Technology Conspiracy Theories I

Jonathan Strickland, Hey there, why are we so quiet today? Well, that would be because we're finally going to tackle that topic that we said we were going to tackle months ago, and then everyone wrote in and asked us to keep doing not Cantanna's, don't even go there. We got one request for to do an episode on Cantana's like eight months ago, and we still haven't done that once. Now, this is the one that lots of people have asked us to do. We are, of course talking about heck

conspiracy theories. And before we get into that, though, Okay, I wanted to talk about something that has nothing to do with conspiracy theories at all. Okay, this there's there's no conspiracy theory behind this, of course there isn't. I'm going to ask that's what they want you to believe. What what is your opinion about pumpkins? What is my opinion about pumpkins? Um? There orange and they love flying through the air. I agree, pumpkins do love flying through

the air. Now, if you were someone who were interested in seeing pumpkins fly through the air at great velocity and distance, what would you do? I actually I wouldn't do it myself. I would have somebody else do it, and I would watch it. Right, But I mean I'm saying like, if you want to watch that, I mean, what opportunity is there? Uh? That would be the opportunity

to tune into the Science Channel on November. That's right, because the Road to Punkin Chunkin, followed by Punkin chunk In itself starting at eight pm, will be on the air on the Science Channel on November twenty six, and you can watch crazy individuals who have built insanely huge machines designed to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to chunk a punkin. Yep, it's uh, it's pretty massive. I gotta say, yeah, Flying fruit no conspiracy,

there no no conspiracy. We can conspiracy to chunk punkins, I suppose, so we can talk a little bit about some actual conspiracy theories that relate back to technology. Okay, I was going to start with our friend Nicola Tesla. Oh him, Yes, we talked about this once before in an earlier podcast about wireless power, and so I just thought I would kind of touch base on that again. Sorry, Nate Lankson, if you're listening, I know he hates that phrase. So that's okay, We're going to take on the low

hanging fruit. Yes, we can raise any red flags we see, right, I'm hoping for some synergy. So Tesla he came up with this idea for transmitting electricity without wires using an enormous tower. He actually had a couple of different ideas

on how to do this. One of them involved firing electricity up into the iono sphere, which he thought was more conductive than any other part of the atmosphere, and then somehow transmitting electricity throughout the globe that way, which we mean you'd have to have some sort of antenna that could reach up there and and bring the electricity

back down. The other idea he had was using the earth itself as a way to send electricity through some sort of resonating kind of technology that that a lot of people have tried to explain since then, but no one's really got a good handle on it. And some of that may be due to the fact that Tesla was years ahead of his time, and some of them maybe due to the fact that Tesla also appears to have kind of gone crazy towards the end of his life for good for good reason, he he had a

tortured existence toward the end of his life. Um, his his mind worked unusually even when he was understandable, it was sort of hard to get yeah, but he he definitely had revolutionary ideas that have since come to fruition, but they were just they were just too revolutionary for the time that he lived in. But one one of these was this idea of of broadcasting electricity wirelessly. Now, he had published an article that kind of was all over the place, but one of the things that talked

about was creating a wireless communication system. So this is before radio, This is before any of that has really taken place. Marconi has not made the big splash with radio yet. So one of the people who read this

article and was interested was JP Morgan. I asked the the famous American finance here right right, he was Mr money Bags really and uh so actually a Mr monopoly is yeah, um yeah, apparently his favorite piece was the anyway, he he actually agreed to to invest a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in Tesla's idea, which was not chicken feed at the time. A little money now, but yeah,

that's a lot then now. Granted, some experts believe that the amount of money Tesla would have needed to complete his project would have actually been closer to a million dollars even back then, so it's still a drop in the proverbial bucket. But Tesla was eager to get on this project and he didn't care that it was just part of what he would needed. He he wanted to get started hope that he could continue to raise money

