April 22, 2026 • 59 mins
It's true that the founders of the United States all too often failed to live up to the values they espoused in the Constitution and other related documents -- but it appears they were up to even stranger things. In the second episode of this two-part series, the guys delve deeper into some of the strangest, most obscure alleged secrets of the founding fathers, including one terrifying story that is absolutely true.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we are back. Fellow conspiracy realists. We hope you
enjoyed Secrets of the Founding Father's Part one.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is a time.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
We did because we can't change the past, so what
else can we do but learn from it? We continued this.
I think originally we did not anticipate this being a
two chapter series, but we have more secrets of the
Founding Fathers, including Gosh. I think we have Benjamin Franklin
(00:29):
as his own episode, right because of all the bodies.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, he knows where the bodies were buried because they're in.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
His house where he stayed one.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Okay, okay, all right, your honor, I I I plead.
I'm a dope guy who does interesting stuff. Okay, Kanye,
he probably also knew the judge at this point. But
it's true that, you know, the founders of the US
often failed to live up to the values they espeused
(01:03):
in their personal lives.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
They would talk about liberty and equality, they would practice
chattel slavery. They had some very rules for the not
me approaches to a lot of things, but they were
up to stranger stuff that didn't make it into your
history books.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You know, they did some Epstein's you know, they did
an Epstein back then. I guarantee there was its own
kind of like I'm sorry, I don't mean to besmirch
the name of our Founding fathers.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Dolein human teeth like they were into a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
It's it's a tough pill to swallow, this concept that
humans are have a tendency to human a lot, which means,
you know, act in flawed ways, do flawed things, even
the ones that we see as visionaries or you know, heroes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
And to their credit, the Founding Fathers knew that and
kind of wrote it into the Constitution to sort of
prevent things from getting way too out of hand. But
it's certainly something that comes along with power. It is
pretty corrupting. Yeah, and you know, in terms of the
humanness of it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
All, they were also to be clear, we're going in there,
We're going into this classic from twenty twenty with open
minds but open eyes. A lot of the stuff the
Founding Fathers believed in right as part of state craft
was kind of hey, not us, but everybody after us
(02:25):
this stuff right, not us.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Now, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
But like later, yeah, we're building the thing, so it
doesn't really apply in this scenario currently.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Right right, We're a real scrappy startup and you know,
once we go legit this stuff anyway. Secrets of Founding
Fathers Part two. We hope you enjoy it. Please write
in with your thoughts.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
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. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
We are joined as always with our super producer, pauled
Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are
here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
to know. It is the second episode in our two
part series on the Secrets of the Founding Fathers, a
(03:40):
subject that's been on the minds of many people or
a number of centuries now.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
In our previous.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Episode, we talked a lot about dead presidents, not the
hip hop group they were all big fans of, but
the actual presidents of the US and the Founding Fathers,
some of whom were ever president, such as you know, Matt,
Alexander Hamilton, right, Never President Ben Franklin, never President George Mason.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
But they did.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
They did a lot of tremendous, tremendous work creating the
United States, and for a long time they were deified,
perhaps to an extreme degree, and people didn't talk about,
you know, the hypocrisy of slavery or the you know,
the nature of their membership in Masonic lodges. There's still
(04:32):
a lot of little known myths, facts or factoids about
the presidents. So maybe we start there. Here are the facts,
Matt if if someone hasn't listened to episode one, what's
some of the crazy stuff to learn?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Well, a lot of the founding fathers were white men.
No wait, yeah, they all were. They many of them
owned slaves or had in a close relationship with the
practice of chattel slavery. That was a big deal. We
definitely talked about Freemasonry, about how the values that Freemasonry
(05:13):
puts forth have a lot of similarity with what ended
up in the Declaration of Independence and a lot of
the other major documents that went into creating the thing
called the United States, and a lot of members yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
The French Revolution, right, and there's a lot of commonality
there there's there are a couple other just fun things
before we get to the really weird stuff today. The
Founding Fathers themselves probably never heard the phrase the founding Fathers,
which makes sense.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
But Founders was probably in there somewhere where the where
the Founders?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, but it's like that's the kind of title
you probably shouldn't give yourself, you know what I mean?
But yeah, they probably they probably did say that couple
ales in at the public house, Sam Adams. Did they
drink Sam Adams?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
There is actually a really great brand of ale I
think out of Michigan called Founders. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
That's very true. I had one the other day. Hey looked,
Hey sponsorship Founders were here.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Wouldn't that be nice? No, it's a really good question.
Do you really think they like coined themselves the founders
or that seems like the kind of thing that the
press would have to w like, that's a that's a
pretty serious self aggrandizing statement.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Well, if you're if you're hanging out at the Masonic
Lodge in secret, or the thing that would become the
Masonic Lodge years down the road, Uh, you know, I
can imagine gentlemen, we here are the founders of this
great nation. Not just the founders, Matt, the founding fathers.
They sired this country from their very loins.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Well, the earliest record we have of that phrase being
used is actually it doesn't occur into nineteen sixteen, at
least in documents. Warren G. Harding, who is a senator
at the time and you know, later goes on to
be president himself, talks to the Republican National Convention and
he's like, you know, YadA, YadA, YadA, the founding fathers.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And this was of his work with Nate Doug.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
This was also the first time he had ever said YadA, YadA, YadA,
you know, which later is referenced in Seinfeld. That's just
these are just historical facts.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So his when he said founding fathers in nineteen sixteen,
he's talking about, like the earlier point you had made
on the previous episode, Matt, He's talking about everybody whoever
fought in the American Revolution and participated in any way
in the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence.
So he wasn't talking about the seven or eight people
(07:50):
that often get honed in on as founding fathers.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
He doesn't.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
He's never really even talking about John Hancock and John
Hancock by the way, I don't know why more people
don't talk about this. He's famous for his autograph, right,
it's very large, showy, it's like six inches.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
He was a smuggler. This is his job.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's like if we were starting a nation and we
were like, hey, let's get that you know that guy
who sells drugs, like down down by the Kroger, we
should get him in on this.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well, but that was a bankable skill at the time.
Hamilton the musical has anything to say about it. Right,
you're right, You're right.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'm being unfair because it's a way to get around
the British tax system, right.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Really, so he's more like the trafficker, right, he's the
supplier of the drugs in a way, or the guy
who's getting him across.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
The Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's the plug. That's a
very good point.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah he's not. He's not the corner guy.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But there are a ton of misconceptions, and I one
thing I like is that a lot of them are
pretty have been busted such that they're common knowledge. Now
George Washington may have cut down trees in his life,
but he certainly did not cut down a cherry tree
as a child and then say, I cannot tell a lie.
It's such a weird story. He also didn't have wooden teeth.
(09:12):
He had fake teeth, but they were not wooden. They
were hippopotamus teeth. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
That wouldn't yeah, aka seahorse teeth.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Ah, that makes sense. Okay, And let's see what else
do we know? Oh, the signatures on the Declaration of
Independence were kept secret. That is true initially, not because
there was some conspiracy, only I guess from the British perspective,
it very much.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Is a conspiracy just for their own protection, right.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, Yeah, you're absolutely right. If the if this document
had been found, and if they had not won the war,
then their lives would be risk absolutely. So those are
Those are just some of the facts. And there are
some fantastic innumerable actually books and pot podcast and documentaries,
(10:03):
musicals and so on about these things. But what we
wanted to do today is explore the crazy, unproven stuff,
some of the weirdest allegations you will hear about these
founding fathers of this country. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It's the ten Dual Commandments. Wait, nope, that's not what
we're doing here. That was great, That was great. Let's
jump in and yeah, talk about the crazy stuff, the
unproven stuff, the stuff that's fun to think about but
may not have much sand to it. But maybe a
(10:42):
couple of greens. As we discussed that pearl last episode,
this is something. It reminds me a lot of the
Paul is Dead theory that we've discussed before with Paul
McCartney and the Beatles. There's a theory roaming around out
there that George Washington the founding father, I mean, the
(11:05):
one that he was assassinated at some point and replaced
with someone else.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Happens all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
That happens all the time. Yeah, it's tough. It happened
at our job earlier, just a few weeks ago. But
let's like get into that Easter egg, so body doubles.
We know that happens, right, That's happened, and it is
possibly happening.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Now.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
What's interesting about this theory is not just the idea
that Washington was assassinated and replaced, but who replaced him.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's the weirdest part. All right, Yeah, shall we get
into some Illuminati discussions here.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's what this whole thing's about, baby, I.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Think so, yeah, John Johann actually Adam Weiss Holped founded
the Order of the Illuminati. It is a thing on
May first, seventeen seventy six, and he was big into
the rising trend of secret societies. But they were often
used as a way to kind of break away from
(12:09):
the status quo a little bit and promote free thinking
and freedom and equality. Actually, and as we've seen with
for example, the Vatican did not care for Freemasons in
Europe and actually outlawed members of the Catholic Church from
becoming members of the Freemasons. Similarly, monarchies did not care
(12:34):
for these either, specifically the Order of the Illuminati. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, And we had discussed the reasons why both monarchies
and the Vatican disliked the Order of the Illuminati, and
of course why Shop's argument here for the Order of
the Illuminati is, let's see, the best way to say
it is he announced it as though it were a
(13:03):
resurrection of an older thing, right, so his argument was
always this dates back into antiquity. But you're right, May
for seventeen seventy six, that's when he founds the Order
of the Illuminati.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
But he founds it in Bavaria.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
In Bavaria, yes, because he is German, which come into
play later.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
He is Germany. If the name didn't give it away,
he was definitely vy Vadi German.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
First of all, Just before we keep going, isn't that
interesting that as a nation was being berthed, this guy
Wysup decides to found the stinking Illuminati, Like the same
in seventeen seventy six, what.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
A version of the Illuminati, I would say, But you're right,
you're right.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's weird.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
It's a busy year for history, and he's in Bavaria,
as you said. But eventually he's exiled because the power
structure rejects things like freedom and equality order things that
are espoused by the Order of Illuminati. And the gist
of our conspiracy theory here is that instead of living
(14:13):
in exile, as all historians agreed, this guy did, he
traveled to the United States to spread the secret doctrine
of illumination across the land. And in seventeen eighty five,
the story goes y shopped assassinated George Washington and replaced him.
(14:39):
Just to point this out, Okay, Washington's official death occurs
on December fourteenth, seventeen ninety nine, and it's still kind
of mysterious. He was sixty seven years old. He had
a brief illness, He lost forty percent of his blood.
