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 iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Folks, we're back. You can call it a comeback because we are indeed literally coming back. If you are tuning into our listener mail segment the evening it publishes, let us be the first to welcome you to June twelfth, twenty twenty five. Guys, the twenty twenty five is almost halfway.
Over, right, thank god? Think so? Yeah, Yeah, you's got I am.
I'm going to drink as much of this Sprite Tea as I possibly can.
Yeah, what's a verdict? Is it better than Sprite dream or whatever?
I don't know. It's way better than I expected.
Yeah, there we go.
Here's the only problem. This is a kind of a regular bottle of Sprite Tea or plus tea has two hundred and thirty calories in the sucker. So over the course of like three days, I've had this much. As you can see, it's about how.
The carbonation holding.
No, but it's just and lemon now, so it's it's basically an Arnold palm whatever they call this, Yeah.
For your health, Arnold Palmer. There we go.
It's a formerly fizzy Arnold Palmer.
This point is just Arnold Palmer here, Yeah, which is great.
Never thought about this Sprite.
It's just fizzy lemonade, isn't it.
That is what it is, lemon eight.
Sorry, it's.
We gotta move on before Big Sprite gets us.
We're going to We're going to explore a lot of fantastic correspondence. As is are remit we cannot get to everything. So if you have written to us or given us call, you're gonna have to join us. Next week we will welcome you on to the show. What we're gonna do tonight is talk about cattle mutilations and old fascination of our show. We're going to get into some great conversation about our recent episodes on Breaking Physics. We're going to
talk about Chinese agro terrorism, some super soldier notes. But before we do any of that, we got really into dreams again and made the decision as a crew that we actively want to encourage all our fellow listeners to tell us about their dream especially the weird ones that maybe science can't yet explain. So what do you say, guys, break for word from our sponsors, and then we'll see what dreams may come. Yes, I'm not we're not cutting it. We're keeping that bad joke.
And we're back. And you know what, I really reject to this notion that nobody wants to hear about people's dreams.
Have you guys heard this?
Like this is sort of a thing where it's like it's sort of meant to be sort of a burdensome thing or obnoxious, and people only think that their dreams are cool and nobody else cares.
I've heard that. I disagree.
I think the discrepancy comes from an unfortunate thing where a lot of a lot of humans have experienced conversations where someone wants to tell you all about their dreams, but they don't reciprocate. Also, if you reciprocate, then any conversation can be interesting. If you listen as much much as you speak, the interaction will be rewarding. I like that, but it's a good way to put it.
And we already have entertained some tales of various listeners dreams who have written into us. But I found one particularly interesting that came from too Fab and it specifically refers to the idea of dream premonitions. So two fab starts. Hey, guys, you know I don't really comment often because of my job, although I listened to every show thanks too Fab. There are three witnesses to this referring to this individual's dream premonitions, and I told three people about the event that occurred,
and the premonition was the night before the event. Just to be clear, I have lucid dreams quite often solve problems in my sleep on the regular.
What a cool skill.
You often hear about artists and musicians that you claim to be able to create the state of lucid dreaming or encourage the state of lucid dreaming in order to work on their art. So I think problem solving makes a whole lot of sense. It's cool that you can do that, too Fab. This is something I've always done since I was a young girl, and I've just accepted this as part of my superpowers, compared to most people
agreed on the superpower. Note, however, I have had three real premonitions before the events, two of which were associated with myself or my family, and therefore could fall into a category of being able to be explained away, perhaps referring to just kind of you know a lot about these people. You can kind of put the pieces together in advance, be predictive based on observations. One can't be explained, and it shook me to the core at the time. When I was in college, one night I had a dream.
In the dream, I was watching a man dressed in blue standing next to a rock wall near a white commercial building in doorway and like entrance. As I watched, President Reagan was waving, and the man shot the President and another man I watched the Secret Service tackled him and covered the President and shoved the President into the car I was riding in the car as it went to the hospital and rushed him into surgery. Then I saw him flatline. I woke up in a cold sweat.
