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 Noel, and they call 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. There's a lot of strange news going on if you are tuning in the evening this publishes. Let us be the first to welcome you to Monday, March seventeenth, twenty twenty five. Guys, this means that we're just past the IDEs of March.
Do you remember those? Yeah, the spooky iides of March right and portends wicked things this way coming.
We just talked about that in our episode about the White House right and people that try to predict things. They would always think about those. Actually, no, remember they missed the iyds last time.
And they missed the eyes. They skipped the eyes, but they were aware of the eyes.
Well, I mean, obviously the IDEs of March specifically are tied to the prophecy of Caesar. Julius Caesar's murder. Is that really the jumping off point that's kind of caused them to be sort of looked at as like a spooky time or a portentous time. Yeah, it's because.
Caesar Caesar was assassinated in forty four BCE, and then later a guy named William Shakespeare, real up and coming writer, had a thing he wrote called Julius Caesar a part of it, and that's where there's a line in that where they say beware the eyes of much.
Oh.
So that's sort of a little bit some some creative license going on there, and I think i'ds just it.
It comes from the Latin to divide, So it's it's a midway point where we're a little loose today, we're a little bit punchy folks. We're so glad that you joined us. We are going to look into some strange and unusual things with you tonight. There's a bribery scandal that leads to black magic batteries that can be powered by nuclear waste. Shout out to some of our listeners who sent this. We'll talk about Ai Will talk about a symbolic bird fight, which we all love, the price
of coffee, which is super important obviously to us. And before we get into any of our leading stories here which we haven't yet alluded to, did you guys hear about this dude in Missouri who got charged for trying to have sex with a train seat.
Relatable real man of the people.
Yeah, in public with others on the train.
Perhaps it was a class cabin, you know, one would hope have a little bit of humility.
My guy, this is in Missouri or Missouri your mileage may very linguistically or dialectically. At a metrolink station, here's what they say, all right, it's February thirteenth, a woman told investigators that she saw a man exposing himself at
the metrolink station. On the same day, Police said the man took a train at the Central West End station and then took out his Australia and proceeded to have relationships of an intimate sort with the upper bar of one of the train seats for about ten minutes.
And there is video of this. Sorry, the upper bar, what are we talking here? Like the head rest? Yeah, the crevasse between the headrest and the and the upper back support area.
It's like, you know, if you've ever been on a train when you're walking, it's like the uh oh snap handle at the top of the train in case it's moving while you're walking down the central corridor.
Oh, why doesn't seem very pleasant?
Yeah? This is a sad story, and the only reason we're bringing it up.
Here in the beginning is because the first.
Question that naturally a lot of us are going to ask, how, just to ourselves one how, I would say, more importantly, unless we cast judgment, Can we see a picture of the train seat?
Oh? Goodness? Please? Yeah? All right, here we go.
Let's look at We'll give you two versions here and Noel Matt. I don't think you guys have seen these yet?
Is that correct? I have not?
Okay, all right, So here is a shot of a Metrolink train. Can you see that upper bar on the you know, sort of like the headrest chassis.
Oh, I wasn't far off. It's it's it's like I guess I would you said the safety of strap. I was picturing a thing sort of mounted to the top of the window, which is where the how came in Seeing this, now understand the how Yeah, yeah, this is why. Maybe is more important, but my goodness, gracious, it's just a plastic opening on either side of the head rest that I guess you could grip onto while walking down the aisle.
Yeah, here's another picture, just so we're doing some due diligence. Is this something that you would risk it all for when you see that that little grabby thing on the side of the head rest, what do you It's.
Not a private situation at all, guys. This is a very very open plan, commuter train type situation. And then yeah, the answer is is a hard no.
It was a very hard no.
Hard yes for this.
Yeah, it was well, you know, the course of true love never did run smooth, and the hardness or softness of the situation.
We cannot comment on.
Dun when you know, you know, as they say in any proper rom com. And we look forward to the Netflix adaptation. For now, we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors. Then we're going to return with some breaking news updates on our earlier conversations about space exploration, as well as some budget stuff, some freedom stuff, the right for corporations to totally tell the truth regarding what they put in the things they sell.
You can we just stop picking on corporations, y'all. That's all I'm saying.
You know, no cool, And we've returned. Last week. We talked quite a bit about space, about the moon, about commerce upon that moon, and how humans are going to be making money hand over fist as they float around on the beautiful thing. If you look out today, as we recorded at least tonight, you'll see in almost full move gorgeous out there.
There's a there's a blood moon on the way as well this week here. You can't see it very well from our metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, how because of the weather conditions that'll be coming through from March thirteenth to March fourteenth.
Well more weather, what are we talking about? What kind of condition's been?
There's a sick blood moon on the way.
Oh cool, as long as it's not another monsoon. I'm getting a little tired of those here in our fair metropolis. Matt really quickly the idea the expression hand over fist. When you do it, it kind of makes a time out sign. I've always wondered where the providence of that expression comes from, and that is probably outside the scope of this conversation, but just wanted to mention.
I don't know.
It's okay, it's again hand over fish time out. Guys.
It means grabbing a bunch of money and stuffing it in your pocket.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's sun brand.
Well, it just means very rapidly. That's according to the dictionary. Uh yeah, that's also.
It's navel in origin. Very I guess I'm picturing one of those uh money cages where it blows around you, you know, like at a Chuck e Cheese or at Dave and Busters, you know, or you just have to grab everything that's coming at you and you emerge. You get to keep with whatever you emerge with. That's kind of you know, I like it.
I'm just I'm derailing us on the etymology.
So that's okay. No, that was my question and I think we solved it. So Maddie, what's going on with commerce and space?
Yeah, we're not finished with hands Okay, okay, okay. Imagine you're on a ship and imagine there a ses of ropes that are down the side of that ship. The other way to get up onto the ship is to go off that rope. So you grab on with one hand, you make a fist because you're grabbing tight right. Then your hand goes over that fist and grabs onto the next one. You keep doing it, you real room girl fast. That's handover rising.
Then well done.
