March 24, 2025 • 62 mins
A phenomenally powerful international lobbying group -- Freedom Cities -- pushes the idea of US communities run by corporations. An opioid update reveals the Sackler family will pay money rather than prison time. A threat in Antarctica, while astronauts finally return home. 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 (00:25):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagot. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Fellow conspiracy realist friends
and neighbors, if you are listening to our strange news
segment the week or the day it publishes, let us
(00:50):
be the first to welcome you to Monday, March twenty fourth.
How's it going, guys, how are we feeling?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Welcome to the middle of the film. That's money, Piper,
that's going good. I'm feeling like a giant nerd today
as usual.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Nice. I am just for some reason craving Ntella. I
just wanted to tell her right now. I don't know, because.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yeah, probably that was to deal with palm oil. Palm
oil bad, right. We don't like palm oil because it's
I think, isn't it harvested historically by slave labor and South.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I mean if you hate orangutanks, then palm oil
is awesome.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh yeah, look it's got palm oil in it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
No, we we are not here to exclusively ruin wholesome
good things. But maybe we pop the top on this
would by giving everybody some news that some strange news
that may make confirm some of our fellow listeners firsthand experiences.
It may also be a nice uh whatever the opposite
(01:57):
of a palate cleanser is to our earlier episod it
on social media. What's the opposite of a palate cleanser?
You guys.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Eat a lot of flavor bomb flavor explosions.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Okay, yeah, a palette blocker, a palette annihilator, yeah, a
palette stem here all right, Uh, here's the news that broke.
Financial Times covered it, Gizmoto covered it, Futurism covered it.
Human intelligence does appear to be sharply declining depending upon
(02:33):
how human intelligence is measured. What do we mean by this?
Assessments from multiple institutions are showing that people across demographics
and across age groups are having trouble concentrating a losing
reasoning problem. Solving, critical thinking, and information processing skills. So
(02:55):
the way that they are measuring intelligence in these studies
does appear to confirm some of the things that we
discussed in our episode on social media versus attention span.
But I think Noel, you raised a really salient point
that's been on everybody's mind earlier, which was perhaps cognitive
(03:20):
processing ability. It's not necessarily part of it is attroby,
but it's not necessarily disappearing.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
It's being shifted.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's being shifted or it's transforming to other priorities in
the great mystery box called the human brain.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Do you remember that story we covered either here on
Ridiculous History about like the decline of intelligence during the
Roman Empire likely attributed to Lead led. I don't think
we can blame Lead for this necessarily. They go plastic
in our balls, ruminated everything.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, we can say that there are chemical substances that definitely,
especially informative years for humans, They can affect cognition, they
can affect later things like impulse control and critical thought.
This goes to here, let's cite let's cite a few
(04:19):
sources as we kick it off. We'll go to nor
Al Sabai writing for Futurism, who points out the University
of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study looked at what they
call concentration difficulty of eighteen year old people in America
(04:43):
and then.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Forty year old people in America. I can relate. Concentration
is hard, yeah, and getting harder. It seems, uh huh.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
And they said, you know, look at these other studies,
like the Program for International Student Assessment or that's a
standing institution. Their whole deal is to measure learning skills
of adolescents around the world. And after years of research,
really deep research, they found that people seem to universally
(05:15):
be struggling with reduced attention spans and weakening critical thinking skills.
Just in twenty twenty two, Oh, the pandemic was a
game changer for US. In twenty twenty two, the National
Endowment for the Arts found that just thirty seven point
six percent of Americans US residents said they'd read a
(05:37):
novel or a short story in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Remember I told you Ben that on our trip to
the Middle East, I was really hoping to read a
whole book, And so I bought the twenty twenty four
collection of the best American short Stories. I am proud
to reveal that I did read the forward, the introduction,
and one story in thirty Hours of Flying.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
The first story was good, very good.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
It was called The Magic Bangle, and I highly recommend it.
And I'm really looking forward to digging in because I figured,
you know, I mean, maybe this is good advice for
anybody that's struggling with this. I just kind of figured, like,
we read a lot of bite sized stuff. I really
want to finish a book, so why not read a
book full of bite sized stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, And some of the world's best novels are written
in that way. For instance, you know, a great, a
great debate covering The Things They Carried is whether that
should be evaluated as a cohesive novel or whether it's
a series of interrelated short stories. And what is life
(06:39):
really except for a series of inter related short stories?
With that. With that, folks, we do not abjure, but
we do encourage you to spend some time in deep thought,
you know, to take some time and for I don't,
I'll be on a here as everybody's accountabil a buddy, h.
(07:03):
I have to put my phone away now when I read,
because we're just so it's so normalized. We're so acclimated
to always having a thing that we check just in
case something new has.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Happens, that dopamine casino we carry around in our pockets.
Like I actually recently invested in one of those mag
charger things that sits by my bed, So when I
charge my phone now, I put it on that thing
and close the door on the other side of the house.
And I've been trying to listen to records and be
more intentional with the stuff I do and try not
to think about that thing. And it's it's, you know,
(07:36):
working to a degree, but it's still not easy. I
do feel that drive to go check it in the
other room.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Can we pause for a moment. A vocabulary word of
the day abjure. Please let us know abjure?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Does that mean kind of like to poo poo, something
like to speak negatively or to reject.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It means to uh, it's it's like to renown. Here
we go disavowed. So I I should have used admonish.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
We just some of us don't know words.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
So we don't so we're not The point is we're
not yelling at you we're not yelling at ourselves, but
we're we're all working towards this, and we'd love to
hear from fellow conspiracy realists who are in charge of younglings.
How how do you handle uh the screen time? How
do you handle the creation of uh capacity for critical
(08:41):
thinking and deep thought? While you're doing that, we're going
to give you a cavalcade of somewhat related stories. We're
going to talk about eggs, of course, We're going to
follow up on Purdue Pharma. We're going to finally catch
up with Satan's disciples. Uh, We'll we'll talk about disclosure.
We got some shout outs to the ends of the
(09:04):
Earth literally, a story we've all been following in Antarctica,
story we've been following in space. But before we do
any of that, before we even pause for a word
from our sponsors, I'd like to posit to you guys,
the following, would you live in a city that had
(09:24):
less rule of law but more potential to use science
to improve your life?
Speaker 4 (09:31):
I answer that question by citing an incredible take I
just heard from Ezra Klein talking about all this idea
of increasing government efficiency, and his critique was, I'm all
about government efficiency, But the question is towards what end
efficiency towards what? And he just feels like the current
administration's vision of the future sucks because it does not
(09:54):
involve the things that you're talking about, Ben, and it
sort of absures science and technology and seems to have
a bit of a retrograde attitude towards that. So I
would I would hope, I would love to live in
a place where all that stuff is more appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
All right, well, we'll go to and add break and
we will introduce you to the not quite new idea
of freedom cities. And we have returned. Do you guys
remember the old song? Was it sixteen tons? The company
(10:30):
store song?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Lord?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
What do you get that is entirely about the US practice,
or you know, the worldwide practice in the past, of
a community that is run by not a state, not
a government, a government entity, but instead by a private entity,
(10:53):
by a corporation. This encounters all kinds of weird stuff
like pain and script or having debts that are purposely
structured such that you can never never really get back
into the black ink. We've all heard stories about that.
I think we did a few episodes on ridiculous history
(11:14):
that touch on the idea of company towns, didn't we.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
We had one on here, Absolutely we did on here.
I mean just the idea of I don't know, just
you know. It's funny too, with the discussion we recently
had about scam factory, you know, that's almost an extension
of that, but even more abusive. I would argue, just
the idea of your captive you are beholden to these
overlords of one type or another, and you are using
(11:40):
currency that they determine the value of.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, great news for any fans of terrible historical precedent.
There is a lobbying group right now active in the
United States called the Freedom Citi's Coalition. The Freedoms Cities
Coalition is currently meeting with officials from the present US
(12:06):
administration to push for the creation of what are called
freedom cities. Now, first off, that's that's a great name.
Uh there. The idea is that you could create tech
hubs exempt from all those pesky taxes and red tape regulation, uh,
to to get get away from all these federal laws
(12:33):
that stop us from doing uh you know what current
society would call highly unethical things like anti aging, clinical trials,
nuclear reactors, startups, different kind of construction that's not bound
by all these you know, busy minded bureaucrats. Right.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Well, I feel like a dummy because when you tease
this topic earlier and asked the question, I thought it
was a good thing. I thought me maybe wanted to
live in a place where more science and technology was
you know, valued and pushed forward. But I guess you're
talking about like unchecked, potentially problematic science and technology.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And back in twenty twenty three, current president US President
Donald Trump kind of pitched the idea of creating ten
freedom cities. The hardcore proponents of this will call them
start up nations, and their concept is, or they're pitches
that if you didn't have the FDA or the Nuclear
(13:36):
Regulatory Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, the
bad guys from Ghostbusters won that you would be able
to jumpstart, jumpstart all sorts of innovation and you could
really put some gas in the tank there. They're hoping
currently this lobbying group to have drafted and ready to
(14:02):
sign by the end of twenty twenty five. If you'd
like to read more about this, you can check out
an excellent article over on Wired Big Thanks to Caroline
Haskins and Victoria Elliott, who wrote this. On March seventh,
twenty twenty five, Startup Nation Group say they're meeting Trump
(14:22):
officials to push for deregulated freedom cities. I got to
tell you, it smells a lot like company towns with
a new skin put on them.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
You know, boy, what very strange mean? Just to say again,
like the sales pitch of this sounds great, and I
was certainly taken by it because just full disclosure, I
was not familiar with the story and I'm kind of
learning about it in real time with everybody. But the
way it sounds on paper, I'm cool with. But then
you start digging into this company store aspect in the
(14:54):
deregulation situation, it starts to feel a little more sketchy.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, that's the thing too. We see precedent not just
in the idea of a company town, but we also
see precedent in what are called special economic zones. These
are things in other countries that have their own sort
of bubbled rule of law and regulation right now. For instance,
(15:23):
you can go to places like the island of Rotan
in Honduras, they have they are home to a place
called Prospera, which sounds like, you know, a pharmaceutical product.
We'll get to the sacklers later tonight. Prospera the place
has been attracting a bunch of tech workers and startups
(15:44):
by promising very low taxes, no regulations, a very business
friendly government. And it's the philosophical difference. This is another
old episode we did on Ridiculous History. The philosophical difference
is treating the public as civilians or citizens versus consumers
(16:05):
or customers. And that's an episode that is worth a listen.
Regardless of whether you're very pro freedom cities or you're
very anti freedom cities. We've given you what the champions
of this think. The people who are critics of this
(16:28):
argue that existing in a place like this will remove
the right of consent and will remove all sorts of
the typical democratic rights of the public. So I'm wondering
where we stand on this. By the way, the Honduran
Congress and the Honduran government is kind of internally at
(16:53):
odds and the idea of prosperity. The citizens don't love it.