Oh and then he died right in a twenty one
(15:00):
hour period.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
How I never heard of this before? Forty percent of
his blood? Was he being like blood let like as
like a remedy to care what ailed him?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
It's what happens when you get assassinated, dude, you lose
at least forty percent of your blood.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
At least I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
He might have been in on the blood trade, you
know what I mean, and somebody came to collect Ben.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And I want to want to mistake you. You're saying,
these are the circumstances of his actual death or these
are the purported circumstances of his supposed.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Death, actual death, sexual death.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
He was.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
He fell ill and died over a twenty one hour
period in seventeen ninety nine because he was being bled.
It was a common medical practice. Okay, not super successful
medical practice, but super common. They bled him like I
think a total His personal doctor bled him once and
(15:55):
then more doctors arrived and bled him four more times
over the next eight hours, and that's how he lost
all the blood. He also, by the way, gargled a
mixture of molasses, vinegar, and butter. He did several other things,
but he didn't. By late afternoon, he knew that he
was on the way out. And his last words are
(16:16):
I am just going have me decently buried. Do not
let my body be put into the vault less than
three days after I am dead? Do you understand me?
Tis well? And then I die And he died. But
was it him or was it Adam? Why shopped? Had
had this guy come from Bavaria and sort of done
(16:40):
a what's that show? The Americans done kind of a
sleeper agent thing and replaced the president of the United States. Well,
that's okay. We do know the founding fathers were aware
of Johann Adam Wyshopp.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
They even wrote about him. Yeah, it's true. Jefferson of
him in a letter to Madison where he says that
weiss Hopt was an enthusiastic philanthropist of outstanding moral character,
and they seem to dig this guy. He was. He
(17:16):
was popular amongst.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
The fathers Yeah, we talked about how important Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison were as founding fathers, and it's interesting
to note that they were definitely on board with this guy,
or at least found took an interest with him, and
found him to be an upstanding fellow. But yeah, I
don't I don't know, man, Let's keep going. It just
(17:38):
feels feels Let's keep going.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
All right.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, I do want to point out that while I
think we were much more than fair with Thomas Jefferson
in the previous episode, he did originally. I just reminded
of this. He did originally have a ban on slavery
(18:02):
in the initial documents of the US, but he removed
those bands because he thought they wouldn't be able to
get support from delegates in slave owning areas, and also
he owned slaves. It was a huge hypocrit But he
(18:23):
liked Adam Wi shopped, I shopped, and there's some other
things here. It's something we had talked about earlier. Even
if this guy, the founder of the Order of the Illuminati,
did seek to spread these New World Order views, he
wouldn't have been pushing for anything that was super wild
(18:46):
to the founders of the United States. They were on
board with the kind of stuff that the at least
the Illuminati on paper supported, Like the values have a
lot in common with Masonry. Self determination, freedom from religious dogma,
et cetera. If anything, the Illuminati is just a little
more extreme on the religion stance. I think the Masonic
(19:10):
thing is something like their acknowledge a higher power.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Or something like that. That's all you must do. It
matters not what you what dogma you place on. It
is just that you you yeah, acknowledge that something greater
than you exist, and you are essentially a part of
that plan or a part of that thing.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What separated it from the Freemasons? Like why bother starting
all brand new secret society? Was there something about Freemasonry
that advice help didn't like. That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
One of my initial cynical answers would be that people
for some reason love to start their own thing instead
of helping existing things. Like you see it in the
world of charity all the time. Someone tries to start
a charity when they're already you know, eight other things,
been doing it for a long time and could use
the help. But of course these things don't occur in
(20:04):
a vacuum, so it is likely that he knew about it,
but it's also possible and I haven't dug into this,
This is just my speculation. It is also possible that
he was trying to circumvent perhaps a ban on freemasonry
that's happened in the past, but that may be something
(20:28):
we dive into in another episode.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, we'll definitely dive into it in another episode. I
just want to point to one thing written by the
Bavarian Illuminati of kind of what they stood for, and
this is something they wrote in their general statutes. The
order of the day is to put an end to
the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them
without dominating them. Interesting, right, so he user tendrils to
(20:53):
control things, but don't let anyone know that that tendril
is their influence.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Okay, yeah, so a hidden hand. That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
But there's there's one big thing people are forgetting when
they talk about this assassination theory. Yeah, it's a cool,
crazy story. I would watch the feature film when Nicholas
Cage about this. He would play both wy Shot and
George Washington obviously, But the problem is Whyshoft is from Germany.
He has a very thick, noticeable German accent. This is
(21:26):
attested in other contemporary writings. It's like thicker than a
bowl of oatmeal. Shout out to anyone who gets the reference.
If we are being charitable, it is highly unlikely that
this guy would have been able to kill George Washington,
you know, put on the wig or whatever and seamlessly
(21:47):
slip into that character. People would have noticed because he
talked to people, you know what I mean. He wasn't
emailing folks, so I would say this is not true.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
But there's a.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Crazy thing we're going to explore even crazier than this,
that is absolutely true and should terrify you. We'll get
to it after word from our sponsor. Imagine this, no heaven.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
No heaven. I don't have to imagine that. I know
it to be true.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
WHOA, Well, that's I mean, that's where Thomas Jefferson was
accused of being philosophically. During the eighteen hundred election, there
were these crazy rumors. You think elections are weird and propagandistic,
Now these were nuts. These rumors spread that Thomas Jefferson
(22:46):
was secretly an atheist, which used to be a very
bad thing.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, yeah, very very bad. And they and people were saying.
His opponents were saying, you know, Thomas Jefferson wants to
be president not because he cares about this country. He
only wants to be president to ban religion. He is
an enemy of God. He is infiltrating this, uh, this
holy office, in this holy place. Most people would say,
(23:13):
I mean that's the thing. Though, Jefferson wasn't a Jefferson
hated churches, maybe not religion, but he was super not
down with churches. Most people today would describe him as
a non denominational theist.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
So kind of as interesting is that? Sort of like
being not agnostic? Yeah, is an agnostic where you recognize
that there is some sort of higher thing but you
don't know what to call it.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
You mean, like the like the basic beliefs of Freemasonry
and the Illuminati.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Uh yeah, that one.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Agnosticism is more saying that you can It's like pleading
no contest to the question of God. Right, So you're
you're not You're you're saying that you cannot you do
You're essentially saying you do not have the information necessary
to make informed uh the conclusion.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So you're not you're not. You're not. You're not discounting
it entirely though, right, I don't know, you're leaving the
door open for for like, you know, if you are
one day blessed with that wisdom, then okay, cool, I
hedged my bets. I think that. Yeah, what do you
think do you think agnostics? If at that when they
meet Saint Peter at the gates, didn't they get a pass?
Didn they get in? You didn't deny him? You know,
(24:28):
I don't know, capital h.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yeah, it's to prove that he's even there. Saint Peter's
chilling somewhere by some gates. Maybe I was.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Wondering why they were pearly. I think it just felt
like a fancy material with it. Maybe they're just pearl
like encrusted, you know, because it's pearl. Wouldn't be a
particularly good gate material if you ask me. I don't
know what their budget is.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
You know what, if they really are ivory and Heaven's
got this thing with rhinos.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
And they have counterfeit gates, Heaven is canceled you guys, Oh.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Man, wow, we got it. Okay, Well, well.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Other people thought about this, No, no, I can break
us back. Other people thought about this. Thomas Jefferson. The
weird thing about calling him an atheist is that he
thought often about.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Matters of faith and religion.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
He wrote what's called the Jefferson's Bible in a stunning
display of humility, and it's the Jefferson Bible. Is well,
it's called I think the official title is The Life
and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, and there are no
copies around today, but essentially what he did is a
(25:41):
cut and paste process of a new Testament, and he
took out all the stuff that he thought was like
supernatural or miraculous, so it's just Jesus Christ as a
good and normal dude doing good and normal things. So
that that's the kind. He also was like a what
(26:02):
is it? He believed in a watchmaker God, the idea
that there is some divine force that sets reality or
realities in motion and just sort of, you know, called
it a day and the rest is up to us.
These are radical and highly offensive ideas to a lot
of people, but they's still not as bad as being
an atheist and becoming the president. I mean, you would
(26:25):
be hard pressed to be an atheist and win the election.
Now in twenty twenty. So how did he respond to
this these accusations.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
He did what every politician does since him, because it
worked out for him. You play along, you kind of
cave a little bit. You go to church even if
you don't have those personal beliefs, and you espouse that
maybe you do, or you you know, you stand in
front of a church that shuddered and hold a Bible
(26:57):
up to take some pictures.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I mean it's literally grave foot.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Well, what I'm saying is you play the game, and
that's what politicians do in all things, and especially when
it comes to religion, and that's exactly what Thomas Jefferson did.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
It's a little harder to stomach, though, when the person
playing the game is so clearly not that thing at all.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, Jefferson wasn't either.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I know, but he was smart enough to like put
on a good front, put on a good show. At
least he probably like memorized a few passages out of
the Bible and could quote them properly and you know,
didn't mispronounce the names anyway. I'm sorry. Moving on, Well, he.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Did win the election.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
M hm, yeah, it worked. Do you think this was
the first example, like in American like politics of this
type of pageantry. I mean, obviously it's probably tale as
old as time, right, you.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Know, we can extrapolate and go back to, you know,
the times of monarchies that the United States was fighting
against in establishing itself. We've been and I talked about
it a little bit last episode, just about the control
structures of that, how control is maintained and the way
you control people is like the Illuminati wanted to the
(28:07):
Bavarian Illuminati and why shopped you control through influence through
structures and institutions like churches. That's a tough thing to square,
especially if you're a believer, like a true believer, that
we can be influenced and controlled through things that are
largely positive in our lives like churches.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also to be absolutely clear here,
we're not dinging on religion. We're saying that. We're saying
that Thomas Jefferson, whatever his personal beliefs are, was.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
He was at the very.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Least against the dogma of organized religion. But he sucked
it up and he played the game to become the president.
And when he became the president, he did not ban religion.
He just wanted to maintain a separation of church state,
which seems normal now but was very controversial at the time.
