From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is the top of the week as we hurdle headlong through March.
Now.
We have some adventures that will catch you up on in the near future, but for now, there is so much strange stuff happening. There are people smuggling things as ever, but maybe not the things would expect. We are going to I don't want to say it, but we might have some hot takes on the Red Sea. We'll get to it later. For now, we have to address, of course, one of the most pressing issues in the world of conspiracy and international discourse in the modern day. Let's go
to you, Noel. You're a fan of Charlie and Chocolate Factory. We've talked about role.
Doll Yeah, I'm a big fan of roll Doll's books, especially the creepy ones. And I'm with folks that are saying that even the slightly has an age super well stuff should not be like rewritten.
I think that's weird.
I think once we start doing that, it's like a real slippery slope. So just getting my soapbox moment and on that. But I'm also a fan of the Gene Wilder movie. I think the very of its age.
You know, the the chocolate waterfall looks like diarrhea. That's true.
It's also very stuff they don't want you to know. There is no earthly way of no.
That's true. That's the tunnel.
Yeah, the Tunnel of Doom also taken reappropriated by Marilyn Manson for the video for his hit song Dope hat off of Smell that Smells Like Children the Portrait of an American Family, And I believe on that record too. I'm sorry I'm showing my former Manson I roots there's a sample, or at least he does the there's no earthly way of knowing and the rowers keep hol ring. But he doesn't like a horrible Marilyn Manson kind of way. That guy sucks. He's done terrible things. Not a good dude.
But anyway, yeah, I think you know, roll Doahll looms large. He's become such a institution in Hollywood with you know, remakes and some of them good, some of them not so good. I thought the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was quite bad.
But then there was a little run of some of the short.
Stories that were done by Wes Anderson is short films, and all of those are excellent. They're just really, really really what Henry Sugar I believe was one where the sets kind of move and it's just it really hits the spirit of the whimsy of a roll doll.
And this is big money, you guys.
I mean, we have got the Timothy chalomet reboot of the franchise, you know, with him as the star of those young Wonka with sort of a backstory, and people are you tend to capitalize on that, as was the case in Scotland in Glasgow, to be more precise, where a you know, you see these things all the time, stuffs to some better than others, things like the Museum of ice Cream or they're like.
The Balloon Museum, often that you have museums and.
Then we're like van Go the experience, there's.
Sort of experience a change.
But those are really cool.
Some of them are better than others.
I heard the van Go one sucked and was like kind of mid you know, and just was a little bit underwhelming. And they're often quite expensive, and they're often set up in these massive industrial warehouse spaces and they travel around depending on their success, you know, you might be coming to a town near you some kind.
Of roadshow version of it. You know.
Miao Wolf is a great example of an excellent one that is like so immersive. We went to the one in Vegas. But they also have franchises of these, you know, in other countries and other cities. But in Glasgow, something called Willie's Chocolate Experience was scheduled to run for two days only, February twenty fourth and twenty fifth, promising all sorts of wonders you know to the good people of Glasgow and their and their children.
I think the website has yeah, oh yeah, no it has, and it's still up.
And this event was promoted by a company with a really awesome name for this show, House of Illuminati folks. No joke curated or created this event, and they promoted it as being a cutting edge experience that uses artificial intelligence for scripting and for concept design and all this stuff, and on their website or whatever wherever this stuff was posted originally, now it's kind of been screenshotted and posted
all over the place. They have some of these AI generated images which are just like the quintessential kind of sort of psychedelic nightmare fuel that you'd imagine an AI would spit out when asked to reproduce Willy Wonka escapes, you know, where things are just like a little too twisty, the lollipops, you know, spiral off into oblivion and kind of awkward and uncomfortable ways.
And things look a little too wormy, kind of almost mansonesque, well.
Very much so.
I mean, there is a macabre quality to what they're trying to pitch as this wondrous thing, and that extends very much to the text on some of these images that you can still find anywhere.
People are referring to this stuff as cursed.
But the initial text on this kind of you know, digital promo flyer thing promises the fun following cat gigating live performances, catchy tons XR surgery, lollipops, and a paradise of sweet teats, and.
It's at the top. It's got a big banner saying in chair and in ing intertainment, in char in ining entertainment, and all.
This stuff was put out there like they didn't prove read it or something. Again this we're you know, we're proponents of using stuff as tools. AI has the potential to be an interesting thing in the hands of the right people.
When you just feed it.
Nonsense and say do a thing like this and don't have any oversight, you're gonna get cat gagating and in char in in ing entertainment and apparently a paradise of sweet teats. So all this was promised for the I believe nominal fee of around forty five dollars American. I think it was maybe thirty five pounds something like that or thirty five euro.
You're right, thirty five British pounds. So because it's Scotland, so forty four dollars fifty eight cents US.
