April 13, 2026 • 44 mins
In this week's strange news segment, Ben, Dylan and Noel explore the story of the legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto — and how the New York Times may have finally discovered his real identity. Also, scientists studying microplastics forgot to account for their plastic gloves! A kid finds a human skull during an Easter Egg hunt. All this and more in today's Strange News.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Our colleague Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
They call me Bed.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
You are here.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
If you are tuning into our Strange News program the
evening it publishes, Welcome to April thirteenth, it's a Monday.
That's when we do Strange Newsday right out to Carfield always.
You know, I found something that made me think of
(01:06):
our earlier conversations as we're getting into Strange Newslie and Dylan,
you guys know, we've talked a lot in the past
about plastics and microplastics and how they're getting into pretty
much everything right.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
They're just lousy with the stuff, just.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Lousy with the stuff. You can go to some of
the most remote places on the planet, like underneath Antarctic
ice and you can still find plastic that somehow got there.
This appears to be a little bit of we could
call it, we could.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Call it good news. I think.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Just recently, research revealed that scientists who are tracking microplastic
pollution realized they were in fact measuring their own lab gloves.
This plastic is everywhere. Everything we're testing and touching is
riddled with plastic. Apparently, according to a University of Michigan study,
(02:06):
the culprit that screwed up all their research is a
soap like residue that they use to pop disposable gloves
out of factory molds. So even just a light dry
touch will shed thousands of these particles onto lab equipment
and create false positives. So yes, so years of microplastic
(02:30):
research may need to be reevaluated. We're not saying the
situation still isn't weird and bad, but maybe it's not
as bad as we thought.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well that's good to know, I like, not as bad
as we thought. That's always a suitable outcome.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
That's always good to hear. Good news. So we thought
we would start with that one and then we'll get
into some stuff that is funny, some stuff that's disturbing.
Some stuff that is downright not good news. We're going
to go to space. You're going to attempt to solve
a very old mystery about bitcoin. But Noel, Before we
(03:06):
do that, let's say we pause for a word from
our sponsors, and man, you gotta tell me about this
Easter egg hunt.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Okay, let's do it. And we have returned and boy,
oh boy, somebody found the golden egg then, But it
wasn't the one you might think. It was a human skull,
like an actual human stop. Okay, yeah, headline from The
Guardian human skull discovered during Easter egg hunt near Los Angeles.
(03:36):
We're talking to Forest Park in Long Beach, where a
nice fun community easter egg hunt resulted in the discovery
of a partially buried human skull at DeForest Park over
there in Long Beach. California Police confirmed this discovery to
the Guardian and told them in a statement on Tuesday
(03:57):
that the La County Medical Examiner's Office responded to the
scene and that quote, the remains have been confirmed as human.
We now have a case that's being opened. The Medical
Examiner's Office will be leading that investigation. That office put
out their own statement confirming that there was human remains
(04:17):
and saying that they had recovered a quote skeletonized love
that term human skull and mandible, and that it was
going to investigate the remains. Obviously, in any situation where
human remains are discovered, foul play would seem to be
front of mind or front of skull. Man A man. Yeah,
it doesn't identify the person who discover it, which would
(04:39):
seem to indicate. Ben correct me if I'm wrong that
it was likely a minor.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Sadly, yeah, I mean people can refuse, I believe, legally
to have themselves identified in public in this kind of situation.
But it does seem to indicate it might be a minor.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah. Police have cordoned off a portion of the park
placed a white crime scene canopy over the area where
the skull was found. We've got some aerial footage captured
by sky five. I believe that is an aerial unit
for kt LA, the news outlet at there in Los Angeles.
And yeah, man, it looks like it's just the top
(05:19):
the dome peeking up out of the grounds. And by
the way, when we say a white tarp, we're talking
about like kind of a tent situation, like with the
legs and like a white canopy. Very very very curious.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I was listening to my buddy Jonesy on weird af
News and he's from the Los Angeles County area and
Long Beach. Certain areas of Long Beach are pretty high crime.
So I do wonder what led to this situation. Gosh,
seems like it would have been, you know, quite some
time in the past for this level of decomposition to
(05:53):
have occurred. Are we talking serial killer? Are we talking
gangland crime? And disposing of the of the of the evidence?
Very very curious.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, And where is the rest of the body. That's
a question we can get to. I do want to
say that the New York Times and their reporting did
confirm that the skull was located by a child, So it.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Seemed like that was entirely Thanks for me for picking
that one out, Ben, not a whole heck of a
lot to add there. I just thought we'd, you know,
lead with sort of a macabre Easter story, you know,
given the season and all of that stuff. Sunday's discovery
follows a recent announcement that this is from the Guardian
piece by California Sonoma County Sheriff's Department confirming the human
(06:37):
remains discovered on a beach in twenty twenty two belonged
to a missing banker last seen in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So people can disappear, And this sounds like when we're
reading stories about this area in particular, it sounds pretty
heavily trafficked. This is not like a remote, middle of
nowhere Sopranos style body don't being.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Spot No, No, I've been to Long Beach and I
mean it's definitely beachy beach type community, but then there
are parts of it that are much more urban, you know,
strip Molly kind of stuff, and I imagine that that
was the kind of area that this park was located,
though I'm not exactly familiar with the DeForest Park area
of Long Beach ever, really has kind of been more
in the tourist y, you know, sex on the beach
(07:22):
sipping kind of area.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
And I hope that this kid in question was young
enough to not be permanently scarred by such a ghoulish
Easter egg.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Hunt, possibly or just possibly old enough to think it
was kind of badass.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, the kind of kid like us who loved scary
stories to tell in the Dark Man.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh man, those illustrations haunt me to this day. Man.
Oh yeah, it's crazy that they let children buy that, Dude.
Not only did they let children buy it, it was
like top of the shelf facing forward at the book fair.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It was an incredibly popular kids series, which is Yeah,
I think.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
It explains why we are the way we are. Ben, Yeah,
one hundred percent agreed there, Noel. I hope that this
teaches everybody to be aware of their surroundings and hopefully
right and hopefully.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Very sensible take a force, Ben, trying to be diplomatic.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Hopefully the authorities will be able to use DNA and
other forensic techniques to discover the identity of this person. Ben,
shall we pivot, Yes, speaking of areas that are very
places in the world, Yeah, this is out of this world.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
We're going to let's do.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
One of their most remote places human civilization knows about.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The moon.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Earth's moon has been in the news in a big,
big way. As we are recording today on Wednesday, April eighth,
the four person crew of Artemis two is making history
and in a strange, an inspiring trend, they are unifying
a lot of Americans and a lot of humanity. Everybody
(09:12):
on the planet, virtually everybody on the planet really hopes
that this goes well. Despite all our terrestrial differences. I
think people understand that the ultimate goal of the human
species is to expand beyond the bounds of Earth, and
ran across a story that we wanted to share with everybody.
(09:32):
Not to be outdone by the United States and recent
Chinese lunar plans, Moscow has announced its own plan to
establish sovereign Russian territories on the Moon because they're doing
so well on Earth.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
All right, right, let's do it. What do we got then? Ax?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah, let's go to sources like TVP World, where the
journalist Maria Kamensky is reporting that Sergei Chernishev, the vice
president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, just announced in
a Presidium meeting about space exploration, that Russia's space program
(10:14):
will ultimately allow Moscow to establish control over lunar territories.
They want to divide the Moon up a minute, Earthly.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Power, Wait a minute, I thought that was not on
the table. I thought we had something in place internationally
speaking that nobody owns the Moon. Yes, that is correct.
All the technical things like that have more and more
seemed to be being thrown out the window.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Right, like being unable to weaponize space. You know, this
lunar program, according to the sources, will provide new knowledge
and technologies for lunar exploration and ultimately it will help
establish sovereign Russian territories on the lunar surface. This is
a quote that comes to us via the BBC. In
(11:01):
the same, very same meeting, Jennishev said, we are also
going to have further delays to our existing lunar program.
Our next mission, Luna twenty six, has been postponed to
two thousand and twenty eight, a year later than previously planned.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So are we talking about another space race here?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Ben, We are immediately talking about another space race here, Nol.
