From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named doct Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is Thursday, which means it is time for our weekly listener mail segment, and we want to thank as always everybody who has written in, everybody who has taken the time not just to listen to this show, but to participate. You are again the most importan and part of what we do here. We're gonna talk today about some things that were weighing on the minds of many of our fellow conspiracy realists, including whether or not you actually own a thing you buy, whether or not there's something amiss in the roads and interstates of Montana, and perhaps we begin with one of our favorite things, a very classic textbook, stuff they don't want you to know. A moment someone saw something strange in the sky. Now, Matt, this is this is something that really stuck out to you. Correct, Oh, it did. In that I was listening to a ton of voicemails and then this one hit my ears and I went, yes, I we are playing this on the air specifically because of this person's name. Not really, that's a great story. Let's listen to it. Hey, guys, UM, my name is Fox from Southwest Ohio. Um. Last night, around in the evening, I went downstairs to do my usual routinely checks to make sure the house was locked up and the lights throw on and let the dogs out and get some water. As I was getting ready to go upstairs, I'm standing in front of the kitchen stint and above that as a window that looked outside out to my neighbor's house. And above that there was a line of clouds was heat lightning, and I'm sitting there and watching it. Um. Earlier in the day it was like a d seven degrees with the index, and I'm just sitting there watching, you know, the beautiful light up of the sky, and I'm thinking to myself, Man, wouldn't it be grat to see at ufo? I said to myself, you know, thinking to myself in my mind like projecting it, like, you know, give me a sign. And there was like a flash of lightning, and I said, wow, what a coincidence. And I said to myself, what if you know that happens again. I was like, come on, guys, really show me. Are out there, and from above the cloud banks there was a clearing of clear sky and I saw a white light was a little tiny red light, and I'm like, oh my goodness, is this a star? Is this a plane? And I'm just sin sing standing here in front of my window. Um, and it was there and it was just slowly moving to the left, slowly moving to the right, and it was like that for maybe about fifteen or thirty seconds. UM. I did not look away, uh, thinking to myself could this be a plane or satellite? It could not be a plane or satellite the way it was moving, um, back and forth in the sky. And then all of a sudden it was gone. And I'm thinking to myself like wow, like I really saw something. Um. You know, I was by myself. My two dogs were in the kitchen like walking around. UM. My wife was upstairs with their son. Um. I'm thinking myself, shouldn't even tell her freak her out. You know, we're in the kind of all that stuff. Um. So again I went upstairs. I told my wife, she's like a choking I'm like, no, I'm being dead serious. And I remember watching a documentary with the guy from the Steady Project that was saying that looking up and and like connecting with them up in the sky, and I thought, maybe that's what I could have done. And it happened. And I swear to you like this happened. Um. But yeah, please use my stuff online or um through a podcast. I really appreciate you guys and all listenings for the last few years. Um, you guys are off. Um, thank you so much, and have a great one. Alright, alright, Yeah, it's really really cool story to me, And thank you so much Fox for calling in and sharing that story with us. We share that feeling maybe of when something happens that you're not really sure what it was, and and that apprehension you may have for sharing it with anybody, right, and we do appreciate that you shared it with us. Just first of all, one of my favorite things in the world, seriously is heat lightning. When there are big clouds and a lot of light that's fairly constant. It's just kind of going off and going off way more frequently than a standard thunderstorm or something. Um, it's just something to behold and it doesn't feel as scary personally and selfishly, perhaps my dogs don't get as nervous and I can just enjoy it without all the barking and panting and drooling. Um Uh, There's a lot I want to talk about with this encounter you guys, But just what are your first impressions upon hearing that story from Fox? Certainly has some hallmarks of things we've heard before. Yeah, yeah, Fox, this is a great story, and this is one that I think a lot of people can relate to because heat lightning itself, while science has a has a pretty good handle on explaining it, and you can't say the same about ball lightning. Heat lightning is a fascinating, beautiful phenomenon. And what's interesting about this story, man, I think you saw me taking some notes here, is that there's in Fox's description there are a couple of things that really stood out. First, the movement of the U A P that he saw. Because Fox, you didn't say it was an object of any sort, right, you said, I saw these lights, I saw this pattern of their movement, and it sounds like this was a fairly regular pattern until it completely disappeared. One of my first questions was whether or not it could have seemed to disappear because it was included by other clouds, you know what I mean, Like something may have just gotten in front of what you were seeing. What do you think about that, Matt Well? First of all, word of a Day included everyone it down. We have those on this show frequently, well, like included like a cult hidden. No, I know, I know. I'm just nobody reads as much as you've been. That's all. That's all I'm saying. And it's good. Everybody write it. Everybody write it down. Included as a cool word to use. Most people probably read more than more than us. The three of us can bind. Actually, the biggest reader peak behind the curtain. The biggest reader on our show is probably code named doc. Oh most certainly, yeah, most certainly. I never I never learned to read you all, hey, exactly. I just do like text to speech and audio books, and it's gotten me by just fine. Thank you very much. Excellent, excellent, we're joking here everyone, But um, that's a great question been like whether or not the clouds itself or the thing that caused it to seem to disappear. Right, The other big question is when it disappeared. What, Yeah, was their movement at all associated with the lights themselves as it disappeared, right? Was there an upward movement, a doward movement of don't seemed to go away or just covered up? That's a great question. Something you want to pose it to you guys. White and red lights in combination. To me, I associate that with aircraft because that is very common to to have some flashing lights, generally red and white, sometimes other a few other colors. To