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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Long time listeners, fellow conspiracy realist, this is our weekly Strange News segment. We are recording this on Wednesday, October eleventh. By the time you hear this, some of the situations we're looking at will have undoubtedly escalated. As you may have heard, doubtlessly if you are on
social media. The largest largest attack in recent history in the well in the modern history of Israel occurred quite recently, and Matt Nol, many of our fellow listeners and I have been keeping a close eye on this. We want to be as always objective and transparent in our explorations here as we record right now, the conflict continues and all signs show that it will escalate. This is something that you have heard a lot about you may have
personal experience with it. We're going to talk about several specific angles of this, and before we conntinue with that, we also want you to know we're going to talk about other strange news that is happening. Armenia is still in a lot of trouble. The war in Ukraine continues unabated, and I guess without talking too much about ourselves, you know, to be very clear, we are not of air lineage. We do have some Jewish heritage, two of the three
of us. We also we also exercise empathy. As we have said frequently in the past, when empires make war, it is the grass that suffers right, and so as we record, there are millions of innocent people who will bear the brunt of this. We're going to talk predominantly about this situation. We're going to explore some questions about the weaponization of social media online misinfo or disinfo. Check out our earlier episode to learn the difference between those.
We're going to learn about the rise of weight loss drugs around the world, and we are also maybe we start here, we're also going to talk about the proposed evacuation of Gaza and Noel matt All of US Doc Holliday as well. We have been reading about this recently. Would it be helpful for us to give like a timeline of what happened between now and our last strange news.
I think it would. This is definitely a historical conflict and one that has a lot of nuance to it, and I think what's been happening over the last week is, for reasons we're going to get into in a bit, a little bit tough to fully wrap one's head around. So I think even a little bit of a recap would be super helpful for me personally and I think probably most everybody listening.
So here's the high level timeline. You can read about this in any mediu sword on the planet now. This month, Hamas, which is the ruling party, also acknowledged as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the United States Israel, Hamas launched the biggest attack on Israel in years from the enclave of the Gaza Strip, and this was an attack with a level of sophistication that was unprecedented in ever right, this huge attack, hundreds of people dying, thousands of people injured.
You can see and we'll talk about this in a moment. You could see horrific things social media and the news about this, and they did stuff that they'd never done before, like launching Cassan rockets is precedented. But they had paragliders attacking a rave This is true along the border, and they also took hostages. They took not just is Israeli civilians,
but foreign nationals back into Gaza. At this point, as we record, there is an ongoing hot conflict and the Government of Israel, newly unified, is hammering Gaza and retaliation for the invasion, the incursion, the war crimes committed, some of which are clearly provable and true. And the question now, one of the things that's popping up this week is the idea of how to safely evacuate the two million people living in Gaza from the counter attack of the
Nation of Israel. The issue is that for decades and decades decades this part of the Middle East, Gaza has been bound and barricaded. The Nation of Israel controls their access to water, their access to electricity, their access to resources. There are a lot of questions if you are if you study intelligence agencies, it is a known fact, up until this previous weekend that Masad is one of the best intelligence agencies in the game, So how did they
miss an attack of this magnitude? And that's a question that remains unanswered. There's also there's also the far more important question of saving innocent people in a wartime scenario. And around the world people are asking, not just people you know on Twitter whatever, not just people in regular civilian life, but people at the top of your favorite or least favorite nations are all asking where can the innocent folks of Gaza escape? Where can the innocent folks
of Israel escape? Where can the civilians go when the guns start firing and the bombs start dropping and the war crimes occur. It's a question that is terrifying, and hopefully by the time this Strange News segment publishes, these will be questions that have been answered. But if you look at it, if you look at the map Gaza being barricaded, there's one crossing, it's called Rafa crossing that
would allow people to exit from Gaza into Egypt. And the issue with this is that recently, as we record, a military spokesperson for Israel recommended that people get to the Rafa Crossing, and there the idea was you could exit Gaza before before the bombs hit, before you and your families were killed. The problem is the IDEF bombed the Rafa crossing and the people who had heard this news pre bombing and tried to cross, several lost their lives and had to return to an active war zone.
Does this seem I'm hoping to be fair and objective about what's happening. Does this seem like editorializing aside? Does this seem like accurate information?
