November 7, 2022 • 40 mins
Debra, Diana, and Jesi talk about the most level-headed UFO account, how a city planning strategy created severe allergies nationwide, and a mysterious cell phone harassment case... and what time it is at the North Pole.
Tell us what sparks your interest on twitter (@interest_spark), facebook, instagram, and TikTok! (@sparkmyinterestpodcast) Send a crazy story or interesting article to sparkmyinterestpodcast@gmail.com or leave us a voicemail through our website sparkmyinterestpodcast.com and we might just share it on the show!
Articles and other sources:
https://youtube.com/shorts/nSnWCqygzpo?feature=share
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/time-has-no-meaning-at-the-north-pole/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/1994-lake-michigan-ufo-incident
https://readysteadycut.com/2022/10/18/unsolved-mysteries-season-3-episode-2-recap/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse
https://youtu.be/Fh758qVQPqg
https://the-line-up.com/cell-phone-stalker
https://medium.com/of-misdeeds-and-mysteries/the-kuykendall-family-phone-stalker-mystery-8d696f4609dd
Tell us what sparks your interest on twitter (@interest_spark), facebook, instagram, and TikTok! (@sparkmyinterestpodcast) Send a crazy story or interesting article to sparkmyinterestpodcast@gmail.com or leave us a voicemail through our website sparkmyinterestpodcast.com and we might just share it on the show!
Articles and other sources:
https://youtube.com/shorts/nSnWCqygzpo?feature=share
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/time-has-no-meaning-at-the-north-pole/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/1994-lake-michigan-ufo-incident
https://readysteadycut.com/2022/10/18/unsolved-mysteries-season-3-episode-2-recap/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse
https://youtu.be/Fh758qVQPqg
https://the-line-up.com/cell-phone-stalker
https://medium.com/of-misdeeds-and-mysteries/the-kuykendall-family-phone-stalker-mystery-8d696f4609dd
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We are the ladies who sparked myinterest. It's so much fun because there's
this anonymity. You are a twinkie. I want to see Jesse use a
twinkie. Yeah, bra, Ihave a hard time thinking about putting my
lips to that. Yeah, allright, Diana take it away. I
thought water could turn to wine butmetal. You know, guys, I've
(00:21):
been taking those allergy shots, butI couldn't go in today for my new
serum because I have strep throat.Oh no, you don't sound so you
don't at all. You don't evenWe've been talking for like twenty minutes.
Guys. It's such a nice compliment. But you all also have like energy
and I feel pretty good throat rawat all. Technically, I caught it
(00:44):
early because Leandre came down with ittoday, like she had the sore throat
today. Mine just started getting sore, so mine actually came back negative.
But I'm like, she's like,we're gonna treat both of you. I'm
gonna give you a prescription because it'scoming. So I think it caught early
enough where it's not terrible. Yeah, you take for strip throat? Oh
well, right now, there's likea shortage on antibiotics, so I didn't
(01:06):
get the traditional like amoxicillin. Igot zethromycin or whatever they call it.
I don't know. Not a realpisser though. Yeah, well, I
mean I had a good run forOctober. I didn't get sick at all,
so it was coming. It wasjust a matter of time. Like
there's all these kids getting like thatrespiratory virus. You know, they're trouble
a lot of kids. Everything's runningrampant everywhere. Yeah, everything is out
(01:30):
right now. I'm like, yep, yep, still wearing the mask.
I'm still rocking that shit. AndI don't see an end in sight for
that. Well, I was rockingit today, for sure. We are
all doom and gloom already, Noquite. We mentioned the masks if you
were listening to us for the firsttime. We are not always doom and
gloom. We are the Ladies ofSparked My Interest podcast. My name is
(01:52):
Diana, I'm Deborah, I'm Jesse, And every week we get together.
We gather articles that we found onlineor in books or in magaze scenes,
and we share them with one another, and at the end of every episode
we vote to see who had themost spark Worthy Article prize remains TVD at
this point. We don't care.We're just in it for the glory of
that wind. And I believe weall brought it today. I brought it.
(02:14):
And for the first time ever,we are wearing filters on our Zoom
meeting. How is this the firsttime? It is amazing. It puts
me in a good mood. Workedall day and you know what, I'll
enjoy my lipstick being put on forme be in a crown around my head.
Yeah, that's got a little crownin the corner of her head.
(02:35):
I'm wearing the we can do ItRosie the Riveter, Rosie the Riveter like
head kerchief with fake red lipstick andfake eyebrows. This is fun. I've
got the fake red lipstick and ared beret. Yeah, she's going in
French and you're you're you're selling it. Messiou merci MESSI un natural And Jesse,
(03:00):
I think you took a screenshot atour filters in the green room jump.
Yeah, I'll make sure to sharethose on social media so you can
see how ridiculous we look. Welook great, Yeah, we cartoonishly great.
It's perfect. So we've entered ourselves. We've all commented on how great
we look. Jesse, I believeyou're going to spark us up. I
(03:22):
am. This comes to us froma Scientific American, from an article by
Katie Women probablyshed March thirteenth, twentytwenty, and from something that Neil de
grass Tyson just mentioned briefly on oneof his little like YouTube shorts. You
think of like latitude lines that gohorizontally around the Earth, right, and
(03:42):
you've got the longitudinal lines you know, have something to do with time zones,
right, But as you move upto the North Pole and down to
the South Pole, those time zonesconverge on a point. And so what
time is it at the North Pole? Which time zone do the the poles
fall into? Is that that question? Well? I would think it would
(04:04):
fall into multiple time zones. Imean there's twenty four time zones, and
I don't think they're hitting just one. Yeah, they they don't fall into
any time zone really, so ifthey have to sort of just adhere to
whichever time zone they're trying to communicatewith. As of this article, there
was this German research ship called thePolar Stern up at the North Pole that's
(04:25):
like this icebreakership that does research upthere, and they are represented by one
hundred people from twenty different countries,and so they're all talking to their families
and different people at different times,and they all have to keep track of
what time zone they're in because inthe fall of twenty nineteen, the Polar
Stern captain pushed the time zone backone hour every week for six weeks to
(04:46):
sync up with incoming Russian ships thatfollow Moscow time. And it says with
each shift the captain adjusted automatic clockscattered around the ship, researchers paused to
watch the hands of analog clocks spineerily backward. I mean, when you
think about it, sun only risesand sets once a year on the North
Pole, so there is no senseof day or night. It would totally
(05:06):
mess you up. You would notknow when to go to bed and when
to wake up and when to eatyour meals. And I'm in the daylight
alone. It is already helping talk. Yeah, already problematic. Yeah,
And then you're telling me they're arounda bunch of people who are also living
in their own time zone, likethey're not. Just like, you know
what, let's go with Pacific orwhatever it may be. I think they
(05:28):
worked it out so that they sortof all adhere to a similar schedule.
But it's not it's not logical,you know, it's not based on anything
that's like. They just basically sayhere's here's what our schedule is, just
so we can stay sane, andthen they stick to that. It's really
interesting the world we live in,man or simulation, whatever it is.
It's unique. Yeah, but it'sweird because the closer you get to the
(05:50):
poles, the less time kind ofmakes sense in the traditional sense. Well
cool, I'm definitely sparked and canbring us into our Sparkler spot. Our
Sparkler Spot of the week is Minafrom Sacramento, California. He writes to
us at our Instagram. Longtime listener, first time writing in Debor used to
(06:15):
talk a lot about aliens in theearlier seasons. I love these stories.
They spark my interest the most.I was watching the latest Unsolved Mystery season
and they have an entire episode dedicatedto the UFO sighting back in the nineties.
If you haven't watched it yet,you should. It could make for
a great story contender for one ofyour episodes. Keep up the interesting stuff.
(06:41):
Love from Sacramento. Mina, Well, Mina, yeah, you're right.
I do love Aliens and I thinkit is fascinating and I did watch
that episode. Yeah, I knowyou have because you've been talking about it
like crazy. Oh yeah, Imean, I'm gonna use it as my
story. Actually, there are severalarticles written about those sightings and an episode
(07:01):
of Unsolved Mysteries, and I'm like, you know what, it is the
most interesting thing that I have watchedand read about as of late, so
I'm going to cover it. Sowith that, I'm going to go ahead
and kick things off into this storytime. My articles come from all That's
(07:30):
Interesting dot com by Austin Harvey,checked by John Kurowski on October sixteenth,
twenty twenty two, and I alsoused Unsolved Mysteries season three, episode two,
Something in the Sky. On Marcheighth, nineteen ninety four, residents
living along the shore of Lake Michiganwitnessed one of the most widespread UFO sightings
(07:56):
in history. Bright multicolor orbs appearedover the water and could be seen as
far south as Indiana's state line,dancing erratically across the night sky. So
these objects over three hundred people reportedthese objects, calling into police, the
(08:18):
fire department, the weather department.There were circular objects. They were not
planes, They were silent. Theywere more like glowing orbs, is really
how they were explained. Their movementwas erratic and there was a collection of
five to six of them, thatis how people described them. They also
moved incredibly fast. There's a woman, her name is Cindy Pravda. She
(08:43):
was in her fifties. She justsaid she was on the phone and she
looked into her backyard because she waslike, man, it must be a
full moon because it's so freaking bright. And she looked out and she was
like, that's not a moon.What is this? And there were these
huge orbs and just said into herphone, I think I've got a UFO
in my backyard. These things didnot just appear and then disappear. They
(09:07):
were there for at least thirty minutes. The most compelling encounter, though,
was likely from the on duty radaroperator for the National Weather Service that name.
