From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories where look with unexplained events, you can turn back now or learn to stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and I am Ben, and I have a question for you. Ben, lay it on me, brother, you're done with T p P. Oh you know me? If we're talking on a personal note, then I would say that I'm very, very skeptical about T p P. Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations to you and to us if you caught our reference to O P P U a pretty pretty fantastic song from back in the day, right Matt? And it's other people's property? Is that actually what it stands for? Is that just something I learned through the grapevine? Do you know other people's something? Oh? There are various interpretations, but we we are talking about today and this week entirely is not O P P but t p P, which stands for the Trans Pacific Partnership. Alright, First, yeah, yeah, First question, why why should I care? This sounds like a snooze fest. What the heck is it? You probably shouldn't care. What I would do is turn this off and just go back to watching football. Oh yeah yeah, or maybe, um, what what is a celebrity doing that's not important or matters? Did somebody maybe say something about a different celebrity that is a throwaway line that could be interpreted or confused with news because that's what people like to watch, right. All I know is that my character needs to level up and right now, so I'm going to get on the game and just do that for all Just grind, you know what I mean, that's what it's about. So aside from our fairly cynical portrayal of what people confuse with news and productivity, let's talk about Transpacific Partnership, which if you follow some news sources you may have heard about. If you're on Reddit, of course, then you know about this. It is a free trade agreement. So what is free trade? That's something we hear a lot in the news sometimes sometimes we just read it on Reddit. Well, free trade is in itself, this sexy buzz word. It just sounds so good, right. People love free stuff. Man, who doesn't love free stuff and trading? I mean that's what makes the world go around, right, Yeah, so let's trade for free. Okay, I'm down, But it isn't really free in the way you might think. Now, It only means that different countries in this example here with the t PP, different countries can agree to trade goods and services all the things that they trade without tariffs, which are taxes and quotas, which would be you know, you have to create a certain amount or you have to buy or sell us certain amount in order to make the trade occur, and all these other trading constraints that you'd have to go through when you're making just a simple transaction from one country to another. So one of the big questions is why is this a big deal. The majority of countries in the world today participate in some kind of protectionism, and what this means is that they impose those barriers that Matt is talking about here, like tariffs or quotas on exports or imports, and they do this to support their domestic businesses and arguably the domestic economy. That's right, and one of the biggest examples of this would be agricultural subsidies or food subsidies, where government is essentially paying a farmer or a large agribusiness corporation to make food and then they supplement the income of that company or a group of farmers so that they can sell and trade at a lower price for these goods. Now this affects global trade, of course, Uh, if there is a country that's able to produce corn at a cheaper rate than of course people in Country B will buy the cheaper corn. Sure. But what happens here is is pretty smart because I first started thinking about this when the European Union was forming. One of the big fights people had was over agricultural subsidies. France had quite quite a lot, and the United States and Japan actually have quite a lot right now too. We are the home of big corn, after all. So there's a smart, almost a real politic thing here, which is that if you have these sorts of subsidies or some sort of governmental support for your agribusiness, then you are taking out insurance on your domestic ability to produce food. So that means that you'll survive your industry rather will survive despite international competition. And it can mean that you won't become dependent on imports for food. But and I know I wrote this in such a crappy way here, but it can be bad because it prevents global trade and people in favor of global trade. Well you know that bothers them. I love it, always my best defense. But so that's a free trade agreement. It doesn't quite mean what it sounds like it means. It is really what is called a liberalization of trade. Now, Uh, can I take a soapbox? Just real quick and all right? So another thing that is tricky, These these buzzwords in these terms can be so misleading. All right, listeners inside and outside of the United States. You know that the United States is roughly divided between Democrats and Republicans or people who call themselves conservatives or liberals or something like that. The thing here is that liberalization of trade does not mean what you would think it means if you associate it with what are called liberals in the United States. What it means is that there is more liberty for these actors, these uh companies, really and that there is less state level restraint on them. So it's more of a free to do what you will, uh in a economic sense, whereas liberal in the United States is usually taken I mean free to do what you will in some sort of social sense, right, And I'm not I'm not picking a horse in that race. I am just saying that's what it is, and and don't let it be confused. But with this free trade agreement stuff, right, Uh, people who are fans of trade liberalization love it. But people are just hearing about it or going okay, so what what? What is this? Is it our first time doing this as a country. Yes, this is not the first time one of these free trade agreements has occurred, especially with the United States. You might have heard of something called NAFTA or the North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into play in the I believe about twenty years ago as we record this, and it was kind of the same thing. It dealt with North America and some of South America. Um, well, I guess it was just North America, wasn't It was Mexico, Canada and the U S. So this arguably had some adverse effects on a couple of things, a couple of markets, especially the Mexican agricultural markets. Opponents said that NAPTA moved the US manufacturing overseas and it cost hundreds of thousands of jobs inside the US because there was this uh motivation to lower the prices of or excuse me, lower the costs of manufacturing. Well yeah, and then also if there is less of a barrier for importing it's from another country, right, Yeah, it's cheaper to make it over there, and even what it costs you on shipping to get it on a cargo ship still leaves you with a wider profit margin. Then of course you'll do it. That's just good business. Uh. In fact, the US has had trade agreements