November 29, 2024 • 61 mins
Did the real Paul McCartney die in a car accident, only to be replaced by a doppleganger? What about the similar stories surrounding Taylor Swift, Avril Lavigne, Saddam Hussein and more? Join the guys as they explore the facts, fiction and plausibility of celebrity body doubles, replacements and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Tonight's classic episode all about celebrities. This is one for
the pop culture fans in the crowd. We went through
a Beatles phase a while back to where we were
asking ourselves, oh gosh, we did a video about it.
Did the real Paul McCartney get replaced?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Turn me on dead man? He was the Walrus? He
is the Walrus?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Or is he the Walrus?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Is that the one? No? Yeah, we did that, But
we also did the audition tape wherein we imply that Ben,
you and I have been replaced by agents of some sort.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Everybody knows that, yeah, and everybody has these crazy theories too,
about not just celebrities, not just your Taylor Swift's, but
also your notable historical figures. You're a Saddam Hussein's, you know,
the great villains of history. Now, in this classic episode,
we're looking at fact fiction and plausibility of the idea
(00:54):
of body doubles, and also, would you ever get a
body double if the situation wation presented, I'd consider it.
I feel like the best way to do it, the
honest way to do it, is just to have an
identical twin.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I think how everyone can't be so lucky?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, not yet.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel
is on an adventure.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control Decat most importantly, you
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. We have a special guest of sorts today, Matt.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
We do. We have JJ Posway. He's a new producer
here at the iHeart Radio Network, the iHeart Radio Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's a hard shrug you're doing there, man.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Whatever this thing is they we're a part of, is
called Yeah, it's pretty pretty awesome. It's good to have
you here. JJ. Apparently he knew like what this show
was before getting.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Here, right, and we're still friends.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I know, he's like trip. He hasn't looked me
in the eye yet, just because I kind of like
ran into the studio right before we hit record. Yeah,
and I can't see him because my view of JJ. Oh, Okay,
he's looking at me oh gosh.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah. Yeah, Well you've got sort of blue steel vibe
going on today, so I can see how people would be,
you know, gotcha a little bit intimidated.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the blue steel.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, I'm going for kind of an eye of the
tiger thing and I'm sort of doing it. I'm pulling
it off kind of.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Oh no, I'm seeing the intensity. So just to check
in with you, everything's good. We just had our big
July fourth, like I guess, weekend.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah, yeah, I have some some traveler that I need
to catch up on. But yeah, July fourth, woo woo America. Right.
I hope you had a good weekend as well. And
if you are listening in a different country, July fourth,
I think it's weird for us to assume everybody knows this.
July fourth is when the United States celebrates independence from Britain, right,
(03:22):
And the way in which the US most often tends
to celebrate this day is through getting kind of drunk,
lighting fireworks, and having barbecues.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
There you go, and that's what some of us did.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's very diplomatic. How are you guys doing out there
in the booth? Thumbs up, thumbs.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Down, thumbs up all the way combs up.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
That's great. And how are you doing, folks out there
listening to day? Do you have something on your mind?
How We're going to investigate some pretty interesting stuff here
that may be familiar to some of us. If at
any time while we're exploring this strange rabbit hole, the
spirit so moves you when you have something on your
mind that you want to tell us and you don't
(04:07):
want to have to type it out, they have no fear.
You can pause the show. We'll wait for you, and
you can give us a call.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
You can call us at one eight three three s
wk'll you'll figure it out. You'll hear Ben on there.
You'll know you're in the right place.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And I feel like we've established the rules of the call.
I lied such that at this point, you know, fill
it up. Yeah, all you have to do is call so.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So we talked at the top here just about how
honestly odd it is when someone I can't speak for you, Ben,
but it's an odd experience when someone recognizes your voice.
And on this show it's only happened to me a
handful of times. I'm assuming that it's happened to you
(04:57):
more because you had a visual present on this show
for so long, and so many people watch those videos.
But today we're talking about the concept of being known,
of being recognized right.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
To the nth degree. As indeed, Matt, we were talking
about the concept of celebrity. Celebrity is really bizarre when
you think about it. Since before the dawn of recorded
human history, we've looked to place our beliefs and our
values on the form of a familiar face, something that
is like us. Abstract ideas were all well and good
(05:32):
on their own, but generally speaking, humans like other humans
or things that look like humans, and they want that
to be sort of a code rack upon which ideas hang,
something with which we can directly identify. So for a
lot of people, maybe during the Cold War in the West,
(05:54):
when they thought of communism, they didn't think of a
bunch of ideals written by some stuffy, old dead European folks.
They thought about specific propaganda image, maybe a soldier in
red marching or something.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, we are a symbol seeking being, the human is
and the celebrities a lot of times are the representations
of from propaganda are ways for us to quickly organize
the way we feel about something, or the way we
should feel about something, or the way we actually do
feel about something or someone right.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And we can be blinded by this too, which is
a bit of a different bag of badgers for us.
We can be blinded by this in strange ways, and
our brains are pretty good at making things seem normal.
So picture, imagine your mind, the most famous person you
can think of, the most famous person caveat who is
(06:55):
alive today. If that person said something that jibe with
what they usually say, their diehard supporters are more likely
to go along with it because they identify with the
person first interesting and the idea that they have. You know,
they can be led along or led astray someone say,
(07:18):
just by the way in which that person with whom
they identify says or explains a certain thing. And this
is why human beings love the concept of celebrities. In
a lot of ways, celebrities today are similar to deities
in ancient times. You know, people obsess over them. We
perform certain rituals, and that doesn't necessarily mean, you know,
(07:42):
you're sacrificing a goat to Neil de grass Tyson or
Bill Hie or something It.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Can be as simple as checking your Instagram stories every
day or every couple of hours, or something.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Right right, Or you always listen to a song by
your favorite musician when you're about to do a thing,
you know what I mean, Like you always play on
the Road Again by Willie Nelson when you're on a
road trip.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So that's the first track at least, right.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right, exactly, So when we perform these rituals, we feel
a genuine personal connection with entities that we may have
never met and may well never meet an hour lifetime.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
And who may not be anything like the representation that
exists on whatever medium you're consuming exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
So it's no wonder then that the world of celebrity
is also a world rife with conspiracy. A while back,
I wanted to bring this to your attention. A while back, Matt,
you and I did a strange video which I still
think holds up. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but in
(08:52):
that video we have this sort of meet the team
kind of thing, right, And in there you have you
built this great chart supporting the notion that Paul McCartney
had died and been replaced by someone else. Do you
remember this?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I do remember this and shout out to Diana, my wife,
because she gave me most of the information that was
included in that. She helped me build that thing. She
is she has an obsession like we're talking about with
the Beatles, whether living or dead, and she knows so much.
She basically was like, oh, yeah, well, here's all the things.
(09:29):
You just put this on there, put that on there all,
cut all this stuff out here. You got it.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
That's awesome, man, that's awesome. That video is still around
on our YouTube channel, which I missed, by the way,
for some reason. The main thing I remember about that
video is you holding some kind of pipe, yes, and
looking and explaining this conspiracy thing to me, and then
we're in a bathroom.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, we realized we're in a bathroom and you've been
urinating the entire time.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh, that's right. As it cuts over, spoil h it
is safe for work. We should say that we thought
that was hilarious and we hope you enjoy it. Maybe
some of our fellow longtime listeners in the audience remember
that when today we are diving back into the world
of celebrity conspiracy, specifically the idea that some of the
world's most famous people have been secretly replaced by lookalikes,
(10:19):
body doubles, dappel gangers.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Oooh, dappele gangers. Can I say it? So? Guess what?
Here are the facts? Just doesn't sound the same when
we've got it, here are the facts. When we hear
that word celebrity, you know, we've been talking about this
whole time. We're all on the same page. We understand
what that is. Somebody who is known a famous person
and athlete, a musician, an actor, maybe even one of
(10:44):
those insta fluencers. I don't even know how you say it.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Oh, that's good that I did. That's great. Yeah, that's good.
I like that exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
But but there's a there's a thing here and it's
tough to differentiate, but we're gonna try and do it.
Here between someone being capital F famous, it's not really capital,
but let's just use a capital F as in this
person is known throughout the world for some reason as
a human person that does things, but then an internet
(11:20):
famous person that is slightly different.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, I would, I would say so, I would completely
agree with that. So we're talking maybe about athletes, musicians,
actors and so on. That's often what we mean, right,
when we say, as you say, capital F famous or
heads of states or heads of religions, people.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Who are photographed by other people all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And then we have and then we have the thing
where people are maybe more famous in a specific field.
That's probably where I would put what we call instafluencers
or very very well known YouTubers who focus on a
specific thing, right, And of course we have to be honest.
(12:08):
Podcasters fall in that. There are some, there are some
maybe they count as capital F famous people who are
also podcasters, but they're not famous for that.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, that makes sense thinking about Will Ferrell right there.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he'll get into
podcasts right now, I think it's just Ron Burgundy.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So. So it's strange, and it's also it's a bit
unsettling the idea or the notion of celebrity because it
places hierarchical value on people in a way that should
not really exist. Absolutely, So, with all that in mind,
(12:54):
if we do a very broad definition, if we sort
of mash up those kind of known in their field
people and the worldwide known people, you know, the Michael
Jackson's and so on. If you smash them all together
into one thing. We can ask ourselves how many people
in this world, in one way or another would be
considered famous. It's really really tough to tell. Some, like
(13:18):
you said, Matt, are known worldwide as a kind of
eternal position, like the pope changes, but everybody is aware
of the idea of the pope. Yeah, the pope is
very very well known, not always very very popular, but
very very well known. And some people are known more
in their field of expertise. What's someone who would be
(13:40):
really specific field of expertise?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
We know, I'm thinking of scientists a lot of times,
or like perhaps an FBI investigator that is known in
the true crime world and or the law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Feel great, okay, I've got one. How about Nobel Prize winners.
So there's an American astrophysicist, John C. Mather, who essentially
proved that the Big Bang was real, not just the theory.
He is very well known in his field. Yeah, but
you know, it's difficult because if you ask the average
(14:22):
this is not a ding on the average person. If
you ask the average person name your two favorite astrophysicists,
they might have a tough time. Yeah, because most people's
conversations are not going to relate to that on a
day to day basis. So we have experts in their field,
we have worldwide famous, and then we have some infamous
(14:44):
people like the child molester Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, hey, it's
not alleged. We don't have to say alleged.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Let's do an anti shout out to you, Jeffrey Epstein
for possibly actually facing charges and going to jail. Maybe
this time.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Will we'll see. I think at this point the money
matters less than the potential co conspirators who could be indicted.
