May 9, 2022 • 54 mins
Across the country, a series of bizarre disasters -- from fires to outright plane crashes -- prompts public speculation that someone, somewhere, may be conspiring to destroy the US food supply. A woman is found dead after a run-in with a cop accused of corruption. A megadrought in the western US forces communities to consider some extreme decisions: water, or electricity? All this and more in this week's Strange News.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart greeting, Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
me Bett, and we're joined as always with our super
producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
of the week two. Welcome back and good luck to
(00:46):
us all. I feel like it's the greeting we should
start saying more often here. Uh. We had a tough time,
I think over the past week finding the stories we
really wanted to stick with. Just for recaps, Japanese construction
companies are building mix. That's true. There are doubts about
whether or not Musk will actually buy Twitter. We've upped
(01:08):
our our meme game on social media, so thanks to
all our fellow conspiracy realist participating in that. Today we're
going to talk about a strange case with baptism and death.
We're going to talk about the real life example happening
now of the dangers we warned about for years with
(01:30):
water shortages that will be coming to affect a municipality
near you. And then we're also going to talk about
one of the newest conspiracy theories, one that you may
have heard about just in the past week or so,
concerning food supplies. Have you, guys heard about all the
(01:50):
various like attacks and food processing disasters across the US today, Ben,
I've not heard of this at all. I noticed something
over the weekend about a recall of meat products, and
when you mentioned to us what you're covering today, I
thought that's what we're talking about. I thought that was
a story you were bringing up. Was this one case
(02:11):
of a meat processing plant that was like, yeah, maybe
there's some cool I let's shut the whole thing down.
But that is not at all what we're talking about here.
You're talking about a tax on like food supply chain, right, Well,
that's that's the idea. Yeah, So we know that there
have been a number of disasters and various food processing
(02:33):
facilities like cereal mills, uh salad packaging plant in California
that burned to the ground on April. It was a
major food processing facility at Taylor Farms. And then just
a few weeks before that in Maine, potato processing plant
was destroyed also by a fire. Here in stuff that
(02:57):
wants you to know is home state of Georgia. Lights planes,
actual airplanes were crashing into food processing areas. Has also
happened in Idaho. Animal feed mill burned down in Louisiana
and January, there's a food bank in Arizona that caught
(03:17):
a fire in March, and there are more and more
and more and this, yeah, this has led to the
birth of a new conspiracy theory, the just being that someone,
some entity, or some force is seeking to disrupt typical
food supply chains and then perhaps take advantage of that chaos.
(03:40):
In some cases, you'll hear speculation that there's a larger
company that is attempting to take this chaos and use
it as a way of consolidating their own control overmass agriculture.
If so, it's scary scary stuff, right, is there world
where this could be some weird niche version of eco
(04:04):
terrorism because of all of the uh, you know, additives
and things that are being put in food and g
and GMOs and all that. Some kind of version of
like disrupting that system, even if it's to the detriment
of you know, large group of people and possibly populations
that are um less wealthy and have to rely on
(04:25):
processed foods, maybe don't have the luxury of of buying
you know, organic. Yeah, it's I mean, it's the fear
is coming from a real place. And before we dive
in too much with this, we do have to say
the following things are demonstrably true. One, yes, food processing
plants have been burning down. Those facilities in many cases
(04:50):
have been rendered unusable as a result of these fires. Two,
we can say that anybody who lives in this country
and pays it punchin to their bank account knows that
the cost of average things are accelerating at a higher
than average pace. You know, everything from your local case
(05:11):
da stand to wherever you buy produce, wherever you buy gas, shoelaces,
gimlets for your shoes, whatever you name it. Uh, it's
more expensive in most cases than it was in the
years previous. So those fears are kind of commingling and
mixing and blending into this smoothie of conspiratorial thought. So
(05:35):
if we were to look at this critically as a
as a conspiracy theory. If we're to practice conspiracy realism,
then first we would need to find out who or
what would profit from the results of those disruptions, you know,
of those disasters. And in that case, usually what you're
(05:56):
going to hear in these theories is going to be
something like it's uh a big food brand or holding company,
right Like they'll say, oh, it's it's a Monsanto, or
it's young brands or something, and their basis for that
thought is that those are very very large entities. But
(06:16):
that's not enough, you know what I mean, that's not
enough to prove the case. And if you if you
think about it that way, let's just put that to
the side for a second and we say, okay, well,
what if in that case, what if there is um
how would they profit? Would they buy up this stuff
or would they be able to maybe swoop into the
(06:38):
market and sell like now they sell the cereal because
the other place got knocked out, or they sell the potatoes, right,
something like that. I have to tell you, this is
not My mind doesn't go to eco terrorism or or
that ben and my mind right now, I just want
to thinking about everything. It goes to warfare. When when
(06:59):
you're engaged, even in a proxy war, in full scale
war with another country or superpower, one of the main
targets are you know, supplies, specifically food supplies, and you know,
attempting to starve an enemy out. That's where my mind went, Uh,
I'm not thinking about the profits, but that that to me, Well,
(07:19):
you're saying is way more plausible to me than you know,
Russia or some other world power that you know has
ill intentions on us attacking our food chain in that way.
I just want to just a cursory google of my
initial gut theory, I guess the eco terrorism angled there there.
I haven't seen any examples of this popping up yet
in the States, but I did an article from a
(07:39):
website called Genetic Literacy Project Science not Ideology as their
tagline UM came up saying, age of eco terrorism. Why
are activists attacking the most productive part of our food
industry at modern agriculture? And this is happening in Brittany,
France where a grain train was sabotaged and destroyed very
recently March ninete in Brittany, France, and it was packed
(08:02):
with fifteen hundred tons of wheat UM that were intended
for chickens at a cooperative, so it doesn't seem like
it's out of the realm of possibility that could make
its way here and disrupt food chains that are seen
as being less than friendly to the environments, which these
massive prepackaged, you know, industrialized processing plants certainly could be
(08:26):
seen as. Yeah, there's an interesting distinction which didn't Uh.
I don't know. I don't know if we hit out
hard enough in the eco terrorism episode, but one of
the hallmarks of terrorists organizations were those who engage in
terroristic activities is that they want to be identified. They
want you to know who did it and why, right,
(08:49):
and in this in that case described yeah in France,
then that would make sense. There's probably a clear uh
indicator of who at least claimed responsibility. This is not
so uh the if there were some nefarious entity behind this,
it hasn't identified itself as of yet, and then we
also need to think about how complicated it would be
(09:12):
to pull off this stuff. We also need to think
about how strange it would be for any entity, even
powerful enough to perpetrate something like this, how weird it
would be for them to be so rude Goldberg esque
about it to make every attack a game of mouse
trap such that it looks like an accident. In every case,
it sounds more like a super villain. Ben some villain.
(09:36):
He's the food daddy. Yeah, there's a fantastic line in
this Daily Dot article about this conjuncture. Are like positing
with is it mere coincidence, just some bad things happening
at the same time, or is it a sinister plot
to starve the United States and call the herd of
useless eaters? I love useless eaters. That is solid writing. Yeah,
(10:00):
that's a shout out to Mike Roth's child, the author
of that. That's what I wanted to post on and
that that came in as we were recording today. So Mike,
thank you. You played a big part in today's show.
The The issue is that this, lest we all panic, right,
there are other much more real things to panic about. Um,
this is kind of easily disprove it first. Yes, the
(10:24):
food supply chain is going to be a problem. There
are allegations about Russia attacking Ukrainian uh grain stores now
grain storage sites, I should say, But the bigger picture,
whether you think that's propaganda or true, the bigger picture
is going to be what happens to African nations that
rely on Russia and Ukrainian agricultural supplies. The food supply
(10:48):
chain in the US and abroad is only going to
be increasingly disrupted as the amount of arable land continues
to erode. But in this case, we can say this
is kind of false. And to understand why it's false,
all you have to do is look back at other
stories of fires at food processing facilities. There kind of common,
(11:14):
they're not infrequent in and it goes on and there
hasn't really been year over year an uptake or an uptick,
I should say, in these incidents. This is something she
reported in Daily Dot. You can also, I want to
give a kudos to uh W C and C outside
(11:34):
of Charlotte, whose co authors had a little bit of
a deeper look into this based on tweets, because this
thing was blowing up on Twitter for a while. But
if you look at comments from people like Sarah Little,
the VP of Communications at North American Meat Institute, which
is a thing Nammy uh to Todd Super who is
(11:57):
running things over at the National Chicken Council, is their
senior VP of Communications or even the U s d
A Department of Agriculture. They've all responded that what we're
seeing here when you're looking at these posts on social
media that talk about this sort of stuff, what they're
doing is taking very real problems and real events and
(12:19):
they're kind of connect trying to connect them in often
tenuous ways that are disprovable. And again, if you're already
primed to believe this stuff, there's a big part of
your brain it's going to be kind of mad at
you for disproving what it already assumed. That's why it
can be tough. You can see lists that have um
(12:39):
that have something like twenty articles referencing similar events ostensibly
similar events, or eighteen or even sixteen, and when you
look at them presented that way, when they're curated that way,
it can look a lot like a trend. But the
issue is again that you can make a list like
(13:00):
this for many other years leading up to now, and
when you think about the numbers, the US has more
than Snopes pointed this out too, and I verified some
of their sources well. In twenty nineteen, the US have
more than thirty six thousand different processing outfits for food
and beverages. That means that if you look at the
(13:24):
twenty six news articles Snopes listed in there, you know,
here's twenty nineteen approach to this and that comparison, that's
less than one percent of those facilities. So this is
kind of like saying, there have been troubling reports of
car accidents in every state across the US over the
(13:44):
course of January two. Who's sabotaging all these cars? You
know what I mean? The answer is not some Bond
esque emperor of traffic lines. The answer instead is human
error and most of those cases, so we have to
be really careful with the way information is framed, the
(14:07):
way it ends up getting depicted. And the thing is,
I feel like these kind of stories are going to
continue regardless of analysis or the facts, simply because it
is such red meat, right for people who are already
trying to find a specific example of fears and trends.
(14:29):
With that being said, you know, consider our earlier Strange
News segment on that water processing hack over in Florida.
