From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis, code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top of the week, so Monday evening, we are bringing you some fresh baked strange news. Shout out to everybody listening to this in a cyber truck. Be safe, geez. Shout
out to everybody who's been in unusual loan circumstances. We were talking a little bit off air, and we thought we might do just a quick cavalcade old school strange. She's daily at the top. We talked about investor passports like a while ago. Right, did we ever do an episode on this? I don't think we did.
I don't believe so no doesn't quite ring a bell. That'd love to be caught up.
Yeah, so I know we talked about this hanging out off air. They're always with every election cycle, there's always going to be several groups of people in the US who say, well, if so and so as president or so and so does something, then I'm moving, me and the family are getting out of the US. We're going to some other country. For many of us in the audience today, who may indeed be expats, you know that the process is often much more involved then.
You know.
You can't just go online and then click a box. It takes a while, and so it may be of interest to some of us to find that the more wealthy people in the US and the world are building a thing called passport portfolios. Let's go to Robert Frank for CNBC who wrote this just just about a week ago. Apparently around the globe, very well to do people are collecting a second or even a third or a fourth passport,
like actual citizenship, international citizenship stuff. And I think it's safe to say, without putting any of us on the spot, that we as a group, we're all kind of like one passport folk, right. We don't have to say it on it.
Oh on a good day, yeah, on a good day. Well, I mean I think I maybe mentioned I had a child's passport, not like I was using a child's passport, but I only just recently got a grown up passport, and I did not have the one from my early early youth, and so it was a big old pain in the butt to get a new one when you don't have the original. If it's I get to fill out a different form and it can take a little longer. But I've been using my new big boy passport every
chance I get. But yes, only the one, only the one. When I think of multiples, I guess I think of that secret hidden drawer full of loose diamonds, and like multiple identities. They're like various passports.
You know.
I literally just opened my secret hidden drawer and hold kidding.
What's your identity on that one? That?
Uh what does this say? Walton Goggins love that?
Oh good, Yeah, yeah, that'll work. Yeah. It's weird because before the global pandemic, US passport would get you into about one hundred and eighty four countries, which is awesome, But during the pandemic that number plummeted to like twenty nine countries. You could still get in, but you would need to jump through additional hoops or be quite wealthy.
And that's because the US was home to or is home to around four percent of the world's population, but also had about one fourth of total COVID nineteen cases. So all the rest of the world was looking at this and thinking, what a dumpster fire. We can't let
these people in. I did some research. We might want to save for a for an episode in the future, but it is surprisingly easy to just buy your way into citizenship in some countries, like a lot of Caribbean countries like Saint Kitts and Nevis or Saint Lucia, Turkey is one of the most exciting. If you are a billionaire listening to this and you're thinking of moving to New Zealand, I like where your head's at. It's a
good decision. Unfortunately, other people got there first, Like billionaires are pretty much buying that country now.
Wasn't that the deal? We talked about certain countries that were very, very difficult to get, you know, dual citizenship in, and that was one of the toughest. Yeah, it's one you have to show that you're committing a certain amount of your income to things that better the economy.
I yeah, exactly right now. The top destinations for what they're calling supplemental passports amidst wealthy Americans are in the following order, Portugal, Malta, Greece, and Italy. And that's coming to us from a firm in London that just does
this called Henley and Partners. I don't know, man, It still feels kind of okay, it feels kind of unfair because these people aren't there, you know, if we are practicing meritocracy, they're not necessarily better or worse than anybody else who wants to move, but they are getting they're cutting the line, you know, because they can just throw
money at the problem. But the main disturbing thing about this, at least what we could say is the main disturbing thing is that this is picking up not because it's a cool trend, but because the halves of American society are increasingly persuaded that something bad is on the way. Like they think they think the house may not burn down, but it is in ever greater danger of burning down. So they want to be able to hop on that plane to Malta. All you need is like three hundred
thousand euros in real estate to move to Malta. If that was like the main hold up, that's timber.
Shields you from prosecution in any way, or like, are there particular I know there are particular destinations you can't be extradited from, but like what's the list of Like I'm very rich and I'm scared that the IRS or the you know, SEC's coming for me. Where do I f off to?
Right? Right? That's a great question. That's what we should cover in the episode, you know, because sometimes people have just they're not you know, business tycoons, but they've saved up money throughout their lives and they want to retire some other place and so they can get that investment passport as retirements. We're not saying all these people are
like Monty Burns level evil. But the society, as we've mentioned and as we'll explore in this week's Listener, male society in the developed world is aging at a rather precipitous rate. I mean, we know this. People who tend to be considered elderly are finding life increasingly difficult for a number of reasons. I mean even FBI agents are going broke now because of housing cost, which is a national security concerned Like the main story I wanted to
share this kind of a setup is uh. Do you guys remember Madam Bell from like the days of TV, Like you'd see the blue screen and the call in number like dial one night psychic. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, because.
There was also like it was Dionne Warwick did it for a minute and that's amazing singer. Then there was also Miss Cleo. I remember Miss Cleo very well. Yes, yeah, I believe she was a very famous fraud. I believe there's a whole story behind her thing that. I mean, she's got in some big trouble if I'm not mist.
She had a brick and mortar on Cheshire Bridge.
