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 this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nola.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
Speaker 3: you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. It's the top of the week,
Speaker 3: which means it is time for strange news. Scientists in
Speaker 3: Antarctica True Story are developing their own accents because of
Speaker 3: the isolation. Yeah, did you guys see that.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to talk about it though that makes sense
Speaker 4: from a sociological standpoint, but I can't wait to hear more.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we're right now. It's just to mention because
Speaker 3: we have a lot to get to and I think
Speaker 3: we need to hear the accent develop more. So maybe
Speaker 3: we can have an Antarctica on the show in the
Speaker 3: future for an episode or an interview. We are also
Speaker 3: going to learn about uh Yakuza nuke spuggling. If you
Speaker 3: guys have did you read the news about.
Speaker 5: That, surprise me. Ok So no is to is okay? Wow, jeez.
Speaker 4: The they got their hands in all kinds of nefarious pies,
Speaker 4: don't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the story for the yakuza smuggling broke uh pretty recently.
Speaker 3: Earlier in February, as we're recording, a guy named Takashi
Speaker 3: Ibisawa was already facing drug trafficking charges and then he
Speaker 3: got caught selling uh two investigators attempting to sell uranium
Speaker 3: and plutonium or the raw ar for it that could
Speaker 3: make nuclear weapons. And the funny part about this is,
Speaker 3: if humor does exist in this, is that this guy's
Speaker 3: non nuclear scientists, he's no AQ con. The stuff he
Speaker 3: was selling is not what you would think of as uranium.
Speaker 3: It's like the raw substance you need to make these
Speaker 3: things source from mead mar or burma as some call it.
Speaker 3: And most likely he was just hoping to scam a
Speaker 3: government out of some cash because it's stuff aaran already has.
Speaker 3: So this story is being widely reported in sort of
Speaker 3: a panicky way, and I don't think, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't think that this is a panic moment, But
Speaker 3: nuclear smuggling is going to be a thing, and it's
Speaker 3: going to happen more and more often now.
Speaker 4: I mean, it is the kind of thing you see
Speaker 4: in like films, you know, usually it's sort of like
Speaker 4: exaggerated versions of maybe what's actually happening in the real world,
Speaker 4: where there's like, you know, brokers for that kind of
Speaker 4: stuff or selling the supplies you'd need to make dirty
Speaker 4: bombs and the like, but not to say that doesn't
Speaker 4: actually happen already.
Speaker 3: And I love that you mentioned brokers, Noel, because that
Speaker 3: takes us to one of the main things I wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about today. We are fortunate to be joined
Speaker 3: with one of Doc Holiday's alter egos, Wendy's Burger Broker,
Speaker 3: because Wendy's got in trouble recently. You know the mixtape
Speaker 3: Legend Wendy's that also has a fast food joiner too.
Speaker 4: They're one of those like kind of fire social media
Speaker 4: manager brands where they like get in like beefs with
Speaker 4: other brands on X or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, check out the Wendy's mixtape. Rest in Greece
Speaker 3: is a stem to stern Banger The Clown is about
Speaker 3: a certain rival you could imagine. It turns out that
Speaker 3: despite being so fluent in the language of social media.
Speaker 3: Wendy's had a bit of a misstep recently because on
Speaker 3: their most recent earnings call, they announced or the CEO announced,
Speaker 3: that they were going to use dynamic pricing. I want
Speaker 3: to give a big shout out to our friends over
Speaker 3: at ap News, who were some of the first to
Speaker 3: the post with this story. But we know what dynamic
Speaker 3: pricing is. We use the ticketmaster thing and Uber and
Speaker 3: lyft time.
Speaker 5: You see that, right, I think we accept it with
Speaker 5: Uber and Lyft.
Speaker 4: The ticketmaster thing caused a big old stink though, because
Speaker 4: it seemed to be not victim that's maybe the wrong
Speaker 4: way we're buying tickets here, not you know, getting aid.
Speaker 4: But it did seem to be hurting people in terms of,
Speaker 4: you know, their ability to get the tickets. They wanted
Speaker 4: a reasonable price because I think it was something like
Speaker 4: Bruce Springsteen, who's mister you know America and like fairness
Speaker 4: and working man or whatever. Those tickets were going for
Speaker 4: like thousands of dollars because of the nature of that
Speaker 4: dynamic price.
Speaker 3: And we see this also occur in it a related
Speaker 3: way with airbnb rentals. Like a lot of times people
Speaker 3: will this happens during eclipses. Enough people will try to
Speaker 3: find the best spot to watch an eclipse, they'll get
Speaker 3: an airbnb there, and then when the owners of the
Speaker 3: airbnb realize that they can make more money renting it
Speaker 3: out on the eclipse than they can, cancel the appointment
Speaker 3: and change things with a different price. For many people,
Speaker 3: this is free market. This is business one oh one
Speaker 3: supply and demand. And that seemed to be what CEO
Speaker 3: Kirk Tanner was thinking when he said quote during this
Speaker 3: conference call. Beginning as early as twenty twenty five, we
Speaker 3: will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and
Speaker 3: daypart offerings, along with AI enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.
Speaker 3: So to unpack that, what that means is you could
Speaker 3: roll up to your local Wendy's in twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: and then you could see the prices of the things
Speaker 3: change if you're there at the right time.
Speaker 4: I mean, aren't you already kind of paying the price
Speaker 4: for being there during surge by having to wait a
Speaker 4: really long time to get your food?
Speaker 3: I mean, that's definitely, you know what, that's a really
Speaker 3: good point. That's definitely a cost to it. The way
Speaker 3: it was, the ways being kind of floated to the
Speaker 3: public was that prices would go down maybe if you
Speaker 3: were using the app and got a deal, or there
Speaker 3: was a sort of low demand or dead time, because
Speaker 3: the way radio stations hate dead air is the way
Speaker 3: fast food stations hate low traffic periods of time. You know,
Speaker 3: what the public said, pretty unanimously, seemed to be something
Speaker 3: more long lines of we think this is price gouging.
Speaker 3: We think that you are going to use information against
Speaker 3: us to slowly, you know, like boiling the frogs, to
Speaker 3: slowly normalize higher prices. And that's exactly what happened with
Speaker 3: grocery stores and loyalty cards, right are we are we
Speaker 3: all old enough to remember before the Kroger Plus card.
Speaker 2: And we also remember when the Kroger Plus card did something. Wow,
Speaker 2: Now it's it's very it's almost like it doesn't do
Speaker 2: anything anymore. And even the FTC is upside with Kroger
Speaker 2: right now. They just blocked or they're attempting to sue
Speaker 2: to block a merger between Albertson's and Kroger because they're like,
Speaker 2: y'all are gonna prevent competition again. You can't spend twenty
Speaker 2: five billion dollars And then just conglomerate all of the
Speaker 2: food for everybody.
Speaker 3: Right right, be the masters of the food, I guess.
