Strange News: Revelations from Venus, the FinCEN Leaks, and Facebook Whistleblowers

What exactly did scientists find in the atmosphere of Venus? A former Facebook employee claims the company actively ignored widespread political manipulation, and recently leaked documents highlight serious financial crimes by multiple international banks. All this and more in this week's Strange News segment.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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.

(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means we are bringing you some hopefully very strange news.

(00:48):
A little bit of Florida Man, a little bit of
Twilight Zone meets the X Files with a dash of
the Loan Gunman is how you would describe it to
a jaded Hollywood producer. So our stories are, uh, we're
a little bit difficult for us to determine in this
week's segment because so very much has happened, you know

(01:08):
what I mean, gone or the days when the news
cycle would dedicate a whole two weeks to something. So
we're going to do our best. Uh, we may have to.
In later episodes, introduce a a segment that I'll pitch
to you guys later, but for now, our journey takes
us to the realm of big tech. Our journey takes

(01:28):
us to the murky world of international finance and to
the reaches of outer space. We talked a little bit
off air, and we decided we would start with space
and then work our way back to earthly things that
sound good to you guys, wonderful all over it? Very well,
then we'll do the honors. It turns out that, in

(01:50):
a move I can only describe as classic human, we
may have just found evidence of life off of Earth
at the same time we're doing our level best to
destroy life on Earth. Yeah, it's a very very human thing. Well,
even if even if we're not even trying, it's still

(02:11):
happening when it comes naturally, you know, we've come honestly
by our destructive powers, and whether through accident or design,
of course, I think I may have mentioned this on
an earlier episode. Uh, within the last fifty years, humans
have destroyed two thirds of animal populations and various biomas

(02:32):
across the planet. Things are looking dire. And it doesn't
matter whether or not you support the World Wildlife Fund.
This is just math. There are no opinions evolved. Uh
this this story takes us to Venus. The news broke
fairly recently. On September of this year, scientists announced a

(02:55):
mystery of foot on our planetary neighbor. They just covered
something called phosphene in Venus's atmosphere. They did not importantly
claim that they discovered extraterrestrial life. It would be the
biggest news in the history of human civilization. I you know,

(03:15):
I read the paper. What I like is they spend
uh a large amount of time trying to prove how
it could be anything other than a sign of life.
So phosphine, that's what they found. They found phosphine in
large amounts that are very difficult to explain without microbial

(03:38):
life somehow being the cause. Of course, the news took
this and ran with it, saying life on Venus, I
don't know questions or life on Venus? We found it
right right? Well, like ben isn't Venus one of the
ones with like the super toxic atmosphere or like as

(04:00):
far as like if you're actually on the surface of
the planet, but then the upper atmosphere is sort of
similar to like Earth's atmosphere, and then the way it's
made up maybe correct me if I'm wrong. There are
some commonalities in the atmosphere, and this plays this plays
a big role in our investigation today. So if we
if phosphene first, let's say, let's let's figure out what

(04:22):
phosphine is. Then let's figure out where it happens, which
are right, it is in the atmosphere, not on the surface,
and then let's figure out what this might mean to
humanity if we make it to the next season of
this insane endeavor that we have set ourselves upon. So,
phosphene is not cool for you. It's it's not something

(04:44):
you naturally want to hang out with. It's colorless, it's explosive,
it's flammable, and it smells like garlic or decaying fish.
Small amounts of this stuff naturally occur on Earth as
organic matter breaks down. It reminds me a little bit
when I was reading about it of methane, just enough

(05:07):
of some of the properties that it has and as
a byproduct of chemical biological processes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
here on Earth, on our little hunk of rock, the
only source of phosphine is microbes. It's it's a gas
often associated in fact with feces. So shout out to

(05:29):
everybody who wrote in or found me on Twitter and
started telling me about the question, who are we farting
inside of? I think it's I think it's a great question.
You need to get books for that one man. I
think that has to be like a hoodie at the
very least, you know, or maybe maybe I see You'll
get to it at some point. We'll see. But the

(05:52):
fascinating thing here is that we have we have a
mystery up. It's like a cosmic murder and a lot
through We don't know how this phosphing occurs. We can't
immediately assume it indicates life on Venus, but we are
having a very difficult time explaining how so much phosphing

(06:14):
could be created if microbes are not involved. There's there
are a couple of things. There are a couple of
what I'll call the wamp womp calm down points, And
the number one wamp wamp calm down point is that
we don't know a ton about the geochemistry of Venus.

(06:37):
It's our nearest planetary neighbor, but we rarely visit it
because it's not a neighborhood for humans. It's it's a
weird street for us to walk down. Yeah. One of
the major things is that the average temperature on Venus,
right that could could pose a bit of an issue
for humanity. Uh, we're you know, right now, it's a

(07:00):
little chillier than it has been for a while in Atlanta.
I think it was fifty five fifty six degrees this morning.
That's a fahrenheit of course, you know. Uh, on Venus,
the surface temperature there's gonna be around oh, I don't know,
eight hundred degrees fahrenheit. And it's the atmosphere is the

(07:24):
densest of what are called the four terrestrial planets, so
not like not a gas giant like Jupiter or something.
If you make it down to the surface of Venus,
you're going to be in an environment with about ninety
two times the sea level pressure of Earth. So it's

(07:45):
it's not a place where we can easily survive. It's surrounded.
It looks like a gas giant if you look at it,
because it's surrounded by such a soupy atmosphere. And there's
this an interesting genre of planetary exploration. An astronomy here
has a lot in common with forensic science. We are
trying to reconstruct through thought experiment and through various observational

(08:11):
tools what these planets may have looked like in the past. Right,
Like liquid water was discovered on Mars, there's a pretty
convincing argument that once it flowed much more freely. The
argument in regards to Venus is that once upon a time,
Venus itself may have had some sort of water that

(08:32):
was later swept into inner planetary space. But anyway, the
big wamp wamp point is that we don't know enough
about Venus to say that there's no way phosphen could
exist without some form of what we recognize as life.
The second womp wap point here is that we don't

