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 Noah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Lexus code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It's the beginning of February. It's actually the day after Valentine's Day, so hope everything worked out for all those who celebrate. We are going to hear some amazing correspondence from our friends
around the world. Before we do any of that, however, we have a special announcement from an anonymous listener who reached out to us. As you know, fellow conspiracy realist, we like to release classic episodes every week. We recently released a classic episode on asymmetrical warfare called the ghost Net from twenty eighteen, and in that episode we played a bit of a prank on our fellow conspiracy realist. We had not heard anything about this prank for years
and years and years until quite recently. As a matter of fact, last night before we recorded this episode, we in how much context should we give here, guys?
I don know, man, I think I think you pretty much just set the tone. But it was more like the wee hours of the morning. It was like, what three forty five am Standard time Eastern Center.
Time came through in my phone like one something I don't know.
Okay, should we just read it?
Yeah?
Why don't you open it up?
Matt.
Right, here's a dramatic reenactment of the email. Hey, guys, I've listened to your show for over a decade. Now I like to listen to the podcast as I fall asleep. In the last episode, your jokes about Google's assistant caused multiple devices in my house to go off. Multiple people were woken up. The assistant would not stop freaking repeating that they didn't understand you executed random commands. I have to be at work in four hours and I'm not
gonna get another second of sleep. My boyfriend is not able to go back to sleep. I'll never listen to another episode. I'm freaking furious. Fuck you guys, freking idiots. I can't convey the absolute insane level of outried hatred. I have for you fting morons right now, few me, here's my phone number.
And then four minutes later we receive another missive from a non this like, seriously, you guys up these no loop, inconsiderate pieces of I hope you have flat tires, wet socks every second of every day for the rest of your lives. Uttered nincompoops, nimrods, buffoons, knuckle draggers. I hope you all's day tomorrow is as as ours will be. Facts.
Wow, that's flowery talk. Oh wow, I really.
Hope we bleeped all those those a lot of bleeps.
Oh, my goodness, points for creativity on the swears. First of all, I mean my goodness.
Best Valentine's Day card ever.
Yeah, thank you, I mean a ten year listener and this is all it takes.
Oh man, Well, you know, exercise and empathy is important.
Yeah, it stinks that that happened. Let's just really quickly talk about something we discussed off air. Well, we made this episode what do we call these things home assistance?
Yeah, in twenty eighteen, because we all listen back to the episode to find the specific code for so spoilers for anybody tuning into that this stuff Anonymous is referencing occurs about twenty four minutes and thirty seconds in, and it's pretty quick.
Well, and Google Home had come out two years prior to this episode releasing originally, right, this was a brand new technology, a new piece of hardware that not a lot of people had yet when we released that episode. And I guess it's proliferated enough now that there's way more of a chance that something like this could happen.
Well, I mean, I think the fact that we didn't hear a peep about it for lo those many years speaks to that very thing. Granted, we haven't heard many peeps. This is the only very loud peep that we've heard, but yeah, they're just everywhere now. And I can totally understand how someone would be annoyed by this, But you know, this isn't how we talk to our friends of ten years.
I love that this person put their phone number at the end after signing purpose or.
Is it just like an automatic No, No, you're right they did put it by hand, because it wasn't in the reply. It's so funny.
It feels like an impulsive reaction to something very unpleasant, which unfortunately also proves our point about the growing ubiquity of those devices and the fact that they are indeed always listening.
Very true even while you're asleep and listening to this show. Emrods.
I haven't heard that one in a while. Income poops either. Knuckle draggers is a fun one. That's a nice sent in a very rich imagery. This guy's got a potential career as a poet, second career. Hope you made it work on time, though, I truly, I mean, we're being a little silly about this because it is kind of funny, but also like we never intended to, you know, to do any harm, and I think none of us remember
this bit was even in there. Frankly, it's not like writ large in the name of the episode, or like you know, inherent within the topic of ghost Nat and Green.
Well, guys, should we celebrate by going to the phone lines? Well, yeah, let's let's let's do here we go, let's hear a message from Rob Rob.