with twenty nations as of October, and there are more on the table and in the works today, including the Trans Pacific Partnership. Right, and just the point in fairness here, NAFTA is not universally criticized. The United States Chamber of Commerce and other supporters say that NAFTA has led to a booming economy and trade relationship, and that's why they're so gung ho about t p P. Here's how it started. It was first called the Pacific three Closer Economic Partnership or P three step. Because in the international sphere and especially at the government level, people just love acronyms. The more non sensical the better. Uh. This happened during the two thousand to APECK. That's another acron leaders meeting. Yes, APEX stands for Asia Pacific economic cooperation, and in two thousand five, Brunei joined full time and the trade group became known as the P four because see they added one get it, get it guys. Okay. Official agreements were concluded by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore in June of two thousand five. And what this means is that this didn't start with the United States as a member. Now currently, right, there are twelve members in this and Matt, maybe we can alternate and just name them Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada, Japan, the Republic of China or Taiwan, and Republic of Korea. And they're hoping so many more will join. So if you are the head of a Pacific rim government and happened to be listening to our show, hey, thank you, and uh here's looking at you, Indonesia, what's going on? Get at me or you know, get at someone in charge of making that uh decision. They are hoping more people joined soon, and they're especially hoping a certain country will join because Matt, some people are missing from the table. Right, Yeah, there's one in particular that you mentioned in the vlog from this week that is super surprising. The biggest player over there in the Asia Pacific area China, who you know, we're talking about the largest population. We're talking about massive, a massive economy, second largest in the world. Uh, the United States is currently still first. Speculation around the Western speaking world leads us to believe that China, at least factions of the and these governments see this free trade agreement as an attempt to contain China's growth internationally. And China, it's true, has uh several other free trade initiatives of their own that they have been pushing that they want the US not to really mess with, and the US is telling them not to mess with that and to join their organization. It's like two people holding a party at each at different houses on the same night and saying, no, no, you're welcome, I really want you to come to the party, but come to my house. Let's let's hang out at my house. And that's that's on a basic level. But we've talked about how the t p P came to be, We've talked about the countries involved, We've talked about free trade and what that means. And now it's time to actually talk about what the TPP says. After a word from our sponsored and we're back. So Ben, We've gone over a lot of the stuff about the TPP, but I'm not really sure exactly what, Like, what's the big issue here? What does it say? That's a great question, and that's when we didn't answer during the break, So let's get right into it. One trippy thing about this agreement is although it affects literally millions of people, over three million in the United States alone, this is something we only know about because there were leaked drafts that came out courtesy of some of our buddies on the internet. And and these leaked sections, which are to be fair certainly not the entirety of the agreement, nor they have the final version, they have a lot of stuff that most of our listeners would disagree with, like language that resurrects the SOPA UH, which was the Internet Rights Act and an act in several of the other versions of it, basically attempts to control the way the Internet is used. Right, And we won't bog you down too much with reading the dry language of this, but we will tell you where you can read more. And there's a number one place to read the actual text. Yeah, I was on WikiLeaks just before this going through some of the documentation. They've put out some really great press releases trying to explain exactly what some of the language means. Again, Wiki leaks dot org is a place where you can go and get this. And there are the initial people who are they're the way that I found out about it, right, Yeah, whomever that whistleblower was that sent the early drafts. They also updated these drafts. And of course if you don't want to stumble through this dry international text, then you can go to online analysis. You can read both the left and the right sides of the political sphere for the best picture. That's what I would say. Yeah, and there's one more place you can go to, and that is the official Office of the United States Trade Representative website. They've got I guess a PR version of what the TPP might be. M h. Yeah, it's it's weird when you read that official language because one thing I found that was strange there is that people were quoting internal buzzwords and I couldn't determine where that buzzword originated. One of them was the phrase high standard. Whenever you read the Office of the Trade Representatives official statements or other countries official statements, they have all agreed on the phrase high standard. No one has really defined what high standard means. Matt just means that the standards. Oh okay, well, pardon the heck out of me. Right. We should also point out that the Office of the US Trade Representative is with the name we're throwing around, is the part of the executive brand Itch that is charged with running the negotiations for the U S side. Now we have a rough look at some of the official statement will here from the Uncle Sam side supporting the t p P. They believed as the potential to boost US exports and investments by lowering tariffs and leveling the playing field air quotes in some large or rapidly growing markets. The White House said that the tpp would create or could create more US jobs, and it could also generate an additional one hundred and twenty three point five billion dollars a year in US exports by so beyond the ideas here for business beyond the commercial side, there are a lot of experts who regard the t p P as a key piece of US foreign policy. Yes, and amid the rise of China and it's increasing, let's say, exercise of political and military power over in East Asia, the current administration, Obama administration said that it would turn its attention more to the East, the so called you might have heard this before on the news, the pivot to Asia. Yeah, and uh. They want to strengthen US influence in that region, which means matt essentially that the factions of the Chinese government who are saying this was a move to contain China were right, because the idea here is to prevent China from becoming what's called a hedgemon, and a hedgemon is the top dog in an area. Now there are global hedgemon's, there regional hedgemons. There hasn't