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 Nola. They called me Ben.
We're 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. If you are listening to our strange news program the evening it comes out, let us welcome you to February third, twenty twenty five. Guys, we're more than one month into the new year.
How are we feeling old?
Yeah, it's that same feeling. It doesn't feel like a month should have gone by since the time we celebrated New Year. So it's just odd.
Yes, yes, some of us celebrate, some observe some of us. A fellow conspiracy realists who are a little bit older in the crowd may have taken a nap and woken up around eleven forty nine pm December thirty first, just to mark the passage of the New year, and then went back to sleep. The New Cycle. Yeah, yeah, that was me.
That was me.
The New Cycle, however, does not stop. We have so much stuff to share with you. We're going to learn a little bit about Sasquatch allegations and consequences thereof. We're going to talk about some videos. We have to talk about some recent dangerous moves in the world of politics and in the world of science, as well as the realm of spirituality. Before we do any of that, I do have to give, perhaps out of the Blue shout out to China's rule of law. It's a big problem
to keep police accountable in any country you visit. And recently, you guys, the government of China SmackDown one of their law enforcement officers. Did you hear about this?
Physically gave him a backhand.
Well, he lost his bonus. The thing is, he's not a human police officer. He is a Corgie named Fushi and Fuji translates the lucky boy.
Okay, all right, what's the deal? Why are they picking on Fuji?
Right? Right?
So, what happened to the back of the Blue China? It appears that Fuji, who has become an Internet sensation, did violate the terms of his employment. He is an explosive searching dog. We're not sure the correct term the Chinese government would use. Yeah, he's a corky.
So okay, I guess they're really leaning into the aesthetics for their bomb dogs. They're going for the cute factor. It would see and say that's a cute dog.
Yeah, And like a lot of law enforcement there he gets a year end bonus, or he would have, because you see, just recently he was supposed to be given a lavish gift package including Harrying pumpkin soup, dumplings, meatballs made of rabbit, some Chinese other Chinese delicacies.
I would eat all of those things, just saying, you.
Know, you know what I mean. And now we're going to go real quick to euro News with Oman al Ya Yai, who tells us that this poor guy, this poor officer, did not in fact receive his bonus because of his his on the job behavior, which included taking naps and peen in his football.
Bad boy I love all Matt shaking his head right there.
You're so disappointed. And food is it? Fuji? Yeah? Fui?
See Officer Meadow who hangs out in my precinct last night she decided that she's going to jump on the counter and eat half of a frozen pizza before it made it way into the oven. The encounter.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah for a big dog.
Wo is currently incarcerated in dogjail, and she's going to be there for the remainder of probably this afternoon.
Actually met also true. What if Fuji and MoU Dang got together? Do you think that'd be fun? That could be an Internet sensation of its own, like a crossover of viral animals. Hope.
So justice for Meadow, This for Fuji, who had all of their rewards removed confiscated on camera. We're talking about Fujai, not not Meadow, who was a US operative.
They shamed him publicly.
Yeah, well you know what shame on you, Meadow. You were caught red snouted.
Okay for anyone who doesn't know, Meadow is a fair haired dog.
Yes, so it really was stark, Yes, And I was at the I was going grocery shopping. Well, Grandma and my son were playing. Oh no, they had no idea what was happening.
Meadow. Deprive your family of a delicious frozen pizza. Snatched it right out of the mouth of your child.
Yeah, with this, With this, uh, you know, we know Meadow will make restitution and be a return to her position as a valued member of the community.
There.
We are also going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and we're going to return with more strange news. And we have returned a breaking story. If we could, Dylan, please get a breaking news cube.
Awesome street read all about it.
Let's get into it. Yeah, let's get into it this way. We all remember the seminal American Western Tombstone, right, of.
Course, also a very popular brand of frozen pizza callback.
Yes, callback, well done. We also remember, of course, the breakout character, the breakout star of Tombstone, Doc.
Holiday, portrayed by Val Kilmer. He's all of our huckleberries. I believe our.
Good friend Alexis agreed to go by the moniker Doc Holiday so long as we only introduced her as code name Doc Holiday sometimes Doc when we were hanging out, right, and Doc Holiday from Tombstone suffers from what was called consumption. Consumption is the street name of that era for tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a very nasty disease, and we often think
of it as a condition that is relegated to the past. However, as we have learned recently and want to report now, the United States of America is currently experiencing the largest outbreak of tuberculosis in all of this young nation's history. And it's happening right now as we record in Kansas.
Wait, we're in Kansas. I didn't think we were in Kansas, and.
We're not in Kansas anymore, but we're talking about Kansas.
It does seem like this is another and a series of stories about supposedly eradicated diseases popping up seems a little on the scary side. I don't want to be alarmist, but didn't we also just discover a new case of measles here in Georgia for the first time in decades.
As well as AVM flu. It's coming back. We have to talk about this larger context. Let's drill down to the Topeka Capital Journal as well as Esquire, which has published a pretty good summation of this. Both sources quote Ashley Goss, who is Deputy Secretary at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Speaking to the Senate just yesterday.
