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: our pal Nol is on an adventure.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul Mission Control decad Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. And I was thinking a good
Speaker 3: way to open the conversation this evening. Not everybody likes
Speaker 3: to hear this, but folks, fellow conspiracy realist, if you
Speaker 3: are listening tonight, you can thank drugs. We're not saying
Speaker 3: everybody's tuning in because they're under the influence of something
Speaker 3: at this moment. Matt, I was just I was thinking
Speaker 3: through this. At some point in every human's personal history,
Speaker 3: a drug of some sort has saved your life or
Speaker 3: the lives of your ancestors, the people who came before
Speaker 3: you know, penicillin, chemotherapy, even insulin treatments. Right in the
Speaker 3: modern day, drugs have saved countless lives, oh.
Speaker 2: For sure, even potentially something as innocuous as aspirin, or
Speaker 2: maybe you feel as though a drug has saved your
Speaker 2: life when you've taken a pain pill because you've been
Speaker 2: in excruciating pain and couldn't mentally handle it. You felt
Speaker 2: but this magic little medicine, this drug got you through something.
Speaker 2: And one of the weird things with these drugs is
Speaker 2: that you are prescribed very specific doses of them when
Speaker 2: you've taken them, and potentially when they've saved your lives,
Speaker 2: even something like you know, an antibiotic. But if you
Speaker 2: overtake any one of these drugs, there are potential very,
Speaker 2: very very bad effects.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. I don't know if it's this
Speaker 3: way in every language, but in English the word drug
Speaker 3: has a pretty rough connotation. Nowadays, we associate it with
Speaker 3: the heartbreak of abuse and addiction. And when we hear
Speaker 3: the word drug, a lot of us, I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to say, immediately think of illegal narcotics, O bioids,
Speaker 3: crack cocaine, things like that. But the real definition of
Speaker 3: a drug is much simpler, so much so that it's
Speaker 3: kind of unhelpful. A drug is technically, quote, any chemical
Speaker 3: substance that affects the functioning of living things and organisms.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds like a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: So yeah, at that point we have to ask ourselves,
Speaker 3: if this is true, then what is not a drug
Speaker 3: by that definition? Right?
Speaker 2: Is right? Yeah? I mean any sugar potentially falls into that. Gosh,
Speaker 2: I guess even guess even sodium.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean sodium is a chemical substance. I mean
Speaker 3: drug use is also one of the oldest of all
Speaker 3: human technologies. I remember years ago we both got super
Speaker 3: into the theory that early humans ingesting hallucinogens may have
Speaker 3: led to the creation of religion or the breaking of
Speaker 3: the bicameral mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the evolution of the thought process that we associate
Speaker 2: with humans may have had something to do with weird
Speaker 2: neurological connections that were made or you know, remade or
Speaker 2: broken apart and reconnected because of psychotropic drug use.
Speaker 3: So cool, so cool. Can't really prove it, can't prove
Speaker 3: it yet, but what a cool uber conspiracy. We know
Speaker 3: we can prove that well. Before the invention of the
Speaker 3: written word, humans around the world knew some substances had
Speaker 3: beneficial effects and some harmful effects, which leads us to
Speaker 3: the question people still ask today, what then, is the
Speaker 3: difference between a good drug and a bad one. It's
Speaker 3: a confusing question you pointed out earlier, so astuteley man,
Speaker 3: that these even the most innocuous substances can be dangerous
Speaker 3: or deadly and high enough doses or depending upon how
Speaker 3: they interact with other substances, which is why you get
Speaker 3: weird warnings about when you should or should not consume
Speaker 3: things like grapefruits.
Speaker 2: The thing my parents are dealing with right now. Really, yeah, grapefruits, man,
Speaker 2: Who would.
Speaker 3: Have thought it's the least favorite fruit for me?
Speaker 2: Oh, I can understand why. I think there are specific
Speaker 2: species of the grapefruit that are pretty wonderful, or you know,
Speaker 2: versions of the grapefruit that are a little sweeter, less
Speaker 2: obnoxious to the old taste buds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll come clean with you the reason, and lest
Speaker 3: I seem to cast on an all grapefruit enthusiasts, do
Speaker 3: as you will. The reason for me is probably due
Speaker 3: to a situation where I was stuck out in this
Speaker 3: camping compound for several weeks and we were slowly running
Speaker 3: out of food and beverages, and the last thing left
Speaker 3: that was not water was grapefruit juice that had clearly
Speaker 3: gone bad in my opinion, and it was my first
Speaker 3: time drinking grapefruit juice absolutely ruined it for me. I thought,
Speaker 3: this is what this thing is supposed to taste like, And.
Speaker 2: Now I mean, it tastes like that, bro, that's what
Speaker 2: it tastes like.
Speaker 3: That's what it tastes like. Oh boy, I was.
Speaker 2: In a situation where my grandparents would set of my
Speaker 2: grandparents would constantly cut open a grapefruit and then each
Speaker 2: of them have a half in a bowl in the morning. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the fun kind of grapefruit. It was just
Speaker 2: a grapefruit in dang, it's just.
Speaker 3: Oh it wasn't one of the red ones or the Yeah,
Speaker 3: the bruby ones. Pretty good, that's it. Yeah. Well, this idea, right,
Speaker 3: as complicated as we can already tell it is it
Speaker 3: arrives because drugs, again, like any other technology, they have
Speaker 3: the same pitfalls. Right. A fire can burn a house
Speaker 3: as easily as it can warm a house. But in
Speaker 3: this case, with drugs, the house is you folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's very, very, very true. And I think
Speaker 2: maybe this specific point is let's say, a learning, a
Speaker 2: lesson that was learned by military's governments, people who want
Speaker 2: to be in control. Also learned by hunters early, early,
Speaker 2: early on, that you can use a substance that might
Speaker 2: be good for you in certain respects, or at certain
Speaker 2: times or in certain dosages, but it can also be
Speaker 2: deadly to an enemy or some thing you're trying to
Speaker 2: eventually eat.
Speaker 3: And the weirdest part is all across human civilization. In
Speaker 3: most cases we still don't know which use. Humans figure
Speaker 3: it out first. They say, oh, this poison is actually
Speaker 3: a medicine, or oh, whoops, this medicine can be also
Speaker 3: be a poison.
Speaker 2: I want to, I want to, I want to believe.
Speaker 2: Let's say that it was medicinal first, like right, some
Speaker 2: kind of herbs that were discovered to or just through
Speaker 2: testing and experimentation and word of mouth. Try this specific
Speaker 2: herb concoction and it will actually help your stomach if
Speaker 2: it's hurting really badly. But if you take too much
Speaker 2: of it and apply it to an arrowhead, you're going
Speaker 2: to make whatever you know deer or you know bison
Speaker 2: that you're hunting, it will go down way faster.
Speaker 3: And you'll add importantly, you'll still be able to eat it,
Speaker 3: so it will be contaminated, right, which you can't say
Speaker 3: for all all substances. I also, I'm with you, Ben,
Speaker 3: I kind of like to think there is some relationship
Speaker 3: between the belief and sympathetic magic there because someone, perhaps
Speaker 3: someone got sick or they got cut by something and
Speaker 3: substance entered their bloodstream, and someone said let's go back
Speaker 3: to the you know, the scene of the crime or
Speaker 3: the accident, and said, well, let's try a different version
Speaker 3: of the thing that cut you, you know, because you're
Speaker 3: going to die anyway. There's a lot of trial and error,
Speaker 3: is what we're saying. And there's still a lot of
Speaker 3: errors today. Recently, a collaboration that you and I did
Speaker 3: with the folks over at Lava for Good, a panel
Speaker 3: about the war on drugs in the US and abroad,
Speaker 3: which is now up for a Webby. Everybody please go vote.
