November 8, 2021 • 51 mins
A man in Luton learns his identity was stolen -- and someone sold his house. In Shinjuku, a man dressed as the Joker unsuccessfully attempts mass murder. Despite Project CETI's puntastic name, AI may genuinely allow human beings to speak with sperm whales -- and no one knows what they'll say (perhaps "so long, and thanks for all the fish"). All this and more in this week's Strange News.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. A lot of things have
been going on. Sad news story to report at the beginning,
(00:46):
we are officially past Halloween. Uh you know, it's a
little bit of a blues situation. Uh. Now, you guys
both have kids. Did you have Halloween adventures? I did.
It was the first year that my kid went trick
or treating with her crew. Uh Sam's parents, and they
totally came back alive. I was very pleased with that outcome. Congratulations, dude,
(01:08):
that's a big step buds. Yeah. I dawned a night
costume and roamed around with my son as he wore
a Steve from Minecraft outfit. It was quite great. Oh,
I think I saw that posted somewhere. Yeah, that minecraft
outfit was impressive. Man. Yeah, and it comes out as
(01:31):
a box right, Well, it looked good. It was actually
one of my favorite costumes that I saw this year. Uh.
In in other news, we know that situations continue to
deteriorate in several countries facing coups who we know that
the world is kind of burning down. A lot of
people here in the US are maybe nervous about going
(01:53):
to see their extended family for the next holiday Thanksgiving,
and uh, the housing cristis continues. Maybe that's where first
story starts. This is uh, this is a very personal
housing crisis. If you want to hear about the more
macro level housing crisis, check out our episodes on foreign
investment in housing markets. But if you want to hear
(02:16):
one of the strangest stories that we found recently about houses,
then uh, check this out, Matt. This is something that
you dug up. Yes it is. It comes from the
news strangely. You know, if you want to find out
why the housing crisis, just try and get qualified to
buy a house right now. Good luck to you, good lord. Um.
(02:37):
But this this one comes to us from Luton, Luton
in Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, and um, it goes a little
something like this, at least according to the headline, Luton
man left shocked as his house is stolen. Now you
(02:58):
may ask yourself, how could one steal a house? Is
it mobile asking myself just that, Matthew, I was asking
myself just that. H No, that is not how you
can steal a house. You can steal a house by
impersonating someone's identity, by stealing that identity and then uh
going through a solicitor or a real estate agent here
(03:19):
in the States and uh convincing them you are that person,
and then putting the house up for sale, selling it
and then taking the money. Oh, that sounds scared. And
just to make sure everyone is a where solicitor is
not a real estate agent, that's not a one to one.
A solicitor would be like an attorney, a lawyer or
somebody like that. But here in the States, it's very
(03:39):
often that there's an attorney and a real estate agent
that worked closely together when you're making a home purchase
or selling a home. Um. So that's what happened to
a fellow. According to the BBC and an investigation that
the BBC and the show You and Yours did one
of the primary journalists associated with the story Sherry s
(04:01):
H A. R I v A h L. Sherry Vall
And just some great reporting here. Okay, this this man
named Reverend Mike Hall, was not living in Luton in
his home, the home that he owned. He was living
in Wales, which is somewhat quite quite a bit actually
(04:22):
to the east, four and a half five hours east
of this area in Luton. And he was notified by
his neighbors that all the lights were on in his
home and there was somebody moving about in that home,
and they knew that he was not currently living there,
so they were a bit perplexed. So this man, Mike,
(04:43):
drove you know, the four hours or however long it
took for him to get back to his house, tried
to get into his front door of the home that
he owns, that his name is on the title, you know,
the property deed, and his key doesn't work on the lock.
So he knocks at the door. This person lets him in,
and this person says to Mike, well, I hey, I'm
(05:04):
just doing some some building on the home. Mike notices
that absolutely everything is stripped out of that house. Again
that he owns the furniture, parts of the walls, parts
of the ceiling. The whole thing is being redone without
his knowledge. Then, you know, he he basically calls foul right,
(05:24):
this is my freaking house. Get out of here. The
dude who was in the house leaves, only to return
with some other person that explains that this home was
purchased in July of this year and they've got the
uh you know, they've got the paperwork for that sale
and everything. So Mike is freaking out. He then uh
(05:47):
calls up the authorities that have the thing in the
United Kingdom called the land Register. This is the only
official record of who owns what land, what property is,
what persons right and within this land registry, if your
name is on a piece of property, then you own
that land no matter what. And if you can somehow
(06:09):
sneak your way in and put your name onto that
land registry rather than the person who actually owns it,
you now own that land unless you can go through
some very gosh long procedural stuff to you know, show
that fraud has occurred and change it back to your name.
Let's say, if you're the property owner like Mike, Well,
turns out somebody had gone to essentially what it would
(06:33):
be the d m V here in the United States,
but it's the d v l A is what it's
called there in the UK. And they had used Mike's identity,
like parts of his identity and information to get a
brand new driver's license, like a replacement one that you've
probably done before in your lives. Um, I know I've
(06:55):
done that before. This person was able to trick the
d v l A into giving issuing or reissuing a
driver's license that had a different address, that had a
different signature, and a couple other different things. But I
had a lot of the primary information on there to
prove that it was it was Mike, even though it
(07:18):
was not. Then whoever whoever did this identity theft, took
that license, placed a different photograph into it, essentially of
whoever this person was going to be that make that
was impersonating Mike to make the sale, and then used
that successfully to make this home purchase occur. And then
(07:38):
they took the money a hundred and thirty one thousand
pounds and just left. Uh. Pretty crazy. Yeah. One of
my first questions for you here, Matt is do you
think that the pandemic and COVID procedures made it easier
to perpetrate this kind of theft, Like was it was
(08:00):
it possible that he was just doing it online and
just had the right information. I can't tell you precisely
that that's what happened, but I'm just with you. I
think that's probably the case. Right, nobody's actually going in
to the d v l A or you don't have
to go into the d v l A to prove
who you are in the same way during COVID restrictions
as you would in normal times. Whatever that will be
(08:22):
in the future or what it was in the past,
But I can totally see that that step, that physical
step away from being in person doing some of these
things would cause it to be easier. Yeah, And I'm
wondering how they can now figure out who this who
the fake Mike is? Who's Mike too? You know? How
do they do a a mic check in new sorts
(08:45):
of situations like UH? Is it would they be able
to use facial recognition of this person's photograph? Would they be?
I I don't know, because I went to while we're talking,
just for curiosity's sake, I hopped onto gov dot UK
UH you know, and I was looking at the process
of renewing license, which it appears you can do online
(09:08):
in its entirety. Yeah. And one of the reasons they
know kind of well, I mean you're talking about facial recognition.
They've got a picture of somebody whoever that you know,
somebody who was a part of it, right, somebody who
pretended to be Mike in one situation or another where
documents were changed hands or something, right, And that i
(09:30):
D was needed because the copy of that i D
is with the BBC folks who did the investigation as
well as I guess this I don't know. I don't
know who it is because it's not the police. This
is not a criminal offense in the same way you'd
imagine a lot of other crimes like this maybe should be.
(09:51):
This is considered a civil thing, I guess in Bedfordshire,
So they can't like press charges in the same way
against this person too. Then you know, have the law
enforcement do facial recognition to track this person down. But
they do have voice. They do have the voice of
somebody who was a part of this team perhaps or
(10:12):
maybe it's the same person. They've got a voice recording
from the solicitor, the attorney with whom this person worked
to sell the house. And there's two two recordings of
it where you can hear this person's voice clearly and
again BBC you and yours. That's the program they've You
can go there and listen to it. Uh it's BBC
dot CEO dot UK slash sounds and you can find
(10:36):
it there. So are you saying that that what would
typically be considered evidence of a crime is like somehow
an admissible in this situation, that they can't run vocal
recognition to tie this to a person's identity. Well, I mean,
it's just I'm just saying it when it's not a
police investigation, at least according to what the BBC is saying.
And Mike, according to mine, he went to the police
(10:56):
and tried to, you know, write up a report like
a crime report work, right, But they said, no, this
is not a crime. This is a civil offense. We
can't do anything about it. But you can, you know,
go down all these other routes. So I'm just imagining
it'd be more difficult to like get those resources to
do I don't know, vocal recognition, facial recognition, all that stuff.
Let me add a bit of Carmen here if we
(11:18):
haven't mentioned it before. And if you're the thief and
you're listening to the show, you know, first off, thanks
for tuning in. You know, don't agree with your choices,
but give us a review. And here's the thing. This
guy is a vicar, so you're stealing from a religious
figure as well. Yeah, yeah, not great, um, And just
(11:41):
a terrible situation to be in if you, you know,
own a property and that's a lot of money, especially
who knows how much you've got invested into it, how
much maybe your mortgage was worth, or how much you had.
