June 16, 2023 • 63 mins
Snake oil -- it's a strange phrase for all sorts of sham treatments and fake cures. But where did it come from? Why do so many hucksters conspire to sell false hope in the modern day? Join Ben and Matt as they dive deep into the history -- and deeply troubling future -- of snake oil.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Our colleague Noel is not here today, but we'll be
rejoining us shortly.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer. All mission control dec it. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know? Matt, Is this
one of the episodes where we do a disclaimer? Should
we do a.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, let's let's do a disclaimer. Don't you want me
to run it? Here we go disclaimer. No part of
the following episode contains medical advice. If you are seeking
treatment for a physical or psychological melody, contact a qualified professional.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Perfect. Okay, so we've got that out of the way.
Everybody buy our new radium pills. I know, I know,
I know. We just got a deal on old radium
pills and we're reselling them on TikTok and Instagram. We
are kidding. That is not true, and you should not
(01:27):
buy things just because you see someone excited about them
on social media. It's an old, old practice.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And don't buy things with radioactive materials. Not a good look.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's not the best look. It's a look that glows
in the dark sometimes. I mean, we're talking about snake
oil today, right, We're talking about things where a charismatic
authority figure tells you, Hey, trust me, the main stream
(02:00):
is lying to you. I'll let you in on the conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, man, you're in on the conspiracy and this stuff
I got right here. It's gonna make you stronger, thinner,
it's gonna cure you of that melody. As we said earlier.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Oh, you're drinking regular water. You don't have energized water.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Oh jeez, oh that's so familiar.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Do I need to explain, says the huckster. What energized
water is? Wow, you need a lot of help, and
for a reasonable fee, I can be the person who
helps you. I'll make you thinner, smarter, younger, faster. In
tonight's episode, we are exploring the concept of fake cures.
(02:49):
Over here in the US, this stuff is often called
snake oil. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Oh yeah, well, let's start with snake What the heck
is that it's a pretty great term. You should start
using it. If you don't use it in your everyday life,
it just means again, it's a fake cure. It's kind
of a stand in for the same thing, something a
substance that you either ingest, you apply to your skin,
you take it in some way, and it's supposed to
have curative effects for some problem, and really it's nothing.
(03:22):
It's the placebo effect made real.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Ooh, I love that you mentioned that part, because we
do know the placebo effect has an effect. As dumb
as that sounds, I gotta ask him, man, when I
was when I was learning about snake oil as actual
oil produced from snakes, I was surprised. I didn't know
(03:45):
that was a thing. Did you know that there is
genuine snake oil?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah? Ben, tell me what I'm wrong here, what I'm
getting wrong. My understanding is that you could actually use
snake oil from certain species, or at least it was
used traditionally to apply to like the outside of your
skin or something if you don't have an open wound,
because the effects of that neurotoxin would actually like numb
(04:11):
your skin. Maybe or maybe that's wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Oh, I don't know. I'm asking you, Matt, this is
this is the thing. You know, the last time I
try never to kill things like snakes or spiders, But
the last time I killed a snake, I wasn't thinking, ooh,
time to make some snake oil like like that did
not occur to me. And you know, you and I
(04:36):
have seen our fair share of serpents in the field.
We don't really think of them as a resource. And
it's weird, Like what you're pointing out absolutely makes sense.
You know, back in the day in Chinese traditional medicine,
I believe they used oil from water snakes to do
(04:58):
just what you're describing to some sort of ointment or
salve on joints, right, I mean, this would this would
reduce pain from things like arthritis and so on. But
maybe I think you're onto something now that you mention it.
I think it may have functioned as a local anesthetic. Perhaps.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Look, that's just that's maybe. I don't know where I'm
pulling that from, Ben, that's just in the ether I'm
pulling it in, And it just feels like something that
would function perhaps like Lydakane maybe does nowadays. Oh this
makes except again I think lydakin you can use on
the inside of your mouth and stuff. So maybe don't
do that with snake venom. But snake venom is a
(05:45):
fascinating thing. Maybe we can talk about that really quickly
in some of the research here Ben that you you
found and that we kept looking at. Here just snake venom.
You're talking about, what do you do with snakes if
you get a hold of some, if they're venomous, you
might be able to make some money because extracting the
venom from a venom of snake can help by creating
(06:08):
anti venom. Except gosh, man, I didn't know how much
money was in anti venom.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's a huge deal, right, it's crazy. You can also
look on I guess YouTube, if we're being honest, look
up milking cobras or something like that, and there's there's
this entire industry. Yeah, yeah, Matt, describe it.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
You got it. It's almost hypnotic the way you can
watch the two fangs kind of move separately as it
goes into the contraption that's actually pulling the venom out
of the or it is. It's literally milking the venom
out of the fangs of these things. It's brilliant. But
there's Uh, there's another thing I just learned. It's a
(06:51):
type of anti venom that's being produced somehow through horses. Gosh,
I can't think of it completely. Oh no, it's right here.
It's called anavip.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Right, which is the it's Is it the same process
as the sheep injection to harvest antibodies?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yes, I think it's very similar, but it's it's derived
quote from the blood of horses immunized with the venom
from like specific snakes.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Pretty nuts, right, So there is something to snake oil,
at least in terms of venom from venomous reptiles. And again, yes,
there is a difference between poisonous and venomous. Huh. So Look,
as we always say, people of the past, of days
(07:45):
of yore, were just as intelligent or unintelligent as people
in the modern day. It worked with the information they had,
you know. I read a fascinating account was able to
corroborate this too, across a couple of different academic papers.
When the Chinese American population blossomed in the United States,
(08:08):
people from China brought over traditional medicinal practices with them,
and that's where we get the idea of snake oil
being rubbed on human extremities on the elbows or the weenness,
if you want to use the technical term. And and
then the West learned of anti venom technology all of
(08:30):
a sudden. Snake oil was like crypto. It sounded really good.
You had never experienced it, likely in the eighteen hundreds,
but you had heard about it. And if someone comes
into town and they're selling authentic snake oil, right, and
they're branding it with something from you First Nations or
(08:51):
indigenous peoples, or they're branding it with some sort of
like yellow peril, racist Asian stuff, then you might look
at the little wagon and say, this guy's legit. He's
gonna help me with my brain fever or my dropsias
or oh handedness.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Definitely it's the brand new snake oil. Olives.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
We got to talk about the history, right, Why did
snake oil become? Like you said, Matt, the catch all
phrase for fake medicine?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Oh, Ben, you found this. It comes from the late
eighteen hundreds when a retired cowboy decided he was going
to move on mosey on down to another pasture. His
name's Clark Stanley and he has street name. What was it?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
The rattle snake King. He beat the Tiger King, but
unfortunately he was he was alive well before the dawn
of Netflix specials. He claimed he had spent I think
it was two years. He's most often voted as saying
he's spent two years with Hope Spiritual Leaders, and they
(10:10):
taught him the secret of snake oil. So he bottled
this up and he sold it. It was called Snake
Oil Liniment, and he made a lot of money off
of this stuff until like nineteen oh seven to nineteen sixteen,
(10:31):
things were things were getting rough for him because you know,
you can only sell a fake cure for so long
before the people that survive your fake cure start asking
why it doesn't work?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Well, well yeah, or they're like, man, this works perfectly.
I survived, right enough, there's gonna be enough of that.
The people who don't survive don't write reviews. Maybe their
family does though, right. That's why it could be popular
and function for a long time, especially if you're dealing
in local markets, and if you're a traveling salesman, you're
(11:08):
only in town to make enough people angry for long
enough to then move on and do it again. But yeah,
in nineteen sixteen, the US government finally came down and
they said, oh right, mister cowboy rattlesnake King guy, what's
inside this here bottle? And what if they find no
medicinal properties? And they also found, oh, no snake oil.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, like, no ingredients from any sort of snake at all,
no snake poop, no eggshells from snakes. No, like no
snake legs, which aren't really a thing.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
But Kennecker, that would be something that would be something
snake legs, old snake legs.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
That's actually that feels like a good street name. That's weird,
weird one. So they levied a penalty against this guy,
against our former cowboy Stanley aka the Rattlesnake King, and
Uncle Sam said, you gotta admit that you were wrong.
(12:16):
You got a pony up twenty dollars. That was about
five hundred bucks in twenty twenty three money. But again,
the snake oil in the US, the reason people call
bull yours snake oil. The guy who invented it didn't
even bother to put snake ingredients in his concoction. And
(12:41):
that's funny.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, that's for money, and that's why we have snake oil.
You're welcome, right.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I mean, also, there's no evidence that Stanley personally believed
in the thing he was selling. It does appear to
be a grift it. It does not appear that he
genuinely believed in some sort of medical efficacy for this
stuff he was selling. And as a result, now snake
(13:15):
oil is associated with grifting in some darkly hilarious ways.
But Matt, why is snake oil dangerous?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Snake oil is extremely dangerous because not only can taking
something that you believe is curing you of an ailment,
it doesn't actually help your ailment whatsoever. So you may
just die from that original ailment or become even sicker
and sicker believing that you're actually curing yourself in some
way or aiding in what you're suffering from. But the
(13:48):
second biggest problem with snake oil treatments is that sometimes
and we're going to talk about it in today's episode,
sometimes that substance, whatever it is that supposed to be
a cure all or a fix for the one thing,
it can cause other problems, sometimes even worse than the
ones that were from your originating disease or you know,
(14:10):
whatever it is that's troubling you in the beginning. And overdoses,
Oh my god, overdoses on substances are such a thing
we're going to get into.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Mm. Yeah. And in the US and in other countries
that don't have a developed healthcare infrastructure, right like in
the US, and other places that do not function the
way a developed country does with healthcare, people become frightened
(14:38):
by the high price of going to the doctor, right
of seeking treatment of some sort. They're thrown out in
the cold, you know what I mean, And they're searching
for alternative solutions. They're asking themselves what would I not
do to save my life? Or more often, what would
(14:59):
I not do to save the life of someone I love.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
This is.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Why the FDA exists, the Food and Drug Administration, I mean,
regardless of political leanings, the US public increasingly agreed on
one thing. Back in the day. They said, all right,
if we go and buy something, it should be the
thing we thought we were buying. You know, no mystery
(15:29):
boxes or cans at the grocery store. No more ground
beef with human fingers. Is that a hot take?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's a great idea. Theoretically, the FDA,
the Food and Drug Administration, is one of the best
ideas humans have had. Really, honestly, let's know what we're doing,
Let's know what we're buying, ingesting, and using as medical treatments.