That was one time and people lost beat me here, Doc,
People lost the minds because it's scary. So if there
were purposeful attacks on food processing plants in a coordinated
(14:49):
way across the country. This would be much bigger news.
This would not just be a Twitter post. And you
don't even have to hack the water plants anymore, and
the water is just not going to be in there.
That's the set up. Yeah, that's something else we're gonna
see in the third act of this week's segment. For now,
I just wanted to put this on your radar. If
(15:13):
you want to have I find more information about this,
then I would recommend looking at some of those uh
articles I had just cited. Check out Snopes. They did
a great overview of this, but also check out the
real geopolitical concerns about coming food shortages due to the
war in Ukraine that is going to be hitting people
(15:34):
um harder. We should also do an episode about about
fake flation. It's a word I've made up for some
of this stuff because I was thinking, I think it
will work. I was thinking about, you know, how gas
prices will go up at these predictable demands, but then
also gas prices will go up and the the reason
you're given is that it's a insert administration here, or
(15:56):
that it's be global shortages. But then when those things
get x or changed or whatever. A new administration comes
in the whatever conflict that's been blamed for this is resolved.
How come those prices don't go down, never go back
down to where they were telling you fake plai. Anyway,
We're gonna pause for work from our sponsors, will return
(16:18):
with more strange news, and we're back. Uh. You know,
if the story I'm about to describe sounds like the
plot of a kind of B level, swampy backwoods like
(16:38):
stalker horror film, that's probably because it definitely has that
kind of potential. Um not to diminish the lives that
are being affective or that potentially were affected directly by
this story. But you can't, I can't ignore that aspect
of I'm just gonna read the headline that I found
from news nine ABC in Tennessee. Saadi Daisy, woman at
(17:02):
center of deputy baptism lawsuit, found dead in home Wednesday. Okay,
so this is essentially a follow up to another story
that I wish you would have caught earlier because it happened.
I think it was a couple of weeks ago that
this lawsuit, uh that was described in the headline was
given the go ahead to go forward. I just found
(17:23):
an article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press judge Okay's
lawsuit against ex Hamilton's county deputy for baptizing woman after
traffic stops. So what happened? What you're asking yourself? Um?
The name of the woman, uh was Shandel Marie Riley.
She was forty two years old. Back in twenty nineteen.
(17:43):
She was stopped for a traffic stop, um by a
deputy sheriff, Daniel Wilkie. He pulled her over outside just
outside of her ex mother in law's home. Um. It
wasn't clear exactly what the stop was forgine, it was
something relatively routine and she was so close to home.
Maybe he was following her for a little bit, if
(18:04):
she was speeding or ran stop sign or something simple
like that. That's really what it seems like. Uh, it's
usually I wouldn't imagine typically getting pulled over right outside
your final destination, but it certainly happens. Um, if it's
in like a residential area, maybe you made a boo
boo and you know, rolled through a stop stop sign
and then the cop follows you home. Um. It's a
(18:25):
little creepy in and of itself, but not completely unheard of.
But what is completely unheard of is that the deputy
you know, asked her probably a typical round of questions,
and she admitted, you just don't do this. People just
don't do it. It's just you don't have to do it.
Don't do it. She admitted that she had a marijuana
roach in her cigarette pack. Um, you just don't do that.
(18:48):
I'm sorry, not trying to shame the dead here, but
it's just they have no right to search you. Um,
And I guess that's probably cause they certainly can, e suppose.
But then if you're found to have had your right
so hilated, that can they can be upheld by a court.
But we are talking about pre rural part of the
South where sort of the network of good old boy
(19:08):
and stuff that extends all the way up to the
the court's unfortunately a lot of times, and if you
can sent to a search, probably cause goes out the window, exactly,
thank you. So you just say no, say no. If
they force it upon you, you at least have that
future protection if probable cause did not truly exist. It's
always easy for a cop to say they smell marijuana.
(19:29):
Didn't sound like that was the case. Though it sounded
like a lot of times they'll say, you know, do
you have any drugs in the car, or do you
have any weapons or whatever, and some people that maybe
don't know their rights well enough will get that stuff
over and it's just not doesn't It doesn't like absolve
you of of the consequence of having it. So um,
the sheriff deputy said, Okay, well, I'm gonna give you
(19:51):
an ultimatum, Gonna give you a choice here. I'll either
take you to jail or you can go into your
mother in law ex mother in law's house, get some towels,
and walk with me down to this lake here and
allow me to baptize you in the the water. I
mean the parade of red flags. It's I mean, first,
(20:13):
first of all, I just would can you imagine how
you would feel in that situation? I would, I mean,
especially if you're like vehemently anti religion or anti you know,
I would feel violated on so many levels. Like I
would say yes, but just because I don't believe it, honestly,
of course I would say yes. And who get I
(20:33):
don't believe in what it's what it's, what it stands for,
the meaning behind it but it's it's essentially the same
as as being asked to bend over and bark like
a dog, you know. I mean it's it's the same
as being it's it's a form of humiliation. I would argue,
it's it's incredibly illegal. So that happened. And when she
(20:54):
walked into the house, the mothers like, what are you doing?
And she goes, I guess I'm her quote from her
as I guess I'm fixing to get back tizt um.
And I had to say, there's an article about this
in religion News services. Well, it doesn't come right out
and say this guy sucks and did a thing that
makes the rest of us, you know, religious folks look bad.
(21:14):
It reported on it pretty even handedly and definitely was
not like he was out there doing God's work, because
that is not that is not what that is. That
is absolutely an active coercion um, and that is how
it is being tried um. So essentially, uh. The the
woman filed a lawsuit against against the deputy who and
(21:37):
his his buddy. By the way, he had his buddy
who was another deputy, come and join uh too. I
guess you gotta have like a I don't know an
assistant for a for a baptism. I didn't think he statement.
The statement that was given I think his name is
Jacob go Forth, deputy. The statement there was a lead
(22:00):
given hers in this article is that he filmed it.
He was there to film it. Well, he there had
to be a witness or for the baptism to be
I guess legitimate or something in the eyes of the
of Wilkie, the guy who did it. Okay, well that's
what he was there for. And he also apparently filmed
the whole thing on his cell phone camera. Um and
(22:21):
and also reportedly um in in the same Religion News
article that they describe it very matter of factly. Wilkie
stripped down to his underwear and T shirt and waded
into the water. Um. That's creepy in and of itself.
And Riley, fully clothed, followed. Wilkie baptized her by immersion,
as go Forth filmed the event from his cell phone. Uh.
(22:44):
Go Forth later said that he filmed the event to
protect all persons present and document the events. Okay, um,
let's see how it's protecting anybody. Um. In any case,
So there's a film, there's a film that this reminds
me of not mean to be extreme and making the domination,
you know, connections. But that's how it feels to me.
(23:05):
There's a movie called Coercion, Um I believe that's what
it's called. It's it basically is about a dude that,
like rob's a fast food restaurant and it holds a
young fast food employee, fast food you know, restaurant employee
hostage in the back of the restaurant just by like
making these escalating requests. Eventually it ends up in just
(23:29):
the most like degrading, humiliating circumstances you could possibly imagine.
But it's like a frog boiling in water. You but
you don't even know you're being abused until you think
back on it or you realize, oh, I'm tied to
a chair or whatever it is, or oh, I'm out
in the water with this weird dude in his underwear.
I mean, I fully think this is a power play.
It's like and that that is how that is how
(23:50):
she characterized in the lawsuits. She referred to it as
it was about not about saving her soul, but about
power and control. And it was not long before or
the body was discovered that a Tennessee judge gave the
go ahead for this lawsuit against UM, the ex Hamilton
County deputy, to move forward. So of course, you know,
(24:13):
I found this on a Reddit thread, and conspiratorial chatter
is kind of going nuts, implying that you know this,
this this man hired somebody to kill this woman for
ruining his life whatever, and that's how they would perceive.
I suppose that he had a sibling or something that
did it. There's a lot of talk about that kind
(24:33):
of good old boy mafia mentality and that part of
the country, a lot of possibilities UM. But it's a
very troubling story on a lot of levels, because I
really do feel myself getting more and more worked up
out of the more I talk about it, because that
is just a flagrant abuse of power, you know, especially
for a crime that already should be a non issue.
(24:54):
You're gonna use that against somebody threatened them with, you know,
potentially life ruining situation and and arm twist them, you know,
into doing something that that you want them to do
that they have no wherewithal to actually do. I just
find it really despicable and it's strange too, because you know,
(25:15):
for anybody unfamiliar with Hamilton's County. Like we said, you
don't want to be unfair paint with a broad brush,
but there are plenty of firsthand experiences people have had,
locals as well as visitors to the area with um,
you know, clear bias on the part of law enforcement.
Everybody who works in law enforcement in that area. Of course,
(25:38):
they're they're human being. They have their own personal beliefs,
but the question is are they capable of separating those
beliefs from the day to day duties of their job.
You know, they're being accused of islamaphobia in the past,
they've been they've been accused of talking openly on social
media about the upcoming race war. I don't think that's
(26:00):
the kind of person you want in charge of a
firearm and the ability to pull you over on the road,
you know what I mean. So they have a lot
of stuff to work on, but it's really troubling. There
was one comment that stood out to me. It's really
troubling when you see statements like those of Robin Flores,
(26:22):
the late ms Riley's attorney, who says we might not
have nobody to continue to prosecute this case because this
lawsuit was already getting delayed multiple times due to the pandemic. Right,
so what's going to happen is this guy is this
case is going to get just thrown out? Yeah, I
mean that that was a chatter about that on the
(26:42):
Reddit thread too, and someone you know, kind of pointed
out that that's not really supposed to be allowed to happen, right,
But we are talking about a rural area where politics
and supposed to enter into this kind of stuff into
the law. But it and and and it's also a
staffing issue, and I guess maybe because it's a police officer,
(27:05):
there might be an easier route to throwing it out.
To the judge's credit, Travis R. Mcdonnaugh of the Tennessee
Eastern District Court. Uh, I mean, he's got some damning
things to say about this. And then then I thought
were very astute saying, quote, in view of all the
circumstances surrounding the instant, a reasonable person would have believed
(27:27):
he was not free to leave, or would feel free
to decline the officer's requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.
And then it's like kind of legally as a little
a little muddled sounding, but I mean essentially saying that
a person of sound mind in that situation would have
believed this was an ultimatum. This was a you know,
if you don't do this, I am taking you to jail.