I don't know. I don't want to be too skeptical
about it, but it's just so well rare for people
at that level to go to jail.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And especially after what happened last time that we have
a whole episode on about if you're interested, but beware
you will throw things as you're listening.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
To it, right, And maybe it'll be like the Westminster
the Westminster child abuse circle where they tossed out a
few scapegoats posthumously. Yeah, and then the people who are
implicated were also the people investigating it and nothing ever changed.
I don't know, I you know, hope springs Eternal anyway,
(15:46):
So we've got those people infamous, the villains, the well
known experts in their field, the worldwide. Everybody knows who
that is kind of people. How do we tell how
many people in the world are those sorts of folks?
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, we have some help here in this quest, even
if it's not the perfect examination of it, it's it's
getting us somewhere. Right. There's this mathematician named Samuel Arbsman
who who took a pretty interesting approach in back in
twenty thirteen. He looked at Wikipedia and they have this
thing on there called living People. It's a category in
(16:23):
which you can kind of search and navigate through. And
at the time that the count in twenty thirteen, the
number of living people was just over six hundred thousand,
six hundred and four than one hundred and seventy four.
And he, you know, he even admitted when with his
own study and everything he was doing, that Wikipedia's notability
(16:47):
standard was pretty low as when it came to like
who is famous, who is not famous? Who is worthy
of being on Wikipedia?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Right, some of our coworkers are in Wikipedia. I don't
think we are, but so our coworkers.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Are, Yeah, we are not. Josh and Chuck. I believe
we're on there, and I think maybe Holly and Tracy.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
That makes sense. The question here is how many of
these over six hundred thousand people has everyone heard of?
Could one person have heard of them all? That is doubtful.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So many people. But with this in mind, we can
at least, as Arbsman puts it, get a hint of understanding.
We can we can get a little bit of a
spider sense or a guestimate about how common fame is
in the world. And so here's how his shortcut works.
He divided the famous people count by the global population
(17:39):
in twenty thirteen, which was seven point h six billion, approximately,
and then with that math he got the number of
point zero zero eighty six percent, so much less than
one percent, which is probably good for everybody's sanity, right,
and probably bad for the celebrity stalker industry, but you know,
(18:03):
they're just gonna have to deal with it. This number
is not ironclad by any means, but it's still pretty
fascinating because it tells us when we're talking about possible
celebrity doppelgangers, we're also talking about a very small subset
of an already very tiny slice of humanity, and based
on that fact alone, we might think initially, we might
(18:25):
think it would be easy to spot an impersonator or
a replacement. You know, there's someone saying, I am the
number one Carly ray Jepson fan. Is that a person?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I think so. I don't know who it is, but
I've heard that name before.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Okay, so someone loves this person, Carl ray Jepson. They say,
I've got all of her albums or videos, whatever she's
done it. If it's in the public sphere, then I
have it, says the super fan. So I would notice
immediately change even if those filthy, casual Carly ray Jepson
(19:03):
fans don't understand the magnitude of my work. Then we
could go a bit further and assume the average living
celebrity will tend to be photographed and filmed more often
than the average non celebrity.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Right, yeah, I mean it would have to be, or
would it. Yes. So a lot of the things we've
been discussing thus far are our assumptions. We're making assumptions
based on evidence and numbers and our own experiences, but
they are assumptions. But really, think about it. If we're
talking about the current president, or any president, or maybe
(19:43):
some daytime news hosts. Many, many famous people have entire
groups of people, teams who are controlling their images. They
have offices built around managing the icon that is their
very own celebrity, that is a pr little gem or
something that they get to show around. And it may
(20:05):
actually be easier for a celebrity to be replaced because
in many ways they've already been replaced by all of
these images of themselves, these versions, these virtual versions of
themselves that are out there. Sure, you know, they've had
different haircuts over you know, the time that they've been famous.
They wear a lot of different outfits, They go to
all these different places and do different things.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Celebrities, Yeah, I think it's a good point. Hon of
celebrities are more tightly controlled than one might imagine. When
we say replaced, we don't necessarily mean somebody's cutting off
their fingers one by one and sticking other people's fingers
on their hands, but that would be interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
They live by scripts a lot of times, right, even
if it's not their own intention.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Like their words may not be their own. Their words
may be written by publicists or speech writers or social
media gurus. Their candids are often carefully orchestrated by professional photographers,
and their trends and attitudes or their public stances may
be dictated by deep dive marketing research indicating the most
(21:13):
attention grabbing responses, opinions, or hot takes of the day.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Or for some movie that they're about to put out,
they have to say certain things or be careful not
to say other things.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So it might not be as difficult for a celebrity
to be taken out and replaced. It might not be
as difficult as it initially sounds, because let's admit it
sounds kind of out there. But the question today is
could it really happen? Could some celebrity known around the
world actually be replaced? And if so, how and if
(21:44):
so why?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And we're going to talk about that after a quick
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Here's where it gets crazy. We were talking about this
earlier off air. Body doubles are real.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
This stuff happened, yeah, oh for real, in in two places.
And the first one is one that you already know about.
There are body doubles in Hollywood in filmmaking, for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, good call.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
When when you're thinking about stunt doubles and stand ins.
There are there are people whose job it is to
look like a celebrity and either stand in light to
make sure that it looks good with the costume or something.
And then also people who get paid to do very dangerous,
sometimes terrifying things, and they look like at least similar to.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
A celebrity exactly, and they're but they're publicly acknowledged.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
They're publicly acknowledged, but you won't know who they are
unless you're a huge fan of stunt doubles or you
know a person of a celebrity and also know their
stunt double or team of stunt doubles. But but in
there's another case here in it's politics, and that's when
you have a huge state actor, a figure that's known really,
(23:07):
really well, but is also in danger of being assassinated
or at least harmed.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Right, right, So one of the most famous cases would
be Joseph Stalin. He was a real pill. He implemented
controversial plots against citizens of the Soviet Union, even ministers
and folks who are in his inner.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Circle, the place that he was the leader.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, yes, people who opposed him were executed after a
fake trial on a good day. Other days they just disappeared,
and we mean disappeared from history. They were removed from
official photographs, real devious stuff. Stalin increased the role of
the Soviet secret police as he became the absolute power
in the thirties, and it made sense for him to
(23:56):
use these political decoys because he was protecting himself from
his growing list of enemies. We don't know how many
body doubles he had. He definitely had more than one.
We know about two for sure. One was a double
named Rashid, and he was dismissed from the army because
he looked too much like Stalin. He went home, a
(24:17):
government agent came to recruit him, and he became a
sit in for the dictator at meetings and banquets. Somehow
he survived being in close proximity to Stalin, and he
died in nineteen ninety one at the ripe old age
of ninety three. So well done, Rashid, good job staying alive.
We also, I do have to mention, we also have
(24:38):
a episode of ridiculous history that's entirely about body doubles
in the political sphere. So it always into a little
bit more of this. But he is again just one
of Stalin's body doubles. There's one that's a little more
well known.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I would say, oh, yeah, somebody, how do you say
his name, Felix Dadev Dadeese.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah. So you can head on over and listen to
that episode of Ridiculous History now, or you can hear
this abridged version right now.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Oh, this is one small fact about Dadyev. He was
so good that in nineteen forty five he was flown
to Yalta and he met with President Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Churchill, whoa after the after the during the post
war organ reorganization.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Gotcha, was it was it as the double?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It was Stalin? They thought they.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Thought he was Stalin.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Oh my god, which I mean, well done. Right.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So this is one example. But then we also have
the examples from the Middle East, most famously Iraq.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yes, Saddam Hussein and one of his sons were really
really big big body double fans. Let's see, let's see,
we've got some quotes here that come from inverse. This
is the late Iraqi dictator reportedly employed a roster of
body doubles. When you know, when he was ruling. And
(26:06):
when we say roster here, we're not talking about one
or two really good body doubles. We're talking about a dozen, dozens,
perhaps of people who looked similarly enough to him that
they were employed throughout his rule.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Right. He was a prolific fan of body doubles, and
people would observe this, keep a very very close eye
on it, especially his tensions were ratcheting up in that
part of the world, and they would they would read
some more or less kind of read tea leaves and
try to interpret smaller clues like the way his bodyguards acted.
(26:43):
You know, did they act differently around the true dictator
than they did around his body double. Saddam was reportedly
possessed of a little bit of an ego. Yeah, and
he was a big fan of close ups, and so
people began to think, well, if he doesn't get his
close up in during one of his many speeches and proclamations,
(27:03):
that means it's a body double. People are so worried
about this that in two thousand and three, when he
was captured, then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had to
like go out and address concerns that they may have
nabbed at decoy and was you know, they were figuring
out ways to determine whether this was the real Saddam
Mussin and this practice continued.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Oh and just to jump in there, I remember in
two thousand and three when Saddam was captured, thinking that's
not the real Saddam Hussein. And I was very skeptical
of it. But I didn't I didn't know. I wasn't
thinking about it at that level at this point, but
I was aware just through pop culture that that Saddam
Mussein did employ body doubles.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
And his oldest son, Oude Hussein was a monster, and
that doesn't have anything to do with his practice. It
looks like he learned from dear old dad and and
he started using body doubles as well. There was a
guy named Latif who said he went to school with
Ude Hussang and in nineteen eighty eight he was enlisted
(28:12):
to be Uday's body double non consensually.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, because in Iraq there's this mandatory thing where you
have to join the military when you reach a certain age,
and Uday's body double was basically told, yeah, you are
going to join as Ude, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That's what's what that's what's happening. Yeah, and the guy
who was Uday's body double survived, escaped to rock and
there was even a movie made about his story called
The Devil's Double.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, and you know, yeah, he is one man, the
person that we're talking about. Sure, and he had some
stories to tell. He had a lot of claims and
it's difficult to you know, back a lot of that
up with hard facts. But again, this is a person
who expec sperienced them and then his claiming to have
experienced them. But he said he got shot over twenty
(29:04):
five times twenty how many times?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Twenty six times?
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Twenty six times while he was impersonating the son of
the Iraqi dictator as well as something else crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
He was describing Ouday as essentially someone who was off
his rocker.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Oh yeah, incredibly violent and enjoyed torturing people, like really
enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And you know, it's tough because that's one person's opinion.
I don't know enough about him. I've seen other documentation
of other people claiming very similar things, so I'm inclined
to believe it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Okay, that's very fair of you. I just want to
go on record he did Yeah, torture be abominable, unforgivable things.
