From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the 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.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is the top of the week, it's the evening where we like to explore what we call strange news. We're going to learn about some very grisly things today, some quite disturbing things.
So for anybody listening along with the young leans and the kiddos, please know this following commerce station may not be appropriate for all audiences. We're talking about ghoulish insurance scams, a mystery that is unraveling as we record, and we're talking about I don't know, there's a There's so much dark stuff today, guys, that I was thinking we could just say one piece of nice news at the very beginning.
Is that, okay, very short, I got a nice thing, Okay, and this is sort of an apology to the good people of Worcester because for a long time, on multiple shows we have joked about how.
It's unfil.
Uh. There we go. We've done that one. We've got we did that with just now. Congrats Matt. We also we also gave them a hard time about the misleading spelling and pronunciation of the name. So both as good news, a little dosa good news, and as a an all of branch to the good people of Worcester or Wooster, depending on your accents, as an olive branch to our fellow conspiracy realists in that part of the world, we are proud to announce that the library fees in this
town have fundamentally changed. If you have a late fee at a library in this community, or you're getting a fee for a damaged book or you lost something, et cetera, you no longer have to pay for it in cash. All you need to do, according to Boston dot Com, is bring a cute picture of a cat.
Dang, do you think they're going to adopt that policy? At my video store, there's so many late fee Yeah, dude, I think I'm single handedly keeping that place in business with my late fees because.
Of your late fees.
Yeah, I mean Video Drome. Okay, we could do an episode of Video dro It's awesome.
It's also an incredibly fantastic David Cronenberg movie. But like, you know, the thing, we're so we're so spoil by like streaming, that we forget. You know, we're on a schedule. You got to read these books, watch these movies in a reasonable timeframe, not just whenever you feel like it.
And yeah, Video Drome, named after the film, is a longstanding local rental institution. Right, we love Video Drome here. I also am grateful, I think we all are to their policy of giving you a discount on the late fees.
They do do that. I was about to say, that's awesome, but I'm glad to do that. I thought it was special for a second. But how dare I think that? You know what, when I get home from travels this evening, I'm going to watch both of them and return them to as Sweet tomorrow. Maybe I'll bring a cat picture just for good measure. What do you think?
Just do it? Yeah, just you know, grease the wheels a little bit. This is the kind of lobbying I like the library there in Massachusetts is calling this program March me Owdness, and it applies to all seven branches of the library system. So please let us know if that we're for you, and you may have you may join us on a future listener mail program. You also may have a spidy sense. We started with something so innocuous, so wholesome, and now we're like, we're like in the
Willy Wonka boat in the chocolate factory. There's no earthly wave. Things are about to get dark, you guys. Have We have talked about this on a couple of different shows, and we've mentioned it in the past. Things are going poorly for Nickelodeon the recent well. The long standing allegations of toxic work environments, conspiracies and retaliation, and sexual abuse are becoming mainstreamed with an explosive new docuseriies called Quiet on Set. Have you guys watched this?
I haven't watched it, but I've seen a lot of the fallout that has resulted from it, including some pretty ir responsible and INCENTI set of things said by some former Nickelodeon co stars and the names of Escaping me. But there was one former colleague of one of the people that came out and you know, basically described some of these experiences. And this former co star just had some really gross stuff like mad it made a joke out of it, and there's nothing to be joked about here.
Yeah. Yeah, And this again, this is the deep Water. This series has four parts out now in various different platforms, and it goes into things that apparently were an open secret or acknowledged pre Internet all throughout the industry. The name that you will hear most often associated with this is the producer Dan Schneider, who was kind of the kingmaker at Nickelodeon for a long time. The allegations range widely.
Here are some of the most explosive. These are coming to us from an article by Wesley writing for Entertainment Weekly. It's disturbing stuff. There was a production assistant on all that and a program called The Amanda Show in the early two thousands named Jesse Handy, who apparently was a self proclaimed pedophile and was sending sexual pictures of him
pleasuring himself to actors as young as eleven. He had been arrested in April of two thousand and three after a tip, like an anonymous tip to the authorities and police found over ten thousand images of erotic material or what we call CSAM child sexual abuse material. He was sentenced to prison in two thousand and four. And this is one of the allegations, but only one, and it doesn't even touch on Dan. Before we go on, do we want to talk a little bit more about the
allegations regarding Schneider, I mean Nol in particular. We had been discussing this. We're hanging out with Gandhi on her show's Sauce on the Side.
