Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My
Speaker 1: name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our superproducer alexis codenamed Doc
Speaker 1: Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know, Fellow conspiracy realist, is one of our favorite
Speaker 1: days of the week. As you are hearing this, it
Speaker 1: is Monday, which means it's time for some strange news.
Speaker 1: People on YouTube are sick and their own armies at
Speaker 1: your favorite supermarket superstores. People in Germany are doing a
Speaker 1: little bit of fandom with their research, and across the planet,
Speaker 1: Russia is building a shadow fleet of people of ships. Specifically,
Speaker 1: this is news a lot of people will miss, but
Speaker 1: turns out those sanctions may not be worth as much
Speaker 1: as we would have assumed before we do anything. Though, fellas,
Speaker 1: I think it's time for us to shout out code
Speaker 1: named Doc Holiday. As everybody's hearing this recently, Doc and
Speaker 1: one of the friends of the show, Lauren Vogelbaum, did
Speaker 1: a kick ass Disney episode. Did you guys hear it?
Speaker 1: Do you guys check it out? Yeah? Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: find it on Disney Plus or I'm just choking the
Speaker 1: stuff that Disney Plus doesn't want you to know about
Speaker 1: Disney and it absolutely rules. Alex straight up talked about
Speaker 1: slow cooking Walt Disney's head. Yeah, I couldn't be more proud.
Speaker 1: How else do you get the head? Cheese? And so
Speaker 1: as as you all may know, we are lucky, immensely
Speaker 1: fortunate to be able to once in a while ask
Speaker 1: our superproducer for a favor, and we did, and Alexis
Speaker 1: came through. Doc Holiday of course came through for us,
Speaker 1: and hopefully you will check out that episode. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts about Disney. But while we're
Speaker 1: talking the world of entertainment, we also want to give
Speaker 1: someone else their flowers. Keanu Reeves Jianu Reeves the actor
Speaker 1: also not a bad person at all. The guy's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, definitely hear all these, uh Keanu Reeves kind
Speaker 1: of you know fanboy stories like good ones like he
Speaker 1: It's it's the kind of stories you hear that almost
Speaker 1: take on the air of urban lore, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. The idea that he went to the Possessions
Speaker 1: to add in a movie, bought candy bars, and then
Speaker 1: and threw it away just so he had something to
Speaker 1: sign to give to the ticket taker who had asked
Speaker 1: him for an autograph but he didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: write on. Or the fact that this is not a
Speaker 1: nerve a legend. The fact that Keanu Reeves gave the
Speaker 1: special effects team of The Matrix a ton of his
Speaker 1: salary and profits from that film franchise because he knew
Speaker 1: who was doing the work credits very important to us
Speaker 1: on the show. And apparently, Matt, this is a story
Speaker 1: you found. Apparently there are some researchers in Germany who
Speaker 1: feel the same. They're pro Kyatu. Yes, if you don't
Speaker 1: like Keanu Reeves, look yourself in the mirror just for
Speaker 1: a little while and just try to figure out why
Speaker 1: you don't like that awesome human being. So yes, But ultimately, guys,
Speaker 1: this story comes to us in a bit of a
Speaker 1: roundabout way. Going through the voicemail. We got one from
Speaker 1: a frame of constant Caller a frame and I want
Speaker 1: to play that for us really quickly, because this story
Speaker 1: actually goes back to early February of this year, but
Speaker 1: it was written about very recently on CNN, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm bringing it to the table today. And it
Speaker 1: related back to this voicemail. So this is a hybrid
Speaker 1: listener mail Strange News segment. Right here, he's a frame again.
Speaker 1: And I thought of a little thought experiment for you
Speaker 1: that I think you guys might appreciate while listening to
Speaker 1: the recent Strange News when you mentioned to be introducing
Speaker 1: tamthers in Florida and whatnot, taxing of that term apex predator,
Speaker 1: and I think false idea of a hierarchical food chain.
Speaker 1: A lot of humans they go, we're at the top
Speaker 1: of the food chain, Well, get naked into cage with
Speaker 1: the tiger if you're at the top of the food chain,
Speaker 1: because the tiger's not wearing anything, the tiger doesn't have
Speaker 1: or the tiger doesn't have a gun, and then the
Speaker 1: tiger doesn't have a weapon, the tiger doesn't have planes
Speaker 1: or armor or anything. It's naked in the cage with you.
Speaker 1: And what you feel on top of the food chain,
Speaker 1: taken in the cage with the tiger no, And really,
Speaker 1: if you extend that thought, when that tiger dies, it
Speaker 1: will get eaten by vultures and flies and maggots and
Speaker 1: gnats and molds and fungus. Most molds and fungus is
Speaker 1: in penicillin and savory morals or even fun magic mushrooms.
Speaker 1: I propose the top of the food chain is occupied
Speaker 1: by only if it is a hierarchy. First rue gets
Speaker 1: the circle. But if we're insisting that there must be
Speaker 1: a top of the food chain, then the only logical
Speaker 1: organism to place at the top of the food chain
Speaker 1: are toxic funguses that can't be eaten by anything because
Speaker 1: everything dies and everything is consumed by fungus, even vultures
Speaker 1: and wise, so if the decomposers are decomposed by a
Speaker 1: fungus that nothing can eat, that is the only logical
Speaker 1: top of the food chain. If we must have a linear,
Speaker 1: hierarchical Jordan Peterson food chain um or we can just
Speaker 1: let it be a circle. Understand, there is no top,
Speaker 1: there is no bottom. Everything is a flat circle. Reggie lad.
Speaker 1: Then it's much easier to see it. But it must
Speaker 1: be a king. It's the deathcap. Thank you for the show.
