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're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It's that time of the week again, fellow conspiracy realists. We get to hear from you, and we get to share your stories with your fellow listeners. We've got some interesting stuff here, I mean we always do. We've got some great questions, We've got some strange tales in the land of dream, and then we've got a controversy of the cosmetic sort. I don't know about you, guys, Matt Noel, but I'm coming off of a little bit of a Halloween hangover and I've already started counting the days down to next Halloween. I've even done a thing on a on a different show than Nolan. I do ridiculous history. Where I've been, I've been segue into Thanksgiving by saying, Hey, the Thanksgiving is horrible for some people. You know that's a scary situation, right. Oh yeah, I mean just having to hang out with your you know, in laws and family and all in one setting and not get into some sort of like political flame war terrifying prospect. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's wonderful spending time. So there we go, there we go. That's that's very sweet. So what we're uh, maybe what we can do for some of our listener males. It's always been an exercise and gratitude for us here on stuff. They don't want you to know you are the reason this show exists. Uh. We're going to continue as we heard all headlong toward two uh, with that spirit of thankfulness to everyone who wrote in, and we want to encourage you. We only do about three or four of these every week, but we would encourage you to write in because, as we always say, we hear every voicemail we get, we read every email you send, uh, and we cannot wait to hear from specifically you, Yes, you, specifically you listening, especially if your name is add because Ann, you wrote to us to say the following this is a good one. I think we'll all enjoy this. Hey, Ben, Noel, and Matt. I'm a long time listener since the YouTube days, but first time writer. I love the show. Thank you for all the hard work you put into the show and creating content five days a week. I have a request. I recently learned about the topic of the metic warfare. That's m E M E T. I see like meme. Memetic warfare is a form of psychological and political warfare using memes. Information and disinformation is spread via memes in order to persuade the public to create disunity and or discord. Memetic warfare is the more efficient and sustainable solution to traditional boots on the ground warfare. The theory is that by indirectly infiltrating a nation through disinformation, this dissemination weakens the nation. Consequently, the country is divided and cannot unify behind any belief. Ben, you have touched on this topic of disinformation regards to anti vaccine support. It begs us to ask the question who or what is behind a certain agenda, is the information authentic and how can you verify the source? Memetics ties in nicely with your recent episodes on spies. I hope you consider doing a deep dive into memetic warfare. Thank you for your balanced approach to the conspiracy realm, and happy how Halloween, and happy Halloween to you, and hope you had a good one. Uh, this is this is something. Look, it's still a secret that we all all of us here doc Mission Control, nol Matt myself, we all enjoy a good meme and if we see one that's especially funny, we send it to each other after hours and stuff. Sometimes we've even stopped the show to be like, hey, look at this. Uh what was it recently? Oh is the Cathulu turkey. It's like, stop, we have to look at this. Of the two you showed, the second one actually had a nice kind of crisp brown skin to it, and it was just the squid parts coming out, which they look pretty cooked at like a good squid as much as the next guy, even though they are some of the most sentient intelligent sea creatures. Uh and apparently, um, it's very you've seen my octopus teacher. Not the best thing to eat probably, But the other one then was absolutely nightmare fuel had had crab legs spilling out like very raw looking squashy octopus tentacles, and the turkey itself seemed very dry. Google eyes didn't help. But but yeah, we know, we know that memes are important and now a day's most people in the age of the Internet define a meme as you know, typically like a one panel thing that that can recur or it can be altered because it's part of a living conversation. But really a meme is just an element of culture or system of behavior that can be passed from one individual to another by non genetic means. So that would be like um, a meme is almost any unit of an idea. If we all just started saying I want to be positive not negative here. If we all, just, for instance, started saying, um, as an old one on the show Vibes is a great movie starring Jeff Goldbloom, then we would be communicating this meme. Memes are inherently contagious, they exist to be shared, and in the age of information warfare, they have been weaponized. For an I'd like to recommend excellent article on the New York Times that answers some of your questions Russian disinformation targets, vaccines and the Biden administration. This is by Julian E. Barnes. This is just one example the The practice here is two fold. The first goal is to is for the Russian government to promote its own meme uh nut memes, its own vaccines uh and to do so, they also are pursuing the