Goss noted that public health officials have documented sixty six active cases of tuberculosis in Kansas City, Kansas since twenty twenty four, in addition to seventy nine what they call latent infections. Most of the cases have been focused in a single area in Wyna Dot County, with a handful in nearby Johnson County. And the crazy thing is, if you go to the CDC numbers, this outbreak dates back to twenty twenty one. Apparently they just stopped giving public
reports on this kind of thing for a while. Now, what does this mean for all of us listening tonight? It means that, like you said, Noel, these seemingly these infections, these diseases that were once thought to be historical footnotes or historical horrors, are very real. They're very much in play, and we now have to ask, you know, why is this happening now? And how can the United States address it, especially given all the recent proposed cuts to public health and to the funding thereof.
Yeah, that's really it's upsetting. Do we know how many infections they are tracking like actively?
We know that they are.
We know that local medical professionals on the ground are attempting to compile at exhaust of list. But it's incredibly tough because the recent presidential administration has paused all public messaging from the CDC.
Oh geez.
And if I'm not mistaken, it seems to be focused or the case is largely focused in what's called by the CDC and at risk community in a densely populated urban area.
Yeah, and people are attempting to quell public outcry or alarmism by noting there's a very low risk of infection to the general public in these communities. However, tuberculosis is caused by bacteria. It's caused by Micobacterium toulosis, and it spreads through the air when someone actively infected coughs or speaks too close to you, which may remind some of us of a thing that happened just a few years back and continues today. It rhymes with bovid.
Mmmm. Hey. And speaking of guys, do you mind if we throw in another little thing that's happening with the Department of Health and Homeland Security or whatever it's called Health in Human Services.
I think that's still Oh, we must, we must.
It's not Homeland Security. Sorry, I see HS. And that's what I think about. There was there was a very recent story before or maybe during the spending freezes then all the chaos that's kind of happening on the American political front. Health and Human Services announced that they were going to provide a five hundred and ninety million dollars grant injection, if you will, into Maderna to develop a vaccine specifically or vaccines, the same mRNA vaccines that you
for COVID, this time for bird flu. And it's this weird place that we're in that we're kind of talking about, hinting at where we are unsure as the public and as people who are consuming the news on whether or not that kind of money is still going to get injected into a company like Maderna and whether or not that research is going to happen. But it is a bit I don't know. It weirds me out knowing that there's over half a billion dollars going from the government to Maderna for bird flu.
Right because it's a private entity, and I want, Yeah, we're going to explore that larger context as well. We do have to point out before anybody gets too spooked by this, there is a vaccine for tuberculosis. It is not commonly used in the United States, and we do know quite a bit about I like the phrase consumption. We do know quite a bit about it because of
its historical it's historical villainy. You know you are at a higher risk of tuberculosis if you travel to countries or regions of the world where TV is common, or if you live and work in settings like prisons, nursing homes, elder care facilities, homeless shelters. Obviously, if you hang out with someone who has active tuberculosis, or if you have weakened immune systems due to health conditions or medications, you
may be taking Why are these notes important? That last one, that last footnote there is crucial because a lot of people right now have a weakened immune system due to COVID nineteen and they may not be aware of.
Long COVID right after whatever the knock on effects.
Just so they may not be aware of the full consequence of this. Because you can feel better when you are not actually better. Please do check this out. Our thoughts go out with everybody in Kansas, every honestly everybody across the world, because it seems like these infectious diseases of old are simply increasing. And I have a question for you, guys, is this increased perception of an outbreak
due to the hazards of modern civilization. Is it due to better reporting methods or are we looking at a genuine rise in infections of various things across the board.
Well, it's a little weird because tuberculosis, as you said, is a bacteria based disease, and a lot of the things we've been nervous about or hearing a lot about, have been viral infections, right, So fighting it is a little different. Preparing for it is a little different. And you know, with tuberculosis, every kid theoretically gets a BacT for that when you're coming up. That's one of those things that's in the you know, if you think about the MMR and all these other things that you get
when your child is coming up. As an American, if you've got healthcare, they recommend all these vaccines to you, and this is one of them. It reminds me of the time when anti vaccination prior to COVID nineteen was happening, right when that was very popular, and there were these pocket outbreaks of things like tuberculosis and other diseases that were eradicated. But they're very small usually and taking care
of pretty quickly, so it does hope. It does feel like that's kind of what this is an isolated incident in one place to me, at least.
That would be the hope.
Right.
We know that last year, in twenty twenty four, the US saw around eight seven hundred cases of tuberculosis, and we're pulling these stats from the CDC. We know that tubercular has been steadily declining at least in the US since the nineteen nineties. However, rates have been increasing troublingly enough over two thousand and one to twenty and twenty three slight lull in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty
five baby rull the dice. The problem with tuberculosis is it's not a bacterial infection that just you know, makes you poop or need to drink more water, have a bad time. It can kill people and.
Just really quickly. You know, you had mentioned been the pause, the you know, government mandated pause on mass communications from the CDC, mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services, and you know that is meant to be temporary while you know, the new administration installs a new head of HHS and that is potentially going to be our fk Junior, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who, as you know, a bit of a sordid past in his perspective on certain vaccinations.