Speaker 4: So, you know, if you're a member of like you know,
Speaker 4: a thing like that, it does sometimes spit you out
Speaker 4: a couple of coupons or something like that, you know,
Speaker 4: and maybe you wouldn't get those if you remember, But
Speaker 4: you're right, Matt. It used to be much more like
Speaker 4: you'd see little line items on your receipt for a
Speaker 4: discount that was applied because of that membership. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe I don't look at my grocery bills that closely,
Speaker 4: but I certainly don't believe I've seen any anything of
Speaker 4: significance like that in a long time.
Speaker 2: They took most of that functionality away, and now they've
Speaker 2: moved to the app functionality where if you actually want
Speaker 2: to get discounts at Kroger, you have to go on
Speaker 2: their app, add the coupons and all of that stuff
Speaker 2: to your virtual number or whatever you get the thing.
Speaker 2: But it's like it's gamification in the face of actually
Speaker 2: just providing a discount because of that bolk or something.
Speaker 3: Shareholders want it.
Speaker 4: They're they're app fatigued, you know, like come on, really,
Speaker 4: another guy got to have another app, another password and
Speaker 4: user name gombo.
Speaker 5: Give me a break.
Speaker 3: The apps are at capacity for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: but they also generate a new potential revenue stream, right,
Speaker 3: you can sell that personal information the shopping habits, things
Speaker 3: like that, So they're making money on both sides of
Speaker 3: the fence. The Wendy's thing is they were planning to
Speaker 3: invest twenty million dollars in these digital menu moves. But
Speaker 3: think about this, you know, Doc, you and I weren't
Speaker 3: talking about this a second ago before we're recording. You
Speaker 3: are in the lied at the Wendy's counter. You physically
Speaker 3: walk in and the person in front of you pays
Speaker 3: like four bucks for you know, cheeseburger whatever, and then
Speaker 3: you come behind them. You're next in line, and the
Speaker 3: clocks moved over something or the Wendy's knows something about
Speaker 3: you and it's asking you to pay a quarter more.
Speaker 3: How often would consumers catch this? This is what they're
Speaker 3: fearful of? And how inelastic is that demand? Right? Like?
Speaker 3: How much higher would the price have to be for
Speaker 3: you before you decided forget it? I'm going somewhere else.
Speaker 4: I don't know why, but I immediately think of like,
Speaker 4: I think you should leave pay it forward drive through
Speaker 4: kind of situation involving capitalizing on dynamic pricing.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know how that would work exactly, but that's
Speaker 4: what's flashing through my mind.
Speaker 2: Isn't some of this a misunderstanding from that earnings call
Speaker 2: or whatever it was that the CEO is taking part
Speaker 2: of when this kind of the wording came through that
Speaker 2: everybody has jumped on because they did say they were
Speaker 2: going to invest twenty million dollars to change all of
Speaker 2: the menus across the board with to these digital menus
Speaker 2: that could be easily changed and all linked up together.
Speaker 5: Right. McDonald's already has those, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and I think Wendy's is still planning on
Speaker 2: doing that. But it was the phrasing I think that
Speaker 2: got that CEO in trouble because dynamic pricing could mean
Speaker 2: so many different things.
Speaker 4: It's got a bad rap because of all the other
Speaker 4: things we've been talking about, you know, it's like an
Speaker 4: immediate red flag for folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wendy said the digital menu boards could allow quote
Speaker 3: allow us to change the menu offerings at different times
Speaker 3: of day and offer discounts and value offers to our
Speaker 3: customers more easily, particularly in slower times of day. So
Speaker 3: as to the question of messaging right and nomenclature, what
Speaker 3: immediately happens afterwards as people say this is terrible, Immediately
Speaker 3: Wendy's comes back and says, all right, this is not
Speaker 3: exactly what we said. We deny this. We're not trying
Speaker 3: to price gounge, We're trying to streamline and update things.
Speaker 3: But the horse had already left the bar, the burger
Speaker 3: had already been cooked. In the court of public opinion,
Speaker 3: I mean think about think about other stuff too. Could
Speaker 3: this link up to another informational infrastructure of some sort.
Speaker 3: Could it be a situation where and this is the
Speaker 3: science fiction but could you go in and you have
Speaker 3: to use the app, the app will become normalized, and
Speaker 3: then the app is also tied into other activity that
Speaker 3: you do. And could facial recognition play a part of it?
Speaker 3: Could the system somehow know that, Hey, this lady bought
Speaker 3: a pretty fancy new car, right, so she can afford
Speaker 3: a quarter more.
Speaker 2: And she ordered a spicy chicken sandwich last week, so
Speaker 2: we know she's coming back in for thing. Le let's
Speaker 2: she needs it. Let's get twenty seven cents more exactly.
Speaker 4: I do have a question though about the idea of
Speaker 4: dynamic pricing means existed in a lot of other industries
Speaker 4: for a long time. Like you know how those digital
Speaker 4: billboards and gas stations, those prices change all the time,
Speaker 4: just by a couple of They have several decimal points,
Speaker 4: and they changed significantly over time based on the supply
Speaker 4: and demand I guess of the fuel market and the
Speaker 4: fuel economy. So would it be that like long a
Speaker 4: walk or that egregious to change if prices of fast
Speaker 4: food restaurants were digitally fluctuating, tied to the price of
Speaker 4: beef or the price of the suppply chain, other things
Speaker 4: in the supply chain.
Speaker 3: Like the conspiracy about the McRib right, how it appears
Speaker 3: and disappears depending on global meat prices, Yeah, which is
Speaker 3: not proven.
Speaker 4: Do you know what I'm saying, though, is that that's
Speaker 4: exactly what good business in a way.
Speaker 3: Normalization, though, is dangerous because the public has no control
Speaker 3: over it. So like, I don't know, honestly, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be completely transparent to I don't think about Wendy's or
Speaker 3: fast food too too often, except that that mixtape is amazing,
Speaker 3: But they rest in Greece indeed. But the issue is,
Speaker 3: you know, I think for a lot of people, if
Speaker 3: you're going by fast food, it's not a destination. It's
Speaker 3: often a convenience, right, So I think it's more likely
Speaker 3: that people say, oh, I need to pick up some food.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm driving by insert fast food place here. I
Speaker 3: think that's more likely than it becoming a big destination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but at Wendy's you can get that chili oil.
Speaker 2: That's one of the only places you can get chili
Speaker 2: oil for real, Like most other places might have some
Speaker 2: Texas Peat hot sauce or something like that, and maybe
Speaker 2: they've got chili oil. It's meant to go in their
Speaker 2: chili and it is incredible in most other foods are
Speaker 2: such a heat seekert.
Speaker 3: And I love also, you know, I loved the old
Speaker 3: school Wendy's where you know, they had the salad bar
Speaker 3: and stuff like they just lost too much money on it.
