September 27, 2021 • 59 mins
Authorities discover a body they believe to be the remains of Gabby Petito. Scientists wonder whether toilet training cattle may help the environment. Google goes full sci-fi with the creation of "time crystals," which appear to maintain a state of constant change without using energy. All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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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 superproducer likes
this code ename Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. It is the top of
the week, and this is a little something we like
to call strange news, which means we go to some
(00:48):
of the stories that you may have seen headlines about.
When we go to some of the stories you may
have not heard about in your neck of the global woods,
and along the way we run into some things on
the fringes of reporting, some of the stories that it
appears certain people may not want told. Things are going nuts.
(01:10):
You know, if you just look around today, you may
have recently heard that in uh the number of billionaires
in the world increased by over twelve percent, So they're
doing quite well. Give them a hand, although I'm sure
they can buy one for themselves. You know, you read
a really interesting article about very wealthy people who are
(01:32):
worth over one million dollars and how how much they
think about how much their heirs should get when they pass,
and how they have a lot of anxiety about that,
you know, but they don't want it to be too much,
because they want their heirs to not lose that sense
of needing to have a career and a good job
and be successful. Of It's a fascinating problem. I can't
(01:56):
wait till the other study comes out about the children
and millionaires who are worried they won't get enough money,
you know what I mean. I think the research is
probably there. Uh, let's see also Australia, France, the US
and the UK or mad at each other about nuclear submarines.
That's happening. Some people are traveling more often also, if
(02:17):
I'm not mistake, And Joe Biden forgot the name of
the Australian Prime Minister in a speech which didn't bode
particularly well for international relations with that country. Well, in
his defense, a lot of people don't know the name
of the Australian Prime minister. But it's kind of his job,
you know, to like remember those types of names. But
(02:38):
we just got a calm down now here. You just
have to say Scranton, Like that was his watchword during
the campaigns, you know, is like a baby he had
just had and every every policy conversation or debate led
back to Scranton. Well, scrant is where just the common
American blue collar workers exists. The archetype for that is
(03:02):
in scrant and everybody knows that has seen the office.
But yeah, I think his approval ratings are down a
good bit because of the whole Afghanistan debucle Right, Yeah,
that's and that's a bit of a poison pill. I
don't remember if I had said it on this show,
but that's that's something that happens with with successive administrations.
The deal had already been struck by the previous administration
(03:24):
who was following through with it. But for people who
think the U. S Should remain heavily involved in Afghanistan,
he's the one who got the Uh. He's the one
who drew the short straw, or as the Black Monday
Murders would say, he was in the stone chair. Uh.
That's that's a reference for like us and maybe maybe
(03:44):
a couple other people, but we're not talking about those things. Today.
We're just listing some stuff to let you know that
the world is continuing on. And in a show like this, really,
any show that talks about topical events, uh, you have
to understand in that there's going to be more to
the story, and they're going to be more stories that
people don't reach. The folks who probably get the closest
(04:06):
to it are good friends at the Daily Zeitgeist because
they do to like two shows a day now. But
we have carefully picked some things, a mix of the
funny but important, mix of the disturbing and important, and
a mix of the fringe. Yeah, it's also important if
you see a theme here, Um, maybe we ease into
(04:27):
it today. Guys. Uh, I've got I've got a good
set up for you know. Uh, you know, I used
to do that car show back in the day. And
one of the one of these statistics that often gets
kind of miss construed is the relationship between cows and cars.
(04:49):
Like you hear people say, and sometimes they had skin
in the car game, of course, they would say stuff like, well,
is the problem really automobiles? They're not the only sources
of these dangerous gases? What about cows? Right? Yeah, specifically
cow farts. Uh, we're not in burb seeding, which contained
a lot of methane um, which which are greenhouse gases.
But we're not talking about farts or burbs today. We're
(05:12):
talking about peeing. That's where I thought you were going
with that segue bend. I thought we're gonna talk about
like truck drivers peeing into bottles maybe, or truck drivers.
You know, the bottles definitely generate a lot of urine um.
You know, they end up kind of keeping around, you know,
for a while, until they make a stop. Maybe they
dump the bottles or use them. Not I'm not trying
(05:32):
to pigeonhole any truck drivers out there, and I know
that everyone doesn't do that, but it's certainly a thing
that some people do for good reason. It's more efficient
than stopping all the time. But cows p a lot, uh,
even baby cows. Calves generate something something in the neighborhood
of tens of gallons of urine every single day. Um
(05:53):
and urine. While it doesn't create methane, it does create ammonia.
It emits ammonia, and when it mixes with certain microbes
on the ground where cows are stepping because they're just
p and where they stand right, it can create something
called nitrous oxide. Yeah, that nitrous oxide. It's really similar
(06:13):
to what you get at the dentist. If I'm not mistaken,
the stuff that makes you kind of go under nitrous oxides.
Nitrous oxide. Right, maybe there's like a variation of it,
but that is definitely what laughing gas is is nitrous oxide. UM.
But it is apparently uh seven percent of all greenhouse
gases in the United States UH consists of nitrous oxide.
(06:34):
That's according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and cattle farms
are responsible for about half of the ammonia that's produced
in Europe. And a lot of this information was coming
from an excellent Smithsonian article that kind of gives the
rundown on this study that was done at the University
of Auckland UM in Australia that was published in the
(06:58):
peer review journal Current by Ology. And one of the
studies UM founders or I guess one of the author's
co authors of the study, who's an animal behavioral scientist
UH is a person named Lindsay Matthews. And this study
came about because of the problem that I just described that, Yes,
(07:19):
nitrous oxide is a big problem um in terms of
greenhouse gas, in terms of emission, in terms of the
overall portfolio of these pollutants in you know, the whole world.
An animal husbandry or you know, farms that are built
for generating meats and other byproducts of animals are a
huge part of this. And what the authors of the
(07:41):
study figured out how to do, um, they identify this
problem which something that was already very much a known thing,
but they figured out how to potty train cows. Yeah,
potty train cows and apparently, uh, it's not that hard
and it involves something very similar to we talked about
Ben very recently in our episode that I believe Matt
you were absent for UM about video game addiction, where
(08:05):
we talked about the idea of conditioning, of psychological conditioning,
whether classical conditioning or the type that BF Skinner did
that involved a reward response kind of triggering mechanism where
you do a thing, you get a treat, and if
you get the treat enough, you kind of just start
doing the thing without even needing the treat. Isn't the
(08:25):
gist of that, bim? Uh? Yeah, It hinges on a
couple of factors, you know, and There are a couple
of different genres or approaches you could take here, but
cows has domesticated mammals are going to be pretty easy
to train or condition in this way. I mean, you know, uh,
they feel things like they have emotions, right, they like rewards,
(08:49):
and it's they've they've got all the hardware, you know
what I mean. If anything, the weirdest thing, the weirdest
aspect of this is that no one has tried it before.
But I feel like somebody had right somewhere in the
millennial old history of people and cows. There had to
be at least one person before, right, who was like,
(09:10):
I don't know, let me see if I can make
a p over there exactly and make them p over there.
They did um with something they designed. UM that's essentially
a penned in area. It's kind of small, you know,
the cow can move around about in a circle, but
not much more room than that. I mean, think of
it as like a urinal stall. It really is about
that size in terms of the space to size of
(09:33):
the animal ratio. UM. But they call it a mulu.
I don't know if that's been trademarked. They better get
on that because that is too cute. M o O
l o o the mulu um. And the idea is
that they took sixteen Holstein calves um and got them
to use this. I guess that. I'm not quite exactly sure.
(09:54):
I've seen a video of how what happens once they
get inside there, but it is like sort of these
barn door kind of situations. Was like the doors to
a saloon they have to go through. Um. So I'm
wondering exactly how they got them in there in the
first place. But essentially what the idea was they would
get them in there enough where if they peed inside
of this pen, which again you can see a great
(10:15):
video from the Telegraph of this, this actual thing happening,
they would be rewarded with this little window that would
open up and like kind of uh, push out this
bucket of the sweet kind of molasses substance. They would then,
you know, lap up. It's like a nice, sweet little treat,
great little reward. In other circumstances, they would use crushed barley.
I believe if the cow peed in the little astro
(10:38):
turf urinal uh stall, let's just call it because it
is covered with astro turf, It's not like they're peeing
into a toilet or into a particular hole. They can
pee anywhere in this area, and then it's filtered down
and they're able to capture this stuff. What they're going
to do with it, that's uh, that's probably for another conversation.
But surely the stuff maybe has some use. Who knows
(11:00):
there's a nitrous oxide market exactly exactly? Maybe maybe that's
the thing. Steve Martin is the dentist from Little Chappo Horrors.
Come on, yeah, I'm listening to that song right after,
right after this recording. Now you've inspired me. Also, yes,
thanks to everybody wrote in let's just get in front
of this guy's b fifty twos wrote love shack. They
(11:21):
did not write sugar shack. Heartfelt apologies, thank you for
the man. Yeah, it's from a previous episode. I clocked
that to bend. I just we were moving so fast
that I didn't didn't say anything. Um, sugar shack is like,
what is I don't know if there's a song called
sugar there is there roll like a blue song or
(11:42):
something the Fireballs. Yeah that sounds right. I just thought
that was a place where you could go get food.
Isn't the sugar shack where that's true, but also in
California there is a chain of like uh um dinner
type spots called sugar shacks. I have derailed this not
at all. We're just talking about cow pe. We needed
(12:04):
a break. I brought that up because all the head
shops that I've seen lately, any head shops just has
a whole row of nitrous oxide that you could buy,
and they're like, this is not for whippets, this is
just nitrous oxide. How many head shops you go into,
you know, just on average per week? Now everyone that
I find, I go in there, do a quick inspection,
(12:26):
you know, as an okay exactly. Uh. There's a little
extra detail on to add. They did to get the
cows rare and to go for this trial, they gave
them diuretic, so it made them more likely to have
to be But they don't make it quite clear how
they knew. Again, it's a small area and they have
to get them to go in there, so maybe they
(12:47):
start to kind of tinkle a little bit. They're like, okay,
Calie going in here and then and do your business. Um.
But to me, it's all about timing, and the training
involves them knowing they have to pee and training them
to hold it until they get to you know, the
the pen um. So if they don't do it right,
they would get spritched with a little bit of cold
(13:08):
water or an un quote unpleasant sound would play. Um.
And within the course of around ten training days is
what they were for to it as, which makes me
think of you know, King Kong and gut on me. Um.
They were able to train eleven to do it correctly
(13:29):
and consistently. Um. And the idea is that if they
can isolate where this urination is happening or mick duration
as they refer to it in the study, which I
want to read you a couple of lines from because
it's really uh, it's it's very aera diet potty language,
which is a delight to me. Um, then they can
significantly cut down on greenhouse gases. They were saying, if
(13:52):
they can get eight of the world's cattle to do this,
they could cut down on something in the neighborhood of
fifty six of the ammonia emissions in the entire planet. Um.