Things are heating up. This is something that I want
to go back to your excellent point about various international
treaties saying no one can weaponize space. No one can
own the moon, if you think about it right now,
(11:41):
because the Moon is so far as we know, unoccupied
by other living things. All you have to do really
to make something on the Moon a sovereign territory is
point to a spot on a lunar map and say okay,
that's ours.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well and then be able to defend it. Right, that's
a part of it as well.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Right, but right now, who can get there to stop
you from saying that hunbers good?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You know?
Speaker 3 (12:06):
So it's almost an academic point at this juncture because
the science isn't there. I wanted to ask you, guys,
do you think this is more of like a PR
thing or do you think they are seriously going to
attempt to establish an outpost demand outpost on the Moon?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, it would seem that they're kind of behind the
eight ball a little bit if that is their intent.
So I would maybe argue it's a little bit of
flexing and posturing and PR. Yeah, I would.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
I would think so too. It's trying to send an
international signal and Tennessee hopped in with a zinger in
the chat. Can you share it with the class, Dylan.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
They're just chopping at the bit to ANX moon CRIMEA.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yes, there it is to addex moon CRIMEA. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts folks on the idea of
the new space race. Do you think that Artemis two
in particular and the activities of private space exploration companies
have inspired other powers to be a bit more ambitious.
(13:14):
What's next for the moon ed? Let us know if
you would go Noel, would you go to the moon?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
You know this has come up a time or two,
and I'm starting to soften to the idea I might
go to the Moon.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to take a chance. But with
the science here as brilliant as the people at NASA
and so on are, it's still taking a chance. You know,
it's a crazy road trip.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Take a chance on the moon. Why not take a
chance on moon? Yes? Yes, Sorry.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
We've been working on a Eurovision episode for Ridiculous History
that's coming up, and I think you and I both
have been listening to a lot of eclectic music.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, I mean, you know, just as per usual, but
one hundred percent I'm really excited about that one. Should
we take a tiny little break and then come back
with some more some more stories. Absolutely, let's do it. Ben,
I gotta follow up with your Moon talk and your
(14:15):
Artemis two talk. And this is a little bit of
a lighter hearted story, not exactly a Houston we have
a problem, but it did result in a couple of
calls to Houston from the astronauts on the Artemis two spacecraft,
one of which had to do with space poopin spacepoop. Yeah, yeah,
(14:37):
it's obviously a thing, you very human function, and something
that really needs to be dealt with when you're in
a zero gravity environment and boy, oh boy, you can't
hold it forever, can you. And they were really in
a bit of a pickle because it's a very cramped environment.
You really don't want to be blowing it up, you know,
for your for your co pilots, or your one toilet.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Four people, you know what that means By this point
in the game, they are all going to be well
aware of each other's poop schedule, particular poop schedule, and
particular odors.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Let's just say correct. Sorry, Gross didn't mean to take
it there, but we had to. So it would appear
that the four astronauts currently on a mission to the
Moon in the Artemis program's first crude flight not long
after takeoff, ran into a bit of a conundrum involving
their space toilet. We're just gonna call it that because
(15:32):
it's fun spacecraft facilities. Space toilet is more fun. It
was due to a fact that not enough water potable
water had been transferred into the dispenser to keep the
pumps sufficiently wet, so there was a pump failure detection
(15:52):
that picked up on this and caused it to automatically
shut down. Artemis's flight director jud Freeling said that said
as much in a press conference on Thursday, and then
went on with this quote pulling from the Smithsonium who
covered the press conference. So, once we figured out we
didn't put enough water and we put more in there,
made sure that the pump was primed, and then the
(16:14):
toilet came right back up, so crisis averted, it would seem. Yeah.
Mission specialist Christina Coke implemented the fix from space, and
during those first six hours of the flight before they
were able to get the toilet running, at least one
crew member had to pee into a bag. I mean,
(16:36):
we've all been there. Yeah, something, it's something, right, Gator
eight bottles on road trips between gas stations on like
a long and lonesome road. Urine collection includes tubes, bags,
and tanks that ultimately vent the liquid out into space,
and then that solid waste gets stored in bags and
(16:57):
brought back to Earth. So it's good to know they're
not just dumping poop into space.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Just the liquid weights, right, And it's important to know
that despite all the poop jokes, we're making everything that
goes well or malfunctions on Artemis two is an invaluable
learning experience. So every time something happens in this mission
(17:22):
and it goes according to plan, a special cadre of
people who just study that aspect of the thing start
reevaluating their plans. They'll say, this worked, this could be better,
this malfunctioned. How do we fix it? How do we
guarantee it goes more smoothly in future missions? And the
toilet facilities are no exception. There's a poop team at
(17:45):
mission control. They're they're toilet guys.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You know exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Hey, did you did you guys hear about the Microsoft
Outlook problem?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Well that was next my head. What's that, Dylan, everyone's
having even in space. Microsoft Outlook sucks, Dylan, give it
to us. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
I supposely they had two instances of Microsoft Outlook open
on Artemis and they had to have someone remote in
from the ground to fix it.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Oh, that's right, and neither of the instances. We're worrying.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
If I recall yeah, well, i'd asktin us need email.
Come on, you can't even get away from it in orbit, and.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Come on, y'ah, come on, let's put the screens down
enjoy that overlook effect. Isn't that funny?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Though?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
It's strangely validating us being sort of having Microsoft products
foisted upon us as well through work, and just knowing
how terrible things like teams and outlook can be. It's
just good to know that the top minds and space
science are also dealing with the same problems as we
are back here on Earth.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
So we've got a poop team, we've got a food team,
and we officially have an IT help desk in space,
which makes a lot of sense. I also want to
shout out a conversation I was having with one of
our fellow conspiracy really fellow space nerd about the timing here,
because to be it looks like four very smart people
(19:09):
got together and said, we just need to get as
far away as possible from Earth for a little bit.
We just got to step out and take a breath,
and maybe when we come back all of these things
will have worked out.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
These two we hope so well. The good news is
in space, no one can hear you scream at your outlook.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And in space no one can hear you.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Far except your you know, neighbors, if you're.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Inside, Yeah, if you're inside the craft, So maybe you
step outside for a far I don't know if anybody's
done the first space flatulation yet.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Yeah, it may be a good way of propulsion, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Maybe maybe we have nothing but the best wishes for
the brave crew of Artemis two. They're they're really doing
phenomenal stuff and hopefully they're paving the way for future explorations.
Maybe one day soon, whether Russian, American, or Chinese, we
(20:10):
will see a manned outpost on the moon. What do
you guys think will happen in our lifetimes?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Hmmm tbd. Leaning towards maybe yeah, Yeah, skeptical but optimistic.
That's that's the best way.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
And as in all things, and with that, we want
to be skeptical and optimistic about a new plot twist
in a long standing conspiracy. We all remember bitcoin?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Right? Do you still have do you guys still have bitcoins?
I got rid of it. I was I was worried
it was going to go to zero because it just
plummeted and I was just like, get me out of here.
I never had a ton I just kind of wanted
to be part of the conversation, and a buddy of
mine that was into it sort of got me into it.
I did keep my ethereum and a couple of other ones,
but yeah, I was just kind of like done with it.
The rollercoaster of emotion was too much for me to handle. Right.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Yeah, there is a mystery wrapped up in bitcoin. Of course,
bitcoin is full of controversies. It's full of use cases.
There are any variety of coins you can participate in now.
But up until quite recently, one of the biggest mysteries
of bitcoin was the identity of its creator, Satoshi Knakamoto.
(21:29):
We talked about this in our previous episodes on bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Can we have a cool like cyber nickname? He did?
Speaker 3 (21:38):
I believe, and he's been The guy's real identity or
the group's real identity, has been proposed and speculated about
for years.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
He's a pseudonymy.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
The person has never been identified Noel, But The New
York Times just published an investigation this by journalists John
Kerry Row and Dylan Friedman. Pardon my possible mispronunciation there.
