Recent revelations confirm that the Department of Homeland Security and other parts of law enforcement are secretly accessing your financial records -- and taking you in, even if you haven't committed a crime. Plus, US courts rule people have no right to clean water. A sinister Cat in the Hat AI trend goes viral. Nathan Fielder returns with a surprise documentary. Recent government actions regarding drones and 'AI' inspire an episode in the future. Join Ben, Matt, and Noel for all this and more in this week's strange news segment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
My name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined, as always, with our
super producer, Max the Free Train Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
That makes this the Stuff They Don't Want You To
Know Strange News Edition.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's right, folks.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
If you are tuning in the evening, this program publishes.
Welcome to September 14th. There is so much going on. Guys,
I know my throat's still not at 100%, but I
sure missed not being able to make our last Strange
News program, which was just out of the park.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We kicked ass.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'm just joking. Well, I missed you guys.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We missed you too, man.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Thank you, Matt.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
That's really nice of you. We always like to start
with some good news. So if we can put our
producer a little bit on the spot. Guys, can we
congratulate Freight Train on buying a new car?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh, I was hoping it was a Freight Train.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We need to know what did you go with, Max?
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Why?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
The people out here need to understand. We need to
get advice from you.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
And we'd like your license and registration number, if you
don't mind.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
Well, I feel like Matt's asking me this because he
wanted me to get a Toyota Camry. I got a
Honda Accord.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Touring. You got a touring.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
That's sick.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm a Honda guy, though. It is a spaceship.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
Well, and a little reference for the listeners. I am
upgrading from a 2002 Honda CRV. So going like getting
if I would have got in a 2012, it would
have seemed really advanced to me going to 2021. It's
just like, what is this crazy thing? I drove a
23 and I'm like, no, too much, too much. Too
far into the future.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
But now you're driving in the future, Max. And this
is an excellent introduction to our first story of tonight's
strange news. So let's say we pause for a word
from our sponsors and we'll be right back with the
future of driving. We have returned with big thanks to
(02:36):
Joseph Cox writing for 404 Media. We're talking about this
a little bit off air, guys. You know, we've spent
a lot of time exploring the idea of mass surveillance,
exploring the idea of pre-crime as always imagined in science fiction,
as always imagined in sci-fi films like Minority Report.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But riddle me this, guys.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Have you ever heard of a little outfit called Pitt?
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Not once.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Only what you've mentioned to us just a few moments ago.
But no, I'm with you, Matt. Not once prior to that.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
Well.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
It's not as cool as the PIT that most of
us were thinking of off air. PIT is an acronym
for something called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams. It turns out
that the Department of Homeland Security is not contemplating, but
has been running secretive predictive policing units that take in
(03:37):
not just your previous driving habits, but your financial activity.
So these PIT outfits are can do stuff like analyze
the financial activity of somebody driving across Montana and then
use that as a pretense to stop this person driving
across Montana and say, look, we're stopping you not because
(04:01):
of this secret program we're using. We're stopping you because
your license plate is obstructed. And then they charge that
guy with a DUI, driving under the influence of some
sort of intoxicant.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I think the operative word here is pre tense.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
And pre crime.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Beautiful.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
But the issue here is that you cannot control your data. Right, guys,
like every time you use a credit card, most the
majority of the financial institutions that you will work with
in this country do consider your activity a another potential
stream of revenue. So What do we think about this
(04:45):
before we go any further?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I mean, it feels like it's matching up just with
the overly surveilled world we live in now that they
would take. Well, the overly surveilled world matched with the
overly data sucked world that we live in. Our data
is just getting sucked all the time. These folks are dirty.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Data vamps.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Data vamps, data leeches, we could say. They also are
biting us in unusual places if you are the average
person in the United States. So it seems like, and
we still have a lot to learn about this, but
it seems as though what's happening is this huge eye
(05:31):
of Sauron surveillance system is able to say, hey, this
person here spent a lot of money in California. maybe
at a dispensary, and maybe they're driving across state lines.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
That's dirty pool, man. Dirty pool. I don't even like
it that they can scan. I guess there's a chip
in license plates now that let them know without seeing
it physically that your tag has expired. Because I've certainly
been pulled over for an expired tag when there's no
way that the cop on the side of the road
had a view. To my little sticker of the little
(06:06):
tiny sticker. So even that and like things like traffic
cams just feel like dirty pool, man. Like, give us
a fighting chance.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
So I think a lot of us in the audience
agree with you there, Noel. We know that around 930
and this is again, thanks for journalist Cox here around
930 p.m.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
One night in May.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
And I'm reading directly from this 404 media article. A
guy named Kyle William Olson was driving home on Interstate 90.
He had a black Chevy SUV. His dog was in
the backseat. His dog is named Ducky. And in his vehicle,
he had cannabis edibles, cannabis cuttings, and he had butane
(06:52):
hash oil. He works at a licensed legal cannabis farm
in California, and that's where he picked up the weed.
He was transporting it home to Wisconsin. And he got
clocked because of this system. He drove past a guy
named Sergeant James Beck of the Montana Highway Patrol. And
(07:14):
this dude was sitting there, you know, speed trap style.
When Olson passed them, Beck, to your point, Noel, noticed
the vehicle's license plate was obstructed. And he said, you
got a tinted cover. You got a luggage holder. You
can't see the plate. So I'm going to pull you over.
It's nothing major. It's just your license plate is a
(07:35):
little bit obstructed. That's our reason for stopping you. They
gave him a blood test. They charged him with a DUI.
And then later.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
For marijuana?
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Or for alcohol?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
For marijuana, for cannabis. So during discovery in his case,
we come to find that Olson gets this document that
says border patrol or DHS was using pit predictive intelligence
targeting team capabilities to look out for his license plate
in specific. This is, this is the iceberg under the
(08:13):
current controversy of flock.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Well, there's a, there's a couple of tricky, other tricky
things wrapped up in this. Um, and I guess as
the resident stoner here, I just want to speak for
all of us out there in the audience. If you
test positive on a blood test for THC, you could
have smoked yesterday. It does not mean, it is not
any indication. I don't believe that they have any way
of testing positive. What's the word? Concentration or whatever.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Timeline into it. It's not like blood alcohol level, which
absolutely means that you're intoxicated right now. So this already
feels like double dirty pool. And then the other aspect
of it too is just the whole rigmarole around legality
of cannabis.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
And even like taking it through airport security.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Because if you are in like a legal state and
then you're flying back to an illegal state, like who
has precedent or who has jurisdiction in that situation? It's
a very, very gray area. All of these are very,
very gray areas. And I'm particularly disturbed by the detail
of we gave you a blood test and you have
THC in your system. Therefore, you get a DWI.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
That's.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Horse shit, Frank. Right, or a DUI.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
And yeah, this is great because it doesn't mean, a
positive blood test doesn't mean somebody is rolling down the interstate,
smoking a blunt at the same time. Yeah, this does-
Potentially sipping on gin and juice. This does give us,
for sure, this does give us interesting precedent to a
(09:48):
conspiracy we've been talking about a while, you guys. This
document specifically- admits, thanks to Border Patrol agent Matthew Phelps,
the author, it admits that information contained within law enforcement
sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit
(10:10):
narcotics activity can trigger these pullovers, which I think is
a bridge too far. That's a Rubicon civilization probably should
not have crossed and it's definitely a conspiracy well yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It's just i mean not that fairness has anything to
do with it anymore these days um but just the
pretense of pulling someone over for such a minor infraction
we've seen that used in cases of profiling you know
it's always kind of a gnarly entry point into uh
abuse of power not always but often And this just
(10:45):
seems like an even more egregious example of that because
the deck is just utterly stacked against us now.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
It makes me think about a lot of these standards
that got set up a long time ago where things
like probable cause that are there for a good reason,
but they end up being used as if we want
to pull X person over, we need a legal rationale
to do so. And Then we need a legal rationale
(11:13):
to take that person back to a precinct for X
amount of time to establish whatever we need to establish
because this person is our target. And when you have
something like this, you're just– it's more– it's ammunition for
the potential to pull anybody they want to pull over over.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I like that you're using the word ammunition there, Matt,
because I would agree that it's definitely being weaponized in
the eras of sundown towns, which still exist here in
the United States. And officers' discretion was often a fig
leaf for racial discrimination, right? And even state-sponsored murder. And
we could have, in a better world, we could have
(11:57):
assumed that Increased surveillance would keep everybody less corrupt and
more honest. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Ben, sundown towns, doesn't that historically refer to towns that
were inherently anti-Black and were not considered unsafe for Black
people to travel through after dark?
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Yeah, anti-anybody not perceived as white. So any person who
was not perceived as white was in danger of being harassed, assaulted, tortured,
murdered with the full approval of the local government, even
if only tacit approval. This is something we'd love to
(12:45):
hear your thoughts on, folks. Again, we've got a lot
to get to. Drive carefully out there and please do
check out that excellent piece by 404 Media. Bad news
for anybody who gets arrested. due to Pitt or other
surveillance state shenanigans, if you find yourself jammed up and
(13:05):
you're very thirsty, the news is in.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
U.S.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Courts have decided that the Constitution does not guarantee a
right to clean water, which has got to be pretty
freaking crazy. I wish the Segway wasn't so applicable. But
as I think we all clock this individually, we want
to give a big thanks to The Guardian and the
(13:30):
journalist Victoria Bekempis, B-E-K-I-E-M-P-I-S. This legal opinion comes from the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals out there in Jackson, Mississippi.
Residents who were not arrested, by the way, innocent people,
They claimed that tainted drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi, was
(13:54):
a violation of their constitutional rights. And the court came
back and said, no, you not only do not have
the right to be free from exposure to contaminated water,
but you also don't have the constitutional right to accurate
information from public officials.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
What?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Beep me here, Max. What the f * * *?
sorry you don't have the right to public information accurate
information but what i'm saying is that that stuff is
supposed to be of the public record so you mean
like in an exchange like they're not required to be
truthful with you is that the implication.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Or maybe the burden of being accurate is not on
them so maybe maybe we can phrase it as being
um okay for them to be wrong I guess, or
for them to have incorrect information that they are conveying
to the public. But I'm going back to the water.
That is crazy that this country just said, well, we've
(15:02):
had this debate in the past, guys, on previous episodes
or strange news or listener mail, the conversation about Nestle's
villainy with clean water, potable water, or the idea that
the fights that the UN has all the time about
whether clean water or access to water is a human right.
(15:24):
This feels like a very un-U.S.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Thing, I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Ben, what if we were to unpack it and look
at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Like, what
would you consider the, you know, fair, equitable, access to clean,
potable water to fall under if we were to try
to tie it back to the Constitution.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
All people are created equally, afforded the same opportunities based
on the virtue of being alive.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And I suppose we could also maybe argue that that
might also be something that could be pointed to in
terms of access to health care, the idea that you
should be entitled to live prosperously in society. But then
that kind of requires– I just guess– I guess my
point is it requires reading into it a little bit
on both ends, right?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yeah, because the constitution does not explicitly guarantee clean water.