Now humans are going hand over fist to the to make money. That's the plan. We're sending human beings up there very soon. But first before we do that, we're sending up a whole bunch of unmanned missions to do some science, figure out some things that the humans will find helpful before they are walking around on there. Well, last week we talked about the first successful private unmanned lunar mission. It was a company called Firefly Aerospace and
they sent up Blue Ghost. It landed on March second. Awesome. We got to see the amazing video of it landing, and we got confirmation, by the way, as of a couple days ago, that eight out of the ten NASA experiments that were on board the Blue Ghost already met their mission objectives. It's going to operate for a little bit longer until the lunar daytime ends. Then no more solar power, no more mission at least for a time until maybe the sun comes back or it's just done.
It did its whole thing and they got all of the stuff they needed. And that's basically what happens on the Moon. As the sun is out there hitting the surface wherever that lunar lander is, things can operate just fine. Then when it goes away, it kind of goes into
a sleep mode or it's just done with its mission. Now, we talked about at the end of that episode a second lunar mission that was going up, another unmanned lander that was going to be sent up by a different company, this time Intuitive Machines based out of Texas, and we got that newsh got bad news.
Guys, Yeah, didn't like the Blue Ghost.
Didn'n aase the landing. The landing is the toughest part.
How to stick the landing.
And again, as we said previously multiple times, just being fair, the math is extremely difficult cartoonishly so.
Yeah, well, and you have to again just the way the communication works between the unmanned lander and then whoever's working this time, probably in Houston just because it's a Texas based company, but make sending those communications out there's
minor delays, there's all kinds of little things. You're only working with the sensors that are on board that thing, you know, that's going thousands of miles per hour as it's orbiting around the moon for a time before it tries to make that landing and slow like slow down to make the landing. The math is crazy. The physical actions that have to be taken in the moment, in real time are crazy. It's like the hardest video game that could ever be created.
Yeah, take that from soft Like there's also new there's there's a very small.
Margin of tolerance.
Sure, I would say for as you said, rocketing over there, getting the timing right because the moon is also moving, and then going out such that you are able to safely land. That's the tricky part, because any pilot will tell you, you know, technically the easiest part of flying a plane is landing it. The real craft is or craft. The real art is landing it without breaking everything correct.
Well, I mean, really do think about that. We've been in cars before. What the maximum most of us have probably been in a car, if we haven't been in a racing situation is like maybe ninety miles per hour to over a little maybe a little over one hundred miles per hour. If you've been on a highway or something, and someone's chosen to go way faster than you should or legally should be able to, but sped up for
a minute. You know, in racing situations, humans get up to you know, two hundred miles per hour a little higher if you give the f one area, you're getting pretty fast on land. And then if you go to the air planes are going what three hundred four hundred miles per hour?
Malarkey, no real, Well, I guess what.
I mean is I cannot fathom how fast four thousand miles per hour is for a a fairly large thing just traveling right like. That's hard for me to imagine. And then trying to imagine slowing that down effectively to two my ailes per hour for the final the final speed as it's approaching landing. That's just nuts to me. It's also pretty nuts to me that, you know, the
Apollo missions, the human beings inside the craft. You know, it makes sense why you had to get to the orbit and then send the or the separate lander down out of the orbiter. That makes sense to me. Now, yeah, okay, I'm sorry, I'm going off track, guys, But the whole point is it's so difficult with this second lander that
Intuitive Machines sent up. This one's name was Athena. As it's coming down to try and land, it has on board just like the previous lander, Intuitive Machines sent up a very sophisticated system called the Prime Laser Navigation system. So this is oh, very fancy.
This is the thing that I was supposed to a little fragile.
Yeah, fragile perhaps, I mean awesome though, prime laser system.
Everybody say, we all agree.
It's so as as the lander is coming down, this system is supposed to let let the landers systems know where the moon is, how it is positioned, you know, to that moon, so it can know how to fire the stuff the rockets. It needs to slow it down to that two miles per hour. And according to Intuitive Machines, this is the thing that cause problems, just like their first lander. So as it's coming in, it just got it got its trajectory off. It ended up missing its
landing mark like where they where. The math said the lunar lander was going to land by about eight hundred feet two hundred and fifty meters, and it ended up in a crater. And because of the slope of that crater. It's trying to land. It thinks it's on good ground, like steady ground. Flap with that, yeah, exactly, and then this thing just goes.
Googh it's right over, which is hilarious.
Oh yeah. So basically it's like like a space turtle, you know, on its back, just flopped like nothing that can be done. Pictory, folks, When we say it's hilarious, we're saying that with great affection. But imagine the vast chasms of darkness, the utter, weird silence of space, and then out of nowhere there's.
An And I just I love the idea because there's something poetic about it. We built a civilization, built this series of extraordinarily complex and impressive to us paper airplanes, right, and then just sail them across and we're trying to get them to land. And there's something so inspiring and
human about it. And you know, we agreed in previous conversations that it's easy to sort of dunk on these noble attempts, but it's also crucial to remember that at this level, in this rarefied space, even a failure of this magnitude is tremendously impressive.
Oh for sure.
Yeah, next time its fail better. You know.
Well that's that's the whole plan Intuitive Machine. Well let me get into details. And that's a really great point because Intuitive Machines has two more planned missions that are already like they're under contract with NASA to make to get up there. But the sad part is you got all these human beings that you know, made this, all the science happen, all the physical creation of this thing. You know, there's sixty two million dollars worth of intelligence,
like human intelligence to get this thing to happen. It gets on there, there's a huge rover that's on board this lander that was supposed to come out and go do a bunch of other science in Tudi Machines reported that it never made it off the lander, but they were able to control it. It survived and it could have driven off if it could have physically driven off of the lander. So that's a plus, right that science works.
When to your point, Matt, I mean, it's not considered a full failure. The quote from I believe the company there're spokespeople said that the mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission. But I guess you know, even getting there is part of the mission. It's collecting data on the way, right well.