(27:50):
Uh and then and therefore would have felt entrapped because
you know, you're probably going to get out of the baptism,
as humiliating as it might be, but you get into
the system like that, you know where it could lead. Yeah,
this weird stuff going on with this one, guys. Um
First of all, for anyway that was confused, sawdy Daisy
is a place I didn't understand that in the beginning.
(28:11):
And yes, and that is a no no no no
um my understanding with the case and whether it can
continue on, I think there's a good chance for it
to continue on because they believe the plaintiff in this case,
the woman who was found dead, was seeking I believe,
(28:32):
around a million dollars for this and according to some
of the reporting there from Channel nine, if the children,
her surviving children want to continue to take the case,
they can because she had already given her deposition and
her testimony is already on record so that it could
be presented in the case if they wanted to continue
(28:52):
forward with it. I have a feeling that will still
happen because we're talking about two very different things, the
baptism and all the bad stuff that happened in that
moment and that encounter in the lawsuit that came after that.
But then also she was found dead. Do we know
if there's any information on that yet or is it
just there's not they're waiting for the autopsy. I mean,
that's that's obviously the impetus for talking about the story.
(29:14):
But so much going on, that's just like the latest,
like you know, um, and we know nothing about it,
so that's it's it's harder to to talk about. But yeah,
that's it's the kicker, right, And I appreciate you going
into that mad about how her kids could pursue it.
Um do we know what who her surviving heirs are?
I haven't seen any anything about that in the in
the stories that happen. She has to Uh, she has
(29:37):
two children and it would be up to them. They
would essentially have to become the plaintifts for the case.
Is the unders matter how old they are? Does it
matter at all? I'm not sure on that in that respect,
but logically I would imagine at least one of them
has to be old enough to function as their own guardian.
Maybe so she's only early four these there's certainly potential
(30:02):
that both of our kids are under age. Right again,
we don't know that and they haven't leased that info
ages anyway, But just to wrap this up, Wilkie has
been indicted on forty four charges, including six counts of
sexual battery, two counts of rape, nine counts of official oppression, extortion, stalking,
and assault. Um. Not sure about that. The deputy yes, wow,
(30:28):
the rape, I don't know. I don't understand what the
two counts are there because I'm gonna I'm gonna follow
up on this. He was accused of of groping her
her in the crotch area. UM oh sorry, wait no, no,
these are other cases me. Wilkie faces numerous lawsuits in
several cases involving alleged excessive use of force while including
(30:50):
the alleged unlawful body cavity search of a man while
performing a traffic stop. And Ben you mentioned Islamophobia certainly
a thing that that comes up in this part of
the country and our whole where we live. You know,
I mean like the South and there's but you know what,
we go to places like Oregon where there's to see
it as a bastion of like you know, um, liberalism
(31:11):
in their pockets. You know that are about as scary
and and uh backwards as you could possibly imagine the
same with California. I mean it's it's not limited. Uh,
you know, ignorance is not limited geographically to to anywhere
in the world. Um. But this guy Wilkie has a
rap sheet. He has been according to the Times Free
Press article I mentioned, um has numerous lawsuits penning against
(31:34):
him in several cases involving I'm just reading from it,
and then we'll move on alleged excessive use of force,
including the alleged unlawful body cavity search of a man
while performing a traffic stop and the alleged groping of
female miners. UM. The requested damages in the lawsuits in
total around eleven million dollars is just adding onto the
pile here. Uh. And according to Hamilton County official court documents,
(31:57):
he has been indicted on forty four charge is all
in including six counts of sexual battery, two counts of rape,
nine counts of official oppression, extortion, stalking, and assault, among others. Guys,
I think he killed her. Just putting that out there.
There's a bad guy. This is my opinion. I don't
(32:18):
think it would be that. I don't think it would
be that person on their own. No, No, I mean
I think, yes, something, something is really really rotten with
this guy. And um, yeah, we'll have to follow this
one up. But I'm sorry, this is went a little long,
but um and and and dark. But let's keep an
(32:38):
eye on and and see where it goes and take a
break first, and we'll be back with some more strange news.
All right, And we're back. And if everyone could do
me a favor, if you have access to it, go
ahead and just get a little cup of water, if
you've got some kind of holding, you know, container, just
(32:59):
put a little happened there whatever, water, your choice, a
crystal light, okay, this monster Okay, they all contain water,
including my U my iced coffee, which is probably at
this point should be a controlled substance. But yet how
convenient is it? Matt? Do you ever think about that?
(33:21):
I like, I started, Uh one time I turned on
the shower and I thought, how amazing it is that
Not only is this always showing up whenever I want,
but I, like so many other people in the developed world,
get irritated if it's not the temperature I like, you
know what I mean. I'm like, oh, this potable, drinkable
(33:43):
water is a little too warm, too cold for me
to throw it out. They don't have ice. This place
is too terrible. Two wonderful things, right, the having access
to water and then being able to change the temperature
of that water using electricity and or you know, gas
and heat fire, um. And also you know, having having
(34:05):
natural gas plants that run on electricity. We'll we'll get
into it. It's a bit of a nice real slope
that we're gonna be going on today. It starts at
the mouth of the Colorado River. Uh. It's really where
it begins and where water travels all across these great
United States until it reaches a little place called Lake Powell.
(34:29):
And that is in Arizona, great state of Arizona, right
at the Utah border. So if you're looking at maps,
Google maps or any other maps, you can see that
where Lake Powell is, Uh, it's right on the border
of Arizona and Utah. And which is important because the
Colorado River is often used as a place where a
state's line kind of cuts across. That's very frequent out
(34:51):
in the Western United States and in this lake, which
is the second largest reservoir that exists in the United States. Reservoir,
of course, just a holding place of water, place where
water pools, if you will, in lake form, so they
can be used for various things. One of the main
things that it's used for is to have it pumped
(35:12):
out to water treatment plants and other facilities that get
the water ready for drinking, for showering, for washing dishes,
for watering lawns, for all the things that we need,
including you know, water bottling plants things like that. Uh.
There's a problem in Lake Powell because there's a major
drought going on in the West and has been happening
(35:33):
for quite a while, and it's getting much much worse.
The water levels have been reduced almost not quite, but
almost to the point where some serious decisions are going
to have to be made by people who run municipal
and state uh stuff in Arizona, Utah, California, Colorado, everywhere
(35:58):
out there. This is a major drought that's about to
be promoted to colonel. Honestly, it's like it's super bad.
That's perfect a nuclear nuclear grade joke. Right, Yes, So
(36:18):
just quickly, the second thing that that water is used for.
If you think about all the mass, all the weight
of that water sitting in this huge, second largest reservoir
in the US, it can be used for hydroelectric power,
which involves that water being strategically released and flowing downwards
basically to turn turbines that in turn create electricity that
(36:41):
can be sent all over the place. Then you can
generate a ton of electricity because that water is being
siphoned constantly. You just got constant electricity running through that
thing at all times. That's where the Glen Canyon Dam
comes in, because that's the dam that looks quite a
bit like the Hoover Dam. If take a look at
it again on a maps app or something. Where the
(37:03):
water just hydroelectric dam like the one we have here
in Atlanta called the Buford Dam uh flows down, you
get electricity. And as they send water down that dam,
it continues the Colorado River, which then leads down to
Lake Mead. Lake Mead is in Nevada right on the
Arizona border, and guess what's happening in Lake Mead, guys,
(37:27):
the same thing, the same thing. Uh so, all right,
so there's our problem, right. We generate electricity with this
water for a lot of the Southwest. We use this
water to provide water for much of the Southwest, and
the amount of water that exists in these reservoirs is
(37:48):
going away quickly. There's a CNN article title, is Lake
Powell officials face an impossible choice in the West Mega drought,
water or electricity? You can find that right now. It
was posted April, written by Renee Marsh and it's just
a quick overview of the problems, the critical situation that
(38:10):
the entire West faces when it comes to figuring out
what to do when those reservoirs will no longer fill
up to capacity, When the pumps that are inside those
reservoirs and connected to the dams and the water treatment
facilities can't even get the water because it's so low
that you can't suck any more water out of it
(38:32):
because the pumps are too high in the water. Terrifying situation. Guys.
I I could give a lot more details, and let's
just talk about this because I don't know. It seems
like there are no easy solutions here, not uh, not
easy solutions defined as solutions that will make everyone involved happy,
that's for sure. I mean there are there are solutions
(38:55):
that would require some pretty authoritarian moves on part of
the government, right. But one of the big issues I
would argue is the concept of the tragedy of the commons.
These watershed disagreements and conflicts are only going to become
more commonplace as time goes on. You know, in the
(39:16):
Southeast you see watershed disagreements and we were unfortunately correct
when we said water wars are coming. Man. The The
issue is like you could, for instance, say all right,
this is not a Kobyashi maru. You know, this is
not that scenario from Star Trek where there is no
(39:37):
correct answer. This instead brings out a lot of possible
brutal solutions that frankly, residents of the U s would
never want to hear. It would be political suicide to say, Okay,
now you are going to after rational electricity, We're going
to ration your water intake to X amount of gallons
(39:59):
per person per day. But there are countries that have
done that, there are countries that are doing that where
it's just known that the electricity runs from you know,
this hour to this hour hours. Well, let's just let's
talk about that, Ben, because that damn I forgot to
mention this. The Hoover Dam is the second dam that
also generates hydroelectric power from the Colorado River right in
(40:22):
the area, and it is also being affected. So it's
two major dams. But that first one that I mentioned,
the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell. It it provides
electricity for five point eight million homes in seven states
throughout the western US. Like, think about think about that
amount of power and if there isn't enough waterflow to
(40:44):
generate that power it is. It's a scenario that Ben
is describing where you begin by rationing power until you
can no longer generate power from flowing water. If you know,
if the water levels go down that far, then you
have to find alternative energy sources. Really in that area,
it's gonna mean burning coal. That's one of the major sources.
