July 14, 2022 • 53 mins
What is permaculture, exactly? Why does the US have a law allowing them to invade the Hague? Anonymous sources reach out to Ben to ask about a strange conspiracy: is Amazon supporting a Tik Tok grift to swindle writers? 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 the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. I want to
open this week's listener mail segment with a very special
(00:47):
welcome to my neighbor's downstairs dog, who you may be
able to hear in the background, who is going through
some things. Be kind to your pets, the responsible dog owners,
and uh, if your dog is really going through something,
check on it. That's that's our takeaway from today. We
(01:08):
don't need to pay, we don't need to play the
Sarah McLaughlin song, but I'll know the one I'm talking about. Today,
We're going to look I'm doing it. I'm doing it.
I'm speaking up for the dog owners. When I leave
my house, my dog does that. So I have a
feeling your neighbor, Yes, I know, yeah, and you have
to go big on empathy. You have to have the
(01:30):
human moment. So hoping the dog is okay uh, And
thanking you, fellow conspiracy realists for tuning in today. We're
going to talk about issue near and dear to my heart. Uh.
The US is ongoing beef with the Hague. Uh. Also
another thing I think near and dear to all of us,
speculation about food supply apocalypse. You may be able to
(01:53):
see a deep dive of that on YouTube in the
near future. And then we're going to talk about a
conspiracy native to Amazon and TikTok. But maybe first, maybe
you know, we don't always open up with a voicemail Matt,
what do you think about that? I want to switch
things up a little today. Yes, then let's jump to
the phone lines. This is a message we received from Dirs.
(02:16):
Hey guys, it's dirts here and you can use this
on the air if you so choose. In your latest
episode of Strange News, you touched on the food supply
scare in lieu of Russia's war with Ukraine. And I
wanted to add something to that conversation. But it's not
gonna be the doom and gloom that it first appears
for this hanging there in that episode. And forgive me
(02:39):
if I'm incorrect, I didn't hear him mention anything about
rock floss faith. And uh, you know how rock foss
faith is mostly supplied by Russia and Ukraine, so we're
not getting that anymore. But before this war, scientists already
thought that we were gonna heat pique fosters. So what
(03:00):
like does that mean we just can't have food anymore?
Because we can't we can't mind this fertilizer out of
the ground. I don't think that we actually need to.
What do you guys know about perman culture. It's a
system of agriculture that combines philosophy with smart farming. Google it.
Using perman culture, farmers have reversed the certification of entire
(03:22):
fourth we mind fertilizer to like exploit a short cut
to a system that already existed before humans started interacting
with it. I nick mold fertilizer my yard with wheat.
That's Korean natural farming, which is a little bit different.
But anyway, perman culture at a mass scale proven to work.
(03:46):
It's the easiest, simplest, and most cohesive way to farm
to tell me, is Perman culture the stuff that they
don't want you to know. Thanks so much for your show, guys.
You guys actually covered the apocalypse. It's in a really
uh blessedly funny way. And I appreciate what some of
you every day. Thanks what a nice thing is so nice.
(04:08):
Thank you so much. And and Matt you Uh. I'm
familiar with Perman culture actually from from some of my
outdoors time. You spoke with Thers and DRS actually wrote
to us. I believe, yes, permana culture is interesting. I
don't know much about it. I'm learning about it now
and the figure we would all learn about it together.
(04:31):
I did speak to DERs. He's my new best friend. Sorry, guys, Uh,
y'all are OUTDRS is in. That's just how it is,
so I'm kidding. He's just a very very cool guy. Uh.
Spoke to him a little bit. He's got a company
that specializes in Perman culture out there in Seattle, in
the Seattle area. I guess it's titled The Hermetic Order
(04:55):
of the Garden Dawn. Oh wow, snap, I love a
good I love it job. There's also um Perman culture,
as I'm sure there's pointed out. While the term itself
is from the nineties seventies, it's descended from some really
really old agricultural and husbandry practices. Yeah, it's a lot
(05:17):
of different things. Perman culture is many things. It is mostly,
as you said, um, indigenous people's practices, right, that kind
of got lost over time as industrialization came around, and
now it's kind of we're going back to those roots
if you will. It's it's a fascinating thing. I'll tell you. Yeah,
I'll just tell you some of the things here. By
(05:38):
the way, his company is quote a secret society of
plant lovers. It's pretty awesome. We talked about so many things.
One of the most interesting concepts that dur has talked
about is that people in general, our society, I guess
we see weeds that are on our lawns as problems,
weeds that are in our backyards as problems. I certainly do.
(06:02):
I'm preparing to sell my home and one of the
first things I did to try and beautify this place
to be able to make it marketable, is to get
rid of all the weeds, every single one of them. Uh,
scorched earth. Only grass will remain. And that's what I
decided to do and there are so many companies out
there that will do that for you. There's so many
products that you can do that on your own. And
(06:24):
there's main point, or one of his main points, was
that we should not do that. That's one of the
worst things you can do for the soil. If you
want to actually have healthy plants growing on that soil.
One of the worst things you can do is especially
apply herbicide and kill all those things. Anyway, as Dark said,
it's way more of a philosophy and a collection of
(06:44):
techniques than anything else, right, That's what permaculture is, philosophy
plus technique. I don't know where to where to begin here, guys.
Besides this peak phosphorus thing, which is a real existential
threat for me, even though it was kind of a
theory for a while that we had to throw a
little cold water on in the past. But at the
(07:06):
same time, it's a real issue at least when it
comes to how much it will cost to continue, you know,
getting these fertilizers the rock phosphates out of the ground
and then shipping them around the planet in order to
continue our industrial farming practices. It is a bit scary
to me. Have you guys heard anything about that recently? Yeah,
(07:26):
I know. I mean Der's you are correct in the
way that the global phosphates rock system has been disrupted
by conflicts UM. I would also note to you earlier
point that because we did discuss this, I think briefly
a number of years ago, saying that things are like
when you said we threw some cold water on it,
(07:48):
which is to a degree true. Uh, we by no
means said it wasn't going to be a problem. There
are a lot of things that I think sometimes people
don't take it seriously because they hear really hyperbolic descriptions
of them. But just because some one sources being alarmist
(08:08):
does not in any way mean that the problem is
not there. It's like it's like the question about the
timing of when peak oil will be reached. It's a
very similar problem with peak phosphate UM. I think primarily
because no one really knows, like we know where the
um we know where you can mine phosphate rock in
(08:31):
a cost effective way. Now, Uh, we know that there
are certain areas that have great reserves of phosphorus, but
we don't know exactly when we will see those affordable
reserves exhausted. Is it going to be fifty to a
hundred years, is it gonna is peak phosphorus gonna be
(08:53):
twenty thirty? Is it going to be several hundreds of years? Uh?
The jury is out and there are a lot of
smart people who disagree on this. To me, it reminds
me of the rare Earth elements or the rare Earth materials. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a ton of this stuff rock phosphate and and
mindable phosphate on the planet that we could access. It's
(09:17):
just it's concentrated in a few specific places where it's
economically feasible to mind it there. But otherwise it's just
spread out in ways that it would be difficult to
make a lot of money or to have it even
just a and a profitable company at all, to just
gather up the phosphate in these you know, various places
(09:38):
across the globe. So it could be a really big
problem headed our way. I guess the next thing we
need to do is kind of define what is permaculture
a little better, at least for my mind. Ben, you
mentioned the nineteen seventies is when the term at least
came around by a few Australian guys, Bill Mullison, David Holmgren,
(10:01):
and they've wrote a book's called perman Culture. One that
was really the thing that kicked off the movement of
perman culture. I suppose, yeah, and you and you you
raised a great point where, um, in some of the
conversations you and I have had in the past, and
what you just said now about your conversation with DR's
that there is a culture, a philosophy behind this. Uh.
(10:25):
The idea I think maybe for people who aren't familiar
with the term, we could go to, uh something you
would linked to from n C State with their appendix
on perman culture design. Um. I think they're introduction is
quite succinct and covers a lot of the bases, especially
(10:46):
like the three driving ethics or axioms of the belief.
Oh yeah, that's a perfect place to start, Ben. I'll
give you this quote that comes from that book as
a basic definition of sorts, and then we'll go into
the as ethics. The definition is quote, consciously designed landscapes
which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while
(11:08):
yet yielding an abundance of food, fiber, and energy for
provision of local needs, so basically your local area, using
what's there and designing the thing out of what's already there,
like just making the land essentially work. It's in a
way it seems as though we kind of want the
(11:30):
land to work for us. We want this land to
make the corn. We want this land over here to
make the wheat, and that's all it is. That's all
it's gonna be. That's what we're gonna do. This philosophy.
It's way more like, well, what naturally grows over here, Uh,
what's edible that grows in this land already, let's design
it around that. So the former idea you outline is
mono agriculture, right, those are the things where those are
(11:55):
the practices where you see an entire swath of land
growing only soybeans or growing only you know, one specific
type of profitable crop in profitable and whatever current regime
you live in. But for much of human history this
wasn't the case. People lived closer to the land and
(12:15):
they were practicing the thing you describe. The latter idea,
which I think is superior um. If you are in
the United States, you might be familiar with the concept
of the Three Sisters, which is the corn beans and squash.
You plant them like you plant the beans at the
base of the cornstocks, and they helped support the bean
(12:39):
vines as they grow and reach the sunlight. You the
ideas you can um by farming. You can look at
it as not like helping plants work together and people
working with plants. You can also um. You can also
rotate the crops you grow in such a way that
enriches the soil, rather than growing just one crop that
(13:01):
over time could deplete the soil. So there's science to this.
What we're establishing is there is philosophy. There are ethical guidelines,
but there is like I'm sure DR's you would you
have probably had to point this out to people in
the past. There's solid science to back up a lot
of this stuff. Oh yeah, oh dude, there's all kinds
(13:22):
of science and fascinating things I've never heard about. Did
you guys know? There's a German method where you cut
your lawn that has grass on it, and you you
cut it into squares. Then you take that lawn and
you flip it over so the grass side is down,
and then and you leave that there, and then that
grass breaks down into the nutrients you need to feed
(13:46):
stuff that you plant into the soil. On top of that,
I've never heard of that. That's amazing. That's news to
me as well, Matt. I love learning new things. That's awesome.
