November 23, 2023 • 48 mins
Lord of Enjoyment calls in with some additional context on the Tyson chicken nugget recall. A letter prompts a conversation about the controversy surrounding the Balfour Declaration. Multiple anonymous sources prove the problem of contamination is much, much bigger than just chicken nuggets -- and it turns out Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking novel The Jungle still matters in the modern day. 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.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
superproducer Alexis code name Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
You are here.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
In the United States, this is Thanksgiving week, and as
we always like to say in our listener mail segment,
we are so thankful fellow conspiracy realists that you have
joined up with us. We are going to have follow
ups to the Tyson recall. We're going to answer or
(00:58):
explore would be the more accurate term, some questions about
global history. And before we do any of that, or
on the way to doing that, we thought we'd switch
it up in listen to some.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Voicemails, yeah, which includes some of those topics. But guys,
before we even do that. This week on Strange News,
we talked about a little airplane incident where a plane
had to turn around because of some damage to some windows.
I'm just throwing an extra strange news right on top,
right here. It's super quick. There was recently a Boeing
seven forty seven plane that had to land, do an
(01:32):
emergency landing and return because a horse escaped inside the plane.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Weblight. Yeah it was this an okay go video.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Yeah, it was an okay go video made real.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Or the John mullaney bit about the horse in the
hospital but in the air.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Yeah, I tired all these MF and horses on my
MF and plane. Anyway, you can actually go there are
a couple of places you can go online to hear
the air traffic contryroll audio of the horse escape moment.
So do check that out.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
You can lead a horse to never mind moving on
all right.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Hartsville Jackson Airport is, yes, where you'd say so. Yeah,
let's jump to the phone lines, and we're gonna hear
a voicemail that is a response to the strange news
segment we did on the chicken nuggets recall horrifying thing. Ben,
Just before we get into it, let's go quickly give
a recap of what that story was about.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Sure, the giant food manufacturer Tyson recently recalled a great deal,
well not a great deal, but a significant amount thirty
thousand pounds or so of chicken nuggets, specifically the Dinosa
roughly dinosaur shaped fun nuggets, due to a It was
voluntary recall due to a small amount of pliable metal
(02:53):
articles found contaminating the nuggets.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yet they're pliable, what's the problem?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Yeah, it should be fine. So there were actual injuries
right associated with this recall. It's a serious thing. We
just had somebody call in with some more information on it,
with some experience. So here's a message from Lord of Enjoyment.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Yes, this is a Lord of Enjoyment calling. I'm calling
about you. Guys can use my voice and everything. By
the way, I'm calling about the chicken nugget recall. I'm
a truck driver. I've been driving refrigerated food and freight,
I guess for a few years all over the country
from all different shippers and receivers, Tyson being a pretty
(03:35):
frequent one. So these people put out like the article,
that's thirty thousand pounds of the chicken nuggets I got recalled.
One trailer of chicken nuggets or meat or of anything
is about forty to forty five pounds, So that's less
than one trailer load of chicken nuggets, and one small
(03:58):
plant could have like I don't know, hundreds of trailers
going out every single day, twenty four hours a day.
So that's like literally nothing that could be That's not
even the day's worth of chicken nuggets that they sent
out from one small plant. And there's like who knows
how many plants that are like massive, so it's not
really that big of a thing. And also about the
(04:20):
chicken strips and the Tyson plants closing a year or
two ago, that was due to a to a hacking
incident where they were shut down because their infrastructure was compromised,
like their software and everything. It wasn't due to like
demand dropping or anything like that. So feel free to
call me back, feel free to use my voice, enjoy everybody.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
That is illuminating because I had no sense of the
scale of this kind of operation A And it also
makes it make sense where it's like, Okay, this one
batch got compromised, right.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well, yeah, exactly. I think the scale is the thing
when you try and visual a plant that produces the
stuff that becomes chicken nuggets, in my head at least.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And I've seen the documentary footage, right, the how.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
It gets made, Oh it's made, how it's made, and
all that stuff, Like, I see the scale within the factory,
But I don't imagine that that much is pumped out
and sent out to stores every day from one plant.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Right. No, No, I certainly didn't. But it makes sense now.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
But then it becomes a matter of Okay, let's say
we've got one truckload of contaminated product. Right, where did
that truck go? You could probably track that, it seems like, right,
and you'd be able to just recall that one truckload
rather than putting out a whole like warning to everybody.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
One would imagine, I suppose it would, to your point,
more of enjoyment. I suppose it would depend upon how
many or how the plant distributes the product into trucks.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh yep, that's.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
A good point, because they could be coming off of
multiple different lines and then sort of converging into like
a shoot that then is dumped into the tribe. Again,
this doesn't make it. This is not how it's done.
They have to be refigurated and packaged and all of
that stuff. But you guys, have you ever gotten a
foreign object ingested? A foreign object from prepackaged food or
(06:23):
from like to go food ingested? I don't know, or
close to Yeah, perhaps come close to like where you
caught it and then you pulled it out of your mouth. Yeah, yeah, same,
it's terrifying. I once pulled like a staple out of
some sort of to go food.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You gotta stop ordering the staplers.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's true, but like that's terrifying. And I understand how
it's more about the optics of doing the massive recall
than it is about maybe the smaller recall would do
the trick. They need to make a big show of
it because they're banking on people really taking their word
that they're never gonna let this happen again, or they're
(07:04):
like doing the big move to make this go away.
I think it's really funny. If you guys have ever
been to Ikea, they post all their recalls in the
giant elevator. There's like an elevator, like a big one
that you can take your giant flat packs and stuff,
and there's always tons of little posted flyers talking about
the items that they have recalled, and a lot of
(07:25):
times it's like contained rocks, you know, like it's really
funny how candid Ikea are about their recalls and how
they put it like post it in the store like that.
But it's again it's because of optics.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
I guess, well, yeah, it's like we talked about on
the Strange News episode. If you imagine you're Tyson, you
cannot take the risk that somebody else is going to
get metal, right, they're in their child's mouth by giving
their their kid a product that's really really freaky.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And that whole the note.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I don't even remember what Lord of Enjoyment is talking
about with the Tyson in plant closing down the Chicken
strips plant. I think it must have been when we
did that episode on our like, is there an attack
on the food supplies?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's it's possibly referencing that also, Lord of Enjoyment, I
think you're referencing some of the previous mishaps that Tyson
experienced and going back to the issue of scale. After
a certain threshold, you have to accept that they're just
going to be bad things that happen, right. That's why
the FDA is saying it's okay to have a little
(08:31):
bit of wrap poop in cereal not a bunch you guys.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
But we know mistakes happen.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So there's nobody's going to be one hundred percent perfect,
is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
That is another horrifying thing that I haven't considered, the
fact that the software infrastructure that runs all the automated
machinery in a factory could be attacked and then the
whole thing shuts down only due to the fact that
the software doesn't function to actually produce the stuff anymore
and you can't get it to work anymore. Kind of
(09:02):
reminds me of the infrastructure like attacks on water treatment
plants that we talked about in power plants back in
the day, but just with food manufacturing. I guess it's
the same deal craziness.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
It's true in terms of tactics that could be exercised
and points of vulnerability. However, food manufacturers, we could argue
have a bit of an advantage because if you go
to like power supplies have a little bit of redundancy, right,
and wastewater management water management, there's redundancy there. The food
(09:35):
supply of the United States, the way you think about
it commercially, is a bunch of private entities, right that
are all trying to have their turf or they're trying
to encroach on other turf. You know, let's get into
the other guy's dino chicken nugget business.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Slang and nuggets, right, slanging nuggets.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So they're all incentivized, I think, to to have their
own kind of order of operations as much as possible.
So like if you if someone flipped a switch for
some reason, Let's say there's like a terrorist group that
just wants to bring down Tyson Foods. If they do that,
(10:17):
there are going to be other things, other entities that
sell the same stuff that's just not Tyson, you know
what I mean. So the food supplies I think a
little bit more secure.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Oh yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
I think I'm just imagining a coordinated effort to attack
the food supply. If you hit factories like that, those
the fear, right, Like in twenty twenty two, the fear
was that food factories were under attack, but it felt
more like a physical threat right at the time. In
this case, it wouldn't have to be physical at all.