And it's making sure all of the components that make up that lander can function correctly. Right there's a drill on board, and that drill was supposed to go into the surface of the Moon and do some testing. That drill was able to be activated and turned while you know, while still attached to the lander that's on its side. That means, hey, the drill is going to function. If we can get this thing up right, that's great. Yep,
And uh oh, this is the other thing. This is very interesting, and I just wonder what you guys think about it. So on board are all of the things that are publicly known the scientific missions, all of these different pieces of hardware that are going to go and do different things. But there's also stuff on there that are just the other science missions that NASA has paid for as a part of this lunar mission. And in Tuda machine said quote, several other mission objectives were accelerated. Yeah,
that's interesting to me. Right, So, even though the lander is on its side, even though all of these major things, like there there was another hopper do you remember we talked about that, Well, maybe we didn't talk about it. There was a hopper that was going to hop its way from the lander a couple of different times using that lessoned gravity that the Moon has and get to like the bottom of another crater and then test that crater for water.
Matt, is the name just clever or is the thing really hop I'm trying to picture? Yeah, it's actually okay, that's pretty neat.
Imagine a little system that pushes really hard, like on the ground or like a like almost like a mini rocket or something goes. I don't know exactly how it works. I haven't seen the schematics, but it just does one big jump using that lesson of gravity, lands does it a couple more times, and then it's in a crator.
What I like to think of, and this is just going to put it at a very basic level, what I like to think of is imagine you walk a long way and you've got a backpack, and you got
all kinds of cool stuff in your backpack, like you're hiking. Now, imagine one of those things is sort of a giant cricket or a grasshopper, and it's your little buddy it's your little jimminy cricket and it jumps out and it comes back, and then it tells you, hey, there might be some water over there, and always let your conscience be your guide, or in this case, it might say, hey, man, pick yourself up.
There you go.
Kind of reminds me of the type of tech that's used in the video game No Man's Sky, where you have a sort of rocket pack on your back that is really just a quick boost so you can hop with more trajectory, you know, as you make your way across the planet to collect all your resources and stuff. Dude, it's a fun game. They got better. It was like sort of a letdown when it came out, but over
the years it's improved significantly. If you're into open world space exploration, you know, what's the word resource extraction kind of games, it's.
For you, amazing. Let's all look that up. Guys. We have to jump away from the room really quickly, run out of time for this segment, but we have to talk about one thing. There's this guy. His name's RFK Jr. You may know him Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
From earlier, Yeah.
From earlier. He is currently the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. People have feels about mister Kennedy in a couple different ways, usually too really like the guy, really don't like the guy. But there is that space between. The space between that is the thing that sees him as a very complicated, not great human that sometimes does
cool things. And I've heard that from many people. I think I might share that a little bit, at least somewhat because mister Kennedy came forward and basically has stated something in the open. Well, he because of his position the US government, has now stated something that we have said on this show many a time that many people we are into that we read their books, in their articles,
they are into and will say it out loud. But they're journalists or you know, they're working in a specific field, and they're not a part of the US government, so
it just hits a little different. He came forward and he had this quote in a statement that was made on March tenth of this year, Robert F. Kennedy said quote, For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the US food supply without notification to the FDA or the public.
That statement alone by the government just saying, hey, these companies are putting stuff in the food that we don't even have oversight on or full knowledge about. The people who are going to eat those food products don't know what they are. And it goes on in this statement that was put out on March tenth to say we need to do something about this.
Specifically, it's the self affirming policy.
Yes, yes, it's that whole thing where a company a corporation can come up with a new chemical ingredient, let's just throw them out in the air, like aspartain, and they can decide, hey, we're gonna put this substance in a bunch of different food. Here is all the data or some of the data that we have done that shows this thing is perfectly fine for everybody. All you need to know, FDA is that we did that, and public will just state to you it's fine, it's good
to go. We did some testing. But essentially what's happening here is there's public discourse that that's not okay. We need to change that, and there needs to be more transparency about food additives and ingredients and things like that. It hit pretty hard to me, guys, because we had just talked last year about specific additives in foods like crackers and candies and all kinds of soft drinks and things that can be sold here in the US.
Versus the yeah.
You have to do you have to use completely different ingredients that don't include the ones that Robert F. Kennedy Junior there would be talking about.
Right, yeah, And this is this is the thing that can be tricky to understand, especially in the divisive narratives of mass media. People can be wrong about some stuff and then totally on the money about other stuff. It reminds me of that it was either the Hard Times or the Onion that had some headline where they said devastating blow. The person you hate the most just made an excellent.
Point, And I was gonna say, this does seem relatively reasonable and positive.
Yes, okay, cool, this is this is overall something that Upton Sinclair would applaud right the author of The Jungle, and that that piece of journalism played a huge role in the consumer protections that exist in the United States today. So look, we're not saying that you have to agree with everything. Rfka Junior says, we are saying that if someone is legally selling you something, you should, as a consumer, have a right to understand what you're buying. I think
that's very reasonable. We are far past the Greco Roman days of caveatimp tour or buying a pig in a poke. Uh, just two idioms, we're gonna we're gonna whip out there.
We just lifted out the pig in the poke and then out the poke.
Funny Ben, There's a British sketch show that I really love called The League of Gentlemen, which you guys may have seen, and there's a recurring character on it that always says, okay, do pig and a pokey? And I never understood what that meant until you just said it just now in an American accent. What does the expression mean?
I mean like a pig in jail, But by a pig in a poke means that you don't know what you're really buying. A similar reference would be so a poke is just a sack?
Got it?
So the idea is you're buying something concealed and the person selling it to you is telling.
You, yeah, When I heard the hokey I thought maybe meant something to do with the jail, But no, that's very helpful. Ben, thank you for demystifying that.
It reminds me a bit of the character of Francis Underwood, Like I really like Francis Underwood. I don't like him, but I also really like watching Francis Underwood.
Such a cad, such a little scamp.
Yeah, but then you then you're like, you look at the layers of Francis Underwood and you're like, oh, well, what about the actor that's playing Francis Underwood. Oh, and then you just start to go deeper and deeper, and then the complexities of Francis Underwood, the character and then the human, and then your brain kind of short circuits a little bit. I don't feel fully that way about RFK Junior, but uh, there's some it's something along those lines.
