February 2, 2023 • 55 mins
M writes in with some (frankly disturbing) stuff the military doesn't want you to know. Snag Daddy shares a strange tale about haunted planes from over in the Pacific. Kevyn prompts a conversation about the nature of style -- can it be copyrighted? All this and more in this week's Listener Mail.
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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 Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named dot Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. It is one of our
favorite times of the week. Happy February three, everybody. This
(00:47):
is our first listener mail segment of the month. It's
where we scour social media, we dig in through all
these amazing phone calls, we talk track uh off the books,
in these places, just off the edge of the map
of mainstream culture, and then we come to you with
(01:09):
some stories that we think you should know, if not enjoy,
from the best part of the show, your fellow conspiracy realists,
We are going to have a suggestion for an episode
that's one of our favorite things. By the way, keep
sending those. We're going to share a story with you
that we don't want to spoil. In the world of
aviation uh we're also going to talk about We're going
(01:33):
to continue our conversation about the nature of creation, nature
of intellectual property and art. And before we do any
of that, we're going to share a partially redacted story
from a good friend of ours, a fellow conspiracy realist
who has God, who has decided to go by the
(01:55):
name and so, without further ado, here is um. M
says a couple of really nice things at the beginning
of this missive but those are going to be redacted.
We're not going to share those. We'll start here. Says. Okay,
that part will let up. But uh in in uh
(02:16):
in this letter, M says, in a previous life, I
served as an Army infantry officer from two thousand and
airborne ranger C. I b all the hits, all the
good stuff. That's just me doing Dennis Reynolds uh so
him continues, Here's some pretty wild stuff they don't want
you to know. The military waste amazing amounts of money,
(02:40):
even outside the big ticket projects like the F thirty
five that everyone knows about. Let's pause here, guys, because
I think we all, we all separately, at some point
in our lives, learned about the massive amounts of cash
the military waste. Remember those coffee cups, those like heated
coffee mugs that we've found out they washed. That was
(03:02):
This is a long time ago, but that was the
most frivolous and bizarre example of that. It was like
it had some sort of motor in it. It was
proprietary kind of like technology that was designed to keep
your coffee hot. Yeah, and it's hammers also, like your
garden variety hammer you would have in your tool kid
(03:23):
at home. Uh, toilet seats also, it's I think those
stories often break because you hear them presented as evidence
of corruption and graft. Right, these sweetheart deals and smoky
back rooms where you know, technically you're supposed to go
for the lowest reliable bid for a lot of these things.
(03:45):
We should do it, you know, we should do an
episode about government contracts. Right, I can't believe we haven't
done that anyway. Can can we drop how much program cost?
The cost? Oh? Yeah, the program not per unit? It right?
This is develop and deploy five including training and all
that stuff. All this is what I've seen. So it
(04:09):
was currently when I last checked in, when I guess
a billion around four billion dollars. Oh my, what I
would be serious? Yeah, I said a billion. That's an
unfathomable number. That it's not one plane, it's you know,
a whole bunch of planes across the entire thing, but
(04:29):
it's it was projected a little bit after that, um too.
I think fully cost around one point seven trillion or
something ridiculous like this. Now that does that number? To
be fair, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but
to be fair, that number factors in a ton of research, design,
(04:49):
research and design. It factors in a ton of support infrastructure.
Because when you when you look at a fighter jet,
um any time that it's field ready or service ready,
what you're really looking at is a culmination of a
lot of other projects. Right, Well, you tries, you might
sometimes you have to redesign all the stuff you thought
(05:12):
you had nailed down. And it could be really small stuff.
It could be like, oh, we have to we have
to change the brackets on this one thing, and that's
another multimillion dollar problem. Yeah, but in like planes, really
small stuff can equal really big stuff. Not to mention
in a military situation. I'm talking about like commercial planes,
you know, Yeah, the smaller it is actually the more
(05:34):
expensive it is to make because of you know, miniaturization,
and you just imagine, and you know, I don't know
how much of this is true. I don't have an
insight directly to some general or admiral or somebody. But theoretically,
some high level person can get really stoked about a
particular small thing like you're talking about, and then the
whole project, the whole thing has to be retired. Have
(05:57):
you guys seen this coffee? Like, I mean, are you?
I have put this coff be in there like an
hour and a half ago, and look it's still it's lukewarm,
but it's it's stepid steps that keeps your coffee quite warm.
And so let's let's get back to this email with
uh we divert here because we wanted to UH want
(06:21):
to ask you, fellow conspiracy realists, if you are comfortable,
let us know your most hilarious story of government or
large corporation waste that you've seen, because everybody's got one
at this point, almost no matter what industry you're in.
So back to M. M. Says. As a junior officer
and platoon leader in Afghanistan, I personally sent over thirty
(06:45):
million dollars worth of vehicles and equipment off to be
destroyed in a nearby airfield. This was just the gear
I was responsible for as a low level officer. Uh
in the surge OFFSTA was I mean to an end.
So we had orders to demilitarize our trucks and some
of our larger weapons systems. Three million dollar gun trucks
(07:08):
were disassembled and shredded. Demilitarizes means like destroying. Basically, it's
sort of like a buzz term. Yeah, it could mean,
it could mean a couple of things, like, um, it
could be destroying. Civilian comparison would also be like if
you buy its armed car auction, right and you get
a former police vehicle, then it's not going to have
(07:31):
you know, police get whatever. And I mean I know, yeah, yeah,
I get it, I get it. Ye. So so there
there are a couple of different directions would go, we're
not experts on this. We mainly these days concentrate on
on doing our our little podcast and we're not actively
preparing vehicles for civilian years. I think I could say that,
(07:54):
but so okay. M also says two thousand dollar machine
gun optics were smacked to be clear, we tried but
failed to save many of these property items by transferring
it to our garrison property book. But destroying these items
were the orders we had received, disposition orders we had received,
(08:15):
and you have to follow orders basically. So the communicated
rationale for this was that flying these vehicles back was
deemed cost ineffective. What that means is the official rationale
here was that it will we will be saving money
by destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment versus flying
(08:38):
it back to use it somewhere else. And that's uh yeah,
But then don't you when't you have to just build
more of them next time? Uh mind, reader, Matt, But
this is next gen stuff though, right these are like
the old models, So the ones they're going to build
are like the new better version a case that are
still out there in the world that there were manufactured. Right. Well,
(09:05):
that's the thing, because it seems M shares a bit
of our skepticism here, M says, I suspect the real
reason for this destruction is that these mechanized platforms will
need to be reordered for the next conflict, also by
a private company. By the way, not to spoil M's
discourse here, uh see the current war in Ukraine and
(09:26):
all of the mechanized assets we are sending. This came
to us, by the way, right around the time the
Biden administration said, you know, yolo thirty one more abrams
for Ukraine or thirty one abrams in general. And so
is this a bookkeeping thing? Is this about like justifying
expenditure and like, you know, showing progress and whatever. I'm sorry, please,
(09:52):
those M can answer better than I could, So M
says the mind resistant vehicles need to be reordered from
General dynam emmics, Aerial surveillance assets need to be bought
from Boeing, Air to ground munitions need to be bought
from raytheon. This is not so much a waste of
taxpayer money as a transfer payment to defense contractors and
(10:15):
their shareholders and to our lawmakers who were oh wait
also shareholders in the defense industry and so military industrial
complex people are always screaming about. Yes, And before Eisenhower
was forced to edit that speech, this is a true story.
He called it the military industrial congressional complex. And some
(10:37):
powerful forces made him take that that big sea out.
So this the thing that we're seeing here, and we
don't want to put words in your mouth. Then is
that these things are being destroyed, right, the rational being
they're too expensive to fly back to Uncle Sam territory.
But when they're replaced by another order, to a private
(10:58):
defense contractor they're just building the same thing. Again, they're
not necessarily next gen, so it's not next But haven't
the right But again Devil's advocate, haven't they already? They've
gotten their money's worth out of them at this point
to some degree, one must hope. Well, uh, the defense
(11:21):
defense corporations first off that yes, they do provide a
lot of valuable stuff in research, but they also are
private therefore profit seeking entities first and foremost. And to
pretend anything is other than the cases either cartoonishly ignorant
or purposely misleading. Uh. They're also um you know, they
(11:44):
got some sidelines and other businesses, lobbying being a huge one.
Uh that's another revenue stream if you think about it.
Check out our chapter on labby anyway, So so this
is and and M is cognizant of this. And remember
M has the more uh impactful firsthand experience you could
have on this outside of being the politicians and the
(12:07):
private corporation leaders making these backroom deals. So him continues saying,
I often think of the good that could have been
done back home with all of that money, like for
giving medical debt, expanding nutritional assistance, and repairing failing infrastructure.
Just so you know, I don't know if this will
be on YouTube, and but just so you know, all
(12:28):
three of us are nodding, and this sort of take
us to church right on kind of way, and take
me to church. So dying like a dog those zer aside,
maybe that's what he's talking about. Two. Um, yeah, I
think it's mainly about this. But you know, uh M says,
(12:48):
I think that's some heavy stuff. They don't want you
to know that all the money we need to make
the lives of our citizens better exist, we just choose
to send it to defense contractors and their shareholders. And
the way you were writing, and this story that you're
telling is a story that I wish more people knew
(13:09):
in the US. I wish was talked about more often
and not relegated to the fringe of conversation. And and
and from the way you right, I assume that you
are also painfully aware of that Eisenhower's speech, which you
only made when he was on the way out. If not,
If anybody hasn't heard that, do check it out. Read
the transcript. Is the argument that is just like too
(13:31):
important to like be a little more frugal with these
military budgets. I would say that's probably the argument a
lot of politicians would make. Yeah, the idea is that
you can you can spend all the livelong day saying
this is a waste of money. But you are doing
(13:51):
that because that quote unquote waste of money has preserved
a world order that allows you to freedom to complain
in that regard, and there there is some validity to it.
But you can't be absolutist about this. There's a spectrum,
you know what I mean, and it's used in rhetoric.
The spectrum is we are being gas lit h collectively,
(14:13):
you know, as taxpayers by this argument, I would argue.
So M says, I have other more fun, spooky stories
from my time as a soldier. This I thought would
be enjoyable too, and not as depressing as the reality
of wide scale defense grift. Uh M says, I'm pretty
sure I saw a cryptic big cat in the pan
(14:36):
district using an infrared scope maybe a snow leopard, but
it was if so, it was far outside its home range.
