August 4, 2022 • 50 mins
A caller prompts a conversation about the booming black market for airbags. It seems some power companies are using smart thermometers to mess with their customer's temperature settings. Over in Australia, multiple Conspiracy Realists are startled to find the infamous case of the Somerton Man might just be solved. All this and more in this week's listener mail.
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Episode Transcript
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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.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name isn't all they called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis,
Code Game doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. As you're tuning in today, folks,
fellow conspiracy realists, this is the first listener mail of
(00:48):
August twenty two. We made it, folks. This is officially
the Conspiracy Stuff Show. Birthday month for your faithful correspondence. Uh,
Matt and Noel and whatever they call me. It depends
on who day is, frankly, but yeah, this time we
(01:08):
are going to explore. We got a lot of messages,
and for me, at least, this drove home some of
the communication I had recently drove home to me that
this is more than a show as as were as
it feels to say it, it's it's become quite a
community and we learn about this. I think every time
(01:30):
we do listener mail with all the strange stories and
follow ups that we hear from around the world. Now,
so we're going to learn about a black market that
you may not expect if you are outside of the
auto industry. We're going to learn about a stunning mystery
that haunted us for years decades that has been solved
(01:55):
Asteris And you'll see what we mean there at the end.
But first we're gonna have some follow ups on on
the issue of trust and things that are connected to
the cloud. In last week's Strange News segment, we discuss
how Amazon is snitching. It's snitching on you if you
(02:16):
have a ring camera. At least eleven times it's done this.
But that is just the beginning, because we recently received
um call a tasty email nol uh about another danger
of smart devices, very tasty from from an elf it
would seem, named keebler uh, the the titular elf of
(02:38):
cookie fame. Um, Hey, guys, you can call me Keebler.
Listening to your July twenty Strange News and the segment
about ring cameras being shared with god knows who reminded
me of a story I read this weekend on next
Door it's self worthy of an episode next Door, the
Hive of the Nosy Neighbor and the overreactive accurate. Uh.
(02:59):
There is a jew one story on Vox about this
a different bit of smart technology Nest and they're smart thermostats. Uh.
The story is that power companies in Texas have been
using an app connected to the Nest thermostat to increase
their customers air conditioners settings a few degrees here and
there as a way to let them cut power consumption
(03:19):
and preserve their too fragile power grid. The culprit is
a program called Smart Savers Texas, which enters folks in
a five thousand dollar sweepstakes if they surrender some measure
of control to their smart thermostat. People were hot about
it on next door. Uh asten to be on next door?
Oh yeah, and also hot. One complained they had a
(03:41):
newborn baby who could not speak up about being too hot.
Another worried about the implications of northern climates in the
cold winter. So some grist for the conspiracy Grinder, Thanks all,
and I love your show. Uh, thank you Keebler for
this this hot tip. I found the Vox article in
question from June twenty one of last year by Sarah Morrison.
(04:03):
How your power company can remotely control your smart thermostat um.
As I've mentioned recently, I I purchased a house and
the previous owners were a bit of a smart home
techie nerds, which I am too. I like all that stuff.
I have all the hue bulbs and all of that.
I have had never owned a Nest system in my
previous rentals because there were rentals, but this place came
(04:26):
pre installed with one. And it's really cool. Um. It's
you can you know, set it for a schedule to
you know, have the air fluctuate depending on the time
of day, depending on if your home or not. There's
all kinds of ways of doing it. And yes, I
understand the implications of all of this connectedness and and
cloud capabilities and the you know risk it may pose
to privacy, but I've given all of that up long ago,
(04:49):
and I'm I'm happy to live in a futuristic home,
you know, for the privilege of getting away subsemblance of privacy. Um.
And I'm not that worried about this whole snitching thing.
I do. I do think it's interesting and there are
implications also have a ring situation. My girlfriend brought over
from her previous place, and my kid, who's old enough
(05:10):
now to stay home by herself, is a fan because
she can look at the cameras. We can monitor the cameras,
you know, remotely when we're away. UM, anytime someone is
the front door, you get notification, and you can even
talk to the person of the front door when you're
not there. So there's some cool things about that. The
Nest power company issue is a very interesting one UM,
(05:31):
and presumably it does require some sort of buy in,
but it's again maybe one of those fine print kind
of situations. The Smart Savers Texas program, it accurately um
does involve a sweepstakes where you can win five thousand
dollars off of your energy bill for the coming year.
But a lot of these users didn't realize exactly how
much control they were giving UM to the power companies.
(05:55):
And so from the Vox article, uh quote the idea
of a power company turning up your them us that
like a stereotypical electricity bill conscious dad might seem dystopian,
but it's also fairly common. Their programs like Smart Savers
Texas all over the country, from California to New England.
The idea behind them is to decrease power consumption to
alleviate stress on the electrical grid and avoid brownouts. UM.
(06:17):
Since customers aren't likely to volunteer to use less of
the power they pay for when they need it, most
these programs give them an incentive and the means to
do so easily by proxy. Um. I'm just gonna keep going.
This is good stuff. Some programs provide better incentives than others.
When it launched in Philadelphia's Smart a c Saver program,
gay participants a one dollar bill credit, which was apparently
(06:38):
too generous and was cut to just forty dollars in
subsequent years. But Smart Savers Texas only offers this chance
too for the sweet sticks, you know, to win um
this big prize and apparently, uh, the terms were super vague. Um,
so you know, it's very interesting terms of service kind
(06:59):
of question here when you're entering into this. And also
just the fact that it is so easy to just
click the box and say yes, I accept, you know,
without actually reading the fine print. And it's one thing
if it's like a website or something like that, but
it's another thing when when these things actually infiltrate your
home um, and it really should give you pause and
(07:19):
make you a lot more conscious about reading these types
of terms of service. And also I believe Nest is
owned Nest is owned by Google. Um you have to
use the uh, the the Google Home app to control
the Nest, which is a little weird because there's a
Nest app, but it makes you use Google Home. So
I'm a little confused as to why they both exist.
It might just be a legacy thing. Um, So you
(07:42):
are kind of probably being monitored, whether it's just you know,
for informational purposes, for statistics, you know, power consumption and
all that. But there are kind of far reaching implications
for what these kinds of programs could portend for the future.
You know, where within those terms of services you could
(08:02):
be giving away much more control over these smart devices
than you realize without even entering into a sweepstakes of
some kind. I don't know what do y'all think? Is this? Uh?
Is this the tip of the iceberg? Is this the
beginning of that slippery slope? And to you know, having
your thermostat controlled by you know, some overlord, or is
(08:24):
this just you know, a clever way of trying to
reduce strain on the grid, which is technically good for
everyone in the long run. Full slip and slide. It's happening.
I mean, this is this is another indication of the
overall trend towards removing the concept of ownership. Right. The
concept of privacy is already uh an endangered species, and
(08:48):
as we pointed out in the past, the modern understanding
of privacy is itself a pretty recent development, So it
makes sense that people would want to remove the idea
of privacy. But also removing the idea of ownership allows
you to sell something but never really give it to
(09:09):
the person and give them a service, right, and now
you can Now you can have increasing control over how
that service is delivered. So I think next things to
happen will see this increasingly. In autonomous vehicles. There's already
in some non autonomous vehicles there are complaints about having
(09:31):
to pay extra to unlock features that already exist in
some cars. I believe BMW is a great example of that.
Tesla as well. Um, we're gonna see this increasingly. I
think in consumer electronics we're already you know, it's it's
very common now for someone to not actually buy a
phone because they're pretty expensive for most folks, but instead
(09:55):
to get kind of a layaway plan, and then that
layaway plan can also be an excellent entry point into
UH into forcing people to have stuff because just like
we said with Sesame credit, remember it was opt in
in the beginning, and this smart thermostat thing is opt
in at the beginning. That's that's where I think it's headed.
(10:17):
I also want to shout out real quick, I sent
this story to you guys who might get to it
later on, but I want to shout out my pal
Rebel Devil on Instagram, who actually knows one of those
eleven people involved in one of those eleven cases where
Amazon was snitching. But yeah, no, I think it's I
don't even think it's the beginning. I think it's a
(10:39):
future that is closer and closer to becoming the present.
So I don't blame anyone who says they want to
go full analog, just be aware of it's going to
be increasingly difficult to do that with each passing year.
What what I first see is a tiered system, much
like PlayStation Network just did with their PlayStation Plus program,
(11:00):
where you can get the basics you can you can
have you know, your utilities, your powering, your gas, but
we as the company get to control the levels you
get to exist within. Right, So, probably too hot for
many people, probably too cold for many people, but at
that at this base level, you're gonna have. You know,
you're not gonna die. We're gonna keep you alive, right,
(11:25):
thank you, blessed Overlord. You pay a little more in
those margins come in a little bit closer, and if
you pay for the premium, you could do whatever the
hell you want with your power and gas. But isn't
that frightening because that's what we're talking about tiered citizenship
ultimately not in all but name so like you can
do you know who I am? My father is a
(11:46):
premium Gold Medallion citizen and I'll be damned if you
talk to me this way in ah in a baskin Robbins.
That's interesting, Well, that's an interesting uh reference there have
been because with airline sky miles type programs is so
opaque as to what a sky mile is actually worth.
(12:09):
That's controlled by the company and there's no transparency into
what that process is um and you know the miles
that you have to earn to get to that next tier.