So that's that's a pretty big deal. Um. That's really
the gist of it. I'd love to hear you guys thoughts,
but I just want to read the first couple of
sentences of this study because it's delightful. Indiscriminate voiding of
(14:14):
ex greta by cattle contributes to greenhouse gas h G
emissions and soil and water contamination emissions are higher, and
animal friendly husbandry offering cattle more space a tradeoff we
call the climate killer conundrum. Voiding in a specific location
latrine would help resolve this dilemma by allowing ready capture
(14:35):
and treatment of ex greta under more spacious farming conditions. Um.
I love this, And I also want to point out
something that is mentioned in the very first sentence is
that this is also about runoff. That this stuff you know,
can literally contaminate water supplies as well, you know, for
drinking water. So um. Kind of a multifold solution to
(14:55):
to a pretty significant problem that involves something real cute.
The idea of, you know, train little baby cows to
to pee in a in a latrine stall. Well, at
least they're not drilling holes down into aquifers like a
certain company that's been making the news lately. Yeah, that
seems way more friendly and benign than that they're just
they're just avoiding their experta down into the aquifers eventually. Well, yeah,
(15:19):
I have a question here because it's it's a question
that I know it can be a bummer for some folks,
but I think it is an important question. So these
cows are not based in the US, right, so there
are different laws governing how they have to be treated,
what their quality of life maybe, and it's you know,
it's admittedly pretty low and a lot of situations in
(15:40):
the US. But I'm wondering, if you know, I set
this up a little earlier when I said, you know,
they're obviously intelligent enough to experience emotion like humans do.
Are they intelligent enough to experience boredom? And if so,
is doing this like a new interesting thing? Next question?
What else can you train them to do? You know
what I mean, We're we're on the cusp of something
(16:02):
big here. I I agree, And honestly, I always kind
of realized cows, you know, we're relatively intelligent creatures. But
it always kind of blows my mind the lines that we,
you know, culturally draw between animals that were comfortable with
slaughtering and eating and ones that were not, like even
rabbits are sort of on the fence. But like you know,
cattle are okay, even though we can totally train them
(16:24):
to go to the bathroom quicker than you can't even
a toddler. That was the big takeaway in the study
that made all the headlines, like cows can be trained
to use the potty uh more readily than toddlers. So,
I don't know, it's just something interesting to think about again.
And I'm not like some sort of you know, vegan
or anti meat eater person at all. I just think
it's interesting culturally the way we you know, have those
(16:45):
lines in the sand, uh. And it sure seems like
cows are pretty gentle uh and intelligent creatures um that
exist largely for our consumption. Just you know, those taboos
are taboos of convenience. People will eat anything up to
and including each other if it means they get to
live one more day, you know what I mean in um.
(17:08):
But anyway, anyway, something interested to keep an eye on
really quickly. Just at the end here, do you guys
see any like how would you scale this? You know
what I mean? It would require training, like it would
require putting in place like this whole extra step uh
in the process. And then you know, maybe they had
some luck with a small sample size, but as we know,
(17:29):
you know, psychology is different per individual, so maybe it
wouldn't be a success rate. You know, if they were
trying to train massive quantities of calves to do this,
they would probably teach their young at some point. So UM,
I think it also again goes back to their living
the living standards of the cattle. If there, if they're
(17:51):
an ingregious, really crowded conditions, it may be physically impossible
for them to do this. I agree. Uh. And another
thing I wanted to end on is this all so
uh is more sanitary for the for the roaming you know,
for the cattle, the grazing conditions since you know, the
urine is isolated to an area where it can drain away. Um.
I'm sure that latrine and the ASTROI trip that doesn't
(18:14):
smell great, but it certainly leads to cleaner conditions than
you know, if they were just going wherever we This
is great and the u N just again said hey, everybody, hey,
we should do something about you know, climate change, and
we should do it faster than we've been doing it.
So let's do that. Uh, And you know that's just
(18:35):
the u N and members of the UN saying that again.
But this could be one small step towards helping out
a little bit, at least in some small way, if
it can be, like you said, applied on a wide scale,
one small stream time. Get out of my head, you
(18:56):
son of a I love it. I just had a
vision of Alex Jones yelling that loudly. I was just
fun because I mean, even with the zoom delay, we
kind of got that out at the exact same time. Then,
I love you so much, dude. We can leave it
with that, I think, and have a quick sponsor break
and then be back with more strange news and we're back.
(19:23):
I hope you enjoyed those commercials. We are switching gears,
So prepare yourselves. If you have been paying any attention
to your news feed that comes on your phone, on
whichever app you choose to use. If you've looked at
a television, whether in a bar or at your home,
and news was on that television, you've likely heard of
Gabby Petito and Brian Laundry. Now this is another missing
(19:48):
person's case. There are a lot of those in the
United States, we've spoken about these before in the past.
Depending on the demographics of the missing person, uh, it
may or may not get the most attention you've ever
seen a case get, or the least attention or zero attention.
But in this case, it is a young twenty two
(20:11):
year old woman, and it's all over the place. Everyone.
Everyone pretty much knows who this is. NOL. You were
saying you haven't seen it come across NPR or anything
like that, not yet, I mean, and I've I haven't
watched like, you know, cable news since last week when
I was at the gym um, and I don't really
typically watch that at home. I guess I haven't been
(20:32):
looking at Facebook much either, just mainly Instagram. So this
is kind of news to me. But I'm sorry to
hear this. That doesn't sound like a good story. Yeah,
it's it's not a good story, but I'm honestly surprised
that it hasn't made it across somebody's Instagram feed at
some point. But let's just move while. I'll tell you
where we are, because I've been following this since I
believe it was the twentieth anniversary of September eleven. That's
(20:54):
when I think I heard the first murmurings about it,
that is around the time when Gabby's parents reported her missing.
And that's really when I noticed that. Every morning when
I woke up on my Apple news feed, there was
an update, and around mid afternoon there was another update,
(21:15):
and then around the evening a third update. And it's
just pretty much a story that's been continually cycling through
your NBC's, ABC, CBS, IS, CNNs, all of these major
news outlets are covering this thing on an hourly basis.
I'm gonna give you where we stand right now as
of that this is a Monday, when we're recording this
(21:37):
what's happened thus far, just in the past. I think
this is a day. Ben, You correct me if I'm
wrong here, but I think this is in roughly a
day's time. All the things that I'm going to be
discussing here maybe two days. So before we go into
the news that we're going to discuss today, let's just
give the absolute basics. You can go to CNN, Fox News,
(21:58):
whatever you choose to to read and see a timeline.
Gabby and her boyfriend Brian went on a long road
trip the end of June. Throughout the end of August.
They were traveling from New York all the way across
from the East coast to the West coast, going through
(22:20):
a bunch of national you know, national parks, visiting some monuments,
things like that, and they they were, I guess, through
social media documenting everything. Right, So we've got a couple
of interesting things coinciding here. We've got a missing person's
case and a person who is very active on social
media and is and I think for some reason, those
(22:40):
two things together have caused this case to really become elevated. Um,
particularly the number of followers that Petito had. Correct. God,
there's a lot to discuss here. But Petito Gabby ended
up not making contact with her parents towards the end
of August when contact should have been made, and they
(23:02):
were unable to get in touch with their daughter. Then
apparently the boyfriend drove home to Florida and didn't contact
Potito's parents to tell them what was going on or
what happened. It all became this weird situation where there's
so much mystery around what the boyfriend was doing and
why why he lawyered up to many people who were
(23:26):
following this, they immediately saw that as a very hard
tell that something wrong had happened, something terrible had happened,
and the guy was dodging the police. And now it
has evolved very much over the past couple of days.
So let's get into the news. The first thing that
happened was the FBI began searching a very specific area
(23:46):
of Grand Titon National Park, which is out there in
the west. You can look all of this up if
you wish. There's an NBC New York article titled Gabby
Potito search expands FBI looking for witnesses from a specific campground.
You can find all that information there. Then there was
another article, this one from CNN. This one was all
about now searching for Brian Laundry, who had disappeared and
(24:11):
escaped somehow into a reserve and nature reserve out in Florida,
fairly near his parents home. You can also look to
a story out of uh. This one was from NBC. Again,
this one is the major part of the story that
we were going to bring up today. But then everything
is evolved since then as well. This morning, the FBI
(24:35):
said that a body quote that is consistent with the
description of Gabby Petito was found in the park or
in an area of the park where they were searching.
So it is very likely that by the time you
hear this, this body has been identified as Gabby Petito
(24:56):
and the hunt for the boyfriend Brian Laundry, you will
be going strong or they will have apprehended him or
found his body. Who knows. That's the thing about doing
a story like this, So much can happen between the
time that we sit down and record this and then
you hear it. That's why we very much avoid these
kinds of stories. But again, there's so much out there
(25:17):
about this right now, it's getting so much attention, we
felt like we had to at least mention it here. Yeah,
that's one of the things. That's one of the things
that you and I talked about Matt off air, because
I I realized, I'm honestly the one who often is
most hesitant to go to something that continues to have
(25:38):
and evolving event curve I would call it, you know,
was so much on the horizon, and so I was
the one going, okay, let's check everything like right as
we're going on air, and then I even um, while
while you were walking us through the basics here, as
I was also going Okay, let's just check just in
(25:59):
case found this guy, and then we'll probably check again
at the end. But I completely agree with your assessment.
There is one thing that puts me off just a bit.
And I want to say this carefully, and I don't
want it to be mistaken as a cold comment. In fact,
it's quite the opposite. It's a larger aspect. Before we
(26:20):
dive into the recent developments here, I want to make
a note for everybody, and I hope I'm not the
only person thinking this. How many other people went missing
in the month of August, how many people went missing
this year? How many people went missing in in the
US alone. I can pull the statistics. I have them,
we can save them for a future episode, but they're sobering, okay,
(26:43):
and they're not They're not great statistics, just doubt spoiler.
There's not a year where zero people disappeared, and there's
not a year where all the people who disappeared made
it back or we're found. And so I think about
this sometimes when we we have other cases that pop
up in in the past in the US where where
(27:05):
one person goes missing and they dominate the headlines and
for you know, for the parents, beloved ones, the survivors
of these folks who, for one reason or another become
an object of national and international focus. I I hope
that that attention brings a resolution, right because this as
(27:26):
we're recording this right now, it hasn't been ruled a homicide,
just to be very clear. But I I would also like,
I'm not going to be one of the people who saying,
don't pay this much attention to a single tragedy, But
I'm asking why this much attention is not paid to
every tragedy, you know, And they're more cynical folks in
(27:48):
the crowd who are thinking of the cases that I'm
alluding to in the past, and for some of us,
some of the more cynical, there's a very obvious and
disturbing reason behind the discrepancy and coverage and the discrepancy
in diligence on law enforcements. Part is it because it's
an attractive, young, blonde, white woman. Sorry, is that what
(28:10):
you're getting out? Maybe I'm asking off, Mike and I'm
literally just sipping Okay, Well, yeah, we talked about that
before on this show, specifically with indigenous women, women of
tribes in certain parts of the Northwest and in southwest
United States. I'm thinking about the up and vanished case
(28:31):
on season three this year is about a Native American
woman who went missing in seventeen. Um. You know, we've
we've talked about that a lot. But yeah, also, yeah,
people who are missing who are not white women understanding.