And when I deployed to Southeast Asia, some of the
host nation soldiers we trained swore they encountered black magic
insurgents who could teleport in the jungle. But this email
(14:56):
is getting along anyway, keep up the good work. That
last statement. For for a second, I pictured the cryptid
being armed with an infrared scope like it was some
sort of like you know, golden compass, like weaponized bear.
Just for the record, but the person writing this email
observed this using and panjway just for anyone who wants
(15:18):
the place, and that it is in the Kandahar province
of Afghanistan. Think of kandahart like a state. Pengi is
like a Panjwai is like a a county inside of state.
So that to me, that last part two seems very enticing,
And because there are a lot of stories like that,
(15:40):
especially when people are out in the wilderness, you know,
away from cities, we forget how wide and wild the
world is. The nutso thing is that a lot of
those stories do end up coming from people in the
armed services of one country or another, and because of that,
they often don't get reported as people don't want to
(16:03):
be a laughing stock or they don't want to endanger
their career prospects. That's the same reason it took so
long for Air Force and Navy pilots to report all
the weird stuff they saw in the sky. I just
think there's an interesting there's an interesting threat or comparison here,
and we would love to hear more of your cryptid
(16:23):
stories or unusual things you saw when you were deployed,
or if you were in the Arms services officially or whatever,
any time you were out off the grid or in
the wild, because there's a lot of stuff out there. Uh.
And I think that's where we ended today, uh with
m thank you so much for anybody else who has
(16:43):
found themselves in a similar situation. We want to hear
your stories about graft and cryptids. I guess uh, stay
safe out there, folks will be right back after a
word from our sponsors. And we've returned with the message
from Kevin with the Y. I love a good unorthodox
(17:07):
spelling of an orthodox name, gentleman. I've been listening for
a long time, but your latest strange news episode has
finally inspired me to reach out to you. I have
a number of thoughts about the pressing topic of AI art.
In fact, I honestly think that this is our eras
greatest creative moment. My first thought is to ask who
owns the copyright for these images? Generally speaking, unless otherwise
(17:30):
a sign by a work for higher agreement, the entity
that makes the images real owns the copyright. This is true.
I can speak to this in terms of like making music.
You know, once you've made the thing, you own the copyright,
and if you can show with like time stamp that
you generated the content is essentially the same as registering
a trademark um. You know, you could argue the minutia
(17:52):
of that. But anyway, Kevin goes on, the entity that
makes the images real owns the copyright. In this case,
it would be the actual soft where making the images
from the prompts of the person asking the image to
be created. Remember if I asked you to take a
photo of me, you own that photo even though you
use my camera. That's that's interesting because it would be
(18:15):
about burden of proof. You know who has the camera.
You couldn't necessarily prove that you took the picture. If
the person that owned the camera, had the camera and
showed the timestamp, But that's splitting hairs. Uh. This is
a totally separate conversation from whether or not the image
itself includes protected intellectual property. My second thought relates to
the danger of a potential court precedence Relating to the
(18:37):
idea of in the style of it seems like a
lot of the artist pushback is the notion of art
being created in the style of another artist, which, in
a way I understand how this could be troubling. However,
I don't believe, and I confirmed this to be the case,
that you can copyright or trademark and artistic style. And frankly,
I don't know that you should be able to imagine
(18:59):
a world where one artist could own the copyright or
trademark To point all, is um the style of stippling
dots with pen and ink for illustrating, then any other
artists working in that style would have to license or
pay royalty to the artist that created the style. This
to me is a very slippery slope. Finally, I think
(19:19):
that creating the right prompts to create a I work
could in and of itself be an art form. It
takes talent to be able to create some of these images,
and I think that shouldn't be overlooked as we are
debating the morality of AI art. This could also finally
give people who have divine creative inspiration but not the
ability to make those visions real an ability to contribute
(19:42):
their artistic visions to the creative community, not to mention
the ability of this technology to create greater access to
those living with disabilities. I say all this as a
photographer who has been dealing with a digital revolution that
makes taking photos easy for everyone. Also, as an artist,
I bel eve that we should be paid for our
creative work and that we should have some rights on
(20:03):
protecting our work. I'm just not sure where that line
between art and law should be drawn in this new frontier.
Thank you for all the great work you do and
for keeping me on top of what's happening in the world.
Yours in conspiracy, Kevin. Okay, I'm just gonna throw this
to the to the room because we've been talking about
a lot of this stuff, kind of a lot, and
(20:24):
we've made some of these same points are ourselves, like, like,
what is the nature of imagination? What is the nature
of what will's an artistic vision into being and uh,
I love the idea of can you copyright of style?
You can't. That's why people are able to do like
sound alike music. And as long as you're not you know,
ripping off an exact series of notes and meter and
(20:46):
in the exact way that another artist has done, you're
not copyright infringing. You can do something in the style
of you know, Mac de Marco or you know, any
other artists, but as long as you're not actually being
off a composition they've made, there's no law against impersonating
the sound of someone's voice, even unless and get sued
(21:09):
for sounding too much like yourself. Well, that's it's that's
its own, that's right. But that's why this type of law,
and also like intellectual property law around music and sampling
and all of the various stakeholders in these types of things,
is so slippery because it's tough to determine um creative inspiration.
(21:30):
It's not something that's easily quantifiable. But what you can quantified,
what is required for legal you know, proceedings, is something
that you can put down on paper, like a series
of notes. But you can't copyright a certain combination of
instruments let's say, or singing in a certain register, or
even copying the way a certain singer sounds that is
(21:51):
not trademarkable or copyrightable. Yeah, I mean, that's the the
issue I think in some ways is that we're talking
about two human drives that are often fundamentally opposed, the
drive for profit and the drive for creative expression. So
(22:11):
creative expression is something that all people can and should
engage in. It's good for the soul, if you believe
a soul exists. But the idea of profit like profit entities,
are often seen as kind of corralling and codifying creative expression,
not in a way that shares that with the world,
but in a way that maximizes compensation for it. As
(22:35):
you know, you know, far before the days of AI
generated art or literature or whatever. Far before that, there
were huge systems in place in the world of publishing
in almost any creative endeavor, the world of music, labels
and so on, that maximize the profits for the people
(22:56):
who were not creating the actual stuff. So it's important
know the system was far from perfect before this uh
new contender entered the fray. But I I mean, you
have to agree with the idea of compensation. Being an
artist is a job like any other, you know what
I mean. And people have jobs because hopefully they like it,
(23:17):
but also because they need to have a job. But
to your point, been far before the creation of entertainment
law and intellectual property law was the desire for humans
to express themselves. Uh So it wasn't until this industry
kind of came in or you know again, like you
(23:37):
know we're talking about like bards. Even like in the
early days of thinking about like an artist and someone
that was like kept around for their skills. Um there
became a need to codify something uncodifiable, you know, something intangible,
the idea of inspiration, the idea of like expression. So
you know, the expression came first and has been around
(23:59):
as long as people have been able to make a
sound or like scratch a thing on a wall or whatever.
Um So that came first. Then came the need to
figure out how to commodify it and maybe you know,
protect the rights of the artists, but mainly commodify it.
Mainly it's that are trying to figure out how to
capitalize on this inspiration and take advantage of the artists. Yeah, please,
(24:20):
I mean that's it, Like that's the UH, like, for instance,
think of we're thinking of rights. Just to take this
out of AI for a second. Recently, a musician of
an up and coming guy named Justin Bieber sold off
the rights to his to his music and the number
(24:40):
he got it was somewhere in the hundred millions, like
two hundred million or something. For fans of that artist,
it seemed like that was a very low number because
most of them didn't realize what what that individual is
doing was selling off their share of the stuff they created.
They did not committee, and so there are many other
(25:03):
players in the game. The diplomatic term is stakeholder UM.
But I think one of the big questions then comes
up here is if you are civilization is going to
have to decide sooner rather than later, how they will
in general treat UH these algorithmic creation processes. Right, does
(25:28):
a does a an algorithm or even if general lot
AI does become a thing soon, does that have legal representation?
Does have the same rights afforded to human creators? You
know what I mean? Because if if it does, if
it gains what you would call legal personhood, as some
animals have in Germany, as corporations have since Citizen United
(25:53):
in the US. If that situation occurs, then wouldn't you,
at least in the world of music, wouldn't you treat uh,
machine generated music the same way you would have to
treat a DJ who's really good at sampling, you know
what I mean. But isn't the whole point of AI
(26:13):
and of like, you know, robotics, is that we don't
have to worry about that kind of stuff. There are slaves.
They do whatever we tell them because we made them. Well,
I'm not going to be on record saying that, because
those guys, those guys are coming there. I'm I'm speaking,
I'm I'm speaking hypothetically. I mean, you know, like here
I go back to Silicon Valley again. There's an episode
(26:35):
where there's this in cell weirdo that's creating this robot,
and it turns out that he's been kind of like
basically weirdly groping the robot behind closed doors, and when
he gets called out on it in front of a room,
he says, I made it, I can do whatever I
want with it, to which the room goes gasp kind
of because yeah, that's messed up sounding to say out loud,
(26:57):
But also That's also kind of the point of a
I on its base level on paper is that we
made it so we can do whatever we want with it.
It saves us from having to pay people. It saves
us from having to worry about the rights of people
because we made it so it doesn't have rights. Saying
computer make me a series of images of the Staten
(27:18):
Island Ferry in the style of Kevin with a Wise
Nipple project, Alexa Nipple prop. What is this? Sorry? Yeah, yeah,
it's the K and P Kevin Nipple Project. See we
pay attention to Kevin. I thought you were just gonna say,
computer make me a sand pitch Alexa write me the
Great American Novel. But really, again, this is something we're
(27:41):
talking about some unrelated projects, you know, or we talked
about this in our recent is AI Coming for You
things were brought up, the idea of infernal bargains monkey
paw jin in lamps or bottles. You make wishes and
you must be very specific with the wishes. Those prompts.
