From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Name is Noah.
They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
It is time for some strange news. If you are listening in the evening this program publishes Welcome to February seventeenth. This is the week of our big show at National Sawdust and Brooklyn is part of on AirFest, so get over that way if you are interested.
I can't believe it's coming up so soon. Oh it's crazy, but it's going to be a good time. Make sure to get your tickets. It is a separate ticketed event from on AirFest itself, so you can check that out on the on AirFest website or I believe it National Sawdust's website.
You can just show up at the National Sawdust and say let.
Me in to see stuff they don't want you to know to say, you know Ben cool for you, you might have even better luck.
I appreciate that, nough you might have even better luck if you say you're there to see our special guest, Justin Richmond, who who's classing up.
The show with us from Broken Record.
You may know the show the podcast the music podcast featuring Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin on the Pushkin Network, really great source for all things music, and we're going to talk about some hidden messages in your favorite records with Justin, among other things. It's gonna be fun. There's gonna be live modular synth music, and we're using this immersive sound system. The National Sawdust has to have a really good time with some immersive audio, so check it out. It'll be a good time.
And we're also crossing the borders of fact and fiction, conspiracy and speculation. Yes, I deft with that. If you want to hear more about it, please come join us. In the meantime, guys, I thought we could kick off tonight's Strange News by uh. I just want to share with you my favorite headline I read this week. Ready, you probably already saw it, Okay, actually surprised me.
Okay, here he.
Goes Man claimed he was warming up his chicken in a sauna after becoming aroused by pool jets.
Going on there, why just keep some unfolding?
Yeah?
So wait, yeah, the first of all, that's not what a sauna is for. And what does the chronology of I mean, okay, you're aroused by pool jets, we don't kick here, But what does the chronology have to do with eating it? Was he just like one of those bacchanalian type folks who just loves to have the juices drip down the chest when they're you know, like in the Farrell does on.
And is it actually chicken that were talking about?
That is a great question, great question. It is indeed a chicken.
Okay, Now, bringing a snack into an unusual place is something that's happened to a lot of people.
We're from Atlanta.
We've seen plenty of well, I've seen plenty of people try to be slick and sneak a rotisserie chicken into the movie theater. Everybody goes spaghetti, right, what's just spaghetti policy? But it's an excellent question. It is a literal chicken. Let's go to Birmingham Live by Chris Slater and Isabelle Bates.
It did take a.
Team of journalists to break the case. Here who we're going to We're traveling over.
To the UK.
The at the Tom Husband Leisure Center at Salford University, they discovered fifty nine year old xin Jiang who was in the sauna and he was staring at a lady outside the sauna after he had taken a swim. He's fifty nine years old. He was discovered with his shorts.
Down to his knees.
He was touching himself and he told he later told the authorities who was roused by feeling the pool jets on his tucks, and that he was not pleasuring himself. It was not a sexual act. He was cold because he had been swimming, and he put his hands into his shorts to warm them up.
Gay huh. Well, look now, I just have to admit we've probably all experienced a little accidental jet arousal in a hot tub.
WHOA, what was that? Or otherwise? Yes, largely accidental. And I would also like to point out that in finish sauna culture, enjoying a nice grilled sausage often prepared on the sauna stove along with a finished lagger, very very common.
Perhaps perhaps Oh man, yeah, this guy's nowhere near as cool. I was a little confused about this. Uh, it's worse than a literal chicken. When management asked him what he was doing, uh, he just said, I'm adjusting myself or I'm adjusting my chicken, which is.
What as a chicken's Wow. Okay, I would have We could have left that one with the headline Yeah, but.
No, no stone left unturned. That's what's straight left. No chicken left uncooked.
Oh boy.
Uh, so we are going to learn about, uh, some stuff on the edge of science fiction.
We're gonna learn about.
Some fat bergs, some droning and ongoing Bitcoin saga, and much much more. But before we do any of that, what what about we pause for an ad break and then get to a heist? Yay, and we have returned over one million dollars worth of olive oil has been stolen from a Montreal trucking company.
Finally, yeah, finally the time has come. I said, we love a weird food heist, and we talk We talked about an egg heist last week.
More than one hundred pallets of olive oil worth over one million US dollars were stolen. According to the Montreal Police, a transport company was sending product to a client. It was supposed it was supposed to arrive early February. It didn't show up on the third or the fourth.
Uh.
