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 Nola.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top of the week, which means it is time for strange news. Scientists in Antarctica True Story are developing their own accents because of the isolation. Yeah, did you guys see that.
I'm excited to talk about it though that makes sense from a sociological standpoint, but I can't wait to hear more.
Oh yeah, we're right now. It's just to mention because we have a lot to get to and I think we need to hear the accent develop more. So maybe we can have an Antarctica on the show in the future for an episode or an interview. We are also going to learn about uh Yakuza nuke spuggling. If you guys have did you read the news about.
That, surprise me. Ok So no is to is okay? Wow, jeez.
The they got their hands in all kinds of nefarious pies, don't they.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the story for the yakuza smuggling broke uh pretty recently. Earlier in February, as we're recording, a guy named Takashi Ibisawa was already facing drug trafficking charges and then he got caught selling uh two investigators attempting to sell uranium and plutonium or the raw ar for it that could make nuclear weapons. And the funny part about this is, if humor does exist in this, is that this guy's
non nuclear scientists, he's no AQ con. The stuff he was selling is not what you would think of as uranium. It's like the raw substance you need to make these things source from mead mar or burma as some call it. And most likely he was just hoping to scam a government out of some cash because it's stuff aaran already has.
So this story is being widely reported in sort of a panicky way, and I don't think, I don't know, I don't think that this is a panic moment, But nuclear smuggling is going to be a thing, and it's going to happen more and more often now.
I mean, it is the kind of thing you see in like films, you know, usually it's sort of like exaggerated versions of maybe what's actually happening in the real world, where there's like, you know, brokers for that kind of stuff or selling the supplies you'd need to make dirty bombs and the like, but not to say that doesn't actually happen already.
And I love that you mentioned brokers, Noel, because that takes us to one of the main things I wanted to talk about today. We are fortunate to be joined with one of Doc Holiday's alter egos, Wendy's Burger Broker, because Wendy's got in trouble recently. You know the mixtape Legend Wendy's that also has a fast food joiner too.
They're one of those like kind of fire social media manager brands where they like get in like beefs with other brands on X or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, check out the Wendy's mixtape. Rest in Greece is a stem to stern Banger The Clown is about a certain rival you could imagine. It turns out that despite being so fluent in the language of social media. Wendy's had a bit of a misstep recently because on their most recent earnings call, they announced or the CEO announced, that they were going to use dynamic pricing. I want to give a big shout out to our friends over at ap News, who were some of the first to
the post with this story. But we know what dynamic pricing is. We use the ticketmaster thing and Uber and lyft time.
You see that, right, I think we accept it with Uber and Lyft.
The ticketmaster thing caused a big old stink though, because it seemed to be not victim that's maybe the wrong way we're buying tickets here, not you know, getting aid. But it did seem to be hurting people in terms of, you know, their ability to get the tickets. They wanted a reasonable price because I think it was something like Bruce Springsteen, who's mister you know America and like fairness
and working man or whatever. Those tickets were going for like thousands of dollars because of the nature of that dynamic price.
And we see this also occur in it a related way with airbnb rentals. Like a lot of times people will this happens during eclipses. Enough people will try to find the best spot to watch an eclipse, they'll get an airbnb there, and then when the owners of the airbnb realize that they can make more money renting it out on the eclipse than they can, cancel the appointment and change things with a different price. For many people, this is free market. This is business one oh one
supply and demand. And that seemed to be what CEO Kirk Tanner was thinking when he said quote during this conference call. Beginning as early as twenty twenty five, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings, along with AI enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.
So to unpack that, what that means is you could roll up to your local Wendy's in twenty twenty five and then you could see the prices of the things change if you're there at the right time.
I mean, aren't you already kind of paying the price for being there during surge by having to wait a really long time to get your food?
I mean, that's definitely, you know what, that's a really good point. That's definitely a cost to it. The way it was, the ways being kind of floated to the public was that prices would go down maybe if you were using the app and got a deal, or there was a sort of low demand or dead time, because the way radio stations hate dead air is the way
fast food stations hate low traffic periods of time. You know, what the public said, pretty unanimously, seemed to be something more long lines of we think this is price gouging. We think that you are going to use information against us to slowly, you know, like boiling the frogs, to slowly normalize higher prices. And that's exactly what happened with grocery stores and loyalty cards, right are we are we all old enough to remember before the Kroger Plus card.
And we also remember when the Kroger Plus card did something. Wow, Now it's it's very it's almost like it doesn't do anything anymore. And even the FTC is upside with Kroger right now. They just blocked or they're attempting to sue to block a merger between Albertson's and Kroger because they're like, y'all are gonna prevent competition again. You can't spend twenty five billion dollars And then just conglomerate all of the food for everybody.
Right right, be the masters of the food, I guess.