According to the reports we're all looking at, because I think we're all looking at the same you know, general section of sources right from Al Jazeera to the BBC, like literally just trying to get a cross section of all these different sources to find out what's happening. I would say that's the best version, or my at least
understanding of the best version of what occurred. That crossing you're talking about there in the southwest corner going into Egypt is literally the only other place you could escape, and it's already a crazy, tightly controlled border crossing, and it's a crossing that's been controlled that tightly. Good golly
for you know me? I think since two thousand and seven ish something like that, where you can only have a certain number of people cross that border like in or out in a day, and it's in the hundreds, right.
And it's with prior approval. So there were many many people civilians from Gaza who attempted to make the Rafa crossing only to find they did not have prior approval. And there were also, of course many people who tried to go there or previously injured or killed as a result of the bombing, which continues as we record this afternoon. And you'll look at this, we were talking about this
offline in our group chat. You'll look at these reports and you will see a proliferation of unsourced claims about things. One thing you will see that is different is images,
still images, video footage. We need to be very careful with those still images because unfortunately, there is a proliferation of misattributed images, misattributed video footage, wherein someone will claim that a thing has occurred on some side of the conflict, and if you do just a little bit of digging, then you will see that that is from a different time in the history of this conflict, or indeed a different conflict in a different part of the world altogether.
Right now, One of the most harrowing things to recognize is that the nation of Israel does control access to resources for this enclave of Gos, which means that Imagine if you are in a population of two million people and you don't have control over your water, your gas, your electricity to some degree, or access to food. Imagine if there is a power that can cut that off, and that power tells you to leave town, and you say, I will leave town, and then that same power cut
off your way to leave town. It's harrowing.
Even if you can leave town, isn't a big issue, like you know, there's really no This is a people that has kind of been rejected by other nearby places in terms of like having the ability to seek refugee status or to seek asylum. You know, Egypt I believe is very much not welcoming to these folks.
That is correct, Yeah, And you could say the same all about Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, each of which has their own troubled history with people who are Palestinian. You know, Lebanon had a civil war about this, and we have to be very very careful in how we speak about this. We are not experts, we're not math surgeons or whatever.
But we do understand a little bit about geography, and we do understand a little bit about logistics, such that we can say, as the plans stand now, as the statements of the government stand, at this point, there is not a realistic way to evacuate these people unless something changes. The Biden Administration of the United States issued issued a press release wherein they said they're actively working to evaluate
an evacuation plan. But the hard truth that the West doesn't often like to hear nor speak about, is that in the Arab world there is not unity right. There are differing aims, differing factions, likes and dislikes, and we cannot we as a civilization, simply cannot paint with a broad brush. That is dangerous. It will lead to the loss of innocent lives. And it's also, I don't know, it's also just it's mind boggle honestly that Masade didn't
know or didn't prepare this was coming. Apparently the Nation of Egypt sent warnings well in advance. They said something's in the wind. And this was not acknowledged by what everyone in the intel community thought was one of the top performers. They just ignored it, even though they have control of one of the most heavily surveilled parts of the world, and massade.
For maybe folks that aren't is up on this and I had to double check myself. That's the Israeli intelligence organization, right, Like it's sort of like their CIA or you know, KGB or whatever, right.
Yeah, And their capacities are worldwide. They have force projection, they're very good at surveillance.
Well, and I mean, you know, I think and again, this is not a I truly do not and I want to be more familiar with this stuff, but it's just something that I'm not educated enough to fully speak on. But it is my understanding that, you know, it is not a controversial belief or opinion to believe that, you know, Jewish people should have a state, you know, they should
have this homeland, you know that. But within that understanding, there's also a lot of corruption, you know, in their government and mistreatment of these you know, these other folks that they find inconvenient. And I think a lot of the controversy surrounding this is like, how do you support Israel, you know in its like perfect form, but also support
Palestinian civilians, you know. And obviously Hamas is a very I don't know, I mean, it's even even controversial, maybe seeming to call a terrorist organization, but it is an organization that is, you know, in charge of this part of this region, and they have some very nasty tactics and what they did to Israeli kids and the Israeli civilians in this recent situation is absolutely unforgivable. But then you have Israel doubling down and retaliating by killing Palestinian civilians.
