A Cheer Mom creates deep fake photos in a revenge scheme targeting her daughter's rivals. The government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) ghosts the US, refusing the new President's attempts to contact them. Over in the US, the Texas Rangers promise to stop hypnotizing people -- in other news, Texas law enforcement has been hypnotizing people for about 40 years. All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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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 is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means it is time for strange news. We're seeing
(00:48):
a story that's kind of black mirror meets uh, bring
it on. I think yes, we're like keeping up with
the Kardashians or something. We're we're traveling to one of
one of the areas of the world that I don't
know about you but fascinates me the most big spoilers
(01:09):
and um, we've got a mesmerizing story from Texas. Uh
there where really right? So where should we begin? I
gotta tell you, Nol, I really liked the story you
brought because it touches on It touches on a trend
(01:30):
that we kind of predicted, but in a really messed
up way, don't you think, uh, in the most messed
up way. I mean, let's just start with like, you know, okay,
so the idea of deep fakes. We we've seen the
video of Tom Cruise like doing a magic check, but
it's not really Tom Cruise. Uh. I think we are
a lot of Tom Cruise related deep fake videos. I
think the first one that I saw that was like
(01:52):
the most mind boggling where I was like, oh God,
this is a thing that's gonna, you know, have legs.
Was it was like an appearance by Bill Hater on
a late show and his face as he as he
starts to do an impression of Tom Cruise and tell
the story about meeting Tom Cruise, face starts to morph
into Tom Cruise as he's doing the voice, and it's
just uncanny. But but but not uncanny Valley. That's the point.
(02:13):
I mean, it is a little bit, but it's like,
you know, it definitely has the feel of being pretty authentic,
even if you can tell there's something a little off
about it. But now with all these filters like on
Snapchat and Instagram, where you can you know, smooth out
all the wrinkles on your face or like make yourself
look like a magical pixie or soupin and that's more
(02:34):
like alternate reality. But it's starting to blur the line
between alternate reality and these deep fake videos. So there's
now like apps you know, used to be it had
it had to be you had to really know what
you're we're doing, requires immense processing power to do these
deep fake videos. Now you can literally get these like
face swap apps or you know one where you can
(02:55):
make your face appear on a character from a movie, um,
just by uploading the different components are picking from a
pool of you know, available clips or whatever. Um. And
you know, we've been talking from the start about how
does this affect trusting what you see in the news,
and the news already having been kind of maligned and
given this bad rap, but now it's like, is seeing
(03:17):
really believing? I mean, I think we all know that
that that can be a very dicey question, But it
seems like the first story that any of us have
have seen of this really kind of becoming oh god,
this is really could be a problem. Uh, it didn't
come from where we thought it would. Maybe I would
have thought it would have been maybe trying to smear
a politician or you know, a celebrity or some kind
(03:40):
of blackmail, you know, creating these fake videos. But it
turns out it was from an absolutely unhinged uh what
I believe is referred to as cheer mom. So a
mom like a dance mom. You know, it's kind of
a psycho helicopter stage parent for dancers, you know, cheer
moms or that very same thing for cheerleaders. Uh. And
(04:03):
this particular cheer mom in question, um is named Raphaela Spone. Uh,
great name from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and uh, she's fifty years old,
should definitely know better. Surprised she got ahold of However,
however she did this unclear? Um, But like we said,
now it's been much more amplified. So what she did
(04:24):
was in order to smear or you know, have ejected
from the cheer squad her daughters to like rival cheerleaders.
Cannot imagine what that would consist of, right, Like, maybe
they didn't get along, maybe I don't know, who knows,
Maybe they were outshining her daughter in some way unclear,
(04:44):
but she uh using something some kind of deep fake
apple or technology, or maybe she hired someone to do.
It took these two young women and superimposed their faces
from social media videos onto other bodies that were smoking vapes,
(05:05):
vaping um. Some of them were nude uh, and some
of them were drinking so um. There's one video of
the vaping that you can see, and the reason you
can see it is because one of the young women
actually came forward, named Maddie him who was sixteen. This
happened about a year ago or a little less than
a year ago, and it's just now kind of coming
(05:25):
out and hitting the press. Um. But she was. She
appeared on Good Morning America uh and told the story
of literally seeing this video that was texted not only
to her and her parents, but to the coach directly.
Um also with veiled suggestions that she kill herself out
(05:50):
of shame, like to I don't know, to save face
or something. It's you know, like, Harry, carry yourself because
this you've you've brought shame on your family. But to
to hear this this young woman, Maddie, uh, Hi'm kind
of react to this on Good Good Morning America. She's
literally like, I'm seeing this video and I know it's
not me, but it is me, and I don't think
(06:13):
anyone's gonna believe me. She was genuinely concerned. Um and
and thankfully her mom did believe her and told her
she would call the police. UM. And they did call
the police. And they also texted the number back. Big
clue here, like texted the number back and got an
auto reply UM, indicating that it was some kind of
spoof spoofing system like a like a the telemarketers might
(06:36):
use to send auto texts for ads or whatever, or
to you know, mask a number so they can do
an auto call like a robot call. UM. The police
were able to trace it back to the IP address
of Raphaela Spoon, and she's in a lot of trouble.
I believe she's been charged with something in the neighborhood
(06:59):
of like menacing, you know, youths, like corrupt. I don't know,
Like I'm trying to think of what she's got Three
counts of cyber harassments child menacing youths, misdemeanor cyber harassment
of a child. Yeah, what are the misdemeanors? No child
pornography though, or a better way to say it would
(07:22):
be stop being charged with depictions of abusive children or
you know, underage stuff like that, and that gets us
to a very weird area which is going to be
I think, increasingly disturbing and important as the months and
years continue, which is, if she is making things depicting
(07:43):
these children nude, then does she fall under various sex
offender laws, right? Or does she fall under those, you know,
the various laws that are specifically meant to combat that
kind of um, that kind of imagery. I don't I
don't see her being charged with that right now. Uh
three counts of harassment, cyber harassment, menacing a child, two misdemeanors. Um.
(08:11):
But I think this is I think you're right. I'm sorry,
trying to step back. There are a couple of things
to address. I think you're I think you're right. This
is something that as the technology is democratized, is just
going to become more and more common. And I wonder,
like what becomes what becomes the mark of authenticity? Is
(08:31):
there like a water mark that people have or some
equivalent of that, a pixel? I don't know. Yeah, it
has to be like especially when it comes to like
you you know, with this as well, but with things
like official news, you know, I mean so many, so
much footage is released, and whether it's like, let's say
it's a t M footage or it's like you know,
blurry in the first place, and so it's already kind
of compromised in a little dicey you introduced this angle
(08:54):
into it, and that kind of you know, low res
quality of the kind of footage that will get broken
as breaking news, you know, Um, it can be even
more misleading. So there absolutely has to be some sort
of chain of custody. Maybe we do it through the blockchain,
you guys, how about that? Uh, let's kill some more rainforests.
I'm kidding, it's I'm only just now starting to realize
(09:15):
how dangerous blockchain technology is and how horrible for the
environment is every one of these little But there are
ways that it does verify ownership and authenticity and chain
of custody. Um. But there's got to be something like that,
you know, where you can genuinely know the footage you're
seeing is authentic. Um, whether it's an origin you know,
(09:37):
watermark like you said, from when it was initially created,
that can't be. But I don't know how, I don't
know what that looks like. And surely there'd be a
way around that too. Um, but yeah, it's this woman,
I mean just looks like a real piece of work
and her I mean not the mug shots are the
most flattering images anyway, but she is just like a
dead eyed, thin lipped, very severe looking woman. I don't mean,
(10:01):
I mean I see darkness in her eyes. Let's just
put it that way. I I feel you like I'm
hesitant to um. I don't like the exploitative nature of
a lot of mugshot stories I would call them. But
from what I understand, the circumstances of events are pretty crazy.
Philly Inquirer has one person saying the parent of one
(10:24):
person saying that this harassment began because he and his
spouse told their daughter not to hang out with spawn's
daughter and that they were concerned about this kid's this
other kid's behavior. And then the mom kind of like
went straight from cold war to nuclear level harassment. I mean,
(10:49):
how did she how did she think this was gonna
play out? How? How would you legitimately think you would
not get caught doing something like this? You know what
I mean? That was I think I've mentioned on the
show before YouTube channel that I really like called Internet Today,
and they do a segment each week called Weekly Weird News,
and they did a segment on this, and um, I
(11:11):
love those guys. But they they made a joke that, well,
if she'd only used express VPN, you know, she uh
might have gone away with it, um, because you know,
they did ultimately trace it back to her IP address.
So I don't know, Ben, I mean, I think it's
likely she could have gotten away with it if they
hadn't have been able to trace back. But she tried
to cover her her tracks by using this phone spoofing
(11:32):
and it was a pretty elaborate to do. But her
lawyer does say she denies it unequivocally and that she's
been receiving death threats and is trying to paint her
as the victim, which is what lawyers do. So obviously,
you know, obviously innocent until proven guilty, but um, it
doesn't doesn't bode well. The facts are a lot of
smoke here and feeling like there's probably some fire. Well
(11:53):
that this one I want to bring up. She she
absolutely is innocent until it's proven beyond the shadow of
a doubt that she's guilty or she pleads guilty in
a court of law. Right, So I just want to
bring up the counterpoint, and I know it's uncomfortable, and
I don't you know, I do. I don't know how
how to have this conversation without being told I'm victim
(12:14):
blaming maybe or something. But you tell me, guys, there's
the there is a possibility that some of the images
were real and the girls were very embarrassed that they
were being released. And again this is me painting a
uh you know, drawing a picture from nothing and not
(12:35):
knowing anything. Got it, just saying like if I if
I was putting myself in their position and some embarrassing
photos came out of me while I was in especially
in high school, in the time when your reputation means
so much, when your reputation level is one of the
things that keeps you in the thing you love, in
this case cheerleading or you know my case, band or
(12:56):
theater or whatever. But just I'm imagining if images like
that out, it could be really damaging to me, right
so well, specifically scenario, there could be a scenario where
one or more of those images were real, and you know,
somebody was putting them out, putting those images out and
(13:18):
for you know, for whatever reason, but it was coming
from that same IP address. So how did the detectives
then analyze it, because they're the ones who ultimately said
that these were deep fakes. Yeah, and I'm I I
suppose I don't know what the actual analysis was, what
it looks like, and what those conclusions like. We're how
how how tight those conclusions are. Maybe they're completely like, yes,
(13:44):
these are all deep fakes and they came from this
i P address or maybe the I think these are
all valid points. Um. And I think it's not like
drinking or you know, entering into sexual activity or vaping
is like some outlandish, you know, cancel worthy behavior from
(14:04):
like you know, uh, teenage girls. Like it's it's certainly
a real thing. I mean, vaping and drinking, underage drinking
and all that is is absolutely rife, uh in in
high schools. But you're right, it is a it is
a question of one's reputation. I mean the articles, the
reporting that I've seen on it is only in a
handful of places. Um, the Pennsylvania Uh, let's see, it's
(14:26):
actually the Daily Mail picked it up. Of course, it's
just as a sexy headline. Um. They picked up on
the story when when Mattie him went on television. Uh.
