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 Noel.
They call me Ben, and we are joined with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. We are coming to you fresh baked, hot and ready here on a lovely autumnal evening hot to Atlanta. Yeah yes, similar to Little Caesar's Pizza. Yeah uh well, now.
This is more of a chapel Roone reference is taking the world by storm and getting a parodied on SNL as most.
The Thai hippo, which apparently I have to go see. Anyway, there is something we wanted to do, folks. This is our weekly strange news program, and we have such wonders to show you memory crystal that may preserve the human genome, some updates on your favorite deli meets. We've also got oh gosh, we've got so many other things. There's a lady smuggling maloney anyway, before.
Were yeah, before we reached today, before.
We do any of that, we wanted to share with you because you, conspiracy realists are the most important part of our show. We wanted to share with you the news about our longtime friends, I would say family at this point. Paul Mission controlled DECANDT and Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. These are longtime producers. They are friends of ours. We still hang out. They have moved on.
Yeah, not like from this mortal coil, but like you know, from the show, and we wish them all the best. And to your point, Ben, we love them both dearly and and we'll continue on as Pal's I r L.
Yeah, we're gonna miss them like crazy. They've been an integral part of the show since gosh, I don't even know how many years has been now. Yeah, I got to catch up with Alexis a little bit. By the way. She's currently on a train ride all across like the northern United States, seeing beautiful places and feeling good.
So does not surprise me.
And I have to water her plants that we're really No story ever ends, folks, and we thank you again for joining us tonight. This is our cold open. Uh, we have to learn a lot about deli meat really quickly.
And we've returned and we're going to New York City to talk about the mayor, the current mayor, the as of right now, Mayor Eric Adams, who is facing a lot of charges. Guys, some pretty serious charges.
What a mayor of New York No way in a.
Little cozy with some foreign operatives, maybe perhaps some veiled illegal campaign contributions.
Say something like that. Mayor Eric Adams is now facing five counts of criminal offenses, including bribery, wirefraud, soliciting legal foreign campaign donations. There's an and in there that I missed, but you get the idea.
It's not great.
There's an indictment right now that alleges he sought and accepted illegal campaign funds over one hundred thousand dollars in luxury travel benefits from Turkish businessmen and an official seeking to gain his influence, which then theoretically would gain more influence and kind of go up the chain. That's the idea, right, when you gain political influence like that. Sure, and we're really just mentioning this because it's a big deal. You can read about it anywhere you want to right now, SNL.
As you mentioned, Ben just parodied this whole situation. It's kind of a I don't know it's being joked about, because I think a lot of people nowadays think, oh, well, of obviously this is happening. This is happening with every mayor, with every governor, with every elected official. There's just money that exchanges hands. That's just how the sausage gets made into Ready, a.
Lot of faith in our government officials.
Or the daughterer kabab in this case.
Yeah, just like that, Matt, did you hear about did you hear the one about the Turkish building that was given a pass on fire safety inspection?
That's true, Yeah, I heard about that.
There's all kinds of other allegations that are going to be coming forward because according to authorities, Eric Adams was in what he went in, and he pleaded not guilty to all this stuff initially, and he's back in court right now, I think as we're recording this, or today or tomorrow, as we're recording this on Wednesday, October two, and he's just going to be fighting this lengthy legal battle because he's saying I'm not guilty, which means it's
going to go through the courts and take a long time. Many people are calling for him to step down, but I don't don't think he's going to do that willingly. At least that's the posturing currently.
Isn't he using the old witch hunt defense? Yes?
I actually linked to a Fox News article. Guys, this on purpose because here's the title. Eric Adams calls out alleged collusion of Feds and mainstream media, asks judge for consequences.
Sounds familiar, and he means consequences for the Feds, yes, for the ambiguous, nebulous mainstream media whatever that means. Yeah, it makes sense though, because it's not quite the same as the more red meat, juicy headlines of say the former Washington d C. Mayor who got caught smoking crack. This is a financial crime, right, and financial crime is often boring to people past the headline.
It's such a crime against his constituents.
Though it's awful he did a talk or talk is the wrong word. He gave a statement and did you hear the guy screaming at him through the Mega like.
You're a disgrace to black men? You know?
I mean, it's just he's not it's not going over well with the community. Let's say, and New York has a string of issues with corruption from their mayors.
Right, And I will say that in a shout out to New York City. The public has now, you know, they've got the classic New York cynicism, but they also have a track record of calling public officials to account, which I think is an admirable trait that many other US cities could learn from. Also, Matt No, I'm sure you guys saw this. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo came in and said, hey, I'll be the mayor. You know, he's the guy he's pretty famous for nipple piercing's I think.
But yeah, that's true, that's true. He also, I don't know, it's just it's a bit I guess everybody is hungry in the world of politics. But it is a bit like hitting on the widow at the funeral.
But didn't already have a shot. And he sucked too. He wasn't great, right, he was all thing.
It's a real Gotham City stuff, guys. Because this investigation into Adams has been going on since twenty twenty one, since before Eric Adams became mayor. Adams that you know, he's a former police officer that basically got up there and said we need law and order. Again sounds familiar, And the he was elected as mayor, and all the while FEDS had been just kind of peering over his shoulder and looking at all of his friends and family and kind of scary stuff.
