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 Paul Mission controlled decond Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. After taking a very long hiatus from this realm of topics, we are returning to the world of the Nazis. The Nazi Party of Germany and World War Two has become a source of many, many proposed conspiracies and proven conspiracies as as we learn more and more about the inner workings of of that regime. And nowadays you know, we can we can say with certitude certain statements that would have once been considered controversial or conspiratorial, like now we can say it is common knowledge that many Nazi officials and Nazi collaborators escaped to South America in the aftermath of World War Two. It's a genuine, vast conspiracy. You hear them called ratlines right, thousands of people fled from Europe to Brazil, Chile, especially Argentina, and as the world was trying to recover from the atrocities of war, there were these investigators from places like West Germany and Israel, and individuals who were tracking down Nazis, sifting through rumors, trying to hunt these men who would be ghost as. You want to learn more about that, check out Operation Adessa, I think is the episode we did on that topic. Specifically, we have a lot of we have a lot of Nazi episodes because they did a lot of terrible things. But the weird, weirdest part here is when we're talking about the Nazis escaping to South America. We're talking about a true thing, a real event that went on for years, but we're also talking about all the rumors that built off that, like the idea that Adolf Hitler himself may have escaped. That's a story for another day, but today's episode is when people might not have heard of. It. Concerns the infamous Nazi doctor, the so called Angel of Death, Joseph Mangel, and the conspiracy theory that he continued his horrific experiments long after the end of World War two today's episode, fellow conspiracy realist, What is Candido good Oi and what the hell is happening there? Yes, here are the facts. It's a city you probably haven't heard of unless you've heard of this story or unless you have visited a specific part of Brazil. Rio Grande do sul So. Candido Goody is a city in Rio grand do soul Brazil. Um. It's a pretty small place, populations somewhere between six thousand and only seven thousand, uh. And you can find its close to the Argentine border. Um. And there you'll find a small settlement in the city called Lena sal Pedro. And that population is even smaller, with just a few hundred people there. Um. It was founded by an original population of only eight families back in nineteen eighteen. In their defense, these are big families. Yes, that's right, that's right. And uh, if you don't mind, Ben, I'd like to pull in a quote here. There's a video that the BBC put out in UH that I won't tell you the name of right now, but there's a quote from an historian we're going to meet later more in depth in this episode. But you're just according to him, he says, there are like a slightly higher number there, I think fifteen to twenty families, but again it's like the original eight families to you know, maybe up to twenty. Essentially just putting that out there as like we're pretty we're pretty sure it was a very few number of actual families that founded this place, right, and then later later immigrants would come. But something unusual was happening because although Candido Goodoy was colonized by the Spanish forces, the area now is primarily inhabited by descendants a little bit from Poland, but primarily German immigrants. And what's more, these immigrants mostly originate from a single region of Germany, a place called Hunsruck, which is also known for a weird tendency amongst amongst its population. So if you go to Lenha sal Pedro, uh, you'll immediately notice some odd things. First, people aren't speaking Portuguese as often as you would think. They tend to speak a German dialect. Secondly, you're gonna see a lot of people who look alike because there are a ton of twins in lin haa sal Pedro, a a lot quite a few. Uh. It is noticeable when you walk through town, and for years scientists have struggled and failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in this area results in twins, most of them, according to the legends, being blonde haired and blue eyed. Very curious, Um, so why how many are we talking? Um? The birth rate stats for twins in Candido is ten percent, which is significantly higher than in the rest of the state, where it's only about one point eight percent UM. So this is one of the highest what you'd call twinning rates in the entire world. And this is a noteworthy pattern, um, at least during the early twentieth century, when the first immigrants started to set a precedent arriving um with seventeen sets of twins, um, you know amongst them. Uh. And if you visit the area today, you might still notice that it is, like you said, Ben, like instantly, something that's remarkable. How many, just how many sets of twins you'll see just on a given day looking around. Well, you think about that, that's one in ten kids that are born are kids instead of kid. Yeah, that's crazy. And the stats can you know, you'll as suite listeners, of course you clocked that that rate of twins was given as ten percent, but then scientists also projected one in five pregnancies. We're we're aware of this discrepancy. It's coming from a couple of different sources. And of course birth rates do change or they vary over time. But yeah, yeah, it's a lot of twins. Yeah, that