Did the Pentagon just admit it's been secretly experimenting with wreckage from UFOs for decades? Did a Florida man really build an electric guitar from his uncle's skeleton? What exactly caused the collapse of the Texas power grid, and why were so many people left without power or clean water? All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is no They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. It's the top of the week, which
means it is time for some strange news, cadavers and music.
(00:47):
The mystery of the Texas Grid, uh, the Texas Electric Grid,
and then a choice that I thought this might be
a hashtag no saw gentlemen, I thought this might be
fun game to play if you're down for it. Okay, now,
I love that level of trust. Noel. Let me tell
(01:08):
you what they get. What the game is. Uh, It's
it's not Russian Roulette. But um, so I know we
all read stuff extensively lately, I've been having a tougher
and tougher time just going to uh one story, So
I'd like to give you uh three headlines and maybe
(01:29):
Matt Noel you will pick the one that you want
to hear from uh from me in in today's segments.
So I've already made my choice. Sorry, but go ahead
and read them all right, Okay? Cool? This is like
we're sucking the joy out of this for you back. No, No,
it's like voting in the center. Okay. So number one,
(01:53):
as the Pentagon just admitted to retaining and testing UFO wreckage.
Number two, what about the massive unprecedented protests in India
as farmers rally against the increasingly tyrannical government. Uh. And
number three, what's with the United Kingdom saying they will
(02:15):
not resuscitate COVID nineteen patients with learning disabilities? Those are
the three. What do you think, Matt, You said, you've
got your mind's made up. Well, there's some really important
stuff in there, some stuff that's gonna, you know, really
impact people's lives, especially the farmers in India. And you know, man,
(02:36):
it's just horrible the reporting that's coming from the Guardian
right now about that last story you mentioned with the
do not resussitate, but you said the phrase the Pentagon
admitted to testing UFO wreckage And there's no way we
cannot cover that story. It does feel that way. That's
a unanimous vote, all right, Okay, alright, that sounds like
(02:59):
that's of like Unamo's vote. So uh, let's if you
guys are okay, we'll kick off with that one. And
we will in all seriousness, we are returning to the
story about the protests, the massive protest on going because
it's they're still going to be happening for a while.
We want to get all the information we can, uh.
And in that way, the desire to get all the
(03:20):
information we can uh, we are similar to an author
named Anthony Bregia who claims that he does have no
fully legitimate proof that the Pentagon did collect Ufo wreckage
and did retain it. What's more, they know a lot
about it, and they've been experimenting with applications of this stuff.
(03:45):
That's that's the headline. Let's see, let's see how it
holds out. So so here's the backup. Stop me when
there are any questions, uh, there should be some should
be some questions. So Brigalia said that the U. S.
Defense Intelligence Agency or d i A, they accept f
o I a request Freedom of Information Act request. He
(04:06):
said that over three years ago he sent in a request.
The man shot a shot and he said, tell me everything,
Tell me everything you know under the rights of the
fo I A. And then three years later they came
back to him with a series of a hundred and
fifty four page test results regarding a medal called knitten All.
(04:32):
You can look it up now and I T I
N O l uh. This this medal to Brigalis thinking
was mind boggling because nitn all can is famous for
remembering quote unquote remembering its shape when you distort it
or folded. So if you had simple example, if you
(04:53):
had a knitton All fork and you bent it long
ways or in any number of directions you crumpled it up,
even then it would eventually spring back into being a
fort and there would be no creases, no lines, no
proof of previous deformation. It could happen too with something
like a paper clip, right, So this would be a
(05:13):
really cool material to work with. You can read the
full story over on his blog UFO Explorations. You can
also see some reports by h places that we have
dunked on as not being the best sources in the past,
like the Daily Mail and The Sun, which you know
(05:33):
we were right about this. Uh So when this guy
asked the d i A about this stuff, he's asking
physical descriptions, properties, and composition of these things. This is
where we get into some weird territory because according to
b Regalia, and again just when we consider our sources, folks,
(05:56):
the name of this guy's blog is UFO Explorations. So
in his blog you'll see that he believes the information
provided to him by the d i A also proves
that some of these what he calls futuristic materials have
the potential to make things invisible. Shout out to our
(06:17):
earlier episode on the Philadelphia experiment. Uh And he's saying
he's cleaning this because for anybody who hasn't read a
document that's released by f o I eight, there's like
a legal requirement to release it with a few exceptions,
but there's no legal requirement not to edit it. So
(06:38):
you're also redacted like like big old highlighting black blocks
right right right, exactly like the old Onion headline that
was so wonderful where it said FBI. FBI learns they've
accidentally been using black highlighters for decades highlighters, But isn't
it true they've been that there have been cases where
people have been able to see through those when you
(06:59):
hold it up to the light or something. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think there was a case a number of years
back where someone had redacted a form electronically, which meant
that if you wanted to read the unredacted version, you
just changed the view. Oh man, the smallest things, folks,
(07:19):
The smallest things bring down the giants. So here here's
the issue, though, the first issue. We'll stop here before
you go further with the story. First issue, Uh, Nitton
All For anybody who was an engineer or chemist, or
anyone who looked this up as they were hearing about this,
Nitton All is not some magic extraterrestrial material that just
(07:45):
got its name from the first guy who discovered it
in the wreckage of a UFO. Nitton All is around.
We know what it is. It's less sexy name is
nickel titanium. It's like a real known thing. The history
of it dates back to nineteen fifty nine. Now, of course,
(08:06):
this is the part where a lot of people might say,
hang on, when did the roswell crash occur? Well, that
did happen in nineteen So if if this is, if
this came somehow from that Roswald crash, which we we
made a good case that there's a good case it
(08:26):
might have been a weather balloon or nuclear monitoring device.
But if if this knitt all was obtained from that crash,
then that would mean that somebody else knew about it
before the official story. It's funny when they refer to
it in the context of the Roswald crash. They call
it memory metal, which immediately, I don't know about you guys,
(08:47):
makes me think a one thousand stuff. Yeah, it does, yes,
determined to um I am. I'm a little bit confusing
looking at the UFO Explorations dot com website and he's
saying the author here is saying that there was memory
metal debris recovered at the UFO crash in Roswell or
(09:09):
the you know, alleged UFO crash, so they're described. I
guess what I'm confused about is the fo I a
response describing this memory metal as being present at that
crash specifically, or just that that's a material that it
states exists within the redacted parts. I guess. So this
(09:30):
is this is an interesting point, mat because if you
go to the blog, you'll see the author's interpretation of
what is contained in that d I a response, but
you can also on the blog you can see the
full text of both his request and the government's response.
(09:53):
So it definitely seems to confirm that they're looking there,
that they're working with applications of things like amorphous metals,
so that would be your T one thousand stuff or
meta materials, which would be materials that are kind of
purposely engineered to have a couple of extra properties or
(10:17):
an animate superpowers that naturally occurring materials would not possess. Uh.
And this also ties back into Bigelow aerospace. Of course. Uh,
it's cool because with this kind of news, you know,
I was previously pretty skeptical because there was no you know,
we've we've heard Bigelow saying for years that they add
(10:38):
access to some kind of materials that were recovered, but
they never shared them. They were talked really about them
other than to say that I have them, I won't
show them to you. That's what at least, uh, that's
what Robert Bigelow and Harry Reid and Tom DeLong all
seemed to be saved. But this is a little bit
different because you can read the actual documents from Uncle Sam.
(11:03):
So I'm a little less I'm a little bit less
skeptical um or I think there's more likely to be
something here. But the question is is this somehow material
science that a UM a lay person might not understand
or might mistake for magic or something extra terrestrial, or
(11:27):
is this simply cutting edge experimentation for the time in
which it occurred. You'll note if you're reading full the
response from Uncle Sam, you'll see that there's a hundred
and fifty four pages about five documents, and some of
these documents, some of the information in here has been
(11:48):
uh has been redacted, not necessarily because of the science involved,
but because there there's an exemption that allows them to
prevent the unwarranted invasion of individual privacy. So they've crossed
out names where it's like, you know, Johnny Blue Jeans
(12:09):
is the one who is experimenting with titanium. That remembers
who it is despite the way you bent in. Well,
I want to read something from one of these reported
you know responses to the f A request. It says
the meta mirror approach to infrared energy harvesting is one
(12:30):
of the very promising applications of meta materials. A number
of aspects of meta mirrors must be investigated in Several
important questions must be answered before practical applications can be
pursued meta mirrors. This is the first time I've ever
heard of this. Oh an absorber meta mirror structure. My goodness,
(12:50):
I just want to dig into all of these. Yeah, right,
I mean, it's legit. They did respond there is something there.
I do have to point out that everybody is immediate
thought process. When you hear the headline the Pentagon admitted
to testing UFO wreckage, your immediate response needs to be unknown.
Does not automatically equal extraterrestrial. The founds of stuff, I
(13:14):
didn't know what it was. They kept it like they're
on some state level episode of Hoarders, and they did
all kinds of weird stuff to it. Uh. That's that's
what's happening now, is that it does that mean that
there is technology possessed by the government that the public
does not possess or maybe even isn't aware of totally
(13:38):
even before this is yes, totally. Of course, there are
things that have not been released publicly. Of course, they're
suppressed technology. I just thought it was interesting. I thought
this is a story you guys would enjoy and everybody listening,
all the conspiracy realists who have wrote to us about disclosure,
this should be another feather in your cap. I don't
(14:00):
know whether things are accelerating in a certain direction that
hasn't been proven yet, but the frequency of things being
disclosed in this regard has certainly increased. It's something to
keep an eye on. We're going to dig into the
full d I a response, and we'll we'll update if
there's anything super super strange, if if they reference uh,
(14:23):
you know, extraterrestrials or anything like that. I'm sure the
author would have led with that if that was the case. Yeah, Ben, listen.
Non linear, non reciprocal chiral meta materials for developing novel
optical isolators and one way microwave mirrors. Awesome. I thought
I thought you were about to do a spoken word
(14:44):
poetry thing. It's what it sounds like it, but it
sounds science fiction, and it's it's a document created by
the government about a thing. Yeah, I know nothing about Well,
you weren't alive during that time, but your parts were.
They were. They were paying people to write these things.
(15:05):
If you think about it, right, that's taxpayer money. Uh boy,
but yes, this is happening. We're going to report back, uh,
and we're gonna pause for word from our sponsor. Hopefully
we don't get beamed up or black bagged. Uh, and
then we'll we'll be back with more strange news. And
(15:27):
we're back with more strange news. Okay. Um, We're gonna
pivot a little bit, but kind of stay within the
material sciences realm and also like weird uses of materials
or questionable stories behind uses of strange materials. Okay, I'm sorry,
I'm being very vague here. Uh. This is possibly the
(15:49):
most metal story of the year. Uh. And I'm viewing
metal horn fingers as I say this. If you can
maybe who knows, maybe this gets picked for the YouTube clip.
Maybe not. But I was doing it aggressively. And it's
because this is a story about a man, a Florida
man no less uh, purportedly with the very metal name.
(16:10):
He has two very metal names, uh, yago anax a
k A. Prince Midnight, who was allegedly taken the bones
the upper body torso bones minus the arms, minus the
skull of his deceased uncle Philip spelled F I. L.
I p it's also kind of metal, um, and converted
(16:33):
it into a guitar because supposedly Uncle Philip at least
this is what Prince Midnight's told metal sucks dot Com,
which is actually counted the name of up site about
four people who like metal. It's ironic. I guess, um.