That reminds duh when Scott Benjamin over at cars stuff
years ago. You know, Scott, I love the guy. Uh.
She told me. I was. I was doing a piece
(14:06):
on two two cycle engines, right, so I was fixing
all these little lawnmowers and is getting frustrated, and he
was like, you know what you should do, Ben You
should buy a goat lawn. And that's a real thing
people do. You can rent goats stick out your lawn,
and arguably it's more sustainable than than a gas guzzling motor.
But but I love like not do we know how
(14:29):
old that idea is in Germany or how recent? I
don't know. I'm here somewhere in one of these links
that I shared. Guys, it's a specific technique. Oh lord,
I'm not gonna be able to find it right now.
I missed a step. By the way. You have to
get decaying wood or like dry or older wood that's
just around somewhere from you know, probably just sticks falling
(14:51):
down and things like that. But you have to put
that wood between the ground and that grass layer that
you put on top, because that would breaks down in
the same way the grass breaks down, and that will
feed those plants that you put on top of it
for years, I guess, or at least for a long
time according to jurors. I don't know these things. Guys
(15:11):
is very smart and knows these things. Um, there's also
something I figured you guys might have encountered through ridiculous history.
You guys, ever heard of night soil? Oh? Yeah, night soil.
Human poop is fertilizer. Okay, it's sort of like gray
water maybe where you take the runoff or the you know,
parts of the water that you use in your house
(15:32):
that don't have human fecal matter in them and use
it for irrigation. Yeah. Night night soil is an historic
practice too. It's quite an efficient one. But but I
think what a lot of people might not know is
night soil is still commonly used as fertilizer today in
different parts of the world. That's right, That is right again.
(15:54):
Just mix your poop with wood chips and you've got
some really great fertilizer. That's that's what I wipe with.
Oh oh lord there. I mean there are controversies though
about it being linked to uh, some health concerns, you know,
but it makes sense when you're you know, like, imagine
(16:16):
you're a farmer. We'll just say, for the sake of argument,
hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, and uh,
and you don't have a big company. You don't also
have a general store where you buy fertilizer, so you
save it up the poop and then you're probably also
having a lot of kids because that's free labor. Right,
(16:36):
it was a very different time. All right, guys, I'm
gonna get to those ethics we never said them. Yeah.
This is according to um NC State North Carolina State University,
I'm assuming, and this is on one of their websites.
It's Appendix G Permaculture Design. It's from the North Carolina
Extension Gardner Handbook. Okay, here we go. Permit Ulture ethic
(17:00):
one Care for the Earth. Stop me when you feel
like this is sounding like guidestones. UM Care for the Earth.
The discipline looks to nature as a model for design.
Perman culture includes replicating and restoring natural systems. With this
ethic perman culture emphasizes organic and sustainable methods of working
(17:20):
with the land. It promotes the use of naturally occurring
and locally available materials for design, installation, and maintenance. Awesome,
and number two would be care for people. One primary
goal of perman culture is to provide for people's basic needs,
including food, shelter, human connection, education, and a sense of
(17:41):
purpose and place. A perman culture designer aims to produce
both food and pleasure. Whoa okay? Okay? Number three share
in the surplus. The third ethic is to share the
surplus ones basic needs are met an alignment with natural systems,
Excess yield is transferred to another system or person. Waste
(18:02):
becomes an asset to be repurposed. Now, I know you
were kind of joking, but there are some guidestones. E
feels about some of these, like and that it feels
more like a philosophy more than like a set of
instructions for a you know, sort of practical functioning system.
But that's I don't think that. I don't think you're joking, Matt.
I mean, I know the precepts would all do, but you,
(18:23):
like Matt, you were just literally saying earlier that this
is a combination of philosophy and practical practical tactics. Right, yeah,
it really is, and it and it does Honestly, I really,
I'm not joking. Well, it feels like to me like
leaving room for nature, finding a way to work with nature. Basically, um,
here is my thing, guys. This sounds amazing. This sounds
(18:46):
like also and I'm serious, there's this feels like the
laying the groundwork for a cult, you know, like and
not in a bad way, not saying permaculture is a cult.
I'm saying these are very positive, awesome things. Uh. It
just does make me feel like you could use this
as your as You're like, um uh support structure to
(19:10):
get a bunch of people out living on a piece
of land with commune kind of stuff. Yeah, you can't
spell permaculture without cult. Just but that's not what. I
Don't mean that at all, And I'm not trying to
speak badly about the Flash movement. It's just when I'm
when I'm reading that out loud and I'm hearing it
then in putting it all into my head because you
(19:33):
can use that phrase. Perman Culture Designer aims to produce
both food. And you know, the BuzzFeed headline is libertarians
hate this agricultural system. Uh. You know, for some people
who are a little bit sensitive about stuff, the idea
of the third ethic may seem um, probably too close
(19:56):
to socialism in some ways. I mean, the big difference
from perman culture, between perman culture and the precepts from
the Georgia Guidestones is obviously not the demand for um,
a mass lowering of the population, and hopefully not descended
as directly from belief in eugenics. But uh, but also
(20:20):
in defense and again this is not This is a
point that has nothing to do with with perspectives on
current society. What sticks out to me here is the
emphasis on systems, right on the systems, and uh, society
is a system. A group of people is at heart
(20:41):
a system. And in the natural world, way before human
beings ever existed, that third precept and that first precept
were enforced at times brutally, you know what I mean.
Nature has been a lot of things, but it's not
always the nicest, the nicest thing, I No. I think
this is especially the emphasis on learning and mimicking natural systems,
(21:08):
like the more sophisticated so much technology becomes, the closer
and closer it cleaves to being very similar to pre
existing things that were formed by environments or by evolution.
I strongly believe that it doesn't matter. If I believe it,
it's true, yeah, exactly. The one thing for me, guys,
(21:30):
is this all sounds well and good. It sounds amazing.
It sounds like the right thing to do. One of
the things Durst said was no one picks up leaves
in a forest and the soil is doing great in there.
And that's one of the whole points. Like, the way
these systems function is to sustain themselves, right, the way
a forest functions, the way a meadow functions. It will
(21:52):
sustain itself if you don't touch it, and it's going
to grow and be great. It just won't do maybe
the things that we wanted to do, but you can
gently if those things and those systems to work for you,
rather than tearing them up and trying to build something new. Basically,
I really love what like the philosophy he was teaching me.
The way drs did this is he went to a
(22:12):
special place. I can't remember DERs what it was, but
he just looked it up online found a school basically
to go to and learn all about permaculture, and then
he started a business and he's you know, he's running
a successful business right now doing this stuff. My question is,
how do you do this on a mass scale really,
because it feels like it's going to be impossible just
(22:34):
to fill up the stores with the food that Americans
and much of the Western society is used to. I
don't know that you can. Maybe you can. It feels
unfeasible to me, which you know, maybe it's not. And
hopefully somebody out there knows that it's not and knows
a way to do it, and we can figure that out,
because this does seem a lot more sustainable than the
(22:55):
factory farming. It's just I don't know how it would
function at scale and time soon. Oh, I would love
to talk about this more in depth that I say
we do an episode because I've got some crazy stuff
about this, So there's you're gonna have to tune in
for that. I think this will be a fun one. Sweet,
I'm in. Well, that's it for now, Thanks so much
(23:17):
for calling enters. We'll be right back with more messages
from you. And we're back with one more message from
from you. Uh and in this case, you is a Connor.
And here's how the message goes. Hello. I am an
American and have lived in Europe for thirty years now
(23:39):
and teach at a community college here in the Netherlands.
I really enjoy both stuff they don't want you to
know and stuff you should know. Um. A few months ago,
I gave my English as a Second language students the
exercise of choosing one of your episodes, listening to it,
and giving a short or report on the episode in English.
I would love to hear that. Shucks. Yeah, a connor
goes on. I all so teach social studies and international studies.
(24:02):
So for those courses, every year our students visit the
International Court of Justice in the Hague, where we talk
about how it works and sometimes get to watch some
of the war crimes trials. Most people do not know
that the US does not participate in the Court. They
do help find and transport criminals, and historically they did
help create the court. However, they do not participate in it.
(24:25):
It would be great if you did a show on
the International Court of Justice, especially given the recent debate
on US democracy. Love to hear you, guys, cop the
good work kind regards A Connor, Ben, that was a
very telling chuckle. Um, I think, because why would the
US not want to support an international court that tries
war criminals? Crazier than that? Okay, so a lot of
(24:50):
Americans don't know this, but there are, um, there are
some people who are lauded as heroes by certain factions
of the US population that can't travel to places because
they might get arrested. Uh and yeah, your point holds
know about the idea of possibly being war criminals. I
(25:13):
would like to introduce everyone who hasn't heard about this.
Uh well wait, first off, first, I'm excited. I'm jumping around.
But first off, A Connor, thank you, Yes done, we're
doing that episode. It's weird. We haven't done it so much.
It's so rife. It's fascinating because here's how deep it goes.
