All Episodes

September 12, 2022 57 mins

Turtles and turkeys attack humans. Kangaroos overrun a small Australian town. A man in Japan loses his hologram wife when a company stops supporting her software. Out in space, NASA's ambitious DART program aims to alter the direction of a near-Earth asteroid. All this and more in this week's Strange News. They don’t want you to read our book. They don’t want you to see us on tour.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

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 My Heart Breeding. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
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 the stuff they
don't want you to know. It is the top of
the week. We are verging into autumn, the great fall

(00:47):
uh and it is honestly great. It's like our favorite
time of the year. But the news keeps coming and
you will be surprised, we hope, by some of the
things we found today. Now, obviously there are a lot
of stories in the West that are rightly taking up
a lot of national attention, the ongoing scandal at Mara Lago,

(01:08):
the ongoing war in Ukraine. But the point of our
weekly Strange News segment is to establish that a lot
of other stuff is happening all the time and it
just doesn't get reported. Animals are taking over cities again
like they did in the pandemic we talked about that. Remember, Uh,
there are of course turkeys are still jerks. Uh. There's

(01:30):
a lot of crazy stuff going on in space, real stuff,
not weird sci fi stuff. People are having rocky romances
with holograms. Uh. And nowadays you can't even trust turtles.
Maybe we start there home. What happened? I mean, to
be fair, I guy, remember the whole. I think it
was pretty much debunked, the notion that during the pandemic,

(01:53):
the height of lockdown, because like people weren't driving as much,
there was like less pollution and all of a sudden,
like the way hills and the dolphins were returning, you know,
to the shores of our fair lands. You know, this idea,
there was some sort of like nature is curing itself.
This is like a natural reset. Things weren't less bad,
but you're right, it was. It was exaggerated. There were

(02:16):
really like going into townships pretty frequently. But but nature
operates on such a slow scale you would need more
than a temporary pause. Yeah, and you know, turtles kind
of have a bad rap of being I mean, not bad,
a rap of being slow as well. You know, the
whole the tortoise and the hair slow and steady wins

(02:37):
the race and all of that. UM never really thought
of turtles other other than the snapping variety or what
is it toko and raisor tokey and raisor from turtles
to the secret of the use. That was pretty scary turtle.
I think he was used from a snapper. UM that
really thought of it as being particularly aggressive or the

(02:58):
terrible terrifying, Like I love animals and they are monstrous
nasty bookers several times. Yeah, really we've tangled with the turtles.
I didn't know that. I didn't know were you wearing
that hat at the time, because I want to see
that footage. Well, you don't talk about the hat for us,

(03:22):
just for us, we're just not addressing it where we're here.
You have to use your imagination anyway. Yeah, but it
turns out turtles are real, real cranks, uh, and some
of them at least this one particular turtle in the
beautiful crystal blue ocean waters of the the Goosey Laba
Resort and Antalia, which I believe is in Turkey. Um,

(03:46):
it's taken on some real Jaws type vibes. Uh. A
A Russian pensioner UH named Lydia basarovat four, Um was
apparently nearly dragged to a watery grave by this turtle. Um,
who we're gonna call uh beak. Okay, we got Jaws

(04:10):
the shark. This turtle is beak and it's not snapping turtle.
And before this lady sounds silly, it's a really big turtle.
To it's big, big, old like like galapago. Sian. Oh,
I like that. We're type of type of beasts. Um.
But yeah, so this woman was having a nice swim
and said, crystal blue waters and the resort and uh,

(04:31):
all of a sudden was was grabbed by the leg
and and and bitten about the hips, legs, buttocks and
fingers and dragged, you know. She says. I wasn't expecting anything.
I was really close to shore, some three or four
meters when I just turned onto my back and lay
like this. Then something grabbed my backside. It was really scary.

(04:54):
I didn't know what it was that suddenly grabbed me. Um.
I was beating about the water with my arms. I
was rownings total Spielbergian territory. Here the creature let me go,
only to grab me with an even stronger bite. I
don't know how long it lasted and uh yeah, apparently
the theory is um that she was attacked by a
caretta corretta so nice they named it twice or you

(05:19):
know the opposite of nice. Really Uh. It is a
carnivorous sea turtle. One of your favorite words been logger
head a logger head sea turtle, which can also refer
to being obstinate, or when two people can't come to
terms with something, you're at logger heads. I wonder if
that has anything to do with the cantankerous nature of
this particular breed of turtle. Um. They can be as

(05:42):
heavy as a cow. And this reporting comes from the
Metro uh dot co dot uk by cn Elven giant
turtle tried to drag tourists underwater and attacked her at
holiday resort. Oh that's a that's a doozy of a headline.
There pictures here of the bruise. Is I mean serious,
serious nasty business? Um? Thankfully, Uh, some kindly passer by

(06:08):
came to Lydia's rescue. Um. A lifeguard named Mustafa sorry
rushed in and presumably you know, beat the turtle off,
uh says he rushed to me and started to yell
at the creature. I guess it switched attention to the
rescuer um and eventually it just decided lived to fight
another day and then crawled back into the sea. She

(06:31):
raced towards the shore, she said, only to find that
her rescuer his arm was broken. So, I mean this
is you know, this, this turtle really caused some havoc.
I was fighting my pain, she said, and my fear. Um.
She described it as being absolutely awful, and the bruises
are serious. She goes on to say, I'm not sure
I'll ever be able to get back in the sea again.

