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 call 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 you. You are here. That makes this the
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
Speaker 3: of the week, so Monday evening, we are bringing you
Speaker 3: some fresh baked strange news. Shout out to everybody listening
Speaker 3: to this in a cyber truck. Be safe, geez. Shout
Speaker 3: out to everybody who's been in unusual loan circumstances. We
Speaker 3: were talking a little bit off air, and we thought
Speaker 3: we might do just a quick cavalcade old school strange.
Speaker 3: She's daily at the top. We talked about investor passports
Speaker 3: like a while ago. Right, did we ever do an
Speaker 3: episode on this? I don't think we did.
Speaker 4: I don't believe so no doesn't quite ring a bell.
Speaker 4: That'd love to be caught up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I know we talked about this hanging out
Speaker 3: off air. They're always with every election cycle, there's always
Speaker 3: going to be several groups of people in the US
Speaker 3: who say, well, if so and so as president or
Speaker 3: so and so does something, then I'm moving, me and
Speaker 3: the family are getting out of the US. We're going
Speaker 3: to some other country. For many of us in the
Speaker 3: audience today, who may indeed be expats, you know that
Speaker 3: the process is often much more involved then.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: You can't just go online and then click a box.
Speaker 3: It takes a while, and so it may be of
Speaker 3: interest to some of us to find that the more
Speaker 3: wealthy people in the US and the world are building
Speaker 3: a thing called passport portfolios. Let's go to Robert Frank
Speaker 3: for CNBC who wrote this just just about a week ago.
Speaker 3: Apparently around the globe, very well to do people are
Speaker 3: collecting a second or even a third or a fourth passport,
Speaker 3: like actual citizenship, international citizenship stuff. And I think it's
Speaker 3: safe to say, without putting any of us on the spot,
Speaker 3: that we as a group, we're all kind of like
Speaker 3: one passport folk, right. We don't have to say it
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 4: Oh on a good day, yeah, on a good day. Well,
Speaker 4: I mean I think I maybe mentioned I had a
Speaker 4: child's passport, not like I was using a child's passport,
Speaker 4: but I only just recently got a grown up passport,
Speaker 4: and I did not have the one from my early
Speaker 4: early youth, and so it was a big old pain
Speaker 4: in the butt to get a new one when you
Speaker 4: don't have the original. If it's I get to fill
Speaker 4: out a different form and it can take a little longer.
Speaker 4: But I've been using my new big boy passport every
Speaker 4: chance I get. But yes, only the one, only the one.
Speaker 4: When I think of multiples, I guess I think of
Speaker 4: that secret hidden drawer full of loose diamonds, and like
Speaker 4: multiple identities. They're like various passports.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I literally just opened my secret hidden drawer and hold kidding.
Speaker 4: What's your identity on that one? That?
Speaker 2: Uh what does this say? Walton Goggins love that?
Speaker 3: Oh good, Yeah, yeah, that'll work. Yeah. It's weird because
Speaker 3: before the global pandemic, US passport would get you into
Speaker 3: about one hundred and eighty four countries, which is awesome,
Speaker 3: But during the pandemic that number plummeted to like twenty
Speaker 3: nine countries. You could still get in, but you would
Speaker 3: need to jump through additional hoops or be quite wealthy.
Speaker 3: And that's because the US was home to or is
Speaker 3: home to around four percent of the world's population, but
Speaker 3: also had about one fourth of total COVID nineteen cases.
Speaker 3: So all the rest of the world was looking at
Speaker 3: this and thinking, what a dumpster fire. We can't let
Speaker 3: these people in. I did some research. We might want
Speaker 3: to save for a for an episode in the future,
Speaker 3: but it is surprisingly easy to just buy your way
Speaker 3: into citizenship in some countries, like a lot of Caribbean
Speaker 3: countries like Saint Kitts and Nevis or Saint Lucia, Turkey
Speaker 3: is one of the most exciting. If you are a
Speaker 3: billionaire listening to this and you're thinking of moving to
Speaker 3: New Zealand, I like where your head's at. It's a
Speaker 3: good decision. Unfortunately, other people got there first, Like billionaires
Speaker 3: are pretty much buying that country now.
Speaker 4: Wasn't that the deal? We talked about certain countries that
Speaker 4: were very, very difficult to get, you know, dual citizenship in,
Speaker 4: and that was one of the toughest. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 4: you have to show that you're committing a certain amount
Speaker 4: of your income to things that better the economy.
Speaker 3: I yeah, exactly right now. The top destinations for what
Speaker 3: they're calling supplemental passports amidst wealthy Americans are in the
Speaker 3: following order, Portugal, Malta, Greece, and Italy. And that's coming
Speaker 3: to us from a firm in London that just does
Speaker 3: this called Henley and Partners. I don't know, man, It
Speaker 3: still feels kind of okay, it feels kind of unfair
Speaker 3: because these people aren't there, you know, if we are
Speaker 3: practicing meritocracy, they're not necessarily better or worse than anybody
Speaker 3: else who wants to move, but they are getting they're
Speaker 3: cutting the line, you know, because they can just throw
Speaker 3: money at the problem. But the main disturbing thing about this,
Speaker 3: at least what we could say is the main disturbing
Speaker 3: thing is that this is picking up not because it's
Speaker 3: a cool trend, but because the halves of American society
Speaker 3: are increasingly persuaded that something bad is on the way.
Speaker 3: Like they think they think the house may not burn down,
Speaker 3: but it is in ever greater danger of burning down.
Speaker 3: So they want to be able to hop on that
Speaker 3: plane to Malta. All you need is like three hundred
Speaker 3: thousand euros in real estate to move to Malta. If
Speaker 3: that was like the main hold up, that's timber.
Speaker 4: Shields you from prosecution in any way, or like, are
Speaker 4: there particular I know there are particular destinations you can't
Speaker 4: be extradited from, but like what's the list of Like
Speaker 4: I'm very rich and I'm scared that the IRS or
Speaker 4: the you know, SEC's coming for me. Where do I
Speaker 4: f off to?
Speaker 3: Right? Right? That's a great question. That's what we should
Speaker 3: cover in the episode, you know, because sometimes people have
Speaker 3: just they're not you know, business tycoons, but they've saved
Speaker 3: up money throughout their lives and they want to retire
Speaker 3: some other place and so they can get that investment
Speaker 3: passport as retirements. We're not saying all these people are
Speaker 3: like Monty Burns level evil. But the society, as we've
Speaker 3: mentioned and as we'll explore in this week's Listener, male
Speaker 3: society in the developed world is aging at a rather
Speaker 3: precipitous rate. I mean, we know this. People who tend
Speaker 3: to be considered elderly are finding life increasingly difficult for
Speaker 3: a number of reasons. I mean even FBI agents are
Speaker 3: going broke now because of housing cost, which is a
Speaker 3: national security concerned Like the main story I wanted to
Speaker 3: share this kind of a setup is uh. Do you
Speaker 3: guys remember Madam Bell from like the days of TV,
Speaker 3: Like you'd see the blue screen and the call in
Speaker 3: number like dial one night psychic. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, because.
Speaker 4: There was also like it was Dionne Warwick did it
Speaker 4: for a minute and that's amazing singer. Then there was
Speaker 4: also Miss Cleo. I remember Miss Cleo very well. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: I believe she was a very famous fraud. I believe
Speaker 4: there's a whole story behind her thing that. I mean,
Speaker 4: she's got in some big trouble if I'm not mist.
