November 4, 2022 • 41 mins
Why write a book about conspiracies and conspiracy theories? In today's behind-the-scenes episode, the guys explore how the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know book came to be, how they chose what to leave in -- and what they're saving for the next one. Order a copy here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Heads up, fellow conspiracy realist. This is behind
the scenes footage, the kind of stuff you might run
(00:46):
into a director's cut of a documentary and so on.
Sneaking past the curtain on the show to talk a
little bit about the recent stuff they don't want you
to know book, Maybe talk about the title too. To
be honest with you, it's been a wild ride. UH
want to thank everybody who's taken the time to show
(01:08):
support here, whether that's by dropping a rating on Amazon
or good Reads, your your platform of choice. Even more so,
people who throughout the years have supported the show with
excellent questions, excellent recommendations, recording UH an episode earlier today,
someone just provided news the Delphi murderer has probably been caught.
(01:34):
This show works with live active fire, So today it's
going behind the curtain to talk about how this book
came about, how the subjects were chosen, and maybe some
of the stuff that got cut out. So here are
the facts. A Delphi guy, by the way, lived right
down the street, not really, but metaphorically right down the
street from the police office that was investigating those murders.
(01:57):
Since it's crazy, it's how it goes. So, you know,
we are very lucky to be part of a network
UM called I Heart Radio, and UM we were asked
to follow in the footsteps of our buds Josh and
Chuck and write a book based on our podcast. Josh
and Chuck wrote a book called Stuff You Should Know.
(02:18):
We followed Suite are writing a book called Stuff They
Don't Want You to Know. And UM. The whole process
was really interesting in and of itself, just from you know,
doing the research assembly the manuscroup, realizing how crazy deadlines
are in the publishing industry, also kind of realizing how
important supply chain stuff is because the reason deadlines exist
(02:40):
are to work backwards from a release date and then
book yourself, you know, your company time um, in a
printing press to get the proper number of of books
or records or whatever it might be printed to meet
that goal, you know, for that deadline. And we've seen
a lot of issues with that with Vinyl and another
you know tech knowlogy, even like PlayStation five's and all
(03:03):
that kind of stuff. It can be very logistically challenging
to meet those goals. So all of this stuff, all
of these pieces have their place in the process, and
if one thing screws up, it screws up the whole
chain of events. Yeah, you're right, we've learned a lot. Guys,
We've learned a whole lot in going throughout this process. Yeah,
(03:25):
we've learned quite a bit, and maybe we tackle the
biggest question first, which is why this book, why this
in particular, and why publish it now. I mean we've
been doing a podcast for more than a decade at
this point. I mean, I guess it's we kind of
got to it before things became so divisive. We had
(03:46):
a little practice. Um, but you know, things nowadays with
the way information misinformation spread, I mean, you really just
kind of have to be the top of your game
in terms of like kind of knowing what to look
for how not to be deceived, um, and also allow
that to not completely torpedo your quality of life. Uh.
(04:07):
It's easy to let this stuff just wear you down.
But which is a little bit of critical thinking and
on with some kind of you know, ability to suss
out the fact from the fiction, you too can live
a normal life. Absolutely, And we've been doing this for
so long we've just become accustomed to it. And what
we try and do with our podcast is arm you
with that information. And for the first time, we've collected
(04:31):
a lot of those strategies, a lot of the understanding
from all of these years of research and compiled it
into one place, into one book that you can literally
pick up for real, in real life with your hands. Look,
this is no fooling folks. This is a divisive time
no matter which way you look at it. It's a
(04:51):
level of division in the West that has not been
seen since the era of civil rights or even since
the bloody days of the UI Civil War. So what
you hear, what you see, what you encounter in this
book is a way too, as you said, Matt, empower yourself, uh,
(05:12):
and to better arm yourself against bad faith actors who
want to sell you a story and hope that you
will not have the time nor the tools to verify
whether or not that story is in fact true. It's
especially important if you have someone in your life who
(05:33):
does question everything and maybe tends to believe what they
see on social media more than let's say, what a
mainstream news channel would be saying. It would be a
great idea to gift that person this book because it's
designed and written in such a way that it's not
going to feel anybody feel strange for holding beliefs that
(05:54):
maybe you don't have that you don't hold. That's kind
of the whole point of it. You can read this
no matter you believe, and you're gonna pull things out
of it that are maybe different than somebody else. I agree.
We don't talk down, we don't talk at We talk
with and we ask, and we want to thank everybody
for getting on this crazy adventure with us. Full disclosure,
(06:16):
Matt Noel and yours truly don't always uh don't always
agree on everything, uh, and we ask ourselves a lot
of questions. I kind of want to pose a question
to you, guys, um if you don't mind, just really
quick to see what you think um, when it comes
to synthesizing the materials, the like research that we do
(06:37):
for these episodes, and you know, the writing band that
you do for these episodes. When it comes to synthesizing
that into a book format, what what was that process like? Right? So?
The common uh, the common approach to writing a book
like this in a non fiction world, especially dealing with
(07:00):
such hot button issues in the West and beyond, is
to make it approachable. Often people get caught in information bubbles.
That's one of the most successful successful heist of the
information age is to remove people's ability to look beyond
(07:24):
what they know, and perhaps more importantly, to forget that
other people may be in a different, overlapping or entirely
separate bubble. Uh. In the stuff that this show writes,
it is um. You know, the approaches primarily to make
sure that it is interesting and easy to the ear
(07:45):
to hear things. Writing for someone's inner theater of the
mind when they're reading is quite different from writing for
someone's inner theater of the mind when they're listening. Not
everybody's an auditory learner, not everybody as a visual learner.
How does one navigate the difference in this uh? In
(08:07):
this wing the idea and of course deferring to you, Matt,
and you know here uh, in this kind of endeavor,
the big question is how to make something enjoyable to read,
because one thing most human beings don't like is feeling lectured, right,
(08:30):
because there's something sometimes there's something inherently condescending about a lecture,
whether or not that's the intent. So when you want
to communicate with people, you want to ideally be communicating
with them instead of at them. Now, many people have
been in conversations where they feel as though someone is
(08:53):
not listening to them and just talking at them, right,
And that's never a pleasant feeling for the person who
has to be the listener or the audience and whatever
format that is. So, to answer your question directly, Matt,
the at least in this experience, the idea is how
to communicate stuff in an actionable way, in a way
(09:17):
that matters, in a way that feels like an open hand,
right rather than a closed fist. Here are things that
have been found, what do you think about them? And
stuff they want you to know. Is immensely fortunate in
that it is one of the absolutely most listener driven shows. Honestly,
(09:38):
and this speaker's experience at least absolutely. And you know,
to your point about something being for the for the
ear versus for the eye and the mind, I guess
the theater of the mind that that you mentioned. We
learned that firsthand too, and we went and did the
audiobook of this, uh, this work. And you aren't allowed
(10:00):
dimprov at all, like you know, you have too because
of certain cross referencing things between like Audible and Amazon
and different things that you know, allow things to be
kind of connected in terms of like text and audio.
