December 11, 2013 • 22 mins
Is there really an ancient, shadowy secret society running the world? If so, what's their endgame - and why hasn't anyone conclusively proven their existence? Join Ben and Matt as they look back on their Illuminati series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now came
at I'm gonna try something interesting with this to open
up our podcast. You ready, all right? Go with me
on this. In a world where less than one percent
(00:24):
the human population controls the futures, fates, and destiny of
the entire human race, what can one man do? So
that's like my film intro and then this, Yeah you like,
I'm I'm trying to figure out who would play the
protagonists in this movie about somebody fighting. The topic of
(00:45):
today's podcast, the Illuminati. Oh man? Uh? Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage. Yeah,
you know what? Not a bad pick because he could
go weird with it if he if he had to.
I feel like he has to go weird with stuff. Uh. Anyhow,
Welcome to the podcast. My name is Ben Bolan. Oh,
my name is Matt Frederick, and today we're here to
(01:07):
talk a little bit about the Illuminati, by far, one
of the most prevalent conspiracy theories. Um ever, really, Uh,
the the Illuminati is something that we have covered extensively
in our video show. I guess we have three three
part series on that. We officially have three, but there
is a fourth technical one on the Illuminati in the
(01:28):
music industry that you can find. Yes, great point, Matt,
and our series on the Illuminati covers a couple of
things that we won't rehash too much here. It covers
the what we know about the founding of the historical Illuminati.
It covers the rumors and conjecture about some sort of
secret past, Uh, what goes to the Illuminati in the
(01:51):
modern day, right, who that might be? And then it
asked some questions about the future now the music industry.
One was a is a surprise to me how how
prevalent that belief is. But let's just start with the facts.
We'll get weird to get crazy with it as we
go on, but let's start with the facts, Matt. What's
(02:12):
the historical Illuminati? So we do know there's this man
named Adam Wi Shot who in seventeen seventy six founded
a secret society called the Illuminati, and it's real. You
can look it up. He's real. And um, now, the
question is how much further did that society grow? Did
it become something bigger or was it a part of
(02:34):
something much older, right, This is this is where the
conspiracy theories start to come in. Yeah. Interesting side note,
his name in the order was allegedly brother Spartacus Nice.
So what did bro Spartacus have to do with any
of the historical rumors about the Illuminati? When he started
the very chapter there was also this rumor that he
(02:58):
in a way encouraged that the Illuminati was actually uh
secret society that was thousands of years old, and that
this society was secretly again guiding humanity towards towards something
or another. But we can fast forward past a lot
of this because a lot of those claims are explored
(03:20):
in our video series. What we wanted to talk about
today is, first, if there is something like the Illuminati
and it can be proven to exist, because that's the thing,
that's the thing that makes skeptics and people who believe
in the Illuminati bump heads often. Is this idea all right? First,
the most difficult to believe part of something like this, right,
(03:43):
would be, well, if there is one group of people
that are somehow controlling the world, then how can it
be a secret? How can there be absolutely no proof?
And one of the conspiratorial responses to that would be
that just proves how good they are. The proof is
that it's not there. I can see Nicolas Cage saying
that line. Right, yeah, but the but we we have
(04:06):
found some interesting things that might change people's minds. Here's
where here's where it gets weird. So we know that
we know that there's not really at this point any
hard proof that the the Illuminati as they're explored in
a lot of conspiracy theories or a lot of alternative history.
We know there's no solid, universally agreed on proof that
(04:28):
this group exists in the modern age. But what we
can prove is that there are a lot of extremely wealthy,
extremely powerful groups that exist, and in particular now those
groups are a lot of times corporations with controlled banks.
Um usually some kind of corporate entity, right, But it
(04:51):
could also be some sort of religious entity or religious affiliated,
religiously affiliated entity, for instance, the like church has Opus day. Uh.