ten percent, I believe in a particular study we looked at was between nine. Well we're also talking about ten percent of a very small population, which makes it extra noticeable when you walk in. It's like, wow, they're everywhere, and you know, we know, um what a mystery. Twins still continue to be as to what leads to them, as to like their ability to communicate differently, you know, I mean there are there's something that you know, if you if you know anybody who has a twin sibling they claim to and you know, I mean honestly, you can't not believe them have this uh kind of almost telekinetic ability or this ability to kind of like feel things about each other from far distances for example, um, or you know, to be able to almost like speak without speaking to each other. It's very very interesting and not a lot of note about that, uh, and that totally applies to this case only this is an extra weird kind of twist, like why so many twins in this small area? And one of the theories is quite disturbing. Yeah, and I have I I do just spoiler alert have what I feel like is the explanation here. But let's let's let's walk through the crazy stuff. I want to step back because there was something I wanted to point out. So, yeah, this is extraordinary because of the birth rates in the number of twins relative to the population. But for comparison, there are places that have, you know, in absolute numbers, much higher tendencies towards the production of twins, and Nigeria actually leads the world in this regard. Also, I always, I always thought it would be cool to have a twin, but I think for most of us the concept is incredibly alien. And that's why singles, right, even if you have siblings, you're a single, right in comparison to twins. That's why singles, like the majority of us in the audience today, are always fascinated by this and then the rumors of this connection, this idea of clara voyance, this idea of unspoken communication. We're not the only people fascinated by this. Mangolia was also fascinated by the idea of twins, and over the past few decades, various scientists, scholars, and historians have attempted to figure out just what causes this place, this tiny spot in in Brazil to produce so many twins. Locals have guests about this too, because you know, they're the ones directly affected, so they might say that they have a couple of different theories. Uh. One of the most interesting I think is is almost a horror movie trope. Is something in the water, yeah, or or it's you know, a blessing in a weird way, it's a curse or a blessing, depending on how you look at it, if it were true, right, and just the concept that there's minerals or something about the pH or some specific thing about the rock formations where the water you know, the tributaries are and everything where specifically gets to that one area. Um, there are a few, right, yes, exactly, you know, and and that's like we said, lore that that was a you know, a legend essentially, and that there are a few others that you know, maybe specific groups of locals had or rumors, but most of it had to do with. Honestly, the most prominent one I saw there was water or the one we're about to mention, right, there is another theory and it's one that uh, it's one that's led people around the world on a very strange exploration down a very odd rabbit hole. One of the most disturbing theories to explain the twins of Candido Godoy is the idea that the infamous Nazi Joseph Mangles, the Angel of Death never really stopped his experiments. He just moved shop from Germany to Brazil. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and then we'll dive into this story ourselves. Here's where it gets crazy, the connection when we say we're talking about this Angel of Death. First off, we have to learn a little bit more about who he is and what his what his weird deal with human experimentation and twins actually was. Yeah, I mean there's accounts I've read. You know, he was the notorious um presence at the offloading sites where you know, these undesirable races like the Jewish race, Um, the Roman people and LGBTQ population, for example, were a rounded up in these cattle cars on the rail lines and then unloaded at these concentration camps, and he would kind of lurk around these places, you know, with his associates. And um, I read an account of of of a family mother and to twin daughters, and they heard, you know, one of the Naziss officers say twins and and and she looks at the mother and says twins, and she goes yes, is that good? And he goes yes, and then takes them away and they never see their mother again. Um. And that's common because he was there like kind of trolling for twins, because that was a big part of something he was fascinated with. He thought was what it would add to the efficacy of the bizarre experiments that he was doing that included everything from disfigurement, artificial insemination. Um, what out spin? I mean it's you know, maiming, just literally like trying to see how the human body would react to the most horrible, despicable conditions. Yeah, I would just say likely. That comes from the account of Ava Moses core who who told her entire story in a series of writing and writings and documentaries, and she says that specifically the the twins were all taken and placed in a separate barracks away from everybody else, and they were separated by what Manglai considered their gender at the time, girls and boys. And they had a very rigid schedule that they kept too. According to Ava, on Monday's, Wednesdays and