It could be virtual, which is creepy.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I mean, hell, the computers probably also, I think you're
already saying this and sorry for being redune to probably
control the mixture, you know, and the way the ingredients
are blended and like all of that stuff. So you
could like throw the ratio off or like you know,
over deliver on one ingredient to make the thing like
completely made of like fat or something. You know, like
(11:11):
a million things you could do.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Well, then the company wouldn't be able to package it
and sell it, right, because they're at every factory that
creates a food product, they test the line right from
the lines of products.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
To the degree that they are legally required to do.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So that's a really good point bench.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Test the chicken nugget slurry.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Oh geez, oh hot dogs come from us.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Oh, we'll get to it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
We'll get to it. Yeah, hot dogs. All right, Well,
that's it for this segment. We will be right back.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Thank you so much, Lord of Enjoyment for letting us
know about all of that stuff, giving us that insight.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
We'll be right back with more messages from you.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And we have returned a quick disclaimer for this one, folks,
we're gonna have to use multiple sources and they all
have to be anonymous. Thank you, anonymous sources. We know
who you are. You know who you are, and you
reached out to us. As we said to each of you,
we're doing our best not to compromise your identity, nor
(12:16):
your profession, or your prospects. We're going to follow up,
Lord of Enjoyment. We're going to take a queue from
you and hear some more from people with on the
ground experience related to industrial food manufacturing and a lot
of other consumable manufacturing as well. Heads up, if you
(12:38):
are eating a snack while you hear this next story
in our weekly listener mail segment, tell us tell us
your experience of eating the snack. We're interested. So a
lot of this comes to us via social media. Here
is one source just pulled a bunch of excerpts so
we can stop along the way and react to these.
(12:59):
Their I opening and maybe off putting. So our first
one starts this way. Okay, so off the record, I
have first hand knowledge not only on the Tyson recall,
but on many others. This source is responsible for a
specific type of equipment, a couple of types of equipment
(13:21):
that are used in production lines. One would be metal detectors,
which are part of industrial food manufacturing, and the other
is magnetic separation equipment. Have you guys heard of magnetic
separation equipment?
Speaker 4 (13:36):
No, does sound Oh god, if we're time off food production,
I'm imagine meat getting separated.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But maybe that's not it.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
That's what I was thinking too, because it reminds me
of the It reminds me of the ingredient list on
some foods where you look at it and it says
this includes mechanically separated chicken. Yeah, okay, So these, from
what I understand, magnetic separators in general, if I'm getting
this correct, we are net experts. Magnetic separators in general
(14:07):
are designed to recover magnetic material from non magnetic matter.
So if you think there might be some small pliable
pieces of metal in your chicken paste or your hot
dog slurry, then you run it through this kind of
equipment that will be able to suck out the metal
(14:30):
that reacts to the magnet.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
In the food production line.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Well yeah, like on the way you know, Oh okay,
not the final hopefully is before they cook it. And again,
so that's what excerpt. Not the only person saying this.
There were more people reporting that the problem or the
issue goes bigger than this Tyson recall. Because to your point,
(14:55):
Lord of enjoyment. Yeah, that's a very tiny slice of
a very big pie. Shout out Dominoes. We had another
source who says, guys, it's not just Tyson. Many many
food manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and chemical companies also have to
use magnets and metal detectors because they remove components that
(15:20):
might have snuck into the process, and they also remove
fragments of blades.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
So like, yeah, I guess that makes sense because I mean,
you know, the kind of equipment that we're talking about online,
like that something could chip right, you know, or likely
the tip of something could. I've certainly have you ever
tried to open a can with the tip of a
knife and broken the tip of the knife off, and
then you'll let Well, I guess I'm not gonna eat
this spaghetti sauce because there's a special surprise in there somewhere,
(15:50):
and I don't really feel like sifting through spaghetti sauce
by half. If only I had one of those magnetic
extractors separations.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Keep them separated. Shout out to who is that? What
was that?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
The offspring?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
PhD and chemical engineering like a hot sauce impresario, many things,
many things. Regular Dolph lundering that guy, so uh.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Dolphin say regular Diddy Kong and I meant p Diddy carry.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
These are perfect, These are examples to aspire to. Uh So,
we also learned from someone who is in the business,
a different source, who said, here is how this is
a business, because one of my questions was, is this
not rarefied air? You know, like there are a few
big companies who make most of the process chicken in
(16:41):
the US. Are there not just a few companies who
do like compliance with these kinds of standards and safeguards.
It turns out that the way a lot of these
folks get business is they read super sexy government reports
on a pretty regular basis coming from the FDA. If
(17:04):
you were recently reading a book and you thought this
is too good, this is too much of a page turner.
I need something to help me sleep, and I'm worried
about contaminants and melatonin, then we highly recommend for tonight's
Reading Rainbow segment that you check out the Food Defect
Levels Handbook published on FDA dot gov. It is not
(17:29):
a page turner and it will help you find some slumber.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I think, oh dude, this is title twenty one.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yes, yes, this is Matt's a big fan of Title
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yea previous episode, wasn't that something politically in the news
like Title twenty one? Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
It's like whenever there's a slow news day or a
particularly meme level story that goes viral, then we that's
when we get inundated by this very specific governmental language.
And I've got to be honest, I don't know about you, guys,
but I forget a lot of it because so much
(18:12):
of it sounds so very similar.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
You know, Title twenty one is the thing.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Maybe I'm wrong. It's the thing that we reference or
we talked about it one time. Oh gosh, it was
the it was Agenda twenty one or something like that.
But then there was a real thing called there's a
real thing called Title twenty one, which has to do
with the allowable amounts of horrible stuff in food products, right.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And Agenda twenty one is a United Nations thing.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yes, exactly, guys.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
It's like sports jerseys. You gotta differentiate your numbers. Okay,
you're confusing the.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Fans, so.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Shout out, push your tea. So the actually that makes
no sense. I'm shouting out a line from pusha T's
Diet Coke song, which is great. You guys would love it.
So let's continue with this idea. This tells us that
there is an entire industry of people who are one
source called ambulance chasing. They're waiting for the FDA to
(19:10):
publish a cavalcade of recalls, and then they go to
these companies and they say, hey, I heard you having
a hard time, buddy. You got some like blue rubber pieces.
You got some metals in your nuggets.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
That'll cost you extra.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Ap is sure interested in that, or they would be.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So it's weird too because the companies. The reason matten
Or in that earlier thing is said, the reason we
had to point out these companies are doing exactly what
they are required to do by regulatory bodies. There's a
source that pointed out, look, I often hear about these
(19:55):
companies after something has happened. They are reactive rather than proactive.
Nobody is saying, hey, let's make sure that in you know,
the next five years, all our chicken nuggets are metal free.
Let's do it right after something happens, and let's say, like,
(20:15):
what's the good price to get us across the finish
line this year.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I know, I know, just shaking my head over Yeah, Matt.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Shakes his head over here. Uh noel uh nol. How
would how would you rate your emotional state with hearing this?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Indifferent?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
No, uh, shocked and or odd. It's strange too.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Because you know, this immediately reminded me I nobody, guys,
but reminded me of a book called The Jungle.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Well, sure, yeah, it comes up all the time. It's
like the first expose blown the lid off of meat
packing at a time where there was like zero oversight.
That stuff's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Oh you, guys, we.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Got a voice from someone who goes by Trucker Joey.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Another trucker out there. Thanks to everybody on the road
that's listening.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
It's his brother, Trader Joe, the Trader Joe and Trucker Joey.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, I think that's it.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Oh so he he at the very end of his
message talks about going up to the break room at
some of these meat processing facilities, specifically like slaughterhouses where
cows and pigs get quote processed, and he describes this, Oh,
I don't even want to say it. It's gonna upset people.
(21:32):
He describes this blade that is like a V, like
this really long V that the pigs are just attached
by their their hoofs, their feet as they go up
this conveyor belt, and their necks just kind of pass
through this V that just like slices the whole thing on.
It's just like was because they're alive when it happens.
(21:54):
It's not like they're dead before.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Wow, I thought, no, wait a minute, I thought they
I thought imagine. I thought they let their throats and
let them. Now, the only.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Way, the only way you can know for sure if
that happens is whether food. If food is rated halala
or kosher.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I was gonna say, so, that's almost more like a
bespoke way of killing the pig. You pay extra for that, right,
Otherwise all bets are off and you're gonna have the
freaking caligular murdered lawnmower machine.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Well, local organic interest will we'll probably have a more
quote unquote humane way of processing the animal. But yeah,
it's the industrial food or livestock system is pretty horrific.
And this goes to an excerpt from an expert who
(22:43):
says the smell at these facilities is surreal. It's deathlike
it's discussed, and you know everybody, well not everybody hopefully,
but a lot of us listening know that death does
have a smell. And there's a necessity to this widespread horror.
The argument goes, because it is feeding not just the
(23:03):
United States, but the world in an intricately connected global network.
And do people want to know that the food they
get at the grocery store goes through magnets or metal
detectors or X ray machines. I think a lot of
people to your point, Noel would probably be indifferent if
(23:25):
it was seen as a safety measure and if you
knew that resulted in less dangerous delicacies.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I was being demure. I'm not actually indifferent. I just
it's easy to get numb to this stuff because it
does feel so confounding and out of your control. I
feel you.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
There's a one of the stories from a comedter that
really stuck with me was seeing half alive birds on
a process line. A process line being where you know
the food is going through, So somehow.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
A bird you missed a few.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
A bird, Yeah that maybe it was a bird that
wasn't supposed to be in the production line the same way.
