Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. If you are tuning
Speaker 3: in to our strange news program, The Evening It publishes,
Speaker 3: let us be the first to welcome you to Monday,
Speaker 3: April twenty eighth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Welcome to April.
Speaker 4: It's so spooky. Wait, this isn't the spooky?
Speaker 5: Is that an RSKA impression? That's pretty good?
Speaker 4: No, No, just spooking would be like welcome.
Speaker 6: If he has a waiver, he has a bit of
Speaker 6: h he's got to make him a cryptkeeper knows it's
Speaker 6: very hard to do that voice without choking on your
Speaker 6: own spit.
Speaker 3: I also learned recently guys on the Daily zeite guys that,
Speaker 3: apparently as a ute Tom Waits would scream into his
Speaker 3: pillow to help create his raspy voice.
Speaker 5: Do that every night, just in the state of the world.
Speaker 3: What it's like, the most screamable pillow.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's just the my pillow.
Speaker 3: Yeah great, that guy's in the news as well as Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh real quick up top, I just wanted to ask
Speaker 6: you guys something, since you're having a minute to catch us.
Speaker 6: I was watching some YouTube doom scrolly type things. A
Speaker 6: little shorts have been up on the shorts lately, and
Speaker 6: somebody pointed out a new arrangement for the press briefing
Speaker 6: room at the White House, which is essentially a standing
Speaker 6: room section that is devoted to quote unquote new media. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but a lot of these folks, one of which I
Speaker 6: saw a quote from whose name escapes me, represents particularly
Speaker 6: far right unless, let's just say journalists, journalist d kind
Speaker 6: of news.
Speaker 3: I thought I thought you were going to say, No,
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say, represents the Lollipop Kids.
Speaker 6: That's also true, definitely Lollipop Guild. Indeed, lollipip gild.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely correct. By the way, I did write to
Speaker 3: the current administration because they have an open h application
Speaker 3: online where you can request to be a as a
Speaker 3: new media member podcaster, you can request credentials, and to
Speaker 3: be all out there.
Speaker 6: I guess what I was getting at is it seems like,
Speaker 6: since it is at the discretion of the White House
Speaker 6: Press Secretary as to who gets to ask questions, when
Speaker 6: the deck is stacked.
Speaker 5: A little bit with some of these let's call.
Speaker 6: Them sympathetic folks end up opinion generating lot of news
Speaker 6: bites that are very pro administration, and some of these
Speaker 6: folks literally ask just I mean, beyond softball questions like
Speaker 6: isn't it.
Speaker 3: True that's the best president in the history of the
Speaker 3: concept of humanity? Isn't it true that you're also fun
Speaker 3: at parties?
Speaker 6: It is very much that vibe, and it just I
Speaker 6: don't know, maybe I'm stating the obvious here. Doesn't it
Speaker 6: feel like at ploy or a tactic to erode journalism,
Speaker 6: to erode the idea of what constitutes journalism, And obviously
Speaker 6: it fits in with the whole concept of the fake
Speaker 6: news and it just feels another like a very nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty four kind of thing.
Speaker 5: That's all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guy, Speaking of tertiary characters in your favorite movies,
Speaker 2: can we talk about how dirty The Lost Boys did?
Speaker 4: Rufio didn't talk about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my gosh, this is going to be our
Speaker 3: cold open.
Speaker 6: I just listened to a discussion on my favorite podcast,
Speaker 6: blank Check with Griffin and David about Hook and.
Speaker 2: I seriously, yeah, I watched it last night.
Speaker 5: Well, Banger Rang Bang Rang.
Speaker 6: Indeed, listen to the episode, Matt, You're going to be
Speaker 6: fresh on all the details. And it's a great podcast
Speaker 6: in and of itself. But they're doing the latter day
Speaker 6: career of Steven Spielberg. They do directors kind of filmographies
Speaker 6: in series, and there was so much I forgot about
Speaker 6: Hook and I've been It's been on my.
Speaker 5: List to rewatch as well. It's not good right, like.
Speaker 4: It's it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Okay, what do you it's banger range. They invented the
Speaker 3: word banger range.
Speaker 6: I remember their clubhouse was a kid's dream come true.
Speaker 3: Everybody's eating like brightly colored gag.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right, and skateboarding.
Speaker 6: I want to say it reminded me of the Foot
Speaker 6: Clans hideout in the first Ninja Turtles movie, which made
Speaker 6: made me when to join the gang.
Speaker 5: It really made.
Speaker 2: It's a very specific vibe for the nineties.
Speaker 4: This is nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: And yes, uh, they're imagining eating magically colored stuff.
Speaker 3: And if you believe Robin Williams, if you believe in
Speaker 3: the power of imagination, then you'll never be hungry again.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's nice, dude, Rufio spoiler alert ready three two
Speaker 2: to one. When Ruffio takes that hit from Dustin Hoffman, right, Captain, Yes,
Speaker 2: he dies immediately and everybody just he's going and that's it.
Speaker 3: They did him so dirty in hook. I do remember,
Speaker 3: I do remember watching that thinking what happened to the
Speaker 3: power of imagination? Can't they just like believe this guy
Speaker 3: back into life?
Speaker 6: Dang man, that's a good point. You think they could
Speaker 6: just does it? Snap your fingers? Clap your hands, that's
Speaker 6: you clap your hands. Yeah yeah, watch out for that uh,
Speaker 6: watch out for that gator. We're going to talk about
Speaker 6: some likewise surreal things. We had had some conversations off
Speaker 6: Mike about people who that we've already we've already dunked
Speaker 6: on this industry before getting to not white space, edging
Speaker 6: into space for maybe ten to eleven minutes. Uh, as
Speaker 6: we're recording this, there's going to be a huge merger
Speaker 6: on the horizon for credit card companies so any credit
Speaker 6: card companies in the audience tonight, that one's going to
Speaker 6: be for you. Please don't get on a list when
Speaker 6: you are.
Speaker 3: Please don't get on a list with your personal medical records.
Speaker 3: We've got so much to get to. A new crime
Speaker 3: just dropped that I think we all will learn about.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have ken you come up in a little bit.
Speaker 3: But before we do any of that, why don't we
Speaker 3: take a break for a word from our sponsors, and
Speaker 3: we'll come back with some credit where do and some
Speaker 3: FDA news.
Speaker 4: And we're back.
Speaker 2: We're getting federal government up in here, everybody.
Speaker 3: The sexiest thing to say at a party.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's talk federal government, guys. On April twenty second,
Speaker 2: Reuters reported US f DA suspends milk quality tests amid
Speaker 2: workforce cuts. Right, you know what I like? Untested milk?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, we're talking about this earlier. You know, would
Speaker 7: I walk through a grocery store. What I like to
Speaker 7: feel is the sensation of risk, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: I like to think we're rolling beat me here, Dylan.
Speaker 7: I like to think we're rolling the in dice, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is there cyclospora in this milk or cheese, maybe bird flu.
Speaker 6: Does this figure into the conversation around raw milk? Isn't
Speaker 6: DARFK a big fan of raw milk, and it's sort
Speaker 6: of been like state by status to whether it's legal
Speaker 6: or not unprocessed, unpasteurized milk.
Speaker 2: Raw it may. But in this case, this is the agency,
Speaker 2: the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that is suspending
Speaker 2: its proficiency testing for Grade A raw milk and finished products.
Speaker 2: So any milk you can buy that would be considered
Speaker 2: Grade A that you buy in your store shelves, the
Speaker 2: kind for human consumption, it is suspending the testing for that.
Speaker 6: So the assumption is it's probably fine, nothing to worry about.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, everything's fine.
Speaker 4: I can't about yeah.
Speaker 3: To be clear, nothing is improving for the cows.