Let's just figure it out and well. And I think
(15:57):
maybe even the better underlying concept of the FDA is
to create a an infrastructure, an organization, a group of
specialists and experts that you can trust. You can put
your trust in them, because when they say something is
in this product, it is definitely in that product or not.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I like that or not. At the end, it is
definitely in this product or not.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
There's problems. There's real problems.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, agreed. It's so weird too, the way that the
way that literature can move action at least back then,
you know. One of the primary motivating factors for the
creation of the FDA was a book, a quite disturbing
book about stockyards in Chicago. It was called The Jungle,
(16:49):
written by a guy named Upton Sinclair, and it shed
a lot of light on things people would rather not
think about, you know what I mean. And anyway, Okay,
it's meat production, right, yes, in this case it's meat production.
And this led to the creation of the FDA, attempting
(17:15):
to keep consumer goods safe until you know, lobbying forces
buy them out, and we could say that's the end
of griffs. But fellow conspiracy realist, what would you say
if Matt and I told you that these griffs panaceas
no stroms. They're called sometimes snake oils. They continue and
(17:40):
escalate in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
They continue. You say, no, wait, hold on, let's take
a quick word from our sponsor and hear about some
fully FDA approved products.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Here's where it gets crazy, all right, snake oil is
an insult? Right If someone says what kind of snake
oil are you selling here? They don't mean it as
a compliment.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Right, Usually not, it's usually well, unless it's essential snake oil. Now,
if it's essential snake oil, right, you can probably trust
and use it and it'll work. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
If you're an anti venom laboratory and you say what
kind of snake oil are you selling here? You know
you might not mean it as an insult. And they
they're probably the most defensive people about that. They're probably
the people most likely to say, this is not snake oil, sir,
(18:48):
this is anti venom.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, this is asp asp extract, this is cobra contra.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
All right, sure, hire us to name your weird drugs.
This stuff is Another iteration of this is the idea
of patent medicine, which continues today. Patent medicine real thing
over the counter remedies for usually minor medical situations. What
(19:25):
we mean by over the counter is you don't need
a prescription. It's not like some sort of powerful psychiatric
drug or physically addictive drug that requires a physician to
check in with you. It's like you got a cold, right,
you got a headache. You know, you got some aches
(19:47):
and pains in your joints, and you just don't have
a snake handy for the oil.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Well, it's let's give an example, Ben and correct me
if I'm wrong here. But I think a good example
of a patent medicine is quinine. Maybe, like it's a
substance that was used for medicinal purposes, and it was
like if you created something with quinine back in the day,
a tonic and the tonic water these days that we
(20:13):
consume you you could patent that, right, and now you
can sell it.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah, And the idea of patent medicine or patent in
general goes back to European monarchies, where a monarch or
a court administration would issue something called a letter's patent,
which would coside a product or service. So it could
(20:41):
be medicine, but it could also be we like the
way this guy makes shoes, or we like the way
this lady makes lace. They're our official cosined person, which
means which means that if you are a grifter, if
you are selling a fake medicine, a medicine that does
(21:02):
not do what it purports to do, you no longer
have to convince the public. You just have to convince
the queen or the king or the duke or whomever. Right,
I know, sorry almost, Yeah, you found that's very kind.
Uh So, so look, this is also the stuff that
(21:26):
pioneered advertising, right this the folks who were whether they
were on a wagon or whether they were out in
the town square, waving a scroll with a little wax
mark on it. What are those gold you know what
I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Signed with a seal?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
What do you mean a seal? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, like
a like a seal of some sort of authoritative approval. Yes,
and they're waving it and they're going, hey, you know,
the king likes this the low local authority figure tells
me this is one hundred percent awesome. It's stopping the plague.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Oh yeah, really, if you put yourself in that position.
Let's say you're on the side of a street it's
the eighteen hundreds, you're moving towards the nineteen hundreds, and
you know, you see a I guess it would be
like a carriage, but it's not really a carriage. It's
a horse with a buggy of some sort in the back, right,
and it's just strolling through. It stops in place, the
(22:27):
person gets out, opens up a few flaps on the thing,
and on those flaps there are signs that say things
like this that have the seal, they have that kind
of thing. It's like, it's not the first example of signage,
right and that kind of pr perhaps, but it is.
It's probably one of the biggest innovations that occur. Because
(22:48):
you've got so many people selling so many different things,
they're coming up with different kinds of signs, different kinds
of tactics to convince you that their medicine is better
than the other guys. It's pretty I don't know, it's
it's kind of it's messed up when you think about
what was actually happening. But I think maybe I just
love that humans have such a competitive nature for that
(23:09):
kind of thing that it ends up developing into this
huge the whole business of marketing and pr and all
that stuff. You can just see the threads of it
from this one thing.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Oh sure, Yeah, And I'm sure they got pretty I'm
sure they became pretty insidious with stuff, you know, like
there would be someone like doctor peppin jumps guaranteed patent
pending foot care tonic which has one hundred percent no
(23:43):
human urine in the bottle, unlike doctor you know, Jubbin'
PEPs over in the next town.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yes, right now, no one's peed in the bottles.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
They're just they're they're making these range accusations.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
You know, now beeing on the bottles, that's a whole
different thing, but not in that bottle.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
That's how you cure the you know, let's how you
cure the glass anyway. So, uh so, look, we're talking
about these days of yr in which people were again
working with the information they had, and they were just
as smart as anyone listening tonight. They were not able
(24:27):
to hop on a phone, to hop on a computer,
they were not able to contact an expert at the
very moment they wanted answers, and so, Matt, we would
think when we armed with all the information of the
world at our fingertips, people would be a bit more uh,
(24:49):
a bit more skeptical, a bit less credulous, you.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Know, right, yeah, yeah, you might think that, I don't.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Know, sure, oh god, yeah yeah. Unfortunately, it appears that
in a world of endless information and endless access to information,
the conspiratorial genre of snake oil grifting is thriving. It
(25:20):
is a golden age of selling people bull and I
am not joking. We are not joking here. There might
be someone selling bullpoop. Oh dear, you know, for like
a vague unease or for or for you know, are
(25:41):
you worried about your children being born with more than
five fingers on each hand? Take doctor Awkwards patented polydactyl
prevention potion.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Oh man, I love the piece. Thank you, Ben. Well,
you're you're on the money here, Ben, because we talk
about our social media bubbles all the time, and your
social media bubble is not just the people you follow
in the types of videos that you you know, stay
on for a longer amount of time on TikTok or
Instagram or whatever. Your social media bubble is also the
(26:17):
ads that get served to you. And sometimes those ads
aren't just you know, a company that paid money in
order for this ad to show up on your social
media page. Often it's somebody promoting something, right, which it
means we're all at risk at any time from having
(26:37):
somebody we like or somebody we think we like promoting
something to us that may not be fully above board.
And maybe they're that person who's promoting it isn't even aware.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, and your algorithm knows it. Yes, your algorithm is.
Everybody should know this immediately. Your algorithm is weaponized against you,
and it doesn't matter who you are, and if you're
on there, it is weaponized with the idea of enticing
you to consume further right to participate in the economy.
(27:14):
And the algorithm knows no morality anymore than any other
kind of any other kind of technology. That's why if
you are in heartbreaking situations like you have a loved
one with a terminal or chronic condition, right, or you
yourself have a chronic condition, you will be inundated with
(27:39):
modern day snake oil. We're gonna Matt, you and I
talked about this off air. We do have to flip
the tone a bit. We have to go toward a
very difficult thing. Fake cancer cures are so common.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
They're so common becase because there's a desperation that comes
with yourself or a family member being diagnosed with cancer,
no matter what cancer it is, no matter where it
is in the body, there's a desperation that is born,
right and it grows because often, you know, using Western medicines,
(28:20):
cures for cancer, or treatments, let's say, of cancer often
take a long time, are brutal on the body, and
don't work all the time. Sometimes they do, but not
all the time. And when something isn't working like that
for especially for a long enough time, or maybe you
don't even have access to that type of treatment because
(28:41):
you either can't afford it right, or it's you're in
a stage that's too late to be treated. In those ways,
you are going to seek anything that could potentially help, right,
And people have historically preyed on that because cancer has
been with us for a long time, and the desire
to make money has been around for a long time.
(29:03):
And sometimes when you can throw away those morals. It
becomes a pretty pretty easy answer of yeah, I'm going
to at least try to make money in this way,
not us or not. I'm just saying that's where the
desire comes from. For somebody who's going to sell a
cancer cure because they know about the desperation.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
And for people who are combating a chronic or terminal
medical condition like cancer. Right then you get to a
point where you say, well, I'll try whatever, Yes, as
long as I know it won't kill me, or you know,
in the darker TikTok TikTok moments of mortality, I'm dying anyway,
(29:46):
why don't I give this a go? And predators are
aware of that. Fake cancer cures are so common that
the FDA has dedicated page addressing the issue. They say, look,
don't mess with something unless the FDA has approved it,
unless there is some sort of clearance or green light
(30:09):
where we can tell you this thing won't actually kill you.
And they know that they are losing the battle. They
cannot catch every falling sparrow of the grift. There's a
long quote. We could probably skip a lot of it,
but they talk about bogus cancer treatments and they say,
(30:29):
it includes pills, capsules, powders, creams, teas, oils, and treatment
kits that are often advertised assh natural treatments. And it's
funny that the FDA just side note, Maad, it's funny
that the FDA sayssh natural because, as we talked about
(30:52):
in some explorations of grocery store wording natural doesn't mean anything.
You can say all natural ingredients?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
What what is unnatural?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
What is what is unnatural?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Just does it mean you used a chemical process to
make something? Well, are those chemicals natural? Did you make
all of those chemicals on your own? Or the molecules
that formed those things?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
You know? Like it?