They say it makes it increases wealth, disparity and poverty.
The former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. He loved Prospera,
you know, maybe arguably because he was already at the
(17:15):
top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. But he gave them a
permanent charter. And it wasn't until twenty twenty two that
Congress came back and said, look, we can't have this
be going on. This is bad for the people of Honduras,
you know, the people who can't afford to move from
the area that is now Prospera. I don't know. There's
(17:39):
an ongoing lawsuit as we record, and it's Prosperous suing
the Honduran government. We have to wonder is this a
one off? Is this a precedent? Would we see We
talked about this in an episode or in Strange News
a while back. Do you think do you guys think
the United States would ever have new company towns? Well?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I think okay. So in the situation with Prospera, it
came into form in twenty thirteen, right, and like four
years before that there was a pretty big coup situation,
and then a couple of years later, like a whole
truth and reconciliation situation there in Honduras and that instability
(18:24):
created the right political and economic climate for these folks
to move in and create Prospera. Right, so it does
feel well and now and what they are suing, right
because the new government is basically saying this is a
bad idea, guys, yeah, and Prospero says, oh yeah, we're
going to sue you for ten billion dollars which would
(18:44):
cripple your entire country.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Everybody raise your pinkies.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Wait a minute, bit, but like, aren't these things staffed
by like highly educated and specialized individuals who like have
a lot of other opportunities available to them, Like, they're not,
you know, forcing people to work in these situations, right,
I mean, I'm just trying.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
To understand, not yet. But it's kind of like sesame credit.
It always starts as an opt in thing until the
choice that you have is later removed.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yes, right, So what I'm seeing here, Ben, is the
thing you've been warning about for I don't even know
how many years, This concept that potentially there will be
a new country of sorts formed in one of these places, right,
a new economic zone that then, let's say, maybe successfully
sues its parent country country and then that becomes the
(19:38):
new thing that everybody. Everybody has to now vote between
either the government or somebody who represents the government, or Hey,
this new Prospera place or this new Freedom Corporation.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, the new region of southwestern North Oklahoma brought to
you by me and dies and excellent and alphabet.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Well, it doesn't seem too far off from like the
kind of technocracy that we're finding ourselves in with, like
you know, the unelected billionaire Elon Musk kind of running
so many key parts of the government seemingly to the
interests of his own companies to a certain degree. And
you got to wonder, as a company big enough at
a certain point and installed enough in a government that
(20:24):
they then you know, kind of flout the rules and
basically take over. I don't know, does that Does that
make sense?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, that's the that's the precedent that critics are prognosticating, predicting,
and fearing. You know, if we if we go to
folks like trade Joff go O f f uh, the
chief of staff of Prospera, then we'll see we'll see
that there. Everybody is agreed there is some sort of
(20:54):
conspiracy afoot. It's just the champions of freedom cities feel
like they're conspiring to make a better world, and the
critics feel like these guys are conspiring to engineer a
new form of neo feudalism, right a dark technocracy. If
(21:14):
we go just a little bit further on this, please
check out Freedomcitiescoalition dot com. That is the website of
the lobbying group that we're mentioning, and our paltray from
Prospera says, look, our group has already briefed officials at
the White House on not just the concept of freedom cities,
(21:36):
but three ways to create them. One is through what
they would call interstate compacts. Two or more states set
aside territories with the same kind of bubble tax and
regulatory policy. And then under existing law, these interstate compacts
(21:56):
are very tough to revoke. You can dissolve them, but
it's like, you know, it's like how it's tough to
rescind an amendment in Congress. Once you get an amendment in,
you have to have a huge majority of people in
legislation to take it out. It's a sneaky way to
get it into federal law. The other options are creating
(22:17):
federal enclaves with special economic zones, or and this might
be the most plausible option, having the White House whomever
controls it, issue executive orders to create a city one
by one.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Uh huh okay, Yeah, it's making me think about that
giant swath of land that was purchased out in California
we talked about, yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Or Elon Musk's compound outside of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah. And then it gets tricky because if we're talking
about private industries assuming something very close to the role
of government, we have to ask ourselves are those private
industries going to be US based or are they going
to be industries from a foreign country that maybe doesn't
(23:10):
have the same structure between like private and public caraffs cities.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Can I just say that if you go to Prospera
dot co, the background image is like a video. It's
the most sci fi looking kind of culty almost you know,
idyllic future city kind of pitch that I've ever seen,
and so much crypto content in it. And you got
to imagine too, that a lot of these free cities
(23:40):
or free freedom cities would be it would be proposed
that they would use the new currency. You know what
I mean, like, I just feel like that's sort.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Of the script kind of.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
I mean, that's that's a big thing about like questions
about how the government is going to start investing social
security or whatever if they dismantle it. Is this idea
that am I start making risky bets and like, you know,
speculative cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
We need a white lotus season in Prospera.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
M yeah, and we'll have Prospera produce it. I'm sure
this is the issue on the table for many of
us in the crowd. You might already be thinking ahead,
like there are nobody likes to mention this, but there
are objectively scientific innovations that could occur much faster were
(24:34):
humanity not practicing a code of ethics, were there not
hard regulations about human experimentation and so on, there would
be horrifically high rate of attrition for a lot of things,
but overall, arguably you would arrive at some breakthroughs faster
(24:56):
than you would under the current regimen of rules.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I know, man, the more I'm watching this Prospero video loop,
the more it seems pretty nice. You got healthcare, dental,
A Commissary Green spaces a pickleball court, and what else.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Do you want?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
I'm down here. You can do some human experiments on
me if I get to play pickleball for free, herey
you go.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And if you have a problem in a freedom city
that it's kind of like having a problem as an
employee of a corporation. That's another fear. You won't have
a day in court. You might go to an arbitration board.
And if you don't step right, as we used to say,
then you could have consequences with no avenue for things
(25:40):
like appeal, no avenue for things like habeas corpus and
so on, because the federal government would then have to
whatever that overall government is, would have to figure out
how they interact with this increasingly autonomous nation state. There's
a great graphic novel called Lazarus for anybody who likes
graphic novel levels. It explores the dystopian end spectrum of
(26:05):
corporate run global government and that in that there are
three demographics. For there are a few companies that rule
the world right regions thereof in those places, there are
three demographics. There's the family, the ruling class. There's what
are called the serfs, which are the skilled workers, and
(26:26):
then everybody else is called waste. And the waste can
disappear at a moment's notice. Their rights are severely curtailed,
their avenue or access to information is highly limited. And
that while that is science fiction and it's a great
graphic novel series, it does, I would argue, speak to
(26:49):
some real world concerns, especially now you know in the
US where what forty eight New Mexico residents have just disappeared,
and ICE doesn't know where, the ICE's lawyers don't know
where they are. Everybody's ignoring the fact that people are
ghosting in the US without their consent.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Dude, imagine a physical place on this planet where autonomous
security drone slash robots will be in place for the
first time. Can you imagine a country, or a state
or a city where that will happen. I can't imagine
one that has a government like literally, I cannot imagine
(27:29):
a place on this earth that would do that except
an entrepreneur based freedom city.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I have a scuba shop. There's a scuba shop on
the premises.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Come on, I can imagine. I can imagine that easily
happening with a overar constructure that calls itself the government,
sort of like how your substitute teacher might show up
in class. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are going
to move on or time. But with this we would
(28:01):
also naturally see an erosion of privacy, which reminds us
of one last golden apple to toss in the chat
before we moved to the sponsor Folks. One day, one evening,
one year, one decade. Soon we will hopefully be correct
about something good. Yet again we come to you to
(28:23):
say we correctly predicted something bad. Amazon has removed the
privacy option for all of its all of its neat
little recording devices, so all Alexa recordings will now immediately
go to the cloud. You have been decisioned tread away
yet again from a choice that you thought you were
(28:45):
always going to be able.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
To make Alexa stop spying on me.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
No, I got in trouble for doing that joker earlier.
Who was it? It was a few years back.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
We go, oh, we did that. We did a bunch
of them in a row. I just did one. Guys
come on and alexas talking to me, and she says
she can't do.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
That, Dave. She could at least learn your name. But
everyone be careful. We want to hear your thoughts on
all of this, especially, we want to hear from people
who are very anti or very pro Freedom City. Do
you think this would actually happen? Do you think this
is a company town, or do you think there is
(29:25):
a net positive to removing all those regulations? Conspiracydiheartradio dot com.
We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsors and
will return with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
And we're back. I'm gonna jump right in by way
of an update Produe Pharma, y'all. Remember those guys, the Sacklers.
Remember that giant heroin spoon that that Momus sculptor built
outside of their offices, out of their headquarters. Remember bad news,
that whole situation with OxyContin being put forth as non addictive,
(30:04):
of course, leading to the opioid epidemic.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Absolutely, demastology of the one to ten pain scale.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
All of that, absolutely, all of that very very tricky
stuff of coming from the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. But they,
you know, were forced the Sackler family to leave the
board of Purdue Pharma. Perdue Pharma did declare bankruptcy. The
Sacklers no longer are able to be enriched by any
(30:31):
activity from the company moving forward. And now a deal
has been made or perdue. Pharma has submitted a settlement
plan including up to seven billion dollars of cash from
the Sacklers themselves and their personal wealth. And you know,
as let's under the deal, the family members just jumping
(30:52):
off with the AP's reporting, estimated in documents from twenty
twenty and twenty twenty one to be worth eleven billion,
would give up ownership of the company in addition to
contributing money over fifteen years, with the biggest payment upfront, okay,
eleven billion in net worth collectively. It's just kind of
making me think about what's going on right now with
(31:14):
the stock market and with the loss of value of
certain very very very wealthy individuals. It's like, if you're
worth fifteen billion dollars, is you know, coughing up three
billion of your net worth like that big a deal.
I can't even imagine what a billion dollars even looks
like or feels like. It just seems after a certain
point people are just like hoarding their gold, you know,
(31:37):
in their castles.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Well, I mean, gold is a tangible asset though, and
this is when you get past a certain threshold of
currency or the concept of currency. You're talking about ideas,
you're talking about articles of faith. This is very non
freedom City. Yeah, so it's not giving Freedom City. But
(32:00):
but Noel, this does sound like at least some sort
of accountability. When I was reading these statements, I was
seeing a couple of astis up to seven billion dollars,
which is not the same thing as seven billion dollars.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
No, it's true, it's true.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
And none of the sacklers are facing any criminal charges, Like,
no one's going to jail yet.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Noah, No, not that we've heard. And you know, to me,
that would be a more appropriate punishment or some kind
of actual And if not, that's my point. I guess
it's like, if you're worth that many billions of dollars,
and yeah, going from eleven billion to just four billion,
if you are coughing up that full seven billion, sure
is a big hit. But also you're still you still
(32:45):
have four billion dollars, which is more money than even
makes sense to me. So it just kind of feels like,
to your point, bend these articles of faith, is it
really a huge sacrifice that's being made by these folks
that are directly responsible for loss of lives and livelihoods
and ruining families.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Well, where what money goes to preventing this from happening?