There are there, of course, numerous incidents um or examples
rather in history of of groups that arose to uh
(05:13):
unknown power level, and we're able at some point in
history to exert control over something behind the curtain like
P two in Italy, right, propaganda do which was an
offshoot of the Freemasons. Um. But the thing is, when
when we talk about this there there are a couple
of ways to look at it. First, is it is
(05:34):
it kind of disappointing? Are we throwing cold water on
the idea, because what we're proposing is that secret societies
have existed, or secretive at least, and they continue to
wield some sort of influence over span of time, but
maybe not for all of human history. Or we can
look at it the second way, which I think is
(05:55):
the more realistic and frankly more frightening way, which is
that there's not one group of people controlling the world effectively,
there are multiple groups of people attempting to control the world,
which leads inevitably too horrible horrible things. Yeah, the conflict gets, uh,
(06:15):
let's say, ratcheted up when when the stakes are world control, right,
and we we know for instance that, um, it's funny.
There's a great article in uh Straight Dope, uh where
the you know, the guy at Straight Dope, Cecil Adams.
Someone asks him if there's any truth to the stories
about secret societies like the Illuminati, The Builderberg Council on
(06:38):
Foreign Relations trilateral commissions, so on, and uh, he goes
in his response, he says, you know what is crazy?
A secretive group that does wield a lot of influence
the n s A. Yeah, exactly, That's exactly what I
was thinking this whole time. Yeah, well, you hit the
nail on the head, my friend, because if you think
(06:59):
about the n ESA does have some of the superpowers
often ascribed to the Illuminati. But also, you know, it's
it's it's weird because it's human nature. Humans are gregarious
and cooperative and more than the sum of their parts.
So of course in human society, people with influence will
attempt to pull their powers to gain more influence. UM.
(07:24):
And at this point, again, it really depends on where
you fall in um, where you fall in the priorities
of the critical thinking exercise. Is it really to you?
Is the lack of proof of the quote unquote conspiratorial Illuminati? Uh?
Is that lack of proof proof in it's of of itself?
(07:45):
Or is the claim of a single secret society so
extraordinary that it requires just amazing, watertight evidence. It sounds
it's so weird. It sounds as though to me, let's say,
I'm gonna take it from the conspiratory stamp. Okay, Yeah,
it sounds to me as though the illumin audio is
some kind or at least the word is kind of
(08:05):
a smoke screen for a lot of these other very
powerful groups. It's almost the thing that you look at
instead of the real thing. Oh I see, okay, So
and and it's also kind of um just saying it
could be kind of a misdirection. And you're also saying
also pointing out that it functions as an umbrella term
of stuff of sorts right near a strawman in a way. Yeah. Yeah,
(08:29):
And maybe that is to the detriment of people who
do deserve to know more about uh secretive meetings that
can affect the course of history or your life as
an individual. One one thing if we look at like
a ven diagram, one thing that all secret society conspiracy
theories have in common is that they believe the goal
(08:52):
of the society is somehow to remove autonomy or agency
or serenity from nation states or individuals. And that's a
that's an understandable thing, and I'm putting it in in a
very base level. But maybe calling something illuminati is is oversimplifying,
maybe sensationalizing a little bit. But in future episodes when
(09:15):
we explore some of those other groups we just name dropped,
we're going to see that there can be um some
disturbing grains of truth uh in in these claims. Now,
we're not saying these people are necessarily half reptile, half
human creatures with some strange blood oath to I don't know,
(09:35):
make everybody like two and a half men or something.
That the goal the TV show I have no idea,
but but the goals that the ascribed goals in the specifics,
my point being, they can vary widely, and they can
also vary. They can vary widely in terms of content,
but they can also vary widely in terms of plausibility. Well, okay,
(09:56):
so I agreed. One of the things that we have
owned is that one of the best ways to exert
control is by controlling money, uh currency, sure, yes, and
also belief, like you said, with religion, controlling what what
a massive people believe is. It's highly important if you
(10:17):
want to control the world. But going back to the money,
sorry to go on the off four there we there's
this great Forbes article that we've been looking at, and
it's kind of old it's from two thousand eleven, but
and it's entitled The one and forty seven Companies that
Control Everything, and it's a study that was done by
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and it's
(10:40):
one of the one of the best micro reads that
I've done in a while. The actual study, which you
can find if you search for this online. It there's
a link inside this Forbes article to the actual study
in the big model and everything, and it explains to
their findings. So what they did in this study essentially
is that a they looked at forty three thousand and
(11:04):
sixty transnational corporations and then they started connecting the dots,
the share ownership dots here and they found that based
on their model, there's kind of a bow tie shape
and they found a dominant core right of these investment
companies that have steaks in each other and stakes somehow
(11:27):
uh into about of the wealth in this network of
forty three thousand huge corporations UM. And when you look
at the numbers, it's it's pretty distressing. Uh, seventy seven
thirty seven companies I believe control of that global wealth UM.
