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 called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis 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 is time for our weekly listener mail program, where we get to hear from the best part of the show, you and your fellow conspiracy realist. We are going to We're gonna hear from our friend Big Shucks, who appears to have accepted the nickname that we pitched. We're going to get an update on some
very strange culty news. But before we do any of that, we got a cavalcade of voicemails, right because there are some interesting tips that came our way.
We've been getting so many incredible messages thanks to everybody who's been calling in. Let's jump to a message from Sydney, who has an interesting idea about a weeding technique I'd never heard of.
Hey, it's been a long time. This is Sydney. I just listened to your episode about the Mexican cartel. I think it was a strange news. You know, guys were talking about roundup, and I mean, I live in Iowa, so round up is literally everywhere around a pretty corn. We talk about it all the time. So many people defend it. My dad even defends it, and I'm like, Dad, I really don't want you to do you cancer and die. Anyways, you were talking about having to pull your weed's hand
by hand. If you mix up Don Dishop in some water, it can also kill weeds in your garden or in your flowerbed. So that's a I guess. I don't know if Don Dishov is txting. I don't think it is, but that is a different it's an alternative for you. So yeah, there you go. Love you guys.
Wow, Oh thanks so much. Sidney googling Don dish Soap tucks yes, Exac well, and and you says a weed killer, right, I've never heard of that. My gosh. If I can go buy one thing at Don dish Soap, a bucket and a means of spraying, then I'm into it, and I will do that rather than spray and all the chemicals they end up buying to get rid of these weeds. Super cool. I had never heard of that before. You may have mentioned Sidney say like hey again, like very
much high again. Sidney has called in to us before. She told us a story about losing I believe it was her purse or her handbag on a form of mass transit, and just that what that entailed and what that was like. And we talked to her before about that. This concept of living in Iowa, which Sidney describes as
the cancer capital of the world. And again she's at attributing that and a lot of other people attribute that to the large use of herbicides and pesticides that just hang out on the lands all throughout the farmland out there in Iowa. That freaked me out just thinking about that, living in that environment and then finding an alternative like this that appears to be non toxic, at least to everything I've seen on it.
I did result of said Google was yes, done so does contain toxic ingredients oh something to the effect of a condition called acute aquatic toxicity. It does appear though that's certainly of a lesser order than roundup.
So sheeez. Well, I mean it is allegedly killing plants, so that's probably not good or great. My big question was will it also kill your grass? And Sydney's response was a was, well, grass grows back. I'm not worried about that, So there you go.
Maybe no use it on your vegetable garden.
There you go, good call.
All right.
Next, we've got a message from trash Panda with an intro take on those loyalty programs.
All right, here we go, Hello STDWYTK crew. In some circles, I'm known as trash Panda. Recently, on an episode, you guys talked about grocery stores and meeting phone numbers in order to access deals. If you don't want to give your own phone number, I suggest you think about Jenny. I have used eight six, seven, five three oh nine at multiple different grocery stores over the years, and there
is always an account, doesn't matter the area code. My local Ralphs, which I believe is Krager's on the East Coast, is actually transitioning to an app, so this trick does have a shelf life. Thank you for all the content, and y'all totally have my permission to use my voice and message if you see fit. Thanks a bunch, bye.
Take you. Trash Panda all.
Right, Kroger and Ralphs are the same thing.
Kroger is in the midst of a huge I know, globd overlord move.
This sounds to me like the way they call Carl's Junior Harty's in our neck of the woods, and that at Carls Junior you know in the West.
Have to google that.
I think it's Chris Kroger and Albertson's are the It's the big thing going on right now.
Yeah, for now, and then we'll see what happens next year, next quarter. But yeah, I just want to take a second and trash Panda. First off, I want to say thank you so much for your awesome name. And I think we may have corresponded in the past, but this is a brilliant idea. I am all about discordiism and light fun anarchy. So let's wreck the.
System anarchy in the USA. Another great song. So this one guy's got stuck in my head ever since we got this message. That old Oh what's the name of that group? Is two Tone Tommy two Tone No what's the what's the band that did eight six seven, five three oh nine?
Got it? Got it?
I got your number on the wall?