Hello, gentlemen, you can call me Rob. I'm from Central Illinois on the way to work. Just heard something about Operation Overmatch. This was put forth by mad Dog Matdow and I think that you guys would be really interested in finding out more about this. I am intrigued. Has to do with next generation weaponry being green live with billions and billions of extra dollars added to our budget to make basically a bunch of gay guns and stuff by the Wars of tomorrow today. It's really out uplifting
and uh, you know, I'm sure it hasn't happy. I think somewhere around the corner wanted to fill you guys in and wish you the best. It is rainy and cold here in the Midwest, and it's such as usual the armpit of America, Central Illinois. Love you, guys, Thanks for all you to keep on keeping on.
Good day, good day, and good day to you, sir, oh most certainly, I hope you're having a good day in the place that you live that you seem to dislike so much.
Now he put a woohoo in there, Yeah.
There was a woo Who I heard it all right, So, guys, Operation Overmatch brought to us by mad Dog Madow. Is that a gamer tag that I'm not aware of? Or is he referring to Rachel Madow.
I was thinking I was wondering the same thing Matt is is it Rachel Maddow? But even more so, gamer tag kind of makes sense given that nature of this.
Right, Hey, there we go.
Also, if you say it with enough of a draw, it sounds like you're saying madow madaw.
Yes, so ray guns, guys? Is that on the way? Is that real? What is Operation Overmatch? Is this an actual thing? Well? It is, And when you search around, you're gonna get really confused because there's also Project Overmatch, which is not the same thing.
Similar Overwatch, which is definitely not the same thing.
Nope, excellent game.
There's also Overmatch, which is I think I think a new feature on Tender Is there?
Really?
It's like speed dating.
They give you way too.
You gotta pay extra. No, it's.
Okay. So let's talk about what Operation overmatches? Do you guys remember a long time ago we talked about something called America's Army is a video game.
To be confused with America's Armbit exactly.
America's Army a video game that was created by the US Army to essentially train and recruit folks to be in the Army. Recruit folks to be in it, and train them to function within it once they're there. So the development organization, the game developers that created that game also reportedly, starting in twenty seventeen, we're working on a different type of game, a different type of combat simulation
that they titled Operation Overmatch. And in this simulation, at least in the beginning in twenty seventeen, when it was started, according to the US Department of Defense, they recruited like one hundred people initially who were combat veterans, people who
already have seen combat. They got them to try out this new simulator and within that simulator test out like prototype weapons, theoretical weapons that the US Armies are in d side and you know, probably DARPA and other organizations connected to the Pentagon, what they would spend their time
and money on to develop. Basically, if these new types or family, this new family of weapons functioned really well for these actual members of the armed forces in that simulation, then maybe they would work really well in an actual field of battle. Right. Fascinating concept. Fascinating concept. But I haven't seen anything written anywhere that says Operation Overmatch, this concept of testing out prototype weapons in a virtual environment has moved in any way to a real environment. I
don't know if you guys have seen anything. I haven't seen anything written about that.
Well, I don't understand why would it. Isn't it sort of meant to be the sort of like virtual program.
Or so Operation Overmatch Action is a simulated environment. Does that make sense? What the way that Rob was speaking about it made it seem as though it's actually testing things like regulars and future weapons prototypes. So the question here, I think is has it moved since twenty seventeen when the project was beginning from the virtual environment to the real environment or.
Is it a thing where the game players rating or experience with This just enables the real world version of the project to be greenlit under a different name, so that it's like no longer attached to Operation Overmatch.
Oh yeah, you guys remember that Robin Williams movie Toys from the nineties. Oh lord, Yes, Well there's a whole thing where the company wouldn't make war toys. And then like the creator of the company dies and his brother comes in to run it, and he's this like war hawkish general and they make all these crazy war things.
And as part of the movie where there's kid's playing video games and they're actually like controlling real war machines, you know, like perhaps that's something like there were these This is pivoting to maybe being a remote controllable you know, video game operation of drones or something I don't.
