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Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noa.
They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is Thursday evening if you're hearing this as the program plays or as it's published, and that means it's time for listener mail. We're going to hear looks like quite a few voicemails.
We're going to get some perspectives on a lot of stuff. Again, as we mentioned in the previous week's recording, you know, we don't always put this in episodes, but this is very much our time to hang out with you. So we want to again thank all the many, many fellow conspiracy realists who reached out to us through one platform or another to ask if we were okay in the wake of the continuing calamities. Oh and that's our gold open.
We have so much other stuff to get to Oh boy do we And we have returned from our cold
open with today's first installment of Listener Mail. This comes to us from Lisa, and guys, this is a long one, and I think it is some incredibly good information, both for educational purposes, just for like the you know, being fun at parties like you like to say, Ben, but also for some actionable information that I think could maybe even potentially save some lives, make you a little more aware of how the sausage is made in terms of illegal street drugs supplies and why on earth anybody ever
want to intentionally put fentanyl, something as dangerous and deadly as fencinyl, into a drug supply that is sold to users on the street. Lisa addresses this question expertly from the highest level of an organization like a cartel that might be the origin of some of these drugs that are tainted to the street level users. And I'm really very appreciative of Lisa's emails, So I proposed that, since it's a long one, we break it up.
A little bit.
So I'll read the first bit setting things up, and then maybe we can like round robin it back because.
It's a bit of a listical, so here we go. Hi, map Ben Andol.
I am a longtime listener and a neuroscience PhD student in Philadelphia studying opioid addiction. Your podcast have entertained me through many a grueling experiment, and I've learned so much. I really enjoyed your collab with My Mama told me the other day. Since I study opioiddiction, I was really interested to hear your takes on the surge slash potential
recent drop in fentanyl overdose deaths. But I wanted to bond too your discussion around why on earth anyone would cut their own product with something so likely to kill their customers. There are actually a few good reasons that cartels might be interested in cutting their drugs with something like fentanyl, and why dealers might be interested in selling stuff that they know or suspect is tainted with fentanyl.
None of this is to say that there's no way it's the government keeping it going for the border war, something we discussed and bat it around with David and Langston from My Mama Told You podcast. Two great guys, very very smart guys, very funny guys, and I think we all three. Very much enjoyed that conversation, so thank you Lisa for tuning in. She goes on just to reiterate, this is kind of the crux of the conversation that
we had with those guys. None of this is to say that there's no way it's the government keeping it going for the border war, after the way the war on drugs evolved, I'm definitely not ruling that out. I honestly would bet that both forces play a role. But anyway, here are the sas that help make it make sense financially to cut your product with fentanyl.
So now we have three points.
So I propose that perhaps Ben, would you like to read point number one?
Sure, And first I want to thank you Lisa for taking the time to write to us. You said one, as opposed to being derived somehow from a plant, fentanyl is entirely lab made, and so compared to most of our street drugs that come from nature, it is comparatively very cheap to source and manufacture. The cheap is helped along by the fact that a little goes such a long way. This goes for its analogs, too, many of which are even more potent and thus cheaper to manufacture.
The CDC doesn't separate deaths from fentanyl versus fentanyl analogs, so it's hard to say what precise compounds are currently driving overdose deaths. I want to pause there, because the lab made aspect that you're pointing out, Lisa, is mission critical. That is a huge part. That means that the supply is not beholden to the same travails or the gambols of growing things in an increasingly unpredictable environment.
And outdoors where they can be monitored much more easily and seen from planes, et cetera. Labs can be subterraneum, they can be hidden much more easily.
Right well, yeah, and they could be anywhere.
And Lisa, you continue, So it can be attractive to cut product with fentanyls or fentanyl analogs to reduce the manufacturing cost, and you don't need to put much in to get to the other effects such as and here we get to point number two. Yield the floor to mister Matt Frederick.
Ah, yes, and I too would like to take a moment and say thank you, Lisa. Here we go number two. Fentanyls chemistry produces this very quick, very intense high that fades just as quickly as it comes on, and this is true also when it's used to cut other drugs. This is useful for There are a couple of reasons
for dealers. The big one is that it rapidly creates an association between that specific product and feeling intensely good, i e. It makes that dealer's product look like it's more attractive or maybe feel like it's more attractive.
Lisa, anecdotally, I.
Was once at a panel discussion with folks who run methodone clinics in my area, and they said that they'd actually seen a trend that when someone died of an overdose that involved fentanyl, that would actually increase traffic to the dealer who sold it, because it says something about the quality of the product.
