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 Iheartrading.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nola.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top of the week, which means it is time for some strange news. Where are Mexican cartels getting all this hardware? From what's going on with Iran the US? And that
weird sound in Florida that might just be fishbanging? Is Bear going to be held responsible for some various other things Before we do any.
Of that, we'll get to all that more.
But before we do any of that, we've got an up and coming musician to talk about. And even before then, Noel, you had some thoughts on the recent resurgence and viral popularity of Stanley Cup's not the hockey trophy exactly.
I mean, look, first of all, that's the first time I heard all this hubbub about the Stanley Cup. I'm like, oh, I guess hockey's taken off in the States now, you know, people are like all of a sudden getting stoked about hockey.
Not the case. Apparently. This company, Stanley, has been around for like a hundred years and largely, much like the whole deal with Carhart, the brand kind of shifting from like a working class sort of like you know, dungarees or whatever and meanies for the construction site into more of a fashion forward brand. That's kind of what's happened with Stanley. They were largely known for the kind of thermisis and sulated thermoss that you might see folks taking
to a work site. And then I don't know exactly how it happen. There were a couple of things that contributed to it. One I think was a story about like a car fire that like the only thing that survived was one of these Stanley quincher cups or whatever. They're very popular among nurses, They're very popular among you know,
kind of young people. There are even stories about how young people are getting bullied for not having Stanley cups or for having knockoff Stanley Cups kind of like a bit of a rag's to riches kind of story for this brand. They started doing all these exclusive colors. People are getting in fights over them at Walmart's. There was a heist of them recently to come into our recent kind of fascination with weird heists. But the story today is that it has been confirmed that these products do
contain lead. There were some like kind of TikTok moms that do these sort of like you know, testing of stuff to make sure there's no bad chemicals or whatever in them, and one user reported using one of these tests that you can get on Amazon, swabbing the inside of Stanley cups, also swabbing the inside of I believe it's most that other one, Yeah, a YETI brand cup. It's also a similar kind of deal in in that space.
And one other thing, and the other two tested negative and the Stanley cup tested positive, And we're hearing all kinds of reports there's lead and Stanley Cups. The company has come out and said, yes, there is lead in them, but it's okay because it's part of the manufacturing process that goes into ceiling the base of them, that creates this like mega vacuum whatever. I don't know material science well enough for manufacturing to know why that would be
the choice that they would make. It might be part and parcel of the fact that this is an old legacy company, you know, so maybe it's like an old school thing. They said, it's okay, it's it won't ever be exposed unless the cup breaks, which is very rare, but I guess possible. But then that does beg the question why was the TikTok mom getting positive test results from swabbing the inside of the of the cup where the drink goes. So there's a lot of reporting out there,
people saying largely believing Stanley. It seems like the general internet consensus that Stanley's telling the truth and this is sort of a non issue. But I am a little skeptical with these tests that are showing positive results of lead inside the cup where the drink goes. Obviously, much like conversation we had in our last episode, there are allowable levels of all kinds of talk.
Sense, So, well, have we forgotten about potential water lead contamination like that cup and then you swab it and you think, oh, well, there's just water here. That was in there, And it's.
True, I was interested in the control elements of the test that this one cracked. TikTok mom had that she was test cross testing other types of products which she would assume she's washing in the same sink, but only the Stanley tested positive. So all this to say, interesting, will be interesting to see if it affects their sales or the craze of it at all. Kind of think it won't. It does seem like the consensus says that Stanley is to be believed.
Believe Stanley, Yeah, because you know, the microplastics and the forever chemicals getting in there anyway, no matter what you put in little let in there just adds this seasoning.
It was fine. It was a good run, you know, the.
Spice of life.
Also that if you want to see the video that inspired this uh viral interest and then the natural the natural pushback or recursive nature of internet conversation, it's a person named Danielle on TikTok in her car fire. The thing that made Stanley popular online was that in the fire, the Stanley cups still had the ice cubes. Wow.
That you can't buy that kind of marketing. You can't. You almost got to wonder if the people will the fine focus. They didn't do it.
Okay, okay, we're sure they did not not an inside jobs. Sure, so tell us about this Taylor Swift person. It's tough to make them living in music.
I know. The first thing, you know, she's just playing at coffee shops and and uh and you know, little indie venues and and now she's like, now she's the biggest pop star on the planet. Seems have happened overnight. No, it did not happen overnight. It was a very methodical and intentionally tracked career trajectory. And you got to give props where props is do. There's a little something in
the Taylor Swift catalog for everyone. She's interesting also in that she fought back against the record companies who owned her master recording rights and just said, screw you guys, I own my publishing. I'm just going to re record all those records myself and you. Everyone may have heard of the Taylor's version phenomenon, so there's you know, she's slowly been going not slowly actually honestly, kind of astonishingly
quickly going through her entire catalog. The company Big Machine was the record label that sort of found her when she was sort of actually a bit smaller from the Nashville scene, because as you may or may not know, she sort of came up as more of a pop country artist and then gradually went way more mainstream than has since amassed just an absolute throng of loyal followers, you know, who will hang on her every war or swift Swifties don't cross Taylor, or the Swifties will come
for you, much like the behive with Beyonce. But I would argue more intense I think perhaps, but I don't know. That's up up for debate. But she's really been in
the news a lot lately. She one Time Magazine's Person of the Year, largely because of the unbelievable success of her Era's tour, which as we know, was just the hottest ticket in the known universe, and it was just you know, people were traveling from far and wide to go crash ticket Master you know many times over caused all kinds of conversations around the fairness the equity of
ticket monopolies like that. We've had this conversation in the past, but it's only when an artist with that much power enters the chat that things really start to change, and I think that's part of what we're going to talk about today. All of that's just just a little bit of primary, hopefully not being too redundant for folks that are already following the story. But the latest is sort of threefold. I guess we'll start with the easy one because it's something that we talked about, I believe a
couple of episodes ago. There has been a rash of AI generated lude images of Taylor Swift that have been kind of proliferating on the internet, some bordering on pornographic, most just kind of elude, just naughty, you know, Like here's there's some that depicting her like as you know, sort of like an exotic dancer perhaps, you know, surrounded by a bunch of dudes who were kind of cop and feels and things like that. There's one of her like making out with the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.