really been a global hedgemon that lasted for a very long time. The British Empire certainly expanded, uh and owned a great many nations. I feel like maybe it's controversial to say owned, but it's true. The United States right now, being one of the only world superpowers that survived and thrived in World War after World War two, has so many territories and overseas, not quite nation places that a lot of people in the United States don't know about. Look up Diego Garcia. I think we mentioned that in an earlier podcast. Right. When I think about a superpower hedgemon in that way, I don't necessarily think of it as from the empire perspective of owning a bunch of lands. I mean maybe controlling a bunch of areas. What I think of is just having your I was gonna say tentacles, but just currency. Maybe currency would be a huge way to control certain areas, or even just you know, having a military base, yes, in or around your area. And we've we've talked about that a lot too, probably off air. I forget sometimes when we're on air, we're off which is something I should try to remember saying it's important so we don't end up swearing what. Yes. One of the big distinctions here is the ability to project force, which is the term for your ability to send an army or navy or an air strike somewhere. And I think we've talked about brown, green, and blue water navies on the show, right, I think we've mentioned it. We have not covered it in detail, all right, Well, just real quick, most countries that have a Naval Force have what's called a brown water navy, and what this means is that they can only go a few hundred miles away from the coast. And then there's a green water navy, which can go a little bit further out. And then there's a blue water navy, which only a few nations have, then the United States being one of them, which can go anywhere in the world. And since the US has aircraft carriers, if you are another country, you want to play nice because you don't want an aircraft carrier of all things, running up to your shore and then launching air strikes. Are too close, right, Yeah, And it's it's got to be suspicious for anyone who follows the news around the world when tensions start building between countries. All of a sudden, they're doing war games, right, and all of a sudden, South Korea and the United States are just running a regularly scheduled war game. And then all of a sudden, oh wait, there's an aircraft carrier not too far from our country. Okay, like when the there was a large summit in Australia recently and Vladimir Putin, who, as you can recall, is in a huge not quite cold war, lukewarm war with the West and economic war. Really he traveled down to Australia for this meeting, and when he traveled there, he traveled with warships and they they docked off the coast while he was at the meeting, which some would say is paranoid or someone says showy, But I think it might have just been good planning. I don't know how you travel if you're in charge of a country, especially a country that's embroiled in those kind of cold conflicts. So this means that this means that if a country achieves hedgemoney, then it will be able to UH make clients states of all the other countries in its sphere of influence. One of the things that's really big when we hear about Middle Eastern conflict is the idea of Saudi Arabia or Iran uh expanding this sphere of influence and UH toppling the United States, which the United States is sort of global hedgemon. And we know that China weaving the world, not just the West knows that China is seeking to expand. China is building islands. It's literally building islands in what we call the Sea of China here in the States or the South China Sea, excuse me, so that it can make better claims to these to these islands, to this maritime property. So it's not just the United States being paranoid. It's they're paying attention. And it's got extensive intelligence agencies that look at this kind of stuff. Oh yeah, what do we always call it an alphabet soup? Right? But we we know that there is probably all to say, there is probably a valid point there about an ulterior motive beyond the economy, and there's a there's a cynical perspective about this too. Yeah, there's a way to look at this and go, oh god, well that that perspective would entail looking at the benefits that companies and wealthy individuals, wealthy persons which are company has been um, just the benefits that they're getting at the expense of ordinary citizens on either side of these trading deals. So if you look at a massive corporation coming in and wanting to trade let's say there, let's say corn, a huge amount of corn. Let's say Japan just really has been liking corn lately, and they want to get some of this American corn, and they want it cheap. So these massive corporations that are mass producing corn, say, the subsidized farmers all that stuff, they're gonna get benefits over you know, somebody who is not producing that crop for the US government. That's a great point because there's a fantastic example. And by fantastic, I don't mean good for the people involved. I mean it hits almost letter to letter what you're saying. One country was different. NAFTA lead to was called dumping for corn in Mexico because these subsidized corn growers in the United States were able to make corn much much cheaper, and then with a free trade agreement, there was not really away from Mexico to protect its domestic industry. So it was bad news for a lot of Mexican farmers. But again supporters of this stuff would say, great news for the Mexican economy. Not to mention things where you overproduce a crop because you're getting so many subsidies, then you just burn it. It's so strange the way that trade works domestically and internationally. You know, one thing I always remember from growing up and breeding about the Great Depression in the United States is that due to price drops and fluctuations. People were starving in the cities, you know, and farmers in rural areas were throwing milk into the creek because it was worthless. It's strange because it means that we can, through the we can, through the use of speculation and the use of money and goods as an abstract rather than a concrete um asset, we can engineer these situations where people are starving and throwing away things that would keep them alive. It's just weird, but okay, so sorry, I digress. Uh. Politicians in the West, the cynical would say, generally represent moneyed interest and it is also true that in many Asian economies, governments openly own what would function as a corporation, like Brunei for instance. Right. Uh, So this leads the cynical to conclude one thing, Right, Yes, this deal will pass. It will be negotiated, probably for a while longer, but it will pass because those in charge of negotiating, they don't really answer to anybody but the moneyed interests. Yes, And we're going to come back to some specific things, which I believe we talked about in the videos a little bit, right, Uh. Some of the specific problems or concerns or dangers with this, and again these are the words of critics. We are going to talk