Oh did you guys hear that.
One thing that exposed this is something probably for an episode exposed him was a pop video, a pop music video from the artist Sabrina Carpenter, who shot a video where she did some salacious dancing in a Catholic church and it was approved by the I guess the head, the head of the clergy at that church, and he had dealings with somebody that had dealings with atoms. And in the outcry for giving her permission to shoot that video at the church, they uncovered some stuff about atoms.
She joked about it at a recent concert.
Like, what the hell, Yeah, I.
Want to know more about the red string of it all, you know, the conspiracy part of it all, I.
Feel for sure. Yeah, sure, well, and we'll find out more about it as basically the lawsuit continues and as more stuff becomes available to the public because right now, stuff sealed. It's kind of the way it goes. But for now, let's just keep our ears and eyes open. But speaking of how the sausage is made, guys, we're jumping back to a story that Ben brought to us. I think we only had time to mention it when
we talked about it in late July. Ben just mentioning that there was an outbreak at a boreshead facility in the liverwurst and it caused a bunch of injuries. Is there anything you want to catch us up on there, just about what happened initially?
Yeah, Unfortunately we did not have the time to get into it, but we did want to let everybody know, fellow listeners, that the listeria in boar's head is a very real thing. Again, we often talk about infrastructure compromise, the role of regulation, and I know a lot of people don't love to hear the R word, but there is a reason that you need to have non corporate entities in charge of food safety.
Boom, is this something new? Because I thought we talked about this.
It had something that your favorite turkey, the Salsilito turkey, it was also affected, right.
That was a part of our conversation, but the main story was about liverwurst that was produced out of a specific Virginia facility. Jiratt I think is how you say it got it, and it was a super gross facility once it got fully investigated. When it hit our attention back then in late July early August, that's when basically the news was just breaking and there was a huge recall at the time. I think it was what a million pounds, which was a lot livers.
But also it also was indicative of a tip of the iceberg situation exactly.
And it's now moved up to seven million pounds of meat in total or something like that, and not just Liverworst, other meats that were produced in that same Virginia factory where the Liverworst appears to have gotten some listeria in it.
Shout out to all my fellow cheap skates. Shout out to everybody who pulled that Larry David at the deli counter and said, well, what's the store brand?
Oh gosh, Well, but guys, I mean, Boreshead is everywhere. Yeah, every bodega in New York City. I mean they've got the big boar's head sign. That's what they're making your HOGI out of.
I mean you can ask them to use the less expensive Oh my god, I'm going to Larry David. You can't ask for the less expensive version.
It's too much bad. But yes, this is very very serious. Fifty nine people in nineteen states were sicken from this listeria that was present in this specific meat. A tenth person died a very recently. September twenty fifth is when NBC San Diego reported on it. At least you can read that tenth death reported in Borishead Deli meat listeria outbreak.
It's a huge deal. The illnesses were all reported between May and August of this year, and there were a bunch of other facilities that then got looked at after this one. Basically inspectors went in and they found horrifying stuff, you guys. The inspector reports revealed mold insects, dripping water, meat and fat residue on the walls, on the floors, and on the equipment dating back to at least two years. So this stuff had been just sitting there.
Vintage meat is borish head done with no borsaid. No, you don't think so.
Barshead is in major trouble. But what we're finding out as all of this is happening, there's a major law enforcement investigation of Boar's Head facilities across the country. You can jump over to CBS News and read Boar'shead plants nationwide now part of law enforcement investigation, USDA says, and you can read about how there is a super cozy relationship that bores had in particular had with the USDA UH and basically it was a pact that they made
a long time ago. Basically it stated that since Bor's Head controls a lot of these facilities that are in super rural areas, they don't need to have federal inspectors come out and look at their facilities. They can get state inspectors to come out very specific maybe localized inspectors.
Buddies we call them, Yeah, folks who can get touched exactly.
What were you saying, Ben about the benefits of having government oversight over your food production?
Yeah, I mean when it works, right Jesus.
Yeah, it's a decades old agreement that they've been going through.
How is that legal?
And I want to know who did this, Like, is there a document that seems certainly seems.
Very loopholy and handshake agreement.
Quote unquote, the investigation is ongoing, end quote.
The that's exactly what they said, right.
Right, because they're also tracing out the tendrils there of the corruption, like who took the handshake? Right the deals were made. We talked about corruption on a municipal level pretty often. When I say government regulation of food sources, things like food, water, and shelter, I'm talking about the federal level. And the Feds don't really play with this, you know, which is why the atoms stuff is still a sealed indictment because they don't really miss when they swing well.
And to answer my own question, maybe about as boards had finished, it just occurs to me the statement rights itself. We had an agreement we thought made sense, and they took advantage of it and flouted it, and it's will never happen again.
And then the war said, people.
Say we will have better oversight over our rural manufacturing facilities.
We've let you down and will never let you down like this again. The public.
It's still the Dennis Reynold's rule, right, never apologize, just say we hear you, it's gross literally and we will uh we hear you, We're with you, We're doing this together. Also the UH, I know, I don't want to diatract because now it's not the time, but uh again, it reminds me of our our hot potato we were talking about with UH with who manufactured pagers and where did the batteries go?