And the question about performative acts, performative religious acts is
(29:10):
interesting because we don't know folks inner motivations or their
inner beliefs at this point. They would have to write
it down right in an explicit way. That's why we
know some stuff about Thomas Jefferson. So do you know,
I just think it's unfair to ascribe personal beliefs to
(29:32):
people if we don't know what they are. But we
do know that we do know that he didn't ban religion,
So this conspiracy theory is debunked, we can say. But
there's another one that I think is interesting. I'm gonna
say it. I don't know, I don't know. The title
(29:52):
of this is the Boston Tea Party was an opium heist.
Have you guys ever heard of that one? Nope.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I saw it on the sheet and I was like,
that is not something that I was taught in history class.
What's the deal?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
It involves another secret society, this time the Sons of Liberty,
the precursor of the Sons of Anarchy, and the Boston
Tea Party really set off on December sixteenth, seventeen seventy three,
three years there before the official founding of the US
and it was a protest, right, it was I guess
(30:29):
you could say an attack in a way. It was. Yeah,
it was an attack. And it's known as the Boston
Tea Party. This was a response, as we've talked about
on this show before. I think maybe we haven't gone
into full detail, but there's this thing called the Tea Act,
which had to do with imports of tea from China
(30:50):
and it was this thing that we have for sure
talked about on the show, the British East India Company boo. Yeah. Again,
there are a couple of slightly complicated things having to
do with taxes and how essentially tariffs, like how how
taxes were levied on some of these goods for the
colonists and it's a thing we could get into if
(31:14):
we really really want to, but ultimately it's, you know,
we're having to pay a lot of taxes that the
citizens didn't feel they should be paying.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
And it empowered, it empowered this corporation. Yes, like the
Dutch East India Company, British East India Company. These are
sort of a harbinger of corporations to come, and they
are immensely powerful. They are also they're also not restrained
by laws in the way that many other corporations are,
(31:48):
at least in paper today. So one huge effect this
will have on the American colonies is that it threatens
the smuggling trade.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
John Hancock's stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I know they're messing with. They're messed with on THESS
with Handcock.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Nobody messes with John.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
And so this makes people furious. The Sons of Liberty also,
by the way, founded by Sam Adams. If they're if
they're gonna sponsor us, we'll just keep doing Sam Adams
fact facts.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
It's a beer not quite good enough to drink with
your mouth?
Speaker 3 (32:22):
What in my like Adams, it's a beer for Yeah,
what are you talking about? Old Adams is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Oh you're just saying that.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
There's like seventeen varieties that I've tried.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I do think that's cool. I think this season stuff
is cool, I'll admit it.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
They do the pumpkin ones, right, isn't that a thing
that Sam Adams does. They do a seasonal like a
pumpkin spice too.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Old Wig is one of the best beers.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Is that really the name who was?
Speaker 3 (32:52):
What was he? Is he?
Speaker 2 (32:53):
In the uh Christmas Carol?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
I think so? Hold on, no, I need to make
sure that I'm saying that right.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
I hope, I hope that he's a lesser known Sons
of Liberty member. There's Old Feesiwig who is instrumental in this.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It is It's called Old Feesiwig.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So there you have it, folks, Old Feziwig recommended by
none other than Matt Frederick wholeheartedly, right, Matt, without reservation.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
I think so so so you're right, though, smuggling is
a big thing.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
It's a big industry and it thrives. The smuggling industry
thrives because of the taxation system imposed by the British.
So a threat to that is a threat to people's livelihoods.
And so a group of people, some disguised as Native Americans,
boarded three ships in Boston Harbor. As we said, on
(33:50):
December sixteenth, seventeen seventy three, they dumped officially three hundred
and forty two chest of tea into the ocean. This
costs the British East India Company the equivalent of about
a little more than two million dollars in today's terms.
But the conspiracy is that they dumped the tea and
(34:11):
they took something else, because again, the Sons of Liberty
are in the like they move in circles with smugglers,
and they're smuggling associates knew there was more precious cargo
aboard opium, which should be familiar to anybody's heard our
previous episodes British East India and Opium in the opium
(34:32):
trade in China.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Wow, I mean, it would make complete sense if the
tea is coming directly from China via the East India
Company of Britain, that there could be other cargo aboard
that ship that was not on any manifest that wasn't
recorded and you know, left to history, like you said,
if it wasn't written down, we don't know. And if
(34:56):
it's if it's secretly on that ship and then was taken,
it just would happen and we'd have no record. Huh. Well,
that would be a smart move. Dump the t take
the opium because you could sell that, right.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's immensely profitable. Uh, it's actually it's it's immensely profitable.
It's immensely dangerous, but it's a it's a way to
move a lot of money quickly, because people might not
donate to your revolution, but they'll buy opium. So so
(35:31):
the pieces are there. We don't have proof. We just
have a series of like circumstantial interesting things, you know
what I mean, and together they they they make for
a tantilizing possibility. But we don't know, Matt. We don't
(35:51):
know whether they threw the t and took any opium.
We don't know if any opium was aboard. But then again,
that's the thing. If it's a smuggling situation, then you
can't trust the manifest right interesting curious or and curious
or But we don't know for sure. Perhaps one day
in the future, newly uncovered documents will spill the tea
(36:16):
on this case.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Man, Yeah, for sure. You know, it is fascinating. I've
never thought about opium in colonial America. I know that
the United States after was founded, I mean, I want
to say, I want to probably I think it's about
one hundred years after America was founded. There was quite
a bit of an opium crisis in the United States
(36:38):
because it was you know, it was a medicinal thing
at the time that doctors would carry with them and
would give you a tincture of it essentially if you
required it. But the abuse of it as a narcotic,
as a drug, I know nothing about in that time,
you know, like pre eighteen hundreds. Fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, and you know, I think we're not taught a
lot about the US relationship with opium. It's an old one.
The first millionaire officially in the US. It's a guy
named John Jacob Astor.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
I know that name.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, he died.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
In eighteen forty eight. But the way he became so
wealthy is entirely due to the opium trade. We also
know that going back to the Mayflower in the sixteen hundreds,
some pilgrims were probably carrying opium. Especially there's a physician
named Samuel Fuller and he probably had laudanum with him
(37:44):
as a doctor. And during the American Revolution opium was
a common medical tool. Thomas Jefferson even used it later
to treat his chronic diary. But it would not be
unusual to see opium in the in colonial America.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Would this be opium that you would smoke or was
it essentially just like laudanum was like a tincture, right,
or like you could even put it on.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
A rag, right or yeah, you know, I can't. I
can only really speak to the medicinal stuff. We know
that people were growing, like Thomas Jefferson even ended up
growing poppies in Monticello. Eventually, opium or opiates became a
common ingredient in multiple products in like I would say
(38:38):
more of the eighteen hundreds or so, but I don't know.
I don't know about recreational use in particular, So we
would have to have more proof of something for the
opium heist to work. So instead of saying this is
debunked all though it kind of is, instead of saying
this is true what you don't have proof for, I
(38:59):
want to pitch it to you guys as a film,
The Boston Opium Heist.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
This is good. This is a good idea. You shouldn't
pitch this on the podcast. That's a really good idea.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Well, we get like an Ocean's eleven kind of vibe
and ensemble heist film.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, and then you in order to get France's support.
It's something that greases the wheels like a of opium.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
There we go. Conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
I love it, I love it, but it is not true.
We're gonna pause, or we're from our sponsor, and when
we return, we will tell you a conspiracy theory that
is very true, very disturbing, and should kind of scare you.
(39:48):
All Right, we're back, So imagine, fellow conspiracy realist, you
are with us. And as Matt said, the room where
it happens, we're making a new nation. We're building a new,
really weird system of government. We're working live. No one's
tried this before, so we want to learn from the
mistakes of the past, but we also want to pay
(40:11):
attention to the stuff that worked. This leads us to
the situation the Continental Congress found itself in massively dysfunctional group,
lots of competing interests. They're not on the same page
about stuff, and they're also not efficient. They have an issue,
(40:33):
like one of their big issues is paying people. There
are a ton of veterans who have fought in the
war and survived, some with lifelong injuries, and they're not
getting paid because the government doesn't have the money to
give them. Who knows, maybe they spent it all in opium.
I'm kidding. This leads a guy named Daniel Shayse, a veteran,
(40:56):
to rally the Vets into some thing called the Shae Rebellion.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
The Shae Rebellion, Yeah, this was a group of Vets
led by Daniel Shayse, like you said, and they were
not happy because they basically won the war and they
weren't paid a nickel. And this made the leaders of
the United States very anxious because they needed something to
(41:26):
kind of strengthen their executive power, and the most powerful
executive position they knew of was a king. And they,
you know, certainly were not trying to style themselves in
the image of a king. That was sort of the
whole point. But John Adams actually wrote, quote, hereditary monarchy
or aristocracy are the only institutions that can possibly preserve
(41:50):
the laws as well. As you know, they were not
huge proponents of the idea of unbridled democracy early on,
and this followed his inauguration as vice president, when he
even designed a system that used something resembling a hereditary monarchy,
only it was a hereditary legislature. And he had the
(42:15):
notion of appointing the president for life. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Well, I mean that's that's what they wanted, right, I mean,
think about what they just experienced with George Washington. I
mean he won the war or with you know, with
the help of everyone else, he won the war, that's
my quotes. And then he stayed in power for quite
a while, and he was considered a good leader. He
was trusted by people and respected by people, and there
(42:41):
was you know, the rebellion, rebellions against him, and the
opinions against him were fairly good, i would say, across
the board. Even though you know, he wasn't loved by everyone,
he could keep people in line and he had enough
respect to do so.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, so Shay's rebellion. Of course, it's a terrifying thing
to these guys, because we're talking about around four thousand
battle trained and tested people who said, don't tread on me.
We're not going to take it anymore. This is what
on earth were we fighting for, right, And they have
(43:20):
valid claims, they have valid problems, so we have to
crack down. This might surprise a lot of people to
learn that many Founding Fathers were so pro monarchy, but
it should be even more surprising that these Founding Fathers
conspired against the nation they had created, which was very
(43:41):
anti monarchy.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
A lot of the what Pulp would call the common people.
In seventeen eighty six, the President of the Continental Congress,
Nathaniel Gorham, decided they were going to pitch European royalty
on becoming the king of the United States. So Gorham
(44:03):
writes to Prince Henry, who is the younger brother of
Frederick the Great, the Prussian king at the time, and
in this letter, which is a real letter, it's lost now,
but it really happened, they invite Henry to go across
the pond and become King of the United States of America.