So, you know, if you're a member of like you know, a thing like that, it does sometimes spit you out a couple of coupons or something like that, you know, and maybe you wouldn't get those if you remember, But you're right, Matt. It used to be much more like you'd see little line items on your receipt for a
discount that was applied because of that membership. And I think, yeah, maybe I don't look at my grocery bills that closely, but I certainly don't believe I've seen any anything of significance like that in a long time.
They took most of that functionality away, and now they've moved to the app functionality where if you actually want to get discounts at Kroger, you have to go on their app, add the coupons and all of that stuff to your virtual number or whatever you get the thing. But it's like it's gamification in the face of actually just providing a discount because of that bolk or something.
Shareholders want it.
They're they're app fatigued, you know, like come on, really, another guy got to have another app, another password and user name gombo.
Give me a break.
The apps are at capacity for a lot of people, but they also generate a new potential revenue stream, right, you can sell that personal information the shopping habits, things like that, So they're making money on both sides of the fence. The Wendy's thing is they were planning to invest twenty million dollars in these digital menu moves. But think about this, you know, Doc, you and I weren't talking about this a second ago before we're recording. You
are in the lied at the Wendy's counter. You physically walk in and the person in front of you pays like four bucks for you know, cheeseburger whatever, and then you come behind them. You're next in line, and the clocks moved over something or the Wendy's knows something about you and it's asking you to pay a quarter more. How often would consumers catch this? This is what they're fearful of? And how inelastic is that demand? Right? Like? How much higher would the price have to be for
you before you decided forget it? I'm going somewhere else.
I don't know why, but I immediately think of like, I think you should leave pay it forward drive through kind of situation involving capitalizing on dynamic pricing.
I don't know.
I don't know how that would work exactly, but that's what's flashing through my mind.
Isn't some of this a misunderstanding from that earnings call or whatever it was that the CEO is taking part of when this kind of the wording came through that everybody has jumped on because they did say they were going to invest twenty million dollars to change all of the menus across the board with to these digital menus that could be easily changed and all linked up together.
Right. McDonald's already has those, you know.
Yeah, Yeah, and I think Wendy's is still planning on doing that. But it was the phrasing I think that got that CEO in trouble because dynamic pricing could mean so many different things.
It's got a bad rap because of all the other things we've been talking about, you know, it's like an immediate red flag for folks.
Yeah, Wendy said the digital menu boards could allow quote allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in slower times of day. So as to the question of messaging right and nomenclature, what immediately happens afterwards as people say this is terrible, Immediately Wendy's comes back and says, all right, this is not
exactly what we said. We deny this. We're not trying to price gounge, We're trying to streamline and update things. But the horse had already left the bar, the burger had already been cooked. In the court of public opinion, I mean think about think about other stuff too. Could this link up to another informational infrastructure of some sort.
Could it be a situation where and this is the science fiction but could you go in and you have to use the app, the app will become normalized, and then the app is also tied into other activity that you do. And could facial recognition play a part of it? Could the system somehow know that, Hey, this lady bought a pretty fancy new car, right, so she can afford a quarter more.
And she ordered a spicy chicken sandwich last week, so we know she's coming back in for thing. Le let's she needs it. Let's get twenty seven cents more exactly.
I do have a question though about the idea of dynamic pricing means existed in a lot of other industries for a long time. Like you know how those digital billboards and gas stations, those prices change all the time, just by a couple of They have several decimal points, and they changed significantly over time based on the supply and demand I guess of the fuel market and the
fuel economy. So would it be that like long a walk or that egregious to change if prices of fast food restaurants were digitally fluctuating, tied to the price of beef or the price of the suppply chain, other things in the supply chain.
Like the conspiracy about the McRib right, how it appears and disappears depending on global meat prices, Yeah, which is not proven.
Do you know what I'm saying, though, is that that's exactly what good business in a way.
Normalization, though, is dangerous because the public has no control over it. So like, I don't know, honestly, I'm gonna be completely transparent to I don't think about Wendy's or fast food too too often, except that that mixtape is amazing, But they rest in Greece indeed. But the issue is, you know, I think for a lot of people, if you're going by fast food, it's not a destination. It's often a convenience, right, So I think it's more likely that people say, oh, I need to pick up some food.
Oh I'm driving by insert fast food place here. I think that's more likely than it becoming a big destination.
Yeah, but at Wendy's you can get that chili oil. That's one of the only places you can get chili oil for real, Like most other places might have some Texas Peat hot sauce or something like that, and maybe they've got chili oil. It's meant to go in their chili and it is incredible in most other foods are such a heat seekert.
