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 are joined with our guest superproducer Max the Free Train Williams.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
As you are hearing this, fellow conspiracy realist, it is August fifth. This means that we have survived through July. We're hurtling through summer. It is for reasons that may or may not be disclosed. One of our mutual I won't even say favorite, one of our mutual Mileston owes of the year is the month of August.
Talking about the birthday vibes, the consecutive birth bun birthday boys.
It's the only real New Year's a person gets. Birthdays are very important to us. We also have so many strange stories to talk about. First off, we were totally right, by the way, hate to be those people. We were totally right about subscription services moving into more and more industries. Logitech is floating the idea of what they call a forever mouse.
That's what to say.
How does one subscribe to a mouse? I don't care for this. I want to own my mouse, thank you very much.
It's very HP, by which I mean Hewlett Packard and maybe HP Lovecraft Potter or maybe Harry Potter. The idea is that it would be a mouse dependent upon regular proprietary software updates, so the mouse stops just like an HP printer. Even if the mouse works, it will stop working for you if you don't pay your fee.
Hot take that's dumb. What mouse is a single use function?
Like?
What else do I.
Need out of a mouth that I can't get through an iPad or through some other thing that I don't Maybe they can sell me on it, but I am fully against it.
It'll be so much more affordable.
Guys, stop shill.
You'll go for the mouse, big Mouth, local best Buy. You'll pick up a mouse. They'll give you twenty bucks for taking the mouse. All you gotta do is pay ten dollars every month for the rest of your life.
Yeah, and you know, depending upon how you manage your subscriptions. A few months after you die as well before before your estate clears it up. We also, we also do have good news. Right earlier, we're talking about how we were trying to put in some good news in our strange news. So we do have some good news. We do have some astonishing news. We have some conspiratorial takes on the Olympics. Before we do any of that, we have to, of course give our requisite shout out to INTERPOL,
both the band and the international law enforcement organization. Did you guys hear about how thoroughly they just busted in international drug conspiracy? Yeah?
Interpoll never doesn't get enough wins, at least in the public sphere. You know, you don't hear much about the good works of the fine folks at Interpol. So I was happy to see them getting getting a w here.
There you go.
It's good to see people win.
There was another thing I wanted to talk with you guys about. I can't find the story right now. Somebody just got arrested and busted. Who's like this international drug overlord guy as far as shipping drugs and using you know, speedboats to traffic them. He had a crazy name or a crazy specially.
The street name. I find it Yeah, while you're looking for that, Matt, let's let's talk just briefly about the inner Pol conspiracy we're alluding to. Interpool has arrested two hundred and six individuals across Europe, North America, and the African continent. These people also came along with some accessories. Interpool got their hands on one point six US billion dollars worth of illegal drugs and chemicals used to make
those drugs. This is an historic bust. Now, you know, obviously people have complicated feelings about law enforcement and knowl to your earlier point, I would say, we don't hear a lot about the times Interpool drops the ball, which does happen, Just to be.
Clear, I'm certain, and I have to say, I mean, it comes up in like spy films, you know, from time to time. But I don't fully understand the jurisdiction of Interpol.
Yeah, neither does Interpol.
Okay, they always step out of the lane. Interpol.
A quick, tiny just headline note Hamas political leader is Mali Hanayi was killed in Iran, which is I.
Believe in Tehran.
Deally, Yeah, exactly, a deal, quite a blow to the organ to that organization.
One could argue, there are many many things happening that are are just mentioned in Western news. That's why we do this show. You might not have heard that along with this Interpol arrest, like they busted a genuine conspiracy, they also got sixty five stolen cars, they got thirty thousand military grade detonators, and then they got the classic Narco sub the homemade semi submersible submarine. It's an amazing story. It's one you can learn more about, should you wish to, Matt.
Do we have the name yet?
Oh, we do the title of this person whose real name is Milos Redonzik, who's thirty four. He was arrested in Italy and extradited to New York City. He is a citizen of Montenegro and he goes by Pirate of the Unknown.
That's the name.
Yes, yes, that's a pretty good message board handle. It is.
It is depending on how you lead it right, how you elite speak that one. But we have so much to get to, so maybe let's take a quick break and then we'll dive right in. And we have returned. Here's a mixtape approach to the first part of our segment. This evening, we've heard from you, fellow conspiracy realist. And one thing we really appreciate is when we can and hit a lot of stories, we get a lot of responses from you, and you are the most important part of this show. We have to say it. We are
adults here. Uh I thought of our earlier conversations regarding privacy and freedom on the internet when I learned that this summer, Spain is rolling out something that they are calling a porn passport. Hm, yes, they're there. They also have a pun in there with a It's called a paje porte uh p a j a p o r t e. And if you know a little Spanish, you know why that's hilarious.
Wait, I don't though.
It's a portmanteau of a slang word for masturbation and the passport, so it's kind of like your whackport.
It's like a damn I'm trying to think of clever. No, I can't do it. It'll come out of the clear blue sky later irrelevant apropos.
Of nothing in the episode.
But or maybe maybe you'll wake up while you're asleep and you'll just scream it out.
A jerk order like a work order.
Yeah, Okay, we're on the same They're going to have those in max really soon.
Yep.
The the idea is this, Uh. The initiative is part of something called a new digital wallet app. Let's go to Walter Finch, writing for the Olive Press over in Spain. The concept here is get this a little bit paradoxical. It's pitched as a way to preserve a user's anonymity when viewing pornography sexual content online while at the same
time knowing enough about them to verify their age. So you have to use an electronic ID, a digital certificate, or something called the Clave system to enjoy pornographic sites in Spain. Once your age is verified in this system, it issues a pack of what they call thirty tokens, valid for thirty days, and then you are off to the races, so to speak, until you use all your tokens, at which point you will be required to prove your age once again. Again. This is pitched as for privacy.