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Again, that is a question makes it does not seem
to be being addressed.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Like how could you? I don't know, just how do
you prevent a corporation like that and damage is done
family from generating something that causes so much harm?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Right?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yeah, Okay, so I understand you now, because there are
there are two related or ven diagrammed but distinct avenues there.
The first question is how do we prevent that specific
company from doing a thing right or other companies? Is
there a preventative precedent set? And then the second thing
(33:48):
is where does the money from a settlement go? That's
that latter question is a little bit easier to answer
because we I believe we discussed previously when this settlement
was first starting to you know coalesce the idea of
similar to like tobacco companies in those big settlements, they
(34:08):
had to fund public awareness campaigns, they had to fund
you know, resources for addiction, the resources for medical information,
things like that. They're not quite defanged, but they're very
dull canines when it comes to the bike.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Sure, I mean yeah, but it's also like one of
these things that I think ties into what we were
talking about with freedom cities and the idea of deregulation,
which seems like more the order of the day rather
than further regulation, because that would kind of be the
thing that could prevent other companies from doing something like this.
And you know, if there is this effort to scale
back any kind of oversight and regulation that I don't
(34:47):
think there's any way that this isn't going to happen again.
And not to mention that, you know, the damage has
been done. They began this epidemic, you know, in the
nineties and it very much, you know, kind of started
top the dominoes leading up to where we are now
with defentanyl crisis because that you know drug and the
proliferation of that drug, if you think about it, is
(35:07):
just a continuation of the availability of hard opioids that
then when they were harder to get because of regulation
and issues with oxy content, a lot of people pivoted
to heroin.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Well it was more affordable too, one hundred Percentially, if
you don't find you know, a pill mill in your
area or your doctor, this happens in the military too,
when people get prescribed painkillers after an injury in the field,
you know what I mean, And they come back and eventually, unfortunately,
that's a tale that pre dates oxycotin. That's true emergence
(35:44):
onto the market in nineteen ninety six. Right. The idea
is that people would end up being through one circumstance
or another, not always their fault, they would get hooked
on some very serious substances and they would be physically
dependent upon those. So you have to have something like that.
What are you going to do when the official doors closed,
(36:06):
You're going to find another window into the house.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
I thought a piece of television that did a really
good job of telling the story of the human cost
of this whole thing was Dope Sick, which I think
was based on a memoir of some kind by one
of the doctors that was portrayed in the in the
series by Michael Keaton. I think that's right, But it
really does show not only the like how the sales
people worked and the information they were being given, and
(36:31):
how they were able these pharmacy reps were able to
go out to these you know, hospitals and pitch their
drug as being non addictive, but also how that trickled
down to, like, you know, regular folks who were prescribed
it legally and then ultimately just became completely strung out.
I think it's a really well done show, and I
do recommend that if you want to be reminded of
the damage that this family did. So I don't know, Matt,
(36:54):
does that kind of ensure what you were talking about, like,
how do we what can be done? Is it even possible?
Like I just feel like with the climate they we're
in now, it's feeling less and less possible. And this feels,
at the end of the day like a slap on
the wrist to me.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Well, any of these corporations can develop a drug, right
that they can then test themselves and then bring in
the regulators and pay some of them off and then
make their way through and create something that becomes just
as bad as this. All of the money, I mean,
there's a breakdown on the AP News article that you
(37:26):
linked to know that it does show exactly where the
money goes. And you know, two hundred and ten million
to the lawyers of local governments who've been fighting this
battle for how many years now? You know, money that
is going to go to individuals, but it'll probably be
between three thousand and forty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
And health insurers.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, a trust for Native American tribes that
were affected. There's incredible stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I didn't see this infographic, Matt, what a really excellent
breakdown this is on the AP. I didn't realize that.
So that's cool. Well, at least they are paying, you know,
some sort of reparations to affected communities that I imagine
would go into various treatment programs and at the very least,
you know, counseling and stuff like that, because that stuff
isn't available.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
But ultimately, this is money, and it's stated within that
article to fight the opioid crisis, that's right, So it's
money to fight the giant problem that the corporation created
in the first place.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
Then that's so it's very positive.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
It's positive, but ultimately it's it's trying to fix the
thing that is the crap show that we're already in.
So like, yeah, I just wish there was money that
was going to somehow setting up a way to penalize
an organization that looks to create something as addictive and
(38:48):
damaging as that drug was right.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
I'm with you. I don't know what that looks like
those Yeah, no, no, I'm with you, And I will
say too, there's amount of this that I don't know.
The dollar amounts do seem meaningful, Like if you're talking
about one hundred and forty million dollars for trust for
Native American tribes that were affected infants affected by neonatal
abstinence syndrome one hundred and fourteen million, that does seem
(39:16):
like meaningful dollar amounts that could make a difference. But
to your point, it does start to feel a little
performative because it's like, way, way after the fact. And
is any amount of money enough to fix what Purdue
Pharma hathrought?
Speaker 3 (39:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Well, I mean what three thousand, seven hundred dollars as
the minimum right for an individual victim? That's enough for
maybe a funeral maybe.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
With the sheep casket.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah well, but you know, up to forty eight thousand
is that worth the life of somebody that was lost
due to this stuff? And if you break down seven
hundred and seventy eight point eight million dollars to individual victims,
that's what it equals, three thousand, seven hundred to forty
eight thousand depending on who you are and how you're fe.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well, there's that update, and yeah, I think it was
an opportunity to catch up on just how messed up
the whole situation was. So I will just leave you
with one more story. This one. It's pretty wild, y'all.
It feels it reminds me immediately of that episode of
the Twilight Zone terror at thirty thousand feet, I think,
(40:21):
where it was like William Shatner is being terrorized on
an airplane. He already has like horrible anxiety about flying,
and then he sees this like gremlin on the wing
and he just, you know, basically he's losing his mind.
Throughout the course of this episode, something very very similar
happened out of our state of Georgia and Savannah. A
(40:42):
passenger absolutely went ballistic physically violent behavior, lashing out at
crew members at fellow passengers due to what would appear,
at least as described by this individual as some form
of either demonic possession or belief that there were demonic
(41:06):
forces present on this flight that had followed this individual.
The individual in question is named Delanngea Augustine. He's thirty
one years old and on a flight leaving American Airlines
flight from Savannah, Georgia to Miami. He began to convulse
and shake. Initially, a lot of the attendants on board
(41:28):
thought that he was having some sort of medical emergency,
like a seizure, but he, in fact, it was later determined,
believe that a demonic spirit had entered the cabin of
this aircraft. He you know, kicked and punched folks on
the plane. One of them he kicked so hard in
the chest that an attendant, a flight attendant, actually tumbled,
(41:50):
you know, and flew across the aisle into a window
on the other side of the plane. This is all
according to an arrest report. Yeah, it's a quote from
Savannah Solomon, who's a special agent with the FBI. In
this New York Times piece about it. Augustine's choices appeared purposeful,
though difficult to describe. After a certain point, he swallowed
(42:17):
his rosary beats, you know, purposefully, claiming that later that
it was a protective means to guard him against the
demonic forces on board. I mean, everything about this just
is like feels like something you'd see in a film,
you know, and it's very scary. And it turns out
his sister when they were detained, said that they had
(42:39):
been fleeing Haiti due to spiritual oppression of some kind,
oppressive forces that were following them, and that they were
trying to escape from the words in particular, were to
flee religious attacks of a spiritual nature. His sister was
(43:02):
told by mister Augustin to close her eyes and pray
because Satan's disciples had followed them onto the plane and
the legion did not want the Augustines to make it
back to Haiti. And that's when he swallowed the rosary
beads and he referred to them as a weapon of
strength and the spiritual warfare. Only about eight other passengers
(43:22):
were on the plane. It must have been one of
those short little hopper puddle jumper type planes, and no
one was seriously injured, and you know, the crew apparently
acted very efficiently and quickly. He is facing charges, most
of which are misdemeanor's battery, obstruction of law enforcement, and
one felon account of criminal property damage. There have not
(43:46):
been any statements from a lawyer representing mister Augustin, So, yeah,
what do you guys think about that? It's a real
as real horror show.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
There that's an intense situation where it feels like the
personal belief so the family affected a lot of other
people and also some kind of situation. It's interesting. There's
a quote in the USA Today article that you posted here, Noel,
(44:16):
where the family of this man who's experiencing all this
stuff says, I didn't what was it. The quote was
she was surprised that he had hurt anyone because quote,
he hurts evil, so like he is a spiritual warrior
of some sort in the belief of the family.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
It just feels Jesus is also a mental health story,
and we know there's a lot of intersection between hardcore
spiritual beliefs and you know, mental illness that can kind
of synergistically affect one another and create sort of like
a whole new situation.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
You know, mental health struggles are very much real, and
we do know that there's something about the contained environment
of a plane that can I don't know, you we
don't hear the stories about the plane flights that go
well where everybody on the plane behaves. We hear, you know,
(45:08):
people who maybe are having a mental break, maybe hallucinating.
It is going to be a story to keep an
eye on, and we wish the or I wish the
person in their family the best.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
Oh same, no, no question, I mean it does. It
breaks my heart in away. I mean, this is obviously
someone who has a very strong spiritual belief and if
you want to take what his sister's saying and face value,
doesn't seem like someone who would typically lash out and
try to injure people, you know. So yeah, my heart
goes out to them as well, and definitely something to
(45:42):
keep an eye on. But let's let's pause here, take
a quick break here, a word from our sponsor, and
then we'll come back with one more piece of strange
news from mister Frederick.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
And we've returned computer generate eighty foot tall version. I'm
just showing you. Have you guys seen that clif so, no, okay,
you should watch that. You should find that just search
computer generate eighty foot tall version of Daisy with a
full bladder, generate lawn chair and a pair of goggles.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Right, okay, I'm on it.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
It's wonderful. Okay, let's talk about being stranded, you guys,
having no way out, like if you're on that plane
we just discussed, right, just having there's something occurring and
you cannot escape physically.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Sure, or like being in a freedom city that you're
born in.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Oh yeah, and you just don't know anything else outside
of it, and perhaps the perimeter is patrolled by robot
dogs with giant weaz f flamethrowers.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
At least you could leave after paid a reasonable fee.