We'll get to the Chiefs part of things in a bit as well. And I think what I mentioned when I was talking about it on the podcast was that I saw this and showed it to my partner, who immediately said, oh, Taylor's not gonna like that. And then literally a couple of hours later, article pops up on some tech website saying Taylor Swift representative of Taylor Swift seeking legal action against this stuff. And Ben, I believe both of y'all pointed out that this is one of
those litmus tests of this kind of thing. It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle. It's hard to get things stricken from the Internet once it's already out there. Ben, I believe you pointed out the stress effect.
Yeah, that's why I reference. It's a law of the internet, you know, up there with that one, with that one other evil rule that seems accurate, which is if you can imagine a fandom, then some pornographic version of that fandom exists. It's like rule thirty seven, or it's got
a weird number attached to it. But but yeah, this also, I mean, it's strange because I think maybe talking with you guys a little bit off air about this, people have been asking the US Congress and indeed the West overall to pass some sort of legislation weighing in on this idea like deep fakes for political propagandistic or pornographic purposes, And it seems like this might be the one. This
might be the that gets Congress to act. They have a bill that isn't a law yet, but I think it's up now, isn't it on the way?
Well, it does beg the question like, is Taylor Swift a powerful enough public figure that this stuff would be outside the realm of just fan fiction? Like would this stuff potentially be damaging in a way that would affect her and her business in real life as opposed to just being something a little bit rude that maybe people completely know isn't real. And I would argue that the images that I've seen either there's anybody believing that these
are real. Yeah, they look, you know, more realistic than the kinds of face swaps we used to see in the past with celebrities on like you know, porn Hub or whatever. But it has a cartoon e quality to it. It has a stylized quality to it. But it doesn't have to. I mean, if you know, you can tell whatever mid Journey to make things photorealistic, you can tell them to make it in the style of you know,
so it's definitely an issue. But to me, the question is like, is this just fan fiction of a public figure, and that to me seems to be protected by freedom of.
Expression, right, That's that's an important distinction. I appreciate you making it that fan fiction we're referring to would be something in print, right, they're writing about like slash fiction. But the idea of depicting fictional characters versus picture public figures who are real people. That's the line. And what I was looking for is speak a draw the Defiance Act of twenty twenty four. It came out. You can
read about it online. They have some interesting stats here, Like you said, no, it's clearly in reaction to the proliferation of deep fakes, an algorithm generated algorithm generated images and footage. They had a stat that stands out, they said, study from twenty nineteen found that ninety six percent of deep fake videos during that year were non consensual pornography.
So that's gross. We all think this is gross. And I'm not saying this should be okay. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying that is a different conversation. Then, is it okay to make a deep fake video of a politician saying something they didn't say? That could cause a panic, that could cause you know, it's like the yelling fire in a public place. That's that's illegal. That's not freedom of speech. That's not protected speech.
Freedom of speech means you can say what you want, but that does not indemnify you from the consequences. Right, that's the fire in a theater example. Also, there was a Joe Biden deep fake going around in the northeast what was it, New Hampshire where was a robo call and it sounded like Joe Biden telling people not to vote. So that's a real thing.
