January 12, 2026 • 62 mins
Oh, come on! We take a couple weeks off for the holidays, and the world goes nuts? Ben, Matt and Noel welcome you back to the first strange news segment of 2026. Tune in as the guys explore the unfolding chaos in Venezuela and abroad, the debate about the McRib, Uncle Sam's new interest in Russia's shadow fleet -- and so much more.
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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 Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our guests,
super Producer Max, the Freight Trade Williams. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. And we are returning
friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists for our first Strange
News segment of twenty twenty six. If you are hearing
(00:51):
this when it publishes, we can't wait to welcome you
to January twelfth. Spoiler, we're recording on January seven.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Is it too late to say Happy New Year? I
think it's too late.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
A month? Get a month if you haven't talked to
someone prior, like if you the last time you spoke
to someone in twenty twenty five, if you speak to
them from now until January thirty, first you can still
say Happy New Year.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Fair game? Okay, I can't remember if Larry David had
a shorter cutoff than that. There's a bit that he
did in the current episodes.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I think it's weird if you see someone earlier in
January and you don't say it, and then on like
the Wealth of the Tenth, you say, oh, by the way,
happy New Year. Ah.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
The complexities of social niceties, which brings us to some
of our.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Break eat news books, the complexities or real large geopolitics conspiracy,
writ Lard. Look, we took a quick break for the
holidays the end of the year, as the Gregorian calendar
counts it and lo and behold, a bunch of conspiracies
reached fruition. We have so much to talk about. One
(02:01):
of the things we agreed that we had to mention was,
you know, a lot of stuff happening down south.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
This is what they call the Christmas surprise.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
There's the October surprise. For sure. The Gregorian calendar is
just malarkey. But guys, as we were hanging out we
mentioned this on our episode about trunk and heads at
the very top. While we were hanging out with friends
and loved ones and going on various adventures, stuff finally
(02:32):
went down in Venezuela. So what if we kick the
tires get back into the groove of things by the fires. Yeah,
by talking a little bit about this after we light
up Caracus, we have returned. Now we've all probably seen
(02:53):
the stats here in the United States, the claims that
the average American resident cannot indeed identify Venezuela on a map.
I don't know if that's completely true.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Well, I don't know if you saw this. I can't
remember where I saw this. It was the Newsmax, which
I've never really experienced much of, but I saw it
on a clip of a Newsmax anchor I guess, saying
how he didn't know where Venezuela was on the map.
It was John Stewart be because he's like, well, you guys,
don't have a meeting before you go, like on the.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
News, right right, Yeah, Venezuela is going to be sold
to the American public often as a supply well a huge,
big bad in terms of drugs and anti democratic actions
that also happens to have some of the largest believed
(03:46):
or estimated oil reserves on the planet.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
I think I like what you're implying. Ben.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
However, Noel, the thing that we'll we'll see here is
this has been a long running beef that has reached
kinetic action a little bit earlier than what was reported
in Western media. Also, not all types of oil reserves
are created equally. It really goes down to the refineries.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yeah, there's the crude, which is it's a whole nother
step to process, so it's not quite as valuable upfront,
but still usable, still valuable.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Sure, Yeah, it's still oil, just like kind of a
crappy incandescent bulb will still provide you know, light, just
like an led wood. But the LED is you know,
a little bit easier to work with.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
It's definitely cooler.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
It's definitely on several levels cooler. Well done, Maybe we
started this way, Okay, the West has been beefing, the
global West has been beefing with Venezuela for quite some time.
Who's aside recent government interventions aside the spoiler is it's
(04:57):
only it's not entire about the oil. What we need
to know is, given the great game of communists versus
capitalist ideology and the rise of Russian supported left wing
movements sometimes organic left wing movements throughout Latin or Latin America,
(05:18):
and added to that, Venezuela's potential to be a regional
power player. The United States and indeed Western Europe have
always had their eye on this country like ever since,
you know, post World War Two. This culminates in the
kidnapping of the former president of Venezuela, a guy named
(05:40):
Nicholas Maduro Allah.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And some subsequent fire memes of his incredible transport outfit
where he looks like Giorgio Moroder or some kind of
like European electronic artists.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
And a few fewer security members on his purp walk
than Luigi Mangio, which is also interesting.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
But still quite a quite a display.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
They love a.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Purp walk in New York.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Oh yes, yes. And also we have to note that
we're not saying Maduro was by any means an incorruptible
president or even necessarily a great guy. But he was
the president of a sovereign state, unless you believe the
recent conspiracy theory that he was a CIA plant the
(06:23):
entire time, which come on, man, I hadn't heard them.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, the US has been doing some interesting stuff in
Venezuela for a long time, right, And we have a
whole video series on the previous president of Venezuela. Go
Chaves and you can go back to those episodes and
just see how much oil and natural resources played a part,
and then how much, let's say, multinational corporations, large oil
(06:51):
corporations had a hand in setting up the oil infrastructure
of Venezuela today. So there is there's a bunch of
deep hat, very deep things to drill down into when
it comes to Venezuela.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
We're doing oil exploration jokes. Yeah, I love that point, Matt,
because we see a similar We see a precedent right
in the geopolitical woes of Iran, and right now, if
you are Arodian or in the Erodian diaspora, we're holding
(07:26):
you in our thoughts. Things are going severely sideways there
at a precipitous rate. But Iran encountered something similar with
Western oil powers right leading to the nationalization of oil infrastructure,
energy infrastructure, and resources. And this is why, okay, this
is a weird quick turn. Before we get to the takers.
(07:50):
You've probably seen the reports, folks that Venezuela will be
paying out like two billion dollars worth of sanctioned oil
to the United States. The current president of the United States,
what we call the TOTUS, is quite bullish on this
and has made some statements that are later contradicted by
(08:10):
other members of the White House or the Executive administration.
And we see that. We see that oil companies for
a while have been hesitant to invest in Venezuela, primarily
due to the previous actions of nationalization. So you're private company,
(08:32):
Let's say you're I don't know AT and T. You
go in, You build out all the telephone lines, you
build out all the power stations, build out all the
creepy long lines esque buildings that you need for people
to use cell phones or chat with each other. And
then the leadership of that country that you spent all
(08:53):
this money in, they say, actually, no, you guys forced
us to sign a bad contract. We're not gonna honor it.
This is part of our state run enterprise now.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
So it was meant to be a collab originally. That
was sort of the deal, the terms.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
The IMFIS entered the chat.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yes, there was going to be some resource sharing, like
we help you build the infrastructure, you cut us a
deal or we share in the resources.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, very similar to previous cases. In one case that
would be great for this would be examining Chinese actions,
Chinese state actions in the African continent, we build the infrastructure,
We give you loans that almost function is free money
due to the interest rate, and then you get a
(09:42):
share of the stuff. Historically, that share of the stuff
for the origin company, the origin country of the resource.
That almost well, often it translates to corruption and what
the country should be getting the leaders take.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
One could argue that this beef has legitimate roots.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
You could also argue, there are no good guys in
this conversation.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, in any of these conversations, right.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Isn't a strange thing. You nationalize the thing, the resources
in your country, you make it a part of your
country and how it operates, and then Uncle Sam says, hey,
uh the hell, it's too far.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well then you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Well, yeah, there have been a lot of comparisons to
Manuel Noriega in Panama in nineteen eighty nine and the
invasion there and how the United States wanted a little
something more out of Panama than Panama was willing to give,
and specifically Manuel Noriega was willing to give. So the
you know, the US just invaded and took that guy
(10:46):
out of there and took him to Miami to face charges.
Very similar.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, like, especially given that we were talking
about this a little bit off air, especially given that
the United States has very little respect for international organizations
like the ICC, the International Criminal Court, who has jurisdiction?
Who gets to be the watchman here? The we do
(11:11):
have to say conspiratorially here that the argument of the
argument of kidnapping and it was kidnapping Maduro as some
sort of flex against drug trafficking and narco terrorism cartels.
That doesn't really hold up, because Tiger, Yeah, yeah, because
(11:33):
think about the former Honduran president Hernandez, who was arrested
in twenty twenty two, not that long ago, for drug
trafficking charges, but then later pardoned by the current president.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Devil's advocate. His line there is that he was railroaded
by the Biden administration. I'm curious as to what the
justification for even making that argument might be.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Oh, well, you, I mean, it's tribalism, right, you create
a boogeyman. What was the guy's name? Goldstein in nineteen
eighty four where they all have the two minute hate
every day. I don't know, it's a great book. I'll
have to look up the specific villain's name. But the
way they control the population in nineteen eighty four, part
(12:21):
of their propaganda is to pick one thing, a face
to hate and then make everybody stand up, Like instead
of doing a pledge of allegiance in school, you stand
up for two minutes they show a picture of this guy,
an ugly picture, and you just beat me here at
Max and Dillan, you just hate on them, Yeah, for
two minutes out loud.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
But is there any question that this hun Duran president
was in fact irresponsible for all of these tons and
tons of cocaine being trafficked into the US. Is that
truly disputed?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think the word responsibility would be doing some heavy
lifting there. Corruption for sure. But is he a Noriega?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I don't know, Okay, Okay, So the part in you
know isn't maybe without its precedent, but it does seem
like it does create a certain Faulse equivalency.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Right, Yeah, and it is a Manuel Goldstein by the way,
in nineteen eighty four. Nice.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Great, Let's go back to Noriega really fast, because there's
some stuff about him that I didn't realize, you guys,
I didn't know he specifically went to the school of
the Americas and he was trained there and he was
a CIA asset that was breaking in around what would
be now three hundred thousand dollars a year, like on
the payroll of the CIA before he went back into
(13:39):
Panama and decided, Hey, actually, no, I'm not going to
do the things you want me to do, right, Sam
doesn't like that. Have we done a full episode on
that specific invasion in Noriega?
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Don't believe so. At least it's not ringing up familiar.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
We give him a lot of TLC your attention in
our earlier episodes videos on the School of America's because
he's the most of faith, he's the most famous alumnus,
or one of them. We also, what we're saying here
is everything is precedent, very much so in these situations.
And as we were going into record strange news here,
(14:15):
we were talking back and forth about the US's new
love of interdiction and blockades and piracy. Literally right before
we rolled, we talked about what we learned that US
Special Forces and the Coastguard boarded the former Bella one
(14:35):
new name the Maranera. Do you check out our Sunday gravy, Yeah,
do check out our episode on Russia's shadow fleet, which
became alarmingly accidentally prescient for US.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Isn't there also speaking of blockades, isn't there also some
action towards blockading Cuba in a new way surrounding all
of this talk?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh yeah, man, And so this this feels like an
episode itself because the dust is still settling or winding up.
We don't know if things are gonna wind down or
if they're going to accelerate, what happens with Greenland for instance.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yeah, just to stay on Cuba for a moment, Guys,
did you see the reports early that it was Cuban
guards or security forces that were killed during the strike,
and then it changed to Cuban civilians that were killed
during the US strikes entering Caracas and other areas. I'm
really interested to see how that's gonna continue to play
(15:34):
out as like a potential second scalation. I was gonna
say second country, but maybe third, fourth, eighth country that's
gonna get targeted in this next.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
I mean escalation in terms of adding names to the
hit list. Right.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, there's a great book. I can't remember if I
have it here with me, but there's a great book
A few years ago called Where to Invade Next? That
was originally marketed as satire, but it was pulling directly
from the non fictional stuff. And this is an old book,
this is pre the fall of Goadafi. And if you'll
look through that wish list, you'll see all of the
(16:11):
things that regularly get mentioned when we're talking about this milieu.