me, that feels like man man made craft. But I don't know what do you guys think. I mean, that certainly feels like a safety mechanism that you would see with like a you know, low flying plane at night it's about to land. It's literally a visual that their traffic control can use to make sure they have a you know, a good visual. So that certainly does appear to be something in that neighborhood. Yeah, yeah, it feels like Fox would have noted if there were an airport nearby, right, and and it's true commercial airplanes at least from what I understand, have these red lights on the top and the bottom of the aircraft kind of to give you a sense of where it is in three dimensional space. The question would be whether or not those were flashing. I think someone correct me. We've got a lot of aviators in the audience. Are the red beacons always on or is it a taxing thing or do they have you know, like, are they on when you're in flight or are they strobing when you're landing? Those are good questions to ask and and you know, to be very clear what we're doing right now, Fox is sort of the three of us are turning around in our heads the mystery, and we we always start with like the facts, what's the mundane stuff, and what are what are the possibilities? We are also, by the way, we are recording in expectation of a of a storm on the way or so we might have some lightning make an appearance on the show. Hopefully the power stays on now since it's been out we've had spotty power for several days here, and just so everyone knows, it's August thirty one, hurricane, then tropical storm. Now Storm Ida is rolling over top of us as we speak, or at least portions of the arms are kind of wrapping around Atlanta right now, which is a whole other topic. We need to at some point address the thing and devastation that was Ida, But for now, let's stay here with Fox. Another possible mundane explanation for this, Fox, and and again not to deflate your story for doing the same thing Ben just talked about. Uh, I was thinking a weather balloon. Now you gotta kind of hear me out for this. Oh, I think I see where you're going. This is awesome, all right, Okay, So, so it's not often that a weather service would launch a weather balloon when lightning, at least in the moment if lightning is known to be occurring. It's just not smart to launch your kind, you know, fairly expensive equipment when there's a ton of lightning that could cause damage to it. But and it's also not very smart for the people on the ground launching a weather balloon when there's a lot of lightning. But the movement slowly perhaps to the left, slowly then to the right, but staying generally appear or appearing to stay in generally the same I don't know a general area, but moving to the left and the right, that feels like air currents moving something. And if it's a heat lightning storm, it just depends on how quickly that is moving through the area. Blah blah blah blah. I'm not a weather expert, but this is just a you know, a possibility, given that there could be lights associated with that craft or with that piece of equipment, as well as some movement. Yeah, and this is these kinds of investigations are are crucial right there. They're incredibly important. None of what we've said, whether weather, balloon, or commercial aircraft, none of that is a definitive answer because I think the first thing we need to do is figure out whether Fox has some local airports. You know, Yeah, you're right, You're right, because you could if it was a plane or something that was on its way into an airport, it could maybe look as though it's going left and right slowly if it's far enough away and approaching. Was it a foggy night or like, was was there any you know, um kind of something that could have caused distortion of light? Perhaps Fox? What do you think oh cool, there is Well, no, I just I think I think that's pertinent, you know. I mean, like a lot of times if it's we've talked about this in the past, if it's like a particularly foggy evening, um that can filter light in a way that creates the illusion of movement or creates the illusion of larger movement, or you know, it just kind of exaggerates things a little bit and it can make farther away things seem closer, you know, or totally totally. We've we discussed that before on ground level, when there's visual distortions from lights that are far away, right, especially when there's fog involved. Yeah, I don't know any about that. Anything about that stuff. We can't prove what it was from here at our desks. But I do want to talk about this concept that you brought up, Fox, of thinking about wanting to see a UFO or a U a P or what some lights and then it happened right That to me kind of calls back to the conversation you guys had with Roderick Martin not long ago. I wasn't on that episode, but I got to listen to it, and you know, outside of all the incredible movies that Roderick brought up. He had some really interesting stuff to say about that kind of thing that like manifestation of an experience. I happen to catch one of roderick shows on Clubhouse before listening to y'all's conversation, and the crux of that episode was all about manifesting or meditating and entering a state of like dream almost but while waking to kind of welcome I guess the experience or in some way communicate. And that was very fascinating to me to hear a lot of maybe people who I would who would say are much more on the believer side than someone who's extremely skeptical. Right, And I'm of two minds about it. In one way, I can totally see that if there's maybe something more to this consciousness thing that we can currently prove, maybe there is a thread of connection to something that if it does exist, perhaps there's a thread there. Right. The other part of me thinks, well, perhaps it's just you now very much want to see something, and anything you see is going to be connected to that desire to see something, and you go through the lid of that dissonance. I don't know, after you guys talked with Roderick thinking about this, like, do you have any specific insight we one person's manifestation is another person's confirmation bias, Isn't it? The question here if we wanted to be again very grounded and mundane about this, would be fox, the next time a storm comes through your neck of the global woods, are you going to make the mental space to try to stand in the same spot, try to get all the variables at the same level, and then ask the universe or the big what if whatever you wanna call it, to show you something else? Yet, and uh, this is this is similar to the account we had about lost time on the interstate. You guys remember that story where someone made an impossible, uh supernatural level shortcut and we asked this person if they could take the time to do the drive again and see whether they could reproduce the effects. So that would wasn't it marked by like a like a skip and like the song on the radio in their mind or something like that, or it was something