Mexico demands answers as cartels seem to wield massive amounts of US-manufactured military ordnance. Pop musician Taylor Swift inspires bizarre, panicked reactions among America's conservatives. Pharmaceutical giant Bayer is under the gun yet again as the dangers of Roundup, once dismissed as a conspiracy theory, result in a lawsuit putting the company on the hook for more than 2 billion US dollars. A woman in Colorado discovers she is on the Minnesota presidential primary ballot -- she doesn't want to be president, and she can't get her name off the list. All this and more in this week's strange news segment.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here That makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
of the week, which means it is time for some
strange news. Where are Mexican cartels getting all this hardware?
(00:48):
From what's going on with Iran the US? And that
weird sound in Florida that might just be fishbanging? Is
Bear going to be held responsible for some various other
things Before we do any.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Of that, we'll get to all that more.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
But before we do any of that, we've got an
up and coming musician to talk about. And even before then, Noel,
you had some thoughts on the recent resurgence and viral
popularity of Stanley Cup's not the hockey trophy exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
I mean, look, first of all, that's the first time
I heard all this hubbub about the Stanley Cup. I'm like, oh,
I guess hockey's taken off in the States now, you know,
people are like all of a sudden getting stoked about hockey.
Not the case. Apparently. This company, Stanley, has been around
for like a hundred years and largely, much like the
whole deal with Carhart, the brand kind of shifting from
(01:40):
like a working class sort of like you know, dungarees
or whatever and meanies for the construction site into more
of a fashion forward brand. That's kind of what's happened
with Stanley. They were largely known for the kind of
thermisis and sulated thermoss that you might see folks taking
to a work site. And then I don't know exactly
how it happen. There were a couple of things that
(02:01):
contributed to it. One I think was a story about
like a car fire that like the only thing that
survived was one of these Stanley quincher cups or whatever.
They're very popular among nurses, They're very popular among you know,
kind of young people. There are even stories about how
young people are getting bullied for not having Stanley cups
or for having knockoff Stanley Cups kind of like a
(02:22):
bit of a rag's to riches kind of story for
this brand. They started doing all these exclusive colors. People
are getting in fights over them at Walmart's. There was
a heist of them recently to come into our recent
kind of fascination with weird heists. But the story today
is that it has been confirmed that these products do
contain lead. There were some like kind of TikTok moms
(02:44):
that do these sort of like you know, testing of
stuff to make sure there's no bad chemicals or whatever
in them, and one user reported using one of these
tests that you can get on Amazon, swabbing the inside
of Stanley cups, also swabbing the inside of I believe
it's most that other one, Yeah, a YETI brand cup.
It's also a similar kind of deal in in that space.
And one other thing, and the other two tested negative
(03:08):
and the Stanley cup tested positive, And we're hearing all
kinds of reports there's lead and Stanley Cups. The company
has come out and said, yes, there is lead in them,
but it's okay because it's part of the manufacturing process
that goes into ceiling the base of them, that creates
this like mega vacuum whatever. I don't know material science
well enough for manufacturing to know why that would be
(03:31):
the choice that they would make. It might be part
and parcel of the fact that this is an old
legacy company, you know, so maybe it's like an old
school thing. They said, it's okay, it's it won't ever
be exposed unless the cup breaks, which is very rare,
but I guess possible. But then that does beg the
question why was the TikTok mom getting positive test results
(03:52):
from swabbing the inside of the of the cup where
the drink goes. So there's a lot of reporting out there,
people saying largely believing Stanley. It seems like the general
internet consensus that Stanley's telling the truth and this is
sort of a non issue. But I am a little
skeptical with these tests that are showing positive results of
lead inside the cup where the drink goes. Obviously, much
(04:12):
like conversation we had in our last episode, there are
allowable levels of all kinds of talk.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sense, So, well, have we forgotten about potential water lead
contamination like that cup and then you swab it and
you think, oh, well, there's just water here. That was
in there, And it's.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
True, I was interested in the control elements of the
test that this one cracked. TikTok mom had that she
was test cross testing other types of products which she
would assume she's washing in the same sink, but only
the Stanley tested positive. So all this to say, interesting,
will be interesting to see if it affects their sales
or the craze of it at all. Kind of think
(04:51):
it won't. It does seem like the consensus says that
Stanley is to be believed.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Believe Stanley, Yeah, because you know, the microplastics and the
forever chemicals getting in there anyway, no matter what you
put in little let in there just adds this seasoning.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
It was fine. It was a good run, you know, the.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Spice of life.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Also that if you want to see the video that
inspired this uh viral interest and then the natural the
natural pushback or recursive nature of internet conversation, it's a
person named Danielle on TikTok in her car fire. The
thing that made Stanley popular online was that in the fire,
(05:30):
the Stanley cups still had the ice cubes. Wow.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
That you can't buy that kind of marketing. You can't.
You almost got to wonder if the people will the
fine focus. They didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Okay, okay, we're sure they did not not an inside jobs. Sure,
so tell us about this Taylor Swift person. It's tough
to make them living in music.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I know. The first thing, you know, she's just playing
at coffee shops and and uh and you know, little
indie venues and and now she's like, now she's the
biggest pop star on the planet. Seems have happened overnight. No,
it did not happen overnight. It was a very methodical
and intentionally tracked career trajectory. And you got to give
props where props is do. There's a little something in
(06:10):
the Taylor Swift catalog for everyone. She's interesting also in
that she fought back against the record companies who owned
her master recording rights and just said, screw you guys,
I own my publishing. I'm just going to re record
all those records myself and you. Everyone may have heard
of the Taylor's version phenomenon, so there's you know, she's
slowly been going not slowly actually honestly, kind of astonishingly
(06:33):
quickly going through her entire catalog. The company Big Machine
was the record label that sort of found her when
she was sort of actually a bit smaller from the
Nashville scene, because as you may or may not know,
she sort of came up as more of a pop
country artist and then gradually went way more mainstream than
has since amassed just an absolute throng of loyal followers,
(06:57):
you know, who will hang on her every war or
swift Swifties don't cross Taylor, or the Swifties will come
for you, much like the behive with Beyonce. But I
would argue more intense I think perhaps, but I don't know.
That's up up for debate. But she's really been in
the news a lot lately. She one Time Magazine's Person
(07:18):
of the Year, largely because of the unbelievable success of
her Era's tour, which as we know, was just the
hottest ticket in the known universe, and it was just
you know, people were traveling from far and wide to
go crash ticket Master you know many times over caused
all kinds of conversations around the fairness the equity of
(07:40):
ticket monopolies like that. We've had this conversation in the past,
but it's only when an artist with that much power
enters the chat that things really start to change, and
I think that's part of what we're going to talk
about today. All of that's just just a little bit
of primary, hopefully not being too redundant for folks that
are already following the story. But the latest is sort
of threefold. I guess we'll start with the easy one
(08:01):
because it's something that we talked about, I believe a
couple of episodes ago. There has been a rash of
AI generated lude images of Taylor Swift that have been
kind of proliferating on the internet, some bordering on pornographic,
most just kind of elude, just naughty, you know, Like
here's there's some that depicting her like as you know,
(08:24):
sort of like an exotic dancer perhaps, you know, surrounded
by a bunch of dudes who were kind of cop
and feels and things like that. There's one of her
like making out with the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.
We'll get to the Chiefs part of things in a
bit as well. And I think what I mentioned when
I was talking about it on the podcast was that
I saw this and showed it to my partner, who
(08:47):
immediately said, oh, Taylor's not gonna like that. And then
literally a couple of hours later, article pops up on
some tech website saying Taylor Swift representative of Taylor Swift
seeking legal action against this stuff. And Ben, I believe
both of y'all pointed out that this is one of
those litmus tests of this kind of thing. It's hard
to put the genie back in the bottle. It's hard
(09:08):
to get things stricken from the Internet once it's already
out there. Ben, I believe you pointed out the stress effect.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, that's why I reference. It's a law of the internet,
you know, up there with that one, with that one
other evil rule that seems accurate, which is if you
can imagine a fandom, then some pornographic version of that
fandom exists. It's like rule thirty seven, or it's got
a weird number attached to it. But but yeah, this also,
(09:34):
I mean, it's strange because I think maybe talking with
you guys a little bit off air about this, people
have been asking the US Congress and indeed the West
overall to pass some sort of legislation weighing in on
this idea like deep fakes for political propagandistic or pornographic purposes,
(09:56):
And it seems like this might be the one. This
might be the that gets Congress to act. They have
a bill that isn't a law yet, but I think
it's up now, isn't it on the way?
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Well, it does beg the question like, is Taylor Swift
a powerful enough public figure that this stuff would be
outside the realm of just fan fiction? Like would this
stuff potentially be damaging in a way that would affect
her and her business in real life as opposed to
(10:30):
just being something a little bit rude that maybe people
completely know isn't real. And I would argue that the
images that I've seen either there's anybody believing that these
are real. Yeah, they look, you know, more realistic than
the kinds of face swaps we used to see in
the past with celebrities on like you know, porn Hub
or whatever. But it has a cartoon e quality to
it. It has a stylized quality to it. But it doesn't
(10:51):
have to. I mean, if you know, you can tell
whatever mid Journey to make things photorealistic, you can tell
them to make it in the style of you know,
so it's definitely an issue. But to me, the question
is like, is this just fan fiction of a public figure,
and that to me seems to be protected by freedom of.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Expression, right, That's that's an important distinction. I appreciate you
making it that fan fiction we're referring to would be
something in print, right, they're writing about like slash fiction.
But the idea of depicting fictional characters versus picture public
figures who are real people. That's the line. And what
I was looking for is speak a draw the Defiance
(11:33):
Act of twenty twenty four. It came out. You can
read about it online. They have some interesting stats here,
Like you said, no, it's clearly in reaction to the
proliferation of deep fakes, an algorithm generated algorithm generated images
and footage. They had a stat that stands out, they said,
study from twenty nineteen found that ninety six percent of
(11:56):
deep fake videos during that year were non consensual pornography.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
So that's gross. We all think this is gross. And
I'm not saying this should be okay. I'm not saying
that at all, but I'm saying that is a different conversation. Then,
is it okay to make a deep fake video of
a politician saying something they didn't say? That could cause
a panic, that could cause you know, it's like the
yelling fire in a public place. That's that's illegal. That's
(12:23):
not freedom of speech. That's not protected speech.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Freedom of speech means you can say what you want,
but that does not indemnify you from the consequences. Right,
that's the fire in a theater example. Also, there was
a Joe Biden deep fake going around in the northeast
what was it, New Hampshire where was a robo call
and it sounded like Joe Biden telling people not to vote.
So that's a real thing.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
It's okay. So then that does get me to the
kind of the pivot here, which is the power aspect.
Is Taylor Swift so powerful and influential that this is
a different conversation maybe around to like, you know, how
could this affect what people think? I think the like
kind of naughty stylized images maybe fall into a different category.
(13:07):
But we we start thinking about what if someone made deep,
big videos of Taylor Swift telling the Swifties to vote
for one party or another, right to not whatever. So
now we're starting to see this NFL stuff with Taylor
Swift dating what's his name, Kelsey, Right, there's a funny
(13:29):
video of David Letterman talking about how much she loves
Taylor Swift and what she's doing for the NFL, and
he keeps saying that she's dating Kelsey Grammar, but it's
this football player Kelsey. Somebody, Travis Kelcey. Thank you, Travis Kelsey.
