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.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis codenamed Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. In twenty twenty four, you guys, can you believe it?
Barely weird?
I'm not stoked.
Use your date, man. Once we hit twenty twenties. Now everything just sounds like it's supposed to be megafuturistic and it's just not minus weird. Robot attacks, did you guys hear about that? Apparently happened a year ago, but U Tesla robot on a factory floor in Texas attacked and mauled an employee, and that the story just came out. But that's sort of my future. But it happened a
year ago, it just now started getting reported on. I thought that it was maybe a thing that was already known, and that I just was, you know, missing the boat. But I looked it up and it does seem that it was a thing that happened. That it was a clawed assembly line sort of robot arm that basically pinned and mauled an employee who then fell down a shoot intended for scrap metal.
Very willy wonka, also very margin of error kind of thing, right.
But it didn't do it because it wanted to, Right, That's the.
Yeah, I was considering doing that as as today's strange deduce from me. But I feel like it's such a buzzy fake out kind of thing where it's like robots attacking. No, that is not that there was an emergency stop thing. It must have. It was unclear from the article exactly what caused it to target this individual, but I don't think it was out of malice.
The human rates to what do we attribute, right, like like what is the motivation of a plant, of an algorithm and so on? Or the Supreme Court. We're going to get to that. We're going to talk about some big picture stuff. We're going to touch on an epidemic amid the US deer population. We're going to talk about menthol cigarettes, and we're going to talk about the US Supreme Court because America, we need to have a conversation to America.
You're drunk, go home or maybe not, Ben you you brought I think for a little kind of yea to start with for the new year.
Yeah, let's talk about good news. So we wanted to start the year off with some cool ideas. We got one in here. I don't know if it's good news, but did you guys hear that humans can make jet fuel from hoop?
Now? You know what? That makes sense with all the burn pit information we've been getting lately, like burning the poops seem to have just as many bad effects as burning the jet fuel.
And of course, since I'm a child, my mind immediately condures a cartoon image of someone with fire shooting out of their butt. That's just a me.
Thing, No, that's I think that's an everybody thing. That'd be pretty cool if you could, if you could fart well enough.
To be a jet runing that the very first South Park episode where Cartman's like, there'sh.
There are some extinct animals that have been rediscovered, right, like Mark Twain said, the uh the reports of their deaths have been greatly exaggerated, So shout out to the shimmering golden mole.
Which the shimmering gold that's that like the opposite of the naked It sounds shimmering golden, right, I want to catch them all. I was really having my fingers crossed for the Dodo though, No, Dodo.
We got to call Lucky. We have a covenant.
Toto's coming back for real, though, I remember seeing, Yeah, they're trying to bring Dodo back.
Oh but that's a science y thing. This is okay, it's like an experiment.
Guys. I just had a vision for our future. Oh my god, this talk about positivity. We've been looking for a way to get a universal basic income. If everybody is just pooping on the regular and we all do it, what if we're all just making jet fuel and the government pays us poop.
Stop, It'll be a matrix situation. We'll I'll just have tubes hooked up to our butts.
And Eisenhower was right, Military industrial poop complex.
Matt stop it with these pithy suggestions that are just.
It's ancient technology. Night soil is a real thing. It's the first fertilizer, so why can't it be the new biofuel, serious biofuel.
We are the batteries, guys. We are the batteries fueling the military industrial complex from our butts.
You just change up the sewer system like minorly and add in and intake. Oh my god, we can do this.
Everybody, write your congress person, folks. Matt said it here first.
Yeah, yeah, send a physical letters so they'll pay attention. So another piece of good news. Minimum wage is going to increase in twenty two states across the US on January first. Shout out to MPR. Shout out to everybody listening now, who is one of the nine point nine million workers who will see an increase.
I'm assuming this is just as a result of a benevolent state sort of situation, right Ben, someone was just like they deserve it, give it to them, they worked for it.
I don't know a lot of our fellow conspiracy realist will point out with validity that inflation has accelerated.
So is this is this one of those tools right, like the FED adjusting you know, rates and such. I'm really obviously a math scientist.
Well, this is this is really good news, you guys. I'm just looking at that and per article you shared, Ben, and it looks like some states are going to see almost seven dollars additionally added to the minimum wage number.
That's amazing significant.
Yeah, yeah, that's life changing, hopefully for the better. We also are one other piece of good news. Scientists have successfully destroyed cancer cells using vibrating molecules, which I don't pretend to understand, but shout out to the journalist David Neild if that's real.
We've received a lot of messages and we've seen stories over the years of using vibrations to cure people of things, right, like different vibes but different different types of literal vibration just being shot through parts of the human If this is true, I want to learn more about that. So we need to do a deeper dive into that.
And this isn't the first story of the year, even that's been about advances and eradicating cancer, like we are in a future. You know, I made the joke about twenty twenty four seeming so futuristic, but there are things that are happening despite my bad jokes. A cure for cancer is the kind of thing that always had this ring of like unattainability, and now it does feel like we're inching towards something resembling that. Right.
