December 1, 2023 • 45 mins
Named for the orange stripe lining the 55 gallon barrels containing this herbicide and defoliant, Agent Orange was one of the most widely-used "rainbow herbicides" of the Vietnam war. But it wasn't just harmful to plants. Soon after it was deployed in Vietnam, Vietnamese citizens and US veterans alike reported crippling, life-threatening symptoms.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, man.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
So it turns out, back in the day in the
Vietnam Wars, the US call it, a lot of people
got sick, didn't understand why, and allegations about poisoning continue today.
This is a heck of a classic episode, dude.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Have either of you guys seen the movie Jacob's Ladder
starring what is it?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
No? Geez? Who's in that? Tim Robbins.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's a very very cool, kind of psychedelic, kind of
messed up actually, a sci fi movie about Vietnam and
some potential Agent Orange esque experiments that take place and
lead to some pretty messed up things happening in the
lives of these individuals. But oftentimes, you know, reality is
stranger than fiction and and scarier because yeah, this was
a thing, man.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
It was just a set of herbicides. Guys, what's the
big deal?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah? What's a neo nikotinoid ever done wrong? Aside from
killing all the bees? We were right about that part too.
What's going on on with depleted uranium? Right, what's the
deal with white phosphorus? What's the deal with Agent Worrinch?
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Let's find out.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are you,
and you are here, and that makes this stuff they
don't want you to know. We can open with a
question today, I guess for the table. Have any of
us had relatives involved in the Vietnam War?
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I do not believe I did. Honestly, If I do,
I am unaware of it.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Paul, do you have any relatives in that conflict? Also?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Three nos. That's interesting, Ben, Yeah, Well, being from a
military background, it's somebody, yeah, yeah, multiple members of my family.
The reason we open this episode today with this question
is because our episode touches on the Vietnam War. It's
not really just about the war, it's about something different.
(02:30):
The Vietnam War is the last conflict in which Uncle
Sam conscripted actual civilians. So some of us listening to
the show today may have at some point been drafted,
sent to a country that you were radically unfamiliar with,
and told that you were playing a vital part, if
a small part, a vital part in a greater fight.
(02:54):
We our country intervened in the activities of foreign nations
to support a larger geo political war against communism.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, it was that one time we interfered with another
country's inner workings.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
At one time.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And the thing about modern war is that it drives
technological innovation. There's no two ways about it, and the
Vietnam War was no exception to this rule. During this conflict,
the US pioneered numerous pieces of technology that we now
see today in the civilian sphere. Some of these innovations
(03:30):
were entirely innocuous. They were medical breakthroughs, right, And some
were really far out things that even today sound like
crazy science fiction novel ideas far out, like Surfer far out, yeah,
even further, even further from sure.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah. And weather manipulation is one of those things.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Right, which we talked about, which was surprisingly a real thing.
I think that baffled all of us. There was another
innovation in this war which might surprise some people. It
was the widespread use of herbicide as a weapon, which
which is nuts. Right. Planes swept across the Mekong Delta
(04:09):
dropping weed killer instead of bombs.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Oh there were bombs too, There were also bombs, but
there was a lot of weed killer.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And this weed killer is known today by the name
agent Orange. In decades and decades after it was deployed
there in Southeast Asia, we as a species are still
trying to figure out exactly how it affected us. But
let's start with the facts here. They are. What is
agent orange?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Oh, man, I'm gonna butcher this pronunciation, but I'm gonna
try it is something called a defolian, A defoliant nailed. Yeah,
I guess it wasn't as hard as I made it
out to be.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Thanks for the ataboy, though, guys, I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So yeah, a plant killer, like you said, so, this
is a combination of various herbicides, but it was the
most famous used in the Vietnam War, when the US
dispersed it across entire areas of the country in order
to remove plant cover.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
You know those tree lines.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
They're always talking about Charlie's hiding in the tree line.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
And all that.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
You know. I remember hearing that movies. That's in movies.
They wanted to get rid of that.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I guess, so they had more visibility of the potential
awaiting enemies.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yea. And there are big problems with naval ships where
there would be tree lines right along the water and
combatants would hide there with various munitions, and this was
one of the reasons, one of the main reasons they
wanted to use Asian orange or any of the herbicides.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah. Yeah, good point met, because that's scene in Apocalypse
Now where the boat is going up the river. Yeah,
that kind of stuff really did happen. And you make
an excellent point about the other herbicides because we always
hear about agent orange. Agent orange was called this or
sometimes called orange too.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
That whole family.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, yeah, it had a whole family, a whole spectrum
of colors. It was called agent orange due to the
orange markings on the barrels it was shipped in. But
there were other colors too. There was Agent blue, denoted
by the blue markings. Still a herbicide, a little bit different,
But we can get into the chemistry of agent orangetty
pretty easily. We can do a high level. Look, we're
(06:23):
not chemist.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Do you guys know why they called the Vietcong Charlie.
I just looked this up to make sure I wasn't
accidentally being racist. Please tell us VC Victor Charlie Viet
comm Charlie.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
There you go, boom today innocuous AF.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
So that's really interesting. Had no idea. Oh no, that's great.
So let's get into what exactly this stuff is. Agent
orange is equal parts to chemicals, and these are both herbicides.
The first one you can just call it T four
dash D and that's T comma four dash D that's
dichlora finoxy acidic acid. And the second one is T
(07:04):
comma four comma fivesh T or T four five T
that's trichloro finoxy acidic acid. Now, so it's just two
of these orbicides equal parts mixed together you get agent orange.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And were these were these common beforehand?
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Yeah? These were pretty common in the United States. They
were used the separate chemicals, not agent orange itself, the
combination of them. But yeah, the separate chemicals were common
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And during the manufacture of what which one of these ingredients,
it's the T four five T okay, the trichloral yes, yeah,
so during the manufacture of that, another chemical is produced.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Right, Yes, small amounts of something called TCDD. You're ready
for this, here's the last one.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
You got it?
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Two three seven eight tetrachloro divenzo dioxin. And it's also
referred to as.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Dioxin dioxin, and it's formed as a byproduct. It's considered
a contamination in its own way. It is an unwanted growth,
very similar to a weed.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
There you go, oh, a weed within the herbicide.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But what is it really? I'm so glad you asked.
It's crazy. So it's what. It's a kind of thing
called a persistent organic pollutant. There are multiple forms of dioxin.
When we say persistent organic pollutant, the key word there
is persistent. Once these things get into something, they tend
(08:40):
to stay. According to the EPA, dioxins are not made commercially,
nor are they sold in the US, at least they're
not supposed to be. There are several hundred different versions
of this substance we call dioxin, but they generally fall
under the same three chemical families. Oh no, it's my
turn now, is okay?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
All right?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Chlorinated die benzo p dioxians. There you go, chlorinated die
benzofurans or CDFs and some polychlorinated bifenels PCBs, which you
may have heard a long time ago on a previous episode.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Oh yeah, you've almost certainly heard of PCBs before. That's
one of those common chemical compounds. You actually hear PCBs, Like,
this is without PCBs. We stopped using.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Those, do health concerns, right exactly? A little bit of foreshadow?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Is that the stuff that's an im thinking of BPA?
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, different, but only the crinkly ones.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, yeah, I remember peak behind the curtain, folks. I
remember a few years ago, Matt, you first told me
about BPAs. I was microwaving something in a plastic like
a plastic container, a TopWare kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Yeah, I mean it was one that you generally put
in a microwave.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
And then when I was convinced that I was going
to it, I was convinced it was all over for me.
It's like, here comes the cancer.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
I mean, we're all full of it already. There's nothing
you can do. We exist in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, we're riddled with it. In the nineteen seventies, we
didn't have the same awareness of what the consequences of
exposure to these sorts of chemicals could be and dioxin
in particular, which on its own looks like these little
white crystalline needles, is chemically speaking, a Samuel L. Jackson
(10:30):
level bad. I mean, we're a family show. What should
I say, guys?
Speaker 5 (10:35):
M Murpher Murpher nailed it.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yes, it's a bad Murpher it because the accent can
cause cancer, reproductive problems, developmental disorders. It can also wreak
just train wrecked levels of damage on hormones and the
immune system. Agent Orange was meant to be what's called
a rainbow defoliant, meaning that it didn't specifically target get
(11:00):
one type of plant. It targeted everything. Yes, and this
means that as a weapon of war, Agent Orange was
from the get go, from deployment, meant to do more
than I think the American public believed. We were told.