We're also still as the US currently in this in this administration. Not a political point, this is just structural. We're still very much in the new car smell era. You know, people are uh saying a bunch of stuff, they're proposing it by stuff that, just like with Tariff's ends up, the conversation changes hour by hour. Right, So it is there is a non zero chance that a lot of stuff ORFKSA and in this new position will ultimately not come to pass or not translate to policy.
And the question is the art now becomes figuring out how much of this is perhaps purposeful noise, how much of this is genuine concrete policy.
I'm trying to be hopeful that at least saying it out loud like this will at some point make it become a thing.
Right.
Maybe it's manifested well in some way, because I think when you speak the truth out loud like that, it has a better chance of being addressed, at least.
And just because of the source of where it's coming from. Okay, that's it, guys, I'm so sorry I went way too long there.
Good stuff.
We will be right back after word from our sponsors, and we have.
Returned with more strange news. Gonna lead with a couple of shorties and then get into one that I think will be rife for discussion. First, I would like to talk about a kind of symbolic news event. I suppose in the wake of all of this kerfuffle with the US and Canada, this impending trade war, a lot of this back and forth with you tearrif uss will tear a few, all the electricity stuff, and now how Trump is you know, pushing back against that, saying how could you?
How dare you Canada, you know, try to hurt the common people, you know, by depriving them of their electricity. I don't know. Seems little disingenuous we think about it, But today we're going to talk about a photograph that really captures this dynamic, kind of almost too perfectly. The headline says it all from The Guardian. Canada goose fights off bald eagle in rare, symbolism laden battle on ice.
Oh it's pretty incredible. A fatahographer from Ontario with the name of Mervin Sequira or Siquira, was out with his family hanging out on a frozen lake and spotted a bald eagle making its way with murderous intent towards a Canada goose. The photographer thought that he was about to capture an absolute blood bath, a massacre of epic proportions, but instead he saw something very different that really speaks to kind of the ingenuity and stick, touitiveness and wiliness
of the Canadian spirit. Symbolically, of course. For the next twenty minutes, he captured this battle that did transpire with his camera and watched as something unexpected unfolded. This is what he had to say to the Guardian. I've seen bald eagles take a lot of things, from ducks to muskrats, but this is the first time I've seen a bald eagle go in for something as big as a goose. The eagle attempted to sink its razors sharp talons into the goose, the beloved Canada goose. However, the goose was
not was unflappable. That's a pun. I'm fine with that, And it continued to evade these swooping maneuvers from the bald eagle, who would you know, come in for the kill and miss, and then go up again, circle a while and come back in for another kill and apparently like a lunar land just so and after again, twenty minutes of this back and forth, this eagle and goose, cat and mouse kind of situation. Uh, you gave up and flew on its merry way. Wow? Yeah, pretty crazy, guys.
I mean, the symbolism is so thick you could cut it. It's like a it's like a poutine, you know.
Yeah, how many times have these sorts of encounters occurred in the past. Yeah, this is great timing for the photographer, given the given the current tensions between the US and Canada. I would also note there is more than mere symbolism at play here, because the eagle, the eagle hunting the goose. This is a question for experts in the crowd, the eagle hunting the goose. Is this a normal thing for an eagle to do, or is it driven by a lack of other prey avenues or perhaps politics?
You know, maybe maybe the eagle was trying to make a statement and the goose prevented him from prevented it from doing that, you know. And of course in the article on the Guardian, it goes into a lot of the stuff that we've already discussed about the rhetoric between the US and Canada. This the images alone are fantastic, and some of them you can really see the adversarial relationship between these two creatures. But in a couple of them it looks like they're having themselves a hodown, like
just dancing on the ice. It's pretty incredible. You can definitely check those images out for yourself on the Guardian, just search for Canada Goose fights Baald Eagle and it should come right up.
Guys, you think we could develop a mortal combat style fighting game with birds like different birds?
I'm on board. Sure. I think I've mentioned my my love of the board game Wingspan and the video game adaptations thereof it's a little more of a meditative zen kind of board game situation. But I'm all about what you're describing that what would what would be some super moves or some special moves that the bald eagle or fatalities even how would the Canada goose finish him?
We don't want to give away too much right now, we're in the R and D stages of this thing. I think this thing has wings, and uh, we're gonna we're gonna work on it.
I got an idea. The Canada goose lays a like flies above, circles around, lays a giant egg that then just pounds his opponent into the into the ice or into.
The has crazy movement speed. H that's good as a migratory bird.
Uh.
The obviously the multi attack with the talons for the bald eagle, that's good.
Perhaps a disemboweling, you know.
With something where where it vanishes into the air and then drops down in a sort of a teleportation move.
Yeah, this is crazy. You say this.
I actually have with some friends, including a guy we'll call coach a uh, a cartoonishly robust ranking system of bird fights and their abilities.
Uh, this would be cool.
One of the questions that, again, as we said, we're still in R and D on, is how our flightless bird friends factor it?
You know what I mean? What are their abilities?
So they're like the zanif of the game. You know they're there, They're the kuma is.
Swing you around by your ankles.
You know, this is the These are crucial questions. Please send us your pitches. I know, out of respect for you guys, I stopped sending pictures of strange and dangerous birds that I think are cool a few years back.
Casswary gotta put them in the mix. That would be a that's actually one of its real life Yeah. Yeah, dude.
There's like a cardinal and it's super tiny. The hit box is so small on it. You'd think there's no way this cardinal is going to win against you know whatever.
But like anytime Yoda is in a fighting game.
Humming bird could fly into down the gullet of its opponent and beat its wings so fast that.
It makes the creature explode from the inside. All corvids are automatically boss characters. There's just there's no way around that.
The shame song of the fighting bird world. What about mimic birds capable of mimicry too?
Right?
Anyway, I can't believe we still have to do this show because obviously we're way more invested in this bird fighting game.
