September 29, 2025 • 62 mins
As world leaders convene for the United Nations General Assembly, the US Secret Service uncovers a massive telecom conspiracy -- and has no idea who created it. People are out here peeing in theatres, it's Fat Beer Week as we record, and the Pentagon declares journalists must tow the party line. All this and more in this week's strange news segment.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nolan.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are here that makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. With a returning special guest, doctor Vnkman
here if you are tuned in the evening, our Strange
News publishes Welcome to September twenty ninth, the last Strange
(00:53):
News of September twenty twenty five. We're coming back, and
we wanted to open the show with a very old
joke that we love that just came back into the zeitgeist.
As I was saying, quoting Jimmy Kimmel here.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Already joining our commentary already in progress from when we
were rudely interrupted, not us, but the Royal wey.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, it only lasted a weekend and a day.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And it's still not a total re emergence or restitution because,
as we know, the syndication. Several of the syndication networks
that control various outfits regional distribution rights for Jimmy's show
still have refused to air his broadcast. But yeah, he
(01:43):
is officially back. Despite the protestations of Sinclair and Next Star.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I found out guys where you live, you could have
watched it live on ABC where I live. I was
unable to watch it anywhere live.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I was not allowed to because they Yeah, you would
have to do something crazy like go to the internet.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, on the Internet, I would have to do something
illegal to watch it or to buy I guess Hulu
Live plus Apple.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
A lot of those services do have live TV streaming
almost like like not like a VPM, but like where
you can stream local television from other places.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, but I pay good money for Infinity. I pay
good money for Expinity. You're one of those, Just like
with South Park, right was I was unable to watch
it through the exorbitant fees I pay to a giant
cable company.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And it Yeah, if anybody wants a regional map showing
you the coverage of Sinclair, which goes against trust laws.
By the way, the coverage of Sinclair, Next Star just
right to US conspiracy. iHeartRadio dot com. We can send
that map along your way. This shows I was thinking
of you map because this shows this map shows how
(02:57):
the Atlanta metro area isn't come by those those two behemoths,
but your neck of the woods.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Is, dude. I tuned into the live ABC feed just
online through Exfinity, and I was watching the news. You
guys know how those late night TV shows usually come
on like right after the news ends, and like with SNL,
it'll cut from the news directly into SNL. Well, I
sat there for a while, going what the hell is
(03:27):
going on? And it was just more news and I
had to read to find out, Oh, they just extended
out news coverage for an hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, and it's always good to get the news, but
it's always bad to have comedians be stifled, especially like
Jimmy Kimmel is many things, but controversial is not necessarily one.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
I think we talked about this. I mean, the comment
itself didn't even raise an eyebrow in the general population
in terms of like Google search results for where Jimmy
Kimmel when the actual comment happened. It wasn't until he
was punished that people started searching for it, and I've
seen a lot of folks talking about how they couldn't
even quite figure out which one it was what he said,
(04:12):
because what he said was something to the effect of
the Trump camp is trying to do as much as
they can to prove that the killer wasn't one of
their own, not accusing him of being one of their own,
just saying that they were in a pr frenzy, to
make very clear that it was the opposition rather than
one of their own. And that was apparently the nail
(04:32):
on the coffin, But it wasn't actually him talking smack
about Kirk himself, which is what makes this whole thing
really scary.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
The thing about escalating propaganda war was sometimes unexpectedly your
escalator stops and then you talk trash about it at
the United Nations.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Did you see the thing that allegedly the cameraman ran
up there and turned the escalator off, the cameraman that
was a part of the administration or I hadn't heard
that follow up.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I saw the video like a like a malfunction. What
are he's saying, Who's who's cameraman?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, guys, I don't I may be completely off base here,
But I heard I heard some rumors launching around about
how the teleprompter went out, and that was also something
that was done purposefully to make it seem as though
the UN is just out of sorts.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Right right, the idea again of a narrative war, and
I'm quite proud of that dumb escalator joke. So I hope, Dylan,
we can we can keep it the Yeah, the statements themselves,
we were talking about this a little bit on our
off air group chat. The statements themselves made by the
US President are directly in line with earlier statements by
(05:41):
folks like Vladimir Putin, big fan of our show, couldn't
have written it better himself. And so what we're communicating here,
of course, is a win for the late night show format.
It's a win for the freedom of speech the First Amendment.
But it's not a complete win because again, and what
we're describing here is common to so many people across
(06:04):
the United States who might have said, oh, I thought
Kimmel was back, Why can't I see it without giving
another company more money or going ar maybe on it.
So we're with you. We know a lot of stuff
happened in New York. We're recording on September twenty fourth,
so they are probably going to be updates to a
lot of the things we talk about in Tonight's Strange News.
(06:27):
We're going to go all over the place. We've got
some great hidden mysteries, We've got some weird AI updates
that I really love, some public pranking, some scary stuff.
But you know, guys, since we're talking a little bit
about the UN meeting in New York, why don't we
take a break for a word from our sponsors and
start there? Oh oh, do we want to shout out
(06:49):
Fat Bear Week first?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Well, it's fat Bear Week, so okay, coming anyway, let's
see what do you need to know? Fat Bear Week
twenty twenty five starts on September twenty third, which is yesterday.
Actually we record this and that's where fans are able
to vote daily for the fattest brown Bear, of which
there are multiple candidates to choose from, so you can
actually get in on the voting yourself. Just google Fat
(07:13):
Bear Week and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, we mentioned this last year as well. We're super
into fat Bear Week. I love how we kind of
as a group we pick things that we get obsessed with.
This has nothing to do with anything. But remember we
were talking, I think a little off air about falconry.
Jillan and I are hoping to take a crew out
for a day of falconry, and we have decided that
(07:36):
we're going to start describing things that are not cool
as non falcon no falcon. Are you guys interested?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
So not falcon or non falcon? I'm with it, man,
but yeah, vote for your favorite chunky boy over at
explore dot org slash fat Dash Bear Dash week.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
And with that will pause for a word from our sponsors,
and then we'll return with some breaking news from New
York City. And we have returned. All right, this is
deep water, folks. The inboxes went crazy for us, I think,
(08:13):
as individuals right before the news released. But the United
States Secret Service has announced they dismantled what they call
an imminent telecom or telecommunications threat in the New York
tri state area. Here's what's happening. If we rewind back
to twenty twenty four, we see that there were a
(08:36):
lot of reports of the private homes of would be
politicians or election officials getting swatted. And I think we
all know what being swatted means, but do we want
to describe it for the audience.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
That's when somebody calls in a swat team on you, basically, right.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, makes a false statement too, something that well one.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Will lead to such activity.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes, yeah, any kind of fake crime report with the
intention of the people calling know that that crime did
not occur. They're attempting to trigger massive law enforcement response.
It's an escalation of the earlier prank of calling non
consensual pizza deliveries to an organization or person's house back
(09:26):
in the days where you didn't have to pay in
advance for the pizza.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh yeah, but it's not like calling and saying something
that would show you know, one cruiser to show up
right and knocking to normal like you okay. It's usually
the crime that stated there is something that requires a
swat team.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Right exactly. And this is this can be dangerous. They
were targeting a lot of politicians, right. This has been
ongoing for some time, including people outside of the Tri
state area, folks like Georgia's own Marjorie Taylor Green and
a lot of Republican officials Democratic officials as well. And
(10:05):
right before the big meeting at the United nations that
had so many problems with teleprompters and escalators. The US
Secret Service announced that it had started it had looked
into the swatting stuff, and it had been looking into
it for several months, and they ended up discovering something,
at least per their statements that they did not anticipate,
(10:29):
more than three hundred co located SIM servers and one
thousand SIM cards across multiple sites, a conspiratorial hidden network
that could do much more than carry out anonymous telephonic
threats on a burner. These could make genuine telecom attacks.
The big news here is that if this thing had
(10:53):
not been discovered, it could have relatively easily disabled cell
phone towers, creating denial of service attacks d dos, and
then allowing potential bad faith actors. We're dancing around the terrorists,
right or organized crime to communicate without the usual surveillance.
(11:16):
This is let's go to a statement from the Director
of the Secret Service, Sean Current. Sean said, the potential
for disruption to our country's telecommunications posed by this network
of devices cannot be overstated. The US Secret Services Protective
Mission is all about prevention, all right, fine, and this investigator,
(11:36):
I said all right, Fine, he didn't say. And this
investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that eminent
threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down,
and dismantled. This is scary stuff. This is real Halloween stuff,
or as we're talking about off air mister robots stuff.
The devices that they have found, everything they think is linked.
(11:59):
So far, they're all concentrated within thirty five miles of
the United Nations General Assembly, the big Mickey Mouse club
for world leaders.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Maybe it's part of that. Maybe it's just something benign,
and they're just trying to help all of the people
operating at the UN have their burner phones.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Sure you know who doesn't have a burner phone. Nobody
has to answer that. The Secret Service we learned about
something they had a pretty newly minted section of the
agency called the Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit, or at A
(12:41):
two brute. So they're conducting this investigation in kind of
an Avengers team up with Homeland Security, the DOJ, the
D and I, and of course local law enforcement like
the New York Police Department. The official statement of the
Secret Service, which you can find at Secret Service dot gov.
(13:03):
That's where most of the news is pulling their info
from the primary source here. Continues to hammer home that
this is an ongoing investigation and they are not giving
any details about who may have made this network. They're
not giving any details about how long they think this
(13:25):
network was active, and they're not giving any further detail,
like they haven't named any individual that they're going to
attempt to apprehend or prosecute.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Like, how the hell did they find it?
Speaker 3 (13:37):
You know, well, collection methods are the secret sauce.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Right, It's one of those things I keep mentioning, I'm
rewatching mister Robot, and then things in the news keep
happening that are crazy reminiscent of something that would occur
in that show or did occur in that show. And
this is another one. Some apartment that has all this
stuff in it, that has all of these capabilities, Like
that's just randomly there. But it feels so odd and
(14:02):
so calculated.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Sure, yeah, especially you know, the disturbing part is we
saw a tip of an iceberg. Because it's an ongoing investigation,
the authorities, if they're competent, are not going to release
much more information until they have things five by five
and water tight. If you look at a different like.
(14:25):
We were diving deep into this and we want to
thank all our fellow listeners and old associates who reached
out about it. It may have been an existing underground
cell network meant entirely to provide untraceable services for things
like drugs, you know, human trafficking, arranging hits, which means
(14:47):
it may have been more of an avoidance measure rather
than an offensive measure. However, it had both of those
capabilities per the Secret Service, you know what I mean,
Just like you know, a hammer can hit a nail
and it can hit a skull.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Oh, this would be a devilishly smart thing for an
organized criminal syndicate to pull off. Really, I never would
have thought of that.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Super affordable too, by the way, And I.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Mean, could you argue or it might this enter into
the rhetoric of domestic terrorism and politically motivated terror attacks?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Well, we have apparently begun to define terrorism as anybody
that people in power do not care for.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
So yes, that's what I'm I'm yes, And I was
trying to diplomatically say rhetoric. You know that For that reason,
it does feel like this is the kind of thing
that could get lumped in and used as a further
justification for tightening certain measures against privacy.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And let me amend this because when I'm saying the
equipment involved is affordable, I mean it's affordable for a
large organization. If you're Johnny Blue Jeans and you wake
up one day in Brooklyn and you say, I want
to get real weird with it, it would be a huge,
huge investment for you, and it would take a lot
of time. It would take a lot of hardware, and
would take a lot of technological acumen, a lot of
(16:09):
know how. So our questions still become what is the
end motive qui bono? Who benefits? As we always say,
what is the return on investment for whoever ponied up
the cheddar for this? It's right now with the information
we have in the public. It is a big leap
to assume it is a terror attack. I would say,
(16:30):
it's not a big leap to speculate on the possibility
of a criminal enterprise. It's definitely also not a big
leap to speculate about a surveillance apparatus. Because New York
is full of really weird, really fascinating stuff that people
(16:51):
have just accepted as normal, things get normalized so quickly.
