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 Nol. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Deconds, as well as with our new super producer Alexis Jackson. So drop by and say hello, help us think of a nickname when you have the chance. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. As we always like to start the top of the week, we're bringing you strange news in this segment. So many things fly under the radar these days, to recur just outside the pool of iodine street lights. So many things happened just off the edges of the mainstream map. So again, as we said last week, this is the segment where each of us finds a story that we think deserves the attention of our fellow conspiracy realist. What do we have today, guys? We have we have plagues, We have history. Maybe rhyming, if not repeating, Yeah, We've got all kinds of we've got a grab bag for you today. But the first thing we're gonna bring up here is that, you know, if you're doing a search around for Alexis Jackson here, you're gonna find some other Alexis Jackson's. This is my submission for super Producer Alexis Jackson's nickname Alexis double x Is and s Is Jackson. Does that? Does that feel good? In double lex and s or Alexis double x and s Jackson double like that? That's a ton twist, my friend. Yeah, you have to heard that one. Yeah, I like we your heads at there. We should also say, Alexis apologies. I think we may be briefly talked about we were going to do this. We should have checked beforehand. But uh, of course you get final vote on any nicknames. Okay, I got a better one, Superproducer Alexis the prof Jackson Jackson. Oh okay, okay. I also want to put out there that Paul it's Paul's policy to remain anonymous and not speak on the show. We obviously to offer Alexis her ability to make that choice for herself if she wants to chime in. She has more than welcome to do something. Yeah, I did that off the air previously, as you guys know, I have have that track record. I'm just trying to get everybody to come on Mike at some point. I think we all we all agree that that's a cool thing for the show. But no pressure, of course, as you said, nol Uh, it is of course always an individual's personal choice. More on that to come for now. We each made a personal choice speaking of just painful segues, uh, and we found some stories that we thought our fellow listeners would enjoy. We talked a little bit about this off air, matt Um. You you had said we could maybe start with something you dug up. It feels like an end of day's plague. I'm just gonna be honest with you, just from what you've told us. Well, yeah, don't don't give it oh way too much there, Ben, But let let's just read the headline first. You ready, This is now This is from CNN, and this headline is a mirror of a bunch of UK websites where I was first reading about this. But I guess I liked the the way CNN put it best. A swarm of flying ants stretched for miles over the UK and looked like rain on weather radar. So really that gives you almost the entire thing in a headline right up front. But the imagery that it conjures really is for me the stuff of nightmares. So, you know, living in Georgia, we we three Georgia boys, are quite accustomed to flying insects hovering around us at all times, be it gnats or flies or the dreaded mosquitoes. Uh. Currently that is what we're facing when or what most people called, you know, giant cockroaches, but we very charmingly referred to you as palmetto bugs. Yeah, those adorable little palmetto bugs that are in your house and outside your house and everywhere. But this, in this case, we're talking about fairly large black flying ants, and we are talking about massive swarms of them, to the point where there are so many that the millions of flying ants show up on radar and trick, they don't trick meteorologists. Meteorologists have a whole host of data that they're looking at when they're you know, deciding what is occurring weather wise. But if you look at the radar maps over the UK from the past week, it genuinely looks like there were these storms popping up in in several places kind of southeast of Yeah, it is southeast of London, down in the bottom of the country there, And my goodness, it is so crazy to imagine that there would be enough insects in the sky that it would register on radar. Just I like the now. I know there are a lot of people who are phobic when it comes to insects, but I always liked the idea of the natural world moving on mass, you know, like before the extinction of passenger pigeons in the in what would become the United States, those guys used to block out the sky and and apparently from what we're learning here in the UK, this is not the first time it's happened, Is that correct, mat Yeah, absolutely, this happens on a yearly basis, not necessarily the uh mistaking ants for rain clouds or anything, but there there is a yearly emergence of this specific species of flying ants in the UK and in England, and specifically they're in the place where it was found this time near London, Kent and Sussex. But it it occurs all over the world every year. In the summer months, so anytime between June generally in August, like right towards the beginning of September. There these ants will emerge kind of young ants basically, and then in order to not have too much interbreeding essentially within one colony, they spread out. They fly to a new place essentially to spread to create a new colony. And it's fascinating to me that essentially you've got one big flying queen ant and then a bunch of male ants that are all taking to the skies to go find a new place. While they're in flight, they are mating. Okay, so then the queen wait a minute, way of it. She's saying, they're doing it like in the in the air. Wow, very circue dissolate, you know, yes, very much so. And this is just how it works, is just the way of functions. Mate in the air, and then they go and land to somewhere else on the ground, so they actually take to the ground and then they create new colonies. The queen this is was amazing to me. The queen ant bites her own wings off and then creates a brand new colony, begins laying eggs, and male ants that are also flying around they kind of just become a new colony there. Fascinating stuff. This is like the very definition of a hive mind kind of situation, right where they just know the need for approcreation and they are communicating it, whether it's there following the queen or whatever. But you know, it's that kind of like almost electrical impulse communication, you know, with such wide ranging groups that are like so far away from the queen, it's like this chain reaction. But um, do you think, Matt, if this swarm descended on, say a herd of cattle, would be one of those cartoonish things where they'd come away and it would just be like bones with like you know, flesh hanging off them, or they just like rip it to shreds. I want to believe that, Matt. I want to believe that. I mean, that sounds very x files Uh in this case. I don't think the ants would be interested in, you know, ripping the flesh from a creature of any sort. They're very much at least to the understanding