Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowStrange News: FEMA Under Attack, Active Shooter Drills, DPRK Declares "Holy War," Europa, Deadly Ottomans and More
Conspiracy theories proliferate in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, resulting in actionable threats against FEMA contractors. Mysterious goo appears on the shore. Active shooter drills terrify local institutions. An ottoman bed kills an innocent woman, scientists explore Europa; all this and more in this week's strange news segment.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben.
We are joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is the top of the week if you are hearing this the evening it comes out. Welcome, friends and neighbors to October twenty first, we have so much in store for you. We have a lot of things that we might not get to. But on a pot positive note for a pulled open cool update, the Rangers in Wyoming have decided to stop blowing up dead horses.
I thought you're referring to a sports team for a second. I get you now the actual Rangers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're done with blowing up dead horses now. A lot of us, a lot of us would say cool. That's another headline like space bricks, that gives us a lot of questions. Already in the statement, it is apparently due to the wildfire risk that is posed when you blow up the horse carcass.
Well, remember that story from years years back where they blew up a whale carcass on a beach somewhere, and it was a horrible idea because the guts and smelly, awful stuff just flew like, way way farther than they were expecting it. I mean, I know a horse isn't a whale, but still seems like there'd be some potential for catastrophic gut flinging.
Yeah, if you want to learn more, please do check out the excellent article in The Guardian publish pretty recently. Shout out to Richard Luscombe. Apparently this has been a ongoing policy. They just exploded the carcasses forever and now they are stopping it. So we're looking for good news. Obviously, there's a holy war going on, or it's being advertised as such. There's mysterious stuff washing up on beaches. We got true crime for you. We've got some dangerous automans, and of course, as we are all in love with space, we have some space exploration and we promise not to make too many you know, urine blood and potato flake jokes, right, can we promise that I can't do that?
Okay?
And that is refusing totally all.
Right, given a soft yes, he's given a soft yes. Soft sorry to guarantee a thing like that. Ben, It just comes up, you know, and you got to go where the spirit moves you. Yeah. Agree.
Also, Soft Yes is the band we made up for our pal Paul Deckett.
Too Many Sich. Indeed, it's like a kind of a new wave synthpop type bane.
He's still like he's not He was never mad about the joke, but he was disappointed. So folks, coming into tonight's exploration, you may have noticed longtime listeners that we had a classic episode published in place of our weekly listener mail segment. We are in good spirits, we're happy. Like many other people, we have been dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters in the southeastern United States, keeping the folks in North Carolina and our thoughts. They just got walloped with hurricane weather and then they got walloped with snow. It's actually snowing in parts of North Carolina. Now I heard that, yeah, And also I would argue we and the US entire has encountered something that people weren't predicting another knock on consequence of hurricanes, which is hurricane conspiracy theories.
One of the.
Elected politicians in our home state of Georgia controversially claimed that weather controlling technology was deployed heavily, implying that that was used to weaponize hurricanes. That is MTG, not Magic the Gathering, sadly, and I always wish it was magic the Gathering. What is it though, Ben Marjorie Taylor Green, Oh.
Yes, yes, sir, Sorry, I don't even she occupies so little real estate in my head. I don't even think of the acronym gotcha.
It's a smart choice, smart choice not to think of it. Did you guys hear that statement from that point?
Yeah? But yes, it's a bizarre thing to talk about, because I mean, we know that I mean to what end? First of all, you know what I mean, to deploy this technology were it to exist in this way? Like, what's the point. It just seems very expensive in terms of everyone's investment, whether it be FEMA, whether it be insurance companies. It just seems like a real dumb move. I just can't see any benefit to deploying this to ruin people's lives and skyrocket insurance rates.
The accusations I've been seeing online have to do with an attempt to somehow mess up the early voting for the presidential election, which is it's troubling to see it like that. It's way yeah, when it's such an out there claim and then a lot of people take it seriously and then turn around and at least make a TikTok video about it or an Instagram reel about it, and then it just continues the flow.
And well, speaking of flow, it's clogging up a lot of resources because they're having to take actual facts time to explain to people that know this is not the case, and it's taking away from like the work that they could be doing and and the other you know, types of communications they could be fielding that are much more life saving and livelihood saving.
And to step back for the larger context, let's be quite transparent here. Weather modification technology does exist, but in a relatively primitive form. We've discussed it at length in episodes in the past. You can do things like cloud seeding. The problem is global weather systems are highly interconnected, so you're not you know, it's a it's a lot less like pushing one domino down without interfering with other dominoes. And it's a lot more like flicking you know, a mobile or a mobile you know, I'm talking about the little things that hang sure from the baby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so it affects this system. And often when we hear conspiracies or claims of conspiracy about weather modification, it's putting a lot of no offense science. It's putting in a lot of undeserved credit toward current weather. Right, and thank you for beving me there, because there's not a level of discrete control. Every country that has tried it has gotten smacked with unforeseen consequences, from US operations in the Southeast Theater to Chinese cloud seeding in advance of things like the two thousand and eight Olympics, and so the weather modification that's just one thing. We could even do an episode on this, if.
