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 Noll. They call me Ben. We are 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 stuff they don't want you to know the show where it's always kind of Halloween, just making that up. Uh, this is our listener mail segment for the week, and uh we have gosh, like the center Bites says in hell Raiser, we have such wonders to show you or to tell you about. Uh, we're going through history. We're running into some curses, were into the future of troubling problems with privacy. Frankly, Uh, I don't know where best to begin. Would it be? Would it be okay if I took a swing first with this ancient history stuff? Have had it? Have had it? My good man. Alright, we're doing this with the help from our fellow conspiracy realist, Evan. Evan writes to us and says hello, I'm wondering if you have done an episode on the burning of the Library of Alexandria. It's a fascinating topics, says Evan, and has been said to send civilization hundreds of years back. Uh, set civilization hundreds of years back. It's a common misbelief that it was all of a sudden burned, as I believe it was actually becoming very unpopular over centuries and then it was accidentally burned. Would society be at a different place today if it had still been kept intact? Are there any rumors of important documents that would have changed society today? Why didn't they just save all the physical copies as PDF files? Evan? So Evan says, all joking aside, I believe there are many avenues to explore with this topic, and if it has not already been an episode, it would make for a great show. I agree. I think that's that's a fantastic point, because the Library of Alexandria is one of those big historical what ifs. You know, we all we're all vaguely aware of it. We've we've heard of this. Uh. We know that human society in general has a bad, bad habit with when it comes to book burning, in this case scroll burning. But I don't think a lot of us know the I think in the modern day, like a lot of us are not aware of how the decline of the Great Library actually worked, you know what I mean. Like picturing Library of Alexandria, it kind of reminds me the exploration we did on a rom the City of Pillars, right, which was mythological city, but we found the real thing and it it turns out that maybe it just looked more impressive back then because the people who finally happened upon it were often starving to death and you know, lost members of their caravan along the way. So maybe the library, uh, if we saw it in the modern day, maybe it wouldn't have been as impressive as it was the people of the time. But it is an interesting question. I don't know, what do you all think? So do you think it would have changed history? I don't know. It's like I mean, I guess we it's hard to know. Do we have a sense of what what we're missing or is it just like it's just poof gone. We don't even have any indication of what might have been in the well Okay, we know a couple of things about Alexandria of the time and what the library really was, right, Um, the first thing you need to know is that gosh, I mean it was Tell me if I'm wrong on this bend. My understanding is that it was Alexander the Great that founded this. Um, well, I founded Alexandria at least, and that was way back in the day three thirty one BC I believe BC. Um. And then from there it became this big essentially a harbor town, like a trade A big part of the trade routes alex area itself in Egypt. And one of the big things that they did in Alexandria was create papyrus specifically for writing purposes. And you know, you can imagine if you're at the hub of or if you're the you are the creator of most of the paper or something, you would be also interested in keeping around the things that are put onto paper, generally words which become books, sometimes pictures, um or both which is the best kind pictures and words. I agreed, My friends agreed, But I mean, we would like a modern day equivalent of this being something like the Library of Congress, Like it's meant to you know, how is all of these really crucial cultural documents of import that would be, you know, a legacy type thing, or was it just a really awesome library that just had like fantastically curated materials. Yeah, I can feel some of these. So the the library itself had a an agglomeration of a ton of different things. But to me, one of the most fascinating parts of this is that the experts right now, if you ask them, if you put them to the sword and said, tell me how many scrolls, I mean, how many things documents were in the library, then their best guess is somewhere between forty thousand to four hundred thousand. And the reason that's roughly you'll see people say that's roughly the equivalent to a hundred thousand books. For reference, the Library of Congress has more than thirty nine million books that are cataloged. The problem is, we know the founding of the Library of Congress. We have a factual history of how that institution came to be. But if we look at something as ancient as the Library of Alexandria, uh, it's like finding the origins of dynasties in ancient China. You know, we get into the world of legend very quickly. We know it wasn't the first library of its kind, but it's their their mythic elements to the origin story, absolutely, And just before we jump into some of those, the big fact in my mind and answer to your question, well, is that think about we we can't even imagine it. Think about the time of three hundred four b c e. Just the number of writings of knowledge, of of recorded histories of sciences that were being developed, and I mean really anything. It wasn't It's not like you could just go somewhere and grab a book, right. You couldn't order one online. You can't go to a bookstore down the road, because people don't just have giant stores of books and paprietor scrolls anywhere where you can pick up and learn what you want to learn. Libraries like the one in Alexandria and in a few other places across the world at the time, that was it, man. That is the knowledge base essentially, right, And if you're going to make copies or something, you you know, you needed to have the source material and you can only go to a couple of places to