July 20, 2020 • 48 mins
Why is Kim Jong Un's sister getting special permission to watch DVDs of US holiday celebrations? Why do so many countries want to ban TikTok? How did a woman win the lottery based entirely on a vision from her dreams? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they introduce the new Strange News segment, a once-a-week round up of some of the weirdest news -- and the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know?
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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 Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is not They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decades. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know a bit of an expanded version. Why
am I hearing a new stuff they don't want you
(00:47):
to know? Episode on Monday? You may be asking yourself.
That is because Paul, maybe if we could get a
sound queue here, something dramatic, building, anticipation, perfect. Stuff they
don't want you to know is officially going to be
coming to you every single day of the week until
(01:10):
we go crazy, until we get disappeared, black bagged, etcetera.
Don't worry, We'll still have the same deep dive episodes
you know and love on Wednesdays and Fridays. However, we're
going to add some things to the week. This is
our first iteration of what we're calling strange news. So now,
(01:32):
with the help of my collaborators, co conspirators, the Esteemed
Noel Brown and Matt Frederick. We are resurrecting, revising, grittily
rebooting Strange News Daily into Strange News. We sure hope
you like it. We've worked pretty hard on it, and
we hope that you enjoy it coming out every Monday.
(01:54):
That's our plan right now, right totally. Yeah, No, I'm
certainly excited about it, and I really appreciate everybody uh
tuning in for the first installment. And just to give
a little bit of context, what's gonna happen here in
these episodes. Each of us is coming to the table
with a news story that we found to be intriguing
or weird or strange in some way, and we're gonna
(02:16):
essentially bring it up and then we'll all discuss it,
and all three of us are gonna get that chance,
and at the end, you have to vote for whose
is the weirdest. Now I'm just joking, that's not a
part of it, but we'd totally accept any messages saying, hey,
yours was the weirdest or yours was the whatever. Where
we're interested in what you think about all these stories. Okay, So,
(02:37):
without further Ado. I think I have the the honor
of of being the first to the table today with
an article UM from the National Review UM by Karen
hajar Um and the headline is US considers TikTok ban
as Chinese threat to global Internet freedom grows. There's a
lot to unpack here. I only just recently found out
(02:59):
about this and had to to hear more TikTok as
as many folks know. I know because my kid was
on it when it was called music dot l y
or musically it's sort of like an app that UM is,
I guess the new answer to Vine in the vacuum
where Vine was, where people were making short little videos,
(03:19):
whether you know, showcasing kind of dance routines UM or
a little comedy sketches or what have you. I think
about TikTok is a lot of it is meant to
be lip sync too, and people copy each other's dances
or bits or you know, lip syncs or whatever, and
it's really gone absolutely bonkers since UM quarantine. People that
(03:39):
would have been you know, totally ragging on a service
like this or an app like this, or never in
a million years think they'd be on it, are all
over it UM and it is really taken the Internet
by storm. I think I read it's been downloaded like
more than a billion times or something insane like that.
But as it turns out, UM it is owned and
operated by a Chinese company by the name of Bite
(04:02):
Dance UM that has, as many corporations in China do
very close ties to the Chinese Communist Party UM And
in a recent interview on Fox News, Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo indicated that the United States is certainly looking
at banning outright TikTok. State Department already forbids it to
(04:24):
be downloaded on any you know, government issued phones UM
and it's really causing quite a stir. And the reason
for this is that the Chinese government is very well
known for their kind of iron grip on the Internet
of China and the way users perceive it. So for
a company like that to be so massive here in
(04:47):
the United States, there are potential, you know, conflicts of
interest there, I suppose is the term you would use. UM.
I'm really interested to hear what you guys think about this.
The idea that they could use this social media platform
to stockpiled data about users or even go a step
further as far as spying on American citizens. Well, I'll
(05:09):
jump in quickly here bite dance by the way, B
y T E D A n c E if you
want to look it up for your own research. Um,
it feels a lot like conversations that maybe I haven't
looked at or heard news about in other countries when
they're talking about let's say a service like Twitter or
(05:32):
Facebook or some other social media that's a US based company,
where you're you're imagining that this perhaps foreign government linked
entity maybe gathering all the information of all the users
in your country that are downloading it. It's interesting. It
(05:53):
definitely feels like something that would be happening because we
know a lot of these companies, especially social media companies,
that have apps attached to them where it's physically in
a phone of an end user that that that user
is being tracked in some way, shape or form. You know,
on the surface, it's for advertising purposes, right, and it's
(06:16):
for making money for that app to be able to
sell that data to somebody else or to use it internally. UM.
When thinking about it, of the United States having or
thinking at least about attempting to put a stop to
an app and its use within the United States because
(06:36):
it is based in a foreign country. That that to
me is something brand new of at least something to
think about. Yeah. There, So I had some deep dives
in this earlier on on the original version of Strange
News Daily. There's a lot to it, and I think
in the West we are maybe missing some stuff here.
(06:59):
For shout out to everybody who was listening to this,
uh this very important news, and then said, why are
we worried about TikTok? Facebook? The Alphabet Boys and Google
are already doing the same thing and they're doing it
all the time. That's true. But to your point, all
the difference here is that legally speaking, the government of
(07:22):
China has uh much wider powers when it comes to
retrieving information from a quote unquote private venture. Uh, TikTok
is a is definitely a potential security risk. I mean,
imagine you're a diplomat, your two kids love TikTok because
they do dance challenges. It's not hard to pull information
(07:47):
and then sort of Kevin Bacon degrees of separation your
way into what uh like diplomatic conversations. You just start
pulling the spider webs and pulling the yard. But but
here's here's one thing that's interesting because uh, you know,
in the US, a lot of observers are saying that
(08:11):
the White House or the current administration is behind banning TikTok,
partially because of a security concern, but partially because the
current president is angry about the effectiveness of TikTok activism
when hundreds of thousands of K pop fans started trolling
(08:31):
UH speaking events right reserving seats. Yeah, so that, I mean,
that definitely plays a part. But we have to remember
UH India band TikTok. There's a hilarious story. This is
in step, by the way, with UH the border clashes
between India and China, which very well may spark a
regional war. Millions of people tuned in on TikTok to
(08:55):
just watch this guy eat chicken wings. That's like all
he did until the lights went out on on TikTok.
And now, if you if you're keeping track of the
closures or the bands of TikTok, the US military or
the U. S Army excuse me, and the Navy have
already banned service members from using TikTok, at least on
(09:15):
their government phones. I think wells Fargo banned it too.
There's the Coastguard to come Coastguard, ye air Force? Uh
huh yeah. And so now the question is is the
US going to ban it entirely? And if so, if
they do, what happens Because India pretty much soon after
they banned TikTok, another essentially a TikTok clone that was
(09:38):
native to India rose in its place. I mean, wouldn't happen?
I did not know about that. But do you do
you see this as being in any way retaliate, retaliatory
by the Trump administration pointing fingers, for say, in their eyes,
causing the current pandemic that we are involved in. And
then and also you know the way China often uh
(09:59):
kind of holds our feet of the fire economically, is
this kind of our way of of kind of clapping
back a little bit? I mean, I I could only
speculate that that's a reasonable assumption. Like the main the
main issue or the main question is is there seriously
a security risk? And the answer is, of course yes,
(10:21):
because not just because it's TikTok or it's oh uh
in China, it's a security risk because it's a social
media app. That's kind of why they exist to each
and everyone, uh each sorry, the majority of popular social
media apps are trojan horses or have the potential to
be such. But to your point about whether this is retaliatory,
(10:45):
we have to remember that there is a there's very
much a cold war going on right now between China
and the US, and it's taken place across the internet,
across the South China Sea, in trade room talks, everywhere.
It's it's escalating apps really and also to your point,
been these bands, you know, within the military branch of
the military have been in place since last year, since
(11:07):
December or January. Even so, any retaliate, retaliatory you know,
implication would just be in making it larger scale, bat
banning it among you know, my kid, for example, who
would be crushed. That is her social media platform of choice.
I'm not kidding, Like that is where she has the
most followers and interacts with you know, her cosplay friends,
and it's a thing, um and and it really is.
