March 13, 2023 • 51 mins
German researchers name a groundbreaking discovery after the legendary Keanu Reeves. YouTuber MrBeast sets his fans upon Walmart. Across the planet, Russia uses a "shadow fleet" of tankers to bypass sanctions -- no one's publicly saying who runs these groups... only that the fleet appears to be growing. All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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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. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
(00:25):
name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproducer alexis codenamed Doc
Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know, Fellow conspiracy realist, is one of our favorite
days of the week. As you are hearing this, it
(00:47):
is Monday, which means it's time for some strange news.
People on YouTube are sick and their own armies at
your favorite supermarket superstores. People in Germany are doing a
little bit of fandom with their research, and across the planet,
(01:11):
Russia is building a shadow fleet of people of ships. Specifically,
this is news a lot of people will miss, but
turns out those sanctions may not be worth as much
as we would have assumed before we do anything. Though, fellas,
I think it's time for us to shout out code
(01:33):
named Doc Holiday. As everybody's hearing this recently, Doc and
one of the friends of the show, Lauren Vogelbaum, did
a kick ass Disney episode. Did you guys hear it?
Do you guys check it out? Yeah? Yeah, you can
find it on Disney Plus or I'm just choking the
stuff that Disney Plus doesn't want you to know about
Disney and it absolutely rules. Alex straight up talked about
(01:57):
slow cooking Walt Disney's head. Yeah, I couldn't be more proud.
How else do you get the head? Cheese? And so
as as you all may know, we are lucky, immensely
fortunate to be able to once in a while ask
our superproducer for a favor, and we did, and Alexis
(02:23):
came through. Doc Holiday of course came through for us,
and hopefully you will check out that episode. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts about Disney. But while we're
talking the world of entertainment, we also want to give
someone else their flowers. Keanu Reeves Jianu Reeves the actor
(02:44):
also not a bad person at all. The guy's pretty cool.
I mean, definitely hear all these, uh Keanu Reeves kind
of you know fanboy stories like good ones like he
It's it's the kind of stories you hear that almost
take on the air of urban lore, you know what
I mean. The idea that he went to the Possessions
(03:05):
to add in a movie, bought candy bars, and then
and threw it away just so he had something to
sign to give to the ticket taker who had asked
him for an autograph but he didn't have anything to
write on. Or the fact that this is not a
nerve a legend. The fact that Keanu Reeves gave the
special effects team of The Matrix a ton of his
(03:26):
salary and profits from that film franchise because he knew
who was doing the work credits very important to us
on the show. And apparently, Matt, this is a story
you found. Apparently there are some researchers in Germany who
feel the same. They're pro Kyatu. Yes, if you don't
like Keanu Reeves, look yourself in the mirror just for
(03:48):
a little while and just try to figure out why
you don't like that awesome human being. So yes, But ultimately, guys,
this story comes to us in a bit of a
roundabout way. Going through the voicemail. We got one from
a frame of constant Caller a frame and I want
to play that for us really quickly, because this story
actually goes back to early February of this year, but
(04:12):
it was written about very recently on CNN, which is
why I'm bringing it to the table today. And it
related back to this voicemail. So this is a hybrid
listener mail Strange News segment. Right here, he's a frame again.
And I thought of a little thought experiment for you
that I think you guys might appreciate while listening to
(04:33):
the recent Strange News when you mentioned to be introducing
tamthers in Florida and whatnot, taxing of that term apex predator,
and I think false idea of a hierarchical food chain.
A lot of humans they go, we're at the top
of the food chain, Well, get naked into cage with
the tiger if you're at the top of the food chain,
(04:55):
because the tiger's not wearing anything, the tiger doesn't have
or the tiger doesn't have a gun, and then the
tiger doesn't have a weapon, the tiger doesn't have planes
or armor or anything. It's naked in the cage with you.
And what you feel on top of the food chain,
taken in the cage with the tiger no, And really,
(05:18):
if you extend that thought, when that tiger dies, it
will get eaten by vultures and flies and maggots and
gnats and molds and fungus. Most molds and fungus is
in penicillin and savory morals or even fun magic mushrooms.
(05:41):
I propose the top of the food chain is occupied
by only if it is a hierarchy. First rue gets
the circle. But if we're insisting that there must be
a top of the food chain, then the only logical
organism to place at the top of the food chain
are toxic funguses that can't be eaten by anything because
(06:05):
everything dies and everything is consumed by fungus, even vultures
and wise, so if the decomposers are decomposed by a
fungus that nothing can eat, that is the only logical
top of the food chain. If we must have a linear,
hierarchical Jordan Peterson food chain um or we can just
(06:29):
let it be a circle. Understand, there is no top,
there is no bottom. Everything is a flat circle. Reggie lad.
Then it's much easier to see it. But it must
be a king. It's the deathcap. Thank you for the show.
Hitting up sorry, A Frame, it was a great though.
(06:53):
I like the true detective reference as well. Oh yeah,
But ultimately I think the point that any Frame is
making there is that, you know, the food chain is
very weird when you think about all things die, all
things decay, something you know causes that, And then could
it be possible that it's in as above so below
situation when you're thinking about the food chain, the true
top is the fungus. And if there's a fungus that
(07:15):
cannot be eaten because it is so toxic, then maybe
it wins. Overall, we've been talking about fungus a lot
late lately because we're you know, we're all in the
last of Us mode. There's only one episode left everybody
actually it probably it just came out as this episode
is coming out, so we're all watching it in real
time right now. In the most recent episode that we've
(07:36):
all seen, there was a really great quote from kind
of the baddie of the episode talking about how fungus
really is godlike essentially and deserving of worship because of
all the things that that A Frame said that everything
returns back to it. It is the ultimate destroyer and creator,
and that it will do anything to protect its ability
(08:00):
to spawn. Well, I've been saying that fungus is one
of my like Ben's top picks for an organic extraterrestrial organism.
You can also see the studies we've mentioned in previous
episodes on the tricky nature of intelligence, especially when applied
(08:22):
to the activities of those fung guys mispronounced on purpose
because no pun left behind, that's right. But yeah, yeah,
So the fungus, we need to fight it. We've been
talking about it on this show a lot. We need
to be able to fight it as humans as because
it infects us. Many different funguses can affect human beings,
(08:47):
can cause very very serious harm as well as death
to us, and it comes in all kinds of different forms.
And we also need to protect our crops against fungus
because we've learned over the years here that fungus is
one of the biggest killers of things like grapes and
trees and all kinds of plants that we generally need
(09:07):
to eat, even plants that we need to feed animals
that we consume. So we need to find ways to
kill fungus more effectively as that fungus becomes more effective
at fighting against our means to kill it. Okay, So
this is where Keanu Reeves comes in. Kiana has made
many movies over the years. He's been in a lot
(09:27):
of different franchises. In several of those that are the
most prominent, he is a highly effective eliminator of the
bad guys, especially when you think about him in the
Matrix trilogy, if you think about him in John Wick,
the fourth of which I believe is still in theaters
right now we record this, or at least it's coming
(09:48):
to theaters. I don't know there's another John Wick. He
kills a lot of people in those movies. Some researchers
have discovered, in a kind of a roundabout way, a
new substance, a chemical compound that seems to be extremely
effective at eliminating fungus, the bad fungus. And it's also
it also, in the initial testing, appears to not harm
(10:10):
the plant material in the same way that it harms
the fungus and potentially could be used as an antifungal
drug in humans, which would be a huge leap forward.
It will require a lot more testing to see if
it actually is going to function, you know, as a drug.
If you could, if you could create a drug out
(10:30):
of it, right, So let's jump into this story. The
recent reporting comes from CNN. There's an article you can
find titled Newly discovered chemicals are so deadly to fung
guy that they are named after Keanu Reeves. It's written
by Taylor Nikki Yoli for CNN again, and it was
written March third. But most of the writing about this,
(10:51):
the initial stuff that came out is from around the
early February, like February second, February sixth, and it looks
like the actual publication was released on January twentieth of
twenty three. So let's just I guess we should jump
into it a little bit, talk about it. This is
(11:12):
really just an informational session, guys. The only stuff they
don't want you to know here is the same thing
we've been harping on. Fungus is a really serious, big
deal and it's going to get way more of a
serious deal in the next ten twenty years. That's the
stuff they don't want you to know. So here we go.
(11:32):
I don't want to read this verbatim. Let's see. I
guess we can give you the high level stuff. And
there's a person Sebastian goats a goot ze, he says,
the goat Sebastian goats. Oh yes. Researcher with the Leibniz
Institute in Germany. They do natural product research. They also
(11:55):
look at infection biology and oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes and goats has this to say about this new discovery.
These are lipopeptides. Okay, that's what these things are. So
there's a lipid Does that indicate there's some kind of
vatty molecule like a lipidum you know, I don't know null.
(12:19):
They are lipopeptides. I like words, And that's the fun
one quote. The lipopeptides kilso efficiently that we named them
after Keanu Reeves because he too is extremely deadly in
his roles. We have a crisis in anti infectives. True,
many human pathogenic fungi are now resistant to antimycotics or
(12:39):
anti fungals, partly because they are used in large quantities
in agricultural fields. So think about that. One of the
main reasons that antibiotics are less effective on humans these days,
as we've talked about on this show many times, is
because those products, those medicines are used on a lot
of the cattle on a lot of the animals, the pigs,
(13:01):
the chickens that we end up consuming because they're kept
in such you know, tight quarters, in such large numbers
that they often get sick, and one of the ways
to prevent some of that sickness is to dose them
with those antibiotics talked about this. This is a major problem.