(25:33):
And um, A Connor, I'm sure you know this. But
for anybody who's not aware, this stance against participating in
I c C is so ingrained in American culture that
back in two thousand and two under the Bush administration,
they passed the American Service Members Protection Act, and that
(25:57):
has a street name. The street name is the Hague
Invasion Act, meaning that if you take someone that we
care about, because the US doesn't treat everybody equally, obviously,
if you take someone that we care about and you
try them in the court, then we are sending the
world's biggest, most dangerous military to the court, and not
(26:21):
to peacefully testify, not to be character witnesses. So there's
a really really cool piece cool I don't know, it's
just a good like primer on this that came out
in April sixteenth of this year, UM on NPR. It
was filed by Michael Martin on All Things Considered, and
he interviews John Bellinger the third, who is a former
(26:42):
legal advisor for the National Security Council UH specifically about
this kind of fraud relationship between the US and the
International Criminal Court. And the host starts the interview very
I don't know, straightforwardly asking this gentleman, UM, why why
is it that the you know? So he sort of
(27:02):
gives a little back, right, So, the International Criminal Court
was established relatively recently in n by an international agreement
that's called the Rome Statute, and the US, you know,
to a Connors point in the email, UM did help
negotiate that accord. In the end, it didn't formally join
uh and he asks Bellinger why not, and he responds,
(27:24):
the real answer to your question is that the US
has been concerned from the very beginning that the prosecutor
for the court would be given too much power unchecked,
and he or she could conduct politically motivated prosecutions of
US soldiers a k a. Bring them up on war
crime charges. Right right, Yeah, Yeah, there's more to the
(27:45):
story to certainly, But but I'm just saying, it's like,
we don't do war crimes in the United States. I
think that's sort of the what I'm saying is, I
am the US. We don't do war crimes. That's what
other countries do work times. We don't do that. So therefore,
we are not gonna put our rubber stamp on a
situation out of our control that could call our men
(28:08):
and women in uniform before some sort of European tribunal
and and rake them across the coals for just doing
Uncle Sam's good work. That's the idea. I mean, that's
why that's why they're standing law in the US. I'll
dig into this and have the specifics for the episode,
but that's why they're standing law in the US that says,
(28:29):
you know, you can't prosecute certain people or positions for
exercising the actions that are expected in their role unless
they're you know, there are things that are outlined, right,
But there's that's why the US doesn't accuse a sitting
president of war crimes, right when when there's a conflict
(28:52):
in a region somewhere else in the in the world.
But this idea, it's important to note, has never been tested.
The US is not invaded the Hague for two decades
and counting. So picture the u N or the International
Criminal Court with one of those little race boards in
(29:14):
the break room that says it's been and then somebody
and Marker wrote, twenty years since the US invaded the Hague.
It's strange. There's some c y there, obviously, and a
lot of US allies didn't like this move. Um, and
the US started instituting the strategy of obtaining immunity from
(29:35):
other state actors in order to like in a quid
pro quo. So it's it's a fascinating process, but it's
not something every country can do. And the U S
would say, of course, as the lawyer pointed out, they're
not signatories to the I s C. Well, you know
who else is not. There's another country that's in the
news right now that's doing some things m hm. And
(30:01):
that's honestly where this, uh, this article kind of stemmed
from or this uh, this NPR piece was, you know,
the US or the President of the United States, Joe
Biden went so far as to call Vladimir Putin a
war criminal. Um And where do war criminals get prosecuted.
It's it's at the Hague at least in terms of
international affairs or the international you know community. Uh. And
(30:25):
yet we would not hold our own um officials or
our soldiers to that same standard. So at that point,
you know, I mean, I know it's complicated, and I
know it's definitely we're gonna keep this short because we
don't want to spoil anything that's gonna go into the
episode and definitely requires a deeper dive. But it feels
(30:45):
very hollow for Biden to say that as sort of
a buzzy thing to say, I'm taking a stand, and
yet we don't actually recognize the jurisdiction of this you know,
largely internationally legally recognized body. So it's kind of like
not really putting your money where your mouth is when
you say a thing like that. Yeah. Also, let me
(31:07):
just read the list of countries who are not part
of the International Criminal Courts. This isn't fullst but Russia
is not. Neither is the US. We've established that, neither
is China, nor India, nor Rock, Libya, Yemen, Cutter Israel, Ukraine,
Like it's not everybody is what we're saying. And then
(31:27):
I do want to say, I know, we do want
to keep this short. I want to say there could
be rational, slash legitimate concerns from the perspective of those countries.
The i c C gets a lot of criticism. It's
been accused of um being a tool of Western imperialists
or neo colonial powers, punishing like the leaders of smaller,
(31:50):
less powerful states in Africa in particular, while ignoring crimes
committed by other more powerful countries. It's even the African
Union wants to withdraw from made moves to withdraw from
the court. It's hard to find a court that every
country agrees with, and there are a lot of accusations
(32:13):
about conspiracy. So a connor, as the Templar Night said
to Indy, you have chosen wisely, this is perfect for
an episode, and there's an Indiana Jones coming out number five.
I don't know if my face off is it really yeah? Yeah,
but the last one was so middling. This win. I
(32:34):
don't know about lou boof, but if he can still
stand up right by that, I mean, okay, no, no,
no shame there. Harrison's a stud I don't believe there
will be any like c g I monkey swinging. That
was I couldn't heard. It took all the magic out
of the previous films. The Indiana Jones franchise also, as
far as I know, like Russia, India, China and the
(32:56):
US and those other countries, does not acknowledge the jurisdiction
of the International Criminal Court. So it's going to be
up to the good folks at Rotten Tomatoes to decide
whether or not Indiana Jones five as a crime. Well,
good luck to you, Indiana Jones. I mean you could
argue Indiana Jones himself might have been guilty of some
(33:18):
war crimes. I mean, shot that guy dead. He was
just swinging a sword around, and come on, that's not right.
He also airplane guy? Yeah? Oh yeah. Also wait, but
there was a dude who like, yeah, there's a dude
who's like swinging a scimitar around, yeah, and make a
big show of it. And then Indy just shoots him dead,
you know, And that was improvised. He also shot that alien.
(33:39):
He shot that alien man in in Star Wars. He
definitely shot first, and they've that's revisioned his history right there.
Han shot first, ruined that fridge. Well, he also stole
a ton of priceless artifacts. Look, I say, this is
a fan of many films in the Indiana Jones franchise,
but the guy's a criminal. These are crust you guys.
(34:03):
Know what else is coming out? I think it's this weekend.
It's the new Thor movie. Yeah, it's good tonight as
we record Love and Funder. That looks fun. It's very
Masters of the Universe looking. I like that vibe that
I'm getting from the trailer. Can't wait us. I don't
get excited about many movies we go from international courts.
(34:27):
I love that about the show Crime and Jurisdiction. Yeah,
this is a great thing. We we got there because
I just had to reference the templar night from uh,
the Last Crusade. So yeah, that's how we got there.
But but yeah, this is something more people should know about.
And the decision for the US to participate or not
(34:49):
participate in the i SEC is such a who does
it ride with? Who does that rest with? Ben? Well,
it's such a high level decision. I think it's executive branch.
But it's such a high level decision. May be wrong
that the average voter doesn't get to do anything about
it. It It doesn't matter what you think you can you
(35:09):
I guess all I will say to end with if
that's okay? Is uh? This guy Ballinger, you know, who
seems to know what he's talking about. Um, he says
the US should be a member. But sadly that ship
sailed back in when the negotiators over US objections during
the Clinton administration negotiated a treaty that did not address
US concerns. So, yes, it's painful for me as an American,
(35:33):
as a lawyer, as the former legal advisor for the
State Department, representing a country that has long been at
the forefront of international criminal justice. It is unfortunately the
United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court.
We should be, but for the time being, I think
US policy will have to continue to be through both
Republican and democratic administrations, is to support the Court when
(35:55):
it is doing what it was set up to do,
which in this case is the investigations of the Russian
War crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, which is
exactly what the Court was set up to do. So
boy oh boy, Um, this is a deep dive of
an episode that we're gonna have coming up in the
in the near future. And and thank you a Connor
(36:15):
for this. Um, you know, just kind of light bulb
moment I think for all of us. Um, we're gonna
take a quick break and then we're gonna come back
with one more piece of listener mail from you. And
we've returned. This one comes to us via Instagram. A
(36:36):
lot of people reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter,
various missives, Crossroads at midnight, all the hits, all the
good ones, and uh, this person requested to be anonymous
and they hipped me to something that I shared with
you all off air. Uh. It was someone strange for
me because it's something I had never heard of a
(36:58):
lot of times would get a good idea. We're thinking,
why haven't we done it? Episode on that like the
I C C. I think it's crazy that never came
up a conversation. Um, maybe it did back in the
YouTube days. But this question, I'll read the pertinent bit
sad to remove some stuff to help preserve this person's identity.
But if you are listening, thank you. This is a
(37:21):
very strange one. And just like academic journals the piece
we did earlier, which by the way, we got we
got some Uh, we're gonna get some feedback from the
world of academia on that one. But like academic journals,
this idea is a little bit niche. So here it
is anonymous from Instagram reaches out at them bullen to say.
(37:42):
A TikTok trend called the hashtag Read and Return challenge
instructs readers to read books on Amazon quickly then return them.
Amazon actually does so, then deducts the money from those authors.
This has led to an increasing number of authors and
observers wondering whether Amazon is complicit in this trend, pushing
(38:06):
authors to join their Kindle Unlimited program. Now earlier and
this anonymous person did something I love, which is uh,
sending some sources, sending some articles that they had been
reading and relaying some of their own personal experience. At
the end of this week's segment, I'm going to ask
(38:27):
if you have encountered something like this. Uh, it reminds
me of earlier this week, we're talking about how to
manufacture a viral marketing trend. What if you could pull
those levers not just to try to make a middling
film a success, but you could pull those levers to
(38:47):
incentivize behavior in people. Here's this group. So Amazon has
this thing called Kindle Unlimited. Full disclosure, I've used Kindle
Unlimited for a number of years, often to get books
related to various branches of research, things that are so
(39:08):
subject specific I'm probably not going to keep them, you know,
as a physical copy. But the story really started with
someone named Lisa Kessler, who is an award winning, very
prolific author, has written forty four novels forty four separate novels,
and then earlier in June this year, Uh blew up
(39:30):
with a tweet where she said, Hey, just reminder, Amazon
is not a library. When you read and return a book,
it cost the author. It's June one says this again,
successful award winning, prolific author, and I owe Amazon at
the moment because people are reading through a series of
books she wrote and returning the books when they finish.