You have to read it exactly verbatim and um, it's
interesting that we're narrating our own book. But if you were,
say a voice actor, they don't want any improv It
(10:21):
has to be word for word what's written in the book.
And sometimes when you read out loud, you know in
your voice what's written, you know, for someone to read
silently in their mind, it can really point out some uh,
some issues and some separations between those two you know,
mediums and ways of experiencing things. And so kudos to
all the you know, the audiobook professional audiobook readers out
(10:45):
there for being able to kind of like bridge that
gap because it's not easy. Yeah. Folks, folks familiar with
production and performance, fellow actors as well, you may recognize
this as d LP dead letter perfect no improvisation allowed,
and that may that may be a wake up call
(11:06):
to a lot of folks. Uh, this book does exist
in an audio format. Question for you, Noel, and for you, Matt,
was there anything in the process that surprised you along
the way in terms of content or in terms of
some of the stuff you described? Noel, the uh, the
whole uh, the whole cavalcade of moving parts. For me
(11:29):
was just working with an editor and the book industry
in general, and what we were allowed to keep into
the book and what we had to take out, and
how we had to really form the book to a
very specific story kind of what did you give it?
An arc? You know, just so to speak like that.
They're all about the arc in terms of like what
is this what are you trying to express? Like is
(11:51):
it something that can be perceived as a formatted thing
with chapter breaks and all of those kinds of Well,
it's weird. It felt like there was always a clearer
vision for this book. I think it's just we had
to tighten the scope quite a bit. Uh, for the
purposes of the editor. I think for me it was
how much thought and uh fussiness kind of goes into
(12:14):
the cover. Um, the cover is just such an important
detail when it comes to marketing a book and making
sure that it is it is as broadly and universally
received as possible. That there were little details about the
cover that we would never have thought of in a
million years that to certain folks were like big red
(12:35):
flags or big things like, oh, we gotta make sure
that we, you know, present it in this certain way
that doesn't accidentally trigger somebody or make people think the
wrong thing about what we're trying to communicate in terms
of like, you know, because this is ultimately a critical
thinking conspiracy book that is trying to help people or
further people's ability to think critically about the world and
(12:59):
about you know, these conspiracy theories that are out there.
I mean, that's what we've always prided ourselves undoing and
to make sure that nobody accidentally mistook it for something else,
And how important the visual design of it is in
communicating that idea, because for a lot of people, that's
going to be the first line of like, am I
interested in this talking about judging a book by its cover.
(13:22):
I mean it is done. It's it's said as a
negative because it's maybe not always the right thing to do,
but it is the most common thing to do. If
books are not judged by the cover, then why do
books have different covers. Let's just apply some logic to
that one. You know, it is clearly a like convenient
and valid phrase to throw around. This show was quite lucky,
(13:46):
quite fortunate to have a good friend in Nick Admiral
Turbo Benson, who did all the art, including the cover,
which is something this show had to fight for. Spoiler alert.
So this there's thing that a lot of fellow listeners
asked about when getting teases of the book or sneak previews.
(14:11):
Why is this solely about government related conspiracy theories? That's
the question, right. This is not an encyclopediac look at
the at the most popular or prevalent conspiracy theories in
the Western world, or in the Middle Eastern world, or
(14:34):
in uh, you know, the Pacific theater, etcetera, or in
the Russian world, etcetera. What this is instead is a
focused study, one could say, or it was said to be,
you know, a certain percentage folklore a certain percentage obsessively
(14:54):
researched history, and a certain percentage warning signs about the future. However,
to the earlier statements, it was attenuated to be to
focus almost entirely on actions of powerful entities like governments
and businesses. This was not the original play at Perhaps
(15:20):
it's time to pause for word from the sponsors and
return to dive deeper into the reasonings and perhaps most juicily, uh,
the the actual things covered. Here's where it gets crazy.
(15:42):
So what this episode is going to do now is
with that background, you have fellow conspiracy realists explore the breakdown,
and maybe I have a little discussion about each of
the chapters involved. Let's see, you're going to have to
look this up, partner Faithful correspondence. Here it's your dog
(16:04):
eared copy out of the old desk drawer. I got
a question for for you guys on chapter one. It's
a it's about biological warfare, man, What is the lie
within the lie within the lie? This is a slick
way to point out something that happens really often in
the age of ubiquitous information, there is often a an
(16:29):
inherent truth right that creates like it's the origin call
in the great game of telephone, that is unanalyzed communication. Right.
So someone's like you, if you live in a small town,
you've heard how quickly rumors spread, right. Uh. If you've
ever been in a court of law and listened to
(16:50):
eyewitness accounts after the fact, you understand how the stuff
gets increasingly embellished over time. The lie within the lie
is a bit of a shout out to this sort
of process. So the sad truth about biological warfare is
that it is an ancient practice, it continues in the
(17:11):
modern day, it is going to continue in the future,
and it creates a need to obscure the truth. Right,
these insidious activities by powerful forces. So you create a
lie to lie about the things you did. Uh. And
in the case of governments, you usually the conspiracy often
(17:33):
starts when you're lying about how you screwed something up,
and then that creates another lie, right, and then that
creates another obsocation, another prevarication of some sort. But if
you go past the lie within the lie within the lie,
what you usually find is what the show calls a
(17:57):
grain of truth. Big fans of the oyster analogy, oysters
produce pearls, and those pearls always come from a grain
of sand. So just like other forms of folklore, just
like a uh an oyster creating a pearl, there's something there.
(18:20):
Humans don't make things up out of whole cloth or
or they can. Individual human beings can, but they do
not garner attention. They do not snowball, that's another good comparison,
nor escalate in less. People who are all quite intelligent,
by the way, can look at a story, can hear it,
(18:40):
and can identify something they know to be true at
the basis of that story. Well, and also like the
pearl that's created from an oyster, that grain of sam
it's in there is a source of irritation. It's like
a nagging thing that just won't let up and then
ultimately produces this this other thing. And I guess the
(19:02):
expression pearls of wisdom maybe comes from that. I don't know,
but I do like the idea of that grade of
sand being something that other people can identify with, because like, oh,
I was bothered by that too, and why let's follow
this through and then ultimately, if you do go through
the paces and do the work and do the research
and pay attention, you will come out on the other side.
(19:24):
With this pearl of truth and uh quite pro quo.
Uh here question for a question then, Uh, what were
some of your favorite parts about this chapter or what
what something that surprised you? For me, it was large
area coverage or operation large area coverage. Uh. We've talked
about that on the show before in the podcast form,
(19:47):
but to see it written out like completely here, it
reminds me of that concept of the lie within the
lie within the lie, because it is it's nineteen fifty
seven through night where this thing that the United States
government was taking part in, the Army chemical corey, they
conducted this thing that it just reminds me of something
(20:10):
would discuss on this show quite often, which is that
when a big problem occurs you already mentioned it a
moment ago, Ben, the conspiracy begins because of a lie,
because of a mess up right, because of somebody accidentally
did something or or everybody in this case thought spraying
these inert uh materials over the United States wouldn't do anything.