It is weird that there's a gigantic window list building
in Manhattan. Shout out to the long Lines building. That's weird.
Oh yeah, that's weirder than neckties, which are themselves a
very strange thing.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Hey, and if you ever seen mister Robot, that building
makes an appearance as the place that is targeted initially
for attack. Did you talk Ben about how many of
these safe houses they found that had these networks in them?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Not the safe houses, but we did, Matt talk about
the equipment that has been recovered so far. Do you
want to talk about the number of safe houses?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I just found it on the CNN article you linked
to Ben at the bottom. Here it's naming multiple places.
I don't know how to say this Armunk, New York, Greenwich, Connecticut, Queens,
New York, right across the river in New Jersey, which
I think is the one that I heard you mentioned, Ben,
(17:47):
But they were circling New York City.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Right like state area.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, but it's crazy to imagine it if you're honing
in on a target, or if you're operating in an area.
Just the idea that you could be in all of
those different places setting these things up, so it's not
an individual place, right, And that's why in my mind
I was seeing someplace where a bunch of servers were
set up to run these things. But it is that
(18:12):
it's just in all of these different places.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, that's there is photographic evidence released by secret service
and law enforcement, but that information is relatively limited. I
was trying to think of the best analogy for that.
What you're describing the encirclement the telecom siege here. Yeah,
and I would recommend looking at a map of US
(18:38):
military bases encircling the nation of Iran. That is another
very clear thing. And what both of those cases show
us is that there is likely not a single individual
play here. It is almost certainly impossible that one individual
could have conspired in this way. It has to be
(19:01):
a network. The question is what is this group? Is
this foreign state level actor or a foreign state level
actor through are proxy. Is this private criminal industry trying
to just getting bigger and bigger for their breeches. Did
they get to a point with trafficking or drugs or
(19:21):
racketeering when they said, oh, yeah, you know what if
we need to just shut down the cell phones and
vending's like, I gotcha. You know, we can shut down
the cell phones maybe fifteen minutes that's when you make
the call.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah. It also says that they could have sent a
text message, like a secret text message, to every single
cell phone in the United States, within twelve minutes of
someone like taking the actions.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Pull in the switch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's
still is a very limited time time window. The thing
about the infrastructure of the United States, the physical infrastructure
is incredibly vulnerable. We've explored that in the past, but
because the tele infrastructure is a more recent development, it
is a little bit more girded against against intrusion, which
(20:10):
is why you would have that very cinematic limited window
of time. It feels like Hollywood writing when they know
they only have forty five minutes out of an hour
program for commercials. But yeah, they wouldn't be able to
keep it down forever. And this has become red meat
to a lot of a lot of Politico's, a lot
(20:34):
of pundits because it's a scary thing. It's up there
with comparison we made earlier on this show, or Daily Zeitgeist,
where you get the worst good news an organization you
have never heard of, says hey, we've done a decade
long study and we're lowering the amount of rat feces
that will be allowed in Cereal, or they say, hey,
(20:56):
we're an acronym or an initialism that you have ever
heard of? Your tax dollars pay for us, and we have,
after intense research and a lot of hard work from
our officials, we have finally prevented the massive hippo driven
murders in East Saint Louis, Missouri. What yeah, you're like,
(21:19):
oh great, But also how much rat feces has have
I eaten? How many people have died in East Saint
Louis because of these hippos? And they're like, well less
now in both cases fewer.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Good, good, great, great?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Not nearly enough rat feces.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
If you ask me find me now I can sleep.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It would be it would be for a microcosmic version
of it. Imagine if our one of our friends came
to us and said, guys, it's been you know, we've
been friends for twenty years, and I want to tell
you I'm off the quayludes. I just stop doing quaaludes.
And then we look around and say, oh great, But also, did.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Have did you have like a secret cache of them
that you were holding on too from the seventies.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
We have so many questions, right, this is what these
stories tell us. We're spending some time on this one
because the questions that naturally follow from this story tell
us there is much more to come. Please read the
official statement of the Secret Service over at their website.
(22:29):
You can find some breaking news summaries of this from
regional regional journalistic outfits Fox five New York. They're all
over YouTube. Check that one out. I'd also like to
recommend the AP News article that published just oh yesterday
before we recorded. Shout out to journalist Mike Balsamo. A
(22:51):
massive telecom threat was stopped right as world leaders gathered
at you and headquarters in New York. And that is
where I get to the suspicious timing. It's right before
this happened. It was a months long investigation, right that
started with swatting and then began uncovering these individual nodes
(23:15):
of a network. So with that in mind, I got
to ask you guys about the timing. Does the timing
and the timing of the public announcement does it not
feel a little hinky, as our palchuk would say.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Uh, yeah, I'm trying to think of what it would
be distracting from it.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
It's what wouldn't it be distracting?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
There's just so much going on right now, is that right?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Or what the motivation would be? You know? I mean
these are wheels within wheels, right, hands and hands and
gloves and gloves. This is Matroshkadal for sure. And we
have to be careful not to spin out our if
thens two extravagantly, because you know, there's a world where
we could say, and I know for a fact that
(24:04):
foreign governments have internally been thinking about this. There's a
world where you could say, hey, the United States government
exposed and found this thing to make us feel safer
so that we didn't think about whatever thing they're doing,
you know what I mean, Like the kid who the
kid who lets their parents find a cigarette butt and says, yeah,
(24:26):
I'm smoking, so that the parents don't know they're actually
smoking weed. That kind of thing. It gets very conspiratorial
and paranoid very quickly. But anybody who is acquainted with
this milieu, we'd love to hear from you. There are
so many stories we're not going to have time to
get to right now. We do want to acknowledge that
(24:49):
we know the news about Errol Musk. We are just
going to mention it the answers out there. There's a
phenomenal and phenomenally disturbing New York Times investigation about this.
At the very end of this show will warn you
about squirrels. There's a PSA you need to hear. Someone
did a great con, an unsuccessful con trying to steal Graceland.
(25:14):
All of that more. But for now we're gonna pause
for word from our sponsors, and we'll be back with
more strange news.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
And we've returned, Ben, I was looking more at this
mobile X company that was at the heart of you know,
the story you just talked about that offers those ten
dollars SIM cards that you can buy at Walmart in
other places.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
This is why I'm excited to do an episode on
this one.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Dude. Oh yeah, for sure. I don't want to spoil
it too much, is there they're CEO. Mobile X's CEO
and founder, Peter Adderton just had a really interesting quote
here that I'd just like to read real fast. He says, quote,
our platform is designed to be easy to use and
cost effect qualities that can unfortunately, also attract occasional bad actors.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
The Hammer company CEO says, well, we make good hammers.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's just it's interesting to think about
industries and organizations that produce goods that are known to
be used by bad actors. Right, you know it when
you're making a SIM card that's that cheap that you
know you can go pick up at Walmart and then
(26:29):
switch out hot swap with whichever one you've got in
your phone. That somebody's gonna be using that for probably
not great reasons, unless, of course it's just you know,
someone trying to gain access to a little phone time
and they don't have their Verizon account anymore. They can't
you know, they can't afford the exorbitant prices that are
offered other places.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, there are good use cases too, That's why we
rationalize the stuff. You know what I mean, a hammer
can build a house, right, or a person who needs
access to what is called a burner phone may be
in a situation in the US or abroad where they
don't have the right documentation to get a phone or
a regular phone, even if they can afford to do so.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yep. Well, and we find ourselves, all of us, if
we are American citizens, and actually anybody citizen of any
country that's looking to get news out of the United States,
find ourselves in the situation where we like to know
what's going on. And we have this thing called the
free press that is supposed to be able to have
access to most things, especially things that the government does,
(27:31):
as this is a representative democracy. So when you see
things pieces of news coming out of AP news like
Pentagon steps up media restrictions now requiring approval before reporting
even unclassified information, you start to worry a little bit.
You think that's kind of strange. And guys, it got
(27:53):
me thinking back to that old film Good Morning Vietnam,
and to that scene where Airman's second class a cronauer
whose job it is to disseminate the news to all
of the US servicemen out there operating in Saigon ho
Chiman City, and that's his job report the news. But
before he can report anything to anyone, he has to
(28:15):
get that news approved. And we talked on the show
several times about that film and about that process and
what it means to disseminate official information while you're in
a war zone. You know, We've talked about the rationalizations
for that and maybe the need for some of that
control of information. But when you're talking about unclassified information
(28:37):
that's coming out from the Pentagon, about what the Pentagon
is doing, about what the United States military and government
is doing, it seems like we should know about that again,
because you know, we kind of pay for the whole thing,
and we we supposedly run the whole thing, we the people.
So it's just a bit strange when you hear something
(28:58):
like that coming out of the Pentagon. Wouldn't you say.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, yeah, I would say, well, an unnamed source familiar
with the investigation would say yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well yeah. But let's say let's say you're working for
Reuters and you put out something like that. Now it
appears that that person won't be allowed in the Pentagon. Again,
it appears that that person won't be allowed any information.
So then they would have to have a mole inside
the Pentagon that leaks information out, that then leaks it out.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And that exists. That strategy exists only for a limited
amount of time, because history teaches us the next inevitable
step is going to be clamping down on those journalists
as such that you could be. I mean, we're not
there yet, but there is a world in which reporting
(29:50):
unapproved news becomes sore well, and you could be jammed
up for treason or anti American activities. And I think
it'll probably start with something like it was something it
was something like a defamation or libel or slander law
(30:11):
that gets broadly emphasized, similar to the UK stuff with
the protesters over at the over at the Epstein thing.
Oh and by the way, did you guys see the statue, oh,
friends and Jeffrey Epstein making the little hard hands on
the plaque.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It's pretty pretty solid.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
That's that's still free speech, but it's also uh, it's
also exacerbating the moves to clamp down on the free press.
Well as the free press.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
Yeah, it's a good thing, for sure, it's in the
Constitution too, But like, what is it so many of
these lawsuits that that the president is putting forth seemed
and now some of the direct instruction that he's giving
to his Department of Justice to like go after dissenters,
go after political adversaries.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Perceived enemies right to the way I would put guys, Yeah,
it's it's that stuff's insane. We talked about access to
the White House, right, and the press credential, the Press
Club and all of the people that are that will
be shifting in and out of that, you know, that group.
And uh, just how that's again a method of controlling
(31:20):
information and you could use it that way if you
wanted to. You're in, You're in, You're in, but none
of you are allowed inside the room.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Oh did I mention this real quick? I? Uh when
when the news broke that they were going to allow
some podcasters in. I applied for press club credentials under
the current administration. They haven't gone back to me, So
I'll go ahead and reaping make sure it didn't go
to their spam box.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Good luck to you, indeed, sir. Uh. Let's gome back
to the story from AP News, written by Morgan Lee,
who was published on September twentieth, twenty twenty five. Here
it goes. The Pentagon says it will require credential journalists
at the military headquarters to sign a pledge to refrain
from reporting information that has not been authorized for release,
including unclassified information. Journalists who don't abide by the policy
(32:08):
risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon under
a seventeen page memo distributed last Friday. As we're recording
this on Wednesday, September twenty fourth, that steps up media
restrictions imposed by the current administration. And then if you
look down to something that was written on x by
Defense Secretary Pete Hegsith, it gives you a sense of
(32:31):
why it's being done. And then we'll talk about this
statement quote, the press does not run the Pentagon, the
people do. The press is no longer allowed to roam
the halls of a secure facility, wear a badge and
follow the rules or go home.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Okay aka, so credentials revoked.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yes, So let's talk about what the press is. The
press is supposed to be the people. It's supposed to
be the people's arm of the government a little bit.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
But a lot of the rhetoric that's getting thrown around
is that they're not serving the interests of the people.
And therefore, like a lot of this FCC stuff, you know,
your license is at risk because you're no longer serving
the needs of your community as dictated by who.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, it does not bode well, gentlemen, does.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Not bode well, gentlefolk. Yes, agreed, This is the issue.