(06:55):
And apparently it was bruce so badly around her backside,
she described it that she's not able to sit down
for it for some time. Um. But here's the thing.
Is this an isolated incident? Apparently not? Uh Turkish professor
um expert of of turtle ology, one would presume. Uh
Professor memit Go Kaglu said that turtles, if they feel threatened,

(07:20):
um will in fact attack if if they feel humans
are threatening or invading their their living space. So yeah,
I guess this is just nature of fighting back and
saying get off my lawn, your tourists, you know. Apparently,
there are numerous cases of of bites being you know,
happening in the shallow waters every year. Um. According to reports,

(07:41):
there have been eleven separate turtle attacks in the area
over the past two years. But yet somehow the mayor
won't close the beach because you know, they got to
get sweet sweet tourism. Buck. It's it's it's right, it's
a josh reference. Um but um crazy right. You want
to tell us about your your tango at the turtle. Well,

(08:01):
these were different sorts of turtles and it was completely
my fault. Uh, the alligator snapping turtle, which is look,
a lot of turtles are docile, as any any expert
will point out, turtles don't usually go looking for a fight. Uh.
They will react if you are in their space, like

(08:23):
our experts said, if you're swimming unknowingly towards them, or
maybe in my case, you're walking through a shallow part
of a creek where the turtle is just chilling. Because
from the turtles opinion, and this goes for many wild
animals outside of apex predators, from the turtle's perspective, it's
sitting in its apartment and you're a giant busting into

(08:47):
its house, you know what I mean. So it's possible
that in this case with the Coretta Coretta, our swimmer
was just swimming by and act sentally went into its apartment.
Through comparisons, they're usually docile. They're not gonna like if
an animal seeks you out to kill you. However that happens,

(09:11):
it's probably not going to be a turtle. But there
is a scary story about a tiger in Siberia. God,
those things are impressive. A commentar on this uh, this
this post made a really good point saying it seems
the turtle was weekend slash, very old. Uh, this woman
was lucky she only got away with bruises. Their beaks
are enormously strong. I've seen them snapping large crabs in

(09:34):
half as if it were a chicken egg. The fingers
would be bitten off with no effort at all. Um,
So that's something to consider there too. Did you guys
hear about I saw this, I'm ashamed to say, and
I saw this on an Instagram. Real guys, but there
was get the news. This is what we evolved to.

(09:58):
I remember seeing this short video of a tiny little
tortoise about the size of a foot like a size
twelve shoe. Um a tortoise though that was really angry
at black shoes. And what it would do is anytime
anyone wear black shoes near it, it would put it.
It would put its head back into its shell and

(10:20):
head butt like like viciously head butt the black shoe
in front of it to attack it. But then if
you put a gray shoe or a white shoe or
any other colored shoe, it was fine. But as soon
as the black shoe showed up, it went into attack mode.
It was just like pomp. What about other black objects? Like? No,

(10:40):
I don't know what the situation is. All I know
is that the turtle doesn't like dark, like really dark
things in front of it, almost like maybe it's some
kind of fear mechanism that gets triggered. But fascinating stuff
you can read about it. The turtle's name I just
found it on It looks like mirror dot code at UK.
The tortoises name is Tommy Shelby. I would like to

(11:03):
to to redeem tortoises and turtles, uh, which are different,
because we have we're giving you some cases of when
turtle time goes wrong. I would like to shout out
the tragic story of the world's oldest tortoise, whose name
is Jonathan. Jonathan is like more than a hundred and

(11:27):
eighty years old. He's around a five years old, maybe six,
I can't remember. Uh. He is the oldest living tortoise,
and he's one of the oldest living animals on land.
I'm sure. Uh he has not reproduced because Jonathan is
not into female tortoises. WHOA, that's so progressive. Yeah. Uh,

(11:52):
if you want to quick read on it, gave Pilate
Poletti over at all. That's interesting. Dot com notes. I
think this article does a good job of noting that
it's probably a little hyperbolic to say Jonathan is quote
unquote attracted to the same sex. Uh. They actually scientists

(12:15):
can have a tough time figuring out the sex of
a tortoise, which I didn't know. So don't they have
some kind of one of those like dual purpose sex organs.
They have to either do a d N A test
to figure out the sex of Jonathan's type of tortoise,
a SHL giant tortoise. Uh, they either do a DNA

(12:37):
test or they have to look at very small differences
in the shape and size of the shell. Also, next
time around a turtle, they can feel stuff on their shell,
like if you tap on their shell or someone cuts
their shell. Yeah, they have the nervous system such that
they can feel it. So be nice to turtles if
you see one, you know, I know, like many outdoorsy kids,

(13:01):
I also would adopt them, put them in a shoebox,
you know, try to raise them, have some turtle friends.
T In m t had a big effect on that. Yeah,
but really just leave them alone. You know, they got
enough going on, you know. Um, I had manages before,
but but I think it's it's it's appropriate. Here. Some

(13:22):
radioactive clean up sites in the United States they call
them super fund sites. You know, they actually use the
wildlife around there to track the progress of the radioactive
clean up. UM. So they will actually tag these these turtles, uh,
and so they can find them, and then they'll collect
them and bring them back to the lab and like
you know, run their little click at the click meter

(13:44):
things on them, um, Geiger counters or whatever, and do
other tests and then uh get a sense of you know,
because they're living in that environment, of of how the
clean up is going. I always thought that was pretty interesting. So, uh,
you know, I wonder if any of those scientists have
gotten snapped. Um, certain as possible, but we tease something else.
You know, I think you'll love the set up. Just

