CLASSIC: STDWYTK Live: Secrets of The Federal Reserve

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So true story.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Perhaps not a story the Jedi will tell you, Fellow
conspiracy realist. Back in the day, we went on a
tour across the northeast part of the United States, and
we decided what better to talk about than the conspiracy
surrounding the Federal Reserve. That's our classic episode this week.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Oh yeah, we're talking about the creature from Jekyl Island
to do.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Love it shout out nineteen thirteen.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
This is also, if I recall correctly, this is also
the time we were very taken with Hobo code and then
we were also, oh I found we found that toybee
tile here in Atlanta. Yeah, we just we squeezed that into.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
This is really great.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
And I honestly can't remember which city this recording is from,
or like when whichever one this is from. We had
such a great time touring around the northeast of these
good United States talking about the system that kind of
controls the money here in a weird way. Uh, we
can't wait for you to hear this. We had a
great time.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Hello, hello, hello, welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Oh my gosh, you guys, we did it. We came
to our hometown and a crowd showed up to see
us live.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
How are you doing.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, it's Sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
It is all right. We had to check earlier. We
have no idea what day it is. At this point,
it's been a bit of a blur.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
It's been a bit of a it's been a bit
of a blur. But we want to thank you so
much for coming out. Is astonishing to us to record
in our hometown live now this is this is the
last show of our tour and we saved it for
you for Atlanta. I like your hat, by the way.

(02:05):
And we went We went to a bunch of places, really, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
We did.

Speaker 5 (02:10):
My favorite highlight of the tour was having a lobster
role at a dive bar in Boston, because that's the thing.
They're just lousy with lobsters there and at Yeah, and
then yesterday I almost died. I choked on a bone
from a fish at a tire restaurant and had a
panic attack. But these guys got me through it. And
now here I am to be with you fine people.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
We played a show in Arlington at this old theater
and it was beautiful because all of the seats were
like old office chairs that have been just discarded by someone.
But they just purchased them all or found them on
the side of the road and just filled the entire
theater with them.

Speaker 5 (02:45):
And then there were remnants, like there were weird piles
of them just in the corners.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, and there were weird tables.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
It looked like we were going to do a meeting
for the United Nations.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
Yeah, yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
It's like one of those like the Buckhead Theater, I forget,
not the Bucket theater.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
It's one of the old like the Pisa or something, one.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Of the newer movie theaters that actually has food there too,
so you're sitting in these seats and ordering food.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
It was just an odd experience.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Was it was.

Speaker 5 (03:09):
It as odd as the one in Boston where there
was a kid's parkour class going on outside of our.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Which was great.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
It was fantastic. Those kids have moves. We tried to
hang with.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Them, Yeah, they weren't having it.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
Literally just ch opened the door to the dressing room
and there's just like these little tiny midget people just
zooming bye, like like tires and like you know, bars
and stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
It was pretty wild.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
But they did actually say parkour while they were j Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
But now we're in a place called Terminal West, which
rules do you do?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
You?

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Guys ever come out here to see shows like music,
awesome live shows.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
We're on that stage right now.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Oh boy, uh oh, and we're supposed to do a show.
That's why we're.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Here, right, Okay, let's let's get started. Yeah, yeah, welcome
back to the show.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
My name is Matt, my name is not and they
called me Ben. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
We're joined also by our super producer, Paul, Paul Mission
Control Decad. Hey, were you still please let us embarrass you.
This guy makes our show. This guy makes our show happen.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
He we continually cajole him to get on microphone with us.
I know, I know, I know, but but.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Then he's surrounded by a lot of other house stuff works.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Oh I see you them, I see some celebrities in
the crowd. Can I get your autograph later? Guys, I
don't want to make it weird, but you.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Know, okay, I made it all right?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, well yes, Paul mission Control decand uh, we're finally back.
And we were on the road for a while and
we had these bizarre adventures, roaming through New England, roaming
through through historic places. Every city we have been to,
including Atlanta, has has a few things in common. Right,

(05:08):
There's a there's a bunch of graffiti everywhere. Oddly enough,
there's a regional Federal Reserve Bank, which in every city
we went to, in every single one. And when we
were thinking about our show, we we started we started brainstorming,
and we were we were thinking about hidden things, signs, symbols,

(05:30):
secret languages, and we were wondering how they came to
be and why and what they mean, and more so,
why do some of the world's most powerful, influential institutions
use secret signs, codes, signals, languages every year, every month,
every week, every day.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Ben, are you talking about the shadowy organization that operates
out of that five sided buildings over near Arlington, Virginia
where we were. That has absolutely nothing to do with pentagrams.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
I mean, I mean there are a lot of buildings.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
With five sides.

Speaker 5 (06:06):
I hear it has a subway and a Best Buy.
So you know, it's true. The branding is part of
it as well.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Right, right, It's true.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well, you know, Matt, the Pentagon is arguably involved Okay,
but that comes later, I think, right, I will wait,
do we want to call it foreshadowing?

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yes, okay, we'll call it foreshadowing.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
So we're hoping that you join us today as we
dive into the strange stories of these signs, languages, signals,
and symbols that allegedly influence us everywhere we go.

Speaker 5 (06:39):
And the institutions are one of them anyway, that just
loves them.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yes, yes, absolutely so. Okay, So this is a modern city.
Atlanta is a pretty big city, and every time you
walk through any modern city in the US or abroad,
we are inundated with literally millions of images of mess right,
and they're non consensual. You don't wake up in the

(07:03):
morning and agree to see twelve thousand billboards.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
You just have to go do something.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
And we had a time a while back, Matt, you
and I years ago had a fool's errand where we said,
you know what, we're gonna wake up tomorrow. We're going
to count every single advertisement that we see during the day.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
We really did it, and we got to about two
hundred or so. I think both of us maxed out
around that range two hundred three hundred range.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
I gave up at eleven thirty five am.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, it was rough, and it's just crazy.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
And a lot of its logos that are kind of
unassuming that you just notice on the side or on
somebody's shirt or a hat, sir, awesome shirt, And it
could just be as simple as a letter or something
like that, or like if it's a logo, you look
at something like we all know this the FedEx logo
that has that secret arrow in there, or the Amazon
logo that also has a not so secret arrow.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
It's got a smile that starts at where starts at
like a yeah, and it goes to Z.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Lets you know you can get everything online right. All
you need is a tiny little symbol that lets you
know exactly what something is and you don't have to
communicate with words beyond.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
That, and the smile just lets you know that everything's cool.
Amazon is a completely innocious organization that just means the
best for you, and one that story goods and servicesn't
be able to buy your laundry detergent with the push
of a button. It's a fantastic company. I'm a fan.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
We're getting those drones for you, says Jeff Bezos. But
but this, this is weird because it goes beyond advertisements.
There is a great deal of money and time spent
to create logos that you know, FedEx has letters in it, right,
Amazon also has letters in it. But the parts of
our brain that are being engaged when we see these

(08:46):
logos are non verbal things. They're not they're not the
language part of our brain, you know. What they are
instead are imagistic, symbolic things.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
We're meant to connect with you, like on almost emotional,
kind of prioritial level.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely your primal level. And we thought,
how far does this go?

Speaker 4 (09:06):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Right, We've all seen mad Men or read the Wikipedia
entries about it, I'm sure so.

Speaker 6 (09:12):
So.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
We know that advertising is historically huge industry, but the
idea of secret symbols, secret signs, secret languages goes far
beyond advertising. It predates it. We wanted to find an
example for you, and we wanted to start with something
that used to be alarmingly cartoonishly common. It's something you

(09:33):
may not have heard of in the modern day. The
name sounds a bit silly, but here we go. It's
Hobo code. Hobo code.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
There you go.

Speaker 5 (09:43):
You got to enunciate it because we had a couple
of shows when people didn't know what we were saying.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, so here's the thing.

Speaker 5 (09:50):
The it does sound kind of like it could be
like the name of like some kind of prog band's
concept album.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Or yeah, so kind of like concept EP or something
mobo code.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, but no, it's not.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
It's actually an entire kind of cryptographic language, and it
surround the world of the hobo, which you may know
today as being a bit of a pejorative or something
you might say to your you know, significant other if
they're not dressed well or something like that.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
It's weird.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
It's an anachronistic, Like some of us are here with
our significant others. If you're ever in a fight with
them and you call them a hobo, then they're.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Just like out of the argument. They don't understand what's
going on.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
Why would you say that?

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, They're like, what year is it? Tim?

Speaker 2 (10:31):
I apologize if anyone here is named Tim. But the
idea of this goes back to a part of American
history that we don't often talk about outside of maybe
middle school, high school, the Great Depression, The world of
the hobo itinerant workers without homes who had to leave

(10:52):
their communities due to the fact that there were no
means of sustainable employment. This world is often romanticized nowadays.

Speaker 5 (11:00):
Right you got you got the guy with the bendle,
then the stick with the bag and like the crumpled hat,
maybe a pipe or something, trusty dog riding the rails.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Not a care in the world.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
Only kind of a lot of cares in the world,
because the world, as it turns out, was a terrifying,
terrifying place.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yes, and they find themselves in that position, not of
any real action that they took. Perhaps it's something that
was kind of forced on them. If you don't have
a home, then this is this is kind of what.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
You do, and it's a it's a brutal and demanding existence.
And the problem with this is we don't know too
much about this community because it was largely an oral tradition.
These people weren't buying wings of museums, they weren't financing
some sort of scholarship program. You can find some interviews,

(11:47):
you can find a couple of books by some intrepid journalists,
and you can hear some i'll say it, creepy songs
that stayed in the American song book.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
They they might actually know rock Handy mount.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, no one up north does.

Speaker 4 (12:01):
Nobody knows this song?

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Are people in this audience, No, rock Candy Mountain, Rock
Candy Mountains.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
Oh yeah, tell them.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Okay, So there's uh the song, the version of it
you hear has one verse xcised from from what will
typically play on auto you know, blue bluegrass kind of stations. Yes,
the last verse is it turns out the entire song
is a message from a hobo to a young runaway child,

(12:33):
and the last verse is the child saying, I am
not going to let you take what you call it,
no hobo hobo heaven.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah yeah, that's what the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 (12:44):
But now now you're making it makes it sound like
hobo's were like evil or something.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
That's not true.

Speaker 5 (12:48):
No, they were just they were just people, which is
but this is this is the story of an evil hobo.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
But yeah, so, but the idea is.

Speaker 5 (12:55):
Really that the Big Rock Candy Mountain is sort of
like the thing you have to look forward to in
this you know, hard fought life is basically the afterlife,
because that's about the best you're gonna get. But in
the meantime, Before this happens, there were some pretty powerful
symbols that were created to help communicate conditions in this
community that was known as the Brotherhood of Yeah, the

(13:17):
Brotherhood of the Frate right exactly, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
So you can google Big Rock, Candy Mountain full lyrics
just by the way, we're not gonna recite them. But this,
this message, the system of symbols existed for five hundred
thousand people in the early nineteen hundreds and had spiked
to seven hundred thousand by nineteen eleven. By the Great Depression,

(13:42):
the number exploded and we reached we reached something called
peak hobo.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
That's the official term, that's the scientific term.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
And while these people were on the rails, living on
the fringes of a society that did not want them around,
they devised a system that that we would not recognize
to communicate with one another. And this this system, this system.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Was meant to.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Warn other travelers, other people in this brotherhood that you
mentioned about the conditions of the town they would find,
or about the things that would be beneficial, or to
be a system of warnings, right, And it didn't use words.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, that's this is highly important because a lot of
this population was either illiterate or they were speaking different languages,
so there wasn't a whole lot of common from a
language perspective. So it like, did you call it hoboglyphs already? No,
but that is like hieroglyphics in a way, because it is.
It's it's you've you've likened it before to the IKEA, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
The IKEA instruction manual.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Right, we've all bought disappppointing furniture, like we know what
that is. You know there there are no words. Those
say manuals are printed and distributed across the globe because
everyone can get that that awkward humanoid figure in their
awkward buddy.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
Yeah you don't.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
You don't need words for it, right, That's the whole
point of.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
This, and that is the one indisputable concrete remnant of
this community, this thing called hobo code. Let's do you
guys want to do some examples? Yeah, what hobo code?

