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 Noah. They call me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is the top of the week, which means it is time for strange news, bodies being found, games being regulated. A shout out perhaps at the end of tonight's show to all the stories we're not going to get to. But first things first, Raps, stay warm folks here amid the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere. But don't stay too warm.
Oh no, not too warm. Wait, Ben, before we get into the stories, do you want to tell a personal story a little bit? You sent us a video of something that's been in the news that I was I can't wait to hear the full story about.
Oh jeez, well, Matt, yes, it is true. Contacted contacted you off hours. Recently took a domestic flight wherein sitting in an exit row by a window, because planes are amazing and it's super awesome to look outside of a plane while it's in the air, set by an exit window, and saw that the interior of the window, the plastic shell of it, was detaching slowly from the rest of the plane.
Yeah, it's I feel like maybe I saw something about that recently happening.
Maybe your plane was used in like a fashion photo shooter or something.
It was a Boeing seven to one to seven Max flying domestically. Yeah, alerted, the alerted the staff, great staff on the plane and they said, well, you know, it's like the old Yeah, it's like the old joke about complaining to a waiter about a fly in your soup and the waiter says, well, don't tell anyone because they'll
want one too. But uh, but made it, made it safe and sound, and it perhaps goes to a larger conversation we'll have in a future episode about aviation, the nature of regulation, the nature of flying the friendly sky.
I mean, but I think the day you sent it was the day that that Alaska Airlines flight had literally a hidden door inside the fuselage pop off mid flight.
And then.
We used to do that, and then the FAA grounded all the Boeing similar aircraft, so it was just like a thing. And I'm really glad you made it through that flight. And we're here today recording to talk about some news that's strange.
Yeah, because you might feel unsafe in the skies, but folks, you can also be unsafe in your own all.
Right now, before we get too much of anxiety, this story does have a nice little conclusion with some things that we can protect ourselves with. But it is going to get eerie for a little bit, and it is a tragic story, so prepare yourself. Here we go. I'm not going to read the title of this article from NBC News Wyff, written by Janis Simon, but I'm going
to be Simon. Yeah, I am going to read a lot from it and then say the title at the end, the headline so you can find it and shout out to you Janis for writing it and to you Wyff. But here we go, and this is going to be a lot of this is verbatim, so it's just kind of a storytelling thing. So here we go. This takes place in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and according to report from
their Police Department, the Spartanburg Police Department. Police and medics were called just after six pm on this past Saturday, as we're recording this, so on Saturday, January sixth, to this home on Woodview Avenue there in Spartanburg. The family called and to bring them there for a welfare check because they hadn't heard from their parents since I guess
it was the previous Wednesday, January third. When the officers arrived, he said, all the doors are locked, but the window leading into a bedroom was unsecures the way they put it so like you could open it from the outside.
They removed the screen to that window, looked into the bedroom and they saw that there was an elderly couple in there that the family had called for the welfare check, and unfortunately that couple appeared to be deceased just from opening the window and looking in, so already tragic, like, oh my gosh, what happened. As the medics like basically went through that window, they noticed that the resonance was,
as they describe it, extremely hot. In the bedroom. The man was found laying on the bed unclothed, facing upwards, and the woman was on the side of the bed in a chair, kind of slouched clothed, and they did not observe any signs of a struggle, no signs of foul play. But again the home itself was as they described, quote, extremely hot.
But no fire or anything, right, no signs of a fire.
The Spartanburg fire department was called the check for because what would you think maybe happen if there's no fire, but there's.
Exactly something?
Yeah for sure.
Yeah, so no signs of foul play, as you.
Said, exactly, so fire department comes in checks for carbon monox poisoning. They didn't find any signs of that, so again, what the heck happened? The medics and first responders checked the temperature, the body temperature of the deceased, and they were using devices that measured up to one hundred and six degrees. That's the height of the temperature that could be read by these devices. Both victims were above that threshold. So basically the thermometer went two one oh six and
then stopped. It errored out right that first of all, a human body temperature of one hundred and six.
Is not good, no, especially if you're older. I mean exactly situation, it's very close to uh, it's very close to organ shutdown impact exactly.
And if the thermometer isn't reading even to the actual temperature, it is likely that they were. That's probably how they died, probably right, but you can't see that for sure.
Make sure you think of that cartoon scenario where the thermometer gets so hot that it pops, you know, I mean, yeah, to make light. But that's that's why. That is beyond the ability of the device to measure exactly.
So listen to this. By the way, this is in South Carolina at a time when it is freezing, so not necessarily freezing temperatures, so below thirty two degrees fahrenheit outside, but we are very close to that threshold at this time in South Carolina where they where this house is, right, that's the exterior temperature. The fire department who measured the interior temperature of the home got a reading of one hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit inside the house.
So i'd be like a little longer fifty celsius.
Correct, yes, something, just using fahrenheit for the folks in the States. And again that's just how my mind works with temperatures. Still unfortunately, but one hundred and twenty degrees is super hot. I would I don't know, guys, Median medium let's say median temperature for my home is around seventy five, like seventy four or seventy five, pretty good regulation.
That's toasty.
I mean for it to even maintain at that level, you'd have to have pretty good insulation.