Seems kind of counter privacy to me. There's a lot of very personal questions they're expecting you to come.
Right on out with.
You know, I don't know about that makes me uncomfortable just talking about it. It makes me feel like I watch way too much porn and I really don't I know.
Shout out to all our fellow conspiracy realists who are doing some I say cocktail math right now in their heads, like, oh, would I go over the tokens that's on you?
Have you heard there's some Republican politician who has something where he like sends his son an inventory of the porn that he watches or has a thing like, in an effort to curb his impure thoughts or to like cut down on his masturbation.
The ideas you you have two users, and you both get to see the other person's.
Accountabil a buddy corn pals. Yeah, yeah, and there's uh, there's also.
I did oh gosh, all right, we're gonna skip some of that because we are a family show.
Welcome to the family. Under this system, in Spain, heavy what are described by this journalist as heavy porn users who use up all their tokens too early are considered at greater risk of being tracked in their usage because they'll have to go back and verify their identity. Shout out to the old drug addict Dave Chappelle sketch. Someone's like scratching their neck and they got shapped lips and they're like, hey, Government of Spain, you've got any more of those porn tokens?
Tokens? Yeah, yeah, it's Can you trade tokens with others?
But right now the answer is no. Here is what they Here's what they say. In terms of privacy, the application will be audited and certified by Spain's National Cryptologic Center to quote ensure that there is no record of users pornography habits and can never be hacked. Here's what you have to do to enter the app. To use your token, you have to identify yourself each time with your fingerprint, facial recognition, or a code or a pattern.
When you are typing the address of a what is considered a pornographic site, a QR code will appear if the user is on their computer, and then a link will appear if they're using their mobile phone. Nothing weird. I've got to say. This is disturbing. It will also be used for online gambling.
Does well, that makes a little more sensing. I don't know.
I know people do have crippling porn addictions that cause them real problems in their relationships and with their families and you know, all of that stuff.
And I mean, hell, the term gooning is very.
Popular right now amongst the youth, which is basically a form of compulsive porn.
It's the only thing I met at Robert Evans forever teaching me.
Yeah, no, it makes it, I get it. But it is very much a thing, So I guess I could see that. But it also just seems weirdly puritanical for such a you know, kind of laisse fair you know, like let your freak flag fly part of the world like Spain.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
Maybe I'm over I think it's addressing valid problems, I guess, But it also I would argue it also goes to some of the dilemmas we described earlier. Is there a good faith effort to protect the innocent or is it kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing idea wherein these good faiths are window dressing for a larger conspiracy to eliminate anonymity online.
That's possible.
Yeah, I don't. I don't know if I believe in good faith when it comes.
To this kind of stuff that is always suspicious and feel like there's ulterior motives I mean, you know, what have you seen right now with Facebook their whole facial recognition debacle. You know that they stopped doing several years ago, but are just now having to pay the piper for in.
Terms of, you know, in l actual literal cash.
You know that they owe the government after an investor gation into their I believe photo to auto photo tagging that was you know, presented like, oh, wouldn't this be fun we can identify people in your pictures for you and connect you to their accounts, But it really was just kind of like a shady way of just snatching up more data without people's consents.
And Madison Square Garden also uses facial recognition to identify adversarial lawyers.
M yeah, it's I make sure they're not the.
Boxing matches, like like like what I don't understand.
Well, they're a private entity, so they they are behold into a different set of regimes.
I just want to say, I feel like this was somebody's really interesting, maybe good idea to help people recognize that they're viewing this type of material too much, And it was somebody's really good idea who's really smart, and like, oh, what if we let people see like really show it to them and make them feel at least that they could hold themselves accountable. Like, oh man, maybe I should cut down a little bit. I have to like fill out this whole process.
Now.
I gotta, you know, I gotta take my gimpsuit off to push my finger against the vague every time.
Mag No, No, it's joke. I'm being silly.
It's funny, But I PI posit the question does it count if you're watching ten porn videos at the same time on on on your VR headset?
Does that only cost you one token? Or is that ten tokens?
So I can answer this question, you can only enter I can sort of answer it. You can only enter the same website a maximum of ten times without having to use up more tokens.
And that I think I might have interrupted. You's got my brain, but please please finish your point.
If I did, well, I just mean I think the most of humans, once they find out what pornography is and that it exists, and that it's easily accessible, it becomes at least a fascin for a time.
That's what we've kind of seen. That's the way our society has altered. We've talked in the past, how it has altered the way we think about other people in our world right now that porn exists, it's altered us a bit at least, and it's something that we uh for the most part, human beings crave that kind of thing. So I do wonder if it has to be a self regulated change that has to occur somehow.
It's not.
It's never going to be. Hey, guys, we have to stop making porn now, it's never going to happen, or we have to stop watching porn now.
What's interesting is it's a new problem, and a new problem requires new solutions. People are trying to figure that out together. I am just pointing out there is a conspiratorial aspect here, or potential for for sure. The other conspiratorial aspect here, I would believe is largely positive and beneficial to society, which is to better track and apprehen hind proliferators of CSAM, child sexual abuse material or depictions of crime people posting sexual assaults on the Internet.
Now, if that is the case, I would and it was actually helpful for that end, I might sign up for a program like this, you know what I mean. Like if it was an opt in situation, which I would think what's the is the is the proposal of this would be mandatory.
Yes, okay, I'm just making sure I'm getting there right.