He told them that that Uncle Philip was the biggest
metal head in the world and he wanted to honor
(16:55):
his you know, remains in his legacy by converting it
into a a functional guitar because he wanted to be
able to shred into eternity or be shredded upon. I
suppose right, um. And this story, you know, understandably got
picked up all over the place. I saw one in
(17:15):
an Indian newspaper of note, the Tampa Bay Times obviously
um the original reporting, but places like Guitar World Magazine, obviously,
CBC Radio One, Complex, Huffington's Post, The A V Club
and many more have picked this story up. Um, and
Prince Midnight did several posts on Instagram where he talked
(17:37):
about how he was planning on doing this or actually
it started off, you know, where he was like, I
am going to get my uncle's remains from this medical
lab that they were donated to. Apparently he donated his
remains to science, but the co story goes that they
no longer were able to use actual skeletons to make
skeleton demo kind of suations. Like our agent Scully, I
(18:02):
don't think that's a real skeleton. No comment got it
in any case. Apparently it used to be that medical
remains remains of this kind could be used in that fashion,
and this is apparently not the case anymore. So he
was somehow able to get it back, which I think
is a little fishy. How do you go about that?
(18:24):
You know, It's not like he was digging it up
from a grave, which would obviously be hyper illegal. But
this he claims that he was able to get it
back from this lab, the school rather um because they
didn't need it anymore and so they were able to
he was able to get it get it back. I
guess maybe because he showed some identification, showed he was
next to ken what have you, came in a giant
(18:44):
wooden box and this is a Greek Orthodox family again
according to reports um. And then he shows the process
of making the guitar. He literally installs pickups by drilling
into the bones um and then you know, a bridge,
and he has to install like a metal a steel
rod to reinforce it because you know it. Sure, a
(19:05):
spine is strong, but a spine also bends. That's not
something you want your guitar neck to do. So he
had to run a steel rod up through the center
of the spine and then put a neck on it.
And it's kind of fun to see him play it.
You can see this online actually in several places because Reddit.
I think it's pretty cool, but it's also kind of
limiting if you're truly a shredder. Uh, your movements are
(19:28):
a little limited because the actual part where you strum
is inside the rib cage. Yeah, I saw that too.
It's it feels like it would be a little tough
to reach, doesn't know, I do want to say, just
because I never get the opportunity to work this into
conversation naturally. Philip spelled with two l's, is an archaic
(19:48):
word for the following that little putting your finger against
your thumb and then flicking it at someone. Yeah, that's
a Philip. Oh, that's fascinating. See there's like this a
few details, quite a few details in the story that
make me think, uh, well, there's more we're gonna get
there that there, maybe this isn't the whole story. First
(20:10):
of all, the name uh Yago Annex it's almost like
a nod and a wink to the famous metal guitarist
Ingve Malmstein in that at least it's just a very
Nordic sounding name. It's a very metal sounding name, obviously
not will not Nordic, but like a Greek kind of
it has that vibe with two a's. It makes makes
(20:33):
me think of Vigo the Carpathian from like Ghostbusters to
the Scourge of Moldavi. And also, now that you mentioned that, Philip,
what is that that? What would you do? If you
were going to do that, you would be bunking someone
on the nose, almost as a little uh ah, got
you kind of thing. Right. So the story goes on
the publication of origin here, which would be the Tampa
(20:57):
Bay Times. And if you guys don't know this, many
of you probably do. Tampa Bay and Florida in general,
but Tampa Bay in particular has always been known for
having a bit of a theatrical kind of metal scene.
Like apparently there was a band called like Hell on
Earth back in the day that had some kind of
scheme to have the first like on stage suicide and
(21:18):
it was somebody who was terminally ill and they were
going to allow this person to offer themselves in full
view of of of the public. Definitably, I didn't go
over well in terms of pr uh, so they abandoned
this idea. Well, that's the kind of stuff. The metal
scene in the in in Tampa Bay is is known
for very goth, very theatrical, very black metal. It's almost
(21:39):
like uh Norway or something, you know, but like in Florida,
and obviously the Florida Man trope, which we've you know,
been through a million times on this show. Um. But
Tampa Bay Times as raising some doubts about the veracity
of this story because they believe that Prince Midnight a
k a. Yago Annex looks a whole heck of a
(22:01):
lot like this other gentleman who made some news in
past years, a guy with also very interesting name by
the name of Odolan Osair who has an Instagram. By
the way, who has an Instagram an excellent follow for
for anyone that's interested. Um and Osair made the news
(22:22):
for getting the Guinness record for like having the world's
tallest hat. Yeah, it's it looks like a stovepipe hat,
like an a blank in type situation, but it goes
up like two tree heights, Like I mean, it's it's
it's massive. There's pictures of him wearing a really cute outfit.
It's a gray suit jacket and pants that matched the
(22:45):
color of the fabric of the hat. Uh, and the
hat is extending up into the heavens. And then he's
wearing this kind of baby blue vest and he's got
a very very quoft mustache and long kind of mane
like hair. He really looks like a kind of guy
you'd see maybe tending bar at some kind of hipster
speakeasy type joint, only with a really really tall hat.
So that's one thing he did. He also did another
(23:07):
bit where he uh got another world record for having
the longest acrylic fingernails. Um. And so there's images of
him with these crazy long acrylic fingernails that that are
extending like he's kind of posing with them, and they're
there again matched his outfit. He also had another moment
(23:27):
of fame, relatively speaking, where he submitted a taxidermy crocodile
um that has two heads that's now on display at
a coffee shop in Seminole Heights, uh in the neighborhood
Seminal Heights in Tampa. So the Tampa Bay Times felt
like Prince Midnight had a very striking resemblance to oz
(23:51):
there Um and Prince Midnight is is admittedly wearing a
wig and you don't really see his face super well.
Uh So the jury is still out on this one
and it hasn't been quote unquote solved yet. Um. I
think it's a fun story. There are things to be
said that about the level of um kind of laying
(24:11):
the groundwork for a hoax like this, that our guy,
Prince Midnight mate, because he definitely has a band, he
definitely has a record. Prince Midnight is an institution. This
guy is very much leaning into this persona uh he
you know, I had to figure out how to make
a guitar out of a skeleton. Whether it's real or not,
(24:31):
I don't know. I mean, he definitely put in the
effort one other thing, and I'm going back to I
don't know if you would if you could call it
a hoax, you can definitely call it a performance but
I don't think a performance is automatically a hoax. It's
only a hoax if the skeleton is not real. Right, Well,
you depends people have. People have sliding definitions of hoax.
(24:53):
But I wanted to want to point out clever hoaxes,
especially if they're meant to be discovered, if they're meant
to have a nod and we have little clues in there.
So maybe Philip with two with Philip with one l
is this guy the alleged skeleton guitars name it carried
in life? What if it's short for Philip pendulous, which
(25:16):
is another useless word. I know it means to be
suspended by or strung upon a threat, but goes very
well with guitars. I'm just saying, finally, God, I have
like a list of words that never gets to use.
Those are two thinking and it also describes the all
of the reporting and outfits that just kind of ran
with this story. Sensational piece of news. Um it's it's
(25:42):
interesting to the Tampa Bay Times who did really you're
like you said, Matt, They're the only one that really
did any true digging on this at all. Everyone else
just reported its side unseen like crazy story, get to
Florida man, makes me my metal thing of the year,
makes the guitar out of uncle's remains. How it's actually
looking into any any confirming anything, which is actually a
(26:06):
pretty interesting comment on the state of reporting right now. Um,
but the Tampa Bay Times actually contacted the Guinness World
Records Office, which you know, admittedly has become a bit
of a it's it's not a thing as much as
it maybe once was. You know, it used to record
important records, things like, you know, the world's fastest man
(26:26):
or what have you. But now it's things like longest
acrylic nails and tallest stovepipe hat. Um, so it really
is more of like a publicity stunt, and it's easy
to outdo somebody just so so you can make the
it's the thing anyway. Um, but they reached out. Guinness
said they do ask their applicants to provide a full name,
but we'll accept a stage name. And that also points
to how this is kind of a bit of a
(26:47):
carni esque, you know, silly thing these days, Guinness Records. Um,
if it called me out if I'm wrong on that,
but that's just how it feels. Yeah, Well, a Guinness
World Records. The Guinness Book of World Records was ever
super credible nor accurate. I mean it is. It is
mainly made to be a conversation starter, uh, and to
(27:08):
resolve arguments that people had at bars. That's the origin stories,
and to sell actual a Guinness. Right. They ran, they
and they ran the Scholastic book fair. I was always
very excited about those books. Along with other things we
mentioned in past episodes. I do want to point out
less I seem too pretentious for knowing so many unnecessary
words for a long time. As a kid, I thought
(27:31):
stage name was just the name of a local stage.
So I thought people's stage names were like the stages
they went to to do whatever their show was. It's
like you know when you go to a festival and
they have like the big stage, the main stage, and
the two smaller stages, and they all have kind of
clever names or names of like the companies that sponsor them.
(27:53):
That's money. Then yeah, And I thought I thought I
thought pen name was what people name their pens. It was.
That's not a very well adjusted members. You learned something
new every day. Um. Last thing, uh so the two
headed alligator picture I mentioned before Um that was actually
(28:15):
perpetrated by a guy by the name of Justin Arnold,
who The Tampa Bay Times also believes osare resembles um.
Ozair has said he doesn't know anything about this Prince
Midnight thing, or at least he, you know, denied any
associations And this is not me and I don't know anything.
I have nothing to do with that. I do want
to say this other guy, Justin Arnold, who The Tampa
(28:37):
Bay Times believed Ozar could also possibly be. He's the
one who tricked the paper into publishing this two headed
crocodile picture on its cover. So maybe they're a little
peeved about that two fourteen. Maybe they're kind of after
him a little, because it really does seem like they're
trying to do almost like some kind of lighthearted character
(28:58):
assassination here. But I love this. This guy, Justin Arnold
is currently the front man of a punk band in
Tampa Bay called Ferrell Babies, which I think is a
fabulous name for a punk band. Yep. And did you
mention the response when this outfit from I think it's
from a group called or As As it happens, they
(29:19):
reached out to that punk band and the response was
go f yourself. Okay, so punk totally. And also the
Ray Roya, who has been kind of following a lot
of this stuff. Um, and he seems to believe that
these are all kind of one and the same. Um.
He's on the side of whomever this person may be. Uh.
(29:41):
He's the editor in chief of Creative Low Fan, which
we also have here in Atlanta. I guess that's the
Southern thing. I didn't realize that it was just it
wasn't just in Atlanta. Um. But he he says, quote,
calling him a prankster seems cheap because he's a performance artist,
a genius in a way, so a genius in a way,
in a way compliment now, well you know, I mean
(30:02):
he didn't call him a genius. So you're good at
not wet in the bed in a way. Oh, come
on better, that's a little that's not it's just it's
a head. It's a head. I go, you're I get it.
And and there is there is something to be said
with the the idea of the subversion, which I'm quite
(30:23):
a fan of, the idea of hoisting someone pranking them
for not doing their due diligence, like the Sun and
the Daily Mail. To MAT's earlier point, knowles earlier point,
they didn't investigate as much as they should. Uh. But
it also makes me think, so these kind of performance artists,
they they need an audience, right, So it makes me
(30:46):
think there's more in the future to come. And by
the way, the guitar is he he has dubbed it
the skelecaster, which just clever. And if in fact it
is made of human remains, which he obtained legally, uh,
he cannot legally ever sell this because it is illegal
(31:06):
to traffic human remains, to sell human remains, yeah, to
uh to civilians correct, Yeah, yeah. And I don't think
any medical labs would be in the market for a skelecaster.