Well, that's in the weather.
I guess that's more of a when it's hot outside temperature maybe or something.
I don't know, but most American households are somewhere in that range, like sixty eight degrees fahrenheit to like seventy ish, depending upon exterior climate.
Exactly seventy when it's cold outside is making your stuff work pretty hard to maintain that temperature exactly.
So for that home to be one hundred and twenty degrees when it's so cold outside is a serious issue. This reading was also taken after If you imagine first responders getting into the house, opening that window, then going through and opening the front door and opening probably other doors and leaving them open. That is, after twenty minutes of the home being opened to like the cold air or the hot air. I guess, being pushed out of a home.
Oh and just for comparison, not to be ghoulish, we can look to most people's home ovens when you are cooking something. When you're baking something in an oven, one of the warnings you will receive is not to open the door before things are done, or to be very mindful about it, because one will lose so much heat when the seal is broken. That's what happens here. And it's still one hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit.
Yes, after minutes, twenty minutes I mean, and with it being quite cold outside, so I mean that transfer of heat would have been very quick. And for it to have only gone down to that temperature after twenty minutes is I use the word remarkable.
This is nothing but tragic.
But you know, scientifically speaking, thermodynamically speaking, this is a very very fascinating situation.
I agreed.
So let's say you're in the mind of those first responders. There's no fire in the home, the temperature is that high, What the heck's going on?
What do you check?
Check? The you check the heater or the heating elements there, because I imagine this is a home that has a water heater of some sort definitely has some sort of HVAC capability.
That's it. The radiators, the air, furnace, the boilers, whatever it is that's heating that home, whether it's central air or some other you know, even space heaters. You go and you check whatever is heating that home. So they go down.
They we're smelling gas, right, so the natural gas. So they the assumption there is that this is a gas heated home.
Yes, they were smelling gas, but again no carbon monoxide poisoning levels. There are levels that would kill a person right right, And this is we're talking about natural gas here. That's probably coming out from some whoever serves their natural gas needs, whoever it is. So they go down to the basement, they find the heater and this is this is according to the official report. Firefighter said quote the heater was so hot it looked as if the basement
was currently on fire, even though it was not. He said, I guess there was a warm glow to it of some sort that looked as though the fire.
That haze that can happen, just some heat, like in the desert, you know, where you start to see things looking a little little dreamy, you know, Yeah, I bet that's exactly what it.
Was, dissipating from pavement.
Yeah, that's that's you know what, that makes so much sense, guys, that's exactly what they're describing. But they so they noticed that, oh it wasn't actually on fire, so they were able to get over to it close enough to turn the thing off. They measured the surface temperature of that air controller, the heater itself, and it was over one thousand degrees fahrenheit, which would.
Be five hundred and thirty seven something degree celsius. Thank you, Ben, Yes, real, jeez.
But just to have that amount of heat somewhere in your home where there's likely wood and you know what, whatever other materials are in your home that likely could catch fire, it's a wonder that nothing did right.
That it is that part is indeed is indeed remarkable, and we could imagine that had had these first responders not arrived when they did that, the house could indeed have have gone up in flames. But yes, so, Matt, is there so some of us listening this evening are
HVAC experts and and may have had similar encounters. Indeed, one of the first questions for all of us non HVAC experts is going to be something like, shouldn't shouldn't mass produced heating devices have some sort of sail safe that allows you to like that that ensures this won't happen.
You're right on the money there, dude. Okay, So in order to there's more to the story, we'll we'll come back to it, but let's let's address this because this is super important. I made a call to Stuart pro Heating an Air, which is just a local HVAC company up here where I live.
Cig work, by the way, creative work, Stuart.
They actually do. I talked to Antonio there and he is He is saying it depends on the age of the system that was installed in that house, but all systems, even older ones, should function in series and should have several safety mechanisms in place to where if one of them is malfunctioning or just not working or not plugged in, the whole furnace itself would not even turn on. Like redundancy, it would know even if it's an older system, it would know that it should just not turn on to
continue heating the house. However, he is saying that newer systems have a lot more devices that are connected for different types of issues that can go wrong. He mentioned a couple of things that I didn't fully understand, but he's saying like seven at least seven safety switches. There's a limit switch for temperature, a rollout trigger. I'm not sure what that is, a blower safety switch.
So like.
If the fire flames actually occur and start to go out of the system, like exit the system where they're supposed to be, then it will shut itself off at.
The very least though.
I mean, I've I've blown my circuit breaker trip to my circuit breaker just by plugging in like a power saw and hitting it and then all of a sudden click everything. Why would this not have triggered a circuit to reset?
Well, it depends electrical or not right, And that's the thing, Like is the amount of electricity going into it a problem? Or is it just that the system at theself doesn't know to shut off? Which is another which is another thing I checked out. I'll just shout this out. I went to Golden Rule plumbing, heating, cooling, and electrical. This person named Mark pop Paup wrote an article about common problems with a heating system that would cause it to continually heat a home thermometer.
Thermometer has to play a role, right thermostatic.