So here's why it's quite clever and quite purposeful for
the Pentagon to release this as a directive rather than
as a law. There is no criminal punishment. The consequence
no criminal punishment explicitly outlined in the memo. The consequence
(33:47):
is the revocation of credentials. And that hexith statement is
itself a bit misleading because it's saying we're a badge,
which you always have to do if you go to
the Pentagon, by the way, now the second largest office
building in the world, but wearing the badge thing. Yes,
you shouldn't be an extraneous person in that kind of
(34:10):
hall of power. But the idea of following the rules
so vaguely put, does not acknowledge that the rules get changed, right,
It does not acknowledge that the rules have just been
massively altered. So it also doesn't acknowledge what the specific
channels of approval would be. There are a lot of
(34:32):
factions in the Pentagon. So one guy may say this
is great, Please tell the American public. Run to the
New York Times, dude, get on the train and get
back to the office and publish this today. And another
person will say, well, I didn't authorize that I don't
want people talking about it. So what happens to the
journalists then?
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Well, and can we also just say that, you know,
deplatforming certain individuals on the right by force is on
the left. You know, when it comes to like Twitter
and some big names losing their Twitter accounts, the President
included that's a slippery slope too. You know, there's absolutely
both sides to blame, and it seems like neither one
(35:16):
of the quote unquote sides are working in the best
interest of free speech.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Right because we're talking about private corporations. We're talking about
the high levels of government that we can argue the
private corporations, especially in social media channels, due to various
types of legislation. Here are the states. They don't have
the same personal liability. They build the hammer, and it's
not on them if someone uses the hammer for evil,
(35:44):
and I'm stay up with this hammer comparison because it's
working surprisingly well. The issue on the other side, to
your point there of a government entity that has protection
of the press enshrined within its is that they, by
their own account, hold an historic responsibility to allow the
(36:07):
news to be reported even if they don't like it. Now,
we know Uncle Sam has gone back and forth on
this over the years. You know, the various intelligence branches
of the US as well as parts of the Defense Department,
do have their fingers in journalistic pies and half for
a long time they write to editorial boards and say, hey,
don't tell a story, or tell it this way. I
(36:29):
think one of the most famous examples for US, of course,
is in the wake of the jfk assassination, when the
FBI reached out to every newspaper of note, even the rags,
and said, here's what happened. This is the official thing.
A lot of people are going to come to you,
maybe journalists, with their own pitches, and you need to
(36:49):
dismiss this specifically as a conspiracy theory. So the US
has always had a level of influence and control over
the press that is not reflected in the constitution.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Bit of a toe the line mentality when it comes
to certain extenuating circumstances that seem to trump those rights
as it exists.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Call them nine to eleven truthers. That'll do it. I
want to leave this section here with a couple more quotes,
so this one from the Society of Professional Journalists. Here
we go. This policy reeks of prior restraint, the most
egregious violation of press freedom under the First Amendment, and
is a dangerous step towards government censorship.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Well, we also know about the concept of catch and kill, right,
which is a form of prior restraint. But that also
is sort of like a quid pro quote thing where
it sometimes there's a strong arm aspect to it. Sometimes
it's like, you do a solid for me, get rid
of the story, and I'll help you out with a
source or something. Didn't mean to interrupt, But that's totally
what my mind goes towards.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. That quote does continue on. You
can find it on the ap article. But here's one
last one for Matt Murray, the executive editor at the
Washington Post. The Constitution protects the right to report on
the activities democratically elected and appointed government officials. Any attempt
to control messaging and curb access by the government is
counter to the First Amendment and against the public interest.
(38:10):
I just have to say I wholeheartedly agree with that,
and I'm just a guy with a journalism minor. You
know it gross stop it, and if and if they
don't stop it, something has to be done. Something must
be done. Something must be done. Reel rebel speaking of
getting something done. Guys, the US Federal Trade Commission and
(38:32):
seven different states are suing Live Nation and ticket Master
for tacitly allowing ticket brokers to scoop up millions of
concert tickets and sell them to fans add a significant markup.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Tacitly, all right, that's I don't understand why they would
do that, Like, it just seems like they're getting They're
not getting the extra money they're not getting. Are they
getting the markup? Are they benefiting from this financially in
some way? It just seems like such a bad pr
move and obviously a bit them in the ass. But
I don't understand the reasoning behind allowing it. Is it
(39:05):
too much infrastructure, it's too much work to combat it,
or what is it?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Matt, You've talked about in the past about this, right,
I think at least one other time when there was
a big lawsuit because of stuff going down, and because
of Ticketmaster's whole secondary market thing.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And our Ticketmaster episode which does deep into this. So
qui bono to your question, Noel, part of the benefit
comes from Ticketmaster's secret value proposition, which is, we will
play the bad guy to make you some more money,
so you can blame us for egregious fees or our
price fixing. And then you can also look with the
(39:46):
secondary market, similar to that network of servers and simcards
and circling the United Nations, there's an industry of scalping.
It's quite organized, right the days of the old guy
who is tickets for extra weed and a fish concert
in the parking lot. Those exist, but they're dwarfed by
(40:06):
what's happening here. So you could say Ticketmaster makes a profit,
makes a benefit by having a bunch of tickets pre scalped, right,
essentially pre scalped because of the way the bots and
the automation could work. And then that means the only
tickets that are available from that remaining pool. Let's say
(40:27):
they can scalps get all the general admission to continue.
Then the ticketmaster guys know that the only things the
average customer can buy are the more expensive ones. Supply
and demand kicks in, and so they raise the prices
of those remaining tickets.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Especially because the scalpers's almost what like it's like a
false a false demand that benefits them down the road
or very quickly in that they're able to then you know,
use that demand as a reason for raising the prices dynamically,
especially with this new way they've been doing it that's
been so unpopular.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah. Literally, what I'm saying, we've got out throw to
Dylan here Tennessee, Pal Dylan's what's the skinny? What's the scoop? Oh?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Yeah, just reading an article about this, the FTC made
the point that they've been tripled dipping, so they've been
collecting fees when the ticket is first sold. Then they
collect a fee from both the reseller and the buyer
of the resold ticket. So but my question, I guess,
is like, it's not Ticketmaster that controls the secondary market.
This is on stuff like stub Hub or whatever. Ticketmaster
(41:28):
does have a resale market though, That's what I was wondering.
So that's that's got to only be part of the
portfolio here, because surely there would be something in place
that wouldn't allow you to put it back on the
Ticketmaster market jacked up to some absurd number.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Or is that not the case? Well, let's go back
to you, Matt. What has changed with this recent news?
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Nothing really has changed. Just the big old suit, big
old suit. Ticketmaster and Live Nation reaped three point seven
billion of resale fees between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four. Uh.
They control eighty percent of the primary ticketing markets for
major concerts and venues. Just remember that, Remember that eighty percent.
Here's a quote from Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino. He
(42:12):
was talking to the CNBC and Boardroom game Plan conference
and this guy, by the way, CEO of Live Nation,
is worth nine hundred and ninety seven point one million dollars.
This is what he had to say. Music has been
underappreciated in sports. I joke, it's like a badge of
honor to spend seventy grand for a Knick's court side seat,
and they beat me up if we charge eight hundred
(42:32):
dollars for Beyonce.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
No I saw this, yucko, But this.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Is very interesting. The concept the guy you know, officially
making the executive decisions for a company that allows us
to go see our favorite artists, has that much money
and thinks that little of us.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Right. I'd like to also, yeah, how much can a
banana be? Michael ten dollars. I'd like to also shout
out the even larger bands who have decided to issue
this racket or this conspiracy, like Pearl Jam. You know
what I mean. You all have to love Pearl Jam,
But ethically we can say they made a decision on
behalf of their audience, their supporters, and their fans when
(43:13):
they said we're not gonna mess with Ticketmaster, even though
it might mean we are losing some money. So everybody
check out our twenty nineteen episode the Ticketmaster Racket.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
But the problem there too, and the problem with that
whole merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster is like Live
Nation owns all the venues, like all the ones that
are of a certain size that like a certain tier
of band could play. And I actually recently was really
lucky to get a ticket to see Radiohead in Europe
in December in Copenhagen, and they had this whole thing
where it was very fair. You had to sign up
(43:43):
through Radiohead's website to get on a list to maybe
get a code for a concert on this tour that
you said you could attend, and then you maybe get
that code or you don't, and if you do, you
have to show up at a certain time, get in
the queue, use the code, and then you buy the
tickets at face value, And it wasn't agreed priced at all,
but there was a certain fairness to the whole proposition
(44:03):
where if I hadn't gotten one, I wouldn't felt like
the bots were to blame. I would have just felt
like it was a crazy demand. But only certain bands
of that size and demand and like rarity, perhaps even
of performing can can do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Agreed. Hopefully we'll have some live nation ads right after
this because this section is done, We'll be right back
with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
And we've returned with our last segment of strange News.
We already talked about Fat Bear Week. I'm going to
just jump right in because we're running little long today. Guys,
do you think it's possible to get sued for talking
smack about a virtual pop band?
Speaker 3 (44:45):
It was really interested when you brought this story to us, Noel,
because it's it's weird. It's a weird interrogation of the
line between a personality or a corporation.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
That's exactly right, Ben, And this is a story coming
out of South Korea. An article by Coeway from BBC
dot Com says Accord in South Korea has ordered a
social media user to pay five hundred thousand and one
or around three hundred and sixty dollars American for defaming
a K pop boy band whose members are virtual characters.
There's a group called Plave, and I think this is
(45:18):
I think the term is virtual idols. They are a
kpop group that are voice and animated through MOCAP by
real performers who remain anonymous. They are characters, sort of
like Hotsunemiku is another great example of this. There are
no real people behind those, I believe, because that is
vocaloid technology, that is this sort of voice synthesis thing.
(45:38):
But there are individuals behind these characters, but nobody knows
who they are. So last year, the agency behind this
K pop group, virtual k group Plave, file a civil
suit against one social media user for talking smack basically
saying the band sucked and that the people behind the
characters might be ugly. We'll get into the specifics in
(45:59):
a minute. Play debut in twenty twenty three. They're one
of the most successful stories of this whole virtual idol scenario.
They have a million followers on YouTube and they regularly
post music and vlogs there. They have a song called
Way Number four Luv, which was nominated for Best Vocal
Performance and Song of the Year at the twenty twenty
(46:20):
four Mama Awards, and they also won a big prize
at these Soul Music Awards. So essentially what was said
in these comments that were posted online was conjectured that
the people behind the avatars quote could be ugly in
real life and gave off quote typical Korean man vibe energy.
That's according to The Korea Times. In the court case,
(46:42):
the defendant claimed the comments were actually aimed at the characters,
not the people behind them. However, the court didn't go
for this argument at all, saying that if an avatar
was widely recognized to represent someone real, even though completely anonymous,
then attacks on the avatar extended to tacks on the
real person and Ben had to scoot for a thing.
But he made a really good point earlier that this
(47:04):
is this whole story is about narrowing that gap between
what constitutes personhood, you know, and like, what if I
insult a cartoon, does that mean I'm insulting the person
that it was based on? And does that mean they
could accuse me of defamation? I Mean it's wild, Like
if I say something about Batman and there's a guy
who plays Batman in a movie. Is the association of
(47:27):
that character with the cartoon version extend to that person?
Of course, this isn't a different country. But as we've
talked about in the previous segments of today's episode, this
free speech stuff is getting a little dicey over here too.
So they asked for six point five million one each
per member, but the court, citing emotional distress that the
(47:48):
comments may have caused. However, the court granted a fraction
of this one hundred thousand and one per person. But
the precedent is pretty clear. What do you think about
this one, Matt, It's pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
It's just insane. It feels like it feels like life
is becoming too complicated and strange.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
To even like parse it out. Like it's just it's wild.
I don't know. I'm just kind of marble mouthed about
this map because I see what you're pointing to, and
it is such a bigger sense of confusion and information
overload and metainis that I can't even put it into words.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, just that we're having to some you know, evaluating courts,
the kind of things that we're evaluating in courts and
figure out, oh is it okay for this? Is it bad?
For that?
Speaker 4 (48:34):
Is it right?