You know, I mean, whatever your personal beliefs are about vaccinations, I think we can all agree that some of them are pretty important. And he has also, you know, done some slightly dubious, no more than slightly dubious financial dealings, in depriving people of HPV vaccine in an efforts to enrich himself. There was some sort of a case against merk the pharmaceutical company that produces this drug, and he
essentially benefited from it. And I just wanted to point out that his cousin, Caroline Kennedy recently published a pretty scathing open letter describing him as unfit for the job and as being a predator and talking about his past, you know, dalliances with drug addiction and how he's describes him as a dangerous attention seeker with dangerous views on vaccinations, and describes him someone who's unfit to be the nation's
health secretary. So I just thought worth mentioning that with these kinds of things on the rise, it does seem like it would be great to have someone in charge that believes in science.
That's all yeah, And that's I think a salient point there, Noel, because again, what we're seeing here, the reason we're bringing this into our Strange News program now is because these kinds of infections, any kind of communicable disease, it doesn't really vote, it doesn't really practice a border necessarily, except for apparently foot and mouth disease in the Darien Gap
check out our series on that. Instead, what it shows us is there is tremendous advantage to having someone at the watchtower, someone who can see the overall lay of the land, the forest that is comprised of the these various outbreaks. And it's safe and easy and dismissive maybe to hold these very limited things and say nothing will
go wrong because it's not affecting you right now. However, we do have to flag this kind of stuff because if there is not a larger scope possible to monitor this stuff, then they can quickly these infections can quickly become a true health crisis, and no one knows when that will stop or how to build sort of a medical firebreak for it. Right now, as as we speak, the tuberculosis cases in Kansas will hopefully be contained. Our thoughts go out to everyone who is struggling with this.
It does paint a larger contact. And we'll just tease this for a moment. What happens if the US becomes Balkanized the way Putin and Alexander Dugan always wanted it to be. In foundations of geopolitics? What happens if a state succeeds. We hear this all the time again, just to tease it's happening again, you guys, there's something moving on the ballot over in California for California, one of our favorite states, to secede from the US in twenty
twenty eight, just a qulsome fear. I don't think it's gonna happen. Do you guys think it will happen?
Ever, it takes a lot, right, I mean, what's the mechanism in place for doing something like that?
There is none, and I think so there is no legal mechanism to secede. It only happens via force, really and without consent from the federal government. But the pickle of it is the bag of badgers here is that you can put anything on a ballot in a democracy if you wanted to say all Frisbees will be replaced with case ideas and that will be the law of what's a fun state Delaware.
Then everybody at Dell State, right, everybody at Delaware could be totally on board with voting.
For a thing, and then the courts could smack it down. So again, to sort of reassure all our fellow listeners here, we don't think states will succeed. Forces in Texas have certainly tried and will likely try again in the near future, but for now it seems like it will not work. However, the news can be confusing. That's one of the reasons that we do this program every week. Even your local ice cream truck may come under suspicion in these chaotic times.
With that, we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors and will return with more strange news.
And we have returned and been the perfect tease for a pretty bizarre story that on its surface is you know, kind of offbeat and a little bit light, but it sort of speaks to so much larger issues, first and foremost being the widespread proliferation of misinformation on social media. Viral posts on various social media platforms identified a Las Vegas ice cream truck with an admittedly law enforcement adjacent theme as being a vehicle belonging to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement or ice. It led to the owner of the truck, Billy Settle Myers, a former mechanic who went into you actually built the truck and designed it and gave it this kind of law enforcement vibe as a way of I don't know, it's a little odd. I'm not gonna lie, but he did.
It.
Seems like his heart was in the right place. He felt that there was a need for a feeling of safety around ice cream trucks. You know, this being a trusted ice cream truck, and even potentially folks seeing his vehicle from a distance in traffic might be more likely to drive safely, you know, in certain neighborhoods where the ice cream truck would be roaming, which is of course the kind of areas where there would be school children
walking home from school every day. This is what he had to say about this case, Ice and Border Patrol don't use trucks from nineteen eighty five. The name of his company is ice Cream Patrol. A person posted on social media video of Settle Meyer's truck driving into a neighborhood with a caption, please be on the lookout for ice cream trucks. They play music to get people to
come outside. This is actually so sick. Other people reposted this image with other captions including, you know, warnings about impending mass raids and deportations and of course with the way things are going with the new administration, these are very legitimate fears, and so it it. You know, I can understand why people might assume this, but as with the fires in Los Angeles, it's just so easy for this kind of misinformation to spread and for people to
repost it instantly as fact. And it just points out once again how important it is to do your own research because it put this man in jeopardy, you know, at risk, because ICE is not a very popular agency, and they are beginning to appear, as you know, a very aggressive enforcement wing of an administration that is not is openly very you know, unkind in rhetoric and in policy to immigrants and know, legal or illegal or otherwise. Oftentimes they get kind of lumped up into the same
bucket and treated whatever their legal status might be. So there's a lot, a lot of folks very very upset about the heightened kind of temperature of this rhetoric that could potentially put immigrants who are here very legally at risk alongside folks who are here potentially illegally.
I bet that ice cream truck gets a lot of business rolling up and down you know, the Vegas Strip life for real, just like oh ice cream? Yeah, I imagine a lot of people going for it.
I mean, we understand the fear too, right, because that is this is occurring during the time of great and not unvalid paranoia. You know who hasn't heard an ice cream truck and thought, yeah, I'll get myself a treat, you know what I mean. I still I don't know about you guys. I barely even eat ice cream, and I still get excited just to hear one roll down the street.
You know.
It's such a percible, spontaneous human opportunities.
