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 Noelah.
Speaker 3: They call me Bed, and we are joined as always
Speaker 3: with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are you. You are here. That makes this the
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know. No, no, yes,
Speaker 3: our yes, yes, it is true. The rumors have been confirmed.
Speaker 3: This is our weekly strange news program. If you're listening
Speaker 3: to it the evening it comes out. Welcome to Monday,
Speaker 3: October twenty eighth. We have so much to get to you.
Speaker 3: We're probably not going to get to all of it,
Speaker 3: but that's just the beautiful problem to have. Boeing is
Speaker 3: blowing up. North Korea's up the high jinks. We got
Speaker 3: some bank stories, we got some counterfeit whale sharks, we
Speaker 3: got all kinds of stuff for you. But the first
Speaker 3: thing we have to talk about. We don't want to
Speaker 3: sound like Dick's here. Another Russian oligarc was found dead
Speaker 3: in Moscow. Quite recently, Ben saying, so do you guys
Speaker 3: know how he died?
Speaker 2: It's the word of the day.
Speaker 4: Cheezy, geezy.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say, defended it.
Speaker 5: I literally just guessed, Ben, I assume that's what you
Speaker 5: were pointing to, sign posting a little bit.
Speaker 4: But is it really true?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yeah?
Speaker 4: How are they this unriginal? Is my first question?
Speaker 3: Well, if you know, if you got something that works,
Speaker 3: it works right?
Speaker 5: It doesn't doesn't that seem a little dicey though, like
Speaker 5: you could survive a fallout of a window if it
Speaker 5: was I mean, how high are we talking?
Speaker 4: Are we talking like skyscraper window?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And also it appears that what a terrible run
Speaker 3: of luck this guy had. When Mikhail Rogachev, who was
Speaker 3: sixty four, fell out of the window, the back of
Speaker 3: his head hit a bullet as well. So it didn't No,
Speaker 3: it didn't mean it okay, time you got.
Speaker 4: Right time, wrong time, right place.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's something, but you did nail it there, Noel, Yes,
Speaker 3: unfortunately fell out of a window. The reason that we
Speaker 3: said the word of the day was cheesy. For a second,
Speaker 3: there is unrelated, much more positive experience had it at
Speaker 3: Chick fil a yesterday where I accidentally said the secret word,
Speaker 3: which was cheesy, and they gave us mac and cheese.
Speaker 3: We had a really robust Chick fil A conversation before
Speaker 3: he rolled today.
Speaker 5: Question, did you just say it in the course of
Speaker 5: normal conversation whilst waiting in line?
Speaker 3: I was at the counter. I was just making conversation
Speaker 3: with A.
Speaker 5: I guess I got to know how you naturally arrived
Speaker 5: at saying the word cheesy.
Speaker 2: Ben Ben said, how cheesy is this mac and cheese?
Speaker 2: That was his intention? You only got the cheese.
Speaker 3: Shut up, you absol bad jokes. Give this man cheese.
Speaker 3: Well still we are we are encountering some levity. But
Speaker 3: to the point, folks, if you have followed our show
Speaker 3: at all, uh, you know that the defenestration in Russia
Speaker 3: is at this point beyond the problem. Like it's now
Speaker 3: it's a meme, isn't it not?
Speaker 5: Since the famed defenestration of Prague have we had this
Speaker 5: level of a window throwing epidemic.
Speaker 2: We we do realize a man has died.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 5: You can't not have a little gallows humor around this pattern.
Speaker 5: It's just again I come back to, like, is there
Speaker 5: not another way? Is there not a better way? Whose
Speaker 5: idea is this is this one particular hit squad that
Speaker 5: this is just there like signature.
Speaker 3: Move it's other intellig agencies do it as well, or
Speaker 3: criminal organizations. Because it's simple and it's relatively full proof.
Speaker 4: You could also blame it on the individual doing it to.
Speaker 3: Themselves, right, right, Uh, And it's just much more reliable
Speaker 3: than say, having to obtain polonium. But you can still
Speaker 3: you know, it still does signal something. You're a bullet
Speaker 3: to the back of the head. Right, You're supposed to
Speaker 3: know that. You're supposed to know who did it. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Wait a minute, wait, what do
Speaker 3: you mean by that?
Speaker 4: Like it is it is?
Speaker 5: It is meant to send a signal? And yeah, there
Speaker 5: is plausible deniability as right, Okay, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, And while we're talking Russia, we'll consider this our
Speaker 3: cold open and we'll finally get to the holy war. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we're back. I've been over using the phrase holy war,
Speaker 3: you guys. It's just it's got such gravitas. But I
Speaker 3: need to stop calling every disagreement I have with someone
Speaker 3: a holy war.
Speaker 5: I also think the term outrage has been largely overused
Speaker 5: in the press. There's a podcast I listen to called
Speaker 5: weird af News, and the dude that hosts it pointed
Speaker 5: this out and I couldn't help but completely agree, Like
Speaker 5: it is a I've got outrage over the use of
Speaker 5: the term outrage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like all the political hit pieces
Speaker 3: where they use these crazy verbs like so and so
Speaker 3: slams blah blah blah. What's another one?
Speaker 5: Well, but I guess the problem with outrage is usually
Speaker 5: used around relatively innocuous things. People are outraged over the
Speaker 5: overuse of condiments, you know.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, people are outraged by ticket prices or
Speaker 3: by a celebrity ephemera. This Holy war is a very
Speaker 3: different thing that it is a direct quote from the
Speaker 3: nation of North Korea because they say that they are
Speaker 3: launching a holy war against South Korea. They d as
Speaker 3: of this month, they have mobilized or they claim to
Speaker 3: have mobilized one point four million citizens, mostly young people,
Speaker 3: and also pulling folks back into serving in the military,
Speaker 3: and they're calling South Korea a nation of confrontational maniacs
Speaker 3: and criminals. They've also destroyed roads connecting the two Koreas,
Speaker 3: which is not a great idea if you're trying to invade,
Speaker 3: because then you're just gonna have to use the tunnels,
Speaker 3: and the tunnels kind of suck for anybody who's been
Speaker 3: in them. And I think it's strange that we're seeing
Speaker 3: so much news about North Korea now because you guys
Speaker 3: saw also this is occurring in step with North Korean
Speaker 3: forces being loaned out to the Russian Army, right, we
Speaker 3: all saw that. Yep.
Speaker 2: It's a weird feeling. It's a really weird feeling.
Speaker 3: Ben.
