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 Nolan.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. And by the way, folks, if you live in the fair metropolis of Los Angeles, we got to say we like it here. Three fourths of us are on the road. But the strange news continues.
We've got what you call Nola heavy sandwich today. We've got stories of like a lot of news broke right as we were recording last week, right after we recorded, the tragic cancer diagnosis of Kate Middleton came out. We also learned about a very suspicious Moscow attack, also heartbreaking, which we're going to dive into. We've got a fun superstition story from Japan. Before we do any of that, there's something we've been talking about off air that occurred quite recently in Maryland.
Yes, and actually I just got an update as we began rolling here, so we will work that into the story. But let's begin with what occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, March twenty sixth, and we will give you some of this information from an NPR article titled what We Know and Don't Know about Baltimore's Key Bridge collapse. So, in those early morning hours of Tuesday, March twenty sixth, twenty twenty four, it's yesterday as we record this episode, a ship called the Dolly. This is DLI. It's a
nearly one thousand foot container ship. It's registered in Singapore. It departed from the Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland, traveled a very short distance, and then at around one thirty am Eastern Time, it appeared to lose power, at least according to some of the video footage that was
captured of this incident. Then it shifted course towards one of the key areas of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which goes across the river there right near Baltimore, Maryland, and it was traveling about nine point two miles per hour and it impacted the bridge when it hit the bridge. The entirety of the bridge collapsed. It's a tragic, otherworldly, film like thing to behold. It doesn't seem real. It looks like something that happened years ago, and you would
watch it on some kind of documentary or something. It just again, it doesn't appear real, but it actually happened, thankfully. There was a may day signal that was sent out by the crew of that large container ship, the Dolly, so police were they literally had ninety seconds to shut down traffic flowing onto the bridge from either side, which they were able to do so. There were very few, if any vehicles actually traveling across the bridge when it collapsed.
But there was a crew of at least eight people, possibly more working on that bridge repairing potholes when it collapsed, And as we were recording this, there is right now recovery efforts for those people. Two of them were recovered, one seriously injured, one injured but not as badly as the first person. And there are six or seven people presumed dead who are still currently.
Missing, just because of the time that collapsed.
Right exactly, and the temperatures of the water and a lot of again, the drop from where that bridge was exactly. Right now, federal investigators are trying to figure out what the heck happened? How did the power go out on this huge ship right after leaving port. When it did go out, why did it go in that trajectory, like directly towards one of these huge columns that is a fairly small target when you look at the length of the river there, right.
It sounds like the rudder got frozen when they lost.
Power exactly, and they were able to recover power at least according to some of the theories that are being the postulations. Let's say that they were able to recover some power but not to the engines, so they weren't able to get thrust or they didn't have the ability to move that rudder to then change the ship's trajectory or to slow it down.
Do we have a sense of who's responsible or who is going to be held responsible for this?
It's tough at this point.
Yeah, right now, it's trying to figure out what the heck happened?
Right?
Is it dirty fuel? That's one of the theories that's come out that somehow messed with the engines so they were unable to perform properly. Was it someone at the helm that did something improperly. But either way, it seems like a tragic accident. At least it seems that way now, although you will find people online talking about how it appears deliberate because there is. It does again it feels like there's something off the way if you watch the
full video, guys. I linked to a YouTube video that shows the entire like several minutes prior to the crash and collapse, and it does feel weird. It feels like it goes on target to this pillar, even though that doesn't seem like what actually occurred.
Right. Yeah, we were talking about this bit off air, and I was also talking with a bunch of folks on Twitter or x or whatever, some of whom live and work in the Baltimore area. And it's the thing again where we want to make sense of a track, right, We want to have an explanation, ideally with a very clear good or bad side.
Right.
