A massive olive oil heist. Some US politicians apparently genuinely want to annex Greenland, and rename it to "Red, White and Blueland." New York Mayor Eric Adams -- who's huge in Türkiye -- will have all corruption charges dropped. An update on Mangione's legal crowdfunding. Corporate chemical giant Bayer fights back against anti-pesticide activists. Sweden rolls out DUI laws for drone pilots. Fatberg updates. 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 iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Name is Noah.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
It is time for some strange news. If you are
listening in the evening this program publishes Welcome to February seventeenth.
This is the week of our big show at National
Sawdust and Brooklyn is part of on AirFest, so get
over that way if you are interested.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I can't believe it's coming up so soon. Oh it's crazy,
but it's going to be a good time. Make sure
to get your tickets. It is a separate ticketed event
from on AirFest itself, so you can check that out
on the on AirFest website or I believe it National
Sawdust's website.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
You can just show up at the National Sawdust and
say let.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Me in to see stuff they don't want you to
know to say, you know Ben cool for you, you
might have even better luck.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
I appreciate that, nough you might have even better luck
if you say you're there to see our special guest,
Justin Richmond, who who's classing up.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
The show with us from Broken Record.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You may know the show the podcast the music podcast
featuring Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin on the Pushkin Network,
really great source for all things music, and we're going
to talk about some hidden messages in your favorite records
with Justin, among other things. It's gonna be fun. There's
gonna be live modular synth music, and we're using this
(01:55):
immersive sound system. The National Sawdust has to have a
really good time with some immersive audio, so check it out.
It'll be a good time.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
And we're also crossing the borders of fact and fiction,
conspiracy and speculation. Yes, I deft with that. If you
want to hear more about it, please come join us.
In the meantime, guys, I thought we could kick off
tonight's Strange News by uh. I just want to share
with you my favorite headline I read this week. Ready,
(02:24):
you probably already saw it, Okay, actually surprised me.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Okay, here he.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Goes Man claimed he was warming up his chicken in
a sauna after becoming aroused by pool jets.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Going on there, why just keep some unfolding?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So wait, yeah, the first of all, that's not what
a sauna is for. And what does the chronology of
I mean, okay, you're aroused by pool jets, we don't
kick here, But what does the chronology have to do
with eating it? Was he just like one of those
bacchanalian type folks who just loves to have the juices
drip down the chest when they're you know, like in
the Farrell does on.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
And is it actually chicken that were talking about?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
That is a great question, great question. It is indeed
a chicken.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
Okay, Now, bringing a snack into an unusual place is
something that's happened to a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
We're from Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
We've seen plenty of well, I've seen plenty of people
try to be slick and sneak a rotisserie chicken into
the movie theater. Everybody goes spaghetti, right, what's just spaghetti policy?
But it's an excellent question. It is a literal chicken.
Let's go to Birmingham Live by Chris Slater and Isabelle Bates.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It did take a.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
Team of journalists to break the case. Here who we're
going to We're traveling over.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
To the UK.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
The at the Tom Husband Leisure Center at Salford University,
they discovered fifty nine year old xin Jiang who was
in the sauna and he was staring at a lady
outside the sauna after he had taken a swim. He's
fifty nine years old. He was discovered with his shorts.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Down to his knees.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
He was touching himself and he told he later told
the authorities who was roused by feeling the pool jets
on his tucks, and that he was not pleasuring himself.
It was not a sexual act. He was cold because
he had been swimming, and he put his hands into
his shorts to warm them up.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Gay huh. Well, look now, I just have to admit
we've probably all experienced a little accidental jet arousal in
a hot tub.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
WHOA, what was that? Or otherwise? Yes, largely accidental. And
I would also like to point out that in finish
sauna culture, enjoying a nice grilled sausage often prepared on
the sauna stove along with a finished lagger, very very common.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
Perhaps perhaps Oh man, yeah, this guy's nowhere near as cool.
I was a little confused about this. Uh, it's worse
than a literal chicken. When management asked him what he
was doing, uh, he just said, I'm adjusting myself or
I'm adjusting my chicken, which is.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
What as a chicken's Wow. Okay, I would have We
could have left that one with the headline Yeah, but.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
No, no stone left unturned. That's what's straight left. No
chicken left uncooked.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Oh boy.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Uh, so we are going to learn about, uh, some
stuff on the edge of science fiction.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
We're gonna learn about.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Some fat bergs, some droning and ongoing Bitcoin saga, and
much much more. But before we do any of that,
what what about we pause for an ad break and
then get to a heist? Yay, and we have returned
over one million dollars worth of olive oil has been
(06:07):
stolen from a Montreal trucking company.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Finally, yeah, finally the time has come. I said, we
love a weird food heist, and we talk We talked
about an egg heist last week.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
More than one hundred pallets of olive oil worth over
one million US dollars were stolen. According to the Montreal Police,
a transport company was sending product to a client. It
was supposed it was supposed to arrive early February. It
didn't show up on the third or the fourth.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
The the people waiting for their olive oil fortune reported
it to the cops on February fifth. Uh, it is
missed in transit. And we know that there are some
CCTV snaps of what looks to be the possible the
possible oil thieves. We're really just mentioned there's not too
(07:00):
much of this at this point yet. We're really just
mentioning it because we love a heist. We are stands
for heist. So let's do a couple of fun ones.
There's much more important news that we'll get to. We'll
get to hear in and listener mail. But you may
have heard, fellow conspiracy realists some scuttle butt about a
(07:22):
politician who has not only proposed that we buy Greenland.
We the US not only backed up President Trump there,
but additionally said, you know what, while we're at it,
while we when we acquire it, we should rename it
not Greenland, but red, white and Blueland.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Did you guys, hear about this.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
This is a joke.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yes, this is I thought it was as well. Yeah,
I thought it was too. No it is not.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Okay, Yeah, this one comes to us from our home
state of Georgia. The Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia introduced
a new bill to Congress. This we're gaming to rename
Greenland to red Comma, White Comma, and Blueland, Bluelands being
all one word. This is a real thing. It is
(08:11):
Hr one one six ' one, Red, White, and Blueland
Act of twenty twenty five. Now, before Google officially renamed
the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, I
would have said this was an onion article, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
I would have said this was a clear prank.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yes, how do you introduce something like that as a
serious matter. I don't understand. This is like body mcboat
face type stuff.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
Here's what Carter said in a statement on Tuesday, said
America is back and will soon be bigger than ever
with the addition of Red, White, and Blue Land. President
Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now
Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly
welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist.
When our negotiator in chief inks this monumental deal, Here's
(09:08):
what I think.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Is going on.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
I am certain that Representative Carter, whether or not you
support him, I'm certain he doesn't genuinely believe that this
bill will pass or maybe garner enough support in larger Congress.
I think instead it is meant as a political signal
(09:29):
that he supports the new administration.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's what I think the way is.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yeah, yeah, I will say though, that Red, white, and
blue Land certainly would be an appropriate name for a
America themed amusement park, you know, So it's not all bad.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Well, to be clear, there are maybe sillier names throughout
the span of history we've run into.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
You know.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
Maybe let's say this does pass, then how long would
it take for it to be normalized and for people
to just start calling it Blueland and general, you know,
and then kids are born and they don't know about Greenland,
and the name feels That's my question. Does it feel
silly to us now because it's objectively a silly name,
or does it feel silly just because we're used to Greenland.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Greenland was always kind of a bit of a misnomer
in and of itself, right, because it's like Iceland is
more green and Greenland is more icy or something I
can't remember. There was always a mayor.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
The old conspiracy. Yeah that's right.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Yeah, yeah, So folks, please let us know your thoughts.
Maybe the name is awkward because it's red Comma, white Comma,
and blue land. So that's a that's an odd agglomeration
of names. There's some stuff that we we can't get
to that hopefully we'll explore in a listener mail program
(10:47):
later this week. There is a plague of rats, that's true,
laying waste the cities thanks to climate change.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
There is a new there's a new.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
Overly if sperm donor that's made the news, so check
out that story. And maybe this is a good segue
to another conversation we're going to have later in this program.
Various professors are now arguing I got some flak when
I brought elon Musk versus the US to last week's recording,
(11:21):
but it was the right thing to.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Do, and it was curious to It was curious.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
To me to find that a lot of a lot
of in the no tech experts are feel that they
have identified the overall goal of Elon Musk. In their opinion,
they think he wants to replace representative government with Silicon
Valley controlled AI, so technological oligarchy run by machines.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Didn't he in a consortium of his other tech oligarch bros,
put together some sort of proposal to buy open AI
for billions of dollars but also less than the valuation
of it.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
And then Altman replied by offering to buy Twitter for
about a tenth of that price.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, there you go. I have heard this kind of
scuttle butt as well, Ben, this idea that they would
be the terrifying notion that they would be potentially behind
closed doors testing AI in an effort to streamline government systems.
You know, they have now been given access to and
I don't think anybody wants that right, not at all.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Yeah, they are just too many.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
You know, whether you consider yourself a Luddite or a
blade Runner esque pioneer bleeding edge sci fi, the reality
is right now, what we know about large language models
and AI and the quest for AGI is simply that
it's not up to the task of fully running something
(12:49):
is massive and complicated and self contradicting as a government.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
That was the big problem in the real world, in
the world of West World, right, once you get in
and once you got into later seasons, didn't they have
it wasn't a governance by the massive AI of some sort, right,
I'm just thinking about all the problems that society faced,
at least within that fictional world.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
And predictive models being an issue there as well. There's
probably one of the best write ups, at least that
I have found about this comes from Eric Salvaggio, writing
for Tech Policy Press.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Savaggio definitely is not a fan of Musk, just to
be clear, he has he has a perspective and a
bias and a horse in the race. But his article
Anatomy of an AI Coup is a must read if
you want to learn more about this, more about these demands,
and more about why critics are concerned that statements about
(13:48):
government efficiency might just be sheep's clothing over a wolf.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Heard heard, Indeed, that's a creepy thought. Really want to
have humans at the wheel if we can, for as
long as we can, if that's cool.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
And you know, yeah, and maybe that makes us sound old,
But the thing is governance by humans. We already know
all the problems that can occur with that particular kind
of structure. We do not know the problems that can
occur with a brand new form of intelligence running the structure.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Well, I know, for my two sents, I guess I'm
certainly not opposed to AI as a tool, you know,
with eyes wide open, using it for you know, certain
things that maybe aren't nearly as high stakes. But I
just I really resent and am sort of offended by
this tech bro move fast break stuff mentality that just
(14:47):
doesn't seem to take into account, like the ramifications on
literally the entire world of just shoving this stuff through
because they think it's neat you know.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
No, yeah, or they can they can control it, right,
maybe maybe if I build it, I can control the
thing that then runs everybody.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
But that's the thing too, right, like think of.