Yeah, it turns out if you shake up these aminocyanine molecules with something that's not quite infrared light, they will vibrate in sync the same way people would like dance at a wedding across the world. They'll do it like a weird line dance, and this will break out the membranes of cancer cells. This is pretty cool news. We are indeed talking about good vibrations. Shout out to that band, the Beach Boys. I really think they're going places.
Yeah, I heard of them, dude, Amino Cionine. Never heard of this.
This is incredible, It is incredible, right, I agree with you, guys. Like the strange thing about this is that so often on Strange News we bring you stories that don't quite get into the headlines or don't quite get the analysis they deserve, and a lot of times we don't make space to talk about the good stuff. And there is good stuff happening, right, There are uplifting things occurring in the world, and we hope that we can launch our
own project twenty twenty five in a good way. Right, And speaking of segues, the amazing invention here in the US. But speaking of conversational segues, there is a group of people that will be very important to you next year. Odds are you have not spoken with these folks directly. Odds are you don't know all their names, but if you live in the United States, they are the rock stars of law and order.
Yeah, I have a really cool acronym. It's fun to say and sounds a lot like scrotum.
Yeah. Well, they're they're they're the seemingly invincible characters that they live on planet Earth. Right, they they get in their position, there's nothing you could do too bad. They're there. That's it. I don't know, in a weird way, I do see them as like, I don't know, the way you're describing them and makes me see them as comic book characters.
I think that's accurate, Matt. I mean, like, we're we're talking about a democracy, a democracy that is also a republic in some ways, and a lot of people get mad about the semantics of that. But in a very real process, the laws of the United States are written by Congress, right, they're co signed or derided by the President. But it's a Lord of the Rings situation. There are nine people right now who are basically ring raiths. You do not elect them as a US citizen. They do
not really get fired. They have the job for the entirety of their lives. They are called to your point Noel Scotus, Supreme Court of the United States, and oh boy, we need to talk about them. We need to talk about them. This is not quite strange news for twenty twenty three. This is strange news for twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five.
And I guess the update ish maybe that puts it sort of in the news and for end of twenty twenty three. Is this Code of Ethics thing which seems like it should have already been in place, but is seemingly relatively toothless and kind of just more symbolic than anything, right.
Yeah, yeah, So we've talked about it in the past. There's a lot of ongoing controversy around things like insider trading laws for members of Congress. Congress on both sides of the political aisle, made a lot of money during the pandemic by short selling things like toilet paper, sanitizer, vaccination deployment.
Game stop, game stop.
Yeah, yeah, shout out to our stock friends right. The issue, however, rarely gets to the level of the Supreme Court, the idea of corruption, because this court is seen in American history as largely infallible. It is seen as the consciousness of the American public despite the fact that these folks are again unelected, often above reproach and don't hold themselves to the same standards that you would be held to. Congratulations, Hey, guess what if you bought a mortgage, you have to
deal with stuff. But if you're in, if you're the Supremes, you can you can get some workarounds because.
You have synchronized dance moves.
They don't. I mean, I don't know's there's no video allowed in the court, so maybe they got a caol.
They have outfits like.
So let's go to the point you raised. The US Supreme Court has adopted its first ever ethics code. To be clear, Congress does have an ethics code and has for some time. I'd gallon paper.
Sure, look what it took for what's his face to get ejected first first ever? Remember I believe it was he Congress or was he representative? I'm talking about of course Santas. So yeah, Santos, I mean, that guy was just doing crimes left, right and center. And even that was a remarkable feat that he was ejected. I scoff because clearly their code of ethics is pretty toothless too. I'm sorry inter out. I'm just blown away by that.
Well, George Santos was ejected. I think he was his House of Representatives, so he's not his senator. He's the sixth member of the House of Reps in all of American history who was ejected. It was it was a thing where this divided country came together and said, ah, this guy. But this doesn't often happen with members of the Supreme Court. And when the Supreme Court decided that they would do some sort of ethics standard thing, they raised a lot of questions, and they raised a lot
of criticism. They issued the following statement, and this comes to us from a great MPR article by Annie Gersh and Nina Totenberg. Here's the quote. The absence of a code has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rule. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long
regarded as governing our conduct. This happens in step with and folks, we hate to say it, this happens in step with growing controversy over a member of the Court who is from our state of Georgia, as Thomas No I know not critical hit.
Twenty was wrote, Yeah, that gosh, man, just reading about this stuff. Well, I've got an idea. I'm gonna throw it out at the end, so let you yeah, let's keep going. I've got like a concept. I think you guys are going to be into.
You got a pitch yep?
Nice?
All right, So we know this occurs. Nothing happens in a vacuum, right, So the US public has a very low opinion of the Supreme Court right now as of twenty twenty three, going into twenty twenty four, more and more where people are saying, hey, why don't these guys have consequences? Right, Like, why don't these folks have the same sort of experiences that we have to live under. For instance, you know there's the Row versus Wade overturning.
There's a lot of scuttle butt occurring. Now, scuttle butt is a word I learned from the late Scalia. You guys remember Scalia.
Yeah, he's a Scotus.
