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 the time of the week again where we are fortunate enough to share with you our fellow conspiracy realist letters from the best part of this show, your fellow listeners. Today's adventures are going to take us into some shady government activities, some astonishing real life adventures on the high seas, and they're going to take us to a hole, a very big hole. The name of it is. It's literally called the Big Hole. It is uh to too kind, too kind, met um. We are always the whole crew over here at stuff they want you to know. Is always fascinated with the hidden aspects of of the world. And if you live in a city of any size, as we've discussed in the past. There are most certainly places that the average person doesn't know about seemingly innocuous buildings. Uh we We did a whole series on these in New York for a previous live tour. This was in response to our Restricted Zones episode, Would you guys like like to go there? This this story is a little close to home for us. Take me to the zone, Ben, take me to the whole. Let's let's go. We're gonna do it with some help from our pals. Thomas T. Thomas, you wrote the following, Hey guys, longtime listener, Love the content. I know you all have covered bunkers before, but not sure if you have ever covered the Big Hole in in c North Carolina. It's an a T and T facility built in the sixties that sounds kind of familiar already, right, guys in a in a rural area outside of Chapel Hill. It is supposedly, according to Thomas, thirteen stories deep, with blast proof ceilings, floors coated and copper across two hundred acres with fencing, guardgate, vehicle barriers. All the hits originally constructed as part of the government's plan for communication continuity post nuclear slash e p M blast via the Auto Vaughan switching network. Thomas goes on to say, there are multiple sites such as this went throughout the US. I just happened to be from the general area and clearly have an affinity for all things strange. And Thomas goes on to say it's possible that technology made this communication opsleete, But he also asked, what about the rise in hacking and cyber warfare events lately? Is that why the facility is still being kept up? Or are these sites just used a house, expensive communication equipment, all the toilet paper we couldn't find during COVID, or they used as high level government fallout shelters? Is there something more sinister? And that nold. This is where Thomas points out something I thought it was fascinating. The site was apparently shut down or shuttered mothballed in two thousand eight, but right before it, right before it shut down, the rumor has it that the facility had a sixty one million dollar upgrade right before it was closed. Sketchy. That's sketchy. Yeah, what's up with that? Yeah? I'd love to know if if it's just been shuttered, it's still government land. How they doubt anyone can just you know, stroll around and take a gander at it. But how much sixty four million, sixty one million, six sixty million dollars dumped it into the big hole. It's just a safe now, that's what it is. And Thomas, you would ask us to take a deep dive on this and related facilities, and they're very well could be a very deep rabbit hole here, even more than thirteen stories deep. Because what this is is something known as a project office. And remember, folks, it's the position of our show that if you find a government agency that has a really innocuous name, the odds of them being up to something are higher than normal. You know what I mean, Like the more innocuous the name sketch. It's the same with government operations too, right, like operations Sunshine Picnic Party that is probably some sinister shoot, like Operation Fresh Pies and Fuzzy Hugs is all about stealing eyeballs, Operation freshly cut Grass. Yes, we should just make a list, will accidentally, well, will accidentally stumble across the reel when I'm sure, I'm certain so. A project office is uh, it's kind of an umbrella term for these facilities that were made by eight T and T in the middle of the twentieth century to house these ongoing secret projects in collaboration with the government. They're not necessarily bad things, but there are a lot more out there than a lot than many people are aware of. They've been building these since the nineteen sixties, and as we discussed in our episode on the Long Lines Building, whenever we mentioned it there in the middle of Manhattan, A T. T is never are officially said what they do in in these facilities. They have vague They have vague descriptions like I kid you not one of their descriptions. Uh. If you ask them, hey, what's the project office, then they'll say, oh, those are central facilities. What does that mean? And then find prentices mind your own beeswax, you know, yes, just so yeah. The so, the one that Thomas is talking about specifically is a project office located in North Carolina, just eleven miles south of Chapel Hill, and a lot of people in North Carolina, apparently, according to the story, don't even know this exists. If you can see, uh, some aerial photographs of the building. Let me send these two you guys in the chat here you go, I'm looking at it on this website only in your state. That's one and you can get you can get like the some on the ground pictures of the churn off towards this facility. You guys, when you're looking at I'd love to hear what you think when you're looking at the overhead satellite images. What do you see? Does it does it seem suspicious or does it just seem like any other place? This is what I see. A ton of trees, just forest, and then out of that forest, someone has taken a giant, god sized lawnmower and just cut an interesting little shape into that forest. And in there I see two buildings and some street operation freshly cut grass there. It is. Yeah, No, it's crazy. And it looks like a it looks like a weird plank dinner or something like the shape of it that it's cut out is very odd. I definitely. I mean, what do you think these I see? There's obviously a road and access road, like one very skinny access road leading up to it. It looks like a giant tennis court kind of actually from the area of view, Yeah, yeah, and I think that's the stude. This is one of those. This is one of those places where it feels like and this is entirely my speculation. Uh, they found a Goldilocks zone right there, able to collate and collect data that's coming from from Chapel Hill right as well as many other places. But they're far enough away that if you are driving there and the area is if it wasn't shuttered, then the guards would have more than ample time to see you coming. That's part of the design, right, the right it is it is, don't go to Area fifty one, folks. Again, I feel like we have to say this every time we bring this up. The government is legally allowed to kill you. They will typically give you a warning, but if you persist. I'm not saying they will, I'm saying they can't. And I mean they're they're supposed to shoot to wound. But you know, things happen to see you from a long, long way away, which is the whole point of bringing it up here. Yeah, and we we know this firsthand because we've got a friend of the show who actually went up to Area fifty one and didn't didn't quite he didn't violate the trespassing stuff, but he got got close to some of the signs and then he has a terrifying story of what happened afterwards, but he's fine. He made it. This kind of situation is something that you could find yourself in very easily and perhaps by accident, as unbelievable as that may seem. So people typically believe that this is it's all speculation, but people typically believe that this is a part of the n Essays mass surveillance hub. You know, um, like the A T. T Building, the Window Lists building in Manhattan has long been suspected to be the uh the HQ for something called tighten point M. So it could be it could definitely be something like that here. So the term longlines, I know when we did that that story or actually was part of a live show. I think about that Window Lists building in Manhattan, we called it the A, T and T Longlines Building, but I think longlines is more of a generic term. So like this is what they would call longlines. Hut um that's on this piece of property, and it's because it houses very sensitive data and connections, even I think, and so it needs to be blastproof, uh, in order to prevent massive communication outages. Correct, Yeah, that's part of it. It doesn't specifically have to be something military. It could just be protecting the communications structure. But you are absolutely correct. There are many more huts like this out there. And one of the one of the most interesting things about this is that it's tough to know for sure whether whether it actually is closed, you know, and it may have been, it could have been sold. We simply don't know. That's what would make sense to me if there were a massive upgrade, because it's kind of like, you know, you fix up your house before you sell it, right, so maybe something like that. I'm trying to I'm trying to air on the side of caution, but you know, and I get too carried away saying the you know, pointing out the badger in the bag here, which is that you cannot trust the government when it comes to spine. I just sort of I'm working on working on this, guys, but I always start off with the baseline like, yeah, they're doing it for spying sort of the name of the spying game. There's not a whole lot of trust between spies, you know. Um, But like this is a question for for both of you, Um, how in bed do you think a T and T and massive telecom companies like them are with the government allegedly, and I don't know if you guys recall this from that Long Lines discussion we had. Allegedly the Long Lines building is where the n S A essentially spliced into all of A T and T S traffic and then doubled it essentially, um and that was a long time ago. That's allegedly what happened, according to you know, whistle blowers. But I you would have to think because of the history of A T and T and the United States government with things like this and the