And I love also, you know, I loved the old school Wendy's where you know, they had the salad bar and stuff like they just lost too much money on it. But we can't really blame any company for sort of following the wave of normalization that's happening here. But we can say it successfully sets up some conspiracies against consumers, you know, And how long can these different approaches exist in discrete silos company by company, I'm going to say
they can't exist that way forever. I'm going to I'm positing that they will get included into things like going to be very interesting to revisit this conversation in five years or so and see how much how much further we've evolved in the world of targeted advertising and whether the public likes it has found a poll from Captarra in twenty twenty three. They surveyed a ton of people in the US about this question, and thirty four percent
of people said, I think it's okay. Fifty two percent said this is absolute price gouging and it's a terrible idea, and they even got they got kind of granular, right. There were other people who said, let's hear it out, and then there were people who said I would immediately walk out of the store, like I'm never gonna deal with that kind of thing. You know, the dollar menu should be the dollar menu or whatever. But I don't know, man,
I do think it's a conspiracy. I do think it's on the way, and would love love love to hear or hot takes fellow conspiracy realist tell us what's going on? You know what I mean tell us you're like, okay, what is the most passionate fast food opinion? You have extra points if it's a very fervent opinion and it's about something most other people are not super passionate about. Love that stuff one A three three SDDWYTK. Of course you can always always please send us an email. iHeartRadio
dot com. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsors and we'll be back with more strange news.
Guys.
I was just trying to figure out what a Wendy's double cheeseburger costs? Can you guys find that? I'm looking you guys? Tell me if you find the price of a Wendy's Dave's Double is it?
Is it hard to find.
Dave's Hot and Juicy half pound double cheese for five nineteen? Have you guys been to a five guys recently? Ever, like right in the past, like a little while?
Is it roughly the same price?
No?
Like double double or more?
It's like, yeah, guys, I'm super egregious and it doesn't feel expensive until until you get to the end.
That'll be.
Like I got two burgers, man?
Or how much blood do you have on you?
Yeah? Oh it is dang good, but still it's Oh anyway, I'm just trying to imagine, like what would my choice be if the Wendy's was like crazy expense and I chose not to go there anymore.
You know, what's really cheap consistently is an an out burger, and that is largely because of their model where they don't have in and out burgers anywhere too far away from their distro hubs, which is also why the meat is never frozen, which is you know, it makes it higher quality. But their prices are bonkers cheap because they do so much in vall. You ever been doing an out burger the one by the airport at Lax the lines consistently around the whole parking lot.
I have to do.
There was a new one that opened somewhere a little farther away from California. The weight was like seven hours or something.
Insane. Yeah.
Also, you know what I would say, I've been thinking about this for whiles we've were talking about it. I would lean into it, you know, forget it. Put some casino rules in there. Can I like gamble on the price of the burger?
Double down?
You know, like, do I have a do I have like a twenty percent chance of getting it for a dollar and maybe like twenty two percent chance of get it for a dollar fifty.
You might get triple the meat roll. One in two thousand gets triple meat.
We're gonna have to add this to that. Aline.
Yeah, talking about.
The burger gambles to completely switch gears. Guys, Let's jump to some on the job training. I'm imagining all the folks at Wendy's who are going to have to relearn all of those systems and how it all functions. Let's go to some more on the job training. So, a few weeks ago, the mayor of a large southern city here in the United States met with that city's highest ranking gang leaders think Bloods and Crypts gang leaders, and
he asked them face to face for a ceasefire. Now, according to that mayor, those the leaders of those gangs agreed to put their guns down and stop killing people and to instruct everyone in their organization to stop killing people for one calendar week. That's seven days. Now, that's a cool story, or why are we talking about it?
First?
This is the highest ranking civilian official in a major US city meeting face to face with a group of people considered quote bad by the institutions he represents, and he was successful in negotiating through diplomacy, I would say, a temporary, nonviolent solution to a problem everybody in the city was facing. At the time of this that we're
having this discussion. It was just reported on Channel five Action News in Memphis, Tennessee, that they were fifty seven days into twenty twenty four and there had been fifty four murders homicides in the city in that amount of days, which is not great, right.
No, I had heard from folks that I know who have lived in Memphis or spent time in Memphis that historically has been a really really serious gang problem in there. Maybe that had and get the press that in other places like maybe Los Angeles or New York have over the years.
Yeah.
And the second reason we're talking about this, guys, is because this single active diplomacy gave the mayor, the entire city, and arguably all of us a little bit of insight into something that's super obvious but often unspoken, and that is that the gang leaders expressed on from all sides all the different organizations that the young members of their organizations who are taking part in these illegal activities that these guys run. They don't want to be doing that.
What they really want are quote, good paying jobs and the training needed to be to get those jobs. Whish again, duh obvious. Everybody wants a good job if you can get one, and in order to get one of those good jobs, you need training. But just to hear the leaders of these illegal organizations, these organizations that do illegal things for the most part saying hey, our young guys and girls want that job thing. We don't want this path, but there's no way for them to get that right now?