And the AI part, you know, also was promoted as being the source of the scripting for the actors. This is this is not like an AI, you know, virtual reality experience. This is like a brick and mortar pop up type experience that they're promising to recreate this stuff, you know, that's depicted in these really kind of wormy,
disturbing images. I'm looking at one right now, and I just it's got real sandworm vibes and like you look in the in the bushes and they're these bunny rabbits, but they look like they're smiling with like really rancid, like twenty teeth almost Like again, I'm looking at it, not zoomed in, but you know the way AI does where it'll just kind of one part of something will be just a little smeared or a little kind of wonky and not ripe wonky.
That's appropriate, but AnyWho.
The scripting for this was also generated by AI and was meant to be memorized by the actors who were hired and showed up the day before the launch of the thing, and Ben pointed out off air that there's some amazing accounts for some of these actors who were just trying to make a day rate, you know, for doing this thing.
They didn't know much about it.
They showed up assuming that the thing hadn't been completed a lot of times these things, you know, if you've ever been to a circus even or like Cirqa Sola, they're building that stuff up to the wire a lot of times the day before, like before. That's not to malign Sirk to Sole. They probably have it up longer than that, but for some of these maybe lower budget things, you know, time and personnel are at a premium, so
they're trying to maximize that. These actors were giving them the benefit of the doubt.
However, when the day one game and.
Families and their kids were streaming in to this industrial warehouse, there wasn't any change from what they had witnessed the night before, which was kind of these scantily decorated walls with these like backdrops that are just comically small, whereas it's almost like they just took some of these AI images and you know, printed them on fabric but not very big. And it's in the middle of a giant bear like rock looking wall, like a concrete looking slab wall.
There's like a rainbow entryway that you can see the seam on it. There's a lab they call the Imagination Lab where they are these OPA lumpa type things which are called I believe in the script are called wonka
doodles or wonky doodles, something to that effect. And the image I believe that first went viral, which is a term that I hate, but you get what it means, was an image of this young woman playing an opa lumpa and looking really bummed out, surrounded by what appears to be the things that you would find in a meth lab.
I was just gonna say, the way, the way I'm looking at it, from the images that are available that I've seen mostly on X, it looks like if I, Matt Frederick, decided to like make my son a birthday party inside a giant warehouse and I could only access the things that I, as Matt Frederick, could access and like find in a couple of days and like throw together. It just it feels exactly like that, like objection.
Objection, you, Matt Frederick would do a much better job.
I agree.
I think it would be really close to this, guys.
I would find somebody to be like, hey, can I give you four to five dollars to like pretend to be whatever you just said.
Doodle and do Let's not forget about the unknown who was named the unknown because his name is unknown. This is all stuff that the AI script generated.
We're gonna do a little reading because Gizmoto has the whole thing linked out and posted and it all checks with what we've We've heard the actors describing, you know, and the little bits of commentary they've offered to the
whole thing. But it was apparently so bad that parents, like their kids were crying because this unknown thing, which is just like a person wearing like a spooky robe kind of and like one of those silver masks that you get in like spirit Halloween and like at a wig, does a really serious jump scare.
I didn't sign up for a job. I don't like jump scares.
I'm forty year old man and I don't go to haunted houses because jump scares freaked me out. So I would have been her to too, because apparently the kids were in tears. Not to mention, once they made it through that traumatic event, they were only given a single jelly bean and a half a glass of like Tesco brand lemonade. It's wow. And that's the image of the Opa Loipa. The wind viral is the station where the jelly beans were handed and there's images because people.
Were taking videos with their phones just.
To document this debacle for posterity, I guess, to back up their claims, their eventual claims to the police.
And you can see this person taking.
Like the tiniest little jelly bean and placing it in the hand of a child.
It's it's it's sad stuff, you guys.
I don't know what am I missing anything with this setup.
It's been described as the fire Festival for kids.
Yeah.
Yeah, the the one of the actors I think it's Kirsty Patterson that portrays the sad Yeah, is actually doing their best. And there was a later interview with The Independent. I want to say where several of the actors are actually one of the actors who played Willie McDuff.
He's the one. Yeah, because they did it only for like half a day.
Yeah, they talked about it and they have this classic moment where they're like, well, we uh, we knew it was messed up, so we went to the pub and let it blow over. But they they got the job offer, you know, a side unseen from like indeed dot com or something, And I think there was in the beginning a bit of a bit of a trend toward vilifying those actors who were just trying to work. They were not, Like, they were not the boardroom of the what is it know,
the house of House of Illuminati. Yeah, they were not. They were hired guns on this one. And I just want to give a shout out to Patterson because it sounds like, outside of those viral clips, it sounds like she was doing her best in a weird situation and peek behind the curtain. I know, Matt, Nolan and I and Doc I would hazard you as well, have found
ourselves in weird situations where we have to do strange things. Matt, I'm thinking specifically about the time we were explaining cryptids to a bunch of raucous kids in Maryland and they were yelling at us because they knew we had a monkey. That is a true story, Yeah, it's true.