It's just a terrible situation to have it completely taken
out from under you, and it seems like you don't
have much you can do about it. Um. And plus
(12:03):
you know what if the people who purchased that property
were completely innocent, just there was some a fraudster is
what the BBC or first to them as some fraudster
sold it to you, and now what you've got to
give the property back and then try and get your
money back somehow out they did everything right on their end,
(12:24):
they just didn't know that there was a fake Mike
in the mix. You know exactly there was a fake Mike. Um, okay,
So last thing we're gonna just mention here. If you
are in the UK, first listen to that that BBC
UH I guess I think it's a podcast or maybe
just a radio program. Listen to that, get some of
(12:46):
the details for yourself. You can read in the BBC
U the story itself, and then check on maybe your situation,
your your identity situation. Because the v l A alerted
the real Mike that someone tried to reissue his driver's
license d v l A again like the d m
(13:07):
V here in the US, and Mike said, no, I
haven't had my license reissued. The d v l A
then says, okay, well we'll rescind this new one that
we just issued. No problem. But I guess they didn't
do it in time, or they didn't do it effectively enough,
and this person was able to impersonate Mike. Still, if
you're in the US, you can go to a bunch
(13:27):
of different places. I found a great article on Quicken loans,
which you know, it's not a plug for them, but
they've got a great article that shows what you can
do to kind of protect yourself if you're a property
owner of any kind against this kind of abuse, I
guess yeah, and that I'm wondering. Um. From from what
(13:48):
I was reading, it looks like this case is of
course a bummer, but it's also maybe not necessarily unique.
Mike is not alone here in the UK. The you
you can look on that BBC article and actually find
out that there was what three point five million pounds
worth of compensation due to fraud, uh that the land
(14:12):
Registry Registry paid out over the last year. So I mean,
if you think this is one thirty one thousand pounds,
if you multiply that out, I mean, that's not a
ton of land registry fraud in this way, but it's enough.
And if you jump to the US and you think
about it, and you know, any other country, but specifically
(14:33):
in the US. According to that Quicken Loans article, the
FBI says that nine thousand six victims lost over fifty
six million dollars in two thousand seventeen due to real
estate and rental fraud. So this this is a real problem.
It's just it depends on when you catch it. Like
(14:54):
when you catch that the problem is occurring, right, because
if it gets too far along in the process, then
it's very difficult to at least get money back. So
stale alert, folks, that's right, st alert. We're going to
jump to a quick commercial break and we will be
right back with more strange news and we're back. Um.
(15:20):
This story is definitely a bit of a bummer, UM,
but it is kind of an escalation of the type
of some some types of stories that we've covered over
the years. The idea that a lot of Asian countries
have very very tight gun laws so they don't have
mass shootings in the way that we do here in
the United States was obviously a very very good thing. Unfortunately,
(15:41):
that does not mean there aren't uh mass attacks that
take place often in public settings like schools or train stations. UM. Recently,
we talked about a story out of Singapore where a
lot of concerned parents were understandably upset about some creepy
louns that were hanging out outside of schools. Um turned
(16:02):
out they were just passing out flyers or trying to
hit these kids to this like special learning academy to
like you know, do test practices or test prepper or whatever.
UH in that particular company rightfully got an earful on
the internet. UM. Today unfortunately we have the reason that
(16:23):
things like that would be of concern to two parents.
UM a young man twenty four year old in Japan.
In Tokyo. UM dressed up as the joker, particularly the
uh I. Guess it was kind of a combination of
the Joaquin Phoenix joker and the Heath Ledger joker. Wearing
kind of a purple suit and a green shirt. UM
(16:47):
went on a stabbing rampage. UM on a train on
the way to Shinjuku, which is a very very busy
train station. UM. In Tokyo. It was the Kyo Line
ka Io. UM. He had a knife and he apparently
just went wild, slashing and stabbing people while also dousing
(17:10):
the train cars in lighter fluid UM and according to
some reports, set a few small fires. There were seventeen
people that were injured in the attack, some that were cut,
one man that was stabbed in the chest, UM, and
some others that were injured by smoke inhalation. If you
can imagine setting a fire in a closed system like
(17:32):
one of those moving subway cars would be bad news.
If it was you know enough, UM, you can definitely
get some nasty smoke inhalation from that. UM. The chilling
part about this is that the young man named Kyota
Ha tore Um, after he finished his spree, he just
sat in the train car with his legs crossed, smoking
(17:54):
a cigarette. UH. And there's video of people screaming and
running and fear and panic, and then there is one
quick shot, it's like something out of a found footage
horror film, UM, of this guy just sitting by himself,
smoking a cigarette, wearing this joker outfit. UM. And he apparently,
according to what he told police, UM admired the joker
(18:16):
as a character, you know, the clown prince of crime.
He was known for sewing havoc and just kind of
being an agent of chaos UM. And he was hoping
that he would get the death penalty. He specifically said
that he wanted the death penalty, and he was very
disappointed that he didn't actually kill anybody. He didn't manage
to kill anybody. UM. So, while this is horrific, UH,
(18:39):
these types of lone wolf attacks in other countries, specifically
our country, typically you're not going to walk away from
that without some fatalities because these folks are using you know,
military grade weapons that are you know, semi automatic or
fully automatic weapons In this situation, it's one man with
a with a you know, a blade of stabbing in
(19:00):
a pleamnant. Um. So there has to be some precision
involved as opposed to just kind of you know, just
spraying a train car with bullets, where you're probably gonna
have a huge number of fatality. So the fact that
the one was killed, uh is obviously a huge blessing, um,
But it is very very troubling them. The man was
described by folks who knew him in the same way
(19:22):
as as folks like this are often described as is
not having very many friends, as being very quiet, someone
who they would never think would take any initiative. Is
a quote that was printed in a Japanese publication called
Kyodo News. There's an English language version of that story. UM.
And it's just, you know, it's the same kind of
(19:43):
thing we hear and in the states of these lone
wolf attackers that you know, we're oh, they seem so
innocuous and and unthreatening. Um. But this this man apparently
had been thinking about killing for a long time. UM.
He said that he had been having trouble with war,
he had lost his job, likely due to some of
these anti social issues. Uh. And he had also you know,
(20:06):
he just vaguely kind of referred to the collapse of
his relationships. Um. But you can definitely see video of this.
There's stills of like a fire in a in a
train car further down, and smoke kind of flooding in.
So these were not just small fires. You can actually
see in the doorway that connects the two train cars
an absolute blaze. Um. So yeah, that's that's really the
(20:29):
gist of it. Um. This is one of a handful
of these types of attacks. There was an acid attack
on a train station also in Tokyo. UM. There was
another attack earlier in October. October fift or two men
were stabbed by a man at a j R we
know station. Um. And also in late August there was
(20:51):
a man who sprayed sulfuric acid in the face of
another man. So, you know, while the gun laws are
obviously keeping these attacks from claiming so many lives, these
particularly grizzly and up close and personal types of attacks
are truly troubling. Um. I don't know, guys, I mean,
(21:11):
we're not here to psychoanalyze the population of Japan or
anything like that. But I think it's no different than
any other city or any other culture maybe, and just
the fact that the laws are different sort of leads
to the types of attacks that we're seeing. But also
they aren't nearly as common as you know, gun attacks
here in the United States. Yeah, and there are there
(21:32):
are a couple of the things we should take note
of here. His reasons, at least from you know, he's
reading Japanese news on this, his reasons um seem a
little vague. Like you said, he said he wasn't getting
on well with his friends. He it sounds like the
thing that was really the feather on the camel's back
(21:52):
here was the Uh he felt he had messed up
at work, but the police they had no fixed address,
so he was all read a kind of on the
outs of society. On a larger scale, what we can
see is that there is a dangerous predictor for instability
in a population, and it's disaffected young men without community. Right,
(22:17):
That's one of the that's one of the big factors
that can lead to instability in any society. Uh. This guy, clearly,
as you said, thought about this for some time. Who
was only he's twenty four right when this occurs. Yeah, so,
um what it was on Halloween by the way, Yeah,
(22:39):
we don't know what the We don't know what the
legal decisions will be here. There is one person in
critical condition, I think, but so far they have not
passed away. That's going to be one of the big,
big factors of what happens to him. And if he
does get the death penalty. Do you guys know how
the death penalty works in Japan? It's horrified. I don't.
(23:01):
I'd love to, not love to surprisingly stuff, but I
have no idea actually they So if you get sentenced
to the death penalty in Japan, you're on death row.
One thing that you will not know is your date
of execution. One day, they will just walk in and
they will take you and they will execute you. Might
(23:23):
be I believe executions are mainly carried out by hanging
in Japan, which is a nasty way to go, of course.
But but what you know, if if the one person
is in critical condition now actually does expire, then it
could become a death penalty case. I mean, it's obviously premeditated.
(23:47):
I don't know what kind of mental health arguments could
be made, and I don't know how they would fly
in the Japanese legal system. You know what I'm saying,
I got a question for you. If a guy like
this wants to be executed on death, I mean obviously
wants to make a big show of it. Um, he's
not beholden to hire a lawyer who's going to make
a good argument for him, right, you know what? Uh,
(24:09):
I don't know. I don't know because I've luckily never
been involved with the Japanese legal system in that regard. Shot.
I'm getting that though. Yeah, Like, if someone really was
had it, you know, in their mind they wanted to
be executed by the state, couldn't. I mean again, we know,
like here, for example, you could probably torpedo your own
case by representing yourself poorly, um or just you know,
(24:30):
swearing off your right to an attorney. I'm just interested.
I would be interested to know how that works in Japan.
But also it really does speak to this guy's mental state.