We're talking repeat sexual assault. We're talking murdering people for
them for the thrill of it, like the old Diet
coke commercial jingle. It's not surprising that he would have
(30:09):
a body double because there were many, many people who
wanted him dead for his many many atrocities. Okay, it's
just it's like to the point where it's a lot
of work for one dude.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh, dude, I hear you for me. It's trusting. You know,
any Western source that would say that about somebody you
know like that?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I see a really good point.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
It's it's hard for me to know where the line
is of what's true because I don't I don't disbelieve
that he did some pretty terrible things.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, I see, But was it exaggerated for propaganda purposes
and so on? It's a good question. Uh. There is
another question that we should address, which is how many
more suspected body doubles are out there? According to Joe R. Reader,
who is a former undersecretary for the US Army, in
two thousand and one, he said that many many world
(31:03):
leaders had used body doubles to escape capture. He said
Osama bin Laden used body doubles man Well Noriega, Fidel
Castro and more. And there were even rumors that Hitler
used a body double to escape death. That is a
story for another day.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I think, oh, we've got I'm pretty sure a whole
episode on that. Check it out if you're if you're
interested it, it's pretty compelling. I don't know, Argentina.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I mean, yeh, Nazi Nazi Party members did escape there
through the rat lines, right, they certainly did. So. We
also know that body doubles were used in ancient times,
not even really in ancient times. They were used up
until the widespread dissemination of photography right and av equipment,
(31:55):
So it became easier to say, oh, no, no, no, no,
I've seen a picture of the emperor. Yeah, and you
do not talk like him, you do not look like him, You, sir,
are an impostor.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Well, yeah, basically, any way to record image or sound, right,
because if you're just dealing with an illustration and a
written document, even that has quotations or something in it,
that's the only way to know the even the president
like George Washington. Imagine how many people in the United
(32:28):
States actually saw George Washington, and then most of what
people in the public knew of him throughout the world
were paintings, Yeah, illustrations, paintings, any image of him that
was just created from another person's imagination through looking at
him exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And now that we have access to these amazing surveillance
devices called smartphones, yeah, it's very very easy to not
only take pictures of people, but to find pictures of people,
and they don't have to be famous. So it seems
like we're back to square one. How would you effectively
fool people if you were a politician and athlete, a musician,
(33:11):
an actor, and so on and so on. In this
world where it's much easier to verify this, it turns
out that the same technology that made body doubles and
impersonations more difficult for a time may make it much easier.
And we'll we'll explore why after a word from our sponsor.
(33:39):
All Right, that's a bit of a bait and switch,
because we have to get to celebrity body doubles. This
is the meat of what we are. This is the
meat of the conspiracy burger. Okay, I didn't eat lunch today.
I'm just these are all going to be food comparisons.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Me neither, and I'm right there with you. I would
like to add some Bieber bacon on top of whatever
this sandwich slash hamburger we're creating here. And really, there's
an entire industry out there of people impersonating celebrities. Really yeah,
and it's what we were talking about right before the
(34:18):
break to your your phone, Instagram, Facebook, social media. On
the streets of New York City, there are people in
La my god, just everywhere. There are people who impersonate
singers and go do shows. There are people who impersonate
actors and do events.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
There are people who impersonate fictional characters. I have some
pretty good friends.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Who impersonate Bill Murray.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Not yet, okay, no I had I think that was
just him. I think that was Bill.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Oh really, no one.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Will ever believe us, I know, but I know some
people who, for instance, appear at functions, children's parties and
stuff as you know, Cinderella or as snow White or something.
I also have friends who do this, yeah, and that
that seems like a really wholesome gig. We're not talking
(35:13):
about those kind of impersonators. We're not talking about someone
who is doing a spot on kiss cover band or something.
We're talking about impersonators who replace celebrities in a way
for the purposes of crime. And this goes back to
(35:34):
the Bieber bacon that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, more of
a bi burrito, right it.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Is a Yeah, the bi burrito comes after the bacon.
So the bacon is actually it's terrible to call that
because I'm a big fan of bacon. Big ups to you, Bacon,
just for existing and being and even though you're terrible
for me and for the environment and all of those things,
thank you for providing your oils with which to cook
(36:01):
other things. Okay, let's just go to get on here.
So you may love Justin Bieber, you may loath him
either way. There's no denying that this guy, the image
of him, his voice, everything about him is extremely extremely popular,
and specifically with younger women, younger girls, teenage girls in particular.
(36:22):
And there's this man named Leem wirmi R. He's thirty,
he was thirty four years old, and he really capitalized
on Justin Bieber's popularity, and not in a good way.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
No, he would pretend to be this teenager Justin Bieber
online and he would talk to teenage fans, and he
would start hounding them for money and then explicit sexual
videos of themselves. If they didn't send him money, then
(37:01):
he would say that he was going to post their
videos online. This guy's an uber creep, and you have
to imagine how emotionally traumatizing that is. You're a huge
super fan, it's your favorite singer, you have, like maybe
it's your first crush or something, and you think that
this person is asking you, an underage person, a child,
(37:25):
for what nude videos or something. And then for some reason,
this guy has got to be at least a multi millionaire,
is shaking you down for cash.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, hopefully, you know, you'd think that someone would recognize that.
But again, that kind of fog of celebrity, it's.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Powerful, right, and some people start successful criminal careers by
rinsing and repeating this sort of tactic. There's an person
here named Emma Charlton who posed as a Vanity Fair
editor and a winterer, the one occurs in that film
The Devilwaar's Product. So Charleton tricked this guy into falling
(38:07):
in love marrying her, and then she just robbed him blind.
It turned out she had a long history of impersonating
other people, some famous and fleecing, fleecing various dudes that
thought they were in love with her. So those are
pretty dark. That's still not quite what we're what we're
getting at, right, Let's let's go to something a little
(38:31):
bit softer just for a second, right, because people also
impersonate celebrities for the purpose of pranking.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Right, Yeah, there was there was this thing that occurred
back in twenty eighteen where this picture of Justin Bieber
was going all around the internet. I think we may
have mentioned it in passing before on this show.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
This is what I meant by bieber Rito, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Where it was a photograph of Justin Bieber wearing a hat, sunglasses,
and a hoodie and he was eating a burrito from
the center of the burrito rather than at one of
the ends. And it was supposedly taken by some passerby
while Justin Bieber was enjoying a burrito, just out in
the park somewhere, and it got retweeted so many, like
(39:18):
I don't even know exactly how many times, thousands and
thousands of times. It was posted on all kinds of
different blogs, and it became I guess a trending thing
that was occurring. But it turned out that it was
literally just some pranksters that were pretending to be Justin
Bieber and that's all it was the entire time. But
(39:40):
you think that you'd think that with the number of
people who know who this kid is. Who are this
guy Justin Bieber? I guess he's a bit older now,
but who know who he is? They know exactly what
he looks like. You'd think that somebody somewhere would have
figured out that that wasn't him. It didn't happen until
(40:01):
these guys posted a YouTube video explaining exactly what they
did and how they did it.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Wow, weird. I guess the reaction was just so attention
grabbing right.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, and think about this around you, on your social media,
whatever you're using, everyone is believing that this is an
actual picture of Justin Bieber. So you almost don't even
question or you don't question it whatsoever. You just take
it for granted. Oh that's Justin Bieber. That's weird.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
I'm gonna be honest with you, Matt. I'm just gonna
lay it all out on the table. I can confess
to you. I no ding on the guy, but I
am not typically in a situation where my Bieber count
is very very low on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh, you have your encounters with the Beebes. The Beebes, Yeah,
is that a thing? The Beebster I don't know. I
don't know be Justin Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
All right, well, you know, I wish him the best
the luck in his career because it's tough work to
be a musician.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'll tell you this, tremendous respect for Justin Bieber on
this side over here. Even though he did he caught
up doing a lot of things that has been That's
a little kid that has been fighting through the music
industry since he was a little kid.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
That's so very kind of you. I mean, come on,
I don't have a statement because I just don't know
much about it. But we see how even a very
well known person can be can be impersonated very deluiously.
It doesn't it doesn't matter how famous you are. Maybe
to your point about social media, it could make it easier.
(41:40):
Now we get to the stuff that people will tend
to dismiss out of hand. What if a celebrity was
not consensually impersonated, right, What if they were murdered and
replaced somehow taken out. This brings us to twenty fifteen
when buzzfeeds Ryan Broderick found a Brazilian blog called Avril
(42:01):
is Dead, referring to the musician Avril Levine. The idea
is in the blog now. Avril Levine got famous in
the early two thousands, and then she was emotionally overwhelmed.
Her grandfather passed away and she died by suicide right
after the release of her first album, which was called
let Go. Oddly enough, according to this theory, the record company,
(42:26):
the record label did not let Go because the first
album was so successful. They said, Okay, we can just
get someone who looks kind of like her, a doppelganger,
and keep the machine going, keep the money coming. In
a little while later, Avril Levine finally addressed this idea,
and she said in an interview on an Australian radio
(42:48):
station KIS ten sixty five for anyone interested, nice the
host aster, did you laugh at the rumors that went
around where you no longer exist and there's a clone
of you, to which Aril applies. Yes, some people think
that I'm not the real me, which is so weird,
Like why would they even think that. For supporters of
this theory, there, you know, you're probably white knuckled right
(43:10):
now with your hands on the steering wheel or whatever,
and you're saying, of course, that's what the clone would
say that the actor would say.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah, exactly. But you know, as weird as it sounds,
imagine just put yourself in the shoes of some record company.
Now this is gonna sound weird, but just imagine this.
You're the head of a record label. You just had
one of the most popular albums ever come out, or
(43:42):
at least within the past like a couple of years,
come out on your label, and it's this one singer
songwriter that is gonna make you. You know, they've made
you millions of dollars. They're gonna make you millions and
millions of dollars with their next album and everything. What
if that person dies and it's kept quiet enough to
where you think, well, maybe we can put out another album.
(44:07):
I mean, that's insane to think about.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Like, what would you do given the opportunity right now?
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Exactly, you already have millions of dollars, you're going you're
set to make millions more, tens of millions of dollars.
What would you do to continue that money flowing in?
I don't know. That's one of those age old questions.
Why do powerful, old rich people do some of the
things that they get accused of and sometimes convicted for sure? Anyway,
(44:32):
so it goes to Black Mirror. Have you seen Season
five Black Mirror?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
So there are only three episodes, but one of them
features Miley Cyrus and in it she plays a pop
star called Ashley Oh. And this pop star spoilers by
the way ahead right after this.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Cow down three two one spoilers.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
So she gets placed in a medically induced coma by
her management team essentially her aunt and some other people
working for her, and then they want to replace this
pop star with an AI. Essentially it's called Ashley Too,
but it's created from this weird, little, compartmentalized, pr friendly
version of Ashley Oh's personality.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, but the the hardware they start off with is
I very rarely use this word, but it's kind of cute.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Oh the little tiny Yeah, No, I agreed, But in
this case they're going to make use of holograms and
Ashley Oh's personality to basically replace the pop star completely.