There is a creative aspect to them. It is generative
(28:05):
and it is a human thing to create the prompt
And again, okay, going back to one of our earlier
discussions in that episode, uh if a in this drives
with Kevin's Kevin with your idea about someone else using
your camera, right, applying their creative aptitude to equipment that
you possess. If someone borrows a pen, I'm just freestyling
(28:28):
off our earlier comparison. Someone borrows your pen and they
write an amazing story and it wins like a Pulitzer
or a Nobel or something. Do you, as the owner
of the pen, have a right to the share of
that story or does it belong to the person who
created the thing? Right? It's like if you won the
lottery with a ticket that someone gifted you. You know
(28:51):
what I mean? Similar, Yeah, I mean and look in
Neither of those are necessarily one to one analogs, but
that's that's a good way I think to begin looking
at the problem. If you, for instance, what if you
go to an art show is for our our artist friends,
our artist conspiracy realist. You go to an art show
(29:13):
and you see there's this exhibit. It's all by one artist.
It's a solo exhibition, but all of the art has
been made using something like mid journey, and each piece
is inspired by the style of a local artist in
your city and you see one painting that looks like
(29:34):
you made it, how would you feel? Well, that would
be considered bad form, but not necessarily illegal. Right currently,
that would be bad form, but there's there's not a
law against it because or not, there's not a hard
explicit law against it because, as we say, technology always
always painfully outpaces legislation well, and most of the artists
(29:56):
that get in the style of are so famous and
or dead that it's not the same thing. You're not
worried about taking money out of some up and coming
artists pocket because it's Andy Warhol, for Christ's sake, or
Pablo Picasso, or you know, like any number of other giant,
household name type artists who have a distinct style. But
(30:18):
to your appointment, I love this. By the way, Um,
if you're doing it with local artists and doing a
local show, you are literally taking money out of their pocket. Theoretically,
you can't be literally in theoretical at the same time anyway,
You see what I was saying. This is just really
confirmed everything that all of our baby boomer parents always
(30:39):
told us, get a real job. Sorry, that's back when
there were If we're defining real job by something that
allows you to buy a house and raise children. There
are far fewer real jobs and what like forklift operator masks,
and yeah, it's gonna do that real, I assure you.
(31:04):
I know you are. And it's funny and it's it's
but it's also like it's scary, all of it. It
is coming for us kind of. But also I really
like Kevin's perspective as an artist. It's sort of been
my and I think all of ours to a degree,
perspective on this is that it's just another tool. It
doesn't have to be looked at with utter terror and
(31:25):
existential dread, even if there are bits of that you
sprinkled throughout it, like there are with any emerging technology.
So uh, thank you Kevin for this um insider perspective
as as an artist, um you know. And again I've
also as a musician, I've made the comparison of like
when synthesizers first came out, a lot of like people
(31:47):
in classical music, where like this is going to replace
the orchestra. That didn't really happen. It just became a
new tool that did its own thing and then was
used by composers to do something different. So but it's
it is and it's not a it's not a one
to one. I see your face, Ben, and you're totally
right now because I say it's so different. There's another
market though, because that that means that there's a future
market of like the artists and equivalent. Look at my
(32:10):
human made photographs. It's the backlash, right, Like you know,
again we're talking about digital plugins and tools and you know,
music making equipment, there is this analog resurgence as a
backlash kind of to that. So it's like, oh, you
you made that using a plug in. You know, that's
not cool. You didn't use like a five thousand dollar
(32:30):
filter and like you know, single module, you know, as
part of your giant wall of synths. Then you're not
a real musician. It's about taste making. It's about like
culture generation, and there's always gonna be niche areas that
go back to the old ways. Like I don't like
digital photography. I only do tin type, you know, I
only do like, you know, old school. I'm being that person.
(32:54):
I'm just saying, you know, I don't listen to MP three's.
I only listen to music on wax cylinders on a
victrola anyway, ploot to unpack here. I think we've done
a decent job of doing that a bit. We're gonna
take a break and then come back with one more
piece of listener mail. Ha ha. We have returned, and
(33:17):
we are turning to Snag Daddy Snag with a g.
Snag Daddy wrote us an email, and we're going to
read it to you because there's quite a story in
here pertaining to the episode we made about haunted aircraft.
Remember Delhi Crazy Mike. Oh yes, so here we go.
(33:38):
Let's jump right in. Greetings. I just finished listening to
your most recent episode on airplane hauntings, and a story
from my co worker came straight to mind. I currently
work as an aircraft mechanic for airline company in US City.
I work the night shift with several other mechanics. We're
responsible for maintaining aircraft that stay here overnight. Our job
(34:01):
includes changing tires, windshields, lights and engines, to changing oil fuel,
air filters, and fixing tray tables. Anything that breaks on
the airplane will repair or replace it. That includes unclogging toilets,
which involves you digging in the bowl with your hand
and physically pulling out whatever clogged the toilet. Fun. You'll
(34:22):
be surprised sometimes what you find on clogging a toilet.
It's not always toilet paper. Oh what does that mean?
You know? Well, that's all fun, but um, probably uh,
hygienic products would be a big one. Okay, I was
thinking like legos and stuff like that. That'd be way cool.
(34:43):
Legos are so expensive now you might want to just
save it if you find it. But yeah, anyways, one night,
one of our planes arrived for the night and passengers debarked.
I went upstairs and met the pilots and soft the
aircraft had any issues. As I finished my scheduled task
on the plane, I proceeded to sleep the plane, which
(35:04):
means to turn it off completely. As I was walking
out of the aircraft, a gate agent approached me and
asked me if I could turn the lights back on.
See after every flight, the gate agents will go onto
the aircraft and take pictures of the locks of the
galley carts to ensure that people don't open them throughout
the night. She was busy and couldn't do it. As
soon as the plane arrived, I offered to lend her
(35:25):
my flashlight, so she could see throughout the aircraft as
I had other tasks to do. She accepted my offer,
but only under one condition. I had to go with her.
In my mind, I was confused and wondered why. Jokingly,
I asked her if she was scared of being alone
on a dark airplane, and she responded that she was,
so I went ahead and accompanied her inside the plane.
(35:48):
I flashed my light for her, and I asked if
she had ever had a bad experience in a dark
plane before. While she said no, she did tell me
she gets creeped out being in a dark airplane, and
then told me a story of a prior airline she
worked for. Here's where it gets crazy, she explained to
me years ago, in the early two thousands, when she
(36:09):
worked for a competitor airline, she had an experience a
flight attendant had a heart attack and passed away on
a redacted aircraft. Years after her tragic passing, she said,
whenever that same aircraft had a known mechanical problem or
a looming mechanic issue, a passenger reading light underneath where
the flight attendant sat down during her heart attack and
(36:32):
eventually passed away, would mysteriously turn on just to confirm here.
This is saying that the exact place where that flight
attendant passed away from a heart attack is where that
light turns on. I just want to make sure everybody
interst that, so what happened. The let's keep going. I
hopefully everybody else is is hooked into this story as
(36:54):
I am. Come on, you stagged me dad, the old
dad snag, Daddy snag, and our story continues. The lights
sometimes in flight will turn on by itself, and upon landing,
the flight crew would report a mechanical issue unrelated to
that light. She said. Mechanics would work on the plane
(37:14):
at night, and that light would mysteriously turn on when
they were working on a mechanical issue on that aircraft.
Also on some mornings, when mechanics and flight crew would
wake up the plane I means turning on the aircraft power,
the light would mysteriously be on. Upon the aircraft being
entirely powered up, the crew would encounter a fault or
an issue with that aircraft without a prior history. Spooky, right,
(37:39):
So it's it almost sounds like it's warning people. It
sounds like it's definitely I mean the skeptical answer. Of course,
a lot of people are probably saying this listening at home.
People will say, well, check the wiry. But keep in mind, folks,
snag Daddy is a mechanic. Sea knows what uh they're
(38:00):
talking about here. So this is not the same as
um as just a civilian saying, hey, that's weird about
the light. Uh. This is the kind of person who
has the experience to accurately assess and diagnose something wonking. Yeah.
But and we should also know that this is a
secondhand story, right, that's true. That's true. We're being fair there.
(38:23):
This is something that zag Daddy says as well, continuing
to say she claimed the gate agent that this was
the deceased flight attendant's way of doing a warning like
you were mentioning Matt, of letting the crew of mechanics
know there was an issue with the aircraft, in a
way of her looking out for the safety or passengers
(38:44):
and crew members even beyond the grave after she passed away.
And this is where stag Daddy says, when I heard
her story, I was skeptical. I still am today. I've
tried looking up stories about the flight attendant for redacted airlines,
but can't find any information on her, which Okay, this
is a question that I have for Snag as well
(39:04):
and for all of us. Is this a would it
be unusual to not find that story? Like? How how
widely reported inside baseball type stuff? Right? Like? Could it
be something that's kept internal? I mean, even if you
if you have a person's specific name, sometimes unless you
(39:26):
really put some elbow grease into it, it can still
be difficult to find the circumstances of that person's death.
Right you kind of have to pull some p I cards,
do some social engineering at a hospital, etcetera. You have
to imagine the only way it would get real press
is if a local journalist picks up the story because
(39:46):
somebody you know, like this person who's telling the story
is like wanting to tell their story, right right, It's
not just going to become something that ends up in
a paper somewhere. Um. And also, we're talking a about
a pretty major airline. We have used the phrase we're
adapted when it comes to the actual airline that this
person is talking about. Just but you would have heard
(40:08):
of him, Yes, you would have heard of them. We're
just keeping it out just in case for snag daddies
purposes here and safety. Um. But if there were enough
people noticing this thing happening, I feel like more people
would be talking about it. But I who knows what
I love so much about flying in general? First off,
(40:30):
it's a crazy, amazing superpower. Good job human beings. That's nuts. Uh,
you're you're a beast for that with humanity. But something
about exploration to the edges of human ability or knowledge
always creates legends and folklore. And it doesn't matter how
(40:50):
far technology goes. As soon as more people are out
in the deep in ink of space, we're going to
see things that are very similar to World War two folklore,
very similar to the ancient uh, the old tall tales
and rumors of yesteryear's mariners, like sea monsters are like
running up against the edge of the world and things
(41:11):
like that, which I think is cool and that's not
Please don't conflate that with me saying this isn't true,
or that we don't believe someone, because what we found
in our exploration of allegations of haunted aircraft is that
some of the things can be relatively easily debunked, right
(41:36):
like Flight four oh one and a couple of those
weekly world news stories. They can be they can be
pulled apart and they don't hold up as well. But
then there's other stuff like this that's very difficult to
disprove honestly or not even I don't want to see disprove.