I'm thinking about the time I worked at a private club and I got paid to pretend I was Middle Eastern and WHOA, yes.
Are you not Middle Eastern?
No?
No, at least I don't think so. But maybe aren't we all in some way? But what I'm what I'm saying is like I just I've been in a situation where I was getting paid, I was acting, and I thought I was doing great when I was a kid. When I was a kid, But if you look back at it, it's like, what is happening right now?
I didn't have to do anything problematic.
I don't think that I can recall, but I worked for a children's science center for a time where I did like the science show or you did the you know, the static electricity on the balloon and things like that with.
Kids, and it was fun. It was a glorious time, but you know, it's stressful. Kids are kids are tough.
Kids are a tough audience and it takes, you know, a lot of planning and coordination to make them happy at an event like this and this kid.
Yeah, still, I still do career days at public schools by far the toughest crowd ever.
Can I just say I pushed that thought, that memory out of my head ben doing that performance. So the kid with the kids, specifically with the the monkey.
God, that one you tend to be Middle East.
It's back.
I'm sorry, oh God.
And I came up under the auspice of the grand old opry. Let's move on.
Yeah, I just want to This is a really great uh X.
Is that what you call the individual things? From a user name at Cheerwine who sums it up beautifully. You're six years old, you live in Glasgow. You are told you will be meeting Willie Wonka eating chocolate. You arrive, you are given a single jelly bean buttered popcorn flavor. The Baba Duke is there.
Because to your point, Noel, there is a jump scare there. That is something that would be I don't want to say it should be verboten, but one would imagine if one were a parent. It's the kind of thing you, as a parent would want to know your kids are encountering before you go into it. So they got a hard time and we get it. The four of us get it, folks, and probably you listening along at home. Live productions are tough, right, theater is tough, But it's
also fire Festival. That's the best. Oh yeah, Firefest for kids.
Just to wrap it up, you know, it's when you read the scripts, which I just wanted to read, a tiny little exert of again fully generated by a I clearly not edit it at all. After the fact, it paints a pretty cool picture that I'm sure would have been really neat if they executed it. There's magical bubbles popping and you know, twinkling lights in the sky.
There's a spooky forest.
There's a confrontation between the Unknown, who, by the way, is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls of the chocolate factory and is Willy there's always not even Willy Wonker. By the way, he's Willy McDuff.
I need to mention that is sworn enemy, right, this evil chocolate maker.
Who lives in the walls.
There's some stuff that they have this confrontation at the end of the script that involves this you know, Terrry Potter.
Style battle of shooting powers at each other or whatever.
And then it ends with the Unknown being vacuumed up by a giant vacuum cleaner. Because, by the way, the coveted item like which you'll remember from the film and the book, the Everlasting Gobstopper that Charlie you know, is supposed to steal and give to slug Worth and that's how he passes the test to win the factory. In this one, it's something called Willie's anti graffiti Gobstopper, which tighties up everywhere whenever you eat it. It also somehow
tighties up helps mums and dads, but mostly mums. It says all this in the script, so it's a there's there's a message here too about kids cleaning their rooms, but really quickly. This is how the script describes this relationship.
This fiendish foe is long coveted.
This is Willy speaking my way.
One of my most cherished creations, the anti graffiti Gobstopper, a marvel of confectionery science designs to aid oh, not just any soul, but the tireless guardians of cleanliness are beloved mums and yes, dad's true, but especially mums from the endless scourge of dirty socks trun about by youthful adventurers. And there's a joke about viagra kind of and it's oh and the stage directions alone are worth the price of admission. But I think we could talk about this
for way too long that I will. I think we'll put a put a stop on it right now.
But geez, what a what a fun you know, relatively harmless. I guess this is part of what makes it so fun. I think I think the people are probably going to
get their money back. They weren't you know, conned out of thousands and kept hostage on an island, like with fire festivals, So it seems a little less, you know, less of an inconvenient There were people that came, you know, on trains from far away who are now demanding their train fare be refunded as well by the House of Illuminati, the founder of which made a statement apologizing said that the holographic equipment didn't come in in time.
It's just what led it to be the sad display that it ultimately was.
So there you go live and learn.
Oh and by the way, there's also apparently a film and production already about the Unknown, because he was the hit of the whole charade. Let's take a quick break here, a word from our sponsors, and then we'll be back with another piece of strange news.
And we've returned. Hey, before we get to the main store, I want to talk about guys. Did you hear the one about the snowmobile lawsuit against the government.
Yeah, watch where you park your copters.
I thought it was a joke set up.
That's awesome.
No, well, it's this weird situation there's some like actual injury involved in Again, just a weird situation. So in March twenty nineteen, this Massachusetts based attorney named Jess Smith was writing his snowmobile through this place called Albert Farms. It's an airfield in Worthington, Massachusetts. It's at night. He's had like one or two beers at least according to his statement. He's not drunk at it by any means,
at least according to him. But he's riding a snowmobile at night, and he's going really fast, and unbeknownst to Jeff, on the trail, there was a parked, non illuminated black Hawk helicopter.