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You can, I guess from a legal standpoint, it's really
strange to think about the word natural because because literally
everything that we could ever have access to is in
some way natural.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's all it's all derived from the same elements on
the same periodic table, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, hey, let's let's give a quick example
bend of from that FDA website, just super fast. It's
at the very bottom of that page if you scroll
all the way down, they talk about this person hairy
m Hawxie who quote had no medical training, but he
made millions of dollars hawking they call it quack cancer
(32:08):
cures again to desperate patients for more than three decades, wow.
And he was selling them into the nineteen fifties. So
it's not like it was way way long ago. Maybe
your parents or your grandparents, you know, saw ads for
this stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
And you know what, Matt, to add to that, there
might be some of us listening this evening who have
a problem with the phrase quack doctors. He may feel
that we are being anti duck and we're here to
tell you that ducks are absolute pieces of shit, every
(32:47):
single one. That's the best they can do is be eaten.
They reproduce in a horrific, non consensual way. Ducks are terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And they are delicious. So I guess you know, win win.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
That was for Noel that the guy hates birds, So
we got a there's one bird we can all agree on.
It's just a terrible, terrible bird. So quack quack. These
people are selling. They're selling false hope, you know. And
this example that you mentioned here that is terrifying because
(33:32):
it's capitalizing on a lack of information and it's capitalizing
on a very human desire to not die.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Right, Yeah, Well, and in Hawxy's case, it was an
herbal extract concoction of some sort, but it was labeled
as an herbal cancer treatment, you know, in that type.
And that's what we're talking about here. Just why it's
so dangerous because it sounds great and it's in what
appears to be a medicinal package. So let's at least
(34:09):
give it a try for a while, honey.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
And there's nothing there's nothing wrong with herbal medicine, with
herbal supplements. You know, sometimes people with chronic conditions may
start taking some regimen of treatments and they will feel
better because their body is now getting access to stuff
their body needed anyway for its regularly scheduled programming. Right,
(34:36):
if you're human, you need vitamin C. And if you
don't have that, you eat vitamin C. You know, maybe
your cancer isn't God, but your teeth aren't loose in
your mouth anymore because you no longer have scurvy.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Oh man, score, But Ben, what happens if instead of
just herbal supplements, there's bad stuff in the treatment.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
No, that's the thing. That's what the FDA is worried about.
I wish we were still a video show so everybody
could see Matt the way you the way you pose
this stuck.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And gave it a good scrip.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I mean, so the Yeah, this is the problem. This
is what the FDA is most immediately concerned about. This
is what most medical professionals are immediately concerned about. If
you take some Farfignugan blue sky placebo, then you may
(35:38):
experience the placebo effect, which is real, but not enough
of a not enough of a prime mover to save
you from something like lymphoma. Right. Placebo effect israel It
does have measurable efficacy. But if you're taking something that
(35:59):
does doesn't harm you, doesn't help you, that's a world
of difference from taking something that does include harmful ingredients.
You know, we talked about this all the time. One
of the most successful dudes in all of Chinese history
died because he ate a ton of mercury, not literally
(36:19):
a ton, but like a lot of mercury for a
person to eat, which is any amount of mercury.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, because he thought he was going to turn into
a cyborg. Right, Oh wait, no, it was it was
just it was thought to be good and part of
living a longer life, perhaps even attaining immortality.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Mm hmm. Spoiler, he's either still recovering or he is dead.
It's a longer recovery. Or people expose themselves to radiation.
For centuries, people have said, you know what your problem is.
You got too much blood.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Your humors are all off, Your.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Humors are all off. You're sad because you're melancholic. All right, anyway,
let's let's cut you open. Uh uh, blood's so weird anyway.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Oh wait, yeah, Ben, what about uh? What about poop?
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Oh, poop? Yeah, poop's the new hot thing.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Well it was because it was again in the thought
for a long time there you need to let some
of the blood out, right to get your body back
into the right balance. Well maybe it's because all the
bad toxins and things are in your gut and in
your poop, or the bad stuff in your poop is
inside your body, so we need to get the poop out.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Your body, yes, and put some better poop inside. About
the poop transplants, it's a real thing.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
But yeah, that's a newer Back then, it was just
anima's right, They just it wass were like a cure.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Right. Uh, you know you seem depressed. Let's put some
yogurt up your butt, you know what I mean and
check back in shout out Kellogg. Yeah, absolutely right. Oh,
tobacco smoke they used as well. People were again working
with the information they had. Not all of them were rifters,
some of them sincerely believed in it. But the difference
(38:23):
between those folks and actual medical pioneers is that in
every single case, the actual medical pioneers created or discovered
things that are still used today. There's a there's a
reason you don't have a Nesta cobras at home, and
(38:45):
you know you're not slapping them on your knee every
day or something like that.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Oh, very true.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I don't know. Maybe someone is, yeah, maybe someone's listening
right now and they're you know, they're they're holding one
of their cobras and they're injecting the venom from the
cobra straight into their kneecap and they're going, these guys,
these guys don't get it.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Why is my knee turning all black and smells of almonds?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Right? So the issue is this applies to pets as well.
People also go for alternative care when they have a
pet that needs help, especially if you have an elderly pet,
and the veterinarian is saying there's nothing we can do,
or we can ease the pain, et cetera, et cetera,
(39:38):
et cetera, and he gets weirder and weirder and weirder.
You know, can water riddle me this, Matt. Can water
be better if someone meditates over it for a while?
Oh gosh, I know that's such.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
A tough one, because I think by now we've all
seen the videos, see the report, or like a bunch
of reporting that was done on you. Remember the water.
I can't remember the fellow's name, but he spoke really sweetly,
said nice things to some water and put it in
his fridge, and then yelled and cursed at his other
(40:16):
water and put it in the fridge. And then the
stuff that he cursed at became diseased and horrible. But
the water that he complimented and was kind to was
pure as anything you could ever wish. You know, I
never was able to prove personally that that was fake,
but it certainly feels pretty fake. To me.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Well yeah, I mean, we would have to do the
experiment ourselves, right, and also again to the excellent point
you made about the placebo effect. We have an episode
coming out soon called Our Vibes Real, and please listen
to it. It may be a rare positive experience on
(41:03):
stuff they don't want you to know. But I think
of Matt. I think of the idea here being that
if all other given variables are equal, then it's cool
to be good. Right, So it doesn't necessarily matter whether
the water hears you, or whether your plants hear you,
(41:26):
et cetera, et cetera. It matters to your mind, to
your cognitive internal mechanisms, that you are presenting what you
see as a positive aspect in the world.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yes, no, you're right, And it matters if your flock
believes that you praying over the water somehow makes it
holy right, Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Oh my gosh, nailed it home run. Yeah, oh man,
in another world we are very strange. Tell evangelists. It does.
But it also goes wrong. Right. Can electromagnetic treatments, for instance,
cure HIV. Can sexual congress with people who are virgins
(42:16):
cure sexually transmitted diseases? The answer is no, Yeah, it's
been propagated. It's quite dark. Back in the early two thousands,
former South African president Thabo Becke claimed that HIV did
not cause AIDS proposed a number of purported cures and
(42:39):
treatments for the condition. But also in many countries, for
some time, there was this belief that if you had HIV,
if you had contracted the virus, you would be able
to somehow cleanse yourself of it by having intimate contact
(43:00):
with someone who had never had sexual contact before, and
it led to some unclean activities.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah cheese, Uh, okay, I'm done. Good night, everybody. That's
so dark cheese.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Okay, yeah, that's terrible, but that's steak oil again. And
we see the real world damage this sort of stuff
can create. I mean, okay, people like to crack on
South Africa, right, people like to crack on other countries.
Imagine then, fellow conspiracy realist, imagine, if you will, your
(43:42):
president touting a fake cure for a serious, potentially deadly condition. Crazy.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Okay, which one are you talking about? Because I know
what was the stuff? It was, President Donald Trump. It
was right as the pandemic was hitting its height, and
(44:10):
there was something it wasn't ivermectin. That was a whole
other thing.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Hydroxychloricquin that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
That's what it was.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, well, yes.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Because it actually can do good, just not to cure
the COVID nineteen infection, right, Ben, Do you remember what
it was used for, like what the actual substance was
used for.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah. Man, it's like you set up earlier in tonight's show,
this substance was also an anti malaria drug.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Oh wow, So yeah, it can kill the malaria, right,
and maybe it can kill this one. And again, the
logic is there, right, the potential for something happening theoretically
is there. It's just malaria and this virus are very
different things.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, that's true, that's absolutely true. And you know, we
got very dark here. We're talking about the importance of
recognizing these grifts, these conspiracies against the desperate Matt. I
suggest to you that we take a break for a
word from our sponsors, and then maybe we end with
some fun stuff, some quack medicine of yesteryear. Again, ducks
(45:30):
are horrible.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
And we've returned and we're going to push this one
more time. You are not stupid. We are not stupid. Collectively,
humans are not stupid. We get scared sometimes, we get
a little desperate sometimes, and we'll do anything to help
ourselves and others many times. And that's that's really what
(45:59):
this whole episode of is about. That's what snake oil is about.
It's about searching for a solution. Give me something concrete
that I can either give to myself or somebody I love.
They can help the problem. And I guess that's why
it's so scary. Again. People are so down to jump
on that fear you've got roiling around inside you so
(46:21):
that they can make a buck.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
And sometimes people don't understand what they are selling. Let's take,
for example, opium opium.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Let's not take opium, but let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Let's talk about opium. Opium so popular that when the
very prosperous Chinese government refuse to buy opium, the British
invaded not once, but twice, because that's all they had
to sell. People loved opium. McK mun's elixir of opium
(46:58):
was this thing mixed with alcohol, and it was promising
that it would fix quote nervous irritability in adults and
children alike. Is your kid too vocal? Why not give
them make muns elixir of opium and make that gay
(47:20):
go to bed. Also, hey, what if you're not nervous
and irritable? What if you have rabies or tetanus? Make muns.
Elixir of opium will make you feel less bad about
it at least is.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Your rabies giving you nervous irritability? Are you experiencing? Oh
it's a hysteria, that age old problem of hysteria. The opium, apparently,
is your fix.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Opium is your fix for being a woman in society. Yep, right, okay, great,
And then we talked about blood. This one has some
scientific validity as plasma transfers. There's a some quite fascinating
science and quite unethical science going on with the idea
(48:11):
of prolonging quality of life through certain types of blood transfusions.