Madam Bell, Yes, I went to that one. Yeah, it's a great date idea, but it is it's a really bad reading.
That's a road in Atlanta or it's known for what, guys, I don't.
Know, bring adjacent to some awesome.
Food there you go and other things and sex trafficking.
Yes, unfortunately that is true. Madam Bell, to our knowledge, is not involved with that. A funny story. When I visited that that psychic on a date many years ago, I was also surprised to learn this shouldn't have been surprising. I was surprised to learn that there was an original Madam Bell. It was not the person I spoke with who was found dead, faced down in a puddle at a hotel several years before I visited that Madam Bell.
So it's probably a franchise, right, That's more likely than a ghost.
Or identity theft situation or theft.
The thing is, you know, for a lot of the more skeptical folks in the crowd, you might say, visiting a psychic, you know, a fool and their money are soon parted, right, and you got scammed. But if you go in there and you just think of it as a cultural experience, then you're paying for a good time, right, and you can go compare notes later. And a lot of people find a lot of meaning in in consulting with folks who call themselves psychics. And that's where we
run into the weirdest. The weirdest story they found recently is a guy named Patrice Runner, a dual citizen of Canada and France. He's got both passports, he's fifty seven. He just got convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and money launtering through quote a massive psychic mass mailing fraud scheme.
Does that many he sent all the fraudulent letters with his mind? Man?
I mean, does that mean he saw the conviction coming? As you might imagine psychic.
He was any good?
Right, So let's go to Leyland Seco writing for The Guardian. Con man who swindled get this guy's one hundred and seventy five million dollars in this massive psychic fraud scheme just got sentenced to two years? Is the demographic of his victims? Largely elderly.
I've seen it more and more since. I mean it's it's never not been a thing, but people running scams on the elderly things. Since COVID has really taken an uptick.
The US Postal Service, oh, the US Postal Inspection Service excuse me, doc got him and they also worked in conjunction with the Department of Justice. He was doing this for quite some time and it was similar to some of the things that we've seen prosperity theologians and televangelists do. So his company, his company, which has a weird name INFO just direct marketing what they would, right, Yeah, INFO?
Does that mean like jokey information? Or is it like ingest and information as a portmanteau.
I think it's like a reader's digest of information is what they're trying.
To size information easy to goes down easy.
I don't know, it sounds like a really non legit business name.
No, but it just makes you think of info.
You just you know, like, oh I see yeah, yeah, yeah.
It makes me think they need to get Kim Wexler and Jimmy McGill and pull a Samdpiper on this.
Dude, why not you know, uh, I think you know, I agree with you guys. This this strategy or this grift is unfortunately, as we said just a second ago, it's it's pretty common. They played the numbers game like a pickup artist. They sent all a time of letters that purported to be individualized. Now a lot of us in the US have received we receive junk mail, you know,
on a weekly basis. Right where you'll you'll be able to tell that it's junk mail because it'll say something like Walton Goggins or current resident yeah.
Or it'll say a non transferable open Immediately, you don't want to miss out on what's in here.
You know, your car's extended warranty is in Jeopardy right.
Final notice from Kansas City Stakes. All right, guys like slow your role. I bought the rabbis once. So what they would do is send this kind of pseudo personalized
stuff to millions of people. And it would appear, if you didn't look closely, that the correspondence was handwritten in cursive from a famous French psychic, Maria Duval, and it would pose to the reader that you have quote an opportunity to achieve great wealth and happiness with the psychic assistance, as long as you give us a little bit of money for what they called a quote astral clairvoyant forecast. And so the opportunity much like the pursuit Yes, happiness, yes,
just so, just sotal. And so let's say ninety nine people receive these one person responds, it's still enough to justify the grift. If a person responds, they make an initial payment, and then they get dozens and dozens of additional letters, all seemingly personalized, all requesting additional fees, and then sometimes asking you to mail in personal items like finger and palm prints, photos of yourself, locks of your hair, and this would help them conduct additional personalized rituals and
astrological services, and there from the indictment from the DJ. Yeah. Interestingly enough, there's also an interview with patrise Runner and his interview, which you can read on the Walrus dot CAA talks in depth with the guy, and his argument, even post sentencing, is that he never violated the law in his male business and his thing was, look, if people were not satisfied, they could always ask for their money back. His specific quote was, maybe it's not moral,
beat me here, doc. Maybe it's not moral, Maybe it's bullsh but it doesn't mean it's fraud.
Of course not.
Okay, I know what it is when I see it, right, Oh boy.
Yeah, he's been doing this for a while. He had been found guilty of running scams previously, not once, but twice. In Canada nineteen ninety one, a company in his name got fined and for falsely advertising clairvoyant services all to predict winning lottery numbers. So I don't know about anybody here. Maybe it's true, maybe clairvoyance or prognostication is a real psychic power. But if someone in the mail is like, hey, man, slive me a couple bucks and I'll give you the winning lottery numbers.
I don't know.
I'm a bit suspicious people felt for it. He got in trouble. He got fined the equivalent of just a little bit north of thirty one thousand dollars in the US. Fast forward nine years, it's the year two thousand. He has another company that gets fined the equivalent of three hundred and sixty two thousand dollars in Quebec for selling BS weight loss products. This guy's kind of got a track record, right guys.