(14:06):
we've got to set you up. So turtles not not bad.
Turtles are not bad dudes. Uh. And you also would
be angry if someone came into your apartment unannounced. However,
there's a funny story here. When we were previously on
on a tour and we're doing live shows, we happened

(14:26):
by Boston. Boston is a very let's call it specific city,
set in its ways and its opinions, and it's often
a divided city save for one thing. Everybody we met
in Boston literally everyone hated turkeys. Yeah, there's some some terrorists.
Uh s O B s these turkeys. Um. You know,

(14:49):
I've made no secret about the fact that I have
a bit of light phobia when it comes to birds
and turkeys. Just tick all the boxes. Man, they're soue,
We're unpredictable. They'll they'll just like, you know, freak out
and start flapping at you. They've got these terrifying weird
you know, maccab just like dangly red bits they're they're weird,

(15:11):
little scrunchy blue faces. Bother me. Um, they're fanned out tails.
You know, they're like peacocks, but like not beautiful. Okay,
maybe there's people out there to be like, well, no,
the tour of the Majestic Turkey is is okay whatever,
you know, that's people have had opinion. Stop it, Matt,
stop it. You think I don't see what you're doing.
Stop that. Stop that right down. So turkeys do, apparently

(15:34):
in Boston actively, they will actively try to punk people
on the streets, and they will fall out of trees
and they'll get mad at you if you're walking by,
just because you saw them. You saw how clumsy they were,
and they're embarrassed and they're angry. Yeah, an unrelated bird
case on that way. On my way back from the
doctor's office this morning, I saw a family of geese

(15:55):
crossing the road single file. Uh, totally irrelevant to any
of the plants. Thought that was funny. I didn't freak
me out because I was safe in my car. I
felt like it was on Safari or like driving through
Jurassic Park before the power went out. Um, so I
felt relatively safe behind the metal and glass of my car.
But I would not have felt safe if a turkey
fell out of a tree on me and just started

(16:17):
like going at me with this creepy little clause and
and beak. And that's exactly what happened to a man
um in Let's see, where is this in British Columbia
in Canada? A gang of turkeys? Like were they carrying
switch blades? You know? What are we talking here? A
gang of turkeys attacks British Columbia man on July twenty

(16:38):
is a little while ago, um, but still absolutely worth
worth mentioning um bit off his finger and broke both
of his hips in addition to you know, dolling out
severe you know, multiple severe lacerations. Um. The police of
this line and this this piece from the all Alder

(16:59):
gross are M by Jacqueline Gallano says police were told
that the birds in question have already been scheduled to
receive the death penalty for their crimes. According to a
Sergeant Barry Kennedy, Uh, it is not known if implicated
turkeys will be served at Thanksgiving dinner. That was really

(17:20):
cute keepe writing there, But yeah, man, can you imagine
what the chaos It'd be like one of those things
in the cartoon where you get dragged into the dust
cloud and then you kind of clraw your way out
and the turkey grabs you and pulls you back in
broken hips. No thank you. I would never be able
to to go outside again this happens to me. I
would be this is me now, guys as where I live,

(17:41):
you know, just on my on my on my computer.
Become a total shut in, like one of those one
of those Japanese super gamer shut ins. I'd be like
one of those guys, just like chip crumbs everywhere. It
would wreck me psychologically. But yeah, it's just a little
little bonus funny because the first story was from Turkey,
and this story is about a turkey in Canada. Um

(18:02):
am I crazy and and in my own or I
don't know. We're just being arrogant and thinking I could
take a couple of turkeys like the number. I feel
like you could do that right, like a couple of kicks,
go back down, cowards, coward and most people just haven't

(18:24):
fought wild animals, to be honest with you, the number.
The number is unclear, Matt. I mean you're talking about
a couple of turkeys. Sure, you know. Just thankfully you're
not afflicted with my with my condition, because I would
be psyched out so hard that I would just you know,
I don't know what I would do, um, but I
might go into fight or flight mode, or or fight

(18:45):
rather mode, and I might dole out some kicks, try
to hold my own. You're you're right, though they are
a load of the ground. Think about that. How they
even get to his hips. They had had to be
some hopping, you know, some some medium. They can't really fly,
but they can kind of waggle at you. I don't
know how they would have gotten to the hips. Must
have been a short man, but he had not unclear
how many we're talking, but the term gang was thrown around.

(19:06):
I'm just picturing they're wearing leather jackets and just striking
threatening pose and demanding the man's wallet before brutally beating him.
Possibly probably not though they were probably just a bunch
of turkeys, and it was a lot and scary, And
I don't know. It doesn't say how old the man was.
But if you slip and fall and you're you know,

(19:28):
above a certain age, I imagine breaking your hips is
probably much more of a danger. So I'm assuming it's
something like that may have happened. Yeah. Also hence maybe
his ability to not be able to fight back quite
as effectively. Perhaps he was infirmed. Anyway, lots to consider,
not a lot of detail around the story. But um yeah,

(19:48):
so they go a little too for uh animal reverse
animal cruelty um in this one. So we got another
cool animal story coming up in a bit. But for now,
let's take a quick break and here a word from
our sponsor and we'll be back. And we have returned

(20:10):
and bringing a couple of stories here because I wanted
to present a transition, and as people know, I historically
have a terrible time picking just one story because so
much stuff is happening. I'd like to hearken back to
the earlier statements I made regarding animals overrunning small towns

