Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowStrange News: The Mouse Moves Public -- or Does He? An AirBnB Scam, a Tale of Two Secret Spacecraft
With a cavalcade of hot takes and further questions, Steamboat Willie debuts in the public domain. A long-run, unethical Air BnB grift nets profits and consequences. China and the US continue a strange bromance with the Shenlong and X-37B -- a space race, or a Space Olympics? The public may never know. 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 Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to.
Know it is.
You know, we're getting into January as you hear this on Monday twenty twenty four. Still nuts to say, and there is so much strange news in the world. As we record, we're going to explore all sorts of bizarre things. We're gonna mention a lot of stories on the way. But tonight, folks, we're going to talk about some secrets in space. We're going to talk about airbnb, the value proposition being what if you went to a hotel but you also had to clean it.
Or at the very least pay to clean it.
And before we do any of that, we're going to intro our first story for this segment with a lovely little piece of music. Are you guys. Ready, I'm quite excited. Not so ready, Matt, you're feeling good on this one.
I don't know yet.
There we go, Here we are.
I'm gonna stop it there? Okay, so we could still play it safe. I think we can all guess the beginning just from that slight snatch of music.
I mean it made me pump my arms furiously like a little cartoon guy. You know we pretending to be steering a steamboat.
You're right, it is of Montreal.
Yes, Oh, I was genuinely attempting to ascertain what I was hearing, Like, what were those instruments? If you guys had to say, what were they?
They're called the tooty pipes. Pipes?
Yeah, yeah, theies.
H are you guys saying actual words? Are you messing with me? There?
So I would say some sort of I mean, you know, this is what what are we talking about?
The twenties?
So that is a That is the intro music for a short film that changed the world, Steamboat Willie, which premiered in nineteen twenty eight. It features non speaking versions of two very popular anthropomorphic rodents, Mickey and many Mouse.
Uh.
There's a ton of stuff to be said about Steamboat Willie about the way it was inspired by previous works like the A Singer and so on. But what we need to know for now is that, according to some of the boffins at at Duke University, January first was celebrated as public Domain Day. We joke about Disney pretty often on this show, all in good fun if the lawyers are listening. But despite decades of efforts to control this depiction of this cartoon, Mouse Steamboat Willie officially has entered public domain. And that's one of the big stories going around in the West. There's a lot of noise and misinformation going around about it. So we thought what better way to kick off this evening than to talk about this idea of Mickey Mouse is officially free or is he connected? A dund.
Perfect thank you for that might even be copy copyrighted. No, I don't know, that might been in public demand. It sounds like something that would have been like premiered to the visual of a young Maiden tied to some train tracks. But Matt really quickly to answer your question. Probably if it's the twenties, that sound very much air moving through pipes, so probably a calliope, one of those cranky circus type instruments, you know, sort of like mechanical flutes. But wow, yeah, Ben, So I've heard some of the scuttle. But that I've heard is that, like, first of all, it is this version of Mickey Mouse visually and Minny Mouse. But somehow they've managed to stay grasping on at least intellectual property wise to the gloves.
What's up with that they're wearing gloves in this short So let me go.
Back to the beginning where we're going here, the Steamboat Willie, you're right, is a early depiction of Mickey Mouse. It is not the same thing. And one thing a lot of people are getting mixed up with here is the difference between what is called the trademark and what is called a copyright. A copyright expires, a trademark does not. Also, this only applies to United States law. Under current US law, anything that was released between nineteen twenty four and nineteen seventy eight is copyrighted for ninety five years. This doesn't just include things like Steamboat Willie. It includes things like novels like DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, films like Charlie Chaplin's the circus, but far and away. The Michael Jordan of all this previously non public domain stuff is our boy, Steamboat Willie, and you can see it now wherever you like to watch stuff, probably YouTube. Check out our episode on YouTube. This cartoon's pretty short. It shows Mickey Mouse on a steamboat and he's whistling and he's getting into high jinks with the captain of the boat, who is a cat named Pete.
Wait then Pete the cat is also because it wasn't Pete the cat used a lot after this.
Yeah, in various iterations, but I mean, yeah, he was. Certainly this is like a proto version of that kind of bully cat character, sort of like the Blue Do to Popeye. Wow.
Okay, sorry, I mean there was also entering.
The public domain soon by the way, Popeye. That's coming up real soon, but please sorry.
There are a ton of misconceptions about what just happened. First off, Steamboat Willie was not the first cartoon to use synchronize sound if you're looking at the history of invention here. But a lot of people, including your faithful correspondence fellow conspiracy realists, have wondered why Disney was able to bend the rules of copyright law for so long. It happened a couple of times, to be honest with you. One of the more recent ones was in nineteen ninety eight, when Disney extended copyright law from seventy five years to ninety five years of exclusivity in what is now known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. And it's not known that's the street name and it's not a compliment. This also, we should say, includes the animation what is It Playing?