It's okay. So then that does get me to the kind of the pivot here, which is the power aspect. Is Taylor Swift so powerful and influential that this is a different conversation maybe around to like, you know, how could this affect what people think? I think the like kind of naughty stylized images maybe fall into a different category. But we we start thinking about what if someone made deep, big videos of Taylor Swift telling the Swifties to vote
for one party or another, right to not whatever. So now we're starting to see this NFL stuff with Taylor Swift dating what's his name, Kelsey, Right, there's a funny video of David Letterman talking about how much she loves Taylor Swift and what she's doing for the NFL, and he keeps saying that she's dating Kelsey Grammar, but it's this football player Kelsey. Somebody, Travis Kelcey. Thank you, Travis Kelsey. The fact that they her presence at these games is
causing such a stir. It's making ratings go up because the Swifties that we were talking about are now all of a sudden watching football. They never cared about that. I mean, some of them probably did, but a lot of them probably didn't. So that's creating a real impact that the NFL seems to love, but a lot of old school NFL fans do not seem to love. They seem to despise. So there's a lot of noise online of people, you know, sportos saying stop putting the camera
on Taylor Swift. But obviously, if you're the NFL, you're like, put the camera on Taylor Swift as much as possible because we're gonna get the numbers up. And obviously this could really come into play when the Chiefs go to the Super Bowl and the question then becomes is Taylor
Swift's going to go. There is a massive conspiracy theory in the right that indicates that there are some high profile members of the right who believe Taylor Swift is a government op along with her boyfriend in order to sway the election, that the NFL is rigged, and that the Chiefs are gonna win the Super Bowl, at which point Taylor Swift is gonna come out and endorse Biden publicly. Taylor Swift has asked her fans to vote, and it
was a massive surgeon registration. Travi Kelsey has asked people that follow him to get vaccinated, and I believe that made an impact too. So there's all this chatter that Taylor Swift is a government up and even weirder stuff. I think she's connected with the you know, the Illuminati, whatever that is, and it's getting a little out of hand. I just wonder what you guys think about this. Is Taylor Swift powerful enough to sway an election? And why is the right freaking out so much if that's not
the case. It seems to me they believe it is the case, and that a lot of this other stuff is just smoke to try to you know, malign or shut down this potentiality.
Former President Donald Trump recently used the term holy war in a private conversation, sharing the same concern that Taylor Swift the individual would be able to trigger possibly swing the needle in the upcoming twenty twenty four election, possibly with more success than Uncle g because you know, he recently told Joe Biden that China's not going to fear interfere in the election. We'll see how it works. But yeah,
to your question there, Nol, it is. I think it is abundantly clear that because fandom in the world of ubiquitous interaction, because it creates such a positive feedback loop, people who would ordinarily not participate in politics will do so for the somewhat tribal dopamine hit of being able to say, I, as a loyal SWIFTYE, did what Taylor said. You know, so there is a great importance to it.
I mean, we see that with a lot of public figures of that echalon like Beyonce, for instance, very rarely does public appearances, interviews, casual stuff, right, because a statement from Beyonce can also move the needle. And the Taylor Swift thing, I think is a little bit different. I love that you pointed out the Nashville then diagram there. Right, she's hitting as an entertainer, she's hitting a share of voters that ordinarily might not agree with each other.
That's right.
But if because of the strength of this parasocial relationship, if she says jump, then they might jump.
I'd never really thought of that exactly in that way been, but I think that's right. The demographic of her fandom is not exclusively hardcore lefties right right. They're swifties, but not necessarily lefties, and some of them might not vote at all, or might just be of the age where they can vote, right, So a lot of power in that. I don't know, I've got a tweet I want to read or not. That's actually not a tweet, it's a it's a thread. But Matt, I've been seeing the gears
turning as you're taking on all this sin. Do you have any thoughts about the power of pop cultural figures And have we ever seen anybody with this kind of power before who has made a stand yet? Because she has asked people to register, but she hasn't endorsed a damn thing, and that still could be to come look I.
Love Taylor Swift, and I don't know what you guys are talking about. She's one of the best people on the planet and I will hear none of it.
Okay, don't you dare accuse us of maligning to Swift. I am just saying she's powerful. I mean, she hasn't come down on one side of the issue yet, and I think honestly, some people of that who are entertained first they make a conscious effort not to do that, and I also think they shouldn't be bullied into having to do that. But I think the power is fascinating and obviously has certain political folks running a little scared.
Yes, no, yeah, I feel all that stuff. The point I want to make on this particular stories about the NFL and the all the allegations that that sport, like the NBA was allegedly for quite a time and probably still is, was it's all rigged.
Shout out Brian Towey.
I agree with that.
Shout out Brian Tooby. Indeed, our episode we made with him about the NBA and possible you know, weird stuff going on there and other I actually think he focused more on the MLB on baseball the NBA is when we talked to Tim Livingston, I believe, who made a show with Tenderfoot about that fascinating stuff. There's a anyway I'm getting into this because of another podcast called The Raven, another Tenderfoot production that Tim's working on. But the history
of the NFL and sports betting is fascinating. And in twenty twenty one, they made a deal with some of these big online sports betting organizations to like allow them to also bet bet MGM, Fox, bet, Win, Bet, Points bet and all these, which then leads to that conversation that we had on those shows, on those episodes right about whether or not a major organization would also take part in setting up games for massive windfalls through the sports betting arenas totally.
And now that a lot of that stuff is so open and legal, with like your Draft Kings and all of this online stuff that's relatively new, So it's just, yeah, you gotta wonder how that's gonna affect the business at large, because, let's be really all, it is a business, you know.
Yeah, because they were already partnered with DraftKings, fan Duel and I think Caesars, So it's just a it's a road that we could travel down and I'd be interested to see if there's any if there's any fire there to the smoke that's being alleged, But I don't know.
I just want to end this segment with this. I found a thread that popped up to me. They're really feeding you these threads if you're an Instagram person, And this is from stone Kettle, and it said the Taylor Swift thing. Yeah, it's funny, but it's also crazy as hell. It is symptomatic of a dangerous growing instability gripping a huge chunk of the population. For these people, the entire world has become some enormous, fantastically complex conspiracy aim at them,
and everything is evidence of it. Nothing is fringe, and every insanity, no matter how bizarre, is mainstreamed and taking a face value. I just thought that sort of summed this up pretty well. And then there's some nice back and forth unchecked. He ends this kind of madness leads directly to the violent suicide of civilization. Oh okay, let's take a quick break here we're from a sponsor, and then come back with some more strange news.