(20:31):
during the pandemic. What is occurring now in a in
a very small area in Australia could rightfully be called
a revolution throw a grown in their dock. I'm not
proud of that one either. And kangaroo revolution, I want
to I thought I thought you meant like a you know,
a sauce base of a sauce you would make a

(20:54):
revolution save that. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Now we're
gonna we're gonna work that went in at some point.
Watch us do that ten years later. Um. Yeah, So
here's what here's what surprised me. A lot of this
is coming from news dot com dot au. Recently, a

(21:16):
tiny town in Queensland found itself fighting off a horde
of kangaroos who were turkey level aggressive the animal, not
the country, and they don't know how many kangaroos are
actually part of this revolution. Uh. This town my room,

(21:37):
Australian friends, forgive my mispronunciation. That's m A a r
o o M. It is just south of a place
called Hervey Bay and it is really small. It's only
home to about two nineteen people. They are outnumbered by
the kangaroos. Now. The recent development has led to people

(21:57):
walking outside to their front yard and seeing nineteen or
so kangaroos hanging out waiting to fight them. Uh, if
you mow your yard, there will be fewer kangaroos there.
But if you don't mow regulars clockwork, then the kangaroos
consider it. There's turf. One town local, a guy named

(22:19):
Mark Sitaway. Mark I really want to meet you. He
pointed out that the kangaroo population had ballooned due to
environmental conditions. Just like if you live in an area
where there are a lot of antelope or maybe deer
or moose, then you know that their population can swell
given the right conditions. That's what happened in Australia recently.

(22:42):
There was this huge amount of torrential rain over the
last few years they had La Nina and the grass
just kept growing, which meant kangaroos were eating more. Kangaroos
are interesting animals for a number of reasons. But one
of the fascinating things about the kangaroo is that it

(23:03):
can pause it's uh pregnancy. It can can pause its
reproductive cycle and wait until conditions are right to create offspring.
And conditions were right. Mark said, they've multiplied because we
have provided a Sizzlers Morgan's board for them. Two things
to know they're apparently one there are sizzlers in Australia,

(23:24):
question number one for all of us. And also back
apparently one like Sydney as a goof. But just to
understand the reference, though a sizzler or a Western swizzler,
Sizzlers are. Yeah, they made to order steak bar steak buffet,
so yeah, they got like a salad bar. They've got

(23:46):
sides and stuff. But then you go to this you know,
like at a hotel kind of where they cut the
primer before you this when they actually pick your steak
and then they cook it for you. They have like
the stations, right. I love. You know, they're not consider
fine dining here in the United States, but I used
to love the place, Like the pepsi two sizzlers coke

(24:08):
would be Ryan's Steakhouse Family Steakhouse. Yeah, then that is
one of my favorite places on earth. Every Sunday after
church Ryan's Family Steakhouse. Boom. Love those after church meals,
Like here is your reward for sitting still while this

(24:28):
person lectured you. We used to go to a place
called the Old Country Buffet and Old was spelled like
like the days of old and it didn't make any
didn't really go with it. But by the way Sizzler
to their website, they're going through some pretty epic rebranding.
They're doing this whole county fair offerings, the cakes and

(24:53):
weird seasoned fruit, very shot. I would go to their
Kangaroo station I like buffet restaurants that have stations. It
feels organized. Maybe that's the kangaroo meat is the thing
you can eat. I've eaten multiple times. Is it frowned upon?
Is it's because now it's not? Don't think so. No,
it's not. It's not controversial to eat it. Uh for

(25:15):
more so than any other animal. The consumption of any
other animal flesh might be. But back to this story,
there are quite a few attacks with kangaroos in Queensland
and they're often when They often occur with a human
tangling with a male kangaroo that is being territorial or
that might have a mating display. In this little town

(25:38):
of Maroom, they have seen sixty to eighty different kangaroos
on any given day and they're mystified because the local
forest in this area cannot sustain the amount of kangaroos,
so they have to go into town to eat the
way that you would drive to a sizzler. I brought

(25:58):
it back. The other thing is that some people are
trying to feed the kangaroos, but that's just emboldening the kangaroos.
I'm keeping an eye on this because I think kangaroos
are a fascinating animal, and it's a nice segue. Uh.
Those kangaroos, by the way, are also trying to mate, reproduce,

(26:18):
live their lives, and they have to do it rue
to rue, the same way that humans have had to
have biological, physical, romantic relationships for quite some time until
it all changed. That's right. Segue segue in the segment
to a sad story that I think sets us up

(26:40):
for the future. You guys know about holograms, Yeah, you
know like them? Yeah yeah, yeahs yes, underrated show, At
least from my memory, nobody ruined that for me, So
there's pretty good. There's there's a sad story that ran

(27:01):
across that needs to be told, and it concerns a
man named Akihiko Condo. Four years ago, Condo got married
to the woman of his dreams. Her name a sun
A Miko. She was a hologram vocal Lloyd said the
voice library, Yeah, and it was using a voice synthesizer software.