So it really is like a might makes right situation unfortunately.
We do know that the court said– well, the majority
of the court at least said we recognize there are
allegations of serious government misfeasance and we are sympathetic to
(16:39):
to the injuries that suffer as a result. And then
they said, our sympathies cannot be the basis of this ruling.
So because the constitution does not explicitly say something like
everybody has a right to not drink poison and to
pursue happiness, because it doesn't explicitly say water, the people
(17:03):
polluting the water, the powerful corporations get a pass.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
It's another example of this narrative that empathy is weakness
that is being pushed so heavily, you know, by certain
powers that be.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
And Matt, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, we talked recently on our data centers episode about
how private well water. So not water that's coming from
a municipal source like it is there in Mississippi in
that case. But private well water is not regulated in
any way. it's not under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Oh, right.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
So it's not entitled to be safe, essentially. There's no
guarantee of its safety.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, but I'm separating here private well water, right? This
is like, you're a landowner, you've got a well.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
On your land.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
We heard in that episode about construction of a data
center and the act of construction, polluting, contaminating all that
private well water, right? And we just found out in
Going through that episode specifically that the state of Georgia
doesn't regulate well water at the state level at all,
we found out that the EPA basically gives guidance for
(18:15):
private well owners. And that's it. And, oh, technical assistance.
So that's nice. They can help you out if your
well water goes bad. But then when you get to
a municipal source where everybody is paying a significant amount
of money into a system that is supposed to put
out fresh water, potable water. for you to drink that's safe.
It sure does seem like the government is the only
(18:37):
thing responsible. The folks that are deciding how that water
is going to be treated, what pipes it flows through
to get to your house. This is insane to me
that nobody can be held responsible. And then in that article, Ben,
they say, well, why didn't you try and do tort reforms?
Why didn't you elect somebody better who would better represent
(18:58):
you in your water needs?
Speaker 5 (19:01):
What?
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I'm glad you brought that up because that is a
clear textbook quintessential example, in my opinion, of victim blaming, right?
Like why do you, despite not being a lawyer, right?
Why do you not understand the concept of tort claims
and tort reform? It's really on you because of the
(19:24):
way you were intellectually dressed. That's what they're saying.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And appropriate because of Max's recent article. Vehicle acquisition, it
kind of reminds me of like when you're negotiating terms
for like an auto loan like at a dealership and
they give you a really high rate and you say
something to the effect of like, this happened to me. Well,
this seems really high. Oh, you didn't tell us you
wanted a low rate.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Like, that's literally more or less what they said. And
it's like this idea that you should have to negotiate
on your own behalf to get what's fair.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
And if you don't know enough, then you're entitled to
whatever bum deal gets thrown at you because you were
too stupid to do anything about it.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Well, sir, you didn't say you did not want all
these flies in your soup. Or, well, America, you didn't
say specifically that you didn't want rat feces in the cereal.
So that is kind of on you. Guys, we've run
a little long here. I want to congratulate... All the
new hires at the FBI, they've lowered the standards officially.
(20:31):
If you have been caught hiring sex workers or if
you have committed bestiality or if you have embezzled from
an employer, it's no longer a deal breaker. for you
to work at the FBI. So check out CBS News
for that.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Hell, it might afford you some interesting appointments. You know
what I mean? Like maybe they install you in a
different division because these are like strengths, not weaknesses, especially
the bestiality part.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Who better to guard the hen house than the guys
who are very interested in chickens? So shout out to
Sarah Ann Lynch and Daniel Klaidman over at CBS News.
We've got more on the way. We're going to pause
for a word from our sponsors, and we'll be back
with more strange news.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
And we're back. And guys, I just want to start
off with a little bit of show and tell. I
think you guys might have already seen this, but it
is a movie teaser trailer, so we can play it
in its entirety and then talk a little bit about
it because the subject matter absolutely fits right within the
wheelhouse of this show. So without further ado, here we go.
Speaker 7 (21:40):
I'm not that person. I can promise you that. I
don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm
not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being.
Why would I deceive you?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
There's no....
Speaker 7 (22:02):
There's no reason for me to do that.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
Okay. All right. Okay, good shot. You're being real right now?
(22:27):
I'm always being real.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Woo!
Speaker 2 (22:39):
God, man, come on.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Sociopathy, anybody? Holy gal. If anyone isn't familiar, this is
the trailer, the teaser trailer just dropped for a new
documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
The....
Speaker 3 (22:53):
CEO of the billion-dollar-valuated Silicon Valley startup Theranos, which I
believe was responsible for marketing a device that was a
medical device that supposedly could diagnose any number of ailments
with the prick of a finger, and it was all
utter vaporware, if that's the right term, just being charitable,
(23:16):
let's go so far as to even call it just
complete charity. bunk, just absolutely built on lies, lying to shareholders,
lying to the public, gaslighting, all of this stuff. And
this is Elizabeth Holmes speaking in that trailer to Nathan Fielder,
who I know we are all huge fans of, from
(23:36):
his CBC work to his work on Nathan For You,
the kind of satirical sort of blurring the line between
reality TV and performance art and just absolutely fantastic stuff.
And then evolving into the, uh, what's it called guys? The,
not the audition, the rehearsal. That's right. Uh, the rehearsal. Um,
(23:57):
and then an incredible, bizarre, uh, TV series, um, called
the curse that he did with, uh, one of the
softy brothers, um, And now he's making this documentary with
another incredibly talented filmmaker, creator named Lance Oppenheim, who has
this film coming out about something that's called Showtime. That's
about to catch a predator, the TV series where the
(24:19):
dude would kind of hijack or I guess what's the
word I'm looking for? Sort of confront, you know, sex
pests or less. um, controversial show, um, played by Robert Pattinson,
controversial film, because the guy who is being portrayed is
suing or is threatening to sue, um, for the way
he is being portrayed. But Matt, I know you've seen this, Ben,
(24:39):
I know you've seen this as well. Um, I'd love
to hear your thoughts on what we just saw and
what I would categorize for my money as one of
the most arresting minute and a half trailers that I've
seen in a long time. I think I must've watched
it 13 times last night.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I've also watched it over and over. Uh, analyzing and why,
why does it make me feel that way? Here's what
I've come away with. And I'm no expert here, but
I do have a background in video film stuff. And
I think the primary thing that's working here, the thing
that's putting in the most work is the long lens
that they're using to get these, these two shots. So
(25:16):
you're looking at Elizabeth Holmes and it feels as though
Nathan Fielder is inches away from her face.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
But she also actually is.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Well, they're very close, but that long lens makes it feel.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
When they pull it back, and I think one of
the details that really did it for me, too, was
that she is all the while rocking her baby with
her leg that is extended way off to the side
where the baby's in this cradle. And she's leaning forward.
on one side of a couch, and Nathan's on the
other side also leaning in. So maybe not inches, but
(25:50):
a weird setup, and the fact that she's multitasking while
rocking this Joker, Rictus, dead-eyed look, head tilted. It really
gives me chills.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Just to the point I was making there, proximity becomes
one of the most intense things you can do on
a screen when you're working in that medium. And when
you have that unbroken eye contact that they're both doing
and there's very little blinking, there's an intensity to that interaction.
If it was happening in real time in front of
(26:26):
you or if you were having that interaction with somebody,
they did a really good job with the camera and
the edit there to give you that feeling, Noel, and
to make me and everybody else who saw it just
feel unsettled to their core.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
How'd it hit you, Ben?
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Well, I'm obviously, as we know, folks, I'm very interested
in the story of Theranos, which Investopedia once called a
fallen unicorn. This is one of those things where at
the offset, everybody was super bullish about it, even though
the technology was, as you said, clearly vaporware or clearly
(27:06):
obscured from any credible researcher who could authenticate whether or
not it was malarkey. So I'm very excited to watch this.
As I hope everybody knows, I am a huge fan
of Nathan Fielder. And if you haven't seen the rehearsal,
check it out before you watch this documentary. It'll give
(27:27):
you a sense of the man's artistic depth. That's a
joke about camera work.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Yeah. Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Depth of field.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
And to that point, Ben, about the rehearsal, you are
going to get some of that stuff in this, at
least according to people who saw it at the surprise
screening of a, quote, mystery documentary when nobody knew what
they were going into.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Can you imagine going into a darkened theater? It just
says mystery documentary. And then this happens. And it's like
three hours.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
God, God.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
But there's a moment in it where it becomes so
meta because it is that thing, Ben, like in rehearsal
where you have the real person, then the actor playing
the person, and then the person reacting to the actor,
and then the actor reacting to the person reacting to
their acting. It just sounds really exciting.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
And that's already fascinating because a lot of the– I
mean this trailer has generated a ton of conversation like
in a very, very short amount of time. And one
of the themes that keeps coming up is autism versus psychopathy.
It is like writ large like in the dynamic between
Nathan and Elizabeth. Nathan Fielder has often been spoken of
(28:34):
in terms of his likely position on the autism spectrum.
And again, I'm not here to psychoanalyze anybody from afar.
I can't speak to any diagnosis that he's received or
I don't believe that he's necessarily spoken of to this.
But it is interesting because a lot of folks are coming–
psychologists are coming on and referencing this trailer and the
(28:56):
look of bewilderment that he is kind of conveying, I guess,
and how it is sort of an example of a
type of expression that is common in individuals on the
spectrum when they're kind of trying to understand– what they're
seeing or like whether someone is trying to manipulate them
or not or like kind of like their version of
(29:18):
sort of telegraphing the 3D chess they might be playing internally.
And I just think that aspect of it alone is
fascinating and certainly not lost on the whole very clear
dichotomy in the way the trailer is cut and what
it's trying to kind of like present. I just don't
know what to say. I haven't really been affected by
a piece of media like this and in.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
A minute there's another new trailer that dropped recently oh
gosh it's got the word social in it it's like
uh it's it's about facebook remember on strange news we
talked about.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
It's the sequel sort of it's called the social reckoning
or something like that um it's it's by uh uh
What's his name? The guy that wrote the social network
who also did like the West Wing and stuff. And
it is his director. He's directing it as well as
having written.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
And it's.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Is that Sorkin? Sorkin.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And it is showing the things about the things that
we talked about on strange news that that huge suit
about endangering children and specifically teens and then Facebook having
to actually change its platform because like to actually be
affected by by the things that they have done to.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
All of us, specifically children.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
So I just I cannot wait to see that one either.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
You know, Jeremy Strong, Mr. Method playing Mark Zuckerberg, and
he is doing it the most. Let me tell you,
he really he really kind of gets the mannerisms, specifically
the ones we kind of started to be more familiar
with when Mr. Zuckerberg was testifying before Congress and just
kind of having a bit of a I don't know,
(30:55):
had taken on a bit of an alien quality, you know,
let's just say. And Strong is really leaning into that. Well, guys,
that was kind of just a little treat to start
off this segment of Strange News. And as is always
the case, when we have something fun like that, we
talk about it a little more than I maybe anticipate.