It's also pretty vague. You have like a chart in
your app that kind of tells you where you are
along the process. They're called m q ms or something
like that. Anyway, exactly, I'm a silver medallion status person
(12:33):
and you know, we have friends that work for Delta,
and I've been told that as a trash status, uh,
and that the people that work for the company make
fun of people with silver medallion said, I don't even
get to go to the sky Lounge, and I this
is through thousands of miles of travel that that work
has paid for for the most part. You know, we're
very lucky we get to get those miles for our
(12:54):
personal you know, accounts. But as an individual, I never
would have spent that much on travel. So does the
amount you'd have to spend on travel to get that
diamond status is unbelievable over time, you know, and it
resets every year. So I see what you're saying. These
are almost like especially with the smart card things you're
saying then it's almost like an app purchases in either
(13:16):
phone apps that are free to play, but but not
the whole thing. You You you don't get to unlock
all of the little bobbles, and then you know, once
you're in the ecosystem, you're kind of like eating out
of their hand to a degree, because you don't see
an experience. Imagine if it is a micro transaction system. Look,
(13:38):
I've been playing a little bit of that Diabolo Immortal game,
and my god, the micro transactions and that, but it's
a yeah, it is, but still so much fun. Is
still Diablo. But anyway, imagine if every time you went
to your thermostat and you wanted to like, let's turn
let's say, turn it down one degree to seventies six
(13:59):
or seventy five, you had to choose to make that
micro transaction at that moment, at that point of sale
where you where you get, you get one degree. If
you want to degrees, it's gonna be a little more
expensive because two degrees. Right now, we're at peak hours,
so you're gonna have to spend a little more. And
instead of it just being a monthly thing that gets
calculated by the company, you are actually seeing it happen
(14:22):
and they're overcharging a bit more than they would. Do
you want uh signature or classic vote or are we
going to go for comfort vote plus today, that will
give you one point two of a vote. We have
two more openings today for comfort plus vot you can
upgrade to premium vote. That is that does count as
(14:45):
two votes premium doctor. Yeah, that's already a network out
of network. Yeah. And then you know you make a
good point that because tie that in again saying this
more and more often, nothing exists in vacuum, despite what
headlines seem to indicate. And that's not a ding on journalists.
They have to report a narrow scope of a story
(15:07):
right ideally based on what they can prove. But what
we're seeing is already occurring in multiple other ways. One
of the huge investment categories right now that does well
even even during economic downturns is uh medtech biotech medical monitoring.
You know, like you might be freaked out if you
(15:29):
haven't seen it right now. If you are a user
of Chrome, you have a Google account, many many, many
many people do in the US and abroad. Just go
if you want to give yourself just a little bit
of a freaky feeling, then go to your go to
your little Google avatar, little thumbnail there in Chrome. If
you use Chrome, and then scroll down, you'll go to
(15:53):
manage my account, and you'll see basic info, contact info,
blah blah blah. And then go to data and prive
to see and you will see stuff about google fit.
You might not have opted into it. Uh, you will
have to opt into it, right, but google fit will
(16:14):
is already set up in the eCos. It's already part
of your account. It's to manage like to monitor your
medical history or like your well, really your physical habits. Right,
it's still account me ten thousand steps kind of thing. Um.
But you can also see monitoring of this sort on iPhones.
(16:35):
This it's there aren't grand announcements about it that are
hitting the public sphere often maybe a couple of times
in a news cycle annually, but you will you will
be surprised if you look by just how sophisticated the
infrastructure and architecture is for monitoring you right now. And
it's not because it's not because of these companies. Think
(16:58):
of people like Pokemon. It want to collect everyone because
it's fun. You don't get badges for it. They're going
to use the information. Like you said, no, I've long
gone a record saying that terms of service are purposely
up to at this point in many fields. That is
by design. That is the world we are headed toward.
(17:21):
And I feel like I've got a sandwich board walking
and I'm walking around like the end of privacy is
nigh or whatever. But if I did that, my sandwich
board would be cartoonishly outdated. The end of privacy already
occurred quite a while ago. Privacy now is a is
the domain of the very very well to do and
(17:44):
people living outside of the balands of conventional society. Unfortunate. Man.
I did exactly what you said, and I went to
my my little Google person you know, went through the trees,
and I went to manage my location his tree, and
I went to things you've done and places you've been
clicked on that because that sounds horrifying, and it's got
(18:07):
your history settings, your maps, and timeline, places you go,
when you were there, how you got there. Thankfully, my
history was turned off. But there was one location and
it was an urgent care I went to I don't
even know when, but he was in there, just hanging out.
I don't like this. Yeah, that's weird. And all the
(18:29):
while we've been doing this, I've just been what you
guys have been talking. I just saw that I had
a critical security alert on my Google account. UH there
was some suspicious log in attempt and it's like, I
don't even know if it was me or not. Because
you have to change your passwords so much, it's like
maybe I just forgot and like tried too many random
different pass words and I registered myself as a as
(18:49):
a security UH risk. But just to add this, to
close this out, Google Nest does have its own program
called rush Hour Rewards UH that are leaked up with
different power companies. UM. You know, they vary depending on
where you live, so like, for example, kanned in New
York offers up to eighty five dollars if you enroll UH.
National Grid UH is giving out twenty five dollar gift cards,
(19:12):
and some power companies actually offered discounts UH for your
power bill if you use a smart thermostat. But again,
enrolling maybe gives them some access. Who knows. I don't
know the details, but it does seem like that's certainly possible.
So there's so much to talk about here as as
as we've discovered. I think there might be episode material
(19:33):
moving forward. But let's take a quick pause. I have
a word from our sponsor and then come back with
another piece of listener mail. Welcome back everyone. We are
going to jump to the phone lines and hear a
message from Jack. Hey Matt, guys, this is Jack Collingen,
(19:56):
just listening to your episode on Academic Journal Corruption and
guys made a passing joke about stealing Honda Civics and
I got a personal story. Um So, about a year
and a half, two years ago, I bought a Honda
Civic and it's the newest car I've ever owned, and
at the time I didn't have a set parking spot
(20:18):
in my apartment complex, so I was parking down the street. Well,
about a week and a half later, go out, go
grab some KFC, and I noticed that my passenger window
has been smashed in and my driver's steering wheels air
bag has been stolen. Come to find out, after doing
(20:39):
some research into it, the Honda Civics air bag is
notoriously easy to remove. There's just two screws that require
a basic Alan key, and on the black market they
can fetch upwards of a thousand dollars I'm not sure
Canadian or American. Yeah, So they sell it to these
dirty mechanics shop and the wait for people to come
(21:01):
in who have either had an accident, uh and or
in my case, somewhere and stolen air bags, basically coming
in to get a new air bag installed. And half
the time these dirty shops will actually use stolen airbags.
So just rent and repeat. It probably writes down the
people's information to go back and steal it a few
(21:22):
weeks later. Anyway, alright, take triggers. Oh boy, So Ben,
I figured you would have lost to say here. You're
the one that brought up Honda Civics are the cars
to steal apparently, And I had no idea. I really
thought it was going to be Odyssey's because I mean,
everybody is in the market for those once you have
(21:44):
a kid, and they're so freaking expensive. It's all the
others I know, so many couple olds. So yeah, Ben,
what do you think about that statement from Jack about
airbag specifically? Jack, you are are on the money, my friend, unfortunately.
And it's something something we explored a little bit many
(22:06):
years ago, our pal Scott Benjamin and I on a
show called Car Stuff. Yeah, it's it's part of the
part of the reason that the Honda air bags are
so attractive to thieves and to the dirty shops that
often contract out to them. Is it's exactly what you described.
(22:28):
But to go a little bit deeper on this, we
should all note that one of the reasons that Honda
Civics and parts of Honda Civics were stolen so often
throughout the past couple of decades actually is because they
didn't have a lot of anti theft technology that would
be common in other cars. It's also because there are
(22:50):
already so many Honda Civics out there that there was
a demand for the parts. You could easily fence and
move them right a lot of different Yeah, if you
were taking if you were like I only steal, I
always steal proprietary components of exotic cars, then the you know,
like the twelve people in your city who own that
(23:10):
car are gonna know something's up. You got a feed
from the larger herd. If you're a predator, right, and
you gotta pick off the week and the disadvantage. The
other thing I love that you nailed it, man um.
That air bag is ridiculously easy to take out, which
feels great if you're if you were like doing work
on a car, that's awesome because a lot of times,
(23:33):
as you know, there can be parts of a car
that be a real pain in the butt to to fix,
repair or replace that. The other safety features I want
to be super difficult to take out and put back in,
Like an air bag that's gonna explode in my face,
but it's only attached with two alan What makes you think,
like when when the engineers are brainstorming how many accidents
(23:57):
did they think this driver was going to get at,
they were like, this guy needs to replace this thing
probably every three months. We should we you know what,
we should throw a couple extra in the trunk. There's
actually a plot about this and uh the last season
of The Sopranos where they're boosting air bags um and
moving them through a friendly auto shop and they talk
(24:20):
about getting you know, one to two dollars for them.
And there's even a thing where one of the mobsters, uh,
he's had a sort of a pinch, he sells he
takes the one out of his personal car and sells it.
And then also he gets in a car accident. Luckily
die or anything, but it's something that this is like,
you know, fifteen years ago, this is something that's been
going on for a long time. You think they would
(24:41):
have made it a little more difficult to get these out.