Auto Vaughn network, UH, which was the Cold War thing that was supposed to maintain the continuity of government if a nuclear blast occurred, you'd think that they're working pretty closely together. And who knows how that's changed with the the n S as rise to I don't domestic surveillance power, Yes, yeah, that's that's the question. We also, you know, we just don't have a lot of visibility on this. And Thomas, you know, you're absolutely right that very few people are aware of not just the big hole, but also largely unaware of the existence of these of these facilities in general. Just to add some more conspiratorial spice to this story about whether or not this is closed down. This is kind of Shrewdinger's hole at this point. Uh. Local media at the time noted that in two thousand eight there were multiple convoys of trucks that were moving stuff away from the site over the courses several weeks and the specifically, I'm thinking of the Charlotte Observer, which in two thousand and eight released a piece called Mysterious Cold War Bunker closes. And this is where you get a little bit of a glimpse into the local speculation about US, because people, you know, locals knew about this, and they were saying, well, I bet it's missiles, and then of course as someone saying I bet it's UFOs and other people who are just saying, I don't know what's going on in there. Uh, but as a citizen of the US, I'm sure paying for part of it. This this bunker, I mean, I don't know, man, I feel like it's necessary. But also, guys, it feels like if you spend that much money building something like this, are you really just gonna abandon it? No? No, you're not. You you honestly aren't, especially because of what it can do or what it was designed to do, according to War History Online. Who knows how reliable the information is here, but according to this site, these bunkers were created for that auto van system, the automated Voice network automatic voice network system, which was installed in the sixties. Uh. And there were hubs all over the place across the United States and these specific places allegedly. I don't have this information, uh air tight, but allegedly these bunkers were the primary hubs for this system. Again, in the case that the Soviet Union or another power is able to detonate a nuke in Washington or one of the other you know, central areas of power within the United States, these things would continue communications via all these hubs, these other hubs, And I don't see why you would shut that off. Man, can imagine shutting down real life bat phones they were even, Yes, I mean, it really is an emergency system, and I can't imagine completely shutting it down unless there's a and there probably is a fully, fully functional, much better system that costs less money from a facility standpoint. But isn't there though, I mean, these were all built pre fiber optics, right, so this would have been like what's called trunking technology or or like these massive bundles of these interconnected networks of between switchboards essentially, and so I mean there is a better technology, right well, yeah, but if you've already got the land, you've already got you know, a secure as hell facility like this underground like it says, a skyscraper just pointed down. Um, I don't know, it feels like you could make use of that space. It's not for the original intended purpose brands, but it's also didn't we talk about how like wouldn't exects be they would go there and the event of some sort of nuclear fallout and there was like ping pong and stuff, you know, like they had like like amenities in the Long Lanes building in Manhattan, Manhattan. Anyway, Yeah, there were there. That's another important aspect because what we know about these facilities does seem to indicate the possibility of housing people in emergency situations. And we know that the US government does have federally funded facilities of that nature for you know, members of Congress and so on, because they need to ensure the continuity of government if bombs start falling, which of course we hope never happens. I want to point out though, Matt and know you're you're onto something here, because in the ninety nineties the US government did switch from autovon to something called the Defense Switched Network, which I believe is still in use today, and so it's it's completely possible that when otto Von went out of Vogue that the that there was a decision made just to shut it down. And this is something we can explore in depth in the future. But just to wrap this up, I want to let everybody in North Carolina know that Thomas story is completely true as far as we can tell. Thank you for usnow, Thomas. And the building is creepy because if you drive up there now, you'll see the gates are still locked, the fences stand, there are cameras, but the intercom system is disconnected, and there's no one manning the guard booth. As far as we know, your mileage may vary. Stay safe out there. Let us know if there are any creepy restricted zones in your neck of the Global Woods. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and we'll return with more listener mail. And we're back with with more listener mail, and this one comes to us from Cynthia. He says, guys, love your show. I thought this was an interesting piece of news. Not really sure if it's show worthy, but you guys seem like you would get a kick out of it. Uh. And Cynthia, You're absolutely right. This is already on our radar. We even mentioned it, I think in the last Strange News episode at the top, just as a t is um, but didn't get into it. So here we go. I have had the song my Name is Jonas stuck in my head all day. My kid. Recently it's got into Weezer um and she bought the right album, the Blue and the Blue one. She's been getting collecting vinyl. But we've been rocking that out the house and I just can't get out of my head. And that is appropriate? Is it Jonas or Jonah's Jonas? I think, um? But this story is about a real life Jonah and the whale or I think uh. In the Bible, um, it is referred to more as a very large fish. But that may have just been you know, the practical knowledge of the time. They don't really know what to call it. That's kind of what a whale is it's a really large fish, doesn't have gills though it has to surface to breathe um, but it has massive lung capacity. And today we're talking about a humpback whale, which I believe can be upwards of fifty feet long um and way, you know, thousands and thousands of pounds, several tons if I'm not mistaken, and a unfore yet incredibly lucky lobster diver Um in Provincetown, Massachusetts is barely a really beautiful, lovely spot to to visit. I would like to check it out one day. I was doing what he does every day. It has been for a long time, the guys, like I think in his mid fifties diving for lobsters. And I guess there's a couple of ways to catch lobsters. One is with those crazy traps that you see, the boxy ones, and then another one is just to dive down and literally just grab them with your hands um from the bottom of the of the of the ocean um in you know, shallower areas off the coast um. And he was doing that. Well, you're diving, so it's not like super shallow. And also it wouldn't it couldn't be super shallow because he had a very fortuitous encounter with a humpback whale uh, in that he was swallowed by one and ended up in the mouth of this whale. It wasn't a full Pinocchio situation where you know, he ended up literally in the belly of the way. Uh. And then like I think you lit a candle or something and made the whale sneeze and that's how he got out. Um. He was just in the whale's mouth, which while massive would would would still be you know, it wouldn't be like he could like walk around, you know. He was definitely he said he felt something forced his legs together and then all of a sudden it was plunged into darkness. Um. I can't imagine. I think I've mentioned on the show before specifically, I think in our sleep paralysis episode or when we were talking about like nightmare people. I have a recurring dream often where I find myself out in the middle of the ocean and there's like some massive presence, you know that I can't see. The idea of unseen you know, monsters like under the water, just another surface really freaks me out. Um. But it turns out that whales are actually pretty chill. You know, sharks are predators obviously, and they seek out prey. They often mistake or they can mistake humans, especially like I think paddling and canoes or kayaks for example, as uh, turtles, sea turtles, and so they'll they'll come at you. But typically sharks, I don't think, unless they're provoked, won't just come at you out of nowhere unless they do mistake you for their natural prey. But um, whales will actually avoid humans. They'll actually you know, out maneuver humans or or try to maneuver so they don't encounter them, so they don't run into them. Um. So the you know, the idea here is that this whale made a mistake. This whale did a did a bit of an oopsy because the way whales feed is they just like shoot through the water with their massive, unhinged jaw just kind of sucking up everything in its path. So it's like you know, krill and you know, tiny squid and small fish and plankton and things like that. They don't eat like large sea creatures at all. It's all just like tons and tons and tons of these smaller sea creatures. They can just kind of just gobble up or really it's just like this massive intake of water and then that's that's how to eat. And dude just kind of what's in the exact wrong place at the wrong time and got caught up in that very thing. I wonder, you know, I had a song stuck him ahead after this news broke, and I wonder if he's heard the Mariners Revenge by the Decembrist. I bet he supervibes to that song. Now, isn't this sort of a moby dick asks story very much? It's literally about being It's a revenge story on the high seas where where in the protagonists and spoilers the villain are both eventually swallowed by a whale. It's a it's a long song. It's not like radio friendly, but it's a it's a blast if you if you get a chance to check it out. This. You know what amazes