(11:29):
Largely I think maybe some of the concern is coming
from just the ballooning popularity of the app. And and
something I didn't realize is using something called shadow bands,
which is something that's employed UH in general by social
media companies UM for example, against sex workers oftentimes sex
workers or shadow band because of their content and rather
(11:50):
than just being you know, canceled or having their credentials revoked,
their content just isn't reaching their followers. So it's a
way to limit who acts chilly sees content that's being
put out. And for example, there was some evidence that
a user in twenty nineteen UM for Rosa Azaz had
her account suspended after putting up a makeup tutorial that
(12:13):
had some kind of um almost uh subconscious or sort
of like secretly kind of veiled UM criticisms of Chinese
massed attention of of the weaker Muslim population UM in
Xianjiang Province and also references to things like Tianamen Square
or the protests that are going on in Hong Kong.
(12:34):
Also uh, they have a way of kind of making
sure that stuff doesn't filter through even to US users.
One interesting thing to point out here with regards to
TikTok's data is that the company says at least that
the user data that it stores is not physically located
in China and it is backed up elsewhere in Singapore,
(12:56):
at least according to Wired. And here's a quote here,
our data centers are located entirely outside of China and
none of our data is subject to Chinese law. That's
a company's statement from TikTok Um. So I mean, that's
interesting alone there when you're thinking that the Chinese government,
the Communist Party would have to go, I don't know,
(13:19):
to some lengths to get that information if they were
attempting to use it for some nefarious purpose. Um, you know,
who's to say TikTok doesn't wouldn't have some kind of
back room deal with a with a government or a company.
But Bite Dance actually in the past has had some
(13:41):
some issues with the Chinese government in the Communist Party
in some other social media news apps that is created
in the past, and the CEO actually at one point
had to make a public apology about the use of
those apps, which is interesting to me. I don't know,
but that the quote is really telling, and you know,
(14:02):
it speaks to a lot of other things we've discussed
on this show. But I'm just gonna say right here, uh,
he says the product has gone astray posting content that
goes against socialist core values. It's all on me. I
accept all the punishment since it failed to direct public
opinion in the right way. WHOA, Yeah, that's a question
(14:22):
I had for you, Ben. I mean, if we take
a like a real, like sci fi kind of dystopian
approach to this, is this kind of infiltration with an
app that catches on with the youth, a way to
spread communism abroad away to you know, make a new
generation of American you know kids, Okay? With that? Is
(14:46):
there the potential for indoctrination subtle ways? You know what
I mean? I just wonder, I mean, and that that's
an interesting question or because it would be uh, it
would technically I think falling of the category of what's
called soft diplomacy. Uh. That's a more physical example of
(15:07):
that would be the Confucius Institutes that opened up around
the world to familiarize people with the what the Communist
Party considers official Chinese culture. And we have to admit,
Chinese culture is super cool. Just the history is amazing.
But um, but right now, the PRC globally is a
(15:31):
little more concerned with domestic information control than they are
with expansion of information globally or expansion of narrative. Globally,
you'll see you'll see narrative expansion in terms of UH
directed focused efforts to certain regions of the world or countries.
(15:53):
But but right now, the US, maybe we're being US
centric here. Right now, the US is not UH is
not especially receptive the common person in the US too,
UH that kind of propaganda. If they were doing it,
it feels like it definitely has the ability to be
or the capacity to become an intelligence gathering tool. And
(16:16):
Uncle Sam is super super worried about it. But right now,
right now, we don't. I don't know. It seems more
likely that if there were Nafari's end or an ulterior
motive for propagating TikTok, it would be to gather intelligence
more so than to win hearts and minds. But I mean,
(16:39):
you could do it just get people to copy the
right dance, you know, right right. And just to point
out that the National Review is is a right wing publication,
but this is a national story and we have multiple
other sources for this, but from that perspective, um, this
is a quote from the article, and I think this
is interesting because it's sort of what we were just
talking about in the ace of China's threats to the
(17:01):
freedom of the world's Internet, the Trump administration should be
applauded for considering a ban on TikTok. As Chinese censorship, surveillance,
and propaganda spread worldwide, the US has a chance to
fight back and change the trajectory of the information age
for the better. Yeah. I mean again, it's sort of Uh.
If you wanted to be absolutely brutal about it and
(17:23):
a little bit cold, you could say maybe the US
or maybe the West in general, is not so much
upset that social media is used for intelligence gathering as
they are that someone else is getting the benefits, you
know what I mean, because US didn't hasn't raised a
(17:44):
big stink about Facebook. It is a really interesting time
we're living in where a big move, a big political
or almost a long game move, is to ban a
competitive country tech companies. Isn't that that's so strange to
(18:05):
me that that's a chess move at this point, Um
ban it and then like kind of, as we alluded
to earlier, introduce your own version of whatever that thing
was that was extremely popular. Huh, because it really could be,
or at least has the potential, no matter how minute
to be a way of spying on some other countries citizens. Yeah.
(18:28):
What I really appreciate about that point, met, is that
you're putting into context a larger pattern. We can't forget
that there are multiple countries that have said, forget the
World Wide Internet, We're going to make our own Internet.
Insert bender from Futurama joke here. But the idea is
that we want to the people in power, the people
(18:52):
responsible for making decisions. We want to have vertical control,
we want stem to stern, soup to nuts, control all
of all the capabilities of something. And we definitely don't
want back doors in any technology from a foreign source,
which is you know, by the way, Uh, the reason
that the US wants to be careful about that is
(19:13):
because we know people do it, because we do it
all the time. We're all the protagonists and antagonists at
all times. Guys, no percent, it's interesting to even think
about it from that perspective. But you got it. You
nailed it back. Um. I think there's a story that
we're going to continue looking into and seeing as it develops,
and maybe even do it do more on it down
(19:34):
the road. But in the meantime, we've got some more
strange news coming your way. After quick wordsrom our sponsor,
and we've returned. Let's stay on the Asian continent for
our second story today. As long time listeners know several
(19:56):
of us, I guess I should just out myself here
and have a weird fascination longstanding with the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea the DPRK, better known as North Korea
here in the West, UH. North Korea is also called
the Hermit Kingdom. UH. It has been in a state
of unending war officially UH since the fifties. It is distinct,
(20:21):
it's dangerous, UH. It's it's a scary place, UH. And
it's also an opaque place. A lot of people have
no idea what's really happening on the ground there. Before
the proliferation a very affordable communications technology, it was almost
a black box, and we only knew people we being
(20:43):
everyone who lives outside of North Korea, we only knew
what was going on in there based on reports of
defectors that sometimes couldn't be proven or cooperated, or based
on very limited human intelligence, relatively limited satellite imaging technology.
That's changed now in a globally connected world, but we
(21:06):
still don't really know what's going on, and that is
why UH many many people across the globe now are
very concerned about the succession of power in North Korea.
North Korea is currently ruled by a guy named Kim
(21:26):
Jong oon. We've discussed him in several previous episodes. Here
is the grandson of Kim Il sung, who is who
is considered the eternal president of the country and was
the founder of what we call DPRK today. However, if
you'll recall UH, relatively recently, Kim Jong un disappeared for
(21:50):
some amount of time, and this led to pretty alarmists,
kind of breathless pearl clutching reports in the US and
in South Korea that he had died i'd possibly due
to COVID nineteen, possibly due to any number of his
health issues, including UH, he's got a bum ticker apparently, UH.
(22:10):
And then surprise, surprise, he did, like a dictator power move.
He came back out. At first, we thought maybe it
was just a video that had been archived and they
were just trying to maintain stability. But there's something else
interesting happening UH that I thought would bear discussion here.
His sister UH is quickly becoming the favorite to be
(22:33):
the next leader of North Korea. Her name is Kim
Yo jong. Uh and this story I would categorize as
a weird flex guys. Uh. One of the biggest news
stories in domestic North Korean media is that Kim Yo
Jong officially got permission from the government to watch the
(22:54):
US celebrations of July four, not just for this year,
but year going forward. And this sounds like a small
deal to us, but it's a big big deal there
because it's a very propaganda sensitive country and July four
is one of the most propagandistic things that America does.
Just like watch like on like a feed, like watch
(23:16):
news coverage or what are we talking here? DVDs? Wow,
that is wild. But I I just I guess I
don't understand because it's on the face, as you said,
fully propaganda being exported by the US, by any country
that's celebrating a day like that of their independence or
their founding or something like that. I mean, it's almost
(23:38):
like on the face of it, Hey, guess what, guys, everybody,
even in the country where we're celebrating, this is kind
of propaganda for how great we are. It's interesting that
she would need permission to watch that. Huh yeah, yeah,
and this is uh, this is something that is confirmed
(23:58):
by North Korean state media, uh, which is a real
it's real eye opener to read that stuff. Just the
way that it's written. It's kind of like they're there,
the official messages. It sounds like the person writing them
is paid per amounts of times they pick up the
thesaurus by their keyboard. But it's really fun read. However,
(24:21):
we can't dismiss this just as propaganda because you know,
you have to study the enemy to know the enemy, right. Uh.