The fact that they her presence at these games is
causing such a stir. It's making ratings go up because
(13:50):
the Swifties that we were talking about are now all
of a sudden watching football. They never cared about that.
I mean, some of them probably did, but a lot
of them probably didn't. So that's creating a real impact
that the NFL seems to love, but a lot of
old school NFL fans do not seem to love. They
seem to despise. So there's a lot of noise online
of people, you know, sportos saying stop putting the camera
(14:11):
on Taylor Swift. But obviously, if you're the NFL, you're like,
put the camera on Taylor Swift as much as possible
because we're gonna get the numbers up. And obviously this
could really come into play when the Chiefs go to
the Super Bowl and the question then becomes is Taylor
Swift's going to go. There is a massive conspiracy theory
in the right that indicates that there are some high
(14:34):
profile members of the right who believe Taylor Swift is
a government op along with her boyfriend in order to
sway the election, that the NFL is rigged, and that
the Chiefs are gonna win the Super Bowl, at which
point Taylor Swift is gonna come out and endorse Biden publicly.
Taylor Swift has asked her fans to vote, and it
(14:57):
was a massive surgeon registration. Travi Kelsey has asked people
that follow him to get vaccinated, and I believe that
made an impact too. So there's all this chatter that
Taylor Swift is a government up and even weirder stuff.
I think she's connected with the you know, the Illuminati,
whatever that is, and it's getting a little out of hand.
(15:20):
I just wonder what you guys think about this. Is
Taylor Swift powerful enough to sway an election? And why
is the right freaking out so much if that's not
the case. It seems to me they believe it is
the case, and that a lot of this other stuff
is just smoke to try to you know, malign or
shut down this potentiality.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Former President Donald Trump recently used the term holy war
in a private conversation, sharing the same concern that Taylor
Swift the individual would be able to trigger possibly swing
the needle in the upcoming twenty twenty four election, possibly
with more success than Uncle g because you know, he
(16:00):
recently told Joe Biden that China's not going to fear
interfere in the election. We'll see how it works. But yeah,
to your question there, Nol, it is. I think it
is abundantly clear that because fandom in the world of
ubiquitous interaction, because it creates such a positive feedback loop,
(16:22):
people who would ordinarily not participate in politics will do
so for the somewhat tribal dopamine hit of being able
to say, I, as a loyal SWIFTYE, did what Taylor said.
You know, so there is a great importance to it.
I mean, we see that with a lot of public
figures of that echalon like Beyonce, for instance, very rarely
(16:48):
does public appearances, interviews, casual stuff, right, because a statement
from Beyonce can also move the needle. And the Taylor
Swift thing, I think is a little bit different. I
love that you pointed out the Nashville then diagram there. Right,
she's hitting as an entertainer, she's hitting a share of
(17:09):
voters that ordinarily might not agree with each other.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
But if because of the strength of this parasocial relationship,
if she says jump, then they might jump.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I'd never really thought of that exactly in that way been,
but I think that's right. The demographic of her fandom
is not exclusively hardcore lefties right right. They're swifties, but
not necessarily lefties, and some of them might not vote
at all, or might just be of the age where
they can vote, right, So a lot of power in that.
(17:43):
I don't know, I've got a tweet I want to
read or not. That's actually not a tweet, it's a
it's a thread. But Matt, I've been seeing the gears
turning as you're taking on all this sin. Do you
have any thoughts about the power of pop cultural figures
And have we ever seen anybody with this kind of
power before who has made a stand yet? Because she
has asked people to register, but she hasn't endorsed a
(18:04):
damn thing, and that still could be to come look I.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Love Taylor Swift, and I don't know what you guys
are talking about. She's one of the best people on
the planet and I will hear none of it.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Okay, don't you dare accuse us of maligning to Swift.
I am just saying she's powerful. I mean, she hasn't
come down on one side of the issue yet, and
I think honestly, some people of that who are entertained
first they make a conscious effort not to do that,
and I also think they shouldn't be bullied into having
(18:36):
to do that. But I think the power is fascinating
and obviously has certain political folks running a little scared.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes, no, yeah, I feel all that stuff. The point
I want to make on this particular stories about the
NFL and the all the allegations that that sport, like
the NBA was allegedly for quite a time and probably
still is, was it's all rigged.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Shout out Brian Towey.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I agree with that.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Shout out Brian Tooby. Indeed, our episode we made with
him about the NBA and possible you know, weird stuff
going on there and other I actually think he focused
more on the MLB on baseball the NBA is when
we talked to Tim Livingston, I believe, who made a
show with Tenderfoot about that fascinating stuff. There's a anyway
(19:26):
I'm getting into this because of another podcast called The Raven,
another Tenderfoot production that Tim's working on. But the history
of the NFL and sports betting is fascinating. And in
twenty twenty one, they made a deal with some of
these big online sports betting organizations to like allow them
to also bet bet MGM, Fox, bet, Win, Bet, Points
(19:48):
bet and all these, which then leads to that conversation
that we had on those shows, on those episodes right
about whether or not a major organization would also take
part in setting up games for massive windfalls through the
sports betting arenas totally.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
And now that a lot of that stuff is so
open and legal, with like your Draft Kings and all
of this online stuff that's relatively new, So it's just, yeah,
you gotta wonder how that's gonna affect the business at large, because,
let's be really all, it is a business, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, because they were already partnered with DraftKings, fan Duel
and I think Caesars, So it's just a it's a
road that we could travel down and I'd be interested
to see if there's any if there's any fire there
to the smoke that's being alleged, But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
I just want to end this segment with this. I
found a thread that popped up to me. They're really
feeding you these threads if you're an Instagram person, And
this is from stone Kettle, and it said the Taylor
Swift thing. Yeah, it's funny, but it's also crazy as hell.
It is symptomatic of a dangerous growing instability gripping a
huge chunk of the population. For these people, the entire
world has become some enormous, fantastically complex conspiracy aim at them,
(21:00):
and everything is evidence of it. Nothing is fringe, and
every insanity, no matter how bizarre, is mainstreamed and taking
a face value. I just thought that sort of summed
this up pretty well. And then there's some nice back
and forth unchecked. He ends this kind of madness leads
directly to the violent suicide of civilization. Oh okay, let's
take a quick break here we're from a sponsor, and
(21:22):
then come back with some more strange news.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And we've returned. Guys, are we familiar with the comedian
Adam ray r a y y really like I have.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
A passing recognition of it.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Sounds recognizable, right. So he notably played the role of
policeman in the twenty twenty three smash hit Barbie and
he he is a really great impressionist and comedian. I've
been watching him lately. He does the live show I
believe in Los Angeles maybe in other places too, called
(22:04):
Doctor Phil Live, where he portrays Doctor Phil and he
has on people and they do basically the Doctor Phil Show,
but as this very funny person playing the role. Anyway,
he did. He did an episode recently with Adam and
Durrs from This is important. And he also the one
that I'm thinking about guys. If you haven't seen the clip,
(22:24):
check it out now. He had on Bobby Lee and
Andrew Santino, who have a really funny so much.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I love Bobby Lee so much.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well, they've got a tremendously silly podcast and they came
on and it's just one of the funniest things that
I've viewed in a long time. Just putting it out
there for everybody and for you guys. Okay, let's get
into our very serious subject here today. Arms trafficking and
car tells. This story comes to us from Mexico City.
This is a tale as old as time. You could
(22:55):
probably trace it back to Oh, I don't know, let's
let's just say the eighties, and let's let's be kind
to the US government. But let's say the eighties when
there were US military grade weapons being sent all over
South America and Mexico as well as Latin America, and
they were being sent to you know, usually let's say
(23:18):
US military personnel and their friends, where basically I'm saying
there were there were US military grade weapons being shipped
all over the place in these areas. Now, the country
of Mexico is alerting the world and especially the United
States to a major problem at seeing of what appeared
(23:40):
to be US military grade weapons in the hands of
cartel members that they are battling. Right, So we're talking
Mexican military personnel that are fighting cartels with these weapons.
We're also talking about local police forces that are fighting
cartels with these weapons, as well as you know, the
equivalent of like DA and FBI there in Mexico. The story,
(24:04):
we'll just read this from AP News. It was published Monday,
January twenty second, it is titled Mexico demands Investigation into
US military grade weapons being used by drug cartels. Right
on the nose there, Mexico is looking for an urgent
investigation into how exactly these US military grade weapons are
finding their way into the hands of these members who
(24:27):
are using them against the security forces. These are things
like belt fed machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades, things
that you don't want to deal with the wrong end
of right, and they're generally not sold for civilian use.
Before we even get into the rest of the article here, guys,
(24:47):
I think we've all found in research for this subject,
just in seeing the news and thinking about it. There
are states in the United States where you can procure
such things. Some of it is a little more off book,
like the rocket launchers are a little more iffy. Let's
call it gray market, yeah, grenades just writing underneath that.
(25:10):
But the belt fed machine guns and like sig sour
huge like fifty cow rifles are a whole other thing,
because that's a whole that's a whole other problem here,
like these large essentially sniper rifles that use the larger ammunition.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
So the implication being that there's an inside person's that's
feeding them this stuff, or that there's even potentially governments involvements.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I think the first part is a clarification that I
really appreciate, Matt, which is that in some states some
of this hardware that is military great can be acquired legal.
So it's just it's expensive, it's inconvenient. It can happen,
but nowhere near this degree. Yes, that is the issue.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
I would say it's highly unlikely that you have even
a large number of people who are buying these weapons
legally in the US then shipping them to Mexico because.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
You couldn't get that scale right. It wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
It'd be tough.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
It would be tough to scale. And also the legal
matter of tracing guns, because when you buy one of
those guns, you're gonna get registered in some way somewhere
unless you're buying it, you know, secondhand, third hand, and
you basically create a paper trail that's difficult to follow.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
We don't need serial numbers between friends. You meet out
in the desert, you make sure everyone's got a cool vibe,
and then you get your bag.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yes you have an inside connection.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Well, yeah, the vibe. I would say that Mexico is
putting out is that hey, US military, maybe there's a
backdoor problem that you've got going on with your military
with your supplies, right.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Which is almost certainly true.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
I think I do. Yes, I'm sorry, just elef in
the room, guys, I guess it's not really an element,
it's just the room.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Well, so it brings up the thing we mentioned at
the top, but also another The first thing is that
US military grade weapons are hanging out all over the place,
stockpiles of them that have just existed since the nineteen
eighties and before that. You then get repurposed or then
an official military body comes through in a country where
(27:17):
those weapons were used, takes them over and then has
them stockpile. But then maybe they leak out. We know
corruption amongst military members within Mexico itself is a huge
issue that they've been dealing with for decades, but even
recently we've talked about it on this show, where it
appears that there are potential leaks for that kind of thing,
(27:37):
and potential let's say, lines that someone could follow to
get that hardware. Agreed, it's a really messed up issue
because these weapons were used to do things like destroy
planes recently that were at an International Airport, like Cartel
members used some of this weaponry to all that kind
(28:00):
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
To stop a boss from escaping right now.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, that was when one of the one of l
Chapo's suns was being arrested or being taken in. There
was a huge, I don't know, pushback their resistance to
that action being taken by the military where very dangerous
weapons were being used against military members and civilians alike. Horrifying,
terrifying stuff that if you were there to witness it.