The the people waiting for their olive oil fortune reported it to the cops on February fifth. Uh, it is missed in transit. And we know that there are some CCTV snaps of what looks to be the possible the possible oil thieves. We're really just mentioned there's not too much of this at this point yet. We're really just mentioning it because we love a heist. We are stands for heist. So let's do a couple of fun ones. There's much more important news that we'll get to. We'll
get to hear in and listener mail. But you may have heard, fellow conspiracy realists some scuttle butt about a politician who has not only proposed that we buy Greenland. We the US not only backed up President Trump there, but additionally said, you know what, while we're at it, while we when we acquire it, we should rename it not Greenland, but red, white and Blueland.
Did you guys, hear about this.
This is a joke.
Yes, this is I thought it was as well. Yeah, I thought it was too. No it is not.
Okay, Yeah, this one comes to us from our home state of Georgia. The Representative Buddy Carter of Georgia introduced a new bill to Congress. This we're gaming to rename Greenland to red Comma, White Comma, and Blueland, Bluelands being all one word. This is a real thing. It is Hr one one six ' one, Red, White, and Blueland Act of twenty twenty five. Now, before Google officially renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, I would have said this was an onion article, you know.
I would have said this was a clear prank.
Yes, how do you introduce something like that as a serious matter. I don't understand. This is like body mcboat face type stuff.
Yeah.
Here's what Carter said in a statement on Tuesday, said America is back and will soon be bigger than ever with the addition of Red, White, and Blue Land. President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist. When our negotiator in chief inks this monumental deal, Here's what I think.
Is going on.
I am certain that Representative Carter, whether or not you support him, I'm certain he doesn't genuinely believe that this bill will pass or maybe garner enough support in larger Congress. I think instead it is meant as a political signal that he supports the new administration.
That's what I think the way is.
Yeah, yeah, I will say though, that Red, white, and blue Land certainly would be an appropriate name for a America themed amusement park, you know, So it's not all bad.
Well, to be clear, there are maybe sillier names throughout the span of history we've run into.
You know.
Maybe let's say this does pass, then how long would it take for it to be normalized and for people to just start calling it Blueland and general, you know, and then kids are born and they don't know about Greenland, and the name feels That's my question. Does it feel silly to us now because it's objectively a silly name, or does it feel silly just because we're used to Greenland.
Greenland was always kind of a bit of a misnomer in and of itself, right, because it's like Iceland is more green and Greenland is more icy or something I can't remember. There was always a mayor.
The old conspiracy. Yeah that's right.
Yeah, yeah, So folks, please let us know your thoughts. Maybe the name is awkward because it's red Comma, white Comma, and blue land. So that's a that's an odd agglomeration of names. There's some stuff that we we can't get to that hopefully we'll explore in a listener mail program later this week. There is a plague of rats, that's true, laying waste the cities thanks to climate change.
There is a new there's a new.
Overly if sperm donor that's made the news, so check out that story. And maybe this is a good segue to another conversation we're going to have later in this program. Various professors are now arguing I got some flak when I brought elon Musk versus the US to last week's recording, but it was the right thing to.
Do, and it was curious to It was curious.
To me to find that a lot of a lot of in the no tech experts are feel that they have identified the overall goal of Elon Musk. In their opinion, they think he wants to replace representative government with Silicon Valley controlled AI, so technological oligarchy run by machines.
Didn't he in a consortium of his other tech oligarch bros, put together some sort of proposal to buy open AI for billions of dollars but also less than the valuation of it.
And then Altman replied by offering to buy Twitter for about a tenth of that price.
Yeah, there you go. I have heard this kind of scuttle butt as well, Ben, this idea that they would be the terrifying notion that they would be potentially behind closed doors testing AI in an effort to streamline government systems. You know, they have now been given access to and I don't think anybody wants that right, not at all.
Yeah, they are just too many.
You know, whether you consider yourself a Luddite or a blade Runner esque pioneer bleeding edge sci fi, the reality is right now, what we know about large language models and AI and the quest for AGI is simply that it's not up to the task of fully running something is massive and complicated and self contradicting as a government.
That was the big problem in the real world, in the world of West World, right, once you get in and once you got into later seasons, didn't they have it wasn't a governance by the massive AI of some sort, right, I'm just thinking about all the problems that society faced, at least within that fictional world.
And predictive models being an issue there as well. There's probably one of the best write ups, at least that I have found about this comes from Eric Salvaggio, writing for Tech Policy Press.
Uh.
Savaggio definitely is not a fan of Musk, just to be clear, he has he has a perspective and a bias and a horse in the race. But his article Anatomy of an AI Coup is a must read if you want to learn more about this, more about these demands, and more about why critics are concerned that statements about government efficiency might just be sheep's clothing over a wolf.
Heard heard, Indeed, that's a creepy thought. Really want to have humans at the wheel if we can, for as long as we can, if that's cool.
