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, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. If you are hearing our strange news program the Evening it publishes, let us welcome you to May fifth, twenty twenty five. As justin Timberlake so often says, it's going.
To be May May the fifth be with you.
May the Fifth be with you? Indeed, guys, how are we feeling super great?
So stoke, no issues, no complaints, ten ten no notes, tent too's down.
I love it when people say ten toes down, Matt? How are we just check it in?
How are we feeling feeling very punch bully this morning?
Punch bully?
Mm hmm. Well I'll tell you about it, all.
Right, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. We're going to talk a little bit about a lot of things right now. Before we do anything, maybe we dip our toes in with this one for the headline alone. You guys remember Seattle, the city.
Heard of it. Yeah, it made some kind of music popular.
Hey, what's a rhyme?
Was it?
Grime?
I'm gonna give us a crime?
You're close. I'm sure there starts with a G. Yeah.
Coffee, Oh yeah, good coffee there too, coffee as well.
Ed. It turns out masturbation so news story.
I hope this is related to your story. Man, It's not just out of left field.
A story that broke on Monday, twenty eighth. We're recording this Wednesday, April thirtieth. Is the following headline. Thanks to our friends at the Independent, Neighbors demand answers after quote rampant masturbation takes over a Seattle park.
First of all, I love the idea of demanding answers, just in any context.
Who did this? We must know who did this?
I need more context here, Ben, is this like what park? First of all, I know about the Seattle parks.
This would be the Denny Blaine Park b Lai n E Park in Seattle, and residents of a surrounding neighborhood. There are, as you said, Nold, demanding answers, pushing for the city to do something about Again, I think it's just the modifier in the headline rantant masturbation.
Is this pidemic?
Yes, so a big thanks to Greg Grizzousi over in Washington, DC writing this article. Apparently there is an unofficial nude beach in the area and people are people are at loggerheads because residents of the neighborhood and fans of the beach have noticed an uptick in illegal illicit activities, masturbation coming on to people in the neighborhood, Guys pulling their Australia out and requesting someone to touch it. Washington is a state where nudity is legal. This has long been
a safe spot. But let's give you the description from Lee Keller, who is a spokesman with the Denny Blaine Park for All Community movement, is talking to local news and Lee said, it's illegal, it's illicit. It's masturbation multiple times a day by men sitting on the wall, sitting at the park, in view of the homes, in view of everything, and it's non ending and it's really troubling.
Non ending masturbation without end.
These guys are like Jerkin and shifts.
It would seem so. I mean, the scale of it all is staggering.
So we bring that up again just for the headline. We have. We have a parable to take for this or a moral here, which is, you know, don't do that, don't do that in public, don't do it on the beach.
Believe you know, nude beaches in general, there are still boundaries. You're not supposed to do things like that, even where nudity is permitted.
Everybody's just doing their best every day, you know, guys. And sure some people's best is taking a little walk out to the bitch.
Some people some people just misconstrued what their therapist said when they said, hey, it's time for you to believe in yourself.
It's just to believe in yourself behind closed doors and in the night times.
Believe in yourself in a way that doesn't purposely injure or hurt other people. But we only have this, we only have this story because the internet and electricity still work here in the United States. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors. We're going to get into the BS science of polygraphs. We're gonna check in with the Justice Department. We'll probably talk about Tariff's GPT fluoride.
Back in the news again, Disney worker who pulled kind of a cuisine version of Icarus flight, and then of course some Narco corridos.
But first let's hear act little ad break.
And we have returned. This is going to be relatively old beings, hopefully by the time we all we all joined together to hear our strange news program. But we all saw the reports right about the massive power outage in Spain.
I did not, actually I know this is this is news to me.
Portugal too, right in Portugal.
Too touched a bit of fress as well.
A brown out. What do you call this?
It's one of the worst in European history. It started in the afternoon of Monday the twenty eighth, so just about forty eight hours after we record this. It lasted through the nightfall. It affected tens of millions of people. We're talking we're talking folks trapped on subways, We're talking folks trapped in elevators. All the cell phone networks, or a lot of the cell phone networks went down. Critical
infrastructure just went to the dogs. If you want to read more about it, some of the One of the best summations comes from our friends at AP. The journalist Suman Niciatam wrote the following what we know about Monday's sweeping power outage in Spain and Portugal. It was shortly after twelve thirty pm local time. Spain lost fifteen gigawatts of electricity, which is about sixty percent of demand for
the country overall. Spain is in terms of population, a smaller place than the United States country, about forty nine million people. And they're calling them disconnection events or interruptions in power the little before the big So there were signals, but as soon as the news broke, people were asking us whether there was some sort of conspiracy afoot, whether whether perhaps hostile powers, be they homegrown or be they foreign powers, whether they had purposely broken the electrical grid.
It want to pause there, because before we sound all crazy, guys, I think we can agree disrupting electric grid is like a go to move for possible terrorist acts.