throughout the project. So he starts building this and the conspiracy theory here is that Morrigan got wind that the project was not to build a wireless communication network, but rather to create a way of distributing electricity without the use of wires, which would essentially mean that people could get electricity for free. Yeah, and this is uh, this is the famous Warden Cliff or in shore I'm Long Island, which which did actually come to fruition? I mean, and

there was there was there was one. Yes, something was built. Yes, part of it is still there. I think it's about to get torn down in fact, but most of it was taken a part in nineteen seventeen. Yes, yes, So the conspiracy theorists say that what happened was Morgan heard that there was going to be this free energy system, and in order to prevent it so that he would not uh see a dip in profits from any kind of electricity delivery systems uh, he specifically pulled funding and

essentially sabotaged the the project by not paying for it. Um. However, it appears that that it's not quite that sinister. It still doesn't mean Morgan in a very nice light, but it's you know, part of it is that Tesla was not being upfront about what his project was about in the first place. Well, yeah, that's true, and people who are lending you money are generally interested in knowing exactly what you're going to do with Yeah. Yeah. The the de fault is not wholly upon Morgan in this case.

What appears to actually have happened is that while this project was under construction, Mark Marconi successfully was able to transmit the letter S transatlantically and it was able to prove that his system of wireless communication worked and it was relatively cheap. So now Morrigan is looking at his project, that he's funding this hundred fifty project, and saying, well, if there's a reliable and cheap way to to transmit information, why am I pouring money into this very expensive and

so and so far unproven method. And that is why he cut the funds to Tesla's project. Had nothing to do with worrying that he was going to go bankrupt because suddenly he had no way of making money out of delivering electricity. Right, So that's that's one conspiracy theory

more or less debunked. Again, there was definitely a disagree between these two gentlemen, Um, but I think it was partly due to Tesla not being completely honest about what his project was for, and also Morrigan was, you know, he just wasn't willing to to to see if the the this project would pay off in the future. So but that's a good one to start with. Now, Um, did you have any you want to bring up specifically

or shall I move on to the next one. I was thinking maybe since we've been talking about energy and people uh possibly conspiring to prevent a more efficient means of using energy, that maybe we would stick with that theme for a moment, since we were going to talk about the the auto companies, yes, and basically how they want to squash other forms of other forms of propulsion in favor of the internal combustion engine that runs on diesel petroleum based rather than than than a electric cars.

We're really getting down to the oil companies here. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that oil companies have conspired to to essentially squash any project that would have created an affordable and efficient electric vehicle. Uh. There's a lot of evidence out there that kind of suggests that, you know, some projects that would have brought an electric vehicle to market earlier than we've seen were

in fact kind of squashed. But whether that was because the oil companies were coming in and throwing their weight around, or whether it was because other considerations had to pop up, that's still that's still under debate. For one thing, let's say that we did put electric vehicles out there earlier, you have to have some sort of infrastructure to support that. Well, there were electric vehicles earlier, much earlier, and in fact, Henry Ford was not a big fan of using assolene

at all. No. Um. Well, my point being that to switch over to an all electric system needs more than just putting electric cars on the market for people to buy. They need a place to plug the things in to make sure they remain charged so that or to have some sort of stations where they can get there the battery or whatever it is is going to provide the electrical power to keep the car running. Uh. That infrastructure

costs money. Well, see, the people at Honda probably agree with you, because one of the conspiracies that I saw around there. One of the theories conspiracy theories around this that I saw was that some people think that Honda, you know, having their fc X and then later the Clarity hydrogen powered cars, they had a home fueling station that would basically convert natural gas to hydrogen that could be used in the cars, and they said, well, they've

had this technology for years and Honda is suppressing it. Um. The thing is, you know, Honda says, well, you need the infrastructure away from your home because what happens if you run out of fuel when you're away from home. So, you know, but the conspiracy theorists who who think Honda is hiding something don't necessarily agree with that. The vehicle doesn't do you much good if you can only travel

five to ten miles away, you know, and then you're stuck. Yeah, I mean, you couldn't go even even under on you know, you say, okay, well I take a hydrogen could get me around town for a week. Well what happens if you, you know, say, drive to your in laws house and well they don't have a hydrogen fueling station and there's