Speaker 2: I can't even tell you how little I knew about
Speaker 2: North Korea until the first time you brought it up
Speaker 2: and we had a long conversation about the DPRK and
Speaker 2: just the weirdness with their relations to other countries and
Speaker 2: the tensions that kind of ebb and flow in some
Speaker 2: weird little political machine that never really does anything. In
Speaker 2: my mind, you tell me if I'm wrong here, but
Speaker 2: in my mind, this is the first time I've seen
Speaker 2: North Korea stepping out for some kind of hot conflict.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I mean there's the Korean War, but.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I guess since the court Korean War. In
Speaker 2: my mind, like, yeah, when have they left and mobilized
Speaker 2: troops to go, you know, enter another country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exceedingly rare. And that's a good point because usually
Speaker 3: they're foreign activities away from their home soil are going
Speaker 3: to be espionage and criminal attempts, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: like moving those counterfeit supernotes. And yeah, we shouldn't even
Speaker 3: call those counterfeit because they are higher quality than the
Speaker 3: actual US one hundred dollars bill. We'll just call them
Speaker 3: super We just called them the soups. Yeah, this is strange,
Speaker 3: and I posit to all of us listening that the
Speaker 3: heightened tensions between DPRK and South Korea are somehow part
Speaker 3: of the ever cozier relationship between Russia and North Korea.
Speaker 3: There's a game going on, and you can kind of
Speaker 3: susus out what's happening by contextualizing the headlines. But we
Speaker 3: know that the President of Ukraine, Zelenski, recently said, look,
Speaker 3: Russia is going to be getting ten thousand North Korean
Speaker 3: soldiers to join the war. The US has confirmed that
Speaker 3: this intel looks legit. South Korea's spy agency has said
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred troops have already arrived in Russia, could be
Speaker 3: more like twelve thousand when it's all said and done,
Speaker 3: so it sounds like they made a deal, and part
Speaker 3: of that deal was giving the cold shoulder again to
Speaker 3: their southern neighbors, South Korea. Plus you know, heavy US
Speaker 3: presence in South Korea, so it makes sense. But my
Speaker 3: question here is how often does this kind of thing happen?
Speaker 3: Should these guys be considered mercenaries for the purpose of
Speaker 3: Geneva or should they be considered, like I mean, soldiers.
Speaker 5: I don't know when was the last time that the
Speaker 5: Geneva Convention was like properly in forest.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I hate to be irolly about that, but I
Speaker 5: just it's almost like a mood point.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a good question.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I worried that I get caught up in my own
Speaker 2: little mental gymnastics when it comes to that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: like like maybe these guys aren't, you know, officially doing
Speaker 2: this kind of thing, and maybe it's not like that,
Speaker 2: But in the end, it's the same way I feel
Speaker 2: about the United States and Ukraine and all the conflicts
Speaker 2: are going on over there, like what are the lines
Speaker 2: really when it's a official government money from any government
Speaker 2: that ends up being the thing that gets human beings
Speaker 2: to you know, a fighting place. Ultimately it's the country.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, it's a tough one. And this
Speaker 3: is this is one of those things where it's a
Speaker 3: conversational grenade. We're sort of tossing your way, folks. We
Speaker 3: want you to tell us what's going on, especially if
Speaker 3: you have experience in Russia or in the Koreas, and
Speaker 3: tell us if there is indeed a great game afoot.
Speaker 3: But with moving on, because we're you know, doing some
Speaker 3: rapid fire things, we'll give you some good news. Well,
Speaker 3: it depends on how you feel. ICP. That's one for
Speaker 3: the Juggalos. They have officially endorsed.
Speaker 4: The insane clown Posse.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, put some respect on their name. They
Speaker 3: have they have officially given the Juggalo endorsement to a
Speaker 3: political candidate. That candidate is Harris. So this has probably
Speaker 3: ruffled a lot of feathers. They tuned. Just that's our
Speaker 3: Juggalo update. I don't know if I'm going to sound
Speaker 3: you for that. Dylan magnus oh.
Speaker 2: I said around that video of Violent Jay on The
Speaker 2: Daily Show, reacting to I was all the candidates in
Speaker 2: like face paint, jugglo face paint oh yeah, and uh
Speaker 2: the reactionally had to Walls was Walls.
Speaker 4: He said, didn't he say?
Speaker 3: Who is it? I don't know, he said, I am
Speaker 3: completely opinionless.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have absolutely zero opinion on that man's uh so,
Speaker 2: I mean the man likes fried food, you know, so
Speaker 2: I would think that would get the Juggalo seal of
Speaker 2: approval on a song.
Speaker 3: I yeah, Well, why has neither party gotten out in
Speaker 3: front of this? Where is the accountability? Where's their fago platform?
Speaker 3: These are real questions, right, and Harris and Trump both
Speaker 3: refuse to answer to the issues.
Speaker 4: Is Michigan a swing state?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Baby, it is really so obviously. I mean, Detroit is
Speaker 5: where the insane clown Posse hails from. I don't know
Speaker 5: the political makeup of Detroit. I feel like maybe because
Speaker 5: of the auto industry, it's a lot of blue collar
Speaker 5: folks who maybe.
Speaker 4: Are more on the Republican side. I really don't know.
Speaker 5: I just I'm trying to like think about this as
Speaker 5: an actual swear of votes. I wonder that would be
Speaker 5: really interesting if it had like the ICP effect, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, and you know it's it's two guys who
Speaker 3: they violent Jay and Shaggy Chagny two Dope, Shaggy too dope.
Speaker 3: Maybe at lockerheads, you know, they don't always move in step.
Speaker 3: Just because they work together will happen.
Speaker 5: But this is they are presenting a unified front here though, right,
Speaker 5: this is the Juggalos or this is the insane clown posse.
Speaker 3: Of the insane clown posse is the best.
Speaker 4: Way only Violent J has made.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is not a unilateral endorsement from the entirety
Speaker 5: of ICP.
Speaker 4: We have it heard from J. We haven't heard from
Speaker 4: Where is violent J.
Speaker 5: You know this?
Speaker 3: So let us know your opinions on the pressing political matters.
Speaker 2: Let us know I weighed in either.
Speaker 3: Since yeah, so update us with that. And also let
Speaker 3: us do your favorite weird celebrity opinions, because I love
Speaker 3: it when someone quotes a celebrity for no reason. They
Speaker 3: just happen to be accessible to the news. It happens
Speaker 3: all the time in Atlanta. And this is no disrespect
Speaker 3: to the various musicians we've seen interviewed about things. But
Speaker 3: they'll say, oh, okay, and here's blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: This is a very complex geo political issue and we
Speaker 3: ran into Ti the entertainer, Yes, entertainer very smart too
Speaker 3: also by the way, but with one more piece before
Speaker 3: you go to ad break, this is something we should
Speaker 3: maybe describe as we called it. And unfortunately when we
Speaker 3: make some of these predictions, they're usually about terrible things.
Speaker 3: And this is where we get to the story of
Speaker 3: Abercrombie and Fitch.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, don't I don't think we are the only
Speaker 5: ones who called it.
Speaker 4: I think those ad campaigns called it.