This came out today. This came out this morning as
we're recording. It is called My Quest to Solve Bitcoin's
(22:14):
Great Mystery. It's a hell of a it's a hell
of a ride, folks. Bitcoins creator, using the pseudonym Sutoshi Nakamoto,
has gotten away unidentified for the better part of two decades.
But these journalists say a trail of clues buried deep
in crypto lore led them to the real identity of Nakamoto.
(22:36):
They say it's a fifty five year old computer scientist
named Adam Beck Tracks It also that but that name
as well sounds like a pseudonym, does it not?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It sure does, Ben, I mean in terms of the
age of the individual background, do you know what I mean?
I could just see that. And I'm really glad that
you brought this one up in because would love to
follow it up with another unmasking story that we have
not talked about yet. But yeah, what do we have?
Are we skeptical? Is this considered proven beyond the shadow
of a doubt? Where are we? This is interesting? All right?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
So here's what they use to build the case. They
say that they've analyzed historical records, technical writing, other comms,
and if they get this verified, they will solve one
of the greatest mysteries in the world of tech. Because
Satoshi was a master of staying anonymous on the Internet,
(23:33):
which is increasingly difficult, so left very few, if any,
digital footprints. But Satoshi did write a lot about bitcoin,
including the nine page white paper where he outlines the invention.
He has a ton of posts on bitcoin talk for him.
That's an online message board where people get together to discuss,
(23:54):
you know, to fanboy about pitcoin and probably to speculate
on the prices. We know that there are also emails
that Satoshi sent to early bitcoin adopters. We know that
various programmers who interacted with Satoshi have, for good or ill,
released hundreds of emails that appear to be from him.
(24:18):
We know his associations with other not quite hacker groups,
but online groups. If you go down this rabbit hole,
you see that people have been speculating about mister Back,
Adam Back, as a possible satoci in disguise for a
long time. Because over the past a dozen years, Noel
(24:43):
and Dylan, this guy Adam Back has built an empire
of bitcoin related companies. He's one of the most influential
members in the overall bitcoin community. So for a long
time people said, if there's someone who's Satoshi, this is
one of our top suspects.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Okay, sounds pretty conclusive, ISHU.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Well, okay to us, Yes, a plot twist right after
a word from our sponsors, and we've returned, get this
guy's The journalists actually fly out to Las Vegas to
meet mister Back, who was scheduled to speak at the
(25:24):
Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference at the Venetian Resort, so
they wanted to just learn more about him and do
some more research. This journalist spoke with mister Back after
watching him predict on a panel that bitcoin would reach
a trading value of around a million easy in five
(25:48):
to ten years. He was also, by the way, speaking
on what they call the Nakamoto stage. Okay, a little
other notes. Yeah, but here here's another twist. As we
saw the story, this has.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Not been confirmed.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The mystery is unraveling, but we still don't have it
completely solved. It's like we're playing that board game Clue,
and we have the murder weapon and we have the room,
but we don't have the identity of the killer just yet.
And Adam Back, who by the way is a British
national fired back already. Today he spoke with the BBC
(26:26):
in response to this New York Times article that again
just came out this morning and he said, Nope, I
am not Satochi Nakamoto. This is confirmation bias. I am
an early adopter with a laser focus on the social
implications of cryptography, online privacy, electronic cash. But the thing is,
(26:50):
if you look at back online activity, the timeline matches
up with a lot of stuff on the Satochi side.
So it's he's looking sus for this one. We're not
saying it's bad. Bitcoin has changed the world, but the
identity of Sutoshi still remains a secret for now. Keep
(27:12):
an eye on this story because we think the developments
are going to come in pretty quickly here. While we're
gonna we're gonna let that one simmer and Noel, let's
go to another story.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What do we have next? Well, this is a bit
of an older one, but I just we haven't mentioned
it at all, and it's something we've definitely talked about
in the past. The much debated and uh you know,
much speculated upon identity of the British street artist known
as BANKSI. I think we're all fans of this individual's work.
(27:43):
We all really enjoyed the kind of interesting hybrid docu
slash mockumentary Exit through the Gift Shop, the Doctor Brainwash
of it all. It's such a cool film because it is,
on the one hand, documentary telling the story of Banksy
and his like very politically charged street art graffiti work
and the whole hubbub in the art world about like
(28:05):
how you know, the value of street art literally monetarily
and of course culturally, and then it sort of veers
into this weird, sort of controlled narrative involving this other
street artist named doctor mister Brainwash I think is his name.
So if y'all haven't seen that out in Conspiracy Realist Land,
highly recommend it because it is red meat for the
(28:26):
kind of stuff we talk about on this show. And
a big part of the whole myth of Banksy is
the anonymity, you know, and that's a big deal. It
had a lot to do with the the wild speculation
in terms of art value, you know, and and all
that stuff in terms of like how much these pieces
(28:46):
would go for. There's been this ongoing thing that is
also addressed in the documentary where you have folks supposedly
working for Banksy out on the streets in various cities
selling either fake banks See pieces that may well be real,
and you've got stories about people finding real ones, and
(29:07):
that's still going on to this day. There's actually this
Diamond District dude named Moses the Jeweler that I follow
who recently bought up every one of these you know,
maybe real maybe fake Banksy pieces from this guy on
the street and he asked him what his deal was
and he said he was hired by somebody to do this.
So I just I love this stuff. It's just, oh
(29:28):
the speculation is so fun and it just that mystery,
like as we know with things like the Georgia guidestones,
which by the way, we should talk about this Atlanta
Journal Constitution podcast that is supposedly Unmasked RC Christian, but
that's maybe a story for another day. I think we
could do a whole episode on that.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
That's the one Unmasked attempted to unmask who was responsible
for the destruction of the guide stones. And I want
to give a big shout out to our friend of
the show, Christopher Hasiotis, who originally pitched that to AJAC
apparently amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Well, that's that's a story very near and dear to us.
It was a documentary short that I made many years ago,
and we sort of repurposed for the for the stuff
they Don't Want You to Know YouTube channel, and it's
something that we've been really interested. But I think our
takeaway was always it's way more interesting when you don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah, like the idea that banks he might be just
a pseudonym of a group of activist artists, and they've
been linked to everything from like beyond art groups, even
musical acts have been accused of being Banksy.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Well, specifically the electronic music producer I think his name
is three D or two D rather he I mean,
I forget. He's the guy that makes all the beats
or a lot of the production for the incredible and
influential electronic group Massive Attack, who I am a huge, huge,
huge fan of. And that speculation was tied to a
(30:54):
twenty sixteen academic study that used geographic profiling to map
the movement of so the supposed bank see as an
individual based on the popping ups of various works, and
in that piece, the name Robin Gunningham was also mentioned.
In addition to this producer from Massive Attack, it would
(31:17):
appear that Robin Gunningham, a former Bristol Cathedral School student
from I believe Leeds, has been linked to Banks's identity
as far back as two thousand and eight, and of
all places. I don't mean this to sound any kind
of way. I just think of Reuters as more like
financial kind of stuff. But they do some interesting reporting
(31:38):
and they are the ones who broke the story, and
there is quite an in depth piece that they put
out called in Search of banksee the British street artist's
identity has been debated and closely guarded for decades. A
quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed
out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan and uncovered
much more than a name. I actually think we could
probably do a whole episode on this, because there's a
(32:00):
lot of good info here, a lot of interesting forensic
kind of work looking at various sources and speaking to
people on the ground. So I do think that we
can maybe put a pin in this one for a
larger discussion, But for now, it would appear that this
Robin Gunningham individual is most likely the true identity or
(32:23):
of at least the individual known as Banksy and Ben.
To your point, I don't think this precludes it from
being a group. I mean, we know from the documentary
as well a gift shop that the occurrences of these
kinds of things and the way they would pop up
simultaneously in far flung parts of the globe indicate that
there's clearly some collaboration going on, and the Banksy might
(32:47):
be the ringleader and the vision behind the whole thing.
But then of course there's going to be you know,
when you're dealing with wheat paste and stencil type art.
