July 30, 2026 • 43 mins
Operation Doppelganger was a Russian propaganda project discovered in 2022, a minor part of the enormous, ongoing disinformation and chaos-sewing campaign Russia spreads across the world through social media. And some of your views may have come from it.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's missing. We don't know where she is.
The Russians have her, at the very least, it's quite
possible the Russians have misled her in some way or another,
and maybe they tricked her into leaving when it was
time to record.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You cheeky boy, don't worry everybody, Jerry's just really on vacation.
But that was a very clever setup to this episode
on essentially on Russian propaganda and how you know, I
think we all knew that, like their propaganda machine was
big back in the cold worn stuff obviously, but it's
(00:50):
it's a really big problem now and has been for
a while, ever since the advent of the Internet and
especially social media.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, because those two things are wide open set up
for people to distribute misinformation, deliberate misinformation. The Russians are
far from the only ones that do it. They're just really,
really good at it, and they've been doing it for
a long time. They I would guess they were probably
the first country to really start doing this on like
(01:20):
a wide scale. But I mean as far back I
think as twenty ten or at least the two thousand, Yeah,
but like the twenty tens, at least twenty thirteen at
the absolute latest. The Internet Research Agency was the first
kind of famous one that surfaced. And the whole premise
(01:41):
back then and now is to basically game social media
and use whatever you can whatever like weaknesses it has
in like the entire structure of it, to confuse people,
to sow discord and disinformation and chaos and questioning what
reality is, getting the media to start using words like
(02:04):
post truth and stuff like that, that kind of stuff.
It might not have a specific aim where it's like
we want to say, get Trump elected that was part
of this too, like that was a Russian name as well,
or we want to stir America up over the border crisis.
Just creating a climate where people question what's real or
(02:25):
what's true. That in and of itself is a huge
triumph for these Russian operations that have been going on
for more than a decade.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah. I think that was one of the things that
chilled me most was it wasn't like we really need
to get people to believe this one thing right about Ukraine,
let's say it's more like, no, let's just so chaos
in confusion to where you doubt what you're reading and
you don't know what the truth is anymore. And that's
just like that feels even scarier, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It does, because ultimately, eventually most people would be like,
it's not worth trying to get to the bottom of this.
You know, I'm just gonna stop. I'm just not going
to pay attention anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I'm just not going to care, or I'll just share
something because like I read.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It, yes, exactly sometimes on Reddit.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, good point. All right, So maybe we should jump
back a little bit and talk about the IRA, not
the Irish Republican Army, but the Internet Research Agency or
the Russian troll Farm as it might you might know
it better, as that was founded in twenty thirteen by
guy that was a former criminal eventually a successful entrepreneur
(03:39):
and kind of higher up oligarch in Russia and you know,
confidant of Vladimir Putin, and he also founded you know,
Confident up for a while because he also founded the
Wagner Group, which you may have read about the news,
the Russian Mercenary organization that would eventually try and Overthrow putin.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yes, do you watch the age and see on Prime? No?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It is magnificent. Yeah, it's one of the best spy
shows of recent times.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I love a spie show.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You guys liked Black Doves, right, yep. This is at
least on that caliber, if not higher. Michael Fossbender's in it,
Richard Gear, Jeffrey Wright, a bunch of other very talented people.
But it's all like spycraft stuff, and it's it's really
worth it. They just released their second season and I've
(04:32):
got three episodes left. I started two days ago, and
both seasons are well worth watching.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Okay, I did not watch Black Doves. Actually, I thought
you were talking about the what's the Gary Eelman show,
Wild Horses something horses.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I don't know, I know the one you're talking about.
You watch that?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I watched that one.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Is it good?
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah? It's really good. I mean Gary Oldman's fantastic Slow Horses.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Slow Horses. I swear you watch Black Doves because Emily
said she liked it, the one with she may have
watched it, bend it like.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Beckham, Yeah, Kiera Knightley, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't see it.
May have watched that without me though, because she watched.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Okay, just watch them, watch them both, but definitely watch
the agency. It's much more likely to be in your
wheelhouse if either one of them are going.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
To be all right, Okay, So back to the show.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh, I know I brought that up. They battle essentially
the Wagner Group, but it's Valhalla in the agency.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay, gotcha, sorry about that. That's okay. Everyone loves a
good recommendation from either one of us, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah. I also, I want to be clear here, this
was not brought to you by Prime. We're not trying
to manipulate you or propagandize you or market to you.
This is just I watch it on Prime and it's
on time, and it's so good that I just took
that time to share that with everybody. That's all exactly
what it seemed like on face value. And do you
(05:57):
know why I have to say that.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Chuck, I don't know, Josh, because of.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Stuff like this operation that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
That's right. So the IRA that I spoke of, the
Internet Research Agency that what they did this is like
mid twenty tens. They hired a ton of you know,
young people basically who could speak English and who knew
a lot about politics to like, hey, why don't you
start a troll farm, you know, get on board this
troll farm and just create fake stuff, create fake news stories.
(06:28):
Although I'm love to even say those words together, fake
social media posts, YouTube videos. Eventually, you know, as you'll
see what would become like deep fakes and AI and
stuff like that. But this is before that. Yeah, and
while this was going on, Sputnik and Russia Today or
RT these are you know, I think legitimate or one point,
(06:51):
we're legitimate Russian news outlets. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
They were always backed by the Kremlin. Oh well okay, yeah,
but yeah, I think that they were still they still
had journalists and stuff like that, but they were trying
to get the Russian viewpoint across to Western audiences.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Right, So they started distributing stories around the world, basically,
like we were saying, trying to get people to like
to believe whatever they wanted to believe at the time,
like politically.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Right, And the twenty sixteen United States election was a
real big kind of debut. They've been kind of ated already,
but the twenty sixteen election they really showed just how
much they could monkey with stuff, or at least the
potential of them monkeying with stuff. And this is where
that the allegations of Trump colluding with the Russians, this
(07:43):
is what they were talking about unproven, by the way,
to Rachel Maddow's great dismay right Pizzagate. These they didn't
necessarily come up with these things, but they were able
to amplify them, yeah, and get people talking about them
and make people questioning what was what, you know, or
the Democrats like really keeping child sex slaves in the
(08:05):
basement of Comet Pizza in DC. Who knows? Maybe you
should take an assault rifle from North Carolina and go
find out.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, exactly. So once this start sort of starts coming out,
and the United States and you know, all over North
American and Europe started realizing what was going on. In
February twenty twenty two, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
there started to be a little bit of action taken.
The EU banned Russian state media, including Sputnik and RT.
(08:34):
Other companies Google News dropped them from aggregation service. I
think Google, Microsoft and Apple all started like pulling their apps.
So that sort of started happening and then in twenty
three was when that failed uprising against Putin by the
Wagner group happened. And the long and short is after
all this, the IRA finally disbanded, but this work continued
(08:57):
among other groups.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, this is a good example of the whack a
mole that the West is playing. The Russian Internet disinformation
operations have the West on our heels. Clearly, there's basically
no one who knows what they're talking about with this
stuff who would disagree with that. The West still has
not figured out how to do it, aside from piecemeal
(09:20):
responses like taking Russia Times app off of the Apple market,
off of the Apple app store, you know, like that's
the kind of response we have to this. Still, and
this has been going on for more than a decade.
And one of the reasons why it's so hard to
do anything about it is because they use what the
(09:40):
Rand Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a
fire hose of falsehood, just put everything out there. It's
not the quality, it's the quantity that they focus on.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah. For sure, after CRIMEA was annexed in twenty fourteen,
and then obviously after the invasion of Ukraine in February
of twenty twenty two, they really ramped up a lot
of messaging to try and get you know, sentiment, sometimes
on their side, but a lot more times like just
(10:13):
against Ukraine and what was going on. And this eventually
it would become known as Dappelganger. But to be clear,
Dappelganger isn't like it wasn't Operation Dappelganger or there's not
an organization called Dappelganger. It's more of just sort of
I think the media sort of misread that and labeled
it that, but it's really just sort of this method
(10:35):
of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, to be specific, it's a way of cloning dummy
websites that look like actual legitimate websites. The ones some
of the ones that they targeted were Lamonde and France,
their website, Washington Post in the US, the Guardian in
the UK, and they would essentially just take they would
(10:59):
have the bots start sending links or putting links all
over the Internet to basically share, right, hey, look at
this crazy article. Right. The Washington Post actually reported this,
so it seems like it would be legitimate. Then you
would click that and it would take you to a
different series of domains that got smaller and smaller to
where if you were in the area they were targeting,
(11:23):
say you were in the United States and you had
clicked you know, this thing to find out about whatever
this fake Washington Post thing was saying, it would it
would take you to this fake website like Washingtonpost dot PM,
just different enough that like you probably wouldn't notice, but
it's a different domain name. And the way that they
(11:43):
were able to get away with this was shell companies
and using shady kind of hosting services around the world.