Speaker 2: Bro I mean, dude, well, that that's the thing. And
Speaker 2: when we even thought about it and started thinking about
Speaker 2: this thing, people have been writing about this, student telling
Speaker 2: tales about this.
Speaker 3: The flights, I remember the flights, the flight you have
Speaker 3: to have no problem, the uniform, the uh, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was already always uber creepy. But now the FBI
Speaker 3: has cracked down on uh Mike Jefferies, the former CEO,
Speaker 3: his partner Matt Smith, and a third guy named Jim Jacobson. Uh.
Speaker 3: They have been accused of operating an international sex trafficking ring. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and further through coercion, through like getting you know, dangling
Speaker 3: the promise of becoming a model or a celebrity to
Speaker 3: give some sort and then making folks sign up for
Speaker 3: these getaways and places around the world, and then not
Speaker 3: allowing them to leave, forcing forcing certain drugs on them,
Speaker 3: like poppers and what was it poppers via agra or
Speaker 3: something else too, then pushing them into sexual acts. So
Speaker 3: this was a salt that it's it's just way worse
Speaker 3: than I think we it assumed, right, I didn't know
Speaker 3: it had that level of structure to it. Dumb question.
Speaker 5: Maybe is Abercrombie and Fits still a brand? Do they
Speaker 5: still have like brick and Border stores? It's still okay,
Speaker 5: it's still very much a thing.
Speaker 2: I was been willing at the Mall of Georgia not
Speaker 2: that long ago.
Speaker 3: And Jefferys is again former seed okay, unconnected.
Speaker 2: And those stores, by the way, smell exactly as you
Speaker 2: remember them.
Speaker 5: They the same they have I would hope toned down
Speaker 5: the orderline.
Speaker 4: Pornographic kind of homo erotic nature of the ads.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know about that. This was the Abercrombie kids.
Speaker 4: You're fair enough, are you saying they have not? I mean, look,
Speaker 4: because it used to be bad.
Speaker 5: It was like very scantily clad boys in like kind
Speaker 5: of homo erotic type situations. I'm having a hard time
Speaker 5: figuring out how to say this. But you know, the
Speaker 5: ad campaigns, it wasn't the homo eroticness of.
Speaker 3: It that was off.
Speaker 4: It was the like age presentation of these models.
Speaker 6: It felt a little on the young side, and the
Speaker 6: type of cavorting that were portrayed did not feel like
Speaker 6: it was taking place from consenting adults.
Speaker 3: Let's just put it down. Yeah, over sexualization of young men.
Speaker 3: It's the same reason. I also get the the skidders
Speaker 3: around the ideas of child pageantry.
Speaker 4: Don't care for one bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah do love it.
Speaker 2: It's muddled in my mind, guys, because I think I
Speaker 2: was of the age of most of the models, at
Speaker 2: least that I remember in some of these Abercrombie spreads, right,
Speaker 2: So in a way it was like, oh, that's it's
Speaker 2: you know, they want me to look like this or
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, And I most certainly did not,
Speaker 2: But I did like their cat back in the day.
Speaker 4: Distress whole thing, pre distressed stuff that I think I was.
Speaker 3: Well, this is a story that has much more reporting.
Speaker 3: It's old beings. As matter of fact, by the time
Speaker 3: that you hear strange news, it's been widely reported. We
Speaker 3: hope that the victims or the survivors.
Speaker 4: Are you do an episode on this guy, Ben?
Speaker 3: No, but we uh we called him out a one.
Speaker 5: I swear it was part of a larger conversation like
Speaker 5: and and I can't maybe just google it, but I
Speaker 5: know that we had a pretty in depth conversation about
Speaker 5: the flights and about like the concierge kind of and
Speaker 5: sexual acts taking place on these potentials on these flights.
Speaker 3: I don't know it was. It was just you're you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right. We have talked about it before, and we're
Speaker 3: probably going to learn more about it with you, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2: Ben, you talked about it in January, oh two strange News. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but but just oh my gosh, it's been that long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but unfortunately we called it. Maybe one evening
Speaker 3: we'll be able to predict something positive that comes to
Speaker 3: past short we have, right, we all have the best
Speaker 3: track record with positive stuff, and we do have a
Speaker 3: good track record with ad breaks. Don't believe us. Check
Speaker 3: this out.
Speaker 5: And we have returned with a couple of minor pieces
Speaker 5: of strange and the first one I think is interesting.
Speaker 5: It's actually kind of encompasses two stories. So maybe I'm
Speaker 5: actually bringing you three. This is the case of a
Speaker 5: counterfeit whale shark has been teased in the beginning of
Speaker 5: the episode. After five years of construction and renovation, a
Speaker 5: sea park. It's a sea world. It's I guess referred
Speaker 5: to in the UK as sea park. But shin Zen's
Speaker 5: forgiving me not a native Shines speaker. Shin Zen's Jao
Speaker 5: my Sha sea World opened to the public recently with
Speaker 5: an ad campaign surrounding a very special creature being highlighted,
Speaker 5: a whale shark. And now here in Atlanta, you know,
Speaker 5: we're very lucky to have not one, but two actual
Speaker 5: whale sharks in the Atlanta Aquarium, which is, you know,
Speaker 5: kind of a world class aquarium. We do know, and
Speaker 5: I think we've mentioned on the show before that the
Speaker 5: story behind these whale sharks is one of rescue. They
Speaker 5: were not trafficked, they were not purchased. They were rescued
Speaker 5: from these tanks under a roller coaster in some kind
Speaker 5: of abandoned amusement park. I want to say, in Mexico,
Speaker 5: is that what you guys remember as well?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, cool.
Speaker 5: So we've seen them and they're beautiful creatures. They're very,
Speaker 5: very large, they are migratory mammals. They are incredibly intelligent,
Speaker 5: and they are not particularly conducive as a species to
Speaker 5: being held in captivity because of that migratory nature. Because
Speaker 5: of that, and also because of the pretty brutal shark
Speaker 5: poaching that takes place in China and other parts of
Speaker 5: the world, the importing or the trade of whale sharks
Speaker 5: is outlawed. They are protected, and that is why apparently
Speaker 5: this Sea World didn't couldn't got one, and instead presented
Speaker 5: a robotic whale shark, which, while pretty cool, you know,
Speaker 5: was not exactly what was advertised. That we'll get into
Speaker 5: sort of some of the pr behind it, but it
Speaker 5: led to visitors feeling completely baited and switched when they
Speaker 5: you know, walked in and we're expecting to see this
Speaker 5: you know, sentient being instead saw a three hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty kilogram, very very expensive facsimile of a whale shark
Speaker 5: swimming around.
Speaker 2: Did it Does it look like an actual whale shark?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it does, minus the like seams and you know,
Speaker 5: robotic accoutrement that are hard to cover up. It's impressive.