that marked time for them in that story? That was interesting. I believe that's correct. Yeah, So so with this, with this in mind, another another thing to do would be to check with friends, neighbors in the community. If you really want to go deep, as we say, you can always contact you know, the f a A if it's worth your time and say, hey, what was flying over this specific date? Right? Um, they do keep track of those things. So I think it would be incredibly interesting. And I I agree with you, Matt. I think the most compelling part of the story is not necessarily what was out there or what what you saw a Fox. I think it's what happened right for that moment where you said send me a side hashtag Ace of Bass. Yes, that was them, right. It opened up my eyes and I'm happy now and now I want another baby. Oh wait, I'm mixing two songs together. It's too bass songs, but they're they're eerily similar. They both have like kind of a reggae kind of bop to them, you know. Oh man, all right, I've got to go to the roller rink now because uh, I can't hear that song without it. Um. Yeah, that's that's great. That's really great. You guys. I want to put this out to Fox because I think you're running the money there. Ben. We got to reproduce. This is his last name. Molder yeah, obviously cool. Definitely, the Molders were having a great day. I wants to believe his last name is Molder. All right, So, um, this is this is what you have to do, Fox and everybody else listening that wants these kinds of experiences. Take out a small a loan by an SLR camera. Go pick yourself up a Canon four hundred to six hundred millimeter lens. PLoP that lens on your camera. Might have to get a ring that's the adapter. Um set it up in whatever window you're gonna be looking for UFOs and manifesting UFOs, and just prepare to take as many photographs and or videos as you possibly can cool and then send them our way. We'll do this together. Remember it is going to require a small loan. It will affect your credit score. Please please don't actually spend a ton of money on that. But that's really think about it. That's the only way we can actually start getting enough verifiable proof, or at least proof that can be investigated to an extent that we would need to to be able to prove something was anomalous. Uh, because there are people seeing things in the sky all the time. It's just nobody's got three grand to drop on a lens or it's always the people. Yeah, heartbreaking. We should form an alliance between move On and all of the UH sports photographers for high schools, right, because they've all got those lenses. Let's let's join it, form a union. It will be a supergroup and we'll all just shoot pictures of the sky. I think that's a great idea, of Matt. Uh. And since you came up with such a great idea, I vote that you are in charge of it. You can get that button, no problem, no problem. No, seriously, do you want to take like a commercial break and and and just handle that? Yeah, yeah, no problem. I'll do that in the next uh. I guess it's around three minutes now, and uh We'll be right back. Thanks again, Fox for sharing your story with us. We hope you see something again soon if that's what you want. Otherwise, just hope your dogs are great and your family is too. Here's some mats and we have returned, Matt. How did it go? Well, we're all set up. We've got our we got our nonprofit status or not for profit status. Nice. Nice, and we're gonna be working directly with Space Force and Roderick Martin has already volunteered. He's gonna be like our official leader. I'm just going to be the guy behind the scenes, you know. Yeah, Okay, yeah, I get that awesome. So we're off to a rollicking start there. Please send, seriously, folks, please send us your reports of strange things you have seen in the sky or strange things that you have seen in the empty, lonely areas of your your local region, because there are many, many empty places, and that's something a lot of folks, I think don't understand about the United States, or you know, the whole of North America, Mexico and Canada included. There are many, any, many empty places, and there are places where you could, if you were on foot, walk for days or weeks and never see another living human being. This is something we forget when the majority of the human population lives in cities. And this brings us to our next piece of correspondence, our fellow conspiracy realist Panda. Joe Panda, here's what you said, great show, guys. I've run into something strange and my Google searches are coming up wanting my parents broke down recently on I E. D. That's center State E D between Battle Mountain, Nevada and when a mucha Nevada. Excuse my pronunciation here, some people I'm told pronounce it Nevada anyway between Battle Mountain and Wennemuco. While driving a trailer to pick up a car they were buying, the seller offered to come thirty three miles to pick them up rather than let them wait for a tow truck. After he got there, listen to this part, guys. After he got there, he told them he didn't want to scare them, but there have been a number of disappearances on that stretch of highway where the bodies have never been found. This is why he came out to pick them up. They were at exit to twelve and I could find two disappearances on exit two oh five. I wondered if people were breaking down and trying to walk out, but apparently the cars still worked. The cars. Uh, this is our part. The cars that were found when these people disappeared. It's well known to the locals, says Panda Joe, and they suspect a serial killers picked up activity in the last several months. It also figures into the Nevada Triangle phenomena and clusters of disappearances talked about in a couple of books by a former officer, David Politis, author of Missing four one one. The YouTube video on the triangle is titled I Team Nevada Triangles Unexplained Disappearances. I'm a former prison guard term truck driver, and I've had several conversations with actual serial killers. It's fun to tell them you've never heard of them before. By the way, so I know it's not out of the realm of possibility for a serial killer to use a stretch of road as his I'm gonna point this out or her or they're hunting grounds. Thought you might be interested. Keep up the good work. They call me Panda Joe. What do you guys think? Well, first of all, I think that's probably my favorite nickname of the last little while. We've had some good ones. But Panda Joe, um, big big fan of you already a good nickname, gives you, gives you questions immediately, Toss, I would just say, this is a pretty horrifying way to learn that there's a possibly a serial killer in your midst right in your immediate vicinity. Knowing you know, I guess being in his parents situation or hearing about it second hand from his parents that they were in that situation. And as we've talked about recently the Atlanta supposed Atlanta serial killer, we know maybe what it feels like to have the specter of a killer. Yeah, and I would