February 13, 2025 • 63 mins
Colby Jack Cheese continues the conversation about chimeras. Ward invites the gang to a Bigfoot Festival. Mike gives a first-hand account of fighting fires out west. Plebe prompts a conversation about telepathic communication -- all this and more in this week's listener mail segment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is not They.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super
producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. If you are listening to our
listener mail program the evening it comes out, Welcome to
February thirteenth. No worries. It's a Thursday, not a Friday,
(00:51):
as the calendar reckons. We have so much stuff to
get to. We're going to We're going to folks, to
be honest. We learned about some crazy new plans of yesteryear.
We got a magnificent first hand account from a firefighter
or exotic landscaper as he prefers to be called.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I shouldn't laughed. So much heavy stuff going on with firefighting,
but it's good to have a little gallows humor, I
guess around it.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
That's a good one. Oh my gosh. Telepathy tapes mushrooms, bigfoot,
stefan voice. This has everything. We also got a lot
of great responses to our conversation that we keep returning to.
And I hope it's not me putting my own fascinations
(01:38):
onto the group or projecting, but man, these chime erase
the future of organs, especially as things get riddled with
micro and nanoplastics.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
And personhood, which came up on our last Strange News episode.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Strange News, Yeah, and that program we teased the mountain
that became a man light. I didn't use because it's
kind of gendered, but we talked about the tree and Athens.
We've talked extensively about something that fascinates us all, which
is the argument of the ship of thesis. And it
turns out, fellow conspiracy realists, the five of us you
(02:19):
listening along at home and try Force and Matt and
Nolan myself are not the only people who are endlessly
fascinated and maybe a little freaked out by the future
of personhood.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Let's jump to a tiny ad break and then we'll
come back and get right into that conversation, and we
return with a message from Colby Jack Cheese. Here again,
Colby Jack says, and as always, you can use read
this on the show if you want. With that being said,
(02:53):
let's get to it. Listening to your most current listener
mail as at the time of writing, episode where you
talk about the eth of growing human organs in pig bags,
which sounds like the name of an industrial band, and
a question struck me like a kick from a horse.
What if someone was in total body paralysis and you
were given the choice to, through the power of imagination
(03:15):
for now to transfer their mind to pig host so
a new body can be grown. Is that pig a
person now a human despite all the wet wear being
distinctly different from a human. Does it obtain personhood or
are they now lower on the food chain of humanity.
(03:36):
I'll stop here to keep myself from rambling, but I
will leave you with this. How do you measure personhood?
Is it by intelligence? We have a hard time measuring
that as far as I'm aware. Or could it be language?
If your dog slash cat slash fox slash fourth dimensional
fluffy friend could speak to you in perfect English, could
it be considered a person despite being a clear non human.
(03:58):
Love the show and all the interesting questions that keep
me distracted from the bar fight going on today in society.
Much love to you from me kolby Jack Cheese. You know,
it's this makes me think of I don't know. There's
a lot of depictions in like comic books, for example,
of like sentient animals. There's that what has that one been?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
We three?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Is that one?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's it's it's short and beautiful and sad and brutal
and speaks to a lot of this kind of stuff. Yeah,
oh oh, I know you did. You're one for the
year whatever year that happened to have been. It is
a story of super charged animals that are given the
ability to more or less communicate in kind of weird
(04:43):
broken English, and they're also designed to be murder machines
for the government. They escape from the facility in which
they are being essentially tortured and converted into these things
they're not meant to be, and then they are pursued
by something horrific. Let's put it that way. It's like
Homeward Bound on speed and psychedelics.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Cyberpunk, Homeward Bounce.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
It's wonderful, but it speaks to wouldn't you say, guys
that it speaks to a lot of these questions of like,
you know, we're hearing stories now coming out about technology
that could potentially one day allow us to communicate with
our pets. Given that technology and the ability for animals
to speak in something that is intelligible on a human
language level, does that change the way we think about them?
(05:33):
And it also comes back to this idea of what's
the term that the peda guy mentioned to us, The
idea that certain animals are treated as lower than others,
you know, less worthy of our care and love and respect,
and more able to be seen as you know, good
eats rather than companions. What's that term, guys, do you
(05:54):
remember speciism? That's the one. It's this idea that there
are certain animals, like, I mean, rabbits are an interesting
one that kind of fall on that line, because yeah,
we people eat rabbits, and people also have rabbits for pets.
In the United States eating dogs, it would be considered
more or less barbaric with our countries where that's acceptable
as well. It does straddle the line of personhood. But
(06:19):
I think that Colby Jack really does bring up some
interesting questions. But this idea of if a human consciousness
were transferred to a quote unquote lower life form. Does
that change the nature of the lower life form? And
if again, we were able to communicate with lower what
we see as lower life forms, does that elevate there?
(06:42):
I guess deservingness of personhood.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I throw it to the room. Guys, Matt, you're throwing
it as well.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I don't know. I keep thinking about these videos I've
seen of Teddy the Talking porky. I don't know if
you hear.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
What I don't know about this? Okay, you see like
a mood Dang esque figure. How have I missed Teddy
the Talking Porcupine?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, I see their older videos and who knows, like
when they were originally posted, I haven't done the digging,
but they show up nowadays as though they just happened.
But I think they go all the way back to
twenty thirteen, twenty fifteen, things like that. But it's just
a porcupine that loves shounddown on food, and while it's
chound down on food, it's going and it just seems
(07:33):
so human in the way that it seems to want
to communicate things to the people that take care of it.
And I just imagine just that idea of any animal
that can speak, right, we get those things like a
lot of the birds, especially that can speak, can vocalize
and appear to respond, not just in a mocking way
(07:57):
SIMI yes, yeah, and appear to say things, to get things.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And to understand the nuances of language, abstract thought, object, permanence,
things like that. Shout out to our COVID bros in
the crowd. What's really fascinating about this, too is the
Colby You're you're taking the next step in thought experiment
(08:22):
I had raised and I think it was our Strange
News segment or something like something to that effect, which
was the idea of brain transference.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
What was that Faustian bargain we pitched or that devil's
that devil's deal we pitched wherein someone could save your
brain or the program of your brain, but they could
only put it in a pig. Is that pig now human? Yeah?
These are These are the logical questions that we will
have to ask. Please, please, please, if you have not
(08:54):
yet done so, do us a favor, do yourself a
favor and check out our previous episode on the concept
of legal personhood, which is really a mixed bag of
badgers around the world. Depending on where you go. We
talked about oh, you know what it was. It started recently.
It restarted recently when we spoke about the elephants in
(09:16):
Colorado who had recently lost their bid to get out
of that zoo there in Colorado. This will only become
more complex as a human understanding of what we call
consciousness and intelligence continues to acquire sophistication and nuance. I
(09:37):
love what you're bringing up there, Matt, which is the idea,
the big question, the eternal question for the human is
are you really seeing something akin to you in some
respect or are you anthropomorphizing which is just the fancy
pants way of saying, are you projecting what you would
imagine human like traits to be on a non human
(10:00):
an animal? And I got to say it, you guys,
I am such a sucker for those videos that I
usually in my head call they're just like us videos.
You know. I love it when, especially really expressive domestic
animals like huskies. Huskies get it, dude, Huskies get it,
and they're sassy and they have an attitude and they
(10:23):
sometimes they you know, we've all seen the clips. I hope,
so I don't sound crazy where someone asked their husky
a question, and the husky's.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Like no, never, yeah, yeah, they say, hey, it's you
can And that's just because, you know, as we talked
about in Ridiculous History recent series on the domestication of
these amazing creatures, the dogs, the.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Canines, that's because they evolved to communicate more efficiently with
humans than many other animals. But just because they've evolved
to communicate with humans more efficiently or in a way
that's more understandable to humans, doesn't mean that other animals
are any less intelligent. They feel paid, they love laws.
(11:09):
If you prick them, do they not bleed to rip off?
Billy Shakes? Who is old? Shake your spear? That's Shakespeare.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
This article from Axios from late last year using AI
to talk to animals, I think is super interesting. Researchers
are building an AI system that they will hope will
one day allow humans to understand the many languages that
animals use to communicate with one another.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
A couple of things.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
What they're saying here, we are facing a biodiversity crisis.
Earth Species Project CEO Katie Zakarian said during a demo
of Nature LM at a recent Axios AI plus some
in San Francisco. She said, the situation we are in
today is driven from a disconnection with the rest of nature.
We believe that AI is leading us to this inevitability
that we will decode animal communication and come back into
(11:57):
connection between the law. This is what actually has had
to say about this sort of.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Summing it up.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Translation in the broadest sense is something that generative AI
has proven to be quite good at. Sometimes that's translating
from one human language to another, but the technology is
also adept at transforming text from one genre to another.
And added wrinkle with translating animal languages is that instead
of moving between two known languages, we have a limited
understanding of how animals communicate and what they are capable
(12:23):
of conveying through speech. Researchers know, for example, that birds
make different sounds to your point bent when they are
singing songs as compared to sounding a warning call. They
also have determined that many species have individual names for
one another, and some, like prairie dogs, have a system
of nouns and adjectives to describe predators. Earth Species Project
(12:44):
is one of many endeavors looking to tap AI to
address planetary concerns. I think that's an interesting spin on it,
the idea of like closing the gap I guess between
various aspects of the natural world. But I do think
it's also interesting how they point out that just because
you can translate it doesn't necessarily mean that you're like
(13:07):
having a conversation, so I think. But again, it's also
hard to kind of parse where we do draw the
line for personhood and how like kind of selfishly human
centric that concept even is.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, it sounds amazing. It makes me imagine a time
when any animal could communicate with some device, right that's
around the animal, uh, and you just you hear it
in your head or your headphones or wherever you are,
almost like an esp kind of thing, right.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Well, you know, And also that's something that's a feature,
real feature of that comic they we're talking about, the
way the animals communicate is this kind of broken English
that implies a sort of real time translation of something
more very specific to the species that is just kind
of meant to be interpreted, you know, by human ears.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
And to that point we are getting now Kolbe, we're
bringing it back to the earlier philosophical quandaries as well.
But to that point, that we just made. If you
are a lover of dogs you may already know this,
or a lover of certain other animal species, you will
(14:26):
see that there are devices out there that purport to
do something close to this kind of communication. I'm thinking
specifically about the button boards. Put a couple of links
in our chat here. The button boards. You see it
mostly in dog videos, and I'm smiling because gosh, I
(14:46):
love animals, even the human ones. There's a there's a
series of science doesn't consider until legit, but there are
a series of these buttons pads like the old school
Nintendo running track pad.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You skinner box situation, like some of the old school
pigeon talk, like the talking chicken. Like hitting the buttons
and making communication sounds kind.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Of similar, a little a little more nuanced because each
button has, you know, a command and a specific consistent
location such that if you if your doggo buddy is
smart enough, they can try to communicate with you so
instead of barking. This doesn't apply to huskies because they
(15:33):
can basically speak. But if you're you know, say you
have a really smart dog like an Australian shepherd or
a collie or a poodle, then the idea is that
once they learn this location series of buttons, and they
learn which reaction it insights in their human pal then
they will go up and instead of barking at you,
(15:54):
they'll just they'll get your attention and they'll hit the
button that says walk, or they'll hit the button that
says treat you know, or maybe you have the name
of their favorite toy. Obviously, science agrees they're not reading
these things because we don't know any literate dogs just yet.