Speaker 5: Think of like the.
Speaker 3: Shark in Jaws.
Speaker 5: If you really saw it and you saw every aspect
Speaker 5: of it, and not just for a few minutes. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like there, you can't ignore it. It has propulsive technology,
Speaker 5: it is able to swim at relatively high speeds and maneuver.
Speaker 5: It cost millions of Chinese wand in order to build
Speaker 5: this thing, and to construct this thing, however, there seems
Speaker 5: to have been a bit of a disconnect between you know,
Speaker 5: what this thing was, what it maybe was for, and
Speaker 5: how the exhibit was advertised. Representatives from the Sea World
Speaker 5: or from the aquarium have said that they only decided
Speaker 5: to go with the robotic whale struk because again of
Speaker 5: the ban of the laws surrounding the actual whale sharks,
Speaker 5: because they're listed as an endangered species due to again
Speaker 5: climate change, things like illegal fishing use of their meat,
Speaker 5: mentioned the shark fin soup phenomenon.
Speaker 4: You know, in this part of the world, it's it's
Speaker 4: quite horrible.
Speaker 5: It could really cause overfishing of all kinds of sharks.
Speaker 5: So they say they decided instead to go with this
Speaker 5: robotic version, and twofold, they also were hoping that it
Speaker 5: would create a conversation around conservation and around this type
Speaker 5: of overfishing issues that I'm describing. The problem is I
Speaker 5: think with the way they went about it, because a
Speaker 5: lot of people felt like as this article that I
Speaker 5: found in phizz dot org pH ys dot org, really
Speaker 5: great article the case of a robot shark in a
Speaker 5: marine park raises questions about animal welfare by Elliott Dumbos.
Speaker 5: They felt catfish is the term that was used, which
Speaker 5: I guess is a bit of a sea parks pun.
Speaker 3: You know what it reminds me of. Do you guys
Speaker 3: remember the story of the fake Pandas.
Speaker 5: I was That's the second one that I was going
Speaker 5: to bring up in this very context. This is the
Speaker 5: second get case of counterfeit animals on display in Chinese
Speaker 5: wildlife exhibits. They were chow dogs, chow chows that were
Speaker 5: had their faces dyed black and they were painted in
Speaker 5: different ways and they were passed off as being Pandas.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing about that one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's pretty wild, and you know they got
Speaker 5: in big trouble for that.
Speaker 3: On a side note, you can check out videos of
Speaker 3: the panda dogs and uh, they're just great. They're cool.
Speaker 3: But I see your point, Noel. It's it's really about
Speaker 3: how it's in a case of the robo shark and
Speaker 3: the pandas it's about how you present things to the consumers.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, dude, I'm looking at the thing you
Speaker 2: just sent us to. Those are clearly dogs.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's bad.
Speaker 5: And I don't see a video of this shark situation
Speaker 5: that's been posted yet, but I have seen images, and
Speaker 5: you do kind of get a sense of like the
Speaker 5: sort of joints where the pivots, you know, of the
Speaker 5: fins and all.
Speaker 3: Of that take place. And I didn't want to in
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 5: By reading a quote from Elliott Dumbos, who wrote the
Speaker 5: piece for fizz dot org, he at the end of
Speaker 5: his article said, overall, the introduction of a robot whale
Speaker 5: shark into an aquarium, although controversial, can help engage wider
Speaker 5: audiences in conservation issues. Although misrepresenting a robot as a
Speaker 5: living whale shark is arguably unethical, anything which helps to
Speaker 5: create a space for public discussion on endangered species and
Speaker 5: animal welfare should be seen as a positive for overarching
Speaker 5: issues of species justice. So I'm with him on that,
Speaker 5: and I'm with them if they did this as sort
Speaker 5: of like a proteste kind of piece of performance art
Speaker 5: or something, but that just doesn't seem like the way
Speaker 5: they market it and I imagine they'll be pivoting that
Speaker 5: marketing campaign moving forward after all the controverts.
Speaker 4: Maybe the controversy was the point.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a good thing to say after that's
Speaker 3: caught right, Like, this was my plan all and we
Speaker 3: knew and now we've all learned a valuable lesson about
Speaker 3: both robotics and conservation as the friends we made along
Speaker 3: the way. That's true.
Speaker 5: Last thing, countries like Indonesia, Mozambique and India also ban
Speaker 5: the fishing and trade of the particular species we're talking here,
Speaker 5: which is a considered a megafauna.
Speaker 3: I love that term.
Speaker 4: It's a fun term, migratory megafauna.
Speaker 5: The species is called Rhina codin typis and they are
Speaker 5: the world's largest fish species, with a maximum recorded size
Speaker 5: of eighteen meters in length. If you do make it
Speaker 5: down to Atlanta, you can see some real ones. They
Speaker 5: are there in the Atlanta Aquaria. Am I think I've
Speaker 5: got just enough time to just mention this one, and
Speaker 5: maybe this is part of a larger discussion.
Speaker 4: On AI and the media.
Speaker 5: I'll just read the headline from Vanessa Gara over at
Speaker 5: the ap Polish radio station replaces journalists with AI presenters.
Speaker 5: A Polish publicly funded radio station called off Radio Crackow
Speaker 5: relaunched this week after laying off its entire staff and
Speaker 5: have pivoted to being what was a press release referred
Speaker 5: to as the first experiment in Poland in which journalists
Speaker 5: are virtual characters created by AI. There are three avatars,
Speaker 5: I guess that have been created that have their own
Speaker 5: kind of personalities and views and topic areas. But the
Speaker 5: idea is to appeal to gen Z listeners potential gen
Speaker 5: Z listeners by having these avatars speak to cultural, art
Speaker 5: and social issues as.
Speaker 4: Well as LGBTQ plus issues.
Speaker 5: The head of the station, mar Chin Poult, said, is
Speaker 5: artificial intelligence more of an opportunity or a threat to
Speaker 5: radio media and journalism threat? We will seek answers to
Speaker 5: this question. How noble of them they're at Off Radio
Speaker 5: crackou guys, and just to give an alternate perspective from
Speaker 5: an actual facts journalist, A guy by the name of
Speaker 5: my TuS Demski, who is a journalist and film critic
Speaker 5: who was laid off.
Speaker 4: From the station.
Speaker 5: Published an open letter protesting the choice, referring to it
Speaker 5: as the replacement of employees with artificial intelligence, and saying
Speaker 5: that it is a dangerous precedent that hits us all
Speaker 5: and could lead to a world in which experienced employees
Speaker 5: associated with the media sector for years and people employed
Speaker 5: in creative industries will be replaced by machines.
Speaker 3: Not cool.
Speaker 2: You guys can still tell that I'm human?
Speaker 4: Right, I think?
Speaker 3: So? I just gotten good.
