January 18, 2021 • 56 mins
The COVID-19 relief bill contains some surprising-- and possibly groundbreaking -- new directives for UFO disclosure, along with a 180-day timeline that has UFOlogists across the planet freaking out. The guys examine the warnings and speculation regarding the possibility of more violence as the date of the Presidential inauguration approaches. All this and more in this week's Strange News segment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer,
Alexa's code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is our Strange News segment.
I know what you're thinking, folks. Should we even call
(00:47):
things strange? News? At this point? Is not all news
and every news program a little bit strange here in
the beginning of the answer is yes, but we decided
to call it strange. Who's way before NBC or ABC
or the other other rookies in the crowd. So welcome aboard, guys. Uh,
(01:07):
Today's episode a little bit hyperbole there, Uh. Today's episode
is going to take us to some familiar places, some
ongoing threats in the US. It's going to take us
uh to a story of contamination that I would wager
many of us in the audience have not heard. And
we're also going to look at something interesting about the
(01:31):
COVID nineteen stimulus bill that has nothing to do with
COVID nineteen. I'm very excited about all three of these.
Where do you guys want to begin? I personally want
to start where you just ended there, Ben, Can we
can we begin there? Yeah? I mean I'm certainly intrigued. Absolutely, absolutely, Okay,
this is this is so bizarre. But all right, if
(01:54):
you are I think you're aware of this, even if
you're not. In the United States. The government of the
United States federal government has been a long, harrowing time
arguing over the specifics of what we call the Corona
Virus Relief Government Funding Bill. One thing that may be
surprising to a lot of people who haven't really drilled
(02:17):
into this stuff before, or to a lot of people
who are not from the US, is that our legislative
branch has this ridiculous, cartoonish habit of tacking extra onto
a bill that has nothing to do with the purpose
of the bill. How far did this go? This goes
(02:39):
so far that you could, for instance, say, uh, say
you and code named Doc and and Matt Noel and
I are all part of Congress. We're a Congress of five, right,
and one of us says, hey, uh, it is literally
raining cats and dogs. We need to make raining cat
(02:59):
and dog bill to combat the massive damage that's happening
with all these dogs and cats hitting the sidewalk. And
then someone says, well, we could pass this, but I
also want a subsidy for toe cream, and that's it
has to pass that way, Like that's that's the example, right, Yeah,
(03:21):
it does feel a lot like that, Ben, Like just
something completely out of the blue has to go in
the bill or else it's dead. Is that that's not
poison pill? Necessarily could poison pill, isn't it? Like it's
like you give me what I want, to give you
you what you want. Sort of Even though the thing
that we want is something that everybody wants, it always
struck me as a little disingenuous and kind of bizarre. Yeah,
(03:45):
because if you're a member of Congress, you're always always
kind of pitching. Everything you do is ideally a pitch
to your constituents for why they should elect you the
next time your election comes up. And so to solidify
their base, many members of Congress or like, let's take
this bill for um, let's take this bill for uh,
(04:07):
making a national Explosions in the Sky holiday, and let's
tack on something that is a subsidy for the munitions
factory in my constituency. You know, I think Ben as
a secret post rock fan, which I just recently found out.
(04:27):
I mean, you mentioned them occasionally for your like studying
listenings because they're instrumental, but I recently found out Ben
and I have been a member of the same post
rock Facebook group for many years. I didn't want to add.
I like this idea of a congress of five. I
feel like we'd get a hell of a lot more
done than the current set up, just just putting that
out there. You know, five, now that we think about
(04:50):
it is great because there's never there won't really be
a deadlock, right only constituents being our wives, girlfriends or children.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine how corrupt they would
become and how quickly, just because the amount of money
that would be shoved at five singular people's faces. You're right,
(05:11):
we wouldn't let anybody know who they are, completely anonymous
on account of the bag. But oh my god, Ben,
please continue with this. I'm fascinating. Well, this, this practice
has happened to get. The Coronavirus Relief and Government Funding
Bill was signed into law in December by President current
(05:33):
President Donald Trump. As we record this, which is tricky
that we have to say as we record this right now,
he signed it, you know, late December, and this bill
is two point three million dollars strong. As you know,
it doesn't have a lot of stuff that various Congress
(05:55):
Congress members or various factions of their constituencies wanted, like
a lot of other countries are getting, like our northern neighbors.
I think we're getting up to two K a month
for the duration of the pandemic. The big hot button
issue on the table for a lot of households in
the US was whether there should be any kind of
(06:17):
monetary or financial relief for the millions who are unemployed
or facing hardship. And if so, what that one time
or that second stimulus should look like six D or
two K. I think we're the big numbers. But this
bill included something else. Of course it did. Because it's
the US Congress. It doesn't matter who's in power, there's
(06:39):
never gonna be a bit a bill that's just about
the bill. It's like if you're in a bad relationship.
The fight is never really about the fight, it's about
something else, you know what I mean. And those dirty
dishes are kind of like a metaphor for all the
ways you present each other over the years. I'm sorry
that description probably just ruined some one's day. But this
(07:00):
extra thing that was tacked on one of them is
not as as ruinous is that horrible relationship example. For
some reason, this COVID relief bill began a one d
and eight day countdown for the U. S Intelligence agencies,
all of them to tell Congress everything they know about
(07:23):
UFOs or you know, as we know what they prefer
to call them, unidentified aerial phenomenon. So, yes, we're gonna
try to survive the pandemic as a nation. But also,
while we're at it, let's say that you have to
tell Congress what the hell is going on? Because remember,
the armed forces spent millions of dollars researching this, and
(07:46):
it's not it's not something that's ever been presented in
totality to Congress. Pretty nuts. I'm not sure why there's
a hundred and eighty day thing. I think that's that
might just be time for them to you coalate all
their information and cross check in fact check, etcetera. UM,
you can read about this, and CNN you can read
(08:09):
about it, and Vice they have a good article about this.
It also puts in something else. It doesn't say, just
give us this one time report. Oh, if you want
to read it. It's it's buried in the Committee Comments
section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year, which
is also inside this massive spending bill. So it's a stipulation.
(08:32):
It's like you're going into the liner notes of a
of a really detailed you know, like one of those
special um collectors addition vinyls that has the whole discography
of something or something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and
there's this long, uh printed documentary or oral history of
(08:53):
the thing, and you find like one liner note and
they're like and it's like this was, you know, shortly
after Mick Jagger was kicked out of NASA, and you're like, wait,
what and so the rolling stones began? But that that's
not true, I don't think. But this one, this one
also puts in this process. It says there needs to
(09:13):
also be an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection
and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomenon reporting for
the federal government, designate an official responsible for that process,
identify whether any of these u a p s are
national security threats, and explicitly say whether any of the
(09:38):
nation's known adversaries could be behind this, and the submitted
report has to be unclassified. So this has been confirmed
by Stokes, this has been confirmed by sen In by
multiple sources. It's going to happen. Um for all the
uthologists or UFO enthusiasts in the crowd, they count down
(10:00):
has begun. My first question for you guys, do you
think this will actually happen? So I'm just reading about
this for the first time. Then, according to what I'm seeing,
this is all contingent on whether or not the executive
honors this request and whether or not the administrations among
the well the administration which is the executive, as well
(10:21):
as all these other military personnel who are part of
the Air Force, the Navy, and all these other places,
whether or not they actually cooperate to get this information
out there and get it declassified. So it's like there's
an order to do it, but you still got to
get everybody to actually do the thing. Even though there's
this they're calling it a request. It's more of an order.
(10:44):
It feels like, yeah, yeah, it's phrases an order with
several different things that could go wrong, or it's sort
of structured as one. This is being put It might
surprise some people who haven't had their eyes on this.
This whole thing is being pushed by Marco Rubio. Yeah,
he is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Um,
(11:04):
they want this to happen. But we also any ufologists
in the US can assure us that there have been
multiple statements, kind of off the cuff statements of various
presidential candidates. It's usually while they're running for president. They say, okay,
and also one other thing that I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna figure out this UFO stuff. I mean, they
(11:25):
get it released. Bill Clinton said that, Um, I can't
remember what George Bush said in that matter, but a
couple of other a couple of other folks, even Donald
Trump at one time, they have said this. They've said
that when they go when they're going into office or
when they're running for office, but when they're actually in office,
it takes a back seat or a back burner because
you know, there's a lot of stuff to think about
(11:47):
when you're president, I assume yeah. And there's there's always
the the much assumed conversation that any executive coming into
office has with the intelligence community that's basically, uh, you
can't look behind those doors. You can't know what's back
there for your own safety and for national security. Oh,
you know the old I don't know if you guys
(12:08):
have heard this, but there's there's an old joke that
changes depending on what which industry of the U. S.
Government you're in, or which genre which branch goes let's
do it with the president. So it goes like this.
There's a guy who's elected to be the president and
on the day of his you know, his first real
(12:28):
day on the job, he goes in the oval office
and he asked the outgoing president for any advice, and
the outgoing president says, uh, well, I left two envelopes
on the desk, and if anything really screwy or terrible happens,
no matter how it happens, so open that first envelope
(12:50):
and you'll know what to do. And so they say okay,
and then, you know, like a year or two passes
in their term, and things get really dicey. Something terrible happens,
maybe it's a current president's fault. And so they opened
the top right drawer of the desk or whatever, and
they take out the first envelope and they open it
and the envelope just says, blame it on me. It's
(13:10):
signed by the other president. And so they go on
on television and on the networks of the circuits. So
they say it was the other guy, and then boom,
their ratings are back up. They're onto year three, toward
year four. Uh, something goes wrong again, very very wrong,
and this president says, okay. They opened the second envelope
(13:32):
and they think, all right, what are my first time
it worked? And they read the second envelope and it
says write two letters and find two envelopes. That's that's it.