And again, this is what I am saying is the
opposite of It's very much the opposite of uh saying like,
(28:56):
don't pay as much attention to this one missing person's case.
It's just asking doesn't everybody and doesn't everybody's family and
the relatives and their loved ones. Don't they all deserve
that same level of investigation. I think So, It's like
we've talked about recently, um, referencing the work of David
(29:16):
Politis and and looking at all these registries, you know,
the people that have disappeared in different parks across the US,
and how there is a discrepancy as to what kind
of treatment they get, and if you look at you know,
the reporting on this and even the police department, the
Northport Police Department has a tweet where it just shows
an absolute man hunt, you know, with people decked out
(29:37):
in um flat jackets and you know, all kinds of volunteers,
and it's just, you know, a real effort, and it
certainly does not feel like every one of these cases
that Politis reports gets this kind of treatment at all.
Some of them get no attention paid. So Matt with
that with like, I think you've done this amazing job
(29:57):
outlining the very basics some people still not may not
be aware of at this point. And as as we
were building, uh building toward it, we have to ask, like,
what what's the latest as we're recording today September twenty, Well,
the latest right now all focuses on the fact that
the boyfriend for some reason left that Grand Tito National
(30:22):
Park or that area and went back to Florida without Gabby,
at least to the to the best knowledge of people investigating,
and Gabby stopped contacting anyone right at the end of
August there and he then kind of was hiding at
his parents house and his parents and their attorneys were
(30:43):
not having him speak with authorities. And at the time
when this first began becoming a story, when he was
still just a missing person's case, the boyfriend, Brian was
just considered a person of interest and not a suspect
in any way, because there was the terrible thing, but
there was nobody so it was not a homicide, if
(31:04):
that makes sense. If this was just a missing persons
and he was they were interested in speaking with him.
The attorneys said, hey, don't do that, don't speak with
with law enforcement. So no action was taken by law
enforcement to speak with him. That's sketchy, is hell, Though
it's very sketchy. It's very sketchy. It's not only sketchy,
and it's it's weird that the law enforcement would just
(31:25):
be okay with that. Yes, it is very strange. You
can read responses from various law enforcement officials who were
parts of the teams who decided not to, you know,
physically pursue him because it was a choice. Right. Here's
the other thing, because they didn't pursue him, or maybe
(31:48):
not because they didn't pursue him, but as a result
of not being pursued by law enforcement, and then it
kind of was heating up to where it looks like,
at least from the national reporting, like law enforcement was
going to pursue the boyfriend he appears to have taken off.
According to the family. You get one story he like
drove out to this reserve area in his mustang and
(32:11):
then left the mustang there and the parents had to
go pick it up and bring it home. It's weird
stories that the family is giving out and there hasn't
been any communication between the boyfriend's family and the end
Gabbyous family. There's been no communication again because the attorney said,
don't talk to them. Weird stuff. The FBI, as of
(32:32):
this morning, was was searching Brian land Laundry's house, the
home where his parents lived, and at least according to
ABC and NBC, UH, there was a hard drive recovered
from the van. This this Ford passenger sleeper van thing.
(32:52):
You can find pictures of it, you can learn all
about it if you want to. UH, there was a
hard drive found in there that may have more detail
ails about the trip itself. I'm assuming photos that are
time stamped to have metadata associated with them, videos, things
like that, because again, as they're going on this trip,
they're documenting, their documenting everything for social media. So hopefully
(33:16):
there will be the best like times and dates when
this turns into a murder investigation, because as we said,
a body was recovered that maybe Gaby Petito, but an
autopsy has not been performed as of this moment, and
she's not been fully identified at least as of the
moment we record this, and uh, we do have the
(33:36):
closest we have the confirmation at this point from authorities
is the statement that the body they recovered is quote
unquote consistent with descriptions. So a lot of people are
taking that as uh tacit confirmation pre autopsy, but it's
not quite the same thing. It's not the same thing,
(33:56):
and who knows what else is going to come out
again by the time you you hear this story. When
something like this, a case of a missing person, gets
this much attention, it's amazing and terrible for the I
would say, for the authorities searching for this person or
the people who are trying to solve this case. We've
(34:17):
talked about it before. On the positive side, you've got
everybody pretty much in the United States searching for answers,
searching for a missing person, searching for maybe in this case,
Brian or the potential suspect. Right, you've activated a surveillance
system that is every human being that has heard about
this story. Uh, that's great. The problem is you're getting
(34:40):
you're kidding probably a ton of misinformation from well, you know,
from well meaning people that say, oh I think I
saw Gabby, or oh I think I saw Brian, or
oh I think I saw this, or I saw that.
It makes it tremendously difficult as well to sift through
all of the information that comes in when it gets
this much attention. And then I would say the worst
art about it is if this is a case that
(35:03):
has to go to trial, you may be influencing a
jury at some point that needs to sit down and
be objective about the evidence that comes through. A lot
of attorneys take great pains. We've talked about this as well.
Get that jury that maybe hasn't been influenced by the
media yet. That's not easy. But especially if it has
(35:28):
to be in a certain location. I mean if I tried,
like in a certain jurisdiction, right right, right. Um, we
should note this is something you and I talked about
off air, Matt. So much stuff with this story is
going to happen this week. You know, they may find
the missing fiance. There's the autopsy is set for tomorrow
on the body. Um, and I read some conflicting sources
(35:51):
that say it had been confirmed. Now to be the
remains of Petito, but I've seen that as of the
moment of acording. But as of this moment, whomever this
body belongs to, a lot of people do believe it is.
It does belong to Gabby Petitou. The cause of death
has not been confirmed. That's what you need the autopsy for.
(36:14):
So that's where we are at at present. Wow, okay,
so we will keep our eyes on this. You likely
know more than we do in this moment because it
is in the future. As you hear this, I guess,
let us know your thoughts and we'll be right back.
After a quick break and we have returned. There's something
(36:40):
that that I thought would be great to end the
show today because we talked a little bit about the
the challenges of creating topical stories, well not creating, but
exploring topical stories in a way that is relevant and timely.
And this got me thinking, as as we do pretty
(37:02):
often here. Um, this got me thinking about the concept
of time as human beings experience it. In an earlier segment,
we explored a deep time experiment. You guys, remember where
those folks were put in a cave with no real
access to electronics or ways to measure time. Oh yeah,
for sure. And um what was the what was the results?
(37:24):
I mean I remember being incredibly disorienting. Um, And but
there was some kind of twist to that story. If
I'm not mistaken that I'm that I'm ascared escaping me
right now? Yeah? Yeah. It turns out that the the
way people perceive time is very much dependent upon external factors, right,
and time can drift. It's not exactly as clean as
(37:47):
it may seem on a clock. And this is where
I'm always thinking about this. This is where we came
to something really trippy one to share with you. If
you haven't heard about it yet. Uh, Doc, hit me
with the reverb please time crystals? Okay, guy, Matt noll
apro that will sound better, I think in the edit.
(38:09):
What are you talking about? I heard it reverberate through
the spheares. Because now it's just me you can play
about time crystals. But but yes, special effects aside. This
is something that you may have seen mentioned in the news,
and it's something that we don't It's a discovery and
invention that the human species doesn't fully understand the implications
(38:33):
of yet. So I was thinking we could do is
I wanted to check to see if you all had
heard of this, and then I was hoping we could
explore it together and explain what these are, what they mean, when,
what what experts mean when they describe them as time crystals, right,
which sounds very RPG or video game, and perhaps the
(38:54):
most importantly, what that means for our future applications or
for our concept of the few. Sure. Now, I know
that a lot of us are pretty big newshounds and Nott.
Had you read about these before? Yeah? I did, and
I thought it was complete bs because none of them
makes sense to me. And I was just like, yeah,
time crystal, Okay, yeah, Google whatever computer make time crystals,
(39:18):
commander key. Yeah. I know very little about this, but
it strikes me immediately as the thing that you load
into the you know, the thing in your time machine
that needs some sort of magical fuel like the flux
capacitor in Back to the Future. That's where the time
crystals go, right, And it's something that you have very
Rick and Morty too. It's like you're you're searching for
(39:39):
all these distant planets to find and harvest time crystals.
Assuming that's not what it is, but it's something timey
ymy and science E y and c right. Uh yeah, no,
it's exactly like from that Rick and Morty episode, the
crystals from Rick Die Rick Pete the death crystals they're
called in the show, which can allow you to see
the various possible outcomes of your life or how you
(40:01):
will die depending on the actions you take. Uh so
Google invented them. That's where we are now, Kitty Kitty,
it's not quite the same, Okay. So to explain time crystals,
the first thing we need to do to understand about
how important this could be, what a big deal this is,
we have to explain to ourselves what they are. So
(40:23):
there are a couple of examples. And I didn't I
didn't bring props here, although hey, I don't know this shape.
This meant man got me lift this Goonies masks that
made an appearance somewhere on some social media that I saw. Yeah,
that was at Ben Bullen on Instagram. Always be closing,
(40:43):
So come for the conspiracy to stay for the grooney mask. Anyway,
here's what happens if props aside. You can imagine it
in your head, fellow conspiracy realists. A glass, a glass
of water, whatever, beverage you would like, and let's say this. Now,
let's make a water. Let's keep it simple. We don't
want any emails about like guaffa juice. So you've got
(41:06):
this glass of water and it's got ice cubes in it,
and it's just relative room temperature. Right, so at some
point you can safely assume these ice cubes, all things
being equal, will melt. That's kind of how how physics works,
how time works. But in this situation, let's imagine. So
(41:28):
you've got your you've got your glass water in the ice,
and you can you can predict, okay, you know an
X amount of minutes these ice cubes will melt. I've
seen this before. And when they melt, they'll lower the
temperature of the water. Right, that's kind of why the
ice is in there to begin with. But what about this.
What if you were looking at a very special glass
(41:50):
of water and you knew that it would melt and
say five six minutes, but then in another five six minutes,
the ice cubes would reform back to their back to
their you know, they're frozen form, and then fast forward
in their five or six minutes and they melt, and
another five or six minutes and they reform and they
(42:10):
just keep going back and forth like that. M is
that film where they have the wide pooping back and
forth forever. Right, it's and it's also um summed up
with a little like early emoticon using like asterisks and
uh um open ellipses or parentheses. Rather it's me and
(42:31):
you and everyone we know the Maranda July film, which
it turns out maybe based in part upon the concept
of time crystals. Kitty, but the ice cube example, the
the glass of ice is a pretty solid example. So
we're talking about these two states that seem to uh
switch back and forth. There's another example from a guy
named Kurt Vaughan Kaiserly, who plays a pretty profound role
(42:56):
in all the theoretical work that led to this development.
We should say these time crystals are real. It's clearly
his destiny of the name like that. Yes, so he said,
this isn't my favorite example, but I want to get
what he's saying wrong. So he says, imagine you take
a box, any box, and you fill it with many coins.
(43:19):
And so if you look down at this box it
has a lot of coins in it, you'll see that
they're either pointing like heads up or the pointing heads
down right, heads are tails, the old fifty fifty chants.