Right?
Like, so to whom folds the responsibility? We have to find out who's responsible of allowing like to be clear and Matt, I think this is something we can all agree with. Nobody has been proven to have purposely created listeria. It was a crime of negligence, right, not domestic terrorism.
Yes, absolutely. The problem is some of the details, the the bigger picture of the story do lead to those tendrils being connected that aren't necessarily connections. And just to think about this, we're going to jump to another CBS News article titled USDA cut back on listeria testing nationwide
ahead of deadly boar's head outbreak. It basically states here that the Biden administration quietly made significant cuts to planned testing for specific germs across America's food supply, basically cutting back on the USDA's Food and Safety Inspection service so that there's much less of a chance that something like listeria or another contaminant is going to be detected in the food supply no matter where it's coming from, but especially in these meats that are being produced by Boreshead
and other companies that are cold meats, right, meats that are supposed to be You open the package and you just pull it out and you put it in your mouth. Those specific meats have to be treated extremely carefully.
Because they're not heated, which is another layer of protection which would make me kill any outstanding bacteria. Guys, it took me ages to be okay with lunch meat. I didn't like it for years. It weirded me out eating cold cuts. I think this has set me back. I think this has set me back.
Well, you're not one of the ten dead people.
That's fair bad, that's fair small blessings.
You're not even one of the fifty nine people.
Second, No, it's true, guys, this isn't about me.
I'm just saying I think a lot of people will probably reevaluate their relationship with the cold meats.
And that is why y'all Congress is coming in. They're stepping in and they're saying, hey, why aren't there more regulations, federal regulations that would have stopped this, and they're being really strong, very specific. Congressmen and the Senators and all those folks are coming through because you know, they don't want to look really good to get elected again.
So aren't some of these the same folks who stridently voted against regulation?
Say what now this interview is over.
It's the guy in the hot dog suit all over again. More appropriate on this story than ever.
You can read all about that stuff too. I would send people over to I've found a little write up on Food Safety Magazine. I don't know anything about Food Safety Magazine. I don't know if they're a reliable source or not. But they have links to specific letters that were written to the Department of Agriculture basically saying hey, why didn't you catch this? And it's got a lot of the information there about specific specific lawmakers who are attempting to seek change.
If they lock down the name Food Safety Magazine, I hope they have at least some credibility.
Ah, yes, but that is not Food Safety News, which is another site that it is sponsored by Marler Clark Incorporated. Ps. I don't know what that is. I didn't look into it. I've found the same information on there. All right, Well, that's it for this segment. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
And we have returned with I don't know, this isn't a bummer We're all going to die from deadly meats level story. This is maybe a bit of a palate cleanser.
I think as an appropriate expression here.
It's a science story that feels almost like science fiction,
but it is partially science facts. Sciences have created a storage medium, basically an indestructible eternal flash drive, and in this they have embedded the human genome, which, ideally, if this thing survived billions of years into the future, could be discovered billions of years after the extinction potentially of the human race, could be discovered by you know, whoever's around, to potentially bring back the the human race, you know,
kind of like in that bad alien movie, Alien Resurrection. Currently, we do not possess the technology to do this. As we know, scientists have sequenced the human genome, and that's what we're talking about here. But I'm going to read from a fabulous article by Margarita Bassi from Smithsonian Magazine.
We love Smithsonian magazine, and she says, if humanity ever goes extinct, scientists now have a backup plan, a coin sized crystal storing the entire human genome future species, and yes, maybe aliens.
Could use this record as an instructional manual to recreate humans some millions or even billions of years in the future. This has been done in England's University of Southampton, where scientists created what they're referring to as a five D memory crystal, which is created using the material fused quartz, which is a type of glass that in twenty fourteen won the Guinness World Record for most durable data storage material.
In order to commit data to this medium, lasers have to be used to actually embed it, to write it into physically etch it into the material. In its largest size, this crystal can store up to three hundred and sixty terabytes of information that could potentially stick around for billions
of years. It has the potential to withstand incredibly hostile conditions, including cosmic radiation, extreme temperatures well below freezing and you know, above incineratory levels, as well as the ability to withstand direct impacts of up to ten tons per square centimeter.
You know, in optimal conditions, we'll call it room temperature. That's what Margarita calls it in the article. It can remain stable for guys three hundred quintillion years. That is occurring to Guinness, which is more than twenty one billion times the current measured age of the universe.
This is wild. Questions, Yes, I don't know, Yes, how is it access or no? I I well, yeah, I have a lot of questions. But the first one is why can't you scratch it? It's a fully like unscratchable surface.
Somehow with current technology it would be it would be real tip on purpose to move to scratch it, is the best way to say. It's kind of like the It's similar to uh, the idea that we saw a while back with encoding messages onto disc shot into deep space. This ideal, right, right, this idea preserving uh some thing
is some part of human knowledge. And what I really love about you bringing up this story and knowl is we had some listeners right into us regarding this when the when the news went public, and this feels so optimstick ambitious. It's very hold my beer, very classic human as far as a question. One of the best questions a lot of our listeners are going to have is okay, thought experiment? Fast forward millions of years you know what, forget it, quintillions of years in the future.