Like dolphins might get snacked up and fishing.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Now you get an onion ring in your French fries. Yeah,
this is only much more macabre.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
One of these is a pigeon wing, right, and then
what's the old line? Well, don't tell the other customers, sir,
they'll be jealous. Another example would be so we did
get a lot of responses for this. Another example would
be Kraft Mac and Cheese had to recall from I
guess one of their plants out in Illinois, and they
(24:39):
were getting flakes of aluminum in the Easy Mac and
Cheese cups because Craft was using something to like pre
bake the product and it was depositing aluminum aluminum flakes
inside the actual Mac and cheese.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Y'all boil some water, for the love of God, boil
some water. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I think we're all I think we're all on board
with that, you know, in general, actually, if you want
to be super safe and a little bit Howard Hughes
about it, you should just be boiling.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Water all the time.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
We're very likely to live in a place where you
can drink it out of the tap. The last few things,
the FDAIGHT. We talked about how they have a tolerated
amount of insects. They have a tolerated amount of vermin
feces or rat feces. I was not aware of this.
They have apparently a tolerance for choke hazards. It is
(25:39):
seven millimeters by twenty five millimeters.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
The otherwise you have to warn about it.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Like otherwise you have to do something. Okay, So that
is just if you want to take a sorry, i've
got a cat on me, we can keep that part in.
That is seven millimeters by twenty five millimeters is huge,
especially if you consider that there would be younger people
eating this stuff. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I'm going to read this to you because it's that
time of year. Yeah, oh god, this exact FDAIGHT thing
you're mentioning here Ben, for apple butter, here are the
levels when it comes to mold, you are you are
exceeding the limits of the acceptable mold. If there is
a mold count of twelve percent or more, you're exceeding
(26:30):
the rodent filth. If there is an average of four
or more rodent hairs per one hundred grams of apple butter,
and if there are an average of five or more
whole or equivalent insects, not cloud yes, not counting mites, aphids, thrps,
(26:53):
or scale insects per one hundred of because I don't.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Well, well, you know there's probably a couple of court
cases and email arguments about this where someone goes, look, okay, fine,
if you add up all the mites, Okay, I get it,
But is that fair to American business?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh god, I just oh the broccoli stuff. Don't read this.
Don't read this.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Everybody read it while you're eating, right now, Get like
a big can of like a stew something with a
lot of ingredients, DENTI more preps and read this. And
also know that mammalian poop is separated, sometimes not mechanically,
but regulatory, separated from just rat poop. So rats are
(27:41):
like the Kobe Bryant of pooping in your food.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
They've got mammalian poop listed here for cinnamon bark.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Well, I mean that just means it tastes like shit.
It's not very Look, what's the takeaway here, y'all? We've
all definitely consumed vcs before.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
As far as a takeaway, we have mentioned this in
the past. The one last thing I wanted to shout
out before we do a takeaway is our sources said, Look,
hot dogs are made from a pumped hot dog paste,
which is called slurry in the industry, So just think
of that next time you have a hot dog. And
(28:23):
now we get to our takeaway. Before we dive into
a bit of heavier history, we would like to hear
your stories of strange things you've found in your food.
We would like to hear your take on the regulations,
because some people will say, hey, regulations are bad for business.
Other people will point at things like the jungle And
(28:46):
what better way to end this story in our listener
mail segment for this week by shouting out once again
Upton Sinclair. Dude, if he was alive, if he was
on Twitter right now, I feel like he would have
a hard time not saying. Just so, we're gonna pause
for a word from our sponsors. We'll be back with
one more message from you.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
And We're back with one more message from you, and
I'm gonna just jump right into reading it. Hi. I
know the Palestinian Israeli conflict is super touchy and seems
to make people very emotional and myopic, but I was
wondering if you folks could discuss the Balfour Declaration and
British mandate of Palestine. These are historical occurrences, not conspiracy theories,
(29:35):
and you guys are awesome, but talking about things objectively,
so hopefully it wouldn't be a controversial episode. Thanks stdwytk's
Muslim fan. I love the way that's written. It's like
the implication is that we have one Muslim fan. I
hope that's not true, but I do thank this listener
for writing in and personally hipping me to a topic
(29:57):
that I was woefully unfamiliar with. I don't know, let's
just address the elephant in the room. It's true, the
Palestinian Israeli conflict is super touchy and does many people
very uncomfortable and can be very polarizing and hard to
discuss because there's horrible things happening over there to women
and children and people, civilians you know, who are getting
(30:17):
caught in this crossfire that is a historical conflict between
Israel and Palestine, and there seems to be a tendency
to want to favor one side over the other, whether
it be family ties, you know, religious ties, ethnic ties,
whatever it might be. And I understand that, but at
the end of the day, both sides are pretty seat
and doing pretty terrible stuff. There's a question about Hamas
(30:39):
at the very least, and the Israeli government, who have
been doing things poorly for quite some time. It's a
gnarly conflict. It's very complex and very rife, and what's
going on right now is inexcusable and really really hard
to see. And it's also hard to talk about because
it is there's almost an insistence to come down, you know,
(31:02):
on one side or the other and to you know,
and to say this is what's right, this is this
is who these are, who the good guys are, And
I just have a hard time seeing quote unquote true
good guys on either side. I think that Hamas is
behaving and is is you know, conducting operations like a
terrorist organization, but Israel is retaliating with such aggression and
(31:25):
such just horrific violence and malice and disregard for you know,
civilian life. I can't support them either, I don't know.
But to our listener's point, I think it is a
very interesting thing to just talk about the history of
this and how far back this conflict goes and how
it essentially resulted from imperialism, you know, from our colonialism.
(31:49):
I guess rather, you know, on the side on the
part of the British and that you know, after World
War One and because of certain promises and diplomatic you know, rewards,
I guess, like you know, how things are divvied up,
the whole idea of to the victor go the spoils.
This Balfour Declaration is a fascinating piece of literature. It's
(32:10):
a letter. And Ben, we talked about this offline. This
is something that you studied in school, you know, during
your international affairs studies, and I was hoping you might
lead us off. I've done some digging and research into
it myself, but this is definitely something that's very much
in your sphere of expertise. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So on November two, we just passed the anniversary of
what is called the Balfour Declaration. In nineteen seventeen, then
Foreign Secretary for the British, guy named Lord Arthur James
Balfour wrote a letter to Lord Walter Roth's child and
it's a very short letter.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
It is of the Rothschild.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Rothschild's right, Just running that out there, okay, Yeah, And
the letter just the following, and again, this is a
This is a letter from two aristocrats, or from one
to another. It says, His Majesty's government views with favor
the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate
(33:17):
the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that
nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, or
the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews any other countries.
So it's like it's making three promises, and you could
say they're kind of necessarily vague. I don't know, because
(33:39):
it's a it's a short letter, like that's the bulk
of the letter. And again, you know, it might be
surprising to some people that this was written in nineteen seventeen,
so this is well before World War Two.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
That's right. But it had to do with like rewarding
assistance overthrowing the Ottoman Turks.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, yeah, the Auto Empire. They were a huge force
for a while, but the Ottoman Empire is no longer
around today, despite whatever barnstorming speeches erdigon. Who is the
leader of Turkey right now might make the Ottoman Empire
(34:18):
street named Turkish Empire. Back in the day, it was
a huge, huge deal, and they controlled the part of
the Middle East pre World War One that the British
took over.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
And then you know, the French were involved too, and
it was really all about kind of carving up the Levant,
you know, carving up this piece of very oil rich
land in advance, kind of making deals to divvy up
this land and literally writing checks that they couldn't cash
because the British didn't own or operate or have any
(34:54):
claim to this land that was occupied by indigenous you
know people, right.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, they also, I mean, yes, the British were again
very much colonial, as you said, imperialistic power, and the
Ottoman Empire, in their view, had already fumbled because they
sided with what we're called the Central Powers in World
War One. The Central Powers are Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria,
(35:27):
and the Ottoman Empire, even though it was in decline
at this point, was a very big player in Eurasia.
The Levant, you know, the Middle East entire got it.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
And I also just want to say too, like I mean,
I I think we mentioned this where we discussed this
a little bit off air. I think one reason that
this stuff is very polarizing is because people either have
incredibly strong opinions one way or the other, or they
don't know enough and feel terrified they're going to say
the wrong thing. So I would air on the side
of asking questions, being open about not knowing all the
(35:59):
things as I am trying to be. I only just
recently realized that Zionism was sort of a political persuasion,
or at the very least a political movement that had
that sprang up around this time, which was you know,
very much spearheaded by folks like the Rothschilds or this
wroth Child in particular. The idea that the Jewish people
(36:21):
deserved a state of their own is that, right, Ben,
Is as simple as that? Or is there more nuance
to it than that that I'm missing the idea of Zionism.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It's much more complex, to be absolutely honest, like there is.
