CLASSIC: Are people really murdering scientists?

From Iran to London, it seems that being a scientist has become an increasingly dangerous occupation. Learn why in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So it's no secret that the world in a large
part depends upon the tireless individuals studying STEM, by which
we mean science, technology, engineering, mathematics and being a scientist.
As many of our fellow listeners can assure you, it's

(00:20):
not the same thing as being the scientist you'll see
portrayed in film or on a TV show, you know
what I mean. Like Fringe is a super cool show.
I loved it. But being a scientist can be tedious.
It can be very demanding. You can often be underpaid,
and in some cases you can be murdered, especially if

(00:44):
certain bad actors don't like what you're working on or
what your work could mean for them or their business,
or their ideology or country. And we're gonna look at
a trend. It's pretty disturbing scientists and dying in this episode.
And we did this episode before Russian medical professionals gained

(01:07):
that nasty habit of falling out of windows from UFOs
two ghosts and government cover ups. History is writted 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

(01:28):
and this is stuff they don't want you to know.
And today, like every day here, it's stuff they don't
want you to know. We're tackling something pretty grim. 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. There

(01:49):
we go, do we get close to copyright? Josh and
Truck are gonna bust in here in a second. Now.
It's it's interesting, you know, just before you and I
win 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

(02:11):
ways to draw things. The idea is to get a
new perspective and to get 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

(02:34):
out there in the audience, the answer 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 the offset not to
start thinking of this in terms of good guys and

(02:55):
bad guys. Now, it's more complicated than that. 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

(03:15):
of surrealist games, uh which spoiler alert I haven't read completely,
is that there are differing 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 assassination and murder? Okay,
So an assassination is a type of murder. It's you

(03:40):
kind of have to look 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,
some one who is an heir to some kind of

(04:02):
massive fortune, or even an inventor somebody who has technology
that isn't out in the public hands yet, but this
person knows 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,

(04:24):
or they're motivated by 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

(04:44):
the status quo of some situation, 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 Fronds he at an end right,
triggering the World War um or another example of maintaining

(05:06):
a status quo. For those of us who believe that
not 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, research, Yeah, that's

(05:30):
a different show maybe. But if if you believe in that,
then you probably believe that the Kennedy's were murdered to
maintain a status quo or advance 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

(05:52):
UM forces have assassinated, not just murdered scientists. So it
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 coats, but they'd be easier to spot. Yeah,

(06:15):
it would be easier spot. But whoever has killed these
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

(06:36):
to know because in a lot of cases there's not
solid proof, that's just pointing you in the direction of
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

(06:57):
not have the Iranian nuclear weapons pro Graham continue on,
So who do you point the finger at when there
are there's a whole group of people you can 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,

(07:20):
most often governments. 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 corporation has also

(07:42):
been killing inventors and have they been killing scientists? Um,
we've 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 McFarlane More.
He was an inventor and he created the More lamp,
which was the first really commercially viable light source that

(08:06):
was based on gas. Okay, and he was shot by
another rival 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 would be Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer.

(08:29):
And this is really interesting story, Matt, This, I want
to do 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, long range artillery inventor. This guy

(08:49):
just loved building guns bigger and bigger and bigger guns. Uh.
The actual technical term for these would be super guns.
And Project Babylon was a supergun that he was building
for the Iraqi government. He was assassinated in Belgium in
n And then going back to how murky it can

(09:10):
be to trace the killers. Uh, The guesses for this
are all over the place. So they said maybe Iran
did it, and that that makes sense because Iran and Iraq,
of course we're not allies. Especially Yeah, maybe Israel did it, um,
which makes sense because Iraq and Israel and not particularly allies.

(09:32):
Maybe the CIA or m I six, who they get
brought up in almost every assassination stories were fined. Maybe Chilean, Syrian,
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,

(09:55):
but that he was assassinated due to his unique knowledge
about this gigantic long range artillery. Yeah, and he's 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

(10:19):
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
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

(10:43):
were about to eat because they were going to go
meet a couple of Belgian investors, and I guess Stanley
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 easy. Yeah.
Check out this episode if you get a chance, because

(11:03):
we found a lot of interesting stuff there. Now you
will also find quite a few people saying that the
water powered 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,

(11:25):
were after him to suppress his invention. It's really interesting
his story to me. I don't mean to pause too
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

(11:46):
how he could create a ton of the suspicion and
the paranoia in his own mind by thinking that it
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

(12:08):
the most frightening things we've learned on this show. But
inventors are not the only subjects of assassination based on
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

(12:30):
Joseph Webster, who was an anthropologist and a social activist
who was murdered by assassin's working for South Africa's Civil
Cooperation Bureau, and they think this is due to his
political activism um i e. His the anti apartheid movement
in nine Yeah. And what's interesting about the South African