Okay, just continue, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do the thing.
Okay, we'll do the thing that we'll talk about really quick.
Yeah. So, according to the story, the crew of that Blackhawk helicopter was just doing what they were told. They flew down from New York's Fort Drum for a night training exercise at this airfield. But Jeff had no idea that was happening. Jeff was just riding along with a snowmobile. He collided with the tail end of the chopper, literally the tail of the chopper flew through the air, broke a dozen ribs, punctured along suffered severe internal bleeding.
Hadn't used his left arm at all.
He had to be airlifted to a trauma center. Lost the use of his left arm. He's gone through numerous surgeries, and he's been living on federal assistance since the crash and living with his parents. So messed up, right, And he has been suing the US government for quite a while.
Right now.
The suit is he's looking for nine point five million dollars in damages to cover all the medical expenses, lost wages, and, according to him and his attorneys, to hold the military responsible for parking a blacked out black Hawk on an active snowmobile trail.
That was fun to say, perry to it.
But yeah, I don't know any thoughts, guys. I just I think it's crazy that I don't know. You would never, at least I would never expect to encounter a blacked out black Hawk like that in a place where I thought it was okay to just take a vehicle.
And I'm sorry, just to clarify, this is a stealth craft. So if it's blacked out, right, is it like really hard to see, is that?
Or what's more, it's.
More that it's not illuminating. Yes. So given the given the weather at the time and the time of night, and given given Smith's expectation, right, the argument is reasonable expectation. So you could say, for instance, if we if we finally pulled the trigger on Buy and our bunk out out in the mountains, and then we're all having a good time on our four wheelers and all of a sudden one of us four wheeling in the dark smacks up against a thing. Yeah, and that thing is owned
by the US government. With whom does the liability?
Uh?
With whom does the liability fall? Is it Uncle Sam? Or is it the person on the on the other vehicle?
Oh?
I mean it like you said, it's active.
It's sort of the equivalent of parking an invisible truck, like in the middle of the road.
I mean, think, I'm sorry, I'm leaning into the stealth thing.
I know it's not invisible, but it is dark, very darkly colored, and if the lights are completely off, you would not see that coming, especially if it were white out e type conditions like it might be. You know, you'd sleek it be at full speed I mean, that's obviously what happened.
Right.
Well, let's think through analogy too, just to just to interject this. Let's say, for instance, let's change the circumstances a little bit, just at context to the legal argument. So what if you are this guy is on Smith is on an established snowmobile trail. Okay, he's not just freestyling it through the woods. This is an established snowmobile trail,
and there is an unexpected anomalous vehicle directly in that path. So, for instance, think of for anybody who's a fan of off roading, for anybody who's a fan of driving around unpaved streets. You know, let's say you were doing something like that, and you know what, here's a better way.
Let's say you're on a state road and you're driving home and it's late at night, and all of a sudden, there's a there's a jet in the middle of the road you're driving on, and you just go over a turn or you hit a hill the wrong way and you don't have time to veer. For anybody who rides a snowmobile, you know that it is very difficult to like quote unquote stop on a dime. So in that case. Again, who is liable in that situation?
I don't know.
Is this one of those situations though, where it's like the government doesn't make mistakes, this is not.
Our fault because we refuse to own up to it.
Well, we were never there. I don't know, Like, what are they saying?
So so the government this has been going on again. It started in twenty nineteen, right, so the government has attempted to outright dismiss the entire case based on some older some older laws and just some older rulings like the Federal Tort Claims Act. Because the reason why the helicopter was there was a policy decision, had nothing to do with the crew. The crew had no idea that they were landing in this area that was an active
snowmobile route. They're saying that, oh, in our policies, there's nothing that requires that crew who's running that helicopter to illuminate it. That's that we don't have anything that states that we didn't know nothing, we did nothing wrong. It's it's Smith's fault for driving sixty five miles per hour on a snowmobile, which is really fast.
It's fast.
Are there posted limits on these types of motorways.
Whoa fun police?
That's right.
No, you're right, you're right. That's an excellent question. Also, also there's another question too, like if there were and I don't know how far the courts will go in entertaining this, But to the point about illumination, right, Like what illumination would have mattered? Is it? Sort of? Because this was not a planned landing, right Like, they weren't this It wasn't part of their immediate mission to land there. It's something they had to do, so.
It's an emergency maneuver of some kinds.
No, it was part of a night training, right that might I don't mean to contradict, I just I think this was night training.
Why didn't they park on the shoulder?
Well, the argument is that the crew had no idea where the tail of the craft was was actually on this active trail, right, And.
It makes sense that the crew would not know that. But then the reason I'm getting to the illumination argument is like to Nole's question about pulling over on the side of the road versus just stopping a broke down car on the highway. If you when we have a lot of fellow conspiracy realists who drive semi semi trucks, right, so like there is a well established operation for landing, and if this is training, then you know you would enact that operation.