And I love the point about the numbers and national
identity of the victims and Crocus changing right. At first
it was just forty people security detail, then it was
twenty four Cuban soldiers, then it was thirty two Cuban soldiers.
Then whoop. Some of them were civilians. One might have
(16:33):
been a doctor who is just on call. This is
this is something that look, I know, we're we're running
over time here. This is something that we must explore
in an episode. We'll get to the blow by blow
of the tankers. We've got a I think we pointed
out some of the issues with the oil investment narrative.
(16:54):
We teased Greenland and we hope, oh my god, guys,
I hope it's just a tease. I hope nothing happens,
because that leads to the dissolution of NATO. Shout out
Alexander Duban.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Yep, that's right. Well this new Monroe doctrine.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Stephen Miller on Jake Tappert, I think it was where
he's just really going big in terms of the scope
of this talking about our hemisphere.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, oh right, we're.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Going to operate as a superpower, that's and exert control
of our hemisphere. These are in our backyard quote unquote.
And it was always the position of this administration that
Greenland was needed for strategic defense.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Dude. It goes back to the south trying to see
stuff that we've been talking about for years. It's these
superpowers doing that exact thing.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Foundations of geopolitics yep. Ivalized Europe, isolate the US, give
it some toys to play with, right, expand over the
Soviet States, and then quota. I don't agree with this,
but the way they say it is quote unquote give
Asia to China and then have Russia and China negotiate
(18:09):
the African continent in the future. We also have to
add just because someone is doing evil stuff does not
mean they're stupid. There are plenty of evil intelligent people,
and there are pretty there are pretty strong indicators regarding
(18:29):
climate change that argue Greenland, once the glaciers are further eroded,
is a catbird seat for the North Atlantic. There's just
no way around it. However, how I know, we got
to cut through napbreak. However, it's important to note that
the United States already has the right to plant military
(18:50):
installations on Greenland. It's a fight to quote unquote get
stuff you already. It's it's just bizarre to me, just.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Like all the oil in South America stuff we already have.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yes, Yeah, because the US and Canada are big with
the oil. I sound to Larry David, they big with
the oil. But what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's the It's gonna get weirder and weirder, you guys.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
No way.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
But we were joking about how back on December nineteenth,
we recorded an episode that is I think coming out
to day January seventh. As we're recording, and we were
joking on that episode about the invasion of Venezuela and
we're like, well, just wait for it, like it's coming.
They're about to do it the way they're the way
they're talking, and it'll be about oil.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
You guys.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
I know, we got to break last thing, though, Is
it completely cynical to think that there's some uh timing
related stuff in terms of covering up or distracting from
the epsteins.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
It is not h Yeah, and thank you know, that's
one of the points when to get to before we
wrap it. It is not u cynical or is it
reductive to think that that's very much a big part.
I would also add in terms of timing a midterm
election coming up, it's a great time to start a
war if you have a lot of domestic descent, which the.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
United States race, right, That's that would be the prevailing
notion is that if we're in the thick of this
big conflict, it would be really not in our best
interest to have a sea change now right.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Well, there are a few more points that we'll get
to in a future episode. We hope that we've given
a quick overview of some stuff we're going to dive
into in depth in the future. Drilled down to Matt's
earlier joke. For now, we're going to pause for a
word from our sponsors, and what say we come back
with something completely different.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
That sounds great, And we're.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Back with something completely different, completely unrelated and hopefully a
little bit of a palate cleanser, because we're talking about
two food three food stories. Actually in my segment today,
first and foremost is really important. We got to get
this out of the way, y'all. Speaking of where's the beef?
As mentioned in the last segment, this one's more where's
(21:16):
the pork. A lawsuit is asserting that a Chicago based
McDonald's is practicing deceptive advertising on the grounds that the
McRib has no rib.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I saw that in Daily Zeitgeist too. Man, they got
heated up about it.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
It's heated class action lawsuit alleges the McDonald's McRib Sandwiches
contains no actual rib meat, despite its name and patty
shape resembling ribs. Guys, can we just first and foremost
say chicken nuggets that's not chicken doesn't come out shaped
like that a McRib is. This is a similar thing.
It's a fun shape made from molded meats. You know,
(21:55):
I don't think anyone is operating under the presumption that
this is a rib.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Well, there's like somebody, but I can already see the
amazing hopefully deep South or weirdly Chicago defender that lawyer
going y'all to if it pull indeed a rib, it
was simply be called the real I advanced to you.
Mac reel isn't a different thing. It is mock sherib.
(22:24):
It is a mock rib.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
They should call it the mock rib, which is it
would be funny to say, guys. Remember the the kerfuffle
surrounding boneless wings. Yes, that was a similar issue. It
was about advertising. It was about the wording of the
name of the product. Right, boneless implied that there once
was a bone in this thing that has been removed.
(22:46):
But actually boneless ribs are much more like the aforementioned
chicken nuggets. In this case, the lawsuit is claiming that
the McRib is marketed deceptively because it contains low quality
ground pork rather than the rib meat, which would be
considered a more premium cut.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, it's just shave shaped impressed right into a rebisque form. Uh.
This is this is interesting because as as we all
know as longtime listeners, as you folks know as well. Uh,
the McRib was previously subject to another wonderful little conspiracy.
That conspiracy be that it was only available once global
(23:27):
pork prices dipped below a certain threshold, and when they
rose again, that's when the mic rib went out of season, which.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
We did debunk or has been. It is, and it's
very similar to the story we're going to talk about
just a second. The pizza index. The idea of of
something like that, a food related thing being a predictor
of other things. Right, So, the notion that it is
made of ground pork of lower quality cuts does imply
(23:54):
that it could contain like what would be collectively referred
to as awful, right, like the gutties, the hearts, you know,
the tripe, scalded stomach. McDonald's claims this is not the case,
and in fact, it contains the McRib contains one hundred
percent seasoned, boneless pork with no use of pork Hart's
(24:15):
tripe or scalded stomach. That's a new one on me,
scalded stomach, y'alli.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
So, yeah, the fast food chain is claiming that they
use mainly pork shoulder, but they don't get into the
bits and pieces that also might be included.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, well, gosh, guys, can we not trust fast food places? Oh?
Speaker 4 (24:41):
One hundred percent? Speaking of fast food, I don't know
if y'all had school lunches that contained something that always
was collectively referred to as riblets, which were little pressed
patties kind of like chicken nuggets, was supposedly made of
rib me and they also had those fake grill marks
on them, or those fake in dentations where the rib
(25:01):
you know, would go, I guess, did you guys have riblets?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I do seem to recall that, but it didn't make
enough of a mark for me to have a Eureka
moment there.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Okay, well there you go. I think I'm just saying,
like school lunches are serving these two no ones suing them.
I think it's a bit of a spurious argument. And
the last thing on this one, the proposed class action lawsuit,
which again is being brought in a Chicago states that
by including the word rib in the name of the sandwich,
McDonald's knowingly markets the sandwich in a way that deceives
(25:33):
reasonable consumers who reasonably but mistakenly believe that a product
named the McRib will include at least some meaningful quantity
of actual pork rib meat, and to which McDonald's pushes
back and saying that they include only the finest cuts
of rib meat. Pork shoulder, pork shoulder, thank you? Which
isn't rib?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Is it? No?
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Pork shoulder, ain't rib?
Speaker 3 (25:56):
No different part of the beast.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
But I don't remember back the boneless wing thing that
didn't go the way that the people proposing the lawsuit
wanted it to either. I think it was overruled that
this is not a reasonable expectation.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
That was in Ohio, and I believe was Ohio, and
the judge said, well it's not. Yeah, the judge didn't
let a fly in court. And this might be a say,
a similar thing. But the good news about this is
that if it's a class action and you can prove
your order to make rib through some window of time,
(26:31):
that you can get on that after the lawyer's fees,
regardless of what the settlement is, you might get a
check for something north of three dollars but less than
ten tions bias a.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
D didn't be ca yeah, where you could play at
least one game game.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I don't know what.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I'm speaking just on this kind of naming. Is your
product name gonna fly? And is this some trademark gonna
do what it says it does on the tin? Did
you guys see the whole thing about the Robotaxi slash
cyber cab debacle that Tesla's dealing with right now.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
They've been dealing with so many it's hard to keep track.
What's the what's the latest?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Okay, well, there's two things. There's a rival company that
Tesla is dealing with right now that's UH is an
unexpected company. We might have to look that up just
to talk about it completely. That's a that's one thing
where they are going in and basically taking ip from
underneath Tesla because Tesla has been really slow at putting
(27:40):
in like a trademark request. And then this other issue
with Robotaxi that there was a judge basically saying you
can't call your robot taxi program robo taxi. That's like
calling a car a car. You can't trademark that. You
have to come up with some other name. So cyber
Cab was the name that they want to use. But
(28:01):
there's this other company that I can't remember that's going
in and usurping their I p.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Oh wow, because they're not being UH because UH, legislation
always lags behind technological innovation. I love this, okay, so
let's do it live let's see Tesla's cybercab competitor. Uh,
cybercab versus waybo is one of the first things that
pops up, is.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
It Unibev that's coming up, which is weird, Like what
they it's they have they have they're just patent trolling
their patent or trademark trolling. In this case, they are
totally legal.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, yes, it's this thing Tesla Kila that was gonna
be a Tesla Uh, a Tesla tequila, I guess, or
something that Unibev was really upset about because I guess
they already had a product or something that was kind
of like that. Yeah, so basically there, so there's being petty.
They're just ground beefing over it.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh my god. You can also you can also make
some serious uh profit when you do that stuff correctly.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Sell it back.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
It's like like web It's exactly. Yeah. So this is uh,
this is an exciting thing. I was I was on
the road for some stuff this morning, and I was
surprised by how many Tesla's I saw, Like the old
car stuff thing makes me think it's crazy how quickly
Tesla got adopted by the at least the American populace
(29:28):
in urban environments, and I think part of that is
because of the larger than life sort of iconic status
of Alon Musk, whether you love them or hate them,
and the fact that purchasing to Tesla became in some
ways a political statement. So this is actually this legal kerfuffle.
(29:48):
I know, we got to get back to Pentagon and pizza,
but this legal kerfuffle is a net good for Tesla
right now.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
And if you want to check out some ridiculous episodes,
we did a series on copyright and trademarks that you
can intellectual property, intellectual property, dig a little deeper into
that stuff. But apparently I'm trolling, scrolling rather through a
Reddit thread, and they make some really good points. The
trademark squat is what they're referring to. This ass will
get overturned in court because Tesla can easily show usage
(30:21):
before registration and will likely win this in court with
very little effort, which seems to ring true to.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Me, and win some headlines everybody involved, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
In which in this case, unlike the usual headlines Tesla's making,
this is when we're Tesla's kind of being bullied instead
of being the bully. So it's kind of a good
pr look in a way.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Maybe we all hate bullies, you know what I mean.
I hope people hate bullies. This is I want to
get back to the food stuff though we set up
because this not our old show about eating stacks, but
this idea that we discussed in previous episodes or in
our previous Weekly Strange News segment, the concept that if
(31:05):
you are clever enough, you can slightly predict US military
and state level action by seeing how much pizza people
order in a very specific part of the United States.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And we talked about that not long ago, and I
don't remember exactly what it was, connected to what event,
but they're at it again, you know, crack Internet. You know,
users are tracking spikes and activity at nearby pizza restaurants
in Washington, d C. And using them much like the
waffle House index, predicting bad weather informal indicators of late
(31:43):
night work taking place at the US defense buildings there.