Yeah, So if there's a problem with the thermostat and it's either non functioning or not installed correctly, or something happens to the wires, then potentially the system doesn't know that it's heated up to seventy degrees fahrenheit and it thinks maybe it's forty degrees fahrenheit in the home. So it's going to stay on and keep warming until that thermostat reaches the level it's supposed to hit.
But there's nothing for it to tell it when to stop.
Basonly, well, theoretically, again, at least according to Antonio and a lot of other writing, theoretically, the system should know to turn off because there it would the internal temperature. If it gets above one hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit, the system should turn off, which in that case, it was a thousand degrees.
Multiple failures, you know, in whatever happened. I'm curious to see what the that The ultimate takeaway was.
Well, well, here's another thing from the article. Another major problem could be a frayed or disconnected wire. This is huge because I'm going to read directly from the article here. Whether you have a furnace, boiler or heat pump, a dedicated thermostat wire signals the heating system to shut off.
If this wire has frayed or is accidentally disconnected, your heater will not know when it's time to turn off, and you will have perpetually warm air blowing, which, in my mind, at least no expert, that feels like potentially what happened, because and only because according to the family. You remember the family called in that wellness check. Yes, they were at the home on Wednesday, January third, because the house was not getting hot enough. They're both their
water heater and their HVAC. Their heating system was not properly functioning, so it was really cold in the house. So family members went down into the basement attempted to fix the issues. And I'm just going to read this from the article. It says they started quote fiddling with it, moving a wire and the pilot light turned on. Once the light came back on, they left the home and then a few days later, after not hearing from their parents,
they became concerned. So unfortunately and terrifyingly and tragically, it seems like maybe their attempts to help and fix this thing caused a problem that nobody saw coming right.
Well right, big takeaway for me is that don't fiddle with stuff that you don't really know what you're fiddling with. And even if it seems like a waste of money, probably best to call a professional in situations like this. I don't know, I mean, if you're not confident.
Well, I think that is one of the major takeaways, right, Like with anything electrical in your home, even if you know what you're doing, you think you know what you're doing, you just got to take such caution, right, any type electricity and anything that's going to deal with a pipe that contains natural gas.
Good God, also brilliant marketing to call it natural gas in the first place. Story for a different day. But Matt, like, it makes me think to the we know from the article you shared that this couple themselves, they were not extremely mobile, they were an older cup yes, And is it then is it then possible that they fell asleep like I'm wondering. I'm wondering if there's a hockey sticker j curve escalation of temperature that occurred. I don't know. There are a lot of questions.
Still, yeah, it's a horrible thing to think about, that whole boiling frogs thing that we always bring up on this show. But after it, you know, when it's uncomfortably hot, it's at least better than being freezing. And if you do go to sleep as it's warming up, you may not know. You may not wake up in your body temperature just continues heating. But we don't know in that either way, it's a tragic scenario. We don't know what
happened to either victim in this scenario. There's been further reporting that you can find from Channel seven News A CBS channel WSPA. There's more stuff from WYFF. These are local stations. You can find their websites. The coroner has released the names of the couple. I don't think it's necessary for us to say it online here, especially just when it comes to privacy for the family, But you can find it if you want to.
Guys.
I don't have much more to say other than do like, theoretically, the systems won't do this, and there's so many companies out there that can look at a system if there's a major malfunction. Just use caution if you're in there working on it by yourself, or you send a family member in because I don't know, it's dangerous. But it's very unlikely this scenario is ever gonna happen, but there are major problems they can occur when you're dealing with
natural gas and electricity. If you want to read the original article that we cited here from WYFF, you can find the headline South Carolina couple found dead in home where heater was found to be one thousand degrees. Police say, okay, we'll be right back with more strange.
News, and we've returned with more strange news. This one is a bit of an update for some stuff that we've talked about regarding the gaming industry in China, and when I say gaming industry, I'm referring to mobile games.
I don't believe a lot of this regulation necessarily applies to consoles, but there are, as we know, a lot of very very popular mobile games, and they're extremely popular in We talked a bit about the Chinese gaming companies ten Cent and net Ease, which are two massive players in the space that focus I believe, almost exclusively on these types of mobile games.
And while certain console type games.
Like you know, for the PlayStation or Xbox or whatever, do have micro transactions, ways to update parts of the game that you don't like get all of upon purchase, or maybe you know things like Fortnite, where the game itself is free, but you buy in game currency that you can use to upgrade your skins or weapons or what have you. Mobile games, the bread and butter of
most of these is in app purchases. The games oftentimes are completely free, you know, to download and to play, but you end up in situations, as Ben would put it, situations that will not really allow you to advance in the game or to feel as though you're getting the most out of the game. And these are by design.
They get you frustrated. They get you in a mindset where if you're really into the game and you want to quote unquote compete, especially if they're online you know, components or like multiplayer competitions with some of these apps, you want to be competitive, so you're gonna invest, You're gonna throw down some actual bucks, uh, non bend bucks.
In these ecosystems, which.
Are kind of these little closed ecosystems. Oftentimes the purchases are not through some sort of third party marketplace like an app store or whatever they are directly.
You know, with that the company that makes the game.