Right.
You got to rehearse before you go live. In those cases where you have a car pulled over, you have all kinds of emergency flares and things like that. So for anyone driving a tractor trailer a semi you know that if there are engine problems, mobility problems, you have a set of procedures, things like road flares or even the little triangles you're supposed to set in some columns the vehicle.
Yeah, and saw those at walmartin places for non commercial vehicles, like for your vehicle that they just flash red lights, but they're sufficiently bright to warn people.
And that's all that's about.
That's the question, Matt, Like at this, I don't know much about the We know it was night, we know it was snowing. Was there any was there any illumination that would have mattered?
I would argue if I was Smith's attorney that yes, even if he's traveling sixty five miles per hour, if he sees something glowing even slightly on the snow like that, because the ground is covered in snow, so it's gonna be way more reflective any light that you put out there, right, I think he would have time to at least moved, you know, away a bit to the left, let's say, a couple of feet, because he only clipped a very tail end of that machine.
I don't know.
I think as attorneys have a point there. Yes, but but again, this these are these are military professionals training for a specific situation where you're going in at night in the dark. So they're doing what they're supposed to be doing to train correctly.
I don't is this your main story, Matt.
No, But that's okay. This was this. I like talking about this with you guys.
It's good.
I didn't realize it was going to generate so much conversation. There's a lot of questions. I just I feel like they have to be liable.
It certainly say this seems like they were following procedure, you know, if that's what matters, if they determined that they did not follow protocol, because it seems like anything outside of that isn't going to matter.
Well, it also goes I think there's a reasonable Again, we are not lawyers, uh, I think there is in this country. I think there is a reasonable expectation that you could argue here right like this, this community seems to be unaware that there were training exercises happening, right And then you know, you can already kind of game
out the back and forth of it. But what you can't get around is the idea that a totally innocent dude just having a sick time on a snowmobile got his life ruined, And he got his life ruined when he was doing the right things. He was just riding a snowmobile on an established trail for that he was going to go home, he was going to have a
great night. And now he is probably up to his neck in medical debt, combined with a multi year struggle legally against one of the most powerful entities in the world, which is the United States government, And that seems pretty well. Maybe I'm putting an editorial thumb on the scale, but I.
Don't editorially speaking, though, doesn't it seem like at this point they would just help him out for optics alone, Like why does the go do they always have to be right? Why can't they just be like you know what? It was a it was a bit of a whoopsie. You know we're gonna help you out with these bills.
Oh, and get in front of this question. The snowmobile does have lights, Is that correct?
Yeah?
Oh yeah, snowmobile has lights. But again, you're going through forested areas that have openings where there's way more field basically covered in snow than trees.
And dense trees. Right turns like probably hairpin turns.
Who knows, and shout out to the crew because they when they heard that smack, they got out immediately and started helping the guy.
Yeah, the first responders were the guys who were who were training, and thankfully they knew, you know, things like first response to somebody who's injured like that. They couldn't immediately save him, save him like and just fix all his problems, but they were able to at least triage him enough to get him on a flight to because I think that he had to get airlifted almost immediately again because internal bleeding, punctured.
Lung, doesn't broken ribs.
Yikes, guys, we're barely going to touch the other story, but let's do it so at least we talked about it a bit. We have a first here in these old United States. Firsts don't come along very often anymore. But we've got one, the first person in the United States to be prosecuted for smuggling greenhouse gases into the United States. What it's happening right now? Southern District of California.
Okay, wait wait, smuggling gases into the US.
Not yes, yes, specifically hydrofloral carbons.
Oh, we don't like those. They're bad for the ozone layer.
Oh those are so tight, man, I'm.
Sorry to what end if I might ask?
Well, this person, his name is Michael Hart. He's fifty eight years old. He lives in San Diego. He is accused, He stands accused of bringing those hydrofluoro carbons in and
then selling them on Facebook marketplace. So at least according to all of these documents, it's saying that he put these hydrofluorocarbons and containers into his car, covered them up so he could get past you know, I guess customs as you go through the border right there when you get the check, the border check, and then basically held them until he could sell them on Facebook.
Facebook.
Yeah, yeah, man, okay, granddad.
Well, but I mean that's a way to sell things. That's a viable way to sell things.
These do when to get scammed. It's terrible on there.
Oh really, Oh dude, I've never.
Had selling some furniture on Facebook Marketplace and I got way more bots, you know, then I got actual people.
Just I sort of never do it again.