And it makes you wonder, like, is that is that
the kind of situation we we get in when we're
talking about how these reports get released or who is
(13:55):
accountable for the release of these and the various ways
that these can go wrong. And then, of course, the
argument that all of this UFO release stuff that's come out,
because there has been a lot, there's the argument that
all of it is a distraction from ongoing domestic affairs,
which I don't know what to think about that. I mean,
(14:16):
what do you guys think, because a lot of the
stuff that's being released is not new by any means. Yeah,
but it's nice to be able to have access to
it all in one place, like from an official source. Right,
it was just kind of piecemealing it together from various
reports and dribs and drabs on the internet. Yeah, that's
a good point. Look, I'm never gonna not think disclosure
(14:38):
is coming until it comes, Okay, So I don't think
a conversation with a very smart friend of mine, we
kind of hang out every every month or so and
just kind of chat about life stuff. And you know,
he's he's into conspiracy theory. He wasn't the show, um,
and he just doesn't think it's it makes sense logistically,
the idea of disclosure. Like he just he was sort
of like, just what we about science and the way
(15:01):
time works and the way distance works. It just doesn't
he doesn't see it. And I kind of was was
on the same page as you or I'm like, oh,
all this new stuff is coming out. I feel like
we're on the edge of it, and he just kind
of pooh pooed. It took the way out of my
sales a little bit. But then I started thinking about
what he was saying. I kind of feel that side
of it too. I don't know what are your thoughts
in terms of the logistics of disclosure, the logistics of
(15:22):
actual alien contact. It's it's all good, dude. Your friend
just doesn't know that the aliens actually are from Earth
and they live inside the spoiler. Yeah, that's I mean.
The thing is that the math is not impossible if
(15:43):
we are assuming conventional rules of time and space. And
I think we've talked about this before. The same math
that makes it a statistical certitude that we would have
other life in the universe is all also the same
math that makes it virtually impossible that we would ever meet,
just the time and the space involved. But if those
(16:04):
rules don't always apply, then it's an entirely different conversation.
Or if there's to Matt's point, if there is something
that is closer to home than we imagine, then we could, uh,
we could find ourselves in a very different conversation. You know,
for the longest time, one of the most plausible answers
has been suppressed technology built by Earth leans because we
(16:29):
know that happened in the past, and we know that
other governments, including Uncle Sam folks, those other governments were
more than happy to take sightings of space age bombers
and stuff and be like, oh, yeah, that's a uh,
that's an alien. I guess you're right. Yeah, it's definitely
definitely on us or ours who would build a flying
(16:54):
black triangle. This reminds me of the old urban legends
last you know, our story the call was coming from
inside the house. Yeah, yeah, And I'm of course, you know,
I'm joking about the concept of extraterrestrials being terrestrial and
all of that. Although unidentified submerged objects will always always
(17:17):
have a place in my heart. Uh just I think
any any light we can shed on this stuff is
good light because it will calm down somebody like me
that is so excited and itching to get actual evidence
if there's nothing there and we can, you know, conventionally
explain all of these things. But it will also I
(17:37):
think it's some weird way. I don't know, God, this
is this sounds so just happy and hippie, but in
some way thinking about this stuff, even even without the
reports and all the info. Just thinking about other life
on other planets in some way brings us together to
think about ourselves as one our you know, about manity
(18:00):
and all that stuff. I feel bad saying that, but
it's kind of true. Yeah, I feel you. And also,
you know, if I was gonna design a T shirt
for this, I would I would say, who needs extra terrestrials?
When terrestrials are extra enough? I mean we have, It's
not gonna work. It's too many, like extra negative thing
(18:21):
like terrestrials extra Yeah, I mean we are look at
this like if you're any other form of life on
the planet, honestly, humans, we're the worst ones. Yeah, because
why we can't have nice things. That's why we can
have nice things. So the last bit of last bit
(18:42):
of news on this for anybody who's like I don't
want to wait a hundred and eight days. We live
in uncertain, terrible times. The Middle East is a powder keg. Authorites,
Harry and governments also have nuclear weapons and are increasingly
less hesitant to invade other places. I want to know
how the movie ends now, well right now. Officially you
(19:06):
can obtain every single declassified CIA document on UFOs. You
can officially do it at a site that we have
shouted out in the past, the Black Vaults, which is
a privately owned clearinghouse for declassified documents in general. But
they have released downloadable archive with PDFs containing all the
(19:30):
CIA files on unidentified aerial phenomena. I'm not sure whether
this includes USOS yet, Matt, but let's always let's always
hope while we can uh. Some of these reports date
all the way back to the nineteen eighties. This archive
is the passion project of the founder of the Black
Vault site, John Greenwald Jr. And we're looking at the
(19:55):
results of somewhere a little less or a little more
than ten thousand different fo I a Freedom of Information
Act request, And this is the work of decades for
this guy. So do check it out if you want
to learn more. Be warned this will have the notoriously moving,
compelling language of a government agency. These aren't exactly page turners,
(20:21):
is what we're saying, but we would love What I
would love to do is crowdsource this and get a
sense from our fellow conspiracy realists over which of these reports,
over whether there's a hidden diamond in the rough here.
You know what I mean, Or a gem that corroborates
with some other proven historical event, you know what I mean,
(20:43):
like the allegations of unidentified flying objects disabling nuclear weapons,
things like that. Right, So let us know and let
us know what other weird stuff you found in the
COVID nineteen stimulus bill. Because it's it's five thousand, six
hundred pages, you guys, there's all kinds of stuff in there.
(21:05):
It's like an unedited Stephen King novel. All Stephen King
novels are united, says a Stephen King fan. That totally
it's totally true. Really quickly, just you know, in terms
of like what these look like, like are they like
footnotes kind of or like how have you actually looking
at the documentation? How are they slipped in there? Like
that's what I kind of want to know without actually
(21:27):
having to read the things tedious and terrible. Many of
these are typed letters from way back when, and they're
it's difficult to even see and decipher everything that's said
in there, let alone, you know, search a PDF because
they are all in PDF format. Um. They there's about
(21:49):
three d and what forty two megabytes I think in
the entire thing. If you're going to download it, you know,
some of it is the actual Freedom of Information Act,
like letterhead or something, and then there will be a
black vault, I don't know on the second header that
tells you about that site, and then you'll get the
document that's like one to x number of pages. Yeah,
(22:10):
and I think, no, you might have. You might have
been referring to just how that slipped in congressionally in
a relief bill. No, no, no, no, these are both.
These are both very good questions. So part of it
is just that, Look, I'm not saying I'm not accusing
anyone in specific of being disingenuous. Every Congress member has
(22:31):
a staff, and their staff assist them with understanding what's
going on in these bills. But this bill in particular
is controversial because some members of Congress say that by
the time it was finally shared with them, it was
like a few hours before the vote. So how on
earth was their time to read it and digest everything involved?
(22:54):
And this kind of this kind of stuff happens quickly.
The the answer to how this can be squeezed in
is that they're so much there that you can kind
of matroshka doll a subheading into another subheading, into another subheading,
into another subheading, and then and oh, by the way, aliens, Well, yeah,
and by its very nature, I think that the issue
(23:15):
there's a lot of issues with like parliamentary procedure and
then our government. It's by its very nature not transparent
at all. Even the way these things get slipped in,
it's like it's like burying the lead, you know what
I mean. We have to kind of dig, dig, dig,
dig to even find a semblance of what the hell
is actually going on in some of these things. And
that just seems wrong to me. But maybe it's like
rewards those who like do the digging and do the homework,
(23:38):
and it implies that if you don't care enough to like, look,
you shouldn't know. But that just seems wrong. That is yeah,
that is that is wrong because right now, the level
of information we're talking about, the level of information processing
is simply beyond the grasp of someone who doesn't have
the specific job of doing this every day. There's just
(23:58):
no way, and there's a way a single person could
read the entirety of the things that are being passed
by Congress. That's why these staff members kind of divide
and conquer. But we spent a lot of time on this.
It hasn't happened yet. You have our word, folks that
if six is months from now we figure out what's
(24:20):
actually going on, If if the badger does finally get
out of the disclosure bag, then we are going to
be all over it. We might we'll have a party.
We'll have like a physical in person UFO party somewhere
cool David Busters, I don't know, let's fly out on
the company dime to area fifty one. It's either the
(24:42):
beginning of a new world or the end of the
old one. Who knows at that point. But we're still
in this world, and we're still in strange news. So
we're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and
then we'll be back with more. And we're back, and
my news story today sort of morphed a little bit,
(25:04):
sort of sprouted some heads and try to keep it manageable.
But it started off with I think what we can
all agree is very important information. Um this coming out
within the window of time that this FBI uh memo reports.
An internal FBI bulletin warned that as of yesterday, the
day we're recording this is Monday, yesterday being Sunday the tenth. Um,
(25:27):
there are plans circulating on the internet for armed protests
at all fifty states capitals. UM. And that's really you know,
the FBI issue. At least one other bullets in according
to the AP, where they sort of appeal to law
enfortunationwide to be prepared and not have another repeat of
that absolutely ludicrous display that we saw on Wednesday of
(25:52):
last week. UM, warning that there are potent there's potential
for clashing with police, there's potential for violence. Uh, there's
potential for targeting, uh and kidnapping, just like we saw
on Wednesday. Army General Daniel Hawkinson, chief of the National
Guard Bureau, told reporters today UH that the National Guard
is also looking at any issues across the country to
(26:14):
deploy in advance. So okay, great lesson learned, UM, but
be careful. If you live near a big metro area
downtown with a capital building, just steer. I would steer clear.
I would be very cautious about that. So this in
and of itself is I think important news to disseminate
because I actually it felt a little below the fold. Uh.
(26:34):
My friend texted me this information and I initially using
the search terms FBI um armed protests, I didn't get
any hits. Uh. And then he told me he was
on the Raw Story, which it was, and then I
found it directly by searching the Raw Story. And then
I found it on ABC, who initially obtained that. But
there's not a whole lot of reporting about this, so
hopefully this has reaching some folks that maybe hadn't heard
(26:55):
about this. UM. Then this is the part I'd like
to just open up and chat with everybody about it
led me down this rabbit hole. I think we've everyone's
familiar with the uh social media alt right or whatever
you want to call it. Let's just call it far
right platform parlor um. In addition to many major social
media UH and web hosting companies pulling the plug on
(27:19):
Donald Trump's online presence and others of his ilk UH,
Parlor was seen as kind of like, Okay, we're not
welcome on Twitter anymore, and we're not welcome on Facebook anymore.
All of these people made this mass kind of egress
to Parlor UH, and then very quickly Parlor's web hosting
support was pulled. Amazon Cloud. We know that Amazon one
(27:42):
of the big things that they do is have these
massive server farms and do web hosting. Uh. And so
if you don't have anybody to host your service, you
don't really have a service. So currently Parlor is down.
