Tonight's classic episode all about celebrities. This is one for the pop culture fans in the crowd. We went through a Beatles phase a while back to where we were asking ourselves, oh gosh, we did a video about it. Did the real Paul McCartney get replaced?
Turn me on dead man? He was the Walrus? He is the Walrus?
Or is he the Walrus?
Is that the one? No? Yeah, we did that, But we also did the audition tape wherein we imply that Ben, you and I have been replaced by agents of some sort.
Everybody knows that, yeah, and everybody has these crazy theories too, about not just celebrities, not just your Taylor Swift's, but also your notable historical figures. You're a Saddam Hussein's, you know, the great villains of history. Now, in this classic episode, we're looking at fact fiction and plausibility of the idea of body doubles, and also, would you ever get a body double if the situation wation presented, I'd consider it.
I feel like the best way to do it, the honest way to do it, is just to have an identical twin.
I think how everyone can't be so lucky?
Yeah, not yet.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Noel is on an adventure.
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Decat most importantly, you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We have a special guest of sorts today, Matt.
We do. We have JJ Posway. He's a new producer here at the iHeart Radio Network, the iHeart Radio Podcast Network.
That's a hard shrug you're doing there, man.
Whatever this thing is they we're a part of, is called Yeah, it's pretty pretty awesome. It's good to have you here. JJ. Apparently he knew like what this show was before getting.
Here, right, and we're still friends.
Yeah, I know, he's like trip. He hasn't looked me in the eye yet, just because I kind of like ran into the studio right before we hit record. Yeah, and I can't see him because my view of JJ. Oh, Okay, he's looking at me oh gosh.
Yeah. Yeah, Well you've got sort of blue steel vibe going on today, so I can see how people would be, you know, gotcha a little bit intimidated.
Oh I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the blue steel.
Yeah, I'm going for kind of an eye of the tiger thing and I'm sort of doing it. I'm pulling it off kind of.
Oh no, I'm seeing the intensity. So just to check in with you, everything's good. We just had our big July fourth, like I guess, weekend.
Yeah, yeah, I have some some traveler that I need to catch up on. But yeah, July fourth, woo woo America. Right. I hope you had a good weekend as well. And if you are listening in a different country, July fourth, I think it's weird for us to assume everybody knows this. July fourth is when the United States celebrates independence from Britain, right, And the way in which the US most often tends to celebrate this day is through getting kind of drunk, lighting fireworks, and having barbecues.
There you go, and that's what some of us did.
That's very diplomatic. How are you guys doing out there in the booth? Thumbs up, thumbs.
Down, thumbs up all the way combs up.
That's great. And how are you doing, folks out there listening to day? Do you have something on your mind? How We're going to investigate some pretty interesting stuff here that may be familiar to some of us. If at any time while we're exploring this strange rabbit hole, the spirit so moves you when you have something on your mind that you want to tell us and you don't want to have to type it out, they have no fear. You can pause the show. We'll wait for you, and you can give us a call.
You can call us at one eight three three s wk'll you'll figure it out. You'll hear Ben on there. You'll know you're in the right place.
And I feel like we've established the rules of the call. I lied such that at this point, you know, fill it up. Yeah, all you have to do is call so.
So we talked at the top here just about how honestly odd it is when someone I can't speak for you, Ben, but it's an odd experience when someone recognizes your voice. And on this show it's only happened to me a handful of times. I'm assuming that it's happened to you more because you had a visual present on this show for so long, and so many people watch those videos. But today we're talking about the concept of being known, of being recognized right.
To the nth degree. As indeed, Matt, we were talking about the concept of celebrity. Celebrity is really bizarre when you think about it. Since before the dawn of recorded human history, we've looked to place our beliefs and our values on the form of a familiar face, something that is like us. Abstract ideas were all well and good on their own, but generally speaking, humans like other humans or things that look like humans, and they want that to be sort of a code rack upon which ideas hang,
something with which we can directly identify. So for a lot of people, maybe during the Cold War in the West, when they thought of communism, they didn't think of a bunch of ideals written by some stuffy, old dead European folks. They thought about specific propaganda image, maybe a soldier in red marching or something.
Yeah, we are a symbol seeking being, the human is and the celebrities a lot of times are the representations of from propaganda are ways for us to quickly organize the way we feel about something, or the way we should feel about something, or the way we actually do feel about something or someone right.
And we can be blinded by this too, which is a bit of a different bag of badgers for us. We can be blinded by this in strange ways, and our brains are pretty good at making things seem normal. So picture, imagine your mind, the most famous person you can think of, the most famous person caveat who is alive today. If that person said something that jibe with what they usually say, their diehard supporters are more likely to go along with it because they identify with the
person first interesting and the idea that they have. You know, they can be led along or led astray someone say, just by the way in which that person with whom they identify says or explains a certain thing. And this is why human beings love the concept of celebrities. In a lot of ways, celebrities today are similar to deities
in ancient times. You know, people obsess over them. We perform certain rituals, and that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, you're sacrificing a goat to Neil de grass Tyson or Bill Hie or something It.