second goal, which is to discredit vaccine programs from the US and from Western Europe. And one of the reasons this stuff is so successful is because it hinges on a very simple idea. You can make people laugh and you can be anonymous through the use of memes. I mean, sure, people can slap a watermark on there, and you know, we all have friends, I'm sure who feel like their meme was stolen the meme that they reposted got stolen. Okay. But but what we see here is something very valuable to the world of asymmetric warfare. We've talked about asymmetric warfare in the past. The idea in its extreme is basically something like this. Let's say let's say uh, Matt is in charge of a country that doesn't have an aircraft carrier. Matt, would you rather spend untold billions of dollars building an outdated aircraft carrier to try to fight the eleven that the US has a rather or or choose wisely, my friends, or would you rather spend let's say, a couple of hundred one point five billion building missiles that can out maneuver and destroy an aircraft carrier. M hmm, I'm gonna go with c trained dolphins to go on suicide missions. Now I'm just choking. Yeah, the only you're right, option A doesn't make any sense, right, have one aircraft carrier to defend yourself and or go on the offense against eleven or twelve? Got it? Yeah, that's the basic idea. You can you can leap frog tactics even if you can't leap frog technology. Leap frogging technology is when let's say, um, your primary geo political adversary is a country run by Noel and Noel you are the U S. You have eleven aircraft carriers. Finally, right, you did all the research. You It's it's almost impossible to put a price on the blood, sweat, tears and treasure that your country has put into these But now the secrets out and all your hard won research can be used against you as by countries run by Matt. I'm not trying to paint you as a despot. That's fine, I am. But the thing is, as soon as I developed the you know, missiles, the aircraft killer missiles, NOLL then develops the aircraft killer missile defense system, and then it just goes on develop the aircraft killer missile defense system, defense system, you know, and we just yeah, whatever, I mean, it's just it's it's endless. And then you guys unite when when my spacecraft lands and we start the whole game over again, you know what I mean. It never ends, And so sounds like a good time to Me's sure it is time well spent. Well, then we can start the meme campaign to that's like dece info about the air the whatever your thing is where you invaded, it's not real, and we just make means about it not being real, right and so and this is this is amazing because memes can be used as a form of asymmetrical warfare. They're used through front groups based in Russia, They're used through front groups based in China. And to be absolutely fair, it sounds like we're dunking on other countries. But make no mistake, folks, the US is also actively engaged in mimetic warfare. UH. Memes can be insidious in that they can also slowly radicalize people. So you could, for instance, if you wanted to, it is completely possible to um get ahold of a user base or people who generally just follow what they think is a meme account. And it might have a theme, right, it might be memes for US veterans or something. And then if you have control of that and the and you are anonymous, because the assumption by the public, by the customers or the audience rather is that you yourself are a US veteran, right, but you might not be. But then it's like, but it's just to cartoon frog. What could be wrong with that? You know? I mean you look at him. He's so cute, and he's smoking a cigarette and making this fun little smirk and saying all these veiled racist things. Wait a minute, I've been radicalized. Yes, And there's a psychle exactly, Just so, there's a psychological tendency that occurs. This is hardwired in humans. It is a political It knows no ideology, and it is simply this. People of similar beliefs when they hang out with one another, they tend to become over time more extreme and those beliefs. It does not matter what kind of belief we're talking about. Group polarization is real, and it's uh, it's weird because you can see examples of it in almost any any kind of forum, any kind of town hall, any kind of community, and it doesn't does not matter what we're talking about. A lot of people would instantly go to politics, right because we live in pretty divisive times here in the West. Part of that divisiveness, I propose, does come from the influence of foreign powers, and they are using mimetic warfare. This is taken very seriously the Rand Group, who is not perfect, but the Rand Group is very intelligent. The Rand Group has done a lot of work on this. You can read some of their research online right now, and they're at the level they're taking this so seriously that their level of discourse now is not is this happening? What would it look like? Their level of discourse is how is this happening? What does the US need to do in response? And one particular paper I read focuses on the US Air Force, Like that's how serious and concrete the problem becomes. You don't know where those memes are coming from you really do not, and they are so easy to spoof. You know, this is um This could be a wolf in sheep's clothing kind of idea. And the the main thing that we need to remember about this sort of