And we've talked about China oftentimes a little bit draconian methods of controlling, you know, some of the behaviors of their citizens with things like you know, sesame credit, for example, the idea of having to you know, have a certain score in order to get airline tickets in order to travel, and all of that stuff, and ben that is still somewhat of a you know, down the road thing. It's not really happening or has been rolled out the whole sesame credit system.
Sesame credit in its final form, as the Pokemon fans might say, I think it's The problem is, as we talked about, as you indicated, it started as opt in, and I don't know if it's fully I don't know whether it's fully rolled out to all of mainland China's population, but is definitely on the way.
Okay.
So that's all that to say, this is a thing that the government of China likes to do. They would claim for the greater good, they would claim for the benefit of their citizens, and a lot of these regulations extends to the gaming I believe they've already imposed an hour and a half daily playtime limit for minors. And this is something that affects the two point four billion gamers in China. And now this is actually a story that kind of kicked off or was announced in late December,
but we haven't talked about it. China has announced plans to roll out some even further kind of limiting regulations, you know, that will affect the way people are able to interact with these types of games. First and foremost in this kind of bundle of legislation, proposed new restrictions would prohibit gaming companies from giving out things like rewards for daily use and you know, and that's not monetary rewards. It would be like some sort of little bonus power up or something.
Like that, like an in game dopamine fix.
That's exactly what is. I've played so many games that have that. If you log in daily, you get a thing and it's just a yeah, it's just a tie anything. But if you do it seven days in a row, you're gonna get an even bigger reward on day seven.
Yeah. Oh real quick, no, Matt, I have to I have to clarify here because I think it's a confusion that happens in the West.
Now.
The the what we're talking about at the setup here is the social credit system. That's what China is calling it now. Originally we in the West were calling it the sesame credit system. However, this is very clever sesame credit. There is a thing now that is unrelated which is gonna mess up your search terms when you're looking for the real problem, which is again social credit system or like it's something like schehay signong t shie or something.
But just so everybody knows, that's why it's hard to learn more about this by sure, well.
You know, and for me, I play a lot of not a lot, but I have a handful of phone apps that I really enjoy playing. I actually am a subscriber to the Apple Arcade an ecosystem or whatever, and the most of the games that they feature on that are of really high quality and they don't really That's one thing that you get when you pay for a subscription like that is you're not bugged with in app purchases.
That's part of it.
You're paying a little bit upfront so you don't have to, you know, get bled over the course of you know, your your lifetime with the game. And one of the games that I play on that is called card Jockey. It's like a solitaire meets horse racing game, which is kind of weird, weird combo, but I really enjoy playing it. But that is actually the first time that I've noticed a daily reward thing.
It will be some little like.
A carrot, you know, for your horse that gives you a boost at the beginning of the race, or you know, a certain type of crop, you know, for hitting your horse on the butt to make a gallop faster.
But what they have.
Done is they have Yeah, this isn't hasn't been rolled out yet, but the proposed legislation would limit those things. I think it would actually prohibit those types of instead to based rewards. So that's one another thing that that is being proposed is to prohibit topping off of account balances. So a lot of times within these game gaming ecosystems, like you know with with Fortnite, there's a name that
for this currency you can literally buy v bucks. Now, v bucks is roadblock, right, I think you're asolutely right, hundred percent. There's roebucks in roadblocks, which as we know, is very targeted at younger people, fortnite seems a little less so it seems a little more widely adopted. But I know a lot of young people that really enjoy
it as well. But this part of the of the bundle of legislation regulations would prohibit or it would limit to how frequently users can top off their account of virtual money that you have to you know, pay actual money. And the thing that's interesting is, you know, we know how long it took for all line gambling in the United States, like, you know, to be more or less legal. If I'm not mistaken. You can play online poker now in the United States for real money, but.
Back in the day you couldn't.
And I know, I knew, I knew a lot of people, not a lot of people, but a handful of people that were professional gamblers, and they would move around depending on what the law was in that particular country, so that they could constantly play online without having.
To go to actual casinos.
So some of these things feel very similar to the kinds of incentives that you get when you're making bets in online gambling apps or whatever.
But in the top off scenario, you're talking about just how much you can actually like the upper threshold how much that wallet will hold, right, it must it must.
Be something along those lines.
It may not be that, though to me it seems more like it's less about the upper level and about how frequently you can add money.
Oh, I see, And that kind.
Of makes such an important distin because if the if, the if, the amount, the maximum was whatever it was, and you deplete that because you can't control yourself, you know, in the span of a couple of days, it would probably behoove the user to not be able to add any more money for a period of time.
Especially if there's a miner involved. Right. A lot of these appear to be aimed at at younger users.
It does feel like that, and that is what the the government is saying that a lot of this is definitely targeting miners, for example, another part of this legislation or actually this may have been an older one, it may already be in place. But you know how on a lot of streaming apps you can like tip people, uh,
you know, Twitch for example or whatever. There's you know, all kinds of cam type apps that don't necessarily have to be what your mind immediately goes to, like in terms of like OnlyFans or you know, more adult content. But yeah, you can tip streamers of any variety, and you know, to have minors be able to do that could potentially be problematic.
Sure, I mean think about, for a certain demographic of our listeners this evening, the days of landline phones where people would call a nine hundred number right and get charged X amount per minute. That shares some of the same I think connotations you're mentioning here in all the idea that there were, you know, dirty talk nine hundred numbers.