Matt, if I could just jump in real quick too, I think this answers an interesting question that we have posed in this discussion, which is why would someone lace something like cocaine, which here in the Atlanta area been reports of many people dying from fentanyl laced cocaine. Obviously, Lisa's expertise is in opioid addiction, which it's a lot
more intuitive. Fentanyl creates opioid like effects. So it would make sense that you could lace something like press it into a pill and have a counterfeit pill of some kind or heroin or whatever. But why would you put it in something that's meant to engender sort of an upper effect like cocaine. And the answer here, I think
is that it just makes it more addictive. It just makes it more attractive because it yields this result that if it doesn't kill you and you maybe don't even notice that it's different, it just makes you want it more and therefore maybe seek out that same supplier for your upper type drugs.
Lisa, I would argue there's also a bit of psychology at play in that, now this is the real stuff quote, the idea that messing with this, it's sort of like, in a very ghoulish comparison, it's similar to the idea of children at amusement parks, the best rides are the ones that have this you must be this toll to ride kind of thing or some sort of danger inherent
unto them. And so that is in part of my editorial interjection here, that is part and parcel I think of what you're talking about here, Lisa.
Oh for sure that insert narcotic I bought from insert dealer's name really hits hard. And Lisa goes on to say, the other thing about this is that the quick fade means users have to take or buy that product more frequently than they might otherwise to avoid a come down that makes them sick. That means your customers are always going to be frequent customers.
Point number three.
Killing off your customers is generally not a good business model, But that assumes your customer base is static and that there won't be more customers to replace the ones.
Your product has killed off.
We are still, unfortunately, at a point where a large proportion of opioid dependency results from trying to manage high impact pain, and we're not making a lot of progress towards fixing that. And we're also still probably feeling the effects of the aggressive and unethical marketing of opioid for
pain relief that happened in the early two thousands. My guess is that part of the reason fentanyl deaths climb for so many years but maybe starting to fall, is that we're finally at a point where the supply of customers is not exceeding the number that we're dying woo sobering, And as you mentioned, the increasing awareness fentanel test strips and narcan finally being available over the counter has almost certainly helped all that to say, at least anecdotally, that
there are definitely financial forces that can mean that money outweighs the risk. I'd expect this to be especially true at the cartel level, when the decision makers don't even have to ever interact with the users who they might be killing and can probably live with it as a pretty abstract idea. Guys, there's one more paragraph, and I don't know if let's just maybe bend your mind round in this one out. I think there's some really good information and some stats in this last bid here from Lisa.
Yes, Lisa, you knocking it out of the park with these points, and again thank you you continue. I also want to clarify when we're talking about cutting other drugs with fentanyl, that doesn't necessarily mean purposely cutting them with a lethal dose. On the contrary, in twenty twenty three, seventy point five million Americans reported using illicit drugs nearly nine hundred times more people than overdose fatalities, and Lisa
bonus points for the class. My guy, you got the citation with twenty twenty three National Survey on Drug Use and Health. And just to pause there, guys, we know the population of the US is only a little bit north of three hundred and twenty something million people. So that's a pretty significant number, right.
Yes, Ben, Knocking it out of the park is really the only way to put it. These stats are incredibly sobering. The scale here is something that had never really occurred to me, the idea of you know, all this hay is being made rightfully, so oh, of all these fentanyl overdoses, but I never really factored it into the overall number of drug users, Like it is a fraction of the
overall drug use. So the implication here is that, yeah, it's being done, but no one's out there lacing things for the purposes of killing people.
That is not the goal.
It is just an accidental byproduct of a larger business model.
Yikes, that's a lot of people out there just using drugs, man.
It's true.
I mean, and it doesn't count legal drugs like tobacco, caffeine or alcohol.
Also well yeah, or legal use of opioids.
Yeah, it's still out there, that's definitely legal use of empetomines or any of the other drugs, right, I mean, it's all of that stuff.
It's just.
And Lisa continues here, that is a horrifying and devastating number, but that proportion can probably help keep the risk pretty abstract to the people who are actually making the decisions to cut their products with fentanyl. That's exactly what you were saying, no, especially since those decision makers are unlikely to ever have to directly interact with someone who could overdose on their product.
Going on, and people who physically create drugs like chemists, are used to working in the microgram or nanogram range as opposed to the much larger milligram or gram range we're used to thinking about in everyday life. It's easy to weigh out a non lethal dose of fence and AOL with the right equipment. All that said, it's probably not that cartels are purposefully creating a product that they know is going to be lethal for a large proportion of their customer base.