But oh my gosh, can we do a sound Q on that? Those excellent. So the the issue here is that for a democracy to exist, all members of the public servitude, industry or genre should be following the letters of the law that they write. And increasingly the American public regards wardless of demographic, ideology or age. The American public is increasingly cynical regarding these institutions. We have maybe heard stories about Clarence Thomas, in particular, taking big, big,
weird vacations with billionaire donors. You guys remember that.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like and you know, getting all sorts of elaborate meals and gifts and just I mean, it's it's nearly impossible to classify that stuff as anything but bribes. Yeah.
Well, when the individual, the individual that is giving these gifts, right, or these trips or these vacations, whatever you want to call them, when that individual is a huge money player in politics, it's a big deal because those justices have to come together and decide in the end what the law means.
Right, yeah, in a closed door session, in a vacuum, basically, you know what I mean. It's unilateral to your pointment, the power that these raiths wield, so to even have the perception of that kind of compromise is outrageous.
But it's not as though Clarence Thomas was the only justice that was doing this kind of stuff, right. Other people have been shown to have these meetings, trips in you know, vacations as you put it in I think that's probably the best word for it. But just hanging out with donors who run the political parties.
They're supposed to be out of their reach, they're supposed to beyond reproach. It's horses. They're clearly none of those things.
It's tough. It's tough also because we know from previous I almost said exercises keeping it. We know from previous examples that one of the first things you do when you overthrow a democracy is control the courts.
Right. That's why that's why.
Courts turn into rubber stamps under dictators of any stripe. That's why justices get harassed, exiled, or even murdered. And one of the big big controversies a few years back was the installation of Supreme Court justices and the installation
of appellate justices and federal level federal level judges. And this is going to be important in the near future, sooner than perhaps any of us in the US would like to imagine, because we're in a situation where the folks who are hired by a guy have to rule for or against that guy.
Even the confirmation process of justices seems largely symbolic. You know, it's basically, if the president picks the person, they're gonna get confirmed, no matter how controversial they are. I don't know that I've ever seen in my lifetime one that was rejected short of maybe, like you know, proven allegations of like sexual misconduct on the front end. Can you think of one? I can't. I don't know.
I thought that just happened pretty much.
Was there one? There was that one guy. No, No, that one guy got confirmed and.
He got confirmed, but previously to him, there were several other or no after him, there were several okay, people that got put for.
Still, it's just it's yeah, well it seems very symbolic largely, but anyway, I just the process is really creepy. I don't like it. I don't like it. It's a strange what it's going to ask you really quickly, because when when you brought us up in our group textdress, I thought you were also maybe referring to the situation with uh state supreme courts and like keeping a candidate off
the ballot. I don't want to pivot too much, but I'd love to talk more about that in the coming weeks and months as we see how that process is achieved, what allows it to succeed and what causes it to fail, and maybe state supreme courts is also an interesting thing to roll into a larger episode about the Supreme Court.
Ah, yes, you're talking about Colorado.
Eh, that's right.
Yeah, that's a fantastic point, and it's something that can maybe put some folks into a snoozefest. Right, who wants to talk about who wants to talk about the weird state of courts in the United States? Well, people who go to prison, first off, are friends at Lava for Good and people who want to pull shenanigans. Again, we're being a political with this. We're pointing out a structural conspiracy. There is some stuff they don't want you to know when it comes to the idea of packing courts.
Yeah, I think the biggest deal with this whole ethics thing, and like, here's a solution, right, we will offer you an internal solution. We will sign a piece of paper that says we won't do anything bad. But there's no mechanism. There's no lever that gets pulled or a wire that gets tripped if they do something that is, you know, contrary to that agreement that they signed. So really it's toothless, doesn't mean anything, I think guys, Oh, here's the pitch.
If you imagine all the surveillance that we as citizens are under, well, you know, some of it overt some of it just that's happening through third parties and applications we sign up for and sign terms of agreements with. If you imagine just how much data is collected on
us individually. What if there was a special version of that kind of thing that was for publicly serving officials, right, someone who gets elected or someone who gets appointed, like to the Supreme Court, where they are monitored just a little more fully like.
A rate my professor type situation.
No, it's not external, right, So the information is internally to whatever this is, this you know, oversight committee, this thing that just shows every meeting like every major person that in agenda them there things like that where it's just.
Calendar is what I mean by agenda? Like, you know, who are they taking meetings with that should be public? Is it not? To some degree it doesn't exist? Okay?
The degree of surveillance also, I would pause, it does exist. It's not available to the public. But the justices and the alphabet are I can only imagine very aware.
They might know.
You know what they might know Supreme Court bowel movement schedules.
Well they probably do. I mean, I'm sure they know mine, so like, why wouldn't they know theirs?
Well, you got to get off that app, Matt. You gotta stop logging in.
I don't even bring my phone around me when I poop anymore, and they still see me doing it.
No, you gotta make your jet fuel some somehow, somehow, there we go. Making jet fuel should becoming new euphemism for pooping.
By the way, I love it. Matt's a loop. What are you proposing here?
I feel like, if you are going to take the great responsibility of being one of those sitting justices. There should be some kind of.
Scrutiny, high level scrutiny.