of scientists. Uh. And some of the Royal Society is there in the UK. It's all about essentially procreation and expansion of the colonies, and they're not eating flesh, or they just they just have a taste for love, not flesh. You know, they're too busy getting it on mid air to be worried about eviscerating herds of cows. But but I like the imagery just the same, and they are also if I understand, they share one important difference with twenties perhaps better known insects swarm, the locust swarms that have gone through vast swaths of the African continent, in that this form of flying ants, the experts believe is actually good for the ecology of the region. Is that correct. Yeah, They're gonna aerate the soil where they end up landing in, is gonna make it easier to you know, nutrients will be put back into the soil essentially where they're going. They're going to provide a ton of food for the birds and other small animals that are in the area and even the I mean, it's it's pretty crazy how beneficial the ants actually will be. Though it is it is super unsettling watching some of the social media videos online of these things crawling around on the sidewalks, on you know, in the grass wherever they exist, because it does look like an ant with pair of big, old translucent wings on it. Um. But you know, and the reason why I bring this as a strange news thing, it's being written about on social media and I have to imagine ingest but it's being written about as just another of the signs that is bringing about the apocalypse essentially, or that the apocalypse is nigh in because there's yet another one of these plagues of insects, which, you know, something that was spoken about in the Bible about how there would be plagues that would occur. Plagues came along, you know, with other important Biblical figures, specifically plagues that were unleashed in the direction of Pharaoh. Um. But you know, this to me doesn't read as that. It reads to me as a very fascinating biological thing that occurs on a yearly basis. Whatever happened to those murder hornets everyone's all worked up about. For a minute, I haven't heard much on them, and in a little their population was relatively small. It did an earlier UM piece on this for Strange News Daily. Their presence um is disturbing, right, How how does this kind of insect to get across the Pacific in the first place? But they were never their numbers were never as great as a swarm of flying ants or locusts. We would have heard a lot more about them. Uh. It's weird, though, To go back to your point, Matt, the idea that insert odd story here is yet another sign that the world is ending in twenty twenty. I think it's so narcissistic of human beings. The world is ending for someone somewhere. Every day and every single year, there are at least a baker's dozen of let's say, cults or charismatic individuals who were convinced that this is gonna be the last year. I get it in the long term, humanity is still sort of a fad. But don't you think it's kind of humans, Centrick that we all we all assume that we're going to be alive when the actual end occurs. I don't think we are. It just it feels a little self aggrandizing to be like here, we're here, We're at the end. Things are always bad, they're getting worse. I don't I don't know. I would just say it does feel perhaps as close as you can get this year to be near the apocalypse. It feels it feels that way at least, and I only have thirty some odd years of experience, but it certainly feels that way. But that's what we said in twelve. Uh yeah, did it feel like the end of though I think that was more. I think that was more of a Hey, the signs are pointing to this now because of the Mayan calendar, I don't know. Yeah, but that was supposed to be June twenty one, so he dodged a bullet on that one, unless they got it wrong again because previously it was supposed to be December. But then, you know, much like many doomsday prophecies, there's usually some little kink. Wait, wait, are you saying that the date for the Mayan and apocalypse was pushed back? And I missed it. I didn't even know what's happening. They did a zoom call about it, they held off production, barely even made our newsletter. I mean, I can't believe I missed that. I must have been out that day. Dang. But that's I mean, I think you're right in that it does feel like we're seeing more and more incredibly anomalous events occurring this year. I mean, the past few months have been like the longest tatten years in history as as as the jokes go. But but it makes it does make you wonder are we are we just more attuned to acknowledge and hear these stories or to report them now, or is there real more crazy stuff happening. I feel like a lot of the things that are being reported as like this is happening this year and this is screwy soon. Science reveals summer will be too hot for human beings literally, but people have been saying that for years and they were right then. Or we just paying more attention or are things really on a precipitous path or is it a mix of both? I don't know. I think it's absolutely a mix of both, in the same way that you you turned us onto this. John oliver Um last week tonight segment on conspiracy theories, and he speaks to the scholar who talks about how we as a species, uh tend to want to ascribe big events to big causes and that's sort of a big part of the whole thinking behind conspiracy theories, like, oh, if if this massive thing happened, it had to be for a reason, you know, it had to be, Like there's some thought behind it, right, and this is a little different, but it's like it's that same kind of what is it batter Minehoff syndrome where you keep noticing things the more you notice them. It's like, you know, confirmation bias, where we're like, Okay, this year definitely sucks, and there happened to be a lot of things that we can, you know, attached to some kind of cosmic plan for why things suck so bad. Um, you know, hence the murder hornets and the finding the plague in the Chinese herdsman. But then we realize, oh, they actually find that like a little every year. So there's a lot of things that we attach meanings to that don't necessarily haven't have any mean not to say that we're not living in the end times, and it sure as hell feels like it. But you can see what I'm saying, Yeah, I get it. The idea of a conspiracy, no matter how terrible, is in some ways infinitely more comforting than the idea of the alternative that things are an accident, no one knows what's going on, no one's in charge. The idea that our species is one big escape room experiment, and Earth is the room. We're all locked in and we just can't get it together enough to get out of the room. I mean, yeah, that's terrified. Not not only that been, not only an escape room experience, but an escape room where the dumbest person is the most confident and leading you in the wrong direction constantly. That escape room experience of yours really scarred. Man. I'm not I mean, I just think it's appropriate. You're absolutely right. I am a little long time listeners will know that I am referring to a real thing. But you see what I'm