Fridays, they would have to all walk over to a building that was called Auschwitz one, and there Mingla and other doctors and others just working for them would measure them essentially, run run diagnostic tests on their bodies, and do comparisons between the two twins. Then on Tuesday's, Thursdays and Saturdays, that's when a lot of the experimentation would happen. Uh that they called it the blood lab, or have at least called it the blood lab. And there would be she said, around thirty children in this one area. They would all sit in chairs and if they would have their arms strapped down and in one of their arms they would have blood taken out for testing, and the other arm they would have injections where who knows what's being put into them, but they would get injections. A lot of that has lost to history. Actually, the efficacy, I would I think the important point we need to make here is the distinction. This comes up when we talk about uh Nazi war crimes as well as Unit thirty one in Japan. There is a distinction here that needs to be made between what would be considered human experimentation and what would be considered torture. Uh. The methodology of a lot of these so called scientists was unsound because their aim was it had the patina of scientific rigor. But these are war crimes, and a lot of the a lot of the science that was derived from those activities turns out not to be good, not not to be super worthwhile. Uh. Yeah. For mainly the thing is that people know about the twins. But while he, like many people, was fascinated by twins, Uh, first off, he's a very very bad person. He is in direct violation of things like the hippocratic gowth do no harm right. He was literally one of the people who would select folks to go straight to the gas chambers or to be worked to death or subjected to experiments. And all of his under leans and all of his collaborators have been given special instructions not just to find twins, but to find to find people who were dwarves. Or little people, to find people who are extraordinarily large or tall, anyone with a unique what we would recognize as a hereditary trait like hetero chromia, eyes of a slightly different color, or a club foot, or even polydactyl people if those turned up and extra fingers, we mean more than the usual five per hand. Uh. And the reason when he had these twins, the horrific things that he was doing to them while right while the rest of their family is also being tortured and put to death. Here Uh, these these horrific things can the scope of them can be found just in the following statistic. They pulled about three thousand twins right over the course of May Galaize time in Germany when he was in Auschwitz, and most of those twins were children. Of those three thousand, only two hundred survived, and and really in a very real way against all lots. So this this guy, let me give you his rationalization, I was doing this. So he was doing this not just not just because he's a horrible person, but also because Adolph Hitler had given him instructions to figure out ways to increase the population of what he considered to be the master race. A k a. The Arians and Mangalais was researching twins because the logic here, if logic existed, was the idea that if we can figure out what creates twins, then we can go to the people we want to reproduce and we can do something to them. We can affect their biology such that every birth they have will result in twins or heck, you know triplets. Who knows though they were twin focused right, and that if we can do that, we will essentially be doubling our birth rate. That was their logic. It's a two for one deal. I mean really, it is just absolutely that Nazi efficiency that everything needs to kind of serve a purpose and you don't have any waste or whatever. And the thing that's most terrific to me as well about these uh, you're absolutely right then, I mean absolutely unsound science. And you really could just classify his torturing is he would use one twin as like the experiment subject and then use the other one as a control. And if my understanding is correct, they would often be made to watch each other be tortured. Yeah, that's a that's horrifying. I I I want to bring up something and this is a complete speculation on my part, guys, but I just want to ask you what you think about this. It is known that in the upper echelons of the Nazi par there was a belief there's a lot of magical thinking, and there there were some odd beliefs there that I think may have also led to a further fascination with twins, as in a possible connection beyond the physical, if that makes sense. And I do. I do wonder if anything, if any beliefs they're led to this fascination as well, because you know, you'll notice we're not talking about them experimenting on the mothers, the people who birthed twins, right, We're not talking about a focus on the fathers who who you know, created twins. It's it's on the twins themselves. And I just I just wonder, and again this is me just thinking aloud. I wonder if there was something more to that fascination. Well, there's a lot of folklore in in Germany surrounding twins, like the Alsies, which were a pair of twin brother odds that were warships by Germanic people's and and survives and and we know at a time and again, this is just a line of we're just freestyling the speculation here, but we know that we know that there was a movement in the party to generate a new kind of religion, right or to you know, replace the concept of Christianity that was popular. So there