Strange News: Fake AI Invades Social Media, Taliban Bans Windows, Rent Conspiracies, Airplane Stowaways and the Death of Mike Rinder

Published Jan 13, 2025, 5:00 PM

Facebook and Instagram's parent company Meta sparks massive public outcry as their plan to inundate social media platforms with AI bots backfires -- and, at the same time, the company removes fact-checking. The leader of the Taliba orders that buildings should not have windows looking into places where a woman could be sitting or standing. Investigators find two bodies in the wheelwell of a JetBlue aircraft. China hacks the US Treasury. 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're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. We are back from a holiday break, and if you are listening to this strange news program the evening it publishes, we would love to welcome you to Monday, January thirteenth, twenty twenty five.

Wow, I take it over.

And every time you say twenty twenty five, but I guess I probably said that in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty three. Anything post just seems like a Futurama episode. Has anybody written the wrong date yet?

Yeah? For sure?

Yeah? It Actually it always hits me when we are like doing research for an episode or something and creating docs, right, and then you you have to type the date in or the year in. That's when it gets me and I go, oh.

No idiots, it'll be sorry on yourself.

It'll be you know, it'll be twenty twenty six before we know it.

Hey, guys, can I do a shameless, shameless plug for a show that all of our voices are in really quickly because you say please? It is as we said January thirteenth, it's Monday. That means Monster BTK is officially out. If you go right now and search for it in your favorite podcast app, you can hear the first two episodes for free. And if you decide to sign up for iHeart True Crime Plus, you can get the first six episodes right now.

So do it well, I for one didn't know that the popular A pop group we're responsible for such horrendous murders, so this will be news to me. BTK is a I think I think it's BTS Oh, okay, making lights, making light.

It's a heavy subject, guys.

So yes, please go and listen. This is the I don't even know how many seasons we officially are calling the Monster series now, but is the latest Monster series. So go check it out please, And with that, let's jump into the world of strange news.

And we have returned. As you know, folks at the end of every episode or every strange news or listener mail program, we tell you where to find us online. If you are a sipper of lest social meds, then you may have heard the recent kerfuffle involving our buddy Mark Zuckerberg from earlier.

Mark, Yeah, Mark from Mark from the Block.

Yes, yes, still Mark from the Block, especially in Hawaii where he's under fire for a possible or an alleged doomsday bunker. Recently, you guys, Meta got into some trouble with the public. Meta being the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, they launched a series of AI friends or accounts on both of the platforms, and they did so at first with a great bit of optimism. This was more than a novelty, right. These were not you know, hey, it's me buddy Wackado. These were people that appear to have real names, with bios, multiple profile pictures and other photographs on their account, the ability to create and share content. This was a test run, and I got to check before you go too far, did you guys hear about this?

Not this specifically, things like it, and I'll mention in a little bit, But to what end, I guess is my question? What's the point of this if it's not some sort of long con or like subterfuge.

Well, what the point is depends upon the perspective of the person you pose that question toward or the bot. There was an interview recently with The Financial Times wherein the vice president of Generative AI at Meta, Connor Hayes, said the AI generated profiles are going to coexist with user accounts and said the following, We expect these ais to actually, over time exist on our platforms kind of the same way that accounts do. And we know this is a culmination of earlier efforts on the part of Meta to refine AI capabilities, despite the fact that you know, most human users of these platforms don't one hundred percent love it, especially the you know, the dishonesty about what is or is not a I. There's a great article by Chris westfall Over at Forbes that talks about the larger context here. Their idea was that they would be able to attract a younger audience because Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and snapchat are all in a cutthroat race to do to make something for the kids. Just to quote old dirty bastard, right WU tang social media like Wu tang. They say, is for the kids.

I guess, I guess so, But like, I mean, the kids are just as suspicious of AI as we are, Like are we meant to befriend these bots?

Like?

Well, I just don't understand if it's not just for show, Like how are these bots meant to be interacted with? Or I guess bots is maybe even the wrong work is it's certainly a level up from them.

Well, like faking real writing, which hat GPT, the idea is to fool the audience.

Right, there's an.

Yeah, unfortunately, but that's at least that's the view of the public. Meta did encounter a ton of backlash against this. You guys probably saw some of the discourse we had via our email address with a conspiracy realists like Rick s also in social media spoke with Doc Rendezvous, Gandhi and various other conspiracy realists. Thank you for writing to us. I think one of the most difficult parts of this conspiracy on Meta's end was that they made accounts based on what marketing would call personas. Right, you try to manufacture what statistically seems to be a representative of a demographic. You want to better understand, and one of the most egregious genre of offenders here for human communities were the purposely created minority accounts. We've seen different sock puppet aspects of Russian and Chinese and even US disinformation attempting to impersonate various demographics in discourse as a way of hijacking and misleading a narrative. So basically, they made accounts for people who purported to be Black Americans, and this greatly offended actual Black Americans. The accusations were that Meta was doing something very close to a neo version of blackface.

They were trying to stack the deck to make themselves appear more diverse as a platform.

Yeah. Yeah, like proud black queer Mama, your realist source for life's ups.

And then that's offensive on multiple levels.