And that that was doppelganger, that technique that they used
for getting this stuff out. There is no operation like this.
These these using bots or creating like fake accounts on
(12:06):
Facebook or whatever. That wasn't dopplgetor that is constant. It's
so constant and so embedded that there's no name for that.
Doppelganger was just the technique of the way that they
use the infrastructure of the Internet to deliver misinformation for
this short period of time.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, sort of one of the main companies. And we're
not going to go through all of these because it's
a little mind numbing. But there's one called the Social
Design Agency, which is a pr firm that started up
in twenty twenty two, founded by a political consultant who
had you know, that was their business, so you know,
(12:42):
they know exactly how to do it, and the Russian
government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute,
we would love to hire you to do like all
this stuff. It's literally as of I think a couple
of years ago, run by the Kremlin and directed by
the Putin administration, so they're kind of in the middle
of most of this doppelganger activity. Yes, and you know,
(13:03):
like you said, when you go to one of these websites,
when you click on the link, if you're not paying
attention to the dot whatever, and you realize it's not
you know, Washingtonpost dot com. It looks like it, it
smells like it, it acts like it for the most part.
So it's really easy to fool people.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It is. I mean, if you really look closely, and
you look with a skeptical eye, you'll turn up some stuff.
I saw. One example is that the US must not
become the world's gendarme, which is police in French, like
the Washington Post would not use a phrase like that, right.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
But you have to know that, like I think they
count on just fire hosing it such where they're like, well,
who cares if most people don't, If we just get
this percentage of people, that's great.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yes, And even more than that, I feel like going
to the trouble of actually creating the article on the
fake website is almost superfluous because so many people on
the internet just share, Yeah, share, like that headline gotcha? Now,
I think that this is going on, not even bothering
to click into this to read the actual article. All
(14:10):
I need is the headline because it got me juiced up.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, for sure. And of course they're amplifying this through
the bot farms. Russian social media bots will post links
and then there are more bots that retweet these links.
I think I mentioned on the show. I saw a
picture of a bot farm one not too long ago
that was in big expose.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Were they all just doing grass?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
No? That was terrifying. It was like a dude sitting
at a desk on a computer and there were a
thousand cell phones connected hardwired to the computer, and then
there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds
and hundreds of smartphones wow, connected on a big wall.
So when you see how it actually works, like literally
connecting to phones to send this stuff out and amplify it,
(14:54):
it's just it feels really dystopian and scary.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah. I feel like it's becoming clear that we're going
to have to abandon the Internet and come up with
a new one because this one got cooked.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
A creed. Should we take a break? All right, Well,
we're going to ruminate that, and I hope we can
even come back after we ruminate, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I hope.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
All right. So I mentioned after the invasion of Ukraine
in February twenty twenty two, that's when things really ramped
up again. They you know, a lot of these ideas
were really pretty clever. There was a one group that
launched sort of like a Snopes like site, but a
fake one, I know, War on Fakes, and it was
(16:00):
design to discredit Ukraine and support Russia obviously. And then
another one called are in Reliable Recent News which replace
reliable Russian news. So on one side you've got something
that says like, hey, this is reliable news, so this
is real. On the other side, it's like, hey, we
root out the fake stuff, but it's fake, so it's
(16:22):
almost like, you know, it's not almost like they've got
all their bases covered.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah. I mean, if you pay too close attention to this,
you'll start bleeding out of your ear guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Doppelganger got its name from the EU's Disinformation Lab. One
of the disheartening things to me, Chuck was figuring out
that the people who are tracking this stuff, there's not
a government agency involved anywhere. These are all like independent
NGOs that are dedicated to tracking disinformation.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, it's interesting journalists.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Like these are the people doing the actual work, and
then seven years later the governments like, oh, we're going
to have our Department of Justice do something about this.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
So where that's where Doppelganger got its name from. I
think it's basically it suggests that these are or it
points out like the cloned sites, they're like Dappelgangers of
the real thing.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
But that war on Ukraine, after the invasion of Ukraine,
they really ramped up the misinformation flood that was coming.
Like they targeted in twenty twenty four and I think
twenty twenty three, their main targets were France, Germany, the US,
the UK and Ukraine. And essentially what they were trying
(17:42):
to do was to make the people, the public in
each of those countries lose support or turn on the
idea of supporting Ukraine so that Russia could get them
out of the Ukraine business in Russia could just get
back to trying to take over Ukraine as best it could.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, and they, you know, they did it in a
lot of ways. Obviously, some ways were just fake articles
about like, you know, stuff that Ukraine does, or maybe
a fake article about that whitewashes a Russian atrocity like
the Buka massacre, like that never happened, right, But cleverly
they're also going like through celebrities and like faking that,
(18:24):
you know, Taylor, like a real influential celebrity like Taylor
Swift or Kim Kardashian, Like fake messages where they're supporting
or they're criticizing America and Europe for supporting Ukraine. Or
did you find something about Oprah?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, do you want to read that quote? Go ahead,
Oprah says supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives
in societies.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, so you know, especially if you're some like young
person who supports Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, you're probably
you know, not even aware that this kind of stuff
even goes on. All you're thinking is like, well, Taylor
Swift said, Ukraine deserves what's coming, So that's probably true.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
That's exactly right, that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Or maybe not deserves what's coming, but like America, this
is what a big sort of angle for them is.
America first, like, we shouldn't get involved in this. Let
Ukraine handle it themselves.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Right, And so that you just hit the nail on
the head. As far as why Republicans typically get targeted
with this stuff, it's not because the Trump administration is
colluding with the Russians. It's because the message that the
Trump administration and MAGA in general and Republicans by extension,
(19:43):
are basically basing their platform on. It's like you said,
America first, focus on domestic issues, get ourselves out of
foreign affairs, and that goes lockstep with what Putin wants.
It's like, yes, America, go mess with your own stuff,
and by pointing out and creating turmoil about all the
things that are going on in America at any given time.
(20:06):
It makes it seem even that more urgent to just
stop giving money to Ukraine when we've got all of
these middle class white people who need that money too,
and like tax breaks and stuff like that. That kind
of messaging that's not necessarily wrong, but is making it
seem like the American public sentiment is behind that. That's
(20:28):
the part that's wrong. They're manipulating that to kind of
try to get the public to swing that way, all
because they just want to be able to invade Ukraine
more easily.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah. They had one project called the Good Old USA Project,
which one of the SDA founders had come up with
with some other people, and it targeted voters in six
swing states during the last election in twenty twenty four
about just that, like let's not help Ukraine, like why
are we doing that when we have problems here? And
(20:57):
they also spent about ten million bucks encouraging right wing
influencers to get on board with pro Russia opinions. So
that's why if you've if you've ever been on like
the comment section of any social media site about anything
political like this, first of all, we would both encourage
you to stop doing that because it's just not good
(21:19):
for your mental health and well being. But if you
do and you see people saying like, oh yeah, thanks,
comrade or whatever Russian bought, like, that's that's what they're
talking about here.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, And to be fair, those right wing influencers, the
YouTubers that were hired to disseminate Russian propaganda were not
aware that that's what they were doing. They were hired
by a front company called Tenant Media. Yeah, they hired
like six hardcore right wing YouTubers and just basically said, hey,
let's talk about this kind of thing. But they were
(21:50):
not aware that they were being paid by the Kremlin.