(28:25):
Just the number of bullet holes And I'm looking at
a picture right now of the entrance to the city
hall in this one part of Mexico City where Cartel's
shot it up, and they're just these huge holes that
are not from standard style like in AR fifteen or something. Gosh, guys,
we don't even need to spend that much time on
(28:46):
this because it is this huge quagmire of an idea,
of a concept, of a thing that's happening that doesn't
have an exact answer, But Mexico wants an answer, that's
the whole point. They want to know what the heck's happening,
and they're reaching out to the US, the government, to
the ambassador saying, hey, what the heck is the problem?
Help us figure it out.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And do they not deserve an answer? I feel like
that's a very fair thing. I mean, like, think through.
I love that you pointed out there the messy logistics
right of the US being the hedgemon of those two continents.
What happens is you get your freedom fighters, your right
wing Getia and you stage a coup, right shout out
(29:30):
Guatemala in the fifties and so on, and you typically,
unfortunately this is true, you typically cut that native talent
and you leave them adrift. You don't take back their guns,
so you don't take back their stuff. So that means
there's a lot of material that's unaccounted for, and there's
(29:50):
not a very high and unfortunately, in the domestic US
there is a huge incentive on monitoring and tracking this
kind of stuff or civilian esque versions of it, prosumer
if you wish. But abroad there's absolutely there's very little oversight,
you know what I mean. And people sometimes forget that
(30:13):
you could hop on a plane and aproad is like
two to three hours away, you know.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Oh yeah, I think that that's one of the main
points Mexican officials have been making if you are a
civilian living in Mexico, you can buy low grade firearms
like the small stuff, right low caliber weapons if you
and you can't get a hold of the other stuff,
you can't do it legally. So it has to be
coming from somewhere, And like, what are the what holes
(30:43):
do we need to plug to make sure this thing
stops leaking guns into our country?
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Well, dude, also not to mention the hypocrisy of it all,
Like there's so much rhetoric, you know, in certain political
spaces around Mexico and how they're leaking drugs and and
an evil people into you.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
It's like the rhetoric, the heated rhetoric behind that we
have to close those plug those holes, build the wall whatever.
And again I'm not coming down on any political side here.
It's just it's a fact these things are said. I
can imagine that does not sit well oftentimes with these
folks in power there. I mean, and we know it's corruption,
we know there's problems, but when when they see these
weapons that they believe are coming from US unchecked causing
(31:26):
some of the problems that we're blaming on Mexico, you
know what I mean, So I could see the hypocrisy
there being a bit of a.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
It's not hard to find where those guns are manufactured,
is the issue, you know what I mean. It's not
like a mystery that you know, this insert insert hardware
here came from somewhere, but we don't know where. We
suspect it was maybe made the US. No, it's one
hundred percent this stuff is made in the United States,
(31:55):
and it's somehow getting into the hands of veryous people
who honestly aspire to replace the government and the rule
of law of that country. It's a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Dude.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Oh this this is the other major part of this.
I can't believe you didn't bring this up yet. There's
a lawsuit some news that just came out of Mexico,
but a lawsuit. They are suing seven US gun manufacturers
for ten billion dollars. There's a lawsuit right now. It
had at one point gotten struck down or dismissed, basically
(32:28):
like you can't sue the gun manufacturers for.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
People don't kill people. You know, bot's kill people. People
kill people.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
That was the big deal. It was there's a I'm
gonna get this wrong y'all, there's a rule. It's not
a law, but it is a one of those rulings
that came down before that said you cannot sue the
gun manufacturer because somebody used a weapon to kill somebody.
Does that make sense, Like, yeah, that they just made
(32:56):
the tool. Somebody else with malice or whatever intent or
whatever was used it and someone died. But that only
holds true within the United States, which is what this
latest ruling said. So it's basically saying, yeah, well, if
Mexico wants to sue the manufacturers, I guess we have
to see this thing out and see how it plays.
(33:18):
So that's going to be a fascinating thing that plays
out over the next two three years or however long
it takes.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Especially because that's a that's a recent, a relatively recent
US law. Right, it's a.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Potential Lawful Commerce of Arms Act or the KEYLCAA.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
George w Yeah, mostly true. It's very difficult in the
US to hold you know, your local I don't know
why I said it, like your local mom and pop
defense company. It's tough to hold them liable in civil
court at least, right.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Hey, quit picking on the defense companies, guys, yeah, they
didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Well, no matter what route these guns are taking, it
is believed, at least by the Mexican there is the
government there that seventy percent of all guns that are
getting in the hands of cartels come directly from the
United States, from these weapon manufacturers that they've got beef
with rightly. So, so we'll see how it plays out.
There is a story though, that I think we should
(34:16):
cover specifically at some point in a full episode. It's
a story about a factory in Wisconsin that was manufacturing weapons,
these large caliber like they call them fifty caliber rifles,
and how in some way six hundred thousand dollars worth
of these things went to a cartel of the weapons
(34:39):
that were being manufactured there. It is a twisted, weird tale.
Vice has been writing about it, Reuter's been writing about it.
A bunch of places wrote about it. I think it
first hit the news like late last year, twenty twenty three.
It's strange, you guys, and it makes me think about
the reach of the cartel, how far as it go,
(35:00):
how many countries is you know, one particular cartel in
like the Sonola cartel or the New Generation cartel, it's
creepy and I think we should look into it further.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, writing it down. And also another question that the
public media doesn't ask as often as it should. How
well do these cartels play with others, Meaning, for instance,
you might not have you might not have full reach
into the Upper Midwest based on your current organizational structure,
(35:33):
but you may know someone who knows someone right and
you could talk O Marita a little bit with some
with some locals. That kind of stuff happens. That's why,
that's why it's called organized crime. They're super into this
kind of thing. I think it's absolutely plausible. I agree
with you, wrote it down, this is an episode in
(35:54):
the future.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Heck yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The Mexican government, by the way, estimates around two hundred
thousand weapons are manufactured in the US and then sent
to Mexico each year in some way I'm abused.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, are they coming in new or are they no? No?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Sorry not as in like their manufacturing and then sent directly.
Let's say, let's say two hundred thousand weapons that were
at some point manufactured by US based companies end up
in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Every year, possibly with a secondary like a third party
transit country of some sort.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yes, exactly, and that is an estimate. So the question
is track down, track down the lines, guys.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
I mean, we know that the US military, like has
lost nukes before in the past. Just would not shock
me that there was an ungodly number of these stockpiles
of like let's call them vintage weapons. You know that
there maybe aren't keeping as close a watch on anymore
as they should, and then maybe the leaks are coming
(36:48):
from some of that as well, if not largely. I
would be a shu to see, like what make and
vintage some of these guns are? You know what I mean, Like, yeah,
it's not it's not this year's models. You know, it's
probably I bet you they're.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Quite old, like the ak's and the coalition of covs.
Coalitionon covs are a currency in some more troubled parts
of the world. Once again, once it gets out, you
can't get back in. And I would advance I'm just
going off the top here. I would advance the idea
that the US probably has messy oversight for anything handheld abroad.
(37:26):
I think it's just too difficult to watch every falling
belt fed sparrow.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Well, and we've talked about black market arms dealing is
a thing, and it's been a thing since arms have existed,
and it's not going to stop. Just how much worse
is it going to get? And is it possible to
I guess, get the guns at the source, which is
the factories making them. And is that a good thing
or a bad thing? Let us know what you think.
(37:52):
We'll tell you how to contact us at the end.
Here for now, we're going to take a break and
we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
We've returned bleeped the g rides. I want the machines
that are making them. As our pal Zach said once
upon a time, We're going to end with a tiny
bit of hopefully good news. It's scary, but hopefully hopefully
it's good news. Actually, wait no, we're going to give
you the good news story. We'll give you a couple
of weird ones at the end. So we talk often
(38:26):
on this show about pharmaceutical companies, about R and D stuff,
and you have probably heard longtime conspiracy realist, you've probably
heard some advertisements for various pharmaceutical products on this show. However,
that does not affect our reporting of these things. And
Matt Nol you'll remember a while back, we had gotten
(38:50):
very deep into neo nicotinoids. It was once called a
conspiracy theory that those things were killing bees. They are
very much killing bees. We also we also looked at herbicides.
One of the most popular herbicides is round up. Have
you ever used round up?
Speaker 4 (39:09):
You guys, No, not personally, but it's certainly like it's
almost like xerox is synonymous with, you know, making copies,
you know, or coc is synonymous with soda. Roundup is
kind of occupies that same kind of space with pesticides.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
That's a great point. Yeah, I love that, Like it
became the epononymous trademark, the word. Yeah, the so round
up is super popular.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Round up ready crops?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah yeah yeah, Like, Matt, did you ever use round up?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I did not, because we talked about round up early
on in my having a house career. So yeah, no,
I avoided this stuff like crazy. But it is weird
how many similar how many products have similar chemicals in them. Yeah,
it's just a matter of time before we all go, oh, crap,
that one does it too?
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Bum bum bump. Yeah. The German pharmaceutical giant Bear bought
the American agro chemical giant Monsanto back in twenty eighteen.
Wheels within wheels, you know, just like a pyramid, ownership
attenuates and conglomerates at the top. We're going to go
to a Washington Post article that came out January twenty seventh,
(40:23):
twenty twenty four, so just a few days ago as
you're hearing this strange news on February fifth. Shout out
to Francis Vanaal, who writes Bear is ordered to pay
two point twenty five billion US dollars after jury links
the herbicide roundup to cancer. Two point twenty five billion.
(40:44):
Maybe the good guys win sometimes, maybe maybe the courts work.
I don't know, what do you guys think? Just off
that headline, it.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Sounds great, don't it. But but again, but again, this
is a huge company. That's a lot of jobs, it's
a lot of people. We get that we feel empathy
for those humans. I agreed, But it does seem like
this is something we've kind of known. And then I'm
going to continue one more but Ben, the science I'm
doing quotations here is still out, guys.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Yeah, and the and they deserve that's those are two
really great points, two really great butts. And the person
awarded these damages. Is a guy named John mckavision, and
uh mckivison filed a lawsuit in Philly when he was
diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma, and he said, this happened
(41:36):
because I used round up specifically on my property for
the better part of two decades. And so the jury
comes back and they unanimously find that round up is carcinogenic,
it did give this guy lymphoma non Hodgkins lymphoma, and
that Massanto either knew or was criminally negligent, you know,
(42:01):
like willfully ignorant about the dangers of roundup. And so
they say, this is the lawyers, the legal team, Tom
Klein and Jason Icken said, this verdict is quote a
condemnation of fifty years of misconduct by Monsanto, which again
is owned by Bear. So so would Bear have made
(42:23):
this purchase in twenty eighteen if they knew what was coming?
Interesting boardroom conversations, you know what I mean, off the record,
no phones in the room. I imagine Monzanto fires back
or Bear fires back, and they say, we're appealing this.
It's two point two five billion dollars. Obviously we're appealing this.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
And that's a lot. That's a lot for one.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
That's a lot for one. What about the class action,
you know what I mean, which is surely on the way.