I must have screamed because it was so real. I could smell the gun, the people, and the sweat, the car, leather everything. My roommate asked what was wrong. I told her I had a nightmare and told her what I dreamed. She was like, wow, that's weird. Why would you dream about the president? I told her, I don't know, but that was really, really real. I got up because I couldn't sleep. I went to breakfast with my two best
friends and told them about the dream. They both teased me and asked if I was going to join the Secret Service or something. I told them, of course not, and we all laughed and the subject dropped. I went to class for readers. We didn't have cell phones or pagers back then, so things would happen during the day and no one would know until they turned on the news. I went back to the dorm that afternoon and one of my best friends met me at the door and had a white face. She goes, you need to come
with me. Took me into the TV room and there it was on the news that Reagan had gotten shot. They had no news about his status yet. I started crying because I kept saying I saw him die. I saw him die. Of course he didn't die. He survived the attack, so I was like, Okay, it wasn't a correct premonition, but my brain was also going other than the guy and how he was dressed, and the building was exactly the same building from my dream, and they shoved him into the car and drove to the hospital
and another man was also shot. Of course, years later we find out he did possibly flatline, but was resurrected. I have zero clue why that came to me, or why I would have dreamed anything or what we like that I cannot be explained. So I do believe these can happen, and there may be no real explanation on why these may occur, although events like mine would likely be extremely rare, since if lucid dreams are the key your own life may make you stay within your normal
life bounce. Perhaps I had them because I later worked in and around the seats of power. Don't know, but maybe it was also telling me where I would eventually go since I have worked protection planning. I love the show. Keep up a great work too, fab fa Wow. Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you for the detail and this incredible recollection of I mean, I would argue that this is absolutely qualifies as a premonition. Well, even
see in fiction. When premonitions happen, they're often little twists to them or little ways of interpreting them that maybe leads to an incorrect assumption about what's going to happen. Only when you know how to interpret them correctly, can you actually use the superpower?
Right?
Yeah two, fab, thank you again for the excellent correspondence. And I may be a bit biased. I may need to recuse myself because my family has a history of premonition via the dream state. So I do while I cannot scientifically explain it. We attempt to in our two part episode series on Dreams Predicting the Future. We attempt to with some pretty fascinating physics. But I'm with you too, Fab.
I think this is I think there has to be something to it, And a lot of skeptics hate when I say that, But I would advance then in response that skepticism true skepticism is only rational inquiry, and if something sounds crazy, you cannot immediately dismiss it just because you know it trips some wire for what you think the universe should work.
Like, yeah, I mean it seems tied to into all kinds of other ideas around the collective unconscious and just you know, information that can be received by some people but not others, and psychic powers and all of that. Like, I'm always drawn back to the fact that the government and you know, the intelligence services believed in this stuff enough to like have a whole programs surrounding it. And
we've seen cases of programs that yielded some success. So while I'm not like one hundred percent the believer, I feel like there's a lot of smoke and probably some psychic fire out there somewhere, how about you, Matt.
Well, I, like Ben, have got some weird dream stuff in the fam, some weird mental stuff in the fam, and there's all kinds of things that go together with that. That society, as Ben was saying, kind of puts its own little spin on it, right, science decides kind of what it is. I get it. I think there's something
to it. I don't know how to control it, and I don't know any I've never met anybody who can control premonition dreams, right, who can say I want to have a premonition tonight about something that's going to happen to a specific.
Person, and does the measurement or the observation even in a dream of a future event. Does it affect in some state or in some manner the transpiration of those events?
Right? Is it a projection? And you know there there is really interesting science going on right now with the whole the whole what is it infodynamics and some of that stuff that it deals with whether or not we humans, as an individual conscious thing, are actually projecting our own consciousness or consciousness itself onto the world, onto this field,
this information field. Weird crap. And it goes back to that episode about breaking physics, which we're going to talk about further in this episode.
But it feels like we're reacting to something. I mean, there's a certain amount of intuition that goes into this and people that like to Fab's point about maybe some of those premonitions that could be explained away because of intimate knowledge as certain individuals and you know whatever the
course of their lives, et cetera. So there is a certain level of just intuition and kind of a certain kind of intellects that goes into being good at this, and we see that exploited by like fake psychics and sure confidence men and such, right.
Mentalist, Yeah, yeah, I mean there is that that's the thing. A non zero percentage of these lived experiences can be explained by understood science.
Right.