So then you have one from Fox News and one
from ABC. Uh, and then there's like, you know, the
original reporting came from uh Philadelphia. But yeah, it does
(14:49):
say that the investigators determined that the videos were deep
fakes using images from the girls social media accounts. Yeah.
So again, if you've got the original and then the
deep fake, and you're actually analyzing those two photos and
you can determine that, yes, this was reused. Right, It's
(15:10):
just for me. It feels like a Florida man thing,
right where you just get that early, that early statement
that this person is accused essentially of this thing. Um,
and those the laws are tremendously classist, like the legislation
is going to have to be changed advised extensively as
(15:32):
we enter this new era. I do want to shout
out a really clever thing that I learned about for
for differentiating, uh, between deep fakes and the real McCoy.
If people still say the real McCoy the genuine article,
you know what I mean. But you're bringing it back
then thanks man. Well we'll see, we'll see. Uh. There's
a thing called fake Catcher, which is a tool that
(15:56):
has an accuracy rate of a little bit over telling
whether a video is fake or is the actual article
it purports to be. And they do this by measuring
a subtle difference in skin tone, which is caused by
get this, the human heartbeat. So every time your heart beats,
(16:20):
your skin changes color just a little bit. That's really freaky.
I think we just if someone's listening to this and
they're looking in the mirror, we might have just messed
with their day. Oh yeah, do you remember the tech
we talked about it before. I think it was tech
for baby monitors that was specifically using that, and it
was to they could alert if your child was in danger,
(16:43):
especially when at the very early months of you know,
bringing a new baby home. It was using a camera
I think infrared, maybe not infred, but to be able
to see just below the skin to see that pulse,
just to make sure you could always monitor that that
child is, you know, the heart was beating. And that
sounds weird and a little weird, but I can imagine
(17:05):
using that for the same reason. At a little more
info on the nudes the quote unquote nudes. Uh the
District Attorney um for Burke County, uh Wine Troube is
his last name and his yeah, Matthew Wine Troube. He
said that the nudes were quote somewhat imprecise uh in
(17:26):
the videos the victims. It was clearly originally videos or
images of the victims in bikinis that were then digitally
removed and overlaid with stick skin toned bars, which absolutely
would have triggered your apple. You're talking about their um
ben So yeah, he says, quote it would It would
seem the intent was to make it a peer nude
(17:48):
with no obvious genitalia. Described it as a Barbie doll
like effect, and and the intent was to slut shame
quote this is this is his words the victims. Um.
He said that the reason that she was not given
more serious charges was because it wasn't like kind of
was a botched job. Hence the non no child pornography
(18:12):
or you know, sexualization of of miners or what have you,
because it was just so blatantly bad and and obvious. Um,
so there you go. She dodged that bullet, then you
know what I mean. But still say she could get
six months, but very unlikely. This, I mean, this is
(18:33):
just a terrible story for the kids involved, I think,
and it was I was trying to bring it on.
Is that cheerleading movie? Right? I think you to the
right one. I think there's a couple of sequels to
but yeah, that's the one with what's her name from
her interview with the vampire. I always still think it
was a little yep yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, which
I mean as a compliment totally. He's also great in
(18:56):
the Fargo TV series. I believe season two typically Iceberg
for this stuff fellas you know, really uh and and
think of if a cheer mom could do this, um
using an app or whatever. I mean, think of what
people with really advanced technology could do, uh to to
to ruin people's reputations. But I guess it's good that
(19:17):
we're all kind of collectively aware of this stuff. Um
and And it started off so innocuous, as like a
cute little internet trick, but now you know, you're really
starting to see the true dark side of it, and
you know you can only go downhill from here. My
question is how often has it already happened? You know
(19:38):
what I mean? That's the next question. An article in
the Washington Post actually that profiled this very early on,
UM had a fascinating quote from a University of Virginia
law professor named Danielle citron Um, whose area of researches
and digital harassment, free speech, and privacy um and made
(20:00):
the you know, let's just say, the first place stuff
like this is probably gonna pop up is in porn, right,
so you get like fake celebrity porn. That was always
like a thing with like photoshop, always blatantly obvious, you know.
But this professor noted that the deep deep fake sex
videos are becoming a thing, um, whether it's to you know,
(20:21):
target individuals or to try to blackmail them, or you know,
potentially for like the purposes of you know, entertainment. Um.
And they're getting better and better is what is what
the comment is and and and there's a quote here,
um from this researcher saying, quote, it's like an arms race.
(20:41):
Pretty soon the dark hats are ahead of the white hats,
and we can't tell which is real. Um. So that's
that's kind of where we're at. Uh And and also
notes the fact that it's gotten very user friendly, their
YouTube tutorials for how to do it, their phone based apps,
the barrier for entry for this kind of stuff is
lower than it's that a bet, and it's just gonna
keep getting lower. So yeah, I'm gonna keep an eye on,
(21:05):
but not necessarily trust your eyes when they're on it.
That's what we need is some sassy justice. Hopefully they'll
come around soon. Uh yeah, for sure. So let's take
a quick break, um and hear are worth from our sponsor,
and then come back with some more strange news. And
(21:29):
we are back, and we are jumping over to a
little combo of Newsweek and the BBC. We're going to
use the BBC's headline though here it is. You ready
for it? North Korea not responding to US contact efforts ghosted?
Did we get ghosted? The Newsweek headline is Kim Jong
(21:52):
un ghosts US as Joe Biden's North Korea shake up looms.
It's unfair for me to say that, because you know,
I'm all over this man. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know.
The headline alone is a little bit scary for those
of you new to the party. Here. Um, we've discussed
extensively North Korea's interest in nuclear technology, nuclear weapons. We've
(22:17):
discussed a lot of their practices in the past, some
of the horrific things that have gone in gone on
there from stories of people who have escaped, also just
the the fascinating political and socio economic situation of everyday
citizens there in the DPRK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
(22:38):
And in this case, we we had a changing of
the guard in the US right when when President Joe
Biden stepped in, President Trump stepped out, and generally with
with any country, well again, like Ben, I kind of
just like I just want to talk with you about
I just want to hear you talk about it. But
(22:59):
I'll put it in my understanding. Generally you want to
have a touch base with your friends and your enemies
when you've got a changing of the guard like that.
And the current understanding is that the United States since
around February has been attempting to make direct direct contact
(23:19):
with Kim Jong un or the top levels of the
government there in the DPRK, and those emails essentially have
gone unanswered or the phone calls or whoever else they're
attempting to contact the government there. Um, we'll just read
a little bit from this article. Uh, they're saying that
Washington or you know, the folks there in Washington have
(23:41):
been attempting to reach Pyonyang in several different ways to
prevent tensions escalating. Because tensions are certainly up. There were
several attempts with the previous administration of the US to
lower those tensions, but it seems like those efforts were
not as successful as they could have been. Um. Yeah,
(24:04):
middling success. They're forgetting from from Ben's hand, um uh,
at least, according to the BBC, to fail. The talks
failed to persuade North Korea to give up the concept
or the attempt to build nuclear weaponry. Um. In this case,
it's to further refine the uranium and radioactive materials. Um.
(24:28):
Here's the other thing, And this one is a little
confusing for me because I'm reading I've read several articles
for this. BBC is saying that the DPRK has failed
to recognize Biden as the president or Biden's the new administration. Essentially,
is that your understanding, Ben, Yeah, yeah, they have. I mean,
you're as a foreign power, you're under no real obligation
(24:51):
to play nice. A lot of this stuff could be
best described as like polite rules of international siety. Just
like you said, Matt called the person congratulate them. You
know what, I mean, even if you'll particularly care for
them or care for what their country represents to you.
(25:11):
But we have to understand there is a ton of
precedent going into this ghosting of a president. First. First, yeah,
North Korea, the current and I'll say at the regime
uh is is they're big fans of the Trump administration
because the Trump administration was um granting some legitimacy that
(25:38):
the DPRK did not historically have in in the West.
And if you go back to just a few months ago, well, no,
if you go back to thank you forgetting also happened.
If you go back to you'll see that North Korean
official press had like called Joe Biden rabid dog, said
(26:00):
he was power hungry and that he should be beaten
to death. This is all on record, and that he would.
He was saying that Kim Jonggon is equal murderous dictator.
They're not friends as opposed to Trump, who is pretty
much complimentary. You know, he very much clearly had a
kindred attitude to to to to the dictator, um, you know,
(26:22):
for obvious reasons. But yeah, that that stuff. It's interesting though, Ben,
You're right, like it is. It is sort of like
formality it's not like it's the law. I mean it's alienating. Sure,
how much more alienated can we get from this regime?
But it's sure is an interesting escalation, right, Yeah, I mean, Matt,
(26:44):
to your point, like, it is kind of unconventional. I
would say for these countries not to be speaking to
one another. But it's unfortunately unconventional in that countries usually
do speak to one another through some kind of channel, right,
some kind of diplomacy, even if it's back door. But
(27:05):
the issue here is that if you look at it
through the North Korean perspective, I would say we have
to understand first, Uh, things are pretty rough, and that
probably from what we know, things are pretty rough on
the ground for the average North Korean and um, a
lot of the stuff reported both by the country and
(27:29):
by its opponents is just it's straight up propaganda. There's
no way around it. The waters are very muddy. I
will stop ted talking after this, but this is the question,
and it's something that I don't think we're hearing a
lot when this is reported in the West. Let's say
that you, Matt Frederick, through a very bizarre set of
circumstances inherit the leadership of North Korea. There was some
(27:53):
stuff going on twenty three and me explained it, and
now boom, you are in charge of the Democratic People's
Republic of North Korea. Like that old John John Goodman
movie Duke of Earl or something like that. Never mind, Uh,
I don't know, Okay, just read the Wicked on But like,
(28:15):
all right, so you're in charge. You're in charge of
the Democratic People's Republic of Korean. You are getting a
ton of pressure from coalition's Western states telling you to
step away from this nuclear weapons program. That's the like,
that's the main thing the West tells you about every day. Yeah,
(28:37):
and you know they also are hanging out very close
in South Korea doing tons of drills with the U.
S Military and other powers that seem to be antagonistic
towards US and our goals. M h. Yeah. And then
you think, well, they're offering me some pretty cool carrots, right,
(28:58):
and the carrot and stick idea. They're offering me some
pretty cool carrots to say, yes, get rid of this
um this testing site that I have and get rid
of the I C B M S that I have built.
Uh but wait, you start thinking maybe no, uh, you're
you're in this you're like the number one advisor. You're
you're the smart guy, the smartest guy in the room here,
(29:19):
and you go, hang on, what happened to all those
other countries that peacefully stepped away from their nuclear programs?