It's getting better as it's become more well known. There's
(13:21):
been a bit of a public outcry because well, because
we're seeing companies now try and move away from that. However,
in the large factory settings where you've got to pump
out x amount of beef every day, this is still
a major issue. Same thing is happening with a lot
of the mass produced plants that we end up consuming.
(13:42):
These anti fungal substances have to get sprayed on everything
just to make sure there's not a huge problem. Again
with like the grapes that we end up consuming that
go into our wine, that go into your Kroger and
all that stuff. So it's the same deal. There's also
a problem with anti fungals in humans because just the
fungus in general, after you use a certain substance for
(14:06):
a long enough period of time, it becomes less and
less effective over time because these are live things. It's
it's alive, and it changes. It starts figuring out just
through attrition, how to get around these anti fungals. I
don't know, guys, Yeah, you said it already been. They're
(14:26):
called keanu, mayasins k e A, n U, M y
c I ns these substances, and it's pretty pretty dope stuff.
You can read all about it if you want. I mean,
you raise an excellent point there, Matt. Like the idea
of evolutionary cycles. Right, A short lived organism, like many
(14:50):
fungal organisms are, has a higher rate of attrition, obviously,
but it also has a shorter interval between generations, much
that it can adapt way more quickly than the human body.
And I don't know, I also think it's really cool
that you could be on the forefront of science and
(15:12):
decide to name a thing whatever that's sort of neat, right,
Like I always I always think about that when you
when you hear some astronomer has found an obscure planet
or heavenly body and they said we're going to call this,
you know, Donnie's Place or whatever, or you look at
(15:33):
the especially when you look towards the end of the
periodic table when people are saying Prometheum, i'd steadium. Here's
a person I like Mendelevium. That's why. Yeah, Matt Scovium,
maybe Matt Fredrixium. Yeah, my god, yes, please, let's not
(15:55):
do it. Matt's long held dream. Everybody, fellow conspiracy real,
especially chemist in the crowd. It has been our brother's
long term dream to have an element in the periodic
table named after him. I think he got robbed by
the einsteinium, folks man. I think that was unfair, because
(16:17):
what has Einstein done? Really? You know what I mean? Yeah,
I'm the greatest ever. I guess. No, please don't ever
name anything after me. Forget me, forget me. Okay, so
let's jump in here really quickly. Just a couple other
things here, because it's very important for us to remember.
Fungal cells. Put them right in the center of your mind. Okay,
(16:39):
to the left, you've got plant cells. To the right,
you've got animal cells. These fungal cells that are in
the center, they aren't the same as but they are
very similar to in a lot of ways the animal cells. Now,
imagine you're trying to develop a drug that only targets
those fungal cells, but they're really close to those animal cells.
(17:01):
So often when drugs are being developed as anti fungals,
they can have serious negative effects on the animal cells,
which is by the way you and your cells. That's
why it's really difficult to develop an effective anti fungal
treatment for a human being or for a pig for
that matter, or whatever. In the case of these keyonomyacins,
(17:22):
it appears that they don't cause serious toxic effects to
the animal cells, which is why this is so very
vastly important. Trying to think of an equivalent. It's that
thing of making a discovery that doesn't come around but
a few you know, every couple of decades you find
a new substance that's going to be effective against fungi
(17:44):
in this way. So this is huge. Good on everybody involved.
Good Keanu, Good on the people who named it, Good
on the folks. They're making the last of us. And
that's all I have to say. And now we'll hear
a word from our response and we're back with more
(18:09):
strange news. You guys know about mister Bee's I'm saying
to that theme, Yeah, just based on the reproduction of
my kids singing it to me. I've actually not really
watched much of mister Beasts content. I'm familiar does big
set PC kind of money giveaway things like did I
(18:30):
think did like a real life version of squid Game
that then Netflix decided they'd do too, but they sort
of missed the point and did a really bad job,
and people froze and got sick and it was a
real debacle. But yeah, mister beasts YouTube sensation massively popular.
Fellow also has a ghost kitchen chain of restaurants called
(18:52):
Mister Beast Burger, and now, as it turns out, also
has chocolate bars called Feastables that you can get at
various big box retailers, including Walmart. And apparently mister Beast
didn't take too kindly to the way or the treatment
of his product line, specifically at Walmart's thought that they
(19:15):
were a little messy, were being given a short shrift
in favor of the big boys like the Hershey's of
the world. So on March third, Mister Beasts who's a
Christian name is Jimmy Donaldson tweeted at his eighteen point
eight million followers as such, I need your help next
(19:37):
time you see feastables in Walmart and soon to be
new retailers. If you could clean up the presentation and
make it look better, that would make me very happy.
I'm building a team to do this routinely. Just need
help in the short term. Hm, what could go wrong?
What could go wrong? And originally there was like a
(19:59):
five thou dollar a reward kind of like you know,
tied into this, or would be a drawing of folks
that could prove that they had done this. I'm not
seeing that detail added. I would not be surprised if,
given the backlash we're about to talk about, he took
that away. Um he replaced it with something I think
that they We'll get into just a little bit. But um, yeah,
it's kind of Sechuan Sauce all over again. Really, if
(20:20):
you think about it, the whole Rick and Morty people
come in and standing on the counters and McDonald's screaming
about the Sechuan sauce that that they were out of Um,
you know, some folks in an attempt to curry favor
with mister Beast, who is hugely popular on YouTube, and
you know, just like a mention or you know, a
repost of some you know up and coming content creators.
(20:43):
Content could be a game changer for them. So a
lot of folks just tweeting pictures of feastable section in disarray,
followed by the after shot We're they're all neat and tidy. Um,
you know, just say hey, mister beast, love each stuff,
be the help here here here I am um, you know,
and adding adding mister Beast's handle. But then, you know,
(21:06):
you start to kind of reality starts to set in
a little bit, and you start to think about what
does this feel like to folks who actually work at
Walmart and have to, you know, restock shells and all
of a sudden dealing with all these kind of Yeah,
I'm gonna call him Yahoo's no, no insult intended, but
I mean, this is just a little bit of a
of a dopey thing to do, in my opinion, coming
(21:29):
in there and messing with your with your displays. You know,
it's not really something that you've signed up for for
your minimum wage, you know, big box store job U.
The tweet was like one hundred and twelve thousand times,
and it has gotten an understandably some backlash of people
saying that this very very wealthy YouTuber is essentially crowdsourcing
(21:52):
free labor five thousand dollars or no. Um, it's it's
a little bit odd, I would say. And you have
folks pointing out this very fact, and you know, in
addition to the usual kind of well you know, hey,
I did the thing. Good job me. Thanks mister beast
for being awesome hashtag team mister beasts, you've got some
(22:13):
some more satirical let's just say posts. One person struth
Queen on Twitter posted, mister beast just unlocked a new
form of capitalism. I hate it. Here with some reposts
of some of the images of folks. Yeah, we're just
in Walmartin noticed this display. You need some fixing at
mister beast. Then one of my personal favorites, which is
(22:38):
posted by at harm harm cart, which I believe is
an image of somebody in Ukraine who is like duct
taped to a traffic poll, a traffic signal, and the
text reads, at mister beast, I caught this man after
his shoulder brushed a feastable's display and one of your
chocolates fell to the ground. He is pleading for mercy,
(23:00):
but I do not believe he is truly sorry. How
shall I deal with him? Sir? Wow, Uh, that's the
that's the that's the dream, or like the nightmare. And
it really makes me think of, you know, the thing
that's sort of portrayed in the latest Batman movie where
you've got the Riddler who with this kind of you know,
(23:21):
gang of kind of Riddler acolytes. He essentially, you know,
there's obviously a much more low key an Ocuus version
of this, but he essentially sicks an army of his
followers on Gotham City, and I just really, I mean,
obviously this is not mister Bees doing anything of that nature.
And I'm I'm half joking, of course, but it does
(23:41):
really point to the power of these types of folks,
you know, who can command action among people who just
want to want to be seen by them, acknowledged by them.
So kind of creepy, you know, a great look if
you ask me, I don't know, what do you guys think? Well,
it's it's a weird. I'm just imagining the Walmart that
(24:03):
is close to me where I live right now, and
imagining the jobs that exist within that walmart. And I
don't know the specific details for whoever manages that location,
but mostly I have seen people working in specific sections
of the store or at the front of the store
(24:23):
at like customer service or in you know, the eyewear
shop or whatever they have at the front there, and
people who are stocking the store, so like bringing boxes
out from the back and putting products on the shelves.
I'm sure there is a position somewhere in the store
or it's like something that someone who runs a section
is supposed to handle, like making the displays look nice, right.
(24:47):
I just don't think I've seen that in action anytime
I've visited that store. And I wonder how much of
a priority that is specifically for a Walmart, because I
know at other store I have seen that as like
a not a position, as like this is what you
do as your job is what you get paid for.