(20:35):
If these are fine, these are inert agents, biological agents,
and we'll we'll be able to track them, but they're
not gonna do anything to anybody. They're not gonna have
any effect on anybody, and it didn't turn out that way.
It was in general it was to test fallout patterns
and like how if we were to be attacked, here's
where the stuff would go. Um, And it was sort
(20:58):
of like you know, doing good how work. So I
wouldn't say it was necessarily you know, malevolent from the
get go, but it was also probably not thought through
as well as it should have, or the the data
wasn't really there to know if these I mean, you know,
their best judgment was that it was going to be
inert quote unquote, but that did not end up being
the case. Counterpoint as well. There if Uncle Sam was
(21:22):
so and a CEC were so certain this stuff was inert,
why did they target disadvantaged communities? That's one of the
that's one of the big dangerous questions. This also, by
the way, is the most likely origin of chemtrail conspiracy theories.
(21:43):
And again, to be clear, these not theories. This stuff
actually happened, and this is something there. There's a lot
of stuff here and this is a personal opinion said
with full sincerity and affection. Uh, there's a lot of
stuff here that this show had to fight for just
(22:05):
to get into this book. There were a lot of
things that were considered maybe uh not to say, too
hot for TV or too hot to handle, too cold
to hold, called the Ghostbusters consider in control. Uh, it's
Halloween as the show records this. So there were a
lot of things that had to be fought for here
because they were unpleasant. You know, Biological warfare is a
(22:29):
doozy to start a book with, especially if the book
just talks about this one aspect. In the roots of
biological warfare, you can find, if you were honest and objective,
you can find the predecessor, the precursor to chem trail theories.
You can find the precursor to ideas about fluoridation as
(22:51):
a weapon. Uh. And this this just goes on. The
second chapter is all gas, no breaks on human experimentation.
Questions for you guys, human experimentation hot button issue going
into this. Uh, what did you think about human experimentation?
(23:12):
Did you think it was something that was actively occurring,
did you think it was something that was sort of bonkers?
Did you think it was a relic of the unsavory
past like Unit seven thirty one and other World War
Two endeavors, etcetera. It's certainly a great follow up from
what we just talked about with biological warfare, because one
could argue that what the government did with what Matt
(23:34):
was just talking about that's addressed in the book is
human experimentation, um, because they're using humans as test subjects essentially,
even if they wouldn't come out and say they said
they were cracking wind patterns and stuff. But it goes
so much deeper than that, with things like the Tuskegee
experiments UM, where again um, you know minority communities were
(23:55):
targeted to do horrific tests um and dehumanizing treatment of
of black and brown people. Yeah. I think commonly the
general public, including your faithful correspondent, believe that human experimentation
was a World War two thing, or at least you
have that sense about it, because we know about those, right,
(24:19):
We've read in our history books and we've seen on documentaries.
I think, like you said, Ben Unit one and the
things that the Nazis were doing, you can see that stuff.
It's written out there. But when you look a little bit,
I mean, like let's say fifties, sixty years in the
future and you get to the early two thousands and
(24:39):
you look at what's happening in black sites, let's say,
in the Middle East, things that are being done by
the US government, like could those be considered human experimentation
some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. So, I don't know,
it's a it's a question to ask. At least it's
an excellent question. Yeah, it's an excellent question. And unfortunately
(25:02):
the answers and accountability are often measures of convenience. UH
and and UH. One of the one of the things
that is wrapped up in human experimentation is the next
chapter surveillance. Uh, Surveillance, Thank you, surveillance. You are evil
(25:23):
and you've been so good to this show in terms
of uh, in terms of providing providing works. So uh.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable moments here is the
comparison which the comparison of current five eyes Western surveillance
(25:44):
systems to the game six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. This
came talking about behind the scenes stuff this game of
from an unnamed source who used to work for a
little something called the Puzzle Palace, and remains one of
the best analogy slash comparisons for the the large scale
(26:10):
application of surveillance. Now it's not who you know folks,
it's not who you know and who they know. It
goes all the way out. As a matter of fact,
it's a surveillance system that is built by design to
theoretically monitor the activities of more people than exist in
(26:33):
the world at present. Again, you know, on publication this book,
several folks wrote to the show and said that they
understood where the argument was coming from. But those folks
brought up budgetary constraints, which is the funniest thing. It
just confirms another thing this show says often, which is
(26:53):
that the government programs are fighting against each other and
always need more money. But valance did it change anything
for you know, or for you Matt about how you
behave this show or the culmination in this book in
a way. But ultimately what this the research for this
book and what's actually included in here in this chapter
(27:14):
just made me think more and more about the nineteen
sixties through the eighties for something like I'm sorry, that's
just what it did for me, because we went through
the Edwards Snowden saga in Prism, right. We were making
this show when that was occurring, so we got to
cover that in real time. I feel like I have
a personal understanding of that. That's at let's let's give
(27:35):
it a sevent I feel pretty good. I can get
a c if I talk about that just extemporaneously. But
what I don't know a ton about, or what I
didn't know until he wrote this book, was the stuff
that was happening around in the Echelon days in you know,
those those earlier days where there were there were also whistleblowers.
What is it, Ben, Margaret Newsham, somebody like I think
(27:58):
somebody like that, Margaret Margaret, somebody named Margaret I know
for sure talked about Echelon and she worked at Lockheed
and she found out about this stuff, and then she
became a whistleblower and told the world about it, essentially.
And I think there's Echelon, by the way, another one
of these, um well, aspying effort, or I guess in
(28:19):
an intelligence effort to send signals to the United States
government to monitor stuff that's going through like satellite dishes
for communications and the Soviet monitoring Soviet communications. So that's
like nineties nine seventies we're talking about. But I didn't
know about that stuff. Uh. And you know, if you
(28:40):
don't know about it, maybe you should read this chapter.
Not to make it sound too much like an infomercial, folks,
but yes, this is this is not common knowledge, it's
not stuff. Oh no, I'm making it full full infomercial.
So they're there are more things to get to surveillance.
As you can probably tell, this show gets uh gets
(29:01):
involved very quickly with these things. Uh, these are things
that show beliefs are important. Probably best to skip U
A p UFOs right now. There's a chapter on that,
uh stuff they want you to know. Fought to keep
that in the book. No regrets. There there's a recent
ongoing U A p ufo news. Check out recent episodes
(29:25):
for that. Uh quick, you know, game time decision maybe, Um,
how about cutting to a commercial break and then talking
just briefly about things like propaganda, coup's assassinations, secret societies, lobbying,
and of course what better way to end drugs? Returned
(29:54):
propaganda smack dab in the middle of the work one
of the concepts that inspired the bizarre journey that began
in the first place all these years ago. Yeah, of
the podcast like Burn's and just the idea of what
marketing is and how inextricable is marketing from propaganda at
(30:17):
the end of the day, and the psychological concepts that
are in place to convince people to do stuff. This
one leads right into Cusan assassinations, because one of the
big things Bernet's convinced, you know, the US population to do,
was to be okay with war and to want war
because it would be good for us and it would
(30:37):
be good for everybody involved. We need to go to war.