Maybe a museum. I was gonna say, he could probably
donate it, that'd be tight. Well, but then now I
(31:28):
don't know what does it take to have credentials to
buy things like this? The heart of darkness? Is it
technically illegal to buy things from for serial killers to
sell and profit off of their memorabilia. Earlier episode, will
In delt into the world of serial killer merchandise. We
found a pretty disturbing industry. Uh, those laws I would argue, Uh,
(31:54):
the legal constraints are a little bit different, Like, for instance, Uh, yes,
there are laws against serial murderers who are convicted making
money off selling their own story or something like that. Right,
but after someone dies after say it Ted Bundy passes
or something like that, then there's not really anything to
(32:17):
stop someone else from saying, hey, I have this parking
ticket the guy signed, or you know, I have Eileen
Warnos is uh childhood grammar book for some reason like
that that's sticky with a museum. Unfortunately, there there are
a lot of gray areas here. Like I in the
(32:37):
past it made snarky comments about the British Museum, which
gives lie to the idea that the government has done
with the days of empire because they did not give
a lot of that stuff back. So museums can museums have.
First off, they spent a lot of time working on
codes of ethics. So the first question is for the museum,
is it ethical for us to pay for the state?
(33:00):
You know what I mean? Um? And they and and honestly,
museums address that differently depending on the country and depending
on the museum. So you could maybe if you're listening, uh,
what what's the name of Getting Midnight. His name is
Prince Midnight. And by the way, big shout out to
UM Internet Today, which is a YouTube channel that I've've
(33:22):
really been digging the last maybe six months or so.
During COVID, they do a segment every week all weekly
weird news and I have sometimes crib stories from them,
and they reported on this as well. UM and they
pointed out that the you can find his music as
Prince Midnight on Spotify. Uh. And it's it's metal ish
(33:43):
but it has a lot of marimba vibra phone on it,
so it's a little like odd sort of a weird
metal jazz hybrid. I haven't listened to yet, but I
trust those guys. Is that has like a rat on it,
you know, like made of human bones, it will be metals. Yeah, Oh,
I was talking about the pedal, but oh, funny you
(34:06):
should say that. And I'm just gonna leave it this.
This is speaking of musical instruments. I just bought a
electric thumb piano. It's a it's a kalimba. It's got
the little times on it that you can play with
your thumbs, and it has a like it's a wooden box.
It's really cool sounding, and then it's got a jack
on it and I Am going to plug it into
a rat pedal and a bunch of weather stuff too.
So I'm excited to made out of human bones. Though
(34:30):
I know we're jumping off this story, I really do
think the stuff theyn't want you to know. At the
heart of this is the fact that if you can
get out their story that you come up with, and
you get one reporter at one even smaller legitimate outfit
to to publish a story, you can get the entire
Internet to just respond and say things like, well, according
(34:54):
to this, yeah, yeah, yes, and your research. Do your research, guys,
watched the read the Sun and watch the video. Like people.
People can be too credulous, you know, I mean, nobody
ever talks about this. It's so easy to just make
up a word. Maybe we mentioned their make up a word,
(35:15):
get it mentioned five times in five different publications, and boom,
you have a shot of being in the Oxford English Dictionary.
It's like, that's a flibbertasm, right, we could make that
a thing. It's a living language. Uh. It reminds me too,
I like, if you want to see this happening in
real time and see like the mechanics behind making a
(35:36):
total horse story, you know, go viral and be picked
up by seemingly legitimate news organizations. I highly recommend you
watch them. Nathan for you episode about the Petting Zoo
where he essentially frames a story where a goat resk
a pig, excuse me, rescues a baby goat from drowning,
and he just does all this behind the scenes stuff
(35:57):
with scuba divers and like they build like a plastic
track for the goat to go through, and they have
a guy say go in the water, and they do
all this thing and make a phone video and upload
it and it gets blasted out on Reddit organically picked
up like crazy, and then before you know it, George
Stephanopolis is talking about it, Japanese news stations are talking
about it. You see this in real time. It is genius.
It can be done. And ending on that inspirational note,
(36:21):
we will pause for a word from our sponsors and
be back with one more piece of strange news. And
we are back, and this story comes to us from
the big old state of Texas. We have a lot
(36:43):
of people out there right now listening who are in
Texas I'm sure hopefully you're hearing this recently after we're
recording it and you're not just sitting there trying to
find a place to charge your phone still, because I
know that's probably been something you've been dealing with as
well as you know, turning the heat on and staying
warm enough in frigid temperatures. Uh. As of this weekend
(37:06):
and over the last week, there was an incredible winter
storm that went through Texas and just blanketed the almost
the entire state and the surrounding areas in you know,
freezing rain, in snow, and all kinds of things that
are really bad for electrical grids. Things that are you know,
(37:28):
bring trees down, and you've probably dealt with that wherever
you live. You've probably seen freezing rain or something bring
a tree down, knock over some lines that are going
across the street or something, and then took out power
in a small area. Well, imagine if you are in
this giant state of Texas and pretty much everywhere the
power goes out, and not only that, after some of
(37:53):
the major parts of of the infrastructure are repaired, you
have to as an end user, as just a per
in with a house or an office or something. You
have to deal with rolling blackouts where the the power
is turned off just to sustain all of the other uh, well,
let's say critical pieces of infrastructure within the state. Because
(38:15):
you can't just send power everywhere and all the time
because there's not enough to go around. It's a pretty
terrible situation to be in in Texas probably right now,
I know, at least over the weekend, it's been pretty awful. Um,
I'm gonna this story comes from w f a A.
It's a local ABC affiliate there in Texas, and the
(38:36):
headline is Texas power outages. How the largest energy producing
state in the US failed in freezing temperatures. And I'm
won't go over the entire thing with you here, but
the bottom line is that we know what happened at
this point, and we know that it's happened before at
least twice in the fairly recent past, and we know
(39:00):
how to fix it and prevent it from happening again.
But the major thing that's in the way is cost
and money. So it's not like this was a situation
in Atlanta when there was you know, snow apocalypse or
Snowmageddon when that occurred, where the major issues were traffic
related where there were power outages, but it was mostly
(39:22):
you know, trees that fell down and took out small
parts of the grid, and then other parts of the
grid got a little overloaded. In this case, with these
freezing temperatures, there are a lot of energy producing nodes
essentially places where energy is actively being produced for power
is being produced since being sent back onto the grid,
(39:44):
and in these freezing temperatures, many of these in Texas
literally froze. The mechanisms where perhaps a mechanical pump that
is being used or something that is turning, literally froze
to the point where they could no longer function. And
what ended up happening is that just with this part alone,
(40:07):
and this is only one factor within all of the
loss of power the system, just through this one little thing,
the system has lost or did lose, tens of thousands
of megawatts because of this. A single megawatt, by the way,
can power five homes, which is a nice thing to
knows does it take to make a jigawat all of them?
(40:29):
All the megawatts get a jigawatt um And I want
to go back to this concept that this has happened
before so in in two thousand eleven, there was another storm,
a winter storm that came through and did pretty much
the same thing. Uh. It took out a lot of
the infrastructure due to freezing mechanical stuff that was used
(40:52):
to generate power. And you can go to if you
look at that article that I cited from w f
a A, they link to an August two thousand eleven
report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation as well
as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and it has recommendations
(41:14):
about this event where a massive power outage occurred because
of freezing temperatures. And in here they cite pretty obvious
things how to weatherize certain equipment that was rendered ineffective
in these cold temperatures. They they laid out exactly what
(41:35):
needs to be done. The problem is it costs a
lot of money to do that, and there are a
lot of independent operators here. They would have to take
those costs on or they'd have to get grants or
you know, essentially loans from the Texas government to do this.
Because unlike a lot of other states, Texas runs its
(41:55):
own energy for the most part, for the most part,
at least, UH, there's this thing called e GOT. I
think that's the one where you win the ammy of
the Grammy of the oscar in the town. Sorry, it's
it's not the EGOT or the EPCOT, the RCT. It's
the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and they manage this
(42:17):
is a quote here from their website. They manage the
flow of electric power to more than twenty six million
Texas customers, and it represents they represent about the state's
electrical load. Yeah, there are a couple of other outfits.
These other outfits exist entirely due to the gargantuan size
(42:37):
of the state of Texas. I believe I'll passed was one.
There's an interesting it's an interesting aspect here. Texas kind
of had a suite deal with Like the US has
three three electric grits. Right, We've got the Eastern Interconnection,
that's exactly what it sounds like, the Western Interconnection, it's
(42:58):
exactly what it sounds like. And then we've got Texas,
which is mostly what it sounds like. Of it is
what it sounds like. And then these other places are interrelated.
The two thousand eleven case is really interesting to me.
Um and shout out to our friend James, I think
we should say who is talking with us a little
bit about this? But it's really interesting to me because
(43:20):
in many ways Mexico was a better neighbor than some
of the adjacent US states, and they helped Texas out
when it's grid was down in twenty eleven. Um part
of it goes deep into the Texan history of wanting
to be as independent from a federal government as possible
(43:40):
and the result of that. Now, I think there's a
good argument to be made here. Uh And I do
think this could be a full episode similar to that
Enron conspiracy with blackouts in California, which they totally did
on purpose. The The thing here is that Texas is
kind of having its cake and eating it to the
(44:01):
critics say like, we're independent, we don't need we don't
we don't need no stinking Feds. Until something goes wrong,
and then it's like, oh, we are part of this,
please help us out. And this is not at all
a dame upon the millions of people living in Texas,
who were, of course not alive when this conversation started.
(44:24):
The thing is that the Reliability Council has some enormous
powers here. They were formed in nineventy, not after a
blackout in Texas, but out of after a blackout in
the Northeast, and they said, let's not let this happen again.
We're beyond the jurisdiction of the fetes um except when
we need this assistance. And you're right, do just like
(44:47):
just like the quote unquote snowpocalypse in Atlanta, why did
everything go sideways? It wins sideways because just like that
case in Old Smar, Florida, people didn't care about the
boring of structure. I don't care about the turbines assault, right,
I don't care about this snool plows. When's it gonna
snow in Atlanta? I don't care who on Earth is
(45:10):
going to hack a wastewater treatment plant. The thing is
those eventualities exists. So I think this is an infrastructure problem.
But we're all talking on fair and you say there's
and I agree with you that there's something curious or
about this, if not the cause of the outage, which
to my mind so far does seem to be weather.
(45:31):
Doesn't seem like there's an in RHN to play purposely
killing the lights. Uh. But as far as people are,
people in institutions are navigating this UM went about you guys,
I heard some weird rumors about zip codes. Yeah, there's
definitely stuff going around on social media. When you look
at the power outages maps, if you look at which
(45:55):
areas seem to have a consistent flow of energy and
then the other areas that are either dealing with those blackouts,
the rolling blackouts, or just power outages in general, it
looks on the surface like there's a bit of um,
what would you say, income gap between those who have
(46:16):
power and those who don't. It seems that way. Who knows, Uh,
there's no way for us to prove it currently that
something like that is happening. I would just say those
maps do seem they do seem to paint a picture. Yeah,
it's just to be clear. It's when Matt say there's
a discrepancy between the zip codes. This is not saying
(46:39):
that the very poor and disadvantage zip codes got power
back on first because their lives are already more challenging.
In fact, it's uh, it's quite the opposite, isn't it.
This is a little unrelated, but in this something I
just found out about. But this is a story from
December of apparently UM California water h is now a
(47:02):
future to be traded as a commodity because of potential scarcity.
Um that just seems wrong. Wrong. There's a whole other
thing that we're not even getting into today that I
do not understand, frankly, and that is the trading of power,
the trading of electricity within the grid. And you know
(47:24):
how much it costs when you sell, where it's coming from,
where it's going, who needs it now, where's the demand?