Speaker 3: But we can't really blame any company for sort of
Speaker 3: following the wave of normalization that's happening here. But we
Speaker 3: can say it successfully sets up some conspiracies against consumers,
Speaker 3: you know, And how long can these different approaches exist
Speaker 3: in discrete silos company by company, I'm going to say
Speaker 3: they can't exist that way forever. I'm going to I'm
Speaker 3: positing that they will get included into things like going
Speaker 3: to be very interesting to revisit this conversation in five
Speaker 3: years or so and see how much how much further
Speaker 3: we've evolved in the world of targeted advertising and whether
Speaker 3: the public likes it has found a poll from Captarra
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three. They surveyed a ton of people
Speaker 3: in the US about this question, and thirty four percent
Speaker 3: of people said, I think it's okay. Fifty two percent
Speaker 3: said this is absolute price gouging and it's a terrible idea,
Speaker 3: and they even got they got kind of granular, right.
Speaker 3: There were other people who said, let's hear it out,
Speaker 3: and then there were people who said I would immediately
Speaker 3: walk out of the store, like I'm never gonna deal
Speaker 3: with that kind of thing. You know, the dollar menu
Speaker 3: should be the dollar menu or whatever. But I don't know, man,
Speaker 3: I do think it's a conspiracy. I do think it's
Speaker 3: on the way, and would love love love to hear
Speaker 3: or hot takes fellow conspiracy realist tell us what's going on?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean tell us you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: what is the most passionate fast food opinion? You have
Speaker 3: extra points if it's a very fervent opinion and it's
Speaker 3: about something most other people are not super passionate about.
Speaker 3: Love that stuff one A three three SDDWYTK. Of course
Speaker 3: you can always always please send us an email. iHeartRadio
Speaker 3: dot com. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsors
Speaker 3: and we'll be back with more strange news.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 2: I was just trying to figure out what a Wendy's
Speaker 2: double cheeseburger costs? Can you guys find that? I'm looking
Speaker 2: you guys? Tell me if you find the price of
Speaker 2: a Wendy's Dave's Double is it?
Speaker 5: Is it hard to find.
Speaker 2: Dave's Hot and Juicy half pound double cheese for five nineteen?
Speaker 2: Have you guys been to a five guys recently? Ever,
Speaker 2: like right in the past, like a little while?
Speaker 5: Is it roughly the same price?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Like double double or more?
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, guys, I'm super egregious and it doesn't
Speaker 3: feel expensive until until you get to the end.
Speaker 5: That'll be.
Speaker 2: Like I got two burgers, man?
Speaker 3: Or how much blood do you have on you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh it is dang good, but still it's Oh anyway,
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to imagine, like what would my choice
Speaker 2: be if the Wendy's was like crazy expense and I
Speaker 2: chose not to go there anymore.
Speaker 4: You know, what's really cheap consistently is an an out burger,
Speaker 4: and that is largely because of their model where they
Speaker 4: don't have in and out burgers anywhere too far away
Speaker 4: from their distro hubs, which is also why the meat
Speaker 4: is never frozen, which is you know, it makes it
Speaker 4: higher quality. But their prices are bonkers cheap because they
Speaker 4: do so much in vall. You ever been doing an
Speaker 4: out burger the one by the airport at Lax the
Speaker 4: lines consistently around the whole parking lot.
Speaker 5: I have to do.
Speaker 4: There was a new one that opened somewhere a little
Speaker 4: farther away from California. The weight was like seven hours
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 5: Insane. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, you know what I would say, I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about this for whiles we've were talking about it. I
Speaker 3: would lean into it, you know, forget it. Put some
Speaker 3: casino rules in there. Can I like gamble on the
Speaker 3: price of the burger?
Speaker 5: Double down?
Speaker 3: You know, like, do I have a do I have
Speaker 3: like a twenty percent chance of getting it for a
Speaker 3: dollar and maybe like twenty two percent chance of get
Speaker 3: it for a dollar fifty.
Speaker 2: You might get triple the meat roll. One in two
Speaker 2: thousand gets triple meat.
Speaker 5: We're gonna have to add this to that. Aline.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talking about.
Speaker 2: The burger gambles to completely switch gears. Guys, Let's jump
Speaker 2: to some on the job training. I'm imagining all the
Speaker 2: folks at Wendy's who are going to have to relearn
Speaker 2: all of those systems and how it all functions. Let's
Speaker 2: go to some more on the job training. So, a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago, the mayor of a large southern city
Speaker 2: here in the United States met with that city's highest
Speaker 2: ranking gang leaders think Bloods and Crypts gang leaders, and
Speaker 2: he asked them face to face for a ceasefire. Now,
Speaker 2: according to that mayor, those the leaders of those gangs
Speaker 2: agreed to put their guns down and stop killing people
Speaker 2: and to instruct everyone in their organization to stop killing
Speaker 2: people for one calendar week. That's seven days. Now, that's
Speaker 2: a cool story, or why are we talking about it?
Speaker 5: First?
Speaker 2: This is the highest ranking civilian official in a major
Speaker 2: US city meeting face to face with a group of
Speaker 2: people considered quote bad by the institutions he represents, and
Speaker 2: he was successful in negotiating through diplomacy, I would say,
Speaker 2: a temporary, nonviolent solution to a problem everybody in the
Speaker 2: city was facing. At the time of this that we're
Speaker 2: having this discussion. It was just reported on Channel five
Speaker 2: Action News in Memphis, Tennessee, that they were fifty seven
Speaker 2: days into twenty twenty four and there had been fifty
Speaker 2: four murders homicides in the city in that amount of days,
Speaker 2: which is not great, right.
Speaker 4: No, I had heard from folks that I know who
Speaker 4: have lived in Memphis or spent time in Memphis that
Speaker 4: historically has been a really really serious gang problem in there.
Speaker 4: Maybe that had and get the press that in other
Speaker 4: places like maybe Los Angeles or New York have over
Speaker 4: the years.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the second reason we're talking about this, guys, is
Speaker 2: because this single active diplomacy gave the mayor, the entire city,
Speaker 2: and arguably all of us a little bit of insight
Speaker 2: into something that's super obvious but often unspoken, and that
Speaker 2: is that the gang leaders expressed on from all sides
Speaker 2: all the different organizations that the young members of their
Speaker 2: organizations who are taking part in these illegal activities that
Speaker 2: these guys run. They don't want to be doing that.
Speaker 2: What they really want are quote, good paying jobs and
Speaker 2: the training needed to be to get those jobs. Whish again,
Speaker 2: duh obvious. Everybody wants a good job if you can
Speaker 2: get one, and in order to get one of those
Speaker 2: good jobs, you need training. But just to hear the
Speaker 2: leaders of these illegal organizations, these organizations that do illegal
Speaker 2: things for the most part saying hey, our young guys
Speaker 2: and girls want that job thing. We don't want this path,
Speaker 2: but there's no way for them to get that right now?
Speaker 2: Can you help?