Like when you choose to do that, you were going to make quite a bit of money. You're not going to be, you know, a billionaire, but you're gonna make quite a bit of money in that position, and you're going to wield a ton of power. I think there's got to be some kind of mechanism set up there that make sure you are actually doing what that position is supposed to do, rather than serving yourself or your family or whatever other thing it is that you hold up higher than the public good.
But if there's not, which there's not, you have to ask yourself, is this by design? Is this the nature of this system? You know there? I think it is to a large degree. I don't think. I think people want to be able to have that opportunity to work their way to that level of power. That's the dream. Then you can, you know, get whatever you want for your family and your cronies and your connections for life. That's the reason a lot of people get into politics.
I think, you know, and I don't think it should be that. I don't think it should be that at all.
Shout out to the Taft family. One of the biggest US presidents in many ways on many levels, also served in the Supreme Court. So do you guys think it's worth it to do an episode about the Supreme Court?
Yeah, and maybe we throw in a little bit of stuff about some of the state stuff as well. I think it's great, Ben, and I think this is a great primer and really valuable information to start us off strong. Give our paranoia a kick, a shot in the arm.
There we go. So shout out to our fellow conspiracy realist folks. We would love to hear your opinions on the Supreme Court of the United States, especially if you have spent time in countries other than the US. Let us know conspiracy Diehart Radio dot com what eight three three s T d W y t K. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors, and then we are going to return with a story from the natural world. Not super pigs, but another you know, another situation.
Wake up, grab a human thrown down the way chute. Sorry sorry, robot chops.
Say, actually that's kind of weird. I am serious.
It was referenced in some podcast I was listening to over the holiday break. So that's sorry about that.
A voice that got really cool, great operatic pipes on that guy.
Dude, seriously, system of a down if you didn't catch a reference. Okay, so we were back, and guys, let's start out by talking about mad cow disease. We lived through that whole thing when we were slightly younger. What was that? What causes mad cow disease? Why is it dangerous?
Prions?
Right?
Yes, I always say prions. I think it might be wrong, but p R I O N s. I'm gonna say prions because that's just the way my brain works around that thing.
But not to be confused with prawns, which are delightful shrimp esque crustaceans.
Yeah, no, none, spongefore sponge offm in cephalopathy.
That's wow. That's it, Ben, Yes, that is the thing that we all heard about. It was in popular media all over the place. It was in the news. Thousands and thousands of cows lost their lives because they were potentially exposed to the prions that caused this thing. It was a horrible, big deal not that long ago here in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and several other places in the world. And the reason why it
was so dangerous. It's because these weird malformedes called prions infect an animal and then slowly change that animal and spread throughout that animal till it gets to their brain. And there is no medicine you can give an animal infected with these things these prions, no way to cure
this thing. And there's also well, let's just say it's extremely difficult to eradicate these prions once they're out in the environment, and they can exit an infected animal in all kinds of ways, like through their saliva, through their waste, through their dead, decaying body. It's really really dangerous stuff, and it can stay in the soil, kind of like the way those potential fungal infections can occur, and they just hang out in the soil for long periods of time. Really scary.
Yeah, you can't eat the flesh, or you shouldn't eat the flesh as well. You're absolutely right on multiple accounts. Prions, pons, prions is the way ions. You're right. I think it's prions.
Well that's a whole thing. Now we're going to introduce to you something that you may not have heard of, called chronic wasting disease or CWD.
Is that like a Dungeons and dragons.
Definitely, Oh, definitely, yes, it's a spell that is cast. No. No, this is another disease caused by similar prions, but in a different class of animals, different species. So matt cow, it's cows, right, bovines in CWD. It is in animals like deer, elk, moose, caribou and rein deer and this thing it acts very much in the same way. And it's also called the zombie deer disease.
Ohikes.
Now there's a reason for that because when an animal is infected with this stuff, and it can take, by the way, up to a year to potentially two three years to actually see the effects of an infection in an animal.
Uh.
The animals become drooling, lethargic, emaciated like they're not eating enough, stumbling around and they have this uh The Guardian. Todd Wilkinson, writing in The Guardian on December twenty second, he describes it as a telltale blank stare like just like like a zombie.
And then they crave brains.
No doubt that thousand league stare the double zeros. Stephen King talks about eyes when looking at a serial killer. Oh yeah, dead eyes like Kirsten Dunst in literally every Man, My God, I said it, It's true. Watch even and bring it on, dude, watch the eyes.
Actually in Fargo season two, she's a classic blank character choice.
Guys, it's a character choice.
I'm with you, Matt, I'm with you. I'm with you. Come on, all right?
So yes, yes, walk down the street that one. But this, you know, Matt, this story reminds me a little bit of the dolphin atavism that we discussed earlier. It reminds me a little bit of the hybrid super pig. Definitely reminds me of our Cortyceps episodes. This zombie deer disease, right, how is it spreading? Is it zoonotic?
What do you mean zoonotic?
Can it go to humans?