Speaker 2: You guys both seem very human to me, So I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna assume we're all still human here.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, if there's anything wrong with not being human, totally.
Speaker 4: More human than to quote Rob Zombie.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I don't know, like they're they're framing it
Speaker 5: as this noble experiment, which I think is disingenuous.
Speaker 3: Sure, and bullshit.
Speaker 5: They argue that the listenership of the pre existing situation
Speaker 5: at the radio station was.
Speaker 3: Quote close to zero. Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 5: And that may well be the case. And if that's
Speaker 5: the case, okay, I guess it is within their right
Speaker 5: to pivot. But it's a weird look, and I guess
Speaker 5: I'd rather see something like this attempted in a situation
Speaker 5: like this. But it's also the kind of thing you
Speaker 5: could say and then just do whatever the hell you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need to know more about the production pipeline, right,
Speaker 3: Like are these are these AI entities simply leveraging audio
Speaker 3: to repeat something that has been written for them or
Speaker 3: are they conducting you know, their own attempts to write
Speaker 3: like that terrible stuff chat GBT, so it tries to do.
Speaker 3: I mean also, we have in full disclosure, folks, because
Speaker 3: because of the nature of our vocation, we learned a
Speaker 3: lot of the details about this kind of technology, I
Speaker 3: think a little bit earlier than some of the general public,
Speaker 3: just because we lived in that world or lived closer
Speaker 3: to it. And a lot of the AI editing and
Speaker 3: a lot of the attempts to make AI entities or
Speaker 3: personas still fall pretty far short. Like you can when
Speaker 3: you listen to a show that has just been edited
Speaker 3: with AI, even if the speakers are human, you can
Speaker 3: tell you.
Speaker 5: Can get a human touch to smooth out those rough cuts,
Speaker 5: literally those rough edits. All of the AI R like
Speaker 5: I have seen aiar that I find interesting, I would
Speaker 5: not say I've seen anything that moves me or I
Speaker 5: find compelling, because let's be really, all the thing that
Speaker 5: makes art moving is the human aspect.
Speaker 3: Of it.
Speaker 5: The thing that makes good journalism good journalism is the
Speaker 5: human eye and the human observation and the empathy that
Speaker 5: can only come from being an actual human observing the
Speaker 5: behavior of other humans. I don't think that's a controversial position.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. There's also you know, I also
Speaker 3: don't see current large language models or you guys know,
Speaker 3: I don't even like to phrase artificial intelligence. I don't
Speaker 3: see them as this mistake. Yeah, I don't see them
Speaker 3: as the end result here, So you can't really great.
Speaker 3: This is the predecessor to something that may be capable
Speaker 3: of amazing things in the future. But right now, if
Speaker 3: this kind of practice spreads as the current technology stands,
Speaker 3: we're going to run into the double mirror situation, which
Speaker 3: is already happening with any AI on a search engine.
Speaker 3: It's just when I say double mirror, I mean two
Speaker 3: mirrors eternally reflecting back nothing but emptiness. They're going to
Speaker 3: quote each other in a or a boros.
Speaker 4: It's like the visual metaphor for like an echo chamber, right.
Speaker 3: And it'll get less and less robust. Informative copy of
Speaker 3: a copy of a copy, Yes, just like Multiplicity starring
Speaker 3: Michael looking.
Speaker 2: Let's really quickly think about the radio company's stance here,
Speaker 2: just to get our minds into it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Sure, so these aren't crazy high paid radio hosts.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming not.
Speaker 2: Because this is a public radio Yes, I can imagine
Speaker 2: a company that has you know, that is paying out
Speaker 2: somebody like a like a Rush Limbaugh or you know,
Speaker 2: somebody who was really well known. You're paying millions of
Speaker 2: US dollars per year for that type of talent. Right
Speaker 2: if you could create an AI generated version of that
Speaker 2: kind of character and make it popular, you would be
Speaker 2: saving tens of millions of dollars a year. That is
Speaker 2: not the case going on here, but it is pretty
Speaker 2: creepy to think about the way this could be thought
Speaker 2: about in the future.
Speaker 3: It's gonna happen. You know, if you are in a
Speaker 3: public facing entertainment or education field, be very careful what
Speaker 3: you sign, because you can. We are at the place
Speaker 3: where you could resurrect a Rush Limbaugh just based on
Speaker 3: the huge collection of data of him speaking.
Speaker 5: We already have individuals like that selling the rights to
Speaker 5: their image, Right, is it really that big of a
Speaker 5: leap for them?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, and this is the folk.
Speaker 5: These are the folks that have gotten ahead of it
Speaker 5: where they're like, sure, I'll sell you my entire virtual likeness,
Speaker 5: including my personality, for a gajillion dollars, and then I
Speaker 5: can retire and I never have to talk on Mike again.
Speaker 5: That precedent will be set, that will happen, and then
Speaker 5: it'll be somebody like what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: Then they can just go on forever. It's it's it's eternal,
Speaker 4: Howard Stern.
Speaker 3: There are people right now as well this evening who
Speaker 3: would who are not public figures, but would gladly sell
Speaker 3: away their rights for a surprisingly small amount of money,
Speaker 3: maybe even for a free small mac and cheese at
Speaker 3: Chick fil A. Again, the word of the day is
Speaker 3: cheesy for.
Speaker 4: The privilege of using an app bro.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for an app right, because you are the product.
Speaker 3: I think this is something that we are going to
Speaker 3: continually return to. I also have always found Polish to
Speaker 3: be an incredibly tricky language. It's one of the most
Speaker 3: difficult to learn for Yeah, and all my friends who
Speaker 3: speak Polish. It's goingd of like people who speak Finnish.
Speaker 3: You ask them, you know, how you say something in Polish,
Speaker 3: and they just like roll their eyes and say, let's
Speaker 3: just stick with English.
Speaker 5: Jojo Siwa was recently clowned, as she typically is, on
Speaker 5: the internet, for attempting to sing one of her songs
Speaker 5: in Polish, and Polish posters were like, I.
Speaker 3: Have no idea what the hell she was.
Speaker 4: You're in JoJo's corner. I know, I do feel bad.
Speaker 4: She tried real hard, but I don't try.
Speaker 3: I don't know who she is. And when you guys,
Speaker 3: she was the girl with the big bows.
Speaker 4: They sell her bows at the Walmart.
Speaker 5: She was like a little like ponytail, teeny bopper type,
Speaker 5: you know, pop princess.
Speaker 4: And now she's trying to be a bad girl. She's
Speaker 4: sort of rebranded.
Speaker 2: In my head, this is somebody who's been in the
Speaker 2: spotlight since they were a tiny She's she's rand well
Speaker 2: and she's still learning who she is and what the
Speaker 2: world is I mean, and she's just doing it in
Speaker 2: front of everybody. And that is an awful.
