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 the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 4: super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 4: you are you. You are here. That makes this the
Speaker 4: stuff they don't want you to know. I hope your
Speaker 4: brain waves are doing well, fellow conspiracy realist. We are
Speaker 4: also going to check in with the state of music
Speaker 4: in a country or a region you haven't heard too
Speaker 4: much about here in the US. We are going to
Speaker 4: along the way mention some other stories that caught out eyes.
Speaker 4: If you're listening to this and you're currently unhoused, here
Speaker 4: as hoping that the Supreme Court does not ban sleeping outdoors,
Speaker 4: which is a thing they're trying to do. Have you
Speaker 4: heard about this?
Speaker 3: No, that also include camping.
Speaker 4: That's the question. Yeah, it's like, how would you.
Speaker 5: We'll get it probably have to be in a national
Speaker 5: park or something some kind of like government accepted designation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and before the mutated strains of drug resistant bacteria
Speaker 4: get into the International Space Station or take it over.
Speaker 4: It's already up there in orbit. We have other stories
Speaker 4: to share. We want to start with one that may
Speaker 4: not be appropriate to all audience members. So we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about an incredibly disturbing event, self immolation that
Speaker 4: occurred here in the United States shortly after we recorded
Speaker 4: our previous Strange News and listener mail. And if this
Speaker 4: is something that may you feel may not be appropriate
Speaker 4: for you or the kiddo's listening along, absolutely fine. Just
Speaker 4: fast forward fifteen minutes or so and I'll give you
Speaker 4: a chance to go very well. We begin want to
Speaker 4: introduce you to a man named Max Azarello. At the
Speaker 4: age of thirty seven, Max Azarello set himself on fire
Speaker 4: in a part outside of the Lower Manhattan Courthouse where
Speaker 4: the trial of former President Donald Trump continues today. This
Speaker 4: was a long time in coming, and if you are
Speaker 4: someone who is on social media, you may have seen
Speaker 4: a lot of the discourse as this was happening. If
Speaker 4: you were not on social media and you get your
Speaker 4: news through maybe broadcast television or the radio, then you
Speaker 4: may have also heard the live reporting of this self immolation.
Speaker 4: Self emilation is just the word for setting oneself on fire.
Speaker 4: And this this prompted a conversation immediately about what the
Speaker 4: motives may have been, right, what would what could possibly
Speaker 4: drive someone to injure themselves in this way. Historically, we
Speaker 4: know that self immolation in the modern era has often
Speaker 4: been an act of protest right in the Asian theater
Speaker 4: as well as you know the ostensible launch of the
Speaker 4: Arab Spring not too long ago, and I think we
Speaker 4: all read about this case separately. By the time that
Speaker 4: it was by the time we were really digging into
Speaker 4: a lot of this stuff, this person was still alive.
Speaker 4: They were grievously injured when they set themselves on fire.
Speaker 4: They were taken to a hospital after the flames were
Speaker 4: finally extinguished, and they died as a result of their injuries.
Speaker 4: What we'd like to do with our time today here
Speaker 4: is take a look at the trail that Max Azrello
Speaker 4: left in the time leading up to his death. Because
Speaker 4: before he set himself on fire, he distributed pamphlets out
Speaker 4: like around to anyone who would listen, and reportedly law
Speaker 4: enforcement was also very quick to pick these pamphlets up.
Speaker 4: We read his manifesto right, and he also left videos
Speaker 4: about the beliefs that propelled him toward this act. I'd
Speaker 4: like to start with before you get to the manifesto,
Speaker 4: excellent piece by The New York Times, written by Michael Wilson,
Speaker 4: Tracy Tully and Jan Ransom. A life overtaken by conspiracy
Speaker 4: theories explodes in flames as the public looks on. And
Speaker 4: the scary thing is, I think for many of us
Speaker 4: listening tonight up until up until the death of his mother,
Speaker 4: that he had a very close relationship with. Max was
Speaker 4: an all around mench He was like a good guy.
Speaker 4: He was educated, he was a supportive friend. He had
Speaker 4: worked with some political offices, but he was by no
Speaker 4: means like a partisan of any sort. He was the
Speaker 4: kind of person that you could talk with even if
Speaker 4: you disagreed. And that appeared to begin to change around
Speaker 4: April sixth, twenty twenty two, when his mother, Elizabeth passed away.
Speaker 4: And I think we've all, like we're mentioning this off air.
Speaker 4: We saw some of the videos right before, and I
Speaker 4: think we've read the manifesto as well, correct.
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 5: I just want to say, though, when I first saw
Speaker 5: the news story, my immediate assumption was that it was
Speaker 5: some kind of protest for Trump being on trial, that
Speaker 5: it was like a hardcore supporter, And I think a
Speaker 5: lot of people probably thought that until deeper digging was done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the pamphlet that he was distributing. You can
Speaker 2: actually still find it right now. There's a Google drive
Speaker 2: where it exists. I guess we could say the name
Speaker 2: of it, just bleep this dip Secrets of Our Rotten World.
Speaker 2: It's the title of it. And it has all kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff in there, including a section about the Simpsons
Speaker 2: and how it's brainwashing and evil.
Speaker 4: Right, and if you were in the wrong place, that
Speaker 4: place being collect Pond Park right by the courthouse, then
Speaker 4: you would have been able to snag a physical copy
Speaker 4: of these. You can also go to his substack, Theponsi
Speaker 4: Papers dot com and read in full his thoughts about this.
Speaker 4: To give you just some excerpts here which is right now.
Speaker 4: You can find it easily, folks. He says, my name
Speaker 4: is Max Azabello. I am an investigative researcher who is
Speaker 4: so himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan.
Speaker 4: Interesting note this is not related to the Trump trial. Itself,
Speaker 4: which I think is to your point, Noel, it's something
Speaker 4: we all thought upon first read just because of the
Speaker 4: location he chose. But he says the following, This extreme
Speaker 4: act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent
Speaker 4: and important discovery. We are victims of a totalitarian con
Speaker 4: and our government, along with many of their allies, is
Speaker 4: about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.
Speaker 4: And as you read through. As you read through, Max
Speaker 4: lays out the point by point of what led him
Speaker 4: to this belief of what he sees as supporting evidence,
Speaker 4: and to him, the story starts. One of the big
Speaker 4: parts of the story begins in March of twenty twenty
Speaker 4: three when billionaire Peter Thiel starts a bank round on
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley Bank, which we talked about when that occurred,
Speaker 4: and as he is investigating this on his own, he
Speaker 4: begins becoming increasingly convinced that this dates. This all dates
Speaker 4: back to cryptocurrency and to Thiel's venture capital firm Founder's fund,
Speaker 4: and he list out the following things that he considers
Speaker 4: inarguably proven. One cryptocurrency, he says, is our first planetary,
Speaker 4: multi trillion dollar ponzi scheme. He says further, the cryptocurrency
Speaker 4: was expressly created for this purpose by a ball of
Speaker 4: rich and powerful people. He says all the bank failures
Speaker 4: in March of twenty twenty three were intentional, in other words,
Speaker 4: that someone was purposely collapsing the banks, and he says
Speaker 4: cryptocurrency is what's keeping this quote unquote Ponzi scheme afloat.