(39:52):
So Kessler was in an interview with BuzzFeed and she
said this problem started around May of this year and
last month for her, there was this swell of returns
of entire series of books, and they didn't seem to
be related to people not liking the actual book or
accidentally buying something, which you know can happen when you're
(40:14):
shopping online. She says, they ran through them and turned
turned them back in and got their money back. You know,
this is a hustle people have done at retail stores
in the past, right, Like, uh, nobody has to admit
it if you've done it. But I'm sure there are
many of us listening to the audience today who maybe
bought something that they were going to use over the
(40:36):
weekend and then returned it because you just needed it
for the weekend. And also the like the permissiveness or
laxness of return policies. It comes off like a feature
where it's like, oh, I'm not taking any risk by
buying this thing because I can just return at no
questions asked. But there are so many ways to game
that like the like you know, a scam you'll see
in movies. Sometimes it's like people will steal something from
(40:59):
one tar get and return it to the other one
because you don't actually have to have the receipt. Yeah, exactly.
And in some cases, especially for a lot of big retailers,
the headache of the paperwork and returning and processing something
is or like denying or return it just doesn't make
sense for their use of time. That's why there are
(41:20):
things that that's why there are so many algorithms in place, right,
Like if you order something that's not incredibly expensive from
a company like Amazon, you know, you just get your
whatever threshold to get free shipping, and then you say
the box never arrived. If you're not doing that really often,
they'll probably just send you another box of the same stuff,
(41:43):
you know. I think the term is called spoilage. Like
in business in general, like there's a shrink you know, yeah,
maybe it's one of the two, um, but there is
a certain allowable level of that. Like I think we've
even talked about like in you know, this isn't the same,
but in like drug cartels, they have an allowable amount
of cash that just gets eaten by rats. You know,
(42:07):
it's like, Okay, it's like it's just like a little spoilers. Look,
we're past it now, but I have to say it.
Nobody talks about shrinkage Seinfeld anyone. So so this is
not a Seinfeld problem though, because a lot of these
(42:28):
authors are independent. You know, they don't have the Seinfeld
comedians and cars getting coffee money. Uh. Instead, what they're
doing is depending upon these sales, and when these things
are purchased as e books, they ideally you would get
paid off that you get like royalties of some sort,
(42:49):
but when that e book is returned, the royalties from
that sale get deducted from the author's Amazon account directly.
And per Kessler, there's also a digital delivery fee that
Amazon charges the author. Sounds kind of bs to me.
That's like the ticket master fees, but they don't mean
the maintenanceive servers are so yeah, it's something so our
(43:13):
cynicism is showing here. Uh. But then you you you
have to imagine they probably also are getting Spotify money
compared to what they would get for like a purchased
physical copy of their book. Right, and here's where the
conspiracy comes into play. The going like. The running theory
(43:36):
is that Amazon is aware of what's being called a hack. Uh,
Like you can buy any book and you get seven
days you have to return. You can return it in
seven days, no questions asked, and you could even hear
people you only hear play any people arguing that e
books are a scam. But that's a story for another day. Uh.
(43:58):
The conspiracy, if you'll let me Pepe Lopez just a
little big guys. Uh, the conspiracy is that Amazon is
aware of this trend and complicit in it. Uh, and
they're allowing it to happen because they want to incentivize
or push these independent authors toward the Kindle Unlimited program.
(44:22):
And the Kindle Unlimited program doesn't have the same return policy.
So it's like, um, kinda unlimited his Amazon's ebook subscription
plan and that pays authors by the pages read instead
of just buying you know, the entire work or something.
(44:44):
So if you go to Kindle Unlimited, you read ten
pages and you decide, well, Loumargadoff, He's guide to perman
Culture is not for me. He's just coming from a
different place. Then you then, uh, whomever the rights of
that book would would get the ten pages. So you
(45:04):
know what I would buy? What would you buy? Man? Little?
A little book from Lisa Kessler titled Pirates Passion Yes, yeah,
oh yeah it's it's real passionate. You can tell by
the cover, right, Oh yeah yeah. So that's the conspiracy
(45:24):
theory that's going around, that's the idea, that's the speculation. Um.
Looking into it, there are some questions that I would
have to ask. We have to interrogate that theory because
one Amazon is Amazon not powerful enough that they could
just say all books have to go to Kindle unlimited.
Maybe maybe they aren't. Maybe they can't get the literary
(45:49):
whales like the Malcolm Gladwell's, the Stephen King's, the J. K.
Rolling Rowlings or what have you. Um, But then it
feels a little circuitous, right Like there are two ways
to look at it. So there are a couple of ways.
So Amazon could the far end, deep the deep end
of the conspiracy theory pool is that Amazon did this
(46:12):
somehow right. They did it instead of just saying, hey,
you have to go to this uh this model that
we have, they did it on purpose, even though it
feels kind of round about. The other more moderated or
mitigated idea is that maybe Amazon saw it happening and thought, well,
this works out for us. We're we're opportunists. Eventually, these
(46:34):
people who are not powerful enough to change our return
policies are going to have to do what ultimately makes
them some money, even if it makes them less money
than it than the previous model did both of those. Yeah,
we see them doing shady stuff like this with like
designers to for example, where like they have this Amazon
(46:54):
marketplace where you can like upload a design and then
through Amazon they'll print on demand and like a shirt
or a coffee mug or whatever sort of like you
know sites like t public. But it's all within the
Amazon ecosystem. And it turns out that a lot of
like freelance designers are having their like design stolen and
then put into the Amazon you know whatever, the automated
(47:15):
system and then printed and they get no money. So
we know that Amazon doesn't particularly have scruples about this
kind of thing in terms of because I mean think
about it, like, if you're not John Grisham or whatever,
I'm sorry, that's the only like big author actor Stephen King,
you know you're an independent seller. You depend on those
e book sales not only for a little cash, but
(47:37):
to get your name out there, because it's like the
distribution platform of choice. Let's not forget Amazon started off
selling only books, you know, and they've still kind of
kept an iron fisted grasp over that market. So they
really have like small creators over a barrel. And what
are you gonna do? Say, Well, I'm not gonna put
my stuff on Amazon anymore, Okay, cool, go with God,
(47:58):
they say, right right. It's kind of like the old
adage from back in the days of the West when
when the US was expanding westward. You probably heard the
story a hundred times. But the idea is, you go
to a small town, there's just one saloon, there's a
guy playing poker, and the dealer is clearly cheating, and
(48:22):
one guy points out to the poker player. He's like, hey,
this game is rigged, and the poker player shrugs and says,
I know, that's the only game in town. Like that's
that's kind of how these monopolies can work, and that's
a very real danger. But it also launched a pretty
nuanced discussion that you can read in You can read
(48:43):
ex service in The Daily Dot and Chicago Tribune and
pick this up and so on about the nature of ownership,
what differentiates a bookstore from a library. You know, whether
you should be able to return a book just because
you say you didn't dig it. And this all leads
(49:03):
us to what's happening now as we record now, there
is a petition going around on change dot org pushing
for Amazon to change its return policies for completed e books.
You can find this very easily and their ideas in
the petition, they explicitly say, we don't have a problem.
(49:25):
If somebody reads ten of a book and they don't
like it, you can turn it back in return it
because you didn't like it. It's like taking a bite
of something at a restaurant and sending it back. But
then if you read the whole thing and return it,
it's like you're in a restaurant. You ate the fries,
you ate the hamburger, you know, you're polishing off the
cookie or whatever, and then you tell the server you
(49:47):
were not satisfied, the meal wasn't up to your standards,
and you want your money back, you know what I mean.
I'm sure a lot of our our fellow conspiracy realists
in the service industry are like nodding with their brows
for road right. Now, you've seen those people, I've seen it.
You got worst. It was probably one of the worst things.
(50:07):
It's just one of the worst things. I've been on
both sides. I've been at a table when somebody did it,
and I've been you know, walking out as the server
to pick up I'll play in. They're like, yeah, that
was awful. Um, I'm gonna I'm not paying for that.
You just realized it was awful classy anyway. But if you, um,
if you agree with the following two ideas that one
(50:31):
changed dot org petitions work and that too, Amazon should
change its policies, then I encourage you to find this
petition uh and give it your John Hancock and see
if that will trigger a response from Amazon. UH. And
with that, we're gonna We're gonna leave it there. Thanks
to a Connor, Thanks to anonymous on Instagram. Thanks of course,
(50:54):
two dur's. Thanks to everyone who tunes into the show
every every day, every week, every episode, every segment, uh,
and thinks even more so, to those of us who
take the time to contact us. We love it. We
want to hear your thoughts. I'd like to end with
a very special thank you to the UM the amazing
(51:15):
work of independent authors in the US and abroad across
the planet. Because it's a daunting task, but I think
it's an important pursuit. I think it's an important profession.
We can't wait to hear what you think, folks about
permit culture, about the I c C, About the big
A Amazon nowadays. Uh so let us know what's on
(51:36):
your mind. We try to be easy to find online.
Oh yes, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
YouTube at Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram where at Conspiracy Stuff Show.
But there's more, that's right. We are also authors, at
least officially, especially Ben Like really, you can buy our book.
(51:57):
It's coming out right now. You can preorder it. It's
called stuff. They don't want you to know. It's got
our names on it. You'll see it. There's a picture
of I believe it's the capital guys, is that correct
capital in a UFO. You'll you'll recognize as soon as
you see. It's got this cool orange warm tone to it. Uh,
check it out. Please don't return it on Kindle like
(52:19):
if if you can help it, we unless you just
really don't like it. We get it sure, but still
don't don't return it. That would be cool, all right.
We also have a voicemail system. If you want to call,
you can. Our number is one eight three three st
d w y t K. You'll call, You'll get a
message letting you know you're in the right place. You'll
(52:39):
have three minutes. Those three minutes aren't ours, they're yours.