(11:49):
And then this was what's strange with this is that
some of the individuals in these companies may be serving
on multiple boards UM. And it's also it's also distressing
and surprising to think that, given just the size of
the world's economy, that the wealth would be concentrated so
(12:11):
much in a hundred and forty seven companies. Now the
top ones are going to your point, the top ones
are financial and interest, right like Barclays is number one,
at least it was at the time it was at
the time of this article. And some people might be
listening to us right now, Matt and seeing you guys
(12:33):
are exaggerating or that's that doesn't necessarily mean they have
great control over the world's economy. Are shills for the corporations, right,
or you guys are shills reasons? Yeah, but we're if
we're just looking at some of the facts here, we
do know that these We do know that some people
(12:53):
have rejected this study, most notably a guy named Eric Savitts,
who when he was writing UM with Forbes, he wrote
a retort uh claiming that these companies in the top
fifty list they're just investment companies. They are operating, so
that means that maybe they're just putting their money in
(13:15):
a lot of different pies so that they can diversify
and remain stable. Now, for for my money personally, this
it's still disturbing that there would be that kind of
inequality of control. But I do think that's a fair point,
because you know, the money that these companies have is
not necessarily money that they are directly managing. Right, Yeah,
(13:40):
that's true. It's tied to indicase a lot of this money,
so like, uh, like mutual funds exactly, hedge funds, mutual funds,
all that kind of stuff. So then but then another
Forbes writer Brennan cofey after who wrote that article, I
think it was Sabat's Yeah, Eric saviatts okay. So then
it's so great to kind of read through these articles
(14:01):
and fours of the different writers kind of shooting words
at each other. So then, uh, this other guy, Brinton Kofy, Right,
he's a contributor who it does say on here that
he works for someone else now, so I don't know
what that means as far as writing this article, but anyway,
he says that there are actually four companies inside this
(14:23):
massive list that was outlined in the one companies that
actually do exert a certain amount of control because, like
you said, all of that money, a lot of that
money is controlled by the indices. There's five percent of
it that is not that is that can be directly manipulated,
and that is by these four companies that actually have
(14:44):
an ability to to influence this money. McGraw hill, Northwestern Mutual,
c m E Group, and Barkley's because Barkley's purchased Lehman Brothers.
Uh what is it, They're Lehman Aggregate Bond Index. So
that's weird because most people in the United States probably
(15:04):
associate McGraw hill with textbooks. Yeah, that's that's exactly what
when it's weird, I imagine these textbooks publishers. Maybe that's
just the side hustle they own Standard and ah yeah, yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. So they own some of the indices.
And that's that's interesting because let's think about the numbers here.
(15:25):
We went from over forty three thousand transnational corporations to
seven hundred and thirty seven that control eighty percent of
global wealth in some way, to uh one and forty
seven it to four companies that exert some sort of
influence over those other hundred forty seven YEA of the
(15:48):
actively managed funds. And this is this is interesting because
at this level, the money at this level is amazing.
And going back to going back to your statement, which
I totally agree with about the way to influence society
directly or indirectly through finance. UM, it reminds me of
what was that old roths Rothschild attributed quote where it says,
(16:12):
give me control of the nation's money supply. I'm paraphrasing,
but it was something like, give me control of a
nation's money supply, and I don't care who's in office.