Speaker 3: It'll be the first time we've gotten a Webby for
Speaker 3: something we were on air for. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Maybe? Well, I don't know. Thirteen Days of Halloween I
Speaker 2: believe won a Webby, oh, which means and I think
Speaker 2: it was one of the season. It was definitely a
Speaker 2: season that you wrote on. It was definitely a season
Speaker 2: that I executive produced on. So no, we had well,
Speaker 2: but I was not.
Speaker 4: On Mike wells to Mike either well semi congratulations to
Speaker 4: both of us, and also with you to check out
Speaker 4: do check out thirteen Days as a cantel.
Speaker 3: Matt and I really really love the work that goes
Speaker 3: into that and it makes our day whatever people get
Speaker 3: to experience it for the first time. But with the
Speaker 3: social effects of drug use, right, I love that you
Speaker 3: laid out any kind of controlling, authoritative structure has struggled
Speaker 3: with this. Religions, governments, you name it, your favorite cult leader,
Speaker 3: they have these policies around drug use, meaning there are
Speaker 3: social effects. So if you live in the US, whether
Speaker 3: or not you indulge in cannabis, you know, millions of
Speaker 3: people get locked away for non violent drug crimes. It
Speaker 3: ruins their lives, It sets them on a cycle of
Speaker 3: recidivism that gets increasingly difficult to escape and increasingly expensive
Speaker 3: to survive within. And then you know that's still better,
Speaker 3: sadly than places in the Middle East and Southeast Asia
Speaker 3: in particular, where a comparatively minor amount of certain narcotics
Speaker 3: can lead to a death sentence and your home government
Speaker 3: cannot save you. Hear us, well, Americans, your home government
Speaker 3: cannot save you. If a country has a death penalty
Speaker 3: for drug possession.
Speaker 2: And you get caught with it, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Don't do it. If you feel like you have to
Speaker 3: have your drugs. In that case, stay home, go somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Also, don't carry around large sums of cash with you,
Speaker 2: especially if you're going to an airport, especially when in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh nice, Yeah, shout out to Clayton English and
Speaker 3: Eric Andre. Check out that panel, folks. There's also just
Speaker 3: a side note here. There's also something a lot of
Speaker 3: people don't understand. If a foreign government that has really
Speaker 3: draconian drug policies wants to get you for possession, they
Speaker 3: can drug test you, and having a substance in your hair,
Speaker 3: or your bloodstream or your body will for them count
Speaker 3: as possession.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, if it is in you, I suppose you
Speaker 2: do possess it. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It depends on really, it depends on what they want
Speaker 3: to do with you.
Speaker 2: Well, it's more like it's possessing you, right, Nah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends on the substance. And this gets us
Speaker 3: to these are all true chilling conspiracies, but it leads
Speaker 3: us to another side of the story. A disturbing aspect
Speaker 3: to drugs and humans that we briefly discussed but haven't
Speaker 3: really explored fully. It's this what happens when people purposely
Speaker 3: decide to use drugs as weapons. We're going to pause
Speaker 3: for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: We've returned. Here's where it gets crazy, man. Man, we
Speaker 3: were just compared notes before we went on air, Matt
Speaker 3: and I think we both yet again, we both got
Speaker 3: super into the same two big topics and they're I
Speaker 3: don't know, man, I'm bothered.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's bothersome. I think this is exactly
Speaker 2: the kind of thing this topic needs us to discuss.
Speaker 2: Like some specific examples of when drugs were used as weapons, right,
Speaker 2: but that are not the let's say, traditional chemical weapons
Speaker 2: we might think of, right, Like especially chemical weapons that
Speaker 2: are associated with World War One, mustard gas, some of
Speaker 2: the stuff that was developed by the Nazis, some by
Speaker 2: you know, British and American forces, but chemical weapons that
Speaker 2: were meant to be dropped often from above and meant
Speaker 2: to incompare state or kill enemy combatants down below. We're
Speaker 2: talking more. When is a more medicinal drug that we
Speaker 2: would think about when is that used or has it
Speaker 2: been used as a weapon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's an important distinction. We know, we know
Speaker 3: chemical warfare or drugs as weapons. We do associate it
Speaker 3: with World War One these days with nerve gas and
Speaker 3: uh later with VX and stuff like that. But but
Speaker 3: again it goes back to the ancient past. In eight
Speaker 3: one eight four BCE, Hannibal's army used Belladonna to disorient
Speaker 3: enemy forces.
Speaker 2: And I do what is Belladonna?
Speaker 3: Belladonna is one of the Okay, so there's like a
Speaker 3: Wu Tang clan of these plants that have these drugs.
Speaker 2: Now you're gonna say, there's a member of Wu Tang
Speaker 2: called Belladonna that I've never heard of, And I was like.
Speaker 3: I would totally I would totally tune in it out.
Speaker 3: It's uh, it's from the night shade family. Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: and a lot of these things that we're going to
Speaker 3: explore originate from the night shade family. It's if you
Speaker 3: look at it, it's like an herb. It's a it's
Speaker 3: a bush basically, and you can find it throughout Central
Speaker 3: and South Eurasia. It gets pretty tall. It is toxic.
Speaker 3: Its other name is Deadly Nightshade, Oh, to differentiate it
Speaker 3: from the rest of the good folks at the night
Speaker 3: Shade family.
Speaker 2: And you said, Hannibal way back then used it as
Speaker 2: not as a maybe lethal technique, dosing technique, but as
Speaker 2: a disorienting thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, And to be clear, Hannibal would have been fine
Speaker 3: if that disorientation led to death.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, But in this case, it's more like make
Speaker 2: my troops advancement more effective by disabling.
Speaker 3: Your troops, a little like a flashbank, right in some ways.
Speaker 3: And then I didn't know this, But there's this author,
Speaker 3: David A. Price, who has a book called Love and
Speaker 3: Hate and Jamestown. And in this book, which I haven't finished,
Speaker 3: in this book, he makes a pretty fascinating case. He
Speaker 3: says that Chief Palwaton had deployed a toxic hallucinogen against
Speaker 3: the Jamestown colony in sixteen eleven, which I had not
Speaker 3: heard before.
Speaker 2: Was it bread? Was it was it that?
Speaker 3: Er? I don't know, man, I don't know this, but
Speaker 3: this is just These are two examples from across centuries
Speaker 3: and continents. We also, I think you and I were
Speaker 3: both very taken with an article about this conundrum by
Speaker 3: a scholar named Vladimir Pitchman and his co author's name.
Speaker 2: Yes, the co authors, Well, the co author is zd
Speaker 2: n e. K Zeni Hahn. And there's also an academic
Speaker 2: editor that worked on this paper, Mirta Milic.