They also called the damages awarded by the court, they
called it quote, unconstitutionally excessive. And this reminds me that
was such a great setup in our in our previous
conversation before the break, the controversy surrounding liability of gun
(43:07):
manufacturers or firearm defense companies, things.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Like that, and it came immediately to mind in terms
of the Purdue case, where it's so rare to even
have any whiff of holding those types of executives or
the company accountable. It was only what there was clearly
malice and malicious and maybe not malicious, okay, well whatever,
No one editorialize here, but clearly an intent to ignore
(43:32):
data and push forth something that was going to cause
people to die with their knowledge. You know, It's different
with medicine though, because death is only kind of a
side effective medicine. Death is like the point of guns,
So it's sort of hard to you know what I mean, Like, ugh,
is the point of guns? Brother? The ultimate point is
(43:54):
death or at the very least making people do things
as a result of the fear of death. That this
sort of the end.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Goal of guns. The point is a hit him with
some bird shots so they know you're coming, and then
with some buck shots so they know you mean business.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
I think also the point is death is buteedor time
is butet windoor, I'll be back, shut out, vego Ghostbusters?
Can we get an air horn?
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Dot?
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Schwarzenegger snuck in there somewhere that guy was senisd there.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I got a lot of plot twists today, guys. I
actually had to listen to a lot of Schwarzenegger statements.
Uh for a different thing. But but this is like,
these are actual arguments. Another example of this. Another example
of this is the to your point, noal the Sackler
family and Purdue. However the courts end up working those
(44:44):
things out, they have still created an environment wherein dangerous
addictive drugs are sort of pure pressured onto patients who
might not need them. Like, remember, I was so confused
we were talking about this off air. I was so
confused when uh docs wet hard on the paint to
prescribe the oxycodone or oxy cont oxyds.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
No, it's not content anymore. Hydro codone is classic. That's
like classic coke. OxyContin was like the next level up,
and that was what they said, wouldn't get you addicted
in the way that that hydro codone would. But yeah,
hydro codone is still okay. It has a lot of
tilent all in it, and so it's very commonly prescribed
for like things like oral surgery. But it also left unchecked,
(45:30):
and if they don't know the person has an addictive personality,
can very quickly lead to addiction.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
You don't want to go fall the house of the
usher or whatever.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
It was, right, Yeah, that was a great adaptation.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
You don't want to take that fall of the house.
That's a that's a deep fall, that's a false flat
on your face.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
And I feel like these three examples were mentioning firearms, opioids, uh,
and now carcinogenic things that are just for your lawn.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
These these things show us one upling commonality. Indeed, something
I could argue is conspiratorial, which is the burden falls
upon the consumer caveat em tour As they said, there's
serious questions about liability for the creators of these and
other products, even unto of course, like food manufacturers. That's
(46:18):
a big thing we talked about pretty often over the years,
like the way the EU handles ingredients versus the way
the UK or the US handles ingredients. I mean, the
European Commission already got got in front of this because
in twenty oh, gosh, twenty twenty three now they put
in a ruling about the active ingredient in roundup live
(46:42):
foss eight or gly foss eight, and they said, we
don't think it's carcinogenic, and Canada said the same thing.
And Bear has a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
The difference, folks, that's what we have here. We don't
believe that this is costing a gena despite the side
different results. These eggheads don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
And I'm glad they talked. Sorry, that is exactly how
they talk. And four years ago, interestingly enough, Bear agreed
to pay a settlement in class action lawsuit tens of
thousands of people. Bear paid a total of ten billion
US dollars over allegations that round up causes wait for it,
(47:25):
non Hodgkins lymphoma. And because Bear is a very powerful,
big company, they did not admit wrongdoing. They just gave
him billion dollars away.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
Ben, if you're hearing me chuckle every now and then,
is because I'm just hearing in my mind you're describing
a bear like bear feels very strongly about this, and
the bear does this, and the bear does that. In
my mind, it's just the culprit. Here is a giant
anthropomorphic bear, love it. I know that's not the case,
but you know, I have a very active imagination. My
mommy told me right to bear arms.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
You know. That's what I was trying not to bring
that up during our very serious conversation exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
About the weapon.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Straight.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
Yeah, I mean everyone has a right to bare arms.
All you got to do is lift, bro, you lift
get those bare arms.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Yeah. By some fur so Bear also be a ye er.
In their most recent annual report to investors, they were
required to state that they have thirty one separate lawsuits
in Canada related to Roundup. Eleven of those thirty one
lawsuits are looking to become class action lawsuits. Bear is
(48:33):
Bear and Monsanto round Up. Those brands are in trouble.
We don't know how, we don't know how far this
will go. And obviously, Matt, I think we can all
agree with the point you raised earlier. So astutely, we're
not saying these companies are filled with evil, villainous monsters.
(48:53):
A lot of people make a good living there and
they're definitely not waking up every morning saying I hope
I give someone lymphoma.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
They probably don't believe that it causes lymphoma. And I
think that's just a part of being in that position,
you know, especially like people were putting together the chemicals,
people who are packaging these things like you cannot believe.
I think there's that's that cognitive dissonance kind of thing,
where like even if someone showed you, hey, this definitely
causes cancer. But yeah, but this also puts like allows
(49:23):
me to feed my family. It's a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
And they're like, your family stinks.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Though it's similar to what happened with Perdue, where it's well,
that's not what our scientists say, you know what I mean?
You know, and again no shade on scientists, but we
know a lot of the folks that end up getting
those jobs working with these big companies come from regulatory backgrounds.
They know how to kind of twist the numbers a
little bit maybe, And again I'm not trying to malign
(49:49):
scientists are saying that there are people out there doing
quote unquote bad science.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
This just no Brown hates scientists anti.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Science because I have a real agenda. But no, we
know that you can, by virtue of limiting the scope
of research kind of get the results you want. You're
doing the thing that you're doing.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
You know, not too long ago, R. J. Reynolds supported
studies where they found some doctor who is like, actually,
smoking cigarettes is great for your respiratory, for breathing, it's
like refreshing.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
It's the best if we're when there is all this
talk about how the reason people in France didn't get
COVID is because they smoked so many cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
I'm just saying, you know, causality or whatever, without causation,
never mind, there's different ways of looking at this stuff
where you can definitely be like, that's the thing. See,
that's the thing that did it. It was this, and
we like that because it's our thing, you know.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Correlation the causation, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
It just as an aside, speaking that shit think true.
A little while ago we talked about these things med beds, right,
and I fear so much shade and all this stuff,
and it made a video put out there's so much shade.
Then there really is new research coming out talking about
resonances and cellular destruction and like ways to target like
hyper targeting part of the like a tumor that's inside
(51:12):
a brain, and then be able to actually use again
different type of vibrations than sitting on a bed and
someone you know too good good ones presumably right, good
playing vibrations, yeah, but just playing some tones near you,
but using using just vibrational tones to do things like
cure cancer or at least remove a tumor.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Didn't we talk about do we not?
Speaker 4 (51:35):
We may have talked about me if we danced around
a little bit. But I think Matts saying that he's
been seeing some new stuff that kisses even further into
the realms of possibility, but.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Just saying how quickly our belief can potentially be shifted
if we're willing to take in evidence, right.
Speaker 4 (51:51):
And if we have skin in the game, especially you know,
if it's like, oh, this might apply to my nana,
you know, I want to believe right.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
It's also, yeah, you always have to hear things out
in science, and sometimes people perhaps incorrectly misidentify themselves as skeptics,
and what they're practicing instead is not open inquiry. What
they're practicing is a kind of zealousness and over stubbornness
at the very least sure, and that way it becomes
(52:20):
another fundamentalist ideology, and just as dangerous as any other
fundamentalist ideology, I would argue. And that's just one entity's opinion.
But what we can see now is that you probably
shouldn't use a ton of a ton of things if
you just to be safe. If you hear something in
the wind like this might cause this specific thing, and
(52:44):
a lot of people want to court for it, then
it's a personal choice, but very likely.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
It's up to you absolutely. But that's why I did
want to bring up the lead in Stanley cups things,
because I think it's so easy for someone to read
that headline and immediately be like, oh, lead and Stanley
cub is gonna kill us all, And not to say that.
Maybe there won't be more retaith that comes out that
says the levels are beyond allowable or they're not good.
But you should think about more, like you know, the
(53:09):
big picture before you make those decisions. That's the opposite
side of it.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
You're right. I want to talk about how frustrated it
is that things like round up are bad because it
seems like such a beautiful miracle substance for someone who's
borderline OCD like me when I look out at my
grass and I go look at all these stinking weeds everywhere,
and now I can't spray them with anything. I gotta
(53:34):
go out and pick them one by one out from
the root.
Speaker 4 (53:37):
I believe al Gore would call that an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
And here we wrap it up. I want to hear
from people who have worked in this industry, would love
to hear your take on these products, like are there
safe herbicides? Are there safe pesticides? What do you think
more of your fellow conspiracy realists need to know. Also,
I want to give a quick shout out to Elmo,
(54:02):
thank you for the mental health check in earlier. Yeah,
a lot of angst in Western society.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Wait wait, people were I just want to say the headlause.
I love this term trauma dumping on Elmo because on
the social media account for I guess sm street, Almo
wanted to know how everyone was doing, and apparently not
super well.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Yeah, and Elmo did respond just as we were going
into record today. You can find a great article about
the whole debacle on the BBC shout out to the
journalist nor Nanji. You can also find out on XFK Twitter.
One last shoutout, guys, we have to say congratulations and
good luck to Crystal Gable, who is non consensually running
(54:46):
for president in Minnesota. She got a Google alert that
told her she's on the primary ballot for the presidency
in Minnesota, and according to reporting, she cannot get off
the ballot. She does not want to be potus. What
we don't know. We know that she spoke with the
(55:07):
Star Tribute and said, quote, I did not give consent
to be on the Minnesota ballot for this race.
Speaker 4 (55:13):
Is this a public figure at all? Or is this
just like a clerical error because of a mistaken connection
with a name.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
It definitely is not if conspiracy it is. It is
not a conspiracy that she was in on. So let
us know the times you've accidentally run for office, folks,
What a.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
Great plot for sort of a comedy, sort of satire.
Someone's name accidentally ends up on the ballot and they
win because all the other candidates are that garbage.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
The Eddie Murphy, the Eddie Murphy vehicle.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
I wouldn't be surprised if this had been done. You're
talking about Bowfinger or.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
No, it's earlier in that he goes into Congress based
on name recognition, and spoiler, he ends up doing the
right thing because it's a wholesome comedy. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts, folks. Thanks as always for joining us.
We'll be back later this week with a lot of
strange things and some stuff they don't want you to know.
In the meantime, join up with us. We'd love to
(56:08):
hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (56:10):
That's right. You can find it to the handle Conspiracy
Stuff where we exist on Facebook, YouTube and x FKA Twitter.
You can also find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram and take any talk feeling down run
out give us a car Win eight through three us
to do w ride.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
I'll stop now.
Speaker 4 (56:29):
That was a thanks for checking in.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Just you know, why don't you check in with us too.
We're a lot like Elmo. The number is one A
three three std W I t K. It's a voicemail system.