Because that's the only way any Yeah, it's like autonomous vehicles. It doesn't really work unless all the vehicles are autonomous. But there is good news, uh, be for we move on. There's a lot we can't get through right out with good news. Uh there is a new dual target drug that can make antibiotic resistance one hundred million times harder. So the ideas of we did episode back in the day about superbugs, right, and the constant race between new
antibiotics and quickly evolving infections and bacteria. So bacteria very very good at this Their mutation evolution cycle is Olympic level. That's a nice setup for later. The concept here is that we could use we being humans or civilization can use multi pronged attacks to fight things that are superbugs in the making. So it's very important to hear as we get into more stories this evening that not all the news is bad. There is good news.
That's a great number for a talking point. I gotta say it almost sounds made up.
Like one hundred million times better.
It's like some super Saiyan kind of like you know, dragonball Z power Up type stuff.
And another piece of good news, researchers have recently found that oxygen is being produced on the ocean floor. One complication. The research was paid for by a deep sea mining outfit and they are not happy about the news.
Well, yeah, we need to put a bunch of stuff down there and extract a bunch of stuff and probably put a bunch of oil on the surfaces that are I guess somehow making oxygen.
Yeah, they were. They were so astonished. There's a multi year study. They were so astonished that Andrew Sweetman of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, the guy who led this study, he said, for eight years he just disregarded all the data they were getting about oxygen production from ancient lumps of metal. This is a true lovecrafting story. And he said, I just thought all our sensors were messed up. And then we spent another couple of years
just trying to disprove it. And then we had to go go back to the Metals Company, a Vancouver based mining firm that funded this. They in the Metals Company perspective. They spent years arguing that mining in the deep ocean has a low environmental impact and that they were a green company by extracting minerals from the seafloor. But if indeed this is producing oxygen, then the the mining company's argument is somewhat fraudulent or incorrect. I shouldn't say fraudulent.
I love the idea of a green mining company, just in general. How do all those machines work down, you know, in the depths of the ocean to extract minerals. That's weird.
Yeah, we're one stop fire department. We have vertical integration, so we start the fires and then we also put them out at a very reason the mole market costs to you.
It's so weird. It's that same what is the carbon offsetting and all that stuff they got so popular. It's that there was a story about New Zealand air company, like a passenger flight company, that an airline excuse me, that's the word for it. Why not just say airline mass But there's an airline company that just you know, had to roll back on their climate goals and their carbon emission goals because they were realizing that the stuff they needed to buy the better planes, the better fuel.
It was so cost prohibitive, and just they were unable to meet investor goals and meet those things at all. So they just said, we're just gonna We're just going to push back what our goals actually are. We'll do it in twenty fifty now instead of twenty thirty.
Well, those things aren't like binding. They're more pr items than anything. So it's like and they probably werell them back quietly, you know what I mean. It's not like they put out a big old release saying, hey, guys, that's why I We're definitely not going to meet these goals that we announced.
It's aspirational anyway.
Yeah, aspirational is a more diplomatic phrase than greenwashing. But check out our episodes on that as well.
Aspirational implies that they mean well greenwashing implies that it really is just kind of like flim flam.
Right.
Also, recycling's a scam talked.
Check it out in very much a scam.
I mean, it does some good, but it was created as a way of deferring the guilt.
To consumers, you know, the burden onto consumers. There there are a lot of things happening in the world of tradecraft as well. Check out the news about Venezuela. That's getting pretty dicey. Shout out to everybody who's been having some offline conversations about that. US federal authorities have arrested an ex Green Beret in connection to a hilarious doomed twenty twenty attempted coup on Maduro. It's been called in certain circles the Bay of Piglets. And there are so
many other things that we're not getting to yet. We're going to have to save them for later. We want to hear from you, specifically about all of the stuff we just mentioned. It makes our day when you respond to a specific story, or in some of our cases, it makes our evening. The continent of Africa is maybe forming a new ocean at a very slow rate. That's crazy. Oceans are crazy in general. But you know what else was crazy to a lot of people in the United States,
France and abroad. A little game civilization likes to play every so often, something called the Olympics. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be back with more strange news, because no, you got some thoughts here, right, I sure do.
And we've returned to the great game, the great the big Games, the great Games.
What do they call the Olympics? People love the Olympics.
It's a It does present a certain opportunity for a unification, you know, globally speaking. I like that aspect of it. I'm not a sporto, you know. To coin, I guess a British or Australian maybe term that I have a big fantom. I like the term sporto. Don't really care for sports that much, but I've always been a fan of the pomp and circumstance and pageantry behind a good
Olympic opening ceremony. They'll realize in discussing the story with you guys and looking into it that I've never really sat through an entire Olympics ceremony because I had no idea that they could he of.
Like three hours, they're really good. Yeah.
This one in Paris this year, for the twenty twenty four Summer Games was no exception.
Clock in it. I believe a little more than four hours.
And most of those four hours seemingly have not upset or offended anybody. But there's two particular moments that lasted literally moments a piece that have caused a real stir amongst certain I guess religious types of you know whatever. And we're not here to denigrate anybody's religion or or
crap on anybody's opinion. But I do think there's something to be said about manufactured outrage, and I have to do think that intent is very important when you're getting mad at somebody for them supposedly, you know, saying something that offends you. I do think it's important to put yourself in their shoes and think, like, were they actively trying to offend you know, was that the goal? Or am I just maybe looking at this through a particular
kind of lens. Ben, we talked a little bit about how in your previous life in academia studying international affairs, were required in many situations to watch the opening ceremonies because it was a way to kind of look into the culture of the country putting on the games, in terms of like what kind of technology they wanted to show off, in terms of how they wanted to kind of sneak in I guess their ideology, their political beliefs, you know, their culture into these proceedings, And I think
that's a big part of what we're talking about with the Paris Games today. But could you speak a little bit about that before we get into the controversy, just how that might be a thing people don't really think about.