But back in the late eighteen hundreds, people were consuming
non human blood in hopes of revitalizing their general well being.
And Matt, you and Paul and I were talking about
(48:32):
this when off air before we recorded. I know we're
running a little long, but we have to talk about
this ad right.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, we do. I don't even know how
to begin with this thing. Is is it pronounced bovnine?
Is that how you would pronounce it?
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, I was thinking bovnine.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Okay, but that sounds medicinal beovnine. Should we just should
we do the poem? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Do the poem. The poem's epic can do like a
voice with a lot of gravitas, like real Ozmandia stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Okay, let's see what I can do. Look on me
in my lassitude, reclining, my nerveless body, languid, pale and lean.
Now hold me up to where the light is shining,
and mark the magic power of Bovinine.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Sautiful.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So in this ad of how would you describe it?
Ben uh Matt, I.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Would say it's a lady reclining. She's by a window.
She's reclining. She has a nightstand or a table stand
by the side of her chair, and there are two
glasses by the side of the chair, and there's a
larger bottle and it is Bovanine or bovnine. And in
(50:03):
the first image her eyes are closed.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Oh yes, but if you hold it up to the light,
just as the poem suggests, you can see that her
eyes are in fact open. And there's a giant cow
in the back. And guess what it says? My life
was saved by bovanine and uh, what is it that's
in bova nine ben.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Oh it's uh, it's blood from cows and extract cattle.
Uh gunk, you know nine, not sperm that would be
too expensive. Uh, it's it's the blood and like extracts
and fats and stuff. Uh. And also if you were
(50:48):
walking around and you saw this at your local grocer,
you would probably see stuff like Alan's Cocaine tablets. Oh
of course, Yeah, the number one cure for.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Ah got some throat troubles cocaine.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Right, Oh, I have a headache and fifty cents. There's
a solution here. It's Allan's cocaine tablets. This is pretty nuts.
We know that cocaine or CoA is still pretty popular
(51:26):
with human beings today, but now people are more aware
of the damaging effects that sort of substance can have.
Back in the day, they weren't. They were aware that
hay fever sucked, you know what I mean? So why
not tackle that one first?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah? Well, and the FDA finally finally came along and said, hey, guys,
cocaine is out. But you know what was also popular
back in the cocaine hey days, a well thing called caffeine,
and it came in pill form and it was a
drug and upper just like cocaine was. But caffeine is
(52:07):
still very much in the free market. As he drinks
his Monster Energy drink and Cheer's coffee.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Yeah, I'm drinking. I always drink iced coffee out of
out of Mason jars apparently, but I guarantee it's one
hundred percent coffee. It doesn't contain arsenic because it's not
Fowler's solution nor Donovan's solution, both of which contained arsenic
(52:35):
purported to treat things like skin diseases, leukemia, malaria. Just
drink this, you know, just chout out on this arsenic
bro dude.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
It was. It was Fowler and Donovan's solution for an
unhappy romance.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
So lady Gay got they could have a bad romance.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
And they're like, here, honey, take this solution. It's very final.
Oh sorry, oh god.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Okay, but what about my old lace? Right? So this,
this example, I think arsenic in particular shows us more
about the human obsession with poison as antidote. It's cognative
jump you get it right? What is poisonous antidote?
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Poisonous antidote is it's the same reason why during that
nineteen eighteen pandemic, you know, back in the day, one
of the solutions was to let the little kids go
hang out down by the what was it the chlorine
gas at some of the factories. Chlorine gas highly poisonous,
will will kill you if you're exposed to too much.
(53:48):
But parents would send their children to go hang out
in the chlorine gas because there were lower instances of
people catching flu in those clouds of chlorine gas, because
they did have benefits, right, But in the end, it's
just more poison.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, that's the issue. That's one hundred percent and it
it's a cognitive jump that dates back to the very
old concept of transitive property transitive magic. You know, you
can see it in the weirdest places all around cultures
(54:26):
across the human world. You know. For example, you might
hear someone say, oh, it's the hair of the dog, right,
the hair of the dog that bit you. Refers to
somehow curing yourself of a symptom from a dog bite
by consuming some piece of or taking ownership of some
(54:47):
piece of the thing that attacked you. It's really weird, yeah,
and it's really common still. People just don't like to
use the word magic these days.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah, and also don't don't take.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Radium radium, you say, well, I hadn't thought of that yet.
Somebody had that idea, Ben, someone had.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
That idea of Matt, and unfortunately they beat us to it. Uh.
Matt and I started podcasting because we worked really hard
on UH on our own snake oil panacea and in.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
The microwave weapons didn't work.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Out, and the microwave weapons really really didn't didn't get
past the experimental phase. I should have never told you that. Uh.
And we found out that we have been scooped folks,
fellow conspiracy realist. Way before we were working together, some
(55:44):
boffins came up with something called Ratathor MM Ratathor.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
It's a combination of r A two two six and
r A two two eight. It's radium. It's mostly water
with a few microcuries of.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Just to make it pop, right. Yeah, Yeah, it gives
you that glow. The label said. Ratathor is harmless in
every respect. It is a cure for the living dead,
and it is perpetual sunshine. Yeah, there's some escalation.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Cure for the living dead. Cures zombies.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Yes, yes, yeah, I wish we had done that earlier
because that that could have got you and I out
of out of some previously hectic situations.
Speaker 2 (56:33):
But seriously, yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Anyway, uh spoiler, those statements prove to be untrue. There
are countless examples of this crap, and sadly they're more
on the way. Why is that? Why is there always
more snake oil?
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Because there's there's still one hundred dollars bills in circulation.
Speaker 1 (56:53):
Dude, yeah, I think you have most of them.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
Oh yeah, yeah, all I got all the one hundred dollars.
But I mean, that's really that's what it is. There's
some stuff that we humans have to deal with that
the smartest people on the planet haven't figured out how
to fix them. Like big, big, big problems, terrible horrible things.
We just haven't figured them out yet. But humans, given
(57:19):
enough time, we generally figure things out. That's kind of
what we do. That's what we're good at.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
It's just.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
Some stuff is really hard or elusive. Let's say again,
cure for cancer has been crazy elusive for humanity. But
there are strides as long as we throw you know,
really smart people at the problem, and lots of funding.
There's gonna be major, major cures for different types of cancer.
(57:50):
There will be, it's inevitable. It's just it takes time.
And until we have time to fix those things, somebody's
gonna offer you a solution. It's faster, right than it's
going to take to get the actual cure, and you're
probably desperate enough to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
Beautifully put. Yeah, and now we have to end this way.
How do you protect yourself from this snake oil, from
these false claims, from these predators conspiring against you in
a moment of vulnerability. Well, first, we need to treat
every medical claim with an enormous amount of skepticism. Secondly,
(58:29):
we need to look for corroborating evidence. Doesn't matter what
your particular ideological bent is. The reality is this, and
hopefully Matt Noell, Paul and Doc Holiday can cosign me
on this. The truth is world governments are run by apples,
(58:51):
but their science departments are run by nerds, and you
should kind of eat You should follow the nerds, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (59:00):
Yeah, the a holes are smelly, PU don't follow them.
But I love that sentiment.
Speaker 1 (59:10):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I want to throw to a quick thing that you
found in your research that I think just speaks to
this so well. It's from CNN, written by Kristin Rogers
in October of twenty twenty. The title is blood Letting
and gas fumes Quack Treatments of the nineteen eighteen Flu.
And they're talking there about doctors prescribing high doses of
(59:33):
aspirin to combat the Spanish flu outbreak at the time,
and because it was known to help with fever, right,
aspirin was a known thing that you could prescribe a
patient and it would help their fever. It was not
known that when you prescribed too much aspirin you could
potentially kill that patient because the aspirin is going to
(59:54):
be just as deadly as the flu and the sentence
that you're going to get from the flu, and sometimes
when they coincide, that's what's going to kill a patient. Well,
Kristen Rogers, who wrote this, consulted with Laura Spinney, who
is an author. She wrote Pale Writer, The Spanish Flu
of nineteen eighteen and how it changed the world. And
there's this quote here that I just wanted to bring
(01:00:15):
up because I think it just speaks to this whole episode.
It's kind of what we've been saying the whole time.
But ultimately there's a couple keywords in here. Here's the
quote from Laura Spinney quote. Human beings in general need
to feel a sense of control over whatever is afflicting them.
That's just a perennial truth, and I think that in
(01:00:37):
the end it's everything right. We want to feel some
sense of control, especially when we're feeling desperate and afraid.
Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
One hundred percent, and that is why these conspiracies persist. Unfortunately,
we know that you or someone you are close with
has encountered something like modern day snake oil, so we
want to know what you think. We'd love to hear
(01:01:08):
examples of kakammy cures you've encountered in the wild, and
also for everyone who might be shouting into the void
as you're hearing this. Yes, we know big Pharma is corrupt. Yes,
we have done previous episodes on these things right on
(01:01:28):
the idea of repressed technology, including repressed technology in the
world of medicine. We always want to end these episodes
too with a shout out to our boy Semivice, the
doctor who said, hey, everybody wash your hands and got
(01:01:51):
thrown into an asylum.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Ye wash your hands before performing surgery and hands in
a human.
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
It wasn't even it wasn't even saying to everyone to
watch their heads. He's like, hey, before you put your
hands and people clean them.
Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Up, you think about it.
Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
And they were like, throw this man in crazy jail anyway,
So we want to hear your thoughts, folks. Please let
us know examples of strange purported cures or snake oil
that you are seeing in the wild. You can find
us on Instagram where conspiracy Stuff show. We can find
(01:02:31):
us on YouTube we are conspiracy stuff. You can find
us on TikTok. You can find us, you know, in
the right sort of wija board vibe if you if
you feel like a wija board is an awkward way
to communicate, you can also just give us a phone call.
Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, I get the nearest burner wherever you
are and just dial one eight three three st d
w y t K. It is a voicemail system. You've
got three minute to leave a message when you call in.