Yeah, yeah, well, Settlemyer, I had this to say. I kind of feel like a target. People have to stop and realize with social media, how many people are going to see their video and the repercussions from it are dangerous. Possibly, thankfully, of all the wonderful customers I have in this neighborhood. They came to my defense and I really appreciate that a lot. And again to your point, Bent, it is true.
Last week, as of our recording of this episode, the actual ice arrested about twelve hundred people across cities in the United States, including Chicago and Los Angeles.
And Atlanta and Atlanta we talked about that in part two of our episode on the Darien Gap.
Please, that's absolutely correct. There are, however, no indications of these types of arrest taking place at that scale in Las Vegas, and a lot of the social media posts indicating that this truck was a checkpoint indicated some sort of checkpoints and there are none of those two be
found in the Las Vegas Valley. So, you know, I think it speaks to as we as we're saying, misinformation spreading wildly, you know, on social media and across the internet being so important, as I was guilty of with the with the fire buckets thing, so easy, especially in a time of heightened paranoia and concern and your heart being in the right place, to just repost something like
this or talk about it on a podcast. It's just more important than ever just to do your vetting and double check your sources and make sure that this stuff is real, lest you put an agency like the the Los Angeles Fire Department in harm's way. You know, people who are trying to do good work, or an individual who's just trying to sell some ice cream. I'm just
an ice cream man, That's what he said. So moving on to an interesting story for me, because I just watched the film The Taking of Pellam one two three, which is a fabulous this nineteen seventies heist movie about a subway train that is hijacked in New York City by some nasty dudes who hold the passenger's hostage and are asking for a million dollars from the city government. If they don't get it, and the time that they've allotted, they are going to execute a passenger every minute on a minute.
Past and soft note for everybody just now hearing about this film, which I believe we mentioned on a previous recording, I sure did a million dollars was a lot more money back.
Yeah, definitely. It's just a great film if you're into like things like Dog Day Afternoon and you know, just I don't know. The seventies are such a golden era for the cinema verite kind of stuff, and it is a heist movie, but it's very funny, it's very exciting. It doesn't feel dated at all, and it just really kind of made me focus in on this story is it's not about a hostage taking situation, but it is about a situation that maybe happens more than we might realize.
A New York City R train from the New York MTA was stolen and taken for a joy ride very recently. The theft was discovered Saturday, as we record, by the NYPD, and according to the police, MTA employees told officers that people had entered an unoccupied train that was being stored on a type of track that isn't connected to the main you know, transit lines. It's sort of like a I don't know, like a waypoint, sort of like a
little hub where out of service trains are kept. It was operated for only a short distance, and the assailants also broke numerous train car windows. They also blacked out on board cameras using sharpies, which I thought was an interesting move. I haven't really heard about that one, but you know, you heard you see it in the heist movies A lot of times they use like spray paint,
but Sharpie's works just as well. There is a video shared on social media that shows them inside the conductor's cabin, which is of course where the throttle is for the train that operates it allows it to speed up and slow down. There are, of course, as you'll see in taking a PELM one two three if you check it out, safeguards in place to keep collisions from happening, to keep
trains from exceeding certain speeds, et cetera. While they're doing this, one of the assailants or I guess the suspects, is seen operating the controls, while another one sits on the very front open door of the train with his legs dangling over the tracks, with a third person standing behind him. All of this is really echoes Pellam one two three, except there aren't any automatic weapons and no one was
on board the train, thankfully. The NYPD said the R train was left secured on what's called a layup track at the seventy first Avenue station in Queens, and again that is something that's used for storage of trains when they're not in service. The R train number was ninety one oh eight. It was left secured but unattended by MTA personnel. It would seem that the thieves had knowledge of operating these vehicles accessing them. It would appear that it was accessed us using MTA keys. So is it
an inside job? Again? Tell them one, two, three yo where they stolen. It doesn't seem like a crime of opportunity. It's really odd how much forethought must have gone into this for something as boneheaded as a joy ride. Transportation expert Robert Paswell told CBS News they obviously knew something about both where the train was and how to operate the train and how to get the keys. Once you start it, he says, it's just a simple throttle, and you use the throttle to move it and to slow
it down. The social media video that I mentioned also does show the train being operated at a super high rate of speed, though briefly and authority say the intruders were wearing black masks and black clothes and they did cover the camera lens. As I mentioned, Once MTA workers determined that the train had moved by monitoring, you know, they've got like a blip on these maps for every train in the system. They went to the Queen's train Yard to check it out and analyze its black box data.
This after the suspects had fled the scene in order to figure out where it had been taken for how long you know, if it had gone elsewhere beyond where it was left. One last thing, An MCA spokesperson said, New York City Transit is working with the NYPD on their investigation of this incident. And as I mentioned at the top, this isn't the first time this happened. In September of last year, two teenagers tried to operate unoccupied train, also in Queens and ended up crashing it. They damaged
the car. They were seventeen. They were charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief in the incident. It does also appear that this case is being treated similarly as a case of reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. What do you guys think about that sort of a pointless heist, Like, what do they gain from this? They're dressing like they're out to steal something, But is there something that we're missing?
Is there something that they did again very pealam one two three, beyond the eyes and knowledge of the MTA and the NYPD is this some sort of subterfuge, some sort of diversion, so they were like pulling off some other crime. My mind boggles at it.