That's made so many thought experiments possible. He says, all right,
close this box, shake it, shake as long as you want,
shake it a million times, and if you look down,
(43:41):
you put it back down, you open it, you count
the coins. You'll see that about half of them are
heads side up and half of them our tails side
up right. That makes sense because the each have a chance.
And he says, you know, it doesn't really matter how
many shakes you do, a million and one, it doesn't matter.
Random shakes will give you this random roughly fifty fifty chance.
(44:04):
And then he said, imagine if I imagine if this
box behaved the way a time crystal does. What you'll
see is that what he calls the coins here, the
spins would be pointing mostly up, and then later they
might be pointing mostly down. It seems to remember this time.
(44:28):
Crystal seems to remember something about its previous state. And
when we say remember, that's that gets into some spooky territory,
because usually living things to remember right and credibly home around.
This is defying one of the laws of thermodynamics. Yes,
and I am no, no scientists, but it's the idea
(44:49):
that things moved towards entropy, or you know, at least
in terms of like distributing thermal energy throughout a system
instead of like kind of keeping it more contained. And
this one skips that step and constantly flips back and
forth between right before it would like you know, it
would distribute it, and it almost brings it more internal.
Is that correct? Essentially? I mean I'm simplifying. Yeah, let
(45:11):
me let me super simplify, because you know, I'm not
a physicist. A lot of us listening to the show
right now are not physicists. There's a thing called the
second law of thermodynamics, and a show like ours that
applies critical thinking to some very strange ideas. Uh. The
most practical way to understand the concept of the second
law of thermodynamics is this. It bans perpetual motion machines.
(45:36):
It says, none of that. Get it out of here.
I don't want to see it. I don't like that.
That's what That's what the second law of thermodynamics means
for a lot of people in real terms. And there
has been no perpetual motion machine proven to exists. All
things seek a low energy state over what we understand
(46:00):
to be tied. That's it, right. You put some energy
into a system, and that energy energy, whatever that is,
gets eventually spread out, especially when you when it comes
to like temperature. Uh, it evens itself out reaches equilibrium. Okay,
So in this case, their time crystal doesn't do this.
(46:20):
It's a well it goes with way he goes back.
It is forever sort of vacillating between and this change
in states, oddly enough doesn't seem to take energy, which
means that it is doing something and it could just
maybe do it for the human concept of forever. Uh.
(46:42):
In July this year, a research paper was published that
showed this is possible. This, this really seems to be happening.
A limitless rule breaking source of energy, very small level
that could revel lucanize quantum computers. It could revel luctionized civilization.
(47:03):
It's not hyperbolic to say it could revolutionize civilization if
people figure out some way to use it. It's been
called by some folks, maybe a little breathlessly, the most
important scientific breakthrough of our lifetimes. I don't quite know
what to do with it right or now, it's got
some it's got some possibilities. It would be really accurate
(47:27):
component for an atomic clock. You would know exactly what
the time was. There's that. But if you like I
am not a fan of deadlines, You're like, why do
I need a better clock? That's not that's solving the
wrong problem. So, uh, we should also mention that, according
to scientists, this does break Isaac Newton's first love motion. Yeah,
(47:49):
I can see that. Ben. I want to read you
a tiny thing here from this space dot com article
that you shared with us, and I just want to
see if you can explain it to me. Okay, so
this is what they actually did at Google inside their
super computer to create a time crystal. Yes, there were
(48:13):
twenty strips of super conducting aluminum. Okay, they had those
and they quote programmed them into two possible states. Then
they blasted them strips with a microwave beam and somehow
they flipped states. They were flipping states, and they repeated
(48:35):
the experiment tens of thousands of runs, and then they
would stop record the states of each one of these strips,
which one they were in. And this isn't quote. What
they found was that their aluminum strips were flipping back
and forth between only two configurations, and they weren't absorbing
(48:55):
heat from the microwave beam either, so they had a time.
What the hell are they talking about? I don't get it.
They're just going back and forth, back and forth. No,
it's no. Can't you signed a contract? I don't understand.
It's not a work related contract, Noel. So the yeah,
(49:19):
here's the thing. The it is difficult to understand, and
it's weird, and the name is misleading to you know,
like time crystal honestly sounds a lot cooler than what
this thing actually is, though it is still amazing. What
they did was not permanent either, right you saw that part, right, Matt.
The scientists were able to create this and it lasted
(49:43):
for about a hundred seconds, and this was in the
core of Google's Sycamore, which is a quantum processor. Uh.
Kurt von Kaiserling said, you know, this was a big
surprise because nobody to have expected this. In fact, theorists
just predicted this state of matter could exist only nine
(50:07):
years ago. So this is like, in terms of things
people didn't expect, this is up there with how uh
the human species keeps finding other mixed tapes of early
human beings that we're able to interbreed with them and
then possibly gave rise to you know, all those different
uh oral traditions and stories of folklore. Then you know,
(50:28):
found out they were real. There were real quote unquote hobbits.
That's pretty that's it. But like, okay, solid liquid gas,
I gets it's a thing that it's a thing that
gas can essentially become. Right, it's another state of matter.
In this case, we're talking about aluminum god strips. How
(50:51):
do they become a different state of matters? I'm I'm
confused on that one too, And and and how has
that used used? You know, I understand, I understand where
you're coming from, what the quantum clock thing, But it
does feel a little bit like, I mean, did this
happen by accident where they like they aiming for this?
Was this like a desired outcome? Or it almost just
seems like a byproduct that's now getting reported on like
(51:12):
it's some sort of crazy discovery. Uh yeah, they just
have cooler hobbies than a lot of us, you know,
over over at that facility. Uh, this is okay. So
the best way to think of it as a state
of matter is that we're we're defining it as a
phase of matter, and at the same time, by doing that,
(51:36):
because there's nothing else quite like it, at the same time,
by doing that, we're already expanding our definition of what
constitutes a phase of matter, you know what I mean.
So it's it's cheating a little, right, or it's at
least it's either cheating a little, or it's just factoring
in new information. Uh So, before now, all the other
(51:58):
known phases of matter or uh like had a kind
of thermal equilibrium, which meant that there they're atoms trying
to be low and chill, you know what I mean,
just low five vibe. They they settled down to the
lowest energy state they could find permitted by the temperature
(52:19):
around them, and if the temperature doesn't change, then those
properties don't change. But a time crystal is the first
phase humans have ever learned about. That's known as quote
out of equilibrium. If you have already started doing something
recreational in this conversation, whether it's cracking a beer or
(52:40):
what have, you totally get it. This is weird. Deep
water Matt, there's another state of matter that was discovered
relatively recently, and I wasn't familiar with until looking into this.
It's called Bose Einstein condensate and it does most closely
represent you know, condensation, but it it's rules are revolve
alving around similar energy transfer uh specificities. Let's just say, right,
(53:06):
I think the deal with this one is um it
gets to such low temperature that molecular motion comes close
to actually stopping. But since there's no kinetic energy that's
being moved from one atom to another, they start to
like clump together and create this other, uh sort of
form of matter that involves something called a super atom.
(53:27):
Um thousands of these separate, smaller atoms clumped together to
create the super atom. And again I'm reading a lot
of this, uh paraphrasing this from a Live Science article.
I don't fully understand that either, but at least I
can kind of wrap my head around what a condensate is. Yeah, dude, dope,
I get it. And uh, Like all quantum systems, Google's
quantum computer needs to be perfectly isolated from its environment
(53:49):
to prevent its cubits from undergoing a process called decoherence,
which eventually breaks down the quantum localization effect, destroying the
time crystal. Yeah, I get all of that, I can.
I want to mess with the quantum localization effect. I mean,
that's podcasts for a living. We've all all run into
this kind of time loop. But this, so what what
(54:11):
would the applications be here? It could do some pretty
amazing stuff, if you know, if humanity doesn't destroy itself,
if there's not a gamma ray burst or the right
kind of CME at the right time. A lot of caveats,
but anyway, if they keep it together, then first we're
(54:32):
not talking about time travel. Just gonna just gonna get
that out of the way right now, as far as
the official science is concerned, everybody is traveling through time
at the rate of one thing per second or permillia second,
and only in one direction. Um not the band, everybody.
(54:54):
You don't have to be a member of one direction
to be a linear time travel There sol stuff better,
but I'm with you, bad with you. So they could
detect magnetic fields. They could also be used in a
diagnostic capacity in a quantum computer. But the there's something
that really that really spoke to me. I was watching
some can't remember the exact video I was watching, or
(55:17):
someone summed this up and they said that for them.
The main the main thing about these was that they
were beautiful, and they proved that there is more mystery
to the universe than then perhaps we assume on a
day to day basis, and further supports. Besides, she shakes
his fist at the sky further supports. Sometimes it's so
(55:39):
boxing about for a while, which is at the very
large end and the very small end of things. The
rules as humans understand it break out, Like all of
the rules start to break down. So what's next? What
rule will we break it next? I don't know. Hopefully
it's just more time rules. Hopefully this time Crystal can
(55:59):
be placed into some kind of I don't know, DeLorean
or other device and then can be used to take
us back to I don't know, the nineties and save
general motors e V one vehicle, which will then put
humanity on a track to not have hurricanes every five seconds,
which should be pretty cool. Uh yeah yeah, And stay
(56:23):
safe out there at folks, because the weather is probably
just going to get wilder over time. However, we end
up defining it so conspiracy realist, fellow armchair horologists, the
fancy word for the study of time. Uh, we hope
you enjoyed today's segment. We cannot wait to hear from you.
(56:44):
As Matt said, we are messing with time a little
bit due to the way we record, uh these segments.
You are going to You're probably going to do a
little bit more hopefully about the potito case. We'd like
to hear your take on that. We would like to
hear you or take on the greater good of training
cattle and livestock or house breaking them. We'd also like
(57:07):
to hear what else cattle can be trained for. I
think the answers will surprise some of some of us
and variety of them. You know, you just gotta try hard.
I don't know what I call it a trick when
I dismiss it like it's a it's a move. It's
definitely a move. Um, let's call it more of a
minor superpower. How about that? Oh nice? Yeah, that's yes.
(57:29):
What kind of minor superpowers can train cattle to do?
And what do you think future physicists will find? Will
the time crystal just be an interesting oddity that's not
really practical yet, like a lot of stuff on the
far end of the known periodic table? Or are we
on the cusp of something bigger. How inviolate are these
(57:51):
laws right now and which will be broken in the future?
Let us know. We try to be easy to find online.
It's right. You can find us on the Internet. You
can find us in the usual at social media locations
of note Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well, where we
exist under the handle conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram. You can
find us a Conspiracy Stuff show, or Hey, why do
(58:11):
I give us a telephone call? Yes? Please do. Our
number is one H three three st d W y
t K. Give yourself a nickname when you call in.
It is voicemail, so there's a limited amount of time.
You get three minutes. Use it however you wish. Just
let your imagination go wild. See see if you can
oscillate between two states of matter or make a new
(58:33):
state of the matter while you're on the voice mail system.