Know, or shot injurs game. Just get in front of the emails if we don't mention an injuries game unclear.
Just I see the connections there. The what did they call it? They've got a really great name for it. They talk about it here early synthetic prototyping, Early synthetic prototyping. So again like what the name says, right, it's early stages prototyped weapons. Theoretically a laser gun. Let's say, like, what if we could make a laser gun? How would that work? How would it function if you're in a cover situation, right, and you're firing at someone who's you know,
X yards away and they're elevated in their position. Would it actually work in that way or would it not? Would that weapon be good if it was attached to an APC, right, or some kind of vehicle. Would that weapon be better if it was in a helicopter? Right? This is me spitballing and imagining what it would be like is. I've played a lot of video games, and I've played with a lot of different weird weapons in virtual environments.
I wonder if they do loop crates someone.
I doubt it.
Do, but that might be too much fun. I mean, it does make sense, though it doesn't it just from a procedural standpoint or the order of operations of development, because now you're potentially saving a lot of time and money because you don't have to actually physically build out the thing. You just have to build software that represents it.
And then maybe maybe it's a faster way to identify like perks or problems or stumbling blocks before you actually get to, you know, creating your handheld rail.
Gun or whatever. Well, think about how much money you would spend in the R and D phases to create something like a functional handheld laser weapon, a ray gun or whatever you want to call it, a rail gun that could actually be attached to a jeep, you know, or a hum vy or something like that. That's we're we're talking millions, if not billions of dollars to research, develop, and then produce that thing. And if you find out it doesn't work, by running the simulation a bunch of times.
Oh god, this simulation. I can't have another sleepless night guys thinking about how I'm not real. Okay, I don't know, you're super real. You're super real.
Definitely keeps it real.
When keeping it real goes wrong.
I don't like people playing on my phone.
Nobody does. And don't change the radio in my car when I'm driving.
Okay, sorry, we have Okay, let me just put this out there. There's a lot. Actually, there's not that much to discuss here. It's you can find a bunch of cool writing on it back from twenty seventeen. I would recommend the Atlantics piece titled The Video Game That Could Shape the Future of War by Aiden Dobkin, that was written in October twenty six, twenty seventeen. You can find that and read it right now. It's a cool look
at it. You can also find a lot of official writing from the DoD on their website, on National Defense's website and Army Dot Mill, the official website of the US Army, very very cool stuff. You can learn more about the developers as well. It's called the Army Game Studio And I'm going to read you, guys really quickly,
how they describe it on Army Dot Mill. The Army Games Studio located at the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation and Missile Centers, Software Simulations, Systems, Engineering and Integration Directorate.
Take a breath, good Gravy, I can see you turning blue.
It's best known for creating America's Army, the official video game of the US Army.
Do you guys remember when I say that text When I was at like TJ Max and they had these like Army like branded toys, you know, like there were tanks and aircraft carriers, and it was like official US Army merch. I wonder if that's part of this like similar kind of program. This is very unusual.
Well, this one is specifically for for like training purposes. This one, so America's Army is for training and recruitment kind of thing. This one is specifically for prototyping with active soldiers. Mostly active soldiers, right, people who have actually you know, they know what it's like to take fire
from an elevated position. So when they're in the game, they're like, Okay, this is these are the tactics I would use the guys that I'm with, and how we would position ourselves and then with these new weapons, what can we do right? The other thing to look up if you have some time is Project over Match. This one has to do with the Navy, and this one is all about data collection and data sharing when operating on the high seas. Or it's a little more sush.
You can find a great article in Popular Mechanics that was written last year in April titled Everything we Know about Project Overmatch, the Navy's secret maritime program. I would highly recommend you check it out. This is what the article says, quote. The project is part of the Pentagon's multi billion dollar joint All Domain Command and Control effort, which is intended to establish seamless communication and give warships
better awareness of adversaries at sea. Cool. Basically, they want to have a better understanding of where the other ships and submarines are right, and planes and probably spacecraft because space is now one of the domains that is included in that all domain what title. Weird stuff, guys, But I think it's time to take a break, hear a word from our sponsor and contemplate everything we've learned. Thank you, Rob, I will not sleep tonight. We'll be right back.
