The guys dive into a bizarre website that may be an art project, the ramblings of a lunatic, or something more sinister. For years, LEGO bricks have been washing up along the coast of the UK. Multiple scientists, asking to remain anonymous, write in with disturbing details on the problem of micro- and nanoplastics. The good news? The guys were right about the problem. The bad news? The guys didn't know just how right they were. All this and more in this week's installment of Listener Mail.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is n All. They
call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super
producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. It's our listener male
episode we've got. We've got some doozies for you, fellow
(00:47):
conspiracy realist, especially this week. We've got some some troubling
and some strange updates and feedback from our Microplastics episode.
That's one where we uh pretty comprehensively ruin the concept
of recycling, which was a conspiracy sold to everyone from
the plastics industry. And we're also diving into a very
(01:12):
very strange, a very very strange website that we were
hipped to by one of our fellow listeners. You know, Matt,
should we start there, starting with the very strange stuff
and then get into the very disturbing stuff, Yes, Ben,
And to do it we need to go to a
message that was sent to us by mental biopsy that
(01:36):
is a moniker. We will we will use for this
person who sent us this image says good evening. I've
been listening for a couple of years now and I
appreciate it more than you know. A few years ago,
a friend and I spent many hours deep in this website.
And we'll tell you the website in a moment. At
first glance, it appears as rubbish, but once you learn
(01:57):
how to navigate it, it goes into some deep places.
Sometimes it feels like you shouldn't be looking at what
it's presenting you with. There isn't anything here that can
get you in trouble that we know, but initially it
appeared to be a dump for a hacker or something
along those lines. You can begin by going to the
address that will give you in a moment. Once you're there,
(02:18):
you will always be presented with some sort of picture
or a bunch of words. You can click on the
pictures to advance to another page. The links are usually
nothing that you typically get linked to, but they send
you to places. Some of the pages appear to be
just flashy colors or mixed up words. But a lot
of the time this is masking layers and layers of
(02:39):
stuff in one page. For example, you can sometimes click
on the mouse and hold the mouse button and drag
the mouse down the page and highlight stuff. You go
to your notepad paste it in. Now you've come up
with what the flashy stuff was hiding. Oh this sounds
so amazing, doesn't it. You can view the page as
a source code and see more hidden stuff in it too.
(03:00):
You can also use your phone and view it in
simple mode, which we removes the flashy images and it
will show even more stuff. This isn't limited to the
home screen. This is screen after screen after screen. We're
talking about pages and pages and pages of texts. We'll read.
We'll read a little bit more of what uh mental
(03:22):
biopsy sent us, but for now, let's give everyone a
warning and then the website. So first, the warning is
that the website we're gonna we're gonna tell you about
here has images that would be considered pornographic by some.
It should not be visited by young people, and it
should probably not be visited at work or even on
a work machine, just in case, unless you're asked, in
(03:44):
which case this is like totally par for the courts
machine time. Well, my machine is now filled with this
website and all its various Uh, I don't know what
should call them, tentacles, engines. You gotta give it to us. Okay,
(04:05):
So if you're if you're interested, head on over to
H T T P colon slash slash l h O
h Q dot info. Okay, are you there? Hopefully you're
not a child and you're not at work. Uh, let's
let's go together. Everybody here is now on the website
(04:26):
looking at it. I'm gonna tell you just about what
you know about my explorations. Okay. Um, to my mind,
this is a repository of someone's let's call them discoveries
and artful presentation of those discoveries. Some of it feels
(04:46):
a lot like a joke. There's a mock Department of
Homeland Security seal that maybe you guys have already seen,
which shockingly features a penis um. Yeah, but again, it's
just a piece of art. Someone photoshopped this thing and
it's just there's presented to you. But if you click
on it, continue right, I mean, and also you know
(05:07):
about ballpark of the human species shockingly features a Penis.
So that's true. It's true. I feel like I feel
like we have to be careful not to be too puritanical.
But you're right, this gets crazy very quickly. I don't
want to be puritanical. But again, like who knows who's
browsing it, So I gotta say that it reminds me
(05:27):
of like some of those weirdo kind of early flash
art websites, kind of like from the early aughts exactly
where it's like, you know, a lot of like what's
that stuff called asky art, you know, combined you know,
where it's the little symp symbols and things that are
in alphit America key kind of sets, but also like
kind of bad gifts but also like bad on purpose
(05:50):
where the edges are really you know, um, kind of
ragged and things like that. Like, but it's clearly a
lot of thought and intentions going into the placement of things.
But um, yeah, Matt, I mean, what, what's what what's
going on here? There's something at the heart of these
weirdo artsy kind of presentations. Um, well, I I don't
(06:11):
know what's at the heart of it, but yeah, I'll
tell you a few other things that exist in the
website that you can find. Some of it's harder to
get to, and honestly, I couldn't tell you how I
navigated to some of the things that I got to UM.
But once you get there, it's like looking into, i
don't know, a black hole. Maybe you start to think
(06:34):
about yourself in the world a little differently, maybe not
that maybe not that deep, but it's interesting. So some
of the stuff you'll find feels like maybe a hyperlinked
conspiracy wall of sorts, where on the page there will
be three or you know, maybe seven things you can
click on. But you really have to hunt within the
website to find the things that you can click on.
(06:57):
Almost like in the old flash pages where you could tab.
You could hit tab and it would highlight all the
things you could you could select. UM. It doesn't work
that way, but you just have to search, and once
you do it, you start jumping from lab for instance,
a right up on a specific near Earth object that
may impact Earth at a certain time. That then jumps
to a right up on the Fermi paradox and Gamma
(07:20):
ray bursts, and why perhaps we haven't seen any other
UM intelligent life in the universe yet, And it just
kind of goes down rabbit holes in that way. But
then it will take a massive left turn. Even if
you're just clicking on whatever images presented to you, it'll
just take a left turn, and now you're in military
intelligence or something. But once you've kind of gotten used
(07:41):
to the site itself and you know, in your attempts
to make sense of the fascinating layout, you'll find things
like I did, where you stumble upon a set of
instructions for coffee and it's all blown out. So if
you imagine a user manual, you'd have all your information
pretty densely in pages, you know, with a table of
(08:05):
contents or something. Imagine taking all that information then blowing
it out with giant spaces in between, with old icons
from Microsoft XP, but again just blown out. Just that
it's almost an endless scroll. Not quite endless, but it's
about massive, massive page and coffee. By the way, is
Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor. That's what it stands for.
(08:28):
It's software from Microsoft that does exactly what it says.
It's a tool to extract forensic evidence from a computer.
It's generally used by law enforcement, and it's the whole
user manual just there on a website, how to do it,
how to install it on a target computer, how to
generate reports on what that computer is doing and has
(08:49):
been doing, how to analyze all that stuff. It's fascinating.
You keep going. Oh, by the way, the background of
that particular page is a an infinite gift grid of
Bill Gates being hit in the face with a pie,
as like a joke. So it's clearly it's clearly to
me someone curating some of this information and posting it,
(09:12):
rather than, as some people have said, possibly in artificial
intelligence program generating a website. I don't think that's a possibility. Um,
maybe there's I can see it as like, here's a
certain table of inputs, now whatever you know, AI thing
we've got running. Maybe it then just puts things together
(09:34):
that kind of makes sense, But not really I can
see that being a thing, but perhaps not, Uh Matt.
I'm also like, are you getting different content when you
like refresh the page, because I'm getting four distinct article
headings with the same kind of gobbledygook headlines and then
some text, and then when you click the link to
(09:54):
those articles, I'm getting the same main four pages. And
and then what I've been doing is just doing select
all and copying, and then it just grabs all of
the text that's like sort of like a layer in
the background that's obscured through all these flashing colors and
gifts and whatnot. And then when you paste that into
like a notepad, it pass everything and even pays some
(10:15):
of the like hard coded like images, um. And it's
like it's immense some of them, like a couple of
one of them was was maybe like you know, a scroll,
and then this other one that I've got, the headline
is l h o h Q prepared statement of Admiral
Stanfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence, is like it looks
(10:38):
like pay pasting a source code from a very large website.
Like it's it's a lot of text, um, it's And
then then you even have a section that's like about
advertising products. If you go to products, there's all these
video links that are basically just kind of like vaguely
(10:59):
political art films. There's this one called The First Time
Space Girl on the Farm and it's nine minutes and
it starts with a close up of like a donkey's
butt hole basically with like the tail kind of switching
back and forth that it gradually pulls out until you
see this farm, and then there's lambs, and then there's
(11:19):
like these kind of looks to be like migrant workers
and like a barn, and this idyllic kind of almost
ambient atmospheric music. I haven't watched the whole thing yet,
but this looks like somebody's crazy art project from college
or like, but with way more actual hidden depth of information.
(11:40):
Is really cool. Fine man. Yeah, anytime you begin a
shot with a close up of a donkey's anus and
then you pull out, I mean that's art, I think. Well,
but that's why I said it was vaguely political, because
it's like, does the donkey represent the you know, the Democrats?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where
(12:01):
it's going with its politics. I would say it leans
more towards yeah, I don't know, anarchism or you know,
f F the system kind of vibe of the Church
of the SubGenius. I have. I have a lot of
I have a lot of thoughts on this this um
uh mental biopsy. Thank you so much for sending this.
I don't want to I don't want to put my
(12:24):
my thoughts on this. This uh, this was vaguely familiar
to me from other weird rabbit holes, because I I
see a couple of possibilities here. First, I'd like to recommend,
if you haven't watched it yet, there is a YouTube
channel called blame it On Jorge. You guys have seen
(12:46):
that has a pretty comprehensive video on this website. One
of the So if we're being conspiratorial and we're just
taking at face value, Nol as you said and Matt,
as you indicated, I think in your previous statements, uh,
clicking on the same what appears to be the same
link will take you two different distinct pages. Additionally, I
(13:08):
would recommend again if you're not if you're not a minor,
and you're not on a work computer with I T
that checks your Internet usage, I would recommend viewing page
source that will be pretty instructive. You'll see a lot
of stuff in the meta that doesn't necessarily show on
the screen for a page UM Blame it on. Jorge's
(13:29):
ultimate conclusion is that this is an example of what's
called modern data is UM because l h o h
q is very similar to l h o o q.