They didn't know that. And then once that was exposed,
that company dissolved in. Those people, well, I guess had
to eat some crow, I would guess.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know,
you know, George Soros is paying those protesters like that
by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters. Yeah, that
comes from a fake Washington Post article, like you know,
from one of these like completely fake cloned websites. That's
where that comes from. It was right after Israel invaded
(22:25):
Gaza in spring of twenty twenty four and that there,
you know, all the protesters were going on, and there
was a fake Washington Post article that came out about
the Sorols Foundation and Rockefeller like paying people thirty bucks
an hour to go protest.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah. Uh, well, the one I remember was that the
Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis. Oh yeah, yeah, and
really what Russia's doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I
remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this
Doppelganger era.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah. One of the weirder ones was Princess Kate when
she sort of disappeared from the public eye. Yeah, and
you know this is before she revealed it was because
of a cancer diagnosis. But they jumped on that and
sort of hijacked that with all sorts of weird conspiracy theories.
And again I think that was one just to just
to create tension and chaos in the UK.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yes, I don't remember where I found this, but I
saw that their involvement in conspiracy theories is topic agnostic.
They don't care about the subject. Whatever it is that
will push people's buttons, that will get emotional responses and
get people worked up, they will get in there and
amplify it if they if they didn't make it up
themselves in the first place. Man, they also apparently, according
(23:40):
to I think the Good Old USA Project, that they
there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency who, again,
like you said, seem to be the ones behind this.
If all of a sudden you start to hear negative
chatter about stuff, you should know, I'm going to go
ahead and say it was probably them after this episode
(24:01):
comes out.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
What's a little worried about that.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I am hopefully we're still under the radar enough.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, I like to think so.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah. And if all of a sudden, Chuck and I
die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably
the Kremlin.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I'm not flying anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
You have to, although I don't want to say when
or how. We should probably edit this part out. But
there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency
that was their job was to monitor social media posts
from GOP lawmakers to figure out what was on America's
mind or what people were worried about or angry about,
and then they would start making memes and stuff based
(24:40):
on that and try to create like I guess, mess
from that, just from like one tweet or something could
do it.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, for sure. I don't know how much you want
to get into this nuts and bolt section.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
We kind of already covered it really.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, it gets sort of in the weeds, but like
you sort of mentioned earlier, we just want to be clear.
It's like they'll use disposable domains that are owned by
other companies. They will use virtual offices and set up
shell companies. They'll work with you know in places like
sometimes at the far reaches of the earth. Well they'll
(25:15):
set up like some company in Malaysia where you know,
it's then it goes to another shell company in Lithuania
and it's just you know, it's also obfuscated. And that's
the whole point, you know that you don't know, it's
hard to even trace back to any origin.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Right, and it's just very decentralized. And then the companies,
these shell companies are just legitimate enough to provide cover
for the shady hosting companies to say like, well they're legal.
There's a UK company, so you know, we don't have
any obligation to check what they're doing, right, And as
(25:51):
it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website,
the companies just get shadier and shadier, and apparently they're
not the one thing didn't come up with this technique.
It's fairly common among bad actors. Yeah, like Brad Pitt.
I guess I.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't
want to be mean.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at
this point.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh yeah, because he's a fine actor. Oh yeah, and
a fine piece you know, a piece of what you know?
Did you see he and Ed Norton at the soccer match?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
No?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I heard about it.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, it's kind of fun, the old fight club thing.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
What was I gonna say?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
You were gonna say, we're gonna take a break, right.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, I think whatever I was saying, just peter it out.
Didn't matter.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
All right, Well, Josh is gonna Peter back up and
we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Okay, So we're back, and we know about Doppelganger. Like
I said, thanks to journalists and non governmental organizations that
are dedicated to tracking and fighting disinformation. The first one
where it came up even before it was called Doppelganger,
because remember that was the EU's Disinfo Lab that gave
(27:29):
it that title. But a full year or so before that,
a German website t online not the thing it does.
It sounds super fake. They published an article where they
were like, hey, there's a bunch of new Facebook accounts,
all of our German women. And the weird thing is
they all say that they work for Netflix, and even weirder,
(27:53):
every single one of them seems to be really really
adamant about Germany not funding you and just leaving Russia alone.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I'm sure Netflix is like seriously, thanks.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I know, although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity's good.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Well, yeah, that's a good point. I get this is
this is not this, But I know you're not on
social media a lot, but on Instagram I will get
I will have to block a lot of people that
come on to follow me because it's clear that it's
some sort of a some sort of a porn thing. Sure,
(28:29):
Or I will get a comment from someone on some
random like I'll leave a comment on some random like
like Instagram posts that I think is cool or whatever,
and then someone will comment on that like oh yeah, totally,
Chuck Brian or whatever, Chuck the podcaster, And then I'll
look at you like who is this and it's you know,
it's clearly some fake person, and I just I don't
(28:51):
know what the angle is and I always block it,
so obviously I don't know, but I wonder what the
goal is. I got to be separating me from money somehow.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Somehow, or yeah or yeah, or getting money to somebody
like an influencer something or to boost whatever thing you
said was cool.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Maybe it's very strange, but it's always quite obvious what
it is because they have like zero posts, uh follow
a ton of people, no one follows them, and it's
usually some you know, if I can be frank, it's
usually some very like well endowed you know woman.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah. Do you remember there was a period of time
when AI slop was really starting to gear up, where
it does not matter what video you were watching on
like YouTube or whatever. In the search it was like
a very beautiful woman standing there like Vana White, right
next to the video screen, like learn all about C
(29:49):
plus plus coding from me the sixty secretary, you know.
Like it was all videos were like that for a minute,
and I was like, God, is this how it's going
to be from now on? And then it seems to
have vanished.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, And you know the only reason I bring all
that up is because it's just sort of backs up
this thing that we're talking about in this idea that
I keep edging toward, which is like, God, maybe it's
just best to get off and away from all of
that stuff all together. Yes, is really going in the
wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
No, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead
Internet theory. Been wanting to do at least the short
stuff on it, but essentially it says that the Internet
has become a just a bunch of bots interacting with
bots trying to gain social media algorithms to make money
for some dude or whatever country Singapore or something like that, right,
(30:41):
And some studies have found that perhaps a third of
accounts on either Instagram or Facebook, probably Facebook, are bots
a third man, and that it's just gotten so far
out of hand that we're never going to get it back.
And also, like those long tail articles where you make
like five cents but it costs nothing to have an
AI write and publish that article, those have have pushed
(31:05):
actual human written, researched articles about any given thing from
like page one Google search to like page twenty. So
there's still like no reason to go in and search
for anything anymore unless you want some AI article broken
into fifty different small paragraphs or sections that are basically
(31:25):
repeat themselves over and over again, that's what you have available.
So it does seem like the Internet is pretty dead.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, I've noticed even on Instagram from some sites all
I can follow, like music sites or whatever, it's sort
of a dead giveaway. Now if the caption instead of
being like, you know, led Zeppelin performs at this performance
and it was awesome, it's now some really long, like
four paragraph thing with like this detailed history of like
led Zeppelin was a band and blah blah blah, and
(31:53):
it's just so obvious AI is doing it. Yeah, and
it's just it's kind of ruining what I used to
like about Instagram, along with a lot of other stuff. Yeah,
like you know, these fake busting women. It's like it
just makes me want to run away. Stop it, run away.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Something else is going to come along, because there is
like it's very clear that the Internet, and it's like
ideally is really great and useful and important and we
need it. It's just this version of it is no
longer useful, so we need to figure out a different one.
And somebody right now it'll.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Well it just it sucks because I don't like to
support that company because they're part of Meta, which I
hate and got off of Facebook. But I do like
the connection with listeners and be able to chat stuff up.
So it's, uh yeah, it feels like it's a no
in situation.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Sometimes I think what'll probably become is more of an
emphasis on email maybe again, and then like they'll that'll
get taken over and then it'll be handwritten letters.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
That'd be great. Speaking of Meta though, in twenty twenty two,
and this was after that t online group that you mentioned,
sort of out of this whole thing. Mm hm, that's
when like Meta and some other higher profile companies started
saying like, oh, well, like we know this is going on.