I don't want to come off like one of those
jerks is not really a skeptic. But difficult to investigate,
(41:58):
let's say that way. But even though this is like
a second hand story, it's obviously a second hand story
from another person on the inside with all of the
same jargon and like terminology that wouldn't be sexy enough
to be reported on a wide scale. Um, it's a
little bit anomalous and kind of like admired and minutia
of the particular industry. So unless there was like a
(42:20):
death tied to it or some grand disappearance, and then
it became like sort of a clue, no one's ever
going to talk about this outside of people that are
in the know within that particular industry. Yes, Um, I
could not find anything on this guy's What I could
find is the same thing that snag Daddy was able
to find when they were doing research for this topic.
(42:44):
I'm not gonna give you any specifics. I just want
everybody to look up flight too forty three. Look that
up when you get a chance. Um, it is maybe
the scariest scenario I can imagine when it comes to
something that could go wrong mid air on a passenger
(43:05):
airline number again for the people flight two four three,
you should be able to find it just by searching that. Yes,
so just again erowin plane at home. We're not going
to get into it, but check out flight two three.
It is my nightmare now, it is Matt's. Matt's nightmare now. Um,
(43:27):
So if you want to dream like Matt, check out
that flight. So we also have to know that there's
something interesting here, which is that we don't have a
timeline from you Snag Daddy. So that also there's all
kinds of information you can get to really drill down
in this. But one thing that's another amazing thing about
(43:47):
this is that we've had other people writing in with
weird plane stories. I think we may have hit a
little nerve, or we may have we may have hit
some sort of metaphorical called the attack didn't button because
I've had some stuff on our minds. We'll dude, I
mean friend of the show and uh human friend of
ours Steve Wilson Um. He reached out and was very
(44:12):
taken by this. And I've ran into a couple of
people that discovered the show recently and we're like, haunted
airplanes what? And it makes sense in terms of like
what you said then, like the ideas of exploration and
like haunted ghost ships, that's not outside the realm of
people's kind of like pop cultural knowledge. But haunted airplanes
(44:33):
is somehow kind of like remarkable to people, and I
think that's very interesting. Oh yeah, oh yeah, guys. Can
we do one more quick mention of haunted airplanes from
another listener? Let's do it. Yes, I'm excited about this
one too. Maybe. Okay, this is super fast, you guys.
It's a suggestion, and as you said at the top, Ben,
we love suggestions. Any episode do you think we should
(44:55):
be doing let us know. We're into it. Yeah, even
if you think it's too we here, especially if it's weird,
we're gonna do it. Okay, So this message comes to
us from Steve, Not that Steve you're talking about. No,
I don't think uh, Steve says, hello. The Official US
Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio is full of combat
(45:16):
airplanes from the earliest days of air wars. There are
a lot of stories about ghosts being seen inside the
airplanes or walking around the museum. You want to check
it out, Steve. I love the I love a good museum. Suggestion, Steve,
that might be enough for us to That might be
enough for us to make up a reason to go
(45:37):
to Ohio. We've had people asking us to do more
live stuff, and we're hoping to do so soon. Also,
full confession, I'm just I'm gonna be in the air
a lot more. And so that's why the airplane thing
is cool. But none of the three of us are
are shook a flight. I think we all like it, right,
I mean, once you're actually on the plane. Yeah, but
God forbid one bad thing happens. It could shake our whole,
(46:02):
you know, complacency about the the enterprise because your point, Ben,
who was it? I think it was Lucy k maybe
who was talking about how we're complaining about, you know,
all this dumb stuff. But yet we can like jump
into a tube and like you know, fly across the country.
And also they have his little magic boxes that let
us talk to anybody and look up the wealth of
(46:23):
human information. On them at any given time. Um, some
people though, really really hate flying. You know, David Lynch
won't really leave Los Angeles because he just I don't know,
you say he. I think it probably usually does come
down to being scared. Um. I don't want to malign
David Lynch and call him like a coward or anything,
(46:43):
cause I'm not. That's it's a thing. It's a deep
it should be. Honestly, we're the outliers that were okay
with it, right, you know, like it seems like a
self preservational kind of impulse to be scared of this
kind of thing. But you know, I mean, you don't
have control over it. And a phobia or a fear
is a is a primal emotive thing. And what that
(47:05):
means is that statistics aren't gonna change that primal aspect
of you. That's saying, holy crap, no, we should be
on the ground. What are you doing right? Like you
can Again, we talked about it before, not just in
that episode, but it's previous episodes. You are far far
more likely to die driving a car anywhere when you
(47:31):
are in the plane. But you know, people feel I
think often feel a little more comfort because uh, it's
it's me behind the wheel, it's my hands, my decisions,
not some jamoke pilot that I'll never meet again. And
that's that that takes us something interesting. Uh? Will people
will the same people who have a fear of flying,
which again is completely understandable. Will that fear transfer to
(47:55):
autonomous vehicles another thing that you're just sitting in that
cannot control and technically, until all vehicles are autonomous, a
much more dangerous ride. What do you guys think it
just hights? Maybe if there's that too, But with autonomous vehicles,
if enough time passes where people forget all of the
(48:16):
hilarious screw ups, then maybe it will be like a
safe feeling. But like right now, we've seen so many
like high profile you know, stories about autonomous vehicles doing
dumb stuff. But we know on paper that if if
the technology is right, it's way better than the human element,
because the human element is fallible and like makes horrible mistakes.
(48:38):
And once they get the tech to the point where
we can really rely on it, probably there will be
similar statistics around autonomous vehicles, but it won't necessarily for
some be enough to make them okay with giving up
that level of control. Yeah, it's gonna be like how
Gadaga made genetic modification a thing. They just use private
(48:58):
industry ensure rates to make it too expensive. Right, it
will be too expensive to drive your own car. That's
how they're gonna get you. Okay, now that I've said
and that's how they're gonna get you, I think I
got a little too conspiratorial. We might want to wrap
up um as we do. These are great suggestions as
we do, Matt, No, I'm wondering, is it okay if
(49:21):
we just read this this Twitter poll that we started
after we did Strange News talked about gene editing. Okay, okay,
so this is a super scientific poll, which means while
we took a quick we call it a bio break
on the show, I took a quick bio break, went
to Twitter and said, if you were given the opportunity
(49:41):
to take gene editing therapy with a high likelihood of
extending your life, I say, ten years, would you do it?
The three answers are heck, no, I need a lot
more info and shoot me up homie, and uh, I
think put it right in my neck. Just put in
my neck, you know, give me a good sound rack
um right now again with this super scientific hole. Uh,
(50:05):
it looks like people said I need a lot more info.
Only sixteen percent said heck no, that's for you Matt
and for you Doc. And thirty nine percent just said
shoot me up HOMEI somebody carpet. I think some of
these people like, they're what eating potatoes too much? What
(50:27):
is the thing that is bad for your heart? I
can't remember anymore. It's all bad for your kinds of stuff,
anything you like, anything you like, anything, even that they
have made advances in kale. Uh, the kale technology gets
hurts and bounds heard that the lead content of kale
(50:51):
uk just kidding itself. I'm just kidding. This simply orange
has a ton of p f A s in it.
That's real. I remember that. Yeah. Is that the one
with no pulp some pulp or all the pulp, all
the simply orange and every orange drink, like every orange
soda is what is it? Brominaded um thiamyline. I don't know. No,
(51:15):
Oh my gosh, how am I not thinking of the
next words? It vegetable oil, vegetable oil. That's it. Yeah.
I feel like it was like there was another It's
in it's in mountain dew. Brominaded vegetable oil is a
mountain dew, anything with the cloudy look to it. Yeah,
and apparently brominaded stuff also is used for flame retardants.
So there's that. That's what. Yeah, you're right, So we're
(51:36):
gonna call it a day before we ruin more seemingly
innocuous things like you enjoy it, get you through. I
put it in my smoothie as like, just so I
can feel like I know you were. I'm joking. Waterson
Air Force Base and check out the museum and we'll
all feel better because it's haunted. There we go. Yes,
(51:59):
you've got to be the to play and you wish
to see in the world. Can we also say that
in the story that you brought Matt from snag Daddy,
that this is a clearly kind of a benevolent ghost,
right right. A lot of those stories, actually a lot
of the stories were receiving and this is what I
would call this uh era of aviation folklore. They are
about someone trying to warn you the ghosts who stay
(52:19):
on the planes. The people who believe in ghosts are
not trying to wreck the planes, because then they'd be
like you know or grand Maybe we should have people
right in and let us know innocuous things that that
have dark sides. That's always an area of interest. I
don't Then and then we can send the list to
Stephen King and he can write about more haunted innocuous things.
(52:42):
The case idea at the end of the road. How
a super evil things that have like good intentions. Oh God,
like kale, Like kale just ruined side. That's what kale ruins.
It isn't very tasty, isn't how mult you try? I is? Yeah,
I know people always say they love it. That's the
(53:04):
most diplomatic thing. It's good in this candelini candloni. How
tied it in a smoothie where you can't taste it?
That make it, make it um, make it into a
shirt and wear it around you know what I mean.
That is becoming a thing in fashion. Actually, a lot
(53:24):
of these like new kind of woke fashion brands are like,
you know, making their stuff out of plant matter, that vegetable. Yeah,
obviously we have the mangler, the haunted mangler, And we
have to depart it a little bit from listener male
because we're all thinking about what to eat next hunger, Uh, Penance,
(53:46):
I will eat, I will put kale in my daily
case and dilla in the meantime. We can't wait to
hear from you folks. Come be a part of a show.
You will be the best part by default, our fellow
conspiracy realists. Hey, I want to be part of the show.
You might be saying. We hope you're saying that, But
how can I ever get a chance to talk to
you all? It's actually super easy, carcopoonishly easy. If you've
(54:09):
never listened to the end of an episode before, we
got the scoop for you. You can find us on
social media. We are conspiracy stuff on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Or we have a group called a Facebook group is
a thing they'll be talking about that in the history books,
uh called Here's where it gets crazy conspiracy stuff show
on Instagram and take any talk as the kids call it. Yes,
(54:30):
and we have a phone number. It is one eight
three three st d w y t K. When you
call in, you've got three minutes. Count on one to three.
Give yourself a cool nickname. Let us know if we
can use your message on the air. It's that easy.