I should probably do a better job of anticipating. But
I am going to briefly mention a story that I
(31:16):
teased on the last Strange News episode when Ben was
not With us, and I'm kind of glad that I
get an opportunity to share it now that you are here, Ben,
because I teased it by giving Max the nickname Max
the Cat in the Hat Williams. And this is in
reference to how a creepy Cat in the Hat meme
(31:37):
escalated into school threats. This comes from an article on
Mashable by Olivia Tauber. A little older at this point,
but I just haven't seen a ton being made of it.
And I think it's definitely very much in the spirit
of what we're talking about with misinformation, AI-generated slop, and
(31:57):
all of the confusion that it can cause. And how
something can very quickly evolve from just sort of maybe
a mean-spirited internet goof into actionable threat. Or at least
the perception of actionable threats. I'm just going to read
a little bit from this piece. Over the past several weeks,
AI generated and manipulated images if purported to show a
(32:19):
life-size version of the cat in the hat lurking outside homes,
staring through windows and roaming dark streets. The videos often
borrow the unsettling appearance of Mike Myers' character in the
much-mimed 2003 movie adaptation, then present the footage as a, quote,
local sighting. At first, the posts mostly played like internet
(32:41):
horror fiction, like creepypasta kind of stuff, but like the
AI version. But as the trend spread, some copycat accounts
began naming specific students, schools, and communities alongside phrases such as,
you're next, don't leave your window open, and coming for you.
Those messages have now prompted police investigations, increased security, canceled activity,
(33:05):
and at least one juvenile arrest. And I think the
most interesting thing about this, guys, is how this kind
of internet bullying can very quickly become a real concern
for law enforcement when names are names and when specific
(33:27):
organizations are named. Even if there's no real credible threat,
it starts to change the whole nature of the game
when You know, Palmerston North, for example, is a school
that is mentioned. And a tweet says Palmerston North is
being held hostage by a cat in the hat man. Beware, Palmy,
(33:51):
spotted cat in the hat near Golden Dragons. He's roaming around,
walking funny. Keep your doors locked. I guess Palmerston North
is not a school, but it's like a community. The
cat in the hat, C word, weird, cutting about Coatbridge.
This is in the U.K., And it's got images like
of this cat in the hat lurking on a playground
that's kind of edited in the style of surveillance footage,
like some sort of like flock camera. Cat in the
(34:13):
hat spotted in Leeds around White Rose, Wakefield, Bradford area.
Make sure to keep windows and doors locked and don't
stay out late at night and keep yourself safe. And
then we start seeing more like leering cat in the hat,
you know, surveillance footage and stuff. And Creepy stuff. I
truly believe that all the insane have been let out
to run wild in this country at the moment. That's
(34:34):
including the government, I might add. This mysterious figure was
seen alongside A27 near Worthing and apparently caused a bit
of a fright to people driving. Again, shadowy cat in
the hat figure. So, of course, police had to step
in and explain that the sightings weren't real. Authorities in
the UK and Ireland reassured residents that the images were fake.
(34:57):
and that they were AI-generated. However, similar to the killer
clown panic of 2016 that we talked about a bunch,
that does not necessarily put an end to things just
because law enforcement shut it down and start posting things
from their official accounts saying that these images are AI-generated.
(35:19):
What then happened was it began to escalate and people
started posting it and naming specific schools. And that led
to some shutdowns. This is in the United States. Posts
are circulating on TikTok and Snapchat, making violent threats against
schools in Oklahoma. A dangerous TikTok Snapchat trend has emerged
using a council that named Cat in the Hat. The
posts feature imagery of the Cat in the Hat with
a bloody knife. That's when law enforcement starts to swoop in.
(35:43):
So I guess this is sort of like a modern
version of like, I don't know. What do they call it, guys?
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Swatting?
Speaker 3 (35:50):
You know, when you make a threat against a school
and it literally forces a law enforcement reaction. Or you
can even do it against someone's personal residence. But the
school aspect of it is what I think is fascinating.
So I yield, guys. I'm curious to think about how
you see this as an escalation of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
It's weird to me that in Kentucky, after similar things,
they had a digital day and then canceled after-school activities.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
That is....
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I just don't understand how it becomes credible. And I
guess I suppose you have to take everything seriously because
if you don't and something happens, it's your fault. So
as the authorities there who can make that decision to
take an online day.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
It's so absurd. It's so absurd, right? How is the
line between what is real and what is fantasy been
blurred so much that you know, AI generated posts of
a silly character, but in a menacing stance, you know, or, or,
you know, with a creepy filter on it, how does
that become grounds for us to take big actions like
(37:04):
canceling school? It doesn't feel like we're just in this
space where stuff that is real.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Like this is completely fantasy. Make them upsies kids, you know,
Doing weird stuff on the Internet because they can.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It's like nothing is real, but everything is real. It
has to be treated as if it were real.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Oh, God, I feel like such an old man. It
feels disappointing to me.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
What the hell?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
And to your point, Matt, the Tennessee Office of Homeland
Security's Threat Assessment Center started tracking these posts that were
targeting schools and students. This also happened in Michigan and
in Texas. A perimeter was created, like an extra police
presence in a Texas school district. Sorry, it was the
Michigan high school that entered a precautionary perimeter lockdown after
(37:55):
an account directed a specific student. And I just will
say this too, like being, and I'm sure you see
this as well, Matt, being the father of a high
school age kid. I get texts when things like that
happen and they'll lock the school down over just about anything.
So it's not like the craziest thing in the world
for that to happen, but it's more just the bigger
picture and how this kind of rippled out into all
kinds of places, including, of course, the UK. But Ben,
(38:17):
I know that this is something that's on your mind,
just in terms of like the really dark side of AI.
And is this different than just someone making, say, writing
a note or making a post that's text-based threatening a school?
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Yeah, thank you, Noel. I'd like to go to a
retired Kentucky police sergeant who now owns a business that
helps people become more well-versed in this new paradigm of AI.
Shout out to Jason Rothermund, who said it better than
we could, but said something very similar to what we've
(38:51):
been saying for years. Quote, we should not be surprised
that a simplistic generative image is causing this kind of
disruption in because this is just, in my opinion, the
tip of the iceberg. And I know we've run long
on this one, but I appreciate the opportunity to shout
out Jason Rutherman, because it is absolutely true. There's a reckoning.
(39:15):
I have a lot of thoughts for this one, guys,
but I feel like I have to yield my time on.
Speaker 5 (39:19):
This, because.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
It just turned into a TED Talk. Well, I'd love
to at least hear just some closing words from you, Ben.
This is a big one, and I think it's probably fall.
for a future episode on the evolution of AI and
public safety and the erosion of trust in the media
and all of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
That's a perfect thing because we mentioned– let's make an episode, guys,
because we mentioned the post-truth society or post-truth civilization earlier.
pretty often. So why don't we do an episode on it?
I just, I can't think of a better way than
Rotherman phrased it when he was speaking with WKYT.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Absolutely. Well, looking forward to that one. That's going to
be probably an ongoing series because to Rotherman's point, absolutely
just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
But there is one thing here, and Noel, you mentioned
it early on when we were talking about this story.
There were There was threatening language and real students and
real schools that were mentioned in some of the posts.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
So in the end, this story isn't about cat in
the hat. It has nothing to do with the AI
generated memes. It looks like what it has to do
with some individuals calling out actual human beings and threatening them.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
For sure, and that's why I asked, is it that
much different than someone just making a threatening post using text?
This is just kind of an escalation of that, and
I think because it's.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
First Amendment does not guarantee— does not protect you if you
are inciting specific harm to someone.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Terroristic threats and the like. No, you're absolutely right. I
do still think it absolutely figures into the larger conversation
around how AI is eroding belief in what is real.
what is not real. So let's take a quick break here.
We're from our sponsors and then we'll be back with
one more strange news segment.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
All right, and we've returned. We're going to go for
a little walk, guys. We're going to begin with AP News,
and we're going to talk about drones. Here's the piece.
Lawmakers ask Army to explain why it told a military
unit to stop specializing in drone warfare. This is from
September 2nd.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is pressing the Army,
that's the U.S.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Army, to stop specializing in drone warfare.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
To explain why it told the 173rd Airborne Brigade in
Europe to stop specializing in drone warfare. This is an
order that comes as the world's battlefields rapidly evolve and
military tactics increasingly rely on these uncrewed systems to fight. Now,
the 173rd Airborne Brigade was building its own drones. Hear that?
(41:58):
It was building its own drones and practicing the exact
kind of warfare that we've talked about on the show,
that Ukraine has pioneered against Russia, and that Iran is
currently fighting against the U.S. This is a brigade of
600 soldiers. It was set up in November, and it
was of that as of last year, and it was
set to be deployed anywhere that drones were needed for
(42:20):
the U.S. Army. And here's a little quote here. We
have deep concerns that eliminating this specialized drone unit will
limit our ability to learn from allies, particularly the Ukrainian
armed forces, and and hinder our efforts to modernize drone
warfare at the speed necessary to compete in the modern battlefield.
(42:40):
This specialized unit was a prudent response in a moment
when the character of warfare is changing faster than a
conventional formation's ability to adapt. This is a letter that
the group of lawmakers wrote, or this is contained within
that letter. They sent that to the Associated Press. These
lawmakers said, this is according to the article, They were
(43:03):
particularly keen to understand the data analysis and process behind
the change after less than a year of the drone
unit being active. They also want to know if the
decision was based on guidance from Pentagon leadership or if
it was made internally by the Army.
Speaker 5 (43:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
And that's those are two very different things. Is the
Army deciding this is a strategic move we need to
make or is someone in the Pentagon just saying, hey,
do this? Any thoughts there, guys, before we move on
to the next piece?
Speaker 5 (43:34):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
One, the best way to put it is everybody should, again,
read Foundations of Geopolitics by Alexander Dugin. This is another
example for anybody who believes that the United States is
being purposely destroyed from within.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
It's a very interesting point there because it does appear,
and I didn't mention some of this, that is in
the AP article you can find. But it does discuss
the potentially political moves that are happening here, specifically with
members of the armed forces, like high-level members of the
armed forces that were pushed out or kicked out or told, hey,
(44:14):
you should probably move on.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
Fall on your sword.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I'm going to read this one last piece just so
we have a couple of these vocabulary words and proper nouns.