And this is one of the things that that are
COOT group, the e R c o T. That's what
they handle. That's one of the things that they do
for of Texas and you always wonder if that could
come into play in some way for this stuff. But
(47:47):
in the end, it really does feel like, at least
to me, that this is a problem of infrastructure that
was shown to be an issue in that was then
shown to be an issue again into the thousand eleven.
But since it was a report made by the Public
Utility Commission of Texas UH it had it wasn't mandatory,
(48:08):
So you know, the individual operators, the companies that run generators,
that run power plants, they didn't have to do anything.
And like you said Ben, this is a winter storm
scenario that comes along once in a blue moon, as
they say, or you know, twelve years once, then twelve
(48:29):
years later, and then again roughly ten years later. Is
it worth all of that, you know, the millions of
dollars that it would take. We don't know what price
do you put on a human life, because let's remember
we are also talking about hundreds of thousands of people
who depend on technology to live in a very literal,
(48:50):
unpoetic way. They will die without continual help of medical
devices and so on. And yes, of course hospitals do
have secondary backup systems just for this. Uh. I think personally,
a well run state level independent electric grid, I get it.
(49:10):
Like that seems like it could be workable. You know. Um,
there's a great thread going on over at our Facebook page.
Here's where it gets crazy where we've got a lot
of our native Texans or current Texans in the crowd
talking about this and bringing up bringing up some great points,
and people are hurting. There are people who haven't at
power of water for thirty six hours. Uh. There there
(49:32):
are people are saying, you know, we need to abolish
our coot and get on grid with the rest of
the country or or as, as some users have pointed out,
maybe invest more in Kott's infrastructure. Boring though that investment,
maybe uh, and then maybe maybe take a serious internal
(49:53):
look at the organization to see how the people in
place can make sure this sort of stuff doesn't happen,
Like if you were not in the US. First off,
just to give you a sense of scale here. First off,
if you're not in the United States, it is very
difficult to understand just how cartoonish lee big Texas is.
(50:16):
You can drive and drive. Have you guys ever driven
all the way through Texas? All the way through When
I was on tour with that MetalMan, we drove through
Texas because we had like four different shows in Texas
and then one in New Mexico, So we like drove
over the course of a couple of days, we drove
like the width of Texas. That's nuts. Yeah, Okay, we're
(50:38):
talking eight hundred and seventy miles to go from border
to border. That's like fourteen to sixteen hours on a
good day. That's not like there are countries that are
smaller than Texas. It is. It is huge. So I
get has that grid, but like I don't. I don't know.
(51:00):
I don't know. Matt. You think there's some shenanigans in
the way this is being handled. Um, I don't know
if it's shenanigans. I think it's a scramble. Because if
you look at Arcot's website, they have videos of their
control room. It purports to be this, you know, highly
technical control room with all kinds of information, way too
(51:23):
much information for for the group to know what's going
on at all times with the grid and to forecast
what's going to occur. And they've there, I'm sure that
they're very, very good at that. They say there are
nine people at all times within that room monitoring the
grid across you know, all of Texas or at least
they use outside of El Paso in a few other places.
(51:46):
And you look at this stuff and you think, Okay,
they are forecasting how bad it's going to be. And
unless they you know, unless they turn the knob all
the way to s H t F, which would be
I guess, stuff hitting the fan. Um, they're not gonna
they're not gonna plan for this to happen, for it
(52:08):
to be this bad. Um, I don't really know where
I'm going with this other than it feels like a scramble, like,
oh crap, things are going wrong, Let's see what we
can do. And then you've got a company like Encore,
which is Encore Electric Delivery Company LLC. It reminds me
a lot of Georgia Power here in in Atlanta and
(52:30):
in Greater Georgia, where you will see Georgia Power employees out,
you know, fixing, getting a tree off the road, fixing
a substation, getting a transformer back up and running. That's
what that company, at least to my understanding and from
the reporting here, that's what they do. But I'm also
seeing a lot of people hating on Encore for stuff.
(52:56):
But I honestly don't think it's their purview to go
out and fig you know, I don't think it's would
be their job to fix a natural gas plant. I
think that would be on the plant itself. So I
just I don't know that for sure. That's just my
understanding from what I'm reading through all these websites, and
they could be you know, the we're talking about an
(53:18):
energy rich state, which is one of the reasons Texas
was able to build this grid in the first place. Right, Uh,
what that means is that there are a lot of
organizations involved with specific aspects of of this whole, this
overall organism, if we want to call it that. And
then because they're multiple players involved, that also means that
(53:40):
people are necessarily or institutions excuse me, are necessarily going
to be somewhat territorial. So it may be the case
that some organizations really do want to help and get
stuff solved and probably have the competency in the skill
set to do it, but they can't because it's not
their turf. Like that's that that happens. That happens so often.
(54:03):
It's interesting, Like I mean, in Georgia, we have options
for you know, you can go with Georgia Power, you
can go with um scan or whatever, you know what
I mean. Um but we have a Public Service Commission
that regulates rates and sort of keeps that under control,
and they're the only ones that can raise rates. But
there's also like a lot of former Georgia Power executives
(54:26):
that end up appointed to head up the Public Service Commission.
So there's kind of like a little bit of conflict
of interest in that situation. And Texas has what's called
the Public Utility Commission. But I'm wondering how does that
figure into all of this what we're talking about, if
it's sort of like its own thing. Well, the the COT,
(54:47):
the the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. They are a
nonprofit corporation, so like a five oh one C four,
they just according to their information, their government, a board
of directors. They're subject to oversight by the Public Utility
Commission of Texts and the Texas legislature. So they you know,
(55:09):
but but again, like the members of of this thing
of URCOTT are consumers, co ops, generators, power marketers, retail
electric providers, investor owned electric utilities, transmission and distribution providers.
These are a lot of words, by the way that
I swear, are meant to be a little difficult to
like get in. There's isn't there. I mean that these
(55:35):
are stakeholders would be the the other umbrella term for this.
But but you know, the average person is probably not
gonna understand what a power marketer is, uh and where
they're where their vig is right, what service did they provide?
What rent do they seek? This stuff? There there's a
lot of money because this is something that the species
(55:57):
is accustomed to having now, And it's very difficult to
take things from people when they are used to having them.
So it follows that people will accept almost any kind
of system so long as it seems normalized and provides
the things that they believe me their life normal. Shout out.
By the way, code Dame Doc Holiday was was telling
(56:20):
us that she actually drove across Texas when she was
on tour with a metal band who did not necessarily
have guitars made from human remains. Right. Uh, that's just
adds another point to our proof that our super producers
have these incredibly interesting, rich backstories. But so, Matt, Paul,
(56:42):
mission controls not here right now. I just want to
ask you plainly, just cards on the table. It's just you, me, Noel, Doc,
and millions of other people. Uh, why do you think
Paul did it? What do you think he crashed the grid?
Something about Applebee's. I don't know, you know what it is.
(57:06):
I think he resented Applebee's switching to iPad only ordering
um because I haven't even pre pandemic, you know. And
I think Paul really appreciated that personal touch of the
Appleby's Waite staff. Really felt like he was built just
a tiny update UH. A story that was published uh
today UM, referencing a meeting of the Public Utility Commission
(57:29):
of Texas that we talked about, which does have oversight
over this. Uh. This collective that you're talking about, matt um,
but is also staffed by a lot of big wigs
in the energy world. UM. They held an emergency meeting yesterday, UM,
where in order to it's the same thing that the
PSC does here in Georgia, they talk about setting rates
(57:49):
and there's a rake height and people you know, commiserate
about that. This specifically, they draft an order that said, uh, quote,
energy prices should reflect scarcity of the supply. If streamer
load is being shed, scarcity is at its maximum, and
the market price for the energy needed to serve that
load should also be at its highest. So you pay us.
(58:16):
But it's supply demand, guys, it's messed up, and it's capitalism.
Is a longer conversation, but for now, we just if
you're if you're in Texas, we hope you're okay if
you're hearing this. When you're hearing this, uh, and please
stay warm however you can, and remember the case of monopolies,
(58:37):
supply demand doesn't always apply the same way because you
can control the supply for something that will always have
this level of demand electricity, water, air. I'm telling you
there's a lot of money changing hands right, Stories like
this too. You look at and you can't tell me
that monopolies don't exist. Come on, it's more like it's
(59:01):
more like supplying the man right there was perfect. Also, Yeah,
you can say monopolies don't exist, but you will be
either wilfully lying to people or you will be wilfully naive. Again,
there's there's a thread going on our Facebook group. Here's
where it gets crazy. If you want to check that out,
(59:24):
whether you are in Texas yourself or you just want
to learn more firsthand from people. We've got. The thread
right now is really active and they're going into some
things that I think a lot of the larger media
outlets are not considering, maybe things that wouldn't occur to
you if you didn't live in the great state of Texas,
(59:45):
which which I miss it. It's just amazing that there's
something that big. It's crazy, yeah, and it's also so diverse,
you know, because you have like your Dallas is and
your Austin. I mean Austin's sort of its own little
weird liberal hippie bast in. But even the time that
we spent there in Austin, there there there's a lot
of there's some kind of normies in Austin too, But yeah,
(01:00:07):
it's a very interesting landscape for sure physically and uh
in terms of just like the mindset of the people
that live there. Foods great too. Oh yeah, Hey, so again,
we hope you're okay there in Texas. Oh, what are
the other things we're talking? We hope if you've got
a guitar it isn't made out of a skeleton, or
if you've got a skeleton, it isn't a guitar, because really,
in my mind, you should keep those things separate. And
(01:00:30):
we we we hope that, uh, we hope that you
get back to us with your opinions on disclosure or beliefs.
And of course, as always, if you have a story
to share with us related to any of these things
we discussed, no matter how tangentially, or if you just
have a new topic idea that you believe your fellow
(01:00:51):
listeners would enjoy, we would love to hear from you.
I'd especially like to hear from anybody who is on
the ground in India right now during the pro test,
for example, let us know what's going on. You can
find us. As we said at the various internet outlets
were on Facebook. Here's where it gets crazy. That got
some special shout outs today because of the ongoing situation
(01:01:13):
in Texas. But if you don't care for the Internet,
you can also just give us a call directly. We
have a number and everything that's right. Our number is
one eight three three st d w y t K.
Please leave a message. We're gonna tell you exactly how
to do it, all right. First things first, tell us
(01:01:34):
your name, if we can use it, and if it's
cool for us to play this thing on air, then
tell us your message. That's the best thing to do.
Try and keep it within you know, two minutes something
like that, and then afterwards, anything else you want to
say just personally to us, or you know, anything really
at all, say it at the end. What we mean
there is like, if there is something that you know
(01:01:56):
you don't necessarily want on the air, doesn't pertain to
the topic, but you just want to share it with us,
then just put that at the end. And if you've
got a longer story. We do have a three minute
limit on these, so if you have a longer story,
it's best to send it directly to us via email,
which will give you in a second. Absolutely, and Ben,
I want to say, I really I was trying to
(01:02:17):
to jump in and be a part of the fun.
And uh and and and tag and catalog some of
these voicemails and Ben, you would you would wiped out
the entire folder, my friend, I literally did three from today.
But now it's under control. Uh. And we're gonna each
take our little shifts and keep it a little more manageable.
But then there are some really good ones in there.
I went through the list today, UM, just kind of
(01:02:38):
listening to a bunch of them, and man, you guys
have some amazing stories, that's right. And if you don't
want to do that stuff, there are other ways to
contact us. You can figure email, you'll find them, but
the easiest one. If you've got a long story, especially
or some a lot of details and links, go ahead
and send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want
(01:03:17):
you to know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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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 no They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. It's the top of the week, which
means it is time for some strange news, cadavers and music.