no fueling station around. Then you're stuck. And that's that's the that's the biggest obstacle I think to really adopting a new and efficient and uh and and green um strategy as far as transportation goes, it's that the initial investment, that upfront investment and building the infrastructure necessary to support

that kind of of endeavor is phenomenally expensive. Of not only that, but you would still have to continue to support the gasoline industry until you were able to make a full transition over to whatever your alternative fuel was. You couldn't just make the switch overnight because too many people are driving gasoline powered cars. What are they gonna do? You know, you can't just necessarily, like unless the government does some weird subsidized thing where you can trade in

your gas vehicle for an electric vehicle, and that's it. Uh, it just wouldn't work. And I can't imagine how expensive a program like that would be. I mean, you think about how many cars are on the road just in the United States alone, That kind of program would be insanely expensive. I think peak oil is also going to force the petroleum companies to rethink their strategy, so I think it's in their best interest to find other types

of fuels now. I mean honestly, there, as with all of these, there may actually be something to these conspiracy theories, but you know it doesn't to This one, to me, doesn't really make a lot of sense. I think the most sense, the most sense I can make of it is that it from a business standpoint, it really didn't make sense to to invest in these other technologies because it just again, building out that infrastructure was so expensive until you get to the point where you absolutely have

to do it, you don't really want to take that expense. Now, It kind of stinks that we have to wait until we get that far because it means that you're depending on foreign oil, you're also polluting the environment. There are a lot of really negative things. But at the same time, I mean, the world runs on money. It's it's a

sad fact. You cannot get around that. And whereas we would love to think that these big companies would turn an altruistic leaf and do what's right for the rest of humanity, unless every single person is willing to do that, I don't think you can really cast stones. Um. Now. Granted, some of these companies act in a much more uh irresponsible manner than others, and for that they should be

derided and you know, insulted or whatever. But yeah, I don't think it's necessarily as I don't think it's a group of old men in a smoky room chuckling evil e to themselves as they squash he had another electric vehicle design. No there, they make them smoke outside. Now, that's true. They're still in the room, but you know they go take a break every once in a while.

On a related note, here's the conspiracy theory of the oil companies getting together to uh to dismantle the electric cable car uh systems in various cities in the United States, because a lot of cities had electric cable cars and then they started to kind of go away and they were replaced by buses. So there's a theory out there that oil companies kind of got together and bought up a lot of these cable cars in order to run them out of business and create a monopoly. Now there's

some truth to this. There were a lot of companies that did get together in order to make a monopoly so that they would be the one and only provider of the various parts you would need to replace the buses. But on the flip side of that coin, by the time a lot of these cable companies cable car companies started to go out of business, it was because they had rising costs and not enough revenue. It wasn't that they were being run out of business. It was just

that they were becoming obsolete. They were the A lot of these were having problems with maintenance. You know, cars were falling apart, and there were no longer companies that actually made the parts that originally went into these these systems. This sounds familiar to those of us who live in Atlanta. Um. But so, it doesn't look like to me that the oil companies really had to do that much to run cable. If they did had any anything to do with it,

they didn't have to work hard. It was just a matter of time before these companies went away already, just based upon how much they were in the whole. So but um but that's another one of those common energy things. I've got another one for cold fusion. So fusion, we're talking about a nuclear process where you fuse two nucleus is together. Turns out that's hard to do. Yeah, I

mean it requires a lot, a whole lot of heat. Yeah, a lot of energy, because what you're talking about is you've got a nucleus, you know, it's it's protons, neutrons, So neutrons carry no charge. Protons carry a positive charge. If you take two positively charged anythings and put them next to each other, they repel one another because like

repels like correct, so positive repels are positive. In order to fuse two nucleus is together, you have to you have to essentially put in enough energy to break down that that effect, and that's a lot of energy. That's the problem. With fusion. That's why fusion is is looked at as a difficult problem to solve if you want to use it to get energy out, because you have to put so much energy into it that it doesn't