You don't mind, Ben, I just think there's just two things we get to point out here. We know that there are advanced research projects that DARPA funds for things that would attempt to be more robust weather modification.
Right.
We know that DARPA funds that kind of stuff, and we also know that we don't know all of the research projects that are happening anywhere that have a darkened budget somehow. And when you've got somebody in the position of Marjorie Taylor Green or somebody like that, there's a perception that because this person holds that position, they may know more than we do, because they've been maybe privy to documentation that the public doesn't get access to. So then there's this feeling, at least a perception that maybe this could be real when you have somebody at that level speaking so certainly about it publicly, and it really just does feel dangerous because, as you're saying, some other modification is real, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that something like that could exist, but the fact that somebody is saying it with so certainly that it is definitely happening, it just causes I think some of our brains to malfunction a little bit.
And believe it right, You anticipated my final point there, which is, yes, Congress does members of legislation or legislator they do have access to things that are occluded from the voting public. Therefore, yes, let's let that point stand. What we do need to get to here is the moment of empathy. Please, please, folks take a moment and realize that the people at FEMA are not villains. They're working so hard, right, and often underpaid. There are a lot of misconceptions about FEMA, and one of the misconceptions that seems to be proliferating now even more so than it did in the wake of things like Katrina is the idea that FEMA is part of a deep state bound up in the idea of weather modification as well. And we were talking about FEMA briefly off air. Would you guys say there is more disinformation spreading about FEMA in the wake of these disasters or is this par for the course.
It feels like certainly more, because it's an active effort. And it's almost like, in situations like this, you barely even need people stir in the pot to get the potential for those kinds of conspiracy theories floating around. And so when you actually have people actively proliferating misinformation, it stirs the pot in a really really chaotic and nasty way. And like you know, I mean, if I were to imagine what type of weather control or modification technology is being researched or would be deployed in our country by our government. Maybe I'm naive here, but I'd like to think that it would be stuff that could break up storm systems like that, right, you know, before they get to the places that it's literally decimating our country. It just doesn't make sense. I don't understand and I don't see a particular political viewpoint being targeted in these demographics that were hit Georgia, North Carolina. These are places I mean, I just don't understand. These are places that it's it seems would largely support Marjorie Taylor Green's political ambit.
I think that's what's being said, right, that they're being targeted because they are conservative voters.
Oh so it's the other side that's doue.
I gotch Okay, see the ideas I would interfere with early voting. To step back to the point we were making their No. One thing these regions have in common is that they are historically geographically vulnerable to hurricanes. A little known fact. There have been and I love that point you made, There have been historical efforts to control hurricanes. They have failed in the decades between the nineteen sixties and the nineteen eighties, Uncle Sam toyed with the idea of making storms bigger in size but weaker in intensity. The idea being we could spread out I say we, I was not involved in this this year, that you could spread out this thing and through spreading it out reduce the tremendous damage. They Yeah, General Electric in the US military back in nineteen forty seven dropped a dry ice out of Air Force planes into the path of a hurricane and they thought, maybe that'll weaken it. Spoiler, that also didn't work. What I'm trying to bring us back to here is the idea that FEMA itself is getting. People contracting for FEMA are having to stop working. To your earlier point about resource allocation, they're having to stop because they are being targeted by militias, by bad faith actors, people who drank the Flavor aid and yes it was Flavor eight folks, not equilly. But have you heard have you guys heard about the idea that FEMA I almost said operatives, but like people working for FEMA or under that auspice are being targeted.
YEA, death threats and the like. And there's things just that are life threatening at the worst and horribly distracting. Maybe at the most diplomatic.
Yeah, I know, one particular contractor I think pulled back all of their workers right after some death threats from individuals. Right, not at least early on in the reporting. It wasn't a whole group or someone that was coming out and saying, you know, we're going to attack you, but it was individuals who these groups were continually encountering, like one homeowner to the next one, where there was an actual threat. And it got to the point where I think someone even got arrested.
Right, Yes, that's correct. Yeah, And this is why I think this could be an episode. As we go into that idea, it's important to correct a common misconception a lot of folks have about FEMA, which is FEMA doesn't really have its own you know, standing Army of water mitigation experts, have you, They partner with other groups, right, They will partner with the Army Corps of Engineers. They will reach out to local and regional contractors. So we were talking about this a little bit off air. The dangerous thing about what's been happening here, especially in North Carolina quite recently, is the idea that the guy who was your sump pump, dude, you know two years ago. Now all of a sudden, he's part of a deep state. The logic struggles, right, and we know that in specific, the rampant disinformation began as FEMA was responding to Hurricane Helene, which as we know, hit Florida on September twenty sixth and ultimately left a trail of wild destruction across six different states. People were also criticizing the current Biden administration, as we record again with the with the concept being the larger narrative spine being that there is a concerted effort of some sort to disenfranchise people who might vote one way or another. And I feel like it's gonna it's gonna continue. You use the word decimate earlier Nol and Helene in particular, and also later Milton decimated remote towns, which means they didn't obliterate them, but they definitely they definitely made things.