Okay, you're right. Yeah, well I never knew the name in my head. I talked to trash Bandit for a little bit. She said she heard a rumor that that was actually a number that was on a bathroom wall that one of the bandmates saw. Noel, I just want to see if you had any music trivia with it.
Well, I know that it's such a it's such an earworm that I don't think the number exits like they purposefully don't allow people to have that number because it would get called you know, yea nauseam.
I can confirm that at least the way I have this is just me. But the way I had heard this rumor it did seem to have a lot of validity. I think there's an interview with its oh nice members of the band.
But again, that's just that's awesome. According to trash BANDA, that phone number was disconnected no matter who had it or when after that song came out and was such a hit any phone, you just can't have that phone number anymore. But I guess with this system I.
Don't call you.
They don't cross reference your phone number to give you a Kroger account.
No, not usually unless again, unless it starts moving towards the app thing. That's right, like we're talking about here, where then you you might have two factor authentication At some point or whatever. It seems like it will go out the window. But for now, this is a little hack that we can all use.
And y'all, Ralphs is in the Kroger family of stores. It's like, you know, they you got to have brand recognition regionally, and for us, I guess it's Kroger on the West Coast, it's Ralphs.
It's in the Big Lebowski for crying out loud.
And the last message we've got for today comes from a Frame and this message has to do with our episode of Strange News. We're talking about cartels and moving high caliber weapons pretty much military weapons.
Hey guys, it's say you frame again, and I want a way to day to call you. And I didn't really want to email this. Uh, but when you're talking about how the cartels and have access to military grade weaponry and are actively and it's being actively brought into Mexico and increasing violence they in leading to a lot of the fear mongeringe happening here around illegal immigration and drugs. That is not new. I don't do hard drugs anymore. I just smoke my weeds. Sometimes I'll take some mushrooms.
I don't do anything else. I only really drink occasionally, and I just like beer, you know, or like a nice cocktail. I don't really like going too hard. I'm too old for that. But when I was in high school in twenty twelve and thirteen, I can tell you that it was easier for me to get a hand grenade in a Mac eleven than it was for me to get alcohol because I had access to cocaine. And when you have access to cocaine, you do and always
have had access to everything. So everybody you know who does coke, if they played it cool enough and ask the right questions, they could get a hand grenade, They could get an RPG.
Maybe their dealer doesn't want them to know the full extent of who they know because they don't necessarily trust them. But if you have access to hard drugs like cocaine and ecstasy, you have access to.
Any and everything, from guns to people. The black market is just there and it's not. There's really very little separation in those organizations in between selling one product and another. And Operation Past and Furious. You guys certainly know about that. That was name dropped by my homeboy who had those hand grenades. He was like, you ever heard of Operation
Past and Furious? And I was like, yeah, isn't that that thing people are mad at Obama about because they like gave guns to cartels to see where they smuggled them to see if they could catch them later. And he's like, yeah, once he hang in it, and that's how it all started. So it was just it was very las fair, very casual, just normal to him. It wasn't new, it wasn't a conspiracy, It wasn't mind blowing.
He just had access to things from the militaria that they were bringing over the border so it would be smuggled and they could track it and try to figure out where the smuggling roots were. That's it. They've been doing it since like the eighties. Obama just got in trouble for it because he got in trouble for the things that but he didn't start it. It's been going for a long time. It's gonna go for a while.
That's my personal experience with it makes me very uncomfortable to think about in the past how easy it was for me to get that stuff. Have a good day.
Gud Wow, never thought of that perspective. That's very interesting.
A frame always comes in with the best stuff, man.
Dude, A frame you guys, if you're listening out there, you have no idea how often a frame calls in with stover just like, oh, well, that's amazing, but this isn't the A frame show a frame. You can't have amazing things every time, but you do every time. We have several several of you out there do that where
it's just bangers every time. I don't have any personal experience with this stuff, guys, but I you know, hearing that from somebody who has had experience, who's gone through it, who just this concept of if you have access to that specific drug I guess cocaine as a dealer, I guess then potentially you have access to other things. I don't know. That to me feels like an exaggeration, but maybe it's not. I don't know.