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Isle's So, let's say you're going into a new town
and you're looking for food as you may want to do,
as we all usually want to do, and there somebody
has come along and found a good free food source
from some building or some group of people that lives
in an area. So you'll you'd note this to anyone
else who comes after you by making a tea. Except

(15:46):
it's not just any t it's like a box and
then another box.

Speaker 4 (15:49):
It looks similar to tetris the good pieces, you know,
the law, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Important ones, you know. But that's kind of cool. So
if you if you note that somewhere in your town,
perhaps this means there's a good source of free food there.

Speaker 4 (16:01):
Well.

Speaker 5 (16:02):
There was even like a variation of it where I
believe it had a cross up on the side, which
implied that if you talk religion or like kind of
act like you're in to Jesus, that they will give
you free food.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
So that's another important little tip.

Speaker 5 (16:13):
We have another one that would warn people about the
state of like natural resources, like a water supply that
may have been like tainted.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
So that would be a squiggly line with.

Speaker 5 (16:24):
Like another line on top and another line on the bottom,
and that'll let them know to like avoid this well
because it will make you intensely ill.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Right, good stuff to know.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, need food, need water. I'm going to give you
some warnings just so you know.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
And the people who lived in these communities would have
no idea what these symbols were. I mean a capital T.
You would just be like, wow, that guy's name must
be Tim. Again, I hope no one here his name Tim.

Speaker 5 (16:47):
And they also like, it's not like it was alarmingly
large or like printed in some super central place. It
would be in a place that these folks would maybe
know where to look for them.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, and kind of temporary with like chalk or coal
or something that was readily available.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
And there was a darker side to this as well,
because in many cases, perhaps a preponderance of cases, these
symbols were meant to warn to warn other travelers of danger.
There would be something that looks like a square, but
it's turned on a corner, so it's sort of a
diamond and it has one line going up, and that

(17:22):
meant be out of this town by sundown, be ready
to defend yourself. There's no way someone could guess that, right,
I mean no.

Speaker 5 (17:30):
And that's the thing too about this language and the
way it evolves. It was experiential, so you know, these
folks would have to have these experiences enough to the
point where it would spread and they would know to
look for these symbols because it wouldn't just happen overnight,
because some of them you could kind of ikia and
figure out, oh, I think this is what this means.
But ones like this, we're a little bit more shrouded

(17:52):
and kind of mystery.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
And law enforcement plays a big role. Series of interlocking
circles mean handcuffs or law enforcement will put you in
a chain gang. I like the point that you bring
up here, Nol, because although the term hobo code is
very fun to say, try it at home, the reality
of this is that this was a language built on

(18:14):
tragedy and suffering and blood. And it sounds like a
neat historical footnote. But here's the thing. These secret messages
exist today. People are still alive.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Thousands and thousands.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Of people are riding the rails, are living on the
fringes of society and using new iterations of this code
to communicate.

Speaker 5 (18:35):
So Atlanta's got a pretty decent train hopping community. If
you've ever been to a little Five Points like that,
you see the folks with like the dogs, with the
bandanas and stuff. I mean, that's sort of that's like
a modern hobo.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
I'm not kidding.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
And I grew up with kids like that that would
hop trains and made a whole way of life around it,
and they kind of carry on some of these traditions.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, So does this mean that the world of secret
symbols and languages is relegated to people who are maybe
burnouts or on the lamb or living on the fringes
of society. Have we solved it?

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Is it? Yes?

Speaker 4 (19:05):
We have?

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Okay, and that concludes the show. So really, guys, thank
you coming, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
It's disappointing.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
Oh are we gonna keep going?

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah we should, We probably should. But it's true, it's
not that simple. Secret symbols also exist in the world
of art, right, yes, we we explored things in the past,
like the toinbee tiles. What are those about?

Speaker 3 (19:27):
There are these weird linonelym art pieces that get pushed
into the ground in asphalt on streets in mostly Philadelphia
and New York and other places like that, And it
says toynbe Idea in movie two thousand and one resurrect
dead on Jupiter.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
Cool, right, really cool.

Speaker 5 (19:47):
There's a couple other flavors of them, as well as
as the teg But I mean that this is the
main idea that toinby idea.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yes, I mean it's we don't know, we don't know
who makes them, it's it's in English, it's using in
the alphabet. Well, does it mean that toy Bee felt
like he was plagiarized by Stanley Kubrick in two thousand
and one Space Odyssey?

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Was there resurrecting of dead on Jupiter and Space?

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Really really not in the inta theatrical release. But then
there are other works of art like the Codex Seraphinais
or the Yeah Yeah, they're purposely created to have some
sort of inscrutable language, and they are known to be
works of fiction. So does that mean then that the

(20:31):
world of Secret Signs and Symbols is relegated to relatively
cerebral works of art or the fringes of mainstream culture.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
I'm gonna say no this time because I feel like
that's probably a better answer.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, we can move on, we can move forward to
the next thing that they're relegated to. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, So the world of Secret Symbols actually goes much much, much,
much much deeper. In fact, as we all came to
Terminal West tonight, we may well have carried some of
the world's most famous agglomerations of secret symbols with us
in our pockets, in our wallets, and our purses, in
our fanny packs. I hear those are making a comeback.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
I'm a fan of the fanny pack.

Speaker 5 (21:11):
I mean it's a utilitarian yet stylish accessory. And I
have no problem with the fanny pack. You can wear
it on the side, it on the back, wear it
on the front.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
What so, according to numerous critics, the most powerful secret symbols.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Anti fanny pack? Man, what's your problem? Because we already
we already got you a present?

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Are you gonna?

Speaker 4 (21:34):
Are you serious?

Speaker 1 (21:35):
It's a Gucci bag.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
It's okay, I would wear, I would wear, but.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
It will just please really really good. Yeah, please exercise.
Oh my gosh, you got okay when we get the
fanny pack. But uh, but it does go much deeper
because these secret symbols, the people who argue are are
the most powerful in our world today, are on something
we and you and your fellow Americans carry with you

(22:04):
every single moment theoretically, and it's a weird thing. It's
a really dirty thing. About forty percent of it carries
traces of fecal matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true, but
as we are recording this right now, statistically speaking, people
are literally murdering one another for a chance.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
To touch it.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Just you wait, right, eighty percent of it carries traces
of cocaine. These are both conservative estimates, by the way,
despite the fact that possession of this drug carries very
harsh consequences conspiracy realists, we are talking about by far,
the most ubiquitous medium for hidden symbols in the Western world.
It is the US dollar. Feel free to take one

(22:45):
out after you heard the statistics about shit, and if
you have it, check the designs as well.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Story it smells. You don't have to. Oh my god, dude,
did you not hear the stats? Ready?

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Ago?

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Are you're not paying a.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
Sixty doesn't contain?

Speaker 5 (23:00):
Okay, well, I mean it's better than that I heard
was like one hundred and twenty percent cocaine.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
That checks out? You do, do you? But I'm gonna yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
So if you've if you've seen the back of one
dollar bill, If you have, your odds are pretty good
as far as not touching poop on balance, If you
want to hold this with us, uh, if you've ever
seen the back of this bill, one thing will immediately
stick out. It's engraved with a gigantic stone pyramid, similar
to what you would see in Egypt. There's a desert,

(23:32):
the whole nine. That's weird.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Oh that's so regular and just a giant pyramid. It's fine,
it's fine.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Pyramids are like a classic move architecturally speaking, right, dude, yes,
but there's something different about this pyramid.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Right.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Instead of a normal capstone, there's a floating capstone suspended
in mid air with this all seen eye just sort
of staring out at you, kind of like the uh,
the Eye of Souron and Lord of the Rings. Yeah,
mystical shit. Yeah, I mean it's weird. It's not quite
on brand with the US. It really does stare right
right at you and like.

Speaker 5 (24:07):
It follows you when you move around the room, which
is weird considering how small it is.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right right, and this symbol, this symbol has several names.
One of the most popular names comes from Christian mythology.
It's called the Eye of Providence. And usually when we
are looking into early Christian mythology and folklore, we defer
to Matt. So Matt, okay, not to put you on
the spot, but to put you on the spot in

(24:32):
front of a bunch of people. What's the eye of Providence?

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Oh well, in this case, we're talking about the symbol
of a triangle. Right, triangle has three angles to it,
three sides. M What could that mean? It's probably the
three aspects of God? Right, father son, you can say
it with me? Holy Spirit?

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Why does Holy Spirit get too? They said, people do that.
It's goods. There's this.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
One of the first known appearances of this comes in
a painting called The Supper of Emmaeus, created by a
guy named Caravaggio for the Carthusians in like.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Fifteen twenty five. But it's not super blatant.

Speaker 5 (25:15):
Oh this is the one though, that contains that there's
rays of light that we talked about. Oh yeah, yeah,
I mentioned exactly that emanating from this this triangle, and
this painting is what first featured that in Like, I
think it's a reflection through a glass or something. It's
pretty subtle, but it's meant to be like this divine
light of Christ.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Somewhat cool, you might say, occluded. Yeah, So if you
go even further back in history you will see that
this wasn't always called the eye of Providence. It does
have some sort of folkloric precedence. Let's say in Egypt.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
Oh, yeah, you're talking about the eye of Horace.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
I am a different god horse, a sky god, sky
god that was represented by that eye. You've probably seen
it before. It looks like it has some really killer
eyeshadow going on.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, you've probably seen its, like a smoky eye. It
is really nice smoke, sultry. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
I learned a lot from my wife about eyeshadow. It's important,
it's important stuff. But this, this horse, this god horse
is also sometimes often depicted as a falcon. Uh, you're alive, well,
and you may you may notice on the other side
of the bill that we're going to talk about a

(26:32):
little later. Uh, there's a big old eagle hanging out.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Hm.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
Hm.

Speaker 5 (26:37):
You think he's got a name, like an official name
in the parlance of this this symbolism and imagery.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
What greg Gregory Gregory? Okay, Yeah, that checks out. Yeah, okay,
so Gregory the Eagle, Gregory the Eagle. Let's fast forward
to the United States. How did this weird symbol end
up on the dollars that we're trading and apparently pooping
on every day? It's weird. Sorry, it wasn't always there.

(27:03):
The eye itself was not originally on the dollar. The
pyramid and the Eye are both part of a much
older thing called the Great Seal. Way back in seventeen
seventy six, around July fourth Surprise, Benjamin Franklin and John
Adams and a few others were thinking to each other,
how do we make these thirteen states look more like

(27:25):
more legit?

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, like how do we we want to make an impression?

Speaker 1 (27:29):
You know what? We should we branding. We need branding.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
We should get a stamp, you guys, like, let's stamp
some stuff, you know. And so they came up with
this Great Seal. It's approved on what June twentieth, seventeen eighty.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
Two, correct.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
And these symbols themselves are supposed to reflect the beliefs
of the founding fathers, some pretty standard I would say,
beliefs when you're creating a new country.

Speaker 4 (27:53):
What are these beliefs?

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Independence, enlightenment, Right, these are important things. But those two
ideas have something in common with a lot of movements,
or a big movement that was occurring around that same time.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, someone in the audience right now is like Freemasons,
I know it. I know they were free. I see, Yeah,
thanks for coming, Matt.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Do we have any freemasons?

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Is it your grandpapa freemason?

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Now there was some association with my family.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Is that all you can say?

Speaker 3 (28:25):
That's all I'm gonna say.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
We asked him this question every show. I'm cool though,
I'm cool. Yeah, yeah, because is it like copper rules?
Do you have to tell us that you're a mason
if we ask them?

Speaker 1 (28:36):
All? Right? Moving on, moving on.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
So, the front of the seal, as you said, Matt,
depicts a bald eagle holding an olive branch and one
claw and and arrows in the other right, piece of
war cool, I get it. Dichotomies. That's tight. But the
but the reverse side, the back of the seal is
what shows the pyramid and the eye. And the founding

(28:59):
fathers said, oh, this represents strength and durability. And they're like,
why is the cap still floating? That's weird And they're like, ah,
it's because the pyramid's unfinished, because you guys, the nation's unfinished.
And they were and Benjamin Franklin is probably like, oh,
think about it, because he's totally that type.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
You know what I mean. Yeah, he was kind of
an actually kind of dude. He was, so actually that's
like his thing.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
So if you go to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing,
those are the people who make these coupons today. If
you go to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, you'll
find it's not on the official tour.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Are you taking this tour?