saying, though, It's like we put so much trust in the people that are the loudest voices in the room and the ones that come forth with this confident plan, and oftentimes they're just improvising. You know, there's there's there's just kind of entropy and all of it. Everyone's just sort of faking it till they make it, including the universe. I mean, Matt, I want to know your take. I'm not gonna lie. Part of me would be darkly, intensely delighted if it turned out that this was this was something that the UK somehow did on purpose, Like the Queen is going we must distract from the crimes of Frinns Andrew, release this all the ants, you know what I mean? I would love that. Give me give queen your queen boys, ben, I love it so much. Yeah. She she made a quick call to the Royal Society of Biology, which is a real thing in the United Kingdom, and she said, yeah, hook us up with a couple swarms. We really need some cover here literal and figure two and uh, they got it going. I don't know how I feel, guys, I was reflecting just for a moment here the thing I forgot to tell you about the whole mating in the sky with diamonds thing. Um, I don't know why. That just felt like it rhymed and felt felt good. But so the the Queen Aunt, the most important aunt of all. The Queen Aunt does her thing, then lands on the ground after being um fertilized and choose her own wings off and gets to work making that colony. Well, the flying male ants when they're up there doing that dance. Uh, as soon as they're finished mating, the male just straight up dies and falls right down to the earth from whence he originally came. Um, I'm sorry, this is I'm asking ignorant question, not being an entomologist and this being your topics, so I assume you did a little extra research. They like all have sex with just the one queen. Yeah, the that's the biological imperative. I guess of the male role there. What a burden that queen has to bear. I mean, my goodness, it's really interesting. Generally we would pull it back from a I am a creature and I'm making this decision of my own folition. It's more of my DNA, my whatever is inside of me, you know, from the past experience of my species and the species that came for me. I'm going to act in this way, right. So the concept is that they just it's just known to do this right. And again that's from our current understanding of ants and of this particul kular species, and it's, you know, very human thing to do, to be like, oh, they obviously don't understand or know what they're doing. They're just tiny little ants. But again, science can't prove that there's any kind of consciousness going on there. I mean, have you seen the movie at what is? Say? What do you want to say? Man? Oh wait, oh wait? I was just gonna say, have you seen the movie Ants? I mean that movie is basically like an instruction manual for how to foment a revolution, how to rise up, you know, against your your oppressors. I don't know, it's a good time to watch the movie Ants. You guys just putting that out there for everyone if you haven't seen it. To me, it's just tough to imagine that those male ants would take it upon themselves to do that act, knowing it or perhaps not knowing, but definitely if they know they're gonna die immediately afterwards, it seems like there would be some they would say, Nope, I'm just gonna keep going doing some other stuff and definitely not gonna mate anytime soon. I'm gonna call this and throws centrism. Fellow armchair mermacologists in the crowd, you may enjoy this thought experiment, this conundrum here. First, this is an excellent illustration of a common pattern in uh, the in biological life on earth, which is that, uh, those things that might be identified as male as biologically male. Uh, you know, life cycles generally treat them as the disposable ones. That's why there are hundreds of male ants to a queen. That's why there are hundreds and thousands or millions of young men sent to war in the human species. But I ask you this, this is for you, meremacologists. What is the most successful life for on Earth? A lot of people want to say human, and you could say that depending on how you measure things. But I think there is a tremendously compelling argument to be made for the ants. Super colonies. Uh, they have agriculture, some species uh that have enormously specific adaptations. They partner with other species. Uh, they conquer and enslave other species. I mean, they take all the boxes. I think ants are a strong top five contender for most successful life form, depending on the metrics. I would tend to agree with Roaches are pretty strong too, because they can survive like a nuclear holocaust situation. Uh. And Matt, you know your whole question of like, do you think if they knew they would they would maybe just trying to like sneak on out of there if they knew what their fate was going to be after that? Maybe ritual Well, that, my friend, is antithropomorphizing a bit much for my taste. Sorry, um, sorry, I had to get dad pun in there. Thanks guys, And I think this one's awesome, man. Let's pause for a moment, and unless we two are consumed by a biblical plague level swarm of insects, will be back after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. You're just thinking here, I'm just kind of spitballing. Guys. Knowing that there are swarms of ants if you're going to be going outside, might be a good reason for you to put a mask over your face so you don't get a mouth full of insects. But there are currently a lot more pressing reasons to put a mask on. And for more on that, Mr Noel Brown, Oh my god, you introduced me like a real correspondent, Matt, thank you. I love this. Uh yeah, it's true. So I'm gonna read you a public a note from the Treasury Department, United States Public Health Service. Um influenza spread by droplets sprayed from nose and throat. Cover each coffin's knees with handkerchief, spread by contact. Avoid crowds if possible, walk to work. Do not spit on floor or sidewalk. Do not use common drinking cups and common towels. Avoid excessive fatigue. If taken ill, go to bed and send for a doctor. The bub applies also to colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. UM Aside from a couple of little indicators in there, this could very well be a notice that we would see posted today or a recommendation from like the Centers for Disease Control about how to uh stem the tide of COVID nineteen. This in fact came out Circle nineteen eight teen during another pandemic known as the Spanish flu. A lot of other parallels exists between that pandemic and the one we're going through now and the one we're going to talk about in in this story UM specifically the attitude towards masks UM. Here in Georgia, for example, we even have like a lot of really tense back and forth between the governor of our state, Brian Kemp, and the mayor of our city, Kesha Lance Bottoms. Keisha Lance Bottoms felt that with all of the spiking cases that we're experiencing now, would be appropriate to a UM impose a mask mandate and be roll back to what's called phase one of of quarantine essentially, which would be closing non essential businesses just short of