But it's a it's a definite responsibility for people who
(25:11):
are working within the store. Does that make sense? It
does make sense. And also like no no shade on
any of these people. But I mean, these stores are
massive and then they're oftentimes understaffed, and they kind of
exist in a constant state of disarray, you know what
I mean. And it's it's just the nature of it.
You know, people are always moving things around, putting things
in the wrong place, and it's just a constant battle
(25:32):
to even like have things be relatively presentable. And there
are probably priorities beyond that. I don't think of Walmart
as like the store of like shiny displays per se.
So it's just odd to have these kind of invading forces,
you know, doing this, and and the Internet today guys
who am always referencing who I love. They pointed out that,
(25:53):
you know, there's a strong possibility that some of these
folks might have actually been the ones messing them up
in the first place, just so they have something to
show for a before and after pick. Yeah, so you
you could argue that this is like, what is it
the bed you always reference in the Cobra problem, where
you like, unleash a thing to fix a problem, but
(26:13):
it actually becomes the problem itself. Yeah, there's a lot
to unpack here, because we are looking at we are
looking at a phenomenon that legislation doesn't really exist for
at least not this iteration of it. Back in the
days of old, there were very explicit rules about who
(26:35):
could or could not martial forces together toward a cause.
That's one of the reasons the right to assembly is
super big in the United States as it stands today.
So the idea of the cobra problem, for quick recap,
is that if you incentivize people to do a thing,
(26:55):
you may find yourself in a situation where people are
over incentivized, as this occurs in India. Back in the day,
they had a lot of cobras and say they said,
we're going to pay people to kill these cobras, right,
We'll make things safer for everyone. But when people realize
they could get paid to kill cobras, they started growing
(27:18):
and raising cobras and they're turning them in for the bounty.
And the idea here is a bit further complicated because
now we are adding in we are all respect to you,
mister beasts. We are adding in the dopamine casino of
social media, which means that now people don't have to
be paid, they simply have to be approved of by
(27:41):
their community. So this could happen in any number of ways.
This is also I don't know. I don't know about you, Noel,
Matt doc I don't have a problem with mister beast.
I think feastables is actually a really good improvement on
the name lunch. It was right there. It was a
(28:01):
good job. You know, it's a good martin. One of
the flavors of the of the Feastable's chocolate bars though,
is just for the record, these nuts so also hilarious.
It continues to be. It does continue to be. I
will drop a these nuts joke myself from time to time.
But it stinks if you're in a Walmart. You know,
(28:21):
the Walton family has such an outsized influence on the
US in so many ways. They're killing small businesses, that's true.
They're also accelerating inequality in this country and very serious
to the degree of unsustainability. But imagine to your earlier pointment,
imagine you're working at this section and to your point, nol,
(28:45):
maybe it's a chaotic place already. And now on top
of all of this, you got to try to deal
with someone who has been sent by a YouTuber that
you they have never met. You're not getting any kind
of compensation or putting up with that, you know, it's
it's tough. And again, Jimmy, mister beast Donaldson not a
(29:07):
bad YouTuber like your child said. No, this is very
entertaining content. I mean, do we know do we know
what the latest scoop is? Now? Do we know how
people are responding the relatively ongoing story? I did you
know there were some some details, you know how Twitter.
I'm not good at Twitter, so things seem to get
covered up, like if the posts aren't hind or whatever.
(29:29):
The top response from mister beast now says, to show
how grateful I am to everyone that helped Tidy only
spells it titty. Actually t I D d y, which
is funny. Made me giggle things up. I'm going to
donate a one hundred thousand dollars to charity. What charity
should I donate? To appreciate you all? But like, there
were some other tweets that apparently he deleted, one of
(29:52):
which kind of almost suggested that the people sabotage other
competing chocolate displays like Hershey, which isn't good because even
the you know, with this kind of thing been to
your points, you know, marshaling folks, the very indication that
you're you're perceived kind of Internet messiah wants you to
(30:14):
do a crime. I mean there are people that are
going to run with that. Yeah, in a very real way.
So will this. You know again, it's a kind of
a goofy internet, pranky guy whatever. But what this points
to is something larger, and we've seen it with things
like the insurrection you know at the state capital and
how this level of unchecked internet power that is to
(30:36):
your point, Bin, I completely agree unregulatable, maybe not unregulatable,
but unregulated. But I don't know how you do it.
You know, there were going to start putting limits on
how many people can follow somebody online because they're they're
too too powerful. You can't really put that genie back
on the bottle at this point. It's kind of impossible.
Let me get old man for a second. Guys, go
(30:58):
back to some of my Scout leader taught me when
I was a little boy. I know that guy, all right,
when you go out in the wilderness or anywhere in
the world, you leave it as good or better than
you found it every time. If we all take on
this responsibility, every one of us, each individual, then every
time we walk into that Walmart is going to look
(31:19):
exactly like it did when it got set up. In
that display of feastables or Dove chocolates, whatever they are,
It's gonna look pristine and gorgeous. Even if you take
ten of them, you can leave it just like you
found it. So you're saying we should just crowdsource, you know,
tidying up all walmarts help you ourselves. It's the boy
(31:39):
Scout way. Well it happens, is something like that happens
in Japan? I know we got to move on. But
you know, you don't find a lot of public trash
cans in that country because people know you shouldn't litter,
and they don't need to have some sort of intermediary
between personal responsibility and making you know, a public space
(32:02):
look like a house. There's a there's a tragedy of
the commons at work, and it's been so for society
for a long long time. If I don't know, maybe
we should hear from our fellow listeners here. If you
have advice or insight from you know, the front lines,
(32:23):
from your own philosophical experiences, what would you say is
the best way to address this problem? Because you're right,
you know, if you even if you hate billionaire dynasties
like the Waltons or whatever, if you are screwing stuff
up for the person who has to work there and
(32:46):
clean it up, know that you are not in any
way touching the Walton family. You're just making life harder
for someone just like you. And that's kind of I
don't know, I think it could you could exercise a
little more insight. We all could. Yeah, I mean, I
completely agree, and I think all three of us are
(33:08):
of the leave that as as good or better than
you found him. Mentality. Uh, no litterbugs here in this squad,
that's for sure. Um, But I just wanted to add
one last whole thing. Then we'll definitely move on. One
of my favorite tweets as well, besides the guy taped
to the telephone pole, one was from web website idiot,
who says at mister beast, I will continue destroying your
(33:29):
chocolate displays until you pay me one hundred thousand dollars.
So that the script did a little reverse blackmail, or
maybe not reverse, just regular blackmail, but kind of kind
of doubt that payday is coming anytime. Sim we're gonna
take a break, we're gonna hear a word from our sponsor,
who maybe may well be mister Beast, mister beastables, and
then we'll be back with more strange news. And we
(33:56):
have returned folks. Our last story for or today pertains
to something that a lot of a lot of people
in the US and abroad don't pay much attention to
unless you work at a port authority, you are lucky
enough to have a train that doesn't get derailed rolling
through your town. We're going to talk about I don't
(34:20):
want to quite call it piracy, but we're going to
talk about some bootleggers, and not the kind that you
would see back in the days Lincoln CDs or DVDs
on your local public transitor street corner. So everybody remembers Russia, right,
it's a country. It's kind of controversial part of it. Yeah,
they're waging this war and Ukraine the guy in charge,
(34:44):
Lad Putin sort of a bag. This guy, this frigging guy,
as we would say on the internet, is waging a
war that is rocking the Nited Nations, that is rocking
European ukraying in particular. A lot of innocent people are dying.
(35:04):
And the issue with this country is that to support
its war, it relies on oil exports. So your favorite
suits over in NATO and over in the United Nations,
and I'm sure at transnational banking institutions across the planet
said let's cut it off at the pass. If war
(35:27):
mongers need oil money to finance their aggression, then let's
not allow them to sell oil. I don't know about
you all, but I've never been at some point in
my various lives where I could say I'm not going
to allow someone to sell the thing. Can you imagine that,
(35:47):
Like we can boycott stuff by not buying it, But
can you imagine being at some point in your life
where you say, I'm not going to allow you to
sell a thing. No, not yet, things out I don't don't.
I can't imagine hav any that much cloud. It's a
lot of cloud. It's a dangerous amount of cloud. But
they did it because they can. And everybody in western
(36:12):
media saw that. In ninety something percent said, oh, hunky dory,
surely a war will end soon because we have cut
off the funding. But here's what's happening now, and it
deserves more attention. As we record today, there is a
growing fleet, hundreds and hundreds of tankers moving this oil
(36:38):
across the planet, and no one is copying to the responsibility.
No one is saying, oh, yeah, these are my takers,
Like you guys have seen everybody I think has seen
cargo containers. Right, You've probably seen them on a train.