It's even quoted somewhere on the website. That's an acronym
created by a guy named Marcel Duchamp who's conceptual artists.
(13:51):
It's like either he's very closely associated with data is
um he's the toilet guy or Mutt like the art
piece that's just a toilet signed our Mutt, that was
one of his most famous pieces, I believe, and there
are there's there's this deluge of information, right, this this
(14:12):
hay Stack effect, everything from what you said, Matt, to
some some science and speculation to philosophy to really ostensibly
disturbing stuff about say fascism and Walt Disney or for instance,
uh you know, child abuse and what what a lot
(14:32):
of people have argued in the past is that this
is an a r G some sort of augmented reality game.
That's something that people asked us about Cicada, right, what
was it, thirty three oh one? Do you guys remember that? Yes,
I mean, yeah, that's possible. I I like some of
those ideas been and I honestly, I haven't done a
ton of research into what other uh you know, other
(14:55):
folks have been saying about it. I've I've really just
let myself kind of experience a go down the rabbit
hole with it. Um I could see it being a
lot of those things, But the website always seems to
to show you something that doesn't fit any any of
the scenarios that have been put forth, because for me,
(15:18):
there's an agenda to it, and maybe the things that
I'm about to say are throwing people off the scent
of what it really is, or it's just an extra
thing that exists there, or maybe somebody else applied it within,
you know, the website by some surreptitious means. But I
let me just tell you a couple of other things
that I found. One page is an entire operating manual
(15:45):
for the Richmond Police Department's Mobile Command Center, and it
is that's information that a police department in Richmond, I'm
assuming Richmond, Virginia, um like, uses to operate within the
field essentially in their city when they when they need
(16:05):
to have you know, when they need to have an HQ,
essentially when there's something big occurring, and it could be
dangerous having that information out there. I mean, maybe that's
something that exists in other places where you could just
download if you live in Richmond, or if you you know,
live in Virginia or maybe if you just exist and
have an Internet connection. But it feels very strange to
(16:28):
see it all written out there on this weird website. UM,
I don't know that. That kind of thing gives me pause,
like why would that be there? Um? And the other
the other last thing that I'll say about it is
that on one page and I'll well, I'm not I'm
not gonna say what the actual I'm gonna make people
find out. I'm not gonna say what the actual you
(16:49):
r L is. It's within the website somewhere and if
you stumble upon it, you stumble upon it. But it
looks to be instant checkmate pages of this is. This
is a piece of software that you can use. It
is used by my team quite frequently when we are
looking for interview subjects and trying to track people down
(17:12):
to talk to about let's say, a true crime story
or something and you need to get somebody's email or
their phone number or nowhere they are located. Excuse by
journalists mostly investigative uh like investigative journalists and private investigators
and law enforcement. This kind of thing that those are
the people that use this. UM. There are several images
(17:37):
of results from instant checkmate of very powerful people. So
this is a paid for service that you have to
you know, you have to pay to actually use it
and search for people, and you have to pay extra
to get certain levels of information. Whoever created these images
has been paying for it and got a lot of
(18:01):
people like Stephen Feinberg, Daniel Kowalski or Dan Kowalski, David Malpas,
and even Peter Navarro, even the sitting president. It has
it has personal contact information like all that you could
ever want on these people. I have not independently verified
(18:23):
whether any of this information is correct or up to
date or accurate in any way, but some of it
appears to be. Some of the addresses are are accurate
for sure. So it it is a really freaky thing
to just see all of that. It feels like something
you shouldn't be looking at. And I'm kind of scared
that it's on my computer. Now maybe you would be too,
(18:47):
but I don't know. I don't know how you feel
about it, or that it might look back at you
right like, is there some kind of ping? This may
seem the paranoid, but is there's some kind of ping
scent that in roles or enlist some sort of search
set on your own information. I just hit you guys
in our chat um. This is something I found about
(19:10):
gosh last night yesterday. Sometimes the someone posted a map
visual site map that gives you a little bit of
insight into the labyrn here. And it is a labyrinth
of sources. So what you'll see when you pull it
up is something that each each endpoint of the domain,
(19:33):
meaning each thing you can click toward from the home page,
is represented by a dot of a different color. Uh.
And being partially color blind, I know some of it,
but I don't know what it means. Uh. And if
we describe it, it looks like, uh, there is a
massive sort of circle or almost a torus around one link,
(19:57):
and then there are some other things that linked things
like you'll see how linking on something about a guy
named Bill Howard Tannin will lead to something about android scientologists,
which will lead to something about governor android governs, androids
and these this uh, this map which you can find
(20:18):
you know, visual site mapper. Uh. This this map just
shows us they have stuff about transcranial magnetic simulation, one
of my old hobby horses. This stuff shows you how
they're linked in the in the titles of these end points.
But uh, content wise, you'll see again to the point
I think you guys earlier made. Content wise, you'll see
(20:40):
that what's on the page or what's in the page
source doesn't always match what the page is called. And
also like some of the stuff does appear to be
you know, copy pasta kind of I guess from the
official documents like that there are clearly reports and internal
you know, things like like that that manual for the
you know, police equiped man. But some of it is
(21:01):
also just complete non sequitar weirdness. Like there's one I
just found from the site map that I couldn't even
find through the actual front page. That the heading is
devil worshiping pedophiles. Then the text is erections from because
from because Microsoft about for pornographic with from four two
because one Microsoft from newspapers, one Wall Street Journal with
(21:25):
homosexual and another Washington d C on the one with
sounds like an automation sort of text generation. That kind
of word salad seems common. But I I think you
know what I would love to hear, guys, I would
love to hear from listeners who have gone with you
Matt on this endeavor. I'd love to hear what's like
(21:47):
the specific favorite link they found. I think that would
be worthwhile. And then what what it means. I don't
think it's a cult. I don't. It feels very very
Church of the SubGenius to me. Yeahs for Marshall mclewin.
The medium is the massage. If you've ever read that
book or that kind of commentary on how we encounter information,
(22:09):
so let us know. And if you can tell by
my face, there is some flashing stuff happening on the website.
And with that we're going to head to a commercial.
But thanks again for sending us down this rabbit hole.
We looked forward to hearing your thoughts, and we've returned.
(22:32):
We have not returned alone. We are accompanied now in
spirit and in motivation by several scientists who wish, for
various very valid reasons to remain anonymous. So our piece
of listener mail, we just picked one from these, is
one that I personally found haunting. I forwarded it to
(22:55):
the group for visibility, just like as soon as we
got it. In our episode on plastics and the Great
Hoax of Recycling Plastics, we asked for subject matter experts
to chime in and to answer some questions about how
this current situation will unfold, what plastic alternatives might actually
(23:19):
look like, how they would work, and so on. And
one of the questions we asked is, uh, how far
away are we from a world in which human beings
specifically are already born riddled with plastics, since it's in
so many parts of the natural world now even if
(23:40):
you last pieces of wilderness left have plastic arriving there
before humans arrived there. So this particular scientist, who like
the rest of those who wrote in wants to remain anonymous,
has first asked us to paraphrase there letter. Because you
to the specifics of their work, they can't disclose very
(24:05):
much personal information, so they say, hello, stuff they want
you to know. Thanks for bringing us this episode in particular,
longtime listener, but first responder, I don't normally email podcast
i'm listening to, but I noticed you and did this
particular episode asking for any polymer scientists to comment, and
I could not help myself. I am a polymer scientist
(24:27):
working on interactions between polymers and biomolecules, and this person's
department their colleagues have started investigating methods into the detection
of nanoplastics, which are smaller than microplastics. Obviously, Uh, they said,
We've recently published new work on detecting nanoplastic particles in
(24:51):
this range, but I can't be more specific about it
because it could be traced to me or to my department.
This is a line stuck with me as Uh. This
anonymous scientist says, regarding the episode in general, I have
good news and bad news. The good news is that
I was very impressed with the episode. Well, I didn't
necessarily learn anything new. You managed to really dilute the
(25:13):
essence down to less than an hour without using difficult
jargon or terms. I wish many of my colleagues had
that same skill. It's gonna pause for a second. This
is us, not this anonymous scientists. Thank you and thank
you anonymous, because that makes our day whenever we have
a subject matter expert come in and say that we
didn't completely with on these very complex concepts. Uh. So
(25:40):
they continue with the bad news because obviously they're buttering
us up. Right. The bad news, says this scientist, is
that you really hit the nail on the head, and
we all probably should feel an imposing sense of dread.
It is pretty much as dire a picture as you painted.
As recent as last year it was shown that there
are detectible levels of micro plastics and Arctic ice and snow,
(26:02):
and you can safely assume that by now plastic molecules
are everywhere, no exception. And then they said, you've asked
a few questions. I'll try to answer. First question we asked,
how will this unfold? Your subject matter expert, you know
plastics are a problem. What comes next? This scientist says,
(26:25):
I think it is most realistic that we will do
absolutely nothing about this for at least decades, as biodegradable
but durable plastics slowly gain popularity but never surpass petrochemical plastics.
For now, the official stances plastics may be found everywhere
but are harmless due to their inert nature. This is
(26:45):
almost certainly not true. It is almost certain that plastic
particles that have been found in individual human cells will
have adverse effects on health. They're probably not clear now
but already existing, but will slowly become more evident in
the coming decades. Scientists says, I have no idea how
this will manifest exactly, but I suspect either an increase
(27:08):
in cancer, always a safe bet with biology, as well
as more generalized poor health symptoms, as polymer biomaterial interaction
is likely rather weak and lends itself to minor disturbances
rather than very big, obvious disruptions of specific organs and tissues.