Terrible, right. But some of them, though, are that are just gone, you know.
And FEMA had to advise all federal responders in Rutherford County to leave the county immediately.
UH.
The US Force Service also sent multiple reports to two associated agencies because of the concern that armed militias would would take action against them based on these conspiracy theories. If you want to read more, please do check out the excellent article in the Washington Post by Brianna Sachs and Dan Lamoth. North Carolina authorities arrest and armed man after threats against FEMA workers. So they did at least arrest one guy. His name's William Jacob Parsons, he's forty four years old, because he was making actionable threats against a government agency. And I know, I don't you know you've heard this show, fellow conspiracy realist. We talk a lot of trash. I think we're very fair about it, but we also don't make actionable threats against federal level agencies, and you also should avoid doing that.
Is that fair? Yoh? Yeah? Bad for him? Yeah.
I just want to go back to this fear of FEMA. Do you remember the FEMA camps theories that we covered early in the video series, when people thought there were FEMA detention camps that were being set up for basically political prisoners to be can mass again, the coffin liners, the black plastic coffin liners that were seen in satellite imagery.
What do you think it is about them that breeds that kind of thinking. I guess I don't fully understand where this comes from.
Because they're often going into rural areas and it's a federal level force. And if you are not you know, if you're not familiar with the structure of FEBA, then you know also you're encountering one of the most terrible times of your life. You are not maybe cognizant that these are a lot of contractors, right, They don't work for FEMA full time. They travel around to address these things. To imagine, you're in a fairly localized environment and all of a sudden, this big acronym sweeps in. Right, they're going through the door. They're telling you things. If you're already kind of a small government or less is better kind of ideological stance, then this does seem this can seem very evil empire.
Yeah, well, and they they generally make big moves, right, because we're saying there's like individuals going door to door, like teams going door to door. But when FEMA moves to an area to set up AID essentially for a region, they move in mass and they create big areas where they're operating out of and if you know, you've got people online maybe taking a video of FEMA response area coming up while you're saying, you know, things that sound kind of scary into the camera about it.
It's yeah, it feels.
Like, oh man, this is God. I mean, it literally is government moving into our area.
It's an occupation that's being interpreted as an occupation.
It depends on the context that's being delivered to you around whatever is actually happening. I don't know, it just it goes back to the eighties because I didn't realize there's stuff in here about Reagan when FEMA was operating and there were like real fears about it, which probably you know, then go into things like some of the raids that occurred and are very famous nowadays. I think it all gets intertwined, and this whole thing doesn't help, especially when there's actual facts stuff being reported by CBS and other places about those lithium mines in North Carolina and about the Pentagon's massive, massive injection of money, like ninety million dollars into the lithium mines by the Pentagon last year, last September. So then you add that as context, and then you start talking about Oh, they just want this lithium, right.
So if we declare it a disaster area and we can swoop in and take control, then that's is that kind of the idea.
My point is that you combine all these things together and you make it sound very scary, and to somebody on the ground there who was seeing bits and pieces of it in real life, it then becomes terrifying in something you need to take action against.
So we also see that US meteorologists have been facing death threats, which is terrible because I always feel like meteorologists. I think everyone can agree. If you're meteorologists, you get a lot of flak because you're already in a kobayashe Maru situation, an unwinnable thing. So in either a future listener mail segment or in perhaps an episode, we'll address some of the things briefly referenced here, such as the lithium mind conspiracy. Thank you again to everybody from North Carolina in particular who has taken the time to contact us regarding this. Went on Twitter, which is now peak conspiracy and asked about some other hurricane theories, which we will get to the original point. We want to end on here. Despite this brief discourse is to please stay safe, please exercise empathy and understand. The points made earlier refer to the fact that when people don't have all the information and they're in a very scary time, humans are pattern recognizers, right, Humans are in organizers curators of experience. So we can predictably see more dangerous disinformation in the near to mid future because natural disasters will continue at dare I say an unnatural pace would love to hear your stories. We'd love to hear your first hand accounts. Please please please consider us a resource for other things people should know conspiracydiheartradio dot com will pause for a word from our sponsors. We'll get to some more stuff later, but for now, I think it's time we take a trip to a beach.
And we have returned and Ben set it up perfectly. I do have two sort of shorter stories today, but the first one does involve a trip to a beach the coast of Newfoundland in Canada, where beach combers since September have been spotting some very unusual material washing up on the beach amidst the jellyfish and kelp and all of that good stuff. This stuff much more closely resembles like something akin to fried dough, or like sort of globules of like pizza dough. Almost. It's really bizarre. There's a guy from Newfoundland from the area who spoke to the BBC's Jessica Murphy from their report on this, who said that it was like someone had tried to bake bread and done a lousy job, and described it smelling something akin to vegetable oil. And there have been reports of this weird globby stuff washing up, like I said, since September, and government officials in Ottawa, which is the part of Canada where Newfoundland is, have visited the site multiple times and done some testing, preliminary testing which has thus far determined the material to be plant based. And if you go to this BBC article you should be able to find it. Just by googling mysterious Blobs on the BBC you can see lots of pictures of this stuff and it really does look kind of like wet, squishy blobs of dough. There has been a lot of online chatter about this, a lot of speculation from different beachcomber groups online, and I imagine it's started to filter out into other corners of the Internet. But some of the conjecture involves thinking it to be some kind of mold or fungus, or perhaps palm oil, paraffin wax, or even amber grease, which I'm certain we've discussed on the show before. It is a really great Bob's Burgers episode about amber grease, which is this really smelly waxy stuff that is expelled from the bellies of whales and it actually I don't quite understand the problem, but it is used to make fine perfumes and phrase and it's very, very valuable.