We're going to start removing pages and we're going to
start deleting this and we're going to take this super
(33:11):
serious and who knows what's going on on the inside.
I sound like I'm being cynical, because I probably feel
like I am. But they have found that like a
lot of it is coming through ads, and like they're
not even catching a ninety five percent of undeclared political
ads aren't being caught in this supposed sweep to clean things.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Up right, Yeah, because it's not just posts or bots
creating posts or even commenting, it's buying ads, and so
Facebook has a huge financial incentive to not root those
things out because they make tons of cash off of it.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
So yeah, I mean they said that they're doing this,
they're not actually doing it. And that's a good example
of the whole whack a mole thing too. Is like
a big company like that trying to police their own
social media site that's gotten out of their own control.
That's not a good technique either, although I think all
of us could probably agree that medic could do way,
(34:09):
way more than it does. So the finally, in September
twenty twenty four, after this has been identified for two
full years, the US Department of Justice is like, we're
going to take charge here.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, we'll take care of it.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Get this. They took down thirty two websites wow, that
were related to Doppelganger, and they were like, this is
too risky before a US election, So we're gonna we're
gonna do We're gonna go the nuclear option and take
down thirty two websites.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. I think the cynicism is coming through. It's I mean,
whack a mole didn't even begin to describe it. I'm
sure like Russia hears the stuff and they're just like
laughing into their vodka, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah, Well that's the point that a lot of people make,
is that it might not even be changing people's minds,
but just the fact that we know it exists makes
you question everything then, And so you're right, are questioning
the legitimate stuff too, So you're not learning anything. Everything
has an angle.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, and now we're seeing of course, and we've talked
about I think we did a whole episode on deep fakes, right,
mm hmm, yeah, on deep fake and obviously the advent
of AI technology, which is now completely taken over already
where they have, you know, a fake video going up
where it looks like Joe Biden doing something, or it
looks like anybody doing something, and they will take you know,
(35:35):
they try to evade detection, so they'll post a video
just a little differently in different iterations, like with just
a few milliseconds trimmed out, so they can't be automatically
rooted out when like a company builds a system to
root out this kind of stuff, right, and we're already
at the point like AI has moved so fast, we're
already at the point where people all over the place.
(35:56):
For months now, I have been going like, I don't
even know if this is real, Like I don't know
if what I can believe anymore. So like it's working.
What they're doing is working, right.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
The thing that got me is that they've figured out
because AI companies train their models on like the Internet
and specific parts of the Internet, the Russians have figured
out that they can flood those parts of the Internet
with misinformation, and that's what the AI is going to
learn and think is real. So the AI is going
(36:28):
to just give out bad information or misinformation as well
because that's what it thinks is true.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah, I'm going to go live in a cave right
after we record.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
This, We'll get into Buddhism.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, let's let's do that.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
So, like we said, I don't know if we gave
our a hat tip to Olivia, who really did a
good exhaustive job on explaining this, But one of the
things she points out is that it's really unclear whether
this actually sways opinion.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, there have been some studies, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I mean just anecdotally, I think it does, but maybe
it's one of those things where like, Okay, if it
really comes down to somebody saying, do you truly believe that?
Are you gonna be like yes, then maybe it doesn't
really sway opinion. But there was a study that looked
at disinformation efforts by Russian the twenty sixteen US election,
(37:23):
and it basically found that, like it had almost no
effect whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, they found that one percent of social media users
got seventy percent of the exposures, so a few people
getting most of this stuff, but that's still thirty percent
on the other ninety nine percent. And they also point
out that like a lot of the people getting exposed
to this are Republicans because the Russian posts are you know, again,
(37:52):
they're sort of targeting them about like hey, America first stuff,
America first stuff, and they already believe that stuff anyway,
so it's not maybe like they're changing minds, maybe that's
the point, but they're reinforcing beliefs for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah. Yeah, but again, that fire hose or the fire
hose of misinformation or false information, that's the technique, and
it seems to be working. The thing that stuck out
to me was I couldn't find anything about what they're doing. Now,
it seems like they're still doing much the same because
(38:23):
it works really, really well and it can just pop
up anywhere. Like there is a story I found, I
don't know if you saw it, where a twenty sixteen
disinformation campaign from Russia actually managed to get real life
Texans to battle one another, at least verbally. I don't
think anyone was physically injured over the Islamification of Texas,
(38:46):
which was just complete bunk made up by the disinformation group.
And even more than that, they made up the group
that the protesters joined. They also made up the group
that the counter protesters joined, So the whole thing was
totally fat, fabricated and social engineered. So like that works,
and at the time, these people were not thinking that
(39:07):
they were being manipulated by Russians, right, They thought it
was real. So it's going to keep continuing to work,
so there's no reason for them to stop. I'm curious
about what the next thing is that they're doing now
that we're going to find out about three years from now.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know, right, yeah, for sure. The other thing that
sort of would send a chill up your spine is
like none of this is even secret anymore. Like it's
out and they know it's out, and they don't care.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
They're in crowd if.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
They're out and proud with their what they call a
high reach, low impact campaign, which is, like you said, again,
the fire hose and the volume of content doesn't really
matter how much people believe it or not, as long
as you're sowing chaos and getting people to eventually think
like I don't even know, like maybe I'll just disengage
altogether because I don't know what's real. When widespread coverage
(39:56):
of Doppelganger came out, the Russian government was like, awesome,
let's give more funding to the SDA. And there's even
a suggestion that SDA deliberately leaked Operation Doppelganger like information
about that just to get more media coverage about it. Right, man,
(40:17):
I really do want to go live in a cave
after this.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
The best suggestion I saw was to fight fire with fire.
That the whole wackamle thing is never ever going to work,
and it actually just helps Russia, like you said, just
by giving it publicity, and that essentially the best thing
the West could do is to create its own SDA
and just turn it on Russia that that's basically the
(40:40):
only option to get them to stop.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
That sounds like a great idea for sure.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Well, since Chuck and I are jaded, I think it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Is beyond jaded, all right, guys, for this is a
nice light way to end. Guys. For years, my wife
and I have had an argument over the pronunciation of biopic,
like when you make a movie about a person like
a biographical picture. We've both been stubborn to admit defeat.
She's part of the biopic crowd, but I prefer biopic.
(41:17):
She of course claims she's right because she's a former
elementary school teacher and a big study of English lit
and knows the truth. Blah blah blah. But it wasn't
until Chuck said biopic in your recent Howard Hughes episode
that I got the vindication I needed. I don't care
if Chuck and I are wrong, it doesn't matter. All
that matters is I know I'm not alone anymore. And
we'll continue with my pronunciation, and I'll make sure to
(41:38):
pass this down to my seven and four year old kids.
That is from Kevin Croyle in North Carolina, and I
also got a really rude email from a very I
guess angry person that I said it differently and they
were like, a goosh, you'd like being wrong. I guess
it is wrong. I don't even know. I never thought
about it. But I don't say biography. I say biography,
(42:01):
so I say biopic and I don't know. That's just
how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may
be wrong. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, you may be prettrazy.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
You say biopic, right, mm.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Hmm, but that's just what I've always heard, and I'm
so used to you saying biopic. Now that's not even
I think that they're both right. I think you managed
to wedge it into reality.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Well maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives,
it'll make it creat to do a biopic. Yeah all right.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Well, who is that from? The nice one?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
That is from Kevin?
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Thanks Kevin, that was very nice and I'm glad. Do
you feel vindicated sorry to your wife although she and
I share the same pronunciation.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Okay, yeah, we can all have an arm wrestling match
one day.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Or something if you want to be like Kevin and
write to us about feeling vindicated by me or Chuck
or Jerry or whoever we want to hear about it,
Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you should know the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's missing. We don't know where she is.
The Russians have her, at the very least, it's quite
possible the Russians have misled her in some way or another,
and maybe they tricked her into leaving when it was
time to record.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
You cheeky boy, don't worry everybody, Jerry's just really on vacation.