If he wanted to die so badly, why not just
kill himself as opposed to making such a big show
of it and then being executed by the city. Obviously
has some some kind of delusions of grandeur or some
sort of form of megalomania where he needs to be
(24:52):
like the center of attention in some way. It seems
certainly I believe he said maybe in that France twenty
four article that he wanted to die, but he couldn't
do it himself, so he came up with a plan
to die. Yeah, I don't know, And I'm just I'm
thinking back particularly to the Halloween thing, that this that
(25:13):
he carried it out on Halloween when there are multiple
people probably on that train, definitely in the train station
around the train station, that are in costume. He would
not you wouldn't think twice seeing a joker walking around
on Halloween night. And he chose that day amidst that
confusion that's already there to carry out this attack that
(25:36):
I mean, that alone should lead to whatever he gets,
you know, officially charged with. And and how a judge
adjudicates that the system for deciding the death penalty or
a conviction of any sort is pretty fascinating. Is different
from what happens in the US district courts. Try these
(25:59):
capital caces, you with a team of like three professional
judges and then six citizens non judges chosen at random.
Is that like a stand in for a jury. Uh.
They it's called the lay judge system. Interesting, so this
is a different environment. But I would point out, so
I've been dishing Juku and you know, you guys are right,
(26:21):
it's a big, big place. Uh. It's also not unusual
to see people in costume in general, you know what
I mean, Like the district for that. Isn't that like
the like one of the big districts for like fashion.
Now that's hard as Juku s I'm confusing my Jukus.
But still in Japan in general, I mean, it's like
not on common to see people cosplaying, you know, all
over the place, right exactly there was when I was there,
(26:45):
I saw some people in costume as well. But to
your point, Matt, Uh, people in Japan are aware of
the tradition of Halloween, and I think it's been growing
in popularity for a number of years now. It is interesting,
um speaking to his mindset in terms of how he
viewed his victims. Uh. There is a scene in the
(27:06):
Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie where, at a pivotal moment in
you know whatever his character's name is, Gary Fleck or whatever,
his transformation into the Joker, he kills some bully type
men on a subway train, and that sort of marks
his metamorphosis, the beginning of his like metamorphosis into the Joker. UM.
(27:29):
So I'm wondering if this guy, I mean, obviously he
had to have some malice towards those who you know,
rejected him, or in some way he couldn't like break
through and have a connection with um The reports, you know,
from the passengers that were on the train say he
just like acted like a robot. He had no emotion
(27:51):
uh in in in the act as he carried it out.
And I saw that he specifically said to the police
that it didn't matter who is victims were. He just
thought that he killed what two or more people, he'd
be a shoeing for the death penalty. I guess that's right. Yeah,
I don't know. I just think that the connection between
the scene and the Joker and him in the particular
type of outfit that he chose to wear me I
(28:13):
don't know. I'm probably overthinking it, but I think you're right.
I think at the end of the day, his end
game was just to you know, kill as many people
as possible, which, thankfully, in this type of situation is
not as easy as one might think. One person with
a knife, you're not going to have a high kill
rate unless you're incredibly precise and know exactly what you're doing. Um,
people were able to escape out of windows. Um. You've
(28:36):
got accounts from you know, commuters that say they barely
escaped the train car that he was on. Um, but
they thankfully did and many that that spoke to the
press were not injured at all. Uh. And to your
point Ben about Halloween that hey, that's my fall guys.
Um just looking at the footage of the actual incident,
and almost nobody is wearing a costume because they're not
(28:58):
celebrating Halloween widely. About that very American centric there on
my part. Oh no, no, I mean I think it
was from about the year two thousand. Since then, Halloween
has been growing in popularity, So even if people were
dressed up, they were aware of it. And Juko is
a huge place, So, like Goal was saying earlier, it
is an unusual to see someone in costume. If you
(29:22):
want a really cool on a very light on a
much letter note, if you want to you want to cool,
look at how Japan has handled some other Western holidays.
Look at the KFC and Christmas. It's an amazing story.
Still still not sure how I feel about it, but
KFC is huge for Christmas in Japan. That's right, we
did an episode about the reticulous history. If I'm not mistaken, Um,
(29:45):
and Matt, you're not wrong that he he had come
from a particular district that was very Halloween e um.
And also the BBC, I'm sorry. The Guardian reporting on
it says, quote witnesses told public broadcaster and a k
how petrified passengers had fled to adjoining carriages and jumped
out of windows during the attack, which occurred on Sunday,
when the Japanese capital was full of Halloween revelers, many
(30:08):
and costume. So I mean the footage we have is
is limited, Okay, indicated right, Um, But this story is
nothing but wrong and um it's a very sad story. Again,
I'm not trying to soapbox here about gun control or anything,
but it does show that having some form of gun
(30:31):
control does keep these incidents from causing more deaths. You know, Um,
if this was somebody with a submachine gun, you know,
it would have been a much higher fatality rate. So
with that, let's take one more pause for a word
from our sponsor, and then be back with one more
strange news, and we have returned. We're not gonna leave
(30:55):
you hanging with these grim stories of of crime, of
of depravity and tragedy. And you know, stealing somebody's identity
and then stealing their house. Those are two terrible things.
We wanted to end today with something that could maybe
not be terrible, but it could also be terrible. Here's
(31:17):
I was thinking about how to get into this story.
It amazed me. You guys know, I read pretty widely
about weird things like this. Uh, we all know what
a sperm whale is. It's the most hilariously named whale. Right.
Uh there, you're a child like we are, which we are,
right right, It's also sperm whale. Uh, it's all. It's
(31:38):
also a credibly intelligent cetacean. It's brain is enormous. And
if I could, I just want to say, I think
it's delightful that you can both giggle about sperm whale
but then also use the very smart word cetacean. Uh.
You contain multitudes of my friend, it's too kind. That
goes for everyone, every one of us, and every one
(32:01):
of us listening at home. We do contain multitudes. Uh,
here's the thing. For a long time, people have been
arguing over whether or not animals have something called language.
For a lot of folks in in academia and in
the world of science, language is almost like one of
(32:22):
the last bastions of human exclusivity. The more we have
learned about animals over millennia, the more we have learned
that they are, in some cases capable of doing things
that we would normally think only people could do, Like
animals can make tools, animals can teach their young, knowledge
transmitted across generations for a long time. Uh. Some my
(32:46):
favorite birds, corvids are an excellent, if at times disturbing
example of this. And citations as well are incredibly intelligent.
They have You know, you've all heard the idea of
like whale communication. We've heard of whale songs, and you've
you've probably gotten a chance to hear some of those
(33:07):
online before. Yeah. Yeah, it's not exactly the newest Limp
Biscuit album, but there's definitely a structure to it and
it's just one of those things. Wait, one of those days,
dang it, I screwed up the Limp biscuit reference. Please, yes,
that's what that's that's our olympiscuits. Shout out, we did it, guys,
(33:28):
we got there. So So, sperm whales actually speak in clicks,
so they make these clicking noises think almost like Morse code,
and their rhythmic and they're in the series called codas,
and these codas appear to be communication. Now, people who
don't believe that animals, non human animals, i should say,
(33:52):
can communicate through language would say, well, they don't have
two of the big defining factors of language, which are
things like grammar. Uh, that turns out not to be
entirely true. Grammar, you know, grammars the reason that we
order words in the way that we order them, regardless
of which language you're talking about, or at least that
(34:15):
goes with most languages. There's this excellent article in the
Atlantic by Christophe Drosser and Hakai magazine which is about
the newest attempt to speak to wales, to speak to cetaceans.
It's pretty it's pretty amazing. Um. But before we talk
(34:36):
about it, I'd like for us all to recall one
of the other famous attempts to communicate with cetaceans, when
people were getting l s d d up with a
dolphin and eventually uh laed to. I mean, there's no
other way to say it. Lad to Atlanta hands stuff dolphin.
(34:57):
There's some slippery critters, let me tell you. Yeah, well, yeah,
put them in and put them in a flooded chamber
with a with a attractive lady hopped up on LSD.
I mean things are gonna happen. Some low lights got
shot a play in, you know, with a fliet storm.
Where did my hands end and your fins begin? There's
(35:20):
a dorsal fin I believe the technical thinking about flap
adoos flap ads. Yeah, uh so, it's so okay. People
know that there is a complex communication pattern and a
lot of citaceans doesn't meet length the standards of what
(35:41):
people call language. That's still up for debate in a
lot of folks minds. But now human civilization, we finally
have an answer to that question because people are using
artificial intelligence and machine learning two figure out when the
spur whales have a language, and if possible, whether humans
(36:05):
can speak directly to the whales. This is the aim
of something called Project Setti Cetacean Translation Initiative. You know,
it's like SETI with an S, but they're searching for
intelligence beneath the waves, so whatever and deep deep deep below. Um.
(36:25):
So obviously lots of members of the animal kingdom, you know, communicate.