It's more that killing off.
A small proportion of their customer base is a risk that they're willing to take.
Then I yield the floor to you for the wrap up here. I think this is just a fire email.
Oh, we yield the floor to you, Lisa, because you gave us a juicy little academia academia joke that just made the evening. You say, I hope you follow up on this topic. I'd be really interested to hear whether there's evidence for government manipulation slash intentional life, lack of oversight of the current drug supply and Lisa fellow conspiracy realist, you're talking to You're talking to some guys who are pretty convinced about that part. Is that fair to say?
Absolutely, at the very least, Like to the point that Langston made, or maybe it was David, it's not that they're like feeding fentanyl into the system.
They're just kind of letting it happen. It's a talking point.
It creates a talking point, a scent of negligence for me.
It doesn't even require the government to do anything. You just need a couple of people whose hands get greased and the drug supply gets in and out exactly how it's meant to.
And then if you are as we mentioned in that conversation with the guys, you are therefore guaranteeing yourself a year over year job security, right.
And probably profit like you're probably gonna get a raise if you do a good job.
And further funding. Yes, And so Lisa, you continue regarding the government obstinates in the face of clear evidence about what works and what doesn't to curb overdose risk is super suspect, or, as we say on this show, super suss my field. You say, Lisa loves to overuse the word elucidate, but I also feel like it's an excellent description of what you all do. Thanks for elucidating the inner workings of society for me, and I'm excited to
see what you come out with next. Ah Noel Matt elucidates, it's like being scratched behind the ears.
Yeah, I felt the same exact way, and I wrote back to Lisa thanking her for this email, and I complimented her the same way. This email elucidated all of this stuff for us. I mean, it is just a demystifying way of describing a very very complex problem. And if we're getting a compliment from someone that writes like this and has the communication ability dare we say science explainer capabilities, that is a compliment worth its waiting goal
li Thank you so so much. This is heavy stuff, and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the potential conspiracy of it all.
But I think you're right, Matt.
It doesn't require a whole heck of a lot of moving parts or even a nefarious plot. It's just a thing that happens, and then it's allowed to continue to happen, and it just becomes an incredible talking point, you know, blaming the other side for the existence of this stuff in the supply and just further demonizing drug use, rather than perhaps addressing, to Lisa's point, the ways that overdoses
could be curbed. I mean, we only just recently got fentanyl available over the counter, to Lisa's point, and I believe I mentioned the other day a story that I heard about how just now there's some kind of legislation in place, or I believe it's a guideline issued by the CDC or anyway some government body that would require any prescription of heavy pain relief drugs pain medication to also come with a prescription for.
A narcan, which is a good thing.
Lisa, I'm sure you are read up on this, given the fentanyl conversation, but in the realm of international trade talks. There is what Corporate America would call a healthy conversation, which means they're arguing about the provenance of fentanyl and what if any regulations there should be around the manufacturing
of this substance. The US House Committee just in April of twenty twenty four had released this report which accuses the government of China, which is not the people, of directly subsidizing the manufacturing and export of fentanyl because to their mind, officially, this is something like an industrial substance more so than a dangerous addictive drug. And they're also going to be honest, if you read it in Mandarin,
you get different news from the English. Well see some kind of to be fair out there, Chinese officials arguing that this is the next step in the opium wars.
And to think I had a little conversation off Mike again transparency, but like this stuff is coming from China, it is coming from Asian countries. It is also to the point of this not being something that has to be grown out in the open. These labs can be set up anywhere, and I imagine the quote unquote recipe for making this stuff isn't like some sort of proprietary secret that only one company has. If you have the gear, you can make the stuff. You can synthesize this stuff
in a lab. Not to mention all of the analogs that Lisa was talking about, which we know are a problem for all kinds of other drugs. You change one little molecule or whatever. Sorry I'm not a scientist, but I believe it's as simple as that. You've got something that may have the same exact effect or even more intense effects, and it is not categorized as the same drug, and therefore flies through some kind of legal loophole.
Sometimes, yeah, because the legis, as we always say, lags behind the technological innovation. And to be to get in front of this part when to be fair, the people in Congress, who surely are well intentioned, are sometimes being a little bit hyperbolic just to get stuff moving through the legislature. Far be it from me, dare I say, But the thing we have to remember is a lot of the subsidization that is occurring. To your point, NOL is not the end product. It is the subsidization of
what we call the precursor chemicals. So you're saying you know you're saying, hey, look, pineapple cake is killing people. We're not selling pineapple cake. We are selling pineapples. We are selling flour. But what happens after that is, you know, not our business.