(27:26):
This was the first virtual singer, as you pointed out.
But he recently became a widower at the young age
of thirty five, not because of irreconcilable differences between the
personalities involved, but because the software stopped updating. The company

(27:46):
that created and maintained the software canceled their service in
March of and uh, this poor guy condo was recovering
from this, but it took a long time. This is,
you know, from his perspective, the love of his life,
and he has not been able to interact with or

(28:07):
talk to his spouse what he sees as his spouse.
And this story gets a little creepy because a hologram
sixteen years old when they get married. Uh, they had
a big wedding in Tokyo, forty guests. And there is
actually there are actually a couple of terms for what

(28:28):
this is. The motivation, the psychological motivation for this is
something called fickty sexuality or FicT ophelia. It describes the
inclination of sexual or loving attraction towards characters or people
that do not exist, so bridging the gap between the

(28:49):
real and the imagined. The reason I wanted to bring
this story today is because it's easy for us to
laugh at it. Right. There are a few of us
who are probably chuckling, and you say, well, you know,
it's not that bad. You didn't lose a human spouse, Dude, right,
or you can always recover the software or make some

(29:10):
new version of it, but for him it will not
be the same, you know. Uh. And I think this
is an excellent opportunity for us to talk a few
minutes about whether this is a fluke, whether this is
a harbinger, not our pal Jordan's, but an actual harbinger
of things to come. And my question for those of

(29:30):
us listening along today, fellow conspiracy realist in the future,
would you ever consider a long term romantic relationship with
a computer with a piece of software with a hologram? Uh?
If so, and if you had a hot take about it,
just hit me on Twitter, Bimble and hs W. But

(29:51):
for now, I want to hear what Matt Noill have
to say. Well, Um, I'm a big fan of cuddles
and I'm just skeptic in how well, you know, maybe
there's gonna be some kind of cuddle tron nine thousand
that becomes compatible with you know, software programs. I mean,
maybe that would work, But if that wasn't, if that

(30:13):
didn't exist, then I'm not into it. I'm a big
fan of uh, of gentle caresses. I'll give him out
as much as I'll receive them. But I should like
receiving them. But my girlfriend, I love her to death,
she can only do those for about two minutes at
a time. Uh So I would I would love to.
I would love to have a separate side relationship with

(30:35):
the machine that can just do infinite gentle caresses. Um,
that's on the table, you know. I'd be totally open
about it, wouldn't look I mean, we we already have
so many relationships with machines. I mean, not to overstate
the case, but sort of the idea of like, does
the metaverse only exist if it's virtual reality. I think

(30:57):
that's the point that Facebook and Meta are kind of missing.
It's the metaverse is the Internet. We already have a metaverse.
We already have like things like Fortnite and uh and
and roadblocks and and Minecraft, you know, virtual environments. So
how is a relationship with, say, I don't know, just
a video game you know, or or anything that you
are interacting with that much different? Shut out in thirty

(31:22):
rock in Japan? What what was that? What was that line? Then?
Why is this pillow here? What? What? Why is this
standard here? Why is this chair here? Exactly? Because they're
attacks they're here to serve us here you love them.
There's such a sad line in this article. I'm sure

(31:42):
you saw this as well. Been um the one on
CBR dot com by Michael Cerna. Um, it's just the
image here. It's like the It's like the last shot
of a Black Mirror episode. It says. The thing is
still around, it just can't talk anymore. The AI part
is what lost the law the support, so he says.
While the projection of Miko can no longer respond to

(32:05):
his voice, Condo says he has continued to talk to
it and eats his meals with the now silent virtual
character facing him. Yeah. Yeah, and I was just about
to get to that there. This is a device. The
foundation of this is device that's called gate Box all
one word. It's about dollars us and it allows the user,

(32:28):
the owner, to interact with holographic fictional characters and have
something that feels like a chat. Although this is not
as advanced as Lambda, to be honest, the next step
is getting something like this with something like Lambda, and
this step after that is allowing it some sort of
physical form, right, tangible form. I mean this like a

(32:51):
series of canned response to this kind of or could
it adapt Like I'm just wondering what level of AI
were talking here, the level of AI. We're not super
clear on the sophistication on how close it can come
to mimicking a conversation, you know what I mean? Unlike Lambda,

(33:11):
if you asked me Kull what her thoughts were on
life and the nature of existence, you probably wouldn't have
as in depth and answer as Lambda. But you know,
you could say that about the comparison between almost any
too human beings. They're gonna have, They're gonna have different

(33:33):
uh levels of importance that they assigned to philosophy philosophical questions.
I also don't think we should necessarily judge people who
are experiencing this. I mean, the world, for billions of
people is ending every day and it's a very lonely place.
Some of some of our friends in the audience today

(33:54):
maybe going through some emotional turmoil. To me, the lack
mirror aspect of this is that society is approaching a
time where it will be possible to reproduce some version
of your loved ones mind after they had passed beyond
the mortal coil. And to me, that seems incredibly dangerous.

(34:19):
Just the power of grief is such a compulsion, you know,
beyond words. Um, I don't know if I could do it.
We've all the bleacher song was right, everybody's lost somebody, right,
But would you want to live in a world where
that person could come back? You know, you never had
to lose your grandmother, your spouse, your child. You would

(34:39):
have a hologram. Their activity on social media had been
uh analyzed, along with three emails, all their other digital footprints,
such that it could create a reasonable impression of them
to talk to you from beyond the grave. To me,
that that's really disturbing. But to some people that would
help them process their grief. What do you guys think? Yeah,

(35:02):
I think it could help you process grief. It's just
I don't know, man, slippery slope dude, Like it's a
way of like never letting go. It's a way of
never moving on. Yeah, that's what I would worry about,
getting trapped right, um in the in an illusion of
something that is that you're you're feeling a lot of

(35:24):
grief about and you're sad about constantly. Was leaky at
the gate Box website. As we've been talking here, I
didn't know that they're unveiling a new one, or they
did last year that is human sized, like a very
large version of the same small kind of Alexa sized
one that the person and that we're talking about today had.