(12:52):
cases is that with the post apartheid government, um we
are now able to learn a lot of the dirty
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

(13:14):
of a sudden transparency becomes a little bit easier, more plausible. Um,
you can argue, of course, that governments who have continually
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

(13:37):
I'll probably mispronounce here, yah L Mashad, an Egyptian nuclear
scientists who was in charge of the Iraqi nuclear program,
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

(14:03):
our contestant, Matt Frederick, because yeah, because it's in a
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 nunu. I'm never
gonna get out of a a man. I turned around and

(14:23):
Chandler was staring at me, and I honestly was a
little scared for a minute. Yeah. That's uh, our producer
predator 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

(14:49):
not gonna 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

(15:12):
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 researching tropical disease,

(15:36):
he was killed via spear by tribesmen who thought that
he would use their blood samples for witchcraft. Interesting, so
we've got him on the assassination list because technically it's
a murder to maintain a status quo. Yeah, they killed

(15:59):
him because they're afraid of a position right right or
their life or was it in defense self 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, it's it's tough to make that

(16:22):
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 move on. I just want

(16:44):
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 I don't know how
to put this nicely. He was rather anti Muslim. Uh,

(17:07):
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 of those political views and because
of those UH strongly held notions right anti immigration, and
he was reacting to the what what he saw as

(17:30):
the erosion of traditional Dutch culture. And you know, that's
one of the reasons that Anders Bravick h 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. And then,

(17:51):
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 brilliant scientists died

(18:12):
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 pol Pot. Yeah,

(18:35):
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 Saral. Yeah, just
a bit of trivia. And we haven't dug into the
history of Cambodia, but we would like to examine it
in another podcast. If that's something you're interested in, just

(18:57):
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. Often

(19:18):
things are only cliches because they are so true. And uh.
In in this case with with the ISAIS video that
we had done recently, we found that that was also
um it also obeyed that rule the development of that group,
which was ongoing and which um it's very strange for

(19:39):
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

(19:59):
believe the future of this group is. 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

(20:20):
controls them, which is what our 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

(20:43):
little bit of context the 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
eight of war. You have probably heard hawks in both

(21:04):
the United States, Europe Israel 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

(21:27):
you can't get bullied quite 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

(21:48):
coaxed into UH stopping their nuclear programs. But Iran maintains
that it has a right to nuclear energy, and 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

(22:12):
can be used to 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

(22:34):
simply be a nuclear war. 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 war because UH, the West

(22:54):
and the sunny empires of the Middle East do not
want the Shia to trieve 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 in the model. No, it's totally fine. There's just
there's so many competing interests out there, and then a whole,

(23:19):
a whole other set of competing 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

(23:40):
in the side of anybody who 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 ones admitting it.

(24:02):
At some point a group of very powerful people said,
you know, this paperwork has taken a while, and uh,
I don't have to wait 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, don't
you know, it doesn't matter if you think it was
a good decision or bad decision, if you're if you're

(24:26):
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 than five examples of

(24:48):
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 away and detonated the

(25:09):
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 Porta. I'm mispronouncing this name, but uh.
This was a scientist and professor of electro magnetism. Died

(25:31):
in two thousand and seven. According 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, Massade

(25:52):
sources denied these allegations, which means that it is possible
that the scientists asphyxiated due to gas fumes while asleep. However,
to me, that doesn't hold water. Given the studies and
the professional biography or the CV of this person, I'm

(26:15):
fairly certain Hosting Poor was assassinated. Then there's Massoud Ali Mohammady.
He was a quantum field theorist and an elementary particle physicist.
In two thousand ten, he died because his motorcycle was
apparently booby trapped and it exploded and he died in

(26:35):
the explosion, and Iran demanded the extradition of a couple
of these Tonedar members. They're an expatriate association based in
the US and they're often thought of my 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 proxies in in these kinds of

(26:59):
dirty war wars or clandestine assassination wars. And Tondar is
a group based in the United States of Iranian Americans
or originally Iranian nationals who left uh either in response
to the increasingly strict policies of Iran post revolution or

(27:24):
in response to the revolution. So they are not was
it 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 expatriate organization. And we see that happening often,

(27:48):
you know, and thinking the video, we mentioned emmy k
and we mentioned Hi Bellah and the other groups that
are terrorists to some countries and not terrorists in other
Countries's moving on number four. Darush Raisiana Jade uh this
is again my mispronunciation. I apologized to all Farsi speakers.