You got three minutes and let us know if we
can use your name and message on the air. I
think that's it. What wait, what if people want to
send us an email.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Then all you have to do is reach out and
touch space at our good old fashioned email address. Twenty
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Speaker 2 (57:25):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here That makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
of the week, which means it is time for some
strange news. Where are Mexican cartels getting all this hardware?
(00:48):
From what's going on with Iran the US? And that
weird sound in Florida that might just be fishbanging? Is
Bear going to be held responsible for some various other
things Before we do any.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Of that, we'll get to all that more.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
But before we do any of that, we've got an
up and coming musician to talk about. And even before then, Noel,
you had some thoughts on the recent resurgence and viral
popularity of Stanley Cup's not the hockey trophy exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
I mean, look, first of all, that's the first time
I heard all this hubbub about the Stanley Cup. I'm like, oh,
I guess hockey's taken off in the States now, you know,
people are like all of a sudden getting stoked about hockey.
Not the case. Apparently. This company, Stanley, has been around
for like a hundred years and largely, much like the
whole deal with Carhart, the brand kind of shifting from
(01:40):
like a working class sort of like you know, dungarees
or whatever and meanies for the construction site into more
of a fashion forward brand. That's kind of what's happened
with Stanley. They were largely known for the kind of
thermisis and sulated thermoss that you might see folks taking
to a work site. And then I don't know exactly
how it happen. There were a couple of things that
(02:01):
contributed to it. One I think was a story about
like a car fire that like the only thing that
survived was one of these Stanley quincher cups or whatever.
They're very popular among nurses, They're very popular among you know,
kind of young people. There are even stories about how
young people are getting bullied for not having Stanley cups
or for having knockoff Stanley Cups kind of like a
(02:22):
bit of a rag's to riches kind of story for
this brand. They started doing all these exclusive colors. People
are getting in fights over them at Walmart's. There was
a heist of them recently to come into our recent
kind of fascination with weird heists. But the story today
is that it has been confirmed that these products do
contain lead. There were some like kind of TikTok moms
(02:44):
that do these sort of like you know, testing of
stuff to make sure there's no bad chemicals or whatever
in them, and one user reported using one of these
tests that you can get on Amazon, swabbing the inside
of Stanley cups, also swabbing the inside of I believe
it's most that other one, Yeah, a YETI brand cup.
It's also a similar kind of deal in in that space.
And one other thing, and the other two tested negative
(03:08):
and the Stanley cup tested positive, And we're hearing all
kinds of reports there's lead and Stanley Cups. The company
has come out and said, yes, there is lead in them,
but it's okay because it's part of the manufacturing process
that goes into ceiling the base of them, that creates
this like mega vacuum whatever. I don't know material science
well enough for manufacturing to know why that would be
(03:31):
the choice that they would make. It might be part
and parcel of the fact that this is an old
legacy company, you know, so maybe it's like an old
school thing. They said, it's okay, it's it won't ever
be exposed unless the cup breaks, which is very rare,
but I guess possible. But then that does beg the
question why was the TikTok mom getting positive test results
(03:52):
from swabbing the inside of the of the cup where
the drink goes. So there's a lot of reporting out there,
people saying largely believing Stanley. It seems like the general
internet consensus that Stanley's telling the truth and this is
sort of a non issue. But I am a little
skeptical with these tests that are showing positive results of
lead inside the cup where the drink goes. Obviously, much
(04:12):
like conversation we had in our last episode, there are
allowable levels of all kinds of talk.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Sense, So, well, have we forgotten about potential water lead
contamination like that cup and then you swab it and
you think, oh, well, there's just water here. That was
in there, And it's.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
True, I was interested in the control elements of the
test that this one cracked. TikTok mom had that she
was test cross testing other types of products which she
would assume she's washing in the same sink, but only
the Stanley tested positive. So all this to say, interesting,
will be interesting to see if it affects their sales
or the craze of it at all. Kind of think
(04:51):
it won't. It does seem like the consensus says that
Stanley is to be believed.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Believe Stanley, Yeah, because you know, the microplastics and the
forever chemicals getting in there anyway, no matter what you
put in little let in there just adds this seasoning.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
It was fine. It was a good run, you know, the.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Spice of life.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Also that if you want to see the video that
inspired this uh viral interest and then the natural the
natural pushback or recursive nature of internet conversation, it's a
person named Danielle on TikTok in her car fire. The
thing that made Stanley popular online was that in the fire,
(05:30):
the Stanley cups still had the ice cubes. Wow.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
That you can't buy that kind of marketing. You can't.
You almost got to wonder if the people will the
fine focus. They didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Okay, okay, we're sure they did not not an inside jobs. Sure,
so tell us about this Taylor Swift person. It's tough
to make them living in music.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I know. The first thing, you know, she's just playing
at coffee shops and and uh and you know, little
indie venues and and now she's like, now she's the
biggest pop star on the planet. Seems have happened overnight. No,
it did not happen overnight. It was a very methodical
and intentionally tracked career trajectory. And you got to give
props where props is do. There's a little something in
(06:10):
the Taylor Swift catalog for everyone. She's interesting also in
that she fought back against the record companies who owned
her master recording rights and just said, screw you guys,
I own my publishing. I'm just going to re record
all those records myself and you. Everyone may have heard
of the Taylor's version phenomenon, so there's you know, she's
slowly been going not slowly actually honestly, kind of astonishingly
(06:33):
quickly going through her entire catalog. The company Big Machine
was the record label that sort of found her when
she was sort of actually a bit smaller from the
Nashville scene, because as you may or may not know,
she sort of came up as more of a pop
country artist and then gradually went way more mainstream than
has since amassed just an absolute throng of loyal followers,
(06:57):
you know, who will hang on her every war or
swift Swifties don't cross Taylor, or the Swifties will come
for you, much like the behive with Beyonce. But I
would argue more intense I think perhaps, but I don't know.
That's up up for debate. But she's really been in
the news a lot lately. She one Time Magazine's Person
(07:18):
of the Year, largely because of the unbelievable success of
her Era's tour, which as we know, was just the
hottest ticket in the known universe, and it was just
you know, people were traveling from far and wide to
go crash ticket Master you know many times over caused
all kinds of conversations around the fairness the equity of
(07:40):
ticket monopolies like that. We've had this conversation in the past,
but it's only when an artist with that much power
enters the chat that things really start to change, and
I think that's part of what we're going to talk
about today. All of that's just just a little bit
of primary, hopefully not being too redundant for folks that
are already following the story. But the latest is sort
of threefold. I guess we'll start with the easy one
(08:01):
because it's something that we talked about, I believe a
couple of episodes ago. There has been a rash of
AI generated lude images of Taylor Swift that have been
kind of proliferating on the internet, some bordering on pornographic,
most just kind of elude, just naughty, you know, Like
here's there's some that depicting her like as you know,
(08:24):
sort of like an exotic dancer perhaps, you know, surrounded
by a bunch of dudes who were kind of cop
and feels and things like that. There's one of her
like making out with the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.
We'll get to the Chiefs part of things in a
bit as well. And I think what I mentioned when
I was talking about it on the podcast was that
I saw this and showed it to my partner, who
(08:47):
immediately said, oh, Taylor's not gonna like that. And then
literally a couple of hours later, article pops up on
some tech website saying Taylor Swift representative of Taylor Swift
seeking legal action against this stuff. And Ben, I believe
both of y'all pointed out that this is one of
those litmus tests of this kind of thing. It's hard
to put the genie back in the bottle. It's hard
(09:08):
to get things stricken from the Internet once it's already
out there. Ben, I believe you pointed out the stress effect.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah, that's why I reference. It's a law of the internet,
you know, up there with that one, with that one
other evil rule that seems accurate, which is if you
can imagine a fandom, then some pornographic version of that
fandom exists. It's like rule thirty seven, or it's got
a weird number attached to it. But but yeah, this also,
(09:34):
I mean, it's strange because I think maybe talking with
you guys a little bit off air about this, people
have been asking the US Congress and indeed the West
overall to pass some sort of legislation weighing in on
this idea like deep fakes for political propagandistic or pornographic purposes,
(09:56):
And it seems like this might be the one. This
might be the that gets Congress to act. They have
a bill that isn't a law yet, but I think
it's up now, isn't it on the way?
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Well, it does beg the question like, is Taylor Swift
a powerful enough public figure that this stuff would be
outside the realm of just fan fiction? Like would this
stuff potentially be damaging in a way that would affect
her and her business in real life as opposed to
(10:30):
just being something a little bit rude that maybe people
completely know isn't real. And I would argue that the
images that I've seen either there's anybody believing that these
are real. Yeah, they look, you know, more realistic than
the kinds of face swaps we used to see in
the past with celebrities on like you know, porn Hub
or whatever. But it has a cartoon e quality to
it. It has a stylized quality to it. But it doesn't
(10:51):
have to. I mean, if you know, you can tell
whatever mid Journey to make things photorealistic, you can tell
them to make it in the style of you know,
so it's definitely an issue. But to me, the question
is like, is this just fan fiction of a public figure,
and that to me seems to be protected by freedom of.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Expression, right, That's that's an important distinction. I appreciate you
making it that fan fiction we're referring to would be
something in print, right, they're writing about like slash fiction.
But the idea of depicting fictional characters versus picture public
figures who are real people. That's the line. And what
I was looking for is speak a draw the Defiance
(11:33):
Act of twenty twenty four. It came out. You can
read about it online. They have some interesting stats here,
Like you said, no, it's clearly in reaction to the
proliferation of deep fakes, an algorithm generated algorithm generated images
and footage. They had a stat that stands out, they said,
study from twenty nineteen found that ninety six percent of
(11:56):
deep fake videos during that year were non consensual pornography.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
So that's gross. We all think this is gross. And
I'm not saying this should be okay. I'm not saying
that at all, but I'm saying that is a different conversation. Then,
is it okay to make a deep fake video of
a politician saying something they didn't say? That could cause
a panic, that could cause you know, it's like the
yelling fire in a public place. That's that's illegal. That's
(12:23):
not freedom of speech. That's not protected speech.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Freedom of speech means you can say what you want,
but that does not indemnify you from the consequences. Right,
that's the fire in a theater example. Also, there was
a Joe Biden deep fake going around in the northeast
what was it, New Hampshire where was a robo call
and it sounded like Joe Biden telling people not to vote.
So that's a real thing.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
It's okay. So then that does get me to the
kind of the pivot here, which is the power aspect.
Is Taylor Swift so powerful and influential that this is
a different conversation maybe around to like, you know, how
could this affect what people think? I think the like
kind of naughty stylized images maybe fall into a different category.
(13:07):
But we we start thinking about what if someone made deep,
big videos of Taylor Swift telling the Swifties to vote
for one party or another, right to not whatever. So
now we're starting to see this NFL stuff with Taylor
Swift dating what's his name, Kelsey, Right, there's a funny
(13:29):
video of David Letterman talking about how much she loves
Taylor Swift and what she's doing for the NFL, and
he keeps saying that she's dating Kelsey Grammar, but it's
this football player Kelsey. Somebody, Travis Kelcey. Thank you, Travis Kelsey.
The fact that they her presence at these games is
causing such a stir. It's making ratings go up because
(13:50):
the Swifties that we were talking about are now all
of a sudden watching football. They never cared about that.