about the stuff they don't want you to know about the t p P, But first a message from our sponsor. All right, So let's get into what the critiques are so far of the Transpacific Partnership. Yeah, there are a few. The biggest one that I've read thus far, and that I think holds the most weight, is that it's secretive. It's super secret. The only again, the only reason we know about this is because it was leaked by Wiki leaks, and it was just a draft version of it. And we're talking about, you know, some pretty big players, large economies, a lot of people like you said, and it's a hush hush game. Yeah. Congress members have noted that the Office of the US Trade Representative made it very difficult for them and their staff to learn more about the t p P. And you gotta think this is especially troubling when around seven hundred quote cleared advisors unquote, all of whom come from i P rights holders, have access to the entirety of the text. So there are seven hundred cleared people who get to look at this and these are like corporate lawyers right in. And one of the big problems with this is that Congress doesn't have access to this agreement, but the private sector does. And regardless of how carefully that information is handled, it seems that this to to many of the critics, it seems that this should be something Congress is allowed to know more about. Now. Don't get us wrong, there are quite a few members of Congress who support this so much so that they want to quote unquote fast track it and get it get it permanent before people really well, when I say people, I'm sorry, I just mean before the average citizen or a voter gets a chance to say something about this. Well. And they say that the secrecy is highly important because they're making these deals that are very sensitive. We're talking about I want I don't even I can't tell you the percentage change in the dollar signs and everything that would make a deal go through or not go through. I have no idea, but I have a feeling that these little bits and pieces that are traded there, it's like this Jenga game where little one pieces taken out, but then people are putting another little piece back in, and it's really sensitive if one person gets it wrong, or one party gets it completely wrong, then the whole thing is done. You know, that's not a bad comparison at all, because we do know that the following example could happen, all right, So we know that all of the states are not seeing eye to eye on the agreement. Right, There's some things that the United States really wants that no other country wants. There's some things that three other countries want that no other country wants, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Let's take this for an example. Let's say that, uh, the part of the copyrighting stuff which was a version of what was published. Let's say that this being published shows the United States aims, which are to completely uniformly regulate copyright law. Right. Intellectual property is a huge part of what we've read about the TPP. So if you're a country that disagrees with the US position and you see documents indicating that that is the biggest thing for the United States in this agreement, then you know that you can push the negotiators to cave on some other stuff because their one priority is going to be that thing. So there's a validity to that, But that is by far not the only issue people have with this agreement. You know, like we said before, there is a huge danger to Internet freedom. The Internet is something that is international. It exists across the world, is not just a one country thing. And it's the same stuff that made most of the Internet revolt against the legislation that was trying to be pushed through United the United States, the Actor and the what was the other one? The SOAPA, all that stuff. If you just have a barrage of vague enough acronyms, eventually people will stop paying attention, right, that's the idea. There's another thing here similar to this, the idea that having such active, uniform i P regulation would restrict innovation. And we have seen this happen before with software patents. Right when you patent an idea, and now there are companies that just exist as software trolls. They just own patents and sue people, whether or not the people purposely we're using that patent, or whether it's really something that you can patent. But that's a different podcasts here. One one thing that I do think is important to point out is that there's nothing really wrong with regulating internet or intellectual property. Uh, but the way that this could be done can be damaging, and here, I think is one of the more damaging things. Critics say that this could potentially remove the rights of state legal systems, of a nation's ability to enforce its own regulations, because there's a there's this idea that companies would be able to resolve disputes or like investors quote unquote, would be able to resolve disputes with an international tribune of the tribunal excuse me of the t PP. So that means that if, for instance, you are a large company that violates some sort of regulatory standard in I don't know, Uruguay, Bolivia or something like that, then under this this you would not necessarily have to go to court there. You could have this resolved in this international tribunal that I don't know that just has such a gives me such a sour taste in my mouth. It seems like the idea of internally regulating yourself inside this group, right state sovereignty, Yeah, because then what does the state do if you if you're a part of this group and you break some laws there and just take it on over. And this is interesting too, because you know, again this hasn't happened. The States don't all agree. No one has officially made the t p P happen yet as of the time we record this, but people are certainly trying, and the supporters are very wild about it. I know it seems like we're focusing exclusively on criticisms of it, but that is because that's what we're looking at with the show. We could we could do a show where we talk about global trade and into for a wave, but then we'd also need to talk about fair trade and and things like that and how real or not real fair trade is. Then this show is called stuff they don't want you to know, right, Yeah, Okay, I'm back back on that. So with this, with this corporate stuff, which does post some scary possibilities. Honestly, regardless of what you're political ideology or your religious bent is. It is strange because critics say, well, this means companies might violate um, the environment, you know, environmental regulations. It might mean that corporations become more powerful than nations. And with that tribunal system. Uh, there is Ah, there's a there's a worry about secrecy overall with this, I think, and about trades, like how trading occurs between these countries. I'm trying to get on that tribunal, you know what I mean. Yeah, I I don't know what your qualifications have to be. Probably not Internet writer, producer, podcaster, video editor. I'll tell them I'm super producer, Noel. That's I'm probably in. Yeah, okay, Now all I need