Are people really murdering scientists?

From Iran to London, it seems that being a scientist has become an increasingly dangerous occupation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm Ben. And this is stuff they don't want you
to know. And today, like every day, here, it's stuff

(00:24):
they don't want you to know. We're tackling something pretty grim,
little grim. Yeah, but it's the thing. It's a thing
that people should know about. When you say, Matt, agreed,
and that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna tell you
the things you should know that they don't want you
to know about. There we go, do we get close
to copyright? Josh and Truck are gonna bust in here

(00:45):
in a second. Now. It's it's interesting, you know, just
before you and I went on air, we were talking
about this book of surrealist games, which which I just
got in the mail earlier, and a lot of it
is writing prompts or different ways to draw things. The
idea is to get a new perspective and to get

(01:06):
out of your head. And speaking of fantastic segues, I
will bring this back later. I mentioned for a reason. Uh,
what are we talking about today, Matt. We're asking the question,
is someone really assassinating scientists and inventors, and for you
ladies and gentlemen out there in the audience, the answer

(01:26):
will probably be. Of course, given the span of human history,
numerous people have been killed for a multitude of reasons. Um.
But we have to be very careful at the offset
not to start thinking of this in terms of good
guys and bad guys. Now, it's more complicated than that.

(01:48):
It turns out that there really aren't any good or
bad guys. There are competing interests, right, Yeah, just like
nation states don't have friends, they have interests that may
or may not align. Um. So, the reason I mentioned
the perspective, the importance of perspective, which is explored in
this book of surrealist games, uh, which spoiler alert I

(02:09):
haven't read completely, is that there are different perspectives upon
what constitutes an assassination or a murder. So, what what
is what what's the dif? Dif what's what's the difference
your assassination and murder? Okay, So an assassination is a
type of murder. It's you kind of have to look

(02:31):
at the motivation. So if it's for impersonal reasons, if
you're looking at political or financial gain, if say this
person X is killed, or if it's a high profile
person like a world leader, or let's say a scientist,
an expert in their field, someone who is an heir
to some kind of massive fortune, or even an inventor,

(02:55):
somebody who has technology that isn't out in the public
hands yet, but this person is how it works. That
could be considered an assassination. We'll see a few of
those two. And murder, on the other hand, then would
be in this perspective. Murders that are not assassinations are
often things like crimes of passion, or they're motivated by

(03:15):
lower level personal gains small amount of money, social obligations
you know, like you're joining a gang, or emotional motivations jealousy, anger,
all the hits. Yeah, So the implication of the word
assassination is that the person involved in the killing is
motivated by trying to maintain the status quo of some situation,

(03:36):
or to advance their personal position or perhaps their country's position,
um or even to perhaps overturn an entire system. Oh yeah,
like when the Black Hand assassinated Franz Ferdinand right triggering
the World War UM or another example of maintaining a
status quo. For those of us who believe that not

(04:00):
everything was on the up and up about the JFK
RFK murders, assassinate somebody thinks that wasn't just yeah, really
too long gun guys who didn't know each other and
just coincidentally decided to Yeah, anyway, some research. Yeah, that's
a different show. Maybe. But if if you believe in that,

(04:23):
then you probably believe that the Kennedy's were murdered to
maintain a status quo or advanced the position and influence
of the people involved in it. So with that's a
different story, as we said, and I'm getting a little
derailed here, but it is correct to say then that
UM forces have assassinated, not just murdered scientists. So it

(04:48):
goes back to the perspective, the killing, the motivation. They're
not stabbing these people or shooting them for you know,
twenty three dollars and some change in their lab coat,
which is so stereotypical. I'm I'm not saying they walk
around a lab because but they'd be easier to spot. Yeah,
it would be easier spot. But whoever has killed these

(05:09):
people has assassinated them, uh, usually related to their work, right,
And here's the thing, it's tough to know exactly who
is doing the assassinating. Who are they It's really tough
to know because in a lot of cases there's not
solid proof that's just pointing you in the direction of

(05:31):
one person or the other because they're, like we said,
competing interests in this one area. And let's say a
scientist in Iran gets assassinated, just as one example, there
are a lot of groups that would potentially want to
not have the Iranian nuclear weapons program continue on. So

(05:51):
who do you point the finger at when there are
there's a whole group of people you could be looking at,
And in Iran they wouldn't even say it's a weapon program,
just an energy sure, just an energy program. Yeah right,
that's that's true. So we know that the alleged perpetrators are,
at least as far as we can tell, most often governments.