Speaker 5 (15:11):
I know I probably overdo analogies, but thanks to everybody
who writes in if we if we go one right
think of the film Snow Piercer spoilers for Snow Piercer
three to one spoilers. Uh, you know the guy who
is the conductor of the train, he nominally runs the
entire civilization right, because he runs the train. However, the
(15:33):
train cannot deviate from its path because it is on rails. Right,
So you could have a nominally run AI government, right,
that's controlled by a person. But does the AI have
its own set of rails, and if so, how much
autonomy and latitude does the human ruler actually possess?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Minor spoiler alerts as well for West World three two
one spoiler alert, Harris, who plays the conductor in Snow Piercer,
is very much the guy kind of in charge of
Westworld and faces a very similar conundrum of like, you know,
you may be the god of a thing as a human,
(16:15):
but then once you've let that being, that that genie
out of the bottle, it takes on a life of
its own, and you really no longer have control, even
if you built in rails, so to speak, like you're
talking about. I just think it's an interesting parallel those
two characters that are both played by Ed Harris.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Dude, that guy, I don't know, maybe there's something, maybe
we need to talk to Ed. Maybe he knows.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Something, he knows what's up.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
M Yeah, and he's probably a really good hang too,
you know who else. It's totally unrelated. You know who
else turns out to be super into exploring conspiracies, Rick Rubin,
imagine that I had no idea, but apparently it makes sense.
Apparently so Rick, if you're listening.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Uh, come a hang.
Speaker 5 (16:57):
And there's so much more to get to, including some updates,
some of which we mentioned on the ongoing weird thing
with eggs in the United States.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Will it expand abroad?
Speaker 5 (17:09):
Will pause for a word from our sponsors, will keep
this one short, and we'll return with more strange news.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
And we're back. Guys, is going to be rapid fire
update time. Here we go. Start your engines, GIOO. Everybody
remember that guy Eric Adams, mayor of New York City
we've been talking about over and over and over and over.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Again, huge in Turkey, huge and.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Really big in Turkey. Well, guys, the new acting Deputy
Attorney General, Emil I think is how you say, Emil
bove Bove has ordered federal prosecutors in New York to
drop the corruption charges against Eric Adams that we've been
talking about. Yeah, the orders for all the charges against
him to be dismissed, and the dismissal is quote without prejudice,
(17:59):
which means charges could be refiled in the future, but
for now, go away charges, says the acting whatever Attorney General. Interesting, right,
feels a little weird that corruption charges would just go
away like that. It seems like there's a lot of
stuff that was going through the courts that is just
kind of dissipating into nothingness as we speak. This formal
(18:23):
dismissal would have to be filed in a court, you know,
by the same prosecutors that originally filed those charges out
there in the Southern District of New York. An a
motion to dismiss the whole thing would have to be
reviewed by a judge and you know, approved in everything.
But the reasoning here, guys, is that the indictment of
Mayor Eric Adams in September of last year came too
(18:45):
close to the mayoral primary in June, and that it
limited his ability to aid President Donald Trump's crackdown on
immigrants and to fight crime.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Oh so a political maneuver or a greater good.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Argument, That's exactly what it is, a greater good argument
for the folks who are now in charge. So the
same person both said Eric Adams case would be reviewed
by a new Trump appointed US Attorney after the general
election for mayor in November. So there you go. It's
it's all in who you know, right, And.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
You know, I mean this is maybe stating the obvious,
but I just think, you know, corruption should be considered corruption.
You shouldn't get it pass just because it's inconvenient for
somebody else. But it would appear that we are moving
more and more into a nineteen eighty four esque, you know,
model of truth, where like that you don't know what
you think you know says the powers to be. You know,
(19:41):
just because you think something is a certain way, it
doesn't make it true, even though if you know it
to be true. And I just I find that mind boggling,
and it really does my head in.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
I'm fully with you on that. I do feel like
this kind of thing happens no matter who's you know,
elected over office.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
It's true the friends or the people who are political
allies get a little pick me up from the folks
that get in.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
So it's it's quid pro quo, and we need to
stop for a second and check in on this. It's
no secret that the Department of Justice has met with
a lot of controversy in just a few weeks. Right now, especially,
I'm thinking about what have been portrayed as a conspiracy
(20:29):
of reprisals. The Justice Department has fired twelve officials who
had investigated Trump activities, some of which were related to
the previous administration, and then I think it was the
acting Attorney General of the DJ Right now, James McHenry
has sent out termination letters that are kind of speaking
(20:49):
to that quid pro quo that I'm getting a spider
sense about when I hear the Eric Adams stories. McHenry
says in the termination letter for officials investigating some aspect
of Donald Trump's companies or previous administration, he says, Look,
I don't believe you can quote be trusted to faithfully
(21:12):
implement the president's agenda because of your significant role in
prosecuting the president end quote. So I have a question there,
does that logic? Is that logical or is that a
rationalization to punish people or both?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Well, you're not folks who have already been engaged in
actions that view let's say person A as a potential criminal.
Right you're investigating this person for criminal activities, You're not
going to view that person as an objective, you know,
actor for other things that that that person is doing.
(21:49):
Right if you if you have been actively investigating that person.
So I can see the logic. It is unfortunate that
there is no form of objectivity when it comes or
thought of objectivest when it comes to someone who is
in that prosecutor prosecutorial role. I don't know anything. Yeah,
but it's just a it's a freaking weird situation.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
I would say, Yeah, that's that's the pickle too, right,
because is this a a straight up qui pro quo
transactional relationship now that the DOJ is sort of brokering
or are they still just doing their job according to
you know, their mandate, which makes them historically super unpopular
(22:32):
by the way with powerful people.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, yeah, and it is putting the attorneys general against
the you know, the district attorneys they like, the acting
US attorneys in the different districts. In this case, it's
the the acting Deputy Attorney General versus the acting US
Attorney for the Southern District of New York versus all
these other prosecutors and all the other districts versus the
(22:55):
Department of Justice itself. And it's it's all infighting and
chaos and again, I think the whole thing goes back
to that. Maybe some of the strategies we've talked about
make the whole thing chaos, so every good thing seems amazing.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Oh god, yeah, yeah, create the problem that you purport
to solve, right, yes, yeahsh is one on one, the.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Use and the cobra.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
You gotta yes, exactly who's going to win? It's usually
the mongoose.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Well no, no, no, there was that whole thing. Sorry
I wasn't mongoos, it was there was a thing in India, yeah,
the cobra effect, where in India there was a massive
rat problem and in order to deal with that, somebody
had the hair brained, slash genius idea of releasing a
bunch of cobras, which led to them eating and killing
the rats, but then it led to them having a
cobra problem.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
And then to solve the cobra problem, they incentivized hunting cobras,
giving you a lum sun per cobra carcass that you returned,
And what that did was create more cobras, because people
figured out they could farm a cobra quite profitably and
then just sell the dead cobras or some kinds live
Cobra's back to the authorities, so that's the Cobra effect.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And then Totino's pizza roles comes in and it's like,
what is happening here?
Speaker 5 (24:13):
Totino's pizza role, the Cobra of the frozen food aisle.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
That's right, what's the alien's name? And the Chasmo Chasmo
so funny. If y'all haven't seen that, it's so good,
it's really there's also like an uncensored version where Chasmo's
eyeball pops out and rolls across the floor. That they did,
and Totino's leaned right into it. They posted it themselves,
but apparently the Super Bowl and Standards and Practices did
not approve that one.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh yeah, guys, we got to keep moving rapid fire here.
Remember that guy, Luigi Mangioni. Yeah, yes, okay, Well we
talked about how there was some funding going on for
him for his legal fees and all of that stuff.
Well we've got a bit of an update. The legal
fees were flowing in. There was originally a give Send
Go fund for him. That's a that's a service or
(24:58):
a website, give send to Go, and there was a
goal of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars set for
Luigi Mangioni's legal fees. They smashed through that really quickly,
and now it has been capped at five hundred thousand
dollars and today, as we record, it is sitting at
three hundred and fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty
(25:20):
two dollars at least as I the last time I
checked the website.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Is this like a gofund me?
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
When we say capped, does it mean it cannot exceed
five hundred k or does that just mean like that's
their stretch.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Goal, that's the goal. The goal is five hundred thousand
right now. Surely it can become much much huger if
they wanted to. But it is just nuts because the
reporting that came out recently was that donations had kind
of topped off and slowed down a lot for Luigi's funds,
and now they're going back up like gangbusters.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Ah. And it is a site that I'm not familiar with.
It's called give Send Go, which is very similar to
gofund me situation. But I don't know what differentiates them
why I would be used instead of that. But yeah,
man Wow five hundred K goal three hundred and sixty
four to twenty two raised.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
YEP.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
It is headed by the December fourth Legal committee, which
is apparently connected with Mangioni's attorney Karen Friedman and Jiffiloh.
I don't know how to say that name. And this
is all this is in the actual news. This is
like a real appears to be a real thing. ABC
News is confirming that this is the actual you know,
funding site and everything.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
And I could answer the question why it's not go
fund Me, which I'm sure I just.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Want to get in front of the emails folks.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
I know a lot of our fellow listeners are probably
shaking their headphones right now. Go fund Me was originally
the crowdsourcing apparatus or platform for Luigi Mangioni until in
December twenty twenty four they canceled all pro Luigi campaigns.