But from what people are saying, from the analysis that I've read, I haven't traveled to this bridge the analysis I've read and from what people on the ground have been saying, I haven't spoken with anybody who's actually on the ship. But they're they're saying, it looks like the power loss occurred while the rudder was in one direction, and then the captain or the crew gave the order to try to drop anchor to swing a little bit more astute leave right because or to prevent that curving
toward the pillar. And it's simply you know, as we as we said off air, it's really hard to turn those suckers. They're absolutely beast and even if a bridge looks big, it's not built to withstand an impact like that.
And I'm sorry, guy, this isn't one of those bridges that can like open up to make way for large, taller ships, is it.
No?
It has the section as a clear set kind of in the center of it that has clearance for these larger container ships. But it was built at a time when container ships were much smaller than this.
True.
True, it has what was it guys? Oh man, I'm have to find it in one of my other links here. But it has the capacity to carry like ten thousand of these container what do we call these things?
Cargo containers?
Cargo containers. It has a way again, it's a thousand feet long and it's way larger way bigger, and you know, it doesn't have anything to do with the height. It could have made it just fine underneath that bridge if it had gone in the right place, like gone underneath the right place.
It can carry almost ten thousand of those cargo containers. So if you've ever seen a train going by each one of those cargo containers, imagine ten thousand of those on a ship that's large enough to keep itself afloat and maneuver in the ocean. So these things are these things are very difficult to turn. It's possible to turn them on a dime, you know.
Well, yeah, and again, they lost power multiple times in a very short time span. I think it was a couple of minutes where they lost power, recovered it through a generator, then lost power again. The voyage data recorder has been recovered, at least according to the National Transportation Safety Board, So we will be getting, I guess, a better idea or they will be getting a better idea of what exactly occurred, like minute by minute, second by
second actions that were taken on the ship itself. There's been a lot said about previous safety issues with the ship. According to NPR, it's had twenty seven previous inspections, and in twenty sixteen, this is a Quote it sustained significant damage to its hull after hitting a dock while leaving a port in Antwerp, Belgium. And then last year it was found to have a problem with quote propulsion and auxiliary machinery. But again, who knows.
It's just like a Boeing quality control issue that might be even company wide with these types of shit.
I just wondered, I haven't seen that.
Yeah, Dolly's made by marisk and marisk Is they're a Danish company. They make a ton of these things, a ton, but they, like any company of their size, they've had issues, but not at the frequency, you know, like they contained frequency of Boeing. And also, honestly, cargo ships function under such tremendous wear and tear and stress that it would be kind of surprising for an inspection to occur and not find a couple of problems, right, because there's just so much stuff that could go wrong.
Yeah, for sure, really quickly, Alexis. I don't know if you're recording audio, if you're available for comment, but just since this is like the Baltimore area, and I wonder if you've had any if you've ever hung out over there in the Baltimore area at all, or you guys, have you spent much time over there. I just want to learn more about the Potapsco or potaps Go, I think,
is how you would say it. The river that this bridge was spanning across, and I've never I don't think I've ever driven across it or been in that area much. Just wonder if any of you guys are if Alexis has.
I've been there before, but I don't have any noteworthy affiliation with the area.
Okay, okay, cool.
Everything I know about it I learned from I think season two of The Wire, where it's all about the shipping, you know, and the what sort of they called longshoremen and the union and all that stuff, and they talk about the Potapsco a lot in that season, and there's definitely a lot of you know, it's about basically, like you know, planned oversight. Let's just say, in shipping and receiving that I could imagine could trickle down to safety
measures in terms of getting things through. Maybe that should probably be given a little more attention just for the sake of keeping things running, you know.
Yeah, just to jump out of that. I have been to I've been to Baltimore. I've spent some time Maryland. But Matt, if you drove over this bridge, you would absolutely remember it because it's so long. It's like more than a mile long.
That freaks me out.
Yeah, six or something miles. And then also, if you're not familiar with the area in general, and I think a lot of us probably aren't, the Baltimore shipping the magnitude of that industry cannot be overstated. This is a huge blow. And I'm sure we've all seen the photos in the aftermath of the literal waiting line of shipping containers that formed within just I mean fewer than twenty four hours after this.