Speaker 2 (48:35):
For this is it? And we're dealing with stuff that
it so often exists in virtual worlds and and you know,
virtual representations. I just I don't know, it's so strange
to me, man. I think maybe I'm just getting too old.
I'm already too old for it.
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Yeah, there there is that, And of course, like you know,
like my kids generation and I think your kids like
one generation, you're just Gen.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Alpha, right, I don't know the ten.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
I think Gen Alpha then, yeah, for sure, and mine's
Gen Z. And there is of course this, you know,
this generation raised on the Internet. There's absolutely done a
number on certain brain functions, some for good, some for bad.
We've talked about this, like there is a certain creativity
and intuition and media savviness. I think that comes along
with that. But then they're also it does some other
(49:21):
not so great stuff too. But you can say that
about any generation and about any you know, consumption of media.
Though with the exponential improvement and increase of media transmission
and absolute quantity rather than quality of it, it just
I'm with you, man, I don't. I don't want you
to beat yourself up or say that it's about being old.
(49:41):
I think this is this is true for everybody. Nobody
can parse this stuff out, and that's why people start
like making their own little bubbles and fiefdoms because it
is just so overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah that makes sense, that makes sense. So yeah, but
it's weird. We like bifurcate ourselves in that way.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Our brains, our souls. Are you have you watched Alien Earth, Matt?
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Not yet? Not yet?
Speaker 4 (50:03):
Well, there's some good it's some people are into it,
some people are not. I'm absolutely into it. But it
has some interesting conversation of this bifurcation of soul and
what can happen, you know, when a soul and technology
kind of intersect, and what even is a soul? And
like what does that mean for corruption and the degradation
of quote unquote the soul? You know. I think it's
(50:25):
a very very interesting show, a little bit flawed in places,
but I really like it a lot and I think
it's worth a look. And everything No Holly does is
pretty kick ass. So yeah, we'll leave Allan for now.
Excited to chat more about this with Ben. So the
last story I'm going to bring today since we ran
a little along is uh. We love a good history mystery,
don't we. Yes, we love a good monolith, don't we?
(50:46):
Matt Exactly, I'm too mess From the from the monolith.
The researchers have apparently solved the mystery of some monolists
that I personally wasn't aware of in Armenia, known as
so cool dude. The dragon stone something called zartonk media
which rules and I'm sure that's an Armenian word, but
when I read it on paper it makes me think
(51:06):
of like a space lord or something. Reports that an
international team of researchers have done comprehensive research into Armenia's
dragon stones and believe they have found a link to
an ancient cult. These are known as vishaps, after the
Armenian word for dragon. They stand eighteen feet tall, typically
decorated with animal imagery depicting fish. And we're erected in
(51:30):
high altitude pastures, high places. We know all about those,
right lay lines, high places, et cetera. Archaeologists and I'm reading,
by the way, from Archaeology magazine directly here. This is
a piece. Yes again, I think this is a lyft
from that tzartonk media piece. So I'm just going to
read from here. Archaeologists have been unsure exactly when and
(51:50):
why they were created. Led by Vaje Gurzadayan and Arsen
BOBOI Heiken, Please forgive my pronunciations of yerevn State University,
the team an was one hundred and fifteen known vis
apps vish apps, vis apps you having vish apps, and
determined they were often located near springs, streams, and irrigation systems,
which led them to conclude they must have been associated
(52:11):
with ancient water cults and rituals that celebrated water as
a life sustaining force. They were often clustered at these
high altitudes around sixty two to eighty eight hundred feet
above sea level, and that they were likely placed symbolically
near sources of the snow melt that provide water for
agriculture communities in the valleys below. Yeah, you can read
(52:33):
the scholarly article about this in PJ Heritage Science.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
It doesn't it kind of remind you of the nacerema
thing that we talked about in listener mail.
Speaker 4 (52:42):
Absolutely all, bro, that's the point, right, Like all of
this stuff with enough remove, with enough separation from the
actual culture and what it meant to those people. It
all seems like anthropological craziness, things that you would study.
We just got to kind of crawl out of our
butts and realize that, like we are the modern cavemen
(53:04):
of whatever future, if it exists, is going to look
back on and think how quaint everything we did was.
You know.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, just talking about water cults, I think that term
in particular is so interesting to me, like to label
something a water cult.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
But in the way it's being used here. Obviously, these
are offerings or these are structures honoring certain gods or
deities that they hoped would bestow favorable conditions right upon
them to allow their crops to flourish, or to allow
them to have drinking water, whatever it might be. That's religion, man, Yeah,
that's all. That's all it is. And it's even funny
(53:40):
that they label them water cults here. It's i think
because maybe they don't have a better name for it,
or it's it's considered maybe more of a pagan sort
of early sort of proto religion that's maybe not directly
tied to one of the big ones that we think
of today. That's why the term cult is so interesting,
because it often just gets thrown around out of laziness.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
Yeah, and I just, you know, I'm so interested in
this kind of stuff because you you just imagine the
significance of someone choosing to not only get this particular
stone or one of these particular stones that are quite
large and heavy, to carve it in such a way
to place it in the ground as some kind of marker,
and then you know, all these years later us trying
(54:20):
to figure out the significance of it. I just wonder
how many things like that that we find are for
some kind of very specific general purpose that has nothing
to do with religion, has nothing to do with anything besides, Hey,
we're marking the levels of snow melt in this general area,
I understand, Or we're marking to where to go so
(54:41):
you can maybe see.
Speaker 4 (54:42):
Maybe there's a functional aspect to it. Dude. That's a
really good point, and it doesn't come up here in
this research, but maybe there's like markers on it to
show what you know, I don't know's I think that's
a really interesting way of looking at It's like ben'z
always talking about how whatever future civilization discovers our civilization
is going to be really curious as to why we
worship the giant penises.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
You know. Yeah, if anything sticks around, yeah.
Speaker 4 (55:05):
Let's not be let's not be too to doom and
gloom about it. I do try to maintain a healthy
sense of optimism just despite conditions. I'll just quickly wrap
up with just a silly one that I thought was
just you know, maybe it's not silly. It's a salt.
But in surprise Arizona, a man is facing multiple charges
(55:26):
after he urinated in a movie theater during a screening
of the latest Demon Slayer movie, which probably slaps The
last one was awesome. I actually remember seeing that with
my kid when they were in their super anime weeb
cosplay phase, and it's the only time I've ever been
to one of those movies where the seats move and
it squirts you with water and stuff, and then I
just say, that is awful.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Don't do it.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
It's awful. It's trying to like it's like tracking sort
of what's going on on the screen, but it's really
just jerking you around for an hour and forty five minutes,
and it's very patently undosant, So don't do it. I
will never forget that screening. But at least nobody peede
on me. But the seat sprayed me a little bit.
I mean, maybe this experience wasn't that different from mine.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
On the Lonely Island podcast, Seth Myers told the story
a couple of weeks ago about he was going to
see a movie. He's really excited to go see it,
and he went and sat down and the trailers were playing,
the seats were moving, and he just was like, nope, no.
Speaker 4 (56:20):
Yeah, I was with the kid and their friends. I
did not peace out, but boy did I want to.
It was a chore, an absolute chore. There's actually a
video of this though, and my buddy Jonesy over at
the Weird af News podcast he was talking about this story,
so shout out to him to check out his pod
if you're looking for some other interesting weird news stuff
daily content and how like, during the point where this happened,
(56:44):
this guy pissing in the middle of the theater caused
a stir and essentially people like tackled him and there
was like a struggle of some story. It apparently happened
during a really epic battle scene in the movie. So
if you watch the video, it's like this intense cinematic
fight music and you see the silhouettes of this conflict
(57:04):
sort of flashing across the screen. Wow, did I mention
this took place in Surprise, Arizona?
Speaker 2 (57:10):
Surprise? Yeah, real joke. Right.
Speaker 4 (57:13):
He was arrested, this this dude la mille hull uh
and booked on charges of indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, criminal
damage and dad insulted injury refusing to provide a truthful name.
Oh that's that' said. Another thing to unpack in and
of itself, because have you has your algorithm started feeding
you a lot of like body cam videos or like
videos of people sort of like like given sas to
(57:36):
cops because mine is. And a lot of times people
will refuse to give a name, and they will maybe
not give a false name, but they'll refuse to give
a name. So is it only illegal if you give.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
A fake name?
Speaker 4 (57:48):
Because it's definitely not illegal to my understanding to refuse
to identify yourself.
Speaker 2 (57:54):
Oh that's a weird one to unpack, That's what I mean.
That's another one of those where.
Speaker 4 (57:58):
It's all about decorum, about how far do they want
to take it.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
It depends on what you know. The officer you're interacting
with officially is stopping you for and if you are
actually being detained, and whether or not you're aware of that.
There's all these things, and you know, if you're in
the right as a citizen being detained in whatever way,
you usually have to go to court to prove that
you are in the right rather than just being right.
Speaker 4 (58:23):
Oh, of course, And that's of course an expense and
an inconvenience and could might not go your way, not to.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
Mention putting yourself in danger in that moment if you're
being argumentative, which is like crazy, because yeah, man is dangerous.
Speaker 4 (58:37):
It's very interesting that I keep getting fed all these
and maybe it's because I linger on them a lot,
and then and when I do, the algorithm thinks, and
I'm it is entertaining, and I am glad to see
people sticking it to the man. And usually the videos
that I see, you know, do show the officer being
in the wrong and the individual knowing their rights way
more than the officer would hope that one would, so
(58:59):
that there is something empowering about seeing those videos. But
oftentimes the officer will still try to reach through the
window and tase the person in the face.
Speaker 2 (59:06):
You know, yeah, yeah, we you know, we did that
episode recently on Taser International, Right, we talked about a
couple of specific cases where it's a kid, like a
seventeen year old that is just a heart condition, you know,
asserting that, Hey, you what's going on? Do you need like?
Am I being detained? Am I being arrested? What's happening? Why? No,
(59:26):
you don't have to do all that. What what's happening?
In your taste?
Speaker 4 (59:29):
And that's the thing too, dude, where like all these
court cases, we're really starting to see a test of
like the speed of justice, where if so many of
these things get challenged, then the system is going to
get so clogged up, and then after a certain point
it's almost like impossible to prosecute or to sorry to
defend your position. And if it becomes just this matter
of decorum shifting and all cops under certain instructions from
(59:52):
the people over them, who have people over them, we
have people over them, it just starts to become militarized policing.
I mean, we're already and I'm not I'm sorry, I'm
don't mean the soapbox at all. But I just think
we're not that far off from it literally just being
like kind of like a willy nilly cops can kind
of do whatever they want to you without fear of repercussion.
World had a little silly story here, not silly again
(01:00:13):
gross Hopefully nobody got splashed, and of course we ended
up with with talking about the impending doom of.
Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
The police state.
Speaker 4 (01:00:21):
So hey, that's fun at party is as Ben would say.
So that's that's it for me, man, I'm tapped out.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Well, that does it for this episode of Strange News.
We hope you enjoyed. Maybe that's not the right term.
Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
We're enjoyable.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, we had some fun while just reminiscing on the
old times before things got so crazy and remembering that
it's only got to get crazier. A baby, but we're here,
we're here. Well, thanks so much for listening to this
episode of Strange News. If you're interested in contacting us
to let us know what you think about any and
all of this, you can do that. There are a
(01:00:55):
myriad of ways.
Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
There, sure are, Matt. You can find us the handle
conspiracy Stuff. We exist on Facebook with our Facebook group
here's where it gets crazy on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube,
or we have videos for youtuberus and enjoy on Instagram
and TikTok. However, we're conspiracy stuff. So Matt, I think
there's a phone number too.
Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
There is a phone number. It is one eight three
three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
Please do give us a call, find us on social media,
and if you don't want to do those things, you
can always send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet out afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back, we'd love to send you a random fact.
We would love to send you some news about vicious
squirrel attacks that have sent two victims to the emergency room.