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Is it? Is it cool? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:38):
It's dope, man, Okay, I should go. Yeah, you should
stally go take a date or something.

Speaker 5 (29:43):
But what what question do I ask to get like
the real line, not just the official party line.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Who do I talk to? And what do I say? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Well, if you find one of the employees just sort
of hanging out off the record, they're like, I don't know,
subway or five guys.

Speaker 5 (29:59):
Because they're underpaid and they're just willing to dish. So yeah, okay,
so yeah, what do they say?

Speaker 2 (30:03):
And then probably you're you're really good with strangers, they
probably want to talk to and that's very kind.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
That's true, it's true. What's what's the uficial?

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Okay? So the unofficial stuff is pretty much the party
line we discussed earlier. The pyramids meant in some way
to symbolize the lasting power of the US, similar to
the way the Pyramids of Old with the test of
time time.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, and you.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
Know, you know what I found out today.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
If you go to the Federal Reserve in Atlanta and
you take a tour, it's the National Monetary Museum. You
actually will they'll give you a bag of money when
you leave.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Shredd up.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, it shredded though.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
That kind of sucks, but that's kind of interesting, right.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
All right.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
You can't like, you can't like tape it back together.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
You you have to be very good.

Speaker 5 (30:43):
It's probably really thin shreds. They probably have really solid
industrial shredders there.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
They would have to. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Uh, let us know if you do tape back a
dollar and tell us where to bring them. Just by
the way. Uh So the actual dollar, the actual dollar,
the one you saw, pyramid eagle, all the weird stuff.
There's a hidden owl or spider in there as well.
It didn't come about until nineteen thirty five. There's a
guy named Henry Wallace, and he is the Secretary of Agriculture,

(31:12):
which has nothing to do with anything under President Roosevelt.
And he sees a pamphlet on the Great Seal, and
we have a factually accurate historical reenactment of this. He
walks up to the President and he's like, hey, Rosie boy,
you know I saw this thing about the Great Seal.
It's got the motto it's a novas Ordo seclorum now

(31:34):
Order of the Ages. That's kind of like you think you.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Know, what was he like in the Mafia?

Speaker 8 (31:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, yeah, this version. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
And he's like, it's like new Deal of the Ages.
This is perfect.

Speaker 5 (31:44):
Yeah, and then Roosevelt says, never call me Rosie boy
ever again.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
And then he punches in, but he's like, but cool, idea,
I like this, let's go for him.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, and Wallace is like, you know, we should put
that on a coin or something. That would be dope.
People love that kind of thing, you know. And then
Roosevelt they're collectible. They're collectible, you know, they're like the
original POGs.

Speaker 5 (32:03):
But no, no, Roosevelt says, I will do you one better,
my good sir, And he says, we're going to put
it on the most circulated piece of American currency that exists,
which is the dollar.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yes, in this case the one dollar silver certificate.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Right, which means that in nineteen thirty five, when this
thing came out theoretically on paper and hopefully in practice,
you could walk to some point and you could be like,
here's the thing, give me this much silver, and they
would be like, well, he's got the certificate or she's
got the certificate. They would give you silver, which was
a big deal. I guess yeah, you could.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
You could kill a lot of werewolves if you had
enough dollars.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Huge problem. There was a werewolf epidemic in this Yeah,
it was hard time.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
It's true. There's a documentary about that properly. But so
so now the question is there are no more silver certificates, right,
at least actionable silver certificates.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
So what does this.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Dollar that we've been discussing stand for, like in the
real world old what is its value based on?

Speaker 4 (33:03):
It's a fiat currency.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
I know everybody in this room knows this, but we're
gonna talk about it because we really got to hit
it home for the rest of this episode.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Okay, Yeah, currency is not an automobile.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
No, No, it's not beautiful, cute little automobiles. You'll you'll
often hear people talk about this, how the US dollar
is a fiat currency, and that just means that the
what this is worth. It's not backed up by any
kind of metal or anything like that. It's just it
has value because some authority figure in this case, a government,

(33:36):
says that it has value. It's literally a faith rectangle.
That's what this is.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
It's an article of faith.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
We all agreed, and I don't want to call anybody out,
so I'll call all of us out. We all agreed
to continue to do agree that this thing is worth
a thing. We're like, everybody wants to be cool, everybody
wants to fit in. Someone's like, hey, I have like
twenty of these, and we're all like, oh, nice, good job.
That's way better than a bed bath and beyond coupon,

(34:07):
you know what I mean, has some really cool stuff.
They do have some steals, they have some buys.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
If you're like my friend Alex over there, you can
gather up like one hundred two hundred thousand.

Speaker 4 (34:16):
Of these and they will give you a house. Isn't
that crazy?

Speaker 5 (34:20):
But if you paid in singles, can you imagine paying
for a house with dollars like in a big giant sack.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yes, that would be a ball or move. I have
to say they'd have to.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Take it, but they would probably be like, oh, so
what drugs do you say?

Speaker 1 (34:32):
They'd make a face.

Speaker 5 (34:33):
Yeah, yeah, those dollars would probably be like ninety percent cocaine.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
But it's imperative and crucial to remember that despite the
symbols this bears US currency, itself is a symbol of
something else, the power behind the paper, if you will.
It's it's something that is a boogeyman in so many
conspiracy theories ever since it's creation. It's something we call

(34:57):
the US Federal Reserve.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
And we're going to talk about the Federal Reserve. Right
after a quick word from our.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Sponsor, we're live, okay, Oh oh yeah, jeez, I keep
for okay, all right, it's.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Really hard to break these habits. You know.

Speaker 5 (35:18):
We usually we usually do this show like in a
in like a weird shipping container with no windows. I
don't really even know what time of day it is,
and we get an electric shock delivered to us by
Paul to break. So we're kind of like Pavlovian dogs
of podcasting.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Behaviorism, Like we're so trained when we're just hanging out,
we take commercial.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Breaks, but we're back, but we're back. We're back. Okay.
So here's how it started.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
The US has an incredibly muddy history with the idea
of central banks. That's what the Federal Reserve is. A
central bank is just a financial institution that's supposed to
make sure the coupons a country uses will retain the
same value they had yesterday and have it in the
present day and have something like that tomorrow.

Speaker 5 (36:05):
You made a face, But that's that was the train.
There's a train like right up there, and it occasionally
goes squeeze.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Well, I was trying to focus on what Ben was saying,
but yeah, the train freaked me out there.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
A little bit. We'll go, we'll go look for hobo
code later.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
So so the FED, it turns out, is not not
the first central bank.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
In fact, it is the third. It's the third.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Try that our country has made of this, and the
the first one dates all the way back to Alexander Hamilton.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
Alexander Hamilton.

Speaker 5 (36:36):
You know, I think I figured out why lind Manuel
Miranda decided to write a musical about Alexander Hamilton, because
just the cadence of saying that name is just perfect.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Alexander, It's beautiful, It's.

Speaker 5 (36:47):
Just a perfect name for a musical.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah done, And you know, we all recognize Alexander Hamilton
from his recent renaissance in the world of musicals. It
turns out as a real person, actually did some stuff.
Was a It was the first Secretary of the Treasury,
and was super was was super perplexed and worried. After

(37:13):
the Revolutionary War, which on the other side of the
pond they call the America War of Independence, somebody asked
us that earlier, that's the actual It wasn't the peasants uprising, that's.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
But it's still referred to that probably in some circles.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Oh sure, sure. And and so Hamilton believed that the
US needed some sort of banking authority because otherwise he
thought the country would be doomed. It turns out that
wars are crazy expensive, you know. And he envisioned this
bank as quote, a profit making institution, with private shareholders

(37:54):
holding full fifths of its stock and dilecting full fifths
of its directors.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
It was just the ways all of our twist or something. Yeah,
this and this version is okay, it's pretty much twist.
I like you.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
This is highly important, though, Let's not lose any of this.
A profit making institution, first of all, and four fifths
of its directors. It's stock and directors would be private shareholders.
Four fifths. That's a lot of private interest in this
giant profit making bank.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
That that means, I mean, that is important, Matt. That
means that only twenty percent of the steering wheel and
they would have no idea what a steering wheel is.
Let's just be clear. It means like twenty percent of
the steering wheel belongs to the country affected by this concept.
And so we would imagine that Hamilton and co. Had

(38:42):
to come up with a really good pitch for this, right.
They were like, we need a name, like a real
banger name. It's it's the first It's the first central
Bank of the US. It's the first bank, first Bank,
first Bank.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
How about the first bank?

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Oh shit, great idea, right, drop it, Mike. It's so
they were like, that's the best, that's the best. A
burst of creativity.

Speaker 5 (39:03):
Well, I mean it's descriptive, you know, I mean, I
guess they were just trying to be mutilitarian with their
naming conventions. And we'll see this carry on throughout the story.
But there were people who opposed this idea. We had
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They were super against it, but
despite their outrage, it was passed. It was created. In
seventeen ninety one, Congress granted the Bank of the United States,

(39:26):
the First Bank, a twenty year charter and to try it.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Out, just to try it out, just give it a go.
Just twenty. That's twenty. That's not a commitment, right, twenty.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
So then the bank's charter comes up, right.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, in eighteen eleven, but this time James Madison is president.
This guy knows how to hold a grudge. He says,
no way, not happening. I'm in charge now. I don't
know what a steering will is, but I'm probably at it.
And we're not going to extend this bank. We are
firing the bank. Critics were on his side. They said
this was this was in furious to economic growth, it

(40:02):
was holding the nation back. But there's something else. This
is crazy that you won't find with a lot unless
you dig into it a little bit. Remember how we
talked earlier about four fifths of the First Bank being
held by private interests. Of that, of that eighty percent,
two thirds of the bank was owned by private British
and British interest Like, I'm stuttering a little because.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's weird, right, It's like that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Like imagine it's like imagine you get divorced with from
someone and you're like, you know, we've we've gotten divorced. Uh,
we should get a credit card.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, joint bank account.

Speaker 5 (40:37):
Here, here's the keys to my house and you can,
you know, have like three fifths of my cat.

Speaker 4 (40:41):
That sounds great, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
What a plan, right, And.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
That's mind blowing to me. I had never known that
ever before. And it makes sense because a lot of
the money was was in British hands at this time, right,
but still to allow it to occur seems atrocious.

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Well that's just me.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Maybe, and discontinues for about a year. In eighteen twelve,
something occurs with another very creative name.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
Oh the War of eighteen twelve.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, it was a war, and they were like what
do we call it? So in eighteen twelve, President Madison
changes his mind and he says, I might not fully
agree with this thing, but we need something, we need something.

Speaker 5 (41:26):
Well, it was because things have been relatively chill and
you know, there was peace time, and it was like,
you know, we don't need this bank, We're fine without it.
And then almost as though they were a pattern. War
flares up again, it's like, ah shit, we got to
figure out how to finance this. It's almost as that
we need some kind of central bank.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah, so we'll make another one right right exactly, And
that's that's what they do. And they say, we can
only imagine. They say, well, that was that was kind
of dry the first run. That was of it's weird
that war turns out to be expensive. You don't really
get a price break.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Who knew.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
And they're like, we need a better name, though, We
need a name that will inspire creativity, ambition, entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
The second Bank, that's it. That's it.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
So in a burst of creativity, they're like, let's call
it the second Bank.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
And you know what you're getting, you know, it's yeah,
it's what it says.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
The ten right this last to eighteen thirty two branch
at President Andrew Jackson is in office and he's like, no,
this is malarkey.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
I'm done with it. We're out of this.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
As a result, the US had no central bank from
the mid eighteen thirties to nineteen thirteen, and during this
time numerous terrible, terrible things occurred.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, there were just crashes all over the place. We
don't even have to ramble them off. But it's like
eighteen seventy three, eighteen eighty four, eighteen ninety three, nineteen
oh one, nineteen oh three, and then this thing happens
in nineteen oh seven, called the Panic of nineteen oh seven,
which would lead to some serious, serious problems.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
It was sort of the feather on the financial camel's
back and the government, uh, the people in the government
looked around at each other, and they were like, umph,
something must be done for umph. And as so often
happens in American politics, everyone could agree there was a problem,
no one could agree how to solve it, and they

(43:20):
all hated each other.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
That doesn't sound familiar at all.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Right, Right, So it was even a matter of calling
one party corrupt or one group corrupt.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
It wasn't.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
It was a matter of which pocket you were in there. Well,
you're in the pocket a special interest. Well you're in
the pocket of those fat cats at Wall Street. Well
I don't know which pocket you're in, but screw that pocket,
you know.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:43):
And this also trickled down to, like, you know, the citizenship.
I mean, people distrusted these fat cat bankers as you
refer to them a lot, and it was just there
was no support for this kind of situation.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The years leading up to this, like
we've we've seen political satire cartoons in the New Yorker
and stuff. Back then they were insane, They were not subtle.
There was again like this top hat, monocled cane, sword
wielding banker guy coming out to Midwest America putting his

(44:18):
hand wrist deep in a baby's mouth pulling out food,
and people were like, what could be done?