(08:53):
really know what we would do next if if we
found that fosse Like if again, it's classic human that
we discover a new life form through its poop. But uh,
but we don't know what we would do necessarily if
we found it, Because think about this, one of the

(09:14):
last things you would want to do is to introduce
some new life form like this two Earth life forms.
We we have know what we've seen the dystopian sci fi.
We've all seen outbreak right, Uh, this could be this
could be the very last plot twist of the twenties. Well,
it's sort of like the equivalent of people are like

(09:36):
an invasive species from another country, like and let it out,
you know, like starlings for example. That was a horrible
misstep by that one guy that really thought starlings were
beautiful and he essentially overpopulated Central Park with them and
then it became like a real problem. But this would
be like that on like a cosmic level, right, Yeah,
I think that's a good comparison. Uh, it's strange because

(10:00):
is you know, it's the holy grail. It's like a
secular holy grail, the idea of finding life, and it's
tremendously difficult for us to be as a species as
objective as possible. There have been so many near misses.
There have been so many close calls. I mean, experts

(10:20):
are still debating about the Viking lander experience in n
and saying, well, maybe they did discover some evidence of
once upon a time life on Mars. At this point,
there is a lot of science to do. This is Uh,
this is one of the most important questions in the

(10:43):
big game of the human species, and it will probably
be so for a while because it's expensive. It's expensive
to figure out what the hell is going on in Venus?
I thought you would like this though, guys, I wanted
to save this before we move on, so you know, Uh,
there's a plot twist already. Dmitri rogoes In, who is

(11:06):
the director General of Rolls COLSMOS, the Russian Space agency
like Russia's NASA, he recently came out after this announcement,
by the way, and declared that Venus is officially a
Russian planet. And uh, it's because Russia or the USSR

(11:27):
was the first and only nation to date to successfully
land anything on Venus. They went through the atmosphere, they
went to that brutal surface of the planet there. Technology
did not last long. But they're taking that as a win.
So wait, does that mean we own the moon? Then?
Is that how it works? We planted a flag there, baby,

(11:49):
But the treaties against that kind of thing, right, I
saw that. I saw an article about that too, and
actually on Fox News. Um where it interesting. Um, this
is the first time I've seen this, and you guys
may be aware of this moniker for Venus. It's it's
sometimes referred to as Earth's evil twin um, which which

(12:09):
makes the idea of life on Venus even more interesting?
What if it's like bizarro Earth, where like everyone there
is like a weird evil mirror image of of of
Earth links. I don't know, I'm just I'm just getting
sci fi with it. Why not? Um? Really interesting though?
What an odd flex, though, Ben, I see your point, Like,
do you think it was literally in response to, oh,

(12:30):
oh well, better go ahead and stake our claim since
there might be life, let's let's go ahead and bring
this up and get the debate started. I don't know,
it's a odd Of all the superpowers that existed in
the time of early exploration, USSR was the one sending,
as you said, Ben, metal and money towards Venus to
try and get some kind of data from the planet.

(12:53):
And and has been said, all the stuff that they
did send there ended up melting and getting crushed almost immediately.
Like if you sent down a standard metal container and
you know, down in the ocean three thousand feet, the
thing just would crush at some point. That's what happened
to all of their money and efforts. But they did

(13:14):
get a few images back or a few bits of
data back with one of them that were very very important.
You know, It's interesting to think that Japan right now
has the only functioning observation status of Venus with with
I forget the name of it, but it's got a
satellite that's going around it right now. Right here's the

(13:36):
time where we finally get to say it coincidence and
getting yeah, it probably is coincidence, but it may not be.
The The last new I'll leave us with here is
that this may not be the only satellite exploring the
I mean, certainly it won't be if we get enough,
if we stay alive long enough to send more stuff.

(13:58):
There's one interesting paper that came out on our vix
dot org earlier and it proposes what you could think
of as a daredevil mission, something called the Calypso Venus Scout,
and the idea is to um to use a balloon
in Venus atmosphere and a layer of Venus is atmosphere

(14:21):
is probably it's if we add humans there, it would
be the most likely place for us to make our
own kind of sky city or landing base. The Calypso
Scout is just a proposal at this time, but it's
quite an intriguing one. The ideas that it would hang
twenty miles below or thirty two kilometers for the rest

(14:44):
of the world below this balloon floating in the clouds,
and it would be able to provide revelatory information such
that if we could get this thing onto Venus, then
we would probably be able to answer, uh, like definitively

(15:04):
answer whether or not there was or is something that
we would consider life. Notice at conspiracy realists, I've been
what I've been talking about this, I've been saying something
we consider life. We have a sample size of what
right story behind the naming of like all the planets.

(15:26):
I know they're all named after like you know, Greek
gods and Roman gods. But I will say, based on
the description of Venus Um and the weird love triangle
that existed between Venus uh Mars and Venus husband vulcan Um,
who was like the god of metal working, I think
they kind of got it wrong. I think they should

(15:47):
have named Venus vulcan and then uh named some other
planet Venus. That's just my opinion, because it's all these
volcanoes there, the temperature, you know, scientists have described it
like hell. You know, um Mars isn't like that, and
it's just red and o Mars has got a war,
but I don't I don't know why Vulcan got left
out of the mix. Vulcan such a cool, fiery god.

(16:08):
I don't know. What do you guys think it didn't
get left out? It was an entire species, is that correct?
Or entire civilization on Star Star Trek there is a
planet Vulcan. You're right, there's that's exactly right. Yeah, I
think we need to. I don't know. I think we
need to. Who do we write to about renaming Venus?

(16:30):
The time is nigh well human we have to remember
human names for things. While they may seem permanent now
whatever now is, they're very much ephemeral, right, because Venus
is visible without without technology. You can see it with
your unaided eyes if you are patient and avoid light pollution.

(16:52):
Venus is mentioned in one of the oldest surviving astronomical documents,
in Civilization People Babylon. We're talking about it before the
idea of this Greco Roman mythology even entered the fray.
So I would say you could write to someone who

(17:13):
could also just wait and see what what the next
with the next iteration of humanity names these various planets,
because honestly, you know, I feel like we should stick
with Uranus. I think it's funny. Uh, and I don't
think we should rename all the planets, especially the good
punworthy ones give or take Jupiter. Completely agree, then it's

(17:36):
urin this guys, come on, grow um, that's still that's
still funny too. Sounds like PEP, so it's actually worse
pp and butts. Well, let's be you know what. Let's
let's remember the human race is a team sport, so
maybe when we're renaming planets we can call that other one.