So this other platform is fighting the power there. And
(26:58):
this was This came amid the big move by mainstream
media and a lot of platform owners to scrub discourse
about mangion or to shift the narrative, which we discussed
in previous previous episodes, as well as strange news can.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
I also just say that maybe this is something that
go fund me offers. But I'm seeing there's a lot
of comments attached to folks who have donated, along with
the dollar amounts that they have contributed, and some of
them are very interesting. Here's one from anonymous giver. Jury
nullification refers to a jury's knowing and deliberate rejection of
the evidence or refusal to apply the law, either because
the jury wants to send a message about some social
(27:38):
issue that is larger than the case itself, or because
the result is dictated by law is contrary to the
jury's sense of justice, morality, or fairness. Team Luigi, nothing
more need to be said. Freedom for all those the
system has failed miserably. If we keep this as another one,
we keep this momentum, we can easily be the biggest
fundraising campaign on the site. Free Luigi. We need to
(27:58):
make a change. Good luckilyuis Luigi for president. Those are
all different ones.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Just yeah, hey, And speaking of eating the rich and
the rich in general, remember a company called Bear b A.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Y e R.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Oh my god, I love Bear.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Right all the chemical folks. Of course, they make this
other thing called round Up, round Up. Ready or whatever
all that other stuff, the weed killer round up specifically, Well,
we've talked before and very recently about how their product
round up appears to be causing cancer, at least according
(28:38):
to scientists who are studying the stuff who are not
directly hired by Bear or paid by Bear. And uh, well,
Bear is fighting back, you guys.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
There are protesters all over the place in Iowa, especially
outside the Iowa Capitol Building this this Monday, specifically as
we're recording this week, because there is legislation being proposed.
They're in Iowa at the Capitol Building as well as
in seven other states that would protect pesticide companies like
Bear from claims they failed to warn their customers that
(29:09):
their product causes cancer, because this is what this legislation says,
because their labels on their products complied with the US
Environmental Protection Agencies regulations. So what they're saying is, what
this legislation is saying is that Bear and other companies
who make these weed killers that do cause cancer put
(29:30):
on their labels the stuff that the EPA required them to,
and one of those requirements is not this may cause cancer.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Right, So the question isn't the science that it's the
amount or the threshold of legal compliance, and these exactly right, okay,
and these grassroots activist whatever, I'll take the applause.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
I'll take the check for that one. Get it? Grassroots pesticide.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Well yeah, the people who are saying, hey, this is
the right legislation. Bear didn't do anything wrong. But you've
also got protesters who were saying, what the heck, guys,
Bear definitely did something wrong, and then you get signs
and they're all like, no, you're wrong.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
So this reminds me of a previous episode, Matt.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Do we know if whether Bear is paying the pro
bear activist or pro bear protesters.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I do not know. I do not know.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I know they're paying the you know, the firms essentially
that are on the PR side, that are working to
fight against us.
Speaker 5 (30:32):
And it is legal to do that. It's just it's
very ethically fraught. But it wouldn't be the first time
large companies or even political groups have have paid people
to be sort of astro turf protesters.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yes, yes, And let's jump really quickly to ap news.
This was written on April sixteenth, twenty twenty four, so
a while back, but specifically back then when we were
talking about Bear. It discusses how they are about one
hundred and sixty seven thousand legal claims against Bear and
specifically round Up at that time last year in April.
They've settled several of those, but they've lost several others
(31:12):
where there are huge judgments. We talked about one I
think it was ten billion dollars that was awarded for
plaintiffs against Bear because of this whole roundup cancer thing.
And then you jump to now and there's still a
ton of these lawsuits. So basically Bear is attempting to say, hey,
none of these lawsuits are worth their salt anymore because
(31:32):
of this thing. Right, we didn't do anything wrong according
to the EPA regulations specifically for our labels.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Yeah, which I've just said again, and far be it
for me to accuse anybody of conspiracy. It sounds like
a really weird and specific, hair splitting legalistic point for
people to get organically fired up about, such that they
would go protest, you know what I mean? Yeah, Like
I don't see the occupy EPA warning labels take it
(32:04):
a big move in this direction exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
A couple other stories coming out that are worth your
time to check out there is a weird one that
CNN Science reported on about the shape of Earth's core
and how it is changing and altering, and then it
connects back to previous reporting again, kind of like that
last story reporting for twenty twenty four that talked about
Earth's core slowing down its spin compared to the spin
(32:29):
of the exterior of the Earth that we experience, you know,
that's how we get our days. But the Earth's interior
core seems to have slowed down and is now rotating
the opposite direction that Earth is rotating. And now scientists
have discovered, just through studying earthquakes and a bunch of
other a bunch of other stuff that is a little
over my head, they are noticing that the actual shape
(32:52):
of that solid metal, extremely hot ball that is the
Earth's core is like altering. It's not a sphere, and
it is moving in weird ways and causing volcanic activity
in different places on the Earth's surface because of its
weird shape. Just strange stuff.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Check it out, we'll do.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And also check in on that artificial sun ben that
I think you brought to us, the one in China
that is potentially going to change the entire planet with
infinite energy. They just broke another record, they smashed it
and just came out today. So just keep your eyes
and ears open for stuff about the core and the
sun and the cancer and.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Oh and just by the way, by the way too.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
To add on to that, also check out our previous
episodes from years ago. Yes, sometimes the magnetic bulls just switch. Yeah,
so that's.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
On the way too. We don't know when, but you know,
keep your wits about you.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Good luck with that pole a shift rabbit hole you're
about to go down. All right, We'll be right back
with more strange news.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And we have returned with more strange news. Got a
couple of handful of fun ones. I thought i'd start
with one relating to some kind of landmark international case
precedents involving the flying of drones. Dateline, Sweden. Man convicted
(34:25):
of drunk driving a drone in Sweden's first case of
its kind, Ben, have you heard about this one?
Speaker 5 (34:34):
This one is new to me, Noel, and I think
the first question everybody has just to clear things up.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer. This guy who
got convicted is not physically himself on the drone, right, because.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
That's why This is important, Ben, because this is a
first of its kind case in terms of the penalty
on a fifty four year old ratvik Man just a
town in Dalarna in central Sweden. He was at a
classic car event flying a drone in a temporary no
(35:11):
fly zone, and police flying their own drone that was
monitoring the event happened to notice this, you know, invader,
this electronic invader. They then traced it back to the
spot where this man was piloting the drone and determined
that he had a blood alcohol content of point sixty
(35:32):
nine parts alcohol per one thousand parts blood. I've never
heard it quite put that way. Maybe this is a
Guardian piece, by the way, so maybe I don't know, Ben,
Is that the same way we measure blood alcohol content here?
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Yeah, you could.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
It's it's not the it's the same concept, but it's
not the same threshold.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Didn't think so, So that makes sense why it's a
little unfamiliar to me. So under Swedish law anything above
point two parts alcohol and when that in Bart's blood,
I don't know why. I think that's funny. It is
very specific is punishable for d w I d uy
one point oh is a mega serious crime. Drunk driving
laws in Sweden are a little bit stricter than they
(36:13):
are in other parts of Europe. In the UK the
limits point eight. In France and Belgium point five. In
Spain it is point five as well. In Romania and
Hungary it's zero. I don't understand. How is that less
strict than point eight? Isn't zero? Like no, no zero
alcohol content? Yeah, right, sorry, maybe it requires a little clarification.
(36:37):
But they do point out in this article in the
Guardian by Miranda Bryant, who is a Nordic correspondent for
The Guardian, that Swedish law is a little bit more
strict than other parts of Europe. However, the paragraph referencing
those different blood alcohol levels ends with in Romanian Hungary
it is zero. Romanian Hungary would be the strictest.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Yeah, that seems like it might be possibly a typo.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
It does seem that way.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
It's oh, actually, dope, Nope, it's in comparison.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Any blood alcohol at all, any blood alcohol at all
over like just the tiniest drop, you know, they'll take
your robtuscin or whatever.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yeah, that is a crime.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Romania and Hungary serious business. They did determine again that
this man had a point sixty nine part parts alcohol
per one thousand parts blood. He admitted to find the drone,
he claimed that he did not fly, later on claiming
he didn't fly the drone under the influence and he
actually blamed a friend who was at presence when the
(37:43):
police arrived. He was fined thirty two thousand Swedish kroner
or two three hundred and forty one pounds or euros,
to be paid across eighty days daily, with daily allotments
of four hundred Swedish croner or about twenty nine euro
The big deal about this is that they imposed the
(38:04):
same penalty on this dude who is flying a remote
controlled aerial device as they would if he were driving
an automobile or you know, a scooter some other kind
of road faring vehicle. Jenny Holden Nystrom, who's the prosecutor,
told SVT, which is a Swedish broadcaster, I have not
seen a case like this before. I am satisfied with
(38:26):
the verdict. Karen Holmant, who is the district court president,
said that they chose to apply the same punishment scale
as it would for drunk driving to the drone case
because quote. It is an aircraft. Even though it is
flown by itself, it is controlled by someone down on
the ground and can fall from a high height and
injure someone. As you said, I'm behind all of this, guys,
(38:48):
I think it makes a lot of sense. You can
wreak a lot of havoc even if you're sober and
flying a drone, let alone, if you are under the influence.
I think this is a precedent that maybe should be
adopted elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 5 (39:00):
Yeah, it makes sense because you can even if you
yourself are not in the vehicle or in the device,
you can create a crash, you can make a collision.
There's a reason drones are such a huge part of warfare,
and with the economy of scale, they're going to continue
to become more sophisticated and more affordable. So regulation or
(39:22):
further regulation, I should say, is inevitable.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
It has to be on the.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Way and potentially larger, wouldn't you say, I mean, like,
the type of drones that we see in warfare are
the size of like, you know, a small aircraft, a
very small aircraft, but they are much larger than the
consumer drones that we see. And as we know, technology
that the government and the military gets first over time
does seem to inch its way into consumer availability.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, we know that we'll see early adopter
behavior play a huge role in what kind of laws
get made for the rest of us. So, just like
just like with any other technology rolling out, it just
takes a few knuckleheads to ruin it for everybody else, right,
(40:09):
And this guy was being a little bit knuckleheaded, especially
with the uh the story of the invisible disappearing pilot
friend that Oh yeah, yeah, that's like, yeah, I think
you've had to You had to have a few drinks
to think that one was gonna work.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Isn't that also very similar to like if you're drunk
driving and you've got a passenger who's sober trying to switch,
you know, switch seats at the last minute to fool
the coppers.