It adds depth, warmth and longevity to the scent.
So they say it's weird how valuable it is. But to check out the Bob's Burgers episode about ambergrease, I think Gene like really enjoys eating it. And it's a whole thing involving mister fishoder and you know, all of the folks down at the beach in Bob's Burgers. The Environment and Climate Change Canada Office, a spokesperson of there, told the BBC that they're going to have to take some additional samples and analyze further in order to determine what the substance is and what its potential environmental impact might be. They have largely been spotted in an area the shorelines of an area called Placenta Bay. It's kind of weird, sent yeah, but I mean you can't ignore well, you can't ignore it, guys. I mean these things do oh kind of have.
Like a Placenta kind of look to but they know the composition though, right, like isn't the sort of isn't the question more providence like the origin and the why?
Oh? Ben? You know, all I saw in the BBC reporting, which is largely what I saw other people kind of sighting, was that they determined it to be plant based. But did you maybe see an update that I missed?
Well, we we you know, we're fascinated with this stuff, especially with our previous collaborations on Strange Things Falling from the sky.
And I love the Angel goo what was it?
Yeah, right right right, Star Jelly.
That's the fun, Yeah, Angel Goose, Star Jelly Potato.
So I love that you're bringing this story up because I read that the blobs were formed from uh or seemed to be comprised of seaweed, sand and small stones. But they're slippery and apparently they can They're also flammable, which I don't associate with, you know, snot of the sea, and I love it. No, you know, I love snot of the sea. I eat oysters all the time.
Oh yeah, how very brave was the man who first ate an oyster? Yeah I do too. Yeah no, but you know it's funny like the article from Jessica Murphy from the twelfth of October today being the sixteenth didn't have that detail in it, So I appreciate you bringing that up because that is very interesting. I do think that there will still need to be more data collected and analyzed for them to understand where it comes from, because it could potentially be a side effect or a byproduct of something else, like some sort of maybe manufacturing process or what have you, that could be either out of step with regulations causing you know, further pollution or contamination, or it could be something more unusual than that. There is a really interesting quote that wraps up this article from that stand Tobin guy who called it badly big bread. He he lives in an area called ship Cove, which is a very small village along the bay, and he walks on the beaches often, and he described it as hundreds and hundreds of globs, big globs, little globs with about a maximum diameter of six inches or fifteen centimeters. He's the one who he's one of the people who initially called the Canadian Coast Guard to report what he had seen. And he had this to say, which I thought was a good way of wrapping up the story. Somebody or somebody's know where this came from and how it got there and knows damn well it's not supposed to be here. So you know, Tobin's got the right idea, he gets it. But yeah, do you guys, I mean, I think this is one to follow. I mean, it could be nothing, but I know, as you said, Ben, we're always a fan of mysterious globular substances. Did you guys have anything to have before I move on to this next one?
Sounds like a yeasty, yucky thing.
Yeah, the beast on Yeasty tried to can we sell it at like a high dollar you know, better breakfast or something.