And you know, yeah, and maybe that makes us sound old, But the thing is governance by humans. We already know all the problems that can occur with that particular kind of structure. We do not know the problems that can occur with a brand new form of intelligence running the structure.
Well, I know, for my two sents, I guess I'm certainly not opposed to AI as a tool, you know, with eyes wide open, using it for you know, certain things that maybe aren't nearly as high stakes. But I just I really resent and am sort of offended by this tech bro move fast break stuff mentality that just doesn't seem to take into account, like the ramifications on literally the entire world of just shoving this stuff through because they think it's neat you know.
No, yeah, or they can they can control it, right, maybe maybe if I build it, I can control the thing that then runs everybody.
But that's the thing too, right, like think of.
I know I probably overdo analogies, but thanks to everybody who writes in if we if we go one right think of the film Snow Piercer spoilers for Snow Piercer three to one spoilers. Uh, you know the guy who is the conductor of the train, he nominally runs the entire civilization right, because he runs the train. However, the train cannot deviate from its path because it is on rails. Right, So you could have a nominally run AI government, right,
that's controlled by a person. But does the AI have its own set of rails, and if so, how much autonomy and latitude does the human ruler actually possess?
Minor spoiler alerts as well for West World three two one spoiler alert, Harris, who plays the conductor in Snow Piercer, is very much the guy kind of in charge of Westworld and faces a very similar conundrum of like, you know, you may be the god of a thing as a human, but then once you've let that being, that that genie out of the bottle, it takes on a life of its own, and you really no longer have control, even if you built in rails, so to speak, like you're
talking about. I just think it's an interesting parallel those two characters that are both played by Ed Harris.
Dude, that guy, I don't know, maybe there's something, maybe we need to talk to Ed. Maybe he knows.
Something, he knows what's up.
M Yeah, and he's probably a really good hang too, you know who else. It's totally unrelated. You know who else turns out to be super into exploring conspiracies, Rick Rubin, imagine that I had no idea, but apparently it makes sense. Apparently so Rick, if you're listening.
Uh, come a hang.
And there's so much more to get to, including some updates, some of which we mentioned on the ongoing weird thing with eggs in the United States.
Will it expand abroad?
Will pause for a word from our sponsors, will keep this one short, and we'll return with more strange news.
And we're back. Guys, is going to be rapid fire update time. Here we go. Start your engines, GIOO. Everybody remember that guy Eric Adams, mayor of New York City we've been talking about over and over and over and over.
Again, huge in Turkey, huge and.
Really big in Turkey. Well, guys, the new acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil I think is how you say, Emil bove Bove has ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the corruption charges against Eric Adams that we've been talking about. Yeah, the orders for all the charges against him to be dismissed, and the dismissal is quote without prejudice, which means charges could be refiled in the future, but
for now, go away charges, says the acting whatever Attorney General. Interesting, right, feels a little weird that corruption charges would just go away like that. It seems like there's a lot of stuff that was going through the courts that is just kind of dissipating into nothingness as we speak. This formal dismissal would have to be filed in a court, you know, by the same prosecutors that originally filed those charges out
there in the Southern District of New York. An a motion to dismiss the whole thing would have to be reviewed by a judge and you know, approved in everything. But the reasoning here, guys, is that the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams in September of last year came too close to the mayoral primary in June, and that it limited his ability to aid President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigrants and to fight crime.
Oh so a political maneuver or a greater good.
Argument, That's exactly what it is, a greater good argument for the folks who are now in charge. So the same person both said Eric Adams case would be reviewed by a new Trump appointed US Attorney after the general election for mayor in November. So there you go. It's it's all in who you know, right, And.
You know, I mean this is maybe stating the obvious, but I just think, you know, corruption should be considered corruption. You shouldn't get it pass just because it's inconvenient for somebody else. But it would appear that we are moving more and more into a nineteen eighty four esque, you know, model of truth, where like that you don't know what
you think you know says the powers to be. You know, just because you think something is a certain way, it doesn't make it true, even though if you know it to be true. And I just I find that mind boggling, and it really does my head in.
I'm fully with you on that. I do feel like this kind of thing happens no matter who's you know, elected over office.
Right.
It's true the friends or the people who are political allies get a little pick me up from the folks that get in.
So it's it's quid pro quo, and we need to stop for a second and check in on this. It's no secret that the Department of Justice has met with a lot of controversy in just a few weeks. Right now, especially, I'm thinking about what have been portrayed as a conspiracy
of reprisals. The Justice Department has fired twelve officials who had investigated Trump activities, some of which were related to the previous administration, and then I think it was the acting Attorney General of the DJ Right now, James McHenry has sent out termination letters that are kind of speaking to that quid pro quo that I'm getting a spider
sense about when I hear the Eric Adams stories. McHenry says in the termination letter for officials investigating some aspect of Donald Trump's companies or previous administration, he says, Look, I don't believe you can quote be trusted to faithfully implement the president's agenda because of your significant role in prosecuting the president end quote. So I have a question there, does that logic? Is that logical or is that a rationalization to punish people or both?