It's sort of like, you know, the more modern equivalent
of stealing car stereos. But this is even better because
you don't know that it's been stolen. I think that's
the idea, right, you you put it back and then
people just are riding around in death traps. Well, yeah,
I think you would notice, right if you're bag is stolen,
you would definitely notice at some point we gotta put
(25:04):
it back. Yeah, we've got to talk about the the
margins because they're enormous profit margins here. But I'm sure
we'll get to that exactly. There are enormous profit margins.
That's why it's happening so much. And I just wanna
go to your point, Nol. It's not just back then.
It's still happening today, and it's not just you. Jack.
Let me jump to a story from w u s
A channel nine, and I think that's CBS the Fighting nine.
(25:29):
This is from May. The title is eleven Honda Civics
burglarized and string of air bag thefts in Arlington. Police say, so,
this is Arlington, Virginia. There were, in fact eleven Honda
Civic air bag stolen and there are a total of
thirty five air bags that have been stolen in the
area over the course of three weeks. That's one area
(25:52):
that's in May of this year. If we jump back
to two thousand eighteen, there's a story in car buzz
that sites some serious statistics. Guys I had no idea
of their specifically talking about Honda civics and accords and
about stealing air bags, and they jumped down to some
(26:13):
numbers coming out of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and
they estimate about fifty thousand air bags are stolen every year.
But they don't they don't track trends about like what
what model, what makeer model these airbags are being stolen
out of, but Hondas are specifically targeted for the reasons
we mentioned earlier. Uh, that's pretty crazy in Miami Dade County.
(26:37):
This this article says thieves stole eight hundred and seventy
five air bags in oh And another interesting thing, just
to talk about some of the math here, fellow fans
automobiles in the audience might be saying, Hey, why is
it the driver's side air bag that's being stolen? Because
(26:57):
that's overwhelmingly like just getting taken bond is. It's because
it's the most likely to activate in any crash unless altercation.
I don't think cars get into altercations just yet. Updates Tesla.
But the the the idea is you can cut this
out without that needing it right, And like you mentioned, Jack,
(27:18):
I'm gonna throw some numbers from the US. Uh. They
might not be one to one with Canadian numbers, but
I imagine the margins are pretty close, and that's what
we should be looking at. So buying it from the factory,
you're looking at thousand bucks right, give or take. And
if you buy it online without knowing the providence of it,
(27:43):
you can get it for as little as three hundred dollars,
like even two hundred dollars, and some things you don't
ask too many questions. The cost of replacing this thing
plus labor is two to three grand. So you get Yes,
you're already making hundreds of dollars when you're selling a
(28:04):
an old or a stolen air bag as a factory
fresh one, and then on top of that you charge
the labor. And then to that other point, like Jack said,
why not I keep the information? You know you don't
have to get your hands dirty. You can just let
it be known to a couple of folks who hang
out at the shop right that uh, there may be
(28:24):
some opportunity and that you were paying three hundred bucks
for air bags, no questions asked. And just to piggyback
on that, and and go back to the Sopranos grift
and the plotline that I mentioned. Um, they would further
increase their profit margins by taking these UM stolen air
bags and putting them in cars that were being repaired
(28:44):
in the shop, UM that had deployed their air bags,
and then charge the insurance company for a brand new one.
UM like the insurance company is gonna ask to see
the box or something like that, I guess, And that
costs double. Seems that because the insurance fraud, specifically in
this realm seems to be intense, I bet the insurance
companies are highly incentivized to crack down on this. And
(29:07):
it's weird to think about that this is all happening
around the same time. Do you guys remember gosh, I
want to say it was seventeen, maybe it was earlier
than that. Honda specifically I think had an air bag
recall and it was something crazy like million millions. I
think tens of millions, maybe fifty million air bags got recalled.
(29:27):
And if they're not the only company that's had to
deal with that, twelve million, twelve million, Chief pays for
that if you if you own the car, you take
it back to the dealership and they just do it
gratis like what a what a screw up and unimaginable loss.
But it also speaks to how much money these companies
make that this wouldn't just like bankrupt them. If anybody's interested,
(29:51):
check out checkout car stuff again. And I want to
play it too hard. There's also a great episode on
how to find a mechanic you trust, because there are
you know, there are unethical mechanics out there who have
no compunction about trade on someone that they think they
can swindle. Right like you you can see all the
(30:12):
like just breaks has gotten in trouble with this that's
a regional chain here in the US. We also see
many stories that are that are easy to prove of
someone claiming apart is broken right whereby an alternator or something.
They say, okay, that's what's wrong with your car. The
alternators busted, But it's not the alternator. Your alternator is fine,
(30:34):
you just didn't look under the hood. You got a
mechanic to do it. And what they do is they
take that, they take that alternator that works, they swap
it out, they put in someone else's car, and then
they sell you a new alternator that they got for wholesale,
you know what I mean, Like, they're there are multitude
of ways for this to happen, So this can be
a grift. Jack, You're absolutely right, But the question is
(30:57):
is it a fatal grift? And that's where I remember
learning Matt that um the FBI and the pretty much
every traffic safety authority they don't really track air bag thefts.
And I think in the vast majority of times after
a crash, if we're trying figure out whether someone got
(31:18):
killed by black market airbags or something, it's kind of
tough because there's not really a lot of testing after
a crash to say like, hey, is this a legit
airbag or does this airbag look like it was torn
out and putting a couple of different steering wheels. That
just doesn't just happen. Just to passion, how many air
(31:39):
bags had to explode when they weren't supposed to explode.
For a major car company or you know, airbag company
to recall twelve million of their units, there had to
be something. There had to be a ton of them
before they were like, okay, we're gonna take that loss. Well,
it's a cost risk analysis, right, yeah, exact how likely
(32:01):
are we when the when the amount of the lawsuits
are going to exceed the amount that they will lose
in doing the thing, that's when it happens. And uh, guys,
if you're going to you know, lube, if you're gonna
go to a lube, take your time. Don't don't do
it in a jiffy or spiffy or or whatever it is.
Just take your time with the loop. You know. I
(32:23):
gotta say I was actually gonna bring this up. I
recently went to a Uh, I went to a take
five oil change and they do like a like a
like a twelve minute oil change. They give you snacks
and and water. And speaking to your point, been about
finding a trustworthy mechanic. UM. You know, oftentimes I'll be like, oh,
you need to change your filter. Even if you don't. UM,
(32:43):
the guy helped. He pulled by filter out and showed
it to me. And compared it to a clean one,
and mine looked like trash, and I realized I probably
have never changed it, so I did it. Yeah, you
gotta be careful too sometimes, because there there are tricks. Again,
the majority of mek headics, at least in my ex
arians and the research I've done, are fine there, fine,
they're great people, and they're gonna be honest with you.
(33:06):
You just have to to be cognizant of as much
as I bore the phrase the few bad apples. So
in that case, we're gonna tell you some of the
sith lord side of this stuff. What you do then,
is you don't you don't open the hood in front
of the customer and pull out the filter. What instead,
(33:26):
what you do is you make them go sit in
the lobby and you take the prop dirty filter that
you keep around for cars like that, and you carry
it in and say, this is what a clean filter
looks like, this is what a good filter looks like,
and we can replace it. No, No, you probably didn't.
You probably didn't. I'm just saying that's how it can work.
And anyway, it's it's really important to change your air filter.
(33:49):
Oh my god, I'm going like dad mode, change your
much filter. Jack. Everybody, watch out for your air bags. Okay,
it doesn't matter what kind of car you I if
you've got an air bag, someone might want it. So
I recommend you go read Why would someone want to
Steal My air Bag? By Ed Grabbyanowski on how Stuff
(34:10):
Works dot Com. As I say, I think that's how
you say his last name. I just know edg. But
go go read that article. Listen to car Stuff. It's
still available and we'll be right back with more messages
from you. And we have returned. Sorry guys, I got
(34:33):
sucked back into it. It's great. Uh man, I miss it.
Even put on your little mechanics suit. You got your
pencils in your pocket there and your air pressure gauge.
And I mean it was it was. It was a
thing to behold, a real transformation before our very eyes.
We were vast, we contain multitudes, you know what I
(34:53):
mean is right? But the okay, so this one, this
thing we're closing with today for this listener Males. Segment
comes to us courtesy of many Many of our fellow
conspiracy realist folks reached out to me directly, epen Bowling
and Eppen Bowling hs W on Instagram and Twitter. Uh
folks emailed us at the show. UH folks posted on
(35:16):
our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy, so much
so that I had to just choose one person to thank.
And this is out of out of all the people
we can thank in Australia. As we're gonna see the
Australian battalion of the stuff. They want you to know.
I don't like battalion. This a little militant Australian battalion
(35:37):
there see. Maybe that's what it was, so that you
can have a rhyme with it. Um and if I
say our Australian friends, I sound like a spy. Look
are all our fellow conspiracy realists in Australia were hip
to this and some of the first people to tell
us about it. I want to shout out specifically our
long time listener and dear into the show, Simon Workman.
(36:02):
Uh Simon, actually yeah yeah, Simon also reached out and
hip this to this because Simon is awesome, So thank you. Simon.
Taste in music that very much so audio file with
no limit. So Simon, if you're hearing this, we're big,
big fans. Of yours, man and hope you're doing well.
(36:22):
So with thanks to Simon and everybody else, like literally
dozens and dozens and dozens of people who sent us
to this story, we can finally say it. The identity
of the mysterious Sumrton Man appears to have been revealed.