Crazy?
P L a n E. You can now use all of these depictions without permission from Disney proper, but there are a ton of caveats, and you have to be careful with those. You can't You can't, for instance, use the more modern depictions of Mickey Mouse because those are still trademarked. You can't use the Disney logo with the Mouseketeer ears because Disney's rights to those never expire. And there's a lot of stuff going on here that I think it's fair to say this is some stuff that Disney doesn't want you to know. Definitely, the lawyers don't want people to know until they get their fees. And lawyers are about to make a ton of money off of this, Like here's here's one question for the group. Is Disney not being a tad hypocritical about public domain? Did Disney not make literal billions of dollars off of public domain stories such as Cinderella insert pretty much any Western fairy tale here, snow White and the Seven Dwarves, et cetera. Like where do they get off? Is a question the public is asking, what do you guys think about that?
I'll tell you where they get off the bank. That's where cash all those mouse checks. I don't know. To me, it's more it's less about making money and more about protecting their brand because there's such a target, you know, for parody and for outright mockery, that it's kind of easy for people to take something like this and use it as an excuse to drag the Disney brand through the mud. And whether or not it's like the current Mickey Mouse version or not that's available to do that with. I do think they are going to still try to be pretty litigious with this stuff and have been in the past. There's this guy in Athens, Georgia who's a screen printer who used to do these weirdo kind of twisted Mickey Mouse prints and put them on T shirts, and the Mouse lawyers found him, this little hipster niche screen printer guy in Athens, Georgia. I'd send him multiple season assists letters, so, you know, and they were sort of like it would be like his head would be on his butt and I, you know, the weird things zis would be mixed up in the wrong order or something like that, or parts would be reversed. And yeah, he had to stop doing that for fear of, you know, being sued out of existence. This guy could couldn't afford to fight the mouse lawyers.
There's also just an interject here, there's also the very very real observation that the lawyers have to justify their employment. Bill blowers are a big deal, so they are incentivized to send c and ds.
For sure.
I want to get back to the question you post been thank you just about using using stuff that has entered the public domain to create new things that are not necessarily an update. Like in the case of Disney, they're updating those old tales, right, putting their own spin on it and inserting their own characters which were copyrightable. Right, So now it is a Mickey and Donald adventure and not you know, the original characters that went on whatever whatever adventure. So that is a in a way, a money grab to create a marketable, copyrightable thing that can then become a film, it can become a TV show, it can become a comic book. It's that makes sense to use then their characters that they've created. I don't think it's I don't think humans are meant to be alive long enough and have institutions that last long enough to where that ninety five years is an issue. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
There's also it may sound like we are splitting hairs. That's what people do in these sorts of legal arguments. You don't just split hairs. You talk about small nuances like the design of an eye, right, whether or not color is applied. The post nineteen twenty eight Mickey Mouse is still very much Disney's the pre nineteen twenty eight or nineteen twenty eight, and before Mickey Mouse, that is fair game. Another big exception, another big big asterisk, which is probably gonna trip some people up. One cannot use steamboat Willie or Mini or what's the other guy, peg Leg Pete the captain one cannot use them in a way that appears to imply that Disney has co signed whatever you're doing. And that part, actually, I hate to sound like the bad cop here, that part is a pretty good argument because copyright trademark this kind of stuff. These laws exist for a reason. If you used, for example, a depiction of Mickey Mouse to appear as though it were endorsing evil, evil things. You know, if it was like, hey, the Kick Puppies campaign twenty twenty four or Project twenty to twenty five and the Big Old Picture Mickey Mouse co signing evil stuff, then Disney would be within their rights to say, hey, don't associate us with your weird puppy kicking endeavors.
But what about this like kind of fly by Night like horror video game that is already you know, making the rounds and similar to the one of the Yeah, very simply when the Poo was a film was a really really bad slasher film. It was called like Blood and Honey. There are apparently already no less than two early Mickey Mouse depictions that are going to be featured in horror films. And then there was this very clearly slapped together shoot them up kind of Resident Evil type video game. I mean, I guess my question is where is the line drawn, Like if you're showing a beloved spokes mouse, you know, for a company like that murdering teenagers, is that that different than having him saying it's okay to kick puppies? Like, at what point is it satire or entertainment? And what point is it actually telling co signing these kind of actions.
We'll have to let the courts figure it out.
