A former FBI agent stands accused of stealing almost 1 million dollars' worth of cryptocurrency. NASA assures people that Earth did not, in fact, lose gravity for seven seconds earlier this month. Uncle Sam (or, rather, powerful corporations) aggressively conspire to scuttle wind power. Oh, and Hugh Hefner tried to warn the FBI about Jeffrey Epstein. Tune in for all this and more in this week's strange news segment.
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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 this 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,
my name is Noaah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They called me Ben enjoyed as always with our super
producer Max the freight Train Williams. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. If you are tuning in to
our Strange News program the evening, it publishes welcome one
and all to August twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. And guys,
(00:51):
I know our Strange News program is a is an
audio only segment, so I have to explain the face
you guys just saw me make. Was drinking this water
and I did not know it was carbonated water.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
That's a real mind f Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I honestly thought it was sake. When I looked at
that bottle, I was like, no, just.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Real quick.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I'm so used to going to like h Mart or
one of those places, you know, a world farmer's market
and seeing the bottles of like soju and sake and
some of those things that it looked like that to me.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Sorry, I wish I were that courageous. Let us know,
by the way, folks, we've been more and more interested
in what we call low stakes conspiracy. So let us
know if you like your water flat or spicy. This
is an internal debate that we have amongst ourselves.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Oh man, you guys, I want to put something out
there just at the top, because we are there's no
way on one of these episodes we could talk about it.
There is a story from years ago that is being
kind of brought back to the front lines right now
because of some legal issues about a South African police detective,
(02:08):
senior police detective who was shot and killed with I
believe automatic weapons and his car was found flipped over
while he after he was supposed to meet with like
a secret source about this case he was working on
dealing with special forces in South Africa, and it like
the implications, at least according to BBC and The Guardian
(02:29):
or that this guy was murdered by special forces. And
there's this whole huge story that I would love at
some point to dive in with you guys about. His
name is Franz Mathipa. I think that's how you would
say it. M A T h IPA.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I just saw it recently and I was like, oh
my god, I think we could deep dive this thing.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Let's make it an episode in the future, right, and
this we're we're writing the sound folks were working live here.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I'm looking up. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, we also so hit us with any leads you
have on that one. We also have to report something
else that has been ignored. A quick Epstein update as
we're going into this guy's I think we all saw
the news that broke just a few days ago. As
we record on Thursday, August twentieth, a lot of people
(03:20):
were reporting Epstein to the FBI, and we just learned
that one of the people who reported Epstein to the
FBI was none other than the Playboy founder himself, Hugh Hefner.
So how I know, right, how depraved do you have
to be for Hugh Hefner to say that's a bridge
(03:41):
too far?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
It's a bridge too far? I mean, yeah, I know,
Hugh's always been a bit old school with his debauchery.
Not given the guy a pass. I'm sure he got
up to some shenanigans, but I could see him viewing
that stuffs undignified.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
This is intense. I'm just looking it up and just
of the allegations and stuff that somebody close to Hugh,
you know, had allegations of being trafficked directly, right.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yes, yeah. If you want to quick write up of this, folks,
go to Complex dot com by the journalist Bernadette Giocomazo.
The headline ex FBI agent says there's no excuse for
ignoring Hugh Hefner's Epstein tip for fifteen years allegedly and yeah,
this comes from an associate of Hefner, a former playmate. Allegedly,
(04:31):
Hugh Hefner called the FBI not once, but multiple times
across two thousand and five to report Jeffrey Epstein, and
he said that Epstein had sexually assaulted and trafficked another
former playmate, Audra Christiansen. But the FBI did not bother
to interview this person until twenty twenty years after both
(04:56):
men died.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
What do you think the reasoning behind that is? I mean,
is there I know, there's allegations of course all over
the place of people, you know, being in Epstein's pocket
or looking the other way, and systematic kind of flaws
that allowed him to continue with his horrific behavior for
so long. But I mean, do you think this is
that seems like a credible report from a man who
would potentially be moving in such circles. I just it
(05:22):
blows my mind that they would leave such a thing
unanswered for so long if it weren't intentional or part
of some systematic cover up.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, it seems like according to people like an ex
FBI special agent Jennifer Coffendaffer. According to people familiar with
the FBI at the time, this case was put on
a backburner. This specific tip from Hefner was put on
a backburner because the bureau was stretched for resources. That's
(05:55):
their unofficial official explanation, the idea being that the FBI
was focused on counter terrorism and focused on combating extremist
groups Posts nine to eleven. But that's a you know,
that's a bag of badgers. I don't personally buy to
your point. Noal it does seem as though there is
(06:15):
much more to.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
The story because another allegation that gets thrown around is
that Jeffrey Epstein had stuff on folks in positions last hour,
which I imagine could include high level FBI agents and officials.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Oh yeah, and we know, we know ex CIA officials
or x CIA members came out publicly not too long
ago and said that Jeffrey Epstein had in fact approached
on his own volition the FBI and the CIA to
work with them or provide information. So curiouser and curious.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Er without offering anything in the way of spoilers. There's
this TV series that I've really been enjoying on Hulu
called Fears. That's about a woman serial killer who is
systematically eliminating folks who have wronged her and other sex
workers that she, you know, associated with in her like
(07:14):
kind of a previous life. And there is a plot
line involving a very very very powerful and wealthy man
who appeared to engage in this kind of behavior on
a massive scale, specifically with underage girls, and an FBI
agent high level that appears to very much be in
(07:34):
this man's pocket.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Yes, because it's called Furious.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
If I didn't say, it's an excellent show.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, and thank you for the recommendation. LA was watching
that earlier.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I haven't.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I'm not caught up, but you're not. Blue and smoke
and rainbows there. It's a great show. Guys. What about this.
We've got a little bit long. How about we pause
for a word from our sponsors. We'll come back with
another strange FBI story, because human run agencies are corruptible,
(08:06):
so we'll talk a little bit about AI as well.
Right after the break, we might need to welcome some
new members of the United States. And we have returned
a lot of stuff going on in the news, a
(08:27):
lot of strange things in the mix. We wanted to
give you a quick update on a proposed expansion of
the United States. We've all heard about the administration's plans
to take over Greenland, to annex Greenland. We do have
(08:47):
an actual episode on the way about that, but you
may have missed this one, folks. Just a few days ago,
the current President of the United States, speaking in public
at Long Island, New York, said he wants to make
the Strait of Horror moves the newest US territory.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Is that how territories work, and the.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I mean not the modern day everybody can say whatever
you want.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
You sure can, and they sure do, But like, what
would that even entail? And it just certainly seems like
they just don't have near the leverage that they purport
to have in that territory. Let's call it.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
We could build a wall right in the middle of
the street. War moves, you guys or old school you
don't plant a flag.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
It used to just be as simple as a flag.
Right for all the vexillologists to that question. Uh No,
The current president did not elaborate on exactly how the
US would make this straight of horror Moves an official
US territory.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
It would be.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Legally interesting because jurisdiction of the Strait of Horror Moves
is shared by Oban and Iran, two countries very well
known for not being in the United States. Yeah, that's
what it says about them.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Maybe it's just another one of those things you say
to make people go huh and then think about it
for too long while you're over here going they'll never
see what I'm doing with petroleum over here.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
A stock market. Yeah, I don't know if you guys
saw too. There's a clip that was circulating of Trump addressing.
The headline of the clip that I saw was just
the elite. Now they were referred to but at one
of his golf clubs. Essentially, it's really hard selling the
war in Iran and just saying all this stuff, like
(10:48):
giving all these stats about how every single navy ship
Iran has ever had at the bottom of the ocean
and all of this stuff, and that big things are
coming and all of this, and it just seems to
me like a whole lot of talk, you know, to
justify a conflict that didn't really have much of an
end the game in mind. And I don't know if
we've talked about this, guys, but are you guys of
the mind that the Straight of Horror moves was never
(11:09):
really considered and that it just kind of ended up
being an unexpected byproduct and major inconvenience. And now Iran
realizes how much leverage they have over the United States economically,
when maybe in the prior to the conflict they did not.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Ben, can I go really fast? And then I know
you're like a good answer, Yeah, okay, I would say
I think the Straight of Horror moonves was the point
the whole time, because it would manipulate the gas market
so that the energy gods could make all of their money,
and they've made so much of it.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
So just the turmoil was a feature, not a not
a bug.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
That's just that's that's my gut and my gut is
mostly wrong.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
So ben Ah, you've got a good gut the bio
Matt Ed I agree with most of most of what
we're saying here. I don't want to go too deep
by this on a Ben blabber or a Ted talk.
We might have to have this as an episode in
the future. But you know, one way to put it
(12:10):
is for anybody who's a fan of hip hop or freestyling,
a lot of it is like being an escape artist.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
You set up a problem and then you try to
get your way out of it on the fly, and
that desperation takes you to unusual places. So if, for instance,
you were attempting to enrich yourself and your cronies through
any means necessary, you're kind of thinking out the box
like you're freestyling, right, so what's the way to get
the bag of badgers? And then also if you want
(12:41):
to distract from something else. Historically we know that in
not just in democracies, generally in a government, the best
way to get domestic support is to start a war.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
It's very rare for a sitting US president to not
be re elected in the midst of a of a conflict.
So maybe this was a push for that, but Iran
always knew the Strait of Hormuz was a was a
choke point. And I'm going to say it.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
You know, a lot of people don't like to hear it,
but the nation of Israel and to a lesser degree
in Saudi Arabia have been wanting US intervention in Iran
for quite some time. And this is this is the
presidency that they were able to convince, for one reason
or another to do so. But will the will the
(13:39):
people living around the Strait of Hormuz become residents of
the US, That remains to be seen. You can read
the full the verbatim quote in the Hill, So thanks
to Julia Manchester, we know the following. He was addressing
the good people of Long Island, New York, and he
was originally talking about combating crime in the United States,
(14:04):
and then at some point he said, pretty soon I
will be declaring the horror moves straight a territory of
the United States.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Which is yeah, But like he's always talking about declaring
things and acts as though by tweeting our true thing
about it, it makes it so. I mean, only kings
declare things, right, A declaration don't make it.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
True and woo woo people on TikTok manifest right, so
maybe he's maybe he's manifesting this. We also promised one
more FBI story, this one. This is another thing that
came out earlier this month. Guys, have you ever wanted
to just steal a bunch of crypto? I think we
(14:50):
talked about it one time.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
You mean, like the people at Star crypto companies? Right?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Good call that. Yeah, it reminds me of that old adage.
If you want to get a little bit rich, rob
a bank, If you want to get wealthy, start a bank,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
You are if you are in the FBI. Spoiler, you're
not supposed to steal stuff unless it's part of a
bigger operation. A guy named Patrick Stephen Yero and I
may be mispronouncing that. Why aroocch is this surname. This
guy allegedly came across more than nine hundred thousand dollars
(15:35):
worth of cryptocurrency and he was a member of the
FBI's National Security Investigative Squad that was focused on crypto
from a unnamed adversarial nation and apparently the reason the
guy stole all this money again allegedly is because he
(15:58):
was quote frustrated by what he saw as government in
action end quote.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
So he said government in action regarding crypto like making
it like regulation or what are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Regarding the FBI per his account, regarding the FBI not
putting the hammer down, like they knew the crypto was there,
but they weren't taking action to acquire it, to track
the or you know, close down the money laundromat. Apparently
he used his internal access to transfer the crypto holding
(16:40):
so you can read all about this on CNN Big
thanks to our journalist Sean Lingas there. He used his
internal access to get a hold of the crypto and
then at some point he transferred it to his personal account.
