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 Iheartrading.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 3: our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are you. You are here That makes this the
Speaker 3: stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
Speaker 3: of the week, which means it is time for some
Speaker 3: strange news. Where are Mexican cartels getting all this hardware?
Speaker 3: From what's going on with Iran the US? And that
Speaker 3: weird sound in Florida that might just be fishbanging? Is
Speaker 3: Bear going to be held responsible for some various other
Speaker 3: things Before we do any.
Speaker 4: Of that, we'll get to all that more.
Speaker 3: But before we do any of that, we've got an
Speaker 3: up and coming musician to talk about. And even before then, Noel,
Speaker 3: you had some thoughts on the recent resurgence and viral
Speaker 3: popularity of Stanley Cup's not the hockey trophy exactly.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, first of all, that's the first time
Speaker 4: I heard all this hubbub about the Stanley Cup. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: I guess hockey's taken off in the States now, you know,
Speaker 4: people are like all of a sudden getting stoked about hockey.
Speaker 4: Not the case. Apparently. This company, Stanley, has been around
Speaker 4: for like a hundred years and largely, much like the
Speaker 4: whole deal with Carhart, the brand kind of shifting from
Speaker 4: like a working class sort of like you know, dungarees
Speaker 4: or whatever and meanies for the construction site into more
Speaker 4: of a fashion forward brand. That's kind of what's happened
Speaker 4: with Stanley. They were largely known for the kind of
Speaker 4: thermisis and sulated thermoss that you might see folks taking
Speaker 4: to a work site. And then I don't know exactly
Speaker 4: how it happen. There were a couple of things that
Speaker 4: contributed to it. One I think was a story about
Speaker 4: like a car fire that like the only thing that
Speaker 4: survived was one of these Stanley quincher cups or whatever.
Speaker 4: They're very popular among nurses, They're very popular among you know,
Speaker 4: kind of young people. There are even stories about how
Speaker 4: young people are getting bullied for not having Stanley cups
Speaker 4: or for having knockoff Stanley Cups kind of like a
Speaker 4: bit of a rag's to riches kind of story for
Speaker 4: this brand. They started doing all these exclusive colors. People
Speaker 4: are getting in fights over them at Walmart's. There was
Speaker 4: a heist of them recently to come into our recent
Speaker 4: kind of fascination with weird heists. But the story today
Speaker 4: is that it has been confirmed that these products do
Speaker 4: contain lead. There were some like kind of TikTok moms
Speaker 4: that do these sort of like you know, testing of
Speaker 4: stuff to make sure there's no bad chemicals or whatever
Speaker 4: in them, and one user reported using one of these
Speaker 4: tests that you can get on Amazon, swabbing the inside
Speaker 4: of Stanley cups, also swabbing the inside of I believe
Speaker 4: it's most that other one, Yeah, a YETI brand cup.
Speaker 4: It's also a similar kind of deal in in that space.
Speaker 4: And one other thing, and the other two tested negative
Speaker 4: and the Stanley cup tested positive, And we're hearing all
Speaker 4: kinds of reports there's lead and Stanley Cups. The company
Speaker 4: has come out and said, yes, there is lead in them,
Speaker 4: but it's okay because it's part of the manufacturing process
Speaker 4: that goes into ceiling the base of them, that creates
Speaker 4: this like mega vacuum whatever. I don't know material science
Speaker 4: well enough for manufacturing to know why that would be
Speaker 4: the choice that they would make. It might be part
Speaker 4: and parcel of the fact that this is an old
Speaker 4: legacy company, you know, so maybe it's like an old
Speaker 4: school thing. They said, it's okay, it's it won't ever
Speaker 4: be exposed unless the cup breaks, which is very rare,
Speaker 4: but I guess possible. But then that does beg the
Speaker 4: question why was the TikTok mom getting positive test results
Speaker 4: from swabbing the inside of the of the cup where
Speaker 4: the drink goes. So there's a lot of reporting out there,
Speaker 4: people saying largely believing Stanley. It seems like the general
Speaker 4: internet consensus that Stanley's telling the truth and this is
Speaker 4: sort of a non issue. But I am a little
Speaker 4: skeptical with these tests that are showing positive results of
Speaker 4: lead inside the cup where the drink goes. Obviously, much
Speaker 4: like conversation we had in our last episode, there are
Speaker 4: allowable levels of all kinds of talk.
Speaker 2: Sense, So, well, have we forgotten about potential water lead
Speaker 2: contamination like that cup and then you swab it and
Speaker 2: you think, oh, well, there's just water here. That was
Speaker 2: in there, And it's.
Speaker 4: True, I was interested in the control elements of the
Speaker 4: test that this one cracked. TikTok mom had that she
Speaker 4: was test cross testing other types of products which she
Speaker 4: would assume she's washing in the same sink, but only
Speaker 4: the Stanley tested positive. So all this to say, interesting,
Speaker 4: will be interesting to see if it affects their sales
Speaker 4: or the craze of it at all. Kind of think
Speaker 4: it won't. It does seem like the consensus says that
Speaker 4: Stanley is to be believed.
Speaker 2: Believe Stanley, Yeah, because you know, the microplastics and the
Speaker 2: forever chemicals getting in there anyway, no matter what you
Speaker 2: put in little let in there just adds this seasoning.
Speaker 3: It was fine. It was a good run, you know, the.
Speaker 4: Spice of life.
Speaker 3: Also that if you want to see the video that
Speaker 3: inspired this uh viral interest and then the natural the
Speaker 3: natural pushback or recursive nature of internet conversation, it's a
Speaker 3: person named Danielle on TikTok in her car fire. The
Speaker 3: thing that made Stanley popular online was that in the fire,
Speaker 3: the Stanley cups still had the ice cubes. Wow.
Speaker 4: That you can't buy that kind of marketing. You can't.
Speaker 4: You almost got to wonder if the people will the
Speaker 4: fine focus. They didn't do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, we're sure they did not not an inside jobs. Sure,
Speaker 3: so tell us about this Taylor Swift person. It's tough
Speaker 3: to make them living in music.
Speaker 4: I know. The first thing, you know, she's just playing
Speaker 4: at coffee shops and and uh and you know, little
Speaker 4: indie venues and and now she's like, now she's the
Speaker 4: biggest pop star on the planet. Seems have happened overnight. No,
Speaker 4: it did not happen overnight. It was a very methodical
Speaker 4: and intentionally tracked career trajectory. And you got to give
Speaker 4: props where props is do. There's a little something in
Speaker 4: the Taylor Swift catalog for everyone. She's interesting also in
Speaker 4: that she fought back against the record companies who owned
Speaker 4: her master recording rights and just said, screw you guys,
Speaker 4: I own my publishing. I'm just going to re record
Speaker 4: all those records myself and you. Everyone may have heard
Speaker 4: of the Taylor's version phenomenon, so there's you know, she's
Speaker 4: slowly been going not slowly actually honestly, kind of astonishingly
Speaker 4: quickly going through her entire catalog. The company Big Machine
Speaker 4: was the record label that sort of found her when
Speaker 4: she was sort of actually a bit smaller from the
Speaker 4: Nashville scene, because as you may or may not know,
Speaker 4: she sort of came up as more of a pop
Speaker 4: country artist and then gradually went way more mainstream than
Speaker 4: has since amassed just an absolute throng of loyal followers,
Speaker 4: you know, who will hang on her every war or
Speaker 4: swift Swifties don't cross Taylor, or the Swifties will come
Speaker 4: for you, much like the behive with Beyonce. But I
Speaker 4: would argue more intense I think perhaps, but I don't know.