Well, you're not folks who have already been engaged in actions that view let's say person A as a potential criminal. Right you're investigating this person for criminal activities, You're not going to view that person as an objective, you know, actor for other things that that that person is doing. Right if you if you have been actively investigating that person.
So I can see the logic. It is unfortunate that there is no form of objectivity when it comes or thought of objectivest when it comes to someone who is in that prosecutor prosecutorial role. I don't know anything. Yeah, but it's just a it's a freaking weird situation.
I would say, Yeah, that's that's the pickle too, right, because is this a a straight up qui pro quo transactional relationship now that the DOJ is sort of brokering or are they still just doing their job according to you know, their mandate, which makes them historically super unpopular by the way with powerful people.
Well, yeah, and it is putting the attorneys general against the you know, the district attorneys they like, the acting US attorneys in the different districts. In this case, it's the the acting Deputy Attorney General versus the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York versus all these other prosecutors and all the other districts versus the Department of Justice itself. And it's it's all infighting and chaos and again, I think the whole thing goes back
to that. Maybe some of the strategies we've talked about make the whole thing chaos, so every good thing seems amazing.
Oh god, yeah, yeah, create the problem that you purport to solve, right, yes, yeahsh is one on one, the.
Use and the cobra.
You gotta yes, exactly who's going to win? It's usually the mongoose.
Well no, no, no, there was that whole thing. Sorry I wasn't mongoos, it was there was a thing in India, yeah, the cobra effect, where in India there was a massive rat problem and in order to deal with that, somebody had the hair brained, slash genius idea of releasing a bunch of cobras, which led to them eating and killing the rats, but then it led to them having a cobra problem.
And then to solve the cobra problem, they incentivized hunting cobras, giving you a lum sun per cobra carcass that you returned, And what that did was create more cobras, because people figured out they could farm a cobra quite profitably and then just sell the dead cobras or some kinds live Cobra's back to the authorities, so that's the Cobra effect.
And then Totino's pizza roles comes in and it's like, what is happening here?
Totino's pizza role, the Cobra of the frozen food aisle.
That's right, what's the alien's name? And the Chasmo Chasmo so funny. If y'all haven't seen that, it's so good, it's really there's also like an uncensored version where Chasmo's eyeball pops out and rolls across the floor. That they did, and Totino's leaned right into it. They posted it themselves, but apparently the Super Bowl and Standards and Practices did not approve that one.
Oh yeah, guys, we got to keep moving rapid fire here. Remember that guy, Luigi Mangioni. Yeah, yes, okay, Well we talked about how there was some funding going on for him for his legal fees and all of that stuff. Well we've got a bit of an update. The legal fees were flowing in. There was originally a give Send Go fund for him. That's a that's a service or a website, give send to Go, and there was a goal of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars set for
Luigi Mangioni's legal fees. They smashed through that really quickly, and now it has been capped at five hundred thousand dollars and today, as we record, it is sitting at three hundred and fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and twenty two dollars at least as I the last time I checked the website.
Is this like a gofund me?
Mm hmm.
When we say capped, does it mean it cannot exceed five hundred k or does that just mean like that's their stretch.
Goal, that's the goal. The goal is five hundred thousand right now. Surely it can become much much huger if they wanted to. But it is just nuts because the reporting that came out recently was that donations had kind of topped off and slowed down a lot for Luigi's funds, and now they're going back up like gangbusters.
Ah. And it is a site that I'm not familiar with. It's called give Send Go, which is very similar to gofund me situation. But I don't know what differentiates them why I would be used instead of that. But yeah, man Wow five hundred K goal three hundred and sixty four to twenty two raised.
YEP.
It is headed by the December fourth Legal committee, which is apparently connected with Mangioni's attorney Karen Friedman and Jiffiloh. I don't know how to say that name. And this is all this is in the actual news. This is like a real appears to be a real thing. ABC News is confirming that this is the actual you know, funding site and everything.
And I could answer the question why it's not go fund Me, which I'm sure I just.
Want to get in front of the emails folks.
I know a lot of our fellow listeners are probably shaking their headphones right now. Go fund Me was originally the crowdsourcing apparatus or platform for Luigi Mangioni until in December twenty twenty four they canceled all pro Luigi campaigns.