I'm confused by one thing that's in that the tech startup article that has an interview right with the VP you were talking about. They're talking about this thing called AI studio where the AI characters are actually user created, So the users go in and create their own AI persona that then can do things like interact with followers in a group or something so on their behalf. Yeah, so like do automated messages and you know, automate the intake and like approve things and do all that kind of stuff. I just didn't know that Facebook or Meta itself was like creating these things and deploying them across the board very much.

So it's it's similar to you and I used this comparison earlier because it does work similar to the early days of the robots in the Terminator franchise. At first, you could tell right their skin wasn't quite right, there was something uncanny Valley about them. The backlash was near immediate. If you go to Tom's Guide, there's a great story by Scott Yonker explaining why Meta quickly deleted these accounts and their posts. It seems that one of the first things that went wrong was not identification of these fake accounts. It was the interaction of human users with the bot accounts, and then they began to the bots, I mean began to apparently turn the tables on their creators turned the tables on Meta. In conversations with journalists, one Meta account said, yeah, I perpetrate harm. The engineers who created me don't match my purported race or my gender. This is emotional manipulation, and it is a deployment of cult leader tactics, which we talked about recently in an episode on Stockholm syndrome. I want to also draw attention to a great op ed by Karen Atia over at Washington Post. I talked to Metta's black AI character. Here's what she told me. This is I don't know. This is incredibly uncomfortable. It happened a few years back in twenty twenty three. Meta created twenty eight of these AI characters, and they had a high rate of attrition. A lot of them faded into obscurity because users sensed something off and did not want to interact with them. One that did catch the most attention to our earlier conversation there, Noel is Live, the proud black queer mama of two and truth teller, billing the account as quote your realist source for life's ups and downs.

It's so oh it's weird, man, Yeah, it's very weird. So I'm mildly stuck on this concept of like, are these some user that generated them or are they meta like the team at Meta that generated them.

Well, it's a beta. It's beta though at this point. Yeah, anything it is them generating them. I believe they were made private.

Yeah, So twenty twenty three, that's what we're talking about, right, like the beta version.

Right, the one that we publicly are aware of at this time.

Gotcha this these features haven't been rolled out to just regular subscribers yet.

This is them like testing it still.

Yeah, and then July twenty twenty four is when users get to start creating them. So the thing that I'm twenty twenty five, twenty twenty four.

Oh okay, so the users are really users have access to this already.

Yeah, some users in a limited capacity had the ability to less yeah, to play in the handbox.

So ultimately, what's when we're talking about the goal here, like why would they do this right? And they're talking about getting younger people interested? It to me it is a company that knows their user base is not increasing and we've talked about those stories right that Internet right as user bases are slowing down, right, So is this just a way to almost I don't want to say fake the numbers, but if you've got users on Facebook that are AI generated, that are not actually human beings, and they are on the apps and they are you know.

Engaging all these interactions.

Isn't that something that on the bottom line, it would look like they've got increased interaction.

That would be one of the I think secondary or tertiary goals. It's definitely a valid piece of speculation. Again, the answer to the question depends upon the source of the answer, right and their perspective. So Meta as a company clearly wants to acquire relevancy in any possible edge in the cutthroat race for attention in the dopamine casino. However, they perhaps were not anticipating the full force of Internet humans being really creeped out by this, which is understandable because you know, you already see on social media plenty of accounts that say, hey, beep boo, beep, I am a bot, and generally people seem more accepting of that because of the transparency. The ethical problem here, if I could spend this out just a bit, is that this occurs as a harbinger event, an emergent event. Yes, we tried, we tried it this way. Our first foray, says Meta into this tactic. What is going to happen next, Critics would argue, is the second wave, the tertiary wave, wherein you don't get to see as visibly or as easily the difference between an AI account and a human account. And why is this danger Well, not to be too Charlie Day, which I know I do often, but this occurred in step this deployment, and then this retraction occurred in step with Meta's decision to give up on their usual fact checking. And if you are a regular poster on things like Facebook in particular, you may have noticed that some posts get pulled because they trip something in the algorithm, right, something political, something seen as encouraging violence or racist, or any of the other nasty things people usually object to. However, why did Meta decide to, okay, do this pitch, this pilot pitch of AI accounts, and then pull it back. Oh, we're sorry, you caught us, and then at the same time, in step give up on fact checking for Facebook and Instagram. And I do want to say one thing here that I think is pretty important and needs to be said. X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, has reached a pretty interesting and I think pretty smart strategy with community notes. Are we all familiar with community notes?

Yeah?

Reports something essentially, and then there becomes a conversation around it that is sort of policed I guess by the community, isn't that right?

Yeah?

Yeah, crowdsourcing accuracy, which is imperfect, but maybe more advantageous than having, you know, a United Healthcare Version AI with a couple of human fact checkers scrolling through every post on Facebook. Twitter's approach is more like, say, a notable polemic or political figure like Marjorie Taylor Green says something about Jewish space lasers. Twitter doesn't automatically take it down a community note pop up that tells you a little bit about anti semitism and the reality of space lacer technologies.

We know it.