Integrating drones into the Army's tactics was a major focus
for General Randy George, who was recently ousted by the
standing Secretary of Defense. Last year, he and, oh, Driscoll
is another person that's mentioned in this article, another person
from the Army that you can look up, D-R-I-S-C-O-L-L. So
(44:45):
General Randy George and Driscoll had rolled out what they
called the, quote, Army Transformation Initiative Initiative. which pushed to
add quote modernized unmanned aircraft systems into formations. So the
idea is in some of these more traditional formations that
you might find battalions, you might find in the army,
you would also have drone specialists and, you know, a
(45:06):
few drones, a small number of drones that would be
there to assist on the battlefield. And that's often like intelligence, right?
That's what these drones are doing. They're assisting and gathering
information about the battlefield and the enemy. Um, It is
very strange to me personally that the U.S. would make
this move, especially considering what we're seeing in the two
(45:27):
largest fronts on which war is being fought right now.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Non-consensual hangouts.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, because there are wars happening across the world, right?
Many of them civil, as we had just talked about
in Sudan and in other places. But in the two
big ones where there are big boys measuring their penises,
everybody's doing that these days. These guys doing that, they're
using drones to fight.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
Drones are the future, so riddle us this, folks, and
I think we're on the same page here. Why would
one of the world's most powerful militaries acknowledge that this
is a future front of asymmetric warfare and then at
the same time say, hey, you know what we're going
(46:09):
to do? Make sure that we'll never be good at it.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Well, it is weird because these folks have been out
there for almost a year doing it, and it must
have either gone really wrong or somebody just has some
bad ideas at the top.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
It's just baffling to me. Yeah, guys, por que los dos?
Both things can be true at once. It is, I think,
further evidence to the longstanding idea, and I know people
call me crazy for this, to the longstanding idea man,
not even an idea, an observation that for some reason
(46:47):
in recent years, and I'm being very diplomatic here, the
United States has repeatedly made decisions that are bad for
the United States on a geopolitical and a domestic level.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Ben, I hear you, Ben, and I do not discount
what you're saying there or that idea or the evidence,
you know, that we've seen, right? I am going to
propose An alternate concept with the next couple of things
that we're going to talk about here is just something
that we could think about. Here we go. This is
(47:23):
from The Guardian, August 18th, 2026, Autonomous Drones and the
Future of War in an AI-Driven World. I'm just going
to read a bit of this, and we're just going
to mix this into our understanding thus far. And it
should be noted, this is a letter that was written
by Dr. Darren Mann, who is a military surgeon in London.
(47:43):
This is like a letter to the editors. And it
is commenting on several other Guardian pieces that have been
written over the course of July and August of this year.
So when you hear this first name in this quote,
it is a writer for the Guardian.
Speaker 5 (48:00):
So here we go.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Stuart Russell is right that AI's builders fear losing control
of it. And then it cites the article. We're not
going to mention. You can find it if you want to.
But it is not only a future superintelligence's problem. It
is already loaded into weapons where a loss of control
kills a civilian today, not humanity tomorrow. An autonomous drone
told to clear a, quote, kill box is the genie.
(48:25):
Your other columnist described, links to another article, It does
what it is told, killing whatever is inside that box,
combatant or child. A further danger is peculiar to war.
Autonomy is sold as combat without our own dead, and
a bloodless war is easier to start, but that is
a fallacy. You can take the human from the targeting loop,
(48:49):
not the nation from the war. Machines that kill without distinction,
answerable to no one, leave no one safe. And this
is just a quick commentary. And this is a very
ripe letter that you can find because it does cite
numerous other articles that then you can begin connecting the
dots and understand even deeper what Dr. Darren Mann is
(49:11):
saying here. But just the concept that with autonomous drones
that are given by a human. commander or through some
kind of AI generative thing, a kill box, literally drawing
a box on a map where they need to go
and kill all the things that are in that box.
(49:32):
If it is fully autonomous, just how dangerous that potentially
could be. And especially when you factor in The problems
that AI has been having as recently as this past week, guys,
that whole weird thing where all the AI shut down
for a little bit and not all of it, a
large majority of it all shut down, likely due, I
(49:55):
was going to talk about this, but we're not going
to have time to it, likely due to Microsoft Azure
having some major problems or maybe even, what is it,
XAI and Microsoft them having these weird reciprocal relationships where
they're sharing compute now at different data centers. There's one
(50:15):
in Memphis that may have had some problems and then
that affected, you know, other ones. So Grok ends up
going down and somehow chat GPT gets broken for a moment,
but nobody will explain how or why it happened. And
then you go even further down into all the stories
we've been talking about in the past where AI has
(50:36):
been hacking things And these rogue agents are going out
and doing their own thing, taking pretty intense steps. Ben,
I think you were going to talk about hugging face today,
but we're going to save that. So we'll go deep
into that maybe next time, I'm hoping. Will we do that?
Speaker 5 (50:55):
Oh, yes.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
This may actually be an episode, but I love the
shout out there, Matt. Everybody, please do check out The
Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations by Dwarkish Patel. This
will be a focus for us next week, and I
think we'll have more news about it when we get there,
(51:16):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
But the news with regards to this thing that we're
building right here, Hugging Face got hacked hard, real hard.
And the weird news for me was reading on September 3rd,
as is according to ABC News, NVIDIA buying artificial intelligence
platform Hugging Face for $ 13 billion. Just to see, again,
(51:40):
we've talked about the circular investment thing that's happening. Everybody's
sharing things. Everybody's sharing the same money and passing it
back and forth and making the valuations of everything go up.
And at the same time, these things that they are
building are getting further and further away from their own control.
(52:01):
And we just keep building them. And it's important. And
now NVIDIA is going to make a bunch of money
and have a lot more control now that they've got
Hugging Face. Let's read a little bit here. Chipmaker NVIDIA
is buying artificial intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $ 12. 93 billion.
In July, the data processing systems of Hugging Face were
(52:21):
hacked and chat GBT maker OpenAI acknowledged that its artificial
intelligence system was to blame, sending shockwaves through the security
community amid heightened concerns about the capabilities of powerful AI models.
Just over a week later, Anthropic said its artificial intelligence
models hacked into three other organizations during testing, followed closely
(52:44):
by an announcement from Meta, which said its AI model
accessed the Internet on its own and hacked another company.
The wave of AI intrusions occurred just a month after
the current United States president signed an executive order creating
a framework for the federal government to vet the national
security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up
(53:04):
to a month before their public release. Guys, what I'm
trying to get at with these stories, I wonder if
the US military, the Pentagon, and perhaps even the army
are noticing that they've kind of messed up and they've
been pushing for these AI systems to get deeper integrated
(53:26):
into all of their systems, into their targeting systems, into
their reasoning systems, into their intelligence apparatus. I wonder if
they're realizing that that some of this AI stuff and
the autonomous stuff is going to be maybe a really,
really bad thing, especially if we consider that some of
(53:48):
the first bombs that were dropped in the Israel-Iran-U.S. conflict
that's happening that killed schoolchildren because allegedly, at least according
to the story, and I can't confirm this, I don't
have any kind of secret access, but it was allegedly
because it was an AI-generated target.
Speaker 5 (54:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:06):
And Matt, I hear you on that. I think a
lot of people do, but we have to understand that
could exist in a faction of a government that is
very divided because now we know there are still pushes
to further shoehorn agentic AI into aspects of the military
and governance. So maybe drone activity could be an exception, uh,
(54:30):
but there's very much, I think, um, the very least,
there is a disunited front here because Hegseth, as we know,
the current Secretary of Defense has already made a lot
of public moves to further insert AI into the equation.
So perhaps it's a division that we were teasing a
(54:51):
little bit earlier, the actual military versus the armed forces bureaucracy,
wanting two different things. That seems to be like one
of the easiest answers because it's easy to mistake incompetence
for malevolence. And that's one.
Speaker 5 (55:08):
I hear you.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
But if, but if Hegseth.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
But also, again, both things can be true.
Speaker 5 (55:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
And often are.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
But if Hegseth and the cronies, you know, at the
Pentagon and those folks who want all the AI and
want to make all the money on the AI and
the investments that they've all got and they're all corrupt with,
they want more of it. Why would potentially an order
from the Pentagon and from Hegseth himself maybe go to
the army and say hey stop doing that thing with
drones that doesn't make sense to me I am holding
(55:39):
on to hope that somewhere within the giant horrifying terrifying
military industrial apparatus there are some human beings with enough
understanding that can say hey this is a huge mistake
that we're making with this stuff.
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Maybe chat GPT said, Hey guys, stop with the drones.
Speaker 5 (56:05):
Yeah. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
And they're just listening. I, for me, I'm holding on
hope that I'm holding on hope that it's human beings
that are seeing the folly and will hopefully in some
part help us lessen, uh, lessen the lesson that we
are about to learn the hard way.
Speaker 5 (56:24):
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
Uh, last thing that you should read. This is from Gizmodo,
September 2nd. A solar superstorm caused a GPS glitch bad
enough to crash self-driving cars. This is just a little
piece about a November 11, 2025 solar flare and storm CME,
coronal mass ejection that hit Earth. And it messed up
(56:46):
GPS so badly that cars and tractors were like 30
miles away. They were showing up 30 miles away from
where they actually were on GPS systems. And this is
just to say, hey, guys, maybe the sun ends up
being the thing that saves us from this crazy AI
hellscape we're all entering into. Maybe the sun is the
(57:09):
thing that shuts it all down because it blasts us
with its solar radiation enough that all of our technology
gets lost.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
I always think of the ending to a pretty corny movie,
Escape from L.A., the sequel to a much better movie,
Escape from New York, where it ends with Some doomsday
device that essentially kills all electronic anything in the entire world,
including batteries, which I always thought was the funny little
detail that made it not believable. But, I mean, that
(57:38):
is the ultimate reset, you know, of Sodom and Gomorrah style, right?
Speaker 5 (57:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
A guy can hope. Come on, son. Let's do this.
Speaker 3 (57:47):
I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
All right. That's it for me, guys.
Speaker 4 (57:51):
And folks, thank you as always so much for tuning in.
Thank you for riding along with us on Strange News.
As all three of us teased, we have a lot
of stories we didn't get to, but we're hoping we
can crack the walnut on, whatever, we'll keep it, crack
the walnut on some of these in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, the most important part about this show
(58:12):
is going to be your thoughts. So please find us,
reach out, tell us your takes and your opinions, especially
about Uh, with the stuff we teased, but didn't get to,
there are a ton of ways to contact us.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
You can find us all over the internet at your
social media platform of choice. Uh, and either the handle
conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
We have a phone number. It is 1 8 3
3 S T D W Y T K. When you
call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
one of our listener mail episodes that show up in
this same feed where you're listening to this. Uh, so
I guess keep listening. If you want to send us
an email, we are.
Speaker 4 (58:52):
The entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive
be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back.
Why does Nepal want India, China, and the United States
to pay for floods? You can find that. And what
makes El Nino definitely not that Nino this year?
Speaker 5 (59:10):
Year?