(17:59):
Oury is moving on. We have we have some more
strange news for you after a word from our sponsor,
and we're back, not just from the ad break, but
from space. You see a lot of things are happening

(18:22):
on Earth as well. Yeah, sort of a blip in
the timeline of all things. But yeah, here we find
ourselves in a pretty interesting section of the blip. Um.
Let me ask you guys, have either of you yet
seen the new Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. Yes, yeah,
I'm not a fan of the dramatizations. Yeah they're a

(18:44):
little cringeing, but I enjoyed it. Enjoyed is maybe a
weird word for it. Despite those UM, and I do
recommend that everyone check. I actually watched it with my daughter,
who isn't that bad of a social media junkie. She
mainly messes with the TikTok and UM maybe story of
another day, but she was thrilled when UH the company
Byte Dance made a deal with um Oracle. UH, so

(19:06):
TikTok is no longer canceled. There was a brief window
where it was like, Okay, TikTok's done. You can keep
it on your phone, but it's gonna get slower and
slower and slower as you can't get the updates and
all that. We're not talking about TikTok today. We're talking
about Facebook, which is a big part of of this
UH movie, The Social Dilemma. It's all about how these
designers use psychology to game our brains and our brain

(19:28):
chemistry into you know, craving that device or craving that
feedback that dopamine hit. They literally design it using these
concepts that the same kind of concepts that the casino
would use to make sure you keep pulling that lever,
you know, like even like when you refresh your page,
you're swiping downward right and you're hoping that you're gonna
get a little treat. Maybe if you do it enough,

(19:49):
something'll change and you'll be, you know, giving a little
tasty morsel or be like with the casino. You know,
one arm bandit maybe you'll get like a jackpot. It's
all about like the thing that might come, and it
keeps you on the hook. But another thing that the
film talks about and that we've talked about plenty on
the show is just how much division is sewed with

(20:10):
the way something like Facebook uses its algorithms to essentially
create this echo chamber where it's serving up information to
each side of a of a big issue. Let's say
Republican and Democrat, each of us. If I'm a Republican
and then my mother or a friend or colleague as
a Democrat, we're getting different stuff on our Facebook feeds,

(20:30):
and nine times out up ten, we're getting served stuff
that's feeding our own confirmation bias and making us feel
good about ourselves so that we stay on the service
longer and longer and longer, so they can collect AD
dollars and learn more data about us as we feed
in more clicks into the system. Um Another thing the
film talks about is the way this can be used
to literally so division to the point where it actually

(20:54):
becomes manipulation of things like governments of elections. We new
found out about all of that in ways that can
be used for good, with things like the Arab Spring
uprising and using Twitter to literally proliferate real information about
things going on the ground. Great, that's a great example
of this stuff working for good. But then we've also
got examples of Russian bots gaming fake news articles and

(21:19):
targeting people using that algorithm who maybe we're already on
the fence and distrustful of a certain party, um and
used that technology to not hack. This is not people
hacking Facebook. This is people using tools that exist in
Facebook for a purpose to to essentially convert people's hearts
and minds. Um. And it just came out through another

(21:41):
disgruntled Facebook employee. We talked about another one recently when
it came to Facebook policing fake news and U Republican bias, etcetera.
Are right wing bias, etcetera. This one comes from a
data scientist who was fired very recently, and before she
was fired, released a sixty six hundred word memo that
talked about how Facebook has blatantly ignored political manipulation from

(22:05):
around the world. Uh, not just in the United States,
but in places like Brazil where like Bostonaro was elected
um in in in what many have blamed on this
very same kind of division that sewed Uh using Facebook,
because in Brazil, when people get a computer or they
get a new phone, like Facebook is the Internet, that
is the Internet to Fox in Brazil for the most part,

(22:27):
that's how they conduct their business online. So this young
woman her name UM is Sophie zang Uh went through
and um outlined her grievances about how they know about
this stuff that's going on, but they don't typically do
anything about it, or when people do raise the red flag,
they're shut down, and that was largely why she claims

(22:50):
she was fired. Gentlemen, Uh, what do you think about this?
This is something that we've talked about already, but it
just seems like more and more of this information is
coming out that Facebook isn't really doing their dude diligence
and trying to shut this stuff down, and we're seeing
these ramifications really affecting our lives and politics and big,
big things, not just sharing cat pictures I'm reading an
article here from The Verge that's talking about this issue,

(23:14):
and there there are a couple of quotes in there
from uh, Sophie, the person who was the whistleblower essentially
on this and you know, there are several different things
in here that you've already expressed, No, but one thing
that Sophie yourself was expressing is that there are not
enough human beings who specialize in this stuff working at

(23:37):
Facebook to actually enforce the company's rules or to even
take action against people who are, you know, doing these
kinds of manipulation pieces or political propaganda or whatever you
want to call it, or whatever however it manifests itself. Um.
I mean that's one major issue, the just the skeleton

(24:01):
crew nature of like people actually whose job it is
to target these kind of activities. Well, because how could
you run something like Facebook with so many millions of
users and police without largely making it automated. I mean,
it would be impossible, I think, and I believe that's

(24:21):
what they have found over years and years. And you know,
in order to make decisions about what is propaganda versus
what is a genuine political ad or you know that
that is a ben I look to your expertise a
little bit on this, just because it feels like the
gray area that exists within anything that could be considered
political is going to be very difficult for an algorithm

(24:44):
to decide if it is uh, fact based or manipulated,
you know, being manipulative in some way, because at the
very heart of anything that's gonna be put out in
that way is going to be purposefully manipulative, whether it's
to get your emotional response to you know, uh, confirm

(25:04):
your biases and all those things, but that all of
that content is doing most of it is doing that
in some way. The way the algorithm works is to
manipulate us into staying on the service longer. So how
can they even flag oh, this is being manipulate? Of
course it is. It's all being manipulative. Maybe maybe I'm
misreading what you're saying. Ben, I really want to hear
your kind of bigger picture political you know, Pandora's box