Dude, right before we started recording, I had a circuit breaker trip and even that it makes your heart skip a beat. I mean, you realize once you lose power, even temporarily er like internet or the kind of creature comforts that we're used to, you realize how dependent on that stuff you are. And it can be a little bit staggering on a large scale though, when you're say, at the mercy of the power grid and trapped somewhere in an elevator like you said, or a train station
or what have you. I mean, yes, it is a surefire way of wreaking havoc on a large scale.
These folks, all innocent people, were without power for about eighteen hours. Now we know for sure, I think enough time has passed to admit it. We know for sure that the few years ago, the brownouts in California, the rolling blackouts, were something that could have been avoided. They were They were the result of corruption within the energy industry. And that's not a conspiracy theory at this point, it's proven we conspired to do this kind of situation.
Can I just say, really quickly to my question earlier, was it a brown out versus a blackout? I just looked this up because I wasn't sure myself, and it might be helpful. A brown out is a temporary, partial, abrupt drop in voltage followed by it coming back relatively quickly. While I blackout is a total crash and failure of the power grid and an area that can last for
an extended period of time. Sometimes brownouts are actually done on purpose to lead off yes hundred percent voltage drops, however, can cause sensitive electronic equipment and appliances to become damaged. So blackouts are potentially less dangerous because they just shut the device off, whereas a change in voltage can absolutely damage certain types of equipment.
And it's it's quite a bag of bat because a series of browdouts can also stress the electricity grids such that it leads to a blackout or it leads to a loss of function. Right now, as we're recording, this may change. But as we're recording, no one officially knows what caused the fluctuations and the eventual failure of the system. We do know that France got hit a little bit because European grids are incredibly interconnected. There's not you know,
there's not like an air gap for that. Everybody is sharing sharing the same sort of font of power. So we'd love to hear theories, especially from our European conspiracy realist. Mainly, we think this is a way to emphasize that you should be prepared not to sound paranoid. Everybody thinks we're paranoid till the light shuts off.
Yeah. Can you guess what I thought of when I heard the news that there was a sudden blackout and nobody could figure out what had.
Happened Sonic the hedgehog.
So close. I thought coronal mass ejection. And I was like, oh, because you know those those things can happen from the Sun and they can affect electric rids, and if a big enough one happens, the electric rids just fry and we go to we go into darkness for a while.
Yeah, like Canada nineteen eighty four. Yeah, you just pull.
Out off the top of your head. Ben, that's impressive.
We talked about it. We went through a whole face m hm.
Well guess what. There was a coronal mass ejection on April twenty eighth, guys, but it missed the Earth somewhere to the south.
Officially, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.
It wasn't that strong anyway.
How much could you you know, how deeply can we trust tens of thousands of physicists and the astronomers.
Why is my potty brain immediately thinking of Ben's Seattle masturbation story when I hear the term coronal mass ejection.
Oh, that's the street name of one of those guys.
It's the phenomenon that is taking place in darks across the Seattle metropolitan Come on, mass ejections.
Come on down to the Seattle twenty twenty five mass ejections.
Oh oh, and there are some tech bros who are actually doing doing sperm racing. Do you guys.
Read saw that?
Wy? Did you watch by it? I did. I watched the clip of it. I see.
Is it like a microscope?
Yeah? Yeah, that's amazing. I'm not the Democratic.
I really can't put money on just about anything, can't you?
Yeah? Vegas baby. Also wait, wait, we've got a message from our Tennessee pal coming in live. Coronal massive Injection is a great jam band.
True?
Also true? Thank you, Dylan. Look, I've got another couple questions with the time we have real quick. Years ago we looked into the Great Floridation Conspiracy, and that has acquired new relevancy in the zeitgeist of late because states are banning fluoridation of water in a couple of different places, a couple of different municipalities have done the same, and as we record, the Great State of Florida is poised to ban fluoride from all public water systems.
Well, we certainly know that there's a lot of rhetoric coming from RFK Junior about the evils of fluoridation, right, which really does harken back to our precious bodily fluids kind of stuff from Doctor Strange Love. It feels as though we're living more and more of a Doctor Strange Love esque situation these days.
Yeah, I agree.
Is this a result of that or is this separate?
We know Florida can go for some wacky ideas in and of themselves without help from you know above.
Dude, you nailed it. It's it's the push by the current US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. We know Utah just last month became the first state to ban fluoridation, and now as a result of this, we're seeing an accreational effect, a snowball effect, floride free snowball effect. People are following this idea. I'm bringing this up for the larger context because it is an incredibly durable conspiracy theory here in the West. So initial thoughts first off, before we continue.
Well, my first question would be, what's the reasoning. I haven't really followed RFK Junior's rhetoric on this. I just know that he doesn't like it.
Well, if you don't mind, know before we get into that, and we can talk about what we've talked about with floride in the past. It's one of the first videos we ever made was the fluoridation of.
Water Hexa flora's sicilic acid.
That sounds right. That sounds right to me. So the big question that the American Dental Association has been grappling with for a long time that is still unanswered is how effective is fluoride when it's ingested versus when it's applied. Right, So, fluoride applied to the teeth works great, and it functions exactly as we say it does as.