Speaker 3: And this paper is fascinating. It's called Drugs as Chemical Weapons,
Speaker 3: Past and Perspectives. You can read it in full online
Speaker 3: for free today. They make this case where they say, look,
Speaker 3: the sources of pretty much any poison that's been deployed
Speaker 3: by the big criminals or state powers, they've also always
Speaker 3: been natural agents that serve as medicines. And then he says,
Speaker 3: you know, originally the most militarily significant toxins, they were
Speaker 3: discovered as a byproduct of pharmaceutical research most for most
Speaker 3: of history. It wasn't until pretty recently that governments started saying,
Speaker 3: let's make bad stuff on purpose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's have an R and D department that specifically
Speaker 2: tries to figure out the most toxic, dangerous chemicals or
Speaker 2: just natural substances that we can then synthesize with a
Speaker 2: new thing that's exactly the same chemical combination, or we
Speaker 2: can concentrate and combine to make something that just makes
Speaker 2: you dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, drugs are a dual use technology now that we
Speaker 3: think about it, aren't they. And then, of course there's
Speaker 3: that lovely, lovely phase that so many governments went through
Speaker 3: several decades back, where they would find nifty unfamiliar substances
Speaker 3: and then say, hey, what does this do? Let's just
Speaker 3: you know, let's fa fo Yeah, but what it do?
Speaker 2: Though? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: What shout out to mk ultra, shout out to the
Speaker 3: CIA's weird phase with LSD when they were literally just
Speaker 3: dosing the snot out of each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, hey, let's just we can't recommend this article
Speaker 2: enough because there was a huge list that Ben and
Speaker 2: I were discussing off air that it shows what we
Speaker 2: were talking about early on here arrowhead toxins that were
Speaker 2: also used as for medicinal purposes by indigenous groups across
Speaker 2: the world. It is really great, Like, it's really great
Speaker 2: and worth your time. We decided that we cannot pronounce
Speaker 2: effectively most of the words that I decided I decided
Speaker 2: that I can't pronounce.
Speaker 3: We can make an attempt, but we're not going to
Speaker 3: nail a lot of these because we are not chemists.
Speaker 2: But yes, but do look it up because it's very fascinating.
Speaker 2: It goes across I think it's every continent that it hits.
Speaker 2: Where here is a series of medicinal herbs that were
Speaker 2: also used as offensive weapons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and here's the good thing that people learned to
Speaker 3: do with this stuff, like treat skin problems or fungal infections,
Speaker 3: and then they found out they could also poison animals
Speaker 3: and yeah, I don't know. I mean also, you know,
Speaker 3: if you fast forward to the modern day, there's one
Speaker 3: story that we have to share that captivated both of
Speaker 3: us because we were saying, you know, to that earlier
Speaker 3: distinction you made. We were saying, let's find a case
Speaker 3: where someone took not like a not mustard gas, not
Speaker 3: a nerve agent, but what you would consider a quote
Speaker 3: unquote regular drug, and let's see when they used it
Speaker 3: offensively on purpose in the modern day. That takes us
Speaker 3: to Russia in October of two thousand and two at
Speaker 3: the Moscow Ball Bearing Plants Palace of Culture.
Speaker 2: It's also known as the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow, and
Speaker 2: this is well, there was something that was showing that
Speaker 2: night according to the BBC. I'm just going to cite
Speaker 2: this article, Ben so people can find it if they
Speaker 2: want to. There's a BBC article from October twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty twelve titled Moscow Theater siege Questions Remain Unanswered, which
Speaker 2: is written ten years after this thing we're talking about
Speaker 2: that happened in two thousand and two, and it gives
Speaker 2: us a little bit of context. But what we need
Speaker 2: to know is that there is a show going on them,
Speaker 2: a musical going on at this huge theater in Moscow,
Speaker 2: when it is stormed by a bunch of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so later results will find that nine hundred and
Speaker 3: twelve people or so we're in the audience and they're
Speaker 3: watching that musical you're describing, nord Ost and I think
Speaker 3: they're just moving. They're relatively early into the show. I
Speaker 3: think they're in the second act maybe. And these terrorists
Speaker 3: male and female, identified members of the Chechen army. Some
Speaker 3: of them have explosives strapped to their body, and they
Speaker 3: have one demand, and it is the typical demand of
Speaker 3: Chechen separatist groups, or as Russia will call them, Chechen
Speaker 3: separatist groups. They say, Russia, withdraw all of your military
Speaker 3: forces immediately, all of your state forces, free Chechnya. And
Speaker 3: this was a common demand. This withdrawal because Russian forces
Speaker 3: had been occupying Chechnya had left, had come back, and
Speaker 3: for fifty seven hours it was a brutal standoff. We
Speaker 3: know that two of the hostages died sometime in that
Speaker 3: fifty seven hours, but the Russian authorities were at a loss.
Speaker 3: They had the place surrounded. These terrorists were not going
Speaker 3: to make it out one way or the other.
Speaker 2: Well, and there, let's say there were there were at
Speaker 2: least forty militant yes, or you know, people who were
Speaker 2: in there as the hostage takers who were controlling the
Speaker 2: nine hundred and twelve people who were hostages. So if
Speaker 2: you just imagine a huge theater that number of people
Speaker 2: and then think about strategies of going in and stopping
Speaker 2: the situation, if you're going to do it by four yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I imagine those Russian forces strategizing and you know, a
Speaker 2: room of people trying to come up with the best way,
Speaker 2: and what do they come up with?
Speaker 3: They came up with what you might call a very
Speaker 3: Russian solution to the problem. Right, if they attempt to
Speaker 3: breach this facility occupied by a small basically a militia,
Speaker 3: they would lose most people before before they could rescue hostages.
Speaker 3: So their solution is novel, it's innovative, it is incredibly ruthless.
Speaker 3: They pump what is first described as an unknown gas
Speaker 3: into the building, and they pump a lot of it
Speaker 3: in nearly all of the terrorists and hostages fall unconscious
Speaker 3: immediately or die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, at least according to BBC News and
Speaker 2: people reporting on it at the time, there was no
Speaker 2: warning given to anybody that this gas, this subs since
Speaker 2: whatever it was was going to be deployed, and they
Speaker 2: didn't even warn like some of the first responders that
Speaker 2: were immediately outside of the facility. So and it was
Speaker 2: leaking outside of the facility and affecting people that were nearby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're just some guy at you know, the sandwich
Speaker 3: shop next door.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we're a fireman or you know, just first
Speaker 2: respond exactly who's outside and there's some kind of weird
Speaker 2: smoke looking stuff coming out of like some of the
Speaker 2: ventilation or the side of the building, and it's affecting you.
Speaker 2: And how did they describe it at the time after
Speaker 2: they they because they acknowledged it like hours and hours
Speaker 2: later that they released some kind of gas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're just saying how did the international news
Speaker 3: or how.
Speaker 2: Did the expression authorities acknowledge that they even gassed people?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh, do you have the quote? I think BBC as
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: Well, according to this BBC News article by Artem Kretschetnikov,
Speaker 2: he is saying that public health services were not warned
Speaker 2: in advance that this type of I don't know measure
Speaker 2: would be used releasing a gas into this huge building.
Speaker 2: Police did not clear the nearby streets of any parked vehicles.
Speaker 2: Ambulances arrived on the scene an hour and a half
Speaker 2: after the operation began, and again this gas was still
Speaker 2: it wasn't being dispersed actively, but it was still dispersing
Speaker 2: out of the building.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The phrase they would use is an aerosol anesthetic
Speaker 3: later when they explained this. But for a lot of
Speaker 3: the surviving hostages, we see that they originally thought there
Speaker 3: was smoke from a fire somewhere else. Yes, because it
Speaker 3: was pumped through the AC system.
Speaker 2: And then the authorities I found it been. The authorities
Speaker 2: didn't acknowledge it until eight hours later that they even
Speaker 2: did that.