me about this story, Nol, is that what what we're seeing here feels like an an accident, right because, as you said, the humpback whale essentially vacuums through the sea in search of krill. Uh. But another point, if like we should make about sharks in general is sharks don't want to eat you. Actually, a lot of animals don't want to eat people. Were super inconvenient. We probably don't taste that great. And and uh, as dangerous as shark attacks can be, I always think it's it's worth noting that for the shark, it's like you're walking in a grocery store and you see a free sample of something and you take a bite of it and then you go gross like like that's the most shark attacks I think are like one bite, right. Well, and again, the life of a whale it's I mean it seems, at least in terms of like their culinary you know, life, uh, kind of dull. It's like that. Do you think they even taste their food? I mean, they're just kind of like inhaling it. You guys, I'm on a you dot whales dot org. And I know we're talking about bailey in whales, right, the ones that don't have teeth, not the tooth whales. We're talking about the sifters. They're like practically filter feeders, right, isn't that essentially what they're doing? Yeah, I mean it's really interesting and honestly, I I've learned a little bit about them over over the last four years, just because of my son's interest in whales. But there are you know, there's well and just all creatures, right, creatures on Earth are fascinating and for a little kid, it's and it's incredible to learn about all these different things that are real and not just these made up monsters. But but in this case, the bailey whales, like right whales, humpbacks, fin fin whales, gray whales, they all do kind of different things. But exactly what you're talking about their all um, it's like it depends on if they filter it at the mouth level, at the stomach level, or the plate level, which is kind of like if you just imagine it's their filters where the water gets pushed out and all the little creatures get caught in. Uh, fascinating stuff learn about whales today. There's a there's a new documentary about whales on his Knee Plus. I think, um it was I think they own not Discovery, but National Geographic as well, or it's it's there's a section for National Geographic stuff on Disney Plus. But um, really interesting and terrifying, but also at the same time, like I said, they are gentle giants of the ocean or whatever. Yeah, so so this humpback whale, which based on their intelligence, probably does have a name for itself in terms of like how it communicates their intelligence is fascinating. But this humpback whale definitely gentle giant. But our unfortunate Jonah here was very, very lucky because the creature could have easily accidentally grievously injured or killed him. Because it's tongue alone weighs four tons. Jesus Christ, Yeah, what's the total weight for for one of these fellas? They're about fifty ft long, like I was saying, and I said tons. I was very vague, but god, I had no idea how the tongue alone was tons for he tongues about her thirty six metric tons. They're they're big boys. That's on an interview with that guy that he said that he thinks that actually was like a younger whale that didn't quite know how to feed correctly. Yet it was a little bit smaller. So that could also explain why this young like he said he thought it was about a teenager, and which is like sort of like swimming around with his mouth up and like still learning how to feed. And then I was like, oh, there's a person in my mouth. You're absolutely right, alexis uh. And that is a really good point because this little fella, relatively speaking, UM might have not really known quite what he was doing, and it was a little bit less experienced in in uh and and feeding UM. And it would have accounted for the fact that maybe like a larger whale of the mouth would have been he may have been like digested, you know, he could have actually gotten sucked down into the actual belly. But if it's a smaller whale, because he could feel the pressure of the mouth, and I'm picturing you know, uh forty ton creature or that mouth is probably gonna be much bigger than a human because you know, you've seen um images where you have the whale and then a you know scale for for scale purposes, like the diver, you know, a little little infographics and uh, I feel like he would have not felt the pressure of the mouth with a larger whale, but he did UM. And then he apparently the whale dove and then realized something was wrong, like, oh, what is this Like it's just like getting like a popcorn. Colonel stuck in your teeth, only like way more extreme. And so then the whale surfaced and or at least started going up and expelled the guy from his mouth, and he saw the light and was rescued by someone who saw the whole thing go down. Um. They he said he thought his legs were broken. Um. The diver um whose name, by the way, I don't think we mentioned. His name is Josiah, very close to Jonah Mayo. Um. He said he thought his legs were broken. And then his buddy, who was a fellow diver, was worried that he may have gotten an embolism from surfacing too quickly, because that's the thing that can happen, is that the ben's it's some kind of form of the bends or it's more extreme where you get if you surface too quickly, Uh, the pressure doesn't have a chance to even out correctly, and it can cause a brain embolism, or at the very least that sensation UH called the bens um. But he was fine. He got rushed to the hospital. He didn't have any grievous injuries, like he said, Ben, he had some real bad bruising around his legs, and I think he dislocated his knee, but um he did. He did an a m a on Reddit like the guy's fine, and there's a really adorable picture of him in the hospital given the thumbs up. Yeah, he looks like a happy camper man. I I think I would be. I don't know. I want to wonder what you guys think. I think this would be obviously highly traumatic for anybody, but uh, I think it might break me psychically. I think it literally might break my brain. But also then the relief of not being dead, because he literally, you know, thought he was going to die. Uh and he said the first thing he thought of were his son's um, but you and die. So do you think the not dying thing would kind of like trump the the traumatic the traumatic nature of the whole experience. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, because he because he made it through the fire in this case, he may made it through the whale. Uh, just just the front part luckily. But I think it would be to a degree in empowering. Um. Also, also another way in which he was lucky is that, uh, this was a humpback whale and not a toothed whale like a sperm whale, which a sperm whale according to experts is the only whale that would be likely capable of actually swallowing a human being and you would have an unpleasant death in its series of stomachs. But there is no documented case of this happening. There are other cases of people getting getting in a whale's mouth to the irritation of both the whale and the human and then and then emerging surviving. So I would say, you know, probably case by case basis, but I would say this would feel empowering to look out on the ocean and be like, ha I got away, did you? Guys already mentioned his two thousand one encounter with another crazy experience, So according to a reddit a thread and asked me anything that he did, he says that in two thousand one he survived a plane crash, like, actually survived a deadly plane crash, and the same whale was on the plane. My thought is, if he survived that, that's when you have that kind of moment where you're like, you know what, every moment counts? Where we got this? Then to survive the whale, I don't know. This guy should probably become a superhero. Uh right, isn't that what should happen? Yeah, at least by a lottery ticket at the very least, you know. Oh, apparently the nurse came up to him and asked him for his lottery numbers, like like she had like a pen and paper. Now that that was the thing, he said on the A M A. The nurse came up, and everyone wanted to talk to him, of course, like what a story, good lord, Like, what a story? And you're right to have to have also survived a plane crash like that when one of their little detail the water or off the coast of Cape Cod, which is where he was um or very murky to the whale, likely wouldn't have seen him. And when the whales feed and they unhinged their jaws like that, they can't see anything because their giant mouths are in the way. Uh So, kind of a perfect storm of of circumstances that led to a harrowing encounter with nature that ultimately is just gonna be a great story to tell at parties and to borrow. Something that the dudes on Weekly Weird News said about the story, A he probably will never have to buy a drink again. Ever, you're the whale guy whoa let me get you a beer? His tender dates are going to be riveted. I would put that in his like profile, like right there, the whale guy from the internet, you know, the one that you know that now I'm for seeing a real deep dilemma for him, like a few years down the road and he'll be He'll be thinking does this person really like me? Or do they just like fish? Why did they keep asking me to go to the aquarium with them? I can see he is. I do believe he is. He is married, sorry everyone, Uh, and he has two children. His when he thought he was dying, his last thoughts were of his two kids. So to that other, to that other point. Yeah, I think now that he's on the other side of this encounter. Uh, he definitely is. How did you put it, Matt, He's appreciating each moment. There you go, I think. So, all right, we're gonna take another a quick break for a word from a sponsor, and then we'll be back with one more message from you. And we are back. We are jumping to an email that was sent to us by someone we're going to lovingly refer to as Nada as a Nata sock puppet. Keep this person anonymous for reasons you will very soon understand. And this message comes to us in response to our episode we made on in q tel. You remember in q tel it's the c