Speaker 4: That's up up for debate. But she's really been in
Speaker 4: the news a lot lately. She one Time Magazine's Person
Speaker 4: of the Year, largely because of the unbelievable success of
Speaker 4: her Era's tour, which as we know, was just the
Speaker 4: hottest ticket in the known universe, and it was just
Speaker 4: you know, people were traveling from far and wide to
Speaker 4: go crash ticket Master you know many times over caused
Speaker 4: all kinds of conversations around the fairness the equity of
Speaker 4: ticket monopolies like that. We've had this conversation in the past,
Speaker 4: but it's only when an artist with that much power
Speaker 4: enters the chat that things really start to change, and
Speaker 4: I think that's part of what we're going to talk
Speaker 4: about today. All of that's just just a little bit
Speaker 4: of primary, hopefully not being too redundant for folks that
Speaker 4: are already following the story. But the latest is sort
Speaker 4: of threefold. I guess we'll start with the easy one
Speaker 4: because it's something that we talked about, I believe a
Speaker 4: couple of episodes ago. There has been a rash of
Speaker 4: AI generated lude images of Taylor Swift that have been
Speaker 4: kind of proliferating on the internet, some bordering on pornographic,
Speaker 4: most just kind of elude, just naughty, you know, Like
Speaker 4: here's there's some that depicting her like as you know,
Speaker 4: sort of like an exotic dancer perhaps, you know, surrounded
Speaker 4: by a bunch of dudes who were kind of cop
Speaker 4: and feels and things like that. There's one of her
Speaker 4: like making out with the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Speaker 4: We'll get to the Chiefs part of things in a
Speaker 4: bit as well. And I think what I mentioned when
Speaker 4: I was talking about it on the podcast was that
Speaker 4: I saw this and showed it to my partner, who
Speaker 4: immediately said, oh, Taylor's not gonna like that. And then
Speaker 4: literally a couple of hours later, article pops up on
Speaker 4: some tech website saying Taylor Swift representative of Taylor Swift
Speaker 4: seeking legal action against this stuff. And Ben, I believe
Speaker 4: both of y'all pointed out that this is one of
Speaker 4: those litmus tests of this kind of thing. It's hard
Speaker 4: to put the genie back in the bottle. It's hard
Speaker 4: to get things stricken from the Internet once it's already
Speaker 4: out there. Ben, I believe you pointed out the stress effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I reference. It's a law of the internet,
Speaker 3: you know, up there with that one, with that one
Speaker 3: other evil rule that seems accurate, which is if you
Speaker 3: can imagine a fandom, then some pornographic version of that
Speaker 3: fandom exists. It's like rule thirty seven, or it's got
Speaker 3: a weird number attached to it. But but yeah, this also,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's strange because I think maybe talking with
Speaker 3: you guys a little bit off air about this, people
Speaker 3: have been asking the US Congress and indeed the West
Speaker 3: overall to pass some sort of legislation weighing in on
Speaker 3: this idea like deep fakes for political propagandistic or pornographic purposes,
Speaker 3: And it seems like this might be the one. This
Speaker 3: might be the that gets Congress to act. They have
Speaker 3: a bill that isn't a law yet, but I think
Speaker 3: it's up now, isn't it on the way?
Speaker 4: Well, it does beg the question like, is Taylor Swift
Speaker 4: a powerful enough public figure that this stuff would be
Speaker 4: outside the realm of just fan fiction? Like would this
Speaker 4: stuff potentially be damaging in a way that would affect
Speaker 4: her and her business in real life as opposed to
Speaker 4: just being something a little bit rude that maybe people
Speaker 4: completely know isn't real. And I would argue that the
Speaker 4: images that I've seen either there's anybody believing that these
Speaker 4: are real. Yeah, they look, you know, more realistic than
Speaker 4: the kinds of face swaps we used to see in
Speaker 4: the past with celebrities on like you know, porn Hub
Speaker 4: or whatever. But it has a cartoon e quality to
Speaker 4: it. It has a stylized quality to it. But it doesn't
Speaker 4: have to. I mean, if you know, you can tell
Speaker 4: whatever mid Journey to make things photorealistic, you can tell
Speaker 4: them to make it in the style of you know,
Speaker 4: so it's definitely an issue. But to me, the question
Speaker 4: is like, is this just fan fiction of a public figure,
Speaker 4: and that to me seems to be protected by freedom of.
Speaker 3: Expression, right, That's that's an important distinction. I appreciate you
Speaker 3: making it that fan fiction we're referring to would be
Speaker 3: something in print, right, they're writing about like slash fiction.
Speaker 3: But the idea of depicting fictional characters versus picture public
Speaker 3: figures who are real people. That's the line. And what
Speaker 3: I was looking for is speak a draw the Defiance
Speaker 3: Act of twenty twenty four. It came out. You can
Speaker 3: read about it online. They have some interesting stats here,
Speaker 3: Like you said, no, it's clearly in reaction to the
Speaker 3: proliferation of deep fakes, an algorithm generated algorithm generated images
Speaker 3: and footage. They had a stat that stands out, they said,
Speaker 3: study from twenty nineteen found that ninety six percent of
Speaker 3: deep fake videos during that year were non consensual pornography.
Speaker 4: So that's gross. We all think this is gross. And
Speaker 4: I'm not saying this should be okay. I'm not saying
Speaker 4: that at all, but I'm saying that is a different conversation. Then,
Speaker 4: is it okay to make a deep fake video of
Speaker 4: a politician saying something they didn't say? That could cause
Speaker 4: a panic, that could cause you know, it's like the
Speaker 4: yelling fire in a public place. That's that's illegal. That's
Speaker 4: not freedom of speech. That's not protected speech.
Speaker 3: Freedom of speech means you can say what you want,
Speaker 3: but that does not indemnify you from the consequences. Right,
Speaker 3: that's the fire in a theater example. Also, there was
Speaker 3: a Joe Biden deep fake going around in the northeast
Speaker 3: what was it, New Hampshire where was a robo call
Speaker 3: and it sounded like Joe Biden telling people not to vote.
Speaker 3: So that's a real thing.
Speaker 4: It's okay. So then that does get me to the
Speaker 4: kind of the pivot here, which is the power aspect.
Speaker 4: Is Taylor Swift so powerful and influential that this is
Speaker 4: a different conversation maybe around to like, you know, how
Speaker 4: could this affect what people think? I think the like
Speaker 4: kind of naughty stylized images maybe fall into a different category.
Speaker 4: But we we start thinking about what if someone made deep,
Speaker 4: big videos of Taylor Swift telling the Swifties to vote
Speaker 4: for one party or another, right to not whatever. So
Speaker 4: now we're starting to see this NFL stuff with Taylor
Speaker 4: Swift dating what's his name, Kelsey, Right, there's a funny
Speaker 4: video of David Letterman talking about how much she loves
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift and what she's doing for the NFL, and
Speaker 4: he keeps saying that she's dating Kelsey Grammar, but it's
Speaker 4: this football player Kelsey. Somebody, Travis Kelcey. Thank you, Travis Kelsey.
Speaker 4: The fact that they her presence at these games is
Speaker 4: causing such a stir. It's making ratings go up because
Speaker 4: the Swifties that we were talking about are now all
Speaker 4: of a sudden watching football. They never cared about that.