Speaker 3: Position to be. And I'm not trying to punker to art.
Speaker 5: I just mentioned the Polish thing because it is That's
Speaker 5: where I learned this fact that the Polish apparently incredibly difficult.
Speaker 3: Also, you know, I wish Jojo the best. I don't
Speaker 3: have a stance really on that's I think people worship
Speaker 3: celebrities in a way that is just disappointing and gross.
Speaker 3: But but you know, it's tough to make it in
Speaker 3: the world of music. So I, you know, absolutely wish
Speaker 3: everybody the best. Every musician is not a jerk.
Speaker 5: Oh and yeah, I do wish hich are the best,
Speaker 5: and I hope she doest. That was the very empathetic
Speaker 5: way of putting it, and that is no unrelated to
Speaker 5: the story.
Speaker 3: But I think an interesting side conversation just the same.
Speaker 5: So, guys, I think we ran a little long with
Speaker 5: these two. Maybe we're a little more robust than I realized.
Speaker 5: But let's take a quick break here, a word from
Speaker 5: a sponsor, and then come back to you with another
Speaker 5: piece of strange news.
Speaker 2: And we've returned. Guys, we're gonna get into some fiscal
Speaker 2: responsibility right now. How does that make you feel?
Speaker 3: I'm a fisco sexual. Let's do it.
Speaker 5: Let's get physical, physical, physical, get physical.
Speaker 2: All right, We've got some news for you. We have
Speaker 2: talked about many in a whoopsie that banks have done
Speaker 2: in the past, or I guess more of a whoopsie.
Speaker 3: You caught us Yeah, check out Jeffrey Asthmus. Great peace
Speaker 3: on Wells Fargo. Oh, I'll send it to you guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on all of them, basically all the banks that
Speaker 2: we've ever talked about on this show, and it's most
Speaker 2: of them. Every once in a while, you get caught
Speaker 2: doing something you're not supposed to be doing, an you
Speaker 2: gotta either pay a little money. Usually you don't have
Speaker 2: to say we did anything like as a bank, you
Speaker 2: don't have to admit guilts. You just have to pay
Speaker 2: a nice little fine and then continue making billions and
Speaker 2: billions of dollars cheese and crackers.
Speaker 3: You guys, we didn't know that was illegal.
Speaker 6: We did.
Speaker 2: I didn't know I couldn't do that.
Speaker 4: Golly g Willickers. We were just trying to bank. Is
Speaker 4: that so wrong?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well that's it. That's all they were trying to
Speaker 2: do is make bank. Well, here's some news out of
Speaker 2: the BBC. It's actually coming out of the Justice Department
Speaker 2: and a bunch of other places, but we're gonna be
Speaker 2: reading from some stuff Natalie Sherman wrote on BBC on
Speaker 2: October tenth. The article Natalie wrote is titled TD Bank
Speaker 2: Maybe you've heard of them? TD Bank find three billion
Speaker 2: dollars US in historic money laundering settlement.
Speaker 3: Historic.
Speaker 2: That's why we're talking about this because otherwise.
Speaker 5: The borderline meaningful even for a bank, right, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 5: Or no, almost so close to verging.
Speaker 2: On it's edging on meaningful.
Speaker 4: Gooning. Meaning that's true there TD Bank.
Speaker 2: As we're gonna about to find out, it has been
Speaker 2: gooning in one particular way for a long time. So
Speaker 2: TD Bank, it's one of Canada's largest lenders, according to Natalie,
Speaker 2: and you know, just by the facts, they've agreed to
Speaker 2: pay more than three billion dollars. And this is the
Speaker 2: historic part. Three billion is historic. But the other thing
Speaker 2: that's historic is that they're pleading guilty to criminal charges,
Speaker 2: including conspiracy. Guys, like actual facts conspiracy and the stuff
Speaker 2: they're pleading guilty to. Actually, let's go and jump to
Speaker 2: the Justice Department, like precisely so we get this right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: The Justice Department says TD Bank NA is pleading guilty
Speaker 2: too conspiring to fail to maintain an anti money laundering
Speaker 2: program that complies with the Bank Secrecy Act. So they
Speaker 2: are conspiring to fail, isn't that interesting?
Speaker 3: Yes, they're letting something they're quietly sabotaging.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're also conspiring to fail to file accurate currency
Speaker 2: transaction reports, and the big one conspiring to launder money.
Speaker 2: But again, everybody's doing that. But this is really interesting.
Speaker 2: I think that concept of conspiring to fail to do something,
Speaker 2: it's striking to me because it really is people somewhere
Speaker 2: at the top who are building the system, the structure
Speaker 2: of how the bank functions, getting together and saying, I
Speaker 2: think we got to just not look so hard at
Speaker 2: some of this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they bought themselves a larger window of time, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: because every day that they can avoid the internal regulatory
Speaker 3: process is another day that they can wash the money.
Speaker 2: Yes, another day for an entire decade.
Speaker 5: Matt Merrick Garland, the Attorney general who prosecuted the case,
Speaker 5: said that they basically made their services convenient for criminals,
Speaker 5: and doing so became one themselves.
Speaker 3: Can you give us a little bit of a sense.
Speaker 5: Of how like they what they did was more egregious
Speaker 5: or different than what other banks are and we're doing.
Speaker 2: They conspired to basically just allow massive transactions to occur
Speaker 2: when they shouldn't be occurring without being immediately reported to authorities.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: There was one customer who used TD bank to launder
Speaker 2: more than four hundred and seventy million dollars in drug proceeds,
Speaker 2: making large cash deposits and bribed staff with gift cards.
Speaker 2: There was there was one person that was found. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to find it in here. They were making
Speaker 2: daily million dollar transactions just like in and out and
Speaker 2: in and out and in and out, and it was
Speaker 2: an individual, and.
Speaker 5: They weren't reporting this to whom is it supposed to
Speaker 5: be like the irs, Like I think it's five thousand dollars,
Speaker 5: like you know, anything above ten thousand, ten thousand, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's that's US laws. Just like here in
Speaker 3: the US, Canadian financial institutes like this are required to
Speaker 3: report these larger suspicious transactions. It reminds me of when
Speaker 3: HSBC literally built different windows at their physical locations so
Speaker 3: they could help launder drug money faster.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was basically just saying we're gonna allow all this
Speaker 2: stuff just to happen. And then as as organized criminals
Speaker 2: who are very organized and making lots of money, as
Speaker 2: they realized, oh keys, we can just put this in
Speaker 2: TD Bank and we're good to go. And then we
Speaker 2: can just take it back out at TD Bank and
Speaker 2: it's no longer drug money. It's TD Bank money, which
Speaker 2: is crazy to think about. But there were other things
Speaker 2: happening where TD Bank was allowing funds to go directly
Speaker 2: back to people who were producing fentanyl, which is one
Speaker 2: of the really crazy things that the investigation found. So
Speaker 2: people were again just they weren't following the money, they
Speaker 2: weren't reporting on any of the transactions. And here it is.