Speaker 1: Hitting up sorry, A Frame, it was a great though.
Speaker 1: I like the true detective reference as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: But ultimately I think the point that any Frame is
Speaker 1: making there is that, you know, the food chain is
Speaker 1: very weird when you think about all things die, all
Speaker 1: things decay, something you know causes that, And then could
Speaker 1: it be possible that it's in as above so below
Speaker 1: situation when you're thinking about the food chain, the true
Speaker 1: top is the fungus. And if there's a fungus that
Speaker 1: cannot be eaten because it is so toxic, then maybe
Speaker 1: it wins. Overall, we've been talking about fungus a lot
Speaker 1: late lately because we're you know, we're all in the
Speaker 1: last of Us mode. There's only one episode left everybody
Speaker 1: actually it probably it just came out as this episode
Speaker 1: is coming out, so we're all watching it in real
Speaker 1: time right now. In the most recent episode that we've
Speaker 1: all seen, there was a really great quote from kind
Speaker 1: of the baddie of the episode talking about how fungus
Speaker 1: really is godlike essentially and deserving of worship because of
Speaker 1: all the things that that A Frame said that everything
Speaker 1: returns back to it. It is the ultimate destroyer and creator,
Speaker 1: and that it will do anything to protect its ability
Speaker 1: to spawn. Well, I've been saying that fungus is one
Speaker 1: of my like Ben's top picks for an organic extraterrestrial organism.
Speaker 1: You can also see the studies we've mentioned in previous
Speaker 1: episodes on the tricky nature of intelligence, especially when applied
Speaker 1: to the activities of those fung guys mispronounced on purpose
Speaker 1: because no pun left behind, that's right. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the fungus, we need to fight it. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about it on this show a lot. We need
Speaker 1: to be able to fight it as humans as because
Speaker 1: it infects us. Many different funguses can affect human beings,
Speaker 1: can cause very very serious harm as well as death
Speaker 1: to us, and it comes in all kinds of different forms.
Speaker 1: And we also need to protect our crops against fungus
Speaker 1: because we've learned over the years here that fungus is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest killers of things like grapes and
Speaker 1: trees and all kinds of plants that we generally need
Speaker 1: to eat, even plants that we need to feed animals
Speaker 1: that we consume. So we need to find ways to
Speaker 1: kill fungus more effectively as that fungus becomes more effective
Speaker 1: at fighting against our means to kill it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this is where Keanu Reeves comes in. Kiana has made
Speaker 1: many movies over the years. He's been in a lot
Speaker 1: of different franchises. In several of those that are the
Speaker 1: most prominent, he is a highly effective eliminator of the
Speaker 1: bad guys, especially when you think about him in the
Speaker 1: Matrix trilogy, if you think about him in John Wick,
Speaker 1: the fourth of which I believe is still in theaters
Speaker 1: right now we record this, or at least it's coming
Speaker 1: to theaters. I don't know there's another John Wick. He
Speaker 1: kills a lot of people in those movies. Some researchers
Speaker 1: have discovered, in a kind of a roundabout way, a
Speaker 1: new substance, a chemical compound that seems to be extremely
Speaker 1: effective at eliminating fungus, the bad fungus. And it's also
Speaker 1: it also, in the initial testing, appears to not harm
Speaker 1: the plant material in the same way that it harms
Speaker 1: the fungus and potentially could be used as an antifungal
Speaker 1: drug in humans, which would be a huge leap forward.
Speaker 1: It will require a lot more testing to see if
Speaker 1: it actually is going to function, you know, as a drug.
Speaker 1: If you could, if you could create a drug out
Speaker 1: of it, right, So let's jump into this story. The
Speaker 1: recent reporting comes from CNN. There's an article you can
Speaker 1: find titled Newly discovered chemicals are so deadly to fung
Speaker 1: guy that they are named after Keanu Reeves. It's written
Speaker 1: by Taylor Nikki Yoli for CNN again, and it was
Speaker 1: written March third. But most of the writing about this,
Speaker 1: the initial stuff that came out is from around the
Speaker 1: early February, like February second, February sixth, and it looks
Speaker 1: like the actual publication was released on January twentieth of
Speaker 1: twenty three. So let's just I guess we should jump
Speaker 1: into it a little bit, talk about it. This is
Speaker 1: really just an informational session, guys. The only stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know here is the same thing
Speaker 1: we've been harping on. Fungus is a really serious, big
Speaker 1: deal and it's going to get way more of a
Speaker 1: serious deal in the next ten twenty years. That's the
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. So here we go.
Speaker 1: I don't want to read this verbatim. Let's see. I
Speaker 1: guess we can give you the high level stuff. And
Speaker 1: there's a person Sebastian goats a goot ze, he says,
Speaker 1: the goat Sebastian goats. Oh yes. Researcher with the Leibniz
Speaker 1: Institute in Germany. They do natural product research. They also
Speaker 1: look at infection biology and oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: yes and goats has this to say about this new discovery.
Speaker 1: These are lipopeptides. Okay, that's what these things are. So
Speaker 1: there's a lipid Does that indicate there's some kind of
Speaker 1: vatty molecule like a lipidum you know, I don't know null.
