From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. Ben is not here today. He's on adventures in a far, far away land as he is. I want to do sometimes, to do. Yeah, that's right. We are joined today because Paul Mission Control Decand is also with him. We are joined today with guest super producer Seth Johnson. He is on the ones and twos out there. You are you, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt, I almost just called you, bet, because when you looked at me in the eyes and said you are you, it was a very strange moment that I had, Oh, yeah, pictured you as like Ben transmogrified himself into your very being, and we locked eyes and it was like, for a second there when he said those words, you were Ben bowling. Well, you know, I tend to feel as though I am in those moments. And the best I can do for everyone listening and for unal and for myself is to channel a little bit of Mr Bolan. Well, any more than that would probably kill you. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right. So let's get in today today. What are we doing. We are We are checking up on our emails after all of these adventures we've had, and we've had so many great messages from you writing in. So let's begin today by just reading one about the episode we made regarding tickets and ticket Master. Yeah, this one comes from Aaron and it says, Hey, y'all, I just listened to your ticket Master episode last night and this morning I was buying tickets for a concert on Facebook and discovered the attached to a screenshot um of what exactly I believe it's a screenshot from Aaron's phone as she's checking out via Facebook to buy some tickets, and at the very bottom there's a message that says Facebook and ticket Master prices are the same, and it's a disclaimer that's actually embedded within the checkout. So the implication here being that Facebook and Ticketmaster like in the hoots or something or what. Yeah, Well, in Aaron's sentiment there at the end of the message was Uh, screw this, I'll just go buy them at the box Office. First of all, my questions you, Aaron is why what makes you think Facebook is less evil than Ticketmaster. I don't understand that that's like a that's like a kinder, gentler option than than going to the Ticketmaster. Well perhaps, but we actually have some late news for you here. As of Ticketmaster announced that they would be selling tickets via Facebook. So really what you're dealing with is Ticketmaster through the medium of of Facebook. So it's basically like a skin. Yes, it's a Facebook shaped uh costume for ticket Master. Yeah, and there there was an article from end Gadget that kind of announced that Ticketmaster had made this announcement from sixteen, and since then it's just been going that way because you know, if you're on the platform of Facebook and you see that someone has checked in or someone has said, hey, I'm interested in going to this event. The smart move there on behalf of ticket Master was well, let's also give people an immediate outlet to buy a ticket to that event. Pretty smart move on on their part, and it's been working. The only difference that I can discern from the reporting on it right now is generally, if you went to ticket Master and you're checking out you've got your ticket prices are a certain amount, but then you've got all those associated fees. Right, some of those fees go to paying the ticketmaster staff. In this instance, some of those are actually going to be transferred to Facebook and the staff there. So really it's just who are you giving a small amount of your money too. But in the case of buying tickets online, we know that they're kind of exorbitant prices. Well, it's just like, you know, the service fees and all of the different adjustments and all that stuff that just seems absurd. By the time you're you're checked out, you're paying like a good almost forty dollars more and then the ticket price sometimes right. Um, The thing about this stuff is like lately, in the last god, probably ten years, I mean, I guess I don't go to that many concerts that are that size anymore. Like I just don't. Like, maybe there's a handful of bands that are of that level that would would command a ticket master ticket situation, like maybe an arcade fire like a Radiohead or something like that. Maybe those are the ones, maybe some legacy reformed rock band that would you know, play a venue that size, But typically I get tickets from sites like ticket fly or ticket Alternative or maybe these are local, but I think ticket fly at least as national and dub Hub is more of like the aftermarket thing where there's definitely a call for it absolutely um. But with these smaller ticket retailers, they've always done a pretty good job of embedding things online and like where when you buy a ticket, you can share it and then people can go to that event, or when there's an event page for it, there's an immediately a link to embed to buy the tickets right away. Even event bright is a thing that I've noticed lately. It's more of an event page for invitations, but they do have built in ticketing on event bright as well, so see there it's ubiquitous. You can get your tickets in many places. But we do know that Ticketmaster in a lot and a lot of the situations we've encountered, ends up being one of the end groups that you deal with. It's because they have the venues on Lockdown. It's because they have the venues of a certain size on lock and they essentially command this monopoly. And like artists like Pearl Jam and stuff in the past have pushed back against Ticketmaster tried their best to not put their stuff on Ticketmaster, but it becomes so unwieldy that it's difficult for them to to do that. Well, it's too late there. They had already become the master of tickets. And you know, once you're in that position and you gotta do through. In the case, true, you don't. You don't gonna name like ticket Master unless you actually have a master master mastery of ticketing. Um. But the thing is too like what we've seen more of lately, and what I think we should maybe talk about another time is how horrible things have gotten in terms of like bots buying up tickets like instantly, like it's almost impossible to get a hot ticket, like for a concert. Let's take let's take Radiohead for example. Let's take it for example for both of us, right, I think we both were on there and in the queue or whatever. And Radioheads, a band that like gives us, gives a crap and wants to, you know, make sure that the real fans get the tickets. But because of these bots and these like I don't know, ticket click farms or whatever you wanna call it, they get swiped up before the regular fans are the people that don't get it on pre sales and then have a chance to actually buy a ticket. And there have been a lot of attempts to do things about that, like Radiohead, for example. I think makes it where you you have to have an idea that goes along with your ticket, and that makes it difficult too for people who want to just like buy tickets for their friends or by a mean and I don't know, just like it's like nine eleven, Like maybe everyone have to take their shoes off at the airport. It's like a couple of bad actors. That's