You're exactly right, Matt. That is where the stuff they don't want you to know naturally leads in this situation. I want to shout out a great write up by Jess weatherbed Over at The Verge. I also want to shout out for anybody who really wants to get in the weeds. Reason dot com by Joe Lancaster has a great is a great article on this which says Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain dot dot dot, well sort of, and this The issues here are myriad. They extend in so many directions, just like a slime mold mapping out the Tokyo railway system. To your earlier question, there artistic merit parody versus propaganda horror movies or you know, one off flash games, et cetera. It's not a flash game, but you know what I mean, the indie games. Then what we have to look at is the original intent of copyright law. To your previous excellent point, Matt, copyright law was intended to contribute to the public domain. It was intended ultimately to give a creator a window of time to get their bag essentially, and then for that to enter into the zeitgey such that it could be used to inspire to create more works of unique cultural import And the argument goes by kicking the can down the road not once but twice. By the way, the mouse proper was able to stymy this creativity. And I want to give again a big shout out. I don't think I named it earlier. Jennifer Jenkins, who is the director of the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, wrote an excellent article that you can read at a web dot law dot Duke dot edu right now. And Jenkins in this part doesn't just list off all the stuff that entered the public domain on January first, twenty twenty four, but also pays special attention to the importance of public domain in the world of creativity. We talk about it occasionally on this show. You know, what makes something an homage, what makes something plagiarism? You know, And that's to your earlier question. That's one of those things. Like the judge who decided whether or not Ulysses was pornographic. The ruling was, well, I know it when I see it, and legally that doesn't hold water.
I sort of maybe jumped the gun when I asked earlier about like the gloves, Like what about some of the features of Mickey Mouse as we kind of know him today. I found an article referencing a twenty twelve Reuters piece that cited a poster touting Mickey Mouse as the quote World's funniest cartoon, which, how I think Mickey Mouse is really cute. I've never really thought of him as being particularly funny, but I guess it was a different time. But that dates back to nineteen twenty eight and the poster. While the film you know then was black and white, the posters in color, and Mickey is wearing his signature red short with the two little dots on the front and yellow gloves, which I know became white if I'm not mistaken. Later down the Road.
So do you know if that is lumped in with this or is that also.
Something in the court You're gonna have to decide, like, is the color version also up for grabs or is it just the black and white version as featured in Steamboat Willie or do we not quite it.
Is conclusively simply the black and white version as depicted in nineteen twenty eight and earlier, which again includes more than just Steamboat Willie. It includes playing Crazy, and I believe right in fellow conspiracy realist conspiracy di iHeartRadio dot Com, I believe it also includes a third piece that was not distributed or was not widely distributed, which I learned about or is reading history of the Disney dynasty or empire.
But then now we're on a rolling yearly Disney property you like release of copyright, right, I mean every year. Now it's like we hit that threshold and now more and more characters are going to be in the public domain.
And to the earlier question, the differences, which may seem small to the average consumer, are huge in the courtroom colorization mentioned earlier, Uh, the design of eyes like Disney has gotten in front of this because Disney has for quite some time been proactively sort of revitalizing or reimagining Mickey and it's you could argue the conspiracy here is to further distance the modern Mickey from the steamboat Willie origin such that they become two distinct legal entities.
Well it's funny too. Outside of branding, Mickey Mouse hasn't exactly been like a hot character, you know, for a long time, hasn't really been featured in any movies, you know, really or any of the like big tentpole things. He's in a couple of the rides at Disney, but they're even those are sort of throwback, kind of like vintage feeling. And if anyone's been to Disney World or Land recently, you'll notice that they've really pivoted away from Mickey Mouse as being the kind of spokes perst creature and now it's this dragon called Figment. And that was very calculated, you know, knowing that all of these changes were coming. They didn't want to, you know, have their branded kind of spokes character be something that could even remotely be you know, lampooned in the public domain. And to my previous thing about the color poster, some sources put it in nineteen twenty eight, but a lot of others put it in nineteen twenty nine to nineteen thirty, so I do think that that might come up. But it does appear that if it was even a year later, then what you're talking about ben that the call the color stuff is off the table.
And there's a lot of stuff on the docket again in court law and order. The mouseum, what we're going to see here is somewhat precedented or predicated by the case that we the public saw with Wennie the Pooh, which entered the domain in the public domain in twenty twenty two. This is overall a win for creativity. We could argue this is very much not a David versus Goliath situation. If anything, it's one mouse versus another mouse. To be very clear, the later versions of Mickey Mouse that we're released after nineteen twenty eight are still tightly controlled by the Disney Corporation. With that being said, we can't wait to see what happens next. We're going to keep an eye on this, and we would love your opinion too. We've got a lot of fellow conspiracy realists who are in the field of art, in the field of creative expression of music and of litigation. So let us know directly, folks, we can't wait to hear from you. We're going to pause for a word from our sponsors. We'll be back with more strange.
News, and we're back.
Yeah.
Sorry, I've got mouse on the brain. That's gonna be a fun one to follow, especially as we see people test it right testing it with their parodies and memes. The explosion of memes has already been delightful thing to behold. Apparently they've been just really quickly. The steamboat Willie is still in the blacklist. I guess whatever algorithm for YouTube because like a YouTube show that I was watching, the covers it said they tried it or they had read somebody had tried it and they still got got knocked for it.