If you got more to say, they could fit in
that three minute voicemail. Why not instead write it all
out in a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
(54:52):
at iHeart radio dot com. M m m h. Stuff
(55:12):
they don't want you to know. Is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is known. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named dot Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. It is one of our
favorite times of the week. Happy February three, everybody. This
(00:47):
is our first listener mail segment of the month. It's
where we scour social media, we dig in through all
these amazing phone calls, we talk track uh off the books,
in these places, just off the edge of the map
of mainstream culture, and then we come to you with
(01:09):
some stories that we think you should know, if not enjoy,
from the best part of the show, your fellow conspiracy realists,
We are going to have a suggestion for an episode
that's one of our favorite things. By the way, keep
sending those. We're going to share a story with you
that we don't want to spoil. In the world of
aviation uh we're also going to talk about We're going
(01:33):
to continue our conversation about the nature of creation, nature
of intellectual property and art. And before we do any
of that, we're going to share a partially redacted story
from a good friend of ours, a fellow conspiracy realist
who has God, who has decided to go by the
(01:55):
name and so, without further ado, here is um. M
says a couple of really nice things at the beginning
of this missive but those are going to be redacted.
We're not going to share those. We'll start here. Says. Okay,
that part will let up. But uh in in uh
(02:16):
in this letter, M says, in a previous life, I
served as an Army infantry officer from two thousand and
airborne ranger C. I b all the hits, all the
good stuff. That's just me doing Dennis Reynolds uh so
him continues, Here's some pretty wild stuff they don't want
you to know. The military waste amazing amounts of money,
(02:40):
even outside the big ticket projects like the F thirty
five that everyone knows about. Let's pause here, guys, because
I think we all, we all separately, at some point
in our lives, learned about the massive amounts of cash
the military waste. Remember those coffee cups, those like heated
coffee mugs that we've found out they washed. That was
(03:02):
This is a long time ago, but that was the
most frivolous and bizarre example of that. It was like
it had some sort of motor in it. It was
proprietary kind of like technology that was designed to keep
your coffee hot. Yeah, and it's hammers also, like your
garden variety hammer you would have in your tool kid
(03:23):
at home. Uh, toilet seats also, it's I think those
stories often break because you hear them presented as evidence
of corruption and graft. Right, these sweetheart deals and smoky
back rooms where you know, technically you're supposed to go
for the lowest reliable bid for a lot of these things.
(03:45):
We should do it, you know, we should do an
episode about government contracts. Right, I can't believe we haven't
done that anyway. Can can we drop how much program cost?
The cost? Oh? Yeah, the program not per unit? It right?
This is develop and deploy five including training and all
that stuff. All this is what I've seen. So it
(04:09):
was currently when I last checked in, when I guess
a billion around four billion dollars. Oh my, what I
would be serious? Yeah, I said a billion. That's an
unfathomable number. That it's not one plane, it's you know,
a whole bunch of planes across the entire thing, but
(04:29):
it's it was projected a little bit after that, um too.
I think fully cost around one point seven trillion or
something ridiculous like this. Now that does that number? To
be fair, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but
to be fair, that number factors in a ton of research, design,
(04:49):
research and design. It factors in a ton of support infrastructure.
Because when you when you look at a fighter jet,
um any time that it's field ready or service ready,
what you're really looking at is a culmination of a
lot of other projects. Right, Well, you tries, you might
sometimes you have to redesign all the stuff you thought
(05:12):
you had nailed down. And it could be really small stuff.
It could be like, oh, we have to we have
to change the brackets on this one thing, and that's
another multimillion dollar problem. Yeah, but in like planes, really
small stuff can equal really big stuff. Not to mention
in a military situation. I'm talking about like commercial planes,
you know, Yeah, the smaller it is actually the more
(05:34):
expensive it is to make because of you know, miniaturization,
and you just imagine, and you know, I don't know
how much of this is true. I don't have an
insight directly to some general or admiral or somebody. But theoretically,
some high level person can get really stoked about a
particular small thing like you're talking about, and then the
whole project, the whole thing has to be retired. Have
(05:57):
you guys seen this coffee? Like, I mean, are you?
I have put this coff be in there like an
hour and a half ago, and look it's still it's lukewarm,
but it's it's stepid steps that keeps your coffee quite warm.
And so let's let's get back to this email with
uh we divert here because we wanted to UH want
(06:21):
to ask you, fellow conspiracy realists, if you are comfortable,
let us know your most hilarious story of government or
large corporation waste that you've seen, because everybody's got one
at this point, almost no matter what industry you're in.
So back to M. M. Says. As a junior officer
and platoon leader in Afghanistan, I personally sent over thirty
(06:45):
million dollars worth of vehicles and equipment off to be
destroyed in a nearby airfield. This was just the gear
I was responsible for as a low level officer. Uh
in the surge OFFSTA was I mean to an end.
So we had orders to demilitarize our trucks and some
of our larger weapons systems. Three million dollar gun trucks
(07:08):
were disassembled and shredded. Demilitarizes means like destroying. Basically, it's
sort of like a buzz term. Yeah, it could mean,
it could mean a couple of things, like, um, it
could be destroying. Civilian comparison would also be like if
you buy its armed car auction, right and you get
a former police vehicle, then it's not going to have
(07:31):
you know, police get whatever. And I mean I know, yeah, yeah,
I get it, I get it. Ye. So so there
there are a couple of different directions would go, we're
not experts on this. We mainly these days concentrate on
on doing our our little podcast and we're not actively
preparing vehicles for civilian years. I think I could say that,
(07:54):
but so okay. M also says two thousand dollar machine
gun optics were smacked to be clear, we tried but
failed to save many of these property items by transferring
it to our garrison property book. But destroying these items
were the orders we had received, disposition orders we had received,
(08:15):
and you have to follow orders basically. So the communicated
rationale for this was that flying these vehicles back was
deemed cost ineffective. What that means is the official rationale
here was that it will we will be saving money
by destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment versus flying
(08:38):
it back to use it somewhere else. And that's uh yeah,
But then don't you when't you have to just build
more of them next time? Uh mind, reader, Matt, But
this is next gen stuff though, right these are like
the old models, So the ones they're going to build
are like the new better version a case that are
still out there in the world that there were manufactured. Right. Well,
(09:05):
that's the thing, because it seems M shares a bit
of our skepticism here, M says, I suspect the real
reason for this destruction is that these mechanized platforms will
need to be reordered for the next conflict, also by
a private company. By the way, not to spoil M's
discourse here, uh see the current war in Ukraine and
(09:26):
all of the mechanized assets we are sending. This came
to us, by the way, right around the time the
Biden administration said, you know, yolo thirty one more abrams
for Ukraine or thirty one abrams in general. And so
is this a bookkeeping thing? Is this about like justifying
expenditure and like, you know, showing progress and whatever. I'm sorry, please,
(09:52):
those M can answer better than I could, So M
says the mind resistant vehicles need to be reordered from
General dynam emmics, Aerial surveillance assets need to be bought
from Boeing, Air to ground munitions need to be bought
from raytheon. This is not so much a waste of
taxpayer money as a transfer payment to defense contractors and
(10:15):
their shareholders and to our lawmakers who were oh wait
also shareholders in the defense industry and so military industrial
complex people are always screaming about. Yes, And before Eisenhower
was forced to edit that speech, this is a true story.
He called it the military industrial congressional complex. And some
(10:37):
powerful forces made him take that that big sea out.
So this the thing that we're seeing here, and we
don't want to put words in your mouth. Then is
that these things are being destroyed, right, the rational being
they're too expensive to fly back to Uncle Sam territory.
But when they're replaced by another order, to a private
(10:58):
defense contractor they're just building the same thing. Again, they're
not necessarily next gen, so it's not next But haven't
the right But again Devil's advocate, haven't they already? They've
gotten their money's worth out of them at this point
to some degree, one must hope. Well, uh, the defense
(11:21):
defense corporations first off that yes, they do provide a
lot of valuable stuff in research, but they also are
private therefore profit seeking entities first and foremost. And to
pretend anything is other than the cases either cartoonishly ignorant
or purposely misleading. Uh. They're also um you know, they
(11:44):
got some sidelines and other businesses, lobbying being a huge one.
Uh that's another revenue stream if you think about it.
Check out our chapter on labby anyway, So so this
is and and M is cognizant of this. And remember
M has the more uh impactful firsthand experience you could
have on this outside of being the politicians and the
(12:07):
private corporation leaders making these backroom deals. So him continues saying,
I often think of the good that could have been
done back home with all of that money, like for
giving medical debt, expanding nutritional assistance, and repairing failing infrastructure.
Just so you know, I don't know if this will
be on YouTube, and but just so you know, all
(12:28):
three of us are nodding, and this sort of take
us to church right on kind of way, and take
me to church. So dying like a dog those zer aside,
maybe that's what he's talking about. Two. Um, yeah, I
think it's mainly about this. But you know, uh M says,
(12:48):
I think that's some heavy stuff. They don't want you
to know that all the money we need to make
the lives of our citizens better exist, we just choose
to send it to defense contractors and their shareholders. And
the way you were writing, and this story that you're
telling is a story that I wish more people knew
(13:09):
in the US. I wish was talked about more often
and not relegated to the fringe of conversation. And and
and from the way you right, I assume that you
are also painfully aware of that Eisenhower's speech, which you
only made when he was on the way out. If not,
If anybody hasn't heard that, do check it out. Read
the transcript. Is the argument that is just like too
(13:31):
important to like be a little more frugal with these
military budgets. I would say that's probably the argument a
lot of politicians would make. Yeah, the idea is that
you can you can spend all the livelong day saying
this is a waste of money. But you are doing
(13:51):
that because that quote unquote waste of money has preserved
a world order that allows you to freedom to complain
in that regard, and there there is some validity to it.
But you can't be absolutist about this. There's a spectrum,
you know what I mean, and it's used in rhetoric.
The spectrum is we are being gas lit h collectively,
(14:13):
you know, as taxpayers by this argument, I would argue.
So M says, I have other more fun, spooky stories
from my time as a soldier. This I thought would
be enjoyable too, and not as depressing as the reality
of wide scale defense grift. Uh M says, I'm pretty
sure I saw a cryptic big cat in the pan
(14:36):
district using an infrared scope maybe a snow leopard, but
it was if so, it was far outside its home range.