So as the United States took you know, action there
in Venezuela with a large scale military strike in Caracas,
a pizza outlet near the Pentagon saw some of those
very spikes, surges and orders on Saturday, January the third
(32:08):
guys remind me when we talked about this, like there
is some truth to this, but it's also a little anecdotal. Yeah,
Greek food right now, It's.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
It's true in that if you are looking for a
pattern with pizza ordering and US action, then you can
easily find what appears to be a pattern, but one okay,
not to get old conspiratorial, but to definitely get conspiratorial.
One of the interesting things about this is if you've
been to DC, you know that they're the DC area,
(32:43):
you know that there are tons of places that will
give you a bunch of food. They can't wait to
do catering. That's great for a restaurant. But then also,
and I know a lot of us listening have in
fact been to the Pentagon. The Pentagon has tons of
food available, one of the world's largest office buildings. They
have literal mountains of food. Man our favorite subway closed, yes,
(33:07):
but there's still like you are at an embarrassment of
riches for ordering food. So then the question becomes, if
we know that the public can see this, anybody on
the wide world of the Internet, then why would we
continue having that security vulnerability? If vulnerability it is, I mean,
(33:28):
how much of it is calculated propaganda?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
I remember asking the same question last time, But how
are people tracking this? They're just looking at like you know,
those Google results of like busy times, or like real
time analysis of like foot traffic at particular types of eateries,
or because I mean, it's not exactly public information, like
you know, the order is coming in to in real time,
in real time, right, yeah?
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, you can also call some of the pizza places.
One of the most famous ones. I'm trying to remember
the name of it. I think it's something, Oh god,
what is it?
Speaker 4 (34:04):
The big win question for this round of discussion is
Pizzato Pizza.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
That's the one. That's what I'm thinking about. Yeah, Because
you know Stone's throw from the Pentagon right right, and
you'll see you'll see the claims like the I think
the orders just a day ago. So we're recorded on
the seventh, So on the sixth they jumped and fifty percent.
But then the percentage gets tricky because we have to
(34:31):
ask the baseline, how often is our people in the
Pentagon ordering pizza from this place on a normal day.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
It's a good question, and again, can you can you
answer that for me, though, Man, Now, how are they
gauging these spikes the average internet saluth?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Right, Yeah, So the what of the ways that I
heard and I haven't participated in aggregating this data. One
of the ways that I've heard is literally calling the
place or maybe having an inside man relationship where somebody
you know, uh, what's what's the name of that place again,
No Pizzato Pizza, Okay, So mister Pizzato calls up and
(35:07):
says he there's a lot of pepperoni, and I think
you know where it's going. And then what you know,
he's like their deep throat in Watergate or something. Oh,
we can't say pizza gate. They ruined it.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
I really ruined it, Geez Louis Okay. So that's a
very analog way, one that dates back, I think to
even the earliest versions of this theory the the Cold War,
when I believe Soviet intelligence services would monitor movements of
pizza delivery drivers in Washington as a way of seeing
how on the ball US might be.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
And then Matt, get out of my head. There's a
website that you that you've boasted in the chat that
is actually it's a lot of fun do you want
to tell us about that one?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Sure, it's p I z z I N T dot
W A T c h so pasant dot watch.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
And it's a real time aggregator of this type of
data based on a number of factors. I imagine.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, it's very fun. Wait, hold on, what is happening here?
There's also a gay bar report on another tab.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Oh, that goes back to you know, Gavin Newsome made
a recent joke about that. That goes back to the
the idea of tracing actions by certain members of the
political class by attending what are called gay bars or
grinder usage.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Grinder usage, And that's the whole thing, is this notion
that like a lot of these grinder usage spikes around
right leaning events because there's a lot of closeted, you know,
behavior in that set.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
It's a weird allegedly allegedly, guys, Papa John's right now
is at a three spike. That's what it says.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
From what what is one?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I don't know, much busier than usual because it'd be like.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Okay, all the late nights they would after it just
like this, there's going to be a lot of pizza
being or you know, after a strike like this. So
at a certain point it doesn't. It's no longer a predictor.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Well, it's also so here's the thing. I keep going
back to this idea, Jens, the idea that the so
called pizza meter, which you're fans of and I follow
quite closely. The idea is that it lacks real scientific foundation.
It is still reading a little bit of tea leaves
or basil leaves, since that's what you would put on
(37:29):
a pizza. But it's fun to think about. I have
not I was digging into some of this. I have
not heard anybody on the inside, you know what I
mean by the inside. I haven't heard anybody on the
inside say, yes, we love the Pizza Index. It's one
(37:49):
hundred percent correct. I have heard people say, we're aware
that members of the public believe there is a connection. Careful, careful, califrol.
Is it a boneless wing or is it a boneless wing?
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Maybe it's just a boneless wing of the mind.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
A rose is a rose, is a ruse.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
I just want to cap this off because this kind
of triggered another related story in my head. Did you
guys see the story about the individual that made a
whole lot of money betting on Maduro's capture Polymarket poly
Market implying some inside information, and then the concept of
(38:31):
I believe, you know, some of Trump's sons sitting on
the board of these kind of betting markets, and the
notion that there's going to be leaked information that could
lead to this kind of stuff, especially when you're allowing
betting on literally any type of world event. I did
just see an update saying gambling platform Polymarket not paying
(38:53):
bets on us invasion of Venezuela. Gamblers who placed wagers
totally ten point five million angered after the capture Nicholas
Maduro deemed not to qualify. So I'm wondering if that's
a response to this criticism.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
It is it is because they Polymarket came forward in
the immediate reporting as a response and they said, hey,
we have a policy on our website that says no
insider trading. They said, yeah, but how would somebody know?
Was this a lucky guess? It's not like it's not
(39:27):
like guessing on a Rolet wheel or something where you
have a fine number of factors and the money wasn't
even if it was a lot for the average person,
like north of four hundred thousand something USD But that's
not oil executive money, right. If you're running insert oil
company here, you're not really sweating your career over less
(39:48):
than half a million dollars. But maybe I don't know.
I'm spinning out on that one, Noel, and I appreciate
you bringing it up. My thinking is that, yeah, Polymarket
is trying to preserve their future longevity, so they also
don't want to have to pay the money. Is a
great way to not have to pay the money.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
So there are two competing narratives here, or two different
flavors of bet. I do believe that the story that
initially made headlines about this one Polymarket user making thirty
two grand betting on the ousting of Venezuelan leader Nicholas
Maduro before the end of the month, and there being
(40:31):
a lot of speculation that there was insider information that
led to that the idea that Polymarket won't pay these
bets on US invasion of Venezuela, I believe is different.
They came out saying that US military operations intended to
establish control are what would win these bets. President Trump's
(40:56):
statement that they will run Venezuela while referencing on talks
with the Venezuelan government does not alone qualify the snatch
and extract mission to capture Maduro was an invasion. So
with that, let's move on from food related conspiracies for
the time being and take a quick break care worthrom
O sponsor, and then come back with the last segment
of today's Strange News episode.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
And we've returned, guys, we are gonna jump back quickly
to Venezuela just to talk about a little more shipping stuff,
because there is a saga of the high Seas that
it appears to be concluding today on Wednesday, January seventh,
as we record this, it has been ongoing for a while.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
To the piracy bit you reference, maybe, yes.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, yes, it's Shadow Fleet piracy stuff and also you
know US military and UK military intervention. So we're gonna
start with some writing that the Guardian put out this
morning on January seventh. Yeah, here's the title, Russia reportedly
sends submarine to escort Shadow Fleet tanker being pursued by US.
(42:06):
Interestingly enough, the report that this report is referencing comes
directly from the Wall Street Journal. They're the ones who
started talking about this submarine. But as we're going to
find in a moment. The submarine isn't the biggest part
of this story. But let's just keep in this one
for a moment, because this is what we're reading, right
If you're reading the news as it's happening on Wednesday,
(42:30):
January seventh, it says Russia's dispatched naval assets to a
score a shadow fleet oil tanker being pursued by the
US across the Atlantic. The ship, formerly known as the
Bela one, has spent more than two weeks attempting to
evade a US blockade of US sanctions hit oil tankers
operating near Venezuela. The ship was once known it changed
(42:52):
its name at one point to the Marinera. When its
crew was dealing with some stuff, they were they were
going to be boarded by a US ship. They somehow
evaded that boarding. They painted a huge Russian flag on
the whole of the ship. It was added to an
official Russian registry so it would not be boarded. It's
(43:14):
no longer yes, it's no longer a shadow fleet vessel.
Now it's an official Russian vessel. So you can't do
anything to this vessel under you know, the weird wonky
rules of the high seas.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
The Coastguards run it up, and the captain gets on
the horn and has a weird relationship conversation with Russia, like,
come on, guys, what are we.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
Yeah, dude, it's frenemies.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
It's this weird thing with the ship that appears to
have been on its way to Venezuela to pick up
some oil for Russia. Again, like that appears to be
what was happening. It started in Iran, it did this
whole weird trip around. No, it went to Iceland for
a minute, yes, or it was headed towards Iceland, I guess.
(43:56):
And then more stuff happened this morning.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yes, more stuff happened this morning. We've got some We've
got some live updates. I would recommend a great a
great source for this. Not for everybody, but if you
should sip the social meds, check out OSNT defender over
on x dot com formerly Twitter. There. They're at least
(44:22):
I think they're part of where Wall Street Journal may
get some sourcing. But they were some of the first
folks we saw who reported that US Special Forces, along
with the Coast Guard did successfully board the quote Russian
flagged Iranian linked oil tanker MARINERA in the North Atlantic,
(44:43):
and if you look at the map, it's not getting
it's not getting pot or boarded anywhere close to the
United States, nor particularly close to Iran, nor particularly that
close to Russia.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
No, it's very strange, and even in the reporting they're
having to call it Bela I slash Marinera, yes, and
it gets so confusing just trying to figure out what
the hell happened and is this the actual tanker that
we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
That's part of the art. Yeah, And we look at
this and we see that if we look at some
of the larger context here, we know that the US
has seized at least four as of this morning, at
least four different oil tankers linked to Venezuela. Two tankers
seized January seventh, and two others previously. It's it's a
(45:36):
heck of a time to be at the wheel of
a shadow fleet vessel, oh man, or the even shadow
fleet vessels. Sorry, that's the thing, because now you can
just throw that name on something and say that's why
we got them.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, oh, we had to pick them up. They were
shadow fleet. Are you sure, guys that it seemed like
a pretty small fishing vessel. No shadow Fleet.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
It's like earlier. Also, the rules of maritime engagement are
again so murky and so purposely riddled with loopholes. I
keep remembering in our shadow Fleet episode we talked about
how cool it would be to just switch your passport
if you got in trouble abroad. I just say, oh,
(46:19):
this is not my oh gosh, my Giata passport. Hey guy, guys,
let me get the other one. All right, here's the
Russia win. Are we tight? Okay?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Oh? Man? Wait was that an actual passport? What was that?
That looked awesome? The small pamphlet of some that was cool?
Thanks man, Well, guys, oil tankers aside, we're gonna talk
about something that happened on US soil, something that is.
It gets wrapped up in politics, but ultimately, as we're
going to talk about here in a moment, it goes
(46:49):
back to childhoods for me at least. On Monday, January fifth,
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting officially voted to dissolve it.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yikes, I'm doing hunger games, you.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Know, right there with you? What was that thing? Ravens?