And we've returned with another piece of listener mail, this one with zero swears. Zero swears in this one from Scurvy Earl, which is a really great nickname. And I know we say all the nicknames are great, but they really are. Most of them are truly, truly creative. So we'll jump right in. Hey boys, scurvy Earl here, I have some thoughts about the US healthcare system I wanted to share. Have you ever noticed how doctors really only tree symptoms and never the root cause? Why, yes, scurvy Earl,
I do believe we have. I'll give you an example. Say you go to your primary care physician because you've been dealing with a bad bout of depression. The doctor is going to probably ask you a few vague questions, then go right into prescribing some meds. We got some lexapro that I'll fix you right up in no time. Might make the giggle stick stop working, but we got cialis for that too. Or say you've been feeling super low energy and find out your thyroid isn't functioning properly.
This is actually very close to home for me, Scurvy Earl, because I've been through this exact situation, and I am, in fact taking said meds for the rest of my life. Bad news. You got hypothyroidism. Not sure why, but there's some thyroid compounds you'll have to take for the rest of your life. But your thyroid will be purring like a kitten in no time. I don't know what my thyroid's doing. I don't really ever hear it purring much. But I'm being hyperbolic, he says, But you get it.
I think the cause of this issue is multi dimensional. Let's start with the hospitals. Institutions are here to help people, but also, and maybe more importantly, to the board, to make a stupid amount of money. IU Health, the largest healthcare conglomerate in my dear home state of Indiana, had a profit just shy of one billion dollars in twenty twenty two. That's one billion left over after all operating expenses.
Hospitals aren't allowing doctors the time to sit with a patient and dig a little deeper into the health story. You go to an appointment and the doctor talks with you five to ten minutes fifteen tops, then they are off to the next patient. Because number of patient appointments a day equals dollars in the piggy bank. Then there's the whole relationship between ordering providers, hospitals, and drug reps.
It always has rubbed me the wrong way whenever I see reps creeping around the medical offices slash hospitals, same vibes I get with lobbyists to be honest man man after our own heart, my own bias, no doubt. Also, I think that the schools of medicine don't teach the new doctors new ways of practicing medicine, just doing the same old thing that's always been done, because that's just how it goes. Then my final point is the general
stereotype of holistic healthcare and homeopathic medicine. Most people, physicians and general public alike view this type of medicine as either quack new agy or just for hippies. Because of these stereotypes, there doesn't seem to ever be funding to do some high level research into some of the medical claims that homeopathic practitioners believe in. In my opinion, seems like a bit of a conspiracy between healthcare and pharmaceutical companies
to keep the population medicated instead of cured. Why cure someone when you could have a lifelong consumer of your products. Anyway, big fan of the show, Cuba, great work, guys, Midwest sends its best, Scurvy Earl, oh Man, Bang Bang Bang bang bag. This is stuff we've talked about over the years, and you know, we certainly have done episodes on big pharma, the cozy relationship between pharmaceutical reps and the healthcare system. The idea like do cures exists that they're keeping from us.
Maybe that's like a bit, you know, on the extreme end of the spectrum. But I just think all of our eyes are lighting up with one after the other of these points that Scurvy Earl here is making.
Yeah, it's weird because in a lot of other countries that one billion dollar profit the scurvy Earl, and we do hope you get that scurvy taking care of At some point, Earl, that profit would not exist, right, You would have operating expenses that would be paid in tax dollars. Generally, that's how we function correct me if I'm wrong, there anybody out there listening. But I think that's how it works most of the world over. You pay in collectively and you get healthcare.
And we pay plenty. Let me tell you in terms of taxes here in this country and are always you know, railing online what exactly we get and we don't know where it goes in terms of what government projects it's funding, you know, what military pursuits, what have you. And we certainly do not feel that it goes to providing quality of life, you know, guarantees for our loved ones, you know, and our families.