And that is in my opinion, whether or not that
is is an actual statement the guy made because Rothschild
family members are often misquoted, but whether or not he
(16:32):
actually said that, I think that is a profound point
and it's an absolutely true point. Controlling the money supply
is a way to control so much more. And um,
as we're recording this, we had just recorded a couple
of episodes on the gold Standard, which was an illuminating
experience for us. And uh, we hope that you check
(16:55):
out this video here. No met I gotta ask you
in the future when we cover other secret societies what's
one of the first ones you want to take a
crack at in our audio. I would like to hit
skull and Bones. Uh, particularly for the two thousand four election. Ah. Yes,
Skull and Bones uh as secretive, elite collegiate organization. It's
(17:20):
probably the most politically correct way to say and uh.
And then two thousand four election and it made some
weird waves in the media because both the both of
the candidates for president Democrat and Republican were members of
the Skull and Bones organization in college, and it made
and also part of their terms. They refused to speak
(17:42):
about it. Yes, both of them refused to speak about it. Well,
because it's a secret society. Come on, yeah, But if
you want to avoid if you want to avoid speculation,
if it's like in Hitchcock movies, you know where they
say one of the masterful things that Alfred Hitchcock did
is he never really showed the monster on screen all
the time. Right, So the monster that you create in
(18:02):
your mind with a lack of some sort of evidence
is is going to tend to be just terrifying. So
you mean kind of like the Illuminati, kind of like
the Illuminati. Nice way to bring it back around. Um,
and maybe that's why people are so upset. But let's
I'd like to end this episode with just naming some
(18:23):
of the craziest things we've heard about the Illuminati, like
craziest theories, and then inviting our listeners to respond and
do the same. Okay, that sounds great, all right, UM
to go first, Yeah, you go first. You've got a
good one, I'm sure. Well. I think one of my
favorite ones was that the the Illuminati as we think
of it today has its roots in the Brotherhood of
(18:43):
the Snake, which is an ancient Egyptian secret society based
on aliens that made human beings. Oh cool, kind of
an ancient aliens thing, I got you. Another one that
I had heard, uh, was that the Illumini attempts to
control society through pop music. Now we've done an episode
(19:06):
on this, but that it's specifically linked to um underground
pedophilia rings that for some reason. Yeah, and UM, we
do know now this is a bit dark, but we'll
we'll keep it appropriate, um for for families here. That
we do know that there have been in the past
some crazy sex scandals along that time along those lines
(19:30):
with involving powerful people. UM. I'm thinking, most notably about
the incidents in Belgium. But the that does that prove
that there's this huge secret society or does that prove
that they're that powerful? People can also just be really twisted,
messed up folks in their private lives. Yeah, I hope
(19:51):
to lean towards the ladder, but I don't know. Yeah
that maybe that's something we can explore in an audio podcast.
That's something those kinds of topics and allegations were stuff
that we can't really explore a video because we Yeah,
we couldn't show it to you tastefully, and I wouldn't
want to. I don't know. It's there's there's an integrity
(20:12):
there that I wouldn't want to. Yeah, that we don't
want to cross a line on. But okay, So another
crazy thing I heard about the Illuminati. I heard that
the Illuminati uh descended from secret hermetic orders and that
magic works, and that they practice working magic. Nice. Now
(20:36):
would that have anything to do with Bohemian Grove and
the creation of caros? That just completely different? Oh, nice,
Bohemian Grove, that's a good one. We have to cover
that too. Bohemian Grove ladies and gentlemen is a real thing.
You've probably heard of it, but if you haven't, go
check out our videos on the Bohemian Grove. Now, uh,
let's say, let's see, Uh, Matt, I'd like to return
(20:58):
to the Illuminati in the future. Um. I. I enjoyed
doing our series on it, but I felt like there
was so much more we could have explored. So what
I'd like to propose for our next recording is that
when we touch on the Illuminati again, let's go with, uh,
let's try to find some really specific instance of alleged
(21:20):
Illuminati meddling. What do you say? That sounds great? Alright,
so we're gonna go off and work on that. In
the meantime, we hope that you guys have enjoyed a
little bit of our show Notes episode on the Illuminati
video series. You can watch the series itself if you
go to test tube dot com, slash conspiracy Stuff or YouTube.
We're still conspiracy stuff there too, and there is a
(21:42):
full playlist on YouTube where you can just click one
button and watch the entire thing. And you can check
us out on Facebook. You can send us a tweet.