Yeah, and that episode may or may not be out, Yeah, but do take a look. It was a really wide ranging conversation that did venture to this territory. I just really quickly want to double back and see. The person I was referring to was actor and musician Drake Bell, who was featured in the documentary and one of his they were in. He was in a show that was
Past My Time. Well, he was in all that, which was kind of part of my Nickelodeon upbringing in the Amanda show, as you mentioned, but some other Nickelodeon colleagues, stars of a show called Neds Declassified, a guy named Devin Werkheiser, Lindsay Shaw and Daniel Curtis Lee have a podcast and they are the ones who said some pretty gnarly stuff, almost like victim blamey, kind of just gross things on their podcast in a TikTok that they posted.
But he had allegations against Brian, who was a dialogue coach, is one of the dialogue coaches. Yeah, but no, I mean as far as Schneider, that was brooming the highest of the highest order, right and you know assault.
Yeah, since we brought in Brian Peck, now, let's let's go to that and we'll get to Schneider later. So Drake Bell was repeatedly sexually abused by Nickelodeon employee dialogue coach Brian Peck. And this was during his teenage years where he was a cast member of The Amanda Show. And we're not going to give you the full details of what was happening, but it appears that it was happening in a it appears that it was happening in an open, secret kind of way. We've talked about plausible
deniability before. It appears that in this situation the fig leaf of plausible deniability simply cannot cannot be used or rationalized by other people in these productions. Peck was also convicted of child molestation in two thousand and four. He pled no contest to some pretty gnarly and disturbing charges. And I didn't know you could plead no contest to things of that magnitude. I thought that was for traffic court, you know, like here's your money. But I wasn't speeding
kind of stuff. I didn't know it could go to that level of just despicable crime.
Yeah, in order where what were the years again, Ben that this was happening.
The years that this was happening were during the during the course of the Amanda Show, So the convictions for crimes of a similar nature didn't come about till two thousand and four. But the Amanda Show itself ran from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and two, got it, And that was starring Amanda Binds, which became another another mother load of very nasty allegations to which Schneider has responded, but not very convincingly.
And if I'm not mistaken, Amanda Bynes went on to have some pretty public mental health issues that you know, were widely reported, and one can't help but wonder if that kind of thing that is related to things that she witnessed, you know, while on set. I'm just conjecturing here, and I don't know that's for a fact, but it does seem like that is a common trope with child actors who have experienced difficult situations when they were very young. It can lead to difficulties later in.
Life, and the allegations continue. There's also sl Channel, who was a Nickelodeon employee who worked at the company's Burbank lot. He was convicted of bringing in minor a young boy to the lot and abusing him on site. And that gets even more to stur because it turns out Channel had a prior conviction and was a registered sex offender before applying to work at Nickelodeon. They hired him, and it just gets it gets stranger and stranger. You know.
There's the point. There's the point that we haven't had a full episode on about the tremendous psychological dangers posed to child actors. You know, it's unfortunately, it's I'm not going to say, of course, something hyperbolic. It's obviously not every child actor. You can see people who have great, storied careers and they had awesome parents who are helping them along the way. But there are also a lot
of dark things that occurred. A lot of kids got who slipped through the cracks or were treated as objects or things to be abused, and that has series consequences later in life, you know, in terms of mental health, in terms of substance abuse. It is a story so common indeed that it has become part of American folklore. And with this, when I was watching through this series,
I was reading through these allegations. It was after it was after some of our previous discussions where we jokingly, we jokingly talked about the kind of internet meme that kept saying Dan Schneider has a weird thing for feet, remember that? And then I realized the logo of Nickelodeon was a foot.
Yeah orange slime foot yeah.
Yeah yu yeah, yuck indeed, yuck to the max. And then there were also there were also super cuts that have been released in recently and in recent years of kids in these programs doing things under the guise of comedy that, while not explicitly sexual, are seen as disturbing by some critics. Do you do you remember hearing about any of this, you guys.