This is not a joke, says the flyer. More than
(01:01:53):
five people have been attacked by a quote a very
mean squirrel over the past few days, and that comes
to us San Raphael, California. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nolan.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are here that makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. With a returning special guest, doctor Vnkman
here if you are tuned in the evening, our Strange
News publishes Welcome to September twenty ninth, the last Strange
(00:53):
News of September twenty twenty five. We're coming back, and
we wanted to open the show with a very old
joke that we love that just came back into the zeitgeist.
As I was saying, quoting Jimmy Kimmel here.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Already joining our commentary already in progress from when we
were rudely interrupted, not us, but the Royal wey.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, it only lasted a weekend and a day.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And it's still not a total re emergence or restitution because,
as we know, the syndication. Several of the syndication networks
that control various outfits regional distribution rights for Jimmy's show
still have refused to air his broadcast. But yeah, he
(01:43):
is officially back. Despite the protestations of Sinclair and Next Star.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I found out guys where you live, you could have
watched it live on ABC where I live. I was
unable to watch it anywhere live.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
I was not allowed to because they Yeah, you would
have to do something crazy like go to the internet.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, on the Internet, I would have to do something
illegal to watch it or to buy I guess Hulu
Live plus Apple.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
A lot of those services do have live TV streaming
almost like like not like a VPM, but like where
you can stream local television from other places.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, but I pay good money for Infinity. I pay
good money for Expinity. You're one of those, Just like
with South Park, right was I was unable to watch
it through the exorbitant fees I pay to a giant
cable company.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And it Yeah, if anybody wants a regional map showing
you the coverage of Sinclair, which goes against trust laws.
By the way, the coverage of Sinclair, Next Star just
right to US conspiracy. iHeartRadio dot com. We can send
that map along your way. This shows I was thinking
of you map because this shows this map shows how
(02:57):
the Atlanta metro area isn't come by those those two behemoths,
but your neck of the woods.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Is, dude. I tuned into the live ABC feed just
online through Exfinity, and I was watching the news. You
guys know how those late night TV shows usually come
on like right after the news ends, and like with SNL,
it'll cut from the news directly into SNL. Well, I
sat there for a while, going what the hell is
(03:27):
going on? And it was just more news and I
had to read to find out, Oh, they just extended
out news coverage for an hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, and it's always good to get the news, but
it's always bad to have comedians be stifled, especially like
Jimmy Kimmel is many things, but controversial is not necessarily one.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
I think we talked about this. I mean, the comment
itself didn't even raise an eyebrow in the general population
in terms of like Google search results for where Jimmy
Kimmel when the actual comment happened. It wasn't until he
was punished that people started searching for it, and I've
seen a lot of folks talking about how they couldn't
even quite figure out which one it was what he said,
(04:12):
because what he said was something to the effect of
the Trump camp is trying to do as much as
they can to prove that the killer wasn't one of
their own, not accusing him of being one of their own,
just saying that they were in a pr frenzy, to
make very clear that it was the opposition rather than
one of their own. And that was apparently the nail
(04:32):
on the coffin, But it wasn't actually him talking smack
about Kirk himself, which is what makes this whole thing
really scary.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
The thing about escalating propaganda war was sometimes unexpectedly your
escalator stops and then you talk trash about it at
the United Nations.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Did you see the thing that allegedly the cameraman ran
up there and turned the escalator off, the cameraman that
was a part of the administration or I hadn't heard
that follow up.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I saw the video like a like a malfunction. What
are he's saying, Who's who's cameraman?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Well, guys, I don't I may be completely off base here,
But I heard I heard some rumors launching around about
how the teleprompter went out, and that was also something
that was done purposefully to make it seem as though
the UN is just out of sorts.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Right right, the idea again of a narrative war, and
I'm quite proud of that dumb escalator joke. So I hope, Dylan,
we can we can keep it the Yeah, the statements themselves,
we were talking about this a little bit on our
off air group chat. The statements themselves made by the
US President are directly in line with earlier statements by
(05:41):
folks like Vladimir Putin, big fan of our show, couldn't
have written it better himself. And so what we're communicating here,
of course, is a win for the late night show format.
It's a win for the freedom of speech the First Amendment.
But it's not a complete win because again, and what
we're describing here is common to so many people across
(06:04):
the United States who might have said, oh, I thought
Kimmel was back, Why can't I see it without giving
another company more money or going ar maybe on it.
So we're with you. We know a lot of stuff
happened in New York. We're recording on September twenty fourth,
so they are probably going to be updates to a
lot of the things we talk about in Tonight's Strange News.
(06:27):
We're going to go all over the place. We've got
some great hidden mysteries, We've got some weird AI updates
that I really love, some public pranking, some scary stuff.
But you know, guys, since we're talking a little bit
about the UN meeting in New York, why don't we
take a break for a word from our sponsors and
start there? Oh oh, do we want to shout out
(06:49):
Fat Bear Week first?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Well, it's fat Bear Week, so okay, coming anyway, let's
see what do you need to know? Fat Bear Week
twenty twenty five starts on September twenty third, which is yesterday.
Actually we record this and that's where fans are able
to vote daily for the fattest brown Bear, of which
there are multiple candidates to choose from, so you can
actually get in on the voting yourself. Just google Fat
(07:13):
Bear Week and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Yeah, we mentioned this last year as well. We're super
into fat Bear Week. I love how we kind of
as a group we pick things that we get obsessed with.
This has nothing to do with anything. But remember we
were talking, I think a little off air about falconry.
Jillan and I are hoping to take a crew out
for a day of falconry, and we have decided that
(07:36):
we're going to start describing things that are not cool
as non falcon no falcon. Are you guys interested?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
So not falcon or non falcon? I'm with it, man,
but yeah, vote for your favorite chunky boy over at
explore dot org slash fat Dash Bear Dash week.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
And with that will pause for a word from our sponsors,
and then we'll return with some breaking news from New
York City. And we have returned. All right, this is
deep water, folks. The inboxes went crazy for us, I think,
(08:13):
as individuals right before the news released. But the United
States Secret Service has announced they dismantled what they call
an imminent telecom or telecommunications threat in the New York
tri state area. Here's what's happening. If we rewind back
to twenty twenty four, we see that there were a
(08:36):
lot of reports of the private homes of would be
politicians or election officials getting swatted. And I think we
all know what being swatted means, but do we want
to describe it for the audience.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
That's when somebody calls in a swat team on you, basically, right.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, makes a false statement too, something that well one.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Will lead to such activity.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yes, yeah, any kind of fake crime report with the
intention of the people calling know that that crime did
not occur. They're attempting to trigger massive law enforcement response.
It's an escalation of the earlier prank of calling non
consensual pizza deliveries to an organization or person's house back
(09:26):
in the days where you didn't have to pay in
advance for the pizza.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Oh yeah, but it's not like calling and saying something
that would show you know, one cruiser to show up
right and knocking to normal like you okay. It's usually
the crime that stated there is something that requires a
swat team.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Right exactly. And this is this can be dangerous. They
were targeting a lot of politicians, right. This has been
ongoing for some time, including people outside of the Tri
state area, folks like Georgia's own Marjorie Taylor Green and
a lot of Republican officials Democratic officials as well. And
(10:05):
right before the big meeting at the United nations that
had so many problems with teleprompters and escalators. The US
Secret Service announced that it had started it had looked
into the swatting stuff, and it had been looking into
it for several months, and they ended up discovering something,
at least per their statements that they did not anticipate,
(10:29):
more than three hundred co located SIM servers and one
thousand SIM cards across multiple sites, a conspiratorial hidden network
that could do much more than carry out anonymous telephonic
threats on a burner. These could make genuine telecom attacks.
The big news here is that if this thing had
(10:53):
not been discovered, it could have relatively easily disabled cell
phone towers, creating denial of service attacks d dos, and
then allowing potential bad faith actors. We're dancing around the terrorists,
right or organized crime to communicate without the usual surveillance.
(11:16):
This is let's go to a statement from the Director
of the Secret Service, Sean Current. Sean said, the potential
for disruption to our country's telecommunications posed by this network
of devices cannot be overstated. The US Secret Services Protective
Mission is all about prevention, all right, fine, and this investigator,
(11:36):
I said all right, Fine, he didn't say. And this
investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that eminent
threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down,
and dismantled. This is scary stuff. This is real Halloween stuff,
or as we're talking about off air mister robots stuff.
The devices that they have found, everything they think is linked.
(11:59):
So far, they're all concentrated within thirty five miles of
the United Nations General Assembly, the big Mickey Mouse club
for world leaders.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Maybe it's part of that. Maybe it's just something benign,
and they're just trying to help all of the people
operating at the UN have their burner phones.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Sure you know who doesn't have a burner phone. Nobody
has to answer that. The Secret Service we learned about
something they had a pretty newly minted section of the
agency called the Advanced Threat Interdiction Unit, or at A
(12:41):
two brute. So they're conducting this investigation in kind of
an Avengers team up with Homeland Security, the DOJ, the
D and I, and of course local law enforcement like
the New York Police Department. The official statement of the
Secret Service, which you can find at Secret Service dot gov.
(13:03):
That's where most of the news is pulling their info
from the primary source here. Continues to hammer home that
this is an ongoing investigation and they are not giving
any details about who may have made this network. They're
not giving any details about how long they think this
(13:25):
network was active, and they're not giving any further detail,
like they haven't named any individual that they're going to
attempt to apprehend or prosecute.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Like, how the hell did they find it?
Speaker 3 (13:37):
You know, well, collection methods are the secret sauce.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Right, It's one of those things I keep mentioning, I'm
rewatching mister Robot, and then things in the news keep
happening that are crazy reminiscent of something that would occur
in that show or did occur in that show. And
this is another one. Some apartment that has all this
stuff in it, that has all of these capabilities, Like
that's just randomly there. But it feels so odd and
(14:02):
so calculated.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Sure, yeah, especially you know, the disturbing part is we
saw a tip of an iceberg. Because it's an ongoing investigation,
the authorities, if they're competent, are not going to release
much more information until they have things five by five
and water tight. If you look at a different like.
(14:25):
We were diving deep into this and we want to
thank all our fellow listeners and old associates who reached
out about it. It may have been an existing underground
cell network meant entirely to provide untraceable services for things
like drugs, you know, human trafficking, arranging hits, which means
(14:47):
it may have been more of an avoidance measure rather
than an offensive measure. However, it had both of those
capabilities per the Secret Service, you know what I mean,
Just like you know, a hammer can hit a nail
and it can hit a skull.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Oh, this would be a devilishly smart thing for an
organized criminal syndicate to pull off. Really, I never would
have thought of that.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Super affordable too, by the way, And I.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Mean, could you argue or it might this enter into
the rhetoric of domestic terrorism and politically motivated terror attacks?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Well, we have apparently begun to define terrorism as anybody
that people in power do not care for.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
So yes, that's what I'm I'm yes, And I was
trying to diplomatically say rhetoric. You know that For that reason,
it does feel like this is the kind of thing
that could get lumped in and used as a further
justification for tightening certain measures against privacy.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And let me amend this because when I'm saying the
equipment involved is affordable, I mean it's affordable for a
large organization. If you're Johnny Blue Jeans and you wake
up one day in Brooklyn and you say, I want
to get real weird with it, it would be a huge,
huge investment for you, and it would take a lot
of time. It would take a lot of hardware, and
would take a lot of technological acumen, a lot of
(16:09):
know how. So our questions still become what is the
end motive qui bono? Who benefits? As we always say,
what is the return on investment for whoever ponied up
the cheddar for this? It's right now with the information
we have in the public. It is a big leap
to assume it is a terror attack. I would say,
(16:30):
it's not a big leap to speculate on the possibility
of a criminal enterprise. It's definitely also not a big
leap to speculate about a surveillance apparatus. Because New York
is full of really weird, really fascinating stuff that people
(16:51):
have just accepted as normal, things get normalized so quickly.
It is weird that there's a gigantic window list building
in Manhattan. Shout out to the long Lines building. That's weird.