If you don't trust Facebook, you can drop us an
email directly. We are conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From
more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube
(22:06):
dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now came
at I'm gonna try something interesting with this to open
up our podcast. You ready, all right? Go with me
on this. In a world where less than one percent
(00:24):
the human population controls the futures, fates, and destiny of
the entire human race, what can one man do? So
that's like my film intro and then this, Yeah you like,
I'm I'm trying to figure out who would play the
protagonists in this movie about somebody fighting. The topic of
(00:45):
today's podcast, the Illuminati. Oh man? Uh? Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage. Yeah,
you know what? Not a bad pick because he could
go weird with it if he if he had to.
I feel like he has to go weird with stuff. Uh. Anyhow,
Welcome to the podcast. My name is Ben Bolan. Oh,
my name is Matt Frederick, and today we're here to
(01:07):
talk a little bit about the Illuminati, by far, one
of the most prevalent conspiracy theories. Um ever, really, Uh,
the the Illuminati is something that we have covered extensively
in our video show. I guess we have three three
part series on that. We officially have three, but there
is a fourth technical one on the Illuminati in the
(01:28):
music industry that you can find. Yes, great point, Matt,
and our series on the Illuminati covers a couple of
things that we won't rehash too much here. It covers
the what we know about the founding of the historical Illuminati.
It covers the rumors and conjecture about some sort of
secret past, Uh, what goes to the Illuminati in the
(01:51):
modern day, right, who that might be? And then it
asked some questions about the future now the music industry.
One was a is a surprise to me how how
prevalent that belief is. But let's just start with the facts.
We'll get weird to get crazy with it as we
go on, but let's start with the facts, Matt. What's
(02:12):
the historical Illuminati? So we do know there's this man
named Adam Wi Shot who in seventeen seventy six founded
a secret society called the Illuminati, and it's real. You
can look it up. He's real. And um, now, the
question is how much further did that society grow? Did
it become something bigger or was it a part of
(02:34):
something much older, right, This is this is where the
conspiracy theories start to come in. Yeah. Interesting side note,
his name in the order was allegedly brother Spartacus Nice.
So what did bro Spartacus have to do with any
of the historical rumors about the Illuminati? When he started
the very chapter there was also this rumor that he
(02:58):
in a way encouraged that the Illuminati was actually uh
secret society that was thousands of years old, and that
this society was secretly again guiding humanity towards towards something
or another. But we can fast forward past a lot
of this because a lot of those claims are explored
(03:20):
in our video series. What we wanted to talk about
today is, first, if there is something like the Illuminati
and it can be proven to exist, because that's the thing,
that's the thing that makes skeptics and people who believe
in the Illuminati bump heads often. Is this idea all right? First,
the most difficult to believe part of something like this, right,
(03:43):
would be, well, if there is one group of people
that are somehow controlling the world, then how can it
be a secret? How can there be absolutely no proof?
And one of the conspiratorial responses to that would be
that just proves how good they are. The proof is
that it's not there. I can see Nicolas Cage saying
that line. Right, yeah, but the but we we have
(04:06):
found some interesting things that might change people's minds. Here's
where here's where it gets weird. So we know that
we know that there's not really at this point any
hard proof that the the Illuminati as they're explored in
a lot of conspiracy theories or a lot of alternative history.
We know there's no solid, universally agreed on proof that
(04:28):
this group exists in the modern age. But what we
can prove is that there are a lot of extremely wealthy,
extremely powerful groups that exist, and in particular now those
groups are a lot of times corporations with controlled banks.
Um usually some kind of corporate entity, right, But it
(04:51):
could also be some sort of religious entity or religious affiliated,
religiously affiliated entity, for instance, the like church has Opus day. Uh.