there could be some symbolism motivating people in that way. But long story short, before you spent too much time in Manley in Germany. UH. Spoiler alert, and this is a good spoiler. UH. Nazi Germany lost World War two for a number of reasons. If you haven't caught up with that one. Yes, that Nazi Germany lost World War two, and the people in power found themselves desperate to escape justice uh, and to escape the various forces that wanted to hold to account for their crimes. So the war draws to a closed Germany is falling. Mangelad travels to South America nineteen forty nine. In July, he sails to Argentina, and he has the help of the rat Line. Rat Line and network of other former SS members and Nazi sympathizers, many of whom were associated with the Church. They were getting these people new identities, they were giving them supplies from you know, all the all the stuff they stole during World War two was providing funding for these folks, and so for about a decade, the Angel of Death is living in and around Buenos Aires, just under an assumed name, and the heat hasn't caught up to him. But when he starts to feel something shift in the wind, he flees first to Paraguay and then to Brazil. And when he reaches Brazil, it's nineteen sixty. If you're interested in a remarkably historically inaccurate but relatively interesting show to watch around this type of stuff, there's a show called Hunters starring Al Pacino, where it's like this very fictionalized almost like ragtag band of like sort of you know, uh an a team kind of situation where it's these Nazi hunters they're looking for, you know, war criminal Nazis, and there are things in it that are based on reality, but there it's absolutely overblown and embellished in Hollywood eyes. I believe Ben coined that last episode. Um, but it's it's worth a watch. It's it's not great, but it's it's interesting, much like the is it the Arrogant Bastards, which it's very quick, it's Quentin Tarantino style. I would say I was surprised watching Hunters. I was surprised to learn that he wasn't the one making it right. I was also surprised with kind of how far they go down some of the more uncomfortable territories of this type of thing. UM almost made it a little unpleasant at times, it being such a kind of schlocky, grandiose, uh, you know, kind of revisionist history type show. But I leave it to you to decide what you think of the show Hunters, and let us know. And this is exactly what Mangola was going through. Um. He was a wanted man. He was on the lamb. He was being hunted by officials from West Germany and Israel who were, you know, in cooperation in this endeavor, and that included people like Simon Wisenthal. All of these individuals wanted to bring him and those like him to justice for his absolutely despicable war crimes. Because let's make no mistake, that is what these were. He was holding people against their will and performing you know, inhumane experiments on them. Um and and as you said, been resulting in thousands and thousands of deaths. UM. But Mangola was a smart guy. Um. You know, he knew what he was doing in terms of you know, you know, plotting his escape. Um, he had he had the right idea in the nineteen help That's what I'm saying. He worked with the right people exactly. And then there's there was this network that was established, these rat lines, like you said, Um, and many did get caught, but many escaped. And sort of that almost trope you see in a lot of fiction about like the you know, the Nazi war criminal, you know, pretending to be a mild mannered old man living next door to you in the suburbs. Um. I believe that happens as well. In The Marathon Man, the character that does the played by Lawrence Olivier who does the you know, dental torture that's a you know, an escape Nazi war criminal were it's supposed to be. Um, who I believe is also called the Angel of Death if I'm not mistaken in the movie, it's not the same Angel of Death, I don't believe, but that is his nickname. UM. So he he assumes a false name, Wolfgang Gerhard Uh and they don't find his true identity until he dies by the way natural causes more or less of a stroke. Uh in nineteen seventy nine, while having a nice swim off the Brazilian coast and he drowns. Um. But again, he's been masquerading as this wolf Wolfgang Gerhard character and his true identity isn't determined when his remains are exhumed and forced to be subject to forensic analysis. Yeah. Yeah, so in a very real sense, he got away, and they all they know is that there was a real Wolfgang Gerhard. At some point that guy left the picture and mangele it became him so well, and we know that he had it. I think at least three names or yeah, but but I know of three off the top of my head. So he was definitely changing chameleon ing movie. He was doing that out of necessity because you don't, I mean, you do want to you do want to have more than one. It's kind of like doing a shell company, right, because each one will make you more difficult to trace, but it also requires more work on your part or for whomever's handling you. So in in this situation, what probably happened is, uh, he had to burn some of these personas because he was on the run the entire time. It's that classic twist in the movie when the nosy neighbor is snooping around in the suspicious German Man's house when he's off, you know, going to the grocery store and finds a drawer with like six different passports and you know, all with different names, and that's sort of like the aha moment um. But that was real, and I'm sure he