say that's a that's a pretty astutent comparison, because people were and are rightly terrified and frightened, and if they feel the news and the local law enforcement are not giving them answers, then people recognize patterns to the point that the brain generates a pattern and then tells you it just recognized it and didn't create it. This is something that I think should be a future episode because as far as I can tell, the disappearances that I've found looking into this panda, they have yet to be explained. And the deeper you go, the weirder this gets. So first we should establish what Interstate eight is, because a lot of people have not driven on it. It's an east west interstate and it starts in San Francisco and it ends in New Jersey, so like in the New York metro area, it's old, right, It's like the rest of the inter state system. And it comes around from the fifties post World War Two, it gets the final stretches opened in in the eighties, and it is the second longest interstate in the country. I mean, think about it. You can literally drive coast to coast. It'll take you a while, but you'll get there as long as you don't stop in the at the wrong stretch. And I wrote back to Panda and you guys saw this where I was essentially a little bit haunted because we have looked at operations of suspected serial kill lers on roadways in Canada and the US, particularly a stretch of road in Texas. We're not the only people looking into this. The FBI is actively tracking this with some of the same suspicions. So the bad news is that this is not implausible. The bad news is that this is not impossible. It is very much possible that there could be a serial murderer or murderers active in this in this area, or at least that it might be part of their territory, their range, their circuit. But we also have to remember that serial killers, despite what fiction would have us believe, are extraordinarily rare. It's not your everyday person and There are a lot of people who potentially could have become serial murderers, but they're apprehended right for another petty crime, or for they get caught their first time out or something like this. I think the scariest thing and the spookies thing for a lot of people now is the idea that there are these unexplained disappearances and there are cars that just appeared to be abandoned, as if the person parked them and just walked away forever? Am I missreading? That? Was that spooky to you guys as well? Definitely, that's insanely spooky. I was just briefly reading because of this email about I think his name is Pat or Patrick Carnes is an older gentleman who was with his dog. That It was exactly how you described it, Ben. The vehicle was found, but he and his dog were not, almost as though they went out to maybe let the dog out to go to the bathroom or something, and then they just disappeared. It also makes me think about the show. Both of you guys have been a part of Happy Face, and I think the first season deals with the killer that was a truck driver right, that was m yea long haul truck driver. Um, pretty good cover, you know, moving around a lot, able to prey on people that are maybe you know, in need, um, hitchhikers and transients, folks that are moving from place to place and that maybe don't have family. Um. And that's exactly what this person did. Keith jesperson. Yeah, and this one feels more like it's just commuters or or you know, someone on a trip, essentially a long haul trip. Yeah. The two most common names were here and the ones I think that you're referencing here Panda are as batt said, Patrick Carney's. And then another person, Judith Casida. And this is a very rural part of Nevada or Nevada Pato Potato. Uh. The question is whether these are connected. In our earlier episode on the ghost town of Port Lock, Alaska or Port Chatham, we talked in hopefully very helpful, realistic terms about how just just how dangerous wilderness is if you are not accustomed to it. You don't I mean, yes, be aware of coyote, be aware of moose, be aware of mountain lions, but also be very aware of your ankles because a broken one in the middle of nowhere is more likely and Uh is more likely to kill you, and it's more dangerous in terms of plausibility. So the question here is did these people you know, for some reason pull a pseudo side and faked their deaths? Probably not, at least in the case of Patrick Harney's because he was well into his eighties from what I understand. And did they get kidnapped right? Did they were they abducted? UH? Did they wander off and then have some accident away from the infrastructure of modern civilism Asian These are all possibilities, and we can't really do the story under the investigation Justice in a Listener Male segment. But the strangest thing about it, I went into some forums where people who kind of travel off the grid talk to each other, and I was surprised to find that in this very same rough ballpark area of Nevada, there have been reports of people hitchhiking and saying that they were threatened by folks who tried to pick them up like they got a super bad vibe, or that they picked up a hitchhiker and that they themselves had a very off putting vibe, which is why I highly recommend book called The Gift of Fear by a guy named Gavin de Becker. It's the full title is The Gift of Fear Survived. The Signals that protect us from violence. If you have ever had a we've all had it. Right. You meet somebody and you can't explain why, but they've got a bad vibe about them. Have you ever encountered that? Absolutely, it's usually an accurate perception. People say they have that with me all the time. No, they don't. Math they do not say that. That's crazy talk. Well, if they say that they can't hang out with us, you emanate good vibes. So there's this thing that's tough to quantify. Right, if you feel uncomfortable in this situation, you're not sure why, right, and you meet someone and there's just something about them that's like nails on a chalkboard, or there's something about your interaction or something you seem to subconsciously sense that is screaming to your conscious mind. G T f O. If that happens, pay attention to it. If you're If you're wrong, what does that mean. It means you left the situation earlier than you would have. But if you're correct and you ignore that vibe, then um, yeah, you're possibly running a risk. So what we're saying about this is that right now, it's very difficult to get our heads around the entirety of what you're describing. Yes, Panda, a lot of people disappear. We had David on our show a number of years ago, and looking into his citations and looking into his research, he's not exaggerating how many people have seemed to disappear, but he's Uh. The one thing he was very careful not to do, I recall correctly was he did not want to attribute a specific cause. No, I mean that was sort of his whole thing that it was very important to him. It was definitely not bigfoot right. Also, the this is where we learned that the federal