Well, yeah, so let's talk about that. The port where this ship left is further in towards Baltimore, right, So if you imagine coming in from the sea through then the river then to get to the port, the bridge was standing between entrance to that area and the port right So effectively, right now there is just a bunch of metal shrapnel and shards of a giant bridge that
is all the way across. So it is preventing ships from going in and out of port right now, at least for the most part, and the story really shifted quickly from tragedy to an a story about economic impact because eighty billion dollars worth of cargo goes through this port every year, including, according to NPR, eight hundred and fifty thousand cars and trucks. So imagine that, first of all,
that's like shipping manufacturing vehicles. It also provides fifteen thousand jobs to human beings that work there in the port, in about three point three billion dollars in personal income to families right to people who actually work there, and two point six billion dollars in business revenue, and lastly four hundred million dollars in tax revenue according to the state of Maryland. The President went on television and discussed this like, we're going to get this up and running again.
We're gonna get the port going, we're going to clean this up, we're going to rebuild the bridge, and he also stated that the federal government would be paying for the rebuilding process.
That answer is part of the who's responsible.
It's not who's responsible per se, but this is something that's larger than just one company making a mistake or you know, the city itself having to take charge of the reconstruction. This is like practically like a state of emergency situation, right, like a act of God.
Right.
Certainly it's a massive tragedy for the eight to ten people possibly more who were affected or you know, injured or killed by this event. There were twenty people who were on the cargo ship. All of them have been accounted for. It is still a mild unknown about the number of human beings that were actually on the bridge when it collapsed. So that's something we're going to continue following and if we hear anything more, we'll definitely we'll talk about it. Just the last couple of things to
point out here. If you want to watch the full seven minutes twenty seconds of before the crash and the crash, I would highly recommend you search for Francis Scott Keybridge collapses in Baltimore on the First Coast News YouTube channel. You can find it right now and watch the whole thing. It's a camera from down below, like if you imagine up the perspective of another boat maybe sitting on the
water and watching everything happen. It's very very intense. And also if you want to keep up with just news that's breaking with regards to the story. There's an AP news feed that has been updated that we've been following basically since this began. You just search for AP news Baltimore Bridge collapse, and it'll give you a live feed of like every time something new comes in, it just pops up on that page. It's very very helpful. Anything else, guys.
I will say, you know that we take allegations of bad faith actors pretty seriously and looking into this at this point knowing that there's still a lot of information out there. At this point, there does not seem to be any plausible support for some of the speculation or some of the more out there conspiracies that are floating around, like floating around poor choice words, but like a false flag attack or you know, the investigation has to keep going,
so we have to be careful. Even if a story sounds really juicy and you're hearing on the internet, we have to be careful to dig in and prove things before we make those kind of claims.
I mean, chances are like as case in point with the k Middleton stuff, if those things are coming out really quickly after an event like this, probably some of these professional speculators just doing what they do on the internet.
Well, yeah, again, it feels not real, right, So, as you said, Ben, we look for any kind of explanation that would satisfy whatever that thing is that makes it so extraordinary or feel so extraordinary to us. But yeah, we'll just keep an eye on it, as we hope you will too. Let us know if you find anything, we'll be right back with more strange news.
And we returned with a decidedly light her story after if that one about the bridge collapse. And again, our hearts are with anyone who's missing loved ones, with the families, and it's just a really horrible situation. But let's take a little trip over to Japan, where they love. There's a lot of American cultural crossovers. Obviously, we import a lot of Japanese culture over here on a ma and manga and tons of video games and technology and all
of that stuff. Is huge fascination in the United States with Japanese culture that does go both ways for some things. Two of those things are baseball and Kentucky Fried Chicken and away. Back in the earliest days of another show that Ben and I do together called Ridiculous History, we did an episode on what's called the curse of the Kernel in Japan, especially Ben, correct me if I'm getting this wrong. Around the holidays, around Christmas time, KFC is
hugely popular. They sell these like family holiday dinner combo things like Reserve. I'm sure they're great, and I know from my understanding too, KFC over there operates at a little bit of a higher level than it does over here, and it's kind of considered plussed up fast food and more of like a family restaurant.