But they know the location and they know the reaction.
So this goes. This goes to show that we're getting
(16:17):
closer and closer as a civilization to something like bridging
the linguistic and cognitive gap. And I think that's amazing
And to your point, Noel, yes, there are animals that
are not canids that seem to be able to do
the same thing. The question is how do we frame it?
What's our perspective? Right? Does the crow understand what it's
(16:41):
saying when it says all right, then mate, I'm referring
to a specific specifically.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
One with the one with the monocle on the top hat.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, I know that Crowlutely, I'm not
trying to be like mega mega like puritanically tree huggery
about this, But I do think it's worth talking about
just this idea of personhood and how you know, human centric.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
It is, and I know that we all benefit from.
Again I'm going to sound like I'm being like a
total hippier, but the enslavement of animals. But there is
a certain philosophical thing to kind of contend with about
this notion of what personhood is, especially as things like
AI start to get more and more intense and more
(17:27):
and more human like. I just think it's something that
we kind of need to address.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Well, is the human mind itself not already a large
language model we're talking about being anthrocentric, right exactly. Methrocentrism
is a huge bag of badgers. It's a difficult thing
to quarrel with and really get a human mind around
or outside of. You could ask the same question, you know,
(17:55):
let's just flip the script for a second. We don't
have to go too deep into this unless want to
do an episode on it. But let's think about it
this way. What if evolution went just a little bit differently.
What if somebody got to the superpowers first, right, the
way that humans reproduce, and they the way their brains work,
(18:17):
and of course one of the greatest features of the
human the thumb. Sorry everybody beat into that. When what
if those things happen or something like that to another
species and the primates ended up as a result not
attaining Homo sapien hood, right, or not even not reaching
(18:37):
past maybe habilis or something like that. What would those
new creatures dominating the earth. What would the descendants of,
say the elephant or the corvid or God forgive us
the octopus? What would they think about humans? Would they
have the same viral videos of us like trying to
wave four fingers like octopy arms and going oh my god,
(19:02):
well like us? Well yeah, well that too.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
But also like what if a quote unquote higher species,
higher intelligence, higher life form were to enter the chat
and then we began to be subjugated and treated the
way we treat quote unquote lower life forms, Like it's
just I don't know, I can't help.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
We have buttons, and we can press the button and
shock callers, right, and you know they don't make buttons
that say who am I Dad?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Mom?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Where pack? You know, like what is meadow? Who is meadow.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yes, yeah, I love that point. But because there are
there are no uh self awareness buttons. There are there's
no button for existential crisis, but there are buttons for
specific people because we know that animals can have favorites.
So there's I I've seen, I want to say, a
couple of videos where some influencer whose animal appeared to
(20:07):
prefer her partner more and she's trying to get the
dog to do something and it just keeps hitting the
button that says dad, and then it starts barking at her,
but again to the chicken scratch or the counting horse idea.
Another inescapable part of this communication paraphernalia or attempt at
communication technology is that animals, dogs especially but all non
(20:31):
human animals, are very good at picking up unconscious human cues. Right,
So are we just friming the response we want to
see and then telling ourselves something different is happening. It's
quite a pickle. And the real answer, I would posit
Colby and thank you for the excellent email. The real
(20:53):
answer that we're getting at here is simply this, the
human animal does not understand the concept of the human.
Animals still can't grasp the concept that other human animals
are indeed people, and that's where the problem begins.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
That's a pickle, my man. That's very well put and
something to put in our collective pipes and smoke for
lack of a better term. I don't know, Mad, you've
got anything else to have before we move on.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I think I know what people is.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
You, guys. I had this other incredible email from a listener,
like almost like telling this story about a.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Fictional chimeric Oregon farm.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
But I think we're running a little long on this
segment that has created so much incredible conversation, so I
think I'm gonna save this one for next week. That's
okay with you, guys, Yes, sir, Let's take a quick
break here worth from our sponsor, and then we'll return
with more messages from you.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And we've returned, we are jumping to the phone lines
to hear a message from Fleeve and I think this
is a really interesting way to bridge the gap between
our discussion before the break and into an even deeper
thing within our own minds potentially, So let's hear this
message from pleep Hey fellas.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
Play in the Northwest here. I was just curious if
you guys have come across this crazy ass podcast called
the Telepathy Tape. It's based on nonverbal or barely verbal
autistic children that are communicating with their parents or caregivers
or teachers heelopathically, and they also communicate with each other
(22:43):
on this place called the hill at night when they
dream teleopathically. And there's like a huge number of these
people that are all communicating to each other in this
ethereal space. I really want you guys to look into it.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Let me know what you think.
Speaker 7 (22:59):
It's very crazy. It makes you think about Like they
talk about an autistic child that can read, and they're like,
where did you learn to read Hebrew? And the person
says from the priests, and they're like what other languages
can be learned? And they're like, I mean they type
hiro and they're like, like hieroglyphics and they're like yes,
(23:20):
So they show her some hieroglyphics and they read the
hieroglyphics like absolutely bananas. Just to be opened up to
this constant step because we already know about the I
just set that like CIA document with the astral projection
in the Mars viewing. It's like a legit document. It's great.
I mean, all right, it's crazy. And then you have
(23:41):
that in combination with.
Speaker 8 (23:42):
Bolth floor remote viewing trials, and then you have these
people that are learning to communicate nonverbally because the human
desire and condition like requires us to communicate.
Speaker 7 (23:53):
It's just fascinating. So look into the tape. Let everybody
know about it. Let me know what you think, how
ple've been in it? All right?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Whoa please? My goodness. That's a lot, a lot to
take in. And just to put this message out there,
we are not sponsored by the Telepathy tapes. We're not
connected to the Telepathy tapes. That is another podcast. We
are going to talk about it now. Initial thoughts upon hearing.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
This, initial thoughts, Yeah, please, thank you so much for
reaching out. The podcasting question garnered a lot of attention,
and it garnered quite a bit of controversy. I haven't
listened to all of the podcasts. I have listened to
a few episodes, and I have to be honest, just ethically,
(24:45):
I'm required to say this. There are there are very
different interpretations of what's going on here, similar to as
you said, Matt, the concept of communication cross species, and
I'm not saying that autistic people are not human at all,
or anybody on the spectrum is not. But I do
(25:07):
think the evidence is clear that this is a form
of projection and not astral projection. And my argument here, unfortunately,
would be that every everything that I have encountered, not
as an expert, here shows me that this could be
dangerous to the treatment of people who do need special care.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Interesting. Okay, well, let's let's listen to a bit of
the trailer for this podcast that is available on YouTube.
You can watch right now. Let's just watch a tiny
bit together, just we get a sense of what the
show says.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
It is joining us today to shed some light.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Doctor Diane Powell.
Speaker 8 (25:50):
I'm working with children who have been reported by a
parent to be able to read their mind. The data
was so compelling and actual that I had to follow it,
even though I knew I was missing my scientific reputation.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
So we'll just put that there, right, This concept that
there is a doctor who is interested enough in this stuff,
in receiving you know, specific messages from parents or caregivers
who have children on the autism spectrum, you know, reporting
self reporting these things. There's now a neuroscientist, doctor Diane Powell,
(26:26):
who's looking into that. That's what the show is about.
If you go to the website, guys, you can see
that they've got that. It's Thetelepathy Tapes dot Com. They
have a section that they call the test Library, and
in this test library you can see individual videos that
(26:50):
appear to be individual examinations like a one off test
basically that is run that appear to test potential telepathy
of some sort or brain connection of some sort that
would be abnormal or would appear to you know, not
be the way that human beings communicate and function generally,
(27:13):
the way we observe. If you click on any of
these individual tapes, it shows that you have to join
the organization or you have to become a member of
some sort and pay some money in order to see
these individual things. That makes sense, right if you're attempting
to monetize something like a podcast, like a website, like
(27:34):
you know, further studies. But unfortunately, at least from this end,
feels a bit weird because I would love to gain
access to those raw tapes, just as somebody who's interested
in the topic, to at least test for my own
brain whether or not I believe these individuals to have
these sorts of things right, or to be able to
(27:56):
communicate in these ways, it does feel a little weird.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, I hear you. And that doesn't necessarily, to be clear, folks,
that doesn't necessarily mean that it is somehow functioning with
bad intentions, right. And from what I understand Matt and
Plabe and null Entry Force, what I understand is that
(28:24):
proponents of the telepathy tapes have themselves criticized the critics
and said, hey, you're being ablest because these people are
not communicating in the methods that you or via the
methods that you feel comfortable calling communication. However, again, there
are just trying to be very fair. It seems like
(28:47):
there's some serious issues with some of the methodology of
the test, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Oh yeah. There is one specific test you can view
in the trailer the test itself, the tape. You can
view it on their website. It is titled UNO or
UNO one Houston, and it is a test where there
is there is someone who is being tested for telepathic
abilities sitting at a table, their caregiver is sat next
(29:19):
to them, and doctor Dian Powell is behind them, and
she is showing the camera which is positioned across from
the table UNO cards, so shuffling a deck then showing
an UNO card to the camera. Then the person with
supposed telepathic abilities is pointing to a separate object that
(29:40):
has one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy nine ten
on it, and then it also has like plus and
minus on it, So this person can point to plus
two and that would represent the draw to card that
you might be familiar with in an UNO deck. As
you're watching this tape, specifically, in the trailer, I haven't
seen the whole thing. It appears to show the test
(30:02):
subject looking directly at the camera as the next UNOCRD
is drawn, And in my mind, because of the way
that test is set up, you cannot rule out the
possibility that the test subject can see a reflection in
the lens or in a part of the camera body,
or in you know, something that is slightly reflective there
(30:25):
the card that is behind him, and you would have
to rule that kind of thing out. If you're going
to redo that test over and over and over again,
you'd have to change the variables enough and test it
and test it and test it to really show that
that person has the abilities that they're purporting, right, And
again I don't I haven't listened to the entire show.
I haven't watched this whole thing. But you would have
(30:46):
to repeat these tests enough to at least convince me
or you know any scientific body that that single individual
shows those capabilities.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
That single individual, Yeah, because they're not they're not to be.
Or again, there's no argument that this is something for
everyone who is nonverbal on the autism spectrum.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh no, not at all. Again, these are self reported
cases where the caregiver reaches out right and says, hey,
I've found this to be true. You also can't discount
those individual reactions from a caregiver or findings of a caregiver.
So in my mind, it is just a fascinating subject,
fascinating concept for a podcast and a show, and I
(31:29):
can't wait to dig into a deeper So thank you,
plead for reaching out to us and sending us this.
I would say, I reached out to my ex wife,
who has a lot of experience in this field with
children on the autism spectrum at the Marcus Institute here
in Atlanta, and she was fascinated by it. And hopefully
(31:51):
we're going to have a further discussion about it, because
it is one of those things that when you work
with especially a child who is nonverbal, the incredible communication
that occurs that is not through speaking, and that can
be developed and honed. It's it's it's mind boggling because
(32:12):
it's just a different way of communicating.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, and I love that you're pointing that out. Matt.