What happens after that is anyone's guests, this is, in
(27:31):
my opinion, far more a political, capitalist issue than it
is a scientific one goes on to compare it to
global warming. And let's let's pause here for a second
and unpack this. What what do you all think? From
what I'm hearing? The good news bad news is that
we were right and if there's anything that we did
wrong in this episode, we were perhaps a little too optimistic.
(27:55):
This is this is clearly a scientist indicating a spiking
cancer in the mid and uh, something that will be
hard to attribute to nanoplastics in the beginning, right, because uh,
that shout out to a specific organ. Right, we can
find some chemicals and contaminants that affect maybe the brain, right,
(28:16):
were the nervous system or the liver or the kidney,
But this sounds like it's a general system attack. Um, Matt,
I know you were adventuring on this episode when Noel
and I were doing this. But this is a problem
that we've talked about at length in the past. Do
you all think this person is being to dire or
(28:40):
do you think there are being alarmists or I mean,
what's your initial reaction to that they're saying plastic will
essentially cause cancer in massive amounts in like years. Yeah,
so I'm certainly not up to snuff on the research
as I was gone when you guys did this, like
you said, Ben, but I'm over the years, we've been
(29:01):
hipped to similar things. That's why we made that. That's
why you guys made that episode in the first place. Um,
it does feel like an inevitability. Plastic, like macro plastics,
let's call them, are invading you know, oceans and land
and uh flora and fauna all over the entire planet
(29:25):
right now. We talked about other chemicals that you know,
humans have found to be very useful for first on
almost always military purposes, and then for some other purpose.
I'm thinking of teflon things like that. Um, the plastics
feels like the same kind of problem. This is my
(29:47):
question to you guys, and I guess not not to
our scientist friend as they have these answers. I'm sure
and it would be old hat. But nanoplastics, how are
they generated? And I apologize for not knowing that and
not let's at the episode, but are they generated through
the process of recycling and other breaking down of plastic
or is it in the manufacturing or in some other way.
(30:09):
So nanoplastics can be manufactured, well, not manufactured, they can
be created accidentally in the wild through the break by
products breakdown plastics. Okay, okay, cool. So so we're talking
about all the plastic that we know is everywhere on
the planet, and it's just breaking down, getting this stuff
(30:32):
into water sources, then finding its way you know, I'm
assuming into the air and then going down to other
places and then we're all just consuming it. Yeah, I mean,
there was a there was a moment in the episode
wh we we I forget the exact figure, but um,
it's it would be very common for you to go
outside and be breathing in these particles pretty regularly. To
(30:54):
some degree, there would be some part of the air
oxygen you are consuming that has residue of these particles
or some amount of these problems. Certainly not an amount
that would like affect you quickly, it would be a
slow process, like feeding a rat sacharan, you know, and
giving it cancer over a period of time or rat rather.
(31:16):
I guess they fed the rats lots of saccarin to
give them cancer quickly. But saccarin maybe only gives us
cancer over the course of eating sweet and low for
like an entire lifetime. Theoretically. Um, it's really fascinating. I've
got a question for you, Matt. Um. We did an
episode just this last recording where we did the Strange
News episode where you talked about this kitaness building material
(31:39):
that would be used in space. Uh, it sounds like
a really versatile material. How is that not being discussed
as a replacement for plastics since it's obviously biodegradable, since
it's made of mainly organic material, and seems like it's
got a lot of potential. But certainly had never heard
of that outside of this Wired article that seemed very
(32:00):
pimous sky about how this is the future of manufacturing
on space, but the discussion of it being something we
would use here on Earth was barely a footnote. Yeah,
I think we should consult the writing of our scientists
here for answers to that question, because titan would not
function the way plastics can. And there's a reason, there's
(32:23):
a very good reason why we use plastics. Uh. And
again our scientists has has some of that info. Yeah. Yeah,
plastics are just incredibly durable. Uh. And they're incredibly malleable
both as a material but also malleable as an application,
given that certain plastics will have great a greater level
(32:45):
of heat resistance and so on, or ductility as well.
But I think one of the bigger issues here is
what's called path dependence. We are path dependent as a
species on petrol. We have an emphatic structure that is
designed to rely on petrochemical plastics, so we would have
(33:09):
to It's it's not necessarily a matter of just inventing
a viable plastic alternative. It's a matter of inventing a
viable plastic alternative infrastructure to go around to go along
with it. Like what use is building a hydrogen powered
car if you don't have hydrogen gas stations for lack
(33:30):
of a better phrase. Uh, That's that's the problem that
that we're at. And we know that we know that
any slowly degradable bioplastic is still streets ahead of a
non biodegradable petroplastic. I don't know about you, guys, but
I don't want to get fast food and look at
a plastic fork and realize it will be around thousands
(33:52):
of years after I'm gone. I can't deal with that
existential crisis. You know what I mean? Um, It makes
you think about the ephemeral nature of humanity. This letter
goes on again. We were asked not to read it verbatim.
I want to hit one last thing. What you are
anonymous friend called a throwaway question, how far are we
away from children being born with plastic in them? In
(34:15):
inn and deal with plastic our scientists and other scientists
wrote in says I guarantee this is already happening, and
then gives us two sources that they you know, that
are solid sources. They say they're pop science sources, but
they're accurate. So the plastic is in you now. And
(34:35):
if you have children, there's probably plastic in them because
they are born inside a human who already probably has
some form of plastic in them. And to your point,
know what what a to answer your question about nanoplastic directly, Matt,
It's a byproduct, like Nell said, it's not um so
much purposely made in a lab for practical application. Most
(35:00):
and just what we're talking about when we talk about
nanoplastic are little bits produced by the degradation of which
you get macro to micro to nanoplastics. And that's when
it gets light enough to go in the air, you
breathe it in. What a wonderful day. Thirty five years
later some reason you have cancer. That's the dystopian view.
(35:20):
But my son develops cancer thirty years down the road
because of this. This is that's a horrifying thought. It
all points to the short sightedness of technology and manufacturing,
right like, only now are we kind of discussing that
maybe cell phones possibly maybe give you cancer or contribute
to it. But it's not like we're slowing now and
(35:42):
that like like you would say, Ben, that badger is
already out of the bag. And same with plastics. I mean,
even in the episode we talked about how it was
pretty clear very quickly that this is going to be
a problem, but the convenience and the money to be
made outweighed worrying about the ultimate outcome for the future.
And that's just a trend. We see especially in the
United States, you know, in terms of just like putting
(36:05):
the moment ahead of like the big picture and how
things will affect you know, everyone down the line, not
just you know, those in a position to profit um.
And it's it's sad, and and it's I think this
is a really great example because even this isn't a
conversation we're hearing in the halls of Congress, isn't a
conversation we're hearing in presidential debates how do we deal
(36:27):
with the plastic problem? But it's a problem, There's no
question about it. Yeah, I still have a bias going
into this because I believe the petrochemical industry has been
aware of this, just like they were aware of climate
change for a very long time, uh, and have perhaps
even orchestrated which I know is dangerous work, but perhaps
(36:49):
even orchestrated path dependency upon plastic as an insurance policy,
a new potential income stream, a revenue street name for
the post fossil fuel era, right Like, Like it's kind
of like how M R. J. Reynolds got big into vapes,
(37:10):
you know, because cigarettes are on the way out, so
maybe we can find another way to sell our based product,
which is tobacco. So can we find another way to
sell our based product oil and fossil fuel? Yeah, plastic
bags of fork that will be here like the like
the statue of Ozamandeus long after we're gone. A fork
(37:32):
you didn't even ask for in the bag of fast food,
you know what I mean? Like, I save that stuff
because it feels like the right thing to do or
some way of And I I washed, I rewashed my
tupperware that comes in like to go food. I I
keep that stuff and I rewash it and try my
best to use it until it sort of is full
(37:52):
of holes and useless. Well it degrades directly into your mouth.
You're probably right, Matt. I'm probably a freaking idiot. But
I just don't know. It's a still microwave it. No,
I certainly don't like all those plastic scientists are out
there right now say no, no, do not do that.
Stop stop right uh. And I I would say thank
(38:18):
you to the scientists because you have been shouting uh
politely at me for years. Whatever this comes up, even
back in the YouTube days. And uh, I greatly appreciate this.
In the letter, you know, again, we've been asked not
to read it in full, but in the letter UH,
you anonymous scientists make a fantastic point where you say,
(38:41):
you know, a lot of research scientists are underpaid. They
have the same problems that so many people have today
skyrocketing cost of living or or rent, you know, uh,
insecurity about continual employment. Speaking out can have repercussions. It
sounds like a conspiracy theory, but the apparatus of academia
(39:01):
can and will, you know, exert influence on divergent opinions
or unpleasant truths. So keep fighting the good fight right
to us. Let us know. I've got I've got a
couple of contacts for people who have had personal experience
trying to go completely plastic free, and I'm gonna I'm
(39:21):
gonna hopping onto uh to talk with them at length.
And Matt No, I'd love to either get you guys
on there with me or to update you afterwards, because
it's just if you try going just a month without
getting new plastic, forget not ever using plastic. That's really
tough now, but if you can, if you tried going
(39:42):
a month just not getting any plastic from the grocery store,
from a restaurant, from you know, uh, the auto mechanic whatever.
Then it's very it's a very daunting thing, and it's
a great illustration of just how far, how far down
this road we as a civilization have gone. But but
(40:04):
hopefully this episode isn't all gloom and doom. We've been doing. Uh,
we've been doing something that you know, I don't know
about you guys, but I quite like where we try
to find something that's maybe a little bit lighter to
end the show. So it's not all we're gonna die
riddled with plastic docs by some strange, mad possibly artificial
(40:25):
intelligence created website. Uh, So we're gonna so we're gonna
talk about the first presidential debate of he and we'll
do that. We'll do that during a break so you
don't have to hear uh freeboard dudes hot takes. Uh.