We're not the ones who turn it upside down.
Right, Just so, and thank you for picking up Come on, get out of my house.
That was very well.
Becosed, saying I think we've gone over on this one because it was too good not to read every word of this email. So again, huge thanks from all three of us to you, Lisa, Matt. Sorry I didn't want I want to give you last word because you didn't really have a chance to chime I much. I think I was blown away by this and was probably gabbing a little too much.
Oh no, I was just gonna say thank you Lisa on behalf of you know, our friends at Elucidation Worldwide in perpetuity.
Yes, indeed, let's take a quick break here we're from more sponsor and then come back with more messages from you.
We've returned, guys, We've got three quick voicemails to go over today. The first one is from egg Salad with a minor correction. I don't think it's really a correction. It's just something that we should put out there because we've talked about it off Mike before, and I think in an episode we were discussing the Secret Service and specifically their origins and we just kind of left it at a place where we were talking about them connected to the Treasury.
Or a clarification.
Yeah, it's exactly what it is. It's a clarification. We you know what, we don't need to play egg Salad's message. We just need to say thank you egg Salad for pointing it out to us, and then we will say the Secret Service began as directly connected to and underneath the Department of the Treasury. Then that whole nine to eleven thing happened, and then they got moved over to this newly formed Department of Homeland Security thing.
And we love your work, egg Salad, Yes we do.
So stinky, I hate it.
Don't say stinky so gross man. It's great as a nickname, though.
My ex wife and who I'm buddies with, often says egg salad is a stand in for excellent, like eggs salad. You know, maybe it's weird. You can do all kinds of wacky stuff with it. But now, as a product, don't want to go anywhere near this stuff. But as a human, we love.
You, ab so lutely shout out to Tim and Eric.
Okay, so I guess let's jump to then Chef Ben for our first message for this segment, Bellas, this is.
Chef Ben in Chicago. As always, feel for you to use this on your show. I don't have an agenda, I don't mean anything by this, and I am honestly asking this question because I do not know. You talk a lot about microplastics. Looking at you, Matt, looking at your boss. Here's my question. While I understand the ubiquity of microplastics, they're everywhere, They're an unborn fetises, okay, and I get that it's likely not a good thing, what is the actual effect of having microplastics in your body?
Right?
Like, Yes, I understand it's not ideal, but why is it bad? And in what realm is it bad?
Right?
Like?
Does this give you cancer? Does it give you superpowers? Does it imped brain function or development? Or something like that? Like, I hear a lot of traffic and a lot of fear mongering about Oh, microplastics are everywhere, sure, but lots of things are everywhere, And so that's my question. I don't know, don't have an up. I'm simply curious. Sure, microplastics are probably not great for us. What are they doing when they're in that balls? What are they doing?
Thanks, Ellas, quit looking at my man's ball? All right, give a man suprivacy. I think of that.
I'm thinking about this all the time, Matt, Like, have you just made peace with the fact that we're all gonna get cancer and that it's just a matter of time?
Like that's sort of how I think about it in a way.
What else are you gonna do?
There's nothing but do we even like?
This stuff also always feels like such a dice roll, Like we know people that smoke packs of cigarettes a day and don't get cancer, and then people that have never touched the stuff in their life they get, you know, deadly.
Lung cancer, lung disease.
I just it's so hard to predict and to know, and and with the microplastics, you literally you cannot smoke, but you can't apparently avoid this microplastic stuff.
Yeah, I mean when it's when it's in the water we drink, and in the food we eat, and in all the clothes we wear, and I mean, you know, it's just kind of it's gonna get in, yes, somehow or another, and it's gonna move through your body in different ways, and it's gonna stick around in different parts of your bodies, including your brain as we talked about recently, yes, and your testicles in your baby if you're pregnant. They're gonna get everywhere. But to the point of Chef Ben,
why is it such a big deal. If you go online, you start searching around for resources as to you know, what microplastics actually do, you will find some stuff. You can also go back to our episode on microplastics. Guys, do you remember around what time we did that, like twenty It was in the twenty twenties, so it was pretty recent, right, Yeah, it was.
It was definitely recently.
