June 22, 2010 • 34 mins
In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the controversial "ghost prisons," covert prisons created by the CIA after September 11th, 2001 to secretly detain and interrogate terrorist suspects in various locations around the world, including the U.S.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Visit Go to Meeting dot com slash stuff. That's Go
(00:44):
to Meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Across this vast gulf of
a table in our brand new v o C heavy
studio is Charles You, Chuck, Brian, Alright, we're in people.
This is our brand new studio. This is our first
(01:04):
time recording and now it's we gotta get used to
this weirdness all over again. Know things just can't be normal.
So now we're in weird chairs and the table is huge,
and Jerry. I can't even talk about Jerry because she's
not even in the room with us anymore. Wait, Chuck,
did you just pronounced huge with the out the h
with the H being silent? Did you just say huge?
(01:25):
I've been saying human being and huge ever since I
came back from New York. Huge. Yeah, it's huge, huge.
And Jerry isn't even in our vision line of vision,
and I hate that. Yeah, it's odd. Things are odd.
There's like a burlette curtain. I'm wearing headphones made out
(01:46):
of old potatoes. Alright, Chuck, let's let's get this going
all right, All right, enough griping from us. No, seriously,
nobody cares. No, one cares. Um. I had like a
great intro to this one. Let's hear it. I can't remember. Oh, yes, Chuck,
you know that there's a lot of finger pointing about
(02:06):
how nine eleven was allowed to happen? Right? Uh? Is
there there? There has been. I don't know if there
is anymore. But at first there's a lot of finger pointing,
and a lot of that fell on Clinton. Oh yeah,
because you know, Bush is pretty new. He was a
He was a newbie still as far as presidents go,
and Clinton had been president for two terms. Blame it
(02:27):
on the previous guy. It's an American tradition, it really is. UM.
But the thing is Clinton's administration, Clintons CIA had passed
along a list of high valued targets of people in
the Alcadda network before the September eleventh attacks ever happened,
(02:47):
and there was a lot of talk about what to
do with this list of people. UM. After September eleven,
like you know, say, eleven am on September eleven, the
talk started about what to do with this list is
it became clear that this was al Qaeda that had
carried out this this heinous attack, right, And one of
(03:08):
the things that we did with it was to publish
a UM deck of cards. I have that deck? Do
you really? Yeah? A friend of mine gave me that deck. Yes.
Do you remember that you could get them like a
comedience stores and American public beyond the lookout for these
guys and also enjoy some you know, Texas hold them
with them as well. And my mine is Camo on
(03:29):
the other side. That's appropriate, UM, But so there's a
lot of talk about what to do with this list
of people. We had their names in a lot of cases,
we knew where they were, and um one of the
one of the ideas that was suggested was to start
assassinating all of them, and that one was I think
probably fairly well entertained. But the CIA had been as
(03:52):
far as we know, out of UM practice with assassinations
for a while. UM. So instead we decided to start
UM stepping up a program called Extraordinary Rendition, right right,
which would be a great band name. As soon as
I heard it. You you think everything is a great
(04:13):
band name? No, not everyone. Everyone thinks everything is a
good band name, but not me. Okay, you're you're the
I'm the guy who named his band El Cheapo, So
I know it's a good one. What was the other one?
A designer kiddy or what? There's another band name recently
that you liked? Oh I don't know? Okay, Well, anyway,
this Extraordinary Rendition program actually dated back to UM the
(04:36):
Bush senior presidency. In January, George Herbert Walker Bush UM
signed a Presidential finding authorizing extraordinary rendition, which basically is kidnapping.
Yeah of finding it we should say it's sort of
like an executive order. It's one of those things that
a president can just say, make it happen. But it's
pretty much a secret executive order. I mean, like its
(04:58):
existence can be made public, but its contents aren't. And
actually the executive order that Um Bush Senior signed um
allowing or authorizing extraordinary rendition is still classified, right, But
what we know is that it was used a couple
of dozen times, largely in the Clinton era, and for
the most part it was used to go into countries
(05:20):
that harbor terrorists, kidnapped the terrorists, and then bring them
to American courts for trial or other places. Well that
that kind of stepped up after two thousand one, after
after Bush Jr. Came into power. Um the CIA stopped,
I guess, kind of wanting to put their faith in
(05:40):
American courts and risk the coin toss of of an
American jury going in favor of a terrorist. So they
started using extraordinary rendition to third party nations. So now
not only are we kidnapping foreign nationals or kidnapping foreign
nationals and taking them to other countries that they don't
have an affiliation with so that we can basically outsource torture, interrogation,
(06:03):
that kind of thing, right, Yeah, And we should point
out at this point that UM during this kind of rendition, Uh,
this isn't the kind of rendition you want to hear
if you're a detainee, because it basically means you can't
you don't have a lot of contact with the outside world,
as in none, you don't have rights to habeas corpus.
You can't call your attorney and say, you know, get
me out of here on bail. Uh, that kind of thing.
(06:23):
It's very secret you're abducted. I think one of the
stories you listed was a guy that they set up
a fake fundraiser and invited this guy to it in
order to capture him. Yeah. After after nine eleven, like
the world stage turned into like this um plot exposition
montage from a Mission Impossible movement or a Simpsons episode. Sure, yeah,
(06:45):
people just started disappearing. Actually, yeah, pretty much. And by
the very socio or the very um geopolitical definition of disappearing,
it was they were kidnapped by a government entity and
kept out of the um perv you, of the courts,
and stripped of any kind of rights, right, right, So
(07:05):
the problem is we went from using a couple of
extraordinary rendition on a couple of dozen people throughout the
entire nineties to UM by the New York Times estimate
at least three hundred and seven UM between late two
thousand one and two thousand five. That's probably a very
very low number, right, So we go from a couple
(07:28):
of dozen in a decade to three hundred and seven
and more in about four years, and we don't exactly
know where to put these people. The CIA didn't want
to bring them to the US because they didn't want
them to be prosecuted in American courts. They wanted these
people to lose all their rights and to disappear so
that they could be kept for as long as the
(07:49):
CIA wanted them until they found out what they needed.
So what they did was set up as a network
of secret prisons, right, ghost prisons as their call us.
And they're known as ghost prisoners there and they are
the podcast Yeah if only Human Rights Watch, you've heard
of that group. They have a list on the internets
(08:11):
about a list of ghost prisoners, suspected ghost prisoners, and
it's very long, and the CIA is always like, we
don't comment on that. Kind of thing because those lists
are probably not accurate, right that they towed the company
line there, right, because the c I couldn't say, yeah,
that list is really accurate, and we do this. The CIA,
(08:33):
for years and years and years after the the their
cover was blown, would never acknowledge that there were secret prisons. Right. Well, yeah,
but g W had to come clean and what oh
six in Atlanta wasn't in atlantas Sony produced standing next
to him. Yeah, he acknowledged the existence of secret prisons.