We're gonna get to it, guys real quick. I'm gonna talk just briefly about another heist type situation. Coffee beans are at an all time high. I mayban not an all time high, but they are surging the prices in the United States and a theft of truckloads of green coffee beans is also on the rise along with the price of those beans, and there's a pretty interesting grift
being done. Ted Costly is a logistics sales coordinator for Hartley Transportation, which is a freight broker in Pembroke, New Hampshire, said there were dozens of thefts in the last year, something that would happen only rarely in the past, and he described how it's being done. Importers, he said, should be careful about who they hire because there are these phony import companies that essentially are making these deals and then just making off with the coffee. He says, once
they get the coffee, they disappear. Let's see. Armed men in one case of this type of thing took five hundred bags of coffee worth around two hundred and thirty thousand dollars from a farm in Brazil's Minas Geras state in January, and that was according to reports from local police. Yeah it says here. Theft is a direct quote from
an article by Reuter's. Theft of coffee has been reported in producing countries such as Brazil and Vietnam, usually in farms where the beans are temporarily stored after the harvest. These sites are more vulnerable because they are isolated. Costly said that these fake companies that I was describing are in the market trying to to get small contracts from importers by offering better prices or immediately available trucks. Pretty wild,
It's a pretty interesting scam. Another quote from the piece here. To wrap this one up and then remove on with one more super interesting story for my segment. Some market participants believe the gangs then who are running these fake operations, then try to sell the beans to smaller roasters which are feeling the pain from these skyrocketing prices. Jeez. So importers are actually starting to put tracking devices inside the
coffee bags in an effort to protect their shipments. This kind of thing you might see in Gus Fring's meth operation, you know, in breaking that.
Well, yeah, it's just so it's scary to me because let's say you've got a tracker in one of those bags and there was a large group of armed men that took those coffee bags. Who do you send in to recover the coffee besides you know, a pretty elite team that's either local police or maybe even government.
I'll tell you.
I'll tell you RFK Jude here yep, private moon lantern that we just repurpose so that he can drop in and then ex filtrate easily with Scott talents.
I was about to say, Canadian goose in tow with the grasshopper drone that pops out.
Yeah, backpack mounted drones, by the way, are on the very much in play please check out our upcoming episode on the twenty twenty five Super Soldier Update.
Oh, I just noticed that's a Voice of America article.
It is correct. Yeah, it's from Reuters, but it was posted on Voice of America. It's it's credited to Ruters, but I don't know them very well, Matt, Is that a sirce to even enjoying?
I love the Voice of America, as should you, as should everyone.
All right, are you being serious or is this something that that I don't know about? Is this like about a bad site or something.
Voice of America and Radio Free American and Radio Freation all these other things are functional soft power propaganda initiatives by the US government. We're not saying they're lying. We are, as we mentioned them quite recently, either in an episode or a strange news segment. We also talked about them a little bit in an interview I think, with maybe Carl Miller or someone. But the point of it is not to lie to people, but, as Emily Dickinson said,
to tell the truth, but tell it slant. So they're the opposite of an unbiased news organization. Full disclosure, we have friends and contacts who have worked with these outfits or similar ones in the past. They're not villainous people, but they definitely have a mission.
Absolutely fair enough. And then, like I said, it is a repost of a Reuter's piece, and I did find this on ground News, which is that great news aggregator app that I think we've all mentioned multiple times on this part of the show, and it was ratioed a little in favor of the left, so I will point that out as well. But this is a thing that's happening, and I'm very interested about these gangs and these a
scam operation setting up these fake import companies. It's something that we definitely keep an eye on.
It does seem like there's so many grifts, are you know that are so sophisticated moping up nowadays, or maybe they're just they've been around for a long time. They're just getting very very good at what they do.
And do check out our speaking of grifts, our interview with the incredible creator of Scam Factory, which is another deep dive into some of these very specific grifts and how they've sort of evolved with the times. Yeah, Denise Chan hundred percent excellent human and excellent researcher and investigative journalist and it's such a cool podcast. Highly recommend it. So I know I'm almost a time, guys, and it's some bummer because I guess I wasn't expecting those to
fill up as much conversation as they did. But I do just want to briefly mention I guess I should have led with this one. The headline here says at all as well, what one finished church learned from creating a service almost entirely with a I we talk all the time about the kind of an intersection of money and technology and religion, and I just think this is such a fascinating look into that. It's a tale of
good and evil, says the ap Helsinki. Played out on the large screen in the sanctuary of Saint Paul's Lutheran Church in Finland, Jesus was shown in robes with long hair and a beard, while Satan was dressed in more modern clothes but with a menacing frown and a higher
pitched voice, all created by artificial intelligence. This was, I guess, an attempt to use AI tools to entirely create a service, not as you know, with the goal of replacing anyone that was There was more just kind of an experiment, I guess, and it does seem that this church has a history of kind of innovation and trying out different technology and sort of being on the bleeding edge of
that stuff. It was the first service in Finland, says the AP, put together almost entirely by AI tools, which wrote the sermons and some of the songs, composed the music and created the visuals, and it was widely advertised as an experimental service, drawing over one hundred and twenty people to the church in the northeastern part of Helsinki, which is a lot more than on a typical weeknight. The AP says people came from all over the country, as did a handful of people from even outside of
Finland to check it out. There's a quote here from the Reverend Petya Kapparen in I believe that's close to correct. Usually when people talk about aiither talking about what AI can do in the future.
But the future is now.
AI can do all those things that people think that it can maybe do in ten years or so. This is clearly coming from the person who came up with this idea and shepherded it through the clergy and worshippers. Said they enjoyed it, but there was some dings as well. One attendee told the Associated Press it was pretty entertaining and fun, but it didn't feel like a mass or a service. It felt distant. I didn't feel like they were talking to me. The warmth of the people is
what people need here here to that. I think we're all fascinated by the use of AI, maybe also equally trepidacious about the overstep in using AI and and what it means for even industries like podcasting, what it means for certain types of jobs. You know, it's it's we're very much on the in the wild West kind of of this technology, and plenty of folks in corporations that are, I would maybe say a little over zealous about trotting
this technology out. So, I don't know, guys, it's interesting to see it being used in this way that I think a lot of folks in religious circles might look at as being a little I don't know, offensive.