Well, I mean I suppose I just heard about just kind of you hear about the worst of it, and then you can only assume that what led to the worst of it was a culture of inappropriate behavior and just these folks not being good stewards of the young people they were meant to be looking out for.
Yeah, the normalization that allows escalation, right, and shifts the overtone the Overton window. And there are also, of course, there are allegations that are maybe sexually based or misogynistic, but they are not sexually explicit or sexual abuse claims, like the stories of female writers or female identifying writers who were working on this show and said, you know,
we were retaliated against. There were the Amanda Buying Show or the Amanda Show had only two female writers on the first season, right, and it's supposed to be a female centric show, right, They're looking for a certain demographic. And these two writers, Jenny Kilgan and Christy Stratton are interviewed describing their experiences, and what they talk about is
really hostile stuff. There's one quote where it's like, right when they first start the writer's room and they're breaking stories and they say, Dan Schneider, his manifesto, his thesis statement is he doesn't think women are funny, and then in front of these female writers, he says, name one funny female writer, which is pretty that's kind of a bully tactic.
Isn't it, Sarah Silverman. Yeah, And then he sorry, just one of the funniest writers on the planet.
And yeah, we're Earthlings. Let's blow up earth things. Shout out Sarah Silverman. He also goes on to like the accusations again, these are allegations against the It hasn't been there hasn't been a big court conviction of stuff like this for Schneider. But apparently he would show female writers pornography on his computer. He would try to pressure people into giving him massages to get their sketches on the air.
And these are the actual writers saying it. There was also dirty financial shenanigans going on, like splitting the pay that you were supposed to give to a single writer between two writers so you could get like a buy one, get one free deal. And then, in all fairness to Nickelodeon, Schneider left in twenty eighteen. It's twenty twenty four, and these things are like, these stories are still coming out and I'm wondering, guys, do you think they're sand to this?
Do you think there's credibility to this? Yes?
Unfortunately, I mean, yeah, I haven't seen the things you've looked at, but it certainly sounds like it.
I've certainly been aware of the story for a long time, and I grew up as a Nickelodeon kid, and so I suppose I had a vested interest. And unfortunately it does feel all too real.
Yeah, and this is where we pass the torch to you, folks, fellow conspiracy realist, especially people who were in the demographic. When you're watching shows during this time period, we want to hear from you. If you have any experience in the industry, tell us your take on these allegations. Tell us how deep, how far this might go? Was this an active conspiracy against these employees and these children? And you can always reach us conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Say it along at home one ay through three, std WYTK. We're going to take a pause for a word from our sponsors and we'll be back with more strange news.
And we've returned with another piece of strange. This one is a Bomer kind of non the same, not quite the same aggnitude as the previous one, But it's just an example of someone going way, way, way off the deep end to try to perpetrate a fraud and losing
out in the most grandiose way imaginable. And it involves a student in Taiwan who had a not so great friend who apparently was in over his head in crypto, and the friend, known only in the press as Lao, apparently convinced his buddy Xiang to perpetrate an insurance fraud with him to help get him paid because he it would appear, this Jang, you know, had a soft spot in his heart for his buddy Lao, and he Lao told him that he was being pursued by gangsters because
of crypto debts that he had, which unclearest whether that's the case or not, but whatever the case, it appears that the two hatched an elaborate insurance fraud scheme that involved not Lao the person in debt I guess taking one for the team, but rather Zang. I can only imagine that they had agreed to split some of these insurance proceeds, but it was Jang who agreed to amputate his own legs. Both of them, both of them, yes, legs plural and file an insurance claim. Well, it didn't
exactly go as planned. Apparently. What happened was on January twenty sixth, twenty twenty three, Leao and Xang took out a motorbike and rode around Taipei so that they would have an alibi or a cover story for this idea that Xiang had become due to exposure to the elements afflicted with frostbite due to their evening ride. I don't know about you, guys. I'm not an expert on the climate of Taipei, but never really thought of it as a subarctic kind of situation. Ben, I believe you've spent
some time in that part of the world. Does they get that chili at night?