(41:04):
There are a few awesome, huge solar facilities are I
don't know if you call them park solar parks like
a raise a rays where they can provide quite a
bit of energy, but nothing compared to what those hydro
electric power plants in the dam's produce, and now it's
twenty five percent full. It's thirty two feet away from
(41:24):
not being a power plant anymore. Exactly, silly question, but
like I mean, obviously, hydro electric power is a little
more widely accepted than wind power. Right. It's it's just
like you know something that you know what this is,
seeven as controversial, right, like as far as our power portfolio.
Um when when you hear you know, people that are
(41:45):
maybe climate change deni ares arguing against wind power, arguing
against solar potentially because it's more expensive. But like you know,
things like the Hoover Dam are considered a marvel of
like modern American ingenuity and all of that. Would you
guys agree that, like culturally this is the case, Well,
we've had them for a long time. I mean, the
concept of damming Upper River like this and controlling the
(42:06):
water flow to produce electricity has just been happening for
a long time. I think it's more ingrained in our Yeah,
I don't know, just our conscious memory of the past.
But it requires certain circumstances and it requires certain natural features. Yeah. Yeah,
so just like geothermal energy, Honestly, or or wind power.
But the thing is, what's brilliant about hydroelectric power is
(42:28):
that you don't need a ton of complex material science knowledge,
you know, at least compared to what you would need
for an efficient solar panel. Uh. And what I think
is beautiful about hydro electric power, even though it definitely
is a situation specific Uh, the water is already going
where it's going. You can use it. You're just having
(42:49):
it's just doing a side job. It's like high fiveingue
while it's walking by to where it was already headed.
You know, you're not doing too much with it now.
Of course damning it self, which is part of this
hydroelectric proposition. It does, It can wreak havoc on wildlife.
It doesn't come without the cost. But I think it's
(43:10):
it's safe to say that it's still on balance better
than mining and burning coal, which is going to be
hopefully human history will look back on that as a
phase and not a final fatal phase of the anthropasy. God. Yeah,
you mentioned you know how water rationing is already a thing.
(43:32):
Um like that. Usually we maybe see that in terms
of like when you're allowed to water your lawn, which
is already a problematic thing in and of itself, a
silly kind of vanity thing that the Americans have the
luxury of having this beautiful lawn that gets to suck
up all this water that you know, people in other
countries would kill to have a tiny, you know, thimble
(43:54):
full of um. But we're talking beyond that, right The
measures this is required would be like it wouldn't be
the honor system, or how would they even like track it?
Um is my question. Here's the deal where we keep
talking about that chain the Colorado River to Lake Powell,
down the Colorado River somewhere to Lake Mead, And the
issue now is Lake Powell releasing fewer gallons of water
(44:18):
in billions to go down the river to Lake Mead,
which is the other reservoir. So right now there's a proposal.
I think this is happening like in early May, so
we're recording this on Monday, May second. The results may
have come back from you know, the essentially the think
tanks of the governments of these very states coming together
and talking about this and getting you know, some kind
(44:40):
of solution across the table. But right now, the proposal
I'm gonna quote from the CNN article calls for holding
back the equivalent of forty two point six billion gallons
of water in Lake Powell, which means I'm gonna keep reading,
which means deeper cuts to the amount of water people
can use in Arizona, California, Colorado, out Nevada, New Mexico, Utah,
(45:02):
and Wyoming. And they've already they're already holding back. I've
got it in here somewhere, guys, But around billion gallons
of water in two has already been held back. So
they're already attempting to preserve the water levels in Lake
Powell by not releasing that's the question to Another controversial
(45:23):
part of this very damaging group project is figuring out
which industry gets water right, especially when we're talking about
very thirsty agricultural things, you know, like livestock or I
don't have the agricultural stats of the of the countries
of the states named right now, they're all still states,
(45:45):
not independent countries. But the big question is would have
cost benefits? Sometimes, too, write like the idea of saving
ecology or local wildlife, goes to the wayside very quickly
when people feel their lives or their jobs are on
the line. But then the next step of that, you know,
like the second gate that this a train walks through.
And this never ending story is the problem of whether
(46:08):
authorities prioritize those businesses and those industries or the people,
you know, like one of the reasons that droughts have
become so problematic. It's not just climate change. It's exacerbated
by this massive infrastructure of very thirsty things. Like you
can look up you can look up how much water
it takes to create one almond. I'm just saying almonds
(46:32):
because they're delicious and and Doqui was eating some earlier
off air, and you know, I'm back on my cash
show thing. But the if you look at it that way,
then you have to start saying, Okay, we're holding back
this much water, right because we need it for the
hydroelectric aspect of this damn to work. But then who
(46:54):
is losing that water? Losing that water? Then? In that regard,
is it like an industry? Is it is it a
a a group of people, a family of four? How
do you tell? I don't know how you would everybody
who wants water and lives in those states, everybody south
of the dam. Yeah, and Colorado and guess who wants water.
(47:17):
No one's immune from that. We need water. I just
spent three days at a music festival. I know what
it feels like to be dehydrated even a little bit,
and and it's bad. Like yoursels need that stuff to
like survive in the same way you need air. It's
just not as quickly palpable um. So this would absolutely
I mean, you know, not to always go to the
(47:38):
mad Max comparison. But that was an aqua aqua cola.
I mean, that's the resource that the warlord has control
over and is able to exert control over the population
by giving them a little bit of water here and
there and hoarding it over though. I mean, like it's
a fantasy film, but is it. I mean it could
you know, who controls the spice and all of that stuff,
(47:59):
I mean, it could getting that bad. I'm surprised they're
having been more you know, groups that are trying to
take control over those kinds of resources. You know, it's
a huge going that direction North Africa and the Gulf. No,
did you get to see the Stranger Things Kids band? Yeah?
It was good. Joe Yeah, yeah, it was super solid.
(48:20):
Now that the name of the band is Joe D
j o H. I forget the actor's name, but he
plays the He was the bully in the first season
and he gets cool. But um, he's god of sound like,
he's great, kind of sounded like Tam and Paula meets
Flaming Lips, lots of synths and vocoders, and it was
very I was impressed. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Excellent. Well,
you make a great point. Music festivals will not be
(48:41):
a thing if there is no water. Yeah, sorry, just
to follow up on that. You even realize what a
current sya water is when you're at the music festival
because people they're water stations, but people are still carrying
around the five dollar bottles of water, cans of water,
liquid death, which is the sponsor of the shaking the music,
because maybe the lines are too long, or they're like
(49:02):
really dehydrating they need it now, like, or they're just
lazy and don't feel like walking because that's how thirsty
they are, you know what I'm saying, Like you start
to see water as a currency when you get into
those kinds of situations. Uh, well, guys, we're at time here,
and time is the only thing we have right put
(49:23):
it hopefully, hopefully some water will make its way into
the Western United States in a big way, will be
a comeback. We'll make water great again. Set your rain
barrels out while you can where it's legal to do so,
because it's not legal anymore in all the places. And
if you want tips on how to survive in the
(49:44):
wild with UH, with minimal access to water or with
no water, first off of that ladder one you won't
last long, but you can always you can always write
out to me directly, UH four tips as someone who's
been through it. Not pretty, not fun, that's not good.
I was supposed to mention, man, not good. UM desalination
(50:05):
is one of the solutions to the water problem. When
you've got freshwater lakes that are running out, massive desalination projects.
There's one happening right now. Oh lord. I think the
name of the company is Poseidon, which is a great
name for a water company. But it was a proposed
desalination plant off the coast of San Diego, I believe,
(50:27):
but I think it seems like it might not be
moving forward. It's right now in debate and whether or
not the projects you move forward. But that's one of
the only ways we can fix this problem. And all
the coasts, all the places that have ubiquitous amounts of water,
a water level that's going to continue rising over the
next hundred years while we're still here. We could use
(50:48):
that water, turn it into potable stuff, and then drink
it and put it our along. Uh. We just need
a couple of billionaires, maybe someone who has the ability
to buy Twitter, to just be like, Man, I'm gonna
do desalination now, right. Also, there are countries that are
leading the way. I'm so glad you mentioned desalination. Uh,
Saudi Arabia like that is keeping the country alive in
(51:12):
a very real sense. Uh. There's also great work going on,
I mean throughout the Ghost the coast, the Gulf Coast,
u a e Quait Israel like they it's not out
of the realm of possibility that eventually other countries will
just have to start buying that technology from them. Oh
and they're m I T students that just made an
(51:34):
amazing desalination system the size of a suitcase. It's incredible.
It's not gonna help the problem that's on the level
we're speaking of right now, but man, as a like
portable desalination device come on, Oh and maybe just build
a bigger suitcase. Guys. Right there we go, that's the
American solution to the problem. But no, that's beautiful map
(51:56):
because now we're ending on a hopeful rather than a
dystopian note. So it's sort of technology and collective human
conscience racing against the consequences of the actions of previous generations. Yeah,
it's still dystopian. I'm sorry, it's well, we'll find a
(52:17):
portmanteau that it's dystopian. It's dystopian, hop dystopian. Well what
you know? What you know? It's not dystopian. You said
ghost and then coast right together, and my head just
went straight to space ghost and I'm happy there. So
uh all right, well that's well, well is it today, folks.
Thank you so much as always for tuning in. Join
(52:40):
us next week for more strange news. Join us later
on in this week when we're talking about any number
of disturbing tales, the stuff they don't want you to know,
and stay tuned for our upcoming weekly listener Male sect
that where we hear from my favorite part of the show.
You So how could I be a part of that?
May be asking, Well, we try to make it simple.
(53:02):
As long as the power is on and the internet
is connected. You can find us online. Find us on
the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram,
Conspiracy Stuff show well and eight three three std w
y t K for me. Just call it up and
(53:23):
leave a message. Now, yeah, you got three minutes. No, okay,
that's it. Give yourself a cool nickname. When you call in,
you get three minutes. Say whatever you want. Please let
us know if we can use your name and message
on the air. Uh, if you were in the cast
of Stranger Things and also have a band, we want
to hear from you. Oh. None. Other guy's got a band.
Finn Wilford has got a band called the Aure's like
(53:43):
four of them. I think there's four or five. Yeah,
but they're they're pretty good too. I mean, frankly, I
think Joe is a little a little more my speed.
But you know, you always hear that and you're like, oh,
it's gonna be like a celebrity vanity project. I always
like it when I'm proved wrong in surprise, So good job.