And we've returned. Guys, are we familiar with the comedian Adam ray r a y y really like I have.
A passing recognition of it.
Sounds recognizable, right. So he notably played the role of policeman in the twenty twenty three smash hit Barbie and he he is a really great impressionist and comedian. I've been watching him lately. He does the live show I believe in Los Angeles maybe in other places too, called Doctor Phil Live, where he portrays Doctor Phil and he has on people and they do basically the Doctor Phil Show, but as this very funny person playing the role. Anyway, he did. He did an episode recently with Adam and
Durrs from This is important. And he also the one that I'm thinking about guys. If you haven't seen the clip, check it out now. He had on Bobby Lee and Andrew Santino, who have a really funny so much.
I love Bobby Lee so much.
Well, they've got a tremendously silly podcast and they came on and it's just one of the funniest things that I've viewed in a long time. Just putting it out there for everybody and for you guys. Okay, let's get into our very serious subject here today. Arms trafficking and car tells. This story comes to us from Mexico City. This is a tale as old as time. You could probably trace it back to Oh, I don't know, let's let's just say the eighties, and let's let's be kind
to the US government. But let's say the eighties when there were US military grade weapons being sent all over South America and Mexico as well as Latin America, and they were being sent to you know, usually let's say US military personnel and their friends, where basically I'm saying there were there were US military grade weapons being shipped
all over the place in these areas. Now, the country of Mexico is alerting the world and especially the United States to a major problem at seeing of what appeared to be US military grade weapons in the hands of cartel members that they are battling. Right, So we're talking Mexican military personnel that are fighting cartels with these weapons. We're also talking about local police forces that are fighting cartels with these weapons, as well as you know, the
equivalent of like DA and FBI there in Mexico. The story, we'll just read this from AP News. It was published Monday, January twenty second, it is titled Mexico demands Investigation into US military grade weapons being used by drug cartels. Right on the nose there, Mexico is looking for an urgent investigation into how exactly these US military grade weapons are finding their way into the hands of these members who
are using them against the security forces. These are things like belt fed machine guns, rocket launchers, and grenades, things that you don't want to deal with the wrong end of right, and they're generally not sold for civilian use. Before we even get into the rest of the article here, guys, I think we've all found in research for this subject, just in seeing the news and thinking about it. There are states in the United States where you can procure
such things. Some of it is a little more off book, like the rocket launchers are a little more iffy. Let's call it gray market, yeah, grenades just writing underneath that. But the belt fed machine guns and like sig sour huge like fifty cow rifles are a whole other thing, because that's a whole that's a whole other problem here, like these large essentially sniper rifles that use the larger ammunition.
So the implication being that there's an inside person's that's feeding them this stuff, or that there's even potentially governments involvements.
I think the first part is a clarification that I really appreciate, Matt, which is that in some states some of this hardware that is military great can be acquired legal. So it's just it's expensive, it's inconvenient. It can happen, but nowhere near this degree. Yes, that is the issue.
I would say it's highly unlikely that you have even a large number of people who are buying these weapons legally in the US then shipping them to Mexico because.
You couldn't get that scale right. It wouldn't.
It'd be tough.
It would be tough to scale. And also the legal matter of tracing guns, because when you buy one of those guns, you're gonna get registered in some way somewhere unless you're buying it, you know, secondhand, third hand, and you basically create a paper trail that's difficult to follow.
We don't need serial numbers between friends. You meet out in the desert, you make sure everyone's got a cool vibe, and then you get your bag.
Yes you have an inside connection.
Well, yeah, the vibe. I would say that Mexico is putting out is that hey, US military, maybe there's a backdoor problem that you've got going on with your military with your supplies, right.
Which is almost certainly true.
I think I do. Yes, I'm sorry, just elef in the room, guys, I guess it's not really an element, it's just the room.
Well, so it brings up the thing we mentioned at the top, but also another The first thing is that US military grade weapons are hanging out all over the place, stockpiles of them that have just existed since the nineteen eighties and before that. You then get repurposed or then an official military body comes through in a country where those weapons were used, takes them over and then has
them stockpile. But then maybe they leak out. We know corruption amongst military members within Mexico itself is a huge issue that they've been dealing with for decades, but even recently we've talked about it on this show, where it appears that there are potential leaks for that kind of thing, and potential let's say, lines that someone could follow to
get that hardware. Agreed, it's a really messed up issue because these weapons were used to do things like destroy planes recently that were at an International Airport, like Cartel members used some of this weaponry to all that kind of stuff.
To stop a boss from escaping right now.
Yeah, that was when one of the one of l Chapo's suns was being arrested or being taken in. There was a huge, I don't know, pushback their resistance to that action being taken by the military where very dangerous weapons were being used against military members and civilians alike. Horrifying, terrifying stuff that if you were there to witness it.