It's like the Hotel California, you can check out any
time you can't leave, or you know, being a bean
in space or yeah, being in a place you can't
walk away. It reminds me one thing, just a quick
note here. Met One thing that I think shocks a
(47:10):
lot of people and they're traveling internationally, is some countries
charge you a fee when you arrive, but then some
other countries charge you a fee to leave.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
Oh yeah, I did not know.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
That now, so hey, that's a really great point. There
is definitely a fee to leave the International Space Station
once you get up there, because we're and it's not
just a little fee. Well you don't have to pay
it necessarily, but somebody does, to the tune of millions
of dollars. So back gosh, this was last year, just
(47:47):
before the summer. Maybe it was late June, early July,
when we talked about two astronauts that went up to
the International Space Station on the very first, very exciting
Boeing Starliner spacecraft. It was the first time that humans
were going to be on there, actually traveling up to
the ISS, and they did it. They made it there.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Well.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Once they got there, Boeing realized, oh, there's a lot
of problems with our Starliner craft here, so we can't
actually send you back the way we wanted to, you know,
within a couple of days time there. So you're gonna
need to hang tight and we'll figure out the problem
and then you'll be good to go. That turned into
a couple of months, and then a couple more months,
(48:31):
and it turned into from early June twenty twenty four
to this week. Oh, actually last week, as you're hearing this,
when two NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, finally
made it back to Earth, but not via a Boeing craft,
via a SpaceX craft. This is just an update, guys.
(48:53):
There's a ton of ton of writing about this, and
it's big in the news, like, oh my gosh, the
astronauts are back. We did it, Hurrah. And then it's
being politicized just because of the fact that SpaceX is
the one the company. They got him down right, it's
being stuff out there. The previous president did it wrong,
the new president did it right, and all this other stuff.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Ultimately the presidents who knows the president of Freedom Town,
Red white and Blue Land and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
But it does none of that matters. What matters is
the two human beings who are awesome astronauts made it
back to Earth.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
Yes, it's cool.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Two other astronauts came down with them, Nick and Alexander,
which is which is cool, and they made it out.
Everybody's safe, and a bunch of dolphins apparently a whole
pot of it, yes, which is it's just nice. That's
just nice to hear.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
Folks.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Tell us where you think about this, because all right,
here's my theory, Matt Noel. Are those dolphins going to
come back and say that they saw UFO thanks for
all the fish. I hope that they are currently conspiracy
squeaking right now? You know this is real.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
We saw a sorry, yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Well, it was the biggest crash we've ever heard, right,
and then we went and checked it out, and there's
a bunch of creatures on it.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
And why won't Dolphin government tell the truth about what's
going on there at the top of the water.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, what were those appendages they had that had little
tiny appendages on them? Ale weird. So anyway, that's a
cool story, guys. We're going to jump to another form
of being stranded that we've talked about on the show before,
traveling out to the frozen wastes of Antarctica and existing
(50:45):
on a research station and what it's like to know
that you have to wait for a very specific ship
to make a very dangerous trek out to where you are,
and then you have to take a very dangerous trek
out to where that ship is in order for any
supplies to come in, in order for any people to
arrive or to leave. Very let's just say I was
(51:10):
going to use the word precarious. It's a it's a
fragile existence, right.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
It's a battle episode because a bottle knows because there's
such a small group.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yes, So, so imagine that you are one of nine
people existing on a far flung research station in Antarctica. Uh,
and the only way in or out is by ship,
and the only way to get to that ship is
to take basically a small uh they call them, they
don't call them snowmobiles, they call them something else, but
(51:45):
a small snowmobile out to a larger vehicle, and then
take that slow, large vehicle down far, far away to
where a ship could arrive. Imagine somebody one of the
other nine people with you is getting real violent and
making threats, like threatening lives, and you're stuck in You know,
(52:06):
it's a fairly large station, the one we're going to
talk about, but it's also very claustrophobic. There's not a
lot of large open spaces there, and on the other
side of the wall, every wall is just snow and
negative thirty degrees celsius weather.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
And HP Lovecraft monsters, Mountains of Madness. Yeah, yes, we're
talking about Sinai, right.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yes, the the Sinai for base that's in Antarctica. It
is run by South Africa. It is officially their base.
And there was an email sent to a journalist from
one of the people who is currently staying on that
base saying that another team member had physically assaulted a
colleague and threatened to kill another colleague. This email also
(52:56):
alleged some sexual assault that is a little weird because
South African officials came through and said after investigation that
specific instance of sexual assault was not correct. But we
don't have all the details that is being kept by
whatever investigation was made there. We do know that there
was an individual on that base that did seem to
(53:20):
become violent, both in words and in actions, and it
just reminded me of some of the films that we've
seen over the years, or reminded me of the psychological
place you are in when you are in a far
flung place like that, feeling like there's no way out,
there's nothing you could even do. What am I going
to do? Send an email, which is what this person did, right,
(53:43):
Please help via email. It just doesn't seem like you're
going to get any help anytime.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Soon, especially the closest other physical basis like one hundred
and ninety miles away, right.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yes, yes, so you could, I guess escape if you
wanted to an attempt to make it to the other place,
but the chances that you make it there safely are not.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Great, especially this time of year.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, it's not a great time of
year because everybody on that base is going to have
to stay there until I think December. Like that's like
they're locked there basically until December.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
Because the hemispheres have opposing seasonal shifts. So yes, right
now in the very lowest part of the hemisphere, not
to be too normalizing the northern normalizing of the Northern hemisphere,
but in Antarctica right now, the weather is turning increasingly
(54:45):
hostile for travel.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
You're snowedd Yes, unless a corporation or country or group
decided to spend a ton of money and send a
ship out there to do some kind of a urgency
evacuation or emergency intervention. Which again, just like on it's
not quite as expensive as you know, the whole SpaceX
(55:09):
saving them and all that stuff out in space, but
it's pretty close when it comes to just the expenses
that someone would have to incur to save.
Speaker 3 (55:17):
You, and the dangers also there are very MiG Even
if you have a state level entity doing an exfiltration
on this, they're still going to be rolling the dice
a little bit.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Ah exactly.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
So, guys, all of this is making me think about
being somewhat stranded here on planet Earth because in both cases,
the individuals on the Sinai Research Station, the people who
are out on iss they made it or the concept
right is you make it to safety, you make it
to a place that is that feels maybe more like home,
(55:52):
that feels like I'm no longer in danger. We're currently
all of us. If you can hear this existing on
planet Earth, right.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah, it's the first spaceship when you think about it.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
At least that we're aware of, right, And it's making
me think about more of that stuff out there, right,
connecting it back up to space. And there was this
documentary that really caught my eye. I've not seen the
film yet, I've only watched the trailer, but when I
watched the trailer and then did a little digging, it
reminded me of the first time we talked about the
(56:24):
Disclosure Project, Stephen Greer's thing that he put together out
in Washington in two thousand. This concept of bringing together
as many individual human beings that have true access to
government programs, especially those special programs that we've talked about
on in this show before, where only a couple of
(56:46):
members of Congress, sometimes only a couple senators sometimes even
know that they exist. This documentary, it's called Age of Disclosure,
brings together around thirty human beings that have real access
to these programs like a TIP and programs like the
ones that are that followed a TIP that are happening
(57:06):
right now that are looking at unidentified anomaloust phenomena, which
is what they call it now, and they are coming
forward in this documentary and saying, yes, non human intelligence exists.
It has been here for a long time. The technology
has been here for a long time. We are currently
in a cold war with every other country on the planet,
(57:30):
especially the United States and China and Russia, and that
cold war is all about taking this crashed technology or
technology that has been encountered that is not of this
world and somehow reverse engineering it. And they are saying
that the first country or superpower that successfully reverse engineers
it will be the next dominant hegemonic power on this planet.
Speaker 3 (57:55):
Ooh, and they're not saying, by the way, I love
that you're playing this out, Matt, because it's something we
point out. Obviously, no one has said definitely extra terrestrial.
The confirmed phrase that is being used by a lot
of people who are experts in their fields is non
human in origin, and that's a hell of a umbrella phrase.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
Well, some of the folks in there. I think they
use the aliens wordy.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
In the trailer at least. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Well, from what I'm reading about the documentary, so people
who were at south By Southwest this year were able
to see it. That's where it premiered. And and the
interesting thing to me, guys, is that there are there
appears to be bipartisan support when it comes to the
two party system in this country, for more money being
(58:48):
thrown at this concept, for more transparency about this idea.
You've got people like Marco Rubio, people little Micah, Yeah,
the Secretary of State, Mark Rubio. You've got Kristen I
don't know how to say her name, Gillibrand Gillibrand she's
(59:09):
from New York, she's a senator. You've got uh, there's
there's several other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle
who are saying, hey, we need to do more with
this thing. This is really important. And then you got
people from the intelligence side, from the Pentagon, from people
who are career Pentagon officials coming forward and saying, yeah,
(59:30):
this is this is absolutely real. It's time for us
to take this seriously and tell people because we've been
keeping it secret for so long. It's always in a
lot of these documentaries. It's talked about as in, it's
the alien thing, right, it's the concept of aliens. Oh,
there's all these possibilities with aliens. What this is focused on,
at least to my understanding, is this arms race essentially
(59:54):
that we're all locked into.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Because it's a it's a defense threat at this point.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
To everybody, and and everybody wants the new thing because
whoever gets it first, whoever drops that technology first, wins,
at least according to the folks in this documentary. But
I just want to put that out there for anybody
who's listening. What do you think about all of that stuff?
What do you think about everything we've talked about on
this episode today? You should contact us.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yes, there are many ways to do so. You can
take your local UAP over down our way, just drop by,
you know what I mean, Send us a blurry photograph
of yourself Bigfoot style. By the way, there's also a
move I don't know, I told you guys, there's a
move to make Bigfoot the state cryptid of California. So
(01:00:44):
gobout that. Yeah, yeah, we're on board with that.
Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
I think it'd be Oregon, though, honestly.
Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
You know, hopefully it's setting a precedent, fair enough, right,
matting a precedent there, It is so you could contact
us with your take on all of these stories. We
discuss us recommendations of other stories you fill your fellow
conspiracy realist will enjoy in an upcoming episode. How do
I do that? You're asking yourself? So glad you asked.
(01:01:09):
You can call us on a telephonic device, You can
send us an email. You can find us on a
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Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagot. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Fellow conspiracy realist friends
and neighbors, if you are listening to our strange news
segment the week or the day it publishes, let us
(00:50):
be the first to welcome you to Monday, March twenty fourth.