Hamas killed in the most recent incursion, Hamas is believed to have killed more than one thousand people. It's insane, many civilians. That's not counting friendly fire, which will probably that will probably come out after the fog of war lifts. Israel has Israel has become in many in many cases, in international pariah for the continued actions taken against people of not just Gaza, but the West Bank, which is
ruled by a different organization, the PLO. And there is a lot of speculation at this point, right, there's a lot of smoky backroom stuff happening. Right, This did unify net Yahoo's government. Uh, this did uh, to galvanize some other some other forces that are absolutely opposed to the
existence Israel and absolutely have no problem killing civilians. What we're looking at is the the genesis of a total war situation in which Geneva Conventions, red Cross rules, all that stuff, Uh, they're not being applied on the ground. And this is incredibly dangerous for the world. Innocent people are dying on both sides. It's not some sort of thing where they get to vote. To be very clear, democracies out the window at that point. And with this
we know we started with a bummer. It's very important. We hope by the time that this strange news segment publishes that there will be an evacuation route for the innocent people of Gasa. We do hope that the people living in Israel, innocent civilians again are going to be able to escape to avoid the atrocities, the bloodshed that is occurring. But for now, let's pause for a word
from our sponsors. Will return and maybe we continue this theme and we talk about social media, which has become weaponized and is very much in this conflict and other atrocities going forward. It very much needs to be considered another theater of war.
And we're back, and you know, I mean that's obviously something that we just couldn't not talk about. Ben, I think you did a fabulous job, from my perspective, personally educating me about some of the details. I know this is very much your wheelhouse, these kinds of international affairs, and I think I largely understood, you know, the nature of this ongoing conflict, but I mean, it really is tough to fully understand without being there, without being you know,
on the ground. And while you know, we may remember things like the Arab Spring and how Twitter was such a big deal back then in terms of like disenfranchised people on the ground in a war conflict or in a wartime situation, being able to communicate and being able to spread information to the rest of the world. That is largely what led to such an outpouring of support for that situation, you know, and I think probably moved
the needle to some degree. Arguably. I'm not saying yay, social media, you save the world, but you know, that was a big new story that was largely what really gave Twitter it's kind of clout in terms of like this is a powerful tool. This is something that is of value, you know, for people that don't have a voice. Well, since then, a lot's change, first and foremost, well not maybe not first and foremost. But it's no longer called Twitter. It's now called X. I hate calling it that. I
think it's a goofy name. I think we all feel that way. Do everything I can at the end of the show not to just leave it at that, but it is what it is. And that's because it was bought by a guy who didn't seem to really want to buy it. He seemed to try to make this whole deal as like a bit of a troll, I guess, and then was sort of forced I guess legally into buying it because he'd gone too far, he'd passed the
point of no return. And since that acquisition, you know, under the I guess auspices, I'm gonna make it better, I'm gonna streamline it, I'm gonna make it profitable. This is Elon Musk talking. I can't. I'm not gonna do the voice. But he does have one that's a little
little interesting. He sounds. He sounds just kind of like a patrician, you know, caricature, you know what I mean, Like from the olden times, like someone who would be waving a hanky, you know, and having his his uh man servant lay down a lay down some sort of coat over a mud puddle that he may not sully his shoes. That's just what he sounds like to me.
But say what you will about the guy. Seems pretty clear that the choice, many of the choices he's made at Twitter now x have not gone very well, uh financially or functionally speaking. You know, the Twitter always had a pretty serious team, multiple teams dedicated to stemming the flow of misinformation or disinformation, you know, removing problematic posts, hate speech, things like that. That was one of the first things Xelon Musk cut, you know, like to save money.
You could argue on the face of it, but one might dig a little deeper and argue that maybe he didn't want that stuff removed. Maybe he, you know, in the interest of quote unquote unbridled free speech, he felt that this kind of stuff ought to be able to stand, and that the great I guess the cream rises to the top kind of scenario and everything else will be well in its due time, be eliminated by common sense
and the great you know, collective unconscious that is the Internet. Well, that's not really how it works, because it really hard to discern what is true and what is absolutely bogus. Especially in Ben you used fog of war language. You know,
that's I think that that's appropriate here. When something this big and devastating happens, there's all kinds of takes on it, and there's all kinds of agendas floating around people that want the narrative to be perceived in a certain way, and what better way of doing that than to spread
your narrative in under the guise of truth. And a recent change that Musk made that I think happen literally maybe for five days, maybe a week prior to this, this attack or this this this event was eliminating text headlines from tweets and replacing them with an image on its own. So even before this this, you know, opportunity
for bad actors to spread misinformation. Those image headlines were being gamed in a really gnarly nefarious way where you could easily upload an image that would be misleading or even like AI images, right, we know that's old other ball of wax that would create engagement but not necessarily be any way related to what the content actually is. And you know, I guess in Musk's mind, images get more clicks than words, you know, but that's not the
nature of the platform. This platform has always been about words. That's its whole bread and butter is these headlines. And now the misinformation is spreading even more rampantly because of this change. Well, let's get into some of the detail. Starting off, do you guys have any thoughts about just in general, where Twitter is now versus where it was when it seemed to be just gaining the accolades of like, you know, social justice people, you know, the world over.