And I haven't really his name, Joe, Yeah, Joe curious
is name? There we go. Also, if you're not in
(54:06):
the Stranger Things cast. We want to hear from you
even more honestly than them, so give us a call.
If you don't want to do that, instead, send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(54:38):
Is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart greeting, Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
me Bett, and we're joined as always with our super
producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top
of the week two. Welcome back and good luck to
(00:46):
us all. I feel like it's the greeting we should
start saying more often here. Uh. We had a tough time,
I think over the past week finding the stories we
really wanted to stick with. Just for recaps, Japanese construction
companies are building mix. That's true. There are doubts about
whether or not Musk will actually buy Twitter. We've upped
(01:08):
our our meme game on social media, so thanks to
all our fellow conspiracy realist participating in that. Today we're
going to talk about a strange case with baptism and death.
We're going to talk about the real life example happening
now of the dangers we warned about for years with
(01:30):
water shortages that will be coming to affect a municipality
near you. And then we're also going to talk about
one of the newest conspiracy theories, one that you may
have heard about just in the past week or so,
concerning food supplies. Have you, guys heard about all the
(01:50):
various like attacks and food processing disasters across the US today, Ben,
I've not heard of this at all. I noticed something
over the weekend about a recall of meat products, and
when you mentioned to us what you're covering today, I
thought that's what we're talking about. I thought that was
a story you were bringing up. Was this one case
(02:11):
of a meat processing plant that was like, yeah, maybe
there's some cool I let's shut the whole thing down.
But that is not at all what we're talking about here.
You're talking about a tax on like food supply chain, right, Well,
that's that's the idea. Yeah, So we know that there
have been a number of disasters and various food processing
(02:33):
facilities like cereal mills, uh salad packaging plant in California
that burned to the ground on April. It was a
major food processing facility at Taylor Farms. And then just
a few weeks before that in Maine, potato processing plant
was destroyed also by a fire. Here in stuff that
(02:57):
wants you to know is home state of Georgia. Lights planes,
actual airplanes were crashing into food processing areas. Has also
happened in Idaho. Animal feed mill burned down in Louisiana
and January, there's a food bank in Arizona that caught
(03:17):
a fire in March, and there are more and more
and more and this, yeah, this has led to the
birth of a new conspiracy theory, the just being that someone,
some entity, or some force is seeking to disrupt typical
food supply chains and then perhaps take advantage of that chaos.
(03:40):
In some cases, you'll hear speculation that there's a larger
company that is attempting to take this chaos and use
it as a way of consolidating their own control overmass agriculture.
If so, it's scary scary stuff, right, is there world
where this could be some weird niche version of eco
(04:04):
terrorism because of all of the uh, you know, additives
and things that are being put in food and g
and GMOs and all that. Some kind of version of
like disrupting that system, even if it's to the detriment
of you know, large group of people and possibly populations
that are um less wealthy and have to rely on
(04:25):
processed foods, maybe don't have the luxury of of buying
you know, organic. Yeah, it's I mean, it's the fear
is coming from a real place. And before we dive
in too much with this, we do have to say
the following things are demonstrably true. One, yes, food processing
plants have been burning down. Those facilities in many cases
(04:50):
have been rendered unusable as a result of these fires. Two,
we can say that anybody who lives in this country
and pays it punchin to their bank account knows that
the cost of average things are accelerating at a higher
than average pace. You know, everything from your local case
(05:11):
da stand to wherever you buy produce, wherever you buy gas, shoelaces,
gimlets for your shoes, whatever you name it. Uh, it's
more expensive in most cases than it was in the
years previous. So those fears are kind of commingling and
mixing and blending into this smoothie of conspiratorial thought. So
(05:35):
if we were to look at this critically as a
as a conspiracy theory. If we're to practice conspiracy realism,
then first we would need to find out who or
what would profit from the results of those disruptions, you know,
of those disasters. And in that case, usually what you're
(05:56):
going to hear in these theories is going to be
something like it's uh a big food brand or holding company,
right Like they'll say, oh, it's it's a Monsanto, or
it's young brands or something, and their basis for that
thought is that those are very very large entities. But
(06:16):
that's not enough, you know what I mean, that's not
enough to prove the case. And if you if you
think about it that way, let's just put that to
the side for a second and we say, okay, well,
what if in that case, what if there is um
how would they profit? Would they buy up this stuff
or would they be able to maybe swoop into the
(06:38):
market and sell like now they sell the cereal because
the other place got knocked out, or they sell the potatoes, right,
something like that. I have to tell you, this is
not My mind doesn't go to eco terrorism or or
that ben and my mind right now, I just want
to thinking about everything. It goes to warfare. When when
(06:59):
you're engaged, even in a proxy war, in full scale
war with another country or superpower, one of the main
targets are you know, supplies, specifically food supplies, and you know,
attempting to starve an enemy out. That's where my mind went, Uh,
I'm not thinking about the profits, but that that to me, Well,
(07:19):
you're saying is way more plausible to me than you know,
Russia or some other world power that you know has
ill intentions on us attacking our food chain in that way.
I just want to just a cursory google of my
initial gut theory, I guess the eco terrorism angled there there.
I haven't seen any examples of this popping up yet
in the States, but I did an article from a
(07:39):
website called Genetic Literacy Project Science not Ideology as their
tagline UM came up saying, age of eco terrorism. Why
are activists attacking the most productive part of our food
industry at modern agriculture? And this is happening in Brittany,
France where a grain train was sabotaged and destroyed very
recently March ninete in Brittany, France, and it was packed
(08:02):
with fifteen hundred tons of wheat UM that were intended
for chickens at a cooperative, so it doesn't seem like
it's out of the realm of possibility that could make
its way here and disrupt food chains that are seen
as being less than friendly to the environments, which these
massive prepackaged, you know, industrialized processing plants certainly could be
(08:26):
seen as. Yeah, there's an interesting distinction which didn't Uh.
I don't know. I don't know if we hit out
hard enough in the eco terrorism episode, but one of
the hallmarks of terrorists organizations were those who engage in
terroristic activities is that they want to be identified. They
want you to know who did it and why, right,
(08:49):
and in this in that case described yeah in France,
then that would make sense. There's probably a clear uh
indicator of who at least claimed responsibility. This is not
so uh the if there were some nefarious entity behind this,
it hasn't identified itself as of yet, and then we
also need to think about how complicated it would be
(09:12):
to pull off this stuff. We also need to think
about how strange it would be for any entity, even
powerful enough to perpetrate something like this, how weird it
would be for them to be so rude Goldberg esque
about it to make every attack a game of mouse
trap such that it looks like an accident. In every case,
it sounds more like a super villain. Ben some villain.
(09:36):
He's the food daddy. Yeah, there's a fantastic line in
this Daily Dot article about this conjuncture. Are like positing
with is it mere coincidence, just some bad things happening
at the same time, or is it a sinister plot
to starve the United States and call the herd of
useless eaters? I love useless eaters. That is solid writing. Yeah,
(10:00):
that's a shout out to Mike Roth's child, the author
of that. That's what I wanted to post on and
that that came in as we were recording today. So Mike,
thank you. You played a big part in today's show.
The The issue is that this, lest we all panic, right,
there are other much more real things to panic about. Um,
this is kind of easily disprove it first. Yes, the
(10:24):
food supply chain is going to be a problem. There
are allegations about Russia attacking Ukrainian uh grain stores now
grain storage sites, I should say, But the bigger picture,
whether you think that's propaganda or true, the bigger picture
is going to be what happens to African nations that
rely on Russia and Ukrainian agricultural supplies. The food supply
(10:48):
chain in the US and abroad is only going to
be increasingly disrupted as the amount of arable land continues
to erode. But in this case, we can say this
is kind of false. And to understand why it's false,
all you have to do is look back at other
stories of fires at food processing facilities. There kind of common,
(11:14):
they're not infrequent in and it goes on and there
hasn't really been year over year an uptake or an uptick,
I should say, in these incidents. This is something she
reported in Daily Dot. You can also, I want to
give a kudos to uh W C and C outside
(11:34):
of Charlotte, whose co authors had a little bit of
a deeper look into this based on tweets, because this
thing was blowing up on Twitter for a while. But
if you look at comments from people like Sarah Little,
the VP of Communications at North American Meat Institute, which
is a thing Nammy uh to Todd Super who is
(11:57):
running things over at the National Chicken Council, is their
senior VP of Communications or even the U s d
A Department of Agriculture. They've all responded that what we're
seeing here when you're looking at these posts on social
media that talk about this sort of stuff, what they're
doing is taking very real problems and real events and
(12:19):
they're kind of connect trying to connect them in often
tenuous ways that are disprovable. And again, if you're already
primed to believe this stuff, there's a big part of
your brain it's going to be kind of mad at
you for disproving what it already assumed. That's why it
can be tough. You can see lists that have um
(12:39):
that have something like twenty articles referencing similar events ostensibly
similar events, or eighteen or even sixteen, and when you
look at them presented that way, when they're curated that way,
it can look a lot like a trend. But the
issue is again that you can make a list like
(13:00):
this for many other years leading up to now, and
when you think about the numbers, the US has more
than Snopes pointed this out too, and I verified some
of their sources well. In twenty nineteen, the US have
more than thirty six thousand different processing outfits for food
and beverages. That means that if you look at the
(13:24):
twenty six news articles Snopes listed in there, you know,
here's twenty nineteen approach to this and that comparison, that's
less than one percent of those facilities. So this is
kind of like saying, there have been troubling reports of
car accidents in every state across the US over the
(13:44):
course of January two. Who's sabotaging all these cars? You
know what I mean? The answer is not some Bond
esque emperor of traffic lines. The answer instead is human
error and most of those cases, so we have to
be really careful with the way information is framed, the
(14:07):
way it ends up getting depicted. And the thing is,
I feel like these kind of stories are going to
continue regardless of analysis or the facts, simply because it
is such red meat, right for people who are already
trying to find a specific example of fears and trends.
(14:29):
With that being said, you know, consider our earlier Strange
News segment on that water processing hack over in Florida.
That was one time and people lost beat me here, Doc,
People lost the minds because it's scary. So if there
were purposeful attacks on food processing plants in a coordinated
(14:49):
way across the country. This would be much bigger news.
This would not just be a Twitter post. And you
don't even have to hack the water plants anymore, and
the water is just not going to be in there.