The FBI fired him when they found out about this,
and they arrested him earlier this month for interstate transport
(17:05):
of stolen goods the receipt of stolen goods. We don't
know who his lawyer is yet.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Now that's interesting. I haven't really thought about this, or
we haven't discussed it on thinking, but the idea of
crypto being considered a tangible asset like that you can transport,
because isn't it like you know, I mean, we know
that there are cases of folks having like wallets that
are that are physical, like hard drives, like that guy
that lost his drive, you know, in that garbage dominfill
(17:35):
and then spent all this money trying to get it back.
But I guess I don't typically think of the same
laws applying to crypto as would like, you know, having
piles of cash or gold or other things. But maybe
that's just me, you know, missing the point is that
did that hit you that way as well? Ben?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But it is interesting because we're still figuring out jurisprudence
for things like digital currency. Right when you look at
the way the laws are working and the direction they're
trending toward, it's kind of a it's paradoxical because the
(18:14):
government and the people in power will say, oh, this
doesn't work like real money when it is helpful for
them to say that, But then when they want to,
you know, when they want to prosecute somebody, they will
treat it as though it is physical currency. And that's
where the interstate thing comes in. This is even the
(18:35):
twist though, Yeah, okay, this is the twist, fellow conspiracy realist.
This will give you a bit of a chuckle, because
there is no humor like gallows humor. There is no
whistle like a graveyard whistle. This FBI agent, a month
before his arrest, asked chat GPT, quote, if you had
(18:55):
a bucket of money around one million, and you wanted
to leave the USA become a resident or citizen of
an EU country, what would you do? And chat Gpt responded,
we have the alleged answer here. It is at thirty seven,
with a young family, a goal of potentially retiring round
(19:16):
forty and clear interest and eventually building a slower living
vineyard agricultural lifestyle in places like Sildnto or Portugal's to
our region. The agent goes on, so of course chat
GPT said, that's a great idea.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I just don't think you should ask chat GPT to
help you with Christ.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
You're doing a great job. You know, you're just doing
such a good job. You're a great person.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Guys. I keep talking about that show Silo, and I
don't want to do too many spoilers. I would just
say at some point in there, there is an AI
like thing that is interacted with and the interaction with
a human being that is shown on screen. Is so
that exact thing you're describing, Ben, We're even in the
(20:03):
situation where I can't say too much to talk about.
But it's a massively powerful entity that is interacting with
a human and still from its standpoint of power, it
placates the human with that exact same kind of language,
that kind of it just drips with that. Oh, yes,
that's a great idea.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Look at you, buddy, let me scratch behind your ears.
You're right about all those terrible things which are actually wonderful. Yeah,
we don't want a great shout out to because that
show is amazing. Not caught up with it yet, but
we don't want to spoil it. We do want to
give you one spoiler that we meant to say at
the top. Folks, the rumors are true. We are hitting
(20:49):
the road together this October. We're going to the high.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Seats, high seas the road and then the seats we
have to you know, hit.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
The roto coolers.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Oh, with a dream. That is the dream. Now we're
doing the stuff stuff at sea cruise with Virgin voyages
where we're gonna be hanging out with our fellows. Stuff podcasters,
including stuff Mom never told you and the very popular
and dashing duo Josh and Chuck from stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
The illustrious Jay and C will be in attendance, as
will we, and we're gonna be doing all kinds of
fun stuff on the actual ship. I'm really probably most
excited about that, guys, where we get to hang around
folks and do some trivia and like talk to people.
You know, it's gonna be so much fun.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, We're gonna get into some high jinks and some
low jinks, and we'd like you to be part of it.
So don't delay check out stuff at sea, and we'll
see you on the ship. We'll also see you after
a brief break for word from our sponsors when we
return with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
And we're back. Guys. Have you heard about this online
conspiracy that's been floating around about something called Project Anchor?
Project Anchor, so NASA has been pushing back on a
conspiracy that's been making the rounds over the past month
or so about an unclassified document that supposedly leaked from
(22:25):
NASA that was published, or at least details about it
were published, that supposedly claimed that Earth would lose gravity
for seven seconds on Wednesday, August the twelfth, which is
obviously in the past. As we sit here recording this
on August the nineteenth, I just found out about this.
It's pretty fascinating. It's gotten so much traction that NASA,
(22:52):
the good science minded folks at NASA, had to publicly
push back against this viral conspiracy theory regarding Project Anchor,
this idea that this anomaly is part of some sort
of program benefiting the elite. One quote from a poster
(23:15):
had this to say. The project's budget is eighty nine
billion dollars and its goal is to survive a seven
second gravitational anomaly expected on August twelfth, twenty twenty six.
So I misspoke. Not necessarily directly benefiting the elite, but
this idea that this event was predicted and you know,
(23:35):
massive amounts of money were spent in order to keep
everything from just you know, flying off the face of
the Earth during that seven seconds. Obviously this did not happen.
August the twelfth has come and gone, or maybe it did.
And you know Project Anchor, which is if you think
about the name, I guess that makes sense. I got
to weigh everything down right, was a success. So there's
(23:58):
a lot of problems with this, guys, and I think
it's pretty interesting that this kind of claim, not necessarily
the project anchor aspect of it dates a lot farther
back than I realized, So less anyone's concerned about something
like this taking place due to the interactions of gravitational waves.
We'll get back to the origins of this. It is
(24:20):
not something that is possible at all, because gravity is
not just a switch, doesn't involve one particular interaction of
matter or waves as is suggested. It is a property
of mass and how mass interacts. That old Isaac Newton
came up with, calling it a force. Einstein also explained
(24:42):
this as time space, or rather space time curvature. In
order for mass to disappear in the way that's being
described here, the Earth would have to disappear. The Earth
is what generates the mass that creates gravity as we
experience it. Any of these alignments, they don't just all
of a sudden cancel Earth's gravitational force. Even the most
(25:05):
massive celestial bodies that are of course incredibly far away,
the pull of these planets on Earth is negligible. Roughly
a few ten millions of the gravity of the planet
Earth that we find ourselves on. The Moon's effect, obviously
we know, is a little more significant, affecting things like
(25:26):
the tides, things that we can observe. But nothing along
the lines of eliminating the force of gravity for any
amount of time at all. Nothing about these things lining up,
these gravitational waves or what have you would negate the
one g that you feel from the weight of the
(25:46):
planet Earth. The idea of weightlessness that you might see
in space, like on the International Space Station, for example, isn't,
of course zero gravity. It is the phenomenon of astronauts
falling around the Earth continuously. Gravity is still about ninety
percent as strong up there in space as it is
on the surface of the Earth. And the thing that
(26:09):
I found, yeah, the phenomenon that is being described here
dates back to a nineteen seventy six April Fools prank
pulled by just a fun love and astronomer named Patrick Moore.
He described a phenomenon known as the Jovian Plutonian effect,
the idea of which has been renewed and recycled and
(26:32):
posted in the form of relatively credible seeming screenshots from
NASA documents from twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. Those were big
years when this was popping up, and now again with
new dates changed and new images doctored. I think the
story here is not necessarily the debunking even of this claim,
because it has been kind of recycled over the years,
(26:54):
but the fact that enough people believe that this is
possible that NASA had to get in front of it,
and you know, put out a statement which I will
read from. They said, Earth's gravity or total gravitational force,
is determined by mass. The only way for the Earth
to lose gravity would be for the Earth system, the
combined mass of its core, mantle, crust, ocean, terrestrial water,
(27:19):
and atmosphere to lose mass. And I mean, guys, correct
me if I'm wrong, but the only way for these
very massive things to lose mass would be for them
to be destroyed, right.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Get sucked into a black hole or grass.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Or just disburse the density of the mass. Right. And
also if Earth lost gravity quote unquote for seven seconds,
a lot of people wouldn't really notice, even though seven
seconds is a long time. And I want to commend
the boffins at NASA for the incredible patients because you
(27:58):
guys know especially before the funding cuts. Members of NASA
officials and NASA actually considered it their duty and sometimes
a fun diversion at work to respond to theories like this.
And from what I understand, there were allegations that this
was related to the recent solar eclipse. Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Yeah, that is part of it, and that's actually a
really good point to continue NASA's statement. A total solar eclipse,
they go on to say, has no unusual impact on
Earth's gravity. The gravitational attraction of the Sun and Moon
on the Earth, which doesn't impact Earth's total gravity but
does impact tidal forces, is well understood and is predictable
(28:45):
decades in advance. To put it more directly, a NASA
official named Karen Fox noted that this same rumor comes
around about every year. It just seems like we are
kind of living in this I don't know era of
communications where this kind of stuff can just get spread
more and more rapidly. And you know, to your point
(29:07):
about the chat GPT of it all, it seems like
people are kind of losing the ability to think critically,
at least on a large enough scale where NASA felt
the need to get in front of this in ways
that it would appear they did not have to do
in the past when these sort of you know, spurious
allegations were being flung around, and maybe we're a little
(29:28):
more quickly recognized as good old science branks.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, I think you're right. I would just also add
that that thing, that phenomena of humanity as a whole
gently declining towards an inability to think for themselves, is
something that Ben and I clocked back in like nine
when we started the show. That's one of the primary
(29:54):
reasons we even got into this whole thing is because
we realized there's so much information out there even then.
Like imagine guys like even in twenty ten, like how
much information was on social media just being spouted as regular, normal,
actual reality facts when it was just a question about
it junk, you know, And we're so inundated now, Like
(30:18):
it's it's almost comical how much effort you you have
to put in as an individual to stay in a
critical thinking mode.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Oh absolutely, Oh yeah, And this is this is something
that I believe we're all happy to be broken records about.
And we're not by any means, We're not, by any
means inoculated nor immune to this proliferation. And and to
your point there, Matt, this the the ubiquity of social
(30:50):
media has empowered this right. And again it's a very
American thing, but now it applies across the planet. The
onus is on you, as the consumer. There are very few,
very few fact checking sources that are treated as the
absolute authority. There are also very few incentives for a
(31:13):
lot of people to dive deeper into a story and
figure out whether or not it is factual or where
that seed of truth comes from. And when we're talking
about twenty ten, oh my gosh, guys, seventeen years ago,
of one of the things that we saw developing was
(31:34):
misinformation with noble intent. I think we all saw somebody
on Facebook who would post that paragraph that said, attention
to Facebook, my pictures and my comments can never be
used by you. And I've posted this, so now it's
lead declared. I declare, I declare if you agree to
(32:00):
share it reposts. And I felt like such a stick
in the mud for having to go to people that
I helped with great respect and affection and saying, hey,
you know that's bullshit, right, you know that's not how
the law works, because you agreed. When you signed up
for Facebook or any social media, you clicked terms and
(32:21):
conditions and you didn't read them because they're by design boring.
And now we're in a world where, because so many
crazy things are happening, very very intelligent people, ourselves included,
we'll hear something about gravity taking seven seconds off and
we think, yeah, I mean why not. You know, like
(32:42):
the government came out and said aliens are real, So
everything's up for grabs, you know, twenty twenty seven. Roll
the dice of believability.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
No, that's a that's a great way winning it, ben,
roll the dice of believability, indeed, And no, you're totally right, man.