Go nuts, get weird with it. Highly encourage you to
do so. Give yourself a cool nickname. Tell us what's
on your mind. Tell us uh. Second, most importantly, if
you are comfortable having your name and or message on
the air. Most importantly, do not censor yourself. If you
(53:00):
having sillary links, who would like to send us? If
you want to walk us to the front of the
rabbit hole, we'll do the rest. All we have to
do is drop us a good old fashioned email where
we are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
(53:32):
they don't want you to know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. I want to
open this week's listener mail segment with a very special
(00:47):
welcome to my neighbor's downstairs dog, who you may be
able to hear in the background, who is going through
some things. Be kind to your pets, the responsible dog owners,
and uh, if your dog is really going through something,
check on it. That's that's our takeaway from today. We
(01:08):
don't need to pay, we don't need to play the
Sarah McLaughlin song, but I'll know the one I'm talking about. Today,
We're going to look I'm doing it. I'm doing it.
I'm speaking up for the dog owners. When I leave
my house, my dog does that. So I have a
feeling your neighbor, Yes, I know, yeah, and you have
to go big on empathy. You have to have the
(01:30):
human moment. So hoping the dog is okay uh, And
thanking you, fellow conspiracy realists for tuning in today. We're
going to talk about issue near and dear to my heart. Uh.
The US is ongoing beef with the Hague. Uh. Also
another thing I think near and dear to all of us,
speculation about food supply apocalypse. You may be able to
(01:53):
see a deep dive of that on YouTube in the
near future. And then we're going to talk about a
conspiracy native to Amazon and TikTok. But maybe first, maybe
you know, we don't always open up with a voicemail Matt,
what do you think about that? I want to switch
things up a little today. Yes, then let's jump to
the phone lines. This is a message we received from Dirs.
(02:16):
Hey guys, it's dirts here and you can use this
on the air if you so choose. In your latest
episode of Strange News, you touched on the food supply
scare in lieu of Russia's war with Ukraine. And I
wanted to add something to that conversation. But it's not
gonna be the doom and gloom that it first appears
for this hanging there in that episode. And forgive me
(02:39):
if I'm incorrect, I didn't hear him mention anything about
rock floss faith. And uh, you know how rock foss
faith is mostly supplied by Russia and Ukraine, so we're
not getting that anymore. But before this war, scientists already
thought that we were gonna heat pique fosters. So what
(03:00):
like does that mean we just can't have food anymore?
Because we can't we can't mind this fertilizer out of
the ground. I don't think that we actually need to.
What do you guys know about perman culture. It's a
system of agriculture that combines philosophy with smart farming. Google it.
Using perman culture, farmers have reversed the certification of entire
(03:22):
fourth we mind fertilizer to like exploit a short cut
to a system that already existed before humans started interacting
with it. I nick mold fertilizer my yard with wheat.
That's Korean natural farming, which is a little bit different.
But anyway, perman culture at a mass scale proven to work.
(03:46):
It's the easiest, simplest, and most cohesive way to farm
to tell me, is Perman culture the stuff that they
don't want you to know. Thanks so much for your show, guys.
You guys actually covered the apocalypse. It's in a really
uh blessedly funny way. And I appreciate what some of
you every day. Thanks what a nice thing is so nice.
(04:08):
Thank you so much. And and Matt you Uh. I'm
familiar with Perman culture actually from from some of my
outdoors time. You spoke with Thers and DRS actually wrote
to us. I believe, yes, permana culture is interesting. I
don't know much about it. I'm learning about it now
and the figure we would all learn about it together.
(04:31):
I did speak to DERs. He's my new best friend. Sorry, guys, Uh,
y'all are OUTDRS is in. That's just how it is,
so I'm kidding. He's just a very very cool guy. Uh.
Spoke to him a little bit. He's got a company
that specializes in Perman culture out there in Seattle, in
the Seattle area. I guess it's titled The Hermetic Order
(04:55):
of the Garden Dawn. Oh wow, snap, I love a
good I love it job. There's also um Perman culture,
as I'm sure there's pointed out. While the term itself
is from the nineties seventies, it's descended from some really
really old agricultural and husbandry practices. Yeah, it's a lot
(05:17):
of different things. Perman culture is many things. It is mostly,
as you said, um, indigenous people's practices, right, that kind
of got lost over time as industrialization came around, and
now it's kind of we're going back to those roots
if you will. It's it's a fascinating thing. I'll tell you. Yeah,
I'll just tell you some of the things here. By
(05:38):
the way, his company is quote a secret society of
plant lovers. It's pretty awesome. We talked about so many things.
One of the most interesting concepts that dur has talked
about is that people in general, our society, I guess
we see weeds that are on our lawns as problems,
weeds that are in our backyards as problems. I certainly do.
(06:02):
I'm preparing to sell my home and one of the
first things I did to try and beautify this place
to be able to make it marketable, is to get
rid of all the weeds, every single one of them. Uh,
scorched earth. Only grass will remain. And that's what I
decided to do and there are so many companies out
there that will do that for you. There's so many
products that you can do that on your own. And
(06:24):
there's main point, or one of his main points, was
that we should not do that. That's one of the
worst things you can do for the soil. If you
want to actually have healthy plants growing on that soil.
One of the worst things you can do is especially
apply herbicide and kill all those things. Anyway, as Dark said,
it's way more of a philosophy and a collection of
(06:44):
techniques than anything else, right, That's what permaculture is, philosophy
plus technique. I don't know where to where to begin here, guys.
Besides this peak phosphorus thing, which is a real existential
threat for me, even though it was kind of a
theory for a while that we had to throw a
little cold water on in the past. But at the
(07:06):
same time, it's a real issue at least when it
comes to how much it will cost to continue, you know,
getting these fertilizers the rock phosphates out of the ground
and then shipping them around the planet in order to
continue our industrial farming practices. It is a bit scary
to me. Have you guys heard anything about that recently? Yeah,
(07:26):
I know. I mean Der's you are correct in the
way that the global phosphates rock system has been disrupted
by conflicts UM. I would also note to you earlier
point that because we did discuss this, I think briefly
a number of years ago, saying that things are like
when you said we threw some cold water on it,
(07:48):
which is to a degree true. Uh, we by no
means said it wasn't going to be a problem. There
are a lot of things that I think sometimes people
don't take it seriously because they hear really hyperbolic descriptions
of them. But just because some one sources being alarmist
(08:08):
does not in any way mean that the problem is
not there. It's like it's like the question about the
timing of when peak oil will be reached. It's a
very similar problem with peak phosphate UM. I think primarily
because no one really knows, like we know where the
um we know where you can mine phosphate rock in
(08:31):
a cost effective way. Now, Uh, we know that there
are certain areas that have great reserves of phosphorus, but
we don't know exactly when we will see those affordable
reserves exhausted. Is it going to be fifty to a
hundred years, is it gonna is peak phosphorus gonna be
(08:53):
twenty thirty? Is it going to be several hundreds of years? Uh?
The jury is out and there are a lot of
smart people who disagree on this. To me, it reminds
me of the rare Earth elements or the rare Earth materials. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a ton of this stuff rock phosphate and and
mindable phosphate on the planet that we could access. It's
(09:17):
just it's concentrated in a few specific places where it's
economically feasible to mind it there. But otherwise it's just
spread out in ways that it would be difficult to
make a lot of money or to have it even
just a and a profitable company at all, to just
gather up the phosphate in these you know, various places
(09:38):
across the globe. So it could be a really big
problem headed our way. I guess the next thing we
need to do is kind of define what is permaculture
a little better, at least for my mind. Ben, you
mentioned the nineteen seventies is when the term at least
came around by a few Australian guys, Bill Mullison, David Holmgren,
(10:01):
and they've wrote a book's called perman Culture. One that
was really the thing that kicked off the movement of
perman culture. I suppose, yeah, and you and you you
raised a great point where, um, in some of the
conversations you and I have had in the past, and
what you just said now about your conversation with DR's
that there is a culture, a philosophy behind this. Uh.
(10:25):
The idea I think maybe for people who aren't familiar
with the term, we could go to, uh something you
would linked to from n C State with their appendix
on perman culture design. Um. I think they're introduction is
quite succinct and covers a lot of the bases, especially
(10:46):
like the three driving ethics or axioms of the belief.
Oh yeah, that's a perfect place to start, Ben. I'll
give you this quote that comes from that book as
a basic definition of sorts, and then we'll go into
the as ethics. The definition is quote, consciously designed landscapes
which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while
(11:08):
yet yielding an abundance of food, fiber, and energy for
provision of local needs, so basically your local area, using
what's there and designing the thing out of what's already there,
like just making the land essentially work. It's in a
way it seems as though we kind of want the
(11:30):
land to work for us. We want this land to
make the corn. We want this land over here to
make the wheat, and that's all it is. That's all
it's gonna be. That's what we're gonna do. This philosophy.
It's way more like, well, what naturally grows over here, Uh,
what's edible that grows in this land already, let's design
it around that. So the former idea you outline is
mono agriculture, right, those are the things where those are
(11:55):
the practices where you see an entire swath of land
growing only soybeans or growing only you know, one specific
type of profitable crop in profitable and whatever current regime
you live in. But for much of human history this
wasn't the case. People lived closer to the land and
(12:15):
they were practicing the thing you describe. The latter idea,
which I think is superior um. If you are in
the United States, you might be familiar with the concept
of the Three Sisters, which is the corn beans and squash.
You plant them like you plant the beans at the
base of the cornstocks, and they helped support the bean
(12:39):
vines as they grow and reach the sunlight. You the
ideas you can um by farming. You can look at
it as not like helping plants work together and people
working with plants. You can also um. You can also
rotate the crops you grow in such a way that
enriches the soil, rather than growing just one crop that
(13:01):
over time could deplete the soil. So there's science to this.
What we're establishing is there is philosophy. There are ethical guidelines,
but there is like I'm sure DR's you would you
have probably had to point this out to people in
the past. There's solid science to back up a lot
of this stuff. Oh yeah, oh dude, there's all kinds
(13:22):
of science and fascinating things I've never heard about. Did
you guys know? There's a German method where you cut
your lawn that has grass on it, and you you
cut it into squares. Then you take that lawn and
you flip it over so the grass side is down,
and then and you leave that there, and then that
grass breaks down into the nutrients you need to feed
(13:46):
stuff that you plant into the soil. On top of that,
I've never heard of that. That's amazing. That's news to
me as well, Matt. I love learning new things. That's awesome.