is a letter of recommendation from Scalia. Right done? And uh so, now we go into one of my favorite parts of the show here, and I know that it might be one of your least favorite parts, Matt. Yeah, what do you think? Do you personally honestly believe if you were comfortable with saying it? I yeah, okay. So I'm a big fan of a band called Rage Against the Machine, and because of my like and short term obsession, I still am a big fan. But I was obsessed with him for a while. And I learned a lot about NAFTA actually because of that band. Yeah. They were very active in that in protesting it. They were not supporters. I learned, you know, on the I guess the negative side, the critics side a lot about it. I mean, I'm sure there are hugely positive things that came out of NAFTA. I unfortunately don't know them because that my focus was on some of the workers rights problems and a lot of the issues that came out. Um, I feel that this is representing gosh. I hate being so open about this, but I feel that this thing, the t p P, is for corporations, by corporations to make profits. It's interesting to respond to that. One thing that I often hear and you often hear too, when we hear people talking about expanding global trade networks is that their enormous benefits people take for granted. Uh, there are differing products, you know, from from foreign food to technology that we ordinarily would not be able to get or it would be tremendously prohibitively expensive. And then we also hear that, you know, this is necessary for the great snowball that is the world econ to me, to keep rolling without ever quite hitting the bottom, and just getting bigger and bigger and bigger as it goes. And one thing that got me a long time ago, I was talking to one of my professors who was an expert on this stuff, and said that, you know, most people don't understand like the function of a large scale economy. Uh. And then he said, and most people who do understand it don't understand that an economy can be booming while people are starving. And that made such an impression on me because I think that it is I think that it really depends on which perspective you see as the most worrisome, because there are quite a few people, quite a few influential and very important people in the United States who think that, um, there is a desperate moment coming where where in China, for example, would exceed United States in terms of economic influence, and that legislation like this, your trade agreements like this, while not uh perfect by any means, are step towards preserving the rest of the nation that can be saved, you know what I mean, the powers that are currently being The thing that worries me Ben right now is global climate change. Honestly, the thing right now that is worrying me the most out of anything in the world is that it beat coronal mass ejections just by a tiny, tiny sliver. Honestly, That's what I'm worried about. I was reading about the Antarctic and glacier melting ratio or what rates thane release, and yeah, I mean, and if anybody watches the Newsroom. You should watch the newsroom if you don't there. They had a great small piece on this, and then Mother Jones looked at it, and then I looked at a couple other sites that analyzed their short piece, and I'm actually pretty terrified, and I feel like none of any of these things that are happening, especially a massive trade agreement like this, where it's going to be corporations probably polluting a lot and sending ships on a higher frequency across the sea, and airplanes that are just fully loaded with things. Um. It's scaring the Heackcademy because it feels like we're just propelling ourselves into the abyss at a faster and faster rate. There's a lot of under reported conflict occurrying or brewing up in the north northern part of the world, in the North Pole as those ice caps melt and navigable passages emerge. One thing that one thing that's interesting here too as well, is that, you know, we've got quite a few listeners who think that climate change itself, the idea of global warming or whatever you wanna call it, is some word of um one world order hoax. Uh So, I you know, i'd be interested to hear both sides of it, because we've received passionate letters from people who say that humans are literally ending the world as we know it, and then we've had people who say that this whole thing is is bunk of some sort, but right to us, and let us know what you say. The last word on the t p P is that supporters say, look how great NAFTA was, as what's going to happen next, right, and detractors and critics say, look how terrible NAPTA was, So let us know what you think. We hope that we have proven that this free trade agreement stuff does matter, even if, well even though most people listening to the show never get a chance to vote on it. No, we won't and probably not a chance to read it. If Wikiliks has anything to say, hopefully we will. Well, we'll see if somebody donate something to Wicked Lis that's how they work. H But we hope in the meantime you will stay tuned for our video on this international trade agreement, the biggest one in twenty years for the United States, actually, and we hope that you will check us out on Facebook and Twitter, and we hope that you will also, Oh, wait, Matt, I forgot. We had a caption contest, all right, and the winner is for that picture of Ben and I from the Snowpocalypse video that all of you captioned so passionately. Thank you very much everyone who wrote in commented, Um, some of you are hilarious and we appreciate it very much. There were some impressive butt jokes on that one. Oh yes, but the winner is you ready for this? I'm ready, Remy Vogeler. You know I'm gonna read it. Yeah, yeah, read it, Remy says Matt. Actually we could do it as it just us. We can read it. Yeah. This is a dialogue. Yeah, it's a dialogue between us, so, Remy says, is our subscribe button voting in the middle of the office. Don't look at it. I think the government put it there. Doctor nice. So thank you so much, I mean thank you to everybody who dropped a caption for us on the on the Facebook threat. We wish we could give more than one winner, because we we actually really enjoyed reading these. Uh, and we might do this again if you are interested a little later in the future. But in the meantime, remember this show does not just belong to Matt, Noel and me. This is your show and our best topics come from you, the listener. So if you would like to help us out and give us a lead on something that you think all the other listeners to this show should hear about very soon, then send us an email. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. From more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get an touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.