Anybody can do that anywhere. You just have to have
the kind of the organizational aspects in place and then
the singular kind of vision, because that is absolutely a
unifying factor in the work of Banksy and I.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Want to do an episode on this Bitcoin mystery or
return an update episode, because I forgot to mention folks
that obviously Adam Back is not the only person who's
been accused of being satoci, but he is the one
who looks the best for being the culprit, and multiple
(33:30):
other folks who also were strong candidates to be Saitoci
even went to court over this. In twenty fifteen, there
was a similar investigation, not by New York Times but
by Wired and Gizmoto that said, hey, Satoshi is actually
an Australian computer scientist guy named Craig Wright, and Wright
(33:52):
responded in an opposite way to the response of Adam Back.
He went to multiple media outlets the BBC and said, yeah,
I am Satoci.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
I can prove it.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
But the bitcoin community did not believe Craig Right, and
after years of claiming to be the inventor of bitcoin,
the case went to court and a High Court judge
in the United Kingdom conclusively ruled that Craig Right is
not Satoci. That's another thing, like why would you impersonate
(34:26):
someone like that? Why would you if you knew you
weren't Banksy, why would you say that you were Banksy?
If you knew you were not Satoci, why would you
say you were? Is it just for attention or is
it a mental instability thing, like when police get all
these crazy folks calling tip lines and claiming to be killers.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Well, one thing that's happening in terms of the response
to this information, which by the way isn't particularly new,
As I said, It's been reported as far back as
two thousand and eight. A lot of the comments around
this on redde and various forums is that, yeah, everyone
knew that the guy's name has been you know, linked
(35:05):
to him for many, many years. And there was even
a pretty famous interview with the electronic music artist Ah
Goldie who, in referring to Banksy accidentally calls him Rob
on the radio. And another Rob in question was the
Massive Attack guy that I was talking about, whose name
is Robert del Naja. But then, of course now we
have Rob and Gunningham, and again a lot of this
(35:27):
chatter is like duh, I'm from London and it's been
an open secret for a long time that this is
who it was. And the kind of commentary around it
is leave Banksy alone, and a lot of people saying
I am Banksy, you know, like Spartacus style, right, because
it's like, come on, we are we are in a
world where so many things are just like everyone's just
(35:49):
trying to demystify everything all the time, and like let
us have some mystery man. Leave banks alone.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Reuter's I don't I don't think it would be particularly
great for Bitcoin for Sutoshi to be conclusively identified either.
And we're big fans of mystery, but we want to
hear from you in this one, folks, because this will
definitely end up being an episode or a series of
episodes in the future. I think we could combine the
(36:16):
two with since rastifinding a third, my rule of three
structure burned into my brain is saying is screaming we
got to find a third infamously famous unidentified person.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Well, Ben, to your point about the unmasking of the
Bitcoin guy affecting not necessarily being good for the price
of bitcoin or for just bitcoin in general. That is
another thing that's being speculated about this Robin Gunningham thing.
Is a lot of people are saying that it could
cause the price of banksy works to skyrocket, but then
there are just as many people saying that it could
(36:51):
cause them to tank because it removes some of that
mystery around it. So I'm a little interested to see
what actually happens in that regard.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
But before we go, since we were exploring space earlier
in Strange News, we wanted to get to some quotes
about one of our favorite mysteries of space, the existence
of extraterrestrials.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
That's right, Ben. This comes to us from Tennessee Republican
Representative Tim burchet who said the American people would be
quote up at night worrying if they knew what he's
been briefed on about extraterrestrial life. He told Newsmax host
Rob Finnerty this past week, I've been briefed by just
(37:36):
about every alphabet agency there is, and I'll just say this,
if they were to release the things I've seen, you'd
be up at night worrying about thinking about this stuff.
Burchett is a member of the House Task Force on
the Declassification of Federal secrets, and he recalled a briefing
that happened prior on a particular issue regarding extraterrestrial life
(37:58):
that he said would have set the earth on fire
and unglued the country if released, they would demand answers,
he said, without going into further detail. So that always
gets me, folks.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
You know the thing where people warn you about information
at the same time telling you that they can't tell
you the information. It's such a black box, And the
question becomes is that overall helpful to the public. I
would say maybe, but because we don't know the content
(38:34):
of what this politician saw. We don't really know how
we can react. And the way that he's phrased it
doesn't necessarily it's vague enough that people could imagine what
they want, you know, like it could be just man
made tech that has been suppressed or mistaken for extraterrestrial stuff.
There could be capabilities that rival powers have that kept him.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Up at night. Yeah, and it does come up this
conversation that he had with Newsmax, something that we've mentioned previously. Uh,
the sort of disgraced I guess we could say Republican
representative Matt Gates speaking also, I believe on a podcast
about knowledge of alien human hybrid breeding programs, and that
(39:19):
would be a little bit above and beyond what you're
talking about. Then if something like that were to exist,
and there's a lot of questions that would be required,
you know, to have answers to in order to justify
such a program existing.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Right, people are out here teleport in waffle house.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Oh dude, talk about that one. Man? We haven't I
don't want to me mentioned that one. And I'm curious
your thoughts. And I only saw that as a headline.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Who was it who was it that was saying that, yeah, okay,
So we'll keep this wood short as we're wrapped up.
A FEMA official, a top FEMA official named Greg Phillips
claims he was once teleported to a waffle house uh
specifically in Rome, Georgia, in our own home state. The
(40:02):
New York Times interviewed two dozen workers and regulars at
the waffle house, so regardless ofbout crazy this story might sound,
they followed up with the with the actual.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Waffle house on the ground, would do right. If you
want to learn more about the.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
History of waffle House, check out our Ridiculous History episode again.
Phillips is an interesting character because in December he was
appointed to a top position within FEMA, the US disaster
Relief agency, and he went on a podcast just a
month later in January twenty twenty five and said he
(40:44):
was teleported in an incredibly frightening moment. His car was
lifted up while I was driving and transported fifty miles
to the Diner chain waffle house, and this was the
Onward podcast. He also said teleporting is no fun. You
know what's happening, but you can't do anything about it,
(41:05):
so you just go. You just go with the ride,
and wow, what just an incredible adventure.
Speaker 5 (41:11):
It all was, Okay, okay, man, I wonder if there
are like secret portals in waffle houses, sort of like
that closet in that diner in the Stephen King book
in the way about the Kennedy assassination and traveling back
in time.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
And obviously, since this guy's a high level government official,
he has taken a lot of heat for this. People
called him unqualified. They said, you know, he's nuts, He's
not the right person for this job. But despite all
the criticism, which just accelerated after this waffle house story,
(41:52):
Phillips doubled down and he said, look, the incident occurred
while I was heavily medicated, and I don't necessarily think
this was aliens. It was a miracle performed by God.
He also went on truth Social and said people are
twisting his words. The word teleportation was not mine. It
(42:13):
was used by someone else in the conversation, reaching for
language to describe something with no easy name. The more
accurate get this, guys, the more accurate biblical terms are
translated or transported. These are not new ideas for people
of faith. I am so close to throwing my micro
(42:34):
my headphones. This is what a bizarre story that doesn't
need to be news.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, and can I just say that I think the
universe is listening whoever's responsible for these teleportation portals, because
my kid literally just texted me asking if I wanted
to go to waffle House with them in a little
bit phenomenal.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
You should do a huge waffle House fans, and we're
huge fans of you. Hello, Conspiracy Realist. Thank you so
much for tuning in to our strange news program. We'll
be back with the episodes. We'll be back with listener mail,
and in the meantime, we'd love for you to join us.
You can find us on the lines. You can call
us on the phone. You can always send us an email.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Reach out to us on the lines at the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social
media platform of choice. You can also give us a
call at one eight three three STDWYTK to leave a
voicemail at the sound of Ben's dulcet tones. Let us
know a nickname you'd like us to use, and give
us permission to use your audio on the show, and
(43:39):
you may well hear yourself on one of our weekly
listener mail episodes. If you don't want to do any
of that, you can always just send us a good
old fashioned email. We are the entities that.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware,
yet 'd afraid. Sometimes the void rights back and give
us a random fact. We'll give you one in return.