Speaker 3: And as oh, okay, we'll see why that was sort
Speaker 3: of a dick move.
Speaker 2: Oh, and they didn't say what gas it was, and.
Speaker 3: They did not see what gas it was. Later, the
Speaker 3: Russian Health Minister Yuri Shivchenko would say that this gas
Speaker 3: is based on fentanyl. What this means is that the
Speaker 3: gas was later found to contain car fentinyl opioi, ten
Speaker 3: thousand times more powerful than morphine, about one hundred times
Speaker 3: more powerful than fentanyl, which is already very scary stuff.
Speaker 3: It's rippen through various parts of the world like a
Speaker 3: natural disaster. But I guess we should also point out,
Speaker 3: now we're talking about this off air, do we still
Speaker 3: have to smack in allegedly on this one.
Speaker 2: I guess we probably should. There have been some court
Speaker 2: cases associated with this because one hundred and thirty hostages
Speaker 2: died during this operation. One hundred and thirty. Of those
Speaker 2: nine one hundred and twelve. Many of them died at
Speaker 2: the hands of, you know, allegedly the hostage takers, at
Speaker 2: least according to the reports. But some of them died
Speaker 2: from the effects of the gas, some of them pretty
Speaker 2: soon after it was released and others days after it
Speaker 2: was released.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, here's a terrifying quote from an author named
Speaker 3: David Sadder in his book The Less You Know, the
Speaker 3: Better You sleep. He studies Russia extensively for the Hudson Institution.
Speaker 2: Can we just say that quote is amazing. The less
Speaker 2: you know, the better you sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and that's not even the full title of
Speaker 3: the book, but yeah, but we went with the bangor part.
Speaker 3: So here's the quote. Here's a quote from Sader's book
Speaker 3: and talks about how when after the breach, after the
Speaker 3: authorities deployed the gas and breached the theater, they just
Speaker 3: started dragging folks out, and they did not discriminate between
Speaker 3: the hostages and the terrorists, or excuse me, the hostage takers,
Speaker 3: nor the living and the dead. They just piled them
Speaker 3: all up like firewood in buses and cars, and Sadder
Speaker 3: says they were bodies were piled on top of another
Speaker 3: each other outside the theater entrance, no attempt to separate
Speaker 3: the living from the dead. A well known songwriter died
Speaker 3: after spending seven hours alive in a bus packed with corpses.
Speaker 3: Godly thirteen year old girl was also crushed beneath a
Speaker 3: mass of hostages in a mini bus died on the
Speaker 3: way to the hospital.
Speaker 2: Geez, well, let's talk about why this is so messed up,
Speaker 2: Why the tactic itself was messed up to just release
Speaker 2: gas at whatever concentration it was at into a massive
Speaker 2: area with a huge group of people, because no matter
Speaker 2: what that substance was, whether it was carfentanyl or some
Speaker 2: other fentanyl derivative or some other sleeping gas as they
Speaker 2: called it, you are dosing everybody with the same amount. Right.
Speaker 2: And as we know, when you go to the doctor
Speaker 2: and you get prescribed a medicine of any kind, and
Speaker 2: they look at your weight, right, your height, you're sometimes
Speaker 2: your BMI, which is a flawed thing anyway, but you
Speaker 2: know your body mass.
Speaker 3: Index, other medications you might be taking.
Speaker 2: Yes, your age, right. The everything goes into account for
Speaker 2: how much of a certain medicine you are supposed to
Speaker 2: be getting, what dosage. In this case, they dosed everybody
Speaker 2: with the same amount with the hope of disabling like
Speaker 2: grown men with Kalishnikov's.
Speaker 3: Right and suicide bombers.
Speaker 2: Yes, so they're going you gotta think they're going for
Speaker 2: an od effect.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And then there is some brutal calculus that
Speaker 3: we can unfortunately understand. Right, we don't have to agree
Speaker 3: with what they did, but we can understand where they
Speaker 3: were coming from because it was from their perspective, it
Speaker 3: was a at least in the official narrative, they were saying, Look,
Speaker 3: we can try traditional methods and lose all of them
Speaker 3: and probably quite a few of our own officers, or
Speaker 3: we can try to save some knowing that some of
Speaker 3: these hostages will die, you know, because again it's almost
Speaker 3: a thousand people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna save some people. That's the thought, right.
Speaker 3: Well, if that was the thought, however, and we could
Speaker 3: even we could make an entire episode about this theater situation,
Speaker 3: because there's a lot going on under the surface. But
Speaker 3: if that was indeed their thought, then why did they
Speaker 3: refuse to reveal what they had dosed the theater with?
Speaker 3: Because in those eight hours it took them to reveal
Speaker 3: the actual ingredients of the drug they weaponized. Doctors were
Speaker 3: losing patients in the hospital because you have to know
Speaker 3: what happened to someone to treat them. So they're scrambling,
Speaker 3: and we cannot praise these doctors highly enough. They're in
Speaker 3: a terrible situation. It's a ticking imbomb, and they're going
Speaker 3: through one antidote or treatment or cure after another. They
Speaker 3: finally scramble lot. I think it was uh NOTx alone.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like the stuff that you save someone who
Speaker 2: is overdosing on an opioid.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, yeah, that's stuff. And all of the hostage
Speaker 3: takers did die. One hundred and thirty or so of
Speaker 3: the hostages died, and most of the hostages who died
Speaker 3: was a result of the terrorism. For the hostage takers,
Speaker 3: it was a result of the gas that the Russian
Speaker 3: government deployed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't know the exact details, which is a problem.
Speaker 2: Right Again, this has gone to trial. There's been examinations
Speaker 2: of this, like what happened there with some conclusions that
Speaker 2: feel more concrete than others. But definitely the forty people. Well,
Speaker 2: and let's say thirty nine of the people that were
Speaker 2: hostage takers were killed either by being shot, after being
Speaker 2: disabled or whatever. But there's one guy who ended up
Speaker 2: having to stand trial for this, literally one human being
Speaker 2: out of the forty Oh that's right, he made it
Speaker 2: out alive that had to stand trial. But then the
Speaker 2: you know, the rest of the families of the other people,
Speaker 2: specifically the one hundred and thirty that died, were left
Speaker 2: with so many questions trying to figure out what the
Speaker 2: heck happened, and what do you do now? Like, what
Speaker 2: do we do now? Yeah?
Speaker 3: What about when leven Letvigneko said later that some of
Speaker 3: these hostage takers or Chechen militants were working for the FSB,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: See, Yeah, well, we don't want to focus too much
Speaker 2: on this, but how did the Chechen rebels get into Moscow?
Speaker 2: One hundred kilograms of explosives, one hundred hand grenades, three
Speaker 2: what they call heavy bombs, and eighteen ak assault rifles
Speaker 2: and twenty pistols by the way, but how did they
Speaker 2: get into the country and threw all the checkpoints and
Speaker 2: into the heart of Moscow to take like to make
Speaker 2: this attack happen?
Speaker 3: And how okay? And also what about the signals that
Speaker 3: the Chechens were sending out pretty blatantly in the month's
Speaker 3: leading Okay, you're right, you're right. We'll have to do
Speaker 3: an episode because otherwise we're just okay, all right, maybe Matt,
Speaker 3: what about this? Should we take an ad break and
Speaker 3: get to another drug as a weapon? Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, please?