But I have it on good authority without over explaining, I have it on good authority that a couple of those nine hundred numbers were just joke lines, and kids would call in to hear someone telling them jokes on a landline phone, and for the kids it doesn't matter, and the parents won't know until they get the phone bill.
So like with playing with playing games on a mobile device, if you are a minor, then odds are your your allowance, for lack of a better word, your your financial interaction with that mobile game is going to be linked to your guardians' finances, which is a nasty bill to get when you're like, what on earth has happened.
You spent nine hundred dollars on room service.
Yeah, right, but now it's like nine thousand dollars for a loop crate.
On whatever it might have, right, widgets or what have you. That's really that's a really good point. And you mentioned the nine hundred numbers too, and like, I don't know about you, but knowing that, yeah, I know, I didn't have a credit card or access to anything like that from my parents when I was a kid.
Things are different now. Kids have their own Venmo accounts that are.
You know, able to be replenished by their parents, but they don't have a direct access to the credit card. Or some kids get their own credit card. It depends on, you know, the parenting play. But like I would have been way too terrified as a kid to snag my parents credit card and try out one of those nine hundred numbers. But I definitely called the number because you get a bit of a risk, a little little outgoing message, and that was enough for me.
See how far you can get before you have to pay?
Yeah, I've done it.
Did similar things like that as well. When telephones became a technology like the there's also this idea I don't know, I'm tempted here, Noel, to say that this is arguably this is a good thing because this does protect minors. The one thing you mentioned that may cast it may cause some of us to cast a glance a skance, is the idea of removing tipping for streamers, because we know that streamer platforms low key were away or a platform for many subversive groups domestically to communicate.
That the weirdless satanic murder cult that we did that we talked the order of nine angles.
I'm talking like in domestic that was definitely.
One that used that ecosystem as well.
Sure you know, I'm just saying, like there's some Twitch streamers like here's the truth about wigers, or here's the truth about Tianaman or whatever.
I understand what you're saying.
It's a potentially a governmental way of shutting down that kind of uh, you know talk, or that kind of potentially.
Yeah, I don't speak in truth to power.
They're already so closely surveilled, right, so maybe that's maybe that's a bridge too far or a tank too far in the square. But the the idea about protecting minors, though, that does seem like a good idea.
Right, All of these sound fine to me. There was another thing that involved pop ups kind of red flagging what's being referred to as irrational behavior. You know, like again, we all hung out and had a good time in Vegas. Right, None of those machines red flag irrational behavior.
They just spur you on. You know, they're literally goading you.
With these these half micro victories in the hopes that it will you know, weaponize your psychology against you. And you know, we went into that situation fully aware of the things at play, and still we had a good time. I mean, it was fun. That was worth the price of admission. But yeah, we know there were definitely times where when the alcohol was flowing such we probably pushed
it a little farther than we would have otherwise. And but of course, you know, to gamble and to be in a situation like a casino, you do have to be, you know, of age.
Of legal age.
One last thing I wanted to mention was that those companies that I that I that I named the top of the show, ten cent and net Ease, this is not good for them or their bottom lines. Any of these types of regulations are bad. The the already pre existing, you know, regulations regarding game time for underage users already not great for them, and I believe when those were rolled through, and please any listeners correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe those haven't been pushed through yet, but I believe
they have. At the very least, the number of hours that miners are allowed to spend on these games is monitored, which is in keeping with the whole monitoring of the Internet at large that happens even for you know, adults in China. But ten Cent and and net Ease both took massive hits to their stock price when these new
regulations were just announced as being up for comments. The Reuters reported at nearly eighty billion dollars evaluation from these two companies collectively were wiped out, it says briefly, So I think there was some backlash. And obviously I don't know what the Chinese equivalent of lobbying like we have over here is, but I would imagine there's something in terms of how these giant corporations interact with the governments. You know, they can't be totally at odds with one another,
but maybe they are. I don't know, Ben, is there anything there like how do giant corporations in China interact with the government in the hopes that they can influence regulation or is that just not a thing over there.
In the way that it is over here.
Well, there's no campaign necessarily to be funded, right, it's a little different.
Well, I mean, you know, if you're a very successful Chinese company, then you are inherently going to be controlled in some way by the Chinese government or the party. So the best way to succeed in the government or in the nation of China is to have a member
of the party on your board, which definitely happens. I got to point out too, man, the idea, folks, tell me if this is off base, the idea that their stock went down with the potential loss of billions of dollars, Is that not kind of like losing billions of dollars worth of child labor? If these things are really meant to prey on children, pray on minors like those, get those kids back in the mobile game, minds, is what ten cent investors are saying.
It's a good question.
I mean, you know, you know, you the heads of those companies might argue that the children are their audience, you know, not necessarily, but they are feeding money into the system.
I've had I've been asked whether there were games on my phone, et cetera. There's a reason that's a meme. And if you've seen children who are playing games, like I think we can all attest kids will treat that like a job, you know what I mean, Like I've got to get done with this school mallarchy so I can get back to my real thing, which is insert game here.