Unless you live near a big body of water, you
(36:58):
might have seen them on a ship. We know what
we're talking about. These things are huge. The vessels that
carry them are huge. The same kind of enormous ships,
or very similar enormous ships that carry oil products across
the world are moving today and it's it's very scooby
(37:19):
doo to me, like, how could you disguise a ship
that big? I want to shout out a couple of
fantastic journalists authors here, Julia Horowitz, whose work we have
mentioned on previous episodes or strange news segments of stuff
they don't want you to know. She has this great
article on CNN called A mysterious fleet is helping Russia
(37:42):
ship oil around the world. And wait for it, Matt
Noell doc us listening at home, it's growing. Not only
can no one figure out who is moving this oil
for the Russians, they only know that there are more
and more ships like every month. Right now, it's roughly
(38:04):
six hundred vessels and just for perspective, that's ten percent
of the number of large tankers across the world. That
is fascinating. I have never thought of oil as being
I thought it was all it was all locked down,
you know. I just figured like that was one of
those industries that everyone's getting it is already doing so
(38:26):
very much above board, you know, and they've got it
all locked down because of what we've talked about with
oil industry of it is being one of those legacy industries.
So the idea of bootlegging oil is fascinating to me.
Are they actually they're pulling it out of the ground
in an illegal operation or is it just kind of
black market you know, maybe it's stolen or something. What's
(38:49):
the deal? My understanding is that it's it's oil that
Russia would be producing and trading legally, but because of
the invasion in the sanctions, they can no longer trade it.
So they've got these unknown buyers coming in buying up
the oil tankers or these huge ships, adding them to
this shadow fleet, and then those ships that aren't on
(39:13):
the books anywhere get loaded up with the oil that
would normally be shipped and they just send it. You know,
they have to go. They have to put a lot
more oil on these ships than they normally would, because
instead of taking them to another country that's closer to Russia,
like Finland, they got to go on a big, long
roundabout trip to a different place, right to drop that
(39:34):
oil off. That's at least understanding. Yeah, you nailed it, Matt.
Maritime law, I know it about as well as Charlie
Day knows bird law, which is to say, I don't
have a degree, but I have some opinions, and and
it's it's quite easy. Actually, it's dangerously easy for a
large ship to have to raise a different flag, to
(39:58):
turn off it's location, and to roll through just sort
of a ghost ship, a ship in the nights, as
it were. If you, for instance, if you are selling
to China or India, you can take a ship have
a different nationality as your port of call or your
(40:21):
home port, and then you can just change the flag
halfway through. One of the immediate questions if you're trying
to work in law and order deep ocean, wait, what
would be a good what would be a good theme
like sound cue for law and order maritime? Would it
(40:41):
be like a sea shanty? There we go? Yeah right, yes,
uh see, this is why we hang out. So in
this law and order maritime or deep ocean. What you
would find is it's quite difficult to enforce this stuff.
And if you were trying to enforce it, then you
(41:04):
would think, maybe we can follow the money, maybe we
can look at the insurers. But the insurers don't have
a ton of power here. The states that would you say, oh,
we allowed these ships to fly under our flag, they
(41:25):
don't have a ton of power. They certainly don't want
to be accountable for this. And we have to remember
that when you're talking tankers, the companies are more powerful
than the countries, which is super weird in my opinion,
but it's true, Soul. You could contract a vessel as
(41:46):
a private transnational entity and exon a Chevron a British
Petroleum dare I say an a Ramco, And once this
stuff gets transferred from vessel to vessel, it's very easy
to lose stuff in the cracks. It's weird to be
because going back to our earlier conversations we're talking about
(42:08):
witness protection. It's easier to disappear as a tanker vessel
full of oil than it is to disappear as an
individual human being in the United States. Isn't that weird. Yes,
it's easier. Well, is that sort of like have you
(42:28):
guys seen the season of the Wire about shipping and
receiving Season two? Season two? That's the one, and so
there's a whole deal where they like lose shipping containers
like in the system because the system is kind of antiquated,
you know, and so they're able to kind of disappear
these cargo containers in order to you know, steal from them.
(42:50):
I wonder if that's a similar deal where maybe like
these systems in place that track these things are maybe
in need of some upgrades one hundred percent, But is
it to the benefit of the money to enact those
upgrades to implement them. That's a really good point then.
I mean, I don't know. I'm thinking right now, what's
happening is it's probably not China. China's big enough to
(43:13):
not need proxies, right, It's probably not the usual suspects
are on North Korea, Venezuela and so on. I think
it's private business is doing this, and I think they're
forming shell companies in relatively open market kind of pro
(43:34):
business places. Maybe it's your Debise, maybe it's your Hong
Kong's I think they're using loopholes to get around sanctions.
Like Doc pointed out when she said that no one
dying at Disney kind of depends on how you how
you define pronounced dead. This gets me because you know,
(43:55):
we've seen the ocean. The ocean's huge. I think no
one has seen the entire pity of the ocean. I
guess it's easy to lose six hundred tankers, but also
that's kind of dangerous. If you turn off your GPS,
you're positioning to do some like sail by night stuff
to move oil, are you going to hit another boat? Yeah,
(44:17):
it's like it's like flying a plane without air traffic control.
You know, something wonky that's happening with the story right now. Guys,
there's some nonprofits working to make estimates on the number
of these unknown buyers and these shadow ships going into
shadow fleets right and they're trying to keep track of it,
but a lot of it. There's a lot of unknowns there,
(44:39):
and there's no way to prove these individual ships with
unknown buyers are in fact going to this shadow fleet
that's moving Russian oil. So I do wonder if this
is something that's being taken advantage of by everyone, including
the US, to maybe even find a way to backdoor
buy some Russian oil put it in reserves, because we
(45:00):
of the US surely knows strategically that as the global
conflict continues to rise between the US, China, Russia and
all these major players, we're gonna need a ton of oil.
I just think it's a huge deal. If we can
get some of Russia's oil, it would be to our
advantage as a country, the US. Yeah, and typically, you know,
we only have scruples in so far as like pr optics.
(45:24):
You know, I would not be surprised at all if
if on the surface, no, no blockading Russian oil. But no, actually, guys,
that's cool. It's block scading with the right hand and
we got our left hand behind our back, you know,
doing the little coming air sign. Uh. Yeah. This is
a shadow industry, and it's an industry that's been growing
(45:47):
for a while. I'm really happy to have like three
fillings a year. But I'm impressed that CNN is talking
about it because it's been happening through the entirety of
Venezuelan oil sanctions, through the entirety of Iranian oil sanctions.
(46:08):
The oil is still moving it's still occurring. And it's
very convenient to your point about signaling stuff to the public.
It's very convenient to high road and say, oh, we're
stopping all this, you know what I mean, it's just
USA all day baby. But is that the reality or
(46:30):
is there some stuff they don't want you to know?
There very much? Is it's on the high seas? I
want to check in with you guys, everybody listening. This
does feel like an episode. This does feel like something
we dive into. I don't know if that's appropriate at
this point, but I'm just massively perplexed by this because, Okay,
(46:55):
if you're sending the usual through the usual channels, right,
and you're Russia, then you get slapped with sanctions, which
means those channels are blocked off. Is it just easier
than we assumed to go find someone else, you know,
like some decade aristocrat and Monaco with gambling debts and
then say, hey, you still control a couple of tankers,
(47:20):
will pay off your baccarat or whatever? Am I even
pronouncing that right? I don't know what bats. None of
us have ever played backarat. I imagine I like Burt back, Yeah,
that's probably who I'm thinking of Burt Backarat, the creator
of Backarat. So the tanker thing is already a huge issue.
(47:42):
You know, they bleed very dangerous substances into the open ocean.
They also, you know, whenever there's a wreck, there's a catastrophe.
But now what we're seeing is an active shadow fleet
that is growing with state support to bypass these sanctions.
(48:05):
And to your point, Matt, an excellent point, we have
to ask ourselves whether US based corporations are playing the
game as well. I'm telling you Black Monday murders, yeah,
or any other country that would publicly say bad Russia.
But nine, we need some oil. So there we have it. Folks,
(48:28):
We're going to call it a day for now. We
hope you enjoyed this. Let us know your interactions with
mister Beast, let us know your interactions with Keanu Reeves
and your thoughts about fungal infections and the future of fungus. Actually,
you know what give us this one? Do you consider
fungus intelligent? If so, why would love to hear your
(48:51):
thoughts on a frames comments regarding circle, the hierarchy of
predator prey and life on this planet. And then you know,
if you happen to be on a shadow tanker carrying
some stuff for the Russians and you feel comfortable reaching
out to us. We'd love to hear from you. Yes,
that was my cat. You know what I heard? D
(49:14):
D D d D. That's what I put What song
is that? That's a song? I don't know. That's what
I heard in my head. I think that's yeah. Oh yeah,
that's it. That's it, that's it. There's also the md
pree song side Oh yeah, yeah, another good cats out.
I actually saw a meme where somebody took Nelson from
(49:36):
The Simpsons going and turned it into that m Ad
three song and it was kind of great. But there
we go. So so reach out with your input, folks.
We cannot wait to hear from you. You are why
this show exists. We try to be easy to find online.
Let's see, Matt Noll did a pretty awesome video recently
(49:56):
on Instagram about drugs and precedent. You can also find
us on TikTok. You can find us on YouTube where
we're putting out all kinds of stuff all the time.
And what do people do if they don't sit the
social meats? You got a social media rehab get on
the social med wagon, or you know, you can also
(50:18):
just find us some old fashioned ways. You can give
us a call one eight three three S T W
I T K yes. When you call in, give yourself
a nickname. Let us know if you can use your
message and name on the air, and your voice. Your
voice is important and we want to put it on
the air. If you don't want us to do that,
let us know. You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like.