Uh So, let's talk Whusan assassinations, you guys, sure. Yeah.
The euphemism is targeted killings, which is not super great
as far as euphemisms go. Uh, it could be something,
you know, uh, something like non consensual hospital decisions. Uh
(31:01):
so the yeah, tip your weight staff and so on.
So this idea, the idea of a coup is and
an assassination. They're they're ugly things and things most politicians
and multinational conglomerates don't want to be openly associated with,
but they happened. The United States alone has launched, aided,
(31:24):
or abetted many many coups. So much so in fact,
that when this show was doing some research on the
ongoing protests in Iran, one of the immediate questions the
show had to ask was is Uncle Sam involved, Because
Uncle Sam sure as heck, was instrumental in the nine
(31:47):
nine coup that sent that country again full of innocent people,
down such a horrific path. It's enough to make one
wonder whether there was some sort of couple dare say,
a secret society at play? What serendipity? What a kinky
dink shout out to you, listener. Turns out that's next chapter.
(32:10):
Secret Societies talks in depth about the true, provable origins
of the group's calling themselves Illuminati. Crazy plot twist here,
fellow listeners, The folks who called themselves Illuminati were the
good guys and their story. They weren't jerks, They weren't
trying to take over the world. They were trying to
(32:31):
fight against an oppressive regime that considered anything off base
from a very particular sort of Christian theology to be
thought crime. They really were the good guys, and just
the other Enlightenment era kind of secret societies that were
usually rebelling against codified ignorance or in some way codified
(32:54):
blind faith, you know, just following the state or some
religious organization, you know, like the Catholic Church. So over time,
I think, you know, in secrecy. Often it's easy to
find um reasons that people might want to keep their
activities secret because they're nefarious, their nefarious activities. But again,
(33:15):
no spoilers. There's there are certainly m nefarious secrets out there,
But in general, I think folks would be surprised at
how much this concept has co opted, uh to to
to to breed fear um versus what they actually historically
were and represented. Ben, what is your favorite secret society
(33:36):
that's in the book? Well, favorite secret society in this
book heavily alluded to would probably be, uh the thing
that functions very much like a deep state, which brings
brings this show to the next chapter of this book,
which is political corruption a K. Lobbying a K. The
(33:58):
thing that is. Hello, areas to explain to all your
friends who are not from the US, who don't understand
rightly why the US has such a problem being honest
with itself. And Uh, look, entities in the US bribe
the government all the time. They just call it lobbying.
(34:20):
It's very so it's a very different thing. And and
politics have become a real third rail and discourse in
the United States. That's to the detriment of the country.
And to be honest, there's a conspiracy there that is
a personal opinion not to inject oneself too much. Why
is that opinion there? Because if there's one winner in
(34:41):
all the sound and fury of increasingly tribalistic politics, it's
big business. Always has been. Uh, there's not there's not
really what one would call a people's movement, not less
that immediately be thought terminated into a cliche of social
is um by people's movement here that means simply some
(35:05):
sort of movement that says, why not support the other
three hundred thirty something million people who live, sweat, celebrate
and die in this country? How did the propaganda become
so pervasive, so convincing. The answer is is cobals. The
(35:29):
answer is political corruption, right, Um, it's And if you
want to look to the effectiveness of this, all one
has to do, at least in this country is to
look toward the war on drugs, which is the final
chapter of this book. Yeah, and I mean, you know,
on one level, it could be argued the war on
(35:50):
drugs has been incredibly successful and then it's been very profitable,
um and allowed a lot of folks that maybe we're
not otherwise going to be subject to this, especially after
the end of slavery, to be enslaved. Essentially, I mean
the idea of uh, certain low level non violent drug
(36:13):
crimes being a gateway into getting the prison population kind
of amped up um, and then what that leads to
in terms of folks using prison labor, you know, for
commercial purposes. And drugs really are profitable, aren't they. Yeah,
the drugs themselves and the war against them, because the
war on drugs is itself a propaganda war. Uh, it's
(36:37):
a war that can never be one, which is honestly,
if your uncle Sam, or your big business or your
whomever is profited, that's the kind of war you want
to wage a war against an idea can never be
truly one, right, and that that is a beautiful thing.
Consider also the model of big monopolies and corporations. Ever
(37:00):
accuse human beings of being super original. If you are
a faction, legal department probably requires the show to phrase
it thus Lee, If you are a faction of the
company the CIA, then why not practice a little bit
of vertical integration? Why not control the manufacturers of the drugs,
(37:24):
why not control the transit roots of those drugs, Why
do I control the profits they and maybe even try
and get your hands in that distribution model. Maybe probably not,
then that might be too difficult. And all of this
is you know, laid out very loocidly in this chapter,
and this is very quick. This uh, this episode has
(37:46):
not answered some of the questions about what ended up
getting left out. Entire chapters on cryptids, on ghosts, on
the evolution of folklore surrounding what uh what people think
of when they think of monsters. Where does the idea
of the like and throw, the skin changer, the shape
(38:08):
shifter come from? What about the idea of the vampire?
Why did both pop up independently throughout ancient civilizations? That
might be something for a second book. There's an original
finale chapter and it was all about Mothman's abs. We
had to take the whole thing out and how much
(38:28):
he looks like he Man he man action figure. Yeah
that's true, but no, it's true, I mean. And again,
another interesting part about working with the publishing world is
it is it is important to focus things and we
have the luxury with the show about every episode kind
of being its own thing, um one episode after the other.
Unless it's a multi partner, doesn't really have to, you know,
(38:50):
be kind of siloed in a book. Uh, you kind
of do have to do that. So we really did
have to hone things down a little bit, and what
you get is exhaustively researched book about real conspiracies, specifically
involving you know, the government and the things they literally
don't want you to know, and how to discern the
(39:11):
conspiracy reality from the conspiracy theory. I would say, what's
particularly cool about this guy's in this show, we are
constantly calling back to other episodes we've done. We did
a full episode on that, a full episode on this
back in back. In this book, you actually get to
see that entire arc and the connections laid out as
(39:31):
you go, and the flow is really smooth. So it
really does take you on a journey. And I am
selling it hard because I think you should buy this
book both for yourself and for somebody you care about.
Right now, I don't care, And if you don't care
for that book, why not buy it for your enemies? Perfect,
perfect gift. Thank you so much to everyone who made
(39:55):
this possible. Again, thank you to you, fellow conspiracy realis
Hope you enjoyed it. Hope it's a kind of read
that keeps you up in diet or, in the case
of the audio book, helps you catch some z s
and slumber along with some A s MR question for
you the most important part of the show. What do
(40:15):
you think? What would you like to see in another book?