Three quick things here. First, Yes, we know that the majority,
especially when you're in person, the majority of human communication
is in fact nonverbal. It's something like sixty percent mix. Secondly,
we do know to be absolutely clear that in certain
(32:38):
cases there are people who are diagnosed on the autism
spectrum who do exhibit abilities that the majority of humanity
would consider extraordinary or superhuman. I'm thinking of, for example,
just for an example of an ability, uh, Stephen Wiltshire,
(32:59):
who is one of this phenomenal painter with an artist
with edetic memory. He's the guy you probably read about.
We discussed him in real life Superpower series, who can
fly in a helicopter over a city and then over
a period of days he can reproduce a massive, accurate
(33:20):
portrait really of an entire city. And he's done this
around the world.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
It is just like sort of a kin to photographic
memory type situations, or are people that can, like, you know,
read a book once and then tell you exactly what
page and passage you know, in paragraph a particular phrase
appears on.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, photographic memory is like Vinn diagram with a detic memory.
I was talking about this in an email with Big Chucks.
I think photog I don't want to get to too
far away from the subject, but it's next one question.
Photographic memory is the way it's depicted often in fiction
and film. Science is still really the science is still
(33:56):
really hotly contested over whether or not that actually exists.
And then edetic memory largely exists in children under twelve,
in about two to fifteen percent of children under twelve.
And what we're talking about here in this exploration is
really the mystery of communication and the fact that often
(34:17):
there is a certain dogmatic approach to science in Ivory
Towers that is simply true. There's this hierarchy of questions
that seem to be allowed or disallowed, and so sometimes
if you stray too far from what is considered quote
unquote legitimate scientific inquiry, then people may be dismissed out
(34:42):
of hand. This is something our associate Russell Tard dealt
with when he was looking into his research. Now to
exercise humanity here too. I think this is one of
the key things. We can't automatically be dismissive. And I'm
not hoping I don't come off dismissive when you asked
(35:04):
that first question, Matt. The reason that I and other
people argue this could be potentially dangerous to people children
on parts of the autism spectrum is because the argument
has never been that this is all kids, right. The
argument has been some kids, as you said, Matt self reported.
(35:27):
So if there is, for instance, a caregiver who is
trying to force these kind of techniques or things on
the kid, then it could be quite distressing, even with
the best of intentions. So it's something we need to
be very careful about. And again, you know, I hope
I don't sound like militant on this. I'm sort of
holding this up and feeling all sides of it. Does
(35:48):
that make sense? Oh, yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
I think you're doing a fine drub well.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I think the desire may also rise out of hope
and desperation, right, hope that you will one day be
able to communicate with your child the way you see
other parents communicating with their children. You hope for that
so and you desire that so deeply that the possibility
(36:14):
that you could potentially communicate with them in this other
way drives you so strong that you may allow yourself
to see or believe or feel things that may not
be fully true simply because you need it. You want
it so badly. And again, that is not to talk
down at any parent right of a child in the
spector or anything like that. It's just that is just
(36:36):
human nature to desire that. I think, Yeah, guys, have
you ever had the hill dream?
Speaker 5 (36:43):
No?
Speaker 4 (36:43):
I don't know. Maybe I got a couple of recurring ones.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, I don't know if I've had it either, but
I've certainly had a recurring dream on a hill where
flight is possible and there are a bunch of other
human beings flying around on this hill. There's some other
specifics to it. I want to learn more about it,
but it's a recurring thing. I would say, this one
feels like, oh, how would I put it? Almost like
(37:10):
a bunch of students of some teacher hanging out on
a hill, flying around to like tree tops and stuff
and being kids kind of, it's very weird, is very strange.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
And surely when we look at these things, because dreams
also memory of dreams changes over time, just like memory
of any other event, it's best to write them down honestly,
no matter what.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Because they just dissipate. Yeah, like tears in the rain.
Dream motifs are interesting or I guess themes, you know,
what's the word, kind of flavors that are universal. I
have this one all the time. Different kind of twists
on it, but it usually involves like having the opportunity
of a lifetime and being completely unprepared for it. Like
I've joined my favorite band, I'm in radio Head, but
(37:57):
I don't know how to play any of their songs,
and I'm on stage at like Carnegie Hall or you know,
the Hollywood b or something.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
What I love about this is everybody does have something
like dreaming, unless you have some specific and serious conditions.
The difference is usually when people tell you that they
don't dream, they mean they don't remember what their brain
is doing in that defragging process. And Matt to your point,
(38:27):
I think this is tremendously illustrative of how how people
specifically approach what they consider real or what they consider bunk,
because there are a lot of people who might have
heard telepathy tapes or a conversation now where we're striving
to be objective and fair, and they might have said
they think that's malarkey. But then they might believe that
(38:50):
they have a light ability toward precognition, right, or that
they are meeting outside entities in their dreams. And I
say this as a I who for many many decades
has had recurring conversations with a talking blue tiger that
doesn't and they're lucid dreams, and it doesn't give us
(39:12):
about what's going on. Sorry, beat me there. It doesn't
givish about what's going on in my life. It wants
to talk about, uh, very specific forms of philosophy. It's
like Alice in Wonderland and the caterpillar kind of and
I don't know why that happens, and I don't know
why it keeps happening, but yeah, so everybody kind of
picks and chooses, and that comes from to bring it
(39:34):
all back around. That seems to come from, as you
so beautifully put, this deep desire to communicate, you know,
and it reminds me we should do an episode. We
should do an actual episode on dream experiments. There's so
much there.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
My god, Yes, I've got this one where there's this
talking raccoon with a bunch of weapons and he sounds
just like Bradley Cooper Rock. You're right, sorry, going back
to that. Well all right, well, hey, thank you so much. Please,
thank you, and y'all tell us what you think about
(40:08):
the telepathy tapes, this concept of ESP. Who you know,
what could it mean? Are humans just not ready for
that kind of extraordinary thing? Do we just are? There
too many movies about it. It just feels like fantasy
or not real life. What how would we convince everyone
that ESP is real if there's scientific backing to it?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Is that a queen reference you made there, Matt.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
I have no idea, he said, his real life.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
As it is fantasy something along those lines. Mama Mia,
I say very important questions.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I don't know the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
There you go, your eyes anywhere the wind blows.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Join us on the hill. We'll be right back, and.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
We have turn folks of full disclosure to thirds of
us are on the road, and the road holds its price.
So we are going to get into a kind of
loose third act of our listener mail segment. We're going
to start with a We're going to start with a
(41:21):
great reaction to our two part series or something we
mentioned our two part series two episodes on the Darien Gap.
Please check that out if you haven't heard of it before.
In the meantime, we present to you a story from
Della which I don't know about. You guys gave me
no small amount of travel fomo, I want to hear it.
(41:45):
Here it goes hi, guys, says Della. We just got
back from a cruise to Antarctica. While on a tour
in Ushaia in Tierra del Fuego, waiting for the cruise
to board, the guide mentioned that this is the south
end of a road that can be traveled all the
way to oh, forgive my pronunciation, Utzskaigvik, on the Arctic
(42:08):
Ocean coast of Alaska. Della's talking about the Pan American Highway. Here.
The guide said that the only break in the road
is the Darien Pass and how dangerous it is to
travel there. So I was very excited to hear your
new episodes on the subject. You guys, remember how we
talked about that wild plan in part one of our
(42:29):
Darien Gap episodes or chapter one, where even the New
York Times co signed this wacky idea to just bomb
the hell out of Panama.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
It's fine, who could go wrong?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
And Panama said, okay.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
No, Panama said, you guys, you already have a canal.
And then we shared a specific article from New York
Times at the time that said, this will be fine.
We'll just put you know, thirty something nuclear bombs to
obliterate the Darien Gap. We'll build a canal, we'll make
(43:06):
a bridge over it. There are people who live there,
but you know they don't vote, they don't subscribe to
the Times.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Dude, did you guys see the news with Panama happening
right now?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yes, yeah, the Rubio stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah, the Rubio stuff, but the canceling the Hong Kong
contract and allowing the US to travel through there free.
And the response from Panama basically saying, yeah, we're ready
for war and their nuclear option would and they said
this former president of Panama said, well, we would just
open the gap. We'd open the Darien Gap and let
(43:44):
everybody in. That would be our final chess piece move.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
We call that Grinsonship.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Yeah, tea, guys, I just wanted to chime in really
quickly because I have to pop a little bit early
from today's episode to make a flight. But a friend
of mine, old friend, having heard our Darien Gap episode
and hipped me to a documentary that a friend of
his did for a Singapore news agency that follows a
handful of Chinese families from Ecuador to the US through
(44:12):
the Darien Gap and it has a really good kind
of overview of the logistics of traveling that route. And
it is called Walk the Line, a CNA insider documentary,
and it's it's very well done and I highly recommend
checking it out.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Awesome. Thank you for the recommendation. And be safe out
there man. Well thanks fellas. I'll see you guys soon. Bye.
Help me hangout all the time by ulture too, and
we'll also be hanging out. February nineteenth, Get the to Brooklyn.
Check out stuff they don't want you to know. Presents
a conspiracy of sound. It's just for you. The show
(44:52):
starts at seven point thirty. If you show up at
six thirty, you can be a part of the show.
At the legendary National Sawdust in Williamsburg.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
That's that's less than a week. Get there, Get them
tickets now.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah. Yeah, we've got to make sure our whole teams
tickets as well. Don't worry, we're on it, and we're
we promise we're not going to deploy a nuclear device.
We ninety nine percent promise we are not going to
deploy a nuclear device.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, now there's definitely going to be undercover folks there
checking us out and tracking our phones.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Benh jeez, Matt, I've got some offline conversations. So let's
go back. Let's go back to this, to this note
from Della. So Della says there's a lot more to
the story of nuking the jungle, the Darien Gap to
build a road, and there is an Alaska connection, and Della,
(45:48):
you all live in Alaska. You continue. Back in the
nineteen fifties, there was a plan to build a new
canal through Panama by detonating nukes to test whether the
theory would work. Edward Heller proposed Project Chariot, a plan
to detonate six nukes off the Alaska coast at Cape
Thompson to create a new harbor. So we're deployed, Yeah,
(46:12):
we're placing nukes just so, almost like eracing a land
tile in a strategy game, so that we can make
a harbor, we can carve out a big enough piece
of land for boats to pass through.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Well, I gotta say it's a much better use of
them than you know, obliterating cities that have people in them.
But still not great.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, like if you had to if you woke up
one day and someone said, hey, good news, bad news,
we've got too many nukes. You got to get rid
of six of them today, that's the bad news. Good
news is you can choose between a coast on Alaska
or you know, a major metropolitan area of your choice.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Hmmm, let's go with the land tile.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Let's go with the land tile. And as Della says,
what could go wrong? Oh yeah, it's delicate tundra and
temporary home to a multitude of migratory birds and caribou herds,
not to mention the folks who live in the village nearby.
But who could really be hurt here? I need a
sarcasm fought, by the way, We'll do that again for you, Della.
(47:24):
But who could really be hurt here?
Speaker 2 (47:27):
So?