And it feels a lot like this story with Avril Levine,
like to continue the money flowing in, they would do
(45:43):
whatever they needed to do to make this person at
least seem real.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Right, right, and they would be able to apply near
future technology.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah, and it's you know, but it's not the first
time some pop star has been, you know, so accused
of being not the.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Real one, right, that's correct. This one is for you, Diana,
although working with us on that previous video, I'm pretty
sure you know all of all of this already, that's right.
September nineteen sixty nine, a rumor that Paul McCartney, famed
member of the Beatles, had died, began spreading across college
(46:23):
campuses in the States. These rumors expanded. There was a
snowball aggregate effect because people felt they were finding more
and more clues hidden in album covers and in Beatles songs,
and clue hunting was infectious, addictive, and fun. Within a
few weeks, this blows up and its global for most people.
(46:46):
This craze was short lived, and Paul McCartney, if it
is him, has an interview where he says, no, I've
been taking some family time. I've been in Scotland, Kenya,
places like that go off the grid.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Because you know, I'm massively rich, yeah, and I can
just go places like that.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
John Lennon is very stressful to work with. That's pretty obvious.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Right, I mean, yeah, I know McCartney also has his quirks.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Sure, sure, that's true.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Just to give John Lennon the benefit of a doubt, okay.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
Right, right, I mean right, that's that's true. Well, McCartney, though,
he has this interview in Life magazine where he's like,
you know, very much alave whatever and to Scotland, and
despite denying the rumors of the exaggerated rumors of his
death in a very Mark Twain esque way, McCartney still
(47:46):
had to confront these things. People said that he was
a lookalike. His real name was William Shears Campbell or
William Shephard. William Campbell allegedly became Billy Shears on sarch Pepper,
and William Shephard was supposedly the inspiration behind the continuing
(48:07):
story of Bungalow Bill.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's a weird one buckalo Bill.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
We listened to a lot of Beatles at my house.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
So all of this stuff rings so true to me. Ah,
I love it.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
So how did this how did this one start?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Oh? There's an article it's called is Beadle Paul McCartney Dead?
And it was written September seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine this
gentleman named Tim Harper, who was the editor of the
Drake Times Delphic. It was a student newspaper of Drake
University over in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, this article, it
(48:45):
addressed the rumor, essentially the rumor mill that was kind
of going around the school that all these clues, if
you put them together, it means that Paul McCartney has
somehow died. And let's let's look at some of these
messages here. So it include a message that says, turn
me on dead man. And this comes from the White
(49:06):
album from the song Revolution nine. And it's when you
play it backwards, it's that old backwards masking thing that
we've talked about before. And this apparently if you like
look at all of the rumors and the things that
were published, if you try trace it all the way back,
you get to this article, the.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
One that we just mentioned in Iowa, right right right
by Tim Harper. So according to music journalist Merrill Nowden.
This was the first published work on the idea that
Paul McCartney was dead.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Because of some backward masks lyrics, turn me on dead man.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It's weird, yeah, weird flex So we have let's do
one more example.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
What about Abby Road? He wasn't wearing shoes and he
was smoking.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
What about Abby Road? I'm just saying, he standing with
four people who all looked kind of alike. What you
gotta differentiate yourself just Paul, I.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Don't know, man. What about that car crash?
Speaker 1 (50:01):
I don't know. He was in a car crash and
his many So I've got to say a lot of
people still think that is a fringe theory, among them
being the man who, as we record this podcast, claims
to be Paul McCartney. He would say he claims to
be that because he is Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, he would.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
I I am profoundly inspired by your commitment to this.
I know it's Do you seriously think it's the case?
Speaker 2 (50:31):
No, I don't.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
I will, I will. I will send you and Diana
on an adventure in a foreign country. If it turns
out that he is not really Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
Okay, accepted, deal. I will work, which work now will
be to prove that that is not Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
So we'll do one more before Diana put me in
the poorhouse, and that is Taylor Swift. People, this is
a weird one. I found people were arguing, based entirely
on the photographs, that Taylor Swift is in fact the
clone of a former Satanic priestess. Yeah, as you do.
This dates back to twenty eleven, and people will say
(51:15):
that Swift is actually a clone of one Zena Levey,
the daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan,
Anton LaVey.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
And there are a bunch of videos on YouTube comparing
the two. I would suggest, I mean, take a look
at them if you want. They don't look very similar.
But a lot of that is interpretive and I.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
The beholder and so on.
Speaker 1 (51:37):
So right now, it doesn't seem that there's too much
sand to the idea that celebrities could be killed, replaced,
or taken out. We're not quite at that black mirror
level yet.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
At least not in person.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
It is going to happen, though it's going to happen,
it's not gonna maybe happen in person, But we are
in the world of deep fakes. Is what is deep fake?
Aside from another episode.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Well, it's yeah. It's a way to digitally manipulate the
sound and image on you know, in digital photography and audio,
to make it seem as though a person, in this case,
a celebrity or well known individual is saying or doing
something that they are actually not. And it's quite effective.
(52:26):
If you go back to twenty sixteen, I'm by the way,
just watching Mister Robots season three, and back in season two,
they had just a quick little piece of video that
happens on a television screen where President Obama is talking
and he mentions one of the characters, Tyrrell Wellick and
(52:47):
it at the time in twenty sixteen, I remember being
taken aback by it. I didn't understand, like, how did
they get the president to say that? Why would they
why would he agree to that? What do you pay
a president when he makes a quick little cameo?
Speaker 1 (53:04):
At counterpoint, you don't pay presidents. You donate to their
foundation's charities and campaign funds.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
There you go, there you go. No, I was perplexed
by it, and I remember I think we even I
can't remember We mentioned it on the show a like
when it came out, but we have talked about it
since then, and you can see there are YouTube channels
online with the deep fakes that are super just believable
(53:31):
and scary, putting other people's faces on bodies, making those
bodies say things, putting words into the mouths of other
people who are being interviewed. If you want to, let's
just stay on the President Obama thing. If you go
to twenty eighteen, two years later, after the Mister Robots
(53:52):
Season two thing, you go to this video that Jordan
Peel made and he impersonated President Obama quite a bit
in his career, or he continues to do that, but
for a while there was one of, you know, one
of the funniest things he was doing, at least according
to me, right, he nailed the voice, just so so
good with the voice. Well, he made a video in
(54:12):
twenty eighteen of him talking and a deep faked video
of President Obama saying all the things that Jordan Peele
was saying. I remember that, yeah, And it was in
warning to everyone that you have to really trust the
news sources that you look at. You have to trust
the videos you watch. Uh, huh, And it's becoming harder
(54:34):
and harder to do that.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I would say, ups, I always say you have to
distrust more.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
So, well, yeah, you have to trust the humans that
are behind the thing.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Right exactly, you have to trust the source or you
have to at least do your own due diligence on this.
And Hollywood of course, very very excited over the moon
about this. Can you imagine how much more affordable films
will become? Why would you need to pay whomever you know,
(55:04):
like Julia Roberts or Idris Elba? What would you need
to pay them millions and millions of dollars every time
you make a movie when you could just buy the
rights to their likeness and their voice and then use
deep fake technology. Holograms are there that they're pretty sophisticated,
but we're not the point where they can replace human
(55:25):
beings yet.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Well, and at this point, almost all consumption occurs on
our phones.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
True. Also, I gotta go on this one pitch. You
got to pitch one thing, Okay, So imagine we combine
deep fakes with AI kind of limited AI. This leads
us to a strange place very very quickly. I have
a prediction I predict that in the mid future, you know,
(55:54):
midterm futures. So it's completely possible that we could democratize
screenwriting and filmmaking in a very strange way, a way
that would not require more than one human being to
be involved. Imagine if you had something that was like
Alexa or Siri or Google Home or whatever, and instead
(56:17):
of just messing with audio, this would mess with audio
and visual. So you could just say to it. You
could say, hey, Google or Alexa, combine Police Academy for
and just name another film. Back to the Future three
and Back to the Future three. Just combine those together
(56:37):
and make a film for me. And then this algorithm
would be able to write the script for that that
combines these things, take the references from the other visual aspects,
and combine those so that we would have something like,
you know, back to the Police Academy four or back
to the Police Academy three, you know what I mean? Yeah,
(56:57):
oh wow, or Police Academy to the you know, It's
completely possible, And then that means the only human being
involved in that entire process once this technology exists is
the person who asks the question. And I think we're
on the way there. Wow, pretty pretty stunning stuff.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yeah, it's funny too, because all you'd have to do
is combine some of the top grossing films over the
past fifty years basically, and then you could just have
new hits and change the proper nouns.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
And script writing is so formulaic. Yeah, any ways, for
a lot of those films. But it appears that at
least for now, at least in the cases we've outlined,
there's no solid proof of celebrities being actively murdered and replaced.
Yet we do see the numerous possibilities for replacement, if
(57:53):
not assassination, and we do know that there are likely
body doubles out there in other forms other I mean,
there's still bodies other forms or other applications would be
a better way to say it.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
You know, I just have to say something here. I
believe that a lot of these allegations that come up
with body doubles, especially with celebrities who were younger women
at the time when they became celebrities, like your Taylor
Swift's and your Avril Levine's and all this, a lot
(58:30):
of this feels like I don't want to say, I
don't know if it's body shaming, isn't the right term,
but the disbelief that a celebrity, especially a female celebrity,
looks differently than she did when she was, you know,
seventeen eighteen, whenever she became popular or younger, I think
(58:52):
has to do with our own perceptions of that and
how we've been manipulated by media to view women as
they age. Is that I feel like there's something there
because there's there's an interview with Avril Levine where she
was being asked, you know, have you heard the rumors
that you were replaced in everything that we were discussing.
(59:13):
In the images of her, she does not look like
she did at least in to whatever that whenever she
was interviewed twenty sixteen or something. She does not look
anything like the Avril Levine that we all grew up
watching on MTV. And it's just the nature of growing
up and changing. And I don't know, I feel like
there's something in there with the way we treat celebrities
(59:35):
and follow them over all of this time that maybe
we just lose sight of who the person is when
you're looking at them.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
The fact that human beings age and change, Yeah, I
don't see that, And that's our classic episode for this evening.