I mean, some of them probably did, but a lot
of them probably didn't. So that's creating a real impact
that the NFL seems to love, but a lot of
old school NFL fans do not seem to love. They
seem to despise. So there's a lot of noise online
of people, you know, sportos saying stop putting the camera
(14:11):
on Taylor Swift. But obviously, if you're the NFL, you're like,
put the camera on Taylor Swift as much as possible
because we're gonna get the numbers up. And obviously this
could really come into play when the Chiefs go to
the Super Bowl and the question then becomes is Taylor
Swift's going to go. There is a massive conspiracy theory
in the right that indicates that there are some high
(14:34):
profile members of the right who believe Taylor Swift is
a government op along with her boyfriend in order to
sway the election, that the NFL is rigged, and that
the Chiefs are gonna win the Super Bowl, at which
point Taylor Swift is gonna come out and endorse Biden publicly.
Taylor Swift has asked her fans to vote, and it
(14:57):
was a massive surgeon registration. Travi Kelsey has asked people
that follow him to get vaccinated, and I believe that
made an impact too. So there's all this chatter that
Taylor Swift is a government up and even weirder stuff.
I think she's connected with the you know, the Illuminati,
whatever that is, and it's getting a little out of hand.
(15:20):
I just wonder what you guys think about this. Is
Taylor Swift powerful enough to sway an election? And why
is the right freaking out so much if that's not
the case. It seems to me they believe it is
the case, and that a lot of this other stuff
is just smoke to try to you know, malign or
shut down this potentiality.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Former President Donald Trump recently used the term holy war
in a private conversation, sharing the same concern that Taylor
Swift the individual would be able to trigger possibly swing
the needle in the upcoming twenty twenty four election, possibly
with more success than Uncle g because you know, he
(16:00):
recently told Joe Biden that China's not going to fear
interfere in the election. We'll see how it works. But yeah,
to your question there, Nol, it is. I think it
is abundantly clear that because fandom in the world of
ubiquitous interaction, because it creates such a positive feedback loop,
(16:22):
people who would ordinarily not participate in politics will do
so for the somewhat tribal dopamine hit of being able
to say, I, as a loyal SWIFTYE, did what Taylor said.
You know, so there is a great importance to it.
I mean, we see that with a lot of public
figures of that echalon like Beyonce, for instance, very rarely
(16:48):
does public appearances, interviews, casual stuff, right, because a statement
from Beyonce can also move the needle. And the Taylor
Swift thing, I think is a little bit different. I
love that you pointed out the Nashville then diagram there. Right,
she's hitting as an entertainer, she's hitting a share of
(17:09):
voters that ordinarily might not agree with each other.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
But if because of the strength of this parasocial relationship,
if she says jump, then they might jump.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
I'd never really thought of that exactly in that way been,
but I think that's right. The demographic of her fandom
is not exclusively hardcore lefties right right. They're swifties, but
not necessarily lefties, and some of them might not vote
at all, or might just be of the age where
they can vote, right, So a lot of power in that.
(17:43):
I don't know, I've got a tweet I want to
read or not. That's actually not a tweet, it's a
it's a thread. But Matt, I've been seeing the gears
turning as you're taking on all this sin. Do you
have any thoughts about the power of pop cultural figures
And have we ever seen anybody with this kind of
power before who has made a stand yet? Because she
has asked people to register, but she hasn't endorsed a
(18:04):
damn thing, and that still could be to come look I.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Love Taylor Swift, and I don't know what you guys
are talking about. She's one of the best people on
the planet and I will hear none of it.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Okay, don't you dare accuse us of maligning to Swift.
I am just saying she's powerful. I mean, she hasn't
come down on one side of the issue yet, and
I think honestly, some people of that who are entertained
first they make a conscious effort not to do that,
and I also think they shouldn't be bullied into having
(18:36):
to do that. But I think the power is fascinating
and obviously has certain political folks running a little scared.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yes, no, yeah, I feel all that stuff. The point
I want to make on this particular stories about the
NFL and the all the allegations that that sport, like
the NBA was allegedly for quite a time and probably
still is, was it's all rigged.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Shout out Brian Towey.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I agree with that.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Shout out Brian Tooby. Indeed, our episode we made with
him about the NBA and possible you know, weird stuff
going on there and other I actually think he focused
more on the MLB on baseball the NBA is when
we talked to Tim Livingston, I believe, who made a
show with Tenderfoot about that fascinating stuff. There's a anyway
(19:26):
I'm getting into this because of another podcast called The Raven,
another Tenderfoot production that Tim's working on. But the history
of the NFL and sports betting is fascinating. And in
twenty twenty one, they made a deal with some of
these big online sports betting organizations to like allow them
to also bet bet MGM, Fox, bet, Win, Bet, Points
(19:48):
bet and all these, which then leads to that conversation
that we had on those shows, on those episodes right
about whether or not a major organization would also take
part in setting up games for massive windfalls through the
sports betting arenas totally.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
And now that a lot of that stuff is so
open and legal, with like your Draft Kings and all
of this online stuff that's relatively new, So it's just, yeah,
you gotta wonder how that's gonna affect the business at large, because,
let's be really all, it is a business, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, because they were already partnered with DraftKings, fan Duel
and I think Caesars, So it's just a it's a
road that we could travel down and I'd be interested
to see if there's any if there's any fire there
to the smoke that's being alleged, But I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
I just want to end this segment with this. I
found a thread that popped up to me. They're really
feeding you these threads if you're an Instagram person, And
this is from stone Kettle, and it said the Taylor
Swift thing. Yeah, it's funny, but it's also crazy as hell.
It is symptomatic of a dangerous growing instability gripping a
huge chunk of the population. For these people, the entire
world has become some enormous, fantastically complex conspiracy aim at them,
(21:00):
and everything is evidence of it. Nothing is fringe, and
every insanity, no matter how bizarre, is mainstreamed and taking
a face value. I just thought that sort of summed
this up pretty well. And then there's some nice back
and forth unchecked. He ends this kind of madness leads
directly to the violent suicide of civilization. Oh okay, let's
take a quick break here we're from a sponsor, and
(21:22):
then come back with some more strange news.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And we've returned. Guys, are we familiar with the comedian
Adam ray r a y y really like I have.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
A passing recognition of it.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Sounds recognizable, right. So he notably played the role of
policeman in the twenty twenty three smash hit Barbie and
he he is a really great impressionist and comedian. I've
been watching him lately. He does the live show I
believe in Los Angeles maybe in other places too, called
(22:04):
Doctor Phil Live, where he portrays Doctor Phil and he
has on people and they do basically the Doctor Phil Show,
but as this very funny person playing the role. Anyway,
he did. He did an episode recently with Adam and
Durrs from This is important. And he also the one
that I'm thinking about guys. If you haven't seen the clip,
(22:24):
check it out now. He had on Bobby Lee and
Andrew Santino, who have a really funny so much.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I love Bobby Lee so much.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well, they've got a tremendously silly podcast and they came
on and it's just one of the funniest things that
I've viewed in a long time. Just putting it out
there for everybody and for you guys. Okay, let's get
into our very serious subject here today. Arms trafficking and
car tells. This story comes to us from Mexico City.
This is a tale as old as time. You could
(22:55):
probably trace it back to Oh, I don't know, let's
let's just say the eighties, and let's let's be kind
to the US government. But let's say the eighties when
there were US military grade weapons being sent all over
South America and Mexico as well as Latin America, and
they were being sent to you know, usually let's say
(23:18):
US military personnel and their friends, where basically I'm saying
there were there were US military grade weapons being shipped
all over the place in these areas. Now, the country
of Mexico is alerting the world and especially the United
States to a major problem at seeing of what appeared
(23:40):
to be US military grade weapons in the hands of
cartel members that they are battling. Right, So we're talking
Mexican military personnel that are fighting cartels with these weapons.
We're also talking about local police forces that are fighting
cartels with these weapons, as well as you know, the
equivalent of like DA and FBI there in Mexico. The story,
(24:04):
we'll just read this from AP News. It was published Monday,
January twenty second, it is titled Mexico demands Investigation into
US military grade weapons being used by drug cartels. Right
on the nose there, Mexico is looking for an urgent
investigation into how exactly these US military grade weapons are
finding their way into the hands of these members who
(24:27):
are using them against the security forces. These are things
like belt fed machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades, things
that you don't want to deal with the wrong end
of right, and they're generally not sold for civilian use.
Before we even get into the rest of the article here, guys,
(24:47):
I think we've all found in research for this subject,
just in seeing the news and thinking about it. There
are states in the United States where you can procure
such things. Some of it is a little more off book,
like the rocket launchers are a little more iffy. Let's
call it gray market, yeah, grenades just writing underneath that.
(25:10):
But the belt fed machine guns and like sig sour
huge like fifty cow rifles are a whole other thing,
because that's a whole that's a whole other problem here,
like these large essentially sniper rifles that use the larger ammunition.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
So the implication being that there's an inside person's that's
feeding them this stuff, or that there's even potentially governments involvements.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I think the first part is a clarification that I
really appreciate, Matt, which is that in some states some
of this hardware that is military great can be acquired legal.
So it's just it's expensive, it's inconvenient. It can happen,
but nowhere near this degree. Yes, that is the issue.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
I would say it's highly unlikely that you have even
a large number of people who are buying these weapons
legally in the US then shipping them to Mexico because.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
You couldn't get that scale right. It wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
It'd be tough.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
It would be tough to scale. And also the legal
matter of tracing guns, because when you buy one of
those guns, you're gonna get registered in some way somewhere
unless you're buying it, you know, secondhand, third hand, and
you basically create a paper trail that's difficult to follow.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
We don't need serial numbers between friends. You meet out
in the desert, you make sure everyone's got a cool vibe,
and then you get your bag.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yes you have an inside connection.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Well, yeah, the vibe. I would say that Mexico is
putting out is that hey, US military, maybe there's a
backdoor problem that you've got going on with your military
with your supplies, right.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Which is almost certainly true.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
I think I do. Yes, I'm sorry, just elef in
the room, guys, I guess it's not really an element,
it's just the room.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Well, so it brings up the thing we mentioned at
the top, but also another The first thing is that
US military grade weapons are hanging out all over the place,
stockpiles of them that have just existed since the nineteen
eighties and before that. You then get repurposed or then
an official military body comes through in a country where
(27:17):
those weapons were used, takes them over and then has
them stockpile. But then maybe they leak out. We know
corruption amongst military members within Mexico itself is a huge
issue that they've been dealing with for decades, but even
recently we've talked about it on this show, where it
appears that there are potential leaks for that kind of thing,
(27:37):
and potential let's say, lines that someone could follow to
get that hardware. Agreed, it's a really messed up issue
because these weapons were used to do things like destroy
planes recently that were at an International Airport, like Cartel
members used some of this weaponry to all that kind
(28:00):
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
To stop a boss from escaping right now.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, that was when one of the one of l
Chapo's suns was being arrested or being taken in. There
was a huge, I don't know, pushback their resistance to
that action being taken by the military where very dangerous
weapons were being used against military members and civilians alike. Horrifying,
terrifying stuff that if you were there to witness it.