If you've got more to say, or links or something
(50:39):
like that, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
(51:05):
they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
(00:25):
name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our superproducer alexis codenamed Doc
Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know, Fellow conspiracy realist, is one of our favorite
days of the week. As you are hearing this, it
(00:47):
is Monday, which means it's time for some strange news.
People on YouTube are sick and their own armies at
your favorite supermarket superstores. People in Germany are doing a
little bit of fandom with their research, and across the planet,
(01:11):
Russia is building a shadow fleet of people of ships. Specifically,
this is news a lot of people will miss, but
turns out those sanctions may not be worth as much
as we would have assumed before we do anything. Though, fellas,
I think it's time for us to shout out code
(01:33):
named Doc Holiday. As everybody's hearing this recently, Doc and
one of the friends of the show, Lauren Vogelbaum, did
a kick ass Disney episode. Did you guys hear it?
Do you guys check it out? Yeah? Yeah, you can
find it on Disney Plus or I'm just choking the
stuff that Disney Plus doesn't want you to know about
Disney and it absolutely rules. Alex straight up talked about
(01:57):
slow cooking Walt Disney's head. Yeah, I couldn't be more proud.
How else do you get the head? Cheese? And so
as as you all may know, we are lucky, immensely
fortunate to be able to once in a while ask
our superproducer for a favor, and we did, and Alexis
(02:23):
came through. Doc Holiday of course came through for us,
and hopefully you will check out that episode. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts about Disney. But while we're
talking the world of entertainment, we also want to give
someone else their flowers. Keanu Reeves Jianu Reeves the actor
(02:44):
also not a bad person at all. The guy's pretty cool.
I mean, definitely hear all these, uh Keanu Reeves kind
of you know fanboy stories like good ones like he
It's it's the kind of stories you hear that almost
take on the air of urban lore, you know what
I mean. The idea that he went to the Possessions
(03:05):
to add in a movie, bought candy bars, and then
and threw it away just so he had something to
sign to give to the ticket taker who had asked
him for an autograph but he didn't have anything to
write on. Or the fact that this is not a
nerve a legend. The fact that Keanu Reeves gave the
special effects team of The Matrix a ton of his
(03:26):
salary and profits from that film franchise because he knew
who was doing the work credits very important to us
on the show. And apparently, Matt, this is a story
you found. Apparently there are some researchers in Germany who
feel the same. They're pro Kyatu. Yes, if you don't
like Keanu Reeves, look yourself in the mirror just for
(03:48):
a little while and just try to figure out why
you don't like that awesome human being. So yes, But ultimately, guys,
this story comes to us in a bit of a
roundabout way. Going through the voicemail. We got one from
a frame of constant Caller a frame and I want
to play that for us really quickly, because this story
actually goes back to early February of this year, but
(04:12):
it was written about very recently on CNN, which is
why I'm bringing it to the table today. And it
related back to this voicemail. So this is a hybrid
listener mail Strange News segment. Right here, he's a frame again.
And I thought of a little thought experiment for you
that I think you guys might appreciate while listening to
(04:33):
the recent Strange News when you mentioned to be introducing
tamthers in Florida and whatnot, taxing of that term apex predator,
and I think false idea of a hierarchical food chain.
A lot of humans they go, we're at the top
of the food chain, Well, get naked into cage with
the tiger if you're at the top of the food chain,
(04:55):
because the tiger's not wearing anything, the tiger doesn't have
or the tiger doesn't have a gun, and then the
tiger doesn't have a weapon, the tiger doesn't have planes
or armor or anything. It's naked in the cage with you.
And what you feel on top of the food chain,
taken in the cage with the tiger no, And really,
(05:18):
if you extend that thought, when that tiger dies, it
will get eaten by vultures and flies and maggots and
gnats and molds and fungus. Most molds and fungus is
in penicillin and savory morals or even fun magic mushrooms.
(05:41):
I propose the top of the food chain is occupied
by only if it is a hierarchy. First rue gets
the circle. But if we're insisting that there must be
a top of the food chain, then the only logical
organism to place at the top of the food chain
are toxic funguses that can't be eaten by anything because
(06:05):
everything dies and everything is consumed by fungus, even vultures
and wise, so if the decomposers are decomposed by a
fungus that nothing can eat, that is the only logical
top of the food chain. If we must have a linear,
hierarchical Jordan Peterson food chain um or we can just
(06:29):
let it be a circle. Understand, there is no top,
there is no bottom. Everything is a flat circle. Reggie lad.
Then it's much easier to see it. But it must
be a king. It's the deathcap. Thank you for the show.
Hitting up sorry, A Frame, it was a great though.
(06:53):
I like the true detective reference as well. Oh yeah,
But ultimately I think the point that any Frame is
making there is that, you know, the food chain is
very weird when you think about all things die, all
things decay, something you know causes that, And then could
it be possible that it's in as above so below
situation when you're thinking about the food chain, the true
top is the fungus. And if there's a fungus that
(07:15):
cannot be eaten because it is so toxic, then maybe
it wins. Overall, we've been talking about fungus a lot
late lately because we're you know, we're all in the
last of Us mode. There's only one episode left everybody
actually it probably it just came out as this episode
is coming out, so we're all watching it in real
time right now. In the most recent episode that we've
(07:36):
all seen, there was a really great quote from kind
of the baddie of the episode talking about how fungus
really is godlike essentially and deserving of worship because of
all the things that that A Frame said that everything
returns back to it. It is the ultimate destroyer and creator,
and that it will do anything to protect its ability
(08:00):
to spawn. Well, I've been saying that fungus is one
of my like Ben's top picks for an organic extraterrestrial organism.
You can also see the studies we've mentioned in previous
episodes on the tricky nature of intelligence, especially when applied
(08:22):
to the activities of those fung guys mispronounced on purpose
because no pun left behind, that's right. But yeah, yeah,
So the fungus, we need to fight it. We've been
talking about it on this show a lot. We need
to be able to fight it as humans as because
it infects us. Many different funguses can affect human beings,
(08:47):
can cause very very serious harm as well as death
to us, and it comes in all kinds of different forms.
And we also need to protect our crops against fungus
because we've learned over the years here that fungus is
one of the biggest killers of things like grapes and
trees and all kinds of plants that we generally need
(09:07):
to eat, even plants that we need to feed animals
that we consume. So we need to find ways to
kill fungus more effectively as that fungus becomes more effective
at fighting against our means to kill it. Okay, So
this is where Keanu Reeves comes in. Kiana has made
many movies over the years. He's been in a lot
(09:27):
of different franchises. In several of those that are the
most prominent, he is a highly effective eliminator of the
bad guys, especially when you think about him in the
Matrix trilogy, if you think about him in John Wick,
the fourth of which I believe is still in theaters
right now we record this, or at least it's coming
(09:48):
to theaters. I don't know there's another John Wick. He
kills a lot of people in those movies. Some researchers
have discovered, in a kind of a roundabout way, a
new substance, a chemical compound that seems to be extremely
effective at eliminating fungus, the bad fungus. And it's also
it also, in the initial testing, appears to not harm
(10:10):
the plant material in the same way that it harms
the fungus and potentially could be used as an antifungal
drug in humans, which would be a huge leap forward.
It will require a lot more testing to see if
it actually is going to function, you know, as a drug.
If you could, if you could create a drug out
(10:30):
of it, right, So let's jump into this story. The
recent reporting comes from CNN. There's an article you can
find titled Newly discovered chemicals are so deadly to fung
guy that they are named after Keanu Reeves. It's written
by Taylor Nikki Yoli for CNN again, and it was
written March third. But most of the writing about this,
(10:51):
the initial stuff that came out is from around the
early February, like February second, February sixth, and it looks
like the actual publication was released on January twentieth of
twenty three. So let's just I guess we should jump
into it a little bit, talk about it. This is
(11:12):
really just an informational session, guys. The only stuff they
don't want you to know here is the same thing
we've been harping on. Fungus is a really serious, big
deal and it's going to get way more of a
serious deal in the next ten twenty years. That's the
stuff they don't want you to know. So here we go.
(11:32):
I don't want to read this verbatim. Let's see. I
guess we can give you the high level stuff. And
there's a person Sebastian goats a goot ze, he says,
the goat Sebastian goats. Oh yes. Researcher with the Leibniz
Institute in Germany. They do natural product research. They also
(11:55):
look at infection biology and oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes and goats has this to say about this new discovery.
These are lipopeptides. Okay, that's what these things are. So
there's a lipid Does that indicate there's some kind of
vatty molecule like a lipidum you know, I don't know null.
(12:19):
They are lipopeptides. I like words, And that's the fun
one quote. The lipopeptides kilso efficiently that we named them
after Keanu Reeves because he too is extremely deadly in
his roles. We have a crisis in anti infectives. True,
many human pathogenic fungi are now resistant to antimycotics or
(12:39):
anti fungals, partly because they are used in large quantities
in agricultural fields. So think about that. One of the
main reasons that antibiotics are less effective on humans these days,
as we've talked about on this show many times, is
because those products, those medicines are used on a lot
of the cattle on a lot of the animals, the pigs,
(13:01):
the chickens that we end up consuming because they're kept
in such you know, tight quarters, in such large numbers
that they often get sick, and one of the ways
to prevent some of that sickness is to dose them
with those antibiotics talked about this. This is a major problem.