From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories where look with unexplained events, you can turn back now or learn to stuff they don't want you to now. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and I am Ben, and I have a question for you. Ben, lay it on me, brother, you're done with T p P. Oh you know me? If we're talking on a personal note, then I would say that I'm very, very skeptical about T p P. Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations to you and to us if you caught our reference to O P P U a pretty pretty fantastic song from back in the day, right Matt? And it's other people's property? Is that actually what it stands for? Is that just something I learned through the grapevine? Do you know other people's something? Oh? There are various interpretations, but we we are talking about today and this week entirely is not O P P but t p P, which stands for the Trans Pacific Partnership. Alright, First, yeah, yeah, First question, why why should I care? This sounds like a snooze fest. What the heck is it? You probably shouldn't care. What I would do is turn this off and just go back to watching football. Oh yeah yeah, or maybe, um, what what is a celebrity doing that's not important or matters? Did somebody maybe say something about a different celebrity that is a throwaway line that could be interpreted or confused with news because that's what people like to watch, right. All I know is that my character needs to level up and right now, so I'm going to get on the game and just do that for all Just grind, you know what I mean, that's what it's about. So aside from our fairly cynical portrayal of what people confuse with news and productivity, let's talk about Transpacific Partnership, which if you follow some news sources you may have heard about. If you're on Reddit, of course, then you know about this. It is a free trade agreement. So what is free trade? That's something we hear a lot in the news sometimes sometimes we just read it on Reddit. Well, free trade is in itself, this sexy buzz word. It just sounds so good, right. People love free stuff. Man, who doesn't love free stuff and trading? I mean that's what makes the world go around, right, Yeah, so let's trade for free. Okay, I'm down, But it isn't really free in the way you might think. Now, It only means that different countries in this example here with the t PP, different countries can agree to trade goods and services all the things that they trade without tariffs, which are taxes and quotas, which would be you know, you have to create a certain amount or you have to buy or sell us certain amount in order to make the trade occur, and all these other trading constraints that you'd have to go through when you're making just a simple transaction from one country to another. So one of the big questions is why is this a big deal. The majority of countries in the world today participate in some kind of protectionism, and what this means is that they impose those barriers that Matt is talking about here, like tariffs or quotas on exports or imports, and they do this to support their domestic businesses and arguably the domestic economy. That's right, and one of the biggest examples of this would be agricultural subsidies or food subsidies, where government is essentially paying a farmer or a large agribusiness corporation to make food and then they supplement the income of that company or a group of farmers so that they can sell and trade at a lower price for these goods. Now this affects global trade, of course, Uh, if there is a country that's able to produce corn at a cheaper rate than of course people in Country B will buy the cheaper corn. Sure. But what happens here is is pretty smart because I first started thinking about this when the European Union was forming. One of the big fights people had was over agricultural subsidies. France had quite quite a lot, and the United States and Japan actually have quite a lot right now too. We are the home of big corn, after all. So there's a smart, almost a real politic thing here, which is that if you have these sorts of subsidies or some sort of governmental support for your agribusiness, then you are taking out insurance on your domestic ability to produce food. So that means that you'll survive your industry rather will survive despite international competition. And it can mean that you won't become dependent on imports for food. But and I know I wrote this in such a crappy way here, but it can be bad because it prevents global trade and people in favor of global trade. Well you know that bothers them. I love it, always my best defense. But so that's a free trade agreement. It doesn't quite mean what it sounds like it means. It is really what is called a liberalization of trade. Now, Uh, can I take a soapbox? Just real quick and all right? So another thing that is tricky, These these buzzwords in these terms can be so misleading. All right, listeners inside and outside of the United States. You know that the United States is roughly divided between Democrats and Republicans or people who call themselves conservatives or liberals or something like that. The thing here is that liberalization of trade does not mean what you would think it means if you associate it with what are called liberals in the United States. What it means is that there is more liberty for these actors, these uh companies, really and that there is less state level restraint on them. So it's more of a free to do what you will, uh in a economic sense, whereas liberal in the United States is usually taken I mean free to do what you will in some sort of social sense, right, And I'm not I'm not picking a horse in that race. I am just saying that's what it is, and and don't let it be confused. But with this free trade agreement stuff, right, Uh, people who are fans of trade liberalization love it. But people are just hearing about it or going okay, so what what? What is this? Is it our first time doing this as a country. Yes, this is not the first time one of these free trade agreements has occurred, especially with the United States. You might have heard of something called NAFTA or the North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into play in the I believe about twenty years ago as we record this, and it was kind of the same thing. It dealt with North America and some of South America. Um, well, I guess it was just North America, wasn't It was Mexico, Canada and the U S. So this arguably had some adverse effects on a couple of things, a couple of markets, especially the Mexican agricultural markets. Opponents said that NAPTA moved the US manufacturing overseas and it cost hundreds of thousands of jobs inside the US because there was this uh motivation to lower the prices of or excuse me, lower the costs of manufacturing. Well yeah, and then also if there is less of a barrier for importing it's from another country, right, Yeah, it's cheaper to make it over there, and even what it costs you on shipping to get it on a cargo ship still leaves you with a wider profit margin. Then of course you'll do it. That's just good business. Uh. In fact, the US has had trade agreements with twenty nations as of October, and there are more on the table and in the works today, including the Trans Pacific Partnership. Right, and just the point in fairness here, NAFTA is not universally criticized. The United States Chamber of Commerce and other supporters say that NAFTA has led to a booming economy