(11:21):
It was to increase visibility, as you said, Noel, and
to remove undergrowth in which the enemy forces could hide.
But it's behind the curtain use, which was sort of
an open secret that unfortunately a lot of voters did
not know at the time. It's behind the curtain use
was much more sinister. It was meant to destroy crops,
(11:44):
depriving enemy combatants and civilians of food, and a lot
of these people at that time, in the rural parts
of the country are subsistence farmers.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
It was a tactic to starve everybody out.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
And we started tracing the evolution of agent orange from
its orangein point Oh God, I'm so sorry to its deployment.
The US exhibited interest in this concept weaponized herbicides way
way before the Vietnam War. In nineteen forty three, the
(12:20):
Army contacted the University of Chicago and asked them for
some data on the potential of herbicides too. It is important.
This was their original question to the University of Chicago. Specifically,
they asked for data to prove whether or not herbicides
could destroy enemy crops. Yeah, that less sinister idea about
(12:42):
removing forest cover.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
That comes later, Yeah, I mean it is. It's interesting
how there was such a problem with forest cover during
the Vietnam conflict that it also made sense to use
this product that destroyed crops. And wonder if that was
just I was getting knuck. I was gonna say, happy
(13:04):
accident is not a happy accident. But they just happened
to coincide with what they needed. But that's really messed up,
So that's nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, and they continued. They moved pretty quickly on the concept.
They first tested the idea of weaponized herbicides in nineteen
forty four in Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I have to say, this idea of herbicidal warfare is
fascinating to me and not something I would typically think
of as weaponized herbicides.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, it's strange, isn't it. And they tested at first,
they were just seeing what sort of poisonous stuff could
do the job, So they tested ammonium thiosinate, zinc chloride,
sodium nitrate, sodium rsenate, and sodium fluoride, which I we know,
fellow conspiracy realists will already make some people's years per cup.
(13:57):
But the tipping point doesn't her until nineteen forty five
during something called Project Sphinx.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
So Project Sphinx was conducted at Fort Knox.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That Fort Knox and the United States government investigated the
use of chemical agents in making vegetation more flammable.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
It seems like it would be flammable enough as it is, but.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Before a flame attack and agent orange and napalm. Napalm's
a scary one. Are the descendants of this particular research.
So the US continued to develop and test Agent orange
from forty six to fifty one domestically.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, and the first use of this crazy cocka made.
The idea of herbicidal warfare comes from Britain in the
nineteen fifties. They cleared areas of the jungle in Malaysia
of vegetation if they were close to roadways. They wanted
to prevent ambushes by well, they called them communist guerrillas.
(14:59):
Other people called them freedom fighters. And many of the
people there just saw themselves as locals.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Yeah, or your family and friends. Also, the Britain didn't
call that a war. No, it's kind of familiar for
you know, for a long time it was the Vietnam conflict.
Or I guess that's kind of changed the Vietnam conflict.
It's been the Vietnam War, but he was never declared
a war by Congress.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
True True Facts. In an internal memo from nineteen fifty two,
the agricultural giant Monsanto informed the US Army Chemical Corps
that the herbicide that you had mentioned earlier MATT two
four five T the try one, the try one, the
trichloral one, was contaminated with dioxin during the production process.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So nineteen fifty two they knew, they knew.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And accidental overheating of the reaction mixture caused this product,
this herbicide to condense into this dioxin. Dioxen, just for
a frame of difference, is one hundred and fifty thousand
times more toxic than arsenic, the poison arsenic, the very
famous poison arsenic. Jeez, yep, sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I'm just making big googly eyes right now. You can't
hear because this is an audio show. But I just
that is an insane number to be more toxic than
the thing that we already know is being quite bloody toxic.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, more toxic than possibly the most famous poison in history.
The US began using herb besides in what nineteen sixty
one and something that was originally named Operation Hades but
got changed to a less sinister sounding.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Name, Operation ranch Hand.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Ah, that sounds like some good old corn fat operation.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
There, boys, I'm just a ranch hand, you know. I
get the horses all, you know, get them back around.
That's pretty much what I do take care of. Do
you hit them up? Hitch up horses to the post,
feeding bags you know.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Now, well that seems a lot more innocuous than Operation
Hell on Earth.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
And also drop a ton of stuff on the viet CONK.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sorry, we're not gonna use it was a dramatic reenact,
but I think the soul of it is completely accurate.
Over twenty million gallons of these herbicides, these various agents
were sprayed across Vietnam but also across Cambodia and Laos,
and for most of the war, Operation Ranch Hand was
(17:31):
based at the Bingha Air Base, which I am surely mispronouncing.
Apologies to all Vietnamese speakers. They were using this airbase
because they wanted to mainly conduct spraying operations across the
Mekong Delta because, as we have mentioned earlier, patrol boats
were vulnerable to attacks from the undergrowth, and the primary
(17:54):
aircraft used for this were C one two threes. That'll
be important later because we'll have to ask ourselves what
happened to those planes?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah one O. Their just little side note there is
that Asian orange was also common or these these agents
were common to be sprayed around military bases and outposts,
and you'll see images online if you search for it
of soldiers in these trucks that are just spraying. You
can see them just spraying these huge swaths of this.
(18:26):
It looks like it looks orange, but I think some
of them have maybe been doctored a little bit. But
it's just it's a chemical agent. They're spraying everywhere around
the bases.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Sure, just like you know, just like an exterminator or
someone applying pesticide with those little buckets and those spray nozzles,
you guys remember those.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, is not a much much much larger scale, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And so here we are with Vietnam and with the
use of this herbicide, not just on enemy vegetation, but
on vegetation, as you said, surrounding military bases post. But
as we mentioned before, agent Orange is not the only
crayon in the box. We'll tell you a little bit
(19:07):
more about the other agents in the field after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And we're back. So we got orange in one corner.
Let's talk about the rest of the group that we've
got here. The agent Orange, that name is just a
code name referring to the color of the band that's
around this giant fifty five gallon drum that contained the
chemical and when it was shipped over to Laos or
Vietnam or Cambodia wherever they were in these giant drums,
(19:39):
and they would sit somewhere and then until they get
loaded up onto whatever plane they're going to be on
or truck. And the other code names were Agent, white, blue, purple, pink,
and green.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Sounded more and more like reservoir dogs.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
That's exactly what it sounds like to me. Dude, does
anybody listening out there? Do you know if that was
a reference the reservoir dogs was actually a reference to
these agents, That would be fascinating to know, because it
sounds very similar. I don't know what we're missing here,
which color we're missing, But anyway, I left to ask Chuck.
He just did an episode with Broken Lizard about reservoir dogs.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, it's Chuck Charles W. Bryant from Stuff you Should Know,
who is also the host of movie Crush, where you
can hear our compatriot Noll popping in.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
That's right, I do do the occasional pop in.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Internet says no Ah, all right, Internet.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
No connect, thanks thanks a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
We'll have to text Quinton and ask him. So. From
nineteen sixty two to sixty five, they actually were not
using Agent orange, is that correct?
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Correct? They started out with purple, pink, and green. Here's
the deal, the problem. All three of these were contaminated
with what are they called tcdds or dioxin.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Right, and these were supply by Monsanto and the Dow
Chemical Company. And let's take a second to talk about
Agent purple. Okay, Agent purple was sprayed just indiscriminately across
the area. One point nine million leaders were sprayed between
that period we mentioned sixty two to sixty five. Unfortunately,
(21:22):
it was later determined that Agent Purple had the highest
concentration of dioxin in comparison to the other these other
mixtures pink and green.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Wow, so really this episode should be called Agent Purple. Well, no,
it's not true because Agent orange was sprayed a whole
lot more.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, that's the thing. From sixty five to seventy they
switched to Agent's orange, white and blue, and then in
what was it, nineteen seventy, they stopped using agent orange.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Yes, and we'll get into why they stopped using Agent
orange a little bit later on the show. But that's
that's around the time seventy to seventy one, all right.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Still, the facts are the facts, and the facts do
not have opinions. Chemicals contaminated with this substance dioxin were
used in the area from sixty two to nineteen seventy,
and they sprayed a bunch of it everywhere.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Right, Yeah, the estimates and these might have changed by now.