Yeah right, yeah, pretty much every And this is oddly enough. This is a rule of thumb that applied a rule of wing or drum that applies to uh, that applies to a lot of fast food places in different countries, like McDonald's is the fancy place in a lot of countries, and KFC is To your point, it can be culturally fascinating to see what a big deal it is. It
became tied with Christmas. The you can go to go to any kind of website mental floss Atlas Obscure probably has some great rite ups on it and read the read the meal, like the big thing is the Christmas cake that they get, right, Yeah, that's that's what's over here.
I don't even know they do pop pies anymore.
Anyway, though these meals are so popular, then to your point of these holiday combo things that you have to reserve your as well and invest and they sell out of them and then anyway, But so KFC and baseball baseball, you wouldn't think there'd necessarily be a connection between KFC and baseball, but a baseball team in the Nipon Professional Baseball Franchise and NPON just means Japan, I believe.
Yeah, I'm not mistaken.
There has been active since nineteen thirty five known as the Hanshin Tigers. Have sort of a little bit of lore that's tied up with with Colonel Sanders him himself, who is in fact a real person, Harland David Sanders, And now I think he himself actually appeared in the earliest of KFC ads when it was you know fully Kentucky Fried Chicken. Since his passing in nineteen eighty he's been personified in different ways by actors and animation.
And what have you.
But yeah, much like Orville Reddenbacher, this was in fact the founder of the company and the secret of the
spices or whatever the blend is that they keep so guarded. Apparently, when he was still alive, there was a beef between my chicken, shall we say, between him and the new managers of the company, where they changed the recipe and he got infuriated by it, and then they had to like kind of make nights, and then they didn't have to, but they made nice with him and changed it back and then kind of brought him back in the fold.
And then he did pass away in nineteen eighty. But we know him by his kind of like the branding of KFC, and that extends even over here. It used to to these like plastic statues that would be outside of KFC franchises. But the Hunch and Tigers from nineteen thirty six to nineteen forty nine were very successful in their league, and they won four titles in that time frame. They reached the what's called the Japan Series, which I guess into our World Series for the very first time
in nineteen sixty two. They won the Central League in nineteen sixty four, but then lost one.
More of these Japan Series.
It wasn't until nineteen eighty five that they won another Central League pennant and it was such a big deal that fans of this franchise, who are kind of known to be a little on the fanatical side, all dove into the De Tombori Canal in Osaka, which is a highly polluted and very deep canal that sort of splits up the city, the downtown kind of part of the city.
Maybe think of like.
The San in France a little bit, or sort of like the you know, the Thames, but it's a little it's narrower.
Obviously not as dirty as the ganjis, but still as dirty.
But high highly filthy even back then and now even worse. Apparently it's been described as, you know, something akin to sewer water. That didn't stop these Tigers fans, and they won the pennant. They jumped in and at the same time, a particularly zealous fan spotted a one of these Colonel Sanders statues outside of the local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, and they thought that it looked a lot like the first Baseman's right anty path.
So you uprooted it, ripped it up out of its perch or whatever, and threw it in the river which was pretty deep, or the canal. It was sucked down into the mud and the muck and lost presumably forever until two thousand and nine. But anyway, when this happened, though, it is believed by you know, those who believe that this started a curse on the Hunshin Tigers, and they didn't win a single thing. It's like angels on the outfield type vibes for eighteen years.
One quick interjection in the defense of the guy who throws the statue in or the crew did it. It wasn't everybody all the fans jumping in. They were yelling out the individual names of players, and they were looking around the crowd to see who most looked like a player, and they were like, jump in the river, or you'll get jumped into it. And then Randy Bass. You know, this is Japan. They're looking around and there's not a lot of people that you would see it immediately think
Randy Bass. So that's why they grabbed the statue.