Please give yourself a cool moniker and nickname, just not
your government name, and tell us if we can use
your name and message on the air. If you got
(01:03:10):
more to say, they can fit in that single voicemail,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Our colleague Noel is not here today, but we'll be
rejoining us shortly.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer. All mission control dec it. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know? Matt, Is this
one of the episodes where we do a disclaimer? Should
we do a.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, let's let's do a disclaimer. Don't you want me
to run it? Here we go disclaimer. No part of
the following episode contains medical advice. If you are seeking
treatment for a physical or psychological melody, contact a qualified professional.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Perfect. Okay, so we've got that out of the way.
Everybody buy our new radium pills. I know, I know,
I know. We just got a deal on old radium
pills and we're reselling them on TikTok and Instagram. We
are kidding. That is not true, and you should not
(01:27):
buy things just because you see someone excited about them
on social media. It's an old, old practice.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And don't buy things with radioactive materials. Not a good look.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's not the best look. It's a look that glows
in the dark sometimes. I mean, we're talking about snake
oil today, right, We're talking about things where a charismatic
authority figure tells you, Hey, trust me, the main stream
(02:00):
is lying to you. I'll let you in on the conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, man, you're in on the conspiracy and this stuff
I got right here. It's gonna make you stronger, thinner,
it's gonna cure you of that melody. As we said earlier.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Oh, you're drinking regular water. You don't have energized water.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Oh jeez, oh that's so familiar.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Do I need to explain, says the huckster. What energized
water is? Wow, you need a lot of help, and
for a reasonable fee, I can be the person who
helps you. I'll make you thinner, smarter, younger, faster. In
tonight's episode, we are exploring the concept of fake cures.
(02:49):
Over here in the US, this stuff is often called
snake oil. Here are the facts.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Oh yeah, well, let's start with snake What the heck
is that it's a pretty great term. You should start
using it. If you don't use it in your everyday life,
it just means again, it's a fake cure. It's kind
of a stand in for the same thing, something a
substance that you either ingest, you apply to your skin,
you take it in some way, and it's supposed to
have curative effects for some problem, and really it's nothing.
(03:22):
It's the placebo effect made real.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Ooh, I love that you mentioned that part, because we
do know the placebo effect has an effect. As dumb
as that sounds, I gotta ask him, man, when I
was when I was learning about snake oil as actual
oil produced from snakes, I was surprised. I didn't know
(03:45):
that was a thing. Did you know that there is
genuine snake oil?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah? Ben, tell me what I'm wrong here, what I'm
getting wrong. My understanding is that you could actually use
snake oil from certain species, or at least it was
used traditionally to apply to like the outside of your
skin or something if you don't have an open wound,
because the effects of that neurotoxin would actually like numb
(04:11):
your skin. Maybe or maybe that's wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Oh, I don't know. I'm asking you, Matt, this is
this is the thing. You know, the last time I
try never to kill things like snakes or spiders, But
the last time I killed a snake, I wasn't thinking, ooh,
time to make some snake oil like like that did
not occur to me. And you know, you and I
(04:36):
have seen our fair share of serpents in the field.
We don't really think of them as a resource. And
it's weird, Like what you're pointing out absolutely makes sense.
You know, back in the day in Chinese traditional medicine,
I believe they used oil from water snakes to do
(04:58):
just what you're describing to some sort of ointment or
salve on joints, right, I mean, this would this would
reduce pain from things like arthritis and so on. But
maybe I think you're onto something now that you mention it.
I think it may have functioned as a local anesthetic. Perhaps.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Look, that's just that's maybe. I don't know where I'm
pulling that from, Ben, that's just in the ether I'm
pulling it in, And it just feels like something that
would function perhaps like Lydakane maybe does nowadays. Oh this
makes except again I think lydakin you can use on
the inside of your mouth and stuff. So maybe don't
do that with snake venom. But snake venom is a
(05:45):
fascinating thing. Maybe we can talk about that really quickly
in some of the research here Ben that you you
found and that we kept looking at. Here just snake venom.
You're talking about, what do you do with snakes if
you get a hold of some, if they're venomous, you
might be able to make some money because extracting the
venom from a venom of snake can help by creating
(06:08):
anti venom. Except gosh, man, I didn't know how much
money was in anti venom.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
It's a huge deal, right, it's crazy. You can also
look on I guess YouTube, if we're being honest, look
up milking cobras or something like that, and there's there's
this entire industry. Yeah, yeah, Matt, describe it.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
You got it. It's almost hypnotic the way you can
watch the two fangs kind of move separately as it
goes into the contraption that's actually pulling the venom out
of the or it is. It's literally milking the venom
out of the fangs of these things. It's brilliant. But
there's Uh, there's another thing I just learned. It's a
(06:51):
type of anti venom that's being produced somehow through horses. Gosh,
I can't think of it completely. Oh no, it's right here.
It's called anavip.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Right, which is the it's Is it the same process
as the sheep injection to harvest antibodies?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yes, I think it's very similar, but it's it's derived
quote from the blood of horses immunized with the venom
from like specific snakes.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Pretty nuts, right, So there is something to snake oil,
at least in terms of venom from venomous reptiles. And again, yes,
there is a difference between poisonous and venomous. Huh. So Look,
as we always say, people of the past, of days
(07:45):
of yore, were just as intelligent or unintelligent as people
in the modern day. It worked with the information they had,
you know. I read a fascinating account was able to
corroborate this too, across a couple of different academic papers.
When the Chinese American population blossomed in the United States,
(08:08):
people from China brought over traditional medicinal practices with them,
and that's where we get the idea of snake oil
being rubbed on human extremities on the elbows or the weenness,
if you want to use the technical term. And and
then the West learned of anti venom technology all of
(08:30):
a sudden. Snake oil was like crypto. It sounded really good.
You had never experienced it, likely in the eighteen hundreds,
but you had heard about it. And if someone comes
into town and they're selling authentic snake oil, right, and
they're branding it with something from you First Nations or
(08:51):
indigenous peoples, or they're branding it with some sort of
like yellow peril, racist Asian stuff, then you might look
at the little wagon and say, this guy's legit. He's
gonna help me with my brain fever or my dropsias
or oh handedness.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Definitely it's the brand new snake oil. Olives.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
We got to talk about the history, right, Why did
snake oil become? Like you said, Matt, the catch all
phrase for fake medicine?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Oh, Ben, you found this. It comes from the late
eighteen hundreds when a retired cowboy decided he was going
to move on mosey on down to another pasture. His
name's Clark Stanley and he has street name. What was it?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
The rattle snake King. He beat the Tiger King, but
unfortunately he was he was alive well before the dawn
of Netflix specials. He claimed he had spent I think
it was two years. He's most often voted as saying
he's spent two years with Hope Spiritual Leaders, and they
(10:10):
taught him the secret of snake oil. So he bottled
this up and he sold it. It was called Snake
Oil Liniment, and he made a lot of money off
of this stuff until like nineteen oh seven to nineteen sixteen,
(10:31):
things were things were getting rough for him because you know,
you can only sell a fake cure for so long
before the people that survive your fake cure start asking
why it doesn't work?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Well, well yeah, or they're like, man, this works perfectly.
I survived, right enough, there's gonna be enough of that.
The people who don't survive don't write reviews. Maybe their
family does though, right. That's why it could be popular
and function for a long time, especially if you're dealing
in local markets, and if you're a traveling salesman, you're
(11:08):
only in town to make enough people angry for long
enough to then move on and do it again. But yeah,
in nineteen sixteen, the US government finally came down and
they said, oh right, mister cowboy rattlesnake King guy, what's
inside this here bottle? And what if they find no
medicinal properties? And they also found, oh, no snake oil.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, like, no ingredients from any sort of snake at all,
no snake poop, no eggshells from snakes. No, like no
snake legs, which aren't really a thing.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
But Kennecker, that would be something that would be something
snake legs, old snake legs.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
That's actually that feels like a good street name. That's weird,
weird one. So they levied a penalty against this guy,
against our former cowboy Stanley aka the Rattlesnake King, and
Uncle Sam said, you gotta admit that you were wrong.
(12:16):
You got a pony up twenty dollars. That was about
five hundred bucks in twenty twenty three money. But again,
the snake oil in the US, the reason people call
bull yours snake oil. The guy who invented it didn't
even bother to put snake ingredients in his concoction. And
(12:41):
that's funny.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, that's for money, and that's why we have snake oil.
You're welcome, right.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
I mean, also, there's no evidence that Stanley personally believed
in the thing he was selling. It does appear to
be a grift it. It does not appear that he
genuinely believed in some sort of medical efficacy for this
stuff he was selling. And as a result, now snake
(13:15):
oil is associated with grifting in some darkly hilarious ways.
But Matt, why is snake oil dangerous?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Snake oil is extremely dangerous because not only can taking
something that you believe is curing you of an ailment,
it doesn't actually help your ailment whatsoever. So you may
just die from that original ailment or become even sicker
and sicker believing that you're actually curing yourself in some
way or aiding in what you're suffering from. But the
(13:48):
second biggest problem with snake oil treatments is that sometimes
and we're going to talk about it in today's episode,
sometimes that substance, whatever it is that supposed to be
a cure all or a fix for the one thing,
it can cause other problems, sometimes even worse than the
ones that were from your originating disease or you know,
(14:10):
whatever it is that's troubling you in the beginning. And overdoses,
Oh my god, overdoses on substances are such a thing
we're going to get into.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Mm. Yeah. And in the US and in other countries
that don't have a developed healthcare infrastructure, right like in
the US, and other places that do not function the
way a developed country does with healthcare, people become frightened
(14:38):
by the high price of going to the doctor, right
of seeking treatment of some sort. They're thrown out in
the cold, you know what I mean, And they're searching
for alternative solutions. They're asking themselves what would I not
do to save my life? Or more often, what would
(14:59):
I not do to save the life of someone I love.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
This is.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Why the FDA exists, the Food and Drug Administration, I mean,
regardless of political leanings, the US public increasingly agreed on
one thing. Back in the day. They said, all right,
if we go and buy something, it should be the
thing we thought we were buying. You know, no mystery
(15:29):
boxes or cans at the grocery store. No more ground
beef with human fingers. Is that a hot take?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's a great idea. Theoretically, the FDA,
the Food and Drug Administration, is one of the best
ideas humans have had. Really, honestly, let's know what we're doing,
Let's know what we're buying, ingesting, and using as medical treatments.