Let the show know? Trying to be easy to find online? Yeah,
try and usually succeed and then you can find us
at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram phone number one eight three
three std w y t K. It's a voicemail three
(40:35):
minutes go. If you don't want to leave us a message,
why not send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Ye Stuff
(41:03):
They Don't Want You to Know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Heads up, fellow conspiracy realist. This is behind
the scenes footage, the kind of stuff you might run
(00:46):
into a director's cut of a documentary and so on.
Sneaking past the curtain on the show to talk a
little bit about the recent stuff they don't want you
to know book, Maybe talk about the title too. To
be honest with you, it's been a wild ride. UH
want to thank everybody who's taken the time to show
(01:08):
support here, whether that's by dropping a rating on Amazon
or good Reads, your your platform of choice. Even more so,
people who throughout the years have supported the show with
excellent questions, excellent recommendations, recording UH an episode earlier today,
someone just provided news the Delphi murderer has probably been caught.
(01:34):
This show works with live active fire, So today it's
going behind the curtain to talk about how this book
came about, how the subjects were chosen, and maybe some
of the stuff that got cut out. So here are
the facts. A Delphi guy, by the way, lived right
down the street, not really, but metaphorically right down the
street from the police office that was investigating those murders.
(01:57):
Since it's crazy, it's how it goes. So, you know,
we are very lucky to be part of a network
UM called I Heart Radio, and UM we were asked
to follow in the footsteps of our buds Josh and
Chuck and write a book based on our podcast. Josh
and Chuck wrote a book called Stuff You Should Know.
(02:18):
We followed Suite are writing a book called Stuff They
Don't Want You to Know. And UM. The whole process
was really interesting in and of itself, just from you know,
doing the research assembly the manuscroup, realizing how crazy deadlines
are in the publishing industry, also kind of realizing how
important supply chain stuff is because the reason deadlines exist
(02:40):
are to work backwards from a release date and then
book yourself, you know, your company time um, in a
printing press to get the proper number of of books
or records or whatever it might be printed to meet
that goal, you know, for that deadline. And we've seen
a lot of issues with that with Vinyl and another
you know tech knowlogy, even like PlayStation five's and all
(03:03):
that kind of stuff. It can be very logistically challenging
to meet those goals. So all of this stuff, all
of these pieces have their place in the process, and
if one thing screws up, it screws up the whole
chain of events. Yeah, you're right, we've learned a lot. Guys,
We've learned a whole lot in going throughout this process. Yeah,
(03:25):
we've learned quite a bit, and maybe we tackle the
biggest question first, which is why this book, why this
in particular, and why publish it now. I mean we've
been doing a podcast for more than a decade at
this point. I mean, I guess it's we kind of
got to it before things became so divisive. We had
(03:46):
a little practice. Um, but you know, things nowadays with
the way information misinformation spread, I mean, you really just
kind of have to be the top of your game
in terms of like kind of knowing what to look
for how not to be deceived, um, and also allow
that to not completely torpedo your quality of life. Uh.
(04:07):
It's easy to let this stuff just wear you down.
But which is a little bit of critical thinking and
on with some kind of you know, ability to suss
out the fact from the fiction, you too can live
a normal life. Absolutely, And we've been doing this for
so long we've just become accustomed to it. And what
we try and do with our podcast is arm you
with that information. And for the first time, we've collected
(04:31):
a lot of those strategies, a lot of the understanding
from all of these years of research and compiled it
into one place, into one book that you can literally
pick up for real, in real life with your hands. Look,
this is no fooling folks. This is a divisive time
no matter which way you look at it. It's a
(04:51):
level of division in the West that has not been
seen since the era of civil rights or even since
the bloody days of the UI Civil War. So what
you hear, what you see, what you encounter in this
book is a way too, as you said, Matt, empower yourself, uh,
(05:12):
and to better arm yourself against bad faith actors who
want to sell you a story and hope that you
will not have the time nor the tools to verify
whether or not that story is in fact true. It's
especially important if you have someone in your life who
(05:33):
does question everything and maybe tends to believe what they
see on social media more than let's say, what a
mainstream news channel would be saying. It would be a
great idea to gift that person this book because it's
designed and written in such a way that it's not
going to feel anybody feel strange for holding beliefs that
(05:54):
maybe you don't have that you don't hold. That's kind
of the whole point of it. You can read this
no matter you believe, and you're gonna pull things out
of it that are maybe different than somebody else. I agree.
We don't talk down, we don't talk at We talk
with and we ask, and we want to thank everybody
for getting on this crazy adventure with us. Full disclosure,
(06:16):
Matt Noel and yours truly don't always uh don't always
agree on everything, uh, and we ask ourselves a lot
of questions. I kind of want to pose a question
to you, guys, um if you don't mind, just really
quick to see what you think um, when it comes
to synthesizing the materials, the like research that we do
(06:37):
for these episodes, and you know, the writing band that
you do for these episodes. When it comes to synthesizing
that into a book format, what what was that process like? Right? So?
The common uh, the common approach to writing a book
like this in a non fiction world, especially dealing with
(07:00):
such hot button issues in the West and beyond, is
to make it approachable. Often people get caught in information bubbles.
That's one of the most successful successful heist of the
information age is to remove people's ability to look beyond
(07:24):
what they know, and perhaps more importantly, to forget that
other people may be in a different, overlapping or entirely
separate bubble. Uh. In the stuff that this show writes,
it is um. You know, the approaches primarily to make
sure that it is interesting and easy to the ear
(07:45):
to hear things. Writing for someone's inner theater of the
mind when they're reading is quite different from writing for
someone's inner theater of the mind when they're listening. Not
everybody's an auditory learner, not everybody as a visual learner.
How does one navigate the difference in this uh? In
(08:07):
this wing the idea and of course deferring to you, Matt,
and you know here uh, in this kind of endeavor,
the big question is how to make something enjoyable to read,
because one thing most human beings don't like is feeling lectured, right,
(08:30):
because there's something sometimes there's something inherently condescending about a lecture,
whether or not that's the intent. So when you want
to communicate with people, you want to ideally be communicating
with them instead of at them. Now, many people have
been in conversations where they feel as though someone is
(08:53):
not listening to them and just talking at them, right,
And that's never a pleasant feeling for the person who
has to be the listener or the audience and whatever
format that is. So, to answer your question directly, Matt,
the at least in this experience, the idea is how
to communicate stuff in an actionable way, in a way
(09:17):
that matters, in a way that feels like an open hand,
right rather than a closed fist. Here are things that
have been found, what do you think about them? And
stuff they want you to know. Is immensely fortunate in
that it is one of the absolutely most listener driven shows. Honestly,
(09:38):
and this speaker's experience at least absolutely. And you know,
to your point about something being for the for the
ear versus for the eye and the mind, I guess
the theater of the mind that that you mentioned. We
learned that firsthand too, and we went and did the
audiobook of this, uh, this work. And you aren't allowed
(10:00):
dimprov at all, like you know, you have too because
of certain cross referencing things between like Audible and Amazon
and different things that you know, allow things to be
kind of connected in terms of like text and audio.