It depends on the season.
It is January, you know, it's probably quite cold. Yeah, but either way, this was their cover story. Several days before this, Jang took out several quite lucrative insurance policies for life travel and accident insurance is. According to prosecutors, After this night ride, Jang soaked his legs in a bucket of dry ice and was admitted to the hospital.
So that would actually give you frostbite. But there's something there's something interesting there at all. Yeah, January is comparatively a cold month for type A. But it's not that cold, dude, It's really not. It's like, I'm gonna just look this up real quick. The average low temperature is ten gree celsius, which is like fifty degrees fahrenheit. It's colder at night in New York now right.
According to Business Insider, the low of the night of the supposed accident was forty two degrees fair night.
Yes, that would be that would be slightly lower than the average low, but still that's that feels like a stretch. So they tried to manufacture the frostbite by this this dry ice process, as you're describing to frostbite sucks. It's not cool.
Like, oh yeah. If anybody saw the most recent season of True Detective, there was something referred to by the lead investigators in that series as a corpse sickle. It was some men who froze to death naked out in the the Alaskan you know, tundra, and your fingers turned black, your extremities turned black, and and you know, you basically get it's almost like getting gangreen. But it's it's it's frostbite, but it's it's not pretty and it is quite painful.
The problem here is that there are certain telltale signs of a legitimate case of frost bite. Right His legs had no markings indicating that he had shoes or socks on. All of his injuries appeared completely symmetrical, which is of course consistent with you know, soaking your legs in a bucket rather than being exposed to the elements, which would be a lot more you know, amorphous and not along a certain line. To your point, Matt, the weather on
January twenty sixth was not anywhere near below freezing. It only got two round forty two degrees fahrenheit, quite chiley. But as the Taiwan Bureau of Criminal Investigation said in a statement, Taiwan is a subtropical region and frost bite of this level is pretty much unheard of. By this level, we mean we're requiring amputation just due to the nature of the climate in that region.
Like non manufactured frostbite.
By non exactly, Zang's legs did have to be amputated below the calf because of these injuries that he had sustained. But this was absolutely, absolutely sketchy and a lot of questions needed answering. Police did seek out those answers and investigated Jang and Lao.
It wasn't until.
November, and with that much time having passed, you think the guys would have gotten rid of the evidence, but no, they found the plastic bucket that was used to freeze Jang's feet. Apparently, insurance documents were just strown about the apartment, willy nilly, and a white polystyrene box used for transporting dry ice, in addition to eight mobile phones and a tablet computer. I imagine maybe those were of interest because of the crypto stuff. Maybe there was indication on those
that this guy was in debt. Lao and Jang were arrested on January seventeenth and charge with fraud and aiding and abetting serious injury according to the Bureau. And here's the kicker why this story is a bummer. This is obviously idiotic behavior. Kicker, Yeah, the kid, Sorry, my mistake in poor taste, accidental. This is obviously an example of some very idiotic behavior. You know, no one likes being backed into a corner, and no one likes being in debt.
Whether or not there were gangsters or you know, members of organized crime involved or not, it can feel very scary and like you're back into a corner and you have nowhere to go. But this seems like a pretty hair brained scheme. And I can't believe Jang wasn't even the one that was in debt and he somehow talked his buddy into having his own legs amputated. The claim they filed was for upwards of American one point five
million dollars. They filed the claim and actually only received seventy two hundred dollars from one of the insurers, And of course now that money is going to have to be returned and those legs ain't growing back, guys.
Not with current medical technology.
When done seem so I just, I don't know. I can't exactly say I call this heartbreaking, but surely there are better ways to perpetrate an insurance fraud. Turned down a building or something. I don't know that it was just I mean, I can only imagine they would have been this one guy would have been absolutely terrified for his life. But there does seem to be a little sense in the reporting on this that he took his buddy for a ride.
Yeah, there is a bit I agree with you, because you are the person who hit me to this story. Initially, you know.
We're sitting there when I discovered popped up my phone. I think we both looked at it the exact same time.