Speaker 5: As the mayor?
Speaker 2: Is essentially what they said.
Speaker 4: I mean, aren't gangs in many many ways just kind
Speaker 4: of like an insular response to being discriminated against and
Speaker 4: to kind of make your own jobs and make your
Speaker 4: own community exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an institution that often via necessity, replaces other
Speaker 3: institutions that would provide stability, opportunity, security. So it's like,
Speaker 3: I mean, it reminds me of the most deafline. Right,
Speaker 3: there's hunger in the streets and it's hard to defeat,
Speaker 3: and some steal for fun, but more steel to eat. Yes,
Speaker 3: people don't wake most people that you would think of
Speaker 3: as gang members don't wake up and say, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: excited to risk my life for a relatively small amount
Speaker 3: of money, or to risk no money right, or to
Speaker 3: risk my life because I feel socially obligated to react
Speaker 3: to something else, even if it doesn't directly concern me
Speaker 3: like this. I think it's also, I mean, without sounding
Speaker 3: too conspiratorial, there is a very valid argument that the
Speaker 3: actions of previous administrations and governments created the gangs they
Speaker 3: purport to combat. And they did this by crippling public education,
Speaker 3: by crippling the healthcare system, food security. This is not
Speaker 3: you know, this is not me on some kind of
Speaker 3: like left wingy soapbox. These are facts that are objectively true.
Speaker 3: I advanced to you that these municipalities also knew what
Speaker 3: they were doing and just did not care about the
Speaker 3: intergenerational consequences.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's something that's been happening for so long.
Speaker 2: It's ingrained, and it's it's quote how things are done right.
Speaker 2: And if you go back to the educational aspect inside
Speaker 2: of it, and just the opportunities that aren't there in
Speaker 2: a lot of places, in a lot of school districts,
Speaker 2: it just it's this massive, compounded problem that's been happening
Speaker 2: for centuries.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The one good thing coming out of Memphis is that
Speaker 2: they're trying to do things like the Community Foundation of
Speaker 2: Greater Memphis. It's like a nonprofit that took a big
Speaker 2: donation from JP Morgan Chase. This is me kind of
Speaker 2: rolling my eyes a little bit, a donation of two
Speaker 2: hundred and seventy two, five hundred dollars for this thing
Speaker 2: called the Collective Blueprint, which is a nonprofit that helps
Speaker 2: unemployed young people find a successful career path. But again,
Speaker 2: that is almost like it's some young unemployed person who
Speaker 2: maybe has a high school diploma or a ged helped
Speaker 2: that person figure out a career path for the rest
Speaker 2: of their life. Right, what is that a quarter million dollars?
Speaker 2: That is not enough money to make a last, long
Speaker 2: lasting impact in my opinion, But it is like something
Speaker 2: to be celebrated as a good thing, But it's not
Speaker 2: going to change the lives of forty five thousand young
Speaker 2: adults aged sixteen to twenty four who are currently out
Speaker 2: of school and out of work in Memphis, which is
Speaker 2: the scale of the problem you're dealing with, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then also I guess there is here in
Speaker 3: the United States, there's always one group that's hiring.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the second part of our of our little
Speaker 2: discussion here, Ben, thank you for that. Here's the second part.
Speaker 2: And this is a little weird. This is a little weird,
Speaker 2: but just go with me for a second because I'm
Speaker 2: being tongue in cheek. But there's also maybe a solution
Speaker 2: here if we think about it, and if there could
Speaker 2: be some perspective change. The US Army is restructuring right
Speaker 2: now from its counterinsurgency forward recent past, think like year
Speaker 2: two thousand and three onward, and it is expressing a
Speaker 2: need to recruit skilled individuals to fill specialized roles that
Speaker 2: are more let's say, electronic in nature more you know,
Speaker 2: almost they almost need like people who are really good
Speaker 2: at playing video games and good at electronic system and
Speaker 2: good at manipulating controls.
Speaker 3: It, drone ops, radar techs.
Speaker 2: All kinds of things. One of the job openings that
Speaker 2: I was looking at earlier is electromagnetic Warfare specialist. And
Speaker 2: here's how it's described on go army dot com. As
Speaker 2: an electromagnetic warfare specialist, you'll plan and execute electronic warfare
Speaker 2: operations you'll use electromagnetic and directed energy to control the
Speaker 2: electromagnetic spectrum and defeat the enemy's electronic systems. That sounds
Speaker 2: exciting to me. I don't know about you, guys. It
Speaker 2: feels like something you could do from a control panel
Speaker 2: of some sort, and if you're good with high hand
Speaker 2: eye coordination, could be really well suited to do something
Speaker 2: like that. I'm imagining a young person who's out of
Speaker 2: high school right, or has dropped out of high school
Speaker 2: or in a ged and has some nohow could jump
Speaker 2: in and do that. I'm assuming I'm thinking maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: I don't know, oh man, I think you're onto something,
Speaker 3: because there's clearly like there's clearly a growing need for
Speaker 3: these positions as the nature of warfare changes or the
Speaker 3: applications as you say thereof and there's also you know,
Speaker 3: we have people listening today who have worked in those roles, right,
Speaker 3: And of course we're not saying it is as simple
Speaker 3: as playing the kind of video gave me a play
Speaker 3: for fun, but there is a transference of skills there
Speaker 3: they do. You know, It's like the credits do migrate
Speaker 3: to this different occupation and for people who have grown
Speaker 3: up always thinking this way and working this way, they
Speaker 3: are going to have a leg up, the same way
Speaker 3: that a kid who had the opportunity to have early
Speaker 3: musical education is going to have an easier time learning
Speaker 3: a language in the future or picking up a new instrument.
Speaker 4: Well, and even just the old model again, not to
Speaker 4: say everybody go join the army or the navy or whatever,
Speaker 4: but in the old model gave folks that maybe didn't
Speaker 4: do super great in school or maybe you know, went
Speaker 4: down a negative path, gave them the opportunity to learn
Speaker 4: some serious skills and even parlay that into college education funding.
Speaker 4: Like a good buddy of mine who is mega smart
Speaker 4: but just didn't apply themselves in school due to many circumstances.
Speaker 4: Joined the Navy, was a sonar tech on a destroyer
Speaker 4: and learned a lot and was able to kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of get right in terms of their
Speaker 4: work ethic and all that kind of stuff, and it's
Speaker 4: now a very successful attorney, like working for folks who
Speaker 4: are being evicted, you know. So that is sort of
Speaker 4: a traditional path that folks have had available to them
Speaker 4: in the past through the military. But this isn't even
Speaker 4: like a step up from that, right wouldn't you guys say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking about the way let's say a young
Speaker 2: gang member may be thinking, and this is me spitballing,
Speaker 2: and I'm just trying to think about this in an
Speaker 2: abstract way, but also from a high level. If you
Speaker 2: are a low level gang member, let's say working on
Speaker 2: the lowest levels of a drug operation, and you're maybe
Speaker 2: on the corner somewhere you're in, you're a part of
Speaker 2: that operation, your mind is thinking operationally and strategically. Probably
Speaker 2: you are keeping high levels of situational awareness. Like there
Speaker 2: are all of these things that the Army would say,
Speaker 2: I think or is going the Army is going to
Speaker 2: train you to do if you go through basic training.