Speaker 4 (59:10):
Stay tuned next week for all this and more on
stuff they don't want you to know. In the meantime,
find us out here in the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio.com.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
My name is Nolan.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined, as always, with our
super producer, Max the Free Train Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
That makes this the Stuff They Don't Want You To
Know Strange News Edition.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
That's right, folks.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
If you are tuning in the evening, this program publishes.
Welcome to September 14th. There is so much going on. Guys,
I know my throat's still not at 100%, but I
sure missed not being able to make our last Strange
News program, which was just out of the park.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We kicked ass.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'm just joking. Well, I missed you guys.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
We missed you too, man.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Thank you, Matt.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
That's really nice of you. We always like to start
with some good news. So if we can put our
producer a little bit on the spot. Guys, can we
congratulate Freight Train on buying a new car?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh, I was hoping it was a Freight Train.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We need to know what did you go with, Max?
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Why?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
The people out here need to understand. We need to
get advice from you.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
And we'd like your license and registration number, if you
don't mind.
Speaker 6 (01:40):
Well, I feel like Matt's asking me this because he
wanted me to get a Toyota Camry. I got a
Honda Accord.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Touring. You got a touring.
Speaker 5 (01:48):
That's sick.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm a Honda guy, though. It is a spaceship.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
Well, and a little reference for the listeners. I am
upgrading from a 2002 Honda CRV. So going like getting
if I would have got in a 2012, it would
have seemed really advanced to me going to 2021. It's
just like, what is this crazy thing? I drove a
23 and I'm like, no, too much, too much. Too
far into the future.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
But now you're driving in the future, Max. And this
is an excellent introduction to our first story of tonight's
strange news. So let's say we pause for a word
from our sponsors and we'll be right back with the
future of driving. We have returned with big thanks to
(02:36):
Joseph Cox writing for 404 Media. We're talking about this
a little bit off air, guys. You know, we've spent
a lot of time exploring the idea of mass surveillance,
exploring the idea of pre-crime as always imagined in science fiction,
as always imagined in sci-fi films like Minority Report.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
But riddle me this, guys.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Have you ever heard of a little outfit called Pitt?
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Not once.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Only what you've mentioned to us just a few moments ago.
But no, I'm with you, Matt. Not once prior to that.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
Well.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
It's not as cool as the PIT that most of
us were thinking of off air. PIT is an acronym
for something called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams. It turns out
that the Department of Homeland Security is not contemplating, but
has been running secretive predictive policing units that take in
(03:37):
not just your previous driving habits, but your financial activity.
So these PIT outfits are can do stuff like analyze
the financial activity of somebody driving across Montana and then
use that as a pretense to stop this person driving
across Montana and say, look, we're stopping you not because
(04:01):
of this secret program we're using. We're stopping you because
your license plate is obstructed. And then they charge that
guy with a DUI, driving under the influence of some
sort of intoxicant.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I think the operative word here is pre tense.
Speaker 5 (04:18):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
And pre crime.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Beautiful.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
But the issue here is that you cannot control your data. Right, guys,
like every time you use a credit card, most the
majority of the financial institutions that you will work with
in this country do consider your activity a another potential
stream of revenue. So What do we think about this
(04:45):
before we go any further?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I mean, it feels like it's matching up just with
the overly surveilled world we live in now that they
would take. Well, the overly surveilled world matched with the
overly data sucked world that we live in. Our data
is just getting sucked all the time. These folks are dirty.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Data vamps.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Data vamps, data leeches, we could say. They also are
biting us in unusual places if you are the average
person in the United States. So it seems like, and
we still have a lot to learn about this, but
it seems as though what's happening is this huge eye
(05:31):
of Sauron surveillance system is able to say, hey, this
person here spent a lot of money in California. maybe
at a dispensary, and maybe they're driving across state lines.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
That's dirty pool, man. Dirty pool. I don't even like
it that they can scan. I guess there's a chip
in license plates now that let them know without seeing
it physically that your tag has expired. Because I've certainly
been pulled over for an expired tag when there's no
way that the cop on the side of the road
had a view. To my little sticker of the little
(06:06):
tiny sticker. So even that and like things like traffic
cams just feel like dirty pool, man. Like, give us
a fighting chance.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
So I think a lot of us in the audience
agree with you there, Noel. We know that around 930
and this is again, thanks for journalist Cox here around
930 p.m.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
One night in May.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
And I'm reading directly from this 404 media article. A
guy named Kyle William Olson was driving home on Interstate 90.
He had a black Chevy SUV. His dog was in
the backseat. His dog is named Ducky. And in his vehicle,
he had cannabis edibles, cannabis cuttings, and he had butane
(06:52):
hash oil. He works at a licensed legal cannabis farm
in California, and that's where he picked up the weed.
He was transporting it home to Wisconsin. And he got
clocked because of this system. He drove past a guy
named Sergeant James Beck of the Montana Highway Patrol. And
(07:14):
this dude was sitting there, you know, speed trap style.
When Olson passed them, Beck, to your point, Noel, noticed
the vehicle's license plate was obstructed. And he said, you
got a tinted cover. You got a luggage holder. You
can't see the plate. So I'm going to pull you over.
It's nothing major. It's just your license plate is a
(07:35):
little bit obstructed. That's our reason for stopping you. They
gave him a blood test. They charged him with a DUI.
And then later.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
For marijuana?
Speaker 5 (07:47):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Or for alcohol?
Speaker 4 (07:48):
For marijuana, for cannabis. So during discovery in his case,
we come to find that Olson gets this document that
says border patrol or DHS was using pit predictive intelligence
targeting team capabilities to look out for his license plate
in specific. This is, this is the iceberg under the
(08:13):
current controversy of flock.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Well, there's a, there's a couple of tricky, other tricky
things wrapped up in this. Um, and I guess as
the resident stoner here, I just want to speak for
all of us out there in the audience. If you
test positive on a blood test for THC, you could
have smoked yesterday. It does not mean, it is not
any indication. I don't believe that they have any way
of testing positive. What's the word? Concentration or whatever.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Timeline into it. It's not like blood alcohol level, which
absolutely means that you're intoxicated right now. So this already
feels like double dirty pool. And then the other aspect
of it too is just the whole rigmarole around legality
of cannabis.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
And even like taking it through airport security.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Because if you are in like a legal state and
then you're flying back to an illegal state, like who
has precedent or who has jurisdiction in that situation? It's
a very, very gray area. All of these are very,
very gray areas. And I'm particularly disturbed by the detail
of we gave you a blood test and you have
THC in your system. Therefore, you get a DWI.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
That's.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Horse shit, Frank. Right, or a DUI.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
And yeah, this is great because it doesn't mean, a
positive blood test doesn't mean somebody is rolling down the interstate,
smoking a blunt at the same time. Yeah, this does-
Potentially sipping on gin and juice. This does give us,
for sure, this does give us interesting precedent to a
(09:48):
conspiracy we've been talking about a while, you guys. This
document specifically- admits, thanks to Border Patrol agent Matthew Phelps,
the author, it admits that information contained within law enforcement
sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit
(10:10):
narcotics activity can trigger these pullovers, which I think is
a bridge too far. That's a Rubicon civilization probably should
not have crossed and it's definitely a conspiracy well yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It's just i mean not that fairness has anything to
do with it anymore these days um but just the
pretense of pulling someone over for such a minor infraction
we've seen that used in cases of profiling you know
it's always kind of a gnarly entry point into uh
abuse of power not always but often And this just
(10:45):
seems like an even more egregious example of that because
the deck is just utterly stacked against us now.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
It makes me think about a lot of these standards
that got set up a long time ago where things
like probable cause that are there for a good reason,
but they end up being used as if we want
to pull X person over, we need a legal rationale
to do so. And Then we need a legal rationale
(11:13):
to take that person back to a precinct for X
amount of time to establish whatever we need to establish
because this person is our target. And when you have
something like this, you're just– it's more– it's ammunition for
the potential to pull anybody they want to pull over over.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I like that you're using the word ammunition there, Matt,
because I would agree that it's definitely being weaponized in
the eras of sundown towns, which still exist here in
the United States. And officers' discretion was often a fig
leaf for racial discrimination, right? And even state-sponsored murder. And
we could have, in a better world, we could have
(11:57):
assumed that Increased surveillance would keep everybody less corrupt and
more honest. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Ben, sundown towns, doesn't that historically refer to towns that
were inherently anti-Black and were not considered unsafe for Black
people to travel through after dark?
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Yeah, anti-anybody not perceived as white. So any person who
was not perceived as white was in danger of being harassed, assaulted, tortured,
murdered with the full approval of the local government, even
if only tacit approval. This is something we'd love to
(12:45):
hear your thoughts on, folks. Again, we've got a lot
to get to. Drive carefully out there and please do
check out that excellent piece by 404 Media. Bad news
for anybody who gets arrested. due to Pitt or other
surveillance state shenanigans, if you find yourself jammed up and
(13:05):
you're very thirsty, the news is in.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
U.S.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Courts have decided that the Constitution does not guarantee a
right to clean water, which has got to be pretty
freaking crazy. I wish the Segway wasn't so applicable. But
as I think we all clock this individually, we want
to give a big thanks to The Guardian and the
(13:30):
journalist Victoria Bekempis, B-E-K-I-E-M-P-I-S. This legal opinion comes from the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals out there in Jackson, Mississippi.
Residents who were not arrested, by the way, innocent people,
They claimed that tainted drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi, was
(13:54):
a violation of their constitutional rights. And the court came
back and said, no, you not only do not have
the right to be free from exposure to contaminated water,
but you also don't have the constitutional right to accurate
information from public officials.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
What?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Beep me here, Max. What the f * * *?
sorry you don't have the right to public information accurate
information but what i'm saying is that that stuff is
supposed to be of the public record so you mean
like in an exchange like they're not required to be
truthful with you is that the implication.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Or maybe the burden of being accurate is not on
them so maybe maybe we can phrase it as being
um okay for them to be wrong I guess, or
for them to have incorrect information that they are conveying
to the public. But I'm going back to the water.
That is crazy that this country just said, well, we've
(15:02):
had this debate in the past, guys, on previous episodes
or strange news or listener mail, the conversation about Nestle's
villainy with clean water, potable water, or the idea that
the fights that the UN has all the time about
whether clean water or access to water is a human right.
(15:24):
This feels like a very un-U.S.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Thing, I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Ben, what if we were to unpack it and look
at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Like, what
would you consider the, you know, fair, equitable, access to clean,
potable water to fall under if we were to try
to tie it back to the Constitution.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
All people are created equally, afforded the same opportunities based
on the virtue of being alive.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And I suppose we could also maybe argue that that
might also be something that could be pointed to in
terms of access to health care, the idea that you
should be entitled to live prosperously in society. But then
that kind of requires– I just guess– I guess my
point is it requires reading into it a little bit
on both ends, right?
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Yeah, because the constitution does not explicitly guarantee clean water.