And it's probably after seeing W. It was probably just
(08:54):
like a snaffoo, or he didn't. He didn't mean to
say it. He was probably tricked into admitting it, but
he did, and um it so it came out that yes,
these these do exist, but but we don't use them
any longer. And then in January of two thousand nine,
(09:14):
Obama the first thing he does is shuts down the
CIA secret prison network, three years after they stopped using it. Apparently,
well that was on a second full day in office
he did that. But pro Publica you've part of them too, right, Yes,
they they say that there are um dozens of ghost
(09:35):
prisoners still unaccounted for, so it's um you know, he
says he shut him down, but they say pro Publica
all these human rights groups say that they're still they
don't know where these dudes are. Well, the other the
other possibility is that the secret prisons have been shut down,
but those people are dead. Um, that's kind of that
(09:57):
was par for the course in a lot of ways
for the CIA secret prisons. If you have no rights whatsoever,
if you die in custody, nobody cares. Like let's say,
or I shouldn't say, no one cares. There's no accountability
for that. So for instance, let's say you were, um,
you died of ahixiation because you were held in a
shipping container. Yeah. Have you seen the road du Guantanamo. No,
(10:20):
there's a it's a kind of I guess, doc. No,
I know about it. I just haven't seen it. It's
worth seeing, Yeah, I mean it's it's it's worth seeing. Um.
But there's a there's a scene in there that that
shows that these people being rounded up and shipped across
Afghanistan in a huge like shipping container and like when
they opened the doors the next day, like most of
(10:40):
them are dead. It's gross, it's really disturbing. Well, it's
like when you get the pet turtle in the shoe box,
you gotta Mom always says, you know, remember the holes
in the top. Yeah, so apparently mom wasn't around to
remind them of this. No, people weren't thinking like that.
And the one dude froze to death. Yeah, and the
secret prison with and I have to say, they had
some pretty cool names. Uh. The one of the first
(11:03):
and one of the largest was codenamed Salt Pit. And
it was in a brick factory and abandoned brick factory
outside of Cobble. Uh. And um, a junior CIA officer
who was kind of new on this kind of thing
ordered a detainee strip naked in chain to the floor
and he was left overnight. And it can get pretty
(11:23):
cold apparently in Cobble. Uh. And the guy froze to death.
So I mean, it's entirely possible that this two dozen,
these two dozen people, I'm surprised it's not more. But
these two dozen people who are unaccounted for are are dead? Right,
that's probably the case. Yeah. Uh, you mentioned the names.
I dug up a couple of more. Um, and I
(11:43):
would say these are probably top ten lists of camps.
You don't want to go to. But Camp Dark Prison
was the one, and my favorite was Camp bond Steel
b O N D S T E E L. I
can't bond steel and thank you for spelling it. Well,
it's not steel is in. Take its steel is in.
(12:04):
This is the metal that I will beat you with.
This is metal that you will live behind for the
rest of your life if you, um, well, let's talk
about what what you lose when you're in a CIA prison.
That the right to lose um. Traditionally do you remember,
like a few years ago, the whole you know, what,
what are the people in Guantanamo Bay? Are the enemy
(12:25):
combatants or the non combatants or the terrorists? Like what
kind of rights do they have? Are they do they
fall under the Geneva Convention. And it was largely decided
by the Bush administration that no, these people didn't have
Geneva Convention rights right, UM. With the under the purview
of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross is charged with
going to visit enemy combatants and prisoners of war UM
(12:49):
on both sides, and and and see how they're treated
um with the secret prisons. First of all, the people,
no one knew that these people had been you know,
um kidnapped. What wouldn't be very good secret prison exactly
if the Red Cross knew about it where they were
And yeah, they were denied you know the Cross. Even
after the Red Cross found out that they were here,
(13:10):
and and I know, you've got this guy here and
we want to visit them in the secret prison, will
quiet see It's like, no, we're not letting you in. Right.
That kind of shook things up. That's a big deal. Um,
there's no habeas corpus And and like you mentioned earlier,
they they would go to countries where they typically might
torture people. And because the US isn't allowed to obviously
(13:32):
to torture, they weren't at the time. Before it was
we decided yeah, yeah we torture, right, but we outsourced it,
like you mentioned, so we would, let's say, set up
in um I think you said the first one was
in Thailand. Yeah, so they were looking around there, like
where would I go if I wanted to set up
a secret prison where you might be able to uh torture.
Somebody in Thailand was like, come on over, you can
(13:53):
set up shop here, and they they outsourced it. But
from what I read in your article was you wrote
this right? From what I read was the US could say, like, hey,
ask him about the micro film, right, we would pass
along questions or direction or something like that. And the
the last I wrote this thing in uh, I can't remember,
some time in two thousand seven, I think late two
(14:13):
thousand seven. And at the time, the last UM report
I had had of of somebody being held in the
secret prison was in Africa, I believe North Africa. Yeah, uh.
And and some Americans and Canadians reported having contact with
Americans in these like African prisons, Westerners being held captive
(14:36):
secretly and some guy behind the curtain saying use the
dental drill exactly, and he sounds like he's from Omaha,
and he shouldn't because this is you know, Africa, uh,
in other places, other other black site host countries. Yeah,
that's what they're called, just like the black budgets and
(14:58):
black ops the or black sites, right, or ghost prisons.
So you put black in front of it, and if
it's related to the government and there's no description, there's
just like a huge budget on a line item. Yeah,
with a sharpie that is exit out. That's the secret prison. Um.
There are Some of the other countries are Azerbaijan, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Algeria.
(15:22):
All of these places where UM receiving prisoners didn't necessarily
have a black site may have, but then most of
the black site UH countries host countries were UM Eastern
European like Lithuania and Romania. Yeah, but once uh, once
it came out, though, they would probably try to shut
it down, right because they didn't want this to get
(15:43):
out to the press. Well, not only did they not
wanted to get out to the press, they didn't necessarily
wanted to get out to the president of that country.
And a lot of cases it was like the c
I a uh, maybe a couple of maybe the the U. S.
Ambassador of that country, and a couple of like say
bulgar Area's secret police, like high commanders. Those are the
only people on the planet who knew that there was
(16:05):
a secret prison Bulgaria. What do they get into Romania?
I wondered that myself too. I mean, like it's gotta
be money, right, Sure, it would have to be, because
do you really think Bulgarians are quite as amped up
about American patriotism is? Say, you know, the average American
is yeah, I wouldn't think so, and especially uh Bulgarian
secret police officer, you know, well yeah, so yeah, I
(16:29):
would think money. Well we yeah. What I said though,
second ago is they would close like Thailand when the
word got out that they were doing this and now
we should close this. But it seems like every time
it happened, they would just find a different country and
then go set up shop there, right, And what with
Eastern Europe in particular, it was a little prickly or
ticklish because, um, well when the Washington Post broke this story,
(16:50):
they even said in the article, like, we're not going
to reveal the names of the host countries because it's
so sensitive. Um that these countries governments are really gonna
have problems on their hands when it comes out. And
indeed they did at first. Um. But the reason why
is because these were all post uh Soviet Block countries
that had, you know, adopted democracies after the fall of
(17:13):
the Soviet Union. Um. And we're now you know, involved
in this horrible uh secret prison network. You know you
were talking about when word got out? Do you know
how word got out? Well, this is a Thailand one.