There is a great deal of nuance regarding that, in
terms of which historical explanations one accepts, in terms of
which perspectives one adopts, and throughout the problem is with
(36:52):
that discourse, throughout all of it there is a continual
tenor of Islamophobia, of anti Semitism, of racism and discrimination.
So it can be very difficult. So when we I
love your point about asking questions and good faith, that's
what we must endeavor to do. We know that we
(37:14):
know for a fact that the Balfour Declaration, the consequences
of it and the intent of it, they're still up
for debate today, even in twenty twenty three. I mean
the British government. We know that they were hoping this
would galvanize American entry into World War One, and I.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Believe the British government the very least kind of stands
by it and borderline celebrates it, and that folks would
consider themselves Zionists also consider it to be a positive thing,
the thing that led to the formation of the Jewish state,
you know, of Israel. But also the point is that
(37:52):
a lot of folks you know, will debate on this,
is that the the British promised a piece of land
that they did not have the right to promise, and
then they went through their typical kind of colonizing path
and essentially committed ethnic cleansing, you know, and and wanted
(38:12):
to just get rid of an inconvenient people in order
to keep a promise to who they viewed as very
important allies.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah to at first point they called it the British
Mandate for Palestine. That's right, right, Yeah, And maybe we
can talk a little bit. We were mentioning this off air.
We talked a little bit about how it seems the
United Kingdom was selling a lot of different things to
a lot of different people.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
You mentioned, yeah, the French, like, well, again there was
the French had had suffered greatly, you know, because of
their participation in the Great War, and they wanted something
in return, right, Yeah, it's I know I'm simplifying, but
I think it's important to sort of simplify a little
bit so that people can at least there's the lower
(38:59):
the barrier of entry, and then once you kind of
get your head around, and then you can go in
and dig deeper. And there is so much nuance. So
I think that's why it's a hard thing to discuss.
But I'm just trying to break the ice a little
bit for me at least, you know, And please any
listeners if I'm coming off sounding like an idiot on
any of this, I'm coming from a place I'm coming
at it from a place of wanting to understand.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You don't sound like an idiot.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Man.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think a lot of people are having the same questions,
you know, and sometimes it can be scary to ask
those questions in good faith.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Well, Matt, you've been a little bit quiet, and I'm
not trying to put you on the spot. And I
know you know we've talked off air about how difficult
some of this stuff can be. But do you have
any questions? Are there any things that you would love
like a little clarification and that might help you feel
more comfortable talking about this or I don't know. I'm
not saying that you even have to do that or
should feel that way. I'm just I'm curious.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Yeah, don't force me to talk about it and want
to No, I mean, I yeah, this is my job.
I am quite frankly uncomfortable talking out loud about this
because I don't feel that I know as much as
I should.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Before I open my mouth.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
Right right before this, we were in a corporate training
and one of our colleagues that we respect and care
about a whole lot raised their hand and said, Hey,
I just want everyone to know this. We were In
a sharing moment in this training that we were doing,
this person said, I am of Jewish descent, and it
(40:29):
I am very uncomfortable with how, you know, everything is going.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
I don't know what to do. I don't know what
to say.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
I'm like.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
It was just this person was very honest and expressed
that nothing feels good about what's happening right now on
any side.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
This is horrible, This is awful, and all.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
I want to do is not talk about it, but
I guess we need to. I think that's maybe how
I feel right now. I just I'm in the stage
where I don't know what to even say.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I totally understand, and I think, you know, you've even
gotten some emails and some communications of people saying, ah,
you know, very conspicuously quiet on the you know, the
Palestine Israel issue, and first of.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
All, they're not going to listen anymore.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Oh that's not true. We have talked about it and
in ways that feel appropriate, but it also is so big.
Does it feel appropriate to do a conspiracy episode on
this even like it feels capitalizing in some way. I
don't know. Maybe That's what I'm trying to avoid here, too,
is like dancing around being politically correct so much that
you actually don't accomplish anything, because I don't think we
(41:38):
ever are capitalizing on anything when we do these topics.
We're genuinely curious. We're genuinely trying to understand the world
better and and and help folks around us to understand
the world better hopefully, So I don't see it that
way at all, But there is this pressure to like
talk about it and to have a stance.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Well, one thing we all have to remember collectively, and
this goes for every conspiracy realist tuning in, all of
us on the show, everybody who makes this show happen,
is that to a large degree, social media has been weaponized.
So I was talking about this over on Twitter. It
must inherently be considered another theater of conflict. Now, in
(42:17):
going forward to the point about feeling like it is
somehow wrong to say I do not know enough about this,
I would like to learn, there is nothing wrong with that.
Humans are great at learning. It is one of the
primary superpowers of the species. And as we said when
we first covered this newest iteration of this very long conflict,
(42:40):
people have more in common with each other than they
have differences, Right, you have more commonalities than you will
ever have differences, and that is simply part of that
is a result of evolution, right of biology and so on,
and part of it is a function of everybody. These
(43:01):
higher goals, your aspirational goals. No matter where you go
around the world, people want safety, right, People want their
kids to have hopefully a better life than the life
they had. They want security, they want food. They don't
have cool stuff to do on the weekend, you know
what I mean. They want to feel cool when they
(43:22):
hang out with their friends. That's what I think. One
of the main things to take in here is the
Balfour Declaration is a story of its own. It's a
whole series and there's been a lot of literature about it,
especially considering what a short letter.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
It is, like seriously, would you look at it?
Speaker 1 (43:40):
It's like sixty something words.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
It's one of the first things that people say about
it talking about what an impact you know.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah, And so that is an exploration all its own.
The I think one of the most important things to
realize and to really keep front of mind and in
your core is that, yes, we have more commonalities with
each other than we do differences. Everybody ultimately wants to
(44:07):
have a good life, right, and it's important to remember
those commonalities.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
A god.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You know, before twenty sixteen, I could have said, it's
important to remember those commonalities. We'll always trump the differences,
but whatever, whatever would be a better synonym than trump
at this point.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Now, yeah, I'm with you, and you know, my kid
just posted a thing about this, you know, like I mean,
all this reposting and stuff and people, I do kind
of resent the implication that people saying if you don't
speak up now right the second and say the thing
that I want you to say in the way that
I want you to say it, then you're part of
the problem. I don't think that's fair. I think people
(44:44):
can exercise empathy in lots of different ways and you know,
help without having to stand on a soapbox. You know,
I don't need to sound like anybody that's speaking out
on this as soapboxing. That's not what I mean either.
I feel like I'm gonna get danged for literally everything
that I just said, and that's part of the issue.
It's hard, but I really hope this was in some
(45:05):
way helpful, and to me, it was helpful to bring
it back to the like, learn, learn about the history
of it, learn about how a lot of these things,
this conflict that's been just you know, uh metastasizing, you know,
for one hundred years, started with self important British you know, imperialists,
(45:25):
bureaucrats just writing a letter and and promising a thing
that it was not theirs to give. So thank you again,
Thank you to std std w I t k's Muslim fan,
one of many I would like to think. So, yes,
I know we've we've heard from from many many folks
out there, but I really think this was very educational
(45:48):
and an opportunity to talk about this in a way
that didn't feel like, okay, here it is the Palestine episode,
you know what I mean. And not not to say
that that won't happen once we get more information and
once we have a real perspective. But I don't know,
that's something that we'll have to all really discuss and
decide whether it feels right and.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Of no relation to our East Palestine episode about the
epidemic of train crashes in the US. So also, yes,
thanks to every single conspiracy realist, Thanks to the multiple
anonymous sources who wrote to us with some somber and
frightening experience in the world of industrial food and drug manufacturing,
(46:31):
including thanks to Lord of Enjoyment. This is Thanksgiving here
in the United States, as this listener mail segment publishes,
we hope it finds you healthy. We hope it finds
you happy. And you know what, you don't have to
eat turkey. Turkey is like a severely commodified thing of Thanksgiving.
(46:51):
Perhaps the story for another day.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
We want to.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Hear your thoughts. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
We do and I think we are. You can find
us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on x FKA, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,
or we have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy.
We are the handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
Do you like calling people with your phone, Well, you
can call us. Our number is one eight three three
std WYTK. When you call in, you've got three minutes.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Say whatever you'd like.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
Just give yourself a cool nickname in let us know
if we can use your voice and message on one
of these listener mail episodes. Can't wait to hear from you, Hermit.