They don't have a dongle for that basic.
Would a future civilization, given the choice, want to bring back the humans or what they say? Good to know, let's put it in our massively futuristic version of the backshelf.
Let's shut it down the memory hole.
Just better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
So you're asking the big questions. Man, I'm caught up on how are they even going to access something? It seems a little bit short sighted or you know, dare we say human centric to believe that there will still remain the technology to you know, decode this.
Yeah, but yeah, I think you can figure it out. You can rummage through the not I was going to say, it's cross cruft. Yeah, get through the cruft on the ship and just be like, le's see what happens. Just make one and it's be like, oh look at that guy.
Oh my god, Michael, it's DNA. How many pairs can there be?
Ten?
You just make a couple of humans, let them hang out for a while, sure, like your pets.
Yeah to your question about scratching it though, it's my understanding that it's like scratching.
It is how you write to it.
So and the only way to do that is with ultrafast lasers, is what the head of the project at the University of Southampton told Technology Networks, a guy named Peter Kazinski, who's the lead researcher. They etched it into these dis encoded data, like literally written by this laser, into tiny voids in the silica. They get as small as twenty nanometers, and he said the information is translated into five different dimensions of its nano structures their height, length, width, orientation,
and position. So this is five D is what. It's a little buzzy, but I get it.
That makes sense.
They also this is me, and this is the part I think I understand this. When they say edged into the crystal's face, I think they still mean in data form. But there's part of me that wants a little clarification. Do they mean it's a picture of this because it says edged end of the crystal's face is a visual key, so I think it may well be a picture containing depictions of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen atoms, as well as the double helix of the of DNA and its
four nucleotide bases. And I believe it also contained a picture of a man and a woman and also instructions I guess how it fits into the cell. What it doesn't include, I guess is how to build a device that would decode it.
But I guess they're just taking that as as read. So, yeah, guys, is that.
What you're understanding is that this is a picture. This is like on there physically, like to see with eyes.
Yeah, but then there's data in this large there's a chunk, right, that's the actual data set one hundred percent.
But I'm saying the things the key it sounds to me are visual. They're like actually on there. Maybe I understand.
Yeah, No, you're you're you're right on it. So the material science, without getting two into the weeds, is fused quartz, so almost but not all the way pure silica. Think of it. For any any fans of clothe making, clothing making in the audience, this is kind of like seeing a blueprint for a dress, Like you see the warp and weft in the where the stitches are supposed to go. It does appear to be very durable to what we will call space conditions as interpreted by humans on Earth.
The idea of human figures is sort of like a trademark, or dare I say, a brand mark? Where you can you can you know, imagine millions of years in the future, someone decides to reassemble the long lost breakout species, the humans, and then they're putting together this DNA and they say, oh, snap, what are these things supposed to look like? And then they can see the little picture and they can say, oh, fewer limbs.
Got it?
Ben?
Your spot on man?
And when you brought up the idea of like, why would they bring us back? It seems like if they did, it would be the equivalent of unleashing some sort of gin into the world.
Like by the.
Time humans are no longer around, I would hope that some of the damage that human beings have done on the planet or the planet itself, perhaps it's behind us, and then whatever intelligence exists maybe has a better handle on it.
And to reintroduce humans could well be a devil's bargain. I don't know.
Well, let's go with this. I like where you're at, let's go with this idea, just to flip it real quick, what would human society do now if let's say, let's say humans managed to land on one of the habitable moons, or on Mars, or establish a permanent foothold on the moon, right on Earth's moon. And what would we do if we found a coin like this and it had DNA in some sort of blueprint as symbol? Would we bring it back?
I don't know why.
I just can't stop thinking about the movie Prometheus and just the idea of like stumbling onto a repository of something that isn't fully understood and unleashing it onto the planet and then it just like annihilating everyone concerned.
Builds walmarts everywhere.
Yeah, right instantly. It wouldn't like have to re evolve or anything.
It would just be like from day one to Walmarts.
They should have they should have a subscriber model, right, that's right, Yeah, just do this is call it signature. But here you can get human plus, which is the part that comes with the brain and the neural network.
I just want to add one thing, just as I'm looking at that as Smithsonian Magazine article, I think we said it, but just want to make sure I clarify it. There are visual pictures included, as you were talking about, but that's not the data. That is a visual key.
It's the key and now I mentioned that, Yeah, that's like the extra bits that it's essentially like in theory, a signal that there is this represents something bigger. But it doesn't even have instructions on how to decode it or like what is contained within it.
It's weird. I can't remember.
I think I was talking with my buddy and friend of the show Payton. There are some nuclear waste repositories that are using spiky weird that like it indicates to a future species or civilization danger. Do not approach without using words. I feel like they might have missed the boat on marking this in a similar way.
That's a good point because we talked about this on a previous recent recording, how to preserve safety for nuclear waste right, so you can grow plants that react to a certain way to radiation right through phosphorestments. Perhaps you could have you know, big stone monoliths that have some sort of ikea level symbol of stay out. It's fascinating stuff. There's a great I want to say, a few years back, there's a great Stuff you Should Know episode on it.