You have to read it exactly verbatim and um, it's
interesting that we're narrating our own book. But if you were,
say a voice actor, they don't want any improv It
(10:21):
has to be word for word what's written in the book.
And sometimes when you read out loud, you know in
your voice what's written, you know, for someone to read
silently in their mind, it can really point out some uh,
some issues and some separations between those two you know,
mediums and ways of experiencing things. And so kudos to
all the you know, the audiobook professional audiobook readers out
(10:45):
there for being able to kind of like bridge that
gap because it's not easy. Yeah. Folks, folks familiar with
production and performance, fellow actors as well, you may recognize
this as d LP dead letter perfect no improvisation allowed,
and that may that may be a wake up call
(11:06):
to a lot of folks. Uh, this book does exist
in an audio format. Question for you, Noel, and for you, Matt,
was there anything in the process that surprised you along
the way in terms of content or in terms of
some of the stuff you described? Noel, the uh, the
whole uh, the whole cavalcade of moving parts. For me
(11:29):
was just working with an editor and the book industry
in general, and what we were allowed to keep into
the book and what we had to take out, and
how we had to really form the book to a
very specific story kind of what did you give it?
An arc? You know, just so to speak like that.
They're all about the arc in terms of like what
is this what are you trying to express? Like is
(11:51):
it something that can be perceived as a formatted thing
with chapter breaks and all of those kinds of Well,
it's weird. It felt like there was always a clearer
vision for this book. I think it's just we had
to tighten the scope quite a bit. Uh, for the
purposes of the editor. I think for me it was
how much thought and uh fussiness kind of goes into
(12:14):
the cover. Um, the cover is just such an important
detail when it comes to marketing a book and making
sure that it is it is as broadly and universally
received as possible. That there were little details about the
cover that we would never have thought of in a
million years that to certain folks were like big red
(12:35):
flags or big things like, oh, we gotta make sure
that we, you know, present it in this certain way
that doesn't accidentally trigger somebody or make people think the
wrong thing about what we're trying to communicate in terms
of like, you know, because this is ultimately a critical
thinking conspiracy book that is trying to help people or
further people's ability to think critically about the world and
(12:59):
about you know, these conspiracy theories that are out there.
I mean, that's what we've always prided ourselves undoing and
to make sure that nobody accidentally mistook it for something else,
And how important the visual design of it is in
communicating that idea, because for a lot of people, that's
going to be the first line of like, am I
interested in this talking about judging a book by its cover.
(13:22):
I mean it is done. It's it's said as a
negative because it's maybe not always the right thing to do,
but it is the most common thing to do. If
books are not judged by the cover, then why do
books have different covers. Let's just apply some logic to
that one. You know, it is clearly a like convenient
and valid phrase to throw around. This show was quite lucky,
(13:46):
quite fortunate to have a good friend in Nick Admiral
Turbo Benson, who did all the art, including the cover,
which is something this show had to fight for. Spoiler alert.
So this there's thing that a lot of fellow listeners
asked about when getting teases of the book or sneak previews.
(14:11):
Why is this solely about government related conspiracy theories? That's
the question, right. This is not an encyclopediac look at
the at the most popular or prevalent conspiracy theories in
the Western world, or in the Middle Eastern world, or
(14:34):
in uh, you know, the Pacific theater, etcetera, or in
the Russian world, etcetera. What this is instead is a
focused study, one could say, or it was said to be,
you know, a certain percentage folklore a certain percentage obsessively
(14:54):
researched history, and a certain percentage warning signs about the future. However,
to the earlier statements, it was attenuated to be to
focus almost entirely on actions of powerful entities like governments
and businesses. This was not the original play at Perhaps
(15:20):
it's time to pause for word from the sponsors and
return to dive deeper into the reasonings and perhaps most juicily, uh,
the the actual things covered. Here's where it gets crazy.
(15:42):
So what this episode is going to do now is
with that background, you have fellow conspiracy realists explore the breakdown,
and maybe I have a little discussion about each of
the chapters involved. Let's see, you're going to have to
look this up, partner Faithful correspondence. Here it's your dog
(16:04):
eared copy out of the old desk drawer. I got
a question for for you guys on chapter one. It's
a it's about biological warfare, man, What is the lie
within the lie within the lie? This is a slick
way to point out something that happens really often in
the age of ubiquitous information, there is often a an
(16:29):
inherent truth right that creates like it's the origin call
in the great game of telephone, that is unanalyzed communication. Right.
So someone's like you, if you live in a small town,
you've heard how quickly rumors spread, right. Uh. If you've
ever been in a court of law and listened to
(16:50):
eyewitness accounts after the fact, you understand how the stuff
gets increasingly embellished over time. The lie within the lie
is a bit of a shout out to this sort
of process. So the sad truth about biological warfare is
that it is an ancient practice, it continues in the
(17:11):
modern day, it is going to continue in the future,
and it creates a need to obscure the truth. Right,
these insidious activities by powerful forces. So you create a
lie to lie about the things you did. Uh. And
in the case of governments, you usually the conspiracy often
(17:33):
starts when you're lying about how you screwed something up,
and then that creates another lie, right, and then that
creates another obsocation, another prevarication of some sort. But if
you go past the lie within the lie within the lie,
what you usually find is what the show calls a
(17:57):
grain of truth. Big fans of the oyster analogy, oysters
produce pearls, and those pearls always come from a grain
of sand. So just like other forms of folklore, just
like a uh an oyster creating a pearl, there's something there.
(18:20):
Humans don't make things up out of whole cloth or
or they can. Individual human beings can, but they do
not garner attention. They do not snowball, that's another good comparison,
nor escalate in less. People who are all quite intelligent,
by the way, can look at a story, can hear it,
(18:40):
and can identify something they know to be true at
the basis of that story. Well, and also like the
pearl that's created from an oyster, that grain of sam
it's in there is a source of irritation. It's like
a nagging thing that just won't let up and then
ultimately produces this this other thing. And I guess the
(19:02):
expression pearls of wisdom maybe comes from that. I don't know,
but I do like the idea of that grade of
sand being something that other people can identify with, because like, oh,
I was bothered by that too, and why let's follow
this through and then ultimately, if you do go through
the paces and do the work and do the research
and pay attention, you will come out on the other side.
(19:24):
With this pearl of truth and uh quite pro quo.
Uh here question for a question then, Uh, what were
some of your favorite parts about this chapter or what
what something that surprised you? For me, it was large
area coverage or operation large area coverage. Uh. We've talked
about that on the show before in the podcast form,
(19:47):
but to see it written out like completely here, it
reminds me of that concept of the lie within the
lie within the lie, because it is it's nineteen fifty
seven through night where this thing that the United States
government was taking part in, the Army chemical corey, they
conducted this thing that it just reminds me of something
(20:10):
would discuss on this show quite often, which is that
when a big problem occurs you already mentioned it a
moment ago, Ben, the conspiracy begins because of a lie,
because of a mess up right, because of somebody accidentally
did something or or everybody in this case thought spraying
these inert uh materials over the United States wouldn't do anything.