Guys, possibly as a personal fan of the concept of Okham's razor. Sometimes people just take a joy ride, right, That's that's the reason why we have that word in this language. We we can often assign a larger thing. And I do think your your question is incredibly valid there. It is quite possible that there were there were other factors at play, maybe that are not being reported by the media. I would argue, however, that with the information we have, it seems that this was a dumb stunt.
And it further seems that, like you said, the most instructive part about this is to realize these kinds of situations occur way more often than one might assume.
Yeah, not any anything to I just I gosh, it just seems like a lot of effort to go to to find the proprietary keys, to get into this thing, to know where it's hanging out, to take it for such a brief joy ride, and to be all masked up and doing all this haisty stuff. I don't know. Maybe you're right, Ben, it is the simplest possibility, you know, being the most likely. But Matt, you got anything to add.
I'm too much of an old man to even consider this really, because in my mind, it's something you do in the days of social media for clout and for to show a video to your friends. That's all. It seems like to me.
Like TikTokers who are walking into people's houses in London just to film themselves there with no ulterior motive other than getting scores in the dopamine casino.
Quite possible. Gosh, guys, it didn't even occur to me that. I mean, who would have been around to film the video other than the crew themselves.
The heist crew, And that's what they're right.
Didn't did not even cross my mind. Of course, that's what happened. It was a total internet clout fiasco. It seems most likely to me. You're right that they did it for clout, did it for clicks. But also they can't claim it. I wonder where it was posted. I mean, it had to have been posted anonymously.
It, Yeah, that's what That's what was happening on TikTok with all the kias that were getting boosted for a long time there, you would take a video of yourself boosting a Kia and that was the exciting thing that you got to show off.
I don't know, nor guys. No, no, you're you're you're get off, get right off our lawn. You you kids? Uh yeah, it does. The CBS News article, by the way, just mentioned that the thieves posted the joy ride on social media, but I don't have a link to the original post. It's been like screen grabbed, so I'm not quite sure if they claimed credit for it or if I mean, obviously they're still being saw it, you know.
Uh.
There there was a comment from a commuter talking about how dangerous this could have potentially been for just you know, MTA users. Imagine somebody is in front of the train right now and they're hanging off and then say the train stops, they can fall on the tracks and the train would run over them. It would be over social media too much of the phone, said another commuter. And then they do mention that if you see something, say something.
NYPD's got a crime stopper hotline one e one hundred and five seven seven tips or for Spanish language one
eight eight five seven piece stop. I think I'm at time, guys, I did just want to mention another story really quickly, just about search for Sasquatch causing a dude in Canada in British Columbia to essentially lose his seeking of alimony of spousal support because in his search for Sasquatch he went on a camp out trip with an ex girlfriend, to which his wife responded with the suing for divorce.
He also claimed that injuries from subsequent Sasquatch expeditions caused him to not be able to work, and therefore claimed that he deserved spousal support. The judge, however, indicated that with all of this time you're spending searching for the Bigfoot,
you probably could have spent that time working. Also, in court documents, the gentleman claimed to have a above average IQ to be quite the smarty pants, and the judge also claimed that if you're so smart, these injuries should not prevent you from getting like a desk job or something. Not to mention the sizeable collection of sasquatch books and memorabilia paraphernalia femera that he seemed to possess that you know, probably relatively valuable as well, so sort of a silly story.
But you know, if you're gonna hunt for sasquatch, do it, do it on your own time. I guess, don't bring the courts into it. Probably not the best move on this guy's part.
Oh you guys, I just heard there's that gathering of the in the desert thing that's happening again this year, and I think Bakara David Bcaerr is going to be there this year. Guy from Expedition Bigfoot.
Yeah, over the check out our earlier interview with him a few years back. What a tree storyteller.
Not really past the story, No, But if you're ever passing through the North Georgia Mountains around about l a j. Check out Expedition Bigfoot. It's super cool and worth your time. Well that's it for me, y'all. Let's take a quick break here, a word from our sponsor, and then come back with some more strange news.
And we've returned, let's get a little doomsday music. It is with a heavy heart that I report it is now eighty nine seconds to midnight according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Well that's no time at all, Matt.
Eighty nine second, less than a minute and a half. Oh, dear gentlemen, what is the bulletin of Atomic Scientists?
I'm so glad you asked, Matt. The bulletin of Atomic Scientists goes back to the idea of doomsday clock, right, which was created created in the wake of nuclear weaponry deployment what we'll call the atomic age and generally now are pal Jack O'Brien. I was talking with him about this earlier. He has some strong feelings about the doomsday clock. But the bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, I would say,
is legit because they are performing a public service. They want people to know about threats to humanity overall capital h humanity from things like nuclear weapons, also things like climate chaos, and perhaps increasingly important in these our modern evenings, emerging technologies, including so called artificial intelligence.