How's it going, guys, how are we feeling?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Welcome to the middle of the film. That's money, Piper,
that's going good. I'm feeling like a giant nerd today
as usual.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Nice. I am just for some reason craving Ntella. I
just wanted to tell her right now. I don't know, because.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yeah, probably that was to deal with palm oil. Palm
oil bad, right. We don't like palm oil because it's
I think, isn't it harvested historically by slave labor and South.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I mean if you hate orangutanks, then palm oil
is awesome.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh yeah, look it's got palm oil in it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
No, we we are not here to exclusively ruin wholesome
good things. But maybe we pop the top on this
would by giving everybody some news that some strange news
that may make confirm some of our fellow listeners firsthand experiences.
It may also be a nice uh whatever the opposite
(01:57):
of a palate cleanser is to our earlier episod it
on social media. What's the opposite of a palate cleanser?
You guys.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Eat a lot of flavor bomb flavor explosions.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Okay, yeah, a palette blocker, a palette annihilator, yeah, a
palette stem here all right, Uh, here's the news that broke.
Financial Times covered it, Gizmoto covered it, Futurism covered it.
Human intelligence does appear to be sharply declining depending upon
(02:33):
how human intelligence is measured. What do we mean by this?
Assessments from multiple institutions are showing that people across demographics
and across age groups are having trouble concentrating a losing
reasoning problem. Solving, critical thinking, and information processing skills. So
(02:55):
the way that they are measuring intelligence in these studies
does appear to confirm some of the things that we
discussed in our episode on social media versus attention span.
But I think Noel, you raised a really salient point
that's been on everybody's mind earlier, which was perhaps cognitive
(03:20):
processing ability. It's not necessarily part of it is attroby,
but it's not necessarily disappearing.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
It's being shifted.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's being shifted or it's transforming to other priorities in
the great mystery box called the human brain.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Do you remember that story we covered either here on
Ridiculous History about like the decline of intelligence during the
Roman Empire likely attributed to Lead led. I don't think
we can blame Lead for this necessarily. They go plastic
in our balls, ruminated everything.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah, we can say that there are chemical substances that definitely,
especially informative years for humans, They can affect cognition, they
can affect later things like impulse control and critical thought.
This goes to here, let's cite let's cite a few
(04:19):
sources as we kick it off. We'll go to nor
Al Sabai writing for Futurism, who points out the University
of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study looked at what they
call concentration difficulty of eighteen year old people in America
(04:43):
and then.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Forty year old people in America. I can relate. Concentration
is hard, yeah, and getting harder. It seems, uh huh.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
And they said, you know, look at these other studies,
like the Program for International Student Assessment or that's a
standing institution. Their whole deal is to measure learning skills
of adolescents around the world. And after years of research,
really deep research, they found that people seem to universally
(05:15):
be struggling with reduced attention spans and weakening critical thinking skills.
Just in twenty twenty two, Oh, the pandemic was a
game changer for US. In twenty twenty two, the National
Endowment for the Arts found that just thirty seven point
six percent of Americans US residents said they'd read a
(05:37):
novel or a short story in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Remember I told you Ben that on our trip to
the Middle East, I was really hoping to read a
whole book, And so I bought the twenty twenty four
collection of the best American short Stories. I am proud
to reveal that I did read the forward, the introduction,
and one story in thirty Hours of Flying.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
The first story was good, very good.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
It was called The Magic Bangle, and I highly recommend it.
And I'm really looking forward to digging in because I figured,
you know, I mean, maybe this is good advice for
anybody that's struggling with this. I just kind of figured, like,
we read a lot of bite sized stuff. I really
want to finish a book, so why not read a
book full of bite sized stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, And some of the world's best novels are written
in that way. For instance, you know, a great, a
great debate covering The Things They Carried is whether that
should be evaluated as a cohesive novel or whether it's
a series of interrelated short stories. And what is life
(06:39):
really except for a series of inter related short stories?
With that. With that, folks, we do not abjure, but
we do encourage you to spend some time in deep thought,
you know, to take some time and for I don't,
I'll be on a here as everybody's accountabil a buddy, h.
(07:03):
I have to put my phone away now when I read,
because we're just so it's so normalized. We're so acclimated
to always having a thing that we check just in
case something new has.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Happens, that dopamine casino we carry around in our pockets.
Like I actually recently invested in one of those mag
charger things that sits by my bed, So when I
charge my phone now, I put it on that thing
and close the door on the other side of the house.
And I've been trying to listen to records and be
more intentional with the stuff I do and try not
to think about that thing. And it's it's, you know,
(07:36):
working to a degree, but it's still not easy. I
do feel that drive to go check it in the
other room.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Can we pause for a moment. A vocabulary word of
the day abjure. Please let us know abjure?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Does that mean kind of like to poo poo, something
like to speak negatively or to reject.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It means to uh, it's it's like to renown. Here
we go disavowed. So I I should have used admonish.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
We just some of us don't know words.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
So we don't so we're not The point is we're
not yelling at you we're not yelling at ourselves, but
we're we're all working towards this, and we'd love to
hear from fellow conspiracy realists who are in charge of younglings.
How how do you handle uh the screen time? How
do you handle the creation of uh capacity for critical
(08:41):
thinking and deep thought? While you're doing that, we're going
to give you a cavalcade of somewhat related stories. We're
going to talk about eggs, of course, We're going to
follow up on Purdue Pharma. We're going to finally catch
up with Satan's disciples. Uh, We'll we'll talk about disclosure.
We got some shout outs to the ends of the
(09:04):
Earth literally, a story we've all been following in Antarctica,
story we've been following in space. But before we do
any of that, before we even pause for a word
from our sponsors, I'd like to posit to you guys,
the following, would you live in a city that had
(09:24):
less rule of law but more potential to use science
to improve your life?
Speaker 4 (09:31):
I answer that question by citing an incredible take I
just heard from Ezra Klein talking about all this idea
of increasing government efficiency, and his critique was, I'm all
about government efficiency, But the question is towards what end
efficiency towards what? And he just feels like the current
administration's vision of the future sucks because it does not
(09:54):
involve the things that you're talking about, Ben, and it
sort of absures science and technology and seems to have
a bit of a retrograde attitude towards that. So I
would I would hope, I would love to live in
a place where all that stuff is more appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
All right, well, we'll go to and add break and
we will introduce you to the not quite new idea
of freedom cities. And we have returned. Do you guys
remember the old song? Was it sixteen tons? The company
(10:30):
store song?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Lord?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
What do you get that is entirely about the US practice,
or you know, the worldwide practice in the past, of
a community that is run by not a state, not
a government, a government entity, but instead by a private entity,
(10:53):
by a corporation. This encounters all kinds of weird stuff
like pain and script or having debts that are purposely
structured such that you can never never really get back
into the black ink. We've all heard stories about that.
I think we did a few episodes on ridiculous history
(11:14):
that touch on the idea of company towns, didn't we.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
We had one on here, Absolutely we did on here.
I mean just the idea of I don't know, just
you know. It's funny too, with the discussion we recently
had about scam factory, you know, that's almost an extension
of that, but even more abusive. I would argue, just
the idea of your captive you are beholden to these
overlords of one type or another, and you are using
(11:40):
currency that they determine the value of.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, great news for any fans of terrible historical precedent.
There is a lobbying group right now active in the
United States called the Freedom Citi's Coalition. The Freedoms Cities
Coalition is currently meeting with officials from the present US
(12:06):
administration to push for the creation of what are called
freedom cities. Now, first off, that's that's a great name.
Uh there. The idea is that you could create tech
hubs exempt from all those pesky taxes and red tape regulation, uh,
to to get get away from all these federal laws
(12:33):
that stop us from doing uh you know what current
society would call highly unethical things like anti aging, clinical trials,
nuclear reactors, startups, different kind of construction that's not bound
by all these you know, busy minded bureaucrats. Right.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Well, I feel like a dummy because when you tease
this topic earlier and asked the question, I thought it
was a good thing. I thought me maybe wanted to
live in a place where more science and technology was
you know, valued and pushed forward. But I guess you're
talking about like unchecked, potentially problematic science and technology.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And back in twenty twenty three, current president US President
Donald Trump kind of pitched the idea of creating ten
freedom cities. The hardcore proponents of this will call them
start up nations, and their concept is, or they're pitches
that if you didn't have the FDA or the Nuclear
(13:36):
Regulatory Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, the
bad guys from Ghostbusters won that you would be able
to jumpstart, jumpstart all sorts of innovation and you could
really put some gas in the tank there. They're hoping
currently this lobbying group to have drafted and ready to
(14:02):
sign by the end of twenty twenty five. If you'd
like to read more about this, you can check out
an excellent article over on Wired Big Thanks to Caroline
Haskins and Victoria Elliott, who wrote this. On March seventh,
twenty twenty five, Startup Nation Group say they're meeting Trump
(14:22):
officials to push for deregulated freedom cities. I got to
tell you, it smells a lot like company towns with
a new skin put on them.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
You know, boy, what very strange mean? Just to say again,
like the sales pitch of this sounds great, and I
was certainly taken by it because just full disclosure, I
was not familiar with the story and I'm kind of
learning about it in real time with everybody. But the
way it sounds on paper, I'm cool with. But then
you start digging into this company store aspect in the
(14:54):
deregulation situation, it starts to feel a little more sketchy.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, that's the thing too. We see precedent not just
in the idea of a company town, but we also
see precedent in what are called special economic zones. These
are things in other countries that have their own sort
of bubbled rule of law and regulation right now. For instance,
(15:23):
you can go to places like the island of Rotan
in Honduras, they have they are home to a place
called Prospera, which sounds like, you know, a pharmaceutical product.
We'll get to the sacklers later tonight. Prospera the place
has been attracting a bunch of tech workers and startups
(15:44):
by promising very low taxes, no regulations, a very business
friendly government. And it's the philosophical difference. This is another
old episode we did on Ridiculous History. The philosophical difference
is treating the public as civilians or citizens versus consumers
(16:05):
or customers. And that's an episode that is worth a listen.
Regardless of whether you're very pro freedom cities or you're
very anti freedom cities. We've given you what the champions
of this think. The people who are critics of this
(16:28):
argue that existing in a place like this will remove
the right of consent and will remove all sorts of
the typical democratic rights of the public. So I'm wondering
where we stand on this. By the way, the Honduran
Congress and the Honduran government is kind of internally at
(16:53):
odds and the idea of prosperity. The citizens don't love it.
They say it makes it increases wealth, disparity and poverty.