So it really is like a might makes right situation unfortunately.
We do know that the court said– well, the majority
of the court at least said we recognize there are
allegations of serious government misfeasance and we are sympathetic to
(16:39):
to the injuries that suffer as a result. And then
they said, our sympathies cannot be the basis of this ruling.
So because the constitution does not explicitly say something like
everybody has a right to not drink poison and to
pursue happiness, because it doesn't explicitly say water, the people
(17:03):
polluting the water, the powerful corporations get a pass.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
It's another example of this narrative that empathy is weakness
that is being pushed so heavily, you know, by certain
powers that be.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
And Matt, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, we talked recently on our data centers episode about
how private well water. So not water that's coming from
a municipal source like it is there in Mississippi in
that case. But private well water is not regulated in
any way. it's not under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Oh, right.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
So it's not entitled to be safe, essentially. There's no
guarantee of its safety.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, but I'm separating here private well water, right? This
is like, you're a landowner, you've got a well.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
On your land.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
We heard in that episode about construction of a data
center and the act of construction, polluting, contaminating all that
private well water, right? And we just found out in
Going through that episode specifically that the state of Georgia
doesn't regulate well water at the state level at all,
we found out that the EPA basically gives guidance for
(18:15):
private well owners. And that's it. And, oh, technical assistance.
So that's nice. They can help you out if your
well water goes bad. But then when you get to
a municipal source where everybody is paying a significant amount
of money into a system that is supposed to put
out fresh water, potable water. for you to drink that's safe.
It sure does seem like the government is the only
(18:37):
thing responsible. The folks that are deciding how that water
is going to be treated, what pipes it flows through
to get to your house. This is insane to me
that nobody can be held responsible. And then in that article, Ben,
they say, well, why didn't you try and do tort reforms?
Why didn't you elect somebody better who would better represent
(18:58):
you in your water needs?
Speaker 5 (19:01):
What?
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I'm glad you brought that up because that is a
clear textbook quintessential example, in my opinion, of victim blaming, right?
Like why do you, despite not being a lawyer, right?
Why do you not understand the concept of tort claims
and tort reform? It's really on you because of the
(19:24):
way you were intellectually dressed. That's what they're saying.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
And appropriate because of Max's recent article. Vehicle acquisition, it
kind of reminds me of like when you're negotiating terms
for like an auto loan like at a dealership and
they give you a really high rate and you say
something to the effect of like, this happened to me. Well,
this seems really high. Oh, you didn't tell us you
wanted a low rate.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Like, that's literally more or less what they said. And
it's like this idea that you should have to negotiate
on your own behalf to get what's fair.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
And if you don't know enough, then you're entitled to
whatever bum deal gets thrown at you because you were
too stupid to do anything about it.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Well, sir, you didn't say you did not want all
these flies in your soup. Or, well, America, you didn't
say specifically that you didn't want rat feces in the cereal.
So that is kind of on you. Guys, we've run
a little long here. I want to congratulate... All the
new hires at the FBI, they've lowered the standards officially.
(20:31):
If you have been caught hiring sex workers or if
you have committed bestiality or if you have embezzled from
an employer, it's no longer a deal breaker. for you
to work at the FBI. So check out CBS News
for that.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Hell, it might afford you some interesting appointments. You know
what I mean? Like maybe they install you in a
different division because these are like strengths, not weaknesses, especially
the bestiality part.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Who better to guard the hen house than the guys
who are very interested in chickens? So shout out to
Sarah Ann Lynch and Daniel Klaidman over at CBS News.
We've got more on the way. We're going to pause
for a word from our sponsors, and we'll be back
with more strange news.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
And we're back. And guys, I just want to start
off with a little bit of show and tell. I
think you guys might have already seen this, but it
is a movie teaser trailer, so we can play it
in its entirety and then talk a little bit about
it because the subject matter absolutely fits right within the
wheelhouse of this show. So without further ado, here we go.
Speaker 7 (21:40):
I'm not that person. I can promise you that. I
don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm
not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being.
Why would I deceive you?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
There's no....
Speaker 7 (22:02):
There's no reason for me to do that.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
Okay. All right. Okay, good shot. You're being real right now?
(22:27):
I'm always being real.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Woo!
Speaker 2 (22:39):
God, man, come on.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Sociopathy, anybody? Holy gal. If anyone isn't familiar, this is
the trailer, the teaser trailer just dropped for a new
documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
The....
Speaker 3 (22:53):
CEO of the billion-dollar-valuated Silicon Valley startup Theranos, which I
believe was responsible for marketing a device that was a
medical device that supposedly could diagnose any number of ailments
with the prick of a finger, and it was all
utter vaporware, if that's the right term, just being charitable,
(23:16):
let's go so far as to even call it just
complete charity. bunk, just absolutely built on lies, lying to shareholders,
lying to the public, gaslighting, all of this stuff. And
this is Elizabeth Holmes speaking in that trailer to Nathan Fielder,
who I know we are all huge fans of, from
(23:36):
his CBC work to his work on Nathan For You,
the kind of satirical sort of blurring the line between
reality TV and performance art and just absolutely fantastic stuff.
And then evolving into the, uh, what's it called guys? The,
not the audition, the rehearsal. That's right. Uh, the rehearsal. Um,
(23:57):
and then an incredible, bizarre, uh, TV series, um, called
the curse that he did with, uh, one of the
softy brothers, um, And now he's making this documentary with
another incredibly talented filmmaker, creator named Lance Oppenheim, who has
this film coming out about something that's called Showtime. That's
about to catch a predator, the TV series where the
(24:19):
dude would kind of hijack or I guess what's the
word I'm looking for? Sort of confront, you know, sex
pests or less. um, controversial show, um, played by Robert Pattinson,
controversial film, because the guy who is being portrayed is
suing or is threatening to sue, um, for the way
he is being portrayed. But Matt, I know you've seen this, Ben,
(24:39):
I know you've seen this as well. Um, I'd love
to hear your thoughts on what we just saw and
what I would categorize for my money as one of
the most arresting minute and a half trailers that I've
seen in a long time. I think I must've watched
it 13 times last night.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I've also watched it over and over. Uh, analyzing and why,
why does it make me feel that way? Here's what
I've come away with. And I'm no expert here, but
I do have a background in video film stuff. And
I think the primary thing that's working here, the thing
that's putting in the most work is the long lens
that they're using to get these, these two shots. So
(25:16):
you're looking at Elizabeth Holmes and it feels as though
Nathan Fielder is inches away from her face.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
But she also actually is.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Well, they're very close, but that long lens makes it feel.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
When they pull it back, and I think one of
the details that really did it for me, too, was
that she is all the while rocking her baby with
her leg that is extended way off to the side
where the baby's in this cradle. And she's leaning forward.
on one side of a couch, and Nathan's on the
other side also leaning in. So maybe not inches, but
(25:50):
a weird setup, and the fact that she's multitasking while
rocking this Joker, Rictus, dead-eyed look, head tilted. It really
gives me chills.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Just to the point I was making there, proximity becomes
one of the most intense things you can do on
a screen when you're working in that medium. And when
you have that unbroken eye contact that they're both doing
and there's very little blinking, there's an intensity to that interaction.
If it was happening in real time in front of
(26:26):
you or if you were having that interaction with somebody,
they did a really good job with the camera and
the edit there to give you that feeling, Noel, and
to make me and everybody else who saw it just
feel unsettled to their core.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
How'd it hit you, Ben?
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Well, I'm obviously, as we know, folks, I'm very interested
in the story of Theranos, which Investopedia once called a
fallen unicorn. This is one of those things where at
the offset, everybody was super bullish about it, even though
the technology was, as you said, clearly vaporware or clearly
(27:06):
obscured from any credible researcher who could authenticate whether or
not it was malarkey. So I'm very excited to watch this.
As I hope everybody knows, I am a huge fan
of Nathan Fielder. And if you haven't seen the rehearsal,
check it out before you watch this documentary. It'll give
(27:27):
you a sense of the man's artistic depth. That's a
joke about camera work.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Yeah. Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Depth of field.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
And to that point, Ben, about the rehearsal, you are
going to get some of that stuff in this, at
least according to people who saw it at the surprise
screening of a, quote, mystery documentary when nobody knew what
they were going into.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Can you imagine going into a darkened theater? It just
says mystery documentary. And then this happens. And it's like
three hours.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
God, God.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
But there's a moment in it where it becomes so
meta because it is that thing, Ben, like in rehearsal
where you have the real person, then the actor playing
the person, and then the person reacting to the actor,
and then the actor reacting to the person reacting to
their acting. It just sounds really exciting.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
And that's already fascinating because a lot of the– I
mean this trailer has generated a ton of conversation like
in a very, very short amount of time. And one
of the themes that keeps coming up is autism versus psychopathy.
It is like writ large like in the dynamic between
Nathan and Elizabeth. Nathan Fielder has often been spoken of
(28:34):
in terms of his likely position on the autism spectrum.
And again, I'm not here to psychoanalyze anybody from afar.
I can't speak to any diagnosis that he's received or
I don't believe that he's necessarily spoken of to this.
But it is interesting because a lot of folks are coming–
psychologists are coming on and referencing this trailer and the
(28:56):
look of bewilderment that he is kind of conveying, I guess,
and how it is sort of an example of a
type of expression that is common in individuals on the
spectrum when they're kind of trying to understand– what they're
seeing or like whether someone is trying to manipulate them
or not or like kind of like their version of
(29:18):
sort of telegraphing the 3D chess they might be playing internally.
And I just think that aspect of it alone is
fascinating and certainly not lost on the whole very clear
dichotomy in the way the trailer is cut and what
it's trying to kind of like present. I just don't
know what to say. I haven't really been affected by
a piece of media like this and in.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
A minute there's another new trailer that dropped recently oh
gosh it's got the word social in it it's like
uh it's it's about facebook remember on strange news we
talked about.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
It's the sequel sort of it's called the social reckoning
or something like that um it's it's by uh uh
What's his name? The guy that wrote the social network
who also did like the West Wing and stuff. And
it is his director. He's directing it as well as
having written.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
And it's.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Is that Sorkin? Sorkin.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And it is showing the things about the things that
we talked about on strange news that that huge suit
about endangering children and specifically teens and then Facebook having
to actually change its platform because like to actually be
affected by by the things that they have done to.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
All of us, specifically children.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
So I just I cannot wait to see that one either.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
You know, Jeremy Strong, Mr. Method playing Mark Zuckerberg, and
he is doing it the most. Let me tell you,
he really he really kind of gets the mannerisms, specifically
the ones we kind of started to be more familiar
with when Mr. Zuckerberg was testifying before Congress and just
kind of having a bit of a I don't know,
(30:55):
had taken on a bit of an alien quality, you know,
let's just say. And Strong is really leaning into that. Well, guys,
that was kind of just a little treat to start
off this segment of Strange News. And as is always
the case, when we have something fun like that, we
talk about it a little more than I maybe anticipate.