I don't know that's weird, but do it. We look
forward to hearing from you. If you've got more to say,
or you have links to share, anything else, you can
send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You
(59:09):
to Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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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 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 superproducer likes
this code ename Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. It is the top of
the week, and this is a little something we like
to call strange news, which means we go to some
(00:48):
of the stories that you may have seen headlines about.
When we go to some of the stories you may
have not heard about in your neck of the global woods,
and along the way we run into some things on
the fringes of reporting, some of the stories that it
appears certain people may not want told. Things are going nuts.
(01:10):
You know, if you just look around today, you may
have recently heard that in uh the number of billionaires
in the world increased by over twelve percent, So they're
doing quite well. Give them a hand, although I'm sure
they can buy one for themselves. You know, you read
a really interesting article about very wealthy people who are
(01:32):
worth over one million dollars and how how much they
think about how much their heirs should get when they pass,
and how they have a lot of anxiety about that,
you know, but they don't want it to be too much,
because they want their heirs to not lose that sense
of needing to have a career and a good job
and be successful. Of It's a fascinating problem. I can't
(01:56):
wait till the other study comes out about the children
and millionaires who are worried they won't get enough money,
you know what I mean. I think the research is
probably there. Uh, let's see also Australia, France, the US
and the UK or mad at each other about nuclear submarines.
That's happening. Some people are traveling more often also, if
(02:17):
I'm not mistake, And Joe Biden forgot the name of
the Australian Prime Minister in a speech which didn't bode
particularly well for international relations with that country. Well, in
his defense, a lot of people don't know the name
of the Australian Prime minister. But it's kind of his job,
you know, to like remember those types of names. But
(02:38):
we just got a calm down now here. You just
have to say Scranton, Like that was his watchword during
the campaigns, you know, is like a baby he had
just had and every every policy conversation or debate led
back to Scranton. Well, scrant is where just the common
American blue collar workers exists. The archetype for that is
(03:02):
in scrant and everybody knows that has seen the office.
But yeah, I think his approval ratings are down a
good bit because of the whole Afghanistan debucle Right, Yeah,
that's and that's a bit of a poison pill. I
don't remember if I had said it on this show,
but that's that's something that happens with with successive administrations.
The deal had already been struck by the previous administration
(03:24):
who was following through with it. But for people who
think the U. S Should remain heavily involved in Afghanistan,
he's the one who got the Uh. He's the one
who drew the short straw, or as the Black Monday
Murders would say, he was in the stone chair. Uh.
That's that's a reference for like us and maybe maybe
(03:44):
a couple other people, but we're not talking about those things. Today.
We're just listing some stuff to let you know that
the world is continuing on. And in a show like this, really,
any show that talks about topical events, uh, you have
to understand in that there's going to be more to
the story, and they're going to be more stories that
people don't reach. The folks who probably get the closest
(04:06):
to it are good friends at the Daily Zeitgeist because
they do to like two shows a day now. But
we have carefully picked some things, a mix of the
funny but important, mix of the disturbing and important, and
a mix of the fringe. Yeah, it's also important if
you see a theme here, Um, maybe we ease into
(04:27):
it today. Guys. Uh, I've got I've got a good
set up for you know. Uh, you know, I used
to do that car show back in the day. And
one of the one of these statistics that often gets
kind of miss construed is the relationship between cows and cars.
(04:49):
Like you hear people say, and sometimes they had skin
in the car game, of course, they would say stuff like, well,
is the problem really automobiles? They're not the only sources
of these dangerous gases? What about cows? Right? Yeah, specifically
cow farts. Uh, we're not in burb seeding, which contained
a lot of methane um, which which are greenhouse gases.
But we're not talking about farts or burbs today. We're
(05:12):
talking about peeing. That's where I thought you were going
with that segue bend. I thought we're gonna talk about
like truck drivers peeing into bottles maybe, or truck drivers.
You know, the bottles definitely generate a lot of urine um.
You know, they end up kind of keeping around, you know,
for a while, until they make a stop. Maybe they
dump the bottles or use them. Not I'm not trying
(05:32):
to pigeonhole any truck drivers out there, and I know
that everyone doesn't do that, but it's certainly a thing
that some people do for good reason. It's more efficient
than stopping all the time. But cows p a lot, uh,
even baby cows. Calves generate something something in the neighborhood
of tens of gallons of urine every single day. Um
(05:53):
and urine. While it doesn't create methane, it does create ammonia.
It emits ammonia, and when it mixes with certain microbes
on the ground where cows are stepping because they're just
p and where they stand right, it can create something
called nitrous oxide. Yeah, that nitrous oxide. It's really similar
(06:13):
to what you get at the dentist. If I'm not mistaken,
the stuff that makes you kind of go under nitrous oxides.
Nitrous oxide. Right, maybe there's like a variation of it,
but that is definitely what laughing gas is is nitrous oxide. UM.
But it is apparently uh seven percent of all greenhouse
gases in the United States UH consists of nitrous oxide.
(06:34):
That's according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and cattle farms
are responsible for about half of the ammonia that's produced
in Europe. And a lot of this information was coming
from an excellent Smithsonian article that kind of gives the
rundown on this study that was done at the University
of Auckland UM in Australia that was published in the
(06:58):
peer review journal Current by Ology. And one of the
studies UM founders or I guess one of the author's
co authors of the study, who's an animal behavioral scientist
UH is a person named Lindsay Matthews. And this study
came about because of the problem that I just described that, Yes,
(07:19):
nitrous oxide is a big problem um in terms of
greenhouse gas, in terms of emission, in terms of the
overall portfolio of these pollutants in you know, the whole world.
An animal husbandry or you know, farms that are built
for generating meats and other byproducts of animals are a
huge part of this. And what the authors of the
(07:41):
study figured out how to do, um, they identify this
problem which something that was already very much a known thing,
but they figured out how to potty train cows. Yeah,
potty train cows and apparently, uh, it's not that hard
and it involves something very similar to we talked about
Ben very recently in our episode that I believe Matt
you were absent for UM about video game addiction, where
(08:05):
we talked about the idea of conditioning, of psychological conditioning,
whether classical conditioning or the type that BF Skinner did
that involved a reward response kind of triggering mechanism where
you do a thing, you get a treat, and if
you get the treat enough, you kind of just start
doing the thing without even needing the treat. Isn't the
(08:25):
gist of that, bim? Uh? Yeah, It hinges on a
couple of factors, you know, and There are a couple
of different genres or approaches you could take here, but
cows has domesticated mammals are going to be pretty easy
to train or condition in this way. I mean, you know, uh,
they feel things like they have emotions, right, they like rewards,
(08:49):
and it's they've they've got all the hardware, you know
what I mean. If anything, the weirdest thing, the weirdest
aspect of this is that no one has tried it before.
But I feel like somebody had right somewhere in the
millennial old history of people and cows. There had to
be at least one person before, right, who was like,
(09:10):
I don't know, let me see if I can make
a p over there exactly and make them p over there.
They did um with something they designed. UM that's essentially
a penned in area. It's kind of small, you know,
the cow can move around about in a circle, but
not much more room than that. I mean, think of
it as like a urinal stall. It really is about
that size in terms of the space to size of
(09:33):
the animal ratio. UM. But they call it a mulu.
I don't know if that's been trademarked. They better get
on that because that is too cute. M o O
l o o the mulu um. And the idea is
that they took sixteen Holstein calves um and got them
to use this. I guess that. I'm not quite exactly sure.
(09:54):
I've seen a video of how what happens once they
get inside there, but it is like sort of these
barn door kind of situations. Was like the doors to
a saloon they have to go through. Um. So I'm
wondering exactly how they got them in there in the
first place. But essentially what the idea was they would
get them in there enough where if they peed inside
of this pen, which again you can see a great
(10:15):
video from the Telegraph of this, this actual thing happening,
they would be rewarded with this little window that would
open up and like kind of uh, push out this
bucket of the sweet kind of molasses substance. They would then,
you know, lap up. It's like a nice, sweet little treat,
great little reward. In other circumstances, they would use crushed barley.
I believe if the cow peed in the little astro
(10:38):
turf urinal uh stall, let's just call it because it
is covered with astro turf, It's not like they're peeing
into a toilet or into a particular hole. They can
pee anywhere in this area, and then it's filtered down
and they're able to capture this stuff. What they're going
to do with it, that's uh, that's probably for another conversation.
But surely the stuff maybe has some use. Who knows
(11:00):
there's a nitrous oxide market exactly exactly? Maybe maybe that's
the thing. Steve Martin is the dentist from Little Chappo Horrors.
Come on, yeah, I'm listening to that song right after,
right after this recording. Now you've inspired me. Also, yes,
thanks to everybody wrote in let's just get in front
of this guy's b fifty twos wrote love shack. They
(11:21):
did not write sugar shack. Heartfelt apologies, thank you for
the man. Yeah, it's from a previous episode. I clocked
that to bend. I just we were moving so fast
that I didn't didn't say anything. Um, sugar shack is like,
what is I don't know if there's a song called
sugar there is there roll like a blue song or
(11:42):
something the Fireballs. Yeah that sounds right. I just thought
that was a place where you could go get food.
Isn't the sugar shack where that's true, but also in
California there is a chain of like uh um dinner
type spots called sugar shacks. I have derailed this not
at all. We're just talking about cow pe. We needed
(12:04):
a break. I brought that up because all the head
shops that I've seen lately, any head shops just has
a whole row of nitrous oxide that you could buy,
and they're like, this is not for whippets, this is
just nitrous oxide. How many head shops you go into,
you know, just on average per week? Now everyone that
I find, I go in there, do a quick inspection,
(12:26):
you know, as an okay exactly. Uh. There's a little
extra detail on to add. They did to get the
cows rare and to go for this trial, they gave
them diuretic, so it made them more likely to have
to be But they don't make it quite clear how
they knew. Again, it's a small area and they have
to get them to go in there, so maybe they
(12:47):
start to kind of tinkle a little bit. They're like, okay,
Calie going in here and then and do your business. Um.
But to me, it's all about timing, and the training
involves them knowing they have to pee and training them
to hold it until they get to you know, the
the pen um. So if they don't do it right,
they would get spritched with a little bit of cold
(13:08):
water or an un quote unpleasant sound would play. Um.
And within the course of around ten training days is
what they were for to it as, which makes me
think of you know, King Kong and gut on me. Um.
They were able to train eleven to do it correctly
(13:29):
and consistently. Um. And the idea is that if they
can isolate where this urination is happening or mick duration
as they refer to it in the study, which I
want to read you a couple of lines from because
it's really uh, it's it's very aera diet potty language,
which is a delight to me. Um, then they can
significantly cut down on greenhouse gases. They were saying, if
(13:52):
they can get eight of the world's cattle to do this,
they could cut down on something in the neighborhood of
fifty six of the ammonia emissions in the entire planet. Um.
So that's that's a pretty big deal. Um. That's really
the gist of it. I'd love to hear you guys thoughts,
but I just want to read the first couple of
sentences of this study because it's delightful. Indiscriminate voiding of
(14:14):
ex greta by cattle contributes to greenhouse gas h G
emissions and soil and water contamination emissions are higher, and
animal friendly husbandry offering cattle more space a tradeoff we
call the climate killer conundrum. Voiding in a specific location
latrine would help resolve this dilemma by allowing ready capture
(14:35):
and treatment of ex greta under more spacious farming conditions. Um.