This man was named Jack Buschung.He was very early into his career
(09:28):
and it was his dream job tobe a meteorologist working for the National Weather
Service. He was Brandlew married aswell. He was born and raised in
the Lake, Michigan area. Soone of the calls that came in that
night were from the police, sothey had been called out. They drove
out to where somebody had seen theseorbs and they were like, gosh,
(09:48):
this is so bizarre. So theycalled in and this call was recorded,
so there's a whole recording of it. If you watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode,
you can hear it, and youcan hear the excitement in Jack's voice.
You know, he mentions, youknow, these aren't planes, and
they show you like what the radarwould look like and how the orbs would
(10:09):
be like over here, and thenthe next time the little circular radar would
go around, they'd be like ahundred miles away, like it's over there.
He was like, what is this. He was recording four or five
orbs at a time, and theywould they would move in patterns. It
wasn't just like, oh, we'rejust one would move and then all of
(10:30):
the others would be kind of doingtheir own thing. No, if one
moved, then they would all moveand they would try to make a shape
together. So just really strange patterns, moving faster than any aircraft we have
ever seen. Again, he waslike, there's no way these are planes.
And on the recording you can justtell he's like, I have no
idea, Like there's just so muchsuspense and he's just there's so much wonder
(10:54):
and realism. Absolutely, and thenlike a high end version of those those
hovering little drones that can all worktogether to make shapes for like yeah,
the Olympics displays, you know,yeah, yeah, absolutely. We gotta
remember this was nineteen ninety four,so none of that was around then.
Out of nowhere, the idea,that's where they did, that's where they
(11:16):
did. Then out of nowhere theyjust vanished. They were not found on
radar whatsoever. They were just gone. So the next day, you know,
some of this phone call was released. It was like, oh wow,
look we saw this thing, andeven the National Weather Service didn't know
what to make of it, andthe powers that maybe at the Weather Service
(11:41):
station was basically like, we can'thave that. And there was still there's
still a stigma today, but therewas really way more of a stigma even
then that if you were like Ithink I may have seen a UFO,
people were like, oh, yes, Gryson's going crazy. Yeah, so
they really quieted him up. He'dbe fair, though, if someone came
(12:01):
up to me legitimately and said,I think I saw a ufoid really,
I mean I wonder yeah yeah,yeah, I mean it would depend on
how they would describe it, that'sfor sure. Yeah, But like I
hate saying that, but it's justkind of like if somebody was like,
oh, I was abucted and thisis what they did, I'd be like,
I don't know, man. Butif somebody said I was using the
(12:22):
instruments that we use to monitor arealearn yeah, and they were like that
wasn't a plane, I'd be like, oh, gay, like you s
legit. Yeah. Anyway, theybasically had him come back on and say,
oh, well, maybe I waswrong, maybe it could be something
else. It was not something else, but yeah. So he started coming
back into work and people were decoratinghis office with like little spaceships and stuff.
(12:48):
And at first he thought he waslike, oh yeah, people were
just like what a funny experience.But then people really did start to treat
him differently, and he had fearedthat he was going to lose his job
because he had no credibility, sohe actually moved he moved to Atlanta to
save his career and kind of justget away from everything. Hundreds of people
(13:09):
tried to contact Jack. They peoplewanted to get a hold of him,
and his information was always withheld fromthe public. So if you called to
say, oh, who was theguy that was on duty? I have
something that I want to discuss.I want to see if he knows anything,
they were just like, oh,no, Unfortunately he doesn't work here
anymore. And that was that.What's really unfortunate about it, though,
(13:31):
is that he never wanted to leavehome. He had his dream job.
He still maintained his dream job justin Atlanta. But he mentions that he
has been haunted for decades about whathe saw that night. So now he's
retirement age. See, he's inhis sixties and he's retired, and with
(13:54):
this new unidentified aerial phenomenon, theUAP being more and more accepted in the
US government, with all the filesthat were released in twenty twenty one,
there's a little bit less of astigma around it. So he decided that
he wanted to take his story andsee if he could find more out.
(14:16):
It's not that he really wants theattention more so he wants answers, and
he thinks, with these three hundredpeople who saw the same thing that he
did, we could learn a lotmore than what we were able to learn
back them. So Unsolved Mysteries hereached out to them and they were like,
yeah, they were more than happyto pick it up. Pick it
(14:39):
up man. So they are theyhave some encounters with him and some of
these people who have been trying tofind him, and they're trying to do
their own research and really work withNASA and work with the US government,
work with anybody who is trying towork around figuring out what exactly it is
that we see. There's a lotof different stories like this from all around
(15:03):
the world that people try to kindof shove under the rugs since the nineteen
sixties, probably even before then.So it is an open investigation. And
so if you or someone you knowhas any information about the UAP sightings that
took place over like Michigan from Marcheighth, nineteen ninety four, you can
(15:24):
go to unsolved dot com to shareyour insight, or you could go to
Spark My Interests. Absolutely, we'llshare it on your behalf. Yeah,
Spark my interest podcast dot com.There you take it. We'll take that
information. I love it though.I love that stigmas are being broken,
especially when you're not saying anything tooout there. I mean, you can't
(15:46):
really deny that having three hundred peoplesee something for sure. Yes, yeah,
and yes, just the burden ofhaving that knowledge about the radar and
everything and nobody they're like, hush, hush, don't talk about this.
That's that's yeah, describe much.Sure. It eats me up and I
just learned about it. Yeah,I reisode Yeah, because you could see
(16:10):
it in Chicago as well, andit's weird, just like see a date
and be like I was alive then, Like why don't I know anything about
this? Yeah? Because it's likeif we can debunk it, debunk it,
you know, definitely give this manand all these people some peace of
mind for sure. Yeah. Highlyrecommend the episode though. That was a
great you said Episode three three,Episode two two, Episode two, season
(16:33):
three, got it. So thereyou go, Mina and Sacramento. I'm
talking about those aliens. Who wantsto go next? I can go next,
all right, Jesse. Okay,so this comes to us from two
sources. The first was The Guardiandot com by Ali Hirschlag, published the
(16:55):
sixteenth of May twenty twenty, andthe other one was from the header YouTube
channel, a video published April twentyfirst, twenty twenty. You've brought the
cheddar before, haven't you. Idon't remember it. I was just gonna
make fun of it. I waslike, what the hell's the cheddar?
Because I have I honestly don't remember. Okay, So I'm gonna tell you
(17:18):
a little story and we're you're gonnasee why I end up on this topic.
Oh, I'm ready for this.So in nineteen ten in the Netherlands,
there was this disease that was attackingelm trees, known as Dutch elm
disease. Have you heard of this? Oh? My god, is this
gonna Are you allergic to the diseaseand not the tree? That's where this
(17:40):
is connected to you? Yeah,it is. It is. So in
the Netherlands nineteen ten, they startednoticing these elm trees dying and they're drying
like very quickly, and they're losinga lot of trees and it's spreading all
over Europe. A Dutch phytopathologist namedb. Schwartz was able to figure out
what was going on, and theybasically said, you know, she said
(18:00):
it was this fungus called ophiostoma omythat was carried by bark beetles, and
the bark beetles would bury themselves beneaththe bark of the elm trees and eat
the dry wood, shed the fungusspores and create this disease. Well,
these bark beetles hopped aboard a shipmentof logs from Britain to the US and
(18:22):
killed all the elm trees here.Like when you talk about how many died,
seventy five percent of the elm treesin the United States died from this
disease over the course of Yeah,So there were these streets that were beautifully
lined with all these elm trees thatare now bare, right, so they
have to replace them with something else. While there are these people who were
(18:44):
thinking this through, They're like,well, what should we replace these elm
trees with? Because one of thenice things about these elm trees, whereas
they were actually hermaphroditic, they haveboth male and female gendered parts that allow
them to have some flexibility in termsof spreading their all in and proliferating,
and they don't create a lot ofmess. They're actually quite tidy tree.