The former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. He loved Prospera,
you know, maybe arguably because he was already at the
(17:15):
top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. But he gave them a
permanent charter. And it wasn't until twenty twenty two that
Congress came back and said, look, we can't have this
be going on. This is bad for the people of Honduras,
you know, the people who can't afford to move from
the area that is now Prospera. I don't know. There's
(17:39):
an ongoing lawsuit as we record, and it's Prosperous suing
the Honduran government. We have to wonder is this a
one off? Is this a precedent? Would we see We
talked about this in an episode or in Strange News
a while back. Do you think do you guys think
the United States would ever have new company towns? Well?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I think okay. So in the situation with Prospera, it
came into form in twenty thirteen, right, and like four
years before that there was a pretty big coup situation,
and then a couple of years later, like a whole
truth and reconciliation situation there in Honduras and that instability
(18:24):
created the right political and economic climate for these folks
to move in and create Prospera. Right, so it does
feel well and now and what they are suing, right
because the new government is basically saying this is a
bad idea, guys, yeah, and Prospero says, oh yeah, we're
going to sue you for ten billion dollars which would
(18:44):
cripple your entire country.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Everybody raise your pinkies.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Wait a minute, bit, but like, aren't these things staffed
by like highly educated and specialized individuals who like have
a lot of other opportunities available to them, Like, they're not,
you know, forcing people to work in these situations, right,
I mean, I'm just trying.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
To understand, not yet. But it's kind of like sesame credit.
It always starts as an opt in thing until the
choice that you have is later removed.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yes, right, So what I'm seeing here, Ben, is the
thing you've been warning about for I don't even know
how many years, This concept that potentially there will be
a new country of sorts formed in one of these places, right,
a new economic zone that then, let's say, maybe successfully
sues its parent country country and then that becomes the
(19:38):
new thing that everybody. Everybody has to now vote between
either the government or somebody who represents the government, or Hey,
this new Prospera place or this new Freedom Corporation.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, the new region of southwestern North Oklahoma brought to
you by me and dies and excellent and alphabet.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Well, it doesn't seem too far off from like the
kind of technocracy that we're finding ourselves in with, like
you know, the unelected billionaire Elon Musk kind of running
so many key parts of the government seemingly to the
interests of his own companies to a certain degree. And
you got to wonder, as a company big enough at
a certain point and installed enough in a government that
(20:24):
they then you know, kind of flout the rules and
basically take over. I don't know, does that Does that
make sense?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, that's the that's the precedent that critics are prognosticating, predicting,
and fearing. You know, if we if we go to
folks like trade Joff go O f f uh, the
chief of staff of Prospera, then we'll see we'll see
that there. Everybody is agreed there is some sort of
(20:54):
conspiracy afoot. It's just the champions of freedom cities feel
like they're conspiring to make a better world, and the
critics feel like these guys are conspiring to engineer a
new form of neo feudalism, right a dark technocracy. If
(21:14):
we go just a little bit further on this, please
check out Freedomcitiescoalition dot com. That is the website of
the lobbying group that we're mentioning, and our paltray from
Prospera says, look, our group has already briefed officials at
the White House on not just the concept of freedom cities,
(21:36):
but three ways to create them. One is through what
they would call interstate compacts. Two or more states set
aside territories with the same kind of bubble tax and
regulatory policy. And then under existing law, these interstate compacts
(21:56):
are very tough to revoke. You can dissolve them, but
it's like, you know, it's like how it's tough to
rescind an amendment in Congress. Once you get an amendment in,
you have to have a huge majority of people in
legislation to take it out. It's a sneaky way to
get it into federal law. The other options are creating
(22:17):
federal enclaves with special economic zones, or and this might
be the most plausible option, having the White House whomever
controls it, issue executive orders to create a city one
by one.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Uh huh okay, Yeah, it's making me think about that
giant swath of land that was purchased out in California
we talked about, yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Or Elon Musk's compound outside of Austin, Texas.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah. And then it gets tricky because if we're talking
about private industries assuming something very close to the role
of government, we have to ask ourselves are those private
industries going to be US based or are they going
to be industries from a foreign country that maybe doesn't
(23:10):
have the same structure between like private and public caraffs cities.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Can I just say that if you go to Prospera
dot co, the background image is like a video. It's
the most sci fi looking kind of culty almost you know,
idyllic future city kind of pitch that I've ever seen,
and so much crypto content in it. And you got
to imagine too, that a lot of these free cities
(23:40):
or free freedom cities would be it would be proposed
that they would use the new currency. You know what
I mean, like, I just feel like that's sort.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Of the script kind of.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
I mean, that's that's a big thing about like questions
about how the government is going to start investing social
security or whatever if they dismantle it. Is this idea
that am I start making risky bets and like, you know,
speculative cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
We need a white lotus season in Prospera.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
M yeah, and we'll have Prospera produce it. I'm sure
this is the issue on the table for many of
us in the crowd. You might already be thinking ahead,
like there are nobody likes to mention this, but there
are objectively scientific innovations that could occur much faster were
(24:34):
humanity not practicing a code of ethics, were there not
hard regulations about human experimentation and so on, there would
be horrifically high rate of attrition for a lot of things,
but overall, arguably you would arrive at some breakthroughs faster
(24:56):
than you would under the current regimen of rules.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I know, man, the more I'm watching this Prospero video loop,
the more it seems pretty nice. You got healthcare, dental,
A Commissary Green spaces a pickleball court, and what else.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Do you want?
Speaker 4 (25:11):
I'm down here. You can do some human experiments on
me if I get to play pickleball for free, herey
you go.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And if you have a problem in a freedom city
that it's kind of like having a problem as an
employee of a corporation. That's another fear. You won't have
a day in court. You might go to an arbitration board.
And if you don't step right, as we used to say,
then you could have consequences with no avenue for things
(25:40):
like appeal, no avenue for things like habeas corpus and
so on, because the federal government would then have to
whatever that overall government is, would have to figure out
how they interact with this increasingly autonomous nation state. There's
a great graphic novel called Lazarus for anybody who likes
graphic novel levels. It explores the dystopian end spectrum of
(26:05):
corporate run global government and that in that there are
three demographics. For there are a few companies that rule
the world right regions thereof in those places, there are
three demographics. There's the family, the ruling class. There's what
are called the serfs, which are the skilled workers, and
(26:26):
then everybody else is called waste. And the waste can
disappear at a moment's notice. Their rights are severely curtailed,
their avenue or access to information is highly limited. And
that while that is science fiction and it's a great
graphic novel series, it does, I would argue, speak to
(26:49):
some real world concerns, especially now you know in the
US where what forty eight New Mexico residents have just disappeared,
and ICE doesn't know where, the ICE's lawyers don't know
where they are. Everybody's ignoring the fact that people are
ghosting in the US without their consent.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Dude, imagine a physical place on this planet where autonomous
security drone slash robots will be in place for the
first time. Can you imagine a country, or a state
or a city where that will happen. I can't imagine
one that has a government like literally, I cannot imagine
(27:29):
a place on this earth that would do that except
an entrepreneur based freedom city.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I have a scuba shop. There's a scuba shop on
the premises.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Come on, I can imagine. I can imagine that easily
happening with a overar constructure that calls itself the government,
sort of like how your substitute teacher might show up
in class. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, we are going
to move on or time. But with this we would
(28:01):
also naturally see an erosion of privacy, which reminds us
of one last golden apple to toss in the chat
before we moved to the sponsor Folks. One day, one evening,
one year, one decade. Soon we will hopefully be correct
about something good. Yet again we come to you to
(28:23):
say we correctly predicted something bad. Amazon has removed the
privacy option for all of its all of its neat
little recording devices, so all Alexa recordings will now immediately
go to the cloud. You have been decisioned tread away
yet again from a choice that you thought you were
(28:45):
always going to be able.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
To make Alexa stop spying on me.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
No, I got in trouble for doing that joker earlier.
Who was it? It was a few years back.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
We go, oh, we did that. We did a bunch
of them in a row. I just did one. Guys
come on and alexas talking to me, and she says
she can't do.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
That, Dave. She could at least learn your name. But
everyone be careful. We want to hear your thoughts on
all of this, especially, we want to hear from people
who are very anti or very pro Freedom City. Do
you think this would actually happen? Do you think this
is a company town, or do you think there is
(29:25):
a net positive to removing all those regulations? Conspiracydiheartradio dot com.
We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsors and
will return with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
And we're back. I'm gonna jump right in by way
of an update Produe Pharma, y'all. Remember those guys, the Sacklers.
Remember that giant heroin spoon that that Momus sculptor built
outside of their offices, out of their headquarters. Remember bad news,
that whole situation with OxyContin being put forth as non addictive,
(30:04):
of course, leading to the opioid epidemic.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Absolutely, demastology of the one to ten pain scale.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
All of that, absolutely, all of that very very tricky
stuff of coming from the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. But they,
you know, were forced the Sackler family to leave the
board of Purdue Pharma. Perdue Pharma did declare bankruptcy. The
Sacklers no longer are able to be enriched by any
(30:31):
activity from the company moving forward. And now a deal
has been made or perdue. Pharma has submitted a settlement
plan including up to seven billion dollars of cash from
the Sacklers themselves and their personal wealth. And you know,
as let's under the deal, the family members just jumping
(30:52):
off with the AP's reporting, estimated in documents from twenty
twenty and twenty twenty one to be worth eleven billion,
would give up ownership of the company in addition to
contributing money over fifteen years, with the biggest payment upfront, okay,
eleven billion in net worth collectively. It's just kind of
making me think about what's going on right now with
(31:14):
the stock market and with the loss of value of
certain very very very wealthy individuals. It's like, if you're
worth fifteen billion dollars, is you know, coughing up three
billion of your net worth like that big a deal.
I can't even imagine what a billion dollars even looks
like or feels like. It just seems after a certain
point people are just like hoarding their gold, you know,
(31:37):
in their castles.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Well, I mean, gold is a tangible asset though, and
this is when you get past a certain threshold of
currency or the concept of currency. You're talking about ideas,
you're talking about articles of faith. This is very non
freedom City. Yeah, so it's not giving Freedom City. But
(32:00):
but Noel, this does sound like at least some sort
of accountability. When I was reading these statements, I was
seeing a couple of astis up to seven billion dollars,
which is not the same thing as seven billion dollars.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
No, it's true, it's true.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
And none of the sacklers are facing any criminal charges, Like,
no one's going to jail yet.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Noah, No, not that we've heard. And you know, to me,
that would be a more appropriate punishment or some kind
of actual And if not, that's my point. I guess
it's like, if you're worth that many billions of dollars,
and yeah, going from eleven billion to just four billion,
if you are coughing up that full seven billion, sure
is a big hit. But also you're still you still
(32:45):
have four billion dollars, which is more money than even
makes sense to me. So it just kind of feels like,
to your point, bend these articles of faith, is it
really a huge sacrifice that's being made by these folks
that are directly responsible for loss of lives and livelihoods
and ruining families.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Well, where what money goes to preventing this from happening?
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Again, that is a question makes it does not seem
to be being addressed.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Like how could you? I don't know, just how do
you prevent a corporation like that and damage is done
family from generating something that causes so much harm?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Right?