Through very clever work and with dday technology primarily researchers
(36:45):
have finally solved the case. For brief recap for anybody
who doesn't know this case, the Summerton Man is a
corpse and it's also called the tom im Shut case.
We covered this real years ago a couple of different
times and a couple of different ways, because up until
(37:07):
now the case seemed incredibly difficult to solve. There was
a lot of tantalizing stuff there that implied tradecraft to
pay on how you interpreted it. And then there was
a lot of uh stonewalling, like not an active cover up,
just you couldn't find enough to get to the next step. Uh.
This body was found on December one on Somerton Park
(37:31):
Beach and could not be identified, identifying things that would
have been useful for investigations at the time were gone. Uh.
It's called the tom On shut the case because of
the Persian phrase tom unshut, which means is over or
is finished. Uh. And it was printed on a scrap
of paper in the in a pocket of the guy's
(37:54):
pants and had been torn from the final page of
the Rubaiyat. So true, I'm tantalizing. Mystery possibly espionage related,
many many theories over the years from two thousand and two.
But as you pointed out folks very recently, a guy
named Derek Abbott from the University of Adelaide. Part of
(38:17):
my pronunciation there, Aussie friends, please tell us how to
pronounce these towns. We all know Melbourne, we got Melbourne right,
but Adelaide I'm stumbling over anyway. So Abbott says that
they found the identity of this person. It is Carl
Webb Charles to his friends, an electrical engineer and instrument
(38:37):
maker born in Melbourne in nineteen o five. They found
this by using DNA sequencing. Uh. And the way that
they did the DNA is also really interesting because they
didn't take it directly from the corpse. They took it
from like a plaster death mask. And you guys, like
(38:59):
I think we all were members some of this uh,
some of the ins and outs of this thing. Professor
Abbott has been working on this since March of two
thousand and nine. Uh, and he he found things like
assumptions police had made in the case. He found different
(39:20):
ways to look at objects that were found with the body,
such as particular brand of cigarettes or excuse me, the
cigarette packet itself was a cheaper brand, but there were
nicer cigarettes inside, right, curious or and curious or I
mean I remember just all this speculation about him being
a spy because of little details like that. I mean,
the cryptic message that was as you mentioned, was found.
(39:43):
But then just to take cigarettes that are better and
put them in a cheaper pack. Why would you do
that unless you're trying to blend in in some way
or trick people into thinking you don't have as much money.
There's just so much speculation there. Yeah, And also of
course things tags torn from clothings you can't really identify
(40:03):
the brand, um all all sorts of stuff about the autopsy.
So he has been since two thousand nine, He, being Abbott,
has been trying to get like the body exhumed. Law
enforcement and the professor and his team kind of met
in the middle and the police eventually gave Abbott strands
(40:23):
of the man's hair that would have been trapped in
a plastered death mask the police made of the summer
to man's face in the nineteen forties when the body
was discovered, and then he and his team worked to
build out a family tree. So they had the DNA information, right,
(40:47):
but your genetic identity does not come with the things
human society puts on you, like a name. You know,
you don't. You don't have uh Jack or Keebler or
Simon Workman in your d N A. That's just what
everybody has agreed to call you. And so they did.
They had this DNA and that's a really unique thing
(41:09):
to have, right, But now they have to search the field.
And so they had already kind of had the name
Web in there. They've already clocked it because as they
were trying to get this DNA information, they had already
built out this family tree of four thousand different names
and possibilities, narrowing it down to this Web character who
(41:34):
had always been interesting to them. Because this guy, Charles Webb,
did not have a date of death on record, they
they were able to track down a first cousin three
times removed on his mother's side, they say. And July
twenty three this year, they matched DNA from one of
(41:55):
those tested decades old hairs, more than half a century
old airs, and they matched it to one of Webb's
distant living relatives. So the odds against it, the odds
against it not being Webb, are enormous now, right, it's
pretty much pretty clear that this is the guy. For
(42:17):
a lot of people, this investigation satisfies their belief or
you know, satisfies their burden of proof. But why do
we say it's an asterix it's a mystery solved asterix
in the beginning? Well, it's because, um, knowing who the
person is is huge and hopefully very worthwhile closure for
(42:38):
the family. But we don't really know what he was doing. Right,
Like if you if you saw a mystery person who
was dead in your neighborhood, in your street, and the
police investigated and they said, oh, yeah, it turns out
this guy's name is Patrick Flanagan. Okay, case closed. Uh,
(43:00):
you would probably still like say, well, why was he
here though? Did he die? Yeah? How did he die? Why?
Why does why did he have a horse saddle and
a riding crop with him there are no horses around here,
you know, like all this weird stuff. Yeah, there's something
interesting in the CNN article that at least that's how
(43:21):
I found out about this. Ben Abbott mentions that if
this person Web is in fact the Somerton Man, that
that person that they've identified Web really like to bet
on horses, right, And they're like, they're thinking that that
has something to do with why that stuff was there.
And the remember the weird letters or like the codes.
(43:44):
It looks like code or something, but it was just
strange letters. There were some of them were marked out.
They're thinking that has something to do with horse bedding.
M MT it's it looks like mt B I AM
P A N E T p mm hmm what what
what could these be? Tend name? Yeah, I would just
(44:05):
think it would be more numerical if it was like
keeping track of races and wins and losses or horses
names or something. There's another one that says like m
L I A B O like none of these and
maybe it's yeah, you're right, maybe it's some kind of
cipher that like to keep his secret sauce a secret
or something. I don't know. And what if the secrecy.
What if the secret sauce was just you know, the
(44:28):
horses he was planning on betting on they don't want. Yeah,
that's that could be. Maybe there's extra letters or it's not.
I don't know, it's that there's there's it's all capital letters,
there's no I don't know what the code would be.
But who knows. Oh, the body was, by the way,
eventually exhumed in May of one, so they did. They
(44:51):
were at this point going entirely just on the death mask.
The hair from that does seem to be the proof.
So with this, you know, one of the questions we
have to ask now is how solved this? This? What
was Somerton doing? According to conclusions that we can see
(45:12):
and in things like that CNN article, the idea is
that he was not in fact a spy, as tantalizing,
as interesting as that is. Instead, he was a guy
who died one day alone on a beach. If that
is you believe the official conclusion, because it's it's hard
to close the door on that for a lot of people,
(45:35):
you know what I mean, it's true select the guide stones.
If we know the real story, mystery is all gone, right, Yeah,
I think we unfortunately have a relatively plausible answer for
that one. That's not a particularly good dude, but you know,
it is what it is. Well. It's also it reminds
(45:55):
me of the time I was talking to Bigfoot investigator
who eventually said gave me the strong impression that they
didn't actually want big Foot to be found for them
most kind of about the journey. You know, certainly I
subscribe to that. I mean, you find got a regular feet,
that's kind of a letdown. He's like a racist, what
(46:20):
do you what do you find? Or he's insufferable about something.
He's one of those he's one of his well actually people,
or he's oh god, yeah, I I don't know. Maybe
that's it. Maybe we're all better not meeting Bigfoot, because
you know they say never meet your heroes, right, But this,
this does show us something really important. This is what
I wanted to end on. I think it's a point
(46:41):
that we can maybe all appreciate here and something we
can take away from uh this story. So one, especially
now and going forward, mysteries that were once considered unsolvable
are no longer impossible to crack. Summer to man, the
original night Stalker or the e. A. R. As he
was also called, was found uh. And then we can
(47:04):
secondly say that because humans are the stories they tell themselves,
it can be easy to fall into the most exciting
explanation even when that's not the case, because people like
exciting things. People don't like being bored. Right, So this
(47:25):
is this is an example of hard work and investigation
that just followed the truth, did not try to impose
a narrative, right, or a lack of a better word,
a sexier ending to the story. So thank you to
Professor Abbott and the team. Thank you again to everybody
who reached out to us regarding this. I can't wait
(47:47):
to hear from you. Hope all is well down under,
and perhaps most importantly, I want to hear your ideas
about other so called unsolvable mysteries that you think may
be solved in the future. What are they? Hopefully they're obscure.
Hopefully there's stuff we haven't even heard about on the show.
(48:08):
Can't wait to hear from you. Thanks of course to Simon,
Thanks to everybody wrote it in about Somerton. Thanks to Jack.
Thanks to you Keebler for that disturbing dystopian cookie of
smart surveillance. If you want to take a page from
their book, then why not. The time is now contact us.
We try to be easy to find online. That's right.
(48:30):
You can find us on Twitter, you can find us
on Facebook, and you can find us on what's it
called the youtubees that' said we exist in all of
those places at the handle conspiracy stuff on Instagram where
conspiracy stuff show. If you don't like social media, why
not consider giving us a phone call like Jack did.
By the way, Jack's full moniker is Jack Kelly, And
(48:53):
I really thought Jack was just giving us his full name.
Then I realized it's an always sunny reference, and I mean,
dam Jack Kelly. I'm a lawyer. We're talking about big feet.
We should be talking about big hands, right Jack? Seriously, Yes,
you can give us a call, just like Jack. Our
(49:13):
number is one eight three three st d w y
t K. It's super easy. You've got three minutes. Give
yourself a cool nickname. We don't care what it is.