That reminds duh when Scott Benjamin over at cars stuff
years ago. You know, Scott, I love the guy. Uh.
She told me. I was. I was doing a piece
(14:06):
on two two cycle engines, right, so I was fixing
all these little lawnmowers and is getting frustrated, and he
was like, you know what you should do, Ben You
should buy a goat lawn. And that's a real thing
people do. You can rent goats stick out your lawn,
and arguably it's more sustainable than than a gas guzzling motor.
But but I love like not do we know how
(14:29):
old that idea is in Germany or how recent? I
don't know. I'm here somewhere in one of these links
that I shared. Guys, it's a specific technique. Oh lord,
I'm not gonna be able to find it right now.
I missed a step. By the way. You have to
get decaying wood or like dry or older wood that's
just around somewhere from you know, probably just sticks falling
(14:51):
down and things like that. But you have to put
that wood between the ground and that grass layer that
you put on top, because that would breaks down in
the same way the grass breaks down, and that will
feed those plants that you put on top of it
for years, I guess, or at least for a long
time according to jurors. I don't know these things. Guys
(15:11):
is very smart and knows these things. Um, there's also
something I figured you guys might have encountered through ridiculous history.
You guys, ever heard of night soil? Oh? Yeah, night soil.
Human poop is fertilizer. Okay, it's sort of like gray
water maybe where you take the runoff or the you know,
parts of the water that you use in your house
(15:32):
that don't have human fecal matter in them and use
it for irrigation. Yeah. Night night soil is an historic
practice too. It's quite an efficient one. But but I
think what a lot of people might not know is
night soil is still commonly used as fertilizer today in
different parts of the world. That's right, That is right again.
(15:54):
Just mix your poop with wood chips and you've got
some really great fertilizer. That's that's what I wipe with.
Oh oh lord there. I mean there are controversies though
about it being linked to uh, some health concerns, you know,
but it makes sense when you're you know, like, imagine
(16:16):
you're a farmer. We'll just say, for the sake of argument,
hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, and uh,
and you don't have a big company. You don't also
have a general store where you buy fertilizer, so you
save it up the poop and then you're probably also
having a lot of kids because that's free labor. Right,
(16:36):
it was a very different time. All right, guys, I'm
gonna get to those ethics we never said them. Yeah.
This is according to um NC State North Carolina State University,
I'm assuming, and this is on one of their websites.
It's Appendix G Permaculture Design. It's from the North Carolina
Extension Gardner Handbook. Okay, here we go. Permit Ulture ethic
(17:00):
one Care for the Earth. Stop me when you feel
like this is sounding like guidestones. UM Care for the Earth.
The discipline looks to nature as a model for design.
Perman culture includes replicating and restoring natural systems. With this
ethic perman culture emphasizes organic and sustainable methods of working
(17:20):
with the land. It promotes the use of naturally occurring
and locally available materials for design, installation, and maintenance. Awesome,
and number two would be care for people. One primary
goal of perman culture is to provide for people's basic needs,
including food, shelter, human connection, education, and a sense of
(17:41):
purpose and place. A perman culture designer aims to produce
both food and pleasure. Whoa okay? Okay? Number three share
in the surplus. The third ethic is to share the
surplus ones basic needs are met an alignment with natural systems,
Excess yield is transferred to another system or person. Waste
(18:02):
becomes an asset to be repurposed. Now, I know you
were kind of joking, but there are some guidestones. E
feels about some of these, like and that it feels
more like a philosophy more than like a set of
instructions for a you know, sort of practical functioning system.
But that's I don't think that. I don't think you're joking, Matt.
I mean, I know the precepts would all do, but you,
(18:23):
like Matt, you were just literally saying earlier that this
is a combination of philosophy and practical practical tactics. Right, yeah,
it really is, and it and it does Honestly, I really,
I'm not joking. Well, it feels like to me like
leaving room for nature, finding a way to work with nature. Basically, um,
here is my thing, guys. This sounds amazing. This sounds
(18:46):
like also and I'm serious, there's this feels like the
laying the groundwork for a cult, you know, like and
not in a bad way, not saying permaculture is a cult.
I'm saying these are very positive, awesome things. Uh. It
just does make me feel like you could use this
as your as You're like, um uh support structure to
(19:10):
get a bunch of people out living on a piece
of land with commune kind of stuff. Yeah, you can't
spell permaculture without cult. Just but that's not what. I
Don't mean that at all, And I'm not trying to
speak badly about the Flash movement. It's just when I'm
when I'm reading that out loud and I'm hearing it
then in putting it all into my head because you
(19:33):
can use that phrase. Perman Culture Designer aims to produce
both food. And you know, the BuzzFeed headline is libertarians
hate this agricultural system. Uh. You know, for some people
who are a little bit sensitive about stuff, the idea
of the third ethic may seem um, probably too close
(19:56):
to socialism in some ways. I mean, the big difference
from perman culture, between perman culture and the precepts from
the Georgia Guidestones is obviously not the demand for um,
a mass lowering of the population, and hopefully not descended
as directly from belief in eugenics. But uh, but also
(20:20):
in defense and again this is not This is a
point that has nothing to do with with perspectives on
current society. What sticks out to me here is the
emphasis on systems, right on the systems, and uh, society
is a system. A group of people is at heart
(20:41):
a system. And in the natural world, way before human
beings ever existed, that third precept and that first precept
were enforced at times brutally, you know what I mean.
Nature has been a lot of things, but it's not
always the nicest, the nicest thing, I No. I think
this is especially the emphasis on learning and mimicking natural systems,
(21:08):
like the more sophisticated so much technology becomes, the closer
and closer it cleaves to being very similar to pre
existing things that were formed by environments or by evolution.
I strongly believe that it doesn't matter. If I believe it,
it's true, yeah, exactly. The one thing for me, guys,
(21:30):
is this all sounds well and good. It sounds amazing.
It sounds like the right thing to do. One of
the things Durst said was no one picks up leaves
in a forest and the soil is doing great in there.
And that's one of the whole points. Like, the way
these systems function is to sustain themselves, right, the way
a forest functions, the way a meadow functions. It will
(21:52):
sustain itself if you don't touch it, and it's going
to grow and be great. It just won't do maybe
the things that we wanted to do, but you can
gently if those things and those systems to work for you,
rather than tearing them up and trying to build something new. Basically,
I really love what like the philosophy he was teaching me.
The way drs did this is he went to a
(22:12):
special place. I can't remember DERs what it was, but
he just looked it up online found a school basically
to go to and learn all about permaculture, and then
he started a business and he's you know, he's running
a successful business right now doing this stuff. My question is,
how do you do this on a mass scale really,
because it feels like it's going to be impossible just
(22:34):
to fill up the stores with the food that Americans
and much of the Western society is used to. I
don't know that you can. Maybe you can. It feels
unfeasible to me, which you know, maybe it's not. And
hopefully somebody out there knows that it's not and knows
a way to do it, and we can figure that out,
because this does seem a lot more sustainable than the
(22:55):
factory farming. It's just I don't know how it would
function at scale and time soon. Oh, I would love
to talk about this more in depth that I say
we do an episode because I've got some crazy stuff
about this, So there's you're gonna have to tune in
for that. I think this will be a fun one. Sweet,
I'm in. Well, that's it for now, Thanks so much
(23:17):
for calling enters. We'll be right back with more messages
from you. And we're back with one more message from
from you. Uh and in this case, you is a Connor.
And here's how the message goes. Hello. I am an
American and have lived in Europe for thirty years now
(23:39):
and teach at a community college here in the Netherlands.
I really enjoy both stuff they don't want you to
know and stuff you should know. Um. A few months ago,
I gave my English as a Second language students the
exercise of choosing one of your episodes, listening to it,
and giving a short or report on the episode in English.
I would love to hear that. Shucks. Yeah, a connor
goes on. I all so teach social studies and international studies.
(24:02):
So for those courses, every year our students visit the
International Court of Justice in the Hague, where we talk
about how it works and sometimes get to watch some
of the war crimes trials. Most people do not know
that the US does not participate in the Court. They
do help find and transport criminals, and historically they did
help create the court. However, they do not participate in it.
(24:25):
It would be great if you did a show on
the International Court of Justice, especially given the recent debate
on US democracy. Love to hear you, guys, cop the
good work kind regards A Connor, Ben, that was a
very telling chuckle. Um, I think, because why would the
US not want to support an international court that tries
war criminals? Crazier than that? Okay, so a lot of
(24:50):
Americans don't know this, but there are, um, there are
some people who are lauded as heroes by certain factions
of the US population that can't travel to places because
they might get arrested. Uh and yeah, your point holds
know about the idea of possibly being war criminals. I
(25:13):
would like to introduce everyone who hasn't heard about this.
Uh well wait, first off, first, I'm excited. I'm jumping around.
But first off, A Connor, thank you, Yes done, we're
doing that episode. It's weird. We haven't done it so much.
It's so rife. It's fascinating because here's how deep it goes.