(28:25):
Just the number of bullet holes And I'm looking at
a picture right now of the entrance to the city
hall in this one part of Mexico City where Cartel's
shot it up, and they're just these huge holes that
are not from standard style like in AR fifteen or something. Gosh, guys,
we don't even need to spend that much time on
(28:46):
this because it is this huge quagmire of an idea,
of a concept, of a thing that's happening that doesn't
have an exact answer, But Mexico wants an answer, that's
the whole point. They want to know what the heck's happening,
and they're reaching out to the US, the government, to
the ambassador saying, hey, what the heck is the problem?
Help us figure it out.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And do they not deserve an answer? I feel like
that's a very fair thing. I mean, like, think through.
I love that you pointed out there the messy logistics
right of the US being the hedgemon of those two continents.
What happens is you get your freedom fighters, your right
wing Getia and you stage a coup, right shout out
(29:30):
Guatemala in the fifties and so on, and you typically,
unfortunately this is true, you typically cut that native talent
and you leave them adrift. You don't take back their guns,
so you don't take back their stuff. So that means
there's a lot of material that's unaccounted for, and there's
(29:50):
not a very high and unfortunately, in the domestic US
there is a huge incentive on monitoring and tracking this
kind of stuff or civilian esque versions of it, prosumer
if you wish. But abroad there's absolutely there's very little oversight,
you know what I mean. And people sometimes forget that
(30:13):
you could hop on a plane and aproad is like
two to three hours away, you know.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Oh yeah, I think that that's one of the main
points Mexican officials have been making if you are a
civilian living in Mexico, you can buy low grade firearms
like the small stuff, right low caliber weapons if you
and you can't get a hold of the other stuff,
you can't do it legally. So it has to be
coming from somewhere, And like, what are the what holes
(30:43):
do we need to plug to make sure this thing
stops leaking guns into our country?
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Well, dude, also not to mention the hypocrisy of it all,
Like there's so much rhetoric, you know, in certain political
spaces around Mexico and how they're leaking drugs and and
an evil people into you.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
It's like the rhetoric, the heated rhetoric behind that we
have to close those plug those holes, build the wall whatever.
And again I'm not coming down on any political side here.
It's just it's a fact these things are said. I
can imagine that does not sit well oftentimes with these
folks in power there. I mean, and we know it's corruption,
we know there's problems, but when when they see these
weapons that they believe are coming from US unchecked causing
(31:26):
some of the problems that we're blaming on Mexico, you
know what I mean, So I could see the hypocrisy
there being a bit of a.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
It's not hard to find where those guns are manufactured,
is the issue, you know what I mean. It's not
like a mystery that you know, this insert insert hardware
here came from somewhere, but we don't know where. We
suspect it was maybe made the US. No, it's one
hundred percent this stuff is made in the United States,
(31:55):
and it's somehow getting into the hands of veryous people
who honestly aspire to replace the government and the rule
of law of that country. It's a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Dude.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Oh this this is the other major part of this.
I can't believe you didn't bring this up yet. There's
a lawsuit some news that just came out of Mexico,
but a lawsuit. They are suing seven US gun manufacturers
for ten billion dollars. There's a lawsuit right now. It
had at one point gotten struck down or dismissed, basically
(32:28):
like you can't sue the gun manufacturers for.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
People don't kill people. You know, bot's kill people. People
kill people.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
That was the big deal. It was there's a I'm
gonna get this wrong y'all, there's a rule. It's not
a law, but it is a one of those rulings
that came down before that said you cannot sue the
gun manufacturer because somebody used a weapon to kill somebody.
Does that make sense, Like, yeah, that they just made
(32:56):
the tool. Somebody else with malice or whatever intent or
whatever was used it and someone died. But that only
holds true within the United States, which is what this
latest ruling said. So it's basically saying, yeah, well, if
Mexico wants to sue the manufacturers, I guess we have
to see this thing out and see how it plays.
(33:18):
So that's going to be a fascinating thing that plays
out over the next two three years or however long
it takes.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Especially because that's a that's a recent, a relatively recent
US law. Right, it's a.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Potential Lawful Commerce of Arms Act or the KEYLCAA.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
George w Yeah, mostly true. It's very difficult in the
US to hold you know, your local I don't know
why I said it, like your local mom and pop
defense company. It's tough to hold them liable in civil
court at least, right.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Hey, quit picking on the defense companies, guys, yeah, they
didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Well, no matter what route these guns are taking, it
is believed, at least by the Mexican there is the
government there that seventy percent of all guns that are
getting in the hands of cartels come directly from the
United States, from these weapon manufacturers that they've got beef
with rightly. So, so we'll see how it plays out.
There is a story though, that I think we should
(34:16):
cover specifically at some point in a full episode. It's
a story about a factory in Wisconsin that was manufacturing weapons,
these large caliber like they call them fifty caliber rifles,
and how in some way six hundred thousand dollars worth
of these things went to a cartel of the weapons
(34:39):
that were being manufactured there. It is a twisted, weird tale.
Vice has been writing about it, Reuter's been writing about it.
A bunch of places wrote about it. I think it
first hit the news like late last year, twenty twenty three.
It's strange, you guys, and it makes me think about
the reach of the cartel, how far as it go,
(35:00):
how many countries is you know, one particular cartel in
like the Sonola cartel or the New Generation cartel, it's
creepy and I think we should look into it further.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, writing it down. And also another question that the
public media doesn't ask as often as it should. How
well do these cartels play with others, Meaning, for instance,
you might not have you might not have full reach
into the Upper Midwest based on your current organizational structure,
(35:33):
but you may know someone who knows someone right and
you could talk O Marita a little bit with some
with some locals. That kind of stuff happens. That's why,
that's why it's called organized crime. They're super into this
kind of thing. I think it's absolutely plausible. I agree
with you, wrote it down, this is an episode in
(35:54):
the future.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Heck yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The Mexican government, by the way, estimates around two hundred
thousand weapons are manufactured in the US and then sent
to Mexico each year in some way I'm abused.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, are they coming in new or are they no? No?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Sorry not as in like their manufacturing and then sent directly.
Let's say, let's say two hundred thousand weapons that were
at some point manufactured by US based companies end up
in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Every year, possibly with a secondary like a third party
transit country of some sort.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yes, exactly, and that is an estimate. So the question
is track down, track down the lines, guys.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
I mean, we know that the US military, like has
lost nukes before in the past. Just would not shock
me that there was an ungodly number of these stockpiles
of like let's call them vintage weapons. You know that
there maybe aren't keeping as close a watch on anymore
as they should, and then maybe the leaks are coming
(36:48):
from some of that as well, if not largely. I
would be a shu to see, like what make and
vintage some of these guns are? You know what I mean, Like, yeah,
it's not it's not this year's models. You know, it's
probably I bet you they're.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Quite old, like the ak's and the coalition of covs.
Coalitionon covs are a currency in some more troubled parts
of the world. Once again, once it gets out, you
can't get back in. And I would advance I'm just
going off the top here. I would advance the idea
that the US probably has messy oversight for anything handheld abroad.
(37:26):
I think it's just too difficult to watch every falling
belt fed sparrow.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Well, and we've talked about black market arms dealing is
a thing, and it's been a thing since arms have existed,
and it's not going to stop. Just how much worse
is it going to get? And is it possible to
I guess, get the guns at the source, which is
the factories making them. And is that a good thing
or a bad thing? Let us know what you think.
(37:52):
We'll tell you how to contact us at the end.
Here for now, we're going to take a break and
we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
We've returned bleeped the g rides. I want the machines
that are making them. As our pal Zach said once
upon a time, We're going to end with a tiny
bit of hopefully good news. It's scary, but hopefully hopefully
it's good news. Actually, wait no, we're going to give
you the good news story. We'll give you a couple
of weird ones at the end. So we talk often
(38:26):
on this show about pharmaceutical companies, about R and D stuff,
and you have probably heard longtime conspiracy realist, you've probably
heard some advertisements for various pharmaceutical products on this show. However,
that does not affect our reporting of these things. And
Matt Nol you'll remember a while back, we had gotten
(38:50):
very deep into neo nicotinoids. It was once called a
conspiracy theory that those things were killing bees. They are
very much killing bees. We also we also looked at herbicides.
One of the most popular herbicides is round up. Have
you ever used round up?
Speaker 4 (39:09):
You guys, No, not personally, but it's certainly like it's
almost like xerox is synonymous with, you know, making copies,
you know, or coc is synonymous with soda. Roundup is
kind of occupies that same kind of space with pesticides.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
That's a great point. Yeah, I love that, Like it
became the epononymous trademark, the word. Yeah, the so round
up is super popular.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Round up ready crops?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah yeah yeah, Like, Matt, did you ever use round up?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I did not, because we talked about round up early
on in my having a house career. So yeah, no,
I avoided this stuff like crazy. But it is weird
how many similar how many products have similar chemicals in them. Yeah,
it's just a matter of time before we all go, oh, crap,
that one does it too?
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Bum bum bump. Yeah. The German pharmaceutical giant Bear bought
the American agro chemical giant Monsanto back in twenty eighteen.
Wheels within wheels, you know, just like a pyramid, ownership
attenuates and conglomerates at the top. We're going to go
to a Washington Post article that came out January twenty seventh,
(40:23):
twenty twenty four, so just a few days ago as
you're hearing this strange news on February fifth. Shout out
to Francis Vanaal, who writes Bear is ordered to pay
two point twenty five billion US dollars after jury links
the herbicide roundup to cancer. Two point twenty five billion.
(40:44):
Maybe the good guys win sometimes, maybe maybe the courts work.
I don't know, what do you guys think? Just off
that headline, it.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Sounds great, don't it. But but again, but again, this
is a huge company. That's a lot of jobs, it's
a lot of people. We get that we feel empathy
for those humans. I agreed, But it does seem like
this is something we've kind of known. And then I'm
going to continue one more but Ben, the science I'm
doing quotations here is still out, guys.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Yeah, and the and they deserve that's those are two
really great points, two really great butts. And the person
awarded these damages. Is a guy named John mckavision, and
uh mckivison filed a lawsuit in Philly when he was
diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma, and he said, this happened
(41:36):
because I used round up specifically on my property for
the better part of two decades. And so the jury
comes back and they unanimously find that round up is carcinogenic,
it did give this guy lymphoma non Hodgkins lymphoma, and
that Massanto either knew or was criminally negligent, you know,
(42:01):
like willfully ignorant about the dangers of roundup. And so
they say, this is the lawyers, the legal team, Tom
Klein and Jason Icken said, this verdict is quote a
condemnation of fifty years of misconduct by Monsanto, which again
is owned by Bear. So so would Bear have made
(42:23):
this purchase in twenty eighteen if they knew what was coming?
Interesting boardroom conversations, you know what I mean, off the record,
no phones in the room. I imagine Monzanto fires back
or Bear fires back, and they say, we're appealing this.
It's two point two five billion dollars. Obviously we're appealing this.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
And that's a lot. That's a lot for one.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
That's a lot for one. What about the class action,
you know what I mean, which is surely on the way.