I know it's incoming. If you don't want to do that,
why not instead, send us an email.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
We read every single email we get. We cannot wait
to hear from you. Send us the pictures, send us
the links. Take us to the edge of the rabbit hole.
We will do the rest conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
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.
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.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
superproducer Alexis code name Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
You are here.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
In the United States, this is Thanksgiving week, and as
we always like to say in our listener mail segment,
we are so thankful fellow conspiracy realists that you have
joined up with us. We are going to have follow
ups to the Tyson recall. We're going to answer or
(00:58):
explore would be the more accurate term, some questions about
global history. And before we do any of that, or
on the way to doing that, we thought we'd switch
it up in listen to some.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Voicemails, yeah, which includes some of those topics. But guys,
before we even do that. This week on Strange News,
we talked about a little airplane incident where a plane
had to turn around because of some damage to some windows.
I'm just throwing an extra strange news right on top,
right here. It's super quick. There was recently a Boeing
seven forty seven plane that had to land, do an
(01:32):
emergency landing and return because a horse escaped inside the plane.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Weblight. Yeah it was this an okay go video.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Yeah, it was an okay go video made real.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Or the John mullaney bit about the horse in the
hospital but in the air.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Yeah, I tired all these MF and horses on my
MF and plane. Anyway, you can actually go there are
a couple of places you can go online to hear
the air traffic contryroll audio of the horse escape moment.
So do check that out.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
You can lead a horse to never mind moving on
all right.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Hartsville Jackson Airport is, yes, where you'd say so. Yeah,
let's jump to the phone lines, and we're gonna hear
a voicemail that is a response to the strange news
segment we did on the chicken nuggets recall horrifying thing. Ben,
Just before we get into it, let's go quickly give
a recap of what that story was about.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Sure, the giant food manufacturer Tyson recently recalled a great deal,
well not a great deal, but a significant amount thirty
thousand pounds or so of chicken nuggets, specifically the Dinosa
roughly dinosaur shaped fun nuggets, due to a It was
voluntary recall due to a small amount of pliable metal
(02:53):
articles found contaminating the nuggets.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yet they're pliable, what's the problem?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Yeah, it should be fine. So there were actual injuries
right associated with this recall. It's a serious thing. We
just had somebody call in with some more information on it,
with some experience. So here's a message from Lord of Enjoyment.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Yes, this is a Lord of Enjoyment calling. I'm calling
about you. Guys can use my voice and everything. By
the way, I'm calling about the chicken nugget recall. I'm
a truck driver. I've been driving refrigerated food and freight,
I guess for a few years all over the country
from all different shippers and receivers, Tyson being a pretty
(03:35):
frequent one. So these people put out like the article,
that's thirty thousand pounds of the chicken nuggets I got recalled.
One trailer of chicken nuggets or meat or of anything
is about forty to forty five pounds, So that's less
than one trailer load of chicken nuggets, and one small
(03:58):
plant could have like I don't know, hundreds of trailers
going out every single day, twenty four hours a day.
So that's like literally nothing that could be That's not
even the day's worth of chicken nuggets that they sent
out from one small plant. And there's like who knows
how many plants that are like massive, so it's not
really that big of a thing. And also about the
(04:20):
chicken strips and the Tyson plants closing a year or
two ago, that was due to a to a hacking
incident where they were shut down because their infrastructure was compromised,
like their software and everything. It wasn't due to like
demand dropping or anything like that. So feel free to
call me back, feel free to use my voice, enjoy everybody.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
That is illuminating because I had no sense of the
scale of this kind of operation A And it also
makes it make sense where it's like, Okay, this one
batch got compromised, right.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well, yeah, exactly. I think the scale is the thing
when you try and visual a plant that produces the
stuff that becomes chicken nuggets, in my head at least.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And I've seen the documentary footage, right, the how.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
It gets made, Oh it's made, how it's made, and
all that stuff, Like, I see the scale within the factory,
But I don't imagine that that much is pumped out
and sent out to stores every day from one plant.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Right. No, No, I certainly didn't. But it makes sense now.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
But then it becomes a matter of Okay, let's say
we've got one truckload of contaminated product. Right, where did
that truck go? You could probably track that, it seems like, right,
and you'd be able to just recall that one truckload
rather than putting out a whole like warning to everybody.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
One would imagine, I suppose it would, to your point,
more of enjoyment. I suppose it would depend upon how
many or how the plant distributes the product into trucks.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh yep, that's.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
A good point, because they could be coming off of
multiple different lines and then sort of converging into like
a shoot that then is dumped into the tribe. Again,
this doesn't make it. This is not how it's done.
They have to be refigurated and packaged and all of
that stuff. But you guys, have you ever gotten a
foreign object ingested? A foreign object from prepackaged food or
(06:23):
from like to go food ingested? I don't know, or
close to Yeah, perhaps come close to like where you
caught it and then you pulled it out of your mouth. Yeah, yeah, same,
it's terrifying. I once pulled like a staple out of
some sort of to go food.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You gotta stop ordering the staplers.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
It's true, but like that's terrifying. And I understand how
it's more about the optics of doing the massive recall
than it is about maybe the smaller recall would do
the trick. They need to make a big show of
it because they're banking on people really taking their word
that they're never gonna let this happen again, or they're
(07:04):
like doing the big move to make this go away.
I think it's really funny. If you guys have ever
been to Ikea, they post all their recalls in the
giant elevator. There's like an elevator, like a big one
that you can take your giant flat packs and stuff,
and there's always tons of little posted flyers talking about
the items that they have recalled, and a lot of
(07:25):
times it's like contained rocks, you know, like it's really
funny how candid Ikea are about their recalls and how
they put it like post it in the store like that.
But it's again it's because of optics.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
I guess, well, yeah, it's like we talked about on
the Strange News episode. If you imagine you're Tyson, you
cannot take the risk that somebody else is going to
get metal, right, they're in their child's mouth by giving
their their kid a product that's really really freaky.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And that whole the note.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I don't even remember what Lord of Enjoyment is talking
about with the Tyson in plant closing down the Chicken
strips plant. I think it must have been when we
did that episode on our like, is there an attack
on the food supplies?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's it's possibly referencing that also, Lord of Enjoyment, I
think you're referencing some of the previous mishaps that Tyson
experienced and going back to the issue of scale. After
a certain threshold, you have to accept that they're just
going to be bad things that happen, right. That's why
the FDA is saying it's okay to have a little
(08:31):
bit of wrap poop in cereal not a bunch you guys.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
But we know mistakes happen.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So there's nobody's going to be one hundred percent perfect,
is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
That is another horrifying thing that I haven't considered, the
fact that the software infrastructure that runs all the automated
machinery in a factory could be attacked and then the
whole thing shuts down only due to the fact that
the software doesn't function to actually produce the stuff anymore
and you can't get it to work anymore. Kind of
(09:02):
reminds me of the infrastructure like attacks on water treatment
plants that we talked about in power plants back in
the day, but just with food manufacturing. I guess it's
the same deal craziness.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
It's true in terms of tactics that could be exercised
and points of vulnerability. However, food manufacturers, we could argue
have a bit of an advantage because if you go
to like power supplies have a little bit of redundancy, right,
and wastewater management water management, there's redundancy there. The food
(09:35):
supply of the United States, the way you think about
it commercially, is a bunch of private entities, right that
are all trying to have their turf or they're trying
to encroach on other turf. You know, let's get into
the other guy's dino chicken nugget business.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Slang and nuggets, right, slanging nuggets.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So they're all incentivized, I think, to to have their
own kind of order of operations as much as possible.
So like if you if someone flipped a switch for
some reason, Let's say there's like a terrorist group that
just wants to bring down Tyson Foods. If they do that,
(10:17):
there are going to be other things, other entities that
sell the same stuff that's just not Tyson, you know
what I mean. So the food supplies I think a
little bit more secure.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Oh yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
I think I'm just imagining a coordinated effort to attack
the food supply. If you hit factories like that, those
the fear, right, Like in twenty twenty two, the fear
was that food factories were under attack, but it felt
more like a physical threat right at the time. In
this case, it wouldn't have to be physical at all.