Rock not doing super super hot? Who's saying Libya? Gaddafi
also didn't have a particularly happy ending. So the idea here,
(29:40):
if you're if you're mat now, and if you're nol
the advisors, the idea is that I is North Korea. No,
the US will have the number one goal of removing
my ability to have nuclear weapons, no matter what you
want to call They'll try to remove that ability. And
if I help them, if I agree, if I comply,
(30:02):
then history has shown me two very recent examples of
just how terrible the outcome will be. So what do
you say, Matt at that point? Now, now the new
president of the US has been elected. This guy dragged
you through the press for years. This is my responsible
(30:24):
While we do appreciate your comments, the United States is
most certainly our biggest enemy. Though I'm not opposed to
diplomatic maneuvers moving forward, there could be something we could
work out, though you would have to make the first
move United States, because you know we're here, we're North Korea,
and we're just we need you to show us that
(30:46):
you mean business and then maybe we can do something.
But in the interim, but you know, if you don't
do anything, here's what I need, uh, And this is
what we're gonna do just until you make the first move.
We're gonna build longer range, better missiles. We're gonna build
hypersonic missiles. We're gonna build some satellites for recon. We're
gonna do some solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile work. Don't worry,
(31:08):
it's cool. We're gonna make some new nuclear warheads. Yeah.
We're also gonna build some tactical nukes and uh also
some U A V s, a brand new U A
V that can you know, do all kinds of fun
stuff for us. So that's what we're gonna be doing.
You decide what you you know, what action you actually
want to take in order to reduce the tensions here,
(31:28):
and then we can talk. Oh man, not quite sure
how to feel about this. It's scared. You should feel
scared a little bit, just enough, but especially if you're
in South Korea or you're you know, within a certain
radius of the DPRK they can hit Alaska and uh
maybe maybe California. The song fourteen which and probably mispronouncing,
(31:53):
but that's the ice. That's the latest. I cb m um.
I think they they just started coming out like seen
they were revealed. But yeah, of course you're gonna say that.
And then there's also you know, in this conversation. At
some point, although it hasn't been widely reported yet, boom
China has entered the chat because China very much wants
(32:16):
North Korea to remain as a buffer state right between
South Korea and to less than the possible influence of Japan, etcetera, etcetera.
So at some point the president of the US, whoever
that president might be, it's Biden currently calls China. They
have to and they're like, hey, why is your boy
(32:39):
on radio silence? And then China, you know, the government
of China, who knows how they handle that approach? They say, oh,
whatever you talking about? That's that's strange. Kim always answers
the phone for me, Can you think of anything you
might have done? Who knows? Who knows? Man, Well, listen,
(33:01):
listen to the rhetoric. So when when Joe Biden was
on the campaign trail, he would often whenever asked a question,
you know, about tensions in in North Koreo or about dictators.
There are all kinds of questions that were kind of
lobbed at him, and he would always respond, not always,
he would often respond by referring to Kim Jong un
(33:23):
as a thug and other you know, authoritarian people as thugs.
And this is a quote from Joe Biden. The days
of cozying up to dictators are over, clearly in response
of the previous administration and the views that that administration was,
you know, had had a different relationship with leaders such
(33:45):
as Kim Jong un. And I believe, I believe North
Korea has referred to Joe Biden as a quote rabid dog.
I think that's correct. Yeah, them's fighting words, yes, and
they went on or someone I believe, I'm not sure
if it was Kim. I think it was maybe just
someone representing the DPRK uh one of the one of
(34:08):
them said that he should be beaten to death with
a stick. Washington Post reported that to it. Yeah yeah,
um yeah. And again like the DPRK has consistently referred
to the United States as their biggest rival, the biggest enemy,
the quote foremost principal enemy, and anything we could do
(34:35):
to lessen the tension there and like legitimately maybe in
some way actually get proper the things that the civilians
their need. I mean, we've will, we'll talk about it
as many times as we have to. But there are
people in genuine with genuine health concerns that are in need,
that live in the DPRK who are just humans, just
(34:57):
people like you and me, and you know, they're living.
They can't help that they're living in that regime because
we've learned that when one attempts to you know, abscond,
to get away, there are major issues, and we've reported
on some of those here and we've also been seeing
it for for decades. Yeah. Yeah, so the problem. The
(35:20):
problem is generational punishment, you know, meaning that if someone
does something that violates law in North Korea, UH, their
relatives can also be punished, may be sent to a
detainment camp or even um even executed. And when people
(35:41):
leave North Korea attempt to defect, when they go through China,
there is a huge likelihood or huge possibility of these
people being trafficked, being sold into marriage, being caught by
the Chinese authorities who do not consider them refugees but
consider them what are called illegal illegal economic migrants, and
(36:03):
they'll just be returned to their home country, where, of
course they have violated any number of laws by defecting UH.
These these are huge issues, and one thing that it
is crucial to remember is whenever you're hearing a story
about a government that's doing things the rest of the
world order disagrees with, the people who live in that
(36:27):
country often have very little, very little decision making ability,
right like North Korea is not checking with everybody who
lives in North Korea about what the next policies should be. Um.
There there's tremendous food insecurity. The International Sphere Order of
Nations still doesn't really know how hard COVID hit the
(36:50):
country that was already in a very tenuous existence. China
probably has a lot of information on this, but um
why release it? You know, it's it's terrible because it's
literally being used as a buffer UH international bargaining chip.
And this is this is a very old game. It's
(37:12):
a game countries have played for a long time. Man, Well,
we're gonna keep our eyes and ears on it and
you know, if you hear anything, please write to us,
call us whatever you gotta do. We'll tell you how
to do that at the end of this. But for now,
we're gonna take a quick word from our sponsor and
we'll be right back with more strange news. And you
(37:33):
aren't gonna believe this one. And we have returned long
time listeners. You know that I struggle every week to
pick simply one story because once upon a time, and
the predecessor to this segment, I was doing three stories
(37:54):
every day. Uh no, it's kind of got an opposite problem. Um,
I'm glad you're okay. Man. After that, that's a lot.
It's a lot of time strange thing. Um maybe okay,
who was the bother being? Okay, it's that's good. I
went past one story that I really enjoyed, which is
(38:16):
the world's first unmanned supersonic fighter. I looked into the
news about the anti Catheram mechanism. Right that news is
pretty much out there now and should be easy to
find that that the fastest unmanned thing is that the
story from Popular Mechanics about reusing the sr SE engines
(38:38):
in in like an unmanned vehicle. I found it on
India Times, but I imagine it would be reported in
Popular Mechanics. It's right up their alley. Uh, yeah, we're
entering the age of supersonic unmanned craft. Okay, my dog
must be eating something she shouldn't be. But yes, that's awesome.
(39:00):
So I don't want to make that that sound too
interesting because I don't want to shoot us in the
audio foot here. Uh, it's a great it's a great story.
He's fascinating. It's a little disturbing. You should read about it,
but instead instead of supersonic unmanned jets. It is time
to make the official announcement, folks. Texas Rangers have said
(39:24):
that they will stop trying to hypnotize people. In other news,
Texas Rangers have apparently been hypnotizing a ton of people
for more than four decades, like with their like charming
southern drawl or how are they going about this? No,
they've got Chuck Norris. He's rolling around and he just
(39:44):
kind of puts his shades down really slowly. Ye, or
if Chuck isn't around, they used the quite prestigious Texas
Ranger badges and they're just like look into the rotation
of the badge get getting very sleeping for sleeping who
(40:06):
killed JFK. But no, I know it sounds like a
crazy story, you guys, but it is true. I did
not um. I was not aware that hypnosis was being
used this this frequently by the Rangers, specifically uh and
in an odd bit of synchronicity, I believe somebody has
(40:27):
also posted this on Here's Where It Gets Crazy, which
is rated arbitrarily by US as the absolute best page
on all of Facebook. Here's what happened. So since at
least the start of the nine eighties, maybe a little
before then, the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees
(40:50):
the Highway Patrol and the Rangers, has has been using
hypnosis techniques two get statements from victims and eyewitnesses. They've
used this technique, according to the Dallas Morning News, at
least eighteen hundred times over the last forty years. And this,
(41:15):
this kind of hypnosis is not the we've talked about
this in the past. It's not the stereotypical ha ha
buck like a chicken, squawk like a chicken or whatever,
or you know, you'll hear this magic word and then
you'll moon people or anything like that. This is meant
to give to help people mentally regress through memories so
(41:39):
that they can uh have more clarity of what they
saw witnessed experience. So like, if this stuff works, then
the idea would be, let's say someone has witnessed the carjack, right,
and they say, okay, we're going to put you under
and we're going to you is these hypnotic techniques to
(42:02):
help you fully remember what you saw. So now you're
just not saying it was a dude in a red shirt.
You're able to say it was a dude in a
red polo who was wearing blue jeans, he had a
Laker's hat on or something like that. Regression hypnosis or
whatever it's this is. This is blowing my mind. Ben.
(42:27):
I didn't think I didn't think anyone. I didn't think
any law enforcement agency would be using this generally. It's
you know, controversial even in therapy let alone for like
eyeball witness accounts, right, because it's it's uh notoriously um unreliable.
So there is some there is some solid science to hypnosis,
(42:50):
but there's a really dangerous thing with this kind of
with this kind of approach. And then and it's this
if you are listening and or human being, than every
time you remember something, you are not remembering that actual
event every time after the first time you remember it. Instead,
you are remembering the last time you remembered thinking about
(43:13):
this thing. And your memory will be affected by smells, sites, sounds, sensations,
even temperatures, all the stuff in your environment that that
you're encountering in real time while you're remembering something in
the past. So it is very easy for new memories
(43:35):
to be created, and you, as the person experiencing these memories,
will not be able to differentiate between those memories and
the real ones. Like in in a way, this is
a helpful circle? Is this? In a way, this is
like a predecessor to the deep fake of the digital age.
And you don't need technology to do it. You just
(43:56):
need a calm voice and a relaxed environment and then
someone who will go with you for the ride. Uh.
And and this is not saying the rangers are doing
this at all. They're not like purposely trying to implant
ideas or distort recollections. But it's very very easy to
accidentally do that, and that's where it gets dangerous. Also, Uh,
(44:18):
it's controversial but Matt, you raised a good question, which,
as he said, you know, I don't always pick I
don't picture law enforcement doing this kind of stuff. But
we know that law enforcement has been taken in by
very unorthodox ideas or claims in the past, like so
called psychic detectives, right, which we should do an episode
(44:38):
on image. It's weird that we haven't. Actually, yeah, several
I remember we when we well, we made the show
about the Atlanta missing and murdered. We were so surprised
to see actual news reports of Atlanta, Atlanta p D
and a couple other police departments using to psychic detectives
or psychics to help them people remote remote viewing type
(45:01):
things like to define bodies or all that essentially remains.
Like I have a strong image of a bridge, there's
running water, there's a side. I see a side. It
starts with the Wayne Williams, that's the guy. Unfortunately, that's
(45:24):
how it works because there's a lot of cold reading
involved there. But law enforcement has we can emphasize this enough.
In theory. The way it's supposed to work is that
law enforcement has to evaluate, evaluate all citizen like reports,
so it's often not them necessarily going out and finding
a psychic or someone who claims to be a psychic. Instead,
(45:46):
it's somebody proactively calling them and saying I know what happened,
because um, I have information about this, and then they
have to say, okay, we'll tell us, because otherwise you're
not really doing your job, are you. I don't know.