Speaker 2: She had a brick and mortar on Cheshire Bridge.
Speaker 3: Madam Bell, Yes, I went to that one. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a great date idea, but it is it's a really
Speaker 3: bad reading.
Speaker 2: That's a road in Atlanta or it's known for what, guys,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, bring adjacent to some awesome.
Speaker 2: Food there you go and other things and sex trafficking.
Speaker 3: Yes, unfortunately that is true. Madam Bell, to our knowledge,
Speaker 3: is not involved with that. A funny story. When I
Speaker 3: visited that that psychic on a date many years ago,
Speaker 3: I was also surprised to learn this shouldn't have been surprising.
Speaker 3: I was surprised to learn that there was an original
Speaker 3: Madam Bell. It was not the person I spoke with
Speaker 3: who was found dead, faced down in a puddle at
Speaker 3: a hotel several years before I visited that Madam Bell.
Speaker 3: So it's probably a franchise, right, That's more likely than
Speaker 3: a ghost.
Speaker 2: Or identity theft situation or theft.
Speaker 3: The thing is, you know, for a lot of the
Speaker 3: more skeptical folks in the crowd, you might say, visiting
Speaker 3: a psychic, you know, a fool and their money are
Speaker 3: soon parted, right, and you got scammed. But if you
Speaker 3: go in there and you just think of it as
Speaker 3: a cultural experience, then you're paying for a good time, right,
Speaker 3: and you can go compare notes later. And a lot
Speaker 3: of people find a lot of meaning in in consulting
Speaker 3: with folks who call themselves psychics. And that's where we
Speaker 3: run into the weirdest. The weirdest story they found recently
Speaker 3: is a guy named Patrice Runner, a dual citizen of
Speaker 3: Canada and France. He's got both passports, he's fifty seven.
Speaker 3: He just got convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud
Speaker 3: and wire fraud and money launtering through quote a massive
Speaker 3: psychic mass mailing fraud scheme.
Speaker 4: Does that many he sent all the fraudulent letters with
Speaker 4: his mind? Man?
Speaker 3: I mean, does that mean he saw the conviction coming?
Speaker 3: As you might imagine psychic.
Speaker 4: He was any good?
Speaker 3: Right, So let's go to Leyland Seco writing for The Guardian.
Speaker 3: Con man who swindled get this guy's one hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five million dollars in this massive psychic fraud scheme
Speaker 3: just got sentenced to two years? Is the demographic of
Speaker 3: his victims? Largely elderly.
Speaker 4: I've seen it more and more since. I mean it's
Speaker 4: it's never not been a thing, but people running scams
Speaker 4: on the elderly things. Since COVID has really taken an uptick.
Speaker 3: The US Postal Service, oh, the US Postal Inspection Service
Speaker 3: excuse me, doc got him and they also worked in
Speaker 3: conjunction with the Department of Justice. He was doing this
Speaker 3: for quite some time and it was similar to some
Speaker 3: of the things that we've seen prosperity theologians and televangelists do.
Speaker 3: So his company, his company, which has a weird name
Speaker 3: INFO just direct marketing what they would, right, Yeah, INFO?
Speaker 4: Does that mean like jokey information? Or is it like
Speaker 4: ingest and information as a portmanteau.
Speaker 3: I think it's like a reader's digest of information is
Speaker 3: what they're trying.
Speaker 4: To size information easy to goes down easy.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it sounds like a really non legit
Speaker 3: business name.
Speaker 4: No, but it just makes you think of info.
Speaker 3: You just you know, like, oh I see yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It makes me think they need to get Kim Wexler
Speaker 2: and Jimmy McGill and pull a Samdpiper on this.
Speaker 3: Dude, why not you know, uh, I think you know,
Speaker 3: I agree with you guys. This this strategy or this
Speaker 3: grift is unfortunately, as we said just a second ago,
Speaker 3: it's it's pretty common. They played the numbers game like
Speaker 3: a pickup artist. They sent all a time of letters
Speaker 3: that purported to be individualized. Now a lot of us
Speaker 3: in the US have received we receive junk mail, you know,
Speaker 3: on a weekly basis. Right where you'll you'll be able
Speaker 3: to tell that it's junk mail because it'll say something
Speaker 3: like Walton Goggins or current resident yeah.
Speaker 4: Or it'll say a non transferable open Immediately, you don't
Speaker 4: want to miss out on what's in here.
Speaker 2: You know, your car's extended warranty is in Jeopardy right.
Speaker 3: Final notice from Kansas City Stakes. All right, guys like
Speaker 3: slow your role. I bought the rabbis once. So what
Speaker 3: they would do is send this kind of pseudo personalized
Speaker 3: stuff to millions of people. And it would appear, if
Speaker 3: you didn't look closely, that the correspondence was handwritten in
Speaker 3: cursive from a famous French psychic, Maria Duval, and it
Speaker 3: would pose to the reader that you have quote an
Speaker 3: opportunity to achieve great wealth and happiness with the psychic assistance,
Speaker 3: as long as you give us a little bit of
Speaker 3: money for what they called a quote astral clairvoyant forecast.
Speaker 3: And so the opportunity much like the pursuit Yes, happiness, yes,
Speaker 3: just so, just sotal. And so let's say ninety nine
Speaker 3: people receive these one person responds, it's still enough to
Speaker 3: justify the grift. If a person responds, they make an
Speaker 3: initial payment, and then they get dozens and dozens of
Speaker 3: additional letters, all seemingly personalized, all requesting additional fees, and
Speaker 3: then sometimes asking you to mail in personal items like
Speaker 3: finger and palm prints, photos of yourself, locks of your hair,
Speaker 3: and this would help them conduct additional personalized rituals and
Speaker 3: astrological services, and there from the indictment from the DJ. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, there's also an interview with patrise Runner and
Speaker 3: his interview, which you can read on the Walrus dot
Speaker 3: CAA talks in depth with the guy, and his argument,
Speaker 3: even post sentencing, is that he never violated the law
Speaker 3: in his male business and his thing was, look, if
Speaker 3: people were not satisfied, they could always ask for their
Speaker 3: money back. His specific quote was, maybe it's not moral,
Speaker 3: beat me here, doc. Maybe it's not moral, Maybe it's
Speaker 3: bullsh but it doesn't mean it's fraud.
Speaker 2: Of course not.
Speaker 4: Okay, I know what it is when I see it, right,
Speaker 4: Oh boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's been doing this for a while. He had
Speaker 3: been found guilty of running scams previously, not once, but twice.
Speaker 3: In Canada nineteen ninety one, a company in his name
Speaker 3: got fined and for falsely advertising clairvoyant services all to
Speaker 3: predict winning lottery numbers. So I don't know about anybody here.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's true, maybe clairvoyance or prognostication is a real
Speaker 3: psychic power. But if someone in the mail is like, hey, man,
Speaker 3: slive me a couple bucks and I'll give you the
Speaker 3: winning lottery numbers.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm a bit suspicious people felt for it. He got
Speaker 3: in trouble. He got fined the equivalent of just a
Speaker 3: little bit north of thirty one thousand dollars in the US.
Speaker 3: Fast forward nine years, it's the year two thousand. He
Speaker 3: has another company that gets fined the equivalent of three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty two thousand dollars in Quebec for selling
Speaker 3: BS weight loss products. This guy's kind of got a
Speaker 3: track record, right guys.