I love this, And I also want to point out
something that is mentioned in the very first sentence is
that this is also about runoff. That this stuff you know,
can literally contaminate water supplies as well, you know, for
drinking water. So um. Kind of a multifold solution to
(14:55):
to a pretty significant problem that involves something real cute.
The idea of, you know, train little baby cows to
to pee in a in a latrine stall. Well, at
least they're not drilling holes down into aquifers like a
certain company that's been making the news lately. Yeah, that
seems way more friendly and benign than that they're just
they're just avoiding their experta down into the aquifers eventually. Well, yeah,
(15:19):
I have a question here because it's it's a question
that I know it can be a bummer for some folks,
but I think it is an important question. So these
cows are not based in the US, right, so there
are different laws governing how they have to be treated,
what their quality of life maybe, and it's you know,
it's admittedly pretty low and a lot of situations in
(15:40):
the US. But I'm wondering, if you know, I set
this up a little earlier when I said, you know,
they're obviously intelligent enough to experience emotion like humans do.
Are they intelligent enough to experience boredom? And if so,
is doing this like a new interesting thing? Next question?
What else can you train them to do? You know
what I mean, We're we're on the cusp of something
(16:02):
big here. I I agree, And honestly, I always kind
of realized cows, you know, we're relatively intelligent creatures. But
it always kind of blows my mind the lines that we,
you know, culturally draw between animals that were comfortable with
slaughtering and eating and ones that were not, like even
rabbits are sort of on the fence. But like you know,
cattle are okay, even though we can totally train them
(16:24):
to go to the bathroom quicker than you can't even
a toddler. That was the big takeaway in the study
that made all the headlines, like cows can be trained
to use the potty uh more readily than toddlers. So,
I don't know, it's just something interesting to think about again.
And I'm not like some sort of you know, vegan
or anti meat eater person at all. I just think
it's interesting culturally the way we you know, have those
(16:45):
lines in the sand, uh. And it sure seems like
cows are pretty gentle uh and intelligent creatures um that
exist largely for our consumption. Just you know, those taboos
are taboos of convenience. People will eat anything up to
and including each other if it means they get to
live one more day, you know what I mean in um.
(17:08):
But anyway, anyway, something interested to keep an eye on
really quickly. Just at the end here, do you guys
see any like how would you scale this? You know
what I mean? It would require training, like it would
require putting in place like this whole extra step uh
in the process. And then you know, maybe they had
some luck with a small sample size, but as we know,
(17:29):
you know, psychology is different per individual, so maybe it
wouldn't be a success rate. You know, if they were
trying to train massive quantities of calves to do this,
they would probably teach their young at some point. So UM,
I think it also again goes back to their living
the living standards of the cattle. If there, if they're
(17:51):
an ingregious, really crowded conditions, it may be physically impossible
for them to do this. I agree. Uh. And another
thing I wanted to end on is this all so
uh is more sanitary for the for the roaming you know,
for the cattle, the grazing conditions since you know, the
urine is isolated to an area where it can drain away. Um.
I'm sure that latrine and the ASTROI trip that doesn't
(18:14):
smell great, but it certainly leads to cleaner conditions than
you know, if they were just going wherever we This
is great and the u N just again said hey, everybody, hey,
we should do something about you know, climate change, and
we should do it faster than we've been doing it.
So let's do that. Uh, And you know that's just
(18:35):
the u N and members of the UN saying that again.
But this could be one small step towards helping out
a little bit, at least in some small way, if
it can be, like you said, applied on a wide scale,
one small stream time. Get out of my head, you
(18:56):
son of a I love it. I just had a
vision of Alex Jones yelling that loudly. I was just
fun because I mean, even with the zoom delay, we
kind of got that out at the exact same time. Then,
I love you so much, dude. We can leave it
with that, I think, and have a quick sponsor break
and then be back with more strange news and we're back.
(19:23):
I hope you enjoyed those commercials. We are switching gears,
So prepare yourselves. If you have been paying any attention
to your news feed that comes on your phone, on
whichever app you choose to use. If you've looked at
a television, whether in a bar or at your home,
and news was on that television, you've likely heard of
Gabby Petito and Brian Laundry. Now this is another missing
(19:48):
person's case. There are a lot of those in the
United States, we've spoken about these before in the past.
Depending on the demographics of the missing person, uh, it
may or may not get the most attention you've ever
seen a case get, or the least attention or zero attention.
But in this case, it is a young twenty two
(20:11):
year old woman, and it's all over the place. Everyone.
Everyone pretty much knows who this is. NOL. You were
saying you haven't seen it come across NPR or anything
like that, not yet, I mean, and I've I haven't
watched like, you know, cable news since last week when
I was at the gym um, and I don't really
typically watch that at home. I guess I haven't been
(20:32):
looking at Facebook much either, just mainly Instagram. So this
is kind of news to me. But I'm sorry to
hear this. That doesn't sound like a good story. Yeah,
it's it's not a good story, but I'm honestly surprised
that it hasn't made it across somebody's Instagram feed at
some point. But let's just move while. I'll tell you
where we are, because I've been following this since I
believe it was the twentieth anniversary of September eleven. That's
(20:54):
when I think I heard the first murmurings about it,
that is around the time when Gabby's parents reported her missing.
And that's really when I noticed that. Every morning when
I woke up on my Apple news feed, there was
an update, and around mid afternoon there was another update,
(21:15):
and then around the evening a third update. And it's
just pretty much a story that's been continually cycling through
your NBC's, ABC, CBS, IS, CNNs, all of these major
news outlets are covering this thing on an hourly basis.
I'm gonna give you where we stand right now as
of that this is a Monday, when we're recording this
(21:37):
what's happened thus far, just in the past. I think
this is a day. Ben, You correct me if I'm
wrong here, but I think this is in roughly a
day's time. All the things that I'm going to be
discussing here maybe two days. So before we go into
the news that we're going to discuss today, let's just
give the absolute basics. You can go to CNN, Fox News,
(21:58):
whatever you choose to to read and see a timeline.
Gabby and her boyfriend Brian went on a long road
trip the end of June. Throughout the end of August.
They were traveling from New York all the way across
from the East coast to the West coast, going through
(22:20):
a bunch of national you know, national parks, visiting some monuments,
things like that, and they they were, I guess, through
social media documenting everything. Right, So we've got a couple
of interesting things coinciding here. We've got a missing person's
case and a person who is very active on social
media and is and I think for some reason, those
(22:40):
two things together have caused this case to really become elevated. Um,
particularly the number of followers that Petito had. Correct. God,
there's a lot to discuss here. But Petito Gabby ended
up not making contact with her parents towards the end
of August when contact should have been made, and they
(23:02):
were unable to get in touch with their daughter. Then
apparently the boyfriend drove home to Florida and didn't contact
Potito's parents to tell them what was going on or
what happened. It all became this weird situation where there's
so much mystery around what the boyfriend was doing and
why why he lawyered up to many people who were
(23:26):
following this, they immediately saw that as a very hard
tell that something wrong had happened, something terrible had happened,
and the guy was dodging the police. And now it
has evolved very much over the past couple of days.
So let's get into the news. The first thing that
happened was the FBI began searching a very specific area
(23:46):
of Grand Titon National Park, which is out there in
the west. You can look all of this up if
you wish. There's an NBC New York article titled Gabby
Potito search expands FBI looking for witnesses from a specific campground.
You can find all that information there. Then there was
another article, this one from CNN. This one was all
about now searching for Brian Laundry, who had disappeared and
(24:11):
escaped somehow into a reserve and nature reserve out in Florida,
fairly near his parents home. You can also look to
a story out of uh. This one was from NBC. Again,
this one is the major part of the story that
we were going to bring up today. But then everything
is evolved since then as well. This morning, the FBI
(24:35):
said that a body quote that is consistent with the
description of Gabby Petito was found in the park or
in an area of the park where they were searching.
So it is very likely that by the time you
hear this, this body has been identified as Gabby Petito
(24:56):
and the hunt for the boyfriend Brian Laundry, you will
be going strong or they will have apprehended him or
found his body. Who knows. That's the thing about doing
a story like this, So much can happen between the
time that we sit down and record this and then
you hear it. That's why we very much avoid these
kinds of stories. But again, there's so much out there
(25:17):
about this right now, it's getting so much attention, we
felt like we had to at least mention it here. Yeah,
that's one of the things. That's one of the things
that you and I talked about Matt off air, because
I I realized, I'm honestly the one who often is
most hesitant to go to something that continues to have
(25:38):
and evolving event curve I would call it, you know,
was so much on the horizon, and so I was
the one going, okay, let's check everything like right as
we're going on air, and then I even um, while
while you were walking us through the basics here, as
I was also going Okay, let's just check just in
(25:59):
case found this guy, and then we'll probably check again
at the end. But I completely agree with your assessment.
There is one thing that puts me off just a bit.
And I want to say this carefully, and I don't
want it to be mistaken as a cold comment. In fact,
it's quite the opposite. It's a larger aspect. Before we
(26:20):
dive into the recent developments here, I want to make
a note for everybody, and I hope I'm not the
only person thinking this. How many other people went missing
in the month of August, how many people went missing
this year? How many people went missing in in the
US alone. I can pull the statistics. I have them,
we can save them for a future episode, but they're sobering, okay,
(26:43):
and they're not They're not great statistics, just doubt spoiler.
There's not a year where zero people disappeared, and there's
not a year where all the people who disappeared made
it back or we're found. And so I think about
this sometimes when we we have other cases that pop
up in in the past in the US where where
(27:05):
one person goes missing and they dominate the headlines and
for you know, for the parents, beloved ones, the survivors
of these folks who, for one reason or another become
an object of national and international focus. I I hope
that that attention brings a resolution, right because this as
(27:26):
we're recording this right now, it hasn't been ruled a homicide,
just to be very clear. But I I would also like,
I'm not going to be one of the people who saying,
don't pay this much attention to a single tragedy, But
I'm asking why this much attention is not paid to
every tragedy, you know, And they're more cynical folks in
(27:48):
the crowd who are thinking of the cases that I'm
alluding to in the past, and for some of us,
some of the more cynical, there's a very obvious and
disturbing reason behind the discrepancy and coverage and the discrepancy
in diligence on law enforcements. Part is it because it's
an attractive, young, blonde, white woman. Sorry, is that what
(28:10):
you're getting out? Maybe I'm asking off, Mike and I'm
literally just sipping Okay, Well, yeah, we talked about that
before on this show, specifically with indigenous women, women of
tribes in certain parts of the Northwest and in southwest
United States. I'm thinking about the up and vanished case
(28:31):
on season three this year is about a Native American
woman who went missing in seventeen. Um. You know, we've
we've talked about that a lot. But yeah, also, yeah,
people who are missing who are not white women understanding.