get it. Yeah, they had a they had a huge operation for this. The the government funded UH purchase of books or purchase of scrolls and documents, and they sent out government agents too, with tons scads of cash UH to try to find any and every text that they could get their hands on because they wanted They were nothing if not ambitious. They wanted this to be the number one repository of all human knowledge, and that's why they were trying to archive things as well as collecting them. They wanted the oldest possible stuff. So if they had like five leads on different translations of something, they would they would one all five, but they would definitely go for the oldest first. So in answer that question, that means that we can we can surmise that we're religious text because remember religion and science are very you know, fingers. On the same hand here this time, they would also want biographies. They would want things that appeared to be descriptions of the natural world, myths. UH. Poetry was really big. That's back when people cared about poetry still. And because of this, they would also host specialist you would go get a job at the library, which is which is no small feat because we also have to remember that literacy was considered a weapon. In many parts of the world at this time. There are people who are not allowed to be literate because it was seen as a threat to the status quo. Uh. There is a rumor that there may have even been they may have even started keeping live animals there, like exotic animals as a again, a repository. You know, I've never heard I had never heard that. That's amazing. So like, you go, I love the idea of you're going to uh, the wing of the building where where you're looking through alphabetized things, let's just call it g and you're like, okay, geography and there's a giraffe. Okay, like the draft being between the books and geometry over here. So yeah, there's a big draphing between just hanging out on the bookshelf, between the bookshelves. But to the question about how how was this destroyed, you're right, Evan, it appears that it went through a period of decline before before it met it's uh, it's death knell. We know that it was accidentally burned by Julius Caesar around forty eight b c E. But we don't know how much of it was completely destroyed, how much could have been salvaged or rebuilt shortly after in a recovery phase. We know that it dwindled. Public support and funding were being pulled around two sixty CE or yeah, the mid to sixty C membership at the library stopped being an option, and then over the course of rebellions, counter attacks, domestic unrest, sometime between two seventy and two seventies C. E experts believe whatever remained of the library was destroyed. But it wasn't like some equivalent of a terrorist came to an existing successful institution and then burned it to the ground. It just kind of ended with a whimper instead of a bank. Well, okay, so that's really interesting. I had read elsewhere, I think, I mean, it's not the best source. It was medium dot com, but and I couldn't find the sourcing for it. But the impression of this writer was that you're exactly what you're saying is correct about the first time it accidentally burned in in in that time frame. But then there's this author is saying that with the decline of Egypt under Roman rule, which is what you're talking about, that's what kind of caused to have that downturn and funding and support and all of that stuff. But then Alexandria revolted against Roman control, I guess, and there was um that battle or the battles that then ensued after that, is what caused it to burn. I wasn't sure if you guys found anything about that. Yeah. Again, it's a little tricky because we're examining the story of something that has a partially legendary origin tale, you know what I mean. And then we have to consider the Greek game of telephone, all the intervening agendas of people who are reporting on this over the millennia. Uh. We also have to say, uh, we also have to point out that it's a weird question because it turns out that a lot of the information at the library, not everything, but a lot of the information there existed in other places, Like a minority of stuff was actually lost for good forever. It's kind of what it seemed like would be the case. That's sort of what I was getting out early on, was like, surely there were backups or you know, I mean, they would be even if hand copied. I mean, they think they would have made more than one. If these things were really you know, culturally significant, well, you know, that one of the main things I think Ben mentioned this, but one of the main things they would do at the library is make copies books and things that were coming in. It makes me think of the Game of Thrones where the citadel, you know, where the uh what are they the master's all hang out and the library is this amazing? I bet you it was that even modeled after something like that. Uh. And there's a lot of those uh scribes or the library, you know, masters or copying manuscripts by hand. Yeah. Yeah. And and just speaking of backups, there was a there was a second library that was essentially an overflow library. Um, I'm gonna pronounce it incorrectly serapium some of serapium maybe, um and it uh, it did a lot of things, but one of the major things it did was take care of the overflow from the Library of Alexandria because there was so much just going into that place. And they I'm assuming we again we don't know for sure, but I assumed that there was quite a bit of backing up of documentation that one did survive another like a hundred and twenty years after the Library of Alexandria burned at least. Yeah, and that's that's the thing. I love that you're pointing this out. Don't think of the Library of Alexandria as just a supersized version of your local library. Think of it more as a research institute. This is a place where people are translating work continually, and it's very rare that to happen with such systemic uh and successful design. The thing is, there are other libraries too that we would talk about. Maybe we should just talk about the loss of ancient libraries. Because the Library of Baghdad was sacked. Uh, there's the House of