The research we got from this is several years old.
But the estimated amount of dioxin sprayed over Vietnam and
all of that time was around three hundred and sixty
eight pounds of it. Wow. Now, I know that sounds
like a kind of low number, three hundred and sixty
eight pounds overall if you're talking about these large land
(22:38):
masses and everything. But when you realize that agent orange,
the dioxin contamination within it was only zero point zero
five to fifty parts per million, that's pretty much the
range that you got in parts per million. And they
sprayed twenty million gallons. It's kind of crazy. Twenty million
(23:01):
gallons of herbicide. It doesn't necessarily mean agent orange.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I see what you're saying. It's important. But even if
we say, okay, it's not like they were spraying pure dioxin, right.
The point is that Overall, over four million soldiers had
some kind of contact with this substance, specifically with agent orange,
and this number is only for the US side. When
(23:27):
we were doing research on this, one thing that we
found to be strange was that a lot of the
emphasis on exposure to this only follow the US side.
They don't follow the millions of civilians who were affected
by this spray and were almost certainly not informed of
it before or after.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
When you think about if they're targeting crops and that
land that would eventually in the future be used to
plant crops again that now has this persistent chemical in
the soil, it's no good.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
And the government knew, at least the US knew. By
nineteen sixty three, the US Army and President Kennedy, the
Kennedy administration knew this stuff was capable of screwing up
humans just as much as plants. The Dow Chemical Company
wrote to the Secretary of Defense at the time and
assured him that's Robert McNamara assured him that two four
(24:22):
five T that's the trichloral one. That's the one, that's
the one was safe for use.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
So nice things.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Dal don't worry about this data.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
We assure you our government contract stands.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Everything is fine.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
And then in nineteen sixty seven, the Department of Defense
set up a contract with Kansas City based Midwest Research
Institute to dig a little deeper and give a comprehensive
analysis of extensive or repeated uses of herbicides.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Herbicides.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Is it a hard Ah, I go with herbicides.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, that's better. I'm not English, you know.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
Heubsibs, and phillots.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Here's what they found.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
And now will quote if I may, the possibility of
lethal toxicity to humans is highly unlikely and should not
be a matter of deep concern.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Now that quote is there's some ellipses in there. Yeah,
but still that's the main point. Don't matter.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Hey, hey, it's cool.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
It's cool. Chill, And hence the cover up.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
There's always a cover up.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
The cover up begins nowadays. It's no secret that these
substances are harmful to human beings. People exposed to agent
orange or any of those other color coded agents will
have a higher risk of exhibiting the symptoms we had
mentioned earlier, some of the symptoms of exposure. But there
is something else in play. The cover up didn't stop
(25:51):
in the fifties while they were developing this and in
the seventies when they were deploying it. The cover up
continues some we'll say, because there's something else to agent orange,
something that could affect you, Yes, specifically you today if
you are descended from anyone who is exposed to herbicides
like agent orange in the past. Agent Orange, you see,
(26:13):
has left the legacy. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
This substance doesn't just affect the people that actually got
exposed to it, whether it was in the field that
they used to grow crops or on the battlefield. It
affects their descendants as well. Well.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Okay, okay, okay, hard pause, Let's take a second to
think about just how insane that is. So that means
that if the four of us and if you listening,
were in Vietnam during this time, or you were exposed
to the substance somehow, we might not exhibit crazy symptoms,
(26:51):
but our kids and our grandkids very well could. Yeah,
which is insidious, you know. And in June and July
of nineteen sixty nine, Vietnamese newspapers began reporting on a
spike in birth defects. They specifically cited Sigon. Yeah, birth
(27:12):
defects in Saigon, and they blamed the deployment of Agent
Orange and the other members of the color coded poison pantheon.
Critics of the time say that Sigon couldn't have been
associated because Sigon was not directly sprayed.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yeah it's way over here.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, that is true. But they failed to consider the
flood of refugees that moved into the city after their
crops were destroyed.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, I can no longer live on this land. I
have to go somewhere else. Now you're in Saigon, a
big city, and now all of your descendants are coming
down with problems. Right, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, the consequences of exposure to agent orange no ideological boundary.
Children of veterans in the Vietnam conflict on the US side,
that were you know, the veterans that we're exposed to
this stuff, their kids have a thirty percent higher chance
of birth defects. And we're not talking you know, we're
(28:10):
not talking like a weird mole or something. We're talking
about things like leukemia. Yeah, extra limbs, life threatening stuff, Yeah,
missing limbs. And for decades, the Department of Veterans Affairs,
which for anyone outside of the US, it's commonly called
the VA here. That is a government organization which is
(28:31):
charged with healthcare, psychological care, job assistance, or employment assistance,
I guess, for veterans after they return from a conflict.
And it's a pretty controversial place. There are a lot
of concerns here in the States about how its affairs
(28:53):
are handled, how it is helping or neglecting to help
veterans after they leave military surface.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
If you somehow have not seen them yet, you can
watch various episodes of The Daily Show and John Stewart
was helming it, or John Oliver's New Show on HBO
to really get into the nitty gritty of the VA issues.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Now, the VA has very high quality people working there,
many of whom are themselves veterans, right and they have
been collecting information from the veterans for years, even specific
questions about birth defects for decades. You can look at
a nineteen eighty two form from the VA where they
(29:35):
have a question that reads the following, is there evidence
of birth defects among veterans' children? The answers are one no,
two yes conceived after Vietnam service, three yes conceived before
Vietnam service.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Four.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, both before and after Vietnam service.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
They don't have any for a conceived while in Vietnam service.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
That is true. That gets you know again, and that
gets to the more myopic US centric focus of the
agent orange problem here in the US at least. So
in twenty sixteen, Pro Publica and a paper called The
Virginian Pilot obtained this information from the VA, and they
(30:17):
made the problem public. Originally, government studies concluded that while
veterans in the war did have a higher chance of
bearing children with birth defects, herbicide exposure was somehow not
the cause. Oh, like you said earlier in all, ah,
don't worry nothing, she is.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Yeah, here we go. Yeah. If something like that came
out as public, it would not be good for anybody involved,
except for the victims.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Rights and the VA responded to this twenty sixteen analysis.
They said it was quote interesting and quote a step
in the right direction. They added that the VA believes
the research to understand the relationship between exposure and intergenerational
transmission of disease, if conducted, should be done where scientists
with expertise in the relevant fields of inquiry can provide leadership.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
I'm sorry I fell asleep during that. What was the huh?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
It means they said, we don't have a department that
is capable of studying this.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Oh, well, isn't that convenient?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
They did say they would play a supporting role in
further investigation.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
They did. Now we need to take one more quick
break from our sponsor. But when we get back, we're
going to talk about the full legacy of dioxin and
agent orange.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
And we're back. It's still twenty eighteen, which means it
has been almost fifty years since the weaponized herbicides were
sprayed across this region. In those intervening years, veterans reported
some of the defects that we have mentioned earlier, missing limbs,
extra limbs, as you said, no life threatening conditions like leukemia,
(32:05):
and they furthermore said that these conditions did not occur
in their family before. You know, some some diseases or
conditions can run in certain families, not the case with
this stuff. And given our species new understanding of epigenetics,
the fascinating, somewhat disturbing realm.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Of stuff, fairly new field, fairly.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
New field too. What is epigenetics, Well, it's the idea that.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Again I think we covered this before and didn't we
decide that it was there. There are several studies out
there about it, but it's not a conclusive thing yet.
But what we do have this understanding that when let's
say a mother goes through trauma at some point in
her life and then gives birth to a baby, that
(32:57):
trauma can somehow affect the way genes are expressed in
the baby. That's the idea, right right.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It affects what genetic expressions manifest, which genes are switched
on or off. And we saw some studies about the
descendants of people who were starved during World War Two.