That's the set up. Yeah, that's something else we're gonna
see in the third act of this week's segment. For now,
I just wanted to put this on your radar. If
(15:13):
you want to have I find more information about this,
then I would recommend looking at some of those uh
articles I had just cited. Check out Snopes. They did
a great overview of this, but also check out the
real geopolitical concerns about coming food shortages due to the
war in Ukraine that is going to be hitting people
(15:34):
um harder. We should also do an episode about about
fake flation. It's a word I've made up for some
of this stuff because I was thinking, I think it
will work. I was thinking about, you know, how gas
prices will go up at these predictable demands, but then
also gas prices will go up and the the reason
you're given is that it's a insert administration here, or
(15:56):
that it's be global shortages. But then when those things
get x or changed or whatever. A new administration comes
in the whatever conflict that's been blamed for this is resolved.
How come those prices don't go down, never go back
down to where they were telling you fake plai. Anyway,
We're gonna pause for work from our sponsors, will return
(16:18):
with more strange news, and we're back. Uh. You know,
if the story I'm about to describe sounds like the
plot of a kind of B level, swampy backwoods like
(16:38):
stalker horror film, that's probably because it definitely has that
kind of potential. Um not to diminish the lives that
are being affective or that potentially were affected directly by
this story. But you can't, I can't ignore that aspect
of I'm just gonna read the headline that I found
from news nine ABC in Tennessee. Saadi Daisy, woman at
(17:02):
center of deputy baptism lawsuit, found dead in home Wednesday. Okay,
so this is essentially a follow up to another story
that I wish you would have caught earlier because it happened.
I think it was a couple of weeks ago that
this lawsuit, uh that was described in the headline was
given the go ahead to go forward. I just found
(17:23):
an article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press judge Okay's
lawsuit against ex Hamilton's county deputy for baptizing woman after
traffic stops. So what happened? What you're asking yourself? Um?
The name of the woman, uh was Shandel Marie Riley.
She was forty two years old. Back in twenty nineteen.
(17:43):
She was stopped for a traffic stop, um by a
deputy sheriff, Daniel Wilkie. He pulled her over outside just
outside of her ex mother in law's home. Um. It
wasn't clear exactly what the stop was forgine, it was
something relatively routine and she was so close to home.
Maybe he was following her for a little bit, if
(18:04):
she was speeding or ran stop sign or something simple
like that. That's really what it seems like. Uh, it's
usually I wouldn't imagine typically getting pulled over right outside
your final destination, but it certainly happens. Um, if it's
in like a residential area, maybe you made a boo
boo and you know, rolled through a stop stop sign
and then the cop follows you home. Um. It's a
(18:25):
little creepy in and of itself, but not completely unheard of.
But what is completely unheard of is that the deputy
you know, asked her probably a typical round of questions,
and she admitted, you just don't do this. People just
don't do it. It's just you don't have to do it.
Don't do it. She admitted that she had a marijuana
roach in her cigarette pack. Um, you just don't do that.
(18:48):
I'm sorry, not trying to shame the dead here, but
it's just they have no right to search you. Um,
And I guess that's probably cause they certainly can, e suppose.
But then if you're found to have had your right
so hilated, that can they can be upheld by a court.
But we are talking about pre rural part of the
South where sort of the network of good old boy
(19:08):
and stuff that extends all the way up to the
the court's unfortunately a lot of times, and if you
can sent to a search, probably cause goes out the window, exactly,
thank you. So you just say no, say no. If
they force it upon you, you at least have that
future protection if probable cause did not truly exist. It's
always easy for a cop to say they smell marijuana.
(19:29):
Didn't sound like that was the case. Though it sounded
like a lot of times they'll say, you know, do
you have any drugs in the car, or do you
have any weapons or whatever, and some people that maybe
don't know their rights well enough will get that stuff
over and it's just not doesn't It doesn't like absolve
you of of the consequence of having it. So um,
the sheriff deputy said, Okay, well, I'm gonna give you
(19:51):
an ultimatum, Gonna give you a choice here. I'll either
take you to jail or you can go into your
mother in law ex mother in law's house, get some towels,
and walk with me down to this lake here and
allow me to baptize you in the the water. I
mean the parade of red flags. It's I mean, first,
(20:13):
first of all, I just would can you imagine how
you would feel in that situation? I would, I mean,
especially if you're like vehemently anti religion or anti you know,
I would feel violated on so many levels. Like I
would say yes, but just because I don't believe it, honestly,
of course I would say yes. And who get I
(20:33):
don't believe in what it's what it's, what it stands for,
the meaning behind it but it's it's essentially the same
as as being asked to bend over and bark like
a dog, you know. I mean it's it's the same
as being it's it's a form of humiliation. I would argue,
it's it's incredibly illegal. So that happened. And when she
(20:54):
walked into the house, the mothers like, what are you doing?
And she goes, I guess I'm her quote from her
as I guess I'm fixing to get back tizt um.
And I had to say, there's an article about this
in religion News services. Well, it doesn't come right out
and say this guy sucks and did a thing that
makes the rest of us, you know, religious folks look bad.
(21:14):
It reported on it pretty even handedly and definitely was
not like he was out there doing God's work, because
that is not that is not what that is. That
is absolutely an active coercion um, and that is how
it is being tried um. So essentially, uh. The the
woman filed a lawsuit against against the deputy who and
(21:37):
his his buddy. By the way, he had his buddy
who was another deputy, come and join uh too. I
guess you gotta have like a I don't know an
assistant for a for a baptism. I didn't think he statement.
The statement that was given I think his name is
Jacob go Forth, deputy. The statement there was a lead
(22:00):
given hers in this article is that he filmed it.
He was there to film it. Well, he there had
to be a witness or for the baptism to be
I guess legitimate or something in the eyes of the
of Wilkie, the guy who did it. Okay, well that's
what he was there for. And he also apparently filmed
the whole thing on his cell phone camera. Um and
(22:21):
and also reportedly um in in the same Religion News
article that they describe it very matter of factly. Wilkie
stripped down to his underwear and T shirt and waded
into the water. Um. That's creepy in and of itself.
And Riley, fully clothed, followed. Wilkie baptized her by immersion,
as go Forth filmed the event from his cell phone. Uh.
(22:44):
Go Forth later said that he filmed the event to
protect all persons present and document the events. Okay, um,
let's see how it's protecting anybody. Um. In any case,
So there's a film, there's a film that this reminds
me of not mean to be extreme and making the domination,
you know, connections. But that's how it feels to me.
(23:05):
There's a movie called Coercion, Um I believe that's what
it's called. It's it basically is about a dude that,
like rob's a fast food restaurant and it holds a
young fast food employee, fast food you know, restaurant employee
hostage in the back of the restaurant just by like
making these escalating requests. Eventually it ends up in just
(23:29):
the most like degrading, humiliating circumstances you could possibly imagine.
But it's like a frog boiling in water. You but
you don't even know you're being abused until you think
back on it or you realize, oh, I'm tied to
a chair or whatever it is, or oh, I'm out
in the water with this weird dude in his underwear.
I mean, I fully think this is a power play.
It's like and that that is how that is how
(23:50):
she characterized in the lawsuits. She referred to it as
it was about not about saving her soul, but about
power and control. And it was not long before or
the body was discovered that a Tennessee judge gave the
go ahead for this lawsuit against UM, the ex Hamilton
County deputy, to move forward. So of course, you know,
(24:13):
I found this on a Reddit thread, and conspiratorial chatter
is kind of going nuts, implying that you know this,
this this man hired somebody to kill this woman for
ruining his life whatever, and that's how they would perceive.
I suppose that he had a sibling or something that
did it. There's a lot of talk about that kind
(24:33):
of good old boy mafia mentality and that part of
the country, a lot of possibilities UM. But it's a
very troubling story on a lot of levels, because I
really do feel myself getting more and more worked up
out of the more I talk about it, because that
is just a flagrant abuse of power, you know, especially
for a crime that already should be a non issue.
(24:54):
You're gonna use that against somebody threatened them with, you know,
potentially life ruining situation and and arm twist them, you know,
into doing something that that you want them to do
that they have no wherewithal to actually do. I just
find it really despicable and it's strange too, because you know,
(25:15):
for anybody unfamiliar with Hamilton's County. Like we said, you
don't want to be unfair paint with a broad brush,
but there are plenty of firsthand experiences people have had,
locals as well as visitors to the area with um,
you know, clear bias on the part of law enforcement.
Everybody who works in law enforcement in that area. Of course,
(25:38):
they're they're human being. They have their own personal beliefs,
but the question is are they capable of separating those
beliefs from the day to day duties of their job.
You know, they're being accused of islamaphobia in the past,
they've been they've been accused of talking openly on social
media about the upcoming race war. I don't think that's
(26:00):
the kind of person you want in charge of a
firearm and the ability to pull you over on the road,
you know what I mean. So they have a lot
of stuff to work on, but it's really troubling. There
was one comment that stood out to me. It's really
troubling when you see statements like those of Robin Flores,
(26:22):
the late ms Riley's attorney, who says we might not
have nobody to continue to prosecute this case because this
lawsuit was already getting delayed multiple times due to the pandemic. Right,
so what's going to happen is this guy is this
case is going to get just thrown out? Yeah, I
mean that that was a chatter about that on the
(26:42):
Reddit thread too, and someone you know, kind of pointed
out that that's not really supposed to be allowed to happen, right,
But we are talking about a rural area where politics
and supposed to enter into this kind of stuff into
the law. But it and and and it's also a
staffing issue, and I guess maybe because it's a police officer,
(27:05):
there might be an easier route to throwing it out.
To the judge's credit, Travis R. Mcdonnaugh of the Tennessee
Eastern District Court. Uh, I mean, he's got some damning
things to say about this. And then then I thought
were very astute saying, quote, in view of all the
circumstances surrounding the instant, a reasonable person would have believed
(27:27):
he was not free to leave, or would feel free
to decline the officer's requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.
And then it's like kind of legally as a little
a little muddled sounding, but I mean essentially saying that
a person of sound mind in that situation would have
believed this was an ultimatum. This was a you know,
if you don't do this, I am taking you to jail.