So if I saw a video as well where somebody did the whistle and got a CND, but those are often automated.
They got to update the system or whatever.
But yeah, really quickly, before we move on, I was playing this game Cuphead with my son and my mother early super hard, very cool looking literally today, and she she mentioned, why does that look so familiar? When we were fighting one of the bosses in the game, and then she began recalling the nineteen thirties, like early nineteen thirties cartoons that were the inspirations for a lot of this game, the Cupheads animation and characters.
Tune Heads from the ink Well type stuff.
Yeah, she matched up like everyone, and it was specific like motions that some of the characters were doing. She's like, wait, I I know that she was having basically flashbacks from her childhood and it was very wiggly emotions, very.
Like whoo, that's very powerful, right the flower that yeah, flower that kind of like hot and it doesn't.
Hands down in a very specific way.
In the medical Carrot, you know, yeah, chet out, Saint James Infirmary, check out all of the early twenties and thirties cartoons before you know, big censorship stepped in.
Well, yeah, there's like character named Bimbo that she like, Tilver reminds me of Bimbo.
We got anyway, this is all way before Airbnb, But I imagine you're allowed to watch some of these cartoons there.
Oh yeah, one would hope you can. Yeah. Also, we haven't really talked about this, but there is apparently a conspiracy afoot that a lot of airbnbs have cameras in them, and they're watching you the whole time and potentially even streaming you in places you know, I mean one would hope not, but there is I did find that you'll appreciate this, Ben. There is a hotel I want to say, either in Japan or in South Korea where it's got absurdly low cost per night if you agree to be streamed the entire time you were there, and the only room that is off limits for streaming is the literal toilet. So there's that.
We're not talking about that, right, We're not talking about that.
Kind of airbnb scam, though I don't doubt that that's the case of the benefit. It was you that kind of woke me from my complacency and that, yeah, there probably are cameras. They're either at the very least emotion sensitive to make sure you're not like vandalizing or stealing their stuff. But it could be up to way worse shenanigans than that. But today we were talking about one particularly egregious case of Airbnb fraud perpetrated by a gentleman by the name of Shrey Goel, who is being charged for running a Airbnb scam across one hundred properties that he owned in the United States, racking up profits of in the neighborhood of eight point five million dollars. If anyone has seen the frankly incredible movie Barbarian that came out, I believe it was last year, really really cool movie. The sort of I guess, what's the word, the kind of initiating action I guess of the film has to do with an airbnb that is double booked. One of the main characters shows up at the airbnb, there's already someone in there. It's in a really rough neighborhood. They come to an agreement and they agree to kind of bunk there together, and you kind of think the inciting incident, that's the word I'm looking for. You kind of think this is going to be what the movie's about, but it actually ends up being about something completely different. But it did get me thinking, like, I wonder how often this happens. You know, people are double booked in an airbnb. Well, apparently that is what Shrey Goell, who is a self described visionary real estate tycoon I guess, or a visionary in real estate. This is exactly what this person was banking on a that people would think it was much more common than it actually was, and b that they wouldn't necessarily report it. Apparently he's being indicted, by the way. On December twenty eighth, Goel was indicted on wirefraud, aggravated identity theft, and criminal forfeiture by a grand jury and the Central Dish of California. Accused of running this scam since twenty eighteen, and the root of the grift is that he would intentionally double book guests at these you know, more than one hundred properties that he operates across the country, creating various excuses for why they were double booked, canceling reservations of the last minute, shifting people to other less desirable, desirable properties because as you know, a lot of times the last minute, you're gonna take whatever you can get. You know, you've made arrangements to have a place to stay, or much like in Barbarian, you got nowhere else to go. Maybe there's a convention in town. Your chances are you're not gonna die on that hill. And you might even not look askance at the situation if it doesn't if it's only happened to you once you know, and you're not identifying it as a pattern, you know, because I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I've ever rented an Airbnb from the same per sin more than once, except in the case of like a cabin in the mountains where there was a particularly neat one that I have bookmarked, you know.
I have primarily because a known entity is going to be more predictable, better the devil one knows or the landlord one knows. And and also shout out to Zach Cregor. You know, Why does Know? Was a fantastic sketch comedy. And Zach Gregor is really in my opinion, he's the director and writer of Barbaria, and he really came into his own here. He I think he clearly got some uh is writing from a place of first hand experience, a bit with with the idea of airbnbs.
Well yeah, and he's also another great example of how comedy and horror are kind of kindred spirits.
And when he said there's the difference between horror and comedy is the music you nick.
Could well, yeah, I disagree.
So Joe Goel Joel, It's g o e L. He would do all kinds of clever little things, set up separate listings for the same properties at different prices, using different photographs, and then he'd cancel the lower priced booking, making some excuse that.