Yes, I was gonna say, AFK, no comment.
Uh yeah, the the management of Twitter or x need Twitter has become increasingly under fire, right, or has found itself increasingly under fire due to what is seen as some reactionary, free wheeling functions or activities on the part
of Musk. One of the things you mentioned, Noel, was the the firing of so much support staff, right, so many of the people who were meant to ensure reliable, predictable function of the platform, as well as people who were meant to do something we used to call back in the day, the separation of church and state, meaning that advertorial content, advertising disguised as editorial and actual content.
This is how stuff works. To put a fine point on it, It was under attack for getting rid of those folks, the folks who would be seen as sort of the conscience of that and critics will say that Musk has Musk has increasingly gone to a more right wing kind of ideology in this person in his personal life. We have not met this person, we haven't kicked it with him, you know, so we're not sure what happened. But the way the deal went down, in general, the
acquisition of Twitter was pretty sketchy. It involved what the m and A Bress merger and acquisition bros call a poison pill, such that he was somewhat forced to go through with the deal even when it was against you know,
the ostensible financial interest. What you will see if you are active on that platform, and I'm probably the most active of the four of us at this point, what you will see is that there there are algorithmic changes which seem to prioritize things with which Eilaud Musk agrees. His tweets are definitely prioritized. Right since the acquisition, the move has been similar to like a private equity firm taking over a platform like quote unquote cut the fat
and monetize or maximize things. So there are as we record, there are ideas is being floated out about making it pay to play service right, making it no longer a public square of communication, which it was during the Arab Spring, but it was always social media was always heavily influenced by corporate and state powers. There's there's never been a free Internet forum if we're if we're being completely honest
about it. However, again critics, critics will argue with some quantitative evidence that this trend has accelerated given Musk's acquisition of the platform, to the point where voices or perspectives or evidence that contradicts claims of Twitter's main character, Musk. There's there's this strong argument that contradicting opinions or perspectives are being actively throttled, and you don't have to look
far to find that evidence. That's not saying that all voices are wiped out or canceled on the platform, but they are definitely getting suppressed to some degree.
I mean, inter your point, band like the whole purchasing of the blue check mark thing. You know, that led to a lot of prioritization. You got to get something for your money, right, and that's I think how it works. Those posts kind of come up first, and that goes fully counter to the idea of folks who maybe either don't they can't afford it, or don't want you whatever. They're like, they need the service now, they don't have time to buy the goddamn blue check mark, and their
voices are being buried. Not to mention Musk himself doing some pretty serious big upping of some notorious outlets for misinformation and also some notorious outlets for anti semitism, you know, like you know that that some posts that he I think maybe only recently deleted, or maybe he didn't delete. It all linked to an organization, let's see the War Monitor.
I believe there was a post saying something to the effect of the overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are Zionists and telling correspondents, yeah, back in June to quote, go worship a Jew, little bro, you know, and this is this is Musk the CEO the front Well he's not, he's not the CEO officially. What is it, Linda Yakarino. He made the kind of fall person, frankly who's coming out to clean up his messes.
He does the thing that unfortunately happens pretty often in money making endeavors. He is set up with a main character syndrome is not a ding on him. It's an injective observation. He wants to be there, the accolades and the compliments and the dopaminea the dopamine casino. But if something goes wrong, he wants to pass the buck. And to be quite honest, if you have ever had a job, you've met someone like that exactly.
And he Okay, let me just go to the Washington Post article by Joseph Men. He has a quote from Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington Center for It in Forum Public he says, anecdotal evidence that X is failing the stress test is plentiful. Go on the platform, do a search on Israel or Gaza. You don't have to scroll very far to find dubious or debunked information. And yeah, to the previous point that I was making, or the previous detail that I was
pointing to. He did leave those replies up to those two accounts that you know, the one that I mentioned, the War Monitor, and an additional one. There are all kinds of little Oh that's what it's called Scent Defender. Yeah, that's it, at war Monitors. And he added at Scent Defender and at War Monitor. And he has one hundred and fifty million followers. You know, this is a big deal.
He has a lot of fanboys. You know, he has a lot of acolytes, I guess, you know, these kind of elon stands that that will repeat whatever he puts out there, you know, whether he likes it or not, you know, and whether the rest of the world likes it or not. You know, he is the kind of king of the influencers. You know, one could argue.