Let's just figure it out and well. And I think
(15:57):
maybe even the better underlying concept of the FDA is
to create a an infrastructure, an organization, a group of
specialists and experts that you can trust. You can put
your trust in them, because when they say something is
in this product, it is definitely in that product or not.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I like that or not. At the end, it is
definitely in this product or not.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
There's problems. There's real problems.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, agreed. It's so weird too, the way that the
way that literature can move action at least back then,
you know. One of the primary motivating factors for the
creation of the FDA was a book, a quite disturbing
book about stockyards in Chicago. It was called The Jungle,
(16:49):
written by a guy named Upton Sinclair, and it shed
a lot of light on things people would rather not
think about, you know what I mean. And anyway, Okay,
it's meat production, right, yes, in this case it's meat production.
And this led to the creation of the FDA, attempting
(17:15):
to keep consumer goods safe until you know, lobbying forces
buy them out, and we could say that's the end
of griffs. But fellow conspiracy realist, what would you say
if Matt and I told you that these griffs panaceas
no stroms. They're called sometimes snake oils. They continue and
(17:40):
escalate in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
They continue. You say, no, wait, hold on, let's take
a quick word from our sponsor and hear about some
fully FDA approved products.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Here's where it gets crazy, all right, snake oil is
an insult? Right If someone says what kind of snake
oil are you selling here? They don't mean it as
a compliment.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Right, Usually not, it's usually well, unless it's essential snake oil. Now,
if it's essential snake oil, right, you can probably trust
and use it and it'll work. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
If you're an anti venom laboratory and you say what
kind of snake oil are you selling here? You know
you might not mean it as an insult. And they
they're probably the most defensive people about that. They're probably
the people most likely to say, this is not snake oil, sir,
(18:48):
this is anti venom.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, this is asp asp extract, this is cobra contra.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
All right, sure, hire us to name your weird drugs.
This stuff is Another iteration of this is the idea
of patent medicine, which continues today. Patent medicine real thing
over the counter remedies for usually minor medical situations. What
(19:25):
we mean by over the counter is you don't need
a prescription. It's not like some sort of powerful psychiatric
drug or physically addictive drug that requires a physician to
check in with you. It's like you got a cold, right,
you got a headache. You know, you got some aches
(19:47):
and pains in your joints, and you just don't have
a snake handy for the oil.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Well, it's let's give an example, Ben and correct me
if I'm wrong here. But I think a good example
of a patent medicine is quinine. Maybe, like it's a
substance that was used for medicinal purposes, and it was
like if you created something with quinine back in the day,
a tonic and the tonic water these days that we
(20:13):
consume you you could patent that, right, and now you
can sell it.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah, And the idea of patent medicine or patent in
general goes back to European monarchies, where a monarch or
a court administration would issue something called a letter's patent,
which would coside a product or service. So it could
(20:41):
be medicine, but it could also be we like the
way this guy makes shoes, or we like the way
this lady makes lace. They're our official cosined person, which
means which means that if you are a grifter, if
you are selling a fake medicine, a medicine that does
(21:02):
not do what it purports to do, you no longer
have to convince the public. You just have to convince
the queen or the king or the duke or whomever. Right,
I know, sorry almost, Yeah, you found that's very kind.
Uh So, so look, this is also the stuff that
(21:26):
pioneered advertising, right this the folks who were whether they
were on a wagon or whether they were out in
the town square, waving a scroll with a little wax
mark on it. What are those gold you know what
I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Signed with a seal?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
What do you mean a seal? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, like
a like a seal of some sort of authoritative approval. Yes,
and they're waving it and they're going, hey, you know,
the king likes this the low local authority figure tells
me this is one hundred percent awesome. It's stopping the plague.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Oh yeah, really, if you put yourself in that position.
Let's say you're on the side of a street it's
the eighteen hundreds, you're moving towards the nineteen hundreds, and
you know, you see a I guess it would be
like a carriage, but it's not really a carriage. It's
a horse with a buggy of some sort in the back, right,
and it's just strolling through. It stops in place, the
(22:27):
person gets out, opens up a few flaps on the thing,
and on those flaps there are signs that say things
like this that have the seal, they have that kind
of thing. It's like, it's not the first example of signage,
right and that kind of pr perhaps, but it is.
It's probably one of the biggest innovations that occur. Because
(22:48):
you've got so many people selling so many different things,
they're coming up with different kinds of signs, different kinds
of tactics to convince you that their medicine is better
than the other guys. It's pretty I don't know, it's
it's kind of it's messed up when you think about
what was actually happening. But I think maybe I just
love that humans have such a competitive nature for that
(23:09):
kind of thing that it ends up developing into this
huge the whole business of marketing and pr and all
that stuff. You can just see the threads of it
from this one thing.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Oh sure, Yeah, And I'm sure they got pretty I'm
sure they became pretty insidious with stuff, you know, like
there would be someone like doctor peppin jumps guaranteed patent
pending foot care tonic which has one hundred percent no
(23:43):
human urine in the bottle, unlike doctor you know, Jubbin'
PEPs over in the next town.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yes, right now, no one's peed in the bottles.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
They're just they're they're making these range accusations.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
You know, now beeing on the bottles, that's a whole
different thing, but not in that bottle.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
That's how you cure the you know, let's how you
cure the glass anyway. So, uh so, look, we're talking
about these days of yr in which people were again
working with the information they had, and they were just
as smart as anyone listening tonight. They were not able
(24:27):
to hop on a phone, to hop on a computer,
they were not able to contact an expert at the
very moment they wanted answers, and so, Matt, we would
think when we armed with all the information of the
world at our fingertips, people would be a bit more uh,
(24:49):
a bit more skeptical, a bit less credulous, you.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Know, right, yeah, yeah, you might think that, I don't.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Know, sure, oh god, yeah yeah. Unfortunately, it appears that
in a world of endless information and endless access to information,
the conspiratorial genre of snake oil grifting is thriving. It
(25:20):
is a golden age of selling people bull and I
am not joking. We are not joking here. There might
be someone selling bullpoop. Oh dear, you know, for like
a vague unease or for or for you know, are
(25:41):
you worried about your children being born with more than
five fingers on each hand? Take doctor Awkwards patented polydactyl
prevention potion.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Oh man, I love the piece. Thank you, Ben. Well,
you're you're on the money here, Ben, because we talk
about our social media bubbles all the time, and your
social media bubble is not just the people you follow
in the types of videos that you you know, stay
on for a longer amount of time on TikTok or
Instagram or whatever. Your social media bubble is also the
(26:17):
ads that get served to you. And sometimes those ads
aren't just you know, a company that paid money in
order for this ad to show up on your social
media page. Often it's somebody promoting something, right, which it
means we're all at risk at any time from having
(26:37):
somebody we like or somebody we think we like promoting
something to us that may not be fully above board.
And maybe they're that person who's promoting it isn't even aware.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, and your algorithm knows it. Yes, your algorithm is.
Everybody should know this immediately. Your algorithm is weaponized against you,
and it doesn't matter who you are, and if you're
on there, it is weaponized with the idea of enticing
you to consume further right to participate in the economy.
(27:14):
And the algorithm knows no morality anymore than any other
kind of any other kind of technology. That's why if
you are in heartbreaking situations like you have a loved
one with a terminal or chronic condition, right, or you
yourself have a chronic condition, you will be inundated with
(27:39):
modern day snake oil. We're gonna Matt, you and I
talked about this off air. We do have to flip
the tone a bit. We have to go toward a
very difficult thing. Fake cancer cures are so common.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
They're so common becase because there's a desperation that comes
with yourself or a family member being diagnosed with cancer,
no matter what cancer it is, no matter where it
is in the body, there's a desperation that is born,
right and it grows because often, you know, using Western medicines,
(28:20):
cures for cancer, or treatments, let's say, of cancer often
take a long time, are brutal on the body, and
don't work all the time. Sometimes they do, but not
all the time. And when something isn't working like that
for especially for a long enough time, or maybe you
don't even have access to that type of treatment because
(28:41):
you either can't afford it right, or it's you're in
a stage that's too late to be treated. In those ways,
you are going to seek anything that could potentially help, right,
And people have historically preyed on that because cancer has
been with us for a long time, and the desire
to make money has been around for a long time.
(29:03):
And sometimes when you can throw away those morals. It
becomes a pretty pretty easy answer of yeah, I'm going
to at least try to make money in this way,
not us or not. I'm just saying that's where the
desire comes from. For somebody who's going to sell a
cancer cure because they know about the desperation.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
And for people who are combating a chronic or terminal
medical condition like cancer. Right then you get to a
point where you say, well, I'll try whatever, Yes, as
long as I know it won't kill me, or you know,
in the darker TikTok TikTok moments of mortality, I'm dying anyway,
(29:46):
why don't I give this a go? And predators are
aware of that. Fake cancer cures are so common that
the FDA has dedicated page addressing the issue. They say, look,
don't mess with something unless the FDA has approved it,
unless there is some sort of clearance or green light
(30:09):
where we can tell you this thing won't actually kill you.
And they know that they are losing the battle. They
cannot catch every falling sparrow of the grift. There's a
long quote. We could probably skip a lot of it,
but they talk about bogus cancer treatments and they say,
(30:29):
it includes pills, capsules, powders, creams, teas, oils, and treatment
kits that are often advertised assh natural treatments. And it's
funny that the FDA just side note, Maad, it's funny
that the FDA sayssh natural because, as we talked about
(30:52):
in some explorations of grocery store wording natural doesn't mean anything.
You can say all natural ingredients?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
What what is unnatural?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
What is what is unnatural?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Just does it mean you used a chemical process to
make something? Well, are those chemicals natural? Did you make
all of those chemicals on your own? Or the molecules
that formed those things?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
You know? Like it?
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You can, I guess from a legal standpoint, it's really
strange to think about the word natural because because literally
everything that we could ever have access to is in
some way natural.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's all it's all derived from the same elements on
the same periodic table, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, hey, let's let's give a quick example
bend of from that FDA website, just super fast. It's
at the very bottom of that page if you scroll
all the way down, they talk about this person hairy
m Hawxie who quote had no medical training, but he
made millions of dollars hawking they call it quack cancer
(32:08):
cures again to desperate patients for more than three decades, wow.