Speaker 4: When it goes insolvent, which apparently is designed to do,
Speaker 4: it will take down half the stock market, it has
Speaker 4: already created global inflation, and from there goes on. It's
Speaker 4: very again apocalyptic end of civilization type stuff. He also
Speaker 4: says COVID was unleashed on the world as a rationalization
Speaker 4: or something for the public to focus on, or a
Speaker 4: way to enable the Ponzi scheme to continue. Other phrases
Speaker 4: he uses or things like economic doomsday device made to
Speaker 4: shatter the world economy. We're all familiar with stories of
Speaker 4: billionaires getting up to shnannigans, and not all of those
Speaker 4: stories are untrue, but in this case, Max also argues
Speaker 4: the US government is fully in on the grift. He
Speaker 4: named checks Bill Clinton, going back to the nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: eight DNC speech where he nominates to Caucus. He taught
Speaker 4: about the Simpsons, as you had earlier mentioned, Matt, He
Speaker 4: talks about Rob Lowe getting stitched up. He brings in Epstein.
Speaker 4: He claims that the entire governance of the US is
Speaker 4: a secret sleptocracy, with both parties ultimately being run by
Speaker 4: financial criminals, which again I don't know, let's stop there.
Speaker 4: The Simpsons thing, by the way, traces back to Harvard.
Speaker 4: He thinks people become part of this scheme through Harvard,
Speaker 4: like the Lampoon.
Speaker 3: Isn't that the kind of comedy magazine of Harvard?
Speaker 2: Yes, but he's specifically talking, well, yeah, I guess talking
Speaker 2: about people who probably wrote for the lamb Shoot and
Speaker 2: then found their way from Harvard to the Simpsons writing room,
Speaker 2: and Bryan twenty seven of them.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, it's kind of like a pop
Speaker 4: culture fun conspiracy that's been bandied about so long to
Speaker 4: almost to the point of meaningless, where meaninglessness where people say, oh,
Speaker 4: the Simpsons predicted insert thing here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But in his in his pamphlet, he's saying that
Speaker 2: The Simpsons as a show basically was programmed us to
Speaker 2: think we are powerless kind of dumb dumbs inside this
Speaker 2: big you know, dumb, dumb cogs in this huge machine,
Speaker 2: and we're powerless to change anything.
Speaker 3: Do we really need the Simpsons to feel that way?
Speaker 4: So let me get to a quote from the manifesto,
Speaker 4: which again I think you should read the pamphlet if
Speaker 4: you're interested, if you want the like the in depth stuff.
Speaker 4: Look at his manifesto where he writes out a lot
Speaker 4: of this and he says, here's his quote. He says,
Speaker 4: if the Simpsons served the interest of organized crime, how
Speaker 4: would it do so well? It offers a dysfunctional family
Speaker 4: suffering from moral decay, a community incapable of solving its problems,
Speaker 4: a worker drone who slaves a way for an evil billionaire,
Speaker 4: and cathartic laughs for our poor collective circumstances. And then
Speaker 4: he starts talking about specific episodes like Marge Versus the Mono,
Speaker 4: which I think was written by Conan O'Brien, primarily Lisa
Speaker 4: the iconoclast, and he argues that it is pop culture programming,
Speaker 4: the idea, that the idea that the elites of the
Speaker 4: US and maybe the world are telling the public that
Speaker 4: our eroding collective circumstances are our own fault and we
Speaker 4: can't do anything about it while they steal the American
Speaker 4: dream from us it is, says Max, for lack of
Speaker 4: a more elegant word, brainwashing. And while this might all
Speaker 4: sound really crazy, he is writing in a structured way, right,
Speaker 4: in a coherent way.
Speaker 5: Couldn't you apply that kind of thinking to just about
Speaker 5: any form of satire though if you tried hard enough.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a rorshack aspect to it, right, what do
Speaker 4: we interpret? You know? Because Married with Children, if you
Speaker 4: remember that show that had a lot of the same stuff,
Speaker 4: but maybe without without the trope of the redemp of.
Speaker 3: Kid and it's not nearly as clever.
Speaker 4: It's not. No, the Simpsons had the benefit or has
Speaker 4: the benefit of standing on the shoulders of satirical giants.
Speaker 4: But with this, you know, the issue for me, guys,
Speaker 4: is that a lot of a lot of people, especially
Speaker 4: in recent years, have felt that there is something more
Speaker 4: to the story that they've been left adrift, right, that
Speaker 4: the institutions and the regimes and morals that are supposed
Speaker 4: to protect the public have been weaponized or compromised. And
Speaker 4: you know, look at the Supreme Court, that's got some
Speaker 4: real problems that are coming to bear now.
Speaker 5: Well, none of these things are patently untrue. It's also
Speaker 5: not a particularly unique take. I would argue any of it.
Speaker 5: You know, it sounds like a person that was triggered
Speaker 5: into a state of mental decline that kind of snowballed.
Speaker 5: And I don't mean to be reductive in that way,
Speaker 5: but that's just kind of how it hits me.
Speaker 4: He also mentions Walt Disney, Stanley Kubrick, all the Doctor
Speaker 4: Strange Love. Yeah, George H. W. Bush as the director
Speaker 4: of the CIA, and his logic, at least from what
Speaker 4: I understanding, has told me if this is incorrect, His
Speaker 4: logic is that this cabal escalated an existing plan because
Speaker 4: climate change and resource extraction, the great bill of those
Speaker 4: crimes is coming to coming do and so they knew
Speaker 4: that they would eventually not be able to sustain the
Speaker 4: current status quo, and so their plan, in his estimation,
Speaker 4: was to gobble up all the wealth and resources they
Speaker 4: could and then pivot to a hellish dystopia, leave everybody
Speaker 4: else holding the bag of consequences. And again to your point, Nol,
Speaker 4: some of the things that he mentions are things that
Speaker 4: many of us listening tonight might personally agree with, but
Speaker 4: he's curated these into his own sort of miliu or remix.
Speaker 4: And with this, I don't know if it brings the
Speaker 4: awareness that he was hoping for. Because the story the
Speaker 4: headline people read as man sets himself on fire, and
Speaker 4: then many of us initially assumed this was some meant
Speaker 4: to be some sort of public protest about the ongoing
Speaker 4: Trump trials, But to be clear, again, it isn't. And
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what we take from this. Folks. If
Speaker 4: you're listening to this and you have ever felt that
Speaker 4: you were in an unstable place or you were not
Speaker 4: supported my friends or family, please remember that there are
Speaker 4: resources available. And Azabella reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 4: you know, how people got weaponized by the QAnon chatter
Speaker 4: and the next thing, you know, raising an interesting point
Speaker 4: on a forum leads you into the spiral. Well months later,
Speaker 4: you're armed and you're breaking into a pizza place.