And I'd totally forgotten that detailed then, and I think that really kind of gives a sense of the energy that was going around. So it wasn't for eighteen years the Tigers won another Central League title, at which point fans did dive into the Dosnbore Canal once again, sadly ending with the man losing his life. Because this is again i'm sure exactly whether he drowned. There's probably some drinking involved, or whether it was sepsis or something, but.
That's neither here nor there. He did lose his life.
But then fast forward two thousand and nine when the city was doing some dredging of the canal and they recovered the original statue, which is a little rough looking, all the paint worn off and quite worse for wear and missing a hand, but they did get it, and they believe that this at least was the very beginnings of lifting the curse of the Colonel, because that year the Tigers finished fourth, which is better than they had done.
In twenty fourteen, KFC moved the statue to their Japanese corporate headquarters and the Tigers made it to the Japan Series, but they did unfortunately lose to the Fukuwaka SoftBank Hawks. But the news today, the update to this story, which we did cover on Ridiculous History, is that the Hanshin Tigers just won the twenty twenty three championship for the first time in many, many years, leading some to believe
that the curse has now officially been lifted. After they won, fans did jump into the river disgustingly polluted river once again. But here's the part that I think is really neat the statue, which has since been moved from the corporate
headquarters to another franchise. It has been officially retired and is essentially being treated like a sacred religious relic, whether it be a publicity stunt or I don't know what you want to call it, but it was essentially exercised in a ceremony at a nearby shrine, in a cleansing ritual that is.
Usually I think to look into.
This a little bit more, maybe been you know this from the time you spent over there, but in a ceremony that's usually reserved for dolls, because I know that they certainly is a lot of belief in Japanese culture of objects being able to hold evil spirits and things like that. So maybe, I don't know, why would there be a specific ceremony just for dolls they felt was just appropriate enough to do on the old Colonel Stole sculpture.
Yeah, I mean it goes back into the into some really deep folklore, you know, the idea that an object can be imbued with the spirit or sentience, especially if in some cases there's this idea that even just your furniture at your house, if you take care of it and it gets the age of one hundred, then it acquires a spirit. So the idea also goes into the concept of respect.
Right.
So part of the curse of the of the kernel comes from the idea of public disorder and breaking, you know, breaking the expected rules of society, so cleansing. This is also a sort of apology to offending the character of the of the spirit the shrine or the effigy.
Makes sense and is really quickly credit where credits do. This actually comes from a sports reporter named Julian Real who is a brit living in Japan. It lived in Japan for about the last twenty five years and he's sort of a lifestyle and culture writer and has a really neat article called Curse of the Colonel lifted Japan's Hanjin Tigers Hope ritual ceremony bats away years of bad
luck and just last last thing for me. This ritual was performed at Sumi Yoshi Taishot Shrine and a priest did this cleansing ritual, and a president of KFC Holdings Japan, Takayuki Hanji, was there and he laid flowers on an altar.
And may, I'm sorry if I'm laughing.
I know this is an offering food to send this to the thing, but this is screams publicity stunt. He offered a portion of KFC chicken as well, and did you know, call it what it was? You gotta at least appreciate the openness.
Was it an original recipe or extra crispy doing unclear?
I don't even know if you can get the two, if there's a distinction anymore.
But he did say that he was very aware that this whole saga, this whole like lore, has contributed to the raising of the value of their brand name. So I don't know, guys, any thoughts on this. It's just it's such a neat, weird story to begin with. And uh, the you know, baseball is in general such a superstitious sport in America, even where people are you know, won't change their socks or have certain pregame things or you know, rituals or chewing the same piece of gum or whatever.
It's really interesting to see these kind of cultural things sort of collide in a very interesting amalcam of American and Japanese culture in this story.
I don't have too much, guys. I was just having fond memories as you were discussing it, seeing no Norm McDonald as the Colonel like back in the day, and Darryl Hammond and a bunch of other actors got to like do cameos, and I was just having fond memories of that. And I hope this, uh, I hope the team does well.