That's what it was, yeah, And how that and it
has a measurable effect. There is a compelling case, I
(33:26):
want to be careful here that it has a measurable
and significant effect on descendants. It appears that agent orange
may also be functioning under the same rules. The survivors
of the war can trace dioxin exposure to birth effects
in later generations. Again, this is sort of controversial. There
(33:48):
are researchers on the other side of the argument saying
that this is overblown, or even saying that it is
a cynical attempt to grab some cash on the part
of relatives of veterans or veterans themselves. Really, those are statements, Yeah,
those are statements that people are making. I mean, I
(34:12):
personally don't agree. That seems like a very roundabout way
to try to get federal money.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Yeah. I think the position of defensive has kind of
just been the standard for anyone involved with the manufacturer
or deployment these things.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And Vietnam veterans and their families attempted several times to
take this issue to court, but the case is eventually
lost momentum.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
It's like a class action lawsuit at one point.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And arguably the research has yet
to bear a definitive link, but critics of those findings
think that there's something else to play. A brutal calculation,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
The va already spends billions of dollars on veterans, so
should it also pay for the medical needs of kids
bearing the scars of this war?
Speaker 4 (35:05):
That's the question they're asking.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I suppose Mike Ryan, who's a Vietnam vet whose grandchildren
suffer from the effects of this exposure.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
He believes that the.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Government will never admit the relationship between Asian orange and
these birth the effects because quote, if they do, then
America is admitting to drafting the unborn.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
That is I think the most powerful line in there.
And it's true. I mean, you can accuse the guy
of waxing poetic if you want, but it is accurate.
If these people who have no role in a war
that occurred before they were born, are suffering the consequences
(35:44):
of this right on both sides, both sides of the Pacific,
then aren't they How are they not being drafted? Yeah,
and there is, of course, of course, there's a very
strong argument to make that people just didn't know what
would happen. But it's pretty compelling evidence that multiple researchers
(36:12):
knew this stuff was dangerous. Even if they did not
know how it could affect descendants of people exposed, they
did know that it had deletorious effects on people who
were directly exposed, and dioxin affected the US in other
ways as well. In nineteen eighty five, there was a
small town called Times Beach, Missouri. The roads were sprayed
(36:33):
with hexachlorophine that contained dioxin, and the town was disincorporated
because of the extremely dangerous amounts of dioxin that they
were exposed to. This stuff makes people obliterate towns. There's
no Times Beach, Missouri anymore. There's Route sixty six State
(36:53):
Park where it used to be. So by the way,
folks watch where you picnic.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Yeah, please don't eat any stres rawberries, even if they
look delicious and wild and you're like, oh man, those awesome.
I got to get some strawberries. Don't do it. Just
don't do it. I don't know if strawberries grow out there.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Well, it's a good idea just to donate anything out
there if you find it growing. And now, as we
as we conclude this episode, we unfortunately don't have a
happy ending. We have to quote the VA steps in
the right direction. Yeah, but we still don't know what
is going to happen to people who are exhibiting symptoms
(37:37):
based on their parents' exposure to these substances. And the
government here in the States continually says there will be
a serious investigation of the phenomenon, and a lot of
scientists are working ardently on investigating it. But veterans in
their families feel there's little real progress toward admitting and
addressing the effects of this herbicide. And you can't really
(38:00):
blame them.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Yeah, I'm having such a hard time with this one.
You guys, let me she if I can work something
out here in my head while we just discuss it.
I want to hear your thoughts. So it is so horrifying,
I think, I mean, horrifying just encapsulates everything about this.
But the thought that a country outside of an internal conflict,
(38:27):
which you know, the the Vietnam War, which was fought
between South Vietnam and North Vietnam over ideological differences, was
kind of their own battle. It was a battle that
was being fought way way over there. If you're sitting
in the continuous United States, and we intervened, and in
(38:49):
doing so, we caused horrors to generations to come for
people in South and North Vietnam. It's it's almost I'm
trying to imagine what it would be like. I'm making
some connection between France coming to the aid of the
United States during the Revolutionary War in some ways, but
(39:12):
if France had come over and like sprayed chemicals all
across different fronts and then for generations, even though we
have in America now, it's just got it's just got
birth effects all across it. I don't know. I don't
know if there's any connection there. I'm just it's just
it's horrifying to me.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, it's a good point. Would what would a similar
comparison be, I don't know, And let us know if
there's a real life analog that you can recall, folks. Additionally,
it's important for us to say that it's incorrect and
it's missing the point to vilify people who were in
(39:54):
the service at this time because these people, well, these
military members were out there risking their lives right for
their country for a greater good, and they were often
just as exposed to the substance, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (40:14):
Oh, if not more, having to load the stuff and
then get nozzles ready and get it in the planes.
And the people who are on the planes actually doing
the spraying are not the people who are going to understand,
you know, exactly what the health effects are of the substance.
It's just not how it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
And one more thing, those planes that we mentioned, the
C one two threes were destroyed shortly afterward, Oh to
remove the Well, people who think there was a cover
up would say they were destroyed to remove the evidence
of the event, but you can't remove it from people's
genetic expression, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Yeah, that's the you know the other thing, these see
one threes or whatever they are. If they had the
agent orange just all over it and inside of it
and going through the systems of the plane, would you
have to destroy it to not expose anybody else who's
going to be on that plane to dioxon? Because it
(41:14):
seems like it's the stuff is so persistent. It might
just be within that structure. I don't know the decay
factor or anything.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Oh yeah, okay, So maybe it's not a cover up.
Maybe it's just a health risk. Perhaps maybe it's both.
It's like asbestos planes. Asbestos planes. Yes, and now our
story turns to you. Thank you so much for listening.
Do you have personal experience with agent orange? Do you
have a relative who was exposed whether or not in
(41:43):
the Vietnam War? Let us know, and most importantly, let
us know if you think there is any sand to
this idea. Is there a cover up on the effects
of agent orange? Is it somehow a cynical grap for money?
We want to hear your stories. You can find Noel, Matt,
Paul and I all over the internet. Yeah, weren Here's
(42:03):
where it gets crazy on Facebook, right.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
That's our Facebook group that you have to answer a
question to join, and you better get it right or
else you're not coming in.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
I screenshot at a couple of really good ones.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Hang on and while while Noel is pulling those up.
Also right to us. If you are a veteran or
a member of the VA and you have experience with
that with the VA, or maybe you work for them,
and you want to just give us some insider information
about like what is actually going on with regards to
Agent orange or maybe depleted uranium another thing we've talked
(42:36):
about before. Yeah, just right in. We'd love to hear
your story.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
So spoiler alert the question and joined the Facebook group
pretty easy.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Who are the hosts of the podcast? Stuff that I
want you to know?
Speaker 3 (42:46):
And typically we get you know, one of us, or
three of us, or a couple of us, or usually
my name is spelled wrong or Ben's last name is
butchered in some way. Josh and Ben. I've seen Josh
and Ben. That's a popular version of this show in
bizarro world. But this is this is this guy, says
Irwin D says uh Hurricane, Matthew, Dollar, Dollar, Bill, Benjamin
(43:07):
and Evolved.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Super ruler of producers Noel, Wow did that make your day?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Yeah? It was pretty nice.
Speaker 5 (43:14):
Guys like Pokemon rules like evolved.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Have you retained your final four?
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Got? I hope not? Well?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Thanks so much, man it thanks for screeched that. I
didn't see that.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
One another one, said Matt and some other guys.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
All right, that's why we were walking around smug yesterday. We,
of course, are ourselves big fans of Here's where it
gets crazy. It's where we can hear from what we
consider the most important part of the show. You and
We've we've seen some fantastic suggestions for episodes. Received a
(43:54):
message recently that I thought the three of us would
find interesting for another episode, which was memory technology. Remember
that Black Mirror episode with the grains that can replay
your memories? Yeah, so what if we do an episode
where we explore whether or not something like that could
actually happen?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Okay, I mean.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I feel like every episode of Black Mirror has a
wealth of potential topics.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Big time.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
What was that one that broke everybody's heart?
Speaker 4 (44:25):
San Jiniparo?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Oh man, yeah, no spoilers, just watch that one beautiful.
I watched it with my mom.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
Oh dude, are you telling me that?
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah, well, did.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
You know what it was before you watch it with her?
I'd seen it before.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Okay, well check it out if you haven't yet. This
one we actually will not spoil. I think the story
is strong enough that you should experience it for yourself.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Shouldn't spoil any Black Mirror Superior show, I would say,
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 st d WYTK.