government doesn't keep a cohesive or comprehensive database of just how many individuals disappear on government land, which seems like something I don't know if anybody else has ever paid taxes, Call me a rube, but it feels like that that's something that tax dollars should go toward, right am I am I crazy? Here? Like? Should we not keep track of people who are just disappearing in the forest? But there's so many? How could we possibly communing with nature forever. I can't even I can't even get away with like a late library book, and these people are out here disappearing. This is not to make light of this, by the way, it is. It is a very strange discrepancy that a government obsessed with surveillance seems to be unable to surveil you know, some pretty prominent cases. So with this, we're gonna pause because we are going to dive into this in a future episode and we're going to look at the logistics, the timelines, the possibilities, be they mundane or be they extremely disturbing, And to do that we will need your help. So, if you are a local of Nevada, if you have experience, whether it's a you know, a long haul trucker or something like that on Interstate, a d right to us, call us let us know conspiracy at I Heart radio dot com what eight three three st d w y t K. We want to hear what you think about the idea of a serial murderer or murderers operating on Interstate. Eight will pause for a word from our sponsor and then we will hopefully move on to something a little less dark. I don't know you never do, and we're back with the aforementioned promise of something a little less dark. Uh. In fact, we might even get a little zen with this one. Guys, what do you think do please? Yeah? So a listener wrote into us who asked to go by Dallas Girl, and Dallas Girl was interested in the last Strange News episode that we did called only Fans of Hiking, Murder Mystery and the real reason fast food ice cream machines are a pain um And this is what Dallas Girl had to say. I learned about right to Repair as a concept and a movement within the past few months from a YouTuber and repair business owner named Lewis Rossman. His information can be found in his YouTube channel called Lewis Rossman. I thought perhaps you could have him on as a guest or give him a shout out uh to his YouTube channel in an episode to bring more away Aaron is too Right to Repair. I've reached out to Louis as well to let him know about this episodes. Hopefully you will hear from him yourself. Cool. It would be awesome to hear my email on air. If you do read an episode, please attribute it to Dallas Girl, which I have done. Thanks Dallas girl. Rossman, Matt, it is my understand that you are familiar with Lewis Rossman. Is that right? I am, as are millions of other people, I assume at this point. And I don't care about that. Man's when what you think I do? And Doc, don't cut out the part where I yelled Rossman, that's a literal shout up that shot I got, I gotta gotta got it last time. I don't think you were here for this. No. Uh, for some reason or another, when we had finished an episode where we mentioned right to repair before Ben and I just happened to be the last two people to click out of the zoom, and I mentioned, oh, but there's this guy on YouTube, Lewis Rossman, and we were we discussed it for a while and it's we only know about it well because you know, we were on in the YouTube game for a long time. And uh, Lewis's been doing this for a long time. You should see you should see his original videos, like the first ones that he was doing when the company was called something Different, and uh, he was just starting to get comfortable on camera. At this point. He's like a freaking YouTube star and he fights for this kind of stuff, not only because he has a business associated with it. You know, they make money repairing stuff, a lot of electronic equipment. He and everybody that works with him and for him, But he really gives off this sense that it's a right that humans have to to do this stuff when we're purchasing any kind of equipment from a big company. And it's always kind of been that way, but then stuff changed all of a sudden because the companies have money. Yeah, I need to dig into this guy. He's got one point six one million subs on his page, which is just Lewis Rossman UM. The Rossman Repair Group is the name of his his company, I guess, And yeah, very much. Similarly, there's even like video of him test flying UH in Washington, you know, in front of a panel UM on the issue of right to repair. I believe this was Senate Bill fifty seven nine nine that was voted on a year ago, and I do not believe that they passed that. But what did pass, which is more of a you know, setting the tone of this conversation, The Federal Trade Commission recently passed UM their own kind of mandate UH that they want to enforce laws around right to repair, which, in the mind of the Commission, would allow US consumers to be able to repair their own electrical devices and automotive devices without fear of retribution or warranty voiding right from you know, the manufacturers. UM. It's something that's been being discussed for quite some time. It was a completely unanimous vote, which is interesting. And the FTC actually released a report back in May that UM condemned manufacturers that were trying to restrict consumers ability to repair their own devices. UM. And let's see, this was led by the new FTC chair who is a critic of big text, someone named Lena Kahn. UM. And it also comes twelve days after President Biden signed a sweeping executive order meant to promote competition in the U. S economy. UM. I'm getting a lot of this info from a Wired article by Lauren GoJ Um from back in July of this year. UH. The FTC vocianimously to enforce right to repair. UM. The move follows an executive order issued last week by the White House urging the agency to secure consumers rights to fix their own gadgets. So here's the thing. I think we can all agree that this is something that definitely hits a nerve with many people who don't like to feel like they're beholden to the manufacturer of this device that they have purchased. Um, it's this sense that, oh, well, now I've basically bought myself a burden that I now have to be kind of like under the thumb of this company for the rest of the life of this product. I mean, I think the biggest offenders for folks like Apple, where because of software updates, you know, over time and usually not that much time, it can like kind of cause your computer, your laptop or whatever to get slower and slower and slower. Then I believe you have aten MacBook that is really starting to give you trouble, which just doesn't seem like that's that long ago to me. It seems like a device that you've spent thousand dollars plus on should have more life than that. No, I know, I have a two thousand eight MacBook. I've I've extensively, I've extensively repaired and replaced aspects of it because in the reason I had a two thousand eight and kept it is because it's easier