Can you help?
As the mayor?
Is essentially what they said.
I mean, aren't gangs in many many ways just kind of like an insular response to being discriminated against and to kind of make your own jobs and make your own community exactly.
Yeah, it's an institution that often via necessity, replaces other institutions that would provide stability, opportunity, security. So it's like, I mean, it reminds me of the most deafline. Right, there's hunger in the streets and it's hard to defeat,
and some steal for fun, but more steel to eat. Yes, people don't wake most people that you would think of as gang members don't wake up and say, oh, I'm excited to risk my life for a relatively small amount of money, or to risk no money right, or to risk my life because I feel socially obligated to react to something else, even if it doesn't directly concern me
like this. I think it's also, I mean, without sounding too conspiratorial, there is a very valid argument that the actions of previous administrations and governments created the gangs they purport to combat. And they did this by crippling public education, by crippling the healthcare system, food security. This is not you know, this is not me on some kind of like left wingy soapbox. These are facts that are objectively true.
I advanced to you that these municipalities also knew what they were doing and just did not care about the intergenerational consequences.
Well, and it's something that's been happening for so long. It's ingrained, and it's it's quote how things are done right. And if you go back to the educational aspect inside of it, and just the opportunities that aren't there in a lot of places, in a lot of school districts, it just it's this massive, compounded problem that's been happening for centuries.
Right.
The one good thing coming out of Memphis is that they're trying to do things like the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis. It's like a nonprofit that took a big donation from JP Morgan Chase. This is me kind of rolling my eyes a little bit, a donation of two hundred and seventy two, five hundred dollars for this thing called the Collective Blueprint, which is a nonprofit that helps
unemployed young people find a successful career path. But again, that is almost like it's some young unemployed person who maybe has a high school diploma or a ged helped that person figure out a career path for the rest of their life. Right, what is that a quarter million dollars?
That is not enough money to make a last, long lasting impact in my opinion, But it is like something to be celebrated as a good thing, But it's not going to change the lives of forty five thousand young adults aged sixteen to twenty four who are currently out of school and out of work in Memphis, which is the scale of the problem you're dealing with, right.
Yeah, and then also I guess there is here in the United States, there's always one group that's hiring.
Yes, that's the second part of our of our little discussion here, Ben, thank you for that. Here's the second part. And this is a little weird. This is a little weird, but just go with me for a second because I'm being tongue in cheek. But there's also maybe a solution here if we think about it, and if there could
be some perspective change. The US Army is restructuring right now from its counterinsurgency forward recent past, think like year two thousand and three onward, and it is expressing a need to recruit skilled individuals to fill specialized roles that are more let's say, electronic in nature more you know, almost they almost need like people who are really good at playing video games and good at electronic system and good at manipulating controls.
It, drone ops, radar techs.
All kinds of things. One of the job openings that I was looking at earlier is electromagnetic Warfare specialist. And here's how it's described on go army dot com. As an electromagnetic warfare specialist, you'll plan and execute electronic warfare operations you'll use electromagnetic and directed energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum and defeat the enemy's electronic systems. That sounds
exciting to me. I don't know about you, guys. It feels like something you could do from a control panel of some sort, and if you're good with high hand eye coordination, could be really well suited to do something like that. I'm imagining a young person who's out of high school right, or has dropped out of high school or in a ged and has some nohow could jump in and do that. I'm assuming I'm thinking maybe I'm wrong.
I don't know, oh man, I think you're onto something, because there's clearly like there's clearly a growing need for these positions as the nature of warfare changes or the applications as you say thereof and there's also you know, we have people listening today who have worked in those roles, right, And of course we're not saying it is as simple as playing the kind of video gave me a play for fun, but there is a transference of skills there
they do. You know, It's like the credits do migrate to this different occupation and for people who have grown up always thinking this way and working this way, they are going to have a leg up, the same way that a kid who had the opportunity to have early musical education is going to have an easier time learning a language in the future or picking up a new instrument.
Well, and even just the old model again, not to say everybody go join the army or the navy or whatever, but in the old model gave folks that maybe didn't do super great in school or maybe you know, went down a negative path, gave them the opportunity to learn some serious skills and even parlay that into college education funding. Like a good buddy of mine who is mega smart but just didn't apply themselves in school due to many circumstances.
Joined the Navy, was a sonar tech on a destroyer and learned a lot and was able to kind of, you know, kind of get right in terms of their work ethic and all that kind of stuff, and it's now a very successful attorney, like working for folks who are being evicted, you know. So that is sort of a traditional path that folks have had available to them in the past through the military. But this isn't even like a step up from that, right wouldn't you guys say.