(20:35):
If these are fine, these are inert agents, biological agents,
and we'll we'll be able to track them, but they're
not gonna do anything to anybody. They're not gonna have
any effect on anybody, and it didn't turn out that way.
It was in general it was to test fallout patterns
and like how if we were to be attacked, here's
where the stuff would go. Um, And it was sort
(20:58):
of like you know, doing good how work. So I
wouldn't say it was necessarily you know, malevolent from the
get go, but it was also probably not thought through
as well as it should have, or the the data
wasn't really there to know if these I mean, you know,
their best judgment was that it was going to be
inert quote unquote, but that did not end up being
the case. Counterpoint as well. There if Uncle Sam was
(21:22):
so and a CEC were so certain this stuff was inert,
why did they target disadvantaged communities? That's one of the
that's one of the big dangerous questions. This also, by
the way, is the most likely origin of chemtrail conspiracy theories.
(21:43):
And again, to be clear, these not theories. This stuff
actually happened, and this is something there. There's a lot
of stuff here and this is a personal opinion said
with full sincerity and affection. Uh, there's a lot of
stuff here that this show had to fight for just
(22:05):
to get into this book. There were a lot of
things that were considered maybe uh not to say, too
hot for TV or too hot to handle, too cold
to hold, called the Ghostbusters consider in control. Uh, it's
Halloween as the show records this. So there were a
lot of things that had to be fought for here
because they were unpleasant. You know, Biological warfare is a
(22:29):
doozy to start a book with, especially if the book
just talks about this one aspect. In the roots of
biological warfare, you can find, if you were honest and objective,
you can find the predecessor, the precursor to chem trail theories.
You can find the precursor to ideas about fluoridation as
(22:51):
a weapon. Uh. And this this just goes on. The
second chapter is all gas, no breaks on human experimentation.
Questions for you guys, human experimentation hot button issue going
into this. Uh, what did you think about human experimentation?
(23:12):
Did you think it was something that was actively occurring,
did you think it was something that was sort of bonkers?
Did you think it was a relic of the unsavory
past like Unit seven thirty one and other World War
Two endeavors, etcetera. It's certainly a great follow up from
what we just talked about with biological warfare, because one
could argue that what the government did with what Matt
(23:34):
was just talking about that's addressed in the book is
human experimentation, um, because they're using humans as test subjects essentially,
even if they wouldn't come out and say they said
they were cracking wind patterns and stuff. But it goes
so much deeper than that, with things like the Tuskegee
experiments UM, where again um, you know minority communities were
(23:55):
targeted to do horrific tests um and dehumanizing treatment of
of black and brown people. Yeah. I think commonly the
general public, including your faithful correspondent, believe that human experimentation
was a World War two thing, or at least you
have that sense about it, because we know about those, right,
(24:19):
We've read in our history books and we've seen on documentaries.
I think, like you said, Ben Unit one and the
things that the Nazis were doing, you can see that stuff.
It's written out there. But when you look a little bit,
I mean, like let's say fifties, sixty years in the
future and you get to the early two thousands and
(24:39):
you look at what's happening in black sites, let's say,
in the Middle East, things that are being done by
the US government, like could those be considered human experimentation
some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. So, I don't know,
it's a it's a question to ask. At least it's
an excellent question. Yeah, it's an excellent question. And unfortunately
(25:02):
the answers and accountability are often measures of convenience. UH
and and UH. One of the one of the things
that is wrapped up in human experimentation is the next
chapter surveillance. Uh, Surveillance, Thank you, surveillance. You are evil
(25:23):
and you've been so good to this show in terms
of uh, in terms of providing providing works. So uh.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable moments here is the
comparison which the comparison of current five eyes Western surveillance
(25:44):
systems to the game six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. This
came talking about behind the scenes stuff this game of
from an unnamed source who used to work for a
little something called the Puzzle Palace, and remains one of
the best analogy slash comparisons for the the large scale
(26:10):
application of surveillance. Now it's not who you know folks,
it's not who you know and who they know. It
goes all the way out. As a matter of fact,
it's a surveillance system that is built by design to
theoretically monitor the activities of more people than exist in
(26:33):
the world at present. Again, you know, on publication this book,
several folks wrote to the show and said that they
understood where the argument was coming from. But those folks
brought up budgetary constraints, which is the funniest thing. It
just confirms another thing this show says often, which is
(26:53):
that the government programs are fighting against each other and
always need more money. But valance did it change anything
for you know, or for you Matt about how you
behave this show or the culmination in this book in
a way. But ultimately what this the research for this
book and what's actually included in here in this chapter
(27:14):
just made me think more and more about the nineteen
sixties through the eighties for something like I'm sorry, that's
just what it did for me, because we went through
the Edwards Snowden saga in Prism, right. We were making
this show when that was occurring, so we got to
cover that in real time. I feel like I have
a personal understanding of that. That's at let's let's give
(27:35):
it a sevent I feel pretty good. I can get
a c if I talk about that just extemporaneously. But
what I don't know a ton about, or what I
didn't know until he wrote this book, was the stuff
that was happening around in the Echelon days in you know,
those those earlier days where there were there were also whistleblowers.
What is it, Ben, Margaret Newsham, somebody like I think
(27:58):
somebody like that, Margaret Margaret, somebody named Margaret I know
for sure talked about Echelon and she worked at Lockheed
and she found out about this stuff, and then she
became a whistleblower and told the world about it, essentially.
And I think there's Echelon, by the way, another one
of these, um well, aspying effort, or I guess in
(28:19):
an intelligence effort to send signals to the United States
government to monitor stuff that's going through like satellite dishes
for communications and the Soviet monitoring Soviet communications. So that's
like nineties nine seventies we're talking about. But I didn't
know about that stuff. Uh. And you know, if you
(28:40):
don't know about it, maybe you should read this chapter.
Not to make it sound too much like an infomercial, folks,
but yes, this is this is not common knowledge, it's
not stuff. Oh no, I'm making it full full infomercial.
So they're there are more things to get to surveillance.
As you can probably tell, this show gets uh gets
(29:01):
involved very quickly with these things. Uh, these are things
that show beliefs are important. Probably best to skip U
A p UFOs right now. There's a chapter on that,
uh stuff they want you to know. Fought to keep
that in the book. No regrets. There there's a recent
ongoing U A p ufo news. Check out recent episodes
(29:25):
for that. Uh quick, you know, game time decision maybe, Um,
how about cutting to a commercial break and then talking
just briefly about things like propaganda, coup's assassinations, secret societies, lobbying,
and of course what better way to end drugs? Returned
(29:54):
propaganda smack dab in the middle of the work one
of the concepts that inspired the bizarre journey that began
in the first place all these years ago. Yeah, of
the podcast like Burn's and just the idea of what
marketing is and how inextricable is marketing from propaganda at
(30:17):
the end of the day, and the psychological concepts that
are in place to convince people to do stuff. This
one leads right into Cusan assassinations, because one of the
big things Bernet's convinced, you know, the US population to do,
was to be okay with war and to want war
because it would be good for us and it would
(30:37):
be good for everybody involved. We need to go to war.