It is funny, though, because initiatives like this, due to me, sort of signal that in some way, the Chinese government cares a little bit more about the let's just call it intellect or the quality of mind of their citizens more so than we do over here, because we don't have regulations like this. The closest thing we have is like movie ratings and like things like that. But you know, no one over here is trying to in ratings for games, but no one over here is trying to monitor how
how much time your kid spends on the computer. That's what parents are for, and if they do a good job at it, then that's great. But this to me and it is sort of a nanny state kind of mentality.
So I get that. I'm not saying this is good.
I'm just saying it seems to me like this is the Chinese government saying we care. We want our citizenry to be smarter and don't not have their brains rotted by this stuff. But that's interesting because a paper was actually published in August of twenty twenty three in Nature Human Behavior that found that there was really no evidence that any of these regulations had.
Any impact at all on people's behavior.
The researchers partnered with an organization called Unity to examine the more than seven billion hours of gaming time screen time among around two point four billion Chinese game gamers, and they ran it from mid August to twenty nineteen to mid January of twenty twenty. That also included a partial measurement of the period when an hour and a half daily playtime limit was imposed.
Or three hours on holidays.
So the results do indicate that this maybe has negligible returns on the said intellect of citizenry.
Well, I would just say okay, just quickly personally, guys, after we talked about this last I set a limit on my son's PlayStation account that when he and I play games together I set it for an hour and a half, so like in a twenty four hour period, he can only play for an hour and a half. And I would say, just from my experience, it has had a good effect on how much he almost wants to regulate. He knows he has to regulate his time now, and so he's totally okay with doing other activities that
are not related with the television. So I do feel like this could be a great thing.
I'm with you. I just wonder, you know how now you know we're different, We're different country, there's different behaviors. I think there might be slightly higher instances of like mega obsessive gaming.
And I think maybe.
The result of the that the study was measuring was really just showing that there were ways around it or something, you know what I mean, like that not necessarily that it wasn't helping because people were following it. It was not helping because people were finding loopholes or something. I think because I'm with you and with my kid, they have come to a place where they want to self regulate because they know it makes them enjoy life better.
And they actually are but sure enough to realize that obsessive internet use and obsessive gaming is actually a negative and it can make you just not have a great quality of life and can lead to anxiety and you know, social withdrawal and things like that. So I think you're right on the money because what you've done with your son has gotten him to a place where he sees the value in limiting himself.
Right theoretically, yeah, I would like to think so.
Yeah, but i'd like to think so.
Anyway, that's really it something to keep an eye on, for sure. The comment period on this bundle of regulation is not until January the twenty second.
As we record this this we're.
Sitting on January the tenth, so I know there's already been massive backlash and a lot of of the companies, of course, are responsible for that. But anyway, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with another piece of strange news.
And we have returned warning folks there's deep water ahead. This may not be appropriate for all audiences. What I'd like to do to begin the final act of our Strange News segment is to give praise and credit where it is due. Super Important Mission Critical NBC News has a continuing investigation called Lost Rights r Ites and through this investigation, Part four of this investigation learned an incredibly disturbing story. Recently, two hundred and fifty bodies were found
buried in a poppers field in Hinds County, Mississippi. They are along a dirt road on the grounds of what is called a jail work farm. Shout out to our journalist here, John Shoop. You can read this part four of Lost Rights, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing in full. It's disturbing. It is stuff they don't
want you to know. If you go down this dirt road, what you will see is when they say a graveyard, what you're actually going to see is just a bunch of metal rods, no names, just number stamped on the rods. And every few months, for the better part of a decade, inmates on the grounds have been digging new graves, adding new bodies to the already hundreds of people there. And the problem is that the families of these people who passed away from any number of means the families were
never alerted. These are not prisoners being buried, These are not people incarcerated in any way. These are people who fell through the cracks of America's increasingly fragmented social system. And so imagine, then, if you will, that you have put in a missing person's report for a member of your family, a child, a sibling, a parent, a loved one, and you have not heard about this for years, and then you learn that also for years, they have been
buried anonymously in Hinz County, Mississippi. That's what's happening. That's reminding me of our pal Jason Flam's work over at Lava for Good. NBC News found several cases in which these folks were dead and buried in this field, even though the family have put the word out to every possible government agency saying, hey, we're trying to find out what happened to this to our Jane or John Doe,
And it turns out Mississippi just didn't check. And every time these families are contacted, they're saying, look, if we had known what had happened, we would have claimed the remains, we would have given our loved ones a proper funeral. But now how can we trust the government? Right? We did everything correctly, why did we have such an egregious
misstep of justice? And before we continue with that lay of the grizzly ghoulish land here, I have to ask, did you guys hear about this story, like I think it really started coming to the forefront in early January.
I had not.
But even just the part where you're describing the rods with numbers stamped on them, that's some dystopian sounding stuff right there, let alone the part that the story is reporting on the ones that fell through the cracks.
I didn't know the personal stories that you're mentioning here in this series, Ben, Who did you say.
That writer was the writer for this one? Is John Shoop?
Yeah? I just found like I went through some of the links you shared and then found that first story on it, and just to read an entire article on one person who lost their son this way, it's just devastating. I didn't know the details, man, this is this is horrifying.