(25:29):
of like how this really figures into like international affairs
and this this as a tool of manipulation, and whose
responsibility is it to to shut it down? Yeah? So, um,
I get I've got like four points. Uh so the
uh the first, I think you did a pretty solid
job referencing the dopamine science uh in that that has

(25:55):
explored in the Social Dilemma. But I want to point
out before moving on to the other three points, I
want to point out that everyone exists in a bubble. Uh.
Something like Facebook or social media may exacerbate the extremities
of that bubble and may accelerate the timeline of how
this radicalization and it is radicalization occurs. But we have

(26:18):
to remember without social media, by listening to this show,
by creating this show every week, we are in a
bubble of our own. I think anybody who listens to
stuff they don't want you to know, especially their big
data episodes, would be hard put to genuinely say they
were surprised by anything explored in a film like Social Dilemma.

(26:40):
But with that being said, I do believe it's important
film to the second point regarding the the tipping of
the scales, right the curation through algorithm of a Facebook
feed that's absolutely incentivized. Everything Facebook is saying, in my
opinion is only my opinion about mitigating the dangers there

(27:04):
is entirely lip service and quite frankly, at the very
least it's misleading. There's a lot of money here. Don't
forget Cambridge Analytica, you know what I mean, Don't forget
the vast chasm between the power of private entity like
this and the complete lack of liability they have for

(27:26):
the consequences of their actions. I would say that in
in this case, what we're looking at is a disincentivization
from ethics from exploring the truth Facebook, like HSBC ha ha,
a little bit of foreshadowing, there has no real punishment.

(27:48):
The Mark Zuckerberg is never going to get in legal
like criminal trouble for anything. And what's going to happen
is that the fees or finds they will be confront
unted with will be folded in as we've said numerous
times on previous episodes, into a cost of doing business. Well.
And they're also always like offering to just police themselves,

(28:10):
you know, I mean, like they always present a solution
they will also be the architect of. So it's really hard.
There's no real oversight because it takes government so long
to catch up this technology. They're saying, Oh, it's okay,
we'll just be good and police ourselves. Yeah, yeah, which
again entirely misleading at best. The next point I would make, though,
is social media is not going away. The net would

(28:33):
have to crash. You made a salient point about a
phenomenon that's been continuing for the better part of a
decade now, which is across the world, the majority of
people who have an Internet connection have it through an
like a mobile device, right, and many of those people
who are entirely reliant on this mobile device are buying

(28:56):
sandbox things lost leaders at a great discount. Face Book
wants you to have a Facebook phone. Google wants you
to have a Google phone, just the same way that
Apple wants you to have an I phone, because then
they can rinse seek and they can take a cut
of everything. Like remember the I Think Fortnite got in
a fight with UH with Apple over their iOS and

(29:20):
how the payment works out. Facebook is doing the same thing.
There's also another one that was like happening, where it's
like a vendor that's basically it's like a game company.
Maybe maybe it is. Maybe it's the one you're talking
about Ben that's essentially has its own ecosystem, and because
the app store vets individual developers, they're essentially barring this
developer from the app store. So you're right, it's all
about proprietary ownership and like saying no, you can't play

(29:42):
in my sandbox. It's my sandbox, and that's what Facebook
is trying to do here. Yeah, agreed. And not to
put too much pressure on Facebook because when we're first
talking about this story, we're looking at off air. You know,
everybody's first question shouldn't be just tell me more about
this leak and how it applies today, It should be
which leak is this? Is this the leak from nineteen?

(30:04):
Which leak from twenty nineteen? Is it? You know what
I mean? It's a sieve. You know, it's not watertight
by any means. Because the employees at the individual level
are perhaps going to practice some their own form of ethics.
This should be scary because there's an enormous Kaiju size
badger in the bag here. Which is that The algorithms now,

(30:29):
which are like technically pr wise, they're defined as giving
you a seamless scrolling experience. Right, Uh, you feel good
about the stuff you were already believed had to get
some cat pictures and some doggie pictures. That's funny. Uh,
But they're very close and I would say there's an
argument we can make that they have already passed the

(30:51):
threshold UH between bringing something that you can observe into
UH steering and their or predicting your behavior. These algorithms
want you to do stuff, and increasingly what they want
you to do was not just by seven toilets or
a Mazda or um, what's a what's a ridiculous thing?

(31:13):
People buybrow a wheelbarrow perfect or Faberge Artisanal wheel, Faberge willebarrow,
Faberge subscription service for will barrows, eggs, and uh flutable horns,
So those would be those would be by points at
least in response, I think that we're I think it's

(31:33):
not going away. I think it will accelerate, and I
don't think how at this point. I don't think it
matters how many people needed information about it. I think
you're absolutely right in and all those points where we're fantastic, Matt.
I think you were hitting on this point UM earlier
a little bit, and I'd left it to hear you
follow up. One of the quotes I think was the

(31:53):
most telling from Zang was was this um and by
the way, this was not her job. Job specifically to
do this. She kind of took it on in her
own capacity or at least expanded the reach or like
the kind of UM capacity that she was hired to do.
And I'm sorry, I'm not getting her actual job title

(32:15):
perfectly correct. She is a data scientist. She had something
to do with this realm. But she absolutely went above
and beyond and running this memo and like in targeting
some of these things, and obviously it got her fired.
But this is a quote from saying that I think
really sums up how this stuff is dealt with. UM.
It's an open secret within the civic integrity space that
Facebook short term decisions are largely motivated by pr and

(32:39):
the potential for negative attention UM. And then it goes
on to say that her superiors would really only react
to these kinds of things after a New York Times
piece or Washington Post piece would be noticed by Facebook
leadership and they'd be like, Okay, now we have to
do this as an optics kind of move, so people
think that we're like, we care about this kind of stuff. UM.