I remember listening to uh, but maybe we were just hanging out with those guys that the issue here too, just while we're spinning this tale, Noel, do we know why Professor Peter Kazanski hasn't made a ton of these? Like, why don't if you want to ensure the survival? I get that this is proof of concept. Why don't you make a ton of them and then just shoot them out really nearly into space.
One hundred percent? I don't there's that's not really discussed it is.
It seems like you said more than a little more than a proof of concept, almost more like a symbolic act in a way, because I think.
So, I mean, maybe I'd love to hear what you guys think.
And I know we're about a time, but there is this place that I believe we have discussed that we haven't we definitely should. I want to know what else the hell was in there called the Memory of Mankind Archive and housat Austria, And that is where this thing will dwell like a virtual, veritable cave of wonders in Aladdin, you know, like we're all the weird stuff for future civilization to stumble upon and let them know of our past greatness or flawedness or look.
Salt mine, guys, it's in a salt mine.
It's good for preservation, that's right.
But yeah, we're not the only ones questioning this whole idea of like is this just kind of a clever gesture. There is a guy by the name of Thomas Hines Highness I think his name is, who is interviewed for this piece in Smithsonian actually for several pieces of reporting on this subject, who said something very similar to what we have been saying, like how will they know how to read the crystal? How will they know how to
build a device to read the crystal? I can barely connect my ten year old iPod and listen to what I listened to back then. You nailed it as far as I'm concerned, Like technology is weird like that, and we are in a time where like there's planned obso lescence and all the dongles and different connections and peripherals.
And all that stuff.
I don't even know how you access There was nothing in any of the reporting that said, is this USB like, do you have to have some sort of specialized device. It's not very clear how you access the data that's etched into this thing. I would think it would have to be proprietary, like the way a record is read by a stylus, you know, as or I guess that's also the way a hard drive is read. It's just a sort of a more micro stylist. So maybe it
is something like that. Is it circular? They say it's a coin, Like, I want to know more about how this thing is actually interpreted.
Yeah, Also, the concept of something being proprietary may well be alien and incomprehensible to a future civilization, right like, oh, we could learn the secrets of this long lost organic life for because right now the statistics are showing us whatever discovers that this would not be organic millions of years in the future. So they would say, like, I feel like it would be very classic human and therefore very short sighted for them to say, oh, we could
bring them back, but that's proprietary. We don't want to pony up the ten bucks use now. We also don't want our secrets to be leaked out there. Oh my god, our secrets to you guys.
We can't have them know how to how to create our proprietary coding machine.
Kind of defeats the purpose. But but you're right, man.
We've talked about this in terms of the gold disc that was floated out into space, like what are you going to do with that? You know, you don't have a photograph or maybe even the wherewithals to create a thing. Just as far as I'm concerned, that kind of technology is magic anyway. But a sufficiently intelligent beyond us, likely enough civilization or species maybe could figure it out reverse engineer. That's the positive outlook, right, or the optimistic approach.
Yeah, yeah, Hey, guys, what about this, just while we're while we're playing the game. What if every free object from space that hits planet Earth has always been some sort of encoded message from other long dead civilizations and we look at it and we just say, oh, that's a weird amount of nickel in this space rock. Let's put it in a museum, you know what I mean?
That might happen. They might say that it might hit some other civilization, this coin if it's launched out into deep space, out in the ink, and then someone says, oh, that's interesting, that looks a little different from the other rocks. Let's put it in our future alien museum.
Dude. I know we've joked sometimes about the moon being a giant message to humanity from love it, you know, whatever seated our planet and then put the moon there to make sure the oceans did their thing so that life could you know, emerge. That'd be super cool if we find it. There's like some control panel inside the moon.
I wanted to be such a bait and switch, Like do you guys remember the film A Christmas Story where the guy finally gets his decoder ring and it just says, drink more ovaltine. Of course, I want to, like we on the human civilization unlocks the mystery of the moon as a message, and all it says is buy more moons.
One of my favorite pieces of pop culture that uses a show similar to this as the episode of the Seminal nineties children's show but Weird in that era of weird children's shows, The Adventures of Pet and p is an episode called Johnny Unitas in the Universe about messages being beamed to and from space and the length of time it takes for them to get where they're going and what they're interpreted as you wouldn't think the Adventures of Pete and Pete and Nickelodeon t Oven the nineties
would have answered deep existential questions, but boy, it surely does highly recommend it. So with that, I think that's it for this one. Guys do want to do a little more digging. And all the pieces I read nothing about how you actually plug this thing up and get that five D model onto your device. So if anybody out there is aware, please do let us know. Conspiracy atiheartradio dot com. Let's take a quick break here, a word from our sponsor, and then come back with one last piece.
Well, actually have grab bag of strange.
News, and we have returned folks. Often we do this cavalcade of columnia and catastrophe towards the beginning of the show. We're going to end with these. We're going to alternate between some good news, some bad news, some weird news. Fat Bear Week is hopefully back on track. As we all surely know, Fat Bear Week is a thing the National Park Service here in the US does where they
measure how big bears are getting pre hibernation. Unfortunately, was delayed due to fatal bear combat, which is just the brutal way of nature. Is also speaking of federal services. A postal worker has been busted. We'll do some heist real quick for stealing over one point five million dollars US worth of checks from various letters over a long period of time. Do you guys ever get checks in the mail? Is it legal for me to ask.