Speaker 4: I was super bummed that I missed the Supplements episode
Speaker 4: from being on the road. But I don't know, I
Speaker 4: haven't listened to it yet, but I'm sure that you
Speaker 4: discuss some scams of this nature in that episode, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We had a listener right in just as we were
Speaker 3: going to record who had thanked us for that episode
Speaker 3: coming out, and they knew, just like we said on air,
Speaker 3: they knew it would have to be a continuing series.
Speaker 3: So we're going to get to New Tropics next. We're
Speaker 3: going to do what else, Matt. We get a couple
Speaker 3: of others.
Speaker 2: We had to hit up the Mushrooms.
Speaker 3: One the Mushrooms, Yes.
Speaker 2: I forget the name already because I'm not looking at
Speaker 2: notes or thinking about it. But there's a term. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well there's a term for adaptogens. I think is that adaptagens.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy is not selling
Speaker 3: any of that. He is to your point, well, he
Speaker 3: is selling snake oil, absolutely.
Speaker 4: But isn't the issue too that a lot of that
Speaker 4: stuff it's easy ish to get around FDA guidelines by
Speaker 4: saying something's not for you know, oral use, you know,
Speaker 4: in the same way that like people were selling those
Speaker 4: lab chemicals and things like that that could get you
Speaker 4: really really high. But somehow we're able to be sold
Speaker 4: in you know, tobacco shops. It it just seems like
Speaker 4: this stuff is rife for fraud to not know what
Speaker 4: exactly is in it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The FDA is unfortunately very much reactive rather than proactive
Speaker 3: when it comes to the world of supplements, at least
Speaker 3: in this country. And they're in a pickle because they
Speaker 3: can't These supplements are not subject to the same rigors
Speaker 3: that a drug would be subject to because they are
Speaker 3: supposedly part of the natural food supply. So you can't
Speaker 3: tell someone not to sell concentrated vitamin C. That's one
Speaker 3: of the examples that we use because you know what's next.
Speaker 3: You're gonna tell them they can only buy so many
Speaker 3: oranges per month. You know, there's not really a way
Speaker 3: around it.
Speaker 4: Like kid asked me a really funny question yesterday. They
Speaker 4: really discovered they love vitamin water, those zero show kind
Speaker 4: and asked me if it was possible to overdose on
Speaker 4: vitamins if they drink more than two vitamin waters in
Speaker 4: a day. And I said, I think it's gonna take
Speaker 4: more than that, but yes, it is possible.
Speaker 3: It is possible. It Oh, everybody checked out that supplement's
Speaker 3: episode Vitamin B three is niosin we're talking about. We
Speaker 3: did some improv with the nios interesting.
Speaker 4: But don't people take niosin too? Like it makes you
Speaker 4: sweat or something, and people think that it'll get you
Speaker 4: out of a drug test or it'll pass a drug
Speaker 4: test for you if you take a bunch of niosin.
Speaker 4: I just remember that from back in the day, back
Speaker 4: when you know, me and friends of mine were worried
Speaker 4: about passing drug tests. I never did it, but I
Speaker 4: just mad some friends. Really, I just took a bunch
Speaker 4: of niosin and made me turn red and sweat all
Speaker 4: the toxins.
Speaker 3: Out and scientology also uses a niosin overdose or vitamin
Speaker 3: B overdoses in some of their rituals. You know, the
Speaker 3: best way to try to You can't really successful full
Speaker 3: of drug test like a urine test, but you can
Speaker 3: go for what you could consider a chemical mistrial, which
Speaker 3: is if you drink enough water. Then what's going to
Speaker 3: happen is the test will come back and maybe the
Speaker 3: science has changed and the people at the lab will say, well,
Speaker 3: this guy, for some reason drank so much water that
Speaker 3: this test is invalid. And then hopefully that'll get to
Speaker 3: the window of time if you are doing that, and eventually,
Speaker 3: like so many people trying to run a drug test,
Speaker 3: drift Runner himself gets caught. He has made millions of
Speaker 3: millions of dollars. He was an international resident living in Switzerland, France,
Speaker 3: Costa Rica, Spain, the Netherlands. This conviction was a long
Speaker 3: time incoming. Law enforcement have been on the case from
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. Like beginning in twenty fourteen, there were extradition
Speaker 3: negotiations in Spain, rested in Nabitha, and he was eventually
Speaker 3: flown to New York. Other people have been linked to
Speaker 3: this scam. They've all pled guilty. Uh, and runner in
Speaker 3: I thought you'd like this typical con man fashion. Before
Speaker 3: the trial, he said he did not have money to
Speaker 3: pay for a lawyer. I used to live like a
Speaker 3: rock star. Wasn't cautious enough. I thought this mail order
Speaker 3: business would be forever.
Speaker 4: That was a quote.
Speaker 3: That was a quote. That's a quote from his interview
Speaker 3: in the New York in the New York Detention Center.
Speaker 4: With the walls forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh, there's there's more to discuss here. This
Speaker 3: is all kind of like a setup for a question.
Speaker 3: We want your help with, folks one eight three three
Speaker 3: std WYTK Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Do you believe
Speaker 3: there should be an upper age limit on voting past
Speaker 3: a certain physical age. Should people be allowed to vote.
Speaker 3: We're just gonna drop that mic here and then we'll
Speaker 3: go to an Uh, we'll go to an app break.
Speaker 3: We'll be with more strange news. Can't wait to hear
Speaker 3: from you.
Speaker 4: And we've returned Ben that question that you just dropped
Speaker 4: at the end of it. I don't want to like
Speaker 4: the muddy the waters or anything, but I think that
Speaker 4: is very interesting. It's never quite occurred to me. I
Speaker 4: could see how it could become problematic for certain Americans
Speaker 4: being like, that's aegis, you can't that you can't rob
Speaker 4: me of my god given right to vote. I'm an
Speaker 4: American citizen and I deserve to be a part of
Speaker 4: the of the you know, democratic process. But I would argue,
Speaker 4: maybe there are some folks at a certain age that,
Speaker 4: given certain circumstances, maybe you shouldn't be able to. But
Speaker 4: maybe that's a hot take, and people are gonna yell
Speaker 4: at me about that, But I really do want to
Speaker 4: know what people think. But moving on to other not
Speaker 4: so hot takes, I think, I think I don't know
Speaker 4: if the jury's out exactly. There was a time where
Speaker 4: a discussion of the rollout of the Tesla cyber truck
Speaker 4: was kind of relegated to let's wait and see what
Speaker 4: will happen with a lot of naysayers, and you know,
Speaker 4: there was some certainly some red flags when Elon Musk
Speaker 4: trotted this thing out, I believe back in twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: when he announced it at I believe it was a
Speaker 4: trade show of some kind where you know, he shot
Speaker 4: at it with a bow and arrow, they shot at
Speaker 4: it with handguns. Tried to prove that the windows were
Speaker 4: instructible by having someone smash it and totally smashed. Also,
Speaker 4: you know, handguns definitely pierced the stainless steel doors. A
Speaker 4: lot of promises, a lot of features that were promised,
Speaker 4: over promised, and under delivered or not delivered at all.
Speaker 4: Like I think at in the original prototype that was
Speaker 4: rolled out, there was like a ramp for accessibility that
Speaker 4: you know would unfurl from the back. That's not in
Speaker 4: the model that's now shipping out to folks being delivered.