(33:01):
And then this is the quote that I was talking about.
She says, it's why I've seen priorities of escalations shoot
up when others start threatening to go to the press,
and why I was informed by a leader in my
organization that my civic work was not impactful, under the
rationale that if the problems were meaningful, they would have
attracted attention, became a press fire, and convinced the company

(33:23):
to devote more attention to the space. Matt, I see
shaking your head vehemently there. And this is like double speak,
it kind of, isn't it. Like it's like it's not
a problem unless it's people know it's a problem. It's
like some Chronobyl logic, you know. Yeah, I for sure
I can see that. Um, it's just a strange situation

(33:47):
because the actors, good or bad, who are you know,
utilizing Facebook to put out misinformation or disinformation in these ways,
generally in reas that are not the United States or
other Western countries. That's that's some of the biggest things
that she's talking about. Um, like in Honduras, when there's

(34:09):
this massive campaign on Facebook to make one candidate look
terrible and it's false information, or at least it's allegedly
false information, and it's bad news. Um, anybody can put
that stuff on there. But I I don't. As you
guys know, just from our working with social media over
the years, that anyone can pay for an ad on

(34:31):
Facebook and kids work to get a message out. You
can promote a show like this one as much as
you want, but if the algorithm isn't behind what you're
trying to do and you're not playing it right, and
especially if you're not paying for it, UM, it doesn't
get much visibility unless there are people clamoring to share

(34:53):
that thing. And then you know, as as it says,
as one says, it goes viral. UM. It's it's weird
to me that these messages can even go out there
and become so viral that humanity. I guess all of
us together we still don't or maybe we've developed this
lack of an understanding of something that is factual because

(35:19):
of all of these sources of information that we have. UM.
I think that's the most troubling part, for we don't
have the hardware. We don't have the hardware to adequate
like information. We say knowledge is power, but what we
need to understand when we say that is that it
is power in the way that nutritional food is power.

(35:39):
I would see information is as important as air, water,
and food and when we are That's why we talked
about eating junk food, right with the viral memes and
all those little dopamine pops when someone reacts to your
thoughts online, what I think is in hairt here, And

(36:00):
I know I'm coming off fairly pessimistic. Again, I'm very
much in a bubble because I read a ton of
things about this and white papers and so on. Uh,
We've we've normalized the existence of this stuff. We've normalized
the acceptance of the idea that the world cannot be

(36:21):
fully understood. There's just too much happening for in a
single person to know. So went away cognitively. If you
have social media accounts, you are a cyborg. There is
an assistant with or without your consent, helping you, you know,
kind of pre chewing your food for you, cutting up

(36:41):
your steak and then uh, and then just giving it
to you a little, a little nibber numb at a time.
How does it feel to know your little baby burden
getting fed your information press. It's weirdly comforting. And my
mommy loves me very much. So yeah, so I would
ask you, guys, what do you think this means for
the future. That's that's to me, that's the most important question.

(37:06):
What what does this mean for the future of a
I mean, we're in a post factual society, There's no
two ways about it. We're at what Fukayama called the
end of history in some ways, Like what do you
think what do you think Facebook or its replacement will
be like eight years from now? Let's make it scary,

(37:29):
what do you think it will be like five years
from now? Well, one one thing that the Social Dilemma
pointed out that I think we've certainly discussed and it
occurred to me, but they do it in a really eloquent,
straightforward way, is that, like, our brains aren't really going
to evolve in eight years, probably not in the eighty years,
not in a hundred years. You know, we're kind of
hit a wall as far as that's concerned. But you

(37:51):
know what does evolve exponentially computing power, the power of
these algorithms. So they're just gonna keep getting better and
better and better. Uh, they're gonna be better at predicting
our behavior and in gaming our brains because our brains
are dumb compared to like these algorithms they've kind of
been able to outsmart us already, hence the effectiveness and
being able to manipulate these elections just by targeting us

(38:13):
with like things that appeal to our our worst nature
and that aren't true. You know, that's the whole point.
Maybe we bury the lead. A lot of these stories
that we're talking about are what real fake news is,
where they're essentially stories that are put out there that
people share because it appeals to something they already believe
and it makes them feel good about that opinion until
they push it out. And you know, there's it's happening

(38:33):
right now with people saying, you know, targeting places like
Puerto Rico who are very uncomfortable with the idea of communism,
and they're putting out ads saying Joe Biden's a communist?
You know, is that true? Is it completely slanderous or
is you know, maybe he says things that are a
little in the communist tip, you know, but that's the
kind of stuff that they're doing. They're targeting people's biases,

(38:55):
and they're hitting people where they live, which is on
the damn Internet. Yeah, that's tough because where do you
look for that non snack able um more nourishing news
and facts. Right. This should bother a lot of us
conspiracy realist. Your ability to learn objectively is being heavily influenced.

(39:22):
But you are not powerless in this endeavor. You're not.
You have agency in this situation. The the inundation of
media and information is, as I said numerous times, much
more than the human brain evolved or was designed, however
you want to say it to handle right, So think

(39:42):
about it this way. Think about and a graph in
X and a y axis. Right now, what's happening is
the average person with an Internet connection has what I
would call a first paragraph of Wikipedia depth of understanding
about many, many, many things. And that's not a ding
back in the days of the Middle Ages you were,

(40:05):
you were a literary lion. You are a giant of
knowledge if you knew just a little bit about so
many things. Now our now, with social media, everybody is
like that person. Our breath of knowledge is larger than
it may have been at any other single point in
human history as a species. However, that comes out a

(40:25):
sacrifice of our depth of knowledge, our deep learning. And
that's something I think, Matt, you and I have been
pretty clear about ever since the YouTube days. You have
the power. You have the power to go beyond that
Facebook post. You have the power to go beyond that
three minute, five minutes spot on the evening news. You

(40:47):
can learn deeply. You out of all the living things
on the planet, you if you were listening, you were human.
And if your AI and listening, you're even better at this.
You have the ability to just spend spend an hour
reading contradictory sources and determine the truth for yourself. Because
as our boy Fox Molder always said, it's out there. Bro,

(41:10):
You're you're like arming all this AI with the knowledge
that they could continue their deep learning until they know
everything better than anything else. Dude, you just you just
started the singularity. No, it's about time. It's about time.
You know, at the end of history, at least we'll