However, we're not looking at that significant discrepancy or that significant piece of the pie. We're looking at the stuff that cannot yet be explained. We're looking towards the bleeding edge of cognitive science, where even the physicists and the skeptics alike throw up their hands or tentacles and say, crap, I don't know. It reminds me of two fab It reminds me of a recent study that you would be fascinated by, I hope, wherein researchers have found quantum entanglement
may explain migratory birds an astonishing sense of direction. Like we knew they could sense magnetic fields, but we didn't really understand how they could do so. And it turns out bleeding edge science me give us the answer, and in the pursuit of that, the understanding of the very small and very tricky science of quantum mechanics, we may arrive at an answer regarding premonitions in dream state.
I guess that's what I'm referring to as well. Specifically, I know I bring it up a lot. I know you guys enjoyed this conversation too. Russell targ Third Eye Spies author and person who is involved in some of those very programs with the government for training psychic spies and stuff. And I just really love that some of that bleeding edge technology you're talking about in science rather it's starting to resemble a place where science intersects with
like the unknown. And I guess that's sort of the point, right What is the unknown if not a thing that science cannot yet explain? And what is bleeding out of science if not starting to approach those things?
And we talk about it. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent, I'm with you.
We talk about it in our episode on whether or not humans can break physics. When you get past a certain threshold of scientific inquiry, the smartest, the most brilliant, the most capable physicists are verging onto what we call spirituality or philosophy. And there's a reason for that. And I think that's a very encouraging clue in unraveling the great mystery of reality.
Because that the part that we call magic art that we always refer back to that quote about of course technology, certain technology to a certain levels might as well be magic more or less? But like, is that unknown part to what you're saying men, and that kind of philosophy, part of being a scientist looking into these things and these secrets of the universe. How could you not have a little bit of reverence for that kind of mystical side of it?
Do you have to even if you know something works? The world is so amazing that understanding it makes it no less.
Magical, and not all scientists or atheists. I think that's something that's very worth pointing out.
You know, Yeah, I like that.
I think that's a beautiful point, and I agree with you that it's often forgotten.
Here's a pitch.
If this is for us, this is for you two fab this is for everyone tuning in and tri force. We're interested in your thoughts as well. If some entity came out or some institution came out with a substance you could consume that would give you a higher likelihood of premonitions and dreams, would you take it? Would you want to know what occurs in the future, and would you know it alter the future?
What do you think?
It's a no for me, dude, I think I don't think people were meant to I mean it's another cliche of fiction around this stuff. I don't think we're meant to have those kinds of powers. I think now it can be really damaging. It can be damaging to one's own psyche and also potentially to I don't know, the world. I don't know.
That's a big let's go for me, okay, but more for you.
All right, So we got one fan of sort of improv jazz approach to life. We got one one vote for yes, let's know all the things. I do think it's interesting that the idea that there may be a genetic component of some sort that was a suspicion or trope that occurs way before the humans knew about genetics.
Yeah, I don't know, because because if that.
Existed, obviously you probably wouldn't sell it to the public. You would have a cadre of folks like those in Russell target experiments, right or pre crime minority report stuff, and they're just tasked with having that existence. I don't know, man, Sometimes you like to be surprised as.
A monkey's pause scenario though every time.
Yeah it yeah, yeah, because if the it's sort of like a sickle cell anemia and malaria, if there were maybe some genetic component that allowed for this sort of dreaming, which is again one of the off sided ideas here.
That genetic component would have been a massive evolutionary advantage, So why is it not more prominent if again, if that's the case, then we would have to lodge assume that there must be many drawbacks to that, similar to creativity and mental instability, which we're all three proud possessors.
Yeah on one or the other, if not both, well y'all with that. Never not an interesting conversation this topic, And please tell me your dreams, whatever the scenario, and I will tell you. Yeah, I just mean like what I was saying earlier about the idea of that being like you know, conversational poison or something like that. If we're ever hanging out one on one, I want to hear about it. And yes, absolutely please share with us, Share with the group. You can write to us a
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Send them along. We will be right back after a quick word from our sponsor with more messages from you.
Thanks too, fab.
And we've returned, and we are jumping to a message from goat to discuss mutilations of animals cattle in particular, but several others as well. It appears Goat has some insight to see what we all feel about it, the fellows.