And they said, you know you're gonna You're gonna be
(44:25):
head of a constitutional monarchy. We've modeled it on the
English system because that's what we understand. Is that not
a little hypocritical, more than a little.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Yeah, But it's just odd that that was the solution.
And maybe it was just to have a crown someone,
you know, have a crown and the money associated, maybe
to stave off or in the power. I just don't
understand the thinking. Maybe, and I personally need to do
(44:59):
some more reading on and i'd highly recommend you listening
to do the same, because that is a puzzling concept.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Well, I also don't understand I didn't realize that there
was such a like, you know, focus on a monarchy
esque form of government, considering that this is all a
product of rebelling against a monarchy, and you know, been
to your point the idea, I know how you hate
you know, political dynasties, which at the end of the
day are sort of a modern form of monarchy you know,
(45:27):
by a different name, but it functions very much the same.
Not to mention the idea of like Supreme Court justices
that are appointed for life, we do have some things
that resemble some of those, you know, forms of government.
And considering that all of this, again was like a
rebellion against those systems, I think it's fascinating that there
was such a you know, early push towards making it
(45:50):
a lot like the thing they had rebelled against.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Right right, That's that's the issue. It should bother you
if you live in the US. The only reason we
don't have a king now is because of what Henry said,
to be blunt about it, Henry turned down the job.
That's why we didn't end up with a king. He
was invited to be king, and he said, I'm good.
(46:15):
I know what Americans do to kings. So actually we
have the quote he said, the Americans have shown so
much determination against their old king that they would not
readily submit to a new one. Smart guy. So the
delegates in Philadelphia went to their Plan B, and today
we call that Plan B the US Constitution.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yay, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Well that's good. Wow, that's wow. I did not know this, Ben,
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
So very close to becoming the thing it sought to destroy.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
But but you have to just remember, I mean, just
to give these you know, the people we're talking about
here and Adams and all these guys a little benefit
of the dell. They're trying to figure out a way
to have a strong leader that that as you said
the quote, common people would would respect and kind of
(47:15):
bow to without actually having to bow, if that makes sense.
And like you said, this is these are the systems
they knew before. This is what worked before. Just because
they didn't like having a king all the way across
an ocean dictating what they had and had to do
and couldn't do. Maybe there was a desire to have
someone like that or a power structure like that, just
(47:37):
that would be on the land in which they occupied.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, No, I think you're making a really good point.
Maybe it's saying we'll have a monarchy because we know
they work, but will have one that is our monarchy, right,
something worth we have.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
Jet Frederick the greats Offspring.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And then maybe we'll get support
from the Prussians or something. But these kind of machinations
happen all the time, right in these sorts of calculations.
That's why that leads us to another interesting one. The
Boston massacre seventeen seventy March fifth.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
You've heard the name.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
It's a it's an altercation that leads to that kind
of becomes a spark that ignites a larger flame, and
angry mob surrounds a century and they start talking trash
to them whatever picture whatever the colonial American version of
trash talking is, you know what I mean. They're like,
(48:42):
you smell of laudanum. I don't know, And they and
thanks Man and eight colleagues come to support this century.
And then the situation escalates and people are throwing stones
and clubs and snowballs, which I thought was wholesome at
the soldiers, and then the nine soldiers open fire on
(49:06):
the crowd, they kill five people, they wound six others.
Only two or convicted of anything manslaughter with reduced sentences.
The rest are acquitted. Without going into this too deep,
there is an idea that the Boston massacre was purposely instigated,
(49:28):
that it wasn't just an organic kind of perfect storm
of tension and you know, waiting for the shoe to drop.
There's the idea that someone got together, someone conspired and said, Okay,
go up, start talking to this person. Let's get them
to fire on us. Why would they do that.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
We've seen this before in the past. If you can
make an opponent act aggressively towards you without taking aggressive
action towards them, opinion is more likely to be in
your favor as the person being attacked rather than the attacker.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
I think that's the primary motivation there. But I don't
know how that would work. I mean, it would have
to be I can only imagine it being a group
of people speaking to you know, this angry mob or
whoever they are, and just kind of making them angrier
and angrier and getting him more and more worked up,
(50:29):
and then doing kind of what you're saying, Ben, just
pointing and going hey, look over there, Look at that guy.
Let's go tell him to go back across the pond.
But even then, I don't see how the Boston massacre
it was a rallying cry. I just don't see how
that strategically would be the thing in that place at
that time.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, that's the thing. And you raise an excellent point,
because we have to remember when someone is proposing a
theory like that, they are doing so with the knowledge
of what happened after the Boston massacre. It puts a
great deal of predictive power on any conspirator here to
assume that they purposely instigated something and somehow knew roughly
(51:11):
what effects that massacre would have. That's it's put in
a lot on them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah, But let's remember what the Project for the New
American Century said in their report that was put out
right before the events of September eleventh, two thousand and one,
where they said, we need a new Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Oh God, you're right.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
And the whole concept of that was to full men
public opinion, to make everybody okay with spending more money
on war, on wartime stuff, on armies, and you know,
material nine to elevens.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm sort of being flippant,
but it's like, I think that's a lot of the
reasons there are so many conspiracy theories behind nine to eleven.
Is it certainly accomplished a goal for like these hawkish
you know, people that were in power at the time,
like gave them a really great excuse to kind of
du a little bait and switch and seek out the
(52:07):
war they wanted, not necessarily the war that made sense
as retribution.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Yeah. And we're not saying that the Project for a
New American Century or anyone caused nine to eleven as
a false flag attack. We are not saying that.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
No, it's not what I'm saying either. I'm just saying
I could see why people's minds would go there because
of what it did.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
It was literally what the what the what do they
call neo conservative playbook was calling for? It's exactly what
it was calling for. Yeah, but it doesn't mean we
can anyone can prove that, and you know.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
That's just where we lived. Certainly not suggesting that. I
think it's just a very interesting parallel to what we're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, that report comes just before the two thousand election.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
And then.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
They're not specifically saying the towers in New York need
to blow up, but they do say a new Pearl Harbor,
some catastrophic event. And clearly there were tons of opportunists
taking advantage of the situation, right of the chaos ensuing
(53:18):
after this. But with that in mind, Matt, that's a
great example. That's I think that's incredibly grounding because some
of this stuff can seem a little bit a little
bit distant, right because we have, again the benefit of centuries.
But I don't want to leave this scene of the
massacre just yet. I've learned some colonial insults. I would
(53:40):
like to tell you what I think they were probably
calling this guy. They were probably calling him a gentleman
of three outs. That's a man who lacks wit, money,
and manners. It's three and a loll poop, I'm sorry,
a loll poop l l l poop, a lazy idle man.
(54:01):
The female equivalent is the fussock.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
I didn't know they were doing like acronym insults. That's
that's some next level stuff right there.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
The loull poop is now an emoji very soon.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
The uh and then they probably called them a guilt
or rum dubber. These are great, uh palliards and Clapper
Dogans Clapper Dogan Clapper Dogans dogens. I'll be I'll be
honest with you, guys. I wasn't actually at the Boston massacre,
(54:36):
so it's so I don't know, but but I love
Loull Poop. Anyway, moving on, what if there's a secret
war happening? What if it's not just the US or
what will become the US fighting with Britain. Uh, what
if after the foundation of the US they are waging
a war against the illuminati?
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Mmmm.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
The Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed to the
law in seventeen ninety eight under President John Adams, were
super controversial because they gave the government like fascist level
dictator powers over political dissenters and over people that were
considered to be foreigners, which is pretty weird because you know,
(55:20):
many people who fought in the Revolutionary War were foreigners, so.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Oh wait, almost all of them.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
So this act is ultimately repealed, but some of some
pieces of it survived today, and that prompts people to
think there might be some sort of hidden purpose behind
the legislation. It extended the requirement for residency from just
five years to fourteen. This is where this is where
(55:50):
it gets very weird. These are very harsh anti immigrant laws.
They give the federal government great power to kind of
cherry pick and who they wish to allow into the country.
And the idea is that they're trying to weed out
members of the Illuminati before they could become a danger
to the newly birthed us. That's so weird, it's so interesting.
(56:16):
I do not think it's true. I don't understand how
it could be. I think xenophobia is a real enough
conspiracy on its own. And there you have it, folks.
These are just a few of the very strange, very
crazy conspiracy theories or secrets of the Founding Fathers. The
(56:36):
one that personally bothers me the most is just how
close this country came to becoming a monarchy. So, Henry,
if you are out there and listening to this show somehow,
thank you for turning down the job. Good on you
massively appreciate it. We haven't even gone into the rabbit
hole about Illuminati bloodlines and the Founding Fathers. That maybe
(57:00):
episode of its own. But in the meantime, what do
you think about the stuff we've talked about today. Do
you think any of it is possible, plausible? Do you
think it's bunk? That's maybe best left for authors of
historical alternative fiction. Let us know. You can find us online.
We try to be easy to connect with their We're
(57:20):
on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
That's correct. You can head on over to YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. Check out our videos. We have
a ton of them going way way way back. Watch
them for fun. There's a which one did we We
just talked about it, Ben. We were looking at some
older ones and I stumbled upon, Oh gosh, I can't
(57:45):
even tell you what it was, the snow apocalypse one
made it just made me laugh so hard. We made
this video back in the day about the time it
snowed in Atlanta and everybody freaked out, and uh, Josh
Clark was in it. That's right, baby, gave me an
nice little chuckle.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
I totally forgot.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
I totally forgot about that one, but that that actually
held up.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
I think I actually appear in one of those videos,
maybe two, but I had a really bad haircut at
the time. So if you want to see me with
a bad haircut, do a little digging.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
It's called the meeting. Check out that one. That's what
this video is titled.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
Is that the one my bad haircut?
Speaker 3 (58:23):
No, no, you have a night haircut.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Oh thanks, Bud, appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
You can also call us, should you prefer that to
social media. We are one eight three three std WYTK.
You will hear a message and you will have three
minutes that entirely belong to you, which you will with them.
Leave us suggestions, leave us feedback, and most importantly on
(58:48):
that one, let us know if it's okay to use
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Speaker 2 (58:53):
And if you don't want to do any of that,
why not head on over to Apple Podcasts. This is
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value constructive feedback. Leave some of that too. It helps
people discover the show and boosts it in the rankings,
So that's always helpful, and you know, we hope you
(59:15):
do that. But if you don't, and you can do
a combination of these things, it's not like mutually exclusive.
You can send us an email.