Speaker 4: He promised there to be a built in air compressor
Speaker 4: that had something to do with tapping into the air
Speaker 4: suspension system. That would certainly be convenient if you wanted
Speaker 4: to to inflate the extra inflatable tenth that you can get.
Speaker 4: That is of course an ad on. Don't have an
Speaker 4: exact dollar amount on that, but that is not part
Speaker 4: of the model that is now being delivered. And again
Speaker 4: also the whole bulletproof promises and and destructible promises, off
Speaker 4: road abilities things like that. Well, we're starting to really
Speaker 4: see a lot of those chickens coming home to roost,
Speaker 4: let's say, and they're not particularly happy chickens or roosters
Speaker 4: or whatever. As the rollout of delivery has taken place
Speaker 4: a good four years after the product was announced, also
Speaker 4: at a much much higher ticket price than was originally announced.
Speaker 4: I think he said the base model is going to
Speaker 4: be around forty grand, but now it has proven to
Speaker 4: be more like sixty grand. And it's one of these
Speaker 4: things where these like kind of Tesla fanboys placed their
Speaker 4: orders I believe, not even knowing what the final price
Speaker 4: was going to be to get in that line, and
Speaker 4: in that queue you had to kind of like sign
Speaker 4: your life away and promise that you're going to buy
Speaker 4: one for whatever costing, which is I think now for
Speaker 4: the base model in the neighborhood of sixty grand, so
Speaker 4: good bit over what was promised there as well. Well,
Speaker 4: now it appears that deliveries have been halted for what
Speaker 4: Tesla claims will be only about seven days due to
Speaker 4: a very very serious problem. Beyond the problems that I
Speaker 4: just mentioned, we're going to talk about some more as well.
Speaker 4: Let's just get this one out of the way. The
Speaker 4: accelerator pedal has a tendency and has been reported in
Speaker 4: multiple cases with folks that have gotten their cyber trucks
Speaker 4: delivered the ones at least they were able to drive it,
Speaker 4: because some of them have ceased to function after moments
Speaker 4: on the road. Multiple stories of that. But the accelerator pedal,
Speaker 4: you would think that it would be some kind of
Speaker 4: software glitch or some kind of other, you know, mechanical issue.
Speaker 4: It's almost comical, how just kind of rinky dink this
Speaker 4: The nature of this problem is so it's not like
Speaker 4: it's being you know, all of a sudden going into
Speaker 4: autopilot mode and the pedal is, oh, it's accelerating without
Speaker 4: me wanting to. No. It is much simpler and much
Speaker 4: stupider than that. Apparently, there is a kind of slide
Speaker 4: on cover that goes over the pedal, which is just
Speaker 4: a machine piece of steel, like it's very thin. The
Speaker 4: whole car really, you know, leans into this whole minimal thing,
Speaker 4: and the cover can come dislodged and kind of poke
Speaker 4: up further than the length of the actual accelerator and
Speaker 4: then literally just get caught under the carpet the kind
Speaker 4: of surrounding carpet molded kind of material around there, at
Speaker 4: which point, as one inside EV's article pointed out, it
Speaker 4: becomes a sixty eight hundred pound land missile. Boy Oh boy.
Speaker 4: A video that went viral on TikTok and was shared
Speaker 4: all over the internet. Showed a person explaining this this
Speaker 4: exact malfunction or this design flaw, and they showed the
Speaker 4: piece that kind of could come dislodge. They actually had
Speaker 4: removed it, revealing just the piece of steel underneath when
Speaker 4: they put it back on. They showed how easy it
Speaker 4: was able to kind of slide up with the force
Speaker 4: of your foot and then get caught under the piece
Speaker 4: of you know, surrounding material right at the very top.
Speaker 4: If you can picture a regular car where you know,
Speaker 4: there's kind of carpeted body, kind of material down there,
Speaker 4: this has sort of a little lip at the top,
Speaker 4: and if you put your pedal to the literal metal
Speaker 4: or the carpet as it were, and this thing slides up,
Speaker 4: it gets stuck, it gets jammed under there at full acceleration.
Speaker 4: And there's been reports of individuals experiencing this on the road,
Speaker 4: one where a person was not able to break apparently
Speaker 4: it like I don't know if there's a separate glitch
Speaker 4: or what, but the brake wasn't doing any good because
Speaker 4: the pedal was so far down, I guess, and this
Speaker 4: person just had to slam into a light post. We've
Speaker 4: been hearing things about issues with crash testing on these
Speaker 4: where I did not realize this, but apparently it's a
Speaker 4: lot of the companies that really pride themselves on, you know,
Speaker 4: showing and sharing their crash test data do so so
Speaker 4: they can get really good consumer reports reviews, yes, and
Speaker 4: really good safety reviews, and they go above and beyond
Speaker 4: because of that very reason, so they can sell it
Speaker 4: as a feature. But the minimum amount of crash testing
Speaker 4: you guys have been I'm sure you've run into this
Speaker 4: on car stuff isn't nearly as high a bar as
Speaker 4: these companies. Some of these companies are setting for themselves.
Speaker 3: No, it's kind of like when you when you learn
Speaker 3: the famous example, we always try it out that at
Speaker 3: one point in time the US government said all right,
Speaker 3: you can have some rat poop and cereal. They kind
Speaker 3: of did the same thing with crash testing. And obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, because a recall is a massive cost in
Speaker 3: terms of finance and in terms of reputation for a manufacturer,
Speaker 3: they are themselves incentivized to game out every single possible
Speaker 3: problem before somebody buys the first car right that they're
Speaker 3: gonna sell. Of a model, and unfortunately, no matter what
Speaker 3: you do, you can't be one hundred percent accurate in
Speaker 3: these things. And there are indeed some just inherent structural
Speaker 3: problems with certain types of vehicles, right, Like some vehicles
Speaker 3: are way more likely just because the way they're built
Speaker 3: to flip at a sharp turn right, and.
Speaker 4: We's known people talk about that with a jeep. But
Speaker 4: people go in eyes open knowing that this is certainly
Speaker 4: a trade off, like I'm gonna get this sweet, you know,
Speaker 4: road warrior esque vehicle knowing that it might not be
Speaker 4: as safe as Saya, you know, a Sonata or something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did you all see the recent testing that was done
Speaker 2: on guardrails and electric cars in general?
Speaker 4: Yes, no I didn't.
Speaker 2: We're because of the added weight of those huge batteries.
Speaker 2: Most electric cars that they tested will just go straight
Speaker 2: through a guardrail like it's not.
Speaker 4: There alone missile.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so just imagine all the things that guardbraels
Speaker 2: sometimes protect, like oh, I don't know, a giant drop
Speaker 2: off or something, and a vehicle.
Speaker 4: Just why don't we add a couple of extra thousand
Speaker 4: pounds of stainless steel to that formula?
Speaker 2: That that sounds that's insane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the thing. So okay, that's the news. That's
Speaker 4: the skinny in terms of like what the latest is.