It could be virtual, which is creepy.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I mean, hell, the computers probably also, I think you're
already saying this and sorry for being redune to probably
control the mixture, you know, and the way the ingredients
are blended and like all of that stuff. So you
could like throw the ratio off or like you know,
over deliver on one ingredient to make the thing like
completely made of like fat or something. You know, like
(11:11):
a million things you could do.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Well, then the company wouldn't be able to package it
and sell it, right, because they're at every factory that
creates a food product, they test the line right from
the lines of products.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
To the degree that they are legally required to do.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So that's a really good point bench.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Test the chicken nugget slurry.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Oh geez, oh hot dogs come from us.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Oh, we'll get to it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
We'll get to it. Yeah, hot dogs. All right, Well,
that's it for this segment. We will be right back.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Thank you so much, Lord of Enjoyment for letting us
know about all of that stuff, giving us that insight.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
We'll be right back with more messages from you.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And we have returned a quick disclaimer for this one, folks,
we're gonna have to use multiple sources and they all
have to be anonymous. Thank you, anonymous sources. We know
who you are. You know who you are, and you
reached out to us. As we said to each of you,
we're doing our best not to compromise your identity, nor
(12:16):
your profession, or your prospects. We're going to follow up,
Lord of Enjoyment. We're going to take a queue from
you and hear some more from people with on the
ground experience related to industrial food manufacturing and a lot
of other consumable manufacturing as well. Heads up, if you
(12:38):
are eating a snack while you hear this next story
in our weekly listener mail segment, tell us tell us
your experience of eating the snack. We're interested. So a
lot of this comes to us via social media. Here
is one source just pulled a bunch of excerpts so
we can stop along the way and react to these.
(12:59):
Their I opening and maybe off putting. So our first
one starts this way. Okay, so off the record, I
have first hand knowledge not only on the Tyson recall,
but on many others. This source is responsible for a
specific type of equipment, a couple of types of equipment
(13:21):
that are used in production lines. One would be metal detectors,
which are part of industrial food manufacturing, and the other
is magnetic separation equipment. Have you guys heard of magnetic
separation equipment?
Speaker 4 (13:36):
No, does sound Oh god, if we're time off food production,
I'm imagine meat getting separated.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
But maybe that's not it.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
That's what I was thinking too, because it reminds me
of the It reminds me of the ingredient list on
some foods where you look at it and it says
this includes mechanically separated chicken. Yeah, okay, So these, from
what I understand, magnetic separators in general, if I'm getting
this correct, we are net experts. Magnetic separators in general
(14:07):
are designed to recover magnetic material from non magnetic matter.
So if you think there might be some small pliable
pieces of metal in your chicken paste or your hot
dog slurry, then you run it through this kind of
equipment that will be able to suck out the metal
(14:30):
that reacts to the magnet.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
In the food production line.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Well yeah, like on the way you know, Oh okay,
not the final hopefully is before they cook it. And again,
so that's what excerpt. Not the only person saying this.
There were more people reporting that the problem or the
issue goes bigger than this Tyson recall. Because to your point,
(14:55):
Lord of enjoyment. Yeah, that's a very tiny slice of
a very big pie. Shout out Dominoes. We had another
source who says, guys, it's not just Tyson. Many many
food manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and chemical companies also have to
use magnets and metal detectors because they remove components that
(15:20):
might have snuck into the process, and they also remove
fragments of blades.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
So like, yeah, I guess that makes sense because I mean,
you know, the kind of equipment that we're talking about online,
like that something could chip right, you know, or likely
the tip of something could. I've certainly have you ever
tried to open a can with the tip of a
knife and broken the tip of the knife off, and
then you'll let Well, I guess I'm not gonna eat
this spaghetti sauce because there's a special surprise in there somewhere,
(15:50):
and I don't really feel like sifting through spaghetti sauce
by half. If only I had one of those magnetic
extractors separations.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Keep them separated. Shout out to who is that? What
was that?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
The offspring?
Speaker 1 (16:03):
PhD and chemical engineering like a hot sauce impresario, many things,
many things. Regular Dolph lundering that guy, so uh.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Dolphin say regular Diddy Kong and I meant p Diddy carry.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
These are perfect, These are examples to aspire to. Uh So,
we also learned from someone who is in the business,
a different source, who said, here is how this is
a business, because one of my questions was, is this
not rarefied air? You know, like there are a few
big companies who make most of the process chicken in
(16:41):
the US. Are there not just a few companies who
do like compliance with these kinds of standards and safeguards.
It turns out that the way a lot of these
folks get business is they read super sexy government reports
on a pretty regular basis coming from the FDA. If
(17:04):
you were recently reading a book and you thought this
is too good, this is too much of a page turner.
I need something to help me sleep, and I'm worried
about contaminants and melatonin, then we highly recommend for tonight's
Reading Rainbow segment that you check out the Food Defect
Levels Handbook published on FDA dot gov. It is not
(17:29):
a page turner and it will help you find some slumber.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I think, oh dude, this is title twenty one.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yes, yes, this is Matt's a big fan of Title
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yea previous episode, wasn't that something politically in the news
like Title twenty one? Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
It's like whenever there's a slow news day or a
particularly meme level story that goes viral, then we that's
when we get inundated by this very specific governmental language.
And I've got to be honest, I don't know about you, guys,
but I forget a lot of it because so much
(18:12):
of it sounds so very similar.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
You know, Title twenty one is the thing.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Maybe I'm wrong. It's the thing that we reference or
we talked about it one time. Oh gosh, it was
the it was Agenda twenty one or something like that.
But then there was a real thing called there's a
real thing called Title twenty one, which has to do
with the allowable amounts of horrible stuff in food products, right.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And Agenda twenty one is a United Nations thing.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yes, exactly, guys.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
It's like sports jerseys. You gotta differentiate your numbers. Okay,
you're confusing the.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Fans, so.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Shout out, push your tea. So the actually that makes
no sense. I'm shouting out a line from pusha T's
Diet Coke song, which is great. You guys would love it.
So let's continue with this idea. This tells us that
there is an entire industry of people who are one
source called ambulance chasing. They're waiting for the FDA to
(19:10):
publish a cavalcade of recalls, and then they go to
these companies and they say, hey, I heard you having
a hard time, buddy. You got some like blue rubber pieces.
You got some metals in your nuggets.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
That'll cost you extra.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Ap is sure interested in that, or they would be.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So it's weird too because the companies. The reason matten
Or in that earlier thing is said, the reason we
had to point out these companies are doing exactly what
they are required to do by regulatory bodies. There's a
source that pointed out, look, I often hear about these
(19:55):
companies after something has happened. They are reactive rather than proactive.
Nobody is saying, hey, let's make sure that in you know,
the next five years, all our chicken nuggets are metal free.
Let's do it right after something happens, and let's say, like,
(20:15):
what's the good price to get us across the finish
line this year.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
I know, I know, just shaking my head over Yeah, Matt.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Shakes his head over here. Uh noel uh nol. How
would how would you rate your emotional state with hearing this?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Indifferent?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
No, uh, shocked and or odd. It's strange too.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Because you know, this immediately reminded me I nobody, guys,
but reminded me of a book called The Jungle.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Well, sure, yeah, it comes up all the time. It's
like the first expose blown the lid off of meat
packing at a time where there was like zero oversight.
That stuff's terrifying.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Oh you, guys, we.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Got a voice from someone who goes by Trucker Joey.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Another trucker out there. Thanks to everybody on the road
that's listening.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
It's his brother, Trader Joe, the Trader Joe and Trucker Joey.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, I think that's it.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Oh so he he at the very end of his
message talks about going up to the break room at
some of these meat processing facilities, specifically like slaughterhouses where
cows and pigs get quote processed, and he describes this, Oh,
I don't even want to say it. It's gonna upset people.
(21:32):
He describes this blade that is like a V, like
this really long V that the pigs are just attached
by their their hoofs, their feet as they go up
this conveyor belt, and their necks just kind of pass
through this V that just like slices the whole thing on.
It's just like was because they're alive when it happens.
(21:54):
It's not like they're dead before.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Wow, I thought, no, wait a minute, I thought they
I thought imagine. I thought they let their throats and
let them. Now, the only.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Way, the only way you can know for sure if
that happens is whether food. If food is rated halala
or kosher.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I was gonna say, so, that's almost more like a
bespoke way of killing the pig. You pay extra for that, right,
Otherwise all bets are off and you're gonna have the
freaking caligular murdered lawnmower machine.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Well, local organic interest will we'll probably have a more
quote unquote humane way of processing the animal. But yeah,
it's the industrial food or livestock system is pretty horrific.
And this goes to an excerpt from an expert who
(22:43):
says the smell at these facilities is surreal. It's deathlike
it's discussed, and you know everybody, well not everybody hopefully,
but a lot of us listening know that death does
have a smell. And there's a necessity to this widespread horror.
The argument goes, because it is feeding not just the
(23:03):
United States, but the world in an intricately connected global network.
And do people want to know that the food they
get at the grocery store goes through magnets or metal
detectors or X ray machines. I think a lot of
people to your point, Noel would probably be indifferent if
(23:25):
it was seen as a safety measure and if you
knew that resulted in less dangerous delicacies.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I was being demure. I'm not actually indifferent. I just
it's easy to get numb to this stuff because it
does feel so confounding and out of your control. I
feel you.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
There's a one of the stories from a comedter that
really stuck with me was seeing half alive birds on
a process line. A process line being where you know
the food is going through, So somehow.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
A bird you missed a few.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
A bird, Yeah that maybe it was a bird that
wasn't supposed to be in the production line the same way.