(45:07):
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh, man.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
So it turns out, back in the day in the
Vietnam Wars, the US call it, a lot of people
got sick, didn't understand why, and allegations about poisoning continue today.
This is a heck of a classic episode, dude.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Have either of you guys seen the movie Jacob's Ladder
starring what is it?
Speaker 4 (00:24):
No? Geez? Who's in that? Tim Robbins.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's a very very cool, kind of psychedelic, kind of
messed up actually, a sci fi movie about Vietnam and
some potential Agent Orange esque experiments that take place and
lead to some pretty messed up things happening in the
lives of these individuals. But oftentimes, you know, reality is
stranger than fiction and and scarier because yeah, this was
a thing, man.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
It was just a set of herbicides. Guys, what's the
big deal?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah? What's a neo nikotinoid ever done wrong? Aside from
killing all the bees? We were right about that part too.
What's going on on with depleted uranium? Right, what's the
deal with white phosphorus? What's the deal with Agent Worrinch?
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Let's find out.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are you,
and you are here, and that makes this stuff they
don't want you to know. We can open with a
question today, I guess for the table. Have any of
us had relatives involved in the Vietnam War?
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I do not believe I did. Honestly, If I do,
I am unaware of it.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Paul, do you have any relatives in that conflict? Also?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Three nos. That's interesting, Ben, Yeah, Well, being from a
military background, it's somebody, yeah, yeah, multiple members of my family.
The reason we open this episode today with this question
is because our episode touches on the Vietnam War. It's
not really just about the war, it's about something different.
(02:30):
The Vietnam War is the last conflict in which Uncle
Sam conscripted actual civilians. So some of us listening to
the show today may have at some point been drafted,
sent to a country that you were radically unfamiliar with,
and told that you were playing a vital part, if
a small part, a vital part in a greater fight.
(02:54):
We our country intervened in the activities of foreign nations
to support a larger geo political war against communism.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, it was that one time we interfered with another
country's inner workings.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
At one time.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And the thing about modern war is that it drives
technological innovation. There's no two ways about it, and the
Vietnam War was no exception to this rule. During this conflict,
the US pioneered numerous pieces of technology that we now
see today in the civilian sphere. Some of these innovations
(03:30):
were entirely innocuous. They were medical breakthroughs, right, And some
were really far out things that even today sound like
crazy science fiction novel ideas far out, like Surfer far out, yeah,
even further, even further from sure.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah. And weather manipulation is one of those things.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Right, which we talked about, which was surprisingly a real thing.
I think that baffled all of us. There was another
innovation in this war which might surprise some people. It
was the widespread use of herbicide as a weapon, which
which is nuts. Right. Planes swept across the Mekong Delta
(04:09):
dropping weed killer instead of bombs.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Oh there were bombs too, There were also bombs, but
there was a lot of weed killer.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And this weed killer is known today by the name
agent Orange. In decades and decades after it was deployed
there in Southeast Asia, we as a species are still
trying to figure out exactly how it affected us. But
let's start with the facts here. They are. What is
agent orange?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Oh, man, I'm gonna butcher this pronunciation, but I'm gonna
try it is something called a defolian, A defoliant nailed. Yeah,
I guess it wasn't as hard as I made it
out to be.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Thanks for the ataboy, though, guys, I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So yeah, a plant killer, like you said, so, this
is a combination of various herbicides, but it was the
most famous used in the Vietnam War, when the US
dispersed it across entire areas of the country in order
to remove plant cover.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
You know those tree lines.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
They're always talking about Charlie's hiding in the tree line.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
And all that.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
You know. I remember hearing that movies. That's in movies.
They wanted to get rid of that.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I guess, so they had more visibility of the potential
awaiting enemies.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yea. And there are big problems with naval ships where
there would be tree lines right along the water and
combatants would hide there with various munitions, and this was
one of the reasons, one of the main reasons they
wanted to use Asian orange or any of the herbicides.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah. Yeah, good point met, because that's scene in Apocalypse
Now where the boat is going up the river. Yeah,
that kind of stuff really did happen. And you make
an excellent point about the other herbicides because we always
hear about agent orange. Agent orange was called this or
sometimes called orange too.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
That whole family.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, yeah, it had a whole family, a whole spectrum
of colors. It was called agent orange due to the
orange markings on the barrels it was shipped in. But
there were other colors too. There was Agent blue, denoted
by the blue markings. Still a herbicide, a little bit different,
But we can get into the chemistry of agent orangetty
pretty easily. We can do a high level. Look, we're
(06:23):
not chemist.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Do you guys know why they called the Vietcong Charlie.
I just looked this up to make sure I wasn't
accidentally being racist. Please tell us VC Victor Charlie Viet
comm Charlie.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
There you go, boom today innocuous AF.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
So that's really interesting. Had no idea. Oh no, that's great.
So let's get into what exactly this stuff is. Agent
orange is equal parts to chemicals, and these are both herbicides.
The first one you can just call it T four
dash D and that's T comma four dash D that's
dichlora finoxy acidic acid. And the second one is T
(07:04):
comma four comma fivesh T or T four five T
that's trichloro finoxy acidic acid. Now, so it's just two
of these orbicides equal parts mixed together you get agent orange.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And were these were these common beforehand?
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Yeah? These were pretty common in the United States. They
were used the separate chemicals, not agent orange itself, the
combination of them. But yeah, the separate chemicals were common
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And during the manufacture of what which one of these ingredients,
it's the T four five T okay, the trichloral yes, yeah,
so during the manufacture of that, another chemical is produced.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
Right, Yes, small amounts of something called TCDD. You're ready
for this, here's the last one.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
You got it?
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Two three seven eight tetrachloro divenzo dioxin. And it's also
referred to as.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Dioxin dioxin, and it's formed as a byproduct. It's considered
a contamination in its own way. It is an unwanted growth,
very similar to a weed.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
There you go, oh, a weed within the herbicide.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But what is it really? I'm so glad you asked.
It's crazy. So it's what. It's a kind of thing
called a persistent organic pollutant. There are multiple forms of dioxin.
When we say persistent organic pollutant, the key word there
is persistent. Once these things get into something, they tend
(08:40):
to stay. According to the EPA, dioxins are not made commercially,
nor are they sold in the US, at least they're
not supposed to be. There are several hundred different versions
of this substance we call dioxin, but they generally fall
under the same three chemical families. Oh no, it's my
turn now, is okay?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
All right?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Chlorinated die benzo p dioxians. There you go, chlorinated die
benzofurans or CDFs and some polychlorinated bifenels PCBs, which you
may have heard a long time ago on a previous episode.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Oh yeah, you've almost certainly heard of PCBs before. That's
one of those common chemical compounds. You actually hear PCBs, Like,
this is without PCBs. We stopped using.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Those, do health concerns, right exactly? A little bit of foreshadow?
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Is that the stuff that's an im thinking of BPA?
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, different, but only the crinkly ones.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, yeah, I remember peak behind the curtain, folks. I
remember a few years ago, Matt, you first told me
about BPAs. I was microwaving something in a plastic like
a plastic container, a TopWare kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Yeah, I mean it was one that you generally put
in a microwave.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
And then when I was convinced that I was going
to it, I was convinced it was all over for me.
It's like, here comes the cancer.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
I mean, we're all full of it already. There's nothing
you can do. We exist in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, we're riddled with it. In the nineteen seventies, we
didn't have the same awareness of what the consequences of
exposure to these sorts of chemicals could be and dioxin
in particular, which on its own looks like these little
white crystalline needles, is chemically speaking, a Samuel L. Jackson
(10:30):
level bad. I mean, we're a family show. What should
I say, guys?
Speaker 5 (10:35):
M Murpher Murpher nailed it.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yes, it's a bad Murpher it because the accent can
cause cancer, reproductive problems, developmental disorders. It can also wreak
just train wrecked levels of damage on hormones and the
immune system. Agent Orange was meant to be what's called
a rainbow defoliant, meaning that it didn't specifically target get
(11:00):
one type of plant. It targeted everything. Yes, and this
means that as a weapon of war, Agent Orange was
from the get go, from deployment, meant to do more
than I think the American public believed. We were told.