Can be as simple as checking your Instagram stories every day or every couple of hours, or something.
Right right, Or you always listen to a song by your favorite musician when you're about to do a thing, you know what I mean, Like you always play on the Road Again by Willie Nelson when you're on a road trip.
So that's the first track at least, right.
Right, exactly, So when we perform these rituals, we feel a genuine personal connection with entities that we may have never met and may well never meet an hour lifetime.
And who may not be anything like the representation that exists on whatever medium you're consuming exactly.
So it's no wonder then that the world of celebrity is also a world rife with conspiracy. A while back, I wanted to bring this to your attention. A while back, Matt, you and I did a strange video which I still think holds up. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but in that video we have this sort of meet the team kind of thing, right, And in there you have you built this great chart supporting the notion that Paul McCartney had died and been replaced by someone else. Do you remember this?
I do remember this and shout out to Diana, my wife, because she gave me most of the information that was included in that. She helped me build that thing. She is she has an obsession like we're talking about with the Beatles, whether living or dead, and she knows so much. She basically was like, oh, yeah, well, here's all the things. You just put this on there, put that on there all, cut all this stuff out here. You got it.
That's awesome, man, that's awesome. That video is still around on our YouTube channel, which I missed, by the way, for some reason. The main thing I remember about that video is you holding some kind of pipe, yes, and looking and explaining this conspiracy thing to me, and then we're in a bathroom.
Yeah, we realized we're in a bathroom and you've been urinating the entire time.
Oh, that's right. As it cuts over, spoil h it is safe for work. We should say that we thought that was hilarious and we hope you enjoy it. Maybe some of our fellow longtime listeners in the audience remember that when today we are diving back into the world of celebrity conspiracy, specifically the idea that some of the world's most famous people have been secretly replaced by lookalikes, body doubles, dappel gangers.
Oooh, dappele gangers. Can I say it? So? Guess what? Here are the facts? Just doesn't sound the same when we've got it, here are the facts. When we hear that word celebrity, you know, we've been talking about this whole time. We're all on the same page. We understand what that is. Somebody who is known a famous person and athlete, a musician, an actor, maybe even one of those insta fluencers. I don't even know how you say it.
Oh, that's good that I did. That's great. Yeah, that's good. I like that exactly.
But but there's a there's a thing here and it's tough to differentiate, but we're gonna try and do it. Here between someone being capital F famous, it's not really capital, but let's just use a capital F as in this person is known throughout the world for some reason as a human person that does things, but then an internet famous person that is slightly different.
Yeah, I would, I would say so, I would completely agree with that. So we're talking maybe about athletes, musicians, actors and so on. That's often what we mean, right, when we say, as you say, capital F famous or heads of states or heads of religions, people.
Who are photographed by other people all the time.
And then we have and then we have the thing where people are maybe more famous in a specific field. That's probably where I would put what we call instafluencers or very very well known YouTubers who focus on a specific thing, right, And of course we have to be honest. Podcasters fall in that. There are some, there are some maybe they count as capital F famous people who are also podcasters, but they're not famous for that.
Yeah, that makes sense thinking about Will Ferrell right there.
Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he'll get into podcasts right now, I think it's just Ron Burgundy.
Oh yeah, exactly.
So. So it's strange, and it's also it's a bit unsettling the idea or the notion of celebrity because it places hierarchical value on people in a way that should not really exist. Absolutely, So, with all that in mind, if we do a very broad definition, if we sort of mash up those kind of known in their field people and the worldwide known people, you know, the Michael Jackson's and so on. If you smash them all together
into one thing. We can ask ourselves how many people in this world, in one way or another would be considered famous. It's really really tough to tell. Some, like you said, Matt, are known worldwide as a kind of eternal position, like the pope changes, but everybody is aware of the idea of the pope. Yeah, the pope is very very well known, not always very very popular, but very very well known. And some people are known more
in their field of expertise. What's someone who would be really specific field of expertise?
We know, I'm thinking of scientists a lot of times, or like perhaps an FBI investigator that is known in the true crime world and or the law enforcement.
Feel great, okay, I've got one. How about Nobel Prize winners. So there's an American astrophysicist, John C. Mather, who essentially proved that the Big Bang was real, not just the theory. He is very well known in his field. Yeah, but you know, it's difficult because if you ask the average this is not a ding on the average person. If you ask the average person name your two favorite astrophysicists,
they might have a tough time. Yeah, because most people's conversations are not going to relate to that on a day to day basis. So we have experts in their field, we have worldwide famous, and then we have some infamous people like the child molester Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, hey, it's not alleged. We don't have to say alleged.
Let's do an anti shout out to you, Jeffrey Epstein for possibly actually facing charges and going to jail. Maybe this time.
Will we'll see. I think at this point the money matters less than the potential co conspirators who could be indicted. I don't know. I don't want to be too skeptical about it, but it's just so well rare for people at that level to go to jail.