And the response is, well, do you want ray guns or do you want to take care of that problem you're having with your thyroid? You know, I'm just joking.
That's like, yeah, there's a scurvy earl. You're absolutely correct. This is something that we have, we have clocked for years,
and it's something that global experts largely agree on. You know, we can't blame anybody who perhaps is a little bit too credulous about some hyperbolic cure because the reality is from a from a budgetary standpoint, it makes sense that a large for profit entity would rather have someone subscribe to a service than by a one time cure, you know, make your quality of life something like a monthly Netflix bill.
We do have to say we've heard from some people on the inside of what we'd loosely call big pharma, and they have made the point that especially for some very high value, widespread diseases or conditions, if a pharmaceutical company did have a cure, logically they would probably bring it to market because it would be an absolute windfall for them. But it does seem that there is a lot of the question is how much emphasis does a
system put on preventative care versus treating something after the fact? Right, Like, there's not to the point, there's not a lot of impetus in privatized insurance systems for preventative care. There's a lot of lip service for it, but it doesn't it
doesn't get widely supported. And without going to political everybody should check out Project twenty twenty five because one of the big things for Project twenty twenty five is the unprecedented acceleration of privatized healthcare for people who would ordinarily be on Medicare in the United States. And I feel like, you know, I feel like even just say medicare kind of makes people's eyes glaze over and turns it into a snoozefest. But it is a really important thing.
Is it? Project twenty twenty five the one that's just trying to push Republican younger Republican candidates into like local positions and move them up the ladder in governmental positions.
And give them marching orders on behalf of the Heritage Foundation and one of the primary planks there is to make all Medicare enrollment default to privatized plans. I know, I know, right again, it's bad news. People don't talk
about it because it's boring. But this idea of prescribing a medicine that treats a symptom but then also creates a symptom like that excellent what was it, lexapro sialis, and then that thing that treats a symptom creates a side effect that has to be treated with something else that creates.
A side effect for every ill and even a pill for the pills.
Ills and ill with every pill. You know what I mean. It is I think a known problem, and it's weird because we get into this kind of black box situation, Like obviously we don't want to think of people working in these industries as sort of like ghoulish monsters planning to keep folks sick and addictive. But you could say it's part of the larger move we see throughout the West to rob people of the right to ownership society and make everyone an unending subscriberber.
Yeah, well it all it's all competition, right guys. I mean, ultimately, that's what it comes down to. Each one of those consultants we're talking about, this shows up. They're competing against the other consultants from the other drug companies, right and all the healthcare organizations are competing against the other ones to get more business.
And that's why it you know, I mean it should be public. Let me see whatever. Look, we're not here to propose a new system exactly, but it does feel like, you know, and whatever big government being what it is, you know, it can be its own problem. But it does feel like when you have that marketplace mentality. Well you're talking about, Matt, the competition, you know, the rivalries, all of that stuff, and the very accurately depicted in the email lobbying esque kind of pharma reps, it's not
in the best interest of the consumer. But then people that are proposing to the system say, no, this is exactly what makes it in the best interest of the consumer, because this competition yields better quality stuff. But I just don't buy that, man, I just don't.
But to Men's point, they're each individual person, as you're saying, we're not aligning anybody individually. Each individual person is just competing in their own lane, right, So they're not doing anything wrong, especially in their own eyes. They're just they're doing the thing they're supposed to do, and they're doing it as best as they can.
So are the Nazis. I'm being a jerk, but I'm just saying, following orders, you know, you're part of the system. Look, I'm not saying health caver reviders are like Nazis. I'm just saying it's like a it's a slippery slope, you know, if you're saying, I was just doing what I was told. But it's impossible to be a part of the system if you don't play by those rules. So I don't know.
I read this old Turkish proverb recently that I had never encountered before, and it said the forest is dwindling because the trees keep getting chopped down, and they keep voting for the axe because the axe has a wooden handle. I think it's one of them.
Oh wow, yeah.
That's good, be right, But It is true though, that when we're talking about these systemic problems, we're talking about things that don't necessarily have an easy instant fix, and that's what people want.