Speaker 5 (40:33):
Yeah, but at that point you have to wonder, like,
why wasn't that person driving in the first place?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Right?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
It is a very very good point then, But we
know humans are very interesting and complex creatures and often
quite idiotic ones as well. It's very interesting. There's another
article about this on The Independent by Jane Dalton Man
find for a drunk driving drone. I love drunk driving
drone in Sweden. It does point out that very few
countries have outlawed drunk drone driving, but Japan, in a
(41:02):
forward thinking move as they are wont to do, did
this way back in twenty nineteen. So that's pretty interesting,
and I feel like this case may well be noticed
by other countries and adopted, you know, as a precedent.
It It just makes sense because we know drones already
are always in the news for nuisance type behavior, and
(41:24):
this just kind of adds maybe another layer of protection,
you know, to regular folks who might be being menaced
by drones.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
Right, and then we'll see early or we'll see later
iterations of regulatory policy come out, like the kinds of
licenses you may need to obtain when there are larger
drones that are more affordable for people. Do you have
something like the equivalent of a drone trucker license? When
drone deliveries become or if they become a normalized thing,
(41:57):
then you would have to have a license to operate
that commercial drone in that way, Should you have to put.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
In hours like you would as you know Ben with
trying to get a pilot's license, you know, have to
kind of prove that you are qualified to make those
kinds of maneuvers, especially as we start seeing areas getting
denser with these drones, like we were seeing in New Jersey,
right with all of these crazy sightings that turned out
to largely many of them being drones. And then when
there was talk about oh maybe they're UFOs, that caused
(42:25):
more people to send their own drones up, adding to
the chaos. Yeah, well put thanks Ben AnyWho. I think
this is something to keep an eye on and hopefully,
you know, as we know, the law often most always
lags behind the exponential improvement and availability of technology. So
maybe this will be a lesson to be learned throughout
(42:47):
the world. I'm going to move on to another story
if you guys don't mind. This one involves a Brian
Adams concert. Remember Brian Adams Summer of sixty nine. Oh,
she also recently did an interview I think as he's
doing this tour, this kind of like legacy, you know,
nostalgia tour, where he said to an interviewer that the
(43:07):
song Summer of sixty nine is actually about doing the nasty,
It's about like the sex position what not. The year
it was the summer where all he did was sixty
nine baby uh dude, guys, Yeah, he's definitely big uping himself.
Maybe he was being coy, but you know, there certainly
(43:29):
are some interludes implied in that song, which I have
to say. There was a fabulous headline that summed this
whole thing up the story here, and that came from
the website rte dot Ie Plumber of sixty nine. Sewage
blockage halts Brian Adams concert in Perth, Australia. A series
(43:54):
of fat bergs, which we've talked about before and we'll
talk about outside the context of this story. So these
are of course fat grease, toilet tissue rags all built
up into this kind of whole other thing that can
cause massive chaos and sewer systems. So these massive fat
(44:14):
bergs created a huge blockage that caused a sewer backup,
a sewage backup in Western Australia. The Canadian singer songwriter
Brian Adams concert was set to take place at a
local arena and the organizers, the proprietors of the arena,
shut it down while people were already waiting in line
(44:37):
to get in due to what they referred to as
the risk of sewage backing up within the venue's toilets.
Actually that came from the State Water Corporation. They said
that their crews were working to clear the blockage of fat,
grease and rag, which has caused several wastewater overflows at properties.
This came from a statement according to the water authority
(44:58):
the blockage could not be easily dislikes and venue management
took this information very seriously and made the tough call
to cancel the Brian Adams concert. This was of course,
very disappointing to the Brian Adams fans set to attend
Brian Adams Roll with the Punches tour as it made
its way across Australia. Unfortunately, the venue was not able
(45:21):
to reschedule the concert. I would imagine and hope that
concert goers would get a refund wherever they made the
purchase for those tickets, and yeah, we'll call it a day.
But this caught my eye, Matt, because you've been teasing
us with a story for weeks now that you keep
holding back on and into this idea that somewhere in
(45:43):
the world I want to say in the UK, these
fat bergs. These absolutely disgusting, massive globs of congealed grease,
cooking products and other ways that are often kind of
ratking style, held together by wipes and rags and toilet
tissue and can cause all kinds of chaos and municipal
(46:06):
sewer system are actually being used. Like what is it
amber grease or something like that? That disgusting whale, you know,
fatty goo, that is such a sought after material to
make perfume. What is the deal with that, Matt, I've
got to know, dude.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
It's even cooler. Yeah, I do apologize guys, this this
story has been stuck in the pipes ha ha for
a long time. Take Hey, this is it's actually really awesome.
I think we found it in January of this year
early on. It was posted in the BBC. You can
look it up right now. The title is Fatberg's Turned
(46:42):
into Perfume Inside Britain's Bizarre New Industrial Revolution And when
you check this out, it's crazy. There are people from
the University of Edinburgh who are they're in a specialized
program there that they're attempting to find ways to use bacteria,
and mostly bacteria, but other biological life forms like that
(47:04):
to break down stuff that we need as a species
to break down because it's mostly trash or waste or
something that we can't make use of right now, how
do we turn it into something else? Well, it's pretty incredible.
Professor Stephen Wallace is one person that was interviewed for
this story. He specifically and his team take these fat bergs,
(47:26):
apply bacteria to them, and it the bacteria breaks the
fat berg all the way down into this chemical that
smells a bit of pine, like a lovely pine smell,
and then you can sell that product to somebody who
is either making a perfume or is attempting to let's
say scent. There are other chemical products, right, so, like
(47:47):
think about something as simple as pine sal which is
a very it was for a long time a popular
cleaning product here in the United States. But anything else
that has that pine smell, there's there's a different chemical
that is a synthesized chemical that is currently made from
fossil fuels like petroleum oil. But if you could instead
(48:08):
make that from the waste, right the leftover fat burg
that would be revolutionary. And that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 5 (48:15):
Yeah, And just to jump in here on the note
about ambergriss, the waxy substance made from those sperm whales,
civilization does need replacements because I think, obviously due to
some environmental regulations and due to just you know, the
nature of hunting sperm whales, it is exceedingly rare to
(48:38):
find natural amber grease use the way it was in
the past. So these kind of alternative products, even if
they might sound a little gross for some people, I
think we all find the science fascinating and these are
really cool innovations.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Oh yeah, come on, if you could find the stuff
you need to smell good in a fat burg, great,
because ultimately it is just it's a biological process breaking
down a chemical into a different chemicals. There a little
chemical change going on there, but it's also being done
on plastics, you guys, to break them down to make
stuff that smells like vanilla. Like, think about that. Instead
(49:15):
of recycling the way we know recycling to be, what
if you just break down those plastic bottles into vanilla
that you could then put into again, think about how
many candles have vanilla in them somewhere?
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Right? Sure?
Speaker 3 (49:27):
I mean, I guess that reminds me of like kind
of repurposing graywater for example, or you know, we've talked
about how certain types of graywater may well be able
to be purified. I can't remember what municipality was doing this,
but there was some work being done to figure out
how to do that, and there was just what was
referred to often in the reporting as kind of the
(49:48):
ick factor of it all. This I think would carry
a very similar ick factor, like is someone really gonna
be cool with using a product doing them smell good,
putting it on their body that came from a giant,
greasy ball of fat and poop and toilet paper.
Speaker 4 (50:05):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
I mean I would like to think that people could
could you know, see the greater good and get their
heads wrapped around? And I think I certainly could.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yeah, if the n product is just in a little
vial or something, especially if it's used in industrial things,
the end consumer never sees that stuff, right, You just know, oh,
it smells of vanilla or it smells of pine. So
I think the K factor kind of goes away because
we don't have any K factor thinking, Oh, that pine
I currently get in the candle or in the whatever
(50:35):
it is I'm using at home that came from the
stuff that I put in my car pretty much.
Speaker 5 (50:40):
Or food coloring or any any number of additives. One
of the big takeaways here, at least from my perspective,
is that if this gives you a nick factor, it's
time to sit down give yourself real honest inventory of
the other things that you run into that should give
you a nick factor much more so, you.
Speaker 4 (51:01):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (51:02):
But be careful when you open that door, folks. It's
the equivalent of having a UV light with you at
your next hotel room.
Speaker 4 (51:08):
Well.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Hell, even like factory farming and stuff, and like the
way the conditions in which chickens are kept, you know,
and beef and things like that, it does seem like
people are able to kind of ignore that. But then
things like this that actually could help with conservation might
be a little tougher for them to swallow.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
There's another thing, as article, guys, that I think would
be that kind of tough to swallow thing. There are
folks making like designer handbags out of microbes like that
wouldn't require you know, high end materials or a bunch
of other stuff. You basically three D print and then
sew together a bag that looks like one of these
high end bags. You know, the people would spend hundreds,
(51:47):
if not thousands of dollars on, but it's it's made
by a startup like biology company. I just I wonder
if people would actually do that.
Speaker 4 (51:58):
Someone would do it.
Speaker 5 (51:59):
They're too many people statistically, someone would for sure.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Well, guys, I'm gonna keep this one quick because speaking
of blockages, I actually have a plumber that just showed
up to help me with some leakage from my zewer
line and my garage. So yeah, I'm actually gonna bop
out a little early on this one. But I think
we mainly got to what we wanted to get to
on these stories. But I will be back shortly for
(52:26):
when we record our listener Mail episode.
Speaker 5 (52:29):
And in the meantime, thank you for tuning in, folks.
There's so much we didn't get to. Of course, a
lot of a big thank you to a lot of
folks who had written to me about booby trapped goggles.
We're saving that for our listener Mail segment. Tune in
later this week. You can find us online. In the meantime,
we are conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram, We're conspiracy stuff
(52:51):
on YouTube or some derivation thereof all over the internet.
If you don't sip the social meds, we totally get it.
You can also give us a phone call.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, our number is one eight three three std WYTK.
It's a voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname and say whatever you'd like just do.
Let us know within the message if we can use
your name and message on the air. If instead you'd
like to send us an email, Hey, we've got that too.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
We are the entities. You read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the
void writes back. Send us your idea, send us pitches
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We love all of those. Do we really write back?