This is Goat. I have the solution for you for the animal mutilations, cattle mutilations specifically, but it's a much broader category. It is the Department of Energy and Defense, funded by the Energy and forced by Department of Defense, where people are collecting tissue for radioactive particulates. And if you look at the animals, the parts that are taken are as follows. The thyroid deliver the kidneys, these stomach contents, the ascending a ord to the entire large intestine, et cetera,
et cetera. Basically, guys and helicopters fly around with giant tasers. It look like something out of Supertroopers. In helicopters, they land so calm. They don't only test cattle. It's just that cattle are very convenient, often in wide open spaces where you win a helicopters five miles away from nobody, chop them up, let the blood drain in the ground. These so calm guys could probably disassemble a cow in
twenty minutes. Team of silpeam six, et cetera. So anyway, they called me goat the appleatric Mountain Hillbilly used my words on the air as necessary. The reason why I know this my entire family worked at Ulcreage nuclear Labs and on the weekends, my grandfather and I used to go electro fishing and collect the samples. We were allowed to keep the fish, but we had to turn in the gills, the eyes, the cheek muscle, the entire digestive track,
the liver, the kidneys, basically all the organs. So you got the fish, throw it at a ziplock bag, put the time, date and the place you were on the lake, and they study the radiation levels and deliver the good news is Milton Hill Lake and East Tennessee, just outside Oakridge, going to see where the new labs are is about five percent of the background radiation in the fish livers. That's what we saw. And you can actually get paid
to do this today. There's a foreign to fill out on the line with the Department of Defense and the National Atomic Energy Watch McCall it. Anyway, they sample all over the world and UH, basically when the socom guys or board, they can always go and shoot a few cows. That's pretty much the story. We got paid. I think eighty dollars a pound for the liver weight is how we were paid. So see, Bah, I've been goat and it's been real. So you.
I'm sorry.
Electro fishing, Can I just put that out there right now?
Yeah?
Yeah, that is incredible?
Goat?
Uh what is electro fishing?
Electro fishing is where you use DC electricity.
To stun a fish.
Yeah. Yeah, it's only stunned.
You've got a submerged cathode and anode. It's still safer than nudely.
Yeah, you use.
Like a battery.
Is this like a very DIY process or is there like pro gear for this? It strikes me as something you would use just like a car battery.
For it's component in science, because if you do it the right way, it's not gonna harm the fish.
Yeah, you just stun and pick them up, take a look at them, take a little sample.
And put much radiation.
We wouldn't kill him dead.
It would literally just knock him out. It seems like it would kill him.
No, No, it doesn't have.
To kill Okay, it can be a low a low shot.
I'm looking at pictures of backpack stun fishing stuff, so you can just submerge it and then stun the fish. Grab it up, take a little sample, put it right back. That's incredible.
I love the stun boats of those of real life. I was not participant in it. Yeah, it's absolutely it's weird. It's like jack skeletons. Yeah, they go out over other either side of the vessel, and they're small vessels.
Dude, bad ass. Goat.
Also, Goat, Oh Matt, If it's okay with you, I'd like to do an introduction for you, Goat.
Is that okay? Sure? All right?
So, through another side quest with roots in East Tennessee and in my family of old, met the official historian of Oak Ridge, a tremendous guy named Ray Smith, and I'm sure he'd love to speak with you, Goat. So, if it's okay with everybody, follow up in this correspondence, drop us your email when you have a chance, and we will. We'll connect you directly with this guy. I think you would love to share some stories with each other.
Heck yeah, if you don't already know Ray again, Ray's just a great storyteller.
Sounds good. Heck yeah, Friends, for life. We're just made on the show Ray and Goat. Oakridge guy, isn't there boys?
Isn't there like a bluegrass outfit called the Oakreage?
Boy?
I swear there isn't They could be Oakridge Boys as Honestly, I liked your song, Matt.
But this is really cool stuff, guys, just the you know, look code. We're not saying you're wrong here or you're telling tales. It's just like stating it so matter of factly that there are so calm guys and helicopters with giant tasers that go around and knock off the you know, the cattle and do the samples right there and let them bleed out into the soil.
Was it cheeks?
Thalamous?
Stomach ascending it?
Did I miss the significance of the parts?
Well?