(06:13):
So the United States, USSR, Israel, North Korea, China, Singapore, Germany,
South Africa got in the game. And then uh, the
other group of play of course, which you and I
have argued before on the show might be the new
nation state is the corporation? So of corporations also been
killing inventors and have they been killing scientists? Um, we've

(06:38):
got the outline here, right, We've got the big picture.
But what are some actual examples? All right, let's just
jump right in. So one would be Daniel McFarland More.
He was an inventor and he created the More lamp,
which was the first really commercially viable light source that
was based on gas. And he was by another rival

(07:01):
inventor in nineteen thirty six. So that's just another example
where competing interest in his field decided it would be
better if he wasn't there. Yeah, and it continues because
another example will be Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer. And this
is really interesting story, Matt. This. I want to do

(07:22):
an episode or series on Project Babylon. This this pretty
recent and you actually hit me to this a few
years back. I only been doing this for a while,
but you hit me to this a few years back.
Gerald Bull, longrange artillery inventor. This guy just loved building guns,
bigger and bigger and bigger guns. Uh. The actual technical

(07:45):
term for these would be super guns. And Project Babylon
was a super gun that he was building for the
Iraqi government. He was assassinated in Belgium in nine And
then going back to how murky it can be to
trace the killers. Uh, the guesses for this are all
over the place. So they said, maybe Iran did it,

(08:08):
and that that makes sense because Iran and Iraq, of
course we're not allies. Especially that Yeah, maybe Israel did it, um,
which makes sense because Iraq and Israel and not particularly allies.
Maybe the CIA or m I six, who they get
brought up in almost every assassination stories were fined. Maybe Chilean, Syrian,

(08:30):
or South African governments or hey, even the Iraqi government
could have been behind the assassination. So it is clear
that he was not murdered for some sort of personal reason,
but that he was assassinated due to his unique knowledge
about this gigantic long range artillery. Yeah, and and he's

(08:54):
had been making and inventing these weapons for a long time,
so anyone who was on the other end of one
of his weapons, any one of those governments, may have
been a culprit. That's a really good point. So another
person is Stanley Meyer, And we did a whole episode
on this highly recommend you check out the video series
on Mr. Meyer. He died in nine. He was the

(09:17):
inventor of this water powered fuel cell alleged water power
or fuel cell um. His brother we talked about this,
but his brother thinks that Stanley was poisoned while they
were about to eat because they were going to go
meet a couple of Belgian investors, and I guess Stanley

(09:39):
ran out of the cafe or the restaurant they were
in and complained that he was choking. He thought he
had been poisoned, and he died. And this please yeah,
check out this episode if you get a chance, because
we found a lot of interesting stuff there. Now you
will also find quite a few people saying that the

(09:59):
water our fuel cell has been soundly debunked. And then
on the other side, his friends and family are saying
that he grew increasingly paranoid and that he was increasingly
convinced that the powers that be, whomever they might be,
were after him to suppress his invention. It's really interesting
his story to me. I don't mean to pause too

(10:20):
long here, but I can imagine that even if his
fuel cell car water fuel cell car didn't work the
way that he thought it worked if he thought it
worked the way it did, and it would be this
huge game changer, and it would be I can see
how he could create a ton of the suspicion and
the paranoia in his own mind by thinking that it

(10:42):
was this new thing that everyone's gonna want. But what
if it was right? What if it was We do
know that, of course, inventions really can be suppressed in
the United States legally, which is probably still one of
the most frightening things we've learned on this show. But
inventors are not the only subjects of assassination based on