And again, this is what I am saying is the
opposite of It's very much the opposite of uh saying like,
(28:56):
don't pay as much attention to this one missing person's case.
It's just asking doesn't everybody and doesn't everybody's family and
the relatives and their loved ones. Don't they all deserve
that same level of investigation. I think So, It's like
we've talked about recently, um, referencing the work of David
(29:16):
Politis and and looking at all these registries, you know,
the people that have disappeared in different parks across the US,
and how there is a discrepancy as to what kind
of treatment they get, and if you look at you know,
the reporting on this and even the police department, the
Northport Police Department has a tweet where it just shows
an absolute man hunt, you know, with people decked out
(29:37):
in um flat jackets and you know, all kinds of volunteers,
and it's just, you know, a real effort, and it
certainly does not feel like every one of these cases
that Politis reports gets this kind of treatment at all.
Some of them get no attention paid. So Matt with
that with like, I think you've done this amazing job
(29:57):
outlining the very basics some people still not may not
be aware of at this point. And as as we
were building, uh building toward it, we have to ask, like,
what what's the latest as we're recording today September twenty, Well,
the latest right now all focuses on the fact that
the boyfriend for some reason left that Grand Tito National
(30:22):
Park or that area and went back to Florida without Gabby,
at least to the to the best knowledge of people investigating,
and Gabby stopped contacting anyone right at the end of
August there and he then kind of was hiding at
his parents house and his parents and their attorneys were
(30:43):
not having him speak with authorities. And at the time
when this first began becoming a story, when he was
still just a missing person's case, the boyfriend, Brian was
just considered a person of interest and not a suspect
in any way, because there was the terrible thing, but
there was nobody so it was not a homicide, if
(31:04):
that makes sense. If this was just a missing persons
and he was they were interested in speaking with him.
The attorneys said, hey, don't do that, don't speak with
with law enforcement. So no action was taken by law
enforcement to speak with him. That's sketchy, is hell, Though
it's very sketchy. It's very sketchy. It's not only sketchy,
and it's it's weird that the law enforcement would just
(31:25):
be okay with that. Yes, it is very strange. You
can read responses from various law enforcement officials who were
parts of the teams who decided not to, you know,
physically pursue him because it was a choice. Right. Here's
the other thing, because they didn't pursue him, or maybe
(31:48):
not because they didn't pursue him, but as a result
of not being pursued by law enforcement, and then it
kind of was heating up to where it looks like,
at least from the national reporting, like law enforcement was
going to pursue the boyfriend he appears to have taken off.
According to the family. You get one story he like
drove out to this reserve area in his mustang and
(32:11):
then left the mustang there and the parents had to
go pick it up and bring it home. It's weird
stories that the family is giving out and there hasn't
been any communication between the boyfriend's family and the end
Gabbyous family. There's been no communication again because the attorney said,
don't talk to them. Weird stuff. The FBI, as of
(32:32):
this morning, was was searching Brian land Laundry's house, the
home where his parents lived, and at least according to
ABC and NBC, UH, there was a hard drive recovered
from the van. This this Ford passenger sleeper van thing.
(32:52):
You can find pictures of it, you can learn all
about it if you want to. UH, there was a
hard drive found in there that may have more detail
ails about the trip itself. I'm assuming photos that are
time stamped to have metadata associated with them, videos, things
like that, because again, as they're going on this trip,
they're documenting, their documenting everything for social media. So hopefully
(33:16):
there will be the best like times and dates when
this turns into a murder investigation, because as we said,
a body was recovered that maybe Gaby Petito, but an
autopsy has not been performed as of this moment, and
she's not been fully identified at least as of the
moment we record this, and uh, we do have the
(33:36):
closest we have the confirmation at this point from authorities
is the statement that the body they recovered is quote
unquote consistent with descriptions. So a lot of people are
taking that as uh tacit confirmation pre autopsy, but it's
not quite the same thing. It's not the same thing,
(33:56):
and who knows what else is going to come out
again by the time you you hear this story. When
something like this, a case of a missing person, gets
this much attention, it's amazing and terrible for the I
would say, for the authorities searching for this person or
the people who are trying to solve this case. We've
(34:17):
talked about it before. On the positive side, you've got
everybody pretty much in the United States searching for answers,
searching for a missing person, searching for maybe in this case,
Brian or the potential suspect. Right, you've activated a surveillance
system that is every human being that has heard about
this story. Uh, that's great. The problem is you're getting
(34:40):
you're kidding probably a ton of misinformation from well, you know,
from well meaning people that say, oh I think I
saw Gabby, or oh I think I saw Brian, or
oh I think I saw this, or I saw that.
It makes it tremendously difficult as well to sift through
all of the information that comes in when it gets
this much attention. And then I would say the worst
art about it is if this is a case that
(35:03):
has to go to trial, you may be influencing a
jury at some point that needs to sit down and
be objective about the evidence that comes through. A lot
of attorneys take great pains. We've talked about this as well.
Get that jury that maybe hasn't been influenced by the
media yet. That's not easy. But especially if it has
(35:28):
to be in a certain location. I mean if I tried,
like in a certain jurisdiction, right right, right. Um, we
should note this is something you and I talked about
off air, Matt. So much stuff with this story is
going to happen this week. You know, they may find
the missing fiance. There's the autopsy is set for tomorrow
on the body. Um, and I read some conflicting sources
(35:51):
that say it had been confirmed. Now to be the
remains of Petito, but I've seen that as of the
moment of acording. But as of this moment, whomever this
body belongs to, a lot of people do believe it is.
It does belong to Gabby Petitou. The cause of death
has not been confirmed. That's what you need the autopsy for.
(36:14):
So that's where we are at at present. Wow, okay,
so we will keep our eyes on this. You likely
know more than we do in this moment because it
is in the future. As you hear this, I guess,
let us know your thoughts and we'll be right back.
After a quick break and we have returned. There's something
(36:40):
that that I thought would be great to end the
show today because we talked a little bit about the
the challenges of creating topical stories, well not creating, but
exploring topical stories in a way that is relevant and timely.
And this got me thinking, as as we do pretty
(37:02):
often here. Um, this got me thinking about the concept
of time as human beings experience it. In an earlier segment,
we explored a deep time experiment. You guys, remember where
those folks were put in a cave with no real
access to electronics or ways to measure time. Oh yeah,
for sure. And um what was the what was the results?
(37:24):
I mean I remember being incredibly disorienting. Um, And but
there was some kind of twist to that story. If
I'm not mistaken that I'm that I'm ascared escaping me
right now? Yeah? Yeah. It turns out that the the
way people perceive time is very much dependent upon external factors, right,
and time can drift. It's not exactly as clean as
(37:47):
it may seem on a clock. And this is where
I'm always thinking about this. This is where we came
to something really trippy one to share with you. If
you haven't heard about it yet. Uh, Doc, hit me
with the reverb please time crystals? Okay, guy, Matt noll
apro that will sound better, I think in the edit.
(38:09):
What are you talking about? I heard it reverberate through
the spheares. Because now it's just me you can play
about time crystals. But but yes, special effects aside. This
is something that you may have seen mentioned in the news,
and it's something that we don't It's a discovery and
invention that the human species doesn't fully understand the implications
(38:33):
of yet. So I was thinking we could do is
I wanted to check to see if you all had
heard of this, and then I was hoping we could
explore it together and explain what these are, what they mean, when,
what what experts mean when they describe them as time crystals, right,
which sounds very RPG or video game, and perhaps the
(38:54):
most importantly, what that means for our future applications or
for our concept of the few. Sure. Now, I know
that a lot of us are pretty big newshounds and Nott.
Had you read about these before? Yeah? I did, and
I thought it was complete bs because none of them
makes sense to me. And I was just like, yeah,
time crystal, Okay, yeah, Google whatever computer make time crystals,
(39:18):
commander key. Yeah. I know very little about this, but
it strikes me immediately as the thing that you load
into the you know, the thing in your time machine
that needs some sort of magical fuel like the flux
capacitor in Back to the Future. That's where the time
crystals go, right, And it's something that you have very
Rick and Morty too. It's like you're you're searching for
(39:39):
all these distant planets to find and harvest time crystals.
Assuming that's not what it is, but it's something timey
ymy and science E y and c right. Uh yeah, no,
it's exactly like from that Rick and Morty episode, the
crystals from Rick Die Rick Pete the death crystals they're
called in the show, which can allow you to see
the various possible outcomes of your life or how you
(40:01):
will die depending on the actions you take. Uh so
Google invented them. That's where we are now, Kitty Kitty,
it's not quite the same, Okay. So to explain time crystals,
the first thing we need to do to understand about
how important this could be, what a big deal this is,
we have to explain to ourselves what they are. So
(40:23):
there are a couple of examples. And I didn't I
didn't bring props here, although hey, I don't know this shape.
This meant man got me lift this Goonies masks that
made an appearance somewhere on some social media that I saw. Yeah,
that was at Ben Bullen on Instagram. Always be closing,
(40:43):
So come for the conspiracy to stay for the grooney mask. Anyway,
here's what happens if props aside. You can imagine it
in your head, fellow conspiracy realists. A glass, a glass
of water, whatever, beverage you would like, and let's say this. Now,
let's make a water. Let's keep it simple. We don't
want any emails about like guaffa juice. So you've got
(41:06):
this glass of water and it's got ice cubes in it,
and it's just relative room temperature. Right, so at some
point you can safely assume these ice cubes, all things
being equal, will melt. That's kind of how how physics works,
how time works. But in this situation, let's imagine. So
(41:28):
you've got your you've got your glass water in the ice,
and you can you can predict, okay, you know an
X amount of minutes these ice cubes will melt. I've
seen this before. And when they melt, they'll lower the
temperature of the water. Right, that's kind of why the
ice is in there to begin with. But what about this.
What if you were looking at a very special glass
(41:50):
of water and you knew that it would melt and
say five six minutes, but then in another five six minutes,
the ice cubes would reform back to their back to
their you know, they're frozen form, and then fast forward
in their five or six minutes and they melt, and
another five or six minutes and they reform and they
(42:10):
just keep going back and forth like that. M is
that film where they have the wide pooping back and
forth forever. Right, it's and it's also um summed up
with a little like early emoticon using like asterisks and
uh um open ellipses or parentheses. Rather it's me and
(42:31):
you and everyone we know the Maranda July film, which
it turns out maybe based in part upon the concept
of time crystals. Kitty, but the ice cube example, the
the glass of ice is a pretty solid example. So
we're talking about these two states that seem to uh
switch back and forth. There's another example from a guy
named Kurt Vaughan Kaiserly, who plays a pretty profound role
(42:56):
in all the theoretical work that led to this development.
We should say these time crystals are real. It's clearly
his destiny of the name like that. Yes, so he said,
this isn't my favorite example, but I want to get
what he's saying wrong. So he says, imagine you take
a box, any box, and you fill it with many coins.
(43:19):
And so if you look down at this box it
has a lot of coins in it, you'll see that
they're either pointing like heads up or the pointing heads
down right, heads are tails, the old fifty fifty chants.