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yeah, Okay, so I understand you now, because there are
there are two related or ven diagrammed but distinct avenues there.
The first question is how do we prevent that specific
company from doing a thing right or other companies? Is
there a preventative precedent set? And then the second thing
(33:48):
is where does the money from a settlement go? That's
that latter question is a little bit easier to answer
because we I believe we discussed previously when this settlement
was first starting to you know coalesce the idea of
similar to like tobacco companies in those big settlements, they
(34:08):
had to fund public awareness campaigns, they had to fund
you know, resources for addiction, the resources for medical information,
things like that. They're not quite defanged, but they're very
dull canines when it comes to the bike.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Sure, I mean yeah, but it's also like one of
these things that I think ties into what we were
talking about with freedom cities and the idea of deregulation,
which seems like more the order of the day rather
than further regulation, because that would kind of be the
thing that could prevent other companies from doing something like this.
And you know, if there is this effort to scale
back any kind of oversight and regulation that I don't
(34:47):
think there's any way that this isn't going to happen again.
And not to mention that, you know, the damage has
been done. They began this epidemic, you know, in the
nineties and it very much, you know, kind of started
top the dominoes leading up to where we are now
with defentanyl crisis because that you know drug and the
proliferation of that drug, if you think about it, is
(35:07):
just a continuation of the availability of hard opioids that
then when they were harder to get because of regulation
and issues with oxy content, a lot of people pivoted
to heroin.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Well it was more affordable too, one hundred Percentially, if
you don't find you know, a pill mill in your
area or your doctor, this happens in the military too,
when people get prescribed painkillers after an injury in the field,
you know what I mean, And they come back and eventually, unfortunately,
that's a tale that pre dates oxycotin. That's true emergence
(35:44):
onto the market in nineteen ninety six. Right. The idea
is that people would end up being through one circumstance
or another, not always their fault, they would get hooked
on some very serious substances and they would be physically
dependent upon those. So you have to have something like that.
What are you going to do when the official doors closed,
(36:06):
You're going to find another window into the house.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
I thought a piece of television that did a really
good job of telling the story of the human cost
of this whole thing was Dope Sick, which I think
was based on a memoir of some kind by one
of the doctors that was portrayed in the in the
series by Michael Keaton. I think that's right, But it
really does show not only the like how the sales
people worked and the information they were being given, and
(36:31):
how they were able these pharmacy reps were able to
go out to these you know, hospitals and pitch their
drug as being non addictive, but also how that trickled
down to, like, you know, regular folks who were prescribed
it legally and then ultimately just became completely strung out.
I think it's a really well done show, and I
do recommend that if you want to be reminded of
the damage that this family did. So I don't know, Matt,
(36:54):
does that kind of ensure what you were talking about, like,
how do we what can be done? Is it even possible?
Like I just feel like with the climate they we're
in now, it's feeling less and less possible. And this feels,
at the end of the day like a slap on
the wrist to me.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Well, any of these corporations can develop a drug, right
that they can then test themselves and then bring in
the regulators and pay some of them off and then
make their way through and create something that becomes just
as bad as this. All of the money, I mean,
there's a breakdown on the AP News article that you
(37:26):
linked to know that it does show exactly where the
money goes. And you know, two hundred and ten million
to the lawyers of local governments who've been fighting this
battle for how many years now? You know, money that
is going to go to individuals, but it'll probably be
between three thousand and forty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
And health insurers.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, a trust for Native American tribes that
were affected. There's incredible stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I didn't see this infographic, Matt, what a really excellent
breakdown this is on the AP. I didn't realize that.
So that's cool. Well, at least they are paying, you know,
some sort of reparations to affected communities that I imagine
would go into various treatment programs and at the very least,
you know, counseling and stuff like that, because that stuff
isn't available.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
But ultimately, this is money, and it's stated within that
article to fight the opioid crisis, that's right, So it's
money to fight the giant problem that the corporation created
in the first place.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
Then that's so it's very positive.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
It's positive, but ultimately it's it's trying to fix the
thing that is the crap show that we're already in.
So like, yeah, I just wish there was money that
was going to somehow setting up a way to penalize
an organization that looks to create something as addictive and
(38:48):
damaging as that drug was right.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
I'm with you. I don't know what that looks like
those Yeah, no, no, I'm with you, And I will
say too, there's amount of this that I don't know.
The dollar amounts do seem meaningful, Like if you're talking
about one hundred and forty million dollars for trust for
Native American tribes that were affected infants affected by neonatal
abstinence syndrome one hundred and fourteen million, that does seem
(39:16):
like meaningful dollar amounts that could make a difference. But
to your point, it does start to feel a little
performative because it's like, way, way after the fact. And
is any amount of money enough to fix what Purdue
Pharma hathrought?
Speaker 3 (39:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Well, I mean what three thousand, seven hundred dollars as
the minimum right for an individual victim? That's enough for
maybe a funeral maybe.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
With the sheep casket.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Yeah well, but you know, up to forty eight thousand
is that worth the life of somebody that was lost
due to this stuff? And if you break down seven
hundred and seventy eight point eight million dollars to individual victims,
that's what it equals, three thousand, seven hundred to forty
eight thousand depending on who you are and how you're fe.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well, there's that update, and yeah, I think it was
an opportunity to catch up on just how messed up
the whole situation was. So I will just leave you
with one more story. This one. It's pretty wild, y'all.
It feels it reminds me immediately of that episode of
the Twilight Zone terror at thirty thousand feet, I think,
(40:21):
where it was like William Shatner is being terrorized on
an airplane. He already has like horrible anxiety about flying,
and then he sees this like gremlin on the wing
and he just, you know, basically he's losing his mind.
Throughout the course of this episode, something very very similar
happened out of our state of Georgia and Savannah. A
(40:42):
passenger absolutely went ballistic physically violent behavior, lashing out at
crew members at fellow passengers due to what would appear,
at least as described by this individual as some form
of either demonic possession or belief that there were demonic
(41:06):
forces present on this flight that had followed this individual.
The individual in question is named Delanngea Augustine. He's thirty
one years old and on a flight leaving American Airlines
flight from Savannah, Georgia to Miami. He began to convulse
and shake. Initially, a lot of the attendants on board
(41:28):
thought that he was having some sort of medical emergency,
like a seizure, but he, in fact, it was later determined,
believe that a demonic spirit had entered the cabin of
this aircraft. He you know, kicked and punched folks on
the plane. One of them he kicked so hard in
the chest that an attendant, a flight attendant, actually tumbled,
(41:50):
you know, and flew across the aisle into a window
on the other side of the plane. This is all
according to an arrest report. Yeah, it's a quote from
Savannah Solomon, who's a special agent with the FBI. In
this New York Times piece about it. Augustine's choices appeared purposeful,
though difficult to describe. After a certain point, he swallowed
(42:17):
his rosary beats, you know, purposefully, claiming that later that
it was a protective means to guard him against the
demonic forces on board. I mean, everything about this just
is like feels like something you'd see in a film,
you know, and it's very scary. And it turns out
his sister when they were detained, said that they had
(42:39):
been fleeing Haiti due to spiritual oppression of some kind,
oppressive forces that were following them, and that they were
trying to escape from the words in particular, were to
flee religious attacks of a spiritual nature. His sister was
(43:02):
told by mister Augustin to close her eyes and pray
because Satan's disciples had followed them onto the plane and
the legion did not want the Augustines to make it
back to Haiti. And that's when he swallowed the rosary
beads and he referred to them as a weapon of
strength and the spiritual warfare. Only about eight other passengers
(43:22):
were on the plane. It must have been one of
those short little hopper puddle jumper type planes, and no
one was seriously injured, and you know, the crew apparently
acted very efficiently and quickly. He is facing charges, most
of which are misdemeanor's battery, obstruction of law enforcement, and
one felon account of criminal property damage. There have not
(43:46):
been any statements from a lawyer representing mister Augustin, So, yeah,
what do you guys think about that? It's a real
as real horror show.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
There that's an intense situation where it feels like the
personal belief so the family affected a lot of other
people and also some kind of situation. It's interesting. There's
a quote in the USA Today article that you posted here, Noel,
(44:16):
where the family of this man who's experiencing all this
stuff says, I didn't what was it. The quote was
she was surprised that he had hurt anyone because quote,
he hurts evil, so like he is a spiritual warrior
of some sort in the belief of the family.
Speaker 4 (44:31):
It just feels Jesus is also a mental health story,
and we know there's a lot of intersection between hardcore
spiritual beliefs and you know, mental illness that can kind
of synergistically affect one another and create sort of like
a whole new situation.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
You know, mental health struggles are very much real, and
we do know that there's something about the contained environment
of a plane that can I don't know, you we
don't hear the stories about the plane flights that go
well where everybody on the plane behaves. We hear, you know,
(45:08):
people who maybe are having a mental break, maybe hallucinating.
It is going to be a story to keep an
eye on, and we wish the or I wish the
person in their family the best.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
Oh same, no, no question, I mean it does. It
breaks my heart in away. I mean, this is obviously
someone who has a very strong spiritual belief and if
you want to take what his sister's saying and face value,
doesn't seem like someone who would typically lash out and
try to injure people, you know. So yeah, my heart
goes out to them as well, and definitely something to
(45:42):
keep an eye on. But let's let's pause here, take
a quick break here, a word from our sponsor, and
then we'll come back with one more piece of strange
news from mister Frederick.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
And we've returned computer generate eighty foot tall version. I'm
just showing you. Have you guys seen that clif so, no, okay,
you should watch that. You should find that just search
computer generate eighty foot tall version of Daisy with a
full bladder, generate lawn chair and a pair of goggles.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Right, okay, I'm on it.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
It's wonderful. Okay, let's talk about being stranded, you guys,
having no way out, like if you're on that plane
we just discussed, right, just having there's something occurring and
you cannot escape physically.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Sure, or like being in a freedom city that you're
born in.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Oh yeah, and you just don't know anything else outside
of it, and perhaps the perimeter is patrolled by robot
dogs with giant weaz f flamethrowers.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
At least you could leave after paid a reasonable fee.