(11:06):
their knowledge. As a matter of fact, we have a
much more concrete record and clear timeline of scientists who
have been assassinated. That's right. We can look at David
Joseph Webster, who was an anthropologist and a social activist
who was murdered by assassin's working for South Africa's Civil

(11:28):
Cooperation Bureau, and they think this is due to his
political activism of i e. His the anti apartheid movement
in nine Yeah, and what's interesting about the South African
cases is that with the post apartheid government, um, we
are now able to learn a lot of the dirty

(11:49):
secrets of apartheid era South Africa that we would never
have known otherwise. And that's also a reason that a
lot of secrets about the U s s R came out,
because once a government is defunct, Uh, then all of
a sudden transparency becomes a little bit easier, more plausible. Um.
You can argue, of course that governments who have continually

(12:12):
covered up their stuff have a whole walking closet of
skeletons just waiting to waiting to see the light of day,
and maybe an underground bunker full. I mean, you know,
if that's way better? Yes, uh so, Uh, this name
I'll probably mispronounce here. Yah L Mashad, an Egyptian nuclear
scientist who was in charge of the Iraqi nuclear program,

(12:36):
was killed in Paris in Now you can take a
wild guest who's generally blamed for that one, right, let's
say ding ding ding day, Yeah, and blue ribbon to
our contestant, Matt Frederick, because yeah, because it's in a row,

(12:58):
it's it's a nuclear program in the Middle East that
is not Israel's top secret nuclear program. Excuse me, finger,
it's around top secret. Yeah, um, mordecaiva unum, never gonna
get out of a a man. I turned around and Chandler
was staring at me, and I honestly was a little
scared for a minute. Yeah that's uh, our producer, predator

(13:18):
Chandler out there mining some stuff for an upcoming episode hopefully.
And let's pause for a moment to give a shout
out to our super producer Noel. Oh, he's in the
house again running the boards. Everything that you guys like
sound wise. I didn't see him dance. He's not gonna

(13:38):
do it again. But everything you guys like sound wise
comes from Noel, so we do always want to thank
him in the course of the show. And uh, moving
on back to the killing of scientists. Yeah, yeah, Unfortunately,
sometimes sometimes we have to make it a little lighter
for ourselves because it gets it gets pretty down when

(14:01):
we look at these things. Ben and I think we
have to lift our spirits somehow. Yeah, it can, It
can get pretty heavy. I'm speaking of heavy though. I
have a question for you about this next guy. I
want to see if you think this is a murder
or an assassination. A guy named Ernest Gibbons, an entomologist
in two while he was in Uganda research and tropical disease.

(14:25):
He was killed via spear by tribesmen who thought that
he would use their blood samples for witchcraft. Interesting, so
we've got them on the assassination list because technically it's
a murder to maintain a status quo. Yeah, they killed

(14:47):
him because they're afraid of his position right right, or
their life or defense defense and from their perspective, going
back to shifting perspectives, it surely was an active defense.
And I mean all of the terrible things that so
many Europeans were doing in Africa in the forties. Um,

(15:09):
it's it's tough to make that tough to make that col.
I mean, of course, they should not have killed him,
and if, especially if this guy sounds like he was
researching tropical disease with an eye towards curing it, right,
not weaponizing it, which again is another podcast we should
do later the scientists out their weaponizing diseases. But let's

(15:32):
move on. I just want to hear what you guys
think if that is that a murder and assassination. Okay,
let's look at PIM fourteen and I'm probably spelled in incorrectly.
P I M f O R t U y N.
He was a Dutch sociologist and a politician. He was, Um,
I don't know how to put this nicely, he was

(15:52):
rather anti Muslim. Uh, should I say he was kind
of racist? He was kind of racist. Yeah, I feel
like that's fair, at least that's what it seems from
my opinion. Anyway, he was assassinated because of those political
views and because of those uh strongly held notions right
anti immigration, and he was reacting to the what what

(16:17):
he saw as the erosion of traditional Dutch culture. And
you know, that's one of the reasons that Anders Bravick
Uh committed the mass murder of those children. And there's
a there's a rise in this sort of sentiment in Europe,
or rather we should say a resurgence or modern modern iteration.