(53:40):
There's one way to find out. Step a little further
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Speaker 2 (54:05):
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 (00:23):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Name is Noah.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 5 (00:40):
It is time for some strange news. If you are
listening in the evening this program publishes Welcome to February seventeenth.
This is the week of our big show at National
Sawdust and Brooklyn is part of on AirFest, so get
over that way if you are interested.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I can't believe it's coming up so soon. Oh it's crazy,
but it's going to be a good time. Make sure
to get your tickets. It is a separate ticketed event
from on AirFest itself, so you can check that out
on the on AirFest website or I believe it National
Sawdust's website.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
You can just show up at the National Sawdust and
say let.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Me in to see stuff they don't want you to
know to say, you know Ben cool for you, you
might have even better luck.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
I appreciate that, nough you might have even better luck
if you say you're there to see our special guest,
Justin Richmond, who who's classing up.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
The show with us from Broken Record.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You may know the show the podcast the music podcast
featuring Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin on the Pushkin Network,
really great source for all things music, and we're going
to talk about some hidden messages in your favorite records
with Justin, among other things. It's gonna be fun. There's
gonna be live modular synth music, and we're using this
(01:55):
immersive sound system. The National Sawdust has to have a
really good time with some immersive audio, so check it out.
It'll be a good time.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
And we're also crossing the borders of fact and fiction,
conspiracy and speculation. Yes, I deft with that. If you
want to hear more about it, please come join us.
In the meantime, guys, I thought we could kick off
tonight's Strange News by uh. I just want to share
with you my favorite headline I read this week. Ready,
(02:24):
you probably already saw it, Okay, actually surprised me.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Okay, here he.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Goes Man claimed he was warming up his chicken in
a sauna after becoming aroused by pool jets.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Going on there, why just keep some unfolding?
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So wait, yeah, the first of all, that's not what
a sauna is for. And what does the chronology of
I mean, okay, you're aroused by pool jets, we don't
kick here, But what does the chronology have to do
with eating it? Was he just like one of those
bacchanalian type folks who just loves to have the juices
drip down the chest when they're you know, like in
the Farrell does on.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
And is it actually chicken that were talking about?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
That is a great question, great question. It is indeed
a chicken.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
Okay, Now, bringing a snack into an unusual place is
something that's happened to a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
We're from Atlanta.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
We've seen plenty of well, I've seen plenty of people
try to be slick and sneak a rotisserie chicken into
the movie theater. Everybody goes spaghetti, right, what's just spaghetti policy?
But it's an excellent question. It is a literal chicken.
Let's go to Birmingham Live by Chris Slater and Isabelle Bates.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
It did take a.
Speaker 5 (03:41):
Team of journalists to break the case. Here who we're
going to We're traveling over.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
To the UK.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
The at the Tom Husband Leisure Center at Salford University,
they discovered fifty nine year old xin Jiang who was
in the sauna and he was staring at a lady
outside the sauna after he had taken a swim. He's
fifty nine years old. He was discovered with his shorts.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Down to his knees.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
He was touching himself and he told he later told
the authorities who was roused by feeling the pool jets
on his tucks, and that he was not pleasuring himself.
It was not a sexual act. He was cold because
he had been swimming, and he put his hands into
his shorts to warm them up.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Gay huh. Well, look now, I just have to admit
we've probably all experienced a little accidental jet arousal in
a hot tub.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
WHOA, what was that? Or otherwise? Yes, largely accidental. And
I would also like to point out that in finish
sauna culture, enjoying a nice grilled sausage often prepared on
the sauna stove along with a finished lagger, very very common.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
Perhaps perhaps Oh man, yeah, this guy's nowhere near as cool.
I was a little confused about this. Uh, it's worse
than a literal chicken. When management asked him what he
was doing, uh, he just said, I'm adjusting myself or
I'm adjusting my chicken, which is.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
What as a chicken's Wow. Okay, I would have We
could have left that one with the headline Yeah, but.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
No, no stone left unturned. That's what's straight left. No
chicken left uncooked.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Oh boy.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Uh, so we are going to learn about, uh, some
stuff on the edge of science fiction.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
We're gonna learn about.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Some fat bergs, some droning and ongoing Bitcoin saga, and
much much more. But before we do any of that,
what what about we pause for an ad break and
then get to a heist? Yay, and we have returned
over one million dollars worth of olive oil has been
(06:07):
stolen from a Montreal trucking company.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Finally, yeah, finally the time has come. I said, we
love a weird food heist, and we talk We talked
about an egg heist last week.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
More than one hundred pallets of olive oil worth over
one million US dollars were stolen. According to the Montreal Police,
a transport company was sending product to a client. It
was supposed it was supposed to arrive early February. It
didn't show up on the third or the fourth.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
The the people waiting for their olive oil fortune reported
it to the cops on February fifth. Uh, it is
missed in transit. And we know that there are some
CCTV snaps of what looks to be the possible the
possible oil thieves. We're really just mentioned there's not too
(07:00):
much of this at this point yet. We're really just
mentioning it because we love a heist. We are stands
for heist. So let's do a couple of fun ones.
There's much more important news that we'll get to. We'll
get to hear in and listener mail. But you may
have heard, fellow conspiracy realists some scuttle butt about a
(07:22):
politician who has not only proposed that we buy Greenland.
We the US not only backed up President Trump there,
but additionally said, you know what, while we're at it,
while we when we acquire it, we should rename it
not Greenland, but red, white and Blueland.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Did you guys, hear about this.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
This is a joke.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yes, this is I thought it was as well. Yeah,
I thought it was too. No it is not.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Okay, Yeah, this one comes to us from our home
state of Georgia. The Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia introduced
a new bill to Congress. This we're gaming to rename
Greenland to red Comma, White Comma, and Blueland, Bluelands being
all one word. This is a real thing. It is
(08:11):
Hr one one six ' one, Red, White, and Blueland
Act of twenty twenty five. Now, before Google officially renamed
the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, I
would have said this was an onion article, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
I would have said this was a clear prank.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yes, how do you introduce something like that as a
serious matter. I don't understand. This is like body mcboat
face type stuff.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
Here's what Carter said in a statement on Tuesday, said
America is back and will soon be bigger than ever
with the addition of Red, White, and Blue Land. President
Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now
Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly
welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist.
When our negotiator in chief inks this monumental deal, Here's
(09:08):
what I think.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Is going on.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
I am certain that Representative Carter, whether or not you
support him, I'm certain he doesn't genuinely believe that this
bill will pass or maybe garner enough support in larger Congress.
I think instead it is meant as a political signal
(09:29):
that he supports the new administration.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
That's what I think the way is.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yeah, yeah, I will say though, that Red, white, and
blue Land certainly would be an appropriate name for a
America themed amusement park, you know, So it's not all bad.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Well, to be clear, there are maybe sillier names throughout
the span of history we've run into.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
You know.
Speaker 5 (09:52):
Maybe let's say this does pass, then how long would
it take for it to be normalized and for people
to just start calling it Blueland and general, you know,
and then kids are born and they don't know about Greenland,
and the name feels That's my question. Does it feel
silly to us now because it's objectively a silly name,
or does it feel silly just because we're used to Greenland.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Greenland was always kind of a bit of a misnomer
in and of itself, right, because it's like Iceland is
more green and Greenland is more icy or something I
can't remember. There was always a mayor.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
The old conspiracy. Yeah that's right.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Yeah, yeah, So folks, please let us know your thoughts.
Maybe the name is awkward because it's red Comma, white Comma,
and blue land. So that's a that's an odd agglomeration
of names. There's some stuff that we we can't get
to that hopefully we'll explore in a listener mail program
(10:47):
later this week. There is a plague of rats, that's true,
laying waste the cities thanks to climate change.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
There is a new there's a new.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
Overly if sperm donor that's made the news, so check
out that story. And maybe this is a good segue
to another conversation we're going to have later in this program.
Various professors are now arguing I got some flak when
I brought elon Musk versus the US to last week's recording,
(11:21):
but it was the right thing to.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Do, and it was curious to It was curious.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
To me to find that a lot of a lot
of in the no tech experts are feel that they
have identified the overall goal of Elon Musk. In their opinion,
they think he wants to replace representative government with Silicon
Valley controlled AI, so technological oligarchy run by machines.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Didn't he in a consortium of his other tech oligarch bros,
put together some sort of proposal to buy open AI
for billions of dollars but also less than the valuation
of it.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
And then Altman replied by offering to buy Twitter for
about a tenth of that price.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, there you go. I have heard this kind of
scuttle butt as well, Ben, this idea that they would
be the terrifying notion that they would be potentially behind
closed doors testing AI in an effort to streamline government systems.
You know, they have now been given access to and
I don't think anybody wants that right, not at all.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Yeah, they are just too many.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
You know, whether you consider yourself a Luddite or a
blade Runner esque pioneer bleeding edge sci fi, the reality
is right now, what we know about large language models
and AI and the quest for AGI is simply that
it's not up to the task of fully running something
(12:49):
is massive and complicated and self contradicting as a government.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
That was the big problem in the real world, in
the world of West World, right, once you get in
and once you got into later seasons, didn't they have
it wasn't a governance by the massive AI of some sort, right,
I'm just thinking about all the problems that society faced,
at least within that fictional world.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
And predictive models being an issue there as well. There's
probably one of the best write ups, at least that
I have found about this comes from Eric Salvaggio, writing
for Tech Policy Press.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Savaggio definitely is not a fan of Musk, just to
be clear, he has he has a perspective and a
bias and a horse in the race. But his article
Anatomy of an AI Coup is a must read if
you want to learn more about this, more about these demands,
and more about why critics are concerned that statements about
(13:48):
government efficiency might just be sheep's clothing over a wolf.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Heard heard, Indeed, that's a creepy thought. Really want to
have humans at the wheel if we can, for as
long as we can, if that's cool.
Speaker 5 (14:06):
And you know, yeah, and maybe that makes us sound old,
But the thing is governance by humans. We already know
all the problems that can occur with that particular kind
of structure. We do not know the problems that can
occur with a brand new form of intelligence running the structure.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Well, I know, for my two sents, I guess I'm
certainly not opposed to AI as a tool, you know,
with eyes wide open, using it for you know, certain
things that maybe aren't nearly as high stakes. But I
just I really resent and am sort of offended by
this tech bro move fast break stuff mentality that just
(14:47):
doesn't seem to take into account, like the ramifications on
literally the entire world of just shoving this stuff through
because they think it's neat you know.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
No, yeah, or they can they can control it, right,
maybe maybe if I build it, I can control the
thing that then runs everybody.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
But that's the thing too, right, like think of.