Speaker 3: Got a wonder too.
Speaker 5: Someone who hasn't been dipping their toes into these waters
Speaker 5: for years and years, to whom a lot of these
Speaker 5: things feel old hat to if all of a sudden
Speaker 5: they were presented a lot of this stuff at once,
Speaker 5: I could see how someone not in the best mental
Speaker 5: state could be it could be too much for you know,
Speaker 5: because it can just be like a sensory overload.
Speaker 3: And I think that happens a lot.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what caused a lot of people
Speaker 5: during COVID to go off the deep end a little
Speaker 5: bit because they didn't have anything to do but go
Speaker 5: down these self perpetuating kind of echo chamber y rabbit holes.
Speaker 4: It got caught the feedback loop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys, look, I don't know about y'all. I personally speaking,
Speaker 2: I think the reason why I haven't gone down a
Speaker 2: full on, like melt down route after learning everything that
Speaker 2: we've learned on this show is because I've got responsibilities
Speaker 2: I have to take care of on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: I can't focus on some of these things as some
Speaker 2: unified theory, as some like big bad that's happening and
Speaker 2: really point to things like this and make pamphlets. It's
Speaker 2: because I gotta make sure my son's got food. I
Speaker 2: got to make sure he gets to school. I gotta
Speaker 2: make sure he's got clothes. I got to make sure,
Speaker 2: you know, we're making episodes so that I can have
Speaker 2: a house and mow the lawn. And I filled my
Speaker 2: life up with responsibilities, which is well, and distractions like
Speaker 2: video games like Fallout and all that stuff, and TV shows.
Speaker 2: I guess here's my worry. I think anyone listening to
Speaker 2: this right now, any one of us could be susceptible
Speaker 2: to this if we had the time, basically to sit
Speaker 2: here and ruminate on all of the insane stuff that
Speaker 2: we've uncovered over the years. Which just makes me, you know,
Speaker 2: it makes me feel terrible for this person, for him,
Speaker 2: for his family, for anybody that knew him, because he
Speaker 2: got caught up in loops. Like you were saying, be
Speaker 2: that again, I think we just we have to individually
Speaker 2: be cautious.
Speaker 4: Of Yeah, agreed. And in the case of Azraelu, there
Speaker 4: were signals. They're almost always signals for the leading up
Speaker 4: to or preceding these acts. We know that he had
Speaker 4: been checked into a mental health facility in August to
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three. There is nothing wrong with that, to
Speaker 4: be clear, that is a good thing to do when
Speaker 4: it's necessary. He didn't find it very helpful when he left,
Speaker 4: he reportedly, and this is from the Times article, he
Speaker 4: approached an autograph in the Hasa Monica hotel over in
Speaker 4: Cordova Street of Saint Augustine Florida, and he threw a
Speaker 4: glass of wine at it. The police came over and
Speaker 4: he told the police he did that, and they said, okay, well,
Speaker 4: you know, everybody has a bad night. Again, that is also.
Speaker 3: True, somewhat generous of some one could argue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anybody has a bad night. But then two days
Speaker 4: later he is back in front of the very same
Speaker 4: hotel in his skivvies, in his underwear, ranting through a
Speaker 4: bullhorn to the public. And then three days after that
Speaker 4: he vandalizes a sign outside of United Way office. He
Speaker 4: climbs into the bed of a stranger's truck and starts
Speaker 4: going through stuff. This has all been a huge sea
Speaker 4: change for him, because radicalization does occur, and often when
Speaker 4: you're in the in the midst of it of extremism
Speaker 4: or falling into that feedback loop. To you, it will
Speaker 4: not if you are in the bubble. The bubble does
Speaker 4: not seem to be a bubble of extreme extremity. You know,
Speaker 4: you think that you are, or you feel that you
Speaker 4: are putting the pieces together. You think it's everybody else
Speaker 4: who's slowly boiling in that pot. And with this, you
Speaker 4: know there's much more to the story. Do you guys
Speaker 4: have some to add before we close this part.
Speaker 5: Oh, just something that you, I guess kind of mentioned
Speaker 5: and you're right up in our shared document about this.
Speaker 5: This does feel to me like the kinds of doomsday
Speaker 5: tropes that we see a lot of times in history
Speaker 5: and fiction, people wearing like sandwich boards saying the end
Speaker 5: is nigh.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of like there's a character and Watchmen,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 5: And of course the narrative of Watchmen is that all
Speaker 5: of those conspiracies are in fact true and that the
Speaker 5: people shouting, you know, in the streets.
Speaker 3: Actually do kind of know what's going on.
Speaker 5: So but it does feel like a harbinger in a way,
Speaker 5: you know, when you hear about this kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: and how maybe it's a perfect storm for people to
Speaker 5: be self.
Speaker 3: Radicalized in this way.
Speaker 5: It's an interesting phenomenon that I don't quite know how
Speaker 5: to wrap my head around.
Speaker 4: Well said. Also, another aspect of this is that if
Speaker 4: you are if you are an antagonistic force who seeks
Speaker 4: to destabilize a given government or power structure, social structure,
Speaker 4: I should say, then you can create things that look
Speaker 4: like independent protests that does not appear to be the
Speaker 4: case here. But the question is is this a tragic,
Speaker 4: heartbreaking one off to our knowledge, no one else was injured.
Speaker 4: Is it possibly indicative of a trend? Right? What is
Speaker 4: on the horizon? With that mind, folks, please please please
Speaker 4: please take care of yourselves, take care of your loved ones.
Speaker 4: We're going to continue digging into this story. We are
Speaker 4: going to learn more about it as time progresses. In
Speaker 4: the meantime, Before we move to the next piece of
Speaker 4: strange news, please remember this. If you are having thoughts
Speaker 4: of self harm or suicide, you can right now call
Speaker 4: or text nine eight eight to reach the nine to
Speaker 4: eight eight Suicide and Crisis Hotline. You can also go
Speaker 4: to Speaking of Suicide dot com forward Slash resources for
Speaker 4: a list of additional resources. You are not alone. Your
Speaker 4: mental health is worth it. Again, that's nine eight eight.
Speaker 4: We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor, will
Speaker 4: return with more strange news.
Speaker 5: And we're back with a story that still definitely feels
Speaker 5: like stuff they don't want you to know in a
Speaker 5: bit of a sinister way, but on the surface maybe
Speaker 5: a little bit lighter than the.
Speaker 3: Story we just discussed.
Speaker 5: The Russian Republic of Checha has recently announced a ban
Speaker 5: on music that the way it's being reported in the
Speaker 5: Western press is that's either too fast or too slow.
Speaker 5: The Chechen Ministry of Culture released a statement saying that
Speaker 5: was translated to say, from now on, all musical, vocal
Speaker 5: and choreographic works must correspond to the tempo of eighty
Speaker 5: to one hundred and.
Speaker 3: Sixteen beats per minute.