And he was selling them into the nineteen fifties. So
it's not like it was way way long ago. Maybe
your parents or your grandparents, you know, saw ads for
this stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
And you know what, Matt, to add to that, there
might be some of us listening this evening who have
a problem with the phrase quack doctors. He may feel
that we are being anti duck and we're here to
tell you that ducks are absolute pieces of shit, every
(32:47):
single one. That's the best they can do is be eaten.
They reproduce in a horrific, non consensual way. Ducks are terrible.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And they are delicious. So I guess you know, win win.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
That was for Noel that the guy hates birds, So
we got a there's one bird we can all agree on.
It's just a terrible, terrible bird. So quack quack. These
people are selling. They're selling false hope, you know. And
this example that you mentioned here that is terrifying because
(33:32):
it's capitalizing on a lack of information and it's capitalizing
on a very human desire to not die.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Right, Yeah, Well, and in Hawxy's case, it was an
herbal extract concoction of some sort, but it was labeled
as an herbal cancer treatment, you know, in that type.
And that's what we're talking about here. Just why it's
so dangerous because it sounds great and it's in what
appears to be a medicinal package. So let's at least
(34:09):
give it a try for a while, honey.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
And there's nothing there's nothing wrong with herbal medicine, with
herbal supplements. You know, sometimes people with chronic conditions may
start taking some regimen of treatments and they will feel
better because their body is now getting access to stuff
their body needed anyway for its regularly scheduled programming. Right,
(34:36):
if you're human, you need vitamin C. And if you
don't have that, you eat vitamin C. You know, maybe
your cancer isn't God, but your teeth aren't loose in
your mouth anymore because you no longer have scurvy.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Oh man, score, But Ben, what happens if instead of
just herbal supplements, there's bad stuff in the treatment.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
No, that's the thing. That's what the FDA is worried about.
I wish we were still a video show so everybody
could see Matt the way you the way you pose
this stuck.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And gave it a good scrip.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I mean, so the Yeah, this is the problem. This
is what the FDA is most immediately concerned about. This
is what most medical professionals are immediately concerned about. If
you take some Farfignugan blue sky placebo, then you may
(35:38):
experience the placebo effect, which is real, but not enough
of a not enough of a prime mover to save
you from something like lymphoma. Right. Placebo effect israel It
does have measurable efficacy. But if you're taking something that
(35:59):
does doesn't harm you, doesn't help you, that's a world
of difference from taking something that does include harmful ingredients.
You know, we talked about this all the time. One
of the most successful dudes in all of Chinese history
died because he ate a ton of mercury, not literally
(36:19):
a ton, but like a lot of mercury for a
person to eat, which is any amount of mercury.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, because he thought he was going to turn into
a cyborg. Right, Oh wait, no, it was it was
just it was thought to be good and part of
living a longer life, perhaps even attaining immortality.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Mm hmm. Spoiler, he's either still recovering or he is dead.
It's a longer recovery. Or people expose themselves to radiation.
For centuries, people have said, you know what your problem is.
You got too much blood.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Your humors are all off, Your.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Humors are all off. You're sad because you're melancholic. All right, anyway,
let's let's cut you open. Uh uh, blood's so weird anyway.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Oh wait, yeah, Ben, what about uh? What about poop?
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Oh, poop? Yeah, poop's the new hot thing.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Well it was because it was again in the thought
for a long time there you need to let some
of the blood out, right to get your body back
into the right balance. Well maybe it's because all the
bad toxins and things are in your gut and in
your poop, or the bad stuff in your poop is
inside your body, so we need to get the poop out.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Your body, yes, and put some better poop inside. About
the poop transplants, it's a real thing.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
But yeah, that's a newer Back then, it was just
anima's right, They just it wass were like a cure.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Right. Uh, you know you seem depressed. Let's put some
yogurt up your butt, you know what I mean and
check back in shout out Kellogg. Yeah, absolutely right. Oh,
tobacco smoke they used as well. People were again working
with the information they had. Not all of them were rifters,
some of them sincerely believed in it. But the difference
(38:23):
between those folks and actual medical pioneers is that in
every single case, the actual medical pioneers created or discovered
things that are still used today. There's a there's a
reason you don't have a Nesta cobras at home, and
(38:45):
you know you're not slapping them on your knee every
day or something like that.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Oh, very true.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I don't know. Maybe someone is, yeah, maybe someone's listening
right now and they're you know, they're they're holding one
of their cobras and they're injecting the venom from the
cobra straight into their kneecap and they're going, these guys,
these guys don't get it.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Why is my knee turning all black and smells of almonds?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Right? So the issue is this applies to pets as well.
People also go for alternative care when they have a
pet that needs help, especially if you have an elderly pet,
and the veterinarian is saying there's nothing we can do,
or we can ease the pain, et cetera, et cetera,
(39:38):
et cetera, and he gets weirder and weirder and weirder.
You know, can water riddle me this, Matt. Can water
be better if someone meditates over it for a while?
Oh gosh, I know that's such.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
A tough one, because I think by now we've all
seen the videos, see the report, or like a bunch
of reporting that was done on you. Remember the water.
I can't remember the fellow's name, but he spoke really sweetly,
said nice things to some water and put it in
his fridge, and then yelled and cursed at his other
(40:16):
water and put it in the fridge. And then the
stuff that he cursed at became diseased and horrible. But
the water that he complimented and was kind to was
pure as anything you could ever wish. You know, I
never was able to prove personally that that was fake,
but it certainly feels pretty fake. To me.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Well yeah, I mean, we would have to do the
experiment ourselves, right, and also again to the excellent point
you made about the placebo effect. We have an episode
coming out soon called Our Vibes Real, and please listen
to it. It may be a rare positive experience on
(41:03):
stuff they don't want you to know. But I think
of Matt. I think of the idea here being that
if all other given variables are equal, then it's cool
to be good. Right, So it doesn't necessarily matter whether
the water hears you, or whether your plants hear you,
(41:26):
et cetera, et cetera. It matters to your mind, to
your cognitive internal mechanisms, that you are presenting what you
see as a positive aspect in the world.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yes, no, you're right, And it matters if your flock
believes that you praying over the water somehow makes it
holy right, Yes.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Oh my gosh, nailed it home run. Yeah, oh man,
in another world we are very strange. Tell evangelists. It does.
But it also goes wrong. Right. Can electromagnetic treatments, for instance,
cure HIV. Can sexual congress with people who are virgins
(42:16):
cure sexually transmitted diseases? The answer is no, Yeah, it's
been propagated. It's quite dark. Back in the early two thousands,
former South African president Thabo Becke claimed that HIV did
not cause AIDS proposed a number of purported cures and
(42:39):
treatments for the condition. But also in many countries, for
some time, there was this belief that if you had HIV,
if you had contracted the virus, you would be able
to somehow cleanse yourself of it by having intimate contact
(43:00):
with someone who had never had sexual contact before, and
it led to some unclean activities.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah cheese, Uh, okay, I'm done. Good night, everybody. That's
so dark cheese.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Okay, yeah, that's terrible, but that's steak oil again. And
we see the real world damage this sort of stuff
can create. I mean, okay, people like to crack on
South Africa, right, people like to crack on other countries.
Imagine then, fellow conspiracy realist, imagine, if you will, your
(43:42):
president touting a fake cure for a serious, potentially deadly condition. Crazy.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Okay, which one are you talking about? Because I know
what was the stuff? It was, President Donald Trump. It
was right as the pandemic was hitting its height, and
(44:10):
there was something it wasn't ivermectin. That was a whole
other thing.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Hydroxychloricquin that's what it was.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
That's what it was.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Yeah, well, yes.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Because it actually can do good, just not to cure
the COVID nineteen infection, right, Ben, Do you remember what
it was used for, like what the actual substance was
used for.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah. Man, it's like you set up earlier in tonight's show,
this substance was also an anti malaria drug.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Oh wow, So yeah, it can kill the malaria, right,
and maybe it can kill this one. And again, the
logic is there, right, the potential for something happening theoretically
is there. It's just malaria and this virus are very
different things.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, that's true, that's absolutely true. And you know, we
got very dark here. We're talking about the importance of
recognizing these grifts, these conspiracies against the desperate Matt. I
suggest to you that we take a break for a
word from our sponsors, and then maybe we end with
some fun stuff, some quack medicine of yesteryear. Again, ducks
(45:30):
are horrible.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
And we've returned and we're going to push this one
more time. You are not stupid. We are not stupid. Collectively,
humans are not stupid. We get scared sometimes, we get
a little desperate sometimes, and we'll do anything to help
ourselves and others many times. And that's that's really what
(45:59):
this whole episode of is about. That's what snake oil is about.
It's about searching for a solution. Give me something concrete
that I can either give to myself or somebody I love.
They can help the problem. And I guess that's why
it's so scary. Again. People are so down to jump
on that fear you've got roiling around inside you so
(46:21):
that they can make a buck.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
And sometimes people don't understand what they are selling. Let's take,
for example, opium opium.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Let's not take opium, but let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Let's talk about opium. Opium so popular that when the
very prosperous Chinese government refuse to buy opium, the British
invaded not once, but twice, because that's all they had
to sell. People loved opium. McK mun's elixir of opium
(46:58):
was this thing mixed with alcohol, and it was promising
that it would fix quote nervous irritability in adults and
children alike. Is your kid too vocal? Why not give
them make muns elixir of opium and make that gay
(47:20):
go to bed. Also, hey, what if you're not nervous
and irritable? What if you have rabies or tetanus? Make muns.
Elixir of opium will make you feel less bad about
it at least is.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Your rabies giving you nervous irritability? Are you experiencing? Oh
it's a hysteria, that age old problem of hysteria. The opium, apparently,
is your fix.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Opium is your fix for being a woman in society. Yep, right, okay, great,
And then we talked about blood. This one has some
scientific validity as plasma transfers. There's a some quite fascinating
science and quite unethical science going on with the idea
(48:11):
of prolonging quality of life through certain types of blood transfusions.