Oh yeah, that's weirder than neckties, which are themselves a
very strange thing.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Hey, and if you ever seen mister Robot, that building
makes an appearance as the place that is targeted initially
for attack. Did you talk Ben about how many of
these safe houses they found that had these networks in them?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Not the safe houses, but we did, Matt talk about
the equipment that has been recovered so far. Do you
want to talk about the number of safe houses?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I just found it on the CNN article you linked
to Ben at the bottom. Here it's naming multiple places.
I don't know how to say this Armunk, New York, Greenwich, Connecticut, Queens,
New York, right across the river in New Jersey, which
I think is the one that I heard you mentioned, Ben,
(17:47):
But they were circling New York City.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Right like state area.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, but it's crazy to imagine it if you're honing
in on a target, or if you're operating in an area.
Just the idea that you could be in all of
those different places setting these things up, so it's not
an individual place, right, And that's why in my mind
I was seeing someplace where a bunch of servers were
set up to run these things. But it is that
(18:12):
it's just in all of these different places.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, that's there is photographic evidence released by secret service
and law enforcement, but that information is relatively limited. I
was trying to think of the best analogy for that.
What you're describing the encirclement the telecom siege here. Yeah,
and I would recommend looking at a map of US
(18:38):
military bases encircling the nation of Iran. That is another
very clear thing. And what both of those cases show
us is that there is likely not a single individual
play here. It is almost certainly impossible that one individual
could have conspired in this way. It has to be
(19:01):
a network. The question is what is this group? Is
this foreign state level actor or a foreign state level
actor through are proxy. Is this private criminal industry trying
to just getting bigger and bigger for their breeches. Did
they get to a point with trafficking or drugs or
(19:21):
racketeering when they said, oh, yeah, you know what if
we need to just shut down the cell phones and
vending's like, I gotcha. You know, we can shut down
the cell phones maybe fifteen minutes that's when you make
the call.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah. It also says that they could have sent a
text message, like a secret text message, to every single
cell phone in the United States, within twelve minutes of
someone like taking the actions.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Pull in the switch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's
still is a very limited time time window. The thing
about the infrastructure of the United States, the physical infrastructure
is incredibly vulnerable. We've explored that in the past, but
because the tele infrastructure is a more recent development, it
is a little bit more girded against against intrusion, which
(20:10):
is why you would have that very cinematic limited window
of time. It feels like Hollywood writing when they know
they only have forty five minutes out of an hour
program for commercials. But yeah, they wouldn't be able to
keep it down forever. And this has become red meat
to a lot of a lot of Politico's, a lot
(20:34):
of pundits because it's a scary thing. It's up there
with comparison we made earlier on this show, or Daily Zeitgeist,
where you get the worst good news an organization you
have never heard of, says hey, we've done a decade
long study and we're lowering the amount of rat feces
that will be allowed in Cereal, or they say, hey,
(20:56):
we're an acronym or an initialism that you have ever
heard of? Your tax dollars pay for us, and we have,
after intense research and a lot of hard work from
our officials, we have finally prevented the massive hippo driven
murders in East Saint Louis, Missouri. What yeah, you're like,
(21:19):
oh great, But also how much rat feces has have
I eaten? How many people have died in East Saint
Louis because of these hippos? And they're like, well less
now in both cases fewer.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Good, good, great, great?
Speaker 4 (21:36):
Not nearly enough rat feces.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
If you ask me find me now I can sleep.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It would be it would be for a microcosmic version
of it. Imagine if our one of our friends came
to us and said, guys, it's been you know, we've
been friends for twenty years, and I want to tell
you I'm off the quayludes. I just stop doing quaaludes.
And then we look around and say, oh great, But also, did.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Have did you have like a secret cache of them
that you were holding on too from the seventies.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
We have so many questions, right, this is what these
stories tell us. We're spending some time on this one
because the questions that naturally follow from this story tell
us there is much more to come. Please read the
official statement of the Secret Service over at their website.
(22:29):
You can find some breaking news summaries of this from
regional regional journalistic outfits Fox five New York. They're all
over YouTube. Check that one out. I'd also like to
recommend the AP News article that published just oh yesterday
before we recorded. Shout out to journalist Mike Balsamo. A
(22:51):
massive telecom threat was stopped right as world leaders gathered
at you and headquarters in New York. And that is
where I get to the suspicious timing. It's right before
this happened. It was a months long investigation, right that
started with swatting and then began uncovering these individual nodes
(23:15):
of a network. So with that in mind, I got
to ask you guys about the timing. Does the timing
and the timing of the public announcement does it not
feel a little hinky, as our palchuk would say.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Uh, yeah, I'm trying to think of what it would
be distracting from it.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
It's what wouldn't it be distracting?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
There's just so much going on right now, is that right?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Or what the motivation would be? You know? I mean
these are wheels within wheels, right, hands and hands and
gloves and gloves. This is Matroshkadal for sure. And we
have to be careful not to spin out our if
thens two extravagantly, because you know, there's a world where
we could say, and I know for a fact that
(24:04):
foreign governments have internally been thinking about this. There's a
world where you could say, hey, the United States government
exposed and found this thing to make us feel safer
so that we didn't think about whatever thing they're doing,
you know what I mean, Like the kid who the
kid who lets their parents find a cigarette butt and says, yeah,
(24:26):
I'm smoking, so that the parents don't know they're actually
smoking weed. That kind of thing. It gets very conspiratorial
and paranoid very quickly. But anybody who is acquainted with
this milieu, we'd love to hear from you. There are
so many stories we're not going to have time to
get to right now. We do want to acknowledge that
(24:49):
we know the news about Errol Musk. We are just
going to mention it the answers out there. There's a
phenomenal and phenomenally disturbing New York Times investigation about this.
At the very end of this show will warn you
about squirrels. There's a PSA you need to hear. Someone
did a great con, an unsuccessful con trying to steal Graceland.
(25:14):
All of that more. But for now we're gonna pause
for word from our sponsors, and we'll be back with
more strange news.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
And we've returned, Ben, I was looking more at this
mobile X company that was at the heart of you know,
the story you just talked about that offers those ten
dollars SIM cards that you can buy at Walmart in
other places.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
This is why I'm excited to do an episode on
this one.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Dude. Oh yeah, for sure. I don't want to spoil
it too much, is there they're CEO. Mobile X's CEO
and founder, Peter Adderton just had a really interesting quote
here that I'd just like to read real fast. He says, quote,
our platform is designed to be easy to use and
cost effect qualities that can unfortunately, also attract occasional bad actors.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
The Hammer company CEO says, well, we make good hammers.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's just it's interesting to think about
industries and organizations that produce goods that are known to
be used by bad actors. Right, you know it when
you're making a SIM card that's that cheap that you
know you can go pick up at Walmart and then
(26:29):
switch out hot swap with whichever one you've got in
your phone. That somebody's gonna be using that for probably
not great reasons, unless, of course it's just you know,
someone trying to gain access to a little phone time
and they don't have their Verizon account anymore. They can't
you know, they can't afford the exorbitant prices that are
offered other places.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, there are good use cases too, That's why we
rationalize the stuff. You know what I mean, a hammer
can build a house, right, or a person who needs
access to what is called a burner phone may be
in a situation in the US or abroad where they
don't have the right documentation to get a phone or
a regular phone, even if they can afford to do so.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yep. Well, and we find ourselves, all of us, if
we are American citizens, and actually anybody citizen of any
country that's looking to get news out of the United States,
find ourselves in the situation where we like to know
what's going on. And we have this thing called the
free press that is supposed to be able to have
access to most things, especially things that the government does,
(27:31):
as this is a representative democracy. So when you see
things pieces of news coming out of AP news like
Pentagon steps up media restrictions now requiring approval before reporting
even unclassified information, you start to worry a little bit.
You think that's kind of strange. And guys, it got
(27:53):
me thinking back to that old film Good Morning Vietnam,
and to that scene where Airman's second class a cronauer
whose job it is to disseminate the news to all
of the US servicemen out there operating in Saigon ho
Chiman City, and that's his job report the news. But
before he can report anything to anyone, he has to
(28:15):
get that news approved. And we talked on the show
several times about that film and about that process and
what it means to disseminate official information while you're in
a war zone. You know, We've talked about the rationalizations
for that and maybe the need for some of that
control of information. But when you're talking about unclassified information
(28:37):
that's coming out from the Pentagon, about what the Pentagon
is doing, about what the United States military and government
is doing, it seems like we should know about that again,
because you know, we kind of pay for the whole thing,
and we we supposedly run the whole thing, we the people.
So it's just a bit strange when you hear something
(28:58):
like that coming out of the Pentagon. Wouldn't you say.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, yeah, I would say, well, an unnamed source familiar
with the investigation would say yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Well yeah. But let's say let's say you're working for
Reuters and you put out something like that. Now it
appears that that person won't be allowed in the Pentagon. Again,
it appears that that person won't be allowed any information.
So then they would have to have a mole inside
the Pentagon that leaks information out, that then leaks it out.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And that exists. That strategy exists only for a limited
amount of time, because history teaches us the next inevitable
step is going to be clamping down on those journalists
as such that you could be. I mean, we're not
there yet, but there is a world in which reporting
(29:50):
unapproved news becomes sore well, and you could be jammed
up for treason or anti American activities. And I think
it'll probably start with something like it was something it
was something like a defamation or libel or slander law
(30:11):
that gets broadly emphasized, similar to the UK stuff with
the protesters over at the over at the Epstein thing.
Oh and by the way, did you guys see the statue, oh,
friends and Jeffrey Epstein making the little hard hands on
the plaque.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It's pretty pretty solid.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
That's that's still free speech, but it's also uh, it's
also exacerbating the moves to clamp down on the free press.
Well as the free press.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
Yeah, it's a good thing, for sure, it's in the
Constitution too, But like, what is it so many of
these lawsuits that that the president is putting forth seemed
and now some of the direct instruction that he's giving
to his Department of Justice to like go after dissenters,
go after political adversaries.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Perceived enemies right to the way I would put guys, Yeah,
it's it's that stuff's insane. We talked about access to
the White House, right, and the press credential, the Press
Club and all of the people that are that will
be shifting in and out of that, you know, that group.
And uh, just how that's again a method of controlling
(31:20):
information and you could use it that way if you
wanted to. You're in, You're in, You're in, but none
of you are allowed inside the room.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Oh did I mention this real quick? I? Uh when
when the news broke that they were going to allow
some podcasters in. I applied for press club credentials under
the current administration. They haven't gone back to me, So
I'll go ahead and reaping make sure it didn't go
to their spam box.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Good luck to you, indeed, sir. Uh. Let's gome back
to the story from AP News, written by Morgan Lee,
who was published on September twentieth, twenty twenty five. Here
it goes. The Pentagon says it will require credential journalists
at the military headquarters to sign a pledge to refrain
from reporting information that has not been authorized for release,
including unclassified information. Journalists who don't abide by the policy
(32:08):
risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon under
a seventeen page memo distributed last Friday. As we're recording
this on Wednesday, September twenty fourth, that steps up media
restrictions imposed by the current administration. And then if you
look down to something that was written on x by
Defense Secretary Pete Hegsith, it gives you a sense of
(32:31):
why it's being done. And then we'll talk about this
statement quote, the press does not run the Pentagon, the
people do. The press is no longer allowed to roam
the halls of a secure facility, wear a badge and
follow the rules or go home.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Okay aka, so credentials revoked.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yes, So let's talk about what the press is. The
press is supposed to be the people. It's supposed to
be the people's arm of the government a little bit.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
But a lot of the rhetoric that's getting thrown around
is that they're not serving the interests of the people.
And therefore, like a lot of this FCC stuff, you know,
your license is at risk because you're no longer serving
the needs of your community as dictated by who.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, it does not bode well, gentlemen, does.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Not bode well, gentlefolk. Yes, agreed, This is the issue.