No word got out on what then unlike the existence
of the secret prison period. H yeah, it wasn't a
(17:37):
canary singing singing like a canary. No, there was a
vision there was Basically it was the CIA's fault. They
didn't do their leg work. They didn't do their homework
with the manifest for the planes. Yes, so this is
what this is what cracks me up, is kidnapping people,
taking them to a secret prison network that they've set up,
(17:59):
and yet the honest about flight manifests right right, Yeah,
that's what I don't get. So there was a Swedish
TV producer who um basically did some like hard hitting journalism.
I think it was called cold Facts was the translation
of the Swedish. We'll call him Spence Fencing. I think
that's good. And if that's not his name, I'll bet
(18:20):
Spence Spencon is better than his real name. So Sven
um was was, I guess, investigating the the extradition of
two um Swedish citizens to Egypt for questioning. They were
suspected terrorists. So sven starts looking into um the plane
(18:40):
that that took them there, and it was a Gulf
Stream five. Yeah they charted these right. Yeah, it was
a Gulf Stream five and it was registered to a
company Sven found out very quickly UM called Premier Executive
Transport Services, and it was registered in Deadham, Massachusetts. So
Sven and calls Premier Executive Transport Services, leaves a message
(19:04):
wants to know about, you know, why they would be
transporting UM suspected terrorists to Egypt, And fifteen minutes later
it gets a call from the Swedish Intelligence Service saying like,
stop asking questions, and so Savin starts looking a little
further and apparently UM finds out very quickly, in very
short order that there are thirty six planes chartered by
(19:26):
the CIA UM making odds that are all that are
all yeah, making odds. Stops with the nationalities of the
people on board, and they would go from like say, UM, Afghanistan, Yeah,
this guy out to Egypt, trough UM Morocco, and then
to Guantanamo. Yeah, they're flying from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. But
(19:47):
somehow they can't get a direct flight. And they stop
off at like four places along the way right and
then at each stop there's somebody who's um, you know
uh uh country of origin is Ohman and they but
they get off know in in Cuba, you know. So, yeah,
it's very flimsy. All the all of the companies were
dummy corporations that had like p O boxes listed And yeah,
(20:11):
the Swedish intelligence Service basically tipped this guy off and
he blew the whistle. And I think two thousand four
when yeah, Spence Svince Svince in r I p so
these prisons, Josh, we're not saying that, you know, these
are nice guys that shouldn't be picked on. These you know,
these are big, big time. And the one in Thailand,
I think the first one, their first guest, their first
(20:34):
overnight guest, was Abu Zuba Zobeida, and he was a
top al Qaeda guy. He was captured in a shootout
in Pakistan, was recovering in the hospital and I think
he probably knew what was what was going on. You know,
he's in the hospital saying, I'm still not feeling that great,
maybe I should stay here a little longer. And then
(20:55):
he recovers and then they're like, well, why don't you
come stay in our our private hotel. Was he the
one that they they kidnapped out of his hospital? Ben Somalia,
Uh no, no, no, they just Pkistan. Yeah, they were.
He was just recovering after a shootout and then they
brought him to their little the secret hotel. And you
pointed out that he was treated well. Well, he was
(21:15):
tortured and treated well, said they. You said they fed
him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and yeah, and he loved
kit cats and they gave him kick cats all the time.
Did he I don't know. That's what I was, That's
what I read. Well, it said they fed him. He
was treated well because they fed him baked chicken and
candy bars. But what if on his little questionnaire he
filled out like allergic to chocolate and I hate chicken.
(21:36):
Part of entirely possible. I just wanted to bring that up.
There's also um Chuck a list on Mother Jones I think, yeah, yeah,
of UM music the Music of Torture or something like that.
Metallica's hype the list I know that Metallica, Rick Astley, Yeah,
the Barney there, yeah yeah, the Barney song at UM
(22:00):
Guantanamo very loudly, over and over and over again. And
Mia mix commercial really yeah, yeah, I would do the
um Cook's pest control here locally looking looking lucky. Here
comes cookie pass control. Yeah, the the guy I mentioned that,
the Abu Zubdaya Zubaya. Yeah, he was joined shortly thereafter
(22:24):
by Khaleed Chiek Mohammed, who's a high value, high high
value target. So I'm sure when he checked in to
the secret hotel the other guy was like, oh crap,
what's not good. What's odd is that you know it
took us as many years as it did to start
assassinating people like uh. I think it was just in
the last couple of months that UM news broke of
(22:45):
some programs that the CIA was outsourcing to, like um
ZE Worldwide, Blackwater and other contractors, Extel's force. Guys. Who
were you know, going into Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and assassinating
UM like al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists guys. Right,
So I wonder why we didn't just do that at first, instead,
(23:06):
you know started I guess we needed info. Yeah, intelligence,
we had none, So I guess that's probably why they
were like, well, we can't kill them, Yeah, what's going on?
So we can water board him? And then eight years
later we'll start assassinating and give them kitcats, right apparently,
so oh latest news on this UM Yeah, there's some
(23:27):
pretty recent stuff going on. Yeah, did you read about
the UM Physicians for Human Rights report? So basically there
were physicians present at a lot of these enhanced derogations,
and not just in an observational manner. Well that's what
they were supposed to be there forest and basically like, hey,
you just almost drowned, so let me make sure you're
(23:47):
still alive and breathing in in good health. Right, Yeah,
that's UM, that's okay. Actually, apparently as far as the
American Medical Association and and international UM treaties are concerned,
you're allowed to do that. You're still fulfilling your purpose
as a physician. They took it a step further, right, Yes,
they did. They have a report out Josh called Experiments
(24:11):
and Torture Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in
the Enhanced Interrogation Program. And from what I gathered, the
long and short of it is they were gathering information
that could later be used to defend and court the torturers.
Is that right? I think they were quantifying pain thresholds,
(24:31):
like if you waterboard this guy for this long, he'll
experience a pain of eight. So they were kind of
writing an outline of what you can do and still
get defended in a court of law, right, which transferred
their position as physicians to UM researchers. And it's transferred
the position of these detainees as patients to test subjects.
(24:56):
So they were engaging in human experimentation, yeah, pretty much,
and gathering data from torture, which is totally illegal. Yeah.
But isn't everything about the ghost prison network illegal? Yeah?
Pretty much. Everything that took place as far as the
CIA was concerned after two thousand one was illegal. And
it's not like we're little babes in the woods. It's
not like the CIA has just been, you know, on
(25:18):
the up and up since then. But this is what
this is. So this is recent, this is going on
now still, I imagine. Yeah, there was another joint study,
a two d and twenty six page report published in
January of this year, and um, it's a joint study
by this Well, there's like four different groups I won't
read all of them, all human rights groups, and they said,
(25:41):
of a particular concern to the authors, I'm gonna read
this verbatim, beyond the overall illegality of the entire project
conceived and executed by the Bush administration is the fate
of dozens of men held in secret prisons run by
the CIA or transferred to CIA prisons. So they estimate
you said a couple of dozen. You said a couple dozen?
(26:01):
I thought, did I know? They're saying that ninety four
prisoners um had been redacted and had enhanced interrogation techniques
to varying degrees performed on twenty eight of the ninety four.