Did you see the European Union recently gave him a warning you're gonna yeah, ax him for six percent of the social platform's income.
I didn't see that detail, but that's fascinating, not to mention the lawsuit with the Anti Defamation League, you know, and all and he he he likes to come out and make these grand statements about how you can't trust the media, trust X trust me. But then he regularly and you know, absolutely verifiably elevates absolutely, you know, toxic information. Yeah.
Oh, just to clarify, yeah, you six percent thing for anyone who hasn't heard, I'm specifically referring to the European Union warning that if X continues to spread disinformation about Hamas attacks on Israel and what they describe as fake news, he will be fined six percent of X's income or X will be shut down entirely in the European Union. Notice, they're not saying six percent of X's profits because the platform is not profitable.
Absolutely, it's less profitable than it's ever been, and there's lots of questions as to what it's true active user
count really looks like. You know, that scent Defender account that I mentioned again, This Washington Post article quotes a researcher at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Research Lab named Emerson T. Booking, who categorizes, you know, characterizes rather that account sent Defender as absolutely poisonous, regularly posting wrong and unverifiable things, inserting random daitorialization, and trying to juice its
paid subscriber count. There were posts that were elevated that the Prime Minister of Israel was injured and then the hospital You know, all kinds of things like that, just little little details like that that when people run with it and repost it, it just absolutely intensifies that fog of war that you're talking about. I just wanted to mention this in you know, parallel with the Arab spring stuff. And I know that, you know, Twitter has never been perfect.
The Internet's its own, it's a toxic place in a lot of ways, but that was a moment where it's like, oh, wow, this stuff can actually have some you know, some positive impact. And it just feels like it's fallen so far and now it's literally just kind of like a breeding ground for the worst kind of people.
It's definitely awful, guys. I just I would like to just point out that I feel I'd like to state this out loud. I feel tremendously confused about exactly what happened, because I feel as though every outlet I'm reading, every video, I'm watching, every news piece, so not the social media side, not the Twitter side or acts or whatever it is, but every news piece to me feels like I am being emotionally manipulated one way or the other. Whether that yet no, I'm and I feel as though it's constant
when it comes to this topic. So I'm automatically putting up defense mechanisms to try and be skeptical of these things, no matter what it's about, no matter you know, if it's something horrible that ammostive, is something horrible that is real, there's something horrible, I'm just I feel overwhelmed by it,
and it's a horrible feeling of I think confusion. And as I'm going through you know, some of the articles that you guys have found for these first two topics, I just I feel as though I'm lost and they stayed in there that when there are people in Gaza who are attempting to flee from the bombs and the explosions, they are feeling confused about what exactly is happening because they are attempting to get information the same way we are,
right from from various sources. So it is it's just like enough, I don't know, but I don't know what, I don't know what the what the response is, do you guze. We used to look to Twitter, to the social media feeds to be like, oh, that's actually what's going on. Because we've got some sources that we trust that are on the ground that are actually filming things that are actually reporting.
Right, it's been infiltrated, it's it's been co opted and and and it's been it's so cluttered now that it's just another trash pile, you know what I mean. It's it's just it's worse even because a lot of the most toxic and gnarly voices on the internet have you know, and the in the world have figured out how to kind of game it to their own nefarious ends. Saw it with you know, all kinds of misinformation being spread
during elections and the use of it. It's because you know, you use the word the phrase weaponized, Ben, That's absolutely what it is. And it's hard to know how to walk that back. I think there are you know, other social media platforms like blue Sky that are trying to be more you know, invite only and stuff. But the whole point of Twitter is that it's already there. The scale is there. You know, it's been the platform of choice for this kind of communication, and now it's just
been absolutely taken over. You know, and maybe those people were always there, they just relate to your point, Ben, They've just been given more of a voice and they're rising to the top because it isn't a democratization of information, it's it's a lot of it's paid, which is hell almost like the equivalent of like paying a bribe to get your platform raised, you know, I mean, it's not based on merit, it's not based on validity of information.
It's just based on money. And then this is all too you know, it's so transparent because it's all Musk's kind of desperate, ham fisted attempt to make the platform profitable no matter what.
Did you know he likes Warrior though it looks like the guy who figured out he's the guy who figured out Lauren Michaels does have a price to make you a host on Saturday Night Live whatever, you know what, I don't want to say too much, but I think it's an important point you're bringing up.
Guys, I don't nowhere else to go from here. I think it's just very clear that something's amiss in terms of you know, to your point, Matt, I mean, I feel the same way, and it made me even question which parts of the narrative that I think I know do I even know? Yeah, it makes your head spin.