It's getting better as it's become more well known. There's
(13:21):
been a bit of a public outcry because well, because
we're seeing companies now try and move away from that. However,
in the large factory settings where you've got to pump
out x amount of beef every day, this is still
a major issue. Same thing is happening with a lot
of the mass produced plants that we end up consuming.
(13:42):
These anti fungal substances have to get sprayed on everything
just to make sure there's not a huge problem. Again
with like the grapes that we end up consuming that
go into our wine, that go into your Kroger and
all that stuff. So it's the same deal. There's also
a problem with anti fungals in humans because just the
fungus in general, after you use a certain substance for
(14:06):
a long enough period of time, it becomes less and
less effective over time because these are live things. It's
it's alive, and it changes. It starts figuring out just
through attrition, how to get around these anti fungals. I
don't know, guys, Yeah, you said it already been. They're
(14:26):
called keanu, mayasins k e A, n U, M y
c I ns these substances, and it's pretty pretty dope stuff.
You can read all about it if you want. I mean,
you raise an excellent point there, Matt. Like the idea
of evolutionary cycles. Right, A short lived organism, like many
(14:50):
fungal organisms are, has a higher rate of attrition, obviously,
but it also has a shorter interval between generations, much
that it can adapt way more quickly than the human body.
And I don't know, I also think it's really cool
that you could be on the forefront of science and
(15:12):
decide to name a thing whatever that's sort of neat, right,
Like I always I always think about that when you
when you hear some astronomer has found an obscure planet
or heavenly body and they said we're going to call this,
you know, Donnie's Place or whatever, or you look at
(15:33):
the especially when you look towards the end of the
periodic table when people are saying Prometheum, i'd steadium. Here's
a person I like Mendelevium. That's why. Yeah, Matt Scovium,
maybe Matt Fredrixium. Yeah, my god, yes, please, let's not
(15:55):
do it. Matt's long held dream. Everybody, fellow conspiracy real,
especially chemist in the crowd. It has been our brother's
long term dream to have an element in the periodic
table named after him. I think he got robbed by
the einsteinium, folks man. I think that was unfair, because
(16:17):
what has Einstein done? Really? You know what I mean? Yeah,
I'm the greatest ever. I guess. No, please don't ever
name anything after me. Forget me, forget me. Okay, so
let's jump in here really quickly. Just a couple other
things here, because it's very important for us to remember.
Fungal cells. Put them right in the center of your mind. Okay,
(16:39):
to the left, you've got plant cells. To the right,
you've got animal cells. These fungal cells that are in
the center, they aren't the same as but they are
very similar to in a lot of ways the animal cells. Now,
imagine you're trying to develop a drug that only targets
those fungal cells, but they're really close to those animal cells.
(17:01):
So often when drugs are being developed as anti fungals,
they can have serious negative effects on the animal cells,
which is by the way you and your cells. That's
why it's really difficult to develop an effective anti fungal
treatment for a human being or for a pig for
that matter, or whatever. In the case of these keyonomyacins,
(17:22):
it appears that they don't cause serious toxic effects to
the animal cells, which is why this is so very
vastly important. Trying to think of an equivalent. It's that
thing of making a discovery that doesn't come around but
a few you know, every couple of decades you find
a new substance that's going to be effective against fungi
(17:44):
in this way. So this is huge. Good on everybody involved.
Good Keanu, Good on the people who named it, Good
on the folks. They're making the last of us. And
that's all I have to say. And now we'll hear
a word from our response and we're back with more
(18:09):
strange news. You guys know about mister Bee's I'm saying
to that theme, Yeah, just based on the reproduction of
my kids singing it to me. I've actually not really
watched much of mister Beasts content. I'm familiar does big
set PC kind of money giveaway things like did I
(18:30):
think did like a real life version of squid Game
that then Netflix decided they'd do too, but they sort
of missed the point and did a really bad job,
and people froze and got sick and it was a
real debacle. But yeah, mister beasts YouTube sensation massively popular.
Fellow also has a ghost kitchen chain of restaurants called
(18:52):
Mister Beast Burger, and now, as it turns out, also
has chocolate bars called Feastables that you can get at
various big box retailers, including Walmart. And apparently mister Beast
didn't take too kindly to the way or the treatment
of his product line, specifically at Walmart's thought that they
(19:15):
were a little messy, were being given a short shrift
in favor of the big boys like the Hershey's of
the world. So on March third, Mister Beasts who's a
Christian name is Jimmy Donaldson tweeted at his eighteen point
eight million followers as such, I need your help next
(19:37):
time you see feastables in Walmart and soon to be
new retailers. If you could clean up the presentation and
make it look better, that would make me very happy.
I'm building a team to do this routinely. Just need
help in the short term. Hm, what could go wrong?
What could go wrong? And originally there was like a
(19:59):
five thou dollar a reward kind of like you know,
tied into this, or would be a drawing of folks
that could prove that they had done this. I'm not
seeing that detail added. I would not be surprised if,
given the backlash we're about to talk about, he took
that away. Um he replaced it with something I think
that they We'll get into just a little bit. But um, yeah,
it's kind of Sechuan Sauce all over again. Really, if
(20:20):
you think about it, the whole Rick and Morty people
come in and standing on the counters and McDonald's screaming
about the Sechuan sauce that that they were out of Um,
you know, some folks in an attempt to curry favor
with mister Beast, who is hugely popular on YouTube, and
you know, just like a mention or you know, a
repost of some you know up and coming content creators.
(20:43):
Content could be a game changer for them. So a
lot of folks just tweeting pictures of feastable section in disarray,
followed by the after shot We're they're all neat and tidy. Um,
you know, just say hey, mister beast, love each stuff,
be the help here here here I am um, you know,
and adding adding mister Beast's handle. But then, you know,
(21:06):
you start to kind of reality starts to set in
a little bit, and you start to think about what
does this feel like to folks who actually work at
Walmart and have to, you know, restock shells and all
of a sudden dealing with all these kind of Yeah,
I'm gonna call him Yahoo's no, no insult intended, but
I mean, this is just a little bit of a
of a dopey thing to do, in my opinion, coming
(21:29):
in there and messing with your with your displays. You know,
it's not really something that you've signed up for for
your minimum wage, you know, big box store job U.
The tweet was like one hundred and twelve thousand times,
and it has gotten an understandably some backlash of people
saying that this very very wealthy YouTuber is essentially crowdsourcing
(21:52):
free labor five thousand dollars or no. Um, it's it's
a little bit odd, I would say. And you have
folks pointing out this very fact, and you know, in
addition to the usual kind of well you know, hey,
I did the thing. Good job me. Thanks mister beast
for being awesome hashtag team mister beasts, you've got some
(22:13):
some more satirical let's just say posts. One person struth
Queen on Twitter posted, mister beast just unlocked a new
form of capitalism. I hate it. Here with some reposts
of some of the images of folks. Yeah, we're just
in Walmartin noticed this display. You need some fixing at
mister beast. Then one of my personal favorites, which is
(22:38):
posted by at harm harm cart, which I believe is
an image of somebody in Ukraine who is like duct
taped to a traffic poll, a traffic signal, and the
text reads, at mister beast, I caught this man after
his shoulder brushed a feastable's display and one of your
chocolates fell to the ground. He is pleading for mercy,
(23:00):
but I do not believe he is truly sorry. How
shall I deal with him? Sir? Wow, Uh, that's the
that's the that's the dream, or like the nightmare. And
it really makes me think of, you know, the thing
that's sort of portrayed in the latest Batman movie where
you've got the Riddler who with this kind of you know,
(23:21):
gang of kind of Riddler acolytes. He essentially, you know,
there's obviously a much more low key an Ocuus version
of this, but he essentially sicks an army of his
followers on Gotham City, and I just really, I mean,
obviously this is not mister Bees doing anything of that nature.
And I'm I'm half joking, of course, but it does
(23:41):
really point to the power of these types of folks,
you know, who can command action among people who just
want to want to be seen by them, acknowledged by them.
So kind of creepy, you know, a great look if
you ask me, I don't know, what do you guys think? Well,
it's it's a weird. I'm just imagining the Walmart that
(24:03):
is close to me where I live right now, and
imagining the jobs that exist within that walmart. And I
don't know the specific details for whoever manages that location,
but mostly I have seen people working in specific sections
of the store or at the front of the store
(24:23):
at like customer service or in you know, the eyewear
shop or whatever they have at the front there, and
people who are stocking the store, so like bringing boxes
out from the back and putting products on the shelves.
I'm sure there is a position somewhere in the store
or it's like something that someone who runs a section
is supposed to handle, like making the displays look nice, right.
(24:47):
I just don't think I've seen that in action anytime
I've visited that store. And I wonder how much of
a priority that is specifically for a Walmart, because I
know at other store I have seen that as like
a not a position, as like this is what you
do as your job is what you get paid for.
But it's a it's a definite responsibility for people who
(25:11):
are working within the store. Does that make sense? It
does make sense. And also like no no shade on
any of these people. But I mean, these stores are
massive and then they're oftentimes understaffed, and they kind of
exist in a constant state of disarray, you know what
I mean. And it's it's just the nature of it.