We want an easy instant fix, and we have to look at the stakes that people look. Every time I hear a politician of any stripe touting the benefits of things that seem clearly against the interest of the public, one of my first questions is who's funding them? Right, who pay for that campaign, what fundraisers are they going to? And quite often we have to admit, in the US,
privatized healthcare has a lot of pull. They invest a lot of the money they take from the premiums and the various like employer dependent deals, they take a lot of that profit and they put it right back into DC and they've had excellent results with that. The problem is those excellent results for those companies do not seem to bear or do not seem to translate into excellent results for the American public using those healthcare plans.
Also, when we see the results of things like what happened with Purdue Pharma, you know, and we know that they were put how hard they were pushing, and how hard those reps were pushing, and how susceptible the healthcare system and the providers were to being pushed in that way. That makes us extra suspicious of this kind of stuff continuing. I don't know, that's it.
I yield my time, get THEMN booster shots, boys steal my coffee.
And went every quarter. Hey, you can subscribe for Booster plus.
Booster Max. It is weird because we do in the United States, We really do have this like leveled system for health care. It depends on what you can afford initially, right, and then what can you afford over time? And then you have to decide, now, what can I afford? What do I think I can afford? How healthy do I think I'm gonna be in the next year? How healthy is my family gonna be? It should be okay, I
think I can exist on this level this year. But you're literally gambling and that something comes up and then you're trapped in debt for the rest of your life. But not only are you trapped, all of the people that come after you and your family lion are trapped in that medical debt because it don't go away unless you do a really cool thing like did you hear
about New York's awesome move they made. There's a nonprofit that was working with the City of New York and they erased the medical debt of tens of thousands of people. It was incredible.
I'm wondering. I've been counseled by when my mother passed away, by some folks who are smarter than me, saying that they couldn't come after me for her medical debt because of the way we out with her estates and whatever. Again, this is above my pay grade. But yeah, I hope I don't need to rethink that, because she definitely passed away with you know, some some medical debt.
You shouldn't be culpable for that.
No, But it depends. That's the scary thing. I think. It depends what state are you in, how good of an estate planner slash you know, whoever's dealing with finances at the end of someone's life, how much information was collected, and how much was preemptively set aside right for when that occurs, if you're caught unawares in a situation like that, especially if someone gets very sick right and then is very sick and needs to be hospitalized for a long time.
It can be a horrible situation for an entire family. Man, I'm obviously emotionally right going through that with someone who's sick, but then the bills that can come afterwards, it can destroy an individual or a family.
Absolutely, Absolutely, am I supposed to like reach out to my mom's debtors, Like.
I'm overstating. I'm overstating on purpose, like.
A hyperbolically in my head about.
This, because they, depending on the situation, they can pull that and then if you don't have a good attorney or somebody who's on your side that is really good with money, then you can get raked.
Basically, what they try to do is they try they use intimidation.
And it goes down. Well, if you just give us this, we'll leave you alone.
Exactly.
It has already been sold sold to a party, so they're on commission. They're sleep so gross, so gross, you guys.
It's like mafioso tactics. It's bad.
You're safe, man.
Yes, this is all I think on Mike, because this is this is our country. This sucks. It's like that we have to worry about this stuff, you know. Not not to mention the treatment aspect that is subpar in the first place, then you have to deal with all of this crazy amount of rapacious debt.
I'd love to hear from everybody who has been in these similar situations, because this is definitely predatory.
Right.
We've outlined several circumstances in which this is which encounter provable predatory conspiracies. Right, it's so easy to lose ourselves in the noise of like political affiliation or these ideologies of you know, what is or is not correct behavior, But the reality of it is that the system is broken. I likewise yield my time.
Yeah, I got it to say.
I'm on the edge of being emotional about this stuff now that we've gone the full gamut with it.
Oh, we've got a nice one we can end on.
I think that's probably a good idea. Why don't we take a quick break and then we'll come back with a nice one.