Wisdom that people might not be as aware of. Uh. It's it is an enormous loss to history. UH. But but it's a very difficult question for us to answer when we say what would the world have been like? I mean revisionists or alternative history aside. To answer that question, we would need to have a little bit better idea of what was in there that was lost the time, you know, the old chicken or the egg question or something, the papyrus or the page boom ben way to make it era appropriate. Um, this is I mean, I I started to harp on this, but it does feel like there is a parallel with the National Archives and and the Library of Congress, and just the idea that like this is a repository of all the stuff that we think is important enough to keep and tag and put a number on. But I'm sure there's digitization efforts involved now, just in case, you know, there were an attack or god forbid, uh waste paper basket fire that you know, poof took the whole thing up. They probably do have those PDFs that the listener was talking about. Oh, I hope they have a secret room in Iron Mountain. I'm sure they have like real rooms and an out in the republic knowledge. But how fun would a secret room be? A secret room in a secret mountain. This is the b site the Iron Mountain, you know, that nobody knows about. So we may well dive into these strange mysteries of ancient libraries, their destruction, and how that destruction did or did not influence the modern day. But before we do that, we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors, and then we'll hear more from you specifically we're back then, Yes, that was that last line was a little misleading for a lot of the people listening to the audience today. But but for one person you just had, Matt, you mentioned this off area. You're just you're gonna have a real weird moment. Yeah, sorry everybody else, Hannah, we were we were talking about you. Um, Hannah actually just sent us a link. That is all that was included in her email. It was a link she did. There was She didn't need to greet us, she didn't need to tell us anything about it. She just said, hey, look over here at this. I said, okay, popped it open and this is what I found. It is a Guardian article, The Guardian in fact, and the title is tourist returns stolen artifacts from POMPEII after suffering curse. Yeah, you know how we like curses here on stuff. They don't want you to know. Please do not cast any upon us, but uh, we we like discussing them. Specifically. Was it King Tutton commons curse that we looked at back in the day. I think that was the one. Yeah, that sounds right, maybe a few others. What happens when you meddle with something ancient that deals with or that had something terrible occur to it or around it or to the humans that used it. Um, well, that is the case here. Let let's jump into the article just a little bit. There was a tourist from Canada who visited Pompeii fifteen years ago as of this month, and she while she was there, she took to mosaic tiles and a piece of ceramics, and she took both of those things back with her to Canada after leaving Pompeii. Um, first of all, let's not do this, everybody. Let's just make a pact right now. If you're in Pompeii or some other ancient city or place, let's not pilfer things from those ancient places. Should I should wait? What? Oh? Oh no, I've just I think it's a noble thing to do. Why do we want to be honest, it's you know, things come up. Well, okay, it's something we should strive to not do. Okay, looking at you British museic, I mean even like you know, there's this historic cemetery in Atlanta called Oakland Cemetery, and you know there's like a golfer's grave there, whether people have dumped all these golf balls there and like teas and stuff like that. You know, people even that's like not cool, you know, taking taking that stuff as a souvenir or like Jean Benet Ramsey's grave, And I'm sorry I'm being depressing about that, but there's like a tree next to her grave that people hang these little ornaments in, and you know you don't want to take that stuff either, but you certainly don't want to take something that could be like a culturally important artifact, let alone that has religious significance. And the idea of of of desecrating a grave, that's just you know, not chill, You're correct, And on this show, we as of yet have enabled to confirm or deny the existence of karma. But it's certainly something that I feel exists and uh comes something that comes something akin to what you put into the world, you will also get out of it. Um. But it's not always true. In history has proven this. Uh So let's let's get back to this tourist. Her name is Nicole, and when she was fairly young, in her early twenties, she visited POMPEII and she took these things. She took these things back to where she was living. And at this point, fifteen years later, she is blaming this simple, this single act on several pretty terrible things that have happened in her life. Um. She she apparently has suffered with breast cancer um twice in her life, so getting cancer, being treated, going to remission, then getting cancer again the second time. She was forced to get a or she had to get a double mastectomy in order to treat the cancer. And she said she's had a run of misfortune going getting into financial hardship. Um, I'm sure in part from her medical expenses. And then she took these, put them in a package, sent them back with a note that said, please take them back. They bring bad luck. And and she did apologize for the act of pilfering. And you know, it's one of those things like at least she did the right thing and sent them back, because not everyone does, and people take things from Pompeii all the time and other places. And I just want to jump to an article from oh and from all sources, mail online, but bear with me here, um, oh gosh, it's it's not that bad of a of a source. But my goodness, if you try and navigate their website, the ad placement is just insane. UM, I get what you're doing, mail online. You gotta have those ads. But come on, I can barely read your articles. Um. This is an article from that describes just how many people take things from Pompeii and return them. Um, there's a seventy year old woman who took