Therein is a bag of awful badger's O F F al Because this will this will potentially explain some of the cattle mutilation phenomena and goat as I'm sure you and I would agree here. It doesn't need to explain
all of it to be valid. The skeptical answer will typically be hey, given the remote population right of cattle, there is a clear probability right, that some of these cattle expire through natural causes or through predation, and if they're left out there and they're undiscovered, then scavengers are always going to go for the soft spots of the carcass. And that is where you see what looks like specific
removal of organs now goat. That's obviously not what we're talking about here, but what I'm saying or positing, and I think we can all agree on this, I hope, is that there are multiple explanations for cattle mutilation, and one existing does not make the others impossible. They are not mutually exclusive. There are a lot of cattle out there and there are a lot of things that can
happen to them. I think we should also thank everybody else who wrote in on our classic episode of cattle mutilations.
Yeah, undred percent, thanks so much, y'all. Not every cattle mutilation is made equally. That's something that we found over the years. There are these more surgical looking, you know, removal of all of the guts and the parts that would be easily testable for like radiation accumulation. But then there are other ones, as as Ben is describing where something went in through the eyes and the mouth and the butt basically and all the parts back there, the
soft tissues. But it is it isn't as perfectly like a perfect cut out of the side of a cow, which we have seen. We have seen evidence of that stuff, right.
The diamond shape incisions on the undercarriage, like some of that, some.
Of that's weird, right, and where this kind of thing would be an explanation, But man.
Diamond shaped, and that makes me think of you remember that part in Signs of the Lambs where he's like, was she a big fat woman, big fat person? The skin that was being removed from the victims in that diamond shaped and it was because they were being used to make like clothing, they're being used to stitch together. I'm sorry, it's just just occurred to me. I wonder if there's an alien serial killer.
On the loose.
I don't know, but we'd love to hear from the do O D or the Atomic Energy Watch you might call it. That would be really awesome. I really love.
It. We'd love to hear the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, probably Atomic Energy Commission.
That's the back in the day one. Yeah, yeah, Well, if you do want to write to us. You you'll get our number and our email and everything at the end of this, so just stay tuned and then contact us. All right, we'll be right back.
Thanks so much, goat, And we've returned with a with a couple of brief core pieces of correspondence work corresponding sees if you want to be that guy at.
A party, and we're gonna start maybe this way, guys, let's talk a little bit about Super Soldiers. I think we all found our Super Soldier update episode illuminating, terrifying, a little disquieting. We all walked away with some opinions on genetic modification and exoskeletons, and we also we also strongly implied the idea that war may evolve past human war fighters. This is our first message for this part. Hey, guys,
call me Clever in you window, huge fan. I'm sure you've had plenty other veterans right in saying about the same things regarding your update on Super Soldiers or SS. I don't love that one, Clever in your Window, but I get it.
You continue.
I spent ten years in the service and saw my share of action, But more important to the conversation, I had countless hours of training on sometimes awesome, sometimes over hyped new technologies. The DoD that's our Department of Defense here in the US, a hilarious name, obviously spends absurd amounts of money on developing technologies that have potential to be game changers on the battlefield. However, the application of these aids frequently falls short, often due to the higher
ups wanting the benefits without forking over the dollars. That is to say, they develop these sweet gadgets and then roll them out as cheaply as possible. Sometimes that means there are not enough to actually help. Sometimes they are so shoddily built that they break immediately, or it's a dollar store version of what's actually needed. So while I do believe some super soldier stuff is in the works and that one day it will actually be effective, I think that day is far far away, but I hope
it's before Skydek goes live. Sorry this was long. Thanks for all the content. Keep kicking ass, brothers, love you all. Clever in your window, Thank you Clever. Brief brief clarification there was I was referring, perhaps an error to some other correspondence. We got about a world in which technology advances such that you don't have humans on the battlefield. I think that is also a salient point. But what Clever is saying here is going to be familiar to
any veteran. We mentioned it, right, like rolling out stuff before it's battle tested and just saying, oh, you know, Helliburton, those guys gave us the cheapest per unit price, so let's hope those planes stay in the air.
So they mean by field.
Tested, right, Yeah, yes, especially with a lot of the wearable gear that ends up being made of crazy cheap materials because the government, you know, saw a way to get it cheaper.