I was super bummed that I missed the Supplements episode from being on the road. But I don't know, I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm sure that you discuss some scams of this nature in that episode, right. Yeah.
We had a listener right in just as we were going to record who had thanked us for that episode coming out, and they knew, just like we said on air, they knew it would have to be a continuing series. So we're going to get to New Tropics next. We're going to do what else, Matt. We get a couple of others.
We had to hit up the Mushrooms.
One the Mushrooms, Yes.
I forget the name already because I'm not looking at notes or thinking about it. But there's a term. Yeah, well there's a term for adaptogens. I think is that adaptagens.
That's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy is not selling any of that. He is to your point, well, he is selling snake oil, absolutely.
But isn't the issue too that a lot of that stuff it's easy ish to get around FDA guidelines by saying something's not for you know, oral use, you know, in the same way that like people were selling those lab chemicals and things like that that could get you really really high. But somehow we're able to be sold in you know, tobacco shops. It it just seems like this stuff is rife for fraud to not know what exactly is in it. Yeah.
The FDA is unfortunately very much reactive rather than proactive when it comes to the world of supplements, at least in this country. And they're in a pickle because they can't These supplements are not subject to the same rigors that a drug would be subject to because they are supposedly part of the natural food supply. So you can't tell someone not to sell concentrated vitamin C. That's one of the examples that we use because you know what's next.
You're gonna tell them they can only buy so many oranges per month. You know, there's not really a way around it.
Like kid asked me a really funny question yesterday. They really discovered they love vitamin water, those zero show kind and asked me if it was possible to overdose on vitamins if they drink more than two vitamin waters in a day. And I said, I think it's gonna take more than that, but yes, it is possible.
It is possible. It Oh, everybody checked out that supplement's episode Vitamin B three is niosin we're talking about. We did some improv with the nios interesting.
But don't people take niosin too? Like it makes you sweat or something, and people think that it'll get you out of a drug test or it'll pass a drug test for you if you take a bunch of niosin. I just remember that from back in the day, back when you know, me and friends of mine were worried about passing drug tests. I never did it, but I just mad some friends. Really, I just took a bunch of niosin and made me turn red and sweat all the toxins.
Out and scientology also uses a niosin overdose or vitamin B overdoses in some of their rituals. You know, the best way to try to You can't really successful full of drug test like a urine test, but you can go for what you could consider a chemical mistrial, which is if you drink enough water. Then what's going to happen is the test will come back and maybe the science has changed and the people at the lab will say, well, this guy, for some reason drank so much water that
this test is invalid. And then hopefully that'll get to the window of time if you are doing that, and eventually, like so many people trying to run a drug test, drift Runner himself gets caught. He has made millions of millions of dollars. He was an international resident living in Switzerland, France, Costa Rica, Spain, the Netherlands. This conviction was a long time incoming. Law enforcement have been on the case from
twenty fourteen. Like beginning in twenty fourteen, there were extradition negotiations in Spain, rested in Nabitha, and he was eventually flown to New York. Other people have been linked to this scam. They've all pled guilty. Uh, and runner in I thought you'd like this typical con man fashion. Before the trial, he said he did not have money to pay for a lawyer. I used to live like a rock star. Wasn't cautious enough. I thought this mail order business would be forever.
That was a quote.
That was a quote. That's a quote from his interview in the New York in the New York Detention Center.
With the walls forever.
Yeah, and uh, there's there's more to discuss here. This is all kind of like a setup for a question. We want your help with, folks one eight three three std WYTK Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Do you believe there should be an upper age limit on voting past a certain physical age. Should people be allowed to vote. We're just gonna drop that mic here and then we'll go to an Uh, we'll go to an app break. We'll be with more strange news. Can't wait to hear from you.
And we've returned Ben that question that you just dropped at the end of it. I don't want to like the muddy the waters or anything, but I think that is very interesting. It's never quite occurred to me. I could see how it could become problematic for certain Americans being like, that's aegis, you can't that you can't rob me of my god given right to vote. I'm an American citizen and I deserve to be a part of
the of the you know, democratic process. But I would argue, maybe there are some folks at a certain age that, given certain circumstances, maybe you shouldn't be able to. But maybe that's a hot take, and people are gonna yell at me about that, But I really do want to know what people think. But moving on to other not so hot takes, I think, I think I don't know
if the jury's out exactly. There was a time where a discussion of the rollout of the Tesla cyber truck was kind of relegated to let's wait and see what will happen with a lot of naysayers, and you know, there was some certainly some red flags when Elon Musk trotted this thing out, I believe back in twenty nineteen when he announced it at I believe it was a trade show of some kind where you know, he shot at it with a bow and arrow, they shot at
it with handguns. Tried to prove that the windows were instructible by having someone smash it and totally smashed. Also, you know, handguns definitely pierced the stainless steel doors. A lot of promises, a lot of features that were promised, over promised, and under delivered or not delivered at all. Like I think at in the original prototype that was rolled out, there was like a ramp for accessibility that
you know would unfurl from the back. That's not in the model that's now shipping out to folks being delivered. He promised there to be a built in air compressor that had something to do with tapping into the air suspension system. That would certainly be convenient if you wanted to to inflate the extra inflatable tenth that you can get. That is of course an ad on. Don't have an exact dollar amount on that, but that is not part
of the model that is now being delivered. And again also the whole bulletproof promises and and destructible promises, off road abilities things like that. Well, we're starting to really see a lot of those chickens coming home to roost, let's say, and they're not particularly happy chickens or roosters or whatever. As the rollout of delivery has taken place a good four years after the product was announced, also at a much much higher ticket price than was originally announced.