make sense as far as a source of energy. Cold fusion is a theory or a process by which you would be able to fuse two atoms together without pouring all this energy into it, and therefore it could theoretically be a source of practically endless energy, right, and it sounds great, Yeah, it would be. It would be. When they say cold fusion, they don't mean cold like in you know, the inside of the large headron collider, but that's very, very cold, almost as cold as the deepest

depths of space. Now, this is this is room temperature we're talking about, So cold is relative in these things. Cold being that it's not taking millions of degrees of celsius of heat in order to do this, right, And you also wouldn't necessarily need fancy equipment. You could by

the process of cold fusion. The idea is that you would use existing lab equipment at working at room temperature to do this, which is you know, really seriously, we could do that, Yeah, a pair of scientists back in the UH I think it was March is when they made their announcing. Hey look at that, Martin Fleishman and Stanley Ponds, and they announced that they had successfully achieved

cold fusion. They they found in their experiment that um, the experiment generated some heat that they could not otherwise explain, and there were also some other byproducts that they could not otherwise explain unless some sort of fusion had occurred. Uh. Here's the problem. Uh, No one's really been able to replicate this experiment and get exactly the same results that they got without having some other problem pop up where it kind of explains away the result, Like a faulty

piece of equipment, for example. Uh, a faulty thermometer. It doesn't measure the temperature correctly, and therefore you think you've got unexplained heat phenomena, and it turns out you don't. UM. So, even though there are a lot of people out there, a lot of different scientists still working on cold fusion, the scientific community as a whole still regards cold fusion as essentially an impossibility, or at least it's unproven. They say it's an extraordinary claim, and so far there is

no extraordinary proof to back it up. As a matter of fact, the Ponds and Fleishman's theories, you know, once they made them public, basically they were pounced upon by an army of their peers, all of whom basically uh ridiculed might not be a strong word to use in

this case. Yeah, the criticism was not kind. Now, scientists and other cold fusion enthusiasts who all subscribe to the whole cold fusion theory or process, argue that the scientific community is now suppressing anything that has to do with cold fusion um out of arrogance or uh refusal to

look at evidence, however you want to define it. But essentially, what they're saying is that their voices are being shut out by the scientific community at large, even though they claim that they have uh at least some fairly convincing evidence to prove that it works. Uh. The scientific tift community, on the other hand, says, everything that's been presented so far doesn't meet the burden of proof necessary to show that ColdFusion actually does work. So you've got these two

sides going back and forth. Of course, the scientific community, the supporters point out, they're they're the ones with the power. They're the ones who choose what papers get published in in pure reviewed journals and what information essentially gets out to the media. Although trust me, the media is all about publishing weird, wacky scientific explanations. If if the media thought that they could get away with talking about some sort of free energy source, I can pretty much guarantee

you it would be all over the place. Even if there were, there was not a shred of proof. Yeah, it's just a sad fact. We know. Anybody who's watched the movie Back to the Future knows that in the future we'll all have a Mr. Fusion machine on the back of our cars into which we can throw our junk and it will turn into a miraculous propulsion system, when in fact, of course, it's just a coffee grinder. What an amazing segue. Really, Yes, because now we can

talk about hoverboards. Yes, well they really exist, right according to the people who watched Back to the Future, to who have lots of wishful thinking, Yes according to reality. No, well you know, even uh even Bob Zemeckis was was saying that they were real. Uh so, if you don't know what we're talking about, First of all, get some culture. People rent the Back to the Future trilogy. Actually, you know, the second one is really the worst one of the trilogy.

It's terrible. It depends on how you look at it. But that's we can argue about whether three are really whoa whoa whoa. Three was awesome. It was a western. It was a western, and therefore was awesome, just like Sundown was a Western vampire movie and therefore is awesome. Okay, we need to stop talking about movies and get back to the future. I mean, well that's still so anyway, if you remember you were back to the future too.