This also was not a move occurring in a vacuum. Uh.
It was Kim Yo jong, not Kim Jong un, who
just koboshed the idea of another summit with the United States.
(24:44):
He said, no, we don't need it. Uh. Mainly, you know,
in geopolitical circles, it's it's pretty clear that the current
US administration sees those summits as tremendous pr opportunities and
you know, kind of like a win when it comes
to the votes and the elections coming up in November.
(25:04):
But the weird thing is, it seems that Kim Yo
jong is very into the internet because uh, cyber warfare
campaigns are picking up at an unprecedented rate. You're not
gonna see this entire story laid out in a single
news article. We had to pull a couple of things
(25:24):
to get here. But cyber warfare, asymmetrical warfare online is
like the best move if you are outnumbered in a
conventional military. And we don't know yet. Really it's still
such a secretive regime or a secretive government. We don't
know yet what's going to happen. We don't know how
(25:45):
long Kim Jong Oon is gonna last. We don't know
if his sister will become the first female leader of
the country. Um, we don't know if the country is
gonna collapse. Honestly, the signals that we're getting from this
are our distressing. They haven't really they're they're being mentioned
in one offs in western news. But without making a prediction,
(26:07):
I I would say keep your eye on this country because, uh,
it's not equipped to handle COVID nineteen. The populace is
aware that there is a world where you're less likely
to starve. Just over the border, people are risking life
and limb to get out of there, and where we
may see the collapse of North Korea within our lifetime. Question, um,
(26:30):
and and forgive me if you mention this and I
missed it. Why why does she want to she is
she is a younger generation that's fascinated by American culture.
Is that what? Or is there something else to it
that that I'm missing? I think it's a it's again.
I think it's studying the enemy. But you raise a
good point about fascination with Western culture. It's weird because
(26:53):
the it's weird because Kim Jong moon was educated at
a very posh school in Europe and he loves US basketball. Uh,
he loves American films, you know. Culture. I guess you
could say culture and war are two of the primary
exports of the United States. Uh. And he definitely loves
(27:16):
the culture part. So his sister may like that as well.
It may just be a I like to watch the
show kind of thing. But I wouldn't be surprised if
we're going to see some modeling of of US propaganda
techniques used in North Korea to great effect. The US
(27:38):
is good at propaganda. We do it all the time.
Nobody talks about it, but we do it uh to ourselves,
and that's what really hurts to quote radiohead excellent. I
would point out just I am fascinated by the language
Kim Yo jong uses, And tell me what you guys
(28:00):
think about this. I'll read a quick quote from this
political article that we found here. Um, they're they're talking
about reigniting these talks and how the United States, or
at least the Trump administration has been saying that, Hey,
there's a possibility we're gonna get back into these nuclear
discussions with the DPRK. And this is what can you know?
(28:23):
John had to say, quote, assuming that we hold the
summit talks now, it is too obvious that it will
only be used as boring boasting coming from someone's pride,
which is really interesting. Like you said that, Um, I
think both sides, if you want to call them that,
in this kind of exchange, are are very good at
(28:45):
what they do when they signal publicly about one or
the other. And then she she continued down the line
there within wherever they're quoting from in this political article
to reference the Christmas gift. The was referenced prior to
this time by Kim Jong n about essentially a nuclear
(29:06):
weapon that could be sent somewhere fairly close to them
on the eve of the elections is what she's referring
to here. So like, as the Trump administration is going
into an election, they are saying, yeah, you just remember,
we could give you a little nuclear gift on that
day if we wanted to. UM. I think it's just
(29:29):
fascinating to read the language of this what do you
call it, the back and forth almost cold war uh
exchanges that go across the bow here. It's almost like
a form of one upsmanship in some weird way. You're
you're very very close the phrases brinksmanship, and it's exactly
(29:52):
it's the same thing. It's basically so much of so
much of international affairs is like we've used this analogy before.
Uh We've said international affairs as a house party where
everybody thought there would be enough beer and uh snacks
to go around, and now they find out there's much
less and they're fighting for it. But in this situation
(30:15):
and people are uh, in this situation where there's conflict involved,
it's like the world stage is a crowded bar and
there you know, the nations saying they're going to fight
are going like, you know, come at me, bro come
at me. Why you bump me? Why you bump me, bro,
and then uh, they're getting their friends to like hold
(30:38):
them back, and they're like, hold me back, China, hold
me back. You got my back, right, Okay, come at me, bro,
Christmas gift what? And this It feels silly, but it
but it can be really dangerous and I know it's. Um.
The reason I wanted to bring this up on on
today's show is because we're seeing a lot of reports
(30:59):
about horrific things happening in detainment camps in China, in uh,
detainment camps here in the US. UH. And we have
to remember that these kind of camps have existed for
decades and decades in North Korea, and the West knows,
the West new. The West is never interfered beyond you know,
(31:23):
sanctions often related more to the nuclear weaponry than human rights.
So at this point, given the instability, I mean, North
Korea just let out an official statement admitting that COVID
nineteen is spreading, and they said stopping COVID nineteen is
more important than the economy, which is a lesson some
other countries could learn. I imagine, uh, some some people
(31:45):
would say, but keep an eye out for it. It
is in a more unstable time than it has been
since Kim Jong il originally took power after the death
of Kim Il sung. But assuming we don't fall into
the grips of a global nuclear exchange, we're gonna pause
for a word from our sponsor and we'll be back
(32:08):
with more strange news. And we're back. What are you?
What are you saying that it falls to you? You've
been telling us offt air that we're gonna get weird
with it. Well, you guys, you know you come in
(32:29):
here with your important articles about global news, stuff that
actually matters. Well, I got something different for everybody. We're
gonna read an article here from a place maybe you
didn't expect. The lot That's what it's called, the lot
Media Center. This is the Lottery of Australia and they've
(32:52):
got a little place where they put out essentially pr
That's really all this is is to let you know, hey,
here's a feel good story about somebody who won the lottery,
and you can win two and you should play the
old lottery and all that um. But this one struck
me just a little bit because of the circumstances that
(33:12):
led to the winning numbers. So just to quickly go
through it. There's a thing called the Gold Lotto Draw
in Australia, and you know, it's a lottery like any other.
You pick some numbers and if those numbers come up,
you're gonna win some money. Well, there's one woman in
Queensland who you know did the whole thing. She put
some numbers in, She bought a ticket, or rather she
(33:35):
bought it take and put them numbers in. Then she
won a million dollars and she went through and she
confirmed it with you know, the whole lottery company and everything,
and this is what she had to say. The numbers
came to me in a dream about fifteen years ago.
That's fifteen years. I literally saw them appear one by
(33:56):
one and I've been playing them in that exact order
ever since. The numbers have always been good to me.
I've always won little amounts over the years, but now this,
it's amazing. So my question to you guys, that's really
all I've got for a new story. Dude, No, this
is amazing. What an optimistic and lovely way to wrap
(34:16):
the episode. I know, magic does happen. This is incredible.
My question to you guys is do you think there
is any realm of possibility, you know, as skeptical as
when we may be that she in some way was
given those numbers, either by herself or by some other
(34:38):
outside force that predicted that this would happen in some way.
Do you guys think there's any remo possibility that that
could have happened? Sure, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm as sure. Yeah,
I mean anything is possible. Not to be relativistic about it,
and that just sound dismissive, but I'm yeah, sure. We
(35:01):
have no idea how the human mind works. We are
we we kind of get the neurochemical stuff. We get
that part, right, We've we've sort of we've solved the
idea of how the gas moves through the engine, but
we don't know why there's a car, and we don't
(35:22):
really know where it came from and where it's going
in a cognitive sense. Uh. We also have some tricky
statistics here. I would say, not to be too much
of a Donnie Downer about it, but how many millions
of other people have been doing the same thing for decades,
and maybe they did it their entire life, and they
(35:44):
got two or three numbers once, and they got four
even and then they passed away. We're hearing about this
story because this is the time that it worked, you
know what I mean, that's a really great point. It
just happened to work this time, maybe, Yeah. And I mean,
you know mean, so the number that it's pretty complex
series of numbers, right, Uh, it's fifteen, two, eight, and
(36:07):
forty five, with supplementary numbers being twenty and thirty, which
I think you need to get all of those to
hit the big one, right and that right, I honestly
don't know exact I think so, but I'm not a
lottery guy myself. Point is, these these these combinations of
numbers are difficult to hit, you know what I mean,
It's like you can't just you know, the likelihood of
(36:30):
playing the same numbers over and over again and having
it randomly hit very just very slim. Um. And this
is fascinating. Uh, let's see how many times did she
play it? Well, she played a lot, at least according
to her in you know, you're talking about roughly fifteen years.