(16:39):
And then, of course we should mention the numerous scientists
in history who have been killed as part of a
mass murder. We've got here on the outline scientists who
died in Nazi concentration camps. Um. Of course, many really

(17:00):
and scientists died in concentration camps. Uh. There were also
prominent people who died in the massacre and Rwanda, and
one of another stark example of widespread I would say
assassination of scientists occurs in Cambodia under the rule of

(17:21):
pol Pot. Yeah, and uh, I don't know if you
know this we've talked about before. Uh did I ever
tell you pol Pot's real name, his birth name, Saloth
Sar Salath. Yeah, just a bit of trivia. And we
haven't dug into the history of Cambodia, but we would

(17:42):
like to examine it in another podcast. If that's something
you're interested in, just let us know. And it holds up. Unfortunately,
it's often treated as a as a cliche or a platitude,
at least in English. I don't know. I don't want
to assume everybody's native language is English listening, but we
often say, you know, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely.

(18:06):
Often things are only cliches because they are so true.
And uh. In in this case with with the Isis
video that we had done recently, we found that that
was also UM. Then it also obeyed that rule the
development of that group, which was ongoing and which UM.

(18:27):
It's very strange for us to do podcasts on things
that are still underway. You know, our series, we don't
know exactly what is going to happen in the Middle East.
And again I would ask you guys, ladies and gentlemen
to check out our video on Isis and let us
know what you believe the future of this group is.

(18:50):
Because it goes without saying, but I'll say it that
it's enormously controversial and complicated and complicated and does not
have the approval of the Muslim world at large. So
please do check that. We've also heard a lot of
theories about who actually controls them, which is what our

(19:10):
video is about. Is it a Western group UH funding
these people? Is it a a Middle Eastern group that
has a problem with Shia, because I believe Isais is
Sunni Um. And speaking of the Middle East, now we
go to the thing that inspired a lot of our
series on scientists assassinations. A little bit of context the

(19:33):
quickened dirty first, for anyone who hasn't seen our video
or does not know about this. For a number of years,
as you have probably heard, Iran and the Western world
have been at a near state of war. You have
probably heard hawks in both the United States, Europe Israel

(19:56):
as well UH saying that Iran is closer and closer
to achieving a nuclear weapon and becoming a nuclear power
is in most cases a point of no return for
the world order, and it changes things. Yeah, because now
you're a real threat and you can't get bullied quite

(20:17):
as much, and you're also extremely dangerous. Right, and nuclear
power is considered, at least under a deterrence theory, the
ultimate stay out of my affairs kind of weapon. UH.
In some cases, UH countries have gotten close to this
and then been coerced or coaxed into UH stopping their

(20:40):
nuclear programs. But Iran maintains that it has a right
to nuclear energy and they they say that it's energy
and not weaponry. The problem is that the same processes
used to refine nuclear material to make a nuclear power
plant are the same processes that can be used to

(21:02):
create nuclear weapons. UH. It's a dangerous line. It's a
dangerous line, and it's UM it's a It's an interesting
thing because going back to perspective, the Western perspective is
often that if Iran achieves nuclear power game over man,
to quote aliens, UH, there will simply be a nuclear war.