I mean, we've been experiencing this continuum where I guess
the spectrum of the post truth you know, communications all
kind of propped up by social media, that we're now
starting to see the chickens come home to roosted in
terms of like Facebook being you know, actionably sued for
(33:15):
causing a lot of these problems that they denied, whether
it be causing all kinds of attention issues for kids
and you know, targeting them and doing all of these
things that ultimately have net negative effects. And we certainly
are not immune to that, but it just feels like
now with this new element of the you know, the
(33:35):
clouds and the chat sheepets of it all, it's just
a further escalation, especially when some of these things that
people are like relying on are known to quote unquote
hallucinate and generate false information, you know, despite them being
kind of pushed forward as like the ultimate truth machines
or whatever it might be. It just feels like it's
(33:56):
further muddying the water. And now we're at a place
where we can't trust pictures, you know, we can't trust
these documents, so everything is called into question. I can't
remember we talked about this, but I do think this
is interesting, and maybe this is sort of along the
lines of what you were talking about with a recent
story about how one of these AI assistants has a
(34:17):
watermark built in two images that it generates. But then
to your point, Matt, you can always repost the image,
doctor the image, and that watermark can be removed. But
I did see a thing. I think it's Claude is
in integrating a new feature that even by copying and
pasting text from the tool, there is some sort of
(34:38):
I don't know the term for it, but embedded ask
ye kind of character like a pixel within the text
that is much harder to remove and can be detected
if run through some sort of filter to note that
what you're reading was in fact generated by their tool,
which you don't hear about JGBT doing that. I do
think Claude seems to be one of the more mindful
(34:59):
of these you know, companies pushing this stuff forward. I
don't know, I didn't mean to get derailed, but I
just thought that occurred to me that that is something
new that I also read about.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yeah, I mean, something has to happen inevitably. The good
news is something will happen. The bad news is something
will happen. This is an untenable situation. The idea of
authentication and water marking leads us to, you know, another
(35:28):
thing that is still a big dilemma, big bag of badgers,
that the four of us or the five of us
counting you at home, we still haven't a fully untangled
this Gordian not because the best way to assure authenticity
and truth and factual communication in the wild West of
(35:52):
the online age is to remove anonymity, which is something
I think we're all against well.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Right, but you know we we've certainly talked about that
and Devil's advocated that whole you know conversation. Is there
a world where maybe that is a positive thing because
it could keep people from being able to hide behind there,
you know, anonymous Internet user profiles and all of that stuff,
and think maybe could curtail some of the hate speech
and doxying and all of that kind of stuff. But
(36:20):
there's such an unintended knock on consequence of it just
creating this like I don't know how to describe it,
Like I think the bad would far outweigh the good.
And this idea of de anonymizing, you know, the Internet.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I'm more and more on board with the concept of.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
I am to see a little bit. It's a real
head scratcher because I see the benefit of it. I
see the utility in it. But then you start to
really go down that slippery slope rabbit spiral, and then
you get you get to some scary places. But it's
out of control, guys.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
It's yeah, it's the the Pandora's lid has already been unscrewed, right,
Pandora's jar actually, and this this is a screw is right. Yeah, yeah,
screwed is right. Unfortunately, this is something we would love
to hear your thoughts on, folks, because the big, the
(37:16):
big concern with d anonymizing the Internet is that there
will naturally have to be an overall authority right for identification,
for authentication, and that authority will then be in a
catbird seat to do some very evil things. Now, we've
(37:37):
predicted this for years now, and I think our prediction
will hold true. Privacy is about to become a precious
resource of the elite and of the wealthy. And privacy
as a modern concept has always been kind of short lived.
It's one of those things that was nice while it lasted.
(37:58):
But so you know, I'm I'm with you, guys. I'm
on the fence because obviously something is going to happen,
and it's you know, it's just untenable now to say
that the world would collectively draw back from social media
(38:18):
or draw back from the great BS machine of online communication,
right that like, we can't we can't uncross that rubicon.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
That's true. I agree with you, large scale, But I
will also say that you do see pockets especially in
like my kids generation of uh you know, unplugging and
very intentionally kind of removing some of that control from
their lives and like really leaning into like physical crafting
(38:48):
and more you know, in person community stuff sort of
the way like vinyl records is a digital backlash against
like everything being available on streaming. So these things kind
of ebb and flow and like at the end of
the day, like we may not be able to expect
any kind of mass you know, reverse swing of the pendulum,
but we can control our own lives to a certain degree,
and that's all we can hope for and hope that
(39:11):
you know that these pockets exist and that we are
able to in some way not live off the grid
but still have full lives without needing that that draw
into the internet black hole, you know, to be such
a determining factor in our existences.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
He said, staring into the black mirror.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Man, it's tough, especially with our jobs, you know, like
as much as you know, but there are things that
I do I try actively to to disengage, and I
tried to when we do engage, we're engaging from a
place of critical thinking. That's that's what we try to
do with this show, and that's what we try that
we hope you know. People take away from the show
is just you do have the tools and you It's
(39:58):
not to say distrust everything that your eyes beholder, that
your ears here, that you read, but it is to say,
have a perspective, you know, and approach things with humanity.
First yep, end of rant off of soap Bucks. Very sorry, no,
please frustrat No, it's just frustrating and it's defeating, it
(40:21):
feels I know, I know, this is it's crazy that
we went down this rabbit hole from what is ultimately
a silly story about like a prank that happened in
the seventies that was just kind of repeated and you know, repackaged.
But again, the takeaway is that NASA had to come
out and say and sort of quell the fears of
folks that truly believe this stuff. And if folks in
a large enough scale can believe something as seemingly ridiculous
(40:45):
as this, like where are we at.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Well's the thing. Yeah. I don't know about you, guys,
but I certainly feel like I can't trust a damn
word that comes from the official narratives that get sent
to us by most organizations individuals that represent government and
corporations and all of these, you know, these major entities
(41:10):
that kind of control at least small portions of life
for most of us humans. It just feels like everything
is a narrative nowadays. Everything is a story that's being told.
It's not objective fact. It's this we're in this weird
place where we're inside the fairy tale that is just
(41:30):
constantly being written by the various characters. I don't know
if that's complete nonsense when I'm when I'm spouting out
of my mouth right now, but it just feels so
strange and.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Describing you're describing a feeling. You know, it's it's it's
a it's an intuition that something right, and again it's
an insuation that we'd have we've had for a long time.
But we're just kind of at this like critical mass point.
And not to mention, I saw a study the other day.
I'll try to find it before the end of the
show of how not only are young people in the
most dire situation when it comes to like earning the
(42:03):
kind of living that would allow them to be independent
and own a home and all of this stuff, but
there also were living in a time where everyone is
out to rip them off like in the most egregious
ways imaginable, with very little recourse to do anything about it,
because so many of these things are utterly government approved,
(42:24):
if not encouraged and subsidized.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, I'm privatized even in places like the UK that
you know, we talk about things like healthcare and things
that are turned into a state, you know, a tax
driven state service that is provided for everybody who pays taxes. Right,
these good things, but then when all the water ends
up being privatized, now you're running the same problems that
(42:47):
we're seeing here. Right If a private company that's only
the only reason that it exist is to make profits
is now sitting there and checking its own work right
before where it goes out regulating itself. Guys, I'm just
word salading because I'm so frustrated at this concept of
(43:07):
profits over everything that we exist in this world where
everything is that now literally everything is that.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
The economy and the concept of modern economy is the
dominant religion of the age. Prove us wrong.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, well, it's yeah overwhelming the knowledge that it's real.
And if you just try and play a video game
for a while, take a nap, even it's still there.
It's still there, and it will be there when you.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Finish, everybody check out. There will come soft rains by
Ray Bradberry.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
That is lead.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
That is the end State. I can't believe it hasn't
been adapted for film yet, but.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
I don't know that book. Yeah, I've been doing the
audible thing lately. And then last thing, and I had
a couple other stories about like AI running nine to
one one call centers and New Orleans. Another one about
an AI entirely AI run convenience store or chain of
convenience stores that decided to fire an employee. We'll leave
(44:09):
those for another day or maybe wrap them into we've
been talking about like a bigger, you know, State of
AI kind of episode. But another thing that I saw
recently that pertains to this whole idea of kids being
ripped off is that kids are now and I say kids,
I guess I mean gen Z are now looking at
sports betting and these polymarket type things as their only
(44:34):
path forward to financial stability, and they're treating it as
a part of their investment strategy, which it ain't. Yeah,
that's it. Sorry to be a bummer. Let's take a
break and we'll come back with one more bit of
strange news.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Then we've returned. You guys can make this super quick.
Before we jump in, we have to do a quick reminder.
It's from a few weeks ago, early August. This comes
from Al Jazeera August fourth. Why are oil companies posting
record profits amid Iran war disruption? Here we go the
second quarter profits for the old energy gods, both American
(45:16):
and European. They're just bonkers. These guys embody, both those
old American gods and you know what we're talking about,
I think as well as the new ones, like the intangibles,
that old stock market, the intangible assets and all that stuff.
Looking at Exxon Mobile, the largest US oil company, fourteen
point five billion dollars, highest quarterly profits in four years.
(45:40):
Chevron second biggest company, twelve billion, highest quarterly profit in
six years. Shout out Sudan, Shout out Sudan. Shell, Europe's
biggest oil company ten billion dollars BP. That little engine
that could out there in the UK.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Guys, sorry, I made that jug the other day, but good.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Lord, coming in only at five point seven three billion dollars, however,
that is that is more than double what it earned
at the same time last year doubled its profits amid
the Iran War and the straight of Hoar Moves being
closed off.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And you can play along at home. Check out the
news on whether the Strait is open or closed every Friday,
right around the time the markets closed, right before they
open Black Monday murders is so correct. And also, Matt,
with that excellent and needful reminder, we have to add
(46:35):
one one caveat. Please keep in mind, folks, those are
the officially posted numbers.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Yes, oh yes, oh yes. And also keep in mind
that even the Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil giant god,
whatever you want to call it, it's quarterly earnings rose
forty four percent here on year to thirty two point
six y nine billion. So if you thought Exon mobiles
(47:05):
fourteen point five billion were big for a quarter, oh,
that's nothing compared to Saudi Ramco.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
And that, you know, that inspires me, guys. I think
if we if we haven't done it yet, I swear
I wrote a brain stuff thing about this year's ago.
But if we haven't done it yet, it be fascinating
for us to do an episode called how Much Money exists. Hey,
fun that one right.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Okay, let's do it. Oh and just one more little reminder,
the United States recently hit forty trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
Yeah, how much money exists?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Indeed, exactly right. One more reminder before we jump in.
This is from last week, August tenth PBS here in
the United States. I'm just gonna say it, the contiguous
United States broke its record for hottest month ever in July.
Hottest month ever recorded this past July.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
So far, we still got a little bit more of
a year left.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
So yeah, go to look. So no matter how you
describe yourself and that old mind to yours, just the
way we do and everybody else does, no matter how
right or left or center or liberal or conservative you
think you are, you feel you are, or somebody tells
you you are. We were all in school. We all
(48:27):
learned about science. We all learned about fossil fuels. We
all learned about things that can affect stuff you know,
and you can it's all been politicized now, so you
can believe one way or the other. But it's just
gonna depend on which narrative. As we were talking before
on this episode, which narrative you ascribe to. Which one
do you think is right? Which one do you think
is true? Do you believe that burning massive amounts of
(48:51):
fossil fuels can lead to the hottest July ever on record?