There are around fifteen years of play. Um. You're looking
(36:54):
at a lot of money that's been spent on that
lottery over the years. And the the big question for
me though, is when we're thinking about dreams, and I
think we might be do for another episode on dreams.
I know we've talked about it several times in the
past on this show. Um, you know, about seeing shadow
(37:14):
people and sleep aaralysis and lucid dreaming, a couple of
things like that. But it's still, as you, as you
mentioned earlier, been an area of our brains and our
lives that we still don't have concrete answers on. And
you know, we've had psychologists and psychoanalysts over the years
(37:34):
give us like their takes essentially on what they think
dreaming is in that act and where we go and
what happens, um, everyone from Singun Freud, Carl Young to know,
those guys in the nineteen seventies that we've mentioned before,
Alan Hobson and Robert macarley who talked about dreams being
more of a random firing that's occurring rather than you know,
(37:56):
some of the older concepts of it being you know,
us psychologically getting through our sexual desires or are more
base needs or whatever. Um. To me, I just wonder
if there is more to the the consciousness, the altered
(38:17):
consciousness that we go into when we're dreaming. I don't know.
It makes me want to talk about it more. I
I agree. It's interesting too that this happened in Australia,
which has, you know, the Aboriginal tribes and the concept
of the dreaming or the dream time, um, which is
I don't know. I mean, not not that they're directly related,
(38:39):
but it is certainly a kind of mystical set of
beliefs that are wrapped up in this notion of of
the dreamtime, which we We actually had Annie Reese on
the show to talk about her experiences in Australia, UM
with some of these tribes. That's correct. There's there's a
point you make that um. They want to explore a
little bit further, at least in today's episode, and we
(39:00):
can return to it in a deep dive in the future.
It's the definition of consciousness. We don't really have one.
We know that we feel like we think, and we
know that based on the behavior of others, it seems
that they are undergoing the same dubious condition known as sentience.
(39:22):
But there was a great uh, there was a great
sci fi story I read recently called The life Cycle
of Software Objects. Without spoiling it, it introduces what I
thought was a very good definition of consciousness, which is
that we are maybe the the we that we think
of when we think what are we? What am I?
(39:43):
Maybe that is not necessarily a single point in the body.
Maybe it's not even a single point metaphysically in some
dimension or vibration that we cannot understand. Perhaps we are
just the thing that we think of as ourselves. It's
simply a pattern, right, and it molds itself over time.
(40:06):
It's a it's a complex sort of um I think
think like something like a series of opening and closing tubes,
but also a mobile like you would hang over maybe
a child's crib, and that that pattern, that movement, the
space between those things, that is as much of a
(40:29):
part of us as the neurons that we can see.
Where it's kind of like the difference between just speed
and velocity. I don't know, I you know, I'll just
send you this story, uh ted chank. He does. He
does a better job explaining it here. But the reason
I'm bringing that up is that the brain, as I
(40:49):
think we said in previous episodes, the brain is at
best hardware. The closest analogy we have to a consciousness
is software, and since we know that software through hardware
can interact with other things, then there's you know, it's
(41:11):
it's not conclusively proven, but it is therefore somewhat naive
to assume that the pattern that we think of as
consciousness exists in some sort of firewalled location. Our brains
are inundated, just like every other part of our bodies,
with so many types of energy, radiation, vibration, I don't know, microwaves,
(41:38):
how many times to use a cell phone. I mean,
even bananas have a little bit of radiation to them.
Our brains are awash and things. They do not exist
in a vacuum. So therefore, I do not think it
is out of the question. I do not think it
is unreasonable that our minds could be interacting somehow with
something else, or you know, maybe her subconscious is just
(42:01):
really smart and it's telling you this. But but in
this case, we're really talking about precognition, right somehow, If anything,
if there was any stand to this, it would be
something interacting or herself even interacting to give her information
that she'll need fifteen years in the future, in the
hopes that she would record that information and remember it
(42:23):
and then use it in the time when it was
needed because those numbers aren't going to hit again at
least four a long time, right, So it's it's you know,
if there were something to it, you'd have to drill
down so deeply. That's the that's the thing for me, Like,
you know, the fact that it even hit in her
(42:43):
lifetime is fascinating with just like how many possibilities and
permutations when you're dealing with two digit numbers. You know,
I'm no mathematician, but any any listeners out there, let
us know what the odds are, uh for for for
getting a perfect match on that many a sequence of
two digit numbers very very very very very difficult, probably
(43:04):
impossible or are very difficult for like an algorithm to crack.
If let's say you're trying to force your way into
someone's computer, you know, log in or you know there
are things that can do forced you know, well, they'll
just try all these different combinations of numbers and the
hopes that they'll eventually get to it when you deal
with that's if you're dealing with like single digit numbers
and a sequence of maybe six or something. These are
(43:25):
double digit numbers in the sequence of I think five
or six, so incredibly difficult to to hit that just randomly.
I don't know, man, I'm with you. I think Ben,
you did a really good job of sort of bridging
the gap between the mystic side of it and the
sort of, like you know, just the brain chemical side
of it. Um. I love this, and I think it's
a wonderful way to end the end our first episode
(43:47):
of Strange News. Quantum entanglement exists. The existence of precognition,
uh necessitates assuming the existence of linear time, and all
that we know about time is that's so far it
seems to move in one direction, but recent science has
discovered the rules of the road aren't always the same,
(44:09):
especially when you get down to very very small things.
So I ask you, then, what is the size of
a thought? Alright? Siry? That is it? No, that's great.
I was just gonna point out that you can find
The life Cycle of Software Objects on Amazon right now,
and the hard cover version of it is two hundred
(44:30):
and six dollars. Who though by the short story collection exhalations,
uh it should be it should be uh in there? Okay, awesome? Yeah,
And I think you can get like the full compendium
of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, which also uses the idea
of the dreaming and dream time and takes a lot
(44:52):
of cues from those Aborigine myths that we're talking about. Um, so,
really really cool stuff here and really great thought are
for pop culture. It's been used in science fiction, you know,
a lot since like the eighties, and continues to be so.
Really God, Matt, what a good find. Well, all I'll
say is I've been having a lot of really messed
(45:14):
up nightmares lately, and I certainly hope that I don't
have any kind of pre cognitive abilities, because I don't
want any of those things to come true. All right, Well, hey,
I hope you're having better dreams than me. Uh, write
to us. Let us know what you think about all
this stuff. Let us know what you've been dreaming about.
If you're down with that, we'd certainly be interested to
(45:37):
hear it, especially if you've been predicting something or if
something has been resonating deeply within you. Because this whole
quarantine situation and all the other things, a lot of
other things that are going on in the world right
now have been leading to some weird disruptions and sleep
patterns and and stuff. So tell us about what you've
been experiencing, what you think about everything we've talked about
(46:00):
on this episode. You can find us on the social media.
We are all over the place, right uh Facebook, you
can find our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy.
That's a really nice kind of real time way to
keep up with your fellow conspiracy realists. And we pop
in there as well, and couldn't couldn't have a better
group of folks. Lots of cool conversations and memes and
(46:20):
uh usually when a new episode drops, the conversation kicks
in the high gear. Really interested to see what you
guys think of this new schedule. I had a great
time today and I hope you all listening did too.
You can also find us on the usual places and
social media as Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, if
you wish. You can find us as individual people. I
am on Instagram at how Now, Noel Brown, I'm on Instagram,
(46:42):
Matt Frederick Underscore, I Heart. I think you can find
me on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bowling hs W
or on Instagram where i am at Ben Bowling. If
you are a person who does not care for social
media totally get it. There's pretty solid evidence that, uh,
social media can have delatorious effects on the mind. So
(47:05):
why do I kick at old school? You can give
us a call directly where we are one eight three
three s sc d W y t K. Yeah. I
don't think it's happening, guys. It was a good effort, though,
it was a good hustle. Well, the people, you know,
our our fellow listeners at home, are hopefully chanting along
(47:26):
or at the very least finding our attempt to chant
together in dear rate. If nothing else. If you don't
want to do any of that stuff and you want
to just write to us, you know, like we used
to in in in days of your you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(48:03):
to know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
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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 Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is not They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decades. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know a bit of an expanded version. Why
am I hearing a new stuff they don't want you
(00:47):
to know? Episode on Monday? You may be asking yourself.
