June 5, 2023 • 50 mins
Canadian police stop a bizarre toothpaste heist. Companies aim to automate debt collection with AI. In Italy, a mysterious boat accident leaves multiple intelligence agents dead. All this and more in this week's strange news segment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code
named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here and
that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
It is the top of the week and as we
hurtle headlong into summer, we wanted to do one of
our favorite things on the show, which is to bring
(00:51):
you our fellow conspiracy realist, some strange news. We're going
to get to the bleeding edge of AI, a story
that I think we all strongly feel should be discussed
much more in depth. And speaking of depth, we're going
to examine a strange case of some operatives who met
(01:11):
an untimely end in literal depths. And then you know,
we'll have a palate cleanser along the way.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Don't worry, we're not. We're not going to keep it
all spooky.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
But I think before before we get into that, maybe
just a quick update really briefly, guys, Remember we talked
about our pal, Elon Musk, the famous Salon. Yeah, famous
Emerald guy.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
He's a busy boy.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
He's got a lot of stuff going on, and the
FDA recently gave his one of his companies, the official
green light to implant things in the human brain.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
The new leak is coming.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Wasn't this the technology that had previously been experimented on
with simions or with with primates to pretty inhumane effect.
If I'm not in I believe there was some some
investigations that showed that they were not doing right by
our primate cohorts.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So the extent
of the trial is not known yet Neurolink. Their public
statements are are pretty short. You know, they're clearly dictated
by their legal department, and all we know is they
are not they're not taking participants for this clinical trial
(02:27):
just yet. We will examine this maybe in a future episode.
But what you need to know, the positive thing, which
is very real, is that the implant is primarily meant
to help people with severe paralysis regain movement and quality
of life through controlling external technologies using the power of thought,
(02:49):
So it could could could be really good.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Maybe just leave it there. It's a nice rite, isn't
it funny? How like early on, you know, in Elon
Musk coverage, he was sort of like cast as this
like real life Tony Stark, you know, the Iron Man,
you know, tech billionaire from comics fame. And now he's
a bit more of a rational ghoul type figure. You know,
he's become kind of a bit more of like a
super villain. Maybe this will help the you swing the
(03:16):
pendulum back a little more in the other direction. Or
it could be like they're abducting unhoused people from the
streets and experimenting on their brains, or it's ad supported.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Did you guys hear about the fMRI study with blood
flow and like not chat bought technology, but you know,
very similar technology, these aid learning servers to watch the
blood flow in somebody's brain while they're in an fMRI
machine to predict what their thoughts are. So this experiment
(03:47):
would be like showing them a silent movie while they're
in that machine, and then this thing is like trying
to predict what their thoughts are while they're inside the machine.
And watching something on televis or watching a silent movie.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
It's already happening. It's so nuts. I don't know if
you'd listen to Ted Talk Daily, great podcast based on
Ted Talks, which can be a little bit Pollyanna. You know,
the future is not always going to be great. But
they recently had a wonderful episode about privacy of thought
and how that's becoming increasingly endangered by things like the
(04:24):
technology we're talking about again. You know, we have a
whole show to get to. We just wanted to let
everybody know we're aware of that one the same way
that we're aware of Cop City here in Atlanta. Those
episodes are on the way, but this really right now
for our purposes. The neurlink stuff and what you pointed out,
Matt about using AI to monitor brain activity, I think
(04:46):
that takes us really smoothly into our first story, because
AI is everybody's worried about writing and visual arts, as
we should be, right, But there's much more to the story. No,
you found you found something that is just can.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I say that it's just hellish?
Speaker 4 (05:04):
This could be hellish.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
It's hellish and unsurprising because I think we're at the
stage now where this tech is getting so exponentially good,
it's improving, it's such an insane rate that we're really
just now starting to see the stories kind of trickle
out as to what the kind of early game uses
are going to be for this technology. And like, while
(05:26):
obviously things like writing and art are important, there are
people whose jobs revolve around those things, there are much
more dystopian depths that this technology can stoop to. Let's
just say, let's talk about debt collection. Okay, debt collection
is a little bit of background. If anyone's ever been
(05:48):
unlucky enough to get a call where it says this
call is being recorded, this is an attempt to collect
a debt. YadA, YadA, YadA. Usually get a little pre
recorded voice like that, and then it bumps you to
a person or the person is reading from a script.
And that's a whole industry in and of itself. Things
like support centers for call centers for tech support and
(06:09):
all that stuff, and call centers in general that do
all kinds of things like collecting debts or reaching out
about utilities and things like that. But then if you
get reported for failure to pay, you are getting a
debt collected from you. You are an attempt to collect
that debt, and that can reflect on your credit and
folks will go to some lengths to talk you out
(06:29):
of your money. And I mean, of course, if you
are in debt, you do owe that money. You did
sign up for that. But we also know there are
lots of predatory lending practices that are pretty gross that
target folks that are less well off. Now we're seeing
a lot of things like these pay later kind of
services that PayPal offers, and it's like another little thing
(06:52):
where even with a relatively meager credit score, you can
get this kind of like you get the thing now
and you pay and install. The problem with some of
those services is that they actually don't build credit for you.
I found that out a little bit later in a
different time in my life, where like, for example, PayPal
has a credit part of its service, but for whatever reason,
(07:15):
that's not the same as having a loan or having
a credit card. It does not actually build credit for you,
So it's really not benefiting you in the long term
in terms of your financial wellness. You know, and just
have the ability to for example, get a mortgage later
down the line or whatever it might be so now
there is a new development in debt collection that involves
(07:37):
of course chat GPT or GPT four. There are services
now that are popping up out of the one in
particular that this Vice article by Corn Fife Fai fe
Fi fe Fife sounds good is talking about a company
based in New York and Bangalore called skit dot Ai,
(07:58):
which is described as being a digital voice agent. So
it's essentially what the article describes as the next generation
of the robocall as we know. Combining things like chat
GPT with voice let's say, synthesis technology, you could theoretically
(08:19):
and in actuality speak to a robot that can then
take cues from you that aren't just playing back another clip.
You know, it's actually engaging with you. So using that
text to speech ability and this AI chatbot technology, you
could have a dynamic responsive This is from the article
(08:39):
Conversation with this technology, And of course the goal here
is to get rid of humans, get rid of human jobs.
These people no longer are required because they can have
a can scale this technology in an alarming way. You
can have a technology doing the job of hundreds, if
(09:01):
not thousands of employees. Because it's all about server space.
It's all about processing capacity. You know, that stuff is
relatively easy to upgrade and to keep in these server farms,
and you don't have to pay it once you buy it.
It's sort of a one and done thing. You just
have to maintain it. So the idea is to employ
this technology in reaching out to individuals explaining to them
(09:24):
that they are in big trouble and they need to
pay up or they're gonna you know, they are going
to be repercussions rather than sticking to a script, and
an individual you know, would would be looking at these
things can be a lot more nimble and kind of
you know, obviously they've got their guard rails. You know,
that would probably be dictated by legal language and you
(09:46):
know as far as what the company is able to
communicate to an individual and what they are not. But
the point is using AI for debt collection certainly increases
the capacity for these companies to go out after individuals.
As we know, during the pandemic, there was quite a
boom in online shopping that was sort of boosted by
(10:10):
that stuff I was just talking about earlier, these buy now,
pay later models, you know, things like Sezel, which just
sounds like a made up thing in afy movie, or
like a Silicon Valley name for a company quad pay,
something called Klarna that I'm also not aware of that
also sounds made up, and companies that were more aware of,
like PayPal, are using. So essentially what this amounts to
(10:32):
is a increasing amount of debt that individuals are racking
up have racked up, oftentimes with exorbitant interest rates that
are associated with them, and of course, due to certain
after effects of the pandemic, many people have lost their jobs.
So now there's more money to be made than ever
(10:53):
in collecting these debts in the form of really applying
the pressure, kind of mafia style, like I'd be a
shame of something happened to this cup here pushing off
the table. So this is again not surprising. It's just
another use of this technology that maybe wouldn't have been
instantly apparent, but it is absolutely happening. So in the
(11:15):
article they quote a statement from the company skit dot
Ai that describes the technology as follows. They credit it
with quote alleviating the negative feelings customers might experience with
a human during an uncomfortable process, because the writer points
out it's obviously, of course a lot more comfortable to
(11:37):
negotiate with the robot. What do you guys think about that?
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It's obviously more comfortable just from.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
A Vice article, right, so yes, yeah, so there's always
an implied base level of sarcasm maybe, but it's maybe
a case by case basis too.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
This makes me.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Think, you know, it's weird that we haven't done an
episode on corruption in the deck collection industry in general
like this, this feels like it is good for the
bottom line of these companies, right as you articulated, So well,
there no, but it also feels like they're attempting maybe
(12:17):
and maybe they're sincere about it, but they're attempting to
ascribe benefits to this kind of automation that are not
the real benefit, which is one hundred percent saving money
reducing the costs associated with having a human staff. And also,
I guess we should point out here in the US
it may work differently in your neck of the global woods,
(12:40):
but you have certain non negotiable rights in a debt
collection situation, and they're not going to They're not going
to be the ones to.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Tell you about those.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
So don't let yourself be intimidated into something that's possibly illegal.
I don't like this is okay? This is how is
this not weaponnising that immensely irritating robo menu. You have
to go through whatever you call a company now, right,
and you have to use voice commands, right. They're increasingly
(13:13):
phased out touch tone because they want your vocal data whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Sorry, that's no, no, that's its own thing. And that's true.