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yeah, don't google those propaganda campaigns, Okay.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
They just don't.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
They're pretty racist. And there were also there were also
crazy protests, public outcry, what are we going to do?
You know what I mean? The nineteen thirties sees the
rise of a very serious progressive movement, and it's often
ignored in history books today. But even more importantly, the

(44:50):
same captains of industry, the same political titans who in
public hated and vilified one another, were meeting behind the scenes,
away from the public eye, and just a little bit,
just a little bit of a quieter pitch. They were
going for something must be done up.

Speaker 5 (45:10):
We should maybe like do it so that it lines
our pockets and our political cronies pockets, and our banking
bro buddy pockets. Because we're all in a pocket, right,
everyone in a pocket we're.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Sticking with for the rest of this show.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
So a guy named us, this is an important character
in the story, guy named Senator Nelson Aldrich. In nineteen
oh eight, he gathered a group of said banking bros
and political cronies. Uh, and he called it the National
Monetary Commission. And the idea was to study potential economic reforms,
reforms to the financial system.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
And there's nothing wrong with that, right, Sure, something must
be done. Okay, let's take some action. Let's let's bring
private and public interest together and figure out what needs
to be done.

Speaker 4 (45:52):
A noble pursuit, there we go.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah, chin up right, And so for two years, the
National Monetary Commission investigates this idea of central banks in
another country? How do you replicate that? How do I
don't want to be too divisive yet and say, I
think they were like, how do you make money off this?
As Noel was saying in November of nineteen ten. Two

(46:16):
years later, Senator Nelson, we'll just call him by his
first name for now and I'll come into play later.
Nelson is in the midst of financial disaster. People are
literally starving, and he says, you know what, I know,
I'm a senator and it's my job to take care
of the American public. But I'm going to take some

(46:37):
me time, you know, like I'm gonna like, when's the
last time you just travel for fun? I'm gonna take
a field trip. And this wasn't widely reported in the
papers of the time. The few reporters who did bother
to ask were told that he was going on a
duck hunt, not the Nintendo game that wasn't around. He
was going. He was like, yeah, the country's burned. They're

(46:59):
like the country's burning. And he's like, yeah, but you know,
like mallards, they just get to me.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
As long as he had that dog, I mean, that's fine, right,
that dog was.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
That dog was an asshole, man, that guy.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
You can control it with the second player controlling, Yeah,
how is you could control the ducks? The dog just
shows up like Clippy and Microsoft. The dog's just a dick,
don't the ducks with the second controller. Yes, we should
do a show about this. We should do a Nintendo conspiracy.

Speaker 5 (47:25):
We should play it too, But for now we're talking
about an actual duck hunt, or you know, at least
the notion of an actual ducks.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
So where is he conducting this duck So.

Speaker 5 (47:33):
You guys have heard of a place called Jeckyll Island?
Have you guys heard of this place? Is any It
would have been.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Where Georgia I went once you went, Well, I didn't
hang out there. I can't get in and hang out.

Speaker 5 (47:44):
What do you mean you just like we're doing like recon.
You were just like checking it out, like peeking through
the I was in the area, hedge maze like I
was in the area. This is a different show. But
Jackal Island, what's that? If you're not familiar with Jackal Island,
it is still and certainly was even more so than
and incredibly opulent get away for the super super super
one percent of the one percent of the one percent

(48:05):
rich to you know, go do their things and maybe
have secret meetings and pretend duck hunts.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Well, woa WHOA Okay?

Speaker 2 (48:12):
So, in their defense, by the way, Nelson takes five
of his buddies, which we'll get to. In their defense,
this was not an obviously fake cover story.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
There is a duck hunting season.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
It starts in November around this time, stops for a
little bit, it resumes from December to January. So maybe
they were maybe they were hunting ducks.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Maybe they were like in the end, it doesn't matter, right, right,
So these his five buddies.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
It turns out, surprise, surprise, I hope this is not
a Shyamalan move for everybody. It turns out that they
were very prominent in the world of private banking, and
they were very active at the thing Noel mentioned earlier,
the National Monetary Commission. And despite the fact that these
fellows had enormous power here in the US and abroad,

(49:00):
they were afraid to be seen hanging out with each other.
So one by so, Nelson Aldrich hooks up this really
sick customized railcar like it's it's got mahogany, it's got chrome,
it's very it's flashy, and he decides the best way
to hide it is to hook it up to a
train in New Jersey, and one by one, these prominent

(49:25):
titans and captains of industry sneak onto the train, not
not using their names, and because.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
I think they had they had to have at least
like one servant.

Speaker 5 (49:34):
I think they definitely pared down the staff, which was
that was huge for them, right.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
The whole thing.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
They had to use only their first name because they
wanted to maintain some level of anonymity. So who's in there, Yeah,
so undercover of night, one at a time, these guys
sneak into this railcar. We've got Frank Vanderlip of National
City Bank, Henry Davison of Morgan Bank. We've got Paul
Warburg of the kun Lobe Investment House. These are all
names that stick around to this day and companies that

(49:59):
have on through various name changes but are still basically
doing the same thing. We've got Apat Andrews from earlier,
who was then the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department.
And we also have Arthur B. Shelton who was the
Secretary of that National Monetary Commission that was kind of
doing some of the legwork that led up to this meeting.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
And they know they may have actually haunted Ducks, but
on the way they by the time they were done,
they had discussed and formulated a plan in secret to
create another central bank. And they were like, ah, the
two times that's a gimme. But Hey, lucky number three,
right right, And we've got a question. Why was this

(50:40):
meeting held in secret?

Speaker 4 (50:41):
Well, the biggest thing is that they knew.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Can we've kind of just touched on it, but they
knew that if word got out that they were trying
to present this kind of idea from both a private
and public side, the House of Representatives, the people that
actually represented the public of the United States, would absolutely
shut this thing down before it even became a thing, right,
So they had to keep it as secret as possible.

(51:04):
And then we're gonna find out a little later because
it does happen spoiler alert. The way they got it
past was a little.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Right right, Well, I mean it makes sense it was
associated any anything associated with fat Wait, okay, I gotta stop,
all right, So I've been using the phrase fat cat
a lot tonight, and I want to apologize. I do
have a fat cat at home, and I don't want
to be disrespectful. His name is mister Jackpots. I will

(51:33):
show you pictures on Instagram after the show if you wish.

Speaker 5 (51:37):
So you should come up with a new word then,
So you're kind of like not throwing your sweet boys
under the bus.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, A big feline I don't know. We just reinvested
your etch time, just like anti fat cat prejudice.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Right there we are. So it's true.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Though, Matt, like they knew that this would immediately be
dead in the water, and that is why they held
this meeting secret. But holding this meeting in secret in
nineteen ten this results in a breeding ground for speculation,
right rumor metastasizes, it becomes conspiracy theory because no one

(52:15):
knows what's going on. But since we have decided to
be here tonight, we won't be conspiracy theorists. Let's be
conspiracy realists. And that means that we can't believe we're
except a bunch of speculation without fact. So here's a
fact for you. There's a fact we found. These guys
did not admit that this meeting ever happened for years

(52:39):
and years and years. It was not until the nineteen
thirties in the depression where with like one or two
of them said, uh.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah, I mean this thing happened.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
We didn't really hunt ducks. That was just we thought
it sounded cool.

Speaker 5 (52:54):
But yeah, and they call themselves the First Names Club,
like we mentioned. So by the end of that time,
on Jackie at Aldrich and all his guys had developed
this plan for a Reserve Association of America, which would
be a single central bank with branches across the country.
And then on December twenty third of nineteen thirteen, Woodrow
Wilson agreed, he signed the Federal Reserve into existence.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Yeah, and this was it's December twenty third. This tricky thing.
A lot of a lot of legislators are at home
with their families or back in their home state, and
there's a tricky thing here. So they said, the federal
reserve banks, the regional reserve banks like the one that's here,
I would be owned not by individuals but by commercial banks.

(53:40):
So this means that there's not like, you look responsible,
but you can't go by a regional reserve bank. And
I'm sorry that you had to learn it here, but
neither can. I not feel bad. But the thing is
these banks would be coordinated by a committee that's kind
of sort of appointed by the president.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
But yeah, they get a list, right, that's kind of
the idea. Just slide a list across the table, be
like just pick like seven, cool, all right, cool?

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah, So then it goes to who really owns this thing?

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Who owns this gargatuan thing. The officials governing parts of
the system can own interest, in particular commercial banks, but
no one officially actually owns those shit riddle dollars that
we all just robbed at the beginning of the show.
In fact, the FED considers itself independent.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Oh yeah, this is this is important, and this it's
mind blowing. Okay, And I'm trying really hard not to
just be infuriated throughout this entire show. I have been
during every show that we've done so far. In this Okay,
The Federal Reserve says the terms of the members of
the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms. Now,

(54:52):
when you hear this at face value, you could say, oh,
this is very reassuring. This means that no matter who's
in the White House, no matter how much I like
him or her, no matter how long they are in
the White House, no matter which Senator or House of
Representatives person gets elected, my money is safe with the
Federal Reserve.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
That sounds lovely.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah, I hate to ah you here, but that's also
kind of terrifying, isn't it, Because what they're old.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Another way to look at it is they're saying, no
matter who you vote for, no matter who's in charge,
we're in charge of the money.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Yeah, like you know you can vote, that's cute. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:33):
There was a quote from Alan Greenspan, who is the
Chairman of the FED and you've heard of. He said
something to the effect of there is no government body,
there is no elected official that can do anything about
any of the decisions we make. He just very brazenly
said that out loud and like, yeah, So that's the
vibe that we're working with with the FED here.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
It's been to be reassuring. So officially, this system is
a bulwark, right, That's what it provides. It stabilizes these
faith rectangles. I love that phrase, thank you for me.
That Matt made that one though, was great. And it
stabilizes the dollar against the ups and downs of the uncarrying, chaotic, ridiculous,

(56:17):
horrible place that we live in. And the thing is,
it doesn't matter what you would believe. It was created
without the consent of the American public. No one voted
on it, no one can vote on it. It is
also arguably one of the most powerful financial institutions in
the world. Pyramid lidless eye creepy Latin catchphrases, the whole nine.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
Yeah and ah oh man, I'm just gonna I'm gonna
bring it back to this. In the more than one
hundred years following its creation, more and more people are
asking is there more to this story? Is it just
this organization that exists outside of the control of the
voting people of the United States, or is it more sinister?

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
Yes, I love it when he does that. I love it.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Well, it's true. It's true. We're going into crazy territory now.
So I hope you're comfortable, because maybe it'll be uncomfortable
at the end of this. The most popular and most prevalent,
most prominent conspiracy theory about the Federal Reserve is that
rather than mitigating or preventing financial disaster, the Fed creates

(57:36):
financial catastrophe to it manipulates the money supply for the
benefit of member banks and most importantly, the shareholders or
the owners of those member banks. So no one can
own a regional reserve bank, but anyone can buy shares
in a commercial bank. It's just a question of how

(57:57):
many you own. And this argument, uh, this argument proposes
that we the public are taught that financial disasters occur
through two things, accident or incompetence subprime loans, right, right,
And the argument is that the opposite is the case.
And this is a really weird one to us because

(58:19):
it unites people across a political divide.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yeah, it really does. By the way, we've been on
the road a lot. Has something been happening with the
stock market. We haven't exactly been keeping up, but I
just noticed all the lines were read when I looked
at my phone earlier.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
Everything's okay, We're all okay.