But that was a very clever setup to this episode
on essentially on Russian propaganda and how you know, I
think we all knew that, like their propaganda machine was
big back in the cold worn stuff obviously, but it's
(00:50):
it's a really big problem now and has been for
a while, ever since the advent of the Internet and
especially social media.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, because those two things are wide open set up
for people to distribute misinformation, deliberate misinformation. The Russians are
far from the only ones that do it. They're just really,
really good at it, and they've been doing it for
a long time. They I would guess they were probably
the first country to really start doing this on like
(01:20):
a wide scale. But I mean as far back I
think as twenty ten or at least the two thousand, Yeah,
but like the twenty tens, at least twenty thirteen at
the absolute latest. The Internet Research Agency was the first
kind of famous one that surfaced. And the whole premise
(01:41):
back then and now is to basically game social media
and use whatever you can whatever like weaknesses it has
in like the entire structure of it, to confuse people,
to sow discord and disinformation and chaos and questioning what
reality is, getting the media to start using words like
(02:04):
post truth and stuff like that, that kind of stuff.
It might not have a specific aim where it's like
we want to say, get Trump elected that was part
of this too, like that was a Russian name as well,
or we want to stir America up over the border crisis.
Just creating a climate where people question what's real or
(02:25):
what's true. That in and of itself is a huge
triumph for these Russian operations that have been going on
for more than a decade.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah. I think that was one of the things that
chilled me most was it wasn't like we really need
to get people to believe this one thing right about Ukraine,
let's say it's more like, no, let's just so chaos
in confusion to where you doubt what you're reading and
you don't know what the truth is anymore. And that's
just like that feels even scarier, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It does, because ultimately, eventually most people would be like,
it's not worth trying to get to the bottom of this.
You know, I'm just gonna stop. I'm just not going
to pay attention anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I'm just not going to care, or I'll just share
something because like I read.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It, yes, exactly sometimes on Reddit.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, good point. All right, So maybe we should jump
back a little bit and talk about the IRA, not
the Irish Republican Army, but the Internet Research Agency or
the Russian troll Farm as it might you might know
it better, as that was founded in twenty thirteen by
guy that was a former criminal eventually a successful entrepreneur
(03:39):
and kind of higher up oligarch in Russia and you know,
confidant of Vladimir Putin, and he also founded you know,
Confident up for a while because he also founded the
Wagner Group, which you may have read about the news,
the Russian Mercenary organization that would eventually try and Overthrow putin.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yes, do you watch the age and see on Prime? No?
Speaker 1 (04:02):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
It is magnificent. Yeah, it's one of the best spy
shows of recent times.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
I love a spie show.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
You guys liked Black Doves, right, yep. This is at
least on that caliber, if not higher. Michael Fossbender's in it,
Richard Gear, Jeffrey Wright, a bunch of other very talented people.
But it's all like spycraft stuff, and it's it's really
worth it. They just released their second season and I've
(04:32):
got three episodes left. I started two days ago, and
both seasons are well worth watching.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Okay, I did not watch Black Doves. Actually, I thought
you were talking about the what's the Gary Eelman show,
Wild Horses something horses.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I don't know, I know the one you're talking about.
You watch that?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, I watched that one.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Is it good?
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah? It's really good. I mean Gary Oldman's fantastic Slow Horses.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Slow Horses. I swear you watch Black Doves because Emily
said she liked it, the one with she may have
watched it, bend it like.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Beckham, Yeah, Kiera Knightley, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't see it.
May have watched that without me though, because she watched.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Okay, just watch them, watch them both, but definitely watch
the agency. It's much more likely to be in your
wheelhouse if either one of them are going.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
To be all right, Okay, So back to the show.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh, I know I brought that up. They battle essentially
the Wagner Group, but it's Valhalla in the agency.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay, gotcha, sorry about that. That's okay. Everyone loves a
good recommendation from either one of us, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah. I also, I want to be clear here, this
was not brought to you by Prime. We're not trying
to manipulate you or propagandize you or market to you.
This is just I watch it on Prime and it's
on time, and it's so good that I just took
that time to share that with everybody. That's all exactly
what it seemed like on face value. And do you
(05:57):
know why I have to say that.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Chuck, I don't know, Josh, because of.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Stuff like this operation that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
That's right. So the IRA that I spoke of, the
Internet Research Agency that what they did this is like
mid twenty tens. They hired a ton of you know,
young people basically who could speak English and who knew
a lot about politics to like, hey, why don't you
start a troll farm, you know, get on board this
troll farm and just create fake stuff, create fake news stories.
(06:28):
Although I'm love to even say those words together, fake
social media posts, YouTube videos. Eventually, you know, as you'll
see what would become like deep fakes and AI and
stuff like that. But this is before that. Yeah, and
while this was going on, Sputnik and Russia Today or
RT these are you know, I think legitimate or one point,
(06:51):
we're legitimate Russian news outlets. Right.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
They were always backed by the Kremlin. Oh well okay, yeah,
but yeah, I think that they were still they still
had journalists and stuff like that, but they were trying
to get the Russian viewpoint across to Western audiences.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Right, So they started distributing stories around the world, basically,
like we were saying, trying to get people to like
to believe whatever they wanted to believe at the time,
like politically.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Right, And the twenty sixteen United States election was a
real big kind of debut. They've been kind of ated already,
but the twenty sixteen election they really showed just how
much they could monkey with stuff, or at least the
potential of them monkeying with stuff. And this is where
that the allegations of Trump colluding with the Russians, this
(07:43):
is what they were talking about unproven, by the way,
to Rachel Maddow's great dismay right Pizzagate. These they didn't
necessarily come up with these things, but they were able
to amplify them, yeah, and get people talking about them
and make people questioning what was what, you know, or
the Democrats like really keeping child sex slaves in the
(08:05):
basement of Comet Pizza in DC. Who knows? Maybe you
should take an assault rifle from North Carolina and go
find out.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, exactly. So once this start sort of starts coming out,
and the United States and you know, all over North
American and Europe started realizing what was going on. In
February twenty twenty two, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
there started to be a little bit of action taken.
The EU banned Russian state media, including Sputnik and RT.
(08:34):
Other companies Google News dropped them from aggregation service. I
think Google, Microsoft and Apple all started like pulling their apps.
So that sort of started happening and then in twenty
three was when that failed uprising against Putin by the
Wagner group happened. And the long and short is after
all this, the IRA finally disbanded, but this work continued
(08:57):
among other groups.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, this is a good example of the whack a
mole that the West is playing. The Russian Internet disinformation
operations have the West on our heels. Clearly, there's basically
no one who knows what they're talking about with this
stuff who would disagree with that. The West still has
not figured out how to do it, aside from piecemeal
(09:20):
responses like taking Russia Times app off of the Apple market,
off of the Apple app store, you know, like that's
the kind of response we have to this. Still, and
this has been going on for more than a decade.
And one of the reasons why it's so hard to
do anything about it is because they use what the
(09:40):
Rand Corporation researchers Christopher Paula and Miriam Matthews call a
fire hose of falsehood, just put everything out there. It's
not the quality, it's the quantity that they focus on.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah. For sure, after CRIMEA was annexed in twenty fourteen,
and then obviously after the invasion of Ukraine in February
of twenty twenty two, they really ramped up a lot
of messaging to try and get you know, sentiment, sometimes
on their side, but a lot more times like just
(10:13):
against Ukraine and what was going on. And this eventually
it would become known as Dappelganger. But to be clear,
Dappelganger isn't like it wasn't Operation Dappelganger or there's not
an organization called Dappelganger. It's more of just sort of
I think the media sort of misread that and labeled
it that, but it's really just sort of this method
(10:35):
of doing what they're doing and how they're doing it.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, to be specific, it's a way of cloning dummy
websites that look like actual legitimate websites. The ones some
of the ones that they targeted were Lamonde and France,
their website, Washington Post in the US, the Guardian in
the UK, and they would essentially just take they would
(10:59):
have the bots start sending links or putting links all
over the Internet to basically share, right, hey, look at
this crazy article. Right. The Washington Post actually reported this,
so it seems like it would be legitimate. Then you
would click that and it would take you to a
different series of domains that got smaller and smaller to
where if you were in the area they were targeting,
(11:23):
say you were in the United States and you had
clicked you know, this thing to find out about whatever
this fake Washington Post thing was saying, it would it
would take you to this fake website like Washingtonpost dot PM,
just different enough that like you probably wouldn't notice, but
it's a different domain name. And the way that they
(11:43):
were able to get away with this was shell companies
and using shady kind of hosting services around the world.