(35:45):
They're offering new ones that are human sized. And you
just imagine putting that image of you know, a loved
one who's lost inside that box that you then get
to interact with and as you're saying, processing with that person.
It could be incredible, but it could also I don't
know something about there's something unknown or unseen when you

(36:08):
begin that process, you know, and then maybe it it
halts one psychological progress. I want to shout out Ben
Dooley and his Sako, you know over at the New
York Times, who wrote an excellent article about these related
questions that come up. Also want to thank the good

(36:28):
folks over at Futurism, especially Victor Tangermann who wrote an
excellent article about this. But most importantly, folks, before we
go to the ad break, I want to preemptively thank
you for reaching out and answering these questions. Would you
want an electronic version of your of your loved one
return to you in some way? Would that think make

(36:50):
things easier? Would that make them more difficult? Do you
believe that the idea of people falling in love with
holograms and software is legit? Is it's something that you
are skeptical of, or do you think it's some sort
of bio bigotry. Whatever it was that Blake Lemoyne called
opinions about Lamb Duck. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. Folks,

(37:12):
like it or not, it seems that we're increasingly approaching
a world where something like a ghost becomes reality. Will
pause here for a word from our sponsor, and then
we're going further into the future. I'm excited about this one.
All right, we're back and uh, we're gonna look to

(37:35):
the skies. Everybody, just go ahead and pause. Take a
moment here, Look up. If there's a ceiling there, well
you're you're gonna have to go outside. But if not,
hopefully you're seeing, you know, just the infinite expanse that
just keeps on going out wherever your eyes can see.
And here's the deal. There's a lot of stuff out

(37:58):
there that's just line around, really stinking fast, almost inconceivably fast.
For the physics that we're aware of on this planet.
Some of them are big, someone were really tiny, some
of them were just medium sized. But the ones that
are big are dangerous. We've talked about it on this
show before. Near Earth asteroids are one of the things

(38:23):
that will eventually wipe out a bunch of life on Earth.
They in the past. It will have it's we know it.
Uh So all we can do is prepare as much
as we possibly can in the event that we can
see one of those things coming at us in advance

(38:44):
and come up with a plan to take care of
it before we are taken care of by it. So
introducing DART, also known as double Asteroid Redirection Test. This is,
according to NASA, it's first plan a terry defense test mission.
There's a Guardian article you can check out right now.

(39:05):
It's titled NASA to crash three D and thirty million
dollars spacecraft into asteroid to see if impact can alter course.
Can check that out right now and the Guardian. There's
also a ton of writing about this on space dot
com and really any other outlet. You can just type
in DART asteroid d a R t asteroid and what

(39:25):
we're talking about here is going to occur in just
a few days from when you're hearing this on September
at seven fourteen pm Eastern time, you will be able
to witness everything we're about to discuss. So here we go.
Dart is a spacecraft that was launched on November. It

(39:47):
was launched from a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket and it
has been traveling extremely fast towards its target. It's this
thing called the Diddimos d I d y m O
S binary asteroid system. It's about six point seven million
miles away from Earth. That's eleven million kilometers and uh,

(40:08):
Didymus is very interesting. It is a binary asteroid system.
So you've got one primary asteroid that is just hurtling
through space, and then around it there is a smaller
asteroid called Dimorphos, and it is orbiting this asteroid. Uh,
it's really cool, and it's actually orbiting with if you're

(40:28):
looking at it from Earth, So imagine the camera if
you're watching this is Earth. Here is the larger asteroid.
The smaller one is orbiting this way, so it's passing
in front of the larger asteroid, which is very important
because that's the only way that we on Earth with
our sensors and telescopes can tell that it is in
fact a binary asteroid system. Super cool because you can

(40:52):
actually watch the brightness of that main asteroid kind of
get brighter and less bright as this thing is passing
around out that's going to come into play in just
a moment here. So what Dart is going to do,
you guys, is going to itself and it currently is
doing this hurdle through space until it reaches that smaller asteroid,

(41:15):
the one that's orbiting around the larger one, and it's
going to literally slam itself into di MorphOS And it's
a mission that Dart shall not return from. And whether
or not it's aware of that, who knows it is,
you know, robotic in nature, it's a program um, But
it is going to slam into that thing, and then

(41:36):
scientists are going to measure the brightness that we can
observe from Earth of the larger asteroid to see whether
or not that kinetic impact was actually able to change
the orbit of that smaller asteroid. Super cool stuff in
my opinion, guys, because it's a small, like first test
of what we would do if there was a giant

(41:58):
asteroid headed towards Earth. You know, there was going to
be a collision with Earth. Could we actually knock it
off of its trajectory enough to save ourselves? Practice again
before you play it for money, you know what I
mean exactly? And Japan is doing something really interesting around
this too. We should talk about the Higha Busa too.