Speaker 3 (59:22):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff They Don't
(59:45):
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.
And we are back. Fellow conspiracy realists. We hope you
enjoyed Secrets of the Founding Father's Part one.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is a time.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
We did because we can't change the past, so what
else can we do but learn from it? We continued this.
I think originally we did not anticipate this being a
two chapter series, but we have more secrets of the
Founding Fathers, including Gosh. I think we have Benjamin Franklin
(00:29):
as his own episode, right because of all the bodies.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, he knows where the bodies were buried because they're in.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
His house where he stayed one.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Okay, okay, all right, your honor, I I I plead.
I'm a dope guy who does interesting stuff. Okay, Kanye,
he probably also knew the judge at this point. But
it's true that, you know, the founders of the US
often failed to live up to the values they espeused
(01:03):
in their personal lives.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
They would talk about liberty and equality, they would practice
chattel slavery. They had some very rules for the not
me approaches to a lot of things, but they were
up to stranger stuff that didn't make it into your
history books.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You know, they did some Epstein's you know, they did
an Epstein back then. I guarantee there was its own
kind of like I'm sorry, I don't mean to besmirch
the name of our Founding fathers.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Dolein human teeth like they were into a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
It's it's a tough pill to swallow, this concept that
humans are have a tendency to human a lot, which means,
you know, act in flawed ways, do flawed things, even
the ones that we see as visionaries or you know, heroes.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
And to their credit, the Founding Fathers knew that and
kind of wrote it into the Constitution to sort of
prevent things from getting way too out of hand. But
it's certainly something that comes along with power. It is
pretty corrupting. Yeah, and you know, in terms of the
humanness of it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
All, they were also to be clear, we're going in there,
We're going into this classic from twenty twenty with open
minds but open eyes. A lot of the stuff the
Founding Fathers believed in right as part of state craft
was kind of hey, not us, but everybody after us
(02:25):
this stuff right, not us.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Now, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
But like later, yeah, we're building the thing, so it
doesn't really apply in this scenario currently.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Right right, We're a real scrappy startup and you know,
once we go legit this stuff anyway. Secrets of Founding
Fathers Part two. We hope you enjoy it. Please write
in with your thoughts.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
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. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
We are joined as always with our super producer, pauled
Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are
here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
to know. It is the second episode in our two
part series on the Secrets of the Founding Fathers, a
(03:40):
subject that's been on the minds of many people or
a number of centuries now.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
In our previous.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Episode, we talked a lot about dead presidents, not the
hip hop group they were all big fans of, but
the actual presidents of the US and the Founding Fathers,
some of whom were ever president, such as you know, Matt,
Alexander Hamilton, right, Never President Ben Franklin, never President George Mason.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
But they did.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
They did a lot of tremendous, tremendous work creating the
United States, and for a long time they were deified,
perhaps to an extreme degree, and people didn't talk about,
you know, the hypocrisy of slavery or the you know,
the nature of their membership in Masonic lodges. There's still
(04:32):
a lot of little known myths, facts or factoids about
the presidents. So maybe we start there. Here are the facts,
Matt if if someone hasn't listened to episode one, what's
some of the crazy stuff to learn?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Well, a lot of the founding fathers were white men.
No wait, yeah, they all were. They many of them
owned slaves or had in a close relationship with the
practice of chattel slavery. That was a big deal. We
definitely talked about Freemasonry, about how the values that Freemasonry
(05:13):
puts forth have a lot of similarity with what ended
up in the Declaration of Independence and a lot of
the other major documents that went into creating the thing
called the United States, and a lot of members yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
The French Revolution, right, and there's a lot of commonality
there there's there are a couple other just fun things
before we get to the really weird stuff today. The
Founding Fathers themselves probably never heard the phrase the founding Fathers,
which makes sense.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
But Founders was probably in there somewhere where the where
the Founders?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, but it's like that's the kind of title
you probably shouldn't give yourself, you know what I mean?
But yeah, they probably they probably did say that couple
ales in at the public house, Sam Adams. Did they
drink Sam Adams?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
There is actually a really great brand of ale I
think out of Michigan called Founders. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
That's very true. I had one the other day. Hey looked,
Hey sponsorship Founders were here.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Wouldn't that be nice? No, it's a really good question.
Do you really think they like coined themselves the founders
or that seems like the kind of thing that the
press would have to w like, that's a that's a
pretty serious self aggrandizing statement.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Well, if you're if you're hanging out at the Masonic
Lodge in secret, or the thing that would become the
Masonic Lodge years down the road, Uh, you know, I
can imagine gentlemen, we here are the founders of this
great nation. Not just the founders, Matt, the founding fathers.
They sired this country from their very loins.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Well, the earliest record we have of that phrase being
used is actually it doesn't occur into nineteen sixteen, at
least in documents. Warren G. Harding, who is a senator
at the time and you know, later goes on to
be president himself, talks to the Republican National Convention and
he's like, you know, YadA, YadA, YadA, the founding fathers.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And this was of his work with Nate Doug.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
This was also the first time he had ever said YadA, YadA, YadA,
you know, which later is referenced in Seinfeld. That's just
these are just historical facts.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So his when he said founding fathers in nineteen sixteen,
he's talking about, like the earlier point you had made
on the previous episode, Matt, He's talking about everybody whoever
fought in the American Revolution and participated in any way
in the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence.
So he wasn't talking about the seven or eight people
(07:50):
that often get honed in on as founding fathers.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
He doesn't.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
He's never really even talking about John Hancock and John
Hancock by the way, I don't know why more people
don't talk about this. He's famous for his autograph, right,
it's very large, showy, it's like six inches.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
He was a smuggler. This is his job.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's like if we were starting a nation and we
were like, hey, let's get that you know that guy
who sells drugs, like down down by the Kroger, we
should get him in on this.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well, but that was a bankable skill at the time.
Hamilton the musical has anything to say about it. Right,
you're right, You're right.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I'm being unfair because it's a way to get around
the British tax system, right.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Really, so he's more like the trafficker, right, he's the
supplier of the drugs in a way, or the guy
who's getting him across.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
The Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's the plug. That's a
very good point.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah he's not. He's not the corner guy.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
But there are a ton of misconceptions, and I one
thing I like is that a lot of them are
pretty have been busted such that they're common knowledge. Now
George Washington may have cut down trees in his life,
but he certainly did not cut down a cherry tree
as a child and then say, I cannot tell a lie.
It's such a weird story. He also didn't have wooden teeth.
(09:12):
He had fake teeth, but they were not wooden. They
were hippopotamus teeth. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
That wouldn't yeah, aka seahorse teeth.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Ah, that makes sense. Okay, And let's see what else
do we know? Oh, the signatures on the Declaration of
Independence were kept secret. That is true initially, not because
there was some conspiracy, only I guess from the British perspective,
it very much.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Is a conspiracy just for their own protection, right.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, Yeah, you're absolutely right. If the if this document
had been found, and if they had not won the war,
then their lives would be risk absolutely. So those are
Those are just some of the facts. And there are
some fantastic innumerable actually books and pot podcast and documentaries,
(10:03):
musicals and so on about these things. But what we
wanted to do today is explore the crazy, unproven stuff,
some of the weirdest allegations you will hear about these
founding fathers of this country. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It's the ten Dual Commandments. Wait, nope, that's not what
we're doing here. That was great, That was great. Let's
jump in and yeah, talk about the crazy stuff, the
unproven stuff, the stuff that's fun to think about but
may not have much sand to it. But maybe a
(10:42):
couple of greens. As we discussed that pearl last episode,
this is something. It reminds me a lot of the
Paul is Dead theory that we've discussed before with Paul
McCartney and the Beatles. There's a theory roaming around out
there that George Washington the founding father, I mean, the
(11:05):
one that he was assassinated at some point and replaced
with someone else.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Happens all the time.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
That happens all the time. Yeah, it's tough. It happened
at our job earlier, just a few weeks ago. But
let's like get into that Easter egg, so body doubles.
We know that happens, right, That's happened, and it is
possibly happening.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Now.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
What's interesting about this theory is not just the idea
that Washington was assassinated and replaced, but who replaced him.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's the weirdest part. All right, Yeah, shall we get
into some Illuminati discussions here.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's what this whole thing's about, baby, I.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Think so, yeah, John Johann actually Adam Weiss Holped founded
the Order of the Illuminati. It is a thing on
May first, seventeen seventy six, and he was big into
the rising trend of secret societies. But they were often
used as a way to kind of break away from
(12:09):
the status quo a little bit and promote free thinking
and freedom and equality. Actually, and as we've seen with
for example, the Vatican did not care for Freemasons in
Europe and actually outlawed members of the Catholic Church from
becoming members of the Freemasons. Similarly, monarchies did not care
(12:34):
for these either, specifically the Order of the Illuminati. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, And we had discussed the reasons why both monarchies
and the Vatican disliked the Order of the Illuminati, and
of course why Shop's argument here for the Order of
the Illuminati is, let's see, the best way to say
it is he announced it as though it were a
(13:03):
resurrection of an older thing, right, so his argument was
always this dates back into antiquity. But you're right, May
for seventeen seventy six, that's when he founds the Order
of the Illuminati.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
But he founds it in Bavaria.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
In Bavaria, yes, because he is German, which come into
play later.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
He is Germany. If the name didn't give it away,
he was definitely vy Vadi German.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
First of all, Just before we keep going, isn't that
interesting that as a nation was being berthed, this guy
Wysup decides to found the stinking Illuminati, Like the same
in seventeen seventy six, what.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
A version of the Illuminati, I would say, But you're right,
you're right.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's weird.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
It's a busy year for history, and he's in Bavaria,
as you said. But eventually he's exiled because the power
structure rejects things like freedom and equality order things that
are espoused by the Order of Illuminati. And the gist
of our conspiracy theory here is that instead of living
(14:13):
in exile, as all historians agreed, this guy did, he
traveled to the United States to spread the secret doctrine
of illumination across the land. And in seventeen eighty five,
the story goes y shopped assassinated George Washington and replaced him.
(14:39):
Just to point this out, Okay, Washington's official death occurs
on December fourteenth, seventeen ninety nine, and it's still kind
of mysterious. He was sixty seven years old. He had
a brief illness, He lost forty percent of his blood.