And especially after what happened last time that we have a whole episode on about if you're interested, but beware you will throw things as you're listening.
To it, right, And maybe it'll be like the Westminster the Westminster child abuse circle where they tossed out a few scapegoats posthumously. Yeah, and then the people who are implicated were also the people investigating it and nothing ever changed. I don't know, I you know, hope springs Eternal anyway, So we've got those people infamous, the villains, the well known experts in their field, the worldwide. Everybody knows who
that is kind of people. How do we tell how many people in the world are those sorts of folks?
Well, we have some help here in this quest, even if it's not the perfect examination of it, it's it's getting us somewhere. Right. There's this mathematician named Samuel Arbsman who who took a pretty interesting approach in back in twenty thirteen. He looked at Wikipedia and they have this thing on there called living People. It's a category in
which you can kind of search and navigate through. And at the time that the count in twenty thirteen, the number of living people was just over six hundred thousand, six hundred and four than one hundred and seventy four. And he, you know, he even admitted when with his own study and everything he was doing, that Wikipedia's notability standard was pretty low as when it came to like who is famous, who is not famous? Who is worthy of being on Wikipedia?
Right, some of our coworkers are in Wikipedia. I don't think we are, but so our coworkers.
Are, Yeah, we are not. Josh and Chuck. I believe we're on there, and I think maybe Holly and Tracy.
That makes sense. The question here is how many of these over six hundred thousand people has everyone heard of? Could one person have heard of them all? That is doubtful.
Yeah, it's just.
So many people. But with this in mind, we can at least, as Arbsman puts it, get a hint of understanding. We can we can get a little bit of a spider sense or a guestimate about how common fame is in the world. And so here's how his shortcut works.
He divided the famous people count by the global population in twenty thirteen, which was seven point h six billion, approximately, and then with that math he got the number of point zero zero eighty six percent, so much less than one percent, which is probably good for everybody's sanity, right, and probably bad for the celebrity stalker industry, but you know,
they're just gonna have to deal with it. This number is not ironclad by any means, but it's still pretty fascinating because it tells us when we're talking about possible celebrity doppelgangers, we're also talking about a very small subset of an already very tiny slice of humanity, and based on that fact alone, we might think initially, we might think it would be easy to spot an impersonator or a replacement. You know, there's someone saying, I am the
number one Carly ray Jepson fan. Is that a person?
I think so. I don't know who it is, but I've heard that name before.
Okay, so someone loves this person, Carl ray Jepson. They say, I've got all of her albums or videos, whatever she's done it. If it's in the public sphere, then I have it, says the super fan. So I would notice immediately change even if those filthy, casual Carly ray Jepson fans don't understand the magnitude of my work. Then we could go a bit further and assume the average living celebrity will tend to be photographed and filmed more often than the average non celebrity.
Right, yeah, I mean it would have to be, or would it. Yes. So a lot of the things we've been discussing thus far are our assumptions. We're making assumptions based on evidence and numbers and our own experiences, but they are assumptions. But really, think about it. If we're talking about the current president, or any president, or maybe some daytime news hosts. Many, many famous people have entire
groups of people, teams who are controlling their images. They have offices built around managing the icon that is their very own celebrity, that is a pr little gem or something that they get to show around. And it may actually be easier for a celebrity to be replaced because in many ways they've already been replaced by all of these images of themselves, these versions, these virtual versions of
themselves that are out there. Sure, you know, they've had different haircuts over you know, the time that they've been famous. They wear a lot of different outfits, They go to all these different places and do different things.
Celebrities, Yeah, I think it's a good point. Hon of celebrities are more tightly controlled than one might imagine. When we say replaced, we don't necessarily mean somebody's cutting off their fingers one by one and sticking other people's fingers on their hands, but that would be interesting.
They live by scripts a lot of times, right, even if it's not their own intention.
Like their words may not be their own. Their words may be written by publicists or speech writers or social media gurus. Their candids are often carefully orchestrated by professional photographers, and their trends and attitudes or their public stances may be dictated by deep dive marketing research indicating the most attention grabbing responses, opinions, or hot takes of the day.
Or for some movie that they're about to put out, they have to say certain things or be careful not to say other things.
So it might not be as difficult for a celebrity to be taken out and replaced. It might not be as difficult as it initially sounds, because let's admit it sounds kind of out there. But the question today is could it really happen? Could some celebrity known around the world actually be replaced? And if so, how and if so why?
And we're going to talk about that after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. We were talking about this earlier off air. Body doubles are real.
This stuff happened, yeah, oh for real, in in two places. And the first one is one that you already know about. There are body doubles in Hollywood in filmmaking, for sure.
Yeah, yeah, good call.
When when you're thinking about stunt doubles and stand ins. There are there are people whose job it is to look like a celebrity and either stand in light to make sure that it looks good with the costume or something. And then also people who get paid to do very dangerous, sometimes terrifying things, and they look like at least similar to.
A celebrity exactly, and they're but they're publicly acknowledged.