But here's the rub or here's the uh, the kind
of story within the story. Before that happened, an intrepid
uh let's call him hacker, whatever you want to call it,
(28:04):
a power user of the internet, uh, went and did
what's called a data scrape of all of these archives
or all of these like archive posts, because apparently the
code of Parlor, the actual base code is super holy
let's just say, not holy as an awe, but like
(28:26):
full of holes, easy to poke through. There's a really
great Reddit page called Parlor watch, and on it there's
a lot of you know, screenshots of different tweets, uh
and and you know, communications about this. And apparently the
internet security company Octa, which we actually use work, said, okay,
(28:46):
t A, They said that apparently Parlor was It's basically
an authentication protocol that that forces you to do like
a dual authentication. So you try to log into a thing,
it pings you on another device, You then say yes,
it's me, and then it lets you in um. That's
what it's for at the base level. But apparently the
Parlor coding team or whatever was using a free trial
(29:10):
version of octa um, and this hacker was able to
poke holes in that and essentially archive posts with the identities,
including geolocation information of thousands of posters, many of which
were directly involved with the insurgents let's call it at
(29:31):
the Capitol on Wednesday and their driver's license A vote
to right. That's the thing, Ben, and I was with
you there on that one too. That was the initial
story that came up. That is not true, UM. The
initially it was said that it was hacked and that
somebody was able to clone admin accounts and then dig
through and do all this nefarious stuff by like cloning
(29:52):
millions of admin accounts and basically it's kind of like,
you know, causing sewing chaos on the platform. But what
is true is that it's been d plat formed. It's
not online anymore, UM, none of the app stores will
carry it. And now this hacker goth and donk nb
um user name has has archived all of this stuff
(30:12):
and is reporting it to authorities. So that was part
of the original story, Ben, that was a Reddit story
saying that, Oh and also, uh, they have to scan
their driver's license to be part of it. And maybe
that part is true, but a lot of the other
pieces in that initial story we're not true. So I
really actually I'm not sure, Ben, but I saw that
as well. Um, but what do you what? What do
you guys think? Is this a matter of shutting down
(30:35):
free speech? Is this a matter of just doing what's
best for like national security? Um? Where is the line?
It's just a fascinating thing to consider. Yeah, yeah, agreed,
And it's an important thing. It's going to be important
for the generations that come after us, you know, if
we think beyond the immediate window. Right. I want to
(30:56):
give a shout out to a colleague of ours. I
was having a similar conversation with the creator Prodigy podcast.
His name is Lowell Brilliante. You'll hear more about him
soon later, I hope. But uh, he actually he had
hipped me to parlor watch, and I'm meant to shout
him out as well. Thank you. Ben. Also check out
(31:17):
his episode about the UNI bomber on Prodigy. Fantastic stuff,
really great podcast. And uh, we were we were talking
about some of this uh and talking to some of
my friends in the tech industry who were just you know,
everyone from far to one side or another to the
very a political people who are primarily motivated by money,
(31:43):
I would say, or motivated by you know, their own
their own very specific ideologies. And there is a there
is a worrisome aspect here to the idea of Okay,
so freedom of speech is something constitutionally guaranteed right, but
a private service is the owner of its own playground. Right.
(32:05):
If you were on the McDonald's playground, they don't have
to say that you slide down slides in a stupid way.
They don't have to say you're breaking rules. They could
just kick you off the playgrounds. And you can't say
it's my governmental right to be on this playground because
it's McDonald's, no shirt, no shoes, no service. That that
is that is the prerogative of the individual business right.
(32:28):
And they can eject you for any reason and you
can leave kicking and screaming, but at the end of
the day they can have you dragged out by police
that they don't want you to be in there, and
don't have to, you know, say boo about why that
is it's the same with any of these free services.
It is a privilege to be able to access these,
Sure you can have you know, maybe it's I don't know,
is it even a right to have access to the internet? Like, yeah, exactly.
(32:50):
So all this free speech talk in terms of these discussions,
I think is very misplaced. And so is then a
legislative bread like Congress. Are they abdicating state power true
private entities? Are we becoming more of a technocracy than
we are a democracy? It's it's a good question, and
(33:12):
it's kind of Edward Snowden had said the same thing. Actually,
our pal Jake from Q Clearance was saying the same thing.
And I understand how first off, if you think that
people inciting violence should have already been banned from a
social network, then this move comes very very late, right
(33:35):
late in the game, so late in fact, that it
could almost be seen as symbolic. But there's there's such
a pickle here, how do we impact this. So in
the case of Parlor Parlor's death sentence, it's funny because
we didn't see any state level demands to close parlor down.
(33:55):
We saw what could be called ostensibly the free market.
It seems like the free market decided to review service.
And if that's the case, then there's no two waste
about it. That's that's how it's supposed to be able
to work. But some people, of course, they're not happy
because some people we're big fans of parlor, but they're opos.
I mean, their security always seems kind of kind of lame,
(34:19):
didn't it It did? And and really quick, I want
you to have a chance to response, Well, you were
absolutely right about the driver's license, Ben, but it was
the same way when you get verified on Instagram or Twitter,
you have to scan your driver's license to be verified.
So there are certainly call them verified citizens. Uh, and
so that information is stored with those particular accounts government
(34:39):
issued ideas like driver's licenses or military ideas or what
have you. Um. But yeah, I mean stuff like this,
these deleted posts one that that donk nby gives us
an example from a user named c m underscore patriot. Uh,
shut them down, Mr President, try them hang or shoot
them publicly, the traders, thieves and her verts who have
(35:00):
taken our great blessed country hostage. M. That's the kind
of chatter that's going on in this service. And I
I would argue calling for hanging and publicly executing acrosses
the line from free speech into something very different. It's
certainly dangerous, even if the intention there isn't truly that.
And you know, you can argue forever that because of
(35:22):
free speech, you can say something like that. But that's
why we have rules about yelling things in movie theaters. Um,
where you're endangering other people. UM. This is what I
would say, just from my perspective. My wife came to
me and asked me about this right before we we
came into this room to record. Uh. She specifically was
(35:44):
asked me about the rumors that are going around right now,
this very thing, where there may or may not be
attacks planned at all of the state capitals, whether or
not there's gonna be something else occurring in Washington, d C.
And the inauguration. I just would say, from my own
research looking around, it does feel as though there's a
(36:05):
ton of chatter about this kind of event in a
lot of places, from a lot of different people. Intensions
are ridiculously high. And the people that seem, at least
to my eyes, the people who are posting about actions
they want to take things, they want to see happen.
It looks as though they so deeply believe that there
(36:28):
is something terrible happening and that they believe they are
And I don't mean to speak for anyone, and I
do apologize if it's coming off that way, but it
seems as though they want to fix something, they want
to fight back against some evil power, and it is
very much slanted in a religious way, at least those
(36:49):
things that I have seen. Maybe that's not true for
everyone and for for a lot of the people, but
there appears to be statements that are spreading widely that
they some kind of religious slant to a war going
on for either the soul of America or for the world. UM,
I just want to caution everybody out there to really
(37:14):
look at where your information is coming from. And I
say this to especially to anyone listening that maybe believe
some of this stuff. Um, we we always on this
show say we're not gonna we're not gonna make you
feel bad for believing what you believe, but we do
implore everyone to do as much research and vetting as
(37:36):
they possibly can on the beliefs that they hold dear
and true. So just I would just put that out
there as a message to everybody. Just because somebody says
it online on you know, a Facebook channel that you follow,
on a podcast you listen to, on a whatever TV show,
doesn't mean that it's true. If somebody says it, look
(37:58):
into the sources when there's something this serious going down.
D FBI has also released some memos warning of various uprisings.
They did so well at advance of January six, of course,
did so well advanced of the nineteen and then also
(38:18):
what I would say would be called situational triggers. Uh.
The Independent ran a great story on just earlier today,
as we record, on January eleven, on potential for a
huge uprising planned if the current president was removed using
the Amendment, which again at this point Vice President Pence
(38:39):
has gone on record saying he will not pursue nor invoke. Uh.
But but look, the main thing is, for most people
who are discussing these kind of things, there's not a
high percentage of people who will actually have the wherewithal
to travel and to deploy these methods. So you're worried
more about out the small percentage of people who do
(39:02):
have that wherewithal right, logically, and that still could be
a large group of people. But the second part of
that is that the US inauguration now especially is probably
going to be one of the most It's always been
one of the most heavily guarded events of its four
year cycle. It's probably gonna be even more heavily guarded
(39:23):
at this point and less um. The rumors of compromise
within the ranks of l e OS and the military
are more widespread than they have appeared to be up
to this point. So, yes, there's no two ways about it.
We are at a very very tense time. And the
fact that the alphabet guys the intelligence agencies were megaphoning
(39:49):
this so much in advance, and the fact that the
capital was still woefully understaffed on January six, it just
looks increasingly suspicious, which I know is very all in
brand and stereotypical of me to say. But isn't anybody
else a little bit weird about by that? Like, just
just a bit? Doesn't it seem like this was clearly telegraphed.
(40:11):
I don't know, But to your original points, no, I
think you're I think you're right. This is this is
something that has been disseminated. There there are at least
some groups with an active plan to do something in
some states, even if they end up being just lone
actors who are radicalized on the internet. That's right, And
(40:31):
I have a ethical question for for both of you, gentlemen.
Um is this dock sing? I mean, so far, I
haven't seen any actual names and addresses, phone numbers, home
personal information released publicly. I know there are some accounts
on like Instagram, for example, there's one called I think
it's called Homegrown Terrorists where there is some docks and
(40:52):
going on with somee of the people that were seeing,
you know, participating in the looting at the capitol. This
to me, there's a big there's a lot of discussion
in these comments sections on these articles. You know, some
people from the right coming in and saying this is illegal,
this is docks, saying this is and this is not
you know, appropriate use of the internet, that that this
(41:13):
is literally breaking the law. What do you guys think
about that? If this information is literally being used to
track down people that committed a crime and then report
them to the authorities they can be taken to task.
Is that like vigilante is um? Like? What what is this?