(21:25):
And in other perspectives and non Western perspectives, UH, the
the constraints and the demands made by the West against
Iran are seen as trying to push her on into
a war because uh, the West and the sunny empires
of the Middle East do not want the Shia to

(21:48):
atrieve regional hegemony, right, and they control that straight up
hor moves, I believe where all the oil comes from. So,
like we said, it's tremendously complicated the model. No, it's
totally fine. There's just there's so many competing interests out there,
and then a whole a whole other set of competing

(22:09):
interests in the Western world that are all looking and
trying to figure out the chest pieces of what's going
on over there. And then when you have, you know,
a fairly small country like Iran that has this developing
technology that could lead to uh, either disastrous results or
just be a thorn in the side of anybody who

(22:30):
wants to manipulate the area. Right. Yeah, So at some point,
a few years back, the governing powers of UM some country, right,
because still no one is quite sure who this is
or no one's admitting it. At some point a group

(22:52):
of very powerful people said, you know, this paperwork has
taken a while, and uh, I don't have to for
the u N to vote on stuff. So let's just
start killing the people who are in charge of the
nuclear program. Now, you know, it doesn't matter if you
think it was a good decision or bad decision, if

(23:13):
you're if you're pro or anti either side. The fact
of the matter is that this happened. Somebody is killing
these people. It happened in a dark room, quiet conversation
between two people. Maybe it happened out in the open
somewhere because it was harder to attract or listen to.
But it happened, right, And we know what happened because
we have just in this show, we have no less

(23:35):
than five examples of when this happened. So let's look
at Majid Sharrari, a nuclear engineer who was assassinated in
two thousand ten. Uh, there were some unidentified assailants who
wrote up on motorcycles and attached bombs to this person's
car and they detonated it from a distance. They rode

(23:57):
away and detonated the bombs that they just stuck to
the sides of the cars. And Iran initially and I
believe still currently blames Massaud for this. And then for
another example, we have our this year hosting port I'm
mispronouncing this name, but uh. This was a scientist and
professor of electromagnetism died in two thousand and seven. According

(24:22):
to Stratford, which is a privately run intelligence analysts corporation,
this scientist was killed either via gassing or radioactive poisoning,
and this was also blamed on the United States and
or Israel. However, Massad sources denied these allegations, which means

(24:45):
that it is possible that this scientist asphyxiated due to
gas fumes while asleep. However, to me that doesn't hold water.
Given the studies and the p fashional biography or the
CV of this person, I'm fairly certain hasting Poor was assassinated.

(25:07):
Then there's Massoud Ali Mohammady. He was a quantum field
theorist and an elementary particle physicist. In two thousand and ten,
he died because his motorcycle was apparently booby trapped and
it exploded and he died in the explosion, and Iran
demanded the extradition of a couple of these Tondar members.

(25:30):
They're an expatriate association based in the US, and they're
often thought of Iran as a terrorist group. And it's
good that we're recording this now because we had a
video that came out explaining some of the nature of
proxies in in these kinds of dirty wars or clandestine
assassination wars. And yeah, so who's Tondar. Tondar is a

(25:54):
group based in the United States of Iranian Americans or
originally Iranian nationals who left uh either in response to
the uh increasingly strict policies of Iran post revolution, or
in response to the revolution. So they are not U

(26:18):
was that they they're not friends of the of the
current government. And in Iran they are treated as a
terrorist group, right, but in the United States they are not.
They're thought of as an expatriot organization. And we see
that happening often, you know, and thinking the video, we
mentioned m e K and we mentioned Hill Bellah and

(26:42):
the other groups that are terrorists to some countries and
not terrorists in other countries. Moving on number four, darush
raisianajad uh this is again my mispronunciation. I apologized all
Farsi speakers. Uh This was an engineering student assassinated by
gunmen in two thousand eleven. Uh Uran also blames this

(27:05):
on massade because uh Daryosh's research was on high voltage switches,
which would be a crucial component in the nuclear technology
that the country was and is pursuing. Last on our list,
we have Mustafa Mati Roshan, who was a nuclear scientist
and a professor and apparently he died by an explosive

(27:30):
and two thousand twelve. So these are just five examples
of assassinations that we know occurred. This doesn't mean that
these are the only ones by any means, and it
certainly doesn't mean that Uranian scientists are the only people

(27:50):
being assassinated. We're not trying to vilify any country because frankly,
a lot of these countries are using clandestine means when
the official channels don't work. And we didn't put anything
in here about the corporations. But Matt, you remember the
guy who allegedly died by hanging himself in Singapore and