After that break, we'll be back with another strange, hopefully
(40:49):
not as terrifying story about plastics. And we're back, and
as promised that you do have another plastic story coming
from a listener named Steve, but also as promised, it
is a little bit more of a kind of a
lighthearted silver lining esque story. Maybe not. We'll let you
(41:13):
be the judge, So Steve wrote us and comments and
on how in the plastics episode, um, we also tried
to end that one on a on a somewhat positive note,
talking about how the Lego Corporation, the giant Danish company
that makes those colored bricks that you're always stepping on
with your bare feet. Um, nasty little things, but you know,
when you put them together, you make all kinds of
(41:34):
cool stuff of adults and children alike love them. A
lot of adults really love Legos, nerd out and make
like Ghostbusters, you know, Headquarters and like the Death Star,
things that kids would never in a million years able
to afford or likely have the attention span to do.
You got to You got two other guys in this
meeting that are big fans. I love Legos now, I
(41:54):
love Legos and you don't know stepping on them. I
really do love Legos. There are a lot of fun
They're a good way to each spatial recognition for kids
and the idea of manufacturing I'm sorry, of of engineering
and an appreciation for you know, architecture and structural stuff
and all of that. It's great. It's a really cool
company and a really interesting legacy to that. The company
(42:15):
that makes them. Um, but they have decided to pivot.
As you know, when you buy a Lego kid, it
comes in a giant plastic bag or a series of
plastic bags, depending on which pieces there they might be organized,
you know, and like pieces that would be in an
individual bags. And because the Lego Corporation received a bunch
of letters from children, um, who were concerned about climate
(42:36):
change and about the effects of of of of plastics
on the environment. UM, they decided, Okay, we're gonna listen
to it to these children, and we're gonna pivot, and
we're gonna start using paper bags as opposed to plastic.
But of course the legos themselves still mad at a
plastic and UM we mentioned on the show. Steve was
commenting on that, well, you know, at least they don't
(42:58):
end up in the ocean, you know, as kids presumably
keep their legos around and and you know, display them
on their mantles, and then maybe they get broken down
and put in bags and passed down to you know,
siblings or whatnot. Because legos are expensive. Um he said, ironically, Uh,
just that very thing happened one particular time in uh
(43:20):
in the nineties. Um. A a container ship uh something
link to this article for the BBC talking about how
a container ship filled with millions of Lego pieces was
capsized off of Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It was
hit by this massive wave and it dumped uh hundreds
(43:42):
of thousands, I think over a million Lego pieces into
the ocean and and consequently, uh, these pieces have been
washing up on the beaches of Cornwall ever since. Yeah,
it was four point eight million pieces estimated in an
in a containership or interestingly enough, a lot of them
(44:04):
were under the sea themed. So it's become kind of
a little like you know, apparently back in the nineties,
there'd be kids that would set up on the beaches
or on the boardwalks, uh, selling these things that they
had collected, like shells, you know, from but it's literally
these little plastic pieces and and there'd be little games
you'd play with your neighbors or people in the village.
Cordinall is a very small it's a village more or less. Um,
(44:27):
it's a very small place. One of my favorite electronic artists,
Richard James a k f X twin, grew up in
Cornwall and he talks about it a lot as as
just being this very very sleepy, little tiny kind of
seaside town um. But yeah, there was access to the
manifest from the shipping container and the breakdown of all
the different pieces that were on it. And I think
(44:48):
one of the figures was three hundred and fifty three thousand,
two hundred and sixty four plastic daisies uh fell into
the sea. And this was on thirteenth of February UM
And the container a ship was the Tokyo Express and
there were sixty two containers overall lost overboard. Right, it's
not just the one, of course, that's because yeah, well
(45:10):
let's think of the way these ships work. These are stacked.
But the stuff, but the one that made the news
because it's continued to have an impact over over years,
was the lego one. Because they just keep kind of
washing up on on on the shore and it's become
like a thing that the residents start to have become
familiar with, and it's the story isn't like a negative story.
(45:32):
The people that they interviewed from the village were more like, oh,
this is like it's like a treasure hind like, oh,
you found an octopus, Well, I found a green dragon
or a little tiny sword and a pirate sword or whatever.
You know. Yeah, but but there is a very negative
side to this story, right. We're talking about plastics and pollution,
especially in the ocean, and we're talking about millions of
(45:52):
legos that fell to the ocean floor from that container.
He was somehow released, and I guess just over time
these things started coming up, and that's plastics that animals
are going to be eating. Probably some of them are
a lot of them are small enough to be eaten. Yeah,
and then consider that again. The reason I wanted to
(46:12):
emphasize the multiple container aspect here is because these containers
are going to be degrading, probably varying rates. So legos.
We know that the container holding the legos was breached,
but there may be other stuff coming and stuff that
doesn't contain things as small and light as legos, so
that it's not as easily transported to the shore. But
(46:35):
I do want to add some hope here. One thing
that is inspiring about this is the community's reactions, as
I think you're getting at their There's a Facebook page
called Lego Loss at Sea, organized by a resident called
Tracy Williams, and this is entirely a community of people
who have gamified collecting these legos, so they've gamified cleaning
(46:59):
up at least the shore a line. Uh, and you
know you want to collect your daisies. What else we got?
We got the flippers, the pirate swords, the harpoons. As
you said, well, it's uh, it's oddly enough pretty nautical themed.
It's a pretty wide swath of stuff. So there's a
great breakdown um on this BBC article uh that goes
(47:21):
into even the specific numbers. There's spear guns presumably belonging
to a tiny lego, and deep sea diver thirteen thousand
of those. Uh. The black octopus one of the rarest
items in this hall, because there were only forty two
hundred of them. So, like we were saying, this has
definitely become like this gamified thing where people will find
(47:41):
these It's almost like finding a rare Pokemon or something
like that. UM. Yellow life preservers. We've got twenty six thousand,
six hundred of those, uh, little tiny flippers in pairs black,
blue and red. Four hundred and eighteen thousand of those UM.
The green and the black dragons also among the rarer items.
Thirty three thousand, nine hundred forty one uh A brown
(48:03):
ship rigging net twenty six thousand, four hundred of those
we mentioned the nearly half a million daisies in in
pairs of four white, red and yellow um scuba devices
scuba breathing apparatus is about a hundred thousand of those. UH.
And that's it total of four million, seven hundred and
fifty six thousand, nine hundred and forty lego pieces that
(48:26):
were in this single container. And the estimate is that
three million, one seventy hundred and seven might have been
light enough to have floated. And let's also mentioned to
the great voyage that these little guys have made. We're
talking about sixty two thousand miles uh, that some of
these pieces might have drifted UM and this article in
(48:49):
BBC mentions that it's twenty four thousand miles around the equator,
meaning that they could potentially end up on any beach
on Earth because they're all in early. This reminds me
of the fantastic story of the rubber ducks, which are
sometimes called the friendly Floaties. Heard of this, uh, perhaps
(49:11):
I know you've heard of Matt guy named Curtis Ebbesmeyer
as an ocean oographer who studies ocean currents based on
the directions, uh that that flots some floating c debris
takes and he was he was able to use rubber ducks. Now,
before you think I'm painting this wonderful guy as a
(49:33):
villain and want you know he didn't throw all these
ducks in the ocean. On January tenth, twelve forty ft
intermodal containers. Those are those shipping containers we're talking about.
That's that's what you see on train sometimes if you
live in your train tracks or a semi trailer. Twelve
(49:56):
of these fort containers were washed of or board. One
of them held almost twenty nine thousand children's bath toys.
So yellow ducks, blue turtles, green frogs, red beavers, and
these things float because if you're a rubber duck, to you,
the ocean is just a really big bathtub. And these
(50:18):
things as they've floated around, you know, they're small. It's
tough for people to catch all of them, even if
you were worried about fighting pollution, or even if those
um those shipping interests were legally liable for the environmental damage.
So instead what we had was kind of these maritime
tracer bullets that allowed us to see the paths this
(50:40):
flotsam was taking, and it told us a lot about
the function and the interaction of Earth's ocean currents. So
there's something there's something to be said there, you know,
there's a little bit of good we can take with
the bad. And the legos are gonna I think are
very similar in perhaps more um well, not even a
(51:04):
micro cosmic wave, because as you said, they could end
up at any beach on the planet. I always thought
the message in the bottle thing was largely an artifice
or trope used in fiction. But if you throw a
bottle in the right place in the ocean, even from
the shore, then who knows where it'll end up? Right,
Just to end it on the shipping containers thing, ben there,
(51:26):
I just wanted to hit you with a stat on
at least from of global annual shipping container losses, And
within that BBC article it states that somewhere between seven
hundred six hundred containers go missing or are lost at
(51:46):
sea every year. That was between two thousand eight and
two thousand and ten, and then from two thousand eleven
to two thousand thirteen, approximately two thousand seven hundred containers
were lost on a yearly basis. So just think about
your just to your point, been about how many things
are down at the bottom of the ocean and these
containers that are degrading and just ready to release something.
(52:09):
M h. And so thank you Steve for providing us
with a little bit of a lighthearted look at this,
this ongoing strange story of things lost in the ocean
and returning to us. Some of the authors writing about
this and journalists have waxed poetic because how could you not.
(52:33):
Thank you also to our anonymous scientists who have written
in to give us a behind the scenes look at
the growing threat of nanoplastics. And thank you to Mental
Biopsy for introducing many of our fellow listeners to their
next favorite Internet rabbit hole. Step to one side time Cube.
(52:55):
There's a new weird one in town. Uh. Thanks also,
by the way, to you Alessandra S who went onto
our Facebook page Here's where it gets crazy and said,
why won't the skeleton watch the scary movie? Yeah, he
doesn't have the guts, So thank you Alessandra. You're in
(53:19):
if you want to, uh, if you want to join
up and hang out with our favorite part of the show.
Our fellow listeners then do head over to Facebook, to
the instagrams, to the twitters. We try to be easy
to find. We love to recommend. Here's where it gets crazy.