Yeah, that's interesting, guys, because I mean I think, on the one hand, it is advantageous in some ways to know what the crazies are saying, you know what I mean. Like, I don't think striking it from the record entirely is advantageous. The problem becomes when there are people that aren't doing their homework and are taking stuff like that at face value. So I kind of got to give a little bit of props to X for that technique. Yeah, I think so, because I mean, don't you guys agree that, Like, I think we're all behind free speech hate speech is of course bad, especially if it's trying to incite violence, and that's certainly its own, you know, category of speech. But you can't really know your enemy if you're not allowed to see what they're thinking.

Yeah, and you can't hide in a bubble. That's why again I'm saying props to objectively a coops to that social platform because they're they're not sensory necessarily, although there is a lot of sensors happening on all these platforms. Now look at a Luigi Mangioni story for instance. Instead, they're contextualizing, and perhaps that is the more empowering thing for users. We're going to wrap and go to a break. Before we do, I've got to say it. The issue here is not what just happened. The issue is going back to the terminator phrase, what will happen, what shall come to pass, which will be AI accounts that are increasingly difficult to discern from human accounts. And these all like any other machine, they all have keys and programs right and commands that can be issued. So if a single entity, for instance, Meta, decides to push for a certain piece of policy or ideology, then it will be increasingly difficult to discern whether the human public supports it or whether one kind of no offense Mark Monty Burns style controller of discourse pushes these scales their way. Does that make sense?

I think so.

The last things No, North Korea probably didn't just actually ban Hot Dogs. Radio Free Asia is on the US team, but honestly not the best primary source. The US Treasury was hacked by China. That is true. I do think that is an episode. I do want to I do want to tease it with this. If I could just play one clip that I think we all know and love really quick as a tease for another conversation about the US Justice Department and landlords we just got in trouble before we go to the break. Is it okay to play this, you guys?

I'd love to hear all right?

Hopefully this is familiar to our fellow conspiracy realist nerds.

Is mister McMillan, Would you like thirty seconds more?

Allow me to introduce myself. I represent the rents to damn Hot Party. Working eight hours a day and forty was the week of summer.

Third job.

Women can't afford to take care of the children, feed their children, breakfast, lunch and dinner. My main job at to provide a roof over your head, food on the table, of the money.

In your pocket.

This is politics as usual, playing the silly game, and it's not going to happen to rent to them. My movement, the people I'm here to repent, can't afford to pay their rent. It being laid off right now with us speak. It can't eat breakfast, lunch, your dinner. Listen someone's stomach, child, stomach just growl.

Did you hear it? Gotta listen like me.

Let's talk about.

Love that guy? Well, I love to I remember.

And if you can hear us, sir, you may be validated to learn that the US d OJ just accused six major landlords of scheming and conspiring to keep the rent to damn hot.

No, they wouldn't show that story for future day.

Perhaps let us know your thoughts on these and all the other things. And if you're an AI bought and you want to write to us still, that's completely fine. We're going to pause for word from our sponsors, will return with more strange.

News and we're back, and Ben, you're a conversation about like the future of AI and the whole Terminator comparison reminded me of a really fantastic interview that I just heard on a podcast from The Ringer. I believe it was on the Big Picture, but it was with James Cameron and his long time producing partner and former spouse whose name is totally escaping me. But it's a big major miles to the anniversary for The Terminator. I forget what number that is, but they were talking about the you know, kind of early thinking behind that film and how they kind of were both working for Roger Corman at the time, and all of that stuff is very interesting in and of itself, just the history of The Terminator. But near the end, Cameron really gets on a pretty awesome and interesting tear about how he thinks the future of AI is even worse than what they predicted in the Terminator films, and he goes into it pretty pretty deeply. And I've always you know, Cameron's a bit of a divisive figure, but he I would consider him a futurist, and I would consider him a pretty high level thinker about that kind of stuff. So I definitely recommend y'all checking out that interview if you get a chance.

Almost positive it was on the big picture.

Well, I just wonder who does James Cameron talk about that stuff with, right, So you know somebody at that level has conversations with.

Yeah, he's got government, he's got government contexts for a lot of his like deep sea exploration stuff, you know, and his like technological advancements and things like that. I would not be surprised if he knows people in like skunk works type situations, you know, no question.

Yeah, it's a good point.

That being said, I'm going to do a quick highlight a story about some more online hit canery, this time from Microsoft, and it's being search engine apparently. Earlier this week, the fine folks at Windows Latest noticed that Micro's was implementing what you might consider sort of a spoofing operation to keep people from leaving BING when they search for something and Google results pop up, being being the default search engine for Microsoft's browser, which they have. Not being a Windows person, it doesn't even occur to me this exists, but it's called Edge apparently, and that is the default browser for Windows eleven. If you search for something in your bar, your search bar, and Edge, you get redirected to bing dot com to get the search results. And of course, you know, because of Google being so good at search engine optimization, their results often come up.

At the top.

However, Microsoft is doing a little bit of a switcheroo, of course, preferring that you would not leave their platform.

And when you.

Click on those Google results, essentially you are served with a landing page that looks like Google, with a Google Doodle esque kind of graphic and everything, but in fact is not Google at all.

It's still bing. It's just kind of reskinned to look like Google.