Sure, yes, and thinking the Olympics from stemistern is a diplomatic initiative. It's what we call a soft power initiative, which is why so many countries fight to have the Olympics staged in one of their cities. Even though it is overwhelmingly a tremendous financial loss for the people who live in the country, it is a projection of power for a lot of people in the realm of you know,
the policy walks and look. A lot of foreign governments are eyes on for the Olympic ceremonies, especially because in situations like the Chinese two thousand and eight Olympic ceremony, we saw evidence of some really fascinating technology, always used
for peaceful purposes. With a nod and a wink the same way, like the same way we say, oh, we shot a satellite out of the sky to help space, right, to help humanity, pay no attention to the fact that also we can shoot stuff out of space from the ground. So like the drones in the two thousand and eight Olympics are a depiction of dual use technology. The cloud seeding, which is a real thing, is another depiction of that
goes in China, right, yes, sir, Yeah. And the what we see in the Paris Olympics, the thing that seems to have really riled up some culture war enthusiasts was the idea that there was a mockery of certain religions or religious scenes. However, the overall thesis of it, if you ask Paris, and if you ask the IOC International Olympic Committee, was the idea that the world is too fun for war. That's basically their thesis, right.
Well, the scene that you're describing, ben is I think, first and foremost what has what it's been landed on as the subject of greatest defense, you know, as you know this the.
Idea to say there were two though they're two, and.
I'll get it the second one later, which I think is the slightly more badass one in my personal opinion, But I think this is the one that the community that is claiming offense has landed on as like the primary source of their concern, a depiction of what they describe as the Last Supper, which is of course a tableau of Jesus and his apostles the night before Jesus is to be crucified, you know, and then all of the you know, particular hand gestures and things of that nature.
And it's obviously an iconic image, so iconic in fact, that it's been parodied, it's been recreated, it's been used for like band photos. You know, I believe the Simpsons did it, because they've done it all because it's just so recognizable. So you one could argue it's so iconic and recognizable that it's kind of beyond offense in many ways.
But I you know, who am I to say? You know, people can be offended by whatever they want.
But the interesting thing is so so they what they've What they did in this moment in the Olympic, the twenty twenty four Olympic opening ceremonies was they depicted something very similar to this tableau, a group of trans and queer and drag queens and children as well, seated at a long table kind of again and in this very artistic kind of tableau, and then a giant serving platter with a dome and everything is lowered down, and a scantily clad, let's just say blue painted individual emerges from
this dome and is kind of dressed in flowers and I believe, like fruit and things like that, but not wearing much else. And the Olympic folks, and then the people that designed this, which was an artistic collective of some kind.
It was a few folks.
It's a massive undertaking the amount of moving parts in a four hour incredibly highly choreographed, you know, basically the most elaborate parade one could imagine a lot of it actually takes place on water, with different boats and floating devices. I believe there's even like a water horse kind of robot thing. At some point they described this as an
interpretation of the Greek god Dionysus. The individual portraying this Dionysus figure is a well known in France singer named I believe it's Philippe Caterine and again decked out in grapevines and floral kind of things and not much else. And a lot of folks that took to Twitter and various online platforms for outrage believe that this person was in some way representing Jesus some sort of blasphemous bastardization
of a christ figure. But again, everyone involved in the production and the Olympic Game's official Twitter account did clarify that this was in fact a depiction of the Greek god Dionysus. The Olympic Games official account did say the interpretation of the Greek god Dionysus makes us aware, to your point, Ben, of the absurdity.
Of violence between human beings.
And I've seen some other discussions about this, the idea that if you're nude, you can't conceal a weapon. You know, the early Greek Olympic Games. We know the Greeks were hedonistic folks.
We know this. This is not like a secret.
And in the Olympic Games, you know, are are a part an extension of that history. I believe been in mant the the Olympians in the earliest games competed fully nude. I think that that's that's a f sure.
And notice they were called Olympians.
Mount Olympus, you know, the home of the gods.
The Greek gods.
Yeah, so they are calling back to the history of the Olympics themselves. France has always been, uh, you know, a very vibrant community for transness and queer culture and creativity, you know, and not to mention their history of iconoclastic kind of revolution.
You know, we've heard a little thing called the French Revolution.
And and to that point, they as a culture, I believe, view themselves as very a religious in terms of their depictions of religious iconography. And I don't believe that there was any intention to have this be seen as religious at all, or any of these symbols to be interpreted as religious at all. And it may well be because of that lack of kind of religious centric kind of thinking that they may have missed the boat a little bit in terms of what it might be interpreted as.
But I would also argue that the point of an Olympic opening ceremony is to represent that culture their ideals and what they believe in and what they stand for, and the concept of libertais, you know, the idea of kind of like, you know, let your freak flag fly, do your own thing, march to the beat of your own drummer. That's all very French. This is all taking
place in Paris, France. So I don't know some of the people that are outraged by this, or folks like Candice Cameron, who I believe that she went by when she was DJ on Full House goes by. I believe a Candice Cameron Burr now and is much more of a Christian kind of right wing activist and you know, UH pundit type individual. She posted uh in a in an Instagram reel UH that she found it to be despicable, that she said she was sickened by it and that it was, you know, offensive to all Christians.
And Rob Schneider.
Also took to the internet to uh to talk some serious crap about this and and said that you know, he found it to be totally offensive to Christians and he refused to participate in any Olympics that that would dare to defame.
Uh.
People of the Christian faith point out, just to mirror what the guys I love on Internet today had to say. Dude did dress and drag a lot throughout his career, and he was in a movie called Little.