Yeah.
War profiteering, it's a real thing. People don't talk about it in the West, maybe as often as we should. But it reminds me of two fictional touch points, and these may be familiar to veterans and to you as well.
Clever.
Remember that movie adaptation of the board game Clue. It had no right to be as good as it is.
This was good, right, and it's fantastic. It made like five Yeah you can see, I believe. Yeah, it's great.
It's the It's probably one of the best board game adaptations out there.
Yeah. Battleship that oh god, you're right. Come on though, is that? I mean, come on?
Like master, I want to see candy Land the movie. That seems like that's a missed opportunity.
I want to see Tim Burton direct candy Land the movie or Verder Hearson.
Guys.
Yeah.
According to IMDb, candy Land is a movie. No, what's from twenty two?
Oh?
Well that was the before times?
Was it the I've never heard nor hear of this?
Directed by John swa.
I thought it was gonna be bowl like that. Well, okay, it good. I'm gonna guess no what the reason.
I'm bringing up clue is that, if you'll recall spoilers three to one spoilers, one of the people I believe it may be the Colonel Mustard character is villainized and exposed as a war profiteer and people died because he was cracking corrupt government contracts to put stuff out for a very low price point. We also see another example of this in Oh Gosh, Oh the Boys, Remember the graphic novel The Boys thought International.
Show wasn't half bad? And there was also a Nicholas Cage movie where he played a war profiteer. It was called Like.
The God, War God, something.
It was exactly it was. It was about the very thing that you're talking about.
Oh man, war profiteering adaptations.
There's shades of it, but I mean, at the end of the day, it's just about prising profits over you know, anything else.
Yeah.
Yeah, and QP people unsafe, you know, putting them in situations that are more unsafe than they already were. You know, this doesn't happen a ton with us in podcasting. What a weird and not good comparison. But if we get a bad mic, we will just move a recording.
Right.
If these folks get bad instrumentation, then people die, you know. And that point about new technology as as you made it mat the the wearables, right, which often have not been tested in these harrowing environments, they will directly lead to death if they malfunction or if they're cheaply made. You know, you don't want the TMU version of the HUD.
Well, yeah, or they'll just end up sitting in boxes at a forward operating base because the soldiers all decide, well, let's just not.
No, not that one, you know what I mean, We'll do it live with the stuff we know.
Works, Yeah, like eyes and you know, ears and stuff.
We also want to thank all the people, the veterans and currently serving members of various militaries and armed forces who wrote in talking about the same future of the super soldier. Does a world exist wherein there are no human soldiers?
Right? And what does human mean in this context? It's on the way.
Maybe we can share more of that in the future, but for now we're going to a brief piece of correspondence that may prompt an episode. This comes to us from our friend. Oh, we're going to do our best. We want all hands on deck for this one.
Guys.
Mm hmm Jack warmar Fad, Jack grubmuffin, Jack braahma than nailed times. Oh thanks bro, Yeah.
One of those.
Okay, uh Jay, we're gonna say it for sure, uh jequealing present. Uh So you wrote to us and you said Below is a link to the news story about possible agro terrorism by Chinese nationals. I'd love to hear you guys dive into this. I'm sure there's much more to this story. I'm also curious as to if we have similar supplies of the same fungus in US labs. Feel free to use my email call me Jacqua Ramafan, Jack Ramafan, if you can, I don't know, I don't know.
One of them might be right. So thank you for our Thank you for barry with us there. Uh guys, I think we all heard about this story. We may have talked about it a little bit offline in other chats, but a University of Michigan scholar and her paramore were arrested for attempting to smuggle a fungus called Fusarium gramminarium into the.
United States because it's because it was.
So fun to say TSA was like, hang on a rhyming fungus, Let me get a go at it. So it's a It's a strain, a dangerous strain of a common fungus. It can infect wheat, rice, other cereal grains. If you want to read more about it, are Palja linked us to a great series of articles. We've got some more to recommend, but start with the Detroit News by Carol Thompson. This was published June third of this month and this year. The concern is that this fungus,
when deployed, it can wreak havoc on crops. It can cause men's damage. It can make those grains not just dangerous for the animals eating them, but it can also prevent their growth, and it can make and dangerous for humans to consume.