Or is that just all make am up seas it's
out there. You believe what you want. I know what
I believe. I think there's a direct link. And maybe
that puts me in a place where you don't like that.
I'm saying that puts.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
You in the company of a lot of smart people.
I will say that, so you're not alone.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
But my point is ultimately it's ascribing to a narrative
which way you go, And I'm going this way because
again I was a kid. I believe that. I think
that's true. I you know, I look to I believe
that I look to the science rather ban I'm just
thinking imagining, like I believe in the science that says
that the hare is a link there. But it is
(49:33):
in the end my belief.
Speaker 4 (49:34):
But who's spinning the counter narrative, Matt, it's the oil company.
Is this is the folks that benefit from the profits
and from the system, you know, staying exactly the same way.
It is so I just I feel like there's no
credible version of their narrative that isn't immediately debunked by
the fact that they're just telling a story that benefits
(49:54):
them and ignoring the science. Because is what did Al
Gore call it? An inconvenient truth?
Speaker 2 (50:00):
A man bear pig. So let's going off of exactly
that nol. Let's jump to one of the main stories
I want to talk about today. This comes from the
AP News, written by Jennifer McDermott August sixth a little
old at the time. We're recording on August nineteenth, The
American Administration's latest buyback of offshore wind leases brings total
(50:22):
to nearly four billion dollars. I got to read a
little bit verbatim. An offshore wind company RWEUS said on
Thursday at the time that it reached a one point
two billion dollars settlement with the American presidential administration to
walk away from projects under development off the shores of
New York, California, and Louisiana. This latest agreement brings the
(50:46):
total amount spent on such settlements by the current administration
to nearly four billion dollars. RWEUS Offshore set its leases
represented years of planning, investment, and partnership with federal agencies,
but it determined that there was no path forward to
permit the projects for the foreseeable future. In exchange for
(51:07):
one point two to two billion dollars, our we is
relinquishing the wind power leases that could have provided about
seven gigawatts of power, enough for more than five million homes,
enough power for five million homes. They are completely walking
away from it because they are being pressured by the
(51:29):
United States presidential administration via these oil gods. Because make
no mistake, the oil gods are the ones pressuring the
American administration to do this, to take this action. It
is not because there is a president that has decided, oh,
wind energy bad, oil energy good. There are profits to
(51:52):
be made in the oil industry, massive profits that we
just outlined that if those profits are taken away by
clean wind energy, no good for oil gods. It's very
very clear.
Speaker 4 (52:07):
And also no good for the continued forever wars that
the military industrial complex craves so so well. Oh yeah,
I mean so many reasons that we're in these places.
Is oil, whether they say it or not.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Yes, oh yes. Just to continue a little bit here, guys.
The current US administration has been buying back offshore wind leases. Again,
that's leasing the area where there would be large wind
farms created offshore. I recently saw this off the coast
of the UK in the south. There these huge wind
(52:42):
farms that are way far away. You can barely see
them in the distance, but there are these massive wind
turbines and you can see them spinning, generating energy, just
doing their thing and generating a ton of energy right
off the coast of like Lansing in those places. Incredible.
There are arguments for and against this type of wind energy,
but my god, it seems to be kind of a
(53:06):
no brainer if you can get it working and it's
functional and it provides that much power to that many
human beings. Again, human beings, not the data centers, please god.
Urwe announced it's investing nine hundred million dollars in a
liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana and spending three hundred
(53:28):
million on natural gas turbines. In total, the German energy
company is developing fifteen natural gas projects across the United States.
Natural gas, guys, do you remember the process that's often
used to extract that natural gas?
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Fracking? Isn't it. Yep.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
And we've we've talked about that, Ben. I remember way
back in the day when we learned what fracking was,
and we're like, Holy Lord.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
And how it probably caused a couple earthquakes.
Speaker 4 (53:58):
Remind us, guys, because I mean, weirdly, it hasn't been
in the news as much. I think a lot of
people may have forgotten other than just the term, because
it's kind of, you know, a bit of an earworm.
Speaker 3 (54:07):
Yeah, it only it only really makes sense depending on
the price threshold of fossile fuels. That's where that's where
it started becoming a matter of widespread public interest a
few years back. It's it's it's pretty smart if you
put the ethics aside. Just from a mechanical standpoint, it's
quite clever. It's a drilling method that lets you take
(54:29):
oil and natural gas from underground rock layers like think
of shell s, h A l E. What you do
is you pump a ton of water, a figurative ton, guys.
You pump a figurative ton of water, sand and other
chemicals down into the earth at very high pressure such
(54:50):
that you can crack a rock. Right, you can crack
that layer or shell and then it will release a
great foot from deep in the earth, and then you
you liquified, or you pay off the local politicians and
you make bukou bucks.
Speaker 2 (55:07):
Oh yeah. One of the biggest problems that we outlined
when we were talking about that back in the day
are those propellants and the chemicals that are put into
the water that are used to cause the fracturing and
things like or to help out lup it up a
little bit while you're down there drilling the earth. Drill, baby, drill.
Speaker 3 (55:26):
And goes right to your faucet afterwards.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Yeah, because you're guess what else is down there? Aquifers,
clean water, the earth. Yeah, uh, really important stuff for
again the humans and the birds and the narwhales, yeah whatever, the.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Badgers, well, Matt, Which is funny because you notice that
a big breason for you know, the line about why
wind power is bad is because the birds. It's killing
the birds.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Yeah, okay, sure, sure, that's what it is. That's what's
the best.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
Skyscrapers kill war birds. Let's be honest. Well, also, I mean,
I think I know I was quiet there for a
second while we're talking about this without re litigating it.
I agree with everything we've said, and I don't think
it matters what I believe, because it's a question of
(56:23):
like do I believe in gravity? No, it doesn't really
matter if I believe in it. It just is right
except for seven seconds earlier. So we know that there's
a We know that. Like when we were talking about
fracking originally, gosh Lo, these many years ago, people called
us crazy because we were saying, hey, this does have
(56:46):
We know it sounds balkers, but this probably is producing
small earthquakes. It's definitely getting into the aquifers. Legislation, what
toothless legislation exists is definitely lagging behind the technology. And
as long as fossile fuel prices remain at a certain threshold,
(57:06):
it will be profitable for fracking to continue, and therefore
fracking will continue, right unless there's a serious change in
energy infrastructure, which the big dogs are already fighting about.
You know, with all this weird, like really weird propaganda
to Thol's point about birds and when power, it reminds
(57:27):
me of the other things we've heard, like solar energy
being bad for the environment. Right, Like they want to
tear down all the public parks and replace everything with
solar panels.
Speaker 4 (57:41):
Decommission national parks and turn them into drilling sites.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
Like give me old gods hate it when you pick
their pockets or you drink their milkshake. And you better
not fucking drink their milkshake or they will come for you.
I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 4 (58:00):
Doesn't want you to eat eat the cows. You know
it's a doomed odyssey. As this crew eat the cows
of the gods, the exact retribution fiercely.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
Oh shit, I still haven't seen that.
Speaker 4 (58:10):
But well, hungry, Well you know the story.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Everybody who feels like playing along at home, I know
I've given us some already given us some projects in
tonight's Strange News program. If you were interested in learning
more about how PR firms shape these kinds of narratives,
which do fly in the face of science. Again, it
doesn't matter what we believe, it flies in the face
(58:34):
of facts. Check out groups like Edelman, w pp Omnikom
publicists with an s Havas interpublic Group and DENSU. Those
are those are like our sinister six who who help
do a lot of what we call greenwashing.
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Oh, those are search those up, search those things up.
You need to learn about those things. Pause this, go back,
write it down, search those things up. I'm going to
finish with this API article. No, don't freaking do it.
You have to. It's imperative. Here we go, Here we go.
From the article, Commenting on the RWE agreement, Interior Secretary
(59:13):
Doug Bergham said that Americans quote deserve an energy system
built on common sense. Ben, this reminds me of our
thing about elections we did, where you're up at the
podium doing this. Americans deserve an energy system built on
common sense, not one dependent on costly subsidies or technologies
that can't meet our country's current demand. He said. He
(59:36):
welcomes our we's agreement and voluntary investment in projects that
strengthen the nation's energy security, provide dependable base load power,
and help keep electricity affordable. There's that word again. There's
a counterpoint coming to us In the article from Sholden Whitehouse,
who is a Democrat from Rhode Island, he said that
(59:58):
the least buybacks are effectively bribing companies. Hear that again,
bribing companies to step away from clean energy that can
displace more expensive fossil fuel plants. Which in turn actually
raise costs for everybody. Let's get a quote from him.
They're creating this enormous money pump, pulling billions of dollars
(01:00:20):
out of customers pockets. That's the real story of what's
going on here. And that is both a cost story
because of the billions and extra cost consumers pay, and
it's a corruption story because it's the president's sneaky way
of getting regular families to pay off his big fossil
fuel donors. There's method here, and it's a real scam.
(01:00:43):
Oh wait, campaign financing. Is that what we're really talking
about here?
Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
The big donors, I mean they're getting something for their money.
Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
It's called pay to play. I mean it's more than that.
It's bribery. Interesting, it's not even bribery if you just
want to do it, is it?
Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Yes, it's a great I mean lobbying. Check out our
series on lobbying, folks. And also, I have to commend
whatever sith Lord normalized calling that that crap. Donations. Donations
are things given without a quid pro quo in the mix. Therefore,
or ergo, if we want to be fancy about it,
(01:01:21):
those are not donations. You're paying for a service, you
know what I mean. Like, we're not donating to the
power company. We pay them to keep the lights on.
That's exactly what's happening. I feel like we're bringing up
a lot of stuff that we've talked about over the
years in this Strange News program in particular, as well
(01:01:43):
as in earlier episodes. But it's culminating, folks, it's driving
rising toward a crescendo. You know, it's going to be
an exciting time to host a critical thinking show as
long as we are allowed to do so.
Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
It's going to be an exciting time to exist outdoors
in shade under the First This is the last part
of your guys, under the First agreement announced in March
French company Total Energies. It's another thing to look up
if you want to just learn yourself some things about
the old gods and the new ones. They all work together.
Total Energies is getting nearly one billion US dollars, essentially
(01:02:19):
a refund of its two offshore wind leases if it
invests the money in fossil fuels instead. Golden State Wind
and Blue Point Wind agreed in April to end their
leases in exchange for reimbursements totally nearly nine hundred million
US dollars provided they invest equally in fossil fuels. And
(01:02:39):
there's another one Chicago based in energy I n V
E N E er G. Why look it up. It's
doing a whole thing ending its offshore wind leases. Ben.
As you said, it's all culminating and it's genuinely scary.
And what do you do about it? We need to
figure that part out and you can help us with that.
(01:03:00):
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Yes, yes, humanity long term? Are you for it or
against it? Let us know so A that's an effectively
propagandistic way to phrase the question. I just did something
we call a decision tree or a logic trap. But
seriously tell us what's on your mind. Thank you so
(01:03:23):
much for tuning in. We cannot wait to hear from you.
There are several ways to find us.
Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Well, sure there are. You can find us at the
handle's Conspiracy Stuff or conspiracy Stuff show on your social
media platform of choice.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Our phone number is one eight three three std WYTK.