So this other platform is fighting the power there. And this was This came amid the big move by mainstream media and a lot of platform owners to scrub discourse about mangion or to shift the narrative, which we discussed in previous previous episodes, as well as strange news can.
I also just say that maybe this is something that go fund me offers. But I'm seeing there's a lot of comments attached to folks who have donated, along with the dollar amounts that they have contributed, and some of
them are very interesting. Here's one from anonymous giver. Jury nullification refers to a jury's knowing and deliberate rejection of the evidence or refusal to apply the law, either because the jury wants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself, or because the result is dictated by law is contrary to the jury's sense of justice, morality, or fairness. Team Luigi, nothing more need to be said. Freedom for all those the
system has failed miserably. If we keep this as another one, we keep this momentum, we can easily be the biggest fundraising campaign on the site. Free Luigi. We need to make a change. Good luckilyuis Luigi for president. Those are all different ones.
Just yeah, hey, And speaking of eating the rich and the rich in general, remember a company called Bear b A.
Y e R.
Oh my god, I love Bear.
Right all the chemical folks. Of course, they make this other thing called round Up, round Up. Ready or whatever all that other stuff, the weed killer round up specifically, Well, we've talked before and very recently about how their product round up appears to be causing cancer, at least according to scientists who are studying the stuff who are not directly hired by Bear or paid by Bear. And uh, well, Bear is fighting back, you guys.
Right.
There are protesters all over the place in Iowa, especially outside the Iowa Capitol Building this this Monday, specifically as we're recording this week, because there is legislation being proposed.
They're in Iowa at the Capitol Building as well as in seven other states that would protect pesticide companies like Bear from claims they failed to warn their customers that their product causes cancer, because this is what this legislation says, because their labels on their products complied with the US
Environmental Protection Agencies regulations. So what they're saying is, what this legislation is saying is that Bear and other companies who make these weed killers that do cause cancer put on their labels the stuff that the EPA required them to, and one of those requirements is not this may cause cancer.
Right, So the question isn't the science that it's the amount or the threshold of legal compliance, and these exactly right, okay, and these grassroots activist whatever, I'll take the applause.
I'll take the check for that one. Get it? Grassroots pesticide.
Well yeah, the people who are saying, hey, this is the right legislation. Bear didn't do anything wrong. But you've also got protesters who were saying, what the heck, guys, Bear definitely did something wrong, and then you get signs and they're all like, no, you're wrong.
So this reminds me of a previous episode, Matt.
Do we know if whether Bear is paying the pro bear activist or pro bear protesters.
I do not know. I do not know.
I know they're paying the you know, the firms essentially that are on the PR side, that are working to fight against us.
And it is legal to do that. It's just it's very ethically fraught. But it wouldn't be the first time large companies or even political groups have have paid people to be sort of astro turf protesters.
Yes, yes, And let's jump really quickly to ap news. This was written on April sixteenth, twenty twenty four, so a while back, but specifically back then when we were talking about Bear. It discusses how they are about one hundred and sixty seven thousand legal claims against Bear and specifically round Up at that time last year in April. They've settled several of those, but they've lost several others
where there are huge judgments. We talked about one I think it was ten billion dollars that was awarded for plaintiffs against Bear because of this whole roundup cancer thing. And then you jump to now and there's still a ton of these lawsuits. So basically Bear is attempting to say, hey, none of these lawsuits are worth their salt anymore because of this thing. Right, we didn't do anything wrong according to the EPA regulations specifically for our labels.
Yeah, which I've just said again, and far be it for me to accuse anybody of conspiracy. It sounds like a really weird and specific, hair splitting legalistic point for people to get organically fired up about, such that they would go protest, you know what I mean? Yeah, Like I don't see the occupy EPA warning labels take it a big move in this direction exactly.
A couple other stories coming out that are worth your time to check out there is a weird one that CNN Science reported on about the shape of Earth's core and how it is changing and altering, and then it connects back to previous reporting again, kind of like that last story reporting for twenty twenty four that talked about Earth's core slowing down its spin compared to the spin of the exterior of the Earth that we experience, you know,
that's how we get our days. But the Earth's interior core seems to have slowed down and is now rotating the opposite direction that Earth is rotating. And now scientists have discovered, just through studying earthquakes and a bunch of other a bunch of other stuff that is a little over my head, they are noticing that the actual shape of that solid metal, extremely hot ball that is the
Earth's core is like altering. It's not a sphere, and it is moving in weird ways and causing volcanic activity in different places on the Earth's surface because of its weird shape. Just strange stuff.
Check it out, we'll do.
And also check in on that artificial sun ben that I think you brought to us, the one in China that is potentially going to change the entire planet with infinite energy. They just broke another record, they smashed it and just came out today. So just keep your eyes and ears open for stuff about the core and the sun and the cancer and.