There are there, of course, numerous incidents um or examples
rather in history of of groups that arose to uh
(05:13):
unknown power level, and we're able at some point in
history to exert control over something behind the curtain like
P two in Italy, right, propaganda do which was an
offshoot of the Freemasons. Um. But the thing is, when
when we talk about this there there are a couple
of ways to look at it. First, is it is
(05:34):
it kind of disappointing? Are we throwing cold water on
the idea, because what we're proposing is that secret societies
have existed, or secretive at least, and they continue to
wield some sort of influence over span of time, but
maybe not for all of human history. Or we can
look at it the second way, which I think is
(05:55):
the more realistic and frankly more frightening way, which is
that there's not one group of people controlling the world effectively,
there are multiple groups of people attempting to control the world,
which leads inevitably too horrible horrible things. Yeah, the conflict gets, uh,
(06:15):
let's say, ratcheted up when when the stakes are world control, right,
and we we know for instance that, um, it's funny.
There's a great article in uh Straight Dope, uh where
the you know, the guy at Straight Dope, Cecil Adams.
Someone asks him if there's any truth to the stories
about secret societies like the Illuminati, The Builderberg Council on
(06:38):
Foreign Relations trilateral commissions, so on, and uh, he goes
in his response, he says, you know what is crazy?
A secretive group that does wield a lot of influence
the n s A. Yeah, exactly, That's exactly what I
was thinking this whole time. Yeah, well, you hit the
nail on the head, my friend, because if you think
(06:59):
about the n ESA does have some of the superpowers
often ascribed to the Illuminati. But also, you know, it's
it's it's weird because it's human nature. Humans are gregarious
and cooperative and more than the sum of their parts.
So of course in human society, people with influence will
attempt to pull their powers to gain more influence. UM.
(07:24):
And at this point, again, it really depends on where
you fall in um, where you fall in the priorities
of the critical thinking exercise. Is it really to you?
Is the lack of proof of the quote unquote conspiratorial Illuminati? Uh?
Is that lack of proof proof in it's of of itself?
(07:45):
Or is the claim of a single secret society so
extraordinary that it requires just amazing, watertight evidence. It sounds
it's so weird. It sounds as though to me, let's say,
I'm gonna take it from the conspiratory stamp. Okay, Yeah,
it sounds to me as though the illumin audio is
some kind or at least the word is kind of
(08:05):
a smoke screen for a lot of these other very
powerful groups. It's almost the thing that you look at
instead of the real thing. Oh I see, okay, So
and and it's also kind of um just saying it
could be kind of a misdirection. And you're also saying
also pointing out that it functions as an umbrella term
of stuff of sorts right near a strawman in a way. Yeah. Yeah,
(08:29):
And maybe that is to the detriment of people who
do deserve to know more about uh secretive meetings that
can affect the course of history or your life as
an individual. One one thing if we look at like
a ven diagram, one thing that all secret society conspiracy
theories have in common is that they believe the goal
(08:52):
of the society is somehow to remove autonomy or agency
or serenity from nation states or individuals. And that's a
that's an understandable thing, and I'm putting it in in a
very base level. But maybe calling something illuminati is is oversimplifying,
maybe sensationalizing a little bit. But in future episodes when
(09:15):
we explore some of those other groups we just name dropped,
we're going to see that there can be um some
disturbing grains of truth uh in in these claims. Now,
we're not saying these people are necessarily half reptile, half
human creatures with some strange blood oath to I don't know,
(09:35):
make everybody like two and a half men or something.
That the goal the TV show I have no idea,
but but the goals that the ascribed goals in the specifics,
my point being, they can vary widely, and they can
also vary. They can vary widely in terms of content,
but they can also vary widely in terms of plausibility. Well, okay,
(09:56):
so I agreed. One of the things that we have
owned is that one of the best ways to exert
control is by controlling money, uh currency, sure, yes, and
also belief, like you said, with religion, controlling what what
a massive people believe is. It's highly important if you
(10:17):
want to control the world. But going back to the money,
sorry to go on the off four there we there's
this great Forbes article that we've been looking at, and
it's kind of old it's from two thousand eleven, but
and it's entitled The one and forty seven Companies that
Control Everything, and it's a study that was done by
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and it's
(10:40):
one of the one of the best micro reads that
I've done in a while. The actual study, which you
can find if you search for this online. It there's
a link inside this Forbes article to the actual study
in the big model and everything, and it explains to
their findings. So what they did in this study essentially
is that a they looked at forty three thousand and
(11:04):
sixty transnational corporations and then they started connecting the dots,
the share ownership dots here and they found that based
on their model, there's kind of a bow tie shape
and they found a dominant core right of these investment
companies that have steaks in each other and stakes somehow
(11:27):
uh into about of the wealth in this network of
forty three thousand huge corporations UM. And when you look
at the numbers, it's it's pretty distressing. Uh, seventy seven
thirty seven companies I believe control of that global wealth UM.