There's uh, there's there's a scene where Marty McFly grabs hold of a hoverboard, a skateboard like device that hovers above the ground seemingly by magic, and it had the brand name Mattel on it, and he floats around and the bad guys chase him and blah blah blah blah blah. Basically they recreated the skateboard scene from the first movie, Yes, except this time everyone's floating. And uh. After the movie came out, there were people who were saying, hey, you

know what, there really are hoverboards. They're real and you can buy one if it weren't for the fact that parents were so freaked out by it that they had banded together and demanded that the these devices not go on sale because they would be too dangerous for children to have. That or the other story which went that Mattel did some intensive testing and somebody died horribly in a nasty accident. Yeah, either way, Um, neither of those

are true. Uh. The fact that Mattel was on the name on of that hoverboard had nothing to do with the fact that, you know, it didn't support the fact any any sort of any sort of claim that the hoverboard was an actual product, because I don't know if you've seen the movie or not. Product placement was rather rampant and back to the future too. I'm thinking of Pepsi and tab and like. There were tons and tons of different products mentioned in that series. And so just

because something is mentioned does not make it real. Uh, it was. It was what snopes dot Com referred to as wishful thinking legend. You know, people want there to be a hoverboard, so therefore there must be a hoverboard and all the way reality works. Unfortunately, Snopes also seems to feel that the reason that Bob's and Meckis actually started saying there were hoverboards was because he got tired of fielding questions about it, so he said, yeah, you

know what, sure thing, there are real hoverboards. Yeah. I once saw Simon Peg say something similar when someone asked him an annoying question of whether or not he would attend Dragon Con. He says, look, there's only one way we can get we can answer this question and get past it. Yes, we'll come to dragon Con. Of course he said, yes, we'll come to dragon Con, meaning no, we're not coming to dragon Con. But it was just to stop getting that question. Um. Now, there are actually

are hoverboards, but they don't look anything like this. They're more like they're more like regular hovercraft the size of a skateboard. You know, they have the skirt and you hover you know, like an inch two inches off the ground. So it's using air. So yeah, it's using air. It's not not some weird magnetic field. No, when you can't you know, fly through the air and do crazy stunts on it, you would basically be you know, floating an inch above the ground, probably at a fairly low rate

of speed, right until you fell off. I was about to say I would probably be falling off, because that's I have no sense of dexterity on something like that. But if you want to, you know, pull a steel fishman twist on it, I'm not gonna happen. I got another segue for you. Okay, So we're talking about the future. We are, Oh, yes, yes we were, and time travel. One of our other conspiracy theories has something to do with time travel, does it really? Yes, we're talking about

the Large Hadron Collider. And this is the weirdest conspiracy theory in my opinion, because it involves a conspiracy of nature against man. That yeah, it's a completely non sentient thing stopping people. All right, So let's let's this is going to take some explanation. First of all, you've got the Large Hadron Collider, which is a particle accelerator. It's going to be an Adam smasher essentially. Really, it's a

particle smasher. Fifteen years, nine billion dollars, it's been we've been waiting for it to be We've been waiting for it to come online for a while now. It was supposed to be online last year and then some stuff went wrong and it got delaid. Yeah, so one of the things the Large Hadron Collider is possibly looking for. Just one of the many things that the scientists are looking for using this machine, it's something called the Higgs

Boson particle. It's also sometimes referred to as the God particle, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, but there you go. Now, the Higgs Boson particle is a theoretical particle. We do not know if it actually exists. It's hypothetic. It's been theorized as the the thing in the universe that would explain why stuff has mass because if you look at

the Big Bang theory. This is really getting complicated complicated, but if you look at the Big Bang theory, but for just when when the universe came into being, that that first instant, there was no such thing as mass. It was this kind of combination of energy and mass that then split, so then you had energy and you had mass. The Higgs Boaston particle would be the theoretical

particle that would explain why that mass has mass. So that's one thing they helped to find by using this particle accelerator because it it in a way is simulating the events that immediately followed the Big Bang on a very very very tiny scale, and this is all happening in less than a second. I mean, it's it's so