Say whatever you'd like. We do ask that you include
whether or not you give us permission to use your
name and voice on the air. Really, that's it. Those
are the only rules. Unless you've got more to say
(49:33):
than can fit in that three minutes, because in that
case you should instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they
(50:01):
don't want you to know. Is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name isn't all they called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis,
Code Game doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. As you're tuning in today, folks,
fellow conspiracy realists, this is the first listener mail of
(00:48):
August twenty two. We made it, folks. This is officially
the Conspiracy Stuff Show. Birthday month for your faithful correspondence. Uh,
Matt and Noel and whatever they call me. It depends
on who day is, frankly, but yeah, this time we
(01:08):
are going to explore. We got a lot of messages,
and for me, at least, this drove home some of
the communication I had recently drove home to me that
this is more than a show as as were as
it feels to say it, it's it's become quite a
community and we learn about this. I think every time
(01:30):
we do listener mail with all the strange stories and
follow ups that we hear from around the world. Now,
so we're going to learn about a black market that
you may not expect if you are outside of the
auto industry. We're going to learn about a stunning mystery
that haunted us for years decades that has been solved
(01:55):
Asteris And you'll see what we mean there at the end.
But first we're gonna have some follow ups on on
the issue of trust and things that are connected to
the cloud. In last week's Strange News segment, we discuss
how Amazon is snitching. It's snitching on you if you
(02:16):
have a ring camera. At least eleven times it's done this.
But that is just the beginning, because we recently received
um call a tasty email nol uh about another danger
of smart devices, very tasty from from an elf it
would seem, named keebler uh, the the titular elf of
(02:38):
cookie fame. Um, Hey, guys, you can call me Keebler.
Listening to your July twenty Strange News and the segment
about ring cameras being shared with god knows who reminded
me of a story I read this weekend on next
Door it's self worthy of an episode next Door, the
Hive of the Nosy Neighbor and the overreactive accurate. Uh.
(02:59):
There is a jew one story on Vox about this
a different bit of smart technology Nest and they're smart thermostats. Uh.
The story is that power companies in Texas have been
using an app connected to the Nest thermostat to increase
their customers air conditioners settings a few degrees here and
there as a way to let them cut power consumption
(03:19):
and preserve their too fragile power grid. The culprit is
a program called Smart Savers Texas, which enters folks in
a five thousand dollar sweepstakes if they surrender some measure
of control to their smart thermostat. People were hot about
it on next door. Uh asten to be on next door?
Oh yeah, and also hot. One complained they had a
(03:41):
newborn baby who could not speak up about being too hot.
Another worried about the implications of northern climates in the
cold winter. So some grist for the conspiracy Grinder, Thanks all,
and I love your show. Uh, thank you Keebler for
this this hot tip. I found the Vox article in
question from June twenty one of last year by Sarah Morrison.
(04:03):
How your power company can remotely control your smart thermostat um.
As I've mentioned recently, I I purchased a house and
the previous owners were a bit of a smart home
techie nerds, which I am too. I like all that stuff.
I have all the hue bulbs and all of that.
I have had never owned a Nest system in my
previous rentals because there were rentals, but this place came
(04:26):
pre installed with one. And it's really cool. Um. It's
you can you know, set it for a schedule to
you know, have the air fluctuate depending on the time
of day, depending on if your home or not. There's
all kinds of ways of doing it. And yes, I
understand the implications of all of this connectedness and and
cloud capabilities and the you know risk it may pose
to privacy, but I've given all of that up long ago,
(04:49):
and I'm I'm happy to live in a futuristic home,
you know, for the privilege of getting away subsemblance of privacy. Um.
And I'm not that worried about this whole snitching thing.
I do. I do think it's interesting and there are
implications also have a ring situation. My girlfriend brought over
from her previous place, and my kid, who's old enough
(05:10):
now to stay home by herself, is a fan because
she can look at the cameras. We can monitor the cameras,
you know, remotely when we're away. UM, anytime someone is
the front door, you get notification, and you can even
talk to the person of the front door when you're
not there. So there's some cool things about that. The
Nest power company issue is a very interesting one UM,
(05:31):
and presumably it does require some sort of buy in,
but it's again maybe one of those fine print kind
of situations. The Smart Savers Texas program, it accurately um
does involve a sweepstakes where you can win five thousand
dollars off of your energy bill for the coming year.
But a lot of these users didn't realize exactly how
much control they were giving UM to the power companies.
(05:55):
And so from the Vox article, uh quote the idea
of a power company turning up your them us that
like a stereotypical electricity bill conscious dad might seem dystopian,
but it's also fairly common. Their programs like Smart Savers
Texas all over the country, from California to New England.
The idea behind them is to decrease power consumption to
alleviate stress on the electrical grid and avoid brownouts. UM.
(06:17):
Since customers aren't likely to volunteer to use less of
the power they pay for when they need it, most
these programs give them an incentive and the means to
do so easily by proxy. Um. I'm just gonna keep going.
This is good stuff. Some programs provide better incentives than others.
When it launched in Philadelphia's Smart a c Saver program,
gay participants a one dollar bill credit, which was apparently
(06:38):
too generous and was cut to just forty dollars in
subsequent years. But Smart Savers Texas only offers this chance
too for the sweet sticks, you know, to win um
this big prize and apparently, uh, the terms were super vague. Um,
so you know, it's very interesting terms of service kind
(06:59):
of question here when you're entering into this. And also
just the fact that it is so easy to just
click the box and say yes, I accept, you know,
without actually reading the fine print. And it's one thing
if it's like a website or something like that, but
it's another thing when when these things actually infiltrate your
home um, and it really should give you pause and
(07:19):
make you a lot more conscious about reading these types
of terms of service. And also I believe Nest is
owned Nest is owned by Google. Um you have to
use the uh, the the Google Home app to control
the Nest, which is a little weird because there's a
Nest app, but it makes you use Google Home. So
I'm a little confused as to why they both exist.
It might just be a legacy thing. Um, So you
(07:42):
are kind of probably being monitored, whether it's just you know,
for informational purposes, for statistics, you know, power consumption and
all that. But there are kind of far reaching implications
for what these kinds of programs could portend for the future.
You know, where within those terms of services you could
(08:02):
be giving away much more control over these smart devices
than you realize without even entering into a sweepstakes of
some kind. I don't know what do y'all think? Is this? Uh?
Is this the tip of the iceberg? Is this the
beginning of that slippery slope? And to you know, having
your thermostat controlled by you know, some overlord, or is
(08:24):
this just you know, a clever way of trying to
reduce strain on the grid, which is technically good for
everyone in the long run. Full slip and slide. It's happening.
I mean, this is this is another indication of the
overall trend towards removing the concept of ownership. Right. The
concept of privacy is already uh an endangered species, and
(08:48):
as we pointed out in the past, the modern understanding
of privacy is itself a pretty recent development, So it
makes sense that people would want to remove the idea
of privacy. But also removing the idea of ownership allows
you to sell something but never really give it to
(09:09):
the person and give them a service, right, and now
you can Now you can have increasing control over how
that service is delivered. So I think next things to
happen will see this increasingly. In autonomous vehicles. There's already
in some non autonomous vehicles there are complaints about having
(09:31):
to pay extra to unlock features that already exist in
some cars. I believe BMW is a great example of that.
Tesla as well. Um, we're gonna see this increasingly. I
think in consumer electronics we're already you know, it's it's
very common now for someone to not actually buy a
phone because they're pretty expensive for most folks, but instead
(09:55):
to get kind of a layaway plan, and then that
layaway plan can also be an excellent entry point into
UH into forcing people to have stuff because just like
we said with Sesame credit, remember it was opt in
in the beginning, and this smart thermostat thing is opt
in at the beginning. That's that's where I think it's headed.
(10:17):
I also want to shout out real quick, I sent
this story to you guys who might get to it
later on, but I want to shout out my pal
Rebel Devil on Instagram, who actually knows one of those
eleven people involved in one of those eleven cases where
Amazon was snitching. But yeah, no, I think it's I
don't even think it's the beginning. I think it's a
(10:39):
future that is closer and closer to becoming the present.
So I don't blame anyone who says they want to
go full analog, just be aware of it's going to
be increasingly difficult to do that with each passing year.
What what I first see is a tiered system, much
like PlayStation Network just did with their PlayStation Plus program,
(11:00):
where you can get the basics you can you can
have you know, your utilities, your powering, your gas, but
we as the company get to control the levels you
get to exist within. Right, So, probably too hot for
many people, probably too cold for many people, but at
that at this base level, you're gonna have. You know,
you're not gonna die. We're gonna keep you alive, right,
(11:25):
thank you, blessed Overlord. You pay a little more in
those margins come in a little bit closer, and if
you pay for the premium, you could do whatever the
hell you want with your power and gas. But isn't
that frightening because that's what we're talking about tiered citizenship
ultimately not in all but name so like you can
do you know who I am? My father is a
(11:46):
premium Gold Medallion citizen and I'll be damned if you
talk to me this way in ah in a baskin Robbins.
That's interesting, Well, that's an interesting uh reference there have
been because with airline sky miles type programs is so
opaque as to what a sky mile is actually worth.
(12:09):
That's controlled by the company and there's no transparency into
what that process is um and you know the miles
that you have to earn to get to that next tier.