really bad example. That's a bad example. But you've got a couple of bad actors that make it inconvenient for everybody. Now everyone has to jump through all these hoops, you know, to to try to just go see their favorite bands. Yeah, just like nine eleven. It's just like a mini nine eleven. Ah, sorry, guys, it's all good. We're good. We're we're cooking with gas now everybody, let's jump to the no. By the way, Aaron, thank you so much for a learning us to that. And uh, you know, we we hope we've given you a little more information. But I think Noel maybe right, there might be something more for us to look into within this realm. So let's jump to Andy. He sent us a message that says, Hey, guys, I work at right Patterson Air Force Base. You want to talk about secret rooms on my God, so many doors I will never see the inside of. It's enough to drive my imagination haywire. Anyway, I love your show because, having been born and raised around here, stories and jokes of conspiracy and secrecy are a staple of our local culture. And yes, endless alien jokes. And don't get too excited, I'm unclassified, low level. I t still cool as heck to go there every day, though, uh Andy, we agree, Right Patterson Air Force Base is one of those places that ends up in our feeds a lot of the time, just people talking about it, um in particular, Just like you said, the endless alien jokes, Um, it's not always jokes. It's it's sometimes people reporting to have witnessed something nearer the base or you know, have insider information that generally, and I say generally a little loosely here pretty much always don't have any proof to back up some of the claims. But that place in particular has has enough Laura about it that I can imagine it's really interesting working there every day. And you know, Andy, you say you're unclassified, low level I T and I guess we believe you. I also think you're selling yourself short there, but yeah, yeah, you're you're doing it at Right Patterson Air Force Based. And speaking of the lore, I mean for anyone that's not super familiar with this facility, um, there has been a lot of connections to sightings of identified flying objects that have been connected with Right Patterson Air Force bakes. There's a book called fifty Shades of Gray's Evidence of Extraterrestrial Visitation to write Patterson Air Force Base and beyond that goes into many of these various sightings, including things like Project Blue Book and other connections to this particular base. Oh yeah, there there are books and ideas galore. The one I was actually going to suggest is called Inside the Real Area fifty one, The Secret History of Right Patterson. And and again it's that connection you're making there to Project Blue Book and the study of unidentified aerial phenomenon. It has a close history with the Right Patterson Air Force Space. And I would say maybe it's worth us doing a whole episode about I believe it's been mentioned on this show many a time when we're talking about possible extraterrestrial involvement in some way with this planet and uh, the intelligent species that occupies it currently for at least another hundred years. Um. But yeah it. I would say, if you don't know much about right Patterson Air Force Space, look into it on your own and you can expect something coming from our end in the future. Oh and uh, thank you Andy for writing to us and letting us know about your cool job. Yeah. No, absolutely. Um. Next, we've got one from Travis. The subject is the CURRMB case info one of the boys didn't die? Question mark, Hey guys love the show. I noticed something in an article I was reading that might slightly lighten up an otherwise pitch black episode or Franchi of course, the episode regarding the curb case um on podcast, it was mentioned that one of the boys from the case had died. Near the end of the article linked below, it has mentioned that check social workers say that both Andres and Jacob appeared to be fine, or as one as fine as one can be after that kind of trauma. Hopefully this article is accurate. And not just someone trying to paint a picture. So if we go to the article, it is from two thousand seven, that's when this was written. It comes from the Irish Times. The title is child abuse case exposes check sect. That's c Z E C H S E C T. And this is actually one of the articles that we used to create the Curme case video and the podcast. And one of the issues we had with that episode a lot of the a lot of the things we're reading about it, we're actually check sources, and there was a lot of translation going on on the research side trying to figure out exactly what the case details were, what the um with the results of the court cases were, and even like what what actually occurred. We had we had some trouble with it because a lot of the sources, again we're kind of going through this medium of being translated into English, and this you know, this is the Irish Times. It's a paper written in English, and it does in fact say in there that the children at the time that they were recovered were okay and they did live. I seemed to recall we had read some other sources that were a little bit later that said one of the children had died. But unfortunately, just sitting here in this room, I don't have that research before me. But maybe that's something we can address when we all reconvene for a different episode. I remember the to the best of my ability, what we said in that episode was the best research we could find. Yeah, I remember that one being particularly hard to get through, and it was. Yeah, it was one of those things where it certainly did paint a picture of something that went down, but there was a lot of like kind of gray area in the storytelling as well. Right, it was kind of like, I don't know, like what didn't was the deal? Like the person ended up being like posing as a child and was actually like a small adult or something like that. Yes, the rabbit hole went very very deep in that one. It was it was about two women who had essentially been brainwashed is incorrect term, but they had been influenced by this woman who was posing as a younger person, and they were convinced that they had to punish the children, uh because anyway it got convoluted. But they believed they had to punish their children by locking them up in cages and leaving them in the basement and doing all kinds of other terrible tortuous things to those kids. Um, but in the end, people did go to jail and uh, the kids were We're safe at least for a time to what I can recall. All right, well, hey, let's uh that one is a bit of a downer. But thank you very much Travis writing in, because you know, in theory, that is a silver lining if both children did in fact survive. Yeah, it's about the best silver lining you're going to get. I can only imagine the PTSD that would come with going through scenario like that, that would follow you into adulthood. Um, but you know, there's professionals out there to help people cope with that kind of stuff. So better to be alive, I would say, thousand, you know. All right. Next, we've got one from Brandon uh titled North Carolina Blue Ridge Military Bases. Brendan says, Hey, guys really love the show. I've been