It's like the Hotel California, you can check out any
time you can't leave, or you know, being a bean
in space or yeah, being in a place you can't
walk away. It reminds me one thing, just a quick
note here. Met One thing that I think shocks a
(47:10):
lot of people and they're traveling internationally, is some countries
charge you a fee when you arrive, but then some
other countries charge you a fee to leave.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
Oh yeah, I did not know.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
That now, so hey, that's a really great point. There
is definitely a fee to leave the International Space Station
once you get up there, because we're and it's not
just a little fee. Well you don't have to pay
it necessarily, but somebody does, to the tune of millions
of dollars. So back gosh, this was last year, just
(47:47):
before the summer. Maybe it was late June, early July,
when we talked about two astronauts that went up to
the International Space Station on the very first, very exciting
Boeing Starliner spacecraft. It was the first time that humans
were going to be on there, actually traveling up to
the ISS, and they did it. They made it there.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Well.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Once they got there, Boeing realized, oh, there's a lot
of problems with our Starliner craft here, so we can't
actually send you back the way we wanted to, you know,
within a couple of days time there. So you're gonna
need to hang tight and we'll figure out the problem
and then you'll be good to go. That turned into
a couple of months, and then a couple more months,
(48:31):
and it turned into from early June twenty twenty four
to this week. Oh, actually last week, as you're hearing this,
when two NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, finally
made it back to Earth, but not via a Boeing craft,
via a SpaceX craft. This is just an update, guys.
(48:53):
There's a ton of ton of writing about this, and
it's big in the news, like, oh my gosh, the
astronauts are back. We did it, Hurrah. And then it's
being politicized just because of the fact that SpaceX is
the one the company. They got him down right, it's
being stuff out there. The previous president did it wrong,
the new president did it right, and all this other stuff.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Ultimately the presidents who knows the president of Freedom Town,
Red white and Blue Land and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
But it does none of that matters. What matters is
the two human beings who are awesome astronauts made it
back to Earth.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
Yes, it's cool.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Two other astronauts came down with them, Nick and Alexander,
which is which is cool, and they made it out.
Everybody's safe, and a bunch of dolphins apparently a whole
pot of it, yes, which is it's just nice. That's
just nice to hear.
Speaker 4 (49:48):
Folks.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Tell us where you think about this, because all right,
here's my theory, Matt Noel. Are those dolphins going to
come back and say that they saw UFO thanks for
all the fish. I hope that they are currently conspiracy
squeaking right now? You know this is real.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
We saw a sorry, yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Well, it was the biggest crash we've ever heard, right,
and then we went and checked it out, and there's
a bunch of creatures on it.
Speaker 3 (50:19):
And why won't Dolphin government tell the truth about what's
going on there at the top of the water.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, what were those appendages they had that had little
tiny appendages on them? Ale weird. So anyway, that's a
cool story, guys. We're going to jump to another form
of being stranded that we've talked about on the show before,
traveling out to the frozen wastes of Antarctica and existing
(50:45):
on a research station and what it's like to know
that you have to wait for a very specific ship
to make a very dangerous trek out to where you are,
and then you have to take a very dangerous trek
out to where that ship is in order for any
supplies to come in, in order for any people to
arrive or to leave. Very let's just say I was
(51:10):
going to use the word precarious. It's a it's a
fragile existence, right.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
It's a battle episode because a bottle knows because there's
such a small group.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yes, So, so imagine that you are one of nine
people existing on a far flung research station in Antarctica. Uh,
and the only way in or out is by ship,
and the only way to get to that ship is
to take basically a small uh they call them, they
don't call them snowmobiles, they call them something else, but
(51:45):
a small snowmobile out to a larger vehicle, and then
take that slow, large vehicle down far, far away to
where a ship could arrive. Imagine somebody one of the
other nine people with you is getting real violent and
making threats, like threatening lives, and you're stuck in You know,
(52:06):
it's a fairly large station, the one we're going to
talk about, but it's also very claustrophobic. There's not a
lot of large open spaces there, and on the other
side of the wall, every wall is just snow and
negative thirty degrees celsius weather.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
And HP Lovecraft monsters, Mountains of Madness. Yeah, yes, we're
talking about Sinai, right.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yes, the the Sinai for base that's in Antarctica. It
is run by South Africa. It is officially their base.
And there was an email sent to a journalist from
one of the people who is currently staying on that
base saying that another team member had physically assaulted a
colleague and threatened to kill another colleague. This email also
(52:56):
alleged some sexual assault that is a little weird because
South African officials came through and said after investigation that
specific instance of sexual assault was not correct. But we
don't have all the details that is being kept by
whatever investigation was made there. We do know that there
was an individual on that base that did seem to
(53:20):
become violent, both in words and in actions, and it
just reminded me of some of the films that we've
seen over the years, or reminded me of the psychological
place you are in when you are in a far
flung place like that, feeling like there's no way out,
there's nothing you could even do. What am I going
to do? Send an email, which is what this person did, right,
(53:43):
Please help via email. It just doesn't seem like you're
going to get any help anytime.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
Soon, especially the closest other physical basis like one hundred
and ninety miles away, right.
Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yes, yes, so you could, I guess escape if you
wanted to an attempt to make it to the other place,
but the chances that you make it there safely are not.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Great, especially this time of year.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, it's not a great time of
year because everybody on that base is going to have
to stay there until I think December. Like that's like
they're locked there basically until December.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
Because the hemispheres have opposing seasonal shifts. So yes, right
now in the very lowest part of the hemisphere, not
to be too normalizing the northern normalizing of the Northern hemisphere,
but in Antarctica right now, the weather is turning increasingly
(54:45):
hostile for travel.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
You're snowedd Yes, unless a corporation or country or group
decided to spend a ton of money and send a
ship out there to do some kind of a urgency
evacuation or emergency intervention. Which again, just like on it's
not quite as expensive as you know, the whole SpaceX
(55:09):
saving them and all that stuff out in space, but
it's pretty close when it comes to just the expenses
that someone would have to incur to save.
Speaker 3 (55:17):
You, and the dangers also there are very MiG Even
if you have a state level entity doing an exfiltration
on this, they're still going to be rolling the dice
a little bit.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Ah exactly.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
So, guys, all of this is making me think about
being somewhat stranded here on planet Earth because in both cases,
the individuals on the Sinai Research Station, the people who
are out on iss they made it or the concept
right is you make it to safety, you make it
to a place that is that feels maybe more like home,
(55:52):
that feels like I'm no longer in danger. We're currently
all of us. If you can hear this existing on
planet Earth, right.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah, it's the first spaceship when you think about it.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
At least that we're aware of, right, And it's making
me think about more of that stuff out there, right,
connecting it back up to space. And there was this
documentary that really caught my eye. I've not seen the
film yet, I've only watched the trailer, but when I
watched the trailer and then did a little digging, it
reminded me of the first time we talked about the
(56:24):
Disclosure Project, Stephen Greer's thing that he put together out
in Washington in two thousand. This concept of bringing together
as many individual human beings that have true access to
government programs, especially those special programs that we've talked about
on in this show before, where only a couple of
(56:46):
members of Congress, sometimes only a couple senators sometimes even
know that they exist. This documentary, it's called Age of Disclosure,
brings together around thirty human beings that have real access
to these programs like a TIP and programs like the
ones that are that followed a TIP that are happening
(57:06):
right now that are looking at unidentified anomaloust phenomena, which
is what they call it now, and they are coming
forward in this documentary and saying, yes, non human intelligence exists.
It has been here for a long time. The technology
has been here for a long time. We are currently
in a cold war with every other country on the planet,
(57:30):
especially the United States and China and Russia, and that
cold war is all about taking this crashed technology or
technology that has been encountered that is not of this
world and somehow reverse engineering it. And they are saying
that the first country or superpower that successfully reverse engineers
it will be the next dominant hegemonic power on this planet.
Speaker 3 (57:55):
Ooh, and they're not saying, by the way, I love
that you're playing this out, Matt, because it's something we
point out. Obviously, no one has said definitely extra terrestrial.
The confirmed phrase that is being used by a lot
of people who are experts in their fields is non
human in origin, and that's a hell of a umbrella phrase.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
Well, some of the folks in there. I think they
use the aliens wordy.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
In the trailer at least. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
Well, from what I'm reading about the documentary, so people
who were at south By Southwest this year were able
to see it. That's where it premiered. And and the
interesting thing to me, guys, is that there are there
appears to be bipartisan support when it comes to the
two party system in this country, for more money being
(58:48):
thrown at this concept, for more transparency about this idea.
You've got people like Marco Rubio, people little Micah, Yeah,
the Secretary of State, Mark Rubio. You've got Kristen I
don't know how to say her name, Gillibrand Gillibrand she's
(59:09):
from New York, she's a senator. You've got uh, there's
there's several other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle
who are saying, hey, we need to do more with
this thing. This is really important. And then you got
people from the intelligence side, from the Pentagon, from people
who are career Pentagon officials coming forward and saying, yeah,
(59:30):
this is this is absolutely real. It's time for us
to take this seriously and tell people because we've been
keeping it secret for so long. It's always in a
lot of these documentaries. It's talked about as in, it's
the alien thing, right, it's the concept of aliens. Oh,
there's all these possibilities with aliens. What this is focused on,
at least to my understanding, is this arms race essentially
(59:54):
that we're all locked into.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Because it's a it's a defense threat at this point.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
To everybody, and and everybody wants the new thing because
whoever gets it first, whoever drops that technology first, wins,
at least according to the folks in this documentary. But
I just want to put that out there for anybody
who's listening. What do you think about all of that stuff?
What do you think about everything we've talked about on
this episode today? You should contact us.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yes, there are many ways to do so. You can
take your local UAP over down our way, just drop by,
you know what I mean, Send us a blurry photograph
of yourself Bigfoot style. By the way, there's also a
move I don't know, I told you guys, there's a
move to make Bigfoot the state cryptid of California. So
(01:00:44):
gobout that. Yeah, yeah, we're on board with that.
Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
I think it'd be Oregon, though, honestly.
Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
You know, hopefully it's setting a precedent, fair enough, right,
matting a precedent there, It is so you could contact
us with your take on all of these stories. We
discuss us recommendations of other stories you fill your fellow
conspiracy realist will enjoy in an upcoming episode. How do
I do that? You're asking yourself? So glad you asked.
(01:01:09):
You can call us on a telephonic device, You can
send us an email. You can find us on a
variety of platforms on the old Internet.
Speaker 4 (01:01:17):
It is the question. In fact, you can find us
at the handle conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook
with our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. Get
in on the conversation, tell us your thoughts, share memes
and witticisms with your fellow conspiracy realists. Can also find
this a Conspiracy Stuff on ex fka, Twitter and on YouTube,
or we have video content gloor for you to enjoy
(01:01:37):
on Instagram and TikTok. However, we're Conspiracy Stuff Show, and
there's more.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three std wytk. It's a voicemail system. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know within
the message if we can use your name and message
on the air. If you've got more to say than
can fit in three minutes, why out instead send us
a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:01:58):
We are the entity who read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back as a better fact. Tune in if you
are an Australian conspiracy realist. We have a fun conversation
coming up for you in our weekly listener mail segment.
And don't feel like asked belog, don't feel like it
(01:02:20):
asked to be short, We don't clip creative wings. Do
as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
So join us out here in the dark conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
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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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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