Maybe AI systems that are purely software like that can't abuse anyone, maybe, and they I don't know, I'm just saying.
Maybe that's fair. I guess I just mean that, you know, a lot of the folks that we're talking, you know, speaking on it, who attended, who had negative things to say. We're just kind of talking about how it just felt kind of cold and distant. And I'm not a religious person. I'm fascinated by religion and religious iconography. But just to go into a little more detail, it was a forty five minute service. They used open AI's chat g ept to write the words except for it's noted here for
what came from the Bible. An app called Suno to compose the music with a very pop kind of style, and Synthesia AI to create video avatars of the preacher themselves and another official from the church or another member of the clergy. They said that it was eerie seeing themselves depicted on screen speaking words that they never spoke in real life. So I don't know, guys, this weirds me out a little bit. I think it's interesting to
see this intersection. And I predict, as I think we've all maybe mentioned, AI has the potential for kind of cult like possibilities, and you know, the idea of like techno cults and people like looking at AI as some sort of deity to be worshiped or treated in that fashion. I just wonder if we're going to start seeing stuff more like this in niche kind of more cult like organizations.
I don't know, guys, any wrap up thoughts. I know we went a little long on this segment, but just about this use of AI in something that has typically been such a human part of daily life for many folks.
Yeah, predicted getting for the emails on this one, Folks, fellow conspiracy realist, you may also have clocked this was predicted in multiple sci fi explorations. I'm thinking in particular th eleven thirty eight, nineteen seventy one science fiction film with George Lucas. In that film, there's not a spoiler for the story, which is awesome. In that film, there is a AI version of Jesus Christ or MESSI save your Figure that people have to go talk to.
That has been on my list for so long, Ben, and you're moving it right up to the top. I'm looking forward to checking that one out, Maddie. I mean coming from and I mean, I know we all have our various intersections with organized religion, but you've been pretty open on the podcast talking about you know, your upbringing, you know in the church and how that was a
really big part of your life. Is there anything about this that feels off to you or what are your thoughts on I do see your point about I know you're sort of joking, but how you know, AI potentially just not going to hurt people directly, as there have been many proven allegations against you know, clergy members, especially in the Catholic Church.
I see exactly why people don't want it and why they weren't very happy about it. I see exactly why you wouldn't want to do this on a wide scale, and why all the AI generative stuff is creeping me the heck out right now at least. Yeah, I just I don't I don't think it's a thing that's going to happen. Churches exists through donation, right, and if you don't have human beings that are there running the thing,
what does that donation go to. Well, maybe it goes to doing good things and you don't have to support all the human beings that are running the church. That could be good. I don't know, complicated, I would.
Say it is. Indeed. Well, y'all, let's take another quick word from our sponsors and then we'll be back with the final segment of today's Strange News episode.
And we have returned with the last part of our Strange News segment.
We do it every week.
This is something that ties into the concept of AI overall.
Now I'll keep this brief.
Guys, how do you feel about using algorithms to target people? Since we mentioned works of fiction that could be arguably predicted in the past, you know, the idea of something like Minority Report. Would you be comfortable assigning certain aspects of law enforcement to non organic minds?
And what are they looking for?
Well, in this case, I want to go to excellent article by Matthew galt Over at Gizmoto, which swings above its way class pretty often. The US State Department has gone public with their plan to use AI to search for pro hamas students people protesting protesting in support of the group Hummas, and the end goal is to deport those protesters if possible.
This is something you know.
The reason I'm saying go public with it is because obviously, for the more cynical of us tuning in to tonight's Strange News segment, we kind of already assumed something like this was happening, right, Like, yeah, they would have already have done this had the technology existed. So I think there's a non zero likelihood. This is just a public statement.
Yeah, because we've discussed how at some of those protests, facial recognition was being used, what was a triangulation of cellular phones was being used. There's all kinds of tracking already happening. Isn't there something in the news about a specific student, like a Palestinian activist that was there was an attempt to.
Support it recently?
Yeah, Mahmud Khalil is the first activist to be quote disappeared by the current administration. You can go to you can read an article about this on The Nation by the journalist Laura Jedid Jeded. This happened very recently. This guy was a Columbia University graduate. He had just gotten He had just got out of Columbia University, and on March eighth, they were found by two playing clothes operatives who said his visa had been revoked and they were
there to deport him. His wife, who was with him at the time, an American citizen eight months pregnant. She was told that if she didn't shut up, comply and go into their apartment, the men would arrest her too. Khalil reasonably asked for a warrant.
One of them.
Get this, one of the agents pulled up their phone and showed a photograph on their phone of what purported to be a warrant and side note, it's not how warrants work, geez man. Yeah, so this occurred. And while this is occurring, we're also seeing a plan to deploy ai as through a program called Catch and Revoke courtesy of our friends at the State Department. What they're doing is leveraging the algorithms to scan news reports and social media accounts of students in the United States on a visa.
So right now, the idea is that this is not targeting, you know, folks who already have US citizenship. It's targeting people from abroad who might have problematic views.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, Khalil was at the head of a student led activist movement, right, We've talked about those in the past, so there is some gray area here too. So it's very interesting to consider this stuff. But just using someone's political views in that way to target them, as you're saying, Ben, and then take like real action like that, that's super troubling well, and if.
I'm not mistaken, there was a statement that came out of the Trump administration recently threatening schools, universities, and other institutions of learning if they allowed any kind of protests
to take place on their campuses. Pretty broad language, you know, around that kind of stuff, and pretty vague as to what constitutes something that would be undesirable for this administration for this law to apply, and threatening essentially to pull funding, which also to be fair, occurred or something like this their in previous administrations, depending on you know, there's a very the conversation about the Middle East is always incredibly
sensitive here in the United States, such that some people might object to us using that very diplomatic phrasing right now on the air.