(00:47):
The mystery of the Texas Grid, uh, the Texas Electric Grid,
and then a choice that I thought this might be
a hashtag no saw gentlemen, I thought this might be
fun game to play if you're down for it. Okay, now,
I love that level of trust. Noel. Let me tell
(01:08):
you what they get. What the game is. Uh, It's
it's not Russian Roulette. But um, so I know we
all read stuff extensively lately, I've been having a tougher
and tougher time just going to uh one story, So
I'd like to give you uh three headlines and maybe
(01:29):
Matt Noel you will pick the one that you want
to hear from uh from me in in today's segments.
So I've already made my choice. Sorry, but go ahead
and read them all right, Okay? Cool? This is like
we're sucking the joy out of this for you back. No, No,
it's like voting in the center. Okay. So number one,
(01:53):
as the Pentagon just admitted to retaining and testing UFO wreckage.
Number two, what about the massive unprecedented protests in India
as farmers rally against the increasingly tyrannical government. Uh. And
number three, what's with the United Kingdom saying they will
(02:15):
not resuscitate COVID nineteen patients with learning disabilities? Those are
the three. What do you think, Matt, You said, you've
got your mind's made up. Well, there's some really important
stuff in there, some stuff that's gonna, you know, really
impact people's lives, especially the farmers in India. And you know, man,
(02:36):
it's just horrible the reporting that's coming from the Guardian
right now about that last story you mentioned with the
do not resussitate, but you said the phrase the Pentagon
admitted to testing UFO wreckage And there's no way we
cannot cover that story. It does feel that way. That's
a unanimous vote, all right, Okay, alright, that sounds like
(02:59):
that's of like Unamo's vote. So uh, let's if you
guys are okay, we'll kick off with that one. And
we will in all seriousness, we are returning to the
story about the protests, the massive protest on going because
it's they're still going to be happening for a while.
We want to get all the information we can, uh.
And in that way, the desire to get all the
(03:20):
information we can uh, we are similar to an author
named Anthony Bregia who claims that he does have no
fully legitimate proof that the Pentagon did collect Ufo wreckage
and did retain it. What's more, they know a lot
about it, and they've been experimenting with applications of this stuff.
(03:45):
That's that's the headline. Let's see, let's see how it
holds out. So so here's the backup. Stop me when
there are any questions, uh, there should be some should
be some questions. So Brigalia said that the U. S.
Defense Intelligence Agency or d i A, they accept f
o I a request Freedom of Information Act request. He
(04:06):
said that over three years ago he sent in a request.
The man shot a shot and he said, tell me everything,
Tell me everything you know under the rights of the
fo I A. And then three years later they came
back to him with a series of a hundred and
fifty four page test results regarding a medal called knitten All.
(04:32):
You can look it up now and I T I
N O l uh. This this medal to Brigalis thinking
was mind boggling because nitn all can is famous for
remembering quote unquote remembering its shape when you distort it
or folded. So if you had simple example, if you
(04:53):
had a knitton All fork and you bent it long
ways or in any number of directions you crumpled it up,
even then it would eventually spring back into being a
fort and there would be no creases, no lines, no
proof of previous deformation. It could happen too with something
like a paper clip, right, So this would be a
(05:13):
really cool material to work with. You can read the
full story over on his blog UFO Explorations. You can
also see some reports by h places that we have
dunked on as not being the best sources in the past,
like the Daily Mail and The Sun, which you know
(05:33):
we were right about this. Uh So when this guy
asked the d i A about this stuff, he's asking
physical descriptions, properties, and composition of these things. This is
where we get into some weird territory because according to
b Regalia, and again just when we consider our sources, folks,
(05:56):
the name of this guy's blog is UFO Explorations. So
in his blog you'll see that he believes the information
provided to him by the d i A also proves
that some of these what he calls futuristic materials have
the potential to make things invisible. Shout out to our
(06:17):
earlier episode on the Philadelphia experiment. Uh And he's saying
he's cleaning this because for anybody who hasn't read a
document that's released by f o I eight, there's like
a legal requirement to release it with a few exceptions,
but there's no legal requirement not to edit it. So
(06:38):
you're also redacted like like big old highlighting black blocks
right right right, exactly like the old Onion headline that
was so wonderful where it said FBI. FBI learns they've
accidentally been using black highlighters for decades highlighters, But isn't
it true they've been that there have been cases where
people have been able to see through those when you
(06:59):
hold it up to the light or something. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think there was a case a number of years
back where someone had redacted a form electronically, which meant
that if you wanted to read the unredacted version, you
just changed the view. Oh man, the smallest things, folks,
(07:19):
The smallest things bring down the giants. So here here's
the issue, though, the first issue. We'll stop here before
you go further with the story. First issue, Uh, Nitton
All For anybody who was an engineer or chemist, or
anyone who looked this up as they were hearing about this,
Nitton All is not some magic extraterrestrial material that just
(07:45):
got its name from the first guy who discovered it
in the wreckage of a UFO. Nitton All is around.
We know what it is. It's less sexy name is
nickel titanium. It's like a real known thing. The history
of it dates back to nineteen fifty nine. Now, of course,
(08:06):
this is the part where a lot of people might say,
hang on, when did the roswell crash occur? Well, that
did happen in nineteen So if if this is, if
this came somehow from that Roswald crash, which we we
made a good case that there's a good case it
(08:26):
might have been a weather balloon or nuclear monitoring device.
But if if this knitt all was obtained from that crash,
then that would mean that somebody else knew about it
before the official story. It's funny when they refer to
it in the context of the Roswald crash. They call
it memory metal, which immediately, I don't know about you guys,
(08:47):
makes me think a one thousand stuff. Yeah, it does, yes,
determined to um I am. I'm a little bit confusing
looking at the UFO Explorations dot com website and he's
saying the author here is saying that there was memory
metal debris recovered at the UFO crash in Roswell or
(09:09):
the you know, alleged UFO crash, so they're described. I
guess what I'm confused about is the fo I a
response describing this memory metal as being present at that
crash specifically, or just that that's a material that it
states exists within the redacted parts. I guess. So this
(09:30):
is this is an interesting point, mat because if you
go to the blog, you'll see the author's interpretation of
what is contained in that d I a response, but
you can also on the blog you can see the
full text of both his request and the government's response.
(09:53):
So it definitely seems to confirm that they're looking there,
that they're working with applications of things like amorphous metals,
so that would be your T one thousand stuff or
meta materials, which would be materials that are kind of
purposely engineered to have a couple of extra properties or
(10:17):
an animate superpowers that naturally occurring materials would not possess. Uh.
And this also ties back into Bigelow aerospace. Of course. Uh,
it's cool because with this kind of news, you know,
I was previously pretty skeptical because there was no you know,
we've we've heard Bigelow saying for years that they add
(10:38):
access to some kind of materials that were recovered, but
they never shared them. They were talked really about them
other than to say that I have them, I won't
show them to you. That's what at least, uh, that's
what Robert Bigelow and Harry Reid and Tom DeLong all
seemed to be saved. But this is a little bit
different because you can read the actual documents from Uncle Sam.
(11:03):
So I'm a little less I'm a little bit less
skeptical um or I think there's more likely to be
something here. But the question is is this somehow material
science that a UM a lay person might not understand
or might mistake for magic or something extra terrestrial, or
(11:27):
is this simply cutting edge experimentation for the time in
which it occurred. You'll note if you're reading full the
response from Uncle Sam, you'll see that there's a hundred
and fifty four pages about five documents, and some of
these documents, some of the information in here has been
(11:48):
uh has been redacted, not necessarily because of the science involved,
but because there there's an exemption that allows them to
prevent the unwarranted invasion of individual privacy. So they've crossed
out names where it's like, you know, Johnny Blue Jeans
(12:09):
is the one who is experimenting with titanium. That remembers
who it is despite the way you bent in. Well,
I want to read something from one of these reported
you know responses to the f A request. It says
the meta mirror approach to infrared energy harvesting is one
(12:30):
of the very promising applications of meta materials. A number
of aspects of meta mirrors must be investigated in Several
important questions must be answered before practical applications can be
pursued meta mirrors. This is the first time I've ever
heard of this. Oh an absorber meta mirror structure. My goodness,
(12:50):
I just want to dig into all of these. Yeah, right,
I mean, it's legit. They did respond there is something there.
I do have to point out that everybody is immediate
thought process. When you hear the headline the Pentagon admitted
to testing UFO wreckage, your immediate response needs to be unknown.
Does not automatically equal extraterrestrial. The founds of stuff, I
(13:14):
didn't know what it was. They kept it like they're
on some state level episode of Hoarders, and they did
all kinds of weird stuff to it. Uh. That's that's
what's happening now, is that it does that mean that
there is technology possessed by the government that the public
does not possess or maybe even isn't aware of totally
(13:38):
even before this is yes, totally. Of course, there are
things that have not been released publicly. Of course, they're
suppressed technology. I just thought it was interesting. I thought
this is a story you guys would enjoy and everybody listening,
all the conspiracy realists who have wrote to us about disclosure,
this should be another feather in your cap. I don't
(14:00):
know whether things are accelerating in a certain direction that
hasn't been proven yet, but the frequency of things being
disclosed in this regard has certainly increased. It's something to
keep an eye on. We're going to dig into the
full d I a response, and we'll we'll update if
there's anything super super strange, if if they reference uh,
(14:23):
you know, extraterrestrials or anything like that. I'm sure the
author would have led with that if that was the case. Yeah, Ben, listen.
Non linear, non reciprocal chiral meta materials for developing novel
optical isolators and one way microwave mirrors. Awesome. I thought
I thought you were about to do a spoken word
(14:44):
poetry thing. It's what it sounds like it, but it
sounds science fiction, and it's it's a document created by
the government about a thing. Yeah, I know nothing about Well,
you weren't alive during that time, but your parts were.
They were. They were paying people to write these things.
(15:05):
If you think about it, right, that's taxpayer money. Uh boy,
but yes, this is happening. We're going to report back, uh,
and we're gonna pause for word from our sponsor. Hopefully
we don't get beamed up or black bagged. Uh, and
then we'll we'll be back with more strange news. And
(15:27):
we're back with more strange news. Okay. Um, We're gonna
pivot a little bit, but kind of stay within the
material sciences realm and also like weird uses of materials
or questionable stories behind uses of strange materials. Okay, I'm sorry,
I'm being very vague here. Uh. This is possibly the
(15:49):
most metal story of the year. Uh. And I'm viewing
metal horn fingers as I say this. If you can
maybe who knows, maybe this gets picked for the YouTube clip.
Maybe not. But I was doing it aggressively. And it's
because this is a story about a man, a Florida
man no less uh, purportedly with the very metal name.
(16:10):
He has two very metal names, uh, yago anax a
k A. Prince Midnight, who was allegedly taken the bones
the upper body torso bones minus the arms, minus the
skull of his deceased uncle Philip spelled F I. L.
I p it's also kind of metal, um, and converted
(16:33):
it into a guitar because supposedly Uncle Philip at least
this is what Prince Midnight's told metal sucks dot Com,
which is actually counted the name of up site about
four people who like metal. It's ironic. I guess, um.