Speaker 1: They are lipopeptides. I like words, And that's the fun
Speaker 1: one quote. The lipopeptides kilso efficiently that we named them
Speaker 1: after Keanu Reeves because he too is extremely deadly in
Speaker 1: his roles. We have a crisis in anti infectives. True,
Speaker 1: many human pathogenic fungi are now resistant to antimycotics or
Speaker 1: anti fungals, partly because they are used in large quantities
Speaker 1: in agricultural fields. So think about that. One of the
Speaker 1: main reasons that antibiotics are less effective on humans these days,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about on this show many times, is
Speaker 1: because those products, those medicines are used on a lot
Speaker 1: of the cattle on a lot of the animals, the pigs,
Speaker 1: the chickens that we end up consuming because they're kept
Speaker 1: in such you know, tight quarters, in such large numbers
Speaker 1: that they often get sick, and one of the ways
Speaker 1: to prevent some of that sickness is to dose them
Speaker 1: with those antibiotics talked about this. This is a major problem.
Speaker 1: It's getting better as it's become more well known. There's
Speaker 1: been a bit of a public outcry because well, because
Speaker 1: we're seeing companies now try and move away from that. However,
Speaker 1: in the large factory settings where you've got to pump
Speaker 1: out x amount of beef every day, this is still
Speaker 1: a major issue. Same thing is happening with a lot
Speaker 1: of the mass produced plants that we end up consuming.
Speaker 1: These anti fungal substances have to get sprayed on everything
Speaker 1: just to make sure there's not a huge problem. Again
Speaker 1: with like the grapes that we end up consuming that
Speaker 1: go into our wine, that go into your Kroger and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So it's the same deal. There's also
Speaker 1: a problem with anti fungals in humans because just the
Speaker 1: fungus in general, after you use a certain substance for
Speaker 1: a long enough period of time, it becomes less and
Speaker 1: less effective over time because these are live things. It's
Speaker 1: it's alive, and it changes. It starts figuring out just
Speaker 1: through attrition, how to get around these anti fungals. I
Speaker 1: don't know, guys, Yeah, you said it already been. They're
Speaker 1: called keanu, mayasins k e A, n U, M y
Speaker 1: c I ns these substances, and it's pretty pretty dope stuff.
Speaker 1: You can read all about it if you want. I mean,
Speaker 1: you raise an excellent point there, Matt. Like the idea
Speaker 1: of evolutionary cycles. Right, A short lived organism, like many
Speaker 1: fungal organisms are, has a higher rate of attrition, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it also has a shorter interval between generations, much
Speaker 1: that it can adapt way more quickly than the human body.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I also think it's really cool
Speaker 1: that you could be on the forefront of science and
Speaker 1: decide to name a thing whatever that's sort of neat, right,
Speaker 1: Like I always I always think about that when you
Speaker 1: when you hear some astronomer has found an obscure planet
Speaker 1: or heavenly body and they said we're going to call this,
Speaker 1: you know, Donnie's Place or whatever, or you look at
Speaker 1: the especially when you look towards the end of the
Speaker 1: periodic table when people are saying Prometheum, i'd steadium. Here's
Speaker 1: a person I like Mendelevium. That's why. Yeah, Matt Scovium,
Speaker 1: maybe Matt Fredrixium. Yeah, my god, yes, please, let's not
Speaker 1: do it. Matt's long held dream. Everybody, fellow conspiracy real,
Speaker 1: especially chemist in the crowd. It has been our brother's
Speaker 1: long term dream to have an element in the periodic
Speaker 1: table named after him. I think he got robbed by
Speaker 1: the einsteinium, folks man. I think that was unfair, because
Speaker 1: what has Einstein done? Really? You know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm the greatest ever. I guess. No, please don't ever
Speaker 1: name anything after me. Forget me, forget me. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's jump in here really quickly. Just a couple other
Speaker 1: things here, because it's very important for us to remember.
Speaker 1: Fungal cells. Put them right in the center of your mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: to the left, you've got plant cells. To the right,
Speaker 1: you've got animal cells. These fungal cells that are in
Speaker 1: the center, they aren't the same as but they are
Speaker 1: very similar to in a lot of ways the animal cells. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine you're trying to develop a drug that only targets
Speaker 1: those fungal cells, but they're really close to those animal cells.
Speaker 1: So often when drugs are being developed as anti fungals,
Speaker 1: they can have serious negative effects on the animal cells,
Speaker 1: which is by the way you and your cells. That's
Speaker 1: why it's really difficult to develop an effective anti fungal
Speaker 1: treatment for a human being or for a pig for
Speaker 1: that matter, or whatever. In the case of these keyonomyacins,
Speaker 1: it appears that they don't cause serious toxic effects to
Speaker 1: the animal cells, which is why this is so very
Speaker 1: vastly important. Trying to think of an equivalent. It's that
Speaker 1: thing of making a discovery that doesn't come around but
Speaker 1: a few you know, every couple of decades you find
Speaker 1: a new substance that's going to be effective against fungi
Speaker 1: in this way. So this is huge. Good on everybody involved.
Speaker 1: Good Keanu, Good on the people who named it, Good
Speaker 1: on the folks. They're making the last of us. And
Speaker 1: that's all I have to say. And now we'll hear
Speaker 1: a word from our response and we're back with more
Speaker 1: strange news. You guys know about mister Bee's I'm saying
Speaker 1: to that theme, Yeah, just based on the reproduction of
Speaker 1: my kids singing it to me. I've actually not really
Speaker 1: watched much of mister Beasts content. I'm familiar does big
Speaker 1: set PC kind of money giveaway things like did I
Speaker 1: think did like a real life version of squid Game
Speaker 1: that then Netflix decided they'd do too, but they sort
Speaker 1: of missed the point and did a really bad job,
Speaker 1: and people froze and got sick and it was a
Speaker 1: real debacle. But yeah, mister beasts YouTube sensation massively popular.