and trade relationship, and that's why they're so gung ho about t p P. Here's how it started. It was first called the Pacific three Closer Economic Partnership or P three step. Because in the international sphere and especially at the government level, people just love acronyms. The more non sensical the better. Uh. This happened during the two thousand to APECK. That's another acron leaders meeting. Yes, APEX stands for Asia Pacific economic cooperation, and in two thousand five, Brunei joined full time and the trade group became known as the P four because see they added one get it, get it guys. Okay. Official agreements were concluded by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore in June of two thousand five. And what this means is that this didn't start with the United States as a member. Now currently, right, there are twelve members in this and Matt, maybe we can alternate and just name them Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada, Japan, the Republic of China or Taiwan, and Republic of Korea. And they're hoping so many more will join. So if you are the head of a Pacific rim government and happened to be listening to our show, hey, thank you, and uh here's looking at you, Indonesia, what's going on? Get at me or you know, get at someone in charge of making that uh decision. They are hoping more people joined soon, and they're especially hoping a certain country will join because Matt, some people are missing from the table. Right, Yeah, there's one in particular that you mentioned in the vlog from this week that is super surprising. The biggest player over there in the Asia Pacific area China, who you know, we're talking about the largest population. We're talking about massive, a massive economy, second largest in the world. Uh, the United States is currently still first. Speculation around the Western speaking world leads us to believe that China, at least factions of the and these governments see this free trade agreement as an attempt to contain China's growth internationally. And China, it's true, has uh several other free trade initiatives of their own that they have been pushing that they want the US not to really mess with, and the US is telling them not to mess with that and to join their organization. It's like two people holding a party at each at different houses on the same night and saying, no, no, you're welcome, I really want you to come to the party, but come to my house. Let's let's hang out at my house. And that's that's on a basic level. But we've talked about how the t p P came to be, We've talked about the countries involved, We've talked about free trade and what that means. And now it's time to actually talk about what the TPP says. After a word from our sponsored and we're back. So Ben, We've gone over a lot of the stuff about the TPP, but I'm not really sure exactly what, Like, what's the big issue here? What does it say? That's a great question, and that's when we didn't answer during the break, So let's get right into it. One trippy thing about this agreement is although it affects literally millions of people, over three million in the United States alone, this is something we only know about because there were leaked drafts that came out courtesy of some of our buddies on the internet. And and these leaked sections, which are to be fair certainly not the entirety of the agreement, nor they have the final version, they have a lot of stuff that most of our listeners would disagree with, like language that resurrects the SOPA UH, which was the Internet Rights Act and an act in several of the other versions of it, basically attempts to control the way the Internet is used. Right, And we won't bog you down too much with reading the dry language of this, but we will tell you where you can read more. And there's a number one place to read the actual text. Yeah, I was on WikiLeaks just before this going through some of the documentation. They've put out some really great press releases trying to explain exactly what some of the language means. Again, Wiki leaks dot org is a place where you can go and get this. And there are the initial people who are they're the way that I found out about it, right, Yeah, whomever that whistleblower was that sent the early drafts. They also updated these drafts. And of course if you don't want to stumble through this dry international text, then you can go to online analysis. You can read both the left and the right sides of the political sphere for the best picture. That's what I would say. Yeah, and there's one more place you can go to, and that is the official Office of the United States Trade Representative website. They've got I guess a PR version of what the TPP might be. M h. Yeah, it's it's weird when you read that official language because one thing I found that was strange there is that people were quoting internal buzzwords and I couldn't determine where that buzzword originated. One of them was the phrase high standard. Whenever you read the Office of the Trade Representatives official statements or other countries official statements, they have all agreed on the phrase high standard. No one has really defined what high standard means. Matt just means that the standards. Oh okay, well, pardon the heck out of me. Right. We should also point out that the Office of the US Trade Representative is with the name we're throwing around, is the part of the executive brand Itch that is charged with running the negotiations for the U S side. Now we have a rough look at some of the official statement will here from the Uncle Sam side supporting the t p P. They believed as the potential to boost US exports and investments by lowering tariffs and leveling the playing field air quotes in some large or rapidly growing markets. The White House said that the tpp would create or could create more US jobs, and it could also generate an additional one hundred and twenty three point five billion dollars a year in US exports by so beyond the ideas here for business beyond the commercial side, there are a lot of experts who regard the t p P as a key piece of US foreign policy. Yes, and amid the rise of China and it's increasing, let's say, exercise of political and military power over in East Asia, the current administration, Obama administration said that it would turn its attention more to the East, the so called you might have heard this before on the news, the pivot to Asia. Yeah, and uh. They want to strengthen US influence in that region, which means matt essentially that the factions of the Chinese government who are saying this was a move to contain China were right, because the idea here is to prevent China from becoming what's called a hedgemon, and a hedgemon is the top dog in an area. Now there are global hedgemon's, there regional hedgemons. There hasn't really been a global hedgemon that lasted for a very long time. The British Empire certainly expanded, uh and owned a great many nations. I feel like maybe it's controversial to say owned, but it's true. The United States right now, being one of the only world superpowers that survived and thrived in World War after World