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Fortunately, you continue a group of pesky biologists from the
University of Alaska Fairbanks and the natives who lived in
the nearby village of Point Hope put up a brave
and lively opposition to the plan, and it was eventually abandoned.
Several scientists lost their federal grants and their jobs due
to their unwillingness to sign off on a project that
(47:49):
their research showed would cause a great deal of harm
to the ecology and people in the area. I highly
recommend the book The Firecracker Boys by Dan O'Neill, which
tells their story to end. Says Della, I couldn't get
a picture of the ice dome that surrounds the flat
earth bummer out in Antarctica, but here is a photo
(48:10):
of a very cute baby elephant seal and a picture
of my dogs, just because they are Nico aka the
dragon aka a hole as and why are you such
an and Auto aka goofball aka what do you have
in your mouth? Anyway, thanks and keep up the good work.
I love the open minded way you approach topics and
your willingness to listen to other points of view. You
(48:33):
can use this on air. I suck it clever nicknames,
looking forward to the next episode. I want to go
to Antarctica so bad, Matt, Yeah, it's so bad.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, there's gonna be an ice wall until I don't
see it with my eyes. And that's not how I
don't know, yes, but I share that desire.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
That's how we should pitch it to our right. We
should just say, guys, thanks for making the time for
this meeting. Really important stuff we need to sort out.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Have you ever not seen the ice walls? Me? Neither?
Speaker 3 (49:13):
And this got this gut is thinking too about nuclear
explosions in engineering. There have been a lot of very
strange drawing board propositions to use nuclear explosions for great
feats of engineering, you know what I mean, to basically
(49:34):
build a better dynamite. And the issue people are get,
the reason that's not happening all the time now is because,
thank goodness, people learned about radiation at some point and contaminations.
Now a lot of the engineering related to nuclear devices
(49:54):
nuclear technology is, thankfully, how do we how do we
build less dangerous nuclear structures and devices? And then you know,
how do we build like fusion, right, sustainable fusion things
like that, And then you know, the super fascinating one,
how do we warn people or warn some other civilization
(50:16):
millennia hence about where all the nuclear waste is buried?
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Right with a skull and crossbones emoji?
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Mm hm. And what if the creatures that find it
don't have skulls? Like, how do we teach them?
Speaker 8 (50:32):
Right?
Speaker 3 (50:32):
What if it's too late? That's where you get this star.
There's a real fascinating stuff you should know episode on
this from back in earlier evenings and we talked about
it in the past. It goes into these really innovative
ideas about genetically engineering plants that that emit a bioluminescent
(50:54):
glow when exposed to radiation, right, or building stone megaliths
that somehow convey the danger of the area.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, I remember reading about all that stuff mega liths
and hieroglyphs basically mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:10):
And who knows by that point people may have or
the descendants of people may have some sort of extraordinary ability.
This is a lot to think on. This is probably
going to be I think a future episode idea kind
of a Venn diagram of stuff they don't want you
to know in Ridiculous history, Matt, if I could pitch
(51:32):
it to you, the top X craziest things people tried
to do with nukes.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Yeah, that's a no brainer.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
We're in. We're in. Thank you so much the Della.
As we said, we're going to keep this loose. There
are two letters from home for us. We discussed this
last week. We didn't we didn't quite get to it.
But we're still you know, we're still cracking away on
following up with everybody who's taking the time to write
(52:03):
or to call. Here is a correspondence we had with
our pal, Mike, the Exotic Landscaper. Hey, just listen to
your strange news program on the California wildfires. As a
Federal wildland fire fireman in South California, I appreciate you
guys shedding some light on the situation. I was not
sent to any of the fires in LA, but I
(52:25):
was on the line for the fire here in the
San Bernardino National Forest. If you have any questions about
the federal side, I would be more than happy to
answer them. Also, as far as the California Inmate cruise
are concerned, those dudes and ladies are the real deal.
Good to hear Mike. I've worked with several of them,
and they for the most part are excited to get
the training and experience because they can be picked up
(52:48):
by the Forest Service upon their release. Those dudes are
like Rocky and Rocky one, and a lot of the
California fire cats I've worked with are like Rocky in
the beginning of Rocky. Anyway, thanks again for the show,
and so we go on and we ask Mike a
couple of questions. You know, we say thank you for
cutting past the unfortunate noise and headlines inmate firefighters. We
(53:14):
also point out, whenever we have these conversations, especially in
the American justice system, being locked up does not automatically
make you a bad person. Matt, I know is very
important to you and me both to point out that
these are human beings with communities. Logically they have a
moral obligation to protect the people and the places they love.
(53:34):
And then we ask for the following question, what are
the primary things that you guys there on the line
need people to know about the fires and the larger contexts?
And Mike says, first and foremost, the federal engines are green.
Take the me green vehicles right, Nope, And Mike also
(53:55):
says he says a little aggravation here, nobody knows the
difference between California fire local departments and the Forest Service
US federal cats only work the fires on federal land. Also,
us on the federal side are not technically firefighters, which
is so weird, right because they are fighting fires, Yeah,
(54:17):
but technically not firefighters.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Well, what else are they doing?
Speaker 3 (54:23):
Yeah, right, exactly, that's a question we have to follow
up with you on, Mike. Mike says, our job title
is forestry technician. That way, we don't get some of
the benefits firefighters get, so maybe it's a budgetary move. Also,
we stand to lose about half hour pay because Congress
won't pass a pay protection Act. Plus the hiring freeze
(54:45):
has affected our numbers when we're already low on personnel.
And Mike has included some other stuff here. One of
our favorite facts we learned was since we aren't technically firefighters,
there's a few of us that refer to our ourselves
as exotic landscapers. That lotiful.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Well, a lot of the techniques in fighting a fire
is altering the land and you know, the foliage, the trees,
the groundcover and all that stuff like that's in the
pathway of the fire, right, Yeah, I can totally see
how landscaping is one of the primary things that they do.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Yeah, isn't that fascinating. We often forget that skill sets
the average person on the outside might not see as related.
These skill sets often coalesce, you know. So of course,
being really well versed in forestry management is going to
(55:45):
make you far more prepared than the average person to
tackle a wildfire. And we are happy to report in
related California fire updates that our good friend and collie,
the one and only mister Miles Gray, is back on
Daily'sygeist and do check him out. It's his return is
(56:08):
an episode not to be missed for everybody who is
whether an exotic landscaper, a firefighter, however you were involved.
Please stay safe out there and know that we have
your back. We're gonna move on here. We said we
would want to end on an up note. Matt, I'm
(56:29):
sure you saw this too. We get a great funny letter,
actually an invitation from our pal Ward. Did you see
this one?
Speaker 2 (56:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Tell me? Oh? Here we go okay, so Ward says, hey, guys,
I love the podcast and listen to it a lot.
Thank you, Ward, thanks for helping us keep the lights
on Ward says, I'm in Greenville, South Carolina. I own
a store called the Mushroom Spot. This is a nano
farm and retail store from my shrooms parentheses the legal ones.
(57:04):
I know how you have commented on fungi and mushrooms
a lot or fun guy, whatever your preference. We have
all kinds of cool speakers and workshops too. Fun guy,
Fungi are amazing and essential. Anyhow, here's the invitation. I
was contacting you to make sure you knew about this
year's Georgia Bigfoot Conference happening March twenty first to twenty
(57:28):
second in Demorest, Georgia. I had not heard of this,
but Matt is where you mentioned a bigfoot conference recently.
Speaker 2 (57:35):
Well, there's the big alien one that contact in the desert,
one that we got invited to last year where we
couldn't make it. This is brand new and checking it
out right now, let's see how far away it is?
Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yeah, how far?
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Let's see putting it in. Looks like it's about an
hour away from me.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
It's doable, okay, So that's okay. Well, we won't turn
this into our logistics conversation, but.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
But that's doable. That is what I'm saying, yeah, it's doable.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
It's doable. We always check this the first time we
get invited to something that feels local, because depending on like,
Georgia is a weirdly shaped state, so you know, something
in Savannah is much more difficult for us to get
to than something an hour away.
Speaker 1 (58:29):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yeah, I hope I'm not over explaining Georgia because we
have a lot of listeners in Georgia already.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Oh yeah, of course, dude, Wait, we're gonna have to
there's a restaurant over there. Yeah, it's an oyster bar.
Oh there's a Cuban cafe. Oh, they've good food.
Speaker 3 (58:48):
We're in you know what. I'm sure we could. I'm
sure we could talk. Nolan did this one because I
think I think you had a little fomo about move on.
Speaker 2 (58:58):
Why don't we uh on some wood? Huh would knock
anyone anyways? Bueller?
Speaker 3 (59:05):
All right, great, I've got to be quiet. It's like
four am over here. Uh okay, so Ward continues. I
am not a conspiracy theorist, nor do I give much
credence to a physical Bigfoot, but who knows. I like
the idea of an interdimensional cryptid. We do too, that
might happen with aliens too, who knows, but it is
(59:27):
fun to think about and a great exercise for the mind.
The Mushroom Spot will be a vendor at this year's
Bigfoot conference. Congratulations, Ward, I've never been before, though my
brother has. He's gonna sell his hot sauce there, Matt
this year. If you come to the festival, please stop
buy my table. I'd love to meet you all. Please
(59:48):
keep up the good work as long as they whomever
they are, permit you and even after and this is
my favorite part. Mush love Ward.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
Oh oh no?
Speaker 7 (01:00:00):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Did did we get a did we get a drum
riff for that one? Andrew? Also, Andrew, do you want
to go to this thing with us? Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
I would like to go. I want to meet big Foot.
Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Yes. Congratulations everybody tuning in. Uh that is the first
on air reaction from our producer, try Force. We did it, Matt,
We got him. This is our show for the evening.
Thank you so much, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist
for spending some of your time with us. We also
(01:00:37):
want to think, of course, Colby, Jack Cheese, pleab Ward,
Mike Della, Miles and everybody who has reached out to
us on the internets, who has given us a summons
on a telephonic device, or who has stared into the
void and written us a letter. Just light ward, Oh
(01:01:01):
my god, mush love. All right, you can find us
on the internet. Should you sip the social meds Instagram,
conspiracy stuff, show Twitter, nay x, that would be conspiracy stuff.
You can also find us where we are on YouTube.
You can see all those old videos from our war
(01:01:22):
stories that we mentioned as YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
But let's say that you, for one reason or another,
have decided to pull back a little bit from social media.
Let's say you just heard our episode on social media's
damaging effects on attention span and you're more like a
(01:01:43):
hear me out. Let me. Let me just call you
kind of person, Matt. Riddle me this. What do people
do in that situation?
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Wow, you pick up your phone. You dial one eight
three three st d w y t K. It is
our voice MAI system. You've got three minutes, give yourself
a cool nickname and say whatever you'd like. Just do
in the message. Let us know if we can use
your name and message on the air. If you got
more to say then can fit in that voicemail. Why
(01:02:11):
not instead to send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
rights back. No, wait, you might be saying, really, really though,
does it happen? Well, there's one way to find out.