I didn't know this before, but at least twenty one
(46:07):
states have banned evidence in court if it's gleaned entirely
through hypnosis. They're no longer going to let you play, uh,
he said, She said, with your past self. Basically, well,
it makes complete sense. Do we have any understanding of
the people who were actually administering this. Were they bringing
(46:29):
people in to run hypnosis set uh sessions or were
they I don't know, were the the actual officers doing
this or somebody in the rangers. I don't know how
how did it work? Yeah, So there was a program
that was there's this program that was based on the
work of an l a. P d. Psychologist named Martin
(46:52):
riser In. He wrote a book called The Handbook of
Investigative Hypnosis, and this is one of the that's one
of the bedrocks of that program in Texas and officers
would be using these techniques, so they would be trained
at least in this regard. Um they have. Yeah, I
(47:16):
think not quite nine hundred police have been certified by
the State of Texas in this investigative hypnosis. Um in
this Yeah, it is. It is a lot. But to
be fair, we also don't know how many of those
eight hundred seventy four people are still performing this stuff
(47:38):
or how many of them just took the course and
then said, Okay, well I had that box checked off
and now I don't have to ever worry about this again. UM.
I mean, is this something that that pops up in
other law enforcement agencies? I mean I always kind of,
you know, probably because of Walker, Texas Ranger assigned a
bit of a mystical vibe to like the Texas Rangers.
(48:00):
H But now they're starting to feel a little more
like a Jedi than like a detective, you know what
I mean. Yeah, it's still I mean, it's still been
used by some police agencies or law enforcement outfits, I
should say, as well as some intelligence agencies. But it's like,
(48:21):
you know, I think the thing that startles a lot
of people if they've just seen why detectors on television
and stuff. Is that polygraphs are also kind of trash science.
It's weird that they're still being used, at least in
the way that they are um and with this idea
of hypnosis. Yeah, it's been around, like people have been
(48:44):
using or attempting to use these techniques with what they
would argue are some credible results since at least the
Second World War. So this is this stuff is around.
But there's another issue here. And again, this is not
accusing witnesses of lying. This is not accusing the individuals
(49:06):
and law enforcement of purposely stitching someone up for a
crime they didn't commit. But we know that multiple, multiple
cases that result in convictions are based on what later
turns out to be a witness somehow misidentifying a perpetrator.
And these people who are wrongfully convicted made languish in
(49:28):
jail for years before say a DNA test comes out,
or before they are able to get access to legal
assistance that can address the problems in their case. Also,
I don't know about you guys, but I'm a little
torn reporting on this because I think that got the
idea of like a hypnosis ranger is just so cool.
(49:52):
It is so amazingly cool. Hypno Ranger Walker, Hypno Ranger.
It's more like Cane from Kung Fu or something, you know.
And again it's just got this real kind of mystic
vibe to it. But but I guess the way they
used it though, it's almost more like an interrogation technique
that then then when you know, look into my eyes
(50:14):
kind of situation. Right, Well yeah, okay, so but it's
it's four witnesses, right, it's for people who saw a crime.
It's for people who were victims of a crime who
were a part of it, trying to recall stuff about
a suspect, right, or a person of interest. I thought,
exactly what kind of what you just referred to their
NOL when you first read this been I thought it
(50:36):
was rangers going out there getting a person of interest
into custody and then like hypnotizing them and then like
trying to get them to tell us that tell them
the truth. I was so excited about that. That's the
one I want to see. Yeah, yeah, instead of a gun,
they just like use their mind powers and hold out
their hands. That's the mind control noise. Yeah, that would
(51:01):
be awesome. But the the issue there is that it
is um. It is actually quite difficult and somewhat unpredictable
to use hypnosis in that kind of non consensual way.
There are ways around it, and you can exploit certain
cognitive susceptibilities in certain individuals, but there's not really there's
(51:27):
not really a silver bullet for that, even for the
people who are very, very good at it. Um. But
I totally agree, man, if they're could, like, if you
could hypnotize criminals, that's a great TV show. But it
also means that if you're an officer who hypnotize a criminals,
every case you land is automatically suspect. Did they really
(51:50):
confess or did you know, did like Walker Texas Mesmerizer
just knocked him over? You know, right, it could certainly
be considered coercion or you know, just suspect, right, suspects testimony.
M Yeah, But if Walker hypno Ranger, if his techniques
get us, you know, to the murder weapon, then we're
(52:13):
okay as long as it's a physical piece of evidence
that gets us there, right, Yeah. It just in those
twenty one states. It can't just be hypnosis. If conversation
under hypnosis leads to DNA evidence leads to like you
said a physical gun or you know, they find the
car that got stolen, etcetera. Then it's it's a different conversation.
(52:37):
So that's that's the huge controversy. But it might be
interested to note, uh that law enforcement, just in general,
US law enforcement has cited a number of cases where
they say hypnosis yielded positive, actionable results. The most famous
infamous was the kidnapping of a school bus that like
twenty six kids and a driver a board in Chowchilla, California.
(53:03):
Have you heard about this? One heard a story of
it when we were making Zodiac, But I was it
buried or was it like? Um, I'm just something is
firing my brain. But I would need to go into
hypnosis to tell you exactly how I remember. You're getting versely, Uh,
you're you're right. The story goes that a hypnosis expert
(53:25):
spoke with witness help them do this regression exploration, and
while they were under this hypnotic questioning, they were able
to recall the full license number of a van that
the kidnappers drove. It's interesting, I mean, you can do
a million like you don't necessarily have to hypnotize people.
(53:47):
You can you can help your friends remember things um
much more clearly or in a much more distorted manner
than they would alone. I'm telling you, just like so many,
so many very small things. If you're holding a hot drink,
you're gonna have more of a fond recollection when you
think of stuff in the past. It's nuts. It's so
(54:10):
easy to hack um, which means that we have to
ask ourselves, can we trust the science how much of
the how much of the curriculum of these sorts of
these sorts of programs, how much of that curriculum focuses
on how to make sure you're not accidentally creating the
memory you're attempting to discover, or you're not leading the witness.
(54:33):
And it could be so easy. It could be Um,
Darren Brown does this a lot. It could be a
quick slip of your speech. So instead you're saying like um,
saying like, okay, you're getting very sleepy. What was the
name Pete of the person you spoke to at the
(54:53):
dairy queen? And they're not going to hear that Pete.
But later as there you know, as they're increasingly compromised,
then of course they're not just going to remember the
name Pete. They're gonna see in their head the name
tag that says Pete, and then boom, this poor schmuck
at the dairy queen is going up the river. It's terrible.
(55:14):
It's possible. I I started feeling really sleepy for some reason. Ben.
I don't know what's going on, oh Pete, but yeah,
that's I wanted to bring that to your attention, folks.
Of course, that dairy queen example is hopefully just a
hypothetical example and hasn't occurred in real life, but the
danger there is very real, and we need to be
(55:36):
aware of this stuff. So I applaud um. I applaud
the decision to stop trying to hypnotize witnesses and victims
of crime, and I applaud their attempts to turn it
around and make it uh perpetrator facing rather than victims
(55:57):
and witnesses. We're all applauding. We're all no, what are
you applauding? We're all applauding right now at the end
of the show. Do you know I I really just
kind of snapped out of this weird stupor that I
was in this FuG state. I don't know what caused it,
but I feel like I lost time there. Um, I'll
snap you out within with an A V Club headline
(56:19):
of a story. We're not going to talk about you, ready, please?
Scientists planned to shoot massive load of sperm samples onto
the moon. Wow, they had to choose that. They really
chose those words carefully, didn't there. That's almost British. Yeah,
massive massive load. They could have just said massive load.
They could have left. Yeah. Well, uh, that that is
(56:42):
that is true. There is something very much like a
doomsday vault being proposed for construction on the lunar surface.
And there is an editor who absolutely had their day
made with that headline. This is strange. Uh, I do
want end a one note for the rangers here. Officer
named James de Brow is quoted as a person who
(57:04):
has performed this kind of investigative hypnosis and trained other
officers in it, and de Brow defends the practice. He says,
you know, he seems very well aware of the danger
of creating a memory when you seek to retrieve one,
and he explicitly says, we're trained not to be suggestive.
We're not here to give information in a hypnosis session.
(57:26):
We're here to retrieve it. But with that, folks, would
love to hear what you think about hypnosis and deep
faking memories. Please let us know, let us know what
you think the future of deep faking in the digital ages.
How can we write a law about it? And if
you happen, and we have to say this every so often,
(57:47):
if you happen to be a member of the elite
in the DPRK, you can can you email us? I
mean email us if you can. We're not clear on
how that would work out for you. But also if
you have experience firsthand in the country, we want to
hear your story. The world is wondering what on earth
(58:08):
is happening in the Hermit Kingdom. We try to be
pretty easy to find online. That's right. You can find
this in the usual social media corners of the Internet,
Facebook and Twitter, or we're conspiracy stuff Instagram, or we're
conspiracy Stuff Show. We even have as I guess, digital
but also sort of analog. You can so you can
reach us with a rotary phone. It's digital on our end.
(58:30):
But if if that's if that's how you roll, you
can still reach us at one eight three three st
d w y t K, where you will hear the
sound of Bend's dulcet tones, which will prompt you to
leave a three minute message. Do your best to keep
it in that three minutes so we can fit it
in to one of our weekly listener mail segments. That's right,
give us a call. We we definitely want to hear
(58:52):
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call you. Let us know if it's okay for us
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tell us everything you need to know. And if you
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(59:12):
a personal message to us, leave it at the end
of the message. Please, you've got three minutes. If you
want to go over that time, you can always send
us a good old fashioned email. Hey. By the way,
I don't know about you, guys. I'm gonna I'm gonna
be watching this Zack Snyder cut of Justice League. I
heard it's good. I got it. I got a solid
se on rotten tomatoes. But I love how the Snyder
(59:34):
cut has become kind of Internet shorthand for just like
the as it was intended, Like does the Pruder film
the Snyder cut, you know, the unabridged, the directors cut.
There you go, the Criterion. It's the only way to
watch Blade Runner. I think, yeah, I'm gonna I'm definitely
gonna watch. I'm I'm a sucker for superhero films. Even
(59:57):
though that we got a lot of great feedback from
our listeners on the Military Entertainment Complex episode who were
pointing out, you know, you could argue that a lot
of superhero films in some ways function as military propaganda.
And then for everybody who was asking why we didn't
talk more about sports of that episode, stay tuned smart,
(01:00:20):
All right, well, hey, I think this is it. We're
gonna give you the email now. Uh the last thing.
Huge shout out to the whole cast and crew of
people that made The Umbrella Academy. I freaking loved it.