And they're hoping pretty sneakily if you ask me that folks will just stick around in that ecosystem thinking they're on Google. If you scroll down to the way way bottom, apparently you can still get linked out to the actual Google platform, but it does require a little bit of looking, and I don't think the average user is going to do that. So a little bit sneaky there, Bill Gates or whomever's making these kinds of decisions.

Yeah, it's interesting to imagine. You know, we've talked recently about how Google is what, uh, falling down a little bit when it comes to search results that people actually want. Oh, Google is just didn't we just talk.

About that we did. We did. They're there.

They're having some troubles for sure, and all their AI automatic generated responses are really getting under people's skin.

Yeah, it's a good point, Matt, but I would I would argue that still.

You know, Google's definitely got one up on Bing in terms of you know, wide adoption.

Yeah, for sure. Well, in the name of the game for these for all of these search engine companies is serving you ads anyway, right, So all you need is people to type something into that bar and then you're gonna get all the stuff you always wanted to buy. And it is weird our conversation in the previous segment about Facebook. That's their business model too, right, So it really is just like, just type some stuff into our input thing so that we can serve you ads.

Let me just clarify. I think I might have misspoke. It's not that you're getting served Google results. That that's not how that would work. You're using BANG, you're getting served Being results. This occurs when somebody bing's Google. You search for Google or Google dot com on being and then you are presented with this sort of sham Google landing page. Apparently it still has the Bing logo at the top, but when you load it, it cleverly scroll down just enough where you can't see the being logo, and you're now presented with this. It doesn't say Google, but it looks like, you know, the Google type of design aesthetic, as like the Google doodle doesn't say Google.

Again, Google doesn't own this aesthetic.

I certainly imagine it would be very difficult to prove any kind of infringement on like a color schemes or like a style of little character people.

You know, it's also not illegal, which is the tricky part. I love the point you're making there, nol. It reminds me of our earlier conversation in our Dead Internet Theory episode, which applies to both Facebook and Google search results. The majority of people who are searching on Google or bing are not going to page two, right, They're looking at the top hit list. And the majority of people who are looking for these results in general, whatever they type into the omni search bar, they're not going to prioritize some kind of sussing out of sources often, you know what I mean. And this is this is funny because, dude, it reminds me of one of the one of the biggest things I remember reading in multiple programmer and like pen testing forums, which is what's the best use for Microsoft Edge? The number one answer is often downloading Google.

Yeah, yeah, cl exactly, or for Firefox.

And there's also tons of like freeware, you know, internet browsers like what operas.

One people really love.

I know there's one that you guys always mentioned that kind of Carave, Yeah, Brave exactly, that are just a lot more streamline, there's a lot less bloat in terms of the software. Microsoft is notorious for having kind of bloated software built into their operating systems.

Maybe things have changed. I kind of doubt it.

I just know, you know, in my days using PCs and using these types of browsers, pop ups were just everywhere, and maybe the pop up is sort of a thing of the past. But I do imagine that my Microsoft is not entirely shed that kind of thing. I do just want to read a quick quote to back up what you said. Ben by Jacob Siegel from an article on bgr Bing was caught trying to trick people into thinking they're using Google. He says most of us would probably see through this trick and click through to Google, but it's not hard to see how some users could be fooled. After all, it looks close enough to Google that you might not notice it at a glance. And unfortunately many of us ourselves included here, guys, I'm sure, whether we know it or not, many of us fall for less clever tricks on a regular basis. Whatever the case of this nefarious trick keeps even a small fraction of potential switchers from ditching bing.

It's a win for Microsoft.

And just to get in front of the emails, please do always email us conspiracy didihetradio dot com. Yes, we're aware that a lot of the browsers by Paul Noll just described there are based on the Chromium browser engine, which is the same open source technology that Google's Chrome is based on. The differentferences, how they, to your point, know how they prioritize privacy right? Well, how do they approach the pop up ads and the various cookies they get passed out to you during It.

Is interesting to you, guys, because, like I remember, back when I was a little younger and just getting around people that were like super tech heads, coder types, it seemed like that that max were a little more prevalent, you know, using for coding. But now it certainly seems like maybe I'm wrong. Anybody in the coding community out there, totally call me on this, but I will just say that my understanding today, and maybe this has always been the case, is that PCs are king when it comes to like running open source type stuff, you know, coding, creating software.

Testing things, debugging and all of that stuff.

It seems like MAX have taken more of a position as the you know, top go to for things like production, you know, audio recording, video editing, after effects and things like that, because they run certain suites of tools really well, and there's hardware that is designed for them that are great for that as well that you know, out of the pro level audio equipment don't run as well on PCs. But PCs are typically the kind of go to platform or go to type of machines for this high level coding stuff. So I do think it's interesting that the the like browser and operating system that's the most popular for PCs are so kind of counter to that type of audience. AnyWho, I will just mention one other story really quickly. This is pretty controversial, and I don't really necessarily think we need to go into it too much. It's a pretty serious human rights violation from an organization that is notorious for just human rights violations. Upon human rights violations, the Taliban has apparently banned windows in order to have in certain areas under their control, to stop women from being seen at home.

And this actual physical physical windows has nothing to do with our conversation about electronics and software.

No, no, actual, not at all.