And that that was doppelganger, that technique that they used
for getting this stuff out. There is no operation like this.
These these using bots or creating like fake accounts on
(12:06):
Facebook or whatever. That wasn't dopplgetor that is constant. It's
so constant and so embedded that there's no name for that.
Doppelganger was just the technique of the way that they
use the infrastructure of the Internet to deliver misinformation for
this short period of time.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, sort of one of the main companies. And we're
not going to go through all of these because it's
a little mind numbing. But there's one called the Social
Design Agency, which is a pr firm that started up
in twenty twenty two, founded by a political consultant who
had you know, that was their business, so you know,
(12:42):
they know exactly how to do it, and the Russian
government all of a sudden was like, wait a minute,
we would love to hire you to do like all
this stuff. It's literally as of I think a couple
of years ago, run by the Kremlin and directed by
the Putin administration, so they're kind of in the middle
of most of this doppelganger activity. Yes, and you know,
(13:03):
like you said, when you go to one of these websites,
when you click on the link, if you're not paying
attention to the dot whatever, and you realize it's not
you know, Washingtonpost dot com. It looks like it, it
smells like it, it acts like it for the most part.
So it's really easy to fool people.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
It is. I mean, if you really look closely, and
you look with a skeptical eye, you'll turn up some stuff.
I saw. One example is that the US must not
become the world's gendarme, which is police in French, like
the Washington Post would not use a phrase like that, right.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
But you have to know that, like I think they
count on just fire hosing it such where they're like, well,
who cares if most people don't, If we just get
this percentage of people, that's great.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yes, And even more than that, I feel like going
to the trouble of actually creating the article on the
fake website is almost superfluous because so many people on
the internet just share, Yeah, share, like that headline gotcha? Now,
I think that this is going on, not even bothering
to click into this to read the actual article. All
(14:10):
I need is the headline because it got me juiced up.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, for sure. And of course they're amplifying this through
the bot farms. Russian social media bots will post links
and then there are more bots that retweet these links.
I think I mentioned on the show. I saw a
picture of a bot farm one not too long ago
that was in big expose.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Were they all just doing grass?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
No? That was terrifying. It was like a dude sitting
at a desk on a computer and there were a
thousand cell phones connected hardwired to the computer, and then
there were dozens and dozens of these guys with hundreds
and hundreds of smartphones wow, connected on a big wall.
So when you see how it actually works, like literally
connecting to phones to send this stuff out and amplify it,
(14:54):
it's just it feels really dystopian and scary.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah. I feel like it's becoming clear that we're going
to have to abandon the Internet and come up with
a new one because this one got cooked.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
A creed. Should we take a break? All right, Well,
we're going to ruminate that, and I hope we can
even come back after we ruminate, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I hope.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
All right. So I mentioned after the invasion of Ukraine
in February twenty twenty two, that's when things really ramped
up again. They you know, a lot of these ideas
were really pretty clever. There was a one group that
launched sort of like a Snopes like site, but a
fake one, I know, War on Fakes, and it was
(16:00):
design to discredit Ukraine and support Russia obviously. And then
another one called are in Reliable Recent News which replace
reliable Russian news. So on one side you've got something
that says like, hey, this is reliable news, so this
is real. On the other side, it's like, hey, we
root out the fake stuff, but it's fake, so it's
(16:22):
almost like, you know, it's not almost like they've got
all their bases covered.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah. I mean, if you pay too close attention to this,
you'll start bleeding out of your ear guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Doppelganger got its name from the EU's Disinformation Lab. One
of the disheartening things to me, Chuck was figuring out
that the people who are tracking this stuff, there's not
a government agency involved anywhere. These are all like independent
NGOs that are dedicated to tracking disinformation.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, it's interesting journalists.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Like these are the people doing the actual work, and
then seven years later the governments like, oh, we're going
to have our Department of Justice do something about this.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
So where that's where Doppelganger got its name from. I
think it's basically it suggests that these are or it
points out like the cloned sites, they're like Dappelgangers of
the real thing.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
But that war on Ukraine, after the invasion of Ukraine,
they really ramped up the misinformation flood that was coming.
Like they targeted in twenty twenty four and I think
twenty twenty three, their main targets were France, Germany, the US,
the UK and Ukraine. And essentially what they were trying
(17:42):
to do was to make the people, the public in
each of those countries lose support or turn on the
idea of supporting Ukraine so that Russia could get them
out of the Ukraine business in Russia could just get
back to trying to take over Ukraine as best it could.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, and they, you know, they did it in a
lot of ways. Obviously, some ways were just fake articles
about like, you know, stuff that Ukraine does, or maybe
a fake article about that whitewashes a Russian atrocity like
the Buka massacre, like that never happened, right, But cleverly
they're also going like through celebrities and like faking that,
(18:24):
you know, Taylor, like a real influential celebrity like Taylor
Swift or Kim Kardashian, Like fake messages where they're supporting
or they're criticizing America and Europe for supporting Ukraine. Or
did you find something about Oprah?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, do you want to read that quote? Go ahead,
Oprah says supporting Ukrainians is unacceptable. Their actions destroy lives
in societies.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, so you know, especially if you're some like young
person who supports Taylor Swift or Kim Kardashian, you're probably
you know, not even aware that this kind of stuff
even goes on. All you're thinking is like, well, Taylor
Swift said, Ukraine deserves what's coming, So that's probably true.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
That's exactly right, that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Or maybe not deserves what's coming, but like America, this
is what a big sort of angle for them is.
America first, like, we shouldn't get involved in this. Let
Ukraine handle it themselves.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Right, And so that you just hit the nail on
the head. As far as why Republicans typically get targeted
with this stuff, it's not because the Trump administration is
colluding with the Russians. It's because the message that the
Trump administration and MAGA in general and Republicans by extension,
(19:43):
are basically basing their platform on. It's like you said,
America first, focus on domestic issues, get ourselves out of
foreign affairs, and that goes lockstep with what Putin wants.
It's like, yes, America, go mess with your own stuff,
and by pointing out and creating turmoil about all the
things that are going on in America at any given time.
(20:06):
It makes it seem even that more urgent to just
stop giving money to Ukraine when we've got all of
these middle class white people who need that money too,
and like tax breaks and stuff like that. That kind
of messaging that's not necessarily wrong, but is making it
seem like the American public sentiment is behind that. That's
(20:28):
the part that's wrong. They're manipulating that to kind of
try to get the public to swing that way, all
because they just want to be able to invade Ukraine
more easily.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah. They had one project called the Good Old USA Project,
which one of the SDA founders had come up with
with some other people, and it targeted voters in six
swing states during the last election in twenty twenty four
about just that, like let's not help Ukraine, like why
are we doing that when we have problems here? And
(20:57):
they also spent about ten million bucks encouraging right wing
influencers to get on board with pro Russia opinions. So
that's why if you've if you've ever been on like
the comment section of any social media site about anything
political like this, first of all, we would both encourage
you to stop doing that because it's just not good
(21:19):
for your mental health and well being. But if you
do and you see people saying like, oh yeah, thanks,
comrade or whatever Russian bought, like, that's that's what they're
talking about here.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, And to be fair, those right wing influencers, the
YouTubers that were hired to disseminate Russian propaganda were not
aware that that's what they were doing. They were hired
by a front company called Tenant Media. Yeah, they hired
like six hardcore right wing YouTubers and just basically said, hey,
let's talk about this kind of thing. But they were
(21:50):
not aware that they were being paid by the Kremlin.