The control dose.
Yeah, well, and it actually stays there on your teeth for a little bit while you're brushing. That's why you have to brush for a certain amount of time. Then you take it off and your rinse like crazy, and you don't swallow it because the fluoride is not good for you to swallow in those dosages. So then what does the floride actually do when it goes into your body? And then is you know, your stomach and your intestines are the things that are actually pulling the fluoride out of the water.
Oh, does it calcify your pinal gland?
Yes? Does it do that? Or does it even have any effect on your teeth whatsoever? When you just swallow it?
Right?
Right?
Is it just moving through the border of your mouth to all points inered?
So are we maybe even slightly on board with this idea? I hear what you're saying sounds right, like, I totally get it, and that makes perfect sense. But isn't it being kind of I don't know, misconstrued in other ways as well, in terms of like what this is causing perhaps knock on consequences of fluoride ingestion that maybe.
Are a little more conspiratorial, I mean possibly.
That's the reason Matt and I instantly went full Larry David. They We were both like, ah.
Because I got you.
I guess it's a pickle. We can go to some more long term measurements. Here in Calgary and in part of Alaska, fluoridation was ended and if you talk with the dentist and dental hygietas, the experts in those areas, they didn't notice people suddenly becoming brainyacts, but they did notice a sharp market increase in tooth decay and cavities, especially in children.
MM.
So maybe that's the tradeoff. Maybe that's like the pyrrhic victory. You can either you can either have good teeth and then have your cognition slowed or other health problems, or you can have terrible teeth and not have those problems. That seems to be what RFK Junior.
Is arguing, So we didn't quite pop into that aspect of it. The idea is that ingesting fluoride has potential long term knock on consequences on cognition.
Right, the calcification of the right. That would be their idea, and then other I don't know. The issue is it's been so politicized and in some cases if we're looking past the headline, and in some cases we see I think that the case of Calgary specifically, Northern conspiracy realist give us more insight on this. In the case of Calgary specifically, it was a budget saving move. It wasn't conspiratorial. It was just very expensive to replace the machinery that added the stuff it got it mile.
Well, it's such a weird thing. It's such a weird thing. I'm sorry, guys. I'm getting caught up on the ADA website because you just you see things on there, and then you see papers come out. I mean, I'm thinking back to one in two thousand and four that came out that we cited back in our video that was discussing the issues with I think they call it systemic
fluoride intake, so it's like going through your system. But they're talking about how on the ADA website now they're talking about how systemic fluoride goes into your body and then actually gets it finds its way to your teeth and it does a good job doing that. And it also is talking about how the recommended levels are zero point seven parts per million in white, which is crazy low, right, crazy crazy low. But then you imagine the amount of
water you're drinking. So it all becomes this muddled thing to me, where what is the difference between what the science is actually saying in the best research, the latest stuff, versus all of the propaganda that comes out from both sides, because there are lobbies they want that fluoride in that water. Oh yeah, but they're also you know, people that don't want it in the water for political reasons.
We're talking big fluoride guys, the lobbies in question, like they're literally this is a moneymaker for certain pharmaceutical companies that are producing this stuff.
We did some good digging on that video, honestly, because yeah, if you to your point, if you follow the provenance of where this fluoride is produced, right, what other mechanisms create this this chemical, then you'll find anti fluoridation folks arguing that it is a best similar to the story of cream of tartar, which is a very weird thing to be normalized in the grocery store. Cream of tartar
is a side effect of some other thing. And then people and I want to say, what the eighteen hundreds I'm spitballing here, said Oh, okay, yeah, let's also can this up and sell it, you know, let's make it a little larder additive.
What is it?
Yeah, it's like a tassium by tar trait chemical compound gets used for cooking.
What is it?
It's kind of like baking soda. And sorry, guys, I don't mean to get caught up on this. I've always wondered what it is.
Oh it was actually I'm wrong. It was the eighteenth century, so seventeen hundreds they scraped it off wine barrels. It was a side effect of that.
It is a flavor enhancer, is how it sold. The idea is that it sort of like MSG.
You know, I guess what I'm getting close to saying here, So to say it explicitly, the anti fluoridation proponents will argue that this is not for public health. They will say it is a result of finding a way to monetize a byproduct of an earlier process. Now, not a lot of people, especially the ADA, agree with that. And again, the ADA is a group of dentists, the people who do work on your teeth. So they do have a horse in the race, you know what I mean, They
get a tooth in the mouth on this one. Our question there, before we move on, there's a lot we're not going to get to our question there For all of us playing along at home, fellow listeners, friends, neighbors, conspiracy realists, where do you stand on the idea of fluoride in general, both fluoride in identifice and in controlled dosage and then fluoride in public water are effects? Is this generally a net good? Is it a net negative? Tell us your thoughts. We can't wait to hear from you. Also,
chat GPT is creeping out users. We're going to talk about rare earth mineral access and how it is turing terrorism, war and our favorite private contractors in a later listener mail program. For now, we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors and we'll return with more strange news.
And we have returned, and I am going to jump in real quick with.