They're publicly acknowledged, but you won't know who they are unless you're a huge fan of stunt doubles or you know a person of a celebrity and also know their stunt double or team of stunt doubles. But but in there's another case here in it's politics, and that's when you have a huge state actor, a figure that's known really, really well, but is also in danger of being assassinated or at least harmed.
Right, right, So one of the most famous cases would be Joseph Stalin. He was a real pill. He implemented controversial plots against citizens of the Soviet Union, even ministers and folks who are in his inner.
Circle, the place that he was the leader.
Yes, yes, people who opposed him were executed after a fake trial on a good day. Other days they just disappeared, and we mean disappeared from history. They were removed from official photographs, real devious stuff. Stalin increased the role of the Soviet secret police as he became the absolute power in the thirties, and it made sense for him to use these political decoys because he was protecting himself from his growing list of enemies. We don't know how many
body doubles he had. He definitely had more than one. We know about two for sure. One was a double named Rashid, and he was dismissed from the army because he looked too much like Stalin. He went home, a government agent came to recruit him, and he became a sit in for the dictator at meetings and banquets. Somehow he survived being in close proximity to Stalin, and he died in nineteen ninety one at the ripe old age of ninety three. So well done, Rashid, good job staying alive.
We also, I do have to mention, we also have a episode of ridiculous history that's entirely about body doubles in the political sphere. So it always into a little bit more of this. But he is again just one of Stalin's body doubles. There's one that's a little more well known.
I would say, oh, yeah, somebody, how do you say his name, Felix Dadev Dadeese.
Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Yeah. So you can head on over and listen to that episode of Ridiculous History now, or you can hear this abridged version right now.
Oh, this is one small fact about Dadyev. He was so good that in nineteen forty five he was flown to Yalta and he met with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, whoa after the after the during the post war organ reorganization.
Gotcha, was it was it as the double?
It was Stalin? They thought they.
Thought he was Stalin.
Oh my god, which I mean, well done. Right.
Yeah.
So this is one example. But then we also have the examples from the Middle East, most famously Iraq.
Yes, Saddam Hussein and one of his sons were really really big big body double fans. Let's see, let's see, we've got some quotes here that come from inverse. This is the late Iraqi dictator reportedly employed a roster of body doubles. When you know, when he was ruling. And when we say roster here, we're not talking about one or two really good body doubles. We're talking about a dozen, dozens, perhaps of people who looked similarly enough to him that they were employed throughout his rule.
Right. He was a prolific fan of body doubles, and people would observe this, keep a very very close eye on it, especially his tensions were ratcheting up in that part of the world, and they would they would read some more or less kind of read tea leaves and try to interpret smaller clues like the way his bodyguards acted. You know, did they act differently around the true dictator than they did around his body double. Saddam was reportedly
possessed of a little bit of an ego. Yeah, and he was a big fan of close ups, and so people began to think, well, if he doesn't get his close up in during one of his many speeches and proclamations,
that means it's a body double. People are so worried about this that in two thousand and three, when he was captured, then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had to like go out and address concerns that they may have nabbed at decoy and was you know, they were figuring out ways to determine whether this was the real Saddam Mussin and this practice continued.
Oh and just to jump in there, I remember in two thousand and three when Saddam was captured, thinking that's not the real Saddam Hussein. And I was very skeptical of it. But I didn't I didn't know. I wasn't thinking about it at that level at this point, but I was aware just through pop culture that that Saddam Mussein did employ body doubles.
And his oldest son, Oude Hussein was a monster, and that doesn't have anything to do with his practice. It looks like he learned from dear old dad and and he started using body doubles as well. There was a guy named Latif who said he went to school with Ude Hussang and in nineteen eighty eight he was enlisted to be Uday's body double non consensually.
Yeah, because in Iraq there's this mandatory thing where you have to join the military when you reach a certain age, and Uday's body double was basically told, yeah, you are going to join as Ude, and that's it.
That's what's what that's what's happening. Yeah, and the guy who was Uday's body double survived, escaped to rock and there was even a movie made about his story called The Devil's Double.
Yeah, and you know, yeah, he is one man, the person that we're talking about. Sure, and he had some stories to tell. He had a lot of claims and it's difficult to you know, back a lot of that up with hard facts. But again, this is a person who expec sperienced them and then his claiming to have experienced them. But he said he got shot over twenty five times twenty how many times?
Twenty six times?
Twenty six times while he was impersonating the son of the Iraqi dictator as well as something else crazy.
Oh.
He was describing Ouday as essentially someone who was off his rocker.
Oh yeah, incredibly violent and enjoyed torturing people, like really enjoyed it.
And you know, it's tough because that's one person's opinion. I don't know enough about him. I've seen other documentation of other people claiming very similar things, so I'm inclined to believe it.