something from They call it the attraction. So it's like the actual city of Pompeii that was uncovered after amounts of vesuvious, you know, erupted and it essentially encased most of everyone who was there in the city in ash and the bodies were actually recovered after it was rediscovered years and years and years later. Um. It's a very somber place. But but this woman's seven year old woman took uh something in nineteen sixty four and then returned it. And then in this article, the director of the archaeological museum there at least I think that's who they're referring to, it does not actually say here UM says they've been receiving hundreds of packages with hundreds of fragments for years and they were considering setting up a special special display essentially that was going to be all of the artifacts that have been taken and returned. Um. It's really interesting. There's a specific Fresco fragment that was taken and of the archaeologists there they wanted to restore. This thing is called the Costa del Fruteo and or it's on the Costa Fruteo side. It's what it says. They wanted to restore this thing. But there was there were a couple important fragments missing, and one person who did take this important thing returned it and they were able to put the thing together restore it. I mean that's nice, right, yeah. But Nicola at the leave her package had some there were some other people, I think a couple from Canada that included some stuff they were returning. Uh. And I couldn't find other people referring to a curse. Uh. It seems like many people were just returning these pilfered pieces of history because they rightly felt bad about what they had done. And also, just to be very clear about my earlier joke, yes, don't don't steal from museums. Don't steal other people's culture and history. I mean, one of the great tragedies of the Iraq War that nobody talks about is how in two thousand and three are starting in two thousand three, Uh, the National Museum of Iraq was looted like. This is not an ancient thing, you know, it's not a one off that happens uh decades or centuries in the past. We have to remember that there there are concerted efforts to to take this stuff for personal enjoyment and for profit. There's a huge business in a legal artifacts and historical works of art. So good on, I would say, good on everybody for returning this kind of stuff. You know, it's um yeah, you feel right having it in your house. Well, she Nicole certainly didn't. And what she wrote in her letter, I'm gonna give you one more quote, she said, we took them without thinking of the pain and suffering these poor souls experienced during the eruption of Vesuvius and their terrible deaths. We are sorry, Please forgive us for making this terrible choice. Made their souls rest in peace. And again, this is a special circumstance. This, this really is. This is a place where a terrible thing occurred and lots of suffering took place. And you know, I understand that that being there in the moment looking at everything kind of you know, experiencing it as close as you can, you may think I want to remember this forever. This is this is amazing, Yeah, but but don't don't do it. Like Ben said, also, this isn't the year for it. You know, we don't have time for this one. But you guys heard recently, right, fifty nine new mummies and a statue of a mysterious god were found in Egypt. People are disentering it. It's not the time. Let let the dead stay in the ground, just like at least until are you saying we don't need an undead plague in addition to all the other because this is the year, this is the year would happened, nol Obviously, it would certainly be like a cherry on top. Honestly, I mean, why not let's just go all the way and get weird with it and be torn apart by angry undead deities from another dimension? Um yeah, uh, I mean we could uh, but you know we also couldn't. We could not. Well, it's you know, we'll see. Let's just let's just let's roll the dice on this one. We'll see how it goes. Do you guys believe in curses? Now? I know you and I talked about this in the King Tied episode. If I were called it's a little difficult to navigate or it's complicated, right because, uh, you do believe in something like karma, just yea formalized karma. Yeah. But really, when I'm thinking about curses, it's something that is you do something and then a and a live person perform some kind of ritual that really is just we talked about this on the on Harmon town. Um when we're referring to magic, the ritual, Yeah, the ritual itself is self weaponized self psychology, right, so almost like convincing yourself that I'm gonna cause bad things to happen to this person. Um. I don't believe that there's some kind of supernatural force that you know, reaches its hand throughout time and space and does bad things to you. But I don't know. I mean, if you're if you're doing anything to harm another person, then you should be on the lookout. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's to say, you know, I mean, words have power and if you really focus them on somebody, But then but then then it belize the question like is a curse a curse if you just do it in private and don't tell the person you know what I mean, does it require actually psyching them out with some like you know, mental jiu jitsu or can you just you know, whisper in a corner in your room and then hope that that that that the power of your words manifests itself somehow through the ether, I would say less so that for sure, much more basically weaponized talking where you're like making someone feel bad about themselves and then they believe gas lighting. Yeah, that's a that's a curse. Things like that, you know, because of the curse words. We used curses all the time, you know, we we curse things all the time, like a plague, a pox on your house, a plague on your podcast, those are curses. A curse saying that is a curse. What was it too that we were talking about? How like um, death too and FARSI is uh much more accurately described as sort of just like a like a mild curse, sort of like you know, forget that thing, you know, airline food right exactly, airline. But it's just some of the most like death to Matt Frederick and his entire