Send us the link, send us the photos, send us
the story. Most importantly, send us ideas for episodes in
(01:02:37):
the future. You are the most important part of this show,
and we'd love for you to join us. One step
away from the light. Out here in the dark, we
are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is not They.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super
producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. If you are listening to our
listener mail program the evening it comes out, Welcome to
February thirteenth. No worries. It's a Thursday, not a Friday,
(00:51):
as the calendar reckons. We have so much stuff to
get to. We're going to We're going to folks, to
be honest. We learned about some crazy new plans of yesteryear.
We got a magnificent first hand account from a firefighter
or exotic landscaper as he prefers to be called.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I shouldn't laughed. So much heavy stuff going on with firefighting,
but it's good to have a little gallows humor, I
guess around it.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
That's a good one. Oh my gosh. Telepathy tapes mushrooms, bigfoot,
stefan voice. This has everything. We also got a lot
of great responses to our conversation that we keep returning to.
And I hope it's not me putting my own fascinations
(01:38):
onto the group or projecting, but man, these chime erase
the future of organs, especially as things get riddled with
micro and nanoplastics.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
And personhood, which came up on our last Strange News episode.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Strange News, Yeah, and that program we teased the mountain
that became a man light. I didn't use because it's
kind of gendered, but we talked about the tree and Athens.
We've talked extensively about something that fascinates us all, which
is the argument of the ship of thesis. And it
turns out, fellow conspiracy realists, the five of us you
(02:19):
listening along at home and try Force and Matt and
Nolan myself are not the only people who are endlessly
fascinated and maybe a little freaked out by the future
of personhood.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Let's jump to a tiny ad break and then we'll
come back and get right into that conversation, and we
return with a message from Colby Jack Cheese. Here again,
Colby Jack says, and as always, you can use read
this on the show if you want. With that being said,
(02:53):
let's get to it. Listening to your most current listener
mail as at the time of writing, episode where you
talk about the eth of growing human organs in pig bags,
which sounds like the name of an industrial band, and
a question struck me like a kick from a horse.
What if someone was in total body paralysis and you
were given the choice to, through the power of imagination
(03:15):
for now to transfer their mind to pig host so
a new body can be grown. Is that pig a
person now a human despite all the wet wear being
distinctly different from a human. Does it obtain personhood or
are they now lower on the food chain of humanity.
(03:36):
I'll stop here to keep myself from rambling, but I
will leave you with this. How do you measure personhood?
Is it by intelligence? We have a hard time measuring
that as far as I'm aware. Or could it be language?
If your dog slash cat slash fox slash fourth dimensional
fluffy friend could speak to you in perfect English, could
it be considered a person despite being a clear non human.
(03:58):
Love the show and all the interesting questions that keep
me distracted from the bar fight going on today in society.
Much love to you from me kolby Jack Cheese. You know,
it's this makes me think of I don't know. There's
a lot of depictions in like comic books, for example,
of like sentient animals. There's that what has that one been?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
We three?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Is that one?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's it's it's short and beautiful and sad and brutal
and speaks to a lot of this kind of stuff. Yeah,
oh oh, I know you did. You're one for the
year whatever year that happened to have been. It is
a story of super charged animals that are given the
ability to more or less communicate in kind of weird
(04:43):
broken English, and they're also designed to be murder machines
for the government. They escape from the facility in which
they are being essentially tortured and converted into these things
they're not meant to be, and then they are pursued
by something horrific. Let's put it that way. It's like
Homeward Bound on speed and psychedelics.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Cyberpunk, Homeward Bounce.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
It's wonderful, but it speaks to wouldn't you say, guys
that it speaks to a lot of these questions of like,
you know, we're hearing stories now coming out about technology
that could potentially one day allow us to communicate with
our pets. Given that technology and the ability for animals
to speak in something that is intelligible on a human
language level, does that change the way we think about them?
(05:33):
And it also comes back to this idea of what's
the term that the peda guy mentioned to us, The
idea that certain animals are treated as lower than others,
you know, less worthy of our care and love and respect,
and more able to be seen as you know, good
eats rather than companions. What's that term, guys, do you
(05:54):
remember speciism? That's the one. It's this idea that there
are certain animals, like, I mean, rabbits are an interesting
one that kind of fall on that line, because yeah,
we people eat rabbits, and people also have rabbits for pets.
In the United States eating dogs, it would be considered
more or less barbaric with our countries where that's acceptable
as well. It does straddle the line of personhood. But
(06:19):
I think that Colby Jack really does bring up some
interesting questions. But this idea of if a human consciousness
were transferred to a quote unquote lower life form. Does
that change the nature of the lower life form? And
if again, we were able to communicate with lower what
we see as lower life forms, does that elevate there?
(06:42):
I guess deservingness of personhood.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I throw it to the room. Guys, Matt, you're throwing
it as well.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I don't know. I keep thinking about these videos I've
seen of Teddy the Talking porky. I don't know if
you hear.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
What I don't know about this? Okay, you see like
a mood Dang esque figure. How have I missed Teddy
the Talking Porcupine?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, I see their older videos and who knows, like
when they were originally posted, I haven't done the digging,
but they show up nowadays as though they just happened.
But I think they go all the way back to
twenty thirteen, twenty fifteen, things like that. But it's just
a porcupine that loves shounddown on food, and while it's
chound down on food, it's going and it just seems
(07:33):
so human in the way that it seems to want
to communicate things to the people that take care of it.
And I just imagine just that idea of any animal
that can speak, right, we get those things like a
lot of the birds, especially that can speak, can vocalize
and appear to respond, not just in a mocking way
(07:57):
SIMI yes, yeah, and appear to say things, to get things.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And to understand the nuances of language, abstract thought, object, permanence,
things like that. Shout out to our COVID bros in
the crowd. What's really fascinating about this, too is the
Colby You're you're taking the next step in thought experiment
(08:22):
I had raised and I think it was our Strange
News segment or something like something to that effect, which
was the idea of brain transference.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
What was that Faustian bargain we pitched or that devil's
that devil's deal we pitched wherein someone could save your
brain or the program of your brain, but they could
only put it in a pig. Is that pig now human? Yeah?
These are These are the logical questions that we will
have to ask. Please, please, please, if you have not
(08:54):
yet done so, do us a favor, do yourself a
favor and check out our previous episode on the concept
of legal personhood, which is really a mixed bag of
badgers around the world. Depending on where you go. We
talked about oh, you know what it was. It started recently.
It restarted recently when we spoke about the elephants in
(09:16):
Colorado who had recently lost their bid to get out
of that zoo there in Colorado. This will only become
more complex as a human understanding of what we call
consciousness and intelligence continues to acquire sophistication and nuance. I
(09:37):
love what you're bringing up there, Matt, which is the idea,
the big question, the eternal question for the human is
are you really seeing something akin to you in some
respect or are you anthropomorphizing which is just the fancy
pants way of saying, are you projecting what you would
imagine human like traits to be on a non human
(10:00):
an animal? And I got to say it, you guys,
I am such a sucker for those videos that I
usually in my head call they're just like us videos.
You know. I love it when, especially really expressive domestic
animals like huskies. Huskies get it, dude, Huskies get it,
and they're sassy and they have an attitude and they
(10:23):
sometimes they you know, we've all seen the clips. I hope,
so I don't sound crazy where someone asked their husky
a question, and the husky's.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
Like no, never, yeah, yeah, they say, hey, it's you
can And that's just because, you know, as we talked
about in Ridiculous History recent series on the domestication of
these amazing creatures, the dogs, the.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Canines, that's because they evolved to communicate more efficiently with
humans than many other animals. But just because they've evolved
to communicate with humans more efficiently or in a way
that's more understandable to humans, doesn't mean that other animals
are any less intelligent. They feel paid, they love laws.
(11:09):
If you prick them, do they not bleed to rip off?
Billy Shakes? Who is old? Shake your spear? That's Shakespeare.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
This article from Axios from late last year using AI
to talk to animals, I think is super interesting. Researchers
are building an AI system that they will hope will
one day allow humans to understand the many languages that
animals use to communicate with one another.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
A couple of things.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
What they're saying here, we are facing a biodiversity crisis.
Earth Species Project CEO Katie Zakarian said during a demo
of Nature LM at a recent Axios AI plus some
in San Francisco. She said, the situation we are in
today is driven from a disconnection with the rest of nature.
We believe that AI is leading us to this inevitability
that we will decode animal communication and come back into
(11:57):
connection between the law. This is what actually has had
to say about this sort of.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Summing it up.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Translation in the broadest sense is something that generative AI
has proven to be quite good at. Sometimes that's translating
from one human language to another, but the technology is
also adept at transforming text from one genre to another.
And added wrinkle with translating animal languages is that instead
of moving between two known languages, we have a limited
understanding of how animals communicate and what they are capable
(12:23):
of conveying through speech. Researchers know, for example, that birds
make different sounds to your point bent when they are
singing songs as compared to sounding a warning call. They
also have determined that many species have individual names for
one another, and some, like prairie dogs, have a system
of nouns and adjectives to describe predators. Earth Species Project
(12:44):
is one of many endeavors looking to tap AI to
address planetary concerns. I think that's an interesting spin on it,
the idea of like closing the gap I guess between
various aspects of the natural world. But I do think
it's also interesting how they point out that just because
you can translate it doesn't necessarily mean that you're like
(13:07):
having a conversation, so I think. But again, it's also
hard to kind of parse where we do draw the
line for personhood and how like kind of selfishly human
centric that concept even is.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, it sounds amazing. It makes me imagine a time
when any animal could communicate with some device, right that's
around the animal, uh, and you just you hear it
in your head or your headphones or wherever you are,
almost like an esp kind of thing, right.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Well, you know, And also that's something that's a feature,
real feature of that comic they we're talking about, the
way the animals communicate is this kind of broken English
that implies a sort of real time translation of something
more very specific to the species that is just kind
of meant to be interpreted, you know, by human ears.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
And to that point we are getting now Kolbe, we're
bringing it back to the earlier philosophical quandaries as well.
But to that point, that we just made. If you
are a lover of dogs you may already know this,
or a lover of certain other animal species, you will
(14:26):
see that there are devices out there that purport to
do something close to this kind of communication. I'm thinking
specifically about the button boards. Put a couple of links
in our chat here. The button boards. You see it
mostly in dog videos, and I'm smiling because gosh, I
(14:46):
love animals, even the human ones. There's a there's a
series of science doesn't consider until legit, but there are
a series of these buttons pads like the old school
Nintendo running track pad.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You skinner box situation, like some of the old school
pigeon talk, like the talking chicken. Like hitting the buttons
and making communication sounds kind.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Of similar, a little a little more nuanced because each
button has, you know, a command and a specific consistent
location such that if you if your doggo buddy is
smart enough, they can try to communicate with you so
instead of barking. This doesn't apply to huskies because they
(15:33):
can basically speak. But if you're you know, say you
have a really smart dog like an Australian shepherd or
a collie or a poodle, then the idea is that
once they learn this location series of buttons, and they
learn which reaction it insights in their human pal then
they will go up and instead of barking at you,
(15:54):
they'll just they'll get your attention and they'll hit the
button that says walk, or they'll hit the button that
says treat you know, or maybe you have the name
of their favorite toy. Obviously, science agrees they're not reading
these things because we don't know any literate dogs just yet.