He told them that that Uncle Philip was the biggest
metal head in the world and he wanted to honor
(16:55):
his you know, remains in his legacy by converting it
into a a functional guitar because he wanted to be
able to shred into eternity or be shredded upon. I
suppose right, um. And this story, you know, understandably got
picked up all over the place. I saw one in
(17:15):
an Indian newspaper of note, the Tampa Bay Times obviously
um the original reporting, but places like Guitar World Magazine, obviously,
CBC Radio One, Complex, Huffington's Post, The A V Club
and many more have picked this story up. Um, and
Prince Midnight did several posts on Instagram where he talked
(17:37):
about how he was planning on doing this or actually
it started off, you know, where he was like, I
am going to get my uncle's remains from this medical
lab that they were donated to. Apparently he donated his
remains to science, but the co story goes that they
no longer were able to use actual skeletons to make
skeleton demo kind of suations. Like our agent Scully, I
(18:02):
don't think that's a real skeleton. No comment got it
in any case. Apparently it used to be that medical
remains remains of this kind could be used in that fashion,
and this is apparently not the case anymore. So he
was somehow able to get it back, which I think
is a little fishy. How do you go about that?
(18:24):
You know, It's not like he was digging it up
from a grave, which would obviously be hyper illegal. But
this he claims that he was able to get it
back from this lab, the school rather um because they
didn't need it anymore and so they were able to
he was able to get it get it back. I
guess maybe because he showed some identification, showed he was
next to ken what have you, came in a giant
(18:44):
wooden box and this is a Greek Orthodox family again
according to reports um. And then he shows the process
of making the guitar. He literally installs pickups by drilling
into the bones um and then you know, a bridge,
and he has to install like a metal a steel
rod to reinforce it because you know it. Sure, a
(19:05):
spine is strong, but a spine also bends. That's not
something you want your guitar neck to do. So he
had to run a steel rod up through the center
of the spine and then put a neck on it.
And it's kind of fun to see him play it.
You can see this online actually in several places because Reddit.
I think it's pretty cool, but it's also kind of
limiting if you're truly a shredder. Uh, your movements are
(19:28):
a little limited because the actual part where you strum
is inside the rib cage. Yeah, I saw that too.
It's it feels like it would be a little tough
to reach, doesn't know, I do want to say, just
because I never get the opportunity to work this into
conversation naturally. Philip spelled with two l's, is an archaic
(19:48):
word for the following that little putting your finger against
your thumb and then flicking it at someone. Yeah, that's
a Philip. Oh, that's fascinating. See there's like this a
few details, quite a few details in the story that
make me think, uh, well, there's more we're gonna get
there that there, maybe this isn't the whole story. First
(20:10):
of all, the name uh Yago Annex it's almost like
a nod and a wink to the famous metal guitarist
Ingve Malmstein in that at least it's just a very
Nordic sounding name. It's a very metal sounding name, obviously
not will not Nordic, but like a Greek kind of
it has that vibe with two a's. It makes makes
(20:33):
me think of Vigo the Carpathian from like Ghostbusters to
the Scourge of Moldavi. And also, now that you mentioned that, Philip,
what is that that? What would you do? If you
were going to do that, you would be bunking someone
on the nose, almost as a little uh ah, got
you kind of thing. Right. So the story goes on
the publication of origin here, which would be the Tampa
(20:57):
Bay Times. And if you guys don't know this, many
of you probably do. Tampa Bay and Florida in general,
but Tampa Bay in particular has always been known for
having a bit of a theatrical kind of metal scene.
Like apparently there was a band called like Hell on
Earth back in the day that had some kind of
scheme to have the first like on stage suicide and
(21:18):
it was somebody who was terminally ill and they were
going to allow this person to offer themselves in full
view of of of the public. Definitably, I didn't go
over well in terms of pr uh, so they abandoned
this idea. Well, that's the kind of stuff. The metal
scene in the in in Tampa Bay is is known
for very goth, very theatrical, very black metal. It's almost
(21:39):
like uh Norway or something, you know, but like in Florida,
and obviously the Florida Man trope, which we've you know,
been through a million times on this show. Um. But
Tampa Bay Times as raising some doubts about the veracity
of this story because they believe that Prince Midnight a
k a. Yago Annex looks a whole heck of a
(22:01):
lot like this other gentleman who made some news in
past years, a guy with also very interesting name by
the name of Odolan Osair who has an Instagram. By
the way, who has an Instagram an excellent follow for
for anyone that's interested. Um and Osair made the news
(22:22):
for getting the Guinness record for like having the world's
tallest hat. Yeah, it's it looks like a stovepipe hat,
like an a blank in type situation, but it goes
up like two tree heights, Like I mean, it's it's
it's massive. There's pictures of him wearing a really cute outfit.
It's a gray suit jacket and pants that matched the
(22:45):
color of the fabric of the hat. Uh, and the
hat is extending up into the heavens. And then he's
wearing this kind of baby blue vest and he's got
a very very quoft mustache and long kind of mane
like hair. He really looks like a kind of guy
you'd see maybe tending bar at some kind of hipster
speakeasy type joint, only with a really really tall hat.
So that's one thing he did. He also did another
(23:07):
bit where he uh got another world record for having
the longest acrylic fingernails. Um. And so there's images of
him with these crazy long acrylic fingernails that that are
extending like he's kind of posing with them, and they're
there again matched his outfit. He also had another moment
(23:27):
of fame, relatively speaking, where he submitted a taxidermy crocodile
um that has two heads that's now on display at
a coffee shop in Seminole Heights, uh in the neighborhood
Seminal Heights in Tampa. So the Tampa Bay Times felt
like Prince Midnight had a very striking resemblance to oz
(23:51):
there Um and Prince Midnight is is admittedly wearing a
wig and you don't really see his face super well.
Uh So the jury is still out on this one
and it hasn't been quote unquote solved yet. Um. I
think it's a fun story. There are things to be
said that about the level of um kind of laying
(24:11):
the groundwork for a hoax like this, that our guy,
Prince Midnight mate, because he definitely has a band, he
definitely has a record. Prince Midnight is an institution. This
guy is very much leaning into this persona uh he
you know, I had to figure out how to make
a guitar out of a skeleton. Whether it's real or not,
(24:31):
I don't know. I mean, he definitely put in the
effort one other thing, and I'm going back to I
don't know if you would if you could call it
a hoax, you can definitely call it a performance but
I don't think a performance is automatically a hoax. It's
only a hoax if the skeleton is not real. Right, Well,
you depends people have. People have sliding definitions of hoax.
(24:53):
But I wanted to want to point out clever hoaxes,
especially if they're meant to be discovered, if they're meant
to have a nod and we have little clues in there.
So maybe Philip with two with Philip with one l
is this guy the alleged skeleton guitars name it carried
in life? What if it's short for Philip pendulous, which
(25:16):
is another useless word. I know it means to be
suspended by or strung upon a threat, but goes very
well with guitars. I'm just saying, finally, God, I have
like a list of words that never gets to use.
Those are two thinking and it also describes the all
of the reporting and outfits that just kind of ran
with this story. Sensational piece of news. Um it's it's
(25:42):
interesting to the Tampa Bay Times who did really you're
like you said, Matt, They're the only one that really
did any true digging on this at all. Everyone else
just reported its side unseen like crazy story, get to
Florida man, makes me my metal thing of the year,
makes the guitar out of uncle's remains. How it's actually
looking into any any confirming anything, which is actually a
(26:06):
pretty interesting comment on the state of reporting right now. Um,
but the Tampa Bay Times actually contacted the Guinness World
Records Office, which you know, admittedly has become a bit
of a it's it's not a thing as much as
it maybe once was. You know, it used to record
important records, things like, you know, the world's fastest man
(26:26):
or what have you. But now it's things like longest
acrylic nails and tallest stovepipe hat. Um, so it really
is more of like a publicity stunt, and it's easy
to outdo somebody just so so you can make the
it's the thing anyway. Um, but they reached out. Guinness
said they do ask their applicants to provide a full name,
but we'll accept a stage name. And that also points
to how this is kind of a bit of a
(26:47):
carni esque, you know, silly thing these days, Guinness Records. Um,
if it called me out if I'm wrong on that,
but that's just how it feels. Yeah, Well, a Guinness
World Records. The Guinness Book of World Records was ever
super credible nor accurate. I mean it is. It is
mainly made to be a conversation starter, uh, and to
(27:08):
resolve arguments that people had at bars. That's the origin stories,
and to sell actual a Guinness. Right. They ran, they
and they ran the Scholastic book fair. I was always
very excited about those books. Along with other things we
mentioned in past episodes. I do want to point out
less I seem too pretentious for knowing so many unnecessary
words for a long time. As a kid, I thought
(27:31):
stage name was just the name of a local stage.
So I thought people's stage names were like the stages
they went to to do whatever their show was. It's
like you know when you go to a festival and
they have like the big stage, the main stage, and
the two smaller stages, and they all have kind of
clever names or names of like the companies that sponsor them.
(27:53):
That's money. Then yeah, And I thought I thought I
thought pen name was what people name their pens. It was.
That's not a very well adjusted members. You learned something
new every day. Um. Last thing, uh so the two
headed alligator picture I mentioned before Um that was actually
(28:15):
perpetrated by a guy by the name of Justin Arnold,
who The Tampa Bay Times also believes osare resembles um.
Ozair has said he doesn't know anything about this Prince
Midnight thing, or at least he, you know, denied any
associations And this is not me and I don't know anything.
I have nothing to do with that. I do want
to say this other guy, Justin Arnold, who The Tampa
(28:37):
Bay Times believed Ozar could also possibly be. He's the
one who tricked the paper into publishing this two headed
crocodile picture on its cover. So maybe they're a little
peeved about that two fourteen. Maybe they're kind of after
him a little, because it really does seem like they're
trying to do almost like some kind of lighthearted character
(28:58):
assassination here. But I love this. This guy, Justin Arnold
is currently the front man of a punk band in
Tampa Bay called Ferrell Babies, which I think is a
fabulous name for a punk band. Yep. And did you
mention the response when this outfit from I think it's
from a group called or As As it happens, they
(29:19):
reached out to that punk band and the response was
go f yourself. Okay, so punk totally. And also the
Ray Roya, who has been kind of following a lot
of this stuff. Um, and he seems to believe that
these are all kind of one and the same. Um.
He's on the side of whomever this person may be. Uh.
(29:41):
He's the editor in chief of Creative Low Fan, which
we also have here in Atlanta. I guess that's the
Southern thing. I didn't realize that it was just it
wasn't just in Atlanta. Um. But he he says, quote,
calling him a prankster seems cheap because he's a performance artist,
a genius in a way, so a genius in a way,
in a way compliment now, well you know, I mean
(30:02):
he didn't call him a genius. So you're good at
not wet in the bed in a way. Oh, come
on better, that's a little that's not it's just it's
a head. It's a head. I go, you're I get it.
And and there is there is something to be said
with the the idea of the subversion, which I'm quite
(30:23):
a fan of, the idea of hoisting someone pranking them
for not doing their due diligence, like the Sun and
the Daily Mail. To MAT's earlier point, knowles earlier point,
they didn't investigate as much as they should. Uh. But
it also makes me think, so these kind of performance artists,
they they need an audience, right, So it makes me
(30:46):
think there's more in the future to come. And by
the way, the guitar is he he has dubbed it
the skelecaster, which just clever. And if in fact it
is made of human remains, which he obtained legally, uh,
he cannot legally ever sell this because it is illegal
(31:06):
to traffic human remains, to sell human remains, yeah, to
uh to civilians correct, Yeah, yeah. And I don't think
any medical labs would be in the market for a skelecaster.