And we have returned. First, we're going to hear from JBB thirteen fifty one, just a quick note, an excellent response to our conversation about the cozy relationship cartels have with us hardware. Don't worry, guys, this is not the nice one yet. This is just an important announcement. Our pal JBB, who is the creator of a podcast called Federal Bites, noticed something that I realized we didn't point out the ATFS operation Fast and Furious, also known as
the gun Walking scandal. We had talked about this in previous episodes, but we didn't mention the conspiracy that JBB points out, which is even today there are long running questions over whether the DEA and the Sonola drug cartel
made a secret conspiratorial deal to run hardware. Because one of our big questions, of course, was yes, it is technically possible to have a huge network of people right going through gray market buying, buying heavy and convenient to purchase hardware, knowing there's a certain rate of attrition and counting on a certain percentage of those folks to get away and move the hardware. But that's so many moving parts, it just seems somewhat implausible, Right, It'd.
Be more likely there'd be a direct conduit, right.
I mean, that's that would be the easier way to do it. If we asked chat GPT, chat GPT with us to make friends with the DEA, Right.
The red button who cares.
Right escally in an unpredictable way, never let them see you coming. So we just wanted to say shout out to JBB on that we have talked about fast Furious in the past, but we definitely want to draw attention to that in the conversation whenever you're hearing this news, because it is a piece that needs to be there. So thank you JBB. Here's the fun one, A bit of a conversation. Dear Ben, Nol and Matt. Hello, my name is Emma and I'm a twenty three year old
new nurse and recent college graduate. Congratulations, Emma, nurses are the good nurses are some of the good guys, as we say, so, thank you for helping save the world. Emma says, I'm a huge fan of the podcast. I'm extremely passionate about politics. I love learning. I have begun to try to spark my own change by writing to my congress folks when I feel particularly moved on a
subject such as the mental health field. While I wish I had a cool conspiracy to inform you all of I come with questions how did you all come to be as informed as you are? The more I listen, I realize how big the world truly is. And there's so many things I don't know. I aspire to make systemic change in the healthcare world someday using my own experiences as a nurse and hopefully someday as a doctor.
Don't worry, Emma, You're going to get there. I am truly inspired by the research you do for your show and wish to continue on and expanding my own worldview, be those conspiracies or whatnot. I understand you all are busy and just appreciate you taking the time to read my email. Thank you so much for the wonderful content you provide. We'll call you nurse Emma. So one thing. First off, thank you so much for the kind note.
I'm pretty confident, at least in my reply here. How did you all come to be as informed as you are? I am one of the least informed people I have ever met. There's so much stuff I have no idea.
About, Like, well, I got to know what you don't know? But I mean it's his repetition, is what does it?
Just as Emma heard the conversation we have where all three of us tried with middling success to understand how magnets work.
Yeah, Wow, you're.
Making self deprecating then, and I do appreciate it, but I would argue that you're much more informed than you give yourself.
What for listen to this week's Strange News episode and hear me attempt to describe the large Hadron collider in particle physics. Good luck understanding any of that, because I don't understand it. But the cool thing, Emma. Honestly, just to be serious about this, we have been tremendously lucky for over ten years, and for Ben and I much longer than that. We have been tasked with learning things
to then take that information. And I was going to say, regurgitate it, speak speak what we have learned into a camera or microphone. Right, That's been our job to take in information and say it back, particularly in a way that is more easily understandable than very complicated maybe jargon that would exist within a specific set of knowledge. Right, we are.
Professional novices, exactly.
I think that it reminds me too of one of the one of the things that always stayed with me is, you know, the mark of great understanding of something, and many human areas have said this. The mark of great understanding of something is to be able to explain it in an understandable way, in a simple, uncomplicated way. And so a lot of what we have done is I
think most important thing we could say. In any field of study, any industry, any personal interest, the main differentiator between the great learners and the dabblers is that you must be passionately, unendingly curious. Yes, you should be incredibly excited when you don't know something, and the world is both understandable and worth understanding. Stole our life from our.
Exactly, So flick with it.
It's so slick with it.