Speaker 5: Probably most people understand what bpm is, but anyone that
Speaker 5: works in production probably understands to a greater degree, and
Speaker 5: there's an interesting psychology behind it.
Speaker 3: A lot of modern pop music is.
Speaker 5: About one twenty to one twenty two beats per mint it.
Speaker 5: A lot of hip hop is slower than eighty beats
Speaker 5: per minut it.
Speaker 3: What kind of falls between eighty and one.
Speaker 5: Sixteen are a lot of house music and techno music
Speaker 5: and kind of.
Speaker 3: Club type music, but also classic.
Speaker 5: Rock songs like Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles,
Speaker 5: which is just ever so slightly too fast for that,
Speaker 5: including also Taylor Swift's Cruel Summer Smells like teen Spirit
Speaker 5: by Nirvana, which is one seventeen so one bpm two fast.
Speaker 5: And the reasoning behind this, as far as the Chechen
Speaker 5: government and their Ministry of Culture is concerned, is to
Speaker 5: really focus on carrying on and perpetuating the Chechen folk
Speaker 5: traditions in music and to not borrow from other cultures
Speaker 5: at all, which is very interesting to kind of couch
Speaker 5: that in terms of such a mathematical formula, like the
Speaker 5: idea of like this is the no go zone for
Speaker 5: beats per mintent rather than like things like instrumentation or
Speaker 5: you know, certain kinds of arrangements or whatever. It just
Speaker 5: seems rife for you know, failure. But let's see, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't know, we could maybe just start from there.
Speaker 5: There's some other things I want to bring into the conversation,
Speaker 5: but it immediately hits you as sort of like you know,
Speaker 5: a ban on dancing, because it's like it goes against
Speaker 5: religious beliefs. But this is less a religious thing than
Speaker 5: it is a cultural thing, and it's about preserving and
Speaker 5: passing on the traditions of Chechen senses of rhythm to
Speaker 5: future generations. But yet there's some very interesting kind of
Speaker 5: contradictions in this that will get in in a second.
Speaker 5: But I don't know, maybe we'll start from there. Do
Speaker 5: you guys have any thoughts on banning music of a
Speaker 5: certain bpm and how it could even be forced.
Speaker 4: What could go wrong? Right now? I think we do
Speaker 4: need to just real quick for anybody listening, because we
Speaker 4: talked about we talked about the problems between Chechena and
Speaker 4: Russia exactly, yeah, earlier in drugs as weapons. Chechen is
Speaker 4: pretty small. It's an autonomous republic in the North Caucus,
Speaker 4: so I think like southern Russia. And it's to your point
Speaker 4: about culture. No, I'm wondering if Ramzan Kadrov, the leader
Speaker 4: of Chechna, I'm wondering if this is part of a
Speaker 4: continuing move to shore up nationalism to say, like, we
Speaker 4: do have a distinct culture. We are not Russian. Sure,
Speaker 4: we are our own thing.
Speaker 5: Except I mean, I know that Chechnia has waged a
Speaker 5: couple of wars against Russia in the past, but now
Speaker 5: I believe they're considered quite the ally. You know, and
Speaker 5: the person you just mentioned in power there in Chechnya
Speaker 5: is very close with Putin, and I believe was either
Speaker 5: installed or you know, kind of co signed by Putin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he's currently a colonel general in the Russian military.
Speaker 4: I know that they Yeah, he was basically Putin was
Speaker 4: his kingmaker, right, that's who tapped him in. But I'm
Speaker 4: also thinking, like, Okay, in this part of the world
Speaker 4: and also in Central Asia, a lot of laws get
Speaker 4: passed that may seem very odd to outsiders, but we
Speaker 4: have to understand there's got to be some kind of
Speaker 4: logic behind it. I mean, if they're trying to ban
Speaker 4: it to your first question there, I guess the only
Speaker 4: really effective ban is trying to shut down importation of stuff,
Speaker 4: which is almost impossible in the era of streaming music.
Speaker 4: But then you could say, well, you can't play this
Speaker 4: in official state functions, right, no more Hotel California.
Speaker 5: Except the funny thing about it is there there are
Speaker 5: so many American as apple pie songs that totally fit
Speaker 5: the bill, like Staying Alive by the Beg's. I mean,
Speaker 5: how much more American can you get in terms of
Speaker 5: like importation of culture. I mean it's just classic you
Speaker 5: know disco, you know white dudes singing falsetto.
Speaker 4: And traditional chech and music by the way kind of slaps.
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely no, for sure, And I've certainly heard a
Speaker 5: lot of traditional Chechen music because of the nature of
Speaker 5: the string sounds and the rhythms, the poly rhythms used
Speaker 5: in electronic music and samples and like used as like
Speaker 5: textures and kind of like loops, you know, underlying kind
Speaker 5: of electronic music. But yeah, like I'm getting a lot
Speaker 5: of this from this NPR piece, by the way, from
Speaker 5: April ninth by Rachel Triesman, And she points out that,
Speaker 5: in addition to Staying Alive by the Begs led Zeppelins,
Speaker 5: Stairway to Heaven, which is eighty two bpms fits the bill,
Speaker 5: Dancing Queen by another very European kind of like fashion
Speaker 5: forward kind of Western vibe there, and Taylor Swift's ten
Speaker 5: minute version of All Too Well, which is ninety four.
Speaker 5: I guess my thing is, like the whole bpm range
Speaker 5: seems just problematic in terms of like, how is this
Speaker 5: actually accomplishing what they're setting out to accomplish. Apparently even
Speaker 5: the Russian National Anthem and its official recording currently it
Speaker 5: is out of this range.
Speaker 3: It's too slow.
Speaker 2: Well, they have until June first to rewrite it.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go, and I'm sure that would happen.
Speaker 5: But even like the song in the background of the
Speaker 5: kind of like press release video that announced this was
Speaker 5: also didn't fit the bill for the standard.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I've got one of those silly, very clear
Speaker 2: pictures in my head of roving groups of military or
Speaker 2: police personnel that have some kind of device that just
Speaker 2: measures beats per minute. It exists for just walking around
Speaker 2: it detecting.
Speaker 3: Tap tempo is what it is.
Speaker 5: They're walking around with just like a metronome and tapping
Speaker 5: the tempo like a producer would try to get a
Speaker 5: tempo for like a track and able to oh no,
Speaker 5: shut it down.
Speaker 4: After the June first deadline, though, at least artists who
Speaker 4: have to rewrite songs in Chechnya. From Smithsonian article you
Speaker 4: sent and old that also links to the original reporting
Speaker 4: in the Moscow Times, it looks like they will have
Speaker 4: an opportunity to rewrite their songs if they don't jibe
Speaker 4: with the new band. But if they don't rewrite a song,
Speaker 4: then they just can't play that song in public. So
Speaker 4: is it kind of like how some countries will ban
Speaker 4: smoking in public places, but you can still like smoke
Speaker 4: at your house? Can you still play what was it?
Speaker 4: Here Comes the Sun in your apartment? Yeah?