Speaker 2: Yep, cows still in their enclosures, continually just given milk
Speaker 2: through all kinds of weird tubing.
Speaker 3: And are they okay? So they're suspending their quality control.
Speaker 3: But Matt, from what I understand, the argument is that
Speaker 3: the FDA is outsourcing this or transferring Hey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. According to the FDA, it's being transferred to
Speaker 2: this place, the FDA's Moffit Center Proficiency testing laboratory is
Speaker 2: quote no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency
Speaker 2: testing and data analysis.
Speaker 4: This is all according to an email official that was sent.
Speaker 2: However, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said the laboratory
Speaker 2: was Don't worry, guys, already set to be decommissioned before
Speaker 2: the staff cuts, and proficiency testing will be paused during
Speaker 2: the transition to a new laboratory. But product testing will continue, guys,
Speaker 2: It will continue.
Speaker 3: All right. Wait, question, what's the difference between proficiency testing
Speaker 3: and product testing?
Speaker 4: Who knows?
Speaker 2: Who knows? There's a proposed forty billion dollar cut currently
Speaker 2: happening at the agency via the Trump administration. And this
Speaker 2: is also really coming about because of the twenty thousand
Speaker 2: employees that were lost from the Department of Health and
Speaker 2: Human Services. So you know, milk testing will happen. It
Speaker 2: just won't be happening in the same way by the
Speaker 2: same people at the same places. It'll just be new, guys,
Speaker 2: and new is better, he said, hopefully, speaking of changes
Speaker 2: in the federal government. Guys, the SEA recently had to
Speaker 2: say sorry, we can't help you to a couple of cities.
Speaker 2: They were dealing with some lad stuff officials in Milwaukee
Speaker 2: and Wisconsin's state health department formally requested the CDC's help
Speaker 2: on March twenty sixth, after many of the city's schools
Speaker 2: were found to have quote significant lead hazards exposing children,
Speaker 2: and according to CBS News and Alexander ten on April eleventh,
Speaker 2: the CDC basically reached out and said, no, we cannot
Speaker 2: help you. A statement from the email received by CBS
Speaker 2: News is quote, I sincerely regret to inform you that
Speaker 2: due to the complete loss of our LED program, we
Speaker 2: will be unable to support you with this. As in,
Speaker 2: because of the staff cuts at the federal level at
Speaker 2: the CDC, there is no longer a LEAD program that
Speaker 2: can help out any city, state, whatever, with testing lead
Speaker 2: and providing basically ways to fit a LET exposure problem
Speaker 2: like within a school per chance, or maybe a citywide problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, despite the fact that there are pretty rigorous studies
Speaker 3: showing LET exposure, especially during formative years, can have consequences
Speaker 3: down the road. It's it's kind of a thing we
Speaker 3: were talking about off air. We have an episode coming
Speaker 3: up on let exposure and it's a I mean, Matt Noel, Dylan,
Speaker 3: Folks at home it's a blood bath over there right now.
Speaker 3: Like the amount of cuts. I think we all probably
Speaker 3: have a couple of friends who were working in public
Speaker 3: service who were unceremoniously given their walking papers or they
Speaker 3: got that really weird email for voluntary resignation, depending on
Speaker 3: their department. I'm gonna say it, I don't think this
Speaker 3: is like a good idea long term. If you if
Speaker 3: you support the US as a as a ONCET.
Speaker 2: I would agree with you. Other officials, like within this
Speaker 2: story about Milwaukee schools, they are saying, this is why
Speaker 2: it is so important to have state level and local
Speaker 2: level folks who do things like test products, you know, milk,
Speaker 2: test for lead in pipes and then know how to
Speaker 2: actually go through a triage and help the students or
Speaker 2: you know, human beings who've been exposed to that lead,
Speaker 2: and then fix the pipes that have the lead in
Speaker 2: them that are seeping it into the water supply. They're
Speaker 2: basically it's an interesting argument. It's both we no longer
Speaker 2: have help at the federal level, but also this is
Speaker 2: why we need to be as good as whoever those
Speaker 2: folks were at the local and state level, Which is
Speaker 2: an interesting argument, right because there are budgets, you know,
Speaker 2: local and state budgets to maybe create things like this.
Speaker 2: It's just how much of that money coming in via
Speaker 2: whatever taxes or whatever incentive programs do you actually put
Speaker 2: towards health and human services stuff?
Speaker 3: Right? And how different should should thresholds and priorities and
Speaker 3: accuracy be from state.
Speaker 4: To state city right?
Speaker 3: Or city to city? Right? Yeah. People who are critics
Speaker 3: of the current direction are going to argue that this
Speaker 3: feels like Balkanizing the United States, turning each of the
Speaker 3: fifty states into their own sort of sovereign territory with
Speaker 3: an erosion of federal law. And there is I mean,
Speaker 3: not to be alarmists, there is some validity to that argument.
Speaker 3: Like what if you imagine, oh gosh, what's a city.
Speaker 3: A lot of people don't think about Bismarck. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: so we're in Bismarck and people love Bismarck because now
Speaker 3: it's a tourism advertisement thing to say, hey, we're known
Speaker 3: for not having poison in the milk. Yeah, come to Bismarck.
Speaker 3: You know what, the town of clean milk. M hm.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's just weird because how do you test all of
Speaker 2: the products coming into Bismarck. I mean, how you test
Speaker 2: every single how do you do that?
Speaker 3: How do you afford it?
Speaker 4: You know, I feel like you.
Speaker 2: Need a federal program or something larger, at least sitting
Speaker 2: on top of everybody who's producing a product and say, hey,
Speaker 2: those folks are going to look at everything.
Speaker 4: If not, I don't know, welcome.
Speaker 3: To El Paso. You might get a finger in the chili.
Speaker 4: But the milk is just following.
Speaker 2: Guys, let's continue a little bit on a previous discussion
Speaker 2: we've had before about Red thirty, that is an artificial
Speaker 2: petroleum based food dye that recently we talked on the
Speaker 2: show about how the US government is looking to cut
Speaker 2: that out, cut it out of our food supplies. If
Speaker 2: you imagine that scene, if you have seen the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one Banger Rang of a film hook, you may
Speaker 2: imagine the props department using a whole crap ton of
Speaker 2: petroleum based food dies to create those I don't know,
Speaker 2: sloppy pies.
Speaker 3: They're basically they're like neon colored gack, but also rufio.
Speaker 6: Yes, that was prime Nickelodeon's slime time, you know, zwise, Yeah,
Speaker 6: for sure.
Speaker 2: Well they sure used it a whole bunch and now
Speaker 2: the FDA again, the Food and Drug Administration at the
Speaker 2: federal level of the US government, is phasing out the
Speaker 2: use of petroleum based synthetic dies by the end of
Speaker 2: the year, according to an announcement by the agency that
Speaker 2: occurred yesterday as we're recording Tuesday for twenty second. This
Speaker 2: comes to us via CNBC. By the way, guys, this
Speaker 2: could be huge, it's not. It's one of those things
Speaker 2: we talked about even before all of this other stuff,
Speaker 2: when we talked about food additive so that are allowed
Speaker 2: within the United States government according to the FDA, and
Speaker 2: those same food additives that are banned in most other countries. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and how maybe it's a good idea to jump on
Speaker 2: the old bandwagon and get those out of our systems
Speaker 2: as well. The FDA appears to be taking steps.
Speaker 3: The people left at the FDA appear to be taking steps.
Speaker 2: Yes, and specifically I was gonna say Robert Downey Junior,
Speaker 2: but it's not him. It's the other guy and Robert
Speaker 2: Kennedy Junior. But but anyway, it is interesting that it's
Speaker 2: happening now. We're talking red forty, yellow five, yellow six,
Speaker 2: jazz all getting out of here, including red three.