Oh and then he died right in a twenty one
(15:00):
hour period.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
How I never heard of this before? Forty percent of
his blood? Was he being like blood let like as
like a remedy to care what ailed him?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
It's what happens when you get assassinated, dude, you lose
at least forty percent of your blood.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
At least I thought it was.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
He might have been in on the blood trade, you
know what I mean, and somebody came to collect Ben.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
And I want to want to mistake you. You're saying,
these are the circumstances of his actual death or these
are the purported circumstances of his supposed.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Death, actual death, sexual death.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
He was.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
He fell ill and died over a twenty one hour
period in seventeen ninety nine because he was being bled.
It was a common medical practice. Okay, not super successful
medical practice, but super common. They bled him like I
think a total His personal doctor bled him once and
(15:55):
then more doctors arrived and bled him four more times
over the next eight hours, and that's how he lost
all the blood. He also, by the way, gargled a
mixture of molasses, vinegar, and butter. He did several other things,
but he didn't. By late afternoon, he knew that he
was on the way out. And his last words are
(16:16):
I am just going have me decently buried. Do not
let my body be put into the vault less than
three days after I am dead? Do you understand me?
Tis well? And then I die And he died. But
was it him or was it Adam? Why shopped? Had
had this guy come from Bavaria and sort of done
(16:40):
a what's that show? The Americans done kind of a
sleeper agent thing and replaced the president of the United States. Well,
that's okay. We do know the founding fathers were aware
of Johann Adam Wyshopp.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
They even wrote about him. Yeah, it's true. Jefferson of
him in a letter to Madison where he says that
weiss Hopt was an enthusiastic philanthropist of outstanding moral character,
and they seem to dig this guy. He was. He
(17:16):
was popular amongst.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
The fathers Yeah, we talked about how important Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison were as founding fathers, and it's interesting
to note that they were definitely on board with this guy,
or at least found took an interest with him, and
found him to be an upstanding fellow. But yeah, I
don't I don't know, man, Let's keep going. It just
(17:38):
feels feels Let's keep going.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
All right.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, I do want to point out that while I
think we were much more than fair with Thomas Jefferson
in the previous episode, he did originally. I just reminded
of this. He did originally have a ban on slavery
(18:02):
in the initial documents of the US, but he removed
those bands because he thought they wouldn't be able to
get support from delegates in slave owning areas, and also
he owned slaves. It was a huge hypocrit But he
(18:23):
liked Adam Wi shopped, I shopped, and there's some other
things here. It's something we had talked about earlier. Even
if this guy, the founder of the Order of the Illuminati,
did seek to spread these New World Order views, he
wouldn't have been pushing for anything that was super wild
(18:46):
to the founders of the United States. They were on
board with the kind of stuff that the at least
the Illuminati on paper supported, Like the values have a
lot in common with Masonry. Self determination, freedom from religious dogma,
et cetera. If anything, the Illuminati is just a little
more extreme on the religion stance. I think the Masonic
(19:10):
thing is something like their acknowledge a higher power.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Or something like that. That's all you must do. It
matters not what you what dogma you place on. It
is just that you you yeah, acknowledge that something greater
than you exist, and you are essentially a part of
that plan or a part of that thing.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What separated it from the Freemasons? Like why bother starting
all brand new secret society? Was there something about Freemasonry
that advice help didn't like. That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
One of my initial cynical answers would be that people
for some reason love to start their own thing instead
of helping existing things. Like you see it in the
world of charity all the time. Someone tries to start
a charity when they're already you know, eight other things,
been doing it for a long time and could use
the help. But of course these things don't occur in
(20:04):
a vacuum, so it is likely that he knew about it,
but it's also possible and I haven't dug into this,
This is just my speculation. It is also possible that
he was trying to circumvent perhaps a ban on freemasonry
that's happened in the past, but that may be something
(20:28):
we dive into in another episode.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, we'll definitely dive into it in another episode. I
just want to point to one thing written by the
Bavarian Illuminati of kind of what they stood for, and
this is something they wrote in their general statutes. The
order of the day is to put an end to
the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them
without dominating them. Interesting, right, so he user tendrils to
(20:53):
control things, but don't let anyone know that that tendril
is their influence.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Okay, yeah, so a hidden hand. That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
But there's there's one big thing people are forgetting when
they talk about this assassination theory. Yeah, it's a cool,
crazy story. I would watch the feature film when Nicholas
Cage about this. He would play both wy Shot and
George Washington obviously, But the problem is Whyshoft is from Germany.
He has a very thick, noticeable German accent. This is
(21:26):
attested in other contemporary writings. It's like thicker than a
bowl of oatmeal. Shout out to anyone who gets the reference.
If we are being charitable, it is highly unlikely that
this guy would have been able to kill George Washington,
you know, put on the wig or whatever and seamlessly
(21:47):
slip into that character. People would have noticed because he
talked to people, you know what I mean. He wasn't
emailing folks, so I would say this is not true.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
But there's a.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Crazy thing we're going to explore even crazier than this,
that is absolutely true and should terrify you. We'll get
to it after word from our sponsor. Imagine this, no heaven.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
No heaven. I don't have to imagine that. I know
it to be true.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
WHOA, Well, that's I mean, that's where Thomas Jefferson was
accused of being philosophically. During the eighteen hundred election, there
were these crazy rumors. You think elections are weird and propagandistic,
Now these were nuts. These rumors spread that Thomas Jefferson
(22:46):
was secretly an atheist, which used to be a very
bad thing.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yeah, yeah, very very bad. And they and people were saying.
His opponents were saying, you know, Thomas Jefferson wants to
be president not because he cares about this country. He
only wants to be president to ban religion. He is
an enemy of God. He is infiltrating this, uh, this
holy office, in this holy place. Most people would say,
(23:13):
I mean that's the thing. Though, Jefferson wasn't a Jefferson
hated churches, maybe not religion, but he was super not
down with churches. Most people today would describe him as
a non denominational theist.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
So kind of as interesting is that? Sort of like
being not agnostic? Yeah, is an agnostic where you recognize
that there is some sort of higher thing but you
don't know what to call it.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
You mean, like the like the basic beliefs of Freemasonry
and the Illuminati.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Uh yeah, that one.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Agnosticism is more saying that you can It's like pleading
no contest to the question of God. Right, So you're
you're not You're you're saying that you cannot you do
You're essentially saying you do not have the information necessary
to make informed uh the conclusion.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
So you're not you're not. You're not. You're not discounting
it entirely though, right, I don't know, you're leaving the
door open for for like, you know, if you are
one day blessed with that wisdom, then okay, cool, I
hedged my bets. I think that. Yeah, what do you
think do you think agnostics? If at that when they
meet Saint Peter at the gates, didn't they get a pass?
Didn they get in? You didn't deny him? You know,
(24:28):
I don't know, capital h.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Yeah, it's to prove that he's even there. Saint Peter's
chilling somewhere by some gates. Maybe I was.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Wondering why they were pearly. I think it just felt
like a fancy material with it. Maybe they're just pearl
like encrusted, you know, because it's pearl. Wouldn't be a
particularly good gate material if you ask me. I don't
know what their budget is.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
You know what, if they really are ivory and Heaven's
got this thing with rhinos.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
And they have counterfeit gates, Heaven is canceled you guys, Oh.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Man, wow, we got it. Okay, Well, well.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Other people thought about this, No, no, I can break
us back. Other people thought about this. Thomas Jefferson. The
weird thing about calling him an atheist is that he
thought often about.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Matters of faith and religion.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
He wrote what's called the Jefferson's Bible in a stunning
display of humility, and it's the Jefferson Bible. Is well,
it's called I think the official title is The Life
and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, and there are no
copies around today, but essentially what he did is a
(25:41):
cut and paste process of a new Testament, and he
took out all the stuff that he thought was like
supernatural or miraculous, so it's just Jesus Christ as a
good and normal dude doing good and normal things. So
that that's the kind. He also was like a what
(26:02):
is it? He believed in a watchmaker God, the idea
that there is some divine force that sets reality or
realities in motion and just sort of, you know, called
it a day and the rest is up to us.
These are radical and highly offensive ideas to a lot
of people, but they's still not as bad as being
an atheist and becoming the president. I mean, you would
(26:25):
be hard pressed to be an atheist and win the election.
Now in twenty twenty. So how did he respond to
this these accusations.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
He did what every politician does since him, because it
worked out for him. You play along, you kind of
cave a little bit. You go to church even if
you don't have those personal beliefs, and you espouse that
maybe you do, or you you know, you stand in
front of a church that shuddered and hold a Bible
(26:57):
up to take some pictures.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I mean it's literally grave foot.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Well, what I'm saying is you play the game, and
that's what politicians do in all things, and especially when
it comes to religion, and that's exactly what Thomas Jefferson did.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
It's a little harder to stomach, though, when the person
playing the game is so clearly not that thing at all.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Well, Jefferson wasn't either.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I know, but he was smart enough to like put
on a good front, put on a good show. At
least he probably like memorized a few passages out of
the Bible and could quote them properly and you know,
didn't mispronounce the names anyway. I'm sorry. Moving on, Well, he.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Did win the election.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
M hm, yeah, it worked. Do you think this was
the first example, like in American like politics of this
type of pageantry. I mean, obviously it's probably tale as
old as time, right, you.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Know, we can extrapolate and go back to, you know,
the times of monarchies that the United States was fighting
against in establishing itself. We've been and I talked about
it a little bit last episode, just about the control
structures of that, how control is maintained and the way
you control people is like the Illuminati wanted to the
(28:07):
Bavarian Illuminati and why shopped you control through influence through
structures and institutions like churches. That's a tough thing to square,
especially if you're a believer, like a true believer, that
we can be influenced and controlled through things that are
largely positive in our lives like churches.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also to be absolutely clear here,
we're not dinging on religion. We're saying that. We're saying
that Thomas Jefferson, whatever his personal beliefs are, was.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
He was at the very.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Least against the dogma of organized religion. But he sucked
it up and he played the game to become the president.
And when he became the president, he did not ban religion.
He just wanted to maintain a separation of church state,
which seems normal now but was very controversial at the time.
And the question about performative acts, performative religious acts is
(29:10):
interesting because we don't know folks inner motivations or their
inner beliefs at this point. They would have to write
it down right in an explicit way. That's why we
know some stuff about Thomas Jefferson. So do you know,
I just think it's unfair to ascribe personal beliefs to
(29:32):
people if we don't know what they are. But we
do know that we do know that he didn't ban religion,
So this conspiracy theory is debunked, we can say. But
there's another one that I think is interesting. I'm gonna
say it. I don't know, I don't know. The title
(29:52):
of this is the Boston Tea Party was an opium heist.