Speaker 5: It's sort of like you know drug laws, where it's
Speaker 5: okay to consume it's in your private home, but not
Speaker 5: out in public, or you can't buy it or whatever
Speaker 5: the rules might be. One thing to mention too, Ben,
Speaker 5: that I'm sure you're aware of, is human Rights Watches
Speaker 5: view of Chechnya. As recently as twenty seventeen and twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: they conducted some very deadly purges of folks seen as
Speaker 5: being part of the lgbtq IA community.
Speaker 3: And there's something.
Speaker 5: About the idea of like banning club music has such
Speaker 5: a you know, place in gay culture, you know, and
Speaker 5: in terms of like just the history of it, and
Speaker 5: then like the nature of dancing in clubs as often
Speaker 5: there's there are some huge, you know, forces in that
Speaker 5: world that are part of that of that culture, and
Speaker 5: you just got to wonder if there's sort of like
Speaker 5: a behind the scenes, you know, dog whistley thing where
Speaker 5: they're saying this, this stuff isn't welcome here anymore. But
Speaker 5: it's like it wouldn't have to be this veiled about it, though,
Speaker 5: because they've been so open about their disdain for that
Speaker 5: kind of culture as well. So you've got to wonder
Speaker 5: what the real motivation is.
Speaker 4: Maybe it is a cult for war, a culture war mentality,
Speaker 4: because it doesn't this come in the step of first
Speaker 4: they've been terrible to like LGTBQ people for quite some time.
Speaker 4: There is an active warning for anybody traveling there regarding that.
Speaker 4: And then I think this was on the heels of
Speaker 4: an unintentional pun, on the heels of new dress code
Speaker 4: crackdowns to make people dress in accordance with their interpretation
Speaker 4: of Islamic law.
Speaker 2: Guys, can we do a quick demonstration just for anybody
Speaker 2: that isn't hasn't sat in a studio before, like absolutely
Speaker 2: must have with a bpm like a metronome playing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So here's a quick example of eighty beats per minute.
Speaker 2: So this would be the minimum number of beats per
Speaker 2: minute that are that is allowable under this new rule.
Speaker 2: Here we go, okay, and then.
Speaker 3: Here ballid territory kind of yeah.
Speaker 2: And here's one hundred and sixteen beat for a.
Speaker 4: Minute too fast, shut it down, shut it smash the metro.
Speaker 2: That's that's right on the edge. That's allowable.
Speaker 3: And I just think the discrepancy too, between like one
Speaker 3: sixteen and one seventeen. Oh, buddy, like if anyone's ever
Speaker 3: fuzed over making beats.
Speaker 5: Sure again, the psychological effect of like of tempo really
Speaker 5: does read. But the difference between one sixteen and one
Speaker 5: seventeen is probably something only a really nerdy producer in
Speaker 5: the weeds is gonna know.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's the one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so even with seventy nine and eighty, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: of course, really really close.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to add something that I thought.
Speaker 5: I saw this on a YouTube video and I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: I'm forgetting the creator pointed out something that I was
Speaker 5: unaware of. In nineteen ninety four, the UK passed a
Speaker 5: law that banned public performances of music quote holy or
Speaker 5: predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive
Speaker 5: beats aka tech. They were trying to crack down on
Speaker 5: club culture. They were trying to crack.
Speaker 3: Down on raves. You know, this is like the high
Speaker 3: time for raves. And there's a.
Speaker 5: Very interesting group called Autecra who are kind of in this.
Speaker 5: I don't know, it's sort of an annoying designation, but
Speaker 5: IDM stands for intelligent dance music, things like AFX twin
Speaker 5: and square pusher like the beat boops, not just straight
Speaker 5: up four on the floor like dancey club music. But Autekra,
Speaker 5: in response to this law, issued a track called Flutter,
Speaker 5: in which no two bars ever have the same beat,
Speaker 5: and it was literally like a protest, and they had
Speaker 5: some very interesting things to say about it in the
Speaker 5: let's see, in the literature that came with I believe
Speaker 5: it was either a single or something. Let's see, the
Speaker 5: track was programmed to have non repetitive beats and therefore,
Speaker 5: according to them, can be played at both forty five
Speaker 5: and thirty three RPMs on a turntable under the proposed.
Speaker 4: Law, which is what we call malicious compliance.
Speaker 5: Yes, and then they also went on to advise that
Speaker 5: any DJs spending their track to quote, have a lawyer
Speaker 5: and a musicologist president at all times to confirm the
Speaker 5: non repetitive nature of the music in the event of
Speaker 5: police harassment.
Speaker 4: Fantastic.
Speaker 5: So that's the kind of thing we're talking about with
Speaker 5: this Chechnia story, where it really because I guess you
Speaker 5: can measure bpms more easily than you can how often
Speaker 5: beats repeat or what qualifies as like repetitive, because that's
Speaker 5: sort of a little bit subjective, and bpm are an
Speaker 5: objectively measurable thing. But what if you had a song
Speaker 5: that changed BPM's it's only one sixteen for a second,
Speaker 5: and then it goes down to whatever acceptable rate? Are
Speaker 5: you doing an average? At this point these cops are
Speaker 5: going to have to have some serious math skills.
Speaker 4: What if you are considered a political dissident, because we
Speaker 4: know Chechnya has a lot of problems with this right now,
Speaker 4: what better pretext would there be? Now the police can
Speaker 4: just break into your flat and say, oh, we have
Speaker 4: to check the BPM and we found this other stuff,
Speaker 4: so you're under arrest and executed.
Speaker 5: And could it go to the lengths of like book
Speaker 5: burnings where it's no longer even legal to possess these
Speaker 5: You know, it's a slippery slope. You start by doing
Speaker 5: it and thinking it about public performance, but then next
Speaker 5: thing you know, it's like, no, we're really cracking down
Speaker 5: and we need, you know, to have this iron grasp
Speaker 5: over culture and it's no longer legal to possess these things,
Speaker 5: Like how long a walk is it from one of those.
Speaker 3: To the other?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And how do you I don't know's it's definitely
Speaker 4: part of something larger, I think, a way to further
Speaker 4: exert control over the region and the public. But as
Speaker 4: you was suitably pointed out here, Nol, there are a
Speaker 4: lot of problems with the idea of an enforcement of this,
Speaker 4: let alone the conception of this kind of law, and
Speaker 4: those problems are such that we have to question the motivation,
Speaker 4: like the idea of quote unquote preserving culture that just
Speaker 4: doesn't It doesn't have enough sand for me. It doesn't
Speaker 4: hold water. It feels like it is for something else. Perhaps,
Speaker 4: as you said, it is a dog whistle, right, like
Speaker 4: when racist politicians back in the nineteen eighties and nineties
Speaker 4: would have what would make such a to do about
Speaker 4: quote unquote urban music, right, so now they're just saying bpms.