And it has also become increasingly difficult, and they make
it so difficult by wrapping you up in this web
of menus that you have to listen through all of
the options before you get to the one. By the
time you get to it, you might have even not
remembered where you are in the list. Then you end
up inevitably back on the home menu. Then you have
to listen to the whole thing again. They're relying on
(13:38):
it to be so frustrating that you just kind of
give up. And I guess this, you know. This whole
notion of the friendly robot, I think is something that
we have seen in science fiction from the past, the
idea of this friendly robot that is a helper robot
that's there to serve you and make your experience nice.
But also this is an inherently combative situation, right that
(14:02):
we're describing here. There is nothing particularly friendly about someone
coming at you saying you owe us money and if
you don't pay us, we're gonna wreck you, you know, in
no uncertain terms. And again to your point, then these
guard rails certainly won't allow the machine to give you
any real answers that are helpful, you know, that's up
(14:22):
to you to determine, you know, And it does beg
the question can a human in this situation either because
these humans that are talking to you they're being recorded too,
they also have guardrails, So is it really that different?
Is my question? And I think the main beef that
I think all three of us have here is that
(14:45):
these are jobs that people depend on. These are sort
of entry level jobs that many people who maybe have
situations where they need to be able to work remotely
would benefit from, and this is going to wipe those
jobs off the map. That's what, aside from any ethical
questions about just machine learning and AI in general, just
the technology itself and it's interaction with humans, it's about
(15:08):
eliminating jobs. And as we know, with the labyrinthine menus
that you're faced with and the inability of these folks,
you know, to actually give you much useful information. This
is the perfect job to replace with AI because these
humans that are on there are kind of hindered anyway.
They're sort of neutered in such a way where they
(15:29):
can't really speak to you as a human. They're basically
human robots anyway.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, it is interesting how that functions. It is weird
that this is one of those maybe low level entry positions.
Right when you're looking for a job, you just need
to go out there and get a job. This is
one of those position mission based, yes, and it's often
just an open job that you could go in phil
if you needed to write I need money, I need
a job. This is one of the things you could do.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
We're so a job that's off an outsourced to other
countries as we do, you know.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Very complex because I think, just to add to what
you're saying, they're met I think a lot of people
don't understand that many debt collection outfits, you know, they
are hired guns. They're already the contractors. They bought the
debt from someone else at a discount, which is why
things are often negotiable because there's a margin, there's a
(16:24):
window and they can go down to a certain threshold
and still make money, still make good on whatever their
deal was. It's just it's very I understand it. And
you know, we don't want to knock people who are
making a living because they have to. But obviously this
can be a nasty, nasty business, and I think AI
would be able to I don't know, man, I don't
(16:46):
know if we're going in the same way with this,
but I think AI will be even more efficient at
squeezing the blood from the stone warm well.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
I thought it was funny that you mentioned the bleeding
edge of AI, that that phrase immediately popped into my head.
It's the squeezing blood from the snow edge of AI.
And to your point, Bentos read a little blurb from
the article here. From the Vice article, some of the
companies that stand to benefit most from AI integration are
those that purely exist to collect debt. These companies, known
as debt buyers, purchase quote distressed debt from other creditors
(17:17):
at steep discounts, usually pennies on the dollar, then try
as hard as they can to get debtors to repay
in full. They don't issue loans or provide any kind
of service that clients might owe them for. It's a
business model built on profiting from people who fell behind
on payments to someone else. They also rely heavily on
the civil court system, which some experts believe will soon
(17:37):
be flooded by AI generated debt lawsuits.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Oh, I just now got it, because a debt collection
agency cannot, at least in the US, a debt collection
agency cannot have someone arrested.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
For failure to pay off that debt. Yet, how think
debtor's prison exists anymore? Right? Currently? Yeah? Yeah? Currently?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
But the way people can get arrested is if they're
not complying with a court order. So taking it through
the court's automating litigation, I think another a guy just
got in trouble for using chat GPT to write a
case brief.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Bat. I don't know, Matt. I feel like the next step, though,
right is automating low level par legal jobs and like
writing these kinds of that's the next step, you know,
once it gets approval and they realize, okay, this is
accurate enough, it's going to inevitably be used for that.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I feel like I just got so contankerous that Matt,
I might you were making a great point, and I
stepped in and I was like, yeah, and also screw
these guys, and then just went kind of Dennis Miller,
my bad.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
No, you're fine. I'm correct me if I'm wrong in
my thinking here, guys. But it feels like it's eliminating
a lot of the jobs that either a you get
early on as a kid. I'm thinking fast food jobs
that are quickly have already been replaced for the most part,
But like all the other parts of fast food, I
think are gonna go things like a telemarketer or somebody
(19:07):
who is doing debt collection. You go into a call center,
you work every day. These are not only the jobs
that young people would get as a starting out position.
There are also the jobs that maybe somebody who's spent
some time in prison and is getting out and it
needs a new job to get started again, right.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Or elderly folks that don't have a retirement plan, you know,
just to keep them afloat.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It feels like we're cutting out a lot of that stuff.
I'm worried that we're going to And when you're talking
about pair of leegals, you're talking about cutting out that
first job out of college, right, if you're going into law,
you may be going in as an apprentice or something
becoming a pair of legal even like just trying to
get in at that lower level. It feels like if
we eliminate all that, then you're either you're either not
(19:52):
a lawyer or you're a full fledged lawyer now, or
you're you know, you're not a blacksmith you've never touched metal,
or oh nope, you're the black smith.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Apprenticeship stuff has been phased out for a long time.
It feels like it just doesn't exist anymore, you know.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
It's the what what we're looking at is a real
time depiction of something, or a real time harbinger of
something we predicted a while ago, which is, yes, a
utopian post work economy may exist someday.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
To work right to that.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Between now and then, what it will inevitably happen along
that path is not the post work economy, but the
post worker economy. You'll still need to have a job
to exist. You just won't be able to have a job.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
If they wanted to do it right, they would be
you know, doing some kind of let's just say it,
socialist kind of programs. Like a universal basic income or
something they would be, you know, developing these things in parallel,
but instead, as the United States is kind of notorious
for doing, we're just taking the shiny new object and
shoving it right out of the marketplace without preparing for
(20:59):
what having it will inevitably reek. I don't know, man,
it just doesn't feel right because to your point, Matt,
like those jobs are going to be eliminated, and there
are folks that don't have access to good education and
that live in underserved areas and are part of underserved
demographics that are no longer going to have a leg
to stand on. And without something like a universal basic
(21:22):
income or a more robust welfare system, this stuff is
going to really do some damage. A lot of nods.
I think we're all on the same page. Let's take
a pause after this depressing conclusion to this story, and
we'll be back with another piece of strange news.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
And we have returned. We explored something nigh inevitable. Like
we said, the Bleeding Edge, we wanted to give you
a bit of a palate cleanser, a fun conspiracy. Who
doesn't love a heist? We hope that you love heist
as much as the four of US fellow conspiracy realists.
(22:05):
This is a lighthearted one. We hope it gives you
a chuckle, even though I think I'm like legally required
to say you shouldn't pull heist. Here's what happened. This
is this is an earlier story. It didn't get to
the US for a little while. In Canada, police stumbled
(22:25):
upon a ridiculous crime. Shout out to our Pure podcast.
Ridiculous crime. Somebody stole thousands and thousands of dollars worth
of toothpaste. They stole, Yeah, they stole at least two
one hundred dollars US worth of toothpaste, and the North
(22:48):
Vancouver Royal Canadian Mounted Police diplomatically described this as a
failed attempt at a clean getaway. This was at a
superstore and officers just happened to be in the area,
like in the parking lot, and they saw this guy
running out. Picture whatever action movie heist film score you want,
(23:13):
think of heat if you want.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, mission impossible.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Perhaps yeah he's got, he's got, or this person has
Duffel bags and then like a child's red plastic wagon.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I love the image on the Yeah, go to the
DH News article.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yeah, that's Daily Hive dot com. That's one of the
articles that has a picture of this, and we'll get
to Twitter in a second. Uh, Like I say, a
child's red wagon full of what looks to me was
at censidine toothpaste. Yeah, sensidine toothpaste. It's a classic, classy paste.
So learned about this because it turns out that the
(23:50):
North Vancouver RCMP Royal Canadian Mounted Police they have a
Twitter and they posted the following took a boot being
in the right place at the right time. On Friday,
officers were near superstore for an unrelated matter when they
observed a man running out of the emergency exit. Followed
by the staff, officers jumped into action. They arrested him
(24:12):
and returned two dollars worth of toothpaste.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Thank you, noe it in it?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Well, doc, could you put in to day dot?
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Could you put in something like the law and perfect
just not close enough to get a sued. So there
were a lot of questions here. First off, we know
that some consumer products are stolen more often than others. Sadly, uh,
hygienic products may get stolen more often, right like people
(24:47):
may steal sanitary pads or diapers, out of necessity. We
know that during the pandemic, people were stealing sanitizer, they
were stealing toilet paper because they could sell it pretty easily.
But toothpaste, though, Like, why why would you steal so
much toothpaste?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Is this a rhetorical question or is yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:07):
No, I'm not styling it, and I'm asking you guys, like,
in what world would it occur to you?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Where?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
What series of events would lead you to a moment
in your life where you said the choice is clear?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Remember when we we did it. We did an episode
we talked about a story where there was a lot
of spam being stolen in Hawaii, to the point where
they had to, you know, put the spam behind like
those glass cases with the key, so like the employee
of the Quickie mart has to grab the spam for you.