(41:31):
have the click bait to keep us warp. Yes, we will,
like the clickbait that you would usually find on BuzzFeed.
And it's not a ding on BuzzFeed. It's just their
business model. That's the way they grew up and became
a big company. But you know, there's this other thing
called BuzzFeed News that I personally have never given much

(41:52):
thought about, you know, as in believing that it's a
reputable news source. It would be in the beginning. I
didn't just because I knew what BuzzFeed was, or I
thought I did. Right. Listicals, didn't they make up that word? Yeah,
just things that are like, hey, look at this, just
click click some for over here for a while, ways
the fourteen ways to take care of your feet, stores

(42:15):
hate numbers nine. I mean, that's really what I thought
all of BuzzFeed was, because again it kind of was.
But with BuzzFeed News, our next story, uh, it comes
from them, and it began from them because there were
documents sent to them and they didn't work alone. But
we'll tell you all about what they uncovered after a

(42:37):
quick word from our sponsor, and we're back as we
teased beforehand, this is a story that comes from us
via BuzzFeed News and several other players, including the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Now that's a name that makes

(42:59):
you go, oh, there's gotta be facts in there somewhere.
It gives you a lot more. It definitely lends itself
more to the idea of credibility than BuzzFeed News. But
we gotta stop ragging on buzz videos. You're right, Matt,
I thought the same, and they really do do some
seriously legit reporting. You guys have to stop ragging on
BuzzFeed news. I remember back in the YouTube days one time.

(43:19):
I don't know if you remember this, Matt, I was
going through the same crisis of research faith, and I
remember I remember saying, you know, Matt, should we should
we tell people that one of the sources for this BuzzFeed,
because we're already a conspiracy show. Well, I think it
speaks to our our our biases and the bubbles that

(43:43):
we find ourselves in, and you know, and first impressions.
Honestly speaks to all of those things. Um. But yeah,
props where it is deserved. Good good on you, BuzzFeed News. Um.
So it's a story. I'm gonna read you some reporting
that was done by the International Business Times on the

(44:03):
story that was broke by BuzzFeed and the International Consortium
of of Investigative Journalists. Okay, here we go. Report global
banks including HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JP, Morgan have laundered trillions
in illicit cash. I'm sorry, trillions, trillions, trillions in illicit cash. Now,

(44:23):
the first thought that you likely have, as Ben and Nolan.
I had was yeah, of course I know that. Come on,
of course banks are laundering money. The second thought is, hey,
you know what, I've even heard you guys specifically talk
about that and that one bank you mentioned, HSBC and
all the laundering that they did for drug cartels back
in the day. Bank too, though Deutsche Bank has been

(44:46):
been on that list for in Deutsche Bank and Wacoba
which is now's far Ago, and all of the other banks.
And they always get their hands smacked a little bit
and then they go right back to it. And that
is the big story here. All of the banks have
been doing it. They get their hands slapped, and they
keep doing it. And it's a process that just starts

(45:07):
and stops and starts. It stops and starts, stops, and
it continues on forever. Um. There are a ton a
ton of details that were brought forth from a leak,
a leak of documents that came to us from the
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or finn SEN. You're going to

(45:27):
see that all over the place if you haven't already
been seeing that f I N, Capital C E N
and this these league, these leaked documents that got out there, uh,
and specifically got to BuzzFeed News. They detail essentially strange
transactions or transactions that have been marked by one of

(45:49):
these banking institutions as possibly suspicious. And that doesn't mean
that there's anything necessarily nefarious going on with any single transaction,
but these are at least internally marked, right, and then
it's up to the bank essentially to check that stuff
out and then report it if they feel it is necessary. Right,

(46:10):
the Foxes must report the weekly massacre of the Henhouse
quarterly rather, I would say important point, Uh, just to
be clear, Finnson is not an independent agency. It is
part of the US Treasury Department. Yes, you know, you're
absolutely right. I hope I didn't characterize in that way.

(46:32):
But yeah, it's a it's a thing. It's a network
within the Treasury, and there they all say, well, you,
you boys and girls over there in the banking industry,
you play nice and if you see anything weird, send
it our way and we'll check it out. And when
that happens doesn't necessarily mean that any action is going
to be taking to stop these transactions or further transactions

(46:56):
from the same players that are making these suspicious transactions.
Maybe this is a silly QUESTIONAI irrelevant, but like where
did the I R S figure into all this? Like
I fear an audit if I like over acclaim stuff
on my taxes, Like if I try to write too
much off, I'm like, I'm not going to get flagged.
You know what, Where do they figure into this whole mess?
And you'd think with that much money it would be

(47:17):
just an instantly red flag if there wasn't just serious
obfuscation going on by the banks to hide these transactions.
Well you know most of this is international, um, but
but yeah, um, it doesn't mean that the I R
S isn't going to be involved with a lot of
this because there are people like uh, let's see JP Morgan,

(47:37):
well JP Morgan operating out of Malaysia with the Malaysia
Sovereign Wealth Fund. Um, like JP Morgan transferring funds Venezuela, Ukraine,
Malaysia having to do with the looting of the public
funds in those states those countries. Um, mean, there's that,

(48:00):
So that's happening and all there's all kinds of things. Again,
this y'all. The set of documents, I think it's two
thousand something documents yeah, documents. It's there's so many weird
transactions happening all over the world with all of these
varying banks, in varying capacities, and in varying levels of

(48:22):
wrongdoing or what maybe wrongdoing. Um One of the only
ones occurring in the United States that I was looking at,
at least in depth, had to do with Paul Manafort,
President Trump's former campaign manager. UM. Some there's several million dollar,
fifty million dollars that JP Morgan processed for Paul Manaford,

(48:42):
and then six point nine million that got moved around
by JP Morgan on behalf of Manafort after he quit
the campaign. I mean, that's just an interesting thing. I
don't know exactly what it means. It doesn't mean he
did anything wrong with it, but he was under investigation
for some other stuff having to do with evicted that

(49:03):
he also he also has some connections. It's got some
Russian connections there, uh, some Eastern European stuff. This this
does provide some compelling, circumstantial evidence of shady backdoor deals.
Right from cleaning out the public funds. It also well,