Apparently, if you like Blagger point out that story this is a human thing. We have to remember these are actual human beings, not just numbers stamped on metal rods. Apparently people have been trying to get records from the county coroner for different burials within the county, but those records don't exist or they were lost prior to twenty sixteen, which is super recent and should really bother you, even
if you don't live in Mississippi. The number of families that are going to find their left one's remains due to this investigation will only increase. Again, it's two hundred and fifteen bodies, not all of which have been identified. And it brought me back to another thing that we haven't We haven't talked about too often here, but I know we've touched on it in previous episodes, the idea
of the pauper's grave. Right, So, how would we describe the Popper's graveyard for any one not in the US or otherwise I'm familiar.
Well, I'll just tell you what I'm looking at in these the series of articles. I see a field that you would see in really any any American state that has I don't know, what would you say, pine trees, right, and then openings, Yeah, suburban esque.
Yeah. They sometimes call a potter's field, like I believe that's another term associated with these Poppers burial sites.
In this case, I think at least the one in the story I'm looking at right now is attached to what they call a penal colony. So at exactly a prison system that is a farm also, and it's it looks to be the same materials that they would use for a street sign, like a piece of metal.
That's just the bar not quite I know what you mean with the rivets the holes.
In exactly, Yeah, just hammered into the ground with what looks to be a piece of cardboard attached to it and like painted like just handwritten, handwritten numbers painted on that piece of cardboard.
And the issues here are myriad. Indeed, you know, the the idea that one could not find records from before twenty sixteen. Again, I just keep going back to how disturbing that is. Now quickly history can be erased. The NBC News investigation says, look, we have a list of we have a list of missing people, and we have in that list we have some confirmed identities, we have some missing or unconfirmed identities. We're having problems like investigating
in good faith with the local government. We know that we have had to remove some people from this list. One person they shout out is Dexter Wade. Dexter Wade is removed from this poppers field and given a proper funeral, and it's due to the reporting of NBC News, which again goes back to the fact that journalism is important.
Okay, let's just talk about Dexter for a moment. He is the subject of that first story and just quickly he left his house on March fifth. An hour after he left his house on foot, he gets hit by a police vehicle.
Yeah, and he's thirty seven years old.
Yeah, but he gets hit by a police officer and is killed on a highway. So, like, imagine a person crossing a highway and gets struck by a police vehicle. First of all, obviously, don't cross the highway on foot. Just not a smart thing to do. But if you get hit by a police vehicle, you'd think somebody would get notified immediately. But that is not what happened.
No, it is not.
And let's go to Let's go to another article by John Shoup, this one from November thirteenth of twenty twenty three. He talks about the arrangements that the Wade family had to go through to find your son. And first off, yes, we are very well aware of folks that there is
truth to the stereotype about corruption in small towns. By the way, send us your stories of small town corruption Conspiracydiheartradio dot Com To your point, Matt, one thing that is just stunning in the worst way is the idea that you could be hit by a police car no one knows except the guy who hits you or the officer who hits you, and the people who agree to cover it up, literally in this case, to cover up the body this article. This article is titled Dexter Wade's
Family a final indignity as he's exhumed without ceremony. Dexter's mother, Betterson Wade, arrives at the Penal farm at the work farm, and when she gets there, after finally learning what happened to her child, she also learns that her son's remains have been dug up or exhumed, put in a body bag, and then tossed in the back of a Chevy suburban because a public work screw had turned up earlier that morning and removed the remains before anyone else arrived to her.
It's yet another iteration of her being continually cut out of the process.
Dude, Just the fact that he got struck and killed on March fifth, He got identified by the police department by the medical examiner on March ninth, that information was sent to the police department. Nobody was notified. Then on March fourteenth, nine days after her son is killed, the mother calls the police to report him missing. And she still like that, So it is so horrifying.
Yeah, and what the Heines County corner. By the way, again, this microcosmic aspect of this is important because this is a similar story to the other two hundred and fifteen people that are gone. Right, this story is one example of what has happened to hundreds of people, and we can only then rightly assume by the way that this has occurred or something similar has occurred in numerous small
towns throughout the United States. Look, when like you're saying, when the Wade family learns what happens to their son, they interact with the Heines County Coroner's office, who say, look, your son's body was unclaimed for months. We didn't know about it, and so since he was unclaimed, we just buried him where we put any other body that falls through the cracks, which again is macabre and in my opinion, unclean.
Well, I was gonna ask, I mean, that is sort of standard procedure and is considered quote unquote like above board to do like you know, you you you try to reach out to next of ken, the prison organization or officials or whatever, and if you don't hear anything back, then there there still is this sort of accepted understanding that they will be buried in not.
A mass crave.
That's that's something else, but in this popper's grave situation. But this particular case just involves more egregious examples of them not even trying to reach out.