Speaker 4 (47:08):
No?
Speaker 2 (47:09):
What were they? Hawk's No? Mockingbirds, mocking birds mocking Jay's boom.
There we go. We got it.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
I shout out to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We've
talked on this show way back in the day about
official national programming for any country and how it can
get a little wonky at times, it can get a
little propagandistic at all times. It can. But I don't
(47:39):
know how much my vision is clouded when it comes
to things like NPR and PBS because of my childhood.
And I wonder if maybe I and a lot of
other people who grew up in the United States have
that same feeling because I think about specifically PBS kids programming. Sure,
especially now as a father who's you know, raised a
(48:00):
kid who's ten years old and spent I don't even
know how many hours sitting in front of a TV
or a screen of some sort with my son watching
Sesame Street or Daniel Tiger or Wildcrats or super Wires.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Or you know, awesome approachable science shows.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
My god, Nature Cat. Somebody somewhere at the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting greenlit this show called Nature Cat that had
Tarren Killham, Kate McKinnon, Bobby moynihan, Kate mccoochie, Chris Parnell,
Keenan Thompson, and Fred Armisen who and they knew all
of those voices would specifically hit home to a parent
because they watched SNL, you know, in in the two
(48:42):
thousands and then But then it's also great programming about
science and nature. I don't know, am I being tricked
somehow or is it just good kid programming?
Speaker 3 (48:54):
You're not being tricked, And this is a universal experience,
I would say for a lot of people growing up
in the United States in particular, Nostalgia is a hell
of a drug for sure, but also due to the
strictures on content, let's put it that way, placed on
public media resources, there are requirements to aspire toward honesty
(49:21):
in reporting, so to aspire away from propaganda. But again,
on the other side, I think this is part of
the question you're asking that there is an issue of
what is considered truth in one place versus what is
considered truth in another place. Most of the time this
is just stuff like look how amazing the snow leopard is,
(49:41):
or let's learn to count to twenty with a vampire.
And I love all of those, you.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Know, well, I think at the heart of it there.
It feels like there is a noble cause for creating
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting back in nineteen sixty seven
with the Public Broadcasting Act of nineteen sixty seven. If
you go to USA Today talking about it today on
January seventh, they discuss how, quote the purpose of the
(50:11):
Corporation for Public Broadcasting was to provide funding and support
for public media across the United States to a quote,
enable greater and equitable access to information and education, which
again feels like a crazy noble thing to me. Let
everybody have the best information out there, and don't relegate
(50:31):
that to people who can afford to have a cable
box in their house or a television in their house,
or you know, or perhaps you would need a television
of some sort to get PBS, but you at the
time at least you just need an antenna.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yeah. The idea being that in a purported meritocracy like
the United States, access an opportunity for education should not
be socioeconomically restricted.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Right, agreed, feels like a good thing. You also got
that with radio, right, All you had to do was
turn your radio to a certain dial and you would
get the news that was theoretically impartial.
Speaker 4 (51:07):
Theoretically well, you know what, I was just theoretical the
impartiality and independence of the FCC. Hey, there you go,
and has been really called into question. I'm not mistaken.
In a hearing with the FCC chairman, he was sort
of cornered into admitting that the FCC was no longer
(51:27):
considered an independent organization, and they actually removed that language
from their official website. And if I'm not mistaken, the
FCC is in the process of doing investigation into PBS
for biased coverage, whatever it might be. There's a grid,
there's a public interest doctrine of some sort involved in
(51:48):
holding a license from the FCC, and it does seem
that specifically around the president's language targeting people that maybe
are against him or oppose him in their coverage, that
that qualifies as not in the public interests. And there
are some pretty serious investigations going into just about every
(52:09):
network except for Fox News and.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Uh oh is it o an No, that's a different one.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Well NEWSMAXIM and I don't know. Fox News is the
only terrest for the broadcasting right, so I believe that
is of the big ones, that's the one that's not
on the list.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
We're we're referring to, specifically, folks, something called Executive Order
fourteen to ninety, which is an older thing from last year,
but the full title of it. Speaking to Nole's point,
there is ending taxpayer subsidization of biased media. You know
what I mean, Who's going to teach my kids to
(52:46):
count to twenty? It's not going to be this liberal
cartoon vampire.
Speaker 4 (52:50):
Not these communist puppets.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Right, how dare you have these mister Rogers reruns about
the importance of sharing.
Speaker 4 (52:58):
Yeah, and being kind and empathy.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Well, there is some good news if you are a
big fan of let's say, Sesame Street, as I and
my son currently certainly were. Sesame Street appears to have
gotten some kind of deal with Netflix to continue producing episodes,
so it will move somewhere else, and several other shows
will probably do the same thing. There's still questions up
(53:20):
in the air if whether or not Frontline will continue,
one of the last bastions of investigative journalism will.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
GBS isn't completely toast, right.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, BBS and NPR are not fully shutting down, but
it is kind of one of those things that if
they're not getting most of their funding the way they
used to. They're gonna have to switch gears. So something
is going to have to change, right.
Speaker 3 (53:44):
State level funding is not gonna float these boats.
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Pledgere just subsidies at best, you know, yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Let's everybody feel bad, by the way about switching the
channel during those pledge drives.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
I feel bad.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
I feel so bad. Got again again.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
To dous.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
That's right, that's right. Let's go out to the USA today
really quickly, and we'll just read a quote from here.
NPR and PBS as a whole will not quote shut
down at least for now, but many associated properties, especially
those in more rural or lower income areas, may suffer.
CPP the Center for Public Broadcasting was a significant portion
of NPR and and pbs is funding, but not all
(54:27):
of it, meaning the organizations will have to find another
means of filling in the multimillion dollar gaps. That's that's
the whole thing. We're going to continue to talk about that,
as you know, if anything changes. Hopefully something changes and
a lot of these programs go elsewhere. So the last
thing we're going to talk about today freemasons. We haven't
talked about them in a while. Guys. Uh, there's a
(54:50):
whole thing going on with U with the UK. Britain's
the Metropolitan Police, so we'll call them and this push
to make all of the Office of the Metropolitan Police
declare whether or not they are members of some freemason sect, right,
So like, are you a freemason or are you not?
And if you are, you must declare. So what do
(55:12):
we think about that?
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Absolutely? Do it?
Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yes, And I'm only saying that because not not being
a barrister nor a solicitor. I'm saying that because these
folks are. I was thinking about this too, Matt. These
folks are similar to members of the military. By the
nature of your role in society, you are sacrificing some
(55:37):
personal freedoms and one of those, arguably could be the
ordinary civilian right to privacy. You know, like let's say
you're you're hiring and this is unpopular across the board.
I get it. And part of why it's unpopular is
because it feels like the right thing to do. If
you say, for instance, if all things are equal, and
(55:58):
if the met is really just enforcing the laws of
the UK, enforcing the laws of the Kingdom, and being
as fair as possible to all civilians, all residents of
the UK. Then you need to know if someone is
into some conspiratorial stuff. We're friends with Masons. They're not
bad people. But if you apply a law, you have
to apply a law. So what if somebody is in
(56:21):
the met and they've got a good career, but you
find out that they're secretly, secretly a big puba in
some organization called like destroy the UK and down with
the Mets, Right, so you have to I think I
would argue, and I think a lot of us will
agree with me. I would argue that this isn't uncool
(56:44):
but necessary evil.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Well, it's about allegiances and oaths, right, right, Just so,
when you become a member of the Metropolitan Police, you
take certain oaths to uphold certain things. And again that
is about a similar to hearing the United States with
police officers. Depending on which group you sign up with,
you are taking a pretty serious oath to protect people
(57:07):
and the public. And depending on where that public is
and who that public.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
Is, when do you joined whatever.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
Yeah, when you join the Freemasons, you are also taking
a similar oath. But in this case you were talking
about protecting and supporting other members of the Freemaker brotherhood.
So what if there is a conflict of interest between
protecting members of you know, some constituency or the public
versus protecting your fellow officer who was also a freemason.
(57:36):
And you know, how deep could that corruption go? And
currently there are allegations that there is corruption at low
and high levels because of because of the connections between
officers and their freemason bruthers.
Speaker 4 (57:50):
Can you imagine if we had this level of transparency
in the US government with elected officials.
Speaker 3 (57:54):
You're pulled over and you ask, is there no help
for the widow's son?
Speaker 2 (57:58):
We know we all know what to do, right, We
talked about that before. We all know we walked Keith.
There are key we do. There are keywords and key
phrases and things you can do with your arms and
hands out in public that can send signals that don't
do it unless you know what you're doing and you
have the right affiliation it.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
Don't don't try to do stolen valor it will not
go well in a the stic milieu.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yes, but hey, you can look all that stuff up
now now that there are books like Freemasons for Dummies
that we've read. There's all kinds of fun stuff out
there anyway. That's all I've got, Guys.
Speaker 4 (58:36):
Are you're bearing the lead on MAT? The organization in
charge of Freemasonry in England has the best acronym of
any organization. It's oogle ooh. What is the United Grand
Lodge of England, the governing body of the Freemasons in England,
And they're the ones who issued this complaint or threat
of lawsuit against the MET.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
And I think the most important thing here is something
that you you hit on just a few minutes to
go MAT, which is if you have, if it is
your vocation and your job right to enforce the law,
and you are a member of any other group, clique,
institution that may at times require you to violate enforcement
(59:16):
of the law, then are you qualified for the job.
That's the bagger, that's the bagger vants. That's the bag
of badgers, I should say, and.
Speaker 4 (59:26):
The bag of vants and the bagger badgers.
Speaker 3 (59:29):
What's coming up? God, Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 4 (59:32):
It's definitely Will Smith all the way down. It's definitely
a pickle.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
I believe.
Speaker 4 (59:38):
They're saying that this kind of scrutiny would undermine the
public credibility of Freemasons, almost couching them as some sort
of terrorist organization or like on some sort of watch list,
not to be trusted. The term aura of mistrust is
being thrown around and this idea of competing oathes.
Speaker 2 (59:55):
But is that because we have a mistrust of Freemasonry
in general because of the way we grew up thinking
about these things, Like I'm saying personal the.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Way from the United States was founded, I said it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Yeah, or the French Revolution, well, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
We also again are huge fans of Masonry. We have
a lot of friends and family who are members of
this or affiliated organizations, and we would love to hear
from you, folks, especially if you are if you are
acquainted with the Masonic organization, what do you think about
the philosophical quandary here? And if you chose a side,
(01:00:33):
what side would you choose? Or do you like us
see all facets of this and also don't forget to
write to us about Venezuela. Thank you so much for
tuning in. That's our show for today. We cannot wait
to hear from you. As we hurtle through the early
days of twenty twenty six, some of us will be
(01:00:53):
on the road, some of us will be in the office.
We're gonna have all kinds of adventures and we're grateful
that you're along with us for the ride. So find us.
You can call us on a phone. You can always
send us an email, and should thou sip the social meds,
you can find us on the lines.
Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Sip away at the handle conspiracy stuff where we exist
on Facebook with our Facebook group, Here's where It's crazy,
on xfka, Twitter, and on YouTube, or we have video
content gloor for YouTube, cruse and enjoy on Instagram and
TikTok where conspiracy stuff show, and there's more.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three std WYTK. Turn those letters into numbers and then
give us a call. It's a voicemail system. You've got
three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
the air. If you'd like to send us an email,
you can do that too.
Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
We are the entities.
Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
Read each piece of correspondence we received. Be well aware,
yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back, if we cannot
wait to hang with you out here in the dark.