Speaker 5: So I'm not read three.
Speaker 3: Yes, read three is the reason we started this show.
Speaker 6: I only drink sports beverages that have read three in them.
Speaker 5: I will die on that hill, possibly literally.
Speaker 3: As an entity that doesn't have, like you, guys, full
Speaker 3: spectrum of color. I appreciate that the additives have numbers
Speaker 3: beside them.
Speaker 5: They just make the bevy hit different.
Speaker 4: You know that's right?
Speaker 2: Well, guys, According to FDA Commissioner Marty McCarey, the agency
Speaker 2: FDA plans to authorize four additional color additives using natural
Speaker 2: ingredients in the next few weeks, so maybe even by
Speaker 2: the time you're hearing this, they are also expecting to
Speaker 2: review and approve other natural ingredient colors.
Speaker 3: Cool. How do we define natural.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not based in the stuff we pull out
Speaker 2: out of the ground and then refine and put in
Speaker 2: our vehicles. Cool, which is very natural, I suppose in
Speaker 2: a way. One last thing, and they were getting out
Speaker 2: of here for the segment Huge news. Yes, I don't
Speaker 2: know what's in your wallet, but this one company is
Speaker 2: really stoked if they've got one of their pieces of
Speaker 2: plastic in your wallet.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: Capital one.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: They had this little idea. They said, why don't we
Speaker 2: buy Discover Financial Services and Discover Bank for around thirty
Speaker 2: five billion dollars thirty five point three to be exact reason,
Speaker 2: Let's buy that and let us become the credit card
Speaker 2: company that exists on the planet, like the biggest one.
Speaker 2: And the Federal Reserve had to check it out. The
Speaker 2: guess who else guys the Office of the Comptroller of
Speaker 2: the Currency You had to check out the dealer.
Speaker 5: Unclear still to this.
Speaker 2: Day, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the parliamentarian.
Speaker 5: What's the deal again, I'm sorry, we gotta we got
Speaker 5: to remind everybody.
Speaker 2: The comptroller is the person with the stamps and the signage.
Speaker 6: They go, yes, they troll the comps, so they're like
Speaker 6: a mega notary basically.
Speaker 2: No, No, they're the one that checks off every thing,
Speaker 2: like the last line of defense for fiscal things services
Speaker 2: depending on when you're.
Speaker 3: In right to them, Matt, I like that, the last
Speaker 3: line of defense that's got to them. They probably make
Speaker 3: custom stamp too, last light of fiscal defense. And they,
Speaker 3: despite that excellent tagline match just gave them. They co
Speaker 3: signed what is arguably a problematic monopolization of one of
Speaker 3: the most sensitive parts of Western life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty weird. It's pretty weird.
Speaker 2: Capital One has around one hundred million card holders, Discover
Speaker 2: had around three hundred millions. So then you put them
Speaker 2: all together, that's four hundred million cards out there. That's
Speaker 2: not individual cardholders if you had those two up, because
Speaker 2: many many folks have multiple cards. It is interesting with
Speaker 2: the two of these companies combined because they have often
Speaker 2: targeted folks who are considered by these financial services to
Speaker 2: be either lower income or lower on the credit scale,
Speaker 2: so around a credit score around six hundred, and they
Speaker 2: offer cards often with cash back and things like that
Speaker 2: that the financial services like Capital One and Discover and
Speaker 2: Visa and all of them say are more popular with
Speaker 2: folks of lower income. That is what that's the way
Speaker 2: they talk about it. Sure, it's really gross.
Speaker 3: Actually, he Evikre just had a happy accident. Companies money.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, but basically they're they're teaming up to make
Speaker 2: one giant financial credit services group with huge interest rates.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to say praying on anybody.
Speaker 3: I just mean, I mean, you kind of have to
Speaker 3: if you're being accurate, but we don't want to say it.
Speaker 3: That doesn't make it not true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, because there's a There are a bunch
Speaker 2: of credit card issuing banks like JP Morgan Chase, Bank
Speaker 2: of America, City Group, Wells Fargo, a bunch of them
Speaker 2: that are like, we're a bank, but we also offer
Speaker 2: credit cards.
Speaker 4: This is like.
Speaker 2: One of the primary ones that are going after people
Speaker 2: who don't have a lot of money and can't afford to,
Speaker 2: you know, pay seventeen twenty three thirty percent interest rates
Speaker 2: on stuff.
Speaker 3: Isirious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, have fun with that one. We'll see where
Speaker 2: all of that goes. Guess who's really happy the shareholders.
Speaker 2: Everybody who owned Discover stock just got a bunch of
Speaker 2: capital one stock. Discover stock was upwards of one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars per share, and your capital one is well above that.
Speaker 2: So everybody who held shares is going to make a
Speaker 2: crap ton of money.
Speaker 3: Everybody at the meeting is having a great day.
Speaker 4: That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 3: Everybody at the met have a great day. Also, if
Speaker 3: we could always be closing. If you want to learn
Speaker 3: more about the history of credit cards as a concept
Speaker 3: and why credit scores are absolutely ridiculous, check out our
Speaker 3: pure podcast Ridiculous History. Matt. We're still trying to get
Speaker 3: you to come back on the show.
Speaker 5: It's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: We're gonna twist one day. I'll do that thing, but
Speaker 2: not right now. Right now, we're gonna hear a word
Speaker 2: from our sponsors.
Speaker 6: And we've returned with a with a oh man, this
Speaker 6: is a real chestnut. Is that a thing? It's an
Speaker 6: old chest nut. Whatever they are, they are, and they're
Speaker 6: tough nuts to crack. Apparently, as often is the case
Speaker 6: with a conspiracy theory run amuck, we do live in
Speaker 6: a time where disinformation seems to be more prevalent than ever,
Speaker 6: with all these accusations of fake news media and fake
Speaker 6: news story and miss and disinformation and dare we say,
Speaker 6: outright propaganda all over the world, and very much in
Speaker 6: this country of ours, the United States of America, with
Speaker 6: all of that stuff flowing around, kind of muddies the
Speaker 6: waters to an alarming degree in terms of what is
Speaker 6: to be believed, what is to be taken at face value,
Speaker 6: And for good reason.
Speaker 5: I mean, we have deep fakes.
Speaker 6: We have more and more convincing uses of artificial intelligence
Speaker 6: machine learning rather to create images that never really existed
Speaker 6: that absolutely look convincing.
Speaker 5: Video footage have even gotten hands better.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you guys have seen that, but
Speaker 6: the AI modeling tools are much much better at generating hands.
Speaker 6: That was always the big tell as to whether something
Speaker 6: was AI slop or not. This story isn't about AI necessarily.
Speaker 6: This story is about space and conspiracies surrounding a particularly
Speaker 6: I don't know, self congratulatory Let's just call it PR
Speaker 6: space flight from Jeff Be's Blue Origin Space Program space company.
Speaker 6: He's a competing, of course with Elon Musk's SpaceX and
Speaker 6: definitely making some headway in terms of privatized spaceflight. Whatever
Speaker 6: you think about that as a concept, it is happening,
Speaker 6: and Bezos is one of the figures at the forefront
Speaker 6: of that.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 6: As a way of drawing attention to his efforts, he
Speaker 6: and his company devised a PR stunt photo op.
Speaker 5: Let's just call it.
Speaker 6: We're in a handful of celebrities who are women were
Speaker 6: gathered together, six of them in fact, for an eleven
Speaker 6: minute spaceflight into near Earth orbit.
Speaker 3: I believe about.