I don't think this is the same thing. I don't
(25:42):
think toothpaste exists at a higher premium or street value
in Canada than another parts of the world. But maybe
I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I'll tell you exactly why you steal this much sensorine toothpaste.
Come on, you guys, you know this why you're on
the inside. Your sales rep for one of the other
big toothpaste guys. You gotta get that stuff off the shelf.
For some reason, everyone wants censidine right now. We gotta
curve this just.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
And now now it's it's wrecking the public image too, right,
sensidid that's the number one toothpaste of criminals.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Right, So yeah, night.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Out of ten failed robbers recommend sensidine and they all
get caught.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
How crazy would that be though? If somebody walks in
your apartment or whatever, and you know they just You've
got an entire closet of toothpaste, and you know, anytime
it's time to refill, you get to have that moment
of like check this out.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
That's my question though, Is there a Is there some
sort of toothpaste shortage in Canada that we're not aware of?
Is the street price of tooth is? Is there a
black market for toothpaste? It just seems like that's such
an easy thing to get. No one would ever need
to buy it on the black market, So I just
don't understand what the endgame is here.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
So yes, I I think this is a really good point.
These are several good points you're making, because as stute listeners,
you may have noticed that I stumbled a little bit
in the beginning of this story. I did some digging.
I thought maybe this was just like a one off haha,
you know, Florida Man level kind of tail that would
(27:19):
lead us to some interesting questions. But upon just just
a little bit of digging around, I found that this
is not the first case of a toothpaste heist this year. Really,
this appears, yep, it appears that on March March seventh,
twenty twenty three, also in Canada, someone stole a truck
(27:44):
containing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of toothpaste.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Why do we talk about that story? That's obviously the
superior hecet this. It was as small statas here, I'd
just say.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Right right, it was earlier, They've got some This was
in Wellington County, and as of March police were still
looking for someone could help them crack the case on
this toothpaste heist. They said that the officers responded to
a theft call at what they're calling a storage lot,
(28:15):
So not clear on whether that's like a public storage area.
That's what I think it is. We have a lot
of those here in the US, and we all know
what we mean when we say public storage area, right,
what are the names of those places you're moving and
you put them.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
In unit storage unit, storage unit.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
The public storage cube, smart place okay, Yeah, And a
lot of times when people die and they've been like
leasing those for a long time, then there those get
everything in there get auctioned off. That was actually the
subject of one of those Guyelmo del Toro. Yeah, that's right, yeah, episodes. Yeh,
Cabinet of Curiosity. Yes, correct.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
There's also a great story in Radio Rental this season
about that.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Check it out, that's right, Yeah, made by our goods
over at Tenderfoot. You know, it's a brain child of
our buddy Pain Lindsey. So do check it out, and
maybe Pain could help us out on the case of
the missing toothpaste.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
All aboard the Pain brain train.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Yes, police say that a white Volvo semi truck was
stolen from the lot and it had a fifty three
foot trailer that was just filled to the brim with toothpaste.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I would argue coincidence. I would argue it was a
theft of opportunity. They didn't know what was in it.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Yeah, they just said, okay, it's a trailer and it
sounds like it sounds like there's something in there, so
hopefully it's PS five.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
But for them to have like Ford thought, like prior
knowledge of the contents that they lined it up, so
they got like you know what I mean, Like remember
that one where there was the big jewel heist from
like it was some sort of trailer like that that was,
you know, the people went inside a gas arrest area
to get a snack and have a shower or something,
and the people were waiting because they knew it was
(30:01):
coming from this gem show. How do you know that
the truck you can't see through is full of toothpaste?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Yeah, you would have to have an indecide toothpaste person,
or it would be, like you said, a crime of opportunity.
The way to learn whether it's a crime of opportunity
is to get a hold of the truck and see
how it was started. You know it was hot wired.
Then maybe somebody just happened by, they busted a window
and so on.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
This still doesn't answer our question as to why toothpaste
what doesn't seem like a particularly valuable commodity? Why are
scarce enough commodity?
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Why are there multiple instances of toothpaste. Heyst because the
very first, the most recent guy was definitely doing it
on purpose and it had to look kind of weird
in the store because he had a child's wagon dragging
behind him, you know, in a place that does have
shopping carts.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Look, I know. I think Canadians like the show Trailer
Park Boys. There's a great episode where they do a
meat heist. They steal a bunch of meat, they get
this lead. You know, that shows all about Ricky and
Julian and their crew, and they are a bunch of
kind of low life dumb dums that do dumb heist
Like there's a whole thing I think it's in the
movie where they're just robbing like parking meters because who's
(31:15):
gonna get them for that? It's theft under a thousand.
There's never gonna be more than a thousand dollars in
a parking meter. So there's a whole episode where they're
robbing supermarkets of meat. This is the kind of heist
that Ricky and crew would do, but it usually has
to be some crime of opportunity with those guys where
either it's gonna not be a felony because it's under
(31:36):
a thousand, this is over a thousand, this is a
two thousand plus. This would definitely be a felony because
they're always talking about theft under a thousand. That's not
gonna get them sent to prison if they do theft
under a thousand. But this screams trailer park boys, Canadian
conspiracy realists out there. Let us know. Is there something
we're missing about toothpaste in Canada? Why'd you do it? Yeah?
(32:00):
Let us know.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
I mean I always try to say this. We take
pains to respect anonymity when possible. We just feel like
there's a very interesting story here. And speaking of interest,
in the interest of full disclosure of folks, we are
in regular contact with former bank robbers, so like we
(32:21):
have talked with I am yeah, we have talked to
folks who have been involved in strange situations. So if
you were the person who was responsible for some of
these toruthpaste heist and you have a reason, we want
to hear it. If you are not the person and
you have a theory about this that we're missing out on,
(32:41):
we would love to hear from you. You can call
us at one eight three three std WYTK. You can
email us. We read every email we get conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com. And you know, if if you'd rather
speak with the police, then speak with us. The local
police want us to tell you that you can call
(33:02):
crime Stoppers at one eight hundred two two two eight
four seven seven. That's one eight hundred to two two
tips to help shed some light on the toothpaste heist.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Why did they do it? What is the deal?
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Maple syrup? I get it was a lot of maple
syrup to move parmesan. I get that's a very high profit.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Margin to the pasta heist in Detroit or not, I'm sorry,
in New Jersey. Yeah, we talked about that, but that
was that was one that happened recently.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Yeah, there was this huge pasta heist. The pasta was
found thrown out the woods like a dead body pasta
spoiled pasta. As a matter of fact, you know what, Also,
we're gonna keep this one short. Before you go to
an ad break, tell us about the weirdest heist you
have ever heard of, espec Like, the weirder the better,
(33:56):
the kind of heist where you have to wonder why
this person cared enough to steal this thing? Can't wait
for your thoughts. In the meantime, we're going to take
a break for a word from our sponsor, and we'll
be back with one more piece of much more serious,
strange news.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And we've returned, guys, and we're gonna get so serious
right now. Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Serious?
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Okay, I'm just gonna start.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Wait and not ready, Oh okay, Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Okay, I'm going to start this way, guys, just kind
of beginning a story to get to a place and
then let's talk. Okay, here we go. On Sunday, May
twenty eighth, a fifty two and a half foot tourist
boat was carrying over twenty people on Lake Maggiore m
a g g Iore near Lissanza in the Lombardi region
(34:49):
of Italy okay So lake in Italy. According to official sources,
the boat capsized and sank due to a powerful quote whirlwind.
This is a a very severe and sudden storm similar
to what we may have heard referred to as a
water bomb that affected a bunch of the region. Just
think a whole bunch of water, strong winds, all of
(35:11):
a sudden. That's the storm that capsized and sank this boat.
Most of the passengers on the craft were able to
escape and swim to safety, either to shore or to
another vessel that came to their aid. Unfortunately, four individuals
who were riding on this boat or who were in
this boat lost their lives. And that's why we're talking
(35:33):
about this story today. Here are the people Anya Boshkhova,
who is the spouse of the owner of the boat,
who just so happens to be Russian, Claudio Alonzi who's
sixty two years old, and Tiziana Barnobi, who's fifty three
years old. These are two people who were employed by
(35:54):
the Italian intelligence agencies, right, they worked for Italian intelligence.
And the fourth person a so far, at least as
I have seen, an unnamed fifty year old retired member
of Masade or the Israeli security forces. Okay, guys, that's
why we're talking about this. Ultimately, it's a story about
(36:16):
a terrible storm and a ship that sank and some
people died. But this is a strange group of characters, right,
don't you think.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
It would seem so? My gosh? Have you guys seen
the film Triangle of Sadness? Yes, it's excellent and don't
want to get too off course, but it's a collection
of very wealthy people on a yacht and things happen.
But it's a ragtag crew of megawealthy individuals that get
into hijinks on a yacht.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Well, it reminds me a bit of White Lotus Season two.
That's like what I was thinking about immediately.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, and this film Triangle of Sadness is basically White
Lotus Season two on a yacht.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Okay, two things immediately. First, the boring bureaucratic stuff. The
stuff that we do have to say is that there is,
for my understanding, there's no proof that they were on
some active shenanigans right as there there's nothing publicly out
about that.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
How would we get proof and who would give that?