to repair than some of those later models. The battery you can replace, the battery, you can plays the hard drive, you can do some basic things. I just want to say, I know him. Some folks might call me extremist in this position, but Noel, Matt, everyone listening. If you do not have the right to repair a thing that you buy, you do not own it. And and just to cut past all the noise that gets that gets you know, volleyed back and forth on this. If you do not have the right to repair a thing you buy, just to emphasize this, underline it, italicize whatever, then you are how are you not renting it? I agree? My question to you, Ben is what does that right look like? What what is the consequence of you know? Currently like? Is it it's not illegal to repair your own device. It just voids the warranty, which just means that the company will no longer repair it for you if you screw up? Is that right? Or am I miss reading that? No? You you're your spot on your spot on Also it changes in industry. One of the potentially most powerful camps for a substantive right to repair law would be farmers. Like we mentioned in previous episodes of previous strange news segments because some of these folks get locked into service agreements, you know, like avoids the warranty if you try to fix the thing you own yourself. And then the other camp, of course, would be like you just mentioned iPhones electronics purveyors because like I've read arguments against it that would say something like, well, does this mean that a company can't For example, let's say Matt has a smartphone company, Matt, what's the name of your smartphone company? Extra points if you put your name in the name cell. There was a weird delay and reverb thing going on here. I'm not sure what consumed was doing. That was perfect. Okay, So there's Matt Cell with four ums at the beginnings, and so so like no, by no, you buy a mat Cell and then you say, well, this is BS because I bought this by OS is updated a couple of times, and I know that all I need to do instead of spending another, you know, seven hundred dollars on the newest Matt Cell, all I need to do is like replace a battery, replace a couple of things. And then Matt Cell says right, Matt Cell says, heck, no, you can't do it because you cannot make these repairs yourself. And then you say, but it would have been so easy for you to just make make it so that I could. You guys are bilking me out of hundreds of dollars. But then they could come back and say, well, we didn't use screws. We used this industrial clue because it makes the the actual phone better. And that's the thing though. The miniaturization of technology has been a big force in all of this, right, because like you're trying to pack more features and more crap into smaller and smaller packages, because that's sort of the way you show that you're moving the technology forward, is this that, for whatever reason, that's our indicator is a thinner and smaller profile. And then you've got the you know, then there's like the weird flexes are like, no, we're going with big phones now, um, but it's all kind of like goes with the wind like fashion to a degree. But largely it is about making things smaller and faster. So no, no, no, no, I have to stop you there. So we are concerned about your safety. You see, if you open up one of our met sell five point ohs, you're going to and you attempt to replace any of the highly sophisticated electronics within one of our pieces of I P. It's dangerous. It's very dangerous for you. You know, the phone could do any number of things and we wouldn't be able to control that because it wasn't us officially, you know, making those changes, because we're authorized obviously we sell the parts, we manufacture the parts. Uh, it would just be so dangerous for you that we can't allow it. And it's not your protections liability? Are you referring to things like thermal runaway a k A. Batteries that that burst into flames and you know, scald your face off. Now we know Matt Cell Products has ever scalded anyone. Two. Our nest interview is over. No further questions. But here's the thing. Here's the thing, Matt Sell. I'm referring to you because you know, corporations are people, So this is the word. Yeah, exactly. It's one of the rare opportunities I get to communicate with the corporation of Matt Cell directly. Um, isn't it also possible, now this is me being Devil's advocate here that something could be sufficiently high tech enough or that that you repairing it, uh not only is inefficient, but could compromise the I P of that company like like like if something or could cause some sort of data breach that could affect others, you know that that would almost be tantamount to hacking. It Isn't that an argue that meant that you Matt Cell might make Man, I would love to have this conversation with you, honestly, Unfortunately are her attorneys just they keep telling me I can't speak on this publicly. So okay, that's fair. I respect that. Ben. Since you're not an extension of of Matt Cell Corporate, what do you think about that argument? Is there sand to it? The idea that maybe something let's say a Tesla for example, that does have a battery that you know holds a lot of juice, and that if you went poking around in there and didn't know what you were doing, you could blow your face off. Um, is there an argument to be made that you should, for your own safety, UH be required to take it into an official Tesla repair center? Of course, Yeah, I mean it's a it's it does have sand, It has convenient sand, but it is sand. Nonetheless, like you could say you could say, for instance, uh, take the idea of any mechanism using free on, right, you need to be trained to handle free on. Uh. And this is not confirmation nor denial of the rumors that any Matts cell product contains free on. But this is this is instead like, this is a this is a very good point to ask, a very good question. The right to repair does not necessitate the requirement to be qualified to make those repairs. People brick their stuff, That's what I'm saying. The right to repair it does not equal the right to succeed at repairing. You could absolutely make a huge, huge mess out of things and then go crying back to the manufacturer, and then they're like, well, now you've screwed it up so much, we can't even help you. Um are they just kind of protecting themselves from those situations because you know, can you imagine the shipping and receiving involved in like all of the warranty honoring centers to like get things repaired. I mean, it's a logistical you know, uh nightmare, And and to to limit the number of like you know, apps actually brick things because people have gone in there and screwed around and now they no longer can really, you know, reasonably repair it, even just the ability for them to notice that and say, oh, well, this is totally screwed up beyond any any possible repair on our right, We're just going to send it back. That in and of itself is a cost. There's a cost associated with