Speaker 1: Fellow also has a ghost kitchen chain of restaurants called
Speaker 1: Mister Beast Burger, and now, as it turns out, also
Speaker 1: has chocolate bars called Feastables that you can get at
Speaker 1: various big box retailers, including Walmart. And apparently mister Beast
Speaker 1: didn't take too kindly to the way or the treatment
Speaker 1: of his product line, specifically at Walmart's thought that they
Speaker 1: were a little messy, were being given a short shrift
Speaker 1: in favor of the big boys like the Hershey's of
Speaker 1: the world. So on March third, Mister Beasts who's a
Speaker 1: Christian name is Jimmy Donaldson tweeted at his eighteen point
Speaker 1: eight million followers as such, I need your help next
Speaker 1: time you see feastables in Walmart and soon to be
Speaker 1: new retailers. If you could clean up the presentation and
Speaker 1: make it look better, that would make me very happy.
Speaker 1: I'm building a team to do this routinely. Just need
Speaker 1: help in the short term. Hm, what could go wrong?
Speaker 1: What could go wrong? And originally there was like a
Speaker 1: five thou dollar a reward kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: tied into this, or would be a drawing of folks
Speaker 1: that could prove that they had done this. I'm not
Speaker 1: seeing that detail added. I would not be surprised if,
Speaker 1: given the backlash we're about to talk about, he took
Speaker 1: that away. Um he replaced it with something I think
Speaker 1: that they We'll get into just a little bit. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of Sechuan Sauce all over again. Really, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, the whole Rick and Morty people
Speaker 1: come in and standing on the counters and McDonald's screaming
Speaker 1: about the Sechuan sauce that that they were out of Um,
Speaker 1: you know, some folks in an attempt to curry favor
Speaker 1: with mister Beast, who is hugely popular on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: you know, just like a mention or you know, a
Speaker 1: repost of some you know up and coming content creators.
Speaker 1: Content could be a game changer for them. So a
Speaker 1: lot of folks just tweeting pictures of feastable section in disarray,
Speaker 1: followed by the after shot We're they're all neat and tidy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, just say hey, mister beast, love each stuff,
Speaker 1: be the help here here here I am um, you know,
Speaker 1: and adding adding mister Beast's handle. But then, you know,
Speaker 1: you start to kind of reality starts to set in
Speaker 1: a little bit, and you start to think about what
Speaker 1: does this feel like to folks who actually work at
Speaker 1: Walmart and have to, you know, restock shells and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden dealing with all these kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him Yahoo's no, no insult intended, but
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just a little bit of a
Speaker 1: of a dopey thing to do, in my opinion, coming
Speaker 1: in there and messing with your with your displays. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not really something that you've signed up for for
Speaker 1: your minimum wage, you know, big box store job U.
Speaker 1: The tweet was like one hundred and twelve thousand times,
Speaker 1: and it has gotten an understandably some backlash of people
Speaker 1: saying that this very very wealthy YouTuber is essentially crowdsourcing
Speaker 1: free labor five thousand dollars or no. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: a little bit odd, I would say. And you have
Speaker 1: folks pointing out this very fact, and you know, in
Speaker 1: addition to the usual kind of well you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I did the thing. Good job me. Thanks mister beast
Speaker 1: for being awesome hashtag team mister beasts, you've got some
Speaker 1: some more satirical let's just say posts. One person struth
Speaker 1: Queen on Twitter posted, mister beast just unlocked a new
Speaker 1: form of capitalism. I hate it. Here with some reposts
Speaker 1: of some of the images of folks. Yeah, we're just
Speaker 1: in Walmartin noticed this display. You need some fixing at
Speaker 1: mister beast. Then one of my personal favorites, which is
Speaker 1: posted by at harm harm cart, which I believe is
Speaker 1: an image of somebody in Ukraine who is like duct
Speaker 1: taped to a traffic poll, a traffic signal, and the
Speaker 1: text reads, at mister beast, I caught this man after
Speaker 1: his shoulder brushed a feastable's display and one of your
Speaker 1: chocolates fell to the ground. He is pleading for mercy,
Speaker 1: but I do not believe he is truly sorry. How
Speaker 1: shall I deal with him? Sir? Wow, Uh, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the that's the dream, or like the nightmare. And
Speaker 1: it really makes me think of, you know, the thing
Speaker 1: that's sort of portrayed in the latest Batman movie where
Speaker 1: you've got the Riddler who with this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: gang of kind of Riddler acolytes. He essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: there's obviously a much more low key an Ocuus version
Speaker 1: of this, but he essentially sicks an army of his
Speaker 1: followers on Gotham City, and I just really, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously this is not mister Bees doing anything of that nature.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm half joking, of course, but it does
Speaker 1: really point to the power of these types of folks,
Speaker 1: you know, who can command action among people who just
Speaker 1: want to want to be seen by them, acknowledged by them.
Speaker 1: So kind of creepy, you know, a great look if
Speaker 1: you ask me, I don't know, what do you guys think? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a weird. I'm just imagining the Walmart that
Speaker 1: is close to me where I live right now, and
Speaker 1: imagining the jobs that exist within that walmart. And I
Speaker 1: don't know the specific details for whoever manages that location,
Speaker 1: but mostly I have seen people working in specific sections
Speaker 1: of the store or at the front of the store
Speaker 1: at like customer service or in you know, the eyewear
Speaker 1: shop or whatever they have at the front there, and
Speaker 1: people who are stocking the store, so like bringing boxes
Speaker 1: out from the back and putting products on the shelves.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there is a position somewhere in the store
Speaker 1: or it's like something that someone who runs a section
Speaker 1: is supposed to handle, like making the displays look nice, right.