It's obviously functional, you know, like oh, there's predators over here,
or we're just trying to you know, put out a
call to let you know where other members of your
you know group might be, right, Um, is the sense
that there's some sort of thinking that there might be
more specificity to these whales conversations than just pings like
(36:51):
a submarine. Yeah. The idea is that there because they
have such high intelligence. The ideas that pause sibly, if
this program can work out what whales are saying and
discernments they are saying stuff to each other, then it
would be possible for humans to maybe speak with them
in their own language. But this is like, um, you know,
(37:15):
recently I lent you that book The Story of your
Life and others, and the Story of your Life is
the inspiration for that film Arrival, and Arrival is about
humans trying to figure out how to speak to something
very very different. So we would be in a situation
(37:35):
like this with whales. If this program works out, and
there's still like, it's not right. Now you you have
our word, there's not somebody at Projects Setty discussing you know,
the best parts of the ocean with a whale right
now right, or you know, trying to figure out the
(37:55):
flap ado version of a high five. But this is
my closer to reality than I think a lot of
people might assume. And in my opinion, the reason when
to bring this to everybody is I'm surprised. It's like
getting more coverage, and it's an example of something that
I think all of us have been looking for for
(38:15):
some time, which is highly sophisticated machine learning. That it's
not used as a weapon of war. So if what
I mean yet until you put lasers on the whales
and figure out how to mind control them, or until
if it's a true AI, what if it what if
it listens to the whales, it learns their language and
(38:37):
they make some really good points and it's like, no,
the whales are right, forget you guys, or we can
start to use whales to like, you know, triangulate positions
of of of naval crews, you know, attack squadrons. I'm
obviously not a military analyst here. But you know what
I mean, Like, there would certainly be a way to
weaponize this technology. That's how all good science start now
(39:00):
all but like a lot of good science starts with
the best of intentions and a purely exploratory kind of
thirst for knowledge, and then in the moment that it
becomes worthwhile to co opt into a military purpose, that
thing will happen. Yeah, let's also consider that the there's
still a lot of speed bumps in the way of
First we have to understand what things are saying. It's
(39:23):
not going to do human scientists any good to have
a a bot that, for its own sake understands whale
language and just talks to the whales and the humans
have no idea what they're talking about. Also, if that
could lead to some sort of mutiny in the world order.
But if they can gather huge amounts of data, dat
alone is not going to be enough the language, the
(39:45):
clicking they're making. As a matter of fact, I'd like
to do is have Alexis, could you play us a
sound queue of a sperm whale communicating Matt now, will
check this out. Let me know what you think. Super cool, weird,
(40:24):
It's like it sounds like industrial music. It's got it
very much has this sound of like machinery, like a spoke,
you know, clicking or something like that. Like it's it's
a very um captivating kind of sound. Like it really
does have this science fiction equality to it. Yeah, it's
also the uh, it's also enormously dangerous to humans, like
(40:46):
the decibel wise, the vibrations. Yeah, they actually used these buzzes,
these clicks in these squeaks in their hunting activity. So
if you were too close, this could have a pretty
a pretty rough effect on you as well. But the
question again is is this a language? It sounds so alien,
(41:08):
you know what I mean. There are a few human
languages that use clicks. But we may be asking ourselves,
why would why would you focus this machine learning approach
on sperm whales as opposed to some other whales. The
answer is all in the clicks, because those are easier,
candidly to translate into something quantified zeros and ones click
(41:31):
or not click. You know, it's almost a numerical language
in some ways. It maybe, but again, you know, there
are a lot of people who think language is just
for humans. The other big issue is that it's not
enough just to relay this language. You have to know
if you want to see if the whale understands what
(41:53):
humans are saying through these computers, then you would have
to be able to decode the whales action, right, which
would mean you'd have to know where the whale was
when it heard this whale tail, and then you'd have
to see like it did it move differently? You know
what I mean? Do whales have the equivalent of laughter?
(42:13):
Do they have the equivalent of get the hell out
of my yard? You know what? Do they have? What's
their It's in their toolbox. I think the thing that
a lot of people go back to in these kinds
of stories is Coco, the guerrilla you know where. But
we have to remember too that Coco was taught to
communicate with humans, you know, it was it was a
very like you know, human language forward situation UM, where
(42:34):
Cocoa was taught to interact with humans and taught human
sign language and all of that. UM. So this would
be like the reverse, and they have no frame of
reference for any human concepts, right, it's the same. It
was the same deal in UM and UM arrival totally
reframe you're thinking about language sadly, Um, what experiences they
(42:55):
do have with human beings are probably not positive ones. Unfortunately. Um,
there's there's a funny line that that really got to
be the The leader of the SET program said the following.
He said, we understand that one of our greatest risk
is that the whales could be incredibly boring, So like,
(43:17):
what if? What if they're just funny duds? There's sticks
in the oceanic mud. I doubt that's the case, Um,
but I think it's humble for them to say. I said,
like to leave us with a quote by a guy
named Michael Bronstein. He's an Israeli computer scientist who is
teaching at Imperial College, London, and he's one of the
folks who's intimately tied up with projects SETTI, and he
(43:40):
said something I would like to I'd like to share
with you guys. He says, I think it is very
arrogant to think that Homo sapiens is the only intelligent
and sentient creature on Earth. If we discover that there
is an entire civilization basically under our news, maybe it
will result in some shift in the way that we
treat our environment, and maybe it will result in more
(44:01):
respect for the living world, optimistic. I don't know, what
do you guys think? What do you think the whales
are gonna say? You humans? I can't this is this
is a really dumb thing to bring up. I'm gonna
(44:21):
do anyway, Because we just finished Halloween. I recently or
the other night for on Halloween or maybe it was Halloween,
Eve watched the quite terrible Stephen King film adaptation um
he actually directed himself, called Maximum Overdrive. That rediant piece
of art. It's it's something, but it's about, you know,
this alien intelligence that inhabits uh machines on Earth. And
(44:47):
the very first scene is Stephen King in his like
you know, um obligatory cameo um trying to get some
money out of an A t M machine and the
little you know, head kind of scroll on the bank
says do you um? And then the uh the A
T M machine screen says you are an atoll. And
(45:10):
then the first line before the title of the movie
comes up as Stephen King goes, Marcia, this machine has
called me an a UM. So, you know, machines don't
probably have the best opinion of humans either, but UM,
I have a feeling if we could interpret the cause
of these whales that it would probably there would be
some knowledge of the horrors that we have wrought on
(45:33):
the oceans and their fellow you know, cetaceans, Well they have,
I mean they have. They are mammals, so they have
a lot of the components needed cognitively for language, their
matriarchal societies. They also their communications. Dude, they have dialects
with spur. Whales have regional dialects, and they're not always
(45:56):
mutually intelligible um or people. You know, Whales don't respond
the same to dissimilar dialects, the same way that you
might not understand, uh, someone who has a very strong
regional English accent of some sort or another, you know.
I mean, we live in the States, and you can
drive to a different state and have a hard time
(46:16):
understanding people. So there's no reason that whales would be
any different. I'm excited, but I don't know where it's
going to go. I wonder, and this is something I
want to leave with the rest of us listening along
at home. I wonder what what they would say. I
wonder how aware they would be, and I wonder what
(46:36):
they would want humans to know. I mean, they're there
familiar with boats. They can be incredibly long lived. They
are aware that there's something on the other side of
the water, They definitely are they probably maybe they just
don't know about continents, you know what I mean. Maybe
(46:58):
maybe they're entire communication is a shared oral history. Maybe
they are telling the story of themselves to the dwindling
number of sperm whales that remain. And if they have
a language, does that mean they could be up for
legal personhood. Check out our episode on legal personhood and
let us know. Also this is random, but just at
(47:20):
the very end, if you could choose one animal, one
kind of animal to talk intelligibly, what would it be? Parrot? Oh? Um,
I don't know. I think, I think, I don't know.
The sea creatures are very ancient and very wise, you
know what I mean, like crocodiles or you know, like
(47:41):
creatures that live for a very very long time. I
think that would be interesting. Yeah, wow, yeah, something deep deep,
deep sea. I'd be interested in finding out angler fish
at the lamp on their heads if we like we've
finally after years of studying what was recorded in the
(48:04):
year that everything uttered by sperm whales, and we find
out that they're just humming the weekend or do a
lipa or something, and they've they've just become overwhelmed with
our pop music scene. Right, it's a different culture war.
You know what if they're stuck in the nineties and
(48:25):
they love Jinko's and math rock, um, and they think
everything is sick and they say, hella a lot, that
would be that would be interesting. I would love to
hear from an octopus. Um. I also discovered that, you know,
the problem with an octopus, which is probably the most
alien form of intelligent life we know about on this
(48:47):
on this planet so far. Problem with is that they
have such short lifespans because their reproductive process is so
inherently inextricably tied to their demise. But there is a
brain surgery you can conduct on a female octopus that
will allow it to live longer. To be very interested
to hear what they have to say. Uh. I know
(49:08):
a lot of our fellow conspiracy realists are going to
kill us if we don't mention this. It is quite
possible that when we do speak dissertations, they say, so
long and thanks for all the fish by tigers got there,
We got there, sperm whales, by the way, I have
a lifespan of seventy years um, whereas I believe, I mean,
(49:29):
I know there they've been around for a long time,
but crocodiles have a much longer lifespan. I think they're
like one of the longest living creatures you know on
the planet, if I'm not mistaken. And the longest living
marine mammal is also a whale. It's not a sperm whale,
though it's called the bowhead whale. We can't wait to
(49:52):
hear what you think, folks. Which animal would you want
to speak with? What is there any audible you definitely
want to avoid speaking with? What do you think is
the future? These real estate crimes and these low wolf attacks?
Let us know. We try to be easy to find online.
You can find us on the Internet and the usual
social media places of note. We are on Facebook, we
(50:13):
are on Twitter. We are on YouTube at the handle
conspiracy Stuff. You can also find us with the handle
conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. UM. On Facebook, you can
also find our group Here's where it gets crazy. Join
that thing. So a lot of good fun folks, good
fun meme exchanges and conversation. You'll be glad you did.
Yes and if you leave the social needs unsipped, instead
(50:35):
use your mouth to contact us. You can call our
number one eight three three st d w y t K.
You have three minutes. You can leave whatever message you
want to give yourself a wonderful nickname. Whatever it is,
we'll take it and uh, you know, say what you want.