(19:06):
They're they're very tall, had alot of things going for them, so
like, well, what can wereplace them with? Because elm trees were
so great for this, and sothey there are I don't know if you
know this, but there are threedifferent kinds of trees. There are the
hermaphroditic ones, which are called monoecious, which means they have the male and
female parts on the same plant.Then there are dioecious trees, which means
(19:27):
that there are separate trees that aremale trees and female trees. There are
also what they call perfect trees,which are hermaphroditic, but they have the
same genders within the same blossom insteadof being separate parts of the tree.
So long story, they are theyare. But the point that I'm getting
(19:48):
to is when they were planning,like city planners, were like, what
we replace all these elm trees with, Let's let's pick trees that are male
only. And the reason that'll beis because any tree, wee plant that's
male only won't have any fruit becausemale trees don't produce fruit from the flower.
So yeah, and which is reallydisappointing. And there's a whole economic
(20:10):
situation about this as well as likewe didn't want to have free fruit for
the people, but you also havea shit ton of pollen there you go.
Yeah, you don't have anything topollenate. That's rights, which is
so ridiculous because you could have plantedall female trees and they still wouldn't have
had fruit. That's great. Yeahin the science where you where'd you hear
(20:36):
this? My husband the start work? Yeah, so seriously, that is
infuriating. So essentially, Yeah,over the course of the twentieth century,
they planted mostly male trees in allurban planned areas, and so you have
this huge influx of pollen being generatedthat was not being caught by female trees,
and so I had nowhere to gobut blow through the air. And
(20:59):
so as in the nineteen seventies,you started seeing all these trees that were
planted over the early part of thetwenty century come to come of age and
start creating all this pollen. Andthat's when you see this huge increase in
allergy related issues. As time hasgone on, the increase in carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere has created like afour times effect on the amount of pollen
(21:23):
these trees are producing because they haveso much carbon dioxide coming in, it's
almost like they're hypergenerating, as wellas temperature swings because of global warming.
And so one of the one ofthe phrases that kind of kicked this whole
issue off was in the nineteen fortynine Year Book of Agriculture. They actually
said, when used for street plantings, only male trees should be selected to
avoid nuisance from the seed. ButDebor's exactly right, because if they had
(21:47):
only planted female trees, they wouldnever have fertilize because you have to be
within like thirty to forty feet ofthe root structure to actually be fertilized by
a male tree. And they wouldnever have been fertilized, never would have
produced fruit or nuts that would havefallen, and they would have been more
tidy than the male tree, wouldn'thave had any pollen. Ye. So
(22:07):
there was this guy in the nineteennineties from San Luis Obispo. He was
a prison landscaper named tom Ogrin,and he was the one who made the
connection between worsening allergies and the overabundanceof male trees because he worked at a
prison, and he noticed, youknow, it's kind of funny because his
wife, she was always complaining abouther allergies, and he because historically women
have been affected more than men byseasonal allergies, that he thought, oh,
(22:32):
you know, it's psychosomatic, likethey're saying, it's not that big
a deal. But then he realizedthat these men who are working at the
prison under this particular type of maletree were having worse allergies and other people
around them. He finally made theconnection. He say, oh, male
trees are causing more pollen, causingmore allergies. That's the connection. Finally
he believed his wife, and soat all should right, you don't believe
(22:53):
us, So m he starts kindof becoming this proponent of you know,
doing things differently and writing books onwhat's causing the problem and getting it out
there. And he actually called itbotanical sexism. But it's great. But
that's the pickle Wren right now,is we have this overabundance of male trees
(23:15):
causing this overabundance of pollen combined withthe increase in carbodox it in our atmosphere,
and so if we want to fixit, we got to start planning
more female trees to offset the balance. Well, I have two female trees
in my backyard, not freeing mypart. That's right, it's the lemon
tree in the orange tree and orangetree. Well, actually, orange and
(23:36):
lemon trees are examples of perfect treesbecause they have the male and female parts
in the same blossom. I triedplanning two female trees, one in my
front yard and one in my backyard, and they both died. I've got
gardeners. Yeah, that's trying todo. But I tried, you guys,
I tried. Yeah, I havethree trees in my backyard. They
(23:59):
were client before I got here,and one of them suffered a little bit
this summertime. I'm not sure ifthey're male or female. I'm guessing they're
probably male, so we'll find out. I'm kind of curious how to find
out, but at least I kindof understand. I'm like, it's like
legit, right, like seventies onward. It's a real thing. All these
male trees are just jizzing everywhere,and there's nothing to catch the jizz.
(24:23):
Really, what's happening? They're justlike fair, I have nowhere to go
with this. It's just going intothe air. Breathe it in with your
nose, take a deep breath.That's nuts. I've never thought of that.
M what a bomber city planning atits finest. I've got another kind
of a I don't want to saybummer, but just a it's an odd
(24:45):
one, okay. I used twoarticles. One is the lineup dot com
written by Kelsey Christine McConnell on Januarytwenty seven, twenty twenty two, and
the one was an article by mediumdot com by Robin Warrel and unsplashed,
(25:07):
posted May twenty first, twenty nineteen, but originally written in twenty seventeen.
Have you guys ever been to furCrest, Washington little town? The twenty
twenty census says that it's only seventhousand, one hundred and fifty six people,
so it's a little tiny quaite town. I wonder if they have a
lot of down, a lot ofMayo fur trees. I know, I
(25:30):
know, speaking of trees. UmNo. But some shit went down and
it all went. It all startedin two thousand and seven. It was
a big year in fur Crest.This all started with a sixteen year old
girl. Her name is Courtney Kirkendalland she in two thousand and seven.
I gotta think back to two thousandand seven, like the iPhone just came
out. Everyone's using my space likeit's technology, but it's new. That
(25:53):
wasn't that long ago. I did. So Yeah. So she is up
one day and her friends start toask her. They're like, hey,
why did you see me that textmessage? She's like, what text message?
And she had sent a bunch ofher friends a text that said gay.
That's it, just gay, okay, And so they were like,
(26:17):
huh, why do we get thisgay text from you? And they're like
they all just kind of like chalkedit up to like Courtney's just being dumb
and just writing us something to thinkshe's that she thinks is funny. And
she was like, oh, myfriends just made this shit up, like
I obviously didn't write everybody gay likewhatever, and so they don't think anything
of it. But then it's justlike a week or so later, Courtney
(26:41):
her neighbor that's her best friend acrossthe street, and her sister who is
older than her and married with ahusband and kids, and they all live
in like the same area of townand for Crest they all start getting phone
calls, voice messages, text,everything you could possibly think of from getting
(27:02):
on your own cell phone and landlinecalls on caller ID that would come up
as restricted. So that's what theystarted to call this person restricted. And
it was horrible threats. It waslike, I'm going to kill you,
I can't wait to rape you.I know your home alone right now.
I'm going to kill your grandparents,I'm going to kill your children, I'm
(27:26):
going to kill your pets. Ohwow. And so everybody's like freaking out,
like what is this, And sothe cops are called. They change
their phones, they change their phonenumbers. They do it twice. Phones
and phone numbers are all changed twice. It wouldn't last even more than a
day, and this restricted would beable to call them and be like ha
ha ha, I know your number, I know your new number, I
(27:49):
know this, I know that andmaking all these strets. So they call
the cops, and the cops call. The cops look into it because at
first they're like, man, thisis some really horrible harassment, and they
look into it and eventually they're likeit's like that old saying. The calls
coming from in the house yeah,the call is coming from in the house.
(28:10):
It's coming from Courtney, the sixteenyear old's phone, and so her
mom and dad are like, whatthe hell how much attention do you need?
And so they take her phone,they turn it off and they take
her phone. Well, is sheadamant? Like, she's not. No,
She's like, it's not me.I wouldn't do this. Why the
fuck would I call my fucking familyand best friend and tell them I want
(28:32):
them dead? I would believe mykid. Right, we're saying she's calling
them and they can hear a voiceor is it texting only it's a raspy
voice weird? Okay, Sometimes it'sa text talking without it like a done
like they're just like whispering okay,well like And one of the times,
one of the instances, the bestfriend is across the street and she's cutting
(28:53):
limes at her kitchen and she getsa call on her phone from restricted and
she picks it up up and allthe voice says, is I prefer lemons.