Okay, awesome, Well you can go listen to that whole episode. So for the purposes of this message and in response to you, Chef Ben, this is coming from the United Nations Development Program, which is a whole episode really if we wanted to get into it. But here's a quote from an article they wrote in June of twenty two based on World Health Organization analysis on the current research related to microplastics, There is currently limited evidence to suggest
microplastics are causing significant adverse health impacts. There are major knowledge gaps in scientific understanding of the impact of microplastics, and the weight of the current evidence is low to conclude the causality of adverse effects. Further and more holistic research is needed to obtain a more accurate assessment of exposure to microplastics and their potential impacts on human health.
It's a very good PSA voice, by the way, Matt.
Yeah, basically we need more information. We don't know what the microplastics are doing. Fully, we know they're in us, and it's probably not a good idea because their foreign bodies and their synthetic substances. You can jump to other places like Science News and you can look at an
article titled microplastics are in our bodies. Here's why we don't know the health risks, which is again just the whole system of Hey, this is a fairly new thing, a fairly ne discovery that these things are in us, at least to the extent that we know they are now, and we're just going to have to study humans to figure out what the microplastics did when we're cutting open bodies of the people that it affected.
You know, Benet really reminds me of that screenshot that you sent us of that EPA warning about the chlorine in the air from the chemical plant explosion here in Atlanta area and Conyers. The note that I think we all got a bit of a kick out of was it probably will be fine for most people, essentially, is what it said. But it seems like that's the language we hear a lot when it comes to this stuff. There's a lot of unknowns and gray areas.
Ah.
Yes, I think we all love the capital letters or the choice thereof in that text. What was it capitalized most people?
Most people will probably be fine there more or less, Yes, exactly.
And Chef Ben go Ben's want to thank you personally for writing with this because it is no honest question. Matt, I'm so glad you brought this voicemail up because, Chef Ben, you are speaking to something we see constantly in science reporting, which is a headline that says, this is bad. Everybody panic here is why. Right Like recently, as we're recording, there's some terrible news about glaciers, the so called doomsday glacier, which I'm sure we all read.
About doomsday stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just so, and what we see here, and one thing that I think you've done really well here, Matt, is what we see is there is a need to look past the headlines. Microplastics has become a thought terminating cliche. People aren't naming polyethylene, right, or polymethyl methacrylates, or the cultures of styrage.
I didn't even think about it.
It saves time and to the point that you're raising there, Matt. For our pal chef Ben, the science takes longer than the news takes, you know, and that's that's a really difficult bag of badgers there. We know that there appear to be The news often doesn't even define microplastics, which is just these substances, what is it less than five millimeters in length like that?
Yeah, yeah, but the science takes longer. But not to mention the science consensus, if there ever even is one. We always talk about how that's just kind of the nature of science. It's a lot of people arguing and for us laymans, we don't know what the hell to believe. And I'm not trying to demonize the process of you know,
deduction and science and experimentation. But it can get a little bit overwhelming to the point where you kind of just have to throw your hands up and say, well, into the breach, go I right, like what am I gonna do about it?
To what you said, Matt, Yeah, there goes the next two months now just reading scientific journals. Sure, the presence of you know, hormone disruption that may be associated with microplastics.
It's a good way to drive yourself nuts if you don't have all of the information. It's like the ultimate form of like googling every symptom on web md when you get an issue throat or something. I mean, it's just not a good move for most of us.
Mortals a web md it's cancers, yes, definitely cancer.
And if it's not microplastics, it's nanoplastics, which is a whole other thing that is pico plastics. Really no, I don't know whatever nanoplastics are being focused on right now.
If they're small, though, it's fine though, right they're small.
Bloodstream is a whole thing, and when you've got plastic particles going through your heart, you know, what's the biggest problem with hearts, the plaque that ends up building up in places and then clots up the pathways.
Now are you just making this up? Is this something that you've read or you just thinking this could be a thing.
This is in science news right now.
It could literally cause like an artery to be clawed with no physical material.
We don't know, but think about it would makes sense if the stuff is clotting up in your bloodstream and you're adding these synthetic particles or nanoparticles or even microparticles of jam.
Yeah. Yeah, it's not great.
Well, I think that is fair to say to your question, Chef Ben, And I'm really sad you didn't ask about my balls. Uh.
I think we made a big deal of it in the in the episode about my balls for some reason.
I think that's what he was responding to.
Well, I hope your ball's real.
Okay.
That was my favorite nineties canceled Fox sitcom. It was called Matt's Balls.
Yeah.
It was hilarious.