i A, the Central Intelligence Agencies, Venture Capital Arm it's there. It's there VC Adventure time place where they invest in technology, individuals and companies that will allow them to have an edge on all of their adversaries, potential enemies and friends or freenemies as men you like to call all others that are not the nation state with which you were operating. No, no, you're right. I stand by that exactly. I think, I mean I do too. Um let's begin, says hey, guys, that just listened to the latest cast and wow, it had my bells ringing in q tel bing keyhole bing bing bing. I worked for a company called Visual Sciences. It was bought in I think sometime two thousand nine by an analytics company called Omnature and they rebranded the software as Insights. Now, if anyone else's bells are ringing by hearing those keywords, uh, stick with us. That's Matt talking. Okay, let's go back to not a sock puppet. Visual Sciences, that's a capital V Capital S was based in Herndon, Virginia, not far from Dullus Airport. It was basically an analo ex engine on steroids. It could pivot to deal with any type of data as long as it had a data type which you could create and a time stamp. I used to call it quote digital Lego because you could build it out of the box or with some smarts, make it do pretty much anything with data classification. Visual Sciences was part funded privately and co funded by in q Tel. Refer to articles attached for more detail, and there are two articles attached which we will get into. I have joined midway through an expansion phase as they sought new markets in the UK and Nada. You continue by saying, without getting too far into the tech, you could ingest a huge amount of data quickly think eBay sized data sets. They were a client, and then in that data you've loaded, get to a single record or group of records in a matter of seconds. This was done using it's very flexible ingestion algorithms and the proprietary way it's stored and retreat data. Think no squ l instead of select law from to where, etcetera. Databases before they were a thing, it was a very flexible architecture, and the limitation was only the processing power and the IO. If you chained enough servers together, it could expand out to in by which you mean insert any number here. I built the largest civilian build for a British broadcasting company that is not the BBC, and that was about twenty two servers. Think about how much computing that is pre Cloud says, not that this was unheard of. And then I think that's Sky or Panama. What do you think that is? It's got to be Sky, right, I mean I would suspect, But so he says, what is so interesting about visual sciences? Think about a lot of data processed quickly, data retrieval down to a single record, very quickly, data such as web browsing behavior. Sure, and he's got up here, phone calls, he says, So this this makes it much more easy to track and co relate people. You can see why Intel would in q tel rather would be into this because visual sciences could group and create dimensions and display them graphically in tables, graphs, charts, whatever, and geo locations on maps. Mm hmm, exactly what we were talking about. We kind of just briefly mentioned it. The whole Google Earth creation thing on that episode about in Q tell so we're getting some confirmation here, not confirmation. We had a confirmation. We're getting uh inner workings in details, right, we got some backup. Thanks, Here comes the cavalry. The cavalry is not all and my drawer just opened on its own. So n s A. If you're into opening drawers remotely, now I I see you. It's a poulter Geist situation where Ben well, hey Poltergeist. N s A, what's the difference, Let's continue on. Nada continues and says we could map and overlay data to locations with resolutions. We could not believe. This is all before Google Maps could do this, and I think VS was possibly the first app to link with keyhole geolocation and imaging data before Google Earth. We used to joke in the house that the maps were straight from the satellite and we would get data refreshes. Often when I would show the software to clients, we would get wow so on the geo piece, and we get questions about where we got these map meshes. Don't forget. Nada adds this stuff was not available to most people at this point in time. I would reply with some theater and say the c I A if people question this, and then we would mention in q TEL And it was actually a great selling point. We needed it because this software, Nada says, was I watering lee expensive. So okay, you can see that it asked the far rearous applications. But was it used by the US government dramatic pause, yes, he says, I was there to continue for two weeks, I would get in a car and drive with two colleagues to Fort Meat in Maryland. Guess the agency. We were not allowed any devices and would digitally disappear for a few hours. We would go into a room with white boards, etcetera. Several agency employees would do a round robin of asking us questions around configuration and sometimes specific questions on sorting algorithms. At no time where we allowed to see the software or the data, so these questions were all hypothetical. It was ridiculous. At one point we asked for a laptop so we could load up code or expressions to help show them examples to assist in answering the questions. We were never allowed to take the USB keys away with us. We had I think five meetings until the geeks at the agency. I love that had enough data to run with and we never got asked back to my knowledge. And there's more here in this message, but we are not going to read this full thing. But I'm not a sock puppet does sign off with uh, giving us some information with the statement, this is to prove I'm not a sock puppet. That's why we called you that. UM So we can confirm anonymously that this is indeed not a sock puppet. UM So, guys, there are these links that this person sent to us that I think are worth our time. It's really just backing up Visual Sciences what it was and that it was associated with in q tel and what it could do. UM, really really cool stuff in here. I'm why don't we just let people know where they can read this stuff. Maybe that's one of the easiest ways for you to to be armed with the information as well. On i q T dot org, which is a website we mentioned on that in q TEL episode, you can find an article Visual Sciences announces strategic investment and licensing agreement with in q Tel. It's from two thousand four. You can find it. There's another one from the Washington Post. It is titled in q TEL that's I N dash Q dash t e L CIA's venture arm invests in Secrets, and that is from August two thousand five. Yeah, this is a this is a legitimate, real story, and people affiliated with Visual Sciences and in q TEL are on public record talking about how great they thought it was. This was a win win for a lot of people. You know. Yep. Oh, there's a lot of great quotes in this article. Unfortunately we don't have time to go into all of it today, but read these articles on your own and you will see exactly what our listener sent to us and was talking about. Yeah, oh, can we do one quote, Matt, This's just this one quote I really like. Okay, So there's a guy named Buzzy, a b crown guard who was the CIA's at one time. He was the CIA's number three official, and he was also a former investment banker. Because, like we said, once you get to the top of some structures, things inevitably, um, things inevitably intertwined. I think it was Flannery O'Connor who said all things arise must converge or something like that. Uh. Sorry, Flannery I'm paraphrasing you, but here's a verbatim quote from Proton Guard about about this, about this relationship. On a scale from one to ten, he says I would give it an eleven, referring to in q tel and then he adds in like just like a little hint of pettiness. He says, it's done so well that even Congress is taking credit for it. Okay, okay, I see you, buzzy. I mean that's a buzzies of investment banker for the seehi A what a life he must lead? Weird? What a position, my god? Ah well, okay, we again we recommend you read that stuff. I just want to say thank you so much person who wrote to us with all of that information. I don't know, man, I could read stories about people who have done cool, weird, sometimes dangerous things all day long. And uh, we hope you enjoy listening to them as much as we enjoy reading them and hearing from you. So again, thank you so much, and thank you to everybody who wrote in absolutely and if you would like to take a page from their book, we would also love to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, Instagram were Conspiracy Stuff Were Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also see us on YouTube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff. It's a it's a wild ride. We've got a lot of videos from the very early days, and honestly, I'm surprised how many of them have held up, which is, you know, is strange to think about in these in these times, we really did hide a bunch of stuff in those videos. Been we have hidden. Yeah, you hit some things in there that I haven't found yet. So so if you like, if you're a fan of badger bags and rabbit holes, that's that's the YouTube channel for you. If you're saying, you know, guys, the topics you delved into around surveillance and big data have me just terrified. I've ever been on social media. Uh, then, never fear. There are other ways you can contact us. One of our favorite is our official phone number. That's right, three std w y t K is the number to call. Leave a message of the sound of Ben's delightful voice, um, and you will have three minutes to tell us a story. Make it good and you might end up with one of these listener mail episodes. Yes for or and you might say, wait, You guys were just talking about A T and T and there direct connects with D N s A. You know, it's fine, why would I call you? Well, hey, we understand. You don't have to call us. There are so many different rituals you can do to you know, either summon us or you know, visit us in a non corporeal fashion. Um. 