You know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Two other fantastic questions, Matt. And then the second thing,
which is a little bit more interesting maybe, is for
anyone who wants to play along at home, I know
that we always do this. If you pull up this
lake on your your world spy of choice, Google Earth
is a great win for this, then you'll see that
(37:42):
this lake is not only the second largest in Italy,
but it is a navigable water border with Switzerland, which
I also find interesting because that's.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
To hide your money, right well.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Yeah, and also when countries have a water border like that,
like a lake or a river, things tend to the
likelihood for Shenanigan is a little is always going to
be a little bit higher because it's a little bit Yeah,
it's a little bit easier to slip some cards up
your sleeve figuratively speaking. But like also, I'm going to
(38:21):
say it, I think there are certain intelligence agencies where
you never really retire. And I suspect that. I mean,
obviously the company here in the in the States, no
one ever really retires from that, And no one ever
really retires from Massade. They may they may have a
different job, they may not be going into that career
every single day.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
The biology remains, right well, the training too, Yeah, And
and the fact that if you are in those things
for the rest of your life, whether or not anybody
but you knows it, you have.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
To check with someone before you do certain stuff. That's
why every time a former intelligence agent writes a tell
all book, if they're still living in the same country,
then they got the green light to write it. That's
the only way it happens.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
And then just a couple of things get edited changed,
you know, just to make sure to protect, you know,
protect the innocent. Sorry, but.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
I'm seeing that because we know, at least from my
understanding of some of the articles you shared, Matt, Yes,
we know that Israel has already naturally been a little
bit close to the chest about the massad agent.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Right, yeah, let's jump to AP News. They posted an
article today. This is the title, Israel's massad says former
agent was among four people who died when boats sank
in Italy and if you jump down just a little bit,
it says this quote. The Israeli Prime Minister's office issued
a statement on behalf of the massade, saying the unnamed
agents remain had been returned to Israel for burial. The
(40:02):
Foreign Ministry had previously confirmed that a retiree from the
Israeli security forces was killed, but didn't provide a name
or age, or give details on his professional background. Even
it goes as far you guys. Prime Minister Benjamin Nett
and Yahoo's office said that because of the agent's work
in the agency, further details could not be disclosed, and
(40:22):
extended condolences to his family, and it continues on here, guys.
This is the last bit before I get out of
this article. Italian police released no information on the identities
or professions of the nineteen survivors, the people who made
it off the boat, but local news reports said they
included other members of the Italian and Israeli intelligence services,
(40:44):
suggesting the outing may have been part of a quote
work meeting.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Which they I mean definitely still happened. That's why those
institutions exist as.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
A team building thing, like a friendly out on the
lake here, and.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
There was a birthday party. There was a birthday party
on the confirmed, but we don't know if it was
had anything to do with any of the intelligence service members.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Also, even if it's not officially that kind of thing,
whenever people in the same industry or genre of profession
hang out, they inevitably, to whatever extent they are allowed,
they will talk shop. You know, So like this is okay.
We got to say this though. The excellent Haretz article
(41:29):
you linked to shows us that a judge was able
to lay down the law and squeeze a little bit
more info out of the Israeli government. So this article
by Yasi Melman describes how a judge in Italy allowed
the body of this unfortunately deceased retired MASSAD agent to
(41:53):
be returned to Israel. And it was only after they
got to their hobby corpus state, after they had the body,
that Massad allowed the official disclosure of this person's name
and as Shimoni and eras Shimoni. The name had already
been reported in the Italian media, and we see this
(42:15):
all the time in multiple countries.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Yeah, I haven't actually seen that name. How do you
spell the first name?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Er easy, last name Shimoni s h I m ni.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
But here's the trick.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Everybody knows it's not his real name. Oh well, it's
sop from ASAD. It's standard operating procedure.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
So that's the.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Other thing I noticed. Been according to the AP News article,
all of the because they're in Italy, right, all of
the Israeli citizens were flown by private plane back to
Israel to Tel Aviv. Like, what kind of service is that? Nice? Hmm?
Speaker 4 (42:55):
It's not the usual government worker budget for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
That's you know. I don't know too.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
Much about how the sausage is made in the Middle
East there, but I can say that in the US
government agents don't usually get flowed up private planes as
a day to day thing.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
I mean, I know, it was an emergency. It was
a terrible tragedy. It's an awful situation. I just it
reads to me like they needed to get them back,
not to safety, but maybe out of the public eye
as quickly as they could.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
There's an interesting line in the article talking about how
folks that did survive, the intelligence personnel that did survive,
were quick to go to their hotels and collect their belongings. Yeah,
and equipment is the word that was thrown out there too.
I just wanted to add there's no weirdness around the
narrative of that this was in fact caused by inclement weather,
(43:49):
Like that part we're all accepting or not.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Well, that's at least according to what I read out
of is it Ry. I think that's how you say it,
r Ai. It's a translated Italian article that like that
is exactly what happened, at least according to the official sources.
Even I think the what do they call him, the
person who runs the entire region there in Italy, I
(44:12):
guess that the president of that region. The official statement
is yes, it was a storm that capsized the ship.
It causes to sink, but.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
We weren't on the lake, and I hate to point that.
I hate to point that out right now, but yeah,
it also it's so sticky because Okay, the most important
thing to say here is that these are human beings.
Their deaths are a tragedy, right, and they've left They've
doubtlessly left behind loved ones and relatives, and it is
(44:41):
a horrible, horrible thing for someone's life to end in
such an abrupt, untimely manner. Also, with that mind and
as respectfully as we can, I think we're doing a
pretty solid job pointing out some serious questions about this stuff.
It is not a secret that the nation of Italy
(45:03):
has long been a crossroads of some spooky stuff. And
I am engaging a wordplay there. I mean, think about propaganda.
Do think about all this stuff the Italian intelligence outfits
have done. I'm not trying to sound anti papist, but
think about the stuff the Catholic Church got up to
(45:23):
and gets up to.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
There's a vibe. There's a vibe.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Okay, yeah, there we go. So I hope that doesn't
sound too judgmental. I'm just saying there's a.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Vibe it is. It is pretty darn weird. And you
know the fact that the spouse of the guy that
owned the boat, Claudio Carmenatti, this fifty three year old
dude from Vares. I guess is how you say that
v A. R. E. S E. The fact that his
wife is one of the people that dies a little weird. Officially, again,
(45:53):
according to the story, they're out of Rye. She went
inside the boat right like down what do you call that?
Going below decks? Yeah, she went below deck because the
storm became so intense so quickly, and she was nervous
about it, and then as it capsized and saying it's
not good to be inside.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I guess my question is the speculation or the conspiracy theories?
I guess theories plural, probably that there was some sort
of clandestine meeting taking place, or that the sinking itself
was the intent.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I think it runs the gamut, right when something like
this happens and all we know is the official story
about some tragedy, but you know, some intelligence service members
died from wherever. It just makes me I mean, I'm
just going to speak personally, It makes me wonder you know,
how did it happen, Why did it happen? What were
they doing? Like all of those things.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
Yeah, I'm also thinking to the point about the just
the collegiate nature of people who have been in the
same business for a long time. I'm also thinking that
if it really is only a social function a birthday
for someone who's been in the game for a while,
then they probably have previous work adventures with each other,
(47:09):
you know what I mean, You probably have war stories
to share. And a little bit more about the plane here,
it seems that the plane that was taking them out,
the executive jet that brought them back to is route,
is a known thing. It is a known aircraft that
the government of that country uses for quote official but
(47:30):
secret missions. It's been flow, It's been spotted flying to
and from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, as well as
Cutter like, these people are clearly connected. And no matter
what happened at the lake, the folks back home at
the top, the folks who have like the red phones,
(47:51):
they said, we don't need these, we don't need our
pals going through regular customs.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Don't need someone to go Hey, is your name really,
Johnny blue jeans. Yes, and you're from Kansas.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Name name a name a city in Kansas, corn Kansas City. Win.
You're lucked into that one.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Win.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, but no, I mean.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
Like that's that's clear. Those are some of the most
pertinent things.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
But I can't think of a city in Kansas. Yeah,
am I bad person? Kansas City? Bro? Okay, I just
said it.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
But yeah, I guys, I don't have much else from
the story. I guess it's just one of those It
was interest, Yeah, right, it was of interest. Hopefully it
was of your interest as well.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Now it seems like the kind of seed that's going
to lead to some further revelations down the line. But
it's good that we're keyting on it now. So thanks
for that, man, Thank.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
You really like that seed that will lead line. Then
we got to use that later.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I'm in a lot this episode, and we want you
to be part of that growth. If you can.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Folks, please, to the extent that you are comfortable and
or allowed to give us your opinion on this tragedy
that lake in Italy. Please let us know what you
think about us doing a debt collecting episode. Please let
us know what you think about the idea of automation
for jobs like this specifically or jobs in general. And
(49:32):
would you let a tech entrepreneur put an implant in
your brain if you knew there might be consequences down
the line, Perhaps most importantly, and I know you're listening,
why'd you take the toothpaste?
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Man? Let us know. We're all over the internet, Oh boy,
are we ever? You can find us a conspiracy stuff
on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram
and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
If you want to use your voice to call us,
you can leave a voicemail. Our number is one eight
three st d WYTK. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname. You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like.