Okay, that's very fair of you. I just want to go on record he did Yeah, torture be abominable, unforgivable things. We're talking repeat sexual assault. We're talking murdering people for them for the thrill of it, like the old Diet coke commercial jingle. It's not surprising that he would have a body double because there were many, many people who wanted him dead for his many many atrocities. Okay, it's just it's like to the point where it's a lot of work for one dude.
Oh, dude, I hear you for me. It's trusting. You know, any Western source that would say that about somebody you know like that?
I see a really good point.
It's it's hard for me to know where the line is of what's true because I don't I don't disbelieve that he did some pretty terrible things.
Yeah, I see, But was it exaggerated for propaganda purposes and so on? It's a good question. Uh. There is another question that we should address, which is how many more suspected body doubles are out there? According to Joe R. Reader, who is a former undersecretary for the US Army, in two thousand and one, he said that many many world leaders had used body doubles to escape capture. He said Osama bin Laden used body doubles man Well Noriega, Fidel
Castro and more. And there were even rumors that Hitler used a body double to escape death. That is a story for another day.
I think, oh, we've got I'm pretty sure a whole episode on that. Check it out if you're if you're interested it, it's pretty compelling. I don't know, Argentina.
I mean, yeh, Nazi Nazi Party members did escape there through the rat lines, right, they certainly did. So. We also know that body doubles were used in ancient times, not even really in ancient times. They were used up until the widespread dissemination of photography right and av equipment, So it became easier to say, oh, no, no, no, no, I've seen a picture of the emperor. Yeah, and you do not talk like him, you do not look like him, You, sir, are an impostor.
Well, yeah, basically, any way to record image or sound, right, because if you're just dealing with an illustration and a written document, even that has quotations or something in it, that's the only way to know the even the president
like George Washington. Imagine how many people in the United States actually saw George Washington, and then most of what people in the public knew of him throughout the world were paintings, Yeah, illustrations, paintings, any image of him that was just created from another person's imagination through looking at him exactly.
And now that we have access to these amazing surveillance devices called smartphones, yeah, it's very very easy to not only take pictures of people, but to find pictures of people, and they don't have to be famous. So it seems like we're back to square one. How would you effectively fool people if you were a politician and athlete, a musician,
an actor, and so on and so on. In this world where it's much easier to verify this, it turns out that the same technology that made body doubles and impersonations more difficult for a time may make it much easier. And we'll we'll explore why after a word from our sponsor. All Right, that's a bit of a bait and switch, because we have to get to celebrity body doubles. This is the meat of what we are. This is the meat of the conspiracy burger. Okay, I didn't eat lunch today.
I'm just these are all going to be food comparisons.
Me neither, and I'm right there with you. I would like to add some Bieber bacon on top of whatever this sandwich slash hamburger we're creating here. And really, there's an entire industry out there of people impersonating celebrities. Really yeah, and it's what we were talking about right before the break to your your phone, Instagram, Facebook, social media. On the streets of New York City, there are people in La my god, just everywhere. There are people who impersonate
singers and go do shows. There are people who impersonate actors and do events.
There are people who impersonate fictional characters. I have some pretty good friends.
Who impersonate Bill Murray.
Not yet, okay, no I had I think that was just him. I think that was Bill.
Oh really, no one.
Will ever believe us, I know, but I know some people who, for instance, appear at functions, children's parties and stuff as you know, Cinderella or as snow White or something. I also have friends who do this, yeah, and that that seems like a really wholesome gig. We're not talking about those kind of impersonators. We're not talking about someone who is doing a spot on kiss cover band or something. We're talking about impersonators who replace celebrities in a way
for the purposes of crime. And this goes back to the Bieber bacon that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, more of a bi burrito, right it.
Is a Yeah, the bi burrito comes after the bacon. So the bacon is actually it's terrible to call that because I'm a big fan of bacon. Big ups to you, Bacon, just for existing and being and even though you're terrible for me and for the environment and all of those things, thank you for providing your oils with which to cook other things. Okay, let's just go to get on here. So you may love Justin Bieber, you may loath him
either way. There's no denying that this guy, the image of him, his voice, everything about him is extremely extremely popular, and specifically with younger women, younger girls, teenage girls in particular. And there's this man named Leem wirmi R. He's thirty, he was thirty four years old, and he really capitalized on Justin Bieber's popularity, and not in a good way.
No, he would pretend to be this teenager Justin Bieber online and he would talk to teenage fans, and he would start hounding them for money and then explicit sexual videos of themselves. If they didn't send him money, then he would say that he was going to post their videos online. This guy's an uber creep, and you have
to imagine how emotionally traumatizing that is. You're a huge super fan, it's your favorite singer, you have, like maybe it's your first crush or something, and you think that this person is asking you, an underage person, a child, for what nude videos or something. And then for some reason, this guy has got to be at least a multi millionaire, is shaking you down for cash.
Yeah, hopefully, you know, you'd think that someone would recognize that. But again, that kind of fog of celebrity, it's.