information warfare is that it has to build upon some kernel of pre existing belief right. It has to like if someone has serious doubts about a political candidate, or not serious doubts, but they have some kind of reservation about a political candidate, or they have some kind of reservation about a medical treatment that can be subjected to this group polarization, and the likes come in on Facebook and your friends and the group chat or sharing and responding and oh my god, I'm getting attention. I'm getting social validation. This therefore must mean I am onto something, and you're onto something, but you're you're in a grift. That's what's happening. People are changing your opinion without being transparent and without concern for how it may or may not benefit you. We know that due to things like Foundations of Geopolitics, the idea of by Alexander Ducan, we know that the idea for a lot of powers who found themselves outmatched in conventional warfare was to resort to this weaponized information to propaganda, and we've seen that it's tremendously of influential. It is difficult to quantify. Even the New York Times article I mentioned earlier says it's incredibly difficult to figure out how much stuff is actually being produced, purpose made by adversarial for an interest. But we know that we know that this is a perfect time to be a propagandist, especially if you want to promote disunity in an adversarial power. Well, there's a segment on a recent John oliver Um last week tonight where he was talking about just how easy it is too. I mean, the biggest thing that I think is spreading some of the most dangerous disinformation is things that are masquerading. Is like infographics that have some little watermark like it's from an agency or some kind of official source. And he just like, I don't know, he's got some clip of somebody on YouTube showing you just how easy it is to make those on you know, photoshop and have them offset just so slightly, and like, you know, literally make some outrageous claim at the top, like in bold text, and have them kind of follow that infographic format, and then before you know, you know, your your grandparents are sharing it around because it has the it's it's not a meme, it's literally, you know, disinformation posing as some sort of legit infographic. But I've definitely seen that becoming more of a thing too. Oh yeah, I'm lame early two thousand's websites, guys. I don't know if you remember back in the day when everything became a quiz or an infographic, and that was really like because we can get hits on those, and they're really share able if people love clicking on them, and that's the Internet. Our grandparents remember, burn the Bomb's world. And then also also yeah, well on that note, uh, medic warfare. We're talking about it on the high macro level. We're talking about this in terms of state warcraft, but it is also just it can also just be a tool of like common criminal organizations. Never take those Facebook quizzes. It doesn't matter what bullshit astrological sign makes your favorite croissant thing is. You can figure that out for yourself. And that information that you give can be used against you frequently enough that you should assume it is the case. But those meta quizzes are fine, take the metic quizzes and I'm joke. You know they Facebook is rebranded to Meta without changing and just Learned, there's a Just Learned. There are surprise other companies named Meta. Alright, go with God but whomever you're messing with. Yeah, but the whole point of bringing that up, kind of in a joking way, is just to say that we have taught ourselves as humans using an Internet and an interconnected set of information, to trust those things, to trust all of that. You know, the infographics, the quick blurb that we don't even necessarily need to be cited. We just trust that it's a thing, and it doesn't matter who shares it with us or you know how it gets to us. If it's a graph and it looks legitimate, it's got some numbers going up and some numbers going down. Oh this must be real. Yeah, and you know, uh US mass media is also very into this. There are plenty of examples from any of your favorite channels, unfortunately, about of of graphs that visually, if you just glance at them while they're on the screen for say five to ten seconds, they appear to be supporting whatever the anchor or self appointed pundit slash expert is saying, but if you looked at the sources and you actually read the report, then you would see, Hey, that that bar on the graph that says thirty should actually be higher or larger taller than that other bar that says fifteen percent? So why do they not match? And the clever thing about that is if you are the producer of those bad faith attempts, you can always go back and say, oh, yeah, that was our bad that was that was a good eyebro because you have you've been caught by one person out of thousands, so the effect is the same. Um, I do believe this is a full episode, and it's uh, it's important, as Fox would say, now more than ever and uh. In the meantime, highly recommend looking into an experiment the Taiwanese government did or a kind of a war game where they had memetic engineering teams in every government department try to combats info efforts, which you know their main Taiwan is getting most of their dis info assaults from mainland China. But what these teams did is they had sixty minutes