Speaker 1: I just don't think I've seen that in action anytime
Speaker 1: I've visited that store. And I wonder how much of
Speaker 1: a priority that is specifically for a Walmart, because I
Speaker 1: know at other store I have seen that as like
Speaker 1: a not a position, as like this is what you
Speaker 1: do as your job is what you get paid for.
Speaker 1: But it's a it's a definite responsibility for people who
Speaker 1: are working within the store. Does that make sense? It
Speaker 1: does make sense. And also like no no shade on
Speaker 1: any of these people. But I mean, these stores are
Speaker 1: massive and then they're oftentimes understaffed, and they kind of
Speaker 1: exist in a constant state of disarray, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And it's it's just the nature of it.
Speaker 1: You know, people are always moving things around, putting things
Speaker 1: in the wrong place, and it's just a constant battle
Speaker 1: to even like have things be relatively presentable. And there
Speaker 1: are probably priorities beyond that. I don't think of Walmart
Speaker 1: as like the store of like shiny displays per se.
Speaker 1: So it's just odd to have these kind of invading forces,
Speaker 1: you know, doing this, and and the Internet today guys
Speaker 1: who am always referencing who I love. They pointed out that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a strong possibility that some of these
Speaker 1: folks might have actually been the ones messing them up
Speaker 1: in the first place, just so they have something to
Speaker 1: show for a before and after pick. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: you could argue that this is like, what is it
Speaker 1: the bed you always reference in the Cobra problem, where
Speaker 1: you like, unleash a thing to fix a problem, but
Speaker 1: it actually becomes the problem itself. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: to unpack here, because we are looking at we are
Speaker 1: looking at a phenomenon that legislation doesn't really exist for
Speaker 1: at least not this iteration of it. Back in the
Speaker 1: days of old, there were very explicit rules about who
Speaker 1: could or could not martial forces together toward a cause.
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons the right to assembly is
Speaker 1: super big in the United States as it stands today.
Speaker 1: So the idea of the cobra problem, for quick recap,
Speaker 1: is that if you incentivize people to do a thing,
Speaker 1: you may find yourself in a situation where people are
Speaker 1: over incentivized, as this occurs in India. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: they had a lot of cobras and say they said,
Speaker 1: we're going to pay people to kill these cobras, right,
Speaker 1: We'll make things safer for everyone. But when people realize
Speaker 1: they could get paid to kill cobras, they started growing
Speaker 1: and raising cobras and they're turning them in for the bounty.
Speaker 1: And the idea here is a bit further complicated because
Speaker 1: now we are adding in we are all respect to you,
Speaker 1: mister beasts. We are adding in the dopamine casino of
Speaker 1: social media, which means that now people don't have to
Speaker 1: be paid, they simply have to be approved of by
Speaker 1: their community. So this could happen in any number of ways.
Speaker 1: This is also I don't know. I don't know about you, Noel,
Speaker 1: Matt doc I don't have a problem with mister beast.
Speaker 1: I think feastables is actually a really good improvement on
Speaker 1: the name lunch. It was right there. It was a
Speaker 1: good job. You know, it's a good martin. One of
Speaker 1: the flavors of the of the Feastable's chocolate bars though,
Speaker 1: is just for the record, these nuts so also hilarious.
Speaker 1: It continues to be. It does continue to be. I
Speaker 1: will drop a these nuts joke myself from time to time.
Speaker 1: But it stinks if you're in a Walmart. You know,
Speaker 1: the Walton family has such an outsized influence on the
Speaker 1: US in so many ways. They're killing small businesses, that's true.
Speaker 1: They're also accelerating inequality in this country and very serious
Speaker 1: to the degree of unsustainability. But imagine to your earlier pointment,
Speaker 1: imagine you're working at this section and to your point, nol,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a chaotic place already. And now on top
Speaker 1: of all of this, you got to try to deal
Speaker 1: with someone who has been sent by a YouTuber that
Speaker 1: you they have never met. You're not getting any kind
Speaker 1: of compensation or putting up with that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's tough. And again, Jimmy, mister beast Donaldson not a
Speaker 1: bad YouTuber like your child said. No, this is very
Speaker 1: entertaining content. I mean, do we know do we know
Speaker 1: what the latest scoop is? Now? Do we know how
Speaker 1: people are responding the relatively ongoing story? I did you
Speaker 1: know there were some some details, you know how Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm not good at Twitter, so things seem to get
Speaker 1: covered up, like if the posts aren't hind or whatever.
Speaker 1: The top response from mister beast now says, to show
Speaker 1: how grateful I am to everyone that helped Tidy only
Speaker 1: spells it titty. Actually t I D d y, which
Speaker 1: is funny. Made me giggle things up. I'm going to
Speaker 1: donate a one hundred thousand dollars to charity. What charity
Speaker 1: should I donate? To appreciate you all? But like, there
Speaker 1: were some other tweets that apparently he deleted, one of
Speaker 1: which kind of almost suggested that the people sabotage other
Speaker 1: competing chocolate displays like Hershey, which isn't good because even
Speaker 1: the you know, with this kind of thing been to
Speaker 1: your points, you know, marshaling folks, the very indication that
Speaker 1: you're you're perceived kind of Internet messiah wants you to
Speaker 1: do a crime. I mean there are people that are
Speaker 1: going to run with that. Yeah, in a very real way.
Speaker 1: So will this. You know again, it's a kind of
Speaker 1: a goofy internet, pranky guy whatever. But what this points
Speaker 1: to is something larger, and we've seen it with things
Speaker 1: like the insurrection you know at the state capital and
Speaker 1: how this level of unchecked internet power that is to
Speaker 1: your point, Bin, I completely agree unregulatable, maybe not unregulatable,
Speaker 1: but unregulated. But I don't know how you do it.