Speaker 5 (58:33):
We still my mom sent me a text about it
and said that my inheritance was dwindling away as we speaks.
So yeah, I'm gonna have to make this podcast game.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
With it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
It's weird, though, because this is this is a conspiratorial
belief that unites people on either side of the sort
of circusy political dichotomy. And you will find people who
consider themselves libertarians and the like, yeah, I read in
the FED that's messed up. But then there are people
on the far left who are like, you know, eat
the rich, screw the FED, let's just get rid of it.

(59:08):
And they're like, you know what, You're right once again.
Everyone can agree that there is a problem, no one
can agree how to solve it. Harm harrumph. The most
famous stories or conspiratorial beliefs about the Federal Reserve come
from a specific book.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Yes, it's called The Creature from Jekyl Island by this
author named G. Edward Griffin.

Speaker 5 (59:35):
Like a like a black lagoon kind of situation, or no,
or the creature is the Fed I get it.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
I got it in that meeting and it emerged, and
then it got on that rail car and it headed
back towards New York.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
I'm just I'm making all that up.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
But I can imagine listen to it.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
I can imagine it.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
So he considers the Federal Reserve more than just this
simple tool to control Americans via debt.

Speaker 4 (59:58):
We're not controlled by debt. We're fine.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Nobody has any student loans or mortgages here. We're good.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
We're good.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Oh my my my girlfriend is here tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Hey Brandy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Can everybody say hey Brandy, Oh, hey Brandy. Hey uh
and uh. We've had some tension because my my primary
girlfriend is Sally May. It was accustomed to a certain
leg Oh I'm gonna pay for that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
One's Sally may anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
It's something called Navviant just kind of came out of
nowhere and all of a sudden, it's like it's not
Sally anymore. Now, it's now it's Naviant. I guess I
have no choice but to pay Navviant now. But you know, right,
and the.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Ideal with Creature from Jackal Island is that this this
practice has been expanded and franchised out to other countries,
and that the Federal Reserve is using the practice of
deceiving people through chickanery, which we looked up earlier.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
It's a new word for us.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Yeah, is this people or state actors to fall into
debt and then using that to using that debt to
control the actions of those countries. But he's got a
lot of critics, Griffin has a ton of critics.

Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
Well, and wouldn't that kind of be the way that
the British interests that you know, we're part of the
original First Bank or whatever, could have potentially exercised that
kind of control back over the colonies right by having
that much of a steak in the First Bank.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
Yeah, I mean it's possible.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
The problem that we're running into here is that g
Griffin took that train. Sorry, I got to make a tea.
There's some delicious food here or there. I guess they
stopped serving it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Wait, what's the what's what's the beef though?

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Oh yeah, the beef is Let me just recalibrate here.
He took he took the pearl that's at the center
of the oyster of that that nineteen ten secret meeting,
and then he created a whole bunch of stuff around
it that he kind of it's not necessarily pulling out

(01:02:09):
of thin air, but he's creating a conspiracy from that
real thing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
He's engaging in some what iffery.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Yeah, it's dangerous, it's dangerous. I'm gonna get off my soapbox.
Let's keep going with the show.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Do you want to do you want a soapboxes?

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
No, No, it's fine.

Speaker 5 (01:02:22):
Sure, it's just a dangerous s Matth's Soapbox is a
segment that we will have.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Yeah, it just happens a lot these days where there
is this one little grain of truth which is on
the show. It's what we try and do we find
that grain of truth. Right, that's the most interesting thing
for me personally. And this guy did that. But then
he just kept going down a rabbit hole, and he
wrote this book that is fascinating, but a lot of
it probably is in it's just not factual.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
And the most one of the most salient questions that
you get from this book if you read it, is
the essential thing. The gi just boils down to this,
could someone act purposefully and successfully manipulate something as gargantuan
as the US economy and therefore, you know, the international economy.

(01:03:09):
The answer to that is yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely
to a scary degree, Like think a war and Buffett
he could tweet today and sink a company, It's true.

Speaker 5 (01:03:21):
Yeah, Or you got like Jeff Bezos or Carlos slim
Halu or any of these other profoundly disgustingly rich human
people that can, like you said, just by communicating their
intent to do something, or you know, they're some kind
of diversification that might happen. It can change the entire
course of at least segments of the economy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Yeah, And that's the question. Though The question then is
does it mean that the FED could do the same thing.
The FED is a group of people, and there are
multiple avenues of oversight, and I'm not going to presume
to know about your friends. But have you ever tried
to order pizza with a group of a or more people?
It gets really nasty, really quickly. And and that's just pizza.

(01:04:06):
That's just like the argument over whether or not someone
likes pepperoni or is gluten free. And this is this
is talking about one of the most important financial instruments
in the world. So it's it's kinda I don't know,
it's it's kind of difficult to digest it. But but
we found another we found another conspiracy theory. This is

(01:04:26):
I would say this is like my second favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, this is a this is a great one.
We've done an episode that kind of touched on this
before in the past. But again, it kind of goes
back to where you were talking about nol the whether
or not there's British control over their former colonies.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Still, yeah, the idea is that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Okay, So in this one, the Federal Reserve is now
a foreign banking institution is controlled by the British, and
the British are still super pissed about the Revolutionary War.
It's like they're main thing. They're like, we have a
lot of problems, but damn it, it's time to go back,

(01:05:06):
you know, and someone's like, hey, maybe we should fix unemployment. Hey,
maybe we should look at immigration. And then like the
Queen turns around in a swivel chair and it's like, no,
let's be weird, putting me back my colonies right And
in this, in this idea, it goes a step further
and they'll say, oh no, no, no, no, no, no

(01:05:26):
no no, Matt nol Ben Michigan control. This is not
a matter of the queen. It's a matter of the
true power behind the throne in the in the world
of the United Kingdom. It is the Rothschild family. You
knew they were gonna be here at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
It's yeah, there are a lot of just the the
targets that are aimed at with a lot of these conspiracies.
The Federal Reserve of the Rothschild's Britain. We're hitting them
all tonight. It's a real just doing the hits.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Folks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
We had a Rothschild actually, or somebody said they were
a Rothschild a few cities ago.

Speaker 5 (01:06:01):
But who are the Rothschilds. Yeah, so it was a
huge influential family. That is the very old family as well,
founded by Mayor Armshell rothschild, and they amassed enormous amounts
of wealth in multiple areas segments including finance of course,
but also over the generations.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
They've diversified in a very big way.

Speaker 5 (01:06:24):
They're active in wine and technology, mining, the bond market,
arms trade, just about anything you can think of, they've
probably got their hands in it in one I mean,
it's a huge family as well, and they're so diversified
and spread out with the various members of the family
it's almost tough to kind of trace the money and
understand exactly how much the entire family is worth and

(01:06:46):
how much influence they wield exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
And this is a huge deal.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
My dad is in the audience tonight and he was
an accountant at this private club for a while, and
he can tell you the difference between old money and
new money, and with old money, it's all of these
it's just a tiered succession of inheriting fortunes and each
one just then becomes another fortune. And then the fortune
just spreads out to this point where you go, oh, yeah,

(01:07:12):
I'll join that club for fifty thousand dollars, no problem.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
And that kind of wealth is it's intense.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
And then but this goes back to the same question.
This presumes that this family, this large influential family, somehow
cooperates and moves in unison like what happens today. You
get together once a year and they're like, Oh, what's
our what's our weird thing gonna be this time? You know,
I doubt I don't know your relatives, but I have

(01:07:41):
never been that cooperative with my own. Again, that pizza
example comes from US.

Speaker 5 (01:07:46):
It was like utter financial control of an entire country's
monetary system on the table for you and your family.
I mean, I figure it out, You might figure it out.
I make some concessions.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
We can maybe swing Tennessee. But but this is interesting
because there's a paradox in this idea.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
There's a bit of double thing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Right. The same people who say, oh, the UK wants
to control the US because they are still, again for
some reason, cartoonishly pissed about the Revolutionary War, they will
also say, but the United Kingdom doesn't really control itself.
It's owned by this elite banking cabal, and they're the
ones who are really who are really making the decisions,
And that sort of invalidates the beginning of their idea.

(01:08:29):
That means that this in this conspiracy, it's really an
economic proxy war between like one family and then maybe
a couple of families here in the US. It doesn't
make sense, but the Rothschild family shows up in so
many of these stories, so many pieces of this folklore tradition.
We have a we have one that we found that

(01:08:50):
we really enjoy and it doesn't take place on land.
It does feature the rothchilds. It takes place at sea.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
We barbershop quartet this one.

Speaker 5 (01:08:59):
Yeah, the trio Conspiracy Etsy Conspiracy Atsy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Mats. You have a beautiful singing voice. I was not prepared.
I did not prepare them for that.

Speaker 5 (01:09:13):
I just totally pulled that out and you guys really
did a good job.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Thank you for hearing me.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
On WHOA trout the b that's conspiracy with it s
e a at the end of the way, And we're
not talking about the conspiracy cruise, which is apparently a thing.

Speaker 5 (01:09:28):
Really we've never been invited to participate on that, but
we're talking about something else entirely. So there's this even
more bonkers, in my opinion, conspiracy theory that the roth
Child family in league with their banking crony and federal
Reserve cheerleader JP Morgan was directly responsible for sinking a

(01:09:48):
supposedly unsinkable ship. You may have seen a film about
with the Heart of the Ocean and the hands on
the Steamy Window and the New Drawings.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
And you love that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:00):
Well, I've really in this tour come to realize that
I saw that movie like ten times when it came
out in theaters, when I was like, you know, eleven
or something, and I.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Was like, why did I Why did eleven year old
me like that movie so much? And we've traced it
back to the New drawing.

Speaker 4 (01:10:15):
Yeah, it was the painting scene.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Some boy called called out, somebody in the audience called
me out, and it's like, you know what, that's that's
pretty much accurate.

Speaker 5 (01:10:21):
Although it is a beautiful love story, although it doesn't
make sense though, why didn't she make room for dude?

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Okay? I said that like a million times. That's my
main with She's just flary and you know, she's hogging
the door. She lets Leonardo DiCaprio.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Go, and let's be honest, he's not a super big guy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
He could have fit on there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
And I feel like she was just looking for a
convenient into a romance.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
I'm gonna say it, she ghosted, she ghosted on.

Speaker 5 (01:10:47):
Him or James Cameron was looking for a convenient plot device.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
Oh that's my argument.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
I mean, how well did doors flow?

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
What about that old couple though you remember?

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
No, no, it's been a while, okay, so hey know
what ship or are we talking about?

Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
Either this had the Titanic, the RMS Titanic, that's the
full proper name. So if proved to be be true
this thing, we're about to enter the realm of wild speculation.
That's what this segment of the show is called. It's
called the Realm of Wild Speculation aka.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
Conspiracy at C.

Speaker 5 (01:11:16):
So, if proved to be true, this would surely go
down in history as like one of the most batshit,
heavy handed or possibly genius assassinations in the history of
the world.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
So let's let's jump. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 4 (01:11:29):
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Let's wade into these icy waters. Let's dive in.

Speaker 5 (01:11:33):
Yeah, exactly, So JP Morgan inco finance the International Mercantile
Marine Company, which was an Atlantic shipping company that kind
of strong armed its way into dominance in this industry
by you know, doing what these kind of companies do
absorbing some smaller, weaker shipping companies from America and Britain.
One of the IMCC subsidiaries was a company called the

(01:11:56):
White Star Line, which owned the RMS Titanic. So Morgan
himself was actually booked to be on this doomed Maiden voyage,
but he canceled at the last minute, citing like tummy
troubles or something.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
And he wasn't feeling well. He was unwell.