Powerful, right, and some people start successful criminal careers by rinsing and repeating this sort of tactic. There's an person here named Emma Charlton who posed as a Vanity Fair editor and a winterer, the one occurs in that film The Devilwaar's Product. So Charleton tricked this guy into falling in love marrying her, and then she just robbed him blind. It turned out she had a long history of impersonating other people, some famous and fleecing, fleecing various dudes that
thought they were in love with her. So those are pretty dark. That's still not quite what we're what we're getting at, right, Let's let's go to something a little bit softer just for a second, right, because people also impersonate celebrities for the purpose of pranking.
Right, Yeah, there was there was this thing that occurred back in twenty eighteen where this picture of Justin Bieber was going all around the internet. I think we may have mentioned it in passing before on this show.
This is what I meant by bieber Rito, Yes, exactly.
Where it was a photograph of Justin Bieber wearing a hat, sunglasses, and a hoodie and he was eating a burrito from the center of the burrito rather than at one of the ends. And it was supposedly taken by some passerby while Justin Bieber was enjoying a burrito, just out in the park somewhere, and it got retweeted so many, like I don't even know exactly how many times, thousands and thousands of times. It was posted on all kinds of different blogs, and it became I guess a trending thing
that was occurring. But it turned out that it was literally just some pranksters that were pretending to be Justin Bieber and that's all it was the entire time. But you think that you'd think that with the number of people who know who this kid is. Who are this guy Justin Bieber? I guess he's a bit older now, but who know who he is? They know exactly what he looks like. You'd think that somebody somewhere would have
figured out that that wasn't him. It didn't happen until these guys posted a YouTube video explaining exactly what they did and how they did it.
Wow, weird. I guess the reaction was just so attention grabbing right.
Well, and think about this around you, on your social media, whatever you're using, everyone is believing that this is an actual picture of Justin Bieber. So you almost don't even question or you don't question it whatsoever. You just take it for granted. Oh that's Justin Bieber. That's weird.
I'm gonna be honest with you, Matt. I'm just gonna lay it all out on the table. I can confess to you. I no ding on the guy, but I am not typically in a situation where my Bieber count is very very low on a day to day basis.
Oh, you have your encounters with the Beebes. The Beebes, Yeah, is that a thing? The Beebster I don't know. I don't know be Justin Oh.
All right, well, you know, I wish him the best the luck in his career because it's tough work to be a musician.
I'll tell you this, tremendous respect for Justin Bieber on this side over here. Even though he did he caught up doing a lot of things that has been That's a little kid that has been fighting through the music industry since he was a little kid.
That's so very kind of you. I mean, come on, I don't have a statement because I just don't know much about it. But we see how even a very well known person can be can be impersonated very deluiously. It doesn't it doesn't matter how famous you are. Maybe to your point about social media, it could make it easier. Now we get to the stuff that people will tend to dismiss out of hand. What if a celebrity was not consensually impersonated, right, What if they were murdered and
replaced somehow taken out. This brings us to twenty fifteen when buzzfeeds Ryan Broderick found a Brazilian blog called Avril is Dead, referring to the musician Avril Levine. The idea is in the blog now. Avril Levine got famous in the early two thousands, and then she was emotionally overwhelmed. Her grandfather passed away and she died by suicide right after the release of her first album, which was called
let Go. Oddly enough, according to this theory, the record company, the record label did not let Go because the first album was so successful. They said, Okay, we can just get someone who looks kind of like her, a doppelganger,
and keep the machine going, keep the money coming. In a little while later, Avril Levine finally addressed this idea, and she said in an interview on an Australian radio station KIS ten sixty five for anyone interested, nice the host aster, did you laugh at the rumors that went around where you no longer exist and there's a clone of you, to which Aril applies. Yes, some people think that I'm not the real me, which is so weird,
Like why would they even think that. For supporters of this theory, there, you know, you're probably white knuckled right now with your hands on the steering wheel or whatever, and you're saying, of course, that's what the clone would say that the actor would say.
Yeah, exactly. But you know, as weird as it sounds, imagine just put yourself in the shoes of some record company. Now this is gonna sound weird, but just imagine this. You're the head of a record label. You just had one of the most popular albums ever come out, or at least within the past like a couple of years, come out on your label, and it's this one singer songwriter that is gonna make you. You know, they've made you millions of dollars. They're gonna make you millions and
millions of dollars with their next album and everything. What if that person dies and it's kept quiet enough to where you think, well, maybe we can put out another album. I mean, that's insane to think about.
Like, what would you do given the opportunity right now?
Exactly, you already have millions of dollars, you're going you're set to make millions more, tens of millions of dollars. What would you do to continue that money flowing in? I don't know. That's one of those age old questions. Why do powerful, old rich people do some of the things that they get accused of and sometimes convicted for sure? Anyway, so it goes to Black Mirror. Have you seen Season five Black Mirror?
Yes?
So there are only three episodes, but one of them features Miley Cyrus and in it she plays a pop star called Ashley Oh. And this pop star spoilers by the way ahead right after this.
Cow down three two one spoilers.