Well I've not learned my lesson yet. I'm gonna try one day. I'm sure I'll forget that you said that, but I can't. I look forward to it. But this person, Michael Hart, he faces thirteen separate charges. Just going to give you a couple of them, conspiracy, importation contrary to law, multiple counts of selling imported merchandise contrary to law, and criminal forfeiture. He could face decades in prison if convicted on any one of the charges related to illegal importation
of hydro floro carbons. And we have to just bring this up, guys. This all has to do with a newish thing from twenty twenty. It was a law that arose in twenty twenty called the aim Act. Aim Act. It gives the EPA the authority to reduce production of hydrofluoric carbons reduce consumption. I'm not sure how you do that of hydrofluoral carbons. Those are the two main things that this Amact does, right, hydrofluorocarbons you may remember as
connected to or related to another thing. What have they called ben CFC's CFCs.
Carbons.
Yes, so these are refrigerants that you will find in your refrigerator. Everybody, right now, you've got some of these in your house. Do you have an air conditioner in your house? You probably have some of these gases that are you know, in strategic places in your house. They have to do with cooling it and.
They're not illegal in that sense, or they're being phased out or what.
I'm still a little confused about what the law is around these substances. Well, and a man who's paying for this stuff on Facebook marketplace?
And why? I'm sorry if that's too many questions.
I think, and I don't know, I haven't seen the details like that are this granular. But I think if you're in the market for hfc's or CFCs like this, you're probably working on air conditioners or or some kind of home HVAC systems as your job. Because those refrigerants are extremely expensive and you often have to go to somebody's house if you're a service person and refill the refrigerants within their AC system or their refrigerator.
And maybe getting them through legal means requires a lot of licensing and hoops and stuff like that, and this is just a quicker route.
To that theoretically, or it's a way for.
Him to make money, right, he can buy Yeah, but the reason that people would buy it rather than go through the proper channels is because it's either cheaper or easier to get and they don't have to, you know.
Fill out some forms or something. Maybe I don't know, it's just the thought.
Theoretically it would it would be easier to buy it on Facebook marketplace like that, then go through all the channels. I'm assuming, but I don't know that for sure. We're gonna check back in on this and see how this first turns out. He recently appeared in federal court. He pleaded not guilty this week as we record this, and he's going to be showing back up on March twenty fifth to hang out with the US District Judge Jeffrey Miller.
Exciting stuff, everybody, All.
Right, let us know if you hear anything about this, or if you hear anything about hfc's and this new aim act, and we'll be right back with more strange news.
And we have returned. Fellow conspiracy realists. You may recall that not too long ago we covered the concept of the fragile thing that makes the current world run the Internet. Before we get to that, because it is going to be a bit of a weird bummer, a bit of a mystery, I wanted to share with you, guys Matt's nooel dot. I wanted to share some quick things. One thing to talk about which may be good news. Did you, guys hear that credit card fees are going to get capped in the United States?
Is it actually happening.
It's something that will hopefully happen late. Fees with credit cards are going to be capped at eight dollars instead of the average of thirty two dollars per overdraw. And given the serious rate of credit card interest in the US and the accelerating economic inequality, I think that's a good thing if you have I'm mainly bringing this up as a mention, fellow conspiracy realist, if you have a credit card debt of any sort, please do pay it off as soon as you can. That stuff is predatory.
No hyperbole there, right, Like, we've all seen that happen to people.
We know.
It's such a tough situation because they rack up so quickly. The way our society functions now, you'll you'll throw your credit card at things and you will not realize you've racked up one hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, three hundred dollars, and you're like, oh crap, how did I spend that much money? And I swear it's because of that disconnect now with the card or our phone or whatever the electronic transaction is. Now, it's so easy to over to overspend I guess right, or.
Even to be forced in a situation where that is your only strategic move. Hopefully that is good news these write to us. I think there's a credit card episode that might be on the way. Whether it's ridiculous history or stuff they don't want you to know, we can say for sure, the way credit cards work, and the way indeed credit as a concept works, is something they don't want you to know. In the West, ask yourself, why don't you get financial literacy as a core class in high school?
Because you're a battery man.
That's all you are.
We need to talk about capital one buying discover that's a huge deal.
Shut it down. No, the show's over thirty five year. Yes, yeah, absolutely, so that is hopefully good news. Also, in a stunningly late to the game opinion, the London School of Economics has concluded the thing called trickle down economics aka what is it? Horses and sparrow economics as it was once called aka tax cuts for the wealthy, turns out it doesn't work. Oh they figured it out, Happy twenty twenty four London School of Economics, lasting before we get to the main store.
But Ben, Ben, you feed the horses, the horses poop, then the sparrows are satisfied.
Yeah, it trickles down.
Oh through, it trickles through.
Got it?
Well, gravity wise, I guess, because the horse's mouth is further from the poop.
Whatever.
This was one of the bedrocks of Reaganomics, and it turns out what it was a grift the whole time. And it's a griff that continues today with disastrous consequences for everyone listening. Even if you are benefiting from it in a short term environment, there is a long term there is a horizon ahead and this makes me think of something. Ah, guys, I don't know if we'll get to the main story, but it is important. We'll have to at least mention it. There's something on my mind.
We all of us on the show now, we live in urban or suburban environments. Do you, guys hear car alarms often?