Have you guys ever heard of that one? Nope.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I saw it on the sheet and I was like,
that is not something that I was taught in history class.
What's the deal?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
It involves another secret society, this time the Sons of Liberty,
the precursor of the Sons of Anarchy, and the Boston
Tea Party really set off on December sixteenth, seventeen seventy three,
three years there before the official founding of the US
and it was a protest, right, it was I guess
(30:29):
you could say an attack in a way. It was. Yeah,
it was an attack. And it's known as the Boston
Tea Party. This was a response, as we've talked about
on this show before. I think maybe we haven't gone
into full detail, but there's this thing called the Tea Act,
which had to do with imports of tea from China
(30:50):
and it was this thing that we have for sure
talked about on the show, the British East India Company boo. Yeah. Again,
there are a couple of slightly complicated things having to
do with taxes and how essentially tariffs, like how how
taxes were levied on some of these goods for the
colonists and it's a thing we could get into if
(31:14):
we really really want to, but ultimately it's, you know,
we're having to pay a lot of taxes that the
citizens didn't feel they should be paying.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
And it empowered, it empowered this corporation. Yes, like the
Dutch East India Company, British East India Company. These are
sort of a harbinger of corporations to come, and they
are immensely powerful. They are also they're also not restrained
by laws in the way that many other corporations are,
(31:48):
at least in paper today. So one huge effect this
will have on the American colonies is that it threatens
the smuggling trade.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
John Hancock's stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I know they're messing with. They're messed with on THESS
with Handcock.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Nobody messes with John.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
And so this makes people furious. The Sons of Liberty also,
by the way, founded by Sam Adams. If they're if
they're gonna sponsor us, we'll just keep doing Sam Adams
fact facts.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
It's a beer not quite good enough to drink with
your mouth?
Speaker 3 (32:22):
What in my like Adams, it's a beer for Yeah,
what are you talking about? Old Adams is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Oh you're just saying that.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
There's like seventeen varieties that I've tried.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I do think that's cool. I think this season stuff
is cool, I'll admit it.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
They do the pumpkin ones, right, isn't that a thing
that Sam Adams does. They do a seasonal like a
pumpkin spice too.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Old Wig is one of the best beers.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Is that really the name who was?
Speaker 3 (32:52):
What was he? Is he?
Speaker 2 (32:53):
In the uh Christmas Carol?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
I think so? Hold on, no, I need to make
sure that I'm saying that right.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
I hope, I hope that he's a lesser known Sons
of Liberty member. There's Old Feesiwig who is instrumental in this.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It is It's called Old Feesiwig.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So there you have it, folks, Old Feziwig recommended by
none other than Matt Frederick wholeheartedly, right, Matt, without reservation.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
I think so so so you're right, though, smuggling is
a big thing.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
It's a big industry and it thrives. The smuggling industry
thrives because of the taxation system imposed by the British.
So a threat to that is a threat to people's livelihoods.
And so a group of people, some disguised as Native Americans,
boarded three ships in Boston Harbor. As we said, on
(33:50):
December sixteenth, seventeen seventy three, they dumped officially three hundred
and forty two chest of tea into the ocean. This
costs the British East India Company the equivalent of about
a little more than two million dollars in today's terms.
But the conspiracy is that they dumped the tea and
(34:11):
they took something else, because again, the Sons of Liberty
are in the like they move in circles with smugglers,
and they're smuggling associates knew there was more precious cargo
aboard opium, which should be familiar to anybody's heard our
previous episodes British East India and Opium in the opium
(34:32):
trade in China.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Wow, I mean, it would make complete sense if the
tea is coming directly from China via the East India
Company of Britain, that there could be other cargo aboard
that ship that was not on any manifest that wasn't
recorded and you know, left to history, like you said,
if it wasn't written down, we don't know. And if
(34:56):
it's if it's secretly on that ship and then was taken,
it just would happen and we'd have no record. Huh. Well,
that would be a smart move. Dump the t take
the opium because you could sell that, right.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's immensely profitable. Uh, it's actually it's it's immensely profitable.
It's immensely dangerous, but it's a it's a way to
move a lot of money quickly, because people might not
donate to your revolution, but they'll buy opium. So so
(35:31):
the pieces are there. We don't have proof. We just
have a series of like circumstantial interesting things, you know
what I mean, and together they they they make for
a tantilizing possibility. But we don't know, Matt. We don't
(35:51):
know whether they threw the t and took any opium.
We don't know if any opium was aboard. But then again,
that's the thing. If it's a smuggling situation, then you
can't trust the manifest right interesting curious or and curious
or But we don't know for sure. Perhaps one day
in the future, newly uncovered documents will spill the tea
(36:16):
on this case.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Man, Yeah, for sure. You know, it is fascinating. I've
never thought about opium in colonial America. I know that
the United States after was founded, I mean, I want
to say, I want to probably I think it's about
one hundred years after America was founded. There was quite
a bit of an opium crisis in the United States
(36:38):
because it was you know, it was a medicinal thing
at the time that doctors would carry with them and
would give you a tincture of it essentially if you
required it. But the abuse of it as a narcotic,
as a drug, I know nothing about in that time,
you know, like pre eighteen hundreds. Fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, and you know, I think we're not taught a
lot about the US relationship with opium. It's an old one.
The first millionaire officially in the US. It's a guy
named John Jacob Astor.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
I know that name.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, he died.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
In eighteen forty eight. But the way he became so
wealthy is entirely due to the opium trade. We also
know that going back to the Mayflower in the sixteen hundreds,
some pilgrims were probably carrying opium. Especially there's a physician
named Samuel Fuller and he probably had laudanum with him
(37:44):
as a doctor. And during the American Revolution opium was
a common medical tool. Thomas Jefferson even used it later
to treat his chronic diary. But it would not be
unusual to see opium in the in colonial America.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Would this be opium that you would smoke or was
it essentially just like laudanum was like a tincture, right,
or like you could even put it on.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
A rag, right or yeah, you know, I can't. I
can only really speak to the medicinal stuff. We know
that people were growing, like Thomas Jefferson even ended up
growing poppies in Monticello. Eventually, opium or opiates became a
common ingredient in multiple products in like I would say
(38:38):
more of the eighteen hundreds or so, but I don't know.
I don't know about recreational use in particular, So we
would have to have more proof of something for the
opium heist to work. So instead of saying this is
debunked all though it kind of is, instead of saying
this is true what you don't have proof for, I
(38:59):
want to pitch it to you guys as a film,
The Boston Opium Heist.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
This is good. This is a good idea. You shouldn't
pitch this on the podcast. That's a really good idea.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Well, we get like an Ocean's eleven kind of vibe
and ensemble heist film.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, and then you in order to get France's support.
It's something that greases the wheels like a of opium.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
There we go. Conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
I love it, I love it, but it is not true.
We're gonna pause, or we're from our sponsor, and when
we return, we will tell you a conspiracy theory that
is very true, very disturbing, and should kind of scare you.
(39:48):
All Right, we're back, So imagine, fellow conspiracy realist, you
are with us. And as Matt said, the room where
it happens, we're making a new nation. We're building a new,
really weird system of government. We're working live. No one's
tried this before, so we want to learn from the
mistakes of the past, but we also want to pay
(40:11):
attention to the stuff that worked. This leads us to
the situation the Continental Congress found itself in massively dysfunctional group,
lots of competing interests. They're not on the same page
about stuff, and they're also not efficient. They have an issue,
(40:33):
like one of their big issues is paying people. There
are a ton of veterans who have fought in the
war and survived, some with lifelong injuries, and they're not
getting paid because the government doesn't have the money to
give them. Who knows, maybe they spent it all in opium.
I'm kidding. This leads a guy named Daniel Shayse, a veteran,
(40:56):
to rally the Vets into some thing called the Shae Rebellion.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
The Shae Rebellion, Yeah, this was a group of Vets
led by Daniel Shayse, like you said, and they were
not happy because they basically won the war and they
weren't paid a nickel. And this made the leaders of
the United States very anxious because they needed something to
(41:26):
kind of strengthen their executive power, and the most powerful
executive position they knew of was a king. And they,
you know, certainly were not trying to style themselves in
the image of a king. That was sort of the
whole point. But John Adams actually wrote, quote, hereditary monarchy
or aristocracy are the only institutions that can possibly preserve
(41:50):
the laws as well. As you know, they were not
huge proponents of the idea of unbridled democracy early on,
and this followed his inauguration as vice president, when he
even designed a system that used something resembling a hereditary monarchy,
only it was a hereditary legislature. And he had the
(42:15):
notion of appointing the president for life. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Well, I mean that's that's what they wanted, right, I mean,
think about what they just experienced with George Washington. I
mean he won the war or with you know, with
the help of everyone else, he won the war, that's
my quotes. And then he stayed in power for quite
a while, and he was considered a good leader. He
was trusted by people and respected by people, and there
(42:41):
was you know, the rebellion, rebellions against him, and the
opinions against him were fairly good, i would say, across
the board. Even though you know, he wasn't loved by everyone,
he could keep people in line and he had enough
respect to do so.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, so Shay's rebellion. Of course, it's a terrifying thing
to these guys, because we're talking about around four thousand
battle trained and tested people who said, don't tread on me.
We're not going to take it anymore. This is what
on earth were we fighting for, right, And they have
(43:20):
valid claims, they have valid problems, so we have to
crack down. This might surprise a lot of people to
learn that many Founding Fathers were so pro monarchy, but
it should be even more surprising that these Founding Fathers
conspired against the nation they had created, which was very
(43:41):
anti monarchy.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
A lot of the what Pulp would call the common people.
In seventeen eighty six, the President of the Continental Congress,
Nathaniel Gorham, decided they were going to pitch European royalty
on becoming the king of the United States. So Gorham
(44:03):
writes to Prince Henry, who is the younger brother of
Frederick the Great, the Prussian king at the time, and
in this letter, which is a real letter, it's lost now,
but it really happened, they invite Henry to go across
the pond and become King of the United States of America.
And they said, you know you're gonna You're gonna be
(44:25):
head of a constitutional monarchy. We've modeled it on the
English system because that's what we understand. Is that not
a little hypocritical, more than a little.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
Yeah, But it's just odd that that was the solution.