I haven't watched show that I loved that much in
a long time. Good work. Congratulations, it's so good. I
haven't finished season two, but season one was was a banger,
And I think it's so cool of that dude for
(01:00:41):
my chemical romance, like if comics were his first love
before he was even, like, you know, a massive emo
rock star. And now he's returned to said first love
and he's quite good at it, quite a good writer,
Gerard Way. All I know is I loved it. If
you loved something too, and you want to tell us
about it, Hey, do all the things we already said
tact us. We'd love to hear from you. Our email
(01:01:02):
addresses conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they
(01:01:24):
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,
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 is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means it is time for strange news. We're seeing
(00:48):
a story that's kind of black mirror meets uh, bring
it on. I think yes, we're like keeping up with
the Kardashians or something. We're we're traveling to one of
one of the areas of the world that I don't
know about you but fascinates me the most big spoilers
(01:09):
and um, we've got a mesmerizing story from Texas. Uh
there where really right? So where should we begin? I
gotta tell you, Nol, I really liked the story you
brought because it touches on It touches on a trend
(01:30):
that we kind of predicted, but in a really messed
up way, don't you think, uh, in the most messed
up way. I mean, let's just start with like, you know, okay,
so the idea of deep fakes. We we've seen the
video of Tom Cruise like doing a magic check, but
it's not really Tom Cruise. Uh. I think we are
a lot of Tom Cruise related deep fake videos. I
think the first one that I saw that was like
(01:52):
the most mind boggling where I was like, oh God,
this is a thing that's gonna, you know, have legs.
Was it was like an appearance by Bill Hater on
a late show and his face as he as he
starts to do an impression of Tom Cruise and tell
the story about meeting Tom Cruise, face starts to morph
into Tom Cruise as he's doing the voice, and it's
just uncanny. But but but not uncanny Valley. That's the point.
(02:13):
I mean, it is a little bit, but it's like,
you know, it definitely has the feel of being pretty authentic,
even if you can tell there's something a little off
about it. But now with all these filters like on
Snapchat and Instagram, where you can you know, smooth out
all the wrinkles on your face or like make yourself
look like a magical pixie or soupin and that's more
(02:34):
like alternate reality. But it's starting to blur the line
between alternate reality and these deep fake videos. So there's
now like apps you know, used to be it had
it had to be you had to really know what
you're we're doing, requires immense processing power to do these
deep fake videos. Now you can literally get these like
face swap apps or you know one where you can
(02:55):
make your face appear on a character from a movie, um,
just by uploading the different components are picking from a
pool of you know, available clips or whatever. Um. And
you know, we've been talking from the start about how
does this affect trusting what you see in the news,
and the news already having been kind of maligned and
given this bad rap, but now it's like, is seeing
(03:17):
really believing? I mean, I think we all know that
that that can be a very dicey question, But it
seems like the first story that any of us have
have seen of this really kind of becoming oh god,
this is really could be a problem. Uh, it didn't
come from where we thought it would. Maybe I would
have thought it would have been maybe trying to smear
a politician or you know, a celebrity or some kind
(03:40):
of blackmail, you know, creating these fake videos. But it
turns out it was from an absolutely unhinged uh what
I believe is referred to as cheer mom. So a
mom like a dance mom. You know, it's kind of
a psycho helicopter stage parent for dancers, you know, cheer
moms or that very same thing for cheerleaders. Uh. And
(04:03):
this particular cheer mom in question, um is named Raphaela Spone. Uh,
great name from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and uh, she's fifty years old,
should definitely know better. Surprised she got ahold of However,
however she did this unclear? Um, But like we said,
now it's been much more amplified. So what she did
(04:24):
was in order to smear or you know, have ejected
from the cheer squad her daughters to like rival cheerleaders.
Cannot imagine what that would consist of, right, Like, maybe
they didn't get along, maybe I don't know, who knows,
Maybe they were outshining her daughter in some way unclear,
(04:44):
but she uh using something some kind of deep fake
apple or technology, or maybe she hired someone to do.
It took these two young women and superimposed their faces
from social media videos onto other bodies that were smoking vapes,
(05:05):
vaping um. Some of them were nude uh, and some
of them were drinking so um. There's one video of
the vaping that you can see, and the reason you
can see it is because one of the young women
actually came forward, named Maddie him who was sixteen. This
happened about a year ago or a little less than
a year ago, and it's just now kind of coming
(05:25):
out and hitting the press. Um. But she was. She
appeared on Good Morning America uh and told the story
of literally seeing this video that was texted not only
to her and her parents, but to the coach directly.
Um also with veiled suggestions that she kill herself out
(05:50):
of shame, like to I don't know, to save face
or something. It's you know, like, Harry, carry yourself because
this you've you've brought shame on your family. But to
to hear this this young woman, Maddie, uh, Hi'm kind
of react to this on Good Good Morning America. She's
literally like, I'm seeing this video and I know it's
not me, but it is me, and I don't think
(06:13):
anyone's gonna believe me. She was genuinely concerned. Um and
and thankfully her mom did believe her and told her
she would call the police. UM. And they did call
the police. And they also texted the number back. Big
clue here, like texted the number back and got an
auto reply UM, indicating that it was some kind of
spoof spoofing system like a like a the telemarketers might
(06:36):
use to send auto texts for ads or whatever, or
to you know, mask a number so they can do
an auto call like a robot call. UM. The police
were able to trace it back to the IP address
of Raphaela Spoon, and she's in a lot of trouble.
I believe she's been charged with something in the neighborhood
(06:59):
of like menacing, you know, youths, like corrupt. I don't know,
Like I'm trying to think of what she's got Three
counts of cyber harassments child menacing youths, misdemeanor cyber harassment
of a child. Yeah, what are the misdemeanors? No child
pornography though, or a better way to say it would
(07:22):
be stop being charged with depictions of abusive children or
you know, underage stuff like that, and that gets us
to a very weird area which is going to be
I think, increasingly disturbing and important as the months and
years continue, which is, if she is making things depicting
(07:43):
these children nude, then does she fall under various sex
offender laws, right? Or does she fall under those, you know,
the various laws that are specifically meant to combat that
kind of um, that kind of imagery. I don't I
don't see her being charged with that right now. Uh
three counts of harassment, cyber harassment, menacing a child, two misdemeanors. Um.
(08:11):
But I think this is I think you're right. I'm sorry,
trying to step back. There are a couple of things
to address. I think you're I think you're right. This
is something that as the technology is democratized, is just
going to become more and more common. And I wonder,
like what becomes what becomes the mark of authenticity? Is
(08:31):
there like a water mark that people have or some
equivalent of that, a pixel? I don't know. Yeah, it
has to be like especially when it comes to like
you you know, with this as well, but with things
like official news, you know, I mean so many, so
much footage is released, and whether it's like, let's say
it's a t M footage or it's like you know,
blurry in the first place, and so it's already kind
of compromised in a little dicey you introduced this angle
(08:54):
into it, and that kind of you know, low res
quality of the kind of footage that will get broken
as breaking news, you know, Um, it can be even
more misleading. So there absolutely has to be some sort
of chain of custody. Maybe we do it through the blockchain,
you guys, how about that? Uh, let's kill some more rainforests.
I'm kidding, it's I'm only just now starting to realize
(09:15):
how dangerous blockchain technology is and how horrible for the
environment is every one of these little But there are
ways that it does verify ownership and authenticity and chain
of custody. Um. But there's got to be something like that,
you know, where you can genuinely know the footage you're
seeing is authentic. Um, whether it's an origin you know,
(09:37):
watermark like you said, from when it was initially created,
that can't be. But I don't know how, I don't
know what that looks like. And surely there'd be a
way around that too. Um, but yeah, it's this woman,
I mean just looks like a real piece of work
and her I mean not the mug shots are the
most flattering images anyway, but she is just like a
dead eyed, thin lipped, very severe looking woman. I don't mean,
(10:01):
I mean I see darkness in her eyes. Let's just
put it that way. I I feel you like I'm
hesitant to um. I don't like the exploitative nature of
a lot of mugshot stories I would call them. But
from what I understand, the circumstances of events are pretty crazy.
Philly Inquirer has one person saying the parent of one
(10:24):
person saying that this harassment began because he and his
spouse told their daughter not to hang out with spawn's
daughter and that they were concerned about this kid's this
other kid's behavior. And then the mom kind of like
went straight from cold war to nuclear level harassment. I mean,
(10:49):
how did she how did she think this was gonna
play out? How? How would you legitimately think you would
not get caught doing something like this? You know what
I mean? That was I think I've mentioned on the
show before YouTube channel that I really like called Internet Today,
and they do a segment each week called Weekly Weird News,
and they did a segment on this, and um, I
(11:11):
love those guys. But they they made a joke that, well,
if she'd only used express VPN, you know, she uh
might have gone away with it, um, because you know,
they did ultimately trace it back to her IP address.
So I don't know, Ben, I mean, I think it's
likely she could have gotten away with it if they
hadn't have been able to trace back. But she tried
to cover her her tracks by using this phone spoofing
(11:32):
and it was a pretty elaborate to do. But her
lawyer does say she denies it unequivocally and that she's
been receiving death threats and is trying to paint her
as the victim, which is what lawyers do. So obviously,
you know, obviously innocent until proven guilty, but um, it
doesn't doesn't bode well. The facts are a lot of
smoke here and feeling like there's probably some fire. Well
(11:53):
that this one I want to bring up. She she
absolutely is innocent until it's proven beyond the shadow of
a doubt that she's guilty or she pleads guilty in
a court of law. Right, So I just want to
bring up the counterpoint, and I know it's uncomfortable, and
I don't you know, I do. I don't know how
how to have this conversation without being told I'm victim
(12:14):
blaming maybe or something. But you tell me, guys, there's
the there is a possibility that some of the images
were real and the girls were very embarrassed that they
were being released. And again this is me painting a
uh you know, drawing a picture from nothing and not
(12:35):
knowing anything. Got it, just saying like if I if
I was putting myself in their position and some embarrassing
photos came out of me while I was in especially
in high school, in the time when your reputation means
so much, when your reputation level is one of the
things that keeps you in the thing you love, in
this case cheerleading or you know my case, band or
(12:56):
theater or whatever. But just I'm imagining if images like
that out, it could be really damaging to me, right
so well, specifically scenario, there could be a scenario where
one or more of those images were real, and you know,
somebody was putting them out, putting those images out and
(13:18):
for you know, for whatever reason, but it was coming
from that same IP address. So how did the detectives
then analyze it, because they're the ones who ultimately said
that these were deep fakes. Yeah, and I'm I I
suppose I don't know what the actual analysis was, what
it looks like, and what those conclusions like. We're how
how how tight those conclusions are. Maybe they're completely like, yes,
(13:44):
these are all deep fakes and they came from this
i P address or maybe the I think these are
all valid points. Um. And I think it's not like
drinking or you know, entering into sexual activity or vaping
is like some outlandish, you know, cancel worthy behavior from
(14:04):
like you know, uh, teenage girls. Like it's it's certainly
a real thing. I mean, vaping and drinking, underage drinking
and all that is is absolutely rife, uh in in
high schools. But you're right, it is a it is
a question of one's reputation. I mean the articles, the
reporting that I've seen on it is only in a
handful of places. Um, the Pennsylvania Uh, let's see, it's
(14:26):
actually the Daily Mail picked it up. Of course, it's
just as a sexy headline. Um. They picked up on
the story when when Mattie him went on television. Uh.