Sort of a follow up.
There's a related story, so tangentially anyway, you guys remember the lawsuit against Disney for an individual who basically was assured that a food item at a Irish themed pub at Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida was not going to have any ingredients that would affect this person's allergy. And then of course the person I believe went into anaphylactic shock.
And I think the real kicker for that story was that there was something that came out from Disney's attorneys saying that they were not this this this party was not able to sue because of agreeing to the terms of services of Disney plus membership.
Interesting.
Okay, so the news story is apparently a disgruntled former Disney employee who was the once the I believe, menu director for Disney you know cuisine for the Disney you know food parts of the parks has been sentenced to three years in prison for, essentially as a retaliatory act, hacking the Disney system that stores all of the menu information and changing it, altering it to indicate that certain food dudes did not contain allergens, when in fact they did. Well,
it's weird because it's not related. This is not something directly involved that previous lawsuit, but it's just kind of weird that it's so in the same wheelhouse.
I saw the headline a little while back, and I don't know much more about this, but I agree with you, Noel, this seems weirdly related. Is it something where the mouse overall is just being like much more careful and cognizant of possible allergens or like, also, what's the motivation of this person? Why would you hack a menu like that?
Well, like I was saying, this is a disgruntled former employee who was let go as their menu supervisor, I believe is the title. And you know, in much of the same way that perhaps a former employee might try to seek retaliatory action against perhaps another colleague who maybe they see as heavy, done them wrong or whatever. Michael Schuyer, a forty year old Winter Garden, Florida resident, essentially hacked the menu system. He was actually the menu production manager
at Walt Disney World. After a contentious, as described by ABC News and the associated press, termination from his job, and here is a statement from federal prosecutors. These intrusions included manipulating allergen information in restaurant menus to indicate that food items were safe for customers with certain allergens when they were not. Schuyer also altered menu information related to
wine regions to reflect locations of recent mass shootings. Very unusual form of retaliation and clearly not a particularly well person, because this is I'm all about sticking it to the man guys, but this is sticking it to hapless individuals who are trying to enjoy a vacation that they have paid a lot of money for potentially being poisoned. So there is no kind of empathy for this type of act.
Can I just say the Wine region thing is really funny to be funny, and I imagine.
That in and of itself, if that alone were the where the move, I'd be all thumbs up for this sticking it to the man.
I love Discordianism, a little bit of social chaos. If it's well intentioned, it doesn't harm people.
So, according to ABC News, he was fired in June for alleged misconduct. That's all we have, so clearly a bit of a of a of a pill in the first place. The termination was apparently quite contentious, which led to these retaliatory actions.
Uh.
In a federal criminal complaint reading from ABC News filed in US Distract Court for the Middle District of Florida, Michael Schuyer, who has been recently terminated, is accused of knowingly causing the transmission of a program to a protected computer and intentionally causing damage without authorization.
I also so like the I know they have to write it that way legally, but I love damage paveat without authorization. The implication that you know, maybe there's a fixer intertal at Disney who goes in it just sews a little discord. It screws things up. He's authorized to callers damage. That's the problem.
They handle a lot of things internally, you know, the Disney parks, they like to keep it in house for sure.
No question, no one dies there. Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, even this being public, you know, is not the best. You know, they have to kind of soft sell it a little bit in terms of, you know, the potential damage to their reputation.
And maybe part of.
That is due to Florida's sunshine laws.
Yes, that's certainly part of it, I would imagine, and especially given the previous lawsuit that I mentioned where negligence was determined to have been the cause, they really can't afford this kind of scrutiny. So you know, it could potentially have an eroding effect on the reputation of Disney restaurants, though super fan Disney Adult probably will give them a pass the allegations. According to David Haas, an attorney for Shoyer,
acknowledge that no one was injured or harmed. I look forward to vigorously presenting my client's side of the story. He added that Schoyer has a disability and that he believes impacted his termination from Disney and sorry, that was prior to the conviction, so that was from October of twenty twenty four. I do not believe we covered this story when it first came out, so this is kind of we.
We did in August twenty twenty four. The Raglan Road death right, the woman who passed away from Manuflexus.
No, No, that's the other story.
Okay, okay, okay, that's.
The other story where at a Irish themed pub at Disney Springs, a woman passed away due to anaphylactic shock and that was because the waiter incorrectly told them that the allergen was not residence.
And maybe that inspired Disney to crack down so hard on this because I remember what first brought that one to Strange News like August last year. But it sounds like you're saying that there are multiple cases that might have informed this reaction. Is it normal for someone to get sentenced that.
Seems intense and it seems a product of the iron fist of the mouse potentially or the gloved hand.
Rather, you know. So, yeah, we'll leave that one for now.
And I wanted to move on to a story out of Mexico, where there has been. There have been some changes, some considered quite positive and some a little controversial from the new president, Claudia Shinbaum, who recently launched a music contest sort of in the spirit of a Eurovision or
an American Idol. But the intention here is to promote peace and to be a force against addiction, seeking to counter the popularity of something called narco corridos, which is I heard it described pretty accurately, I think in a Reddit thread that I was looking into about this. It's kind of the Mexican version of gangster rap. Here in America, where we have a lot of glorification of let's just be real criminals, you know, drug dealers, gang bangers, members of.