All you have to do is mention one of our hosts,
all of our hosts, one of our super producers, like
(53:42):
code named dot Holiday or Mission Control or frankly it
is with a pun, make us laugh, something that lets
us know you listen to the show. But what if
you don't like social media? What if you heard the
big data in the Facebook episodes. Well there's another way
you can contact us. You can call us directly. Uh
we wit and got our own phone number. That's right.
(54:04):
Our number is one eight three three st d w
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Leave that message. We want to hear anything you have
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(54:24):
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(54:47):
And especially now that we're kind of in a new
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(55:08):
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(55:40):
you to Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is n All. They
call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super
producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you
are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. It's our listener male
episode we've got. We've got some doozies for you, fellow
(00:47):
conspiracy realist, especially this week. We've got some some troubling
and some strange updates and feedback from our Microplastics episode.
That's one where we uh pretty comprehensively ruin the concept
of recycling, which was a conspiracy sold to everyone from
the plastics industry. And we're also diving into a very
(01:12):
very strange, a very very strange website that we were
hipped to by one of our fellow listeners. You know, Matt,
should we start there, starting with the very strange stuff
and then get into the very disturbing stuff, Yes, Ben,
And to do it we need to go to a
message that was sent to us by mental biopsy that
(01:36):
is a moniker. We will we will use for this
person who sent us this image says good evening. I've
been listening for a couple of years now and I
appreciate it more than you know. A few years ago,
a friend and I spent many hours deep in this website.
And we'll tell you the website in a moment. At
first glance, it appears as rubbish, but once you learn
(01:57):
how to navigate it, it goes into some deep places.
Sometimes it feels like you shouldn't be looking at what
it's presenting you with. There isn't anything here that can
get you in trouble that we know, but initially it
appeared to be a dump for a hacker or something
along those lines. You can begin by going to the
address that will give you in a moment. Once you're there,
(02:18):
you will always be presented with some sort of picture
or a bunch of words. You can click on the
pictures to advance to another page. The links are usually
nothing that you typically get linked to, but they send
you to places. Some of the pages appear to be
just flashy colors or mixed up words. But a lot
of the time this is masking layers and layers of
(02:39):
stuff in one page. For example, you can sometimes click
on the mouse and hold the mouse button and drag
the mouse down the page and highlight stuff. You go
to your notepad paste it in. Now you've come up
with what the flashy stuff was hiding. Oh this sounds
so amazing, doesn't it. You can view the page as
a source code and see more hidden stuff in it too.
(03:00):
You can also use your phone and view it in
simple mode, which we removes the flashy images and it
will show even more stuff. This isn't limited to the
home screen. This is screen after screen after screen. We're
talking about pages and pages and pages of texts. We'll read.
We'll read a little bit more of what uh mental
(03:22):
biopsy sent us, but for now, let's give everyone a
warning and then the website. So first, the warning is
that the website we're gonna we're gonna tell you about
here has images that would be considered pornographic by some.
It should not be visited by young people, and it
should probably not be visited at work or even on
a work machine, just in case, unless you're asked, in
(03:44):
which case this is like totally par for the courts
machine time. Well, my machine is now filled with this
website and all its various Uh, I don't know what
should call them, tentacles, engines. You gotta give it to us. Okay,
(04:05):
So if you're if you're interested, head on over to
H T T P colon slash slash l h O
h Q dot info. Okay, are you there? Hopefully you're
not a child and you're not at work. Uh, let's
let's go together. Everybody here is now on the website
(04:26):
looking at it. I'm gonna tell you just about what
you know about my explorations. Okay. Um, to my mind,
this is a repository of someone's let's call them discoveries
and artful presentation of those discoveries. Some of it feels
(04:46):
a lot like a joke. There's a mock Department of
Homeland Security seal that maybe you guys have already seen,
which shockingly features a penis um. Yeah, but again, it's
just a piece of art. Someone photoshopped this thing and
it's just there's presented to you. But if you click
on it, continue right, I mean, and also you know
(05:07):
about ballpark of the human species shockingly features a Penis.
So that's true. It's true. I feel like I feel
like we have to be careful not to be too puritanical.
But you're right, this gets crazy very quickly. I don't
want to be puritanical. But again, like who knows who's
browsing it, So I gotta say that it reminds me
(05:27):
of like some of those weirdo kind of early flash
art websites, kind of like from the early aughts exactly
where it's like, you know, a lot of like what's
that stuff called asky art, you know, combined you know,
where it's the little symp symbols and things that are
in alphit America key kind of sets, but also like
kind of bad gifts but also like bad on purpose
(05:50):
where the edges are really you know, um, kind of
ragged and things like that. Like, but it's clearly a
lot of thought and intentions going into the placement of things.
But um, yeah, Matt, I mean, what, what's what what's
going on here? There's something at the heart of these
weirdo artsy kind of presentations. Um, well, I I don't
(06:11):
know what's at the heart of it, but yeah, I'll
tell you a few other things that exist in the
website that you can find. Some of it's harder to
get to, and honestly, I couldn't tell you how I
navigated to some of the things that I got to UM.
But once you get there, it's like looking into, i
don't know, a black hole. Maybe you start to think
(06:34):
about yourself in the world a little differently, maybe not
that maybe not that deep, but it's interesting. So some
of the stuff you'll find feels like maybe a hyperlinked
conspiracy wall of sorts, where on the page there will
be three or you know, maybe seven things you can
click on. But you really have to hunt within the
website to find the things that you can click on.
(06:57):
Almost like in the old flash pages where you could tab.
You could hit tab and it would highlight all the
things you could you could select. UM. It doesn't work
that way, but you just have to search, and once
you do it, you start jumping from lab for instance,
a right up on a specific near Earth object that
may impact Earth at a certain time. That then jumps
to a right up on the Fermi paradox and Gamma
(07:20):
ray bursts, and why perhaps we haven't seen any other
UM intelligent life in the universe yet, And it just
kind of goes down rabbit holes in that way. But
then it will take a massive left turn. Even if
you're just clicking on whatever images presented to you, it'll
just take a left turn, and now you're in military
intelligence or something. But once you've kind of gotten used
(07:41):
to the site itself and you know, in your attempts
to make sense of the fascinating layout, you'll find things
like I did, where you stumble upon a set of
instructions for coffee and it's all blown out. So if
you imagine a user manual, you'd have all your information
pretty densely in pages, you know, with a table of
(08:05):
contents or something. Imagine taking all that information then blowing
it out with giant spaces in between, with old icons
from Microsoft XP, but again just blown out. Just that
it's almost an endless scroll. Not quite endless, but it's
about massive, massive page and coffee. By the way, is
Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor. That's what it stands for.
(08:28):
It's software from Microsoft that does exactly what it says.
It's a tool to extract forensic evidence from a computer.
It's generally used by law enforcement, and it's the whole
user manual just there on a website, how to do it,
how to install it on a target computer, how to
generate reports on what that computer is doing and has
(08:49):
been doing, how to analyze all that stuff. It's fascinating.
You keep going. Oh, by the way, the background of
that particular page is a an infinite gift grid of
Bill Gates being hit in the face with a pie,
as like a joke. So it's clearly it's clearly to
me someone curating some of this information and posting it,
(09:12):
rather than, as some people have said, possibly in artificial
intelligence program generating a website. I don't think that's a possibility. Um,
maybe there's I can see it as like, here's a
certain table of inputs, now whatever you know, AI thing
we've got running. Maybe it then just puts things together
(09:34):
that kind of makes sense, But not really I can
see that being a thing, but perhaps not, Uh Matt.
I'm also like, are you getting different content when you
like refresh the page, because I'm getting four distinct article
headings with the same kind of gobbledygook headlines and then
some text, and then when you click the link to
(09:54):
those articles, I'm getting the same main four pages. And
and then what I've been doing is just doing select
all and copying, and then it just grabs all of
the text that's like sort of like a layer in
the background that's obscured through all these flashing colors and
gifts and whatnot. And then when you paste that into
like a notepad, it pass everything and even pays some
(10:15):
of the like hard coded like images, um. And it's
like it's immense some of them, like a couple of
one of them was was maybe like you know, a scroll,
and then this other one that I've got, the headline
is l h o h Q prepared statement of Admiral
Stanfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence, is like it looks
(10:38):
like pay pasting a source code from a very large website.
Like it's it's a lot of text, um, it's And
then then you even have a section that's like about
advertising products. If you go to products, there's all these
video links that are basically just kind of like vaguely
(10:59):
political art films. There's this one called The First Time
Space Girl on the Farm and it's nine minutes and
it starts with a close up of like a donkey's
butt hole basically with like the tail kind of switching
back and forth that it gradually pulls out until you
see this farm, and then there's lambs, and then there's
(11:19):
like these kind of looks to be like migrant workers
and like a barn, and this idyllic kind of almost
ambient atmospheric music. I haven't watched the whole thing yet,
but this looks like somebody's crazy art project from college
or like, but with way more actual hidden depth of information.
(11:40):
Is really cool. Fine man. Yeah, anytime you begin a
shot with a close up of a donkey's anus and
then you pull out, I mean that's art, I think. Well,
but that's why I said it was vaguely political, because
it's like, does the donkey represent the you know, the Democrats?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where
(12:01):
it's going with its politics. I would say it leans
more towards yeah, I don't know, anarchism or you know,
f F the system kind of vibe of the Church
of the SubGenius. I have. I have a lot of
I have a lot of thoughts on this this um
uh mental biopsy. Thank you so much for sending this.