Speaker 4: They have stopped not production, of course, they have stopped delivering,
Speaker 4: so they're going to figure this out. Unclear as to
Speaker 4: what this means for the folks that already have received
Speaker 4: their guards. And I was just going to point out too,
Speaker 4: like this is such a unique situation because of the
Speaker 4: kind of clout that Tesla has. It's very different than
Speaker 4: no one's signing up like this for the next you know,
Speaker 4: Ford Focus. I mean, it's just so there's a lot
Speaker 4: of people just rolling the dice on this and signing
Speaker 4: up and now they're having their vehicle delivered after they've
Speaker 4: already signed a contract. That's you know, forcing them to
Speaker 4: buy it and they can't get out of it. They
Speaker 4: also want to allow you to resell it in less
Speaker 4: than I believe a year, and that sort of I
Speaker 4: guess they're attempt at not diluting whatever the market I guess,
Speaker 4: or you know, having people flip them for a lot
Speaker 4: of money because they're so sought after. But another theory
Speaker 4: there is they don't want to give the impression that
Speaker 4: people are just selling these things like, you know, to
Speaker 4: get rid of them because they're you know, nightmarish. Some
Speaker 4: of the other issues that we've seen include like there
Speaker 4: was a viral video of one of these being driven
Speaker 4: on a beach and immediately just totally getting log jammed,
Speaker 4: you know, or beached literally like a like a whale,
Speaker 4: like a beached tesla. They were promoted as being these
Speaker 4: off road vehicles, and there's other videos showing people using
Speaker 4: them in off road situations and just absolutely getting having
Speaker 4: to slow to like a snail's pace. They did a
Speaker 4: bunch of big promo kind of things early on about
Speaker 4: how much it can tow. That may well be true,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't really matter how much a vehicle can toe,
Speaker 4: oh if it doesn't you know, roll with consistency. Another
Speaker 4: thing too, is apparently the design, which is you know,
Speaker 4: sleek and minimal and all these like kind of sharp
Speaker 4: corners are actually quite sharp to the point where people
Speaker 4: can you could cut yourself onto the edges of this vehicle.
Speaker 4: Not to mention the I believe it's called the fronk,
Speaker 4: which is really embarrassing to say. I don't like that
Speaker 4: one bit is the front trunk. It has this kind
Speaker 4: of you know, very futuristic kind of rolling out sort
Speaker 4: of lid sort of telescopes into the vehicle. They promoted
Speaker 4: that if there were anything in the way and the front,
Speaker 4: it would immediately, you know, go back. It wouldn't like
Speaker 4: an elevator door kind of, but apparently that does not
Speaker 4: apply to the sides. And someone inserted a carrot into
Speaker 4: the sides of one of these fronks that was immediately
Speaker 4: sliced in half, you know, clean like a guillotine. It's
Speaker 4: being described by some of these evy blogs as a
Speaker 4: team like not to mention the battery life is apparently
Speaker 4: quite bad, and also they're promising, you know, an extended
Speaker 4: life battery. But Matt, to your point, the extended life battery,
Speaker 4: which doesn't even exist yet, would take up way more
Speaker 4: space and be way heavier than the battery that comes
Speaker 4: with its stock. So I don't know, guys. The NHTSA,
Speaker 4: did I get that right? National National Traffic Safety Administration
Speaker 4: are getting in the mix. They have entered the chat
Speaker 4: specifically concerning this defect regarding the accelerator pedal not has
Speaker 4: haven't made any comments about the other stuff, which does
Speaker 4: seem slightly less immediately life threatening, but some of them
Speaker 4: absolutely could be especially I also saw a video of
Speaker 4: like someone got stuck inside of one of these because
Speaker 4: it forced them to do a software update and they
Speaker 4: wouldn't allow them to open the doors, and it wouldn't
Speaker 4: let them leave the car until the software update was done.
Speaker 4: Things like that. And none of this is voting well
Speaker 4: for Tesla's stock price, which is down significantly. And Tesla
Speaker 4: also just had to lay off ten percent of its workforce,
Speaker 4: you know, likely because of some of the issues regarding
Speaker 4: the rollout, because you know, we got to remember, Tesla
Speaker 4: hasn't updated their standard you know, Sedan type models, and
Speaker 4: I want to say, going on at least five years,
Speaker 4: it might be more you guys are more car guys
Speaker 4: than me. And this was kind of you know, Elon
Speaker 4: Musk's pet project, and he was doing this instead of
Speaker 4: you know, rolling out some more minor updates. You know,
Speaker 4: that's sort of what he does. He takes big swings.
Speaker 4: Say about him what you will. He definitely does take
Speaker 4: big swings, but it does seem like he doesn't always,
Speaker 4: if not most of the time, have have the actual
Speaker 4: research and development and true innovation to back up his promises.
Speaker 4: I don't know guys, any thoughts here. This is an
Speaker 4: ongoing thing, but but it does seem that the people
Speaker 4: that are having these issues are still kind of in
Speaker 4: the camp of Elon. They're still saying that that, you
Speaker 4: know what, we're still on board, We're happy to be
Speaker 4: I guess these beta testers.
Speaker 3: I have to say this, This does get perilosly close
Speaker 3: to the old trope of separating art from the artist.
Speaker 3: But there are numerous good things about the Tesla Car Company.
Speaker 3: I'm also still, you know, I'm also still always thinking
Speaker 3: about how the prolong time the big three auto manufacturers
Speaker 3: in the United States would successfully conspire to buy out
Speaker 3: or shut down competitors outside of their triumvirate. Sure so,
Speaker 3: like shout out to Preston Tucker and the Tucker forty eight.
Speaker 3: But then also, you know, so like the idea of
Speaker 3: creating a new car manufacturer is first off, wild and
Speaker 3: it's super ambitious, it's super difficult. One thing I can say,
Speaker 3: in terms of because you guys knew me, I always
Speaker 3: like silver linings positivity. One thing we can say is
Speaker 3: that Tesla has really shaken up the monopolistic well not monopolistic,
Speaker 3: but the dirty grip that car dealership models have between
Speaker 3: the manufacturer and the consumer. So being able to buy
Speaker 3: a car directly from the company is pretty cool, and
Speaker 3: I hope that becomes more common despite whatever problems occur
Speaker 3: with the specific vehicles.
Speaker 4: Well, it makes it a bummer, doesn't that? Like he's
Speaker 4: done what you could argue is a really great kind
Speaker 4: of I hate to use the word a disruptive thing
Speaker 4: for traditional auto manufacturing. You know who we know if
Speaker 4: you've seen the film, the documentary I believe it was
Speaker 4: called Who Killed the Electric Car? You know, there's been
Speaker 4: talk about conspiracies, I mean decades and decades of collusion
Speaker 4: in order to kind of quash that kind of technology
Speaker 4: and just make it prohibitive, you know, to have these
Speaker 4: cars on the road. So now we have reached kind
Speaker 4: of a high water market in terms of, you know,
Speaker 4: people's desire for these kinds of vehicles, the infrastructure for them.
Speaker 4: That wouldn't a lot of that wouldn't have happened if
Speaker 4: it hadn't been for Tesla. So I'm with you, Ben,
Speaker 4: it just sucks that the guy's got such a horrible
Speaker 4: bedside manner and public persona and I don't know, probably
Speaker 4: private person I'm just not a huge fan that he
Speaker 4: is the figurehead. Apparently a lot of people are turning
Speaker 4: in their Tesla just because they find it embarrassing to
Speaker 4: be associated with Elon Musk and with the company. But
Speaker 4: there are other manufacturers coming, you know, to the table,
Speaker 4: and that it could just mean that they're gonna be
Speaker 4: the ones that are going to kind of take over
Speaker 4: the space.
Speaker 2: You think a bunch of people turned in their Volkswagens
Speaker 2: when that whole scandal broke.
Speaker 3: No, some people in the racing community did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, it's so weird
Speaker 2: to have a company that's I guess so tied to
Speaker 2: its owner or controller maybe or you know, the persona
Speaker 2: of a human being, or any company that's so tied
Speaker 2: to the persona of a human being that it would
Speaker 2: fail or win based on how that person is perceived.