Nikki about the literal devil when the Sun of the dak Giuliani. I mean, he couldn't score a role in Little Nikki. But you know, life is not life is not measured in one hundred percent wins. I have a proposition for you guys and all our fellow conspiracy realists,
do consider context. Let us also remember that the nation of France narrowly avoided descending into far right fascism only months ago, not even months very recently, and so it is quite possible, if not probable, it is quite possible that this is in some ways a reaction to that threat, or a celebration of surviving that ideological fire. Would I would also posit I would also posit this the people propagating this as a attack on religion are trying to
fill the slow news day of the culture war. Because the US election cycle encountered some Shyamalan plot twist here, people who need outrage for their machines to function had to find some new gas, and so this is perfect for that, especially if it is just a picture that seems very theatrical, a headline about a threat something. You know, we used to call it a nugget, right, a nugget. How stuff works. You don't have to read much, you'll have to go the context. You can just share it, right,
you can just retweet that or whatever. And I think that's it. I think it's because the pre planned outrage cycles were rendered moot due to some election shenanigans, some electionanagans, and so now that thank you sir. Now this is slotted in where the earlier stuff was supposed to be, and I think it'll be ephemeral.
Resolutely is highly ephemeral because it's sort of a non issue. I am bummed though, that the Olympic Committee, which has an ironclad grasp on all footage and logos and branding related to the Olympics, they'll they'll issue a copyright claim against you. Make your head spin has fully removed footage of this from all accounts. Marvelous ceremony that seemed really artistic and fascinating, and I didn't catch it, so I've
only seen little clips here. I just want to end with the other candidate for outrage that quickly took back seat to the Dionysus thing.
A French metal band called Gojiro, who are awesome.
They performed on these like parapets, like on this incredible French castle that I believe used to be a prison that was even involved in the French Revolution itself. Paris is a conciergerie palace, and they did a French language rendition of an anthem, a nineteenth century French anthem ah ca irah, I believe, and I'm not a native French speaker,
so forgive mispronunciation there. But some of the other windows are all filled with images remind me of the Haunted Mansion and Disney of this decapitated Marie Antoinette's all singing along operatically to this. It's an incredible feat of production. There's flames everywhere. It's really badass. There's even an opera singer that floats by on the mast of a ship as part of that other the water kind of parade we were talking about. And I just want to leave
the last word to some actual French people. One of the singer, I believe, Joe Duplantier of Gorgeiro, had this to say of the notion that what they were doing was satanic. He goes, it's none of that. It's French history. It's French charm, you know, beheaded people, red wine and blood all over the place. It's romantic, it's normal. There's
nothing satanic. France is a country that made a separation between the state and religion during the Revolution, and it's something very important, very dear to the found foundation of Republican France.
We call it la cite.
It's when the state is not religious anymore, so therefore it's free in terms of expression and symbolism.
It's all about history and facts.
We don't look too close at symbolism in terms of religion. Bottom boom. I think that's a great last word. You guys have anything to add on, that's I yield my time. I think it's a fascinating story and a great example of that. What are they trying to bring back the Satanic panic and to what end? To your point, Ben, I think it is just lazy attempt to fill the news cycle with outrage.
I would just point out, boys, I was a part of that weird ceremony in the year two thousand, remember, and the preparations for that were a year long minimum. So like this thing has been in the works for a long time, that.
A fascist party has been bubbling for a long time.
As well, so that I'm with been there on that idea that this is. You know, it's a way to make a through culture and art, make a statement right doing that, and you've been planning it that long and it really does feel to me again kind of as you said, there have been. It's the kind of thing that gets a lot of attention and hopefully gets viewers watching the Olympics and not boycotting the Olympics. I don't know.
I caught. I glimpsed up at a screen where I was when those were going on, and I saw that tableau one of those shots, and I just went huh. And then I didn't watch any more of it. And I wonder how many people had that happen before they got caught in this hole, as you guys said, the retweeting, re sharing, reposting thing. It's like, look at this, how dare they?
Well, let's take a quick break or a word from our sponsor and then come back with one more piece of strange news.
And we've returned. We're going to hit a couple of stories here. We had prepared something about climate and some potentially catastrophic stuff that is coming our way, but it's coming our way anyway, and if we want to talk about it, maybe we do a larger piece on this specific thing. You can look it up if you want to. It's called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which is a current system that goes across the oceans, and it basically
moves warm and cold water around. It sends warm water to places that it needs to go. It's a huge interconnected system that's beneath the oceans, and it might be slowing down. It does seem to be slowing down. It does seem to be potentially the kind of thing that stops crops from being able to be grown on planet Earth in large areas.
That's not good.
It sucks and I don't want to talk about that right now.
Cool, what else you got?
I want to talk about something nicer. But if you do want to look up the story about that, you can find it in Wired. It was posted on July twenty fifth, written by Sandra Upton. The title is how soon might the Atlantic Ocean break? Two siblings? Scientists found an answer and shook the world. Very good read, very long and depressing, but you should probably learn about it.
Go for it.
But for now, let's turn our eyes to the country of China and an awesome breakthrough that they just had that very well could affect all of us, because this could be a new technology or a new way to generate electricity and power that is green and would be a lot safer, even than a coal burning power plant, allegedly according to the folks that have created the factory and are vetting it at this time. Let's go to
the Independent dot co dot uk. They've got an article titled China unveils meltdownproof nuclear power plant in clean Energy Breakthrough Clean Nuclear. You said, melt down proof. That sounds great. We know nuclear energy is a great way to generate lots and lots of power pretty quickly. It's the safety thing. It's always been that issue. Huh And oh yeah, what do you do with it once it's done making all the electricity.
Airan in the desert?