Speaker 5 (15:11):
I know I probably overdo analogies, but thanks to everybody
who writes in if we if we go one right
think of the film Snow Piercer spoilers for Snow Piercer
three to one spoilers. Uh, you know the guy who
is the conductor of the train, he nominally runs the
entire civilization right, because he runs the train. However, the
(15:33):
train cannot deviate from its path because it is on rails. Right,
So you could have a nominally run AI government, right,
that's controlled by a person. But does the AI have
its own set of rails, and if so, how much
autonomy and latitude does the human ruler actually possess?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Minor spoiler alerts as well for West World three two
one spoiler alert, Harris, who plays the conductor in Snow Piercer,
is very much the guy kind of in charge of
Westworld and faces a very similar conundrum of like, you know,
you may be the god of a thing as a human,
(16:15):
but then once you've let that being, that that genie
out of the bottle, it takes on a life of
its own, and you really no longer have control, even
if you built in rails, so to speak, like you're
talking about. I just think it's an interesting parallel those
two characters that are both played by Ed Harris.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Dude, that guy, I don't know, maybe there's something, maybe
we need to talk to Ed. Maybe he knows.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Something, he knows what's up.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
M Yeah, and he's probably a really good hang too,
you know who else. It's totally unrelated. You know who
else turns out to be super into exploring conspiracies, Rick Rubin,
imagine that I had no idea, but apparently it makes sense.
Apparently so Rick, if you're listening.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Uh, come a hang.
Speaker 5 (16:57):
And there's so much more to get to, including some updates,
some of which we mentioned on the ongoing weird thing
with eggs in the United States.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Will it expand abroad?
Speaker 5 (17:09):
Will pause for a word from our sponsors, will keep
this one short, and we'll return with more strange news.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
And we're back. Guys, is going to be rapid fire
update time. Here we go. Start your engines, GIOO. Everybody
remember that guy Eric Adams, mayor of New York City
we've been talking about over and over and over and over.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Again, huge in Turkey, huge and.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Really big in Turkey. Well, guys, the new acting Deputy
Attorney General, Emil I think is how you say, Emil
bove Bove has ordered federal prosecutors in New York to
drop the corruption charges against Eric Adams that we've been
talking about. Yeah, the orders for all the charges against
him to be dismissed, and the dismissal is quote without prejudice,
(17:59):
which means charges could be refiled in the future, but
for now, go away charges, says the acting whatever Attorney General. Interesting, right,
feels a little weird that corruption charges would just go
away like that. It seems like there's a lot of
stuff that was going through the courts that is just
kind of dissipating into nothingness as we speak. This formal
(18:23):
dismissal would have to be filed in a court, you know,
by the same prosecutors that originally filed those charges out
there in the Southern District of New York. An a
motion to dismiss the whole thing would have to be
reviewed by a judge and you know, approved in everything.
But the reasoning here, guys, is that the indictment of
Mayor Eric Adams in September of last year came too
(18:45):
close to the mayoral primary in June, and that it
limited his ability to aid President Donald Trump's crackdown on
immigrants and to fight crime.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Oh so a political maneuver or a greater good.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Argument, That's exactly what it is, a greater good argument
for the folks who are now in charge. So the
same person both said Eric Adams case would be reviewed
by a new Trump appointed US Attorney after the general
election for mayor in November. So there you go. It's
it's all in who you know, right, And.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
You know, I mean this is maybe stating the obvious,
but I just think, you know, corruption should be considered corruption.
You shouldn't get it pass just because it's inconvenient for
somebody else. But it would appear that we are moving
more and more into a nineteen eighty four esque, you know,
model of truth, where like that you don't know what
you think you know says the powers to be. You know,
(19:41):
just because you think something is a certain way, it
doesn't make it true, even though if you know it
to be true. And I just I find that mind boggling,
and it really does my head in.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
I'm fully with you on that. I do feel like
this kind of thing happens no matter who's you know,
elected over office.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
It's true the friends or the people who are political
allies get a little pick me up from the folks
that get in.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
So it's it's quid pro quo, and we need to
stop for a second and check in on this. It's
no secret that the Department of Justice has met with
a lot of controversy in just a few weeks. Right now, especially,
I'm thinking about what have been portrayed as a conspiracy
(20:29):
of reprisals. The Justice Department has fired twelve officials who
had investigated Trump activities, some of which were related to
the previous administration, and then I think it was the
acting Attorney General of the DJ Right now, James McHenry
has sent out termination letters that are kind of speaking
(20:49):
to that quid pro quo that I'm getting a spider
sense about when I hear the Eric Adams stories. McHenry
says in the termination letter for officials investigating some aspect
of Donald Trump's companies or previous administration, he says, Look,
I don't believe you can quote be trusted to faithfully
(21:12):
implement the president's agenda because of your significant role in
prosecuting the president end quote. So I have a question there,
does that logic? Is that logical or is that a
rationalization to punish people or both?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Well, you're not folks who have already been engaged in
actions that view let's say person A as a potential criminal.
Right you're investigating this person for criminal activities, You're not
going to view that person as an objective, you know,
actor for other things that that that person is doing.
(21:49):
Right if you if you have been actively investigating that person.
So I can see the logic. It is unfortunate that
there is no form of objectivity when it comes or
thought of objectivest when it comes to someone who is
in that prosecutor prosecutorial role. I don't know anything. Yeah,
but it's just a it's a freaking weird situation.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
I would say, Yeah, that's that's the pickle too, right,
because is this a a straight up qui pro quo
transactional relationship now that the DOJ is sort of brokering
or are they still just doing their job according to
you know, their mandate, which makes them historically super unpopular
(22:32):
by the way with powerful people.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, yeah, and it is putting the attorneys general against
the you know, the district attorneys they like, the acting
US attorneys in the different districts. In this case, it's
the the acting Deputy Attorney General versus the acting US
Attorney for the Southern District of New York versus all
these other prosecutors and all the other districts versus the
(22:55):
Department of Justice itself. And it's it's all infighting and
chaos and again, I think the whole thing goes back
to that. Maybe some of the strategies we've talked about
make the whole thing chaos, so every good thing seems amazing.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Oh god, yeah, yeah, create the problem that you purport
to solve, right, yes, yeahsh is one on one, the.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Use and the cobra.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
You gotta yes, exactly who's going to win? It's usually
the mongoose.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Well no, no, no, there was that whole thing. Sorry
I wasn't mongoos, it was there was a thing in India, yeah,
the cobra effect, where in India there was a massive
rat problem and in order to deal with that, somebody
had the hair brained, slash genius idea of releasing a
bunch of cobras, which led to them eating and killing
the rats, but then it led to them having a
cobra problem.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
And then to solve the cobra problem, they incentivized hunting cobras,
giving you a lum sun per cobra carcass that you returned,
And what that did was create more cobras, because people
figured out they could farm a cobra quite profitably and
then just sell the dead cobras or some kinds live
Cobra's back to the authorities, so that's the Cobra effect.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And then Totino's pizza roles comes in and it's like,
what is happening here?
Speaker 5 (24:13):
Totino's pizza role, the Cobra of the frozen food aisle.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
That's right, what's the alien's name? And the Chasmo Chasmo
so funny. If y'all haven't seen that, it's so good,
it's really there's also like an uncensored version where Chasmo's
eyeball pops out and rolls across the floor. That they did,
and Totino's leaned right into it. They posted it themselves,
but apparently the Super Bowl and Standards and Practices did
not approve that one.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Oh yeah, guys, we got to keep moving rapid fire here.
Remember that guy, Luigi Mangioni. Yeah, yes, okay, Well we
talked about how there was some funding going on for
him for his legal fees and all of that stuff.
Well we've got a bit of an update. The legal
fees were flowing in. There was originally a give Send
Go fund for him. That's a that's a service or
(24:58):
a website, give send to Go, and there was a
goal of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars set for
Luigi Mangioni's legal fees. They smashed through that really quickly,
and now it has been capped at five hundred thousand
dollars and today, as we record, it is sitting at
three hundred and fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty
(25:20):
two dollars at least as I the last time I
checked the website.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Is this like a gofund me?
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
When we say capped, does it mean it cannot exceed
five hundred k or does that just mean like that's
their stretch.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Goal, that's the goal. The goal is five hundred thousand
right now. Surely it can become much much huger if
they wanted to. But it is just nuts because the
reporting that came out recently was that donations had kind
of topped off and slowed down a lot for Luigi's funds,
and now they're going back up like gangbusters.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Ah. And it is a site that I'm not familiar with.
It's called give Send Go, which is very similar to
gofund me situation. But I don't know what differentiates them
why I would be used instead of that. But yeah,
man Wow five hundred K goal three hundred and sixty
four to twenty two raised.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
YEP.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
It is headed by the December fourth Legal committee, which
is apparently connected with Mangioni's attorney Karen Friedman and Jiffiloh.
I don't know how to say that name. And this
is all this is in the actual news. This is
like a real appears to be a real thing. ABC
News is confirming that this is the actual you know,
funding site and everything.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
And I could answer the question why it's not go
fund Me, which I'm sure I just.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Want to get in front of the emails folks.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
I know a lot of our fellow listeners are probably
shaking their headphones right now. Go fund Me was originally
the crowdsourcing apparatus or platform for Luigi Mangioni until in
December twenty twenty four they canceled all pro Luigi campaigns.