Oh how creep that would creep youout. I would jump out of
my skin. I would be sofucking creeped out because you'd be like,
I'm being watched and he would calleverybody. He would tell them what they
(29:15):
were wearing. They would enter theirsecurity codes and their phones and he would
be like, I know your securitycode is, you know, six,
seven to nine or whatever, Likehe would he would know this. So
no one felt safe, Like evenwith a security system, They're like,
I feel like this guy can breakin. He knows he knows my every
move, he knows what we're eating, he knows how we're dressed. Like,
(29:36):
what the fuck? Who is this? And so like a lot of
the blame went on Courtney. They'relike, it's her phone, But then
her mom started to be like,well, I've had her phone. It's
like been turned off. Even whenthe phone is turned off, we're still
getting calls from her phone and quotations. Yeah, so um, they ended
up calling the cops again. Thecops are like, well, it's coming
(30:00):
from her phone, like it was. The technology was just so new that
they were like, we don't evenknow how this works. They have since
got the FBI involved, and oncethe FBI did get involved, then the
calls eventually stopped. They ceased toexist, and people were like, maybe
the FBI found something out and theyjust didn't tell us or whoever was doing
(30:22):
this was way smarter than your averagetechie back then, and then was like,
oh, should the FBI's involved,and they're gonna end up finding me
out. My thing is, oncethe FBI came in, they had all
that data. I mean, thefreaking president of Sprint was talking about this
(30:42):
because he couldn't even I think hisname's Matt Sullivan. He couldn't even They
couldn't be king of where it wascoming from. It was coming from her
phone, but well, she hasa SIM card probably and so somebody had
probably mimicked her simcards somehow, sothey have some sort of identifier in the
phone and something happened to where somebodywas able to mimic it. I want
(31:04):
to get it, like, Idon't wonder if she got it. No,
and they ended up getting brand newphones. I mean it was like
they were really times like a firstthese calls, but it takes the FBI
and then all of a sudden theystopped. So there's two theories really,
One that she was this, thiswas a hoax, and that all parties
involved we're in on it, andthey were just like, oh, let's
(31:26):
get attention and let's get on TV, like ABC did a special on it,
Like they got the attention they wantedand then the calls stopped. But
they were like, who would whoin their right mind would do that?
Like maybe one family, but likeyou know, the neighbors across the street,
sister in law, Like, it'sjust it's just weird. The other
the other theory is how do theyknow all the stuff? Like how were
(31:48):
they able to say it? Iprefer it I know what you're wearing.
That's what I don't like they knewwhat you were wearing behind closed doors.
They about how they know about theneighbors and what they're looking at and stuff.
You know. The other weird stuffwas like her phone was off,
but it was still calling other peopleand sometimes they would call and relay a
conversation that they had had and likewith you know, within the house that
(32:14):
they were like, we weren't recordingour conversations and now it's being played back
at us, like and one ofthem was when they were talking to the
cops, they got a call afterthe cops left and replayed the message of
them talking to the copses and itwas like a bug their phones. Well,
they were like they had to havebeen wired. The houses had to
have been wired. Yeah, Likehow do you get this information without wiring
(32:35):
a home? Right? Yeah?But how many of them though, and
how do you get in there anddo that? I don't know, And
nothing was ever found, Like it'sliterally so they're they're like, this is
a fucking hoax or it's one ofthe smartest viruses or hacks out there.
That's what I'm thinking. It's someweird hack. You can't wire somebody's home
and all of her friends houses andeverything, Like, there's no way.
(32:58):
There's some clever as You can dothings if you have the right equipment and
you know what you're doing. Imean, like, did you see that
movie about Edward Snowden where they showedthe guys working for the NSA they access
to anything through anyone's smart device.Yeah, and that was around this time
too. Huh. The technology it'sall doable, guys, So if you
have the right tools. No,it's so crazy. And this is I'm
(33:20):
going to read this to you becauseI was like, this is the creepiest
part to me, is it saysauthority suggested that if this was truly an
outsider waking, all this havoc uponthe Kirk and Dolls. It was,
in all likelihood a tech savvy teenageboy. But when probably, yeah,
it says, but when even kidscan cause this kind of damage, how
(33:43):
does someone stay safe in the wakeof the drama? They recommend a few
simple methods. It's to change yourphone password, regularly purchased wireless security software,
and in the event of your phoneis hacked, take it immediately to
the police, get it a newphone, and inform your cell phone provider
of the problem. But they're likekids today are more dangerous than like online
pedophiles. Like that's what this articlesays, which I mean, I don't
(34:07):
I don't know where they get that. I would say. The flip side
of that, though, is thatit's easier to track people down too,
Like it may be easier to accessto stuff, but the police is getting
really saddy at finding these people too. Yeah. I mean, you say
that right now, but no onehas ever been caught from that situation.
They got lucky, yeah, itsays. Did they lose their nerve when
(34:29):
things got you serious with the FBIor did someone plot an elaborate joke to
get on TV. We may neverknow, but think twice the next time
you give your phone number out,so there's no answer. That's why I
wanted to pull up an article fromtwenty twenty two, because I'm like,
we're right there and there's still nofucking update and it's been fifteen years.
Yeah, there was this weird afew weeks where I'm when I would FaceTime
(34:52):
my mom, it would go straightto some dude's phone. Oh aired,
Yeah, that's creepy, you know, getting your wires crossed back background.
This time, there was an appthat you could use, and it was
called Evil Operator, and this ishow it worked. I would if I
had the app, I would putyour number in it, Jesse, and
(35:13):
then I would put Deborah's number init, and then I'd hit send,
and so your phone would call Deborah's, but Devorah's phone would call yours.
But when you looked at your phone, you just saw Deva calling you,
and when she looked at your phoneyou she would be like, Jesse's calling
me, And so you both wouldpick up and be like, hello,
Hello, what do you mean,Yeah, what's up? You called me?
(35:36):
No, you called me, Soit would tape the conversation and then
at the end it would hang you. When you hung up, then it
would send the conversation back to theperson with the app. That's a guy,
just an app. Imagine what youcould do with real tools. I
was super intrigued. Super spits intriguing, definitely. Is we had three good
(35:59):
ones we did. We got threekind of like open ended, you know,
I mean, Jesse's the trees.It's like, well, what are
we gonna do a dilemma? Andthen yeah, we're just gonna be paring
old men trees to like young babygirled trees. If you put it like
(36:21):
that, that is vile. Sowe got that. And then we have
my Alien Encounters March eighth, nineteenninety four, reopened ready for investigation.
And then we have my two thousandand seven iPhone pringster. I'm gonna have
to go Aliens just because I wantto know more about like how that could
(36:45):
possibly happen, Like what technology isfaking out possibly faking out these radar systems
or is it something else. Iabsolutely will go Aliens. I'm fascinated by
it. Um, I have myvote. I'm not going to do the
Aliens, you guys, I'm goingto vote for the trees. Really yeah,
(37:07):
fascinating, something new every day.I was really fascinated with those trees,
so they got my vote. ButI do like my stalker. Yeah,
the stock one's fascinating. I feellike there's an explanation for it.
It's just they haven't dug into itenough totally, or did they? Yeah,
and we just don't know. Wedon't have a street going. But
that might be for the best rightnow, because as we all know,
(37:30):
what is it November seventh. Ifyou're listening to this on the day of
release the holidays, they are aKevin and your girls here are busy.
You're busy? And how long havewe been doing this? Because this wraps
up season six here, We've beenat this three and a half years,
NonStop, guys, not one breakfor us. Ain't no rest for the
(37:53):
Wicked or the podcasters and so Wicked. No, we're just the podcasters.
But this episode is going to beour last of the year, our last
of our soson. Yes, it'sthe last of our season and it's the
last of our year. We're gonnatake a little bit of a hiatus,
(38:15):
but we think it's the perfect timeto do so because we're all going to
be incredibly busy with the holidays.We got tea gifts coming up, we
got Christmas, we got Hanukka,we got New Years. There's a lot
coming down the pipe, lots oftravel, lots of shopping, and all
sorts of different things, not tomention all of our day jobs. And
so we're gonna be gone for ahot second. But don't you worry,
(38:37):
because there's a lot of great materialout there to listen to. Might we
suggest, you know, Dana andJessica over at Rans and Raves, they
just got back from their hiatus,so they did, they did, and
they are rare in the Dome myworst date. Go check out Keegan,
Christina and Cassie. And then alsokeep it weird. Listen to Ashley and
(39:00):
to Lauren over there and on ourBFFs over at Florida Man on Florida Man,
Wayne Cameron and josh Um this.There's tons of content out there.
We want you to come back,but we do just we just need this.