I should probably do a better job of anticipating. But
I am going to briefly mention a story that I
(31:16):
teased on the last Strange News episode when Ben was
not With us, and I'm kind of glad that I
get an opportunity to share it now that you are here, Ben,
because I teased it by giving Max the nickname Max
the Cat in the Hat Williams. And this is in
reference to how a creepy Cat in the Hat meme
(31:37):
escalated into school threats. This comes from an article on
Mashable by Olivia Tauber. A little older at this point,
but I just haven't seen a ton being made of it.
And I think it's definitely very much in the spirit
of what we're talking about with misinformation, AI-generated slop, and
(31:57):
all of the confusion that it can cause. And how
something can very quickly evolve from just sort of maybe
a mean-spirited internet goof into actionable threat. Or at least
the perception of actionable threats. I'm just going to read
a little bit from this piece. Over the past several weeks,
AI generated and manipulated images if purported to show a
(32:19):
life-size version of the cat in the hat lurking outside homes,
staring through windows and roaming dark streets. The videos often
borrow the unsettling appearance of Mike Myers' character in the
much-mimed 2003 movie adaptation, then present the footage as a, quote,
local sighting. At first, the posts mostly played like internet
(32:41):
horror fiction, like creepypasta kind of stuff, but like the
AI version. But as the trend spread, some copycat accounts
began naming specific students, schools, and communities alongside phrases such as,
you're next, don't leave your window open, and coming for you.
Those messages have now prompted police investigations, increased security, canceled activity,
(33:05):
and at least one juvenile arrest. And I think the
most interesting thing about this, guys, is how this kind
of internet bullying can very quickly become a real concern
for law enforcement when names are names and when specific
(33:27):
organizations are named. Even if there's no real credible threat,
it starts to change the whole nature of the game
when You know, Palmerston North, for example, is a school
that is mentioned. And a tweet says Palmerston North is
being held hostage by a cat in the hat man. Beware, Palmy,
(33:51):
spotted cat in the hat near Golden Dragons. He's roaming around,
walking funny. Keep your doors locked. I guess Palmerston North
is not a school, but it's like a community. The
cat in the hat, C word, weird, cutting about Coatbridge.
This is in the U.K., And it's got images like
of this cat in the hat lurking on a playground
that's kind of edited in the style of surveillance footage,
like some sort of like flock camera. Cat in the
(34:13):
hat spotted in Leeds around White Rose, Wakefield, Bradford area.
Make sure to keep windows and doors locked and don't
stay out late at night and keep yourself safe. And
then we start seeing more like leering cat in the hat,
you know, surveillance footage and stuff. And Creepy stuff. I
truly believe that all the insane have been let out
to run wild in this country at the moment. That's
(34:34):
including the government, I might add. This mysterious figure was
seen alongside A27 near Worthing and apparently caused a bit
of a fright to people driving. Again, shadowy cat in
the hat figure. So, of course, police had to step
in and explain that the sightings weren't real. Authorities in
the UK and Ireland reassured residents that the images were fake.
(34:57):
and that they were AI-generated. However, similar to the killer
clown panic of 2016 that we talked about a bunch,
that does not necessarily put an end to things just
because law enforcement shut it down and start posting things
from their official accounts saying that these images are AI-generated.
(35:19):
What then happened was it began to escalate and people
started posting it and naming specific schools. And that led
to some shutdowns. This is in the United States. Posts
are circulating on TikTok and Snapchat, making violent threats against
schools in Oklahoma. A dangerous TikTok Snapchat trend has emerged
using a council that named Cat in the Hat. The
posts feature imagery of the Cat in the Hat with
a bloody knife. That's when law enforcement starts to swoop in.
(35:43):
So I guess this is sort of like a modern
version of like, I don't know. What do they call it, guys?
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Swatting?
Speaker 3 (35:50):
You know, when you make a threat against a school
and it literally forces a law enforcement reaction. Or you
can even do it against someone's personal residence. But the
school aspect of it is what I think is fascinating.
So I yield, guys. I'm curious to think about how
you see this as an escalation of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
It's weird to me that in Kentucky, after similar things,
they had a digital day and then canceled after-school activities.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
That is....
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I just don't understand how it becomes credible. And I
guess I suppose you have to take everything seriously because
if you don't and something happens, it's your fault. So
as the authorities there who can make that decision to
take an online day.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
It's so absurd. It's so absurd, right? How is the
line between what is real and what is fantasy been
blurred so much that you know, AI generated posts of
a silly character, but in a menacing stance, you know, or, or,
you know, with a creepy filter on it, how does
that become grounds for us to take big actions like
(37:04):
canceling school? It doesn't feel like we're just in this
space where stuff that is real.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Like this is completely fantasy. Make them upsies kids, you know,
Doing weird stuff on the Internet because they can.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
It's like nothing is real, but everything is real. It
has to be treated as if it were real.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Oh, God, I feel like such an old man. It
feels disappointing to me.
Speaker 5 (37:30):
What the hell?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
And to your point, Matt, the Tennessee Office of Homeland
Security's Threat Assessment Center started tracking these posts that were
targeting schools and students. This also happened in Michigan and
in Texas. A perimeter was created, like an extra police
presence in a Texas school district. Sorry, it was the
Michigan high school that entered a precautionary perimeter lockdown after
(37:55):
an account directed a specific student. And I just will
say this too, like being, and I'm sure you see
this as well, Matt, being the father of a high
school age kid. I get texts when things like that
happen and they'll lock the school down over just about anything.
So it's not like the craziest thing in the world
for that to happen, but it's more just the bigger
picture and how this kind of rippled out into all
kinds of places, including, of course, the UK. But Ben,
(38:17):
I know that this is something that's on your mind,
just in terms of like the really dark side of AI.
And is this different than just someone making, say, writing
a note or making a post that's text-based threatening a school?
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Yeah, thank you, Noel. I'd like to go to a
retired Kentucky police sergeant who now owns a business that
helps people become more well-versed in this new paradigm of AI.
Shout out to Jason Rothermund, who said it better than
we could, but said something very similar to what we've
(38:51):
been saying for years. Quote, we should not be surprised
that a simplistic generative image is causing this kind of
disruption in because this is just, in my opinion, the
tip of the iceberg. And I know we've run long
on this one, but I appreciate the opportunity to shout
out Jason Rutherman, because it is absolutely true. There's a reckoning.
(39:15):
I have a lot of thoughts for this one, guys,
but I feel like I have to yield my time on.
Speaker 5 (39:19):
This, because.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
It just turned into a TED Talk. Well, I'd love
to at least hear just some closing words from you, Ben.
This is a big one, and I think it's probably fall.
for a future episode on the evolution of AI and
public safety and the erosion of trust in the media
and all of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
That's a perfect thing because we mentioned– let's make an episode, guys,
because we mentioned the post-truth society or post-truth civilization earlier.
pretty often. So why don't we do an episode on it?
I just, I can't think of a better way than
Rotherman phrased it when he was speaking with WKYT.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Absolutely. Well, looking forward to that one. That's going to
be probably an ongoing series because to Rotherman's point, absolutely
just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
But there is one thing here, and Noel, you mentioned
it early on when we were talking about this story.
There were There was threatening language and real students and
real schools that were mentioned in some of the posts.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
So in the end, this story isn't about cat in
the hat. It has nothing to do with the AI
generated memes. It looks like what it has to do
with some individuals calling out actual human beings and threatening them.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
For sure, and that's why I asked, is it that
much different than someone just making a threatening post using text?
This is just kind of an escalation of that, and
I think because it's.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
First Amendment does not guarantee— does not protect you if you
are inciting specific harm to someone.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Terroristic threats and the like. No, you're absolutely right. I
do still think it absolutely figures into the larger conversation
around how AI is eroding belief in what is real.
what is not real. So let's take a quick break here.
We're from our sponsors and then we'll be back with
one more strange news segment.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
All right, and we've returned. We're going to go for
a little walk, guys. We're going to begin with AP News,
and we're going to talk about drones. Here's the piece.
Lawmakers ask Army to explain why it told a military
unit to stop specializing in drone warfare. This is from
September 2nd.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is pressing the Army,
that's the U.S.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Army, to stop specializing in drone warfare.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
To explain why it told the 173rd Airborne Brigade in
Europe to stop specializing in drone warfare. This is an
order that comes as the world's battlefields rapidly evolve and
military tactics increasingly rely on these uncrewed systems to fight. Now,
the 173rd Airborne Brigade was building its own drones. Hear that?
(41:58):
It was building its own drones and practicing the exact
kind of warfare that we've talked about on the show,
that Ukraine has pioneered against Russia, and that Iran is
currently fighting against the U.S. This is a brigade of
600 soldiers. It was set up in November, and it
was of that as of last year, and it was
set to be deployed anywhere that drones were needed for
(42:20):
the U.S. Army. And here's a little quote here. We
have deep concerns that eliminating this specialized drone unit will
limit our ability to learn from allies, particularly the Ukrainian
armed forces, and and hinder our efforts to modernize drone
warfare at the speed necessary to compete in the modern battlefield.
(42:40):
This specialized unit was a prudent response in a moment
when the character of warfare is changing faster than a
conventional formation's ability to adapt. This is a letter that
the group of lawmakers wrote, or this is contained within
that letter. They sent that to the Associated Press. These
lawmakers said, this is according to the article, They were
(43:03):
particularly keen to understand the data analysis and process behind
the change after less than a year of the drone
unit being active. They also want to know if the
decision was based on guidance from Pentagon leadership or if
it was made internally by the Army.
Speaker 5 (43:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
And that's those are two very different things. Is the
Army deciding this is a strategic move we need to
make or is someone in the Pentagon just saying, hey,
do this? Any thoughts there, guys, before we move on
to the next piece?
Speaker 5 (43:34):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
One, the best way to put it is everybody should, again,
read Foundations of Geopolitics by Alexander Dugin. This is another
example for anybody who believes that the United States is
being purposely destroyed from within.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
It's a very interesting point there because it does appear,
and I didn't mention some of this, that is in
the AP article you can find. But it does discuss
the potentially political moves that are happening here, specifically with
members of the armed forces, like high-level members of the
armed forces that were pushed out or kicked out or told, hey,
(44:14):
you should probably move on.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
Fall on your sword.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I'm going to read this one last piece just so
we have a couple of these vocabulary words and proper nouns.
Integrating drones into the Army's tactics was a major focus
for General Randy George, who was recently ousted by the
standing Secretary of Defense. Last year, he and, oh, Driscoll
is another person that's mentioned in this article, another person
from the Army that you can look up, D-R-I-S-C-O-L-L. So
(44:45):
General Randy George and Driscoll had rolled out what they
called the, quote, Army Transformation Initiative Initiative. which pushed to
add quote modernized unmanned aircraft systems into formations. So the
idea is in some of these more traditional formations that
you might find battalions, you might find in the army,
you would also have drone specialists and, you know, a
(45:06):
few drones, a small number of drones that would be
there to assist on the battlefield. And that's often like intelligence, right?