(11:21):
It was to increase visibility, as you said, Noel, and
to remove undergrowth in which the enemy forces could hide.
But it's behind the curtain use, which was sort of
an open secret that unfortunately a lot of voters did
not know at the time. It's behind the curtain use
was much more sinister. It was meant to destroy crops,
(11:44):
depriving enemy combatants and civilians of food, and a lot
of these people at that time, in the rural parts
of the country are subsistence farmers.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
It was a tactic to starve everybody out.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
And we started tracing the evolution of agent orange from
its orangein point Oh God, I'm so sorry to its deployment.
The US exhibited interest in this concept weaponized herbicides way
way before the Vietnam War. In nineteen forty three, the
(12:20):
Army contacted the University of Chicago and asked them for
some data on the potential of herbicides too. It is important.
This was their original question to the University of Chicago. Specifically,
they asked for data to prove whether or not herbicides
could destroy enemy crops. Yeah, that less sinister idea about
(12:42):
removing forest cover.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
That comes later, Yeah, I mean it is. It's interesting
how there was such a problem with forest cover during
the Vietnam conflict that it also made sense to use
this product that destroyed crops. And wonder if that was
just I was getting knuck. I was gonna say, happy
(13:04):
accident is not a happy accident. But they just happened
to coincide with what they needed. But that's really messed up,
So that's nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, and they continued. They moved pretty quickly on the concept.
They first tested the idea of weaponized herbicides in nineteen
forty four in Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
I have to say, this idea of herbicidal warfare is
fascinating to me and not something I would typically think
of as weaponized herbicides.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, it's strange, isn't it. And they tested at first,
they were just seeing what sort of poisonous stuff could
do the job, So they tested ammonium thiosinate, zinc chloride,
sodium nitrate, sodium rsenate, and sodium fluoride, which I we know,
fellow conspiracy realists will already make some people's years per cup.
(13:57):
But the tipping point doesn't her until nineteen forty five
during something called Project Sphinx.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
So Project Sphinx was conducted at Fort Knox.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That Fort Knox and the United States government investigated the
use of chemical agents in making vegetation more flammable.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
It seems like it would be flammable enough as it is, but.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Before a flame attack and agent orange and napalm. Napalm's
a scary one. Are the descendants of this particular research.
So the US continued to develop and test Agent orange
from forty six to fifty one domestically.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, and the first use of this crazy cocka made.
The idea of herbicidal warfare comes from Britain in the
nineteen fifties. They cleared areas of the jungle in Malaysia
of vegetation if they were close to roadways. They wanted
to prevent ambushes by well, they called them communist guerrillas.
(14:59):
Other people called them freedom fighters. And many of the
people there just saw themselves as locals.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Yeah, or your family and friends. Also, the Britain didn't
call that a war. No, it's kind of familiar for
you know, for a long time it was the Vietnam conflict.
Or I guess that's kind of changed the Vietnam conflict.
It's been the Vietnam War, but he was never declared
a war by Congress.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
True True Facts. In an internal memo from nineteen fifty two,
the agricultural giant Monsanto informed the US Army Chemical Corps
that the herbicide that you had mentioned earlier MATT two
four five T the try one, the try one, the
trichloral one, was contaminated with dioxin during the production process.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So nineteen fifty two they knew, they knew.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And accidental overheating of the reaction mixture caused this product,
this herbicide to condense into this dioxin. Dioxen, just for
a frame of difference, is one hundred and fifty thousand
times more toxic than arsenic, the poison arsenic, the very
famous poison arsenic. Jeez, yep, sorry.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I'm just making big googly eyes right now. You can't
hear because this is an audio show. But I just
that is an insane number to be more toxic than
the thing that we already know is being quite bloody toxic.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, more toxic than possibly the most famous poison in history.
The US began using herb besides in what nineteen sixty
one and something that was originally named Operation Hades but
got changed to a less sinister sounding.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Name, Operation ranch Hand.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Ah, that sounds like some good old corn fat operation.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
There, boys, I'm just a ranch hand, you know. I
get the horses all, you know, get them back around.
That's pretty much what I do take care of. Do
you hit them up? Hitch up horses to the post,
feeding bags you know.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Now, well that seems a lot more innocuous than Operation
Hell on Earth.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
And also drop a ton of stuff on the viet CONK.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Sorry, we're not gonna use it was a dramatic reenact,
but I think the soul of it is completely accurate.
Over twenty million gallons of these herbicides, these various agents
were sprayed across Vietnam but also across Cambodia and Laos,
and for most of the war, Operation Ranch Hand was
(17:31):
based at the Bingha Air Base, which I am surely mispronouncing.
Apologies to all Vietnamese speakers. They were using this airbase
because they wanted to mainly conduct spraying operations across the
Mekong Delta because, as we have mentioned earlier, patrol boats
were vulnerable to attacks from the undergrowth, and the primary
(17:54):
aircraft used for this were C one two threes. That'll
be important later because we'll have to ask ourselves what
happened to those planes?
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah one O. Their just little side note there is
that Asian orange was also common or these these agents
were common to be sprayed around military bases and outposts,
and you'll see images online if you search for it
of soldiers in these trucks that are just spraying. You
can see them just spraying these huge swaths of this.
(18:26):
It looks like it looks orange, but I think some
of them have maybe been doctored a little bit. But
it's just it's a chemical agent. They're spraying everywhere around
the bases.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Sure, just like you know, just like an exterminator or
someone applying pesticide with those little buckets and those spray nozzles,
you guys remember those.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, is not a much much much larger scale, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And so here we are with Vietnam and with the
use of this herbicide, not just on enemy vegetation, but
on vegetation, as you said, surrounding military bases post. But
as we mentioned before, agent Orange is not the only
crayon in the box. We'll tell you a little bit
(19:07):
more about the other agents in the field after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And we're back. So we got orange in one corner.
Let's talk about the rest of the group that we've
got here. The agent Orange, that name is just a
code name referring to the color of the band that's
around this giant fifty five gallon drum that contained the
chemical and when it was shipped over to Laos or
Vietnam or Cambodia wherever they were in these giant drums,
(19:39):
and they would sit somewhere and then until they get
loaded up onto whatever plane they're going to be on
or truck. And the other code names were Agent, white, blue, purple, pink,
and green.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Sounded more and more like reservoir dogs.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
That's exactly what it sounds like to me. Dude, does
anybody listening out there? Do you know if that was
a reference the reservoir dogs was actually a reference to
these agents, That would be fascinating to know, because it
sounds very similar. I don't know what we're missing here,
which color we're missing, But anyway, I left to ask Chuck.
He just did an episode with Broken Lizard about reservoir dogs.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, it's Chuck Charles W. Bryant from Stuff you Should Know,
who is also the host of movie Crush, where you
can hear our compatriot Noll popping in.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
That's right, I do do the occasional pop in.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Internet says no Ah, all right, Internet.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
No connect, thanks thanks a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
We'll have to text Quinton and ask him. So. From
nineteen sixty two to sixty five, they actually were not
using Agent orange, is that correct?
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Correct? They started out with purple, pink, and green. Here's
the deal, the problem. All three of these were contaminated
with what are they called tcdds or dioxin.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Right, and these were supply by Monsanto and the Dow
Chemical Company. And let's take a second to talk about
Agent purple. Okay, Agent purple was sprayed just indiscriminately across
the area. One point nine million leaders were sprayed between
that period we mentioned sixty two to sixty five. Unfortunately,
(21:22):
it was later determined that Agent Purple had the highest
concentration of dioxin in comparison to the other these other
mixtures pink and green.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Wow, so really this episode should be called Agent Purple. Well, no,
it's not true because Agent orange was sprayed a whole
lot more.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, that's the thing. From sixty five to seventy they
switched to Agent's orange, white and blue, and then in
what was it, nineteen seventy, they stopped using agent orange.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Yes, and we'll get into why they stopped using Agent
orange a little bit later on the show. But that's
that's around the time seventy to seventy one, all right.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Still, the facts are the facts, and the facts do
not have opinions. Chemicals contaminated with this substance dioxin were
used in the area from sixty two to nineteen seventy,
and they sprayed a bunch of it everywhere.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Right, Yeah, the estimates and these might have changed by now.