to respond to dis info by using an approach they call humor over rumor. Uh so clowning people because the Internet loves clowning people. We could be teaching them, but we're more into clowning them as a civilization. Also check out Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War by Keith Henson, and stay tuned because we'd love to make this an episode in the near future. In the meantime, tell us your favorite memes. Tell us the most dangerous memes. Tell us your take on the medic warfare. Is it overblown or is it even more dangerous than experts believe? One three three std w y t K or conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. We're gonna pause to share some dank memes and then we'll be back. And we are back, and we're jumping to a voicemail sent to us from Voodoo. Hey guys, you can call me Voodoo. I've been listening to your show for for many years. Uh just recently been listening to where you've been asking for scary stories and also had the episode recently about reoccurring dreams. I've got one that's a little bit of both for you. Um, from the ages of about ten until about fifteen years old, I'd have a reoccurring dream. UM. When I was younger, it was probably three to five times a week. As I got older, it was probably once or twice a month. But the dream is always the same. An older version of me was at a party, UM, dancing with a lady, and at some point we decided to go outside and stand on the patio and have a conversation and look up at the sky. UM. She gives me a kiss on the cheek and walks back into the party. I linger on the patio for a little while and see a what looks like a glowing something in the air. UM. This thing starts moving closer and closer and closer to me, eventually striking me in the head and knocking me unconscious. UM pan out to see my body landing on the ground, and the thing that hit me in the head is a silver orb, which then opens up and a little glowing ball comes out of it and enters into my ear, at which point I wake up. UM terrified me for years. Then I kind of came to groups with it, eventually stopped having the dream, And ever since I stopped having the dream, I've had a reoccurring ear infection in my right ear. I'm now thirty eight years old and it continues to happen. I don't know if there's anything to it, but said, you guys might be interested in love the show. Thanks. There we go message from voodoo of all people in places do do yes as the voodoo that you do. Yeah. So, uh, First of all, a reoccurring dream that involves a U A P. It's very small u AP that makes physical striking contact to your head. And then somehow you're having an out of body experience within this dream. And then you're watching the U A P open up and another little floaty thing is coming out and going into your ear. So it's almost like, um, not quite the abduction experience, but the probe probe like experience where something is being inserted into your body during an encounter from the stars. He reminds me, it reminds me of that movie Phantasm. Um, it's like creepy underticker looking dude launches this like weird silver orb that then like shoots out knives and like slices into the people's like drills into their brains. It's a little less grizzly version of that. But that's immediately what I thought of when I heard like little silver or going into brains, and then after having these dreams over the course of years and years and years, to have some kind of physical malady affecting the same place where this thing was affecting you in your dreams. I don't know, right, I've got to introduce you that professor one day, Matt, so the the the I have a theory and voodoo. I don't know if this will be helpful or not, but I do think it is pretty solid and I would be interested to hear what you think of this. Is it possible that your subconscious mind is alerting you to something or was alerting you to something that it clocked about your physical health through symbols it communicated with you through Dare I say memes or or archetypes? Um? I think that I would hazard that that is That is a very I won't say a percent, but that is very likely. Um. What could be going on because other people throughout history of reported similar ideas. One of the most common would be, you know, people have the anxiety dream, often of something being wrong with their teeth right, teeth falling out or cracking, etcetera, etcetera. But in some cases that's also your subconscious mind saying hey, you have a cavity or something like that. Right, Our our minds are very, very very um intelligent, and our conscious minds are only a piece of the iceberg there. So it may be that some part of you was trying to communicate with another part of you, which I find endlessly fascinating. Check out our episode series on dreams if you haven't had the chance to do so yet, I'm going to throw some monks you guys. Yes, agreed as well. I talked to Voodoo just shortly before we start rolling here. The dreams began when he was around seven or eight years old, and they just kept happening. So it was always, he says, always an older woman in this case that he was with that always gave him that kiss. Before this whole you know, situation went down with the U A P. Starting around seven or eight years old, and then around the time he gets to sixteen seventeen years old, just before you know, the end of high school, he stops having these dreams altogether. But what