Please remember anything that shows up on our weekly strange
news or listener mail segment can become one of our
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We'll talk soon. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our guests,
super Producer Max, the Freight Trade Williams. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. And we are returning
friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists for our first Strange
News segment of twenty twenty six. If you are hearing
(00:51):
this when it publishes, we can't wait to welcome you
to January twelfth. Spoiler, we're recording on January seven.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Is it too late to say Happy New Year? I
think it's too late.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
A month? Get a month if you haven't talked to
someone prior, like if you the last time you spoke
to someone in twenty twenty five, if you speak to
them from now until January thirty, first you can still
say Happy New Year.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Fair game? Okay, I can't remember if Larry David had
a shorter cutoff than that. There's a bit that he
did in the current episodes.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I think it's weird if you see someone earlier in
January and you don't say it, and then on like
the Wealth of the Tenth, you say, oh, by the way,
happy New Year. Ah.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
The complexities of social niceties, which brings us to some
of our.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Break eat news books, the complexities or real large geopolitics conspiracy,
writ Lard. Look, we took a quick break for the
holidays the end of the year, as the Gregorian calendar
counts it and lo and behold, a bunch of conspiracies
reached fruition. We have so much to talk about. One
(02:01):
of the things we agreed that we had to mention was,
you know, a lot of stuff happening down south.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
This is what they call the Christmas surprise.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
There's the October surprise. For sure. The Gregorian calendar is
just malarkey. But guys, as we were hanging out we
mentioned this on our episode about trunk and heads at
the very top. While we were hanging out with friends
and loved ones and going on various adventures, stuff finally
(02:32):
went down in Venezuela. So what if we kick the
tires get back into the groove of things by the fires. Yeah,
by talking a little bit about this after we light
up Caracus, we have returned. Now we've all probably seen
(02:53):
the stats here in the United States, the claims that
the average American resident cannot indeed identify Venezuela on a map.
I don't know if that's completely true.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Well, I don't know if you saw this. I can't
remember where I saw this. It was the Newsmax, which
I've never really experienced much of, but I saw it
on a clip of a Newsmax anchor I guess, saying
how he didn't know where Venezuela was on the map.
It was John Stewart be because he's like, well, you guys,
don't have a meeting before you go, like on the.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
News, right right, Yeah, Venezuela is going to be sold
to the American public often as a supply well a huge,
big bad in terms of drugs and anti democratic actions
that also happens to have some of the largest believed
(03:46):
or estimated oil reserves on the planet.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
I think I like what you're implying. Ben.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
However, Noel, the thing that we'll we'll see here is
this has been a long running beef that has reached
kinetic action a little bit earlier than what was reported
in Western media. Also, not all types of oil reserves
are created equally. It really goes down to the refineries.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Yeah, there's the crude, which is it's a whole nother
step to process, so it's not quite as valuable upfront,
but still usable, still valuable.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Sure, Yeah, it's still oil, just like kind of a
crappy incandescent bulb will still provide you know, light, just
like an led wood. But the LED is you know,
a little bit easier to work with.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
It's definitely cooler.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
It's definitely on several levels cooler. Well done, Maybe we
started this way, Okay, the West has been beefing, the
global West has been beefing with Venezuela for quite some time.
Who's aside recent government interventions aside the spoiler is it's
(04:57):
only it's not entire about the oil. What we need
to know is, given the great game of communists versus
capitalist ideology and the rise of Russian supported left wing
movements sometimes organic left wing movements throughout Latin or Latin America,
(05:18):
and added to that, Venezuela's potential to be a regional
power player. The United States and indeed Western Europe have
always had their eye on this country like ever since,
you know, post World War Two. This culminates in the
kidnapping of the former president of Venezuela, a guy named
(05:40):
Nicholas Maduro Allah.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
And some subsequent fire memes of his incredible transport outfit
where he looks like Giorgio Moroder or some kind of
like European electronic artists.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
And a few fewer security members on his purp walk
than Luigi Mangio, which is also interesting.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
But still quite a quite a display.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
They love a.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Purp walk in New York.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Oh yes, yes. And also we have to note that
we're not saying Maduro was by any means an incorruptible
president or even necessarily a great guy. But he was
the president of a sovereign state, unless you believe the
recent conspiracy theory that he was a CIA plant the
(06:23):
entire time, which come on, man, I hadn't heard them.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, the US has been doing some interesting stuff in
Venezuela for a long time, right, And we have a
whole video series on the previous president of Venezuela. Go
Chaves and you can go back to those episodes and
just see how much oil and natural resources played a part,
and then how much, let's say, multinational corporations, large oil
(06:51):
corporations had a hand in setting up the oil infrastructure
of Venezuela today. So there is there's a bunch of
deep hat, very deep things to drill down into when
it comes to Venezuela.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
We're doing oil exploration jokes. Yeah, I love that point, Matt,
because we see a similar We see a precedent right
in the geopolitical woes of Iran, and right now, if
you are Arodian or in the Erodian diaspora, we're holding
(07:26):
you in our thoughts. Things are going severely sideways there
at a precipitous rate. But Iran encountered something similar with
Western oil powers right leading to the nationalization of oil infrastructure,
energy infrastructure, and resources. And this is why, okay, this
is a weird quick turn. Before we get to the takers.
(07:50):
You've probably seen the reports, folks that Venezuela will be
paying out like two billion dollars worth of sanctioned oil
to the United States. The current president of the United States,
what we call the TOTUS, is quite bullish on this
and has made some statements that are later contradicted by
(08:10):
other members of the White House or the Executive administration.
And we see that. We see that oil companies for
a while have been hesitant to invest in Venezuela, primarily
due to the previous actions of nationalization. So you're private company,
(08:32):
Let's say you're I don't know AT and T. You
go in, You build out all the telephone lines, you
build out all the power stations, build out all the
creepy long lines esque buildings that you need for people
to use cell phones or chat with each other. And
then the leadership of that country that you spent all
(08:53):
this money in, they say, actually, no, you guys forced
us to sign a bad contract. We're not gonna honor it.
This is part of our state run enterprise now.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
So it was meant to be a collab originally. That
was sort of the deal, the terms.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
The IMFIS entered the chat.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yes, there was going to be some resource sharing, like
we help you build the infrastructure, you cut us a
deal or we share in the resources.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah, very similar to previous cases. In one case that
would be great for this would be examining Chinese actions,
Chinese state actions in the African continent, we build the infrastructure,
We give you loans that almost function is free money
due to the interest rate, and then you get a
(09:42):
share of the stuff. Historically, that share of the stuff
for the origin company, the origin country of the resource.
That almost well, often it translates to corruption and what
the country should be getting the leaders take.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
One could argue that this beef has legitimate roots.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
You could also argue, there are no good guys in
this conversation.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, in any of these conversations, right.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Isn't a strange thing. You nationalize the thing, the resources
in your country, you make it a part of your
country and how it operates, and then Uncle Sam says, hey,
uh the hell, it's too far.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Well then you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Well, yeah, there have been a lot of comparisons to
Manuel Noriega in Panama in nineteen eighty nine and the
invasion there and how the United States wanted a little
something more out of Panama than Panama was willing to give,
and specifically Manuel Noriega was willing to give. So the
you know, the US just invaded and took that guy
(10:46):
out of there and took him to Miami to face charges.
Very similar.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, like, especially given that we were talking
about this a little bit off air, especially given that
the United States has very little respect for international organizations
like the ICC, the International Criminal Court, who has jurisdiction?
Who gets to be the watchman here? The we do
(11:11):
have to say conspiratorially here that the argument of the
argument of kidnapping and it was kidnapping Maduro as some
sort of flex against drug trafficking and narco terrorism cartels.
That doesn't really hold up, because Tiger, Yeah, yeah, because
(11:33):
think about the former Honduran president Hernandez, who was arrested
in twenty twenty two, not that long ago, for drug
trafficking charges, but then later pardoned by the current president.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Devil's advocate. His line there is that he was railroaded
by the Biden administration. I'm curious as to what the
justification for even making that argument might be.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Oh, well, you, I mean, it's tribalism, right, you create
a boogeyman. What was the guy's name? Goldstein in nineteen
eighty four where they all have the two minute hate
every day. I don't know, it's a great book. I'll
have to look up the specific villain's name. But the
way they control the population in nineteen eighty four, part
(12:21):
of their propaganda is to pick one thing, a face
to hate and then make everybody stand up, Like instead
of doing a pledge of allegiance in school, you stand
up for two minutes they show a picture of this guy,
an ugly picture, and you just beat me here at
Max and Dillan, you just hate on them, Yeah, for
two minutes out loud.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
But is there any question that this hun Duran president
was in fact irresponsible for all of these tons and
tons of cocaine being trafficked into the US. Is that
truly disputed?
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think the word responsibility would be doing some heavy
lifting there. Corruption for sure. But is he a Noriega?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I don't know, Okay, Okay, So the part in you
know isn't maybe without its precedent, but it does seem
like it does create a certain Faulse equivalency.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Right, Yeah, and it is a Manuel Goldstein by the way,
in nineteen eighty four. Nice.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Great, Let's go back to Noriega really fast, because there's
some stuff about him that I didn't realize, you guys,
I didn't know he specifically went to the school of
the Americas and he was trained there and he was
a CIA asset that was breaking in around what would
be now three hundred thousand dollars a year, like on
the payroll of the CIA before he went back into
(13:39):
Panama and decided, Hey, actually, no, I'm not going to
do the things you want me to do, right, Sam
doesn't like that. Have we done a full episode on
that specific invasion in Noriega?
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Don't believe so. At least it's not ringing up familiar.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
We give him a lot of TLC your attention in
our earlier episodes videos on the School of America's because
he's the most of faith, he's the most famous alumnus,
or one of them. We also, what we're saying here
is everything is precedent, very much so in these situations.
And as we were going into record strange news here,
(14:15):
we were talking back and forth about the US's new
love of interdiction and blockades and piracy. Literally right before
we rolled, we talked about what we learned that US
Special Forces and the Coastguard boarded the former Bella one
(14:35):
new name the Maranera. Do you check out our Sunday gravy, Yeah,
do check out our episode on Russia's shadow fleet, which
became alarmingly accidentally prescient for US.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Isn't there also speaking of blockades, isn't there also some
action towards blockading Cuba in a new way surrounding all
of this talk?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Oh yeah, man, And so this this feels like an
episode itself because the dust is still settling or winding up.
We don't know if things are gonna wind down or
if they're going to accelerate, what happens with Greenland for instance.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yeah, just to stay on Cuba for a moment, Guys,
did you see the reports early that it was Cuban
guards or security forces that were killed during the strike,
and then it changed to Cuban civilians that were killed
during the US strikes entering Caracas and other areas. I'm
really interested to see how that's gonna continue to play
(15:34):
out as like a potential second scalation. I was gonna
say second country, but maybe third, fourth, eighth country that's
gonna get targeted in this next.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
I mean escalation in terms of adding names to the
hit list. Right.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, there's a great book. I can't remember if I
have it here with me, but there's a great book
A few years ago called Where to Invade Next? That
was originally marketed as satire, but it was pulling directly
from the non fictional stuff. And this is an old book,
this is pre the fall of Goadafi. And if you'll
look through that wish list, you'll see all of the
(16:11):
things that regularly get mentioned when we're talking about this milieu.
And I love the point about the numbers and national
identity of the victims and Crocus changing right. At first
it was just forty people security detail, then it was
twenty four Cuban soldiers, then it was thirty two Cuban soldiers.