fast that it's difficult for me to even imagine. So anyway, two physicists, Dr Holger Nielsen and Dr Missile uh Ninomia have proposed that the Higgs Boson particle itself, the nature itself, has sent the Higgs Boson particle back in time and sabotage the Large Hadron Collider because the purpose, yes, because the Large Hadron Collider has broken down a couple of times. The idea here is that nature itself is so abhorrent of the Higgs Boson particle that were you to create one,

they there will be horrible consequences. So before you can create one, Nature is sending stuff back in time to stop the creation, to prevent horrible catastrophe. Okay, now here's my problem with this. First of all, it's suggesting there's some sort of sentient aspect to the Higgs Boson particle, which again is just theoretical. We don't even know it exists and we're already giving its sentience. Well you know,

it's not listed in the in the white pages. Secondly, it's suggesting that time travel back in time is possible, something that right now we do not believe is actually possible. We think that if if time travel is possible, you can only do it going forward, not backwards. Thirdly, okay, so if you are given the choice between saying, all right, you've got the world's most complex, huge machine, with lots and lots and lots of parts, all from different manufacturers,

all put together, and it's insanely complex. Is it more likely that one little part of that could break, thus screwing up the project? Or is it more likely to say that some particle that gains sentience traveled back in time and stopped it knowing human beings. I say that the breaking part is more likely. Acom's razor demands that we say, hey, guys, this is a really complex machine. I can't make sure that my car will run two months in a row. We're talking about a machine that's

orders of magnitude more complex than a vehicle. You know, if you want to know, if you want to keep up to date on what's going on with the l h C, you can always check out has the LHC destroyed Earth dot Com? And it will let you know was it say right, now okay, good. Also, I think if you really want to destroy the Earth, you would need a Q thirty six space modulatur Where was the earth shuttering? Kaboom um? So the Yeah, there's the LHC. Also, there's the theory that they will create a black hole

and it will destroy the Earth. Any black hole that would be created in the LHC would be so incredibly tiny and would last for such a brief moment of time that it would not affect anything really. Uh. And the LHC does not do anything that isn't already happening everywhere in the universe right now, Like it's happening everywhere. It's just that in the LHC, it's under controlled conditions that can be observed and measured. All right, I'm I'm

good for that. Now, I'm done with that. Did you want to did you want to pick the next one? Or shall I know? I just uh, I was thinking that, you know, if they did, if we did find a Q thirty six space modulator, it would require the presence of aliens. Ah. I think I see where you're going with this one. Are we are? We taking a little trip out west to Nevada to Nevada. Yes, so, ladies and gentlemen, maybe you've heard of a top secret location called Area fifty one. First of all, Area fifty one

does exist, all right. That's not a conspiracy that it is a it is an actual location, although the government doesn't necessarily refer to it as that. And that would be the Atomic Energy Commission Nevada test site. Yeah, that they were the ones who came up with the idea of calling it Area fifty one. And there are different theories about why that is, the main one being market.

The main one being that they had they had marked out land in a grid for testing nuclear bombs, and they gave each grid a number, each square of the grid a number, and Area fifty one happens to be adjacent to Area fifteen. So it could just be that the number itself has been flipped, and that's why it's called Area fifty one. It's usually referred to as Groom Lake, but it has lots of other different names as well. Um, and it's then go. It tends to be. It tends

to be. Uh. It tends to figure fairly highly in the uphology and alien conspiracy theory. UH circles. Yes, of course, because they're not testing nuclear weapons, they're you know, dissecting aliens. I saw the Alien Autopsy TV show, so yeah, this often has a lot too. Is tied in with Roswell, which, by the way, is nowhere near Groom Lake. Well, I mean it's closer than say, you know, Atlanta. You know, it's closer than it's closer than Georgia, but it's not

it's not nearby. Um, but yeah, there are there are a lot of people who say, well, there's strange lights that would be flying over Area fifty one. It's probably alien technology, and the the United States is testing different craft that they managed to confiscate from aliens. And well, you know they've got hangars that they can you know, wheel aircraft into. Should a satellite flyover? Yes, And that is true because Area fifty one is a testing location.