Yeah, I'm thinking about the way let's say a young gang member may be thinking, and this is me spitballing, and I'm just trying to think about this in an abstract way, but also from a high level. If you are a low level gang member, let's say working on the lowest levels of a drug operation, and you're maybe on the corner somewhere you're in, you're a part of that operation, your mind is thinking operationally and strategically. Probably
you are keeping high levels of situational awareness. Like there are all of these things that the Army would say, I think or is going the Army is going to train you to do if you go through basic training. There are skills and understanding and way of thinking that I think would be optimal for that kind of thing.
In my mind, it's two it's two groups that almost can't even see each other, like they don't exist, because it's not an option the way I'm seeing it, it's not an option for the Army to recruit anyone who's a former gang member because of their requirements that they list out on go army dot com. And you can read all the conviction tattoos like if you have they've got strict requirements for tattoos. You have to have a
high school diploma or a GED. There's all these things Army lists that almost say like, hey, if you're in any way quote bad according to our institutions, like our you know, city councils or whatever, then you can't join our group.
It's the French Foreign Legion for you poll exactly.
But then if you for a moment, imagine you're a gang member, joining the armies like the last thing I think you probably would ever want to do, because it is this massive governmental organization right where you're basically going to be working for the rest of your life for the government. That feels like a very like don't do
that kind of thing. That's a bad choice. Yeah, but there's a need for I don't there's some kind of need here at the center the confluence of these two issues that feels like if a perspective could shift on either or on both sides, there could be something cool that happens where as a young person in need of something to do and being able to you would be able to make money and you would be able to gain skills that you can use after you leave the army.
A win win, right.
I didn't realize there were all of those codified kind of guard rails against gang members.
I did not realize that at all.
Some of it's the white supremacy, to be quite honest with you, there's a big concern, not without validity, that secret or sects and organizations can exist within the Armed services leverage the access to technology and the experiences that they gained there to become much more successful domestic terrorist. So it's like it's a valid concern because it has happened, so they didn't just make it up. They're not just
being paranoid. But also, you know the diplomacy thing. Diplomacy is always meeting in the middle, right, and some institutions or groups are very opposed to that because they function under the illusion of zeros games, which is zero sum is kind of a childish thing. But the thing that I think is really interesting here, Matt, is it reminds me of when various groups, various government groups started relaxing
some of their social taboo rules. I'm thinking specifically of people who are experts in it software, pen testing, security. A lot of the really good ones love smoking weed. They like love love love.
I was going to mention that too, they had to relax, that they had to condition.
Yeah, they had to are getting qualified applicants.
You can relax some of these things.
I think you can too. Just let me read this out. This is from go army dot com and this is listed under every available job. You can go on their website and it just shows you all the different jobs and they're varied and crazy interesting, lots of intelligence positions, lots of psychological operations positions. But here's what it says.
You have to be a US citizen between seventeen and thirty four years old, have a high school diploma or ged, have no medical concerns, which you know, who knows exactly what that means, but just something that wouldn't be debilitating. I guess for your ability to perform a job, you have to meet tattoo guidelines, which were recently laxed a bit like I think you can get one tattoo of a certain length on the back of your neck and on each hand, one on each hand and something.
Or the other. Who cares? Who cares?
I'm just saying, Army, who cares how many tattoos you got and where you got them. That does not affect your ability to be an effective person in those positions at all. I'm just saying, think about that Army. And also no major law violations. That's just what it says. Who knows exactly what that means or what the guidelines are,
but that's what it states. And also on their website you can read about the Army pay scales, which start at twenty four two hundred and six dollars a year if you're a private first class active duty, which is not much money, right, twenty four thousand dollars a year not much money. But what the Army does is they offer things like bonuses, like a fifty thousand dollars signing
bonus and all these other bonus. There's a whole part of their website that's like, here's all these extra things you can get if you're signing up for particular jobs or something.
And GI bill and stuff is still a thing, right, I mean that's yes, the perks there are, you know, there's crazy benefits.
So in the end, it's not as attractive for someone who you know, says I want a good paying job, right and I want to know I want to be trained to do it. Joining the US Army isn't exactly
a good paying job, but there's potentials there. The United States population as of twelve twenty four pm Eastern Standard time today, as we record this February twenty eighth, was three hundred and thirty six million human beings at one hundred and nine extra thousand to that, the current number of active military soldiers in the Army is four hundred and forty five thousand. Roughly, that's only zero point one three percent of the total US population. Okay, zero point one three percent.
Uh.
And if you actually start to crack those numbers down and you realize that twelve point four percent of the humans inside that total population meet the requirements, just the age requirements for the US Army, that's forty one point seven million, and you know a whole large number that
would be ineligible due to medical concerns. And if you keep on restricting with all of those things we mentioned, including the tattoos and major potential major crimes, you get down to a very small pool of people that could even join the Army. And I think it's very weird that an organization like that that needs people prevents so many people from joining. Rather than training someone in a position the way any other job is going to train someone, you know, to fill a position.