Street gangs, et cetera.
That you know has reached massive acclaim, massive popularity among folks even who have nothing to do with that kind of life.
Ever, we'll never even see it.
You know.
There's a lot of suburban, you know, white folks who really did gangster rap, no question about it. Similarly, in Mexico, the tradition of narco corridos, it has really become a pop music sensation. And while the cartels are certainly feared and at large, I think most Mexican citizens would prefer that they, you know, not exist and that they were kept, you know, brought to heal let's just say a little
bit better. But there are certain young folks, let's just say, that glorify this type of thing and that let's call them pro cartel clothing and paraphernalia and things like that, because they look at them as being like kind of these real life badasses, you know. But of course we
know cartel violence is absolutely horrific. But it's a complex issue because we also know that cartels in smaller, more rural regions often are protective of citizens and actually provide them with financial support and almost act as a de facto form of government in places that the Mexican government perhaps does not service, you know, efficiently or effectively. So it's a really complex issue. We know that there are,
of course Narco saints. There are certain emblems and candles and kind of you know, figurines that are meant to kind of revere some of these folks. And there is a pretty excellent episode of Breaking Bad that starts with a Narco corrido music video about Heisenberg character, you know, those spoilers for the show, But that's an important part of the show is this mythical drug manufacturer called Heisenberg who has taken out parts of the cartel and is being revered in.
His own right. So I don't know, guys, what do you think.
I think the spirit of this is cool, like the idea of having a contest wherein people are encouraged to write songs that are not necessarily anti cartel, but that are more maybe sending a positive message and trying to steer the culture away from this glorification of violence and drug trafficking.
Sure, it's interesting that it's Mexico conta for peace and against addictions because I remember us talking not long ago about how a ton of the actual users of the products being made in Mexico the drugs end up in the United States. And it's interesting just thinking about it as an addiction, and I wonder, I do not know how much of an addiction problem the country of Mexico
has with some of those same narcotics. But I don't know how it actually helps besides getting young people to focus on something like this where they can actually put their efforts into maybe writing a song, you know, maybe becoming a good enough singer or maybe becoming a good enough musician to end up on this show, and that takes them away from other activities that they could end up finding themselves.
In Sure, the logic could be, for instance, that someone is a talented songwriter and having them aim for this genre of success or this sphere of success prevents them from becoming heroes to the cartels, right, and then being approached by the cartels right. Be our bar be our musician. So it's well intentioned. The question is will it you know, will it work? It reminds me a little bit in
a tangential way. It reminds me of the infamous DARE program here in the United States, right where we have you know you promised yourself so long ago, right, never to walk it into one's shadow. The Children of Our Future was one of the songs, and that, of course the DARE theme song, and they had kids write essays, kids create songs about the dangers of addiction and illicit substances. However,
long story short, folks, all US residents know this. Over time, it turns out that a lot of people who participated in the DARE program would go on to engage with illicit substances.
Yeah, I think I've joked more than once about the suitcase full of drugs that brought into Clavering that I think maybe was more a situation where kids are like, ooh, I want to try that one. That one, right, that one, I mean, it's a little bit tone death. I agree with you on all those points. I do want to point out to just another story that really indicates how popular these are and how this could potentially cause a rift,
you know. I mean, user on Reddit pointed out or post the question, would this really be a contest you would want to win with the potential that the cartel might see you as a target for being quote unquote anti cartel. But I don't think so, because the idea isn't to trash the cartels. It's just to sing about something different. And I'm going to get into my follow up in a second, but the contest is called, I believe it is called Mexico Canto.
Yes, Mexico kanta, which means Mexico sinks. So just to.
Backcheck, the related story kind of showing how popular these things are is from CBS News from April fourteenth of this year. Ban on music glorifying cartels, sparks chaos at concert in Mexico. Violent attack on our artist, band and crew. A Mexican artist was forced to flee concert stage on Saturday after enraging fans by saying he had been banned by the government from singing popular songs glorifying drug traffickers.
Narco corridos are a controversial sub genre of music in Mexico which celebrates the exploits of the country's infamous drug cartels. The songs have caught the attention of President Claudia Scheinbaum, who in recent days launched a music contest for Peace and against Addictions, seeking to counter the popularity of narco corrito's among young people in Mexico.
And in the United States.
Last bit chaos erupted early Saturday in the city of Texacoco, fifteen miles outside of Mexico City, when Luis r. Conriquez told the crowd that he could not sing his popular songs praising leaders of the Sineloa cartel. He said, it's a law that must be respected. I also feel bad
for not singing which you want to hear. Was followed by booze objects being thrown at the singer and his band, who were forced to flee the stage, and later twenty people stormed the stage and destroyed everything on there.
So it's a.
