 2: X thirty seven B robot space plane blasts off on
Speaker 2: secret mission aboard SpaceX rocket. So that's there so you
Speaker 2: can find it. And within that article there is a
Speaker 2: quote from the Space Force General B. Chance Saltsman.
Speaker 3: What does the B stand for, Matt Badass?
Speaker 2: It stands for broccoli. I don't know why, but it does,
Speaker 2: James Bond Fortune. It goes back to what you're saying, Nol.
Speaker 2: His quote is quote, it's no surprise that the Chinese
Speaker 2: are extremely interested in our space plane. We are extremely
Speaker 2: interested in theirs. These are two of the most watched
Speaker 2: objects in orbit. While they're in orbit. It's probably no
Speaker 2: coincidence that they're trying to match us in timing and
Speaker 2: sequence of this.
Speaker 3: Oh we're probably yeah, what a couinkydink. There's also you know,
Speaker 3: I'm really glad you point this part out, Matt, because
Speaker 3: to one of the questions you asked that, I think
Speaker 3: you're getting at the way this has been reported in
Speaker 3: the West, in the global West, and the anglosphere in particular,
Speaker 3: it does have traces of sinophobia. Like it is a
Speaker 3: lot of the news breathlessly reports perceived capabilities of shed
Speaker 3: long as though they are not the same capabilities the
Speaker 3: X thirty seven B is knowingly working toward. I mean,
Speaker 3: think about think about the satellite shooting that happened a
Speaker 3: few years ago. I don't talking about it as though
Speaker 3: their celebrities getting gunned down, but the US shot down
Speaker 3: a satellite and then China did so for like safety.
Speaker 3: But they were both sending messages to one another. And
Speaker 3: the idea of a space race is true, but perhaps
Speaker 3: it is more accurate to call it a space Olympics.
Speaker 3: There are many different events going on right. There are
Speaker 3: many different medals to be won and races to be run.
Speaker 2: Sure, and as we said before, these objects are being watched,
Speaker 2: not just you know, as that general was stating, you know,
Speaker 2: the countries are watching them. There are individual human beings
Speaker 2: who watch them. And in the case of shen Long,
Speaker 2: somebody who's been keeping track of it has been noticing
Speaker 2: that the shen Long released six quote mystery objects. They
Speaker 2: released them, right, So imagine seeing a UFO and now
Speaker 2: instead of just one UFO, there's seven UFOs flying around
Speaker 2: or lights that you're seeing. That's kind of the experience,
Speaker 2: except imagine how like powerful telescopes and or whatever other
Speaker 2: tracking you know, radar tracking, whatever they've got.
Speaker 3: Maybe something with an EMP device that just happens to
Speaker 3: be on a dumb orbit toward a satellite, another satellite,
Speaker 3: and they could just pop a fart real quick, you know.
Speaker 2: Maybe, but again, maybe there's technology that's being tested that's
Speaker 2: similar to the stuff we've been reading about with the
Speaker 2: wingman AI planes. Remember we were just learning about that
Speaker 2: where jet fighters would would be able to have a
Speaker 2: squadron of smaller AI driven planes that they would fly with,
Speaker 2: and those planes would function as basically eyes in the
Speaker 2: sky as trackers and they'd have sensor technology on them
Speaker 2: basically to give more awareness to that pilot. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: something like that, but in this case, it's a robotic
Speaker 2: space plane with other robots.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, possibly, like like in Transformers and Decepticons. I think
Speaker 3: it's a Decepticon, the guy who transforms into a into
Speaker 3: an old school boombox, but he's got a little robot
Speaker 3: inside of him that transforms into an old school cassette
Speaker 3: tape and Hay launches out. It's like it's possibly six
Speaker 3: of those. It really depends upon how sophisticated their steering
Speaker 3: capabilities are. If they have those, is it purely hard
Speaker 3: science research? You know, the way that the US sells
Speaker 3: this to the US populace. I don't know. I'm really
Speaker 3: glad you brought up our previous episode. What do we
Speaker 3: call it? Something like space Ghost the Return of X
Speaker 3: thirty seven B Like, we might need to revisit this
Speaker 3: because something is happening and there's a lot of there's
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff at stake.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, there most certainly is that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Space Ghost we put out in December of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and we talked about it in November, I think of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two in our Strange News. So you can
Speaker 2: find both of those episodes right now. If you want
Speaker 2: to learn more about this stuff, if you want to
Speaker 2: learn more about Shen Long and these mysterious objects being
Speaker 2: emitted from it, you can find reporting on it all
Speaker 2: over the place. I would recommend space dot com as
Speaker 2: your first stop. They put an article out on December eighteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, titled China's space plane apparently deployed six
Speaker 2: mysterious wingmen in orbit, and the subtitle is some of
Speaker 2: the objects appear to be transmitting signoles?
Speaker 3: What what's he building in there? Shout out Tom Waits
Speaker 3: if it's okay. I'd also like to mention Popular Mechanics
Speaker 3: has uh.
Speaker 2: I do not want you to mention that, Ben because
Speaker 2: they won't let me read their stuff.
Speaker 4: And let's like listenday and Popular.
Speaker 3: Popular Mechanics has a a for now a great comp
Speaker 3: contrast called Battle the Space Planes. How America's X thirty
Speaker 3: seven B stacks up against China's shed and Long.
Speaker 2: Well, that sounds good. I wish I could read it,
Speaker 2: too bad? Sorry, Popular Mechanics. That's about it for right now.
Speaker 2: There's a ton of reporting on this going out there,
Speaker 2: but most of it is surface level. The stuff that
Speaker 2: you'll find on sheen Long often is not English language.
Speaker 2: At least the best information that I could find is
Speaker 2: not English language. So use the the old translators if
Speaker 2: you can, if you want to really dive deep into this.
Speaker 2: All right, I guess that concludes this segment and.
Speaker 4: This episode, right, but not the show.
Speaker 3: No, you can't wait to hear from you, folks. Are
Speaker 3: you taking Disney to court? Are you going to do
Speaker 3: Law and Order steamboat style? What is your strange Airbnb experience?
Speaker 3: What do you think about airbnb in general? And what
Speaker 3: are the US and China doing up there in space?
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