Okay? So before with mad cow disease, the big fear was that this disease would somehow jump to humans, right as we've seen other diseases like a covid you know, a bird disease jumping to humans. They were nervous that mad cow disease. If you ate the meat, you might get it as a human. There was a potential danger for that. But there wasn't a lot of danger for that. It was mostly we don't want to spread any of this around, right.
Things like mad cow disease mainly come from press coverage or was that like some sort of official designation.
Well, it was a real disease caused by that's.
Not the official name for the disease. There's like a scientific name for a mad cow is more of a shorthand sort of like serial killer names.
Bovine sponge of form.
I'm just asking like, does something like calling it mad cow come from scientific community or is that more just like some you know, reporter coins it.
I'm just I don't know. I assume it's from probably farmers who began seeing the disease and began calling it that cow got mad well before they knew what it was, because he caused some of the same stuff in the cows.
But ben right now, there's a lot of fear about this chronic wasting disease spreading, right because these are deer and there are a lot of hunters out there who kill a lot of deer, and more and more hunters are seeing animals with this disease, and they're trying to harvest the meat and it's you know, it's kind of the questionable. Can I actually eat this meat? Is it gonna affect me the way these animals were affected. There
are a lot of questions about that. Still. Right now, there are no confirmed cases of chronic wasting disease transferring to humans, either by the saliva of a deer, the waste of a deer, or eating the meat of a killed deer. But it is a potential thing that could occur. Right there could be some kind of mutation in those prions that allows it to jump to humans somehow at some point, and likely it will happen at some point
in the future. It hasn't happened yet. It is likely that there's going to be a mutation of some sort that it'll just jump to whatever. Right, given enough time, yeah, give enough time, it's probably gonna happen, as we've seen in the past.
What about other animals that eat deer.
Well, yeah, that's a fear, right anything living out in let's say, the northwest of the United States, there are creatures that consume deer. There is a worry about that. Cougars, coyotes, wolves, bears, all kinds of stuff are eating deer all the time, there's a potential for that, but again it's not known yet,
at least from the writing I've seen. The reason why we're talking about it today is because this chronic wasting disease has been observed for a long time, since two thousand and five, I think is really the start of major United States wide monitoring for this disease in deer populations, but it is. I'm just going to name off some states right now that I saw over the past basically
two months of news stories. Kentucky, Idaho, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Wyoming have all reported new cases of chronic wasting disease animals in various parts of those states.
Interesting because they're not contiguous, so no, we could assume maybe like maybe there are states, you know, adjacent to the reporting states that just haven't found a case.
It's very likely because the only way currently that the CDC, which is one of the organizations monitoring this stuff, local fish and Game, wildlife organization, parks organizations, they're all looking at this stuff, and they're all kind of independently reporting. When a hunter finds a potentially infected animal and sends in a sample to be tested, that's the only way they know when there are animals with chronic wasting disease.
Unless an individual hunter who was out there and scoped an animal that was clearly suffering from this thing and then reports it, they don't know. And remember, this disease can take years to manifest, so you could actually see it. So you may shoot a buck as a hunter, let's say somewhere in Georgia, and you think that animal's fine, you take it, You take it to a tax dermis or whatever, you clean it, you get all the meat, and then you're eating that meat over the course of
a year, right, all that venison. It may be infected with these prions. You just don't know it unless you send us sample to a participating taxidermist or another you know group within your state or county that may send it to the CDC.
Are places where maybe hunting is more prevalent and consuming this type of game meet more common. Are they are they more at risk for this kind of thing? Because actually I was talking with my partner and people over Christmas about eating venison, and it really is. It seems to be something that some people just have never done in their entire lives.
I think it's more discovered in places that have large, like let's say, deer or elk populations that are actively hunted only because you're you have more human beings interacting with that large population and seeing the effects. Right, there are way more cases being seen actively in hunting season, which gosh, it's been going I guess for a bit now, and it lasts until usually like January or February, depending
on which state you're in. The reason why we're talking about today though, is because Yellowstone National Park in the northwest corner of Wyoming had their first ever known case, let's say, of chronic wasting disease in a deer, which means the CDC and other organizations are calling for every single hunter that's going out there every time you bag
a deer. It's the term they use every time you kill a deer, whether it's a dough or a buck, no matter where it is, take a sample and send it in to check to see if that deer was infected, and that way there can be a large enough sample size that we can really get an understanding of where these I think they're called chronic wasting zones that are they're being called that by the CDC and other organizations to say, hey, chronic wasting disease exists here in this
corner of this county, or is found here in this specific part of Yellowstone National Park. Because as I said, those primes can last for like a year in the soil on a rock where a deer just got a little bit of spittle as it's walking around emaciated and with its mouth hanging open, another deer can come by and mess with that, get it on their hoof, even there's all there. It's crazy how infectious this is and
how difficult it is to eradicate it. I want to read this tiny section from that same Guardian article quote, once this environment is infected, any environment where this stuff is, the pathogen is extremely hard to eradicate. It can persist for years in dirt or on surfaces, and scientists report it is resistant to disinfectants, formaldehyde, radiation and incineration at six hundred degrees celsius or one hundred degrees fahrenheit.
Holy smooks.