listening for a few years now. In addition to traveling the country in my van, UM, I'm an avid trail runner and frequently run twenty plus miles solo and remote trails. That's impressive, It is very very impressive. Um, I'd love to see your fitness tracker data. I bet you have a metabolism like a hummingbird. I hope you're letting them track all that data. UM. The mixture of facts, conspiracy, and humor in the podcast me as I always have a few episodes lined up for a run. We very much appreciate that that you consider what we do in any way remotely humorous. I now live in Asheville, North Carolina, which is about four hours from Atlanta. I operate a guide company and take clients out on running trips in Pizga National Forest, with most ranging from five miles to fifteen miles. Since starting my company, I've spent a lot of my spare time learning as much as I can about the history of the region, including the origin of many trails and landmarks in the area. Turns out there are a lot of rumors of hidden military bases throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains, and he says, here's where it gets crazy. He threw one into the email trademark we love it. It's in there. Um. In addition to the marfa esque light phenomenon in Brown Mountain, Um, there is a conspiracy about multiple hidden military bases deep in the mountains, typically underground. There are only a few witnesses who can substantiate the claim. But given my extensive time on the trails and several strange phenomenon in the region, i'd be interested for you guys to look into it and or do an episode on it. There there's a lot to be learned, and I think there is some clouds to certain stories and claims based on my extensive time out in the forest. Now, this is a fairly lengthy message that we've got here from Brennan, So we're gonna We're just gonna continue here. It really is worth your time. Let's keep listening. In particular, there's a large unoccupied valley on the western slopes of the Black Mountains that's Mount Mitchell, and despite being considered national forest land, there is no entry by trail or road into a largely unoccupied area. The single road that leads up into the valley is littered with ominous no trespassing signs that don't seem to fit the character of the forest. Some of the testimonies of firsthand accounts of list military vehicles and aircraft mysteriously vanishing in the area, most of which are traveling from east to west from Marion. Some claim state that satellite imagery has been tampered to disguise buildings, roads, or even entrances to the base. Is the twenty six mile running or hiking route that circles the valley from a ridge above, and having done it a few times, I've noticed some ominous structures in the valley that I can't explain or identify on satellite. There are also several abandoned mica mines that are rumored to allow access below the mountain. I've even found one myself, though I didn't have a repelling gear to get down into it. Additionally, there are similar areas nearby that are claimed to have hidden military bases, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Grandfather Mountain State Park, and potential connection to the p A. R I Research Center outside of Cashier's North Carolina. Grandfather Mountain was is considered a U N World Heritage Site, and into the ninety nineties there were countless accounts of military personnel patrolling through the National forest along the boundaries of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Lynn Cove Viaduct Circle's Grandfather and was also the last piece of the parkway to be completed. The fragile and unique ecosystem that's in quotes was blamed for the delays since they wanted to make as little impact as possible. It just happens to be the same area where another hidden military base is rumored to be housed underground. He says, overall, keep up the good work, and he has signed it. Brendan, thank you so much for writing to us with that. Brendan. We we are in Atlanta, as many of you know, and we are I don't even know how many miles away from the Blue Ridge Mountains and especially from the mountain range there, but it's not many, no, no, I mean that's where you go when you get a cabin, you know, if you go do a little cabin getaway. It's in Blue Ridge, Georgia. That's also where the uh, the big Foot Museums it is. But it's a little closer than than where he's talking about. But yeah, but that mountain range is fairly large, is very very old. And the concept that let's say a military or even maybe a paramilitary probably state sponsored military force would want to have bases amongst those mountains boast both for strategic use along the coast. That would that isn't far from the Mountain range, but as well as you know, UM strategic other military outposts to have a place both for refuge and for UH to make decisions if the United States, let's say, is under attack for some reason in the mainland. UM, there are a lot of reasons why you'd want to put at least one big base there. Now, the rumors for all of these various ones that are being mentioned by Brendan, I don't I don't know about a lot of those. I have heard. I have personally heard some stuff about the Black Mountains. Uh, you know, I you know what, I think we should do a little more. We should do a little more research on this knoll and check into it. Yeah, I mean, how do we what do you want to do? Set out with Maybe we should leak up with our buddy at the Bigfoot Museum and do an expedition combined forces. Yeah, expedition Bigfoot. We could do that. He has no I'm not I'm not I'm not being I'm I'm being serious. Like he's got gear, he's got like satellite stuff. You know, he's got golf carts that are did with this these kind of tracking devices. We should do this suite, and while we're at it, we could do some squatching. We definitely need to get our squatch on. So yeah, I don't know, maybe there's uh, maybe there's something there. Check out, try and find an underground military base while we also look for here's the thing. Though, let's say we do find one or the other or both of those things. Who's gonna believe us? Well? What if we mean, if we find the base and it's active, they're not gonna let us leave. No, we're gonna get black bagged tagged, sent to some sort of American goolag. You know. Well, when if we we encounter a multidimensional being such as the Foot of the big Foot himself or herself? Um, I mean, what happens then? Well, presumably you get swept into an alternate dimension? I would hope. Interesting. I don't know, we see, let's go into again really quick. When you just say, what did you say? Multidimensional being? Yeah? Interdimensional inter dimensional multidimensional being that can traverse the dimensions? Can it take you there? Mary Poppins style by touch? Oh? Now that is interesting? Would it would it open a portal that we all get to go into or would it just be it does it phase in and out? Well, the chances are I would tear our molecular structures apart. You know, we're not built for that kind of kind of travel. I don't think. Yeah, well maybe maybe maybe we'll just encounter a big foot that's regular and we'll just kick it. No, no, not kick it? Oh okay, like hang