I think he said the base model is going to be around forty grand, but now it has proven to be more like sixty grand. And it's one of these things where these like kind of Tesla fanboys placed their orders I believe, not even knowing what the final price was going to be to get in that line, and in that queue you had to kind of like sign your life away and promise that you're going to buy one for whatever costing, which is I think now for the base model in the neighborhood of sixty grand, so
good bit over what was promised there as well. Well, now it appears that deliveries have been halted for what Tesla claims will be only about seven days due to a very very serious problem. Beyond the problems that I just mentioned, we're going to talk about some more as well.
Let's just get this one out of the way. The accelerator pedal has a tendency and has been reported in multiple cases with folks that have gotten their cyber trucks delivered the ones at least they were able to drive it, because some of them have ceased to function after moments on the road. Multiple stories of that. But the accelerator pedal, you would think that it would be some kind of software glitch or some kind of other, you know, mechanical issue.
It's almost comical, how just kind of rinky dink this The nature of this problem is so it's not like it's being you know, all of a sudden going into autopilot mode and the pedal is, oh, it's accelerating without me wanting to. No. It is much simpler and much stupider than that. Apparently, there is a kind of slide on cover that goes over the pedal, which is just
a machine piece of steel, like it's very thin. The whole car really, you know, leans into this whole minimal thing, and the cover can come dislodged and kind of poke up further than the length of the actual accelerator and then literally just get caught under the carpet the kind of surrounding carpet molded kind of material around there, at which point, as one inside EV's article pointed out, it becomes a sixty eight hundred pound land missile. Boy Oh boy.
A video that went viral on TikTok and was shared all over the internet. Showed a person explaining this this exact malfunction or this design flaw, and they showed the piece that kind of could come dislodge. They actually had removed it, revealing just the piece of steel underneath when they put it back on. They showed how easy it was able to kind of slide up with the force of your foot and then get caught under the piece of you know, surrounding material right at the very top.
If you can picture a regular car where you know, there's kind of carpeted body, kind of material down there, this has sort of a little lip at the top, and if you put your pedal to the literal metal or the carpet as it were, and this thing slides up, it gets stuck, it gets jammed under there at full acceleration.
And there's been reports of individuals experiencing this on the road, one where a person was not able to break apparently it like I don't know if there's a separate glitch or what, but the brake wasn't doing any good because the pedal was so far down, I guess, and this
person just had to slam into a light post. We've been hearing things about issues with crash testing on these where I did not realize this, but apparently it's a lot of the companies that really pride themselves on, you know, showing and sharing their crash test data do so so they can get really good consumer reports reviews, yes, and really good safety reviews, and they go above and beyond because of that very reason, so they can sell it
as a feature. But the minimum amount of crash testing you guys have been I'm sure you've run into this on car stuff isn't nearly as high a bar as these companies. Some of these companies are setting for themselves.
No, it's kind of like when you when you learn the famous example, we always try it out that at one point in time the US government said all right, you can have some rat poop and cereal. They kind of did the same thing with crash testing. And obviously, you know, because a recall is a massive cost in terms of finance and in terms of reputation for a manufacturer, they are themselves incentivized to game out every single possible problem before somebody buys the first car right that they're
gonna sell. Of a model, and unfortunately, no matter what you do, you can't be one hundred percent accurate in these things. And there are indeed some just inherent structural problems with certain types of vehicles, right, Like some vehicles are way more likely just because the way they're built to flip at a sharp turn right, and.
We's known people talk about that with a jeep. But people go in eyes open knowing that this is certainly a trade off, like I'm gonna get this sweet, you know, road warrior esque vehicle knowing that it might not be as safe as Saya, you know, a Sonata or something. Yeah.
Did you all see the recent testing that was done on guardrails and electric cars in general?
Yes, no I didn't.
We're because of the added weight of those huge batteries. Most electric cars that they tested will just go straight through a guardrail like it's not.
There alone missile.
Again.
Well, yeah, so just imagine all the things that guardbraels sometimes protect, like oh, I don't know, a giant drop off or something, and a vehicle.
Just why don't we add a couple of extra thousand pounds of stainless steel to that formula?
That that sounds that's insane.