So then you have one from Fox News and one
from ABC. Uh, and then there's like, you know, the
original reporting came from uh Philadelphia. But yeah, it does
(14:49):
say that the investigators determined that the videos were deep
fakes using images from the girls social media accounts. Yeah.
So again, if you've got the original and then the
deep fake, and you're actually analyzing those two photos and
you can determine that, yes, this was reused. Right, It's
(15:10):
just for me. It feels like a Florida man thing,
right where you just get that early, that early statement
that this person is accused essentially of this thing. Um,
and those the laws are tremendously classist, like the legislation
is going to have to be changed advised extensively as
(15:32):
we enter this new era. I do want to shout
out a really clever thing that I learned about for
for differentiating, uh, between deep fakes and the real McCoy.
If people still say the real McCoy the genuine article,
you know what I mean. But you're bringing it back
then thanks man. Well we'll see, we'll see. Uh. There's
a thing called fake Catcher, which is a tool that
(15:56):
has an accuracy rate of a little bit over telling
whether a video is fake or is the actual article
it purports to be. And they do this by measuring
a subtle difference in skin tone, which is caused by
get this, the human heartbeat. So every time your heart beats,
(16:20):
your skin changes color just a little bit. That's really freaky.
I think we just if someone's listening to this and
they're looking in the mirror, we might have just messed
with their day. Oh yeah, do you remember the tech
we talked about it before. I think it was tech
for baby monitors that was specifically using that, and it
was to they could alert if your child was in danger,
(16:43):
especially when at the very early months of you know,
bringing a new baby home. It was using a camera
I think infrared, maybe not infred, but to be able
to see just below the skin to see that pulse,
just to make sure you could always monitor that that
child is, you know, the heart was beating. And that
sounds weird and a little weird, but I can imagine
(17:05):
using that for the same reason. At a little more
info on the nudes the quote unquote nudes. Uh the
District Attorney um for Burke County, uh Wine Troube is
his last name and his yeah, Matthew Wine Troube. He
said that the nudes were quote somewhat imprecise uh in
(17:26):
the videos the victims. It was clearly originally videos or
images of the victims in bikinis that were then digitally
removed and overlaid with stick skin toned bars, which absolutely
would have triggered your apple. You're talking about their um
ben So yeah, he says, quote it would It would
seem the intent was to make it a peer nude
(17:48):
with no obvious genitalia. Described it as a Barbie doll
like effect, and and the intent was to slut shame
quote this is this is his words the victims. Um.
He said that the reason that she was not given
more serious charges was because it wasn't like kind of
was a botched job. Hence the non no child pornography
(18:12):
or you know, sexualization of of miners or what have you,
because it was just so blatantly bad and and obvious. Um,
so there you go. She dodged that bullet, then you
know what I mean. But still say she could get
six months, but very unlikely. This, I mean, this is
(18:33):
just a terrible story for the kids involved, I think,
and it was I was trying to bring it on.
Is that cheerleading movie? Right? I think you to the
right one. I think there's a couple of sequels to
but yeah, that's the one with what's her name from
her interview with the vampire. I always still think it
was a little yep yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep, which
I mean as a compliment totally. He's also great in
(18:56):
the Fargo TV series. I believe season two typically Iceberg
for this stuff fellas you know, really uh and and
think of if a cheer mom could do this, um
using an app or whatever. I mean, think of what
people with really advanced technology could do, uh to to
to ruin people's reputations. But I guess it's good that
(19:17):
we're all kind of collectively aware of this stuff. Um
and And it started off so innocuous, as like a
cute little internet trick, but now you know, you're really
starting to see the true dark side of it, and
you know you can only go downhill from here. My
question is how often has it already happened? You know
(19:38):
what I mean? That's the next question. An article in
the Washington Post actually that profiled this very early on,
UM had a fascinating quote from a University of Virginia
law professor named Danielle citron Um, whose area of researches
and digital harassment, free speech, and privacy um and made
(20:00):
the you know, let's just say, the first place stuff
like this is probably gonna pop up is in porn, right,
so you get like fake celebrity porn. That was always
like a thing with like photoshop, always blatantly obvious, you know.
But this professor noted that the deep deep fake sex
videos are becoming a thing, um, whether it's to you know,
(20:21):
target individuals or to try to blackmail them, or you know,
potentially for like the purposes of you know, entertainment. Um.
And they're getting better and better is what is what
the comment is and and and there's a quote here,
um from this researcher saying, quote, it's like an arms race.
(20:41):
Pretty soon the dark hats are ahead of the white hats,
and we can't tell which is real. Um. So that's
that's kind of where we're at. Uh And and also
notes the fact that it's gotten very user friendly, their
YouTube tutorials for how to do it, their phone based apps,
the barrier for entry for this kind of stuff is
lower than it's that a bet, and it's just gonna
keep getting lower. So yeah, I'm gonna keep an eye on,
(21:05):
but not necessarily trust your eyes when they're on it.
That's what we need is some sassy justice. Hopefully they'll
come around soon. Uh yeah, for sure. So let's take
a quick break, um and hear are worth from our sponsor,
and then come back with some more strange news. And
(21:29):
we are back, and we are jumping over to a
little combo of Newsweek and the BBC. We're going to
use the BBC's headline though here it is. You ready
for it? North Korea not responding to US contact efforts ghosted?
Did we get ghosted? The Newsweek headline is Kim Jong
(21:52):
un ghosts US as Joe Biden's North Korea shake up looms.
It's unfair for me to say that, because you know,
I'm all over this man. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know.
The headline alone is a little bit scary for those
of you new to the party. Here. Um, we've discussed
extensively North Korea's interest in nuclear technology, nuclear weapons. We've
(22:17):
discussed a lot of their practices in the past, some
of the horrific things that have gone in gone on
there from stories of people who have escaped, also just
the the fascinating political and socio economic situation of everyday
citizens there in the DPRK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
(22:38):
And in this case, we we had a changing of
the guard in the US right when when President Joe
Biden stepped in, President Trump stepped out, and generally with
with any country, well again, like Ben, I kind of
just like I just want to talk with you about
I just want to hear you talk about it. But
(22:59):
I'll put it in my understanding. Generally you want to
have a touch base with your friends and your enemies
when you've got a changing of the guard like that.
And the current understanding is that the United States since
around February has been attempting to make direct direct contact
(23:19):
with Kim Jong un or the top levels of the
government there in the DPRK, and those emails essentially have
gone unanswered or the phone calls or whoever else they're
attempting to contact the government there. Um, we'll just read
a little bit from this article. Uh, they're saying that
Washington or you know, the folks there in Washington have
(23:41):
been attempting to reach Pyonyang in several different ways to
prevent tensions escalating. Because tensions are certainly up. There were
several attempts with the previous administration of the US to
lower those tensions, but it seems like those efforts were
not as successful as they could have been. Um. Yeah,
(24:04):
middling success. They're forgetting from from Ben's hand, um uh,
at least, according to the BBC, to fail. The talks
failed to persuade North Korea to give up the concept
or the attempt to build nuclear weaponry. Um. In this case,
it's to further refine the uranium and radioactive materials. Um.
(24:28):
Here's the other thing, And this one is a little
confusing for me because I'm reading I've read several articles
for this. BBC is saying that the DPRK has failed
to recognize Biden as the president or Biden's the new administration. Essentially,
is that your understanding, Ben, Yeah, yeah, they have. I mean,
you're as a foreign power, you're under no real obligation
(24:51):
to play nice. A lot of this stuff could be
best described as like polite rules of international siety. Just
like you said, Matt called the person congratulate them. You
know what, I mean, even if you'll particularly care for
them or care for what their country represents to you.
(25:11):
But we have to understand there is a ton of
precedent going into this ghosting of a president. First. First, yeah,
North Korea, the current and I'll say at the regime
uh is is they're big fans of the Trump administration
because the Trump administration was um granting some legitimacy that
(25:38):
the DPRK did not historically have in in the West.
And if you go back to just a few months ago, well, no,
if you go back to thank you forgetting also happened.
If you go back to you'll see that North Korean
official press had like called Joe Biden rabid dog, said
(26:00):
he was power hungry and that he should be beaten
to death. This is all on record, and that he would.
He was saying that Kim Jonggon is equal murderous dictator.
They're not friends as opposed to Trump, who is pretty
much complimentary. You know, he very much clearly had a
kindred attitude to to to to the dictator, um, you know,
(26:22):
for obvious reasons. But yeah, that that stuff. It's interesting though, Ben,
You're right, like it is. It is sort of like
formality it's not like it's the law. I mean it's alienating. Sure,
how much more alienated can we get from this regime?
But it's sure is an interesting escalation, right, Yeah, I mean, Matt,
(26:44):
to your point, like, it is kind of unconventional. I
would say for these countries not to be speaking to
one another. But it's unfortunately unconventional in that countries usually
do speak to one another through some kind of channel, right,
some kind of diplomacy, even if it's back door. But
(27:05):
the issue here is that if you look at it
through the North Korean perspective, I would say we have
to understand first, Uh, things are pretty rough, and that
probably from what we know, things are pretty rough on
the ground for the average North Korean and um, a
lot of the stuff reported both by the country and
(27:29):
by its opponents is just it's straight up propaganda. There's
no way around it. The waters are very muddy. I
will stop ted talking after this, but this is the question,
and it's something that I don't think we're hearing a
lot when this is reported in the West. Let's say
that you, Matt Frederick, through a very bizarre set of
circumstances inherit the leadership of North Korea. There was some
(27:53):
stuff going on twenty three and me explained it, and
now boom, you are in charge of the Democratic People's
Republic of North Korea. Like that old John John Goodman
movie Duke of Earl or something like that. Never mind, Uh,
I don't know, Okay, just read the Wicked on But like,
(28:15):
all right, so you're in charge. You're in charge of
the Democratic People's Republic of Korean. You are getting a
ton of pressure from coalition's Western states telling you to
step away from this nuclear weapons program. That's the like,
that's the main thing the West tells you about every day. Yeah,
(28:37):
and you know they also are hanging out very close
in South Korea doing tons of drills with the U.
S Military and other powers that seem to be antagonistic
towards US and our goals. M h. Yeah. And then
you think, well, they're offering me some pretty cool carrots, right,
(28:58):
and the carrot and stick idea. They're offering me some
pretty cool carrots to say, yes, get rid of this
um this testing site that I have and get rid
of the I C B M S that I have built.
Uh but wait, you start thinking maybe no, uh, you're
you're in this you're like the number one advisor. You're
you're the smart guy, the smartest guy in the room here,
(29:19):
and you go, hang on, what happened to all those
other countries that peacefully stepped away from their nuclear programs?