Speaker 4: I mean, some of them probably did, but a lot
Speaker 4: of them probably didn't. So that's creating a real impact
Speaker 4: that the NFL seems to love, but a lot of
Speaker 4: old school NFL fans do not seem to love. They
Speaker 4: seem to despise. So there's a lot of noise online
Speaker 4: of people, you know, sportos saying stop putting the camera
Speaker 4: on Taylor Swift. But obviously, if you're the NFL, you're like,
Speaker 4: put the camera on Taylor Swift as much as possible
Speaker 4: because we're gonna get the numbers up. And obviously this
Speaker 4: could really come into play when the Chiefs go to
Speaker 4: the Super Bowl and the question then becomes is Taylor
Speaker 4: Swift's going to go. There is a massive conspiracy theory
Speaker 4: in the right that indicates that there are some high
Speaker 4: profile members of the right who believe Taylor Swift is
Speaker 4: a government op along with her boyfriend in order to
Speaker 4: sway the election, that the NFL is rigged, and that
Speaker 4: the Chiefs are gonna win the Super Bowl, at which
Speaker 4: point Taylor Swift is gonna come out and endorse Biden publicly.
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift has asked her fans to vote, and it
Speaker 4: was a massive surgeon registration. Travi Kelsey has asked people
Speaker 4: that follow him to get vaccinated, and I believe that
Speaker 4: made an impact too. So there's all this chatter that
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift is a government up and even weirder stuff.
Speaker 4: I think she's connected with the you know, the Illuminati,
Speaker 4: whatever that is, and it's getting a little out of hand.
Speaker 4: I just wonder what you guys think about this. Is
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift powerful enough to sway an election? And why
Speaker 4: is the right freaking out so much if that's not
Speaker 4: the case. It seems to me they believe it is
Speaker 4: the case, and that a lot of this other stuff
Speaker 4: is just smoke to try to you know, malign or
Speaker 4: shut down this potentiality.
Speaker 3: Former President Donald Trump recently used the term holy war
Speaker 3: in a private conversation, sharing the same concern that Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift the individual would be able to trigger possibly swing
Speaker 3: the needle in the upcoming twenty twenty four election, possibly
Speaker 3: with more success than Uncle g because you know, he
Speaker 3: recently told Joe Biden that China's not going to fear
Speaker 3: interfere in the election. We'll see how it works. But yeah,
Speaker 3: to your question there, Nol, it is. I think it
Speaker 3: is abundantly clear that because fandom in the world of
Speaker 3: ubiquitous interaction, because it creates such a positive feedback loop,
Speaker 3: people who would ordinarily not participate in politics will do
Speaker 3: so for the somewhat tribal dopamine hit of being able
Speaker 3: to say, I, as a loyal SWIFTYE, did what Taylor said.
Speaker 3: You know, so there is a great importance to it.
Speaker 3: I mean, we see that with a lot of public
Speaker 3: figures of that echalon like Beyonce, for instance, very rarely
Speaker 3: does public appearances, interviews, casual stuff, right, because a statement
Speaker 3: from Beyonce can also move the needle. And the Taylor
Speaker 3: Swift thing, I think is a little bit different. I
Speaker 3: love that you pointed out the Nashville then diagram there. Right,
Speaker 3: she's hitting as an entertainer, she's hitting a share of
Speaker 3: voters that ordinarily might not agree with each other.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: But if because of the strength of this parasocial relationship,
Speaker 3: if she says jump, then they might jump.
Speaker 4: I'd never really thought of that exactly in that way been,
Speaker 4: but I think that's right. The demographic of her fandom
Speaker 4: is not exclusively hardcore lefties right right. They're swifties, but
Speaker 4: not necessarily lefties, and some of them might not vote
Speaker 4: at all, or might just be of the age where
Speaker 4: they can vote, right, So a lot of power in that.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I've got a tweet I want to
Speaker 4: read or not. That's actually not a tweet, it's a
Speaker 4: it's a thread. But Matt, I've been seeing the gears
Speaker 4: turning as you're taking on all this sin. Do you
Speaker 4: have any thoughts about the power of pop cultural figures
Speaker 4: And have we ever seen anybody with this kind of
Speaker 4: power before who has made a stand yet? Because she
Speaker 4: has asked people to register, but she hasn't endorsed a
Speaker 4: damn thing, and that still could be to come look I.
Speaker 2: Love Taylor Swift, and I don't know what you guys
Speaker 2: are talking about. She's one of the best people on
Speaker 2: the planet and I will hear none of it.
Speaker 4: Okay, don't you dare accuse us of maligning to Swift.
Speaker 4: I am just saying she's powerful. I mean, she hasn't
Speaker 4: come down on one side of the issue yet, and
Speaker 4: I think honestly, some people of that who are entertained
Speaker 4: first they make a conscious effort not to do that,
Speaker 4: and I also think they shouldn't be bullied into having
Speaker 4: to do that. But I think the power is fascinating
Speaker 4: and obviously has certain political folks running a little scared.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, yeah, I feel all that stuff. The point
Speaker 2: I want to make on this particular stories about the
Speaker 2: NFL and the all the allegations that that sport, like
Speaker 2: the NBA was allegedly for quite a time and probably
Speaker 2: still is, was it's all rigged.
Speaker 3: Shout out Brian Towey.
Speaker 4: I agree with that.
Speaker 2: Shout out Brian Tooby. Indeed, our episode we made with
Speaker 2: him about the NBA and possible you know, weird stuff
Speaker 2: going on there and other I actually think he focused
Speaker 2: more on the MLB on baseball the NBA is when
Speaker 2: we talked to Tim Livingston, I believe, who made a
Speaker 2: show with Tenderfoot about that fascinating stuff. There's a anyway
Speaker 2: I'm getting into this because of another podcast called The Raven,
Speaker 2: another Tenderfoot production that Tim's working on. But the history
Speaker 2: of the NFL and sports betting is fascinating. And in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, they made a deal with some of
Speaker 2: these big online sports betting organizations to like allow them
Speaker 2: to also bet bet MGM, Fox, bet, Win, Bet, Points
Speaker 2: bet and all these, which then leads to that conversation
Speaker 2: that we had on those shows, on those episodes right
Speaker 2: about whether or not a major organization would also take
Speaker 2: part in setting up games for massive windfalls through the
Speaker 2: sports betting arenas totally.
Speaker 4: And now that a lot of that stuff is so
Speaker 4: open and legal, with like your Draft Kings and all
Speaker 4: of this online stuff that's relatively new, So it's just, yeah,
Speaker 4: you gotta wonder how that's gonna affect the business at large, because,
Speaker 4: let's be really all, it is a business, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they were already partnered with DraftKings, fan Duel
Speaker 2: and I think Caesars, So it's just a it's a
Speaker 2: road that we could travel down and I'd be interested
Speaker 2: to see if there's any if there's any fire there
Speaker 2: to the smoke that's being alleged, But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just want to end this segment with this. I
Speaker 4: found a thread that popped up to me. They're really
Speaker 4: feeding you these threads if you're an Instagram person, And
Speaker 4: this is from stone Kettle, and it said the Taylor
Speaker 4: Swift thing. Yeah, it's funny, but it's also crazy as hell.