Just the number of bullet holes And I'm looking at a picture right now of the entrance to the city hall in this one part of Mexico City where Cartel's shot it up, and they're just these huge holes that are not from standard style like in AR fifteen or something. Gosh, guys, we don't even need to spend that much time on this because it is this huge quagmire of an idea, of a concept, of a thing that's happening that doesn't have an exact answer, But Mexico wants an answer, that's
the whole point. They want to know what the heck's happening, and they're reaching out to the US, the government, to the ambassador saying, hey, what the heck is the problem? Help us figure it out.
And do they not deserve an answer? I feel like that's a very fair thing. I mean, like, think through. I love that you pointed out there the messy logistics right of the US being the hedgemon of those two continents. What happens is you get your freedom fighters, your right wing Getia and you stage a coup, right shout out Guatemala in the fifties and so on, and you typically, unfortunately this is true, you typically cut that native talent
and you leave them adrift. You don't take back their guns, so you don't take back their stuff. So that means there's a lot of material that's unaccounted for, and there's not a very high and unfortunately, in the domestic US there is a huge incentive on monitoring and tracking this kind of stuff or civilian esque versions of it, prosumer if you wish. But abroad there's absolutely there's very little oversight,
you know what I mean. And people sometimes forget that you could hop on a plane and aproad is like two to three hours away, you know.
Oh yeah, I think that that's one of the main points Mexican officials have been making if you are a civilian living in Mexico, you can buy low grade firearms like the small stuff, right low caliber weapons if you and you can't get a hold of the other stuff, you can't do it legally. So it has to be coming from somewhere, And like, what are the what holes do we need to plug to make sure this thing stops leaking guns into our country?
Well, dude, also not to mention the hypocrisy of it all, Like there's so much rhetoric, you know, in certain political spaces around Mexico and how they're leaking drugs and and an evil people into you.
Know what I mean.
It's like the rhetoric, the heated rhetoric behind that we have to close those plug those holes, build the wall whatever. And again I'm not coming down on any political side here. It's just it's a fact these things are said. I can imagine that does not sit well oftentimes with these
folks in power there. I mean, and we know it's corruption, we know there's problems, but when when they see these weapons that they believe are coming from US unchecked causing some of the problems that we're blaming on Mexico, you know what I mean, So I could see the hypocrisy there being a bit of a.
It's not hard to find where those guns are manufactured, is the issue, you know what I mean. It's not like a mystery that you know, this insert insert hardware here came from somewhere, but we don't know where. We suspect it was maybe made the US. No, it's one hundred percent this stuff is made in the United States, and it's somehow getting into the hands of veryous people who honestly aspire to replace the government and the rule of law of that country. It's a very dangerous thing.
Dude.
Oh this this is the other major part of this. I can't believe you didn't bring this up yet. There's a lawsuit some news that just came out of Mexico, but a lawsuit. They are suing seven US gun manufacturers for ten billion dollars. There's a lawsuit right now. It had at one point gotten struck down or dismissed, basically like you can't sue the gun manufacturers for.
People don't kill people. You know, bot's kill people. People kill people.
That was the big deal. It was there's a I'm gonna get this wrong y'all, there's a rule. It's not a law, but it is a one of those rulings that came down before that said you cannot sue the gun manufacturer because somebody used a weapon to kill somebody. Does that make sense, Like, yeah, that they just made the tool. Somebody else with malice or whatever intent or whatever was used it and someone died. But that only holds true within the United States, which is what this
latest ruling said. So it's basically saying, yeah, well, if Mexico wants to sue the manufacturers, I guess we have to see this thing out and see how it plays. So that's going to be a fascinating thing that plays out over the next two three years or however long it takes.
Especially because that's a that's a recent, a relatively recent US law. Right, it's a.
Potential Lawful Commerce of Arms Act or the KEYLCAA.
George w Yeah, mostly true. It's very difficult in the US to hold you know, your local I don't know why I said it, like your local mom and pop defense company. It's tough to hold them liable in civil court at least, right.
Hey, quit picking on the defense companies, guys, yeah, they didn't do anything wrong.
Well, no matter what route these guns are taking, it is believed, at least by the Mexican there is the government there that seventy percent of all guns that are getting in the hands of cartels come directly from the United States, from these weapon manufacturers that they've got beef with rightly. So, so we'll see how it plays out. There is a story though, that I think we should
cover specifically at some point in a full episode. It's a story about a factory in Wisconsin that was manufacturing weapons, these large caliber like they call them fifty caliber rifles, and how in some way six hundred thousand dollars worth of these things went to a cartel of the weapons that were being manufactured there. It is a twisted, weird tale. Vice has been writing about it, Reuter's been writing about it.
A bunch of places wrote about it. I think it first hit the news like late last year, twenty twenty three. It's strange, you guys, and it makes me think about the reach of the cartel, how far as it go, how many countries is you know, one particular cartel in like the Sonola cartel or the New Generation cartel, it's creepy and I think we should look into it further.
Yeah, writing it down. And also another question that the public media doesn't ask as often as it should. How well do these cartels play with others, Meaning, for instance, you might not have you might not have full reach into the Upper Midwest based on your current organizational structure, but you may know someone who knows someone right and you could talk O Marita a little bit with some with some locals. That kind of stuff happens. That's why,
that's why it's called organized crime. They're super into this kind of thing. I think it's absolutely plausible. I agree with you, wrote it down, this is an episode in the future.