Yeah? Yeah, Well, look, if if you're to believe what's being written about this, this could be a technology that would prevent something like what happened at Fukushima, where the rods of materials that are generally dipped down into water, which you know, produce all the bubbling water and the steam. Those rods would go away, those things that melt down, it would go away in this new system because they have designed this weird they call it a pebble bed reactor.
Sounds a little bit weird. They are basically small amounts of the same like uranium whatever you're gonna use, whatever nuclear material you're going to use for this uranium. They're inside these poolball sized graphite things that then all sit down and instead of in water, they at least in water because water is what you know generates the steam to create the electricity. Water is also the cooling mechanism for these rods to keep them at a steady temperature.
If they get too hot, that's when you have the meltdown. They then literally melt through the concrete and all the other the structure that is your power plant. These pebbles, apparently because of the way they're formed, do not get as hot when they operate, and they are using helium to cool them rather than just water helium, it can get to a much higher temperature before there are major
issues with it. This is potentially a huge breakthrough, guys, when I think about it being you know, potentially put across the world in places where you can now have this type of nuclear reactor rather than a coal burning power plant. I really quickly wanted to talk with you guys about this. We've mentioned many times on this show.
One of the problems with technology like nuclear technology and power generation is that countries that don't have the amount of money to put into research, to put into development, to then have engineers go through and build giant nuclear power plants. They have to rely on other technology that's just a couple of steps behind, maybe a ton of steps behind, to generate the power they need, which would be more pollute, exactly, way more polluty. If I don't know,
I don't know, what do you guys think? You think there's going to be a larger impact the world over with this kind of thing?
The problem is, I mean, this is, first of all, I'm blown away that there haven't been this kind of advancements in nuclear technology for as long as we've been using nuclear technology. Like I'm sure there have been some subtle changes and infrastructure, you know, I guess workflow, you know, streamlinings and things like that, but largely, if I'm not mistaken, the technology that's used to generate power through a nuclear
reactor has largely stayed the same. The big problem that I see here is a Southern company here in Georgia have been building an additional reactor at Plant Vogel near Augusta for like going on a decade now, if not more, And it's just it keeps being slowed down by regulatory stuff. It keeps being slowed down by overages, and it's just like to now say, oop, sorry, guys, we've got to start over with this new pebble stuff. I would be interested to see what the costs for retrofitting and existing
plant would be, because it's it's impossible. The reactor is made by Westinghouse and you buy the reactor, so you're you're in it, baby. Once you got that reactor and you spent the money and installed it and developed it over the span of decades, you know, years and years and years and years.
You're invested and you're all in, and I don't know how you can walk that back.
The fancy term for that would be path dependency, right, That's what a lot of oil dependent countries have run into as well as oil well. By path dependency, here we're seeing a multi variable pickle.
Right.
It's a real bag of badgers because you could take something like KSA Saudi Arabia. They're dependent largely on fossil fuels for domestic energy production, but they're also economically dependent upon exportation of fossil fuels, meaning that to a country with all of its petroleum eggs in one basket. Is something like nuclear technology could be seen as an enormous threat to your point and no, yes, excellent question. Maybe
throw to you here, Matt. From my understanding the current first we have to know China's new project, or the new revelations about it, I should say, are our best in class as far as we can tell from the claims. However, they are not the only thing out there using an alternative to water as a cooling mechanism. I think of Wyoming. There's another. There's a plant that they're refitting the old footprint of a fossil fuel plant, a coal plant, to
use liquid sodium as a coolant. This is an exciting thing. I think you're right, Matt when you point out that this is reporting coming through several filters. We can file this as big if true, but we also know it seems pretty legit at this point. The main problem production wise is that you run into path dependency. We can't make those old or current reactors, we can't make them into that this is a new thing.
Yep, really quickly they broke ground.
There's two new units at Plant Vogel in Burt County, Georgia.
In June of two thousand and nine.
It was supposed to be done two units by twenty seventeen, but because of the delays and overruns, it.
Reached the billion thirty billion dollars.
Unit three only just started operation July thirty first of last year, and Unit four isn't scheduled to start commercial operation until actually supposedly was April twenty ninth of twenty twenty four.
So that's yeah, you can't turn back the clock on that.
And there are other companies that make what are called small modular reactors and things that are a little less you know, all in kind of.
But even those you know, you say, small modulu rected. It's not like you can put in your garage, but it's so cool, Matt, And I hate to poo poo all of this. I hate that any of us.
It's just like, how do you restart the clock, you know on these giant projects that are already so far along, And like, yeah, I.
Don't think you can because ultimately that becomes profit motive for the companies building the reactors, and the states and countries that are gonna you know, buy the power from the power generation. You can't. You just got to build new ones. If you then look a little deeper, it does seem like this is one play by trying to wean itself off of coal at least in the long term, right, and hopefully it's going to be another way forward. Even
if we do have dangerous nuclear reactors. You just got to hope that the operators of those are really careful and some natural disaster like in the case with Fukushima, doesn't come through and you know, knock power out to all the systems that cool your stuff Downright, Yikes.
It works great, so long as it works, which is a quote from one of my old professors.
Totally yes, Not to mention that the cost of this kind of stuff will almost inevitably get passed on to rate hikes for the end users.
Oh yeah, there's another story we didn't get to about a US. A part of the US is going to start charging customers for not using electricity. Yes, they have their own off the grid alternative sources.
Louisiana like, we'll get you with a power bill anyway.
Bump up. But that's the world we lived. I will say that this technological breakthrough is a net positive something being meltdown proof quote unquote, does address one of the primary dangers of nuclear technology, not the not the only primary danger, because there's still nuclear weaponry and they're kind of the same thing, so you got to keep you an eye on that. But I would say, Matt, this is this is a breakthrough on the level of the boneless chicken wing.