Yeah, there you go, There you go. Is founded in nineteen forty five. You can think of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and their doomsday clock as the long tail regret of the folks who developed the nuclear weapon or you know, the hydrogen bomb. You know, it's literally Einstein and Oppenheimer and the folks at I think it is the University of Chicago who actually developed this stuff
through the Manhattan Project. And what they do is they've got a clock that says, hey, this is how close we are to well, at first it was to nuclear devastation, to some form of global nuclear catastrophe, but now they take into account basically all of the things that humans are doing and they kind of tally those together, and the clock represents how close we are to destroying ourselves essentially or the planet entire eighty nine seconds. The move
is literally one second. It was ninety seconds to midnight, And the folks at the bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are essentially saying, hey, everybody, even a one second move at this time is a big deal, and we are just signaling that there are unmistakable this is a quote unmistakable signs of danger that national leaders and societies are failing to change course on. Yeah, just pointing that out there. It's happening. It's a quote stark signal because the world
is already perilously close to the precipice. Isn't that poetic? Yikes, Before we get into the reason, like one of the major reasons I think this is important to what it's something Ben just hinted at let's give a quick update on a story that we did in the past on the Sodo Lithium Christiane Vite. Oh. This is a series of episodes that we put out not long ago about a Catholic sect in Peru that had a lot of problems.
Their leader, Luis Fernando Figari Rodrigo was kicked out of the group by papal decree as an excite the Vatican side. I like, yeah, the Vatican said, hey, you got to get out. He was kicked out back in August of last year, but the organization stuck around. And the reason why we're bringing up is because as of January twenty third, as reported by CNN and Christopher Lamb, the Pope has officially dissolved the entire Sodolidium Christiane Vite. So the entire
organization is now dissolved. And as we said in that episode, at one point they had around twenty thousand members, and you know that had dwindled a bit after all of the stuff about them in the news and specifically about Figari, and now they're just gone, which is just a weird thing to think the Pope can reach out and say, hey, this entire thing is now void and you can no longer do stuff if there's abuse going on, and it seems like, well, maybe if he can do that, couldn't
he stop abuses elsewhere? Just an excellent question with a tip of the old whatever that thing is on his head, the seoun.
Tip of the cone. Yeah, yeah, it's an excellent question. And please do check out our earlier work on this because it's quite disturbing. It brought up a lot of questions for us and our fellow listeners. When we were exploring this, what we saw was for brief recap, what we saw was this gradation of investigations and bureaucracy bedeviling honestly at every step, real results from those investigations. And as we had discussed earlier, Fagari went through several different
iterations of punishment. And when we ended the episode, when we ended our exploration, this group was still around. This group had not been officially kicked out, and what they had already done. We get into the weeds a little bit on the concept of lay organizations, meaning organizations within Catholicism that are not headed by clergy. We got into the weeds of just how ah, I hate to say it,
how hair splittingly tedious. It seemed to be from the Vatican, from the Holy See to figure out how they would address these very well proven, very well documented cases of a system of abuse. So overall, it does seem to be very good news at least that Pope Francis and the Vatican made this move. But you know, I remember we're talking about this, guys. It's better late than never. But also is it not very late for that decision
to be made. I mean, Matt, do we know what may have inspired this dissolution of the group.
Yeah, the Pope grewsome balls and said I'm going to take action. That's what happened. And we knew, we knew.
He had balls because of that special chair you have to sit in.
Oh don't. I don't know about those special chairs. All I'm saying is, and that's why I think it's important, is because this is a positive move for for somebody in that high seat to be able to say, hey, this is going to be over now. And we've seen, actually, this Pope take a couple of actions like that already, So hopefully it's a trend that moves towards fixing major issues that occur within the church. In organizations attached to the church.
Well, I mean it does seem like, with the gravity of this kind of stuff and just the nature of leadership and the Catholic Church, the too little, too late argument is tough because it takes the right person to come along and actually make effect change, you know, like you have to have a hope that is progressive enough and that sees this stuff is important enough to address, and you're not always going to have that. So I don't think I think it's a very positive thing, right.
Yeah, let me see it's positive, it is. The question is better late than ever. There's also the larger question of which I think you're you're you're alluding to so excellently here, Matt. The the Solidita is sort of we could think of it as a franchise or a spin off right of Catholicism overall. The question then becomes for a lot of survivors of abuse, what next, you know,
your holiness? Will will there be will they be similar scrutiny and accountability applied to the calls that were coming from inside the house more directly?
Yeah, well, that's the hope, right, And with regards to Fagari, his attorney reached out to CNN or CNN reached out his attorney responded, and the attorney emphasized that Fagari quote maintains his innocence and pointed out that he has not been convicted in a court of law for the allegations, which is another issue we talked about in the show.
Right, he kind of just got this permanent vacation right more or less?
Well, yeah, because a lot of parallel court system. Yeah, because in a lot of the issues that we're talking about here and the potential things for the Catholic Church to handle, they would handle them internally and there was you know, a lot of it would not be happening in a court of law. The hope is that that might change again, just hoping.
There's so much maybe the right word is inertia, maybe the right word is momentum, But there's so much internal theft that occurs within Catholicism and within a lot of spiritual hierarchies of this size, where the first question people ask is sometimes not we how do we protect the innocent, but first it's how do we protect our institution? How do we protect the church? You know, it reminds me
of for anybody's read the stand by Stephen King. There's a moment where the US government decides to cover up an outbreak of a very dangerous infection, and one of the kind of JSOK guys at the top says, if you find something terrible has happened to your institution, which is your parent, yes you will, you will address the tragedy, but first you cover your parent's body. And that's a terrifying thing because it is quite apt in these sorts of social dynamics, I would argue.