Heck yeah.
The Mexican government, by the way, estimates around two hundred thousand weapons are manufactured in the US and then sent to Mexico each year in some way I'm abused.
Yeah, are they coming in new or are they no? No?
Sorry not as in like their manufacturing and then sent directly. Let's say, let's say two hundred thousand weapons that were at some point manufactured by US based companies end up in Mexico.
Every year, possibly with a secondary like a third party transit country of some sort.
Yes, exactly, and that is an estimate. So the question is track down, track down the lines, guys.
I mean, we know that the US military, like has lost nukes before in the past. Just would not shock me that there was an ungodly number of these stockpiles of like let's call them vintage weapons. You know that there maybe aren't keeping as close a watch on anymore as they should, and then maybe the leaks are coming from some of that as well, if not largely. I would be a shu to see, like what make and vintage some of these guns are? You know what I mean, Like, yeah,
it's not it's not this year's models. You know, it's probably I bet you they're.
Quite old, like the ak's and the coalition of covs. Coalitionon covs are a currency in some more troubled parts of the world. Once again, once it gets out, you can't get back in. And I would advance I'm just going off the top here. I would advance the idea that the US probably has messy oversight for anything handheld abroad. I think it's just too difficult to watch every falling belt fed sparrow.
Well, and we've talked about black market arms dealing is a thing, and it's been a thing since arms have existed, and it's not going to stop. Just how much worse is it going to get? And is it possible to I guess, get the guns at the source, which is the factories making them. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? Let us know what you think. We'll tell you how to contact us at the end. Here for now, we're going to take a break and we'll be right back.
We've returned bleeped the g rides. I want the machines that are making them. As our pal Zach said once upon a time, We're going to end with a tiny bit of hopefully good news. It's scary, but hopefully hopefully it's good news. Actually, wait no, we're going to give you the good news story. We'll give you a couple of weird ones at the end. So we talk often on this show about pharmaceutical companies, about R and D stuff, and you have probably heard longtime conspiracy realist, you've probably
heard some advertisements for various pharmaceutical products on this show. However, that does not affect our reporting of these things. And Matt Nol you'll remember a while back, we had gotten very deep into neo nicotinoids. It was once called a conspiracy theory that those things were killing bees. They are very much killing bees. We also we also looked at herbicides. One of the most popular herbicides is round up. Have you ever used round up?
You guys, No, not personally, but it's certainly like it's almost like xerox is synonymous with, you know, making copies, you know, or coc is synonymous with soda. Roundup is kind of occupies that same kind of space with pesticides.
That's a great point. Yeah, I love that, Like it became the epononymous trademark, the word. Yeah, the so round up is super popular.
Round up ready crops?
Yeah yeah yeah, Like, Matt, did you ever use round up?
I did not, because we talked about round up early on in my having a house career. So yeah, no, I avoided this stuff like crazy. But it is weird how many similar how many products have similar chemicals in them. Yeah, it's just a matter of time before we all go, oh, crap, that one does it too?
Bum bum bump. Yeah. The German pharmaceutical giant Bear bought the American agro chemical giant Monsanto back in twenty eighteen. Wheels within wheels, you know, just like a pyramid, ownership attenuates and conglomerates at the top. We're going to go to a Washington Post article that came out January twenty seventh, twenty twenty four, so just a few days ago as
you're hearing this strange news on February fifth. Shout out to Francis Vanaal, who writes Bear is ordered to pay two point twenty five billion US dollars after jury links the herbicide roundup to cancer. Two point twenty five billion. Maybe the good guys win sometimes, maybe maybe the courts work. I don't know, what do you guys think? Just off that headline, it.
Sounds great, don't it. But but again, but again, this is a huge company. That's a lot of jobs, it's a lot of people. We get that we feel empathy for those humans. I agreed, But it does seem like this is something we've kind of known. And then I'm going to continue one more but Ben, the science I'm doing quotations here is still out, guys.
Yeah, and the and they deserve that's those are two really great points, two really great butts. And the person awarded these damages. Is a guy named John mckavision, and uh mckivison filed a lawsuit in Philly when he was diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma, and he said, this happened because I used round up specifically on my property for
the better part of two decades. And so the jury comes back and they unanimously find that round up is carcinogenic, it did give this guy lymphoma non Hodgkins lymphoma, and that Massanto either knew or was criminally negligent, you know, like willfully ignorant about the dangers of roundup. And so they say, this is the lawyers, the legal team, Tom Klein and Jason Icken said, this verdict is quote a condemnation of fifty years of misconduct by Monsanto, which again
is owned by Bear. So so would Bear have made this purchase in twenty eighteen if they knew what was coming? Interesting boardroom conversations, you know what I mean, off the record, no phones in the room. I imagine Monzanto fires back or Bear fires back, and they say, we're appealing this. It's two point two five billion dollars. Obviously we're appealing this.
And that's a lot. That's a lot for one.
That's a lot for one. What about the class action, you know what I mean, which is surely on the way. They also called the damages awarded by the court, they called it quote, unconstitutionally excessive. And this reminds me that was such a great setup in our in our previous conversation before the break, the controversy surrounding liability of gun manufacturers or firearm defense companies, things.