The idea, the goal is to use this system, whatever is the engine of the catch and revoke car. It's to use this system to travel back to about October seventh, twenty twenty three, and from there parts all available social media accounts correlated with footage and reports of protests for about the public The public statement is about one hundred thousand people who are in America's student exchange visitor system. And the goal here is to punish anti Israel or
pro Hamas protesters who demonstrated on college campuses. The State Department, speaking with Oxios officially, by the way, said quote, we found literally zero visa revocations during the Biden administration, which suggests a blind eye attitude toward law enforcement.
Does that mean, well, it means that.
It means that they want to they want to escalate what they see as natural response or consequences for people protesting, which is weird because protesting is historically a incredibly American thing. It's in separational history of the United States.
In Khalil's case, it's just weird. Guys. They attempted to revoke his student visa, as we were talking about, but he didn't have a student visa. He had a green card, right, and then they just told him in the moment, we're revoking that too, which, okay, it's like.
Playing it's you know, it's like playing games with kids where they try to shoot at each other with invisible guns and the other kid is always saying, you missed me, though, I got you though.
So.
But the difference here beyond childhood games is that this has very real consequences. Two people that you know, you may not disagree with them politically, but disagreeing with someone doesn't automatically make them a terrorist, you know what I mean? Like, for instance, Matt and I are very dear friends and he eats raisin brand Owes good?
How many scoops toast?
I had a whole conversation last time was a waffle House about how the raisin toast was. Everybody Everybody disagreed with me, including the staff.
We've got several waffle House episodes coming up on these shows and other related shows. Another scarier version of this, I propose I want to get everybody's thoughts here, those of us playing along at home, you guys in tennessee Powell as well. What's the threshold for deploying AI in this kind of regard? Again, Logically we've talked about it in previous episodes or on Strange News or listener mail. Logically, people will use any tech advantage or edge they can get.
Did you hear that the Pentagon has just inked a deal to deploy AI agents for military use?
See, That's what I'm talking about. With all that jump jumping the gun, jumping the.
Gun, y'all, yeah, Terminator there does seem to be no threshold.
I think we would argue, right or it's very low.
Yeah, Dylan says, feels bad.
Man. I agree with you, Dylan.
This is a flagship program that's part of a larger initiative called Thunderforge.
Or like a red flagship program.
We're gonna have, We're gonna We're gonna have to take out this on That's all we got to do.
You move up the chain, Okay, with any operation on this scale, you move up the chain. You get the small ones first. So let's interrogate the moon right and get some get some actionable data on the big.
Guy, and then we move. Butthead the Sun sucks.
It needs to be taken down. And parently, I hate that guy. So and we appreciate that human life on Earth or big majority of life on Earth is due to the Sun.
If only it weren't.
So just you know, appreciate your earlier work.
Dude, take it back and out, you know what I mean.
So, anyway, this anti heavenly jokes aside, The Pentagon has signed a deal with a private wish wish, private AI company called Scale Ai. And this flagship program is in direct contravention to a lot of self imposed rules that places like Google or Microsoft or open ai already put on their initial research into, you know, into these non
human intellectual pursuits. Last month, a senior official at the Pentagon told an outfit called Defense One that Uncle Sam is moving away from the research into autonomous robots with fatal capabilities and instead they're investing in AI power weaponry. So they're kind of moving another middleman out of the way.
So that's just more like, we're going to invest in the software systems that can be adapted to weaponry. We already have more or less, right, Oh, you're ready for targeting? And yeah, I just wonder, like, I mean, it seems like maybe you know, we know that the research and development of software is certainly certainly a lot more affordable than research and development of hardware. That's a good point.
That's a good point, though, if you're ready for were some fun, some fun public statement language.
Here we go.
In a statement the US Defense Innovation Unit or DEIU, not to be confused with the other one DUI totally different, but both maybe a little drunk at the wheel here.
Maybe nice, they said.
The following thunder Forge marks a decisive shift toward AI powered data driven warfare, ensuring US forces can anticipate and respond to threats with speed and precision. This system will allow planners to more rapidly synthesize vast amounts of information, generate multiple courses of action, and conduct a high powered war gaming to anticipate and respond to evolving threats.
I would like to respond with a quote, real quick, I say, your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus, Like the dinosaur, you had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus, the future is our time.
Yeah, this is this is apropos, I believe, and I love that we're shouting out science fiction here because uh, imagine just doing desert storm via chat.
GPT, asking chat GPT like, well, you know, where should we go? What should we do? Right? Should we get this?
Should we do a little desert storm chat GPT?
Can you recommend a bullet pointed list of what I should do to take over Mosoul?
Well?
And now can you do it?
And now can you just can you handle it real quick? Because I need that promotion. I want to take credit for stuff I didn't do oh for sure?
Could I just said, just admit it kind of made me think of this when you mentioned war gaming. I don't know I've talked about this, but I keep seeing the story about a Nvidia developed AI boss fight in a kind of dungeon crawler type game. Apparently this is a boss fight that will learn the patterns of attack and the kind of I don't know variations between players
and react accordingly. So it's just kind of interesting when you see it in this sort of I don't know, a little more frivolous consumer way, but it seems like a very similar type of technology that would be rolled out in the type of weaponry that.
We're talking here, the normalization right of things that are at least big on knowns, if not fundamentally problematic. Here's the plot twist. I, aside from dunking so hard on this, and rightly so, I do believe it is a necessary evil for the modern military apparatus.
It's kind of like the race for the atomic bob.
We can all admit that it will lead to disaster, but if there's if you're in a room with five people, no matter who those people are, and there's one gun, wouldn't you prefer you be the one holding the gun?
I think so.
If I need a gun, I'll just use one of yours. Sorry, Sorry, that was breaking bad.
Yeah yeah, Mike Ahirman trouts, I love it.
So I am in support of, not support. I am in troubled ambivalent perspective sharing and troubled perspective sharing of why this would be a necessary race. However, using AI to target, to target people for exercising freedom of speech and conflating that with acts of terrorism, that's pretty rough. It's kind of like, does committee vandalism at a Tesla at a Tesla dealership? Does it make you the new bin Laden?