Gene from Bob's Burgers would have eaten it first thing. That's exactly Yeah, that's exactly what would have happened. But yeah, yeah, very very very very weird, weird looking stuff interesting that nobody quite knows where it's coming from yet, but hopefully we'll hear some more soon. I am going to move from Canada to still pretty northern area Michigan, you know, the Upper Peninsula. It's kind of Canada like in some ways. It does feel oftentimes parts of Michigan feel like a different universe. And I guess maybe I'm romanticizing it because of that incredible Soufia and Stevens album Michigan that does paint this very kind of lore rich portrait of Michigan and the different parts of it from you know, his perspective growing up there. But this is not about that kind of vibe. This is a pretty horrific thing that happened to some children and some medical professionals back in twenty twenty two, apparently at a psychiatric hospital for children. A active shooter drill took place. At this facility, a state run facility known as Hawthorne Center in suburban Detroit. An announcement came over the loudspeaker's system in the in the hospital announcing that two armed men had entered the state run facility and shots had been fired. And this, as you might imagine, set off a series of let's say, anxiety ridden events, you know, from the patients, from the staff, and that is because nobody was told about this. It was, in fact not true that there was an active shooter. This was a drill, and a painfully misplaced drill. Let's just say, wherever the intentions might have been, heart being in the right place, what have you, It did did not go over well. So apparently one hundred it is traumatic and we're going to get to what that means. But the attorney in this case, there is to your point, then there is trauma to be had and litigated. There is an attorney in this case, because it's happened back in twenty twenty two, had this to say. It was horrifying. Everyone went into oh my god, this is the worst day of my life mode. She said, the lawyers say that. The lawyer saying this, yeah. Wagner, Robin Wagner had this to say. She said, people were hiding under their desks, they were barricading the doors, trying to figure out how to protect the children. All this is being said because it was announced this week on the fifteenth, as we record today, on the sixteenth yesterday, the story came out of the Detroit AP. A judge has approved thirteen million dollars in damages, essentially in a settlement that was announced over this unannounced active shooter drill that took place at once again a psychiatric hospital for children. Seems legit, guys, you know, ben Us said traumatic completely the case. Police apparently were not notified and that first series of kind of frantic phone calls and texts and barricadings and all of that led to swat teams, heavily armed police forces coming down to the facility to address this active shooter situation that had been reported for multiple people present. I just can't imagine what someone was thinking. It was apparently organized by the Hawthorne Center safety director who works for the state, who is probably getting fired, I would imagine. So it didn't say in the AP piece that I read, but it did say the hospital was subsequently closed for reasons unrelated. But maybe this points to a larger mismanagement type problem. But the good news is that the Court of Claims Judge James read For proved the settlements early this month on October fourth, showing that more than three million dollars will be going to attorneys and between fifty and sixty thousand dollars apiece going to the children and their families and also the personnel that were put in the middle of this utterly horrifying debacle of a situation. I mean, And of course the takeaway here is thank god it wasn't a real active shooter situation. But good lord, this is a bungled drill.
You know.
I don't know, guys, what do you think?
It reminds me of the twenty eighteen false missile alert in Hawaii, But you could argue it's even more immediate and therefore more damaging. I guess for most people listening, and not to make presumptions, but for many people in the US listening, you might think of it as a more black mirror version of the fire alarm drills which used to happen all the time at our office or on a semi regular basis. And it was kind of a conspiracy because if it is a drill, you can't let people know, right, But they didn't let everybody who should know know, so it seems.
Like it didn't scream fire over the fricking pa either, right, right.
But also, you know, local law enforcement would ideally, And I'm assuming here, so you guys correct me if i'm if I'm wrong. I'm assuming that local law enforcement would need to be able to have visibility on this such that they can discern the difference between a drill and an active shooter. And shout out to our friend Lauren Vogelbaum for teaching us the word actual facts.
I obviously use the long may she rain. She's coined plenty of those in her day. Love you, Lauren. Just just to give a little bit of numbers really quickly to the settlement, fifty children of the hospital are going to get around sixty thousand dollars a year. Ninety people among the staff will receive fifty thousand dollars each And here's the kind of weird little kicker. And I guess they have to have some sort of rebreak to measure this stuff with. But apparently the amount they're receiving will depend on their score on a trauma exam. And then there are two dozen others that are going to get smaller amounts. But I guess I've never really thought about the idea of taking a trauma exam. I feel like, oh, yeah, trauma, it have to be though if it makes perfect sense, but it just seems like, you know, how do you measure such things, especially so far removed from the actual events. But I guess it would have to do with how much sleep if you loss, do you have nightmares about it? Those kinds of questions would seem to be appropriate.
Well, I don't know about you know, but when my son's school does an active shooter drill like this, and they do elementary schools, do these active shooter drills.
On until they say over the pa, there's an active shooter.
My understanding is they let the kids know what's happening. But I've never been present when one of these drills has gone on because they happen during school hours, sure, and we're often notified like day of or or right before or right after a drill has occurred, and I'll often have a conversation with my son about it before I know anything else. And I just imagine being a kid, as you guys were talking about with those fire drills or tornado drills we used to do, just being in that situation where you are pretending that somebody's got a gun in your school and they're coming to kill you and anybody else just what that does to you.
And one how sad is that we're at a place, you know, in this country now where this is being added to the list of necessary types of drills, and we're no longer just scared about fire. Oop. Somebody you know set a waste paper basket on fire, and now you know people have to know how to react. This is something so much more traumatic long term, just the thought that this could happen at any time. And it's not like there isn't plenty of information out on the news that you'll hadually have on in the radio and you're on the way to school taking your kid hearing about all of these horrible events. It's it's tough because it's like your choices are kind of either to like live in fear as a child, but do we know children are really adaptable or just sort of normalize it. And I'm not sure which is worse. It makes me sad. It makes me sad. I don't know.
It's good to be prepared.
I just feel like it.
Creates crazy anxiety in a mind that isn't ready to handle that kind of thing. But they have to be ready now, which is insane.
It is insane. Yeah, I don't know, Ben, Did you have any other thoughts on this one?