And hey, if you are Sutoshi Nakamoto, reach out to us. Man,
We're cool, We're cool. Hang, we'll take We'll take a bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't want
(44:30):
you to know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Our colleague Matt is on adventures and will be returning soon.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
They call me Bed.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
You are here.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
If you are tuning into our Strange News program the
evening it publishes, Welcome to April thirteenth, it's a Monday.
That's when we do Strange Newsday right out to Carfield always.
You know, I found something that made me think of
(01:06):
our earlier conversations as we're getting into Strange Newslie and Dylan,
you guys know, we've talked a lot in the past
about plastics and microplastics and how they're getting into pretty
much everything right.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
They're just lousy with the stuff, just.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Lousy with the stuff. You can go to some of
the most remote places on the planet, like underneath Antarctic
ice and you can still find plastic that somehow got there.
This appears to be a little bit of we could
call it, we could.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Call it good news. I think.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Just recently, research revealed that scientists who are tracking microplastic
pollution realized they were in fact measuring their own lab gloves.
This plastic is everywhere. Everything we're testing and touching is
riddled with plastic. Apparently, according to a University of Michigan study,
(02:06):
the culprit that screwed up all their research is a
soap like residue that they use to pop disposable gloves
out of factory molds. So even just a light dry
touch will shed thousands of these particles onto lab equipment
and create false positives. So yes, so years of microplastic
(02:30):
research may need to be reevaluated. We're not saying the
situation still isn't weird and bad, but maybe it's not
as bad as we thought.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well that's good to know, I like, not as bad
as we thought. That's always a suitable outcome.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
That's always good to hear. Good news. So we thought
we would start with that one and then we'll get
into some stuff that is funny, some stuff that's disturbing.
Some stuff that is downright not good news. We're going
to go to space. You're going to attempt to solve
a very old mystery about bitcoin. But Noel, Before we
(03:06):
do that, let's say we pause for a word from
our sponsors, and man, you gotta tell me about this
Easter egg hunt.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Okay, let's do it. And we have returned and boy,
oh boy, somebody found the golden egg then, But it
wasn't the one you might think. It was a human skull,
like an actual human stop. Okay, yeah, headline from The
Guardian human skull discovered during Easter egg hunt near Los Angeles.
(03:36):
We're talking to Forest Park in Long Beach, where a
nice fun community easter egg hunt resulted in the discovery
of a partially buried human skull at DeForest Park over
there in Long Beach. California Police confirmed this discovery to
the Guardian and told them in a statement on Tuesday
(03:57):
that the La County Medical Examiner's Office responded to the
scene and that quote, the remains have been confirmed as human.
We now have a case that's being opened. The Medical
Examiner's Office will be leading that investigation. That office put
out their own statement confirming that there was human remains
(04:17):
and saying that they had recovered a quote skeletonized love
that term human skull and mandible, and that it was
going to investigate the remains. Obviously, in any situation where
human remains are discovered, foul play would seem to be
front of mind or front of skull. Man A man. Yeah,
it doesn't identify the person who discover it, which would
(04:39):
seem to indicate. Ben correct me if I'm wrong that
it was likely a minor.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Sadly, yeah, I mean people can refuse, I believe, legally
to have themselves identified in public in this kind of situation.
But it does seem to indicate it might be a minor.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah. Police have cordoned off a portion of the park
placed a white crime scene canopy over the area where
the skull was found. We've got some aerial footage captured
by sky five. I believe that is an aerial unit
for kt LA, the news outlet at there in Los Angeles.
And yeah, man, it looks like it's just the top
(05:19):
the dome peeking up out of the grounds. And by
the way, when we say a white tarp, we're talking
about like kind of a tent situation, like with the
legs and like a white canopy. Very very very curious.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I was listening to my buddy Jonesy on weird af
News and he's from the Los Angeles County area and
Long Beach. Certain areas of Long Beach are pretty high crime.
So I do wonder what led to this situation. Gosh,
seems like it would have been, you know, quite some
time in the past for this level of decomposition to
(05:53):
have occurred. Are we talking serial killer? Are we talking
gangland crime? And disposing of the of the of the evidence?
Very very curious.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, And where is the rest of the body. That's
a question we can get to. I do want to
say that the New York Times and their reporting did
confirm that the skull was located by a child, So it.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Seemed like that was entirely Thanks for me for picking
that one out, Ben, not a whole heck of a
lot to add there. I just thought we'd, you know,
lead with sort of a macabre Easter story, you know,
given the season and all of that stuff. Sunday's discovery
follows a recent announcement that this is from the Guardian
piece by California Sonoma County Sheriff's Department confirming the human
(06:37):
remains discovered on a beach in twenty twenty two belonged
to a missing banker last seen in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So people can disappear, And this sounds like when we're
reading stories about this area in particular, it sounds pretty
heavily trafficked. This is not like a remote, middle of
nowhere Sopranos style body don't being.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Spot No, No, I've been to Long Beach and I
mean it's definitely beachy beach type community, but then there
are parts of it that are much more urban, you know,
strip Molly kind of stuff, and I imagine that that
was the kind of area that this park was located,
though I'm not exactly familiar with the DeForest Park area
of Long Beach ever, really has kind of been more
in the tourist y, you know, sex on the beach
(07:22):
sipping kind of area.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
And I hope that this kid in question was young
enough to not be permanently scarred by such a ghoulish
Easter egg.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Hunt, possibly or just possibly old enough to think it
was kind of badass.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, the kind of kid like us who loved scary
stories to tell in the Dark Man.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh man, those illustrations haunt me to this day. Man.
Oh yeah, it's crazy that they let children buy that, Dude.
Not only did they let children buy it, it was
like top of the shelf facing forward at the book fair.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It was an incredibly popular kids series, which is Yeah,
I think.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
It explains why we are the way we are. Ben, Yeah,
one hundred percent agreed there, Noel. I hope that this
teaches everybody to be aware of their surroundings and hopefully
right and hopefully.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Very sensible take a force, Ben, trying to be diplomatic.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Hopefully the authorities will be able to use DNA and
other forensic techniques to discover the identity of this person. Ben,
shall we pivot, Yes, speaking of areas that are very
places in the world, Yeah, this is out of this world.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
We're going to let's do.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
One of their most remote places human civilization knows about.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The moon.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Earth's moon has been in the news in a big,
big way. As we are recording today on Wednesday, April eighth,
the four person crew of Artemis two is making history
and in a strange, an inspiring trend, they are unifying
a lot of Americans and a lot of humanity. Everybody
(09:12):
on the planet, virtually everybody on the planet really hopes
that this goes well. Despite all our terrestrial differences. I
think people understand that the ultimate goal of the human
species is to expand beyond the bounds of Earth, and
ran across a story that we wanted to share with everybody.
(09:32):
Not to be outdone by the United States and recent
Chinese lunar plans, Moscow has announced its own plan to
establish sovereign Russian territories on the Moon because they're doing
so well on Earth.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
All right, right, let's do it. What do we got then? Ax?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah, let's go to sources like TVP World, where the
journalist Maria Kamensky is reporting that Sergei Chernishev, the vice
president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, just announced in
a Presidium meeting about space exploration, that Russia's space program
(10:14):
will ultimately allow Moscow to establish control over lunar territories.
They want to divide the Moon up a minute, Earthly.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Power, Wait a minute, I thought that was not on
the table. I thought we had something in place internationally
speaking that nobody owns the Moon. Yes, that is correct.
All the technical things like that have more and more
seemed to be being thrown out the window.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Right, like being unable to weaponize space. You know, this
lunar program, according to the sources, will provide new knowledge
and technologies for lunar exploration and ultimately it will help
establish sovereign Russian territories on the lunar surface. This is
a quote that comes to us via the BBC. In
(11:01):
the same, very same meeting, Jennishev said, we are also
going to have further delays to our existing lunar program.
Our next mission, Luna twenty six, has been postponed to
two thousand and twenty eight, a year later than previously planned.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So are we talking about another space race here?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Ben, We are immediately talking about another space race here, Nol.