(11:49):
And then this was what's strange with this is that
some of the individuals in these companies may be serving
on multiple boards UM. And it's also it's also distressing
and surprising to think that, given just the size of
the world's economy, that the wealth would be concentrated so
(12:11):
much in a hundred and forty seven companies. Now the
top ones are going to your point, the top ones
are financial and interest, right like Barclays is number one,
at least it was at the time it was at
the time of this article. And some people might be
listening to us right now, Matt and seeing you guys
(12:33):
are exaggerating or that's that doesn't necessarily mean they have
great control over the world's economy. Are shills for the corporations, right,
or you guys are shills reasons? Yeah, but we're if
we're just looking at some of the facts here, we
do know that these We do know that some people
(12:53):
have rejected this study, most notably a guy named Eric Savitts,
who when he was writing UM with Forbes, he wrote
a retort uh claiming that these companies in the top
fifty list they're just investment companies. They are operating, so
that means that maybe they're just putting their money in
(13:15):
a lot of different pies so that they can diversify
and remain stable. Now, for for my money personally, this
it's still disturbing that there would be that kind of
inequality of control. But I do think that's a fair point,
because you know, the money that these companies have is
not necessarily money that they are directly managing. Right, Yeah,
(13:40):
that's true. It's tied to indicase a lot of this money,
so like, uh, like mutual funds exactly, hedge funds, mutual funds,
all that kind of stuff. So then but then another
Forbes writer Brennan cofey after who wrote that article, I
think it was Sabat's Yeah, Eric saviatts okay. So then
it's so great to kind of read through these articles
(14:01):
and fours of the different writers kind of shooting words
at each other. So then, uh, this other guy, Brinton Kofy, Right,
he's a contributor who it does say on here that
he works for someone else now, so I don't know
what that means as far as writing this article, but anyway,
he says that there are actually four companies inside this
(14:23):
massive list that was outlined in the one companies that
actually do exert a certain amount of control because, like
you said, all of that money, a lot of that
money is controlled by the indices. There's five percent of
it that is not that is that can be directly manipulated,
and that is by these four companies that actually have
(14:44):
an ability to to influence this money. McGraw hill, Northwestern Mutual,
c m E Group, and Barkley's because Barkley's purchased Lehman Brothers.
Uh what is it, They're Lehman Aggregate Bond Index. So
that's weird because most people in the United States probably
(15:04):
associate McGraw hill with textbooks. Yeah, that's that's exactly what
when it's weird, I imagine these textbooks publishers. Maybe that's
just the side hustle they own Standard and ah yeah, yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. So they own some of the indices.
And that's that's interesting because let's think about the numbers here.
(15:25):
We went from over forty three thousand transnational corporations to
seven hundred and thirty seven that control eighty percent of
global wealth in some way, to uh one and forty
seven it to four companies that exert some sort of
influence over those other hundred forty seven YEA of the
(15:48):
actively managed funds. And this is this is interesting because
at this level, the money at this level is amazing.
And going back to going back to your statement, which
I totally agree with about the way to influence society
directly or indirectly through finance. UM, it reminds me of
what was that old roths Rothschild attributed quote where it says,
(16:12):
give me control of the nation's money supply. I'm paraphrasing,
but it was something like, give me control of a
nation's money supply, and I don't care who's in office.
And that is in my opinion, whether or not that
is is an actual statement the guy made because Rothschild
family members are often misquoted, but whether or not he
(16:32):
actually said that, I think that is a profound point
and it's an absolutely true point. Controlling the money supply
is a way to control so much more. And um,
as we're recording this, we had just recorded a couple
of episodes on the gold Standard, which was an illuminating
experience for us. And uh, we hope that you check
(16:55):
out this video here. No met I gotta ask you
in the future when we cover other secret societies what's
one of the first ones you want to take a
crack at in our audio. I would like to hit
skull and Bones. Uh, particularly for the two thousand four election. Ah. Yes,
Skull and Bones uh as secretive, elite collegiate organization. It's
(17:20):
probably the most politically correct way to say and uh.