Speaker 1: You know, there were going to start putting limits on
Speaker 1: how many people can follow somebody online because they're they're
Speaker 1: too too powerful. You can't really put that genie back
Speaker 1: on the bottle at this point. It's kind of impossible.
Speaker 1: Let me get old man for a second. Guys, go
Speaker 1: back to some of my Scout leader taught me when
Speaker 1: I was a little boy. I know that guy, all right,
Speaker 1: when you go out in the wilderness or anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world, you leave it as good or better than
Speaker 1: you found it every time. If we all take on
Speaker 1: this responsibility, every one of us, each individual, then every
Speaker 1: time we walk into that Walmart is going to look
Speaker 1: exactly like it did when it got set up. In
Speaker 1: that display of feastables or Dove chocolates, whatever they are,
Speaker 1: It's gonna look pristine and gorgeous. Even if you take
Speaker 1: ten of them, you can leave it just like you
Speaker 1: found it. So you're saying we should just crowdsource, you know,
Speaker 1: tidying up all walmarts help you ourselves. It's the boy
Speaker 1: Scout way. Well it happens, is something like that happens
Speaker 1: in Japan? I know we got to move on. But
Speaker 1: you know, you don't find a lot of public trash
Speaker 1: cans in that country because people know you shouldn't litter,
Speaker 1: and they don't need to have some sort of intermediary
Speaker 1: between personal responsibility and making you know, a public space
Speaker 1: look like a house. There's a there's a tragedy of
Speaker 1: the commons at work, and it's been so for society
Speaker 1: for a long long time. If I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: we should hear from our fellow listeners here. If you
Speaker 1: have advice or insight from you know, the front lines,
Speaker 1: from your own philosophical experiences, what would you say is
Speaker 1: the best way to address this problem? Because you're right,
Speaker 1: you know, if you even if you hate billionaire dynasties
Speaker 1: like the Waltons or whatever, if you are screwing stuff
Speaker 1: up for the person who has to work there and
Speaker 1: clean it up, know that you are not in any
Speaker 1: way touching the Walton family. You're just making life harder
Speaker 1: for someone just like you. And that's kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think it could you could exercise a
Speaker 1: little more insight. We all could. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: completely agree, and I think all three of us are
Speaker 1: of the leave that as as good or better than
Speaker 1: you found him. Mentality. Uh, no litterbugs here in this squad,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Um, But I just wanted to add
Speaker 1: one last whole thing. Then we'll definitely move on. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite tweets as well, besides the guy taped
Speaker 1: to the telephone pole, one was from web website idiot,
Speaker 1: who says at mister beast, I will continue destroying your
Speaker 1: chocolate displays until you pay me one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So that the script did a little reverse blackmail, or
Speaker 1: maybe not reverse, just regular blackmail, but kind of kind
Speaker 1: of doubt that payday is coming anytime. Sim we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a break, we're gonna hear a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: who maybe may well be mister Beast, mister beastables, and
Speaker 1: then we'll be back with more strange news. And we
Speaker 1: have returned folks. Our last story for or today pertains
Speaker 1: to something that a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the US and abroad don't pay much attention to
Speaker 1: unless you work at a port authority, you are lucky
Speaker 1: enough to have a train that doesn't get derailed rolling
Speaker 1: through your town. We're going to talk about I don't
Speaker 1: want to quite call it piracy, but we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some bootleggers, and not the kind that you
Speaker 1: would see back in the days Lincoln CDs or DVDs
Speaker 1: on your local public transitor street corner. So everybody remembers Russia, right,
Speaker 1: it's a country. It's kind of controversial part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're waging this war and Ukraine the guy in charge,
Speaker 1: Lad Putin sort of a bag. This guy, this frigging guy,
Speaker 1: as we would say on the internet, is waging a
Speaker 1: war that is rocking the Nited Nations, that is rocking
Speaker 1: European ukraying in particular. A lot of innocent people are dying.
Speaker 1: And the issue with this country is that to support
Speaker 1: its war, it relies on oil exports. So your favorite
Speaker 1: suits over in NATO and over in the United Nations,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure at transnational banking institutions across the planet
Speaker 1: said let's cut it off at the pass. If war
Speaker 1: mongers need oil money to finance their aggression, then let's
Speaker 1: not allow them to sell oil. I don't know about
Speaker 1: you all, but I've never been at some point in
Speaker 1: my various lives where I could say I'm not going
Speaker 1: to allow someone to sell the thing. Can you imagine that,
Speaker 1: Like we can boycott stuff by not buying it, But
Speaker 1: can you imagine being at some point in your life
Speaker 1: where you say, I'm not going to allow you to
Speaker 1: sell a thing. No, not yet, things out I don't don't.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine hav any that much cloud. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of cloud. It's a dangerous amount of cloud. But
Speaker 1: they did it because they can. And everybody in western
Speaker 1: media saw that. In ninety something percent said, oh, hunky dory,
Speaker 1: surely a war will end soon because we have cut
Speaker 1: off the funding. But here's what's happening now, and it
Speaker 1: deserves more attention. As we record today, there is a
Speaker 1: growing fleet, hundreds and hundreds of tankers moving this oil
Speaker 1: across the planet, and no one is copying to the responsibility.
Speaker 1: No one is saying, oh, yeah, these are my takers,
Speaker 1: Like you guys have seen everybody I think has seen
Speaker 1: cargo containers. Right, You've probably seen them on a train.