But if you can't fit the entire message into three minutes,
(50:55):
instead get your keyboard out, start clacking away, and send
a good old fashioned email address. We are conspiracy at
i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(51:24):
to know is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. A lot of things have
been going on. Sad news story to report at the beginning,
(00:46):
we are officially past Halloween. Uh you know, it's a
little bit of a blues situation. Uh. Now, you guys
both have kids. Did you have Halloween adventures? I did.
It was the first year that my kid went trick
or treating with her crew. Uh Sam's parents, and they
totally came back alive. I was very pleased with that outcome. Congratulations, dude,
(01:08):
that's a big step buds. Yeah. I dawned a night
costume and roamed around with my son as he wore
a Steve from Minecraft outfit. It was quite great. Oh,
I think I saw that posted somewhere. Yeah, that minecraft
outfit was impressive. Man. Yeah, and it comes out as
(01:31):
a box right, Well, it looked good. It was actually
one of my favorite costumes that I saw this year. Uh.
In in other news, we know that situations continue to
deteriorate in several countries facing coups who we know that
the world is kind of burning down. A lot of
people here in the US are maybe nervous about going
(01:53):
to see their extended family for the next holiday Thanksgiving,
and uh, the housing cristis continues. Maybe that's where first
story starts. This is uh, this is a very personal
housing crisis. If you want to hear about the more
macro level housing crisis, check out our episodes on foreign
investment in housing markets. But if you want to hear
(02:16):
one of the strangest stories that we found recently about houses,
then uh, check this out, Matt. This is something that
you dug up. Yes it is. It comes from the
news strangely. You know, if you want to find out
why the housing crisis, just try and get qualified to
buy a house right now. Good luck to you, good lord. Um.
(02:37):
But this this one comes to us from Luton, Luton
in Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, and um, it goes a little
something like this, at least according to the headline, Luton
man left shocked as his house is stolen. Now you
(02:58):
may ask yourself, how could one steal a house? Is
it mobile asking myself just that, Matthew, I was asking
myself just that. H No, that is not how you
can steal a house. You can steal a house by
impersonating someone's identity, by stealing that identity and then uh
going through a solicitor or a real estate agent here
(03:19):
in the States and uh convincing them you are that person,
and then putting the house up for sale, selling it
and then taking the money. Oh, that sounds scared. And
just to make sure everyone is a where solicitor is
not a real estate agent, that's not a one to one.
A solicitor would be like an attorney, a lawyer or
somebody like that. But here in the States, it's very
(03:39):
often that there's an attorney and a real estate agent
that worked closely together when you're making a home purchase
or selling a home. Um. So that's what happened to
a fellow. According to the BBC and an investigation that
the BBC and the show You and Yours did one
of the primary journalists associated with the story Sherry s
(04:01):
H A. R I v A h L. Sherry Vall
And just some great reporting here. Okay, this this man
named Reverend Mike Hall, was not living in Luton in
his home, the home that he owned. He was living
in Wales, which is somewhat quite quite a bit actually
(04:22):
to the east, four and a half five hours east
of this area in Luton. And he was notified by
his neighbors that all the lights were on in his
home and there was somebody moving about in that home,
and they knew that he was not currently living there,
so they were a bit perplexed. So this man, Mike,
(04:43):
drove you know, the four hours or however long it
took for him to get back to his house, tried
to get into his front door of the home that
he owns, that his name is on the title, you know,
the property deed, and his key doesn't work on the lock.
So he knocks at the door. This person lets him in,
and this person says to Mike, well, I hey, I'm
(05:04):
just doing some some building on the home. Mike notices
that absolutely everything is stripped out of that house. Again
that he owns the furniture, parts of the walls, parts
of the ceiling. The whole thing is being redone without
his knowledge. Then, you know, he he basically calls foul right,
(05:24):
this is my freaking house. Get out of here. The
dude who was in the house leaves, only to return
with some other person that explains that this home was
purchased in July of this year and they've got the
uh you know, they've got the paperwork for that sale
and everything. So Mike is freaking out. He then uh
(05:47):
calls up the authorities that have the thing in the
United Kingdom called the land Register. This is the only
official record of who owns what land, what property is,
what persons right and within this land registry, if your
name is on a piece of property, then you own
that land no matter what. And if you can somehow
(06:09):
sneak your way in and put your name onto that
land registry rather than the person who actually owns it,
you now own that land unless you can go through
some very gosh long procedural stuff to you know, show
that fraud has occurred and change it back to your name.
Let's say, if you're the property owner like Mike, Well,
turns out somebody had gone to essentially what it would
(06:33):
be the d m V here in the United States,
but it's the d v l A is what it's
called there in the UK. And they had used Mike's identity,
like parts of his identity and information to get a
brand new driver's license, like a replacement one that you've
probably done before in your lives. Um, I know I've
(06:55):
done that before. This person was able to trick the
d v l A into giving issuing or reissuing a
driver's license that had a different address, that had a
different signature, and a couple other different things. But I
had a lot of the primary information on there to
prove that it was it was Mike, even though it
(07:18):
was not. Then whoever whoever did this identity theft, took
that license, placed a different photograph into it, essentially of
whoever this person was going to be that make that
was impersonating Mike to make the sale, and then used
that successfully to make this home purchase occur. And then
(07:38):
they took the money a hundred and thirty one thousand
pounds and just left. Uh. Pretty crazy. Yeah. One of
my first questions for you here, Matt is do you
think that the pandemic and COVID procedures made it easier
to perpetrate this kind of theft, Like was it was
(08:00):
it possible that he was just doing it online and
just had the right information. I can't tell you precisely
that that's what happened, but I'm just with you. I
think that's probably the case. Right, nobody's actually going in
to the d v l A or you don't have
to go into the d v l A to prove
who you are in the same way during COVID restrictions
as you would in normal times. Whatever that will be
(08:22):
in the future or what it was in the past,
But I can totally see that that step, that physical
step away from being in person doing some of these
things would cause it to be easier. Yeah, And I'm
wondering how they can now figure out who this who
the fake Mike is? Who's Mike too? You know? How
do they do a a mic check in new sorts
(08:45):
of situations like UH? Is it would they be able
to use facial recognition of this person's photograph? Would they be?
I I don't know, because I went to while we're talking,
just for curiosity's sake, I hopped onto gov dot UK
UH you know, and I was looking at the process
of renewing license, which it appears you can do online
(09:08):
in its entirety. Yeah. And one of the reasons they
know kind of well, I mean you're talking about facial recognition.
They've got a picture of somebody whoever that you know,
somebody who was a part of it, right, somebody who
pretended to be Mike in one situation or another where
documents were changed hands or something, right, And that i
(09:30):
D was needed because the copy of that i D
is with the BBC folks who did the investigation as
well as I guess this I don't know. I don't
know who it is because it's not the police. This
is not a criminal offense in the same way you'd
imagine a lot of other crimes like this maybe should be.
(09:51):
This is considered a civil thing, I guess in Bedfordshire,
So they can't like press charges in the same way
against this person too. Then you know, have the law
enforcement do facial recognition to track this person down. But
they do have voice. They do have the voice of
somebody who was a part of this team perhaps or
(10:12):
maybe it's the same person. They've got a voice recording
from the solicitor, the attorney with whom this person worked
to sell the house. And there's two two recordings of
it where you can hear this person's voice clearly and
again BBC you and yours. That's the program they've You
can go there and listen to it. Uh it's BBC
dot CEO dot UK slash sounds and you can find
(10:36):
it there. So are you saying that that what would
typically be considered evidence of a crime is like somehow
an admissible in this situation, that they can't run vocal
recognition to tie this to a person's identity. Well, I mean,
it's just I'm just saying it when it's not a
police investigation, at least according to what the BBC is saying.
And Mike, according to mine, he went to the police
(10:56):
and tried to, you know, write up a report like
a crime report work, right, But they said, no, this
is not a crime. This is a civil offense. We
can't do anything about it. But you can, you know,
go down all these other routes. So I'm just imagining
it'd be more difficult to like get those resources to
do I don't know, vocal recognition, facial recognition, all that stuff.
Let me add a bit of Carmen here if we
(11:18):
haven't mentioned it before. And if you're the thief and
you're listening to the show, you know, first off, thanks
for tuning in. You know, don't agree with your choices,
but give us a review. And here's the thing. This
guy is a vicar, so you're stealing from a religious
figure as well. Yeah, yeah, not great, um, And just
(11:41):
a terrible situation to be in if you, you know,
own a property and that's a lot of money, especially
who knows how much you've got invested into it, how
much maybe your mortgage was worth, or how much you had.
It's just a terrible situation to have it completely taken
out from under you, and it seems like you don't
have much you can do about it. Um. And plus
(12:03):
you know what if the people who purchased that property
were completely innocent, just there was some a fraudster is
what the BBC or first to them as some fraudster
sold it to you, and now what you've got to
give the property back and then try and get your
money back somehow out they did everything right on their end,
(12:24):
they just didn't know that there was a fake Mike
in the mix. You know exactly there was a fake Mike. Um, okay,
So last thing we're gonna just mention here. If you
are in the UK, first listen to that that BBC
UH I guess I think it's a podcast or maybe
just a radio program. Listen to that, get some of
(12:46):
the details for yourself. You can read in the BBC
U the story itself, and then check on maybe your situation,
your your identity situation. Because the v l A alerted
the real Mike that someone tried to reissue his driver's
license d v l A again like the d m
(13:07):
V here in the US, and Mike said, no, I
haven't had my license reissued. The d v l A
then says, okay, well we'll rescind this new one that
we just issued. No problem. But I guess they didn't
do it in time, or they didn't do it effectively enough,
and this person was able to impersonate Mike. Still, if
you're in the US, you can go to a bunch
(13:27):
of different places. I found a great article on Quicken loans,
which you know, it's not a plug for them, but
they've got a great article that shows what you can
do to kind of protect yourself if you're a property
owner of any kind against this kind of abuse, I
guess yeah, and that I'm wondering. Um. From from what
(13:48):
I was reading, it looks like this case is of
course a bummer, but it's also maybe not necessarily unique.