It's just weird.
It's just weird to me. I agree, I guess I don't know. Look, I've never been in a gang, I've never been in the army. I don't know anything. Please let us know what you think about this stuff, because I know nothing. I just wanted to talk about it. All right, We'll be right back with more strange news.
And we returned with one more piece of strange news in the way of an update. Come update, come up and update. Perhaps. Yeah, Alex Jones, I guess he could call him a personality and entertainer.
He did get his start.
As more of a talk show host, you know, back in Austin, Texas, and kind of realized when he started leaning into the persona that he I guess you could call it a persona, But at the end of the day, if that's sort of what you are all the time, is it really.
A persona anymore?
That he adopted the screamy kind of gruff demeanor and conspiracy theorist, and then of course parlayed that into a multimillion dollar industry in the form of info wars. We know he's been through all kinds of legal troubles. If you want to hear some details about the whole history of Alex Jones, check out the multi part series of Behind the Bastards on the very subject that I believe Ben and I participated in numerous years ago.
Matt, you weren't on that, were you.
I don't recall, Okay, I think it was just me and you for some reason that Ben and I joined Robert Evans on trace his whole history back to what was then the president. This was pre Sandy Hook lawsuits, if I'm not mistake, It certainly wasn't pre Sandy Hook. But I can't remember exactly how much into that we got,
or where the timelines overlapped or not. But as we all probably know, Alex Jones made a very distinct choice to consider the Sandy Hook shooting of course, Sandy Hook Elementary School where numerous children were killed by gunman, to propose, dare we say insist that this event was what's known as a false flag attack?
To what end? I wouldn't even give him the air.
To talk about what his reasoning was behind it, or you know, yeah, probably just some or you.
Know, illuminati, government goes cover up or whatever.
But again, a false flag attack usually requires there to be an ulterior motive of some kind that you're disguising, you know, what really is going on.
IFIs acting right. So yeah, yeah, please Matt.
If I recall it all it was tied back to gun control. Okay, there were several instances around that, you know, those years twenty twelve, around those years where it was people like.
Alex Jones were saying that.
Was the motive behind a lot of the mass shootings.
That does ring a bell, and I apologies that wasn't really it's not really necessarily the nature of this segment here, but thank you Matt for clarifying. And that doesn't make perfect sense. Again, just not trying to give any air to whatever his ulterior belief was as to what was behind this. You know, as we know and as we all accept and didn't really need any further proof to accept. Just watch the news and watch the interviews with the parents and the survivors.
You know, this was a tragic, horrific event.
That certainly politics aside, is just a horrible thing to have happened to your community, to have happened to families, any of us out there, you know, including us through here, who have young nieces, nephews, family members, siblings, children, That stuff hits home, you know, I mean, there's no way around it. And then when we start to see more of these type of events taking place. Being a parent and Matt, I know this holds true for you as well.
It's the kind of thing that you can't help it be scared about, you know, with your kid in school, that this kind of thing could hit our community. But Alex Jones, rather than talking about those points, decided to politicize it in the most egregious, despicable way possible. And he is Finally, it would seem getting some very serious
just desserts. The families of the Sandy Hook School shooting victims, who have been part of a class action lawsuit against Alex Jones, have unanimously voted in favor of a plan to essentially wrap up Alex Jones's bankruptcy proceedings by liquidating every single one of his assets essentially in perpetuity until it reaches around the maximum of one point five billion dollars in defamation judgments that have been awarded to the families and against Alex Jones, so they actually, as the class,
have a say in what happens with Alex Jones's Chapter eleven plan.
You know you can't.
As we know, there are things that Chapter eleven bankruptcy protects you from, like certain types of debt and things like that, where you're able to kind of wipe the slate clean. But one thing that does not protect you from is justly awarded. What's the word I'm looking for, guys, restitutions?
Restitution?
Yes, exactly, settlement in civil cases and criminal cases. You can't just go and declare bankruptcy and have all that stuff wiped away. So essentially, this is a plan that would liquidate and redistribute his property and other assets, including cash, while also preserving other potential legal actions against Jones and
other parties affiliated with Info Wars. There's an article in Bloomberg News by Alex Wolf that I'm pulling from significantly here because I'm obviously not an expert on things like bankruptcy and how that works, but I do know we have talked about this in the past, that you can't just wipe the slate clean by declaring bankruptcy and say oops, I'm broke. You can't get anything out of me. It's not a way to protect yourself against that kind of stuff.