We can't wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let
us know what you think. You can reach to the
handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube,
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Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
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If you got more to say then can fit in
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fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Tonight's classic episode all about celebrities. This is one for
the pop culture fans in the crowd. We went through
a Beatles phase a while back to where we were
asking ourselves, oh gosh, we did a video about it.
Did the real Paul McCartney get replaced?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Turn me on dead man? He was the Walrus? He
is the Walrus?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Or is he the Walrus?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Is that the one? No? Yeah, we did that, But
we also did the audition tape wherein we imply that Ben,
you and I have been replaced by agents of some sort.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Everybody knows that, yeah, and everybody has these crazy theories too,
about not just celebrities, not just your Taylor Swift's, but
also your notable historical figures. You're a Saddam Hussein's, you know,
the great villains of history. Now, in this classic episode,
we're looking at fact fiction and plausibility of the idea
(00:54):
of body doubles, and also, would you ever get a
body double if the situation wation presented, I'd consider it.
I feel like the best way to do it, the
honest way to do it, is just to have an
identical twin.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I think how everyone can't be so lucky?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, not yet.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel
is on an adventure.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control Decat most importantly, you
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. We have a special guest of sorts today, Matt.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
We do. We have JJ Posway. He's a new producer
here at the iHeart Radio Network, the iHeart Radio Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's a hard shrug you're doing there, man.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Whatever this thing is they we're a part of, is
called Yeah, it's pretty pretty awesome. It's good to have
you here. JJ. Apparently he knew like what this show
was before getting.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Here, right, and we're still friends.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I know, he's like trip. He hasn't looked me
in the eye yet, just because I kind of like
ran into the studio right before we hit record. Yeah,
and I can't see him because my view of JJ. Oh, Okay,
he's looking at me oh gosh.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah. Yeah, Well you've got sort of blue steel vibe
going on today, so I can see how people would be,
you know, gotcha a little bit intimidated.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Oh I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the blue steel.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, I'm going for kind of an eye of the
tiger thing and I'm sort of doing it. I'm pulling
it off kind of.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Oh no, I'm seeing the intensity. So just to check
in with you, everything's good. We just had our big
July fourth, like I guess, weekend.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah, yeah, I have some some traveler that I need
to catch up on. But yeah, July fourth, woo woo America. Right.
I hope you had a good weekend as well. And
if you are listening in a different country, July fourth,
I think it's weird for us to assume everybody knows this.
July fourth is when the United States celebrates independence from Britain, right,
(03:22):
And the way in which the US most often tends
to celebrate this day is through getting kind of drunk,
lighting fireworks, and having barbecues.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
There you go, and that's what some of us did.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's very diplomatic. How are you guys doing out there
in the booth? Thumbs up, thumbs.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Down, thumbs up all the way combs up.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
That's great. And how are you doing, folks out there
listening to day? Do you have something on your mind?
How We're going to investigate some pretty interesting stuff here
that may be familiar to some of us. If at
any time while we're exploring this strange rabbit hole, the
spirit so moves you when you have something on your
mind that you want to tell us and you don't
(04:07):
want to have to type it out, they have no fear.
You can pause the show. We'll wait for you, and
you can give us a call.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
You can call us at one eight three three s
wk'll you'll figure it out. You'll hear Ben on there.
You'll know you're in the right place.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And I feel like we've established the rules of the call.
I lied such that at this point, you know, fill
it up. Yeah, all you have to do is call so.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So we talked at the top here just about how
honestly odd it is when someone I can't speak for you, Ben,
but it's an odd experience when someone recognizes your voice.
And on this show it's only happened to me a
handful of times. I'm assuming that it's happened to you
(04:57):
more because you had a visual present on this show
for so long, and so many people watch those videos.
But today we're talking about the concept of being known,
of being recognized right.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
To the nth degree. As indeed, Matt, we were talking
about the concept of celebrity. Celebrity is really bizarre when
you think about it. Since before the dawn of recorded
human history, we've looked to place our beliefs and our
values on the form of a familiar face, something that
is like us. Abstract ideas were all well and good
(05:32):
on their own, but generally speaking, humans like other humans
or things that look like humans, and they want that
to be sort of a code rack upon which ideas hang,
something with which we can directly identify. So for a
lot of people, maybe during the Cold War in the West,
(05:54):
when they thought of communism, they didn't think of a
bunch of ideals written by some stuffy, old dead European folks.
They thought about specific propaganda image, maybe a soldier in
red marching or something.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, we are a symbol seeking being, the human is
and the celebrities a lot of times are the representations
of from propaganda are ways for us to quickly organize
the way we feel about something, or the way we
should feel about something, or the way we actually do
feel about something or someone right.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And we can be blinded by this too, which is
a bit of a different bag of badgers for us.
We can be blinded by this in strange ways, and
our brains are pretty good at making things seem normal.
So picture, imagine your mind, the most famous person you
can think of, the most famous person caveat who is
(06:55):
alive today. If that person said something that jibe with
what they usually say, their diehard supporters are more likely
to go along with it because they identify with the
person first interesting and the idea that they have. You know,
they can be led along or led astray someone say,
(07:18):
just by the way in which that person with whom
they identify says or explains a certain thing. And this
is why human beings love the concept of celebrities. In
a lot of ways, celebrities today are similar to deities
in ancient times. You know, people obsess over them. We
perform certain rituals, and that doesn't necessarily mean, you know,
(07:42):
you're sacrificing a goat to Neil de grass Tyson or
Bill Hie or something It.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Can be as simple as checking your Instagram stories every
day or every couple of hours, or something.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Right right, Or you always listen to a song by
your favorite musician when you're about to do a thing,
you know what I mean, Like you always play on
the Road Again by Willie Nelson when you're on a
road trip.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So that's the first track at least, right.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right, exactly, So when we perform these rituals, we feel
a genuine personal connection with entities that we may have
never met and may well never meet an hour lifetime.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
And who may not be anything like the representation that
exists on whatever medium you're consuming exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
So it's no wonder then that the world of celebrity
is also a world rife with conspiracy. A while back,
I wanted to bring this to your attention. A while back, Matt,
you and I did a strange video which I still
think holds up. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but in
(08:52):
that video we have this sort of meet the team
kind of thing, right, And in there you have you
built this great chart supporting the notion that Paul McCartney
had died and been replaced by someone else. Do you
remember this?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I do remember this and shout out to Diana, my wife,
because she gave me most of the information that was
included in that. She helped me build that thing. She
is she has an obsession like we're talking about with
the Beatles, whether living or dead, and she knows so much.
She basically was like, oh, yeah, well, here's all the things.
(09:29):
You just put this on there, put that on there all,
cut all this stuff out here. You got it.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
That's awesome, man, that's awesome. That video is still around
on our YouTube channel, which I missed, by the way,
for some reason. The main thing I remember about that
video is you holding some kind of pipe, yes, and
looking and explaining this conspiracy thing to me, and then
we're in a bathroom.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, we realized we're in a bathroom and you've been
urinating the entire time.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh, that's right. As it cuts over, spoil h it
is safe for work. We should say that we thought
that was hilarious and we hope you enjoy it. Maybe
some of our fellow longtime listeners in the audience remember
that when today we are diving back into the world
of celebrity conspiracy, specifically the idea that some of the
world's most famous people have been secretly replaced by lookalikes,
(10:19):
body doubles, dappel gangers.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Oooh, dappele gangers. Can I say it? So? Guess what?
Here are the facts? Just doesn't sound the same when
we've got it, here are the facts. When we hear
that word celebrity, you know, we've been talking about this
whole time. We're all on the same page. We understand
what that is. Somebody who is known a famous person
and athlete, a musician, an actor, maybe even one of
(10:44):
those insta fluencers. I don't even know how you say it.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Oh, that's good that I did. That's great. Yeah, that's good.
I like that exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
But but there's a there's a thing here and it's
tough to differentiate, but we're gonna try and do it.
Here between someone being capital F famous, it's not really capital,
but let's just use a capital F as in this
person is known throughout the world for some reason as
a human person that does things, but then an internet
(11:20):
famous person that is slightly different.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, I would, I would say so, I would completely
agree with that. So we're talking maybe about athletes, musicians,
actors and so on. That's often what we mean, right,
when we say, as you say, capital F famous or
heads of states or heads of religions, people.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Who are photographed by other people all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And then we have and then we have the thing
where people are maybe more famous in a specific field.
That's probably where I would put what we call instafluencers
or very very well known YouTubers who focus on a
specific thing, right, And of course we have to be honest.
(12:08):
Podcasters fall in that. There are some, there are some
maybe they count as capital F famous people who are
also podcasters, but they're not famous for that.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, that makes sense thinking about Will Ferrell right there.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he'll get into
podcasts right now, I think it's just Ron Burgundy.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So. So it's strange, and it's also it's a bit
unsettling the idea or the notion of celebrity because it
places hierarchical value on people in a way that should
not really exist. Absolutely, So, with all that in mind,
(12:54):
if we do a very broad definition, if we sort
of mash up those kind of known in their field
people and the worldwide known people, you know, the Michael
Jackson's and so on. If you smash them all together
into one thing. We can ask ourselves how many people
in this world, in one way or another would be
considered famous. It's really really tough to tell. Some, like
(13:18):
you said, Matt, are known worldwide as a kind of
eternal position, like the pope changes, but everybody is aware
of the idea of the pope. Yeah, the pope is
very very well known, not always very very popular, but
very very well known. And some people are known more
in their field of expertise. What's someone who would be
(13:40):
really specific field of expertise?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
We know, I'm thinking of scientists a lot of times,
or like perhaps an FBI investigator that is known in
the true crime world and or the law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Feel great, okay, I've got one. How about Nobel Prize winners.
So there's an American astrophysicist, John C. Mather, who essentially
proved that the Big Bang was real, not just the theory.
He is very well known in his field. Yeah, but
you know, it's difficult because if you ask the average
(14:22):
this is not a ding on the average person. If
you ask the average person name your two favorite astrophysicists,
they might have a tough time. Yeah, because most people's
conversations are not going to relate to that on a
day to day basis. So we have experts in their field,
we have worldwide famous, and then we have some infamous
(14:44):
people like the child molester Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, hey, it's
not alleged. We don't have to say alleged.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Let's do an anti shout out to you, Jeffrey Epstein
for possibly actually facing charges and going to jail. Maybe
this time.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Will we'll see. I think at this point the money
matters less than the potential co conspirators who could be indicted.