I don't want to I don't want to put my
(12:24):
my thoughts on this. This uh, this was vaguely familiar
to me from other weird rabbit holes, because I I
see a couple of possibilities here. First, I'd like to recommend,
if you haven't watched it yet, there is a YouTube
channel called blame it On Jorge. You guys have seen
(12:46):
that has a pretty comprehensive video on this website. One
of the So if we're being conspiratorial and we're just
taking at face value, Nol as you said and Matt,
as you indicated, I think in your previous statements, uh,
clicking on the same what appears to be the same
link will take you two different distinct pages. Additionally, I
(13:08):
would recommend again if you're not if you're not a minor,
and you're not on a work computer with I T
that checks your Internet usage, I would recommend viewing page
source that will be pretty instructive. You'll see a lot
of stuff in the meta that doesn't necessarily show on
the screen for a page UM Blame it on. Jorge's
(13:29):
ultimate conclusion is that this is an example of what's
called modern data is UM because l h o h
q is very similar to l h o o q.
It's even quoted somewhere on the website. That's an acronym
created by a guy named Marcel Duchamp who's conceptual artists.
(13:51):
It's like either he's very closely associated with data is
um he's the toilet guy or Mutt like the art
piece that's just a toilet signed our Mutt, that was
one of his most famous pieces, I believe, and there
are there's there's this deluge of information, right, this this
(14:12):
hay Stack effect, everything from what you said, Matt, to
some some science and speculation to philosophy to really ostensibly
disturbing stuff about say fascism and Walt Disney or for instance,
uh you know, child abuse and what what a lot
(14:32):
of people have argued in the past is that this
is an a r G some sort of augmented reality game.
That's something that people asked us about Cicada, right, what
was it, thirty three oh one? Do you guys remember that? Yes,
I mean, yeah, that's possible. I I like some of
those ideas been and I honestly, I haven't done a
ton of research into what other uh you know, other
(14:55):
folks have been saying about it. I've I've really just
let myself kind of experience a go down the rabbit
hole with it. Um I could see it being a
lot of those things, But the website always seems to
to show you something that doesn't fit any any of
the scenarios that have been put forth, because for me,
(15:18):
there's an agenda to it, and maybe the things that
I'm about to say are throwing people off the scent
of what it really is, or it's just an extra
thing that exists there, or maybe somebody else applied it within,
you know, the website by some surreptitious means. But I
let me just tell you a couple of other things
that I found. One page is an entire operating manual
(15:45):
for the Richmond Police Department's Mobile Command Center, and it
is that's information that a police department in Richmond, I'm
assuming Richmond, Virginia, um like, uses to operate within the
field essentially in their city when they when they need
(16:05):
to have you know, when they need to have an HQ,
essentially when there's something big occurring, and it could be
dangerous having that information out there. I mean, maybe that's
something that exists in other places where you could just
download if you live in Richmond, or if you you know,
live in Virginia or maybe if you just exist and
have an Internet connection. But it feels very strange to
(16:28):
see it all written out there on this weird website. UM,
I don't know that. That kind of thing gives me pause,
like why would that be there? Um? And the other
the other last thing that I'll say about it is
that on one page and I'll well, I'm not I'm
not gonna say what the actual I'm gonna make people
find out. I'm not gonna say what the actual you
(16:49):
r L is. It's within the website somewhere and if
you stumble upon it, you stumble upon it. But it
looks to be instant checkmate pages of this is. This
is a piece of software that you can use. It
is used by my team quite frequently when we are
looking for interview subjects and trying to track people down
(17:12):
to talk to about let's say, a true crime story
or something and you need to get somebody's email or
their phone number or nowhere they are located. Excuse by
journalists mostly investigative uh like investigative journalists and private investigators
and law enforcement. This kind of thing that those are
the people that use this. UM. There are several images
(17:37):
of results from instant checkmate of very powerful people. So
this is a paid for service that you have to
you know, you have to pay to actually use it
and search for people, and you have to pay extra
to get certain levels of information. Whoever created these images
has been paying for it and got a lot of
(18:01):
people like Stephen Feinberg, Daniel Kowalski or Dan Kowalski, David Malpas,
and even Peter Navarro, even the sitting president. It has
it has personal contact information like all that you could
ever want on these people. I have not independently verified
(18:23):
whether any of this information is correct or up to
date or accurate in any way, but some of it
appears to be. Some of the addresses are are accurate
for sure. So it it is a really freaky thing
to just see all of that. It feels like something
you shouldn't be looking at. And I'm kind of scared
that it's on my computer. Now maybe you would be too,
(18:47):
but I don't know. I don't know how you feel
about it, or that it might look back at you
right like, is there some kind of ping? This may
seem the paranoid, but is there's some kind of ping
scent that in roles or enlist some sort of search
set on your own information. I just hit you guys
in our chat um. This is something I found about
(19:10):
gosh last night yesterday. Sometimes the someone posted a map
visual site map that gives you a little bit of
insight into the labyrn here. And it is a labyrinth
of sources. So what you'll see when you pull it
up is something that each each endpoint of the domain,
(19:33):
meaning each thing you can click toward from the home page,
is represented by a dot of a different color. Uh.
And being partially color blind, I know some of it,
but I don't know what it means. Uh. And if
we describe it, it looks like, uh, there is a
massive sort of circle or almost a torus around one link,
(19:57):
and then there are some other things that linked things
like you'll see how linking on something about a guy
named Bill Howard Tannin will lead to something about android scientologists,
which will lead to something about governor android governs, androids
and these this uh, this map which you can find
(20:18):
you know, visual site mapper. Uh. This this map just
shows us they have stuff about transcranial magnetic simulation, one
of my old hobby horses. This stuff shows you how
they're linked in the in the titles of these end points.
But uh, content wise, you'll see again to the point
I think you guys earlier made. Content wise, you'll see
(20:40):
that what's on the page or what's in the page
source doesn't always match what the page is called. And
also like some of the stuff does appear to be
you know, copy pasta kind of I guess from the
official documents like that there are clearly reports and internal
you know, things like like that that manual for the
you know, police equiped man. But some of it is
(21:01):
also just complete non sequitar weirdness. Like there's one I
just found from the site map that I couldn't even
find through the actual front page. That the heading is
devil worshiping pedophiles. Then the text is erections from because
from because Microsoft about for pornographic with from four two
because one Microsoft from newspapers, one Wall Street Journal with
(21:25):
homosexual and another Washington d C on the one with
sounds like an automation sort of text generation. That kind
of word salad seems common. But I I think you
know what I would love to hear, guys, I would
love to hear from listeners who have gone with you
Matt on this endeavor. I'd love to hear what's like
(21:47):
the specific favorite link they found. I think that would
be worthwhile. And then what what it means. I don't
think it's a cult. I don't. It feels very very
Church of the SubGenius to me. Yeahs for Marshall mclewin.
The medium is the massage. If you've ever read that
book or that kind of commentary on how we encounter information,
(22:09):
so let us know. And if you can tell by
my face, there is some flashing stuff happening on the website.
And with that we're going to head to a commercial.
But thanks again for sending us down this rabbit hole.
We looked forward to hearing your thoughts, and we've returned.
(22:32):
We have not returned alone. We are accompanied now in
spirit and in motivation by several scientists who wish, for
various very valid reasons to remain anonymous. So our piece
of listener mail, we just picked one from these, is
one that I personally found haunting. I forwarded it to
(22:55):
the group for visibility, just like as soon as we
got it. In our episode on plastics and the Great
Hoax of Recycling Plastics, we asked for subject matter experts
to chime in and to answer some questions about how
this current situation will unfold, what plastic alternatives might actually
(23:19):
look like, how they would work, and so on. And
one of the questions we asked is, uh, how far
away are we from a world in which human beings
specifically are already born riddled with plastics, since it's in
so many parts of the natural world now even if
(23:40):
you last pieces of wilderness left have plastic arriving there
before humans arrived there. So this particular scientist, who like
the rest of those who wrote in wants to remain anonymous,
has first asked us to paraphrase there letter. Because you
to the specifics of their work, they can't disclose very
(24:05):
much personal information, so they say, hello, stuff they want
you to know. Thanks for bringing us this episode in particular,
longtime listener, but first responder, I don't normally email podcast
i'm listening to, but I noticed you and did this
particular episode asking for any polymer scientists to comment, and
I could not help myself. I am a polymer scientist
(24:27):
working on interactions between polymers and biomolecules, and this person's
department their colleagues have started investigating methods into the detection
of nanoplastics, which are smaller than microplastics. Obviously, Uh, they said,
We've recently published new work on detecting nanoplastic particles in
(24:51):
this range, but I can't be more specific about it
because it could be traced to me or to my department.
This is a line stuck with me as Uh. This
anonymous scientist says, regarding the episode in general, I have
good news and bad news. The good news is that
I was very impressed with the episode. Well, I didn't
necessarily learn anything new. You managed to really dilute the
(25:13):
essence down to less than an hour without using difficult
jargon or terms. I wish many of my colleagues had
that same skill. It's gonna pause for a second. This
is us, not this anonymous scientists. Thank you and thank
you anonymous, because that makes our day whenever we have
a subject matter expert come in and say that we
didn't completely with on these very complex concepts. Uh. So
(25:40):
they continue with the bad news because obviously they're buttering
us up. Right. The bad news, says this scientist, is
that you really hit the nail on the head, and
we all probably should feel an imposing sense of dread.
It is pretty much as dire a picture as you painted.
As recent as last year it was shown that there
are detectible levels of micro plastics and Arctic ice and snow,
(26:02):
and you can safely assume that by now plastic molecules
are everywhere, no exception. And then they said, you've asked
a few questions. I'll try to answer. First question we asked,
how will this unfold? Your subject matter expert, you know
plastics are a problem. What comes next? This scientist says,
(26:25):
I think it is most realistic that we will do
absolutely nothing about this for at least decades, as biodegradable
but durable plastics slowly gain popularity but never surpass petrochemical plastics.
For now, the official stances plastics may be found everywhere
but are harmless due to their inert nature. This is
(26:45):
almost certainly not true. It is almost certain that plastic
particles that have been found in individual human cells will
have adverse effects on health. They're probably not clear now
but already existing, but will slowly become more evident in
the coming decades. Scientists says, I have no idea how
this will manifest exactly, but I suspect either an increase
(27:08):
in cancer, always a safe bet with biology, as well
as more generalized poor health symptoms, as polymer biomaterial interaction
is likely rather weak and lends itself to minor disturbances
rather than very big, obvious disruptions of specific organs and tissues.