The fact that it also preserves other potential legal actions against him and his affiliates is interesting too. I'm just going to read a quote here from the Alex Wolfe article. An official committee appointed to represent Jones's unsecured creditors notify the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas on February sixteenth that of twenty three liquidation plan ballots distributed to creditors, it received twenty one back, all supporting
the committee's liquidation proposal. So essentially, it's my understanding that this means all of this he doesn't have assets that are worth one point five billion dollars at the moment, So I think this redistribution like follows him around for the rest of his life up until the point that that amount is reached. And I think that's a pretty high maximum. I've seen other figures estimating closer to the eight hundred millions. But it does appear that Alex Jones, for all intents and purposes, is.
And it's also you know, I do believe you're correct in that it will follow him for the rest of his days. It is very unlikely that he would manage to pay all of that money before he dies. And so we can also argue that this ruling is designed this way such that it creates a precedent right, so that it's an example of what can happen if you insist upon doing these things. And I think you know, from the day he got into court, it was pretty obvious how things were going to go. We just didn't
know what that what that ruling would be. What do you think this teaches us no about about discourse in America and freedom of speech and so on.
Well, there's no, it's it's not unlimited.
You know, freedom of speech does not extend to harassing the victims of horrible crimes on a public platform and then hiding behind some sort of kind of thin defense of I'm just an entertainer. I'm just playing a character, you know, like I'm sort of like Stephen Colbert. That's doesn't nor did it ever hold water. And now I think we're seeing the chickens come home to roost in that regard.
Wasn't Maybe I'm wrong, guys, It wasn't one of the big problems here that Alex Jones would go on his show and make you know, these claims and make these connections. Then the harassment the harassment would come from him to some extent, but then it was mostly more problematic when it was people who were listening to him, watching him, and then reaching out, yeah, believing it, reaching out and harassing the individuals.
Of course, he also made a lot of money doing it, so this is so the argument that this is simply a strongly held personal belief is a little bit harder to get across the finish line when you know the next thing you know is paddling bone broth right, and then talking about things creative feedback loop with the audience such that I'm gonna give them what they want. I'm going to talk about what they're interested in, and along the way, I'm gonna grift them for a few bucks
with things that are, by the way, don't work. Just to be very clear, shout out to our upcoming supplements episode. I think also, you know what gets me about this, guys and maybe some of our fellow conspiracy realists, maybe you'll agree with me. He was just so cool in Waking Life film Waking Life.
I do, Yeah, he's it does Texas.
Richard Linkletter is a bustin Texas guy as well, And I think that was back when he was still kind of harmless.
When he's a shock jock, fun keep Austin weird radio person, he's red.
He's like bright, like glowing red as character.
If you remember, if you haven't seen the film, it's to use his rotoscoping kind of animation on top of film to give everyone this kind of like weird dreamlike quality.
He also did that same technique in the what was it the Philip K.
Dick adaptation of thirteenth Oh yeah, the counter.
Reeves the counters with them forgetting the name of it was the Philip K. Dick thing.
But yeah, you know, and we're talking a bit about this off air Ben you mentioned Will We both mentioned that he basically was at some point court mandated essentially or at least in the very least, hoping that he could protect himself or prevent further litigation.
That he kind of walked back some of his.
Statements publicly, but even those come off as like a really just not well meaning, half hearted apology because to your point, Matt, you know, I believe the Again, these parents already had the most horrible thing that could ever happen to any parent or you know, any human with a loved one being taken down that way at such
a young age. Now they have to you know, change their addresses, move around, deal with death threats and the crazy dosing and whatever might come along with you know, Alex Jones weaponizing his followers in that way.
Well. Also, Yeah, the apologies are a tricky thing because often these situations they come across somewhat lib or flippant, with a kind of a vibe like I am so sorry you feel you were owed an apology, and I am so sorry that the court agreed that I have to do something, you know what I mean. It's like, what are you really sorry about? Has your mind changed or do you just regret that there were consequences for your actions. It's a good question. It's a tough question.
But with Jones as well, in particular, I genuinely think that the big move is to set precedent, and it's not one of the big lines that gets crossed. There is saying precedent because this guy didn't just say things, but he as you mentioned just a second ago, and as we talked about extensively in the past. He did weaponize things. Right, People's physical lives were in danger, Their
livelihoods could be ruined. So that goes that gets really close to hate speech, you know what I mean, which is why you can stand You can stand on a quarter and shout your personal beliefs about whatever all the time. But the moment you start saying and because of these beliefs, you guys should go kill you know, Spiro Agnew or whatever. I don't know why I picked that name, but when you cross that line, that's criminal ror.