Yeah. I always assume it's mine.
And it's weird that I don't actually know what mine sounds like, because they're all kind of different. But it's usually not, thankfully, But man, I do doc.
Can we get a just a sample of like the stereotypical car alarm?
Oh god, there it is.
Everybody teamed out. They heard it, and they ignored it.
So weirdly enough. Where I live now, I do not hear that. But if I'm in Atlanta, like we're going to a shoot or something like, definitely will just catch it. If I've got my windows down rolling through the Atlanta I hear those sounds all the time, appear appear up here. I hear what I think are house alarms in the distance because sound carries differently out here in the boon with.
Less noise pollution.
Yeah, but I swear I hear you're also like penetrating no no, no, yes, yeah, like laser gun sounds.
You know. Yes.
I feel like if we if we all lived further out in this mountainous compound that I fantasize about increasingly, then we are are. A car alarm would be more effective, A house alarm would be more effective, even if it was just a recording of one of us yelling.
Hey, seriously, some dudes out here yelling to call you guys.
I just called.
So. The problem is, and I think this is what we're getting at specifically here, Noel. The problem is that those things, when they become ubiquitous and familiar, just like when you're driving in the city, Matt, they're easy to ignore, right. They become part of your sort of sonic environment, like nol Win is, for instance, in your neck of the woods. When is the last time you heard a car alarm and went, holy smokes, I better go outside.
Jimmy stuck in the well? I don't never. It's just annoyance, and.
It is a it's noise pollution, that's all it is.
So Unfortunately, a similar thing is happening in hospitals. Oh geez, yeah, the hospital.
Wow, that Ben, I'm doing.
A little conversational parkour. So we started with the good stuff. Now we're gonna do once like if you work in UH, if you were in the medical industry, if you work in hospitals in particular, first off, thank you. We recognize the caliber of your work, and we understand the emotional toll it has to take, an indeed, the physical toll, especially in an ongoing pandemic hospital workers. It turns out
here up to one thousand alarm noises per shift. This is coming to us from New Atlas courtesy of Paul McClure, and this just came out this month as we record. And what happens when you hear all those beats, even if you are a trained professional, is that you will encounter semantic satiation, you know, or you.
Will encounter centory overlook.
So like semantic satiation is where you take a word like ambassador, and you just say it so often or hear it so often it loses its meaning. It becomes a series of just random noises.
Say her a name in the mirror over and over again. It'll start to sound real weird in your head, like it's it's an interesting phenomenon. It doesn't even take that many times, and I can speak from personal experience so recently in a hospital with a loved one. These alarms happen all the time for pretty innocuous reasons too. They're not all coding events or like flatlining events. Some of them are just oh, the battery and the ivy.
Pole to your place.
And I had to go get someone several times, mainly because it was just obnoxious and we were you know, unpleasant in the room and they were none the wiser until I told them about it. But again, you have to assume there's you know, if it's really serious, it'll flash a light or do something extra, one would hope, but what are you finding?
Then?
We always want to assume that there is someone at the wheel right, and unfortunately that is not always the case. As McLure points out McClure themselves being a former ICU
Intensive care unit nurse. McClure points out that a study found in the journal Critical Care Medicine discovered that only fifteen percent of all of these alarms, all these hospital beeps in a critical care environment are quote clinically relevant, which means that you'll hear a ton of beeps, and only fifteen percent of them will be the hurry up and runs that will lead to what is portrayed as
alarm fatigue desensitization. Just like if you live in a city you hear car alarms all the time, you think somebody just bumped into some other car when they were parking, somebody clicked their little keyfob wrong, and you might not immediately think a car is being broken into, or a serious situation and is escalating. I don't know, man, I just would to point that out. I don't know what to do with it. It's just it's getting to be rethinking a lot of things.
We need a new position in all hospitals, and that is the alarm technician in the minder.
Oh oh, town crier.
Yeah, that's all this person does. They just hear the beafs, they go check. Oh that's nothing, hear the beep, go check.
Oh help. Hey, it's like our car alarm.
Right, It's exactly like our car alarm.
So I want to shout out two of the authors of the study that McClure also cites. These are Joseph Schlessinger and Michael Schutz, who are looking into just like with car alarms, they're looking into how changing those sonic notifications might help medical professionals be on the ball. Perhaps we could build a hierarchy of sound there, and perhaps that already exists. You know, this is something that we
can only learn about, not being medical professionals. We can only learn about it through terrible personal experience, as you indicated, as we've all been in that situation at some point. Or we can learn about it through the magic of the internet un less noh oh, the pivot, yeah, the turn unless uh our internet gets cut off? Do you guys remember when we recently did that episode about undersea cables.
Most definitely things about when you put in that context, but I'm not superversed on the nature of this region particularly, or like the conflicts that are going on.
Yeah, we're going to talk about the Red Sea as we end our recording here.
Uh oh wait, that wasn't that the place that we focused on as being one of the most vulnerable areas?