So like, once it's there, it's there, right, So they have to designate areas chronic wasting disease zones and then monitor all populations of all potentially infected animals that move through that in part of their regular migration.
Twenty twenty four Zombie Dear and super pigs. We're doing like a universe thing, Matt. One question I think a lot of people will have in the audience tonight, how would you, the average person, identify a deer that had this infection? Would you? Would it be strange behavior? Is it?
Like generally, any hunter would probably be able to tell because you get you when you're hunting, you can understand, You begin to understand the normal activities of especially let's say a white tailed deer. You understand kind of how they move. Do you understand why they make movements and what they alert to and all those things. A deer that's infected by this, that is showing symptoms is going to act very abnormally and different to that kind of
going to be again, imagine a zombie deer. If you see one, a deer that looks like a zombie kind of that's probably that's what's going on.
Red flag for sure.
But because of that time it takes, you never know if a normal looking deer is actually infected by this, it just hasn't shown any symptoms yet.
Now I'm sorry if I missed it, and I realized earlier I may have asked sort of a silly question about places where hunting and consumption of venison is more common. If those are places more to be concerned about. Does this have any effect on humans if they consume the meat?
Unknown currently doesn't seem to have any effect on humans because humans have undoubtedly ingested this stuff and we haven't noticed anything with you know, a human coming down with chronic human wasting disease or whatever. The worry is that like swine flu or you know, a bird flu, it could jump species the way those did, right, becomes zoonotic. Yeah,
so just be aware, that's all. That's really all. And I would say, if you are actively hunting, do send in samples, like, find out who you can send a sample into, and then just do it.
Please, please do it. You're absolutely right. Sounds like maybe it's a it's a pain to deal with bureaucracy which is often slow moving. But let's not forget that doctor Michael Osterholm, the US epidemiologist who first tipped Britain to mad cow disease, Let's not forget that he said, this chronic wasting disease and deer could become a quote slow moving disaster.
Oh yeah, and here's a quote from that same Guardian article. This one's from doctor Corey Anderson. This freaked me out. That's why he said quote, We're dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious, made into the worries that we don't have an effective way to eradicate it, neither from the animals it infects nor the environments it contaminates. Just think about that for a while while you listen to these ads. We'll be right back with more strange news.
Eight deer bray smokement thal cigarettes, two crimes.
No wait what, I didn't mean.
It, And we're back with one more piece of strange news for this your first day of twenty twenty four.
This one's a doozy. We talked a bit about this off air, and I think we've mentioned the idea of a ban on menthol cigarettes coming down from the United States federal government that has been postponed into twenty twenty four. Unknown as to exactly when it will happen, but it most likely will unless some of the measures we're going to talk about in this news bit kind of do
what they're setting out to do. During the second Republican presidential debate, there was an advertisement that played on Fox Business that talked about how Biden's ban on menthol cigarettes could This is quoting the ad fuel an illicit market lining the pockets of the Mexican cartels, featuring some very inflammatory imagery of border fences and stacks of one hundred dollars bills and men carrying coffins and such. And this ad was paid for by something called the Border Security Alliance.
And I read a really great article on Mother Jones by Dan Friedman and Isabella Diaz from just about a week ago this past in twenty twenty three, in December twenty first of twenty twenty three. You can find it yourself. It's a pretty deep dive, much more than we can
get to in this segment. But I did want to talk a bit about how the idea of these tobacco companies, you know, R. J. Reynolds, you know, being first and foremost on that list and their parent company, Altria, are having to kind of pivot with all of the you know, science behind cigarettes and all of the horrible health conditions that they can cause, and also some of the issues surrounding vapes and also knowing how a lot of these vapes are coming from places like China, places like you know,
other other countries, and there is a certainly a black market of some sort to be talked about, to be to be addressed with this kind of stuff, and that of course, organized crime organizations have often looked to changes in regulations, you know, by the FDA around certain things to pivot their business models into, you know, what they decide they want to smuggle into this country. So again I'm just saying a lot of those things are true.
What is very interesting is how the tobacco companies are kind of spinning it here, right, the idea that and like who they're referencing, the kind of fear mongering behind a lot of this stuff, And what is the Border Security Alliance? A tweet from the bsa underscore US official Twitter x whatever account Border Security Alliance says, our border is at a crisis point. We are battling ruthless cartels on a daily basis. And now in the Biden administrations
is considering a ban on menthol cigarettes. That's irresp The president's ban will fuel an illicit market lining the pockets of Mexican cartels and throughout the life of this kind of talking point, which is relatively recent, as we've seen, you know, the conflicts between Israel and Gaza. UH now terrorist organizations has kind of they has joined the chat and even referencing, you know, stuff like groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and of course in political rhetoric, those are
things that get people's dander up nice and good. So I don't know, I just wanted to see what you guys thought about this kind of politicization of something seemingly as innocuous as banning menthol cigarettes, which, as we know, based on some studies, you know, would help prevent a lot of young people from starting to smoke. Menthol cigarettes are kind of considered a gateway cigarette because they taste
nice or whatever. They've got a minty flavor. I don't know how much I necessarily believe that, But what do you guys think? What's at play here? And is this a shadowy lobbying effort or is this just a company trying to keep other countries from eating their lunch.