(28:15):
he was working with some electronics, some uh my conductors, right, yeah,
the name escapes me now. But the police in Singapore
did not even investigate the crime scene, which the family
found out about when they flew to Singapore. They're convinced
that he was murdered, uh possibly to keep the secret

(28:37):
of his research because he was a US national working
for a foreign company. And there's this entire underbelly, or
this entire unreported segment of of suspiciously convenient deaths that

(29:00):
that just runs through so much of the rarefied world
of high tech expertise, and it's frightening. Well, it's really
frightening because if if you die in a certain way
that doesn't look suspicious, even sometimes if it looks a
little suspicious, Yeah, like you end up in a bag. Yeah,
that's that's locked. Let's say from the outside, in a bathtub. Uh. Oh,

(29:27):
I believe we mentioned him in the video. Yeah, sorry,
you go really go back and watch our video if
you get the chance. It's not very long. You'll enjoy it,
and it'll scare you. Well, I'll set you down a
rabbit hole, that's for sure. So one of the last
things that we talked about, this is one of my
favorite parts of the show, Matt, is that now we
can speak speculatively, we can talk about our opinions, and

(29:50):
let's be very careful to differentiate our opinions from the facts.
We talked about the facts earlier. So with these allegations, right,
because we still have to call them allegations in most
cases since they have them have been proven. You know,
no intelligence agency has been prosecuted for these murders, nor

(30:12):
have any operatives. Right, let's talk pros and cons. So
there's a reason that these people are are being assassinated,
and the governing powers of the people who are carrying
out these assassinations clearly believe that it is worth it
to murder assassinate someone. Let's try and find these silver

(30:35):
lining here. If there is anything, the biggest thing would
be there. Perhaps there is a reason that some of
these people have been killed, and it's because the people
who killed them believe that by killing them, they will
be saving hundreds, if not thousands, or millions of others.

(30:56):
Let's say, for instance, the around Ian scientists. Perhaps there's
a person, let's I'm just this is all my opinion
somewhere I don't know, hanging out CIA headquarters who decided
where these are the guys we need to take out
so that a nuclear weapon won't happen in Iran. So
the idea being that, the idea of being that it's

(31:20):
ultimately better or even morally superior to take a few
lives in order to save possibly thousands, right, possibly, it's
a big if. Right, even even even if you're trying
to go positive with it, it's a huge if, because
who's to say what even if a weapon system did

(31:42):
happen there, who's to say what's going to happen. You
can't see the future. Well maybe the CIA can, and
I just don't know about it. Uh, highly doubt that though.
Well there, you know, we can also talk about some
of the the clear cons for this sort of ing.
Assassinating someone by any measure of the of the international

(32:07):
norms is it's against the law. It's eight shades of illegal,
you know, And uh, I guess I should have fifty
shades of illegal. A topical joke, it's already if you don't,
oh yeah, well it's too late at the dies cast.
But but the point is that this sort of thing

(32:30):
also clearly, clearly and perhaps irrevocably damages relationships between countries.
Already tense situations begin to deteriorate. Uh, spycraft is crazy.
And you know, at some point we have to ask ourselves,
we as as human beings, have to ask ourselves, is

(32:51):
is spycraft generally over the long term of benefit to
the world or is it of short term benefit, uh
to a small group of people to the status quote
right to the status quote. Now, you know, we've we've
all heard the stories about the Cold War and the extensive,
crazy amount of spine that went on there, and it

(33:15):
seemed that the USSR and the United States were constantly
uh putting out their own propaganda and and neck and
neck in some races, but then also started believing their
own propaganda. I I just wonder, I just wonder what

(33:35):
this means for the future of science. Yeah, well, I
think it creates a lot of suspicion and paranoia in
those fields, and it's gonna make it's gonna make at
least high priority science that's happening much more secretive. And
that's scary because that's not what it's supposed to be.
Big science is supposed to be public and shared. And

(33:57):
you know, it's like we talked about with patents a
while ago, what what the patent system does to science?
Because now I, as the inventor or the scientist, I
want to reap the rewards rather than you know, spread
them out amongst humanity. Yeah, I was. I was thinking
the same thing too, because you know right now, uh,
various countries have sanctions systems against one another, right Uh.