You're I think referring specifically to some Reddit comments. The
thing is Reddit doesn't have the best track record of
(41:36):
civilian detective work. Uh consider the case of the Boston
bombing where they got the wrong people. Then also, I
would say, if you're docksing someone who has not proven
to committed to have committed a crime, and you are civilian,
you need to you need to be very careful because
that can, that could, with the best of intentions, lead
(41:57):
you down a very inadvisable path. Uh. There are intelligence
agencies that are hunting these people down. Uh, well stay,
they're hunting people who have actually broken the law down already.
And those folks like the FBI, Let's not forget they
were able to find one protester via Etsy because of
(42:17):
a tattoo that person had, so they have more resources.
But I would just I would caution people because you
know social media and read it is social media. It's
made to manipulate you, it's made to um to incite
you toward engagement and toward further action of some sort.
So even with the best of intentions, you need to,
(42:41):
like Matt said, you need to carefully vet your sources.
Also vet yourself and your own motivations. Uh in nless
you are professional with this stuff, um, then you might accidentally,
with no ill intent, you might accidentally screw up, and
you might even get yourself in a pickle z that
Mac said. I hope I'm not being too extreme there, No, no,
(43:02):
it makes perfect. We're pausing for a moment for a
word from our sponsor, and we are back. I just
want to jump back a little bit in the conversation, Ben,
you're talking about the people we really need to be
worried about, the ones who may actually take some kind
(43:22):
of violent action in in you know, physically somewhere in
the world. I I totally feel you, and imminently that
is what you know, intelligence agencies and police department should
be worried about. What worries me right now are all
of the bystanders essentially who are passively commenting on a
(43:43):
YouTube video or on a Facebook post that I'm going
through that are just uh, it just seemed to be
believing whatever is being said in a lot of these things.
And then when I personally go through and vet the
information that's being spoken, you know, as often as I
as I can, I'm noticing that they're referencing things like Nassara,
(44:04):
n E s A r A. It's called the National
Economic Security and Recovery Act. It was not a real thing,
and but it is believed to be a real thing
by someone talking on YouTube the way I am right now, right,
and and they will say it, and then someone else listening,
here's it, and then they just say what was send
(44:25):
on that YouTube video, rather than looking it up and
seeing that it was it was a part of a
essentially a conspiracy theory newsletter chain that was going out
by somebody who was not credible. Well, even the initial
story about this hack was incorrect, was absolutely full of misinformation.
Um maybe with the best of intentions, but I couldn't
(44:47):
find a story about it. I couldn't find anything to
back it up. And it was all from this reddit
kind of like chatter and Twitter and then Reddit. Even
it got up voted. The incorrect story got up voted
thousands and thousands of times, and they had to put
a keep post on the Reddit page saying, hey, that
one was dead wrong. Here's the new info. Look at
this one up vow this one instead, which I think
(45:07):
is interesting that they even went to that trouble and
in the interest of uh in the interest of full disclosure.
We don't know which parts of this podcast you're gonna
be YouTube clips, Matt, although I thought that was sly
and that's up to James, that's not up to us, Okay,
sure well, or listening to a podcast and hearing somebody
(45:28):
say it to them and then just taking that info
synthesizing it into their own thoughts rather than looking it up.
And there's no way to look up everything you hear.
That's why you have to vet the individual more so
than anything else, which is it's a tough thing to
do because every individual, including this guy who's either talking
right now on YouTube or on a podcast, gets it
(45:48):
wrong sometimes. But you know, in the end, it's just
scary thinking there's so many people that believe something wholeheartedly
that you can prove to be false. So what we're
talking about here, what I think you're talking about, man,
you're talking about the importance or we're all talking about
this all the time. We're talking about the importance of
(46:08):
vetting your sources. And just like trying to read uh
thousand plus page COVID bill while the clock is ticking,
this is very intimidating, it's very difficult and in times
it's impossible, So you do have to use context clues.
And when you use context clues, you have to be very,
(46:28):
very careful because odds are the stuff that's making you
feel like you're increasingly agreeing with yourself. Not all of
that might be true. Your brain might be fooling you,
especially if you're going to a group of like minded people,
because every single member of the human species suffers from
what social psychology calls group polarization. Like again, if we
(46:52):
are are Congress of five that we used at the
top of this episode, and the five of us get
together because we think in general, uh vaetta that ice
cream novelty, that's it's not available around here. By the way,
I was crushed. I know, man, I know. But what
it was like the five of us got together just
(47:12):
as like a fan group of that, and it became
a hot button topic and we started feeling persecuted, just
like an occult. Then we only talked to each other,
and we only talked about the mission to get this
wonderful ice cream novelty back into the world. And you
fast forward one year, We're gonna sound like Vonetta, Yes, radicals,
(47:36):
and I choose ice cream because it's a fun, innocuous example.
But what you're talking about, Matt, is absolutely true. It's
absolutely true, and no one is immune to it. It
is a neurological, hardwired aspect of the human being, of
the human brain. Just because you're like, oh, well this
(47:57):
one didn't get me, I don't even this current one.
That doesn't make you better than anybody else. It just
means that you have to look to other things when
you're checking on how group polarization got to you. Yeah,
for sure. And you know, in a lot of this
was just my response to the response to our coverage
of this latest thing from the capital, just to see
(48:20):
what people are truly thinking and why they would respond
to us in you know, information that I went back
through just like we all did, and listen to it
again to make sure we were stating things correctly. We
were very careful in our language, and dang man, people
are just still feel like in just stating the facts,
(48:42):
we were somehow distorting things and it is just really troubling, man.
And I know, I hope in some way we're able
to you know, speak to enough people, including myself, just
to pull us out a little bit more from our
own biases I wanted to say, are too really quick.
I've been personally really kind of heartened by the response
(49:06):
overall that we've gotten to to those two episodes, not
only in how many people have listened to it, it's
been a lot, but also in just the emails we've gotten, um,
that's all just in general, they've been very positive. Well,
I get a lot of it. I welcome it. Let's see,
let's do this live. I don't know if anything will
show up. We get my phone. Okay, so just fifty
(49:28):
three seconds ago on Twitter at Ben Bully hs W,
I don't know why you guys took pains apart two
to clarify that some people just happened to be there.
It got caught up in the moment as though they
were on a school tour when the steadily terrorist attack
kicked off. PS is clearly more than one individual. The
zip tie thing. I we appreciate that. I don't think
(49:49):
we did the wrong thing there, because again, with a
massive amount of people like this, you can't think that
everybody has the same plan. But we appreciate, we appreciate
the feedback end as we what we really did take
pains to talk about in part two of the attack
on Washington was how little confirmed information was out there
(50:10):
at that point. Do you know what I mean. It's
like you said, Ben, we have to be cautious in
not spreading misinformation, so sometimes we hedge a little bit,
and not only there's anything wrong with that, I don't
think so. And you know, we met One point you
made that really that I really appreciate is we were
editorializing pretty much at all in the first part, right,
(50:35):
and we said we would have some speculation in the
second part. But we a lot of the things that
we do, kind of things we do and this doesn't
apply to every podcast in the world, but a lot
of things we do. If we don't get people objecting
to some of the stuff that we're relaying, if everybody
just agrees with us, then that means that we could
be doing a better job, in my opinion. And just
(50:56):
in response to those two things that I said on
that episoded that that person is commenting about um because
I remember saying them, but that was but it was
two things that I specifically pointed out, just because it
feels as though a lot of the discussion around this
is painting everybody in the same light on either side,
(51:18):
which it is extremely dehumanizing and if you take a side,
essentially you're guilty of it because you're saying the all
of these other people are like this. UM. I just
want to make sure than anyone listening to this understands
that each individual that was even at that that protest,
the you know, the vast majority of the people who
(51:39):
are there for a protest. Uh, We're not the same
as people who showed up with zip ties, who showed
up with you know, molotov cocktails in their truck, who
showed up and napalm essentially in their truck, and automatic weapons,
semi automatic weapons ready to carry out something. It's just
we can't look at each other as all one thing.
(52:00):
We're all individuals and there's there's intense belief on all
sides going on here. We need to see each other,
um a little differently, um, in order to hopefully get
through this, because this is the kind of thing that
doesn't go away, you know, after an election. These are
feelings that are long and UM, I don't, I don't,
(52:22):
I don't know what I'm saying on my soapbox here.
I'm just cautioning to remember that we were all, we
are all individuals, and at heart we all want to
be good. I would hope so, I would hope so.
But also you have to keep in mind stupid, a
little dystopian new mommy, and this whole conversation as if
(52:43):
we need more. Uh, if there were not foreign powers
leveraging this situation that culpidated or big or at least
began on January six, then they will certainly be a
part of future things. So whenn't you hear other narratives
right coming out in the coming days, coming months, etcetera.
(53:04):
I would ask myself, cui bono, who benefits who benefits most?
It may not be a domestic force which should terrify people.
All right, well, have a have a great rest of
your day. We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna pause here.
I think we're gonna keep this one at two stories
(53:24):
for today. We're already at an hour or so, so
we're gonna do that, and I will save my story
for next week. If you live in Mead, Nebraska, here
is looking at you. I hope you can feel our
support from here in Atlanta. I hope you're doing well.
We'll talk about that story and next week for now.
(53:46):
If you want to write to us and give us
an idea for a story, or for anything at all,
you can find us on Twitter. As Ben said, we
are at conspiracy Stuff. We're also on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show. Oh,
Facebook is conspiracy stuff too, and we've also got a
page over there on Facebook called Here's where it Gets Crazy,
a little group you can join and hang out with us.
(54:07):
All you gotta do is name one or all of us,
including Doc Holiday, if you wish, and welcome to our
new mod I want to say, folks. Of course, originally
Strange News Segment Weekly is structured to have three stories.
We're going to endeavor to give three stories every time. Uh,
this one we got a little rabbit hold on, but
(54:29):
expect us to return to three in the coming segments.
If you hate social media, you could give us a
call on the old telephonical device. Some of the people
of a certain age in the crowd remember when those
things used to have wires, which is weird. That's why
they're called landlines. But it'll work on a smartphone. To
(54:50):
just s dial one eight three three S T D
W y t K. You have three minutes. Those three
minutes are yours. All that we ask is that you
specifically tell us if you do not want us to
use your name and or voice on the air, which
is totally fine. We just want to hear from you.
But I hate phones, ben even the ones that are
(55:13):
shaped like a football. You may be saying I hate phones.