Depends on what level of the supply chain you're at. Yeah, if you're like a lower level dealer. You know, the person above you is dealing with the big shots or the top dogs or whatever, you know, who deal with the manufacturers and or importers. Perhaps I would think they would at that level have that kind of access, but I don't know that it would necessarily trickle down all the way.
Crime is like any other business enterprise, right, Ultimately, for longevity, one must diversify. You know, it's quite I think it's quite rare for the typical to Nole's point, the typical what they would call street level drug dealer to say, sorry, I only sell okay, I would make money off of you, but you're looking for the wrong thing. Because way back when when my ancestors started, you know, snowblow and suns, we decided we would only sell one thing. The finest
artists in cocaine. Now they're gonna sell you weed. They're going to sell you whatever can be sold. And then, just like hotels diversify the avocados, then they are going to diversify into other means of income. And there is a very strong argument that criminalizing this stuff the way the US does further empowers those criminal endeavors. But you know, Congress isn't asking us about it.
Do you think there will be like, I don't what bespoke cocaine brands in years. Oh that's so crazy. Yeah, I can already imagine the Apple like stores that will pop up across the world.
The further up the hierarchy you go, right, the more interesting these criminal products can get. I mean, shout out to Pablo Escobar for introducing the hippopotamus to his part of the Americans where they're still around. I mean, he was at the top. I don't to be clear, I don't think if we went to our average street level dealer and said, like, hey, great work on the cocaine. What are your prices on hippos? Do you have price breaks if we get like one apiece?
You know, well, I guess if you are talking about Okay, let's just say it's the probability of someone answering yes to the question, Oh, hello, sir or madam, do you know where I might acquire a military armament Corporation Model ten, which is just the MAC ten. If someone could answer yes to that, you can, I guess in this case, someone who's in the dealings that are described there by a frame, it would probably be a higher probability. I don't know what I'm saying.
No, you got to think about prohibition as well. Right, that's a great comparison. So in the days of alcohol prohibition in the United States, organized crime was also making money running guns. It's just another income stream and typically as a rule, organized crime is not going to be too discriminating against it, like we romanticize the mob where they say, oh, we're not doing drugs, we just do
gambling and racketeering or whatever. But more and more often they diversify, so it makes sense that you would be able to connect the drugs and the.
Firearms, devisify, diversify your vice. Well, thank you to everybody who again called in and everybody we just listened to. There we'll be right back with more messages from you.
And we have returned with another piece of listener maw amissive from you.
Yes, you.
In this case, we have a message, as Ben pointed out at the top of the show, from Big Shucks. Really appreciate you adopting the nickname. I'm just gonna jump right into it. This is about being robbed in a more tech ye kind of way. Let's jump right in. Hello, my fellow handsome travelers. That is very kind. In the most recent podcast episode, I heard you may be doing an episode related to credit cards, so I would like to share some interesting info about them, if you haven't
already heard. I was at a bar when I first heard about these long range skimmers. I started chatting with the guy next to me, and he told me a story about how his company credit card had been skimmed, but not the normal way. He hadn't even used his card on any device in the taxi, he used an
app to pay for the ride. The only way they found the guy is because his company called him about twenty to thirty minutes after the taxi ride to downtown Seattle and they asked him about a purchase of very expensive jewelry.
Yikes.
Police were able to get there pretty quick and found the guy still in the store and arrested him. Apparently, there is a group within the SEATTLEPD that specifically deals with these kinds of issues. What you might think of as a card scammer is a bit different from what happened in the above story. While normal card skimming is a big problem, there are other devices that can be
quite a good distance away from your card. If your card has RFID capabilities, it can be copied either with smaller devices similar to the Flipper zero, or by big devices placed in the trunks of taxis. Now, I'm not trying to harp on taxi drivers here. These devices can steal credit card info while just walking around an area with the scammer placed.
In a backpack. And yeah, links to a video showing just that.
Here's a quote from a blog entry on butterflymx dot com. Long range RFID skimmers don't need to be directly next to an RFID credential to read its information. Instead, most skimmers can read from a distance of up to nineteen inches or fifty centimeters. Here's a kicker, However, users can boost the power of an RFID S camera with antennas or other long range transmission technologies to try to collect
data from further away. Then he linked to an article from hackaday dot com RFID readers snoops cards from three feet away.