Speaker 5: Well, weirdly enough, speaking of that bizarre designation, and in
Speaker 5: commercial radio, by the way, hip hop in the main
Speaker 5: totally acceptable under this designation because I think it's largely
Speaker 5: like seventy five bpms or faster. But within that range,
Speaker 5: you know, you don't usually have except for like maybe
Speaker 5: like bombs over Baghdad by outcasts, you wouldn't really have
Speaker 5: a hip hop song that was at the speeds that
Speaker 5: are on the upper end of that.
Speaker 4: That makes it clear. I think we know what we
Speaker 4: have to do. Gentlemen. It's time to contact the Wu tang.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, take them out of the vague. They're they're
Speaker 4: in Vegas training right now. I say, we deployed them.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought they were chilling in the thirty sixth chamber.
Speaker 4: That you are you read on to Operation thirty six chaper.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they relocated it to the outskirts of Vegas.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh, I don't care for that in the sphere
Speaker 5: perhaps anyway, I don't know. Interesting story, interesting example of
Speaker 5: a very odd move that seems to be a harbinger
Speaker 5: of things to come, perhaps much like the Unfortunate Fellow
Speaker 5: and your story, Ben, but again a lot less heavy.
Speaker 5: But something that seems less heavy on the surface can
Speaker 5: yield much heavier results down the road, as things tend
Speaker 5: to kind of snowball with these levels of like trying
Speaker 5: to control what people can and can't do. Let's take
Speaker 5: a quick break here, a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 5: then come back with one more piece of strange news.
Speaker 2: And we're back. Guys. I can't wait until twenty thirty
Speaker 2: eight rhyme The newly yeah right, the newly elected President
Speaker 2: of the United States requires that all music that is
Speaker 2: played within the United States be bluegrass only. There's only bluegrass,
Speaker 2: and people will have until September to rewrite all of
Speaker 2: their songs into a bluegrass format that's going to be exciting.
Speaker 5: Bluegrass has got to be on the upper end of
Speaker 5: that bpm range. It's it's all pretty quick, but.
Speaker 2: It is representative of American culture somehow.
Speaker 4: Which is interesting because parnage of it. Yeah, because the
Speaker 4: banjo clearly traces back to an African instrument.
Speaker 5: Ah see see, and a lot of the Chechen instruments
Speaker 5: that are kind of loot like or these sort of
Speaker 5: like you know, have that sort of timber to them.
Speaker 4: Well as the first actual facts Homo sapiens, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, the origin of humanity. A lot of
Speaker 4: stuff people acclaiming is their own ultimately traces back to
Speaker 4: you know, when people started people e yah in Africa.
Speaker 2: Basically we're saying this is nuts. All of this stuff
Speaker 2: is nuts. Well, hey, you know what else is nuts?
Speaker 2: Everything you've ever thought ever in your whole life or
Speaker 2: seen or heard happened inside your brain. And let's talk
Speaker 2: about what happens inside there and whether or not you
Speaker 2: control the data that your brain generates.
Speaker 4: You're reading my mind, Matt.
Speaker 2: Oh, I hope.
Speaker 4: So this is one of those things. By the way,
Speaker 4: when I see this, I didn't even I didn't even
Speaker 4: bother to reach out because I was like, I know
Speaker 4: one of it. We have to get to this. I'm
Speaker 4: very excited.
Speaker 2: This is it, y'all. Ten years ago, almost today, in
Speaker 2: April twenty fourteen, we released an audio and video series
Speaker 2: about something that was then known as neuro marketing. If
Speaker 2: you want to look those up, you can search our
Speaker 2: YouTube channel at conspiracy stuff for quote exploiting your reptilian
Speaker 2: brain for profit or neuro marketing and you that's a
Speaker 2: real banger. You should check that one out. Only forty
Speaker 2: four thousand people have seen it so far. Neuromarketing, science
Speaker 2: or science fiction. Those are all three video and audio
Speaker 2: episodes you can listen to right now about this thing
Speaker 2: called neuromarketing that at the time was is being pioneered
Speaker 2: by several private companies that were using fMRI technology and
Speaker 2: EEG technology to scan the old human brain while that
Speaker 2: meat based sensor equipment was interacting with advertisements to basically
Speaker 2: get a better concept or an understanding of what a
Speaker 2: consumer's response to advertising is, what they focus on visually,
Speaker 2: what they remember from the audio, and most importantly, how
Speaker 2: the ad made that meat brain feel.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, saying meat brain made my meat brain sizzle
Speaker 5: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Well, there you go. And since then, y'all, we've been rapidly,
Speaker 2: unsteadily careening down this old humanity mountain towards full on
Speaker 2: android territory. And now in twenty twenty four, there are
Speaker 2: companies like Neurolink that we've talked about before, synchron that
Speaker 2: we haven't mentioned that much, Precision Neuroscience, several others. They're
Speaker 2: all developing and actually deploying direct brain to computer interfaces,
Speaker 2: hardware and software. So do we think there's anything we
Speaker 2: need to be worried about?
Speaker 4: Guys, there are a lot of things people need to
Speaker 4: be worried about.
Speaker 3: Let's not worry about all of them at once, though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I think we kind of we can. I
Speaker 4: like the way the predicted the predictive area of tonight's program.
Speaker 4: We did make some predictions there. Just the technology is
Speaker 4: too yummy, the science is too useful and applicable for
Speaker 4: it not to be used or applied. But we were
Speaker 4: I think pretty forthright when we said we couldn't make
Speaker 4: a call on the timeline we just need. It's like
Speaker 4: when you know it's going to rain, but you don't
Speaker 4: know if it's going to rain at three thirty seven
Speaker 4: or just in the afternoon, but we always on the
Speaker 4: way exactly. It's a range.
Speaker 2: It is well and again, this technology ten years ago
Speaker 2: was aimed at understanding the brain wave functionality the thoughts, right,
Speaker 2: that are happening. Now it's moved into understanding like reading
Speaker 2: them to the point where they can be used. Your
Speaker 2: thought can be used as an input as an interface,
Speaker 2: right m hm. The fear that is now coursing through
Speaker 2: think tanks and lobbying groups and even now state senators
Speaker 2: and governors here in the United States and parliaments in
Speaker 2: other countries across the world, particularly in Latin America. The
Speaker 2: concept is how do we protect the data that's stored
Speaker 2: in each one of our meat brains from being exploited, used,
Speaker 2: sold by companies that are building tech to read those thoughts?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Because you have new currently you know, again, legislation, as
Speaker 4: we even said back then, Unfortunately we're always correct with that,
Speaker 4: legislation is often outpaced by technology. So there is it's
Speaker 4: a new theatre of what we define as identity and rights.
Speaker 4: You know, do you have a right to your thoughts?
Speaker 5: Couldn't you argue in terms of the whole you know,
Speaker 5: technology outpacing legislation that this is pretty forward thinking legislation
Speaker 5: for something that's really just on the bleeding edge that
Speaker 5: they haven't really even spelled out like what this looks
Speaker 5: like in terms of you know, we've got some things
Speaker 5: like neuralink and you know folks that are using their
Speaker 5: minds to control very simple things and play you know,
Speaker 5: World of Warcraft or whatever it was that the guy
Speaker 5: did all night. But it does seem for the legislature
Speaker 5: in Colorado to be thinking about this already.