sheltering in place like we were when things were really you know, starting to get real. Governor Kemp has sued Mayor Kesha Lance Bottoms and also imposed a moratorium or some kind of UH injunction I guess on her speaking to the press about these things and saying that she's overreaching her you know, her power and all of that UM, which I guess could be true. But it's an odd thing to be so at odds with UM, and it was an interesting thing to see people fighting against as well in the in the nineteen when UM in the city of Denver, for example, there was a mask mandate put in place, and it caused folks to just lose their minds, say that they were being UM. They were their civil liberties were being threatened, saying that they should not be forced to do this, that it was somehow political issue, much the same as we're seeing it today. What do you guys think about this, Well, it's certainly something that I've been seeing on social media a bit, and you know a story here there where there's been an altercation in some kind of store because of mask use. UM. Generally, the arguments that I've seen put forth are very similar to what you're describing their noal Um, it's an affront to personal civil liberties. You know, who has who has the right to tell me that I can't do what I want to do? Essentially, Um. And then the counter argument is this is more of a community concern or a larger concern, and the you know, personal civil liberty has to take a back seat to the protection of you know, the larger group. I would just say, I can I entify. I can somewhat identify with that stance. If you personally feel as though you are not a threat to anyone else and you don't feel threatened by anyone else that you're interacting with, I can understand why an individual might feel that way. Right. The problem here is that we're dealing with something that is silent, that is sometimes untraceable, and it's not possible to even know if you are infected, you know, for a certain period of time a window there. It becomes a question of what are you willing to risk, not only for yourself, but for the people around you, because ultimately, wearing a mask isn't to protect you from other people breathing. It is a protection for the other people that you're going to be around. It's a gesture of goodwill to to say like, hey, I'm I were in this together and I'm going to do my part, even if maybe it's not like the end all be all. It's something ben Um, I actually made a mistake. It's not it's not a mistake exactly. I mentioned Denver. But the story that I found is from the Business Insider by Katie Canalis from June three of this year. It's a really excellent article. It has a lot of photographs of the mask kind of outcry situation in San Francisco. There was this anti mask movement. Uh. It was actually a league, an organization of folks called the Anti Mask League that had a mission statement um sanitary spartakan's name of Anti Mask League in in Frisco. Some of these headlines and they actually like gathered in churches and they you know, it was a big it was a big thing. Uh. Three shot in struggle with masks, slacker blacksmith strikes health inspector striving to enforce order. So it literally became like a subject of riots in the street. I don't think we're quite there yet in terms of like being denied entrance to public because you're not wearing a mask um, but we also haven't had a mandate that was enforceable in that same way, Ben, do you see an escalation of this and and and it kind of like a more of a parallel with what we're seeing here in San Francisco in nineteen eighteen, with you know, folks getting arrested and hauled off to jail, and they're becoming this like contingent of folks saying we're not gonna stand for this kind of flagrant abuse of our civil rights. It's an interesting question because there are social commonalities. The hardware of the society, that being the human being, remained very much the same as the physical human beings we see in twenty twenty. However, the software or the infrastructure of the society is very very different. It's it's easy to I don't want to see cherry pick because it's not cherry picking. It's easy to see stark once one commonalities with the H one in one UH and with know COVID nineteen here. But biologically they're different, and the societies in which they occur are also different. The primary culprit, if there is a culprit on the human side, for eighteen flu epidemic is most likely soldiers because they were traveling internationally far more than the average person. And in our modern day society, so many, so many cultures are interconnected or were interconnected because of international travel, international trade, and so on. It was easier, i think, for coronavirus to spread today in than it was for the flu in nineteen eighteen, fewer people honestly were traveling. We know that there will be an escalation, it will probably not occur throughout all parts of the globe because frankly, some parts of the world did a much better job combating this infection. However, you know, if you talk to a medical historian, they're gonna say if you had to put a number on the death toll in the US for the nine eighteen flu, you would say sixty five hundred thousand people Ballpark died. Between fifty million people died globally. It seems like a high number, but there were waves of infection, right just like the Black Death. It didn't all happen in one wave. So you know, it's gonna take a while for a vaccine to be deployed. However, that works, that means more people are gonna die. That's just a fact. Unfortunately, a lot of those people who die globally are going to be in the United States because for a number of reasons, the US is still very much in the grips of the pandemic, and some other countries have gotten to the other side of at least the first wave. So I would say, without predicting the future, which is kind of you know, untrustworthy gig, it's not out of the it's not out of the ballpark for COVID nineteen or the coronavirus pandemic to end up being more dangerous than the Spanish flu um. Just to continue along that, Noll, I would just know that there's a lot of public outcry about mask use because I think some people view it as the beginning of what they would consider to be a slippery slope. If you look at you know, brightly or not or incorrectly, I would say, but if you look at places like France, like the country of France as of today, the what is it July twenty Monday that we're recording this. In France, the government can find any individual who is not wearing a face mask or covering of some sort while in a public indoor setting. They can find them a hundred and fifty four dollars US or a d thirty five euros um just for not wearing a mask. Right, so an officer or someone can stop you and you can be fined that much money for not complying. Um. I think people in the US see that kind of action being taken as something that will eventually occur in the United States, and the stance becomes very much if they can do that, then what else can they do or what else will they do? And then generally I see that linked to a fear that there's something else