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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 the time of the week again where we are fortunate enough to share with you our fellow conspiracy realist letters from the best part of this show, your fellow listeners. Today's adventures are going to take us into some shady government activities, some astonishing real life adventures on the high seas, and they're going to take us to a hole, a very big hole. The name of it is. It's literally called the Big Hole. It is uh to too kind, too kind, met um. We are always the whole crew over here at stuff they want you to know. Is always fascinated with the hidden aspects of of the world. And if you live in a city of any size, as we've discussed in the past. There are most certainly places that the average person doesn't know about seemingly innocuous buildings. Uh we We did a whole series on these in New York for a previous live tour. This was in response to our Restricted Zones episode, Would you guys like like to go there? This this story is a little close to home for us. Take me to the zone, Ben, take me to the whole. Let's let's go. We're gonna do it with some help from our pals. Thomas T. Thomas, you wrote the following, Hey guys, longtime listener, Love the content. I know you all have covered bunkers before, but not sure if you have ever covered the Big Hole in in c North Carolina. It's an a T and T facility built in the sixties that sounds kind of familiar already, right, guys in a in a rural area outside of Chapel Hill. It is supposedly, according to Thomas, thirteen stories deep, with blast proof ceilings, floors coated and copper across two hundred acres with fencing, guardgate, vehicle barriers. All the hits originally constructed as part of the government's plan for communication continuity post nuclear slash e p M blast via the Auto Vaughan switching network. Thomas goes on to say, there are multiple sites such as this went throughout the US. I just happened to be from the general area and clearly have an affinity for all things strange. And Thomas goes on to say it's possible that technology made this communication opsleete, But he also asked, what about the rise in hacking and cyber warfare events lately? Is that why the facility is still being kept up? Or are these sites just used a house, expensive communication equipment, all the toilet paper we couldn't find during COVID, or they used as high level government fallout shelters? Is there something more sinister? And that nold. This is where Thomas points out something I thought it was fascinating. The site was apparently shut down or shuttered mothballed in two thousand eight, but right before it, right before it shut down, the rumor has it that the facility had a sixty one million dollar upgrade right before it was closed. Sketchy. That's sketchy. Yeah, what's up with that? Yeah? I'd love to know if if it's just been shuttered, it's still government land. How they doubt anyone can just you know, stroll around and take a gander at it. But how much sixty four million, sixty one million, six sixty million dollars dumped it into the big hole. It's just a safe now, that's what it is. And Thomas, you would ask us to take a deep dive on this and related facilities, and they're very well could be a very deep rabbit hole here, even more than thirteen stories deep. Because what this is is something known as a project office. And remember, folks, it's the position of our show that if you find a government agency that has a really innocuous name, the odds of them being up to something are higher than normal. You know what I mean, Like the more innocuous the name sketch. It's the same with government operations too, right, like operations Sunshine Picnic Party that is probably some sinister shoot, like Operation Fresh Pies and Fuzzy Hugs is all about stealing eyeballs, Operation freshly cut Grass. Yes, we should just make a list, will accidentally, well, will accidentally stumble across the reel when I'm sure, I'm certain so. A project office is uh, it's kind of an umbrella term for these facilities that were made by eight T and T in the middle of the twentieth century to house these ongoing secret projects in collaboration with the government. They're not necessarily bad things, but there are a lot more out there than a lot than many people are aware of. They've been building these since the nineteen sixties, and as we discussed in our episode on the Long Lines Building, whenever we mentioned it there in the middle of Manhattan, A T. T is never are officially said what they do in in these facilities. They have vague They have vague descriptions like I kid you not one of their descriptions. Uh. If you ask them, hey, what's the project office, then they'll say, oh, those are central facilities. What does that mean? And then find prentices mind your own beeswax, you know, yes, just so yeah. The so, the one that Thomas is talking about specifically is a project office located in North Carolina, just eleven miles south of Chapel Hill, and a lot of people in North Carolina, apparently, according to the story, don't even know this exists. If you can see, uh, some aerial photographs of the building. Let me send these two you guys in the chat here you go, I'm looking at it on this website only in your state. That's one and you can get you can get like the some on the ground pictures of the churn off towards this facility. You guys, when you're looking at I'd love to hear what you think when you're looking at the overhead satellite images. What do you see? Does it does it seem suspicious or does it just seem like any other place? This is what I see. A ton of trees, just forest, and then out of that forest, someone has taken a giant, god sized lawnmower and just cut an interesting little shape into that forest. And in there I see two buildings and some street operation freshly cut grass there. It is. Yeah, No, it's crazy. And it looks like a it looks like a weird plank dinner or something like the shape of it that it's cut out is very odd. I definitely. I mean, what do you think these I see? There's obviously a road and access road, like one very skinny access road leading up to it. It looks like a giant tennis court kind of actually from the area of view, Yeah, yeah, and I think that's the stude. This is one of those. This is one of those places where it feels like and this is entirely my speculation. Uh, they found a Goldilocks zone right there, able to collate and collect data that's coming from from Chapel Hill right as well as many other places. But they're far enough away that if you are driving there and the area is if it wasn't shuttered, then the guards would have more than ample time to see you coming. That's part of the design, right, the right it is it is, don't go to Area fifty one, folks. Again, I feel like we have to say this every time we bring this up. The government is legally allowed to kill you. They will typically give you a warning, but if you persist. I'm not saying they will, I'm saying they can't. And I mean they're they're supposed to shoot to wound. But you know, things happen to see you from a long, long way away, which is the whole point of bringing it up here. Yeah, and we we know this firsthand because we've got a friend of the show who actually went up to Area fifty one and didn't didn't quite he didn't violate the trespassing stuff, but he got got close to some of the signs and then he has a terrifying story of what happened afterwards, but he's fine. He made it. This kind of situation is something that you could find yourself in very easily and perhaps by accident, as unbelievable as that may seem. So people typically believe that this is it's all speculation, but people typically believe that this is a part of the n Essays mass surveillance hub. You know, um, like the A T. T Building, the Window Lists building in Manhattan has long been suspected to be the uh the HQ for something called tighten point M. So it could be it could definitely be something like that here. So the term longlines, I know when we did that that story or actually was part of a live show. I think about that Window Lists building in Manhattan, we called it the A, T and T Longlines Building, but I think longlines is more of a generic term. So like this is what they would call longlines. Hut um that's on this piece of property, and it's because it houses very sensitive data and connections, even I think, and so it needs to be blastproof, uh, in order to prevent massive communication outages. Correct, Yeah, that's part of it. It doesn't specifically have to be something military. It could just be protecting the communications structure. But you are absolutely correct. There are many more huts like this out there. And one of the one of the most interesting things about this is that it's tough to know for sure whether whether it actually is closed, you know, and it may have been, it could have been sold. We simply don't know. That's what would make sense to me if there were a massive upgrade, because it's kind of like, you know, you fix up your house before you sell it, right, so maybe something like that. I'm trying to I'm trying to air on the side of caution, but you know, and I get too carried away saying the you know, pointing out the badger in the bag here, which is that you cannot trust the government when it comes to spine. I just sort of I'm working on working on this, guys, but I always start off with the baseline like, yeah, they're doing it for spying sort of the name of the spying game. There's not a whole lot of trust between spies, you know. Um, But like this is a question for for both of you, Um, how in bed do you think a T and T and massive telecom companies like them are with the government allegedly, and I don't know if you guys recall this from that Long Lines discussion we had. Allegedly the Long Lines building is where the n S A essentially spliced into all of A T and T S traffic and then doubled it essentially, um and that was a long time ago. That's allegedly what happened, according to you know, whistle blowers. But I you would have to think because of the history of A T and T and the United States government with things like this and the