coincides with that time is when he began scuba diving. Scuba diving a whole lot, and when he began scuba diving is when he started having the recurring ear infections. So the dreams scuba diving is here before it? Are the dreams after it? Are the ear infections? Well, it isn't scuba diving. Can't you get like swimmers ear and stuff or like have some issues because of the pressure. I mean, it seems like that's the that's the the differentiating factor. There's the scuba diving. But look to my mind, and I know I'm probably incorrect here, and a lot of Look you say what you want, that's fine, I think what you want wherever you are. To my mind, it's very strange that the decision to begin scuba diving and the training and everything is at that middle point between almost these pre cognitive dreams that something's going to happen with his ear, something's going into his ear that shouldn't be there, and then it actually happening because of the activity that he's partaking in. I don't know, it's weird to me. Well, a self fulfilling prophecy is still a prophecy, is it not? I would, I would argue, And then additionally, you know, additionally, I think we made a pretty not a solid case obviously, but we made a pretty good speculative case that time could work differently in dreams. Um. And then nobody really wants to throw around the p word precognition in academia. But just because current academic culture poop poo's the thing doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Keep in mind, this is the same civilization that beat the living Christ out of a guy for suggesting that doctors should maybe wash their hands before they put them inside people, and that guy died in an asylum. Like I so I think it's um, I think it's quite possible. There's more too. Well, I'm certain there's more to the science of dreams and the function of the brain during sleep. Uh, there's more to it than current society is aware. But it also would also be interested. Like, that's a really good point about scuba diving, because it can cause your problems if you're not up to snuff on your on your safety precautions and your guidelines. You know, like the swimmer's ear is a real thing. Um. People can have fluid and blood leakage in the middle ear. Uh, and that can lead to infections if it's left untreated. And it's just the time that it's the timeline, you know what I mean. That's what's interesting, because these dreams didn't start after the scuba stuff, right, Yeah. But now later in his life, as he's scuba diving more and more, he's getting a little more adventurous with the types of dives he's going on. And Voodoo says, one of the most interesting things he does now is night diving. This is not something I was aware of. I just perhaps I'm not curious enough, and I've never been certified to go scuba diving. But the act of going into the water, going fairly deep down on a scuba dive in the night, where the only lights you have are the flashlights, the lights on the other divers, and yourself. So when you look out on the sea floor wherever you are, all you can see are these little pools of light from all the other divers. And Voodoo described it very much like being on another planet, exploring another plan in the dark, with only your torch if you will um. And for some reason, my mind takes that back to this you know again unidentified aerial phenomena in his dream that is exploring planet Earth and interacts with him. He's saying, you can when you're on these night dives. You can see fish and turtles as they're sleeping. You can see some of the anemonies that will or the an enemy that will glow. If you shine your light on certain smaller fish, a larger fish will be alerted because they can now see that other fish, and they will make a meal of it. And there's something also connected with that to me, of being on another planet exploring with this other vision that he had, of this thing coming from the stars, directly from the stars to visit him specifically. I don't know. Look, I'm over here just analyzing Voodoo's dreams, but I just found it to be compelling. Guys, agreed, And we've we've been getting a lot of folks writing in with with strange encounters in the world of dream. Some of them are downright terrifying stories and experiences. Uh. And you know that. I don't know about you, guys, but the version of reality I subscribed to doesn't make a huge distinction between the world of imagination in the world of physicality. So to me, if something happens in a dream, especially if you believe in a multiverse, all kind of interpretation of of the world or the universe to me, if something happens in a dream, that means it's on some level real. And if our dreams are just a way for another part of the mind to hold up a mirror or to make commentary on something that's happening, or some interpretation of something that's happening, then that also is no less real. Your mind was telling you something voodoo, that is, that is not that, That is not an opinion. That's a fact. Your mind was telling you something. It's just tough to figure out what that was. And if there is correlation to the events in the waking world and this version of it. M hm, Well, guys, that's all I've really got voodoo. If you're interested, you can head over to places like Psychology today read all about recurring dreams or what is it the Sleep Foundation, which is, you know, a place where you can go to learn about