Speaker 2: There are skills and understanding and way of thinking that
Speaker 2: I think would be optimal for that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: In my mind, it's two it's two groups that almost
Speaker 2: can't even see each other, like they don't exist, because
Speaker 2: it's not an option the way I'm seeing it, it's
Speaker 2: not an option for the Army to recruit anyone who's
Speaker 2: a former gang member because of their requirements that they
Speaker 2: list out on go army dot com. And you can
Speaker 2: read all the conviction tattoos like if you have they've
Speaker 2: got strict requirements for tattoos. You have to have a
Speaker 2: high school diploma or a GED. There's all these things
Speaker 2: Army lists that almost say like, hey, if you're in
Speaker 2: any way quote bad according to our institutions, like our
Speaker 2: you know, city councils or whatever, then you can't join
Speaker 2: our group.
Speaker 3: It's the French Foreign Legion for you poll exactly.
Speaker 2: But then if you for a moment, imagine you're a
Speaker 2: gang member, joining the armies like the last thing I
Speaker 2: think you probably would ever want to do, because it
Speaker 2: is this massive governmental organization right where you're basically going
Speaker 2: to be working for the rest of your life for
Speaker 2: the government. That feels like a very like don't do
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. That's a bad choice. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: there's a need for I don't there's some kind of
Speaker 2: need here at the center the confluence of these two
Speaker 2: issues that feels like if a perspective could shift on
Speaker 2: either or on both sides, there could be something cool
Speaker 2: that happens where as a young person in need of
Speaker 2: something to do and being able to you would be
Speaker 2: able to make money and you would be able to
Speaker 2: gain skills that you can use after you leave the army.
Speaker 3: A win win, right.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize there were all of those codified kind
Speaker 4: of guard rails against gang members.
Speaker 5: I did not realize that at all.
Speaker 3: Some of it's the white supremacy, to be quite honest
Speaker 3: with you, there's a big concern, not without validity, that
Speaker 3: secret or sects and organizations can exist within the Armed
Speaker 3: services leverage the access to technology and the experiences that
Speaker 3: they gained there to become much more successful domestic terrorist.
Speaker 3: So it's like it's a valid concern because it has happened,
Speaker 3: so they didn't just make it up. They're not just
Speaker 3: being paranoid. But also, you know the diplomacy thing. Diplomacy
Speaker 3: is always meeting in the middle, right, and some institutions
Speaker 3: or groups are very opposed to that because they function
Speaker 3: under the illusion of zeros games, which is zero sum
Speaker 3: is kind of a childish thing. But the thing that
Speaker 3: I think is really interesting here, Matt, is it reminds
Speaker 3: me of when various groups, various government groups started relaxing
Speaker 3: some of their social taboo rules. I'm thinking specifically of
Speaker 3: people who are experts in it software, pen testing, security.
Speaker 3: A lot of the really good ones love smoking weed.
Speaker 3: They like love love love.
Speaker 5: I was going to mention that too, they had to relax,
Speaker 5: that they had to condition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they had to are getting qualified applicants.
Speaker 3: You can relax some of these things.
Speaker 2: I think you can too. Just let me read this out.
Speaker 2: This is from go army dot com and this is
Speaker 2: listed under every available job. You can go on their
Speaker 2: website and it just shows you all the different jobs
Speaker 2: and they're varied and crazy interesting, lots of intelligence positions,
Speaker 2: lots of psychological operations positions. But here's what it says.
Speaker 2: You have to be a US citizen between seventeen and
Speaker 2: thirty four years old, have a high school diploma or ged,
Speaker 2: have no medical concerns, which you know, who knows exactly
Speaker 2: what that means, but just something that wouldn't be debilitating.
Speaker 2: I guess for your ability to perform a job, you
Speaker 2: have to meet tattoo guidelines, which were recently laxed a
Speaker 2: bit like I think you can get one tattoo of
Speaker 2: a certain length on the back of your neck and
Speaker 2: on each hand, one on each hand and something.
Speaker 5: Or the other. Who cares? Who cares?
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, Army, who cares how many tattoos you
Speaker 2: got and where you got them. That does not affect
Speaker 2: your ability to be an effective person in those positions
Speaker 2: at all. I'm just saying, think about that Army. And
Speaker 2: also no major law violations. That's just what it says.
Speaker 2: Who knows exactly what that means or what the guidelines are,
Speaker 2: but that's what it states. And also on their website
Speaker 2: you can read about the Army pay scales, which start
Speaker 2: at twenty four two hundred and six dollars a year
Speaker 2: if you're a private first class active duty, which is
Speaker 2: not much money, right, twenty four thousand dollars a year
Speaker 2: not much money. But what the Army does is they
Speaker 2: offer things like bonuses, like a fifty thousand dollars signing
Speaker 2: bonus and all these other bonus. There's a whole part
Speaker 2: of their website that's like, here's all these extra things
Speaker 2: you can get if you're signing up for particular jobs
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 4: And GI bill and stuff is still a thing, right,
Speaker 4: I mean that's yes, the perks there are, you know,
Speaker 4: there's crazy benefits.
Speaker 2: So in the end, it's not as attractive for someone
Speaker 2: who you know, says I want a good paying job,
Speaker 2: right and I want to know I want to be
Speaker 2: trained to do it. Joining the US Army isn't exactly
Speaker 2: a good paying job, but there's potentials there. The United
Speaker 2: States population as of twelve twenty four pm Eastern Standard
Speaker 2: time today, as we record this February twenty eighth, was
Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty six million human beings at one
Speaker 2: hundred and nine extra thousand to that, the current number
Speaker 2: of active military soldiers in the Army is four hundred
Speaker 2: and forty five thousand. Roughly, that's only zero point one
Speaker 2: three percent of the total US population. Okay, zero point
Speaker 2: one three percent.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: And if you actually start to crack those numbers down
Speaker 2: and you realize that twelve point four percent of the
Speaker 2: humans inside that total population meet the requirements, just the
Speaker 2: age requirements for the US Army, that's forty one point
Speaker 2: seven million, and you know a whole large number that
Speaker 2: would be ineligible due to medical concerns. And if you
Speaker 2: keep on restricting with all of those things we mentioned,
Speaker 2: including the tattoos and major potential major crimes, you get
Speaker 2: down to a very small pool of people that could
Speaker 2: even join the Army. And I think it's very weird
Speaker 2: that an organization like that that needs people prevents so
Speaker 2: many people from joining. Rather than training someone in a
Speaker 2: position the way any other job is going to train someone,
Speaker 2: you know, to fill a position.