There was flooding or there was some kind of issue with the electrical or the plumbing or whatever it might be. And then again, like I said before, would offer to switch them to another property. Often, and this is according to a really great article in Vice by Rashawn Abraham, often the properties that he would switch them to would be in various states of disrepair. You know, have kind of decaying furniture, cobwebs, sounds like some real gray gardens type stuff. Very interesting, but again you're kind of an over abearl. But that's at that point and you're kind of gonna take what you can get. But you know, if anyone's messed around much with Airbnb, will be places with cute names like Alex and Britney's Honeymoon Bungalow, you know, things like that the egg and honey Helm one hundred percent, and the idea being is to sell it as like this is a lived in, you know, home full of love, you know, and uh, it's it's you're literally staying in somebody's home. As we often find if we've, if we or you have have done much airbnbing, is.
That people will exclusively.
Airbnb certain properties and fill them up with like remember those the model homes and arrested development. They're filled with I think the joke who they were called like home fill or something like that, where it was just like kind of set decorating stuff like live, laugh, love kind of things you get. You know, some of them are like that man, some like you've never lived in this place. Super hosts.
It's the stock images, you know, that's the landscapes, uh, the ornamental fake fruit and plants and so on. There's also a big podcast. I don't want Olive Garden to sue us, but the sentiment is there. Airbnb's value proposition was something like when you're here, your family right, you're at home. And the issue there is just set up real quick. Like. The issue is that people are being increasingly built, swindled, bamboozled in terms of surveillance, in terms of what is promised versus what is delivered, and in terms of what is expected from them as tenants. And I know we're going to get to it. But Noel, isn't this the result of a twenty nineteen like in depth investigation on this one guy.
Precisely, and to your point, Ben, You're absolutely right, Like, I've certainly rented an Airbnb that I felt underdelivered on the promise of the description and the pictures, but it wasn't like gross, and it was a place to sleep and I was able to get in, so I wasn't gonna make a fuss.
There's nothing that was fine.
I've literally never had what I would consider like a hellish or like, you know, negative Airbnb experience, and even if I did find a place to be lacking, I would certainly never leave a bad review. I'm just not that kind of person, and I know there are people that are that kind of person. But my point is, I think Joel is coasting on that expectation that people who are now kind of used to somewhat of a lowered expectation concerning these airbnb experiences, because the value is the fact that you can get one at all, and that they're cheaper than a hotel, and that they're more accessible than a hotel, and in a lot of ways it's a better experience because you've got your own place to park, you don't have to worry about. I don't know, results may vary, but I do find that a lot of times depending on the city, and Airbnb is a great alternative to a hotel. And so I'm not gonna complain, but absolutely right, Ben, There was an in depth investigation by Ali Kanti in twenty nineteen that, yeah, like exposed this. I accidentally uncovered a nationwide scam on Airbnb for the Vice Money section. While searching for the person who grifted me in Chicago, I discovered just how easy it is for users of the short term.
Rental platform to get exploited.
So that's its own piece to definitely dig into, and I highly recommend that you can find that online as well. But yeah, it led to exactly this. This person is in big trouble. And just to give you a little bit more of a background on the investigative piece, Ali CONTI had been a victim of this double booking scam at one of this guy's properties in Chicago, got that suspicious last minute cancellation, but then was contacted by the FBI. Eventually after publishing this experience hadn't really gotten to the bottom of it, per se, but published the article that they identified as the pattern, and then we're like, we want to find out more mere days after the article was published. So this, yeah, I fit in with a much larger pattern of fraud with Airbnb. According to another report, Airbnb, Rising rent and the Housing Crisis in Los Angeles from twenty fifteen that sort of pointed out some of these problems they're sort of becoming, I guess, endemic of this system of temporary rentals.
There's another thing if we want to be proactive and prepared for this. Obviously we're not accusing everybody who runs an Airbnb of doing these sorts of grifts, but there are a couple of things you can do to protect yourselves. Treat it like a rental car. Take photos when you get there. That's going to be huge because people have been both in the world of rental cars and in the world of hiring houses and rooms, people have been accused of damage that is not their responsibility. I would say also, the reviews are important, but as we see in this case, the reviews can be spoofed by dummy accounts. I'm not an agent a big hotel promise you that, but I do think it is very very important for us to realize that a lot of times people are going to leverage your trust, or they're going to leverage your expectations that everybody else will be a good faith actor, and that's simply not the case. The real big problem I would argue with airbnbs is that they're absolutely screwing out first time home buyers across the United States.
Now, that's a really important thing to bring up. Ben. I know it's not related, but I feel like those I mean, well, especially the pattern, you know, it is related, and it's like a grift within a grift because as we know, you know, people are maybe more likely to hold on to properties if they have a way of just squeezing every last dime out of them, you know, and this is a good way of doing that. There are some districts that it has been outlawed entirely because it is technically running. It's like, what's the word sub leasing? I think subleasing is technically against the law in some places. You know, you're supposed to have a contract, you're supposed to have you know, signed documents with the tenant, and they're supposed to have certain rights. But by doing this, you're kind of waiving those rights. In a lot of ways, you really don't have any rights. All the rights lie with the person that's making the money and that has their finger on all the decisions.