It's also pretty vague. You have like a chart in
your app that kind of tells you where you are
along the process. They're called m q ms or something
like that. Anyway, exactly, I'm a silver medallion status person
(12:33):
and you know, we have friends that work for Delta,
and I've been told that as a trash status, uh,
and that the people that work for the company make
fun of people with silver medallion said, I don't even
get to go to the sky Lounge, and I this
is through thousands of miles of travel that that work
has paid for for the most part. You know, we're
very lucky we get to get those miles for our
(12:54):
personal you know, accounts. But as an individual, I never
would have spent that much on travel. So does the
amount you'd have to spend on travel to get that
diamond status is unbelievable over time, you know, and it
resets every year. So I see what you're saying. These
are almost like especially with the smart card things you're
saying then it's almost like an app purchases in either
(13:16):
phone apps that are free to play, but but not
the whole thing. You You you don't get to unlock
all of the little bobbles, and then you know, once
you're in the ecosystem, you're kind of like eating out
of their hand to a degree, because you don't see
an experience. Imagine if it is a micro transaction system. Look,
(13:38):
I've been playing a little bit of that Diabolo Immortal game,
and my god, the micro transactions and that, but it's
a yeah, it is, but still so much fun. Is
still Diablo. But anyway, imagine if every time you went
to your thermostat and you wanted to like, let's turn
let's say, turn it down one degree to seventies six
(13:59):
or seventy five, you had to choose to make that
micro transaction at that moment, at that point of sale
where you where you get, you get one degree. If
you want to degrees, it's gonna be a little more
expensive because two degrees. Right now, we're at peak hours,
so you're gonna have to spend a little more. And
instead of it just being a monthly thing that gets
calculated by the company, you are actually seeing it happen
(14:22):
and they're overcharging a bit more than they would. Do
you want uh signature or classic vote or are we
going to go for comfort vote plus today, that will
give you one point two of a vote. We have
two more openings today for comfort plus vot you can
upgrade to premium vote. That is that does count as
(14:45):
two votes premium doctor. Yeah, that's already a network out
of network. Yeah. And then you know you make a
good point that because tie that in again saying this
more and more often, nothing exists in vacuum, despite what
headlines seem to indicate. And that's not a ding on journalists.
They have to report a narrow scope of a story
(15:07):
right ideally based on what they can prove. But what
we're seeing is already occurring in multiple other ways. One
of the huge investment categories right now that does well
even even during economic downturns is uh medtech biotech medical monitoring.
You know, like you might be freaked out if you
(15:29):
haven't seen it right now. If you are a user
of Chrome, you have a Google account, many many, many
many people do in the US and abroad. Just go
if you want to give yourself just a little bit
of a freaky feeling, then go to your go to
your little Google avatar, little thumbnail there in Chrome. If
you use Chrome, and then scroll down, you'll go to
(15:53):
manage my account, and you'll see basic info, contact info,
blah blah blah. And then go to data and prive
to see and you will see stuff about google fit.
You might not have opted into it. Uh, you will
have to opt into it, right, but google fit will
(16:14):
is already set up in the eCos. It's already part
of your account. It's to manage like to monitor your
medical history or like your well, really your physical habits. Right,
it's still account me ten thousand steps kind of thing. Um.
But you can also see monitoring of this sort on iPhones.
(16:35):
This it's there aren't grand announcements about it that are
hitting the public sphere often maybe a couple of times
in a news cycle annually, but you will you will
be surprised if you look by just how sophisticated the
infrastructure and architecture is for monitoring you right now. And
it's not because it's not because of these companies. Think
(16:58):
of people like Pokemon. It want to collect everyone because
it's fun. You don't get badges for it. They're going
to use the information. Like you said, no, I've long
gone a record saying that terms of service are purposely
up to at this point in many fields. That is
by design. That is the world we are headed toward.
(17:21):
And I feel like I've got a sandwich board walking
and I'm walking around like the end of privacy is
nigh or whatever. But if I did that, my sandwich
board would be cartoonishly outdated. The end of privacy already
occurred quite a while ago. Privacy now is a is
the domain of the very very well to do and
(17:44):
people living outside of the balands of conventional society. Unfortunate. Man.
I did exactly what you said, and I went to
my my little Google person you know, went through the trees,
and I went to manage my location his tree, and
I went to things you've done and places you've been
clicked on that because that sounds horrifying, and it's got
(18:07):
your history settings, your maps, and timeline, places you go,
when you were there, how you got there. Thankfully, my
history was turned off. But there was one location and
it was an urgent care I went to I don't
even know when, but he was in there, just hanging out.
I don't like this. Yeah, that's weird. And all the
(18:29):
while we've been doing this, I've just been what you
guys have been talking. I just saw that I had
a critical security alert on my Google account. UH there
was some suspicious log in attempt and it's like, I
don't even know if it was me or not. Because
you have to change your passwords so much, it's like
maybe I just forgot and like tried too many random
different pass words and I registered myself as a as
(18:49):
a security UH risk. But just to add this, to
close this out, Google Nest does have its own program
called rush Hour Rewards UH that are leaked up with
different power companies. UM. You know, they vary depending on
where you live, so like, for example, kanned in New
York offers up to eighty five dollars if you enroll UH.
National Grid UH is giving out twenty five dollar gift cards,
(19:12):
and some power companies actually offered discounts UH for your
power bill if you use a smart thermostat. But again,
enrolling maybe gives them some access. Who knows. I don't
know the details, but it does seem like that's certainly possible.
So there's so much to talk about here as as
as we've discovered. I think there might be episode material
(19:33):
moving forward. But let's take a quick pause. I have
a word from our sponsor and then come back with
another piece of listener mail. Welcome back everyone. We are
going to jump to the phone lines and hear a
message from Jack. Hey Matt, guys, this is Jack Collingen,
(19:56):
just listening to your episode on Academic Journal Corruption and
guys made a passing joke about stealing Honda Civics and
I got a personal story. Um So, about a year
and a half, two years ago, I bought a Honda
Civic and it's the newest car I've ever owned, and
at the time I didn't have a set parking spot
(20:18):
in my apartment complex, so I was parking down the street. Well,
about a week and a half later, go out, go
grab some KFC, and I noticed that my passenger window
has been smashed in and my driver's steering wheels air
bag has been stolen. Come to find out, after doing
(20:39):
some research into it, the Honda Civics air bag is
notoriously easy to remove. There's just two screws that require
a basic Alan key, and on the black market they
can fetch upwards of a thousand dollars I'm not sure
Canadian or American. Yeah, So they sell it to these
dirty mechanics shop and the wait for people to come
(21:01):
in who have either had an accident, uh and or
in my case, somewhere and stolen air bags, basically coming
in to get a new air bag installed. And half
the time these dirty shops will actually use stolen airbags.
So just rent and repeat. It probably writes down the
people's information to go back and steal it a few
(21:22):
weeks later. Anyway, alright, take triggers. Oh boy, So Ben,
I figured you would have lost to say here. You're
the one that brought up Honda Civics are the cars
to steal apparently, And I had no idea. I really
thought it was going to be Odyssey's because I mean,
everybody is in the market for those once you have
(21:44):
a kid, and they're so freaking expensive. It's all the
others I know, so many couple olds. So yeah, Ben,
what do you think about that statement from Jack about
airbag specifically? Jack, you are are on the money, my friend, unfortunately.
And it's something something we explored a little bit many
(22:06):
years ago, our pal Scott Benjamin and I on a
show called Car Stuff. Yeah, it's it's part of the
part of the reason that the Honda air bags are
so attractive to thieves and to the dirty shops that
often contract out to them. Is it's exactly what you described.
(22:28):
But to go a little bit deeper on this, we
should all note that one of the reasons that Honda
Civics and parts of Honda Civics were stolen so often
throughout the past couple of decades actually is because they
didn't have a lot of anti theft technology that would
be common in other cars. It's also because there are
(22:50):
already so many Honda Civics out there that there was
a demand for the parts. You could easily fence and
move them right a lot of different Yeah, if you
were taking if you were like I only steal, I
always steal proprietary components of exotic cars, then the you know,
like the twelve people in your city who own that
(23:10):
car are gonna know something's up. You got a feed
from the larger herd. If you're a predator, right, and
you gotta pick off the week and the disadvantage. The
other thing I love that you nailed it, man um.
That air bag is ridiculously easy to take out, which
feels great if you're if you were like doing work
on a car, that's awesome because a lot of times,
(23:33):
as you know, there can be parts of a car
that be a real pain in the butt to to fix,
repair or replace that. The other safety features I want
to be super difficult to take out and put back in,
Like an air bag that's gonna explode in my face,
but it's only attached with two alan What makes you think,
like when when the engineers are brainstorming how many accidents
(23:57):
did they think this driver was going to get at,
they were like, this guy needs to replace this thing
probably every three months. We should we you know what,
we should throw a couple extra in the trunk. There's
actually a plot about this and uh the last season
of The Sopranos where they're boosting air bags um and
moving them through a friendly auto shop and they talk
(24:20):
about getting you know, one to two dollars for them.
And there's even a thing where one of the mobsters, uh,
he's had a sort of a pinch, he sells he
takes the one out of his personal car and sells it.
And then also he gets in a car accident. Luckily
die or anything, but it's something that this is like,
you know, fifteen years ago, this is something that's been
going on for a long time. You think they would
(24:41):
have made it a little more difficult to get these out.