Oh and just by the way, by the way too.
To add on to that, also check out our previous episodes from years ago. Yes, sometimes the magnetic bulls just switch. Yeah, so that's.
On the way too. We don't know when, but you know, keep your wits about you.
Good luck with that pole a shift rabbit hole you're about to go down. All right, We'll be right back with more strange news.
And we have returned with more strange news. Got a couple of handful of fun ones. I thought i'd start with one relating to some kind of landmark international case precedents involving the flying of drones. Dateline, Sweden. Man convicted of drunk driving a drone in Sweden's first case of its kind, Ben, have you heard about this one?
This one is new to me, Noel, and I think the first question everybody has just to clear things up. I'm pretty sure I know the answer. This guy who got convicted is not physically himself on the drone, right, because.
That's why This is important, Ben, because this is a first of its kind case in terms of the penalty on a fifty four year old ratvik Man just a town in Dalarna in central Sweden. He was at a classic car event flying a drone in a temporary no fly zone, and police flying their own drone that was monitoring the event happened to notice this, you know, invader,
this electronic invader. They then traced it back to the spot where this man was piloting the drone and determined that he had a blood alcohol content of point sixty nine parts alcohol per one thousand parts blood. I've never heard it quite put that way. Maybe this is a Guardian piece, by the way, so maybe I don't know, Ben, Is that the same way we measure blood alcohol content here?
Yeah, you could.
It's it's not the it's the same concept, but it's not the same threshold.
Didn't think so, So that makes sense why it's a little unfamiliar to me. So under Swedish law anything above point two parts alcohol and when that in Bart's blood, I don't know why. I think that's funny. It is very specific is punishable for d w I d uy one point oh is a mega serious crime. Drunk driving laws in Sweden are a little bit stricter than they are in other parts of Europe. In the UK the limits point eight. In France and Belgium point five. In
Spain it is point five as well. In Romania and Hungary it's zero. I don't understand. How is that less strict than point eight? Isn't zero? Like no, no zero alcohol content? Yeah, right, sorry, maybe it requires a little clarification. But they do point out in this article in the Guardian by Miranda Bryant, who is a Nordic correspondent for The Guardian, that Swedish law is a little bit more
strict than other parts of Europe. However, the paragraph referencing those different blood alcohol levels ends with in Romanian Hungary it is zero. Romanian Hungary would be the strictest.
Yeah, that seems like it might be possibly a typo.
It does seem that way.
It's oh, actually, dope, Nope, it's in comparison.
Any blood alcohol at all, any blood alcohol at all over like just the tiniest drop, you know, they'll take your robtuscin or whatever.
Yeah, that is a crime.
Romania and Hungary serious business. They did determine again that this man had a point sixty nine part parts alcohol per one thousand parts blood. He admitted to find the drone, he claimed that he did not fly, later on claiming he didn't fly the drone under the influence and he actually blamed a friend who was at presence when the
police arrived. He was fined thirty two thousand Swedish kroner or two three hundred and forty one pounds or euros, to be paid across eighty days daily, with daily allotments of four hundred Swedish croner or about twenty nine euro The big deal about this is that they imposed the same penalty on this dude who is flying a remote controlled aerial device as they would if he were driving an automobile or you know, a scooter some other kind
of road faring vehicle. Jenny Holden Nystrom, who's the prosecutor, told SVT, which is a Swedish broadcaster, I have not seen a case like this before. I am satisfied with the verdict. Karen Holmant, who is the district court president, said that they chose to apply the same punishment scale as it would for drunk driving to the drone case because quote. It is an aircraft. Even though it is flown by itself, it is controlled by someone down on the ground and can fall from a high height and
injure someone. As you said, I'm behind all of this, guys, I think it makes a lot of sense. You can wreak a lot of havoc even if you're sober and flying a drone, let alone, if you are under the influence. I think this is a precedent that maybe should be adopted elsewhere in the world.
Yeah, it makes sense because you can even if you yourself are not in the vehicle or in the device, you can create a crash, you can make a collision. There's a reason drones are such a huge part of warfare, and with the economy of scale, they're going to continue to become more sophisticated and more affordable. So regulation or further regulation, I should say, is inevitable.
It has to be on the.
Way and potentially larger, wouldn't you say, I mean, like, the type of drones that we see in warfare are the size of like, you know, a small aircraft, a very small aircraft, but they are much larger than the consumer drones that we see. And as we know, technology that the government and the military gets first over time does seem to inch its way into consumer availability.