Maybe a museum. I was gonna say, he could probably
donate it, that'd be tight. Well, but then now I
(31:28):
don't know what does it take to have credentials to
buy things like this? The heart of darkness? Is it
technically illegal to buy things from for serial killers to
sell and profit off of their memorabilia. Earlier episode, will
In delt into the world of serial killer merchandise. We
found a pretty disturbing industry. Uh, those laws I would argue, Uh,
(31:54):
the legal constraints are a little bit different, Like, for instance, Uh, yes,
there are laws against serial murderers who are convicted making
money off selling their own story or something like that. Right,
but after someone dies after say it Ted Bundy passes
or something like that, then there's not really anything to
(32:17):
stop someone else from saying, hey, I have this parking
ticket the guy signed, or you know, I have Eileen
Warnos is uh childhood grammar book for some reason like
that that's sticky with a museum. Unfortunately, there there are
a lot of gray areas here. Like I in the
(32:37):
past it made snarky comments about the British Museum, which
gives lie to the idea that the government has done
with the days of empire because they did not give
a lot of that stuff back. So museums can museums have.
First off, they spent a lot of time working on
codes of ethics. So the first question is for the museum,
is it ethical for us to pay for the state?
(33:00):
You know what I mean? Um? And they and and honestly,
museums address that differently depending on the country and depending
on the museum. So you could maybe if you're listening, uh,
what what's the name of Getting Midnight. His name is
Prince Midnight. And by the way, big shout out to
UM Internet Today, which is a YouTube channel that I've've
(33:22):
really been digging the last maybe six months or so.
During COVID, they do a segment every week all weekly
weird news and I have sometimes crib stories from them,
and they reported on this as well. UM and they
pointed out that the you can find his music as
Prince Midnight on Spotify. Uh. And it's it's metal ish
(33:43):
but it has a lot of marimba vibra phone on it,
so it's a little like odd sort of a weird
metal jazz hybrid. I haven't listened to yet, but I
trust those guys. Is that has like a rat on it,
you know, like made of human bones, it will be metals. Yeah, Oh,
I was talking about the pedal, but oh, funny you
(34:06):
should say that. And I'm just gonna leave it this.
This is speaking of musical instruments. I just bought a
electric thumb piano. It's a it's a kalimba. It's got
the little times on it that you can play with
your thumbs, and it has a like it's a wooden box.
It's really cool sounding, and then it's got a jack
on it and I Am going to plug it into
a rat pedal and a bunch of weather stuff too.
So I'm excited to made out of human bones. Though
(34:30):
I know we're jumping off this story, I really do
think the stuff theyn't want you to know. At the
heart of this is the fact that if you can
get out their story that you come up with, and
you get one reporter at one even smaller legitimate outfit
to to publish a story, you can get the entire
Internet to just respond and say things like, well, according
(34:54):
to this, yeah, yeah, yes, and your research. Do your research, guys,
watched the read the Sun and watch the video. Like people.
People can be too credulous, you know, I mean, nobody
ever talks about this. It's so easy to just make
up a word. Maybe we mentioned their make up a word,
(35:15):
get it mentioned five times in five different publications, and boom,
you have a shot of being in the Oxford English Dictionary.
It's like, that's a flibbertasm, right, we could make that
a thing. It's a living language. Uh. It reminds me too,
I like, if you want to see this happening in
real time and see like the mechanics behind making a
(35:36):
total horse story, you know, go viral and be picked
up by seemingly legitimate news organizations. I highly recommend you
watch them. Nathan for you episode about the Petting Zoo
where he essentially frames a story where a goat resk
a pig, excuse me, rescues a baby goat from drowning,
and he just does all this behind the scenes stuff
(35:57):
with scuba divers and like they build like a plastic
track for the goat to go through, and they have
a guy say go in the water, and they do
all this thing and make a phone video and upload
it and it gets blasted out on Reddit organically picked
up like crazy, and then before you know it, George
Stephanopolis is talking about it, Japanese news stations are talking
about it. You see this in real time. It is genius.
It can be done. And ending on that inspirational note,
(36:21):
we will pause for a word from our sponsors and
be back with one more piece of strange news. And
we are back, and this story comes to us from
the big old state of Texas. We have a lot
(36:43):
of people out there right now listening who are in
Texas I'm sure hopefully you're hearing this recently after we're
recording it and you're not just sitting there trying to
find a place to charge your phone still, because I
know that's probably been something you've been dealing with as
well as you know, turning the heat on and staying
warm enough in frigid temperatures. Uh. As of this weekend
(37:06):
and over the last week, there was an incredible winter
storm that went through Texas and just blanketed the almost
the entire state and the surrounding areas in you know,
freezing rain, in snow, and all kinds of things that
are really bad for electrical grids. Things that are you know,
(37:28):
bring trees down, and you've probably dealt with that wherever
you live. You've probably seen freezing rain or something bring
a tree down, knock over some lines that are going
across the street or something, and then took out power
in a small area. Well, imagine if you are in
this giant state of Texas and pretty much everywhere the
power goes out, and not only that, after some of
(37:53):
the major parts of of the infrastructure are repaired, you
have to as an end user, as just a per
in with a house or an office or something. You
have to deal with rolling blackouts where the the power
is turned off just to sustain all of the other uh, well,
let's say critical pieces of infrastructure within the state. Because
(38:15):
you can't just send power everywhere and all the time
because there's not enough to go around. It's a pretty
terrible situation to be in in Texas probably right now,
I know, at least over the weekend, it's been pretty awful. Um,
I'm gonna this story comes from w f a A.
It's a local ABC affiliate there in Texas, and the
(38:36):
headline is Texas power outages. How the largest energy producing
state in the US failed in freezing temperatures. And I'm
won't go over the entire thing with you here, but
the bottom line is that we know what happened at
this point, and we know that it's happened before at
least twice in the fairly recent past, and we know
(39:00):
how to fix it and prevent it from happening again.
But the major thing that's in the way is cost
and money. So it's not like this was a situation
in Atlanta when there was you know, snow apocalypse or
Snowmageddon when that occurred, where the major issues were traffic
related where there were power outages, but it was mostly
(39:22):
you know, trees that fell down and took out small
parts of the grid, and then other parts of the
grid got a little overloaded. In this case, with these
freezing temperatures, there are a lot of energy producing nodes
essentially places where energy is actively being produced for power
is being produced since being sent back onto the grid,
(39:44):
and in these freezing temperatures, many of these in Texas
literally froze. The mechanisms where perhaps a mechanical pump that
is being used or something that is turning, literally froze
to the point where they could no longer function. And
what ended up happening is that just with this part alone,
(40:07):
and this is only one factor within all of the
loss of power the system, just through this one little thing,
the system has lost or did lose, tens of thousands
of megawatts because of this. A single megawatt, by the way,
can power five homes, which is a nice thing to
knows does it take to make a jigawat all of them?
(40:29):
All the megawatts get a jigawatt um And I want
to go back to this concept that this has happened
before so in in two thousand eleven, there was another storm,
a winter storm that came through and did pretty much
the same thing. Uh. It took out a lot of
the infrastructure due to freezing mechanical stuff that was used
(40:52):
to generate power. And you can go to if you
look at that article that I cited from w f
a A, they link to an August two thousand eleven
report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation as well
as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and it has recommendations
(41:14):
about this event where a massive power outage occurred because
of freezing temperatures. And in here they cite pretty obvious
things how to weatherize certain equipment that was rendered ineffective
in these cold temperatures. They they laid out exactly what
(41:35):
needs to be done. The problem is it costs a
lot of money to do that, and there are a
lot of independent operators here. They would have to take
those costs on or they'd have to get grants or
you know, essentially loans from the Texas government to do this.
Because unlike a lot of other states, Texas runs its
(41:55):
own energy for the most part, for the most part,
at least, UH, there's this thing called e GOT. I
think that's the one where you win the ammy of
the Grammy of the oscar in the town. Sorry, it's
it's not the EGOT or the EPCOT, the RCT. It's
the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and they manage this
(42:17):
is a quote here from their website. They manage the
flow of electric power to more than twenty six million
Texas customers, and it represents they represent about the state's
electrical load. Yeah, there are a couple of other outfits.
These other outfits exist entirely due to the gargantuan size
(42:37):
of the state of Texas. I believe I'll passed was one.
There's an interesting it's an interesting aspect here. Texas kind
of had a suite deal with Like the US has
three three electric grits. Right, We've got the Eastern Interconnection,
that's exactly what it sounds like, the Western Interconnection, it's
(42:58):
exactly what it sounds like. And then we've got Texas,
which is mostly what it sounds like. Of it is
what it sounds like. And then these other places are interrelated.
The two thousand eleven case is really interesting to me.
Um and shout out to our friend James, I think
we should say who is talking with us a little
bit about this? But it's really interesting to me because
(43:20):
in many ways Mexico was a better neighbor than some
of the adjacent US states, and they helped Texas out
when it's grid was down in twenty eleven. Um part
of it goes deep into the Texan history of wanting
to be as independent from a federal government as possible
(43:40):
and the result of that. Now, I think there's a
good argument to be made here. Uh And I do
think this could be a full episode similar to that
Enron conspiracy with blackouts in California, which they totally did
on purpose. The The thing here is that Texas is
kind of having its cake and eating it to the
(44:01):
critics say like, we're independent, we don't need we don't
we don't need no stinking Feds. Until something goes wrong,
and then it's like, oh, we are part of this,
please help us out. And this is not at all
a dame upon the millions of people living in Texas,
who were, of course not alive when this conversation started.
(44:24):
The thing is that the Reliability Council has some enormous
powers here. They were formed in nineventy, not after a
blackout in Texas, but out of after a blackout in
the Northeast, and they said, let's not let this happen again.
We're beyond the jurisdiction of the fetes um except when
we need this assistance. And you're right, do just like
(44:47):
just like the quote unquote snowpocalypse in Atlanta, why did
everything go sideways? It wins sideways because just like that
case in Old Smar, Florida, people didn't care about the
boring of structure. I don't care about the turbines assault, right,
I don't care about this snool plows. When's it gonna
snow in Atlanta? I don't care who on Earth is
(45:10):
going to hack a wastewater treatment plant. The thing is
those eventualities exists. So I think this is an infrastructure problem.
But we're all talking on fair and you say there's
and I agree with you that there's something curious or
about this, if not the cause of the outage, which
to my mind so far does seem to be weather.
(45:31):
Doesn't seem like there's an in RHN to play purposely
killing the lights. Uh. But as far as people are,
people in institutions are navigating this UM went about you guys,
I heard some weird rumors about zip codes. Yeah, there's
definitely stuff going around on social media. When you look
at the power outages maps, if you look at which
(45:55):
areas seem to have a consistent flow of energy and
then the other areas that are either dealing with those blackouts,
the rolling blackouts, or just power outages in general, it
looks on the surface like there's a bit of um,
what would you say, income gap between those who have
(46:16):
power and those who don't. It seems that way. Who knows, Uh,
there's no way for us to prove it currently that
something like that is happening. I would just say those
maps do seem they do seem to paint a picture. Yeah,
it's just to be clear. It's when Matt say there's
a discrepancy between the zip codes. This is not saying
(46:39):
that the very poor and disadvantage zip codes got power
back on first because their lives are already more challenging.
In fact, it's uh, it's quite the opposite, isn't it.
This is a little unrelated, but in this something I
just found out about. But this is a story from
December of apparently UM California water h is now a
(47:02):
future to be traded as a commodity because of potential scarcity.
Um that just seems wrong. Wrong. There's a whole other
thing that we're not even getting into today that I
do not understand, frankly, and that is the trading of power,
the trading of electricity within the grid. And you know
(47:24):
how much it costs when you sell, where it's coming from,
where it's going, who needs it now, where's the demand?