coming down the road, that this is a stepping stone essentially a lot of times, and someone listening please correct me if I'm if I'm wrong here, But I see it then being linked to things as possibly the vaccination being a some form of government control to do something nefarious to the people who are going to have to get this vaccine and if you don't get it, um, you know, it would be forced, it would be compulsory to get this vaccine. If you don't get it, you'd either get a line or you know, some other bad thing that would happen to you. Sure, but I mean I can understand that the fact that it's something to do with our bodies, like even a mask, because you know, it's not like you're being shot up with some kind of you know, questionable medication, which you know, we know that a vaccine obviously it has to be vetted and everything, but we we know plenty of medications that get vetted by the FDA and then come out and then we find out there's all kinds of unexpected side effects. So I understand that a mask isn't quite that, but it is something that's on your body. But you know what about seat belts. I mean, when seatbelts became mandatory, people freaked out in the same way and we're like cutting them out of their cars, you know, as protests, and those people look like assholes now, you know, I mean, seat belts are No one's really maligning seatbelts, although it is shocking to me that the school buses don't have them. But that's a good discussion for another day, you know what I mean, though, like how is it an issue? Like how is this? Why is it a hill worth dying on? You know when it seems like it's just a matter of just showing that you give a crap and want to, like, you know, do your part. Social dynamics, UM, social dynamics are are pretty compelling here, especially if we look at group psychology. One thing that large groups of people tend to do is to rally around something that feels like a direct action, that feels like a definitive verbs we have done something, and often that's an escape hatch for existing anxieties or fears based on much more complicated situations. So um, you know, the seatbelled example. The issue with that is that there's a lot of there's a lot of purposeful um and somewhat insidious lobbying that goes in I think again an episode of car stuff about it, uh similar to jaywalking or jaywalking became a crime. It is big auto pushing that because they were saving money by not having to manufacture additional seatbelts. They're also very well aware of the slippery slope that existed there because now the US and much of the I mean the entirety of the western world, all the auto manufacturers there have to comply with numerous top down, government ordered safety measures. Right, and people generally now agree that it's a good thing. But also a ton of people aren't going to bother with a seat belt. You might not be aware of this unless you grow up in Georgia, But for a long time there was a law that said people didn't have to wear seatbelts in certain vehicles, notably pickup trucks. That is entirely because there was one old school politician who drove a pickup truck and he just said, seatbelts be damned. He had no science, had nothing but his own personal identity, and it also kind of functioned as UM. Okay, so the seatbelt thing was lobby, right. I think the mask thing is the the idea of wearing or not wearing a mask for people who don't want to wear a mask. The health concerns don't really factor into the conversation. It's metonymy. It's a metonymy protest. Uh there. This this is a symbol, right, This is a symbol of kind of what you had mentioned earlier. Uh, Matt, this precedent. Right, We're gonna cut this off. We're gonna nip this off of the bud because what's next we'll get the mark of the beast. We'll all have our f I D will have to have UM, will have to pass some sort of test to be allowed to have children. Of those three things, I'm gonna say episode for a different day. I have some opinions. They're not facts, but I have some opinions. But do you see what I'm saying here? A mask is something to say no to because it's much easier to feel like you've done something. It's much easier to feel like you've taken an action, and that's similar. You know, again, the hardware is the same. The human species was doing this during the flu pandemic. It's just it's a lot easier to do something small and simple like that, consequences be damned, than it is to look at the underlying, complicated psychological environment in which these fears arise. I get it, and you're you're completely spot on, Ben. I do think that it's further complicated by leadership that uh makes it a political issue, like implying that wearing a mask, even even if it's not directly verbally, there's an implication by refusing to wear a mask um that it makes you weak in some way, and you know that that. I think a lot of people glom onto that and turn it into an active protest where it's like I don't want to be seen as weak or you know, talking about conspiracy theories, there are people out there that think the coronavirus is a hoax, that it's not even real, and that by putting on a mask, you're acknowledging that it's real, or you're somehow signing up for this fake news narrative of of this thing, you know. I mean, it's absolutely a perspective that's out there. It's a great way to crack down on protest. Uh, this is this is off the map of some of the mainstream stuff, but not so much in the US, but in other countries the presence of the pandemic has been used as as a well reason or excuse to crack down on legitimate protests. So I think it's very use it's a very efficacious tool for opportunists. Um. But yeah, as you said at the beginning of presenting the story, Noll, the maybe maybe there's a key change in the Great Song of Humanity, but the progression tends to be the same, and we know the science is there in countries or parts of the world, specifically the Asia Pacific region, where wearing master to protect others has already seen as a normal day to day thing. Uh. They did a great job combating this, you know what I mean, and we're much closer to the epicenter of the infection. Listen, guys, I agree, Ben. I've seen those and it's very nice to actually see that it is possible to clamp down on this thing with a couple fairly easy small steps. If you can get everyone to do it. That seems to be the hard part. What I would say to everyone out there listening that is already upset with us for talking about this. If you need to go get food and you absolutely refuse to wear a mask, and you happen to be in the Southeast, I have some good news for you. You can go into any wind Dixie any let's see what else do they have here? Uh by Low Harvey Supermarket or Fresco Imas, and you don't have to wear a mask. What about Piggy Wiggly. I'm not sure about that. I just it's a horror movie. It's a horror movie grocery store. But they those stores are requiring their employees to wear masks, but they're not requiring cust On the flip side, Kroger, which I believe is probably most of our shopping place of choice is requiring it, as is Target and UH Publics and Walmart. Even so, you know, whether