Speaker 2: Prosecutors said it operated with inadequate guards against money laundering
Speaker 2: for nearly a decade, failing to act even when staff
Speaker 2: flagged obvious cases that there were people abusing the bank
Speaker 2: and doing this kind of illicit trading of money and
Speaker 2: exchanges and financial transactions, and the bank is like, no, no, nah,
Speaker 2: we're good. It is the biggest fine ever under the
Speaker 2: anti money laundering law. And oh, here's the thing. The
Speaker 2: chief executive at TD Bank said, we take full responsibility
Speaker 2: for failing to do this. Here's three billion dollars. They're
Speaker 2: only being the Justice Department one point eight billion dollars.
Speaker 2: They're also paying finn Send. Remember fin Send guys, we
Speaker 2: talked about them. That is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
Speaker 2: they are getting one point three billion dollars for their trouble.
Speaker 2: I guess, well, I mean to fund basically this massive
Speaker 2: investigation that all of these there's so many humans involved
Speaker 2: in investigating this stuff. They're all it'll I guess take
Speaker 2: care of their salaries as well as hopefully fund these
Speaker 2: types of investigations in the future.
Speaker 5: My favorite thing in this article, Matt, you probably clocked
Speaker 5: it as well, the mention of TD Bank's slogan America's
Speaker 5: most Convenient bank and the fact that employees basically was
Speaker 5: an end joke that this was in fact marketed towards criminals.
Speaker 2: Yeh yeh oh. This was the thing. This is when
Speaker 2: we're talking about fentanyl. This was the thing. It's not
Speaker 2: It wasn't about money necessarily coming into the bank from
Speaker 2: the people who were producing the fentanyl. It was people
Speaker 2: who were buying the fentanyl, and then the money that
Speaker 2: they put into the bank, they could use the transactions
Speaker 2: there I guess, through online banking or something to go
Speaker 2: directly back to the people who were producing the fentuinyl
Speaker 2: in China and Mexico and other places.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and messing with the international level brings a whole
Speaker 3: other layer of crime and skullduggery here. It's also it
Speaker 3: still only confirms what we have said multiple times in
Speaker 3: previous exploration. When the punishment, the financial punishment for a
Speaker 3: crime is less than the total profit you make from
Speaker 3: the crime, then it simply becomes a business cost. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And this is I think there's another example of this, Matt.
Speaker 3: Since this has reached, you know, this criminal level, and
Speaker 3: since the big wig said, we take full responsibility whatever
Speaker 3: that means, what do you see as next steps here?
Speaker 3: Will will the bank collapse? Will it continue?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's going to continue. Barat Musrani, who has run
Speaker 2: the bank for a long time, is stepping down. Uh,
Speaker 2: that's one of the.
Speaker 3: Main guys has to fall on the sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the bank is going to have a third party
Speaker 2: that's going to basically monitor everything it does for the
Speaker 2: next three years according to the Justice Department.
Speaker 3: Who's going to continue banking with these folks? Though?
Speaker 2: Like, it's got twenty seven million or more than twenty
Speaker 2: seven million customers worldwide, it's a huge bank.
Speaker 5: You don't, I mean, I guess we know that. Wells Fargo,
Speaker 5: despite their shenanigans, they didn't like lose a bunch of
Speaker 5: customers how I still bank with Wells Fargo full disclosure,
Speaker 5: And I'm embarrassed to say that, and I'm very seriously
Speaker 5: rethinking that. But it's so inconvenient to change banks that
Speaker 5: I think a lot of this stuff just you know,
Speaker 5: of course they're crooked.
Speaker 2: They're the bank yep I.
Speaker 3: Bank with an evil leprechaun. Yeah, he lives out on
Speaker 3: the west side.
Speaker 5: At least get at least you get the little taste
Speaker 5: of that pot of gold.
Speaker 2: What kind of security is going on with this leprechaun?
Speaker 3: It's massive, It's crazy. We could get selkies, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: trees that you can't call enset. Look, man, I don't
Speaker 3: want to get canceled in the in the fay community.
Speaker 3: And this is not up to you, Ben. You know
Speaker 3: that's up to the yes, uh, and that's their prerogative.
Speaker 3: But I I know it's it's a dumb example and
Speaker 3: I'm kind of punchy today. But the thing we have
Speaker 3: to remember with a lot of the system of finance
Speaker 3: overall is that it's easier for these folks to get
Speaker 3: away with crimes than it is for an individual to
Speaker 3: get away with crimes because the regulatory bodies are often compromised.
Speaker 3: That's unfortunately and just true. And money is a heck
Speaker 3: of an incentive for people to commit we you know,
Speaker 3: the Justice Department saying conspiracy, this could be also described
Speaker 3: as crimes of negligence.
Speaker 5: Well, and you know, my initial reaction was awesome, the
Speaker 5: bank's are finally getting taken to task and this is
Speaker 5: a lot of money. And I asked, Matt if it
Speaker 5: was meaningful, and you said it was just on the
Speaker 5: edge of meaningful, and that the bank will continue. And
Speaker 5: I just don't understand how that's allowed to happen. But
Speaker 5: I guess it's just capitalism.
Speaker 3: Baby. You got a right to exist.
Speaker 5: You know, sure you made some mistakes were made, but
Speaker 5: you've atoned, you paid your your ultimately paltry fine.
Speaker 4: What was the big number, Matt, It was truly.
Speaker 2: The big number was eighteen point three trillion dollars worth
Speaker 2: of transaction activity through the bank, believe.
Speaker 3: It right, which means that some of that money could
Speaker 3: be counted twice because it's go because of how it's moving.
Speaker 3: But still it is. It is crazy, man. Also, there's
Speaker 3: the other side of this that we haven't talked about,
Speaker 3: which is for governments, they have to reasonably think when
Speaker 3: they're meeting out penalties and punishment, they have to reasonably
Speaker 3: think about the possible larger economic consequences, right, Like if
Speaker 3: you drive the bank into oblivion, what happens to all
Speaker 3: those customers?
Speaker 2: How much of our society runs on illicit drug trade
Speaker 2: seriously a lot that we just don't even know about,
Speaker 2: and it's just occurring, and the money is changing hands,
Speaker 2: people are benefiting, and then it moves all the way
Speaker 2: up through politics, like oh god, that I mean, there
Speaker 2: are there's so many fictional stories about that, right, and
Speaker 2: then we get to see little glimpses through the glass
Speaker 2: with something like this, well.
Speaker 5: Especially with all the limits that have been taken off
Speaker 5: political donations, and that's almost a way of laundering money in.