Speaker 6: Space, not quite space, near Earth orbit. I believe about
Speaker 6: sixty three miles above the Earth's atmosphere, which is high
Speaker 6: enough to achieve zero gravity. Type effects and all of
Speaker 6: that good stuff. The Internet, however, as it is wont
Speaker 6: to do, is calling foul on this whole thing, saying
Speaker 6: that it never really happened, that it was simulated. The
Speaker 6: very familiar sounding conspiracy theories, given all of the talk
Speaker 6: around the faked moon landing, the supposed faking of the
Speaker 6: moon landing, the idea that it was something that was
Speaker 6: devised and set up on a studio backlot in Hollywood,
Speaker 6: potentially even directed by the great Stanley Kubrick, all of
Speaker 6: that one of the classic conspiracy theories that we have
Speaker 6: talked about a great length on this show.
Speaker 3: But that is true. By the way, Stanley Kubrick did
Speaker 3: fake the moon landing. Cool okay, such an awe tour.
Speaker 3: He said, the only way they could do it realistically
Speaker 3: is to fake the moon landing on the moon.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, he was like the proto Christopher Nolan. That's
Speaker 5: what Christopher Nolan would do.
Speaker 6: Like, there were all these jokes surrounding the idea that
Speaker 6: he actually wanted to detonate an atomic bomb, you know,
Speaker 6: for the shot in Oppenheimer.
Speaker 5: So the women in question are Katie Perry. One.
Speaker 6: Katie Perry, pop star of Matt pointed out, I kissed
Speaker 6: a Girl. I think was her first big hit, Firework,
Speaker 6: which I think is an absolute banger. I'm quite a
Speaker 6: big fan of Firework, and then Our Fireworks perhaps, And
Speaker 6: then a little later she had a song that was
Speaker 6: pretty inescapable called dark Horse, with a pretty laughable verse
Speaker 6: or feature from the rapper Juicy Jay, wherein he compares
Speaker 6: the Beast of Karma to Jeffrey Dahmer in that it
Speaker 6: can eat your heart out. So that's a real clever
Speaker 6: turn of phrase in there. But I quite enjoy some
Speaker 6: of the music of Katie Perry. She has a late
Speaker 6: kind of been lampooned quite a bit by pop culture
Speaker 6: aficionado's media critics, et cetera, because I don't know, she
Speaker 6: did this whole kind of like the feminist kind of
Speaker 6: rollout for her most recent record, and it just came
Speaker 6: off very very heavy handed and very very kind of
Speaker 6: look at me, rather than actually speaking to real things
Speaker 6: behind the idea of feminism and empowering women, etc. It
Speaker 6: was just, I don't know, kind of a little bit
Speaker 6: tone deaf, you know, the rollout of that record she had.
Speaker 6: I think she were, like, you know, she was dressed
Speaker 6: up as like Rosie the Riveter and things like that
Speaker 6: in a music video, and it just pretty much got
Speaker 6: absolutely crapped on by just about anybody, and the record.
Speaker 5: Did not do well.
Speaker 6: She does have a world tour coming up, and I
Speaker 6: guess what better way of promoting your world tour than
Speaker 6: participating in an elaborate spaceflight pr event. So was Katy Perry,
Speaker 6: along with Gail King. Gail King is Oprah's best friend.
Speaker 6: Oprah and Gail that's right, I'm sorry, a friend of
Speaker 6: the show, Anna Host. I have a daily Zeitgeist, fame
Speaker 6: and other things, lots colch Srista's all the big hits
Speaker 6: these days. Just I saw she posted from a Broadway
Speaker 6: play that she recommended, the name of which is Escaping Me,
Speaker 6: but said that Gail and Oprah were sitting right behind her,
Speaker 6: so it had their seal of approval. So along with
Speaker 6: Katie and Gail, we also had Lauren Sanchez, who is
Speaker 6: a journalist, helicopter pilot, and also the author of a
Speaker 6: children's book called like Fritz the Fly or something like that.
Speaker 6: I like beginning the name wrong, but she's also Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 6: Blue Origin and Amazon CEO's fiance partner. We also have
Speaker 6: Amanda Wynn, who is a civil rights activist, two advocates
Speaker 6: for victims of sexual assaults and bio astronautics research scientists,
Speaker 6: something that she also does, and she has worked with
Speaker 6: NASA in the past on the Space Shuttle mission STS
Speaker 6: one thirty five as well as NASA's exo planet Terry
Speaker 6: Kepler space telescope. So no slouch there. We also have
Speaker 6: film producer Carrie Ann Flynn and a former NASA rocket
Speaker 6: scientist and CEO of engineering firm stem Board and founder
Speaker 6: of a company called Lingo that teaches students technology skills.
Speaker 6: Her name is Aisha Bo. So all of these women
Speaker 6: canned in one of Blue Origins, West Texas launch facilities
Speaker 6: for a big televised event wherein they boarded the ship
Speaker 6: the Shuttle I guess should call it, were blasted off
Speaker 6: into space and then posted videos from their near earth
Speaker 6: orbit zero G experience and then returned back to Earth.
Speaker 6: The whole thing lasted a whoppings twelve minutes I believe,
Speaker 6: and this took place on April fourteenth, as we sit
Speaker 6: here on April twenty third.
Speaker 5: What's the Internet stand.
Speaker 6: Well, there's a couple of points as to what they
Speaker 6: believe or the collective they believe.
Speaker 5: Is happening here.
Speaker 6: There was one particular clue that was highlighted quite frequently,
Speaker 6: which is that when the ship landed, or it's called
Speaker 6: the believe the New Shepherd is the name of the
Speaker 6: pod or the shuttle when it landed. As part of
Speaker 6: the ceremony of it all and the kind of photo
Speaker 6: op of it all, Jeff Bezos was supposed to open
Speaker 6: the the door, the pod door, let's just call in
Speaker 6: for saying sci fi about it, with this special tool.
Speaker 6: But before he got to it, you can actually see
Speaker 6: the door opening inward and then quickly being closed. Okay,
Speaker 6: So a lot of folks on the internet seem to
Speaker 6: believe that the door should not have been able to
Speaker 6: open from inside because it it's supposed to be pressurized,
Speaker 6: and if it were to be openable in that direction,
Speaker 6: that the pressure of space could potentially, you know, force
Speaker 6: it open.
Speaker 5: So that's one thing.
Speaker 6: However, according to NASA, hatch doors should in fact be
Speaker 6: able to be opened by a single crew member without
Speaker 6: any special tools from both sides. So the idea here
Speaker 6: would be that they opened it kind of jumped the
Speaker 6: gun and then realizing they had made a mistake, closed
Speaker 6: it really quickly and allowed Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 5: To have his photo op.
Speaker 6: The Daily Mail reports on this, and that is their conjecture,
Speaker 6: and that is confirmed by some NASA scientists that they
Speaker 6: spoke with. This whole mission, by the way, is called
Speaker 6: taking up Space, and the idea was that it was
Speaker 6: meant to promote stem education for young women. All of
Speaker 6: the crew members were these fashionable, more fashionable than your
Speaker 6: average space suit, very star treki honestly blue skin tight
Speaker 6: jumpsuits that were designed by Lauren Sanchez. The central image
Speaker 6: that I'm talking about is the one that is causing
Speaker 6: folks to do a little bit of a head scratch,
Speaker 6: at least.
Speaker 5: On the Internet.