Auto Vaughn network, UH, which was the Cold War thing that was supposed to maintain the continuity of government if a nuclear blast occurred, you'd think that they're working pretty closely together. And who knows how that's changed with the the n S as rise to I don't domestic surveillance power, Yes, yeah, that's that's the question. We also, you know, we just don't have a lot of visibility on this. And Thomas, you know, you're absolutely right that very few people are aware of not just the big hole, but also largely unaware of the existence of these of these facilities in general. Just to add some more conspiratorial spice to this story about whether or not this is closed down. This is kind of Shrewdinger's hole at this point. Uh. Local media at the time noted that in two thousand eight there were multiple convoys of trucks that were moving stuff away from the site over the courses several weeks and the specifically, I'm thinking of the Charlotte Observer, which in two thousand and eight released a piece called Mysterious Cold War Bunker closes. And this is where you get a little bit of a glimpse into the local speculation about US, because people, you know, locals knew about this, and they were saying, well, I bet it's missiles, and then of course as someone saying I bet it's UFOs and other people who are just saying, I don't know what's going on in there. Uh, but as a citizen of the US, I'm sure paying for part of it. This this bunker, I mean, I don't know, man, I feel like it's necessary. But also, guys, it feels like if you spend that much money building something like this, are you really just gonna abandon it? No? No, you're not. You you honestly aren't, especially because of what it can do or what it was designed to do, according to War History Online. Who knows how reliable the information is here, but according to this site, these bunkers were created for that auto van system, the automated Voice network automatic voice network system, which was installed in the sixties. Uh. And there were hubs all over the place across the United States and these specific places allegedly. I don't have this information, uh air tight, but allegedly these bunkers were the primary hubs for this system. Again, in the case that the Soviet Union or another power is able to detonate a nuke in Washington or one of the other you know, central areas of power within the United States, these things would continue communications via all these hubs, these other hubs, And I don't see why you would shut that off. Man, can imagine shutting down real life bat phones they were even, Yes, I mean, it really is an emergency system, and I can't imagine completely shutting it down unless there's a and there probably is a fully, fully functional, much better system that costs less money from a facility standpoint. But isn't there though, I mean, these were all built pre fiber optics, right, so this would have been like what's called trunking technology or or like these massive bundles of these interconnected networks of between switchboards essentially, and so I mean there is a better technology, right well, yeah, but if you've already got the land, you've already got you know, a secure as hell facility like this underground like it says, a skyscraper just pointed down. Um, I don't know, it feels like you could make use of that space. It's not for the original intended purpose brands, but it's also didn't we talk about how like wouldn't exects be they would go there and the event of some sort of nuclear fallout and there was like ping pong and stuff, you know, like they had like like amenities in the Long Lanes building in Manhattan, Manhattan. Anyway, Yeah, there were there. That's another important aspect because what we know about these facilities does seem to indicate the possibility of housing people in emergency situations. And we know that the US government does have federally funded facilities of that nature for you know, members of Congress and so on, because they need to ensure the continuity of government if bombs start falling, which of course we hope never happens. I want to point out though, Matt and know you're you're onto something here, because in the ninety nineties the US government did switch from autovon to something called the Defense Switched Network, which I believe is still in use today, and so it's it's completely possible that when otto Von went out of Vogue that the that there was a decision made just to shut it down. And this is something we can explore in depth in the future. But just to wrap this up, I want to let everybody in North Carolina know that Thomas story is completely true as far as we can tell. Thank you for usnow, Thomas. And the building is creepy because if you drive up there now, you'll see the gates are still locked, the fences stand, there are cameras, but the intercom system is disconnected, and there's no one manning the guard booth. As far as we know, your mileage may vary. Stay safe out there. Let us know if there are any creepy restricted zones in your neck of the Global Woods. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and we'll return with more listener mail. And we're back with with more listener mail, and this one comes to us from Cynthia. He says, guys, love your show. I thought this was an interesting piece of news. Not really sure if it's show worthy, but you guys seem like you would get a kick out of it. Uh. And Cynthia, You're absolutely right. This is already on our radar. We even mentioned it, I think in the last Strange News episode at the top, just as a t is um, but didn't get into it. So here we go. I have had the song my Name is Jonas stuck in my head all day. My kid. Recently it's got into Weezer um and she bought the right album, the Blue and the Blue one. She's been getting collecting vinyl. But we've been rocking that out the house and I just can't get out of my head. And that is appropriate? Is it Jonas or Jonah's Jonas? I think, um? But this story is about a real life Jonah and the whale or I think uh. In the Bible, um, it is referred to more as a very large fish. But that may have just been you know, the practical knowledge of the time. They don't really know what to call it. That's kind of what a whale is it's a really large fish, doesn't have gills though it has to surface to breathe um, but it has massive lung capacity. And today we're talking about a humpback whale, which I believe can be upwards of fifty feet long um and way, you know, thousands and thousands of pounds, several tons if I'm not mistaken, and a unfore yet incredibly lucky lobster diver Um in Provincetown, Massachusetts is barely a really beautiful, lovely spot to to visit. I would like to check it out one day. I was doing what he does every day. It has been for a long time, the guys, like I think in his mid fifties diving for lobsters. And I guess there's a couple of ways to catch lobsters. One is with those crazy traps that you see, the boxy ones, and then another one is just to dive down and literally just grab them with your hands um from the bottom of the of the of the ocean um in you know, shallower areas off the coast um. And he was doing that. Well, you're diving, so it's not like super shallow. And also it wouldn't it couldn't be super shallow because he had a very fortuitous encounter with a humpback whale uh, in that he was swallowed by one and ended up in the mouth of this whale. It wasn't a full Pinocchio situation where you know, he ended up literally in the belly of the way. Uh. And then like I think you lit a candle or something and made the whale sneeze and that's how he got out. Um. He was just in the whale's mouth, which while massive would would would still be you know, it wouldn't be like he could like walk around, you know. He was definitely he said he felt something forced his legs together and then all of a sudden it was plunged into darkness. Um. I can't imagine. I think I've mentioned on the show before specifically, I think in our sleep paralysis episode or when we were talking about like nightmare people. I have a recurring dream often where I find myself out in the middle of the ocean and there's like some massive presence, you know that I can't see. The idea of unseen you know, monsters like under the water, just another surface really freaks me out. Um. But it turns out that whales are actually pretty chill. You know, sharks are predators obviously, and they seek out prey. They often mistake or they can mistake humans, especially like I think paddling and canoes or kayaks for example, as uh, turtles, sea turtles, and so they'll they'll come at you. But typically sharks, I don't think, unless they're provoked, won't just come at you out of nowhere unless they do mistake you for their natural prey. But um, whales will actually avoid humans. They'll actually you know, out maneuver humans or or try to maneuver so they don't encounter them, so they don't run into them. Um. So the you know, the idea here is that this whale made a mistake. This whale did a did a bit of an oopsy because the way whales feed is they just like shoot through the water with their massive, unhinged jaw just kind of sucking up everything in its path. So it's like you know, krill and you know, tiny squid and small fish and plankton and things like that. They don't eat like large sea creatures at all. It's all just like tons and tons and tons of these smaller sea creatures. They can just kind of just gobble up or really it's just like this massive intake of water and then that's that's how to eat. And dude just kind of what's in the exact wrong place at the wrong time and got caught up in that very thing. I wonder, you know, I had a song stuck him ahead after this news broke, and I wonder if he's heard the Mariners Revenge by the Decembrist. I bet he supervibes to that song. Now, isn't this sort of a moby dick asks story very much? It's literally about being It's a revenge story on the high seas where where in the protagonists and spoilers the villain are both eventually swallowed by a whale. It's a it's a long song. It's not like radio friendly, but it's a it's a blast if you if you get a chance to check it out. This. You know what amazes