The research we got from this is several years old.
But the estimated amount of dioxin sprayed over Vietnam and
all of that time was around three hundred and sixty
eight pounds of it. Wow. Now, I know that sounds
like a kind of low number, three hundred and sixty
eight pounds overall if you're talking about these large land
(22:38):
masses and everything. But when you realize that agent orange,
the dioxin contamination within it was only zero point zero
five to fifty parts per million, that's pretty much the
range that you got in parts per million. And they
sprayed twenty million gallons. It's kind of crazy. Twenty million
(23:01):
gallons of herbicide. It doesn't necessarily mean agent orange.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I see what you're saying. It's important. But even if
we say, okay, it's not like they were spraying pure dioxin, right.
The point is that Overall, over four million soldiers had
some kind of contact with this substance, specifically with agent orange,
and this number is only for the US side. When
(23:27):
we were doing research on this, one thing that we
found to be strange was that a lot of the
emphasis on exposure to this only follow the US side.
They don't follow the millions of civilians who were affected
by this spray and were almost certainly not informed of
it before or after.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
When you think about if they're targeting crops and that
land that would eventually in the future be used to
plant crops again that now has this persistent chemical in
the soil, it's no good.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
And the government knew, at least the US knew. By
nineteen sixty three, the US Army and President Kennedy, the
Kennedy administration knew this stuff was capable of screwing up
humans just as much as plants. The Dow Chemical Company
wrote to the Secretary of Defense at the time and
assured him that's Robert McNamara assured him that two four
(24:22):
five T that's the trichloral one. That's the one, that's
the one was safe for use.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
So nice things.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Dal don't worry about this data.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
We assure you our government contract stands.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Everything is fine.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
And then in nineteen sixty seven, the Department of Defense
set up a contract with Kansas City based Midwest Research
Institute to dig a little deeper and give a comprehensive
analysis of extensive or repeated uses of herbicides.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Herbicides.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Is it a hard Ah, I go with herbicides.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, that's better. I'm not English, you know.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
Heubsibs, and phillots.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Here's what they found.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
And now will quote if I may, the possibility of
lethal toxicity to humans is highly unlikely and should not
be a matter of deep concern.
Speaker 4 (25:13):
Now that quote is there's some ellipses in there. Yeah,
but still that's the main point. Don't matter.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Hey, hey, it's cool.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
It's cool. Chill, And hence the cover up.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
There's always a cover up.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
The cover up begins nowadays. It's no secret that these
substances are harmful to human beings. People exposed to agent
orange or any of those other color coded agents will
have a higher risk of exhibiting the symptoms we had
mentioned earlier, some of the symptoms of exposure. But there
is something else in play. The cover up didn't stop
(25:51):
in the fifties while they were developing this and in
the seventies when they were deploying it. The cover up
continues some we'll say, because there's something else to agent orange,
something that could affect you, Yes, specifically you today if
you are descended from anyone who is exposed to herbicides
like agent orange in the past. Agent Orange, you see,
(26:13):
has left the legacy. Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
This substance doesn't just affect the people that actually got
exposed to it, whether it was in the field that
they used to grow crops or on the battlefield. It
affects their descendants as well. Well.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Okay, okay, okay, hard pause, Let's take a second to
think about just how insane that is. So that means
that if the four of us and if you listening,
were in Vietnam during this time, or you were exposed
to the substance somehow, we might not exhibit crazy symptoms,
(26:51):
but our kids and our grandkids very well could. Yeah,
which is insidious, you know. And in June and July
of nineteen sixty nine, Vietnamese newspapers began reporting on a
spike in birth defects. They specifically cited Sigon. Yeah, birth
(27:12):
defects in Saigon, and they blamed the deployment of Agent
Orange and the other members of the color coded poison pantheon.
Critics of the time say that Sigon couldn't have been
associated because Sigon was not directly sprayed.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yeah it's way over here.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, that is true. But they failed to consider the
flood of refugees that moved into the city after their
crops were destroyed.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, I can no longer live on this land. I
have to go somewhere else. Now you're in Saigon, a
big city, and now all of your descendants are coming
down with problems. Right, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah, the consequences of exposure to agent orange no ideological boundary.
Children of veterans in the Vietnam conflict on the US side,
that were you know, the veterans that we're exposed to
this stuff, their kids have a thirty percent higher chance
of birth defects. And we're not talking you know, we're
(28:10):
not talking like a weird mole or something. We're talking
about things like leukemia. Yeah, extra limbs, life threatening stuff, Yeah,
missing limbs. And for decades, the Department of Veterans Affairs,
which for anyone outside of the US, it's commonly called
the VA here. That is a government organization which is
(28:31):
charged with healthcare, psychological care, job assistance, or employment assistance,
I guess, for veterans after they return from a conflict.
And it's a pretty controversial place. There are a lot
of concerns here in the States about how its affairs
(28:53):
are handled, how it is helping or neglecting to help
veterans after they leave military surface.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
If you somehow have not seen them yet, you can
watch various episodes of The Daily Show and John Stewart
was helming it, or John Oliver's New Show on HBO
to really get into the nitty gritty of the VA issues.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Now, the VA has very high quality people working there,
many of whom are themselves veterans, right and they have
been collecting information from the veterans for years, even specific
questions about birth defects for decades. You can look at
a nineteen eighty two form from the VA where they
(29:35):
have a question that reads the following, is there evidence
of birth defects among veterans' children? The answers are one no,
two yes conceived after Vietnam service, three yes conceived before
Vietnam service.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Four.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yes, both before and after Vietnam service.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
They don't have any for a conceived while in Vietnam service.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
That is true. That gets you know again, and that
gets to the more myopic US centric focus of the
agent orange problem here in the US at least. So
in twenty sixteen, Pro Publica and a paper called The
Virginian Pilot obtained this information from the VA, and they
(30:17):
made the problem public. Originally, government studies concluded that while
veterans in the war did have a higher chance of
bearing children with birth defects, herbicide exposure was somehow not
the cause. Oh, like you said earlier in all, ah,
don't worry nothing, she is.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Yeah, here we go. Yeah. If something like that came
out as public, it would not be good for anybody involved,
except for the victims.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Rights and the VA responded to this twenty sixteen analysis.
They said it was quote interesting and quote a step
in the right direction. They added that the VA believes
the research to understand the relationship between exposure and intergenerational
transmission of disease, if conducted, should be done where scientists
with expertise in the relevant fields of inquiry can provide leadership.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
I'm sorry I fell asleep during that. What was the huh?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
It means they said, we don't have a department that
is capable of studying this.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
Oh, well, isn't that convenient?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
They did say they would play a supporting role in
further investigation.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
They did. Now we need to take one more quick
break from our sponsor. But when we get back, we're
going to talk about the full legacy of dioxin and
agent orange.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
And we're back. It's still twenty eighteen, which means it
has been almost fifty years since the weaponized herbicides were
sprayed across this region. In those intervening years, veterans reported
some of the defects that we have mentioned earlier, missing limbs,
extra limbs, as you said, no life threatening conditions like leukemia,
(32:05):
and they furthermore said that these conditions did not occur
in their family before. You know, some some diseases or
conditions can run in certain families, not the case with
this stuff. And given our species new understanding of epigenetics,
the fascinating, somewhat disturbing realm.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Of stuff, fairly new field, fairly.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
New field too. What is epigenetics, Well, it's the idea that.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Again I think we covered this before and didn't we
decide that it was there. There are several studies out
there about it, but it's not a conclusive thing yet.
But what we do have this understanding that when let's
say a mother goes through trauma at some point in
her life and then gives birth to a baby, that
(32:57):
trauma can somehow affect the way genes are expressed in
the baby. That's the idea, right right.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It affects what genetic expressions manifest, which genes are switched
on or off. And we saw some studies about the
descendants of people who were starved during World War Two.