I'm only speaking personally, but it's a terrible situation when you're you're attempting to get the best information that you can find, and you're looking at various sources. You're watching CNN and a live feed right of Anderson Cooper interviewing somebody, a witness who went through something horrifying. But internally you're questioning, Wow, it feels weird to me? Why this interview feels weird?
Because it's they're trying to make me feel things. They're trying to make me have an emotional reaction as I'm watching this. And again maybe that's me being hyper vigilant and maybe a bit out of my mind in my own right, but it when you feel that now, after you know, having all the conversations that we've had over the years, it feels like manipulation, and it's kind of it's scary to me.
It is indeed, it is indeed. So let's leave it at that, and hopefully we can come back with something a little less dreadful for this last segment and this week's strange news. So we're right back.
Hey, welcome back to the show. Have you ever wished you could somehow suppress your insatiable appetite for revelation? Style apocalypse kickoff current events. Well, hey, we feel that too, So let's talk about No, let's talk about prescription weight loss injectable adjuncts, which is it's one of our words of the day. It's a vocabulary word, adjunct. It's just something that's additional, some measure that is an addition that's meant to supplement or enhance something that already is there.
It's like adjunct professor.
Hey, there we go. See I just don't use it enough so it becomes vocabulary word for me. We're gonna be reading from Reuters in a This is kind of where the story begins, and then it goes down a rabbit hole from here. Weight loss drugs fuel boom for firms that fill syringes. That sounds a little bit weird. There's some kind of boom for companies that specifically fill syringes with drugs, and uh, they're being helped out by new weight loss drugs. This was written by Maggie fick
fic K on October ninth. I'm gonna read just one sentence here from that article and then we'll get to trucking contract drug manufacturers seeking to tap into the booming market for weight loss. Drugs are investing billions with a b of dollars to expand or build factories that fill the injection pens used to administer treatments like Novo Nordisks, Wegovy and they are specifically phil finish specializations that we're talking about here, which is another term we have to
talk about. Phil finish is the act of taking bulk drugs and placing them in some kind of specialized container that has been treated correctly. Right, everything in there is sterile as it can possibly be, and then that stuff is all sent off to pharmacies across the land for us to inject ourselves and eat or whatever you do with the specific drugs they're making.
And a lot of those that come with the ones you're describing, their like specialized kind of like syringes that are branded and they're like these whole little n kind of deals. Right.
Oh, yes, there there are proprietary for each manufacturer, So Novo Nordisk has their own type of auto pen or whatever they want to term it. Then Eli Lilly, who was also coming out with a new drug very soon, guys, they put out this press release for I think it's Mount Jarro. That's the name of their new diabetes two slash weight loss treatment injectable that's been out for a while. Okay, well, Munjaro. This is like the way you say it too. It
sounds like it sounds like coffee. I think that's how you say it's m o U. N your site it says mound like as in mountain mount jarro.
Uh.
But okay, this is their press release quote. Mountjaro will be available in six doses and will come in Lily's well established autoinjector pen with a pre attached hidden needle that patients do not need to handle or see.
Oh, assassin's creed stuff exactly, also literally dope, but not quick question with this. So this is sort of a rarefied industry, right Is this similar to is this a situation where there are only a certain number of manufacturers creating these some proprietary version of these fil finished syringes.
Well, gosh, guys, this one gets so complicated so quickly. If you look at let's take two of the drugs that are available right now on the market with govy and ozepic, both made by Novo Nordisk. So they manufacture the stuff which is really the stuff called semiglutide and it's just inside these pens with some other stuff. Both of those products are manufactured by Novo, but they have also brought in other people, other manufacturers to also manufacture
those drugs. And then once they're manufactured, they can either be packaged, you know, at whatever the plant is that Novo Nordisk has in various parts of the world, or they can basically get a contractor a whole separate facility through a third party company to do that same process. And a lot of these big manufacturers have been going
out to a bunch of other contractors. So this story is really about all of the facilities that are either being built or upgraded to handle the amount of these weight loss drugs that are kind of, let's say, masquerading as type two diabetes drugs, because that's really what they're for, and there are a ton of human beings on the planet that could really use these products for type two diabetes.
Off label use is what's making them blow up exactly.
And it's interesting too, because the off label use oftentimes won't get it covered by your insurance. Yes, you have to pay a full price for it. Oh guys, she was almost leg by design. Maybe like as they're just probably cleaning up. I can only imagine.