I would agree, oh yeah with you there. So, guys, jumping back to the doomsday clock and this concept of eighty nine seconds to midnight, one of the existential threats that humanity faces is a general artificial intelligence man creating something that is synthetic, that is smarter than man, that is far more powerful than man, and that is connected or rather interconnected through various systems that we use for everything. That is one of the things that humans have to
grapple with because that thing could spell our doom for doomsday. So, as you're hearing this on Monday, February third, the week before, some strange stuff happened. Some strange stuff got announced and the way that we exchange money and generate wealth out of nothing. That system was rocked a little bit, and that's it kind of gives us implications for the future.
So let's dive in here to the old stock market and the I don't know, the race for general artificial intelligence and all of this stuff, and the people who want to use AI as the way to make money and make industry stronger, faster, and more efficient. So if you jump to the week before that is the week of Monday, January twenty seventh, and to even get to that week, we have to go one week prior to the week of January twentieth, so we start here. There
was a massive rally on AI related stocks. Let's say that's chip makers. That's folks who are building the giant you know, the chat GPTs of the world. So the all of these companies, Microsoft, now everybody's kind of embroiled in figuring out how to make the data centers, how to get the power to the data centers, how to make the chips strong enough to make the AI systems function,
and especially at scale, all of that. On the week of January twentieth, there was a huge stock rally because incoming US President Donald Trump announced this thing called Stargate, Another Stargate, a different stargate, Stargate, a new AI.
Yeah it's not the movie. Yeah, it's the movie.
No, it's not the movie. It's also not Project Stargate, which was the thing we talked about on this show before. This was a new adventure, let's call it a joint venture, which essentially was a five hundred billion dollar investment from the United States government into companies that are building infrastructure for AI. So it's a it's a private sector plan
to inject half a trillion dollars. And it started out with one hundred billion dollars that would be given granted for this stuff, and then another four hundred billion dollars that would kind of be doled out over time as you know, specific subprojects within Project Stargate were we're doing really well well. So that was huge. And investors, you know, because anybody can just buy stock anybody that wants to. You could become an investor in an Nvidia if you
want to. And boy, howdy have people been investing in Nvidia.
Holy, it is a massive growth stock.
You know.
Up to this point, it's been like, you know, one of the hot buys of the past, you know, a handful of years.
Right, specifically because they're building the chips, the computer chips, power processors that can function at speed and with enough of them connected together at scale to make these these things that will eventually be you know, general artificial intelligence very likely, but are right now used in these in these large language learning models like chat GBT. Well, that same week, this startup out of China called deep Seek, which is the origins are a bit unknown as a
private company. Some of the folks involved are known, but really, like where are the money's coming from? Where, like what they want to do with it? Nobody knows, right, And yeah, exactly, it's a little hush hush, and we are in this giant battle to make the best, fastest, cheapest version of
this thing so that it can scale the fastest. Right. Well, they announced that they have a free AI assistant, a new version of their AI assistant that they've been developing for a long time that can use less data overall at a fraction of the cost of things like chat GPT.
Well and a fraction of the necessary resources.
Right passing and power.
Right, this is all of the narrative, Yeah.
Yes, yes, and guys, by Monday, January twenty seventh, Deep Seek in this new AI they just announced had overtaken chat GPT and downloads from Apple's app store. So like that, like it just happened. It was they announced it, and then everybody downloaded it exactly and the big old pot.
And when that occurred, it caused investors to get really afraid because all you know, if you imagine, like the big investors, not just individuals, these companies that have these these giant pools of money, they bought into Nvidia at such scale that a lot of them started scaling back just enough because they're not They didn't lose all their faith in Nvidia and all these other companies and Microsoft and Chat GPT, but they did think, oh, this could
be the disruptor, the real disruptor, right a little bit.
They chose a so think of it like a horse race. They chose their horse, and their horse was proprietary, closed source. And that is the fulcrum of the conversation now. And I love that we're getting to this because again, legislation as it stands is not equipped to handle or to really dress or litigate these sorts of technological breakthroughs, especially with everybody. Everybody is kind of playing uno are a card game with the pursuit of AGI artificial general intelligence.
That's sort of the golden goose. That's the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem. As I think was Yates would say, what are we learning here? We may be learning that. I don't know, man, it's Is it not a little bit hypocritical that inoal for some of the proprietary generators of llms like open ai to argue that deep seek is ripping them off.
Oh well, yeah, it's an arms race.
But wasn't there a story that indicated that deep seek may well have been trained using some pre existing models.
There's all kinds of scuttle butt occurring right now about that because they're not the only folks in town. Ali Baba just announce their own thing that is also cheaper and also you know, more efficient and can do all.
This Baba being massive more like an Amazon kind of right, Yeah, PRC's Amazon basically.
We Also I love arms race because I would say where it's it's a race to the bottom of affordability and a race to the top of accessibility.
Yes, and it is.
It's fascinating because there are very different ways to use this technology, reasons to arm you know, either a citizen or let's say an army, a navy with this type
of this type of service. And the whole reason we're talking about and why it is kind of an arms race, because what if we learned over time when thinking about stuff like the Vietnam War, thinking about Afghanistan and the USSR, thinking about Ukraine right now and what's going on, the expenditure of resources by a large country group in power is often the way that country is drained of their military might because they have no more resources to put
into manufacturing the weapons of war that would be used to fight. In this case, with this simple announcement and then everybody's reaction to that announcement, in Vidia lost in a single day five hundred and ninety three billion dollars worth of market value.