We need a little bit of abreak in order to come back better
than ever. Yeah, you saidit, you said it all. Really,
I think we all collectively came tothis conclusion fairly quickly. And when
(39:23):
we're like, I think, Ithink we need a break. Yeah,
it's sad. It's it's a sadmoment for us because I don't like taking
the break, but at the sametime it's well needed. Oh, I
have anxiety about the fact that I'mlike, what, We're not going to
have one release, Like this iscrazy, but it's happening. It's going
to be great for our mental healthand just making usalk stay sane during this
(39:49):
really crazy time of just work inholidays. Yeah, everyone I talked to
right now seems to be kind ofin the mindset that we are podcasters and
non podcasters. It's just a lotof a lot of mental wear. A
lot of mental wear, for sure. So we appreciate you. We're going
to miss you. It is sad. Please keep writing us. We want
(40:13):
to make sure that we will respondto you, for sure. It's just
you won't be getting your weekly contentfrom us for a hot, hot second.
Yeah, but will be still postingon social media here and there and
planning our next season, so staytuned. Lucky Number seven's coming down the
pipe. But yeah, we willmiss you all more than we can express.
(40:35):
Honestly, We'll miss you all.Thank you. All so much for
listening. We will be back anduntil twenty twenty three, we hope you
all gets sparked
We are the ladies who sparked myinterest. It's so much fun because there's
this anonymity. You are a twinkie. I want to see Jesse use a
twinkie. Yeah, bra, Ihave a hard time thinking about putting my
lips to that. Yeah, allright, Diana take it away. I
thought water could turn to wine butmetal. You know, guys, I've
(00:21):
been taking those allergy shots, butI couldn't go in today for my new
serum because I have strep throat.Oh no, you don't sound so you
don't at all. You don't evenWe've been talking for like twenty minutes.
Guys. It's such a nice compliment. But you all also have like energy
and I feel pretty good throat rawat all. Technically, I caught it
(00:44):
early because Leandre came down with ittoday, like she had the sore throat
today. Mine just started getting sore, so mine actually came back negative.
But I'm like, she's like,we're gonna treat both of you. I'm
gonna give you a prescription because it'scoming. So I think it caught early
enough where it's not terrible. Yeah, you take for strip throat? Oh
well, right now, there's likea shortage on antibiotics, so I didn't
(01:06):
get the traditional like amoxicillin. Igot zethromycin or whatever they call it.
I don't know. Not a realpisser though. Yeah, well, I
mean I had a good run forOctober. I didn't get sick at all,
so it was coming. It wasjust a matter of time. Like
there's all these kids getting like thatrespiratory virus. You know, they're trouble
a lot of kids. Everything's runningrampant everywhere. Yeah, everything is out
(01:30):
right now. I'm like, yep, yep, still wearing the mask.
I'm still rocking that shit. AndI don't see an end in sight for
that. Well, I was rockingit today, for sure. We are
all doom and gloom already, Noquite. We mentioned the masks if you
were listening to us for the firsttime. We are not always doom and
gloom. We are the Ladies ofSparked My Interest podcast. My name is
(01:52):
Diana, I'm Deborah, I'm Jesse, And every week we get together.
We gather articles that we found onlineor in books or in magaze scenes,
and we share them with one another, and at the end of every episode
we vote to see who had themost spark Worthy Article prize remains TVD at
this point. We don't care.We're just in it for the glory of
that wind. And I believe weall brought it today. I brought it.
(02:14):
And for the first time ever,we are wearing filters on our Zoom
meeting. How is this the firsttime? It is amazing. It puts
me in a good mood. Workedall day and you know what, I'll
enjoy my lipstick being put on forme be in a crown around my head.
Yeah, that's got a little crownin the corner of her head.
(02:35):
I'm wearing the we can do ItRosie the Riveter, Rosie the Riveter like
head kerchief with fake red lipstick andfake eyebrows. This is fun. I've
got the fake red lipstick and ared beret. Yeah, she's going in
French and you're you're you're selling it. Messiou merci MESSI un natural And Jesse,
(03:00):
I think you took a screenshot atour filters in the green room jump.
Yeah, I'll make sure to sharethose on social media so you can
see how ridiculous we look. Welook great, Yeah, we cartoonishly great.
It's perfect. So we've entered ourselves. We've all commented on how great
we look. Jesse, I believeyou're going to spark us up. I
(03:22):
am. This comes to us froma Scientific American, from an article by
Katie Women probablyshed March thirteenth, twentytwenty, and from something that Neil de
grass Tyson just mentioned briefly on oneof his little like YouTube shorts. You
think of like latitude lines that gohorizontally around the Earth, right, and
(03:42):
you've got the longitudinal lines you know, have something to do with time zones,
right, But as you move upto the North Pole and down to
the South Pole, those time zonesconverge on a point. And so what
time is it at the North Pole? Which time zone do the the poles
fall into? Is that that question? Well? I would think it would
(04:04):
fall into multiple time zones. Imean there's twenty four time zones, and
I don't think they're hitting just one. Yeah, they they don't fall into
any time zone really, so ifthey have to sort of just adhere to
whichever time zone they're trying to communicatewith. As of this article, there
was this German research ship called thePolar Stern up at the North Pole that's
(04:25):
like this icebreakership that does research upthere, and they are represented by one
hundred people from twenty different countries,and so they're all talking to their families
and different people at different times,and they all have to keep track of
what time zone they're in because inthe fall of twenty nineteen, the Polar
Stern captain pushed the time zone backone hour every week for six weeks to
(04:46):
sync up with incoming Russian ships thatfollow Moscow time. And it says with
each shift the captain adjusted automatic clockscattered around the ship, researchers paused to
watch the hands of analog clocks spineerily backward. I mean, when you
think about it, sun only risesand sets once a year on the North
Pole, so there is no senseof day or night. It would totally
(05:06):
mess you up. You would notknow when to go to bed and when
to wake up and when to eatyour meals. And I'm in the daylight
alone. It is already helping talk. Yeah, already problematic. Yeah,
And then you're telling me they're arounda bunch of people who are also living
in their own time zone, likethey're not. Just like, you know
what, let's go with Pacific orwhatever it may be. I think they
(05:28):
worked it out so that they sortof all adhere to a similar schedule.
But it's not it's not logical,you know, it's not based on anything
that's like. They just basically sayhere's here's what our schedule is, just
so we can stay sane, andthen they stick to that. It's really
interesting the world we live in,man or simulation, whatever it is.
It's unique. Yeah, but it'sweird because the closer you get to the
(05:50):
poles, the less time kind ofmakes sense in the traditional sense. Well
cool, I'm definitely sparked and canbring us into our Sparkler spot. Our
Sparkler Spot of the week is Minafrom Sacramento, California. He writes to
us at our Instagram. Longtime listener, first time writing in Debor used to
(06:15):
talk a lot about aliens in theearlier seasons. I love these stories.
They spark my interest the most.I was watching the latest Unsolved Mystery season
and they have an entire episode dedicatedto the UFO sighting back in the nineties.
If you haven't watched it yet,you should. It could make for
a great story contender for one ofyour episodes. Keep up the interesting stuff.
(06:41):
Love from Sacramento. Mina, Well, Mina, yeah, you're right.
I do love Aliens and I thinkit is fascinating and I did watch
that episode. Yeah, I knowyou have because you've been talking about it
like crazy. Oh yeah, Imean, I'm gonna use it as my
story. Actually, there are severalarticles written about those sightings and an episode
(07:01):
of Unsolved Mysteries, and I'm like, you know what, it is the
most interesting thing that I have watchedand read about as of late, so
I'm going to cover it. Sowith that, I'm going to go ahead
and kick things off into this storytime. My articles come from all That's
(07:30):
Interesting dot com by Austin Harvey,checked by John Kurowski on October sixteenth,
twenty twenty two, and I alsoused Unsolved Mysteries season three, episode two,
Something in the Sky. On Marcheighth, nineteen ninety four, residents
living along the shore of Lake Michiganwitnessed one of the most widespread UFO sightings
(07:56):
in history. Bright multicolor orbs appearedover the water and could be seen as
far south as Indiana's state line,dancing erratically across the night sky. So
these objects over three hundred people reportedthese objects, calling into police, the
(08:18):
fire department, the weather department.There were circular objects. They were not
planes, They were silent. Theywere more like glowing orbs, is really
how they were explained. Their movementwas erratic and there was a collection of
five to six of them, thatis how people described them. They also
moved incredibly fast. There's a woman, her name is Cindy Pravda. She
(08:43):
was in her fifties. She justsaid she was on the phone and she
looked into her backyard because she waslike, man, it must be a
full moon because it's so freaking bright. And she looked out and she was
like, that's not a moon.What is this? And there were these
huge orbs and just said into herphone, I think I've got a UFO
in my backyard. These things didnot just appear and then disappear. They
(09:07):
were there for at least thirty minutes. The most compelling encounter, though,
was likely from the on duty radaroperator for the National Weather Service that name.