Speaker 6: With all this talk of illuminati conspiracies surrounding celebrities and
Speaker 6: you know dark satanic rituals, even dating back to things
Speaker 6: like Pizzagate, the idea of the elite participating in these
Speaker 6: you know, dark occult kind of activities. If you look
Speaker 6: at the image, it is kind of a you know,
Speaker 6: a space pod kind of image stylized with stars and
Speaker 6: all of that stuff. It has the names of the
Speaker 6: crew members emblazoned around the edges with a little corresponding
Speaker 6: icons for each of them. Katy Perry gets a shooting
Speaker 6: star microphone kind of thing, and the filmmaker gets a
Speaker 6: little real of film. But if you flip it upside down,
Speaker 6: it really does start to resemble the head of our
Speaker 6: good old buddy, the dark Prince himself, Lord Baphamet, who
Speaker 6: is often used as a symbol of the Church of Satan,
Speaker 6: which as we know, isn't necessarily interested in the actual
Speaker 6: worship of Satan in the occult. They are more of
Speaker 6: an organization about civil liberty and about you know, owning
Speaker 6: one's own destiny. Do what thou wilt, Let that be
Speaker 6: the whole of the law and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 6: Bapha Met for them is more of a symbol of
Speaker 6: protests and of you know, kind of being down on
Speaker 6: the man or you know, rejecting authority and all that.
Speaker 5: So when you flip it upside down, it does kind.
Speaker 6: Of look like a goat shaped head with a snout
Speaker 6: at the bottom. The wings of the craft be come
Speaker 6: the horns, and yeah, it's causing some folks to really,
Speaker 6: you know, call into question whether or not this thing
Speaker 6: was a pr stunt or some sort of elaborate Satanic ritual.
Speaker 6: There's an image that's also being noted where Katy Perry
Speaker 6: is seen holding her hand over the patch, supposedly indicating
Speaker 6: her swearing her allegiance to the Lord Bapha Met. One
Speaker 6: observer on x commented, Katy Perry swearing her allegiance by
Speaker 6: placing her hand adoringly and lovingly over her Bapha met logo.
Speaker 6: They tell you in so many ways who they worship.
Speaker 6: Some folks even pointed out that in twenty eleven, Katy
Speaker 6: Perry had a music video for her song e Tea,
Speaker 6: wherein she is depicted with goat legs. Goat like legs,
Speaker 6: of course, a long standing symbol often related to like
Speaker 6: Pan or other kind of pagan depictions of satyrs, and
Speaker 6: of course Bapha Met himself.
Speaker 5: So what do you guys think? Do you see it?
Speaker 5: It is kind of entertaining.
Speaker 6: There's also people talking about how an upside down cross
Speaker 6: can be seen as well, if you really you know,
Speaker 6: if you squint at it enough.
Speaker 7: Yeah, while you were walking us through, shared one of
Speaker 7: those images with that badge upside down and I can
Speaker 7: totally see the paradelia of it for sure.
Speaker 3: Just here. Let's uh, let's that about pattern seeking right,
Speaker 3: that's where you that's the human tendency to maybe see
Speaker 3: faces or see patterns where there might not be. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to reshare uh this uh, this thing you
Speaker 3: were describing there for everybody as we can like as
Speaker 3: we're as we're all looking at it now, would love
Speaker 3: to hear just like group reactions. You know, I I
Speaker 3: I get that if you are looking for something, you
Speaker 3: are going to find the thing you are looking for
Speaker 3: for sure. Not to sound like roomy, but.
Speaker 5: No, yeah, I get it's very as end of you.
Speaker 6: Ben another comment or had this to say, really sums
Speaker 6: the whole thing up. Did you notice the logo on
Speaker 6: Katie Perry and her fellow Blue Origin space traveler's patch
Speaker 6: is the Satanic goat with an upside down cross If
Speaker 6: you flip it over, goat horns celebs fake space. I
Speaker 6: don't think space is in question here, but perhaps fake
Speaker 6: space travel also acknowledging a reference to Two Corinthians eleven fourteen,
Speaker 6: Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Baphabet's not Satan.
Speaker 5: No, no, he's not.
Speaker 3: So like, let's get our lore together real for.
Speaker 6: Sure, Baha met would be perhaps considered like one of
Speaker 6: the lesser demons, kind of like in the what is
Speaker 6: it the Key of Solomon? Sort of like Paymon and
Speaker 6: all of that stuff. Baphamet is is he like a
Speaker 6: prince of Hell? What's what's Baphamet's deal?
Speaker 3: Well, bapha Met the name is relatively young as far
Speaker 3: as the the demon game goes, but Bathamet had had
Speaker 3: the distinct privilege of being part of the accusations against
Speaker 3: the Knights Templar.
Speaker 6: That's right, and also considered a misinterpretation of Islamic beliefs.
Speaker 6: Some scholars believe that the name is a corruption of
Speaker 6: Mahammet or Mohammed right, right.
Speaker 3: This leads some historians or speculators to argue that the
Speaker 3: Templars were indeed to some degree following is law.
Speaker 6: And if I'm not mistaken, ben, aren't the Knights Templark
Speaker 6: often lumped in with Illuminati conspiracies?
Speaker 5: Isn't that sort of part of it?
Speaker 3: They know what they did, that's fair?
Speaker 6: Okay, So this is it does feel like part of
Speaker 6: that larger conspiracy bubble of you know, celebrities being in
Speaker 6: some way inducted into some sort of shadowy secret cabal
Speaker 6: accusations have often flown around surrounding even like choreography of
Speaker 6: like Beyonce. I think there was some some stuff talking
Speaker 6: about Beyonce and jay Z are part of this. And
Speaker 6: recently Coachella took place in the Indio Valley there in California,
Speaker 6: and a lot of articles started swirling after Lady Gaga's
Speaker 6: performance accusing that of being some sort of Satanic ritual.
Speaker 6: So this isn't like the first, you know, satanic rodeo.
Speaker 6: It's maybe just the first one that's accused of happening
Speaker 6: in space, So you know, I know we're running along
Speaker 6: in this. There's a couple other quick points I'd like
Speaker 6: to hit, one being that when Katie Perry was in space,
Speaker 6: she holds up a little butterfly sticky note kind of thing,
Speaker 6: apparently it's really hard to read, has text on it
Speaker 6: indicating her set list for her upcoming tour that I
Speaker 6: was mentioning earlier. However, some Internet conspiracy theorists have said
Speaker 6: that that is actually a reference to MK Ultra and
Speaker 6: a form of mind control, because apparently the image of
Speaker 6: the monarch butterfly representing metamorphosis and change has been long
Speaker 6: associated with that program, which is actually something I didn't
Speaker 6: fully realize, but it does make sense.
Speaker 5: So there's that.
Speaker 6: There's also a thing about like a fake hand that
Speaker 6: was visible, Ben, Do I see you nodding? That one
Speaker 6: sort of flummecks me a little bit. I didn't quite
Speaker 6: get to the bottom of that one.
Speaker 2: There's a still that's going around as well as some
Speaker 2: video footage after the capsule comes down of a view
Speaker 2: through the window where there's a shiny looking hand that
Speaker 2: many people in line have said, Hey, that's a mannequin's hand.
Speaker 4: That's a fake hand in the window.
Speaker 2: But again it's pretty baseless. It's just kind of the whole.
Speaker 2: I don't know the rumor thing starts.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at that image again of the capsule flipped around,
Speaker 2: the actual mission image.
Speaker 5: This is the patch. Yeah, they're the logo.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is an all female mission. It is about taking
Speaker 2: up space and promoting promoting stem for girls.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, think about what the blue Origin space crafts look like.
Speaker 2: They look like, so they do and not all.
Speaker 7: Of that, Not all of that is due to necessary function.
Speaker 3: There's a little bit of aesthetic interesting carry me.
Speaker 2: Ben, this this image of the spacecraft is tilted in
Speaker 2: such a way that it looks a little less phallic.
Speaker 2: I think that was done purposefully. So I think any
Speaker 2: shapes you're getting when you flip it over are due
Speaker 2: to the desire to make it look a little less
Speaker 2: like a huge dog.
Speaker 5: That's a really good point, Matt. So it's a PR move.