Uh So, let's talk Whusan assassinations, you guys, sure. Yeah.
The euphemism is targeted killings, which is not super great
as far as euphemisms go. Uh, it could be something,
you know, uh, something like non consensual hospital decisions. Uh
(31:01):
so the yeah, tip your weight staff and so on.
So this idea, the idea of a coup is and
an assassination. They're they're ugly things and things most politicians
and multinational conglomerates don't want to be openly associated with,
but they happened. The United States alone has launched, aided,
(31:24):
or abetted many many coups. So much so in fact,
that when this show was doing some research on the
ongoing protests in Iran, one of the immediate questions the
show had to ask was is Uncle Sam involved, Because
Uncle Sam sure as heck, was instrumental in the nine
(31:47):
nine coup that sent that country again full of innocent people,
down such a horrific path. It's enough to make one
wonder whether there was some sort of couple dare say,
a secret society at play? What serendipity? What a kinky
dink shout out to you, listener. Turns out that's next chapter.
(32:10):
Secret Societies talks in depth about the true, provable origins
of the group's calling themselves Illuminati. Crazy plot twist here,
fellow listeners, The folks who called themselves Illuminati were the
good guys and their story. They weren't jerks, They weren't
trying to take over the world. They were trying to
(32:31):
fight against an oppressive regime that considered anything off base
from a very particular sort of Christian theology to be
thought crime. They really were the good guys, and just
the other Enlightenment era kind of secret societies that were
usually rebelling against codified ignorance or in some way codified
(32:54):
blind faith, you know, just following the state or some
religious organization, you know, like the Catholic Church. So over time,
I think, you know, in secrecy. Often it's easy to
find um reasons that people might want to keep their
activities secret because they're nefarious, their nefarious activities. But again,
(33:15):
no spoilers. There's there are certainly m nefarious secrets out there,
But in general, I think folks would be surprised at
how much this concept has co opted, uh to to
to to breed fear um versus what they actually historically
were and represented. Ben, what is your favorite secret society
(33:36):
that's in the book? Well, favorite secret society in this
book heavily alluded to would probably be, uh the thing
that functions very much like a deep state, which brings
brings this show to the next chapter of this book,
which is political corruption a K. Lobbying a K. The
(33:58):
thing that is. Hello, areas to explain to all your
friends who are not from the US, who don't understand
rightly why the US has such a problem being honest
with itself. And Uh, look, entities in the US bribe
the government all the time. They just call it lobbying.
(34:20):
It's very so it's a very different thing. And and
politics have become a real third rail and discourse in
the United States. That's to the detriment of the country.
And to be honest, there's a conspiracy there that is
a personal opinion not to inject oneself too much. Why
is that opinion there? Because if there's one winner in
(34:41):
all the sound and fury of increasingly tribalistic politics, it's
big business. Always has been. Uh, there's not there's not
really what one would call a people's movement, not less
that immediately be thought terminated into a cliche of social
is um by people's movement here that means simply some
(35:05):
sort of movement that says, why not support the other
three hundred thirty something million people who live, sweat, celebrate
and die in this country? How did the propaganda become
so pervasive, so convincing. The answer is is cobals. The
(35:29):
answer is political corruption, right, Um, it's And if you
want to look to the effectiveness of this, all one
has to do, at least in this country is to
look toward the war on drugs, which is the final
chapter of this book. Yeah, and I mean, you know,
on one level, it could be argued the war on
(35:50):
drugs has been incredibly successful and then it's been very profitable,
um and allowed a lot of folks that maybe we're
not otherwise going to be subject to this, especially after
the end of slavery, to be enslaved. Essentially, I mean
the idea of uh, certain low level non violent drug
(36:13):
crimes being a gateway into getting the prison population kind
of amped up um, and then what that leads to
in terms of folks using prison labor, you know, for
commercial purposes. And drugs really are profitable, aren't they. Yeah,
the drugs themselves and the war against them, because the
war on drugs is itself a propaganda war. Uh, it's
(36:37):
a war that can never be one, which is honestly,
if your uncle Sam, or your big business or your
whomever is profited, that's the kind of war you want
to wage a war against an idea can never be
truly one, right, and that that is a beautiful thing.
Consider also the model of big monopolies and corporations. Ever
(37:00):
accuse human beings of being super original. If you are
a faction, legal department probably requires the show to phrase
it thus Lee, If you are a faction of the
company the CIA, then why not practice a little bit
of vertical integration? Why not control the manufacturers of the drugs,
(37:24):
why not control the transit roots of those drugs, Why
do I control the profits they and maybe even try
and get your hands in that distribution model. Maybe probably not,
then that might be too difficult. And all of this
is you know, laid out very loocidly in this chapter,
and this is very quick. This uh, this episode has
(37:46):
not answered some of the questions about what ended up
getting left out. Entire chapters on cryptids, on ghosts, on
the evolution of folklore surrounding what uh what people think
of when they think of monsters. Where does the idea
of the like and throw, the skin changer, the shape
(38:08):
shifter come from? What about the idea of the vampire?
Why did both pop up independently throughout ancient civilizations? That
might be something for a second book. There's an original
finale chapter and it was all about Mothman's abs. We
had to take the whole thing out and how much
(38:28):
he looks like he Man he man action figure. Yeah
that's true, but no, it's true, I mean. And again,
another interesting part about working with the publishing world is
it is it is important to focus things and we
have the luxury with the show about every episode kind
of being its own thing, um one episode after the other.
Unless it's a multi partner, doesn't really have to, you know,
(38:50):
be kind of siloed in a book. Uh, you kind
of do have to do that. So we really did
have to hone things down a little bit, and what
you get is exhaustively researched book about real conspiracies, specifically
involving you know, the government and the things they literally
don't want you to know, and how to discern the
(39:11):
conspiracy reality from the conspiracy theory. I would say, what's
particularly cool about this guy's in this show, we are
constantly calling back to other episodes we've done. We did
a full episode on that, a full episode on this
back in back. In this book, you actually get to
see that entire arc and the connections laid out as
(39:31):
you go, and the flow is really smooth. So it
really does take you on a journey. And I am
selling it hard because I think you should buy this
book both for yourself and for somebody you care about.
Right now, I don't care, And if you don't care
for that book, why not buy it for your enemies? Perfect,
perfect gift. Thank you so much to everyone who made
(39:55):
this possible. Again, thank you to you, fellow conspiracy realis
Hope you enjoyed it. Hope it's a kind of read
that keeps you up in diet or, in the case
of the audio book, helps you catch some z s
and slumber along with some A s MR question for
you the most important part of the show. What do
(40:15):
you think? What would you like to see in another book?
Let the show know? Trying to be easy to find online? Yeah,
try and usually succeed and then you can find us
at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram phone number one eight three
three std w y t K. It's a voicemail three
(40:35):
minutes go. If you don't want to leave us a message,
why not send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Ye Stuff
(41:03):
They Don't Want You to Know is a production of
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