This man was named Jack Buschung.He was very early into his career
(09:28):
and it was his dream job tobe a meteorologist working for the National Weather
Service. He was Brandlew married aswell. He was born and raised in
the Lake, Michigan area. Soone of the calls that came in that
night were from the police, sothey had been called out. They drove
out to where somebody had seen theseorbs and they were like, gosh,
(09:48):
this is so bizarre. So theycalled in and this call was recorded,
so there's a whole recording of it. If you watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode,
you can hear it, and youcan hear the excitement in Jack's voice.
You know, he mentions, youknow, these aren't planes, and
they show you like what the radarwould look like and how the orbs would
(10:09):
be like over here, and thenthe next time the little circular radar would
go around, they'd be like ahundred miles away, like it's over there.
He was like, what is this. He was recording four or five
orbs at a time, and theywould they would move in patterns. It
wasn't just like, oh, we'rejust one would move and then all of
(10:30):
the others would be kind of doingtheir own thing. No, if one
moved, then they would all moveand they would try to make a shape
together. So just really strange patterns, moving faster than any aircraft we have
ever seen. Again, he waslike, there's no way these are planes.
And on the recording you can justtell he's like, I have no
idea, Like there's just so muchsuspense and he's just there's so much wonder
(10:54):
and realism. Absolutely, and thenlike a high end version of those those
hovering little drones that can all worktogether to make shapes for like yeah,
the Olympics displays, you know,yeah, yeah, absolutely. We gotta
remember this was nineteen ninety four,so none of that was around then.
Out of nowhere, the idea,that's where they did, that's where they
(11:16):
did. Then out of nowhere theyjust vanished. They were not found on
radar whatsoever. They were just gone. So the next day, you know,
some of this phone call was released. It was like, oh wow,
look we saw this thing, andeven the National Weather Service didn't know
what to make of it, andthe powers that maybe at the Weather Service
(11:41):
station was basically like, we can'thave that. And there was still there's
still a stigma today, but therewas really way more of a stigma even
then that if you were like Ithink I may have seen a UFO,
people were like, oh, yes, Gryson's going crazy. Yeah, so
they really quieted him up. He'dbe fair, though, if someone came
(12:01):
up to me legitimately and said,I think I saw a ufoid really,
I mean I wonder yeah yeah,yeah, I mean it would depend on
how they would describe it, that'sfor sure. Yeah, But like I
hate saying that, but it's justkind of like if somebody was like,
oh, I was abucted and thisis what they did, I'd be like,
I don't know, man. Butif somebody said I was using the
(12:22):
instruments that we use to monitor arealearn yeah, and they were like that
wasn't a plane, I'd be like, oh, gay, like you s
legit. Yeah. Anyway, theybasically had him come back on and say,
oh, well, maybe I waswrong, maybe it could be something
else. It was not something else, but yeah. So he started coming
back into work and people were decoratinghis office with like little spaceships and stuff.
(12:48):
And at first he thought he waslike, oh yeah, people were
just like what a funny experience.But then people really did start to treat
him differently, and he had fearedthat he was going to lose his job
because he had no credibility, sohe actually moved he moved to Atlanta to
save his career and kind of justget away from everything. Hundreds of people
(13:09):
tried to contact Jack. They peoplewanted to get a hold of him,
and his information was always withheld fromthe public. So if you called to
say, oh, who was theguy that was on duty? I have
something that I want to discuss.I want to see if he knows anything,
they were just like, oh,no, Unfortunately he doesn't work here
anymore. And that was that.What's really unfortunate about it, though,
(13:31):
is that he never wanted to leavehome. He had his dream job.
He still maintained his dream job justin Atlanta. But he mentions that he
has been haunted for decades about whathe saw that night. So now he's
retirement age. See, he's inhis sixties and he's retired, and with
(13:54):
this new unidentified aerial phenomenon, theUAP being more and more accepted in the
US government, with all the filesthat were released in twenty twenty one,
there's a little bit less of astigma around it. So he decided that
he wanted to take his story andsee if he could find more out.
(14:16):
It's not that he really wants theattention more so he wants answers, and
he thinks, with these three hundredpeople who saw the same thing that he
did, we could learn a lotmore than what we were able to learn
back them. So Unsolved Mysteries hereached out to them and they were like,
yeah, they were more than happyto pick it up. Pick it
(14:39):
up man. So they are theyhave some encounters with him and some of
these people who have been trying tofind him, and they're trying to do
their own research and really work withNASA and work with the US government,
work with anybody who is trying towork around figuring out what exactly it is
that we see. There's a lotof different stories like this from all around
(15:03):
the world that people try to kindof shove under the rugs since the nineteen
sixties, probably even before then.So it is an open investigation. And
so if you or someone you knowhas any information about the UAP sightings that
took place over like Michigan from Marcheighth, nineteen ninety four, you can
(15:24):
go to unsolved dot com to shareyour insight, or you could go to
Spark My Interests. Absolutely, we'llshare it on your behalf. Yeah,
Spark my interest podcast dot com.There you take it. We'll take that
information. I love it though.I love that stigmas are being broken,
especially when you're not saying anything tooout there. I mean, you can't
(15:46):
really deny that having three hundred peoplesee something for sure. Yes, yeah,
and yes, just the burden ofhaving that knowledge about the radar and
everything and nobody they're like, hush, hush, don't talk about this.
That's that's yeah, describe much.Sure. It eats me up and I
just learned about it. Yeah,I reisode Yeah, because you could see
(16:10):
it in Chicago as well, andit's weird, just like see a date
and be like I was alive then, Like why don't I know anything about
this? Yeah? Because it's likeif we can debunk it, debunk it,
you know, definitely give this manand all these people some peace of
mind for sure. Yeah. Highlyrecommend the episode though. That was a
great you said Episode three three,Episode two two, Episode two, season
(16:33):
three, got it. So thereyou go, Mina and Sacramento. I'm
talking about those aliens. Who wantsto go next? I can go next,
all right, Jesse. Okay,so this comes to us from two
sources. The first was The Guardiandot com by Ali Hirschlag, published the
(16:55):
sixteenth of May twenty twenty, andthe other one was from the header YouTube
channel, a video published April twentyfirst, twenty twenty. You've brought the
cheddar before, haven't you. Idon't remember it. I was just gonna
make fun of it. I waslike, what the hell's the cheddar?
Because I have I honestly don't remember. Okay, So I'm gonna tell you
(17:18):
a little story and we're you're gonnasee why I end up on this topic.
Oh, I'm ready for this.So in nineteen ten in the Netherlands,
there was this disease that was attackingelm trees, known as Dutch elm
disease. Have you heard of this? Oh? My god, is this
gonna Are you allergic to the diseaseand not the tree? That's where this
(17:40):
is connected to you? Yeah,it is. It is. So in
the Netherlands nineteen ten, they startednoticing these elm trees dying and they're drying
like very quickly, and they're losinga lot of trees and it's spreading all
over Europe. A Dutch phytopathologist namedb. Schwartz was able to figure out
what was going on, and theybasically said, you know, she said
(18:00):
it was this fungus called ophiostoma omythat was carried by bark beetles, and
the bark beetles would bury themselves beneaththe bark of the elm trees and eat
the dry wood, shed the fungusspores and create this disease. Well,
these bark beetles hopped aboard a shipmentof logs from Britain to the US and
(18:22):
killed all the elm trees here.Like when you talk about how many died,
seventy five percent of the elm treesin the United States died from this
disease over the course of Yeah,So there were these streets that were beautifully
lined with all these elm trees thatare now bare, right, so they
have to replace them with something else. While there are these people who were
(18:44):
thinking this through, They're like,well, what should we replace these elm
trees with? Because one of thenice things about these elm trees, whereas
they were actually hermaphroditic, they haveboth male and female gendered parts that allow
them to have some flexibility in termsof spreading their all in and proliferating,
and they don't create a lot ofmess. They're actually quite tidy tree.
(19:06):
They're they're very tall, had alot of things going for them, so
like, well, what can wereplace them with? Because elm trees were
so great for this, and sothey there are I don't know if you
know this, but there are threedifferent kinds of trees. There are the
hermaphroditic ones, which are called monoecious, which means they have the male and
female parts on the same plant.Then there are dioecious trees, which means
(19:27):
that there are separate trees that aremale trees and female trees. There are
also what they call perfect trees,which are hermaphroditic, but they have the
same genders within the same blossom insteadof being separate parts of the tree.
So long story, they are theyare. But the point that I'm getting
(19:48):
to is when they were planning,like city planners, were like, what
we replace all these elm trees with, Let's let's pick trees that are male
only. And the reason that'll beis because any tree, wee plant that's
male only won't have any fruit becausemale trees don't produce fruit from the flower.