What happens after that is anyone's guests, this is, in
(27:31):
my opinion, far more a political, capitalist issue than it
is a scientific one goes on to compare it to
global warming. And let's let's pause here for a second
and unpack this. What what do you all think? From
what I'm hearing? The good news bad news is that
we were right and if there's anything that we did
wrong in this episode, we were perhaps a little too optimistic.
(27:55):
This is this is clearly a scientist indicating a spiking
cancer in the mid and uh, something that will be
hard to attribute to nanoplastics in the beginning, right, because uh,
that shout out to a specific organ. Right, we can
find some chemicals and contaminants that affect maybe the brain, right,
(28:16):
were the nervous system or the liver or the kidney,
But this sounds like it's a general system attack. Um, Matt,
I know you were adventuring on this episode when Noel
and I were doing this. But this is a problem
that we've talked about at length in the past. Do
you all think this person is being to dire or
(28:40):
do you think there are being alarmists or I mean,
what's your initial reaction to that they're saying plastic will
essentially cause cancer in massive amounts in like years. Yeah,
so I'm certainly not up to snuff on the research
as I was gone when you guys did this, like
you said, Ben, but I'm over the years, we've been
(29:01):
hipped to similar things. That's why we made that. That's
why you guys made that episode in the first place. Um,
it does feel like an inevitability. Plastic, like macro plastics,
let's call them, are invading you know, oceans and land
and uh flora and fauna all over the entire planet
(29:25):
right now. We talked about other chemicals that you know,
humans have found to be very useful for first on
almost always military purposes, and then for some other purpose.
I'm thinking of teflon things like that. Um, the plastics
feels like the same kind of problem. This is my
(29:47):
question to you guys, and I guess not not to
our scientist friend as they have these answers. I'm sure
and it would be old hat. But nanoplastics, how are
they generated? And I apologize for not knowing that and
not let's at the episode, but are they generated through
the process of recycling and other breaking down of plastic
or is it in the manufacturing or in some other way.
(30:09):
So nanoplastics can be manufactured, well, not manufactured, they can
be created accidentally in the wild through the break by
products breakdown plastics. Okay, okay, cool. So so we're talking
about all the plastic that we know is everywhere on
the planet, and it's just breaking down, getting this stuff
(30:32):
into water sources, then finding its way you know, I'm
assuming into the air and then going down to other
places and then we're all just consuming it. Yeah, I mean,
there was a there was a moment in the episode
wh we we I forget the exact figure, but um,
it's it would be very common for you to go
outside and be breathing in these particles pretty regularly. To
(30:54):
some degree, there would be some part of the air
oxygen you are consuming that has residue of these particles
or some amount of these problems. Certainly not an amount
that would like affect you quickly, it would be a
slow process, like feeding a rat sacharan, you know, and
giving it cancer over a period of time or rat rather.
(31:16):
I guess they fed the rats lots of saccarin to
give them cancer quickly. But saccarin maybe only gives us
cancer over the course of eating sweet and low for
like an entire lifetime. Theoretically. Um, it's really fascinating. I've
got a question for you, Matt. Um. We did an
episode just this last recording where we did the Strange
News episode where you talked about this kitaness building material
(31:39):
that would be used in space. Uh, it sounds like
a really versatile material. How is that not being discussed
as a replacement for plastics since it's obviously biodegradable, since
it's made of mainly organic material, and seems like it's
got a lot of potential. But certainly had never heard
of that outside of this Wired article that seemed very
(32:00):
pimous sky about how this is the future of manufacturing
on space, but the discussion of it being something we
would use here on Earth was barely a footnote. Yeah,
I think we should consult the writing of our scientists
here for answers to that question, because titan would not
function the way plastics can. And there's a reason, there's
(32:23):
a very good reason why we use plastics. Uh. And
again our scientists has has some of that info. Yeah. Yeah,
plastics are just incredibly durable. Uh. And they're incredibly malleable
both as a material but also malleable as an application,
given that certain plastics will have great a greater level
(32:45):
of heat resistance and so on, or ductility as well.
But I think one of the bigger issues here is
what's called path dependence. We are path dependent as a
species on petrol. We have an emphatic structure that is
designed to rely on petrochemical plastics, so we would have
(33:09):
to It's it's not necessarily a matter of just inventing
a viable plastic alternative. It's a matter of inventing a
viable plastic alternative infrastructure to go around to go along
with it. Like what use is building a hydrogen powered
car if you don't have hydrogen gas stations for lack
(33:30):
of a better phrase. Uh, That's that's the problem that
that we're at. And we know that we know that
any slowly degradable bioplastic is still streets ahead of a
non biodegradable petroplastic. I don't know about you, guys, but
I don't want to get fast food and look at
a plastic fork and realize it will be around thousands
(33:52):
of years after I'm gone. I can't deal with that
existential crisis. You know what I mean? Um, It makes
you think about the ephemeral nature of humanity. This letter
goes on again. We were asked not to read it verbatim.
I want to hit one last thing. What you are
anonymous friend called a throwaway question, how far are we
away from children being born with plastic in them? In
(34:15):
inn and deal with plastic our scientists and other scientists
wrote in says I guarantee this is already happening, and
then gives us two sources that they you know, that
are solid sources. They say they're pop science sources, but
they're accurate. So the plastic is in you now. And
(34:35):
if you have children, there's probably plastic in them because
they are born inside a human who already probably has
some form of plastic in them. And to your point,
know what what a to answer your question about nanoplastic directly, Matt,
It's a byproduct, like Nell said, it's not um so
much purposely made in a lab for practical application. Most
(35:00):
and just what we're talking about when we talk about
nanoplastic are little bits produced by the degradation of which
you get macro to micro to nanoplastics. And that's when
it gets light enough to go in the air, you
breathe it in. What a wonderful day. Thirty five years
later some reason you have cancer. That's the dystopian view.
(35:20):
But my son develops cancer thirty years down the road
because of this. This is that's a horrifying thought. It
all points to the short sightedness of technology and manufacturing,
right like, only now are we kind of discussing that
maybe cell phones possibly maybe give you cancer or contribute
to it. But it's not like we're slowing now and
(35:42):
that like like you would say, Ben, that badger is
already out of the bag. And same with plastics. I mean,
even in the episode we talked about how it was
pretty clear very quickly that this is going to be
a problem, but the convenience and the money to be
made outweighed worrying about the ultimate outcome for the future.
And that's just a trend. We see especially in the
United States, you know, in terms of just like putting
(36:05):
the moment ahead of like the big picture and how
things will affect you know, everyone down the line, not
just you know, those in a position to profit um.
And it's it's sad, and and it's I think this
is a really great example because even this isn't a
conversation we're hearing in the halls of Congress, isn't a
conversation we're hearing in presidential debates how do we deal
(36:27):
with the plastic problem? But it's a problem, There's no
question about it. Yeah, I still have a bias going
into this because I believe the petrochemical industry has been
aware of this, just like they were aware of climate
change for a very long time, uh, and have perhaps
even orchestrated which I know is dangerous work, but perhaps
(36:49):
even orchestrated path dependency upon plastic as an insurance policy,
a new potential income stream, a revenue street name for
the post fossil fuel era, right Like, Like it's kind
of like how M R. J. Reynolds got big into vapes,
(37:10):
you know, because cigarettes are on the way out, so
maybe we can find another way to sell our based product,
which is tobacco. So can we find another way to
sell our based product oil and fossil fuel? Yeah, plastic
bags of fork that will be here like the like
the statue of Ozamandeus long after we're gone. A fork
(37:32):
you didn't even ask for in the bag of fast food,
you know what I mean? Like, I save that stuff
because it feels like the right thing to do or
some way of And I I washed, I rewashed my
tupperware that comes in like to go food. I I
keep that stuff and I rewash it and try my
best to use it until it sort of is full
(37:52):
of holes and useless. Well it degrades directly into your mouth.
You're probably right, Matt. I'm probably a freaking idiot. But
I just don't know. It's a still microwave it. No,
I certainly don't like all those plastic scientists are out
there right now say no, no, do not do that.
Stop stop right uh. And I I would say thank
(38:18):
you to the scientists because you have been shouting uh
politely at me for years. Whatever this comes up, even
back in the YouTube days. And uh, I greatly appreciate this.
In the letter, you know, again, we've been asked not
to read it in full, but in the letter UH,
you anonymous scientists make a fantastic point where you say,
(38:41):
you know, a lot of research scientists are underpaid. They
have the same problems that so many people have today
skyrocketing cost of living or or rent, you know, uh,
insecurity about continual employment. Speaking out can have repercussions. It
sounds like a conspiracy theory, but the apparatus of academia
(39:01):
can and will, you know, exert influence on divergent opinions
or unpleasant truths. So keep fighting the good fight right
to us. Let us know. I've got I've got a
couple of contacts for people who have had personal experience
trying to go completely plastic free, and I'm gonna I'm
(39:21):
gonna hopping onto uh to talk with them at length.
And Matt No, I'd love to either get you guys
on there with me or to update you afterwards, because
it's just if you try going just a month without
getting new plastic, forget not ever using plastic. That's really
tough now, but if you can, if you tried going
(39:42):
a month just not getting any plastic from the grocery store,
from a restaurant, from you know, uh, the auto mechanic whatever.
Then it's very it's a very daunting thing, and it's
a great illustration of just how far, how far down
this road we as a civilization have gone. But but
(40:04):
hopefully this episode isn't all gloom and doom. We've been doing. Uh,
we've been doing something that you know, I don't know
about you guys, but I quite like where we try
to find something that's maybe a little bit lighter to
end the show. So it's not all we're gonna die
riddled with plastic docs by some strange, mad possibly artificial
(40:25):
intelligence created website. Uh, So we're gonna so we're gonna
talk about the first presidential debate of he and we'll
do that. We'll do that during a break so you
don't have to hear uh freeboard dudes hot takes. Uh.