Speaker 3: It's kind of smart.
Speaker 2: Agreed, agreed. So let's jump to the article that we
Speaker 2: found on Reuters on April seventeenth, twenty twenty four, that
Speaker 2: is last Wednesday as we're recording this on the twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: And here's the title. First Law protecting Consumers brain Waves
Speaker 2: signed by Colorado Governor, that is Governor Jared Polis Paulis Polis.
Speaker 2: It's literally to protect brain waves that which is crazy
Speaker 2: to say out loud.
Speaker 5: I don't know, as though it were your intellectual property
Speaker 5: in some way, or like it's got personhood or what
Speaker 5: are we talking about here?
Speaker 3: That's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, it's data, it's your data, and literally it's yeah,
Speaker 2: rawest of data, and it has never before been accessible
Speaker 2: unless that data was expressed through either words or someone's writing,
Speaker 2: or through music, through you know, in some way it
Speaker 2: was it was expelled from your brain.
Speaker 4: It was collected, even if it was collected physically through
Speaker 4: monitoring by scientists. Right and even then, for quite some time,
Speaker 4: they would just have a vague understanding of neural activity.
Speaker 4: But they hadn't reached the point where some research is
Speaker 4: at this moment where you can have someone hooked up
Speaker 4: to the right equipment, they can think something and you
Speaker 4: can literally see what they are envisioning or get, for
Speaker 4: lack of a better word, a transcript of their thoughts.
Speaker 5: Wasn't there a dream study that where people could look
Speaker 5: at kind of get some a vague rough estimation visually
Speaker 5: of what someone was dreaming.
Speaker 2: It's all happening.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: You combine it with stuff like modem's ability to sense
Speaker 2: the number of human beings in a room. You can
Speaker 2: get into like some of the Bluetooth technology and how
Speaker 2: that has advanced, get into you know, peripherals that are
Speaker 2: used for gaming.
Speaker 4: Right now, Sure you can buy to location tracking dude.
Speaker 2: As all of that stuff comes together, we are closer
Speaker 2: and closer and closer to this really crazy place where
Speaker 2: whatever entity it is, whatever corporation likely it is, we'll
Speaker 2: be able to understand your thoughts wherever you are, where
Speaker 2: you go, how you think, what you think. It's just
Speaker 2: going to be insane.
Speaker 4: And the end goal, right, predictive ability, predictive of what
Speaker 4: you're thinking, but what you will.
Speaker 2: Think well, And I would say putting the thoughts in
Speaker 2: on purpose, because that's what ads are, right. Ads are
Speaker 2: meant to persuade us that In those episodes in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: it was all about how to make a more persuasive
Speaker 2: ad to get someone to need to not only want
Speaker 2: to buy something, but to feel as though they need
Speaker 2: to buy something. So according to this article from Reuters
Speaker 2: written by Brad Brooks, the sponsors of this bill said,
Speaker 2: quote it was necessary as quote quick advances in neurotechnology
Speaker 2: make scanning, analyzing, and selling mental data increasingly more possible
Speaker 2: and profitable. Other people who sponsored the bill state Representative
Speaker 2: Kathy Kipp Let's see state Senator Kevin Priola. Priola and
Speaker 2: another huge proponent of this bill. And I would say
Speaker 2: it doesn't say this in the article, but likely one
Speaker 2: of the entities that really helped write this bill is
Speaker 2: a group called the neuro Rights Foundation. It's a nonprofit
Speaker 2: that promotes the ethical development of neurotechnology.
Speaker 3: Right out of.
Speaker 5: Fallout, guys, I mean, can you imagine getting your brain skimmed,
Speaker 5: you know, like where we're worried about, like long range
Speaker 5: credit card skimmers or like RFID tag readers. Can you
Speaker 5: imagine if this stuff, you know, advance so far that
Speaker 5: walking around someone could shoot something at your head and
Speaker 5: pull ideas out or pull your personal you know, passwords
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 5: I know it sounds pie in the sky now, but
Speaker 5: the way this stuff goes it's exponential, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think it's I don't think it's that
Speaker 4: far of a walk honestly, which and there is one
Speaker 4: good thing though, just the larger context. It reminds me
Speaker 4: of like that TikTok band that keeps getting discussed instead
Speaker 4: of data protection laws. This is a cool way to
Speaker 4: get in front of some things. This might actually set
Speaker 4: whatever the retroactive version of a precedent is in jurispruits.
Speaker 4: If it works, you get say, well, we're protecting thoughts,
Speaker 4: let's protect these other things too. It's a bit Polyanna,
Speaker 4: but so I speak it out loud into the ether,
Speaker 4: so anybody's skimming thoughts will be like hopefully thinking, eh,
Speaker 4: that's a good idea, and then write their congress folk.
Speaker 3: Just don't think about mister Staypuff. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Whatever I think about, like clearing your head. I think
Speaker 5: about that scene of Ghostbusters where you know, whatever they
Speaker 5: think of is what's the form that the traveler is
Speaker 5: going to take?
Speaker 3: And of course the ones thought that pops into.
Speaker 5: Whoever it was, whatever characters had was the cuddly mister Staypuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think that was Dan Aykroyd's character.
Speaker 3: Yes, you're right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So guys, for anybody who's listening to this and
Speaker 2: is still feeling skeptical, this is Reuter's writing. Just listen
Speaker 2: to this. We kind of already said it at the
Speaker 2: top quote the US Food and Drug Administration. Last year,
Speaker 2: the FDA approved human studies for Neuralink's brain implants, which,
Speaker 2: as we just said, had previously been tested on animals
Speaker 2: and is now being tested on humans and it appears
Speaker 2: to be functioning. Earlier this month, in April twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: the CEO of another company, Syncron Synchro n which is
Speaker 2: I guess a rival to Neurlink. They talked to Reuters
Speaker 2: and they said the company is preparing to recruit patients
Speaker 2: for their large scale clinical trials that eventually will they're
Speaker 2: looking for commercial approval for its brain interface brain to
Speaker 2: computer interface system. And those are literally two companies out
Speaker 2: of dozens across the world that are developing this tech
Speaker 2: right now and have been for a while.
Speaker 4: And not all of those companies labor under the same
Speaker 4: regulations no of research that the US applies. So it's
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I think you're god, it is something.
Speaker 4: I think we're onto something in twenty fourteen going through
Speaker 4: how do we get to that? It was the obsession
Speaker 4: with tcts maybe that led into that, But yeah, man,
Speaker 4: on the way, there is another there is a group
Speaker 4: of positive cases for this, you know, being able to
Speaker 4: interact directly with neural activity and say comotose patients or
Speaker 4: people are physically unresponsive. That's that's one of the cases
Speaker 4: that could be a positive. But given the profit motives
Speaker 4: that are clearly apparent here, we can't say that no
Speaker 4: one is going to use this in an nefarious and
Speaker 4: disturbing way.