(42:19):
I don't know why I'm actually Japanese themed in this
week's Strange News, but the Hia Busa too. It's a
project from Jackson, the Japanese Space Exploration Agency, to bomb
an asteroid Mr Show style see if they can create
a crater on it. Possible applications of that experiment of

(42:41):
successful include the future of mining in space, as well
as the hope that eventually humans can figure out how
to how to spin the cue ball to get the
trick shots they want and avoid you know, Earth getting smacked. Apparently,
Apparently a lot of videos of trick shots and stuff

(43:03):
on the Internet and on TikTok involved people in green
screen suits carrying the balls around. And that's all absolute malarkey.
People who do amazing trick shots and they're legit. If
you can see them in any town with a pool hall,
there's there's gonna be like one person and they're weird

(43:23):
about it too, man, Like they probably have their own,
uh pool queue. I know, I'm speaking to the crowd
here because we've got some pool sharks in the audience,
I bet. But have you ever like we have a
place called the Independent, which is a pool hall by
a local theater, and I love to go to the
pool hall and play a few games before going to
see a film. And I'm always impressed by these guys

(43:44):
who come in with their little like their little case right,
it's about maybe a foot and a half long, and
they open it up and they start screwing together thirds
of this of this pool stick like they're going to
kill the president with it or something. They bring their
own chalk in yeah, yeah, and they bring their own truck.
They're amazing. Like I'm sure they have nicknames like Dad

(44:05):
or I don't know, but yeah, can't be faked. But
there are a lot of people who legitimately do them,
so maybe we should be asking them NASA. Yeah, yeah, well, hey,
guys in the pool queue thing just made me think
of from the story about the kangaroos, I read a

(44:26):
phrase that I've never seen before, and some of the
reporting on that gel Blasters do you guys know the
jel blaster is I saw that too. I saw that
to lay it on us. It's a paintball gun. But
the nomenclature gel blasters all over Australia. I've never heard
of it before. I had either I thought such a name.

(44:46):
Yeah right, blast that gel you know, because people are
apparently using gel blasters, at least according to one source,
they're using jill blasters to fight off the kangaroos. Okay, well,
in this case, we're using a million dollar It's not
a satellite. It's a spacecraft. It looks like a satellite,

(45:06):
but it doesn't do any orbiting. It's just as shooting
directly at an asteroid. One particularly cool thing with this
is that there's a tiny little I guess it would
kind of be a satellite. Guess this another little spacecraft.
It's gonna get ejected or released from this dart spacecraft
just before impact, and it's got sophisticated camera system on

(45:28):
it where it's gonna observe the impact, so we can
actually have a visualization of what's occurring, can watch the
plume of dust that comes out whenever they hit. And
that's one way we're gonna look at it. The other
way is, as I mentioned before, scientists on Earth are
gonna measure that brightness and dimming that's going to occur
on that main asteroid. Uh And and it's a huge deal,

(45:51):
you guys. It really is a huge deal. There's so
much preparation that has gone into this single test, so
much technology is going into this single spacecraft just to
get it to be able to see the asteroid, because
it has to identify that small asteroid that remember is
going it's orbiting around this other large asteroid, and it

(46:14):
is traveling at three point eight miles per second. Think
about that, three point eight miles per second. That thing
is just zooming through the air. And then it's onboard
system has to identify the orbiting asteroid and calculate where
the orbit is going to be as it is heading

(46:34):
straight towards it and make a direct head on impact.
That's nuts. That's why it's three thirty million dollars because
you gotta figure that all that stuff out. Um. And
then I just keep thinking about in the future when
we have seen some of these asteroids that are somewhat
dangerous to Earth, because this one is not, by the way,
this this asteroid is poses no danger to Earth, that's

(46:58):
why they're testing it out here this region of space.
But when they do come, like, we have to be
prepared so far in advance, we're gonna need to have
these things sitting around, like nuclear missiles and silos all
over the planet just ready to launch in a quiver. Yeah,
it's scary, but it's also just the air the defense here.

(47:22):
I know a lot of people will hear about something
like this and think that it's a waste of money, right,
that's just another boon doggle. But it's tough for It's
tough for the people working on this project because nobody
wants to be the person who, when the asteroid hits says, ah, yeah,

(47:43):
my bad. Uh. I just thought three thirty million was
a lot. Yeah, which is normal people, but not the governments. Yeah,
and we definitely don't want to find ourselves in one
of those don't look up situations where we are, as
you said, Ben, testing out the tech on the day
the event today. Right. Um, I'll just give you a

(48:04):
quote that NASSA wrote here on its website about Dart. Quote.
While no known asteroid larger than a hundred and forty
meters in size, which is like the dangerous size has
a significant chance to hit Earth for the next hundred years.
Only about forty percent four zero percent of those asteroids,
the dangerous ones, have been found as of October. So yeah,

(48:31):
still hanging out flying around could be dangerous and we
don't even know they're there. Yeah, and the technology, at
least the technology that the public knows about regarding satellite destroyers, folks,
that's that's very impressive, and it's very good to shoot

(48:51):
little manmade things out of the sky, but it's not
enough to stop an asteroid. It would be like using
a ping pong ball to try to stop a speeding car,
you know what I mean. You can hit it, it'll
hit you right after. But yeah, exactly, you could even
blow it up into a hundred pieces, and those pieces

(49:12):
are still going to hit the planet. And it's not
good because the smaller Oh here, this is one of
the last I'm just reading two more quotes here from
the Guardian article. Uh, just again to give you the
scale and the danger. Here, the best known collision of
an asteroid or you know, a planetary body like that
and the Earth occurred sixty six million years ago when

(49:33):
a ten kilometer wide asteroid struck in the Yucatan Peninsula
of Mexico. That's the one that killed about seventy five
of all life on Earth, including those dinos that we
we love to hang out with their fossils. Um ten
kilometers wide, so huge, and it impacted and killed seventy