Speaker 3: And we have returned. I believe this is what originally
Speaker 3: inspired this episode. This evening, Matt, on a previous strange
Speaker 3: news you had shared an intensely disturbing story of criminals
Speaker 3: operating in the Atlanta area and drugging partygoers with something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh it, it's unknown right now what drug was
Speaker 2: used in these specific attacks. There were also attacks in
Speaker 2: New York City that were very, very similar with substances.
Speaker 2: Whatever the substance is, it was, it was used to
Speaker 2: make someone seem extremely intoxicated and lose consciousness at some
Speaker 2: point or to some extent, and also become extremely what
Speaker 2: word would you.
Speaker 3: Use, suggestible, compliant.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's what it is, Just going along with
Speaker 2: things like everything's okay, but not having all of your
Speaker 2: faculties anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And this prompted a conversation that we've had
Speaker 3: with many of our fellow conspiracy realists via email via
Speaker 3: the various waging contact us like our call in line,
Speaker 3: and a lot of us were bringing up a substance
Speaker 3: made from the Torah seeds are also derived from the
Speaker 3: nightshade family, called scopolamine s C O P O L
Speaker 3: A M I N E. It is way more fun
Speaker 3: to sound out that word than it is to take
Speaker 3: that substance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called the most dangerous drug in the world,
Speaker 2: and it's also used it's called in other place in
Speaker 2: the Zombie Drug and Devil's Breath. Yeah, it's got all
Speaker 2: kinds of words, specifically because of the way it was deployed. Gosh,
Speaker 2: where was that ben We heard about it being deployed
Speaker 2: in several countries where it was made into a powder
Speaker 2: that was then blown into somebody's face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Columbia was big for that, parts of other parts
Speaker 3: of the region, like Ecuador. Yeah, but the substances like
Speaker 3: this can be derived from a lot of different forms
Speaker 3: of the night shade family, and you can find scopolamine
Speaker 3: in things like man drake, angels, trumpet, h main plants
Speaker 3: to be honest, that I would not be able to
Speaker 3: readily identify in the wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this specific plant is detura, right, That's the one.
Speaker 2: We had people writing to us after we had that
Speaker 2: discussion on Strange News talking about Detura and the seeds
Speaker 2: from that plant.
Speaker 3: Old Jimson Weed. He's another name for it, which is
Speaker 3: way more innocuous, Jimson weed. Jimson Weed sounds like a
Speaker 3: character in a Wild West story that we would make up,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like him. If he's a little bit older.
Speaker 2: He's been around for a long time. Old Jimson Weed.
Speaker 2: He's seen it all, you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, we needed that levity, but yeah, maybe we should
Speaker 3: write that, maybe we should use the character Jimson Weed
Speaker 3: into it. He always he's always vaguely surprised.
Speaker 2: He's got a dog.
Speaker 3: So all right, Each of these plants, as Jimson can
Speaker 3: assure you, will have a long history in the spiritual
Speaker 3: practices of indigenous cultures around the world. Like they're not
Speaker 3: universally considered demonic, insidious, or bad. I was surprised to
Speaker 3: learn the name Daturah comes from India because thed torah metal,
Speaker 3: a related plant, is considered to be a sacred favorite
Speaker 3: plant of the god Shiva.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, Am I wrong? Isn't Shiva like the creator destroyer?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, you're right.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's interesting. Isn't that interesting? Creator and destroyer?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah the uh? I think Sheiva is the destroyer
Speaker 3: of trinity?
Speaker 2: Oh okay cool?
Speaker 3: Who yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, No, you're right, because
Speaker 3: Shiva creates the universe, but that is also the destroyer
Speaker 3: in the trimurty, the Hindu trinity.
Speaker 2: Look, man, I'm just going off of these weird little
Speaker 2: impulses that are bouncing around my brain of things I
Speaker 2: may have read once and so I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I need to bone up on my Shiva.
Speaker 3: Dude, we should go to We should go to BAPS.
Speaker 2: Oh, I would love to go there. We should go
Speaker 2: do some stuff, talk to some people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's actually, let's make a day of it.
Speaker 2: Let's see it.
Speaker 3: We are very lucky here in the fair metropolis of
Speaker 3: Atlanta to have some to have a collection of holy places, watts, temples,
Speaker 3: and monasteries even and BAPS is a Hindu temple with
Speaker 3: quite a story behind it. And lest we sound, lest
Speaker 3: we sound like we're, you know, super fancy guys or something, Matt,
Speaker 3: the reason I want to go to the temple is
Speaker 3: I want to go back to the gift shop again
Speaker 3: because they have comic books about Shiva. Oh cool, Yeah,
Speaker 3: they're really cool.
Speaker 2: And temples too, Yeah, exactly. What's a good way for
Speaker 2: people to find if you want to look it up,
Speaker 2: just b a PS Atlanta is probably the only search
Speaker 2: terms you need to be able to find this amazing place.
Speaker 3: Maybe BAPS Atlanta Hindu. There you go, just to be safe,
Speaker 3: but that'll lead you to BAPS. Sri swam and Ari
Speaker 3: on Mandir coumples are called mandas. It's in Lilburn, Georgia.
Speaker 3: So if you happen to have some time in Atlanta
Speaker 3: and you want to see something cool, then do check
Speaker 3: that out.
Speaker 2: Like astounding and unexpected, like yeah, when you behold it
Speaker 2: and you're like, wait, where am I? How did this?
Speaker 3: Why? What? They've got a great vegetarian restaurant on the ground.
Speaker 3: All they ask is that you don't bring meat or
Speaker 3: leather products into the grounds, which I think is very reasonable.
Speaker 3: But it's such a trip to find it because directly
Speaker 3: across the street there's a subway.
Speaker 2: Well, thank goodness, there are least sandwiches.
Speaker 3: I always remember that because pre internet days, I was
Speaker 3: attempting to find this for some unrelated research and meeting
Speaker 3: some folks, and I didn't have like GPS, So I
Speaker 3: stopped a gas station asked for directions and the guy
Speaker 3: told me, well, you know where the subway is right
Speaker 3: and told me to just drive to the subway and
Speaker 3: take a left or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Check out,
Speaker 3: check this out. What you need to know from this
Speaker 3: conversation is that these drugs do, or these substances these
Speaker 3: plants do, again have a deep religious history, right, medicine
Speaker 3: for the mind, you could say, But in the modern day,
Speaker 3: you're not gonna hear a lot about that. You're gonna
Speaker 3: much more often hear about the torah and the tore
Speaker 3: seeds and scopolamine being used in crime. And that's where like,
Speaker 3: that's where they have a little paper thing and they
Speaker 3: blow the dust in your face in Columbia or also
Speaker 3: lace it on a cigarette. Because it just takes a
Speaker 3: little bit of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh that's really scary. Yeah, any well, I guess it's
Speaker 2: true for so many drugs. But any drug or substance
Speaker 2: that you can just slip into something like that or dose,
Speaker 2: you know, another thing that you're going to take in
Speaker 2: either either by inhaling or drinking that that is just
Speaker 2: super freaky because it is somewhat or mostly invisible, yeah.