Yeah, that's the thing. So okay, that's the news. That's the skinny in terms of like what the latest is. They have stopped not production, of course, they have stopped delivering, so they're going to figure this out. Unclear as to what this means for the folks that already have received their guards. And I was just going to point out too, like this is such a unique situation because of the kind of clout that Tesla has. It's very different than no one's signing up like this for the next you know,
Ford Focus. I mean, it's just so there's a lot of people just rolling the dice on this and signing up and now they're having their vehicle delivered after they've already signed a contract. That's you know, forcing them to buy it and they can't get out of it. They also want to allow you to resell it in less than I believe a year, and that sort of I guess they're attempt at not diluting whatever the market I guess, or you know, having people flip them for a lot
of money because they're so sought after. But another theory there is they don't want to give the impression that people are just selling these things like, you know, to get rid of them because they're you know, nightmarish. Some of the other issues that we've seen include like there was a viral video of one of these being driven on a beach and immediately just totally getting log jammed, you know, or beached literally like a like a whale,
like a beached tesla. They were promoted as being these off road vehicles, and there's other videos showing people using them in off road situations and just absolutely getting having to slow to like a snail's pace. They did a bunch of big promo kind of things early on about how much it can tow. That may well be true, but it doesn't really matter how much a vehicle can toe,
oh if it doesn't you know, roll with consistency. Another thing too, is apparently the design, which is you know, sleek and minimal and all these like kind of sharp corners are actually quite sharp to the point where people can you could cut yourself onto the edges of this vehicle. Not to mention the I believe it's called the fronk, which is really embarrassing to say. I don't like that one bit is the front trunk. It has this kind of you know, very futuristic kind of rolling out sort
of lid sort of telescopes into the vehicle. They promoted that if there were anything in the way and the front, it would immediately, you know, go back. It wouldn't like an elevator door kind of, but apparently that does not apply to the sides. And someone inserted a carrot into the sides of one of these fronks that was immediately
sliced in half, you know, clean like a guillotine. It's being described by some of these evy blogs as a team like not to mention the battery life is apparently quite bad, and also they're promising, you know, an extended life battery. But Matt, to your point, the extended life battery, which doesn't even exist yet, would take up way more space and be way heavier than the battery that comes with its stock. So I don't know, guys. The NHTSA,
did I get that right? National National Traffic Safety Administration
are getting in the mix. They have entered the chat specifically concerning this defect regarding the accelerator pedal not has haven't made any comments about the other stuff, which does seem slightly less immediately life threatening, but some of them absolutely could be especially I also saw a video of like someone got stuck inside of one of these because it forced them to do a software update and they wouldn't allow them to open the doors, and it wouldn't
let them leave the car until the software update was done. Things like that. And none of this is voting well for Tesla's stock price, which is down significantly. And Tesla also just had to lay off ten percent of its workforce, you know, likely because of some of the issues regarding the rollout, because you know, we got to remember, Tesla hasn't updated their standard you know, Sedan type models, and I want to say, going on at least five years, it might be more you guys are more car guys
than me. And this was kind of you know, Elon Musk's pet project, and he was doing this instead of you know, rolling out some more minor updates. You know, that's sort of what he does. He takes big swings. Say about him what you will. He definitely does take big swings, but it does seem like he doesn't always, if not most of the time, have have the actual research and development and true innovation to back up his promises.
I don't know guys, any thoughts here. This is an ongoing thing, but but it does seem that the people that are having these issues are still kind of in the camp of Elon. They're still saying that that, you know what, we're still on board, We're happy to be I guess these beta testers.
I have to say this, This does get perilosly close to the old trope of separating art from the artist. But there are numerous good things about the Tesla Car Company. I'm also still, you know, I'm also still always thinking about how the prolong time the big three auto manufacturers in the United States would successfully conspire to buy out or shut down competitors outside of their triumvirate. Sure so, like shout out to Preston Tucker and the Tucker forty eight.
But then also, you know, so like the idea of creating a new car manufacturer is first off, wild and it's super ambitious, it's super difficult. One thing I can say, in terms of because you guys knew me, I always like silver linings positivity. One thing we can say is that Tesla has really shaken up the monopolistic well not monopolistic, but the dirty grip that car dealership models have between
the manufacturer and the consumer. So being able to buy a car directly from the company is pretty cool, and I hope that becomes more common despite whatever problems occur with the specific vehicles.
Well, it makes it a bummer, doesn't that? Like he's done what you could argue is a really great kind of I hate to use the word a disruptive thing for traditional auto manufacturing. You know who we know if you've seen the film, the documentary I believe it was called Who Killed the Electric Car? You know, there's been talk about conspiracies, I mean decades and decades of collusion in order to kind of quash that kind of technology and just make it prohibitive, you know, to have these
cars on the road. So now we have reached kind of a high water market in terms of, you know, people's desire for these kinds of vehicles, the infrastructure for them. That wouldn't a lot of that wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Tesla. So I'm with you, Ben, it just sucks that the guy's got such a horrible bedside manner and public persona and I don't know, probably private person I'm just not a huge fan that he
is the figurehead. Apparently a lot of people are turning in their Tesla just because they find it embarrassing to be associated with Elon Musk and with the company. But there are other manufacturers coming, you know, to the table, and that it could just mean that they're gonna be the ones that are going to kind of take over the space.
You think a bunch of people turned in their Volkswagens when that whole scandal broke.
No, some people in the racing community did.
Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, it's so weird to have a company that's I guess so tied to its owner or controller maybe or you know, the persona of a human being, or any company that's so tied to the persona of a human being that it would fail or win based on how that person is perceived.