But back in the late eighteen hundreds, people were consuming
non human blood in hopes of revitalizing their general well being.
And Matt, you and Paul and I were talking about
(48:32):
this when off air before we recorded. I know we're
running a little long, but we have to talk about
this ad right.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, we do. I don't even know how
to begin with this thing. Is is it pronounced bovnine?
Is that how you would pronounce it?
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, I was thinking bovnine.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Okay, but that sounds medicinal beovnine. Should we just should
we do the poem? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Do the poem. The poem's epic can do like a
voice with a lot of gravitas, like real Ozmandia stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Okay, let's see what I can do. Look on me
in my lassitude, reclining, my nerveless body, languid, pale and lean.
Now hold me up to where the light is shining,
and mark the magic power of Bovinine.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Sautiful.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So in this ad of how would you describe it?
Ben uh Matt, I.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Would say it's a lady reclining. She's by a window.
She's reclining. She has a nightstand or a table stand
by the side of her chair, and there are two
glasses by the side of the chair, and there's a
larger bottle and it is Bovanine or bovnine. And in
(50:03):
the first image her eyes are closed.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Oh yes, but if you hold it up to the light,
just as the poem suggests, you can see that her
eyes are in fact open. And there's a giant cow
in the back. And guess what it says? My life
was saved by bovanine and uh, what is it that's
in bova nine ben.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Oh it's uh, it's blood from cows and extract cattle.
Uh gunk, you know nine, not sperm that would be
too expensive. Uh, it's it's the blood and like extracts
and fats and stuff. Uh. And also if you were
(50:48):
walking around and you saw this at your local grocer,
you would probably see stuff like Alan's Cocaine tablets. Oh
of course, Yeah, the number one cure for.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Ah got some throat troubles cocaine.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Right, Oh, I have a headache and fifty cents. There's
a solution here. It's Allan's cocaine tablets. This is pretty nuts.
We know that cocaine or CoA is still pretty popular
(51:26):
with human beings today, but now people are more aware
of the damaging effects that sort of substance can have.
Back in the day, they weren't. They were aware that
hay fever sucked, you know what I mean? So why
not tackle that one first?
Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah? Well, and the FDA finally finally came along and said, hey, guys,
cocaine is out. But you know what was also popular
back in the cocaine hey days, a well thing called caffeine,
and it came in pill form and it was a
drug and upper just like cocaine was. But caffeine is
(52:07):
still very much in the free market. As he drinks
his Monster Energy drink and Cheer's coffee.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Yeah, I'm drinking. I always drink iced coffee out of
out of Mason jars apparently, but I guarantee it's one
hundred percent coffee. It doesn't contain arsenic because it's not
Fowler's solution nor Donovan's solution, both of which contained arsenic
(52:35):
purported to treat things like skin diseases, leukemia, malaria. Just
drink this, you know, just chout out on this arsenic
bro dude.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
It was. It was Fowler and Donovan's solution for an
unhappy romance.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
So lady Gay got they could have a bad romance.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
And they're like, here, honey, take this solution. It's very final.
Oh sorry, oh god.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Okay, but what about my old lace? Right? So this,
this example, I think arsenic in particular shows us more
about the human obsession with poison as antidote. It's cognative
jump you get it right? What is poisonous antidote?
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Poisonous antidote is it's the same reason why during that
nineteen eighteen pandemic, you know, back in the day, one
of the solutions was to let the little kids go
hang out down by the what was it the chlorine
gas at some of the factories. Chlorine gas highly poisonous,
will will kill you if you're exposed to too much.
(53:48):
But parents would send their children to go hang out
in the chlorine gas because there were lower instances of
people catching flu in those clouds of chlorine gas, because
they did have benefits, right, But in the end, it's
just more poison.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, that's the issue. That's one hundred percent and it
it's a cognitive jump that dates back to the very
old concept of transitive property transitive magic. You know, you
can see it in the weirdest places all around cultures
(54:26):
across the human world. You know. For example, you might
hear someone say, oh, it's the hair of the dog, right,
the hair of the dog that bit you. Refers to
somehow curing yourself of a symptom from a dog bite
by consuming some piece of or taking ownership of some
(54:47):
piece of the thing that attacked you. It's really weird, yeah,
and it's really common still. People just don't like to
use the word magic these days.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah, and also don't don't take.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
Radium radium, you say, well, I hadn't thought of that yet.
Somebody had that idea, Ben, someone had.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
That idea of Matt, and unfortunately they beat us to it. Uh.
Matt and I started podcasting because we worked really hard
on UH on our own snake oil panacea and in.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
The microwave weapons didn't work.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
Out, and the microwave weapons really really didn't didn't get
past the experimental phase. I should have never told you that. Uh.
And we found out that we have been scooped folks,
fellow conspiracy realist. Way before we were working together, some
(55:44):
boffins came up with something called Ratathor MM Ratathor.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
It's a combination of r A two two six and
r A two two eight. It's radium. It's mostly water
with a few microcuries of.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Just to make it pop, right. Yeah, Yeah, it gives
you that glow. The label said. Ratathor is harmless in
every respect. It is a cure for the living dead,
and it is perpetual sunshine. Yeah, there's some escalation.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Cure for the living dead. Cures zombies.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Yes, yes, yeah, I wish we had done that earlier
because that that could have got you and I out
of out of some previously hectic situations.
Speaker 2 (56:33):
But seriously, yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Anyway, uh spoiler, those statements prove to be untrue. There
are countless examples of this crap, and sadly they're more
on the way. Why is that? Why is there always
more snake oil?
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Because there's there's still one hundred dollars bills in circulation.
Speaker 1 (56:53):
Dude, yeah, I think you have most of them.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
Oh yeah, yeah, all I got all the one hundred dollars.
But I mean, that's really that's what it is. There's
some stuff that we humans have to deal with that
the smartest people on the planet haven't figured out how
to fix them. Like big, big, big problems, terrible horrible things.
We just haven't figured them out yet. But humans, given
(57:19):
enough time, we generally figure things out. That's kind of
what we do. That's what we're good at.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
It's just.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
Some stuff is really hard or elusive. Let's say again,
cure for cancer has been crazy elusive for humanity. But
there are strides as long as we throw you know,
really smart people at the problem, and lots of funding.
There's gonna be major, major cures for different types of cancer.
(57:50):
There will be, it's inevitable. It's just it takes time.
And until we have time to fix those things, somebody's
gonna offer you a solution. It's faster, right than it's
going to take to get the actual cure, and you're
probably desperate enough to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
Beautifully put. Yeah, and now we have to end this way.
How do you protect yourself from this snake oil, from
these false claims, from these predators conspiring against you in
a moment of vulnerability. Well, first, we need to treat
every medical claim with an enormous amount of skepticism. Secondly,
(58:29):
we need to look for corroborating evidence. Doesn't matter what
your particular ideological bent is. The reality is this, and
hopefully Matt Noell, Paul and Doc Holiday can cosign me
on this. The truth is world governments are run by apples,
(58:51):
but their science departments are run by nerds, and you
should kind of eat You should follow the nerds, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (59:00):
Yeah, the a holes are smelly, PU don't follow them.
But I love that sentiment.
Speaker 1 (59:10):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I want to throw to a quick thing that you
found in your research that I think just speaks to
this so well. It's from CNN, written by Kristin Rogers
in October of twenty twenty. The title is blood Letting
and gas fumes Quack Treatments of the nineteen eighteen Flu.
And they're talking there about doctors prescribing high doses of
(59:33):
aspirin to combat the Spanish flu outbreak at the time,
and because it was known to help with fever, right,
aspirin was a known thing that you could prescribe a
patient and it would help their fever. It was not
known that when you prescribed too much aspirin you could
potentially kill that patient because the aspirin is going to
(59:54):
be just as deadly as the flu and the sentence
that you're going to get from the flu, and sometimes
when they coincide, that's what's going to kill a patient. Well,
Kristen Rogers, who wrote this, consulted with Laura Spinney, who
is an author. She wrote Pale Writer, The Spanish Flu
of nineteen eighteen and how it changed the world. And
there's this quote here that I just wanted to bring
(01:00:15):
up because I think it just speaks to this whole episode.
It's kind of what we've been saying the whole time.
But ultimately there's a couple keywords in here. Here's the
quote from Laura Spinney quote. Human beings in general need
to feel a sense of control over whatever is afflicting them.
That's just a perennial truth, and I think that in
(01:00:37):
the end it's everything right. We want to feel some
sense of control, especially when we're feeling desperate and afraid.
Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
One hundred percent, and that is why these conspiracies persist. Unfortunately,
we know that you or someone you are close with
has encountered something like modern day snake oil, so we
want to know what you think. We'd love to hear
(01:01:08):
examples of kakammy cures you've encountered in the wild, and
also for everyone who might be shouting into the void
as you're hearing this. Yes, we know big Pharma is corrupt. Yes,
we have done previous episodes on these things right on
(01:01:28):
the idea of repressed technology, including repressed technology in the
world of medicine. We always want to end these episodes
too with a shout out to our boy Semivice, the
doctor who said, hey, everybody wash your hands and got
(01:01:51):
thrown into an asylum.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Ye wash your hands before performing surgery and hands in
a human.
Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
It wasn't even it wasn't even saying to everyone to
watch their heads. He's like, hey, before you put your
hands and people clean them.
Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Up, you think about it.
Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
And they were like, throw this man in crazy jail anyway,
So we want to hear your thoughts, folks. Please let
us know examples of strange purported cures or snake oil
that you are seeing in the wild. You can find
us on Instagram where conspiracy Stuff show. We can find
(01:02:31):
us on YouTube we are conspiracy stuff. You can find
us on TikTok. You can find us, you know, in
the right sort of wija board vibe if you if
you feel like a wija board is an awkward way
to communicate, you can also just give us a phone call.
Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Oh yeah, yeah, I get the nearest burner wherever you
are and just dial one eight three three st d
w y t K. It is a voicemail system. You've
got three minute to leave a message when you call in.
Please give yourself a cool moniker and nickname, just not
your government name, and tell us if we can use
your name and message on the air. If you got
(01:03:10):
more to say, they can fit in that single voicemail,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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