Things are heating up. This is something that I want
to go back to your excellent point about various international
treaties saying no one can weaponize space. No one can
own the moon, if you think about it right now,
(11:41):
because the Moon is so far as we know, unoccupied
by other living things. All you have to do really
to make something on the Moon a sovereign territory is
point to a spot on a lunar map and say okay,
that's ours.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well and then be able to defend it. Right, that's
a part of it as well.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Right, but right now, who can get there to stop
you from saying that hunbers good?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You know?
Speaker 3 (12:06):
So it's almost an academic point at this juncture because
the science isn't there. I wanted to ask you, guys,
do you think this is more of like a PR
thing or do you think they are seriously going to
attempt to establish an outpost demand outpost on the Moon?
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, it would seem that they're kind of behind the
eight ball a little bit if that is their intent.
So I would maybe argue it's a little bit of
flexing and posturing and PR. Yeah, I would.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
I would think so too. It's trying to send an
international signal and Tennessee hopped in with a zinger in
the chat. Can you share it with the class, Dylan.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
They're just chopping at the bit to ANX moon CRIMEA.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yes, there it is to addex moon CRIMEA. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts folks on the idea of
the new space race. Do you think that Artemis two
in particular and the activities of private space exploration companies
have inspired other powers to be a bit more ambitious.
(13:14):
What's next for the moon ed? Let us know if
you would go Noel, would you go to the moon?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
You know this has come up a time or two,
and I'm starting to soften to the idea I might
go to the Moon.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to take a chance. But with
the science here as brilliant as the people at NASA
and so on are, it's still taking a chance. You know,
it's a crazy road trip.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Take a chance on the moon. Why not take a
chance on moon? Yes? Yes, Sorry.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
We've been working on a Eurovision episode for Ridiculous History
that's coming up, and I think you and I both
have been listening to a lot of eclectic music.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, I mean, you know, just as per usual, but
one hundred percent I'm really excited about that one. Should
we take a tiny little break and then come back
with some more some more stories. Absolutely, let's do it. Ben,
I gotta follow up with your Moon talk and your
(14:15):
Artemis two talk. And this is a little bit of
a lighter hearted story, not exactly a Houston we have
a problem, but it did result in a couple of
calls to Houston from the astronauts on the Artemis two spacecraft,
one of which had to do with space poopin spacepoop. Yeah, yeah,
(14:37):
it's obviously a thing, you very human function, and something
that really needs to be dealt with when you're in
a zero gravity environment and boy, oh boy, you can't
hold it forever, can you. And they were really in
a bit of a pickle because it's a very cramped environment.
You really don't want to be blowing it up, you know,
for your for your co pilots, or your one toilet.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Four people, you know what that means By this point
in the game, they are all going to be well
aware of each other's poop schedule, particular poop schedule, and
particular odors.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Let's just say correct. Sorry, Gross didn't mean to take
it there, but we had to. So it would appear
that the four astronauts currently on a mission to the
Moon in the Artemis program's first crude flight not long
after takeoff, ran into a bit of a conundrum involving
their space toilet. We're just gonna call it that because
(15:32):
it's fun spacecraft facilities. Space toilet is more fun. It
was due to a fact that not enough water potable
water had been transferred into the dispenser to keep the
pumps sufficiently wet, so there was a pump failure detection
(15:52):
that picked up on this and caused it to automatically
shut down. Artemis's flight director jud Freeling said that said
as much in a press conference on Thursday, and then
went on with this quote pulling from the Smithsonium who
covered the press conference. So, once we figured out we
didn't put enough water and we put more in there,
made sure that the pump was primed, and then the
(16:14):
toilet came right back up, so crisis averted, it would seem. Yeah.
Mission specialist Christina Coke implemented the fix from space, and
during those first six hours of the flight before they
were able to get the toilet running, at least one
crew member had to pee into a bag. I mean,
(16:36):
we've all been there. Yeah, something, it's something, right, Gator
eight bottles on road trips between gas stations on like
a long and lonesome road. Urine collection includes tubes, bags,
and tanks that ultimately vent the liquid out into space,
and then that solid waste gets stored in bags and
(16:57):
brought back to Earth. So it's good to know they're
not just dumping poop into space.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Just the liquid weights, right, And it's important to know
that despite all the poop jokes, we're making everything that
goes well or malfunctions on Artemis two is an invaluable
learning experience. So every time something happens in this mission
(17:22):
and it goes according to plan, a special cadre of
people who just study that aspect of the thing start
reevaluating their plans. They'll say, this worked, this could be better,
this malfunctioned. How do we fix it? How do we
guarantee it goes more smoothly in future missions? And the
toilet facilities are no exception. There's a poop team at
(17:45):
mission control. They're they're toilet guys.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You know exactly.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
Hey, did you did you guys hear about the Microsoft
Outlook problem?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Well that was next my head. What's that, Dylan, everyone's
having even in space. Microsoft Outlook sucks, Dylan, give it
to us. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
I supposely they had two instances of Microsoft Outlook open
on Artemis and they had to have someone remote in
from the ground to fix it.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Oh, that's right, and neither of the instances. We're worrying.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
If I recall yeah, well, i'd asktin us need email.
Come on, you can't even get away from it in orbit, and.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Come on, y'ah, come on, let's put the screens down
enjoy that overlook effect. Isn't that funny?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Though?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
It's strangely validating us being sort of having Microsoft products
foisted upon us as well through work, and just knowing
how terrible things like teams and outlook can be. It's
just good to know that the top minds and space
science are also dealing with the same problems as we
are back here on Earth.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
So we've got a poop team, we've got a food team,
and we officially have an IT help desk in space,
which makes a lot of sense. I also want to
shout out a conversation I was having with one of
our fellow conspiracy really fellow space nerd about the timing here,
because to be it looks like four very smart people
(19:09):
got together and said, we just need to get as
far away as possible from Earth for a little bit.
We just got to step out and take a breath,
and maybe when we come back all of these things
will have worked out.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
These two we hope so well. The good news is
in space, no one can hear you scream at your outlook.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And in space no one can hear you.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Far except your you know, neighbors, if you're.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Inside, Yeah, if you're inside the craft, So maybe you
step outside for a far I don't know if anybody's
done the first space flatulation yet.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Yeah, it may be a good way of propulsion, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Maybe maybe we have nothing but the best wishes for
the brave crew of Artemis two. They're they're really doing
phenomenal stuff and hopefully they're paving the way for future explorations.
Maybe one day soon, whether Russian, American, or Chinese, we
(20:10):
will see a manned outpost on the moon. What do
you guys think will happen in our lifetimes?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Hmmm tbd. Leaning towards maybe yeah, Yeah, skeptical but optimistic.
That's that's the best way.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
And as in all things, and with that, we want
to be skeptical and optimistic about a new plot twist
in a long standing conspiracy. We all remember bitcoin?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Right? Do you still have do you guys still have bitcoins?
I got rid of it. I was I was worried
it was going to go to zero because it just
plummeted and I was just like, get me out of here.
I never had a ton I just kind of wanted
to be part of the conversation, and a buddy of
mine that was into it sort of got me into it.
I did keep my ethereum and a couple of other ones,
but yeah, I was just kind of like done with it.
The rollercoaster of emotion was too much for me to handle. Right.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Yeah, there is a mystery wrapped up in bitcoin. Of course,
bitcoin is full of controversies. It's full of use cases.
There are any variety of coins you can participate in now.
But up until quite recently, one of the biggest mysteries
of bitcoin was the identity of its creator, Satoshi Knakamoto.
(21:29):
We talked about this in our previous episodes on bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Can we have a cool like cyber nickname? He did?
Speaker 3 (21:38):
I believe, and he's been The guy's real identity or
the group's real identity, has been proposed and speculated about
for years.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
He's a pseudonymy.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
The person has never been identified Noel, But The New
York Times just published an investigation this by journalists John
Kerry Row and Dylan Friedman. Pardon my possible mispronunciation there.
This came out today. This came out this morning as
we're recording. It is called My Quest to Solve Bitcoin's
(22:14):
Great Mystery. It's a hell of a it's a hell
of a ride, folks. Bitcoins creator, using the pseudonym Sutoshi Nakamoto,
has gotten away unidentified for the better part of two decades.