Speaker 4: It is symptomatic of a dangerous growing instability gripping a
Speaker 4: huge chunk of the population. For these people, the entire
Speaker 4: world has become some enormous, fantastically complex conspiracy aim at them,
Speaker 4: and everything is evidence of it. Nothing is fringe, and
Speaker 4: every insanity, no matter how bizarre, is mainstreamed and taking
Speaker 4: a face value. I just thought that sort of summed
Speaker 4: this up pretty well. And then there's some nice back
Speaker 4: and forth unchecked. He ends this kind of madness leads
Speaker 4: directly to the violent suicide of civilization. Oh okay, let's
Speaker 4: take a quick break here we're from a sponsor, and
Speaker 4: then come back with some more strange news.
Speaker 2: And we've returned. Guys, are we familiar with the comedian
Speaker 2: Adam ray r a y y really like I have.
Speaker 3: A passing recognition of it.
Speaker 2: Sounds recognizable, right. So he notably played the role of
Speaker 2: policeman in the twenty twenty three smash hit Barbie and
Speaker 2: he he is a really great impressionist and comedian. I've
Speaker 2: been watching him lately. He does the live show I
Speaker 2: believe in Los Angeles maybe in other places too, called
Speaker 2: Doctor Phil Live, where he portrays Doctor Phil and he
Speaker 2: has on people and they do basically the Doctor Phil Show,
Speaker 2: but as this very funny person playing the role. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he did. He did an episode recently with Adam and
Speaker 2: Durrs from This is important. And he also the one
Speaker 2: that I'm thinking about guys. If you haven't seen the clip,
Speaker 2: check it out now. He had on Bobby Lee and
Speaker 2: Andrew Santino, who have a really funny so much.
Speaker 4: I love Bobby Lee so much.
Speaker 2: Well, they've got a tremendously silly podcast and they came
Speaker 2: on and it's just one of the funniest things that
Speaker 2: I've viewed in a long time. Just putting it out
Speaker 2: there for everybody and for you guys. Okay, let's get
Speaker 2: into our very serious subject here today. Arms trafficking and
Speaker 2: car tells. This story comes to us from Mexico City.
Speaker 2: This is a tale as old as time. You could
Speaker 2: probably trace it back to Oh, I don't know, let's
Speaker 2: let's just say the eighties, and let's let's be kind
Speaker 2: to the US government. But let's say the eighties when
Speaker 2: there were US military grade weapons being sent all over
Speaker 2: South America and Mexico as well as Latin America, and
Speaker 2: they were being sent to you know, usually let's say
Speaker 2: US military personnel and their friends, where basically I'm saying
Speaker 2: there were there were US military grade weapons being shipped
Speaker 2: all over the place in these areas. Now, the country
Speaker 2: of Mexico is alerting the world and especially the United
Speaker 2: States to a major problem at seeing of what appeared
Speaker 2: to be US military grade weapons in the hands of
Speaker 2: cartel members that they are battling. Right, So we're talking
Speaker 2: Mexican military personnel that are fighting cartels with these weapons.
Speaker 2: We're also talking about local police forces that are fighting
Speaker 2: cartels with these weapons, as well as you know, the
Speaker 2: equivalent of like DA and FBI there in Mexico. The story,
Speaker 2: we'll just read this from AP News. It was published Monday,
Speaker 2: January twenty second, it is titled Mexico demands Investigation into
Speaker 2: US military grade weapons being used by drug cartels. Right
Speaker 2: on the nose there, Mexico is looking for an urgent
Speaker 2: investigation into how exactly these US military grade weapons are
Speaker 2: finding their way into the hands of these members who
Speaker 2: are using them against the security forces. These are things
Speaker 2: like belt fed machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades, things
Speaker 2: that you don't want to deal with the wrong end
Speaker 2: of right, and they're generally not sold for civilian use.
Speaker 2: Before we even get into the rest of the article here, guys,
Speaker 2: I think we've all found in research for this subject,
Speaker 2: just in seeing the news and thinking about it. There
Speaker 2: are states in the United States where you can procure
Speaker 2: such things. Some of it is a little more off book,
Speaker 2: like the rocket launchers are a little more iffy. Let's
Speaker 2: call it gray market, yeah, grenades just writing underneath that.
Speaker 2: But the belt fed machine guns and like sig sour
Speaker 2: huge like fifty cow rifles are a whole other thing,
Speaker 2: because that's a whole that's a whole other problem here,
Speaker 2: like these large essentially sniper rifles that use the larger ammunition.
Speaker 4: So the implication being that there's an inside person's that's
Speaker 4: feeding them this stuff, or that there's even potentially governments involvements.
Speaker 3: I think the first part is a clarification that I
Speaker 3: really appreciate, Matt, which is that in some states some
Speaker 3: of this hardware that is military great can be acquired legal.
Speaker 3: So it's just it's expensive, it's inconvenient. It can happen,
Speaker 3: but nowhere near this degree. Yes, that is the issue.
Speaker 2: I would say it's highly unlikely that you have even
Speaker 2: a large number of people who are buying these weapons
Speaker 2: legally in the US then shipping them to Mexico because.
Speaker 4: You couldn't get that scale right. It wouldn't.
Speaker 3: It'd be tough.
Speaker 2: It would be tough to scale. And also the legal
Speaker 2: matter of tracing guns, because when you buy one of
Speaker 2: those guns, you're gonna get registered in some way somewhere
Speaker 2: unless you're buying it, you know, secondhand, third hand, and
Speaker 2: you basically create a paper trail that's difficult to follow.
Speaker 3: We don't need serial numbers between friends. You meet out
Speaker 3: in the desert, you make sure everyone's got a cool vibe,
Speaker 3: and then you get your bag.
Speaker 4: Yes you have an inside connection.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the vibe. I would say that Mexico is
Speaker 2: putting out is that hey, US military, maybe there's a
Speaker 2: backdoor problem that you've got going on with your military
Speaker 2: with your supplies, right.
Speaker 3: Which is almost certainly true.
Speaker 4: I think I do. Yes, I'm sorry, just elef in
Speaker 4: the room, guys, I guess it's not really an element,
Speaker 4: it's just the room.
Speaker 2: Well, so it brings up the thing we mentioned at
Speaker 2: the top, but also another The first thing is that
Speaker 2: US military grade weapons are hanging out all over the place,
Speaker 2: stockpiles of them that have just existed since the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties and before that. You then get repurposed or then
Speaker 2: an official military body comes through in a country where
Speaker 2: those weapons were used, takes them over and then has
Speaker 2: them stockpile. But then maybe they leak out. We know
Speaker 2: corruption amongst military members within Mexico itself is a huge
Speaker 2: issue that they've been dealing with for decades, but even
Speaker 2: recently we've talked about it on this show, where it
Speaker 2: appears that there are potential leaks for that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and potential let's say, lines that someone could follow to
Speaker 2: get that hardware. Agreed, it's a really messed up issue
Speaker 2: because these weapons were used to do things like destroy
Speaker 2: planes recently that were at an International Airport, like Cartel
Speaker 2: members used some of this weaponry to all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff.
Speaker 3: To stop a boss from escaping right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was when one of the one of l
Speaker 2: Chapo's suns was being arrested or being taken in. There
Speaker 2: was a huge, I don't know, pushback their resistance to
Speaker 2: that action being taken by the military where very dangerous
Speaker 2: weapons were being used against military members and civilians alike. Horrifying,
Speaker 2: terrifying stuff that if you were there to witness it.