They aren't. That's quite a jump. They are starting to refer to it as the potential act of domestic terrorism. Wouldn't this kind of absolutely you are, And wouldn't this kind of tech for a potentially totalitarian iron fil to the regime be an absolute dream come true?
Well, that's the thing, you know what I mean? And maybe we do an episode on that in the future. There are good things happening. First, we want to hear your your reasoning or your thoughts on this large language model or algorithmic targeting of people. Is it something that should happen? Is it inevitable as we used to stay on car stuff or your for it or aget it? And if so, why don't want to leave you without
some good dope news to step two. Shout out to a fellow conspiracy realist of ours, longtime listener who just had a kid.
By the way, so we may have our newest youngest listener.
Sorry in advance, but our buddy rep hit us to a fascinating bit of good or at least not evil news. Light has been transformed into a super solid cool solid light.
Hell yeah, final solid story solid light light.
Wait, hold on, I'm thinking Minecraft rules here. We're talking like Glowstone where it still gives off light, gelatinous cube, it's solid.
Okay, We're talking more like imagine taking the best things about light and maple syrup and putting them together ut off the taste.
So yeah, light has been now.
Moved to something that is described as an odd solid that can flow like a fluid.
Oh yeah yeah.
Big shout out to our Italian friends, particularly Demitrius triple Giorgios over at the National Research Council or CNR in Italy, and he also gave respect where it's do and he said, look, another one of my colleagues, more than a decade ago, Danielle send Vito, showed this would be theoretically possible. The math is way over my head.
Candidly, is there a practical use for this or is this just another kind of scientific.
Flex Well, this is one of those things where civilization figures out something as possible and then later figures out the application, like maple syrup flavored light.
I think is where we're coming soon.
Well, just just because I can only imagine you'd have to somehow slow down the photons, right that like and put them in a some kind of.
Sort of medium, a suspension.
Yeah, this is awesome, It's very If you go to Yeah, if you go to a New scientist uh with the journal via the journalist Carmela Podovich Calligan, uh, then you'll you'll see some stuff that, uh that stands out in direct response to the question posed there. Matt I I add some of the same ideas. And then there's one line in this article that just says time may be an illusion created by quantum entanglement. So are we really slowing down the photons or we just exist? Adjusting how
they exist in observable reality. It's it's so they get in the weeds. They took a laser. Lasers are amazing. They shot the laser onto a piece of a semiconductor that had a pattern of narrow ridges carved into it, and then they said the following this is a quote complex interactions between the light and the material, which is aluminum gallium arsenite, they formed a type of hybrid particle called a polariton p O L A R I T O N. I think that's a cool word to just
throw out. You're being such a polaritan right now. Someone on Facebook.
Man, I'm sorry, I'm getting so many just thoughts about this. Would think about it in time, man, because to our experience of time, light travels so quickly. Right, But I'm just trying to imagine from light's perspective, what does our existence look like. It's sort of like how slow.
It's sort of the way the flash whenever he's depicted in movies, like he's moving really normal speed, but everything around is moving incredibly slow. Yeah.
Well then just but then as ben as you're saying, like we're just getting or somehow our consciousness has just adapted to whatever this is. This speeded right, but really I don't know it's all relative anyway, But it's sorry, it's just kind of it's making me have all kinds of weird thoughts.
Same, same, This is hart to be.
This is why I have to stop texting you guys at weird hour never, because otherwise it would just be stuff like this. We need a physicist on this stat Okay, fellow conspiracy realist, we're putting out the call right to us, tell us what's going on, Explain quantum mechanics.
I've got to send you, guys.
One of my favorite speeches I saw from a storied professor of quantum mechanics.
It was so good.
The way he starts out is he says, all right, for the next seven days, we're going to discuss quantum mechanics I don't know anything about Like, I know very little about it, and at the end of this week you will also not know what we're talking about and also not understand it. And I thought that was amazing. That's how a good professor should be.
I saw it too. You can now we can collectively spread our misunderstanding and not understanding.
Of this thing.
Yes, yeah, there's something humble in God like to that. But with that, folks, there's so much other stuff to get to. I didn't even get to talk about the Lilavati hospital bribery and black magic. Please do check that story out. Batteries can now be powered by nuclear waste. That's also in play. Yes, yeah, that part is true. You can go to Science Alert and check out an article on March tenth by David Neild which says there is a possible way to power batteries for my micro electronics,
specifically using the gamma radiation emitted by nuclear waste. So for the optimist in the crowd, yay, that's awesome, we found a way to use nuclear waste. For the more cidical in the crowd, wow, does this mean that eventually will purposely make more nuclear waste?
Wait, we might have to though, right for all batteries, for all the data centers and the AI that's got on everything. Now we can use that stuff.
Yeah.
So, oh, what a fausti embargain. What a pyrrhic victory we're facing right now? About ten percent of the world's overall energy demands are met by nuclear power. It is an alternative to fossil fuel. It is when things go well, amazing no notes. When things go wrong, they go horrifically wrong, such that entire swaths of land may be animical to
human existence. So there's a lot at stake here, and to figure it out, we need you all, fellow conspiracy realist, physicist, nuclear quantum or otherwise, please do contact us.
I'm keeping this.
Part of our weekly segment short, but we will be returning in the future with one of our most exciting programs, listener Mail, our weekly listener Mail segment where we get to hear from you and to join us on the show. All that we ask so that you contact us with your thoughts. You can send us a telephone call. You can write an in depth email new word limit. You can also contact us on the internets, on the lines.
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I just want to add yes, absolutely, Otherwise we will make one up for you. If you just call in anonymously, we'll just use some of the words you used, and then that's your new nickname. Do call us and let us know what you think about Michey o Kaku's website mkaku dot org. It's beautiful. Thank you Tennessee pal for letting us see that. If you've got more to say, they could fit in a three minute voicemail. Maybe you've got links, maybe you've got pictures. Whatever you've got, send it to us.
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back and we don't use AI to respond to you. However, I do want to point out one of my favorite Reddit comments regarding the State Department's AI actions. Granham twenty two says, oh, this is the same AI that removed a picture of the Anola gay for being let us know where it goes. Join us out here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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