That's what these drones are doing. They're assisting and gathering
information about the battlefield and the enemy. Um, It is
very strange to me personally that the U.S. would make
this move, especially considering what we're seeing in the two
(45:27):
largest fronts on which war is being fought right now.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Non-consensual hangouts.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Yeah, because there are wars happening across the world, right?
Many of them civil, as we had just talked about
in Sudan and in other places. But in the two
big ones where there are big boys measuring their penises,
everybody's doing that these days. These guys doing that, they're
using drones to fight.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
Drones are the future, so riddle us this, folks, and
I think we're on the same page here. Why would
one of the world's most powerful militaries acknowledge that this
is a future front of asymmetric warfare and then at
the same time say, hey, you know what we're going
(46:09):
to do? Make sure that we'll never be good at it.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Well, it is weird because these folks have been out
there for almost a year doing it, and it must
have either gone really wrong or somebody just has some
bad ideas at the top.
Speaker 4 (46:25):
It's just baffling to me. Yeah, guys, por que los dos?
Both things can be true at once. It is, I think,
further evidence to the longstanding idea, and I know people
call me crazy for this, to the longstanding idea man,
not even an idea, an observation that for some reason
(46:47):
in recent years, and I'm being very diplomatic here, the
United States has repeatedly made decisions that are bad for
the United States on a geopolitical and a domestic level.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Ben, I hear you, Ben, and I do not discount
what you're saying there or that idea or the evidence,
you know, that we've seen, right? I am going to
propose An alternate concept with the next couple of things
that we're going to talk about here is just something
that we could think about. Here we go. This is
(47:23):
from The Guardian, August 18th, 2026, Autonomous Drones and the
Future of War in an AI-Driven World. I'm just going
to read a bit of this, and we're just going
to mix this into our understanding thus far. And it
should be noted, this is a letter that was written
by Dr. Darren Mann, who is a military surgeon in London.
(47:43):
This is like a letter to the editors. And it
is commenting on several other Guardian pieces that have been
written over the course of July and August of this year.
So when you hear this first name in this quote,
it is a writer for the Guardian.
Speaker 5 (48:00):
So here we go.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Stuart Russell is right that AI's builders fear losing control
of it. And then it cites the article. We're not
going to mention. You can find it if you want to.
But it is not only a future superintelligence's problem. It
is already loaded into weapons where a loss of control
kills a civilian today, not humanity tomorrow. An autonomous drone
told to clear a, quote, kill box is the genie.
(48:25):
Your other columnist described, links to another article, It does
what it is told, killing whatever is inside that box,
combatant or child. A further danger is peculiar to war.
Autonomy is sold as combat without our own dead, and
a bloodless war is easier to start, but that is
a fallacy. You can take the human from the targeting loop,
(48:49):
not the nation from the war. Machines that kill without distinction,
answerable to no one, leave no one safe. And this
is just a quick commentary. And this is a very
ripe letter that you can find because it does cite
numerous other articles that then you can begin connecting the
dots and understand even deeper what Dr. Darren Mann is
(49:11):
saying here. But just the concept that with autonomous drones
that are given by a human. commander or through some
kind of AI generative thing, a kill box, literally drawing
a box on a map where they need to go
and kill all the things that are in that box.
(49:32):
If it is fully autonomous, just how dangerous that potentially
could be. And especially when you factor in The problems
that AI has been having as recently as this past week, guys,
that whole weird thing where all the AI shut down
for a little bit and not all of it, a
large majority of it all shut down, likely due, I
(49:55):
was going to talk about this, but we're not going
to have time to it, likely due to Microsoft Azure
having some major problems or maybe even, what is it,
XAI and Microsoft them having these weird reciprocal relationships where
they're sharing compute now at different data centers. There's one
(50:15):
in Memphis that may have had some problems and then
that affected, you know, other ones. So Grok ends up
going down and somehow chat GPT gets broken for a moment,
but nobody will explain how or why it happened. And
then you go even further down into all the stories
we've been talking about in the past where AI has
(50:36):
been hacking things And these rogue agents are going out
and doing their own thing, taking pretty intense steps. Ben,
I think you were going to talk about hugging face today,
but we're going to save that. So we'll go deep
into that maybe next time, I'm hoping. Will we do that?
Speaker 5 (50:55):
Oh, yes.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
This may actually be an episode, but I love the
shout out there, Matt. Everybody, please do check out The
Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations by Dwarkish Patel. This
will be a focus for us next week, and I
think we'll have more news about it when we get there,
(51:16):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
But the news with regards to this thing that we're
building right here, Hugging Face got hacked hard, real hard.
And the weird news for me was reading on September 3rd,
as is according to ABC News, NVIDIA buying artificial intelligence
platform Hugging Face for $ 13 billion. Just to see, again,
(51:40):
we've talked about the circular investment thing that's happening. Everybody's
sharing things. Everybody's sharing the same money and passing it
back and forth and making the valuations of everything go up.
And at the same time, these things that they are
building are getting further and further away from their own control.
(52:01):
And we just keep building them. And it's important. And
now NVIDIA is going to make a bunch of money
and have a lot more control now that they've got
Hugging Face. Let's read a little bit here. Chipmaker NVIDIA
is buying artificial intelligence software platform Hugging Face for $ 12. 93 billion.
In July, the data processing systems of Hugging Face were
(52:21):
hacked and chat GBT maker OpenAI acknowledged that its artificial
intelligence system was to blame, sending shockwaves through the security
community amid heightened concerns about the capabilities of powerful AI models.
Just over a week later, Anthropic said its artificial intelligence
models hacked into three other organizations during testing, followed closely
(52:44):
by an announcement from Meta, which said its AI model
accessed the Internet on its own and hacked another company.
The wave of AI intrusions occurred just a month after
the current United States president signed an executive order creating
a framework for the federal government to vet the national
security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up
(53:04):
to a month before their public release. Guys, what I'm
trying to get at with these stories, I wonder if
the US military, the Pentagon, and perhaps even the army
are noticing that they've kind of messed up and they've
been pushing for these AI systems to get deeper integrated
(53:26):
into all of their systems, into their targeting systems, into
their reasoning systems, into their intelligence apparatus. I wonder if
they're realizing that that some of this AI stuff and
the autonomous stuff is going to be maybe a really,
really bad thing, especially if we consider that some of
(53:48):
the first bombs that were dropped in the Israel-Iran-U.S. conflict
that's happening that killed schoolchildren because allegedly, at least according
to the story, and I can't confirm this, I don't
have any kind of secret access, but it was allegedly
because it was an AI-generated target.
Speaker 5 (54:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:06):
And Matt, I hear you on that. I think a
lot of people do, but we have to understand that
could exist in a faction of a government that is
very divided because now we know there are still pushes
to further shoehorn agentic AI into aspects of the military
and governance. So maybe drone activity could be an exception, uh,
(54:30):
but there's very much, I think, um, the very least,
there is a disunited front here because Hegseth, as we know,
the current Secretary of Defense has already made a lot
of public moves to further insert AI into the equation.
So perhaps it's a division that we were teasing a
(54:51):
little bit earlier, the actual military versus the armed forces bureaucracy,
wanting two different things. That seems to be like one
of the easiest answers because it's easy to mistake incompetence
for malevolence. And that's one.
Speaker 5 (55:08):
I hear you.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
But if, but if Hegseth.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
But also, again, both things can be true.
Speaker 5 (55:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
And often are.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
But if Hegseth and the cronies, you know, at the
Pentagon and those folks who want all the AI and
want to make all the money on the AI and
the investments that they've all got and they're all corrupt with,
they want more of it. Why would potentially an order
from the Pentagon and from Hegseth himself maybe go to
the army and say hey stop doing that thing with
drones that doesn't make sense to me I am holding
(55:39):
on to hope that somewhere within the giant horrifying terrifying
military industrial apparatus there are some human beings with enough
understanding that can say hey this is a huge mistake
that we're making with this stuff.
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Maybe chat GPT said, Hey guys, stop with the drones.
Speaker 5 (56:05):
Yeah. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
And they're just listening. I, for me, I'm holding on
hope that I'm holding on hope that it's human beings
that are seeing the folly and will hopefully in some
part help us lessen, uh, lessen the lesson that we
are about to learn the hard way.
Speaker 5 (56:24):
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
Uh, last thing that you should read. This is from Gizmodo,
September 2nd. A solar superstorm caused a GPS glitch bad
enough to crash self-driving cars. This is just a little
piece about a November 11, 2025 solar flare and storm CME,
coronal mass ejection that hit Earth. And it messed up
(56:46):
GPS so badly that cars and tractors were like 30
miles away. They were showing up 30 miles away from
where they actually were on GPS systems. And this is
just to say, hey, guys, maybe the sun ends up
being the thing that saves us from this crazy AI
hellscape we're all entering into. Maybe the sun is the
(57:09):
thing that shuts it all down because it blasts us
with its solar radiation enough that all of our technology
gets lost.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
I always think of the ending to a pretty corny movie,
Escape from L.A., the sequel to a much better movie,
Escape from New York, where it ends with Some doomsday
device that essentially kills all electronic anything in the entire world,
including batteries, which I always thought was the funny little
detail that made it not believable. But, I mean, that
(57:38):
is the ultimate reset, you know, of Sodom and Gomorrah style, right?
Speaker 5 (57:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:44):
A guy can hope. Come on, son. Let's do this.
Speaker 3 (57:47):
I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
All right. That's it for me, guys.
Speaker 4 (57:51):
And folks, thank you as always so much for tuning in.
Thank you for riding along with us on Strange News.
As all three of us teased, we have a lot
of stories we didn't get to, but we're hoping we
can crack the walnut on, whatever, we'll keep it, crack
the walnut on some of these in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, the most important part about this show
(58:12):
is going to be your thoughts. So please find us,
reach out, tell us your takes and your opinions, especially
about Uh, with the stuff we teased, but didn't get to,
there are a ton of ways to contact us.
Speaker 3 (58:25):
You can find us all over the internet at your
social media platform of choice. Uh, and either the handle
conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
We have a phone number. It is 1 8 3
3 S T D W Y T K. When you
call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
one of our listener mail episodes that show up in
this same feed where you're listening to this. Uh, so
I guess keep listening. If you want to send us
an email, we are.
Speaker 4 (58:52):
The entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive
be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back.
Why does Nepal want India, China, and the United States
to pay for floods? You can find that. And what
makes El Nino definitely not that Nino this year?
Speaker 5 (59:10):
Year?
Speaker 4 (59:10):
Stay tuned next week for all this and more on
stuff they don't want you to know. In the meantime,
find us out here in the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio.com.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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