But these journalists say a trail of clues buried deep
in crypto lore led them to the real identity of Nakamoto.
(22:36):
They say it's a fifty five year old computer scientist
named Adam Beck Tracks It also that but that name
as well sounds like a pseudonym, does it not?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It sure does, Ben, I mean in terms of the
age of the individual background, do you know what I mean?
I could just see that. And I'm really glad that
you brought this one up in because would love to
follow it up with another unmasking story that we have
not talked about yet. But yeah, what do we have?
Are we skeptical? Is this considered proven beyond the shadow
of a doubt? Where are we? This is interesting? All right?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
So here's what they use to build the case. They
say that they've analyzed historical records, technical writing, other comms,
and if they get this verified, they will solve one
of the greatest mysteries in the world of tech. Because
Satoshi was a master of staying anonymous on the Internet,
(23:33):
which is increasingly difficult, so left very few, if any,
digital footprints. But Satoshi did write a lot about bitcoin,
including the nine page white paper where he outlines the invention.
He has a ton of posts on bitcoin talk for him.
That's an online message board where people get together to discuss,
(23:54):
you know, to fanboy about pitcoin and probably to speculate
on the prices. We know that there are also emails
that Satoshi sent to early bitcoin adopters. We know that
various programmers who interacted with Satoshi have, for good or ill,
released hundreds of emails that appear to be from him.
(24:18):
We know his associations with other not quite hacker groups,
but online groups. If you go down this rabbit hole,
you see that people have been speculating about mister Back,
Adam Back, as a possible satoci in disguise for a
long time. Because over the past a dozen years, Noel
(24:43):
and Dylan, this guy Adam Back has built an empire
of bitcoin related companies. He's one of the most influential
members in the overall bitcoin community. So for a long
time people said, if there's someone who's Satoshi, this is
one of our top suspects.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Okay, sounds pretty conclusive, ISHU.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Well, okay to us, Yes, a plot twist right after
a word from our sponsors, and we've returned, get this
guy's The journalists actually fly out to Las Vegas to
meet mister Back, who was scheduled to speak at the
(25:24):
Bitcoin twenty twenty five conference at the Venetian Resort, so
they wanted to just learn more about him and do
some more research. This journalist spoke with mister Back after
watching him predict on a panel that bitcoin would reach
a trading value of around a million easy in five
(25:48):
to ten years. He was also, by the way, speaking
on what they call the Nakamoto stage. Okay, a little
other notes. Yeah, but here here's another twist. As we
saw the story, this has.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Not been confirmed.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
The mystery is unraveling, but we still don't have it
completely solved. It's like we're playing that board game Clue,
and we have the murder weapon and we have the room,
but we don't have the identity of the killer just yet.
And Adam Back, who by the way is a British
national fired back already. Today he spoke with the BBC
(26:26):
in response to this New York Times article that again
just came out this morning and he said, Nope, I
am not Satochi Nakamoto. This is confirmation bias. I am
an early adopter with a laser focus on the social
implications of cryptography, online privacy, electronic cash. But the thing is,
(26:50):
if you look at back online activity, the timeline matches
up with a lot of stuff on the Satochi side.
So it's he's looking sus for this one. We're not
saying it's bad. Bitcoin has changed the world, but the
identity of Sutoshi still remains a secret for now. Keep
(27:12):
an eye on this story because we think the developments
are going to come in pretty quickly here. While we're
gonna we're gonna let that one simmer and Noel, let's
go to another story.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
What do we have next? Well, this is a bit
of an older one, but I just we haven't mentioned
it at all, and it's something we've definitely talked about
in the past. The much debated and uh you know,
much speculated upon identity of the British street artist known
as BANKSI. I think we're all fans of this individual's work.
(27:43):
We all really enjoyed the kind of interesting hybrid docu
slash mockumentary Exit through the Gift Shop, the Doctor Brainwash
of it all. It's such a cool film because it is,
on the one hand, documentary telling the story of Banksy
and his like very politically charged street art graffiti work
and the whole hubbub in the art world about like
(28:05):
how you know, the value of street art literally monetarily
and of course culturally, and then it sort of veers
into this weird, sort of controlled narrative involving this other
street artist named doctor mister Brainwash I think is his name.
So if y'all haven't seen that out in Conspiracy Realist Land,
highly recommend it because it is red meat for the
(28:26):
kind of stuff we talk about on this show. And
a big part of the whole myth of Banksy is
the anonymity, you know, and that's a big deal. It
had a lot to do with the the wild speculation
in terms of art value, you know, and and all
that stuff in terms of like how much these pieces
(28:46):
would go for. There's been this ongoing thing that is
also addressed in the documentary where you have folks supposedly
working for Banksy out on the streets in various cities
selling either fake banks See pieces that may well be real,
and you've got stories about people finding real ones, and
(29:07):
that's still going on to this day. There's actually this
Diamond District dude named Moses the Jeweler that I follow
who recently bought up every one of these you know,
maybe real maybe fake Banksy pieces from this guy on
the street and he asked him what his deal was
and he said he was hired by somebody to do this.
So I just I love this stuff. It's just, oh
(29:28):
the speculation is so fun and it just that mystery,
like as we know with things like the Georgia guidestones,
which by the way, we should talk about this Atlanta
Journal Constitution podcast that is supposedly Unmasked RC Christian, but
that's maybe a story for another day. I think we
could do a whole episode on that.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
That's the one Unmasked attempted to unmask who was responsible
for the destruction of the guide stones. And I want
to give a big shout out to our friend of
the show, Christopher Hasiotis, who originally pitched that to AJAC
apparently amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Well, that's that's a story very near and dear to us.
It was a documentary short that I made many years ago,
and we sort of repurposed for the for the stuff
they Don't Want You to Know YouTube channel, and it's
something that we've been really interested. But I think our
takeaway was always it's way more interesting when you don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Yeah, like the idea that banks he might be just
a pseudonym of a group of activist artists, and they've
been linked to everything from like beyond art groups, even
musical acts have been accused of being Banksy.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Well, specifically the electronic music producer I think his name
is three D or two D rather he I mean,
I forget. He's the guy that makes all the beats
or a lot of the production for the incredible and
influential electronic group Massive Attack, who I am a huge, huge,
huge fan of. And that speculation was tied to a
(30:54):
twenty sixteen academic study that used geographic profiling to map
the movement of so the supposed bank see as an
individual based on the popping ups of various works, and
in that piece, the name Robin Gunningham was also mentioned.
In addition to this producer from Massive Attack, it would
(31:17):
appear that Robin Gunningham, a former Bristol Cathedral School student
from I believe Leeds, has been linked to Banks's identity
as far back as two thousand and eight, and of
all places. I don't mean this to sound any kind
of way. I just think of Reuters as more like
financial kind of stuff. But they do some interesting reporting
(31:38):
and they are the ones who broke the story, and
there is quite an in depth piece that they put
out called in Search of banksee the British street artist's
identity has been debated and closely guarded for decades. A
quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed
out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan and uncovered
much more than a name. I actually think we could
probably do a whole episode on this, because there's a
(32:00):
lot of good info here, a lot of interesting forensic
kind of work looking at various sources and speaking to
people on the ground. So I do think that we
can maybe put a pin in this one for a
larger discussion, But for now, it would appear that this
Robin Gunningham individual is most likely the true identity or
(32:23):
of at least the individual known as Banksy and Ben.
To your point, I don't think this precludes it from
being a group. I mean, we know from the documentary
as well a gift shop that the occurrences of these
kinds of things and the way they would pop up
simultaneously in far flung parts of the globe indicate that
there's clearly some collaboration going on, and the Banksy might
(32:47):
be the ringleader and the vision behind the whole thing.
But then of course there's going to be you know,
when you're dealing with wheat paste and stencil type art.