It's just we're like, wow, okay, well, well for the for the stuff they will want you to know ahead, KAD and credit were due. You introduced me this and uh, and it's there is there's also kind of an implication of possible gambling addiction, with the idea that hey, if I can just get enough money to get right on these outstanding debts, then I can improve my life so much so that I will still have a really great quality of life despite this grievous injury I've given myself.
But it's also kind of an ultimatum thing, right, would you rather lose your life or lose your legs? I am wondering whether whether there's something like the psychology of addictive gambling involved, whether the guy was being conned, And I thought in one of the articles you posted from Business Insider by Matthew Low, there's an interesting larger global snapt snapshot I should say, of what they're calling opportunistic fraud, Like it's kind of a golden age right during the
pandemic to commit insurance scams. Yeah.
I actually talking about this with friend of the show Jordan run Talk a little earlier. Why might that be? You know, maybe people are thinking that there's too much going on and that they're gonna be able to slide past, you know, the authorities. I don't know. I didn't mention this, guys, but on Daily Mail and elsewhere he documented this process and they found pictures. You can find pictures of this guy.
He's got his legs in his bucket of dry eyes, and he's like wrapped his legs in zip ties, presumably so he won't like try to pull him out. It's like he's built a torture device of his own making.
Yeah.
I mean, first off, try not to document your crimes as much as possible. And then secondly, maybe maybe they were planning to make that an income stream or like a revenue streams. The dark levis gross.
Also, do document your crimes. Please keep them on your phone and share them with all of your followers.
Go on Instagram, Go on Instagram live. Hey, guys.
Snapchat is the best.
Snapchat's the best. Yeah, gotta keep her streak going.
But they'll never see anything.
No one can do it. You're so safe because you changed your name a little bit.
Yep, uh, just quickly. This is so weird. Okay. So earlier I was in the studio here with Pain and Chuck Payne, Lindsay from Up and Vanished and all the other shows, and then Chuck Bryant from Stuff you should know. They were discussing. A documentary called Vernon, Florida came up. It's a documentary by yeah, yeah, but Errol Morris, and it's about what you're talking about, Noel, I forgot.
About this one.
It's not the whole town where this has happened a lot of times.
Yes, insurance fraud for like by way of amputating limbs. And that's why Errol Morris originally went to that town to make a documentary, but he ended up making it about a different aspect of the town, just like interviewing individuals and telling their stories. But this they were talking about this very thing and how like it's raised its head again as like ways to get fraudulent insurance claims by like getting rid of body parts.
Right, and also you have to think, right, in a time of massive rising unemployment coupled with rising inflation, the average, even if you have a job, you get less money for that job than you would have in the grand scheme of things. People are looking for people who are increasingly desperate or looking for alternate means of income. And this is often lionized right by the Boffins and the Thomas Friedman's of the world as a quote unquote gig economy, like, oh,
how great it is. You know, it's not great. A gig economy is not optimal nor awesome. And there's another thing in this article they shared here that surprised me and then instantly didn't surprise me. Quote the FBI estimates that four hundred to seven hundred dollars from the average US families insurance premiums goes solely to covering insurance fraud cost? Is the problem?
Then?
Like? Is it the problem privatized insurance? Or like how would you? I don't know, do you guys think there's gonna be more of this in the future? Will escalate?
It does seem you know, Now, we just had a really cool conversation with a really cool director who's a big fan of body horror, and I can't help but think of the films of David Cronenberg where there's this future that's depicted often where surgery is almost like a fetish or something like that, and people, you know, like sacrifice limbs almost as a lifestyle. And there is a part of me that's like, is the is the future a future where like, in the future, we won't even
need legs because everything's on the computer. And maybe, like I don't I'm being a little silly, not silly, I mean, maybe I'm being fatalistic, but uh, there I would maybe think that the answer to that question, Ben is yes, maybe for different reasons than we might think.
Yeah. And that's and then we see I guess some analogus too with uh with the stories of the red market and uh monetized organ donation, right, all those all those villages and rural areas across the world where people have sold their kidneys, and their kidneys have been sold at a dramatic markup. I don't know, man, I don't know if I like this wet wear dystopian sci fi civilization that we're headed toward.