And in the interest of full representation, of course, yes, we do want to give some space to Goelle, who talked a little bit about this on x formerly known as Twitter, just a few days ago. Right, he came out and publicly stated something that sort of referred to this.
Yeah, it's kind of funny because when you look the way it's cited in this Vice article, it's really easy to misread his name as goal So it looks like it says goal posted to X, and there's nothing that This is a great example of moving goal posts. Is what this whole rental scam kind of Airbnb hole inability for regular people to buy a home is. It is that American dream goalpost just moving around, you know, to the point where you'll never be able to make a touchdown anyway. So Goel posted to X on December thirty. That's from the Vice article. Yesterday, it was an incredibly tough day for me. Well, I can't speak publicly about the circumstances I was heading to my condo feeling sorry for myself. He then says that after being awake for a relentless forty eight hours, he witnessed the aftermath of someone having jumped to their death. He then offers his support to my friends, family, and even the Twitter trolls. If you need someone to talk to, I'm here. Life can be tough, but it often brings on a expected moments of hope and clarity.
Well, you know we we can talk to him right now. Did you see on his website that shares his name. You can make an appointment. You can schedule an appointment appointment with this guy at any time, and he's open. His calendar is open.
I think, what if if the pattern holds true, then what what will occur is, uh, you will contact him, and then that listing will change and there will be someone who's named like Gray Shoals some circuit Gray Showell who will talk with you. But the subsidence of that tweet was this person's death put my problems into perspective, which is a super narcissistic way to talk about someone dying.
Well, and there's those problems, by the way that he's referencing, are like, you know, if you go to his social media profile, he uh is pretty open about how his His bio said as that he dreamed at a young age of being a pirate searching for treasure, and that it implies that his real estate empire took a bit of a dive during the pandemic, that he was trying to kind of claw his way back into prominence by dipping his toes into AI and by quote building a company that aimed to revolutionize memoir sharing. So let's go and exploit people's life rights too while we're at it about that anyway.
Doesn't seem like the best of dudes.
Don't wish ill on anybody, but I'm glad that this that somebody got to the bottom of this, because you know, like I said, this is the kind of grift you wouldn't hit the same person with twice. If this happened to me once, I wouldn't think anything of it. I don't think I would have gone as far as our intrepid vice you know, investigative reporter and even looked much further into I would have just chalked it up as you know, a bad experience nestled within a sea of media Oker experiences and I would have moved on, but some people don't move on, and that's good. We need those people. What do you say we take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsor, and then come back with one more piece of strange news.
All right, and we've returned, and we are going to tell a tale of two secret spacecraft. And this is something that we talked about not that long ago. In November of twenty twenty two, we discussed this thing called the X thirty seven. B. Guys, Oh, I'm so excited that this is in our world again. We've been following it since really, I think it was its maiden voyage up into space back in twenty ten, April twenty ten.
When a sweet, sweet little plain right, we had assessed.
That's when we were we were making videos for iTunes video back in the day. And we've been we've been watching this thing because even before that, in nineteen ninety nine, it was a project that was announced as a I guess a collab between NASA and Boeing to create a space plane. They called it like an experimental space plane. Yeah, that's what they called it back then. And then we watched as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, took it over in like two thousand and four, and we're just like, what's gonna happen with this thing? What's happening now? Where is it? And you know, when DARPA takes a hold of a project, it's so funny because often on their website they'll put a big picture of the project they're working on, or a representative picture of that project, and it'll give you some information about it, like not a ton what would you say, guys, Like a paragraph or a couple bullet points, a blurb, you know, Yeah, and it lets you know that it exists and it's happening. But we will, as the public, will never know what the advancements are at the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Yeah, it would be like a series of bullet points with proposed objectives, which are going to be a rewording of the request for proposals exactly.
So that happens in two thousand and four. Then in two thousand and six, the Air Force gets a hold of this thing, or it looks at the X thirty seven A and the Air Force decides, Hey, we're going to make our own version of this thing, except you know, we're aiming for the stars and we're gonna slap a B on that thing. Which what did we say? The X thirty seven B stands for?
Oh, there's so many directions we could go with this, you know, I mean clearly that the lame answer is boeing. But our collective theories are probably much more interesting.
Right, boy, Baller, Matt, you said about Chigobawa, I'm not gonna lie. You got you gotta own it. Own it, Matt, about.
Chiobawa, I think it just stands for the second iteration.
Ah, it's so dull, but it also makes sense.
I know, right.