had, you know, things like um uh valuables that he had smuggled out as well that he was living on. You know, you picture like like loose diamonds or something like that. Right. Yeah, a lot of those guys were supported by things that they had stolen from their victims during the course of the war, or things they made off with from the state as as the regime was collapsing. But here we are, so let's foot aside fiction for a second. Real life nineteen forty nine to nineteen seventy nine, under under various personas, Joseph Mangla was in South America and multiple countries for three decades. What the hell was he getting up to down there? According to controversial claims by some historians, one of whom will examine in depth, Manglais never stopped his experiments with twins. Specifically. At this point, we introduced an Argentine historian named Jorge Camerassa. Joge Camerasa is a specialist in the post war Nazi flight to South America, and he spent a lot of time tracy these individuals activities, putting the pieces of the puzzle together right, hunting down a person who didn't want to be fat, right, proving the ghost was real. This war criminals life across this continent is detailed by Camarasa in his book Manglais the Angel of Death in South America. And in this book, this guy made a tremendous splash when he said Manglais did continue his experiments, specifically in Candido Goodoy and specifically with twins. He is convinced that by the nineteen sixties Manglais somehow cracked the code to creating twins, and he used his knowledge to alter, permanently alter something about the population of Candido. In his specific quote, he says, I think Candido Goodoy may have been manglais laboratory where he finally managed to fulfill his dreams of creating a master race. A blonde haired, blue eyed arians. So the big question, first question we have to have here is what is this guy basing his claim on? And then secondly is I hate I hate that we have to mention this. What we do is he just trying to sell a book. That's a question that comes up a lot with these kinds of stories, and we're not casting and we're not casting aspersion on him right now. It's just it's an understandable question, and it's one that his critics, uh will also mention, and we'll meet them in a few minutes. But right now, the most interesting part about his claim is that residents of Candido Goody appear to verify it. They appear to they at least say that Mangala was there. Yeah, they say that he visited numerous times in the nineteen sixties and when he showed up, he was essentially a doctor, but a veterinarian. So he would show up and he would offer medical treatment, you know, for animals and for women in the town. As this uh, you know, veterinarian a bit strange, and you can you can see the pieces kind of fitting together if you're hearing these as anecdotes from people who live there. Right, Let's just imagine you're the author and you're trying to research as much as this as you can. And there are local legends that this guy was definitely in town, and he, you know, was this character when he was here. Um, you can imagine, just as you said, Ben, that you believe at least that your beliefs then are correct, or at least it would assist in that. And there's one resident there. A person's name is Olosi Oloisi perhaps Finkler. Uh. This person is a farmer and and this is a quote about mangle. He asked about illnesses we had among our animals and told us not to worry. He could cure them. He appeared a cultured and dignified man. Isn't that interesting that that that I can cure I can cure this thing. It reminds me of the cult discussion. You know, a cow is not so different biologically from a woman, Right, that's what that's the kind of reasoning, just to show how creepy it is. Um. But didn't he have some practical knowledge of livestock and he was doing some functional good like they had t B And he gave them some kind of vaccine like he just kind of like helped them or was it all just wild you know, medical quackery. Well, let's go to another quote from Leonardo Bouffler. There's also a farmer in the area and says, yeah, Mentel, it was visiting them under a guy under the guys of being a veterinarian. Boofler says, quote, he went from farm to farm, checking the animals. He checked them for TV and injected those that were infected. He also said he could carry out artificial insemination of cows and humans, which we thought impossible, as in those days it was unheard of. So even if we put aside the larger theory that he was actively creating twins in this small environment, uh, it's already very disturbing the way that this this dude is infiltrating this community by posing as a useful, helpful force a veterinarian, and then you leveraging that somehow to gain access to the humans, to their bodies and and too participate somehow in observing or influencing their reproductive process the same way he would with livestock. That is messed up. Man. If these accounts are true, Like if if these uh, these folks actually identified you know, this person, this guy, whoever his name was at the time as Manglais, and Camerassa traces Manglais path and he claims that this guy, first, like we said, went to Paraguay, to another German enclave called Colonius Anitas, and then from there in nine he started making regular trips, the historian says, to the German community just over the border in Brazil Candido. Goodoy. But if you look at if you look at research, because a lot of people have been involved in trying to figure this out, not just the