It's a voicemail system. You'll figure it out. Please try
to keep your message around three minutes or less. That
would be wonderful. We appreciate you. You can also send
us an email.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
We are the entities to read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet's unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, back back, I'm gonna try some mineral water again,
one more chance. Oh that's not it. We'll see you
out here in the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
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.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noaah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They called me Ben enjoyed as always with our super
producer Max the freight Train Williams. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. If you are tuning in to
our Strange News program the evening, it publishes welcome one
and all to August twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. And guys,
(00:51):
I know our Strange News program is a is an
audio only segment, so I have to explain the face
you guys just saw me make. Was drinking this water
and I did not know it was carbonated water.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
That's a real mind f Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I honestly thought it was sake. When I looked at
that bottle, I was like, no, just.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Real quick.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I'm so used to going to like h Mart or
one of those places, you know, a world farmer's market
and seeing the bottles of like soju and sake and
some of those things that it looked like that to me.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Sorry, I wish I were that courageous. Let us know,
by the way, folks, we've been more and more interested
in what we call low stakes conspiracy. So let us
know if you like your water flat or spicy. This
is an internal debate that we have amongst ourselves.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Oh man, you guys, I want to put something out
there just at the top, because we are there's no
way on one of these episodes we could talk about it.
There is a story from years ago that is being
kind of brought back to the front lines right now
because of some legal issues about a South African police detective,
(02:08):
senior police detective who was shot and killed with I
believe automatic weapons and his car was found flipped over
while he after he was supposed to meet with like
a secret source about this case he was working on
dealing with special forces in South Africa, and it like
the implications, at least according to BBC and The Guardian
(02:29):
or that this guy was murdered by special forces. And
there's this whole huge story that I would love at
some point to dive in with you guys about. His
name is Franz Mathipa. I think that's how you would
say it. M A T h IPA.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I just saw it recently and I was like, oh
my god, I think we could deep dive this thing.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Let's make it an episode in the future, right, and
this we're we're writing the sound folks were working live here.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I'm looking up. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, we also so hit us with any leads you
have on that one. We also have to report something
else that has been ignored. A quick Epstein update as
we're going into this guy's I think we all saw
the news that broke just a few days ago. As
we record on Thursday, August twentieth, a lot of people
(03:20):
were reporting Epstein to the FBI, and we just learned
that one of the people who reported Epstein to the
FBI was none other than the Playboy founder himself, Hugh Hefner.
So how I know, right, how depraved do you have
to be for Hugh Hefner to say that's a bridge
(03:41):
too far?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
It's a bridge too far? I mean, yeah, I know,
Hugh's always been a bit old school with his debauchery.
Not given the guy a pass. I'm sure he got
up to some shenanigans, but I could see him viewing
that stuffs undignified.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
This is intense. I'm just looking it up and just
of the allegations and stuff that somebody close to Hugh,
you know, had allegations of being trafficked directly, right.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yes, yeah. If you want to quick write up of this, folks,
go to Complex dot com by the journalist Bernadette Giocomazo.
The headline ex FBI agent says there's no excuse for
ignoring Hugh Hefner's Epstein tip for fifteen years allegedly and yeah,
this comes from an associate of Hefner, a former playmate. Allegedly,
(04:31):
Hugh Hefner called the FBI not once, but multiple times
across two thousand and five to report Jeffrey Epstein, and
he said that Epstein had sexually assaulted and trafficked another
former playmate, Audra Christiansen. But the FBI did not bother
to interview this person until twenty twenty years after both
(04:56):
men died.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
What do you think the reasoning behind that is? I mean,
is there I know, there's allegations of course all over
the place of people, you know, being in Epstein's pocket
or looking the other way, and systematic kind of flaws
that allowed him to continue with his horrific behavior for
so long. But I mean, do you think this is
that seems like a credible report from a man who
would potentially be moving in such circles. I just it
(05:22):
blows my mind that they would leave such a thing
unanswered for so long if it weren't intentional or part
of some systematic cover up.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, it seems like according to people like an ex
FBI special agent Jennifer Coffendaffer. According to people familiar with
the FBI at the time, this case was put on
a backburner. This specific tip from Hefner was put on
a backburner because the bureau was stretched for resources. That's
(05:55):
their unofficial official explanation, the idea being that the FBI
was focused on counter terrorism and focused on combating extremist
groups Posts nine to eleven. But that's a you know,
that's a bag of badgers. I don't personally buy to
your point. Noal it does seem as though there is
(06:15):
much more to.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
The story because another allegation that gets thrown around is
that Jeffrey Epstein had stuff on folks in positions last hour,
which I imagine could include high level FBI agents and officials.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Oh yeah, and we know, we know ex CIA officials
or x CIA members came out publicly not too long
ago and said that Jeffrey Epstein had in fact approached
on his own volition the FBI and the CIA to
work with them or provide information. So curiouser and curious.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Er without offering anything in the way of spoilers. There's
this TV series that I've really been enjoying on Hulu
called Fears. That's about a woman serial killer who is
systematically eliminating folks who have wronged her and other sex
workers that she, you know, associated with in her like
(07:14):
kind of a previous life. And there is a plot
line involving a very very very powerful and wealthy man
who appeared to engage in this kind of behavior on
a massive scale, specifically with underage girls, and an FBI
agent high level that appears to very much be in
(07:34):
this man's pocket.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Yes, because it's called Furious.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
If I didn't say, it's an excellent show.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, and thank you for the recommendation. LA was watching
that earlier.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I haven't.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I'm not caught up, but you're not. Blue and smoke
and rainbows there. It's a great show. Guys. What about this.
We've got a little bit long. How about we pause
for a word from our sponsors. We'll come back with
another strange FBI story, because human run agencies are corruptible,
(08:06):
so we'll talk a little bit about AI as well.
Right after the break, we might need to welcome some
new members of the United States. And we have returned
a lot of stuff going on in the news, a
(08:27):
lot of strange things in the mix. We wanted to
give you a quick update on a proposed expansion of
the United States. We've all heard about the administration's plans
to take over Greenland, to annex Greenland. We do have
(08:47):
an actual episode on the way about that, but you
may have missed this one, folks. Just a few days ago,
the current President of the United States, speaking in public
at Long Island, New York, said he wants to make
the Strait of Horror moves the newest US territory.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Is that how territories work, and the.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I mean not the modern day everybody can say whatever
you want.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
You sure can, and they sure do, But like, what
would that even entail? And it just certainly seems like
they just don't have near the leverage that they purport
to have in that territory. Let's call it.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
We could build a wall right in the middle of
the street. War moves, you guys or old school you
don't plant a flag.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
It used to just be as simple as a flag.
Right for all the vexillologists to that question. Uh No,
The current president did not elaborate on exactly how the
US would make this straight of horror Moves an official
US territory.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
It would be.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Legally interesting because jurisdiction of the Strait of Horror Moves
is shared by Oban and Iran, two countries very well
known for not being in the United States. Yeah, that's
what it says about them.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Maybe it's just another one of those things you say
to make people go huh and then think about it
for too long while you're over here going they'll never
see what I'm doing with petroleum over here.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
A stock market. Yeah, I don't know if you guys
saw too. There's a clip that was circulating of Trump addressing.
The headline of the clip that I saw was just
the elite. Now they were referred to but at one
of his golf clubs. Essentially, it's really hard selling the
war in Iran and just saying all this stuff, like
(10:48):
giving all these stats about how every single navy ship
Iran has ever had at the bottom of the ocean
and all of this stuff, and that big things are
coming and all of this, and it just seems to
me like a whole lot of talk, you know, to
justify a conflict that didn't really have much of an
end the game in mind. And I don't know if
we've talked about this, guys, but are you guys of
the mind that the Straight of Horror moves was never
(11:09):
really considered and that it just kind of ended up
being an unexpected byproduct and major inconvenience. And now Iran
realizes how much leverage they have over the United States economically,
when maybe in the prior to the conflict they did not.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Ben, can I go really fast? And then I know
you're like a good answer, Yeah, okay, I would say
I think the Straight of Horror moonves was the point
the whole time, because it would manipulate the gas market
so that the energy gods could make all of their money,
and they've made so much of it.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
So just the turmoil was a feature, not a not
a bug.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
That's just that's that's my gut and my gut is
mostly wrong.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
So ben Ah, you've got a good gut the bio
Matt Ed I agree with most of most of what
we're saying here. I don't want to go too deep
by this on a Ben blabber or a Ted talk.
We might have to have this as an episode in
the future. But you know, one way to put it
(12:10):
is for anybody who's a fan of hip hop or freestyling,
a lot of it is like being an escape artist.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
You set up a problem and then you try to
get your way out of it on the fly, and
that desperation takes you to unusual places. So if, for instance,
you were attempting to enrich yourself and your cronies through
any means necessary, you're kind of thinking out the box
like you're freestyling, right, so what's the way to get
the bag of badgers? And then also if you want
(12:41):
to distract from something else. Historically we know that in
not just in democracies, generally in a government, the best
way to get domestic support is to start a war.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
It's very rare for a sitting US president to not
be re elected in the midst of a of a conflict.
So maybe this was a push for that, but Iran
always knew the Strait of Hormuz was a was a
choke point. And I'm going to say it.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
You know, a lot of people don't like to hear it,
but the nation of Israel and to a lesser degree
in Saudi Arabia have been wanting US intervention in Iran
for quite some time. And this is this is the
presidency that they were able to convince, for one reason
or another to do so. But will the will the
(13:39):
people living around the Strait of Hormuz become residents of
the US, That remains to be seen. You can read
the full the verbatim quote in the Hill, So thanks
to Julia Manchester, we know the following. He was addressing
the good people of Long Island, New York, and he
was originally talking about combating crime in the United States,
(14:04):
and then at some point he said, pretty soon I
will be declaring the horror moves straight a territory of
the United States.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Which is yeah, But like he's always talking about declaring
things and acts as though by tweeting our true thing
about it, it makes it so. I mean, only kings
declare things, right, A declaration don't make it.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
True and woo woo people on TikTok manifest right, so
maybe he's maybe he's manifesting this. We also promised one
more FBI story, this one. This is another thing that
came out earlier this month. Guys, have you ever wanted
to just steal a bunch of crypto? I think we
(14:50):
talked about it one time.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
You mean, like the people at Star crypto companies? Right?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Good call that. Yeah, it reminds me of that old adage.
If you want to get a little bit rich, rob
a bank, If you want to get wealthy, start a bank,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
You are if you are in the FBI. Spoiler, you're
not supposed to steal stuff unless it's part of a
bigger operation. A guy named Patrick Stephen Yero and I
may be mispronouncing that. Why aroocch is this surname. This
guy allegedly came across more than nine hundred thousand dollars
(15:35):
worth of cryptocurrency and he was a member of the
FBI's National Security Investigative Squad that was focused on crypto
from a unnamed adversarial nation and apparently the reason the
guy stole all this money again allegedly is because he
(15:58):
was quote frustrated by what he saw as government in
action end quote.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
So he said government in action regarding crypto like making
it like regulation or what are we talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Regarding the FBI per his account, regarding the FBI not
putting the hammer down, like they knew the crypto was there,
but they weren't taking action to acquire it, to track
the or you know, close down the money laundromat. Apparently
he used his internal access to transfer the crypto holding
(16:40):
so you can read all about this on CNN Big
thanks to our journalist Sean Lingas there. He used his
internal access to get a hold of the crypto and
then at some point he transferred it to his personal account.