You mailbox money as they call it? Sure? You know what I mean.
You know people who get like their Spotify twenty five cents that comes in the mail usually, or like residuals for TV, and they call it mailbox money. No, I haven't received a check in the mail in many, many, many years.
It used to be a birthday thing, not anymore birthday thing more.
And I get unless someone is taking my checks exactly.
That's where we're going. We're going to Anthony verdu the second young man twenty nine years old, charged with three counts of mail theft, one count of wire fraud, worked in Saint Louis, Missouri. Had access to all the first class mail process through the facility, and he just kept skimming the checks. He just kept taking them. You could always see, you know, a certain amount of loss or
what do they call it? Shrinkage baked into operations like this where someone says, oh, the check didn't get to you, we will go ahead and make it right because, as we know, if you are the company side of an equation where you have to provide compensation, you want those free lanswers to get paid immediately. So if a check is lost, then just hurry up replace it, you know
what I mean, let accounting sweep up the remnants. My first question with this was, you know, as someone who gets checks through various addresses for various reasons like how easy is it to quote unquote steal a check, how do you clean it? And we found the answer. It's money laundering. You can do something as get this as low tech as using an erase, you know, like the kind of erasers that work on pen You just erase you know, the specifics that you need gone, and then
you put it through a mobile deposit account. So for a lot of people, especially here in the West, who have you know, a banking app of some sort, it will typically let you deposit a check by taking a photograph of the front and back for the obverse of that check, right, so you never have to physically go to the place This makes it more difficult to figure out. Well, you know, when someone wiped out the original name of the recipient and wrote in Johnny Blue Jean's America or whatever.
That's so crazy because the money is coming from somewhere, and that money can be tracked, and where did it come from, Where did it go? Where did it come from?
Where did it go?
Chase Bank knows.
I'm sorry, Cotton, I Chase, I love it. It's it's also completely pot possible. Here's the deal. If you're worried about scrutiny, and banks are getting better at this in the West, it's also completely possible to figure out the name of the payee on the check and then create your own business accounts that is not quite the name, you know what I mean. It's not quite Dylan Tennessee pal. It's something like Dylan Tennessee doll or whatever. And then
that will that will work. This will be deposited into your bank account's name, get the money out, clear out that account, skipped out. It's stunding that this is possible in twenty twenty four, in a surveillance state of all things.
Is this a modern version of what they used to call kiting? Checks.
Yes, Okay, there's a there's a great show on Netflix called Ripley that's about like a talented mister Ripley. For that character played by Oh Gosh, I forget his name, he's wonderfully played Moriarty in the Showloe series with Benett Cumberbatch.
He's a check fraudster. At a certain point.
He does some very similar things in a much more analog fashion to what you're describing.
Then mm hmmm.
Yeah, and this is this kind of crime may be a dying art because it does rely on physical artifacts. We also want to be very very clear, we're huge supporters of our United States Postal Service. I don't know how everybody else feels with their neighborhood postal worker, but my crew is awesome. Those guys are the best. I don't know if you guys. Do you guys have are you on like a named name or chat sort of level with your postal workers?
You got me wanting to go that route because I should I say hi and I wave, but have not, you know, taken it further than that.
Ben, I'm gonna take your inspiration and do that.
Yes, but I'm not going to tell you about her name or any of it's between you information.
Right right. I love it. So you have to be careful with giving gifts because it could count as bribery. However, the one thing he can't give them for sure, for sure is a hybrid clone sheep that is illegal to give to a postal office worker. We know this because on the heels of our original conversation about this in a Strange News program in March of this year, the guy out in Montana who was breeding illegal giant sheep hybrid clones just got convicted six months in prison. No
sheep for you. Do you guys remember this story at all? The original?
Sure?
Yeah, it rings a bell, but I'm going to need to walk back through with you.
Arthur Shoebarth Jack to his friends, was selling these things that were often called Frankin sheep clones, and he was doing this with a weird kind of resurrection men arrangement going back to twenty thirteen where he got body parts of a dead sheep, the ovis aman Poli or Marco Polo our Dolli sheep. He got it from people in Kyrghyzstan, and then he started trying to clone these the same way that a few years back, people cloned Dolly, remember Dolly the clone sheep. He was cloning these and the
business of cloning right now is pretty imperfect. It's just like that banger Michael Keaton piece of cinema multiplicity. You make a clone of a clone or a copy of a copy, and they kind of things get worse and worse.
Yeah.
Yeah, So apparently this guy violated the law because not because he was making money, but because, according to the Department of Justice, he was threatening Montana's native wildlife species.
Like this is an invasive and it would beat them up because it's so big and bad.
It's from Kyrgyzstan. I guess I. You know, you can read more about this all over the place, in you know, in our previous Strange News program, also in the recent news find it in Popular Science. Shout out to Andrew Paul, who wrote an article that posted yesterday as we record here on October second. That's the thing. I don't know, should it be illegal to clone animals? I feel like it should not.
Well, I mean, it could be considered animal cruelty if they end up in that kill me, kill me situation, because it's a botched clone job.
You know, well, theoretically he was like sending out to get these cloned embryos made for him, right, Yes.