(49:25):
I'm sorry, Ben, really quick when you say public funds,
is that the same as like taking our tax dollars
that are like held in escrow or something and literally
funneling them into other things or what does that mean
exactly inbezzling. But when you say public funds, investling public
funds like, yeah, you could say a tax base. So
for instance, let's say you're an oligarch in Russia and

(49:48):
you not only do you you can take all the
money you want, right if you are friends with your
other oligarchs. H Taking advantage of the vulnerable is something
this speci ease does for fun, even when it doesn't
benefit us. So you can take all that money from
the public funds. But the real trick, the real smooth

(50:11):
operators play the shot in the background and then find
ways to move it through increasingly legitimate avenues. These are
the suspicious activity reports that the star Yeah, that's the
kind of stars you want to catch, and uh, this

(50:31):
is This also brings us to the question about the
I R S. It brings us to the Bank Secrecy
Act of here in the US, and that act has
a lot of loopholes. It's got more loops than the
roller coaster. But if it actually works, it is meant

(50:52):
to obligate financial institutions in the US to assist Uncle
Sam in detecting and preventing money laundry. However, anybody who
has a cursory familiarity with the halls of power and
with Congress knows that many members of Congress, I'll say it,

(51:12):
it's fine, they're disincentivized from approaching money laundering because it
is very hard to find a fox guarding a hen
house that will point the finger or the paw at
itself is a very dirty game like these leaks. Obviously,
some of us listening are instantly reminded of the Panama papers.
Right speak by the curve folks. We went off air

(51:36):
so we could remember the name of the primary institution
involved in the Panama papers, and after several increasingly juice
and guesses in our brainstorming, we arrived at most Act Fonseca,
which is the correct thing. What happened there, well, I
believe correct me, I'm trying to remember the right leak here,

(51:58):
Matt and Nold, But I believe eve that the big
takeaway from uh that was the assassination of the journalists
involved in breaking this story. Yeah, it's right. Caruna Galiza
Galizia was murdered. So if I were involved in this

(52:19):
current leak fincon as it's as it's uh as we're
still dealing with the fallout, I don't know, I would
be very careful. Yeah. Well, I mean in that one
it was individuals, um. When this one also deals with
some individuals, some groups such as terrorists, organizations um. But

(52:39):
in in the Panama papers case, it was individual human
beings offshore transactions that were supposed to be private and
secret and not necessarily illegal right ostensibly. Yeah, but it's
still showed big chunks of money getting moved around by
individual humans that they didn't want you to know about.
We have to do an episode on us. Yeah, this

(53:01):
is the whole this whole episode you guys, HSBC, though
for years, for the better part of a decade, we've
been using that at the point to actual conspiracies, not
conspiracy theories. They what this is the bank longtime listeners
that specifically reconstructed their teller windows to accept large deposits

(53:22):
from It's true. God, I remember that. Oh and let's
let's not forget guys. It kind of went under the
radar for us. We I think we mentioned it back
in the day. It was right towards the tail end
of our major video era. UM where standard standard and
chartered or standard chartered UM a bank in I believe,

(53:47):
uh the UK is that correct standard chartered large bank.
In two thousand and twelve, they were accused of conspiring
with Iran for a decade to move two hundred and
fifty billion dollars in secret transactions. And they were also
found to be linked with a couple of other groups

(54:08):
that appear to have been financing terrorists acts in Israel
and other places. UM, I mean these are you know,
we're naming these banks off the HSBC, Standard Chartered JP Morgan,
We've mentioned Wacovia, We've done episodes on them. Now they
were just doing terrible things, laundering money for drug cartels too.

(54:29):
It's just it's it's insane. And in this case we've
got we've got a ton of stuff to go through
thanks to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and BuzzFeed News.
So what other do is recommend everyone goes to I
see i J dot org and check out the giant

(54:49):
article titled global banks defy US crackdowns by serving oligarch's
criminals and terrorists. Look through it Uh, digest what you can.
There is a lot there and very soon, Ben, I'm
looking at you specifically for this. Very soon, we'll come
back with a deep dive into this topic. Yeah, that's

(55:11):
our that's our plan. It's unfortunate because it is developing stories,
so we run the risk of run the risk of
something new happening. But we'll just cover it in a
breaking update. Depending on who get we'll get, we'll get
two to five episodes. Has this been like blasted across

(55:33):
the cable news networks and stuff? I don't know, Like
I don't. I don't have cable, so I couldn't tell you.
I haven't seen uh last week tonight yet, but I
imagine this is a big story. Yeah, it's very recent.
It broke yesterday, I believe at least um, Yeah, broke it, yeah,
on September, and I had seen something. This is weird.

(55:55):
But I know this makes me sound sketchy, but I
had seen some uh rumblings or rumors or speculation as
early as September. But to me, that only means that
someone with knowledge of the upcoming publication new. When stuff
like this breaks in the public sphere, that usually means

(56:18):
for several months, if not years, people have been quietly
investigating it, and it's a huge gamble to take. I mean,
journalists get a hard time, right, but there are some
of the there are some of the hardest working people
on this planet, and often they are the most imperiled.

(56:38):
So be nice to your journalist friends. Uh. They don't
get paid what they should and they're doing this for you,
not for their egos. That's really good. You know. The
The other big story just to come out of this
and we'll be will be done here is that the
stock prices for a lot of these banks has They've
just been hammered as of right now because of this story,

(57:02):
which doesn't always happen. Time for a bailout. I mean
imagine like imagine, imagine you clearly break the law as
an individual, and you get hit with a fine but
not jail time, and then you say, oh, that finds
a lot, and then the government comes in and says,
how much money do you need? That's what's happening. Like

(57:24):
I mean, even with the HSBC thing, like where they
literally admitted to laundering close to a billion dollars for
drug cartels. Not to be repetitive, I think they paid
about two billion fines. Uh, to avoid being you know,
having to essentially have any real consequences outside of you know,
paying money. Not that that's not a lot of money.
If you think about how much money they make over

(57:44):
the long term, Uh, it's sort of pennies. Uh. And
then it turns out as part of this league that
they have been doing business with Russian organized crime again.
Well again, I mean, you know, they're not they're not,
they're not Latin American drug hotels, but they're still doing
illegal stuff in a very real way because there's really

(58:06):
no holding these folks accountable, and there's so much money
to be made from people who are very, very wealthy,
and you do not want they don't want that milk
to stop flowing, you know from the Okay, I'm gonna
stop that image there, but they don't want it to stop.
It's it's not in their best interests to like follow
up on this until to your point, Ben, the the
fox pointing the finger at the other fox or themselves.