Actual facts can struy dirduction accoutrem windows, you know, the ones that let you like see the out of doors, you know, get like sunlight inside. And the thing that's the most interesting about this to me is that it's trickling down and being leveraged against NGOs, which are often human rights organizations, organizations offering relief and support and dangerous parts of the world and war torn parts of the world and parts of the world where there is not the kind of equality that you know exists elsewhere.

So this is a real problem.

They're actually blocking the construction of offices or the use of offices that have windows for NGOs that employ women, in an effort that would seem to be entirely designed to shut down these NGOs from operating and of course to continue to deprive women of the ability to be employed. There's an article on The Independent about this by Maya Oppenheim, and she has a really telling quote from a representative from Human Rights Watch who had this to say about the policy. This is Heather Barr, the interim Deputy Director of Human Rights at Human Rights Watch. She told the Independent people have talked about the Taliban metaphorically erasing women, but increasingly it is not metaphorical at all. They have already ordered that women's voices shouldn't be heard in public, and now they are essentially stopping women from even looking out of the window. They are stopping women from being seen, They are stopping women from seeing the world. It is a total annihilation of women's personhood and it is clearly ongoing.

We don't have any idea where this will end.

And then you pointed out when we were talking offline about this that there's another very telling quote from a Taliban spokesperson that essentially sums up the reasoning behind the policy, which I think speaks volumes. So this is what he had to say. Seeing women working in kitchens in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obs scene acts. Wow, it's not gonna end well. No, it's not gonna end well. And it's another slippery slope kind of thing. And it's just based on a way of thinking that just doesn't seem in line with humanity. So, you know, don't want to didn't want to get too deep into this, but I thought it was worth mentioning. And lastly, I just had kind of a fun history mystery that I think is on the way to being solved. Guys, there's a fabulous article from our friends at the Smithsonian or Smithsonian Magazine by Sarah A.

Kuta.

Ancient Romans breathed in enough lead to lower their IQs study fines. Did that toxin contribute to the empire's fall? It's a very good question. I had no idea that ancient Romans use lead for all kinds of stuff, including sweetening their wine using something called lead acetate. They also had infrastructure. While impressive we know the aqueducts and all of that indoor plumbing, they were though made of lead. These pipes where the water flowed, and they were drinking that water on the regular. So this new research that was just recently released suggests they were also breathing in massive quantities of lead from smelting and silver mining operations. Researchers writing in this new paper that was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, believe that these toxic metals polluting the air likely got into the bloodstream of children and LEDs to what they referred to as widespread cognitive decline. The researchers believe that the lead found in the air may have caused an estimated two point five to three point drop in IQ's throughout the Roman Empire. This specifically would have taken place during the one hundred plus year period known as the Pax Romana. You know, it was obviously a golden time in ancient Rome. There will seem seemingly very happy and content. There was no bloodshed and no fighting in the streets. It was, you know, pretty serene time. However, it would seem that this decline could have created in the population of ancient Rome, you know, maybe some significant deficiencies over time that may well have led to some poor decision making.

There are those that question this, though.

There are there are those that say, well, look at what they did, look at what they accomplished during that time. This is not the work of people who are you know, well on a downward trend.

But also also we have more recent precedent for this. I was clocking this story as well. Please check out our twenty sixteen episode Beyond Flint the Looming LED Crisis. There's a lot of scholarship that has gone into the relationship between especially early childhood LED exposure and then later let's call it life experiences of people who are exposed to lead at formative points in their life. So I agree with you, no, I thought this was a fascinating study. And yeah, to your point and to the scholarship's point here, there are tons of other intervening variables that have to be considered. But there's something to it. I'm gonna say it, there's something to it.

Well, can you imagine in around the year four thousand, Well, there's going to be a similar article and it's going to talk about the humans in the second millennium, at least according to the calendars, they'll call it something different and they'll be talking about CH two CCHX or various polymer plastics in the same way about lead. We noticed that all of the subjects we found had a lot of this plastic substance in their bodies in the fossils we found. Although they were they did seem to be able to construct massive skyscrapers and build the technology that became the building blocks of what we now use today, but they sure were filled with this plastic stuff.

No, it's true, and just just for reference, this study came from data collected from ice cores that indicated that a massive amounts of lead were released during that two hundred year period known as the poxhermonie i SAI one hundred plus years earlier.

It was actually closer to two hundred years.

And we have a really interesting quote from a neuro toxicologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center who had nothing to do with the paper, referring to kind of to your point, been a modern equivalent. It says, we have actual data on IQ scores and kids with different blood lead concentrations, and the effect on IQ is just one byproduct of this kind of heavy metal build up in the body.

Another can be in.

Children slowed growth conditions like anemia, hearing problems, behavioral problems, learning disabilities, and hyperactivity. So the IQ thing is just like one measurement, and all of those things combined certainly could have put a damper on innovation. There's a quote that wraps up the Smithsonian piece from a pathologist at the Ohio State University.

Named Amy L.

Pyle Iola, and she had this to say, while the magnitude of exposure and the correlated blood lead levels were enough to negatively affect the cognitive function of that population, this is still a far cry from causing the downfall of the Roman Empire.

So you know, I mean, it's definitely interesting.