Anybody can do that anywhere. You just have to have
the kind of the organizational aspects in place and then
the singular kind of vision, because that is absolutely a
unifying factor in the work of Banksy and I.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Want to do an episode on this Bitcoin mystery or
return an update episode, because I forgot to mention folks
that obviously Adam Back is not the only person who's
been accused of being satoci, but he is the one
who looks the best for being the culprit, and multiple
(33:30):
other folks who also were strong candidates to be Saitoci
even went to court over this. In twenty fifteen, there
was a similar investigation, not by New York Times but
by Wired and Gizmoto that said, hey, Satoshi is actually
an Australian computer scientist guy named Craig Wright, and Wright
(33:52):
responded in an opposite way to the response of Adam Back.
He went to multiple media outlets the BBC and said, yeah,
I am Satoci.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
I can prove it.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
But the bitcoin community did not believe Craig Right, and
after years of claiming to be the inventor of bitcoin,
the case went to court and a High Court judge
in the United Kingdom conclusively ruled that Craig Right is
not Satoci. That's another thing, like why would you impersonate
(34:26):
someone like that? Why would you if you knew you
weren't Banksy, why would you say that you were Banksy?
If you knew you were not Satoci, why would you
say you were? Is it just for attention or is
it a mental instability thing, like when police get all
these crazy folks calling tip lines and claiming to be killers.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Well, one thing that's happening in terms of the response
to this information, which by the way isn't particularly new,
As I said, It's been reported as far back as
two thousand and eight. A lot of the comments around
this on redde and various forums is that, yeah, everyone
knew that the guy's name has been you know, linked
(35:05):
to him for many, many years. And there was even
a pretty famous interview with the electronic music artist Ah
Goldie who, in referring to Banksy accidentally calls him Rob
on the radio. And another Rob in question was the
Massive Attack guy that I was talking about, whose name
is Robert del Naja. But then, of course now we
have Rob and Gunningham, and again a lot of this
(35:27):
chatter is like duh, I'm from London and it's been
an open secret for a long time that this is
who it was. And the kind of commentary around it
is leave Banksy alone, and a lot of people saying
I am Banksy, you know, like Spartacus style, right, because
it's like, come on, we are we are in a
world where so many things are just like everyone's just
(35:49):
trying to demystify everything all the time, and like let
us have some mystery man. Leave banks alone.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Reuter's I don't I don't think it would be particularly
great for Bitcoin for Sutoshi to be conclusively identified either.
And we're big fans of mystery, but we want to
hear from you in this one, folks, because this will
definitely end up being an episode or a series of
episodes in the future. I think we could combine the
(36:16):
two with since rastifinding a third, my rule of three
structure burned into my brain is saying is screaming we
got to find a third infamously famous unidentified person.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Well, Ben, to your point about the unmasking of the
Bitcoin guy affecting not necessarily being good for the price
of bitcoin or for just bitcoin in general. That is
another thing that's being speculated about this Robin Gunningham thing.
Is a lot of people are saying that it could
cause the price of banksy works to skyrocket, but then
there are just as many people saying that it could
(36:51):
cause them to tank because it removes some of that
mystery around it. So I'm a little interested to see
what actually happens in that regard.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
But before we go, since we were exploring space earlier
in Strange News, we wanted to get to some quotes
about one of our favorite mysteries of space, the existence
of extraterrestrials.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
That's right, Ben. This comes to us from Tennessee Republican
Representative Tim burchet who said the American people would be
quote up at night worrying if they knew what he's
been briefed on about extraterrestrial life. He told Newsmax host
Rob Finnerty this past week, I've been briefed by just
(37:36):
about every alphabet agency there is, and I'll just say this,
if they were to release the things I've seen, you'd
be up at night worrying about thinking about this stuff.
Burchett is a member of the House Task Force on
the Declassification of Federal secrets, and he recalled a briefing
that happened prior on a particular issue regarding extraterrestrial life
(37:58):
that he said would have set the earth on fire
and unglued the country if released, they would demand answers,
he said, without going into further detail. So that always
gets me, folks.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
You know the thing where people warn you about information
at the same time telling you that they can't tell
you the information. It's such a black box, And the
question becomes is that overall helpful to the public. I
would say maybe, but because we don't know the content
(38:34):
of what this politician saw. We don't really know how
we can react. And the way that he's phrased it
doesn't necessarily it's vague enough that people could imagine what
they want, you know, like it could be just man
made tech that has been suppressed or mistaken for extraterrestrial stuff.
There could be capabilities that rival powers have that kept him.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Up at night. Yeah, and it does come up this
conversation that he had with Newsmax, something that we've mentioned previously. Uh,
the sort of disgraced I guess we could say Republican
representative Matt Gates speaking also, I believe on a podcast
about knowledge of alien human hybrid breeding programs, and that
(39:19):
would be a little bit above and beyond what you're
talking about. Then if something like that were to exist,
and there's a lot of questions that would be required,
you know, to have answers to in order to justify
such a program existing.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Right, people are out here teleport in waffle house.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Oh dude, talk about that one. Man? We haven't I
don't want to me mentioned that one. And I'm curious
your thoughts. And I only saw that as a headline.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Who was it who was it that was saying that, yeah, okay,
So we'll keep this wood short as we're wrapped up.
A FEMA official, a top FEMA official named Greg Phillips
claims he was once teleported to a waffle house uh
specifically in Rome, Georgia, in our own home state. The
(40:02):
New York Times interviewed two dozen workers and regulars at
the waffle house, so regardless ofbout crazy this story might sound,
they followed up with the with the actual.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Waffle house on the ground, would do right. If you
want to learn more about the.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
History of waffle House, check out our Ridiculous History episode again.
Phillips is an interesting character because in December he was
appointed to a top position within FEMA, the US disaster
Relief agency, and he went on a podcast just a
month later in January twenty twenty five and said he
(40:44):
was teleported in an incredibly frightening moment. His car was
lifted up while I was driving and transported fifty miles
to the Diner chain waffle house, and this was the
Onward podcast. He also said teleporting is no fun. You
know what's happening, but you can't do anything about it,
(41:05):
so you just go. You just go with the ride,
and wow, what just an incredible adventure.
Speaker 5 (41:11):
It all was, Okay, okay, man, I wonder if there
are like secret portals in waffle houses, sort of like
that closet in that diner in the Stephen King book
in the way about the Kennedy assassination and traveling back
in time.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
And obviously, since this guy's a high level government official,
he has taken a lot of heat for this. People
called him unqualified. They said, you know, he's nuts, He's
not the right person for this job. But despite all
the criticism, which just accelerated after this waffle house story,
(41:52):
Phillips doubled down and he said, look, the incident occurred
while I was heavily medicated, and I don't necessarily think
this was aliens. It was a miracle performed by God.
He also went on truth Social and said people are
twisting his words. The word teleportation was not mine. It
(42:13):
was used by someone else in the conversation, reaching for
language to describe something with no easy name. The more
accurate get this, guys, the more accurate biblical terms are
translated or transported. These are not new ideas for people
of faith. I am so close to throwing my micro
(42:34):
my headphones. This is what a bizarre story that doesn't
need to be news.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, and can I just say that I think the
universe is listening whoever's responsible for these teleportation portals, because
my kid literally just texted me asking if I wanted
to go to waffle House with them in a little
bit phenomenal.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
You should do a huge waffle House fans, and we're
huge fans of you. Hello, Conspiracy Realist. Thank you so
much for tuning in to our strange news program. We'll
be back with the episodes. We'll be back with listener mail,
and in the meantime, we'd love for you to join us.
You can find us on the lines. You can call
us on the phone. You can always send us an email.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Reach out to us on the lines at the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on your social
media platform of choice. You can also give us a
call at one eight three three STDWYTK to leave a
voicemail at the sound of Ben's dulcet tones. Let us
know a nickname you'd like us to use, and give
us permission to use your audio on the show, and
(43:39):
you may well hear yourself on one of our weekly
listener mail episodes. If you don't want to do any
of that, you can always just send us a good
old fashioned email. We are the entities that.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware,
yet 'd afraid. Sometimes the void rights back and give
us a random fact. We'll give you one in return.
And hey, if you are Sutoshi Nakamoto, reach out to us. Man,
We're cool, We're cool. Hang, we'll take We'll take a bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't want
(44:30):
you to know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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