Just do include whether we can use your message and
name on the air. If you've got more to say
than can fit in that three minutes, why not instead
(50:15):
send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code
named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here and
that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
It is the top of the week and as we
hurtle headlong into summer, we wanted to do one of
our favorite things on the show, which is to bring
(00:51):
you our fellow conspiracy realist, some strange news. We're going
to get to the bleeding edge of AI, a story
that I think we all strongly feel should be discussed
much more in depth. And speaking of depth, we're going
to examine a strange case of some operatives who met
(01:11):
an untimely end in literal depths. And then you know,
we'll have a palate cleanser along the way.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Don't worry, we're not. We're not going to keep it
all spooky.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
But I think before before we get into that, maybe
just a quick update really briefly, guys, Remember we talked
about our pal, Elon Musk, the famous Salon. Yeah, famous
Emerald guy.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
He's a busy boy.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
He's got a lot of stuff going on, and the
FDA recently gave his one of his companies, the official
green light to implant things in the human brain.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
The new leak is coming.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Wasn't this the technology that had previously been experimented on
with simions or with with primates to pretty inhumane effect.
If I'm not in I believe there was some some
investigations that showed that they were not doing right by
our primate cohorts.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So the extent
of the trial is not known yet Neurolink. Their public
statements are are pretty short. You know, they're clearly dictated
by their legal department, and all we know is they
are not they're not taking participants for this clinical trial
(02:27):
just yet. We will examine this maybe in a future episode.
But what you need to know, the positive thing, which
is very real, is that the implant is primarily meant
to help people with severe paralysis regain movement and quality
of life through controlling external technologies using the power of thought,
(02:49):
So it could could could be really good.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Maybe just leave it there. It's a nice rite, isn't
it funny? How like early on, you know, in Elon
Musk coverage, he was sort of like cast as this
like real life Tony Stark, you know, the Iron Man,
you know, tech billionaire from comics fame. And now he's
a bit more of a rational ghoul type figure. You know,
he's become kind of a bit more of like a
super villain. Maybe this will help the you swing the
(03:16):
pendulum back a little more in the other direction. Or
it could be like they're abducting unhoused people from the
streets and experimenting on their brains, or it's ad supported.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Did you guys hear about the fMRI study with blood
flow and like not chat bought technology, but you know,
very similar technology, these aid learning servers to watch the
blood flow in somebody's brain while they're in an fMRI
machine to predict what their thoughts are. So this experiment
(03:47):
would be like showing them a silent movie while they're
in that machine, and then this thing is like trying
to predict what their thoughts are while they're inside the machine.
And watching something on televis or watching a silent movie.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
It's already happening. It's so nuts. I don't know if
you'd listen to Ted Talk Daily, great podcast based on
Ted Talks, which can be a little bit Pollyanna. You know,
the future is not always going to be great. But
they recently had a wonderful episode about privacy of thought
and how that's becoming increasingly endangered by things like the
(04:24):
technology we're talking about again. You know, we have a
whole show to get to. We just wanted to let
everybody know we're aware of that one the same way
that we're aware of Cop City here in Atlanta. Those
episodes are on the way, but this really right now
for our purposes. The neurlink stuff and what you pointed out,
Matt about using AI to monitor brain activity, I think
(04:46):
that takes us really smoothly into our first story, because
AI is everybody's worried about writing and visual arts, as
we should be, right, But there's much more to the story. No,
you found you found something that is just can.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I say that it's just hellish?
Speaker 4 (05:04):
This could be hellish.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
It's hellish and unsurprising because I think we're at the
stage now where this tech is getting so exponentially good,
it's improving, it's such an insane rate that we're really
just now starting to see the stories kind of trickle
out as to what the kind of early game uses
are going to be for this technology. And like, while
(05:26):
obviously things like writing and art are important, there are
people whose jobs revolve around those things, there are much
more dystopian depths that this technology can stoop to. Let's
just say, let's talk about debt collection. Okay, debt collection
is a little bit of background. If anyone's ever been
(05:48):
unlucky enough to get a call where it says this
call is being recorded, this is an attempt to collect
a debt. YadA, YadA, YadA. Usually get a little pre
recorded voice like that, and then it bumps you to
a person or the person is reading from a script.
And that's a whole industry in and of itself. Things
like support centers for call centers for tech support and
(06:09):
all that stuff, and call centers in general that do
all kinds of things like collecting debts or reaching out
about utilities and things like that. But then if you
get reported for failure to pay, you are getting a
debt collected from you. You are an attempt to collect
that debt, and that can reflect on your credit and
folks will go to some lengths to talk you out
(06:29):
of your money. And I mean, of course, if you
are in debt, you do owe that money. You did
sign up for that. But we also know there are
lots of predatory lending practices that are pretty gross that
target folks that are less well off. Now we're seeing
a lot of things like these pay later kind of
services that PayPal offers, and it's like another little thing
(06:52):
where even with a relatively meager credit score, you can
get this kind of like you get the thing now
and you pay and install. The problem with some of
those services is that they actually don't build credit for you.
I found that out a little bit later in a
different time in my life, where like, for example, PayPal
has a credit part of its service, but for whatever reason,
(07:15):
that's not the same as having a loan or having
a credit card. It does not actually build credit for you,
So it's really not benefiting you in the long term
in terms of your financial wellness. You know, and just
have the ability to for example, get a mortgage later
down the line or whatever it might be so now
there is a new development in debt collection that involves
(07:37):
of course chat GPT or GPT four. There are services
now that are popping up out of the one in
particular that this Vice article by Corn Fife Fai fe
Fi fe Fife sounds good is talking about a company
based in New York and Bangalore called skit dot Ai,
(07:58):
which is described as being a digital voice agent. So
it's essentially what the article describes as the next generation
of the robocall as we know. Combining things like chat
GPT with voice let's say, synthesis technology, you could theoretically
(08:19):
and in actuality speak to a robot that can then
take cues from you that aren't just playing back another clip.
You know, it's actually engaging with you. So using that
text to speech ability and this AI chatbot technology, you
could have a dynamic responsive This is from the article
(08:39):
Conversation with this technology, And of course the goal here
is to get rid of humans, get rid of human jobs.
These people no longer are required because they can have
a can scale this technology in an alarming way. You
can have a technology doing the job of hundreds, if
(09:01):
not thousands of employees. Because it's all about server space.
It's all about processing capacity. You know, that stuff is
relatively easy to upgrade and to keep in these server farms,
and you don't have to pay it once you buy it.
It's sort of a one and done thing. You just
have to maintain it. So the idea is to employ
this technology in reaching out to individuals explaining to them
(09:24):
that they are in big trouble and they need to
pay up or they're gonna you know, they are going
to be repercussions rather than sticking to a script, and
an individual you know, would would be looking at these
things can be a lot more nimble and kind of
you know, obviously they've got their guard rails. You know,
that would probably be dictated by legal language and you
(09:46):
know as far as what the company is able to
communicate to an individual and what they are not. But
the point is using AI for debt collection certainly increases
the capacity for these companies to go out after individuals.
As we know, during the pandemic, there was quite a
boom in online shopping that was sort of boosted by
(10:10):
that stuff I was just talking about earlier, these buy now,
pay later models, you know, things like Sezel, which just
sounds like a made up thing in afy movie, or
like a Silicon Valley name for a company quad pay,
something called Klarna that I'm also not aware of that
also sounds made up, and companies that were more aware of,
like PayPal, are using. So essentially what this amounts to
(10:32):
is a increasing amount of debt that individuals are racking
up have racked up, oftentimes with exorbitant interest rates that
are associated with them, and of course, due to certain
after effects of the pandemic, many people have lost their jobs.
So now there's more money to be made than ever
(10:53):
in collecting these debts in the form of really applying
the pressure, kind of mafia style, like I'd be a
shame of something happened to this cup here pushing off
the table. So this is again not surprising. It's just
another use of this technology that maybe wouldn't have been
instantly apparent, but it is absolutely happening. So in the
(11:15):
article they quote a statement from the company skit dot
Ai that describes the technology as follows. They credit it
with quote alleviating the negative feelings customers might experience with
a human during an uncomfortable process, because the writer points
out it's obviously, of course a lot more comfortable to
(11:37):
negotiate with the robot. What do you guys think about that?
Is that true?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
It's obviously more comfortable just from.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
A Vice article, right, so yes, yeah, so there's always
an implied base level of sarcasm maybe, but it's maybe
a case by case basis too.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
This makes me.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Think, you know, it's weird that we haven't done an
episode on corruption in the deck collection industry in general
like this, this feels like it is good for the
bottom line of these companies, right as you articulated, So well,
there no, but it also feels like they're attempting maybe
(12:17):
and maybe they're sincere about it, but they're attempting to
ascribe benefits to this kind of automation that are not
the real benefit, which is one hundred percent saving money
reducing the costs associated with having a human staff. And also,
I guess we should point out here in the US
it may work differently in your neck of the global woods,
(12:40):
but you have certain non negotiable rights in a debt
collection situation, and they're not going to They're not going
to be the ones to.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Tell you about those.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
So don't let yourself be intimidated into something that's possibly illegal.
I don't like this is okay? This is how is
this not weaponnising that immensely irritating robo menu. You have
to go through whatever you call a company now, right,
and you have to use voice commands, right. They're increasingly
(13:13):
phased out touch tone because they want your vocal data whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Sorry, that's no, no, that's its own thing. And that's true.