Let me put this out there, at risk of being gross to most people listening to this right now, at one point in my life, I smoked mentalated cigarettes. Yes, that's right disgusting, and I'm sorry, but I did.
A lot of people do, Matt, I mean it's they're popular.
Well, at the time when I did, that was the only type of smoke that I would use, right, that I would purchase in that state of mind that I was in at the time. When I was smoking those, I would I would drive twenty minutes if I knew I could get them somewhere, right Like, if I couldn't find them my local gas station, I would drive out of my way to go and get them because I needed them, and I felt like I needed them, and in many ways I felt help addicted to that specific type of cigarette.
Dude, now that I think back on it, I started smoking by smoking menthol cigarettes when I was very young. Just putting that out there, absolutely true.
I think that it's true potentially that if you ban this specific type of thing, there would be a black market for it that may open up, or at least a spin on it that would end up being legal, but it would taste kind of the same, But there would be something that would fill in that market space, right, because there are going to be millions of people that smoke them right now that are going to need them, but they're going to feel like they need them, right, But is.
It coming from the cartels? Is it coming from hesba lah? Like, that's my question. It seems like an over complication of you know, yeah, there's a black market for freaking raw milk, you know, if you if you can't get it legally. Black markets come up during any kind of prohibition. But is this funding terrorism and you know, weakening our border security.
I'll come in after you met. I think I would just say.
I got you. I think it would fund either market innovation, right or organized crime, which doesn't mean terrorism, doesn't mean cartels, It means like prohibition era stuff, right. I mean, in my mind that's what it is.
Speakeasys flappers, but meilated.
Cigarettes selling Lucy's selling selling a square.
Yeah, I guess what I mean is I just don't know. I don't know if that is the same thing, right, And I don't know how you would prove that that is the same thing as terrorists and car Yeah.
It's a it's a bit rich, I think, especially in a land where the or in a ecosystem where tobacco legacy companies immediately pivoted to vapes that are essentially Halloween candy flavored at all times. Like that, that is the still, that is the menthilation, the gateway that you're talking about, NOL. The idea of equating it to terrorism makes a lot
of sense because you can easily get more funding. I'd like to shout out the allies of the Border Security Alliance, which is not a governmental organization, right right, So shout out to the Arizona Police Association, Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Arizona, Glendale Police Officer Association, Arizona Probation Officer Association, Tucson Police Officer Association, and some friends in Albuquerque. Like the list goes on. What I'm saying is there are
people with a horse in the race. It is very good not to not to light up a Cadillac Newport if you if you can avoid it, it'll cost you a lot of money, either either at a gas station or later in a hospital.
What is that?
Cadillac is a street term for the longer new Ports.
Okay, like a like a like a one hundred yeah yeah, yeah, just so can I add to that really quickly, But just to just to get this out there, Another divisive use of the divisive piece of rhetoric is the notion that this ban is inherently racist because black people disproportionately prefer smoking menthol cigarettes to non menthol cigarettes. Again, don't know if that's true. Kind of almost feels like a like an unfair stereotype. But maybe there's data to back
that up. But it doesn't stop people from throwing that around, you know, as if to mean or to malign this this action.
Yeah, it's interesting too, because putting the terrorism idea aside, the like just bracketing that for a second. We know that banning tobacco has worked in various countries, right there are countries where you can, as a visitor bring in a set amount of tobacco, whether it's measured by weight or in the case of cigarettes, it's i should say, in the carton of cigarettes, it's measured by a number of coffin nails. But the thing is here, we're looking
at something that may simply fade away. Indeed, the best propaganda for cigarettes, for what the kids are calling old school cigarettes now instead of apes, it's going to be Hollywood. It's going to be all those old films, all the old TV series where in the coolest or most mysterious or most dangerous person you know, all of a sudden has a cigarette whatever they're doing. So I think that you have to beat propaganda before you clamp down on
this stuff and call it terrorism. Also, how much money, no, how much money would terrorist groups make off selling Lucy's I.
Good question, Ben. What I do know though, is that tobacco use is way down in the United States, like in a pretty significant way, and also among young people, you know, who aren't starting to smoke combustible cigarettes, you know, and that maybe doesn't necessarily always wrap in the vape stuff, which we also know have their own problems, And it's one of those things where long term the effects of vapes are yet to really they're kind of TBD. Which is wild to me that any form of vape is
FDA approved or is able to be acquired legally. But now, I mean, anytime you go to a gas station or like a smoke shop, a tobacco you know, headshop, whatever you call it, and you see these little disposable guys, like these elf bars or whatever, it's my understanding that those aren't entirely legal because they taste like mango and afriking, you know, papaya and stuff, and they're pretty colors, and I just I don't quite understand how those are able to be sold, if that's a black market thing or
if it's just a loophole thing. Because Jewel got pilloried for all of this stuff. They kind of became the whipping boy for a lot of this debate, and they aren't allowed to sell anything that has a you know, fruity flavor anymore. Right, I don't quite understand where these elf bars are coming from.