They didn't know that. And then once that was exposed,
that company dissolved in. Those people, well, I guess had
to eat some crow, I would guess.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, for sure. Another thing, if you ever heard, you know,
you know, George Soros is paying those protesters like that
by the hour, like paid protesters, paid protesters. Yeah, that
comes from a fake Washington Post article, like you know,
from one of these like completely fake cloned websites. That's
where that comes from. It was right after Israel invaded
(22:25):
Gaza in spring of twenty twenty four and that there,
you know, all the protesters were going on, and there
was a fake Washington Post article that came out about
the Sorols Foundation and Rockefeller like paying people thirty bucks
an hour to go protest.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah. Uh, well, the one I remember was that the
Ukrainian government was actually like Nazis. Oh yeah, yeah, and
really what Russia's doing is liberating the Ukrainian people. I
remember that one for sure. That definitely came from this
Doppelganger era.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah. One of the weirder ones was Princess Kate when
she sort of disappeared from the public eye. Yeah, and
you know this is before she revealed it was because
of a cancer diagnosis. But they jumped on that and
sort of hijacked that with all sorts of weird conspiracy theories.
And again I think that was one just to just
to create tension and chaos in the UK.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Yes, I don't remember where I found this, but I
saw that their involvement in conspiracy theories is topic agnostic.
They don't care about the subject. Whatever it is that
will push people's buttons, that will get emotional responses and
get people worked up, they will get in there and
amplify it if they if they didn't make it up
themselves in the first place. Man, they also apparently, according
(23:40):
to I think the Good Old USA Project, that they
there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency who, again,
like you said, seem to be the ones behind this.
If all of a sudden you start to hear negative
chatter about stuff, you should know, I'm going to go
ahead and say it was probably them after this episode
(24:01):
comes out.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
What's a little worried about that.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
I am hopefully we're still under the radar enough.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, I like to think so.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah. And if all of a sudden, Chuck and I
die in a fiery car crash together, it was probably
the Kremlin.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I'm not flying anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
You have to, although I don't want to say when
or how. We should probably edit this part out. But
there was a whole group at the Social Design Agency
that was their job was to monitor social media posts
from GOP lawmakers to figure out what was on America's
mind or what people were worried about or angry about,
and then they would start making memes and stuff based
(24:40):
on that and try to create like I guess, mess
from that, just from like one tweet or something could
do it.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, for sure. I don't know how much you want
to get into this nuts and bolt section.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
We kind of already covered it really.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, it gets sort of in the weeds, but like
you sort of mentioned earlier, we just want to be clear.
It's like they'll use disposable domains that are owned by
other companies. They will use virtual offices and set up
shell companies. They'll work with you know in places like
sometimes at the far reaches of the earth. Well they'll
(25:15):
set up like some company in Malaysia where you know,
it's then it goes to another shell company in Lithuania
and it's just you know, it's also obfuscated. And that's
the whole point, you know that you don't know, it's
hard to even trace back to any origin.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Right, and it's just very decentralized. And then the companies,
these shell companies are just legitimate enough to provide cover
for the shady hosting companies to say like, well they're legal.
There's a UK company, so you know, we don't have
any obligation to check what they're doing, right, And as
(25:51):
it gets closer and closer to the actual fake website,
the companies just get shadier and shadier, and apparently they're
not the one thing didn't come up with this technique.
It's fairly common among bad actors. Yeah, like Brad Pitt.
I guess I.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Was trying to think of a bad actor. I didn't
want to be mean.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
I think you can be mean to Brad Pitt at
this point.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh yeah, because he's a fine actor. Oh yeah, and
a fine piece you know, a piece of what you know?
Did you see he and Ed Norton at the soccer match?
Speaker 3 (26:29):
No?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I heard about it.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, it's kind of fun, the old fight club thing.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
What was I gonna say?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
You were gonna say, we're gonna take a break, right.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, I think whatever I was saying, just peter it out.
Didn't matter.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
All right, Well, Josh is gonna Peter back up and
we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Okay, So we're back, and we know about Doppelganger. Like
I said, thanks to journalists and non governmental organizations that
are dedicated to tracking and fighting disinformation. The first one
where it came up even before it was called Doppelganger,
because remember that was the EU's Disinfo Lab that gave
(27:29):
it that title. But a full year or so before that,
a German website t online not the thing it does.
It sounds super fake. They published an article where they
were like, hey, there's a bunch of new Facebook accounts,
all of our German women. And the weird thing is
they all say that they work for Netflix, and even weirder,
(27:53):
every single one of them seems to be really really
adamant about Germany not funding you and just leaving Russia alone.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
I'm sure Netflix is like seriously, thanks.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I know, although Netflix is probably like, hey, any publicity's good.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Well, yeah, that's a good point. I get this is
this is not this, But I know you're not on
social media a lot, but on Instagram I will get
I will have to block a lot of people that
come on to follow me because it's clear that it's
some sort of a some sort of a porn thing. Sure,
(28:29):
Or I will get a comment from someone on some
random like I'll leave a comment on some random like
like Instagram posts that I think is cool or whatever,
and then someone will comment on that like oh yeah, totally,
Chuck Brian or whatever, Chuck the podcaster, And then I'll
look at you like who is this and it's you know,
it's clearly some fake person, and I just I don't
(28:51):
know what the angle is and I always block it,
so obviously I don't know, but I wonder what the
goal is. I got to be separating me from money somehow.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Somehow, or yeah or yeah, or getting money to somebody
like an influencer something or to boost whatever thing you
said was cool.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Maybe it's very strange, but it's always quite obvious what
it is because they have like zero posts, uh follow
a ton of people, no one follows them, and it's
usually some you know, if I can be frank, it's
usually some very like well endowed you know woman.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah. Do you remember there was a period of time
when AI slop was really starting to gear up, where
it does not matter what video you were watching on
like YouTube or whatever. In the search it was like
a very beautiful woman standing there like Vana White, right
next to the video screen, like learn all about C
(29:49):
plus plus coding from me the sixty secretary, you know.
Like it was all videos were like that for a minute,
and I was like, God, is this how it's going
to be from now on? And then it seems to
have vanished.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, And you know the only reason I bring all
that up is because it's just sort of backs up
this thing that we're talking about in this idea that
I keep edging toward, which is like, God, maybe it's
just best to get off and away from all of
that stuff all together. Yes, is really going in the
wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
No, it definitely is. There's this thing called the dead
Internet theory. Been wanting to do at least the short
stuff on it, but essentially it says that the Internet
has become a just a bunch of bots interacting with
bots trying to gain social media algorithms to make money
for some dude or whatever country Singapore or something like that, right,
(30:41):
And some studies have found that perhaps a third of
accounts on either Instagram or Facebook, probably Facebook, are bots
a third man, and that it's just gotten so far
out of hand that we're never going to get it back.
And also, like those long tail articles where you make
like five cents but it costs nothing to have an
AI write and publish that article, those have have pushed
(31:05):
actual human written, researched articles about any given thing from
like page one Google search to like page twenty. So
there's still like no reason to go in and search
for anything anymore unless you want some AI article broken
into fifty different small paragraphs or sections that are basically
(31:25):
repeat themselves over and over again, that's what you have available.
So it does seem like the Internet is pretty dead.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, I've noticed even on Instagram from some sites all
I can follow, like music sites or whatever, it's sort
of a dead giveaway. Now if the caption instead of
being like, you know, led Zeppelin performs at this performance
and it was awesome, it's now some really long, like
four paragraph thing with like this detailed history of like
led Zeppelin was a band and blah blah blah, and
(31:53):
it's just so obvious AI is doing it. Yeah, and
it's just it's kind of ruining what I used to
like about Instagram, along with a lot of other stuff. Yeah,
like you know, these fake busting women. It's like it
just makes me want to run away. Stop it, run away.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Something else is going to come along, because there is
like it's very clear that the Internet, and it's like
ideally is really great and useful and important and we
need it. It's just this version of it is no
longer useful, so we need to figure out a different one.
And somebody right now it'll.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Well it just it sucks because I don't like to
support that company because they're part of Meta, which I
hate and got off of Facebook. But I do like
the connection with listeners and be able to chat stuff up.