Now, I don't either. And then again, I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I'm not saying that everyone's like these are all fetishistic weirdos that just want to cut off their limbs for pleasure, like the Corona work. There's obviously also people that are up against a wall and have nowhere to go and this is the only recourse to get that money. But I'm just kind of doing a thought experiment where like, maybe there is a
future where this stuff goes up for other reasons. Sorry, man, I didn't mean to drop.
Well, that's okay. I was just having flashbacks to the Bad Blood episodes we just did where we're talking about, you know, giving away our life blood for small amounts of money because we need it.
Ugh.
If limbs can be produced in a lab, then people won't have to donate their limbs, right unless it's some kind of regeneration thing where you could you could donate your arm and then regrow a new own and then donate that one. Yikes. I don't want to think about that either.
Well, lots to think about, whether you want to or not. And I guess we'll take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor and then come back with one more piece of strange.
News and we're back. Okay, guys, this is breaking news. I think we all just saw this because it was just posted for the first time as we're kind of as we're recording, but we're going to talk about it, see what we can figure out, and then we hope to hear from you as the situation develops. So here it begins. This is posted on the website of NBC News. It is written by Patrick Smith and Dion Hampton. And here's the title. Airport executive shot in firefight with federal
agents at his home in Arkansas. Here's the subtitle. Brian Malinowski, fifty three, executive director at the Bill and Hillary Clinton Airport in Little Rock, was injured after six am Tuesday. So this is an airport executive.
Not an airline executive.
No no, no doting. Yeah yeah, it's not has none to do of Boeing, at least that we're aware of right now. This is the executive director at the Bill and Hillary Clinton Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, and he was shot by federal agents who were arriving at his home to serve a search warrant. Why, well, we don't know yet. We do not know here's a statement from Arkansas State Police. This is within that NBC article. He was quote injured with gunshot wounds and treated on scene by paramedics before
being transported to a local hospital. Very strange. It appears, at least through statements of his family, he was shot in the head during this firefight. He is on life support at least as we're recording this on Wednesday, March twentieth, at four pm that's Eastern time. And we have no
idea why. We know that Brian again as an executive, made a pretty good amount of money around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and we don't know why the ATF was hanging out at his place and trying to serve a search warrant early at early hours in the morning.
We can maybe, yeah, because Matt with the source you shared, like NBC and then also local affiliates there, there isn't a ton of information. But I think maybe we can postulate, I want to say speculate, but postulyly. The the ATF has a specific area of focus and expertise. Could it have possibly had something to do with alcohol, tobacco or firearms?
Probably firearms we know from that NBC article that other people in the neighborhood, this is a residential neighborhood where this was occurring. Other people saw quote guns and ammunition being loaded onto a trailer while firefighters carried a circular saw, crowbars and other tools into the house as though they are attempting to gain access to some room or safe or area that they could not gain access to traditionally.
Right, sounds like gun running, then it sounds like.
It could be it's an executive director of an airport. And what we have learned, at least through the let's say, let's say allegations that come out of Emena, Arkansas about gun and drug running out of an airport there, that there are allegations that have to do with the Clintons, by the way, ps and this happens to be the director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport. Maybe it's just all coincidence, and maybe that's weird. Who knows.
I'm not seeing anyone talking about gun running right now, like through the airport or through use of.
The airport, right or the authorities. Yeah, but then you know the idea, like the scene we're describing, as reported from the neighbors even discounting eyewitness testimonies problem that seems more likely. One of the first questions people would have is if there is illegal firearm trade, er, if there is gun running, what is it related to? Like, you know, gun running doesn't work if you're just one person. It's
not like the card game Solitaire. You run the guns from point A two point z where there are other people. So who are those other people? This is all if then stuff. But also, Matt, I have never been a confession moment of accountability. I've never been an airline or airport executive. Are they well to do? Do they make good money?
Yeah?
Well yeah, I mean it's stated in that NBC News article I think as a statement from his brother, this gentleman Brian Melanowski's brother saying that he earned around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, you know, core a million dollars a year. Not too chabby. But you know who, who's to say if he's got that much money. I don't understand why you would need extra income, you know,
doing some drug running. If you've got a legitimate job that pays you that much money, you know, unless there's some greed aspirations or political connections that were not yet seeing. Also, according to his brother, he had just met with Arkansas senators last week in Washington for quote official airport business.