And here's the thing as well. You can legally buy these devices online. Just a quick Google search and you will find them.
And then linked to literally a place on online where you can buy something called a UHF RFID small integrated reader. So I guess it exists under the auspices of kind of being a card reader, perhaps for mobile use. Yeah, it's it's it's not that in case, it could be, but and it's only three thirty four eighty with fifty seven ninety nine in shipping, so not cheap.
But hey, I mean, think of think of all the card numbers you could steal. No, don't, don't do that. That's gross.
MythBusters and Act was forced by the big credit card legal teams to not air an episode re guarding RFIDs in credit cards, and then linked to an article in the Register myth Busters Our Idea episode acts after pressure from credit card firms. I don't know if you guys have heard about this. I certainly had not. It seems as though a request for interview with the Texas Instruments Company is what led to this this episode being shut down.
Yeah, I remember hearing about this one.
Do you remember this, yes, quite vividly.
It was a big deal because it was one of, if not the only, episode that they got shut down about.
Right, because the issue is, first off, it's terrible pr for credit card companies and for the consumer finance industry in general. As as you know, Big Chucks, and also it shows people how on out non cure our stuff is. You know, just like just like think about when you're driving on the road and the only thing stopping people from careening into you is an agreed upon system of
pretending painted lines are barriers. It's a social contract. There is a social contract that says your credit card accounts and your tap to pays and your pins are safe. I got to tell you, Noel and fellow conspiracy realist Big Shucks, especially tuning in Big Shocks, already knows about this. But one thing that is very handy for these is RFID blocking, you know wallet.
That's what I got to Yeah, and actually that Butterfly MX kind of Techi blog entry that they linked to has all kinds of details on how to protect yourself against this technology, which has existed longer than we might think. This stuff can be amplified to pick up these these numbers, this data and store it in the form of a text document or a text entry. There's a whole system that can be put together. Like again, you don't buy
the thing and it does the whole job for you. You got to have a little bit of know how like there was one description of one that involved using an r duino kind of little microcomputer thing. So it's like, you know, you can get away with doing this stuff and having those uhf RFID small integrated reader because it does technically have a legitimate.
Use sure like pin testing.
Right when you pair it with other stuff, it can be bad news. But again, the amplification part of it too, that's requires a little bit of know how you know, to get that kind of like repeater or whatever to make it like I read. I did read though that while this stuff is scary and it can be you know, amplified it, when you amplify it like that, it's not
as precise. It's sort of just like casting a real wide net, and it can be interfered with by regular old electromagnetic interference and radio signals and all kinds of stuff. So chances are are this isn't how you're gonna get calm.
How you're gonna get ripped off.
It's going to be by one of those more traditional skimmers or some phishing kind of exercise you know that's trying to steal your digital currency, or again, yeah.
Just one of the hacks that's already happened.
There is your data being leaked by the company that's purported to have you know, been a good steward of it.
Also there you know, the main skeleton key in these sorts of shenanigans is always going to be social engineering, right, leveraging that expectation of safety and privacy, So be careful with that, you know, there are other things got to say it, h This is always endlessly fascinating to a lot of us listening this evening. Yes, you can teach yourself to do this online, but that I'm sure this
does not apply to any of our fellow listeners. Do be aware that if you are researching this stuff online and you somehow get involved with shenanigans, the authorities are going to pull your search history and they will know.
Well, you know, it's interesting too.
I mentioned this is this idea of like, you know, requiring some technical know how to kind of jury rig some of the stuff together. But now that I'm looking a little deeper into this product that's available on Ali Express, it already has the antenna. It looks like a router basically, So again, maybe there's a legitimate use for this, but I don't know, is an Ali Express kind of like ull notorious for being sort of a hub forgetting stuff you're maybe not supposed to have.
Well, it's all the intention in the application of the technology. Like again to the point I'm making here, like you can teach yourself to do this stuff in an afternoon. Legitimate testing For anybody who's wondering what pen testing is. Pen testing is a portmanteau for penetration testing. So you can help a company or a client evaluate how secure their electronic systems are.
Or your own network, you know, I mean if you want it to right, if you've got some people have RFID fobs that gain you act says, to your home, to your property, to private areas, you know, perhaps safes, so maybe you would be doing this to pintest your own facilities.