Speaker 6: It is further apart and parcel of the policity stunt
Speaker 6: ness of it.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, it's.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent of PR move. We were talking off
Speaker 3: Mike before we recorded tonight's program where I had asked
Speaker 3: someone to explain who Katy Perry was because I'm super
Speaker 3: plugged into human culture. And then the next part becomes this,
Speaker 3: It would be fascinating to look at the financials a
Speaker 3: Blue Origin and see whether this sort of PR stunt
Speaker 3: is actually financially advantageous to them. Right, you can take
Speaker 3: the hit. You can take the PR hit if the
Speaker 3: investors are still coming through, because now they like your
Speaker 3: mission more and they get to say, oh, look at
Speaker 3: that badge. Blue Origin doesn't look that much like a
Speaker 3: penis we should give them money.
Speaker 6: That's a very good point, Ben, and I will will
Speaker 6: say too that the biggest takeaway from this whole thing
Speaker 6: is just the sort of tone deafness of it all.
Speaker 3: Kardashian, the.
Speaker 6: Pepsi percent that aspect, you know, Katy Perry coming down
Speaker 6: and making these very kind of lackadaisical claims of like,
Speaker 6: you know, we've heard of this idea of the overview effect,
Speaker 6: and it is I'm sure it's very cathartic, and it's
Speaker 6: something that maybe we can all one day experience as well,
Speaker 6: But right now, the ability to experience that for regular
Speaker 6: folks is absolutely out of range. Out of reach in
Speaker 6: terms of price, like I believe it costs about a
Speaker 6: million dollars once space tourism truly begins, you know, in earnest.
Speaker 5: That's about what you're looking to pay.
Speaker 3: Are we making The real question here philosophically is if
Speaker 3: we are making space, are we making space in this
Speaker 3: conversation for other people who are not celebrities at multimillionaires
Speaker 3: or is it just sort of like Jeff Bezos and
Speaker 3: Blue Orged pitching ideas and not really hearing responses.
Speaker 6: One hundred percent that and then funny that you should say, Ben,
Speaker 6: I think your version of the mission name is a
Speaker 6: little less tone deaf. The real version was taking up space,
Speaker 6: which is kind of what these billionaires do, you know,
Speaker 6: in terms of taking stuff that other people could benefit
Speaker 6: from and not giving back.
Speaker 5: So to me, like taking up space is just sort.
Speaker 6: Of absolutely ill conceived, and like I was getting Tokadiy
Speaker 6: Perry making these comments of you know, you never know
Speaker 6: truly how much love you have to give until you've
Speaker 6: gone to space.
Speaker 5: It's like, cool, I guess we'll just have to, you know, settle.
Speaker 6: On the amount of love that we are aware that
Speaker 6: we have to give without having that experience that you shared,
Speaker 6: Katie Perry.
Speaker 5: So there you go.
Speaker 6: I don't know, it just felt a little gross to me.
Speaker 6: I don't think it was faked. I do think that
Speaker 6: stuff is interesting and very much part and parcel of
Speaker 6: the kind of thought experiments that we enjoy on this show.
Speaker 5: But all of it checks out.
Speaker 6: I think it happened, and I think the fact that
Speaker 6: it did happen is maybe even more offensive and obnoxious
Speaker 6: than if it were faked, which why would they do that.
Speaker 6: I will say one thing that hasn't been addressed that
Speaker 6: I do think is interesting. I did see a video
Speaker 6: of an actual, actual astronaut, a woman whose name is
Speaker 6: escaping me. I apologize from I believe the International Space Station,
Speaker 6: where her hair is absolutely up completely, you know, in like,
Speaker 6: you know, a huge mess of hair. Katie Perry's hair
Speaker 6: was much less unkempt looking. It was just gently kind
Speaker 6: of hovering. I would argue that maybe the difference is
Speaker 6: how deep in space you are that would increase the
Speaker 6: gravitational effect.
Speaker 5: Am I right?
Speaker 6: That if you're further into space more than just sixty
Speaker 6: three miles, you're gonna have a heavier amount of zero
Speaker 6: gravity effect that would maybe cause your hair to react differently.
Speaker 5: What do you guys think about that?
Speaker 4: We'll never know.
Speaker 5: I guess not. I guess not.
Speaker 6: Well, what we do know is we're going to take
Speaker 6: quick break here a word from our sponsor, then come
Speaker 6: back with another piece of strange news.
Speaker 3: And we have returned. There is a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: we're not going to get to, but we will follow
Speaker 3: up on the promise of a new crime that just
Speaker 3: dropped Dylan. If we could get an air horn, perfect,
Speaker 3: we welcome to wildlife piracy cool a crime that that
Speaker 3: we like for a very real thing. Just earlier this April,
Speaker 3: as reported by Evelyd Moussambif for ap News, two Belgian
Speaker 3: teenagers were charged with this crime wildlife piracy after they
Speaker 3: were found with thousands of ants. They were smuggling ants.
Speaker 3: They're nineteen year olds, apparently they they were arrested on
Speaker 3: April fifth in Kenya at a guesthouse with five thousand
Speaker 3: ants in their possession and they going.
Speaker 5: Into the ant farm business. They what to what end?
Speaker 3: They said they were collected ants for fun. They didn't
Speaker 3: know it was illegal. If you guys go to the
Speaker 3: article I mentioned there and shared, it looks like a
Speaker 3: professional operation. They have the ants and these tiny graduated cylinders.
Speaker 5: When is this a score for ants?
Speaker 3: And what it gives me? One of my favorite recent
Speaker 3: government statements, which is this the illegal export of the
Speaker 3: ants not only undermines Kenya's sovereign rights over its biodiversity,
Speaker 3: but it also deprives local communities and research institutions of
Speaker 3: potential ecological and economic benefits. So word to the wise.
Speaker 3: Remember when in Rome followed Roman law right, So so
Speaker 3: no breaking the laws of the land that let you in. Also,
Speaker 3: don't steal ants. I guess I don't know.
Speaker 5: I just love how is one to know?
Speaker 7: I mean, I feel like we've all about scale, we've
Speaker 7: all accidentally stolen ants.
Speaker 6: It must be about scale, right, Like it's at a
Speaker 6: certain point you're like mining a resource and maybe you
Speaker 6: have to report that to the proper wildlife authorities. Like
Speaker 6: is it illegal for me to collect ants from my
Speaker 6: backyard and make myself a little ant farm situation?
Speaker 3: It depends on what kind of ant, honestly, and where
Speaker 3: you're dangered ants, right, Because there's a very good, fascinating,
Speaker 3: I should say, if not very good argument about which
Speaker 3: life worm on Earth is the most successful. And when
Speaker 3: it comes to higher order multi cellular life forms, ants
Speaker 3: get a lot of a lot of credit for that
Speaker 3: because of their adaptations. They do things without anthropomorphizing that
Speaker 3: could seem very human and not. We're not talking about
Speaker 3: just the nice things. There are ants that enslave other creatures,
Speaker 3: things like that, like they got the classic human. I'm
Speaker 3: bringing this up, Matt. Do you have any thoughts before
Speaker 3: we move on this one.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that that amount of ants is worth
Speaker 2: around seven dollars.
Speaker 3: And I think we've all accidentally smuggled some insects before,
Speaker 3: not naming names, but you know, we might go on
Speaker 3: hikes and fine, we've accidentally smuggled some ticks.
Speaker 4: I smuggled a tick on my butt.
Speaker 5: Basically, it's your story to tell.
Speaker 3: Bro.
Speaker 4: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I was in the shower and he was like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm down here, man, what's going on?
Speaker 4: And I was like, stop, dude, that out.
Speaker 3: That is a perfect tick act. By the way, Yeah, people.