So this was part of the whole torture memo thing.
How is it that low? I would think it would
be way more than that. Yeah, you know, I would too,
(26:24):
So well that's what they found out, So who knows,
it may have been more good good times. Yeah, yeah,
it's weird. America in the twenty one centuries was a
weird place. The first decade was odd, Yeah, if you
ask me. But Obama's trying to shut these down, and
I think has for the most part. Yeah. Well, see,
I don't but I don't know. But I'm not I'm
(26:45):
not saying that there's not, you know, pinky stuff going
on there too. Definitely not again, Babes in the Woods.
This episode of stuff you should know. It's brought to
you by go to meeting the affordable way to meet
with clients and colleagues for your free thirty day trial.
Does it go to meeting dot com slash stuff You
(27:09):
got anything else? Uh no, I'm good. If you want
to learn more, Um, you can read my two thousand
seven article. Uh was there was there a secret CIA
prison network? Just type in CIA in prison in the
handysearch bart how stuff works dot com and that takes us,
of course to listener Maile, No, no, Josh, oh yeah,
(27:34):
We're gonna do just a little quickie New York recap
for those of our friends who could not be there. Dude,
New York was hugeog. It was odd and weird and
surreal and awesome. One of the things I learned about
our fans, um at least our fans in the Brooklyn area. Yeah. Um,
(27:56):
they're very self aware, in self conscious people, and that
makes them highly relatable to us. So, like the question,
the biggest question I got was this must be very
weird for you. Huh. I didn't get that much. I
got it every time, and every time my answer is like, actually,
it's really weird. Maybe this because you were standing there
like like twitching. Yeah, yeah, but I got it. A
(28:17):
lot and it was it was nice that actually I
found it um disarming. Yeah that's good. Yeah. So we
you know, everyone knows. We went to New York. We
had a few media opportunities, we did a few interviews. Um,
but Monday night was when we had our happy hour
at the knitting factory in Brooklyn with the Onion, which, dude,
we couldn't have done any of this without the onion.
(28:38):
Thank you to Dan and Joe for putting this stuff
together and just being our buds. Yeah, that was a
real treat to get to know those guys for sure.
It was since your sensation, like my dad, It was
a real treat, Josh. So we have our happy hour,
we get there, um, tons of people show up. The
fire department comes at one point because there were too
(28:59):
many people there, which was so awesome. I know, I
was like, what is the somethinge fire? And they weren't
in a hurry. They were just kind of standing around
talking to people, like, you know, trying to gauge the
amount of people. I think. So we got to meet people,
We got to hang out with people and drink an
adult beverage with people. We got to meet Mark, Australian
(29:20):
Wagga Wagon mak Yeah, thanks for the couzy bud. Yeah.
And we got to meet a lot of people who
and I remembered a lot of showed up on Monday.
Sock Ninja, the dude Chris Uh, Chris and his wife
whose wife was car Chris Wit. Yes, he was there
with his wife, and they were super awesome. They were
almost kind of working for us. They were helping with
(29:41):
the T shirts and taking photographs. Yeah. And there was
Greg I believe he was kind of helping me too.
He was helping me like move the line along and everything. Yeah.
There are some really genuinely cool people here. Everybody there
was super Yes. Yes, as a matter and I need
to say special thanks to the banjo dude, remember him, Yeah,
the guy with the banjo and his girlfriend. They gave us.
(30:03):
They well, a lot of people brought gifts, and they
brought me this Uh. She made this really neat little
egg where she had made a design of thread that
was on the egg. It was really intricate and very cool.
And they also met my friend Justin and helped him
out in some ways. And they were very very cool kids.
And I can't remember her name, but there's a fan
(30:25):
that um, both of us met, but I talked to
her for a while. Grundy she gave us No, not Grundy, Um,
but hey Grundy. Yes, she gave us a molecular gastronomy book.
Oh yeah, yeah, she just wrote in today. I can't
remember her name. I thank you for it. Yeah, it
was very awesome. So hopefully possibly look for a molecular
gastronomy podcast. And I got c d S and like, um,
(30:47):
a lot of a lot of bands were like, hey, man,
listen to this. Yes, and we have to go listen
to um the Large Hadron podcast. Yes, I have not yet,
but we need to go check them out. And so
that was Monday. So then we had our Wednesday flash
forward Wednesday and we had our all Star Trivia night
at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn and this was nuts. Yes,
(31:10):
we had um D people in this big room. There's
a big venue. It's like a concert venue. Yes, like
you I could see sticks playing there, um but yeah,
there's it was standing room only, I would say, about
five people, and we we cobbled together this really awesome
(31:30):
trivia team. Go ahead and lower the boom there. Okay,
So we had Jackson Public who creates this, uh, this
super cool cartoon called The Venture Brothers you may be
familiar with. He was one of the head writers on
the Tick. Yes, and he was brought along by our
buddy John Hodgman. We can say our buddy, Yeah, we can.
Now I feel like he's our friend. He is he is,
(31:51):
you can feel that way. Uh. And I'm really glad
that John brought um Jackson along because he actually saved
our our butts like several times with questions. Yeah, we
would have there would have been like five six questions
that we wouldn't have gotten had it not been for him.
And he's a very cool guy. Wyatt see Neck from
The Daily Show came along. Another buddy, super cool. We
(32:11):
actually had lunch with Ian Hodgman one day. Yes, the
the esteemed Joe Randazzo, the editor in chief of The Onion,
who again we couldn't have done any of this without Joe.
Was awesome. Joe was there just looking pumped, you know,
because he works out instead of smokes. Now he's very intimidating.
And then um Ira Glass, Yes, the man that we
(32:32):
stare up at in the iTunes rankings every day. Yes,
Ira Glass was there and on our team not there
to be rate and he was there on our team.
He was very cool and I just need to say that.
He came up to me afterward and was blown away.
Do your impression show and I don't want to start
impresonating glass. Your fans are amazing. That was pretty good.
(32:53):
That was close. He was blown away by the by
the enthusiasm of the stuff. You should know Army and
he doesn't. And Randazzo came up to and he's like, man,
Ira doesn't get this sort of like rock star thing much.
So he was tickled to be there, I think, and
have people you know fawning over him and telling him
how much they loved him. It's which is something he deserves.
(33:14):
And Hodgman, we mentioned John Hodgman was on our team
and he was one of the funniest, quickest, witted, smartest
guys I've ever met in my life. Agreed, I'm with
you on that one. Like I told my buddy Scotty
about that, and he said, you're really quick, though, man,
I said, yeah, but dude, when I quickly make like
a fart joke, Hodgeman is that quick. But he references
(33:35):
like an eighteenth century poet and it fits and it's funny, right,
it's like a drag racer. Yeah, in like a fifteen
year old donkey in competition in that one. Thank you Yeah,
same here, buddy, I got like the twelve year old
donkey thing going up, all right, So yeah, thank you
(33:56):
very much everybody who helped that. And it was such
a success. We had such an a time that we're like,
why would we spend any more time at the office,
Let's go hit other cities. So look for other cities
in the very near future. And we want to know
where we should go next. So if you have a
suggestion of what city where we should go that kind
of thing. You want to play some trivia, let us know.