twin thing, but also this Nazis association. So you'll see local historians, local doctors, local mayors or former mayors all have all have their different takes on this, down to the local historian who runs the museum, which you'll you'll meet him in a second. But let's let's meet town doctor, former town doctor, a Nincia Flores da Silva. He set off to solve the mystery of the Candido twins, and he interviewed hundreds of people, and does Silva one moment notices something odd in a lot of these conversations. There's a name that keeps coming up a mysteri es medic slash veterinarian who called himself Rudolph Weiss. That's right, and Na Silva had this to say about it. He talks about the testimonies that he collected, um, where they were looking through the names of women who were treated by this Rudolph Weis. Um. It seemed that he was some sort of rural medic who would go from house to house and he would, you know, help women with various conditions, including things like vera coast veins, which he claimed to have some sort of cure, all that he carried around in a bottle, or these tablets that he would bring with him. Um. He would also occasionally do dental work UM. And of the most important detail everyone remembers he would always take a blood sample, which is odd if you're just doing work on somebody, that's not really part of the equation, right. Yeah. And it's weird because this same doctor was interviewed by the BBC and gave a very different quote. But it's but specifically he is saying, definitely mangle Ais was here, like for sure he was here, but I don't think he experimented on anybody. So it's it's just very strange because you know, we're not describing experimentation. We're describing perhaps a doctor helping out in some way. We're also describing observation exactly observation at the very least, right, So this this leads us to the next twist in our journey. Could this be true? Could this theory, this conspiracy theory be true. We are going to tell you the definitive answer after a word from our sponsors, and we've returned side notes. Long time listeners, you know that it's it's somewhat rare for us to go. Yes, we have the answer and we'll get to it. So we're we're not fooling with you, no smoke. We do know the answer right now. Most experts will not agree with the claims of the historian Camerassa. We want to introduce to you a dcor Ursula Matte of the medical genetics unit at Porto Allegra Hospital in Brazil. She and her colleagues reject any notion whatsoever that Mangola was responsible for this phenomenon, and they they put the work in. Her team went there during they wanted to investigate the reports of higher than average number of twin births, and they found it was legit. They found a ton of twins. They did blood test on seventeen and the twenty two pairs of twins, about half of those pairs were identical twins. And Mate says the paraphrasing for here. But Mate says, look, you don't need a mad scientist to explain this and this time period. Remember that's the one in ten births. Just to give some context there, and she goes on to say, quote, even though we could not find a definitive explanation for this higher incidence, the existence of other twin towns around the world, most of them in remote, isolated areas with high levels of inbreeding, just as in sal Pedro, shows that external influence is not needed for this to happen. Yeah, So for her, the primary issues are two fold, and there's not a Nazi involved. It's isolation and inbreeding, and this allows ordinarily recessive trait or quality to flourish. And she's careful to note that experts still, as we said, do not fully understand the entirety of the mechanisms that are involved in the creation of twins. But she says it's extremely difficult to think that Angela would have known about this kind of stuff in the late nineties sixties. This would have been sci fi level technology for him to understand this, or for him to be able to not only fully understand that mechanism, but to somehow alter it or set it into motion. Because what she says, our real culprit here is not the Angel of Death in her opinion, it is something that is today understood as the Founder effect, which is a cool name for a dangerous thing, and just as a callback here. Remember we stated that only somewhere between eight and twenty families founded this, this village, the city, the place, you know, this place, right. Yeah. After that initial eight families, there were more that came, but they were again from the same area of Germany that is also known for its higher than average number of twins, So people sharing the same genetic history. First, uh, several large families, like eight large families come and then more families come from the same area and this becomes the kernel of this settlement. So we're saying, is relatively homogeneous population. In the world of genetics, that's a bad thing often, Uh. Founder effect describes a loss in genetic variation that happens when you take a sample of organisms from a larger population, very small sample, and then you put them somewhere else and don't let them interact with other organisms, and you just sort of see what happens as they their genes bounce around each other in this sort of biological version of a bottle episode a television Right, we all know what a bottle episode is and always reminds me of that scene in The Lion King where Scar accuses some character of coming from the shallow end of the gene pool. Yeah, and stop ad at all. Yeah, in a in a bottle episode is the thing where your