Well, but you typically CEOs don't like to be that public, and you know, I mean, Elon Musk literally bought a social media company so he could, you know, be as
public as humanly possible. He loves being out there, and he just seems to be going further and further into kind of turning certain people off, especially considering that the folks that are first to market for these types of electric vehicles are going to be pretty liberal type folks, you know who maybe you're into green living and things like that. Maybe people live on the West Coast much more likely to be left leaning, and he is just
quite the opposite. So he's really alienating his base of customer, which I find really confusing. But I guess he just doesn't know how to not be unfiltered. So the NHTSA has not officially launched an investigation yet, but they are aware of the issue and they are looking into it and seeking more information. And while you know, folks who have been waiting for these cyber trucks for four years
are going to keep waiting. So I don't know, if you guys don't have anything to add, I think that's a fine place to leave it for now.
Drive safe, everybody.
I mean, really, can.
We get more cars that have like a modified headlights structure the way the cyber truck has like just a line instead of two or you know, two big old headlights. Let's get more of those.
I mean, I'm with you, map, but another complaint is that the headlights are like reached way too bright. I think a lot of modern cars are the headlights really bright?
Bring back the tucker. It had the headlight that in the middle moved with a search that's really cool. It was so cool. All right, come on.
Come on and just amm lower. That's all there, you go.
Yeah, we don't need those blasting rise. And the last thing I was gonna say that is the whole indestructible quality of it and the stainless steel. Apparently the steel does stain uh and develops rust spots, and they recommend in the literature for the vehicle to clean off any corrosive material immediately, including bird poop, because it can actually apparently permanently damage the finish or it is lack thereof, it doesn't really have a finish. That's sort of the point.
But also been hearing things about panels being misaligned causing leakage, and apparently it makes them really really noisy if they're not aerodynamic like they're supposed to be. It causes like wind whipping kind of if you ever had a window cracked and one up that apparently it sounds like that inside of these like all the time if the panels are misaligned. So sorry for saying that. Stuff out of order. I thought it was worth mentioning, but definitely something to
keep an eye on. I'm interested to see how the Highway Traffic and Safety Administration responds. For now, let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor, and be back with another piece of strange news.
And we're back, guys. Just I wanted to announce this because it's gonna be like maybe a marker in time that my son hears at some point. Yesterday he tested for his yellow belt and he passed.
And in about congratulations.
Yeah, in about two hours, he's got a belt ceremony that I'm gonna go to. I'm really excited.
Congrats.
Has he broken the board yet or is that a little later?
The big boards come later. They let you break a board to earn your I think it's when you earn your white belt, okay, and that's just to kind of get you into the program as an initiation. Later you have to do the big like actual board breaking and it hurts. So now he's got to train how to let himself feel pain, which you know, dealing with pain is a big deal.
It's a very important lesson to learn.
It is life. Yeah, I'm I'm excited about it. And just one other thing I want to say before we get going. We are not sponsored by Walton Goggins in any way consummate actor Walton Goggins, though I'm certain you guys if he called this and was like, hey, can I sponsor the show? We'd be down right.
Walts seriously, how good is he on the new Fallout show?
That's what I was gonna talk love it. Look, look, if you ever hear this, the shield Sons of Anarchy, Justified Vice Principles and now fall Out come on. Oh right, just Gemstones. Don't forget that Baby Billy Baby Billy's Bible anyway. Uh not sponsored, just awesome. So let's jump to our news, guys. They're one of the stories I want to talk about today. Happened or at least I read about it today. The other one happened in early gosh, I think it was like early March. But I'm just adding it to this
list because it's so related. It's ridiculous and strange.
Uh.
So let's begin in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. I'm going to tell you about two people who are written about in USA today by Mike Snyder and Grace Tucker. Those are the writers of the story. The two people are Loreen and Karen. Loreen is fifty five, Karen is sixty six. They live in a place called Ashtabula. Ashtabula, somebody from Ohio will tell us how to pronounce that correctly. It's just outside of Cleveland. They are currently being charged
with some strange stuff. So let's get into what they did before we tell you what they're charged with. These two women, allegedly, according to Ashtabula police Chief Robert Stell, found Douglas Layman, who they lived with. This is an eighty year old man. They found him dead in the home that they share, Okay, on March fourth. After they found him, they got another friend, these two women. They put him his dead body in his car and they drove that car to a bank where they withdrew an
undisclosed amount of money from his account. Weekend at Bernie's Style full on the weekend at bernie Style.
Like propped up it is presumably.
Yeah, listen, this is from the police chief again quote. It is further alleged that Doug's body was placed in the vehicle in such a manner that he would be visible to the bank staff in order to make this withdrawal, because they had done this before. The bank allowed them to take money out as long as they were accompanied by Doug.
And there was that precedent set already exactly right, and then just say, well, he's an elderly gentleman, so maybe he's taken a quick dose.
Yeah, maybe that's it, and we're just, you know, we brought him with us, we're taking some money out for him. I don't know. I think it could have gone a different way for the two women, even though this is a really weird, wrong thing to do. They took his dead body, his corpse, to the Ashtabula County Medical Center emergency room, and they just left him there. They didn't announce themselves, they didn't say who he was, they didn't do anything. They just left his body.
But they clearly felt bad shortly after, right.
Well, I guess so maybe one of them. It doesn't say in the article I read from USA Today, but one of the women contacted the medical center later and gave them the basic info the rundown, let's say, on Doug. And that's when police officers went to the residents that the two women shared with Doug and the women said, oh he died there. Oh yeah, he died here.