I don't know, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, with uh with some of those guys from nine o two one.
Oh exactly and Louis Anderson.
That's right.
Oh no, no, he was. This was pre Diddy. This is in no pre Diddy world.
Okay, okay, okay, yeah p D versus well pre d pre Diddy.
That'd be a funny thing we can use that, is it. Okay? No, I think it's too soon because it's too soon.
I think we have to let the bets do their job.
But again, uh.
Yeah yeah, let those boys cook it.
Yeah.
So again, Chef Ben, thank you so much, because this is a great opportunity. I would argue to investigate past headlines.
Oh yes, for sure. Hey, here's another place you can look, Chef Ben, if you want to, the National Library of Medicine. Check out a little article titled health Effects of microplastic exposures colon current issues and perspectives in South Korea.
It's pretty interesting.
Just again, it's scientists trying to figure out what the heck these things are going to do over time to us. Well, that's it for now, Chef Ben, thank you so much for calling in. You always a delight to hear your voice on those voice lines. We got other people that we did not call out this week, so we will call you out next week. Looking at you, Phoenix, and uh, we'll be right back with more messages from you.
And we have returned. Big shout out to an anonymous owl. Anonymous, this is something that will well, we'll see if it goes briefer long, but we wanted to share this. Has been putting this off for a couple of weeks here, but it's a great question that is unfortunately relevant in these our divided times, which I feel like we've been saying since you know, the eighteen nineties.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. This is Anon Pal. You can use me on the air, and that is really fine.
Hopefully you don't use my last message because I started to read I got romantict them. Anyway, I was recently summon for jury duty and I was filling out the questionnaire on whether or not I call FI to serve in the jury and I live in Maryland.
And one of the questions, the last question actually number twenty.
One, I believe, was whether or not I was a member of the regulated Maryland Militia. I believe is how it was worded, and I've never heard of such a thing. I did a quick little Google search and I discovered that pretty much every state has its own militia, which in Maryland, I believe is if you are between the ages of seventeen and sixty five, and you qualify or you are accepted. And then there's another thing called the
unregulated militia. But apparently these these state militias exist under the sole discretion of the governor of the state and are not tied in any way to the National Guard or the federal level military branches. And I did notice also on I.
Believe Wikipedia, and of course you know, we all know Wikipedia is fallible, but it seems legit that nineteen states have active state militias, and I'm guessing Maryland must be one of them. If we have this question on our jury selection questionnaire. And I wondered if you guys have ever looked into this, what you know about it, what the significance of it is, what kind of situations this
militia might be used in. I was also considering the same thing with regards to any possible after effects of the Project twenty twenty five goals as they go through. So there you go, just kind of just kind of a weird thing that I noticed and am curious about. Those are the things that makes life worth living.
Oh, I love the positive note there, Anonymous owl. Thank you so much, you guys. We have talked about different aspects of militia in the past, and thankfully, Anonymous OWL we can assure you that you are correct. There is a reason people ask about this in certain jury duty auditions, and it calls to mind, you guys, the conversations we've had over the years regarding attempts to get into jury duty.
You know, did any way to get into or get out of?
Well, I want to get into it, but I think they can tell I'm too thirsty because I never make the I get a callback, but I never make the final cut.
Didn't you do jury duty? I did.
I was excluded recently and then I was picked another time. Both times, I was very candid about doing this podcast and basically shang, I don't trust.
The governments, you know, hoping I was being honest.
I wasn't trying to tamper, like be you know, insincere, but I figured that wouldn't really sit well with most you know, prosecutors or whatever, that I would be the kind of person that might be like a Rabbel rouser, might be, you know, trying to turn people or who knows whatever.
So that one question, do you like true crime shows?
They did not come up precisely, but there were questions they differ, right, Like, there's questions that really pertain to the case, which they don't tell you all the details of, And you can glean a lot of details just from the kinds of questions they're asking you. They give you the kind of basic like X versus why you know who the parties are? They describe kind of what happened,
but they don't give you the details. You know it was a case of abduction or a case of armed robbery or whatever, but they don't describe the scenario to you because that could poison the well, as they say, so, I was excluded from this most recent one, which was the one I was just describing. The first one was a personal injury case, and I actually was able to sway the jury into giving the woman who was the plaintiff less money because she just seemed like an ambulance
chaser to me. I didn't like her, I didn't trust her, and she rubbed me the wrong way. And weirdly, in that case, the jury got to decide the damages, which.
Blew my mind.
Yeah, I didn't understand.