And it has also become increasingly difficult, and they make
it so difficult by wrapping you up in this web
of menus that you have to listen through all of
the options before you get to the one. By the
time you get to it, you might have even not
remembered where you are in the list. Then you end
up inevitably back on the home menu. Then you have
to listen to the whole thing again. They're relying on
(13:38):
it to be so frustrating that you just kind of
give up. And I guess this, you know. This whole
notion of the friendly robot, I think is something that
we have seen in science fiction from the past, the
idea of this friendly robot that is a helper robot
that's there to serve you and make your experience nice.
But also this is an inherently combative situation, right that
(14:02):
we're describing here. There is nothing particularly friendly about someone
coming at you saying you owe us money and if
you don't pay us, we're gonna wreck you, you know, in
no uncertain terms. And again to your point, then these
guard rails certainly won't allow the machine to give you
any real answers that are helpful, you know, that's up
(14:22):
to you to determine, you know, And it does beg
the question can a human in this situation either because
these humans that are talking to you they're being recorded too,
they also have guardrails, So is it really that different?
Is my question? And I think the main beef that
I think all three of us have here is that
(14:45):
these are jobs that people depend on. These are sort
of entry level jobs that many people who maybe have
situations where they need to be able to work remotely
would benefit from, and this is going to wipe those
jobs off the map. That's what, aside from any ethical
questions about just machine learning and AI in general, just
the technology itself and it's interaction with humans, it's about
(15:08):
eliminating jobs. And as we know, with the labyrinthine menus
that you're faced with and the inability of these folks,
you know, to actually give you much useful information. This
is the perfect job to replace with AI because these
humans that are on there are kind of hindered anyway.
They're sort of neutered in such a way where they
(15:29):
can't really speak to you as a human. They're basically
human robots anyway.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, it is interesting how that functions. It is weird
that this is one of those maybe low level entry positions.
Right when you're looking for a job, you just need
to go out there and get a job. This is
one of those position mission based, yes, and it's often
just an open job that you could go in phil
if you needed to write I need money, I need
a job. This is one of the things you could do.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
We're so a job that's off an outsourced to other
countries as we do, you know.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Very complex because I think, just to add to what
you're saying, they're met I think a lot of people
don't understand that many debt collection outfits, you know, they
are hired guns. They're already the contractors. They bought the
debt from someone else at a discount, which is why
things are often negotiable because there's a margin, there's a
(16:24):
window and they can go down to a certain threshold
and still make money, still make good on whatever their
deal was. It's just it's very I understand it. And
you know, we don't want to knock people who are
making a living because they have to. But obviously this
can be a nasty, nasty business, and I think AI
would be able to I don't know, man, I don't
(16:46):
know if we're going in the same way with this,
but I think AI will be even more efficient at
squeezing the blood from the stone warm well.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
I thought it was funny that you mentioned the bleeding
edge of AI, that that phrase immediately popped into my head.
It's the squeezing blood from the snow edge of AI.
And to your point, Bentos read a little blurb from
the article here. From the Vice article, some of the
companies that stand to benefit most from AI integration are
those that purely exist to collect debt. These companies, known
as debt buyers, purchase quote distressed debt from other creditors
(17:17):
at steep discounts, usually pennies on the dollar, then try
as hard as they can to get debtors to repay
in full. They don't issue loans or provide any kind
of service that clients might owe them for. It's a
business model built on profiting from people who fell behind
on payments to someone else. They also rely heavily on
the civil court system, which some experts believe will soon
(17:37):
be flooded by AI generated debt lawsuits.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
Oh, I just now got it, because a debt collection
agency cannot, at least in the US, a debt collection
agency cannot have someone arrested.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
For failure to pay off that debt. Yet, how think
debtor's prison exists anymore? Right? Currently? Yeah? Yeah? Currently?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
But the way people can get arrested is if they're
not complying with a court order. So taking it through
the court's automating litigation, I think another a guy just
got in trouble for using chat GPT to write a
case brief.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Bat. I don't know, Matt. I feel like the next step, though,
right is automating low level par legal jobs and like
writing these kinds of that's the next step, you know,
once it gets approval and they realize, okay, this is
accurate enough, it's going to inevitably be used for that.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I feel like I just got so contankerous that Matt,
I might you were making a great point, and I
stepped in and I was like, yeah, and also screw
these guys, and then just went kind of Dennis Miller,
my bad.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
No, you're fine. I'm correct me if I'm wrong in
my thinking here, guys. But it feels like it's eliminating
a lot of the jobs that either a you get
early on as a kid. I'm thinking fast food jobs
that are quickly have already been replaced for the most part,
But like all the other parts of fast food, I
think are gonna go things like a telemarketer or somebody
(19:07):
who is doing debt collection. You go into a call center,
you work every day. These are not only the jobs
that young people would get as a starting out position.
There are also the jobs that maybe somebody who's spent
some time in prison and is getting out and it
needs a new job to get started again, right.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Or elderly folks that don't have a retirement plan, you know,
just to keep them afloat.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
It feels like we're cutting out a lot of that stuff.
I'm worried that we're going to And when you're talking
about pair of leegals, you're talking about cutting out that
first job out of college, right, if you're going into law,
you may be going in as an apprentice or something
becoming a pair of legal even like just trying to
get in at that lower level. It feels like if
we eliminate all that, then you're either you're either not
(19:52):
a lawyer or you're a full fledged lawyer now, or
you're you know, you're not a blacksmith you've never touched metal,
or oh nope, you're the black smith.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Apprenticeship stuff has been phased out for a long time.
It feels like it just doesn't exist anymore, you know.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
It's the what what we're looking at is a real
time depiction of something, or a real time harbinger of
something we predicted a while ago, which is, yes, a
utopian post work economy may exist someday.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
To work right to that.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Between now and then, what it will inevitably happen along
that path is not the post work economy, but the
post worker economy. You'll still need to have a job
to exist. You just won't be able to have a job.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
If they wanted to do it right, they would be
you know, doing some kind of let's just say it,
socialist kind of programs. Like a universal basic income or
something they would be, you know, developing these things in parallel,
but instead, as the United States is kind of notorious
for doing, we're just taking the shiny new object and
shoving it right out of the marketplace without preparing for
(20:59):
what having it will inevitably reek. I don't know, man,
it just doesn't feel right because to your point, Matt,
like those jobs are going to be eliminated, and there
are folks that don't have access to good education and
that live in underserved areas and are part of underserved
demographics that are no longer going to have a leg
to stand on. And without something like a universal basic
(21:22):
income or a more robust welfare system, this stuff is
going to really do some damage. A lot of nods.
I think we're all on the same page. Let's take
a pause after this depressing conclusion to this story, and
we'll be back with another piece of strange news.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
And we have returned. We explored something nigh inevitable. Like
we said, the Bleeding Edge, we wanted to give you
a bit of a palate cleanser, a fun conspiracy. Who
doesn't love a heist? We hope that you love heist
as much as the four of US fellow conspiracy realists.
(22:05):
This is a lighthearted one. We hope it gives you
a chuckle, even though I think I'm like legally required
to say you shouldn't pull heist. Here's what happened. This
is this is an earlier story. It didn't get to
the US for a little while. In Canada, police stumbled
(22:25):
upon a ridiculous crime. Shout out to our Pure podcast.
Ridiculous crime. Somebody stole thousands and thousands of dollars worth
of toothpaste. They stole, Yeah, they stole at least two
one hundred dollars US worth of toothpaste, and the North
(22:48):
Vancouver Royal Canadian Mounted Police diplomatically described this as a
failed attempt at a clean getaway. This was at a
superstore and officers just happened to be in the area,
like in the parking lot, and they saw this guy
running out. Picture whatever action movie heist film score you want,
(23:13):
think of heat if you want.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, mission impossible.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Perhaps yeah he's got, he's got, or this person has
Duffel bags and then like a child's red plastic wagon.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
I love the image on the Yeah, go to the
DH News article.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yeah, that's Daily Hive dot com. That's one of the
articles that has a picture of this, and we'll get
to Twitter in a second. Uh, Like I say, a
child's red wagon full of what looks to me was
at censidine toothpaste. Yeah, sensidine toothpaste. It's a classic, classy paste.
So learned about this because it turns out that the
(23:50):
North Vancouver RCMP Royal Canadian Mounted Police they have a
Twitter and they posted the following took a boot being
in the right place at the right time. On Friday,
officers were near superstore for an unrelated matter when they
observed a man running out of the emergency exit. Followed
by the staff, officers jumped into action. They arrested him
(24:12):
and returned two dollars worth of toothpaste.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Thank you, noe it in it?
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Well, doc, could you put in to day dot?
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Could you put in something like the law and perfect
just not close enough to get a sued. So there
were a lot of questions here. First off, we know
that some consumer products are stolen more often than others. Sadly, uh,
hygienic products may get stolen more often, right like people
(24:47):
may steal sanitary pads or diapers, out of necessity. We
know that during the pandemic, people were stealing sanitizer, they
were stealing toilet paper because they could sell it pretty easily.
But toothpaste, though, Like, why why would you steal so
much toothpaste?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Is this a rhetorical question or is yeah?
Speaker 4 (25:07):
No, I'm not styling it, and I'm asking you guys, like,
in what world would it occur to you?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Where?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
What series of events would lead you to a moment
in your life where you said the choice is clear?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Remember when we we did it. We did an episode
we talked about a story where there was a lot
of spam being stolen in Hawaii, to the point where
they had to, you know, put the spam behind like
those glass cases with the key, so like the employee
of the Quickie mart has to grab the spam for you.