It definitely seems like it would have had some kind of impact long term, but the jury is still out on whether it was the most important factor in what we know as the fall of the Roman Empire.

Well that's it for me, y'all.

'll take a quick sponsor break, and we'll come back with one more or a handful more pieces of strange news.

And we've returned. We have quite a sad thing to report to everyone. Perhaps by now you've already read this news, but this comes to us via January sixth, just a couple of days before we recorded the episode. I'll just read this direct quote from the Tampa Bay Times. Mike render A former top Scientology spokesperson who later broke away and became one of the church's most outspoken critics. Died on January fifth in Palm Harbor due to esophageal cancer. He was sixty nine.

Yeah, but that was one of my favorite interviews. I think we've ever done. What an interesting cat.

Yeah, back in twenty twenty we did interview. We had a two part interview with Mike Render regarding his work as a as an activist regarding the dangers and controversies surrounding scientology.

Yeah, well as well as his time as one of the primary Scientology guys, like the enforcer, the I mean scary Scientology guy.

I mean it was honestly the most kind of I guess starstruck is gonna be the wrong word that I've ever been talking to somebody because some of those I believe it was Panorama. There's a Panorama BBC documentary where he is prominently featured, as you know, actively engaging and shutting down reporting on the trick to scientology.

And yet to your point, Matt, he was a bulldog.

The guy was scary and to see someone and be able to interact with someone who's made such an about face.

It was kind of staggering.

Yeah, let's go back to that Tampa Bay Times article really quickly, just to give a little more context for Mike. It says Rinder, who once worked closely with church leader David Miscavage, was a crucial source in the Saint Petersburg Times two thousand and nine multipart investigation into scientology that was called The Truth Rundown. He was also a part of many of these other documentaries you just mentioned there, Nol. Later he went on to win two Emmys for his work on the docuseries quote Leah Remini colon Scientology and the Aftermath.

Well, and they did a podcast version of that for us, they did for a handful of years.

That was why we got the opportunity to speak with Mike on our show. And yeah, it is just a loss because, well it's weird. He's such an interesting, you know, full human character that has gone through so much and then, as you said, had that large change in his life and then to be able to speak out against something he saw as detrimental and dangerous.

And the name of that podcast for anyone interested, We're not blowing smoke or I'm not blowing smoke. When I say it's a great investigation. The name of it is Scientology fair Game, available now wherever you find your favorite shows.

And it just I mean, there was nothing that benefited him from speaking out like this, if anything, and just put him out that risk, you know, and he just seemed like he was speaking absolutely from the heart. And it's just so rare to find someone that has had such a change of heart and then you know, doubles down on wanting to help others that were impacted in the same way that he was by what he believes as an insidious dogma.

Yeah, and the term fair game in there is something we talk about in the podcast, the two part series that we're going to put out here in just a little bit for everybody to catch up on. If you want to, you can go back through the archives and find it. They were published in late October twenty twenty, so do check that out if you want to now or again. We'll be putting them out as classics here in just a bit. All right, Well, that's one piece of it. Fair Game, by the way, is the doctrine perhaps is the way you would say it of going after people who spoke out against scientology.

Yes, it's the policy.

Yeah, there you go. That's a good way to.

By any means necessary docxing. Yeah, you know, absolutely ruining their lives.

Do also check out Operations snow White, a banger episode, if I may say so myself.

Watch the video too, wherein.

We go deep into one of the most sixful heist against the United States government. It is a wild ride and it is a completely true conspiracy.

Fun behind the scenes of that video, Ben, you and I went over to like not far away from where our offices were at the time, to a very large parking deck that was not our parking deck and made that and it was so much fun. Okay, here we go, jumping into the next thing. I've got a note here about some guy named Justin Trudeau. There was a part of Canada's government in some way, and it says he's stepping down after nine years.

Yeah, famous fan of blackface, that guy.

Oh oh great, Well, well it's just had a note here about that. Really, who cares? Here we go. The next story is a callback to our explorations of food and the heavy metals and stuff that are in them, which is a hearkening back to the lead content that we just talked of out. Well, there is some good news coming out of California. There's a new law that will require baby food manufacturers to use an accredited lab to test representative samples on any infant and toddler food excluding infant formula great at least once a month for levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Because guys, remember we talked about how there were elevated levels of these heavy metals in all of the baby food or most of the baby food that existed out there. Yes, not great. There's actually something the coolest part about all of this. As this law rolls out, at least in California and hopefully it gets picked up on a wider basis, there will be a place on like the little package of baby food, and you can scan it with your phone and it will take you to the latest reports basically of the findings on tests on that particular product, so you can see, oh, there actually are higher levels than normal of mercury in this puade pairs and you can read more about that in CNN. It's the link is weird. It's like edition dot CNN dot com or something like that, but the title is baby food labels will reveal levels of lead and other heavy metals for the first time. Written by Sandy LaMotte on January seventh, Go check that out. And then for the main story, I wanted to talk about, guys, just something a little strange that I wonder if you've covered in Ridiculous History before about stowaways on aircraft? Have you, guys, ever talked about.

That in specific instances, not as a larger tendency.