Speaker 4: Don't I don't know.
Speaker 2: He was just doing his thing. But yeah, and now
Speaker 2: I'm on antibiotics.
Speaker 4: So thanks tick. Oh seriously, yes, just in.
Speaker 5: Case, in case I don't want to get that lime disease.
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, lime disease episode has been the works for
Speaker 3: a few years here. But yeah, we're mentioning this because
Speaker 3: it's a funny story. I regret to inform friends and neighbors,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists that these two young men did not,
Speaker 3: in fact have the ants in their pandemic, so missed
Speaker 3: opportunity on that. We're going to take a sudden shift
Speaker 3: in direction. We're going to stay with Kenya in a
Speaker 3: few years back. You guys may remember in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: we covered a story in our Strange News program about
Speaker 3: a death cult in Kenya, mass suicide, Oregon theft. This
Speaker 3: is one of those rare situations that made international news.
Speaker 6: Remember talking about this. Possibly that's been a minute. I
Speaker 6: do remember that the basics though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, more than two hundred people died at the time
Speaker 3: of reporting, six hundred were reported missing. And now we
Speaker 3: have another story coming to us via Reuters. Reuters has
Speaker 3: reported that two bodies were recovered from a church in
Speaker 3: Kenya and the discovery has not just the local population
Speaker 3: but the authorities worried that there may be another kind
Speaker 3: of starvation or self harm cult in play. The bodies
Speaker 3: were retrieved from the premises of Saint Joseph Missions of
Speaker 3: Africa Church in Macgory County and this like just happened.
Speaker 3: We're recorded on April twenty third. This happened a couple
Speaker 3: days ago. And you know we I always try to
Speaker 3: keep the eye on these on the cult activities. In
Speaker 3: addition to the two cadavers, they rescued almost sixty people
Speaker 3: who were being held there against their will.
Speaker 5: Okay, doesn't sound good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 2: And apparently they went to the hospital right, or they
Speaker 2: were sent to the hospital, but then they reacted differently.
Speaker 3: Right when they were This is the part about what
Speaker 3: the nature of consent, right, because, as you're saying, Matt,
Speaker 3: when they rescued these fifty seven people and took them
Speaker 3: to a nearby hospital for medical care. Many of them
Speaker 3: refused treatment and instead began to sing religious songs. This
Speaker 3: is creepy, yeah, yeah, but if people are adults, then
Speaker 3: you know, they can do what they want, right as
Speaker 3: long as they're not harming others, Oh for sure.
Speaker 5: But I just mean it just seems a little bit like.
Speaker 6: A spooky I don't know, like, were they doing this
Speaker 6: in protest like or is it this is seeming spontaneous,
Speaker 6: like they're reacting to some unforeseen indoctrination or force or something.
Speaker 5: I guess I'm just confused.
Speaker 3: Yeah, things are getting things are getting hairy there. And
Speaker 3: this is a story that we need to keep an
Speaker 3: eye on because these charismatic cult like institutions, right, they
Speaker 3: can they can do serious harm to people, and you're
Speaker 3: not going to be able to tell sometimes as an
Speaker 3: investigator or as just you know, bystander walking by, unless
Speaker 3: you're in the inner circle, and it can these conspiracies
Speaker 3: can have real life consequences. Obviously, we're not here to
Speaker 3: denigrate anybody's you know, personal beliefs, but if your institution
Speaker 3: of belief is asking you to do things that cause
Speaker 3: harm to yourself or others, it's time to take a
Speaker 3: quick think. Maybe take a walk around the block, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Get a case ida right, listen
Speaker 3: to some jazz. I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 3: the answers are, but I wanted to bring this up
Speaker 3: because we have an upcoming episode, a continuing an installment,
Speaker 3: and a continuing series on cults you've never heard of.
Speaker 3: So this is a claring poll to all of our
Speaker 3: fellow listeners to please let us know about some other
Speaker 3: cults that you think the public should be aware of
Speaker 3: before there's another Waco situation or another Jonestown, which unfortunately,
Speaker 3: historically is always a non zero possibility.
Speaker 6: Ben, I sent to you guys in our group text
Speaker 6: another kind of alarming cult. I think maybe that was it.
Speaker 6: It was one that I was like questioning whether or
Speaker 6: not we had covered because it had some things in
Speaker 6: common with.
Speaker 5: The Mother Love. I believe the one that there was.
Speaker 6: A documentary made recently about. I'll have to put my
Speaker 6: finger on what that was. To your point, though, Ben,
Speaker 6: there's more than enough new entries for an updated episode coming.
Speaker 3: Up right O. Yeah, agreed, And we actually didn't get
Speaker 3: to the story of that cult whose name begins with
Speaker 3: a Z, and we're short on time a little while back.
Speaker 3: But while we have everybody I've got, I've got one
Speaker 3: more thing that I think we do need to talk about.
Speaker 3: We can save some of the rest of it for
Speaker 3: a different program in the future. Guys, Mexican cartels, I'm
Speaker 3: just going to give you some keywords. Mexican cartels one,
Speaker 3: casinos two, China three fentanyl four. I see, yeah, my
Speaker 3: money's run into the laundry like there's something smelly on me.
Speaker 3: Mexican cartels are using casinos to launder money made from fentanyl.
Speaker 3: In the US, at least one point four billion US
Speaker 3: dollars linked to various cartels that are working in a
Speaker 3: Charlie Day level red string map of proxy companies with
Speaker 3: with if not the knowing cooperation of Chinese regulatory bodies,
Speaker 3: at least with a wilful blind eye.
Speaker 6: I mean money spends Jeeze.
Speaker 2: Casinos a great place to launder money.
Speaker 3: That's the old Vegas ad right.
Speaker 5: Second to what happens in Vegas. Stays in Vegas.
Speaker 3: Send your kids to the pool, launder the money. Circus circus,
Speaker 3: circus circus.
Speaker 5: What a weird place, What a weird what a weird place.
Speaker 3: Apparently, the relationship between Mexican cartels and Chinese businesses involved
Speaker 3: in the fentanyl supply chain goes way beyond just selling
Speaker 3: the stuff that you can use to make fentanyl, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Like, you can sell various metals,
Speaker 3: right you can. Yeah, you could sell various metals which
Speaker 3: could be a precursor to a firearm. You're not responsible
Speaker 3: for what happens to that metal after you sell it, right,
Speaker 3: If someone chooses to manufacture a gun, that's no longer
Speaker 3: your remit. However, selling precursor chemicals and claiming well, I
Speaker 3: didn't know, only goes so far.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you going, what else are they good for?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: I mean is that the issue?
Speaker 3: Fent Ugh? What is it good for? Yet? We're what
Speaker 3: we're finding is a couple of different things. I want
Speaker 3: to shout out the Latin Times and the journalist Ector
Speaker 3: Rios Morales, who had a great piece on this on
Speaker 3: April twenty first, twenty twenty five. According to reports that
Speaker 3: are coming from the US Department of the Treasury's Financial
Speaker 3: Crimes Enforcement Network, Finn Sin, I wonder when those guys
Speaker 3: are going to start getting layoffs. They looked at fentanyl
Speaker 3: related illicit transactions tied to the two largest partels in Mexico.
Speaker 3: And what they found was that between January and December
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty four, various financial institutions filed well over
Speaker 3: twelve hundred suspicious activity reports related to that point, the
Speaker 3: purchase of precursor chemicals, the trafficking of fentanyl, and of
Speaker 3: course money laundry. It goes so deep. It's not just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm bringing this up because we have a lot of
Speaker 3: friends and family who are more familiar with casinos than
Speaker 3: the four of us here. We actually did it. I
Speaker 3: think you and I hung out at a casino for
Speaker 3: your very first time a few years back. Is that correct?