Speaker 5 (01:12:16):
Yes, it's really sad, but you know, fortunately or unfortunately
at for them, there were plenty of captains of industry
and your fat cats been on this ship. Because Matt,
you did a good job of describing this in the
kind of context of this particular idea, you could look
at this thing as like a giant honey trap for

(01:12:39):
the affluent. Let's get them all here, get them all
in one place, and then we'll take him out.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
Yeah, if we're gonna go along with this conspiracy theory,
which is kind of ridiculous on the face of it,
But if we go along with it, we're already there
in the speculation part. But if we go along with it,
this kind of could be a perfect trap because you're
gonna have a lot of the people that you may
want to target that don't hold the same beliefs about
financial systems, you might get them on this ship. You

(01:13:08):
actually have a pretty good chance of doing that, just
because it was such a spectacle at the time, and
the people that you're targeting are some of the most
opulent and they want to do things like be on
a Titanic. Okay, let's just put that out there. Yeah,
it could be a good trap.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
But okay, okay, So I'm sensing some sinister stuff here, nol.
Who were they targeted? Were they targeting specific people?

Speaker 5 (01:13:34):
Well, there are the three main ones that are mentioned
in the stuff that I've read about this story. But
like you said, Matt, I mean, it was an absolute
playground of the rich and powerful. So I think if
there is any truth to this at all, it would
be include people outside of this set. But we have
Benjamin Guggenheim, who made a fortune in mining and smelting operations,

(01:13:55):
is it or Strauss, who was the co owner of
Macy's and also a powerful politician and a business And
then John Jacob Astor, the fourth of the Astor family,
which is one of the most powerful and wealthy families
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was a builder,
a real estate tycoon, an investor, you name it. So
these are the three that are cited. One thing that

(01:14:16):
they have in common in everything we read about this
is that they were against the Federal Reserve. They did
not want this to happen, and they had enough clout
and street cred to possibly fur their weight around and
maybe stand in the way of this happening.

Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
Yeah, and then all Morgan had to do is just
strategically place that iceberg, and.

Speaker 4 (01:14:35):
It was all ahead, placed, right done, right ahead. We're good.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Now, So how does this all shake up? Well, it
speculated wildly. Mind you that one of the things that.

Speaker 5 (01:14:47):
These guys hadn't common, like you said, was opposition the
Federal Reserve. I've also seen it as opposition to income tax,
but those things are kind of conflated in this story.
But the ship sank in April of nineteen twelve, and
the FED was formed the very next year.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
So this here's the thing.

Speaker 5 (01:15:04):
That this proved to be financially disastrous for Morgan's company,
the IMCC. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in nineteen fifteen.
So why would JP Morgan ruin his own company by
sinking this unsingable shit.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
And how would he even do it?

Speaker 5 (01:15:20):
Because the arguments that I've seen were like he had
to have influenced the captain of the ship to like
mess up. And you know, there's also stories about how
there weren't enough lifeboats that this thing was doomed to
begin with. There were issues with like the technology where
the compartments like magnetically sealed, like trapping.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
People, and all of this. I mean, it was a
whole There's.

Speaker 5 (01:15:38):
All kinds of things just about the Titanic seeking in
general that are.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
A little off.

Speaker 5 (01:15:43):
But why would he actively do this and cause the
ruin of his own company and something that he would
cause him to lose a lot of money. Does this
mean that he absolutely had nothing to do with it
or was it maybe like the perfect alibi?

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
I think more likely the first one.

Speaker 5 (01:15:59):
But it's fun to think about, and like you were saying, Matt,
with these seeds of truth.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
In these grains, this is one of those. Yeah, I
think there's some.

Speaker 5 (01:16:07):
It points to this idea of incredibly rich and powerful
people going to any length that they need to to
get their way, and this would, again, if proven to
be true, would be a pretty elaborate Rube Goldberg esque
example of that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
You're making the evidence fit your narrative. Can you do
this kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
It's just so it's so weird because there were more
than twenty two hundred people on the Titanic, and then
if they're just killing, they're just seeking this.

Speaker 5 (01:16:33):
Ship to kill three people. What is that the cost
of doing business? Yes, it's called collateral damage, my man.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
Okay, So the same way that a bank makes several
billion dollars and they're like, we gotta find two hundred
million dollars.

Speaker 5 (01:16:45):
She because given what we know about these how these
like shadowy banking bros. Are able to rake in the
profits off of the backs of American taxpayers, Maybe the
loss of a little shipping company might be worth the
exchange of utter control and domin and lifelong profits that
no one can ever vote you out of making.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
So who knows? Sorrybe it is just the cost of
doing business. Two questions? Got two questions? Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Doesn't it sound a little overcomplicated, Like couldn't they just
poison someone or have like a horse accident or something.

Speaker 5 (01:17:21):
Well, it's like I said, I mean, these are the
three that are named, but I mean that, you know,
maybe they just wanted to like bump off, like all
of these these fat cats.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
That's probably true. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:17:33):
Now, this is definitely most likely completely bunk.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
But it's a lot of fun to talk about I.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
Want to think about. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
And when when you were you were doing this research,
you found some unanswered questions, like about these three guys'
stances too, right, Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:17:49):
There was nothing like really out there that was them
just like totally soapboxing about how they hated the Fed.
There were just some things about like their business practices
and their politics that were slightly anti Fed leaning. But
it was a little unclear as to why these three
guys in particular would have been the most problematic.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
But they did actually die on the boat.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
They did, in fact die on the boat. It's true.
It's true.

Speaker 3 (01:18:11):
Let's move on to the next one. Boys, let's do it.
Is it you here? Yeah, I'm going to talk to
you about this. Remember we mentioned that five sided building
called the Pentagon. Well, guess what, here's a conspiracy theory
that perhaps the Federal Reserve exists in some way as
an extension of the United States military. Oh okay, all right,

(01:18:33):
now this is a little wick a noodle, but let's
get into it. There's some compelling evidence that in several cases,
this country has fought wars specifically to preserve the ascendancy
of the US dollar. A lot of times we refer
to it as the petro dollar because it's tied to
oil in a lot of ways. We've gone over that

(01:18:53):
before in an episode, or check it out if you
want to learn more about that. But in this case,
we're talking about evidence that's been provided by a gentleman
an author named John Perkins.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Yeah, yeah, right, you're talking about Confessions of an Economic
hit Man. It's I would describe it as a book,
you know, like it's it's he wrote it. It's there,
but he makes some interesting observations. For years and years
and years, Perkins worked in the quasi government quasi private

(01:19:29):
sector as ostensibly an economists, but according to his recount
of the events, his real job was to travel to
developing countries and to broker huge loans for infrastructure repairs
and to to beguile the people and lie to them

(01:19:50):
essentially about about how effective or not effective This infrastructure
would be in about how affordable or not affordable it
would be. So just imagine you're in a place where
the lights don't always work sometimes get the bad water
right with the hobo code thing earlier, and then someone says, hey,
not only can we give you clean water all the time,
not only quin give you power all the time, but

(01:20:11):
it will be a steal. It will be so great
for your country. You will make so much money. And
there's just like one small detail. We only accept payments
in US dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:20:20):
Yeah, and just by the way, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Right, like you might have your own currency. That's very endearing,
good hustle, but we are a dollar business. And through
the power of this economic influence, the argument goes, or
his story goes, they brought other countries to heal and
force them into deals with multinational US based conglomerates.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
Yeah, And the whole point is that they're loaning you
an ungodly amount of money you will never pay back.
It sounds familiar, right, A lot of money that you'll
never pay back, maybe thirty years maybe if you're lucky mortgage.
Oh yeah, anyway, if your a giant company, you're getting
you know, perhaps billions of dollars in these US dollars

(01:21:05):
that you don't have, that you're supposed to pay back somehow,
and ultimately you just end up doing the bidding of
whatever this lender wants you to do, at least within
this the realm of this conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (01:21:16):
So it's actually not that implausible if you think about it.
We don't have to agree with Perkins like forty thousand
foot view, as they say in Corporate America. We don't
have to agree with this big picture. The very disturbing
thing about this is that several of the cases he
recounts are true. They're absolutely true. Indonesia is a fantastic

(01:21:39):
slash frightening example. Read the book, if you want, read
the Wikipedia. I'm not gonna believe you about it. Just
let us know what you think and think about how
the actions of the FED and the actions of the
US dollar affect countries abroad. The world is an increasingly
smaller place. But speaking of fantastic segues, it turns out

(01:22:04):
that we are headed toward the most wonderful time of
the year.

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
Yeah, we only have a few days, right, Yes, it's
twenty eighth right now.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
Oh my gosh, what's your costume going to be?

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):
I'm buzz My wife is going to be Jesse, and
my three year old son is going.

Speaker 4 (01:22:19):
To be Woody. Oh man, Yes, we're adorable.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
That is the cutest. That's right for us.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
The most wonderful time of the year is Halloween. So
we wanted to save our last crazy notion, the craziest
one we heard for the very end. And it's this. Okay,
go with me here. Pretend we're all at the same
bar and it's like two am right, Okay? So what if?
What if? What if? What if the Federal Reserve, instead

(01:22:46):
of a financial institution, is an occult institution?

Speaker 4 (01:22:51):
Oh shit, people really believe this.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
We didn't make this up.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
The idea is that what if every single dollar spent
to treat it from one party to another is actually
a spell. I'm not gonna this poop on it, man,
I'm not gonna.

Speaker 4 (01:23:09):
I want to cast a spell.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
So for some fringe researchers, this means that the Fed
is way more Slytherin than systemic. It's been way more
like Warlocky than White House, you know. And if the
dollar is a spell cast by some strange cabal, then
the following assumptions have to exist.

Speaker 5 (01:23:32):
Well, it's like this idea of exchanging energy or somehow
hoarding energy through the exchange of currency, which again has
this imaginary value, and the one of the proponents of
this theory talks about how it's all about like a
dollar represents energy because when you are spending it, you
are paying for a service or something that would require

(01:23:52):
time to do or actual physical energy. So somehow this
system they can harness this and kind of hoard it
so where and use it for some purpose. But here
here are the assumptions that what's the first one is
that magic, at least this type of magic is real.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
That's cool.

Speaker 5 (01:24:08):
We've got that reproducible, reproducible, right, yeah, We've got this
idea secret group of people not only exist but cooperates.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
And we've talked about how hard cooperation can be. But
to work this magic.

Speaker 5 (01:24:19):
And to crewe this energy from billions of other people,
and that some portion of this can actually be stored
and used in some nefarious way.

Speaker 3 (01:24:30):
You mean, like stored up in giant bank vaults in
places where you could store all your energy, or maybe
in the stock.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
Market or in the Illuminatus trilogy, that kind of energy
is stored in the Pentagon from traffic does.

Speaker 1 (01:24:45):
Exactly what the different book, right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
And a work of fiction as far as we know.
But it's it's a tall order. This is spooky stuff,
right to people who believe that the FED is actively
some kind of u evil Harry Potter thing voldemortine it's
way through the international financial system. The symbols on the

(01:25:09):
dollar represents something else, entirely, something that the Bureau of
Engraving does not mention in this idea. That all seen
eye on the floating capstone is not the eye of Providence.

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
Instead, it is the eye of Satan.

Speaker 4 (01:25:27):
Sorry, I watched you. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
It's yeah, it's the eye of Lucifer morning Star. And
the light represents a different sort of illumination.

Speaker 4 (01:25:38):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
In this case, it's it's Lucifer's light, right, the illuminated one,
just like that illumination global unlimited that which, by the way,
thanks you for all for joining us tonight. There is
there is kind of a little ritual we have to
do as we exit for them. We'll we'll talk about
it later. Yeah, but you'll notice, you'll it'll be fine.

Speaker 4 (01:26:01):
Yeah, Okay, but.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
This also this light result. This light is meant to
symbolize in this idea, the light of the illuminated ones
those who are aware of this mechanism. But the light
has a double meaning to this idea, and it's the
idea that you and us and your cousin that you
probably should call check in on them after this show

(01:26:25):
that we are ourselves transparent to this gaze and incapable
of holding secrets. And then there's this whole other thing
with the eagle right.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
Well, well, first of all, before we get to the eagle,
just that whole idea that we can't hide anything from
this organization or the most powerful people. Can we just
one more time we talked about all the time we're
all walking around with a SERI in our pockets. We
get home, there's a Google Home hanging out there, and
Alexa just chilling going, what's that you said?

Speaker 4 (01:26:54):
Oh, just keep talking, It's fine, just keep talking.

Speaker 3 (01:26:56):
I'm listening. I'm listening. Or you know, we've got a
cat that I've got covered up by the way Ben
has covered up Nole, Is you just covered up?