(49:54):
of the life on Earth. But not your ancestors, folks. Congratulations.
Somehow we were like, we're good, We're gonna climb out
of that primordial us. Baby. But then there's another one
that's mentioned by the article that occurred in February. We've
mentioned this one on the show before. The diameter of
this one was only twenty meters and it didn't actually

(50:18):
make impact with Earth. It exploded while it was flying
through Earth's atmosphere and it triggered a four hundred kiloton blast,
a huge blast, and it injured over fifteen hundred people.
So just think about that. It was only twenty meters
in diameter and it caused some serious harm. There's a

(50:39):
lot of space between those twenty meters and ten kilometers
and the things that are flying around. I don't know, man,
it's an existential dread. Josh Clark would would be happy
we're talking about this. He has a whole episode and
show about this. I think before Josh got to his series, uh,
The End of the World with Josh Clark, we did

(51:00):
a number of videos and articles about really dreadful stuff.
If you're scared of the asteroids right now, well you
should be aware of them, and you should hope these
experiments work. But you should if you really want to
be terrified, look into Gamma ray burst. There is nothing

(51:22):
that can be done if it happens lights out. There's
not even a way to anticipate that it will happen.
You will just be there one moment listening to a
show like this perhaps and gone the next. So make
it count. Yeah, everybody. You can order Kangaroo Meet online

(51:50):
at places like Fossil Farms dot com. That was that
was for you? A, Uh, they're not they're not spot
through this episode. Speaking of the end of the world
or just cosmic um, was it it where like the
world is like there's the world Tortoise or something like that. Yes,
and and then there's also like discworld where the where

(52:12):
the like the world is a disc balanced on the
back of a giant tortoise and an elephant other things.
I think. So the tortoise is matterin in the Stephen
King universe, and there's a great rhyme there from the
Dark Tower. It's like, see the turtle of enormous girth
on his shell, he holds the earth YadA YadA, YadA, YadA,

(52:35):
tortoise YadA YadA. By the way, no he didn't, but
but yeah, that's an old myth. Uh And I'm glad
you brought it up. Man. People have been trying to
figure out the architecture of the heavens since before they
called themselves people. With some successes, um, with some successes.
Here's the further successes and hopefully the dart is successful

(52:58):
and you can watch it on September again at around
seven pm Eastern time. You can check out NASA's website
to learn how to live stream it because you can
actually watch it live. NASA is doing a whole media
day on it, and actually I think the whole media
week or something learn all about it. But yeah, it's
gonna be interesting. I want to watch. I'm down does

(53:21):
good work. In the meantime, check out the James Webb telescope,
which is making some amazing images of the deep ink,
you know what. And when you're watching Dart, why not
try kangaroo Burger? Why am I shilling for kangaroo meeting
All of a sudden, I think it just skipped lunch.
But but Matt, thank you for bringing this story about

(53:41):
the future space in the future of humanity. It's it's
strange to understand that such large things so far away
could fundamentally change our lives and we wouldn't even see
them unless we did, and we shot a giant spacecraft
at him. Well, we've million dollar pulls there. We'll see

(54:03):
if the trick chat works. And uh, let's see what
you have to say about these stories, the future of
romance and technology. Animals that you have attacked or that
have attacked you in the wild. Hopefully you're not out
there in the woods just trying to start some stuff
with wild animals. But if that's your experience, tell us

(54:25):
about it. We can't wait to hear it. We try
to be easy to find online. Good luck with the turkeys,
Boston Boy, you'll need it. Um. You can find us
on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, and you
can find us on YouTube with a handle conspiracy Stuff
on Instagram, we are Conspiracy Stuff show. Hey, if you're
listening to this and you haven't pre ordered our book yet,

(54:46):
we ask that you do. Please would that be okay?
Have you ever paid for one of these episodes? Oh? Wait, no,
you have it because they're free. That's what's up. Just
show you up. I'm being silly, but really like, if
you want to support the show and you do enjoy it,
pre ordering our book is the best way to support
us and the crew here that makes this show every day.

(55:06):
So please do check out Stuff You should read books
dot com to learn how to pre order that book,
as well as how to see us live when starting
October eleven, when the book comes out, we're gonna be
going on a couple of tour dates. So again, stuff
you should read books dot com. Check it out. And
while you're checking stuff out, statistically speaking, you're probably checking

(55:29):
it out on your phone. Fun story, Uh, this may
be familiar to the technophobes and the audience. Phones have
a hidden function where you can pop in a series
of numbers like a special code, and you can speak
to someone or you can leave a message into the void.
We thought this was a nifty idea. It's a fad

(55:49):
that might catch on. We want to get in on
the ground floor, so why not join us. Give us
a call one three three st d w y t K.
You'll hear hopefully familiar message. You'll to beep like so
beep telling you you're in the right place. Give yourself
a cool nickname. Tell us what's on your mind. Second
most important thing, let us know if it's okay to

(56:10):
use your voice and or message on this recording. And
most importantly, don't censor yourself. Don't limit yourself. Don't feel
like you need to call seventeen times if three minutes
won't work, send us the full story, right it out,
Give us the links, give us the pictures, take us
to the edge of the rabbit hole. All you have
to do is send us a good old fashioned email.
Where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff

(56:49):
they don't want you to know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Matt Frederick

Matt Frederick

Ben Bowlin

Ben Bowlin

Noel Brown

Noel Brown

Show Links

RSSStoreAboutLive Shows

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.

Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.