I miss this. Do we know where the statue will ultimately find its resting place?
Yeah, I'm sorry, but I didn't get to that. The whole thrust of the ceremony is that it ends in the burial. The ceremonial burial of this sculpture, I can only assume it is on site at the shrine that I mentioned, the Taishi Shrine, Yeah.
In Osaka.
So you know, it certainly would also be another great branding play to have it's the final resting site marked so people can go leave KFC buckets and flowers.
You know, I'm looking at photos. I've been to the shrine. It is dope. It is amazing. If you can go. But the kernel wasn't there when I when I.
Saw no, No, this is pretty new.
I also predict, on the note of superstition and folklore, that there will be a new relic of power or an objective powers. They're called in control in the Nation of Japan. The search continues for the left hand of the kernel, right.
And the glasses. I forgot glasses had also been knocked off or whatever.
Which is weird because I don't I don't ever think of the glasses as being a separate part of a of a sculpture.
I wouldn't think so either, But maybe maybe it was, like it's plastic, so maybe it was sort of you know, hotblood or something.
Where is the left hand? Man, I'm gonna be thinking about that, you know, like the old hand of glory in an infernal magic. I would love to hand remains where someone finds the hand of the kernel and the there's a curse or it has power. What I'm just going to write it?
What was it?
You know?
What was that movie with the hand? The recent movie Speak to Me, Talk to Me?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was Maybe they find the hand. It's in beauty with some sort of melodical. Excellent.
Yeah, Infernal Powers. I really liked that movie a lot as well.
Guys.
Another great example of like, you know, kind of like the Daniels, how they started kind of do it as like real low five practical kind of music video things like I can't remember the dude's names, but it's a brother twins then the Philipoo Brothers is their name. They have a YouTube presence of like really crazy cool YouTube kind of videos that are like artsy and bizarre, and they are now making giant movies that did well, so good for them. But yeah, that's it for the Curse
of the Colonel. Hopefully it's lifted.
Let's take a quick.
Break and then we'll return with one more piece of strange news.
And we have returned a couple of things in our conversation. Just to respond to the conversation about the Baltimore Bridge, I think we should do an episode on the shipping the cargo manufacturer that created that, because I'm looking into the conspiracies they've been tangled up with in the past, and there are quite a few. So that's just like
a note to the universe. I think there's an episode there. Awesome, and I wanted to start out by I'm not going to put you too much on the spot, Doc, but I want to thank you on air for making my day earlier today and sending me a joke that we will never never mention on the on the show, you remember what we're talking about.
I audibly guess, Okay, maybe we won't never.
Mind anyway, just to tell you that even in our case, there is some stuff. There are some jokes. We don't want you to know some stuff. Yeah, yeah, but that was a real Gallows humor there, Doc, Respect and salute. Our final story for this week's Strange News program is like the Baltimore Bridge, it is an ongoing story and
the tragic mystery is afoot. On March twenty second, again as we were recording previously, a small band of terrorists attacked a music venue in Moscow, and as of now at this moment, there are an estimated one hundred and forty deaths with north of three hundred and sixty injuries, either as a result of the gunshot as poisoning of the fire that happened shortly thereafter. There were four terrorists involved in pretty soon after the news broke is the
Islamic state claimed responsibility. The Putin administration continues to claim that this was actually this was actually an operation by Ukraine or some agent of the West through a proxy. And they're claiming, I mean, they're all but explicitly saying they believe they believe that the West and or Ukraine managed to use is the Islamic State as kind of a false flag, right, or a patsy to blame this odd.