(34:16):
Send us an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Want
more house stuff Works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you
(34:38):
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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(00:44):
to Meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Across this vast gulf of
a table in our brand new v o C heavy
studio is Charles You, Chuck, Brian, Alright, we're in people.
This is our brand new studio. This is our first
(01:04):
time recording and now it's we gotta get used to
this weirdness all over again. Know things just can't be normal.
So now we're in weird chairs and the table is huge,
and Jerry. I can't even talk about Jerry because she's
not even in the room with us anymore. Wait, Chuck,
did you just pronounced huge with the out the h
with the H being silent? Did you just say huge?
(01:25):
I've been saying human being and huge ever since I
came back from New York. Huge. Yeah, it's huge, huge.
And Jerry isn't even in our vision line of vision,
and I hate that. Yeah, it's odd. Things are odd.
There's like a burlette curtain. I'm wearing headphones made out
(01:46):
of old potatoes. Alright, Chuck, let's let's get this going
all right, All right, enough griping from us. No, seriously,
nobody cares. No, one cares. Um. I had like a
great intro to this one. Let's hear it. I can't remember. Oh, yes, Chuck,
you know that there's a lot of finger pointing about
(02:06):
how nine eleven was allowed to happen? Right? Uh? Is
there there? There has been. I don't know if there
is anymore. But at first there's a lot of finger pointing,
and a lot of that fell on Clinton. Oh yeah,
because you know, Bush is pretty new. He was a
He was a newbie still as far as presidents go,
and Clinton had been president for two terms. Blame it
(02:27):
on the previous guy. It's an American tradition, it really is. UM.
But the thing is Clinton's administration, Clintons CIA had passed
along a list of high valued targets of people in
the Alcadda network before the September eleventh attacks ever happened,
(02:47):
and there was a lot of talk about what to
do with this list of people. UM. After September eleven,
like you know, say, eleven am on September eleven, the
talk started about what to do with this list is
it became clear that this was al Qaeda that had
carried out this this heinous attack, right, And one of
(03:08):
the things that we did with it was to publish
a UM deck of cards. I have that deck? Do
you really? Yeah? A friend of mine gave me that deck. Yes.
Do you remember that you could get them like a
comedience stores and American public beyond the lookout for these
guys and also enjoy some you know, Texas hold them
with them as well. And my mine is Camo on
(03:29):
the other side. That's appropriate, UM, But so there's a
lot of talk about what to do with this list
of people. We had their names in a lot of cases,
we knew where they were, and um one of the
one of the ideas that was suggested was to start
assassinating all of them, and that one was I think
probably fairly well entertained. But the CIA had been as
(03:52):
far as we know, out of UM practice with assassinations
for a while. UM. So instead we decided to start
UM stepping up a program called Extraordinary Rendition, right right,
which would be a great band name. As soon as
I heard it. You you think everything is a great
(04:13):
band name? No, not everyone. Everyone thinks everything is a
good band name, but not me. Okay, you're you're the
I'm the guy who named his band El Cheapo, So
I know it's a good one. What was the other one?
A designer kiddy or what? There's another band name recently
that you liked? Oh I don't know? Okay, Well, anyway,
this Extraordinary Rendition program actually dated back to UM the
(04:36):
Bush senior presidency. In January, George Herbert Walker Bush UM
signed a Presidential finding authorizing extraordinary rendition, which basically is kidnapping.
Yeah of finding it we should say it's sort of
like an executive order. It's one of those things that
a president can just say, make it happen. But it's
pretty much a secret executive order. I mean, like its
(04:58):
existence can be made public, but its contents aren't. And
actually the executive order that Um Bush Senior signed um
allowing or authorizing extraordinary rendition is still classified, right, But
what we know is that it was used a couple
of dozen times, largely in the Clinton era, and for
the most part it was used to go into countries
(05:20):
that harbor terrorists, kidnapped the terrorists, and then bring them
to American courts for trial or other places. Well that
that kind of stepped up after two thousand one, after
after Bush Jr. Came into power. Um the CIA stopped,
I guess, kind of wanting to put their faith in
(05:40):
American courts and risk the coin toss of of an
American jury going in favor of a terrorist. So they
started using extraordinary rendition to third party nations. So now
not only are we kidnapping foreign nationals or kidnapping foreign
nationals and taking them to other countries that they don't
have an affiliation with so that we can basically outsource torture, interrogation,
(06:03):
that kind of thing, right, Yeah, And we should point
out at this point that UM during this kind of rendition, Uh,
this isn't the kind of rendition you want to hear
if you're a detainee, because it basically means you can't
you don't have a lot of contact with the outside world,
as in none, you don't have rights to habeas corpus.
You can't call your attorney and say, you know, get
me out of here on bail. Uh, that kind of thing.
(06:23):
It's very secret you're abducted. I think one of the
stories you listed was a guy that they set up
a fake fundraiser and invited this guy to it in
order to capture him. Yeah. After after nine eleven, like
the world stage turned into like this um plot exposition
montage from a Mission Impossible movement or a Simpsons episode. Sure, yeah,
(06:45):
people just started disappearing. Actually, yeah, pretty much. And by
the very socio or the very um geopolitical definition of disappearing,
it was they were kidnapped by a government entity and
kept out of the um perv you, of the courts,
and stripped of any kind of rights, right, right, So
(07:05):
the problem is we went from using a couple of
extraordinary rendition on a couple of dozen people throughout the
entire nineties to UM by the New York Times estimate
at least three hundred and seven UM between late two
thousand one and two thousand five. That's probably a very
very low number, right, So we go from a couple
(07:28):
of dozen in a decade to three hundred and seven
and more in about four years, and we don't exactly
know where to put these people. The CIA didn't want
to bring them to the US because they didn't want
them to be prosecuted in American courts. They wanted these
people to lose all their rights and to disappear so
that they could be kept for as long as the
(07:49):
CIA wanted them until they found out what they needed.
So what they did was set up as a network
of secret prisons, right, ghost prisons as their call us.
And they're known as ghost prisoners there and they are
the podcast Yeah if only Human Rights Watch, you've heard
of that group. They have a list on the internets
(08:11):
about a list of ghost prisoners, suspected ghost prisoners, and
it's very long, and the CIA is always like, we
don't comment on that. Kind of thing because those lists
are probably not accurate, right that they towed the company
line there, right, because the c I couldn't say, yeah,
that list is really accurate, and we do this. The CIA,
(08:33):
for years and years and years after the the their
cover was blown, would never acknowledge that there were secret prisons. Right. Well, yeah,
but g W had to come clean and what oh
six in Atlanta wasn't in atlantas Sony produced standing next
to him. Yeah, he acknowledged the existence of secret prisons.