That is such a that is such a vague term. I would have written that in sketch comedy. I'm sorry, this is official airport business.
Well, yeah, and the brother said, quote that tells you the circles he's running in unquote, And again, we look, we have to say it this way on the show for many reasons, some of them are legal. There are a ton of allegations about stuff that goes down with state politics in Arkansas that goes it dates way back into the eighties, right, and it's even further back than that, And you know, we've we've talked about a lot of those things openly on this show, where we've explored some
of those allegations. It does make you wonder if any of it continues on, right, and if there is an organized crime element of some sort that could be involved here, wasn't there's.
Something familiar about that town And I'm trying to was it a ron contra?
Which town are we talking about?
Mina, Arkansas?
Yeah? This wait, this one isn't in Mina, though, this.
One isn't in Mina. Okay, I'm thinking, I'm just think now, I'm thinking just wild Arkansas accusations.
Mina, Arkansas touches on. Lord, I'm I don't know for sure. Mina, Arkansas is one of the places where we did our Clinton episode back in twenty sixteen. That's when we discussed that airport, specifically drug running.
Drug running related to Ron Contra through the AES. I remembering that now, okay. But also because for a certain for a certain demographic of people in the U having the Clinton name attached to something immediately makes it super sus.
Right, Well, it weirdly it does. Yeah, even though it doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's just for the it's just again because of allegations of corruption within Arkansas and the state government, and because Bill Clinton was the head of the state government there for a while as governor.
And then again also because there was so much is the problem, you know, and even knowing that some of that has to necessarily be political hit pieces because of the nature of American political discourse. There's a lot of smoke, that's all we can say. There's a lot of smoke from this time period. I don't know, man, I've never heard of an airport executive in the United States being in as our pal Lauren would say, an actual facts shootout, like that's not in their skill set nor their CV.
Oh yeah, Like what what's the implication exactly? There's some kind of sex secret life like a like what would lead one occupying a position and of such legitimacy and prominence to go this route?
Well?
Yeah, according to some of the reporting and some of the statements, Brian Melanowski did collect guns like weapons. Perhaps some of those were caught up in some kind of investigation and the ATF was coming to search the home. We don't know. This is all speculation on my part. Maybe that's why they showed up for this with the search warrant. Maybe it has something to do with something.
Little Rock Public Radio or it's Little Rock Arkansas's NPR station reported on about this weird property dispute that was happening with Brian Melanowski in a neighbor that's really it's it's too much to even talk about right now. It has to do with a mailbox that Brian melanows Ski was like, this is on my property. And then there's a winding maze of strange things that occurred, and at the end, Brian Malanowski failed to get this mailbox removed from what he says was his property. You can look
that up. It's titled Airport director involved in shootout previously at center of property dispute. It's on ual Rpublic Radio dot org.
Nice I was looking at some of the local sources here, but I want to because as you said at the top, that we the public do not have a ton of information about the mechanics of this event. I think we can safely say though, that any rational actor getting into a shootout, a home game shootout with something on the level of the ATF, they have to know that's a suicide run. Like you don't walk out of that.
No, Yeah, so that is.
What would it have been that could make this guy do that? Suicide runs is like a setup of some kind?
Is this a distraction from something else that's going on with this guy that he'd get over his head with somebody like it just seems like secret life kind of stuff to me.
It's wild.
If it's true what Matthew Melanowski's saying, that's the brother of the victim here and Brian did meet with quote Arkansas senators last week in Washington for quote official airport business. I would love to know the minutes of that meeting, or at least the general nature of.
The seconds, just the tenor of the discussion. Oh yeah, yeah, if not the minutes, the seconds, I like that. Yeah, it's like the conversation between Uncle Gee and Uncle Joe right where they're just saying, hey, a good one. We'd like if you read just the minutes of those guys conversations, it would seem relatively innocuous because you're missing so much in tone. But you're right, this is the information that we would need to figure out what happened, and we
can't forget. You know, there's a family that's had their lives horrifically upended, and regardless of what we conclude about this or what we're all thinking as we're hearing the story, we have to remember that there are there are human beings affected by this who are most likely innocent and uninvolved in whatever the hell is going on or was going on with Malanowski.