Mike is not alone here in the UK. The you
you can look on that BBC article and actually find
out that there was what three point five million pounds
worth of compensation due to fraud, uh that the land
(14:12):
Registry Registry paid out over the last year. So I mean,
if you think this is one thirty one thousand pounds,
if you multiply that out, I mean, that's not a
ton of land registry fraud in this way, but it's enough.
And if you jump to the US and you think
about it, and you know, any other country, but specifically
(14:33):
in the US. According to that Quicken Loans article, the
FBI says that nine thousand six victims lost over fifty
six million dollars in two thousand seventeen due to real
estate and rental fraud. So this this is a real problem.
It's just it depends on when you catch it. Like
(14:54):
when you catch that the problem is occurring, right, because
if it gets too far along in the process, then
it's very difficult to at least get money back. So
stale alert, folks, that's right, st alert. We're going to
jump to a quick commercial break and we will be
right back with more strange news and we're back. Um.
(15:20):
This story is definitely a bit of a bummer, UM,
but it is kind of an escalation of the type
of some some types of stories that we've covered over
the years. The idea that a lot of Asian countries
have very very tight gun laws so they don't have
mass shootings in the way that we do here in
the United States was obviously a very very good thing. Unfortunately,
(15:41):
that does not mean there aren't uh mass attacks that
take place often in public settings like schools or train stations. UM. Recently,
we talked about a story out of Singapore where a
lot of concerned parents were understandably upset about some creepy
louns that were hanging out outside of schools. Um turned
(16:02):
out they were just passing out flyers or trying to
hit these kids to this like special learning academy to
like you know, do test practices or test prepper or whatever.
UH in that particular company rightfully got an earful on
the internet. UM. Today unfortunately we have the reason that
(16:23):
things like that would be of concern to two parents.
UM a young man twenty four year old in Japan.
In Tokyo. UM dressed up as the joker, particularly the
uh I. Guess it was kind of a combination of
the Joaquin Phoenix joker and the Heath Ledger joker. Wearing
kind of a purple suit and a green shirt. UM
(16:47):
went on a stabbing rampage. UM on a train on
the way to Shinjuku, which is a very very busy
train station. UM. In Tokyo. It was the Kyo Line
ka Io. UM. He had a knife and he apparently
just went wild, slashing and stabbing people while also dousing
(17:10):
the train cars in lighter fluid UM and according to
some reports, set a few small fires. There were seventeen
people that were injured in the attack, some that were cut,
one man that was stabbed in the chest, UM, and
some others that were injured by smoke inhalation. If you
can imagine setting a fire in a closed system like
(17:32):
one of those moving subway cars would be bad news.
If it was you know enough, UM, you can definitely
get some nasty smoke inhalation from that. UM. The chilling
part about this is that the young man named Kyota
Ha tore Um, after he finished his spree, he just
sat in the train car with his legs crossed, smoking
(17:54):
a cigarette. UH. And there's video of people screaming and
running and fear and panic, and then there is one
quick shot, it's like something out of a found footage
horror film, UM, of this guy just sitting by himself,
smoking a cigarette, wearing this joker outfit. UM. And he apparently,
according to what he told police, UM admired the joker
(18:16):
as a character, you know, the clown prince of crime.
He was known for sewing havoc and just kind of
being an agent of chaos UM. And he was hoping
that he would get the death penalty. He specifically said
that he wanted the death penalty, and he was very
disappointed that he didn't actually kill anybody. He didn't manage
to kill anybody. UM. So, while this is horrific, UH,
(18:39):
these types of lone wolf attacks in other countries, specifically
our country, typically you're not going to walk away from
that without some fatalities because these folks are using you know,
military grade weapons that are you know, semi automatic or
fully automatic weapons In this situation, it's one man with
a with a you know, a blade of stabbing in
(19:00):
a pleamnant. Um. So there has to be some precision
involved as opposed to just kind of you know, just
spraying a train car with bullets, where you're probably gonna
have a huge number of fatality. So the fact that
the one was killed, uh is obviously a huge blessing, um,
But it is very very troubling them. The man was
described by folks who knew him in the same way
(19:22):
as as folks like this are often described as is
not having very many friends, as being very quiet, someone
who they would never think would take any initiative. Is
a quote that was printed in a Japanese publication called
Kyodo News. There's an English language version of that story. UM.
And it's just, you know, it's the same kind of
(19:43):
thing we hear and in the states of these lone
wolf attackers that you know, we're oh, they seem so
innocuous and and unthreatening. Um. But this this man apparently
had been thinking about killing for a long time. UM.
He said that he had been having trouble with war,
he had lost his job, likely due to some of
these anti social issues. Uh. And he had also you know,
(20:06):
he just vaguely kind of referred to the collapse of
his relationships. Um. But you can definitely see video of this.
There's stills of like a fire in a in a
train car further down, and smoke kind of flooding in.
So these were not just small fires. You can actually
see in the doorway that connects the two train cars
an absolute blaze. Um. So yeah, that's that's really the
(20:29):
gist of it. Um. This is one of a handful
of these types of attacks. There was an acid attack
on a train station also in Tokyo. UM. There was
another attack earlier in October. October fift or two men
were stabbed by a man at a j R we
know station. Um. And also in late August there was
(20:51):
a man who sprayed sulfuric acid in the face of
another man. So, you know, while the gun laws are
obviously keeping these attacks from claiming so many lives, these
particularly grizzly and up close and personal types of attacks
are truly troubling. Um. I don't know, guys, I mean,
(21:11):
we're not here to psychoanalyze the population of Japan or
anything like that. But I think it's no different than
any other city or any other culture maybe, and just
the fact that the laws are different sort of leads
to the types of attacks that we're seeing. But also
they aren't nearly as common as you know, gun attacks
here in the United States. Yeah, and there are there
(21:32):
are a couple of the things we should take note
of here. His reasons, at least from you know, he's
reading Japanese news on this, his reasons um seem a
little vague. Like you said, he said he wasn't getting
on well with his friends. He it sounds like the
thing that was really the feather on the camel's back
(21:52):
here was the Uh he felt he had messed up
at work, but the police they had no fixed address,
so he was all read a kind of on the
outs of society. On a larger scale, what we can
see is that there is a dangerous predictor for instability
in a population, and it's disaffected young men without community. Right,
(22:17):
That's one of the that's one of the big factors
that can lead to instability in any society. Uh. This guy, clearly,
as you said, thought about this for some time. Who
was only he's twenty four right when this occurs. Yeah, so,
um what it was on Halloween by the way, Yeah,
(22:39):
we don't know what the We don't know what the
legal decisions will be here. There is one person in
critical condition, I think, but so far they have not
passed away. That's going to be one of the big,
big factors of what happens to him. And if he
does get the death penalty. Do you guys know how
the death penalty works in Japan? It's horrified. I don't.
(23:01):
I'd love to, not love to surprisingly stuff, but I
have no idea actually they So if you get sentenced
to the death penalty in Japan, you're on death row.
One thing that you will not know is your date
of execution. One day, they will just walk in and
they will take you and they will execute you. Might
(23:23):
be I believe executions are mainly carried out by hanging
in Japan, which is a nasty way to go, of course.
But but what you know, if if the one person
is in critical condition now actually does expire, then it
could become a death penalty case. I mean, it's obviously premeditated.
(23:47):
I don't know what kind of mental health arguments could
be made, and I don't know how they would fly
in the Japanese legal system. You know what I'm saying,
I got a question for you. If a guy like
this wants to be executed on death, I mean obviously
wants to make a big show of it. Um, he's
not beholden to hire a lawyer who's going to make
a good argument for him, right, you know what? Uh,
(24:09):
I don't know. I don't know because I've luckily never
been involved with the Japanese legal system in that regard. Shot.
I'm getting that though. Yeah, Like, if someone really was
had it, you know, in their mind they wanted to
be executed by the state, couldn't. I mean again, we know,
like here, for example, you could probably torpedo your own
case by representing yourself poorly, um or just you know,
(24:30):
swearing off your right to an attorney. I'm just interested.
I would be interested to know how that works in Japan.
But also it really does speak to this guy's mental state.
If he wanted to die so badly, why not just
kill himself as opposed to making such a big show
of it and then being executed by the city. Obviously
has some some kind of delusions of grandeur or some
sort of form of megalomania where he needs to be
(24:52):
like the center of attention in some way. It seems
certainly I believe he said maybe in that France twenty
four article that he wanted to die, but he couldn't
do it himself, so he came up with a plan
to die. Yeah, I don't know, And I'm just I'm
thinking back particularly to the Halloween thing, that this that
(25:13):
he carried it out on Halloween when there are multiple
people probably on that train, definitely in the train station
around the train station, that are in costume. He would
not you wouldn't think twice seeing a joker walking around
on Halloween night. And he chose that day amidst that
confusion that's already there to carry out this attack that
(25:36):
I mean, that alone should lead to whatever he gets,
you know, officially charged with. And and how a judge
adjudicates that the system for deciding the death penalty or
a conviction of any sort is pretty fascinating. Is different
from what happens in the US district courts. Try these
(25:59):
capital caces, you with a team of like three professional
judges and then six citizens non judges chosen at random.