Speaker 2: Just the number of bullet holes And I'm looking at
Speaker 2: a picture right now of the entrance to the city
Speaker 2: hall in this one part of Mexico City where Cartel's
Speaker 2: shot it up, and they're just these huge holes that
Speaker 2: are not from standard style like in AR fifteen or something. Gosh, guys,
Speaker 2: we don't even need to spend that much time on
Speaker 2: this because it is this huge quagmire of an idea,
Speaker 2: of a concept, of a thing that's happening that doesn't
Speaker 2: have an exact answer, But Mexico wants an answer, that's
Speaker 2: the whole point. They want to know what the heck's happening,
Speaker 2: and they're reaching out to the US, the government, to
Speaker 2: the ambassador saying, hey, what the heck is the problem?
Speaker 2: Help us figure it out.
Speaker 3: And do they not deserve an answer? I feel like
Speaker 3: that's a very fair thing. I mean, like, think through.
Speaker 3: I love that you pointed out there the messy logistics
Speaker 3: right of the US being the hedgemon of those two continents.
Speaker 3: What happens is you get your freedom fighters, your right
Speaker 3: wing Getia and you stage a coup, right shout out
Speaker 3: Guatemala in the fifties and so on, and you typically,
Speaker 3: unfortunately this is true, you typically cut that native talent
Speaker 3: and you leave them adrift. You don't take back their guns,
Speaker 3: so you don't take back their stuff. So that means
Speaker 3: there's a lot of material that's unaccounted for, and there's
Speaker 3: not a very high and unfortunately, in the domestic US
Speaker 3: there is a huge incentive on monitoring and tracking this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff or civilian esque versions of it, prosumer
Speaker 3: if you wish. But abroad there's absolutely there's very little oversight,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And people sometimes forget that
Speaker 3: you could hop on a plane and aproad is like
Speaker 3: two to three hours away, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think that that's one of the main
Speaker 2: points Mexican officials have been making if you are a
Speaker 2: civilian living in Mexico, you can buy low grade firearms
Speaker 2: like the small stuff, right low caliber weapons if you
Speaker 2: and you can't get a hold of the other stuff,
Speaker 2: you can't do it legally. So it has to be
Speaker 2: coming from somewhere, And like, what are the what holes
Speaker 2: do we need to plug to make sure this thing
Speaker 2: stops leaking guns into our country?
Speaker 4: Well, dude, also not to mention the hypocrisy of it all,
Speaker 4: Like there's so much rhetoric, you know, in certain political
Speaker 4: spaces around Mexico and how they're leaking drugs and and
Speaker 4: an evil people into you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's like the rhetoric, the heated rhetoric behind that we
Speaker 4: have to close those plug those holes, build the wall whatever.
Speaker 4: And again I'm not coming down on any political side here.
Speaker 4: It's just it's a fact these things are said. I
Speaker 4: can imagine that does not sit well oftentimes with these
Speaker 4: folks in power there. I mean, and we know it's corruption,
Speaker 4: we know there's problems, but when when they see these
Speaker 4: weapons that they believe are coming from US unchecked causing
Speaker 4: some of the problems that we're blaming on Mexico, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, So I could see the hypocrisy
Speaker 4: there being a bit of a.
Speaker 3: It's not hard to find where those guns are manufactured,
Speaker 3: is the issue, you know what I mean. It's not
Speaker 3: like a mystery that you know, this insert insert hardware
Speaker 3: here came from somewhere, but we don't know where. We
Speaker 3: suspect it was maybe made the US. No, it's one
Speaker 3: hundred percent this stuff is made in the United States,
Speaker 3: and it's somehow getting into the hands of veryous people
Speaker 3: who honestly aspire to replace the government and the rule
Speaker 3: of law of that country. It's a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 4: Dude.
Speaker 2: Oh this this is the other major part of this.
Speaker 2: I can't believe you didn't bring this up yet. There's
Speaker 2: a lawsuit some news that just came out of Mexico,
Speaker 2: but a lawsuit. They are suing seven US gun manufacturers
Speaker 2: for ten billion dollars. There's a lawsuit right now. It
Speaker 2: had at one point gotten struck down or dismissed, basically
Speaker 2: like you can't sue the gun manufacturers for.
Speaker 4: People don't kill people. You know, bot's kill people. People
Speaker 4: kill people.
Speaker 2: That was the big deal. It was there's a I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get this wrong y'all, there's a rule. It's not
Speaker 2: a law, but it is a one of those rulings
Speaker 2: that came down before that said you cannot sue the
Speaker 2: gun manufacturer because somebody used a weapon to kill somebody.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense, Like, yeah, that they just made
Speaker 2: the tool. Somebody else with malice or whatever intent or
Speaker 2: whatever was used it and someone died. But that only
Speaker 2: holds true within the United States, which is what this
Speaker 2: latest ruling said. So it's basically saying, yeah, well, if
Speaker 2: Mexico wants to sue the manufacturers, I guess we have
Speaker 2: to see this thing out and see how it plays.
Speaker 2: So that's going to be a fascinating thing that plays
Speaker 2: out over the next two three years or however long
Speaker 2: it takes.
Speaker 3: Especially because that's a that's a recent, a relatively recent
Speaker 3: US law. Right, it's a.
Speaker 2: Potential Lawful Commerce of Arms Act or the KEYLCAA.
Speaker 3: George w Yeah, mostly true. It's very difficult in the
Speaker 3: US to hold you know, your local I don't know
Speaker 3: why I said it, like your local mom and pop
Speaker 3: defense company. It's tough to hold them liable in civil
Speaker 3: court at least, right.
Speaker 4: Hey, quit picking on the defense companies, guys, yeah, they
Speaker 4: didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, no matter what route these guns are taking, it
Speaker 2: is believed, at least by the Mexican there is the
Speaker 2: government there that seventy percent of all guns that are
Speaker 2: getting in the hands of cartels come directly from the
Speaker 2: United States, from these weapon manufacturers that they've got beef
Speaker 2: with rightly. So, so we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 2: There is a story though, that I think we should
Speaker 2: cover specifically at some point in a full episode. It's
Speaker 2: a story about a factory in Wisconsin that was manufacturing weapons,
Speaker 2: these large caliber like they call them fifty caliber rifles,
Speaker 2: and how in some way six hundred thousand dollars worth
Speaker 2: of these things went to a cartel of the weapons
Speaker 2: that were being manufactured there. It is a twisted, weird tale.
Speaker 2: Vice has been writing about it, Reuter's been writing about it.
Speaker 2: A bunch of places wrote about it. I think it
Speaker 2: first hit the news like late last year, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: It's strange, you guys, and it makes me think about
Speaker 2: the reach of the cartel, how far as it go,
Speaker 2: how many countries is you know, one particular cartel in
Speaker 2: like the Sonola cartel or the New Generation cartel, it's
Speaker 2: creepy and I think we should look into it further.
Speaker 3: Yeah, writing it down. And also another question that the
Speaker 3: public media doesn't ask as often as it should. How
Speaker 3: well do these cartels play with others, Meaning, for instance,
Speaker 3: you might not have you might not have full reach
Speaker 3: into the Upper Midwest based on your current organizational structure,
Speaker 3: but you may know someone who knows someone right and
Speaker 3: you could talk O Marita a little bit with some
Speaker 3: with some locals. That kind of stuff happens. That's why,
Speaker 3: that's why it's called organized crime. They're super into this
Speaker 3: kind of thing. I think it's absolutely plausible. I agree
Speaker 3: with you, wrote it down, this is an episode in
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 4: Heck yeah.