Rock not doing super super hot? Who's saying Libya? Gaddafi
also didn't have a particularly happy ending. So the idea here,
(29:40):
if you're if you're mat now, and if you're nol
the advisors, the idea is that I is North Korea. No,
the US will have the number one goal of removing
my ability to have nuclear weapons, no matter what you
want to call They'll try to remove that ability. And
if I help them, if I agree, if I comply,
(30:02):
then history has shown me two very recent examples of
just how terrible the outcome will be. So what do
you say, Matt at that point? Now, now the new
president of the US has been elected. This guy dragged
you through the press for years. This is my responsible
(30:24):
While we do appreciate your comments, the United States is
most certainly our biggest enemy. Though I'm not opposed to
diplomatic maneuvers moving forward, there could be something we could
work out, though you would have to make the first
move United States, because you know we're here, we're North Korea,
and we're just we need you to show us that
(30:46):
you mean business and then maybe we can do something.
But in the interim, but you know, if you don't
do anything, here's what I need, uh, And this is
what we're gonna do just until you make the first move.
We're gonna build longer range, better missiles. We're gonna build
hypersonic missiles. We're gonna build some satellites for recon. We're
gonna do some solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile work. Don't worry,
(31:08):
it's cool. We're gonna make some new nuclear warheads. Yeah.
We're also gonna build some tactical nukes and uh also
some U A V s, a brand new U A
V that can you know, do all kinds of fun
stuff for us. So that's what we're gonna be doing.
You decide what you you know, what action you actually
want to take in order to reduce the tensions here,
(31:28):
and then we can talk. Oh man, not quite sure
how to feel about this. It's scared. You should feel
scared a little bit, just enough, but especially if you're
in South Korea or you're you know, within a certain
radius of the DPRK they can hit Alaska and uh
maybe maybe California. The song fourteen which and probably mispronouncing,
(31:53):
but that's the ice. That's the latest. I cb m um.
I think they they just started coming out like seen
they were revealed. But yeah, of course you're gonna say that.
And then there's also you know, in this conversation. At
some point, although it hasn't been widely reported yet, boom
China has entered the chat because China very much wants
(32:16):
North Korea to remain as a buffer state right between
South Korea and to less than the possible influence of Japan, etcetera, etcetera.
So at some point the president of the US, whoever
that president might be, it's Biden currently calls China. They
have to and they're like, hey, why is your boy
(32:39):
on radio silence? And then China, you know, the government
of China, who knows how they handle that approach? They say, oh,
whatever you talking about? That's that's strange. Kim always answers
the phone for me, Can you think of anything you
might have done? Who knows? Who knows? Man, Well, listen,
(33:01):
listen to the rhetoric. So when when Joe Biden was
on the campaign trail, he would often whenever asked a question,
you know, about tensions in in North Koreo or about dictators.
There are all kinds of questions that were kind of
lobbed at him, and he would always respond, not always,
he would often respond by referring to Kim Jong un
(33:23):
as a thug and other you know, authoritarian people as thugs.
And this is a quote from Joe Biden. The days
of cozying up to dictators are over, clearly in response
of the previous administration and the views that that administration was,
you know, had had a different relationship with leaders such
(33:45):
as Kim Jong un. And I believe, I believe North
Korea has referred to Joe Biden as a quote rabid dog.
I think that's correct. Yeah, them's fighting words, yes, and
they went on or someone I believe, I'm not sure
if it was Kim. I think it was maybe just
someone representing the DPRK uh one of the one of
(34:08):
them said that he should be beaten to death with
a stick. Washington Post reported that to it. Yeah yeah,
um yeah. And again like the DPRK has consistently referred
to the United States as their biggest rival, the biggest enemy,
the quote foremost principal enemy, and anything we could do
(34:35):
to lessen the tension there and like legitimately maybe in
some way actually get proper the things that the civilians
their need. I mean, we've will, we'll talk about it
as many times as we have to. But there are
people in genuine with genuine health concerns that are in need,
that live in the DPRK who are just humans, just
(34:57):
people like you and me, and you know, they're living.
They can't help that they're living in that regime because
we've learned that when one attempts to you know, abscond,
to get away, there are major issues, and we've reported
on some of those here and we've also been seeing
it for for decades. Yeah. Yeah, so the problem. The
(35:20):
problem is generational punishment, you know, meaning that if someone
does something that violates law in North Korea, UH, their
relatives can also be punished, may be sent to a
detainment camp or even um even executed. And when people
(35:41):
leave North Korea attempt to defect, when they go through China,
there is a huge likelihood or huge possibility of these
people being trafficked, being sold into marriage, being caught by
the Chinese authorities who do not consider them refugees but
consider them what are called illegal illegal economic migrants, and
(36:03):
they'll just be returned to their home country, where, of
course they have violated any number of laws by defecting UH.
These these are huge issues, and one thing that it
is crucial to remember is whenever you're hearing a story
about a government that's doing things the rest of the
world order disagrees with, the people who live in that
(36:27):
country often have very little, very little decision making ability,
right like North Korea is not checking with everybody who
lives in North Korea about what the next policies should be. Um.
There there's tremendous food insecurity. The International Sphere Order of
Nations still doesn't really know how hard COVID hit the
(36:50):
country that was already in a very tenuous existence. China
probably has a lot of information on this, but um
why release it? You know, it's it's terrible because it's
literally being used as a buffer UH international bargaining chip.
And this is this is a very old game. It's
(37:12):
a game countries have played for a long time. Man, Well,
we're gonna keep our eyes and ears on it and
you know, if you hear anything, please write to us,
call us whatever you gotta do. We'll tell you how
to do that at the end of this. But for now,
we're gonna take a quick word from our sponsor and
we'll be right back with more strange news. And you
(37:33):
aren't gonna believe this one. And we have returned long
time listeners. You know that I struggle every week to
pick simply one story because once upon a time, and
the predecessor to this segment, I was doing three stories
(37:54):
every day. Uh no, it's kind of got an opposite problem. Um,
I'm glad you're okay. Man. After that, that's a lot.
It's a lot of time strange thing. Um maybe okay,
who was the bother being? Okay, it's that's good. I
went past one story that I really enjoyed, which is
(38:16):
the world's first unmanned supersonic fighter. I looked into the
news about the anti Catheram mechanism. Right that news is
pretty much out there now and should be easy to
find that that the fastest unmanned thing is that the
story from Popular Mechanics about reusing the sr SE engines
(38:38):
in in like an unmanned vehicle. I found it on
India Times, but I imagine it would be reported in
Popular Mechanics. It's right up their alley. Uh, yeah, we're
entering the age of supersonic unmanned craft. Okay, my dog
must be eating something she shouldn't be. But yes, that's awesome.
(39:00):
So I don't want to make that that sound too
interesting because I don't want to shoot us in the
audio foot here. Uh, it's a great it's a great story.
He's fascinating. It's a little disturbing. You should read about it,
but instead instead of supersonic unmanned jets. It is time
to make the official announcement, folks. Texas Rangers have said
(39:24):
that they will stop trying to hypnotize people. In other news,
Texas Rangers have apparently been hypnotizing a ton of people
for more than four decades, like with their like charming
southern drawl or how are they going about this? No,
they've got Chuck Norris. He's rolling around and he just
(39:44):
kind of puts his shades down really slowly. Ye, or
if Chuck isn't around, they used the quite prestigious Texas
Ranger badges and they're just like look into the rotation
of the badge get getting very sleeping for sleeping who
(40:06):
killed JFK. But no, I know it sounds like a
crazy story, you guys, but it is true. I did
not um. I was not aware that hypnosis was being
used this this frequently by the Rangers, specifically uh and
in an odd bit of synchronicity, I believe somebody has
(40:27):
also posted this on Here's Where It Gets Crazy, which
is rated arbitrarily by US as the absolute best page
on all of Facebook. Here's what happened. So since at
least the start of the nine eighties, maybe a little
before then, the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees
(40:50):
the Highway Patrol and the Rangers, has has been using
hypnosis techniques two get statements from victims and eyewitnesses. They've
used this technique, according to the Dallas Morning News, at
least eighteen hundred times over the last forty years. And this,
(41:15):
this kind of hypnosis is not the we've talked about
this in the past. It's not the stereotypical ha ha
buck like a chicken, squawk like a chicken or whatever,
or you know, you'll hear this magic word and then
you'll moon people or anything like that. This is meant
to give to help people mentally regress through memories so
(41:39):
that they can uh have more clarity of what they
saw witnessed experience. So like, if this stuff works, then
the idea would be, let's say someone has witnessed the carjack, right,
and they say, okay, we're going to put you under
and we're going to you is these hypnotic techniques to
(42:02):
help you fully remember what you saw. So now you're
just not saying it was a dude in a red shirt.
You're able to say it was a dude in a
red polo who was wearing blue jeans, he had a
Laker's hat on or something like that. Regression hypnosis or
whatever it's this is. This is blowing my mind. Ben.
(42:27):
I didn't think I didn't think anyone. I didn't think
any law enforcement agency would be using this generally. It's
you know, controversial even in therapy let alone for like
eyeball witness accounts, right, because it's it's uh notoriously um unreliable.
So there is some there is some solid science to hypnosis,
(42:50):
but there's a really dangerous thing with this kind of
with this kind of approach. And then and it's this
if you are listening and or human being, than every
time you remember something, you are not remembering that actual
event every time after the first time you remember it. Instead,
you are remembering the last time you remembered thinking about
(43:13):
this thing. And your memory will be affected by smells, sites, sounds, sensations,
even temperatures, all the stuff in your environment that that
you're encountering in real time while you're remembering something in
the past. So it is very easy for new memories
(43:35):
to be created, and you, as the person experiencing these memories,
will not be able to differentiate between those memories and
the real ones. Like in in a way, this is
a helpful circle? Is this? In a way, this is
like a predecessor to the deep fake of the digital age.
And you don't need technology to do it. You just
(43:56):
need a calm voice and a relaxed environment and then
someone who will go with you for the ride. Uh.
And and this is not saying the rangers are doing
this at all. They're not like purposely trying to implant
ideas or distort recollections. But it's very very easy to
accidentally do that, and that's where it gets dangerous. Also, Uh,
(44:18):
it's controversial but Matt, you raised a good question, which,
as he said, you know, I don't always pick I
don't picture law enforcement doing this kind of stuff. But
we know that law enforcement has been taken in by
very unorthodox ideas or claims in the past, like so
called psychic detectives, right, which we should do an episode
(44:38):
on image. It's weird that we haven't. Actually, yeah, several
I remember we when we well, we made the show
about the Atlanta missing and murdered. We were so surprised
to see actual news reports of Atlanta, Atlanta p D
and a couple other police departments using to psychic detectives
or psychics to help them people remote remote viewing type
(45:01):
things like to define bodies or all that essentially remains.
Like I have a strong image of a bridge, there's
running water, there's a side. I see a side. It
starts with the Wayne Williams, that's the guy. Unfortunately, that's
(45:24):
how it works because there's a lot of cold reading
involved there. But law enforcement has we can emphasize this enough.
In theory. The way it's supposed to work is that
law enforcement has to evaluate, evaluate all citizen like reports,
so it's often not them necessarily going out and finding
a psychic or someone who claims to be a psychic. Instead,
(45:46):
it's somebody proactively calling them and saying I know what happened,
because um, I have information about this, and then they
have to say, okay, we'll tell us, because otherwise you're
not really doing your job, are you. I don't know.