So instead of calling the police or first responders, like, instead of calling nine to one one at the house, we just drove him over there, which was ethics aside, just from a production standpoint, that was their misstep like that.
Yeah. Yeah, if this was a bank heist, which it kind of was in a weird way.
Did they have any claim to his funds for common law? Like you know, I don't know, was there anything like that, like because they lived together, any of the time that they lived together, the nature of the relationship.
This is a very small story that I found on one of those places that we like to go to, the reddit, the subreddit offbeat, and this is all, honestly, guys, this is all I found about it. I don't know anything else. Besides one of the people faces additional drug charges associated with being picked up that day. We don't know what that means or what it has. They had
a preliminary hearing back in March. We haven't been following it, and the guys, the whole reason we're even talking about this one is because this feels like weekend at Bernie's bank heist light to me, compared to the next story. Take next, the next story, Oh I will here we go. The next story comes to us via the Guardian, and this was written today as we record this on April seventeenth, by Tom Phillips. Here we Go, We're gonna tell you about Erica Desusa Vieira, who well, she did this. She
had a similar idea. She wheeled her quote lethargic looking uncle into a bank. This is in Brazil, and the moment that the two of them entered the location, clerks were looking at them a little funny. There was a remark made, I don't think he's well. He doesn't look well at all. This person that she had wheeled in, Paulo Roberto Bragg, was sixty eight when she wheeled him in, and it appeared, at least to people who observed them
at the bank, that he was deceased. And it looked like he was being propped up in this wheelchair in order for Erica to go in and secure alone.
Matt, were you looking for a theme today? Did this happened organically?
I wasn't. I saw this in the Guardian and I was like, well, that's a weird one, but that's not enough to do anything on, jumped to offbeat and saw the other news story about the women in Cleveland, and I was like, all right, where we can to Bernie's Berne's sing it. But yeah, the whole the whole thing went down. So the you know, the bank clerks, after this woman brought her dead uncle into secure a loan, they alerted the authorities, and the authorities immediately arrived and
they're like, yeah, ma'am, he's dead. You can't secure a bank loan in his name.
He is dead.
And also why is he dead? How is he dead? And like what happened? And according to Erica's story, he was alive as they were entering the bank and became deceased sometime in the moments.
To say, what if? The response I just, I mean, you know, if I'm being callous about it, the responsibility. My god, he's dead. I miss him so much, you know what I mean, Like like I hadn't noticed. I don't buy that. But you're right, Ben, it is certainly possible, if not plausible.
There's one thing, though, We've got to if this is okay, you bad, I think we've got to mention one of the most darkly humorous parts of this disturbing story in that Guardian article that we're reading. Here's how the police get alerted. Quote. At one point in the images which bank workers began filming after smelling a rat, one suspicious employee apparently comments on Braga's pallid complexion, and Vieira replies, that's just what he's like, and then tries to place a pin in his dead hand.
Oh, come on, but he got this here you go.
Which you know makes you wonder, Like again, I think, like you rightly pointed out, this person has a story where she's saying he was alive previously, right, and he died at some point without my knowledge, like while we were while we were in the bank. But you would think putting a pin in the hand of a corpse, I think even without being a doctor, you could tell if the hand is like unresponsive.
Right, he was just kind of an unresponsive dude. Maybe he was. It's real low energy in life. I don't know, is the questions. That's just what he's like. That's just what he's like. I love that. And Matt, do we have any information about like what happened next, like a corner to determine the time of death, to see if the story is actually you know, lined up with the truth.
I have not seen any further reporting on this yet. Again, this information came out today as well reporting.
Surely they can determine that to see if you know how long this person had been dead. Yeah, at that point, I think this woman's got some splaining to do.
Well. Yeah, there's one thing I wanted to ask you guys. In inside this article it mentions liver live or mortis l I v O R mortis, which in my head was a spelling error for rigor mortis when I first saw it, because its spelled so similar similarly l I v O R mortis. But this is actually it has to do with the coloration of a person's skin after they've died.
Because the blood's no longer moving right.
Well it's yeah, it's where the blood pools in the body, like, depending on how they're oriented when they die, which is a way to you know, uh, determine cause of death. Often rigor mortis is associated with the stiffening of the limbs and the body after death. Yeah, kind of for the same reason. Well, for similar reasons, where how blood works in our bodies to keep us all you know, movable and softish but all I don't know, it's weird anyway to.
Keep us all fresh baked, yeah, squishy. I think about that pretty often to the you know, death is something that that comes for the vast majority of human beings so far, and it's strange how we never really uh. I think a lot of people don't appreciate how much work your body does without your conscious knowledge. Like your heart doesn't take a day off, right nah, and the circular, the circular to system, all your organs are so unappreciated.
So like, the next time you do something that you know is kind of bad for your body, just think of the think of those folks, you know what I mean, think of them basically like the staff. You know, if you if you drink a beer, just thank your liver for its service.
And it's too scary do when I start to think about that, I started to picture what my insides look like and then the blood moving through my body and it freaks me out.
You guys, the spice must flow. If you stop the spice flow within your body, it's over.