out? Okay, yeah, well let me think I'm a monster. So are you talking about kicking a big foot? All right, we'll let kick it with big Well, well, look that that is genuinely an interesting sounding thing, and we definitely want to look into that. So thank you Brendon for sending that in. We're gonna get into a few more emails. After a quick word from our sponsor, Welcome back to the show. Wait, let's how you start the show? Not so much coming back from an ad break, but it kind of applies. You usually do it, though whenever Ben's gone, it throws the dynamic off because I don't know what in order to say things in or you know, we have a whole kind of vibe. And then we have a lot of rituals. There's a lot of rituals, and when one part of the triumvirate is absent unless it's me. You guys do fine without me without Ben. We're we're we're struggling here. We're not struggling. I want to go. I don't want to sell sell ourselves short here. Um, it's mainly just the ad throws ye that caused the problem. Um. But yeah, so we're gonna go right back into listener mail um with with a note from Tiffany Uh titled Fort Knox Episode Request, Tiffany says, Hey, guys, I've been listening for a few years now, and I love your show. I watched a show on Netflix today about America's Book of Secrets. One of the episode was about Fort Knox, which I honestly knew very little about, aside from the obvious that it's a fortress. Uh, it's it's it is in the name. I immediately wanted to know more about this parents conspiracy regarding the contents or lack thereof, of the fourt My first stop for expanding my conspiracy knowledge on the subject is always your podcast. Um, but I wasn't able to locate any episodes about this topic. If you're if you've done one, can you please point me in the right direction. And if you haven't, oh my god, why not? Um I love you all and keep sharing the truth. Tiffany, alright, Tiffany. So, we have done a whole series on gold on our old YouTube channel, that's YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can go check that out right now if you wish. We talk about Fort Knox in there, we talk about gold boullion and the storage of it within the United States and with with other countries, but we do focus on the US is management of of such valuable materials such as just gold bars, right, and Fort Knox. If you look at the US Mint dot gov website is head to hold US Mint bars of almost pure gold or gold coin bars resulting from the melting of gold coins, and it says about half of the Treasury's stored gold, as well as valuables of other federal agencies, is kept at Fort Knox. In fact, the value at Fort Knox holds five thousand tons of gold boullion. Yeah, five thousand times two thousand, that's uh, that's that's a lot of gold. But yeah, so at least um on the surface. According to the people who are charged with thinking about our our wealth, the currencies that we use, including things like gold and silver. They are saying that half of the Treasury's gold is there at Fort Knox right now as we speak. We have read a lot of rumors about Fort Knox actually being empty or having actually little gold in there, because we've been using it to pay off our debts, basically siphoning from the system to pay off debts to the United States. We we can definitely look into this a little bit further, but again in the short term, check out our YouTube videos on gold and just how it's been used in this country and how it's been stored and where. Uh. We we think you'll like it. I think it's a two or three part series. Have you seen the James Bond film gold Finger? I have. Do you remember the premise for Goldfinger? I mostly remember gold Member, but I don't know. Different film, yeah, parody. Yeah. The original gold Finger was the nineteen sixty four Bond adaptation of of of the Ian Fleming novel of the same name, and it involves something called Operation Grand Slam, and the idea was to clear out Fort Knox and it would destabilize the world economy because of something called the gold standard, which is like not a thing, right, Uh yeah, yeah, gold Stender is a little different now. Uh, it's it's all based on you know, the value, the perceived value of the United States and everything that's held within. But hey, if you want to check out America's Book of Secrets, it looks, at least from this end as we're recording this, as though it's still available and you can watch it, it appears to be a documentary series from the History Channel. At least from what I am seeing here on IMDb, it's Prometheus Pictures. So there you go. Uh, good luck to you. We we will check it out and we hope we will all find something interesting about where where our gold is supposedly stored. Now, let's jump to a message from and she's giving us several episode suggestions here, so after you hear these, right in and let us know what you want us to cover. Actually, with all of these, let us know what you want to cover. Whenever we're getting a suggestion. Okay, let's see it says hello, guys. First, let me start by saying I really enjoy your podcasts. Uh um, there are a couple of topics I'd like to hear you guys get into You may have already discussed these at one point, but I don't recall seeing them. If you have discussed them, please let me know what I can download them and listen to them. One conspiracy theory I've looked into is chem trails. I've checked it out for myself, but can't find credible sources that I'm just pausing the email here. That is one of the major issues with chem trails. When you're looking into this. The official sources, the sources that you would perhaps consider credible, all say that no, chem trails are not real, at least the way that they are purported to be real. Within some of the more fringe sits and on some of the forums that you'll find people talking about chem trails, most of those talk about contrails. We have talked about this before on an episode of the show, but my mind is a bit fuzzy about when we recorded it. I know we've done several videos. We had a podcast about chem trails. I think we did right, but it was about it was it was like something else and that was sort of part of it, right, I don't I don't know that it was exclusively cloud busting. Maybe that's cloud bust and Daddy. It's my favorite Kate Bush song. I always say that Wilhelm Reich right, cloud Busting Daddy, Well, cloud Busting is a is a Kate Bush song and the video features a Kate Bush playing a young boy whose father is a Wilhelm Reich esque scientist who has made this rain machine cloud busting machine, right, and the lyrics are like, I will hide you from the government, you know. It's all about like the g men are coming for him and stuff, and he's all like let's He's like go escape, have your life live, you know, and they're taking him away and stuff like it's it's um. Donald Sutherland plays plays that plays the scientist. It's a lovely video. It's a wonderful song. But at the end she goes, that's cloud bust and daddy, and the daddy is like her character like he's she's singing the song from the perspective of the child of a Wilhelm Reich esque figure. That's that's intense. Knowing that they're using Oregon energy, you know, bust clouds and do other things