And when I deployed to Southeast Asia, some of the
host nation soldiers we trained swore they encountered black magic
insurgents who could teleport in the jungle. But this email
(14:56):
is getting along anyway, keep up the good work. That
last statement. For for a second, I pictured the cryptid
being armed with an infrared scope like it was some
sort of like you know, golden compass, like weaponized bear.
Just for the record, but the person writing this email
observed this using and panjway just for anyone who wants
(15:18):
the place, and that it is in the Kandahar province
of Afghanistan. Think of kandahart like a state. Pengi is
like a Panjwai is like a a county inside of state.
So that to me, that last part two seems very enticing,
And because there are a lot of stories like that,
(15:40):
especially when people are out in the wilderness, you know,
away from cities, we forget how wide and wild the
world is. The nutso thing is that a lot of
those stories do end up coming from people in the
armed services of one country or another, and because of that,
they often don't get reported as people don't want to
(16:03):
be a laughing stock or they don't want to endanger
their career prospects. That's the same reason it took so
long for Air Force and Navy pilots to report all
the weird stuff they saw in the sky. I just
think there's an interesting there's an interesting threat or comparison here,
and we would love to hear more of your cryptid
(16:23):
stories or unusual things you saw when you were deployed,
or if you were in the Arms services officially or whatever,
any time you were out off the grid or in
the wild, because there's a lot of stuff out there. Uh.
And I think that's where we ended today, uh with
m thank you so much for anybody else who has
(16:43):
found themselves in a similar situation. We want to hear
your stories about graft and cryptids. I guess uh, stay
safe out there, folks will be right back after a
word from our sponsors. And we've returned with the message
from Kevin with the Y. I love a good unorthodox
(17:07):
spelling of an orthodox name, gentleman. I've been listening for
a long time, but your latest strange news episode has
finally inspired me to reach out to you. I have
a number of thoughts about the pressing topic of AI art.
In fact, I honestly think that this is our eras
greatest creative moment. My first thought is to ask who
owns the copyright for these images? Generally speaking, unless otherwise
(17:30):
a sign by a work for higher agreement, the entity
that makes the images real owns the copyright. This is true.
I can speak to this in terms of like making music.
You know, once you've made the thing, you own the copyright,
and if you can show with like time stamp that
you generated the content is essentially the same as registering
a trademark um. You know, you could argue the minutia
(17:52):
of that. But anyway, Kevin goes on, the entity that
makes the images real owns the copyright. In this case,
it would be the actual soft where making the images
from the prompts of the person asking the image to
be created. Remember if I asked you to take a
photo of me, you own that photo even though you
use my camera. That's that's interesting because it would be
(18:15):
about burden of proof. You know who has the camera.
You couldn't necessarily prove that you took the picture. If
the person that owned the camera, had the camera and
showed the timestamp, But that's splitting hairs. Uh. This is
a totally separate conversation from whether or not the image
itself includes protected intellectual property. My second thought relates to
the danger of a potential court precedence Relating to the
(18:37):
idea of in the style of it seems like a
lot of the artist pushback is the notion of art
being created in the style of another artist, which, in
a way I understand how this could be troubling. However,
I don't believe, and I confirmed this to be the case,
that you can copyright or trademark and artistic style. And frankly,
I don't know that you should be able to imagine
(18:59):
a world where one artist could own the copyright or
trademark To point all, is um the style of stippling
dots with pen and ink for illustrating, then any other
artists working in that style would have to license or
pay royalty to the artist that created the style. This
to me is a very slippery slope. Finally, I think
(19:19):
that creating the right prompts to create a I work
could in and of itself be an art form. It
takes talent to be able to create some of these images,
and I think that shouldn't be overlooked as we are
debating the morality of AI art. This could also finally
give people who have divine creative inspiration but not the
ability to make those visions real an ability to contribute
(19:42):
their artistic visions to the creative community, not to mention
the ability of this technology to create greater access to
those living with disabilities. I say all this as a
photographer who has been dealing with a digital revolution that
makes taking photos easy for everyone. Also, as an artist,
I bel eve that we should be paid for our
creative work and that we should have some rights on
(20:03):
protecting our work. I'm just not sure where that line
between art and law should be drawn in this new frontier.
Thank you for all the great work you do and
for keeping me on top of what's happening in the world.
Yours in conspiracy, Kevin. Okay, I'm just gonna throw this
to the to the room because we've been talking about
a lot of this stuff, kind of a lot, and
(20:24):
we've made some of these same points are ourselves, like, like,
what is the nature of imagination? What is the nature
of what will's an artistic vision into being and uh,
I love the idea of can you copyright of style?
You can't. That's why people are able to do like
sound alike music. And as long as you're not you know,
ripping off an exact series of notes and meter and
(20:46):
in the exact way that another artist has done, you're
not copyright infringing. You can do something in the style
of you know, Mac de Marco or you know, any
other artists, but as long as you're not actually being
off a composition they've made, there's no law against impersonating
the sound of someone's voice, even unless and get sued
(21:09):
for sounding too much like yourself. Well, that's it's that's
its own, that's right. But that's why this type of law,
and also like intellectual property law around music and sampling
and all of the various stakeholders in these types of things,
is so slippery because it's tough to determine um creative inspiration.
(21:30):
It's not something that's easily quantifiable. But what you can quantified,
what is required for legal you know, proceedings, is something
that you can put down on paper, like a series
of notes. But you can't copyright a certain combination of
instruments let's say, or singing in a certain register, or
even copying the way a certain singer sounds that is
(21:51):
not trademarkable or copyrightable. Yeah, I mean, that's the the
issue I think in some ways is that we're talking
about two human drives that are often fundamentally opposed, the
drive for profit and the drive for creative expression. So
(22:11):
creative expression is something that all people can and should
engage in. It's good for the soul, if you believe
a soul exists. But the idea of profit like profit entities,
are often seen as kind of corralling and codifying creative expression,
not in a way that shares that with the world,
but in a way that maximizes compensation for it. As
(22:35):
you know, you know, far before the days of AI
generated art or literature or whatever. Far before that, there
were huge systems in place in the world of publishing
in almost any creative endeavor, the world of music, labels
and so on, that maximize the profits for the people
(22:56):
who were not creating the actual stuff. So it's important
know the system was far from perfect before this uh
new contender entered the fray. But I I mean, you
have to agree with the idea of compensation. Being an
artist is a job like any other, you know what
I mean. And people have jobs because hopefully they like it,
(23:17):
but also because they need to have a job. But
to your point, been far before the creation of entertainment
law and intellectual property law was the desire for humans
to express themselves. Uh So it wasn't until this industry
kind of came in or you know again, like you
(23:37):
know we're talking about like bards. Even like in the
early days of thinking about like an artist and someone
that was like kept around for their skills. Um there
became a need to codify something uncodifiable, you know, something intangible,
the idea of inspiration, the idea of like expression. So
you know, the expression came first and has been around
(23:59):
as long as people have been able to make a
sound or like scratch a thing on a wall or whatever.
Um So that came first. Then came the need to
figure out how to commodify it and maybe you know,
protect the rights of the artists, but mainly commodify it.
Mainly it's that are trying to figure out how to
capitalize on this inspiration and take advantage of the artists. Yeah, please,
(24:20):
I mean that's it, Like that's the UH, like, for instance,
think of we're thinking of rights. Just to take this
out of AI for a second. Recently, a musician of
an up and coming guy named Justin Bieber sold off
the rights to his to his music and the number
(24:40):
he got it was somewhere in the hundred millions, like
two hundred million or something. For fans of that artist,
it seemed like that was a very low number because
most of them didn't realize what what that individual is
doing was selling off their share of the stuff they created.
They did not committee, and so there are many other
(25:03):
players in the game. The diplomatic term is stakeholder UM.
But I think one of the big questions then comes
up here is if you are civilization is going to
have to decide sooner rather than later, how they will
in general treat UH these algorithmic creation processes. Right, does
(25:28):
a does a an algorithm or even if general lot
AI does become a thing soon, does that have legal representation?
Does have the same rights afforded to human creators? You
know what I mean? Because if if it does, if
it gains what you would call legal personhood, as some
animals have in Germany, as corporations have since Citizen United
(25:53):
in the US. If that situation occurs, then wouldn't you,
at least in the world of music, wouldn't you treat uh,
machine generated music the same way you would have to
treat a DJ who's really good at sampling, you know
what I mean. But isn't the whole point of AI
(26:13):
and of like, you know, robotics, is that we don't
have to worry about that kind of stuff. There are slaves.
They do whatever we tell them because we made them. Well,
I'm not going to be on record saying that, because
those guys, those guys are coming there. I'm I'm speaking,
I'm I'm speaking hypothetically. I mean, you know, like here
I go back to Silicon Valley again. There's an episode
(26:35):
where there's this in cell weirdo that's creating this robot,
and it turns out that he's been kind of like
basically weirdly groping the robot behind closed doors, and when
he gets called out on it in front of a room,
he says, I made it, I can do whatever I
want with it, to which the room goes gasp kind
of because yeah, that's messed up sounding to say out loud,
(26:57):
But also That's also kind of the point of a
I on its base level on paper is that we
made it so we can do whatever we want with it.
It saves us from having to pay people. It saves
us from having to worry about the rights of people
because we made it so it doesn't have rights. Saying
computer make me a series of images of the Staten
(27:18):
Island Ferry in the style of Kevin with a Wise
Nipple project, Alexa Nipple prop. What is this? Sorry? Yeah, yeah,
it's the K and P Kevin Nipple Project. See we
pay attention to Kevin. I thought you were just gonna say,
computer make me a sand pitch Alexa write me the
Great American Novel. But really, again, this is something we're
(27:41):
talking about some unrelated projects, you know, or we talked
about this in our recent is AI Coming for You
things were brought up, the idea of infernal bargains monkey
paw jin in lamps or bottles. You make wishes and
you must be very specific with the wishes. Those prompts.