So yeah, and which is reallydisappointing. And there's a whole economic
(20:10):
situation about this as well as likewe didn't want to have free fruit for
the people, but you also havea shit ton of pollen there you go.
Yeah, you don't have anything topollenate. That's rights, which is
so ridiculous because you could have plantedall female trees and they still wouldn't have
had fruit. That's great. Yeahin the science where you where'd you hear
(20:36):
this? My husband the start work? Yeah, so seriously, that is
infuriating. So essentially, Yeah,over the course of the twentieth century,
they planted mostly male trees in allurban planned areas, and so you have
this huge influx of pollen being generatedthat was not being caught by female trees,
and so I had nowhere to gobut blow through the air. And
(20:59):
so as in the nineteen seventies,you started seeing all these trees that were
planted over the early part of thetwenty century come to come of age and
start creating all this pollen. Andthat's when you see this huge increase in
allergy related issues. As time hasgone on, the increase in carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere has created like afour times effect on the amount of pollen
(21:23):
these trees are producing because they haveso much carbon dioxide coming in, it's
almost like they're hypergenerating, as wellas temperature swings because of global warming.
And so one of the one ofthe phrases that kind of kicked this whole
issue off was in the nineteen fortynine Year Book of Agriculture. They actually
said, when used for street plantings, only male trees should be selected to
avoid nuisance from the seed. ButDebor's exactly right, because if they had
(21:47):
only planted female trees, they wouldnever have fertilize because you have to be
within like thirty to forty feet ofthe root structure to actually be fertilized by
a male tree. And they wouldnever have been fertilized, never would have
produced fruit or nuts that would havefallen, and they would have been more
tidy than the male tree, wouldn'thave had any pollen. Ye. So
(22:07):
there was this guy in the nineteennineties from San Luis Obispo. He was
a prison landscaper named tom Ogrin,and he was the one who made the
connection between worsening allergies and the overabundanceof male trees because he worked at a
prison, and he noticed, youknow, it's kind of funny because his
wife, she was always complaining abouther allergies, and he because historically women
have been affected more than men byseasonal allergies, that he thought, oh,
(22:32):
you know, it's psychosomatic, likethey're saying, it's not that big
a deal. But then he realizedthat these men who are working at the
prison under this particular type of maletree were having worse allergies and other people
around them. He finally made theconnection. He say, oh, male
trees are causing more pollen, causingmore allergies. That's the connection. Finally
he believed his wife, and soat all should right, you don't believe
(22:53):
us, So m he starts kindof becoming this proponent of you know,
doing things differently and writing books onwhat's causing the problem and getting it out
there. And he actually called itbotanical sexism. But it's great. But
that's the pickle Wren right now,is we have this overabundance of male trees
(23:15):
causing this overabundance of pollen combined withthe increase in carbodox it in our atmosphere,
and so if we want to fixit, we got to start planning
more female trees to offset the balance. Well, I have two female trees
in my backyard, not freeing mypart. That's right, it's the lemon
tree in the orange tree and orangetree. Well, actually, orange and
(23:36):
lemon trees are examples of perfect treesbecause they have the male and female parts
in the same blossom. I triedplanning two female trees, one in my
front yard and one in my backyard, and they both died. I've got
gardeners. Yeah, that's trying todo. But I tried, you guys,
I tried. Yeah, I havethree trees in my backyard. They
(23:59):
were client before I got here,and one of them suffered a little bit
this summertime. I'm not sure ifthey're male or female. I'm guessing they're
probably male, so we'll find out. I'm kind of curious how to find
out, but at least I kindof understand. I'm like, it's like
legit, right, like seventies onward. It's a real thing. All these
male trees are just jizzing everywhere,and there's nothing to catch the jizz.
(24:23):
Really, what's happening? They're justlike fair, I have nowhere to go
with this. It's just going intothe air. Breathe it in with your
nose, take a deep breath.That's nuts. I've never thought of that.
M what a bomber city planning atits finest. I've got another kind
of a I don't want to saybummer, but just a it's an odd
(24:45):
one, okay. I used twoarticles. One is the lineup dot com
written by Kelsey Christine McConnell on Januarytwenty seven, twenty twenty two, and
the one was an article by mediumdot com by Robin Warrel and unsplashed,
(25:07):
posted May twenty first, twenty nineteen, but originally written in twenty seventeen.
Have you guys ever been to furCrest, Washington little town? The twenty
twenty census says that it's only seventhousand, one hundred and fifty six people,
so it's a little tiny quaite town. I wonder if they have a
lot of down, a lot ofMayo fur trees. I know, I
(25:30):
know, speaking of trees. UmNo. But some shit went down and
it all went. It all startedin two thousand and seven. It was
a big year in fur Crest.This all started with a sixteen year old
girl. Her name is Courtney Kirkendalland she in two thousand and seven.
I gotta think back to two thousandand seven, like the iPhone just came
out. Everyone's using my space likeit's technology, but it's new. That
(25:53):
wasn't that long ago. I did. So Yeah. So she is up
one day and her friends start toask her. They're like, hey,
why did you see me that textmessage? She's like, what text message?
And she had sent a bunch ofher friends a text that said gay.
That's it, just gay, okay, And so they were like,
(26:17):
huh, why do we get thisgay text from you? And they're like
they all just kind of like chalkedit up to like Courtney's just being dumb
and just writing us something to thinkshe's that she thinks is funny. And
she was like, oh, myfriends just made this shit up, like
I obviously didn't write everybody gay likewhatever, and so they don't think anything
of it. But then it's justlike a week or so later, Courtney
(26:41):
her neighbor that's her best friend acrossthe street, and her sister who is
older than her and married with ahusband and kids, and they all live
in like the same area of townand for Crest they all start getting phone
calls, voice messages, text,everything you could possibly think of from getting
(27:02):
on your own cell phone and landlinecalls on caller ID that would come up
as restricted. So that's what theystarted to call this person restricted. And
it was horrible threats. It waslike, I'm going to kill you,
I can't wait to rape you.I know your home alone right now.
I'm going to kill your grandparents,I'm going to kill your children, I'm
(27:26):
going to kill your pets. Ohwow. And so everybody's like freaking out,
like what is this, And sothe cops are called. They change
their phones, they change their phonenumbers. They do it twice. Phones
and phone numbers are all changed twice. It wouldn't last even more than a
day, and this restricted would beable to call them and be like ha
ha ha, I know your number, I know your new number, I
(27:49):
know this, I know that andmaking all these strets. So they call
the cops, and the cops call. The cops look into it because at
first they're like, man, thisis some really horrible harassment, and they
look into it and eventually they're likeit's like that old saying. The calls
coming from in the house yeah,the call is coming from in the house.
(28:10):
It's coming from Courtney, the sixteenyear old's phone, and so her
mom and dad are like, whatthe hell how much attention do you need?
And so they take her phone,they turn it off and they take
her phone. Well, is sheadamant? Like, she's not. No,
She's like, it's not me.I wouldn't do this. Why the
fuck would I call my fucking familyand best friend and tell them I want
(28:32):
them dead? I would believe mykid. Right, we're saying she's calling
them and they can hear a voiceor is it texting only it's a raspy
voice weird? Okay, Sometimes it'sa text talking without it like a done
like they're just like whispering okay,well like And one of the times,
one of the instances, the bestfriend is across the street and she's cutting
(28:53):
limes at her kitchen and she getsa call on her phone from restricted and
she picks it up up and allthe voice says, is I prefer lemons.
Oh how creep that would creep youout. I would jump out of
my skin. I would be sofucking creeped out because you'd be like,
I'm being watched and he would calleverybody. He would tell them what they
(29:15):
were wearing. They would enter theirsecurity codes and their phones and he would
be like, I know your securitycode is, you know, six,
seven to nine or whatever, Likehe would he would know this. So
no one felt safe, Like evenwith a security system, They're like,
I feel like this guy can breakin. He knows he knows my every
move, he knows what we're eating, he knows how we're dressed. Like,
(29:36):
what the fuck? Who is this? And so like a lot of
the blame went on Courtney. They'relike, it's her phone, But then
her mom started to be like,well, I've had her phone. It's
like been turned off. Even whenthe phone is turned off, we're still
getting calls from her phone and quotations. Yeah, so um, they ended
up calling the cops again. Thecops are like, well, it's coming
(30:00):
from her phone, like it was. The technology was just so new that
they were like, we don't evenknow how this works. They have since
got the FBI involved, and oncethe FBI did get involved, then the
calls eventually stopped. They ceased toexist, and people were like, maybe
the FBI found something out and theyjust didn't tell us or whoever was doing
(30:22):
this was way smarter than your averagetechie back then, and then was like,
oh, should the FBI's involved,and they're gonna end up finding me
out. My thing is, oncethe FBI came in, they had all
that data. I mean, thefreaking president of Sprint was talking about this
(30:42):
because he couldn't even I think hisname's Matt Sullivan. He couldn't even They
couldn't be king of where it wascoming from. It was coming from her
phone, but well, she hasa SIM card probably and so somebody had
probably mimicked her simcards somehow, sothey have some sort of identifier in the
phone and something happened to where somebodywas able to mimic it. I want
(31:04):
to get it, like, Idon't wonder if she got it. No,
and they ended up getting brand newphones. I mean it was like
they were really times like a firstthese calls, but it takes the FBI
and then all of a sudden theystopped. So there's two theories really,
One that she was this, thiswas a hoax, and that all parties
involved we're in on it, andthey were just like, oh, let's
(31:26):
get attention and let's get on TV, like ABC did a special on it,
Like they got the attention they wantedand then the calls stopped. But
they were like, who would whoin their right mind would do that?