family as opposed to man Matt Frederick's sort of a pill you know, like oh dang, all right, well, no, I don't believe these things. These are entirely hypothetical. No one in their right mind would ever call you a pill, and if they did, I would have words for them. You just cursed me. But okay, I think if you or a pill, you'd be a sugar pill man exactly, completely ineffective. But I can bring about results if you believe it. I've always believed in your your abilities to bring about let us see. Yeah, yeah, let us know if curses work, let us do if you if you have, don't curse us. Please, we need all the help we can get. None of the entrance. Uh, but let us know, can I really quickly? This is not an ad, but I've been listening to an audible book. It's called The Three Agreements. Um. It's it's sort of like a little bit of a hippie dippy kind of self help situation. Um, but I'm quite enjoying it. And it has this section like there are parts of it that go along and I'm like, oh my god, this guy's really onto something. I really dig this, and I don't think it goes too far. And then he'll go too far. And one of the examples was he's talking about this kind of thing where it's like you say, oh, uh, Matt, you're not looking so good. I think maybe you definitely have cancer. And then and I'm thinking, okay, you have cursed Matt by putting the idea in his mind that he has cancer, and then he's gonna start thinking about it and commiserating about it, and it's gonna make him unhappy. But the guy went a step further and said, if Matt believes the curse that you just laid upon him, he will have cancer in three weeks time. Well, that happened. I mean, we have proof of something like that happening multiple times in Australia, of of people dying because they believe they were cursed. We also have wait, are we talking about the same book, because I've read the four Agreements that's the one. Excuse me, the four agreements. Yeah, I'm sorry, I left one agreement out. I haven't gotten the fourth agreement yet. So, uh So I wonder though, because you know, um, curses can I think we we proved through one way or another, curses can be enormously powerful. Uh It's the debate is whether we are comfortable calling that kind of psychology magic and then the main thing for me is what would happen if all the museums of the world returned their ancient artifacts to the cultures from whence those artifacts came. There's a great I think it was in the hell Blazer comics John Constantine, where he the writer has this fantastic line about the British the British museums, where they said, this is where the Empire drew the line and said no more, We'll give you back the countries, but we're keeping this stuff. And I think about that a lot, you know, Like, do we weigh the benefits of the benefits of preserving history against the ethical problems of stealing it from somewhere else? I don't know. I don't know, man, It's an interesting thought experiment, that's for sure. Yeah. Should we pop to a quick break and come back with one another listener mail? Absolutely, don't take things from UNESCO World Heritage Sites and ad break, don't take anything, don't take stuff that's not yours. Why are we still anyway? At break? And we're back with our final listener mail for the week. This one comes from Haley Uh and it looks and we were looking back and we're realizing that Haley's pitched us a few great ideas for episodes that we haven't gotten to yet. Um, but need to go back and check all of these emails out. But this is the most recent one that she sent, and it goes like this, good afternoon, dudes. Maybe this will be the email it gets me featured on the show. Huh huh, we're talking about intention with the curses and everything. It goes both ways positive things. It's weird. That's karma, baby, put put put it on emails out of the universe, and you will eventually get one read on the stuff that I wants you to know. Podcast by a lottery ticket today after you. Anyway, I'll get to the point. My husband is an aerospace engineer, specifically an aero dynamicist. Says that he doesn't get into the whole conspiracy thing, and he likes to take a healthy, logical step back and look at things with a critical eye. Well, uh, we we do too, for sure. I think that's one of our favorite ways to approach some of these topics. So, um, you should tell your husband listen to the show. You might you might dig him, So she continues, sure, sure, and then he pops off his own conspiracies. This one I had to share. Uh stage set. I'm in the kitchen. A local, yet unknown number calls me. I answer usually I don't if it's unknown, but we just moved, so I'm a little more open to unknown numbers right now. If they're local, I say hello, The line cuts out nearly instantly. My husband, you know they're recording and analyzing of voices to use them right me? What? Husband? Yeah, for sure, they're getting smarter. Telemarketers and hackers used to call from any number, but now they have smartened their systems to call your phone based on its geographical number. Used to you would get calls from all over the US, but now they're connected to your area code or area codes you frequently call me? Sure, So, so you think what the audio record the auto recordings are hang ups or them just wanting to hear you say hello or go to hell? My husband, basically audio spectrographing your voice to develop a system which mimics specifically your voice and then uses it me to I don't know. That's how we need to leave this planet. Um. Yeah, and then then just a little a little wrap up and I love the show and all that stuff. Uh, yeah, interesting one. I've certainly never heard this angle. Uh, and I've just wanted to read it because it was a fun little scene. Um, but what do you guys think? Like how we know that there's things like spoofing. You know, where you get a call from, like a number closely resembling your own number. Maybe it's off by one, maybe it's the exact number, so you're intrigued, so you're more likely to pick that up? Are you less likely to pick that up? Certainly have seen you know, the figuring out your area code, and I'm more likely to pick up a number that's safe from Rome Georgia. Uh thinking who knows what it could be. It could be a work related