I don't know. I don't want to be too skeptical
about it, but it's just so well rare for people
at that level to go to jail.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And especially after what happened last time that we have
a whole episode on about if you're interested, but beware
you will throw things as you're listening.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
To it, right, And maybe it'll be like the Westminster
the Westminster child abuse circle where they tossed out a
few scapegoats posthumously. Yeah, and then the people who are
implicated were also the people investigating it and nothing ever changed.
I don't know, I you know, hope springs Eternal anyway,
(15:46):
So we've got those people infamous, the villains, the well
known experts in their field, the worldwide. Everybody knows who
that is kind of people. How do we tell how
many people in the world are those sorts of folks?
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, we have some help here in this quest, even
if it's not the perfect examination of it, it's it's
getting us somewhere. Right. There's this mathematician named Samuel Arbsman
who who took a pretty interesting approach in back in
twenty thirteen. He looked at Wikipedia and they have this
thing on there called living People. It's a category in
(16:23):
which you can kind of search and navigate through. And
at the time that the count in twenty thirteen, the
number of living people was just over six hundred thousand,
six hundred and four than one hundred and seventy four.
And he, you know, he even admitted when with his
own study and everything he was doing, that Wikipedia's notability
(16:47):
standard was pretty low as when it came to like
who is famous, who is not famous? Who is worthy
of being on Wikipedia?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Right, some of our coworkers are in Wikipedia. I don't
think we are, but so our coworkers.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Are, Yeah, we are not. Josh and Chuck. I believe
we're on there, and I think maybe Holly and Tracy.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
That makes sense. The question here is how many of
these over six hundred thousand people has everyone heard of?
Could one person have heard of them all? That is doubtful.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So many people. But with this in mind, we can
at least, as Arbsman puts it, get a hint of understanding.
We can we can get a little bit of a
spider sense or a guestimate about how common fame is
in the world. And so here's how his shortcut works.
He divided the famous people count by the global population
(17:39):
in twenty thirteen, which was seven point h six billion, approximately,
and then with that math he got the number of
point zero zero eighty six percent, so much less than
one percent, which is probably good for everybody's sanity, right,
and probably bad for the celebrity stalker industry, but you know,
(18:03):
they're just gonna have to deal with it. This number
is not ironclad by any means, but it's still pretty
fascinating because it tells us when we're talking about possible
celebrity doppelgangers, we're also talking about a very small subset
of an already very tiny slice of humanity, and based
on that fact alone, we might think initially, we might
(18:25):
think it would be easy to spot an impersonator or
a replacement. You know, there's someone saying, I am the
number one Carly ray Jepson fan. Is that a person?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I think so. I don't know who it is, but
I've heard that name before.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Okay, so someone loves this person, Carl ray Jepson. They say,
I've got all of her albums or videos, whatever she's
done it. If it's in the public sphere, then I
have it, says the super fan. So I would notice
immediately change even if those filthy, casual Carly ray Jepson
(19:03):
fans don't understand the magnitude of my work. Then we
could go a bit further and assume the average living
celebrity will tend to be photographed and filmed more often
than the average non celebrity.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Right, yeah, I mean it would have to be, or
would it. Yes. So a lot of the things we've
been discussing thus far are our assumptions. We're making assumptions
based on evidence and numbers and our own experiences, but
they are assumptions. But really, think about it. If we're
talking about the current president, or any president, or maybe
(19:43):
some daytime news hosts. Many, many famous people have entire
groups of people, teams who are controlling their images. They
have offices built around managing the icon that is their
very own celebrity, that is a pr little gem or
something that they get to show around. And it may
(20:05):
actually be easier for a celebrity to be replaced because
in many ways they've already been replaced by all of
these images of themselves, these versions, these virtual versions of
themselves that are out there. Sure, you know, they've had
different haircuts over you know, the time that they've been famous.
They wear a lot of different outfits, They go to
all these different places and do different things.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Celebrities, Yeah, I think it's a good point. Hon of
celebrities are more tightly controlled than one might imagine. When
we say replaced, we don't necessarily mean somebody's cutting off
their fingers one by one and sticking other people's fingers
on their hands, but that would be interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
They live by scripts a lot of times, right, even
if it's not their own intention.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Like their words may not be their own. Their words
may be written by publicists or speech writers or social
media gurus. Their candids are often carefully orchestrated by professional photographers,
and their trends and attitudes or their public stances may
be dictated by deep dive marketing research indicating the most
(21:13):
attention grabbing responses, opinions, or hot takes of the day.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Or for some movie that they're about to put out,
they have to say certain things or be careful not
to say other things.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So it might not be as difficult for a celebrity
to be taken out and replaced. It might not be
as difficult as it initially sounds, because let's admit it
sounds kind of out there. But the question today is
could it really happen? Could some celebrity known around the
world actually be replaced? And if so, how and if
(21:44):
so why?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And we're going to talk about that after a quick
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Here's where it gets crazy. We were talking about this
earlier off air. Body doubles are real.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
This stuff happened, yeah, oh for real, in in two places.
And the first one is one that you already know about.
There are body doubles in Hollywood in filmmaking, for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, yeah, good call.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
When when you're thinking about stunt doubles and stand ins.
There are there are people whose job it is to
look like a celebrity and either stand in light to
make sure that it looks good with the costume or something.
And then also people who get paid to do very dangerous,
sometimes terrifying things, and they look like at least similar to.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
A celebrity exactly, and they're but they're publicly acknowledged.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
They're publicly acknowledged, but you won't know who they are
unless you're a huge fan of stunt doubles or you
know a person of a celebrity and also know their
stunt double or team of stunt doubles. But but in
there's another case here in it's politics, and that's when
you have a huge state actor, a figure that's known really,
(23:07):
really well, but is also in danger of being assassinated
or at least harmed.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Right, right, So one of the most famous cases would
be Joseph Stalin. He was a real pill. He implemented
controversial plots against citizens of the Soviet Union, even ministers
and folks who are in his inner.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Circle, the place that he was the leader.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, yes, people who opposed him were executed after a
fake trial on a good day. Other days they just disappeared,
and we mean disappeared from history. They were removed from
official photographs, real devious stuff. Stalin increased the role of
the Soviet secret police as he became the absolute power
in the thirties, and it made sense for him to
(23:56):
use these political decoys because he was protecting himself from
his growing list of enemies. We don't know how many
body doubles he had. He definitely had more than one.
We know about two for sure. One was a double
named Rashid, and he was dismissed from the army because
he looked too much like Stalin. He went home, a
(24:17):
government agent came to recruit him, and he became a
sit in for the dictator at meetings and banquets. Somehow
he survived being in close proximity to Stalin, and he
died in nineteen ninety one at the ripe old age
of ninety three. So well done, Rashid, good job staying alive.
We also, I do have to mention, we also have
(24:38):
a episode of ridiculous history that's entirely about body doubles
in the political sphere. So it always into a little
bit more of this. But he is again just one
of Stalin's body doubles. There's one that's a little more
well known.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I would say, oh, yeah, somebody, how do you say
his name, Felix Dadev Dadeese.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah. So you can head on over and listen to
that episode of Ridiculous History now, or you can hear
this abridged version right now.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Oh, this is one small fact about Dadyev. He was
so good that in nineteen forty five he was flown
to Yalta and he met with President Roosevelt and Prime
Minister Churchill, whoa after the after the during the post
war organ reorganization.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Gotcha, was it was it as the double?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It was Stalin? They thought they.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Thought he was Stalin.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Oh my god, which I mean, well done. Right.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So this is one example. But then we also have
the examples from the Middle East, most famously Iraq.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yes, Saddam Hussein and one of his sons were really
really big big body double fans. Let's see, let's see,
we've got some quotes here that come from inverse. This
is the late Iraqi dictator reportedly employed a roster of
body doubles. When you know, when he was ruling. And
(26:06):
when we say roster here, we're not talking about one
or two really good body doubles. We're talking about a dozen, dozens,
perhaps of people who looked similarly enough to him that
they were employed throughout his rule.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Right. He was a prolific fan of body doubles, and
people would observe this, keep a very very close eye
on it, especially his tensions were ratcheting up in that
part of the world, and they would they would read
some more or less kind of read tea leaves and
try to interpret smaller clues like the way his bodyguards acted.
(26:43):
You know, did they act differently around the true dictator
than they did around his body double. Saddam was reportedly
possessed of a little bit of an ego. Yeah, and
he was a big fan of close ups, and so
people began to think, well, if he doesn't get his
close up in during one of his many speeches and proclamations,
(27:03):
that means it's a body double. People are so worried
about this that in two thousand and three, when he
was captured, then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had to
like go out and address concerns that they may have
nabbed at decoy and was you know, they were figuring
out ways to determine whether this was the real Saddam
Mussin and this practice continued.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Oh and just to jump in there, I remember in
two thousand and three when Saddam was captured, thinking that's
not the real Saddam Hussein. And I was very skeptical
of it. But I didn't I didn't know. I wasn't
thinking about it at that level at this point, but
I was aware just through pop culture that that Saddam
Mussein did employ body doubles.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
And his oldest son, Oude Hussein was a monster, and
that doesn't have anything to do with his practice. It
looks like he learned from dear old dad and and
he started using body doubles as well. There was a
guy named Latif who said he went to school with
Ude Hussang and in nineteen eighty eight he was enlisted
(28:12):
to be Uday's body double non consensually.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, because in Iraq there's this mandatory thing where you
have to join the military when you reach a certain age,
and Uday's body double was basically told, yeah, you are
going to join as Ude, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
That's what's what that's what's happening. Yeah, and the guy
who was Uday's body double survived, escaped to rock and
there was even a movie made about his story called
The Devil's Double.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, and you know, yeah, he is one man, the
person that we're talking about. Sure, and he had some
stories to tell. He had a lot of claims and
it's difficult to you know, back a lot of that
up with hard facts. But again, this is a person
who expec sperienced them and then his claiming to have
experienced them. But he said he got shot over twenty
(29:04):
five times twenty how many times?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Twenty six times?
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Twenty six times while he was impersonating the son of
the Iraqi dictator as well as something else crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
He was describing Ouday as essentially someone who was off
his rocker.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Oh yeah, incredibly violent and enjoyed torturing people, like really
enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And you know, it's tough because that's one person's opinion.
I don't know enough about him. I've seen other documentation
of other people claiming very similar things, so I'm inclined
to believe it.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Okay, that's very fair of you. I just want to
go on record he did Yeah, torture be abominable, unforgivable things.