(25:33):
And um, A Connor, I'm sure you know this. But
for anybody who's not aware, this stance against participating in
I c C is so ingrained in American culture that
back in two thousand and two under the Bush administration,
they passed the American Service Members Protection Act, and that
(25:57):
has a street name. The street name is the Hague
Invasion Act, meaning that if you take someone that we
care about, because the US doesn't treat everybody equally, obviously,
if you take someone that we care about and you
try them in the court, then we are sending the
world's biggest, most dangerous military to the court, and not
(26:21):
to peacefully testify, not to be character witnesses. So there's
a really really cool piece cool I don't know, it's
just a good like primer on this that came out
in April sixteenth of this year, UM on NPR. It
was filed by Michael Martin on All Things Considered, and
he interviews John Bellinger the third, who is a former
(26:42):
legal advisor for the National Security Council UH specifically about
this kind of fraud relationship between the US and the
International Criminal Court. And the host starts the interview very
I don't know, straightforwardly asking this gentleman, UM, why why
is it that the you know? So he sort of
(27:02):
gives a little back, right, So, the International Criminal Court
was established relatively recently in n by an international agreement
that's called the Rome Statute, and the US, you know,
to a Connors point in the email, UM did help
negotiate that accord. In the end, it didn't formally join
uh and he asks Bellinger why not, and he responds,
(27:24):
the real answer to your question is that the US
has been concerned from the very beginning that the prosecutor
for the court would be given too much power unchecked,
and he or she could conduct politically motivated prosecutions of
US soldiers a k a. Bring them up on war
crime charges. Right right, Yeah, Yeah, there's more to the
(27:45):
story to certainly, But but I'm just saying, it's like,
we don't do war crimes in the United States. I
think that's sort of the what I'm saying is, I
am the US. We don't do war crimes. That's what
other countries do work times. We don't do that. So therefore,
we are not gonna put our rubber stamp on a
situation out of our control that could call our men
(28:08):
and women in uniform before some sort of European tribunal
and and rake them across the coals for just doing
Uncle Sam's good work. That's the idea. I mean, that's
why that's why they're standing law in the US. I'll
dig into this and have the specifics for the episode,
but that's why they're standing law in the US that says,
(28:29):
you know, you can't prosecute certain people or positions for
exercising the actions that are expected in their role unless
they're you know, there are things that are outlined, right,
But there's that's why the US doesn't accuse a sitting
president of war crimes, right when when there's a conflict
(28:52):
in a region somewhere else in the in the world.
But this idea, it's important to note, has never been tested.
The US is not invaded the Hague for two decades
and counting. So picture the u N or the International
Criminal Court with one of those little race boards in
(29:14):
the break room that says it's been and then somebody
and Marker wrote, twenty years since the US invaded the Hague.
It's strange. There's some c y there, obviously, and a
lot of US allies didn't like this move. Um, and
the US started instituting the strategy of obtaining immunity from
(29:35):
other state actors in order to like in a quid
pro quo. So it's it's a fascinating process, but it's
not something every country can do. And the U S
would say, of course, as the lawyer pointed out, they're
not signatories to the I s C. Well, you know
who else is not. There's another country that's in the
news right now that's doing some things m hm. And
(30:01):
that's honestly where this, uh, this article kind of stemmed
from or this uh, this NPR piece was, you know,
the US or the President of the United States, Joe
Biden went so far as to call Vladimir Putin a
war criminal. Um And where do war criminals get prosecuted.
It's it's at the Hague at least in terms of
international affairs or the international you know community. Uh. And
(30:25):
yet we would not hold our own um officials or
our soldiers to that same standard. So at that point,
you know, I mean, I know it's complicated, and I
know it's definitely we're gonna keep this short because we
don't want to spoil anything that's gonna go into the
episode and definitely requires a deeper dive. But it feels
(30:45):
very hollow for Biden to say that as sort of
a buzzy thing to say, I'm taking a stand, and
yet we don't actually recognize the jurisdiction of this you know,
largely internationally legally recognized body. So it's kind of like
not really putting your money where your mouth is when
you say a thing like that. Yeah. Also, let me
(31:07):
just read the list of countries who are not part
of the International Criminal Courts. This isn't fullst but Russia
is not. Neither is the US. We've established that, neither
is China, nor India, nor Rock, Libya, Yemen, Cutter Israel, Ukraine,
Like it's not everybody is what we're saying. And then
(31:27):
I do want to say, I know, we do want
to keep this short. I want to say there could
be rational, slash legitimate concerns from the perspective of those countries.
The i c C gets a lot of criticism. It's
been accused of um being a tool of Western imperialists
or neo colonial powers, punishing like the leaders of smaller,
(31:50):
less powerful states in Africa in particular, while ignoring crimes
committed by other more powerful countries. It's even the African
Union wants to withdraw from made moves to withdraw from
the court. It's hard to find a court that every
country agrees with, and there are a lot of accusations
(32:13):
about conspiracy. So a connor, as the Templar Night said
to Indy, you have chosen wisely, this is perfect for
an episode, and there's an Indiana Jones coming out number five.
I don't know if my face off is it really yeah? Yeah,
but the last one was so middling. This win. I
(32:34):
don't know about lou boof, but if he can still
stand up right by that, I mean, okay, no, no,
no shame there. Harrison's a stud I don't believe there
will be any like c g I monkey swinging. That
was I couldn't heard. It took all the magic out
of the previous films. The Indiana Jones franchise also, as
far as I know, like Russia, India, China and the
(32:56):
US and those other countries, does not acknowledge the jurisdiction
of the International Criminal Court. So it's going to be
up to the good folks at Rotten Tomatoes to decide
whether or not Indiana Jones five as a crime. Well,
good luck to you, Indiana Jones. I mean you could
argue Indiana Jones himself might have been guilty of some
(33:18):
war crimes. I mean, shot that guy dead. He was
just swinging a sword around, and come on, that's not right.
He also airplane guy? Yeah? Oh yeah. Also wait, but
there was a dude who like, yeah, there's a dude
who's like swinging a scimitar around, yeah, and make a
big show of it. And then Indy just shoots him dead,
you know, And that was improvised. He also shot that alien.
(33:39):
He shot that alien man in in Star Wars. He
definitely shot first, and they've that's revisioned his history right there.
Han shot first, ruined that fridge. Well, he also stole
a ton of priceless artifacts. Look, I say, this is
a fan of many films in the Indiana Jones franchise,
but the guy's a criminal. These are crust you guys.
(34:03):
Know what else is coming out? I think it's this weekend.
It's the new Thor movie. Yeah, it's good tonight as
we record Love and Funder. That looks fun. It's very
Masters of the Universe looking. I like that vibe that
I'm getting from the trailer. Can't wait us. I don't
get excited about many movies we go from international courts.
(34:27):
I love that about the show Crime and Jurisdiction. Yeah,
this is a great thing. We we got there because
I just had to reference the templar night from uh,
the Last Crusade. So yeah, that's how we got there.
But but yeah, this is something more people should know about.
And the decision for the US to participate or not
(34:49):
participate in the i SEC is such a who does
it ride with? Who does that rest with? Ben? Well,
it's such a high level decision. I think it's executive branch.
But it's such a high level decision. May be wrong
that the average voter doesn't get to do anything about
it. It It doesn't matter what you think you can you
(35:09):
I guess all I will say to end with if
that's okay? Is uh? This guy Ballinger, you know, who
seems to know what he's talking about. Um, he says
the US should be a member. But sadly that ship
sailed back in when the negotiators over US objections during
the Clinton administration negotiated a treaty that did not address
US concerns. So, yes, it's painful for me as an American,
(35:33):
as a lawyer, as the former legal advisor for the
State Department, representing a country that has long been at
the forefront of international criminal justice. It is unfortunately the
United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court.
We should be, but for the time being, I think
US policy will have to continue to be through both
Republican and democratic administrations, is to support the Court when
(35:55):
it is doing what it was set up to do,
which in this case is the investigations of the Russian
War crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, which is
exactly what the Court was set up to do. So
boy oh boy, Um, this is a deep dive of
an episode that we're gonna have coming up in the
in the near future. And and thank you a Connor
(36:15):
for this. Um, you know, just kind of light bulb
moment I think for all of us. Um, we're gonna
take a quick break and then we're gonna come back
with one more piece of listener mail from you. And
we've returned. This one comes to us via Instagram. A
(36:36):
lot of people reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter,
various missives, Crossroads at midnight, all the hits, all the
good ones, and uh, this person requested to be anonymous
and they hipped me to something that I shared with
you all off air. Uh. It was someone strange for
me because it's something I had never heard of a
(36:58):
lot of times would get a good idea. We're thinking,
why haven't we done it? Episode on that like the
I C C. I think it's crazy that never came
up a conversation. Um, maybe it did back in the
YouTube days. But this question, I'll read the pertinent bit
sad to remove some stuff to help preserve this person's identity.
But if you are listening, thank you. This is a
(37:21):
very strange one. And just like academic journals the piece
we did earlier, which by the way, we got we
got some Uh, we're gonna get some feedback from the
world of academia on that one. But like academic journals,
this idea is a little bit niche. So here it
is anonymous from Instagram reaches out at them bullen to say.
(37:42):
A TikTok trend called the hashtag Read and Return challenge
instructs readers to read books on Amazon quickly then return them.
Amazon actually does so, then deducts the money from those authors.
This has led to an increasing number of authors and
observers wondering whether Amazon is complicit in this trend, pushing
(38:06):
authors to join their Kindle Unlimited program. Now earlier and
this anonymous person did something I love, which is uh,
sending some sources, sending some articles that they had been
reading and relaying some of their own personal experience. At
the end of this week's segment, I'm going to ask
(38:27):
if you have encountered something like this. Uh, it reminds
me of earlier this week, we're talking about how to
manufacture a viral marketing trend. What if you could pull
those levers not just to try to make a middling
film a success, but you could pull those levers to
(38:47):
incentivize behavior in people. Here's this group. So Amazon has
this thing called Kindle Unlimited. Full disclosure, I've used Kindle
Unlimited for a number of years, often to get books
related to various branches of research, things that are so
(39:08):
subject specific I'm probably not going to keep them, you know,
as a physical copy. But the story really started with
someone named Lisa Kessler, who is an award winning, very
prolific author, has written forty four novels forty four separate novels,
and then earlier in June this year, Uh blew up
(39:30):
with a tweet where she said, Hey, just reminder, Amazon
is not a library. When you read and return a book,
it cost the author. It's June one says this again,
successful award winning, prolific author, and I owe Amazon at
the moment because people are reading through a series of
books she wrote and returning the books when they finish.