Then whoop. Some of them were civilians. One might have
(16:33):
been a doctor who is just on call. This is
this is something that look, I know, we're we're running
over time here. This is something that we must explore
in an episode. We'll get to the blow by blow
of the tankers. We've got a I think we pointed
out some of the issues with the oil investment narrative.
(16:54):
We teased Greenland and we hope, oh my god, guys,
I hope it's just a tease. I hope nothing happens,
because that leads to the dissolution of NATO. Shout out
Alexander Duban.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Yep, that's right. Well this new Monroe doctrine.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Stephen Miller on Jake Tappert, I think it was where
he's just really going big in terms of the scope
of this talking about our hemisphere.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, oh right, we're.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Going to operate as a superpower, that's and exert control
of our hemisphere. These are in our backyard quote unquote.
And it was always the position of this administration that
Greenland was needed for strategic defense.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Dude. It goes back to the south trying to see
stuff that we've been talking about for years. It's these
superpowers doing that exact thing.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Foundations of geopolitics yep. Ivalized Europe, isolate the US, give
it some toys to play with, right, expand over the
Soviet States, and then quota. I don't agree with this,
but the way they say it is quote unquote give
Asia to China and then have Russia and China negotiate
(18:09):
the African continent in the future. We also have to
add just because someone is doing evil stuff does not
mean they're stupid. There are plenty of evil intelligent people,
and there are pretty there are pretty strong indicators regarding
(18:29):
climate change that argue Greenland, once the glaciers are further eroded,
is a catbird seat for the North Atlantic. There's just
no way around it. However, how I know, we got
to cut through napbreak. However, it's important to note that
the United States already has the right to plant military
(18:50):
installations on Greenland. It's a fight to quote unquote get
stuff you already. It's it's just bizarre to me, just.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Like all the oil in South America stuff we already have.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yes, Yeah, because the US and Canada are big with
the oil. I sound to Larry David, they big with
the oil. But what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's the It's gonna get weirder and weirder, you guys.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
No way.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
But we were joking about how back on December nineteenth,
we recorded an episode that is I think coming out
to day January seventh. As we're recording, and we were
joking on that episode about the invasion of Venezuela and
we're like, well, just wait for it, like it's coming.
They're about to do it the way they're the way
they're talking, and it'll be about oil.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
You guys.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
I know, we got to break last thing, though, Is
it completely cynical to think that there's some uh timing
related stuff in terms of covering up or distracting from
the epsteins.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
It is not h Yeah, and thank you know, that's
one of the points when to get to before we
wrap it. It is not u cynical or is it
reductive to think that that's very much a big part.
I would also add in terms of timing a midterm
election coming up, it's a great time to start a
war if you have a lot of domestic descent, which the.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
United States race, right, That's that would be the prevailing
notion is that if we're in the thick of this
big conflict, it would be really not in our best
interest to have a sea change now right.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Well, there are a few more points that we'll get
to in a future episode. We hope that we've given
a quick overview of some stuff we're going to dive
into in depth in the future. Drilled down to Matt's
earlier joke. For now, we're going to pause for a
word from our sponsors, and what say we come back
with something completely different.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
That sounds great, And we're.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Back with something completely different, completely unrelated and hopefully a
little bit of a palate cleanser, because we're talking about
two food three food stories. Actually in my segment today,
first and foremost is really important. We got to get
this out of the way, y'all. Speaking of where's the beef?
As mentioned in the last segment, this one's more where's
(21:16):
the pork. A lawsuit is asserting that a Chicago based
McDonald's is practicing deceptive advertising on the grounds that the
McRib has no rib.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I saw that in Daily Zeitgeist too. Man, they got
heated up about it.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
It's heated class action lawsuit alleges the McDonald's McRib Sandwiches
contains no actual rib meat, despite its name and patty
shape resembling ribs. Guys, can we just first and foremost
say chicken nuggets that's not chicken doesn't come out shaped
like that a McRib is. This is a similar thing.
It's a fun shape made from molded meats. You know,
(21:55):
I don't think anyone is operating under the presumption that
this is a rib.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Well, there's like somebody, but I can already see the
amazing hopefully deep South or weirdly Chicago defender that lawyer
going y'all to if it pull indeed a rib, it
was simply be called the real I advanced to you.
Mac reel isn't a different thing. It is mock sherib.
(22:24):
It is a mock rib.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
They should call it the mock rib, which is it
would be funny to say, guys. Remember the the kerfuffle
surrounding boneless wings. Yes, that was a similar issue. It
was about advertising. It was about the wording of the
name of the product. Right, boneless implied that there once
was a bone in this thing that has been removed.
(22:46):
But actually boneless ribs are much more like the aforementioned
chicken nuggets. In this case, the lawsuit is claiming that
the McRib is marketed deceptively because it contains low quality
ground pork rather than the rib meat, which would be
considered a more premium cut.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, it's just shave shaped impressed right into a rebisque form. Uh.
This is this is interesting because as as we all
know as longtime listeners, as you folks know as well. Uh,
the McRib was previously subject to another wonderful little conspiracy.
That conspiracy be that it was only available once global
(23:27):
pork prices dipped below a certain threshold, and when they
rose again, that's when the mic rib went out of season, which.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
We did debunk or has been. It is, and it's
very similar to the story we're going to talk about
just a second. The pizza index. The idea of of
something like that, a food related thing being a predictor
of other things. Right, So, the notion that it is
made of ground pork of lower quality cuts does imply
(23:54):
that it could contain like what would be collectively referred
to as awful, right, like the gutties, the hearts, you know,
the tripe, scalded stomach. McDonald's claims this is not the case,
and in fact, it contains the McRib contains one hundred
percent seasoned, boneless pork with no use of pork Hart's
(24:15):
tripe or scalded stomach. That's a new one on me,
scalded stomach, y'alli.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
So, yeah, the fast food chain is claiming that they
use mainly pork shoulder, but they don't get into the
bits and pieces that also might be included.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, well, gosh, guys, can we not trust fast food places? Oh?
Speaker 4 (24:41):
One hundred percent? Speaking of fast food, I don't know
if y'all had school lunches that contained something that always
was collectively referred to as riblets, which were little pressed
patties kind of like chicken nuggets, was supposedly made of
rib me and they also had those fake grill marks
on them, or those fake in dentations where the rib
(25:01):
you know, would go, I guess, did you guys have riblets?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I do seem to recall that, but it didn't make
enough of a mark for me to have a Eureka
moment there.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Okay, well there you go. I think I'm just saying,
like school lunches are serving these two no ones suing them.
I think it's a bit of a spurious argument. And
the last thing on this one, the proposed class action lawsuit,
which again is being brought in a Chicago states that
by including the word rib in the name of the sandwich,
McDonald's knowingly markets the sandwich in a way that deceives
(25:33):
reasonable consumers who reasonably but mistakenly believe that a product
named the McRib will include at least some meaningful quantity
of actual pork rib meat, and to which McDonald's pushes
back and saying that they include only the finest cuts
of rib meat. Pork shoulder, pork shoulder, thank you? Which
isn't rib?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Is it? No?
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Pork shoulder, ain't rib?
Speaker 3 (25:56):
No different part of the beast.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
But I don't remember back the boneless wing thing that
didn't go the way that the people proposing the lawsuit
wanted it to either. I think it was overruled that
this is not a reasonable expectation.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
That was in Ohio, and I believe was Ohio, and
the judge said, well it's not. Yeah, the judge didn't
let a fly in court. And this might be a say,
a similar thing. But the good news about this is
that if it's a class action and you can prove
your order to make rib through some window of time,
(26:31):
that you can get on that after the lawyer's fees,
regardless of what the settlement is, you might get a
check for something north of three dollars but less than
ten tions bias a.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
D didn't be ca yeah, where you could play at
least one game game.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
I don't know what.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I'm speaking just on this kind of naming. Is your
product name gonna fly? And is this some trademark gonna
do what it says it does on the tin? Did
you guys see the whole thing about the Robotaxi slash
cyber cab debacle that Tesla's dealing with right now.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
They've been dealing with so many it's hard to keep track.
What's the what's the latest?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Okay, well, there's two things. There's a rival company that
Tesla is dealing with right now that's UH is an
unexpected company. We might have to look that up just
to talk about it completely. That's a that's one thing
where they are going in and basically taking ip from
underneath Tesla because Tesla has been really slow at putting
(27:40):
in like a trademark request. And then this other issue
with Robotaxi that there was a judge basically saying you
can't call your robot taxi program robo taxi. That's like
calling a car a car. You can't trademark that. You
have to come up with some other name. So cyber
Cab was the name that they want to use. But
(28:01):
there's this other company that I can't remember that's going
in and usurping their I p.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Oh wow, because they're not being UH because UH, legislation
always lags behind technological innovation. I love this, okay, so
let's do it live let's see Tesla's cybercab competitor. Uh,
cybercab versus waybo is one of the first things that
pops up, is.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
It Unibev that's coming up, which is weird, Like what
they it's they have they have they're just patent trolling
their patent or trademark trolling. In this case, they are
totally legal.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, yes, it's this thing Tesla Kila that was gonna
be a Tesla Uh, a Tesla tequila, I guess, or
something that Unibev was really upset about because I guess
they already had a product or something that was kind
of like that. Yeah, so basically there, so there's being petty.
They're just ground beefing over it.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh my god. You can also you can also make
some serious uh profit when you do that stuff correctly.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Sell it back.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
It's like like web It's exactly. Yeah. So this is uh,
this is an exciting thing. I was I was on
the road for some stuff this morning, and I was
surprised by how many Tesla's I saw, Like the old
car stuff thing makes me think it's crazy how quickly
Tesla got adopted by the at least the American populace
(29:28):
in urban environments, and I think part of that is
because of the larger than life sort of iconic status
of Alon Musk, whether you love them or hate them,
and the fact that purchasing to Tesla became in some
ways a political statement. So this is actually this legal kerfuffle.
(29:48):
I know, we got to get back to Pentagon and pizza,
but this legal kerfuffle is a net good for Tesla
right now.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
And if you want to check out some ridiculous episodes,
we did a series on copyright and trademarks that you
can intellectual property, intellectual property, dig a little deeper into
that stuff. But apparently I'm trolling, scrolling rather through a
Reddit thread, and they make some really good points. The
trademark squat is what they're referring to. This ass will
get overturned in court because Tesla can easily show usage
(30:21):
before registration and will likely win this in court with
very little effort, which seems to ring true to.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Me, and win some headlines everybody involved, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
In which in this case, unlike the usual headlines Tesla's making,
this is when we're Tesla's kind of being bullied instead
of being the bully. So it's kind of a good
pr look in a way.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Maybe we all hate bullies, you know what I mean.
I hope people hate bullies. This is I want to
get back to the food stuff though we set up
because this not our old show about eating stacks, but
this idea that we discussed in previous episodes or in
our previous Weekly Strange News segment, the concept that if
(31:05):
you are clever enough, you can slightly predict US military
and state level action by seeing how much pizza people
order in a very specific part of the United States.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And we talked about that not long ago, and I
don't remember exactly what it was, connected to what event,
but they're at it again, you know, crack Internet. You know,
users are tracking spikes and activity at nearby pizza restaurants
in Washington, d C. And using them much like the
waffle House index, predicting bad weather informal indicators of late
(31:43):
night work taking place at the US defense buildings there.