But they know the location and they know the reaction.
So this goes. This goes to show that we're getting
(16:17):
closer and closer as a civilization to something like bridging
the linguistic and cognitive gap. And I think that's amazing
And to your point, Noel, yes, there are animals that
are not canids that seem to be able to do
the same thing. The question is how do we frame it?
What's our perspective? Right? Does the crow understand what it's
(16:41):
saying when it says all right, then mate, I'm referring
to a specific specifically.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
One with the one with the monocle on the top hat.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, I know that Crowlutely, I'm not
trying to be like mega mega like puritanically tree huggery
about this, But I do think it's worth talking about
just this idea of personhood and how you know, human centric.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
It is, and I know that we all benefit from.
Again I'm going to sound like I'm being like a
total hippier, but the enslavement of animals. But there is
a certain philosophical thing to kind of contend with about
this notion of what personhood is, especially as things like
AI start to get more and more intense and more
(17:27):
and more human like. I just think it's something that
we kind of need to address.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Well, is the human mind itself not already a large
language model we're talking about being anthrocentric, right exactly. Methrocentrism
is a huge bag of badgers. It's a difficult thing
to quarrel with and really get a human mind around
or outside of. You could ask the same question, you know,
(17:55):
let's just flip the script for a second. We don't
have to go too deep into this unless want to
do an episode on it. But let's think about it
this way. What if evolution went just a little bit differently.
What if somebody got to the superpowers first, right, the
way that humans reproduce, and they the way their brains work,
(18:17):
and of course one of the greatest features of the
human the thumb. Sorry everybody beat into that. When what
if those things happen or something like that to another
species and the primates ended up as a result not
attaining Homo sapien hood, right, or not even not reaching
(18:37):
past maybe habilis or something like that. What would those
new creatures dominating the earth. What would the descendants of,
say the elephant or the corvid or God forgive us
the octopus? What would they think about humans? Would they
have the same viral videos of us like trying to
wave four fingers like octopy arms and going oh my god,
(19:02):
well like us? Well yeah, well that too.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
But also like what if a quote unquote higher species,
higher intelligence, higher life form were to enter the chat
and then we began to be subjugated and treated the
way we treat quote unquote lower life forms, Like it's
just I don't know, I can't help.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
We have buttons, and we can press the button and
shock callers, right, and you know they don't make buttons
that say who am I Dad?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Mom?
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Where pack? You know, like what is meadow? Who is meadow.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yes, yeah, I love that point. But because there are
there are no uh self awareness buttons. There are there's
no button for existential crisis, but there are buttons for
specific people because we know that animals can have favorites.
So there's I I've seen, I want to say, a
couple of videos where some influencer whose animal appeared to
(20:07):
prefer her partner more and she's trying to get the
dog to do something and it just keeps hitting the
button that says dad, and then it starts barking at her,
but again to the chicken scratch or the counting horse idea.
Another inescapable part of this communication paraphernalia or attempt at
communication technology is that animals, dogs especially but all non
(20:31):
human animals, are very good at picking up unconscious human cues. Right,
So are we just friming the response we want to
see and then telling ourselves something different is happening. It's
quite a pickle. And the real answer, I would posit
Colby and thank you for the excellent email. The real
(20:53):
answer that we're getting at here is simply this, the
human animal does not understand the concept of the human.
Animals still can't grasp the concept that other human animals
are indeed people, and that's where the problem begins.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
That's a pickle, my man. That's very well put and
something to put in our collective pipes and smoke for
lack of a better term. I don't know, Mad, you've
got anything else to have before we move on.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I think I know what people is.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
You, guys. I had this other incredible email from a listener,
like almost like telling this story about a.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Fictional chimeric Oregon farm.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
But I think we're running a little long on this
segment that has created so much incredible conversation, so I
think I'm gonna save this one for next week. That's
okay with you, guys, Yes, sir, Let's take a quick
break here worth from our sponsor, and then we'll return
with more messages from you.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
And we've returned, we are jumping to the phone lines
to hear a message from Fleeve and I think this
is a really interesting way to bridge the gap between
our discussion before the break and into an even deeper
thing within our own minds potentially, So let's hear this
message from pleep Hey fellas.
Speaker 7 (22:19):
Play in the Northwest here. I was just curious if
you guys have come across this crazy ass podcast called
the Telepathy Tape. It's based on nonverbal or barely verbal
autistic children that are communicating with their parents or caregivers
or teachers heelopathically, and they also communicate with each other
(22:43):
on this place called the hill at night when they
dream teleopathically. And there's like a huge number of these
people that are all communicating to each other in this
ethereal space. I really want you guys to look into it.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Let me know what you think.
Speaker 7 (22:59):
It's very crazy. It makes you think about Like they
talk about an autistic child that can read, and they're like,
where did you learn to read Hebrew? And the person
says from the priests, and they're like what other languages
can be learned? And they're like, I mean they type
hiro and they're like, like hieroglyphics and they're like yes,
(23:20):
So they show her some hieroglyphics and they read the
hieroglyphics like absolutely bananas. Just to be opened up to
this constant step because we already know about the I
just set that like CIA document with the astral projection
in the Mars viewing. It's like a legit document. It's great.
I mean, all right, it's crazy. And then you have
(23:41):
that in combination with.
Speaker 8 (23:42):
Bolth floor remote viewing trials, and then you have these
people that are learning to communicate nonverbally because the human
desire and condition like requires us to communicate.
Speaker 7 (23:53):
It's just fascinating. So look into the tape. Let everybody
know about it. Let me know what you think, how
ple've been in it? All right?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Whoa please? My goodness. That's a lot, a lot to
take in. And just to put this message out there,
we are not sponsored by the Telepathy tapes. We're not
connected to the Telepathy tapes. That is another podcast. We
are going to talk about it now. Initial thoughts upon hearing.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
This, initial thoughts, Yeah, please, thank you so much for
reaching out. The podcasting question garnered a lot of attention,
and it garnered quite a bit of controversy. I haven't
listened to all of the podcasts. I have listened to
a few episodes, and I have to be honest, just ethically,
(24:45):
I'm required to say this. There are there are very
different interpretations of what's going on here, similar to as
you said, Matt, the concept of communication cross species, and
I'm not saying that autistic people are not human at all,
or anybody on the spectrum is not. But I do
(25:07):
think the evidence is clear that this is a form
of projection and not astral projection. And my argument here, unfortunately,
would be that every everything that I have encountered, not
as an expert, here shows me that this could be
dangerous to the treatment of people who do need special care.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Interesting. Okay, well, let's let's listen to a bit of
the trailer for this podcast that is available on YouTube.
You can watch right now. Let's just watch a tiny
bit together, just we get a sense of what the
show says.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
It is joining us today to shed some light.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Doctor Diane Powell.
Speaker 8 (25:50):
I'm working with children who have been reported by a
parent to be able to read their mind. The data
was so compelling and actual that I had to follow it,
even though I knew I was missing my scientific reputation.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
So we'll just put that there, right, This concept that
there is a doctor who is interested enough in this stuff,
in receiving you know, specific messages from parents or caregivers
who have children on the autism spectrum, you know, reporting
self reporting these things. There's now a neuroscientist, doctor Diane Powell,
(26:26):
who's looking into that. That's what the show is about.
If you go to the website, guys, you can see
that they've got that. It's Thetelepathy Tapes dot Com. They
have a section that they call the test Library, and
in this test library you can see individual videos that
(26:50):
appear to be individual examinations like a one off test
basically that is run that appear to test potential telepathy
of some sort or brain connection of some sort that
would be abnormal or would appear to you know, not
be the way that human beings communicate and function generally,
(27:13):
the way we observe. If you click on any of
these individual tapes, it shows that you have to join
the organization or you have to become a member of
some sort and pay some money in order to see
these individual things. That makes sense, right if you're attempting
to monetize something like a podcast, like a website, like
(27:34):
you know, further studies. But unfortunately, at least from this end,
feels a bit weird because I would love to gain
access to those raw tapes, just as somebody who's interested
in the topic, to at least test for my own
brain whether or not I believe these individuals to have
these sorts of things right, or to be able to
(27:56):
communicate in these ways, it does feel a little weird.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, I hear you. And that doesn't necessarily, to be clear, folks,
that doesn't necessarily mean that it is somehow functioning with
bad intentions, right. And from what I understand Matt and
Plabe and null Entry Force, what I understand is that
(28:24):
proponents of the telepathy tapes have themselves criticized the critics
and said, hey, you're being ablest because these people are
not communicating in the methods that you or via the
methods that you feel comfortable calling communication. However, again, there
are just trying to be very fair. It seems like
(28:47):
there's some serious issues with some of the methodology of
the test, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Oh yeah. There is one specific test you can view
in the trailer the test itself, the tape. You can
view it on their website. It is titled UNO or
UNO one Houston, and it is a test where there
is there is someone who is being tested for telepathic
abilities sitting at a table, their caregiver is sat next
(29:19):
to them, and doctor Dian Powell is behind them, and
she is showing the camera which is positioned across from
the table UNO cards, so shuffling a deck then showing
an UNO card to the camera. Then the person with
supposed telepathic abilities is pointing to a separate object that
(29:40):
has one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy nine ten
on it, and then it also has like plus and
minus on it, So this person can point to plus
two and that would represent the draw to card that
you might be familiar with in an UNO deck. As
you're watching this tape, specifically, in the trailer, I haven't
seen the whole thing. It appears to show the test
(30:02):
subject looking directly at the camera as the next UNOCRD
is drawn, And in my mind, because of the way
that test is set up, you cannot rule out the
possibility that the test subject can see a reflection in
the lens or in a part of the camera body,
or in you know, something that is slightly reflective there
(30:25):
the card that is behind him, and you would have
to rule that kind of thing out. If you're going
to redo that test over and over and over again,
you'd have to change the variables enough and test it
and test it and test it to really show that
that person has the abilities that they're purporting, right, And
again I don't I haven't listened to the entire show.
I haven't watched this whole thing. But you would have
(30:46):
to repeat these tests enough to at least convince me
or you know any scientific body that that single individual
shows those capabilities.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
That single individual, Yeah, because they're not they're not to be.
Or again, there's no argument that this is something for
everyone who is nonverbal on the autism spectrum.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh no, not at all. Again, these are self reported
cases where the caregiver reaches out right and says, hey,
I've found this to be true. You also can't discount
those individual reactions from a caregiver or findings of a caregiver.
So in my mind, it is just a fascinating subject,
fascinating concept for a podcast and a show, and I
(31:29):
can't wait to dig into a deeper So thank you,
plead for reaching out to us and sending us this.
I would say, I reached out to my ex wife,
who has a lot of experience in this field with
children on the autism spectrum at the Marcus Institute here
in Atlanta, and she was fascinated by it. And hopefully
(31:51):
we're going to have a further discussion about it, because
it is one of those things that when you work
with especially a child who is nonverbal, the incredible communication
that occurs that is not through speaking, and that can
be developed and honed. It's it's it's mind boggling because
(32:12):
it's just a different way of communicating.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah, and I love that you're pointing that out. Matt.