And maybe it was just to have a crown someone,
you know, have a crown and the money associated, maybe
to stave off or in the power. I just don't
understand the thinking. Maybe, and I personally need to do
(44:59):
some more reading on and i'd highly recommend you listening
to do the same, because that is a puzzling concept.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Well, I also don't understand I didn't realize that there
was such a like, you know, focus on a monarchy
esque form of government, considering that this is all a
product of rebelling against a monarchy, and you know, been
to your point the idea, I know how you hate
you know, political dynasties, which at the end of the
day are sort of a modern form of monarchy you know,
(45:27):
by a different name, but it functions very much the same.
Not to mention the idea of like Supreme Court justices
that are appointed for life, we do have some things
that resemble some of those, you know, forms of government.
And considering that all of this, again was like a
rebellion against those systems, I think it's fascinating that there
was such a you know, early push towards making it
(45:50):
a lot like the thing they had rebelled against.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Right right, That's that's the issue. It should bother you
if you live in the US. The only reason we
don't have a king now is because of what Henry said,
to be blunt about it, Henry turned down the job.
That's why we didn't end up with a king. He
was invited to be king, and he said, I'm good.
(46:15):
I know what Americans do to kings. So actually we
have the quote he said, the Americans have shown so
much determination against their old king that they would not
readily submit to a new one. Smart guy. So the
delegates in Philadelphia went to their Plan B, and today
we call that Plan B the US Constitution.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yay, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Well that's good. Wow, that's wow. I did not know this, Ben,
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
So very close to becoming the thing it sought to destroy.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
But but you have to just remember, I mean, just
to give these you know, the people we're talking about
here and Adams and all these guys a little benefit
of the dell. They're trying to figure out a way
to have a strong leader that that as you said
the quote, common people would would respect and kind of
(47:15):
bow to without actually having to bow, if that makes sense.
And like you said, this is these are the systems
they knew before. This is what worked before. Just because
they didn't like having a king all the way across
an ocean dictating what they had and had to do
and couldn't do. Maybe there was a desire to have
someone like that or a power structure like that, just
(47:37):
that would be on the land in which they occupied.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, No, I think you're making a really good point.
Maybe it's saying we'll have a monarchy because we know
they work, but will have one that is our monarchy, right,
something worth we have.
Speaker 3 (47:54):
Jet Frederick the greats Offspring.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And then maybe we'll get support
from the Prussians or something. But these kind of machinations
happen all the time, right in these sorts of calculations.
That's why that leads us to another interesting one. The
Boston massacre seventeen seventy March fifth.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
You've heard the name.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
It's a it's an altercation that leads to that kind
of becomes a spark that ignites a larger flame, and
angry mob surrounds a century and they start talking trash
to them whatever picture whatever the colonial American version of
trash talking is, you know what I mean. They're like,
(48:42):
you smell of laudanum. I don't know, And they and
thanks Man and eight colleagues come to support this century.
And then the situation escalates and people are throwing stones
and clubs and snowballs, which I thought was wholesome at
the soldiers, and then the nine soldiers open fire on
(49:06):
the crowd, they kill five people, they wound six others.
Only two or convicted of anything manslaughter with reduced sentences.
The rest are acquitted. Without going into this too deep,
there is an idea that the Boston massacre was purposely instigated,
(49:28):
that it wasn't just an organic kind of perfect storm
of tension and you know, waiting for the shoe to drop.
There's the idea that someone got together, someone conspired and said, Okay,
go up, start talking to this person. Let's get them
to fire on us. Why would they do that.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
We've seen this before in the past. If you can
make an opponent act aggressively towards you without taking aggressive
action towards them, opinion is more likely to be in
your favor as the person being attacked rather than the attacker.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
I think that's the primary motivation there. But I don't
know how that would work. I mean, it would have
to be I can only imagine it being a group
of people speaking to you know, this angry mob or
whoever they are, and just kind of making them angrier
and angrier and getting him more and more worked up,
(50:29):
and then doing kind of what you're saying, Ben, just
pointing and going hey, look over there, Look at that guy.
Let's go tell him to go back across the pond.
But even then, I don't see how the Boston massacre
it was a rallying cry. I just don't see how
that strategically would be the thing in that place at
that time.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, that's the thing. And you raise an excellent point,
because we have to remember when someone is proposing a
theory like that, they are doing so with the knowledge
of what happened after the Boston massacre. It puts a
great deal of predictive power on any conspirator here to
assume that they purposely instigated something and somehow knew roughly
(51:11):
what effects that massacre would have. That's it's put in
a lot on them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah, But let's remember what the Project for the New
American Century said in their report that was put out
right before the events of September eleventh, two thousand and one,
where they said, we need a new Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Oh God, you're right.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
And the whole concept of that was to full men
public opinion, to make everybody okay with spending more money
on war, on wartime stuff, on armies, and you know,
material nine to elevens.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm sort of being flippant,
but it's like, I think that's a lot of the
reasons there are so many conspiracy theories behind nine to eleven.
Is it certainly accomplished a goal for like these hawkish
you know, people that were in power at the time,
like gave them a really great excuse to kind of
du a little bait and switch and seek out the
(52:07):
war they wanted, not necessarily the war that made sense
as retribution.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Yeah. And we're not saying that the Project for a
New American Century or anyone caused nine to eleven as
a false flag attack. We are not saying that.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
No, it's not what I'm saying either. I'm just saying
I could see why people's minds would go there because
of what it did.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
It was literally what the what the what do they
call neo conservative playbook was calling for? It's exactly what
it was calling for. Yeah, but it doesn't mean we
can anyone can prove that, and you know.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
That's just where we lived. Certainly not suggesting that. I
think it's just a very interesting parallel to what we're
talking about.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, that report comes just before the two thousand election.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
And then.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
They're not specifically saying the towers in New York need
to blow up, but they do say a new Pearl Harbor,
some catastrophic event. And clearly there were tons of opportunists
taking advantage of the situation, right of the chaos ensuing
(53:18):
after this. But with that in mind, Matt, that's a
great example. That's I think that's incredibly grounding because some
of this stuff can seem a little bit a little
bit distant, right because we have, again the benefit of centuries.
But I don't want to leave this scene of the
massacre just yet. I've learned some colonial insults. I would
(53:40):
like to tell you what I think they were probably
calling this guy. They were probably calling him a gentleman
of three outs. That's a man who lacks wit, money,
and manners. It's three and a loll poop, I'm sorry,
a loll poop l l l poop, a lazy idle man.
(54:01):
The female equivalent is the fussock.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
I didn't know they were doing like acronym insults. That's
that's some next level stuff right there.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
The loull poop is now an emoji very soon.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
The uh and then they probably called them a guilt
or rum dubber. These are great, uh palliards and Clapper
Dogans Clapper Dogan Clapper Dogans dogens. I'll be I'll be
honest with you, guys. I wasn't actually at the Boston massacre,
(54:36):
so it's so I don't know, but but I love
Loull Poop. Anyway, moving on, what if there's a secret
war happening? What if it's not just the US or
what will become the US fighting with Britain. Uh, what
if after the foundation of the US they are waging
a war against the illuminati?
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Mmmm.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
The Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed to the
law in seventeen ninety eight under President John Adams, were
super controversial because they gave the government like fascist level
dictator powers over political dissenters and over people that were
considered to be foreigners, which is pretty weird because you know,
(55:20):
many people who fought in the Revolutionary War were foreigners, so.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Oh wait, almost all of them.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
So this act is ultimately repealed, but some of some
pieces of it survived today, and that prompts people to
think there might be some sort of hidden purpose behind
the legislation. It extended the requirement for residency from just
five years to fourteen. This is where this is where
(55:50):
it gets very weird. These are very harsh anti immigrant laws.
They give the federal government great power to kind of
cherry pick and who they wish to allow into the country.
And the idea is that they're trying to weed out
members of the Illuminati before they could become a danger
to the newly birthed us. That's so weird, it's so interesting.
(56:16):
I do not think it's true. I don't understand how
it could be. I think xenophobia is a real enough
conspiracy on its own. And there you have it, folks.
These are just a few of the very strange, very
crazy conspiracy theories or secrets of the Founding Fathers. The
(56:36):
one that personally bothers me the most is just how
close this country came to becoming a monarchy. So, Henry,
if you are out there and listening to this show somehow,
thank you for turning down the job. Good on you
massively appreciate it. We haven't even gone into the rabbit
hole about Illuminati bloodlines and the Founding Fathers. That maybe
(57:00):
episode of its own. But in the meantime, what do
you think about the stuff we've talked about today. Do
you think any of it is possible, plausible? Do you
think it's bunk? That's maybe best left for authors of
historical alternative fiction. Let us know. You can find us online.
We try to be easy to connect with their We're
(57:20):
on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
That's correct. You can head on over to YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. Check out our videos. We have
a ton of them going way way way back. Watch
them for fun. There's a which one did we We
just talked about it, Ben. We were looking at some
older ones and I stumbled upon, Oh gosh, I can't
(57:45):
even tell you what it was, the snow apocalypse one
made it just made me laugh so hard. We made
this video back in the day about the time it
snowed in Atlanta and everybody freaked out, and uh, Josh
Clark was in it. That's right, baby, gave me an
nice little chuckle.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
I totally forgot.
Speaker 1 (58:03):
I totally forgot about that one, but that that actually
held up.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
I think I actually appear in one of those videos,
maybe two, but I had a really bad haircut at
the time. So if you want to see me with
a bad haircut, do a little digging.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
It's called the meeting. Check out that one. That's what
this video is titled.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
Is that the one my bad haircut?
Speaker 3 (58:23):
No, no, you have a night haircut.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Oh thanks, Bud, appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
You can also call us, should you prefer that to
social media. We are one eight three three std WYTK.
You will hear a message and you will have three
minutes that entirely belong to you, which you will with them.
Leave us suggestions, leave us feedback, and most importantly on
(58:48):
that one, let us know if it's okay to use
your name and voice on air.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
And if you don't want to do any of that,
why not head on over to Apple Podcasts. This is
the thing you could do. Could leave a review for
the show, preferably a good one. But you know, we
value constructive feedback. Leave some of that too. It helps
people discover the show and boosts it in the rankings,
So that's always helpful, and you know, we hope you
(59:15):
do that. But if you don't, and you can do
a combination of these things, it's not like mutually exclusive.
You can send us an email.
Speaker 3 (59:22):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff They Don't
(59:45):
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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.