So as the United States took you know, action there
in Venezuela with a large scale military strike in Caracas,
a pizza outlet near the Pentagon saw some of those
very spikes, surges and orders on Saturday, January the third
(32:08):
guys remind me when we talked about this, like there
is some truth to this, but it's also a little anecdotal. Yeah,
Greek food right now, It's.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
It's true in that if you are looking for a
pattern with pizza ordering and US action, then you can
easily find what appears to be a pattern, but one okay,
not to get old conspiratorial, but to definitely get conspiratorial.
One of the interesting things about this is if you've
been to DC, you know that they're the DC area,
(32:43):
you know that there are tons of places that will
give you a bunch of food. They can't wait to
do catering. That's great for a restaurant. But then also,
and I know a lot of us listening have in
fact been to the Pentagon. The Pentagon has tons of
food available, one of the world's largest office buildings. They
have literal mountains of food. Man our favorite subway closed, yes,
(33:07):
but there's still like you are at an embarrassment of
riches for ordering food. So then the question becomes, if
we know that the public can see this, anybody on
the wide world of the Internet, then why would we
continue having that security vulnerability? If vulnerability it is, I mean,
(33:28):
how much of it is calculated propaganda?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
I remember asking the same question last time, But how
are people tracking this? They're just looking at like you know,
those Google results of like busy times, or like real
time analysis of like foot traffic at particular types of eateries,
or because I mean, it's not exactly public information, like
you know, the order is coming in to in real time,
in real time, right, yeah?
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, you can also call some of the pizza places.
One of the most famous ones. I'm trying to remember
the name of it. I think it's something, Oh god,
what is it?
Speaker 4 (34:04):
The big win question for this round of discussion is
Pizzato Pizza.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
That's the one. That's what I'm thinking about. Yeah, Because
you know Stone's throw from the Pentagon right right, and
you'll see you'll see the claims like the I think
the orders just a day ago. So we're recorded on
the seventh, So on the sixth they jumped and fifty percent.
But then the percentage gets tricky because we have to
(34:31):
ask the baseline, how often is our people in the
Pentagon ordering pizza from this place on a normal day.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
It's a good question, and again, can you can you
answer that for me, though, Man, Now, how are they
gauging these spikes the average internet saluth?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Right, Yeah, So the what of the ways that I
heard and I haven't participated in aggregating this data. One
of the ways that I've heard is literally calling the
place or maybe having an inside man relationship where somebody
you know, uh, what's what's the name of that place again,
No Pizzato Pizza, Okay, So mister Pizzato calls up and
(35:07):
says he there's a lot of pepperoni, and I think
you know where it's going. And then what you know,
he's like their deep throat in Watergate or something. Oh,
we can't say pizza gate. They ruined it.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
I really ruined it, Geez Louis Okay. So that's a
very analog way, one that dates back, I think to
even the earliest versions of this theory the the Cold War,
when I believe Soviet intelligence services would monitor movements of
pizza delivery drivers in Washington as a way of seeing
how on the ball US might be.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
And then Matt, get out of my head. There's a
website that you that you've boasted in the chat that
is actually it's a lot of fun do you want
to tell us about that one?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Sure, it's p I z z I N T dot
W A T c h so pasant dot watch.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
And it's a real time aggregator of this type of
data based on a number of factors. I imagine.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, it's very fun. Wait, hold on, what is happening here?
There's also a gay bar report on another tab.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Oh, that goes back to you know, Gavin Newsome made
a recent joke about that. That goes back to the
the idea of tracing actions by certain members of the
political class by attending what are called gay bars or
grinder usage.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Grinder usage, And that's the whole thing, is this notion
that like a lot of these grinder usage spikes around
right leaning events because there's a lot of closeted, you know,
behavior in that set.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
It's a weird allegedly allegedly, guys, Papa John's right now
is at a three spike. That's what it says.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
From what what is one?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
I don't know, much busier than usual because it'd be like.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Okay, all the late nights they would after it just
like this, there's going to be a lot of pizza
being or you know, after a strike like this. So
at a certain point it doesn't. It's no longer a predictor.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Well, it's also so here's the thing. I keep going
back to this idea, Jens, the idea that the so
called pizza meter, which you're fans of and I follow
quite closely. The idea is that it lacks real scientific foundation.
It is still reading a little bit of tea leaves
or basil leaves, since that's what you would put on
(37:29):
a pizza. But it's fun to think about. I have
not I was digging into some of this. I have
not heard anybody on the inside, you know what I
mean by the inside. I haven't heard anybody on the
inside say, yes, we love the Pizza Index. It's one
(37:49):
hundred percent correct. I have heard people say, we're aware
that members of the public believe there is a connection. Careful, careful, califrol.
Is it a boneless wing or is it a boneless wing?
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Maybe it's just a boneless wing of the mind.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
A rose is a rose, is a ruse.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
I just want to cap this off because this kind
of triggered another related story in my head. Did you
guys see the story about the individual that made a
whole lot of money betting on Maduro's capture Polymarket poly
Market implying some inside information, and then the concept of
(38:31):
I believe, you know, some of Trump's sons sitting on
the board of these kind of betting markets, and the
notion that there's going to be leaked information that could
lead to this kind of stuff, especially when you're allowing
betting on literally any type of world event. I did
just see an update saying gambling platform Polymarket not paying
(38:53):
bets on us invasion of Venezuela. Gamblers who placed wagers
totally ten point five million angered after the capture Nicholas
Maduro deemed not to qualify. So I'm wondering if that's
a response to this criticism.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
It is it is because they Polymarket came forward in
the immediate reporting as a response and they said, hey,
we have a policy on our website that says no
insider trading. They said, yeah, but how would somebody know?
Was this a lucky guess? It's not like it's not
(39:27):
like guessing on a Rolet wheel or something where you
have a fine number of factors and the money wasn't
even if it was a lot for the average person,
like north of four hundred thousand something USD But that's
not oil executive money, right. If you're running insert oil
company here, you're not really sweating your career over less
(39:48):
than half a million dollars. But maybe I don't know.
I'm spinning out on that one, Noel, and I appreciate
you bringing it up. My thinking is that, yeah, Polymarket
is trying to preserve their future longevity, so they also
don't want to have to pay the money. Is a
great way to not have to pay the money.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
So there are two competing narratives here, or two different
flavors of bet. I do believe that the story that
initially made headlines about this one Polymarket user making thirty
two grand betting on the ousting of Venezuelan leader Nicholas
Maduro before the end of the month, and there being
(40:31):
a lot of speculation that there was insider information that
led to that the idea that Polymarket won't pay these
bets on US invasion of Venezuela, I believe is different.
They came out saying that US military operations intended to
establish control are what would win these bets. President Trump's
(40:56):
statement that they will run Venezuela while referencing on talks
with the Venezuelan government does not alone qualify the snatch
and extract mission to capture Maduro was an invasion. So
with that, let's move on from food related conspiracies for
the time being and take a quick break care worthrom
O sponsor, and then come back with the last segment
of today's Strange News episode.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
And we've returned, guys, we are gonna jump back quickly
to Venezuela just to talk about a little more shipping stuff,
because there is a saga of the high Seas that
it appears to be concluding today on Wednesday, January seventh,
as we record this, it has been ongoing for a while.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
To the piracy bit you reference, maybe, yes.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Well, yes, it's Shadow Fleet piracy stuff and also you
know US military and UK military intervention. So we're gonna
start with some writing that the Guardian put out this
morning on January seventh. Yeah, here's the title, Russia reportedly
sends submarine to escort Shadow Fleet tanker being pursued by US.
(42:06):
Interestingly enough, the report that this report is referencing comes
directly from the Wall Street Journal. They're the ones who
started talking about this submarine. But as we're going to
find in a moment. The submarine isn't the biggest part
of this story. But let's just keep in this one
for a moment, because this is what we're reading, right
If you're reading the news as it's happening on Wednesday,
(42:30):
January seventh, it says Russia's dispatched naval assets to a
score a shadow fleet oil tanker being pursued by the
US across the Atlantic. The ship, formerly known as the
Bela one, has spent more than two weeks attempting to
evade a US blockade of US sanctions hit oil tankers
operating near Venezuela. The ship was once known it changed
(42:52):
its name at one point to the Marinera. When its
crew was dealing with some stuff, they were they were
going to be boarded by a US ship. They somehow
evaded that boarding. They painted a huge Russian flag on
the whole of the ship. It was added to an
official Russian registry so it would not be boarded. It's
(43:14):
no longer yes, it's no longer a shadow fleet vessel.
Now it's an official Russian vessel. So you can't do
anything to this vessel under you know, the weird wonky
rules of the high seas.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
The Coastguards run it up, and the captain gets on
the horn and has a weird relationship conversation with Russia, like,
come on, guys, what are we.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
Yeah, dude, it's frenemies.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
It's this weird thing with the ship that appears to
have been on its way to Venezuela to pick up
some oil for Russia. Again, like that appears to be
what was happening. It started in Iran, it did this
whole weird trip around. No, it went to Iceland for
a minute, yes, or it was headed towards Iceland, I guess.
(43:56):
And then more stuff happened this morning.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yes, more stuff happened this morning. We've got some We've
got some live updates. I would recommend a great a
great source for this. Not for everybody, but if you
should sip the social meds, check out OSNT defender over
on x dot com formerly Twitter. There. They're at least
(44:22):
I think they're part of where Wall Street Journal may
get some sourcing. But they were some of the first
folks we saw who reported that US Special Forces, along
with the Coast Guard did successfully board the quote Russian
flagged Iranian linked oil tanker MARINERA in the North Atlantic,
(44:43):
and if you look at the map, it's not getting
it's not getting pot or boarded anywhere close to the
United States, nor particularly close to Iran, nor particularly that
close to Russia.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
No, it's very strange, and even in the reporting they're
having to call it Bela I slash Marinera, yes, and
it gets so confusing just trying to figure out what
the hell happened and is this the actual tanker that
we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
That's part of the art. Yeah, And we look at
this and we see that if we look at some
of the larger context here, we know that the US
has seized at least four as of this morning, at
least four different oil tankers linked to Venezuela. Two tankers
seized January seventh, and two others previously. It's it's a
(45:36):
heck of a time to be at the wheel of
a shadow fleet vessel, oh man, or the even shadow
fleet vessels. Sorry, that's the thing, because now you can
just throw that name on something and say that's why
we got them.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, oh, we had to pick them up. They were
shadow fleet. Are you sure, guys that it seemed like
a pretty small fishing vessel. No shadow Fleet.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
It's like earlier. Also, the rules of maritime engagement are
again so murky and so purposely riddled with loopholes. I
keep remembering in our shadow Fleet episode we talked about
how cool it would be to just switch your passport
if you got in trouble abroad. I just say, oh,
(46:19):
this is not my oh gosh, my Giata passport. Hey guy, guys,
let me get the other one. All right, here's the
Russia win. Are we tight? Okay?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Oh? Man? Wait was that an actual passport? What was that?
That looked awesome? The small pamphlet of some that was cool?
Thanks man, Well, guys, oil tankers aside, we're gonna talk
about something that happened on US soil, something that is.
It gets wrapped up in politics, but ultimately, as we're
going to talk about here in a moment, it goes
(46:49):
back to childhoods for me at least. On Monday, January fifth,
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting officially voted to dissolve it.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yikes, I'm doing hunger games, you.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Know, right there with you? What was that thing? Ravens?
Speaker 4 (47:08):
No?
Speaker 2 (47:09):
What were they? Hawk's No? Mockingbirds, mocking birds mocking Jay's boom.