stuff. They've they've got pretty good bibliographies and references at the bottom of the Sleep Foundation Recurring Dreams article, so you know that's worth looking into. I'm just laughing because I thought you were just laughing because I thought you were going to say it was a snooze fest. No, it's not. Ant never say something like that. Yeah, they there's some great writing over there. It's just I don't know. It's kind of the stuff that you expect. The things that we've talked about before, like you said, been the losing teeth and they could miss not being ready for school, flying, falling car crashes. Uh. This, this dream that you told us about voodoo is just unlike any recurring dream I've heard of. Completely agree. I mean, it's definitely a weird one. I wasn't trying to neg it, saying that maybe it was connected to some pressure thing with the Scooba diving. I think it's interesting now coincidence if if, if they aren't related. But yeah, I mean, what an odd recurring dream? Like, what is it implying You're right, Ben? Is it some sort of recognition of an impending ailment? Or is it the cause itself? Hard to say, but really fascinating stuff. I would I would not to be a believe fair. We do have to note one thing post these dreams. If anything had happened to your ear voodoo, it would be very difficult, I think for many people to not feel that there was some possible correlation, no matter what that thing might be. Right, absolutely, and it could just be perceived right because you're making that connection because it makes it makes us feel better to see that pattern than for it to just be chaotic. Right on, Ben, All right, well, hey, we're gonna take another quick sponsor break, but we'll be right back with another message from you. Welcome back the public. That's you, the listeners of this show, the most important part of the show. Uh. And one of you wrote in with a lovely two tiered email with two I'm gonna I'm just gonna briefly rush over the first point and then get right into the second one. This one comes from bronze ranked boomer. UM love that, Uh says, Hey, guys, I'm behind the recent episodes. I just finished the one with the robot dog from Boston Dynamics. I thought you'd get a kick out of this. And then bronze ranked boomer linked to a YouTube channel um from a dude named Mike cool Reeves who is a young maker type guy builds robots and weird devices and a lot of things involving tasers. Um, kind of just like you know, dumb inventions like he had build a machine robot that picks tomatoes out if your salad. Um. There's the one video called using mind control to drive a car electrocuting my muscles to force me to dab things like that. But his most recent video, which has upwards of twelve million views uh, is called teaching a robot Dog to Pe beer. Um. And he has one of these Boston Dynamic robot dogs that he modifies significantly, UM, with a little tankful of beer, a little nozzle that goes right you know where the business end of a dog would go, um, and some like little r do we know micro computer dealies And yeah, he teaches the dog quote unquote teaches the dog to pe beer into a cup. At first a disaster. I just of peas all over the place. UM, And I think he eventually gets it right. But the dog is is called pisspot nine thousand, which I thought was great, So thank you for that. And then bronze ranked Boomer or b r b ha uh. That goes on to talk about this other story UM. Recently, there was a backlash in the streaming community of something called blue light blocking skincare. The streamer Valkyrie or Valkyrie sounds spelled UM was promoting her skincare line called reflect of course it's missing the valves, because that's just how branding works these days. She claims that her product will protect blue light from damaging your skin. Um, here is a link of skincare product. And interestingly enough, when you go to r f lct dot com, you get this message saying Reflect is no longer available. Think you know all who played important roles to conduct research, developed products, create a brand, and serve as partners along our journey. While we believe in the formulations created after further reflection, uh, we have decided to move forward on new paths, effectively terminating the Reflect brand. Should you have further questions, please contact inquiries at Reflect dot com. Um. Then there's this thread that BRB links to on Reddit talking about various scientific research into blue light uh and what it can do to our brains and our you know, eyes, and potentially our skin. Um. So here's the thing. Oh and then b RB goes on she also made a video trying to explain her situation, but it just made it worse. She claims they have researched the damage of blue light on people's skin, but she can't reveal the studies because it's specific for her company. So it now looking at So is blue light skin damage legit or just some scam to get people to buy skin care products. Um? So this all starts with like, you know, you may notice on your phone there's a mode called night mode that filters out blue light. Matt, I believe you've talked about wearing blue blocking sunglasses. Isn't that right? Yeah, I don't think that necessarily. No, No, no, that that part that that No, No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that's where it starts, right, This idea that blue that blue light causes eye stream um, and that you know they can leads to