Like dolphins might get snacked up and fishing.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Now you get an onion ring in your French fries. Yeah,
this is only much more macabre.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
One of these is a pigeon wing, right, and then
what's the old line? Well, don't tell the other customers, sir,
they'll be jealous. Another example would be so we did
get a lot of responses for this. Another example would
be Kraft Mac and Cheese had to recall from I
guess one of their plants out in Illinois, and they
(24:39):
were getting flakes of aluminum in the Easy Mac and
Cheese cups because Craft was using something to like pre
bake the product and it was depositing aluminum aluminum flakes
inside the actual Mac and cheese.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Y'all boil some water, for the love of God, boil
some water. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
I think we're all I think we're all on board
with that, you know, in general, actually, if you want
to be super safe and a little bit Howard Hughes
about it, you should just be boiling.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Water all the time.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
We're very likely to live in a place where you
can drink it out of the tap. The last few things,
the FDAIGHT. We talked about how they have a tolerated
amount of insects. They have a tolerated amount of vermin
feces or rat feces. I was not aware of this.
They have apparently a tolerance for choke hazards. It is
(25:39):
seven millimeters by twenty five millimeters.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
The otherwise you have to warn about it.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Like otherwise you have to do something. Okay, So that
is just if you want to take a sorry, i've
got a cat on me, we can keep that part in.
That is seven millimeters by twenty five millimeters is huge,
especially if you consider that there would be younger people
eating this stuff. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I'm going to read this to you because it's that
time of year. Yeah, oh god, this exact FDAIGHT thing
you're mentioning here Ben, for apple butter, here are the
levels when it comes to mold, you are you are
exceeding the limits of the acceptable mold. If there is
a mold count of twelve percent or more, you're exceeding
(26:30):
the rodent filth. If there is an average of four
or more rodent hairs per one hundred grams of apple butter,
and if there are an average of five or more
whole or equivalent insects, not cloud yes, not counting mites, aphids, thrps,
(26:53):
or scale insects per one hundred of because I don't.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Well, well, you know there's probably a couple of court
cases and email arguments about this where someone goes, look, okay, fine,
if you add up all the mites, Okay, I get it,
But is that fair to American business?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh god, I just oh the broccoli stuff. Don't read this.
Don't read this.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Everybody read it while you're eating, right now, Get like
a big can of like a stew something with a
lot of ingredients, DENTI more preps and read this. And
also know that mammalian poop is separated, sometimes not mechanically,
but regulatory, separated from just rat poop. So rats are
(27:41):
like the Kobe Bryant of pooping in your food.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
They've got mammalian poop listed here for cinnamon bark.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Well, I mean that just means it tastes like shit.
It's not very Look, what's the takeaway here, y'all? We've
all definitely consumed vcs before.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
As far as a takeaway, we have mentioned this in
the past. The one last thing I wanted to shout
out before we do a takeaway is our sources said, Look,
hot dogs are made from a pumped hot dog paste,
which is called slurry in the industry, So just think
of that next time you have a hot dog. And
(28:23):
now we get to our takeaway. Before we dive into
a bit of heavier history, we would like to hear
your stories of strange things you've found in your food.
We would like to hear your take on the regulations,
because some people will say, hey, regulations are bad for business.
Other people will point at things like the jungle And
(28:46):
what better way to end this story in our listener
mail segment for this week by shouting out once again
Upton Sinclair. Dude, if he was alive, if he was
on Twitter right now, I feel like he would have
a hard time not saying. Just so, we're gonna pause
for a word from our sponsors. We'll be back with
one more message from you.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
And We're back with one more message from you, and
I'm gonna just jump right into reading it. Hi. I
know the Palestinian Israeli conflict is super touchy and seems
to make people very emotional and myopic, but I was
wondering if you folks could discuss the Balfour Declaration and
British mandate of Palestine. These are historical occurrences, not conspiracy theories,
(29:35):
and you guys are awesome, but talking about things objectively,
so hopefully it wouldn't be a controversial episode. Thanks stdwytk's
Muslim fan. I love the way that's written. It's like
the implication is that we have one Muslim fan. I
hope that's not true, but I do thank this listener
for writing in and personally hipping me to a topic
(29:57):
that I was woefully unfamiliar with. I don't know, let's
just address the elephant in the room. It's true, the
Palestinian Israeli conflict is super touchy and does many people
very uncomfortable and can be very polarizing and hard to
discuss because there's horrible things happening over there to women
and children and people, civilians you know, who are getting
(30:17):
caught in this crossfire that is a historical conflict between
Israel and Palestine, and there seems to be a tendency
to want to favor one side over the other, whether
it be family ties, you know, religious ties, ethnic ties,
whatever it might be. And I understand that, but at
the end of the day, both sides are pretty seat
and doing pretty terrible stuff. There's a question about Hamas
(30:39):
at the very least, and the Israeli government, who have
been doing things poorly for quite some time. It's a
gnarly conflict. It's very complex and very rife, and what's
going on right now is inexcusable and really really hard
to see. And it's also hard to talk about because
it is there's almost an insistence to come down, you know,
(31:02):
on one side or the other and to you know,
and to say this is what's right, this is this
is who these are, who the good guys are, And
I just have a hard time seeing quote unquote true
good guys on either side. I think that Hamas is
behaving and is is you know, conducting operations like a
terrorist organization, but Israel is retaliating with such aggression and
(31:25):
such just horrific violence and malice and disregard for you know,
civilian life. I can't support them either, I don't know.
But to our listener's point, I think it is a
very interesting thing to just talk about the history of
this and how far back this conflict goes and how
it essentially resulted from imperialism, you know, from our colonialism.
(31:49):
I guess rather, you know, on the side on the
part of the British and that you know, after World
War One and because of certain promises and diplomatic you know, rewards,
I guess, like you know, how things are divvied up,
the whole idea of to the victor go the spoils.
This Balfour Declaration is a fascinating piece of literature. It's
(32:10):
a letter. And Ben, we talked about this offline. This
is something that you studied in school, you know, during
your international affairs studies, and I was hoping you might
lead us off. I've done some digging and research into
it myself, but this is definitely something that's very much
in your sphere of expertise. Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So on November two, we just passed the anniversary of
what is called the Balfour Declaration. In nineteen seventeen, then
Foreign Secretary for the British, guy named Lord Arthur James
Balfour wrote a letter to Lord Walter Roth's child and
it's a very short letter.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
It is of the Rothschild.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Rothschild's right, Just running that out there, okay, Yeah, And
the letter just the following, and again, this is a
This is a letter from two aristocrats, or from one
to another. It says, His Majesty's government views with favor
the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate
(33:17):
the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that
nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, or
the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews any other countries.
So it's like it's making three promises, and you could
say they're kind of necessarily vague. I don't know, because
(33:39):
it's a it's a short letter, like that's the bulk
of the letter. And again, you know, it might be
surprising to some people that this was written in nineteen seventeen,
so this is well before World War Two.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
That's right. But it had to do with like rewarding
assistance overthrowing the Ottoman Turks.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, yeah, the Auto Empire. They were a huge force
for a while, but the Ottoman Empire is no longer
around today, despite whatever barnstorming speeches erdigon. Who is the
leader of Turkey right now might make the Ottoman Empire
(34:18):
street named Turkish Empire. Back in the day, it was
a huge, huge deal, and they controlled the part of
the Middle East pre World War One that the British
took over.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
And then you know, the French were involved too, and
it was really all about kind of carving up the Levant,
you know, carving up this piece of very oil rich
land in advance, kind of making deals to divvy up
this land and literally writing checks that they couldn't cash
because the British didn't own or operate or have any
(34:54):
claim to this land that was occupied by indigenous you
know people, right.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, they also, I mean, yes, the British were again
very much colonial, as you said, imperialistic power, and the
Ottoman Empire, in their view, had already fumbled because they
sided with what we're called the Central Powers in World
War One. The Central Powers are Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria,
(35:27):
and the Ottoman Empire, even though it was in decline
at this point, was a very big player in Eurasia.
The Levant, you know, the Middle East entire got it.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
And I also just want to say too, like I mean,
I I think we mentioned this where we discussed this
a little bit off air. I think one reason that
this stuff is very polarizing is because people either have
incredibly strong opinions one way or the other, or they
don't know enough and feel terrified they're going to say
the wrong thing. So I would air on the side
of asking questions, being open about not knowing all the
(35:59):
things as I am trying to be. I only just
recently realized that Zionism was sort of a political persuasion,
or at the very least a political movement that had
that sprang up around this time, which was you know,
very much spearheaded by folks like the Rothschilds or this
wroth Child in particular. The idea that the Jewish people
(36:21):
deserved a state of their own is that, right, Ben,
Is as simple as that? Or is there more nuance
to it than that that I'm missing the idea of Zionism.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It's much more complex, to be absolutely honest, like there is.