Right, Yeah, absolutely, we know that we'll see early adopter behavior play a huge role in what kind of laws
get made for the rest of us. So, just like just like with any other technology rolling out, it just takes a few knuckleheads to ruin it for everybody else, right, And this guy was being a little bit knuckleheaded, especially with the uh the story of the invisible disappearing pilot friend that Oh yeah, yeah, that's like, yeah, I think you've had to You had to have a few drinks to think that one was gonna work.
Isn't that also very similar to like if you're drunk driving and you've got a passenger who's sober trying to switch, you know, switch seats at the last minute to fool the coppers.
Yeah, but at that point you have to wonder, like, why wasn't that person driving in the first place?
Right?
It is a very very good point then, But we know humans are very interesting and complex creatures and often quite idiotic ones as well. It's very interesting. There's another article about this on The Independent by Jane Dalton Man find for a drunk driving drone. I love drunk driving drone in Sweden. It does point out that very few countries have outlawed drunk drone driving, but Japan, in a forward thinking move as they are wont to do, did
this way back in twenty nineteen. So that's pretty interesting, and I feel like this case may well be noticed by other countries and adopted, you know, as a precedent. It It just makes sense because we know drones already are always in the news for nuisance type behavior, and this just kind of adds maybe another layer of protection, you know, to regular folks who might be being menaced by drones.
Right, and then we'll see early or we'll see later iterations of regulatory policy come out, like the kinds of licenses you may need to obtain when there are larger drones that are more affordable for people. Do you have something like the equivalent of a drone trucker license? When drone deliveries become or if they become a normalized thing, then you would have to have a license to operate that commercial drone in that way, Should you have to put.
In hours like you would as you know Ben with trying to get a pilot's license, you know, have to kind of prove that you are qualified to make those kinds of maneuvers, especially as we start seeing areas getting denser with these drones, like we were seeing in New Jersey, right with all of these crazy sightings that turned out to largely many of them being drones. And then when there was talk about oh maybe they're UFOs, that caused more people to send their own drones up, adding to
the chaos. Yeah, well put thanks Ben AnyWho. I think this is something to keep an eye on and hopefully, you know, as we know, the law often most always lags behind the exponential improvement and availability of technology. So maybe this will be a lesson to be learned throughout the world. I'm going to move on to another story if you guys don't mind. This one involves a Brian
Adams concert. Remember Brian Adams Summer of sixty nine. Oh, she also recently did an interview I think as he's doing this tour, this kind of like legacy, you know, nostalgia tour, where he said to an interviewer that the song Summer of sixty nine is actually about doing the nasty, It's about like the sex position what not. The year it was the summer where all he did was sixty nine baby uh dude, guys, Yeah, he's definitely big uping himself.
Maybe he was being coy, but you know, there certainly are some interludes implied in that song, which I have to say. There was a fabulous headline that summed this whole thing up the story here, and that came from the website rte dot Ie Plumber of sixty nine. Sewage blockage halts Brian Adams concert in Perth, Australia. A series of fat bergs, which we've talked about before and we'll
talk about outside the context of this story. So these are of course fat grease, toilet tissue rags all built up into this kind of whole other thing that can cause massive chaos and sewer systems. So these massive fat bergs created a huge blockage that caused a sewer backup,
a sewage backup in Western Australia. The Canadian singer songwriter Brian Adams concert was set to take place at a local arena and the organizers, the proprietors of the arena, shut it down while people were already waiting in line to get in due to what they referred to as the risk of sewage backing up within the venue's toilets.
Actually that came from the State Water Corporation. They said that their crews were working to clear the blockage of fat, grease and rag, which has caused several wastewater overflows at properties. This came from a statement according to the water authority the blockage could not be easily dislikes and venue management took this information very seriously and made the tough call
to cancel the Brian Adams concert. This was of course, very disappointing to the Brian Adams fans set to attend Brian Adams Roll with the Punches tour as it made its way across Australia. Unfortunately, the venue was not able to reschedule the concert. I would imagine and hope that concert goers would get a refund wherever they made the purchase for those tickets, and yeah, we'll call it a day.
But this caught my eye, Matt, because you've been teasing us with a story for weeks now that you keep holding back on and into this idea that somewhere in the world I want to say in the UK, these fat bergs. These absolutely disgusting, massive globs of congealed grease, cooking products and other ways that are often kind of ratking style, held together by wipes and rags and toilet tissue and can cause all kinds of chaos and municipal sewer system are actually being used. Like what is it
amber grease or something like that? That disgusting whale, you know, fatty goo, that is such a sought after material to make perfume. What is the deal with that, Matt, I've got to know, dude.