So.
I don't know, that's a tough one for me because if you can make just some cloned embryos, theoretically, if you could make enough cloned embryos of maybe the same batch or something. I don't know how all of that works, but you wouldn't have that problem of like making clones of clones of clones of clones.
If you had a fresh one.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the art of it. And this is where we go back, you know, not to set jurisprudence for millions or quintillions of years in the future, but what if future civilizations can't clone humans back into existence, you know, because of the legal and ethical constraints.
With the memory crystal. I'm sorry I never said what it was called. It's called the memory crystal, y, I'm sorry.
Yeah, Well we remembered it, Yeah.
We sure did, and it's a very appropriate companion story.
Got a couple more. Speaking of companion stories, Do you guys remember cannabis?
Do I remember it?
Honestly, not really? I know the smell though, right, right?
Is that a skunk that's a shout out to a weird heist we did many years ago. But but I was interested to find this. This is lighthearted news, apparently, and I'm not super sure on the science. I'd love to hear everybody's opinion. Apparently, a new study is found that consumption of cannabis does genuinely enhance a human individual's enjoyment of music. No, and the best thing about this headline is quote confirming what every Stoner already knows.
Well.
I will neither confirm nor deny whether or I already knew that, but seems pretty logical.
Apparently, and this comes to us from the Toronto Metropolitan University. They look, I'm gonna be honest, this is what we will call anecdotal in the world of science, so it's much more of like a social science study. They recruited people at Toronto met and they did so. But here here's where the methodology gets a little touch. They got people to participate in the study by getting students from
the university. Classic that's always good, But they also put up flyers at a little less than forty different headshops in the Toronto Metro area and they said, hey, complete this questionnaire and we'll interview you also. But I do feel like this has even though it's anecdotal, I feel like it already confirms something that a lot of our friends and acquaintances who engage with cannabis have already told us, right like that baseline doesn't hit until the edible does.
Right.
Well, I don't know, man, I'm certainly not one that is a proponent of saying that you need extracurriculars in order to enjoy a fine piece of arts or music. You know, I think history has shown that there certainly our ways.
Of enhancing these things.
Can I read a quote from the Marijuana.
Moment Yeah on a moment dot net, published October first by Ben Atlind go Ben's here's.
One of the people who who responded to this quote. When I'm not high, I just don't pay enough attention to the music. It's like background noise compared to when I'm high. It's like the only thing I'm focused on.
Give Stoner's a bad name.
They described increased awareness and sensitivity of sounds and volumes even when the set volume of the music remained unchanged. So this it's weird. I think it's more fun than anything else because Luckily, the Western world and hopefully global civilization overall, is getting past their vilification of cannabis phase. And to be completely clear, without compromising anybody, I'm not
cannabis enthusiast. I do ethically and morally support it, and I think that you can make a very strong financial argument for decriminalizing or completely legalizing these substances. They kill far fewer people than alcohol year over year. There's that.
I do think.
I love studies, though, that confirm things that have long been kind of obvious to everybody.
It's just fun, yeah, And that's part of science, and it can sound silly when it's reported in mass media, where you'll see something like stunning news study confirms Earth is indeed the third planet from what we call the sudden.
Cookies are tasty, right right. I want to see the study about the munchies next. That'll be a fun one.
Every time we talk about something like this, now, guys, I just think about that brief, super flawed thing we read about, what was it, cannabis psychosis, Cannabis in psychosis, I mean, that's about it.
That's like saying there's a link between dungeons and dragons and heavy metal and murder. Yeah, but that's not the that portraying these as the prime mover is I would say, intellectually am Worley fraudulent and irresponsible.
But I just did want to add that we did have some experts or some listeners right in about the marijuana do psychosist thing and saying that a person sufficiently on the brink of schizophrenia or undiagnosed, you know, psychiatric disorders smoking marijuana for the first time, a very strong dose or something could be triggered into a psychotic episode.
So just yeah, yes, And to give the larger frame there, you could say the same about many other psychoactive substances, right, twinkies. So again, this meritajuana madness stuff comes from very old racism, and hopefully the money will outweigh the racism at some point.
But I don't know.
When I think when I think of cannabis, I think of usually the munchies, which I know is apparently anecdotal. But there's nothing like a good song and a good snack if you're indulging, and pretty soon, depending on how things work out, folks, you tell us, pretty soon it may be difficult to get some of your favorite snacks because there is a dock workers strike.
A great transition.
Ben, well, let's mat I did it twice, fair enough.
I was going to not give that people behind the curtain, but you're out as yourself, so I can't transparencies.
And so this dock workers strike, we heard about it. It's making the rounds on social media, and the idea is that it can push up prices and cause shortages depending upon how long it lasts.
So is there long shortman?
Right? Yes?
Yeah?
All one word?
No?
And word isn't a big demand of theirs. The similar demands that we've seen in things like the writer's strike is automation minimization.
Yeah, but the writers' guilds have a far lower likelihood of the involvement of organized crime.
Oh that's not it.
I'm not saying that this is one hundred percent of corruption situation, but it does remind me of folks behind the scenes round about. I would say late July early August, we start speculating on what will be the October surprise of the United States election year.
It hasn't happened yet. I mean, I know, we're only a couple of days in. Yeah.