For real they're clean up. Let's talk about price, but really quickly jumped to a Reuter's article from August of this year stating that Nova Nordisk hired Thermo Fisher, another one of these big I guess drug companies, chem companies, whatever you want to call them, as a second full time manufacturer for Wagovy because they needed more Wagovy. So you can look online at the current price of a prescription or non prescription let's say, access to wogovy right now.
So according to this the list price that's as of this year for Wagovy is one three and forty nine dollars per package, which breaks down to two hundred and sixty nine dollars and eighty cents per week, or sixteen and eighty eight dollars and twenty four cents per year if you were just using it without insurance.
So that's pretty hefty, right, that's a pretty hefty cost for most people. And I assume these prices largely apply to like the United States, Canada, the anglosphere.
Is that correct, Yes, And that's if you are using it without insurance. Probably not always, but most likely for its weight loss properties rather than its type two diabetes uses, even though it kind of does the same thing in both, Kate, it does. The drug has the same effect in both cases. One is to modify blood sugar or you know, to keep blood sugar stable. The other way is to suppress appetite.
Like viagra as multiple uses, and they make money off one.
The exact same thing. Man, I don't know, but yes, it makes sense.
I may. I think I mentioned this in the past, but I'm actually taking one of these. I have found it to be quite effective. But I was prescribed it by my doctor, the Munjaro one, and my insurance rejected it because I don't have type two diabetes, so it was like to actually pay for it out of pocket. It's like thirteen hundred dollars or fifteen hundred dollars or something like that for a month's supply, which is just kind of you know, to try. I'm not that overweight.
I just wanted to try it because it's like it seemed like it could be effective for helping reduce appetite and pairing it with you know, exercise and all that stuff that I'm doing. I thought it'd be worth a go, but it was just no way. So I met somebody or through a friend, I was referred to this dietician who they use these compounding labs that make their own
version of it. But then I realized that was sort of sketchy because I looked it up and I was like, wait a minute, this is like locked down intellectual property. What the hell is in these compounded versions of these pharmaceuticals? You know? Yeah, So I actually discontinued use because it was freaking me out. But the point is the demand is so high that there are people that will roll the dice on these other potentially I'm not saying they're all on the ferry. It's it just was too much
for me. But in terms of like what is this, I don't understand how this can be. It is too good to be true.
Well, everybody wants in the game. Pfizer is right now working on drugs that will have the same effect, but rather than being an injectable through a needle like this or syringe, they want to have something you could take orally orally, yeah.
They would have those freaked out by needles.
Well, and again I guarantee you all the other major drug manufacturers are trying to find that kind of thing too. That's why the Mount Jarrow was such a big deal, because it's a slightly different thing. It's not semiglutide. It's their own little, you know, gluatide that they can patent. But all those the reason why it works, guys, and why it's actually kind of scary goes on to our next part of this. And we can't go all the way down the rabbit hole here, but let's just talk
about this quickly. These drugs, using semiglutide or whatever other proprietary outide, they they mimic all of our bodies appetite suppressing hormones, the stuff that makes us say, oh, I'm not hungry right now? Right that just that happens in our body. After we've eaten for a while, your body goes, you don't need any more food, We're good for.
A bit trigger saciation.
Yes.
And and they're known as g LP one agonists, which is glucagon like peptide one receptor agonist. You can look that up if you wish. It just means they're binding to the right receptors to make your body say, hey, I'm good, don't need any more food. And they, oh
my god. This is from that same article. Analysts estimate that this section, these GLP one agonists, the section of drugs could be worth as much as one hundred billion dollars within a decade, including the oral treatments that are being developed to as we talked about by Pfizer and
other drug companies. But you guys. On October fifth, CNBC put out this article weight loss drugs may be linked to stomach paralysis other rare but severe issues, study says, And the whole point of this is it's a study coming out of let's see research journal JAMMA, and it's a study showing that the effect, the appetite suppression effect having those receptors activated by these drugs, if you do it too long and too much of it, rarely a
person's stomach can stop digesting food because by suppressing appetite, you're actually slowing down digestion a little bit. So if you've got food in your body all ready, it's moving slowly, more and more slowly through your digestive system than if you were not taking this drug. And if if you get too much of it basically your stomach, you could get stomach paralysis to where your body is not processing food at all, and you are not getting the nutrients
that you need. And it can also potentially, because of those problems, give you a blockage basically to where food that is not digested properly tries to move through your system, but it unfortunately cannot.