So this other platform is fighting the power there. And
(26:58):
this was This came amid the big move by mainstream
media and a lot of platform owners to scrub discourse
about mangion or to shift the narrative, which we discussed
in previous previous episodes, as well as strange news can.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
I also just say that maybe this is something that
go fund me offers. But I'm seeing there's a lot
of comments attached to folks who have donated, along with
the dollar amounts that they have contributed, and some of
them are very interesting. Here's one from anonymous giver. Jury
nullification refers to a jury's knowing and deliberate rejection of
the evidence or refusal to apply the law, either because
the jury wants to send a message about some social
(27:38):
issue that is larger than the case itself, or because
the result is dictated by law is contrary to the
jury's sense of justice, morality, or fairness. Team Luigi, nothing
more need to be said. Freedom for all those the
system has failed miserably. If we keep this as another one,
we keep this momentum, we can easily be the biggest
fundraising campaign on the site. Free Luigi. We need to
(27:58):
make a change. Good luckilyuis Luigi for president. Those are
all different ones.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Just yeah, hey, And speaking of eating the rich and
the rich in general, remember a company called Bear b A.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Y e R.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Oh my god, I love Bear.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Right all the chemical folks. Of course, they make this
other thing called round Up, round Up. Ready or whatever
all that other stuff, the weed killer round up specifically, Well,
we've talked before and very recently about how their product
round up appears to be causing cancer, at least according
(28:38):
to scientists who are studying the stuff who are not
directly hired by Bear or paid by Bear. And uh, well,
Bear is fighting back, you guys.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
There are protesters all over the place in Iowa, especially
outside the Iowa Capitol Building this this Monday, specifically as
we're recording this week, because there is legislation being proposed.
They're in Iowa at the Capitol Building as well as
in seven other states that would protect pesticide companies like
Bear from claims they failed to warn their customers that
(29:09):
their product causes cancer, because this is what this legislation says,
because their labels on their products complied with the US
Environmental Protection Agencies regulations. So what they're saying is, what
this legislation is saying is that Bear and other companies
who make these weed killers that do cause cancer put
(29:30):
on their labels the stuff that the EPA required them to,
and one of those requirements is not this may cause cancer.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
Right, So the question isn't the science that it's the
amount or the threshold of legal compliance, and these exactly right, okay,
and these grassroots activist whatever, I'll take the applause.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
I'll take the check for that one. Get it? Grassroots pesticide.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Well yeah, the people who are saying, hey, this is
the right legislation. Bear didn't do anything wrong. But you've
also got protesters who were saying, what the heck, guys,
Bear definitely did something wrong, and then you get signs
and they're all like, no, you're wrong.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
So this reminds me of a previous episode, Matt.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Do we know if whether Bear is paying the pro
bear activist or pro bear protesters.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I do not know. I do not know.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I know they're paying the you know, the firms essentially
that are on the PR side, that are working to
fight against us.
Speaker 5 (30:32):
And it is legal to do that. It's just it's
very ethically fraught. But it wouldn't be the first time
large companies or even political groups have have paid people
to be sort of astro turf protesters.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Yes, yes, And let's jump really quickly to ap news.
This was written on April sixteenth, twenty twenty four, so
a while back, but specifically back then when we were
talking about Bear. It discusses how they are about one
hundred and sixty seven thousand legal claims against Bear and
specifically round Up at that time last year in April.
They've settled several of those, but they've lost several others
(31:12):
where there are huge judgments. We talked about one I
think it was ten billion dollars that was awarded for
plaintiffs against Bear because of this whole roundup cancer thing.
And then you jump to now and there's still a
ton of these lawsuits. So basically Bear is attempting to say, hey,
none of these lawsuits are worth their salt anymore because
(31:32):
of this thing. Right, we didn't do anything wrong according
to the EPA regulations specifically for our labels.
Speaker 5 (31:41):
Yeah, which I've just said again, and far be it
for me to accuse anybody of conspiracy. It sounds like
a really weird and specific, hair splitting legalistic point for
people to get organically fired up about, such that they
would go protest, you know what I mean? Yeah, Like
I don't see the occupy EPA warning labels take it
(32:04):
a big move in this direction exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
A couple other stories coming out that are worth your
time to check out there is a weird one that
CNN Science reported on about the shape of Earth's core
and how it is changing and altering, and then it
connects back to previous reporting again, kind of like that
last story reporting for twenty twenty four that talked about
Earth's core slowing down its spin compared to the spin
(32:29):
of the exterior of the Earth that we experience, you know,
that's how we get our days. But the Earth's interior
core seems to have slowed down and is now rotating
the opposite direction that Earth is rotating. And now scientists
have discovered, just through studying earthquakes and a bunch of
other a bunch of other stuff that is a little
over my head, they are noticing that the actual shape
(32:52):
of that solid metal, extremely hot ball that is the
Earth's core is like altering. It's not a sphere, and
it is moving in weird ways and causing volcanic activity
in different places on the Earth's surface because of its
weird shape. Just strange stuff.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Check it out, we'll do.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And also check in on that artificial sun ben that
I think you brought to us, the one in China
that is potentially going to change the entire planet with
infinite energy. They just broke another record, they smashed it
and just came out today. So just keep your eyes
and ears open for stuff about the core and the
sun and the cancer and.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Oh and just by the way, by the way too.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
To add on to that, also check out our previous
episodes from years ago. Yes, sometimes the magnetic bulls just switch. Yeah,
so that's.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
On the way too. We don't know when, but you know,
keep your wits about you.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Good luck with that pole a shift rabbit hole you're
about to go down. All right, We'll be right back
with more strange news.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
And we have returned with more strange news. Got a
couple of handful of fun ones. I thought i'd start
with one relating to some kind of landmark international case
precedents involving the flying of drones. Dateline, Sweden. Man convicted
(34:25):
of drunk driving a drone in Sweden's first case of
its kind, Ben, have you heard about this one?
Speaker 5 (34:34):
This one is new to me, Noel, and I think
the first question everybody has just to clear things up.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer. This guy who
got convicted is not physically himself on the drone, right, because.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
That's why This is important, Ben, because this is a
first of its kind case in terms of the penalty
on a fifty four year old ratvik Man just a
town in Dalarna in central Sweden. He was at a
classic car event flying a drone in a temporary no
(35:11):
fly zone, and police flying their own drone that was
monitoring the event happened to notice this, you know, invader,
this electronic invader. They then traced it back to the
spot where this man was piloting the drone and determined
that he had a blood alcohol content of point sixty
(35:32):
nine parts alcohol per one thousand parts blood. I've never
heard it quite put that way. Maybe this is a
Guardian piece, by the way, so maybe I don't know, Ben,
Is that the same way we measure blood alcohol content here?
Speaker 4 (35:45):
Yeah, you could.
Speaker 5 (35:47):
It's it's not the it's the same concept, but it's
not the same threshold.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Didn't think so, So that makes sense why it's a
little unfamiliar to me. So under Swedish law anything above
point two parts alcohol and when that in Bart's blood,
I don't know why. I think that's funny. It is
very specific is punishable for d w I d uy
one point oh is a mega serious crime. Drunk driving
laws in Sweden are a little bit stricter than they
(36:13):
are in other parts of Europe. In the UK the
limits point eight. In France and Belgium point five. In
Spain it is point five as well. In Romania and
Hungary it's zero. I don't understand. How is that less
strict than point eight? Isn't zero? Like no, no zero
alcohol content? Yeah, right, sorry, maybe it requires a little clarification.
(36:37):
But they do point out in this article in the
Guardian by Miranda Bryant, who is a Nordic correspondent for
The Guardian, that Swedish law is a little bit more
strict than other parts of Europe. However, the paragraph referencing
those different blood alcohol levels ends with in Romanian Hungary
it is zero. Romanian Hungary would be the strictest.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Yeah, that seems like it might be possibly a typo.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
It does seem that way.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
It's oh, actually, dope, Nope, it's in comparison.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Any blood alcohol at all, any blood alcohol at all
over like just the tiniest drop, you know, they'll take
your robtuscin or whatever.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yeah, that is a crime.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Romania and Hungary serious business. They did determine again that
this man had a point sixty nine part parts alcohol
per one thousand parts blood. He admitted to find the drone,
he claimed that he did not fly, later on claiming
he didn't fly the drone under the influence and he
actually blamed a friend who was at presence when the
(37:43):
police arrived. He was fined thirty two thousand Swedish kroner
or two three hundred and forty one pounds or euros,
to be paid across eighty days daily, with daily allotments
of four hundred Swedish croner or about twenty nine euro
The big deal about this is that they imposed the
(38:04):
same penalty on this dude who is flying a remote
controlled aerial device as they would if he were driving
an automobile or you know, a scooter some other kind
of road faring vehicle. Jenny Holden Nystrom, who's the prosecutor,
told SVT, which is a Swedish broadcaster, I have not
seen a case like this before. I am satisfied with
(38:26):
the verdict. Karen Holmant, who is the district court president,
said that they chose to apply the same punishment scale
as it would for drunk driving to the drone case
because quote. It is an aircraft. Even though it is
flown by itself, it is controlled by someone down on
the ground and can fall from a high height and
injure someone. As you said, I'm behind all of this, guys,
(38:48):
I think it makes a lot of sense. You can
wreak a lot of havoc even if you're sober and
flying a drone, let alone, if you are under the influence.
I think this is a precedent that maybe should be
adopted elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 5 (39:00):
Yeah, it makes sense because you can even if you
yourself are not in the vehicle or in the device,
you can create a crash, you can make a collision.
There's a reason drones are such a huge part of warfare,
and with the economy of scale, they're going to continue
to become more sophisticated and more affordable. So regulation or
(39:22):
further regulation, I should say, is inevitable.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
It has to be on the.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Way and potentially larger, wouldn't you say, I mean, like,
the type of drones that we see in warfare are
the size of like, you know, a small aircraft, a
very small aircraft, but they are much larger than the
consumer drones that we see. And as we know, technology
that the government and the military gets first over time
does seem to inch its way into consumer availability.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, we know that we'll see early adopter
behavior play a huge role in what kind of laws
get made for the rest of us. So, just like
just like with any other technology rolling out, it just
takes a few knuckleheads to ruin it for everybody else, right,
(40:09):
And this guy was being a little bit knuckleheaded, especially
with the uh the story of the invisible disappearing pilot
friend that Oh yeah, yeah, that's like, yeah, I think
you've had to You had to have a few drinks
to think that one was gonna work.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Isn't that also very similar to like if you're drunk
driving and you've got a passenger who's sober trying to switch,
you know, switch seats at the last minute to fool
the coppers.
Speaker 5 (40:33):
Yeah, but at that point you have to wonder, like,
why wasn't that person driving in the first place?
Speaker 4 (40:38):
Right?