It's one phones are for texting and means well, never
fear if you don't want to call us, you don't
like social media, There's one way you can always get
in touch with us. That is our good old fashioned
email address. Where we are conspiracy at i heart radio
(55:34):
dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is
(55:55):
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,
Alexa's code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. This is our Strange News segment.
I know what you're thinking, folks. Should we even call
(00:47):
things strange? News? At this point? Is not all news
and every news program a little bit strange here in
the beginning of the answer is yes, but we decided
to call it strange. Who's way before NBC or ABC
or the other other rookies in the crowd. So welcome aboard, guys. Uh,
(01:07):
Today's episode a little bit hyperbole there, Uh. Today's episode
is going to take us to some familiar places, some
ongoing threats in the US. It's going to take us
uh to a story of contamination that I would wager
many of us in the audience have not heard. And
we're also going to look at something interesting about the
(01:31):
COVID nineteen stimulus bill that has nothing to do with
COVID nineteen. I'm very excited about all three of these.
Where do you guys want to begin? I personally want
to start where you just ended there, Ben, Can we
can we begin there? Yeah? I mean I'm certainly intrigued. Absolutely, absolutely, Okay,
this is this is so bizarre. But all right, if
(01:54):
you are I think you're aware of this, even if
you're not. In the United States. The government of the
United States federal government has been a long, harrowing time
arguing over the specifics of what we call the Corona
Virus Relief Government Funding Bill. One thing that may be
surprising to a lot of people who haven't really drilled
(02:17):
into this stuff before, or to a lot of people
who are not from the US, is that our legislative
branch has this ridiculous, cartoonish habit of tacking extra onto
a bill that has nothing to do with the purpose
of the bill. How far did this go? This goes
(02:39):
so far that you could, for instance, say, uh, say
you and code named Doc and and Matt Noel and
I are all part of Congress. We're a Congress of five, right,
and one of us says, hey, uh, it is literally
raining cats and dogs. We need to make raining cat
(02:59):
and dog bill to combat the massive damage that's happening
with all these dogs and cats hitting the sidewalk. And
then someone says, well, we could pass this, but I
also want a subsidy for toe cream, and that's it
has to pass that way, Like that's that's the example, right, Yeah,
(03:21):
it does feel a lot like that, Ben, Like just
something completely out of the blue has to go in
the bill or else it's dead. Is that that's not
poison pill? Necessarily could poison pill, isn't it? Like it's
like you give me what I want, to give you
you what you want. Sort of Even though the thing
that we want is something that everybody wants, it always
struck me as a little disingenuous and kind of bizarre. Yeah,
(03:45):
because if you're a member of Congress, you're always always
kind of pitching. Everything you do is ideally a pitch
to your constituents for why they should elect you the
next time your election comes up. And so to solidify
their base, many members of Congress or like, let's take
this bill for um, let's take this bill for uh,
(04:07):
making a national Explosions in the Sky holiday, and let's
tack on something that is a subsidy for the munitions
factory in my constituency. You know, I think Ben as
a secret post rock fan, which I just recently found out.
(04:27):
I mean, you mentioned them occasionally for your like studying
listenings because they're instrumental, but I recently found out Ben
and I have been a member of the same post
rock Facebook group for many years. I didn't want to add.
I like this idea of a congress of five. I
feel like we'd get a hell of a lot more
done than the current set up, just just putting that
out there. You know, five, now that we think about
(04:50):
it is great because there's never there won't really be
a deadlock, right only constituents being our wives, girlfriends or children.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine how corrupt they would
become and how quickly, just because the amount of money
that would be shoved at five singular people's faces. You're right,
(05:11):
we wouldn't let anybody know who they are, completely anonymous
on account of the bag. But oh my god, Ben,
please continue with this. I'm fascinating. Well, this, this practice
has happened to get. The Coronavirus Relief and Government Funding
Bill was signed into law in December by President current
(05:33):
President Donald Trump. As we record this, which is tricky
that we have to say as we record this right now,
he signed it, you know, late December, and this bill
is two point three million dollars strong. As you know,
it doesn't have a lot of stuff that various Congress
(05:55):
Congress members or various factions of their constituencies wanted, like
a lot of other countries are getting, like our northern neighbors.
I think we're getting up to two K a month
for the duration of the pandemic. The big hot button
issue on the table for a lot of households in
the US was whether there should be any kind of
(06:17):
monetary or financial relief for the millions who are unemployed
or facing hardship. And if so, what that one time
or that second stimulus should look like six D or
two K. I think we're the big numbers. But this
bill included something else. Of course it did. Because it's
the US Congress. It doesn't matter who's in power, there's
(06:39):
never gonna be a bit a bill that's just about
the bill. It's like if you're in a bad relationship.
The fight is never really about the fight, it's about
something else, you know what I mean. And those dirty
dishes are kind of like a metaphor for all the
ways you present each other over the years. I'm sorry
that description probably just ruined some one's day. But this
(07:00):
extra thing that was tacked on one of them is
not as as ruinous is that horrible relationship example. For
some reason, this COVID relief bill began a one d
and eight day countdown for the U. S Intelligence agencies,
all of them to tell Congress everything they know about
(07:23):
UFOs or you know, as we know what they prefer
to call them, unidentified aerial phenomenon. So, yes, we're gonna
try to survive the pandemic as a nation. But also,
while we're at it, let's say that you have to
tell Congress what the hell is going on? Because remember,
the armed forces spent millions of dollars researching this, and
(07:46):
it's not it's not something that's ever been presented in
totality to Congress. Pretty nuts. I'm not sure why there's
a hundred and eighty day thing. I think that's that
might just be time for them to you coalate all
their information and cross check in fact check, etcetera. UM,
you can read about this, and CNN you can read
(08:09):
about it, and Vice they have a good article about this.
It also puts in something else. It doesn't say, just
give us this one time report. Oh, if you want
to read it. It's it's buried in the Committee Comments
section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year, which
is also inside this massive spending bill. So it's a stipulation.
(08:32):
It's like you're going into the liner notes of a
of a really detailed you know, like one of those
special um collectors addition vinyls that has the whole discography
of something or something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and
there's this long, uh printed documentary or oral history of
(08:53):
the thing, and you find like one liner note and
they're like and it's like this was, you know, shortly
after Mick Jagger was kicked out of NASA, and you're like, wait,
what and so the rolling stones began? But that that's
not true, I don't think. But this one, this one
also puts in this process. It says there needs to
(09:13):
also be an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection
and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomenon reporting for
the federal government, designate an official responsible for that process,
identify whether any of these u a p s are
national security threats, and explicitly say whether any of the
(09:38):
nation's known adversaries could be behind this, and the submitted
report has to be unclassified. So this has been confirmed
by Stokes, this has been confirmed by sen In by
multiple sources. It's going to happen. Um for all the
uthologists or UFO enthusiasts in the crowd, they count down
(10:00):
has begun. My first question for you guys, do you
think this will actually happen? So I'm just reading about
this for the first time. Then, according to what I'm seeing,
this is all contingent on whether or not the executive
honors this request and whether or not the administrations among
the well the administration which is the executive, as well
(10:21):
as all these other military personnel who are part of
the Air Force, the Navy, and all these other places,
whether or not they actually cooperate to get this information
out there and get it declassified. So it's like there's
an order to do it, but you still got to
get everybody to actually do the thing. Even though there's
this they're calling it a request. It's more of an order.
(10:44):
It feels like, yeah, yeah, it's phrases an order with
several different things that could go wrong, or it's sort
of structured as one. This is being put It might
surprise some people who haven't had their eyes on this.
This whole thing is being pushed by Marco Rubio. Yeah,
he is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Um,
(11:04):
they want this to happen. But we also any ufologists
in the US can assure us that there have been
multiple statements, kind of off the cuff statements of various
presidential candidates. It's usually while they're running for president. They say, okay,
and also one other thing that I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna figure out this UFO stuff. I mean, they
(11:25):
get it released. Bill Clinton said that, Um, I can't
remember what George Bush said in that matter, but a
couple of other a couple of other folks, even Donald
Trump at one time, they have said this. They've said
that when they go when they're going into office or
when they're running for office, but when they're actually in office,
it takes a back seat or a back burner because
you know, there's a lot of stuff to think about
(11:47):
when you're president, I assume yeah. And there's there's always
the the much assumed conversation that any executive coming into
office has with the intelligence community that's basically, uh, you
can't look behind those doors. You can't know what's back
there for your own safety and for national security. Oh,
you know the old I don't know if you guys
(12:08):
have heard this, but there's there's an old joke that
changes depending on what which industry of the U. S.
Government you're in, or which genre which branch goes let's
do it with the president. So it goes like this.
There's a guy who's elected to be the president and
on the day of his you know, his first real
(12:28):
day on the job, he goes in the oval office
and he asked the outgoing president for any advice, and
the outgoing president says, uh, well, I left two envelopes
on the desk, and if anything really screwy or terrible happens,
no matter how it happens, so open that first envelope
(12:50):
and you'll know what to do. And so they say okay,
and then, you know, like a year or two passes
in their term, and things get really dicey. Something terrible happens,
maybe it's a current president's fault. And so they opened
the top right drawer of the desk or whatever, and
they take out the first envelope and they open it
and the envelope just says, blame it on me. It's
(13:10):
signed by the other president. And so they go on
on television and on the networks of the circuits. So
they say it was the other guy, and then boom,
their ratings are back up. They're onto year three, toward
year four. Uh, something goes wrong again, very very wrong,
and this president says, okay. They opened the second envelope
(13:32):
and they think, all right, what are my first time
it worked? And they read the second envelope and it
says write two letters and find two envelopes. That's that's it.