There is a great deal of nuance regarding that, in
terms of which historical explanations one accepts, in terms of
which perspectives one adopts, and throughout the problem is with
(36:52):
that discourse, throughout all of it there is a continual
tenor of Islamophobia, of anti Semitism, of racism and discrimination.
So it can be very difficult. So when we I
love your point about asking questions and good faith, that's
what we must endeavor to do. We know that we
(37:14):
know for a fact that the Balfour Declaration, the consequences
of it and the intent of it, they're still up
for debate today, even in twenty twenty three. I mean
the British government. We know that they were hoping this
would galvanize American entry into World War One, and I.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Believe the British government the very least kind of stands
by it and borderline celebrates it, and that folks would
consider themselves Zionists also consider it to be a positive thing,
the thing that led to the formation of the Jewish state,
you know, of Israel. But also the point is that
(37:52):
a lot of folks you know, will debate on this,
is that the the British promised a piece of land
that they did not have the right to promise, and
then they went through their typical kind of colonizing path
and essentially committed ethnic cleansing, you know, and and wanted
(38:12):
to just get rid of an inconvenient people in order
to keep a promise to who they viewed as very
important allies.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah to at first point they called it the British
Mandate for Palestine. That's right, right, Yeah, And maybe we
can talk a little bit. We were mentioning this off air.
We talked a little bit about how it seems the
United Kingdom was selling a lot of different things to
a lot of different people.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
You mentioned, yeah, the French, like, well, again there was
the French had had suffered greatly, you know, because of
their participation in the Great War, and they wanted something
in return, right, Yeah, it's I know I'm simplifying, but
I think it's important to sort of simplify a little
bit so that people can at least there's the lower
(38:59):
the barrier of entry, and then once you kind of
get your head around, and then you can go in
and dig deeper. And there is so much nuance. So
I think that's why it's a hard thing to discuss.
But I'm just trying to break the ice a little
bit for me at least, you know, And please any
listeners if I'm coming off sounding like an idiot on
any of this, I'm coming from a place I'm coming
at it from a place of wanting to understand.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You don't sound like an idiot.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Man.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think a lot of people are having the same questions,
you know, and sometimes it can be scary to ask
those questions in good faith.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Well, Matt, you've been a little bit quiet, and I'm
not trying to put you on the spot. And I
know you know we've talked off air about how difficult
some of this stuff can be. But do you have
any questions? Are there any things that you would love
like a little clarification and that might help you feel
more comfortable talking about this or I don't know. I'm
not saying that you even have to do that or
should feel that way. I'm just I'm curious.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Yeah, don't force me to talk about it and want
to No, I mean, I yeah, this is my job.
I am quite frankly uncomfortable talking out loud about this
because I don't feel that I know as much as
I should.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Before I open my mouth.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
Right right before this, we were in a corporate training
and one of our colleagues that we respect and care
about a whole lot raised their hand and said, Hey,
I just want everyone to know this. We were In
a sharing moment in this training that we were doing,
this person said, I am of Jewish descent, and it
(40:29):
I am very uncomfortable with how, you know, everything is going.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
I don't know what to do. I don't know what
to say.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
I'm like.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
It was just this person was very honest and expressed
that nothing feels good about what's happening right now on
any side.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
This is horrible, This is awful, and all.
Speaker 4 (40:47):
I want to do is not talk about it, but
I guess we need to. I think that's maybe how
I feel right now. I just I'm in the stage
where I don't know what to even say.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
I totally understand, and I think, you know, you've even
gotten some emails and some communications of people saying, ah,
you know, very conspicuously quiet on the you know, the
Palestine Israel issue, and first of.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
All, they're not going to listen anymore.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Oh that's not true. We have talked about it and
in ways that feel appropriate, but it also is so big.
Does it feel appropriate to do a conspiracy episode on
this even like it feels capitalizing in some way. I
don't know. Maybe That's what I'm trying to avoid here, too,
is like dancing around being politically correct so much that
you actually don't accomplish anything, because I don't think we
(41:38):
ever are capitalizing on anything when we do these topics.
We're genuinely curious. We're genuinely trying to understand the world
better and and and help folks around us to understand
the world better hopefully, So I don't see it that
way at all, But there is this pressure to like
talk about it and to have a stance.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Well, one thing we all have to remember collectively, and
this goes for every conspiracy realist tuning in, all of
us on the show, everybody who makes this show happen,
is that to a large degree, social media has been weaponized.
So I was talking about this over on Twitter. It
must inherently be considered another theater of conflict. Now, in
(42:17):
going forward to the point about feeling like it is
somehow wrong to say I do not know enough about this,
I would like to learn, there is nothing wrong with that.
Humans are great at learning. It is one of the
primary superpowers of the species. And as we said when
we first covered this newest iteration of this very long conflict,
(42:40):
people have more in common with each other than they
have differences, Right, you have more commonalities than you will
ever have differences, and that is simply part of that
is a result of evolution, right of biology and so on,
and part of it is a function of everybody. These
(43:01):
higher goals, your aspirational goals. No matter where you go
around the world, people want safety, right, People want their
kids to have hopefully a better life than the life
they had. They want security, they want food. They don't
have cool stuff to do on the weekend, you know
what I mean. They want to feel cool when they
(43:22):
hang out with their friends. That's what I think. One
of the main things to take in here is the
Balfour Declaration is a story of its own. It's a
whole series and there's been a lot of literature about it,
especially considering what a short letter.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
It is, like seriously, would you look at it?
Speaker 1 (43:40):
It's like sixty something words.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
It's one of the first things that people say about
it talking about what an impact you know.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah, And so that is an exploration all its own.
The I think one of the most important things to
realize and to really keep front of mind and in
your core is that, yes, we have more commonalities with
each other than we do differences. Everybody ultimately wants to
(44:07):
have a good life, right, and it's important to remember
those commonalities.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
A god.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You know, before twenty sixteen, I could have said, it's
important to remember those commonalities. We'll always trump the differences,
but whatever, whatever would be a better synonym than trump
at this point.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Now, yeah, I'm with you, and you know, my kid
just posted a thing about this, you know, like I mean,
all this reposting and stuff and people, I do kind
of resent the implication that people saying if you don't
speak up now right the second and say the thing
that I want you to say in the way that
I want you to say it, then you're part of
the problem. I don't think that's fair. I think people
(44:44):
can exercise empathy in lots of different ways and you know,
help without having to stand on a soapbox. You know,
I don't need to sound like anybody that's speaking out
on this as soapboxing. That's not what I mean either.
I feel like I'm gonna get danged for literally everything
that I just said, and that's part of the issue.
It's hard, but I really hope this was in some
(45:05):
way helpful, and to me, it was helpful to bring
it back to the like, learn, learn about the history
of it, learn about how a lot of these things,
this conflict that's been just you know, uh metastasizing, you know,
for one hundred years, started with self important British you know, imperialists,
(45:25):
bureaucrats just writing a letter and and promising a thing
that it was not theirs to give. So thank you again,
Thank you to std std w I t k's Muslim fan,
one of many I would like to think. So, yes,
I know we've we've heard from from many many folks
out there, but I really think this was very educational
(45:48):
and an opportunity to talk about this in a way
that didn't feel like, okay, here it is the Palestine episode,
you know what I mean. And not not to say
that that won't happen once we get more information and
once we have a real perspective. But I don't know,
that's something that we'll have to all really discuss and
decide whether it feels right and.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Of no relation to our East Palestine episode about the
epidemic of train crashes in the US. So also, yes,
thanks to every single conspiracy realist, Thanks to the multiple
anonymous sources who wrote to us with some somber and
frightening experience in the world of industrial food and drug manufacturing,
(46:31):
including thanks to Lord of Enjoyment. This is Thanksgiving here
in the United States, as this listener mail segment publishes,
we hope it finds you healthy. We hope it finds
you happy. And you know what, you don't have to
eat turkey. Turkey is like a severely commodified thing of Thanksgiving.
(46:51):
Perhaps the story for another day.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
We want to.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Hear your thoughts. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
We do and I think we are. You can find
us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on x FKA, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,
or we have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy.
We are the handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
Do you like calling people with your phone, Well, you
can call us. Our number is one eight three three
std WYTK. When you call in, you've got three minutes.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Say whatever you'd like.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
Just give yourself a cool nickname in let us know
if we can use your voice and message on one
of these listener mail episodes. Can't wait to hear from you, Hermit.
I know it's incoming. If you don't want to do that,
why not instead, send us an email.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
We read every single email we get. We cannot wait
to hear from you. Send us the pictures, send us
the links. Take us to the edge of the rabbit hole.
We will do the rest conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
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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