It's sort of like, you know, the more modern equivalent
of stealing car stereos. But this is even better because
you don't know that it's been stolen. I think that's
the idea, right, you you put it back and then
people just are riding around in death traps. Well, yeah,
I think you would notice, right if you're bag is stolen,
you would definitely notice at some point we gotta put
(25:04):
it back. Yeah, we've got to talk about the the
margins because they're enormous profit margins here. But I'm sure
we'll get to that exactly. There are enormous profit margins.
That's why it's happening so much. And I just wanna
go to your point, Nol. It's not just back then.
It's still happening today, and it's not just you. Jack.
Let me jump to a story from w u s
A channel nine, and I think that's CBS the Fighting nine.
(25:29):
This is from May. The title is eleven Honda Civics
burglarized and string of air bag thefts in Arlington. Police say, so,
this is Arlington, Virginia. There were, in fact eleven Honda
Civic air bag stolen and there are a total of
thirty five air bags that have been stolen in the
area over the course of three weeks. That's one area
(25:52):
that's in May of this year. If we jump back
to two thousand eighteen, there's a story in car buzz
that sites some serious statistics. Guys I had no idea
of their specifically talking about Honda civics and accords and
about stealing air bags, and they jumped down to some
(26:13):
numbers coming out of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and
they estimate about fifty thousand air bags are stolen every year.
But they don't they don't track trends about like what
what model, what makeer model these airbags are being stolen
out of, but Hondas are specifically targeted for the reasons
we mentioned earlier. Uh, that's pretty crazy in Miami Dade County.
(26:37):
This this article says thieves stole eight hundred and seventy
five air bags in oh And another interesting thing, just
to talk about some of the math here, fellow fans
automobiles in the audience might be saying, Hey, why is
it the driver's side air bag that's being stolen? Because
(26:57):
that's overwhelmingly like just getting taken bond is. It's because
it's the most likely to activate in any crash unless altercation.
I don't think cars get into altercations just yet. Updates Tesla.
But the the the idea is you can cut this
out without that needing it right, And like you mentioned, Jack,
(27:18):
I'm gonna throw some numbers from the US. Uh. They
might not be one to one with Canadian numbers, but
I imagine the margins are pretty close, and that's what
we should be looking at. So buying it from the factory,
you're looking at thousand bucks right, give or take. And
if you buy it online without knowing the providence of it,
(27:43):
you can get it for as little as three hundred dollars,
like even two hundred dollars, and some things you don't
ask too many questions. The cost of replacing this thing
plus labor is two to three grand. So you get Yes,
you're already making hundreds of dollars when you're selling a
(28:04):
an old or a stolen air bag as a factory
fresh one, and then on top of that you charge
the labor. And then to that other point, like Jack said,
why not I keep the information? You know you don't
have to get your hands dirty. You can just let
it be known to a couple of folks who hang
out at the shop right that uh, there may be
(28:24):
some opportunity and that you were paying three hundred bucks
for air bags, no questions asked. And just to piggyback
on that, and and go back to the Sopranos grift
and the plotline that I mentioned. Um, they would further
increase their profit margins by taking these UM stolen air
bags and putting them in cars that were being repaired
(28:44):
in the shop, UM that had deployed their air bags,
and then charge the insurance company for a brand new one.
UM like the insurance company is gonna ask to see
the box or something like that, I guess, And that
costs double. Seems that because the insurance fraud, specifically in
this realm seems to be intense, I bet the insurance
companies are highly incentivized to crack down on this. And
(29:07):
it's weird to think about that this is all happening
around the same time. Do you guys remember gosh, I
want to say it was seventeen, maybe it was earlier
than that. Honda specifically I think had an air bag
recall and it was something crazy like million millions. I
think tens of millions, maybe fifty million air bags got recalled.
(29:27):
And if they're not the only company that's had to
deal with that, twelve million, twelve million, Chief pays for
that if you if you own the car, you take
it back to the dealership and they just do it
gratis like what a what a screw up and unimaginable loss.
But it also speaks to how much money these companies
make that this wouldn't just like bankrupt them. If anybody's interested,
(29:51):
check out checkout car stuff again. And I want to
play it too hard. There's also a great episode on
how to find a mechanic you trust, because there are
you know, there are unethical mechanics out there who have
no compunction about trade on someone that they think they
can swindle. Right like you you can see all the
(30:12):
like just breaks has gotten in trouble with this that's
a regional chain here in the US. We also see
many stories that are that are easy to prove of
someone claiming apart is broken right whereby an alternator or something.
They say, okay, that's what's wrong with your car. The
alternators busted, But it's not the alternator. Your alternator is fine,
(30:34):
you just didn't look under the hood. You got a
mechanic to do it. And what they do is they
take that, they take that alternator that works, they swap
it out, they put in someone else's car, and then
they sell you a new alternator that they got for wholesale,
you know what I mean, Like, they're there are multitude
of ways for this to happen, So this can be
a grift. Jack, You're absolutely right, But the question is
(30:57):
is it a fatal grift? And that's where I remember
learning Matt that um the FBI and the pretty much
every traffic safety authority they don't really track air bag thefts.
And I think in the vast majority of times after
a crash, if we're trying figure out whether someone got
(31:18):
killed by black market airbags or something, it's kind of
tough because there's not really a lot of testing after
a crash to say like, hey, is this a legit
airbag or does this airbag look like it was torn
out and putting a couple of different steering wheels. That
just doesn't just happen. Just to passion, how many air
(31:39):
bags had to explode when they weren't supposed to explode.
For a major car company or you know, airbag company
to recall twelve million of their units, there had to
be something. There had to be a ton of them
before they were like, okay, we're gonna take that loss. Well,
it's a cost risk analysis, right, yeah, exact how likely
(32:01):
are we when the when the amount of the lawsuits
are going to exceed the amount that they will lose
in doing the thing, that's when it happens. And uh, guys,
if you're going to you know, lube, if you're gonna
go to a lube, take your time. Don't don't do
it in a jiffy or spiffy or or whatever it is.
Just take your time with the loop. You know. I
(32:23):
gotta say I was actually gonna bring this up. I
recently went to a Uh, I went to a take
five oil change and they do like a like a
like a twelve minute oil change. They give you snacks
and and water. And speaking to your point, been about
finding a trustworthy mechanic. UM. You know, oftentimes I'll be like, oh,
you need to change your filter. Even if you don't. UM,
(32:43):
the guy helped. He pulled by filter out and showed
it to me. And compared it to a clean one,
and mine looked like trash, and I realized I probably
have never changed it, so I did it. Yeah, you
gotta be careful too sometimes, because there there are tricks. Again,
the majority of mek headics, at least in my ex
arians and the research I've done, are fine there, fine,
they're great people, and they're gonna be honest with you.
(33:06):
You just have to to be cognizant of as much
as I bore the phrase the few bad apples. So
in that case, we're gonna tell you some of the
sith lord side of this stuff. What you do then,
is you don't you don't open the hood in front
of the customer and pull out the filter. What instead,
(33:26):
what you do is you make them go sit in
the lobby and you take the prop dirty filter that
you keep around for cars like that, and you carry
it in and say, this is what a clean filter
looks like, this is what a good filter looks like,
and we can replace it. No, No, you probably didn't.
You probably didn't. I'm just saying that's how it can work.
And anyway, it's it's really important to change your air filter.
(33:49):
Oh my god, I'm going like dad mode, change your
much filter. Jack. Everybody, watch out for your air bags. Okay,
it doesn't matter what kind of car you I if
you've got an air bag, someone might want it. So
I recommend you go read Why would someone want to
Steal My air Bag? By Ed Grabbyanowski on how Stuff
(34:10):
Works dot Com. As I say, I think that's how
you say his last name. I just know edg. But
go go read that article. Listen to car Stuff. It's
still available and we'll be right back with more messages
from you. And we have returned. Sorry guys, I got
(34:33):
sucked back into it. It's great. Uh man, I miss it.
Even put on your little mechanics suit. You got your
pencils in your pocket there and your air pressure gauge.
And I mean it was it was. It was a
thing to behold, a real transformation before our very eyes.
We were vast, we contain multitudes, you know what I
(34:53):
mean is right? But the okay, so this one, this
thing we're closing with today for this listener Males. Segment
comes to us courtesy of many Many of our fellow
conspiracy realist folks reached out to me directly, epen Bowling
and Eppen Bowling hs W on Instagram and Twitter. Uh
folks emailed us at the show. UH folks posted on
(35:16):
our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy, so much
so that I had to just choose one person to thank.
And this is out of out of all the people
we can thank in Australia. As we're gonna see the
Australian battalion of the stuff. They want you to know.
I don't like battalion. This a little militant Australian battalion
(35:37):
there see. Maybe that's what it was, so that you
can have a rhyme with it. Um and if I
say our Australian friends, I sound like a spy. Look
are all our fellow conspiracy realists in Australia were hip
to this and some of the first people to tell
us about it. I want to shout out specifically our
long time listener and dear into the show, Simon Workman.
(36:02):
Uh Simon, actually yeah yeah, Simon also reached out and
hip this to this because Simon is awesome, So thank you. Simon.
Taste in music that very much so audio file with
no limit. So Simon, if you're hearing this, we're big,
big fans. Of yours, man and hope you're doing well.
(36:22):
So with thanks to Simon and everybody else, like literally
dozens and dozens and dozens of people who sent us
to this story, we can finally say it. The identity
of the mysterious Sumrton Man appears to have been revealed.