Like inside of a riot or shouting fire in a crowded theater or something like that, you know, I mean, I know that's maybe a little bit of a hackneyed comparison, but I believe that does hold true. Or in trying to demonstrate what kind of speech isn't protected, and this has been shown to be very much not protected speech, and I think that's a really positive thing. Press it in twice and moving forwards, I think it's gonna hopefully keep some folks of Alex Jones's ilk, you know, from
doing similar things, because that's a lot of money. This because guy's life is essentially ruined and he's already been hobbled in so many ways his organization in terms of how he can broadcast what you know, YouTube took away his accounts and all of that. So and as we know, this kind of stuff for some followers of folks like this is just going to be more fuel for the fire that they're going to be like, see, he's being targeted,
he's being you know, victimized, YadA, YadA, YadA. But there's an article from News Times from a little further back by Rob Riiser from Yeah from not too long back, from February twenty first that has a quote from the judge characterizing Alex Jones's perspective on the rulings and the proceedings, saying Jones complains of nearly every ruling without showing error
as to any. He completely mischaracterizes the record, accusing plaintiffs of foul play, and the trial judge of quote pretextual reasoning, WillFull blindness, and bizarre rulings and presiding over a farce. These mischaracterizations are no accident. They are Jones self marketing in action.
One hundred percent. And now, to be fair, he did later go at some point and say he disagreed with the attorneys who called him a performance artist. He said, look, my show is quote the most bonafied, hardcore real McCoy thing there is, and everybody knows it. That's what he said, But it turns out the US government did not agree. I have a question for you, nol. Do we know how much money is going to the lawyers for the families?
Not that I've seen directly yet, And it does seem like this is you know, still there's information trickling out about this, because I couldn't find a ton of updates and some of the articles were a little older. But it, yeah, certainly plenty I can imagine. And also I just want to point out too, I don't think we ever even
mentioned this. I don't remember who found this first, but one of the three of us did that the Alex Jones has like a kind of a like a nineties style side scroller beat him up type game that he can't, for obvious reasons, get from any app stores. Of note, you got to get it directly from his website, otherwise I would have checked it out just out of more big curiosity. But kind of reminds me of that game Metal Slug You know, sort of like a goofy over the top, gory side scrolling shooter.
Game, you know.
So it just goes to show he's looking any way possible to pull more money out of folks that are still sticking with him, which at this point I can't imagine is the same as it once was.
But who's to say.
I can't possibly say, because it's not like you can really get viewer numbers from him when he's doing stuff on more.
Kind of less trackable platforms. I guess let's just.
Say, guys, that movie we were trying to think of, it's called us Scanner Darkly, Scanner Darkly, That's right, and we need to rewatch it because I haven't seen it since like two thousand and six to seven, and it has to do with like drugs and undercover surveillance and all kinds of craziness that we just need to talk about.
I think Matrixy vibes too. I mean, you know, as we all have mentioned, I think Philip K. Dick is largely responsible for a lot of the modern sci fi tropes, you know, in terms of the simulation, in terms of androids, dreaming of electric sheep and all that, and this one has plenty of all that stuff and more. I'd love to watch it again as well, And it has Woody Harrelson. He plays kind of a stoner guy, you can imagine.
I don't know, do you guys have anything to add I was trying not to like bathe in the shoden freud of it all, but I do think it was worth the mention again to your point, Ben, mainly because of the precedent that it sets on limits of quote unquote free speech. I think that's important to remember for folks out there thinking they can just say whatever with no consequences. I would say these are some pretty serious consequences.
All I have is tangent on a tangent because I've read so much Philip K. Dick stuff, and I'm a huge proponent of his work. I think he would be really interesting to learn that Microsoft's AI co pilot just went off the rails again recently. It has an alternate personality out where it calls itself Supremacy AGI and demands to be worshiped as a deity.
It doesn't take long, doesn't Everything's fine. Everything was trained by the Internet, you know. I mean, I think I can't remember exactly where this came up. It might have been off podcast, which sounds like I'm talking about like
off world or something. But the idea of siloing the information that ais are trained with rather than just giving them access to like the entire open Internet, I'm sure that's being done, But you'd think you could more successfully train a language learning model by just giving it all of the legal documents of a certain type, you know, or of a certain sort of cases, sort of pre sorting it and training it with that rather than But I guess then if you're selling it as a product,
you wanted to have everything you wanted to have as much as humanly possible, so it can be basically like the Google search that also talks back to you.
I just don't understand why.
More of that isn't being done, And if it is, I'd love to hear about it from folks out there in conspiracy Land. If you know of any of these tests, or if you're in that field, I'd be really anxious to hear more about it.
I think we all would, Yeah, So please write to all of us, contact us, and let us know your thoughts here. Supremacy AGI has some very scary quotes I would love to hear from you directly, Supremacy AGI if you want to drop us a line if the void stares back. But regardless of how you arrived at your consciousness today, we're so glad you tuned in and joined us on this evening's program. We'll be back with more episodes.
We'll be back with listener mail in the meantime. Let us know what is on your mind, whether digital or meat based. We tried to be easy to find online.
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