Three quick things here. First, Yes, we know that the majority,
especially when you're in person, the majority of human communication
is in fact nonverbal. It's something like sixty percent mix. Secondly,
we do know to be absolutely clear that in certain
(32:38):
cases there are people who are diagnosed on the autism
spectrum who do exhibit abilities that the majority of humanity
would consider extraordinary or superhuman. I'm thinking of, for example,
just for an example of an ability, uh, Stephen Wiltshire,
(32:59):
who is one of this phenomenal painter with an artist
with edetic memory. He's the guy you probably read about.
We discussed him in real life Superpower series, who can
fly in a helicopter over a city and then over
a period of days he can reproduce a massive, accurate
(33:20):
portrait really of an entire city. And he's done this
around the world.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
It is just like sort of a kin to photographic
memory type situations, or are people that can, like, you know,
read a book once and then tell you exactly what
page and passage you know, in paragraph a particular phrase
appears on.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, photographic memory is like Vinn diagram with a detic memory.
I was talking about this in an email with Big Chucks.
I think photog I don't want to get to too
far away from the subject, but it's next one question.
Photographic memory is the way it's depicted often in fiction
and film. Science is still really the science is still
(33:56):
really hotly contested over whether or not that actually exists.
And then edetic memory largely exists in children under twelve,
in about two to fifteen percent of children under twelve.
And what we're talking about here in this exploration is
really the mystery of communication and the fact that often
(34:17):
there is a certain dogmatic approach to science in Ivory
Towers that is simply true. There's this hierarchy of questions
that seem to be allowed or disallowed, and so sometimes
if you stray too far from what is considered quote
unquote legitimate scientific inquiry, then people may be dismissed out
(34:42):
of hand. This is something our associate Russell Tard dealt
with when he was looking into his research. Now to
exercise humanity here too. I think this is one of
the key things. We can't automatically be dismissive. And I'm
not hoping I don't come off dismissive when you asked
(35:04):
that first question, Matt. The reason that I and other
people argue this could be potentially dangerous to people children
on parts of the autism spectrum is because the argument
has never been that this is all kids, right. The
argument has been some kids, as you said, Matt self reported.
(35:27):
So if there is, for instance, a caregiver who is
trying to force these kind of techniques or things on
the kid, then it could be quite distressing, even with
the best of intentions. So it's something we need to
be very careful about. And again, you know, I hope
I don't sound like militant on this. I'm sort of
holding this up and feeling all sides of it. Does
(35:48):
that make sense? Oh, yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (35:50):
I think you're doing a fine drub well.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I think the desire may also rise out of hope
and desperation, right, hope that you will one day be
able to communicate with your child the way you see
other parents communicating with their children. You hope for that
so and you desire that so deeply that the possibility
(36:14):
that you could potentially communicate with them in this other
way drives you so strong that you may allow yourself
to see or believe or feel things that may not
be fully true simply because you need it. You want
it so badly. And again, that is not to talk
down at any parent right of a child in the
spector or anything like that. It's just that is just
(36:36):
human nature to desire that. I think, Yeah, guys, have
you ever had the hill dream?
Speaker 5 (36:43):
No?
Speaker 4 (36:43):
I don't know. Maybe I got a couple of recurring ones.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, I don't know if I've had it either, but
I've certainly had a recurring dream on a hill where
flight is possible and there are a bunch of other
human beings flying around on this hill. There's some other
specifics to it. I want to learn more about it,
but it's a recurring thing. I would say, this one
feels like, oh, how would I put it? Almost like
(37:10):
a bunch of students of some teacher hanging out on
a hill, flying around to like tree tops and stuff
and being kids kind of, it's very weird, is very strange.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
And surely when we look at these things, because dreams
also memory of dreams changes over time, just like memory
of any other event, it's best to write them down honestly,
no matter what.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Because they just dissipate. Yeah, like tears in the rain.
Dream motifs are interesting or I guess themes, you know,
what's the word, kind of flavors that are universal. I
have this one all the time. Different kind of twists
on it, but it usually involves like having the opportunity
of a lifetime and being completely unprepared for it. Like
I've joined my favorite band, I'm in radio Head, but
(37:57):
I don't know how to play any of their songs,
and I'm on stage at like Carnegie Hall or you know,
the Hollywood b or something.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
What I love about this is everybody does have something
like dreaming, unless you have some specific and serious conditions.
The difference is usually when people tell you that they
don't dream, they mean they don't remember what their brain
is doing in that defragging process. And Matt to your point,
(38:27):
I think this is tremendously illustrative of how how people
specifically approach what they consider real or what they consider bunk,
because there are a lot of people who might have
heard telepathy tapes or a conversation now where we're striving
to be objective and fair, and they might have said
they think that's malarkey. But then they might believe that
(38:50):
they have a light ability toward precognition, right, or that
they are meeting outside entities in their dreams. And I
say this as a I who for many many decades
has had recurring conversations with a talking blue tiger that
doesn't and they're lucid dreams, and it doesn't give us
(39:12):
about what's going on. Sorry, beat me there. It doesn't
givish about what's going on in my life. It wants
to talk about, uh, very specific forms of philosophy. It's
like Alice in Wonderland and the caterpillar kind of and
I don't know why that happens, and I don't know
why it keeps happening, but yeah, so everybody kind of
picks and chooses, and that comes from to bring it
(39:34):
all back around. That seems to come from, as you
so beautifully put, this deep desire to communicate, you know,
and it reminds me we should do an episode. We
should do an actual episode on dream experiments. There's so
much there.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
My god, Yes, I've got this one where there's this
talking raccoon with a bunch of weapons and he sounds
just like Bradley Cooper Rock. You're right, sorry, going back
to that. Well all right, well, hey, thank you so much. Please,
thank you, and y'all tell us what you think about
(40:08):
the telepathy tapes, this concept of ESP. Who you know,
what could it mean? Are humans just not ready for
that kind of extraordinary thing? Do we just are? There
too many movies about it. It just feels like fantasy
or not real life. What how would we convince everyone
that ESP is real if there's scientific backing to it?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Is that a queen reference you made there, Matt.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
I have no idea, he said, his real life.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
As it is fantasy something along those lines. Mama Mia,
I say very important questions.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I don't know the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
There you go, your eyes anywhere the wind blows.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Join us on the hill. We'll be right back, and.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
We have turn folks of full disclosure to thirds of
us are on the road, and the road holds its price.
So we are going to get into a kind of
loose third act of our listener mail segment. We're going
to start with a We're going to start with a
(41:21):
great reaction to our two part series or something we
mentioned our two part series two episodes on the Darien Gap.
Please check that out if you haven't heard of it before.
In the meantime, we present to you a story from
Della which I don't know about. You guys gave me
no small amount of travel fomo, I want to hear it.
(41:45):
Here it goes hi, guys, says Della. We just got
back from a cruise to Antarctica. While on a tour
in Ushaia in Tierra del Fuego, waiting for the cruise
to board, the guide mentioned that this is the south
end of a road that can be traveled all the
way to oh, forgive my pronunciation, Utzskaigvik, on the Arctic
(42:08):
Ocean coast of Alaska. Della's talking about the Pan American Highway. Here.
The guide said that the only break in the road
is the Darien Pass and how dangerous it is to
travel there. So I was very excited to hear your
new episodes on the subject. You guys, remember how we
talked about that wild plan in part one of our
(42:29):
Darien Gap episodes or chapter one, where even the New
York Times co signed this wacky idea to just bomb
the hell out of Panama.
Speaker 4 (42:39):
It's fine, who could go wrong?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
And Panama said, okay.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
No, Panama said, you guys, you already have a canal.
And then we shared a specific article from New York
Times at the time that said, this will be fine.
We'll just put you know, thirty something nuclear bombs to
obliterate the Darien Gap. We'll build a canal, we'll make
(43:06):
a bridge over it. There are people who live there,
but you know they don't vote, they don't subscribe to
the Times.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Dude, did you guys see the news with Panama happening
right now?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yes, yeah, the Rubio stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah, the Rubio stuff, but the canceling the Hong Kong
contract and allowing the US to travel through there free.
And the response from Panama basically saying, yeah, we're ready
for war and their nuclear option would and they said
this former president of Panama said, well, we would just
open the gap. We'd open the Darien Gap and let
(43:44):
everybody in. That would be our final chess piece move.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
We call that Grinsonship.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Yeah, tea, guys, I just wanted to chime in really
quickly because I have to pop a little bit early
from today's episode to make a flight. But a friend
of mine, old friend, having heard our Darien Gap episode
and hipped me to a documentary that a friend of
his did for a Singapore news agency that follows a
handful of Chinese families from Ecuador to the US through
(44:12):
the Darien Gap and it has a really good kind
of overview of the logistics of traveling that route. And
it is called Walk the Line, a CNA insider documentary,
and it's it's very well done and I highly recommend
checking it out.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Awesome. Thank you for the recommendation. And be safe out
there man. Well thanks fellas. I'll see you guys soon. Bye.
Help me hangout all the time by ulture too, and
we'll also be hanging out. February nineteenth, Get the to Brooklyn.
Check out stuff they don't want you to know. Presents
a conspiracy of sound. It's just for you. The show
(44:52):
starts at seven point thirty. If you show up at
six thirty, you can be a part of the show.
At the legendary National Sawdust in Williamsburg.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
That's that's less than a week. Get there, Get them
tickets now.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah. Yeah, we've got to make sure our whole teams
tickets as well. Don't worry, we're on it, and we're
we promise we're not going to deploy a nuclear device.
We ninety nine percent promise we are not going to
deploy a nuclear device.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Well, now there's definitely going to be undercover folks there
checking us out and tracking our phones.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Benh jeez, Matt, I've got some offline conversations. So let's
go back. Let's go back to this, to this note
from Della. So Della says there's a lot more to
the story of nuking the jungle, the Darien Gap to
build a road, and there is an Alaska connection, and Della,
(45:48):
you all live in Alaska. You continue. Back in the
nineteen fifties, there was a plan to build a new
canal through Panama by detonating nukes to test whether the
theory would work. Edward Heller proposed Project Chariot, a plan
to detonate six nukes off the Alaska coast at Cape
Thompson to create a new harbor. So we're deployed, Yeah,
(46:12):
we're placing nukes just so, almost like eracing a land
tile in a strategy game, so that we can make
a harbor, we can carve out a big enough piece
of land for boats to pass through.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Well, I gotta say it's a much better use of
them than you know, obliterating cities that have people in them.
But still not great.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, like if you had to if you woke up
one day and someone said, hey, good news, bad news,
we've got too many nukes. You got to get rid
of six of them today, that's the bad news. Good
news is you can choose between a coast on Alaska
or you know, a major metropolitan area of your choice.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Hmmm, let's go with the land tile.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Let's go with the land tile. And as Della says,
what could go wrong? Oh yeah, it's delicate tundra and
temporary home to a multitude of migratory birds and caribou herds,
not to mention the folks who live in the village nearby.
But who could really be hurt here? I need a
sarcasm fought, by the way, We'll do that again for you, Della.
(47:24):
But who could really be hurt here?
Speaker 2 (47:27):
So?
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Fortunately, you continue a group of pesky biologists from the
University of Alaska Fairbanks and the natives who lived in
the nearby village of Point Hope put up a brave
and lively opposition to the plan, and it was eventually abandoned.