Speaker 1: Unless you live near a big body of water, you
Speaker 1: might have seen them on a ship. We know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. These things are huge. The vessels that
Speaker 1: carry them are huge. The same kind of enormous ships,
Speaker 1: or very similar enormous ships that carry oil products across
Speaker 1: the world are moving today and it's it's very scooby
Speaker 1: doo to me, like, how could you disguise a ship
Speaker 1: that big? I want to shout out a couple of
Speaker 1: fantastic journalists authors here, Julia Horowitz, whose work we have
Speaker 1: mentioned on previous episodes or strange news segments of stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. She has this great
Speaker 1: article on CNN called A mysterious fleet is helping Russia
Speaker 1: ship oil around the world. And wait for it, Matt
Speaker 1: Noell doc us listening at home, it's growing. Not only
Speaker 1: can no one figure out who is moving this oil
Speaker 1: for the Russians, they only know that there are more
Speaker 1: and more ships like every month. Right now, it's roughly
Speaker 1: six hundred vessels and just for perspective, that's ten percent
Speaker 1: of the number of large tankers across the world. That
Speaker 1: is fascinating. I have never thought of oil as being
Speaker 1: I thought it was all it was all locked down,
Speaker 1: you know. I just figured like that was one of
Speaker 1: those industries that everyone's getting it is already doing so
Speaker 1: very much above board, you know, and they've got it
Speaker 1: all locked down because of what we've talked about with
Speaker 1: oil industry of it is being one of those legacy industries.
Speaker 1: So the idea of bootlegging oil is fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: Are they actually they're pulling it out of the ground
Speaker 1: in an illegal operation or is it just kind of
Speaker 1: black market you know, maybe it's stolen or something. What's
Speaker 1: the deal? My understanding is that it's it's oil that
Speaker 1: Russia would be producing and trading legally, but because of
Speaker 1: the invasion in the sanctions, they can no longer trade it.
Speaker 1: So they've got these unknown buyers coming in buying up
Speaker 1: the oil tankers or these huge ships, adding them to
Speaker 1: this shadow fleet, and then those ships that aren't on
Speaker 1: the books anywhere get loaded up with the oil that
Speaker 1: would normally be shipped and they just send it. You know,
Speaker 1: they have to go. They have to put a lot
Speaker 1: more oil on these ships than they normally would, because
Speaker 1: instead of taking them to another country that's closer to Russia,
Speaker 1: like Finland, they got to go on a big, long
Speaker 1: roundabout trip to a different place, right to drop that
Speaker 1: oil off. That's at least understanding. Yeah, you nailed it, Matt.
Speaker 1: Maritime law, I know it about as well as Charlie
Speaker 1: Day knows bird law, which is to say, I don't
Speaker 1: have a degree, but I have some opinions, and and
Speaker 1: it's it's quite easy. Actually, it's dangerously easy for a
Speaker 1: large ship to have to raise a different flag, to
Speaker 1: turn off it's location, and to roll through just sort
Speaker 1: of a ghost ship, a ship in the nights, as
Speaker 1: it were. If you, for instance, if you are selling
Speaker 1: to China or India, you can take a ship have
Speaker 1: a different nationality as your port of call or your
Speaker 1: home port, and then you can just change the flag
Speaker 1: halfway through. One of the immediate questions if you're trying
Speaker 1: to work in law and order deep ocean, wait, what
Speaker 1: would be a good what would be a good theme
Speaker 1: like sound cue for law and order maritime? Would it
Speaker 1: be like a sea shanty? There we go? Yeah right, yes,
Speaker 1: uh see, this is why we hang out. So in
Speaker 1: this law and order maritime or deep ocean. What you
Speaker 1: would find is it's quite difficult to enforce this stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you were trying to enforce it, then you
Speaker 1: would think, maybe we can follow the money, maybe we
Speaker 1: can look at the insurers. But the insurers don't have
Speaker 1: a ton of power here. The states that would you say, oh,
Speaker 1: we allowed these ships to fly under our flag, they
Speaker 1: don't have a ton of power. They certainly don't want
Speaker 1: to be accountable for this. And we have to remember
Speaker 1: that when you're talking tankers, the companies are more powerful
Speaker 1: than the countries, which is super weird in my opinion,
Speaker 1: but it's true, Soul. You could contract a vessel as
Speaker 1: a private transnational entity and exon a Chevron a British
Speaker 1: Petroleum dare I say an a Ramco, And once this
Speaker 1: stuff gets transferred from vessel to vessel, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to lose stuff in the cracks. It's weird to be
Speaker 1: because going back to our earlier conversations we're talking about
Speaker 1: witness protection. It's easier to disappear as a tanker vessel
Speaker 1: full of oil than it is to disappear as an
Speaker 1: individual human being in the United States. Isn't that weird. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's easier. Well, is that sort of like have you
Speaker 1: guys seen the season of the Wire about shipping and
Speaker 1: receiving Season two? Season two? That's the one, and so
Speaker 1: there's a whole deal where they like lose shipping containers
Speaker 1: like in the system because the system is kind of antiquated,
Speaker 1: you know, and so they're able to kind of disappear
Speaker 1: these cargo containers in order to you know, steal from them.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's a similar deal where maybe like
Speaker 1: these systems in place that track these things are maybe
Speaker 1: in need of some upgrades one hundred percent, But is
Speaker 1: it to the benefit of the money to enact those
Speaker 1: upgrades to implement them. That's a really good point then.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I'm thinking right now, what's
Speaker 1: happening is it's probably not China. China's big enough to
Speaker 1: not need proxies, right, It's probably not the usual suspects
Speaker 1: are on North Korea, Venezuela and so on. I think
Speaker 1: it's private business is doing this, and I think they're
Speaker 1: forming shell companies in relatively open market kind of pro
Speaker 1: business places. Maybe it's your Debise, maybe it's your Hong
Speaker 1: Kong's I think they're using loopholes to get around sanctions.