Speaker 4: Well, but you typically CEOs don't like to be that public,
Speaker 4: and you know, I mean, Elon Musk literally bought a
Speaker 4: social media company so he could, you know, be as
Speaker 4: public as humanly possible. He loves being out there, and
Speaker 4: he just seems to be going further and further into
Speaker 4: kind of turning certain people off, especially considering that the
Speaker 4: folks that are first to market for these types of
Speaker 4: electric vehicles are going to be pretty liberal type folks,
Speaker 4: you know who maybe you're into green living and things
Speaker 4: like that. Maybe people live on the West Coast much
Speaker 4: more likely to be left leaning, and he is just
Speaker 4: quite the opposite. So he's really alienating his base of customer,
Speaker 4: which I find really confusing. But I guess he just
Speaker 4: doesn't know how to not be unfiltered. So the NHTSA
Speaker 4: has not officially launched an investigation yet, but they are
Speaker 4: aware of the issue and they are looking into it
Speaker 4: and seeking more information. And while you know, folks who
Speaker 4: have been waiting for these cyber trucks for four years
Speaker 4: are going to keep waiting. So I don't know, if
Speaker 4: you guys don't have anything to add, I think that's
Speaker 4: a fine place to leave it for now.
Speaker 3: Drive safe, everybody.
Speaker 4: I mean, really, can.
Speaker 2: We get more cars that have like a modified headlights
Speaker 2: structure the way the cyber truck has like just a
Speaker 2: line instead of two or you know, two big old headlights.
Speaker 2: Let's get more of those.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm with you, map, but another complaint is
Speaker 4: that the headlights are like reached way too bright. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of modern cars are the headlights really bright?
Speaker 3: Bring back the tucker. It had the headlight that in
Speaker 3: the middle moved with a search that's really cool. It
Speaker 3: was so cool. All right, come on.
Speaker 2: Come on and just amm lower. That's all there, you go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't need those blasting rise. And the last
Speaker 4: thing I was gonna say that is the whole indestructible
Speaker 4: quality of it and the stainless steel. Apparently the steel
Speaker 4: does stain uh and develops rust spots, and they recommend
Speaker 4: in the literature for the vehicle to clean off any
Speaker 4: corrosive material immediately, including bird poop, because it can actually
Speaker 4: apparently permanently damage the finish or it is lack thereof,
Speaker 4: it doesn't really have a finish. That's sort of the point.
Speaker 4: But also been hearing things about panels being misaligned causing leakage,
Speaker 4: and apparently it makes them really really noisy if they're
Speaker 4: not aerodynamic like they're supposed to be. It causes like
Speaker 4: wind whipping kind of if you ever had a window
Speaker 4: cracked and one up that apparently it sounds like that
Speaker 4: inside of these like all the time if the panels
Speaker 4: are misaligned. So sorry for saying that. Stuff out of order.
Speaker 4: I thought it was worth mentioning, but definitely something to
Speaker 4: keep an eye on. I'm interested to see how the
Speaker 4: Highway Traffic and Safety Administration responds. For now, let's take
Speaker 4: a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 4: be back with another piece of strange news.
Speaker 2: And we're back, guys. Just I wanted to announce this
Speaker 2: because it's gonna be like maybe a marker in time
Speaker 2: that my son hears at some point. Yesterday he tested
Speaker 2: for his yellow belt and he passed.
Speaker 3: And in about congratulations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in about two hours, he's got a belt ceremony
Speaker 2: that I'm gonna go to. I'm really excited.
Speaker 3: Congrats.
Speaker 4: Has he broken the board yet or is that a
Speaker 4: little later?
Speaker 2: The big boards come later. They let you break a
Speaker 2: board to earn your I think it's when you earn
Speaker 2: your white belt, okay, and that's just to kind of
Speaker 2: get you into the program as an initiation. Later you
Speaker 2: have to do the big like actual board breaking and
Speaker 2: it hurts. So now he's got to train how to
Speaker 2: let himself feel pain, which you know, dealing with pain
Speaker 2: is a big deal.
Speaker 4: It's a very important lesson to learn.
Speaker 2: It is life. Yeah, I'm I'm excited about it. And
Speaker 2: just one other thing I want to say before we
Speaker 2: get going. We are not sponsored by Walton Goggins in
Speaker 2: any way consummate actor Walton Goggins, though I'm certain you
Speaker 2: guys if he called this and was like, hey, can
Speaker 2: I sponsor the show? We'd be down right.
Speaker 4: Walts seriously, how good is he on the new Fallout show?
Speaker 2: That's what I was gonna talk love it. Look, look,
Speaker 2: if you ever hear this, the shield Sons of Anarchy,
Speaker 2: Justified Vice Principles and now fall Out come on. Oh right,
Speaker 2: just Gemstones. Don't forget that Baby Billy Baby Billy's Bible anyway.
Speaker 2: Uh not sponsored, just awesome. So let's jump to our news, guys.
Speaker 2: They're one of the stories I want to talk about today.
Speaker 2: Happened or at least I read about it today. The
Speaker 2: other one happened in early gosh, I think it was
Speaker 2: like early March. But I'm just adding it to this
Speaker 2: list because it's so related. It's ridiculous and strange.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: So let's begin in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. I'm
Speaker 2: going to tell you about two people who are written
Speaker 2: about in USA today by Mike Snyder and Grace Tucker.
Speaker 2: Those are the writers of the story. The two people
Speaker 2: are Loreen and Karen. Loreen is fifty five, Karen is
Speaker 2: sixty six. They live in a place called Ashtabula. Ashtabula,
Speaker 2: somebody from Ohio will tell us how to pronounce that correctly.
Speaker 2: It's just outside of Cleveland. They are currently being charged
Speaker 2: with some strange stuff. So let's get into what they
Speaker 2: did before we tell you what they're charged with. These
Speaker 2: two women, allegedly, according to Ashtabula police Chief Robert Stell,
Speaker 2: found Douglas Layman, who they lived with. This is an
Speaker 2: eighty year old man. They found him dead in the
Speaker 2: home that they share, Okay, on March fourth. After they
Speaker 2: found him, they got another friend, these two women. They
Speaker 2: put him his dead body in his car and they
Speaker 2: drove that car to a bank where they withdrew an
Speaker 2: undisclosed amount of money from his account. Weekend at Bernie's
Speaker 2: Style full on the weekend at bernie Style.
Speaker 4: Like propped up it is presumably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, this is from the police chief again quote.
Speaker 2: It is further alleged that Doug's body was placed in
Speaker 2: the vehicle in such a manner that he would be
Speaker 2: visible to the bank staff in order to make this withdrawal,
Speaker 2: because they had done this before. The bank allowed them
Speaker 2: to take money out as long as they were accompanied
Speaker 2: by Doug.
Speaker 3: And there was that precedent set already exactly right, and
Speaker 3: then just say, well, he's an elderly gentleman, so maybe
Speaker 3: he's taken a quick dose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that's it, and we're just, you know, we
Speaker 2: brought him with us, we're taking some money out for him.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it could have gone a
Speaker 2: different way for the two women, even though this is
Speaker 2: a really weird, wrong thing to do. They took his
Speaker 2: dead body, his corpse, to the Ashtabula County Medical Center
Speaker 2: emergency room, and they just left him there. They didn't
Speaker 2: announce themselves, they didn't say who he was, they didn't
Speaker 2: do anything. They just left his body.