That is because Paul, maybe if we could get a
sound queue here, something dramatic, building, anticipation, perfect. Stuff they
don't want you to know is officially going to be
coming to you every single day of the week until
(01:10):
we go crazy, until we get disappeared, black bagged, etcetera.
Don't worry, We'll still have the same deep dive episodes
you know and love on Wednesdays and Fridays. However, we're
going to add some things to the week. This is
our first iteration of what we're calling strange news. So now,
(01:32):
with the help of my collaborators, co conspirators, the Esteemed
Noel Brown and Matt Frederick. We are resurrecting, revising, grittily
rebooting Strange News Daily into Strange News. We sure hope
you like it. We've worked pretty hard on it, and
we hope that you enjoy it coming out every Monday.
(01:54):
That's our plan right now, right totally. Yeah, No, I'm
certainly excited about it, and I really appreciate everybody uh
tuning in for the first installment. And just to give
a little bit of context, what's gonna happen here in
these episodes. Each of us is coming to the table
with a news story that we found to be intriguing
or weird or strange in some way, and we're gonna
(02:16):
essentially bring it up and then we'll all discuss it,
and all three of us are gonna get that chance,
and at the end, you have to vote for whose
is the weirdest. Now I'm just joking, that's not a
part of it, but we'd totally accept any messages saying, hey,
yours was the weirdest or yours was the whatever. Where
we're interested in what you think about all these stories. Okay, So,
(02:37):
without further Ado. I think I have the the honor
of of being the first to the table today with
an article UM from the National Review UM by Karen
hajar Um and the headline is US considers TikTok ban
as Chinese threat to global Internet freedom grows. There's a
lot to unpack here. I only just recently found out
(02:59):
about this and had to to hear more TikTok as
as many folks know. I know because my kid was
on it when it was called music dot l y
or musically it's sort of like an app that UM is,
I guess the new answer to Vine in the vacuum
where Vine was, where people were making short little videos,
(03:19):
whether you know, showcasing kind of dance routines UM or
a little comedy sketches or what have you. I think
about TikTok is a lot of it is meant to
be lip sync too, and people copy each other's dances
or bits or you know, lip syncs or whatever, and
it's really gone absolutely bonkers since UM quarantine. People that
(03:39):
would have been you know, totally ragging on a service
like this or an app like this, or never in
a million years think they'd be on it, are all
over it UM and it is really taken the Internet
by storm. I think I read it's been downloaded like
more than a billion times or something insane like that.
But as it turns out, UM it is owned and
operated by a Chinese company by the name of Bite
(04:02):
Dance UM that has, as many corporations in China do
very close ties to the Chinese Communist Party UM And
in a recent interview on Fox News, Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo indicated that the United States is certainly looking
at banning outright TikTok. State Department already forbids it to
(04:24):
be downloaded on any you know, government issued phones UM
and it's really causing quite a stir. And the reason
for this is that the Chinese government is very well
known for their kind of iron grip on the Internet
of China and the way users perceive it. So for
a company like that to be so massive here in
(04:47):
the United States, there are potential, you know, conflicts of
interest there, I suppose is the term you would use. UM.
I'm really interested to hear what you guys think about this.
The idea that they could use this social media platform
to stockpiled data about users or even go a step
further as far as spying on American citizens. Well, I'll
(05:09):
jump in quickly here bite dance by the way, B
y T E D A n c E if you
want to look it up for your own research. Um,
it feels a lot like conversations that maybe I haven't
looked at or heard news about in other countries when
they're talking about let's say a service like Twitter or
(05:32):
Facebook or some other social media that's a US based company,
where you're you're imagining that this perhaps foreign government linked
entity maybe gathering all the information of all the users
in your country that are downloading it. It's interesting. It
(05:53):
definitely feels like something that would be happening because we
know a lot of these companies, especially social media companies,
that have apps attached to them where it's physically in
a phone of an end user that that that user
is being tracked in some way, shape or form. You know,
on the surface, it's for advertising purposes, right, and it's
(06:16):
for making money for that app to be able to
sell that data to somebody else or to use it internally. UM.
When thinking about it, of the United States having or
thinking at least about attempting to put a stop to
an app and its use within the United States because
(06:36):
it is based in a foreign country. That that to
me is something brand new of at least something to
think about. Yeah. There, So I had some deep dives
in this earlier on on the original version of Strange
News Daily. There's a lot to it, and I think
in the West we are maybe missing some stuff here.
(06:59):
For shout out to everybody who was listening to this,
uh this very important news, and then said, why are
we worried about TikTok? Facebook? The Alphabet Boys and Google
are already doing the same thing and they're doing it
all the time. That's true. But to your point, all
the difference here is that legally speaking, the government of
(07:22):
China has uh much wider powers when it comes to
retrieving information from a quote unquote private venture. Uh, TikTok
is a is definitely a potential security risk. I mean,
imagine you're a diplomat, your two kids love TikTok because
they do dance challenges. It's not hard to pull information
(07:47):
and then sort of Kevin Bacon degrees of separation your
way into what uh like diplomatic conversations. You just start
pulling the spider webs and pulling the yard. But but
here's here's one thing that's interesting because uh, you know,
in the US, a lot of observers are saying that
(08:11):
the White House or the current administration is behind banning TikTok,
partially because of a security concern, but partially because the
current president is angry about the effectiveness of TikTok activism
when hundreds of thousands of K pop fans started trolling
(08:31):
UH speaking events right reserving seats. Yeah, so that, I mean,
that definitely plays a part. But we have to remember
UH India band TikTok. There's a hilarious story. This is
in step, by the way, with UH the border clashes
between India and China, which very well may spark a
regional war. Millions of people tuned in on TikTok to
(08:55):
just watch this guy eat chicken wings. That's like all
he did until the lights went out on on TikTok.
And now, if you if you're keeping track of the
closures or the bands of TikTok, the US military or
the U. S Army excuse me, and the Navy have
already banned service members from using TikTok, at least on
(09:15):
their government phones. I think wells Fargo banned it too.
There's the Coastguard to come Coastguard, ye air Force? Uh
huh yeah. And so now the question is is the
US going to ban it entirely? And if so, if
they do, what happens Because India pretty much soon after
they banned TikTok, another essentially a TikTok clone that was
(09:38):
native to India rose in its place. I mean, wouldn't happen?
I did not know about that. But do you do
you see this as being in any way retaliate, retaliatory
by the Trump administration pointing fingers, for say, in their eyes,
causing the current pandemic that we are involved in. And
then and also you know the way China often uh
(09:59):
kind of holds our feet of the fire economically, is
this kind of our way of of kind of clapping
back a little bit? I mean, I I could only
speculate that that's a reasonable assumption. Like the main the
main issue or the main question is is there seriously
a security risk? And the answer is, of course yes,
(10:21):
because not just because it's TikTok or it's oh uh
in China, it's a security risk because it's a social
media app. That's kind of why they exist to each
and everyone, uh each sorry, the majority of popular social
media apps are trojan horses or have the potential to
be such. But to your point about whether this is retaliatory,
(10:45):
we have to remember that there is a there's very
much a cold war going on right now between China
and the US, and it's taken place across the internet,
across the South China Sea, in trade room talks, everywhere.
It's it's escalating apps really and also to your point,
been these bands, you know, within the military branch of
the military have been in place since last year, since
(11:07):
December or January. Even so, any retaliate, retaliatory you know,
implication would just be in making it larger scale, bat
banning it among you know, my kid, for example, who
would be crushed. That is her social media platform of choice.
I'm not kidding, Like that is where she has the
most followers and interacts with you know, her cosplay friends,
and it's a thing, um and and it really is.
(11:29):
Largely I think maybe some of the concern is coming
from just the ballooning popularity of the app. And and
something I didn't realize is using something called shadow bands,
which is something that's employed UH in general by social
media companies UM for example, against sex workers oftentimes sex
workers or shadow band because of their content and rather
(11:50):
than just being you know, canceled or having their credentials revoked,
their content just isn't reaching their followers. So it's a
way to limit who acts chilly sees content that's being
put out. And for example, there was some evidence that
a user in twenty nineteen UM for Rosa Azaz had
her account suspended after putting up a makeup tutorial that
(12:13):
had some kind of um almost uh subconscious or sort
of like secretly kind of veiled UM criticisms of Chinese
massed attention of of the weaker Muslim population UM in
Xianjiang Province and also references to things like Tianamen Square
or the protests that are going on in Hong Kong.