But as they developed it two thousand and six, launches for the first time in twenty ten. The reason why it's very interesting to us still on the show is that it is a secretive, very very secretive, highly classified autonomous space plane or spacecraft I guess. And when it first launched in twenty ten, it was up in the air for two hundred and twenty four days. Then the next time it launched in twenty eleven, it was up there for four hundred and sixty eight days, Then the next time six hundred and seventy four days, then seven hundred and eighteen days, then seven hundred and eighty days, and the last time that we talked about it, it had been up in space in low Earth orbit for nine hundred and eight days without returning to Earth, which is just insane. That's such a long time to have this autonomous spacecraft just flying around in orbit doing who knows what for classified reasons. And it's in the news again because on December twenty eighth it went up on its seventh official old mission or I guess officially acknowledged mission, and it's going to be up there for an undisclosed number of days. If you think about like nine hundred and eight days, that's that's like well over two years, two and a half years. This time, it could be up there for three years, so we won't see it until twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven. Who knows what it's doing. Who knows what it took with it, because remember last time we talked about it, the X thirty seven B has a cargo load, a payload of around the size of a Toyota Tacoma truck, right, so like the thing of a bed of a truck. It can carry things up there like small satellites, maybe even smaller versions of itself. How crazy would that be? And it's just going to be doing its thing and we won't know what's happening. But there are people on the ground who are not part of you know, space force, which is the controlling body of this machine now, or the air or DARPA or any of these. They are just citizens, sometimes scientists, sometimes enthusiasts of the skies. They are tracking these things, like tracking the X thirty seven B and tracking the shen Long which is China's answer essentially to the X thirty seven B Secret of spacecraft, which, guys, let me just throw it to you. What have you heard in the news recently about China's version shen Long?
Oh my gosh, it's so bad that another country is doing the same thing as us.
Oh yeah, yes, I guess that is like the gist of a lot of the reporting.
I think that's there is some hypocrisy too.
I'm personally enraged. Yeah.
Well, Matt, do you want to do you want to let everybody know what shen long translates to in English?
Ah? Yes, if shen Long was to X thirty seven B and the B stood for badass, which is how it should be. Shen Long literally translates to divine dragon, which is just like oh better, or yeah, it could be god dragon. Yeah, I've always seen divine for some reason in reporting I've looked at But this thing is on its third mission, right, It's gone up three or two times previously. Now it's on its third mission and it launched on December fourteenth, just you know, fourteen days prior to the X thirty seven BE going up there. And get this, the X thirty seven B was supposed to go up in early December, but got delayed due to some technical problems and weather issues. So theoretically shen Long was going to be launched almost to match X like literally to match X thirty seven be's launch, right.
Yeah, and it isn't. I think shen Long first went public in seven, but I don't it hadn't launched by them, But that's when the public found out about it.
That's when the agencies there in China disclosed that they were working on a project, kind of the same way that in nineteen ninety nine when Boeing and NASA, Hey we've got this secret thing that we're working on.
But I guess SCNP selth China Morning Post.
I think probably, I guess it never occurred to me, guys. But in reference to this article, I saw a link to another article from the Space Desk. I guess of the Guardian quoting in a US official saying that we are definitely in a space race with China, and there are apparently plenty of reports indicating that China. Well, actually it was a former astronaut in Florida Senator Bill Nelson who is claiming that China is trying to go after the Moon and some of its resource rich areas. So make no mistake, says Nelson. We are in a space race.
Yes, but with regards to these two specific craft, we are not talking about the Moon in any former measure, which is just an important distinction because I think some people often get the you know, mixed up. Right, We are talking about low Earth orbit. Every time the X thirty seven B has gone up into the sky or into space, I guess let's call it really just high up in the atmosphere.
Let's call it Bezos space.
Yeah, when it's in Bezos space. Every time it's launched, it's been in Bezos space. Low Earth orbit and the Shenlong same thing low Earth orbit when it's flying around, except for this time. The X thirty seven B was launched on a Falcon Is it a nine Falcon nine rocket? It's a Falcon heavy rocket that is a part of Elon Musk's thing, and it went it can well, let's put it this way. It can potentially reach geosynchronous orbit, which is higher up, more miles outward than low Earth orbit. And according to official sources, they won't say, yeah, man, X thirty seven B is going way up this time and it's gonna test stuff out there, but they'll say things like I have a quote here from a Guardian article. This is what the Pentagon, via the Air Force Rapid cap Abilities Office said, UH number Mission number seven will involve tests of quote new orbital regimes experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies.
Dude, have you guys seen the BlackBerry movie about it yet?
I want to see that.
There's a really interesting thing that happens in it where BlackBerry was king and then all of a sudden, iPhone came out and immediately they had this prototy that they were, you know, pitching to investors, and they just slapped a screen on it as quickly as they freaking could you know, because so they could say, see, see we're doing the thing that they're doing too. That's this reeks of that kind of desperation a little bit, doesn't it.
Do you know what you're getting at?