thing. I don't know, but if it needs an eight hundred number, I definitely won't pick it up. But yeah, most of them now on my phone say potential spam or a potential fraud or something like that. Um, doesn't don't mind, doesn't do that? I don't. I think I get so many now at this point that the iOS is just getting smarter. It's like, hey, you seem to not really pick up when the calls come through like this, But I'm honestly unsure how the tech is working there, but I do know that I try to answer whenever I can, and there's so many calls, and it's not this is a real thing like telemarketing calls and just awful. Robo calls are increasing and they have been increasing for sure. To respond, I would say that this is somewhat But first off, Hailey, thank you for writing. Your husband is a h right. This is not a new thing either in the world of tech. This is somewhat old beings because some version of this has existed for a number of years. Uh. You can find things dating back a couple of years that that proved the use of robo calls and voice recording, at least for fraud. You can you can get a call for instance, like think of it this way. You get a robo call, or you get a live person is a scammer who's instead of mentioning who they are when the answer the phone, the first thing they say is so you know you like ring ring ring, and then you answer the phone, oh hoy, hoy, or however you answer the phone, and then the people on the other end of the phone, instead of saying who they are, they say can you hear me? And then you say yes and they hang up, and now they have a recording of you saying yes, and so with a couple of other bits of information, they can call an automated line and authorize things as financial charges and so on. Oh no, I didn't even really think about that. That's that's diabolical. That makes perfect sense. Of course they could do that. I mean if they have, you know, the last four digits of your social or something else. But then again, it's not like when you do those calls where you have to audibly say yes. Do you really think they're using voice print technology to like like like in a sci fi movie or you have to like do a retina scan. Do they really have a a print of your voice so they can confirm identity. I'll tell you the scary thing. A lot of bank now, several in particular, do a thing where they will ask you to say this phrase. Oh no, I'm not even gonna say it, oh my god, oh my god, make up one new one that's sort of oh my god, oh my god. Is it like the quick brown fox jumps uh open, says me. That's what they would make you say, and potential pills pill for pompeii, uh pottery. They just they make you say a phrase and if if the system recognizes your voice, and it's an automated system, if it recognizes your voice saying that phrase, then it will let you in um without any of the other pieces of information to confirm. It's designed to be like a one a single sign in, one password for everything, like face idea on the new phones, you know, it's like yeah, but oh my god, because if it's going over a phone ownline, right, there's so much compression going on whatever audio, it's not gonna matter. It's not gonna matter if it's been compressed. Again, oh my god, this is terrifying. No, no, that's true. And just for like non audio nerds out there, that basically means like, you know, you have a recording that's a certain number of bits or whatever and like certain fidelity, and then when you transmit something, you know as an MP three for example, you're reducing the fidelity in a way hopefully that isn't like unpleasant. So there's like, you know, a level of encoding that will make it small enough to transfer v email or stream or whatever. But a phone is like crushing it. It's essentially dismantling the sound and putting it back together in these like audio equivalents of like big giant pixels or something. And so you're right. Think about all the technology that's been or the advances have been made in like deep fakes, or we saw a thing in even an Adobe audition, the software that we use, or maybe it was a different one where it was agually Photoshop for audio, where I think there was some big presentation at one of the is like, uh, you know, an Apple conference, the big the big ones, like I think this is Adobe, and they recreated someone's voice saying a bunch of stuff and it sounded very believable. So having that print is like gold. That's a really good point. I didn't even think about this when I was reading the email. If they can get a catalog of people saying enough things, they could you know, build the version of their voice to do what you're talking about. With banks, maybe think about this. It goes much further than banks. Uh, everyone listening when you have called uh, let's see your credit card company, a bank, utility company, or even your maybe student loans if you have those. Have you noticed the social engineering that is occurring on these automated lines. It is being sold to you disingenuously as a matter of your convenience. It is not. It is creating a new income or revenue stream for many of these institutions because the agreements that you sign when you uh, you know, when you hop on with these services allows them to use your data in a ton of ways, and your audio data is no different. I I myself, just personally, I have complained to institutions about this. Uh. It starts the way that sesame credits started, which I don't want to overuse that example, but the voice stuff was opt in at first, and then it was opt out right and now for many people you don't have a choice. You have to physically speak, You have to say a phrase to confirm a certain thing. Uh. There are there are places that I had been interacting with where I just continued to use the dial tone or touch tone stuff, even when it was taken off the menu. It was like I was ordering something off the menu at a restaurant. And then when it got to the point where I couldn't use just the touch tone and stuff, and I got with a human or humanesque entity on the other line, and asked them why this was happening. Uh, the question got dodged real hard. They're selling your voice and and they're maybe not from nefarious purposes. Maybe it's used to help voice recognition AI, which still