Speaker 3: Tasteless, odorless, it's and it's just a couple sniffs and
Speaker 3: then the effects are severe, virtually immediate, and to the
Speaker 3: unsuspecting bystander, the effects are invisible. Yikes, you're not you know,
Speaker 3: you're not like Hunter S. Thompson on ether in Vegas
Speaker 3: or something, waving around like a cartoon inflatable guy at
Speaker 3: a car shop car shop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, you may just seem intoxicated, right, And when
Speaker 2: this drug is applied to someone who is let's say,
Speaker 2: in a bar or coming out of a bar where
Speaker 2: had just you know, been having drinks or smoking a
Speaker 2: little whatever with some friends, that it may appear completely
Speaker 2: normal and just the mild effects of what whatever other
Speaker 2: substance they were in taking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the criminals will know what's going on beneath
Speaker 3: the surface, and they have deployed this drug as a
Speaker 3: weapon because it makes people so incredibly suggestible to a
Speaker 3: zombie level of compliance. They can walk around on their
Speaker 3: own power. But if you say, hey, let's go to
Speaker 3: the ATM, put your card in the ATM, or give
Speaker 3: me your card and your pin number and then withdraw
Speaker 3: as much as you can, they'll say, oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, let's do it. And then you found an
Speaker 2: article here from GlobalPost dot Ca. Why don't you tell
Speaker 2: us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we go to a toxicologist, an expert on
Speaker 3: this drug in particular, who points out several things. The
Speaker 3: effect can last for more than twenty four hours, and
Speaker 3: if someone is somehow still not fully compliant, then the
Speaker 3: criminals may dose them again. And if you have a
Speaker 3: large enough dose of this drug, usually delivered in like
Speaker 3: a powder form, then you will experience respiratory failure and death.
Speaker 3: And this guy Camilo uribe this toxicologist. He says that
Speaker 3: scapolamine blocks neurotransmitters that carry information to the brain, the
Speaker 3: part of the brain that stores short term memory. So
Speaker 3: like being blackout drunk, it doesn't record what a person
Speaker 3: has done or being really high, I guess. And that's why,
Speaker 3: you know, like you were saying, you were saying, Ben,
Speaker 3: these you know, I'm remembering these things because they're popping
Speaker 3: around and the neurons of my brain. Scapolamine stops a
Speaker 3: lot of that. And there's a chilling quote from Camilo
Speaker 3: that we were able to confirm this expert is describing
Speaker 3: things that actually happen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he says, quote, I can give you a
Speaker 2: gun and tell you to go kill someone and you
Speaker 2: will do it. Yes, hikes. Guykes. See now that speaking
Speaker 2: of mk ult and some of these other you know,
Speaker 2: experimentations and potential like pop let's say, rumors about mentoring
Speaker 2: candidate stuff, someone who is so susceptible that they will
Speaker 2: take a gun and they will you know, when they're
Speaker 2: in that state or under the effects of a substance,
Speaker 2: they will need to want to and be totally fine
Speaker 2: with taking a gun and shooting someone. And then when
Speaker 2: they're not on that drug, they don't even remember having
Speaker 2: those thoughts. But then drug gets introduced again, and then
Speaker 2: potentially they're a killer.
Speaker 3: Which differentiates this from other states of suggestibility, like a
Speaker 3: trance state or hypnosis. When people are in those sorts
Speaker 3: of states, they are suggestible, but they will not ordinarily
Speaker 3: do something they would otherwise not have done, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. If they weren't going to kill someone
Speaker 3: while they were fully conscious, they're not going to do
Speaker 3: it when they're quote unquote hypnotized. But with this drug,
Speaker 3: anything is on the table.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this drug has actual brainwashing potential.
Speaker 3: And you might be saying, well, does that mean Manchurian
Speaker 3: candidates are real? Not quite, because of the window of time.
Speaker 3: You know, a Manchurian candidate would need to function as
Speaker 3: a sleeper agent without their own knowledge for much longer
Speaker 3: than the effects of scopolamine can create.
Speaker 2: Well, I see, but okay, let's just let's game it
Speaker 2: out for a second. Sure, Let's imagine that yourhn se,
Speaker 2: your hand the man who you know killed Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Let's just say, while he's there at that event, he
Speaker 2: this stuff is blown into his face and he has
Speaker 2: given a gun and he is told, you need to
Speaker 2: kill Robert candidate. You have to kill Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And because I see where you're going, because he
Speaker 3: doesn't have a memory of doing this, he comes to However,
Speaker 3: that's I would say, that's like a It's like a
Speaker 3: microwave Manchurian candidate, right, a micro Manchurian because again of
Speaker 3: that time window, right, you could in the Manchurian candidate
Speaker 3: story and the fiction, right, the idea is that you
Speaker 3: could have this effect buried for years and then trigger it.
Speaker 3: But what you're describing now you pointed out, dude, that
Speaker 3: does sound possible, right, episode, Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I'm just throwing things out here,
Speaker 2: trying to make connections, but it is. It is weird
Speaker 2: thinking about that drug as the potential for that drug
Speaker 2: to be used in heinous ways by let's say, a
Speaker 2: military or an intelligence agency that wants to use it
Speaker 2: for offensive reasons.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And again, when the effect wears off, it
Speaker 3: will be as though the victim is trying to recall
Speaker 3: a fading dream. A lot of people experience that pretty commonly.
Speaker 3: Throughout the week. You will wake up with a vivid
Speaker 3: dream and you'll try to remember it, and then you know,
Speaker 3: by the time twenty or thirty minutes have passed, you
Speaker 3: only remember these little tableaus, right, bro.
Speaker 2: I'm pro I had one last night where I woke up.
Speaker 2: I thought, I woke up in my bed, took some actions,
Speaker 2: and then something horrible happened, and then I woke up
Speaker 2: in my bed again. And I swear to you I
Speaker 2: was in my house awake for that dream part. It
Speaker 2: was just it was intense. And it's that kind of
Speaker 2: thing where I don't know. This drug specifically blurs the
Speaker 2: line between reality and, like you said, kind of a
Speaker 2: dream state so much that I feel like it's one
Speaker 2: of the most dangerous. It is one of the most
Speaker 2: dangerous things that exists on the planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because if reality is perception, it is altering your
Speaker 3: reality in a non consensual way, right, and and the
Speaker 3: it's even worse than you know, some of those dreams
Speaker 3: that we're talking about. Like Matt, it sounds like you
Speaker 3: two have experienced the thing where you have a dream
Speaker 3: where that's so vivid and disturbing that you don't want
Speaker 3: to go back to sleep for a little bit. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's why I'll send it an email at three thirty
Speaker 3: in the morning sometimes because I'm like, ah, they're not
Speaker 3: going to get me this time. Back to work.
Speaker 2: What was that book? Again? The less you know, the
Speaker 2: better you sleep.
Speaker 3: Unless there it is, There it is. And this is
Speaker 3: exposure to this substance is even worse because you will
Speaker 3: come to in a situation that is probably very unfamiliar
Speaker 3: to you, and if you think really hard, you might
Speaker 3: be able to retrieve from your memory banks flashes like
Speaker 3: you may you may remember emptying your bank account, or
Speaker 3: throwing a bunch of valuable things from your house into
Speaker 3: a bag, or we even found one story. Guy wakes
Speaker 3: up but his apartment's empty, and he vaguely remembers helping
Speaker 3: move all his crap out of his apartment into a van.
Speaker 3: What vaguely?
Speaker 2: Okay, pizza and beer will do that sometimes to you,
Speaker 2: you know, like too much cheese and carbs and alcohol. Man,
Speaker 2: I really don't remember.
Speaker 3: That's why you always take a picture of your moving
Speaker 3: crew before you start. So there's this Vice documentary that
Speaker 3: we talked about briefly as well, from twenty twelve. It's excellent.