There we go. We got it.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
I shout out to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We've
talked on this show way back in the day about
official national programming for any country and how it can
get a little wonky at times, it can get a
little propagandistic at all times. It can. But I don't
(47:39):
know how much my vision is clouded when it comes
to things like NPR and PBS because of my childhood.
And I wonder if maybe I and a lot of
other people who grew up in the United States have
that same feeling because I think about specifically PBS kids programming. Sure,
especially now as a father who's you know, raised a
(48:00):
kid who's ten years old and spent I don't even
know how many hours sitting in front of a TV
or a screen of some sort with my son watching
Sesame Street or Daniel Tiger or Wildcrats or super Wires.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Or you know, awesome approachable science shows.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
My god, Nature Cat. Somebody somewhere at the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting greenlit this show called Nature Cat that had
Tarren Killham, Kate McKinnon, Bobby moynihan, Kate mccoochie, Chris Parnell,
Keenan Thompson, and Fred Armisen who and they knew all
of those voices would specifically hit home to a parent
because they watched SNL, you know, in in the two
(48:42):
thousands and then But then it's also great programming about
science and nature. I don't know, am I being tricked
somehow or is it just good kid programming?
Speaker 3 (48:54):
You're not being tricked, And this is a universal experience,
I would say for a lot of people growing up
in the United States in particular, Nostalgia is a hell
of a drug for sure, but also due to the
strictures on content, let's put it that way, placed on
public media resources, there are requirements to aspire toward honesty
(49:21):
in reporting, so to aspire away from propaganda. But again,
on the other side, I think this is part of
the question you're asking that there is an issue of
what is considered truth in one place versus what is
considered truth in another place. Most of the time this
is just stuff like look how amazing the snow leopard is,
(49:41):
or let's learn to count to twenty with a vampire.
And I love all of those, you.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Know, well, I think at the heart of it there.
It feels like there is a noble cause for creating
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting back in nineteen sixty seven
with the Public Broadcasting Act of nineteen sixty seven. If
you go to USA Today talking about it today on
January seventh, they discuss how, quote the purpose of the
(50:11):
Corporation for Public Broadcasting was to provide funding and support
for public media across the United States to a quote,
enable greater and equitable access to information and education, which
again feels like a crazy noble thing to me. Let
everybody have the best information out there, and don't relegate
(50:31):
that to people who can afford to have a cable
box in their house or a television in their house,
or you know, or perhaps you would need a television
of some sort to get PBS, but you at the
time at least you just need an antenna.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yeah. The idea being that in a purported meritocracy like
the United States, access an opportunity for education should not
be socioeconomically restricted.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Right, agreed, feels like a good thing. You also got
that with radio, right, All you had to do was
turn your radio to a certain dial and you would
get the news that was theoretically impartial.
Speaker 4 (51:07):
Theoretically well, you know what, I was just theoretical the
impartiality and independence of the FCC. Hey, there you go,
and has been really called into question. I'm not mistaken.
In a hearing with the FCC chairman, he was sort
of cornered into admitting that the FCC was no longer
(51:27):
considered an independent organization, and they actually removed that language
from their official website. And if I'm not mistaken, the
FCC is in the process of doing investigation into PBS
for biased coverage, whatever it might be. There's a grid,
there's a public interest doctrine of some sort involved in
(51:48):
holding a license from the FCC, and it does seem
that specifically around the president's language targeting people that maybe
are against him or oppose him in their coverage, that
that qualifies as not in the public interests. And there
are some pretty serious investigations going into just about every
(52:09):
network except for Fox News and.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Uh oh is it o an No, that's a different one.
Speaker 4 (52:16):
Well NEWSMAXIM and I don't know. Fox News is the
only terrest for the broadcasting right, so I believe that
is of the big ones, that's the one that's not
on the list.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
We're we're referring to, specifically, folks, something called Executive Order
fourteen to ninety, which is an older thing from last year,
but the full title of it. Speaking to Nole's point,
there is ending taxpayer subsidization of biased media. You know
what I mean, Who's going to teach my kids to
(52:46):
count to twenty? It's not going to be this liberal
cartoon vampire.
Speaker 4 (52:50):
Not these communist puppets.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
Right, how dare you have these mister Rogers reruns about
the importance of sharing.
Speaker 4 (52:58):
Yeah, and being kind and empathy.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Well, there is some good news if you are a
big fan of let's say, Sesame Street, as I and
my son currently certainly were. Sesame Street appears to have
gotten some kind of deal with Netflix to continue producing episodes,
so it will move somewhere else, and several other shows
will probably do the same thing. There's still questions up
(53:20):
in the air if whether or not Frontline will continue,
one of the last bastions of investigative journalism will.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
GBS isn't completely toast, right.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, BBS and NPR are not fully shutting down, but
it is kind of one of those things that if
they're not getting most of their funding the way they
used to. They're gonna have to switch gears. So something
is going to have to change, right.
Speaker 3 (53:44):
State level funding is not gonna float these boats.
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Pledgere just subsidies at best, you know, yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Let's everybody feel bad, by the way about switching the
channel during those pledge drives.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
I feel bad.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
I feel so bad. Got again again.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
To dous.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
That's right, that's right. Let's go out to the USA today
really quickly, and we'll just read a quote from here.
NPR and PBS as a whole will not quote shut
down at least for now, but many associated properties, especially
those in more rural or lower income areas, may suffer.
CPP the Center for Public Broadcasting was a significant portion
of NPR and and pbs is funding, but not all
(54:27):
of it, meaning the organizations will have to find another
means of filling in the multimillion dollar gaps. That's that's
the whole thing. We're going to continue to talk about that,
as you know, if anything changes. Hopefully something changes and
a lot of these programs go elsewhere. So the last
thing we're going to talk about today freemasons. We haven't
talked about them in a while. Guys. Uh, there's a
(54:50):
whole thing going on with U with the UK. Britain's
the Metropolitan Police, so we'll call them and this push
to make all of the Office of the Metropolitan Police
declare whether or not they are members of some freemason sect, right,
So like, are you a freemason or are you not?
And if you are, you must declare. So what do
(55:12):
we think about that?
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Absolutely? Do it?
Speaker 2 (55:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yes, And I'm only saying that because not not being
a barrister nor a solicitor. I'm saying that because these
folks are. I was thinking about this too, Matt. These
folks are similar to members of the military. By the
nature of your role in society, you are sacrificing some
(55:37):
personal freedoms and one of those, arguably could be the
ordinary civilian right to privacy. You know, like let's say
you're you're hiring and this is unpopular across the board.
I get it. And part of why it's unpopular is
because it feels like the right thing to do. If
you say, for instance, if all things are equal, and
(55:58):
if the met is really just enforcing the laws of
the UK, enforcing the laws of the Kingdom, and being
as fair as possible to all civilians, all residents of
the UK. Then you need to know if someone is
into some conspiratorial stuff. We're friends with Masons. They're not
bad people. But if you apply a law, you have
to apply a law. So what if somebody is in
(56:21):
the met and they've got a good career, but you
find out that they're secretly, secretly a big puba in
some organization called like destroy the UK and down with
the Mets, Right, so you have to I think I
would argue, and I think a lot of us will
agree with me. I would argue that this isn't uncool
(56:44):
but necessary evil.
Speaker 2 (56:46):
Well, it's about allegiances and oaths, right, right, Just so,
when you become a member of the Metropolitan Police, you
take certain oaths to uphold certain things. And again that
is about a similar to hearing the United States with
police officers. Depending on which group you sign up with,
you are taking a pretty serious oath to protect people
(57:07):
and the public. And depending on where that public is
and who that public.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
Is, when do you joined whatever.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
Yeah, when you join the Freemasons, you are also taking
a similar oath. But in this case you were talking
about protecting and supporting other members of the Freemaker brotherhood.
So what if there is a conflict of interest between
protecting members of you know, some constituency or the public
versus protecting your fellow officer who was also a freemason.
(57:36):
And you know, how deep could that corruption go? And
currently there are allegations that there is corruption at low
and high levels because of because of the connections between
officers and their freemason bruthers.
Speaker 4 (57:50):
Can you imagine if we had this level of transparency
in the US government with elected officials.
Speaker 3 (57:54):
You're pulled over and you ask, is there no help
for the widow's son?
Speaker 2 (57:58):
We know we all know what to do, right, We
talked about that before. We all know we walked Keith.
There are key we do. There are keywords and key
phrases and things you can do with your arms and
hands out in public that can send signals that don't
do it unless you know what you're doing and you
have the right affiliation it.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
Don't don't try to do stolen valor it will not
go well in a the stic milieu.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yes, but hey, you can look all that stuff up
now now that there are books like Freemasons for Dummies
that we've read. There's all kinds of fun stuff out
there anyway. That's all I've got, Guys.
Speaker 4 (58:36):
Are you're bearing the lead on MAT? The organization in
charge of Freemasonry in England has the best acronym of
any organization. It's oogle ooh. What is the United Grand
Lodge of England, the governing body of the Freemasons in England,
And they're the ones who issued this complaint or threat
of lawsuit against the MET.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
And I think the most important thing here is something
that you you hit on just a few minutes to
go MAT, which is if you have, if it is
your vocation and your job right to enforce the law,
and you are a member of any other group, clique,
institution that may at times require you to violate enforcement
(59:16):
of the law, then are you qualified for the job.
That's the bagger, that's the bagger vants. That's the bag
of badgers, I should say, and.
Speaker 4 (59:26):
The bag of vants and the bagger badgers.
Speaker 3 (59:29):
What's coming up? God, Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 4 (59:32):
It's definitely Will Smith all the way down. It's definitely
a pickle.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
I believe.
Speaker 4 (59:38):
They're saying that this kind of scrutiny would undermine the
public credibility of Freemasons, almost couching them as some sort
of terrorist organization or like on some sort of watch list,
not to be trusted. The term aura of mistrust is
being thrown around and this idea of competing oathes.
Speaker 2 (59:55):
But is that because we have a mistrust of Freemasonry
in general because of the way we grew up thinking
about these things, Like I'm saying personal the.
Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Way from the United States was founded, I said it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Yeah, or the French Revolution, well, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
We also again are huge fans of Masonry. We have
a lot of friends and family who are members of
this or affiliated organizations, and we would love to hear
from you, folks, especially if you are if you are
acquainted with the Masonic organization, what do you think about
the philosophical quandary here? And if you chose a side,
(01:00:33):
what side would you choose? Or do you like us
see all facets of this and also don't forget to
write to us about Venezuela. Thank you so much for
tuning in. That's our show for today. We cannot wait
to hear from you. As we hurtle through the early
days of twenty twenty six, some of us will be
(01:00:53):
on the road, some of us will be in the office.
We're gonna have all kinds of adventures and we're grateful
that you're along with us for the ride. So find us.
You can call us on a phone. You can always
send us an email, and should thou sip the social meds,
you can find us on the lines.
Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
Sip away at the handle conspiracy stuff where we exist
on Facebook with our Facebook group, Here's where It's crazy,
on xfka, Twitter, and on YouTube, or we have video
content gloor for YouTube, cruse and enjoy on Instagram and
TikTok where conspiracy stuff show, and there's more.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three std WYTK. Turn those letters into numbers and then
give us a call. It's a voicemail system. You've got
three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
the air. If you'd like to send us an email,
you can do that too.
Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
We are the entities.
Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
Read each piece of correspondence we received. Be well aware,
yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back, if we cannot
wait to hang with you out here in the dark.
Please remember anything that shows up on our weekly strange
news or listener mail segment can become one of our
favorite episodes in the future. So play a game with us.
We'll talk soon. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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