characters are stuck somewhere and they can't really go anywhere. They just sort of bounce off each other genetically. That's what's happening. The Founder effect, And what this means is this is actually fascinating and I believe it will play a big role in the coming era of space travel. When you have a new population that is experiencing Founders effect, their lack of genetic diversity can create over time something distinct and different from that original larger population. And this is happening. This has happened around the world. You can find examples of this in the most extreme cases, which um that would have to happen over a long period of time and probably with a lot of catastrophes along the way. In the most extreme cases, founders effect could lead to speciation at and later evolution of a new species. Why is this interesting for space travel because it's a long way to Mars. We're talking about long distances, right, And if you build an arc ship and people are living and reproducing on it instead of you know, in some sort of stat of suspended animation, then that could also lead to speciation. You could you know, it's quite possible that you could arrive on a planet that have been founded or you know, infiltrated by humans long ago, and you wouldn't quite recognize the humans that you found when you landed. That's amazing, Yes, ben Mars travel, it's the new Galapagos. There we are. Oh that's good, but a T shirt. Yes, but this is I mean that that still feels like the realm of science fiction. But we know that founders effect could very easily apply to future space colonists. And you can see the early stages of founders effects in Brazil's Twin Town. So far, neither the historian Camerassa, nor any other adherent of the Mangalais theory has been able to prove that Mangalais actually conducted experiments. People have only been able to prove he came to the place, he visited on a regular basis. He pretended to be a veterinarian. He did treat animals, and he probably did it as a way to gain access to the human population, a way to gain trust. So back to Dr Mante, Right, that's one of the big questions a lot of us have listening today. What about the DNA, Right, we can do that now. So she conducted a series of DNA tests on about thirty families with a team. She had a team of twenty researchers and they've been working on that since two thousand and nine. And they found a specific gene in the population that appears they're carefully, they phrase it carefully. They say it appears more frequently in mothers of twins than in those without than the mothers without twins. So you can't so they do now they can have a at least a partial predictor. But she notes a couple other things that bust the Manglais theory because she says the prevalence of twin births, like they went back through church records and stuff, and she says the prevalence of twin births dates back to the nineteen thirties, dates back probably even earlier. It's years and years before Mangalais would have ever been on the scene. And then they also, to your point, Matt, because I think I think this is one that was a really popular theory for a while, they also analyzed the water. Yeah, and they found absolutely no abnormalities within the water. No no specific mineral all know, anything, no chemicals that were being leached for some reason or another, or elements. It was just it was pretty good water. Uh. So that was two thousand nine, so they've they've started studying into then they're studying again two thousand nine. I believe the paper that I looked into, at least the abstract of it, was released or published in two thousand eleven. And you can read it if you're if you're so inclined, Yeah, yeah, and it it is. It is fascinating because there is something, you know, no disrespect to the population in this area, there is some there's something extraordinary and and an odd unusual occurring there. Uh. The residents of the residence of Candido Goody today continue to create an abnormally high number of twins. The twin birth rate is real, it continues, and every now and again an expert, a journalist, tourists, just the one curious will visit to experience this mystery firsthand and for the record. In general, the residents are happy to you know, allow you to take a picture with him and so on. Just be very careful, remember, please remember, always be respectful and if you are walking up to some people you don't know in a country you are not familiar with, ask permission before you take a photo. It is it can very easily become a violation of uh several taboos or more's. In fact, you can be attacked sometimes, especially if you're taking photos of children, right, So ask in a respectful manner and if they're cool with it, then yes, you can get the photo. Due to its macab associations, that theory about Joseph Mangle, the idea that he somehow had hidden science and affected the local population, that theory is probably going to continue, even though it's incredibly unlie that he was responsible for this phenomenon. It's just it helps people sell books, it helps with tourism. There, there are reasons people would want to propagate this legend, and he very likely did roll through there and definitely visited, yeah, more than once. He was there and and his he was probably very interested in the town and wanted to stick around, but it was probably fearful of being caught. And it goes back to that um that doctor's quote about I don't think he experimented on people, because in order to do that, he would be giving himself away, and in