Yeah, yep, completely valid.
And buddy of mine is he has been for a long time in security, like network security for large enterprise companies, and he does that with his home system. He routinely tries to figure out if I wanted to, how could I get in, And then he's he's constantly plugging holes
and and he knows what he's doing. So it's like it's it's basically there's there's a never ending series of issues that come up when when hardware meets software right, and I think this is going to be a just an exciting, little ongoing battle that we're going to be having for the rest of our human lives.
One of the recommendations too, on the Butterflymax article, this seemed to be sort of geared towards like rental property owners or maybe even landlords of like apartment complexes or you know, maybe developers. Was as kind of like sort of like is this better or worse? Moving more towards smartphone based access, like we have to our office. There's an app, but it does require two factor authentication and you do have to get this key provided to you that will expire, and it isn't I guess it is
our FID triggered. But there are layers that even give you access and it requires you know, password at tree, using like single signing kind of stuff for your whole company.
So again, surely there's a way to backdoor that as well. But interesting stuff. It's also what I didn't realize and looking into this, is that this.
Stuff has been around a lot longer than one might think, especially for being something that maybe some of us hadn't been hipped to yet.
It's an old war again yet. I'll tell you one of my favorite the Guiver just for funzies project, there is one way to absolutely prevent skimming at a at a long range or from several feet away, and it's it's like a nuclear option. Just you could just build an EMP like a one use electromatic electromagnetic pulse device and you can fit these inside of an altoy ten.
Like you can build these. They're going to completely screw up everything else as well, so you know you're not gonna have your phone's not gonna work either.
Like when mc guiver hacked that like traffic light box to create a diversion and causes like a multi car pile up.
I always wanted to be a little bit chaotic, you know, not evil.
I don't know, I forget the archetypes, but to your point, been there in terms of other maybe hacky type ways. If you don't want to get one of those walls, you can just wrap your cards in tinfoil, which goes back to the whole tinfoil hat thing about guarding your brain against penetration from whatever, you know, infiltration by aliens or whatever it might be. But apparently you know, it is a pretty decent shield, but not very convenient and maybe a little.
Embarrassing you ripping your card out of the store.
Not nearly as esthetic as that cool wality you guys pulled out.
Oh man, I don't know, Like, here's the thing too. And this is why I'm so glad you're bringing this up. Big shucks. In coming years, not having security literacy is going to be like being a literate is today, right, if you have any younglings, if you have any kids you're raising. It's especially in a time where the erosion of privacy is being so aggressively normalized by the powers that be, it's important to know that you have to
be the author of your own privacy, right. You have to be the author of your own security to an astonishing degree, especially in this look. It just it sounds weird because for people who are not like Matt's friend, a security expert, you don't really think of a lot of this stuff because it's invisible until you see it through a ux on a screen, you know what I mean, And that that assumption is easily easily leverage. This is
making me even more paranoid. Maybe it's because the coffee's kicking into but no, what advice would you give to people who are hearing about this for maybe the first time and thinking, crap, what do I do? Should they go get a wallet? Should they get the tinfoil's get the sick wallet?
Those things look bad ass. I want to get one now too, And they really are kind of becoming the norm. They are these kind of stretchy sort of cardholder things where it's got lots of cool you know, little pockets and niches. But this technology is built in. Yours is a little different, Matt, Matt, it looks more like a regular wallet. Well, yours isn't as cool looking as Ben's. I'm sorry, Matt, I'm sorry.
I'm just saying, if you want to go onto the radar, you just get one of niche should go.
Yeah, you don't want you don't want one that looks cool. The reason this one is the way it is is because very few people see it.
Oh, fair enough, I'm just saying I have seen those types before, Ben, I have toyed with getting one, and I just didn't pull the trigger. But now, after hearing this, because again I knew about skimmers. I knew about a lot of this stuff. I know about the long range stuff. But again, not to give you a sense of false complacency. There is a whole section on this article and a couple that I've seen where it's not an exact science. They can't target you and shoot a laser at you.
It's sort of casting a wide net, and chances are if you're outside and you're walking around and someone's not coming right up on you and you know, bumping into you, it's gonna be a little bit hard for them to do it, even with those repeaters.