And it makes you wonder, like, is that is that
the kind of situation we we get in when we're
talking about how these reports get released or who is
(13:55):
accountable for the release of these and the various ways
that these can go wrong. And then, of course, the
argument that all of this UFO release stuff that's come out,
because there has been a lot, there's the argument that
all of it is a distraction from ongoing domestic affairs,
which I don't know what to think about that. I mean,
(14:16):
what do you guys think, because a lot of the
stuff that's being released is not new by any means. Yeah,
but it's nice to be able to have access to
it all in one place, like from an official source. Right,
it was just kind of piecemealing it together from various
reports and dribs and drabs on the internet. Yeah, that's
a good point. Look, I'm never gonna not think disclosure
(14:38):
is coming until it comes, Okay, So I don't think
a conversation with a very smart friend of mine, we
kind of hang out every every month or so and
just kind of chat about life stuff. And you know,
he's he's into conspiracy theory. He wasn't the show, um,
and he just doesn't think it's it makes sense logistically,
the idea of disclosure. Like he just he was sort
of like, just what we about science and the way
(15:01):
time works and the way distance works. It just doesn't
he doesn't see it. And I kind of was was
on the same page as you or I'm like, oh,
all this new stuff is coming out. I feel like
we're on the edge of it, and he just kind
of pooh pooed. It took the way out of my
sales a little bit. But then I started thinking about
what he was saying. I kind of feel that side
of it too. I don't know what are your thoughts
in terms of the logistics of disclosure, the logistics of
(15:22):
actual alien contact. It's it's all good, dude. Your friend
just doesn't know that the aliens actually are from Earth
and they live inside the spoiler. Yeah, that's I mean.
The thing is that the math is not impossible if
(15:43):
we are assuming conventional rules of time and space. And
I think we've talked about this before. The same math
that makes it a statistical certitude that we would have
other life in the universe is all also the same
math that makes it virtually impossible that we would ever meet,
just the time and the space involved. But if those
(16:04):
rules don't always apply, then it's an entirely different conversation.
Or if there's to Matt's point, if there is something
that is closer to home than we imagine, then we could, uh,
we could find ourselves in a very different conversation. You know,
for the longest time, one of the most plausible answers
has been suppressed technology built by Earth leans because we
(16:29):
know that happened in the past, and we know that
other governments, including Uncle Sam folks, those other governments were
more than happy to take sightings of space age bombers
and stuff and be like, oh, yeah, that's a uh,
that's an alien. I guess you're right. Yeah, it's definitely
definitely on us or ours who would build a flying
(16:54):
black triangle. This reminds me of the old urban legends
last you know, our story the call was coming from
inside the house. Yeah, yeah, And I'm of course, you know,
I'm joking about the concept of extraterrestrials being terrestrial and
all of that. Although unidentified submerged objects will always always
(17:17):
have a place in my heart. Uh just I think
any any light we can shed on this stuff is
good light because it will calm down somebody like me
that is so excited and itching to get actual evidence
if there's nothing there and we can, you know, conventionally
explain all of these things. But it will also I
(17:37):
think it's some weird way. I don't know, God, this
is this sounds so just happy and hippie, but in
some way thinking about this stuff, even even without the
reports and all the info. Just thinking about other life
on other planets in some way brings us together to
think about ourselves as one our you know, about manity
(18:00):
and all that stuff. I feel bad saying that, but
it's kind of true. Yeah, I feel you. And also,
you know, if I was gonna design a T shirt
for this, I would I would say, who needs extra terrestrials?
When terrestrials are extra enough? I mean we have, It's
not gonna work. It's too many, like extra negative thing
(18:21):
like terrestrials extra Yeah, I mean we are look at
this like if you're any other form of life on
the planet, honestly, humans, we're the worst ones. Yeah, because
why we can't have nice things. That's why we can
have nice things. So the last bit of last bit
(18:42):
of news on this for anybody who's like I don't
want to wait a hundred and eight days. We live
in uncertain, terrible times. The Middle East is a powder keg. Authorites,
Harry and governments also have nuclear weapons and are increasingly
less hesitant to invade other places. I want to know
how the movie ends now, well right now. Officially you
(19:06):
can obtain every single declassified CIA document on UFOs. You
can officially do it at a site that we have
shouted out in the past, the Black Vaults, which is
a privately owned clearinghouse for declassified documents in general. But
they have released downloadable archive with PDFs containing all the
(19:30):
CIA files on unidentified aerial phenomena. I'm not sure whether
this includes USOS yet, Matt, but let's always let's always
hope while we can uh. Some of these reports date
all the way back to the nineteen eighties. This archive
is the passion project of the founder of the Black
Vault site, John Greenwald Jr. And we're looking at the
(19:55):
results of somewhere a little less or a little more
than ten thousand different fo I a Freedom of Information
Act request, And this is the work of decades for
this guy. So do check it out if you want
to learn more. Be warned this will have the notoriously moving,
compelling language of a government agency. These aren't exactly page turners,
(20:21):
is what we're saying, but we would love What I
would love to do is crowdsource this and get a
sense from our fellow conspiracy realists over which of these reports,
over whether there's a hidden diamond in the rough here.
You know what I mean, Or a gem that corroborates
with some other proven historical event, you know what I mean,
(20:43):
like the allegations of unidentified flying objects disabling nuclear weapons,
things like that. Right, So let us know and let
us know what other weird stuff you found in the
COVID nineteen stimulus bill. Because it's it's five thousand, six
hundred pages, you guys, there's all kinds of stuff in there.
(21:05):
It's like an unedited Stephen King novel. All Stephen King
novels are united, says a Stephen King fan. That totally
it's totally true. Really quickly, just you know, in terms
of like what these look like, like are they like
footnotes kind of or like how have you actually looking
at the documentation? How are they slipped in there? Like
that's what I kind of want to know without actually
(21:27):
having to read the things tedious and terrible. Many of
these are typed letters from way back when, and they're
it's difficult to even see and decipher everything that's said
in there, let alone, you know, search a PDF because
they are all in PDF format. Um. They there's about
(21:49):
three d and what forty two megabytes I think in
the entire thing. If you're going to download it, you know,
some of it is the actual Freedom of Information Act,
like letterhead or something, and then there will be a
black vault, I don't know on the second header that
tells you about that site, and then you'll get the
document that's like one to x number of pages. Yeah,
(22:10):
and I think, no, you might have. You might have
been referring to just how that slipped in congressionally in
a relief bill. No, no, no, no, these are both.
These are both very good questions. So part of it
is just that, Look, I'm not saying I'm not accusing
anyone in specific of being disingenuous. Every Congress member has
(22:31):
a staff, and their staff assist them with understanding what's
going on in these bills. But this bill in particular
is controversial because some members of Congress say that by
the time it was finally shared with them, it was
like a few hours before the vote. So how on
earth was their time to read it and digest everything involved?
(22:54):
And this kind of this kind of stuff happens quickly.
The the answer to how this can be squeezed in
is that they're so much there that you can kind
of matroshka doll a subheading into another subheading, into another subheading,
into another subheading, and then and oh, by the way, aliens, Well, yeah,
and by its very nature, I think that the issue
(23:15):
there's a lot of issues with like parliamentary procedure and
then our government. It's by its very nature not transparent
at all. Even the way these things get slipped in,
it's like it's like burying the lead, you know what
I mean. We have to kind of dig, dig, dig,
dig to even find a semblance of what the hell
is actually going on in some of these things. And
that just seems wrong to me. But maybe it's like
rewards those who like do the digging and do the homework,
(23:38):
and it implies that if you don't care enough to like, look,
you shouldn't know. But that just seems wrong. That is yeah,
that is that is wrong because right now, the level
of information we're talking about, the level of information processing
is simply beyond the grasp of someone who doesn't have
the specific job of doing this every day. There's just
(23:58):
no way, and there's a way a single person could
read the entirety of the things that are being passed
by Congress. That's why these staff members kind of divide
and conquer. But we spent a lot of time on this.
It hasn't happened yet. You have our word, folks that
if six is months from now we figure out what's
(24:20):
actually going on, If if the badger does finally get
out of the disclosure bag, then we are going to
be all over it. We might we'll have a party.
We'll have like a physical in person UFO party somewhere
cool David Busters, I don't know, let's fly out on
the company dime to area fifty one. It's either the
(24:42):
beginning of a new world or the end of the
old one. Who knows at that point. But we're still
in this world, and we're still in strange news. So
we're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and
then we'll be back with more. And we're back, and
my news story today sort of morphed a little bit,
(25:04):
sort of sprouted some heads and try to keep it manageable.
But it started off with I think what we can
all agree is very important information. Um this coming out
within the window of time that this FBI uh memo reports.
An internal FBI bulletin warned that as of yesterday, the
day we're recording this is Monday, yesterday being Sunday the tenth. Um,
(25:27):
there are plans circulating on the internet for armed protests
at all fifty states capitals. UM. And that's really you know,
the FBI issue. At least one other bullets in according
to the AP, where they sort of appeal to law
enfortunationwide to be prepared and not have another repeat of
that absolutely ludicrous display that we saw on Wednesday of
(25:52):
last week. UM, warning that there are potent there's potential
for clashing with police, there's potential for violence. Uh, there's
potential for targeting, uh and kidnapping, just like we saw
on Wednesday. Army General Daniel Hawkinson, chief of the National
Guard Bureau, told reporters today UH that the National Guard
is also looking at any issues across the country to
(26:14):
deploy in advance. So okay, great lesson learned, UM, but
be careful. If you live near a big metro area
downtown with a capital building, just steer. I would steer clear.
I would be very cautious about that. So this in
and of itself is I think important news to disseminate
because I actually it felt a little below the fold. Uh.
(26:34):
My friend texted me this information and I initially using
the search terms FBI um armed protests, I didn't get
any hits. Uh. And then he told me he was
on the Raw Story, which it was, and then I
found it directly by searching the Raw Story. And then
I found it on ABC, who initially obtained that. But
there's not a whole lot of reporting about this, so
hopefully this has reaching some folks that maybe hadn't heard
(26:55):
about this. UM. Then this is the part I'd like
to just open up and chat with everybody about it
led me down this rabbit hole. I think we've everyone's
familiar with the uh social media alt right or whatever
you want to call it. Let's just call it far
right platform parlor um. In addition to many major social
media UH and web hosting companies pulling the plug on
(27:19):
Donald Trump's online presence and others of his ilk UH,
Parlor was seen as kind of like, Okay, we're not
welcome on Twitter anymore, and we're not welcome on Facebook anymore.
All of these people made this mass kind of egress
to Parlor UH, and then very quickly Parlor's web hosting
support was pulled. Amazon Cloud. We know that Amazon one
(27:42):
of the big things that they do is have these
massive server farms and do web hosting. Uh. And so
if you don't have anybody to host your service, you
don't really have a service. So currently Parlor is down.