(12:34):
Also uh, they have a way of kind of making
sure that stuff doesn't filter through even to US users.
One interesting thing to point out here with regards to
TikTok's data is that the company says at least that
the user data that it stores is not physically located
in China and it is backed up elsewhere in Singapore,
(12:56):
at least according to Wired. And here's a quote here,
our data centers are located entirely outside of China and
none of our data is subject to Chinese law. That's
a company's statement from TikTok Um. So I mean, that's
interesting alone there when you're thinking that the Chinese government,
the Communist Party would have to go, I don't know,
(13:19):
to some lengths to get that information if they were
attempting to use it for some nefarious purpose. Um, you know,
who's to say TikTok doesn't wouldn't have some kind of
back room deal with a with a government or a company.
But Bite Dance actually in the past has had some
(13:41):
some issues with the Chinese government in the Communist Party
in some other social media news apps that is created
in the past, and the CEO actually at one point
had to make a public apology about the use of
those apps, which is interesting to me. I don't know,
but that the quote is really telling, and you know,
(14:02):
it speaks to a lot of other things we've discussed
on this show. But I'm just gonna say right here, uh,
he says the product has gone astray posting content that
goes against socialist core values. It's all on me. I
accept all the punishment since it failed to direct public
opinion in the right way. WHOA, Yeah, that's a question
(14:22):
I had for you, Ben. I mean, if we take
a like a real, like sci fi kind of dystopian
approach to this, is this kind of infiltration with an
app that catches on with the youth, a way to
spread communism abroad away to you know, make a new
generation of American you know kids, Okay? With that? Is
(14:46):
there the potential for indoctrination subtle ways? You know what
I mean? I just wonder, I mean, and that that's
an interesting question or because it would be uh, it
would technically I think falling of the category of what's
called soft diplomacy. Uh. That's a more physical example of
(15:07):
that would be the Confucius Institutes that opened up around
the world to familiarize people with the what the Communist
Party considers official Chinese culture. And we have to admit,
Chinese culture is super cool. Just the history is amazing.
But um, but right now, the PRC globally is a
(15:31):
little more concerned with domestic information control than they are
with expansion of information globally or expansion of narrative. Globally,
you'll see you'll see narrative expansion in terms of UH
directed focused efforts to certain regions of the world or countries.
(15:53):
But but right now, the US, maybe we're being US
centric here. Right now, the US is not UH is
not especially receptive the common person in the US too,
UH that kind of propaganda. If they were doing it,
it feels like it definitely has the ability to be
or the capacity to become an intelligence gathering tool. And
(16:16):
Uncle Sam is super super worried about it. But right now,
right now, we don't. I don't know. It seems more
likely that if there were Nafari's end or an ulterior
motive for propagating TikTok, it would be to gather intelligence
more so than to win hearts and minds. But I mean,
(16:39):
you could do it just get people to copy the
right dance, you know, right right. And just to point
out that the National Review is is a right wing publication,
but this is a national story and we have multiple
other sources for this, but from that perspective, um, this
is a quote from the article, and I think this
is interesting because it's sort of what we were just
talking about in the ace of China's threats to the
(17:01):
freedom of the world's Internet, the Trump administration should be
applauded for considering a ban on TikTok. As Chinese censorship, surveillance,
and propaganda spread worldwide, the US has a chance to
fight back and change the trajectory of the information age
for the better. Yeah. I mean again, it's sort of Uh.
If you wanted to be absolutely brutal about it and
(17:23):
a little bit cold, you could say maybe the US
or maybe the West in general, is not so much
upset that social media is used for intelligence gathering as
they are that someone else is getting the benefits, you
know what I mean, because US didn't hasn't raised a
(17:44):
big stink about Facebook. It is a really interesting time
we're living in where a big move, a big political
or almost a long game move, is to ban a
competitive country tech companies. Isn't that that's so strange to
(18:05):
me that that's a chess move at this point, Um
ban it and then like kind of, as we alluded
to earlier, introduce your own version of whatever that thing
was that was extremely popular. Huh, because it really could be,
or at least has the potential, no matter how minute
to be a way of spying on some other countries citizens. Yeah.
(18:28):
What I really appreciate about that point, met, is that
you're putting into context a larger pattern. We can't forget
that there are multiple countries that have said, forget the
World Wide Internet, We're going to make our own Internet.
Insert bender from Futurama joke here. But the idea is
that we want to the people in power, the people
(18:52):
responsible for making decisions. We want to have vertical control,
we want stem to stern, soup to nuts, control all
of all the capabilities of something. And we definitely don't
want back doors in any technology from a foreign source,
which is you know, by the way, Uh, the reason
that the US wants to be careful about that is
(19:13):
because we know people do it, because we do it
all the time. We're all the protagonists and antagonists at
all times. Guys, no percent, it's interesting to even think
about it from that perspective. But you got it. You
nailed it back. Um. I think there's a story that
we're going to continue looking into and seeing as it develops,
and maybe even do it do more on it down
(19:34):
the road. But in the meantime, we've got some more
strange news coming your way. After quick wordsrom our sponsor,
and we've returned. Let's stay on the Asian continent for
our second story today. As long time listeners know several
(19:56):
of us, I guess I should just out myself here
and have a weird fascination longstanding with the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea the DPRK, better known as North Korea
here in the West, UH. North Korea is also called
the Hermit Kingdom. UH. It has been in a state
of unending war officially UH since the fifties. It is distinct,
(20:21):
it's dangerous, UH. It's it's a scary place, UH. And
it's also an opaque place. A lot of people have
no idea what's really happening on the ground there. Before
the proliferation a very affordable communications technology, it was almost
a black box, and we only knew people we being
(20:43):
everyone who lives outside of North Korea, we only knew
what was going on in there based on reports of
defectors that sometimes couldn't be proven or cooperated, or based
on very limited human intelligence, relatively limited satellite imaging technology.
That's changed now in a globally connected world, but we
(21:06):
still don't really know what's going on, and that is
why UH many many people across the globe now are
very concerned about the succession of power in North Korea.
North Korea is currently ruled by a guy named Kim
(21:26):
Jong oon. We've discussed him in several previous episodes. Here
is the grandson of Kim Il sung, who is who
is considered the eternal president of the country and was
the founder of what we call DPRK today. However, if
you'll recall UH, relatively recently, Kim Jong un disappeared for
(21:50):
some amount of time, and this led to pretty alarmists,
kind of breathless pearl clutching reports in the US and
in South Korea that he had died i'd possibly due
to COVID nineteen, possibly due to any number of his
health issues, including UH, he's got a bum ticker apparently, UH.
(22:10):
And then surprise, surprise, he did, like a dictator power move.
He came back out. At first, we thought maybe it
was just a video that had been archived and they
were just trying to maintain stability. But there's something else
interesting happening UH that I thought would bear discussion here.
His sister UH is quickly becoming the favorite to be
(22:33):
the next leader of North Korea. Her name is Kim
Yo jong. Uh and this story I would categorize as
a weird flex guys. Uh. One of the biggest news
stories in domestic North Korean media is that Kim Yo
Jong officially got permission from the government to watch the
(22:54):
US celebrations of July four, not just for this year,
but year going forward. And this sounds like a small
deal to us, but it's a big big deal there
because it's a very propaganda sensitive country and July four
is one of the most propagandistic things that America does.
Just like watch like on like a feed, like watch
(23:16):
news coverage or what are we talking here? DVDs? Wow,
that is wild. But I I just I guess I
don't understand because it's on the face, as you said,
fully propaganda being exported by the US, by any country
that's celebrating a day like that of their independence or
their founding or something like that. I mean, it's almost
(23:38):
like on the face of it, Hey, guess what, guys, everybody,
even in the country where we're celebrating, this is kind
of propaganda for how great we are. It's interesting that
she would need permission to watch that. Huh yeah, yeah,
and this is uh, this is something that is confirmed
(23:58):
by North Korean state media, uh, which is a real
it's real eye opener to read that stuff. Just the
way that it's written. It's kind of like they're there,
the official messages. It sounds like the person writing them
is paid per amounts of times they pick up the
thesaurus by their keyboard. But it's really fun read. However,
(24:21):
we can't dismiss this just as propaganda because you know,
you have to study the enemy to know the enemy, right. Uh.