It's not a chicken wing, it's a chicken nugget. I will die on this head.
Well, let's talk about that. I want to know how you guys feel about boneless boneless wings. I remember when I was a younger lad when boneless wings became an option at some of my favorite places to get chicken wings. I was elated when I don't got to deal with the bones anymore. Heck, yeah, this is amazing.
Because kids like chicken nuggets.
Matt, So tell me, tell me, how do you guys feel about a boneless wing.
I've made my position clear.
In terms of.
What I don't know. What are your thoughts, any terms you you give them to me, any term you got.
An abiding interest in the international economics of the chicken trade would be the first and most unfun way to say it. But it is true because there is this There are so many things that happen to chicken in particular. Before these things get to the plate, right, or get to your local chicken spot, shout out to the local
the wings advertised as boneless. It strikes me, Matt and nol and fellow conspiracy realist, it strikes me as one of those somewhat fatuous terms, like you know, when you see all natural on a cereal box, there's not really
a way like it's. It seems dumb and maybe a little legalistic, But you could say, hey, we're selling, to Nole's point, we're selling this process leftover chicken that has been mushed up into the shape of something vaguely winged like, and we can call it a chicken wing boneless, and
that may be operationally different from a de boned chicken wing. However, you know, chicken wing itself is already a little bit a little bit dicey in terms of how it's sold because what there are, flats and drums and drumsticks are not wings, but they're sold as wings. So I think they're playing with the terms of definition here is.
That Yes, I think I think that's what we're dealing with. Uh, this is what the Ohio Supreme Court had to say in a four to.
Three thank God, great God, I feel like a weight has been lifted.
Thank you. All right next to ja rule things, but please well is.
Jaw Rule the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.
He's the power behind the throne.
There's always room from home lifting, Matt, Sorry, okay, yeah, what is it?
I anyway, I just returned from Ohio. That's where I was when I wasn't on those episodes, guys, and I did take a little dip in Lake Erie, and I'm happy to report that I only saw two very dead perch hanging out, very large fish, all white and dead, right in the area where I was swimming with my son, and that was.
Where they were floating. They were.
They were floating vertically.
Belly were no not belly up.
One of them was belly up, one of them was belly down. One of them looked a lot I wish as the waves moved it closer and closer to shore. Not fun anyway, The Ohio Supreme Court said in a four to three ruling that quote boneless wings refers to a cooking style, and anyone who is eating a boneless wing should be on guard against bones. Since it's common knowledge that chickens indeed have bone. You have bones.
They haven't yet invented the boneless chicken. I know they've been trying. You know, remember those conspiracy theories about there being like a boneless chicken or like this chicken bread for its nuggets.
It's like a centipede. Yeah, yeah, the future is ours. Also, I want to if okay with you guys, I want to give a shout out to a sho that our old discovery alum Trace Dominga's does called that's absurd. Please elaborate. They have an episode coming out about what a human life would be like if humans had no bones, and maybe this this is a similar thing though, because the Ohio is okay, First, I have so many questions and I know we've got a I want to be respectful
of your time here, Matt. But also, how did this get to the Supreme Court of Ohio?
Ah?
Well, it went through the lesser courts. This thing that happened with this guy named Michael Berkheimer who was hanging out in Hamilton, Ohio. He got boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce.
It's just the way.
Yeah, and he.
Got a little choked up on a piece of one of his boneless wings, got it out of his throat, I guess. And then three days later came down with a fever and he was feeling really sick. He was trying to understand what's going on. He couldn't keep any food down, so he went to the er and a doctor found a long, thin bone that torres esophagus and caused an infection.
Have fun in your nightmares tonight, now, do you guys?
Remember?
Yes, I ate a fish and I got a bone stuck. It was like we were on tour doing live shows and it was there. I felt it for days.
I think it got into my head bad. I have a very sensitive gag Reeflece.
I think it scratchedus a little bit, and I.
Was just feeling the scratch. But y'all, that is no joke.
Do not mess with with bones if you if you've swallowed one, because they really could just stick around there and then an infection would be inevitable.
Yeah, So what happens to our guy in Ohio.
Well Berkheimer. Three days after after the doctor's stuff, He's like, what the heck happened? Oh, it must have been that time. I choked and that was a boneless wing. Howld there was boneless hell. So we sues the restaurants on Brookwood. You're sued, he said, Oh jeez. He said they failed to warn him that the boneless wings, which are you know, nugg a boneless skinless breast meat, contain bones and it.
He named the supplier as well, the person who actually like sold that restaurant the boneless wings there, Purdue or whatever, yes, exactly, said they were negligent. You're all negligent. You're gonna pay me. And it went through the lower courts, it got dismissed, got to the Supreme Court, and it basically got dismissed again.
Now, now with within these proceedings, did it come to light as to how these bones? Is there a different process for boneless wings than there is for chicken nuggets? And I hate that I am harping on that, But the implication there would be, to Ben's point, that it is in some way deboned as opposed to some slurry that is then formed into a shape and deep fried.
It depends because different suppliers and different products. There's a whole bunch of different things. Right, we learned about the pink slime chicken stuff that becomes really nuggets that we've seen, right.
Sure check out our earlier episodes.
Yeah, you bit into one of those, and it's this. It's definitely not the same tissue that you would find if you cooked a whole chicken or something.
It's I like the little tumory things, right, you guys know when you get a good it's like a juicy, evil booger.
Oh god, God.
Chicken nugs for a lot of us.
Please message me if you want some notes on your nightmares face. Okay, but some, as you're saying.
Some other chicken products are actually breast meat or the tenderloin or.
Usually say that meat or something like it'll say that on the packet, or you know, if you're buying it frozen, for.