Speaker 5: It's just weird.
Speaker 2: It's just weird to me. I agree, I guess I
Speaker 2: don't know. Look, I've never been in a gang, I've
Speaker 2: never been in the army. I don't know anything. Please
Speaker 2: let us know what you think about this stuff, because
Speaker 2: I know nothing. I just wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 2: All right, We'll be right back with more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we returned with one more piece of strange news
Speaker 4: in the way of an update. Come update, come up
Speaker 4: and update. Perhaps. Yeah, Alex Jones, I guess he could
Speaker 4: call him a personality and entertainer.
Speaker 5: He did get his start.
Speaker 4: As more of a talk show host, you know, back
Speaker 4: in Austin, Texas, and kind of realized when he started
Speaker 4: leaning into the persona that he I guess you could
Speaker 4: call it a persona, But at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: if that's sort of what you are all the time,
Speaker 4: is it really.
Speaker 5: A persona anymore?
Speaker 4: That he adopted the screamy kind of gruff demeanor and
Speaker 4: conspiracy theorist, and then of course parlayed that into a
Speaker 4: multimillion dollar industry in the form of info wars. We
Speaker 4: know he's been through all kinds of legal troubles. If
Speaker 4: you want to hear some details about the whole history
Speaker 4: of Alex Jones, check out the multi part series of
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards on the very subject that I believe
Speaker 4: Ben and I participated in numerous years ago.
Speaker 5: Matt, you weren't on that, were you.
Speaker 4: I don't recall, Okay, I think it was just me
Speaker 4: and you for some reason that Ben and I joined
Speaker 4: Robert Evans on trace his whole history back to what
Speaker 4: was then the president. This was pre Sandy Hook lawsuits,
Speaker 4: if I'm not mistake, It certainly wasn't pre Sandy Hook.
Speaker 4: But I can't remember exactly how much into that we got,
Speaker 4: or where the timelines overlapped or not. But as we
Speaker 4: all probably know, Alex Jones made a very distinct choice
Speaker 4: to consider the Sandy Hook shooting of course, Sandy Hook
Speaker 4: Elementary School where numerous children were killed by gunman, to propose,
Speaker 4: dare we say insist that this event was what's known
Speaker 4: as a false flag attack?
Speaker 5: To what end? I wouldn't even give him the air.
Speaker 4: To talk about what his reasoning was behind it, or
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, probably just some or you.
Speaker 5: Know, illuminati, government goes cover up or whatever.
Speaker 4: But again, a false flag attack usually requires there to
Speaker 4: be an ulterior motive of some kind that you're disguising,
Speaker 4: you know, what really is going on.
Speaker 5: IFIs acting right. So yeah, yeah, please Matt.
Speaker 2: If I recall it all it was tied back to
Speaker 2: gun control. Okay, there were several instances around that, you know,
Speaker 2: those years twenty twelve, around those years where it was
Speaker 2: people like.
Speaker 5: Alex Jones were saying that.
Speaker 2: Was the motive behind a lot of the mass shootings.
Speaker 4: That does ring a bell, and I apologies that wasn't
Speaker 4: really it's not really necessarily the nature of this segment here,
Speaker 4: but thank you Matt for clarifying. And that doesn't make
Speaker 4: perfect sense. Again, just not trying to give any air
Speaker 4: to whatever his ulterior belief was as to what was
Speaker 4: behind this. You know, as we know and as we
Speaker 4: all accept and didn't really need any further proof to accept.
Speaker 4: Just watch the news and watch the interviews with the
Speaker 4: parents and the survivors.
Speaker 5: You know, this was a tragic, horrific event.
Speaker 4: That certainly politics aside, is just a horrible thing to
Speaker 4: have happened to your community, to have happened to families,
Speaker 4: any of us out there, you know, including us through here,
Speaker 4: who have young nieces, nephews, family members, siblings, children, That
Speaker 4: stuff hits home, you know, I mean, there's no way
Speaker 4: around it. And then when we start to see more
Speaker 4: of these type of events taking place. Being a parent
Speaker 4: and Matt, I know this holds true for you as well.
Speaker 4: It's the kind of thing that you can't help it
Speaker 4: be scared about, you know, with your kid in school,
Speaker 4: that this kind of thing could hit our community. But
Speaker 4: Alex Jones, rather than talking about those points, decided to
Speaker 4: politicize it in the most egregious, despicable way possible. And
Speaker 4: he is Finally, it would seem getting some very serious
Speaker 4: just desserts. The families of the Sandy Hook School shooting victims,
Speaker 4: who have been part of a class action lawsuit against
Speaker 4: Alex Jones, have unanimously voted in favor of a plan
Speaker 4: to essentially wrap up Alex Jones's bankruptcy proceedings by liquidating
Speaker 4: every single one of his assets essentially in perpetuity until
Speaker 4: it reaches around the maximum of one point five billion
Speaker 4: dollars in defamation judgments that have been awarded to the
Speaker 4: families and against Alex Jones, so they actually, as the class,
Speaker 4: have a say in what happens with Alex Jones's Chapter
Speaker 4: eleven plan.
Speaker 5: You know you can't.
Speaker 4: As we know, there are things that Chapter eleven bankruptcy
Speaker 4: protects you from, like certain types of debt and things
Speaker 4: like that, where you're able to kind of wipe the
Speaker 4: slate clean. But one thing that does not protect you
Speaker 4: from is justly awarded. What's the word I'm looking for, guys, restitutions?
Speaker 5: Restitution?
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, settlement in civil cases and criminal cases. You
Speaker 4: can't just go and declare bankruptcy and have all that
Speaker 4: stuff wiped away. So essentially, this is a plan that
Speaker 4: would liquidate and redistribute his property and other assets, including cash,
Speaker 4: while also preserving other potential legal actions against Jones and
Speaker 4: other parties affiliated with Info Wars. There's an article in
Speaker 4: Bloomberg News by Alex Wolf that I'm pulling from significantly
Speaker 4: here because I'm obviously not an expert on things like
Speaker 4: bankruptcy and how that works, but I do know we
Speaker 4: have talked about this in the past, that you can't
Speaker 4: just wipe the slate clean by declaring bankruptcy and say oops,
Speaker 4: I'm broke. You can't get anything out of me. It's
Speaker 4: not a way to protect yourself against that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: The fact that it also preserves other potential legal actions
Speaker 4: against him and his affiliates is interesting too. I'm just
Speaker 4: going to read a quote here from the Alex Wolfe article.