And it's probably after seeing W. It was probably just
(08:54):
like a snaffoo, or he didn't. He didn't mean to
say it. He was probably tricked into admitting it, but
he did, and um it so it came out that yes,
these these do exist, but but we don't use them
any longer. And then in January of two thousand nine,
(09:14):
Obama the first thing he does is shuts down the
CIA secret prison network, three years after they stopped using it. Apparently,
well that was on a second full day in office
he did that. But pro Publica you've part of them too, right, Yes,
they they say that there are um dozens of ghost
(09:35):
prisoners still unaccounted for, so it's um you know, he
says he shut him down, but they say pro Publica
all these human rights groups say that they're still they
don't know where these dudes are. Well, the other the
other possibility is that the secret prisons have been shut down,
but those people are dead. Um, that's kind of that
(09:57):
was par for the course in a lot of ways
for the CIA secret prisons. If you have no rights whatsoever,
if you die in custody, nobody cares. Like let's say,
or I shouldn't say, no one cares. There's no accountability
for that. So for instance, let's say you were, um,
you died of ahixiation because you were held in a
shipping container. Yeah. Have you seen the road du Guantanamo. No,
(10:20):
there's a it's a kind of I guess, doc. No,
I know about it. I just haven't seen it. It's
worth seeing, Yeah, I mean it's it's it's worth seeing. Um.
But there's a there's a scene in there that that
shows that these people being rounded up and shipped across
Afghanistan in a huge like shipping container and like when
they opened the doors the next day, like most of
(10:40):
them are dead. It's gross, it's really disturbing. Well, it's
like when you get the pet turtle in the shoe box,
you gotta Mom always says, you know, remember the holes
in the top. Yeah, so apparently mom wasn't around to
remind them of this. No, people weren't thinking like that.
And the one dude froze to death. Yeah, and the
secret prison with and I have to say, they had
some pretty cool names. Uh. The one of the first
(11:03):
and one of the largest was codenamed Salt Pit. And
it was in a brick factory and abandoned brick factory
outside of Cobble. Uh. And um, a junior CIA officer
who was kind of new on this kind of thing
ordered a detainee strip naked in chain to the floor
and he was left overnight. And it can get pretty
(11:23):
cold apparently in Cobble. Uh. And the guy froze to death.
So I mean, it's entirely possible that this two dozen,
these two dozen people, I'm surprised it's not more. But
these two dozen people who are unaccounted for are are dead? Right,
that's probably the case. Yeah. Uh, you mentioned the names.
I dug up a couple of more. Um, and I
(11:43):
would say these are probably top ten lists of camps.
You don't want to go to. But Camp Dark Prison
was the one, and my favorite was Camp bond Steel
b O N D S T E E L. I
can't bond steel and thank you for spelling it. Well,
it's not steel is in. Take its steel is in.
(12:04):
This is the metal that I will beat you with.
This is metal that you will live behind for the
rest of your life if you, um, well, let's talk
about what what you lose when you're in a CIA prison.
That the right to lose um. Traditionally do you remember,
like a few years ago, the whole you know, what,
what are the people in Guantanamo Bay? Are the enemy
(12:25):
combatants or the non combatants or the terrorists? Like what
kind of rights do they have? Are they do they
fall under the Geneva Convention. And it was largely decided
by the Bush administration that no, these people didn't have
Geneva Convention rights right, UM. With the under the purview
of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross is charged with
going to visit enemy combatants and prisoners of war UM
(12:49):
on both sides, and and and see how they're treated
um with the secret prisons. First of all, the people,
no one knew that these people had been you know,
um kidnapped. What wouldn't be very good secret prison exactly
if the Red Cross knew about it where they were
And yeah, they were denied you know the Cross. Even
after the Red Cross found out that they were here,
(13:10):
and and I know, you've got this guy here and
we want to visit them in the secret prison, will
quiet see It's like, no, we're not letting you in. Right.
That kind of shook things up. That's a big deal. Um,
there's no habeas corpus And and like you mentioned earlier,
they they would go to countries where they typically might
torture people. And because the US isn't allowed to obviously
(13:32):
to torture, they weren't at the time. Before it was
we decided yeah, yeah we torture, right, but we outsourced it,
like you mentioned, so we would, let's say, set up
in um I think you said the first one was
in Thailand. Yeah, so they were looking around there, like
where would I go if I wanted to set up
a secret prison where you might be able to uh torture.
Somebody in Thailand was like, come on over, you can
(13:53):
set up shop here, and they they outsourced it. But
from what I read in your article was you wrote
this right? From what I read was the US could say, like, hey,
ask him about the micro film, right, we would pass
along questions or direction or something like that. And the
the last I wrote this thing in uh, I can't remember,
some time in two thousand seven, I think late two
(14:13):
thousand seven. And at the time, the last UM report
I had had of of somebody being held in the
secret prison was in Africa, I believe North Africa. Yeah, uh.
And and some Americans and Canadians reported having contact with
Americans in these like African prisons, Westerners being held captive
(14:36):
secretly and some guy behind the curtain saying use the
dental drill exactly, and he sounds like he's from Omaha,
and he shouldn't because this is you know, Africa, uh,
in other places, other other black site host countries. Yeah,
that's what they're called, just like the black budgets and
(14:58):
black ops the or black sites, right, or ghost prisons.
So you put black in front of it, and if
it's related to the government and there's no description, there's
just like a huge budget on a line item. Yeah,
with a sharpie that is exit out. That's the secret prison. Um.
There are Some of the other countries are Azerbaijan, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Algeria.
(15:22):
All of these places where UM receiving prisoners didn't necessarily
have a black site may have, but then most of
the black site UH countries host countries were UM Eastern
European like Lithuania and Romania. Yeah, but once uh, once
it came out, though, they would probably try to shut
it down, right because they didn't want this to get
(15:43):
out to the press. Well, not only did they not
wanted to get out to the press, they didn't necessarily
wanted to get out to the president of that country.
And a lot of cases it was like the c
I a uh, maybe a couple of maybe the the U. S.
Ambassador of that country, and a couple of like say
bulgar Area's secret police, like high commanders. Those are the
only people on the planet who knew that there was
(16:05):
a secret prison Bulgaria. What do they get into Romania?
I wondered that myself too. I mean, like it's gotta
be money, right, Sure, it would have to be, because
do you really think Bulgarians are quite as amped up
about American patriotism is? Say, you know, the average American
is yeah, I wouldn't think so, and especially uh Bulgarian
secret police officer, you know, well yeah, so yeah, I
(16:29):
would think money. Well we yeah. What I said though,
second ago is they would close like Thailand when the
word got out that they were doing this and now
we should close this. But it seems like every time
it happened, they would just find a different country and
then go set up shop there, right, And what with
Eastern Europe in particular, it was a little prickly or
ticklish because, um, well when the Washington Post broke this story,
(16:50):
they even said in the article, like, we're not going
to reveal the names of the host countries because it's
so sensitive. Um that these countries governments are really gonna
have problems on their hands when it comes out. And
indeed they did at first. Um. But the reason why
is because these were all post uh Soviet Block countries
that had, you know, adopted democracies after the fall of
(17:13):
the Soviet Union. Um. And we're now you know, involved
in this horrible uh secret prison network. You know you
were talking about when word got out? Do you know
how word got out? Well, this is a Thailand one.