But here's the rub or here's the uh, the kind
of story within the story. Before that happened, an intrepid
uh let's call him hacker, whatever you want to call it,
(28:04):
a power user of the internet, uh, went and did
what's called a data scrape of all of these archives
or all of these like archive posts, because apparently the
code of Parlor, the actual base code is super holy
let's just say, not holy as an awe, but like
(28:26):
full of holes, easy to poke through. There's a really
great Reddit page called Parlor watch, and on it there's
a lot of you know, screenshots of different tweets, uh
and and you know, communications about this. And apparently the
internet security company Octa, which we actually use work, said, okay,
(28:46):
t A, They said that apparently Parlor was It's basically
an authentication protocol that that forces you to do like
a dual authentication. So you try to log into a thing,
it pings you on another device, You then say yes,
it's me, and then it lets you in um. That's
what it's for at the base level. But apparently the
Parlor coding team or whatever was using a free trial
(29:10):
version of octa um, and this hacker was able to
poke holes in that and essentially archive posts with the identities,
including geolocation information of thousands of posters, many of which
were directly involved with the insurgents let's call it at
(29:31):
the Capitol on Wednesday and their driver's license A vote
to right. That's the thing, Ben, and I was with
you there on that one too. That was the initial
story that came up. That is not true, UM. The
initially it was said that it was hacked and that
somebody was able to clone admin accounts and then dig
through and do all this nefarious stuff by like cloning
(29:52):
millions of admin accounts and basically it's kind of like,
you know, causing sewing chaos on the platform. But what
is true is that it's been d plat formed. It's
not online anymore, UM, none of the app stores will
carry it. And now this hacker goth and donk nb
um user name has has archived all of this stuff
(30:12):
and is reporting it to authorities. So that was part
of the original story, Ben, that was a Reddit story
saying that, Oh and also, uh, they have to scan
their driver's license to be part of it. And maybe
that part is true, but a lot of the other
pieces in that initial story we're not true. So I
really actually I'm not sure, Ben, but I saw that
as well. Um, but what do you what? What do
you guys think? Is this a matter of shutting down
(30:35):
free speech? Is this a matter of just doing what's
best for like national security? Um? Where is the line?
It's just a fascinating thing to consider. Yeah, yeah, agreed,
And it's an important thing. It's going to be important
for the generations that come after us, you know, if
we think beyond the immediate window. Right. I want to
(30:56):
give a shout out to a colleague of ours. I
was having a similar conversation with the creator Prodigy podcast.
His name is Lowell Brilliante. You'll hear more about him
soon later, I hope. But uh, he actually he had
hipped me to parlor watch, and I'm meant to shout
him out as well. Thank you. Ben. Also check out
(31:17):
his episode about the UNI bomber on Prodigy. Fantastic stuff,
really great podcast. And uh, we were we were talking
about some of this uh and talking to some of
my friends in the tech industry who were just you know,
everyone from far to one side or another to the
very a political people who are primarily motivated by money,
(31:43):
I would say, or motivated by you know, their own
their own very specific ideologies. And there is a there
is a worrisome aspect here to the idea of Okay,
so freedom of speech is something constitutionally guaranteed right, but
a private service is the owner of its own playground. Right.
(32:05):
If you were on the McDonald's playground, they don't have
to say that you slide down slides in a stupid way.
They don't have to say you're breaking rules. They could
just kick you off the playgrounds. And you can't say
it's my governmental right to be on this playground because
it's McDonald's, no shirt, no shoes, no service. That that
is that is the prerogative of the individual business right.
(32:28):
And they can eject you for any reason and you
can leave kicking and screaming, but at the end of
the day they can have you dragged out by police
that they don't want you to be in there, and
don't have to, you know, say boo about why that
is it's the same with any of these free services.
It is a privilege to be able to access these,
Sure you can have you know, maybe it's I don't know,
is it even a right to have access to the internet? Like, yeah, exactly.
(32:50):
So all this free speech talk in terms of these discussions,
I think is very misplaced. And so is then a
legislative bread like Congress. Are they abdicating state power true
private entities? Are we becoming more of a technocracy than
we are a democracy? It's it's a good question, and
(33:12):
it's kind of Edward Snowden had said the same thing. Actually,
our pal Jake from Q Clearance was saying the same thing.
And I understand how first off, if you think that
people inciting violence should have already been banned from a
social network, then this move comes very very late, right
(33:35):
late in the game, so late in fact, that it
could almost be seen as symbolic. But there's there's such
a pickle here, how do we impact this. So in
the case of Parlor Parlor's death sentence, it's funny because
we didn't see any state level demands to close parlor down.
(33:55):
We saw what could be called ostensibly the free market.
It seems like the free market decided to review service.
And if that's the case, then there's no two waste
about it. That's that's how it's supposed to be able
to work. But some people, of course, they're not happy
because some people we're big fans of parlor, but they're opos.
I mean, their security always seems kind of kind of lame,
(34:19):
didn't it It did? And and really quick, I want
you to have a chance to response, Well, you were
absolutely right about the driver's license, Ben, but it was
the same way when you get verified on Instagram or Twitter,
you have to scan your driver's license to be verified.
So there are certainly call them verified citizens. Uh, and
so that information is stored with those particular accounts government
(34:39):
issued ideas like driver's licenses or military ideas or what
have you. Um. But yeah, I mean stuff like this,
these deleted posts one that that donk nby gives us
an example from a user named c m underscore patriot. Uh,
shut them down, Mr President, try them hang or shoot
them publicly, the traders, thieves and her verts who have
(35:00):
taken our great blessed country hostage. M. That's the kind
of chatter that's going on in this service. And I
I would argue calling for hanging and publicly executing acrosses
the line from free speech into something very different. It's
certainly dangerous, even if the intention there isn't truly that.
And you know, you can argue forever that because of
(35:22):
free speech, you can say something like that. But that's
why we have rules about yelling things in movie theaters. Um,
where you're endangering other people. UM. This is what I
would say, just from my perspective. My wife came to
me and asked me about this right before we we
came into this room to record. Uh. She specifically was
(35:44):
asked me about the rumors that are going around right now,
this very thing, where there may or may not be
attacks planned at all of the state capitals, whether or
not there's gonna be something else occurring in Washington, d C.
And the inauguration. I just would say, from my own
research looking around, it does feel as though there's a
(36:05):
ton of chatter about this kind of event in a
lot of places, from a lot of different people. Intensions
are ridiculously high. And the people that seem, at least
to my eyes, the people who are posting about actions
they want to take things, they want to see happen.
It looks as though they so deeply believe that there
(36:28):
is something terrible happening and that they believe they are
And I don't mean to speak for anyone, and I
do apologize if it's coming off that way, but it
seems as though they want to fix something, they want
to fight back against some evil power, and it is
very much slanted in a religious way, at least those
(36:49):
things that I have seen. Maybe that's not true for
everyone and for for a lot of the people, but
there appears to be statements that are spreading widely that
they some kind of religious slant to a war going
on for either the soul of America or for the world. UM,
I just want to caution everybody out there to really
(37:14):
look at where your information is coming from. And I
say this to especially to anyone listening that maybe believe
some of this stuff. Um, we we always on this
show say we're not gonna we're not gonna make you
feel bad for believing what you believe, but we do
implore everyone to do as much research and vetting as
(37:36):
they possibly can on the beliefs that they hold dear
and true. So just I would just put that out
there as a message to everybody. Just because somebody says
it online on you know, a Facebook channel that you follow,
on a podcast you listen to, on a whatever TV show,
doesn't mean that it's true. If somebody says it, look
(37:58):
into the sources when there's something this serious going down.
D FBI has also released some memos warning of various uprisings.
They did so well at advance of January six, of course,
did so well advanced of the nineteen and then also
(38:18):
what I would say would be called situational triggers. Uh.
The Independent ran a great story on just earlier today,
as we record, on January eleven, on potential for a
huge uprising planned if the current president was removed using
the Amendment, which again at this point Vice President Pence
(38:39):
has gone on record saying he will not pursue nor invoke. Uh.
But but look, the main thing is, for most people
who are discussing these kind of things, there's not a
high percentage of people who will actually have the wherewithal
to travel and to deploy these methods. So you're worried
more about out the small percentage of people who do
(39:02):
have that wherewithal right, logically, and that still could be
a large group of people. But the second part of
that is that the US inauguration now especially is probably
going to be one of the most It's always been
one of the most heavily guarded events of its four
year cycle. It's probably gonna be even more heavily guarded
(39:23):
at this point and less um. The rumors of compromise
within the ranks of l e OS and the military
are more widespread than they have appeared to be up
to this point. So, yes, there's no two ways about it.
We are at a very very tense time. And the
fact that the alphabet guys the intelligence agencies were megaphoning
(39:49):
this so much in advance, and the fact that the
capital was still woefully understaffed on January six, it just
looks increasingly suspicious, which I know is very all in
brand and stereotypical of me to say. But isn't anybody
else a little bit weird about by that? Like, just
just a bit? Doesn't it seem like this was clearly telegraphed.
(40:11):
I don't know, But to your original points, no, I
think you're I think you're right. This is this is
something that has been disseminated. There there are at least
some groups with an active plan to do something in
some states, even if they end up being just lone
actors who are radicalized on the internet. That's right, And
(40:31):
I have a ethical question for for both of you, gentlemen.
Um is this dock sing? I mean, so far, I
haven't seen any actual names and addresses, phone numbers, home
personal information released publicly. I know there are some accounts
on like Instagram, for example, there's one called I think
it's called Homegrown Terrorists where there is some docks and
(40:52):
going on with somee of the people that were seeing,
you know, participating in the looting at the capitol. This
to me, there's a big there's a lot of discussion
in these comments sections on these articles. You know, some
people from the right coming in and saying this is illegal,
this is docks, saying this is and this is not
you know, appropriate use of the internet, that that this
(41:13):
is literally breaking the law. What do you guys think
about that? If this information is literally being used to
track down people that committed a crime and then report
them to the authorities they can be taken to task.
Is that like vigilante is um? Like? What what is this?
You're I think referring specifically to some Reddit comments. The
thing is Reddit doesn't have the best track record of
(41:36):
civilian detective work. Uh consider the case of the Boston
bombing where they got the wrong people. Then also, I
would say, if you're docksing someone who has not proven
to committed to have committed a crime, and you are civilian,
you need to you need to be very careful because
that can, that could, with the best of intentions, lead
(41:57):
you down a very inadvisable path. Uh. There are intelligence
agencies that are hunting these people down. Uh, well stay,
they're hunting people who have actually broken the law down already.