You know, people are always moving things around, putting things
in the wrong place, and it's just a constant battle
(25:32):
to even like have things be relatively presentable. And there
are probably priorities beyond that. I don't think of Walmart
as like the store of like shiny displays per se.
So it's just odd to have these kind of invading forces,
you know, doing this, and and the Internet today guys
who am always referencing who I love. They pointed out that,
(25:53):
you know, there's a strong possibility that some of these
folks might have actually been the ones messing them up
in the first place, just so they have something to
show for a before and after pick. Yeah, so you
you could argue that this is like, what is it
the bed you always reference in the Cobra problem, where
you like, unleash a thing to fix a problem, but
(26:13):
it actually becomes the problem itself. Yeah, there's a lot
to unpack here, because we are looking at we are
looking at a phenomenon that legislation doesn't really exist for
at least not this iteration of it. Back in the
days of old, there were very explicit rules about who
(26:35):
could or could not martial forces together toward a cause.
That's one of the reasons the right to assembly is
super big in the United States as it stands today.
So the idea of the cobra problem, for quick recap,
is that if you incentivize people to do a thing,
(26:55):
you may find yourself in a situation where people are
over incentivized, as this occurs in India. Back in the day,
they had a lot of cobras and say they said,
we're going to pay people to kill these cobras, right,
We'll make things safer for everyone. But when people realize
they could get paid to kill cobras, they started growing
(27:18):
and raising cobras and they're turning them in for the bounty.
And the idea here is a bit further complicated because
now we are adding in we are all respect to you,
mister beasts. We are adding in the dopamine casino of
social media, which means that now people don't have to
be paid, they simply have to be approved of by
(27:41):
their community. So this could happen in any number of ways.
This is also I don't know. I don't know about you, Noel,
Matt doc I don't have a problem with mister beast.
I think feastables is actually a really good improvement on
the name lunch. It was right there. It was a
(28:01):
good job. You know, it's a good martin. One of
the flavors of the of the Feastable's chocolate bars though,
is just for the record, these nuts so also hilarious.
It continues to be. It does continue to be. I
will drop a these nuts joke myself from time to time.
But it stinks if you're in a Walmart. You know,
(28:21):
the Walton family has such an outsized influence on the
US in so many ways. They're killing small businesses, that's true.
They're also accelerating inequality in this country and very serious
to the degree of unsustainability. But imagine to your earlier pointment,
imagine you're working at this section and to your point, nol,
(28:45):
maybe it's a chaotic place already. And now on top
of all of this, you got to try to deal
with someone who has been sent by a YouTuber that
you they have never met. You're not getting any kind
of compensation or putting up with that, you know, it's
it's tough. And again, Jimmy, mister beast Donaldson not a
(29:07):
bad YouTuber like your child said. No, this is very
entertaining content. I mean, do we know do we know
what the latest scoop is? Now? Do we know how
people are responding the relatively ongoing story? I did you
know there were some some details, you know how Twitter.
I'm not good at Twitter, so things seem to get
covered up, like if the posts aren't hind or whatever.
(29:29):
The top response from mister beast now says, to show
how grateful I am to everyone that helped Tidy only
spells it titty. Actually t I D d y, which
is funny. Made me giggle things up. I'm going to
donate a one hundred thousand dollars to charity. What charity
should I donate? To appreciate you all? But like, there
were some other tweets that apparently he deleted, one of
(29:52):
which kind of almost suggested that the people sabotage other
competing chocolate displays like Hershey, which isn't good because even
the you know, with this kind of thing been to
your points, you know, marshaling folks, the very indication that
you're you're perceived kind of Internet messiah wants you to
(30:14):
do a crime. I mean there are people that are
going to run with that. Yeah, in a very real way.
So will this. You know again, it's a kind of
a goofy internet, pranky guy whatever. But what this points
to is something larger, and we've seen it with things
like the insurrection you know at the state capital and
how this level of unchecked internet power that is to
(30:36):
your point, Bin, I completely agree unregulatable, maybe not unregulatable,
but unregulated. But I don't know how you do it.
You know, there were going to start putting limits on
how many people can follow somebody online because they're they're
too too powerful. You can't really put that genie back
on the bottle at this point. It's kind of impossible.
Let me get old man for a second. Guys, go
(30:58):
back to some of my Scout leader taught me when
I was a little boy. I know that guy, all right,
when you go out in the wilderness or anywhere in
the world, you leave it as good or better than
you found it every time. If we all take on
this responsibility, every one of us, each individual, then every
time we walk into that Walmart is going to look
(31:19):
exactly like it did when it got set up. In
that display of feastables or Dove chocolates, whatever they are,
It's gonna look pristine and gorgeous. Even if you take
ten of them, you can leave it just like you
found it. So you're saying we should just crowdsource, you know,
tidying up all walmarts help you ourselves. It's the boy
(31:39):
Scout way. Well it happens, is something like that happens
in Japan? I know we got to move on. But
you know, you don't find a lot of public trash
cans in that country because people know you shouldn't litter,
and they don't need to have some sort of intermediary
between personal responsibility and making you know, a public space
(32:02):
look like a house. There's a there's a tragedy of
the commons at work, and it's been so for society
for a long long time. If I don't know, maybe
we should hear from our fellow listeners here. If you
have advice or insight from you know, the front lines,
(32:23):
from your own philosophical experiences, what would you say is
the best way to address this problem? Because you're right,
you know, if you even if you hate billionaire dynasties
like the Waltons or whatever, if you are screwing stuff
up for the person who has to work there and
(32:46):
clean it up, know that you are not in any
way touching the Walton family. You're just making life harder
for someone just like you. And that's kind of I
don't know, I think it could you could exercise a
little more insight. We all could. Yeah, I mean, I
completely agree, and I think all three of us are
(33:08):
of the leave that as as good or better than
you found him. Mentality. Uh, no litterbugs here in this squad,
that's for sure. Um, But I just wanted to add
one last whole thing. Then we'll definitely move on. One
of my favorite tweets as well, besides the guy taped
to the telephone pole, one was from web website idiot,
who says at mister beast, I will continue destroying your
(33:29):
chocolate displays until you pay me one hundred thousand dollars.
So that the script did a little reverse blackmail, or
maybe not reverse, just regular blackmail, but kind of kind
of doubt that payday is coming anytime. Sim we're gonna
take a break, we're gonna hear a word from our sponsor,
who maybe may well be mister Beast, mister beastables, and
then we'll be back with more strange news. And we
(33:56):
have returned folks. Our last story for or today pertains
to something that a lot of a lot of people
in the US and abroad don't pay much attention to
unless you work at a port authority, you are lucky
enough to have a train that doesn't get derailed rolling
through your town. We're going to talk about I don't
(34:20):
want to quite call it piracy, but we're going to
talk about some bootleggers, and not the kind that you
would see back in the days Lincoln CDs or DVDs
on your local public transitor street corner. So everybody remembers Russia, right,
it's a country. It's kind of controversial part of it. Yeah,
they're waging this war and Ukraine the guy in charge,
(34:44):
Lad Putin sort of a bag. This guy, this frigging guy,
as we would say on the internet, is waging a
war that is rocking the Nited Nations, that is rocking
European ukraying in particular. A lot of innocent people are dying.
(35:04):
And the issue with this country is that to support
its war, it relies on oil exports. So your favorite
suits over in NATO and over in the United Nations,
and I'm sure at transnational banking institutions across the planet
said let's cut it off at the pass. If war
(35:27):
mongers need oil money to finance their aggression, then let's
not allow them to sell oil. I don't know about
you all, but I've never been at some point in
my various lives where I could say I'm not going
to allow someone to sell the thing. Can you imagine that,
(35:47):
Like we can boycott stuff by not buying it, But
can you imagine being at some point in your life
where you say, I'm not going to allow you to
sell a thing. No, not yet, things out I don't don't.
I can't imagine hav any that much cloud. It's a
lot of cloud. It's a dangerous amount of cloud. But
they did it because they can. And everybody in western
(36:12):
media saw that. In ninety something percent said, oh, hunky dory,
surely a war will end soon because we have cut
off the funding. But here's what's happening now, and it
deserves more attention. As we record today, there is a
growing fleet, hundreds and hundreds of tankers moving this oil
(36:38):
across the planet, and no one is copying to the responsibility.
No one is saying, oh, yeah, these are my takers,
Like you guys have seen everybody I think has seen
cargo containers. Right, You've probably seen them on a train.
Unless you live near a big body of water, you
(36:58):
might have seen them on a ship. We know what
we're talking about. These things are huge. The vessels that
carry them are huge. The same kind of enormous ships,
or very similar enormous ships that carry oil products across
the world are moving today and it's it's very scooby
(37:19):
doo to me, like, how could you disguise a ship
that big? I want to shout out a couple of
fantastic journalists authors here, Julia Horowitz, whose work we have
mentioned on previous episodes or strange news segments of stuff
they don't want you to know. She has this great
article on CNN called A mysterious fleet is helping Russia
(37:42):
ship oil around the world. And wait for it, Matt
Noell doc us listening at home, it's growing. Not only
can no one figure out who is moving this oil
for the Russians, they only know that there are more
and more ships like every month. Right now, it's roughly
(38:04):
six hundred vessels and just for perspective, that's ten percent
of the number of large tankers across the world. That
is fascinating. I have never thought of oil as being
I thought it was all it was all locked down,
you know. I just figured like that was one of
those industries that everyone's getting it is already doing so
(38:26):
very much above board, you know, and they've got it
all locked down because of what we've talked about with
oil industry of it is being one of those legacy industries.