Several scientists lost their federal grants and their jobs due
to their unwillingness to sign off on a project that
(47:49):
their research showed would cause a great deal of harm
to the ecology and people in the area. I highly
recommend the book The Firecracker Boys by Dan O'Neill, which
tells their story to end. Says Della, I couldn't get
a picture of the ice dome that surrounds the flat
earth bummer out in Antarctica, but here is a photo
(48:10):
of a very cute baby elephant seal and a picture
of my dogs, just because they are Nico aka the
dragon aka a hole as and why are you such
an and Auto aka goofball aka what do you have
in your mouth? Anyway, thanks and keep up the good work.
I love the open minded way you approach topics and
your willingness to listen to other points of view. You
(48:33):
can use this on air. I suck it clever nicknames,
looking forward to the next episode. I want to go
to Antarctica so bad, Matt, Yeah, it's so bad.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, there's gonna be an ice wall until I don't
see it with my eyes. And that's not how I
don't know, yes, but I share that desire.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
That's how we should pitch it to our right. We
should just say, guys, thanks for making the time for
this meeting. Really important stuff we need to sort out.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Have you ever not seen the ice walls? Me? Neither?
Speaker 3 (49:13):
And this got this gut is thinking too about nuclear
explosions in engineering. There have been a lot of very
strange drawing board propositions to use nuclear explosions for great
feats of engineering, you know what I mean, to basically
(49:34):
build a better dynamite. And the issue people are get,
the reason that's not happening all the time now is because,
thank goodness, people learned about radiation at some point and contaminations.
Now a lot of the engineering related to nuclear devices
(49:54):
nuclear technology is, thankfully, how do we how do we
build less dangerous nuclear structures and devices? And then you know,
how do we build like fusion, right, sustainable fusion things
like that, And then you know, the super fascinating one,
how do we warn people or warn some other civilization
(50:16):
millennia hence about where all the nuclear waste is buried?
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Right with a skull and crossbones emoji?
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Mm hm. And what if the creatures that find it
don't have skulls? Like, how do we teach them?
Speaker 8 (50:32):
Right?
Speaker 3 (50:32):
What if it's too late? That's where you get this star.
There's a real fascinating stuff you should know episode on
this from back in earlier evenings and we talked about
it in the past. It goes into these really innovative
ideas about genetically engineering plants that that emit a bioluminescent
(50:54):
glow when exposed to radiation, right, or building stone megaliths
that somehow convey the danger of the area.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, I remember reading about all that stuff mega liths
and hieroglyphs basically mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:10):
And who knows by that point people may have or
the descendants of people may have some sort of extraordinary ability.
This is a lot to think on. This is probably
going to be I think a future episode idea kind
of a Venn diagram of stuff they don't want you
to know in Ridiculous history, Matt, if I could pitch
(51:32):
it to you, the top X craziest things people tried
to do with nukes.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Yeah, that's a no brainer.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
We're in. We're in. Thank you so much the Della.
As we said, we're going to keep this loose. There
are two letters from home for us. We discussed this
last week. We didn't we didn't quite get to it.
But we're still you know, we're still cracking away on
following up with everybody who's taking the time to write
(52:03):
or to call. Here is a correspondence we had with
our pal, Mike, the Exotic Landscaper. Hey, just listen to
your strange news program on the California wildfires. As a
Federal wildland fire fireman in South California, I appreciate you
guys shedding some light on the situation. I was not
sent to any of the fires in LA, but I
(52:25):
was on the line for the fire here in the
San Bernardino National Forest. If you have any questions about
the federal side, I would be more than happy to
answer them. Also, as far as the California Inmate cruise
are concerned, those dudes and ladies are the real deal.
Good to hear Mike. I've worked with several of them,
and they for the most part are excited to get
the training and experience because they can be picked up
(52:48):
by the Forest Service upon their release. Those dudes are
like Rocky and Rocky one, and a lot of the
California fire cats I've worked with are like Rocky in
the beginning of Rocky. Anyway, thanks again for the show,
and so we go on and we ask Mike a
couple of questions. You know, we say thank you for
cutting past the unfortunate noise and headlines inmate firefighters. We
(53:14):
also point out, whenever we have these conversations, especially in
the American justice system, being locked up does not automatically
make you a bad person. Matt, I know is very
important to you and me both to point out that
these are human beings with communities. Logically they have a
moral obligation to protect the people and the places they love.
(53:34):
And then we ask for the following question, what are
the primary things that you guys there on the line
need people to know about the fires and the larger contexts?
And Mike says, first and foremost, the federal engines are green.
Take the me green vehicles right, Nope, And Mike also
(53:55):
says he says a little aggravation here, nobody knows the
difference between California fire local departments and the Forest Service
US federal cats only work the fires on federal land. Also,
us on the federal side are not technically firefighters, which
is so weird, right because they are fighting fires, Yeah,
(54:17):
but technically not firefighters.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
Well, what else are they doing?
Speaker 3 (54:23):
Yeah, right, exactly, that's a question we have to follow
up with you on, Mike. Mike says, our job title
is forestry technician. That way, we don't get some of
the benefits firefighters get, so maybe it's a budgetary move. Also,
we stand to lose about half hour pay because Congress
won't pass a pay protection Act. Plus the hiring freeze
(54:45):
has affected our numbers when we're already low on personnel.
And Mike has included some other stuff here. One of
our favorite facts we learned was since we aren't technically firefighters,
there's a few of us that refer to our ourselves
as exotic landscapers. That lotiful.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Well, a lot of the techniques in fighting a fire
is altering the land and you know, the foliage, the trees,
the groundcover and all that stuff like that's in the
pathway of the fire, right, Yeah, I can totally see
how landscaping is one of the primary things that they do.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
Yeah, isn't that fascinating. We often forget that skill sets
the average person on the outside might not see as related.
These skill sets often coalesce, you know. So of course,
being really well versed in forestry management is going to
(55:45):
make you far more prepared than the average person to
tackle a wildfire. And we are happy to report in
related California fire updates that our good friend and collie,
the one and only mister Miles Gray, is back on
Daily'sygeist and do check him out. It's his return is
(56:08):
an episode not to be missed for everybody who is
whether an exotic landscaper, a firefighter, however you were involved.
Please stay safe out there and know that we have
your back. We're gonna move on here. We said we
would want to end on an up note. Matt, I'm
(56:29):
sure you saw this too. We get a great funny letter,
actually an invitation from our pal Ward. Did you see
this one?
Speaker 2 (56:40):
No?
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Tell me? Oh? Here we go okay, so Ward says, hey, guys,
I love the podcast and listen to it a lot.
Thank you, Ward, thanks for helping us keep the lights
on Ward says, I'm in Greenville, South Carolina. I own
a store called the Mushroom Spot. This is a nano
farm and retail store from my shrooms parentheses the legal ones.
(57:04):
I know how you have commented on fungi and mushrooms
a lot or fun guy, whatever your preference. We have
all kinds of cool speakers and workshops too. Fun guy,
Fungi are amazing and essential. Anyhow, here's the invitation. I
was contacting you to make sure you knew about this
year's Georgia Bigfoot Conference happening March twenty first to twenty
(57:28):
second in Demorest, Georgia. I had not heard of this,
but Matt is where you mentioned a bigfoot conference recently.
Speaker 2 (57:35):
Well, there's the big alien one that contact in the desert,
one that we got invited to last year where we
couldn't make it. This is brand new and checking it
out right now, let's see how far away it is?
Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yeah, how far?
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Let's see putting it in. Looks like it's about an
hour away from me.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
It's doable, okay, So that's okay. Well, we won't turn
this into our logistics conversation, but.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
But that's doable. That is what I'm saying, yeah, it's doable.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
It's doable. We always check this the first time we
get invited to something that feels local, because depending on like,
Georgia is a weirdly shaped state, so you know, something
in Savannah is much more difficult for us to get
to than something an hour away.
Speaker 1 (58:29):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yeah, I hope I'm not over explaining Georgia because we
have a lot of listeners in Georgia already.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Oh yeah, of course, dude, Wait, we're gonna have to
there's a restaurant over there. Yeah, it's an oyster bar.
Oh there's a Cuban cafe. Oh, they've good food.
Speaker 3 (58:48):
We're in you know what. I'm sure we could. I'm
sure we could talk. Nolan did this one because I
think I think you had a little fomo about move on.
Speaker 2 (58:58):
Why don't we uh on some wood? Huh would knock
anyone anyways? Bueller?
Speaker 3 (59:05):
All right, great, I've got to be quiet. It's like
four am over here. Uh okay, so Ward continues. I
am not a conspiracy theorist, nor do I give much
credence to a physical Bigfoot, but who knows. I like
the idea of an interdimensional cryptid. We do too, that
might happen with aliens too, who knows, but it is
(59:27):
fun to think about and a great exercise for the mind.
The Mushroom Spot will be a vendor at this year's
Bigfoot conference. Congratulations, Ward, I've never been before, though my
brother has. He's gonna sell his hot sauce there, Matt
this year. If you come to the festival, please stop
buy my table. I'd love to meet you all. Please
(59:48):
keep up the good work as long as they whomever
they are, permit you and even after and this is
my favorite part. Mush love Ward.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
Oh oh no?
Speaker 7 (01:00:00):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Did did we get a did we get a drum
riff for that one? Andrew? Also, Andrew, do you want
to go to this thing with us? Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
I would like to go. I want to meet big Foot.
Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Yes. Congratulations everybody tuning in. Uh that is the first
on air reaction from our producer, try Force. We did it, Matt,
We got him. This is our show for the evening.
Thank you so much, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist
for spending some of your time with us. We also
(01:00:37):
want to think, of course, Colby, Jack Cheese, pleab Ward,
Mike Della, Miles and everybody who has reached out to
us on the internets, who has given us a summons
on a telephonic device, or who has stared into the
void and written us a letter. Just light ward, Oh
(01:01:01):
my god, mush love. All right, you can find us
on the internet. Should you sip the social meds Instagram,
conspiracy stuff, show Twitter, nay x, that would be conspiracy stuff.
You can also find us where we are on YouTube.
You can see all those old videos from our war
(01:01:22):
stories that we mentioned as YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff.
But let's say that you, for one reason or another,
have decided to pull back a little bit from social media.
Let's say you just heard our episode on social media's
damaging effects on attention span and you're more like a
(01:01:43):
hear me out. Let me. Let me just call you
kind of person, Matt. Riddle me this. What do people
do in that situation?
Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Wow, you pick up your phone. You dial one eight
three three st d w y t K. It is
our voice MAI system. You've got three minutes, give yourself
a cool nickname and say whatever you'd like. Just do
in the message. Let us know if we can use
your name and message on the air. If you got
more to say then can fit in that voicemail. Why
(01:02:11):
not instead to send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
rights back. No, wait, you might be saying, really, really though,
does it happen? Well, there's one way to find out.
Send us the link, send us the photos, send us
the story. Most importantly, send us ideas for episodes in
(01:02:37):
the future. You are the most important part of this show,
and we'd love for you to join us. One step
away from the light. Out here in the dark, we
are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.