So if we go to the timeline here, what we see is that the Crocus City Hall, that's the music venue. It's in a place called Krasnogorsk, and I'm mispronouncing that it started right before a Russian band called Picnic was scheduled to play a sold out show. And this is a very very big venue. We know that it gets stranger and stranger the deeper you dig. Okay, at first, we know the basic timeline. These masked gunmen in combat fatigues came in the open fire on the crowd using
ak style assault rifles. They also apparently had pistols and knives. And put yourself in this situation. If you've been to a concert that has a lot of theatrical sound design, then you might hear gunshots and think it's part of the opener, you know what I mean, Travis Skull or whatever, right, And I also want to stop there. Do you guys are you familiar with the Russian band Picnic? I was not Picnic. Yeah, yeah, okay, Well they're pretty big because
this is there is a huge venue. Unfortunately at the time also there were children and teenagers in this venue for an unrelated ballroom dance competition, So that gives us a sense of the size, the fact that they can have these two big events going on at once. And there is a little bit of video footage that shows these people firing into the crowd. It appears they were
wearing baseball caps. The assailants are apparently heard shouting to each other in Arabic and then they escape after deploying sendury devices we should mention gas bombs to start a fire in the audit, which led to even more injuries. The authorities responded as quickly as they could, but the gunman initially escaped and then they got captured per Russian authorities attempting to exit Russia via the poorous western border
in the war with Ukraine. Does that jibe with what you guys have seen reporting.
Yeah, it's just been really complicated to follow because there have been several high level conspiracy theories that have put out by the Kremlin which are fascinating just about again often placing blame on the West, have like instead of ISIS or ISIS as the cover. But it's really changed a lot since this story first broke again, Like last time we were recording one of these strange news it
happened like right after that. Yeah, it's just confusing if it feels weird and a very high level tragic attack on civilians m m.
Yeah.
And I was talking with was talking with some people familiar with this situation doing like just a vibe tech you know, what can you tell us about this? And even if you are just looking through a cursory kind of like forensic Google investigation of the context and how this situation came to be, then you see a lot of troubling things. It is a fact that the West
warned Russia that some attack was imminent. They were it was Canada and the United Kingdom and the US warned any of their citizens in Russia there seemed like there
was an attack. The US privately warned Russian officials that this spin off, this franchise of the Islamic State was going to attack because they had gathered intelligence earlier in March, like earlier that month, this was fresh baked information, and Putin apparently roundly ignored it because the US intelligence community officially they have something called the duty to warn requirement, which means that if there is a dangerous attack on
civilians that is imminent and actionable, then it doesn't matter if you're friends with the country where it's going to happen, you are supposed to let them know. Because the innocence evolved. You know, they have nothing to do with the larger wars. So Putin and Putin's circle, or I guess, I say, the Putin administration, they dismissed this, and they didn't just say it was incorrect. They said it was blackmail. They
said it was a threat. So they're saying. They didn't take this as a hey, let's at least work together to save lives. They took it as I guess, a very sinister move right, and that may be part of why Putin is accusing Ukraine, which he did immediately, and Zelenski came out from Ukraine immediately and said no, absolutely not. We did not do this. And let's think about the people the countries that were warning Russia, Canada, the UK,
the US. This feels five I to me, right because for the US, I don't know the conspiracy theories being floated by Russia. Tell me what you think about this one is that you'll see people on the internet going, you know, it's interesting how ISAIS seems to be attacking enemies of the West now and the concept being, the implication being that the Islamic state itself is heavily compromised, and maybe now the terrorist has become a puppet of
Western forces. I think that's a lot that seems kind of complicated, right, well.
Overly so to the point where it seems, you know, it's that thing whenever a conspiracy has way way too many moving parts or way too many parties that need to be in perfect sink and cooperation, chances are the reality is.
Something a little more streamlined.
It's a little route Goldberg esk right, yea yeah, yeah.
But it is an organization that has largely fallen out of popular coverage in media, right yeah. So, I don't know, when you feel like there's an armed somewhat organized group like that. I'm not saying there's any sand of the accusations that it's being used as some kind of puppet organization, but it does feel weird when you don't hear about
it very often. Then something this high profile comes along, right, that appears to have a lot of planning, a lot of strategy to get all those people you know, into where they were, to have the weapons they had, and to pull it all off. Yeah, it feels even more organized than you imagine a group like that would be.