channel energy, it's really really interesting. Alright, So yes, chem trails, Um, we're ago, we can we can maybe talk about them again. But I don't know if there's enough meat on that bone to really dig too deep into it any further. Not unless some further research comes out that shows perhaps particulate matter that shouldn't be there after there are contrails over a city for a certain amount of time. Well, well, we'll keep our ears out. So if you hear anything about chem trails, new research or news, send it our way and we'll look into it. She does have another topic here, she says, um, I'd like to hear you discuss Fort Dietrich in Frederick, Maryland. I actually lived down the road from it, moved here a couple of months ago. I didn't know much of anything before I moved, but I've been doing crazy research about their experiments and what they're testing here. There are a lot of rumors about cancer being in the water here. Oh, cancer being in the water, maybe cancers substances being in the water, going back to the testing of Asian orange years ago in the area. The reason I bring this to your attention is that they shut down the testing center's last month due to safety protocols not being followed properly. From what I read, they changed their disposal of contaminated wastes, specifically the air waste and runoff groundwater. The government allowed them to finish their current research when they shut down, but they can't start anything new until it gets resolved. Since the last month, I have not heard anything new. Let me know if you like the topics, also if you want to dig in and do a podcast on them. Um, I don't want my name mentioned. Okay, so just redacted redacted the top of the show to beat that part out. Yeah. Yeah, all the top of the email. All the parts where I mentioned your name will be redacted from this point forward. Next, we're hearing from Brian about an episode we did on What You Know you can fundamentally think of as Canada's equivalent to Roswell. Um. He says, Hey, guys have been binging on the show all summer, and after listening to the Canada's Roswell episode, I remembered that my dad told me once about a very famous incident here in Montreal back in nineteen ninety that he remembered seeing on the local news. So far, I haven't heard any of your episodes mentioned it before. Uh, here's the short version. One of the hotels downtown has a rooftop pool and a woman was out there early in the evening and spotted a UFO that was hovering just above the building. The hotel security or manager was called up and he called the police and the local news media covered it to Unlike other sightings, this one had many credible witnesses. The police chief commented on it as well, and the local news media had time to get there because the event lasted three hours before the craft flew away. Um, and here's a link to an article about it from the CBC. And if I'm not mixing it up, I believe that the same day there was a separate report about three unidentified crafts that flew over the Trans Canada Highway, which is Highway forty towards the city around the same time time. But I can't seem to find the source for that anymore, but I'll keep looking. You guys see toa be pretty good at digging up extra info, and I think this event should be media enough for a whole episode. Um. I hope you can find out more. I'd love to hear you guys discuss it. Brian. Oh yeah, Brian, this is really cool and honestly, I'd never heard of this until you sent it our way. Um. The the date is November seven, when the woman when a woman on top of that rooftop pool in this downtown Montreal hotel saw this thing. It was supposedly a metallic, shiny object that was sending off brilliant lights that was just floating up there in the sky. I'm trying to imagine. It's like if you're at a club or something and you've got one of those um lights that goes off in a bunch of different directions that's attached to the ceiling. Like, imagine that just floating up in the sky, really really high up in large. Yeah, I'm imagining it. It's a little trippy. Yeah, well you can imagine that you'd feel a little weird if you know, you're having a good time, maybe having a drink floating around on top of that pool. That's my question to you, Matt, Like, if you were in that situation, would you would your rational mind take over or would you kind of just find yourself transfixed in a state of almost suspended, you know, like like almost a few state. That's how I think I would find myself. Yeah, it's tough to know the rational me wants to believe that I would look at it and try and get evidence of it if possible, though with a lot of the readily available cameras we have, they're not exactly telephoto unless you got a brand new iPhone whatever Apple X seventeen with the new fidget spinner lens. Yeah whatever, what if you have one of those, or if you have an SLR with a sufficiently telephoto lens, I can imagine snapping something off that maybe of worth. Otherwise, I think I would just want to stare at it and gather everything I possibly couldn't remember it as well as I couldn't write it down as soon as possible. I want to believe that, but I've never experienced anything like that, nool, and maybe I would just kind of stare in my mouth. My jaw would just be on the floor, going, WHOA, it's real. I told you about my UFO thing, right, I think we talked about a little bit. We've talked about it a little bit, and I feel like a jerk because I did get it on video, and somewhere in a drawer somewhere, I have a mini DV tape that has this. I was on tour with a band, and we were riding through Kansas. Yeah, I can't no, Oklahoma. It was there's a lot of corn. Where's all the corn? Nebraska boom, that's where it was, Nebraska. And we were like writing through this, not through it, but like on on either side of the of the highway were corn fields. And I looked up and I saw this thing that looked like a almost like a three dimensional um triangle. It looked kind of like a kite, but like it was the perspective was all off. It was way too high for it to have been a kite, but I was very clear. I could see its shape, and I could tell that it was sort of translucent and somewhat three dimensional. Wow. And you hear about those a lot in terms of like test flights over rural areas and then being these kind of triangular crafts. So I'm pretty sure I saw something kind of legit not saying I think it was extraterrestrials. I think it was probably some sort of government test flight, you know, which is that That's that's what the the Navy admitted to. Right for those those those UFO videos that just kind of got declassified and came out and they sort of copped to right, They didn't admit it was a test flight. No, they also didn't admit that it was aliens. I mean, they basically admitted. What I'm saying is like the level of admission the government is willing to put forth now is more in lines of yeah, we we we you know. The implication is we test weird stuff like this, and it's we've been doing it for a long time and we're finally at a place where yeah, okay, sure we'll admit to it rather than keep, you know, trying to bury it. Right, Yeah, I think so. I don't know, at least in this particular situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Navy video though that you're referencing there, all the Navy admitted was that it was in fact, real footage of whatever that thing was. That's really all they say. Used the term though unidentified aerial phenomenon, right, yeah, yeah, but they didn't say, you know, you didn't say I was at right. All I'm saying is, I think we're entering a place where, well, I guess what I'm getting at is in my mind knowing what I know now, I'm not having some sort of like oh God, I saw the face of God moment, I'm more like, I think I probably just saw a test flight of something that wasn't actually out yet in the world and probably still isn't. I would say, I would say the probability of that occurring rather than some kind of extraterrestrial spacecraft, whether it was you know, there was a physical being on there making it happen, or if it was some kind of artificially intelligent drone, I would say it's probably more likely that it was created on Earth in secret and it was being tested. But that's not to say that's definitely what happened. Just putting that out there. We talked about this many times, have really interesting conversation with Dan Harmon actually and the crew at Harmontown about that very much dead. Um, yeah, that among many other topics, and then we kind of carried that over into the one we did with him afterwards, which I think would have come out at this point. But um, a lot of fun, really cool, free wheeling, different change up for our format. I really enjoyed it. If you haven't listened to, please go do so. Let's jump to our next message. By the way, Brian, thank you so much for writing in and letting us know about that. We will see what we can find. Our next message comes from Oh d T is the name of this person that wrote in. DT says, hello, I have some insight on your Finders episode. Please contact d T. Thanks. Oh my gosh, let's let's quick refresher The Finder's Cults. Yeah, the Finder's Cold that's that's the one where we talked about the the kids were found. It was a group of kids that were found at a playground with several adults, and it turned out that those kids were not those were not the guardians or teachers or anything like that of those children that it led down this weird rabbit hole. Um, I'm having a hard time. We're calling all of the stuff here. But the Finder's Cult was a creepy episode, super creepy episode. And now someone named DT is writing to us. Yeah, I mean it was essentially a a case um in which six children were allegedly abused along with two men in Florida and Tallahassee um, and that they were living in sort of a cult, kind of commune type situation, and there was brainwashing involved and supposedly there were rituals and guy, it's like when we do episodes like this, it's not the stuff that we try to take home, you know, like we we sort of move on, and this is like, it's funny that a couple others come up. We we we just did one that was sort of like the basis for True Detective, which is also a child abuse ritualistic you know, very horrible, abhorrent situation. Um, this is very similar, and then we just did the one about the Curm case. All three of those things have some things in common. So forgive us if we're not like super sharp on the details, because it's one of these things that we kind of try to mind erase ourselves of when we walk out of the podcast studio. Oh yeah, if that men in black technology existed, of that that little pin shaped object that could wipe our memories after leaving this space and talking about some of these things, we would use it. But in this case, the Finders episode is fascinating and if whoever you are DT you have some real information about this, we would just say, please contact us and let us know, because we were ready to to discuss right if you actually have something. Because with a lot of these stories, it's difficult to know who to trust and which source is correct, and because a lot of it is word of mouth, a lot of these things that occur someone either testifying or remembering an occurrence. And as we all know, the human mind and memory is generally fallible at best, if not outright makes stuff up. Which which isn't to say that these things didn't occur and there aren't actual victims. In a lot of situations like this, it's just difficult to then go on air and talk about it as though it's completely fact. That's again, right, that's we were talking about with the Curb case, right, there are a lot of a lot of hearsay, a lot of left out details, a lot of things that you kind of have to fill in the blanks yourself. And that's the same with the True Detective case and and and uh in New Orleans with the Satanic child sacrifice, you know, sex rituals where sure, we we were pretty we walked away from that one pretty convinced, Yeah, something screwed up happened, and there's definitely some child abuse going on. But were they drinking the blood of babies? You know, I don't, I don't, we don't know if they were. Certainly, we certainly hope not, and we think likely no, they were not, because there were a lot of people that had things to gain by building up these very parent, you know, over the top images of what would have happened in that secret room. All right, let's um, let's all just ruminate on that and take a quick word from our sponsor. Let's do it, and we're back once again with some more listener mail, this one from Sarah um on animal religions. Sarah says, Hello, I enjoy listening to your podcast on might drive to work. It makes the time go by faster. I listened with interest on your latest one, Religious Syncretism, The Ultimate Conspiracy, where you discussed the origins of religion and how things are interpreted now as opposed to how ceremony slash belief, etcetera may have come about being of a practical nature rather than symbolic for another unknown reason. Um. You also then went on to talk about how religion is only observed by humans. But I was thinking about this probably too much. Like I said, it's a long drive. Um, how do we actually know that animals don't follow religion? Salmon make a pilgrimage each year to the breeding grounds, birds fly south wales, migrate, etcetera. This is seen as instinctive or practical because of the weather and conditions, etcetera, but could also be reframed in the same way as beginnings of a religious construct. Maybe it's only because humans have to apply meaning to events to understand them that religions came about. Um. Anyway, you just wanted to show this with you. Hope it made sense in my explanation. Have a great day, sarah Um. I think this is a really interesting kind of thought experiment here. But I will say I do think the fact that humans Homo sapiens are capable of inventing stories and like shared beliefs is sort of part and parcel to what religion is. I just don't think animals can do that in the same way that we can, or at least not that we know of. Yeah, at least to our our current understanding, there are no animal religions. But again, there there's some interesting stuff going on with cetaceans and also with elephants and venerating the dead. So maybe it's not necessarily a religion with dogma and those kinds of things, but that