And those folks like the FBI, Let's not forget they
were able to find one protester via Etsy because of
(42:17):
a tattoo that person had, so they have more resources.
But I would just I would caution people because you
know social media and read it is social media. It's
made to manipulate you, it's made to um to incite
you toward engagement and toward further action of some sort.
So even with the best of intentions, you need to,
(42:41):
like Matt said, you need to carefully vet your sources.
Also vet yourself and your own motivations. Uh in nless
you are professional with this stuff, um, then you might accidentally,
with no ill intent, you might accidentally screw up, and
you might even get yourself in a pickle z that
Mac said. I hope I'm not being too extreme there, No, no,
(43:02):
it makes perfect. We're pausing for a moment for a
word from our sponsor, and we are back. I just
want to jump back a little bit in the conversation, Ben,
you're talking about the people we really need to be
worried about, the ones who may actually take some kind
(43:22):
of violent action in in you know, physically somewhere in
the world. I I totally feel you, and imminently that
is what you know, intelligence agencies and police department should
be worried about. What worries me right now are all
of the bystanders essentially who are passively commenting on a
(43:43):
YouTube video or on a Facebook post that I'm going
through that are just uh, it just seemed to be
believing whatever is being said in a lot of these things.
And then when I personally go through and vet the
information that's being spoken, you know, as often as I
as I can, I'm noticing that they're referencing things like Nassara,
(44:04):
n E s A r A. It's called the National
Economic Security and Recovery Act. It was not a real thing,
and but it is believed to be a real thing
by someone talking on YouTube the way I am right now, right,
and and they will say it, and then someone else listening,
here's it, and then they just say what was send
(44:25):
on that YouTube video, rather than looking it up and
seeing that it was it was a part of a
essentially a conspiracy theory newsletter chain that was going out
by somebody who was not credible. Well, even the initial
story about this hack was incorrect, was absolutely full of misinformation.
Um maybe with the best of intentions, but I couldn't
(44:47):
find a story about it. I couldn't find anything to
back it up. And it was all from this reddit
kind of like chatter and Twitter and then Reddit. Even
it got up voted. The incorrect story got up voted
thousands and thousands of times, and they had to put
a keep post on the Reddit page saying, hey, that
one was dead wrong. Here's the new info. Look at
this one up vow this one instead, which I think
(45:07):
is interesting that they even went to that trouble and
in the interest of uh in the interest of full disclosure.
We don't know which parts of this podcast you're gonna
be YouTube clips, Matt, although I thought that was sly
and that's up to James, that's not up to us, Okay,
sure well, or listening to a podcast and hearing somebody
(45:28):
say it to them and then just taking that info
synthesizing it into their own thoughts rather than looking it up.
And there's no way to look up everything you hear.
That's why you have to vet the individual more so
than anything else, which is it's a tough thing to
do because every individual, including this guy who's either talking
right now on YouTube or on a podcast, gets it
(45:48):
wrong sometimes. But you know, in the end, it's just
scary thinking there's so many people that believe something wholeheartedly
that you can prove to be false. So what we're
talking about here, what I think you're talking about, man,
you're talking about the importance or we're all talking about
this all the time. We're talking about the importance of
(46:08):
vetting your sources. And just like trying to read uh
thousand plus page COVID bill while the clock is ticking,
this is very intimidating, it's very difficult and in times
it's impossible, So you do have to use context clues.
And when you use context clues, you have to be very,
(46:28):
very careful because odds are the stuff that's making you
feel like you're increasingly agreeing with yourself. Not all of
that might be true. Your brain might be fooling you,
especially if you're going to a group of like minded people,
because every single member of the human species suffers from
what social psychology calls group polarization. Like again, if we
(46:52):
are are Congress of five that we used at the
top of this episode, and the five of us get
together because we think in general, uh vaetta that ice
cream novelty, that's it's not available around here. By the way,
I was crushed. I know, man, I know. But what
it was like the five of us got together just
(47:12):
as like a fan group of that, and it became
a hot button topic and we started feeling persecuted, just
like an occult. Then we only talked to each other,
and we only talked about the mission to get this
wonderful ice cream novelty back into the world. And you
fast forward one year, We're gonna sound like Vonetta, Yes, radicals,
(47:36):
and I choose ice cream because it's a fun, innocuous example.
But what you're talking about, Matt, is absolutely true. It's
absolutely true, and no one is immune to it. It
is a neurological, hardwired aspect of the human being, of
the human brain. Just because you're like, oh, well this
(47:57):
one didn't get me, I don't even this current one.
That doesn't make you better than anybody else. It just
means that you have to look to other things when
you're checking on how group polarization got to you. Yeah,
for sure. And you know, in a lot of this
was just my response to the response to our coverage
of this latest thing from the capital, just to see
(48:20):
what people are truly thinking and why they would respond
to us in you know, information that I went back
through just like we all did, and listen to it
again to make sure we were stating things correctly. We
were very careful in our language, and dang man, people
are just still feel like in just stating the facts,
(48:42):
we were somehow distorting things and it is just really troubling, man.
And I know, I hope in some way we're able
to you know, speak to enough people, including myself, just
to pull us out a little bit more from our
own biases I wanted to say, are too really quick.
I've been personally really kind of heartened by the response
(49:06):
overall that we've gotten to to those two episodes, not
only in how many people have listened to it, it's
been a lot, but also in just the emails we've gotten, um,
that's all just in general, they've been very positive. Well,
I get a lot of it. I welcome it. Let's see,
let's do this live. I don't know if anything will
show up. We get my phone. Okay, so just fifty
(49:28):
three seconds ago on Twitter at Ben Bully hs W,
I don't know why you guys took pains apart two
to clarify that some people just happened to be there.
It got caught up in the moment as though they
were on a school tour when the steadily terrorist attack
kicked off. PS is clearly more than one individual. The
zip tie thing. I we appreciate that. I don't think
(49:49):
we did the wrong thing there, because again, with a
massive amount of people like this, you can't think that
everybody has the same plan. But we appreciate, we appreciate
the feedback end as we what we really did take
pains to talk about in part two of the attack
on Washington was how little confirmed information was out there
(50:10):
at that point. Do you know what I mean. It's
like you said, Ben, we have to be cautious in
not spreading misinformation, so sometimes we hedge a little bit,
and not only there's anything wrong with that, I don't
think so. And you know, we met One point you
made that really that I really appreciate is we were
editorializing pretty much at all in the first part, right,
(50:35):
and we said we would have some speculation in the
second part. But we a lot of the things that
we do, kind of things we do and this doesn't
apply to every podcast in the world, but a lot
of things we do. If we don't get people objecting
to some of the stuff that we're relaying, if everybody
just agrees with us, then that means that we could
be doing a better job, in my opinion. And just
(50:56):
in response to those two things that I said on
that episoded that that person is commenting about um because
I remember saying them, but that was but it was
two things that I specifically pointed out, just because it
feels as though a lot of the discussion around this
is painting everybody in the same light on either side,
(51:18):
which it is extremely dehumanizing and if you take a side,
essentially you're guilty of it because you're saying the all
of these other people are like this. UM. I just
want to make sure than anyone listening to this understands
that each individual that was even at that that protest,
the you know, the vast majority of the people who
(51:39):
are there for a protest. Uh, We're not the same
as people who showed up with zip ties, who showed
up with you know, molotov cocktails in their truck, who
showed up and napalm essentially in their truck, and automatic weapons,
semi automatic weapons ready to carry out something. It's just
we can't look at each other as all one thing.
(52:00):
We're all individuals and there's there's intense belief on all
sides going on here. We need to see each other,
um a little differently, um, in order to hopefully get
through this, because this is the kind of thing that
doesn't go away, you know, after an election. These are
feelings that are long and UM, I don't, I don't,
(52:22):
I don't know what I'm saying on my soapbox here.
I'm just cautioning to remember that we were all, we
are all individuals, and at heart we all want to
be good. I would hope so, I would hope so.
But also you have to keep in mind stupid, a
little dystopian new mommy, and this whole conversation as if
(52:43):
we need more. Uh, if there were not foreign powers
leveraging this situation that culpidated or big or at least
began on January six, then they will certainly be a
part of future things. So whenn't you hear other narratives
right coming out in the coming days, coming months, etcetera.
(53:04):
I would ask myself, cui bono, who benefits who benefits most?
It may not be a domestic force which should terrify people.
All right, well, have a have a great rest of
your day. We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna pause here.
I think we're gonna keep this one at two stories
(53:24):
for today. We're already at an hour or so, so
we're gonna do that, and I will save my story
for next week. If you live in Mead, Nebraska, here
is looking at you. I hope you can feel our
support from here in Atlanta. I hope you're doing well.
We'll talk about that story and next week for now.
(53:46):
If you want to write to us and give us
an idea for a story, or for anything at all,
you can find us on Twitter. As Ben said, we
are at conspiracy Stuff. We're also on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show. Oh,
Facebook is conspiracy stuff too, and we've also got a
page over there on Facebook called Here's where it Gets Crazy,
a little group you can join and hang out with us.
(54:07):
All you gotta do is name one or all of us,
including Doc Holiday, if you wish, and welcome to our
new mod I want to say, folks. Of course, originally
Strange News Segment Weekly is structured to have three stories.
We're going to endeavor to give three stories every time. Uh,
this one we got a little rabbit hold on, but
(54:29):
expect us to return to three in the coming segments.
If you hate social media, you could give us a
call on the old telephonical device. Some of the people
of a certain age in the crowd remember when those
things used to have wires, which is weird. That's why
they're called landlines. But it'll work on a smartphone. To
(54:50):
just s dial one eight three three S T D
W y t K. You have three minutes. Those three
minutes are yours. All that we ask is that you
specifically tell us if you do not want us to
use your name and or voice on the air, which
is totally fine. We just want to hear from you.
But I hate phones, ben even the ones that are
(55:13):
shaped like a football. You may be saying I hate phones.
It's one phones are for texting and means well, never
fear if you don't want to call us, you don't
like social media, There's one way you can always get
in touch with us. That is our good old fashioned
email address. Where we are conspiracy at i heart radio
(55:34):
dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is
(55:55):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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