Speaker 3: But they clearly felt bad shortly after, right.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess so maybe one of them. It doesn't
Speaker 2: say in the article I read from USA Today, but
Speaker 2: one of the women contacted the medical center later and
Speaker 2: gave them the basic info the rundown, let's say, on Doug.
Speaker 2: And that's when police officers went to the residents that
Speaker 2: the two women shared with Doug and the women said,
Speaker 2: oh he died there. Oh yeah, he died here.
Speaker 3: So instead of calling the police or first responders, like,
Speaker 3: instead of calling nine to one one at the house,
Speaker 3: we just drove him over there, which was ethics aside,
Speaker 3: just from a production standpoint, that was their misstep like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, if this was a bank heist, which it
Speaker 2: kind of was in a weird way.
Speaker 4: Did they have any claim to his funds for common law?
Speaker 4: Like you know, I don't know, was there anything like that,
Speaker 4: like because they lived together, any of the time that
Speaker 4: they lived together, the nature of the relationship.
Speaker 2: This is a very small story that I found on
Speaker 2: one of those places that we like to go to,
Speaker 2: the reddit, the subreddit offbeat, and this is all, honestly, guys,
Speaker 2: this is all I found about it. I don't know
Speaker 2: anything else. Besides one of the people faces additional drug
Speaker 2: charges associated with being picked up that day. We don't
Speaker 2: know what that means or what it has. They had
Speaker 2: a preliminary hearing back in March. We haven't been following it,
Speaker 2: and the guys, the whole reason we're even talking about
Speaker 2: this one is because this feels like weekend at Bernie's
Speaker 2: bank heist light to me, compared to the next story.
Speaker 2: Take next, the next story, Oh I will here we go.
Speaker 2: The next story comes to us via the Guardian, and
Speaker 2: this was written today as we record this on April seventeenth,
Speaker 2: by Tom Phillips. Here we Go, We're gonna tell you
Speaker 2: about Erica Desusa Vieira, who well, she did this. She
Speaker 2: had a similar idea. She wheeled her quote lethargic looking
Speaker 2: uncle into a bank. This is in Brazil, and the
Speaker 2: moment that the two of them entered the location, clerks
Speaker 2: were looking at them a little funny. There was a
Speaker 2: remark made, I don't think he's well. He doesn't look
Speaker 2: well at all. This person that she had wheeled in,
Speaker 2: Paulo Roberto Bragg, was sixty eight when she wheeled him in,
Speaker 2: and it appeared, at least to people who observed them
Speaker 2: at the bank, that he was deceased. And it looked
Speaker 2: like he was being propped up in this wheelchair in
Speaker 2: order for Erica to go in and secure alone.
Speaker 4: Matt, were you looking for a theme today? Did this
Speaker 4: happened organically?
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I saw this in the Guardian and I
Speaker 2: was like, well, that's a weird one, but that's not
Speaker 2: enough to do anything on, jumped to offbeat and saw
Speaker 2: the other news story about the women in Cleveland, and
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, where we can to Bernie's
Speaker 2: Berne's sing it. But yeah, the whole the whole thing
Speaker 2: went down. So the you know, the bank clerks, after
Speaker 2: this woman brought her dead uncle into secure a loan,
Speaker 2: they alerted the authorities, and the authorities immediately arrived and
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, ma'am, he's dead. You can't secure a
Speaker 2: bank loan in his name.
Speaker 4: He is dead.
Speaker 2: And also why is he dead? How is he dead?
Speaker 2: And like what happened? And according to Erica's story, he
Speaker 2: was alive as they were entering the bank and became
Speaker 2: deceased sometime in the moments.
Speaker 4: To say, what if? The response I just, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, if I'm being callous about it, the responsibility.
Speaker 4: My god, he's dead. I miss him so much, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, Like like I hadn't noticed. I
Speaker 4: don't buy that. But you're right, Ben, it is certainly possible,
Speaker 4: if not plausible.
Speaker 3: There's one thing, though, We've got to if this is okay,
Speaker 3: you bad, I think we've got to mention one of
Speaker 3: the most darkly humorous parts of this disturbing story in
Speaker 3: that Guardian article that we're reading. Here's how the police
Speaker 3: get alerted. Quote. At one point in the images which
Speaker 3: bank workers began filming after smelling a rat, one suspicious
Speaker 3: employee apparently comments on Braga's pallid complexion, and Vieira replies,
Speaker 3: that's just what he's like, and then tries to place
Speaker 3: a pin in his dead hand.
Speaker 4: Oh, come on, but he got this here you go.
Speaker 3: Which you know makes you wonder, Like again, I think,
Speaker 3: like you rightly pointed out, this person has a story
Speaker 3: where she's saying he was alive previously, right, and he
Speaker 3: died at some point without my knowledge, like while we
Speaker 3: were while we were in the bank. But you would
Speaker 3: think putting a pin in the hand of a corpse,
Speaker 3: I think even without being a doctor, you could tell
Speaker 3: if the hand is like unresponsive.
Speaker 4: Right, he was just kind of an unresponsive dude. Maybe
Speaker 4: he was. It's real low energy in life. I don't know,
Speaker 4: is the questions. That's just what he's like. That's just
Speaker 4: what he's like. I love that. And Matt, do we
Speaker 4: have any information about like what happened next, like a
Speaker 4: corner to determine the time of death, to see if
Speaker 4: the story is actually you know, lined up with the truth.
Speaker 2: I have not seen any further reporting on this yet. Again,
Speaker 2: this information came out today as well reporting.
Speaker 4: Surely they can determine that to see if you know
Speaker 4: how long this person had been dead. Yeah, at that point,
Speaker 4: I think this woman's got some splaining to do.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, there's one thing I wanted to ask you guys.
Speaker 2: In inside this article it mentions liver live or mortis
Speaker 2: l I v O R mortis, which in my head
Speaker 2: was a spelling error for rigor mortis when I first
Speaker 2: saw it, because its spelled so similar similarly l I
Speaker 2: v O R mortis. But this is actually it has
Speaker 2: to do with the coloration of a person's skin after
Speaker 2: they've died.
Speaker 3: Because the blood's no longer moving right.
Speaker 2: Well it's yeah, it's where the blood pools in the body, like,
Speaker 2: depending on how they're oriented when they die, which is
Speaker 2: a way to you know, uh, determine cause of death.
Speaker 2: Often rigor mortis is associated with the stiffening of the
Speaker 2: limbs and the body after death. Yeah, kind of for
Speaker 2: the same reason. Well, for similar reasons, where how blood
Speaker 2: works in our bodies to keep us all you know,
Speaker 2: movable and softish but all I don't know, it's weird
Speaker 2: anyway to.
Speaker 3: Keep us all fresh baked, yeah, squishy. I think about
Speaker 3: that pretty often to the you know, death is something
Speaker 3: that that comes for the vast majority of human beings
Speaker 3: so far, and it's strange how we never really uh.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people don't appreciate how much
Speaker 3: work your body does without your conscious knowledge. Like your
Speaker 3: heart doesn't take a day off, right nah, and the circular,
Speaker 3: the circular to system, all your organs are so unappreciated.
Speaker 3: So like, the next time you do something that you
Speaker 3: know is kind of bad for your body, just think
Speaker 3: of the think of those folks, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: think of them basically like the staff. You know, if
Speaker 3: you if you drink a beer, just thank your liver
Speaker 3: for its service.