that's more of a PR move or what you know, you can certainly classify it as that. It's definitely become this interesting line in the sand. And even to say, you know, a grocery store with the word Dixie in the name, UH is falling on that particular side of the argument. I don't think is an accident. You know, it's the question of private business. It's it's up to those businesses, barring a law, it is up to those businesses to kind of do what they want technically, because they were private business. If they wanted to, they could say every customer has to wear whatever the hell they randomly decide at four thirty five on a Friday. It doesn't matter. They could say, like, we're only letting people in if they wear purple Jinkos. Some might say this is short side I did and may have an effect on our bottom line. But you know, we hear at Illumination Global Unlimited Groceries Supply Co have thought about it and Purple Jinkos or what we stand for organization, So they gotta know you really want it. You know, First of all, those are hard to find. You know that, even like you know, that barrier of of entry, it's got to be high enough, so you're you know, filtering out like the just fair weather you know shoppers, right, Yeah, and and again it's just it's symbolically. Can the thing with symbols, they can function as dog whistles. The real world efficacy of any kind of symbolic act is at least partially defined by its sort of pr angle as much of it as it's real real effects. But if you are against masks personally, you know, I want to hear I want to hear the reasons why, you know, I want to hear the compelling reasons why. And I'm not you know, I I think that in this show we've done, or in this segment at least, we've we've definitely argued in favor of wearing wearing that or you know, just like washing your hands or something, because from what we can tell, the science is there, and the science exists independent of any one particular pandemic. This is just essential disease science. It doesn't matter what what kind of cooties are in the air, It doesn't matter what, what sort of other airborne bubonic plague, et cetera is going through in some sort of miasthma in your local grocery store. The masks seem to work, and facts do not have opinions. As as is often said by very very smart people, very very good people, very very dumb people, and very very evil people. Everyone agrees facts don't have opinions and maskerf act. It's true. Lasting just there's a lot of fear about children being forced to wear masks been and know that I've seen floating around on social media. I just want to point out here that there was a doctor in Dublin, Ireland that ran a test where he hooked himself up to an oxygen nation machine, or excuse me, he hooked himself up to a machine that monitors his oxygen saturation levels and he tested after putting on one mask, then two, three, four or five, and then six masks, just to show that wearing a mask doesn't prevent doesn't lower the oxygen levels in your bloodstream, which has been a big fear for a lot of parents out there because of some of these social media posts. If you are a parent and you are thinking that this is a major issue for your child. Just know that there are people out there and as Ben is saying, the science does show that that doesn't you know, it isn't necessarily what you're afraid of. And make sure you check yourself versus as we always say to do. And my last and final thing is that, uh, it's given us a new accessory people that are into fashion and love and seeing all the variations and colors and types of designs of masks and certainly a thing I never expected to hear someone complimenting my daughter and saying, nice mask, I like your mask. It's a weird thing to hear. But here we are. Uh. The human brain is pretty good at normalizing weird stuff, uh pretty quickly. And will return for one last piece of strange news. After a word from our sponsor, we're back, super producer Alexis Opradot to steam Datas. I think we might might go a little bit longer today. There is one last story. Uh. I feel a little bit like a character in all those fairy tale tropes emerging at the very end, going, I have a gift for the celebration. This is strange, this is developing. Now there may be more facts that emerge. We have a murder mystery. It is no ongoing murder mystery. It is a developing story. The facts may change recently and tragically. There was a murder in North Brunswick Township in New Jersey. Someone posing as a FedEx driver went to a home in North Brunswick about five pm. They knocked on the door, A man answered and the FedEx. The person dressed as a FedEx driver attacked them, shot them with a firearm. The man's child attempted to intervene and he was murdered. Tragic loss of life. Young man you know, had came from a very well to do family, so he was all set to have a fantastic American dream lifestyle. But the story gets stranger. Unfortunately, were in the US. Homicide by firearm is not an anomalous or even sadly times, not even a noteworthy thing for a lot of news organizations. This story is different because the man in question, Mark andrel A N. D. E. R L and his son Daniel, they're part of a legal family. Mark is a defense attorney. His wife is one Esther Salas. Esther Salace is a federal judge and she has been for a long time. She has recently been assigned to oversee a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank, which some of our fellow listeners may recognize from our earlier work on big banks and financial and criminal shenanigans that they pull. This lawsuit, in particular, concerns the handling of financial matters related to the late Jeffrey Epstein. So, as you can imagine, the people have been following the Galain Maxwell's story are tuned to this. It's a very strange hit. You know. The guy was dressed as a FedEx driver, did not have a FedEx vehicle, was wearing a face covering, and came there with a premeditated, predetermined plan to murder the family. Currently, authorities are saying the motive for the shooting is unclear. The name of the suspect has not been revealed. The latest update I had going into recording today is that the body of the suspect was found. The body of the suspect has been found shortly after we record this. As you said, Matt earlier on July uh he was discovered with what authorities are describing as an apparently self inflicted gunshot wound outside a vehicle in Liberty, New York. As a matter of fact, how real time is this? Just got an update from some friends of mine following the story. The suspect is confirmed to be one roy Den Hollander, seventy two years old. He is an attorney who had a case before solace in. This is, according to anonymous sources in law enforcement, sketchy stuff. We've got an assassin who attempts a murder, apparently doesn't get the person he was trying to kill, and then takes his own life. And it's connected with financial crimes tied to the Epstein case, as we record right now, Galine Maxwell is I just checked this before he went to air, still alive, right, hasn't caught COVID or a suicide attempt yet. But I wanted to bring this to you guys and ask what you think