So it's, uh yeah, it feels like it's a no
in situation.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Sometimes I think what'll probably become is more of an
emphasis on email maybe again, and then like they'll that'll
get taken over and then it'll be handwritten letters.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
That'd be great. Speaking of Meta though, in twenty twenty two,
and this was after that t online group that you mentioned,
sort of out of this whole thing. Mm hm, that's
when like Meta and some other higher profile companies started
saying like, oh, well, like we know this is going on.
We're going to start removing pages and we're going to
start deleting this and we're going to take this super
(33:11):
serious and who knows what's going on on the inside.
I sound like I'm being cynical, because I probably feel
like I am. But they have found that like a
lot of it is coming through ads, and like they're
not even catching a ninety five percent of undeclared political
ads aren't being caught in this supposed sweep to clean things.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Up right, Yeah, because it's not just posts or bots
creating posts or even commenting, it's buying ads, and so
Facebook has a huge financial incentive to not root those
things out because they make tons of cash off of it.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
So yeah, I mean they said that they're doing this,
they're not actually doing it. And that's a good example
of the whole whack a mole thing too. Is like
a big company like that trying to police their own
social media site that's gotten out of their own control.
That's not a good technique either, although I think all
of us could probably agree that medic could do way,
(34:09):
way more than it does. So the finally, in September
twenty twenty four, after this has been identified for two
full years, the US Department of Justice is like, we're
going to take charge here.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, we'll take care of it.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Get this. They took down thirty two websites wow, that
were related to Doppelganger, and they were like, this is
too risky before a US election, So we're gonna we're
gonna do We're gonna go the nuclear option and take
down thirty two websites.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah. I think the cynicism is coming through. It's I mean,
whack a mole didn't even begin to describe it. I'm
sure like Russia hears the stuff and they're just like
laughing into their vodka, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah, Well that's the point that a lot of people make,
is that it might not even be changing people's minds,
but just the fact that we know it exists makes
you question everything then, And so you're right, are questioning
the legitimate stuff too, So you're not learning anything. Everything
has an angle.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, and now we're seeing of course, and we've talked
about I think we did a whole episode on deep fakes, right,
mm hmm, yeah, on deep fake and obviously the advent
of AI technology, which is now completely taken over already
where they have, you know, a fake video going up
where it looks like Joe Biden doing something, or it
looks like anybody doing something, and they will take you know,
(35:35):
they try to evade detection, so they'll post a video
just a little differently in different iterations, like with just
a few milliseconds trimmed out, so they can't be automatically
rooted out when like a company builds a system to
root out this kind of stuff, right, and we're already
at the point like AI has moved so fast, we're
already at the point where people all over the place.
(35:56):
For months now, I have been going like, I don't
even know if this is real, Like I don't know
if what I can believe anymore. So like it's working.
What they're doing is working, right.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
The thing that got me is that they've figured out
because AI companies train their models on like the Internet
and specific parts of the Internet, the Russians have figured
out that they can flood those parts of the Internet
with misinformation, and that's what the AI is going to
learn and think is real. So the AI is going
(36:28):
to just give out bad information or misinformation as well
because that's what it thinks is true.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yeah, I'm going to go live in a cave right
after we record.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
This, We'll get into Buddhism.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, let's let's do that.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
So, like we said, I don't know if we gave
our a hat tip to Olivia, who really did a
good exhaustive job on explaining this, But one of the
things she points out is that it's really unclear whether
this actually sways opinion.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, there have been some studies, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
I mean just anecdotally, I think it does, but maybe
it's one of those things where like, Okay, if it
really comes down to somebody saying, do you truly believe that?
Are you gonna be like yes, then maybe it doesn't
really sway opinion. But there was a study that looked
at disinformation efforts by Russian the twenty sixteen US election,
(37:23):
and it basically found that, like it had almost no
effect whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, they found that one percent of social media users
got seventy percent of the exposures, so a few people
getting most of this stuff, but that's still thirty percent
on the other ninety nine percent. And they also point
out that like a lot of the people getting exposed
to this are Republicans because the Russian posts are you know, again,
(37:52):
they're sort of targeting them about like hey, America first stuff,
America first stuff, and they already believe that stuff anyway,
so it's not maybe like they're changing minds, maybe that's
the point, but they're reinforcing beliefs for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah. Yeah, but again, that fire hose or the fire
hose of misinformation or false information, that's the technique, and
it seems to be working. The thing that stuck out
to me was I couldn't find anything about what they're doing. Now,
it seems like they're still doing much the same because
(38:23):
it works really, really well and it can just pop
up anywhere. Like there is a story I found, I
don't know if you saw it, where a twenty sixteen
disinformation campaign from Russia actually managed to get real life
Texans to battle one another, at least verbally. I don't
think anyone was physically injured over the Islamification of Texas,
(38:46):
which was just complete bunk made up by the disinformation group.
And even more than that, they made up the group
that the protesters joined. They also made up the group
that the counter protesters joined, So the whole thing was
totally fat, fabricated and social engineered. So like that works,
and at the time, these people were not thinking that
(39:07):
they were being manipulated by Russians, right, They thought it
was real. So it's going to keep continuing to work,
so there's no reason for them to stop. I'm curious
about what the next thing is that they're doing now
that we're going to find out about three years from now.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know, right, yeah, for sure. The other thing that
sort of would send a chill up your spine is
like none of this is even secret anymore. Like it's
out and they know it's out, and they don't care.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
They're in crowd if.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
They're out and proud with their what they call a
high reach, low impact campaign, which is, like you said, again,
the fire hose and the volume of content doesn't really
matter how much people believe it or not, as long
as you're sowing chaos and getting people to eventually think
like I don't even know, like maybe I'll just disengage
altogether because I don't know what's real. When widespread coverage
(39:56):
of Doppelganger came out, the Russian government was like, awesome,
let's give more funding to the SDA. And there's even
a suggestion that SDA deliberately leaked Operation Doppelganger like information
about that just to get more media coverage about it. Right, man,
(40:17):
I really do want to go live in a cave
after this.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
The best suggestion I saw was to fight fire with fire.
That the whole wackamle thing is never ever going to work,
and it actually just helps Russia, like you said, just
by giving it publicity, and that essentially the best thing
the West could do is to create its own SDA
and just turn it on Russia that that's basically the
(40:40):
only option to get them to stop.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
That sounds like a great idea for sure.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Well, since Chuck and I are jaded, I think it's
time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Is beyond jaded, all right, guys, for this is a
nice light way to end. Guys. For years, my wife
and I have had an argument over the pronunciation of biopic,
like when you make a movie about a person like
a biographical picture. We've both been stubborn to admit defeat.
She's part of the biopic crowd, but I prefer biopic.
(41:17):
She of course claims she's right because she's a former
elementary school teacher and a big study of English lit
and knows the truth. Blah blah blah. But it wasn't
until Chuck said biopic in your recent Howard Hughes episode
that I got the vindication I needed. I don't care
if Chuck and I are wrong, it doesn't matter. All
that matters is I know I'm not alone anymore. And
we'll continue with my pronunciation, and I'll make sure to
(41:38):
pass this down to my seven and four year old kids.
That is from Kevin Croyle in North Carolina, and I
also got a really rude email from a very I
guess angry person that I said it differently and they
were like, a goosh, you'd like being wrong. I guess
it is wrong. I don't even know. I never thought
about it. But I don't say biography. I say biography,
(42:01):
so I say biopic and I don't know. That's just
how it flowed out of my mouth. So I may
be wrong. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, you may be prettrazy.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
You say biopic, right, mm.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Hmm, but that's just what I've always heard, and I'm
so used to you saying biopic. Now that's not even
I think that they're both right. I think you managed
to wedge it into reality.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Well maybe someday when someone writes the biography on our lives,
it'll make it creat to do a biopic. Yeah all right.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Well, who is that from? The nice one?
Speaker 1 (42:31):
That is from Kevin?
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Thanks Kevin, that was very nice and I'm glad. Do
you feel vindicated sorry to your wife although she and
I share the same pronunciation.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Okay, yeah, we can all have an arm wrestling match
one day.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Or something if you want to be like Kevin and
write to us about feeling vindicated by me or Chuck
or Jerry or whoever we want to hear about it,
Send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you should know the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.