Speaker 7 (01:27:03):
Man?

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
I don't care. You're going.

Speaker 5 (01:27:06):
They can have my precious data as long as I
can play POKEMONO.

Speaker 3 (01:27:13):
I'm just saying, we don't need we don't need this
to be an all seeing eye and actuality.

Speaker 4 (01:27:16):
We're already doing it to ourselves. Bros.

Speaker 6 (01:27:19):
Okay, all right, are you good? Fine, Let's just do
what it keeps. Keep going good, keep going, doing a
commercial breaker. It's way power.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
So the eagle, then, in this idea, this is a
cult idea, is not the bald eagle. What do we
call them, Gregory, It's not your pal greg Instead, it's
an It's taken from ancient pagan symbolism. And people who
believe this will say, well, well, you know, Nole, you
know Matt that uh. That eagle was also used to
signify the Roman Empire, and again it was used as

(01:27:56):
a nikon for a certain German regime.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
Do you in World War Two? This is Benjamin Franklin
talking here.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
This is this is a historically accurate Benjamin Franklin somehow
aware of the nineteen forties.

Speaker 3 (01:28:08):
I told you, guys, the Hits, the Nazis made an appearance.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
They of course all the hits, and the Nazis were weird,
just show up in.

Speaker 4 (01:28:15):
Everything, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
The full society was a real thing, and there were
some occult stuff going on there, a ridiculous thing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
But this this also leads to differing more esoteric mentions
of numbers because a lot of people believe in numerology
as well, So it doesn't matter what you care about
just aesthetically, there's a there's a shit ton of groupings
of thirteen on the dollar, like they went all in.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
Are what are some examples?

Speaker 5 (01:28:49):
Yeah, we've got the thirteen stars, thirteen stripes in the flag,
thirteen arrows that Greg is clutching in his little little
eagle talents. We got thirteen leaves and berries in the
olive branch, letters in the phrase give it to me
Ben as miss aniid queptis, thank you Ben. And then
we have we have also thirteen layers in that creepy pyramid.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
Yeah, what else do we have thirteen of? When we
founded this country? Colonies, so totally makes sense. It's fine,
it's just thirteen colonies, right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:29:18):
But we're really like going down this numerological rabbit hole.
Maybe the founding Father's like it's got to be thirteen. Yeah,
you gotta have thirteen because that's how we're gonna make
the spell work.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
Yeah, And so it was like, why are you freaking out?
We got nine that's solid And they were like, no, man,
we've got a thing we're gonna do later. But but
to be absolutely clear, the off chance that someone is
frightened about this, uh there.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
None of this stuff has been proven.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
None of this stuff has been proven in a way
that people accept or at least when we say that,
we mean that no one has come to us and said, ah, shit,
you guys figured it out, you got me? Was it
we had a good run? Was it thirteen? Where they're
too many?

Speaker 3 (01:30:00):
Thirteen?

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
We were worried about the thirteens, But my god, you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
So no one has proven this.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
But it is true that the Federal Reserve was conceived
and founded as the result of a genuine conspiracy, not
a conspiracy theory. These people conspired to create this thing
and then they covered it up effectively for years, and
even today many of its operations are conducted in secret.

(01:30:30):
So it's no wonder that the story here inevitably ends
on some vital questions. Does the FED prevent disasters or
does it create them?

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):
And if it does create them, does it do so
through honest mistakes, through incompetence or through design.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:53):
I mean, Matt, dude, it's crazy. We can't do anything
about this. Seriously, none of us sitting in this room
could do anything about this.

Speaker 2 (01:31:04):
Ha ha.

Speaker 1 (01:31:07):
A fun show, you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:31:11):
Sorry, I'm sorry. Really just frustrates me to all.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
Hell.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
Well, it is true, man, I mean, either way, there's
some We don't need magic to be real to know
that there are problematic things here. There is a disturbing
truth at the heart of these conspiracies. There's a bit
of historical fact hidden in that fiduciary fiction. And the
next time you pull out a dollar, think about it.

(01:31:35):
Ask yourself what it may or may not represent, and
how it impacts the world in which we live. As
a matter of fact, the next time you walk by
a strange bit of odd graffiti scrawled and sharpie or
chalk or spray paint along a busy street, ask yourself
whether it's a work of art a hidden message. If so,
who is it meant for? What does it say? Is

(01:31:56):
it something they don't want you to know? Okay, all right, Matt,
So that's mostly the show, right, Yeah, it.

Speaker 4 (01:32:05):
Was pretty good. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (01:32:06):
I enjoyed that but being on it and listening to it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
Good job Ben, good job, good job, Dil, good job everybody. Also,
we were probably doing a better job in that episode
because Paul mission controlled DECANDT was at the show.

Speaker 4 (01:32:23):
And that's the whole reason. He just gave all the vibes.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
And it was the fifth iteration, the fifth time we
had done it, so we had ironed it out a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
Oh but there's one other thing. Yeah, we maybe we
should have mentioned this at the top. We like to
do sort of a Q and A thing at the
end of a show, and we had a Q and
A that took place not in Atlanta but earlier in Philadelphia.
And we really enjoyed this QA. At least we enjoyed
doing it at the time. I haven't listened back yet.

Speaker 3 (01:32:53):
Oh it's great, Oh good, just so many good questions
and passionate people. Probably it was my favorite QA as well.
So we're going to listen to it now.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
Hey, hey guys, Hey man.

Speaker 4 (01:33:08):
Trevor.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
Hey, how's it going. Oh, it's going well.

Speaker 9 (01:33:14):
Going back to the beginning of the podcast, you guys
were talking about the hobo symbols. Yes, so if stuff
they don't want you to know how to hobo symbol,
and you guys were going to post one on the
outside of World Cafe Live after we leave here with
that spray paint that didn't bring.

Speaker 4 (01:33:35):
Oh what would it look like? I can tell you
what it would be.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
Yeah, we cannot officially tell you it would be the first.
We cannot officially tell you that it would definitely be.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
The first three alpha numeric letters from our phone number.

Speaker 4 (01:33:53):
Why that's t D.

Speaker 2 (01:33:58):
We cannot cannot officially tell you that would that that
it would be something involving an eye in a triangle
like and we cannot officially tell you that it would
be something involving a triangle, all.

Speaker 4 (01:34:14):
Right, or maybe maybe Trevor, maybe it would be.

Speaker 1 (01:34:21):
Yeah, there you go, Here you go, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
Okay, yeah, Redo, Redo, We cannot officially tell you it
would be a six fingered tap.

Speaker 4 (01:34:33):
Thanks for coming true, Thanks Trevor.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
It was Hi. My name is Chris, Chris Listener. I
was just wondering if, like with this.

Speaker 10 (01:34:46):
Theme of like Federal Reserve, you know, like control, like
if this like you ever thought about like student loans
as a way of like controlling I think about every.

Speaker 3 (01:34:58):
Dad, Yeah, dude, Yeah, student loans just like just like.

Speaker 10 (01:35:02):
A medical condition, like where it's like a form of control.
But right, here's how you do.

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):
Yeah, I'm working on it, that is.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
But because I've got I've got I've got one long
term relationship in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
Uh it's my main girlfriend, Sally may still. Yeah, mine
got sold. Mine's not even Sally anymore. I don't even
know what it's called.

Speaker 5 (01:35:23):
Oh yeah, but yeah, that's that's the one.

Speaker 2 (01:35:27):
Yeah Na, Yeah, Well that's that's I mean, that's an
important question, and it is. It's strange because it will
occasionally get reported, but it's crippling the growth of future generations.

Speaker 11 (01:35:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):
Have you ever had somebody who's older in your family,
maybe a little stodgy, and they're like, well.

Speaker 11 (01:35:46):
When I was, when I was twenty eight, I had
you know, like I had my job at the paint store,
and I sold my first house and made it a rental,
and then I bought a car, and I just you know,
pooped everywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
I don't know, pop a lot of poop.

Speaker 12 (01:36:04):
But but it's it's true if your's but if it's
interesting that you asked this tonight because I looked into
it and for that situation in post world.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
War two and the boom of the economy to exist.
For someone making minimum wage to buy a house, have
two point five kids, all that other census bullshit, the
minimum wage would have to be slightly over forty five
dollars an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:36:31):
That's how imprations worked out, right now.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
Yeah, I don't make that. Does anybody make that out here?
They're not gonna say, oh, of course you do.

Speaker 1 (01:36:41):
You do.

Speaker 10 (01:36:42):
Yeah, that's what they bill me for. They don't pay
me that exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:36:52):
But yeah, that's actually that's that's something that we've been
putting a lot of digging into and we're we're hoping
to do an episode on that pretty soon. Thank you
for asking this question. As far as the implications of it,
I would say, yes, it is. It is not a
conspiracy theory. It is a conspiracy people are conspiring to

(01:37:15):
privatize education. Like at the same time that student loans
boomed and I'll get off my soapbox in a second,
I hope you don't regret asking this. But at the
same time that student loans began booming as an increasingly
privatized industry, there also occurred this change in the zeitgeist
wherein you were told we were all told that the

(01:37:38):
only way you can have a life worth living in
this country is if you can sign yourself to college,
if you can sign yourself to grad school, if you
don't go to trade school, if you like we we
were taught to look down on people for that reason.
And that's yeah, and that's that's insidious.

Speaker 4 (01:37:56):
And it's like it's.

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
Going to affect us, it's straight up. Edward berde.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
Nice, I'm Lindsay. I'm here with Chris Lindsay.

Speaker 4 (01:38:07):
I've been listening for a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
How do you guys stay optimistic? You dive into.

Speaker 5 (01:38:14):
Some of the things they bor on ridiculous or esoteric.

Speaker 10 (01:38:18):
But tonight you talked about a lot of things that
affect us as citizens or just people.

Speaker 1 (01:38:24):
So how do you keep the optimism.

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
With the show?

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
And you seem optimistic?

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
You have beer?

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
No, I don't know. It's hard. It's hard.

Speaker 5 (01:38:36):
I mean I have a me and Matt have kids,
and that makes it extra hard because it's all filtered
through this notion of like what's it going to be
like for my nine year old?

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
And I'm constantly living in fear and dread.

Speaker 5 (01:38:47):
But you know, one day at a time, and I
just I just I just have faith that my kid
is smarter than me and it's gonna be like pluckier
than me and just figure that ship out and just
like navigate whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
Throws at her. And that's that's my optimism there.

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
So I honestly have to say that it requires cognitive
dissonance to continue. I'm being completely honest to know the
things that we all in this room know and continue
on as though everything is okay. We just can't. We
kind of have to not look at it. And I
think that's the way it's been for a long time
for a lot of humans.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
Yeah, but it's literally our job to look at it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
But we in particular, Yes, but that is that not
a head in the sand.

Speaker 3 (01:39:32):
For me, it's video games, alcohol, and nicotine.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
So yeah, I have about three feelings a year. Optimism
is not one anybody else somebody else. Thank you so
much for passing around.

Speaker 4 (01:39:48):
Yes, thank you. This is fun. It's connecting us all.

Speaker 13 (01:39:52):
Hey guys, hey man, I'm in the construction industry. So
to the student loan thing, we're now seeing a dip
in available labor really because.

Speaker 4 (01:40:01):
Because of that idea.

Speaker 13 (01:40:03):
But uh, going back to the beginning, there's a great
documentary about the toy and beetles called Resurrect Deadline.

Speaker 5 (01:40:11):
Starting everything from that. Yeah, it's a great film.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
It's really good film.

Speaker 13 (01:40:16):
Fan a ridiculous history.

Speaker 3 (01:40:18):
Oh wait, show everybody, everybody?

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Hello, thanks so much. Snow you know they didn't give
us free t shirts? Can you believe that we had
to buy our own because they print them on demand? Yes? Hello,
hey switch?

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
Oh there it's a switch on the bottom.

Speaker 1 (01:40:43):
Hello.

Speaker 7 (01:40:45):
Hello, my name's Kelsey. I have a question in regards
to our conversation earlier about the Federal Reserve, so the
errors that it makes. Do you think there's any possibility
that good algorithms could offer a level of accountability for
what they do?

Speaker 4 (01:41:04):
You you want to bring AI into this.