me about this story, Nol, is that what what we're seeing here feels like an an accident, right because, as you said, the humpback whale essentially vacuums through the sea in search of krill. Uh. But another point, if like we should make about sharks in general is sharks don't want to eat you. Actually, a lot of animals don't want to eat people. Were super inconvenient. We probably don't taste that great. And and uh, as dangerous as shark attacks can be, I always think it's it's worth noting that for the shark, it's like you're walking in a grocery store and you see a free sample of something and you take a bite of it and then you go gross like like that's the most shark attacks I think are like one bite, right. Well, and again, the life of a whale it's I mean it seems, at least in terms of like their culinary you know, life, uh, kind of dull. It's like that. Do you think they even taste their food? I mean, they're just kind of like inhaling it. You guys, I'm on a you dot whales dot org. And I know we're talking about bailey in whales, right, the ones that don't have teeth, not the tooth whales. We're talking about the sifters. They're like practically filter feeders, right, isn't that essentially what they're doing? Yeah, I mean it's really interesting and honestly, I I've learned a little bit about them over over the last four years, just because of my son's interest in whales. But there are you know, there's well and just all creatures, right, creatures on Earth are fascinating and for a little kid, it's and it's incredible to learn about all these different things that are real and not just these made up monsters. But but in this case, the bailey whales, like right whales, humpbacks, fin fin whales, gray whales, they all do kind of different things. But exactly what you're talking about their all um, it's like it depends on if they filter it at the mouth level, at the stomach level, or the plate level, which is kind of like if you just imagine it's their filters where the water gets pushed out and all the little creatures get caught in. Uh, fascinating stuff learn about whales today. There's a there's a new documentary about whales on his Knee Plus. I think, um it was I think they own not Discovery, but National Geographic as well, or it's it's there's a section for National Geographic stuff on Disney Plus. But um, really interesting and terrifying, but also at the same time, like I said, they are gentle giants of the ocean or whatever. Yeah, so so this humpback whale, which based on their intelligence, probably does have a name for itself in terms of like how it communicates their intelligence is fascinating. But this humpback whale definitely gentle giant. But our unfortunate Jonah here was very, very lucky because the creature could have easily accidentally grievously injured or killed him. Because it's tongue alone weighs four tons. Jesus Christ, Yeah, what's the total weight for for one of these fellas? They're about fifty ft long, like I was saying, and I said tons. I was very vague, but god, I had no idea how the tongue alone was tons for he tongues about her thirty six metric tons. They're they're big boys. That's on an interview with that guy that he said that he thinks that actually was like a younger whale that didn't quite know how to feed correctly. Yet it was a little bit smaller. So that could also explain why this young like he said he thought it was about a teenager, and which is like sort of like swimming around with his mouth up and like still learning how to feed. And then I was like, oh, there's a person in my mouth. You're absolutely right, alexis uh. And that is a really good point because this little fella, relatively speaking, UM might have not really known quite what he was doing, and it was a little bit less experienced in in uh and and feeding UM. And it would have accounted for the fact that maybe like a larger whale of the mouth would have been he may have been like digested, you know, he could have actually gotten sucked down into the actual belly. But if it's a smaller whale, because he could feel the pressure of the mouth, and I'm picturing you know, uh forty ton creature or that mouth is probably gonna be much bigger than a human because you know, you've seen um images where you have the whale and then a you know scale for for scale purposes, like the diver, you know, a little little infographics and uh, I feel like he would have not felt the pressure of the mouth with a larger whale, but he did UM. And then he apparently the whale dove and then realized something was wrong, like, oh, what is this Like it's just like getting like a popcorn. Colonel stuck in your teeth, only like way more extreme. And so then the whale surfaced and or at least started going up and expelled the guy from his mouth, and he saw the light and was rescued by someone who saw the whole thing go down. Um. They he said he thought his legs were broken. Um. The diver um whose name, by the way, I don't think we mentioned. His name is Josiah, very close to Jonah Mayo. Um. He said he thought his legs were broken. And then his buddy, who was a fellow diver, was worried that he may have gotten an embolism from surfacing too quickly, because that's the thing that can happen, is that the ben's it's some kind of form of the bends or it's more extreme where you get if you surface too quickly, Uh, the pressure doesn't have a chance to even out correctly, and it can cause a brain embolism, or at the very least that sensation UH called the bens um. But he was fine. He got rushed to the hospital. He didn't have any grievous injuries, like he said, Ben, he had some real bad bruising around his legs, and I think he dislocated his knee, but um he did. He did an a m a on Reddit like the guy's fine, and there's a really adorable picture of him in the hospital given the thumbs up. Yeah, he looks like a happy camper man. I I think I would be. I don't know. I want to wonder what you guys think. I think this would be obviously highly traumatic for anybody, but uh, I think it might break me psychically. I think it literally might break my brain. But also then the relief of not being dead, because he literally, you know, thought he was going to die. Uh and he said the first thing he thought of were his son's um, but you and die. So do you think the not dying thing would kind of like trump the the traumatic the traumatic nature of the whole experience. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, because he because he made it through the fire in this case, he may made it through the whale. Uh, just just the front part luckily. But I think it would be to a degree in empowering. Um. Also, also another way in which he was lucky is that, uh, this was a humpback whale and not a toothed whale like a sperm whale, which a sperm whale according to experts is the only whale that would be likely capable of actually swallowing a human being and you would have an unpleasant death in its series of stomachs. But there is no documented case of this happening. There are other cases of people getting getting in a whale's mouth to the irritation of both the whale and the human and then and then emerging surviving. So I would say, you know, probably case by case basis, but I would say this would feel empowering to look out on the ocean and be like, ha I got away, did you? Guys already mentioned his two thousand one encounter with another crazy experience, So according to a reddit a thread and asked me anything that he did, he says that in two thousand one he survived a plane crash, like, actually survived a deadly plane crash, and the same whale was on the plane. My thought is, if he survived that, that's when you have that kind of moment where you're like, you know what, every moment counts? Where we got this? Then to survive the whale, I don't know. This guy should probably become a superhero. Uh right, isn't that what should happen? Yeah, at least by a lottery ticket at the very least, you know. Oh, apparently the nurse came up to him and asked him for his lottery numbers, like like she had like a pen and paper. Now that that was the thing, he said on the A M A. The nurse came up, and everyone wanted to talk to him, of course, like what a story, good lord, Like, what a story? And you're right to have to have also survived a plane crash like that when one of their little detail the water or off the coast of Cape Cod, which is where he was um or very murky to the whale, likely wouldn't have seen him. And when the whales feed and they unhinged their jaws like that, they can't see anything because their giant mouths are in the way. Uh So, kind of a perfect storm of of circumstances that led to a harrowing encounter with nature that ultimately is just gonna be a great story to tell at parties and to borrow. Something that the dudes on Weekly Weird News said about the story, A he probably will never have to buy a drink again. Ever, you're the whale guy whoa let me get you a beer? His tender dates are going to be riveted. I would put that in his like profile, like right there, the whale guy from the internet, you know, the one that you know that now I'm for seeing a real deep dilemma for him, like a few years down the road and he'll be He'll be thinking does this person really like me? Or do they just like fish? Why did they keep asking me to go to the aquarium with them? I can see he is. I do believe he is. He is married, sorry everyone, Uh, and he has two children. His when he thought he was dying, his last thoughts were of his two kids. So to that other, to that other point. Yeah, I think now that he's on the other side of this encounter. Uh, he definitely is. How did you put it, Matt, He's appreciating each moment. There you go, I think. So, all right, we're gonna take another a quick break for a word from a sponsor, and then we'll be back with one more message from you. And we are back. We are jumping to an email that was sent to us by someone we're going to lovingly refer to as Nada as a Nata sock puppet. Keep this person anonymous for reasons you will very soon understand. And this message comes to us in response to our episode we made on in q tel. You remember in q tel it's the c