Speaker 3: And of itself.
Speaker 5: It's a way of exercising you know, that soft power
Speaker 5: I guess you call it, like over the course of
Speaker 5: business and events and regulations.
Speaker 4: I just can't believe how far we allowed.
Speaker 3: That to go.
Speaker 5: Whatever your political leanings are, I don't think anyone's super
Speaker 5: stoked about this. Unlimited money corporations are people mentality.
Speaker 3: I just think it's at least united. Is such a
Speaker 3: grift and even just reading the legalistic parkour that some
Speaker 3: of the smartest minds in the US had had to
Speaker 3: bulst their way through to try to make it sound
Speaker 3: like it was not an absolutely Unamerican, unhinged idea. It's
Speaker 3: it's disappointing, which is worse than being outraged. Right in
Speaker 3: this case, it's like, it's like the thing I do
Speaker 3: now if I'm in traffic, I don't get angry. I
Speaker 3: don't really. I don't have the emotional depth for that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. But I've found what hurts people most
Speaker 3: is not giving them the anger. It's making eye contact,
Speaker 3: pointing at them and giving them a thumbs down.
Speaker 2: Oh, It's like I wouldn't like that.
Speaker 3: That's why I do the cyber trucks and.
Speaker 2: Saying you're weird.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 5: You know what. My girlfriend yesterday pointed out that it
Speaker 5: ain't cool, it weird. It's been co opted in that way.
Speaker 5: I like weird. We have a sign hanging in our
Speaker 5: living room that says stay weird, and it just feels
Speaker 5: like it's been taken from us.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't care pass you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: All things pass? Uh. The weird was weaponized briefly for
Speaker 3: one election and the time the next election comes around,
Speaker 3: they'll just have a different word.
Speaker 2: Yes, they will.
Speaker 3: He'll be he's sporty.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say he's chee cheesy.
Speaker 3: Macari for everyone, free macaroni.
Speaker 2: But one last thing, I just want to say, guys,
Speaker 2: the thing is what we need to do. This is
Speaker 2: my platform. I'm gonna run for Motus next in the
Speaker 2: four years. No, uh, legalize all drugs as has been
Speaker 2: proposed before. Allow the current cartel forces that exist throughout
Speaker 2: the planet to become corporations oh yeah, and sell their products.
Speaker 2: Make sure there are taxes, like heavy taxes apply to
Speaker 2: all drugs that exist that are all legal now, and
Speaker 2: remove all other forms of taxes. As we found human
Speaker 2: beings love some drugs, sure, and they're gonna consume them, right,
Speaker 2: we only tax the drugs from now on.
Speaker 3: But that's a great idea. I don't think it'll work,
Speaker 3: not because of any ethical concerns, but because drugs are
Speaker 3: I would argue drugs are taxed illicit drugs through the
Speaker 3: bribery system, so they're paying tax to specific corrupt individuals, right,
Speaker 3: And that's a good argument we can make with the
Speaker 3: drug dealers, because we'll say, look, now you're just you're
Speaker 3: still paying the same viig. You're just paying it.
Speaker 4: To a government and you have more real, enforceable protection
Speaker 4: as opposed to hoping that the bribes work out.
Speaker 3: In your favorite Oh, we're speaking of bribes. I wanted
Speaker 3: to mention this. I didn't know. We didn't get to it.
Speaker 3: But you guys read about Elon Musk's plan to pay
Speaker 3: people one hundred bucks a pop in Arizona to vote.
Speaker 3: Story for another day, But that that reminds uh Dylan's
Speaker 3: entering the chat. We touched the nerve. Dylan wants us
Speaker 3: to know that one point eight billion is less than
Speaker 3: one percent of eighteen trillion.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, when you consider the scale of the actual crime,
Speaker 5: this isn't mean any more meaningful than any of the
Speaker 5: other wrist slap type fees.
Speaker 2: Finally, well, let's just put this That eighteen trillion number
Speaker 2: isn't all you know, drug money and illicit funds. It's
Speaker 2: just all the money that is not being looked at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and some people smoke tobacco and bongs. I'm sure right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's called a hookah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what you say at the store. But the
Speaker 3: do you guys remember that when you had to you
Speaker 3: had to play that song. Dance at the head shop
Speaker 3: a tobacco water pipe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh what webbs we weave all right, nark.
Speaker 3: We webs we weave cheesy, cheesy stuff. As we moved
Speaker 3: through Halloween, Matt, do we have a takeaway on the
Speaker 3: bank here? I think we've outlined a lot of the problems,
Speaker 3: and the most damning thing being, of course, that the
Speaker 3: bank will continue. There's no takeaway, just dine in only.
Speaker 2: Yes, sure, that's it at your local chick fil a.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, what a weird adventure we've been on. Join
Speaker 3: us later in the week, folks. We will be returning
Speaker 3: with episodes. We'll have listener mail. We've got some very
Speaker 3: strange stuff on the way for you, which may not
Speaker 3: be appropriate for all listeners. You'll see what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Just to heads up. In the meantime, give us your
Speaker 3: takes on this stuff. Tell us about the DPRK North Korea,
Speaker 3: your favorite robo shark. We also had some really interesting
Speaker 3: conversations about the post office that I think we'll get
Speaker 3: to later, but for now, drop us a line. We
Speaker 3: try to be easy to find on the internet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, you can find us the handle Conspiracy
Speaker 5: Stuff where we exist on.
Speaker 4: You too, where you can peruse videos.
Speaker 5: Of our faces containing facsimiles of our voices telling you
Speaker 5: stuff about things. You can also find that handle on xfka, Twitter,
Speaker 5: and on Facebook where we have our Facebook group Here's
Speaker 5: where it gets crazy. On Instagram and TikTok. However, we
Speaker 5: are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: Do you like to call people? Call us? Our number
Speaker 2: is one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
Speaker 2: give yourself a cool nickname and guess what that's really
Speaker 2: all you got to do? Please let us know if
Speaker 2: we can use it on the air or not. Your
Speaker 2: message that is in your voice and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Once you've done all that, say whatever you want. You
Speaker 2: got three minutes. If you've got more to send us,
Speaker 2: maybe a link or two, maybe an attachment that has
Speaker 2: your Kiddykat's face on it. Man, why not instead send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive, and we cannot wait to hear from you. Specifically,
Speaker 3: send us your secret words, your arcane text. Tell us
Speaker 3: a story as we gather around the digital campfire. Take
Speaker 3: us to the edge of the rabbit hole. We'll do
Speaker 3: the rest. And we also want to give a thanks
Speaker 3: to everybody's been writing in. Our email has been blowing
Speaker 3: up like a Boeing satellite, and we couldn't be more
Speaker 3: pleased with that. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: void writes back, We'll see you out there in the dark.
Speaker 3: Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 2: your favorite shows.