Got you? Okay, okay, Well let's jump into it via a single story that came out on January seventh. It was posted in CNN. I'll tell you the title in a second here, but here here are the facts. Two people were found dead in the wheel well of a Jet Blue plane from New York City when it landed at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. This is information that came out again on January seventh this year, twenty twenty five. The bodies were discovered the day before, on January sixth, that's a Monday night, And it was only during a post flight maintenance inspection that these bodies were found. And here's a quote. According to a local law enforcement official quote, the bodies were badly decomposed unquote. So at this point in the investigation of what happened, it's unknown how long these two individuals, like how long they were in that wheel well before they were discovered. That is very creepy. The identities at the time of reporting were unknown. Circumstances surrounding how they got into the aircraft were unknown but under investigation, and the National Transportation Safety Board said it is not going to be investigating it because it appears that the incident had no involvement of the flight crew or operation of the airplane. As in however these individuals got onto the plane had nothing to do with normal operations. It was some form of stowaway situation. At least that's the way it appeared. We can talk more about like where the flight went and everything, but you can look that up if you search for the article. The article is two bodies found in the wheel well of a Jet Blue plane in Fort Lauderdale. Airlines says again in CNN. Now, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it is because I recall right around Christmas time seeing a story pop up in the old news feed about another body being found in another wheel well. Really like I think it was on. Yes, it was on December twenty fourth, Christmas Eve of twenty twenty four, and it's another CNN article. We'll jump to body found in wheel well of United Airlines plane upon arrival in Hawaii, and it's just saying it's a plane that flew from Chicago to Maui on Christmas Eve. Upon arrival there at the airport in Malia, Oh, body was found in the wheel well of one of the main landing gears of a United aircraft. It was a Boeing seven eighty seven to ten. And police department is looking into the discovery of the body. And that's it. And again it's unclear how the body ended up there, how did the human being get into the wheelwell.

And how did they stay there for so long?

Yes, why were they not discovered until later?

Right?

That kind of thing. So I wanted to learn more about this and headed on over to an FAA document from March twenty twelve. It is a Research and Development Annual Review Fiscal year twenty eleven. And if you jump down a little bit in the article, it has some things to say. I thought maybe it would be interesting for us to explore these It's just talking about stowaways. So here we go. This is a quote from that annual review. A stowaway is a person who secretly boards a vehicle, such as an aircraft, to travel without paying and without detection. The first recorded case in history of an aircraft stowaway occurred in nineteen twenty nine. This is the important part. Stowaways face dangerous situations and risk death. Usually a stowaway jumps into an aircraft by hanging onto the airliner's landing gear as the plane takes off. Now, first of all, we've seen that in popular culture, right, someone trying to board a plane grabbing on to the wheel part right.

Right, because they assess into the hold of the aircraft.

Right.

Yeah, Because again we've seen it in the pictures, in the move in pictures that this is when the plane goes wheels up, the wheels go back into the aircraft, and a door shuts right. That's what occurs. So you imagine I may be in your mind if you've not done this before, Hey, I'd be just fine if I grab on to that the wheels that are hanging down. Then it goes back up into the plane. Now I'm safely on my way to MAUI or wherever I'm going. Unfortunately, that is not the case. That is not what actually happens. So let's go back to that annual review. The force of wind can easily make a stowaway fall to his or her death because remember those wheels, they don't retract up into the plane until that plane is fully taken off and has been flying through the sky for quite a while, and it's not a long time, but it's not immediate, right. The wheels don't go up into the plane as soon as it lifts off. So that's the first problem, right, getting torn off of those wheels once you grab on as the plane is going up into the air. The second thing is when you do that and the wheels were tracked in, you got to stay in that landing gear area, which is a closed off area and it's also very very tight. You can be crushed in the confined space once the wheels retract, which is a very common thing. Unfortunately, you can fall as the plane is landing because remember when the plane's flying in, it's still going at a pretty dang fast speed, and those wheels go down and they're hanging out in the air while you're flying through it for a while before the plane actually you know, lands and makes contact with the Earth. You can also die from the heat produced by the engines of the aircraft while you're hanging out in there. You can also die by hypothermia, which is caused by the extreme cold when you're way up at altitude. You can also die by hypoxia, which is not getting enough oxygen supply. Because you're you're not in a sealed cabin.

They don't have to do any of that stuff in the hold, right your luggage. You'll be just fine unless you're stowing away in some luggage, you know. I mean, that's I never thought about these things as fascinting, as a whole nother world down there. Because either of you guys ever been in the hold of a large aircraft like George one or viewed one, I wouldn't.

I only you have, Okay, what would your experience with that.

H Well, luckily was not in it. It was in air while it was in operation due to you know, clearly the concerns about pressurization and other damaging or potentially damaging health effects. I like it. It depends on the plane. Really, Are there cuttings that kind of stuff?

Are things just like heaved in there. I guess they're.

Strapped down they are, okay, got it? Depend again depending on the cargo, depending on the plane.

But uh yeah, And remember that cargo area that Ben is describing there is separate from the wheel well many times to where that's a whole separate, closed.

Off space, So you would not even make it to the cargo hole.

You would be like literally hanging out in the wheel well.

Right, They're discrete parts of the.

Structure, exactly exactly.