(28:09):
Uh This was an engineering student assassinated by gunmen in
two thousand eleven. Uh Uran also blames this 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,

(28:33):
we have Mustafa Mati Roshan, who was a nuclear scientist
and a professor and apparently he died by an explosive
and two thousand twelve. So these are just five examples
of assassinations that we know occurred. This doesn't mean that

(28:54):
these are the only ones by any means, and it
certainly doesn't mean that Uranian scienti are the only people
being assassinated. We're not trying to vilify any country because frankly,
a lot of these countries are using clandestine means when

(29:14):
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
he was working with uh some electronics, some uh my conductors, right, yeah,
the name escapes me now. But the police in Singapore

(29:38):
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
of his research, because he was a US national working
for a foreign company. And there's this entire underbelly, or

(30:01):
this entire unreported segment of suspiciously convenient deaths that 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

(30:24):
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. Oh 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

(30:46):
and it'll scare you. Well, I will 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 speculates of lee, we can talk about
our opinions, and let's be very careful to differentiate our
opinions from the facts. We talked about the facts earlier.

(31:08):
So with these allegations, right, because we still have to
call them allegations in most cases since they have not
been proven. You know, no intelligence agency has been prosecuted
for these murders, nor have any operatives. Right, let's talk
pros and cons. So there's a reason that these people

(31:31):
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 lining here. If there is anything,
the biggest thing would be there. Perhaps there is a

(31:54):
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. Let's say, for instance, the around
Ian scientists. Perhaps there's a person, let's I'm just this

(32:15):
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
being that it's ultimately better or even morally superior, to

(32:38):
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 happen there, who's to say what's going to happen.
You can't see the future. Well maybe the CIA can,

(33:00):
and I just don't know about it. Uh, I highly
doubt that though. Well there, you know, we can also
talk about some of the the clear cons for this
sort of thing, assassinating someone by any measure of the
of the international norms, is it's against the law. It's

(33:24):
eight shades of illegal, you know, And uh, I guess
I just have fifty shades of illegal a topical joke,
and it's corn 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 also clearly, clearly

(33:44):
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 is spycraft,

(34:06):
generally over the long term, of benefit to the world
or is it of short term benefit to a small
group of people? To the status quot 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 seemed that

(34:27):
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 just wonder, I just wonder what this means for

(34:48):
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 you know, it's

(35:09):
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

(35:32):
against one another, right Uh, 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

(35:53):
in the international sphere over whether or not sanctions work.
But one of my concerns is what if education starts
becomeing a 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

(36:14):
you know, it happens to be Harvard 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, seems to be from a public standpoint,
at least here in the US. And we're arriving at

(36:36):
this point, this crossroads met where it 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

(36:58):
cost of information is so cheap that 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 interest of national security, people begin to lose
access to that information. I'm always I'm always very skeptical,

(37:21):
and I have been increasingly skeptical of 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 it's got to be an offense issue. Yeah, I'm sorry.

(37:42):
I can't go to work next week? Why 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 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 and I here national security?
Is it? The new base that you can tag in conversation?

(38:06):
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 around all the time because

(38:27):
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. Huge

(38:50):
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? Every yeah, negate,
any any evidence, anything like that. And people who prized

(39:11):
themselves 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

(39:34):
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

(39:55):
dissonance or justify fallacious logic, or just di miss any
opposing viewpoints. So you know, on the internet, when someone says, hey,
you guys, stop picking on that person, then someone else goes, oh,
look it is your white nighting. Right, white nighting would
be a thought terminating cliche there, because then all of

(40:16):
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, we walked a

(40:38):
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 context 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. I
don't want people to be able to take warheads on

(41:03):
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 the highest opinion
with the T s A. Yeah, well we can get
into that and the T s A and security theater

(41:25):
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,
cliche happens us. Conspiracy theorists go on tangents more and more.
I think the term conspiracy realist or critical thinking is acting.

(41:48):
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
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

(42:10):
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
as a civilian right. And are there other cases of
inventors or scientists being assassinated that you want us and

(42:34):
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
listener mail uh today. Excellent, Let's get to it. We

(42:55):
got this message from Greg s. He says, Hey, guys,
and 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, 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

(43:19):
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. 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

(43:39):
on what Jesuits are interesting, Greg, I don't know, is
it feels a little touchy to me this subject already. Well,
we can definitely look at the history of Jesuits, because
I'll be honest, other than Jesuit schools, I don't know
very much about the the organization and um and I

(44:01):
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. Uh. So, Greg, 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

(44:23):
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 lot of major wars and collapses
come from Jesuit organization. Yeah, let's see what's up with that. Man,

(44:43):
figure it out. Stuart, 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 on Twitter. We're at
conspiracy Stuff, and you should go 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

(45:05):
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. You can find all
of our audio stuff there. Um. We ask people recently
on Twitter if you wanted to read a blog if

(45:28):
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.
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.

(45:49):
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
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(46:12):
your favorite shows.