Speaker 2: The Mexican government, by the way, estimates around two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand weapons are manufactured in the US and then sent
Speaker 2: to Mexico each year in some way I'm abused.
Speaker 3: Yeah, are they coming in new or are they no? No?
Speaker 2: Sorry not as in like their manufacturing and then sent directly.
Speaker 2: Let's say, let's say two hundred thousand weapons that were
Speaker 2: at some point manufactured by US based companies end up
Speaker 2: in Mexico.
Speaker 3: Every year, possibly with a secondary like a third party
Speaker 3: transit country of some sort.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, and that is an estimate. So the question
Speaker 2: is track down, track down the lines, guys.
Speaker 4: I mean, we know that the US military, like has
Speaker 4: lost nukes before in the past. Just would not shock
Speaker 4: me that there was an ungodly number of these stockpiles
Speaker 4: of like let's call them vintage weapons. You know that
Speaker 4: there maybe aren't keeping as close a watch on anymore
Speaker 4: as they should, and then maybe the leaks are coming
Speaker 4: from some of that as well, if not largely. I
Speaker 4: would be a shu to see, like what make and
Speaker 4: vintage some of these guns are? You know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's not it's not this year's models. You know, it's
Speaker 4: probably I bet you they're.
Speaker 3: Quite old, like the ak's and the coalition of covs.
Speaker 3: Coalitionon covs are a currency in some more troubled parts
Speaker 3: of the world. Once again, once it gets out, you
Speaker 3: can't get back in. And I would advance I'm just
Speaker 3: going off the top here. I would advance the idea
Speaker 3: that the US probably has messy oversight for anything handheld abroad.
Speaker 3: I think it's just too difficult to watch every falling
Speaker 3: belt fed sparrow.
Speaker 2: Well, and we've talked about black market arms dealing is
Speaker 2: a thing, and it's been a thing since arms have existed,
Speaker 2: and it's not going to stop. Just how much worse
Speaker 2: is it going to get? And is it possible to
Speaker 2: I guess, get the guns at the source, which is
Speaker 2: the factories making them. And is that a good thing
Speaker 2: or a bad thing? Let us know what you think.
Speaker 2: We'll tell you how to contact us at the end.
Speaker 2: Here for now, we're going to take a break and
Speaker 2: we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: We've returned bleeped the g rides. I want the machines
Speaker 3: that are making them. As our pal Zach said once
Speaker 3: upon a time, We're going to end with a tiny
Speaker 3: bit of hopefully good news. It's scary, but hopefully hopefully
Speaker 3: it's good news. Actually, wait no, we're going to give
Speaker 3: you the good news story. We'll give you a couple
Speaker 3: of weird ones at the end. So we talk often
Speaker 3: on this show about pharmaceutical companies, about R and D stuff,
Speaker 3: and you have probably heard longtime conspiracy realist, you've probably
Speaker 3: heard some advertisements for various pharmaceutical products on this show. However,
Speaker 3: that does not affect our reporting of these things. And
Speaker 3: Matt Nol you'll remember a while back, we had gotten
Speaker 3: very deep into neo nicotinoids. It was once called a
Speaker 3: conspiracy theory that those things were killing bees. They are
Speaker 3: very much killing bees. We also we also looked at herbicides.
Speaker 3: One of the most popular herbicides is round up. Have
Speaker 3: you ever used round up?
Speaker 4: You guys, No, not personally, but it's certainly like it's
Speaker 4: almost like xerox is synonymous with, you know, making copies,
Speaker 4: you know, or coc is synonymous with soda. Roundup is
Speaker 4: kind of occupies that same kind of space with pesticides.
Speaker 3: That's a great point. Yeah, I love that, Like it
Speaker 3: became the epononymous trademark, the word. Yeah, the so round
Speaker 3: up is super popular.
Speaker 2: Round up ready crops?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah, Like, Matt, did you ever use round up?
Speaker 2: I did not, because we talked about round up early
Speaker 2: on in my having a house career. So yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I avoided this stuff like crazy. But it is weird
Speaker 2: how many similar how many products have similar chemicals in them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just a matter of time before we all go, oh, crap,
Speaker 2: that one does it too?
Speaker 3: Bum bum bump. Yeah. The German pharmaceutical giant Bear bought
Speaker 3: the American agro chemical giant Monsanto back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Wheels within wheels, you know, just like a pyramid, ownership
Speaker 3: attenuates and conglomerates at the top. We're going to go
Speaker 3: to a Washington Post article that came out January twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, so just a few days ago as
Speaker 3: you're hearing this strange news on February fifth. Shout out
Speaker 3: to Francis Vanaal, who writes Bear is ordered to pay
Speaker 3: two point twenty five billion US dollars after jury links
Speaker 3: the herbicide roundup to cancer. Two point twenty five billion.
Speaker 3: Maybe the good guys win sometimes, maybe maybe the courts work.
Speaker 3: I don't know, what do you guys think? Just off
Speaker 3: that headline, it.
Speaker 2: Sounds great, don't it. But but again, but again, this
Speaker 2: is a huge company. That's a lot of jobs, it's
Speaker 2: a lot of people. We get that we feel empathy
Speaker 2: for those humans. I agreed, But it does seem like
Speaker 2: this is something we've kind of known. And then I'm
Speaker 2: going to continue one more but Ben, the science I'm
Speaker 2: doing quotations here is still out, guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the and they deserve that's those are two
Speaker 3: really great points, two really great butts. And the person
Speaker 3: awarded these damages. Is a guy named John mckavision, and
Speaker 3: uh mckivison filed a lawsuit in Philly when he was
Speaker 3: diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma, and he said, this happened
Speaker 3: because I used round up specifically on my property for
Speaker 3: the better part of two decades. And so the jury
Speaker 3: comes back and they unanimously find that round up is carcinogenic,
Speaker 3: it did give this guy lymphoma non Hodgkins lymphoma, and
Speaker 3: that Massanto either knew or was criminally negligent, you know,
Speaker 3: like willfully ignorant about the dangers of roundup. And so
Speaker 3: they say, this is the lawyers, the legal team, Tom
Speaker 3: Klein and Jason Icken said, this verdict is quote a
Speaker 3: condemnation of fifty years of misconduct by Monsanto, which again
Speaker 3: is owned by Bear. So so would Bear have made
Speaker 3: this purchase in twenty eighteen if they knew what was coming?
Speaker 3: Interesting boardroom conversations, you know what I mean, off the record,
Speaker 3: no phones in the room. I imagine Monzanto fires back
Speaker 3: or Bear fires back, and they say, we're appealing this.
Speaker 3: It's two point two five billion dollars. Obviously we're appealing this.
Speaker 2: And that's a lot. That's a lot for one.
Speaker 3: That's a lot for one. What about the class action,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, which is surely on the way.
Speaker 3: They also called the damages awarded by the court, they
Speaker 3: called it quote, unconstitutionally excessive. And this reminds me that
Speaker 3: was such a great setup in our in our previous
Speaker 3: conversation before the break, the controversy surrounding liability of gun
Speaker 3: manufacturers or firearm defense companies, things.