Like an ergot situation. I was just thinking about that concept.
It's not it's bad, it's gnarly fusarium head blight.
Yeah, in case he didn't have another thing to worry.
It sounds like a status effect in an RPG or like in like turn based.
Well it ben you know that you mentioned the main ones that infects but also gets maize or corn and which if you're thinking about it in the United States and the primary crops that we've talked about on this show. It infects the main growing crops besides, I think soy. I don't know about soy, but.
It does a number on them too. It's bad.
If you get fusarium head blight, then congratulations.
You're wheat. That is a disease for wheat.
But if you are a human animal and you're in the whole, you know you're doing the human thing, then you should know that this fun can cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive issues. It especially can touch pigs. So look, here's the case we want to we want to approach this rationally without alarmism. We do want to give you some facts. You should know the people who are arrested.
There's a thirty three ye rule. This is the scholar Yun qing Jan and her boyfriend Jun Yong Liu is they're like thirty three and thirty four.
And the issue is why.
They would purposely bring this to the US. It already exists in the US and any number of labs. It seems right now that the federal government is accusing them of possible agro terrorism, using this fungus as a biological weapon to.
Attack the US's bread.
So agro terrorism versus eco terrorism or two different concepts.
Yeah, gotcha.
Yeah, there's a VENN diagram. That's a great question. But the thing is this already existed in the US, as we said, it reached epidemic levels in the nineteen nineties, and it's screwed with crop yields, which messes with crops in the future, messes with the price point of maize and wheat and so on.
It is.
I'm gonna say, it is easy to especially in times of sinophobia, it's easy to accuse these folks of being super villains or something. But it's also quite plausible that they were just trying to get around the red tape. Like you can bring this into the US and things like it, you have to go through a pretty rigorous evaluation period when you ship this stuff, because it is living, it can die in transit while you're waiting to get through all the bureaucracy. So logically you could say, hey,
I need this for my research. I'm just going to bring it in Like those people who always get caught with a bunch of animals in their pants, you know, like snakes and parrots.
There was an ant situation, was a huge ant situation.
Yeah, I don't know.
My first question for you guys here is why did they lie to the FBI when they got caught. That's the that's the main thing stopping me from saying, ah, nerds are going to nerd.
Yeah, well, I I think that's the priory reason that anybody would look at this, you know, if you're not looking at the rhetoric that's being put out there by like Cash Betel, FBI director and other people that are you know, just saying blatantly, yes, these are agro terrorists. That's what they were trying to do. That's it full stop.
That's all you need to know. But if you're looking deeper in the story, you see that they're telling tales and maybe not to get the because they're in a relationship, right, so maybe they're trying to not implicate the other.
But is there is there a scientifically valid reason for having this stuff?
Yes? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The research that can be conducted using this could save crops in the future. How that makes sense, Yeah, so there is there is a legit reason for that. As we're recording again, it's Monday, June ninth, the primary person, the scholar, Yun Jing Jan, is getting or hearing. Her detention hearing postponed to June the thirteenth, so just a few days as we from our recording date. Now, the
officials I love your point there, Matt. The officials on the FBI, the NSC, National Security Council, and others are saying, we think this is a rare but legitimate case of acro terrorism or as you were saying, no bio or eco terrorism, and they say it's again it's but it does happen, and we have to keep eyes on it.
They found the fungus stashed in the boyfriend's backpack in Detroit Metro Airport, and that guy told the boyfriend said, I wanted this to conduct research for the University of Michigan, where my girlfriend works. And then there was a deeper search, right because they like the guy for some shenanigans. So the deeper research looks into his cell phone. Be careful
what you save on your phone quotes. It shows that he has saved a document called twenty eighteen Plant pathogen Warfare under Changing climate Conditions.
I don't love it.
That's like your car gets pulled over, you got a trunk full of hammers. They search your phone and then the first thing they find is a scholarly paper on how to hit people with hammers.
You know what I mean?
Yep? Not great?
Not great.
Also as people who have the simple Sabotage Field Manual on our phones, just be careful what you got on your phone.
It's on my work computer.
Ben great.
Yeah, at our search history is we're already the Internet version of face tattoos.
I don't know.
I think the point about racism and prejudice sinophobia holds, but also what do we make of this acro terrorism is?