I don't think this is the same thing. I don't
(25:42):
think toothpaste exists at a higher premium or street value
in Canada than another parts of the world. But maybe
I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
I'll tell you exactly why you steal this much sensorine toothpaste.
Come on, you guys, you know this why you're on
the inside. Your sales rep for one of the other
big toothpaste guys. You gotta get that stuff off the shelf.
For some reason, everyone wants censidine right now. We gotta
curve this just.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
And now now it's it's wrecking the public image too, right,
sensidid that's the number one toothpaste of criminals.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Right, So yeah, night.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
Out of ten failed robbers recommend sensidine and they all
get caught.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
How crazy would that be though? If somebody walks in
your apartment or whatever, and you know they just You've
got an entire closet of toothpaste, and you know, anytime
it's time to refill, you get to have that moment
of like check this out.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
That's my question though, Is there a Is there some
sort of toothpaste shortage in Canada that we're not aware of?
Is the street price of tooth is? Is there a
black market for toothpaste? It just seems like that's such
an easy thing to get. No one would ever need
to buy it on the black market, So I just
don't understand what the endgame is here.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
So yes, I I think this is a really good point.
These are several good points you're making, because as stute listeners,
you may have noticed that I stumbled a little bit
in the beginning of this story. I did some digging.
I thought maybe this was just like a one off haha,
you know, Florida Man level kind of tail that would
(27:19):
lead us to some interesting questions. But upon just just
a little bit of digging around, I found that this
is not the first case of a toothpaste heist this year. Really,
this appears, yep, it appears that on March March seventh,
twenty twenty three, also in Canada, someone stole a truck
(27:44):
containing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of toothpaste.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Why do we talk about that story? That's obviously the
superior hecet this. It was as small statas here, I'd
just say.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Right right, it was earlier, They've got some This was
in Wellington County, and as of March police were still
looking for someone could help them crack the case on
this toothpaste heist. They said that the officers responded to
a theft call at what they're calling a storage lot,
(28:15):
So not clear on whether that's like a public storage area.
That's what I think it is. We have a lot
of those here in the US, and we all know
what we mean when we say public storage area, right,
what are the names of those places you're moving and
you put them.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
In unit storage unit, storage unit.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
The public storage cube, smart place okay, Yeah, And a
lot of times when people die and they've been like
leasing those for a long time, then there those get
everything in there get auctioned off. That was actually the
subject of one of those Guyelmo del Toro. Yeah, that's right, yeah, episodes. Yeh,
Cabinet of Curiosity. Yes, correct.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
There's also a great story in Radio Rental this season
about that.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Check it out, that's right, Yeah, made by our goods
over at Tenderfoot. You know, it's a brain child of
our buddy Pain Lindsey. So do check it out, and
maybe Pain could help us out on the case of
the missing toothpaste.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
All aboard the Pain brain train.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Yes, police say that a white Volvo semi truck was
stolen from the lot and it had a fifty three
foot trailer that was just filled to the brim with toothpaste.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I would argue coincidence. I would argue it was a
theft of opportunity. They didn't know what was in it.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Yeah, they just said, okay, it's a trailer and it
sounds like it sounds like there's something in there, so
hopefully it's PS five.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
But for them to have like Ford thought, like prior
knowledge of the contents that they lined it up, so
they got like you know what I mean, Like remember
that one where there was the big jewel heist from
like it was some sort of trailer like that that was,
you know, the people went inside a gas arrest area
to get a snack and have a shower or something,
and the people were waiting because they knew it was
(30:01):
coming from this gem show. How do you know that
the truck you can't see through is full of toothpaste?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Yeah, you would have to have an indecide toothpaste person,
or it would be, like you said, a crime of opportunity.
The way to learn whether it's a crime of opportunity
is to get a hold of the truck and see
how it was started. You know it was hot wired.
Then maybe somebody just happened by, they busted a window
and so on.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
This still doesn't answer our question as to why toothpaste
what doesn't seem like a particularly valuable commodity? Why are
scarce enough commodity?
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Why are there multiple instances of toothpaste. Heyst because the
very first, the most recent guy was definitely doing it
on purpose and it had to look kind of weird
in the store because he had a child's wagon dragging
behind him, you know, in a place that does have
shopping carts.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Look, I know. I think Canadians like the show Trailer
Park Boys. There's a great episode where they do a
meat heist. They steal a bunch of meat, they get
this lead. You know, that shows all about Ricky and
Julian and their crew, and they are a bunch of
kind of low life dumb dums that do dumb heist
Like there's a whole thing I think it's in the
movie where they're just robbing like parking meters because who's
(31:15):
gonna get them for that? It's theft under a thousand.
There's never gonna be more than a thousand dollars in
a parking meter. So there's a whole episode where they're
robbing supermarkets of meat. This is the kind of heist
that Ricky and crew would do, but it usually has
to be some crime of opportunity with those guys where
either it's gonna not be a felony because it's under
(31:36):
a thousand, this is over a thousand, this is a
two thousand plus. This would definitely be a felony because
they're always talking about theft under a thousand. That's not
gonna get them sent to prison if they do theft
under a thousand. But this screams trailer park boys, Canadian
conspiracy realists out there. Let us know. Is there something
we're missing about toothpaste in Canada? Why'd you do it? Yeah?
(32:00):
Let us know.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
I mean I always try to say this. We take
pains to respect anonymity when possible. We just feel like
there's a very interesting story here. And speaking of interest,
in the interest of full disclosure of folks, we are
in regular contact with former bank robbers, so like we
(32:21):
have talked with I am yeah, we have talked to
folks who have been involved in strange situations. So if
you were the person who was responsible for some of
these toruthpaste heist and you have a reason, we want
to hear it. If you are not the person and
you have a theory about this that we're missing out on,
(32:41):
we would love to hear from you. You can call
us at one eight three three std WYTK. You can
email us. We read every email we get conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com. And you know, if if you'd rather
speak with the police, then speak with us. The local
police want us to tell you that you can call
(33:02):
crime Stoppers at one eight hundred two two two eight
four seven seven. That's one eight hundred to two two
tips to help shed some light on the toothpaste heist.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Why did they do it? What is the deal?
Speaker 4 (33:18):
Maple syrup? I get it was a lot of maple
syrup to move parmesan. I get that's a very high profit.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Margin to the pasta heist in Detroit or not, I'm sorry,
in New Jersey. Yeah, we talked about that, but that
was that was one that happened recently.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Yeah, there was this huge pasta heist. The pasta was
found thrown out the woods like a dead body pasta
spoiled pasta. As a matter of fact, you know what, Also,
we're gonna keep this one short. Before you go to
an ad break, tell us about the weirdest heist you
have ever heard of, espec Like, the weirder the better,
(33:56):
the kind of heist where you have to wonder why
this person cared enough to steal this thing? Can't wait
for your thoughts. In the meantime, we're going to take
a break for a word from our sponsor, and we'll
be back with one more piece of much more serious,
strange news.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And we've returned, guys, and we're gonna get so serious
right now. Are you ready?
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Serious?
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Okay, I'm just gonna start.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Wait and not ready, Oh okay, Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Okay, I'm going to start this way, guys, just kind
of beginning a story to get to a place and
then let's talk. Okay, here we go. On Sunday, May
twenty eighth, a fifty two and a half foot tourist
boat was carrying over twenty people on Lake Maggiore m
a g g Iore near Lissanza in the Lombardi region
(34:49):
of Italy okay So lake in Italy. According to official sources,
the boat capsized and sank due to a powerful quote whirlwind.
This is a a very severe and sudden storm similar
to what we may have heard referred to as a
water bomb that affected a bunch of the region. Just
think a whole bunch of water, strong winds, all of
(35:11):
a sudden. That's the storm that capsized and sank this boat.
Most of the passengers on the craft were able to
escape and swim to safety, either to shore or to
another vessel that came to their aid. Unfortunately, four individuals
who were riding on this boat or who were in
this boat lost their lives. And that's why we're talking
(35:33):
about this story today. Here are the people Anya Boshkhova,
who is the spouse of the owner of the boat,
who just so happens to be Russian, Claudio Alonzi who's
sixty two years old, and Tiziana Barnobi, who's fifty three
years old. These are two people who were employed by
(35:54):
the Italian intelligence agencies, right, they worked for Italian intelligence.
And the fourth person a so far, at least as
I have seen, an unnamed fifty year old retired member
of Masade or the Israeli security forces. Okay, guys, that's
why we're talking about this. Ultimately, it's a story about
(36:16):
a terrible storm and a ship that sank and some
people died. But this is a strange group of characters, right,
don't you think.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
It would seem so? My gosh? Have you guys seen
the film Triangle of Sadness? Yes, it's excellent and don't
want to get too off course, but it's a collection
of very wealthy people on a yacht and things happen.
But it's a ragtag crew of megawealthy individuals that get
into hijinks on a yacht.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Well, it reminds me a bit of White Lotus Season two.
That's like what I was thinking about immediately.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
Yeah, and this film Triangle of Sadness is basically White
Lotus Season two on a yacht.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Okay, two things immediately. First, the boring bureaucratic stuff. The
stuff that we do have to say is that there is,
for my understanding, there's no proof that they were on
some active shenanigans right as there there's nothing publicly out
about that.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
How would we get proof and who would give that?