Speaker 4: Like that, and it came immediately to mind in terms
Speaker 4: of the Purdue case, where it's so rare to even
Speaker 4: have any whiff of holding those types of executives or
Speaker 4: the company accountable. It was only what there was clearly
Speaker 4: malice and malicious and maybe not malicious, okay, well whatever,
Speaker 4: No one editorialize here, but clearly an intent to ignore
Speaker 4: data and push forth something that was going to cause
Speaker 4: people to die with their knowledge. You know, It's different
Speaker 4: with medicine though, because death is only kind of a
Speaker 4: side effective medicine. Death is like the point of guns,
Speaker 4: So it's sort of hard to you know what I mean, Like, ugh,
Speaker 4: is the point of guns? Brother? The ultimate point is
Speaker 4: death or at the very least making people do things
Speaker 4: as a result of the fear of death. That this
Speaker 4: sort of the end.
Speaker 2: Goal of guns. The point is a hit him with
Speaker 2: some bird shots so they know you're coming, and then
Speaker 2: with some buck shots so they know you mean business.
Speaker 3: I think also the point is death is buteedor time
Speaker 3: is butet windoor, I'll be back, shut out, vego Ghostbusters?
Speaker 3: Can we get an air horn?
Speaker 4: Dot?
Speaker 2: Schwarzenegger snuck in there somewhere that guy was senisd there.
Speaker 3: I got a lot of plot twists today, guys. I
Speaker 3: actually had to listen to a lot of Schwarzenegger statements.
Speaker 3: Uh for a different thing. But but this is like,
Speaker 3: these are actual arguments. Another example of this. Another example
Speaker 3: of this is the to your point, noal the Sackler
Speaker 3: family and Purdue. However the courts end up working those
Speaker 3: things out, they have still created an environment wherein dangerous
Speaker 3: addictive drugs are sort of pure pressured onto patients who
Speaker 3: might not need them. Like, remember, I was so confused
Speaker 3: we were talking about this off air. I was so
Speaker 3: confused when uh docs wet hard on the paint to
Speaker 3: prescribe the oxycodone or oxy cont oxyds.
Speaker 4: No, it's not content anymore. Hydro codone is classic. That's
Speaker 4: like classic coke. OxyContin was like the next level up,
Speaker 4: and that was what they said, wouldn't get you addicted
Speaker 4: in the way that that hydro codone would. But yeah,
Speaker 4: hydro codone is still okay. It has a lot of
Speaker 4: tilent all in it, and so it's very commonly prescribed
Speaker 4: for like things like oral surgery. But it also left unchecked,
Speaker 4: and if they don't know the person has an addictive personality,
Speaker 4: can very quickly lead to addiction.
Speaker 2: You don't want to go fall the house of the
Speaker 2: usher or whatever.
Speaker 3: It was, right, Yeah, that was a great adaptation.
Speaker 4: You don't want to take that fall of the house.
Speaker 4: That's a that's a deep fall, that's a false flat
Speaker 4: on your face.
Speaker 3: And I feel like these three examples were mentioning firearms, opioids, uh,
Speaker 3: and now carcinogenic things that are just for your lawn.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: These these things show us one upling commonality. Indeed, something
Speaker 3: I could argue is conspiratorial, which is the burden falls
Speaker 3: upon the consumer caveat em tour As they said, there's
Speaker 3: serious questions about liability for the creators of these and
Speaker 3: other products, even unto of course, like food manufacturers. That's
Speaker 3: a big thing we talked about pretty often over the years,
Speaker 3: like the way the EU handles ingredients versus the way
Speaker 3: the UK or the US handles ingredients. I mean, the
Speaker 3: European Commission already got got in front of this because
Speaker 3: in twenty oh, gosh, twenty twenty three now they put
Speaker 3: in a ruling about the active ingredient in roundup live
Speaker 3: foss eight or gly foss eight, and they said, we
Speaker 3: don't think it's carcinogenic, and Canada said the same thing.
Speaker 3: And Bear has a lot of money.
Speaker 4: The difference, folks, that's what we have here. We don't
Speaker 4: believe that this is costing a gena despite the side
Speaker 4: different results. These eggheads don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 3: And I'm glad they talked. Sorry, that is exactly how
Speaker 3: they talk. And four years ago, interestingly enough, Bear agreed
Speaker 3: to pay a settlement in class action lawsuit tens of
Speaker 3: thousands of people. Bear paid a total of ten billion
Speaker 3: US dollars over allegations that round up causes wait for it,
Speaker 3: non Hodgkins lymphoma. And because Bear is a very powerful,
Speaker 3: big company, they did not admit wrongdoing. They just gave
Speaker 3: him billion dollars away.
Speaker 4: Ben, if you're hearing me chuckle every now and then,
Speaker 4: is because I'm just hearing in my mind you're describing
Speaker 4: a bear like bear feels very strongly about this, and
Speaker 4: the bear does this, and the bear does that. In
Speaker 4: my mind, it's just the culprit. Here is a giant
Speaker 4: anthropomorphic bear, love it. I know that's not the case,
Speaker 4: but you know, I have a very active imagination. My
Speaker 4: mommy told me right to bear arms.
Speaker 3: You know. That's what I was trying not to bring
Speaker 3: that up during our very serious conversation exactly.
Speaker 2: About the weapon.
Speaker 3: Straight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean everyone has a right to bare arms.
Speaker 4: All you got to do is lift, bro, you lift
Speaker 4: get those bare arms.
Speaker 3: Yeah. By some fur so Bear also be a ye er.
Speaker 3: In their most recent annual report to investors, they were
Speaker 3: required to state that they have thirty one separate lawsuits
Speaker 3: in Canada related to Roundup. Eleven of those thirty one
Speaker 3: lawsuits are looking to become class action lawsuits. Bear is
Speaker 3: Bear and Monsanto round Up. Those brands are in trouble.
Speaker 3: We don't know how, we don't know how far this
Speaker 3: will go. And obviously, Matt, I think we can all
Speaker 3: agree with the point you raised earlier. So astutely, we're
Speaker 3: not saying these companies are filled with evil, villainous monsters.
Speaker 3: A lot of people make a good living there and
Speaker 3: they're definitely not waking up every morning saying I hope
Speaker 3: I give someone lymphoma.
Speaker 2: They probably don't believe that it causes lymphoma. And I
Speaker 2: think that's just a part of being in that position,
Speaker 2: you know, especially like people were putting together the chemicals,
Speaker 2: people who are packaging these things like you cannot believe.
Speaker 2: I think there's that's that cognitive dissonance kind of thing,
Speaker 2: where like even if someone showed you, hey, this definitely
Speaker 2: causes cancer. But yeah, but this also puts like allows
Speaker 2: me to feed my family. It's a weird thing.
Speaker 3: And they're like, your family stinks.
Speaker 4: Though it's similar to what happened with Perdue, where it's well,
Speaker 4: that's not what our scientists say, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: You know, and again no shade on scientists, but we
Speaker 4: know a lot of the folks that end up getting
Speaker 4: those jobs working with these big companies come from regulatory backgrounds.
Speaker 4: They know how to kind of twist the numbers a
Speaker 4: little bit maybe, And again I'm not trying to malign
Speaker 4: scientists are saying that there are people out there doing
Speaker 4: quote unquote bad science.
Speaker 3: This just no Brown hates scientists anti.
Speaker 4: Science because I have a real agenda. But no, we
Speaker 4: know that you can, by virtue of limiting the scope
Speaker 4: of research kind of get the results you want. You're
Speaker 4: doing the thing that you're doing.