Speaker 1: Like Doc pointed out when she said that no one
Speaker 1: dying at Disney kind of depends on how you how
Speaker 1: you define pronounced dead. This gets me because you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen the ocean. The ocean's huge. I think no
Speaker 1: one has seen the entire pity of the ocean. I
Speaker 1: guess it's easy to lose six hundred tankers, but also
Speaker 1: that's kind of dangerous. If you turn off your GPS,
Speaker 1: you're positioning to do some like sail by night stuff
Speaker 1: to move oil, are you going to hit another boat? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like flying a plane without air traffic control.
Speaker 1: You know, something wonky that's happening with the story right now. Guys,
Speaker 1: there's some nonprofits working to make estimates on the number
Speaker 1: of these unknown buyers and these shadow ships going into
Speaker 1: shadow fleets right and they're trying to keep track of it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it. There's a lot of unknowns there,
Speaker 1: and there's no way to prove these individual ships with
Speaker 1: unknown buyers are in fact going to this shadow fleet
Speaker 1: that's moving Russian oil. So I do wonder if this
Speaker 1: is something that's being taken advantage of by everyone, including
Speaker 1: the US, to maybe even find a way to backdoor
Speaker 1: buy some Russian oil put it in reserves, because we
Speaker 1: of the US surely knows strategically that as the global
Speaker 1: conflict continues to rise between the US, China, Russia and
Speaker 1: all these major players, we're gonna need a ton of oil.
Speaker 1: I just think it's a huge deal. If we can
Speaker 1: get some of Russia's oil, it would be to our
Speaker 1: advantage as a country, the US. Yeah, and typically, you know,
Speaker 1: we only have scruples in so far as like pr optics.
Speaker 1: You know, I would not be surprised at all if
Speaker 1: if on the surface, no, no blockading Russian oil. But no, actually, guys,
Speaker 1: that's cool. It's block scading with the right hand and
Speaker 1: we got our left hand behind our back, you know,
Speaker 1: doing the little coming air sign. Uh. Yeah. This is
Speaker 1: a shadow industry, and it's an industry that's been growing
Speaker 1: for a while. I'm really happy to have like three
Speaker 1: fillings a year. But I'm impressed that CNN is talking
Speaker 1: about it because it's been happening through the entirety of
Speaker 1: Venezuelan oil sanctions, through the entirety of Iranian oil sanctions.
Speaker 1: The oil is still moving it's still occurring. And it's
Speaker 1: very convenient to your point about signaling stuff to the public.
Speaker 1: It's very convenient to high road and say, oh, we're
Speaker 1: stopping all this, you know what I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: USA all day baby. But is that the reality or
Speaker 1: is there some stuff they don't want you to know?
Speaker 1: There very much? Is it's on the high seas? I
Speaker 1: want to check in with you guys, everybody listening. This
Speaker 1: does feel like an episode. This does feel like something
Speaker 1: we dive into. I don't know if that's appropriate at
Speaker 1: this point, but I'm just massively perplexed by this because, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're sending the usual through the usual channels, right,
Speaker 1: and you're Russia, then you get slapped with sanctions, which
Speaker 1: means those channels are blocked off. Is it just easier
Speaker 1: than we assumed to go find someone else, you know,
Speaker 1: like some decade aristocrat and Monaco with gambling debts and
Speaker 1: then say, hey, you still control a couple of tankers,
Speaker 1: will pay off your baccarat or whatever? Am I even
Speaker 1: pronouncing that right? I don't know what bats. None of
Speaker 1: us have ever played backarat. I imagine I like Burt back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably who I'm thinking of Burt Backarat, the creator
Speaker 1: of Backarat. So the tanker thing is already a huge issue.
Speaker 1: You know, they bleed very dangerous substances into the open ocean.
Speaker 1: They also, you know, whenever there's a wreck, there's a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: But now what we're seeing is an active shadow fleet
Speaker 1: that is growing with state support to bypass these sanctions.
Speaker 1: And to your point, Matt, an excellent point, we have
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves whether US based corporations are playing the
Speaker 1: game as well. I'm telling you Black Monday murders, yeah,
Speaker 1: or any other country that would publicly say bad Russia.
Speaker 1: But nine, we need some oil. So there we have it. Folks,
Speaker 1: We're going to call it a day for now. We
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this. Let us know your interactions with
Speaker 1: mister Beast, let us know your interactions with Keanu Reeves
Speaker 1: and your thoughts about fungal infections and the future of fungus. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know what give us this one? Do you consider
Speaker 1: fungus intelligent? If so, why would love to hear your
Speaker 1: thoughts on a frames comments regarding circle, the hierarchy of
Speaker 1: predator prey and life on this planet. And then you know,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be on a shadow tanker carrying
Speaker 1: some stuff for the Russians and you feel comfortable reaching
Speaker 1: out to us. We'd love to hear from you. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was my cat. You know what I heard? D
Speaker 1: D D d D. That's what I put What song
Speaker 1: is that? That's a song? I don't know. That's what
Speaker 1: I heard in my head. I think that's yeah. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's it, that's it. There's also the md
Speaker 1: pree song side Oh yeah, yeah, another good cats out.
Speaker 1: I actually saw a meme where somebody took Nelson from
Speaker 1: The Simpsons going and turned it into that m Ad
Speaker 1: three song and it was kind of great. But there
Speaker 1: we go. So so reach out with your input, folks.
Speaker 1: We cannot wait to hear from you. You are why
Speaker 1: this show exists. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 1: Let's see, Matt Noll did a pretty awesome video recently
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