(27:50):
Uh and then and therefore would have felt entrapped because
you know, you're probably going to get out of the baptism,
as humiliating as it might be, but you get into
the system like that, you know where it could lead. Yeah,
this weird stuff going on with this one, guys. Um
First of all, for anyway that was confused, sawdy Daisy
is a place I didn't understand that in the beginning.
(28:11):
And yes, and that is a no no no no
um my understanding with the case and whether it can
continue on, I think there's a good chance for it
to continue on because they believe the plaintiff in this case,
the woman who was found dead, was seeking I believe,
(28:32):
around a million dollars for this and according to some
of the reporting there from Channel nine, if the children,
her surviving children want to continue to take the case,
they can because she had already given her deposition and
her testimony is already on record so that it could
be presented in the case if they wanted to continue
(28:52):
forward with it. I have a feeling that will still
happen because we're talking about two very different things, the
baptism and all the bad stuff that happened in that
moment and that encounter in the lawsuit that came after that.
But then also she was found dead. Do we know
if there's any information on that yet or is it
just there's not they're waiting for the autopsy. I mean,
that's that's obviously the impetus for talking about the story.
(29:14):
But so much going on, that's just like the latest,
like you know, um, and we know nothing about it,
so that's it's it's harder to to talk about. But yeah,
that's it's the kicker, right, And I appreciate you going
into that mad about how her kids could pursue it.
Um do we know what who her surviving heirs are?
I haven't seen any anything about that in the in
the stories that happen. She has to Uh, she has
(29:37):
two children and it would be up to them. They
would essentially have to become the plaintifts for the case.
Is the unders matter how old they are? Does it
matter at all? I'm not sure on that in that respect,
but logically I would imagine at least one of them
has to be old enough to function as their own guardian.
Maybe so she's only early four these there's certainly potential
(30:02):
that both of our kids are under age. Right again,
we don't know that and they haven't leased that info
ages anyway, But just to wrap this up, Wilkie has
been indicted on forty four charges, including six counts of
sexual battery, two counts of rape, nine counts of official oppression, extortion, stalking,
and assault. Um. Not sure about that. The deputy yes, wow,
(30:28):
the rape, I don't know. I don't understand what the
two counts are there because I'm gonna I'm gonna follow
up on this. He was accused of of groping her
her in the crotch area. UM oh sorry, wait no, no,
these are other cases me. Wilkie faces numerous lawsuits in
several cases involving alleged excessive use of force while including
(30:50):
the alleged unlawful body cavity search of a man while
performing a traffic stop. And Ben you mentioned Islamophobia certainly
a thing that that comes up in this part of
the country and our whole where we live. You know,
I mean like the South and there's but you know what,
we go to places like Oregon where there's to see
it as a bastion of like you know, um, liberalism
(31:11):
in their pockets. You know that are about as scary
and and uh backwards as you could possibly imagine the
same with California. I mean it's it's not limited. Uh,
you know, ignorance is not limited geographically to to anywhere
in the world. Um. But this guy Wilkie has a
rap sheet. He has been according to the Times Free
Press article I mentioned, um has numerous lawsuits penning against
(31:34):
him in several cases involving I'm just reading from it,
and then we'll move on alleged excessive use of force,
including the alleged unlawful body cavity search of a man
while performing a traffic stop and the alleged groping of
female miners. UM. The requested damages in the lawsuits in
total around eleven million dollars is just adding onto the
pile here. Uh. And according to Hamilton County official court documents,
(31:57):
he has been indicted on forty four charge is all
in including six counts of sexual battery, two counts of rape,
nine counts of official oppression, extortion, stalking, and assault, among others. Guys,
I think he killed her. Just putting that out there.
There's a bad guy. This is my opinion. I don't
(32:18):
think it would be that. I don't think it would
be that person on their own. No, No, I mean
I think, yes, something, something is really really rotten with
this guy. And um, yeah, we'll have to follow this
one up. But I'm sorry, this is went a little long,
but um and and and dark. But let's keep an
(32:38):
eye on and and see where it goes and take a
break first, and we'll be back with some more strange news.
All right, And we're back. And if everyone could do
me a favor, if you have access to it, go
ahead and just get a little cup of water, if
you've got some kind of holding, you know, container, just
(32:59):
put a little happened there whatever, water, your choice, a
crystal light, okay, this monster Okay, they all contain water,
including my U my iced coffee, which is probably at
this point should be a controlled substance. But yet how
convenient is it? Matt? Do you ever think about that?
(33:21):
I like, I started, Uh one time I turned on
the shower and I thought, how amazing it is that
Not only is this always showing up whenever I want,
but I, like so many other people in the developed world,
get irritated if it's not the temperature I like, you
know what I mean. I'm like, oh, this potable, drinkable
(33:43):
water is a little too warm, too cold for me
to throw it out. They don't have ice. This place
is too terrible. Two wonderful things, right, the having access
to water and then being able to change the temperature
of that water using electricity and or you know, gas
and heat fire, um. And also you know, having having
(34:05):
natural gas plants that run on electricity. We'll we'll get
into it. It's a bit of a nice real slope
that we're gonna be going on today. It starts at
the mouth of the Colorado River. Uh. It's really where
it begins and where water travels all across these great
United States until it reaches a little place called Lake Powell.
(34:29):
And that is in Arizona, great state of Arizona, right
at the Utah border. So if you're looking at maps,
Google maps or any other maps, you can see that
where Lake Powell is, Uh, it's right on the border
of Arizona and Utah. And which is important because the
Colorado River is often used as a place where a
state's line kind of cuts across. That's very frequent out
(34:51):
in the Western United States and in this lake, which
is the second largest reservoir that exists in the United States. Reservoir,
of course, just a holding place of water, place where
water pools, if you will, in lake form, so they
can be used for various things. One of the main
things that it's used for is to have it pumped
(35:12):
out to water treatment plants and other facilities that get
the water ready for drinking, for showering, for washing dishes,
for watering lawns, for all the things that we need,
including you know, water bottling plants things like that. Uh.
There's a problem in Lake Powell because there's a major
drought going on in the West and has been happening
(35:33):
for quite a while, and it's getting much much worse.
The water levels have been reduced almost not quite, but
almost to the point where some serious decisions are going
to have to be made by people who run municipal
and state uh stuff in Arizona, Utah, California, Colorado, everywhere
(35:58):
out there. This is a major drought that's about to
be promoted to colonel. Honestly, it's like it's super bad.
That's perfect a nuclear nuclear grade joke. Right, Yes, So
(36:18):
just quickly, the second thing that that water is used for.
If you think about all the mass, all the weight
of that water sitting in this huge, second largest reservoir
in the US, it can be used for hydroelectric power,
which involves that water being strategically released and flowing downwards
basically to turn turbines that in turn create electricity that
(36:41):
can be sent all over the place. Then you can
generate a ton of electricity because that water is being
siphoned constantly. You just got constant electricity running through that
thing at all times. That's where the Glen Canyon Dam
comes in, because that's the dam that looks quite a
bit like the Hoover Dam. If take a look at
it again on a maps app or something. Where the
(37:03):
water just hydroelectric dam like the one we have here
in Atlanta called the Buford Dam uh flows down, you
get electricity. And as they send water down that dam,
it continues the Colorado River, which then leads down to
Lake Mead. Lake Mead is in Nevada right on the
Arizona border, and guess what's happening in Lake Mead, guys,
(37:27):
the same thing, the same thing. Uh so, all right,
so there's our problem, right. We generate electricity with this
water for a lot of the Southwest. We use this
water to provide water for much of the Southwest, and
the amount of water that exists in these reservoirs is
(37:48):
going away quickly. There's a CNN article title, is Lake
Powell officials face an impossible choice in the West Mega drought,
water or electricity? You can find that right now. It
was posted April, written by Renee Marsh and it's just
a quick overview of the problems, the critical situation that
(38:10):
the entire West faces when it comes to figuring out
what to do when those reservoirs will no longer fill
up to capacity, When the pumps that are inside those
reservoirs and connected to the dams and the water treatment
facilities can't even get the water because it's so low
that you can't suck any more water out of it
(38:32):
because the pumps are too high in the water. Terrifying situation. Guys.
I I could give a lot more details, and let's
just talk about this because I don't know. It seems
like there are no easy solutions here, not uh, not
easy solutions defined as solutions that will make everyone involved happy,
that's for sure. I mean there are there are solutions
(38:55):
that would require some pretty authoritarian moves on part of
the government, right. But one of the big issues I
would argue is the concept of the tragedy of the commons.
These watershed disagreements and conflicts are only going to become
more commonplace as time goes on. You know, in the
(39:16):
Southeast you see watershed disagreements and we were unfortunately correct
when we said water wars are coming. Man. The The
issue is like you could, for instance, say all right,
this is not a Kobyashi maru. You know, this is
not that scenario from Star Trek where there is no
(39:37):
correct answer. This instead brings out a lot of possible
brutal solutions that frankly, residents of the U s would
never want to hear. It would be political suicide to say, Okay,
now you are going to after rational electricity, We're going
to ration your water intake to X amount of gallons
(39:59):
per person per day. But there are countries that have
done that, there are countries that are doing that where
it's just known that the electricity runs from you know,
this hour to this hour hours. Well, let's just let's
talk about that, Ben, because that damn I forgot to
mention this. The Hoover Dam is the second dam that
also generates hydroelectric power from the Colorado River right in
(40:22):
the area, and it is also being affected. So it's
two major dams. But that first one that I mentioned,
the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell. It it provides
electricity for five point eight million homes in seven states
throughout the western US. Like, think about think about that
amount of power and if there isn't enough waterflow to
(40:44):
generate that power it is. It's a scenario that Ben
is describing where you begin by rationing power until you
can no longer generate power from flowing water. If you know,
if the water levels go down that far, then you
have to find alternative energy sources. Really in that area,
it's gonna mean burning coal. That's one of the major sources.
(41:04):
There are a few awesome, huge solar facilities are I
don't know if you call them park solar parks like
a raise a rays where they can provide quite a
bit of energy, but nothing compared to what those hydro
electric power plants in the dam's produce, and now it's
twenty five percent full. It's thirty two feet away from
(41:24):
not being a power plant anymore. Exactly, silly question, but
like I mean, obviously, hydro electric power is a little
more widely accepted than wind power. Right. It's it's just
like you know something that you know what this is,
seeven as controversial, right, like as far as our power portfolio.