Speaker 1 (01:41:08):
It's slippery slope, my friends, It's already there.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
It's really it's that's a that's a wonderful question, because,
regardless of how someone feels ethically about the concept of
machine consciousness, which is not really where we're at now,
a machine consciousness would be everybody thinking to some degree
the way that we do. But what we have now
when we say artificial intelligence, is we have things that

(01:41:34):
are very good at solving specific problems. So like we
can make the mind of something that could go through
a maze or compare columns of data and answer questions
in those parameters. We don't have anything that can do
something like ask why, right.

Speaker 4 (01:41:51):
Are you a data scientist?

Speaker 7 (01:41:55):
Yeah right, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm a science, Technology and
society major.

Speaker 4 (01:42:01):
Okay, yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:03):
So, so to your question directly, the truth is that
this sort of technology is inevitable, and in certain spheres
it's much further along than some people might imagine. In
the stock market, in the trading industry, a lot of
a lot of very quick calculations are made, but they're

(01:42:23):
not made for a greater good. They're made for a
profit margin for a specific group or in some cases
an individual.

Speaker 5 (01:42:31):
Well, there has to be a philosophy behind how you
use the algorithms to and that's sort of what the
FED does.

Speaker 1 (01:42:35):
In some ways.

Speaker 5 (01:42:36):
It's like, what is the economic philosophy that we're chasing,
and so how do we put these algorithms to work
to that end?

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
But it's kind of like the trolley problem with autonomous vehicles.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
So, there's a study that came out recently about autonomous
self driving vehicles.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
The big question is if.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):
They have to hit someone, How do they decide who
to hit?

Speaker 4 (01:43:01):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
Is it a? Is it?

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
Do they do they hit like an average person walking
on the street? Ye?

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
Or do they hit like right? Or do they hit
they have a child?

Speaker 2 (01:43:11):
Well, it's funny you mentioned that because I think I
think who ever said that realized that there was a
massive poll done.

Speaker 14 (01:43:17):
Recently and our species agreed overwhelmingly hit the elderly. Yeah,
which is really cool for us right now, But keep
in mind, we're going to be old when that stuff's everywhere.
So so that same question applies to the Federal Reserve. Who, like,

(01:43:37):
who profits from a certain area of stability?

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:43:42):
If if we can do if if we have an
algorithm that tells us uh, uptick and interest here is
very good for this specific part of the economy or
this specific demographic they're in, but very bad for another demographic,
then who who programs it to value you that question?
Because again, we're a long way off from building an

(01:44:03):
artificial mind that can ask why it's solving a problem.
And so if that, if we have something steering the
Federal Reserve before it can ask why it's doing something,
then we are setting ourselves up for a very very
interesting times, I believe is the euphemism.

Speaker 3 (01:44:25):
I would say the pattern recognition of machine learning could
definitely have some help there to try and predict when
financial institutions may be weak or be ready to crash,
or then you know how much to the interest rate
go up or how little, And you actually have just
a machine that's doing that and looking at the patterns
and not actually making decisions, but giving you feedback. I
think that's a really good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:44:47):
Also, any AI algorithm run on the student loan problem
would come to the same conclusions that we came to tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:44:55):
I'm just saying that is true. Yeah, anybody else, anybody else?
I see a hand over here?

Speaker 4 (01:45:01):
Cool? Oh, I see one over here too.

Speaker 3 (01:45:03):
We got we let's do where We've got one question
here first and then you are next, sir, if you
want to hang.

Speaker 15 (01:45:09):
Out A big fan, thanks man. Didn't finish college, so
no loans. But so I love everything conspiracy, everything from aliens,
do they exist? What are they really doing on plumb Island?
Blah blah, But this one is the real one. If

(01:45:30):
I think you know, it affects us in our everyday life.
And so I've dove pretty deep on this and there's
all these theories about and I don't know if you
guys came across this in your research, but there were
three presidents who made a really really hard push to
get off the federal reserve. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy,
and they all have something in common.

Speaker 2 (01:45:52):
Like Executive Order eleven eleven sery I believe, yeah.

Speaker 15 (01:45:55):
Right right, And we're actually our sitting president has made
some pretty forward comments about getting off the reserves.

Speaker 5 (01:46:03):
Forward comments that guys all class he has the decorum of.

Speaker 15 (01:46:08):
A set, but it's just kind of yeah, it makes
you scratch your head a little bit, and it makes
you curious, you know, like maybe there would be a
pattern forming. If three isn't enough of a pattern.

Speaker 1 (01:46:21):
Get up to thirteen?

Speaker 4 (01:46:23):
Well, yeah, thirteen?

Speaker 3 (01:46:24):
Right, then I would say that some of that executive
order stuff in the theories, depending on where you're reading it,
it isn't really based on the stuff that it says
it's based on. There has more to do with what
was it. The whole silver standard thing is a little
more murky than what a lot of these websites claim
it to be. Yeah, specifically with Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
Well, also Kennedy had very few friends in the halls
of power. It's kind of a situation where it's like, well,
if he wasn't shot for one thing, here are the
other other reasons, other multitudes of reasons that people decided
it would be cool if he had a hole in
his head, which I know is graphic, but that's what happened.

(01:47:06):
That's what happens, harsh, That's what happens. But to your question,
what's really interesting is Abraham Lincoln actually was, especially during
the Civil War, very opposed to the interest rate that
the nation was getting saddled with through banking.

Speaker 1 (01:47:22):
And it's kind of weird when we read when.

Speaker 2 (01:47:25):
It's kind of weird what parts of historical anecdotes are
specified and what parts what characters are left blank or vague,
because it's always like Lincoln was pissed that the US
was going to be broke, Hamilton was pissed that the
US owed money to whom. You know, those people aren't
often named in specific or in particular. And I'm going

(01:47:48):
to keep this thought you sent in my head if if,
if something happens, and then I think we have a
lot of dig in to do.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
But obviously I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:47:59):
I don't personally want just anyone in the world to
get shot, although statistically many people did while we were
recording this show.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
Too Dark. Sorry, guys, there are a lot of the guns.
They have to hang out with me all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:48:14):
Here you go, I need another one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
Yeah, let's let's let's let's take one more question and
then we'll one more question, one more question.

Speaker 13 (01:48:20):
Are we doing?

Speaker 1 (01:48:21):
Hey, Hey, Hey, what's up?

Speaker 4 (01:48:23):
Man?

Speaker 16 (01:48:23):
So first time? First time? So, Yes, this was pretty awesome.
This was a birthday gift from my friend Aaron. It's
my birthday, so let's give it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:37):
Hey, what's your what's your name?

Speaker 4 (01:48:38):
Mike on the counter?

Speaker 1 (01:48:40):
Three? Can everybody say Happy birthday? Mike? Okay? One two?

Speaker 16 (01:48:44):
My wife's birthday the same day.

Speaker 4 (01:48:46):
Two and her name is Kim, So Kim.

Speaker 1 (01:48:50):
On the counter.

Speaker 2 (01:48:50):
Three, Happy birthday, Mike and Kim ok sir one two three,
Happy birthday, Mike, came, Kim.

Speaker 4 (01:49:00):
We didn't ask you how.

Speaker 1 (01:49:01):
That's good.

Speaker 4 (01:49:02):
Yeah, thank you very much, Mike.

Speaker 3 (01:49:04):
That was recorded. By the way we recorded. That's going
to come out.

Speaker 16 (01:49:07):
It's being recorded by the girl that bought the tickets.

Speaker 1 (01:49:11):
Somebody, all right, what's up? What's up? Birthday man.

Speaker 16 (01:49:14):
So here's my question, and I have like seven hundred
thousand questions after like being introduced to the world.

Speaker 3 (01:49:21):
That are you guys?

Speaker 1 (01:49:22):
But no, boy, all right here, it's going to be.

Speaker 16 (01:49:25):
A softball or it's going to be a curveball.

Speaker 2 (01:49:27):
So let's see, let's go.

Speaker 16 (01:49:29):
We started about twin be tiles, we started.

Speaker 4 (01:49:33):
About hobo code.

Speaker 8 (01:49:36):
How difficult is it to articulate the difference between hobo
code and Hota cobe.

Speaker 4 (01:49:50):
A question? So thanks, guys, like.

Speaker 5 (01:49:55):
You just wanted a birthday wish.

Speaker 16 (01:49:58):
Seriously, the whole time you were talking, I thought it
was Hoda Kobe.

Speaker 1 (01:50:06):
Uh is there is it a burning question?

Speaker 7 (01:50:11):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:50:11):
It's John? What's up John? It's John without an age?

Speaker 17 (01:50:15):
John without an age?

Speaker 4 (01:50:16):
Thank you?

Speaker 17 (01:50:17):
Okay, So about two days ago, three years ago, somebody
won one point five billion.

Speaker 1 (01:50:22):
Dollars, right yeah, personally.

Speaker 17 (01:50:25):
Yeah, I wish it was me, But I think I
could do more more good with more money than more power.
Do you guys think that you could do more good
with one point five billion in dollars? Or do you
guys think you could do more good running a country,

(01:50:46):
running a city because or more power.

Speaker 3 (01:50:52):
Well, I'll just start off and then you guys build
really fast. I think the money is the power in
this instance. Because we've said this before, Ben has this phrase,
what is one of the biggest superpowers, the actual real
superpower you can have?

Speaker 1 (01:51:08):
Oh yeah, money, money, like is one of the.

Speaker 3 (01:51:10):
Real superpowers that exists because cut yeah, go.

Speaker 1 (01:51:13):
Ahead, go ahead, can I yeah, it's all such a
nice said.

Speaker 2 (01:51:15):
All right, So I feel this is one of my
three feelings though, it's that Batman is often built.

Speaker 1 (01:51:23):
I'm mean, I get to I'll make it quick.

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):
I know we have to pay and stuff, but uh,
Batman is often built as this amazing superhero because he's
the world's greatest detective and because he doesn't have superpowers,
he has ingenuity that is utter. That's an utter line
of horseshit. Because Bruce Wayne is a billionaire. He didn't
build the suit himself. He didn't build the Batmobile. Instead,

(01:51:46):
he paid someone to do it, which means that if
you look at the way of functions, the use of
money is just value over time. So he's functioning as
a time traveler. He's doing things through the use of
money that would have taken decades, decades and decades to do.
So money may not equate one on one with power
in all situations. However, money does equate to taking the

(01:52:10):
hours of someone else's labor, which I'm not I'm not
going in a socialist direction with this.

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
That's just the way. That's just the way it is.

Speaker 2 (01:52:17):
If somebody is paid five dollars an hour or forty
five dollars an hour, then that is just the price
of an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:52:24):
Do you know what I mean? A billionaire?

Speaker 17 (01:52:27):
Yeah, things you guys say, I will say. You guys
do say that money corrupts?

Speaker 1 (01:52:34):
Yes, right, yes, So if you guys.

Speaker 17 (01:52:36):
Were one point five billion dollars rich, would that not
corrupt you?

Speaker 1 (01:52:41):
Of course the lottery is terrible for people when they.

Speaker 4 (01:52:44):
Will win the lottery. Ever like that just save your life.

Speaker 1 (01:52:47):
I think it would corrupt me, to be honest, I
don't know. You seem like a pretty cool dude. I try.

Speaker 3 (01:52:52):
Here. Here's here's my reasoning behind this and why I
wanted to reference that, because if you're the leader of
a country, there are so many condos on you on
what you can and can't do, because there's so many
interests that you have to look out for. And that's
everything that's economic, that's the people who live in your country.
That's medical. I mean, it's just it's literally all the
things right that you have to deal with. If you

(01:53:13):
just independently get several billion dollars one point five billion dollars,
you can use that however you want.

Speaker 4 (01:53:21):
Really, you can trying to jump in.

Speaker 2 (01:53:29):
Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna end on one thing, John,
I think your question.

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):
I think the more I think.

Speaker 2 (01:53:35):
About it, I would I would go for I would
go for power because if money is an idea, then
a good idea can be money. So I would go
I would go for a movement or an idea, not
to start a cult.

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
I don't know what about you and NOL. You want
the last word, I'll start a call. All right, let's start. Hey, guys,
thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:53:56):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.

Speaker 1 (01:54:16):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:54:20):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}CLASSIC: STDWYTK Live: Secrets of The Federal Reserve