We're talking repeat sexual assault. We're talking murdering people for
them for the thrill of it, like the old Diet
coke commercial jingle. It's not surprising that he would have
(30:09):
a body double because there were many, many people who
wanted him dead for his many many atrocities. Okay, it's
just it's like to the point where it's a lot
of work for one dude.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh, dude, I hear you for me. It's trusting. You know,
any Western source that would say that about somebody you
know like that?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I see a really good point.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
It's it's hard for me to know where the line
is of what's true because I don't I don't disbelieve
that he did some pretty terrible things.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, I see, But was it exaggerated for propaganda purposes
and so on? It's a good question. Uh. There is
another question that we should address, which is how many
more suspected body doubles are out there? According to Joe R. Reader,
who is a former undersecretary for the US Army, in
two thousand and one, he said that many many world
(31:03):
leaders had used body doubles to escape capture. He said
Osama bin Laden used body doubles man Well Noriega, Fidel
Castro and more. And there were even rumors that Hitler
used a body double to escape death. That is a
story for another day.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I think, oh, we've got I'm pretty sure a whole
episode on that. Check it out if you're if you're
interested it, it's pretty compelling. I don't know, Argentina.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I mean, yeh, Nazi Nazi Party members did escape there
through the rat lines, right, they certainly did. So. We
also know that body doubles were used in ancient times,
not even really in ancient times. They were used up
until the widespread dissemination of photography right and av equipment,
(31:55):
So it became easier to say, oh, no, no, no, no,
I've seen a picture of the emperor. Yeah, and you
do not talk like him, you do not look like him, You, sir,
are an impostor.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Well, yeah, basically, any way to record image or sound, right,
because if you're just dealing with an illustration and a
written document, even that has quotations or something in it,
that's the only way to know the even the president
like George Washington. Imagine how many people in the United
(32:28):
States actually saw George Washington, and then most of what
people in the public knew of him throughout the world
were paintings, Yeah, illustrations, paintings, any image of him that
was just created from another person's imagination through looking at
him exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And now that we have access to these amazing surveillance
devices called smartphones, yeah, it's very very easy to not
only take pictures of people, but to find pictures of people,
and they don't have to be famous. So it seems
like we're back to square one. How would you effectively
fool people if you were a politician and athlete, a musician,
(33:11):
an actor, and so on and so on. In this
world where it's much easier to verify this, it turns
out that the same technology that made body doubles and
impersonations more difficult for a time may make it much easier.
And we'll we'll explore why after a word from our sponsor.
(33:39):
All Right, that's a bit of a bait and switch,
because we have to get to celebrity body doubles. This
is the meat of what we are. This is the
meat of the conspiracy burger. Okay, I didn't eat lunch today.
I'm just these are all going to be food comparisons.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Me neither, and I'm right there with you. I would
like to add some Bieber bacon on top of whatever
this sandwich slash hamburger we're creating here. And really, there's
an entire industry out there of people impersonating celebrities. Really yeah,
and it's what we were talking about right before the
(34:18):
break to your your phone, Instagram, Facebook, social media. On
the streets of New York City, there are people in
La my god, just everywhere. There are people who impersonate
singers and go do shows. There are people who impersonate
actors and do events.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
There are people who impersonate fictional characters. I have some
pretty good friends.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Who impersonate Bill Murray.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Not yet, okay, no I had I think that was
just him. I think that was Bill.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Oh really, no one.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Will ever believe us, I know, but I know some
people who, for instance, appear at functions, children's parties and
stuff as you know, Cinderella or as snow White or something.
I also have friends who do this, yeah, and that
that seems like a really wholesome gig. We're not talking
(35:13):
about those kind of impersonators. We're not talking about someone
who is doing a spot on kiss cover band or something.
We're talking about impersonators who replace celebrities in a way
for the purposes of crime. And this goes back to
(35:34):
the Bieber bacon that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, more of
a bi burrito, right it.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Is a Yeah, the bi burrito comes after the bacon.
So the bacon is actually it's terrible to call that
because I'm a big fan of bacon. Big ups to you, Bacon,
just for existing and being and even though you're terrible
for me and for the environment and all of those things,
thank you for providing your oils with which to cook
(36:01):
other things. Okay, let's just go to get on here.
So you may love Justin Bieber, you may loath him
either way. There's no denying that this guy, the image
of him, his voice, everything about him is extremely extremely popular,
and specifically with younger women, younger girls, teenage girls in particular.
(36:22):
And there's this man named Leem wirmi R. He's thirty,
he was thirty four years old, and he really capitalized
on Justin Bieber's popularity, and not in a good way.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
No, he would pretend to be this teenager Justin Bieber
online and he would talk to teenage fans, and he
would start hounding them for money and then explicit sexual
videos of themselves. If they didn't send him money, then
(37:01):
he would say that he was going to post their
videos online. This guy's an uber creep, and you have
to imagine how emotionally traumatizing that is. You're a huge
super fan, it's your favorite singer, you have, like maybe
it's your first crush or something, and you think that
this person is asking you, an underage person, a child,
(37:25):
for what nude videos or something. And then for some reason,
this guy has got to be at least a multi millionaire,
is shaking you down for cash.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, hopefully, you know, you'd think that someone would recognize that.
But again, that kind of fog of celebrity, it's.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Powerful, right, and some people start successful criminal careers by
rinsing and repeating this sort of tactic. There's an person
here named Emma Charlton who posed as a Vanity Fair
editor and a winterer, the one occurs in that film
The Devilwaar's Product. So Charleton tricked this guy into falling
(38:07):
in love marrying her, and then she just robbed him blind.
It turned out she had a long history of impersonating
other people, some famous and fleecing, fleecing various dudes that
thought they were in love with her. So those are
pretty dark. That's still not quite what we're what we're
getting at, right, Let's let's go to something a little
(38:31):
bit softer just for a second, right, because people also
impersonate celebrities for the purpose of pranking.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Right, Yeah, there was there was this thing that occurred
back in twenty eighteen where this picture of Justin Bieber
was going all around the internet. I think we may
have mentioned it in passing before on this show.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
This is what I meant by bieber Rito, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Where it was a photograph of Justin Bieber wearing a hat, sunglasses,
and a hoodie and he was eating a burrito from
the center of the burrito rather than at one of
the ends. And it was supposedly taken by some passerby
while Justin Bieber was enjoying a burrito, just out in
the park somewhere, and it got retweeted so many, like
(39:18):
I don't even know exactly how many times, thousands and
thousands of times. It was posted on all kinds of
different blogs, and it became I guess a trending thing
that was occurring. But it turned out that it was
literally just some pranksters that were pretending to be Justin
Bieber and that's all it was the entire time. But
(39:40):
you think that you'd think that with the number of
people who know who this kid is. Who are this
guy Justin Bieber? I guess he's a bit older now,
but who know who he is? They know exactly what
he looks like. You'd think that somebody somewhere would have
figured out that that wasn't him. It didn't happen until
(40:01):
these guys posted a YouTube video explaining exactly what they
did and how they did it.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Wow, weird. I guess the reaction was just so attention
grabbing right.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, and think about this around you, on your social media,
whatever you're using, everyone is believing that this is an
actual picture of Justin Bieber. So you almost don't even
question or you don't question it whatsoever. You just take
it for granted. Oh that's Justin Bieber. That's weird.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
I'm gonna be honest with you, Matt. I'm just gonna
lay it all out on the table. I can confess
to you. I no ding on the guy, but I
am not typically in a situation where my Bieber count
is very very low on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh, you have your encounters with the Beebes. The Beebes, Yeah,
is that a thing? The Beebster I don't know. I
don't know be Justin Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
All right, well, you know, I wish him the best
the luck in his career because it's tough work to
be a musician.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'll tell you this, tremendous respect for Justin Bieber on
this side over here. Even though he did he caught
up doing a lot of things that has been That's
a little kid that has been fighting through the music
industry since he was a little kid.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
That's so very kind of you. I mean, come on,
I don't have a statement because I just don't know
much about it. But we see how even a very
well known person can be can be impersonated very deluiously.
It doesn't it doesn't matter how famous you are. Maybe
to your point about social media, it could make it easier.
(41:40):
Now we get to the stuff that people will tend
to dismiss out of hand. What if a celebrity was
not consensually impersonated, right, What if they were murdered and
replaced somehow taken out. This brings us to twenty fifteen
when buzzfeeds Ryan Broderick found a Brazilian blog called Avril
(42:01):
is Dead, referring to the musician Avril Levine. The idea
is in the blog now. Avril Levine got famous in
the early two thousands, and then she was emotionally overwhelmed.
Her grandfather passed away and she died by suicide right
after the release of her first album, which was called
let Go. Oddly enough, according to this theory, the record company,
(42:26):
the record label did not let Go because the first
album was so successful. They said, Okay, we can just
get someone who looks kind of like her, a doppelganger,
and keep the machine going, keep the money coming. In
a little while later, Avril Levine finally addressed this idea,
and she said in an interview on an Australian radio
(42:48):
station KIS ten sixty five for anyone interested, nice the
host aster, did you laugh at the rumors that went
around where you no longer exist and there's a clone
of you, to which Aril applies. Yes, some people think
that I'm not the real me, which is so weird,
Like why would they even think that. For supporters of
this theory, there, you know, you're probably white knuckled right
(43:10):
now with your hands on the steering wheel or whatever,
and you're saying, of course, that's what the clone would
say that the actor would say.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah, exactly. But you know, as weird as it sounds,
imagine just put yourself in the shoes of some record company.
Now this is gonna sound weird, but just imagine this.
You're the head of a record label. You just had
one of the most popular albums ever come out, or
(43:42):
at least within the past like a couple of years,
come out on your label, and it's this one singer
songwriter that is gonna make you. You know, they've made
you millions of dollars. They're gonna make you millions and
millions of dollars with their next album and everything. What
if that person dies and it's kept quiet enough to
where you think, well, maybe we can put out another album.
(44:07):
I mean, that's insane to think about.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Like, what would you do given the opportunity right now?
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Exactly, you already have millions of dollars, you're going you're
set to make millions more, tens of millions of dollars.
What would you do to continue that money flowing in?
I don't know. That's one of those age old questions.
Why do powerful, old rich people do some of the
things that they get accused of and sometimes convicted for sure? Anyway,
(44:32):
so it goes to Black Mirror. Have you seen Season
five Black Mirror?
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (44:37):
So there are only three episodes, but one of them
features Miley Cyrus and in it she plays a pop
star called Ashley Oh. And this pop star spoilers by
the way ahead right after this.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Cow down three two one spoilers.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
So she gets placed in a medically induced coma by
her management team essentially her aunt and some other people
working for her, and then they want to replace this
pop star with an AI. Essentially it's called Ashley Too,
but it's created from this weird, little, compartmentalized, pr friendly
version of Ashley Oh's personality.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, but the the hardware they start off with is
I very rarely use this word, but it's kind of cute.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Oh the little tiny Yeah, No, I agreed, But in
this case they're going to make use of holograms and
Ashley Oh's personality to basically replace the pop star completely.