It's where the Air Force tests out various secret projects that are going to eventually possibly become actual equipment that the the United States depends upon for military purposes. So lots of aircraft got there, like Stealth Bomber, got their start in facilities like Groom Lake or Area fifty one. This was where the tests were conducted, where the planes were built and flown. Um, it's a no fly zone even for the Air Force because it's meant to keep

secrecy at the highest levels. Um. Actually, from why I heard, it's not even used that much anymore because they've moved a lot of their operations to Colorado now. But Roy Mountain. I but it's not a it's not a home for aliens. It's a home for top secret, cutting edge technology aircraft. Um.

But Terrest really derived aircraft. Yeah. Well, I mean if we were home for aliens, and they wouldn't be aliens anymore, right, So I'm just saying, fine, people from other planets have visited US, gained a visa and became citizens, get a green card. Yeah, someone's been watching too much Third Rock.

But yeah, so Area fifty one. There are a lot of conspiracy theories around it, and part of it is because the area does have such a reputation for secrecy, and it's it's a well earned reputation because the government really does protect the stuff that's going on there because it's top secret. It's not but it's not necessarily related to aliens. It's just related to technologies they don't want

the rest of the world to know about. Before they get a chance to, you know, because then you would lose the edge, right and in whatever arms race you're currently pursuing, or if you just want to think of it another way. In in an effort to keep the country safe, of course, the Silvius took pictures of it from overhead, and you know, you can go look at it right now on Google Maps or Google Earth. Yea, I actually see in picture. Like I said, it's it's

it's a legitimate place. And there are other things that have happened there that relate to conspiracy theories. There was this whole element of destroying certain materials which ended up being carcinogenic and and dangerous, and several employees came down with various illnesses and ailments and and sued the government a perfectly perfectly mundane diseases caused by hazardous materials being

burned in there and their proximity. So the problem was that because everything was under top secret orders, it was very difficult to pursue a legal claim against the government, uh saying that you know, essentially the government caused my

illness in some cases. In many cases, in fact, people died as a result of this, and um and there was a real struggle in the government, a debate on what was more important keeping all this secret or revealing certain information because people were dying and um some of it. That was about when when some of them information was actually declassified, not all of it by any stretch of the imagination, but enough of it to kind of sort of admit that there was a facility there, because up

to that point there was no admission whatsoever. I mean, there was a physical facility there that you could take pictures of and everything, if people didn't run you off the property before you got chance to snap a photo, But the government consistently denied the presence of any facility there for many many years. Nothing to see here exactly. So you wanna, hey, how about another government thing? Hey, did you know that CIA is running Facebook? Are? No,

they're not, or at least there's no proof. There's a rumor going around the internet, actually been around for a couple of years that the CIA is somehow involved and gathering information using Facebook as the front for getting as much personal information about people as it possibly can. The way the theory goes is that Facebook got some venture capital funding from various sources in its second round of venture capital funding. It received money from a company called

Excel Partners, which was managed by a man named James Bryer. Oh. James Brier also sat on a board called National Venture Capital Association, which had happened to have on the board a man by the name of Gilman Louis. Now Louis had sat on the board of a company called n q TELL, which was a venture capital firm established by the c i A. So you've got a guy who sat on a VC firm for the CIA, who happens to also sit on a board that this other guy sits on, who happens to also be on a board

that then funds Facebook. So somehow this series of connections means that CIA has become involved in Facebook. I don't buy it. It's just it's venture capital funds exist for one purpose, mainly, which is to to make money. Yeah, and they invest in ventures that they think are going to be successful. And I think the connection seems pretty tenuous. But I am concerned because I didn't hear Kevin Bacon's name mentioned once. He has a Facebook page, UM, or