So she gets placed in a medically induced coma by her management team essentially her aunt and some other people working for her, and then they want to replace this pop star with an AI. Essentially it's called Ashley Too, but it's created from this weird, little, compartmentalized, pr friendly version of Ashley Oh's personality.
Yeah, but the the hardware they start off with is I very rarely use this word, but it's kind of cute.
Oh the little tiny Yeah, No, I agreed, But in this case they're going to make use of holograms and Ashley Oh's personality to basically replace the pop star completely. And it feels a lot like this story with Avril Levine, like to continue the money flowing in, they would do whatever they needed to do to make this person at least seem real.
Right, right, and they would be able to apply near future technology.
Yeah, and it's you know, but it's not the first time some pop star has been, you know, so accused of being not the.
Real one, right, that's correct. This one is for you, Diana, although working with us on that previous video, I'm pretty sure you know all of all of this already, that's right. September nineteen sixty nine, a rumor that Paul McCartney, famed member of the Beatles, had died, began spreading across college campuses in the States. These rumors expanded. There was a snowball aggregate effect because people felt they were finding more and more clues hidden in album covers and in Beatles songs,
and clue hunting was infectious, addictive, and fun. Within a few weeks, this blows up and its global for most people. This craze was short lived, and Paul McCartney, if it is him, has an interview where he says, no, I've been taking some family time. I've been in Scotland, Kenya, places like that go off the grid.
Because you know, I'm massively rich, yeah, and I can just go places like that.
John Lennon is very stressful to work with. That's pretty obvious.
Right, I mean, yeah, I know McCartney also has his quirks.
Sure, sure, that's true.
Just to give John Lennon the benefit of a doubt, okay.
Right, right, I mean right, that's that's true. Well, McCartney, though, he has this interview in Life magazine where he's like, you know, very much alave whatever and to Scotland, and despite denying the rumors of the exaggerated rumors of his death in a very Mark Twain esque way, McCartney still had to confront these things. People said that he was a lookalike. His real name was William Shears Campbell or
William Shephard. William Campbell allegedly became Billy Shears on sarch Pepper, and William Shephard was supposedly the inspiration behind the continuing story of Bungalow Bill.
That's awesome.
It's a weird one buckalo Bill.
We listened to a lot of Beatles at my house.
Uh huh.
So all of this stuff rings so true to me. Ah, I love it.
So how did this how did this one start?
Oh? There's an article it's called is Beadle Paul McCartney Dead? And it was written September seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine this gentleman named Tim Harper, who was the editor of the Drake Times Delphic. It was a student newspaper of Drake University over in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, this article, it addressed the rumor, essentially the rumor mill that was kind of going around the school that all these clues, if you put them together, it means that Paul McCartney has
somehow died. And let's let's look at some of these messages here. So it include a message that says, turn me on dead man. And this comes from the White album from the song Revolution nine. And it's when you play it backwards, it's that old backwards masking thing that we've talked about before. And this apparently if you like look at all of the rumors and the things that were published, if you try trace it all the way back, you get to this article, the.
One that we just mentioned in Iowa, right right right by Tim Harper. So according to music journalist Merrill Nowden. This was the first published work on the idea that Paul McCartney was dead.
Because of some backward masks lyrics, turn me on dead man.
It's weird, yeah, weird flex So we have let's do one more example.
What about Abby Road? He wasn't wearing shoes and he was smoking.
What about Abby Road? I'm just saying, he standing with four people who all looked kind of alike. What you gotta differentiate yourself just Paul, I.
Don't know, man. What about that car crash?
I don't know. He was in a car crash and his many So I've got to say a lot of people still think that is a fringe theory, among them being the man who, as we record this podcast, claims to be Paul McCartney. He would say he claims to be that because he is Paul McCartney.
Yeah, he would.
I I am profoundly inspired by your commitment to this. I know it's Do you seriously think it's the case?
No, I don't.
I will, I will. I will send you and Diana on an adventure in a foreign country. If it turns out that he is not really Paul McCartney.
Okay, accepted, deal. I will work, which work now will be to prove that that is not Paul McCartney.
So we'll do one more before Diana put me in the poorhouse, and that is Taylor Swift. People, this is a weird one. I found people were arguing, based entirely on the photographs, that Taylor Swift is in fact the clone of a former Satanic priestess. Yeah, as you do. This dates back to twenty eleven, and people will say that Swift is actually a clone of one Zena Levey, the daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey.
Whoa.
And there are a bunch of videos on YouTube comparing the two. I would suggest, I mean, take a look at them if you want. They don't look very similar. But a lot of that is interpretive and I.
The beholder and so on.
So right now, it doesn't seem that there's too much sand to the idea that celebrities could be killed, replaced, or taken out. We're not quite at that black mirror level yet.
At least not in person.
It is going to happen, though it's going to happen, it's not gonna maybe happen in person, But we are in the world of deep fakes. Is what is deep fake? Aside from another episode.