Speaker 3: You know, not too long ago, R. J. Reynolds supported
Speaker 3: studies where they found some doctor who is like, actually,
Speaker 3: smoking cigarettes is great for your respiratory, for breathing, it's
Speaker 3: like refreshing.
Speaker 4: It's the best if we're when there is all this
Speaker 4: talk about how the reason people in France didn't get
Speaker 4: COVID is because they smoked so many cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, you know, causality or whatever, without causation,
Speaker 4: never mind, there's different ways of looking at this stuff
Speaker 4: where you can definitely be like, that's the thing. See,
Speaker 4: that's the thing that did it. It was this, and
Speaker 4: we like that because it's our thing, you know.
Speaker 3: Correlation the causation, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: It just as an aside, speaking that shit think true.
Speaker 2: A little while ago we talked about these things med beds, right,
Speaker 2: and I fear so much shade and all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and it made a video put out there's so much shade.
Speaker 2: Then there really is new research coming out talking about
Speaker 2: resonances and cellular destruction and like ways to target like
Speaker 2: hyper targeting part of the like a tumor that's inside
Speaker 2: a brain, and then be able to actually use again
Speaker 2: different type of vibrations than sitting on a bed and
Speaker 2: someone you know too good good ones presumably right, good
Speaker 2: playing vibrations, yeah, but just playing some tones near you,
Speaker 2: but using using just vibrational tones to do things like
Speaker 2: cure cancer or at least remove a tumor.
Speaker 3: Didn't we talk about do we not?
Speaker 4: We may have talked about me if we danced around
Speaker 4: a little bit. But I think Matts saying that he's
Speaker 4: been seeing some new stuff that kisses even further into
Speaker 4: the realms of possibility, but.
Speaker 2: Just saying how quickly our belief can potentially be shifted
Speaker 2: if we're willing to take in evidence, right.
Speaker 4: And if we have skin in the game, especially you know,
Speaker 4: if it's like, oh, this might apply to my nana,
Speaker 4: you know, I want to believe right.
Speaker 3: It's also, yeah, you always have to hear things out
Speaker 3: in science, and sometimes people perhaps incorrectly misidentify themselves as skeptics,
Speaker 3: and what they're practicing instead is not open inquiry. What
Speaker 3: they're practicing is a kind of zealousness and over stubbornness
Speaker 3: at the very least sure, and that way it becomes
Speaker 3: another fundamentalist ideology, and just as dangerous as any other
Speaker 3: fundamentalist ideology, I would argue. And that's just one entity's opinion.
Speaker 3: But what we can see now is that you probably
Speaker 3: shouldn't use a ton of a ton of things if
Speaker 3: you just to be safe. If you hear something in
Speaker 3: the wind like this might cause this specific thing, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people want to court for it, then
Speaker 3: it's a personal choice, but very likely.
Speaker 4: It's up to you absolutely. But that's why I did
Speaker 4: want to bring up the lead in Stanley cups things,
Speaker 4: because I think it's so easy for someone to read
Speaker 4: that headline and immediately be like, oh, lead and Stanley
Speaker 4: cub is gonna kill us all, And not to say that.
Speaker 4: Maybe there won't be more retaith that comes out that
Speaker 4: says the levels are beyond allowable or they're not good.
Speaker 4: But you should think about more, like you know, the
Speaker 4: big picture before you make those decisions. That's the opposite
Speaker 4: side of it.
Speaker 2: You're right. I want to talk about how frustrated it
Speaker 2: is that things like round up are bad because it
Speaker 2: seems like such a beautiful miracle substance for someone who's
Speaker 2: borderline OCD like me when I look out at my
Speaker 2: grass and I go look at all these stinking weeds everywhere,
Speaker 2: and now I can't spray them with anything. I gotta
Speaker 2: go out and pick them one by one out from
Speaker 2: the root.
Speaker 4: I believe al Gore would call that an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 3: And here we wrap it up. I want to hear
Speaker 3: from people who have worked in this industry, would love
Speaker 3: to hear your take on these products, like are there
Speaker 3: safe herbicides? Are there safe pesticides? What do you think
Speaker 3: more of your fellow conspiracy realists need to know. Also,
Speaker 3: I want to give a quick shout out to Elmo,
Speaker 3: thank you for the mental health check in earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot of angst in Western society.
Speaker 4: Wait wait, people were I just want to say the headlause.
Speaker 4: I love this term trauma dumping on Elmo because on
Speaker 4: the social media account for I guess sm street, Almo
Speaker 4: wanted to know how everyone was doing, and apparently not
Speaker 4: super well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Elmo did respond just as we were going
Speaker 3: into record today. You can find a great article about
Speaker 3: the whole debacle on the BBC shout out to the
Speaker 3: journalist nor Nanji. You can also find out on XFK Twitter.
Speaker 3: One last shoutout, guys, we have to say congratulations and
Speaker 3: good luck to Crystal Gable, who is non consensually running
Speaker 3: for president in Minnesota. She got a Google alert that
Speaker 3: told her she's on the primary ballot for the presidency
Speaker 3: in Minnesota, and according to reporting, she cannot get off
Speaker 3: the ballot. She does not want to be potus. What
Speaker 3: we don't know. We know that she spoke with the
Speaker 3: Star Tribute and said, quote, I did not give consent
Speaker 3: to be on the Minnesota ballot for this race.
Speaker 4: Is this a public figure at all? Or is this
Speaker 4: just like a clerical error because of a mistaken connection
Speaker 4: with a name.
Speaker 3: It definitely is not if conspiracy it is. It is
Speaker 3: not a conspiracy that she was in on. So let
Speaker 3: us know the times you've accidentally run for office, folks,
Speaker 3: What a.
Speaker 4: Great plot for sort of a comedy, sort of satire.
Speaker 4: Someone's name accidentally ends up on the ballot and they
Speaker 4: win because all the other candidates are that garbage.
Speaker 3: The Eddie Murphy, the Eddie Murphy vehicle.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be surprised if this had been done. You're
Speaker 4: talking about Bowfinger or.
Speaker 3: No, it's earlier in that he goes into Congress based
Speaker 3: on name recognition, and spoiler, he ends up doing the
Speaker 3: right thing because it's a wholesome comedy. We can't wait
Speaker 3: to hear your thoughts, folks. Thanks as always for joining us.
Speaker 3: We'll be back later this week with a lot of
Speaker 3: strange things and some stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: In the meantime, join up with us. We'd love to
Speaker 3: hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4: That's right. You can find it to the handle Conspiracy
Speaker 4: Stuff where we exist on Facebook, YouTube and x FKA Twitter.
Speaker 4: You can also find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff
Speaker 4: show on Instagram and take any talk feeling down run
Speaker 4: out give us a car Win eight through three us
Speaker 4: to do w ride.
Speaker 2: I'll stop now.
Speaker 4: That was a thanks for checking in.
Speaker 2: Just you know, why don't you check in with us too.
Speaker 2: We're a lot like Elmo. The number is one A
Speaker 2: three three std W I t K. It's a voicemail system.
Speaker 2: You got three minutes and let us know if we
Speaker 2: can use your name and message on the air. I
Speaker 2: think that's it. What wait, what if people want to
Speaker 2: send us an email.
Speaker 3: Then all you have to do is reach out and
Speaker 3: touch space at our good old fashioned email address. Twenty
Speaker 3: four hours a day, seven days a week, we read
Speaker 3: every missive we get. Take us to the edge of
Speaker 3: the rabbit hole. We'll do the rest. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio
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