uh, prolonged exposure to blue lights. Um can cause you know, development of cataracts or something like that over a long period of time. Because blue light is one of the most powerful colors of light, and the sun you know, puts out a ton of blue lights. So like filtering that, you know, from your eyes in addition to just filtering out UV rays, it's obviously gonna be a good thing for your eyeballs. Um. Valkyrie made this case based on the fact that she is a twitch streamer, you know, a gamer and YouTube intent creator. Um So she's you know hopping on this blue light bad train. UM, but really took the next level in this notion that blue light is somehow bad for your skin. Um, there is no research that I have found that even remotely UM indicates that. And in fact, there's a Time magazine article that I found this just forget what you think you know about blue light and sleep, because we've also been told that using our phones at night because of the blue light, uh, is in fact bad for your sleep. Turns out, according to a recent paper published by the University of Manchester in Current Biology, UM is trying to kind of challenge that idea. UM. They did a study where they exposed mice to different lights of various hues but equal brightness, and they found that warm toned light was actually worse for the mice sleep because it could actually trick their bodies and thinking it's daytime, while cool or blue lights UH more closely mimic you know the way it looks around twilight. UM. So this sort of throws a wrench into the whole, like, you know, oh, night mode on your phone is gonna make it okay. I mean, honestly, it looks like it's more likely just the fact that you're on your phone, you know, and not quieting your mind than it is like blue light having some sort of elongated like you know, negative effect on your your sleep. And other researchers that are cited in this time article argue that electronics keep you up, some can keep you because of the bright lights. Um. It really is more the time suck of it all and the distraction keeping your mind from you know, resting than it is the color of the light. Um. There's also specifically an article that BRB linked to UH from the Washington Post about this specific case and the controversy that kind of like you know, spring from it. Um. So here's what they say. I'm just gonna read a court from this. Blue light is a form a visible, high energy light that is only slightly less powerful than ultraviolet light, which is admitted by the sun, and can cause skin and eye damage over time. While some experts have suggested that blue light from screens might contribute to eyestrain, it's still an area of contentious debate. The notion that blue light might cause skin damage has even less scientific backing, and the interview UM a person named Shari Marshbine, who is a board certified dermatologist from New York who says, um, there is at this time in conclusive evidence as to whether or not screens can actually produce enough light to cause serious skin damage. A lot of companies are focusing on blue light protection because we know this comes from sun exposure, even if the evidence pointing towards devices isn't as clear. Um. So, yeah, it does seem like this was not sure if the partners and this, you know, this is just an entrepreneurial venture, you know, I'm sure there were It's not like Valcore Valcuree was like coming up with these formulas all by herself. Maybe she was taken for a bit of a ride to UM. But you know, this kind of creating a problem maybe that doesn't necessarily exist or at the very least isn't supported by science. I can see why people might get a little irritated about that, especially from a big, you know, highly paid Instagram influencer. Um. Yeah, what do what do you guys think? I mean, I think anytime there's a problem, you can you can exploit it right and by to make money at least to offer a solution. And we've talked about it before the medical industry where you can if you want to make up a problem that you then offer the only solution to the only currently available solutions. Right. I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but it wouldn't be the first time. Sure, Yeah, I think that's accurate. There's also the idea, m Yeah, the statement that this these findings are inconclusive or uncertain at this time is super are helpful for businesses that want to sell things because they can say, no, one's proven, it's not bad for you, right. Uh. This, this uncertainty is where a lot of profit opportunities thrive. But with the studies that I was I was reading, I found a really interesting one from the National Library of Medicine that may may have found something slightly different from some of these folks. They were saying that this h g V or the fancy name for the for blue light can be harmful to skin, but it can also be beneficial. It all depends upon the intensity and the wavelength. So the idea then, at least according to this and there's one study out of many, the idea then would be, if that is true, would this blue blocking cosmetic not possibly be harmful for skin? You have to be so careful with cosmetics because of all the all the claims that are aid and how how um well I don't like the term woo, but how misleading they can be or how in bad faith they can be right Uh that there is an interesting little side note that comes from another dermatologist UM named Kathleen Susie who's actually