(34:23):
The there's sanctions systems against North Korea, which are primarily
intended to punish the elite, who are the only people
who really have access to those sorts of luxury goods.
But then there there's sanctions against um Iran as well,
and there's this huge debate in the international sphere over

(34:44):
whether or not sanctions work. But one of my concerns is,
what if education starts becoming good that can be sanctioned.
You know, what if what if you're bright student and
you cannot go to the best university for your field
because it happens to be in France, or it happens
to be in you know, it happens to be Harvard

(35:04):
or something that's disturbing. I I hope that never happens. Um. Sorry, Ben,
you're freaking me out, because you know, education is one
of those things that's so under it's such an under
priority or a non priority, it seems to be from
a public standpoint, at least here in the US. And
we're arriving at this point, this crossroads met where it

(35:28):
is possible that education in the future will be free
will be a universal human right. And I know even
just the phrase human rights can just on its own
set people's certain people's hair on end. But you know,
if you look at it, we're we're moving into a
world where the cost of information is so cheap that

(35:49):
people are able to just with an Internet connection. Uh
directly learned from some of the smartest folks in the world.
And what if, in the injured of national security people
begin to lose access to that information. I'm always I'm
always very skeptical, and I have been increasingly skeptical of

(36:11):
national security as a reason for things. Yeah, I think
you should be. It's been abused a lot. I wish
I could just claim national security in my personal life,
you know what I mean? Personal security? Maybe I'm oh,
it's gonna be National's got to be an offense issue. Yeah,
I'm sorry, I can't go to work next week? Why

(36:33):
national security? I shouldn't even be talking to you about this.
Just cover for me. You know it would work for you, Ben,
Would it work work for you? I think it would
have worked more for you. I wouldn't think twice if
if Jerry told me, hey, look, Ben's not here. National security?
Is it the new base that you can tag in

(36:53):
conversation is okay, So I don't want to get us
too off base map. But I wanted to talk about
this on the air because I thought the listeners would
like it, and I think it might answer some conversation
JU and I have been having for a long time.
I was thinking about the term conspiracy theory, and you
and I have you know, kicked this round all the

(37:15):
time because often used as an insult, right, So why
when people hear the phrase conspiracy theory will they throw
out completely reasonable stuff like banks cooperating with drug cartels, which,
excuse my hiccup, we scooped the Daily Show on right.

(37:38):
Huge fans, if you're listening to our show, thank you,
But we we really did find that often that phrase
alone was enough to completely um, what's a good word everything? Yeah, negate,
any any evidence anything like that, And people who prized

(37:59):
them elves as critical thinkers stopped thinking critically or even
skeptically when they heard the phrase conspiracy theory. They just went, oh, well,
that's total bs. So I finally figured out a theory
about what this is, or I should say I found
a book by someone who figured it out. Uh, There's
an author named Robert J. Lifton who wrote a book

(38:23):
called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. And in
the Psychology of Totalism he brings up a very interesting idea,
the thought terminating cliche. It's a cliche that is commonly
used phrase that you hear that will quell this cognitive

(38:43):
dissonance or justify fallacious logic, or just dismiss any opposing viewpoints.
So you know, on the Internet, when someone says, hey,
you guys, stop picking on that person, and then someone
else goes, oh, is your white nighting? Right? White nighting
would be a thought terminating cliche there, because then all

(39:05):
of a sudden has all these connotations of like everything
that the prior person said now is looked at under
this light. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because
of you and what you are, and everybody knows because
of this special word or phrase. And so what what
I'm finding is that going back to this, I know,

(39:26):
we walked a long way for this one, but going
back to it, national security is turning into a thought
terminating cliche, turning into man, I think it's been there. Well,
it's valid in certain contexts, you know, sure, it's valid.
Conspiracy theory is super valid in certain contexts. That's true.
I just you know, like, what's an example of national security?