Tricky situation, really, like a divided feeling around the cartels there. And I actually asked our buddy Alex, you know, who has spent some time in Mexico City, what that's like, and he really indicated that Shinebaum is sort of a divisive figure because there are some folks that revere the cartels, and there are of course, a lot of folks who fear and wish them to be eliminated.
So there you go.
Any closing thoughts around that, guys, I appreciate your perspective on the tenuousness of this whole thing and the good nature, you know, vibes behind it, but also is it a little tone deaf and is it maybe tackling this problem in kind of the wrong way.
It's something, it is, it's not nothing, that's true, and it's gonna make a few folks a lot of money. That's a lot of concerts, that's a lot of airtime.
Yeah, okay, fair enough, with which folks.
What do you mean people? The people running the concerts and the music that ends up or the let's say, the music business folks that end up getting all of these newly minted stars.
That's a good go. A big part of the rhetoric.
I haven't gotten into this enough, but behind the contest is that they want to sort of americanize the music industry.
And there you go, Mexico. So you're spot on there.
Crippling contracts for everyone.
Hey, you get one, and you get one, and you get a break and a word from our sponsor, and then you also get some more strange news.
We'll be right back, we've returned. Fun fact, guys, punch bowl that I mentioned at the top is the secret services nickname for the Capitol Building.
It's kind of weird. It looks like, you know, well.
Yeah, you imagine flipping the punch bowl the top of the Capitol Building over filling it with punch, and now it's a punch.
Bowl, and it would take too long to say upside down punch bowl every time.
That's right, that's right. Shout out to punch Bowl News for teaching all of us that today, guys. On Tuesday, April twenty ninth, the very same network, punch Bowl News reported that Amazon was considering something and here is a direct quote from what they wrote, quote, Amazon doesn't want to shoulder the blame for the cost of the trade war, so the e commerce giant will soon show how much
tariffs are adding to the price of each product. According to a person familiar with the plan, let's remember that the shopping site will display how much an item's cost is derived from tariffs right next to the product's total listed price.
Kind of like how Temu has already done.
Ah, yes, very very good. Temu customers in the US are being hit with steep import charges due to tariffs. That is happening right now. That was reported by NBC News on the twenty eighth of April, and this punch bowl thing came out on the twenty ninth. Temu is apparently doing the old import charges because of you know, the import what do we call it? Guys, it's not a trade war. It's not a trade war.
It's a healthy conversation.
The healthy economic exchange of ideas. That's happening right now across the world.
The discourse, Yeah, more like discord.
The team website is doing this thing. It's like, hey, guess what, you know, shipping is a lot more because there's an import charge.
Now, that's what it's a line item, it's a separate light item from shipping. It's like also, I think.
Most people would see that as being transparent and as you know, letting the consumer know where this is coming from. Right. But if I'm not mistaken, the Trump administration uh clapped back at this pretty significantly, calling it a political and hostile move.
Well, let's go to NBC News again to get some more information, because according to them, Amazon actually made no changes like that to its platform. But the reporting bi punch Bowl News made its way all the way to the White House very quickly, and President Trump did, according to NBC News and a White House official, he did put in a call to Jeff Bezos personally, and a
White House official did confirm that this happened. Happened on Tuesday, the day that this kind of amounds to stay, April twenty ninth.
And I'm laughing and stickering in a supportive way.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure sure. And the quote from the White House official is that the President expressed his displeasure at the concept of what was reported in punch Bowl News again, the idea of putting a whole separate tariff's price next to something on an Amazon website, but not Amazon by the way, we're not talking about Amazon Proper, like if you go to Amazon Prime right now.
They're talking about Amazon Hall Haul, which is a whole other site that is meant to be a competitor of TMU and Wish and all these old it's like.
Ultra low cost mm hmmm.
So like a lot of the like Amazon Select kind of products that they make in house, things like that.
Maybe I don't know exactly what they sell, but they are cheap, cheap, cheap products compared to what you get on Amazon.
Proper, Amazon Hall Find new faves for way.
Less, got it?
This is the first for me.
Well, guys, it seems like the administration has been taking the stance that this is not a tax and that the other countries are going to be carrying this, which is clearly not the case.
And all this to me is is making that clear.
But it seems to be a defiance of a lie, therefore an inconvenient truth.
Let's call it right, Well, let's uh, let's point everybody to our previous episode on tariffs. I think that addresses some of the economic questions, some of the arguments of proponents, and some of the arguments of critics. But to your point, Noal, the way that tariffs are understood here in the US is really coming to bear because there are a lot of misconceptions. The origin country, the origin company right or manufacturer is not going to seek to pay those tariffs.
They are going to what passed the cost on to the consumer. Hence the line item, Hence the I would posit, Matt, Hence the White House calling Jeff and say, hey, man, come on, you know what I mean.
So the at the heart of it, it will it will make the the Amazons of the world look bad because now when you go on as a consumer to purchase a product and object or whatever it is, you see that prices way higher, right, so you think, oh my gosh, these Amazon or whatever prices are way too high. I can't afford this anymore. Amazon doesn't want you to feel that way. Amazon wants you to know these prices are a direct result of these policies or this thing that's happening right.