So here's why it's quite clever and quite purposeful for
the Pentagon to release this as a directive rather than
as a law. There is no criminal punishment. The consequence
no criminal punishment explicitly outlined in the memo. The consequence
(33:47):
is the revocation of credentials. And that hexith statement is
itself a bit misleading because it's saying we're a badge,
which you always have to do if you go to
the Pentagon, by the way, now the second largest office
building in the world, but wearing the badge thing. Yes,
you shouldn't be an extraneous person in that kind of
(34:10):
hall of power. But the idea of following the rules
so vaguely put, does not acknowledge that the rules get changed, right,
It does not acknowledge that the rules have just been
massively altered. So it also doesn't acknowledge what the specific
channels of approval would be. There are a lot of
(34:32):
factions in the Pentagon. So one guy may say this
is great, Please tell the American public. Run to the
New York Times, dude, get on the train and get
back to the office and publish this today. And another
person will say, well, I didn't authorize that I don't
want people talking about it. So what happens to the
journalists then?
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Well, and can we also just say that, you know,
deplatforming certain individuals on the right by force is on
the left. You know, when it comes to like Twitter
and some big names losing their Twitter accounts, the President
included that's a slippery slope too. You know, there's absolutely
both sides to blame, and it seems like neither one
(35:16):
of the quote unquote sides are working in the best
interest of free speech.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Right because we're talking about private corporations. We're talking about
the high levels of government that we can argue the
private corporations, especially in social media channels, due to various
types of legislation. Here are the states. They don't have
the same personal liability. They build the hammer, and it's
not on them if someone uses the hammer for evil,
(35:44):
and I'm stay up with this hammer comparison because it's
working surprisingly well. The issue on the other side, to
your point there of a government entity that has protection
of the press enshrined within its is that they, by
their own account, hold an historic responsibility to allow the
(36:07):
news to be reported even if they don't like it. Now,
we know Uncle Sam has gone back and forth on
this over the years. You know, the various intelligence branches
of the US as well as parts of the Defense Department,
do have their fingers in journalistic pies and half for
a long time they write to editorial boards and say, hey,
don't tell a story, or tell it this way. I
(36:29):
think one of the most famous examples for US, of course,
is in the wake of the jfk assassination, when the
FBI reached out to every newspaper of note, even the rags,
and said, here's what happened. This is the official thing.
A lot of people are going to come to you,
maybe journalists, with their own pitches, and you need to
(36:49):
dismiss this specifically as a conspiracy theory. So the US
has always had a level of influence and control over
the press that is not reflected in the constitution.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Bit of a toe the line mentality when it comes
to certain extenuating circumstances that seem to trump those rights
as it exists.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Call them nine to eleven truthers. That'll do it. I
want to leave this section here with a couple more quotes,
so this one from the Society of Professional Journalists. Here
we go. This policy reeks of prior restraint, the most
egregious violation of press freedom under the First Amendment, and
is a dangerous step towards government censorship.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Well, we also know about the concept of catch and kill, right,
which is a form of prior restraint. But that also
is sort of like a quid pro quote thing where
it sometimes there's a strong arm aspect to it. Sometimes
it's like, you do a solid for me, get rid
of the story, and I'll help you out with a
source or something. Didn't mean to interrupt, But that's totally
what my mind goes towards.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. That quote does continue on. You
can find it on the ap article. But here's one
last one for Matt Murray, the executive editor at the
Washington Post. The Constitution protects the right to report on
the activities democratically elected and appointed government officials. Any attempt
to control messaging and curb access by the government is
counter to the First Amendment and against the public interest.
(38:10):
I just have to say I wholeheartedly agree with that,
and I'm just a guy with a journalism minor. You
know it gross stop it, and if and if they
don't stop it, something has to be done. Something must
be done. Something must be done. Reel rebel speaking of
getting something done. Guys, the US Federal Trade Commission and
(38:32):
seven different states are suing Live Nation and ticket Master
for tacitly allowing ticket brokers to scoop up millions of
concert tickets and sell them to fans add a significant markup.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Tacitly, all right, that's I don't understand why they would
do that, Like, it just seems like they're getting They're
not getting the extra money they're not getting. Are they
getting the markup? Are they benefiting from this financially in
some way? It just seems like such a bad pr
move and obviously a bit them in the ass. But
I don't understand the reasoning behind allowing it. Is it
(39:05):
too much infrastructure, it's too much work to combat it,
or what is it?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Matt, You've talked about in the past about this, right,
I think at least one other time when there was
a big lawsuit because of stuff going down, and because
of Ticketmaster's whole secondary market thing.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And our Ticketmaster episode which does deep into this. So
qui bono to your question, Noel, part of the benefit
comes from Ticketmaster's secret value proposition, which is, we will
play the bad guy to make you some more money,
so you can blame us for egregious fees or our
price fixing. And then you can also look with the
(39:46):
secondary market, similar to that network of servers and simcards
and circling the United Nations, there's an industry of scalping.
It's quite organized, right the days of the old guy
who is tickets for extra weed and a fish concert
in the parking lot. Those exist, but they're dwarfed by
(40:06):
what's happening here. So you could say Ticketmaster makes a profit,
makes a benefit by having a bunch of tickets pre scalped, right,
essentially pre scalped because of the way the bots and
the automation could work. And then that means the only
tickets that are available from that remaining pool. Let's say
(40:27):
they can scalps get all the general admission to continue.
Then the ticketmaster guys know that the only things the
average customer can buy are the more expensive ones. Supply
and demand kicks in, and so they raise the prices
of those remaining tickets.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
Especially because the scalpers's almost what like it's like a
false a false demand that benefits them down the road
or very quickly in that they're able to then you know,
use that demand as a reason for raising the prices dynamically,
especially with this new way they've been doing it that's
been so unpopular.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah. Literally, what I'm saying, we've got out throw to
Dylan here Tennessee, Pal Dylan's what's the skinny? What's the scoop? Oh?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Yeah, just reading an article about this, the FTC made
the point that they've been tripled dipping, so they've been
collecting fees when the ticket is first sold. Then they
collect a fee from both the reseller and the buyer
of the resold ticket. So but my question, I guess,
is like, it's not Ticketmaster that controls the secondary market.
This is on stuff like stub Hub or whatever. Ticketmaster
(41:28):
does have a resale market though, That's what I was wondering.
So that's that's got to only be part of the
portfolio here, because surely there would be something in place
that wouldn't allow you to put it back on the
Ticketmaster market jacked up to some absurd number.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Or is that not the case? Well, let's go back
to you, Matt. What has changed with this recent news?
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Nothing really has changed. Just the big old suit, big
old suit. Ticketmaster and Live Nation reaped three point seven
billion of resale fees between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four. Uh.
They control eighty percent of the primary ticketing markets for
major concerts and venues. Just remember that, Remember that eighty percent.
Here's a quote from Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino. He
(42:12):
was talking to the CNBC and Boardroom game Plan conference
and this guy, by the way, CEO of Live Nation,
is worth nine hundred and ninety seven point one million dollars.
This is what he had to say. Music has been
underappreciated in sports. I joke, it's like a badge of
honor to spend seventy grand for a Knick's court side seat,
and they beat me up if we charge eight hundred
(42:32):
dollars for Beyonce.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
No I saw this, yucko, But this.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Is very interesting. The concept the guy you know, officially
making the executive decisions for a company that allows us
to go see our favorite artists, has that much money
and thinks that little of us.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Right. I'd like to also, yeah, how much can a
banana be? Michael ten dollars. I'd like to also shout
out the even larger bands who have decided to issue
this racket or this conspiracy, like Pearl Jam. You know
what I mean. You all have to love Pearl Jam,
But ethically we can say they made a decision on
behalf of their audience, their supporters, and their fans when
(43:13):
they said we're not gonna mess with Ticketmaster, even though
it might mean we are losing some money. So everybody
check out our twenty nineteen episode the Ticketmaster Racket.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
But the problem there too, and the problem with that
whole merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster is like Live
Nation owns all the venues, like all the ones that
are of a certain size that like a certain tier
of band could play. And I actually recently was really
lucky to get a ticket to see Radiohead in Europe
in December in Copenhagen, and they had this whole thing
where it was very fair. You had to sign up
(43:43):
through Radiohead's website to get on a list to maybe
get a code for a concert on this tour that
you said you could attend, and then you maybe get
that code or you don't, and if you do, you
have to show up at a certain time, get in
the queue, use the code, and then you buy the
tickets at face value, And it wasn't agreed priced at all,
but there was a certain fairness to the whole proposition
(44:03):
where if I hadn't gotten one, I wouldn't felt like
the bots were to blame. I would have just felt
like it was a crazy demand. But only certain bands
of that size and demand and like rarity, perhaps even
of performing can can do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Agreed. Hopefully we'll have some live nation ads right after
this because this section is done, We'll be right back
with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
And we've returned with our last segment of strange News.
We already talked about Fat Bear Week. I'm going to
just jump right in because we're running little long today. Guys,
do you think it's possible to get sued for talking
smack about a virtual pop band?
Speaker 3 (44:45):
It was really interested when you brought this story to us, Noel,
because it's it's weird. It's a weird interrogation of the
line between a personality or a corporation.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
That's exactly right, Ben, And this is a story coming
out of South Korea. An article by Coeway from BBC
dot Com says Accord in South Korea has ordered a
social media user to pay five hundred thousand and one
or around three hundred and sixty dollars American for defaming
a K pop boy band whose members are virtual characters.
There's a group called Plave, and I think this is
(45:18):
I think the term is virtual idols. They are a
kpop group that are voice and animated through MOCAP by
real performers who remain anonymous. They are characters, sort of
like Hotsunemiku is another great example of this. There are
no real people behind those, I believe, because that is
vocaloid technology, that is this sort of voice synthesis thing.
(45:38):
But there are individuals behind these characters, but nobody knows
who they are. So last year, the agency behind this
K pop group, virtual k group Plave, file a civil
suit against one social media user for talking smack basically
saying the band sucked and that the people behind the
characters might be ugly. We'll get into the specifics in
(45:59):
a minute. Play debut in twenty twenty three. They're one
of the most successful stories of this whole virtual idol scenario.
They have a million followers on YouTube and they regularly
post music and vlogs there. They have a song called
Way Number four Luv, which was nominated for Best Vocal
Performance and Song of the Year at the twenty twenty
(46:20):
four Mama Awards, and they also won a big prize
at these Soul Music Awards. So essentially what was said
in these comments that were posted online was conjectured that
the people behind the avatars quote could be ugly in
real life and gave off quote typical Korean man vibe energy.
That's according to The Korea Times. In the court case,
(46:42):
the defendant claimed the comments were actually aimed at the characters,
not the people behind them. However, the court didn't go
for this argument at all, saying that if an avatar
was widely recognized to represent someone real, even though completely anonymous,
then attacks on the avatar extended to tacks on the
real person and Ben had to scoot for a thing.
But he made a really good point earlier that this
(47:04):
is this whole story is about narrowing that gap between
what constitutes personhood, you know, and like, what if I
insult a cartoon, does that mean I'm insulting the person
that it was based on? And does that mean they
could accuse me of defamation? I Mean it's wild, Like
if I say something about Batman and there's a guy
who plays Batman in a movie. Is the association of
(47:27):
that character with the cartoon version extend to that person?
Of course, this isn't a different country. But as we've
talked about in the previous segments of today's episode, this
free speech stuff is getting a little dicey over here too.
So they asked for six point five million one each
per member, but the court, citing emotional distress that the
(47:48):
comments may have caused. However, the court granted a fraction
of this one hundred thousand and one per person. But
the precedent is pretty clear. What do you think about
this one, Matt, It's pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
It's just insane. It feels like it feels like life
is becoming too complicated and strange.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
To even like parse it out. Like it's just it's wild.
I don't know. I'm just kind of marble mouthed about
this map because I see what you're pointing to, and
it is such a bigger sense of confusion and information
overload and metainis that I can't even put it into words.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yeah, just that we're having to some you know, evaluating courts,
the kind of things that we're evaluating in courts and
figure out, oh is it okay for this? Is it bad?
For that?
Speaker 4 (48:34):
Is it right?
Speaker 2 (48:35):
For this is it? And we're dealing with stuff that
it so often exists in virtual worlds and and you know,
virtual representations. I just I don't know, it's so strange
to me, man. I think maybe I'm just getting too old.