Do you ever think about how like the fact that you are basically animating a skull right now? If you're alive and you talk out loud, We're just.
Yeah, it freaks me out.
Well, we're just ghost haunting houses.
I'm animating meat that's wrapped around a skull.
Yeah, yeah, you're a computer program.
Stop it's these faces. No, I don't like it.
Yeah, we're all battlemex Yeah.
Oh that's cooler. That's cooler. Guys. Well, these kind of went by fast. Oh by the way, the police there in Brazil are investigating whether or not this person.
Is indeed the niece of this deceased had I had one thing to add just about both of these stories, and I'm certainly not condoning either of these actions. But do you know what a pain in the ascid is to get a deceased loved one's money if there's no like you know, will or if you know, all of the craziness you have to go through probate and all of this stuff, even if there is a will.
When my mother passed away, we did the whole estate thing well before she passed, not knowing that her end was was going to be sooner than we had realized. I'm glad that we did it because I can't imagine what it would have been like without it, but even with me as the sole executor of her entire estate, I had to jump through so many hoops just to get like five hundred bucks in some bank account that she forgot about that wasn't like listed as part I mean,
insane amounts of red tape. So again not condoning any of this, but I do wonder if they were just kind of trying to take a shortcut, and maybe they were actually do some of this money but needed it real quick and didn't want to have to wade through all of the bureaucracy it would take to get it possible.
I mean, especially to considering that, I think it's safe to say speak for all of us, you say, this is a terrible thing that happens. You know, often at one of the worst parts of your life, you lose a loved one and you get just flooded with paperwork, you know, And there are actually funds, at least here in the US, there are institutions organizations where they have held somebody's money that hasn't been claimed, and that person
may have living relatives. They just simply are so inundated with all this other stuff that they have to deal with that they don't think about you know, like your point you're making. No, like things can slip through the cracks. You know, you've got to organize a funeral, a memorial service, You've got to take care of in term into cremation or what have you, navigate a will. You these things can be forgotten. But the everything costs.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, but guys, in the case of Loreen and Karen, they're living with an eighty year old roommate who's not related to them.
And I still stand by the question about common law, like would any of that have applied. We don't know enough about their situation. Maybe they were a thropple.
You know, maybe well, either way, they both got charged with gross abuse of a corpse.
Yeah, and unfortunately, even before the corpse, like the investigation might find that this was a person maybe being kind of like held hostage or taken advantage of. That's all too common in the world of elderly care. There have been some just elder actually terrifying stories about that kind of stuff. And I'm not going to go out of biographical, but I've seen this kind of stuff firsthand. In some situations, you know, there's a person who had we've read about
it on the show. There is a person who had a consistent Social Security or pension income and they become a prisoner in their own house right, And sometimes they die and the person taking advantage of them just puts them in a shed or doesn't bother to report it, and those folks can get away for years and years.
I mean, not to make it about I saw a TV show once, but you mentioned Walton Goggins in The Shield that I've been rewatching that recently. There was an episode where there was a complaint from a neighbor about noise in the backyard. It turns out there was an old man chained up in the backyard who was being held by a son and just cashing his social Security checks and just you know, kept him literally out of doors,
chained up. And I know it's a TV show, but I know as well that the shows like that and The Shield in particular, take these, you know, from real police reports a lot of times, so it's certainly a thing that happens. Oh yeah, for sure.
I told you guys about the time I saw Walton the Goggins at a flying biscuit. Right, No, yeah, I've been I think I told you sorry, I'll do it real quick. I'll do it real quick. Way back in the days of the Shield, when when I looked at this person's face, I did not see Walton Goggins. I didn't know who that was. I saw Shane from the
Shield and real bastard. Well, I just happen to be walking in to the Flying Biscuit and sat there at the bar was this person that I immediately immediately recognized and just kind of gave one of these little nods like you know, hey, man, and he just goes hey, And I just walked to the table and I just thought, man, Shane from the Shield is my friend. Now I think we're friends.
He was a champion hog hollerer, Like yeah, like aw that.
I just remembered when you said he's a champion howg caller, we said, I've we told that whole.
I've not heard the part. No, he came up some other way. I've never heard about you meeting him. You never, I've never heard that story. I just remember him talking on Fresh Air with Terry gros about being a champion hog hollerer.
This all sounds familiar to me. Guys, Well, we do a lot of happening this has happened before, It's going to happen again.
Hog Hollering is a story and legitimate profession. And if you walk away from tonight's strange news with nothing else, walk away with that.
No, no, you disagree, disagree, walk away with this. There's another Boeing whistleblower you need to know about, Sam Salapore s A M. S A L E HPO.
You are.
Make sure you keep your eyes and ears out for this person. And let's all make sure that if he shows up, you know, in a truck with a quote self inflicted gunshot wound, we're all paying attention to yelling about it, okay.
Or suffocated in the fronk of a cyber truck.
Perhaps, yeah, I withdraw my support of hog hollering. Then I guess yeah, so okay, Thank you so much for tuning in. Everybody. We cannot wait to hear from you. We want to hear your thoughts. You may be part of the show, especially in a future listener mail program. Well, how do I do that? Is it as difficult as signing up for a bank? Good news, it's much easier. We try to be easy to find online.
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