Yes, but I almost want to save them for an episode. I don't want to recap the I mean, the normalization we talked about. That, that's true. We have to remember also that there is an evolution of fear driven drills, which are necessary, as was pointing out earlier, for a certain amount of preparation. But also we have to consider to your point and all the knock on long term effects. You know, we have people in the audience tonight who experience the terrifying nuclear attack drills of the Cold War hide over the desk, and you know that's not going to do a gosh darn thing when some of us, maybe in the younger part of the crowd, experience those tornado drills where you just had to stick your butt into the center of the hallway and put your head toward the corner.
Head between legs, right with your hands over your interlaced behind.
Yeah.
Yeah, similar to the old aircraft crash position, put your head between your knees and kiss your butt goodbye the shit. Careful with that joke. It's an antique, but I think I think it's worth examining whether there are better ways to educate and prepare children other than something as traumatic as this. That's that's just my two cents. Adjusted for inflation, that's like eight cents.
Well, no, I think that's a you know, let's tay, let's call it twenty cents, because I think you're onto something, Ben, don't you guys think this might be a good use of augmented reality or some sort of use of VR. You know, for something like this, you know, the stakes are not what they might seem. You know, in a drill like this, you know you hear in control. But I guess, I guess maybe you have to kind of feel like you're not in control, otherwise you might not react correctly. I don't know, guys, I'm with you that there must be a better way. I don't know what it is, but just the idea of AR and VR came to mind because I mean, Matt, I mean, the other one who turned us on to some of that VR stuff, And even if it's pixily as hell, the all encompassing nature of it does cause your mind to accept it as real. I just think, you know, you could use that to mimic a situation where you needed to react a certain way, and maybe that could be a good stand in for something like that that feels so you know, dangerous, because again, I mean, I can't imagine mad that at your kids' school they scream over the loud speakers that there's a shooter there. That's the part that's jacked up about this story, right that. I mean, if they did that every time, there'd be way more lawsuits like that. So I think that's where the people in charge of this facility obviously went wrong.
Yeah, I can't confirm this specifically by my son's school, but I know often they use a code word, like a code something that they'll say over the speakers, or you know, a phrase or something, and then often a tone or something that will play that is basically a message to the teachers that often the kids are aware of and then they go into a drill. But that's at least the way I have seen it portrayed in the past.
And I also got a wonder too, like is it enough just to have that code word and to be able to react in a very codified way rather than be told that there's a shooter, which is then going to create an every person for themselves kind of situation as opposed to having like procedure. You know, I just wonder because you know, you obviously need to be able to react if someone comes into your classroom, but it's also at that point, is there anything much you can do?
Yeah, it's it's often if somebody is on the school property. At least again, what I'm I get, what I've seen.
Well, I appreciate both of y'all's perspectives, and it's it's scary stuff. But those are my two for today, y'all. So let's take a quick word from our sponsor and then return with one last piece of strange news.
And we're back. This is epig Old grab bag, a couple of updates. You always talked about Boeing a whole bunch, Just gonna bring this little ditty to our attention. In CNN Business, Chris Isidore wrote on Tuesday, October fifteenth, Boeing's crisis is getting worse now it's borrowing tens of billions of dollars. I'm just gonna get meg A layoffs too, right, Yeah, I'm gonna give you a couple of lines here. It gives you a context. These are Chris's words. Boeing's debt surged in the last six years, as Boeing reported core operating losses of more than thirty three billion dollars. Its commercial airline production has ground to a near halt by a month long strike by thirty three thousand members of the International Association of Machinists. Talks between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists or IAM broke down last week with no new negotiations planned, and on Friday, Friday before we're recording this, Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Orthberg, announced plans to cut ten percent of its worldwide staff of around one hundred and seventy one thousand people or around seventeen thousand human beings.
But don't worry, folks, they're all from quality control.
That's right, just the folks who do the last checks.
That's not true.
We're joking, but that is the stuff we've been talking about. That's why this is an update, because Boeing is suffering very, very badly from poorly manufactured or poorly manufactured parts that then get assembled and don't fit right. Here's last bit. So yesterday, as we record this episode, Boeing announced plans to borrow ten billion from a consortium of banks. It also separately announced plans to raise twenty five billion dollars by selling stock and its debt. Isn't that interesting You just sell your debt like that sh raise some money. So anyway, not looking good for Boeing. Anything you guys on that end or anything else we need to add there.
I don't think so. It just doesn't look good. I mean, I know they're one of those companies that's described as like in that too big to fail bracket, but they sure are failing pretty hard. I don't see it getting much better for them, And doesn't it seem like laying off workforce is not the best way to up their quality.
Control ultimately, I think that's a cost saving measure probably. Also, they're in a you know, a battle with a union, which we have seen retaliation before when there's a union battle happening, where they just let a bunch of people go, so in the company's mind, they can pay the rest of the people that stay whatever the costs are, right that they're trying to negotiate. It's a it's a thing that happens. I don't know with.
Great respect, I would pause it that we are looking at conflicting priorities due to the structure of Boeing's ownership, Right, they are beholden to deliver certain certain profits, right, certain metric performances, and sometimes that can be priority that contradicts stuff you would imagine would be the day one things for a company that manufactures tangible assets. Know what, you have made a great point regarding the too big to fail. It may be possible that Boeing gets acquired by something else. But when you're looking at the big dogs in commercial aircraft, you're looking at Boeing an air bus, and you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but I don't think any potus would want to be beholden to France, which is you know, of course where Airbus is based. Isn't that right, aren't they French?