Speaker 4: An official committee appointed to represent Jones's unsecured creditors notify
Speaker 4: the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas
Speaker 4: on February sixteenth that of twenty three liquidation plan ballots
Speaker 4: distributed to creditors, it received twenty one back, all supporting
Speaker 4: the committee's liquidation proposal. So essentially, it's my understanding that
Speaker 4: this means all of this he doesn't have assets that
Speaker 4: are worth one point five billion dollars at the moment,
Speaker 4: So I think this redistribution like follows him around for
Speaker 4: the rest of his life up until the point that
Speaker 4: that amount is reached. And I think that's a pretty
Speaker 4: high maximum. I've seen other figures estimating closer to the
Speaker 4: eight hundred millions. But it does appear that Alex Jones,
Speaker 4: for all intents and purposes, is.
Speaker 3: And it's also you know, I do believe you're correct
Speaker 3: in that it will follow him for the rest of
Speaker 3: his days. It is very unlikely that he would manage
Speaker 3: to pay all of that money before he dies. And
Speaker 3: so we can also argue that this ruling is designed
Speaker 3: this way such that it creates a precedent right, so
Speaker 3: that it's an example of what can happen if you
Speaker 3: insist upon doing these things. And I think you know,
Speaker 3: from the day he got into court, it was pretty
Speaker 3: obvious how things were going to go. We just didn't
Speaker 3: know what that what that ruling would be. What do
Speaker 3: you think this teaches us no about about discourse in
Speaker 3: America and freedom of speech and so on.
Speaker 5: Well, there's no, it's it's not unlimited.
Speaker 4: You know, freedom of speech does not extend to harassing
Speaker 4: the victims of horrible crimes on a public platform and
Speaker 4: then hiding behind some sort of kind of thin defense
Speaker 4: of I'm just an entertainer. I'm just playing a character,
Speaker 4: you know, like I'm sort of like Stephen Colbert. That's
Speaker 4: doesn't nor did it ever hold water. And now I
Speaker 4: think we're seeing the chickens come home to roost in
Speaker 4: that regard.
Speaker 2: Wasn't Maybe I'm wrong, guys, It wasn't one of the
Speaker 2: big problems here that Alex Jones would go on his
Speaker 2: show and make you know, these claims and make these connections.
Speaker 2: Then the harassment the harassment would come from him to
Speaker 2: some extent, but then it was mostly more problematic when
Speaker 2: it was people who were listening to him, watching him,
Speaker 2: and then reaching out, yeah, believing it, reaching out and
Speaker 2: harassing the individuals.
Speaker 3: Of course, he also made a lot of money doing it,
Speaker 3: so this is so the argument that this is simply
Speaker 3: a strongly held personal belief is a little bit harder
Speaker 3: to get across the finish line when you know the
Speaker 3: next thing you know is paddling bone broth right, and
Speaker 3: then talking about things creative feedback loop with the audience
Speaker 3: such that I'm gonna give them what they want. I'm
Speaker 3: going to talk about what they're interested in, and along
Speaker 3: the way, I'm gonna grift them for a few bucks
Speaker 3: with things that are, by the way, don't work. Just
Speaker 3: to be very clear, shout out to our upcoming supplements episode.
Speaker 3: I think also, you know what gets me about this,
Speaker 3: guys and maybe some of our fellow conspiracy realists, maybe
Speaker 3: you'll agree with me. He was just so cool in
Speaker 3: Waking Life film Waking Life.
Speaker 5: I do, Yeah, he's it does Texas.
Speaker 4: Richard Linkletter is a bustin Texas guy as well, And
Speaker 4: I think that was back when he was still kind
Speaker 4: of harmless.
Speaker 3: When he's a shock jock, fun keep Austin weird radio person,
Speaker 3: he's red.
Speaker 5: He's like bright, like glowing red as character.
Speaker 4: If you remember, if you haven't seen the film, it's
Speaker 4: to use his rotoscoping kind of animation on top of
Speaker 4: film to give everyone this kind of like weird dreamlike quality.
Speaker 5: He also did that same technique in the what was
Speaker 5: it the Philip K.
Speaker 3: Dick adaptation of thirteenth Oh yeah, the counter.
Speaker 5: Reeves the counters with them forgetting the name of it
Speaker 5: was the Philip K. Dick thing.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you know, and we're talking a bit about
Speaker 4: this off air Ben you mentioned Will We both mentioned
Speaker 4: that he basically was at some point court mandated essentially
Speaker 4: or at least in the very least, hoping that he
Speaker 4: could protect himself or prevent further litigation.
Speaker 5: That he kind of walked back some of his.
Speaker 4: Statements publicly, but even those come off as like a
Speaker 4: really just not well meaning, half hearted apology because to
Speaker 4: your point, Matt, you know, I believe the Again, these
Speaker 4: parents already had the most horrible thing that could ever
Speaker 4: happen to any parent or you know, any human with
Speaker 4: a loved one being taken down that way at such
Speaker 4: a young age. Now they have to you know, change
Speaker 4: their addresses, move around, deal with death threats and the
Speaker 4: crazy dosing and whatever might come along with you know,
Speaker 4: Alex Jones weaponizing his followers in that way.
Speaker 3: Well. Also, Yeah, the apologies are a tricky thing because
Speaker 3: often these situations they come across somewhat lib or flippant,
Speaker 3: with a kind of a vibe like I am so
Speaker 3: sorry you feel you were owed an apology, and I
Speaker 3: am so sorry that the court agreed that I have
Speaker 3: to do something, you know what I mean. It's like,
Speaker 3: what are you really sorry about? Has your mind changed
Speaker 3: or do you just regret that there were consequences for
Speaker 3: your actions. It's a good question. It's a tough question.
Speaker 3: But with Jones as well, in particular, I genuinely think
Speaker 3: that the big move is to set precedent, and it's
Speaker 3: not one of the big lines that gets crossed. There
Speaker 3: is saying precedent because this guy didn't just say things,
Speaker 3: but he as you mentioned just a second ago, and
Speaker 3: as we talked about extensively in the past. He did
Speaker 3: weaponize things. Right, People's physical lives were in danger, Their
Speaker 3: livelihoods could be ruined. So that goes that gets really
Speaker 3: close to hate speech, you know what I mean, which
Speaker 3: is why you can stand You can stand on a
Speaker 3: quarter and shout your personal beliefs about whatever all the time.
Speaker 3: But the moment you start saying and because of these beliefs,
Speaker 3: you guys should go kill you know, Spiro Agnew or whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I picked that name, but when
Speaker 3: you cross that line, that's criminal ror.