They also called the damages awarded by the court, they
called it quote, unconstitutionally excessive. And this reminds me that
was such a great setup in our in our previous
conversation before the break, the controversy surrounding liability of gun
(43:07):
manufacturers or firearm defense companies, things.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Like that, and it came immediately to mind in terms
of the Purdue case, where it's so rare to even
have any whiff of holding those types of executives or
the company accountable. It was only what there was clearly
malice and malicious and maybe not malicious, okay, well whatever,
No one editorialize here, but clearly an intent to ignore
(43:32):
data and push forth something that was going to cause
people to die with their knowledge. You know, It's different
with medicine though, because death is only kind of a
side effective medicine. Death is like the point of guns,
So it's sort of hard to you know what I mean, Like, ugh,
is the point of guns? Brother? The ultimate point is
(43:54):
death or at the very least making people do things
as a result of the fear of death. That this
sort of the end.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Goal of guns. The point is a hit him with
some bird shots so they know you're coming, and then
with some buck shots so they know you mean business.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
I think also the point is death is buteedor time
is butet windoor, I'll be back, shut out, vego Ghostbusters?
Can we get an air horn?
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Dot?
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Schwarzenegger snuck in there somewhere that guy was senisd there.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I got a lot of plot twists today, guys. I
actually had to listen to a lot of Schwarzenegger statements.
Uh for a different thing. But but this is like,
these are actual arguments. Another example of this. Another example
of this is the to your point, noal the Sackler
family and Purdue. However the courts end up working those
(44:44):
things out, they have still created an environment wherein dangerous
addictive drugs are sort of pure pressured onto patients who
might not need them. Like, remember, I was so confused
we were talking about this off air. I was so
confused when uh docs wet hard on the paint to
prescribe the oxycodone or oxy cont oxyds.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
No, it's not content anymore. Hydro codone is classic. That's
like classic coke. OxyContin was like the next level up,
and that was what they said, wouldn't get you addicted
in the way that that hydro codone would. But yeah,
hydro codone is still okay. It has a lot of
tilent all in it, and so it's very commonly prescribed
for like things like oral surgery. But it also left unchecked,
(45:30):
and if they don't know the person has an addictive personality,
can very quickly lead to addiction.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
You don't want to go fall the house of the
usher or whatever.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
It was, right, Yeah, that was a great adaptation.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
You don't want to take that fall of the house.
That's a that's a deep fall, that's a false flat
on your face.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
And I feel like these three examples were mentioning firearms, opioids, uh,
and now carcinogenic things that are just for your lawn.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
These these things show us one upling commonality. Indeed, something
I could argue is conspiratorial, which is the burden falls
upon the consumer caveat em tour As they said, there's
serious questions about liability for the creators of these and
other products, even unto of course, like food manufacturers. That's
(46:18):
a big thing we talked about pretty often over the years,
like the way the EU handles ingredients versus the way
the UK or the US handles ingredients. I mean, the
European Commission already got got in front of this because
in twenty oh, gosh, twenty twenty three now they put
in a ruling about the active ingredient in roundup live
(46:42):
foss eight or gly foss eight, and they said, we
don't think it's carcinogenic, and Canada said the same thing.
And Bear has a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
The difference, folks, that's what we have here. We don't
believe that this is costing a gena despite the side
different results. These eggheads don't know what they're talking about.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
And I'm glad they talked. Sorry, that is exactly how
they talk. And four years ago, interestingly enough, Bear agreed
to pay a settlement in class action lawsuit tens of
thousands of people. Bear paid a total of ten billion
US dollars over allegations that round up causes wait for it,
(47:25):
non Hodgkins lymphoma. And because Bear is a very powerful,
big company, they did not admit wrongdoing. They just gave
him billion dollars away.
Speaker 4 (47:35):
Ben, if you're hearing me chuckle every now and then,
is because I'm just hearing in my mind you're describing
a bear like bear feels very strongly about this, and
the bear does this, and the bear does that. In
my mind, it's just the culprit. Here is a giant
anthropomorphic bear, love it. I know that's not the case,
but you know, I have a very active imagination. My
mommy told me right to bear arms.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
You know. That's what I was trying not to bring
that up during our very serious conversation exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
About the weapon.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Straight.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
Yeah, I mean everyone has a right to bare arms.
All you got to do is lift, bro, you lift
get those bare arms.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Yeah. By some fur so Bear also be a ye er.
In their most recent annual report to investors, they were
required to state that they have thirty one separate lawsuits
in Canada related to Roundup. Eleven of those thirty one
lawsuits are looking to become class action lawsuits. Bear is
(48:33):
Bear and Monsanto round Up. Those brands are in trouble.
We don't know how, we don't know how far this
will go. And obviously, Matt, I think we can all
agree with the point you raised earlier. So astutely, we're
not saying these companies are filled with evil, villainous monsters.
(48:53):
A lot of people make a good living there and
they're definitely not waking up every morning saying I hope
I give someone lymphoma.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
They probably don't believe that it causes lymphoma. And I
think that's just a part of being in that position,
you know, especially like people were putting together the chemicals,
people who are packaging these things like you cannot believe.
I think there's that's that cognitive dissonance kind of thing,
where like even if someone showed you, hey, this definitely
causes cancer. But yeah, but this also puts like allows
(49:23):
me to feed my family. It's a weird thing.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
And they're like, your family stinks.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Though it's similar to what happened with Perdue, where it's well,
that's not what our scientists say, you know what I mean?
You know, and again no shade on scientists, but we
know a lot of the folks that end up getting
those jobs working with these big companies come from regulatory backgrounds.
They know how to kind of twist the numbers a
little bit maybe, And again I'm not trying to malign
(49:49):
scientists are saying that there are people out there doing
quote unquote bad science.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
This just no Brown hates scientists anti.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Science because I have a real agenda. But no, we
know that you can, by virtue of limiting the scope
of research kind of get the results you want. You're
doing the thing that you're doing.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
You know, not too long ago, R. J. Reynolds supported
studies where they found some doctor who is like, actually,
smoking cigarettes is great for your respiratory, for breathing, it's
like refreshing.
Speaker 4 (50:22):
It's the best if we're when there is all this
talk about how the reason people in France didn't get
COVID is because they smoked so many cigarettes.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
I'm just saying, you know, causality or whatever, without causation,
never mind, there's different ways of looking at this stuff
where you can definitely be like, that's the thing. See,
that's the thing that did it. It was this, and
we like that because it's our thing, you know.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Correlation the causation, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
It just as an aside, speaking that shit think true.
A little while ago we talked about these things med beds, right,
and I fear so much shade and all this stuff,
and it made a video put out there's so much shade.
Then there really is new research coming out talking about
resonances and cellular destruction and like ways to target like
hyper targeting part of the like a tumor that's inside
(51:12):
a brain, and then be able to actually use again
different type of vibrations than sitting on a bed and
someone you know too good good ones presumably right, good
playing vibrations, yeah, but just playing some tones near you,
but using using just vibrational tones to do things like
cure cancer or at least remove a tumor.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Didn't we talk about do we not?
Speaker 4 (51:35):
We may have talked about me if we danced around
a little bit. But I think Matts saying that he's
been seeing some new stuff that kisses even further into
the realms of possibility, but.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Just saying how quickly our belief can potentially be shifted
if we're willing to take in evidence, right.
Speaker 4 (51:51):
And if we have skin in the game, especially you know,
if it's like, oh, this might apply to my nana,
you know, I want to believe right.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
It's also, yeah, you always have to hear things out
in science, and sometimes people perhaps incorrectly misidentify themselves as skeptics,
and what they're practicing instead is not open inquiry. What
they're practicing is a kind of zealousness and over stubbornness
at the very least sure, and that way it becomes
(52:20):
another fundamentalist ideology, and just as dangerous as any other
fundamentalist ideology, I would argue. And that's just one entity's opinion.
But what we can see now is that you probably
shouldn't use a ton of a ton of things if
you just to be safe. If you hear something in
the wind like this might cause this specific thing, and
(52:44):
a lot of people want to court for it, then
it's a personal choice, but very likely.
Speaker 4 (52:49):
It's up to you absolutely. But that's why I did
want to bring up the lead in Stanley cups things,
because I think it's so easy for someone to read
that headline and immediately be like, oh, lead and Stanley
cub is gonna kill us all, And not to say that.
Maybe there won't be more retaith that comes out that
says the levels are beyond allowable or they're not good.
But you should think about more, like you know, the
(53:09):
big picture before you make those decisions. That's the opposite
side of it.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
You're right. I want to talk about how frustrated it
is that things like round up are bad because it
seems like such a beautiful miracle substance for someone who's
borderline OCD like me when I look out at my
grass and I go look at all these stinking weeds everywhere,
and now I can't spray them with anything. I gotta
(53:34):
go out and pick them one by one out from
the root.
Speaker 4 (53:37):
I believe al Gore would call that an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
And here we wrap it up. I want to hear
from people who have worked in this industry, would love
to hear your take on these products, like are there
safe herbicides? Are there safe pesticides? What do you think
more of your fellow conspiracy realists need to know. Also,
I want to give a quick shout out to Elmo,
(54:02):
thank you for the mental health check in earlier. Yeah,
a lot of angst in Western society.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Wait wait, people were I just want to say the headlause.
I love this term trauma dumping on Elmo because on
the social media account for I guess sm street, Almo
wanted to know how everyone was doing, and apparently not
super well.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Yeah, and Elmo did respond just as we were going
into record today. You can find a great article about
the whole debacle on the BBC shout out to the
journalist nor Nanji. You can also find out on XFK Twitter.
One last shoutout, guys, we have to say congratulations and
good luck to Crystal Gable, who is non consensually running
(54:46):
for president in Minnesota. She got a Google alert that
told her she's on the primary ballot for the presidency
in Minnesota, and according to reporting, she cannot get off
the ballot. She does not want to be potus. What
we don't know. We know that she spoke with the
(55:07):
Star Tribute and said, quote, I did not give consent
to be on the Minnesota ballot for this race.
Speaker 4 (55:13):
Is this a public figure at all? Or is this
just like a clerical error because of a mistaken connection
with a name.
Speaker 3 (55:20):
It definitely is not if conspiracy it is. It is
not a conspiracy that she was in on. So let
us know the times you've accidentally run for office, folks,
What a.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
Great plot for sort of a comedy, sort of satire.
Someone's name accidentally ends up on the ballot and they
win because all the other candidates are that garbage.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
The Eddie Murphy, the Eddie Murphy vehicle.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
I wouldn't be surprised if this had been done. You're
talking about Bowfinger or.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
No, it's earlier in that he goes into Congress based
on name recognition, and spoiler, he ends up doing the
right thing because it's a wholesome comedy. We can't wait
to hear your thoughts, folks. Thanks as always for joining us.
We'll be back later this week with a lot of
strange things and some stuff they don't want you to know.
In the meantime, join up with us. We'd love to
(56:08):
hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (56:10):
That's right. You can find it to the handle Conspiracy
Stuff where we exist on Facebook, YouTube and x FKA Twitter.
You can also find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram and take any talk feeling down run
out give us a car Win eight through three us
to do w ride.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
I'll stop now.
Speaker 4 (56:29):
That was a thanks for checking in.
Speaker 2 (56:36):
Just you know, why don't you check in with us too.
We're a lot like Elmo. The number is one A
three three std W I t K. It's a voicemail system.
You got three minutes and let us know if we
can use your name and message on the air. I
think that's it. What wait, what if people want to
send us an email.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Then all you have to do is reach out and
touch space at our good old fashioned email address. Twenty
four hours a day, seven days a week, we read
every missive we get. Take us to the edge of
the rabbit hole. We'll do the rest. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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