There is a creative aspect to them. It is generative
(28:05):
and it is a human thing to create the prompt
And again, okay, going back to one of our earlier
discussions in that episode, uh if a in this drives
with Kevin's Kevin with your idea about someone else using
your camera, right, applying their creative aptitude to equipment that
you possess. If someone borrows a pen, I'm just freestyling
(28:28):
off our earlier comparison. Someone borrows your pen and they
write an amazing story and it wins like a Pulitzer
or a Nobel or something. Do you, as the owner
of the pen, have a right to the share of
that story or does it belong to the person who
created the thing? Right? It's like if you won the
lottery with a ticket that someone gifted you. You know
(28:51):
what I mean? Similar, Yeah, I mean and look in
Neither of those are necessarily one to one analogs, but
that's that's a good way I think to begin looking
at the problem. If you, for instance, what if you
go to an art show is for our our artist friends,
our artist conspiracy realist. You go to an art show
(29:13):
and you see there's this exhibit. It's all by one artist.
It's a solo exhibition, but all of the art has
been made using something like mid journey, and each piece
is inspired by the style of a local artist in
your city and you see one painting that looks like
(29:34):
you made it, how would you feel? Well, that would
be considered bad form, but not necessarily illegal. Right currently,
that would be bad form, but there's there's not a
law against it because or not, there's not a hard
explicit law against it because, as we say, technology always
always painfully outpaces legislation well, and most of the artists
(29:56):
that get in the style of are so famous and
or dead that it's not the same thing. You're not
worried about taking money out of some up and coming
artists pocket because it's Andy Warhol, for Christ's sake, or
Pablo Picasso, or you know, like any number of other giant,
household name type artists who have a distinct style. But
(30:18):
to your appointment, I love this. By the way, Um,
if you're doing it with local artists and doing a
local show, you are literally taking money out of their pocket. Theoretically,
you can't be literally in theoretical at the same time anyway,
You see what I was saying. This is just really
confirmed everything that all of our baby boomer parents always
(30:39):
told us, get a real job. Sorry, that's back when
there were If we're defining real job by something that
allows you to buy a house and raise children. There
are far fewer real jobs and what like forklift operator masks,
and yeah, it's gonna do that real, I assure you.
(31:04):
I know you are. And it's funny and it's it's
but it's also like it's scary, all of it. It
is coming for us kind of. But also I really
like Kevin's perspective as an artist. It's sort of been
my and I think all of ours to a degree,
perspective on this is that it's just another tool. It
doesn't have to be looked at with utter terror and
(31:25):
existential dread, even if there are bits of that you
sprinkled throughout it, like there are with any emerging technology.
So uh, thank you Kevin for this um insider perspective
as as an artist, um you know. And again I've
also as a musician, I've made the comparison of like
when synthesizers first came out, a lot of like people
(31:47):
in classical music, where like this is going to replace
the orchestra. That didn't really happen. It just became a
new tool that did its own thing and then was
used by composers to do something different. So but it's
it is and it's not a it's not a one
to one. I see your face, Ben, and you're totally
right now because I say it's so different. There's another
market though, because that that means that there's a future
market of like the artists and equivalent. Look at my
(32:10):
human made photographs. It's the backlash, right, Like you know,
again we're talking about digital plugins and tools and you know,
music making equipment, there is this analog resurgence as a
backlash kind of to that. So it's like, oh, you
you made that using a plug in. You know, that's
not cool. You didn't use like a five thousand dollar
(32:30):
filter and like you know, single module, you know, as
part of your giant wall of synths. Then you're not
a real musician. It's about taste making. It's about like
culture generation, and there's always gonna be niche areas that
go back to the old ways. Like I don't like
digital photography. I only do tin type, you know, I
only do like, you know, old school. I'm being that person.
(32:54):
I'm just saying, you know, I don't listen to MP three's.
I only listen to music on wax cylinders on a
victrola anyway, ploot to unpack here. I think we've done
a decent job of doing that a bit. We're gonna
take a break and then come back with one more
piece of listener mail. Ha ha. We have returned, and
(33:17):
we are turning to Snag Daddy Snag with a g.
Snag Daddy wrote us an email, and we're going to
read it to you because there's quite a story in
here pertaining to the episode we made about haunted aircraft.
Remember Delhi Crazy Mike. Oh yes, so here we go.
(33:38):
Let's jump right in. Greetings. I just finished listening to
your most recent episode on airplane hauntings, and a story
from my co worker came straight to mind. I currently
work as an aircraft mechanic for airline company in US City.
I work the night shift with several other mechanics. We're
responsible for maintaining aircraft that stay here overnight. Our job
(34:01):
includes changing tires, windshields, lights and engines, to changing oil fuel,
air filters, and fixing tray tables. Anything that breaks on
the airplane will repair or replace it. That includes unclogging toilets,
which involves you digging in the bowl with your hand
and physically pulling out whatever clogged the toilet. Fun. You'll
(34:22):
be surprised sometimes what you find on clogging a toilet.
It's not always toilet paper. Oh what does that mean?
You know? Well, that's all fun, but um, probably uh,
hygienic products would be a big one. Okay, I was
thinking like legos and stuff like that. That'd be way cool.
(34:43):
Legos are so expensive now you might want to just
save it if you find it. But yeah, anyways, one night,
one of our planes arrived for the night and passengers debarked.
I went upstairs and met the pilots and soft the
aircraft had any issues. As I finished my scheduled task
on the plane, I proceeded to sleep the plane, which
(35:04):
means to turn it off completely. As I was walking
out of the aircraft, a gate agent approached me and
asked me if I could turn the lights back on.
See after every flight, the gate agents will go onto
the aircraft and take pictures of the locks of the
galley carts to ensure that people don't open them throughout
the night. She was busy and couldn't do it. As
soon as the plane arrived, I offered to lend her
(35:25):
my flashlight, so she could see throughout the aircraft as
I had other tasks to do. She accepted my offer,
but only under one condition. I had to go with her.
In my mind, I was confused and wondered why. Jokingly,
I asked her if she was scared of being alone
on a dark airplane, and she responded that she was,
so I went ahead and accompanied her inside the plane.
(35:48):
I flashed my light for her, and I asked if
she had ever had a bad experience in a dark
plane before. While she said no, she did tell me
she gets creeped out being in a dark airplane, and
then told me a story of a prior airline she
worked for. Here's where it gets crazy, she explained to
me years ago, in the early two thousands, when she
(36:09):
worked for a competitor airline, she had an experience a
flight attendant had a heart attack and passed away on
a redacted aircraft. Years after her tragic passing, she said,
whenever that same aircraft had a known mechanical problem or
a looming mechanic issue, a passenger reading light underneath where
the flight attendant sat down during her heart attack and
(36:32):
eventually passed away, would mysteriously turn on just to confirm here.
This is saying that the exact place where that flight
attendant passed away from a heart attack is where that
light turns on. I just want to make sure everybody
interst that, so what happened. The let's keep going. I
hopefully everybody else is is hooked into this story as
(36:54):
I am. Come on, you stagged me dad, the old
dad snag, Daddy snag, and our story continues. The lights
sometimes in flight will turn on by itself, and upon landing,
the flight crew would report a mechanical issue unrelated to
that light. She said. Mechanics would work on the plane
(37:14):
at night, and that light would mysteriously turn on when
they were working on a mechanical issue on that aircraft.
Also on some mornings, when mechanics and flight crew would
wake up the plane I means turning on the aircraft power,
the light would mysteriously be on. Upon the aircraft being
entirely powered up, the crew would encounter a fault or
an issue with that aircraft without a prior history. Spooky, right,
(37:39):
So it's it almost sounds like it's warning people. It
sounds like it's definitely I mean the skeptical answer. Of course,
a lot of people are probably saying this listening at home.
People will say, well, check the wiry. But keep in mind, folks,
snag Daddy is a mechanic. Sea knows what uh they're
(38:00):
talking about here. So this is not the same as
um as just a civilian saying, hey, that's weird about
the light. Uh. This is the kind of person who
has the experience to accurately assess and diagnose something wonking. Yeah.
But and we should also know that this is a
secondhand story, right, that's true. That's true. We're being fair there.
(38:23):
This is something that zag Daddy says as well, continuing
to say she claimed the gate agent that this was
the deceased flight attendant's way of doing a warning like
you were mentioning Matt, of letting the crew of mechanics
know there was an issue with the aircraft, in a
way of her looking out for the safety or passengers
(38:44):
and crew members even beyond the grave after she passed away.
And this is where stag Daddy says, when I heard
her story, I was skeptical. I still am today. I've
tried looking up stories about the flight attendant for redacted airlines,
but can't find any information on her, which Okay, this
is a question that I have for Snag as well
(39:04):
and for all of us. Is this a would it
be unusual to not find that story? Like? How how
widely reported inside baseball type stuff? Right? Like? Could it
be something that's kept internal? I mean, even if you
if you have a person's specific name, sometimes unless you
(39:26):
really put some elbow grease into it, it can still
be difficult to find the circumstances of that person's death.
Right you kind of have to pull some p I cards,
do some social engineering at a hospital, etcetera. You have
to imagine the only way it would get real press
is if a local journalist picks up the story because
(39:46):
somebody you know, like this person who's telling the story
is like wanting to tell their story, right right, It's
not just going to become something that ends up in
a paper somewhere. Um. And also, we're talking a about
a pretty major airline. We have used the phrase we're
adapted when it comes to the actual airline that this
person is talking about. Just but you would have heard
(40:08):
of him, Yes, you would have heard of them. We're
just keeping it out just in case for snag daddies
purposes here and safety. Um. But if there were enough
people noticing this thing happening, I feel like more people
would be talking about it. But I who knows what
I love so much about flying in general? First off,
(40:30):
it's a crazy, amazing superpower. Good job human beings. That's nuts. Uh,
you're you're a beast for that with humanity. But something
about exploration to the edges of human ability or knowledge
always creates legends and folklore. And it doesn't matter how
(40:50):
far technology goes. As soon as more people are out
in the deep in ink of space, we're going to
see things that are very similar to World War two folklore,
very similar to the ancient uh, the old tall tales
and rumors of yesteryear's mariners, like sea monsters are like
running up against the edge of the world and things
(41:11):
like that, which I think is cool and that's not
Please don't conflate that with me saying this isn't true,
or that we don't believe someone, because what we found
in our exploration of allegations of haunted aircraft is that
some of the things can be relatively easily debunked, right
(41:36):
like Flight four oh one and a couple of those
weekly world news stories. They can be they can be
pulled apart and they don't hold up as well. But
then there's other stuff like this that's very difficult to
disprove honestly or not even I don't want to see disprove.