(39:46):
I don't want people to be able to take warheads
on planes on commercial flights. You know that is a
matter of national security. It sure is. Uh. And T
s A. If you're listening, good luck, guys, UH, because
I don't think you know, I personally don't have highest

(40:06):
opinion with the T s A. Yeah, well we can
get into that and the T s A and security
theater and we can talk about that later. Security theater.
I like that phrase. Um, it's not mine, but it's true.
I'm gonna I'm gonna look it up. And I'm sorry
if that was too much of a tangent. It happens, man,

(40:27):
cliche happens us. Conspiracy theorists go on tangents more and more.
I think the term conspiracy realist or critical thinking is acting.
That's it, conspiracy realist. And I don't know if someone's
really coined that phrase or not, but I like it.
All right, we called it then unless someone else has
done it. You heard it here first, Matt and Ben
called dibbs. I mean, who can own a phrase? That's

(40:52):
that's weird. Yeah, we'll just put it on a T shirt.
Maybe that'll be enough. Um, But we'd also like to
hear your opinions about these assassinations of scientists. Is it?
Is it correct? Is it? Is it morally justifiable to
assassinate someone who would, for all intents and purposes, count

(41:13):
as a civilian right? And are there other cases of
inventors or scientists being assassinated that you want us and
the rest of your fellow listeners to know about. Uh?
If so, uh, let us know. And just to emphasize
how important listener mail is to us, we have a

(41:33):
listener mail uh today. Excellent, let's get to it. We
got this message from Greg s. He says, Hey, guys,
I've been watching you for some time and I thought
i'd take some time in first congratulating you on all
your success. I know it's hard to get things going,

(41:56):
but you all did it, and I hope the best
success for you in the future. The reason why I'm
taking some time just to talk to you today is
because I really like for you to dive into the
new pope and tie in the idea of him being
a Jesuit. And of course knowing what a Jesuit really
stands for and what they have been doing since the beginning.

(42:16):
I think you'll find a lot of major wars and
collapses or starters from Jesuits. I hope this intrigues you
to find out more or just to inform people a
little on what Jesuits are. Interesting. Greg, I don't know,
is it feels a little touch you to me this
subject already? Well, we can definitely look at the history

(42:40):
of Jesuits because I'll be honest, other than Jesuit schools,
I don't know very much about the the organization. Um
and I do know that the the new Pope is
a Jesuit, right, Uh. I would be really interested to
dig in here and see what we find. So, Greg,

(43:02):
thank you so much for writing to us, and we
you know what, I'm gonna take you up on it.
I'm gonna I'm gonna look into this. Yeah, we'll at
least do some some digging, right, because there's there are
always so many skeletons, they're just under the surface, especially
a very old organizations. So, Greg, you say that a

(43:23):
lot of major wars and collapses come from Jesuit organization. Yeah,
let's see what's up with that? Man? Figure it out? Star? Well,
thank you so much DJ Logic for writing in. So yeah,
if you again, if you have any ideas for a
show topic, send it to us. You can find us
on Facebook. We're conspiracy stuff there. You can find us

(43:44):
on Twitter. We're at conspiracy stuff. And you should go
to our website stuff they don't want you to know
dot com. I love just telling you guys all the
places that you can find us every week. I'm sure
you're getting sick of this or you just turn it off. Yeah,
I hope people don't get sick of it. I mean,
we still have other stuff that we squeeze in at
some episodes, right, uh. And the website is pretty cool.

(44:07):
You can find all of our audio stuff there. Um.
We ask people recently on Twitter if you wanted to
read a blog if we should start doing that again,
So let us know we can. We can always start
that up, but we want to make sure it's something
people feel like reading. Yeah, exactly. Oh hey guess what what.

(44:30):
There's one last way you can contact us. It's kind
of out of fashion, it's kind of old woman. It
is easy, what is it? You can write us an
email We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this topic and other unexplained phenomenon, visit
test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also

(44:53):
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.