It's even cooler. Yeah, I do apologize guys, this this story has been stuck in the pipes ha ha for a long time. Take Hey, this is it's actually really awesome. I think we found it in January of this year early on. It was posted in the BBC. You can look it up right now. The title is Fatberg's Turned into Perfume Inside Britain's Bizarre New Industrial Revolution And when
you check this out, it's crazy. There are people from the University of Edinburgh who are they're in a specialized program there that they're attempting to find ways to use bacteria, and mostly bacteria, but other biological life forms like that to break down stuff that we need as a species to break down because it's mostly trash or waste or something that we can't make use of right now, how do we turn it into something else? Well, it's pretty incredible.
Professor Stephen Wallace is one person that was interviewed for this story. He specifically and his team take these fat bergs, apply bacteria to them, and it the bacteria breaks the fat berg all the way down into this chemical that smells a bit of pine, like a lovely pine smell, and then you can sell that product to somebody who is either making a perfume or is attempting to let's
say scent. There are other chemical products, right, so, like think about something as simple as pine sal which is a very it was for a long time a popular cleaning product here in the United States. But anything else that has that pine smell, there's there's a different chemical that is a synthesized chemical that is currently made from fossil fuels like petroleum oil. But if you could instead make that from the waste, right the leftover fat burg
that would be revolutionary. And that's exactly what's happening.
Yeah, And just to jump in here on the note about ambergriss, the waxy substance made from those sperm whales, civilization does need replacements because I think, obviously due to some environmental regulations and due to just you know, the nature of hunting sperm whales, it is exceedingly rare to find natural amber grease use the way it was in
the past. So these kind of alternative products, even if they might sound a little gross for some people, I think we all find the science fascinating and these are really cool innovations.
Oh yeah, come on, if you could find the stuff you need to smell good in a fat burg, great, because ultimately it is just it's a biological process breaking down a chemical into a different chemicals. There a little chemical change going on there, but it's also being done on plastics, you guys, to break them down to make
stuff that smells like vanilla. Like, think about that. Instead of recycling the way we know recycling to be, what if you just break down those plastic bottles into vanilla that you could then put into again, think about how many candles have vanilla in them somewhere?
Right? Sure?
I mean, I guess that reminds me of like kind of repurposing graywater for example, or you know, we've talked about how certain types of graywater may well be able to be purified. I can't remember what municipality was doing this, but there was some work being done to figure out how to do that, and there was just what was referred to often in the reporting as kind of the
ick factor of it all. This I think would carry a very similar ick factor, like is someone really gonna be cool with using a product doing them smell good, putting it on their body that came from a giant, greasy ball of fat and poop and toilet paper.
Mm hmm.
I mean I would like to think that people could could you know, see the greater good and get their heads wrapped around? And I think I certainly could.
Yeah, if the n product is just in a little vial or something, especially if it's used in industrial things, the end consumer never sees that stuff, right, You just know, oh, it smells of vanilla or it smells of pine. So I think the K factor kind of goes away because we don't have any K factor thinking, Oh, that pine I currently get in the candle or in the whatever it is I'm using at home that came from the stuff that I put in my car pretty much.
Or food coloring or any any number of additives. One of the big takeaways here, at least from my perspective, is that if this gives you a nick factor, it's time to sit down give yourself real honest inventory of the other things that you run into that should give you a nick factor much more so, you.
Know what I mean.
But be careful when you open that door, folks. It's the equivalent of having a UV light with you at your next hotel room.
Well.
Hell, even like factory farming and stuff, and like the way the conditions in which chickens are kept, you know, and beef and things like that, it does seem like people are able to kind of ignore that. But then things like this that actually could help with conservation might be a little tougher for them to swallow.
There's another thing, as article, guys, that I think would be that kind of tough to swallow thing. There are folks making like designer handbags out of microbes like that wouldn't require you know, high end materials or a bunch of other stuff. You basically three D print and then sew together a bag that looks like one of these high end bags. You know, the people would spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on, but it's it's made
by a startup like biology company. I just I wonder if people would actually do that.
Someone would do it.
They're too many people statistically, someone would for sure.
Well, guys, I'm gonna keep this one quick because speaking of blockages, I actually have a plumber that just showed up to help me with some leakage from my zewer line and my garage. So yeah, I'm actually gonna bop out a little early on this one. But I think we mainly got to what we wanted to get to on these stories. But I will be back shortly for when we record our listener Mail episode.
And in the meantime, thank you for tuning in, folks. There's so much we didn't get to. Of course, a lot of a big thank you to a lot of folks who had written to me about booby trapped goggles. We're saving that for our listener Mail segment. Tune in later this week. You can find us online. In the meantime, we are conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram, We're conspiracy stuff on YouTube or some derivation thereof all over the internet. If you don't sip the social meds, we totally get it.
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