Speaker 3: This is the one that calls this drug the most
Speaker 3: dangerous drug in the world and in Colombia. I think
Speaker 3: it's commonly derived from the boracho tree, which is roughly
Speaker 3: translates to like, I think the drunken tree or something
Speaker 3: like that. Yeah, and the people who are making this documentary,
Speaker 3: they're down there, they're in Colombia and they're speaking with
Speaker 3: drug dealers and also just regular Colombian civilians who all
Speaker 3: confirm this stuff makes people childlike you can guide them
Speaker 3: wherever you want. The US authorities think it also wrote
Speaker 3: about this because it was seen as a big, big problem.
Speaker 3: It's just like what happens in other countries. You're at
Speaker 3: a bar, you're at a club, you're having fun. Maybe
Speaker 3: an unfamiliar, attractive stranger finds you very interesting, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? Who doesn't love a little affirmation of
Speaker 3: that regard, even if you're even if you're already in
Speaker 3: a relationship. A lot of people will just say like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: thank you. I also find myself pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: There's also this scenario where there's an attractive person like
Speaker 2: that that unbeknownst to you, is making themselves known to
Speaker 2: you without approaching you, so that you approach them, which
Speaker 2: is in the exact same scenario. Just that one is
Speaker 2: even a little more insidious because it makes you think
Speaker 2: it's your.
Speaker 3: Idea that I would say yes, And I'm glad you
Speaker 3: point that out. But that also brings up some bigger
Speaker 3: issues because people who are doing that and sort of
Speaker 3: implanting that idea or those actions in your head, they're
Speaker 3: often professionals at guing that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Hey, quick plug, listen to to Die For. It's another
Speaker 2: show from Tenderfoot TV, and it is with the host
Speaker 2: Neil STRAUSSI made to Live and Die in La and
Speaker 2: it talks it. The whole thing is about this Russian,
Speaker 2: alleged Russian sexpionage agent and using these types of tactics.
Speaker 2: That's what got me get about that.
Speaker 3: To shout out the sparrows, Yeah, the concept that black
Speaker 3: Widow did not come from thin air. Yeah, but the yeah,
Speaker 3: and look it goes back to you know, what we
Speaker 3: have described sometimes as the two ten rule. Honeypot operations
Speaker 3: are real. You don't have to be a diplomat, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't have to be a professor doing some like
Speaker 3: edgy research or a business tycoon.
Speaker 2: You might just be hanging out at a bar in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Yeah you can. You can also just be You don't
Speaker 3: have to be a stranger in a strange land. This
Speaker 3: can happen in much many more places than you think.
Speaker 3: And folks, we are not saying this to disrespect anybody's
Speaker 3: self esteem or your appearance or your RIZ or whatever.
Speaker 3: You just always need to be skeptical when an attractive
Speaker 3: person approaches you in an unfamiliar place, not even attractive,
Speaker 3: not even physical terms like someone with that you want.
Speaker 2: Yes, you, specifically you, And well, this is what I
Speaker 2: would recommend to everybody. Just make sure you have zero
Speaker 2: RIZ when you're out and about as I do, and
Speaker 2: you're good to go.
Speaker 3: Right. One of my I don't know if I ever
Speaker 3: told you this, one of the best ways I cut
Speaker 3: off a conversation. I was. I was at a crosswalk
Speaker 3: in New York City and someone is really trying to
Speaker 3: talk to me about something. So I'm just waiting, and
Speaker 3: then eventually I turned to them, because you know, they're
Speaker 3: clearly targeting me talking to me. Turned to them and
Speaker 3: then I say, just like this, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 3: speak English.
Speaker 2: Effective was it?
Speaker 3: I think it was just surreal enough because of the
Speaker 3: the American accent. It was just surreal enough. They were like, Oh, okay,
Speaker 3: this guy is either a jerk, mental issues either way,
Speaker 3: too complicated moving on to the Yeah, nice, very nice,
Speaker 3: So tell us if that works for you. But what
Speaker 3: we're what we're seeing here is that approximately fifty thousand
Speaker 3: known incidents of drugging occurred from twenty twelve on like
Speaker 3: each year in Colombia, largely in the capital city, but Columbia.
Speaker 3: I think it's a short shrift and a lot of
Speaker 3: this reporting because when we focus on Columbia, then we
Speaker 3: are forgetting that this substance is deployed around the world.
Speaker 3: It is a drug that has been weaponized, not just
Speaker 3: for street crime. We're gonna maybe we go through some
Speaker 3: quick historical stories, Matt. I want to get to one
Speaker 3: of my favorite ones from the eighties, but this it
Speaker 3: feels weird to call the favorite.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, well, let's just continue with scopel being there
Speaker 2: for a second, because we do know that it has
Speaker 2: been used as an interrogation additive, a little adjunctive, what
Speaker 2: you want to call it.
Speaker 3: Just as a truth Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yea yeah.
Speaker 2: But you can imagine when someone is super compliant and
Speaker 2: you are not. They are not holding back on all
Speaker 2: of those control mechanisms that would prevent them from revealing
Speaker 2: secret information, right or you know, confessing to a crime
Speaker 2: and saying what they actually did. You can imagine to
Speaker 2: be very helpful. And this was something that what did
Speaker 2: you find here, Ben, who was using it?
Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah? The check Secret Police back in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and nine, it was proven beyond the
Speaker 3: shadow of a doubt that they used scopolamine at least
Speaker 3: thrice to get confessions, so that means they used it
Speaker 3: much more often. The only way we were able to
Speaker 3: confirm the three instances is because there's an eyewitness who
Speaker 3: is credible in court in two thousand and nine. And
Speaker 3: they weren't the first to do this. Josef Mengele, the
Speaker 3: Nazi Angel at Death, used it in interrogations. People thought
Speaker 3: it was a truth serum because it made them more compliant,
Speaker 3: but it turns out the science was sort of trash
Speaker 3: because if people are very compliant, but they're also they've
Speaker 3: also lost the ability to differentiate fact from fiction. Then
Speaker 3: whatever their confessions are are just what you told them
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, you asked them.
Speaker 3: A question in a leading way and they were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess are you Elvis Presley? Now that I think about.
Speaker 2: It, you know what, But you know, that reminds me
Speaker 2: of our exploration on torture, and the results often that
Speaker 2: you get from torturing someone is what you want them to.
Speaker 3: Say, exactly right. And that's a hard pill for a
Speaker 3: lot of people to swallow because it leads us to
Speaker 3: an even more uncomfortable series of conspiracies. And Okay, here
Speaker 3: is again I hesitate to call it my favorite story,
Speaker 3: but this is so strange. Way back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: there is a diplomat, Colombian diplomat going to Chile. Happens
Speaker 3: all the time, right, this guy's caught smuggling cocaine into
Speaker 3: the country. Diplomat smuggling cocaine. Weird disaster from the jump.
Speaker 3: It's not a good look. You know, you're supposed to
Speaker 3: use diplomatic pouches for non illegal things. So he was
Speaker 3: going under the jail right in many ways. But apparently
Speaker 3: authorities and doctors investigated him and determined that he was
Speaker 3: under the influence of scopolamine at the time. No way,
Speaker 3: that's the story.
Speaker 2: An unwilling diplomatic mule.
Speaker 3: An unwilling diplomatic drug mule, and he couldn't remember who
Speaker 3: got to him, so the charges against him were dropped.
Speaker 3: Now this is a little bit weird because also, if
Speaker 3: you don't want to get in trouble for smuggling cocaine
Speaker 3: and you're aware of this drug, then maybe you could
Speaker 3: use that as you get out of jail free card.