Well, yeah, and we have to state maybe Brian Melanowski was surprised by armed men showing up at his house. Right, he just defended his home and himself and anybody else who's in the house and he didn't know.
Has a bit of a standard ground kind of situation.
Perhaps, Yeah, well, that's.
Not why people have firearms in their home.
It's true, break.
Ins and violence do occur. I also wonder, like, do we It feels like there are some more official statements maybe that should be on the way. I can only assume. And he was also, Yeah, because he would have been He would have been competent with a firearm because he's an enthusiast and a collector, so surely that means he goes to the range and doesn't let a skills atrophy. Were there any ATF wounds or injuries.
Yeah? One ATF officer was I guess shot or wounded, but in non critical condition, was taken to the hospital. Okay, guys, I don't know what else there is to say here. We've done so much speculation already, simply because this is such a new story. We cannot wait to hear what you find as you're listening to this, and maybe new stuff has come out right to us, let us know details. We can't wait to hear from you.
Yes, and we have one thing to add. This is a This is a special message for my pal Jack, for our pal Jack over at the Daily Zeitgeist, and for our fellow conspiracy realists who have been checking out the Havana syndrome. There's a new update. Ah, Jack is gonna love this. You know, we were going back and forth on Twitter about this. There is a new study that has been conducted over the course of five years that finds there are no brain injuries among Havana syndrome patients.
Really really, I know, right, that's that's the sound our pals are making on the West Coast right now. But yes, as you said, Matt, let us know what is going on with all of the stuff we discussed in Strange News this evening is Havannah syndrome, psychosomatic, attic, insane is the pressure?
Sorry guys on that note, for real, I've been getting terrible sleep for the past like four nights and I've woken up at three am.
Exactly free Na time.
Yeah, it's exactly at three am. And there is an I don't know if you guys have this weird sinastasia thing where you can hear electricity yes, sometimes like the buzz of that field, that electromagnetic field. Not everybody can hear.
That, by the way, Oh, it's like cilantro.
It is like seriously, but I wake up at three am and I hear this super high pitched elect like electrical sound is the only way I can describe it. So then I actually did some recordings at the house to be like, what the heck is this thing? And it is. You can see it in the upper levels of frequency that like you guys know Adobe audition, right, it will show you like that upper echelon if you look at the spectral vision. Yeah, there is something penetrating my house. Boys, can you send it?
I would love to. I would love to dig into that off air.
I think I'm gonna I'm gonna save it, put it on some hard drives, back it up a couple of times, and then hide it in various places so authorities can find.
It good for their comments publicly, right, Yeah, I just wanted to say here, guys.
It really makes me want to pull the trigger on buying that mic I mentioned in our Infrasound episode. Company called Soma Electronics makes a mic called ether that is a wide band receiver that allows you to perceive the electromagnetic landscape around you. It's an anti radio and it picks up nothing but that interference that other mics are designed to filter out.
We need a reason to hang out of my place. Bring it over, I'm going to do it. Order right now.
How much room for activities? Also, I'm with you there, Matt. As everybody knows, I do not practice normal human sleep patterns and have had some some weird stuff going on too. So if we ever sound a little loopy, that's that's part of it, and we're keeping it as part of the show. Folks, do be safe out there. Also, let us know what you think about the rise in potential opportunistic fraud as the insurance industry is called. And you know, also,
please please please not blowing smoke. Let us know what your take on the dark side of Nickelodeon allegations is. And let us know how far how deep you believe this may go. Is there a cover up, is it active? What else does it tell us about the darker side of entertainment in Hollywood? We want to hear all this and more, especially leads on new topics. You think your fellow conspiracy realist will enjoy. We try to be easy to find online.
Sorry. You can find us in the handle conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on YouTube, where we have videos early on every single week, on x FKA, Twitter, and on Facebook where you can join our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy. On Instagram and TikTok. We are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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