Also jam a journal of the American Medical Association, Yes, thank you, famous bunch of crackpots. They work with a bit poop. Obviously, gemas GEMMA is legit, and they do publish like when they publish the research, it is peer reviewed. And I think, Matt, you're making an incredibly important point
about this nature of side effects. You know, living in one of the few countries in the world where it's legal to have vague pharmacyceutical ads on mass media, I think a lot of humans in the US forget that just because a side effect appears to have a low percentage does not mean it probably won't happen to you. You might win that lottery, you know.
What I mean?
Yeah, dude. And again, even though this is a serious study out of a serious journal, it is stating in that study this is very rare, but there's a possibility that users of these drugs that do not have type two diabetes, are of there at a higher risk of developing something like one of these rare things?
I have another question before you met, So, these folks who run this specific industry for these type of syringes that are needed, they have, as you said, they have reached out to contract right to manufacture their's stuff under
license to fulfill demand. Does it remind you a little bit of when the pop music singer Adele absolutely broke the vinyl manufacturing industry, because right, right, so, I'm asking here like, instead of you know, a bunch of non Adele musicians being unable to publish their stuff on vinyl, is there a risk that putting all of the manufacturing capabilities towards this you know, genre or class of drugs?
Does that mean that there are other people who need those syringes to to medicate themselves with other conditions non related to diabetes or weight loss? Are they going to have a more difficult time obtaining medicine?
I don't personally see that as an issue because the manufacturing the syringes themselves is well, I don't know unless it's in the Reuter's article and I just missed it, But I don't think so. I think right now, the shortages are of the drugs themselves and not of the what would you call that, the parts needed to.
Delivery mechanism apparatus. The cops would call it paraphernalia.
Ah, the paraphernalia for the drugs, the applicators, the adjuncts to the drugs themselves. There is right, yeah, but I don't know. I would just highly recommend everybody who is thinking about maybe trying one of these do some of the research because it doesn't show, at least everything I've seen doesn't show that it's a scary thing or something you should be worried about. It is definitely something that the drug manufacturers are super stoked that you and everybody else are so into it, right.
Right right, And the Nation of India has entered the chat when it comes up proprietary or drug price and R and d oh yeah yeah, how far out are we from a generic version of both the paraphernalia of the substances?
Oh dude, I don't know.
Oh got close? And Noel, I think you were right by the way, bro to a matrix dodge that one.
Yeah, it's you know, like I said, I've definitely have some friends that have continued using it and have had great results. But you know, when I told my doctor that I was, you know, going with this compounded thing, he immediately was like red flag City, and I was like, you know, this is intellectual property that is controlled by
these giant pharmaceutical companies. So it doesn't really stand to reason that these off brand whatever they are labs have even the stuff that that is the active ingredient that they could compound with. It's very weird.
Yeah, yeah, before we leave, guys that there might be a full episode here because traveled a little bit down the history of weight law drugs that have been painted and sold across the world. Legal meth, you got, Well, there's other stuff that's similar. It's almost like it's almost like gen one of these newer versions. Stuff like sexenda s A x E N d A that's a pre you know, injectable pen same same kind of thing, had some major issues or but even worse stuff like Belvick.
B E l v i Q oh deep cut Bro.
They got pulled for cancer risks and other things like that. So you know, just what are we as humans willing to risk if there is an easy or a potentially easy solution to lose weight or get healthier.
Right, Yeah, that's a good question, man, I don't know.
It feels like something that big drug manufacturers are more than willing to capitalize on.
Yeah, let's let's make that an episode. That's why we do these this weekly strange news segment. That's why you do this weekly listener mail segment. Want to end on a tiny bit of good news. It's a very weird time to say this while atrocities are occurring, but we wanted to give this a mention because a lot of us tuning into the show over the years have heard us talk about things like brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate,
propyl parabin and red dye three. They're found in all your favorite processed foods at the grocery store, unless, that is, you live in California. Because good news, you guys, California just outlawed the use of these food and drink additives, probably because you know, obviously they tune into our show.
Well, hold on, does that mean I can no longer buy my mountain dew in the great state of California.
You're going to have to drive over to Nevada.
You know, see case in point there, Matt, how much would you risk in order for that eat sweet mountain dew?
He'll risk Buzz's on it. He's going code read on it. And folks, again, as always, thank you so much for tuning in. We are going to return later this week. Tomorrow, You're going to hear a classic episode. Please join us as we continue to explore. We want to hear from you. We cannot wait to hear your perspective, especially if you live outside of the United States. What are you hearing about world events? We want to know if you are a person who SIPs the social needs, what are the
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