I did not realize that was a thing. It really blew my mind.
But tell me more about this malicious stuff, ben Like this is like, is that is the issue here? Like you should not be able to be asked that, like that's too pointed or what.
You can ask people pretty much anything in jury selection. I'm also interested in your jury duty auditions, Matt. I got to stop calling them auditions.
Did you ever get into it's appropriate?
I never have, but I always wear a shirt that says nullification on the front.
You're so wise to that, though, guys, they're so tired of it.
I know.
It's like when it's like when someone who wants drugs goes to their goes to a doctor and says they have back pain and chuckle sleeping. Yeah, Like, okay, buddy, let me just if.
You lead with that unprompted, you're gonna get dinged by the judge.
They're gonna, like, you know, call you out. It's not a good look.
Oh, so don't do that.
Yeah, don't do that.
Well, it depends on what you want to accomplish. Do you want to be on the jury or do you want to get out of the d.
Nullifications The segest the idea is gets you out, or at least the lawyers don't care for that right.
I got in trouble one time for there were some court things going on in Atlanta which we don't have to get into, and I was one of those of just obnoxious people on the literal steps of the courthouse saying, hey, everybody, remember dury nullification.
The people's voice matters.
It's just scary because it is a powerful tool that can be you know, used right because generally you can't try somebody for the same crime again if you can somehow tamper with the jury right and convince, you know, convince members of it to nullify a verdict or something.
Well, you know, objecting to the standing of the law itself. This, this goes into a couple different things here, Anonymous Owl. Your question in particular is perhaps an episode for us in the future, which is the idea of a militia. Now, to be completely honest, militia gets you know, a bad connotation in the United States these days, understandably, but we have to remember that citizen militias or you know, a well regulated militia, as the founding fathers call it, is legal.
It is a thing. As a matter of fact. They played a big part in you know, creating the United States as we know it today. Now, I guess to be to be completely transparent, folks, we ourselves are not identifying as active members of militia's outside of our work with Illumination Global Unlimited. The People's Militia there, it is all the people's militia. I mean, do you guys know anybody who identifies as a member of a militia.
Isn't that kind of a what's the word I'm looking for? Like a derisive term even or it's used that way as a catch all, kind of like microplastics, you know, like the idea of being in a militia. Do militias describe themselves as militias or do they describe themselves as like a social club with lots of guns or something, you know, I just just wonder is it a term that's used by those who actually participate in these kinds of activities?
Right?
Mercenaries don't describe themselves as mercenaries. We're contractors. This is a great question because it goes back to a little bit of nerdy etymology. Militia just means soldiers in the service of some higher power. Right, So the Vatican would have a militia you know what I mean. The idea in the Swiss Guard, right, actually.
We are your formations to protect a country against invaders abroad or within. Right, that's in the Constitution.
I don't know, But isn't that an army? Like where at what point does a militia become an army?
Is it about?
Like who's calling it that or who's organizing it, or which side of the quote unquote law.
It exists on.
Goes back to that very very vague compilation of ideas called the Constitution and then the Bill of Rights, which is so incredibly tough. They were vague booking before Facebook was a thing. If you want to see an example of what a well regulated militia is here in the States, you're looking at something like the National Guard. That is
a completely legal, well regulated militia. And many of our fellow conspiracy realists listening tonight are active National Guard or have served in that capacity.
But it's under the federal government though, right it's part of one of the branches of military.
Yes, National Guard is a federal militia. And I appreciate that because it goes to the question that you're asking anonymous owl regarding what the second Amendment specifically says about a well regulated militia and how that differs from a let's get together and do our thing private citizen militia. Right, So if we all of us together this evening, if we join the National Guard, that's well and good. You know, if they'll take us, and if not, I guess it's
the French Foreign Legion for us. But citizen militias, it's become a really sticky thing here because if you look back on our previous episodes, I'm thinking in particular, guys of an episode we did on the Sovereign State movement, remember that one.
Yeah, that are attempting to basically break away from the Constitution and federal laws and even state laws a lower local municipality laws.
Yeah, exactly.
And this is where we see things that sometimes get joked about. It happens a lot candidly in rural areas of the US, not too far from Atlanta. For a while, there were a group of guys who decided if they printed their own license plates and driver's license and then they also printed little signs on their homes that said, you know, we're the sovereign citizens of Georgia. That they had essentially seceded from the Union and created their own nation. Spoiler alert, the FEDS did not cotton to it.
Have you guys ever read about the Georgia State Defense Force.