i A, the Central Intelligence Agencies, Venture Capital Arm it's there. It's there VC Adventure time place where they invest in technology, individuals and companies that will allow them to have an edge on all of their adversaries, potential enemies and friends or freenemies as men you like to call all others that are not the nation state with which you were operating. No, no, you're right. I stand by that exactly. I think, I mean I do too. Um let's begin, says hey, guys, that just listened to the latest cast and wow, it had my bells ringing in q tel bing keyhole bing bing bing. I worked for a company called Visual Sciences. It was bought in I think sometime two thousand nine by an analytics company called Omnature and they rebranded the software as Insights. Now, if anyone else's bells are ringing by hearing those keywords, uh, stick with us. That's Matt talking. Okay, let's go back to not a sock puppet. Visual Sciences, that's a capital V Capital S was based in Herndon, Virginia, not far from Dullus Airport. It was basically an analo ex engine on steroids. It could pivot to deal with any type of data as long as it had a data type which you could create and a time stamp. I used to call it quote digital Lego because you could build it out of the box or with some smarts, make it do pretty much anything with data classification. Visual Sciences was part funded privately and co funded by in q Tel. Refer to articles attached for more detail, and there are two articles attached which we will get into. I have joined midway through an expansion phase as they sought new markets in the UK and Nada. You continue by saying, without getting too far into the tech, you could ingest a huge amount of data quickly think eBay sized data sets. They were a client, and then in that data you've loaded, get to a single record or group of records in a matter of seconds. This was done using it's very flexible ingestion algorithms and the proprietary way it's stored and retreat data. Think no squ l instead of select law from to where, etcetera. Databases before they were a thing, it was a very flexible architecture, and the limitation was only the processing power and the IO. If you chained enough servers together, it could expand out to in by which you mean insert any number here. I built the largest civilian build for a British broadcasting company that is not the BBC, and that was about twenty two servers. Think about how much computing that is pre Cloud says, not that this was unheard of. And then I think that's Sky or Panama. What do you think that is? It's got to be Sky, right, I mean I would suspect, But so he says, what is so interesting about visual sciences? Think about a lot of data processed quickly, data retrieval down to a single record, very quickly, data such as web browsing behavior. Sure, and he's got up here, phone calls, he says, So this this makes it much more easy to track and co relate people. You can see why Intel would in q tel rather would be into this because visual sciences could group and create dimensions and display them graphically in tables, graphs, charts, whatever, and geo locations on maps. Mm hmm, exactly what we were talking about. We kind of just briefly mentioned it. The whole Google Earth creation thing on that episode about in Q tell so we're getting some confirmation here, not confirmation. We had a confirmation. We're getting uh inner workings in details, right, we got some backup. Thanks, Here comes the cavalry. The cavalry is not all and my drawer just opened on its own. So n s A. If you're into opening drawers remotely, now I I see you. It's a poulter Geist situation where Ben well, hey Poltergeist. N s A, what's the difference, Let's continue on. Nada continues and says we could map and overlay data to locations with resolutions. We could not believe. This is all before Google Maps could do this, and I think VS was possibly the first app to link with keyhole geolocation and imaging data before Google Earth. We used to joke in the house that the maps were straight from the satellite and we would get data refreshes. Often when I would show the software to clients, we would get wow so on the geo piece, and we get questions about where we got these map meshes. Don't forget. Nada adds this stuff was not available to most people at this point in time. I would reply with some theater and say the c I A if people question this, and then we would mention in q TEL And it was actually a great selling point. We needed it because this software, Nada says, was I watering lee expensive. So okay, you can see that it asked the far rearous applications. But was it used by the US government dramatic pause, yes, he says, I was there to continue for two weeks, I would get in a car and drive with two colleagues to Fort Meat in Maryland. Guess the agency. We were not allowed any devices and would digitally disappear for a few hours. We would go into a room with white boards, etcetera. Several agency employees would do a round robin of asking us questions around configuration and sometimes specific questions on sorting algorithms. At no time where we allowed to see the software or the data, so these questions were all hypothetical. It was ridiculous. At one point we asked for a laptop so we could load up code or expressions to help show them examples to assist in answering the questions. We were never allowed to take the USB keys away with us. We had I think five meetings until the geeks at the agency. I love that had enough data to run with and we never got asked back to my knowledge. And there's more here in this message, but we are not going to read this full thing. But I'm not a sock puppet does sign off with uh, giving us some information with the statement, this is to prove I'm not a sock puppet. That's why we called you that. UM So we can confirm anonymously that this is indeed not a sock puppet. UM So, guys, there are these links that this person sent to us that I think are worth our time. It's really just backing up Visual Sciences what it was and that it was associated with in q tel and what it could do. UM, really really cool stuff in here. I'm why don't we just let people know where they can read this stuff. Maybe that's one of the easiest ways for you to to be armed with the information as well. On i q T dot org, which is a website we mentioned on that in q TEL episode, you can find an article Visual Sciences announces strategic investment and licensing agreement with in q Tel. It's from two thousand four. You can find it. There's another one from the Washington Post. It is titled in q TEL that's I N dash Q dash t e L CIA's venture arm invests in Secrets, and that is from August two thousand five. Yeah, this is a this is a legitimate, real story, and people affiliated with Visual Sciences and in q TEL are on public record talking about how great they thought it was. This was a win win for a lot of people. You know. Yep. Oh, there's a lot of great quotes in this article. Unfortunately we don't have time to go into all of it today, but read these articles on your own and you will see exactly what our listener sent to us and was talking about. Yeah, oh, can we do one quote, Matt, This's just this one quote I really like. Okay, So there's a guy named Buzzy, a b crown guard who was the CIA's at one time. He was the CIA's number three official, and he was also a former investment banker. Because, like we said, once you get to the top of some structures, things inevitably, um, things inevitably intertwined. I think it was Flannery O'Connor who said all things arise must converge or something like that. Uh. Sorry, Flannery I'm paraphrasing you, but here's a verbatim quote from Proton Guard about about this, about this relationship. On a scale from one to ten, he says I would give it an eleven, referring to in q tel and then he adds in like just like a little hint of pettiness. He says, it's done so well that even Congress is taking credit for it. Okay, okay, I see you, buzzy. I mean that's a buzzies of investment banker for the seehi A what a life he must lead? Weird? What a position, my god? Ah well, okay, we again we recommend you read that stuff. I just want to say thank you so much person who wrote to us with all of that information. I don't know, man, I could read stories about people who have done cool, weird, sometimes dangerous things all day long. And uh, we hope you enjoy listening to them as much as we enjoy reading them and hearing from you. So again, thank you so much, and thank you to everybody who wrote in absolutely and if you would like to take a page from their book, we would also love to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, Instagram were Conspiracy Stuff Were Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also see us on YouTube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff. It's a it's a wild ride. We've got a lot of videos from the very early days, and honestly, I'm surprised how many of them have held up, which is, you know, is strange to think about in these in these times, we really did hide a bunch of stuff in those videos. Been we have hidden. Yeah, you hit some things in there that I haven't found yet. So so if you like, if you're a fan of badger bags and rabbit holes, that's that's the YouTube channel for you. If you're saying, you know, guys, the topics you delved into around surveillance and big data have me just terrified. I've ever been on social media. Uh, then, never fear. There are other ways you can contact us. One of our favorite is our official phone number. That's right, three std w y t K is the number to call. Leave a message of the sound of Ben's delightful voice, um, and you will have three minutes to tell us a story. Make it good and you might end up with one of these listener mail episodes. Yes for or and you might say, wait, You guys were just talking about A T and T and there direct connects with D N s A. You know, it's fine, why would I call you? Well, hey, we understand. You don't have to call us. There are so many different rituals you can do to you know, either summon us or you know, visit us in a non corporeal fashion. Um. 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