Well, sometimes it's something like a political opponent pressuring their colleagues or conspirators to hold hostages. Sometimes it's futzing with supply chains. Sometimes it's an attack that could have happened in September that is held until October, all orbiting around the idea of how this may or may not affect the election of the President of the United States every four years in November. It's a real thing. Some of these conspiracies are real. I don't know if this is
our October surprise, no all. To your point, I don't know if there's a multiple October surprise situation. And I also don't know, just like the chlorine gas here in Atlanta, I don't know how much of this with the doc workers strike is ginned up, you know, to make people panic because we are of fear ruled news cycle.
At the moment, I was going to ask you, Ben, the idea of organized crime and this. Are you saying that organized crime is has their hands on the puppet strings of a strike like this or this is a reaction to organized crime.
I just want to clarify I see.
I will say one, unions are a good thing. Two, some unions have been historically compromised by organized crime.
Teamsters for example.
Right, well, well, we're not saying a word about the tea guys. We're cool.
We're cool to worry about ya. I saw it in a movie called The Irishman. I heard about it.
Oh yeah, yeah, I recently watched a show called Kill the Irishman, or a film called Kill the Irishman, which was very much about this.
But Kill the Irishman is that different from the Irishman? Yeah, it's different. It's weird about the same thing.
Yeah, I guess they just had to add some different words to get the titles happening here. Okay, but we do want to say that when you hear this strange news program on October seventh, the strike may well be over. The concern is that should the strike continue past a certain amount of time, you could be in a situation where you cannot buy the things you need or those things are insanely overpriced. So it is always good to plan ahead just in case. It's best to be prepared.
Things are already kind of insanely overpriced. No kidding up, twenty one station and all of that of snacks. This is does not bow dwell for our twinkies.
Sorry. The weed story got me feeling snaky.
Yeah, perhaps concerns like this, which we can all identify with, I imagine, are what prompted what of our last stories. A woman, perhaps in preparation for these different issues of our time, attempted to smuggle seven hundred pounds of blogey Jesus. Uh. It was forty rolls of Mexican pork boloney. It is illegal in the United States, kind of like how raw milk is illegal.
Uh.
And when this person got caught, they had a lot of suitcases that appeared, according to Customs and Border Protection to be quote heavier than normal. First off, I think that's unfair. A lot of people have heavy suitcases.
True, it's true, what is normal in this situation?
Anyway, as long as you pay the cost, you know, for over oversized baggage, you should be good to go. I want to hear what led them to doing a search that just seems like a very arbitrary metric.
Well, I'm playing a little bit of a clickbait game.
Maybe there was a smell. There was a smell.
Excuse me, miss, don't take this the wrong way.
You like, yeah, is just the same deal as like what I was what I was talking about.
I was in Spain and like the butcher, when I went to buy the Jamaan said, don't be taking that on the plane.
Now.
Yes, it's like certain processes are different in other countries, therefore they are not allowed to be brought into.
This Yeah, and here in the US or the fifty US states, the most persnickety about that would be Hawaii due to their unique apology. But this lady, just to establish why this is kind of clickbait, is yes, she was trying to move seven hundred and forty eight pounds of bolooney into the US. You get in situations, you know what I mean. Let's not call this lady a villain for trying to make a living off of boloney.
But she's the hero we deserve.
Maybe she is, maybe she's getting in front of maybe she's a worse head hop uh. But unfortunately, she also was carrying two hundred and eighty boxes prescription medicine. And it's legal to carry that across the border if you declare it, which this person did not. And it included something that we have mentioned I think briefly in previous recordings, tramadoll. What is tramadol again, Why he.
Looking at me?
No, I'm looking at that.
He's joking. He's not looking at anybody, folks.
There's no way to tell who he's looking at in this Brady Buncher, right, I was gonna make a dumb joke. Well, maybe the bologney, maybe it was dog medication. In the bologney was to wrap the pill up to feed to the dogs. They can take their their mets. No trade lawyer at large. Tramma doll is a is a heavy sedative. To my understanding, I believe that's what they call an antipsychotic.
Oh wow, well it appears that this person did get caught. This is our reminder, folks, no matter where you find yourself, when you are going across an international border, just go ahead and play by the rules of the place you are going to. It does not matter what is legal in your origin country or where you're coming from. There's a reason that people get arrested for, you know, drug possession based on urine test things like that.
I was dead wrong. By the way, tramadall is used to relieve pain and.
It is it's like a muscle relaxer.
Maybe yeah, I thought it was something. It's It's definitely not like an opioid. It's something different, but it is considered a class for controlled substance because of its potential for misuse and addiction. Ultram is the brand name, which sounds like a Ultram.
The Ultram sounds like a Michael Bay robot.
Yeah, or it sounds like the the M track you have to pay extra for. Anyway, this is our show. Sorry, everybody went a little over time there. I was losing track of it. We're very excited off air about the US Armies testing of robot dogs armed with AI enabled rifles coming to a Middle East near you. We can't wait to hear your thoughts. Thank you again as always for tuning in. Please be safe with a special consideration
to our friends and family affected by Hurricane Helene. We can't wait for you to join the show with us. We try to be easy to find online.
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