But no way, no, really we did, right, Yes we did. Yeah, So, what's a what's like a quick, hot and dirty recap of under the internet communication?
The Internet as you know it, I wherever you are on the continent which you live, it flows from your continent through these undersea cables that are buried or sometimes just hanging out at the bottom of the ocean, and it travels. Let's imagine all the way from North America to Africa, all the way from parts of what everywhere, Every continent basically is connected up through the snaking undersea cables and they are actually the Internet tubes.
Yeah.
If you imagine the server for whatever service you're using that you're accessing via the Internet isn't on the continent where you preside, then you are accessing that stuff from a server that is across these tubes.
Perfect. Yeah. So on September twentieth and twenty twenty three, as the Humans wreckon the calendar, we publish an episode about what we call the underwater Internet spoiler. That's a redundant phrase, just like vennumber or ATM machine, the Internet is underwater. And ever since the days of Samuel Morse and the Telegraph, that has been the case for global communication. Satellites are very important and also likewise fragile, but way more of your daily global online activity is going through
tubes or depending on those undersea tubes. And recently that came to the four of the conversation because in the Red Sea several tubes got cut. There we're talking about the We'll give you the names of these lines and this comes to us from HGC Global Communications out of Hong Kong. One of the lines is Asia Africa Europe one, the other one is the Europe India Gateway, and then there's c COMM and TG in Golf. This affected twenty five percent of the Internet traffic flowing through the Red Sea.
This is just like it might sound weird to talk about a bunch of zeros and ones on the same level of a mining resource or oil, but it's very much the case in global civilization to day.
Because these are international, international transfers of money.
Often.
Yes, that's what's going through these That's one of the primary things that happens through these.
Yeah. So what the initial reporting said, I never thought we'd be in this position, guys. The initial reporting says that the UTI forces in Yemen had purposely cut the cables, and to be completely transparent, in our previous episode, we pointed out the vulnerability and indeed you could argue that we dic did something like this occurring. However, also in fairness to our little initiative, here. We did not say we were going to do it. We didn't we didn't name any specific force that was going.
To do it.
We pointed out the vulnerability exist, right.
Yes, I had to say yes.
And just to be clear, we weren't the only people talking about that for the past couple of years, because it's just one of these things. It's like, once you realize that's how it happens and that's how vulnerable it is, I think it's right to say, hey, maybe we should find something to do because a ship's anchor like has breached these cables several times since we recorded that episode, just accidentally because they dropped anchor in the wrong.
Place, and that is the most plausible explanation here. Again, we're not We're not making a larger comment regarding the current instability, the massacres against civilians and Yemen, nor are we talking about the other problems on the horizon for that region. What we're saying is it has always been a statistical inevitability. It has been a statistical certitude that something this crucial and this vulnerable would be damaged in the wake of chaos. And what most likely happened, as
we in tonight's program. Is this no who These are targeting ships, killing some ships. And when these ships get hit, some of them are big old boys. And those big old boys have big old anchors, and those anchors when a ship is compromised, when it is damaged, those anchors just drag willy nilly across stuff. So what probably happened, best guess right now, what probably happened was a consequence, an unforeseen consequence occurred. And this is not again, this
is not us defending anyone. If anything, this is us pointing out once again, when elephants make war, man, it's the grass. The grass is the first thing to go. Turns out, the same thing happens when they make love. Sorry, that's true. You know well, making love is kind of like making war.
It's a little weird. It's not like a little person.
To say that make love.
It's as bad as make WHOOPI.
Jeez with make love as war?
Metal?
Right, that is metal af radical affection, radical empathy. Uh. We want to hear your thoughts on this, folks. We want to hear your thoughts on the vulnerability of this fragile thing we call human civilization. We want to hear about the last time you encountered military craft in the wild. Out out to our fellow conspiracy realist who who hipped us to a very true story about aircraft being stored
in a Walmart in the middle of nowhere. Uh and uh, we want to hear about your experience, uh in willy Wonka Land.
Yeah, if you went.
I mean it sounds like a lot of the reports back to are like, well that was worth. The price of admission is to be part of history.
They would make money. Hand over AI fist.
Yeah, exactly.
They haven't quite figured out fists yet, are they. They still look a little.
Hands in general?
Can can you put your hands on top of my hands?
Why a picture for the website?
Why did that come to you so hard? That one guy? All right, Okay, well we're gonna we're gonna call it an evening. We're off to noctivigate. We hope you join us.
Uh.
We try to be easy to find online.
Boy do we ever?
You can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group.
Here's where it gets crazy.
We are also conspiracy Stuff on YouTube, where we have amazing, exciting video content coming your way. We were all really in the tickled before this episode if you couldn't tell, because we were looking at some edits that Matt is working on for an upcoming video series hopefully that we are all just so excited about.
So you'll see that on YouTube.
You'll also see that stuff on Instagram and TikTok, where we exist at the handle Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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