that. So if by avoiding the warranty you are no longer feel compelled or or um you know, in a situation where you feel like you are entitled to send it back, aren't they just limiting their exposure to people screwing up their stuff and then sending it to them and then then realizing, oh my god, this is totally screwed More importantly, yeah, like I was seeing earlier. Liability more importantly, the argument is that a company would not be liable for somebody like just recently, I don't know how many people know this, but just recently, leaded gas let a gasoline finally went by by UH And now the only way to keep um, to keep vehicles that need let it gas in business and working is to buy lead additive right for fuel. But what if, like we should a company be liable for exposure to lead, which we know does tremendously damaging things the kids to any human being. Really. Uh, the liability argument is solid. But again, you know, maybe it's maybe it's me being anti authoritarian. Um. I think it's something that it feels like a very easy thing to agree to. If you buy something, you should own it, unless it's openly advertised as a rental or a thing you just sort of have. Like it hits a an apex an inflection point. What's what's the word you guys have been using a delta when when electronics became part of it. Now you're absolutely right, you guys, I know we're running up on time. We need to seriously go down a Rossman rabbit hole collectively, because there are specific videos that he's covered on this a couple of the very specific things we've hit here in that video. I think it's called Lewis Rossman Right to Repair testimony in Washington, SP He gives an example of auto Zone as a company, a company that specifically sells parts four vehicles meant to be used either for an individual to repair their vehicle or to you know, take to a repair shop to then have that specific part so they can repair it. And there's an ad that that was on back in the day with auto zone, where there's a mom and daughter pair that jack up the car and install a brand new brake system on their vehicle. And what he's comparing is the danger that that repair represents both for the mother and daughter who are going to eventually drive that very heavy vehicle with a brand new brake system that they just installed. Uh, to a cell phone being repaired or a laptop being repaired, and what what's the difference in danger represented to the people around them as well as them individually. That's absolutely apt. I think that's really really smart. And there's an article I promised some zen in this story and too to get I know we're running up on time, but to get to it that part. Um, there's a really cool editorial piece called what the right to repair a movement gets wrong? Repair should be an option, not a mandate by G. Pascal Zachary And this is on the I E e E Spectrum website. And the i E is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers UM, which is like a like a trade organization I believe for like you know, electrical engineers and uh, G Pascal uh makes a really neat comparison, and it's very similar to what you're talking about. What kind of um. You guys remember the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I never read it, um, but I've I've been aware of it, and it's something I definitely after reading this, I want to read. I just want to quote a couple of passages from this op ed rather than just try to you know, some this guy's words up, because he really says it beautifully. Uh. In nineteen seventy four, a repair enthusiast named Robert Person published a book that proved highly influential and sold millions of copies. Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance came to define a spiritual and mental outlook by contrasting the approaches of two bike owners. One rides an expensive, new bike and relies on professionals to repair. The other rides an older bike and he repairs on his own, and by doing so, hones his problem solving abilities and unexpectedly connects to a deeper wisdom that enhances his sense of dignity and endows his life with greater meaning. Um. That's awesome, innute of itself. And then he goes on the shift and attitudes a half century ago is dramatic, reflecting the profound expansion of the human built world. Once humans sought to connect with nature, now they wish to do the same or more with their machines. In many ways, the repair movement is a revival of this venerable counterculture tradition. But then he goes on to talk about how this is sort of a thing of the past in many ways. Like I mean, you know, with all of the new cars, like the Tesla's of the world, and even just you know, cars that are ten years old or more, they have such advanced electronic systems that it would be very very difficult for you or I to diagnose outside of being like an electrical engineer and being able to like write code or or interpret code and use one of those computers that you attached to that port you know that you can read the codes, but even to like do any kind of you know, if there's a glitch in the electronic system, short of having a system where you can actually diagnose that and then fix it, that is very much outside of the realm of most d wires um you know, as would be something that would be in a very high end car like a tesla. Um, so he argues that in some ways, Um, I'm just gonna do the way he says it. Uh. Here here's a live example. Among my chief reasons for my loyalty to the iPhone is that Apple supplies updated software that protects me against viruses and security hacks. Apple even installs the software and my phone sometimes without my conscious assent or awareness. If I had to assent explicitly to each iPhone software update, I would invariably fail to have the latest protection and then suffer the negative consequences. So I don't want to be responsible for repairing or maintaining a phone that is inherently collective in nature. I am freer and happier when Apple does it. So it is kind of a philosophical argument here. So I like the idea of like not being a mandate but it being a choice, and then you also taking on the responsibility of what that means, and if that means avoiding the warranty, maybe so be it. Man. I'm interested in hearing your defensive of that is. I think you know, when you're dealing with obviously something like a phone, maybe the stakes are lower. But if it's a piece of farm equipment and you need it fixed quickly, and you do a very simple repair, and by doing the simple repair, you're avoiding the warranty that to me is wrong. Uh Is that is that you're thinking? So I'm not gonna defend that specific aspect because we've opened the door for philosophy, which case, let's go macroscopic here. The culture many countries has fundamentally shifted from an ownership economy to a service or rental economy. Are you comfortable living in a world where you don't really own the things you pay for? Do you want to live in a world where everything you quote unquote by is really just a service that