can certainly mourn. Yeah, and but what does that constitute then a religion. The knowing that your offspring or your family member or a close member of your society has expired. Does that constitute a religion? Just the in the veneration or oh yeah, no, I mean when you know, if you're loyal pooch, you know if you pass away, that pooch is gonna be sad for a time, and know that you're gone, recognize the loss even if it's you know, I think we had sign We anthropomorphize animals a lot, and we assign human emotions to them that we think we understand, Like we say, dog, the dog loves me. In reality, it might just be that the dog relies on me and uh and and and and and and depends on me for sustenance. Therefore it recognizes that if it behaves this certain way towards me, it will get what it needs. And that kind of behavior, you know, you could argue is developed over um, you know, millions of years, you know, you know, evolutionarily speaking, right like the dogs that where we talked about this um in in l a with with the Hermontone folks um the idea that the dog, the dogs that did better at recognizing human faces and you know, doing things that humans liked and saw as being you know, valuable. They survived because they were able to go into the wing of the more powerful and uh, you know adaptable human right. Yeah, it's a it's a fascinating concept and I don't know if there's a whole episode there, but who knows what we're going to find out. The example of salmon making a pilgrimage is pretty compelling to me. I think so too, But I also think that's us ascribing pilgrimage status to a thing that is ultimately, you know, evolutionarily beneficial to them, where it's something they have have to do or it's what they know to do because it's been done. I mean, you could argue it's tradition, but it's really just tradition in that it's just like, it's not tradition where it's assigned some sort of like spiritual value. It's just repeated behavior, it passed down. There's an argument to get into the into that with epigenetics and whether or not the genes are actually carrying some kind of memory or within the d NA there's some memory of one of the first you know, groups of salmon that did go back to the breeding ground and realized, oh, this is the ideal place for us to continue making more of us. Right, It's it's fascinating, especially the parts of it that are driven by sheer procreational drive, you know, Like that's the religion there is do you want to talk about Like, I mean again, it's it's we're ascribing this ourselves. But that's the end all be all. That's the god of of the animal is procreation, survival at all costs, you know, isn't it. Yeah, But we get wrapped up in all this other bullet you know, like I mean really like we do, like we we we lose sight of that, of that you know, that one goal kind of because he wrapped up in all these distractions and these things, and you know, having fun and feeling good as opposed to animals who you know, sure they may be a bear can scratches back against a tree and like feel good, but in the day they're much more honed in on like that survival than we are. I think you make a great point, all right, So let's thank you so much, by the way for writing in Sarah great thought experience. Let's jump to Maggie, who says, high conspiracy boys love the show. I was wondering if you'd be up for looking into modern day colonialism. The United States pretends otherwise and downplays it, but has colonies and associated lands. I'm twenty nine and love history, and I do a lot of extracurricular reading, and this blindsided me. This isn't something that Americans learn in schools. I wasn't aware of it until Puerto Rico got hit with Hurricane Maria a few years ago. What exactly does the United States have its hands in and what other modern countries still have colonies? Thanks folks, Maggie. We've talked about this a little bit before on the show. The number of territorial lands that the United States controls, the military bases that we control in other countries, the places that are officially United States territory, such as Puerto Rico, but they don't have a lot of the UM, a lot of the special things the rights that a a proper quote unquote citizen of the United States has, including the types of voting rights. UM. There are a lot of issues there, and maybe it is something we need to do an entire episode on just the the concept of not only buying and conquering a land that has indigenous people on it, but also then making it less than, making it function as less than the republic that just conquered it. I don't know, it's it's a touchy subject, but maybe it's something that's worth us looking into. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, we talked about what maybe it wasn't It wasn't on this podcast. It was on Rigulous History Been and I talked a lot about the Monroe Doctrine, about like the idea of like America kind of becoming police, uh, to prevent other countries from colonizing. And uh, it's it's something that rubbed a lot of autonomous countries the wrong way, like as though we who are we to say, you know, how they should exercise their perceived superiority or whatever, you know what I mean, their strategy. It really does make me think about Hawaii just in general, as and how that became territory of the United States. All the territories of the United States that have really interesting, U storied pasts, right, some of them not so not so good. Yeah. Um, to make a tomlet you gotta break some griggs. That's That's all I know. I don't know this expression. Man, Well, it's just the special thing that my friend and I like to email each other repeatedly a lot on one particular night. It's a reference. Yeah, it's some movie show of Succession. Anyway, I love I love Succession. I did you see the finale? It just wraps. Yeah, it's very very good to make a tomlet you gotta break some griggs. Greg. Is he the cousin they're always they're always screwing over. He's the best. He is awesome. He like gets wise a little bit kind of, you know, like at first he's like sort of a sucker and they're just sort of using them as their fall guy, and then he sort of like smartens up a little bit. Again, I'm only season one, but no spoilers. No, that's not Is that a spoiler? I don't know, not really. Sorry. If it is, look at you spoiling, look at you boil. It makes me feel like mailing me Wow Greg, Wow, very good his relationship with that one dude. What's his home, Tom? Yeah exactly, Yeah, it's fantastic. All right, all right, let's jump to one last message we're gonna take here from someone named c. This is about the Phoenix lights. So se says, my stepfather, Boyd see feels like they need to disguise their name, but willing to throw Boyd under the bus. I guess it's a stepfather. It's fair. Um no, no, no, no, no, no hate towards stepfathers. I'm sorry, that's a joke. Um. He So Boyd apparently lived in Phoenix and called him at about eleven forty five at night, uh and woke him up to tell him about what he had seen. Um and uh C says, I honestly did not believe him. He stated that the triangle, as he described it, flew direct oh trying to talk about some flying trying it's a call back, flew directly over