Speaker 5: Well, it feels like the kind of tech or the
Speaker 5: thinking behind the whole trope of wearing a tinfoil hat
Speaker 5: or some sort of implement that guards your brain from
Speaker 5: being infiltrated, you know, penetrated remotely. Those tropes exist for
Speaker 5: for a reason. I'm not saying, you know, that's ever
Speaker 5: been the case. I just feel like this is now
Speaker 5: the time and history where we are closer to that
Speaker 5: reality than ever before, you know. And then there's something
Speaker 5: what would that look like if all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: this technology is cracked so wide open. Of course it
Speaker 5: ends up in the commercial sector first, but then people
Speaker 5: figure out how to jail break it, and then people
Speaker 5: figure out how to build devices or they can do
Speaker 5: it themselves, you know, with again nefarious purposes. Of course
Speaker 5: they would be guarded at first, but then we always
Speaker 5: see that kind of tech trickle down into like hobbyists
Speaker 5: and folks that are doing this and maybe even making improvements.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's I don't know, it's yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 2: It is wild. And laws are never going to protect
Speaker 2: anybody from a bad actor that doesn't give a crap
Speaker 2: about laws, right if somebody is coming through and let's say,
Speaker 2: illegally scanning brains, even though there are laws against that
Speaker 2: kind of action. But thankfully, if you're worried about a corporation,
Speaker 2: let's say, a company that is trying to sell products
Speaker 2: or maybe even surreptitiously do some brain scanning at some
Speaker 2: point in the airport in the future, the best place
Speaker 2: is to go. Right now as of today's recording, are
Speaker 2: Colorado because they're putting legislation forward. And who'd have thought
Speaker 2: Chile if you want to have to to Chile. Their
Speaker 2: Supreme Court just issued a unanimous decision ordering a company
Speaker 2: there that was doing some brain scanning stuff called Emotive
Speaker 2: Emotiv to delete all the data that it had collected
Speaker 2: on one of the senators there in Chile, Guido Girardi,
Speaker 2: and like they made them get rid of that information.
Speaker 2: The company complied, they shut down for a moment, and
Speaker 2: they restarted just basically with these new rules. But it's
Speaker 2: the first time that I guess, as supreme court or
Speaker 2: a major court of any kind said hey, let's make
Speaker 2: a ruling on brain scanning in particular.
Speaker 5: I would think too that for medical purposes this stuff
Speaker 5: would be covered under like HIPPA regulations, where you know,
Speaker 5: all of your personal private medical data is protected if.
Speaker 2: It's in a hospital or medical setting.
Speaker 4: Right, And this is also we got to thank the
Speaker 4: neuro Rights Foundation. Didn't they work with Chile on that decision? Oh?
Speaker 2: They did. But again, look, I want to big up
Speaker 2: the neuro Rights Foundation, which you can find at neuro
Speaker 2: n e u r O Rights Foundation dot org. You
Speaker 2: can check them out. They're very interesting. They made a
Speaker 2: documentary with Verner Herzog by the way, Yeah, it's all
Speaker 2: about reading thoughts and stuff. Oh what is it called
Speaker 2: Theater of Thought? That's the name of it. You can
Speaker 2: watch it. Well, it appears to be brand new. You
Speaker 2: can watch a trailer on YouTube right now, and it's
Speaker 2: got Verner doing his you know, the mind. It's amazing
Speaker 2: the mind. Sorry to taste, but yes, that that is
Speaker 2: in there, and I think they're good. It's one of
Speaker 2: those things that I haven't had enough time to go
Speaker 2: through and click on the hour.
Speaker 5: Board board of directors. Yet I knew there was going
Speaker 5: to be a butt. I want to big up these guys, well.
Speaker 2: I but again, you to do no.
Speaker 3: There's always the potential for aulterior motives. Of course.
Speaker 2: It on the surface it appears like what is that
Speaker 2: Electronic Frontier Foundation where it appears to be. It's an
Speaker 2: organization that appears to be doing really good work. We
Speaker 2: just don't know everything yet, but yeah, I think this
Speaker 2: is worth maybe another full episode on this stuff.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: We may need to give it a little bit at
Speaker 2: more time if new stuff comes out. But I didn't
Speaker 2: know how many companies are trying to do this right now.
Speaker 4: I mean, remember last week we're talking about the like genesis,
Speaker 4: like the many livers. This is another form of biotech
Speaker 4: right where getting to that stage. And I'd like to
Speaker 4: also it's synchronicity because I was also looking back at
Speaker 4: earlier research from twenty fourteen, and I feel like there
Speaker 4: are a lot of fascinating things here that aren't getting mentioned,
Speaker 4: like how does this help the push for non human
Speaker 4: personhood right when you can directly communicate what's happening is
Speaker 4: we're building telepathy we as a civilization or building telepathy?
Speaker 4: Are humans ready for it? I'm gonna say it's you know,
Speaker 4: sometimes the only way to swim is to jump in. Bro.
Speaker 3: Humans could barely handle the Internet. I mean they can't. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is next level from that. You know.
Speaker 4: It's just and we know we have some people listening
Speaker 4: tonight who are experts in related fields. Be cool to
Speaker 4: hear from them.
Speaker 2: Let us also let us know what we can finally
Speaker 2: get the tech from that movie up where I can
Speaker 2: talk to my dogs and hear them say things like
Speaker 2: I have only just met you, but I love.
Speaker 3: You, and you know that's how he feels.
Speaker 4: Get a cast speak with animals.
Speaker 2: I want that. Well, Hey, that's all for me, guys.
Speaker 4: Fascinating one man, all fascinating, all all important and speaking
Speaker 4: of important, you are the most important part of the show. Folks,
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Speaker 4: anybody who got that weird poet poetry reference. Try to
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Speaker 3: Did you learn that from the new Taylor Swift album?
Speaker 4: Ben, I'm joking flanders Field j I spoiled it.
Speaker 5: No, it's just funny how everyone's like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: who is this Patti Smith that Taylor Swift's talking about.
Speaker 5: I must discover her and Dylan Thomas, et cetera. But no,
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Speaker 4: We are the folks who read every email we get.
Speaker 4: There is a spoiler. This is why you should always
Speaker 4: listen to the end of the episodes. Folks, we have
Speaker 4: a prediction that recently got confirmed. We were correct. You
Speaker 4: guys remember a while back when robot dogs became a
Speaker 4: thing and people were looking at all the DARPA videos
Speaker 4: and saying, oh, these are for peaceful purposes. I had
Speaker 4: said immediately, I was like, the first thing that's going
Speaker 4: to happen is eventually someone is going to throw a
Speaker 4: weapon on it. Well get this. If for nine and
Speaker 4: twenty dollars, you too, civilian can buy a flame throwing
Speaker 4: robot dog.
Speaker 3: What a terminator? Why wouldn't you? Oh, I didn't know
Speaker 3: that part the terminator.
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