So the idea of bootlegging oil is fascinating to me.
Are they actually they're pulling it out of the ground
in an illegal operation or is it just kind of
black market you know, maybe it's stolen or something. What's
(38:49):
the deal? My understanding is that it's it's oil that
Russia would be producing and trading legally, but because of
the invasion in the sanctions, they can no longer trade it.
So they've got these unknown buyers coming in buying up
the oil tankers or these huge ships, adding them to
this shadow fleet, and then those ships that aren't on
(39:13):
the books anywhere get loaded up with the oil that
would normally be shipped and they just send it. You know,
they have to go. They have to put a lot
more oil on these ships than they normally would, because
instead of taking them to another country that's closer to Russia,
like Finland, they got to go on a big, long
roundabout trip to a different place, right to drop that
(39:34):
oil off. That's at least understanding. Yeah, you nailed it, Matt.
Maritime law, I know it about as well as Charlie
Day knows bird law, which is to say, I don't
have a degree, but I have some opinions, and and
it's it's quite easy. Actually, it's dangerously easy for a
large ship to have to raise a different flag, to
(39:58):
turn off it's location, and to roll through just sort
of a ghost ship, a ship in the nights, as
it were. If you, for instance, if you are selling
to China or India, you can take a ship have
a different nationality as your port of call or your
(40:21):
home port, and then you can just change the flag
halfway through. One of the immediate questions if you're trying
to work in law and order deep ocean, wait, what
would be a good what would be a good theme
like sound cue for law and order maritime? Would it
(40:41):
be like a sea shanty? There we go? Yeah right, yes,
uh see, this is why we hang out. So in
this law and order maritime or deep ocean. What you
would find is it's quite difficult to enforce this stuff.
And if you were trying to enforce it, then you
(41:04):
would think, maybe we can follow the money, maybe we
can look at the insurers. But the insurers don't have
a ton of power here. The states that would you say, oh,
we allowed these ships to fly under our flag, they
(41:25):
don't have a ton of power. They certainly don't want
to be accountable for this. And we have to remember
that when you're talking tankers, the companies are more powerful
than the countries, which is super weird in my opinion,
but it's true, Soul. You could contract a vessel as
(41:46):
a private transnational entity and exon a Chevron a British
Petroleum dare I say an a Ramco, And once this
stuff gets transferred from vessel to vessel, it's very easy
to lose stuff in the cracks. It's weird to be
because going back to our earlier conversations we're talking about
(42:08):
witness protection. It's easier to disappear as a tanker vessel
full of oil than it is to disappear as an
individual human being in the United States. Isn't that weird. Yes,
it's easier. Well, is that sort of like have you
(42:28):
guys seen the season of the Wire about shipping and
receiving Season two? Season two? That's the one, and so
there's a whole deal where they like lose shipping containers
like in the system because the system is kind of antiquated,
you know, and so they're able to kind of disappear
these cargo containers in order to you know, steal from them.
(42:50):
I wonder if that's a similar deal where maybe like
these systems in place that track these things are maybe
in need of some upgrades one hundred percent, But is
it to the benefit of the money to enact those
upgrades to implement them. That's a really good point then.
I mean, I don't know. I'm thinking right now, what's
happening is it's probably not China. China's big enough to
(43:13):
not need proxies, right, It's probably not the usual suspects
are on North Korea, Venezuela and so on. I think
it's private business is doing this, and I think they're
forming shell companies in relatively open market kind of pro
(43:34):
business places. Maybe it's your Debise, maybe it's your Hong
Kong's I think they're using loopholes to get around sanctions.
Like Doc pointed out when she said that no one
dying at Disney kind of depends on how you how
you define pronounced dead. This gets me because you know,
(43:55):
we've seen the ocean. The ocean's huge. I think no
one has seen the entire pity of the ocean. I
guess it's easy to lose six hundred tankers, but also
that's kind of dangerous. If you turn off your GPS,
you're positioning to do some like sail by night stuff
to move oil, are you going to hit another boat? Yeah,
(44:17):
it's like it's like flying a plane without air traffic control.
You know, something wonky that's happening with the story right now. Guys,
there's some nonprofits working to make estimates on the number
of these unknown buyers and these shadow ships going into
shadow fleets right and they're trying to keep track of it,
but a lot of it. There's a lot of unknowns there,
(44:39):
and there's no way to prove these individual ships with
unknown buyers are in fact going to this shadow fleet
that's moving Russian oil. So I do wonder if this
is something that's being taken advantage of by everyone, including
the US, to maybe even find a way to backdoor
buy some Russian oil put it in reserves, because we
(45:00):
of the US surely knows strategically that as the global
conflict continues to rise between the US, China, Russia and
all these major players, we're gonna need a ton of oil.
I just think it's a huge deal. If we can
get some of Russia's oil, it would be to our
advantage as a country, the US. Yeah, and typically, you know,
we only have scruples in so far as like pr optics.
(45:24):
You know, I would not be surprised at all if
if on the surface, no, no blockading Russian oil. But no, actually, guys,
that's cool. It's block scading with the right hand and
we got our left hand behind our back, you know,
doing the little coming air sign. Uh. Yeah. This is
a shadow industry, and it's an industry that's been growing
(45:47):
for a while. I'm really happy to have like three
fillings a year. But I'm impressed that CNN is talking
about it because it's been happening through the entirety of
Venezuelan oil sanctions, through the entirety of Iranian oil sanctions.
(46:08):
The oil is still moving it's still occurring. And it's
very convenient to your point about signaling stuff to the public.
It's very convenient to high road and say, oh, we're
stopping all this, you know what I mean, it's just
USA all day baby. But is that the reality or
(46:30):
is there some stuff they don't want you to know?
There very much? Is it's on the high seas? I
want to check in with you guys, everybody listening. This
does feel like an episode. This does feel like something
we dive into. I don't know if that's appropriate at
this point, but I'm just massively perplexed by this because, Okay,
(46:55):
if you're sending the usual through the usual channels, right,
and you're Russia, then you get slapped with sanctions, which
means those channels are blocked off. Is it just easier
than we assumed to go find someone else, you know,
like some decade aristocrat and Monaco with gambling debts and
then say, hey, you still control a couple of tankers,
(47:20):
will pay off your baccarat or whatever? Am I even
pronouncing that right? I don't know what bats. None of
us have ever played backarat. I imagine I like Burt back, Yeah,
that's probably who I'm thinking of Burt Backarat, the creator
of Backarat. So the tanker thing is already a huge issue.
(47:42):
You know, they bleed very dangerous substances into the open ocean.
They also, you know, whenever there's a wreck, there's a catastrophe.
But now what we're seeing is an active shadow fleet
that is growing with state support to bypass these sanctions.
(48:05):
And to your point, Matt, an excellent point, we have
to ask ourselves whether US based corporations are playing the
game as well. I'm telling you Black Monday murders, yeah,
or any other country that would publicly say bad Russia.
But nine, we need some oil. So there we have it. Folks,
(48:28):
We're going to call it a day for now. We
hope you enjoyed this. Let us know your interactions with
mister Beast, let us know your interactions with Keanu Reeves
and your thoughts about fungal infections and the future of fungus. Actually,
you know what give us this one? Do you consider
fungus intelligent? If so, why would love to hear your
(48:51):
thoughts on a frames comments regarding circle, the hierarchy of
predator prey and life on this planet. And then you know,
if you happen to be on a shadow tanker carrying
some stuff for the Russians and you feel comfortable reaching
out to us. We'd love to hear from you. Yes,
that was my cat. You know what I heard? D
(49:14):
D D d D. That's what I put What song
is that? That's a song? I don't know. That's what
I heard in my head. I think that's yeah. Oh yeah,
that's it. That's it, that's it. There's also the md
pree song side Oh yeah, yeah, another good cats out.
I actually saw a meme where somebody took Nelson from
(49:36):
The Simpsons going and turned it into that m Ad
three song and it was kind of great. But there
we go. So so reach out with your input, folks.
We cannot wait to hear from you. You are why
this show exists. We try to be easy to find online.
Let's see, Matt Noll did a pretty awesome video recently
(49:56):
on Instagram about drugs and precedent. You can also find
us on TikTok. You can find us on YouTube where
we're putting out all kinds of stuff all the time.
And what do people do if they don't sit the
social meats? You got a social media rehab get on
the social med wagon, or you know, you can also
(50:18):
just find us some old fashioned ways. You can give
us a call one eight three three S T W
I T K yes. When you call in, give yourself
a nickname. Let us know if you can use your
message and name on the air, and your voice. Your
voice is important and we want to put it on
the air. If you don't want us to do that,
let us know. You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like.
If you've got more to say, or links or something
(50:39):
like that, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
(51:05):
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