And the moment you think you know everything is the moment you're kind of of no use to anybody because you don't. It's not possible, and uh, you're probably going to come off as insufferable, and you just you're doing you're shooting yourself in the foot by closing yourself off
to new experiences and new perspectives, you know. So I just I think we always talk about two about being self aware, and again, like I was saying a minute ago, knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know and what you have left to learn, and just being a lifetime learner and just always being open to new perspectives and new experiences, and we're very lucky we get to do this. We're grateful that. We're grateful to you for listening and for first of all, speaking so kindly
and highly about what we do. And it means the world to hear that.
I thought this was a nice book end given.
YEA give an emotion a little different way.
Now. Yeah, we're just a bunch of curious little cat boys and we're just out here batting away.
You know, I know that come out. I'm like a dog with a ball.
This is the this is the fun horrible joker.
That's great. This this is.
The funniest thing to ema or one of the most fun things I should say. Uh, when we hang out with our cohort, you can ask anybody what's one weird unusual fact you heard this week, and it'll be any number of things. And the four of us doc holiday
and all that. Myself, we all come from pretty different backgrounds and so we have a we have different worldviews, we have different areas of expertise, and we I think it's safe to say, I don't know how often it happens for you guys, I think it's safe to say we often lean on each other and say like, hey, what do you think about this? Or what is this thing?
And we do that with everybody. I don't know if you can do that with everybody you meet, if you can without falling into platitudes, If you can treat everyone you meet as a teacher, then you're gonna find they have something to teach you. And then that is the best way to be informed, especially if you disagree with some of those people.
And the three of us each have our own kind of flavor that we bring to the conversation and the our own particular little realms of curiosity. There's a lot of overlap, sure, but I mean, I think the reason that it's fun that we have all three of us on the show is that we're able to kind of have this holistic representation and maybe a lot of questions that folks in the audience have because we're asking the same questions you are.
You know.
There you go, And I think it's appropriate to have to have us end on this email. Emma, I'm keeping my time here pretty short tonight because you are a healthcare professional, right and the pandemic has proved to us something that was obvious to healthcare professionals well before the rest of the world caught on, which is that it's often a thankless job, right and unfortunately the good guy
jobs are often thankless jobs. So with that, I want you to know everybody working in the medical field in any capacity, we are grateful that you are here, and we know you have war stories. Dudes, tell us tell us the stuff inside the medical industry that they don't want you to know. I got to tell you. One of the biggest hospitals in Atlanta, Georgia is Grady. Grady Hospital has a bit of a reputation. It's one of the top burn wards in the country.
Is Shady Grady. Nobody calls it that. I think I maybe made that up. Maybe someone's called also used.
To be home to one of the most surreal McDonald's that I've ever visited, and I've been to a lot of McDonald's.
But also, can we point out that it's weird that in the United States there are McDonald's and hospitals that's a little weird.
Like next to it. But it's like I was in there.
Are the Children's hospital in fact, and there was a McDonald's for the longest and maybe it's still there, but it's a little you know.
So yeah, I was in line behind people, probably should have still been in the hospital.
So having these.
Friends in Grady, I got to tell you one thing you will find, Emma, as your continue to pursue the field of medicine, your sense of humor is going to change. I don't want to spoil it too much, but get ready, your sense of humor is going to take a turn. And speaking of taking a turn, we're going to turn the page on tonight's program. We will be back next evening with even more stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you to Emma, Thank you to Scrivy Earl, thank you to Rob, thank you to JBB, and of course thank you to Anonymous. We hope that you join the show with us in the future. We try to be easy to find.
Online, correct Wendo. You can find us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff on Facebook, x FKA, Twitter and YouTube, where there's tons of great video content coming at you every single week. You can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show. However, on Instagram and Dick doc.
We do a quick spin on the words of our initial emailer. Here in this episode, we cannot convey the absolute insane levels of outright love we have for you, you fantastic human. We hope you have full tires and dry socks every second of every day for the rest of your lives. Wow, that was really nice.
Man.
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