Well, it's yeah. It's a way to digitally manipulate the sound and image on you know, in digital photography and audio, to make it seem as though a person, in this case, a celebrity or well known individual is saying or doing something that they are actually not. And it's quite effective.
If you go back to twenty sixteen, I'm by the way, just watching Mister Robots season three, and back in season two, they had just a quick little piece of video that happens on a television screen where President Obama is talking and he mentions one of the characters, Tyrrell Wellick and it at the time in twenty sixteen, I remember being taken aback by it. I didn't understand, like, how did they get the president to say that? Why would they
why would he agree to that? What do you pay a president when he makes a quick little cameo?
At counterpoint, you don't pay presidents. You donate to their foundation's charities and campaign funds.
There you go, there you go. No, I was perplexed by it, and I remember I think we even I can't remember We mentioned it on the show a like when it came out, but we have talked about it since then, and you can see there are YouTube channels online with the deep fakes that are super just believable and scary, putting other people's faces on bodies, making those bodies say things, putting words into the mouths of other people who are being interviewed. If you want to, let's
just stay on the President Obama thing. If you go to twenty eighteen, two years later, after the Mister Robots Season two thing, you go to this video that Jordan Peel made and he impersonated President Obama quite a bit in his career, or he continues to do that, but for a while there was one of, you know, one of the funniest things he was doing, at least according to me, right, he nailed the voice, just so so
good with the voice. Well, he made a video in twenty eighteen of him talking and a deep faked video of President Obama saying all the things that Jordan Peele was saying. I remember that, yeah, And it was in warning to everyone that you have to really trust the news sources that you look at. You have to trust the videos you watch. Uh, huh, And it's becoming harder and harder to do that.
I would say, ups, I always say you have to distrust more.
So, well, yeah, you have to trust the humans that are behind the thing.
Right exactly, you have to trust the source or you have to at least do your own due diligence on this. And Hollywood of course, very very excited over the moon about this. Can you imagine how much more affordable films will become? Why would you need to pay whomever you know, like Julia Roberts or Idris Elba? What would you need to pay them millions and millions of dollars every time you make a movie when you could just buy the rights to their likeness and their voice and then use
deep fake technology. Holograms are there that they're pretty sophisticated, but we're not the point where they can replace human beings yet.
Well, and at this point, almost all consumption occurs on our phones.
True. Also, I gotta go on this one pitch. You got to pitch one thing, Okay, So imagine we combine deep fakes with AI kind of limited AI. This leads us to a strange place very very quickly. I have a prediction I predict that in the mid future, you know, midterm futures. So it's completely possible that we could democratize screenwriting and filmmaking in a very strange way, a way that would not require more than one human being to
be involved. Imagine if you had something that was like Alexa or Siri or Google Home or whatever, and instead of just messing with audio, this would mess with audio and visual. So you could just say to it. You could say, hey, Google or Alexa, combine Police Academy for and just name another film. Back to the Future three and Back to the Future three. Just combine those together
and make a film for me. And then this algorithm would be able to write the script for that that combines these things, take the references from the other visual aspects, and combine those so that we would have something like, you know, back to the Police Academy four or back
to the Police Academy three, you know what I mean? Yeah, oh wow, or Police Academy to the you know, It's completely possible, And then that means the only human being involved in that entire process once this technology exists is the person who asks the question. And I think we're on the way there. Wow, pretty pretty stunning stuff.
Yeah, it's funny too, because all you'd have to do is combine some of the top grossing films over the past fifty years basically, and then you could just have new hits and change the proper nouns.
And script writing is so formulaic. Yeah, any ways, for a lot of those films. But it appears that at least for now, at least in the cases we've outlined, there's no solid proof of celebrities being actively murdered and replaced. Yet we do see the numerous possibilities for replacement, if not assassination, and we do know that there are likely body doubles out there in other forms other I mean, there's still bodies other forms or other applications would be a better way to say it.
You know, I just have to say something here. I believe that a lot of these allegations that come up with body doubles, especially with celebrities who were younger women at the time when they became celebrities, like your Taylor Swift's and your Avril Levine's and all this, a lot of this feels like I don't want to say, I don't know if it's body shaming, isn't the right term, but the disbelief that a celebrity, especially a female celebrity, looks differently than she did when she was, you know,
seventeen eighteen, whenever she became popular or younger, I think has to do with our own perceptions of that and how we've been manipulated by media to view women as they age. Is that I feel like there's something there because there's there's an interview with Avril Levine where she was being asked, you know, have you heard the rumors that you were replaced in everything that we were discussing. In the images of her, she does not look like she did at least in to whatever that whenever she
was interviewed twenty sixteen or something. She does not look anything like the Avril Levine that we all grew up watching on MTV. And it's just the nature of growing up and changing. And I don't know, I feel like there's something in there with the way we treat celebrities and follow them over all of this time that maybe we just lose sight of who the person is when you're looking at them.
The fact that human beings age and change, Yeah, I don't see that, And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts. It's right let us know what you think. You can reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook x and YouTube, on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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