No word got out on what then unlike the existence
of the secret prison period. H yeah, it wasn't a
(17:37):
canary singing singing like a canary. No, there was a
vision there was Basically it was the CIA's fault. They
didn't do their leg work. They didn't do their homework
with the manifest for the planes. Yes, so this is
what this is what cracks me up, is kidnapping people,
taking them to a secret prison network that they've set up,
(17:59):
and yet the honest about flight manifests right right, Yeah,
that's what I don't get. So there was a Swedish
TV producer who um basically did some like hard hitting journalism.
I think it was called cold Facts was the translation
of the Swedish. We'll call him Spence Fencing. I think
that's good. And if that's not his name, I'll bet
(18:20):
Spence Spencon is better than his real name. So Sven
um was was, I guess, investigating the the extradition of
two um Swedish citizens to Egypt for questioning. They were
suspected terrorists. So sven starts looking into um the plane
(18:40):
that that took them there, and it was a Gulf
Stream five. Yeah they charted these right. Yeah, it was
a Gulf Stream five and it was registered to a
company Sven found out very quickly UM called Premier Executive
Transport Services, and it was registered in Deadham, Massachusetts. So
Sven and calls Premier Executive Transport Services, leaves a message
(19:04):
wants to know about, you know, why they would be
transporting UM suspected terrorists to Egypt, And fifteen minutes later
it gets a call from the Swedish Intelligence Service saying like,
stop asking questions, and so Savin starts looking a little
further and apparently UM finds out very quickly, in very
short order that there are thirty six planes chartered by
(19:26):
the CIA UM making odds that are all that are
all yeah, making odds. Stops with the nationalities of the
people on board, and they would go from like say, UM, Afghanistan, Yeah,
this guy out to Egypt, trough UM Morocco, and then
to Guantanamo. Yeah, they're flying from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. But
(19:47):
somehow they can't get a direct flight. And they stop
off at like four places along the way right and
then at each stop there's somebody who's um, you know
uh uh country of origin is Ohman and they but
they get off know in in Cuba, you know. So, yeah,
it's very flimsy. All the all of the companies were
dummy corporations that had like p O boxes listed And yeah,
(20:11):
the Swedish intelligence Service basically tipped this guy off and
he blew the whistle. And I think two thousand four
when yeah, Spence Svince Svince in r I p so
these prisons, Josh, we're not saying that, you know, these
are nice guys that shouldn't be picked on. These you know,
these are big, big time. And the one in Thailand,
I think the first one, their first guest, their first
(20:34):
overnight guest, was Abu Zuba Zobeida, and he was a
top al Qaeda guy. He was captured in a shootout
in Pakistan, was recovering in the hospital and I think
he probably knew what was what was going on. You know,
he's in the hospital saying, I'm still not feeling that great,
maybe I should stay here a little longer. And then
(20:55):
he recovers and then they're like, well, why don't you
come stay in our our private hotel. Was he the
one that they they kidnapped out of his hospital? Ben Somalia,
Uh no, no, no, they just Pkistan. Yeah, they were.
He was just recovering after a shootout and then they
brought him to their little the secret hotel. And you
pointed out that he was treated well. Well, he was
(21:15):
tortured and treated well, said they. You said they fed
him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and yeah, and he loved
kit cats and they gave him kick cats all the time.
Did he I don't know. That's what I was, That's
what I read. Well, it said they fed him. He
was treated well because they fed him baked chicken and
candy bars. But what if on his little questionnaire he
filled out like allergic to chocolate and I hate chicken.
(21:36):
Part of entirely possible. I just wanted to bring that up.
There's also um Chuck a list on Mother Jones I think, yeah, yeah,
of UM music the Music of Torture or something like that.
Metallica's hype the list I know that Metallica, Rick Astley, Yeah,
the Barney there, yeah yeah, the Barney song at UM
(22:00):
Guantanamo very loudly, over and over and over again. And
Mia mix commercial really yeah, yeah, I would do the
um Cook's pest control here locally looking looking lucky. Here
comes cookie pass control. Yeah, the the guy I mentioned that,
the Abu Zubdaya Zubaya. Yeah, he was joined shortly thereafter
(22:24):
by Khaleed Chiek Mohammed, who's a high value, high high
value target. So I'm sure when he checked in to
the secret hotel the other guy was like, oh crap,
what's not good. What's odd is that you know it
took us as many years as it did to start
assassinating people like uh. I think it was just in
the last couple of months that UM news broke of
(22:45):
some programs that the CIA was outsourcing to, like um
ZE Worldwide, Blackwater and other contractors, Extel's force. Guys. Who
were you know, going into Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and assassinating
UM like al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists guys. Right,
So I wonder why we didn't just do that at first, instead,
(23:06):
you know started I guess we needed info. Yeah, intelligence,
we had none, So I guess that's probably why they
were like, well, we can't kill them, Yeah, what's going on?
So we can water board him? And then eight years
later we'll start assassinating and give them kitcats, right apparently,
so oh latest news on this UM Yeah, there's some
(23:27):
pretty recent stuff going on. Yeah, did you read about
the UM Physicians for Human Rights report? So basically there
were physicians present at a lot of these enhanced derogations,
and not just in an observational manner. Well that's what
they were supposed to be there forest and basically like, hey,
you just almost drowned, so let me make sure you're
(23:47):
still alive and breathing in in good health. Right, Yeah,
that's UM, that's okay. Actually, apparently as far as the
American Medical Association and and international UM treaties are concerned,
you're allowed to do that. You're still fulfilling your purpose
as a physician. They took it a step further, right, Yes,
they did. They have a report out Josh called Experiments
(24:11):
and Torture Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in
the Enhanced Interrogation Program. And from what I gathered, the
long and short of it is they were gathering information
that could later be used to defend and court the torturers.
Is that right? I think they were quantifying pain thresholds,
(24:31):
like if you waterboard this guy for this long, he'll
experience a pain of eight. So they were kind of
writing an outline of what you can do and still
get defended in a court of law, right, which transferred
their position as physicians to UM researchers. And it's transferred
the position of these detainees as patients to test subjects.
(24:56):
So they were engaging in human experimentation, yeah, pretty much,
and gathering data from torture, which is totally illegal. Yeah.
But isn't everything about the ghost prison network illegal? Yeah?
Pretty much. Everything that took place as far as the
CIA was concerned after two thousand one was illegal. And
it's not like we're little babes in the woods. It's
not like the CIA has just been, you know, on
(25:18):
the up and up since then. But this is what
this is. So this is recent, this is going on
now still, I imagine. Yeah, there was another joint study,
a two d and twenty six page report published in
January of this year, and um, it's a joint study
by this Well, there's like four different groups I won't
read all of them, all human rights groups, and they said,
(25:41):
of a particular concern to the authors, I'm gonna read
this verbatim, beyond the overall illegality of the entire project
conceived and executed by the Bush administration is the fate
of dozens of men held in secret prisons run by
the CIA or transferred to CIA prisons. So they estimate
you said a couple of dozen. You said a couple dozen?
(26:01):
I thought, did I know? They're saying that ninety four
prisoners um had been redacted and had enhanced interrogation techniques
to varying degrees performed on twenty eight of the ninety four.
So this was part of the whole torture memo thing.