I have not heard of the Georgia State Defense Force.
The GSDF.
It's basically militia from the seventeen hundreds that's made its way through, you know, in different iterations, all the way till twenty twenty four. They're under the direction of the Governor and the adjunct no adjudicant. What is that word adjutant. I've never seen that right before.
Don't know that one.
I think we should keep all this in we're all puzzling through it together.
I don't know that word.
I don't know what this is. I'm going to read from their website. GSDF dot Georgia dot gov says the Georgia State Defense Force is a legally constituted element of the Georgia Department of Defense, serving in support of the national and state constitutions under direction of the Governor and the Adjudatant General of the State of Georgia.
Got to get your paperwork straight, and it's got to be paperwork from the other guys. You can't just print your letters of mark and then go off to the high seas of mirkwork.
Yeah, but there's interesting stuff in here about like rescue training, I mean, all kinds of stuff that seems like it would be super helpful. I think the question comes in when there's a conflict between the state and federal government, what does that force do and exactly how does that function. I just watched that Civil War movie that came out pretty recently, and I don't know if you guys have seen that yet, but I would recommend it because it's worth a conversation.
At least.
Robert Evans had some great takes on that, and also, I will say, perhaps parallel thinking, it follows a lot of the cues of his earlier novel, which is about the same thing. But Civil War as a film is I would say, primarily an examination of journalists on the ground.
Yes, but it's got an interesting through line of what happens when federal government is versus state governments that are functioning together.
And it's weird that originally the first militia formed the predecessors of things like the National Guard here in the States, they go back to the sixteen hundreds, like in the colony days of Massachusetts and when they were formed. Colonies formed these militias because they didn't want to have permanent standing armies, which gets a little bit weird when you realize the United States has by far the most dangerous military force on the planet. Right, we got all the plates.
Do you guys want a plane? We get a plane.
But you want to toe? I can get you ton when we.
Do a guy, Well, we'll just put the toes on the planes. So what this leads us to. I'm really setting this up because anonymous out your question makes me think that we should we should turn this into an episode. Do you guys think, aside from our previous work on the sovereign movements, that we could do a good episode on, just like a primer on the stuff they don't want you to know about militias?
Yeah?
Sure, have we not done something like that?
I mean, I feel like when there was the Am and Bundy stuff, we definitely talked about that story and stuff adjacent to that. But you're right then, I think maybe the history and like all the questions that we're asking about, what doth a militia make or what makes a militia versus you know, an organized fighting for us. That's a larger scale, Like, is there a cutoff?
It is weird to think we talked about it eight years ago.
Yeah, and what does well regulated mean. We're going to explore this question in an upcoming episode. We also might do one shout out to you, anonymous on a Manchester pusher. I kind of divvy the accent there. It would be Manchester pusher if we're saying it in US English or Manchester push off right in a in a vaguely British.
Yeah, is this like a Cockney Manchester is its own thing?
Yeah?
The Beatles?
No, the Beatles were from Liverpool. I'm a dumb dumb.
No, No, you're someone from Manchester.
Fellow con Oasis. They're big. They're from Manchester, Manchester from.
Shout out to our palll Casper. They just released their tentative US tour dates and I Am not going to pay to see them.
Oh I'm not. You know you're not then, because you will not.
Be able to get tickets into the five one night stadium gigs.
Not gonna There's one place in the middle of New Jersey, all right.
Well, the Meadowlands.
What is the Manchester Pusher just like give me one hit, what is it?
Well, if you would like one vape snarf on us. The Manchester pusher is similar to the accusations that we saw in Austin and similar to the idea of the smiley face or a happy face killer. There have been multiple people discovered in the area dead around waterways, and so the current discourse, which pops up on and off again over the years, concerns whether or not there is an active serial murderer or whether these people are drowning due to cruel circumstance. We don't have the time yet
to read the letter in full. I do think this is an episode we should examine. In the meantime, Please do check out our earlier work on the Happy Face murders, which goes super deep. Shout out to the HVAC company train tr A N and then also thank you to anonymous owl and state militias. We cannot wait to hear your thoughts on this. Help arm us with information, folks, Perhaps a poor choice of words for our upcoming episode on militia's are you involved with one? Do you have experience?
We want to hear from you, big big thanks to egg Salad Chef Ben, big big thanks of course to Lisa, and thank you all for joining us this evening. We're going to be back very soon and we can't wait to hear your thoughts on all of this. We try to be easy to find online.
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