(58:29):
Maybe you'll point at another fox if it's your competitive
fox and you want that fox out of your handhouse
so you can eat all the hens. But even then
we've talked about even when we were on Harmontown. How
they don't that doesn't happen. You don't really see people
that are at that level going to war with each
other because they're all kind of in the same echelon
and they're all benefiting off of each other in a weird,

(58:51):
you know, symbiotic parasitic relationship, incestuous, I would add. But
also we have to remember, I'll take pains to make
this clear. Uh, what appear to be distinctions between many
of these institutions, criminal and financial, The things that appear

(59:12):
to be distinct entities uh in in the local news.
Those distinctions are often pageantry past a certain financial threshold.
They are very much like uh, subsidiaries of a larger thing.
And I know that feels conspiratorial, and perhaps it is,
but it also has the benefit of being factual. It's

(59:34):
it's boggas bunts and being everybody. That's that's all you
need to know. That's what it is. That Harry Potter, No,
it's fantastic, Mr Fox. It's ridiculous though. I mean, that's
we have to do an episode on this because we
we have to ask ourselves why this leak comes about.
When it comes about, Um, we have to ask ourselves,

(59:59):
what if any consequences will occur because these places will go,
these entities will go about on their merry way. It's
not and we're not saying, of course, like I was
thinking about this, I wanted to be fair to every
side involved. Think about um, think about the possible sea
level executives at international bank who don't want to go

(01:00:20):
along with this, but realize that their bosses are heavy
in with drug cartels or oligarchs, and you know, it goes.
It can very quickly go past the idea of oh, no,
my jobs on the line to holy crap, they know
where my children live. And I know that's not alarmists,
but that is very true, and I think, yeah, it's true.

(01:00:43):
So think about this, think about like, just to let
you know how unfair the situation is in the eyes
of the law in the Western abroad. Uh, Let's go
back to that example of what how the consequences of
your actions differ if you are a bank. You know,
if you're a bank, you go to court and you know,
you say you're on While I do not admit wrongdoing

(01:01:04):
in the unfortunate death of blah blah blah or the
theft of YadA, YadA, YadA. I do agree in the
interest of of you know, saving everybody time, I do
agree to a billion dollar fine. Uh. And also I
would like to file a motion your honor for you
to pay that billion dollar fine. Because if I'm too

(01:01:25):
big to fail, am I not too big to jail?
You know what I mean? Like that? That logic is
spooky and it works. Yeah. The other spooky logic here
is put yourself in the position of being a company
that literally sells money essentially. I mean, that's what your
company is, right. You bring in money so that you

(01:01:46):
can lend out money, and that's it. And you've got
a bunch of nameless, faceless individuals, which is the case.
It's in the case of a lot of these it's
um people who are trying to put money into the bank,
into a specific banking system. They don't have a name
identity associated with them, but they're trying to make massive

(01:02:08):
deposits into the bank. And how why do you Why
would you say no to that? Because you want to
be a good person. I mean, I hope that we
would say no to that, right, But in the end,
the system itself needs that kind of influx of a
million dollars here, twenty million dollars there, a billion dollars

(01:02:32):
over here in order to continue functioning with their pinkies
in their mouths. I mean, it's just it all makes
it all makes you feel gross, and you know what,
I can't wait to talk about it further. Yes, yes,
So we are keeping an eye on this, and I

(01:02:55):
think we we we we've shared here, should it hopefully
overall be somewhat in aspiring because social dilemma aside, technology outpas,
the evolution aside. What we have to remember is that
this is information. This feeds us and this can help
us make more informed, more prescient decisions in the future.

(01:03:16):
I think you know to your point, and Noll, I
think they're going to be more Facebook leaks to your point, Matt,
I think this is just the beginning of the finn
Sech corruption story and the leaks. And uh, I don't
know if we're gonna find any living thing on Venus,
uh but right in the clouds. But if we do,

(01:03:37):
how cool would it be? One thinks for sure we
are going to be back with more strange news very soon,
and we want your help. We want to hear from you.
What do you think about Facebook leaks? Do you want
to tell us on our Facebook page, because of course
we have one. What do you think about finn sec uh?
Do you work at a bank? What's your perspective on this?

(01:03:59):
Is just this just c O B is a cost
of doing business? Are we being too precious about the
law as it's written? And what do you think about venus?
What do you think the followed is? Does it matter
if we find life on another planet? Is it just
a cool merit badge? Does it warrant a rename? What
do you think? Let us know. You can reach out

(01:04:21):
to us in the ways that events have via the
Facebook group, which is Who's what it gets crazy. You
can do it on the social media is pretty much
every social media that you can think of, where we
are conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show um, why not
give us a call, leave us a voicemail and we'll
tell them about that map. Sure, our number is one
eight three three st d w y t K. Pick

(01:04:44):
up your phone, call it right now. Say whatever you want.
If you've got some cool input that's gonna change our
minds about something, or it's gonna send us down a
rabbit hole, that's probably your best option, or you know,
if you're just gonna make us laugh, because as everybody
needs that right now, please feel free to do so,
but be sure and let us know if you don't

(01:05:05):
want us to use your name, or if you're just
in general cool with us using your voicemail on the show,
or if you are okay with us using it, but
you'd either us not use your name. Just just just be
specific so that we know how to respectfully deal with
your audio nugget that you leave us and if you're down,
you might hear it on an episode of our weekly
listener mail segment. Yes, so please leave us your audio nuggets. Um,

(01:05:28):
we can't wait to go go through the They don't
want to do those things, but how else can they
reach out to us? We have a one way to
reach out to us seven no matter what time of
day it is, no matter where you are on or
off the planet, can send us good old fashioned email
where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com m H.

(01:06:07):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.