many aspects, not necessarily, he wouldn't have to say I'm Dr Mangles, but he would by by doing some kind of invasive experimentation there, you're he would almost like be letting his guard down, I would say, or letting a veil up. You have to wonder what you do with the blood though, which out of context is a really weird sentence to say. But you're right, right, that's that's a big question, like would he have risked exposing himself because he was careful He died under a different name in peaceful circumstances and didn't have and never saw a day in court. So it's likely given what we know about him, that he would have known just how extraordinarily rare this population was, It would have been fascinated by it. He probably would have returned. You know, he was observing, he was paying attention. We don't know what conclusions he was drawing, or if he did have any aims for experimentation, because, like you said, Matt I noticed this too. It is not as if he could have published a paper on his research, right because because any German in South America at this time publishing a paper on research and twins uh, right there. But you also have to you also have to imagine, like I mean, his fascination with this from the onset you know, bordered on obsession, and he did so many experiments they were just not rooted in anything but his own morbid curiosity. It would say, I mean, he had a goal, But there is part of me that thinks you don't really lose that drive, you know, when you get older. If anything, like he's probably bored and like you know, just kind of crawling out of his skin. God, horrible expression there for him. Um, but maybe he just you know, wanted to keep things interesting and then did you know, do a couple on the low down, because I mean, let's listen to lie. This guy is a mass murderer. He's a psychopath, you know, I mean in my in my opinion. Yeah, hey Ben, I want to leave the door open just a little bit, if that's okay with this one. All I want to mention is that there there was a BBC small piece put out in where UH photo journalist video jurnalists traveled there, interviewed several people, including the mayor, including that doctor we mentioned UH and the historian. And there's still genetic testing occurring. It's not as though the study just you know, absolutely stamped it, you know, conclusive, We're done. It definitely shows that, like there's a very high likelihood that that the founder effect is you know, explains what is occurring there and what has occurred there. But they're still the community itself is still very much interested in finding more about what's happening and their you know, their own genes and their ancestry and why so their geneticist. They're likely right now at least as like Augusto Santos, who is you know, they're taking the DNA kits that you may have seen before with like the twenty three and me using saliva to further test the twin populations and the mothers just to find out I guess, just more about what heck is happening and why. Yeah, and this is important too because the founders effect, Whi's probably what this is. The found the founder's effect can have series compose serious dangers to a population as time continues. There are you know, higher rates of certain diseases or medical conditions in isolated populations across the planet. So when you are researching these conditions, in researching this phenomena in these communities, you have a very real possibility of being able to help address genetic issues down the line. And this this is not just important, I would argue for these communities, of course, it is a huge priority there, but it's also important for the human species overall. So these geneticists are doing incredibly important work. And I know, you know, I know a lot of us probably weren't expecting to talk about space travel in this episode of all phases, but it will. Like the larger point is that this research is going to arm the human species with with some profound knowledge that will come in handy in the coming millennia. And you know, that's that's way out there. I know that's that's very much a tangent. But what's happening now, Just like you said, Matt is important to the present, the past, and the future. And we're also fortunate that we have research capable of dispelling this mystery because one of the one of the things that always bugs me is like the the glamorization of you know, various Nazi ideas through conspiracy, you know. And what's what's great about this story is that we found good, diligent scientists one out over mad scientists. Unless that is, you have proof, you have proof that Mangles did something that's somehow further accelerated the production of twins. If you do, we'd love to hear it. Let us know. We try to be easy to find online. That's right. You can find us in the usual Internet locations. Of note, we are on Facebook, we are on Twitter, both of those are conspiracy stuff. You can find us on Instagram at Conspiracy Stuff Show and Matt correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we are also conspiracy stuff on YouTube. Yes, that is correct. Check it out, pull up your oculus and watch us in three D a slash in a virtual environment slash. It's not really three dashes of virtual environment. It's fun. I just tried it. It's weird as heck, but you can watch Ben and he's like forty ft tall looming over to you, and uh, I don't know it's worth it. Try it out, see how it plays for you. I loved it so m yeah. YouTube definitely for sure. 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