Through very clever work and with dday technology primarily researchers
(36:45):
have finally solved the case. For brief recap for anybody
who doesn't know this case, the Summerton Man is a
corpse and it's also called the tom im Shut case.
We covered this real years ago a couple of different
times and a couple of different ways, because up until
(37:07):
now the case seemed incredibly difficult to solve. There was
a lot of tantalizing stuff there that implied tradecraft to
pay on how you interpreted it. And then there was
a lot of uh stonewalling, like not an active cover up,
just you couldn't find enough to get to the next step. Uh.
This body was found on December one on Somerton Park
(37:31):
Beach and could not be identified, identifying things that would
have been useful for investigations at the time were gone. Uh.
It's called the tom On shut the case because of
the Persian phrase tom unshut, which means is over or
is finished. Uh. And it was printed on a scrap
of paper in the in a pocket of the guy's
(37:54):
pants and had been torn from the final page of
the Rubaiyat. So true, I'm tantalizing. Mystery possibly espionage related,
many many theories over the years from two thousand and two.
But as you pointed out folks very recently, a guy
named Derek Abbott from the University of Adelaide. Part of
(38:17):
my pronunciation there, Aussie friends, please tell us how to
pronounce these towns. We all know Melbourne, we got Melbourne right,
but Adelaide I'm stumbling over anyway. So Abbott says that
they found the identity of this person. It is Carl
Webb Charles to his friends, an electrical engineer and instrument
(38:37):
maker born in Melbourne in nineteen o five. They found
this by using DNA sequencing. Uh. And the way that
they did the DNA is also really interesting because they
didn't take it directly from the corpse. They took it
from like a plaster death mask. And you guys, like
(38:59):
I think we all were members some of this uh,
some of the ins and outs of this thing. Professor
Abbott has been working on this since March of two
thousand and nine. Uh, and he he found things like
assumptions police had made in the case. He found different
(39:20):
ways to look at objects that were found with the body,
such as particular brand of cigarettes or excuse me, the
cigarette packet itself was a cheaper brand, but there were
nicer cigarettes inside, right, curious or and curious or I
mean I remember just all this speculation about him being
a spy because of little details like that. I mean,
the cryptic message that was as you mentioned, was found.
(39:43):
But then just to take cigarettes that are better and
put them in a cheaper pack. Why would you do
that unless you're trying to blend in in some way
or trick people into thinking you don't have as much money.
There's just so much speculation there. Yeah, And also of
course things tags torn from clothings you can't really identify
(40:03):
the brand, um all all sorts of stuff about the autopsy.
So he has been since two thousand nine, He, being Abbott,
has been trying to get like the body exhumed. Law
enforcement and the professor and his team kind of met
in the middle and the police eventually gave Abbott strands
(40:23):
of the man's hair that would have been trapped in
a plastered death mask the police made of the summer
to man's face in the nineteen forties when the body
was discovered, and then he and his team worked to
build out a family tree. So they had the DNA information, right,
(40:47):
but your genetic identity does not come with the things
human society puts on you, like a name. You know,
you don't. You don't have uh Jack or Keebler or
Simon Workman in your d N A. That's just what
everybody has agreed to call you. And so they did.
They had this DNA and that's a really unique thing
(41:09):
to have, right, But now they have to search the field.
And so they had already kind of had the name
Web in there. They've already clocked it because as they
were trying to get this DNA information, they had already
built out this family tree of four thousand different names
and possibilities, narrowing it down to this Web character who
(41:34):
had always been interesting to them. Because this guy, Charles Webb,
did not have a date of death on record, they
they were able to track down a first cousin three
times removed on his mother's side, they say. And July
twenty three this year, they matched DNA from one of
(41:55):
those tested decades old hairs, more than half a century
old airs, and they matched it to one of Webb's
distant living relatives. So the odds against it, the odds
against it not being Webb, are enormous now, right, it's
pretty much pretty clear that this is the guy. For
(42:17):
a lot of people, this investigation satisfies their belief or
you know, satisfies their burden of proof. But why do
we say it's an asterix it's a mystery solved asterix
in the beginning? Well, it's because, um, knowing who the
person is is huge and hopefully very worthwhile closure for
(42:38):
the family. But we don't really know what he was doing. Right,
Like if you if you saw a mystery person who
was dead in your neighborhood, in your street, and the
police investigated and they said, oh, yeah, it turns out
this guy's name is Patrick Flanagan. Okay, case closed. Uh,
(43:00):
you would probably still like say, well, why was he
here though? Did he die? Yeah? How did he die? Why?
Why does why did he have a horse saddle and
a riding crop with him there are no horses around here,
you know, like all this weird stuff. Yeah, there's something
interesting in the CNN article that at least that's how
(43:21):
I found out about this. Ben Abbott mentions that if
this person Web is in fact the Somerton Man, that
that person that they've identified Web really like to bet
on horses, right, And they're like, they're thinking that that
has something to do with why that stuff was there.
And the remember the weird letters or like the codes.
(43:44):
It looks like code or something, but it was just
strange letters. There were some of them were marked out.
They're thinking that has something to do with horse bedding.
M MT it's it looks like mt B I AM
P A N E T p mm hmm what what
what could these be? Tend name? Yeah, I would just
(44:05):
think it would be more numerical if it was like
keeping track of races and wins and losses or horses
names or something. There's another one that says like m
L I A B O like none of these and
maybe it's yeah, you're right, maybe it's some kind of
cipher that like to keep his secret sauce a secret
or something. I don't know. And what if the secrecy.
What if the secret sauce was just you know, the
(44:28):
horses he was planning on betting on they don't want. Yeah,
that's that could be. Maybe there's extra letters or it's not.
I don't know, it's that there's there's it's all capital letters,
there's no I don't know what the code would be.
But who knows. Oh, the body was, by the way,
eventually exhumed in May of one, so they did. They
(44:51):
were at this point going entirely just on the death mask.
The hair from that does seem to be the proof.
So with this, you know, one of the questions we
have to ask now is how solved this? This? What
was Somerton doing? According to conclusions that we can see
(45:12):
and in things like that CNN article, the idea is
that he was not in fact a spy, as tantalizing,
as interesting as that is. Instead, he was a guy
who died one day alone on a beach. If that
is you believe the official conclusion, because it's it's hard
to close the door on that for a lot of people,
(45:35):
you know what I mean, it's true select the guide stones.
If we know the real story, mystery is all gone, right, Yeah,
I think we unfortunately have a relatively plausible answer for
that one. That's not a particularly good dude, but you know,
it is what it is. Well. It's also it reminds
(45:55):
me of the time I was talking to Bigfoot investigator
who eventually said gave me the strong impression that they
didn't actually want big Foot to be found for them
most kind of about the journey. You know, certainly I
subscribe to that. I mean, you find got a regular feet,
that's kind of a letdown. He's like a racist, what
(46:20):
do you what do you find? Or he's insufferable about something.
He's one of those he's one of his well actually people,
or he's oh god, yeah, I I don't know. Maybe
that's it. Maybe we're all better not meeting Bigfoot, because
you know they say never meet your heroes, right, But this,
this does show us something really important. This is what
I wanted to end on. I think it's a point
(46:41):
that we can maybe all appreciate here and something we
can take away from uh this story. So one, especially
now and going forward, mysteries that were once considered unsolvable
are no longer impossible to crack. Summer to man, the
original night Stalker or the e. A. R. As he
was also called, was found uh. And then we can
(47:04):
secondly say that because humans are the stories they tell themselves,
it can be easy to fall into the most exciting
explanation even when that's not the case, because people like
exciting things. People don't like being bored. Right, So this
(47:25):
is this is an example of hard work and investigation
that just followed the truth, did not try to impose
a narrative, right, or a lack of a better word,
a sexier ending to the story. So thank you to
Professor Abbott and the team. Thank you again to everybody
who reached out to us regarding this. I can't wait
(47:47):
to hear from you. Hope all is well down under,
and perhaps most importantly, I want to hear your ideas
about other so called unsolvable mysteries that you think may
be solved in the future. What are they? Hopefully they're obscure.
Hopefully there's stuff we haven't even heard about on the show.
(48:08):
Can't wait to hear from you. Thanks of course to Simon,
Thanks to everybody wrote it in about Somerton. Thanks to Jack.
Thanks to you Keebler for that disturbing dystopian cookie of
smart surveillance. If you want to take a page from
their book, then why not. The time is now contact us.
We try to be easy to find online. That's right.
(48:30):
You can find us on Twitter, you can find us
on Facebook, and you can find us on what's it
called the youtubees that' said we exist in all of
those places at the handle conspiracy stuff on Instagram where
conspiracy stuff show. If you don't like social media, why
not consider giving us a phone call like Jack did.
By the way, Jack's full moniker is Jack Kelly, And
(48:53):
I really thought Jack was just giving us his full name.
Then I realized it's an always sunny reference, and I mean,
dam Jack Kelly. I'm a lawyer. We're talking about big feet.
We should be talking about big hands, right Jack? Seriously, Yes,
you can give us a call, just like Jack. Our
(49:13):
number is one eight three three st d w y
t K. It's super easy. You've got three minutes. Give
yourself a cool nickname. We don't care what it is.
Say whatever you'd like. We do ask that you include
whether or not you give us permission to use your
name and voice on the air. Really, that's it. Those
are the only rules. Unless you've got more to say
(49:33):
than can fit in that three minutes, because in that
case you should instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they
(50:01):
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heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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