The FBI fired him when they found out about this,
and they arrested him earlier this month for interstate transport
(17:05):
of stolen goods the receipt of stolen goods. We don't
know who his lawyer is yet.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Now that's interesting. I haven't really thought about this, or
we haven't discussed it on thinking, but the idea of
crypto being considered a tangible asset like that you can transport,
because isn't it like you know, I mean, we know
that there are cases of folks having like wallets that
are that are physical, like hard drives, like that guy
that lost his drive, you know, in that garbage dominfill
(17:35):
and then spent all this money trying to get it back.
But I guess I don't typically think of the same
laws applying to crypto as would like, you know, having
piles of cash or gold or other things. But maybe
that's just me, you know, missing the point is that
did that hit you that way as well? Ben?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But it is interesting because we're still figuring out jurisprudence
for things like digital currency. Right when you look at
the way the laws are working and the direction they're
trending toward, it's kind of a it's paradoxical because the
(18:14):
government and the people in power will say, oh, this
doesn't work like real money when it is helpful for
them to say that, But then when they want to,
you know, when they want to prosecute somebody, they will
treat it as though it is physical currency. And that's
where the interstate thing comes in. This is even the
(18:35):
twist though, Yeah, okay, this is the twist, fellow conspiracy realist.
This will give you a bit of a chuckle, because
there is no humor like gallows humor. There is no
whistle like a graveyard whistle. This FBI agent, a month
before his arrest, asked chat GPT, quote, if you had
(18:55):
a bucket of money around one million, and you wanted
to leave the USA become a resident or citizen of
an EU country, what would you do? And chat Gpt responded,
we have the alleged answer here. It is at thirty seven,
with a young family, a goal of potentially retiring round
(19:16):
forty and clear interest and eventually building a slower living
vineyard agricultural lifestyle in places like Sildnto or Portugal's to
our region. The agent goes on, so of course chat
GPT said, that's a great idea.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I just don't think you should ask chat GPT to
help you with Christ.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
You're doing a great job. You know, you're just doing
such a good job. You're a great person.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Guys. I keep talking about that show Silo, and I
don't want to do too many spoilers. I would just
say at some point in there, there is an AI
like thing that is interacted with and the interaction with
a human being that is shown on screen. Is so
that exact thing you're describing, Ben, We're even in the
(20:03):
situation where I can't say too much to talk about.
But it's a massively powerful entity that is interacting with
a human and still from its standpoint of power, it
placates the human with that exact same kind of language,
that kind of it just drips with that. Oh, yes,
that's a great idea.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Look at you, buddy, let me scratch behind your ears.
You're right about all those terrible things which are actually wonderful. Yeah,
we don't want a great shout out to because that
show is amazing. Not caught up with it yet, but
we don't want to spoil it. We do want to
give you one spoiler that we meant to say at
the top. Folks, the rumors are true. We are hitting
(20:49):
the road together this October. We're going to the high.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Seats, high seas the road and then the seats we
have to you know, hit.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
The roto coolers.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Oh, with a dream. That is the dream. Now we're
doing the stuff stuff at sea cruise with Virgin voyages
where we're gonna be hanging out with our fellows. Stuff podcasters,
including stuff Mom never told you and the very popular
and dashing duo Josh and Chuck from stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
The illustrious Jay and C will be in attendance, as
will we, and we're gonna be doing all kinds of
fun stuff on the actual ship. I'm really probably most
excited about that, guys, where we get to hang around
folks and do some trivia and like talk to people.
You know, it's gonna be so much fun.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, We're gonna get into some high jinks and some
low jinks, and we'd like you to be part of it.
So don't delay check out stuff at sea, and we'll
see you on the ship. We'll also see you after
a brief break for word from our sponsors when we
return with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
And we're back. Guys. Have you heard about this online
conspiracy that's been floating around about something called Project Anchor?
Project Anchor, so NASA has been pushing back on a
conspiracy that's been making the rounds over the past month
or so about an unclassified document that supposedly leaked from
(22:25):
NASA that was published, or at least details about it
were published, that supposedly claimed that Earth would lose gravity
for seven seconds on Wednesday, August the twelfth, which is
obviously in the past. As we sit here recording this
on August the nineteenth, I just found out about this.
It's pretty fascinating. It's gotten so much traction that NASA,
(22:52):
the good science minded folks at NASA, had to publicly
push back against this viral conspiracy theory regarding Project Anchor,
this idea that this anomaly is part of some sort
of program benefiting the elite. One quote from a poster
(23:15):
had this to say. The project's budget is eighty nine
billion dollars and its goal is to survive a seven
second gravitational anomaly expected on August twelfth, twenty twenty six.
So I misspoke. Not necessarily directly benefiting the elite, but
this idea that this event was predicted and you know,
(23:35):
massive amounts of money were spent in order to keep
everything from just you know, flying off the face of
the Earth during that seven seconds. Obviously this did not happen.
August the twelfth has come and gone, or maybe it did.
And you know Project Anchor, which is if you think
about the name, I guess that makes sense. I got
to weigh everything down right, was a success. So there's
(23:58):
a lot of problems with this, guys, and I think
it's pretty interesting that this kind of claim, not necessarily
the project anchor aspect of it dates a lot farther
back than I realized, So less anyone's concerned about something
like this taking place due to the interactions of gravitational waves.
We'll get back to the origins of this. It is
(24:20):
not something that is possible at all, because gravity is
not just a switch, doesn't involve one particular interaction of
matter or waves as is suggested. It is a property
of mass and how mass interacts. That old Isaac Newton
came up with, calling it a force. Einstein also explained
(24:42):
this as time space, or rather space time curvature. In
order for mass to disappear in the way that's being
described here, the Earth would have to disappear. The Earth
is what generates the mass that creates gravity as we
experience it. Any of these alignments, they don't just all
of a sudden cancel Earth's gravitational force. Even the most
(25:05):
massive celestial bodies that are of course incredibly far away,
the pull of these planets on Earth is negligible. Roughly
a few ten millions of the gravity of the planet
Earth that we find ourselves on. The Moon's effect, obviously
we know, is a little more significant, affecting things like
(25:26):
the tides, things that we can observe. But nothing along
the lines of eliminating the force of gravity for any
amount of time at all. Nothing about these things lining up,
these gravitational waves or what have you would negate the
one g that you feel from the weight of the
(25:46):
planet Earth. The idea of weightlessness that you might see
in space, like on the International Space Station, for example, isn't,
of course zero gravity. It is the phenomenon of astronauts
falling around the Earth continuously. Gravity is still about ninety
percent as strong up there in space as it is
on the surface of the Earth. And the thing that
(26:09):
I found, yeah, the phenomenon that is being described here
dates back to a nineteen seventy six April Fools prank
pulled by just a fun love and astronomer named Patrick Moore.
He described a phenomenon known as the Jovian Plutonian effect,
the idea of which has been renewed and recycled and
(26:32):
posted in the form of relatively credible seeming screenshots from
NASA documents from twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. Those were big
years when this was popping up, and now again with
new dates changed and new images doctored. I think the
story here is not necessarily the debunking even of this claim,
because it has been kind of recycled over the years,
(26:54):
but the fact that enough people believe that this is
possible that NASA had to get in front of it,
and you know, put out a statement which I will
read from. They said, Earth's gravity or total gravitational force,
is determined by mass. The only way for the Earth
to lose gravity would be for the Earth system, the
combined mass of its core, mantle, crust, ocean, terrestrial water,
(27:19):
and atmosphere to lose mass. And I mean, guys, correct
me if I'm wrong, but the only way for these
very massive things to lose mass would be for them
to be destroyed, right.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Get sucked into a black hole or grass.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Or just disburse the density of the mass. Right. And
also if Earth lost gravity quote unquote for seven seconds,
a lot of people wouldn't really notice, even though seven
seconds is a long time. And I want to commend
the boffins at NASA for the incredible patients because you
(27:58):
guys know especially before the funding cuts. Members of NASA
officials and NASA actually considered it their duty and sometimes
a fun diversion at work to respond to theories like this.
And from what I understand, there were allegations that this
was related to the recent solar eclipse. Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Yeah, that is part of it, and that's actually a
really good point to continue NASA's statement. A total solar eclipse,
they go on to say, has no unusual impact on
Earth's gravity. The gravitational attraction of the Sun and Moon
on the Earth, which doesn't impact Earth's total gravity but
does impact tidal forces, is well understood and is predictable
(28:45):
decades in advance. To put it more directly, a NASA
official named Karen Fox noted that this same rumor comes
around about every year. It just seems like we are
kind of living in this I don't know era of
communications where this kind of stuff can just get spread
more and more rapidly. And you know, to your point
(29:07):
about the chat GPT of it all, it seems like
people are kind of losing the ability to think critically,
at least on a large enough scale where NASA felt
the need to get in front of this in ways
that it would appear they did not have to do
in the past when these sort of you know, spurious
allegations were being flung around, and maybe we're a little
(29:28):
more quickly recognized as good old science branks.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
No, I think you're right. I would just also add
that that thing, that phenomena of humanity as a whole
gently declining towards an inability to think for themselves, is
something that Ben and I clocked back in like nine
when we started the show. That's one of the primary
(29:54):
reasons we even got into this whole thing is because
we realized there's so much information out there even then.
Like imagine guys like even in twenty ten, like how
much information was on social media just being spouted as regular, normal,
actual reality facts when it was just a question about
it junk, you know, And we're so inundated now, Like
(30:18):
it's it's almost comical how much effort you you have
to put in as an individual to stay in a
critical thinking mode.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Oh absolutely, Oh yeah, And this is this is something
that I believe we're all happy to be broken records about.
And we're not by any means, We're not, by any
means inoculated nor immune to this proliferation. And and to
your point there, Matt, this the the ubiquity of social
(30:50):
media has empowered this right. And again it's a very
American thing, but now it applies across the planet. The
onus is on you, as the consumer. There are very few,
very few fact checking sources that are treated as the
absolute authority. There are also very few incentives for a
(31:13):
lot of people to dive deeper into a story and
figure out whether or not it is factual or where
that seed of truth comes from. And when we're talking
about twenty ten, oh my gosh, guys, seventeen years ago,
of one of the things that we saw developing was
(31:34):
misinformation with noble intent. I think we all saw somebody
on Facebook who would post that paragraph that said, attention
to Facebook, my pictures and my comments can never be
used by you. And I've posted this, so now it's
lead declared. I declare, I declare if you agree to
(32:00):
share it reposts. And I felt like such a stick
in the mud for having to go to people that
I helped with great respect and affection and saying, hey,
you know that's bullshit, right, you know that's not how
the law works, because you agreed. When you signed up
for Facebook or any social media, you clicked terms and
(32:21):
conditions and you didn't read them because they're by design boring.
And now we're in a world where, because so many
crazy things are happening, very very intelligent people, ourselves included,
we'll hear something about gravity taking seven seconds off and
we think, yeah, I mean why not. You know, like
(32:42):
the government came out and said aliens are real, So
everything's up for grabs, you know, twenty twenty seven. Roll
the dice of believability.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
No, that's a that's a great way winning it, ben,
roll the dice of believability, indeed, And no, you're totally right, man.