I think that's right.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean to that end, Boeing expects to report a loss of nine point ninety seven dollars a share in the third quarter, which you know, what do you do when you're gonna report a big loss, Cut some people and save some money.
Oh and the quality control thing, by the way, yes, folks, I was. I was entirely joking. I'm working on material for a live show on election night, and I'm trying to get I'm trying to get our guys here to maybe do some videos for it.
Yeah, just always be closy.
Let's jump to the next thing here. We've been talking about home insurance a lot. Here is a little ditty written by Rob Wiley. I think is how you say his name for NBC News On October thirteenth, insurance nightmare unfolds for Florida homeowners after back to back hurricanes. Guess we'll just get to real quickly. Here these are Rob's words. Some homeowners insurance companies operating in Florida are categorizing the storms, both Helene and Milton, as two separate events, meaning anyone who did not or could not document damage from Helene before Milton hit could face even greater odds that their claim will be denied if they were hit by both storms. Basically, did you not take enough pictures? Did you not get in the right paperwork? Did you not do whatever it is that you have to do according to the papers you signed with your insurance company? Do you not finish that stuff before Milton hit after you got hit by Helene, well you might be out of luck. That is according to Mark Friedlander, who's the director of corporate Communications for the Insurance Information Institute. Oh also this guys. In a statement, FEMA said, I'm going to need your help with this. It is simplifying its claims process so that it will only consolidate two loss claims in a circumstance where there would be no loss of recovery to the policy holder. What no loss of recovery to the policy holder. It will only consolidate two claims in a circumstance where there would be no loss of recovery to the policy holder.
I don't even understand. I mean, you know, I'm already in like insurance paranoia mode right now and here this kind of stuff certainly does not improve that mental state. What does that even mean that way?
I don't know. I don't know what it means. And it really troubles me because that timing that occurred between Helene and Milton was not that long, and we all know how long an insurance claim can take to get fully you know, fixed and finished, to get somebody to come out to your home and inspect it after an insurance claim has occurred, often takes a long time, just all of it. It's going to be a debacle. And add on top of that, Florida has changed some of the ways it allows insurance companies to operate within it basically to get insurance companies back into the Florida market. Basically, they needed to make it better for the insurance company.
To eat insurance nightmare. It would seem just because of like how exposed that part of the country is to this kind of stuff. You know.
Yeah, so it makes and those changes, at least according to Rob Here, writing for NBC News, it would make it very very difficult or more difficult for a homeowner to fight back against the initial decision that the insurance company made when it comes to a claim that's been filed, Which what are you gonna do?
So they're already just trying to find a loophole kind of It sounds to me like that's what they're searching for. With that language that you're talking about, it's just an excuse not to pay out, not to cover. And you've got people in this article that you found Matt saying we did everything we were supposed to do. What else were we supposed to do, Like we couldn't even get someone out to inspect it as quickly as we would have liked.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know, just awful. So those are the two updates. Guys. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm just going to give you two other stories to look up on your own, and they're strange. They meet the criteria of this episode, so check them out. In The Guardian, you can find something written by Rachel Keenan from Friday, October eleventh, titled woman jailed for life after murdering parents and living with bodies in Essex. She did so. She lived with them for around four years after murdering her father by poisoning and mother by hammer and stabbing, and then made a little tomb for her father where she put basically blankets on top of it, pictures and almost like, I don't know, like some kind of memorial for him, and then shoved her mom into a sleeping bag and put her in like another room in the house. Then continued to take their pension money and use it for her online gambling habit for around four years until the police showed up busted in her door and she confessed to everything in the house that day. Crazy. Look it up, it's crazy. Another one, this time in CNN, written by Issy Ronald, titled woman killed by malfunctioning autuman bed. Guys, I didn't know automans were dangerous. Apparently they are the ones that, maybe at least I've interacted with and maybe you guys have interacted with, generally.
Have a pretty innocuous pieces of furniture, you know.
Yeah, it's a bed that folds, right, It's.
Was just the thing you put your on. I thought a proper automan was just like a little foot rest.
Oh wait, maybe I'm getting this wrong. It's an automan styled gas lift bed.
Okay, that must be something different, as an automan is also just a the thing that comes with the cow. It's that's just the little square part that you put your feet up on. That's also an automan as as its own thing. But what you're saying is accurate. But I, of course I just I picture an automan as the thing that I was describing to.
Oh it's a gas lift storage bed.
Yeah, yeah, just to jump in. It's not a murphy bed. It's like almost a horizontal version of that where you can lift it up and have you know, like if you see if you see beds that are I love this construction. You see beds that have drawers you can pull out from beneath the mattress or the box Kia special. This one, if I'm understanding, correctly, means that you can push the mattress up from the horizontal position or the box spring or whatever people sleep on, and then you'll have storage. Is that correct?