Yeah, a little bit. But also who knows there could be really important interesting stuff going on in there, besides figuring out how to kill satellites more efficiently, which we or capture right just grab them up. I mean, I don't know, I don't know. Just to that same Guardian article on less cite it here. The Guardian on December twenty eighth published this article with this title US Military's X thirty seven B robot space plane blasts off on secret mission aboard SpaceX rocket. So that's there so you can find it. And within that article there is a quote from the Space Force General B. Chance Saltsman.
What does the B stand for, Matt Badass?
It stands for broccoli. I don't know why, but it does, James Bond Fortune. It goes back to what you're saying, Nol. His quote is quote, it's no surprise that the Chinese are extremely interested in our space plane. We are extremely interested in theirs. These are two of the most watched objects in orbit. While they're in orbit. It's probably no coincidence that they're trying to match us in timing and sequence of this.
Oh we're probably yeah, what a couinkydink. There's also you know, I'm really glad you point this part out, Matt, because to one of the questions you asked that, I think you're getting at the way this has been reported in the West, in the global West, and the anglosphere in particular, it does have traces of sinophobia. Like it is a lot of the news breathlessly reports perceived capabilities of shed long as though they are not the same capabilities the X thirty seven B is knowingly working toward. I mean, think about think about the satellite shooting that happened a few years ago. I don't talking about it as though their celebrities getting gunned down, but the US shot down a satellite and then China did so for like safety. But they were both sending messages to one another. And the idea of a space race is true, but perhaps it is more accurate to call it a space Olympics. There are many different events going on right. There are many different medals to be won and races to be run.
Sure, and as we said before, these objects are being watched, not just you know, as that general was stating, you know, the countries are watching them. There are individual human beings who watch them. And in the case of shen Long, somebody who's been keeping track of it has been noticing that the shen Long released six quote mystery objects. They released them, right, So imagine seeing a UFO and now instead of just one UFO, there's seven UFOs flying around or lights that you're seeing. That's kind of the experience, except imagine how like powerful telescopes and or whatever other tracking you know, radar tracking, whatever they've got.
Maybe something with an EMP device that just happens to be on a dumb orbit toward a satellite, another satellite, and they could just pop a fart real quick, you know.
Maybe, but again, maybe there's technology that's being tested that's similar to the stuff we've been reading about with the wingman AI planes. Remember we were just learning about that where jet fighters would would be able to have a squadron of smaller AI driven planes that they would fly with, and those planes would function as basically eyes in the sky as trackers and they'd have sensor technology on them basically to give more awareness to that pilot. Maybe there's something like that, but in this case, it's a robotic space plane with other robots.
I don't know.
Yeah, possibly, like like in Transformers and Decepticons. I think it's a Decepticon, the guy who transforms into a into an old school boombox, but he's got a little robot inside of him that transforms into an old school cassette tape and Hay launches out. It's like it's possibly six of those. It really depends upon how sophisticated their steering capabilities are. If they have those, is it purely hard science research? You know, the way that the US sells this to the US populace. I don't know. I'm really glad you brought up our previous episode. What do we call it? Something like space Ghost the Return of X thirty seven B Like, we might need to revisit this because something is happening and there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff at stake.
I think, oh, there most certainly is that.
Yeah.
Space Ghost we put out in December of twenty twenty two, and we talked about it in November, I think of twenty twenty two in our Strange News. So you can find both of those episodes right now. If you want to learn more about this stuff, if you want to learn more about Shen Long and these mysterious objects being emitted from it, you can find reporting on it all over the place. I would recommend space dot com as your first stop. They put an article out on December eighteenth, twenty twenty three, titled China's space plane apparently deployed six mysterious wingmen in orbit, and the subtitle is some of the objects appear to be transmitting signoles?
What what's he building in there? Shout out Tom Waits if it's okay. I'd also like to mention Popular Mechanics has uh.
I do not want you to mention that, Ben because they won't let me read their stuff.
And let's like listenday and Popular.
Popular Mechanics has a a for now a great comp contrast called Battle the Space Planes. How America's X thirty seven B stacks up against China's shed and Long.
Well, that sounds good. I wish I could read it, too bad? Sorry, Popular Mechanics. That's about it for right now. There's a ton of reporting on this going out there, but most of it is surface level. The stuff that you'll find on sheen Long often is not English language. At least the best information that I could find is not English language. So use the the old translators if you can, if you want to really dive deep into this. All right, I guess that concludes this segment and.
This episode, right, but not the show.
No, you can't wait to hear from you, folks. Are you taking Disney to court? Are you going to do Law and Order steamboat style? What is your strange Airbnb experience? What do you think about airbnb in general? And what are the US and China doing up there in space? We want to hear from you, folks. Actually, let me say this because we don't say it often enough. Most importantly, we love hearing new ideas. We love hearing new stories that you think your fellow conspiracy realists should be aware of. We try to be easy to find online while we're working on our own secret spacecraft.
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