his house, and then it was very large, large enough to block out the stars as it went overhead. It was silent. In twenty years, he never changed the story and was not a UFO kind of guy. He was your basic work, fire up the grill and drink a few beers with a bass boat in the garage type guy. UM hopefully took the bass boat out fishing occasionally in the garage. I think you're probably right, Um. Do you think you have one of those fish radars. I always thought those were pretty cool, remember those. Yeah, definitely those are neat uh yeah, and um, I didn't know what to make of all of this, but his description seems reliable. Thanks again, guys. Yeah, so see, uh see, Stepfather Boyd had a close encounter with the Phoenix Lights craft, or the alleged Phoenix Lights craft. But again, that is so exciting to hear that somebody listened to our episode and actually had a connection to this thing, which is still one of my I think it's one of my favorite unidentified flying object occurrences, the Phoenix Lights, just because of those detailed descriptions of this giant thing that's just flying over the city. I always imagine, just this is me speaking personally, that if an extraterrestrial craft did come here and examine us, or just come on a fact finding mission or something, it with the craft itself would be beyond our comprehension. And it harkens back to a lot of the writing of this guy named Grant Morrison. He made this graphic novel called The Filth and the Invisibles, and within the Filth, he's got this concept of a vehicle or type or class of vehicle that is on the road all the time. It's used by these special agents, but humans literally cannot cipher what they're looking at. It makes literal zero, It makes literally zero sense to the human mind when you look at the vehicle. So it's as if it doesn't exist, like it's invisible or it's not even actually there. Your mind doesn't process and cannot process what it is, so it just kind of enters your short term in the next makes me think of that that part from West World doesn't look like anything at all to me. Yeah, exactly, very very similar to that. UM. And I always imagine that if a ship truly did appear in that way, it wouldn't be that anyone is zapping our memories. It would just we wouldn't We truly would not understand what we were looking at. And I'm also skeptical that the light light capturing devices such as the cameras and the chips that we use to capture the digital chips that we use to capture images. I don't know that we could even capture on that because it may be existing on different frequency range than we can even perceive. Um. I know that's a little out there, it's it's not really though, because I mean even like, you know, let's think about television for example, right, Like television projected a certain frame rate, Like if your camera is not lined up with that frame rate, it's gonna look like nothing, or it's just gonna look like like a blurry lines You're only gonna see part of the picture. Or if you're like capturing a spinning ceiling fan and you're shooting at a really high frame rate, it looks really slow, right. I mean, I'm just saying that you can you can equate what you're describing to phenomenon that we already understand of things not lining up, puzzle pieces not connecting, just in terms of like receiver and sender, you know. So why wouldn't like another set of rules technological advancement, Why wouldn't that be on the table for it to not jive with like our particular you know tools, Right. I think it's an interesting thing to bring up. Well, and what a what a wonderful place to end this episode because it takes me back to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in a lot of the rumors about aircraft coming out of that place, or landing in that place, or you know, just being associated in the area and it makes me think, well, it's definitely time to to do some more UFO USO digging because it is one of my personal favorite topics and I know Ben also enjoys it, and I know you do too, so look for a lot of that in the future. Thank you to everybody who wrote to us for for this episode. There are a ton more emails, by the way that we did not get to. It's true, and Matt, thank you for kind of curating this episode. Um I was. I was not as present as I would have liked to be in that process, and you really picked some good ones man, and I really enjoyed this conversation. Well, everybody listening has some cool stuff to say, So if you're feeling left out or you want to get a word in edgewise, remember you can find us on social media at Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook, you can find our community page Here's where it gets crazy Z. To join, all you have to do is name the people who host this show, or name every nut that you know or like Harland, Pepper and uh and best in the show. There you go on and Pepper White, quit quit naming nuts. Macadamion Macadamian nut, hazel nuts all mon pistachio nut, wal wal nut. All right, that's enough. Um Spanish peanuts exactly, alright, so classic peanut. But but really, genuinely, all you have to do is just say who's on this show? And that way we just know that you actually listen and care. You're not going to come in and be a troll or make a reference. That's also fine. If you make a reference, you don't, it doesn't matter. You like, use our names and give us funny names. Uh, let us know that you care. Yeah, and then you're in there you go. And if you don't want to do that, you want to find us on Instagram, you can find us. We are conspiracy stuff show and no you are how now Noel Brown, which is really appreciated every Brandon Yeah, no, I really like it. It teaches people how to spell null because you would not even believe the ways that your name gets spelled in correspondence to us. I would believe it because I see it, and seeing is believing that what's your social meds? Oh it is Matt Frederick, I believe underscore I heart Yeah, I think, And that's on the Instagram. It's real. We've been working together getting you up on the stories check out check out Matts burgeoning social media president. Know you did teach me how to do stories and tag things, you know, it was a delightful journey of discovery for both of us, better tracking through social media. Indeed, all right, you don't want to do any of that stuff. If you're also a little squiggy about social media, you can give us a phone call. Um. We do episodes like that occasionally too that don't involve the text that we actually play the the audio and you can you can do that. We have a phone number. It's one eight three three st d w y t K and leave us a voice one. I think there's a cut off. It's like around three minutes, so be prepared to be zippy or be prepared to be cut off after three minutes and call back and leave another one. We can stiff them together on this. And it's the limitations of the what is it ring Central? I guess that's the big takeaway from me there is be weird, be funny and be genuine and let's all have a good time, all right. And then the last thing, if you don't want to do any of that stuff. You can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. 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