Speaker 3 (40:38):
It is a very very good point then, But we
know humans are very interesting and complex creatures and often
quite idiotic ones as well. It's very interesting. There's another
article about this on The Independent by Jane Dalton Man
find for a drunk driving drone. I love drunk driving
drone in Sweden. It does point out that very few
countries have outlawed drunk drone driving, but Japan, in a
(41:02):
forward thinking move as they are wont to do, did
this way back in twenty nineteen. So that's pretty interesting,
and I feel like this case may well be noticed
by other countries and adopted, you know, as a precedent.
It It just makes sense because we know drones already
are always in the news for nuisance type behavior, and
(41:24):
this just kind of adds maybe another layer of protection,
you know, to regular folks who might be being menaced
by drones.
Speaker 5 (41:33):
Right, and then we'll see early or we'll see later
iterations of regulatory policy come out, like the kinds of
licenses you may need to obtain when there are larger
drones that are more affordable for people. Do you have
something like the equivalent of a drone trucker license? When
drone deliveries become or if they become a normalized thing,
(41:57):
then you would have to have a license to operate
that commercial drone in that way, Should you have to put.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
In hours like you would as you know Ben with
trying to get a pilot's license, you know, have to
kind of prove that you are qualified to make those
kinds of maneuvers, especially as we start seeing areas getting
denser with these drones, like we were seeing in New Jersey,
right with all of these crazy sightings that turned out
to largely many of them being drones. And then when
there was talk about oh maybe they're UFOs, that caused
(42:25):
more people to send their own drones up, adding to
the chaos. Yeah, well put thanks Ben AnyWho. I think
this is something to keep an eye on and hopefully,
you know, as we know, the law often most always
lags behind the exponential improvement and availability of technology. So
maybe this will be a lesson to be learned throughout
(42:47):
the world. I'm going to move on to another story
if you guys don't mind. This one involves a Brian
Adams concert. Remember Brian Adams Summer of sixty nine. Oh,
she also recently did an interview I think as he's
doing this tour, this kind of like legacy, you know,
nostalgia tour, where he said to an interviewer that the
(43:07):
song Summer of sixty nine is actually about doing the nasty,
It's about like the sex position what not. The year
it was the summer where all he did was sixty
nine baby uh dude, guys, Yeah, he's definitely big uping himself.
Maybe he was being coy, but you know, there certainly
(43:29):
are some interludes implied in that song, which I have
to say. There was a fabulous headline that summed this
whole thing up the story here, and that came from
the website rte dot Ie Plumber of sixty nine. Sewage
blockage halts Brian Adams concert in Perth, Australia. A series
(43:54):
of fat bergs, which we've talked about before and we'll
talk about outside the context of this story. So these
are of course fat grease, toilet tissue rags all built
up into this kind of whole other thing that can
cause massive chaos and sewer systems. So these massive fat
(44:14):
bergs created a huge blockage that caused a sewer backup,
a sewage backup in Western Australia. The Canadian singer songwriter
Brian Adams concert was set to take place at a
local arena and the organizers, the proprietors of the arena,
shut it down while people were already waiting in line
(44:37):
to get in due to what they referred to as
the risk of sewage backing up within the venue's toilets.
Actually that came from the State Water Corporation. They said
that their crews were working to clear the blockage of fat,
grease and rag, which has caused several wastewater overflows at properties.
This came from a statement according to the water authority
(44:58):
the blockage could not be easily dislikes and venue management
took this information very seriously and made the tough call
to cancel the Brian Adams concert. This was of course,
very disappointing to the Brian Adams fans set to attend
Brian Adams Roll with the Punches tour as it made
its way across Australia. Unfortunately, the venue was not able
(45:21):
to reschedule the concert. I would imagine and hope that
concert goers would get a refund wherever they made the
purchase for those tickets, and yeah, we'll call it a day.
But this caught my eye, Matt, because you've been teasing
us with a story for weeks now that you keep
holding back on and into this idea that somewhere in
(45:43):
the world I want to say in the UK, these
fat bergs. These absolutely disgusting, massive globs of congealed grease,
cooking products and other ways that are often kind of
ratking style, held together by wipes and rags and toilet
tissue and can cause all kinds of chaos and municipal
(46:06):
sewer system are actually being used. Like what is it
amber grease or something like that? That disgusting whale, you know,
fatty goo, that is such a sought after material to
make perfume. What is the deal with that, Matt, I've
got to know, dude.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
It's even cooler. Yeah, I do apologize guys, this this
story has been stuck in the pipes ha ha for
a long time. Take Hey, this is it's actually really awesome.
I think we found it in January of this year
early on. It was posted in the BBC. You can
look it up right now. The title is Fatberg's Turned
(46:42):
into Perfume Inside Britain's Bizarre New Industrial Revolution And when
you check this out, it's crazy. There are people from
the University of Edinburgh who are they're in a specialized
program there that they're attempting to find ways to use bacteria,
and mostly bacteria, but other biological life forms like that
(47:04):
to break down stuff that we need as a species
to break down because it's mostly trash or waste or
something that we can't make use of right now, how
do we turn it into something else? Well, it's pretty incredible.
Professor Stephen Wallace is one person that was interviewed for
this story. He specifically and his team take these fat bergs,
(47:26):
apply bacteria to them, and it the bacteria breaks the
fat berg all the way down into this chemical that
smells a bit of pine, like a lovely pine smell,
and then you can sell that product to somebody who
is either making a perfume or is attempting to let's
say scent. There are other chemical products, right, so, like
(47:47):
think about something as simple as pine sal which is
a very it was for a long time a popular
cleaning product here in the United States. But anything else
that has that pine smell, there's there's a different chemical
that is a synthesized chemical that is currently made from
fossil fuels like petroleum oil. But if you could instead
(48:08):
make that from the waste, right the leftover fat burg
that would be revolutionary. And that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 5 (48:15):
Yeah, And just to jump in here on the note
about ambergriss, the waxy substance made from those sperm whales,
civilization does need replacements because I think, obviously due to
some environmental regulations and due to just you know, the
nature of hunting sperm whales, it is exceedingly rare to
(48:38):
find natural amber grease use the way it was in
the past. So these kind of alternative products, even if
they might sound a little gross for some people, I
think we all find the science fascinating and these are
really cool innovations.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Oh yeah, come on, if you could find the stuff
you need to smell good in a fat burg, great,
because ultimately it is just it's a biological process breaking
down a chemical into a different chemicals. There a little
chemical change going on there, but it's also being done
on plastics, you guys, to break them down to make
stuff that smells like vanilla. Like, think about that. Instead
(49:15):
of recycling the way we know recycling to be, what
if you just break down those plastic bottles into vanilla
that you could then put into again, think about how
many candles have vanilla in them somewhere?
Speaker 4 (49:24):
Right? Sure?
Speaker 3 (49:27):
I mean, I guess that reminds me of like kind
of repurposing graywater for example, or you know, we've talked
about how certain types of graywater may well be able
to be purified. I can't remember what municipality was doing this,
but there was some work being done to figure out
how to do that, and there was just what was
referred to often in the reporting as kind of the
(49:48):
ick factor of it all. This I think would carry
a very similar ick factor, like is someone really gonna
be cool with using a product doing them smell good,
putting it on their body that came from a giant,
greasy ball of fat and poop and toilet paper.
Speaker 4 (50:05):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
I mean I would like to think that people could
could you know, see the greater good and get their
heads wrapped around? And I think I certainly could.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yeah, if the n product is just in a little
vial or something, especially if it's used in industrial things,
the end consumer never sees that stuff, right, You just know, oh,
it smells of vanilla or it smells of pine. So
I think the K factor kind of goes away because
we don't have any K factor thinking, Oh, that pine
I currently get in the candle or in the whatever
(50:35):
it is I'm using at home that came from the
stuff that I put in my car pretty much.
Speaker 5 (50:40):
Or food coloring or any any number of additives. One
of the big takeaways here, at least from my perspective,
is that if this gives you a nick factor, it's
time to sit down give yourself real honest inventory of
the other things that you run into that should give
you a nick factor much more so, you.
Speaker 4 (51:01):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (51:02):
But be careful when you open that door, folks. It's
the equivalent of having a UV light with you at
your next hotel room.
Speaker 4 (51:08):
Well.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
Hell, even like factory farming and stuff, and like the
way the conditions in which chickens are kept, you know,
and beef and things like that, it does seem like
people are able to kind of ignore that. But then
things like this that actually could help with conservation might
be a little tougher for them to swallow.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
There's another thing, as article, guys, that I think would
be that kind of tough to swallow thing. There are
folks making like designer handbags out of microbes like that
wouldn't require you know, high end materials or a bunch
of other stuff. You basically three D print and then
sew together a bag that looks like one of these
high end bags. You know, the people would spend hundreds,
(51:47):
if not thousands of dollars on, but it's it's made
by a startup like biology company. I just I wonder
if people would actually do that.
Speaker 4 (51:58):
Someone would do it.
Speaker 5 (51:59):
They're too many people statistically, someone would for sure.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Well, guys, I'm gonna keep this one quick because speaking
of blockages, I actually have a plumber that just showed
up to help me with some leakage from my zewer
line and my garage. So yeah, I'm actually gonna bop
out a little early on this one. But I think
we mainly got to what we wanted to get to
on these stories. But I will be back shortly for
(52:26):
when we record our listener Mail episode.
Speaker 5 (52:29):
And in the meantime, thank you for tuning in, folks.
There's so much we didn't get to. Of course, a
lot of a big thank you to a lot of
folks who had written to me about booby trapped goggles.
We're saving that for our listener Mail segment. Tune in
later this week. You can find us online. In the meantime,
we are conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram, We're conspiracy stuff
(52:51):
on YouTube or some derivation thereof all over the internet.
If you don't sip the social meds, we totally get it.
You can also give us a phone call.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, our number is one eight three three std WYTK.
It's a voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname and say whatever you'd like just do.
Let us know within the message if we can use
your name and message on the air. If instead you'd
like to send us an email, Hey, we've got that too.
Speaker 5 (53:18):
We are the entities. You read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the
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fellow conspiracy realist should know about, or just send us
you know, a nice how you doing, haiku, a limerick.
We love all of those. Do we really write back?
(53:40):
There's one way to find out. Step a little further
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Speaker 2 (54:05):
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