How is it that low? I would think it would
be way more than that. Yeah, you know, I would too,
(26:24):
So well that's what they found out, So who knows,
it may have been more good good times. Yeah, yeah,
it's weird. America in the twenty one centuries was a
weird place. The first decade was odd, Yeah, if you
ask me. But Obama's trying to shut these down, and
I think has for the most part. Yeah. Well, see,
I don't but I don't know. But I'm not I'm
(26:45):
not saying that there's not, you know, pinky stuff going
on there too. Definitely not again, Babes in the Woods.
This episode of stuff you should know. It's brought to
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Does it go to meeting dot com slash stuff You
(27:09):
got anything else? Uh no, I'm good. If you want
to learn more, Um, you can read my two thousand
seven article. Uh was there was there a secret CIA
prison network? Just type in CIA in prison in the
handysearch bart how stuff works dot com and that takes us,
of course to listener Maile, No, no, Josh, oh yeah,
(27:34):
We're gonna do just a little quickie New York recap
for those of our friends who could not be there. Dude,
New York was hugeog. It was odd and weird and
surreal and awesome. One of the things I learned about
our fans, um at least our fans in the Brooklyn area. Yeah. Um,
(27:56):
they're very self aware, in self conscious people, and that
makes them highly relatable to us. So, like the question,
the biggest question I got was this must be very
weird for you. Huh. I didn't get that much. I
got it every time, and every time my answer is like, actually,
it's really weird. Maybe this because you were standing there
like like twitching. Yeah, yeah, but I got it. A
(28:17):
lot and it was it was nice that actually I
found it um disarming. Yeah that's good. Yeah. So we
you know, everyone knows. We went to New York. We
had a few media opportunities, we did a few interviews. Um,
but Monday night was when we had our happy hour
at the knitting factory in Brooklyn with the Onion, which, dude,
we couldn't have done any of this without the onion.
(28:38):
Thank you to Dan and Joe for putting this stuff
together and just being our buds. Yeah, that was a
real treat to get to know those guys for sure.
It was since your sensation, like my dad, It was
a real treat, Josh. So we have our happy hour,
we get there, um, tons of people show up. The
fire department comes at one point because there were too
(28:59):
many people there, which was so awesome. I know, I
was like, what is the somethinge fire? And they weren't
in a hurry. They were just kind of standing around
talking to people, like, you know, trying to gauge the
amount of people. I think. So we got to meet people,
We got to hang out with people and drink an
adult beverage with people. We got to meet Mark, Australian
(29:20):
Wagga Wagon mak Yeah, thanks for the couzy bud. Yeah.
And we got to meet a lot of people who
and I remembered a lot of showed up on Monday.
Sock Ninja, the dude Chris Uh, Chris and his wife
whose wife was car Chris Wit. Yes, he was there
with his wife, and they were super awesome. They were
almost kind of working for us. They were helping with
(29:41):
the T shirts and taking photographs. Yeah. And there was
Greg I believe he was kind of helping me too.
He was helping me like move the line along and everything. Yeah.
There are some really genuinely cool people here. Everybody there
was super Yes. Yes, as a matter and I need
to say special thanks to the banjo dude, remember him, Yeah,
the guy with the banjo and his girlfriend. They gave us.
(30:03):
They well, a lot of people brought gifts, and they
brought me this Uh. She made this really neat little
egg where she had made a design of thread that
was on the egg. It was really intricate and very cool.
And they also met my friend Justin and helped him
out in some ways. And they were very very cool kids.
And I can't remember her name, but there's a fan
(30:25):
that um, both of us met, but I talked to
her for a while. Grundy she gave us No, not Grundy, Um,
but hey Grundy. Yes, she gave us a molecular gastronomy book.
Oh yeah, yeah, she just wrote in today. I can't
remember her name. I thank you for it. Yeah, it
was very awesome. So hopefully possibly look for a molecular
gastronomy podcast. And I got c d S and like, um,
(30:47):
a lot of a lot of bands were like, hey, man,
listen to this. Yes, and we have to go listen
to um the Large Hadron podcast. Yes, I have not yet,
but we need to go check them out. And so
that was Monday. So then we had our Wednesday flash
forward Wednesday and we had our all Star Trivia night
at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn and this was nuts. Yes,
(31:10):
we had um D people in this big room. There's
a big venue. It's like a concert venue. Yes, like
you I could see sticks playing there, um but yeah,
there's it was standing room only, I would say, about
five people, and we we cobbled together this really awesome
(31:30):
trivia team. Go ahead and lower the boom there. Okay,
So we had Jackson Public who creates this, uh, this
super cool cartoon called The Venture Brothers you may be
familiar with. He was one of the head writers on
the Tick. Yes, and he was brought along by our
buddy John Hodgman. We can say our buddy, Yeah, we can.
Now I feel like he's our friend. He is he is,
(31:51):
you can feel that way. Uh. And I'm really glad
that John brought um Jackson along because he actually saved
our our butts like several times with questions. Yeah, we
would have there would have been like five six questions
that we wouldn't have gotten had it not been for him.
And he's a very cool guy. Wyatt see Neck from
The Daily Show came along. Another buddy, super cool. We
(32:11):
actually had lunch with Ian Hodgman one day. Yes, the
the esteemed Joe Randazzo, the editor in chief of The Onion,
who again we couldn't have done any of this without Joe.
Was awesome. Joe was there just looking pumped, you know,
because he works out instead of smokes. Now he's very intimidating.
And then um Ira Glass, Yes, the man that we
(32:32):
stare up at in the iTunes rankings every day. Yes,
Ira Glass was there and on our team not there
to be rate and he was there on our team.
He was very cool and I just need to say that.
He came up to me afterward and was blown away.
Do your impression show and I don't want to start
impresonating glass. Your fans are amazing. That was pretty good.
(32:53):
That was close. He was blown away by the by
the enthusiasm of the stuff. You should know Army and
he doesn't. And Randazzo came up to and he's like, man,
Ira doesn't get this sort of like rock star thing much.
So he was tickled to be there, I think, and
have people you know fawning over him and telling him
how much they loved him. It's which is something he deserves.
(33:14):
And Hodgman, we mentioned John Hodgman was on our team
and he was one of the funniest, quickest, witted, smartest
guys I've ever met in my life. Agreed, I'm with
you on that one. Like I told my buddy Scotty
about that, and he said, you're really quick, though, man,
I said, yeah, but dude, when I quickly make like
a fart joke, Hodgeman is that quick. But he references
(33:35):
like an eighteenth century poet and it fits and it's funny, right,
it's like a drag racer. Yeah, in like a fifteen
year old donkey in competition in that one. Thank you Yeah,
same here, buddy, I got like the twelve year old
donkey thing going up, all right, So yeah, thank you
(33:56):
very much everybody who helped that. And it was such
a success. We had such an a time that we're like,
why would we spend any more time at the office,
Let's go hit other cities. So look for other cities
in the very near future. And we want to know
where we should go next. So if you have a
suggestion of what city where we should go that kind
of thing. You want to play some trivia, let us know.
(34:16):
Send us an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Want
more house stuff Works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you
(34:38):
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
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