That's made so many thought experiments possible. He says, all right,
close this box, shake it, shake as long as you want,
shake it a million times, and if you look down,
(43:41):
you put it back down, you open it, you count
the coins. You'll see that about half of them are
heads side up and half of them our tails side
up right. That makes sense because the each have a chance.
And he says, you know, it doesn't really matter how
many shakes you do, a million and one, it doesn't matter.
Random shakes will give you this random roughly fifty fifty chance.
(44:04):
And then he said, imagine if I imagine if this
box behaved the way a time crystal does. What you'll
see is that what he calls the coins here, the
spins would be pointing mostly up, and then later they
might be pointing mostly down. It seems to remember this time.
(44:28):
Crystal seems to remember something about its previous state. And
when we say remember, that's that gets into some spooky territory,
because usually living things to remember right and credibly home around.
This is defying one of the laws of thermodynamics. Yes,
and I am no, no scientists, but it's the idea
(44:49):
that things moved towards entropy, or you know, at least
in terms of like distributing thermal energy throughout a system
instead of like kind of keeping it more contained. And
this one skips that step and constantly flips back and
forth between right before it would like you know, it
would distribute it, and it almost brings it more internal.
Is that correct? Essentially? I mean I'm simplifying. Yeah, let
(45:11):
me let me super simplify, because you know, I'm not
a physicist. A lot of us listening to the show
right now are not physicists. There's a thing called the
second law of thermodynamics, and a show like ours that
applies critical thinking to some very strange ideas. Uh. The
most practical way to understand the concept of the second
law of thermodynamics is this. It bans perpetual motion machines.
(45:36):
It says, none of that. Get it out of here.
I don't want to see it. I don't like that.
That's what That's what the second law of thermodynamics means
for a lot of people in real terms. And there
has been no perpetual motion machine proven to exists. All
things seek a low energy state over what we understand
(46:00):
to be tied. That's it, right. You put some energy
into a system, and that energy energy, whatever that is,
gets eventually spread out, especially when you when it comes
to like temperature. Uh, it evens itself out reaches equilibrium. Okay,
So in this case, their time crystal doesn't do this.
(46:20):
It's a well it goes with way he goes back.
It is forever sort of vacillating between and this change
in states, oddly enough doesn't seem to take energy, which
means that it is doing something and it could just
maybe do it for the human concept of forever. Uh.
(46:42):
In July this year, a research paper was published that
showed this is possible. This, this really seems to be happening.
A limitless rule breaking source of energy, very small level
that could revel lucanize quantum computers. It could revel luctionized civilization.
(47:03):
It's not hyperbolic to say it could revolutionize civilization if
people figure out some way to use it. It's been
called by some folks, maybe a little breathlessly, the most
important scientific breakthrough of our lifetimes. I don't quite know
what to do with it right or now, it's got
some it's got some possibilities. It would be really accurate
(47:27):
component for an atomic clock. You would know exactly what
the time was. There's that. But if you like I
am not a fan of deadlines, You're like, why do
I need a better clock? That's not that's solving the
wrong problem. So, uh, we should also mention that, according
to scientists, this does break Isaac Newton's first love motion. Yeah,
(47:49):
I can see that. Ben. I want to read you
a tiny thing here from this space dot com article
that you shared with us, and I just want to
see if you can explain it to me. Okay, so
this is what they actually did at Google inside their
super computer to create a time crystal. Yes, there were
(48:13):
twenty strips of super conducting aluminum. Okay, they had those
and they quote programmed them into two possible states. Then
they blasted them strips with a microwave beam and somehow
they flipped states. They were flipping states, and they repeated
(48:35):
the experiment tens of thousands of runs, and then they
would stop record the states of each one of these strips,
which one they were in. And this isn't quote. What
they found was that their aluminum strips were flipping back
and forth between only two configurations, and they weren't absorbing
(48:55):
heat from the microwave beam either, so they had a time.
What the hell are they talking about? I don't get it.
They're just going back and forth, back and forth. No,
it's no. Can't you signed a contract? I don't understand.
It's not a work related contract, Noel. So the yeah,
(49:19):
here's the thing. The it is difficult to understand, and
it's weird, and the name is misleading to you know,
like time crystal honestly sounds a lot cooler than what
this thing actually is, though it is still amazing. What
they did was not permanent either, right you saw that part, right, Matt.
The scientists were able to create this and it lasted
(49:43):
for about a hundred seconds, and this was in the
core of Google's Sycamore, which is a quantum processor. Uh.
Kurt von Kaiserling said, you know, this was a big
surprise because nobody to have expected this. In fact, theorists
just predicted this state of matter could exist only nine
(50:07):
years ago. So this is like, in terms of things
people didn't expect, this is up there with how uh
the human species keeps finding other mixed tapes of early
human beings that we're able to interbreed with them and
then possibly gave rise to you know, all those different
uh oral traditions and stories of folklore. Then you know,
(50:28):
found out they were real. There were real quote unquote hobbits.
That's pretty that's it. But like, okay, solid liquid gas,
I gets it's a thing that it's a thing that
gas can essentially become. Right, it's another state of matter.
In this case, we're talking about aluminum god strips. How
(50:51):
do they become a different state of matters? I'm I'm
confused on that one too, And and and how has
that used used? You know, I understand, I understand where
you're coming from, what the quantum clock thing, But it
does feel a little bit like, I mean, did this
happen by accident where they like they aiming for this?
Was this like a desired outcome? Or it almost just
seems like a byproduct that's now getting reported on like
(51:12):
it's some sort of crazy discovery. Uh yeah, they just
have cooler hobbies than a lot of us, you know,
over over at that facility. Uh, this is okay. So
the best way to think of it as a state
of matter is that we're we're defining it as a
phase of matter, and at the same time, by doing that,
(51:36):
because there's nothing else quite like it, at the same time,
by doing that, we're already expanding our definition of what
constitutes a phase of matter, you know what I mean.
So it's it's cheating a little, right, or it's at
least it's either cheating a little, or it's just factoring
in new information. Uh So, before now, all the other
(51:58):
known phases of matter or uh like had a kind
of thermal equilibrium, which meant that there they're atoms trying
to be low and chill, you know what I mean,
just low five vibe. They they settled down to the
lowest energy state they could find permitted by the temperature
(52:19):
around them, and if the temperature doesn't change, then those
properties don't change. But a time crystal is the first
phase humans have ever learned about. That's known as quote
out of equilibrium. If you have already started doing something
recreational in this conversation, whether it's cracking a beer or
(52:40):
what have, you totally get it. This is weird. Deep
water Matt, there's another state of matter that was discovered
relatively recently, and I wasn't familiar with until looking into this.
It's called Bose Einstein condensate and it does most closely
represent you know, condensation, but it it's rules are revolve
alving around similar energy transfer uh specificities. Let's just say, right,
(53:06):
I think the deal with this one is um it
gets to such low temperature that molecular motion comes close
to actually stopping. But since there's no kinetic energy that's
being moved from one atom to another, they start to
like clump together and create this other, uh sort of
form of matter that involves something called a super atom.
(53:27):
Um thousands of these separate, smaller atoms clumped together to
create the super atom. And again I'm reading a lot
of this, uh paraphrasing this from a Live Science article.
I don't fully understand that either, but at least I
can kind of wrap my head around what a condensate is. Yeah, dude, dope,
I get it. And uh, Like all quantum systems, Google's
quantum computer needs to be perfectly isolated from its environment
(53:49):
to prevent its cubits from undergoing a process called decoherence,
which eventually breaks down the quantum localization effect, destroying the
time crystal. Yeah, I get all of that, I can.
I want to mess with the quantum localization effect. I mean,
that's podcasts for a living. We've all all run into
this kind of time loop. But this, so what what
(54:11):
would the applications be here? It could do some pretty
amazing stuff, if you know, if humanity doesn't destroy itself,
if there's not a gamma ray burst or the right
kind of CME at the right time. A lot of caveats,
but anyway, if they keep it together, then first we're
(54:32):
not talking about time travel. Just gonna just gonna get
that out of the way right now, as far as
the official science is concerned, everybody is traveling through time
at the rate of one thing per second or permillia second,
and only in one direction. Um not the band, everybody.
(54:54):
You don't have to be a member of one direction
to be a linear time travel There sol stuff better,
but I'm with you, bad with you. So they could
detect magnetic fields. They could also be used in a
diagnostic capacity in a quantum computer. But the there's something
that really that really spoke to me. I was watching
some can't remember the exact video I was watching, or
(55:17):
someone summed this up and they said that for them.
The main the main thing about these was that they
were beautiful, and they proved that there is more mystery
to the universe than then perhaps we assume on a
day to day basis, and further supports. Besides, she shakes
his fist at the sky further supports. Sometimes it's so
(55:39):
boxing about for a while, which is at the very
large end and the very small end of things. The
rules as humans understand it break out, Like all of
the rules start to break down. So what's next? What
rule will we break it next? I don't know. Hopefully
it's just more time rules. Hopefully this time Crystal can
(55:59):
be placed into some kind of I don't know, DeLorean
or other device and then can be used to take
us back to I don't know, the nineties and save
general motors e V one vehicle, which will then put
humanity on a track to not have hurricanes every five seconds,
which should be pretty cool. Uh yeah yeah, And stay
(56:23):
safe out there at folks, because the weather is probably
just going to get wilder over time. However, we end
up defining it so conspiracy realist, fellow armchair horologists, the
fancy word for the study of time. Uh, we hope
you enjoyed today's segment. We cannot wait to hear from you.
(56:44):
As Matt said, we are messing with time a little
bit due to the way we record, uh these segments.
You are going to You're probably going to do a
little bit more hopefully about the potito case. We'd like
to hear your take on that. We would like to
hear you or take on the greater good of training
cattle and livestock or house breaking them. We'd also like
(57:07):
to hear what else cattle can be trained for. I
think the answers will surprise some of some of us
and variety of them. You know, you just gotta try hard.
I don't know what I call it a trick when
I dismiss it like it's a it's a move. It's
definitely a move. Um, let's call it more of a
minor superpower. How about that? Oh nice? Yeah, that's yes.
(57:29):
What kind of minor superpowers can train cattle to do?
And what do you think future physicists will find? Will
the time crystal just be an interesting oddity that's not
really practical yet, like a lot of stuff on the
far end of the known periodic table? Or are we
on the cusp of something bigger. How inviolate are these
(57:51):
laws right now and which will be broken in the future?
Let us know. We try to be easy to find online.
It's right. You can find us on the Internet. You
can find us in the usual at social media locations
of note Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well, where we
exist under the handle conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram. You can
find us a Conspiracy Stuff show, or Hey, why do
(58:11):
I give us a telephone call? Yes? Please do. Our
number is one H three three st d W y
t K. Give yourself a nickname when you call in.
It is voicemail, so there's a limited amount of time.
You get three minutes. Use it however you wish. Just
let your imagination go wild. See see if you can
oscillate between two states of matter or make a new
(58:33):
state of the matter while you're on the voice mail system.
I don't know that's weird, but do it. We look
forward to hearing from you. If you've got more to say,
or you have links to share, anything else, you can
send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want You
(59:09):
to Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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Noel Brown
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