Speaker 4: Like inside of a riot or shouting fire in a
Speaker 4: crowded theater or something like that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: I know that's maybe a little bit of a hackneyed comparison,
Speaker 4: but I believe that does hold true. Or in trying
Speaker 4: to demonstrate what kind of speech isn't protected, and this
Speaker 4: has been shown to be very much not protected speech,
Speaker 4: and I think that's a really positive thing. Press it
Speaker 4: in twice and moving forwards, I think it's gonna hopefully
Speaker 4: keep some folks of Alex Jones's ilk, you know, from
Speaker 4: doing similar things, because that's a lot of money. This
Speaker 4: because guy's life is essentially ruined and he's already been
Speaker 4: hobbled in so many ways his organization in terms of
Speaker 4: how he can broadcast what you know, YouTube took away
Speaker 4: his accounts and all of that. So and as we know,
Speaker 4: this kind of stuff for some followers of folks like
Speaker 4: this is just going to be more fuel for the
Speaker 4: fire that they're going to be like, see, he's being targeted,
Speaker 4: he's being you know, victimized, YadA, YadA, YadA. But there's
Speaker 4: an article from News Times from a little further back
Speaker 4: by Rob Riiser from Yeah from not too long back,
Speaker 4: from February twenty first that has a quote from the
Speaker 4: judge characterizing Alex Jones's perspective on the rulings and the proceedings,
Speaker 4: saying Jones complains of nearly every ruling without showing error
Speaker 4: as to any. He completely mischaracterizes the record, accusing plaintiffs
Speaker 4: of foul play, and the trial judge of quote pretextual reasoning,
Speaker 4: WillFull blindness, and bizarre rulings and presiding over a farce.
Speaker 4: These mischaracterizations are no accident. They are Jones self marketing
Speaker 4: in action.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. And now, to be fair, he did
Speaker 3: later go at some point and say he disagreed with
Speaker 3: the attorneys who called him a performance artist. He said, look,
Speaker 3: my show is quote the most bonafied, hardcore real McCoy
Speaker 3: thing there is, and everybody knows it. That's what he said,
Speaker 3: But it turns out the US government did not agree.
Speaker 3: I have a question for you, nol. Do we know
Speaker 3: how much money is going to the lawyers for the families?
Speaker 4: Not that I've seen directly yet, And it does seem
Speaker 4: like this is you know, still there's information trickling out
Speaker 4: about this, because I couldn't find a ton of updates
Speaker 4: and some of the articles were a little older. But it, yeah,
Speaker 4: certainly plenty I can imagine. And also I just want
Speaker 4: to point out too, I don't think we ever even
Speaker 4: mentioned this. I don't remember who found this first, but
Speaker 4: one of the three of us did that the Alex
Speaker 4: Jones has like a kind of a like a nineties
Speaker 4: style side scroller beat him up type game that he can't,
Speaker 4: for obvious reasons, get from any app stores. Of note,
Speaker 4: you got to get it directly from his website, otherwise
Speaker 4: I would have checked it out just out of more
Speaker 4: big curiosity. But kind of reminds me of that game
Speaker 4: Metal Slug You know, sort of like a goofy over
Speaker 4: the top, gory side scrolling shooter.
Speaker 5: Game, you know.
Speaker 4: So it just goes to show he's looking any way
Speaker 4: possible to pull more money out of folks that are
Speaker 4: still sticking with him, which at this point I can't
Speaker 4: imagine is the same as it once was.
Speaker 5: But who's to say.
Speaker 4: I can't possibly say, because it's not like you can
Speaker 4: really get viewer numbers from him when he's doing stuff
Speaker 4: on more.
Speaker 5: Kind of less trackable platforms. I guess let's just.
Speaker 2: Say, guys, that movie we were trying to think of,
Speaker 2: it's called us Scanner Darkly, Scanner Darkly, That's right, and
Speaker 2: we need to rewatch it because I haven't seen it
Speaker 2: since like two thousand and six to seven, and it
Speaker 2: has to do with like drugs and undercover surveillance and
Speaker 2: all kinds of craziness that we just need to talk about.
Speaker 4: I think Matrixy vibes too. I mean, you know, as
Speaker 4: we all have mentioned, I think Philip K. Dick is
Speaker 4: largely responsible for a lot of the modern sci fi tropes,
Speaker 4: you know, in terms of the simulation, in terms of androids,
Speaker 4: dreaming of electric sheep and all that, and this one
Speaker 4: has plenty of all that stuff and more. I'd love
Speaker 4: to watch it again as well, And it has Woody Harrelson.
Speaker 4: He plays kind of a stoner guy, you can imagine.
Speaker 4: I don't know, do you guys have anything to add
Speaker 4: I was trying not to like bathe in the shoden
Speaker 4: freud of it all, but I do think it was
Speaker 4: worth the mention again to your point, Ben, mainly because
Speaker 4: of the precedent that it sets on limits of quote
Speaker 4: unquote free speech. I think that's important to remember for
Speaker 4: folks out there thinking they can just say whatever with
Speaker 4: no consequences. I would say these are some pretty serious consequences.
Speaker 3: All I have is tangent on a tangent because I've
Speaker 3: read so much Philip K. Dick stuff, and I'm a
Speaker 3: huge proponent of his work. I think he would be
Speaker 3: really interesting to learn that Microsoft's AI co pilot just
Speaker 3: went off the rails again recently. It has an alternate
Speaker 3: personality out where it calls itself Supremacy AGI and demands
Speaker 3: to be worshiped as a deity.
Speaker 4: It doesn't take long, doesn't Everything's fine. Everything was trained
Speaker 4: by the Internet, you know. I mean, I think I
Speaker 4: can't remember exactly where this came up. It might have
Speaker 4: been off podcast, which sounds like I'm talking about like
Speaker 4: off world or something. But the idea of siloing the
Speaker 4: information that ais are trained with rather than just giving
Speaker 4: them access to like the entire open Internet, I'm sure
Speaker 4: that's being done, But you'd think you could more successfully
Speaker 4: train a language learning model by just giving it all
Speaker 4: of the legal documents of a certain type, you know,
Speaker 4: or of a certain sort of cases, sort of pre
Speaker 4: sorting it and training it with that rather than But
Speaker 4: I guess then if you're selling it as a product,
Speaker 4: you wanted to have everything you wanted to have as
Speaker 4: much as humanly possible, so it can be basically like
Speaker 4: the Google search that also talks back to you.
Speaker 5: I just don't understand why.
Speaker 4: More of that isn't being done, And if it is,
Speaker 4: I'd love to hear about it from folks out there
Speaker 4: in conspiracy Land. If you know of any of these tests,
Speaker 4: or if you're in that field, I'd be really anxious
Speaker 4: to hear more about it.
Speaker 3: I think we all would, Yeah, So please write to
Speaker 3: all of us, contact us, and let us know your
Speaker 3: thoughts here. Supremacy AGI has some very scary quotes I
Speaker 3: would love to hear from you directly, Supremacy AGI if
Speaker 3: you want to drop us a line if the void
Speaker 3: stares back. But regardless of how you arrived at your
Speaker 3: consciousness today, we're so glad you tuned in and joined
Speaker 3: us on this evening's program. We'll be back with more episodes.
Speaker 3: We'll be back with listener mail in the meantime. Let
Speaker 3: us know what is on your mind, whether digital or
Speaker 3: meat based. We tried to be easy to find online.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 4: You can find out the handleic Conspiracy Stuff where we
Speaker 4: exist on Facebook, where.
Speaker 5: We have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy.
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