Is that like a stand in for a jury. Uh.
They it's called the lay judge system. Interesting, so this
is a different environment. But I would point out, so
I've been dishing Juku and you know, you guys are right,
(26:21):
it's a big, big place. Uh. It's also not unusual
to see people in costume in general, you know what
I mean, Like the district for that. Isn't that like
the like one of the big districts for like fashion.
Now that's hard as Juku s I'm confusing my Jukus.
But still in Japan in general, I mean, it's like
not on common to see people cosplaying, you know, all
over the place, right exactly there was when I was there,
(26:45):
I saw some people in costume as well. But to
your point, Matt, Uh, people in Japan are aware of
the tradition of Halloween, and I think it's been growing
in popularity for a number of years now. It is interesting,
um speaking to his mindset in terms of how he
viewed his victims. Uh. There is a scene in the
(27:06):
Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie where, at a pivotal moment in
you know whatever his character's name is, Gary Fleck or whatever,
his transformation into the Joker, he kills some bully type
men on a subway train, and that sort of marks
his metamorphosis, the beginning of his like metamorphosis into the Joker. UM.
(27:29):
So I'm wondering if this guy, I mean, obviously he
had to have some malice towards those who you know,
rejected him, or in some way he couldn't like break
through and have a connection with um The reports, you know,
from the passengers that were on the train say he
just like acted like a robot. He had no emotion
(27:51):
uh in in in the act as he carried it out.
And I saw that he specifically said to the police
that it didn't matter who is victims were. He just
thought that he killed what two or more people, he'd
be a shoeing for the death penalty. I guess that's right. Yeah,
I don't know. I just think that the connection between
the scene and the Joker and him in the particular
type of outfit that he chose to wear me I
(28:13):
don't know. I'm probably overthinking it, but I think you're right.
I think at the end of the day, his end
game was just to you know, kill as many people
as possible, which, thankfully, in this type of situation is
not as easy as one might think. One person with
a knife, you're not going to have a high kill
rate unless you're incredibly precise and know exactly what you're doing. Um,
people were able to escape out of windows. Um. You've
(28:36):
got accounts from you know, commuters that say they barely
escaped the train car that he was on. Um, but
they thankfully did and many that that spoke to the
press were not injured at all. Uh. And to your
point Ben about Halloween that hey, that's my fall guys.
Um just looking at the footage of the actual incident,
and almost nobody is wearing a costume because they're not
(28:58):
celebrating Halloween widely. About that very American centric there on
my part. Oh no, no, I mean I think it
was from about the year two thousand. Since then, Halloween
has been growing in popularity, So even if people were
dressed up, they were aware of it. And Juko is
a huge place, So, like Goal was saying earlier, it
is an unusual to see someone in costume. If you
(29:22):
want a really cool on a very light on a
much letter note, if you want to you want to cool,
look at how Japan has handled some other Western holidays.
Look at the KFC and Christmas. It's an amazing story.
Still still not sure how I feel about it, but
KFC is huge for Christmas in Japan. That's right, we
did an episode about the reticulous history. If I'm not mistaken, Um,
(29:45):
and Matt, you're not wrong that he he had come
from a particular district that was very Halloween e um.
And also the BBC, I'm sorry. The Guardian reporting on
it says, quote witnesses told public broadcaster and a k
how petrified passengers had fled to adjoining carriages and jumped
out of windows during the attack, which occurred on Sunday,
when the Japanese capital was full of Halloween revelers, many
(30:08):
and costume. So I mean the footage we have is
is limited, Okay, indicated right, Um, But this story is
nothing but wrong and um it's a very sad story. Again,
I'm not trying to soapbox here about gun control or anything,
but it does show that having some form of gun
(30:31):
control does keep these incidents from causing more deaths. You know, Um,
if this was somebody with a submachine gun, you know,
it would have been a much higher fatality rate. So
with that, let's take one more pause for a word
from our sponsor, and then be back with one more
strange news, and we have returned. We're not gonna leave
(30:55):
you hanging with these grim stories of of crime, of
of depravity and tragedy. And you know, stealing somebody's identity
and then stealing their house. Those are two terrible things.
We wanted to end today with something that could maybe
not be terrible, but it could also be terrible. Here's
(31:17):
I was thinking about how to get into this story.
It amazed me. You guys know, I read pretty widely
about weird things like this. Uh, we all know what
a sperm whale is. It's the most hilariously named whale. Right.
Uh there, you're a child like we are, which we are,
right right, It's also sperm whale. Uh, it's all. It's
(31:38):
also a credibly intelligent cetacean. It's brain is enormous. And
if I could, I just want to say, I think
it's delightful that you can both giggle about sperm whale
but then also use the very smart word cetacean. Uh.
You contain multitudes of my friend, it's too kind. That
goes for everyone, every one of us, and every one
(32:01):
of us listening at home. We do contain multitudes. Uh,
here's the thing. For a long time, people have been
arguing over whether or not animals have something called language.
For a lot of folks in in academia and in
the world of science, language is almost like one of
(32:22):
the last bastions of human exclusivity. The more we have
learned about animals over millennia, the more we have learned
that they are, in some cases capable of doing things
that we would normally think only people could do, Like
animals can make tools, animals can teach their young, knowledge
transmitted across generations for a long time. Uh. Some my
(32:46):
favorite birds, corvids are an excellent, if at times disturbing
example of this. And citations as well are incredibly intelligent.
They have You know, you've all heard the idea of
like whale communication. We've heard of whale songs, and you've
you've probably gotten a chance to hear some of those
(33:07):
online before. Yeah. Yeah, it's not exactly the newest Limp
Biscuit album, but there's definitely a structure to it and
it's just one of those things. Wait, one of those days,
dang it, I screwed up the Limp biscuit reference. Please, yes,
that's what that's that's our olympiscuits. Shout out, we did it, guys,
(33:28):
we got there. So So, sperm whales actually speak in clicks,
so they make these clicking noises think almost like Morse code,
and their rhythmic and they're in the series called codas,
and these codas appear to be communication. Now, people who
don't believe that animals, non human animals, i should say,
(33:52):
can communicate through language would say, well, they don't have
two of the big defining factors of language, which are
things like grammar. Uh, that turns out not to be
entirely true. Grammar, you know, grammars the reason that we
order words in the way that we order them, regardless
of which language you're talking about, or at least that
(34:15):
goes with most languages. There's this excellent article in the
Atlantic by Christophe Drosser and Hakai magazine which is about
the newest attempt to speak to wales, to speak to cetaceans.
It's pretty it's pretty amazing. Um. But before we talk
(34:36):
about it, I'd like for us all to recall one
of the other famous attempts to communicate with cetaceans, when
people were getting l s d d up with a
dolphin and eventually uh laed to. I mean, there's no
other way to say it. Lad to Atlanta hands stuff dolphin.
(34:57):
There's some slippery critters, let me tell you. Yeah, well, yeah,
put them in and put them in a flooded chamber
with a with a attractive lady hopped up on LSD.
I mean things are gonna happen. Some low lights got
shot a play in, you know, with a fliet storm.
Where did my hands end and your fins begin? There's
(35:20):
a dorsal fin I believe the technical thinking about flap
adoos flap ads. Yeah, uh so, it's so okay. People
know that there is a complex communication pattern and a
lot of citaceans doesn't meet length the standards of what
(35:41):
people call language. That's still up for debate in a
lot of folks minds. But now human civilization, we finally
have an answer to that question because people are using
artificial intelligence and machine learning two figure out when the
spur whales have a language, and if possible, whether humans
(36:05):
can speak directly to the whales. This is the aim
of something called Project Setti Cetacean Translation Initiative. You know,
it's like SETI with an S, but they're searching for
intelligence beneath the waves, so whatever and deep deep deep below. Um.
(36:25):
So obviously lots of members of the animal kingdom, you know, communicate.
It's obviously functional, you know, like oh, there's predators over here,
or we're just trying to you know, put out a
call to let you know where other members of your
you know group might be, right, Um, is the sense
that there's some sort of thinking that there might be
more specificity to these whales conversations than just pings like
(36:51):
a submarine. Yeah. The idea is that there because they
have such high intelligence. The ideas that pause sibly, if
this program can work out what whales are saying and
discernments they are saying stuff to each other, then it
would be possible for humans to maybe speak with them
in their own language. But this is like, um, you know,
(37:15):
recently I lent you that book The Story of your
Life and others, and the Story of your Life is
the inspiration for that film Arrival, and Arrival is about
humans trying to figure out how to speak to something
very very different. So we would be in a situation
(37:35):
like this with whales. If this program works out, and
there's still like, it's not right. Now you you have
our word, there's not somebody at Projects Setty discussing you know,
the best parts of the ocean with a whale right
now right, or you know, trying to figure out the
(37:55):
flap ado version of a high five. But this is
my closer to reality than I think a lot of
people might assume. And in my opinion, the reason when
to bring this to everybody is I'm surprised. It's like
getting more coverage, and it's an example of something that
I think all of us have been looking for for
(38:15):
some time, which is highly sophisticated machine learning. That it's
not used as a weapon of war. So if what
I mean yet until you put lasers on the whales
and figure out how to mind control them, or until
if it's a true AI, what if it what if
it listens to the whales, it learns their language and
(38:37):
they make some really good points and it's like, no,
the whales are right, forget you guys, or we can
start to use whales to like, you know, triangulate positions
of of of naval crews, you know, attack squadrons. I'm
obviously not a military analyst here. But you know what
I mean, Like, there would certainly be a way to
weaponize this technology. That's how all good science start now
(39:00):
all but like a lot of good science starts with
the best of intentions and a purely exploratory kind of
thirst for knowledge, and then in the moment that it
becomes worthwhile to co opt into a military purpose, that
thing will happen. Yeah, let's also consider that the there's
still a lot of speed bumps in the way of
First we have to understand what things are saying. It's
(39:23):
not going to do human scientists any good to have
a a bot that, for its own sake understands whale
language and just talks to the whales and the humans
have no idea what they're talking about. Also, if that
could lead to some sort of mutiny in the world order.