has a lot of problems. Right, all you have to do is look at captions on YouTube. But it's happening. It really is, and it is. It is not necessarily a conspiracy theory. I mean, I don't know if it's even a conspiracy. I feel like it's not a cover up. I feel like we just in the conversation we're having, we're already on board with your husband, Haley, and I hope you are too. It didn't take but a hop, skip and a jump to get there either, and it I hadn't even really considered it, but we literally went there in real time. At least I did, um, you know, to to put a slightly less horrific bow on it. Uh. And looking into this, I came across, uh, this really cool article from Vice called the Story of Lenny, the Internet's favorite telemarketing troll, And it's about this chat bot named Lenny that has kind of developed this cult following, and it essentially like kind of beats the robo callers or telemarketers or at their own game by sort of playing ben what you might refer to as reindeer games with them and sort of like some of the lines that you were talking about, can you hear me? Hello? Are you still there? You know, things like that that's sort of like illicit certain responses from either the AI or whatever you wanna call it on the other end, or or the human and it's just sort of a way of kind of messing with them a little bit. And then of course, obviously they're not going to get your your voice because you're using Lenny. But it was developed in two thousand nine. There's some I T like an anonymous I T worker, uh, developed it because of frustration with the horrible job frankly that the the FCC has done with regulating robot calls and all that you do. You're do, You're right, Matt, I mean, what happened to the do not Call list? What happened to this not being a thing anymore? It's worse now than it's ever been, and much more. Um what's the word predatory? You know, like with the way it it targets the elderly, um and tries to get you know, identifying information for for ripping people off for you know, their bank accounts or that. It seems I don't know, maybe I'm just seeing it more now, but uh this article did this is from eighteen start with a stat at the New York Times UM had reported that there were three point four billion monthly robot calls at the time. Yeah, it was significantly exactly, that was right. Uh So this is my theory. Tell me what you guys think. I think the telephone is an older technology. Um, the actual telephone part of it. I think younger people are using the text features and social media and other ways to communicate with one another because the actual phone calling feature on these phones is used by an older generation, older people that these these predators really in some cases predators. In some cases it's people trying to do a legitimate business through phone calls and hopefully one out of every five hundred picks up and says and actually talks to them. Um. I think they're focusing on the phone because it is the older generation. They had been with land lines for a long time, but now cell phones are old enough where they're going to be people in there, you know, they were in their forties when the cell phone was invented. The first major cell phones that were accessible were invented. Now they're in their sixties seventies, and they're more at risk. I guess, for at least the people who mean to ferry, who have nefarious purposes. I wouldn't I wouldn't even call that a theory, though, Oh a million percent. It's a perfect observation. And then you're absolutely right. And especially with things like the pandemic and people being home more and um being able to kind of create. Oh, there's everything's crazy now. Therefore I would be more willing to accept the potential of somebody offering me a helping hand or or or are there being a problem with my bank? My mom got one from like Amazon, and I'm like, mom, Amazon doesn't call anybody like it just doesn't happen, you know. Uh and um. But but this this Lenny chatbot. It's a programming with sixteen stock phrases and it's really simple. It just plays them in order. The first four are like kind of to encourage the telemarket to continue on with their sales pitch, and then the last twelve phrases are played in a loop. Until the telemarketer hangs up in a rage. So that's sort of the idea to really dis mess with them, and all it listens for the only the only tech behind it really is that it listens for a one and a half second pause in conversations, so it knows when to say the next phrase and begin the sequence of loop of looped phrases. I'd like to um without going into why the do not Call registry became so ineffective. If you're listening and you, like many people are receiving unsolicited calls, if you're like if you're like me and you've got a bunch of Mandarin or Cantonese before, or if you're receiving things like fake Amazon calls or fake I R S calls, which can be very scary for people. I'd like to empower you with some steps that you can take. Uh, These con artists and criminals depend on you not taking the time to report them. That's what it is. It's time the burden of this has been pushed onto the consumer or the victim first. As I think we've established, when you get illegal calls, when you get these weird calls, just hang up if you answer it, and it's and it feels off putting. Hang up. Don't give them the gift of your voice just in case. And I know that sounds paranoid, but don't do it. You can also report calls still that this part has not been dismantled. You can go to very simple do not call dot g O V. Or you can call eight eight eight three eight two one to two two the last for a couple of things. They're all legit. They'll ask you to give your phone number the last to say when you received this unwanted call, and they'll ask whether it was recorded robocall or if there's any other information you can give. They get a lot of reports for this. Uh, they are backlogged. Um. I can only imagine there have been a bunch of funding cuts because advertisers, you know, want to be able to do this, So there's lobbying against people not being able to be called. But there there are real actionable fines. Violations are punishable by something like a little less than forty two grand per call