(39:52):
So Kessler was in an interview with BuzzFeed and she
said this problem started around May of this year and
last month for her, there was this swell of returns
of entire series of books, and they didn't seem to
be related to people not liking the actual book or
accidentally buying something, which you know can happen when you're
(40:14):
shopping online. She says, they ran through them and turned
turned them back in and got their money back. You know,
this is a hustle people have done at retail stores
in the past, right, Like, uh, nobody has to admit
it if you've done it. But I'm sure there are
many of us listening to the audience today who maybe
bought something that they were going to use over the
(40:36):
weekend and then returned it because you just needed it
for the weekend. And also the like the permissiveness or
laxness of return policies. It comes off like a feature
where it's like, oh, I'm not taking any risk by
buying this thing because I can just return at no
questions asked. But there are so many ways to game
that like the like you know, a scam you'll see
in movies. Sometimes it's like people will steal something from
(40:59):
one tar get and return it to the other one
because you don't actually have to have the receipt. Yeah, exactly.
And in some cases, especially for a lot of big retailers,
the headache of the paperwork and returning and processing something
is or like denying or return it just doesn't make
sense for their use of time. That's why there are
(41:20):
things that that's why there are so many algorithms in place, right,
Like if you order something that's not incredibly expensive from
a company like Amazon, you know, you just get your
whatever threshold to get free shipping, and then you say
the box never arrived. If you're not doing that really often,
they'll probably just send you another box of the same stuff,
(41:43):
you know. I think the term is called spoilage. Like
in business in general, like there's a shrink you know, yeah,
maybe it's one of the two, um, but there is
a certain allowable level of that. Like I think we've
even talked about like in you know, this isn't the same,
but in like drug cartels, they have an allowable amount
of cash that just gets eaten by rats. You know,
(42:07):
it's like, Okay, it's like it's just like a little spoilers. Look,
we're past it now, but I have to say it.
Nobody talks about shrinkage Seinfeld anyone. So so this is
not a Seinfeld problem though, because a lot of these
(42:28):
authors are independent. You know, they don't have the Seinfeld
comedians and cars getting coffee money. Uh. Instead, what they're
doing is depending upon these sales, and when these things
are purchased as e books, they ideally you would get
paid off that you get like royalties of some sort,
(42:49):
but when that e book is returned, the royalties from
that sale get deducted from the author's Amazon account directly.
And per Kessler, there's also a digital delivery fee that
Amazon charges the author. Sounds kind of bs to me.
That's like the ticket master fees, but they don't mean
the maintenanceive servers are so yeah, it's something so our
(43:13):
cynicism is showing here. Uh. But then you you you
have to imagine they probably also are getting Spotify money
compared to what they would get for like a purchased
physical copy of their book. Right, and here's where the
conspiracy comes into play. The going like. The running theory
(43:36):
is that Amazon is aware of what's being called a hack. Uh,
Like you can buy any book and you get seven
days you have to return. You can return it in
seven days, no questions asked, and you could even hear
people you only hear play any people arguing that e
books are a scam. But that's a story for another day. Uh.
(43:58):
The conspiracy, if you'll let me Pepe Lopez just a
little big guys. Uh, the conspiracy is that Amazon is
aware of this trend and complicit in it. Uh, and
they're allowing it to happen because they want to incentivize
or push these independent authors toward the Kindle Unlimited program.
(44:22):
And the Kindle Unlimited program doesn't have the same return policy.
So it's like, um, kinda unlimited his Amazon's ebook subscription
plan and that pays authors by the pages read instead
of just buying you know, the entire work or something.
(44:44):
So if you go to Kindle Unlimited, you read ten
pages and you decide, well, Loumargadoff, He's guide to perman
Culture is not for me. He's just coming from a
different place. Then you then, uh, whomever the rights of
that book would would get the ten pages. So you
(45:04):
know what I would buy? What would you buy? Man? Little?
A little book from Lisa Kessler titled Pirates Passion Yes, yeah,
oh yeah it's it's real passionate. You can tell by
the cover, right, Oh yeah yeah. So that's the conspiracy
(45:24):
theory that's going around, that's the idea, that's the speculation. Um.
Looking into it, there are some questions that I would
have to ask. We have to interrogate that theory because
one Amazon is Amazon not powerful enough that they could
just say all books have to go to Kindle unlimited.
Maybe maybe they aren't. Maybe they can't get the literary
(45:49):
whales like the Malcolm Gladwell's, the Stephen King's, the J. K.
Rolling Rowlings or what have you. Um, But then it
feels a little circuitous, right Like there are two ways
to look at it. So there are a couple of ways.
So Amazon could the far end, deep the deep end
of the conspiracy theory pool is that Amazon did this
(46:12):
somehow right. They did it instead of just saying, hey,
you have to go to this uh this model that
we have, they did it on purpose, even though it
feels kind of round about. The other more moderated or
mitigated idea is that maybe Amazon saw it happening and thought, well,
this works out for us. We're we're opportunists. Eventually, these
(46:34):
people who are not powerful enough to change our return
policies are going to have to do what ultimately makes
them some money, even if it makes them less money
than it than the previous model did both of those. Yeah,
we see them doing shady stuff like this with like
designers to for example, where like they have this Amazon
(46:54):
marketplace where you can like upload a design and then
through Amazon they'll print on demand and like a shirt
or a coffee mug or whatever sort of like you
know sites like t public. But it's all within the
Amazon ecosystem. And it turns out that a lot of
like freelance designers are having their like design stolen and
then put into the Amazon you know whatever, the automated
(47:15):
system and then printed and they get no money. So
we know that Amazon doesn't particularly have scruples about this
kind of thing in terms of because I mean think
about it, like, if you're not John Grisham or whatever,
I'm sorry, that's the only like big author actor Stephen King,
you know you're an independent seller. You depend on those
e book sales not only for a little cash, but
(47:37):
to get your name out there, because it's like the
distribution platform of choice. Let's not forget Amazon started off
selling only books, you know, and they've still kind of
kept an iron fisted grasp over that market. So they
really have like small creators over a barrel. And what
are you gonna do? Say, Well, I'm not gonna put
my stuff on Amazon anymore, Okay, cool, go with God,
(47:58):
they say, right right. It's kind of like the old
adage from back in the days of the West when
when the US was expanding westward. You probably heard the
story a hundred times. But the idea is, you go
to a small town, there's just one saloon, there's a
guy playing poker, and the dealer is clearly cheating, and
(48:22):
one guy points out to the poker player. He's like, hey,
this game is rigged, and the poker player shrugs and says,
I know, that's the only game in town. Like that's
that's kind of how these monopolies can work, and that's
a very real danger. But it also launched a pretty
nuanced discussion that you can read in You can read
(48:43):
ex service in The Daily Dot and Chicago Tribune and
pick this up and so on about the nature of ownership,
what differentiates a bookstore from a library. You know, whether
you should be able to return a book just because
you say you didn't dig it. And this all leads
(49:03):
us to what's happening now as we record now, there
is a petition going around on change dot org pushing
for Amazon to change its return policies for completed e books.
You can find this very easily and their ideas in
the petition, they explicitly say, we don't have a problem.
(49:25):
If somebody reads ten of a book and they don't
like it, you can turn it back in return it
because you didn't like it. It's like taking a bite
of something at a restaurant and sending it back. But
then if you read the whole thing and return it,
it's like you're in a restaurant. You ate the fries,
you ate the hamburger, you know, you're polishing off the
cookie or whatever, and then you tell the server you
(49:47):
were not satisfied, the meal wasn't up to your standards,
and you want your money back, you know what I mean.
I'm sure a lot of our our fellow conspiracy realists
in the service industry are like nodding with their brows
for road right. Now, you've seen those people, I've seen it.
You got worst. It was probably one of the worst things.
(50:07):
It's just one of the worst things. I've been on
both sides. I've been at a table when somebody did it,
and I've been you know, walking out as the server
to pick up I'll play in. They're like, yeah, that
was awful. Um, I'm gonna I'm not paying for that.
You just realized it was awful classy anyway. But if you, um,
if you agree with the following two ideas that one
(50:31):
changed dot org petitions work and that too, Amazon should
change its policies, then I encourage you to find this
petition uh and give it your John Hancock and see
if that will trigger a response from Amazon. UH. And
with that, we're gonna We're gonna leave it there. Thanks
to a Connor, Thanks to anonymous on Instagram. Thanks of course,
(50:54):
two dur's. Thanks to everyone who tunes into the show
every every day, every week, every episode, every segment, uh,
and thinks even more so, to those of us who
take the time to contact us. We love it. We
want to hear your thoughts. I'd like to end with
a very special thank you to the UM the amazing
(51:15):
work of independent authors in the US and abroad across
the planet. Because it's a daunting task, but I think
it's an important pursuit. I think it's an important profession.
We can't wait to hear what you think, folks about
permit culture, about the I c C, About the big
A Amazon nowadays. Uh so let us know what's on
(51:36):
your mind. We try to be easy to find online.
Oh yes, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and
YouTube at Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram where at Conspiracy Stuff Show.
But there's more, that's right. We are also authors, at
least officially, especially Ben Like really, you can buy our book.
(51:57):
It's coming out right now. You can preorder it. It's
called stuff. They don't want you to know. It's got
our names on it. You'll see it. There's a picture
of I believe it's the capital guys, is that correct
capital in a UFO. You'll you'll recognize as soon as
you see. It's got this cool orange warm tone to it. Uh,
check it out. Please don't return it on Kindle like
(52:19):
if if you can help it, we unless you just
really don't like it. We get it sure, but still
don't don't return it. That would be cool, all right.
We also have a voicemail system. If you want to call,
you can. Our number is one eight three three st
d w y t K. You'll call, You'll get a
message letting you know you're in the right place. You'll
(52:39):
have three minutes. Those three minutes aren't ours, they're yours.
Go nuts, get weird with it. Highly encourage you to
do so. Give yourself a cool nickname. Tell us what's
on your mind. Tell us uh. Second, most importantly, if
you are comfortable having your name and or message on
the air. Most importantly, do not censor yourself. If you
(53:00):
having sillary links, who would like to send us? If
you want to walk us to the front of the
rabbit hole, we'll do the rest. All we have to
do is drop us a good old fashioned email where
we are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
(53:32):
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