you I mean, judges get death threats, that's just part of the job. But do you think this, let's just address the elephant in the room. Do you think this is in any way related to the ongoing Epstein scandal the people who got away. I mean, if it was, it would be a warning, right because you just because you kill a federal judge that's working on a case doesn't mean another judge doesn't get assigned to it if she truly is Solace. Judge Solace truly was the target here, and it wasn't Mark Androll the husband, because you know, he was a criminal defense attorney. And that's another very common thing, is to have a defense attorney that some person felt they got it wrong or they didn't defend them properly. They would be a target possibly of someone who was who had bad intentions or felt as though they were wronged. It's a tough one because I don't think we have enough information yet to determine what actually happened. This is silly, but I'm maybe I'm a little skeptical even that they got the right person. Maybe they maybe they actually did for sure, I just don't know. Um, any time a suspect ends up being dead by the time they're found, you know, and identified, it always makes me want to wait to get more information. But with a criminal case like that, if you've found the killer, essentially you've you have made the determination that the killer has been found and they are dead. There's not much else to do, uh, in the investigation. Well, it's certainly red meat for conspiracy speculation. Right, um, in the same way that the untimely death of the gentleman that was a slam dunk supposedly for those anthrax male attempts back right around when nine eleven took place that I believe you were out on that one, Matt. But but Ben and I did that one. And always very sketchy when someone I mean, on the one hand, there's the implication of guilt when someone takes their own life when they're being pursued. But then on the other hand, you know, there's certainly could be weirder things have happened than someone being taken out and made to look like a suicide attempt so that people stop asking questions, you know. So, like you said, Matt, not enough in ormation here to know which one this is, but certainly a little suspicious. It's strange because if you look, roy Den Hollander has been repeatedly described as a quote anti feminist lawyer, so he had to be completely fair. He had political stances that he was widely published on in a period on he is what was called a men's right activist. It well, it's still it feels like there's more people's political views of their own. It feels like there's more to the story here because most activists are not dressing up like delivery service workers and shooting people, and especially if this guy was an attorney, Attorneys don't typically pursue vengeance in that fashion. Now there is some truth to the dirty the dirty stories and urban legends, and attorney might hire someone to kill someone that's really more you know, their m O, rather than putting their physical finger on the trigger. It's interesting because if we look into this and we start to if you guys will permit me to play Charlie Dave Pepe Sylvia here, Uh, just a week prior to this, another attorney associated with the Men's Brights movement, a guy named Mark Angolucci, was killed by a delivery man, or by someone dressed as a delivery man. Um. So so you see what I'm saying. I know we don't have enough information, but there's something here. Maybe even the Epstein connection is a red Harry. I'm not sure, but there's too much. There's too much screwy about this right now, which I know is not the most articulate I've ever been on this show. But the thing is he also had this guy, Um roy Den Hollander also had some stances on Russia. There's not a mug shot or evidence of this. Maybe part of it is just the fog of war as new things emerge, but does seem very strange. Fox News, by the way, it was originally censored all mentioned of the bank or of Epstein. And maybe that's because they didn't want to have too much sensationalism. But I don't know, I don't know. You know, more and more on the Epstein case. A lot of people have written asking for further updates, especially with the Galaine Maxwell arrest. It has intelligence agency fingerprints on it, the idea of compromising people like that. The various sources that have come through anonymously so far saying that Maxwell does possess photographic and video evidence of some pretty serious crimes. I don't know, what do you guys think intelligence agency, I mean, compromat is a thing. The CIA did it, the KGB has done it well, I don't know, really quickly. That's also not forget that. Um. You know, the President of the United States has some pretty long standing ties to Deutsche Bank as well. Um. And it is a notoriously yeah no, I mean, it's on the surface it's a respectable operation, but this certainly isn't a good look the lawsuit in general and its relationship with a guy like Epstein. Um. So that's a little bit interesting too. There as an article that just came out in the Financial Times Deutsche banks ties to Donald Trump um dissected that just came out in May by Tom Braithwait, so if you're interested, I want to find out more about those connections, give it a look. Essentially, at several points of the bank gave Donald Trump incredibly extraordinarily favorable loan terms and did not follow up on recouping those loans in a way that a normal business would do. To put it in perspective, the vast majority of people listening to this episode today, if you try to handle alone the way that that bank and that individual and to you know, not to just keep approbrium on Trump. There were other high net value people v i p s that the bank was doing this with. They just have a different system. If you were trying to do what some of these v i p s are doing, loan wise, you would be arrested. You would be arrested, you'd be bankrupted, you go to court. It just the rules are not the same. And and you know, and and Trump has written about this as well, where he defends the bank as being, you know, it was the best bank. It was like, you know, the gold standard. It's the Germans. You're dealing with their you know, known for their uh prowess with dealing with money and finance and all that stuff. However, the Federal Reserve Um, at least according to this article in the Financial Times, regards Deutsche Bank as a badly missus quote from the article, I've decided a badly managed lender with weak money laundering controls, which makes sense considering that we do see their name pop up quite often in money laundering type cases. I want to I want to go back to the story, back to you this assassination attempts and and start trying to draw see see what's out there. I don't think we're I agree with you, Matt. I don't think we're out to the point where we have a definitive statement. But we may not have a definitive conclusion here. According to the Federal court records, Solace was assigned to handle a class action lawsuit that was bought against Outen Bank by Ali Karemi and This was on behalf of investors who purchased securities from the bank between November seven all the way up to July six. The court records show the bank quote failed to properly monitor customers that the bank itself deemed to be high risk, including, among others, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. So this is not Internet speculation. The federal court level records state the Epstein connection and highlight it. And also, if we look at judges or attempted assassinations of judges, Okay, this isn't the same. All across the world being a judge can be a dangerous profession, but here in the US it's incredibly rare for this to happen. You'll get emails, to get angry letters, someone will, you know, poop in a box and mail it to your office. But people are not going to take an assassination attempt out after you. And it reminds me, Matt, you'll remember this of the Detro affair, uh, the child abuse ring in Belgium when the prosecutors and the judges were threatened and I think witnesses started dying in mattress fires and stuff. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't remind me that a little bit. But I think it's being I'm worried that the Epstein thing is clouding everything else in this case. The more I'm reading about Hollander on the New York Post right now, you know, we we mentioned that he's a men's rights attorney, you know, in in that he's coined as that or he described in that way. He's done all kinds of interesting lawsuits, everything from alleging that a bunch of these New York night clubs um by offering ladies night specials and everything are you know, sexist and quote unquote bastions of bigotry and all these things. He got sued, or he sued Jim Norton after going on the Opie and Anthony show dis Guided. He's real, I mean, he's an interesting character. There's a quote here from a lawyer, an attorney named Vic Power or part Power. It says he's speaking about Hollander, he was extremely professional and well read. Um. But he goes on to talk about how um this guy Vic Power represented a New York Police Department detective that Hollander believed was part of a conspiracy with his ex wife her lawyers. The Russian Mexican mafia and some New York City strip clubs. Like, right there, you're painting a very different picture of this guy or very um you know, a picture of him that just seems like maybe he was prone to believing. I don't know, he was personally motivated because of that. Well, yeah, this is what I'm thinking here, because it may have something to do with Solace, because he did want a female judge, Right, that's what we were talking about. He he was going through this um, this suit, and he kept saying that he wanted a male judge, he needed a male judge, and Salace was appointed to his case. And maybe he had some kind of long standing feud because of that with her, or a feud that he believed. Right, what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean he wanted a male judge? Like? Is that? Like you can't like ask who your judge is, right, Like I don't. You can you can request recusal. So because he's a woman hater, if he had a woman he wouldn't be getting a fair shake, Is that the implication? Because he's finish to finish the thought? Um, you can ask for a recusal if there is a conflict of interest, as you would see, and maybe in his mind that functioned as a conflict of interest. But generally speaking, a conflict of interest is to the point where recusal occurs. Is something where it's like the judge says, I cannot rule on this case because I own like three million dollars worth of stock in Conlomco, so I can't. I'm not a good source of education for Conclomco. Right. The implication is almost that like, oh, a female judge wouldn't be able to put her opinions about the person's politics aside. Uh, therefore, so that's almost insulting. It's like saying that would be a person acting unprofessionally. Right. It's interesting though, because then look at the timeline this case is in. That's there what we know best about their direct interaction. But here, according to the New York Post, right now, tell me if this is incorrector if you've got different information, Ben, they're saying that Hollander had a case pending before Solace right then, and it was it was challenging the United States militaries men only draft. That's according to The Daily Beast via the New York Post. Here, but I don't know if that's correct or not. Well, we know that he had a package in the vehicle that was found in Liberty, New York. He had a package that looked to be a FedEx package addressed to Solace. So is definitely, again, if he is the shooter, it definitely seems that he was shooting for Solace rather than for her spouse or her child. It's it's disturbing because, Yeah, the Daily Beast article you're talking about came out while we were recording. Looks like this story is still so fresh baked. Um. We don't know whether the spouse will survive. We know that this guy was the best word to describe it, would be polemical in his views. That's just an extreme stance, a controversial stance of some sort. You can be polemical about all sorts of things, and he seems to be polemical about his view of what he calls men's rights or anti feminism, which is a phrase I haven't heard as much. It looks like we're talking about the same suit here, Matt. It looks like it was filed in with Hollander as an advisor. There were oral arguments on emotions scheduled for this previous month, but they were postponed due to what the case stock it describes as unforeseen circumstances that could be anything that could be COVID. Right, Yeah, it's probably COVID. I mean, I don't, I don't want to guess. I am I'm guessing it's COVID. Wow. That's this is an intense story. Ben, Wow, thank you for bringing this to our attention, but we haven't. It's it's an itch under my skin that we need to see more details here. Um, is it just you know, is the media reporting the Epstein connection just to kind of capitalize on the interest in the news cycle? Possible? Uh? Is there is there more to the story? I am intensely interested in doing a deep dive into the intelligence agency allegations concerning Maxwell and Epstein in a future episode. A lot of our fellow listeners have written in to ask about it. But for this story, at this point, it appears that Hollander, if he was the shooter, was himself just deeply disturbed. Uh, and maybe not you know, on some kind of mission from some sort of well, let's just say it probably doesn't. There are no indicators right now that he was on a mission. From some kind of cabal or something like that, or that the homicide was related specifically to the upcoming financial corruption case with the Bank at Epstein. But again the Bank Epstein, various political figures of all stripes. There's something. There's a web. There's a web there. I'm telling you, so listen. We need you to write to us, tell us what you think about this case and everything else we've talked about on this episode. You can reach us on social media. Were conspiracy stuff or conspiracy stuff show all over the place, you'll find us. You'll know what to do. Head over to here's where it gets crazy on Facebook. 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