Um when when you hear you know, people that are
(41:45):
maybe climate change deni ares arguing against wind power, arguing
against solar potentially because it's more expensive. But like you know,
things like the Hoover Dam are considered a marvel of
like modern American ingenuity and all of that. Would you
guys agree that, like culturally this is the case, Well,
we've had them for a long time. I mean, the
concept of damming Upper River like this and controlling the
(42:06):
water flow to produce electricity has just been happening for
a long time. I think it's more ingrained in our Yeah,
I don't know, just our conscious memory of the past.
But it requires certain circumstances and it requires certain natural features. Yeah. Yeah,
so just like geothermal energy, Honestly, or or wind power.
But the thing is, what's brilliant about hydroelectric power is
(42:28):
that you don't need a ton of complex material science knowledge,
you know, at least compared to what you would need
for an efficient solar panel. Uh. And what I think
is beautiful about hydro electric power, even though it definitely
is a situation specific Uh, the water is already going
where it's going. You can use it. You're just having
(42:49):
it's just doing a side job. It's like high fiveingue
while it's walking by to where it was already headed.
You know, you're not doing too much with it now.
Of course damning it self, which is part of this
hydroelectric proposition. It does, It can wreak havoc on wildlife.
It doesn't come without the cost. But I think it's
(43:10):
it's safe to say that it's still on balance better
than mining and burning coal, which is going to be
hopefully human history will look back on that as a
phase and not a final fatal phase of the anthropasy. God. Yeah,
you mentioned you know how water rationing is already a thing.
(43:32):
Um like that. Usually we maybe see that in terms
of like when you're allowed to water your lawn, which
is already a problematic thing in and of itself, a
silly kind of vanity thing that the Americans have the
luxury of having this beautiful lawn that gets to suck
up all this water that you know, people in other
countries would kill to have a tiny, you know, thimble
(43:54):
full of um. But we're talking beyond that, right The
measures this is required would be like it wouldn't be
the honor system, or how would they even like track it?
Um is my question. Here's the deal where we keep
talking about that chain the Colorado River to Lake Powell,
down the Colorado River somewhere to Lake Mead, And the
issue now is Lake Powell releasing fewer gallons of water
(44:18):
in billions to go down the river to Lake Mead,
which is the other reservoir. So right now there's a proposal.
I think this is happening like in early May, so
we're recording this on Monday, May second. The results may
have come back from you know, the essentially the think
tanks of the governments of these very states coming together
and talking about this and getting you know, some kind
(44:40):
of solution across the table. But right now, the proposal
I'm gonna quote from the CNN article calls for holding
back the equivalent of forty two point six billion gallons
of water in Lake Powell, which means I'm gonna keep reading,
which means deeper cuts to the amount of water people
can use in Arizona, California, Colorado, out Nevada, New Mexico, Utah,
(45:02):
and Wyoming. And they've already they're already holding back. I've
got it in here somewhere, guys, But around billion gallons
of water in two has already been held back. So
they're already attempting to preserve the water levels in Lake
Powell by not releasing that's the question to Another controversial
(45:23):
part of this very damaging group project is figuring out
which industry gets water right, especially when we're talking about
very thirsty agricultural things, you know, like livestock or I
don't have the agricultural stats of the of the countries
of the states named right now, they're all still states,
(45:45):
not independent countries. But the big question is would have
cost benefits? Sometimes, too, write like the idea of saving
ecology or local wildlife, goes to the wayside very quickly
when people feel their lives or their jobs are on
the line. But then the next step of that, you know,
like the second gate that this a train walks through.
And this never ending story is the problem of whether
(46:08):
authorities prioritize those businesses and those industries or the people,
you know, like one of the reasons that droughts have
become so problematic. It's not just climate change. It's exacerbated
by this massive infrastructure of very thirsty things. Like you
can look up you can look up how much water
it takes to create one almond. I'm just saying almonds
(46:32):
because they're delicious and and Doqui was eating some earlier
off air, and you know, I'm back on my cash
show thing. But the if you look at it that way,
then you have to start saying, Okay, we're holding back
this much water, right because we need it for the
hydroelectric aspect of this damn to work. But then who
(46:54):
is losing that water? Losing that water? Then? In that regard,
is it like an industry? Is it is it a
a a group of people, a family of four? How
do you tell? I don't know how you would everybody
who wants water and lives in those states, everybody south
of the dam. Yeah, and Colorado and guess who wants water.
(47:17):
No one's immune from that. We need water. I just
spent three days at a music festival. I know what
it feels like to be dehydrated even a little bit,
and and it's bad. Like yoursels need that stuff to
like survive in the same way you need air. It's
just not as quickly palpable um. So this would absolutely
I mean, you know, not to always go to the
(47:38):
mad Max comparison. But that was an aqua aqua cola.
I mean, that's the resource that the warlord has control
over and is able to exert control over the population
by giving them a little bit of water here and
there and hoarding it over though. I mean, like it's
a fantasy film, but is it. I mean it could
you know, who controls the spice and all of that stuff,
(47:59):
I mean, it could getting that bad. I'm surprised they're
having been more you know, groups that are trying to
take control over those kinds of resources. You know, it's
a huge going that direction North Africa and the Gulf. No,
did you get to see the Stranger Things Kids band? Yeah?
It was good. Joe Yeah, yeah, it was super solid.
(48:20):
Now that the name of the band is Joe D
j o H. I forget the actor's name, but he
plays the He was the bully in the first season
and he gets cool. But um, he's god of sound like,
he's great, kind of sounded like Tam and Paula meets
Flaming Lips, lots of synths and vocoders, and it was
very I was impressed. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Excellent. Well,
you make a great point. Music festivals will not be
(48:41):
a thing if there is no water. Yeah, sorry, just
to follow up on that. You even realize what a
current sya water is when you're at the music festival
because people they're water stations, but people are still carrying
around the five dollar bottles of water, cans of water,
liquid death, which is the sponsor of the shaking the music,
because maybe the lines are too long, or they're like
(49:02):
really dehydrating they need it now, like, or they're just
lazy and don't feel like walking because that's how thirsty
they are, you know what I'm saying, Like you start
to see water as a currency when you get into
those kinds of situations. Uh, well, guys, we're at time here,
and time is the only thing we have right put
(49:23):
it hopefully, hopefully some water will make its way into
the Western United States in a big way, will be
a comeback. We'll make water great again. Set your rain
barrels out while you can where it's legal to do so,
because it's not legal anymore in all the places. And
if you want tips on how to survive in the
(49:44):
wild with UH, with minimal access to water or with
no water, first off of that ladder one you won't
last long, but you can always you can always write
out to me directly, UH four tips as someone who's
been through it. Not pretty, not fun, that's not good.
I was supposed to mention, man, not good. UM desalination
(50:05):
is one of the solutions to the water problem. When
you've got freshwater lakes that are running out, massive desalination projects.
There's one happening right now. Oh lord. I think the
name of the company is Poseidon, which is a great
name for a water company. But it was a proposed
desalination plant off the coast of San Diego, I believe,
(50:27):
but I think it seems like it might not be
moving forward. It's right now in debate and whether or
not the projects you move forward. But that's one of
the only ways we can fix this problem. And all
the coasts, all the places that have ubiquitous amounts of water,
a water level that's going to continue rising over the
next hundred years while we're still here. We could use
(50:48):
that water, turn it into potable stuff, and then drink
it and put it our along. Uh. We just need
a couple of billionaires, maybe someone who has the ability
to buy Twitter, to just be like, Man, I'm gonna
do desalination now, right. Also, there are countries that are
leading the way. I'm so glad you mentioned desalination. Uh,
Saudi Arabia like that is keeping the country alive in
(51:12):
a very real sense. Uh. There's also great work going on,
I mean throughout the Ghost the coast, the Gulf Coast,
u a e Quait Israel like they it's not out
of the realm of possibility that eventually other countries will
just have to start buying that technology from them. Oh
and they're m I T students that just made an
(51:34):
amazing desalination system the size of a suitcase. It's incredible.
It's not gonna help the problem that's on the level
we're speaking of right now, but man, as a like
portable desalination device come on, Oh and maybe just build
a bigger suitcase. Guys. Right there we go, that's the
American solution to the problem. But no, that's beautiful map
(51:56):
because now we're ending on a hopeful rather than a
dystopian note. So it's sort of technology and collective human
conscience racing against the consequences of the actions of previous generations. Yeah,
it's still dystopian. I'm sorry, it's well, we'll find a
(52:17):
portmanteau that it's dystopian. It's dystopian, hop dystopian. Well what
you know? What you know? It's not dystopian. You said
ghost and then coast right together, and my head just
went straight to space ghost and I'm happy there. So
uh all right, well that's well, well is it today, folks.
Thank you so much as always for tuning in. Join
(52:40):
us next week for more strange news. Join us later
on in this week when we're talking about any number
of disturbing tales, the stuff they don't want you to know,
and stay tuned for our upcoming weekly listener Male sect
that where we hear from my favorite part of the show.
You So how could I be a part of that?
May be asking, Well, we try to make it simple.
(53:02):
As long as the power is on and the internet
is connected. You can find us online. Find us on
the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram,
Conspiracy Stuff show well and eight three three std w
y t K for me. Just call it up and
(53:23):
leave a message. Now, yeah, you got three minutes. No, okay,
that's it. Give yourself a cool nickname. When you call in,
you get three minutes. Say whatever you want. Please let
us know if we can use your name and message
on the air. Uh, if you were in the cast
of Stranger Things and also have a band, we want
to hear from you. Oh. None. Other guy's got a band.
Finn Wilford has got a band called the Aure's like
(53:43):
four of them. I think there's four or five. Yeah,
but they're they're pretty good too. I mean, frankly, I
think Joe is a little a little more my speed.
But you know, you always hear that and you're like, oh,
it's gonna be like a celebrity vanity project. I always
like it when I'm proved wrong in surprise, So good job.
And I haven't really his name, Joe, Yeah, Joe curious
is name? There we go. Also, if you're not in
(54:06):
the Stranger Things cast. We want to hear from you
even more honestly than them, so give us a call.
If you don't want to do that, instead, send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(54:38):
Is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.