I mean, we've been experiencing this continuum where I guess
the spectrum of the post truth you know, communications all
kind of propped up by social media, that we're now
starting to see the chickens come home to roosted in
terms of like Facebook being you know, actionably sued for
(33:15):
causing a lot of these problems that they denied, whether
it be causing all kinds of attention issues for kids
and you know, targeting them and doing all of these
things that ultimately have net negative effects. And we certainly
are not immune to that, but it just feels like
now with this new element of the you know, the
(33:35):
clouds and the chat sheepets of it all, it's just
a further escalation, especially when some of these things that
people are like relying on are known to quote unquote
hallucinate and generate false information, you know, despite them being
kind of pushed forward as like the ultimate truth machines
or whatever it might be. It just feels like it's
(33:56):
further muddying the water. And now we're at a place
where we can't trust pictures, you know, we can't trust
these documents, so everything is called into question. I can't
remember we talked about this, but I do think this
is interesting, and maybe this is sort of along the
lines of what you were talking about with a recent
story about how one of these AI assistants has a
(34:17):
watermark built in two images that it generates. But then
to your point, Matt, you can always repost the image,
doctor the image, and that watermark can be removed. But
I did see a thing. I think it's Claude is
in integrating a new feature that even by copying and
pasting text from the tool, there is some sort of
(34:38):
I don't know the term for it, but embedded ask
ye kind of character like a pixel within the text
that is much harder to remove and can be detected
if run through some sort of filter to note that
what you're reading was in fact generated by their tool,
which you don't hear about JGBT doing that. I do
think Claude seems to be one of the more mindful
(34:59):
of these you know, companies pushing this stuff forward. I
don't know, I didn't mean to get derailed, but I
just thought that occurred to me that that is something
new that I also read about.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yeah, I mean, something has to happen inevitably. The good
news is something will happen. The bad news is something
will happen. This is an untenable situation. The idea of
authentication and water marking leads us to, you know, another
(35:28):
thing that is still a big dilemma, big bag of badgers,
that the four of us or the five of us
counting you at home, we still haven't a fully untangled
this Gordian not because the best way to assure authenticity
and truth and factual communication in the wild West of
(35:52):
the online age is to remove anonymity, which is something
I think we're all against well.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Right, but you know we we've certainly talked about that
and Devil's advocated that whole you know conversation. Is there
a world where maybe that is a positive thing because
it could keep people from being able to hide behind there,
you know, anonymous Internet user profiles and all of that stuff,
and think maybe could curtail some of the hate speech
and doxying and all of that kind of stuff. But
(36:20):
there's such an unintended knock on consequence of it just
creating this like I don't know how to describe it,
Like I think the bad would far outweigh the good.
And this idea of de anonymizing, you know, the Internet.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
I'm more and more on board with the concept of.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
I am to see a little bit. It's a real
head scratcher because I see the benefit of it. I
see the utility in it. But then you start to
really go down that slippery slope rabbit spiral, and then
you get you get to some scary places. But it's
out of control, guys.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
It's yeah, it's the the Pandora's lid has already been unscrewed, right,
Pandora's jar actually, and this this is a screw is right. Yeah, yeah,
screwed is right. Unfortunately, this is something we would love
to hear your thoughts on, folks, because the big, the
(37:16):
big concern with d anonymizing the Internet is that there
will naturally have to be an overall authority right for identification,
for authentication, and that authority will then be in a
catbird seat to do some very evil things. Now, we've
(37:37):
predicted this for years now, and I think our prediction
will hold true. Privacy is about to become a precious
resource of the elite and of the wealthy. And privacy
as a modern concept has always been kind of short lived.
It's one of those things that was nice while it lasted.
(37:58):
But so you know, I'm I'm with you, guys. I'm
on the fence because obviously something is going to happen,
and it's you know, it's just untenable now to say
that the world would collectively draw back from social media
(38:18):
or draw back from the great BS machine of online communication,
right that like, we can't we can't uncross that rubicon.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
That's true. I agree with you, large scale, But I
will also say that you do see pockets especially in
like my kids generation of uh you know, unplugging and
very intentionally kind of removing some of that control from
their lives and like really leaning into like physical crafting
(38:48):
and more you know, in person community stuff sort of
the way like vinyl records is a digital backlash against
like everything being available on streaming. So these things kind
of ebb and flow and like at the end of
the day, like we may not be able to expect
any kind of mass you know, reverse swing of the pendulum,
but we can control our own lives to a certain degree,
and that's all we can hope for and hope that
(39:11):
you know that these pockets exist and that we are
able to in some way not live off the grid
but still have full lives without needing that that draw
into the internet black hole, you know, to be such
a determining factor in our existences.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
He said, staring into the black mirror.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Man, it's tough, especially with our jobs, you know, like
as much as you know, but there are things that
I do I try actively to to disengage, and I
tried to when we do engage, we're engaging from a
place of critical thinking. That's that's what we try to
do with this show, and that's what we try that
we hope you know. People take away from the show
is just you do have the tools and you It's
(39:58):
not to say distrust everything that your eyes beholder, that
your ears here, that you read, but it is to say,
have a perspective, you know, and approach things with humanity.
First yep, end of rant off of soap Bucks. Very sorry, no,
please frustrat No, it's just frustrating and it's defeating, it
(40:21):
feels I know, I know, this is it's crazy that
we went down this rabbit hole from what is ultimately
a silly story about like a prank that happened in
the seventies that was just kind of repeated and you know, repackaged.
But again, the takeaway is that NASA had to come
out and say and sort of quell the fears of
folks that truly believe this stuff. And if folks in
a large enough scale can believe something as seemingly ridiculous
(40:45):
as this, like where are we at.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Well's the thing. Yeah. I don't know about you, guys,
but I certainly feel like I can't trust a damn
word that comes from the official narratives that get sent
to us by most organizations individuals that represent government and
corporations and all of these, you know, these major entities
(41:10):
that kind of control at least small portions of life
for most of us humans. It just feels like everything
is a narrative nowadays. Everything is a story that's being told.
It's not objective fact. It's this we're in this weird
place where we're inside the fairy tale that is just
(41:30):
constantly being written by the various characters. I don't know
if that's complete nonsense when I'm when I'm spouting out
of my mouth right now, but it just feels so
strange and.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Describing you're describing a feeling. You know, it's it's it's
a it's an intuition that something right, and again it's
an insuation that we'd have we've had for a long time.
But we're just kind of at this like critical mass point.
And not to mention, I saw a study the other day.
I'll try to find it before the end of the
show of how not only are young people in the
most dire situation when it comes to like earning the
(42:03):
kind of living that would allow them to be independent
and own a home and all of this stuff, but
there also were living in a time where everyone is
out to rip them off like in the most egregious
ways imaginable, with very little recourse to do anything about it,
because so many of these things are utterly government approved,
(42:24):
if not encouraged and subsidized.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, I'm privatized even in places like the UK that
you know, we talk about things like healthcare and things
that are turned into a state, you know, a tax
driven state service that is provided for everybody who pays taxes. Right,
these good things, but then when all the water ends
up being privatized, now you're running the same problems that
(42:47):
we're seeing here. Right If a private company that's only
the only reason that it exist is to make profits
is now sitting there and checking its own work right
before where it goes out regulating itself. Guys, I'm just
word salading because I'm so frustrated at this concept of
(43:07):
profits over everything that we exist in this world where
everything is that now literally everything is that.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
The economy and the concept of modern economy is the
dominant religion of the age. Prove us wrong.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, well, it's yeah overwhelming the knowledge that it's real.
And if you just try and play a video game
for a while, take a nap, even it's still there.
It's still there, and it will be there when you.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Finish, everybody check out. There will come soft rains by
Ray Bradberry.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
That is lead.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
That is the end State. I can't believe it hasn't
been adapted for film yet, but.
Speaker 4 (43:46):
I don't know that book. Yeah, I've been doing the
audible thing lately. And then last thing, and I had
a couple other stories about like AI running nine to
one one call centers and New Orleans. Another one about
an AI entirely AI run convenience store or chain of
convenience stores that decided to fire an employee. We'll leave
(44:09):
those for another day or maybe wrap them into we've
been talking about like a bigger, you know, State of
AI kind of episode. But another thing that I saw
recently that pertains to this whole idea of kids being
ripped off is that kids are now and I say kids,
I guess I mean gen Z are now looking at
sports betting and these polymarket type things as their only
(44:34):
path forward to financial stability, and they're treating it as
a part of their investment strategy, which it ain't. Yeah,
that's it. Sorry to be a bummer. Let's take a
break and we'll come back with one more bit of
strange news.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
Then we've returned. You guys can make this super quick.
Before we jump in, we have to do a quick reminder.
It's from a few weeks ago, early August. This comes
from Al Jazeera August fourth. Why are oil companies posting
record profits amid Iran war disruption? Here we go the
second quarter profits for the old energy gods, both American
(45:16):
and European. They're just bonkers. These guys embody, both those
old American gods and you know what we're talking about,
I think as well as the new ones, like the intangibles,
that old stock market, the intangible assets and all that stuff.
Looking at Exxon Mobile, the largest US oil company, fourteen
point five billion dollars, highest quarterly profits in four years.
(45:40):
Chevron second biggest company, twelve billion, highest quarterly profit in
six years. Shout out Sudan, Shout out Sudan. Shell, Europe's
biggest oil company ten billion dollars BP. That little engine
that could out there in the UK.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Guys, sorry, I made that jug the other day, but good.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Lord, coming in only at five point seven three billion dollars, however,
that is that is more than double what it earned
at the same time last year doubled its profits amid
the Iran War and the straight of Hoar Moves being
closed off.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
And you can play along at home. Check out the
news on whether the Strait is open or closed every Friday,
right around the time the markets closed, right before they
open Black Monday murders is so correct. And also, Matt,
with that excellent and needful reminder, we have to add
(46:35):
one one caveat. Please keep in mind, folks, those are
the officially posted numbers.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Yes, oh yes, oh yes. And also keep in mind
that even the Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil giant god,
whatever you want to call it, it's quarterly earnings rose
forty four percent here on year to thirty two point
six y nine billion. So if you thought Exon mobiles
(47:05):
fourteen point five billion were big for a quarter, oh,
that's nothing compared to Saudi Ramco.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
And that, you know, that inspires me, guys. I think
if we if we haven't done it yet, I swear
I wrote a brain stuff thing about this year's ago.
But if we haven't done it yet, it be fascinating
for us to do an episode called how Much Money exists. Hey,
fun that one right.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Okay, let's do it. Oh and just one more little reminder,
the United States recently hit forty trillion dollars in debt.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
Yeah, how much money exists?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Indeed, exactly right. One more reminder before we jump in.
This is from last week, August tenth PBS here in
the United States. I'm just gonna say it, the contiguous
United States broke its record for hottest month ever in July.
Hottest month ever recorded this past July.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
So far, we still got a little bit more of
a year left.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
So yeah, go to look. So no matter how you
describe yourself and that old mind to yours, just the
way we do and everybody else does, no matter how
right or left or center or liberal or conservative you
think you are, you feel you are, or somebody tells
you you are. We were all in school. We all
(48:27):
learned about science. We all learned about fossil fuels. We
all learned about things that can affect stuff you know,
and you can it's all been politicized now, so you
can believe one way or the other. But it's just
gonna depend on which narrative. As we were talking before
on this episode, which narrative you ascribe to. Which one
do you think is right? Which one do you think
is true? Do you believe that burning massive amounts of
(48:51):
fossil fuels can lead to the hottest July ever on record?
Or is that just all make am up seas it's
out there. You believe what you want. I know what
I believe. I think there's a direct link. And maybe
that puts me in a place where you don't like that.
I'm saying that puts.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
You in the company of a lot of smart people.