For now?
Yeah, relatively rare in the modern day, but we know that there have been corporate activities that were completely legal to mess with crops, like terminator seed lines, right ip shenanigans and so forth. Could this be an attempt to attack the crops of the United States? It seems a little convoluted.
Well, and the if you they're okay, well, you tell me. What I have seen is a single image of the samples that were being smuggled in, which are four small baggies containing a tiny, tiny sample, which is theoretically all you need to grow a fungus, right, Sure, to make lots and lots of more of it, but it does feel like a clunky way to get the party started. If you're gonna, you know, if you're gonna do, if you're gonna go widespread with this thing.
Right, because you'd have to have a safe environment medium to grow at it to larger numbers and baggies of unidentified plant matter. Come on, dude at an airport traveling internationally, look not to be hateful. I know everybody has their first day at work, right, everybody has their first rodeo at some point, but that is day one stuff, you guys.
Well, just in our discussions of diplomatic pouches. How easy would it be to have that in a diplomatic pouch if you're if you really meant business.
Right, so much easier. That's a great point. Yeah, and you could do it in larger amounts. You would not be subject to the same sort of rigorous investigation. I try, I think we all try to see the good in people.
It is quite possible that this was just research. We do know that the.
Chinese government has pressured academics in the past and presently uh into acts of tradecraft, surveillance or info gathering, but often they're doing so without the consent of those nationals. And if you start looking in the right places, you will see a lot of stories about that in.
The United States.
So it's quite possible, Jack Ramathan, that these people got that these folks got caught up in a an active state sponsored prejudice against Chinese nationals. Yet nothing occurs in a vacuum. So this is a good question. I don't know, is this worth doing an episode on you guys?
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Yeah.
And just looking at where the University of Michigan is located, you know, right there in Michigan, where You've got Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, just going through there and if you look at the map, guess what's there farmland? Guess what they're growing there? Corn? Mostly right, and you can just see it as a
potential major thing. Yeah, it does make me wonder if the University of Michigan, like under the cover of a student working in a laboratory, would that function for legitimate spy purposes and agrotarism purposes like state sponsored level services? Would that be functional?
I mean, we've done it before, for sure, it's not.
The thing is possible does not equal definite, you know, and we would need to understand more about the case. The reason this would make a good episode is we need to know where John was traveling. We need to have all like the colms between there, you know, we
need to know a lot more about the boyfriend. We need to know where they gather the substance, right, and we need to know you know, if well we were, if we were those folks who got jammed up, then one of the smartest things we could do, in addition to lawyering up, is prove the case that we had legitimate research. Because skirting red tape, so you can publish your paper so you can advance your career. That's way different from saying, hey, I'm going to wreck Iowa for.
Sure, you know, not great suspicious and may well make people like you for the for the crime part of it all. I mean, I guess it's technically a crime your your you know, being dishonest to authorities, but it just I just think it could cause some pretty gnarly scrutiny on you and then out you, and then also wreck your academic career if you are doing it for that reason.
Right right, And even if you're not, it's still smuggling totally, even if the argument is a greater good and to exercise empathy. Look, folks, we're from the US.
We get it.
All of us at some point have awakened in the night and thought I should destroy Iowa. It's just most of us haven't done the day of the caucus.
Just you know, Matt's laughing because he thought about it.
Right, Oh yeah, sure, driving through it. This place must go.
There he is.
That's the Doctor Doom origin story. We're going to have more on this in the future.
Any islands out there were joking, we love yes, of course.
Any Island's out there, Nola's joke. We're we're gonna go doctivigate ourselves, perhaps to Iowa, perhaps the points beyond. Thanks to Clever and Nuendo, Thanks to Jacquesramaphon, Thanks to the Goat, thanks to two Fab one shout out if we could do it really quickly. Wrongful Conviction, a show that we have partnered with in the past, has a three part interview with the legendary activist Leonard Peltier. The third part has not yet published, but the second part is out there.
They have me as a hired gun and part of that interview. But if you enjoyed our episodes on the American Indian movement in Peltier overall, please do check that out. That's an important message in credible.
You got to do that and that's absolutely worth everyone's time.
Please do check it out.
And Ben it says you're the new co host. That's amazing.
Oh yeah, well, we have.
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