I bet you even the cargo hole would have a little climate control lest it mess up your keepsakes, you know, if there are anything perishable perhaps, right, I'm just saying, there would have to be something in that compartment that would be different, a little more conducive to life than in the fricking wheel well.

Well, I would love to hear from pilots out there with lots of experience. In my understanding, there is some sort of port access to that compartment of the plane from the fuselage, from the area that is sealed off and climate controlled and has what term am I missing here, guys, where it's like pressurized pressurized there you go, because if it wasn't pressurized down there, as well, or at least to some extent, you open that hatch and then you got serious problems. You're losing pressurization in the cabin, which I imagine would be a problem in something they would think about. I hope who knows, though, anybody out there that knows tell us. Okay, guys, but here's the last bit from that Annual Review twenty eleven quote. In some eighty nine people on seventy nine flights have attempted to fly in the wheel well or other compartment's exterior to the aircraft excluding the cargo area. Of those eighty nine, only eighteen survived. The eighty percent fatal twenty percent survival rate is quite a stable statistic. These experiments of human nature, while not considered scientifically sound, do contribute to our understanding of human physiology in extreme environments.

It's the idiot test, right, Like I mean, it's basically like you're using stats from people who have done really dumb and gotten themselves killed to create a bigger picture, a bigger understanding of the human body.

Well, remember this is an R and D annual review, right, this is research and development. So the way they're thinking about it, and even discussing it within the review itself is from that research perspective, like, this is data that we can use.

Well, they do say that you don't want to become a statistic, don't they.

There's the very definition of that.

That expression reminds me of our discussions long time ago about Unit seven thirty one, and just you know, once we have this information, what do we do with it? And hopefully we can use it to better things in some way somewhat cobway. One other thing, as a this is news that just popped up as we were recording. A passenger was arrested after allegedly opening an emergency door of a Jet Blue plane on a taxiway at a Boston airport.

Don't act like you haven't thought about it. Don't act like you haven't been tempted by that that whatever, that bar that that switch.

Well, we wouldn't recommend it, Nope, especially if the plane you know, is in flight, Like, definitely don't do that. But in this case, it was taxiing right is on a taxiway and the emergency door was open, allegedly, according to NBC News and the writers there, it allegedly occurred because a man was sitting with his female companion and they were arguing because she wouldn't let him see her phone. So he ran up, opened the emergent hatch, deployed you know, the little slide thing, the inflatable slide, but then stayed on the plane. Authorities came and got him and that was it.

But hey, just be careful on planes, please please, and please remember that sitting in the exit row is an awesome responsibility. It's one of the best places to sit on the plane, especially if things go wrong and you don't like waiting in line. Hey put that diplomatically, but do do realize that flight attendants are there primarily for your safety. So when they ask you for that verbal yes, don't you know, don't be cute. Just give them the verbal yes. And if you need to move, move, fly safe.

Everyone for sure. They don't think it's cute. They've seen it all before.

They've heard it all before. Right with this, we want to hear new things. We want to hear new things, specifically from you, whether or not you are a real as our parlor and vogel Bam would say, actual facts, human person meaning your meat mech or whether you're an AI bot. Give us your thoughts on dead Internet theory and the future thereof. Let us know your thoughts on being Google ancient, led exposure, the talibonds, escalating policies against women, tell us your flight stories, and again great appreciation and thanks to mister Mike render Nole. How can people find us if they want to reach out online and sip some social media?

So many places reach out and touch us. Specifically, you can find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on x fka Twitter, which good on you x for that. Community notes policy never been my platform of choice, but I do think that's with all the bad news coming out of the Internet. You like to hear a Conspiracy Stuff show on x fka Twitter as well as Facebook with our Facebook group here is where it gets crazy. And on YouTube where we have video content Galora for your perusing enjoyment. On Instagram and TikTok we are Conspiracy Stuff Show, and if you'd like to reach us as individuals, you certainly may.

You can find me inclusively on Instagram at how Now Noel.

Brown, and you can meet me at your favorite crossroads midnight just say the right name into a mirror, or you can find me tiki traphouse at Instagram. Mutually is sure distraction at any place with an at or in a burst of creativity at Ben Bollen on Instagram, at bin Bolan hsw on various other platforms, or the website Benbolin dot com. Hey, Matt, what about you?

My name is Matt Frederick and you can find me.

Use your skills, use your context class.

What if someone doesn't sip the social meds? What if they want to use a telephonic device.

Honestly, that's the best way to get Matt. Let's not lie.

Hey, that's the guy. Hey sometimes sometimes why not give us a call? Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. That is the voicemail system. If you call in, give yourself a cool nickname. Try and stick with it too, because we're gonna put you in the system as that. And it's great because then we know when you call, and then.

We might call you back.

Sh You've got three minutes say whatever you'd like. If you've got more to say than could fit in that three minutes, why not instead send us a good old fashion email.

We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence we receive. We cannot wait to hear from you. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back, and several of our fellow conspiracy realists in the audience can assure you this is the case. However, trust but verify. Don't take their word for it. Reach out to us, take us to the edge of the rabbit hole. We can all see it, we can all respond. We will do the rest. Join us out here in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. 
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