Yeah, and Matt, I'm sure you saw this is being called a Sputnik moment.
Oh yeah, exactly, Like somebody they it's a brand new thing, but it's not really a brand new thing, which I don't know really, it's not really spending mo. It's a I would I would say.
Well, Sputnik wasn't necessarily, I think, because there was a lot of technology leading to that, and that's what's leading to deep Seek. And you know, I love that we started this part with establishing the somewhat imaginative nature of investing in the stock market overall, because we're really quantifying faith in the ability of a company, are we not.
Yeah, yeah, Well, it is also weird that in Vidia's chips were used to build deep Seek, just the chips that were like a couple generations back that take a lot less power to function, and there's a couple other cool things about that.
They're a lot less finicky as well because it's proven technology.
Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna give you a quote here that was in the Reuter's article. Reuter's article is deep Seek sparks AI stock sell off in video post record market cap loss, And here is a quote from Brian Jacobson, the chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. He said, quote, if it's true that deep seek is the proverbial better mouse trap that could disrupt the entire AI narrative that
has helped drive the markets over the last two years. Again, all that money getting thrown at companies like in Vidia, it could mean less and for chips, less need for a massive buildout of power production to fuel the models, and less need for large scale data centers. Remember we talked about nuclear power plants coming back online just to fund these data centers, these massive servers that would fund
these lms. It would, it would, So maybe that is why it's a spunding moment, because it would fully change all of these long term plans that are that are being put in place right now. And who knows. The scary thing to me, guys, is that that happened on Monday, January twenty seventh. Then the next day Tuesday in Vidio, stock rose back up, not fully to where it was, but it rose way back up, and then it fell again,
and then it rose back up a little bit. And it does that and people are making fortunes and losing fortunes in days time because of human concepts of what is going to happen, just people's own nerves about what the future holds.
Right, that's not even counting short selling, that's not even counting you know, the various different financial I almost said it, all right, the various different financial loop de loops you can do. You know it will slide a hand, close up magic of trading at the moment.
And none of it is real money. It's all speculation that creates money in money, And dang, guys, if we can do that, you could we could literally solve the major problems that humanity faces right now.
I feel you, man.
I keep coming back to that too. I was I was re listening to because I'm actually a fan of our show. I was re listening to a conversation we had earlier last week about the nature of being a billionaire. Things are booming for billionaires right now. You have everybody's life is sort of a choose your own adventure paperback to give myself a dated reference, And if you're a billionaire, you have more choices for your adventures. So why not
fund sanitation or literacy? Why not fight disease? Things like that? To your point, Matt, if this stuff is really as fabricated as it does as it does seem to be, then we have to ask about the ethical quandaries involved, you know, And I love that you're pointing out what's happening here. As a disruptor. Right, Imagine a great chess game, right, or maybe even think of Chinese checkers where you can
have multiple players on the same board deep seek. For a lot of these folks privately, it's as though a cat walked up while you were playing the game and just went man at a bunch of the pieces on the board. Now what happened to all your careful plans. You've evolved a system that is inherently, inherently dependent upon the propriety nature of discovery, upon the idea of holding that from the greater public right such that it could
be commodified or monetized. And someone else comes in and says, hey, this is a thing.
We figured out.
We leap frog the technology a little bit, and we made it not only cheaper for us to make, we made it open source. So hey, bud, if you've got some ideas, just drop by GitHub or whatever and post them and then maybe together we can make a better thing. If you have already expended a lot of a lot of your nest egg, right, if you've already gambled on the idea that this proprietary stuff will be a faucet that you own a piece of, then this is a very dangerous thing, even if it ends up being better
for the world overall. It's just such a contradictory cognitive place to be, you know.
Yeah, yeah. I'd like to end with a quote from John Mechlin, editor over at the Blotan of Atomic Scientists, and it's going to go back to that precipice quote, but it's the full quote, and I think this is what's most important here. Quote. In setting the clock to one second closer to midnight eighty nine seconds, we send a stark signal because the world is already perilously close
to the precipice. A move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster. So we are literally we're counting in seconds now, guys, to potentially the end, not for not for you, not for me, for everybody.
So just as we're thinking about all this stuff occurring, I don't know what we do to increase the positive thing and to increase the the hope that we can hold in ourselves that stuff's going to get better. But we need it, so let's do that.
I'll tell you we should call Matt. We need Fujai on the case, there we go the lucky Chinese Quirgi cop. I mean, I'm giving sub levity here because I agree with you, we need it. Each second is becoming more expensive, not only to exist within, but to reverse the course. What we're seeing are a wild agglomeration, or is a wild agglomeration of factors and aims that often contradict. And I keep saying it, but this is an elephant's making
war situation, and it's very important to remember. If you're hearing this, you are the grass Andrew.
And you're delicious for those elephants. You're so tasty.
Speaking of this, we.
Want to hang out with you, folks. Please do come check out our upcoming show on air Fest in Brooklyn. I can't believe it. We got in. You can check us out on February nineteenth at National Sawdust. See the show at seven thirty. Light spoiler. Join the show at six thirty. What are we talking about? Go ahead and ask us. We try to be easy to find online. You can find us via email, a telephonic device, or just hit us up on these inters and these nets.
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