Like that, and it came immediately to mind in terms of the Purdue case, where it's so rare to even have any whiff of holding those types of executives or the company accountable. It was only what there was clearly malice and malicious and maybe not malicious, okay, well whatever, No one editorialize here, but clearly an intent to ignore data and push forth something that was going to cause
people to die with their knowledge. You know, It's different with medicine though, because death is only kind of a side effective medicine. Death is like the point of guns, So it's sort of hard to you know what I mean, Like, ugh, is the point of guns? Brother? The ultimate point is death or at the very least making people do things as a result of the fear of death. That this sort of the end.
Goal of guns. The point is a hit him with some bird shots so they know you're coming, and then with some buck shots so they know you mean business.
I think also the point is death is buteedor time is butet windoor, I'll be back, shut out, vego Ghostbusters? Can we get an air horn?
Dot?
Schwarzenegger snuck in there somewhere that guy was senisd there.
I got a lot of plot twists today, guys. I actually had to listen to a lot of Schwarzenegger statements. Uh for a different thing. But but this is like, these are actual arguments. Another example of this. Another example of this is the to your point, noal the Sackler family and Purdue. However the courts end up working those things out, they have still created an environment wherein dangerous addictive drugs are sort of pure pressured onto patients who
might not need them. Like, remember, I was so confused we were talking about this off air. I was so confused when uh docs wet hard on the paint to prescribe the oxycodone or oxy cont oxyds.
No, it's not content anymore. Hydro codone is classic. That's like classic coke. OxyContin was like the next level up, and that was what they said, wouldn't get you addicted in the way that that hydro codone would. But yeah, hydro codone is still okay. It has a lot of tilent all in it, and so it's very commonly prescribed for like things like oral surgery. But it also left unchecked, and if they don't know the person has an addictive personality, can very quickly lead to addiction.
You don't want to go fall the house of the usher or whatever.
It was, right, Yeah, that was a great adaptation.
You don't want to take that fall of the house. That's a that's a deep fall, that's a false flat on your face.
And I feel like these three examples were mentioning firearms, opioids, uh, and now carcinogenic things that are just for your lawn.
Uh.
These these things show us one upling commonality. Indeed, something I could argue is conspiratorial, which is the burden falls upon the consumer caveat em tour As they said, there's serious questions about liability for the creators of these and other products, even unto of course, like food manufacturers. That's a big thing we talked about pretty often over the years, like the way the EU handles ingredients versus the way
the UK or the US handles ingredients. I mean, the European Commission already got got in front of this because in twenty oh, gosh, twenty twenty three now they put in a ruling about the active ingredient in roundup live foss eight or gly foss eight, and they said, we don't think it's carcinogenic, and Canada said the same thing. And Bear has a lot of money.
The difference, folks, that's what we have here. We don't believe that this is costing a gena despite the side different results. These eggheads don't know what they're talking about.
And I'm glad they talked. Sorry, that is exactly how they talk. And four years ago, interestingly enough, Bear agreed to pay a settlement in class action lawsuit tens of thousands of people. Bear paid a total of ten billion US dollars over allegations that round up causes wait for it, non Hodgkins lymphoma. And because Bear is a very powerful, big company, they did not admit wrongdoing. They just gave him billion dollars away.
Ben, if you're hearing me chuckle every now and then, is because I'm just hearing in my mind you're describing a bear like bear feels very strongly about this, and the bear does this, and the bear does that. In my mind, it's just the culprit. Here is a giant anthropomorphic bear, love it. I know that's not the case, but you know, I have a very active imagination. My mommy told me right to bear arms.
You know. That's what I was trying not to bring that up during our very serious conversation exactly.
About the weapon.
Straight.
Yeah, I mean everyone has a right to bare arms. All you got to do is lift, bro, you lift get those bare arms.
Yeah. By some fur so Bear also be a ye er. In their most recent annual report to investors, they were required to state that they have thirty one separate lawsuits in Canada related to Roundup. Eleven of those thirty one lawsuits are looking to become class action lawsuits. Bear is Bear and Monsanto round Up. Those brands are in trouble. We don't know how, we don't know how far this will go. And obviously, Matt, I think we can all
agree with the point you raised earlier. So astutely, we're not saying these companies are filled with evil, villainous monsters. A lot of people make a good living there and they're definitely not waking up every morning saying I hope I give someone lymphoma.
They probably don't believe that it causes lymphoma. And I think that's just a part of being in that position, you know, especially like people were putting together the chemicals, people who are packaging these things like you cannot believe. I think there's that's that cognitive dissonance kind of thing, where like even if someone showed you, hey, this definitely causes cancer. But yeah, but this also puts like allows me to feed my family. It's a weird thing.
And they're like, your family stinks.
Though it's similar to what happened with Perdue, where it's well, that's not what our scientists say, you know what I mean? You know, and again no shade on scientists, but we know a lot of the folks that end up getting those jobs working with these big companies come from regulatory backgrounds. They know how to kind of twist the numbers a little bit maybe, And again I'm not trying to malign scientists are saying that there are people out there doing quote unquote bad science.
This just no Brown hates scientists anti.
Science because I have a real agenda. But no, we know that you can, by virtue of limiting the scope of research kind of get the results you want. You're doing the thing that you're doing.