And then two thousand four election and it made some
weird waves in the media because both the both of
the candidates for president Democrat and Republican were members of
the Skull and Bones organization in college, and it made
and also part of their terms. They refused to speak
(17:42):
about it. Yes, both of them refused to speak about it. Well,
because it's a secret society. Come on, yeah, But if
you want to avoid if you want to avoid speculation,
if it's like in Hitchcock movies, you know where they
say one of the masterful things that Alfred Hitchcock did
is he never really showed the monster on screen all
the time. Right, So the monster that you create in
(18:02):
your mind with a lack of some sort of evidence
is is going to tend to be just terrifying. So
you mean kind of like the Illuminati, kind of like
the Illuminati. Nice way to bring it back around. Um,
and maybe that's why people are so upset. But let's
I'd like to end this episode with just naming some
(18:23):
of the craziest things we've heard about the Illuminati, like
craziest theories, and then inviting our listeners to respond and
do the same. Okay, that sounds great, all right, UM
to go first, Yeah, you go first. You've got a
good one, I'm sure. Well. I think one of my
favorite ones was that the the Illuminati as we think
of it today has its roots in the Brotherhood of
(18:43):
the Snake, which is an ancient Egyptian secret society based
on aliens that made human beings. Oh cool, kind of
an ancient aliens thing, I got you. Another one that
I had heard, uh, was that the Illumini attempts to
control society through pop music. Now we've done an episode
(19:06):
on this, but that it's specifically linked to um underground
pedophilia rings that for some reason. Yeah, and UM, we
do know now this is a bit dark, but we'll
we'll keep it appropriate, um for for families here. That
we do know that there have been in the past
some crazy sex scandals along that time along those lines
(19:30):
with involving powerful people. UM. I'm thinking, most notably about
the incidents in Belgium. But the that does that prove
that there's this huge secret society or does that prove
that they're that powerful? People can also just be really twisted,
messed up folks in their private lives. Yeah, I hope
(19:51):
to lean towards the ladder, but I don't know. Yeah
that maybe that's something we can explore in an audio podcast.
That's something those kinds of topics and allegations were stuff
that we can't really explore a video because we Yeah,
we couldn't show it to you tastefully, and I wouldn't
want to. I don't know. It's there's there's an integrity
(20:12):
there that I wouldn't want to. Yeah, that we don't
want to cross a line on. But okay, So another
crazy thing I heard about the Illuminati. I heard that
the Illuminati uh descended from secret hermetic orders and that
magic works, and that they practice working magic. Nice. Now
(20:36):
would that have anything to do with Bohemian Grove and
the creation of caros? That just completely different? Oh, nice,
Bohemian Grove, that's a good one. We have to cover
that too. Bohemian Grove ladies and gentlemen is a real thing.
You've probably heard of it, but if you haven't, go
check out our videos on the Bohemian Grove. Now, uh,
let's say, let's see, Uh, Matt, I'd like to return
(20:58):
to the Illuminati in the future. Um. I. I enjoyed
doing our series on it, but I felt like there
was so much more we could have explored. So what
I'd like to propose for our next recording is that
when we touch on the Illuminati again, let's go with, uh,
let's try to find some really specific instance of alleged
(21:20):
Illuminati meddling. What do you say? That sounds great? Alright,
so we're gonna go off and work on that. In
the meantime, we hope that you guys have enjoyed a
little bit of our show Notes episode on the Illuminati
video series. You can watch the series itself if you
go to test tube dot com, slash conspiracy Stuff or YouTube.
We're still conspiracy stuff there too, and there is a
(21:42):
full playlist on YouTube where you can just click one
button and watch the entire thing. And you can check
us out on Facebook. You can send us a tweet.
If you don't trust Facebook, you can drop us an
email directly. We are conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From
more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube
(22:06):
dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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