I will say that, so you're not alone.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
But my point is ultimately it's ascribing to a narrative
which way you go, And I'm going this way because
again I was a kid. I believe that. I think
that's true. I you know, I look to I believe
that I look to the science rather ban I'm just
thinking imagining, like I believe in the science that says
that the hare is a link there. But it is
(49:33):
in the end my belief.
Speaker 4 (49:34):
But who's spinning the counter narrative, Matt, it's the oil company.
Is this is the folks that benefit from the profits
and from the system, you know, staying exactly the same way.
It is so I just I feel like there's no
credible version of their narrative that isn't immediately debunked by
the fact that they're just telling a story that benefits
(49:54):
them and ignoring the science. Because is what did Al
Gore call it? An inconvenient truth?
Speaker 2 (50:00):
A man bear pig. So let's going off of exactly
that nol. Let's jump to one of the main stories
I want to talk about today. This comes from the
AP News, written by Jennifer McDermott August sixth a little
old at the time. We're recording on August nineteenth, The
American Administration's latest buyback of offshore wind leases brings total
(50:22):
to nearly four billion dollars. I got to read a
little bit verbatim. An offshore wind company RWEUS said on
Thursday at the time that it reached a one point
two billion dollars settlement with the American presidential administration to
walk away from projects under development off the shores of
New York, California, and Louisiana. This latest agreement brings the
(50:46):
total amount spent on such settlements by the current administration
to nearly four billion dollars. RWEUS Offshore set its leases
represented years of planning, investment, and partnership with federal agencies,
but it determined that there was no path forward to
permit the projects for the foreseeable future. In exchange for
(51:07):
one point two to two billion dollars, our we is
relinquishing the wind power leases that could have provided about
seven gigawatts of power, enough for more than five million homes,
enough power for five million homes. They are completely walking
away from it because they are being pressured by the
(51:29):
United States presidential administration via these oil gods. Because make
no mistake, the oil gods are the ones pressuring the
American administration to do this, to take this action. It
is not because there is a president that has decided, oh,
wind energy bad, oil energy good. There are profits to
(51:52):
be made in the oil industry, massive profits that we
just outlined that if those profits are taken away by
clean wind energy, no good for oil gods. It's very
very clear.
Speaker 4 (52:07):
And also no good for the continued forever wars that
the military industrial complex craves so so well. Oh yeah,
I mean so many reasons that we're in these places.
Is oil, whether they say it or not.
Speaker 2 (52:22):
Yes, oh yes. Just to continue a little bit here, guys.
The current US administration has been buying back offshore wind leases. Again,
that's leasing the area where there would be large wind
farms created offshore. I recently saw this off the coast
of the UK in the south. There these huge wind
(52:42):
farms that are way far away. You can barely see
them in the distance, but there are these massive wind
turbines and you can see them spinning, generating energy, just
doing their thing and generating a ton of energy right
off the coast of like Lansing in those places. Incredible.
There are arguments for and against this type of wind energy,
but my god, it seems to be kind of a
(53:06):
no brainer if you can get it working and it's
functional and it provides that much power to that many
human beings. Again, human beings, not the data centers, please god.
Urwe announced it's investing nine hundred million dollars in a
liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana and spending three hundred
(53:28):
million on natural gas turbines. In total, the German energy
company is developing fifteen natural gas projects across the United States.
Natural gas, guys, do you remember the process that's often
used to extract that natural gas?
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Fracking? Isn't it. Yep.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
And we've we've talked about that, Ben. I remember way
back in the day when we learned what fracking was,
and we're like, Holy Lord.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
And how it probably caused a couple earthquakes.
Speaker 4 (53:58):
Remind us, guys, because I mean, weirdly, it hasn't been
in the news as much. I think a lot of
people may have forgotten other than just the term, because
it's kind of, you know, a bit of an earworm.
Speaker 3 (54:07):
Yeah, it only it only really makes sense depending on
the price threshold of fossile fuels. That's where that's where
it started becoming a matter of widespread public interest a
few years back. It's it's it's pretty smart if you
put the ethics aside. Just from a mechanical standpoint, it's
quite clever. It's a drilling method that lets you take
(54:29):
oil and natural gas from underground rock layers like think
of shell s, h A l E. What you do
is you pump a ton of water, a figurative ton, guys.
You pump a figurative ton of water, sand and other
chemicals down into the earth at very high pressure such
(54:50):
that you can crack a rock. Right, you can crack
that layer or shell and then it will release a
great foot from deep in the earth, and then you
you liquified, or you pay off the local politicians and
you make bukou bucks.
Speaker 2 (55:07):
Oh yeah. One of the biggest problems that we outlined
when we were talking about that back in the day
are those propellants and the chemicals that are put into
the water that are used to cause the fracturing and
things like or to help out lup it up a
little bit while you're down there drilling the earth. Drill, baby, drill.
Speaker 3 (55:26):
And goes right to your faucet afterwards.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Yeah, because you're guess what else is down there? Aquifers,
clean water, the earth. Yeah, uh, really important stuff for
again the humans and the birds and the narwhales, yeah whatever, the.
Speaker 4 (55:46):
Badgers, well, Matt, Which is funny because you notice that
a big breason for you know, the line about why
wind power is bad is because the birds. It's killing
the birds.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Yeah, okay, sure, sure, that's what it is. That's what's
the best.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
Skyscrapers kill war birds. Let's be honest. Well, also, I mean,
I think I know I was quiet there for a
second while we're talking about this without re litigating it.
I agree with everything we've said, and I don't think
it matters what I believe, because it's a question of
(56:23):
like do I believe in gravity? No, it doesn't really
matter if I believe in it. It just is right
except for seven seconds earlier. So we know that there's
a We know that. Like when we were talking about
fracking originally, gosh Lo, these many years ago, people called
us crazy because we were saying, hey, this does have
(56:46):
We know it sounds balkers, but this probably is producing
small earthquakes. It's definitely getting into the aquifers. Legislation, what
toothless legislation exists is definitely lagging behind the technology. And
as long as fossile fuel prices remain at a certain threshold,
(57:06):
it will be profitable for fracking to continue, and therefore
fracking will continue, right unless there's a serious change in
energy infrastructure, which the big dogs are already fighting about.
You know, with all this weird, like really weird propaganda
to Thol's point about birds and when power, it reminds
(57:27):
me of the other things we've heard, like solar energy
being bad for the environment. Right, Like they want to
tear down all the public parks and replace everything with
solar panels.
Speaker 4 (57:41):
Decommission national parks and turn them into drilling sites.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
Like give me old gods hate it when you pick
their pockets or you drink their milkshake. And you better
not fucking drink their milkshake or they will come for you.
I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 4 (58:00):
Doesn't want you to eat eat the cows. You know
it's a doomed odyssey. As this crew eat the cows
of the gods, the exact retribution fiercely.
Speaker 2 (58:09):
Oh shit, I still haven't seen that.
Speaker 4 (58:10):
But well, hungry, Well you know the story.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
Everybody who feels like playing along at home, I know
I've given us some already given us some projects in
tonight's Strange News program. If you were interested in learning
more about how PR firms shape these kinds of narratives,
which do fly in the face of science. Again, it
doesn't matter what we believe, it flies in the face
(58:34):
of facts. Check out groups like Edelman, w pp Omnikom
publicists with an s Havas interpublic Group and DENSU. Those
are those are like our sinister six who who help
do a lot of what we call greenwashing.
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Oh, those are search those up, search those things up.
You need to learn about those things. Pause this, go back,
write it down, search those things up. I'm going to
finish with this API article. No, don't freaking do it.
You have to. It's imperative. Here we go, Here we go.
From the article, Commenting on the RWE agreement, Interior Secretary
(59:13):
Doug Bergham said that Americans quote deserve an energy system
built on common sense. Ben, this reminds me of our
thing about elections we did, where you're up at the
podium doing this. Americans deserve an energy system built on
common sense, not one dependent on costly subsidies or technologies
that can't meet our country's current demand. He said. He
(59:36):
welcomes our we's agreement and voluntary investment in projects that
strengthen the nation's energy security, provide dependable base load power,
and help keep electricity affordable. There's that word again. There's
a counterpoint coming to us In the article from Sholden Whitehouse,
who is a Democrat from Rhode Island, he said that
(59:58):
the least buybacks are effectively bribing companies. Hear that again,
bribing companies to step away from clean energy that can
displace more expensive fossil fuel plants. Which in turn actually
raise costs for everybody. Let's get a quote from him.
They're creating this enormous money pump, pulling billions of dollars
(01:00:20):
out of customers pockets. That's the real story of what's
going on here. And that is both a cost story
because of the billions and extra cost consumers pay, and
it's a corruption story because it's the president's sneaky way
of getting regular families to pay off his big fossil
fuel donors. There's method here, and it's a real scam.
(01:00:43):
Oh wait, campaign financing. Is that what we're really talking
about here?
Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
The big donors, I mean they're getting something for their money.
Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
It's called pay to play. I mean it's more than that.
It's bribery. Interesting, it's not even bribery if you just
want to do it, is it?
Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Yes, it's a great I mean lobbying. Check out our
series on lobbying, folks. And also, I have to commend
whatever sith Lord normalized calling that that crap. Donations. Donations
are things given without a quid pro quo in the mix. Therefore,
or ergo, if we want to be fancy about it,
(01:01:21):
those are not donations. You're paying for a service, you
know what I mean. Like, we're not donating to the
power company. We pay them to keep the lights on.
That's exactly what's happening. I feel like we're bringing up
a lot of stuff that we've talked about over the
years in this Strange News program in particular, as well
(01:01:43):
as in earlier episodes. But it's culminating, folks, it's driving
rising toward a crescendo. You know, it's going to be
an exciting time to host a critical thinking show as
long as we are allowed to do so.
Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
It's going to be an exciting time to exist outdoors
in shade under the First This is the last part
of your guys, under the First agreement announced in March
French company Total Energies. It's another thing to look up
if you want to just learn yourself some things about
the old gods and the new ones. They all work together.
Total Energies is getting nearly one billion US dollars, essentially
(01:02:19):
a refund of its two offshore wind leases if it
invests the money in fossil fuels instead. Golden State Wind
and Blue Point Wind agreed in April to end their
leases in exchange for reimbursements totally nearly nine hundred million
US dollars provided they invest equally in fossil fuels. And
(01:02:39):
there's another one Chicago based in energy I n V
E N E er G. Why look it up. It's
doing a whole thing ending its offshore wind leases. Ben.
As you said, it's all culminating and it's genuinely scary.
And what do you do about it? We need to
figure that part out and you can help us with that.
(01:03:00):
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Yes, yes, humanity long term? Are you for it or
against it? Let us know so A that's an effectively
propagandistic way to phrase the question. I just did something
we call a decision tree or a logic trap. But
seriously tell us what's on your mind. Thank you so
(01:03:23):
much for tuning in. We cannot wait to hear from you.
There are several ways to find us.
Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Well, sure there are. You can find us at the
handle's Conspiracy Stuff or conspiracy Stuff show on your social
media platform of choice.
Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Our phone number is one eight three three std WYTK.
It's a voicemail system. You'll figure it out. Please try
to keep your message around three minutes or less. That
would be wonderful. We appreciate you. You can also send
us an email.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
We are the entities to read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet's unafraid. Sometimes the void
writes back, back back, I'm gonna try some mineral water again,
one more chance. Oh that's not it. We'll see you
out here in the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
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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