Speaker 2: On yourself, like hit yourself with it. Oh the cops,
Speaker 2: I'm like, whoa would that work? Oh my god?
Speaker 3: What that's like a nuclear level strategy.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but instead of a you know, false tooth
Speaker 2: that's got poison in it to take yourself out. If
Speaker 2: you're an intelligence agent, you've just got a scopel, I
Speaker 2: mean tooth, take it out, crack it, and.
Speaker 3: This guy great, we have to hold him for another
Speaker 3: twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but they didn't see it. So now you're
Speaker 2: like somebody scopeling to me.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine you see that in just any awkward situation, right,
Speaker 3: like your your significant other is mad at you or something. Oh,
Speaker 3: you didn't defrost the chicken. Oh, no, sorry, babe, I
Speaker 3: got again. At least I still have my kidneys.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry. I know we're joking about this, but
Speaker 2: people have died from this stuff, people robbed and assaulted
Speaker 2: with this kidnapps, and we're so sorry. I'm sorry for
Speaker 2: joking about it, but it is like, it is.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous whatever, it is ridiculous though it is so surreal
Speaker 3: and ridiculous. I think we do need some levity. I
Speaker 3: appreciate what you're pointing out their matt because kidnappers have
Speaker 3: made use of this drug like drugging parents and abducting
Speaker 3: their children. Sexual predators use this extensively. It's just incredibly
Speaker 3: difficult to similar to ghb or Rufi's right, it's difficult
Speaker 3: to track down a criminal when the victim may have
Speaker 3: almost no memory of the crime. And as you listen
Speaker 3: right now, wherever you are in this wide world, these
Speaker 3: crimes are continuing, and I think we could say each
Speaker 3: of these is a conspiracy all their own. Yes, a
Speaker 3: lot of these substances again do have legit medical uses,
Speaker 3: like scopolamine can treat motion sickness, but it's usually used
Speaker 3: these days as a weapon.
Speaker 2: Yikes. And you know what scope of me is terrifying.
Speaker 2: Uh just I love that we focused on that there
Speaker 2: are other things been in here that we haven't even
Speaker 2: gotten to yet, and I feel like that's always the case.
Speaker 2: We just need to have a twenty four hour feed
Speaker 2: where we just have a conversation and it doesn't stop
Speaker 2: and just keep talking through things.
Speaker 3: So great for our friendship, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well and our families and our families.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But these things that are often called riot control agents
Speaker 2: nowadays also known as non lethal chemical weapons. Yeah, these
Speaker 2: substances that are often found through you know what do
Speaker 2: they call it, pharmacological research or a drug research that
Speaker 2: is not weaponized, is not meant to be weaponized. But
Speaker 2: you find out about these substances, then you imagine from
Speaker 2: a military perspective, increasing the dosage on these things and
Speaker 2: then deploying them in either as the name states, in
Speaker 2: a riot situation, right to either calm down a populace
Speaker 2: or a bunch of people that are angry, probably for
Speaker 2: good reason, or to use against an attacking military or
Speaker 2: to you know, the way a chemical agent like a
Speaker 2: nerve gas would have been used back in the day,
Speaker 2: but in this case it would be quote non lethal.
Speaker 2: So maybe it would skirt underneath some of those chemical
Speaker 2: weapons control treaties and convention that we have so like,
Speaker 2: and there is research on that. But just to go
Speaker 2: back to that article we cited before drugs as chemical
Speaker 2: weapons passed in perspectives, Uh, this, this sentence, I think
Speaker 2: is the most important thing for our show. Research and
Speaker 2: production on new chemical warfare agents or cwa's has virtually stopped,
Speaker 2: or it's being conducted secretly, which I think because no
Speaker 2: country is going to come out and say, ah, we
Speaker 2: are making great advances in our chemical weapons department of whatever.
Speaker 3: And furthermore, no country is going to accept without extensive
Speaker 3: proof that other countries are somehow keeping their word right,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, why would you?
Speaker 2: But again and they probably aren't. It's very similar to
Speaker 2: some of the pathogen research that we've talked about since
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen extensively, where there's gain of function research happening
Speaker 2: across the world to make sure that each individual country,
Speaker 2: sometimes science at large, but mostly individual countries can defend
Speaker 2: against any possible release of a pathogen within their populace, right.
Speaker 3: And how much defensive research can you do before you
Speaker 3: are making the offensive materials?
Speaker 2: Yes, but in this case just with drugs, but medicines.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's a it's a hell of a loophole
Speaker 3: because it's nigh impossible to close it right until every
Speaker 3: substance has been discovered in all of its various forms.
Speaker 3: It's just it's not going to happen. And a lot
Speaker 3: of that look, a lot of that research, of the
Speaker 3: defensive research is legitimate. We're just saying that the line
Speaker 3: between defensive and offensive is much less bright. There's there's
Speaker 3: a lot of liminal gray overlap the closer you look,
Speaker 3: and it's it's dangerous. Basically, what we're saying is the
Speaker 3: same stuff we say every time here when we talk
Speaker 3: about these kind of grifts micro and macro level. Be
Speaker 3: careful when you're out having fun. We simply cannot assume
Speaker 3: that every single stranger we meet, or every country we encounter,
Speaker 3: is going to be acting in good faith. That was depressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think most of this is. But you know,
Speaker 2: that's just kind of it's kind of our trade. Ben
Speaker 2: that's what we do. We find Jimson Weed finds that
Speaker 2: silver lining.
Speaker 3: Oh you boys looking for some toro.
Speaker 2: That's the name is dog silver silver Lining.
Speaker 3: There we go Jameson Weed and silver Lighting. That's the
Speaker 3: news show. Please tune in tell us if we should
Speaker 3: make that show. Give us some background on Jimson Wheed
Speaker 3: and silver Lining. In the meantime, perhaps even more importantly,
Speaker 3: we hope that this finds everyone safe amid grand adventure.
Speaker 3: We will be back later with a se Seer Hadden episode.
Speaker 3: We've got more on supplements coming out. We've got a
Speaker 3: lot of work to do, and we'd love for you
Speaker 3: to be part of our continuing mission. Let us know
Speaker 3: what you think. Give us your first hand personal experiences.
Speaker 3: Always give us suggestions for episodes we should cover in
Speaker 3: the future. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: You've heard it all before, we you know, folks, we
Speaker 3: hope you're not tired of the George Washington stuff. Matt
Speaker 3: redid the song. We've got a continuing saga, Saga Saga.
Speaker 3: You can find that on Instagram. If you want to
Speaker 3: talk with us directly, why not give us a phone call.
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight three three st DWYTK. When
Speaker 2: you call in, give yourself three minutes, because that's how
Speaker 2: long you've got to make the message. Give yourself a
Speaker 2: cool nickname, whatever you want, anything literally anything, just make
Speaker 2: it fun, and then let us know at some point
Speaker 2: in that three minutes if we can use your name
Speaker 2: and message on the air, and then include your voice
Speaker 2: by the way, So like, if you want us to
Speaker 2: do something with your voice, let us know, or if
Speaker 2: you don't want us to use your voice, let us know.
Speaker 3: Or if you yeah, if you want us just to
Speaker 3: summarize what you said, we're totally fine. Misses anonymity, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we've got your back absolutely.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, If you've got
Speaker 2: maybe an attachment a picture of your cat, as many
Speaker 2: people have been sending us recently, we love those, or
Speaker 2: you know a bunch of links, why not instead send
Speaker 2: us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are 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 iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.