when these folks get caught. So to be clear, it is illegal, like the practice of it. William says, you don't get any of that money. Of course, but the the practice is illegal, but there are a lot of loopholes, but phone solicitation isn't illegal. Like if my friend of mine used to work for the Fraternal Order of Police, you know that organization that has like the stickers for supporters. It looks like a book, a badge. Um, I don't know exactly what they do. It's so like literally I think like a lobby kind of for cops or so or like a no nonprofit that raises money for I'm not a sure exactly. The point is he did cold calls. That is that is that legal? Like that that's legal, right, it's just the robot calls and the I'm just I truly don't Obviously it must be if it's a organization that you know employs humans. Yeah, even you know, even if you do get yourself on the National do not Call Registry, there are charities that can call you, political groups obviously, debt collectors, people doing national surveys, local surveys, they may call you. And there are there's some people that they do not call registry isn't effective on like also you can't. It's a complex legislative endeavor to totally cut off the possibility of unsolicited calls without somehow accidentally saying we've made it illegal for the average person to call people, like that's how phones work. You can't you can't make that illegal. That's why, that's why people get into incredibly hilarious, very Vonnegut esque situations that they used to back in the day, when people would like call that pay phone in the middle of nowhere in the desert, or when people would accidentally and this really happened, when they would accidentally call Norad like they would get they get the wrong number, and then there would be some hard case on the other end who was like, are we go red Tango? Like is this Dominoes? How did you get this number? And then they traced them back. I mean, this stuff happens, but um, the hilarity aside it is. It is a serious problem. The frankin biting is not just for reality television. That's really what we're talking about. Yeah, you're right, um, or stealing podcasters voices and using them for nefarious purposes, don't do that, please. UM. I want I want to tell you guys really quickly. I don't know if you've seen this thing called robo killer that has been around for quite a while. No, but it's a really awesome name. Yes, I believe it's an app. I know it's a website. Yes, it's an app you can put on your phone and what it It's really cool. It's identified a million plus spammers and and other groups that make calls all the time. Frequently those groups that are calling are spoofing their numbers, so it looks as though it's coming from a local number or from somewhere else, um, and it wouldn't be easily identified as like, oh, that's a spam number. But what robo Killer does is it's got a database of all of these groups and numbers, and then it recognizes them as they're coming into your phone and it answers them essentially as the app, and it will give you a notification and tells you. It will tell you, hey, um, a fake Apple agent just called you, but we stopped it. And one of the best things is that it does what Lenny does, the thing we're discussing earlier. It actually will keep um, a telemarketer or somebody whoever it is, on the phone for as long as it can to get as much information from that line as it can. So it's basically a reverse what what is that called? UM, it's gonna do what the what the spammer is trying to do to you? Instead of getting you to talk, it's getting them to talk, and it's gaining as much information as it can. Just really interesting stuff. And we're not sponsored by robot Killer, by the way, but reach out to us if you're interested. I'm just really pleased that this email generated so much interesting conversation. And we don't often get to kind of like discover a thing at the same time like this. This was a lot of fun and terrifying. But you know, I'm not gonna let it keep us up at night. And honestly, I so rarely answer those calls and and and it really is about educating yourself as far as like you know, uh, if you if you have parents or grandparents or whatever. I just you know, it sounds weird like you can't have that talk, you know about about um getting scammed, you know, with these with these robot calls. Klee, I want to hang out with your husband's because yeah, do you do seem cool too? Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah, let's hang out with everybody, because uh, this is one of those things that it's you know, we we basically predicted this in previous episodes. Uh, but we have to remember, you know, everybody lives in a bubble of their own. So if you have someone in your life who is maybe a little bit of a technophobe or not on the cutting edge, do help them out with this. Do let them know that there are resources, there are ways to empower oneself. And most importantly, I would say, remember, no matter what it sounds like, you do not know who is on that other end of the phone, right who's on the other side, And you don't know how many other ears are between you and that ultimate other side. So I would say, just be careful. We have we owe it to ourselves. Since the legislation will inevitably be outpaced by the innovation, the burden of safety falls on us as the end users, and the information we have now may well be outdated next year because this is evolving at a breakneck pace. I said it before, I'll say it again. Uh uh, And there you have it, folks. We here's hoping, uh we don't dig up any ancient primordial beaster infections. Uh. Here is hoping that we don't get any curses. Although we do want to hear about yours and uh, most importantly, here's hoping that we can hear from you. We do listener mail every week, which means we need your help. You can find us any number of ways. You can find us on the internet. Yes, it is actually us, uh Facebook, go to Here's where it Gets Crazy, Twitter, Instagram where conspiracy stuff on Twitter, Where conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. And you can go to Here's where it Gets Crazy. That is our Facebook group. Check it out. 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