Speaker 8: Yeah, you gave me like ten dollars and a clearing machine.
Speaker 8: I hit the wrong button and I didn't get anything.
Speaker 8: It was a big bang theory machine.
Speaker 3: So we yeah, yeah, we called it Goodbye money. I
Speaker 3: think that's how you approach vegas. But this is for
Speaker 3: these cartels and people participate in this global successful criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 3: It's not goodbye money. It's hell o money, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And my question for you guys, I
Speaker 3: don't want amount of like My question for you guys
Speaker 3: is how do you launder money in a casino? Do
Speaker 3: you like, take dirty money and get a bunch of
Speaker 3: chips and then take those chips back and get cash
Speaker 3: for the chips? Is that it?
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 6: I mean just the fact that it is such a
Speaker 6: cash business and there's so few of those that are
Speaker 6: by their very nature that thing that aren't going to
Speaker 6: be looked at askance, that it totally makes sense that
Speaker 6: this would be a way of going about that.
Speaker 5: But I don't know what the actual mechanism would be.
Speaker 3: Okay, Matt, you're shaking your head no as well, by okay,
Speaker 3: what if we like, is there there must be? Is
Speaker 3: there a financial threshold such that pass that amount of money?
Speaker 3: If you try to get chips or cash in chips,
Speaker 3: you have to fill out like a lot of heavy paperwork.
Speaker 3: I know you have to fill out some stuff.
Speaker 6: Certainly for gambling winnings they are they do have to
Speaker 6: be reported to the IRS.
Speaker 5: But I don't know what threshold.
Speaker 7: To yeah still works at the I R S Yeah,
Speaker 7: exactly exactly in those poor guys. Look, this feels like
Speaker 7: a further investigation ahead. I pause it to all of
Speaker 7: us together tonight that it seems increasingly implausible and indeed
Speaker 7: naive to argue that US authorities are not aware of this.
Speaker 7: Maybe factions are complicit in this. I don't know what
Speaker 7: do you guys think.
Speaker 3: Before I start well pulling an Oprah and be like
Speaker 3: you're a corrupt, you're corrupt, and you're a corrupt.
Speaker 6: I will say that I do know that you know, gambling,
Speaker 6: gaming licensing is a big deal, and that proprietors of
Speaker 6: casinos are always very concerned with losing their gaming licenses,
Speaker 6: and so they do, I believe, to the best of
Speaker 6: my understanding, go to great lengths to make sure they're
Speaker 6: in compliance. So this certainly wouldn't be something that would
Speaker 6: be done willy nilly or without an appropriate amount of
Speaker 6: kind of smoke screen, you know, because I think it
Speaker 6: would be pretty easy, to your point bent for Uncle
Speaker 6: Sam to to find out and then you know act.
Speaker 2: To me, casinos are just a weird thing to be okay.
Speaker 2: I don't understand why it's okay.
Speaker 3: How is that a thing other than.
Speaker 2: There are people who agree that they're okay that get paid.
Speaker 2: You pay somebody to say yes, it's okay. Then they
Speaker 2: make a bunch of money and you get some of
Speaker 2: that money.
Speaker 6: And therein lies the issue with the licensing where it's
Speaker 6: like it's only okay up to if these conditions are met.
Speaker 6: And it's the same reason that like when you have
Speaker 6: advertising for any kind of gambling, you have to be
Speaker 6: very clear and expressly state the resources for folks to
Speaker 6: find help if they have gambling problems.
Speaker 3: Well to MAT's earlier point there too, it's a great
Speaker 3: observation that there aren't any I am not aware of
Speaker 3: any like grassroots nonprofit pro casino organization. Like I've never
Speaker 3: seen an interview with someone on the news saying I
Speaker 3: don't make any money off of this. I just think
Speaker 3: it's important for people to have a hot hand blackjack.
Speaker 3: That's what means, you know, step beside human trafficking. I
Speaker 3: chose my thing that I am going to fight for.
Speaker 3: You're right, you know, money is money is a superpower.
Speaker 3: It's a physical or conceptual representation of labor over time. Right. Therefore,
Speaker 3: money as power can be corrupting. It does make institutions
Speaker 3: and individuals corruptible. So it feels like people are aware
Speaker 3: of part of the connection with Cartel's Chinese companies, proxy
Speaker 3: entities and casinos laundering money, but it also feels like
Speaker 3: a lot of powerful people don't want those links to
Speaker 3: be in mistigated in depth understandably, So so what do
Speaker 3: we think, guys? We'll get to one piece of good
Speaker 3: news before we wrap up. There's a lot we didn't
Speaker 3: get to. But overall, does this feel this fentanyl casino
Speaker 3: money laundering thing? Does this feel like an episode in
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, let's break it down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's get into it. Yeah, let's see if we
Speaker 3: can make it back to Vegas. Right.
Speaker 7: Oh, I think we all have different personas in Vegas,
Speaker 7: so we should be fine. It's not longe as that
Speaker 7: can be the bag man, sir, We've saved the seat
Speaker 7: for you.
Speaker 4: I got it. I got a little lost.
Speaker 2: I just want to go to Vallejo now and find
Speaker 2: these dang Zizians.
Speaker 3: The Zizzy and cult. Yes, that's what we didn't get
Speaker 3: to last time.
Speaker 5: Its strange news.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a disturbing story. Tune in for colts
Speaker 3: you've never heard of. Part three will end on some
Speaker 3: good news, I think, I hope.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 3: Studies show that more US residents are using psilocybin than
Speaker 3: ever before. The rates are shooting up due to some
Speaker 3: decriminalization acts right, which also makes people less hesitant to
Speaker 3: self report or to you know, tell the truth on
Speaker 3: a survey or something. There's a great study I found
Speaker 3: out about it from Science Daily, but it was originally
Speaker 3: published in the Annals of Internal Medicine just a few
Speaker 3: days ago, on this Monday past. And what they found
Speaker 3: is that people who are experiencing mental health conditions appear
Speaker 3: to be finding some sort of mitigation or comfort in
Speaker 3: the use of psilocybin aka magic mushrooms, probably the most
Speaker 3: common version of that.
Speaker 6: Here in the US, absolutely, and there's it's becoming more
Speaker 6: and more prevalent, and I think for a good reason
Speaker 6: than when used appropriately under the supervision of like the
Speaker 6: right kind of therapist.
Speaker 5: I have great results.
Speaker 6: From folks that I've spoken to that have participated in
Speaker 6: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And with that, we would love to hear from you,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist, to the degree that you are comfortable,
Speaker 3: tell us your experiences with hallucinogenic substances, tell us your
Speaker 3: hot take for or against it. Let us know if
Speaker 3: you have experience working with the federal government, let us
Speaker 3: know what you're going through. We've had a lot of
Speaker 3: great correspondence there. Let us know if you work at
Speaker 3: a casino, give us the dirty business on that one. Right,
Speaker 3: We did an episode on Stuff that Don't want you
Speaker 3: to know about casinos and I think it holds up
Speaker 3: so we can't wait to hear from you. For all
Speaker 3: of that and for more. You can find us on
Speaker 3: the internet. You can call us on the telephone. You
Speaker 3: can also give us a line any old time you
Speaker 3: like at our good old fashioned email address. That's right.
Speaker 6: You can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where
Speaker 6: we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group.
Speaker 5: Here is where it gets crazy.
Speaker 6: Get in on the conversation, join your Hello Australian listeners
Speaker 6: and recommending some Australian cinema for us to enjoy. You
Speaker 6: want to thank all the folks who have reached out
Speaker 6: giving us some really great recommendations for classic Australian films
Speaker 6: to check out.
Speaker 5: Looking forward to doing that.
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