That's what it was, yeah, And how that and it
has a measurable effect. There is a compelling case, I
(33:26):
want to be careful here that it has a measurable
and significant effect on descendants. It appears that agent orange
may also be functioning under the same rules. The survivors
of the war can trace dioxin exposure to birth effects
in later generations. Again, this is sort of controversial. There
(33:48):
are researchers on the other side of the argument saying
that this is overblown, or even saying that it is
a cynical attempt to grab some cash on the part
of relatives of veterans or veterans themselves. Really, those are statements, Yeah,
those are statements that people are making. I mean, I
(34:12):
personally don't agree. That seems like a very roundabout way
to try to get federal money.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Yeah. I think the position of defensive has kind of
just been the standard for anyone involved with the manufacturer
or deployment these things.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And Vietnam veterans and their families attempted several times to
take this issue to court, but the case is eventually
lost momentum.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
It's like a class action lawsuit at one point.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And arguably the research has yet
to bear a definitive link, but critics of those findings
think that there's something else to play. A brutal calculation,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
The va already spends billions of dollars on veterans, so
should it also pay for the medical needs of kids
bearing the scars of this war?
Speaker 4 (35:05):
That's the question they're asking.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
I suppose Mike Ryan, who's a Vietnam vet whose grandchildren
suffer from the effects of this exposure.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
He believes that the.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Government will never admit the relationship between Asian orange and
these birth the effects because quote, if they do, then
America is admitting to drafting the unborn.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
That is I think the most powerful line in there.
And it's true. I mean, you can accuse the guy
of waxing poetic if you want, but it is accurate.
If these people who have no role in a war
that occurred before they were born, are suffering the consequences
(35:44):
of this right on both sides, both sides of the Pacific,
then aren't they How are they not being drafted? Yeah,
and there is, of course, of course, there's a very
strong argument to make that people just didn't know what
would happen. But it's pretty compelling evidence that multiple researchers
(36:12):
knew this stuff was dangerous. Even if they did not
know how it could affect descendants of people exposed, they
did know that it had deletorious effects on people who
were directly exposed, and dioxin affected the US in other
ways as well. In nineteen eighty five, there was a
small town called Times Beach, Missouri. The roads were sprayed
(36:33):
with hexachlorophine that contained dioxin, and the town was disincorporated
because of the extremely dangerous amounts of dioxin that they
were exposed to. This stuff makes people obliterate towns. There's
no Times Beach, Missouri anymore. There's Route sixty six State
(36:53):
Park where it used to be. So by the way,
folks watch where you picnic.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Yeah, please don't eat any stres rawberries, even if they
look delicious and wild and you're like, oh man, those awesome.
I got to get some strawberries. Don't do it. Just
don't do it. I don't know if strawberries grow out there.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Well, it's a good idea just to donate anything out
there if you find it growing. And now, as we
as we conclude this episode, we unfortunately don't have a
happy ending. We have to quote the VA steps in
the right direction. Yeah, but we still don't know what
is going to happen to people who are exhibiting symptoms
(37:37):
based on their parents' exposure to these substances. And the
government here in the States continually says there will be
a serious investigation of the phenomenon, and a lot of
scientists are working ardently on investigating it. But veterans in
their families feel there's little real progress toward admitting and
addressing the effects of this herbicide. And you can't really
(38:00):
blame them.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Yeah, I'm having such a hard time with this one.
You guys, let me she if I can work something
out here in my head while we just discuss it.
I want to hear your thoughts. So it is so horrifying,
I think, I mean, horrifying just encapsulates everything about this.
But the thought that a country outside of an internal conflict,
(38:27):
which you know, the the Vietnam War, which was fought
between South Vietnam and North Vietnam over ideological differences, was
kind of their own battle. It was a battle that
was being fought way way over there. If you're sitting
in the continuous United States, and we intervened, and in
(38:49):
doing so, we caused horrors to generations to come for
people in South and North Vietnam. It's it's almost I'm
trying to imagine what it would be like. I'm making
some connection between France coming to the aid of the
United States during the Revolutionary War in some ways, but
(39:12):
if France had come over and like sprayed chemicals all
across different fronts and then for generations, even though we
have in America now, it's just got it's just got
birth effects all across it. I don't know. I don't
know if there's any connection there. I'm just it's just
it's horrifying to me.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, it's a good point. Would what would a similar
comparison be, I don't know, And let us know if
there's a real life analog that you can recall, folks. Additionally,
it's important for us to say that it's incorrect and
it's missing the point to vilify people who were in
(39:54):
the service at this time because these people, well, these
military members were out there risking their lives right for
their country for a greater good, and they were often
just as exposed to the substance, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (40:14):
Oh, if not more, having to load the stuff and
then get nozzles ready and get it in the planes.
And the people who are on the planes actually doing
the spraying are not the people who are going to understand,
you know, exactly what the health effects are of the substance.
It's just not how it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
And one more thing, those planes that we mentioned, the
C one two threes were destroyed shortly afterward, Oh to
remove the Well, people who think there was a cover
up would say they were destroyed to remove the evidence
of the event, but you can't remove it from people's
genetic expression, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Yeah, that's the you know the other thing, these see
one threes or whatever they are. If they had the
agent orange just all over it and inside of it
and going through the systems of the plane, would you
have to destroy it to not expose anybody else who's
going to be on that plane to dioxon? Because it
(41:14):
seems like it's the stuff is so persistent. It might
just be within that structure. I don't know the decay
factor or anything.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Oh yeah, okay, So maybe it's not a cover up.
Maybe it's just a health risk. Perhaps maybe it's both.
It's like asbestos planes. Asbestos planes. Yes, and now our
story turns to you. Thank you so much for listening.
Do you have personal experience with agent orange? Do you
have a relative who was exposed whether or not in
(41:43):
the Vietnam War? Let us know, and most importantly, let
us know if you think there is any sand to
this idea. Is there a cover up on the effects
of agent orange? Is it somehow a cynical grap for money?
We want to hear your stories. You can find Noel, Matt,
Paul and I all over the internet. Yeah, weren Here's
(42:03):
where it gets crazy on Facebook, right.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
That's our Facebook group that you have to answer a
question to join, and you better get it right or
else you're not coming in.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
I screenshot at a couple of really good ones.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Hang on and while while Noel is pulling those up.
Also right to us. If you are a veteran or
a member of the VA and you have experience with
that with the VA, or maybe you work for them,
and you want to just give us some insider information
about like what is actually going on with regards to
Agent orange or maybe depleted uranium another thing we've talked
(42:36):
about before. Yeah, just right in. We'd love to hear
your story.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
So spoiler alert the question and joined the Facebook group
pretty easy.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Who are the hosts of the podcast? Stuff that I
want you to know?
Speaker 3 (42:46):
And typically we get you know, one of us, or
three of us, or a couple of us, or usually
my name is spelled wrong or Ben's last name is
butchered in some way. Josh and Ben. I've seen Josh
and Ben. That's a popular version of this show in
bizarro world. But this is this is this guy, says
Irwin D says uh Hurricane, Matthew, Dollar, Dollar, Bill, Benjamin
(43:07):
and Evolved.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Super ruler of producers Noel, Wow did that make your day?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Yeah? It was pretty nice.
Speaker 5 (43:14):
Guys like Pokemon rules like evolved.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Have you retained your final four?
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Got? I hope not? Well?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Thanks so much, man it thanks for screeched that. I
didn't see that.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
One another one, said Matt and some other guys.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
All right, that's why we were walking around smug yesterday. We,
of course, are ourselves big fans of Here's where it
gets crazy. It's where we can hear from what we
consider the most important part of the show. You and
We've we've seen some fantastic suggestions for episodes. Received a
(43:54):
message recently that I thought the three of us would
find interesting for another episode, which was memory technology. Remember
that Black Mirror episode with the grains that can replay
your memories? Yeah, so what if we do an episode
where we explore whether or not something like that could
actually happen?
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Okay, I mean.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I feel like every episode of Black Mirror has a
wealth of potential topics.
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Big time.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
What was that one that broke everybody's heart?
Speaker 4 (44:25):
San Jiniparo?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Oh man, yeah, no spoilers, just watch that one beautiful.
I watched it with my mom.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
Oh dude, are you telling me that?
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah, well, did.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
You know what it was before you watch it with her?
I'd seen it before.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Okay, well check it out if you haven't yet. This
one we actually will not spoil. I think the story
is strong enough that you should experience it for yourself.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Shouldn't spoil any Black Mirror Superior show, I would say,
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 st d WYTK.
(45:07):
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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