After that break, we'll be back with another strange, hopefully
(40:49):
not as terrifying story about plastics. And we're back, and
as promised that you do have another plastic story coming
from a listener named Steve, but also as promised, it
is a little bit more of a kind of a
lighthearted silver lining esque story. Maybe not. We'll let you
(41:13):
be the judge, So Steve wrote us and comments and
on how in the plastics episode, um, we also tried
to end that one on a on a somewhat positive note,
talking about how the Lego Corporation, the giant Danish company
that makes those colored bricks that you're always stepping on
with your bare feet. Um, nasty little things, but you know,
when you put them together, you make all kinds of
(41:34):
cool stuff of adults and children alike love them. A
lot of adults really love Legos, nerd out and make
like Ghostbusters, you know, Headquarters and like the Death Star,
things that kids would never in a million years able
to afford or likely have the attention span to do.
You got to You got two other guys in this
meeting that are big fans. I love Legos now, I
(41:54):
love Legos and you don't know stepping on them. I
really do love Legos. There are a lot of fun
They're a good way to each spatial recognition for kids
and the idea of manufacturing I'm sorry, of of engineering
and an appreciation for you know, architecture and structural stuff
and all of that. It's great. It's a really cool
company and a really interesting legacy to that. The company
(42:15):
that makes them. Um, but they have decided to pivot.
As you know, when you buy a Lego kid, it
comes in a giant plastic bag or a series of
plastic bags, depending on which pieces there they might be organized,
you know, and like pieces that would be in an
individual bags. And because the Lego Corporation received a bunch
of letters from children, um, who were concerned about climate
(42:36):
change and about the effects of of of of plastics
on the environment. UM, they decided, Okay, we're gonna listen
to it to these children, and we're gonna pivot, and
we're gonna start using paper bags as opposed to plastic.
But of course the legos themselves still mad at a
plastic and UM we mentioned on the show. Steve was
commenting on that, well, you know, at least they don't
(42:58):
end up in the ocean, you know, as kids presumably
keep their legos around and and you know, display them
on their mantles, and then maybe they get broken down
and put in bags and passed down to you know,
siblings or whatnot. Because legos are expensive. Um he said, ironically, Uh,
just that very thing happened one particular time in uh
(43:20):
in the nineties. Um. A a container ship uh something
link to this article for the BBC talking about how
a container ship filled with millions of Lego pieces was
capsized off of Cornwall in the United Kingdom. It was
hit by this massive wave and it dumped uh hundreds
(43:42):
of thousands, I think over a million Lego pieces into
the ocean and and consequently, uh, these pieces have been
washing up on the beaches of Cornwall ever since. Yeah,
it was four point eight million pieces estimated in an
in a containership or interestingly enough, a lot of them
(44:04):
were under the sea themed. So it's become kind of
a little like you know, apparently back in the nineties,
there'd be kids that would set up on the beaches
or on the boardwalks, uh, selling these things that they
had collected, like shells, you know, from but it's literally
these little plastic pieces and and there'd be little games
you'd play with your neighbors or people in the village.
Cordinall is a very small it's a village more or less. Um,
(44:27):
it's a very small place. One of my favorite electronic artists,
Richard James a k f X twin, grew up in
Cornwall and he talks about it a lot as as
just being this very very sleepy, little tiny kind of
seaside town um. But yeah, there was access to the
manifest from the shipping container and the breakdown of all
the different pieces that were on it. And I think
(44:48):
one of the figures was three hundred and fifty three thousand,
two hundred and sixty four plastic daisies uh fell into
the sea. And this was on thirteenth of February UM
And the container a ship was the Tokyo Express and
there were sixty two containers overall lost overboard. Right, it's
not just the one, of course, that's because yeah, well
(45:10):
let's think of the way these ships work. These are stacked.
But the stuff, but the one that made the news
because it's continued to have an impact over over years,
was the lego one. Because they just keep kind of
washing up on on on the shore and it's become
like a thing that the residents start to have become
familiar with, and it's the story isn't like a negative story.
(45:32):
The people that they interviewed from the village were more like, oh,
this is like it's like a treasure hind like, oh,
you found an octopus, Well, I found a green dragon
or a little tiny sword and a pirate sword or whatever.
You know. Yeah, but but there is a very negative
side to this story, right. We're talking about plastics and pollution,
especially in the ocean, and we're talking about millions of
(45:52):
legos that fell to the ocean floor from that container.
He was somehow released, and I guess just over time
these things started coming up, and that's plastics that animals
are going to be eating. Probably some of them are
a lot of them are small enough to be eaten. Yeah,
and then consider that again. The reason I wanted to
(46:12):
emphasize the multiple container aspect here is because these containers
are going to be degrading, probably varying rates. So legos.
We know that the container holding the legos was breached,
but there may be other stuff coming and stuff that
doesn't contain things as small and light as legos, so
that it's not as easily transported to the shore. But
(46:35):
I do want to add some hope here. One thing
that is inspiring about this is the community's reactions, as
I think you're getting at their There's a Facebook page
called Lego Loss at Sea, organized by a resident called
Tracy Williams, and this is entirely a community of people
who have gamified collecting these legos, so they've gamified cleaning
(46:59):
up at least the shore a line. Uh, and you
know you want to collect your daisies. What else we got?
We got the flippers, the pirate swords, the harpoons. As
you said, well, it's uh, it's oddly enough pretty nautical themed.
It's a pretty wide swath of stuff. So there's a
great breakdown um on this BBC article uh that goes
(47:21):
into even the specific numbers. There's spear guns presumably belonging
to a tiny lego, and deep sea diver thirteen thousand
of those. Uh. The black octopus one of the rarest
items in this hall, because there were only forty two
hundred of them. So, like we were saying, this has
definitely become like this gamified thing where people will find
(47:41):
these It's almost like finding a rare Pokemon or something
like that. UM. Yellow life preservers. We've got twenty six thousand,
six hundred of those, uh, little tiny flippers in pairs black,
blue and red. Four hundred and eighteen thousand of those UM.
The green and the black dragons also among the rarer items.
Thirty three thousand, nine hundred forty one uh A brown
(48:03):
ship rigging net twenty six thousand, four hundred of those
we mentioned the nearly half a million daisies in in
pairs of four white, red and yellow um scuba devices
scuba breathing apparatus is about a hundred thousand of those. UH.
And that's it total of four million, seven hundred and
fifty six thousand, nine hundred and forty lego pieces that
(48:26):
were in this single container. And the estimate is that
three million, one seventy hundred and seven might have been
light enough to have floated. And let's also mentioned to
the great voyage that these little guys have made. We're
talking about sixty two thousand miles uh, that some of
these pieces might have drifted UM and this article in
(48:49):
BBC mentions that it's twenty four thousand miles around the equator,
meaning that they could potentially end up on any beach
on Earth because they're all in early. This reminds me
of the fantastic story of the rubber ducks, which are
sometimes called the friendly Floaties. Heard of this, uh, perhaps
(49:11):
I know you've heard of Matt guy named Curtis Ebbesmeyer
as an ocean oographer who studies ocean currents based on
the directions, uh that that flots some floating c debris
takes and he was he was able to use rubber ducks. Now,
before you think I'm painting this wonderful guy as a
(49:33):
villain and want you know he didn't throw all these
ducks in the ocean. On January tenth, twelve forty ft
intermodal containers. Those are those shipping containers we're talking about.
That's that's what you see on train sometimes if you
live in your train tracks or a semi trailer. Twelve
(49:56):
of these fort containers were washed of or board. One
of them held almost twenty nine thousand children's bath toys.
So yellow ducks, blue turtles, green frogs, red beavers, and
these things float because if you're a rubber duck, to you,
the ocean is just a really big bathtub. And these
(50:18):
things as they've floated around, you know, they're small. It's
tough for people to catch all of them, even if
you were worried about fighting pollution, or even if those
um those shipping interests were legally liable for the environmental damage.
So instead what we had was kind of these maritime
tracer bullets that allowed us to see the paths this
(50:40):
flotsam was taking, and it told us a lot about
the function and the interaction of Earth's ocean currents. So
there's something there's something to be said there, you know,
there's a little bit of good we can take with
the bad. And the legos are gonna I think are
very similar in perhaps more um well, not even a
(51:04):
micro cosmic wave, because as you said, they could end
up at any beach on the planet. I always thought
the message in the bottle thing was largely an artifice
or trope used in fiction. But if you throw a
bottle in the right place in the ocean, even from
the shore, then who knows where it'll end up? Right,
Just to end it on the shipping containers thing, ben there,
(51:26):
I just wanted to hit you with a stat on
at least from of global annual shipping container losses, And
within that BBC article it states that somewhere between seven
hundred six hundred containers go missing or are lost at
(51:46):
sea every year. That was between two thousand eight and
two thousand and ten, and then from two thousand eleven
to two thousand thirteen, approximately two thousand seven hundred containers
were lost on a yearly basis. So just think about
your just to your point, been about how many things
are down at the bottom of the ocean and these
containers that are degrading and just ready to release something.
(52:09):
M h. And so thank you Steve for providing us
with a little bit of a lighthearted look at this,
this ongoing strange story of things lost in the ocean
and returning to us. Some of the authors writing about
this and journalists have waxed poetic because how could you not.
(52:33):
Thank you also to our anonymous scientists who have written
in to give us a behind the scenes look at
the growing threat of nanoplastics. And thank you to Mental
Biopsy for introducing many of our fellow listeners to their
next favorite Internet rabbit hole. Step to one side time Cube.
(52:55):
There's a new weird one in town. Uh. Thanks also,
by the way, to you Alessandra S who went onto
our Facebook page Here's where it gets crazy and said,
why won't the skeleton watch the scary movie? Yeah, he
doesn't have the guts, So thank you Alessandra. You're in
(53:19):
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