Right, Like this is not more money for us as Amazon, Yes, exactly, the result of things beyond our control. Now, can you use a VPN to spoof a Canadian address and maybe drive up well, that's up to.
You, man, maybe, but in this case, at least personally, guys, it was interesting to me to see this because that phone call did happen. The head of the United States government called the head of Amazon and said, hey, what gives and then something appears to have maybe altered maybe maybe. This is a quote from President Donald Trump. He was asked about the call, he said, quote, Jeff Bezos was very nice, he was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly,
and he did the right thing. Right now, this concept of he solved a problem, he did the right thing. That means that the influence, or if that is true, it means the influence that the White House has over major industrial players is pretty steep, right sure. But counter to that, here's what an Amazon spokesperson told the NEC News quote. The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Hall store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products. This was never approved and is not
going to happen. This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site, and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon property.
Why controversial? Why is this controversial? I don't understand. It seems like it's only controversial because it is shedding light on something very real that is actually happening.
Sure, I would argue there's a second controversy a play, but we'll save that for a second.
I guess what I'm saying is that shouldn't be controversial.
If this is what it is, why not call it what it is unless it is something different than what the administration says it is.
Right, clearly is the case.
Yeah. The the problem here is that it has the potential to make decisions look maybe like not the best decisions, to paint an administration maybe not in the best light, and that administration then has the power to pull a lever and say, hey, don't do that thing that makes us look.
Bad, especially a very administration that campaigned on being quite pro business, right, quite economically focused, future economically future focused. So the idea then that look, the ugly truth about the US and many other countries is that conversations like that happen beat Medling constantly. You know what I mean? This is different.
Behind closed doors, right usually, this is what this is what I would propose as a second controversy.
Jeff, you got a leaky ship, my guy, Because someone close to the thing said a thing that happened, discussed, and it immediately reached sixteen hundred Pennsylvania, and then you had that hot phone call. You know what I mean. Some people are going to get fired off that one because they've messed with Jeff's afternoon.
And the big question is who are these punch bowl news people? You can look it up on there about us. It's really interesting. They're insiders and a bunch of journalists who are trying to do their own thing.
It's kind of cool to this point though maybe as a follow up, like it hasn't a lot of this tariff business sort of been shifted as a result of a meeting that took place between Trump and some high level execs. For some retailers, some big box retailers.
Ooh, conversations are ongoing. Is going to be our official line. But yeah, people are watching the stock market, like hawks, the Walton family or the people who do the actual work for the Walton family. Right from Walmart fame a couple of other big businesses, especially Target, and then especially
other industrial manufacturers, steel manufacturers, the automotive industry. For anybody who watched the recent the recent speech by the president to mark the one hundred days, right, that's the milestone we'll use for a new administration in the US. He's in Michigan, and he spends a lot of time talking about how advantageous the tariffs are. So apolitically, the current administration has really pinned their future and penned their pr
and optics on the concept of tariffs being a success. Therefore, things that run counter to that, especially if they're from people who are considered allied with the administration one way or another, that can be seen as a betrayal. That's the logic that the potus is walking.
Through, But wasn't the line that came through the execs, Like if in two weeks, if you continue down this course, shelves will be empty.
We won't have any stuff left.
And that is from Axios reporting from Kelly Tycho and Nathan bomy Bornie. I think Boey retail wipe out Trump tariff stoke fears of shortages and price hikes. Executives from big box retailers like Walmart and Target and Home Depot, in a meeting Monday of this week, warned Trump that his trade policy could trigger massive product shortages and price spikes.
This is from the Axios piece.
The largest companies are reportedly pressuring suppliers to absorb extra costs. We have decades of experience with buyers plus long standing supplier relationships, Walmart CEO Doug McMillan told reporters earlier this month, with smaller retailers of course having fewer options.
And then you can see another Axios piece a little bit later that is titled Trump softens tariff toad amid empty shelves, warning and market slump by Mark Kapudo Ben Berkowitz.
So Axios is following this. They've been pretty close to the post on it, and it supports what you were saying there and all the idea that there are backroom conversations happening and there are hard economic realities that don't always fit ideology and campaign speeches, which again is not is not unique to any administration.
And as of today at least, the line from the Press secretary is that there are no plans to roll back to so there is still this disconnect again.
Yeah, like I was saying earlier, there's been so much emphasis put on this right and this is not you know, to derail us too far. They are, Matt, but it is something a lot of folks are paying attention to. And if you go to you know, your local community, you will hear people fear fearful that there is a series of massive price hikes on the horizon, maybe something similar to the price hikes encounter during the COVID pandemic.
Absolutely, And just to jump back to that NBC News article, the original one. It mentions the response of White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt, who, upon being asked a question about the whole situation with Amazon Hall, she responded, quote, I just got off the phone with the President about Amazon's announcement. This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.
Now why is that worth commenting on? Because the concept that a company, a private company, can make a decision or even float, making a decision based on the situation, the lay of the land, how everything's going, that an administration, at least the spokesperson of an administration can say out loud that that was a political and hostile act.