You know, not too long ago, R. J. Reynolds supported studies where they found some doctor who is like, actually, smoking cigarettes is great for your respiratory, for breathing, it's like refreshing.
It's the best if we're when there is all this talk about how the reason people in France didn't get COVID is because they smoked so many cigarettes.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
I'm just saying, you know, causality or whatever, without causation, never mind, there's different ways of looking at this stuff where you can definitely be like, that's the thing. See, that's the thing that did it. It was this, and we like that because it's our thing, you know.
Correlation the causation, Yeah, thank you, thank you.
It just as an aside, speaking that shit think true. A little while ago we talked about these things med beds, right, and I fear so much shade and all this stuff, and it made a video put out there's so much shade.
Then there really is new research coming out talking about resonances and cellular destruction and like ways to target like hyper targeting part of the like a tumor that's inside a brain, and then be able to actually use again different type of vibrations than sitting on a bed and someone you know too good good ones presumably right, good playing vibrations, yeah, but just playing some tones near you, but using using just vibrational tones to do things like
cure cancer or at least remove a tumor.
Didn't we talk about do we not?
We may have talked about me if we danced around a little bit. But I think Matts saying that he's been seeing some new stuff that kisses even further into the realms of possibility, but.
Just saying how quickly our belief can potentially be shifted if we're willing to take in evidence, right.
And if we have skin in the game, especially you know, if it's like, oh, this might apply to my nana, you know, I want to believe right.
It's also, yeah, you always have to hear things out in science, and sometimes people perhaps incorrectly misidentify themselves as skeptics, and what they're practicing instead is not open inquiry. What they're practicing is a kind of zealousness and over stubbornness at the very least sure, and that way it becomes another fundamentalist ideology, and just as dangerous as any other fundamentalist ideology, I would argue. And that's just one entity's opinion.
But what we can see now is that you probably shouldn't use a ton of a ton of things if you just to be safe. If you hear something in the wind like this might cause this specific thing, and a lot of people want to court for it, then it's a personal choice, but very likely.
It's up to you absolutely. But that's why I did want to bring up the lead in Stanley cups things, because I think it's so easy for someone to read that headline and immediately be like, oh, lead and Stanley cub is gonna kill us all, And not to say that. Maybe there won't be more retaith that comes out that says the levels are beyond allowable or they're not good. But you should think about more, like you know, the big picture before you make those decisions. That's the opposite side of it.
You're right. I want to talk about how frustrated it is that things like round up are bad because it seems like such a beautiful miracle substance for someone who's borderline OCD like me when I look out at my grass and I go look at all these stinking weeds everywhere, and now I can't spray them with anything. I gotta go out and pick them one by one out from the root.
I believe al Gore would call that an inconvenient truth.
And here we wrap it up. I want to hear from people who have worked in this industry, would love to hear your take on these products, like are there safe herbicides? Are there safe pesticides? What do you think more of your fellow conspiracy realists need to know. Also, I want to give a quick shout out to Elmo, thank you for the mental health check in earlier. Yeah, a lot of angst in Western society.
Wait wait, people were I just want to say the headlause. I love this term trauma dumping on Elmo because on the social media account for I guess sm street, Almo wanted to know how everyone was doing, and apparently not super well.
Yeah, and Elmo did respond just as we were going into record today. You can find a great article about the whole debacle on the BBC shout out to the journalist nor Nanji. You can also find out on XFK Twitter. One last shoutout, guys, we have to say congratulations and good luck to Crystal Gable, who is non consensually running
for president in Minnesota. She got a Google alert that told her she's on the primary ballot for the presidency in Minnesota, and according to reporting, she cannot get off the ballot. She does not want to be potus. What we don't know. We know that she spoke with the Star Tribute and said, quote, I did not give consent to be on the Minnesota ballot for this race.
Is this a public figure at all? Or is this just like a clerical error because of a mistaken connection with a name.
It definitely is not if conspiracy it is. It is not a conspiracy that she was in on. So let us know the times you've accidentally run for office, folks, What a.
Great plot for sort of a comedy, sort of satire. Someone's name accidentally ends up on the ballot and they win because all the other candidates are that garbage.
The Eddie Murphy, the Eddie Murphy vehicle.
I wouldn't be surprised if this had been done. You're talking about Bowfinger or.
No, it's earlier in that he goes into Congress based on name recognition, and spoiler, he ends up doing the right thing because it's a wholesome comedy. We can't wait to hear your thoughts, folks. Thanks as always for joining us. We'll be back later this week with a lot of strange things and some stuff they don't want you to know. In the meantime, join up with us. We'd love to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
That's right. You can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook, YouTube and x FKA Twitter. You can also find it in the handle Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and take any talk feeling down run out give us a car Win eight through three us to do w ride.
I'll stop now.
That was a thanks for checking in.
Just you know, why don't you check in with us too. We're a lot like Elmo. The number is one A three three std W I t K. It's a voicemail system. You got three minutes and let us know if we can use your name and message on the air. I think that's it. What wait, what if people want to send us an email.
Then all you have to do is reach out and touch space at our good old fashioned email address. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, we read every missive we get. Take us to the edge of the rabbit hole. We'll do the rest. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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