at least there's a fan page falls into place. UM. There are other connections as well. I'm sure I'm going to get listener mail about this. There are other connections as well that that can that are concerning because it's people who have obviously been involved in various functions that include things like data mining. I mean, it's the stuff that they've been involved in really does link back to get gathering information for intelligence purposes. Well, you know, Facebook

is renowned for its ability to collect information. That's that's the thing though. That's the thing is because of that, it's easy to draw those connections, right because you say, okay, well Facebook is very good at gathering information. It's receiving funds from a person who also sat on a board that was set on by people who were interested in gathering information. That's enough of a connection for some people to say that there's a conspiracy. For me, there needs

to be a little more proof than that. I could, I could definitely see why the concern would pop up that I don't necessarily jump to that conclusion. So just because there's a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, that that doesn't tie it all together for you. I know a lot of guys who know guys, and it doesn't make me any sort of mastermind. I think

most people would have yeah exactly, Yeah. Yeah. People people who know me, they'll be like, well, there goes that theory, because you know, you never I always put blue in the second spot, and you never get that. Jove, I don't even get the white peg. I used to play that game too, So uh, for those of you that we lost, let's do you get anything else? You have any other conspiracy theories? I have one other one I can bring up. We have tons of conspiracy theories. I

think we're gonna have to do another one of these. Yeah, you know what, I agree, this will just be conspiracy you know, tech conspiracy theories one and then we will do a series of them. Some of these you could probably do a full podcast on, like Area fifty one could be a series of podcasts, But that really wouldn't be what we would talk about. I mean that's not

really our place none. Really. I wonder if we could you know what, I bead stuff they don't want you to know, could do something about Area Yes, but we have to find a way to contact them, right. Yeah. The problem is that now that ben uh is kind of masterminding things like that, he's really difficult to track down like he changed his name and his face. I think he wears a dress. Actually he did that before, but he's really gotten better at coordinating now belt and

pumps fabulous. A Well, that wraps up this conversation about it. We will have another one in the near future, and I guess that leads us to listener mail. And this listener mail comes from Rowland. Oh he put the O in parentheses. Hey, Josh and Chuck ha ha, just kidding. Hi, Chris and Jonathan just wanted to say I love your podcast and you two are really good at what you do. I really enjoyed your How Podcasting Works podcast. Great info, and you have helped me select some microphones to buy

a KG. If it's not too much trouble, could you tell me if your mix could also double for recording music, more specifically loud music guitar and drums with lots of distortion. Maybe your producer Matt knows. I'm not so good with decoding the specs on certain things. Anyway, Great job and keep up the good work. Thanks Rowland. Oh t S. I noticed How Stuff Works dot Com has moved to

a mobile browser for smartphones, possibly another podcasting topic. I thought I would throw this one over to Chris, as Chris is a rock and roll legend in my own mind. Perhaps go for it now. Um yeah, I just just to be on the stay side. Actually, Tyler is doing our podcast day. We have a number of folks who produced with us. Um and just as a matter of confirmation, and yes, you probably could use these microphones to record

loud music, um, if you'd like to. UM. When I've gone into the studio in the past a lot of times, it takes sort of some trial and error. Um, you're you're gonna wanna do some testing some uh, some line checks and and mike checks to make sure that you're not overwhelming those mics. Depending on the kind of equipments you've got on the other end to capture that's the sound. Uh, you may end up needing baffles. Uh, because you know,

I'm being a drummer. I've actually tried to record drums straight into a microphone and it basically just distorts it to the point of non recognition. Although it kind of sounds that like it might be something that already down your alley. But yes, these are these are very nice mics that we use here. And um, I think they would probably work fine, although you know your minlage may very some restrictions apply off or not dealt in all fifty states. You might want to try it out and

see how it goes. Um, so you know, give it a try. Cool all right? Well, thanks Roland. Oh, if any of you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions for podcasts that kind of thing, you can email us or email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember, we have our live show every Tuesday one pm Eastern. You can find that on the blogs how stuff works

dot com. Just look on the right hand side. You'll see the links there and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com And be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the how Stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you