If someone is executing something above a certain level of precision like that means they have thought about this, or they're aiming for you specifically, then you have other problems.
That's for damn sure, you got a stalker on your hands. They're gonna take you for all your worth.
Well, that sounds exciting.
Be anonymous, Oh Matt, you's SICKO. No, man, it's true.
I mean, you know a lot of people say, oh, be careful an ex country, you're gonna get robbed or you're likely to get mugged. I have found that the best solution to that is just to blend in. Don't make a scene, don't make a big show of yourself, look like you belong there. Maybe that's easier said than done, but I think all three of us, when traveling roughly know how to do that. And knock on wood, I've never been victimized in this way, and I hope never
to be. But just don't don't make yourself a target, that's all. It's not to say like they were asking for it, nothing like that. Just you know, it's smart to be able to kind of blend in.
That's all. Thank you, big shucks.
Let's take a quick break here worth more sponsor, and then come back with one more message from you.
And we have returned with an update for something that I can't believe we missed earlier. So we'll give you the part from twenty twenty three, and then we'll follow up. So a fellow conspiracy realist going by the moniker hey Lee h e y l Ee writes to us in October and says the following, thanks for the many laughs I've had so far. As a new listener, I began listening to stuff they don't want you to know earlier this year. I just began listening to companies started by cults.
Two this evening while doing the worst job in the world, washing dishes, and before long I was laughing again. And Haley wants us to put in a trigger warning here for CSA and essay and creepy cult content. So pause for a second for anybody who has listeners tonight, who this, who might find this content objectionable. All right, here we go, So Hailey says, I was born and raised in a religious cult usually referred to by researchers and other outsiders as the two by twos. Some of us who escaped
call them bunheads, laugh or cry. Others call them the Friends, the Way, the Truth, the Gospel, and so forth. In spite of their best efforts, they did not succeed in my indoctrination. I got out at age fifteen, and I am still an atheist. I was abused in nearly all
the ways by parents and their version of the clergy. Recently, there has finally been some exposure in more mainstream press of the CSA and essay so rampant for such a small population round or less than seventy five thousand worldwide. There have been many excellent articles, books, and websites at all for at least thirty years, produced mostly by former members. However, the cult still maintained invisibility to the general public overall.
And I want to pause here because check me on this, guys, keep me honest. I don't think we've talked about the two by twos yet it.
Does not ring a bellt to me.
I am looking at this Vice article that you linked out to Ben, and this is some shadowy, creepy stuff that is unfamiliar to me.
Yeah.
The Vice article comes to us courtesy of Haylee by Ada Merlin. A nameless until their religious sect is being rocked by a massive sexual abuse scandal. SA stands for sexual abuse, CSA stands for child sexual abuse. Hailey goes on, before we get too much into this cult, which I think will be an episode in the future. Haley goes on and says, I've noticed you all are very gracious when talking about cults and religion.
Just heard.
I am not implying Christianity as a cult per se in this episode I'm listening to right now, for example, And no one would ever say that Christianity or Catholicism or a cult. But I assure you, gentlemen, there are a lot of us who do consider them cults, regardless of their size or how long they've succeeded in normalizing
their unprovable fantasies. Is a strong language with their cannibalistic vampire mimicking all the silly hats and sashes and dresses, and we say that out loud to anyone who can hear. A quick, legitimate way to assess whether or not a cult is a cult is to apply doctor Stephen Hassan's bite model. And this is just to catch people up. The byte model is something we talked about a little bit earlier, but.
It's a mnemonic.
It stands for behavior, information, thought, and emotion and how those things are controlled. And I think we're familiar with this, not just in stuff they want you to know, but in some of our other endeavors.
Correct.
Yeah, and especially some of the serial killer things, the at least that I've looked at in the past. These killers have often attempted to control those very things over their victims, like when they've got them captive prior to killing them.