I'm already too old for it.
Speaker 4 (48:50):
Yeah, there there is that, And of course, like you know,
like my kids generation and I think your kids like
one generation, you're just Gen.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Alpha, right, I don't know the ten.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
I think Gen Alpha then, yeah, for sure, and mine's
Gen Z. And there is of course this, you know,
this generation raised on the Internet. There's absolutely done a
number on certain brain functions, some for good, some for bad.
We've talked about this, like there is a certain creativity
and intuition and media savviness. I think that comes along
with that. But then they're also it does some other
(49:21):
not so great stuff too. But you can say that
about any generation and about any you know, consumption of media.
Though with the exponential improvement and increase of media transmission
and absolute quantity rather than quality of it, it just
I'm with you, man, I don't. I don't want you
to beat yourself up or say that it's about being old.
(49:41):
I think this is this is true for everybody. Nobody
can parse this stuff out, and that's why people start
like making their own little bubbles and fiefdoms because it
is just so overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah that makes sense, that makes sense. So yeah, but
it's weird. We like bifurcate ourselves in that way.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
Our brains, our souls. Are you have you watched Alien Earth, Matt?
Speaker 2 (50:02):
Not yet? Not yet?
Speaker 4 (50:03):
Well, there's some good it's some people are into it,
some people are not. I'm absolutely into it. But it
has some interesting conversation of this bifurcation of soul and
what can happen, you know, when a soul and technology
kind of intersect, and what even is a soul? And
like what does that mean for corruption and the degradation
of quote unquote the soul? You know. I think it's
(50:25):
a very very interesting show, a little bit flawed in places,
but I really like it a lot and I think
it's worth a look. And everything No Holly does is
pretty kick ass. So yeah, we'll leave Allan for now.
Excited to chat more about this with Ben. So the
last story I'm going to bring today since we ran
a little along is uh. We love a good history mystery,
don't we. Yes, we love a good monolith, don't we?
(50:46):
Matt Exactly, I'm too mess From the from the monolith.
The researchers have apparently solved the mystery of some monolists
that I personally wasn't aware of in Armenia, known as
so cool dude. The dragon stone something called zartonk media
which rules and I'm sure that's an Armenian word, but
when I read it on paper it makes me think
(51:06):
of like a space lord or something. Reports that an
international team of researchers have done comprehensive research into Armenia's
dragon stones and believe they have found a link to
an ancient cult. These are known as vishaps, after the
Armenian word for dragon. They stand eighteen feet tall, typically
decorated with animal imagery depicting fish. And we're erected in
(51:30):
high altitude pastures, high places. We know all about those,
right lay lines, high places, et cetera. Archaeologists and I'm reading,
by the way, from Archaeology magazine directly here. This is
a piece. Yes again, I think this is a lyft
from that tzartonk media piece. So I'm just going to
read from here. Archaeologists have been unsure exactly when and
(51:50):
why they were created. Led by Vaje Gurzadayan and Arsen
BOBOI Heiken, Please forgive my pronunciations of yerevn State University,
the team an was one hundred and fifteen known vis
apps vish apps, vis apps you having vish apps, and
determined they were often located near springs, streams, and irrigation systems,
which led them to conclude they must have been associated
(52:11):
with ancient water cults and rituals that celebrated water as
a life sustaining force. They were often clustered at these
high altitudes around sixty two to eighty eight hundred feet
above sea level, and that they were likely placed symbolically
near sources of the snow melt that provide water for
agriculture communities in the valleys below. Yeah, you can read
(52:33):
the scholarly article about this in PJ Heritage Science.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
It doesn't it kind of remind you of the nacerema
thing that we talked about in listener mail.
Speaker 4 (52:42):
Absolutely all, bro, that's the point, right, Like all of
this stuff with enough remove, with enough separation from the
actual culture and what it meant to those people. It
all seems like anthropological craziness, things that you would study.
We just got to kind of crawl out of our
butts and realize that, like we are the modern cavemen
(53:04):
of whatever future, if it exists, is going to look
back on and think how quaint everything we did was.
You know.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Yeah, just talking about water cults, I think that term
in particular is so interesting to me, like to label
something a water cult.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
But in the way it's being used here. Obviously, these
are offerings or these are structures honoring certain gods or
deities that they hoped would bestow favorable conditions right upon
them to allow their crops to flourish, or to allow
them to have drinking water, whatever it might be. That's religion, man, Yeah,
that's all. That's all it is. And it's even funny
(53:40):
that they label them water cults here. It's i think
because maybe they don't have a better name for it,
or it's it's considered maybe more of a pagan sort
of early sort of proto religion that's maybe not directly
tied to one of the big ones that we think
of today. That's why the term cult is so interesting,
because it often just gets thrown around out of laziness.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
Yeah, and I just, you know, I'm so interested in
this kind of stuff because you you just imagine the
significance of someone choosing to not only get this particular
stone or one of these particular stones that are quite
large and heavy, to carve it in such a way
to place it in the ground as some kind of marker,
and then you know, all these years later us trying
(54:20):
to figure out the significance of it. I just wonder
how many things like that that we find are for
some kind of very specific general purpose that has nothing
to do with religion, has nothing to do with anything besides, Hey,
we're marking the levels of snow melt in this general area,
I understand, Or we're marking to where to go so
(54:41):
you can maybe see.
Speaker 4 (54:42):
Maybe there's a functional aspect to it. Dude. That's a
really good point, and it doesn't come up here in
this research, but maybe there's like markers on it to
show what you know, I don't know's I think that's
a really interesting way of looking at It's like ben'z
always talking about how whatever future civilization discovers our civilization
is going to be really curious as to why we
worship the giant penises.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
You know. Yeah, if anything sticks around, yeah.
Speaker 4 (55:05):
Let's not be let's not be too to doom and
gloom about it. I do try to maintain a healthy
sense of optimism just despite conditions. I'll just quickly wrap
up with just a silly one that I thought was
just you know, maybe it's not silly. It's a salt.
But in surprise Arizona, a man is facing multiple charges
(55:26):
after he urinated in a movie theater during a screening
of the latest Demon Slayer movie, which probably slaps The
last one was awesome. I actually remember seeing that with
my kid when they were in their super anime weeb
cosplay phase, and it's the only time I've ever been
to one of those movies where the seats move and
it squirts you with water and stuff, and then I
just say, that is awful.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
Don't do it.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
It's awful. It's trying to like it's like tracking sort
of what's going on on the screen, but it's really
just jerking you around for an hour and forty five minutes,
and it's very patently undosant, So don't do it. I
will never forget that screening. But at least nobody peede
on me. But the seat sprayed me a little bit.
I mean, maybe this experience wasn't that different from mine.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
On the Lonely Island podcast, Seth Myers told the story
a couple of weeks ago about he was going to
see a movie. He's really excited to go see it,
and he went and sat down and the trailers were playing,
the seats were moving, and he just was like, nope, no.
Speaker 4 (56:20):
Yeah, I was with the kid and their friends. I
did not peace out, but boy did I want to.
It was a chore, an absolute chore. There's actually a
video of this though, and my buddy Jonesy over at
the Weird af News podcast he was talking about this story,
so shout out to him to check out his pod
if you're looking for some other interesting weird news stuff
daily content and how like, during the point where this happened,
(56:44):
this guy pissing in the middle of the theater caused
a stir and essentially people like tackled him and there
was like a struggle of some story. It apparently happened
during a really epic battle scene in the movie. So
if you watch the video, it's like this intense cinematic
fight music and you see the silhouettes of this conflict
(57:04):
sort of flashing across the screen. Wow, did I mention
this took place in Surprise, Arizona?
Speaker 2 (57:10):
Surprise? Yeah, real joke. Right.
Speaker 4 (57:13):
He was arrested, this this dude la mille hull uh
and booked on charges of indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, criminal
damage and dad insulted injury refusing to provide a truthful name.
Oh that's that' said. Another thing to unpack in and
of itself, because have you has your algorithm started feeding
you a lot of like body cam videos or like
videos of people sort of like like given sas to
(57:36):
cops because mine is. And a lot of times people
will refuse to give a name, and they will maybe
not give a false name, but they'll refuse to give
a name. So is it only illegal if you give.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
A fake name?
Speaker 4 (57:48):
Because it's definitely not illegal to my understanding to refuse
to identify yourself.
Speaker 2 (57:54):
Oh that's a weird one to unpack, That's what I mean.
That's another one of those where.
Speaker 4 (57:58):
It's all about decorum, about how far do they want
to take it.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
It depends on what you know. The officer you're interacting
with officially is stopping you for and if you are
actually being detained, and whether or not you're aware of that.
There's all these things, and you know, if you're in
the right as a citizen being detained in whatever way,
you usually have to go to court to prove that
you are in the right rather than just being right.
Speaker 4 (58:23):
Oh, of course, And that's of course an expense and
an inconvenience and could might not go your way, not to.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
Mention putting yourself in danger in that moment if you're
being argumentative, which is like crazy, because yeah, man is dangerous.
Speaker 4 (58:37):
It's very interesting that I keep getting fed all these
and maybe it's because I linger on them a lot,
and then and when I do, the algorithm thinks, and
I'm it is entertaining, and I am glad to see
people sticking it to the man. And usually the videos
that I see, you know, do show the officer being
in the wrong and the individual knowing their rights way
more than the officer would hope that one would, so
(58:59):
that there is something empowering about seeing those videos. But
oftentimes the officer will still try to reach through the
window and tase the person in the face.
Speaker 2 (59:06):
You know, yeah, yeah, we you know, we did that
episode recently on Taser International, Right, we talked about a
couple of specific cases where it's a kid, like a
seventeen year old that is just a heart condition, you know,
asserting that, Hey, you what's going on? Do you need like?
Am I being detained? Am I being arrested? What's happening? Why? No,
(59:26):
you don't have to do all that. What what's happening?
In your taste?
Speaker 4 (59:29):
And that's the thing too, dude, where like all these
court cases, we're really starting to see a test of
like the speed of justice, where if so many of
these things get challenged, then the system is going to
get so clogged up, and then after a certain point
it's almost like impossible to prosecute or to sorry to
defend your position. And if it becomes just this matter
of decorum shifting and all cops under certain instructions from
(59:52):
the people over them, who have people over them, we
have people over them, it just starts to become militarized policing.
I mean, we're already and I'm not I'm sorry, I'm
don't mean the soapbox at all. But I just think
we're not that far off from it literally just being
like kind of like a willy nilly cops can kind
of do whatever they want to you without fear of repercussion.
World had a little silly story here, not silly again
(01:00:13):
gross Hopefully nobody got splashed, and of course we ended
up with with talking about the impending doom of.
Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
The police state.
Speaker 4 (01:00:21):
So hey, that's fun at party is as Ben would say.
So that's that's it for me, man, I'm tapped out.
Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Well, that does it for this episode of Strange News.
We hope you enjoyed. Maybe that's not the right term.
Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
We're enjoyable.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, we had some fun while just reminiscing on the
old times before things got so crazy and remembering that
it's only got to get crazier. A baby, but we're here,
we're here. Well, thanks so much for listening to this
episode of Strange News. If you're interested in contacting us
to let us know what you think about any and
all of this, you can do that. There are a
(01:00:55):
myriad of ways.
Speaker 4 (01:00:57):
There, sure are, Matt. You can find us the handle
conspiracy Stuff. We exist on Facebook with our Facebook group
here's where it gets crazy on xfka, Twitter and on YouTube,
or we have videos for youtuberus and enjoy on Instagram
and TikTok. However, we're conspiracy stuff. So Matt, I think
there's a phone number too.
Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
There is a phone number. It is one eight three
three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
Please do give us a call, find us on social media,
and if you don't want to do those things, you
can always send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet out afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back, we'd love to send you a random fact.
We would love to send you some news about vicious
squirrel attacks that have sent two victims to the emergency room.
This is not a joke, says the flyer. More than
(01:01:53):
five people have been attacked by a quote a very
mean squirrel over the past few days, and that comes
to us San Raphael, California. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.