Well, I suspect, I'm sure I suspect the legacy tobacco companies again have their hand in the cookie jar here, or have their hand in the tobacco barn, because that can replace the market demand. Right, you get a candy flavor nicotine substance that replaces the your earlier experience as a child with mentallyated cigarettes, as you call them, Matt.
The idea though that I don't know. I sound like I'm cracking on the the ulterior motives of the border alliance here, But just to be fair, you have to point out our earlier conversation in a previous Strange News segment when the cartel took over the avocado trade just so they could, you know, make some money. So maybe maybe they are in.
The way overthrew the government to sell pineapples or whatever whatever, like with the was it Jaquita? Remember there was a whole coup like to sell bananas.
Oh in nineteen fifty four, the free of Throw of Guatemala.
Correct, yes, yes, I'm saying like this is yeah. Sorry, man, you're absolutely right. I'm just thinking of other examples.
You're right, yeah, I mean also, that's the thing I'm looking at this in some of the notes who provided us here. No, I'm looking at the Management of Border Security Alliance, And if you go to their about section, you see that there's a lot of Arizona Arizona Area l eos who are on their board or managing the place, and they're primarily concerned with what they call border security. They're primarily concerned with emigration and drug seizures.
So is this.
Really one of their core missions or is this something to get into the headlines and then further push the Overton window of what they want the conversation to be.
To be fair, our j. Reynolds was reached out to by Mother Jones and asked to give a comment, they said the following. Like many other companies, Reynolds supports organizations that contribute to the debate on issues that are important to our consumers. Reynolds has been clear on where it stands on this topic. We strongly believe there are more effective ways to deliver tobacco harm reduction than banning products.
Banning products often leads to a tended consequences, such as the increase of illegal, unregulated products flooding the market.
Ooh, you gotta admire that linguistic park wore though, huh a couple of matrix dodges. They did a backflip.
Yeah, it's not bad. And then you know, there are other organizations mentioned in this this article to your pointment. Another one is the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, which is a group that until very recently listed R J. Reynolds as being one of their major supporters and now just decided to pivot to mentioning Altria, which is that
parent company of Philip Morris. You know, so it's a little better optics, but there's skin in the game for this stuff, and the idea of linking it to hot button issues certainly isn't a new technique, but I find it to be disingenuous and a little on the creepy side. I think it's something to look into further, especially as we see developments in this kind of thing, because prohibition of any kind does always have I will totally agree. I think we all will have unintended consequences that can
oftentimes be predicted. And I think maybe banning mental cigarettes is not even that is it going to make that big of an impact. But I could be wrong, because you're right, Matt. I do remember a lot of young people I knew that started smoking started smoking by smoking like cools or something that like had that it was easier, It was a gateway because you know, Marlborough Reds are gross but freaking you know, cools or Newports or whatever they've got this they are there's a certain candy quality
to them. That's that's you're not wrong.
Oh and prohibition. Another way to phrase prohibition. I agree with your points here. I think that's brilliant astute. Another way to phrase prohibition is the perverse incentive concept. So you know, especially here in the States, you tell people they can't have a thing, right, Remember, even you don't tell I can right, right right, And lest we sound too political, let's remember in New York when someone banned
large sodas right at your local bodega. People were up in arms, even John Stewart, who clearly have better things to do. Uh, soda is different because it will it will have us health effects less less immediately damaging averse health effects. But gosh, selling cigarette selling Lucy's the mother Jones article you mentioned here. Noel also talks about UH terrorist groups in the Middle East, not just Mexican cartels.
Yeah, yeah, it was, and that was sort of added later in terms of the language. And I think a lot of that had to do with UH some of the you know, the conflicts going on, you know with Gaza and stuff that are very much in the news right now. As a way of like tying it to something that people understand as PoTA, that people divisively understand as a threat. It's just weird. It's all just lobbying and marketing, and it's a bunch of bulls. But it's very fast episode. Uh, I think so too, Yeah, And
I think we leave it there today. This one has run long, but I think, man, what a great way to kick off the new year, and hey, at least we started off with some positive stuff. Guys, right, Thank you for that, Ben, I gotta say, and.
Thank you everyone for tuning in. We hope you are off to a rollicking start for twenty twenty four. We hope you tune into our future episodes. We hope that you show up on air with us, be a part of the show. We have a listener mail segment that may feature you coming later this week. If you want to be part of the show, please take a page from our weird book of secrets and contact us at any number of ways. You don't have to walk winter shins at a crossroad at midnight. You can, uh, you
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So yeah, Still, we're still conspiracy stuff on Twitter x whatever you want to call it. This year. We'll see interesting things developing with that Elon Muskfellow too, that we should probably cover at some point. We are also conspiracy stuff on YouTube and Facebook. Lots of fun videos more to come this year, excited to make. I think we all enjoy and we appreciate your comments on them. We are conspiracy stuff show, however, on Instagram and TikTok.
Ben what is winter sins or winter counterclockwisewise? Yeah, okay, cool?
Say anti clockwise, which I recently learned w I D D E.
R shins got it?
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