Yeah, and also not just to the point of organization, but if you look at the fingerprints of previous is activity, this doesn't match their moone. This is a change. You know, they usually, without sounding to crass, they usually send folks on a one way trip when they're sowing this kind of tragedy in chaos. And maybe it's because this is a regional branch or a subsidiary of the larger Islamic state.
This is is KP Islamic State, Corrusan province. But the idea that they would make an attack and it not be a suicide attack, that is it is just markedly different. You know, previous Islamic State things like we had discussed a little bit off air the attack in Iran which led to more than one hundred people dead. That was to that was two suicide bombers. So it seems or at least you know, I don't know how much we read into it, but it is worth noting that their
tactics have changed at this point. They attempted to have an exit plan. And then also why would their exit plan be Ukraine? Is it because the border is more porous due to conflict, But then knowing you would have to drive through bloody swaths of the military, the military that you just attacked, or is country you just attacked, it's I don't like it. It's dodgy, it's suspect. And there's another. There are even more pieces that get stranger
and stranger. You guys, remember the apartments, right, How Putin came to power? Oh man, it's not a story. The Jedi will tell you.
Okay, can you tell us here?
Yeah? Sure. In nineteen ninety nine, there was a series of explosions for apartment blocks in different cities around Russia, Moscow, Polnaksk, Vogodunksk. More than three hundred people were killed, thousands of people were injured, and this became one of the events that led Putin to his current level of power, because after those bombings occurred, Putin used as the pretext to launch a second war in Chechnya, and this became a long
protracted war. It wasn't just a special military operation. History is proving that is apparently never the case. And for a long time Putin's critics and Putin's rivals and journalists, they maintained that Vladimir Putin may have pulled like a p and Ac or even something even something more evil, that he either planned the attacks or allowed the attacks to happen so that he could gather power, consolidate power,
and launch this war in Chechnya. This also led to the Yeltsin losing power and stepping down in nineteen ninety nine. So if you believe that there is more to the story than the official narrative right now of what's happening with the Moscow attacks, then you look at prior events like this, and I've got to tell you, I don't know the answers in this specific regard, but surely, just with the things we've outlined in less than fifteen minutes here,
it's suspect, right, it's fishy. Does this not seem fishy?
Oh?
Yeah, highly. The question is like what, ooh, why? When? Where?
Now?
Yeah? What kind of fish? What kind of fish is it?
It's unfortunately a good question. We're going to have to We're going to have to think about it, and we need your help, folks, So let us know what you think of the official narrative. Obviously, the Putin administration is going to use this as for the rationalization for the conflict in Ukraine. We still don't know how much force Russia can put, like how much extra force or additional
force they can put into play. And a quick lass note, Putin did quite recently, like as we're recording, come out and say that he blamed radical Islamic extremists. He believes they were operating at the best of Ukraine. But we'll leave you with this. Those terrorists, those four guys killed world one hundred people and then got back in a car, drove almost two thousand miles, passed multiple military checkpoints before
they were caught. The Islamic state doesn't do stuff like that, or they didn't.
Makes you think just goes back to the what trained by the West. Basically isis did it? But they were trained, that's the claim that's being made there. I mean it does sound tactics that you'd hear about with special forces training or something. But again that's complete speculation.
We don't have the proof, you know. We just know that are there are things that complicate or that call into question this official narrative we're getting. And we now have two competing narratives from the superpowers of old. Right, we warned you, no, you threatened us, and now we will respond. And when elephants make war, its the grass that suffers. We want to hear your thoughts, fellow conspiracy realist, tell us what is on your mind, what is going
on in Moscow? Would love to hear from you if you're in the Baltimore area or if you're in the Moscow area as well. And we're wishing your friends, families, and yourself safe travels and adventures and good health. We hope that you do not get cursed by a fast food mascot. That's a good way to end it. And yeah, let us know your thoughts. We try to be easy to do.
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