This also was not a move occurring in a vacuum. Uh.
It was Kim Yo jong, not Kim Jong un, who
just koboshed the idea of another summit with the United States.
(24:44):
He said, no, we don't need it. Uh. Mainly, you know,
in geopolitical circles, it's it's pretty clear that the current
US administration sees those summits as tremendous pr opportunities and
you know, kind of like a win when it comes
to the votes and the elections coming up in November.
(25:04):
But the weird thing is, it seems that Kim Yo
jong is very into the internet because uh, cyber warfare
campaigns are picking up at an unprecedented rate. You're not
gonna see this entire story laid out in a single
news article. We had to pull a couple of things
(25:24):
to get here. But cyber warfare, asymmetrical warfare online is
like the best move if you are outnumbered in a
conventional military. And we don't know yet. Really it's still
such a secretive regime or a secretive government. We don't
know yet what's going to happen. We don't know how
(25:45):
long Kim Jong Oon is gonna last. We don't know
if his sister will become the first female leader of
the country. Um, we don't know if the country is
gonna collapse. Honestly, the signals that we're getting from this
are our distressing. They haven't really they're they're being mentioned
in one offs in western news. But without making a prediction,
(26:07):
I I would say keep your eye on this country because, uh,
it's not equipped to handle COVID nineteen. The populace is
aware that there is a world where you're less likely
to starve. Just over the border, people are risking life
and limb to get out of there, and where we
may see the collapse of North Korea within our lifetime. Question, um,
(26:30):
and and forgive me if you mention this and I
missed it. Why why does she want to she is
she is a younger generation that's fascinated by American culture.
Is that what? Or is there something else to it
that that I'm missing? I think it's a it's again.
I think it's studying the enemy. But you raise a
good point about fascination with Western culture. It's weird because
(26:53):
the it's weird because Kim Jong moon was educated at
a very posh school in Europe and he loves US basketball. Uh,
he loves American films, you know. Culture. I guess you
could say culture and war are two of the primary
exports of the United States. Uh. And he definitely loves
(27:16):
the culture part. So his sister may like that as well.
It may just be a I like to watch the
show kind of thing. But I wouldn't be surprised if
we're going to see some modeling of of US propaganda
techniques used in North Korea to great effect. The US
(27:38):
is good at propaganda. We do it all the time.
Nobody talks about it, but we do it uh to ourselves,
and that's what really hurts to quote radiohead excellent. I
would point out just I am fascinated by the language
Kim Yo jong uses, And tell me what you guys
(28:00):
think about this. I'll read a quick quote from this
political article that we found here. Um, they're they're talking
about reigniting these talks and how the United States, or
at least the Trump administration has been saying that, Hey,
there's a possibility we're gonna get back into these nuclear
discussions with the DPRK. And this is what can you know?
(28:23):
John had to say, quote, assuming that we hold the
summit talks now, it is too obvious that it will
only be used as boring boasting coming from someone's pride,
which is really interesting. Like you said that, Um, I
think both sides, if you want to call them that,
in this kind of exchange, are are very good at
(28:45):
what they do when they signal publicly about one or
the other. And then she she continued down the line
there within wherever they're quoting from in this political article
to reference the Christmas gift. The was referenced prior to
this time by Kim Jong n about essentially a nuclear
(29:06):
weapon that could be sent somewhere fairly close to them
on the eve of the elections is what she's referring
to here. So like, as the Trump administration is going
into an election, they are saying, yeah, you just remember,
we could give you a little nuclear gift on that
day if we wanted to. UM. I think it's just
(29:29):
fascinating to read the language of this what do you
call it, the back and forth almost cold war uh
exchanges that go across the bow here. It's almost like
a form of one upsmanship in some weird way. You're
you're very very close the phrases brinksmanship, and it's exactly
(29:52):
it's the same thing. It's basically so much of so
much of international affairs is like we've used this analogy before.
Uh We've said international affairs as a house party where
everybody thought there would be enough beer and uh snacks
to go around, and now they find out there's much
less and they're fighting for it. But in this situation
(30:15):
and people are uh, in this situation where there's conflict involved,
it's like the world stage is a crowded bar and
there you know, the nations saying they're going to fight
are going like, you know, come at me, bro come
at me. Why you bump me? Why you bump me, bro,
and then uh, they're getting their friends to like hold
(30:38):
them back, and they're like, hold me back, China, hold
me back. You got my back, right, Okay, come at me, bro,
Christmas gift what? And this It feels silly, but it
but it can be really dangerous and I know it's. Um.
The reason I wanted to bring this up on on
today's show is because we're seeing a lot of reports
(30:59):
about horrific things happening in detainment camps in China, in uh,
detainment camps here in the US. UH. And we have
to remember that these kind of camps have existed for
decades and decades in North Korea, and the West knows,
the West new. The West is never interfered beyond you know,
(31:23):
sanctions often related more to the nuclear weaponry than human rights.
So at this point, given the instability, I mean, North
Korea just let out an official statement admitting that COVID
nineteen is spreading, and they said stopping COVID nineteen is
more important than the economy, which is a lesson some
other countries could learn. I imagine, uh, some some people
(31:45):
would say, but keep an eye out for it. It
is in a more unstable time than it has been
since Kim Jong il originally took power after the death
of Kim Il sung. But assuming we don't fall into
the grips of a global nuclear exchange, we're gonna pause
for a word from our sponsor and we'll be back
(32:08):
with more strange news. And we're back. What are you?
What are you saying that it falls to you? You've
been telling us offt air that we're gonna get weird
with it. Well, you guys, you know you come in
(32:29):
here with your important articles about global news, stuff that
actually matters. Well, I got something different for everybody. We're
gonna read an article here from a place maybe you
didn't expect. The lot That's what it's called, the lot
Media Center. This is the Lottery of Australia and they've
(32:52):
got a little place where they put out essentially pr
That's really all this is is to let you know, hey,
here's a feel good story about somebody who won the lottery,
and you can win two and you should play the
old lottery and all that um. But this one struck
me just a little bit because of the circumstances that
(33:12):
led to the winning numbers. So just to quickly go
through it. There's a thing called the Gold Lotto Draw
in Australia, and you know, it's a lottery like any other.
You pick some numbers and if those numbers come up,
you're gonna win some money. Well, there's one woman in
Queensland who you know did the whole thing. She put
some numbers in, She bought a ticket, or rather she
(33:35):
bought it take and put them numbers in. Then she
won a million dollars and she went through and she
confirmed it with you know, the whole lottery company and everything,
and this is what she had to say. The numbers
came to me in a dream about fifteen years ago.
That's fifteen years. I literally saw them appear one by
(33:56):
one and I've been playing them in that exact order
ever since. The numbers have always been good to me.
I've always won little amounts over the years, but now this,
it's amazing. So my question to you guys, that's really
all I've got for a new story. Dude, No, this
is amazing. What an optimistic and lovely way to wrap
(34:16):
the episode. I know, magic does happen. This is incredible.
My question to you guys is do you think there
is any realm of possibility, you know, as skeptical as
when we may be that she in some way was
given those numbers, either by herself or by some other
(34:38):
outside force that predicted that this would happen in some way.
Do you guys think there's any remo possibility that that
could have happened? Sure, Yeah, I'm I'm I'm as sure. Yeah,
I mean anything is possible. Not to be relativistic about it,
and that just sound dismissive, but I'm yeah, sure. We
(35:01):
have no idea how the human mind works. We are
we we kind of get the neurochemical stuff. We get
that part, right, We've we've sort of we've solved the
idea of how the gas moves through the engine, but
we don't know why there's a car, and we don't
(35:22):
really know where it came from and where it's going
in a cognitive sense. Uh. We also have some tricky
statistics here. I would say, not to be too much
of a Donnie Downer about it, but how many millions
of other people have been doing the same thing for decades,
and maybe they did it their entire life, and they
(35:44):
got two or three numbers once, and they got four
even and then they passed away. We're hearing about this
story because this is the time that it worked, you
know what I mean, that's a really great point. It
just happened to work this time, maybe, Yeah. And I mean,
you know mean, so the number that it's pretty complex
series of numbers, right, Uh, it's fifteen, two, eight, and
(36:07):
forty five, with supplementary numbers being twenty and thirty, which
I think you need to get all of those to
hit the big one, right and that right, I honestly
don't know exact I think so, but I'm not a
lottery guy myself. Point is, these these these combinations of
numbers are difficult to hit, you know what I mean,
It's like you can't just you know, the likelihood of
(36:30):
playing the same numbers over and over again and having
it randomly hit very just very slim. Um. And this
is fascinating. Uh, let's see how many times did she
play it? Well, she played a lot, at least according
to her in you know, you're talking about roughly fifteen years.