But if they can gather huge amounts of data, dat
alone is not going to be enough the language, the
(39:45):
clicking they're making. As a matter of fact, I'd like
to do is have Alexis, could you play us a
sound queue of a sperm whale communicating Matt now, will
check this out. Let me know what you think. Super cool, weird,
(40:24):
It's like it sounds like industrial music. It's got it
very much has this sound of like machinery, like a spoke,
you know, clicking or something like that. Like it's it's
a very um captivating kind of sound. Like it really
does have this science fiction equality to it. Yeah, it's
also the uh, it's also enormously dangerous to humans, like
(40:46):
the decibel wise, the vibrations. Yeah, they actually used these buzzes,
these clicks in these squeaks in their hunting activity. So
if you were too close, this could have a pretty
a pretty rough effect on you as well. But the
question again is is this a language? It sounds so alien,
(41:08):
you know what I mean. There are a few human
languages that use clicks. But we may be asking ourselves,
why would why would you focus this machine learning approach
on sperm whales as opposed to some other whales. The
answer is all in the clicks, because those are easier,
candidly to translate into something quantified zeros and ones click
(41:31):
or not click. You know, it's almost a numerical language
in some ways. It maybe, but again, you know, there
are a lot of people who think language is just
for humans. The other big issue is that it's not
enough just to relay this language. You have to know
if you want to see if the whale understands what
(41:53):
humans are saying through these computers, then you would have
to be able to decode the whales action, right, which
would mean you'd have to know where the whale was
when it heard this whale tail, and then you'd have
to see like it did it move differently? You know
what I mean? Do whales have the equivalent of laughter?
(42:13):
Do they have the equivalent of get the hell out
of my yard? You know what? Do they have? What's
their It's in their toolbox. I think the thing that
a lot of people go back to in these kinds
of stories is Coco, the guerrilla you know where. But
we have to remember too that Coco was taught to
communicate with humans, you know, it was it was a
very like you know, human language forward situation UM, where
(42:34):
Cocoa was taught to interact with humans and taught human
sign language and all of that. UM. So this would
be like the reverse, and they have no frame of
reference for any human concepts, right, it's the same. It
was the same deal in UM and UM arrival totally
reframe you're thinking about language sadly, Um, what experiences they
(42:55):
do have with human beings are probably not positive ones. Unfortunately. Um,
there's there's a funny line that that really got to
be the The leader of the SET program said the following.
He said, we understand that one of our greatest risk
is that the whales could be incredibly boring, So like,
(43:17):
what if? What if they're just funny duds? There's sticks
in the oceanic mud. I doubt that's the case, Um,
but I think it's humble for them to say. I said,
like to leave us with a quote by a guy
named Michael Bronstein. He's an Israeli computer scientist who is
teaching at Imperial College, London, and he's one of the
folks who's intimately tied up with projects SETTI, and he
(43:40):
said something I would like to I'd like to share
with you guys. He says, I think it is very
arrogant to think that Homo sapiens is the only intelligent
and sentient creature on Earth. If we discover that there
is an entire civilization basically under our news, maybe it
will result in some shift in the way that we
treat our environment, and maybe it will result in more
(44:01):
respect for the living world, optimistic. I don't know, what
do you guys think? What do you think the whales
are gonna say? You humans? I can't this is this
is a really dumb thing to bring up. I'm gonna
(44:21):
do anyway, Because we just finished Halloween. I recently or
the other night for on Halloween or maybe it was Halloween,
Eve watched the quite terrible Stephen King film adaptation um
he actually directed himself, called Maximum Overdrive. That rediant piece
of art. It's it's something, but it's about, you know,
this alien intelligence that inhabits uh machines on Earth. And
(44:47):
the very first scene is Stephen King in his like
you know, um obligatory cameo um trying to get some
money out of an A t M machine and the
little you know, head kind of scroll on the bank
says do you um? And then the uh the A
T M machine screen says you are an atoll. And
(45:10):
then the first line before the title of the movie
comes up as Stephen King goes, Marcia, this machine has
called me an a UM. So, you know, machines don't
probably have the best opinion of humans either, but UM,
I have a feeling if we could interpret the cause
of these whales that it would probably there would be
some knowledge of the horrors that we have wrought on
(45:33):
the oceans and their fellow you know, cetaceans, Well they have,
I mean they have. They are mammals, so they have
a lot of the components needed cognitively for language, their
matriarchal societies. They also their communications. Dude, they have dialects
with spur. Whales have regional dialects, and they're not always
(45:56):
mutually intelligible um or people. You know, Whales don't respond
the same to dissimilar dialects, the same way that you
might not understand, uh, someone who has a very strong
regional English accent of some sort or another, you know.
I mean, we live in the States, and you can
drive to a different state and have a hard time
(46:16):
understanding people. So there's no reason that whales would be
any different. I'm excited, but I don't know where it's
going to go. I wonder, and this is something I
want to leave with the rest of us listening along
at home. I wonder what what they would say. I
wonder how aware they would be, and I wonder what
(46:36):
they would want humans to know. I mean, they're there
familiar with boats. They can be incredibly long lived. They
are aware that there's something on the other side of
the water, They definitely are they probably maybe they just
don't know about continents, you know what I mean. Maybe
(46:58):
maybe they're entire communication is a shared oral history. Maybe
they are telling the story of themselves to the dwindling
number of sperm whales that remain. And if they have
a language, does that mean they could be up for
legal personhood. Check out our episode on legal personhood and
let us know. Also this is random, but just at
(47:20):
the very end, if you could choose one animal, one
kind of animal to talk intelligibly, what would it be? Parrot? Oh? Um,
I don't know. I think, I think, I don't know.
The sea creatures are very ancient and very wise, you
know what I mean, like crocodiles or you know, like
(47:41):
creatures that live for a very very long time. I
think that would be interesting. Yeah, wow, yeah, something deep deep,
deep sea. I'd be interested in finding out angler fish
at the lamp on their heads if we like we've
finally after years of studying what was recorded in the
(48:04):
year that everything uttered by sperm whales, and we find
out that they're just humming the weekend or do a
lipa or something, and they've they've just become overwhelmed with
our pop music scene. Right, it's a different culture war.
You know what if they're stuck in the nineties and
(48:25):
they love Jinko's and math rock, um, and they think
everything is sick and they say, hella a lot, that
would be that would be interesting. I would love to
hear from an octopus. Um. I also discovered that, you know,
the problem with an octopus, which is probably the most
alien form of intelligent life we know about on this
(48:47):
on this planet so far. Problem with is that they
have such short lifespans because their reproductive process is so
inherently inextricably tied to their demise. But there is a
brain surgery you can conduct on a female octopus that
will allow it to live longer. To be very interested
to hear what they have to say. Uh. I know
(49:08):
a lot of our fellow conspiracy realists are going to
kill us if we don't mention this. It is quite
possible that when we do speak dissertations, they say, so
long and thanks for all the fish by tigers got there,
We got there, sperm whales, by the way, I have
a lifespan of seventy years um, whereas I believe, I mean,
(49:29):
I know there they've been around for a long time,
but crocodiles have a much longer lifespan. I think they're
like one of the longest living creatures you know on
the planet, if I'm not mistaken. And the longest living
marine mammal is also a whale. It's not a sperm whale,
though it's called the bowhead whale. We can't wait to
(49:52):
hear what you think, folks. Which animal would you want
to speak with? What is there any audible you definitely
want to avoid speaking with? What do you think is
the future? These real estate crimes and these low wolf attacks?
Let us know. We try to be easy to find online.
You can find us on the Internet and the usual
social media places of note. We are on Facebook, we
(50:13):
are on Twitter. We are on YouTube at the handle
conspiracy Stuff. You can also find us with the handle
conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. UM. On Facebook, you can
also find our group Here's where it gets crazy. Join
that thing. So a lot of good fun folks, good
fun meme exchanges and conversation. You'll be glad you did.
Yes and if you leave the social needs unsipped, instead
(50:35):
use your mouth to contact us. You can call our
number one eight three three st d w y t K.
You have three minutes. You can leave whatever message you
want to give yourself a wonderful nickname. Whatever it is,
we'll take it and uh, you know, say what you want.
But if you can't fit the entire message into three minutes,
(50:55):
instead get your keyboard out, start clacking away, and send
a good old fashioned email address. We are conspiracy at
i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(51:24):
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.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.