I don't want to come off like one of those
jerks is not really a skeptic. But difficult to investigate,
(41:58):
let's say that way. But even though this is like
a second hand story, it's obviously a second hand story
from another person on the inside with all of the
same jargon and like terminology that wouldn't be sexy enough
to be reported on a wide scale. Um, it's a
little bit anomalous and kind of like admired and minutia
of the particular industry. So unless there was like a
(42:20):
death tied to it or some grand disappearance, and then
it became like sort of a clue, no one's ever
going to talk about this outside of people that are
in the know within that particular industry. Yes, Um, I
could not find anything on this guy's What I could
find is the same thing that snag Daddy was able
to find when they were doing research for this topic.
(42:44):
I'm not gonna give you any specifics. I just want
everybody to look up flight too forty three. Look that
up when you get a chance. Um, it is maybe
the scariest scenario I can imagine when it comes to
something that could go wrong mid air on a passenger
(43:05):
airline number again for the people flight two four three,
you should be able to find it just by searching that. Yes,
so just again erowin plane at home. We're not going
to get into it, but check out flight two three.
It is my nightmare now, it is Matt's. Matt's nightmare now. Um,
(43:27):
So if you want to dream like Matt, check out
that flight. So we also have to know that there's
something interesting here, which is that we don't have a
timeline from you Snag Daddy. So that also there's all
kinds of information you can get to really drill down
in this. But one thing that's another amazing thing about
(43:47):
this is that we've had other people writing in with
weird plane stories. I think we may have hit a
little nerve, or we may have we may have hit
some sort of metaphorical called the attack didn't button because
I've had some stuff on our minds. We'll dude, I
mean friend of the show and uh human friend of
ours Steve Wilson Um. He reached out and was very
(44:12):
taken by this. And I've ran into a couple of
people that discovered the show recently and we're like, haunted
airplanes what? And it makes sense in terms of like
what you said then, like the ideas of exploration and
like haunted ghost ships, that's not outside the realm of
people's kind of like pop cultural knowledge. But haunted airplanes
(44:33):
is somehow kind of like remarkable to people, and I
think that's very interesting. Oh yeah, oh yeah, guys. Can
we do one more quick mention of haunted airplanes from
another listener? Let's do it. Yes, I'm excited about this
one too. Maybe. Okay, this is super fast, you guys.
It's a suggestion, and as you said at the top, Ben,
we love suggestions. Any episode do you think we should
(44:55):
be doing let us know. We're into it. Yeah, even
if you think it's too we here, especially if it's weird,
we're gonna do it. Okay, So this message comes to
us from Steve, Not that Steve you're talking about. No,
I don't think uh, Steve says, hello. The Official US
Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio is full of combat
(45:16):
airplanes from the earliest days of air wars. There are
a lot of stories about ghosts being seen inside the
airplanes or walking around the museum. You want to check
it out, Steve. I love the I love a good museum. Suggestion, Steve,
that might be enough for us to That might be
enough for us to make up a reason to go
(45:37):
to Ohio. We've had people asking us to do more
live stuff, and we're hoping to do so soon. Also,
full confession, I'm just I'm gonna be in the air
a lot more. And so that's why the airplane thing
is cool. But none of the three of us are
are shook a flight. I think we all like it, right,
I mean, once you're actually on the plane. Yeah, but
God forbid one bad thing happens. It could shake our whole,
(46:02):
you know, complacency about the the enterprise because your point, Ben,
who was it? I think it was Lucy k maybe
who was talking about how we're complaining about, you know,
all this dumb stuff. But yet we can like jump
into a tube and like you know, fly across the country.
And also they have his little magic boxes that let
us talk to anybody and look up the wealth of
(46:23):
human information. On them at any given time. Um, some
people though, really really hate flying. You know, David Lynch
won't really leave Los Angeles because he just I don't know,
you say he. I think it probably usually does come
down to being scared. Um. I don't want to malign
David Lynch and call him like a coward or anything,
(46:43):
cause I'm not. That's it's a thing. It's a deep
it should be. Honestly, we're the outliers that were okay
with it, right, you know, like it seems like a
self preservational kind of impulse to be scared of this
kind of thing. But you know, I mean, you don't
have control over it. And a phobia or a fear
is a is a primal emotive thing. And what that
(47:05):
means is that statistics aren't gonna change that primal aspect
of you. That's saying, holy crap, no, we should be
on the ground. What are you doing right? Like you
can Again, we talked about it before, not just in
that episode, but it's previous episodes. You are far far
more likely to die driving a car anywhere when you
(47:31):
are in the plane. But you know, people feel I
think often feel a little more comfort because uh, it's
it's me behind the wheel, it's my hands, my decisions,
not some jamoke pilot that I'll never meet again. And
that's that that takes us something interesting. Uh? Will people
will the same people who have a fear of flying,
which again is completely understandable. Will that fear transfer to
(47:55):
autonomous vehicles another thing that you're just sitting in that
cannot control and technically, until all vehicles are autonomous, a
much more dangerous ride. What do you guys think it
just hights? Maybe if there's that too, But with autonomous vehicles,
if enough time passes where people forget all of the
(48:16):
hilarious screw ups, then maybe it will be like a
safe feeling. But like right now, we've seen so many
like high profile you know, stories about autonomous vehicles doing
dumb stuff. But we know on paper that if if
the technology is right, it's way better than the human element,
because the human element is fallible and like makes horrible mistakes.
(48:38):
And once they get the tech to the point where
we can really rely on it, probably there will be
similar statistics around autonomous vehicles, but it won't necessarily for
some be enough to make them okay with giving up
that level of control. Yeah, it's gonna be like how
Gadaga made genetic modification a thing. They just use private
(48:58):
industry ensure rates to make it too expensive. Right, it
will be too expensive to drive your own car. That's
how they're gonna get you. Okay, now that I've said
and that's how they're gonna get you, I think I
got a little too conspiratorial. We might want to wrap
up um as we do. These are great suggestions as
we do, Matt, No, I'm wondering, is it okay if
(49:21):
we just read this this Twitter poll that we started
after we did Strange News talked about gene editing. Okay, okay,
so this is a super scientific poll, which means while
we took a quick we call it a bio break
on the show, I took a quick bio break, went
to Twitter and said, if you were given the opportunity
(49:41):
to take gene editing therapy with a high likelihood of
extending your life, I say, ten years, would you do it?
The three answers are heck, no, I need a lot
more info and shoot me up homie, and uh, I
think put it right in my neck. Just put in
my neck, you know, give me a good sound rack
um right now again with this super scientific hole. Uh,
(50:05):
it looks like people said I need a lot more info.
Only sixteen percent said heck no, that's for you Matt
and for you Doc. And thirty nine percent just said
shoot me up HOMEI somebody carpet. I think some of
these people like, they're what eating potatoes too much? What
(50:27):
is the thing that is bad for your heart? I
can't remember anymore. It's all bad for your kinds of stuff,
anything you like, anything you like, anything, even that they
have made advances in kale. Uh, the kale technology gets
hurts and bounds heard that the lead content of kale
(50:51):
uk just kidding itself. I'm just kidding. This simply orange
has a ton of p f A s in it.
That's real. I remember that. Yeah. Is that the one
with no pulp some pulp or all the pulp, all
the simply orange and every orange drink, like every orange
soda is what is it? Brominaded um thiamyline. I don't know. No,
(51:15):
Oh my gosh, how am I not thinking of the
next words? It vegetable oil, vegetable oil. That's it. Yeah.
I feel like it was like there was another It's
in it's in mountain dew. Brominaded vegetable oil is a
mountain dew, anything with the cloudy look to it. Yeah,
and apparently brominaded stuff also is used for flame retardants.
So there's that. That's what. Yeah, you're right, So we're
(51:36):
gonna call it a day before we ruin more seemingly
innocuous things like you enjoy it, get you through. I
put it in my smoothie as like, just so I
can feel like I know you were. I'm joking. Waterson
Air Force Base and check out the museum and we'll
all feel better because it's haunted. There we go. Yes,
(51:59):
you've got to be the to play and you wish
to see in the world. Can we also say that
in the story that you brought Matt from snag Daddy,
that this is a clearly kind of a benevolent ghost,
right right. A lot of those stories, actually a lot
of the stories were receiving and this is what I
would call this uh era of aviation folklore. They are
about someone trying to warn you the ghosts who stay
(52:19):
on the planes. The people who believe in ghosts are
not trying to wreck the planes, because then they'd be
like you know or grand Maybe we should have people
right in and let us know innocuous things that that
have dark sides. That's always an area of interest. I
don't Then and then we can send the list to
Stephen King and he can write about more haunted innocuous things.
(52:42):
The case idea at the end of the road. How
a super evil things that have like good intentions. Oh God,
like kale, Like kale just ruined side. That's what kale ruins.
It isn't very tasty, isn't how mult you try? I is? Yeah,
I know people always say they love it. That's the
(53:04):
most diplomatic thing. It's good in this candelini candloni. How
tied it in a smoothie where you can't taste it?
That make it, make it um, make it into a
shirt and wear it around you know what I mean.
That is becoming a thing in fashion. Actually, a lot
(53:24):
of these like new kind of woke fashion brands are like,
you know, making their stuff out of plant matter, that vegetable. Yeah,
obviously we have the mangler, the haunted mangler, And we
have to depart it a little bit from listener male
because we're all thinking about what to eat next hunger, Uh, Penance,
(53:46):
I will eat, I will put kale in my daily
case and dilla in the meantime. We can't wait to
hear from you folks. Come be a part of a show.
You will be the best part by default, our fellow
conspiracy realists. Hey, I want to be part of the show.
You might be saying. We hope you're saying that, But
how can I ever get a chance to talk to
you all? It's actually super easy, carcopoonishly easy. If you've
(54:09):
never listened to the end of an episode before, we
got the scoop for you. You can find us on
social media. We are conspiracy stuff on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
Or we have a group called a Facebook group is
a thing they'll be talking about that in the history books,
uh called Here's where it gets crazy conspiracy stuff show
on Instagram and take any talk as the kids call it. Yes,
(54:30):
and we have a phone number. It is one eight
three three st d w y t K. When you
call in, you've got three minutes. Count on one to three.
Give yourself a cool nickname. Let us know if we
can use your message on the air. It's that easy.
If you got more to say, they could fit in
that three minute voicemail. Why not instead write it all
out in a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
(54:52):
at iHeart radio dot com. M m m h. Stuff
(55:12):
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