I didn't know this before, but at least twenty one
(46:07):
states have banned evidence in court if it's gleaned entirely
through hypnosis. They're no longer going to let you play, uh,
he said, She said, with your past self. Basically, well,
it makes complete sense. Do we have any understanding of
the people who were actually administering this. Were they bringing
(46:29):
people in to run hypnosis set uh sessions or were
they I don't know, were the the actual officers doing
this or somebody in the rangers. I don't know how
how did it work? Yeah, So there was a program
that was there's this program that was based on the
work of an l a. P d. Psychologist named Martin
(46:52):
riser In. He wrote a book called The Handbook of
Investigative Hypnosis, and this is one of the that's one
of the bedrocks of that program in Texas and officers
would be using these techniques, so they would be trained
at least in this regard. Um they have. Yeah, I
(47:16):
think not quite nine hundred police have been certified by
the State of Texas in this investigative hypnosis. Um in
this Yeah, it is. It is a lot. But to
be fair, we also don't know how many of those
eight hundred seventy four people are still performing this stuff
(47:38):
or how many of them just took the course and
then said, Okay, well I had that box checked off
and now I don't have to ever worry about this again. UM.
I mean, is this something that that pops up in
other law enforcement agencies? I mean I always kind of,
you know, probably because of Walker, Texas Ranger assigned a
bit of a mystical vibe to like the Texas Rangers.
(48:00):
H But now they're starting to feel a little more
like a Jedi than like a detective, you know what
I mean. Yeah, it's still I mean, it's still been
used by some police agencies or law enforcement outfits, I
should say, as well as some intelligence agencies. But it's like,
(48:21):
you know, I think the thing that startles a lot
of people if they've just seen why detectors on television
and stuff. Is that polygraphs are also kind of trash science.
It's weird that they're still being used, at least in
the way that they are um and with this idea
of hypnosis. Yeah, it's been around, like people have been
(48:44):
using or attempting to use these techniques with what they
would argue are some credible results since at least the
Second World War. So this is this stuff is around.
But there's another issue here. And again, this is not
accusing witnesses of lying. This is not accusing the individuals
(49:06):
and law enforcement of purposely stitching someone up for a
crime they didn't commit. But we know that multiple, multiple
cases that result in convictions are based on what later
turns out to be a witness somehow misidentifying a perpetrator.
And these people who are wrongfully convicted made languish in
(49:28):
jail for years before say a DNA test comes out,
or before they are able to get access to legal
assistance that can address the problems in their case. Also,
I don't know about you guys, but I'm a little
torn reporting on this because I think that got the
idea of like a hypnosis ranger is just so cool.
(49:52):
It is so amazingly cool. Hypno Ranger Walker, Hypno Ranger.
It's more like Cane from Kung Fu or something, you know.
And again it's just got this real kind of mystic
vibe to it. But but I guess the way they
used it though, it's almost more like an interrogation technique
that then then when you know, look into my eyes
(50:14):
kind of situation. Right, Well yeah, okay, so but it's
it's four witnesses, right, it's for people who saw a crime.
It's for people who were victims of a crime who
were a part of it, trying to recall stuff about
a suspect, right, or a person of interest. I thought,
exactly what kind of what you just referred to their
NOL when you first read this been I thought it
(50:36):
was rangers going out there getting a person of interest
into custody and then like hypnotizing them and then like
trying to get them to tell us that tell them
the truth. I was so excited about that. That's the
one I want to see. Yeah, yeah, instead of a gun,
they just like use their mind powers and hold out
their hands. That's the mind control noise. Yeah, that would
(51:01):
be awesome. But the the issue there is that it
is um. It is actually quite difficult and somewhat unpredictable
to use hypnosis in that kind of non consensual way.
There are ways around it, and you can exploit certain
cognitive susceptibilities in certain individuals, but there's not really there's
(51:27):
not really a silver bullet for that, even for the
people who are very, very good at it. Um. But
I totally agree, man, if they're could, like, if you
could hypnotize criminals, that's a great TV show. But it
also means that if you're an officer who hypnotize a criminals,
every case you land is automatically suspect. Did they really
(51:50):
confess or did you know, did like Walker Texas Mesmerizer
just knocked him over? You know, right, it could certainly
be considered coercion or you know, just suspect, right, suspects testimony.
M Yeah, But if Walker hypno Ranger, if his techniques
get us, you know, to the murder weapon, then we're
(52:13):
okay as long as it's a physical piece of evidence
that gets us there, right, Yeah. It just in those
twenty one states. It can't just be hypnosis. If conversation
under hypnosis leads to DNA evidence leads to like you
said a physical gun or you know, they find the
car that got stolen, etcetera. Then it's it's a different conversation.
(52:37):
So that's that's the huge controversy. But it might be
interested to note, uh that law enforcement, just in general,
US law enforcement has cited a number of cases where
they say hypnosis yielded positive, actionable results. The most famous
infamous was the kidnapping of a school bus that like
twenty six kids and a driver a board in Chowchilla, California.
(53:03):
Have you heard about this? One heard a story of
it when we were making Zodiac, But I was it
buried or was it like? Um, I'm just something is
firing my brain. But I would need to go into
hypnosis to tell you exactly how I remember. You're getting versely, Uh,
you're you're right. The story goes that a hypnosis expert
(53:25):
spoke with witness help them do this regression exploration, and
while they were under this hypnotic questioning, they were able
to recall the full license number of a van that
the kidnappers drove. It's interesting, I mean, you can do
a million like you don't necessarily have to hypnotize people.
(53:47):
You can you can help your friends remember things um
much more clearly or in a much more distorted manner
than they would alone. I'm telling you, just like so many,
so many very small things. If you're holding a hot drink,
you're gonna have more of a fond recollection when you
think of stuff in the past. It's nuts. It's so
(54:10):
easy to hack um, which means that we have to
ask ourselves, can we trust the science how much of
the how much of the curriculum of these sorts of
these sorts of programs, how much of that curriculum focuses
on how to make sure you're not accidentally creating the
memory you're attempting to discover, or you're not leading the witness.
(54:33):
And it could be so easy. It could be Um,
Darren Brown does this a lot. It could be a
quick slip of your speech. So instead you're saying like um,
saying like, okay, you're getting very sleepy. What was the
name Pete of the person you spoke to at the
(54:53):
dairy queen? And they're not going to hear that Pete.
But later as there you know, as they're increasingly compromised,
then of course they're not just going to remember the
name Pete. They're gonna see in their head the name
tag that says Pete, and then boom, this poor schmuck
at the dairy queen is going up the river. It's terrible.
(55:14):
It's possible. I I started feeling really sleepy for some reason. Ben.
I don't know what's going on, oh Pete, but yeah,
that's I wanted to bring that to your attention, folks.
Of course, that dairy queen example is hopefully just a
hypothetical example and hasn't occurred in real life, but the
danger there is very real, and we need to be
(55:36):
aware of this stuff. So I applaud um. I applaud
the decision to stop trying to hypnotize witnesses and victims
of crime, and I applaud their attempts to turn it
around and make it uh perpetrator facing rather than victims
(55:57):
and witnesses. We're all applauding. We're all no, what are
you applauding? We're all applauding right now at the end
of the show. Do you know I I really just
kind of snapped out of this weird stupor that I
was in this FuG state. I don't know what caused it,
but I feel like I lost time there. Um, I'll
snap you out within with an A V Club headline
(56:19):
of a story. We're not going to talk about you, ready, please?
Scientists planned to shoot massive load of sperm samples onto
the moon. Wow, they had to choose that. They really
chose those words carefully, didn't there. That's almost British. Yeah,
massive massive load. They could have just said massive load.
They could have left. Yeah. Well, uh, that that is
(56:42):
that is true. There is something very much like a
doomsday vault being proposed for construction on the lunar surface.
And there is an editor who absolutely had their day
made with that headline. This is strange. Uh, I do
want end a one note for the rangers here. Officer
named James de Brow is quoted as a person who
(57:04):
has performed this kind of investigative hypnosis and trained other
officers in it, and de Brow defends the practice. He says,
you know, he seems very well aware of the danger
of creating a memory when you seek to retrieve one,
and he explicitly says, we're trained not to be suggestive.
We're not here to give information in a hypnosis session.
(57:26):
We're here to retrieve it. But with that, folks, would
love to hear what you think about hypnosis and deep
faking memories. Please let us know, let us know what
you think the future of deep faking in the digital ages.
How can we write a law about it? And if
you happen, and we have to say this every so often,
(57:47):
if you happen to be a member of the elite
in the DPRK, you can can you email us? I
mean email us if you can. We're not clear on
how that would work out for you. But also if
you have experience firsthand in the country, we want to
hear your story. The world is wondering what on earth
(58:08):
is happening in the Hermit Kingdom. We try to be
pretty easy to find online. That's right. You can find
this in the usual social media corners of the Internet,
Facebook and Twitter, or we're conspiracy stuff Instagram, or we're
conspiracy Stuff Show. We even have as I guess, digital
but also sort of analog. You can so you can
reach us with a rotary phone. It's digital on our end.
(58:30):
But if if that's if that's how you roll, you
can still reach us at one eight three three st
d w y t K, where you will hear the
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leave a three minute message. Do your best to keep
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(58:52):
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(59:12):
a personal message to us, leave it at the end
of the message. Please, you've got three minutes. If you
want to go over that time, you can always send
us a good old fashioned email. Hey. By the way,
I don't know about you, guys. I'm gonna I'm gonna
be watching this Zack Snyder cut of Justice League. I
heard it's good. I got it. I got a solid
se on rotten tomatoes. But I love how the Snyder
(59:34):
cut has become kind of Internet shorthand for just like
the as it was intended, Like does the Pruder film
the Snyder cut, you know, the unabridged, the directors cut.
There you go, the Criterion. It's the only way to
watch Blade Runner. I think, yeah, I'm gonna I'm definitely
gonna watch. I'm I'm a sucker for superhero films. Even
(59:57):
though that we got a lot of great feedback from
our listeners on the Military Entertainment Complex episode who were
pointing out, you know, you could argue that a lot
of superhero films in some ways function as military propaganda.
And then for everybody who was asking why we didn't
talk more about sports of that episode, stay tuned smart,
(01:00:20):
All right, well, hey, I think this is it. We're
gonna give you the email now. Uh the last thing.
Huge shout out to the whole cast and crew of
people that made The Umbrella Academy. I freaking loved it.
I haven't watched show that I loved that much in
a long time. Good work. Congratulations, it's so good. I
haven't finished season two, but season one was was a banger,
And I think it's so cool of that dude for
(01:00:41):
my chemical romance, like if comics were his first love
before he was even, like, you know, a massive emo
rock star. And now he's returned to said first love
and he's quite good at it, quite a good writer,
Gerard Way. All I know is I loved it. If
you loved something too, and you want to tell us
about it, Hey, do all the things we already said
tact us. We'd love to hear from you. Our email
(01:01:02):
addresses conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they
(01:01:24):
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