a dermatologic surgeon UH and director of Yale's Aesthetic Dermatology program. UM. So she does speak about a very specific subset of patients that could actually have pigmentation issues that could be like exacerbated by exposure to blue light emissions from the sun. UM. She says, blue light can induce pigmentation in the skin, UH, particularly in darker skinned individuals. Prolonged exposure to blue light. And we're talking about like blue light emissions from the sun can introduce hyper pigmentation. UM. There was this sort of theoretical concern that patients who are prone to pigment issues. So this isn't just your average fair skin individual with no pigmentary history. UH, this is someone who might suffer from a condition called melasma or their skin is prone to hyper pigmentation or darkening. UM could be more sensitive to external triggers of blue light outside of sun rays. So again she goes on to say it's very specific, you know, niche group of patients UM and points to a twenty nineteen study where researchers exposed one side of UM participants faces to the equivalent of blue light from a very powerful screen and shielded the other for eight hours per day, five days in a row. Um, they largely found no difference in the side of the face that was exposed, uh, compared to the other. But what this does, so this is screen strength, right, This is not sun strength, which is what this expert was referring to that could actually have an effect. And this whole cosmetic line was specifically, you know, addressing screen time. UM. So yeah, that strikes me as being utter bs uh. It was probably why they pulled it. Internet snake oil is what it seems like to me. And of course, you know, again, I feel ethically bound to point this out every time these sorts of conversations come up. Again, if this is not causing actual harm to anybody in in any way, and it makes you feel better, then it's okay. Just don't don't be under the illusions that the science is sound. And also we have to acknowledge that the idea of causing actual harm could mean, um could be the same as using this instead of seeking medical treatment for some condition of the skin or another. So it's like, you know, if you're in if you're in your local Sephora or whatever makeup store and you see something that is like this has baby angel tears, and because as baby angel tears, it's going to protect you from elbow weariness, which is when your elbows get depressed. And if that like makes you feel better, then fine, do it. But don't be surprised if you just spend a few minutes looking into literally anything other than web md a k a. You have cancer dot com. If you look into any reputable medical investigation, you can't and you and you find out that surprised. There's no such thing as baby angel tears, and elbow weariness is a weird name for several other possible conditions. Then you know, consider what else, Consider what a doctor might say about your elbows. I mean, I'm walking that example down the street a little bit because I think it's funny and hopefully I'm right, but it's um, it's something people need to be aware of the goal is not always to help you. The goal is to help persuade you to buy something that's a very important, very good and agreed agreed. Uh. And again this is like two clicks away from like the survival type supplements and meds that like Alex Jones chills you know on his show. Uh. In my opinion, UM, I think maybe this this person's heart was in the right place, and I feel like maybe she too was taken for a bit of a ride by her partners. Um. Then the backlash kind of you know, shut the whole thing down. So I don't necessarily think that she was you know, operating with like complete disregard for the facts. It. No, it doesn't seem like it, but it does seem like this is absolutely you know uh WHOI as they say, Um, but yeah, that's this one. So always, uh be vigilant and do your own research and don't let people feed you a bill of goods, you know when it comes to like stuff that you're putting on your skin or in your body. Oh and send us, send us your favorite your favorite strange claims in the cosmetic industry. Uh, the US is actually pretty tame about a lot of these, even when they don't even when they don't withstand scientific rigor. But the rest of the world does have some some wild stuff out there, so be careful. And again, if you identified with something in Voodoo's story, or if you have uh some perspective on the function of time and dreams, we'd love to hear from you if you also I think we said this at the beginning of this week's segment, but if you have some examples of weaponized memes, then please send them our way. We can't wait to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online. I asked. The Internet is where you may find us in all of the places of note, including Facebook, Twitter, UM, and YouTube, where you can find us with the handle conspiracy Stuff. We are Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram. And if you don't want to be on the internet, UM, you want to maybe use more old school or analog means of communications, well we got you covered there too. That's right. We have a phone number, but before you call it, and before I tell you how to call it, I asked that you please take a second and review this show on whatever podcatcher you use, especially if it's Apple Podcasts. 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