And this is one of the things that that are
COOT group, the e R c o T. That's what
they handle. That's one of the things that they do
for of Texas and you always wonder if that could
come into play in some way for this stuff. But
(47:47):
in the end, it really does feel like, at least
to me, that this is a problem of infrastructure that
was shown to be an issue in that was then
shown to be an issue again into the thousand eleven.
But since it was a report made by the Public
Utility Commission of Texas UH it had it wasn't mandatory,
(48:08):
So you know, the individual operators, the companies that run generators,
that run power plants, they didn't have to do anything.
And like you said Ben, this is a winter storm
scenario that comes along once in a blue moon, as
they say, or you know, twelve years once, then twelve
(48:29):
years later, and then again roughly ten years later. Is
it worth all of that, you know, the millions of
dollars that it would take. We don't know what price
do you put on a human life, because let's remember
we are also talking about hundreds of thousands of people
who depend on technology to live in a very literal,
(48:50):
unpoetic way. They will die without continual help of medical
devices and so on. And yes, of course hospitals do
have secondary backup systems just for this. Uh. I think personally,
a well run state level independent electric grid, I get it.
(49:10):
Like that seems like it could be workable. You know. Um,
there's a great thread going on over at our Facebook page.
Here's where it gets crazy where we've got a lot
of our native Texans or current Texans in the crowd
talking about this and bringing up bringing up some great points,
and people are hurting. There are people who haven't at
power of water for thirty six hours. Uh. There there
(49:32):
are people are saying, you know, we need to abolish
our coot and get on grid with the rest of
the country or or as, as some users have pointed out,
maybe invest more in Kott's infrastructure. Boring though that investment,
maybe uh, and then maybe maybe take a serious internal
(49:53):
look at the organization to see how the people in
place can make sure this sort of stuff doesn't happen,
Like if you were not in the US. First off,
just to give you a sense of scale here. First off,
if you're not in the United States, it is very
difficult to understand just how cartoonish lee big Texas is.
(50:16):
You can drive and drive. Have you guys ever driven
all the way through Texas? All the way through When
I was on tour with that MetalMan, we drove through
Texas because we had like four different shows in Texas
and then one in New Mexico, So we like drove
over the course of a couple of days, we drove
like the width of Texas. That's nuts. Yeah, Okay, we're
(50:38):
talking eight hundred and seventy miles to go from border
to border. That's like fourteen to sixteen hours on a
good day. That's not like there are countries that are
smaller than Texas. It is. It is huge. So I
get has that grid, but like I don't. I don't know.
(51:00):
I don't know. Matt. You think there's some shenanigans in
the way this is being handled. Um, I don't know
if it's shenanigans. I think it's a scramble. Because if
you look at Arcot's website, they have videos of their
control room. It purports to be this, you know, highly
technical control room with all kinds of information, way too
(51:23):
much information for for the group to know what's going
on at all times with the grid and to forecast
what's going to occur. And they've there, I'm sure that
they're very, very good at that. They say there are
nine people at all times within that room monitoring the
grid across you know, all of Texas or at least
they use outside of El Paso in a few other places.
(51:46):
And you look at this stuff and you think, Okay,
they are forecasting how bad it's going to be. And
unless they you know, unless they turn the knob all
the way to s H t F, which would be
I guess, stuff hitting the fan. Um, they're not gonna
they're not gonna plan for this to happen, for it
(52:08):
to be this bad. Um, I don't really know where
I'm going with this other than it feels like a scramble, like,
oh crap, things are going wrong, Let's see what we
can do. And then you've got a company like Encore,
which is Encore Electric Delivery Company LLC. It reminds me
a lot of Georgia Power here in in Atlanta and
(52:30):
in Greater Georgia, where you will see Georgia Power employees out,
you know, fixing, getting a tree off the road, fixing
a substation, getting a transformer back up and running. That's
what that company, at least to my understanding and from
the reporting here, that's what they do. But I'm also
seeing a lot of people hating on Encore for stuff.
(52:56):
But I honestly don't think it's their purview to go
out and fig you know, I don't think it's would
be their job to fix a natural gas plant. I
think that would be on the plant itself. So I
just I don't know that for sure. That's just my
understanding from what I'm reading through all these websites, and
they could be you know, the we're talking about an
(53:18):
energy rich state, which is one of the reasons Texas
was able to build this grid in the first place. Right, Uh,
what that means is that there are a lot of
organizations involved with specific aspects of of this whole, this
overall organism, if we want to call it that. And
then because they're multiple players involved, that also means that
(53:40):
people are necessarily or institutions excuse me, are necessarily going
to be somewhat territorial. So it may be the case
that some organizations really do want to help and get
stuff solved and probably have the competency in the skill
set to do it, but they can't because it's not
their turf. Like that's that that happens. That happens so often.
(54:03):
It's interesting, Like I mean, in Georgia, we have options
for you know, you can go with Georgia Power, you
can go with um scan or whatever, you know what
I mean. Um but we have a Public Service Commission
that regulates rates and sort of keeps that under control,
and they're the only ones that can raise rates. But
there's also like a lot of former Georgia Power executives
(54:26):
that end up appointed to head up the Public Service Commission.
So there's kind of like a little bit of conflict
of interest in that situation. And Texas has what's called
the Public Utility Commission. But I'm wondering how does that
figure into all of this what we're talking about, if
it's sort of like its own thing. Well, the the COT,
(54:47):
the the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. They are a
nonprofit corporation, so like a five oh one C four,
they just according to their information, their government, a board
of directors. They're subject to oversight by the Public Utility
Commission of Texts and the Texas legislature. So they you know,
(55:09):
but but again, like the members of of this thing
of URCOTT are consumers, co ops, generators, power marketers, retail
electric providers, investor owned electric utilities, transmission and distribution providers.
These are a lot of words, by the way that
I swear, are meant to be a little difficult to
like get in. There's isn't there. I mean that these
(55:35):
are stakeholders would be the the other umbrella term for this.
But but you know, the average person is probably not
gonna understand what a power marketer is, uh and where
they're where their vig is right, what service did they provide?
What rent do they seek? This stuff? There there's a
lot of money because this is something that the species
(55:57):
is accustomed to having now, And it's very difficult to
take things from people when they are used to having them.
So it follows that people will accept almost any kind
of system so long as it seems normalized and provides
the things that they believe me their life normal. Shout out.
By the way, code Dame Doc Holiday was was telling
(56:20):
us that she actually drove across Texas when she was
on tour with a metal band who did not necessarily
have guitars made from human remains. Right. Uh, that's just
adds another point to our proof that our super producers
have these incredibly interesting, rich backstories. But so, Matt, Paul,
(56:42):
mission controls not here right now. I just want to
ask you plainly, just cards on the table. It's just you, me, Noel, Doc,
and millions of other people. Uh, why do you think
Paul did it? What do you think he crashed the grid?
Something about Applebee's. I don't know, you know what it is.
(57:06):
I think he resented Applebee's switching to iPad only ordering
um because I haven't even pre pandemic, you know. And
I think Paul really appreciated that personal touch of the
Appleby's Waite staff. Really felt like he was built just
a tiny update UH. A story that was published uh
today UM, referencing a meeting of the Public Utility Commission
(57:29):
of Texas that we talked about, which does have oversight
over this. Uh. This collective that you're talking about, matt um,
but is also staffed by a lot of big wigs
in the energy world. UM. They held an emergency meeting yesterday, UM,
where in order to it's the same thing that the
PSC does here in Georgia, they talk about setting rates
(57:49):
and there's a rake height and people you know, commiserate
about that. This specifically, they draft an order that said, uh, quote,
energy prices should reflect scarcity of the supply. If streamer
load is being shed, scarcity is at its maximum, and
the market price for the energy needed to serve that
load should also be at its highest. So you pay us.
(58:16):
But it's supply demand, guys, it's messed up, and it's capitalism.
Is a longer conversation, but for now, we just if
you're if you're in Texas, we hope you're okay if
you're hearing this. When you're hearing this, uh, and please
stay warm however you can, and remember the case of monopolies,
(58:37):
supply demand doesn't always apply the same way because you
can control the supply for something that will always have
this level of demand electricity, water, air. I'm telling you
there's a lot of money changing hands right, Stories like
this too. You look at and you can't tell me
that monopolies don't exist. Come on, it's more like it's
(59:01):
more like supplying the man right there was perfect. Also, Yeah,
you can say monopolies don't exist, but you will be
either wilfully lying to people or you will be wilfully naive. Again,
there's there's a thread going on our Facebook group. Here's
where it gets crazy. If you want to check that out,
(59:24):
whether you are in Texas yourself or you just want
to learn more firsthand from people. We've got. The thread
right now is really active and they're going into some
things that I think a lot of the larger media
outlets are not considering, maybe things that wouldn't occur to
you if you didn't live in the great state of Texas,
(59:45):
which which I miss it. It's just amazing that there's
something that big. It's crazy, yeah, and it's also so diverse,
you know, because you have like your Dallas is and
your Austin. I mean Austin's sort of its own little
weird liberal hippie bast in. But even the time that
we spent there in Austin, there there there's a lot
of there's some kind of normies in Austin too, But yeah,
(01:00:07):
it's a very interesting landscape for sure physically and uh
in terms of just like the mindset of the people
that live there. Foods great too. Oh yeah, Hey, so again,
we hope you're okay there in Texas. Oh, what are
the other things we're talking? We hope if you've got
a guitar it isn't made out of a skeleton, or
if you've got a skeleton, it isn't a guitar, because really,
in my mind, you should keep those things separate. And
(01:00:30):
we we we hope that, uh, we hope that you
get back to us with your opinions on disclosure or beliefs.
And of course, as always, if you have a story
to share with us related to any of these things
we discussed, no matter how tangentially, or if you just
have a new topic idea that you believe your fellow
(01:00:51):
listeners would enjoy, we would love to hear from you.
I'd especially like to hear from anybody who is on
the ground in India right now during the pro test,
for example, let us know what's going on. You can
find us. As we said at the various internet outlets
were on Facebook. Here's where it gets crazy. That got
some special shout outs today because of the ongoing situation
(01:01:13):
in Texas. But if you don't care for the Internet,
you can also just give us a call directly. We
have a number and everything that's right. Our number is
one eight three three st d w y t K.
Please leave a message. We're gonna tell you exactly how
to do it, all right. First things first, tell us
(01:01:34):
your name, if we can use it, and if it's
cool for us to play this thing on air, then
tell us your message. That's the best thing to do.
Try and keep it within you know, two minutes something
like that, and then afterwards, anything else you want to
say just personally to us, or you know, anything really
at all, say it at the end. What we mean
there is like, if there is something that you know
(01:01:56):
you don't necessarily want on the air, doesn't pertain to
the topic, but you just want to share it with us,
then just put that at the end. And if you've
got a longer story. We do have a three minute
limit on these, so if you have a longer story,
it's best to send it directly to us via email,
which will give you in a second. Absolutely, and Ben,
I want to say, I really I was trying to
(01:02:17):
to jump in and be a part of the fun.
And uh and and and tag and catalog some of
these voicemails and Ben, you would you would wiped out
the entire folder, my friend, I literally did three from today.
But now it's under control. Uh. And we're gonna each
take our little shifts and keep it a little more manageable.
But then there are some really good ones in there.
I went through the list today, UM, just kind of
(01:02:38):
listening to a bunch of them, and man, you guys
have some amazing stories, that's right. And if you don't
want to do that stuff, there are other ways to
contact us. You can figure email, you'll find them, but
the easiest one. If you've got a long story, especially
or some a lot of details and links, go ahead
and send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want
(01:03:17):
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