Yeah, and check out our video on how to start a cult. So it's pretty old now, but it's still unfortunately holds up because the rules for these things don't really change. Unfortunately. You can find more about the byte model, which is quite a quite a good room brick to look at over on Freedom of Mind dot com and thank you again to Haley for the link. Haley also has some other links that they've sent to us Daily dot dot com, Daily dot dot com Advocates for the
Truth dot com. These are both great resources if you or a loved one have been have found yourself involved with something like the two by twos, or indeed any organization with cltic leanings. Here's the thing. We received a follow up correspondence from you, Hailey, and you added the following. Quite recently, the FBI has begun investigating and recently sent out a news alert on two x two specifically asking
for victims and witnesses to report what they know. So Haley has asked us on behalf of all the victims of this organization to spread the word. FBI dot gov has the word out. You can read more as Hayley says, on the BBC and the CBC, which you know we're
big fans of the CBC. Obviously, I would recommend reading a piece by George Wright over on BBC, the FBI launches probe into a church and then reading on CBC historical sexual abuse charges filed against BC minister British Columbia minister belonging to a church with no name by Karen Larsen.
So these's a really interesting organization.
Yeah, dates back to the eighteen hundreds.
Yeah, and just the idea that there's no churches really and there's no written doctrine, right, so when someone goes up and preaches, it's just word of it's oral preaching. Right.
It's also incredibly malleable as a.
Result, exactly, oh man, in the schism. I'm just looking at here at some of the schisms over time. This is a deep dive for sure.
Yeah.
I think this is an episode because Haley, as you said, we do need to spread the word about these kinds of organizations, because organizations that thrive in the shadows or work best without transparency or public knowledge, they lose power when there is transparency, They lose power when there is accountability.
Right.
This story is as you said, Matt, it's just absolutely wild. It reminds me a little bit of the finders or the garbage eaters, remember those, right, And they kind of had that same amorphous quality they describe themselves as just maybe like the movement or the Brethren, things like that. It's strange, though, how large these things can grow without much public knowledge about it, Like how do you think
people find out about these things? Is it just you know, do they target people who are at a low point in their life? Do they just encourage the current members to reproduce? That sounds like what happened to you, Haley, because you say half my kid or western North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountain folks and born and raised in this cult. So maybe maybe that's part of it. Like how do you indoctrinate you know, outsiders?
I don't know. I mean it sounds like it's a roving thing to where you would just go house to house and have a conversation the way some other religious movements do. A group of them showed up in my house earlier today. Actually not this group, but a different.
Christ of Latter day Saints or different several there's several there are.
You're right, now, you're right.
But you know, shout out to the musical, the Book of Mormon.
That was all part of their you know, initiation. I guess more or less is going door to door like that. Yeah, I do want to give.
Like we talked about the Church of LDS in past Strange News listener mail or episodes, but to be very clear, they are different from the two by twos very much. So I'm bringing up the Book of Mormon because the most amazing thing to me about that was when I saw it in the playbill. The actual Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints had advertisements in here. They helped fund the play, and they've got this beautiful ad where they say you've seen the play, now read the book.
And I was like, oh, that's funny, well done. That's good marketing, man.
That's good marketing. But hopefully raising awareness of the two by twos in the future will help bring some bring some much needed justice, bring some closure to these folks. And again, you know, like you can tell folks, we have a lot of research to do to dive into this one. And with that in mind, I suggest maybe we we end with one brief letter from Home and then we get back on the case.
What do you guys think it? Okay?
With that vote of confidence, here is one letter from Home, courtesy of Carrie Letters from Home it's just similar to some of the voicemails we get. It's just quick tips or nice things. How you doing, how you folks, that kind of stuff. So Carrie says, Hya and I lived in Vietnam a number of years ago and Nesley was everywhere. Their campaign was to convince new mums not to breastfeed, but to buy their formula, which was available in small shops owned by poor locals locked up in captains with
the promise of money. It was absolutely disgraceful. Keep focusing on these stories, it matters. And I think that's because we recently had a classic episode about Nessley published.
And I remember that.
Thank you, Carrie, Thank you to everybody for tuning in. Thank you to Sydney trash pandat a frame, thank you to Big Chucks. Makes my day that we were able to give someone a nickname, you know, pretty sweet. Yeah, and thank you of course to Hayley. We are on the case. We will be returning very soon with more strange news, more messages from you, more stuff they don't want you to know. Most importantly, before we go, folks, big favor, do you want to join up with us?
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Hey.
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