And got shut down before any hits right.
Well, and then the president can make a call and shut it down. So it's just the concept that the administration can have and wield that power over private industry is interesting, right, it's interesting, and it continues. This concept continues over to the FBI, and it continues with all media, all news media. When we jump over to an NPR article written by Ryan Lucas on April twenty fifth, and it is discussing certain protections that journalists have when they
are speaking with sources for stories. So we'll go directly to the article. The Justice Department rescinded a Biden era policy that provided protections to journalists in leak investigations, paving the way for authorities to once again use subpoenas and compel testimony from reporters in probes targeting leakers. So specifically, when they're using the term leakers, which is interesting.
It's not bla leakers.
Well, yeah, that would be good.
That's fun.
Yeah, it's it. These are also human beings, generally referred to as whistleblowers, people who are inside something and they put a hand up or sometimes quietly say something to a journalist who can then write about it and let everybody know.
Well, and the big line from the administration would be that these the sources are not to be believed because they are anonymous, and therefore it's a way of shutting down potential factuality, right.
Which is unfortunate because that is also sometimes true quite often. We've talked about it in the show. Well, ye, just as in the in the previous thing, the original reporting that came out of punch Bowl News was quote someone close to the thing, right, an anonymous person in this case, Uh, at least within this memo that was sent out by
Attorney General Pam BONDI. Uh, the I'll just read I'll read it directly quote federal government employees intentionally leaking sensitive information to the media undermines the ability of the Department of Justice to uphold the rule of law, protect civil rights, and keep America safe. This conduct is illegal and wrong, and it must stop. And when she is saying federal employees, that's you know, anybody working for the federal government. But it also is hinting at a very specific group within
the government, the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Because we're going to connect it to a Reuter's piece from the twenty ninth of April, FBI starts using polygraph tests in internal leak investigations, right, So the Federal Bureau of Investigations is cracking down on its own team members because it's out the moles, right, Yeah, it's it is. All of this is culminating in my mind to paint a picture of a very paranoid, chaotic situation time and perhaps administration.
Yeah, we see some McCarthyism on the rise. There is always a precedent, you know, even in a country as young as the United States, the continuing experiment in which we reside, we can also see, to add to the point made earlier there, Matt, we can also see descriptions of Defense Secretary Pete Hexith, who purportedly reportedly excuse me, spent about half his time just trying to root out leaks, in addition, of course to being super bad at his
own opsect with signal and those communications. But yeah, there does seem to be a is a phrase that hasn't aged well. But there does seem to be an intense circling of the wagons, a deficit of trust internally, and people are scrambling to prove themselves the most loyal and in doing so, often scrambling as a result to discover disloyalty in other.
People, which often can lead to discovering things where nothing exists to your McCarthyism and the witchness of it all. And I was just gonnadd There's always going to be some leaks here and there, But when you start to see a proliferation of them, as we do in this situation, you start to think about discontent within an organization and folks trying to affect change from within.
It seems that way when the leaks begin to agree. It's kind of like eyewitness accounts, you know what I mean. It's tough because you can't verify this some of this stuff. I believe that all of us would argue that journalistic rights and protections for sources are one of the things that makes this country better than a lot of other places. And again that's not saying the US is perfect. I'm saying the ability for the US US at its best, to be honest with itself and its population is a
big deal. It's like diplomatic.
Community, and that it's a tenant that protects a larger situation.
I like that.
Yeah, it's one of the things that makes democracies function at all. Right, if you can know the truth, then you can vote on whatever the truth is. But if everything is just quiet, covered up, kept secret and hidden, then who knows.
Just talking about sources, anonymous sources close to the investigation.
That's right. Just to jump back to Pete Hegsath, it reminds me of the banality of evil that we've talked about on the show many a time, where people are attempting to compensate for or cover up their own accidents, their own like whoopsies and incompetence and all that stuff. Where Pete Hegsath wrote a memo, His initial memo is the thing that left open the idea of, hey, we might have to polygraph you know, members of the FBI
to figure out who's leaking all of this information. And he is the guy who got confidential information and just send it out to family members and others.
And we know polygraphs are notoriously unreliable too, So when you start basing a system throwing people into polygraphs, you really have the potential for a witch hunt on your hands, don't you have?
You guys ever take it on polygraph I have not.
Yeah, And if I know you can fake it by tightening your sphincter, we.
Have an episode about it. Yeah.
It really does worry me that if the kind of mistakes are made and continually made that are that would make a group of people within the government look bad. Then there's just going to be compensation, external compensation for those mistakes by making other people somehow suffer the consequences.
Yeah, fall guys, Uh, Yeah.
That's all I got today. There's lots a lot.
Talk, a lot, got well with the best possible wishes to innocent people in Pakistan and India. We're gonna call it for this evening, We're off to noctivigate. We cannot wait to hear from you, fellow conspiracy realists. Tell us what's on your mind, especially if you live in Spain, Portugal or the area of France affected by these blackouts. We have much more to get to on rare mineral or rare earth metal access as well. That's going to
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