Yeah?
It looks like a forty five degree angle if you imagine the bed going up, and these are generally like hydraulic sometimes gas filled pistons that are moving up and down that actually hold the bed in place when it's opened at that forty five degree angle, and then you close it back down. Well, apparently she accessed her Attoman bed by opening it up, then got her head and neck stuck between it as it collapsed down onto her because one of the pistons was malfunctioning.
Now, this wasn't death by being crushed though, however, right was she instantly dead or what happened?
Well?
No, it basically strangled her. She asphyxiated because her neck was pressed between the collapsing part of the bed and the hard part.
Of the base. Yeah, what a way to go. Yeah, this is also a very new piece of furniture for me. I'm not aware of this style of bed, but I'm seeing there is the thing I was describing just like a four legged footste automan, and then there is this automan bed, which is news to me. So hey, you learn something every day.
Oh yeah, it was news to me too. What, guys, I can't think of the word in my head. What is the bed that looks like a sofa and then goes down into a bed and then it can sit back up as a sofa.
Trundle bed?
Oh no, there's a word for that. I always thought it was automan, but maybe.
Is it awesome couch?
Is it Transformer couch, Megatron couch?
Again, I'm not joking, but I love multifunctional furniture.
And what's the thing where the bed slides out from underneath where those drawers are that you were describing earlier, Ben, that's also a thing. I think that's a trundle bed. If you have a bed that has a drawer bed that pulls out, Yeah, and then you can flop a mattress on that. That's another type of.
I'm most familiar with Trundle as one of the aliases of Charlie Dave from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He was going by, he was going in his trundle for a time.
I like it. It's got it, got it good. Jobo to people and thank you both of.
Youople ah Man, Well, hey guys, and that is I'll give you this last one because this is something worth thinking about, and then we'll get out of here. NASA launches probe toward Jupiter and it's icy moon Europa to assess habitability. This in CBS News, written by William Haywood on Monday, October fourteenth. Check this out, bro, learn about this.
I wish you would brought it to up firs day because I said, I have something to say about this, because I heard about this on the radio a couple of days ago. And I'll just leave it with this. In the Arthur C. Clark novel two thousand and one, A Space Out to See, of course, the film is based on that too. Europa comes up a lot. There's also the sequel, and it's the one place the aliens say is not for you, and do not come to Europa. Do not attempt any landings on Europa.
We like it, Yeah, real life science as one of the one of the best candidates in the Solar System for harboring something humans would understand his life, So there's a reason to look at it.
Well, Yeah, because it seems as though, at least the data that humans have right now is that there's some kind of giant saltwater ocean beneath the frozen crust of Europa. So like, potentially, if you're beneath all that ice, somehow, maybe you're a little warmer and you're a little safer from all the stuff that could really mess you up. If you're on the surface of Europa. It would be awesome if something was there. My buddy Scott used to talk to me all the time about specifically Europa sometimes iow, but this one in particular as being the place that we need to explore. We're not going to land right This thing that is going off right now, things like a five and a half year flight just to get out to Jupiter, and then it's going to fly around and do forty nine close flybys of Europa to check it out and see what it's or at least to the best of our sensor data. It will check out what's going on.
So this is like a probe type situation. This is like an unmanned yes, unmanned.
It's a test flight essentially, got it. It's a five point two billion dollar NASA probe.
Pretty dope. That is pretty cool. But I don't know, man. I tend to heed the words of the fictional aliens telling us to stay away.
Yeah, thanks, fictional aliens exactly. All right. Well that's all I've gotten, guys.
And so, in addition to thanking fictional aliens, thank you very real entities, organic and simulated alike. We can't wait to hear from you. We will be following up with more episodes. Tune in later this week as well for our weekly listener mail segment. We want you to be part of the story. As you see, we mind a lot of this, just like a asteroid interest in the near future for future episodes, and you're the best part of the show. Please join the cause. Picture us like some triumvirate headed uncle Sam pointing directly at your at your shock is at your pennial gland, and say we want you to join stuff they don't want you to know, and we try to make it easy we try to be easy to find online.
Yes, Joina Son your Internet platform of choice. You can find it to the handle conspiracy Stuff where we exist, on YouTube where we have video content goal or for you to enjoy. Also on x FKA Twitter, and finally on Facebook where we have our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. Get in on the conversation, meme it up with your fellow conspiracy realists and have a ball. You can also find it at the handle conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and yes, TikTok.
Why not connect your voice to our ears call one eight three three STDWYTK. It's our voicemail system. When you call in, you've got three minutes. Say whatever you'd like do. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we can use your name and message on the air. If you got more to say than can fit in a three minute voicemail, why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet unafreid. Sometimes the void stares back. You will also find some interesting correspondence there things that we don't get to on air, like the fact that North Korea. The DPRK is mobilizing with Russian forces. Just had to put this in because I was going by the nickname a Holy War on our recording. North Korea claims they've mobilized one point four million, unfortunately quite young people for a holy war, which is really funny coming from an atheistic state. Anyway, your thoughts and all this and war join us out here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