And it feels a lot like this story with Avril Levine,
like to continue the money flowing in, they would do
(45:43):
whatever they needed to do to make this person at
least seem real.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Right, right, and they would be able to apply near
future technology.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah, and it's you know, but it's not the first
time some pop star has been, you know, so accused
of being not the.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Real one, right, that's correct. This one is for you, Diana,
although working with us on that previous video, I'm pretty
sure you know all of all of this already, that's right.
September nineteen sixty nine, a rumor that Paul McCartney, famed
member of the Beatles, had died, began spreading across college
(46:23):
campuses in the States. These rumors expanded. There was a
snowball aggregate effect because people felt they were finding more
and more clues hidden in album covers and in Beatles songs,
and clue hunting was infectious, addictive, and fun. Within a
few weeks, this blows up and its global for most people.
(46:46):
This craze was short lived, and Paul McCartney, if it
is him, has an interview where he says, no, I've
been taking some family time. I've been in Scotland, Kenya,
places like that go off the grid.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Because you know, I'm massively rich, yeah, and I can
just go places like that.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
John Lennon is very stressful to work with. That's pretty obvious.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Right, I mean, yeah, I know McCartney also has his quirks.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Sure, sure, that's true.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Just to give John Lennon the benefit of a doubt, okay.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
Right, right, I mean right, that's that's true. Well, McCartney, though,
he has this interview in Life magazine where he's like,
you know, very much alave whatever and to Scotland, and
despite denying the rumors of the exaggerated rumors of his
death in a very Mark Twain esque way, McCartney still
(47:46):
had to confront these things. People said that he was
a lookalike. His real name was William Shears Campbell or
William Shephard. William Campbell allegedly became Billy Shears on sarch Pepper,
and William Shephard was supposedly the inspiration behind the continuing
(48:07):
story of Bungalow Bill.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's a weird one buckalo Bill.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
We listened to a lot of Beatles at my house.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
So all of this stuff rings so true to me. Ah,
I love it.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
So how did this how did this one start?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Oh? There's an article it's called is Beadle Paul McCartney Dead?
And it was written September seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine this
gentleman named Tim Harper, who was the editor of the
Drake Times Delphic. It was a student newspaper of Drake
University over in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, this article, it
(48:45):
addressed the rumor, essentially the rumor mill that was kind
of going around the school that all these clues, if
you put them together, it means that Paul McCartney has
somehow died. And let's let's look at some of these
messages here. So it include a message that says, turn
me on dead man. And this comes from the White
(49:06):
album from the song Revolution nine. And it's when you
play it backwards, it's that old backwards masking thing that
we've talked about before. And this apparently if you like
look at all of the rumors and the things that
were published, if you try trace it all the way back,
you get to this article, the.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
One that we just mentioned in Iowa, right right right
by Tim Harper. So according to music journalist Merrill Nowden.
This was the first published work on the idea that
Paul McCartney was dead.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Because of some backward masks lyrics, turn me on dead man.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
It's weird, yeah, weird flex So we have let's do
one more example.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
What about Abby Road? He wasn't wearing shoes and he
was smoking.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
What about Abby Road? I'm just saying, he standing with
four people who all looked kind of alike. What you
gotta differentiate yourself just Paul, I.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Don't know, man. What about that car crash?
Speaker 1 (50:01):
I don't know. He was in a car crash and
his many So I've got to say a lot of
people still think that is a fringe theory, among them
being the man who, as we record this podcast, claims
to be Paul McCartney. He would say he claims to
be that because he is Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Yeah, he would.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
I I am profoundly inspired by your commitment to this.
I know it's Do you seriously think it's the case?
Speaker 2 (50:31):
No, I don't.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
I will, I will. I will send you and Diana
on an adventure in a foreign country. If it turns
out that he is not really Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2 (50:45):
Okay, accepted, deal. I will work, which work now will
be to prove that that is not Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
So we'll do one more before Diana put me in
the poorhouse, and that is Taylor Swift. People, this is
a weird one. I found people were arguing, based entirely
on the photographs, that Taylor Swift is in fact the
clone of a former Satanic priestess. Yeah, as you do.
This dates back to twenty eleven, and people will say
(51:15):
that Swift is actually a clone of one Zena Levey,
the daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan,
Anton LaVey.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
And there are a bunch of videos on YouTube comparing
the two. I would suggest, I mean, take a look
at them if you want. They don't look very similar.
But a lot of that is interpretive and I.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
The beholder and so on.
Speaker 1 (51:37):
So right now, it doesn't seem that there's too much
sand to the idea that celebrities could be killed, replaced,
or taken out. We're not quite at that black mirror
level yet.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
At least not in person.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
It is going to happen, though it's going to happen,
it's not gonna maybe happen in person, But we are
in the world of deep fakes. Is what is deep fake?
Aside from another episode.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Well, it's yeah. It's a way to digitally manipulate the
sound and image on you know, in digital photography and audio,
to make it seem as though a person, in this case,
a celebrity or well known individual is saying or doing
something that they are actually not. And it's quite effective.
(52:26):
If you go back to twenty sixteen, I'm by the way,
just watching Mister Robots season three, and back in season two,
they had just a quick little piece of video that
happens on a television screen where President Obama is talking
and he mentions one of the characters, Tyrrell Wellick and
(52:47):
it at the time in twenty sixteen, I remember being
taken aback by it. I didn't understand, like, how did
they get the president to say that? Why would they
why would he agree to that? What do you pay
a president when he makes a quick little cameo?
Speaker 1 (53:04):
At counterpoint, you don't pay presidents. You donate to their
foundation's charities and campaign funds.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
There you go, there you go. No, I was perplexed
by it, and I remember I think we even I
can't remember We mentioned it on the show a like
when it came out, but we have talked about it
since then, and you can see there are YouTube channels
online with the deep fakes that are super just believable
(53:31):
and scary, putting other people's faces on bodies, making those
bodies say things, putting words into the mouths of other
people who are being interviewed. If you want to, let's
just stay on the President Obama thing. If you go
to twenty eighteen, two years later, after the Mister Robots
(53:52):
Season two thing, you go to this video that Jordan
Peel made and he impersonated President Obama quite a bit
in his career, or he continues to do that, but
for a while there was one of, you know, one
of the funniest things he was doing, at least according
to me, right, he nailed the voice, just so so
good with the voice. Well, he made a video in
(54:12):
twenty eighteen of him talking and a deep faked video
of President Obama saying all the things that Jordan Peele
was saying. I remember that, yeah, And it was in
warning to everyone that you have to really trust the
news sources that you look at. You have to trust
the videos you watch. Uh, huh, And it's becoming harder
(54:34):
and harder to do that.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I would say, ups, I always say you have to
distrust more.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
So, well, yeah, you have to trust the humans that
are behind the thing.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
Right exactly, you have to trust the source or you
have to at least do your own due diligence on this.
And Hollywood of course, very very excited over the moon
about this. Can you imagine how much more affordable films
will become? Why would you need to pay whomever you know,
(55:04):
like Julia Roberts or Idris Elba? What would you need
to pay them millions and millions of dollars every time
you make a movie when you could just buy the
rights to their likeness and their voice and then use
deep fake technology. Holograms are there that they're pretty sophisticated,
but we're not the point where they can replace human
(55:25):
beings yet.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Well, and at this point, almost all consumption occurs on
our phones.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
True. Also, I gotta go on this one pitch. You
got to pitch one thing, Okay, So imagine we combine
deep fakes with AI kind of limited AI. This leads
us to a strange place very very quickly. I have
a prediction I predict that in the mid future, you know,
(55:54):
midterm futures. So it's completely possible that we could democratize
screenwriting and filmmaking in a very strange way, a way
that would not require more than one human being to
be involved. Imagine if you had something that was like
Alexa or Siri or Google Home or whatever, and instead
(56:17):
of just messing with audio, this would mess with audio
and visual. So you could just say to it. You
could say, hey, Google or Alexa, combine Police Academy for
and just name another film. Back to the Future three
and Back to the Future three. Just combine those together
(56:37):
and make a film for me. And then this algorithm
would be able to write the script for that that
combines these things, take the references from the other visual aspects,
and combine those so that we would have something like,
you know, back to the Police Academy four or back
to the Police Academy three, you know what I mean? Yeah,
(56:57):
oh wow, or Police Academy to the you know, It's
completely possible, And then that means the only human being
involved in that entire process once this technology exists is
the person who asks the question. And I think we're
on the way there. Wow, pretty pretty stunning stuff.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yeah, it's funny too, because all you'd have to do
is combine some of the top grossing films over the
past fifty years basically, and then you could just have
new hits and change the proper nouns.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
And script writing is so formulaic. Yeah, any ways, for
a lot of those films. But it appears that at
least for now, at least in the cases we've outlined,
there's no solid proof of celebrities being actively murdered and replaced.
Yet we do see the numerous possibilities for replacement, if
(57:53):
not assassination, and we do know that there are likely
body doubles out there in other forms other I mean,
there's still bodies other forms or other applications would be
a better way to say it.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
You know, I just have to say something here. I
believe that a lot of these allegations that come up
with body doubles, especially with celebrities who were younger women
at the time when they became celebrities, like your Taylor
Swift's and your Avril Levine's and all this, a lot
(58:30):
of this feels like I don't want to say, I
don't know if it's body shaming, isn't the right term,
but the disbelief that a celebrity, especially a female celebrity,
looks differently than she did when she was, you know,
seventeen eighteen, whenever she became popular or younger, I think
(58:52):
has to do with our own perceptions of that and
how we've been manipulated by media to view women as
they age. Is that I feel like there's something there
because there's there's an interview with Avril Levine where she
was being asked, you know, have you heard the rumors
that you were replaced in everything that we were discussing.
(59:13):
In the images of her, she does not look like
she did at least in to whatever that whenever she
was interviewed twenty sixteen or something. She does not look
anything like the Avril Levine that we all grew up
watching on MTV. And it's just the nature of growing
up and changing. And I don't know, I feel like
there's something in there with the way we treat celebrities
(59:35):
and follow them over all of this time that maybe
we just lose sight of who the person is when
you're looking at them.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
The fact that human beings age and change, Yeah, I
don't see that, And that's our classic episode for this evening.
We can't wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let
us know what you think. You can reach to the
handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube,
on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
three STDWYTK. That's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say then can fit in
that voicemail. Why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
We are the entities that read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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