Speaker 4: And it's too scary do when I start to think
Speaker 4: about that, I started to picture what my insides look
Speaker 4: like and then the blood moving through my body and
Speaker 4: it freaks me out.
Speaker 2: You guys, the spice must flow. If you stop the
Speaker 2: spice flow within your body, it's over.
Speaker 3: Do you ever think about how like the fact that
Speaker 3: you are basically animating a skull right now? If you're
Speaker 3: alive and you talk out loud, We're just.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it freaks me out.
Speaker 3: Well, we're just ghost haunting houses.
Speaker 2: I'm animating meat that's wrapped around a skull.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're a computer program.
Speaker 4: Stop it's these faces. No, I don't like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're all battlemex Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cooler. That's cooler. Guys. Well, these kind of
Speaker 2: went by fast. Oh by the way, the police there
Speaker 2: in Brazil are investigating whether or not this person.
Speaker 5: Is indeed the niece of this deceased had I had
Speaker 5: one thing to add just about both of these stories,
Speaker 5: and I'm certainly not condoning either of these actions. But
Speaker 5: do you know what a pain in the ascid is
Speaker 5: to get a deceased loved one's money if there's no
Speaker 5: like you know, will or if you know, all of
Speaker 5: the craziness you have to go through probate and all
Speaker 5: of this stuff, even if there is a will.
Speaker 4: When my mother passed away, we did the whole estate
Speaker 4: thing well before she passed, not knowing that her end
Speaker 4: was was going to be sooner than we had realized.
Speaker 4: I'm glad that we did it because I can't imagine
Speaker 4: what it would have been like without it, but even
Speaker 4: with me as the sole executor of her entire estate,
Speaker 4: I had to jump through so many hoops just to
Speaker 4: get like five hundred bucks in some bank account that
Speaker 4: she forgot about that wasn't like listed as part I mean,
Speaker 4: insane amounts of red tape. So again not condoning any
Speaker 4: of this, but I do wonder if they were just
Speaker 4: kind of trying to take a shortcut, and maybe they
Speaker 4: were actually do some of this money but needed it
Speaker 4: real quick and didn't want to have to wade through
Speaker 4: all of the bureaucracy it would take to get it possible.
Speaker 3: I mean, especially to considering that, I think it's safe
Speaker 3: to say speak for all of us, you say, this
Speaker 3: is a terrible thing that happens. You know, often at
Speaker 3: one of the worst parts of your life, you lose
Speaker 3: a loved one and you get just flooded with paperwork,
Speaker 3: you know, And there are actually funds, at least here
Speaker 3: in the US, there are institutions organizations where they have
Speaker 3: held somebody's money that hasn't been claimed, and that person
Speaker 3: may have living relatives. They just simply are so inundated
Speaker 3: with all this other stuff that they have to deal
Speaker 3: with that they don't think about you know, like your
Speaker 3: point you're making. No, like things can slip through the cracks.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got to organize a funeral, a memorial service,
Speaker 3: You've got to take care of in term into cremation
Speaker 3: or what have you, navigate a will. You these things
Speaker 3: can be forgotten. But the everything costs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, but guys, in the case of
Speaker 2: Loreen and Karen, they're living with an eighty year old
Speaker 2: roommate who's not related to them.
Speaker 4: And I still stand by the question about common law,
Speaker 4: like would any of that have applied. We don't know
Speaker 4: enough about their situation. Maybe they were a thropple.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe well, either way, they both got charged
Speaker 2: with gross abuse of a corpse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and unfortunately, even before the corpse, like the investigation
Speaker 3: might find that this was a person maybe being kind
Speaker 3: of like held hostage or taken advantage of. That's all
Speaker 3: too common in the world of elderly care. There have
Speaker 3: been some just elder actually terrifying stories about that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. And I'm not going to go out of biographical,
Speaker 3: but I've seen this kind of stuff firsthand. In some situations,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a person who had we've read about
Speaker 3: it on the show. There is a person who had
Speaker 3: a consistent Social Security or pension income and they become
Speaker 3: a prisoner in their own house right, And sometimes they
Speaker 3: die and the person taking advantage of them just puts
Speaker 3: them in a shed or doesn't bother to report it,
Speaker 3: and those folks can get away for years and years.
Speaker 4: I mean, not to make it about I saw a
Speaker 4: TV show once, but you mentioned Walton Goggins in The
Speaker 4: Shield that I've been rewatching that recently. There was an
Speaker 4: episode where there was a complaint from a neighbor about
Speaker 4: noise in the backyard. It turns out there was an
Speaker 4: old man chained up in the backyard who was being
Speaker 4: held by a son and just cashing his social Security
Speaker 4: checks and just you know, kept him literally out of doors,
Speaker 4: chained up. And I know it's a TV show, but
Speaker 4: I know as well that the shows like that and
Speaker 4: The Shield in particular, take these, you know, from real
Speaker 4: police reports a lot of times, so it's certainly a
Speaker 4: thing that happens. Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: I told you guys about the time I saw Walton
Speaker 2: the Goggins at a flying biscuit. Right, No, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: been I think I told you sorry, I'll do it
Speaker 2: real quick. I'll do it real quick. Way back in
Speaker 2: the days of the Shield, when when I looked at
Speaker 2: this person's face, I did not see Walton Goggins. I
Speaker 2: didn't know who that was. I saw Shane from the
Speaker 2: Shield and real bastard. Well, I just happen to be
Speaker 2: walking in to the Flying Biscuit and sat there at
Speaker 2: the bar was this person that I immediately immediately recognized
Speaker 2: and just kind of gave one of these little nods
Speaker 2: like you know, hey, man, and he just goes hey,
Speaker 2: And I just walked to the table and I just thought, man,
Speaker 2: Shane from the Shield is my friend. Now I think
Speaker 2: we're friends.
Speaker 4: He was a champion hog hollerer, Like yeah, like aw that.
Speaker 2: I just remembered when you said he's a champion howg caller,
Speaker 2: we said, I've we told that whole.
Speaker 4: I've not heard the part. No, he came up some
Speaker 4: other way. I've never heard about you meeting him. You never,
Speaker 4: I've never heard that story. I just remember him talking
Speaker 4: on Fresh Air with Terry gros about being a champion
Speaker 4: hog hollerer.
Speaker 2: This all sounds familiar to me. Guys, Well, we do
Speaker 2: a lot of happening this has happened before, It's going
Speaker 2: to happen again.
Speaker 3: Hog Hollering is a story and legitimate profession. And if
Speaker 3: you walk away from tonight's strange news with nothing else,
Speaker 3: walk away with that.
Speaker 2: No, no, you disagree, disagree, walk away with this. There's
Speaker 2: another Boeing whistleblower you need to know about, Sam Salapore
Speaker 2: s A M. S A L E HPO.
Speaker 1: You are.
Speaker 2: Make sure you keep your eyes and ears out for
Speaker 2: this person. And let's all make sure that if he
Speaker 2: shows up, you know, in a truck with a quote
Speaker 2: self inflicted gunshot wound, we're all paying attention to yelling
Speaker 2: about it, okay.
Speaker 4: Or suffocated in the fronk of a cyber truck.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, yeah, I withdraw my support of hog hollering. Then
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, so okay, Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: tuning in. Everybody. We cannot wait to hear from you.
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Speaker 2: Washington is in Hollywood, you guys. In about three weeks,
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