Yeah, that's about the size of it. So the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, chuckway On Tar Lumumba, has publicly stated, look, there's no malicious intent here. This is a series of incredibly tragic miscommunications. And the problem is that doesn't bring back the dexter weights, right, that doesn't bring back the people who were affected by this. We also want to shout out another piece, this one by John Shoop with Mike Hicks and Baugh, about Jonathan David Hankins, who left
home in May of twenty twenty two. Authorities found him dead a few days later, also did not contact his mother. She had to search for him for months, and it was not until NBC did this investigation that she discovered where he was buried. This feels, yeah, this feels like this feels like it's bigger than Heinz County. I'm wondering how many more cases of this are out there. Have you guys ever been to a poppers field? Have you seen a Potter's yard or anything like that?
I have not known.
They're more out there than I think any of us would like to contemplate. And it's incredibly frightening thing. But it's like it also, at least here it has somewhat of a I don't even want to call a silver lining of closure, because thank you entirely to the journalist who figured this out. If they had not been digging in, I don't know whether this would like, whether this would have triggered some I don't know what would have happened. I don't know, and so we oh, shoot a huge
thank you. I mean, do you guys think the authorities would have at some point said, hey, we gotta we got to make things right in our Popper's grave.
It kind of feels like the kind of thing where they would be more likely to just leave well enough alone because of the nature of you know, poverty and the fact that it would be few and far between the cases where someone would come looking for these folks. You know, it's awful. I'm just saying that would likely, in my mind, be the thinking there.
Yeah, the problem is the problem is multipolar, right, we're talking about when the system fails, and it doesn't necessarily it doesn't necessarily mean there is conspiracy afoot, but it does mean that people and institutions may well commit conspiracies as a way as in an attempt to cover up their previous actions. That's how these things happen. That's how this stuff occurs, and that's why this is a call out to all of our fellow conspiracy realists. We want
to hear your stories of small town corruption. Please please, please do right to us. This stuff is important and the best we can say is that we're holding the survivors of these folks in our thoughts. The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, but exceedingly fine, and there is closure at the end, which I do think. I mean, it's something we didn't want to end on a super downer note. So here are stories we didn't get to just figure they could get a quick mention. Violence is
rocking Ecuador TV station got overrun. I think we all saw that.
Everybody got arrested.
Everybody got arrested, even the police. Kidding some Ecuadorian police should be arrested, though that's pretty clear at this point. There there was did you guys see this one, the the synagogue brawl? Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a tunnel dug in a New York City synagogue that led to a brawl between police and members of the community who
go to that synagogue. The reason I'm bringing this up is because a lot of crazy anti Semitic misinformation went out about this, because this is acidic Jewish community, right, and please be cautious with the stuff you read about that. Because our old friends at Davos looked at all the short term threats of this our current world, and they said, you know, the number one threat is AI driven misinformation. That's what's happening.
I disagree Davos. You know what the number one threat is, Guys, what's that huge eight foot shadow beings that are teleporting all around them all in Miami.
We're going to talk about that in the next time Classic Miami.
Seriously, that's the and listener somebody and then just you know, Paul Politics aside, Rudy Giuliani is broke and is likely going to be spending the rest of his life fighting off people trying to get their uh, their money from him. He apparently lost out in a defamation suit filed by two of the pole workers here in Atlanta actually, who he out outwardly defamed and led to them receiving death threats, and they are going to get quite a lot of money from him. And he is apparently on the verge
of bankruptcy. But you can't file bankruptcy to get out of paying out damages for these types of case.
You're going to say, student loans.
Yeah, well there's that he's still paying those off too.
But again, not a political statement, just I think, however you fall on the divide there, you could probably agree that this dude was not the best.
And shout out to every fellow conspiracy realist right now who is a was a high homie. I've got your back. Please remember studies recently showing that microplastics are in literally every instance of bottled water sip sip dupe. Indeed, shout out to the nostalgia we're already experiencing about twenty twenty three. It's so hot right now. As a matter of fact, it is the hottest year on record since humans started measuring temperatures.
I'm getting so hot, I'm gonna take my clothes off.
Bay Worp your shirt around. What is the I don't know the song? Well, Native, that's a.
Different Well, shout out to Nelly, shout out hairbacks and forth, and shout out to Nelly. Shout out to the US President. Both fans of Air Force one. That's strange news, folks. We can't wait to hear again. I'm very serious about this small town corruption. It happens so often. Sending our thoughts to the survivors of the people buried in Hinz County, Mississippi. We cannot wait to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online. We do.
We try and hopefully succeed.
You can find some to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on Facebook, x FKA, Twitter and YouTube. We are Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram and TikTok.
Hey, let's do an experiment. If you are listening to this and you have Instagram, go to our feed Conspiracy Stuff Show and put a comment on the Mandela Effect reel that we put out.
I'm really proud of that one, guys, so cool.
A big shout out to Station sixteen and the folks over there and West and the team for putting that one together.
It's such a cool edit.
I'm just so glad. I'm so glad you guys like that. I know it was a really weird pitch.
Thank you for pitching it, Ben, it was a great idea. We I think we pulled it off. Yeah, just do check it out. We want to see how many people are actually listening and hanging out on Instagram.
All right, and we promised not to replace that video with another video and gaslight.
Ah, why would you say that, Ben, We're not going to do that. Oh. Hey, if you want to call us, we have a number. It's one eight through three std WYTK. When you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we can use your message on the air in one of our listener mail episodes. If you want to send us more things, why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
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