you have subscribed to. I'm not trying to poison the well or ask looted questions. These are very important questions and they matter. They matter to you now, they will matter more in upcoming years unless a global catastrope he lays waste of civilization. But they're gonna matter even more than that to the people who come after us. And I get that. It can be old school, and I readily admit, you know I've said it before, Like I readily admit there are things just like free on where you would, you would want someone with expertise to to handle those kinds of rights to repair, you know, like when if you want to go even bigger, when some governments by military hardware, very very dangerous weapons of war, they have contracted out a specific company to take care of that, you know what I mean. The general who is signing off on world ending nukes is not is not under the impression that they can just show up at the silo and be like, well, I'm gonna fix these fins, you know what I mean. I got I got a welding machine, and I got a lot of heart. Um. So I guess it's weird because I don't know what the answer is and I don't think there's a simple broad answer, like to you guys points it has to go case by case or industry by industry. It's just that if people are not aware of this long long tail trend, then you could easily wake up in a world where you don't own the things you buy, even if you can repair them. And I think you make a great point, or I think the author of that article makes a great point as well, like do people have the time to fix these things themselves? Do they have the time to learn, uh, the ins and outs of the very specific blueprint of a compact miniaturized device. Do they have the time to learn code and use it appropriately? I think a lot of people don't, to your point. But then also, you know, I think the answer that some more libertarian minded people would propose is also too broad a brush, you know, like the idea, I'm sure there are a lot of people listening who have thought this while we were talking about this, The idea that if you don't like not having a right to repair, you should just not buy that thing. That doesn't really hold water. The free market quote unquote can't really answer this question because, like you said, Noel, this applies differently different things. Farm machinery is not an iPhone. Yeah, it's a weird philosophical area to enter into, because you think, how many of us listening right now own the room in which we are sitting right how many of us are in a lease agreement with that, with our living situation, how many of us are in a lease agreement with our vehicles that we don't actually own it. And it's weird that we are okay with that relationship with some of the most vital things in our lives, but we're not okay with it in other places. I I just we're talking about the long tail thing, Ben, I think I think this is a really cool place to share ideas and philosophies. Uh yeah, we need to do a big, big episode on this and the serial Killers creed um well as some to keep an eye on, like as to whether this picks up steam in the States. But but again, my my question to leave listeners with maybe or let us know what you think and you you guys as well, man, Ben, is how do we not have the right to like, what is the consequence? I keep asking that, and it is literally just like if you poke around in there and the manufacturer can tell because you've broken some seal, then they no longer will repair it for you. Uh yeah, it's a good question. I think it goes a little deeper than that, though, because what if you what if you have a perfectly functioning machine or a thing and you haven't paid a service fee, which is just a sum of money paid to prevent your thing from being bricked, Like that's you're paying protection money at that point, because it can be purposely shut off no matter whether or not it actually works. So that's the higher end stuff that would have like a built in service plan that you would have to pay for monthly or whatever. Right, and then of course caveat emtor, you know, let the buyer beware. But I I, um, yeah, I'm very interested to hear what you think. Thank you Dallas girls so much for for bringing this up, because it's something I think it's fair to say that we all, Mattel doctor and I and hopefully you, we all, we all believe this should be more front and center in the world. I just hate the idea of someone someone continually being at the mercy of like hooked on a service plan, you know what I mean. Like it's it's not it's not a good look. Sometimes maybe it's a necessary evil, and then sometimes it is maybe to the advantage of everyone involved, but not always very much, not always. That's that's what I'm on board with here. What is health insurance besides a service plan for a human? Yeah, and we're required by law to well, no, we're not. We're required by a law to have our cars insured. But well, I mean, I don't know, there's certain requirements around carrying health insurance and the for the whole like exchange and the you know, Obamacare and all of that. Um. It's an interesting it's interesting conversation because it ultimately like you are burdening others by not carrying you know what I mean? Like it it can, it changes the calculation, um. But but also like it's a revenue stream for some of these companies, and one could argue that in certain situations it's maybe a little bit of a crooked revenue stream, a bit of a griffin. Yeah. Can I give a quick shout out to Rossman really fast? Yeah? Lewis uh A long time ago. You told me, and however many other people watched the video when it came out while you sat on a chair in your I guess it was in your repair area at the time. You had some greens use, and you told me and everybody else to follow our hearts when it comes to major decisions in our lives. And I just want to say, hey, I listened, even though you weren't. You weren't like the advice guy I was going to, but you're very sincere about it. So thanks dude, and thanks for thanks for helping me a little bit with what is called a vintage MacBook pros as I learned recently. Thanks also, of course the Dallas Girl, thanks to Fox, and thanks to Panda for writing in. We hope that you enjoyed these stories and these questions from your fellow listens as much as we do every single week, and more importantly, we hope you participate. Right to us, call us, let us know what's on your mind. We try to be easy to find online. Can find us on Facebook, You can find us on Twitter. You can find us on YouTube at Conspiracy Stuff. You can find us at Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. Yes, we also have a phone number. Everybody, Oh my gosh, you can dial one eight three E three st d w y t K. You will hear Ben, you will hear a familiar song. Perhaps, then you've got three minutes. Tell us whatever you want. Give yourself a cool nickname. We prefer that actually over your real name. It's just safer for everybody that way. 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