Like maybe one family, but likeyou know, the neighbors across the street,
sister in law, Like, it'sjust it's just weird. The other
the other theory is how do theyknow all the stuff? Like how were
(31:48):
they able to say it? Iprefer it I know what you're wearing.
That's what I don't like they knewwhat you were wearing behind closed doors.
They about how they know about theneighbors and what they're looking at and stuff.
You know. The other weird stuffwas like her phone was off,
but it was still calling other peopleand sometimes they would call and relay a
conversation that they had had and likewith you know, within the house that
(32:14):
they were like, we weren't recordingour conversations and now it's being played back
at us, like and one ofthem was when they were talking to the
cops, they got a call afterthe cops left and replayed the message of
them talking to the copses and itwas like a bug their phones. Well,
they were like they had to havebeen wired. The houses had to
have been wired. Yeah, Likehow do you get this information without wiring
(32:35):
a home? Right? Yeah?But how many of them though, and
how do you get in there anddo that? I don't know, And
nothing was ever found, Like it'sliterally so they're they're like, this is
a fucking hoax or it's one ofthe smartest viruses or hacks out there.
That's what I'm thinking. It's someweird hack. You can't wire somebody's home
and all of her friends houses andeverything, Like, there's no way.
(32:58):
There's some clever as You can dothings if you have the right equipment and
you know what you're doing. Imean, like, did you see that
movie about Edward Snowden where they showedthe guys working for the NSA they access
to anything through anyone's smart device.Yeah, and that was around this time
too. Huh. The technology it'sall doable, guys, So if you
have the right tools. No,it's so crazy. And this is I'm
(33:20):
going to read this to you becauseI was like, this is the creepiest
part to me, is it saysauthority suggested that if this was truly an
outsider waking, all this havoc uponthe Kirk and Dolls. It was,
in all likelihood a tech savvy teenageboy. But when probably, yeah,
it says, but when even kidscan cause this kind of damage, how
(33:43):
does someone stay safe in the wakeof the drama? They recommend a few
simple methods. It's to change yourphone password, regularly purchased wireless security software,
and in the event of your phoneis hacked, take it immediately to
the police, get it a newphone, and inform your cell phone provider
of the problem. But they're likekids today are more dangerous than like online
pedophiles. Like that's what this articlesays, which I mean, I don't
(34:07):
I don't know where they get that. I would say. The flip side
of that, though, is thatit's easier to track people down too,
Like it may be easier to accessto stuff, but the police is getting
really saddy at finding these people too. Yeah. I mean, you say
that right now, but no onehas ever been caught from that situation.
They got lucky, yeah, itsays. Did they lose their nerve when
(34:29):
things got you serious with the FBIor did someone plot an elaborate joke to
get on TV. We may neverknow, but think twice the next time
you give your phone number out,so there's no answer. That's why I
wanted to pull up an article fromtwenty twenty two, because I'm like,
we're right there and there's still nofucking update and it's been fifteen years.
Yeah, there was this weird afew weeks where I'm when I would FaceTime
(34:52):
my mom, it would go straightto some dude's phone. Oh aired,
Yeah, that's creepy, you know, getting your wires crossed back background.
This time, there was an appthat you could use, and it was
called Evil Operator, and this ishow it worked. I would if I
had the app, I would putyour number in it, Jesse, and
(35:13):
then I would put Deborah's number init, and then I'd hit send,
and so your phone would call Deborah's, but Devorah's phone would call yours.
But when you looked at your phone, you just saw Deva calling you,
and when she looked at your phoneyou she would be like, Jesse's calling
me, And so you both wouldpick up and be like, hello,
Hello, what do you mean,Yeah, what's up? You called me?
(35:36):
No, you called me, Soit would tape the conversation and then
at the end it would hang you. When you hung up, then it
would send the conversation back to theperson with the app. That's a guy,
just an app. Imagine what youcould do with real tools. I
was super intrigued. Super spits intriguing, definitely. Is we had three good
(35:59):
ones we did. We got threekind of like open ended, you know,
I mean, Jesse's the trees.It's like, well, what are
we gonna do a dilemma? Andthen yeah, we're just gonna be paring
old men trees to like young babygirled trees. If you put it like
(36:21):
that, that is vile. Sowe got that. And then we have
my Alien Encounters March eighth, nineteenninety four, reopened ready for investigation.
And then we have my two thousandand seven iPhone pringster. I'm gonna have
to go Aliens just because I wantto know more about like how that could
(36:45):
possibly happen, Like what technology isfaking out possibly faking out these radar systems
or is it something else. Iabsolutely will go Aliens. I'm fascinated by
it. Um, I have myvote. I'm not going to do the
Aliens, you guys, I'm goingto vote for the trees. Really yeah,
(37:07):
fascinating, something new every day.I was really fascinated with those trees,
so they got my vote. ButI do like my stalker. Yeah,
the stock one's fascinating. I feellike there's an explanation for it.
It's just they haven't dug into itenough totally, or did they? Yeah,
and we just don't know. Wedon't have a street going. But
that might be for the best rightnow, because as we all know,
(37:30):
what is it November seventh. Ifyou're listening to this on the day of
release the holidays, they are aKevin and your girls here are busy.
You're busy? And how long havewe been doing this? Because this wraps
up season six here, We've beenat this three and a half years,
NonStop, guys, not one breakfor us. Ain't no rest for the
(37:53):
Wicked or the podcasters and so Wicked. No, we're just the podcasters.
But this episode is going to beour last of the year, our last
of our soson. Yes, it'sthe last of our season and it's the
last of our year. We're gonnatake a little bit of a hiatus,
(38:15):
but we think it's the perfect timeto do so because we're all going to
be incredibly busy with the holidays.We got tea gifts coming up, we
got Christmas, we got Hanukka,we got New Years. There's a lot
coming down the pipe, lots oftravel, lots of shopping, and all
sorts of different things, not tomention all of our day jobs. And
so we're gonna be gone for ahot second. But don't you worry,
(38:37):
because there's a lot of great materialout there to listen to. Might we
suggest, you know, Dana andJessica over at Rans and Raves, they
just got back from their hiatus,so they did, they did, and
they are rare in the Dome myworst date. Go check out Keegan,
Christina and Cassie. And then alsokeep it weird. Listen to Ashley and
(39:00):
to Lauren over there and on ourBFFs over at Florida Man on Florida Man,
Wayne Cameron and josh Um this.There's tons of content out there.
We want you to come back,but we do just we just need this.
We need a little bit of abreak in order to come back better
than ever. Yeah, you saidit, you said it all. Really,
I think we all collectively came tothis conclusion fairly quickly. And when
(39:23):
we're like, I think, Ithink we need a break. Yeah,
it's sad. It's it's a sadmoment for us because I don't like taking
the break, but at the sametime it's well needed. Oh, I
have anxiety about the fact that I'mlike, what, We're not going to
have one release, Like this iscrazy, but it's happening. It's going
to be great for our mental healthand just making usalk stay sane during this
(39:49):
really crazy time of just work inholidays. Yeah, everyone I talked to
right now seems to be kind ofin the mindset that we are podcasters and
non podcasters. It's just a lotof a lot of mental wear. A
lot of mental wear, for sure. So we appreciate you. We're going
to miss you. It is sad. Please keep writing us. We want
(40:13):
to make sure that we will respondto you, for sure. It's just
you won't be getting your weekly contentfrom us for a hot, hot second.
Yeah, but will be still postingon social media here and there and
planning our next season, so staytuned. Lucky Number seven's coming down the
pipe. But yeah, we willmiss you all more than we can express.
(40:35):
Honestly, We'll miss you all.Thank you. All so much for
listening. We will be back anduntil twenty twenty three, we hope you
all gets sparked
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