You know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Two other fantastic questions, Matt. And then the second thing,
which is a little bit more interesting maybe, is for
anyone who wants to play along at home, I know
that we always do this. If you pull up this
lake on your your world spy of choice, Google Earth
is a great win for this, then you'll see that
(37:42):
this lake is not only the second largest in Italy,
but it is a navigable water border with Switzerland, which
I also find interesting because that's.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
To hide your money, right well.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Yeah, and also when countries have a water border like that,
like a lake or a river, things tend to the
likelihood for Shenanigan is a little is always going to
be a little bit higher because it's a little bit Yeah,
it's a little bit easier to slip some cards up
your sleeve figuratively speaking. But like also, I'm going to
(38:21):
say it, I think there are certain intelligence agencies where
you never really retire. And I suspect that. I mean,
obviously the company here in the in the States, no
one ever really retires from that, And no one ever
really retires from Massade. They may they may have a
different job, they may not be going into that career
every single day.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
The biology remains, right well, the training too, Yeah, And
and the fact that if you are in those things
for the rest of your life, whether or not anybody
but you knows it, you have.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
To check with someone before you do certain stuff. That's
why every time a former intelligence agent writes a tell
all book, if they're still living in the same country,
then they got the green light to write it. That's
the only way it happens.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
And then just a couple of things get edited changed,
you know, just to make sure to protect, you know,
protect the innocent. Sorry, but.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
I'm seeing that because we know, at least from my
understanding of some of the articles you shared, Matt, Yes,
we know that Israel has already naturally been a little
bit close to the chest about the massad agent.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Right, yeah, let's jump to AP News. They posted an
article today. This is the title, Israel's massad says former
agent was among four people who died when boats sank
in Italy and if you jump down just a little bit,
it says this quote. The Israeli Prime Minister's office issued
a statement on behalf of the massade, saying the unnamed
agents remain had been returned to Israel for burial. The
(40:02):
Foreign Ministry had previously confirmed that a retiree from the
Israeli security forces was killed, but didn't provide a name
or age, or give details on his professional background. Even
it goes as far you guys. Prime Minister Benjamin Nett
and Yahoo's office said that because of the agent's work
in the agency, further details could not be disclosed, and
(40:22):
extended condolences to his family, and it continues on here, guys.
This is the last bit before I get out of
this article. Italian police released no information on the identities
or professions of the nineteen survivors, the people who made
it off the boat, but local news reports said they
included other members of the Italian and Israeli intelligence services,
(40:44):
suggesting the outing may have been part of a quote
work meeting.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Which they I mean definitely still happened. That's why those
institutions exist as.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
A team building thing, like a friendly out on the
lake here, and.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
There was a birthday party. There was a birthday party
on the confirmed, but we don't know if it was
had anything to do with any of the intelligence service members.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Also, even if it's not officially that kind of thing,
whenever people in the same industry or genre of profession
hang out, they inevitably, to whatever extent they are allowed,
they will talk shop. You know, So like this is okay.
We got to say this though. The excellent Haretz article
(41:29):
you linked to shows us that a judge was able
to lay down the law and squeeze a little bit
more info out of the Israeli government. So this article
by Yasi Melman describes how a judge in Italy allowed
the body of this unfortunately deceased retired MASSAD agent to
(41:53):
be returned to Israel. And it was only after they
got to their hobby corpus state, after they had the body,
that Massad allowed the official disclosure of this person's name
and as Shimoni and eras Shimoni. The name had already
been reported in the Italian media, and we see this
(42:15):
all the time in multiple countries.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Yeah, I haven't actually seen that name. How do you
spell the first name?
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Er easy, last name Shimoni s h I m ni.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
But here's the trick.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Everybody knows it's not his real name. Oh well, it's
sop from ASAD. It's standard operating procedure.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
So that's the.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Other thing I noticed. Been according to the AP News article,
all of the because they're in Italy, right, all of
the Israeli citizens were flown by private plane back to
Israel to Tel Aviv. Like, what kind of service is that? Nice? Hmm?
Speaker 4 (42:55):
It's not the usual government worker budget for sure.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
That's you know. I don't know too.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
Much about how the sausage is made in the Middle
East there, but I can say that in the US
government agents don't usually get flowed up private planes as
a day to day thing.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
I mean, I know, it was an emergency. It was
a terrible tragedy. It's an awful situation. I just it
reads to me like they needed to get them back,
not to safety, but maybe out of the public eye
as quickly as they could.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
There's an interesting line in the article talking about how
folks that did survive, the intelligence personnel that did survive,
were quick to go to their hotels and collect their belongings. Yeah,
and equipment is the word that was thrown out there too.
I just wanted to add there's no weirdness around the
narrative of that this was in fact caused by inclement weather,
(43:49):
Like that part we're all accepting or not.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Well, that's at least according to what I read out
of is it Ry. I think that's how you say it,
r Ai. It's a translated Italian article that like that
is exactly what happened, at least according to the official sources.
Even I think the what do they call him, the
person who runs the entire region there in Italy, I
(44:12):
guess that the president of that region. The official statement
is yes, it was a storm that capsized the ship.
It causes to sink, but.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
We weren't on the lake, and I hate to point that.
I hate to point that out right now, but yeah,
it also it's so sticky because Okay, the most important
thing to say here is that these are human beings.
Their deaths are a tragedy, right, and they've left They've
doubtlessly left behind loved ones and relatives, and it is
(44:41):
a horrible, horrible thing for someone's life to end in
such an abrupt, untimely manner. Also, with that mind and
as respectfully as we can, I think we're doing a
pretty solid job pointing out some serious questions about this stuff.
It is not a secret that the nation of Italy
(45:03):
has long been a crossroads of some spooky stuff. And
I am engaging a wordplay there. I mean, think about propaganda.
Do think about all this stuff the Italian intelligence outfits
have done. I'm not trying to sound anti papist, but
think about the stuff the Catholic Church got up to
(45:23):
and gets up to.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
There's a vibe. There's a vibe.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Okay, yeah, there we go. So I hope that doesn't
sound too judgmental. I'm just saying there's a.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Vibe it is. It is pretty darn weird. And you
know the fact that the spouse of the guy that
owned the boat, Claudio Carmenatti, this fifty three year old
dude from Vares. I guess is how you say that
v A. R. E. S E. The fact that his
wife is one of the people that dies a little weird. Officially, again,
(45:53):
according to the story, they're out of Rye. She went
inside the boat right like down what do you call that?
Going below decks? Yeah, she went below deck because the
storm became so intense so quickly, and she was nervous
about it, and then as it capsized and saying it's
not good to be inside.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I guess my question is the speculation or the conspiracy theories?
I guess theories plural, probably that there was some sort
of clandestine meeting taking place, or that the sinking itself
was the intent.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I think it runs the gamut, right when something like
this happens and all we know is the official story
about some tragedy, but you know, some intelligence service members
died from wherever. It just makes me I mean, I'm
just going to speak personally, It makes me wonder you know,
how did it happen, Why did it happen? What were
they doing? Like all of those things.
Speaker 4 (46:48):
Yeah, I'm also thinking to the point about the just
the collegiate nature of people who have been in the
same business for a long time. I'm also thinking that
if it really is only a social function a birthday
for someone who's been in the game for a while,
then they probably have previous work adventures with each other,
(47:09):
you know what I mean, You probably have war stories
to share. And a little bit more about the plane here,
it seems that the plane that was taking them out,
the executive jet that brought them back to is route,
is a known thing. It is a known aircraft that
the government of that country uses for quote official but
(47:30):
secret missions. It's been flow, It's been spotted flying to
and from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, as well as
Cutter like, these people are clearly connected. And no matter
what happened at the lake, the folks back home at
the top, the folks who have like the red phones,
(47:51):
they said, we don't need these, we don't need our
pals going through regular customs.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Don't need someone to go Hey, is your name really,
Johnny blue jeans. Yes, and you're from Kansas.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Definitely.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Name name a name a city in Kansas, corn Kansas City. Win.
You're lucked into that one.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Win.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, but no, I mean.
Speaker 4 (48:28):
Like that's that's clear. Those are some of the most
pertinent things.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
But I can't think of a city in Kansas. Yeah,
am I bad person? Kansas City? Bro? Okay, I just
said it.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
But yeah, I guys, I don't have much else from
the story. I guess it's just one of those It
was interest, Yeah, right, it was of interest. Hopefully it
was of your interest as well.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
Now it seems like the kind of seed that's going
to lead to some further revelations down the line. But
it's good that we're keyting on it now. So thanks
for that, man, Thank.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
You really like that seed that will lead line. Then
we got to use that later.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I'm in a lot this episode, and we want you
to be part of that growth. If you can.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Folks, please, to the extent that you are comfortable and
or allowed to give us your opinion on this tragedy
that lake in Italy. Please let us know what you
think about us doing a debt collecting episode. Please let
us know what you think about the idea of automation
for jobs like this specifically or jobs in general. And
(49:32):
would you let a tech entrepreneur put an implant in
your brain if you knew there might be consequences down
the line, Perhaps most importantly, and I know you're listening,
why'd you take the toothpaste?
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Man? Let us know. We're all over the internet, Oh boy,
are we ever? You can find us a conspiracy stuff
on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram
and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
If you want to use your voice to call us,
you can leave a voicemail. Our number is one eight
three st d WYTK. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname. You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like.
Just do include whether we can use your message and
name on the air. If you've got more to say
than can fit in that three minutes, why not instead
(50:15):
send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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