Example, mechanically separated boneless wings.
Yes, which which could be this kind of stuff. Like a lot of places use. It's not rib meat of a chicken. It's the it and it's not wing meat either's the thy meat generally that gets used. That piece of thy meat is then kind of just turned into a shape with some of the same chemicals and substances they used to smash that meat together. Which is kind of like that listeria thing with boar's head when they when you get that packaged meat like ham, that's really nice shape every time. Somehow.
Yeah, that's it. That's the story you did get to. I love You're sorry that out I had that in the notes as Bay of Piglets. One ushead has recalled seven million more pounds of Deli meat due to a huge listeria outbreak.
Oh that came up while we were on vacation and we had I had boar's head ham sitting in my house and I also had some on the way to feed my kid up there in Ohio.
H Yeah, but this okay, So how how does this all work out? The like you said at the Ohio Supreme Court, their version in Diana Ross and the Supremes found that chicken wings can have bones, even if advertised as boneless, because they're already not technically chicken wings, and boneless is a cooking method.
Yeah, but it's not standardized though you literally asked that question and you said it depends. So it's almost more like it's not describing a process that is regulated. It's just an advertising mechanism and it doesn't mean a damn thing.
Yeah, it's a silly thing. If you're buying meat that came from an animal, that probably.
Boneless wings gets a gimmick and total.
It just depends on how much you trust the factory that is producing that product, and how much you trust the company I guess that owns that factory and all that other stuff. We're going to talk about another factory thing in our listener mail this week, so this is a whole other thing we can get.
I'm excited about that one. I've been pretty deep in that one.
Oh yeah, dude, I am just learning about it, but it's fascinating. I'm going to read this one quote from Justice Joseph T. Dieters, who wrote for the majority. Here he says, see if you guys can decode this a
little better than I can. He says, a diner reading boneless wings on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items then believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating chicken fingers would know that he had not been served fingers.
Yeah, okay, makes sense.
It's referring to a shape or like a style of presentation more than anything. And I just googled boneless wings and your story came up more than anything. But I believe there are some contest or something and Popeye's boneless wings one.
Pig and a lot of people dropping arms about that.
But I came up with this article from ap from twenty twenty three around the Super Bowl time, how the boneless wing became a tasty culinary lie. So that's the headline that I think it's the bill for this entire discussion.
To the point of again, I know I'm I do, I'm freestyling here, But to the point of your question at unpacking the legal opinion, there is a bit of a semantic stretch there by saying, hey, you know, chicken fingers aren't really the.
The filangies of chickens, right talent, Yeah, you know, they're not the talons. Chicken feet are an entirely different product. Sure, but you really enjoy once you get past the gelatinous bones.
But there cartilogenous bones, I should say, but once. But the stretch there, I guess the part that makes it an opinion is the idea that because people know chicken fingers are not chicken fingers, they should therefore be assumed to know that chicken wings are not always chicken wings, which is a little bit it's a little bit of a linguistic right there.
But the word boneless is in there, and that's how it's advertised, which is it's the thing that I think that's the reason why the dissenting judges called that reasoning quote utter jabberwockee.
I've never seen that one good poppy cock.
Indeed, jabberwakie, that's fabulous. No, it's a style.
It's a it's a stylistic choice, you know, it's like a menu item, kind of bit of trickery. I'm trying to think of other can you guys think of other examples of that? Like shoe string fries aren't made of.
The strings, you know, boneless.
Lady fingers, the lady fingers are not lady fingers.
Well, for for me, it's like buying a lot of let's say, fish, like fish filets that have been prepared to buy at a grocery store. Every one of those fish has bones in it, right, it's been deboned by somebody somewhere.
You might catch one, though, bro, you might from experience.
You might and if if this is, in fact a meat product that had a bone in that piece of chicken that was used to create the wing, the boneless wing. Then that's one thing. If it's a whole other, you know, system of producing whatever that piece of meat is, it's another thing.
The FDA is compromised. There is a difference between d boned and boneless. As it's being sold. Again, I don't want to lose that joke. But if you have never tried Lady Fingers, let me just manage some expectations. It is a dessert. It does not contain human flesh.
Oh oh, and speaking of witch, just last last thing for me, the purported inventor of Taram Sue, the delightful Italian dessert which is made of Lady fingers soaked in espresso, mascarpone, cheese and cocoa powder.
And I believe one other thing passed away.
I didn't even realize it was like a modern, relatively modern invention and tear me Sue, one of my favorite desserts of all time.
The future is now.
The future is every.
No, sorry, it's boneless.
It's boneless. That's what the future is.
Bless ed.
This is where we pass it to you folks. We cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Of course, we love food and food history and food conspiracy. Please please look up that story about the slowly forming ocean. Let us know your thoughts, the Olympic ceremony, culture wars, and of course Spain's pornography passport if you got if you got wrapped up in that interpool bust, we'd love to hear that story too. We'll be back later this week with more strange things, and we'll be back next week with
more strange news. In the meantime, join the conversation. We can't wait to hear from you, and.
Welcome back Matt from Skimbity, Ohio. That's just lovely to have you back.
You can indeed find us on the Internet of the hanmlic Conspiracy Stuff where we exists. On Facebook, we have our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, on YouTube where we have video content coming at you on the regular, and on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok.
However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Do you like to call people? Call us. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. You got to turn those letters into numbers. You'll figure it out when you go. When you do call in, you've got three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname, and let us know at some point if we can use your name and message inside that voicemail. If you got more to say than can fit in that three minutes, why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Don't often do this, but spoiler for an upcoming conversation in listener Mail, our weekly listener mail program, what would be your Dream? Last Meal? Tell us all about it. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,