There are around fifteen years of play. Um. You're looking
(36:54):
at a lot of money that's been spent on that
lottery over the years. And the the big question for
me though, is when we're thinking about dreams, and I
think we might be do for another episode on dreams.
I know we've talked about it several times in the
past on this show. Um, you know, about seeing shadow
(37:14):
people and sleep aaralysis and lucid dreaming, a couple of
things like that. But it's still, as you, as you
mentioned earlier, been an area of our brains and our
lives that we still don't have concrete answers on. And
you know, we've had psychologists and psychoanalysts over the years
(37:34):
give us like their takes essentially on what they think
dreaming is in that act and where we go and
what happens, um, everyone from Singun Freud, Carl Young to know,
those guys in the nineteen seventies that we've mentioned before,
Alan Hobson and Robert macarley who talked about dreams being
more of a random firing that's occurring rather than you know,
(37:56):
some of the older concepts of it being you know,
us psychologically getting through our sexual desires or are more
base needs or whatever. Um. To me, I just wonder
if there is more to the the consciousness, the altered
(38:17):
consciousness that we go into when we're dreaming. I don't know.
It makes me want to talk about it more. I
I agree. It's interesting too that this happened in Australia,
which has, you know, the Aboriginal tribes and the concept
of the dreaming or the dream time, um, which is
I don't know. I mean, not not that they're directly related,
(38:39):
but it is certainly a kind of mystical set of
beliefs that are wrapped up in this notion of of
the dreamtime, which we We actually had Annie Reese on
the show to talk about her experiences in Australia, UM
with some of these tribes. That's correct. There's there's a
point you make that um. They want to explore a
little bit further, at least in today's episode, and we
(39:00):
can return to it in a deep dive in the future.
It's the definition of consciousness. We don't really have one.
We know that we feel like we think, and we
know that based on the behavior of others, it seems
that they are undergoing the same dubious condition known as sentience.
(39:22):
But there was a great uh, there was a great
sci fi story I read recently called The life Cycle
of Software Objects. Without spoiling it, it introduces what I
thought was a very good definition of consciousness, which is
that we are maybe the the we that we think
of when we think what are we? What am I?
(39:43):
Maybe that is not necessarily a single point in the body.
Maybe it's not even a single point metaphysically in some
dimension or vibration that we cannot understand. Perhaps we are
just the thing that we think of as ourselves. It's
simply a pattern, right, and it molds itself over time.
(40:06):
It's a it's a complex sort of um I think
think like something like a series of opening and closing tubes,
but also a mobile like you would hang over maybe
a child's crib, and that that pattern, that movement, the
space between those things, that is as much of a
(40:29):
part of us as the neurons that we can see.
Where it's kind of like the difference between just speed
and velocity. I don't know, I you know, I'll just
send you this story, uh ted chank. He does. He
does a better job explaining it here. But the reason
I'm bringing that up is that the brain, as I
(40:49):
think we said in previous episodes, the brain is at
best hardware. The closest analogy we have to a consciousness
is software, and since we know that software through hardware
can interact with other things, then there's you know, it's
(41:11):
it's not conclusively proven, but it is therefore somewhat naive
to assume that the pattern that we think of as
consciousness exists in some sort of firewalled location. Our brains
are inundated, just like every other part of our bodies,
with so many types of energy, radiation, vibration, I don't know, microwaves,
(41:38):
how many times to use a cell phone. I mean,
even bananas have a little bit of radiation to them.
Our brains are awash and things. They do not exist
in a vacuum. So therefore, I do not think it
is out of the question. I do not think it
is unreasonable that our minds could be interacting somehow with
something else, or you know, maybe her subconscious is just
(42:01):
really smart and it's telling you this. But but in
this case, we're really talking about precognition, right somehow, If anything,
if there was any stand to this, it would be
something interacting or herself even interacting to give her information
that she'll need fifteen years in the future, in the
hopes that she would record that information and remember it
(42:23):
and then use it in the time when it was
needed because those numbers aren't going to hit again at
least four a long time, right, So it's it's you know,
if there were something to it, you'd have to drill
down so deeply. That's the that's the thing for me, Like,
you know, the fact that it even hit in her
(42:43):
lifetime is fascinating with just like how many possibilities and
permutations when you're dealing with two digit numbers. You know,
I'm no mathematician, but any any listeners out there, let
us know what the odds are, uh for for for
getting a perfect match on that many a sequence of
two digit numbers very very very very very difficult, probably
(43:04):
impossible or are very difficult for like an algorithm to crack.
If let's say you're trying to force your way into
someone's computer, you know, log in or you know there
are things that can do forced you know, well, they'll
just try all these different combinations of numbers and the
hopes that they'll eventually get to it when you deal
with that's if you're dealing with like single digit numbers
and a sequence of maybe six or something. These are
(43:25):
double digit numbers in the sequence of I think five
or six, so incredibly difficult to to hit that just randomly.
I don't know, man, I'm with you. I think Ben,
you did a really good job of sort of bridging
the gap between the mystic side of it and the
sort of, like you know, just the brain chemical side
of it. Um. I love this, and I think it's
a wonderful way to end the end our first episode
(43:47):
of Strange News. Quantum entanglement exists. The existence of precognition,
uh necessitates assuming the existence of linear time, and all
that we know about time is that's so far it
seems to move in one direction, but recent science has
discovered the rules of the road aren't always the same,
(44:09):
especially when you get down to very very small things.
So I ask you, then, what is the size of
a thought? Alright? Siry? That is it? No, that's great.
I was just gonna point out that you can find
The life Cycle of Software Objects on Amazon right now,
and the hard cover version of it is two hundred
(44:30):
and six dollars. Who though by the short story collection exhalations,
uh it should be it should be uh in there? Okay, awesome? Yeah,
And I think you can get like the full compendium
of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, which also uses the idea
of the dreaming and dream time and takes a lot
(44:52):
of cues from those Aborigine myths that we're talking about. Um, so,
really really cool stuff here and really great thought are
for pop culture. It's been used in science fiction, you know,
a lot since like the eighties, and continues to be so.
Really God, Matt, what a good find. Well, all I'll
say is I've been having a lot of really messed
(45:14):
up nightmares lately, and I certainly hope that I don't
have any kind of pre cognitive abilities, because I don't
want any of those things to come true. All right, Well, hey,
I hope you're having better dreams than me. Uh, write
to us. Let us know what you think about all
this stuff. Let us know what you've been dreaming about.
If you're down with that, we'd certainly be interested to
(45:37):
hear it, especially if you've been predicting something or if
something has been resonating deeply within you. Because this whole
quarantine situation and all the other things, a lot of
other things that are going on in the world right
now have been leading to some weird disruptions and sleep
patterns and and stuff. So tell us about what you've
been experiencing, what you think about everything we've talked about
(46:00):
on this episode. You can find us on the social media.
We are all over the place, right uh Facebook, you
can find our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy.
That's a really nice kind of real time way to
keep up with your fellow conspiracy realists. And we pop
in there as well, and couldn't couldn't have a better
group of folks. Lots of cool conversations and memes and
(46:20):
uh usually when a new episode drops, the conversation kicks
in the high gear. Really interested to see what you
guys think of this new schedule. I had a great
time today and I hope you all listening did too.
You can also find us on the usual places and
social media as Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, if
you wish. You can find us as individual people. I
am on Instagram at how Now, Noel Brown, I'm on Instagram,
(46:42):
Matt Frederick Underscore, I Heart. I think you can find
me on Twitter where I'm at Ben Bowling hs W
or on Instagram where i am at Ben Bowling. If
you are a person who does not care for social
media totally get it. There's pretty solid evidence that, uh,
social media can have delatorious effects on the mind. So
(47:05):
why do I kick at old school? You can give
us a call directly where we are one eight three
three s sc d W y t K. Yeah. I
don't think it's happening, guys. It was a good effort, though,
it was a good hustle. Well, the people, you know,
our our fellow listeners at home, are hopefully chanting along
(47:26):
or at the very least finding our attempt to chant
together in dear rate. If nothing else. If you don't
want to do any of that stuff and you want
to just write to us, you know, like we used
to in in in days of your you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(48:03):
to know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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