War two, has so many territories and overseas, not quite nation places that a lot of people in the United States don't know about. Look up Diego Garcia. I think we mentioned that in an earlier podcast. Right. When I think about a superpower hedgemon in that way, I don't necessarily think of it as from the empire perspective of owning a bunch of lands. I mean maybe controlling a bunch of areas. What I think of is just having your I was gonna say tentacles, but just currency. Maybe currency would be a huge way to control certain areas, or even just you know, having a military base, yes, in or around your area. And we've we've talked about that a lot too, probably off air. I forget sometimes when we're on air, we're off which is something I should try to remember saying it's important so we don't end up swearing what. Yes. One of the big distinctions here is the ability to project force, which is the term for your ability to send an army or navy or an air strike somewhere. And I think we've talked about brown, green, and blue water navies on the show, right, I think we've mentioned it. We have not covered it in detail, all right, Well, just real quick, most countries that have a Naval Force have what's called a brown water navy, and what this means is that they can only go a few hundred miles away from the coast. And then there's a green water navy, which can go a little bit further out. And then there's a blue water navy, which only a few nations have, then the United States being one of them, which can go anywhere in the world. And since the US has aircraft carriers, if you are another country, you want to play nice because you don't want an aircraft carrier of all things, running up to your shore and then launching air strikes. Are too close, right, Yeah, And it's it's got to be suspicious for anyone who follows the news around the world when tensions start building between countries. All of a sudden, they're doing war games, right, and all of a sudden, South Korea and the United States are just running a regularly scheduled war game. And then all of a sudden, oh wait, there's an aircraft carrier not too far from our country. Okay, like when the there was a large summit in Australia recently and Vladimir Putin, who, as you can recall, is in a huge not quite cold war, lukewarm war with the West and economic war. Really he traveled down to Australia for this meeting, and when he traveled there, he traveled with warships and they they docked off the coast while he was at the meeting, which some would say is paranoid or someone says showy, But I think it might have just been good planning. I don't know how you travel if you're in charge of a country, especially a country that's embroiled in those kind of cold conflicts. So this means that this means that if a country achieves hedgemoney, then it will be able to UH make clients states of all the other countries in its sphere of influence. One of the things that's really big when we hear about Middle Eastern conflict is the idea of Saudi Arabia or Iran uh expanding this sphere of influence and UH toppling the United States, which the United States is sort of global hedgemon. And we know that China weaving the world, not just the West knows that China is seeking to expand. China is building islands. It's literally building islands in what we call the Sea of China here in the States or the South China Sea, excuse me, so that it can make better claims to these to these islands, to this maritime property. So it's not just the United States being paranoid. It's they're paying attention. And it's got extensive intelligence agencies that look at this kind of stuff. Oh yeah, what do we always call it an alphabet soup? Right? But we we know that there is probably all to say, there is probably a valid point there about an ulterior motive beyond the economy, and there's a there's a cynical perspective about this too. Yeah, there's a way to look at this and go, oh god, well that that perspective would entail looking at the benefits that companies and wealthy individuals, wealthy persons which are company has been um, just the benefits that they're getting at the expense of ordinary citizens on either side of these trading deals. So if you look at a massive corporation coming in and wanting to trade let's say there, let's say corn, a huge amount of corn. Let's say Japan just really has been liking corn lately, and they want to get some of this American corn, and they want it cheap. So these massive corporations that are mass producing corn, say, the subsidized farmers all that stuff, they're gonna get benefits over you know, somebody who is not producing that crop for the US government. That's a great point because there's a fantastic example. And by fantastic, I don't mean good for the people involved. I mean it hits almost letter to letter what you're saying. One country was different. NAFTA lead to was called dumping for corn in Mexico because these subsidized corn growers in the United States were able to make corn much much cheaper, and then with a free trade agreement, there was not really away from Mexico to protect its domestic industry. So it was bad news for a lot of Mexican farmers. But again supporters of this stuff would say, great news for the Mexican economy. Not to mention things where you overproduce a crop because you're getting so many subsidies, then you just burn it. It's so strange the way that trade works domestically and internationally. You know, one thing I always remember from growing up and breeding about the Great Depression in the United States is that due to price drops and fluctuations. People were starving in the cities, you know, and farmers in rural areas were throwing milk into the creek because it was worthless. It's strange because it means that we can, through the we can, through the use of speculation and the use of money and goods as an abstract rather than a concrete um asset, we can engineer these situations where people are starving and throwing away things that would keep them alive. It's just weird, but okay, so sorry, I digress. Uh. Politicians in the West, the cynical would say, generally represent moneyed interest and it is also true that in many Asian economies, governments openly own what would function as a corporation, like Brunei for instance. Right. Uh, So this leads the cynical to conclude one thing, Right, Yes, this deal will pass. It will be negotiated, probably for a while longer, but it will pass because those in charge of negotiating, they don't really answer to anybody but the moneyed interests. Yes, And we're going to come back to some specific things, which I believe we talked about in the videos a little bit, right, Uh. Some of the specific problems or concerns or dangers with this, and again these are the words of critics. We are going to talk about the stuff they don't want you to know about the t p P, But first a message from our sponsor. All right, So let's get into what the critiques are so far of the Transpacific Partnership. Yeah, there are a few. The biggest one that I've read thus far, and that I think holds the most weight, is that it's secretive. It's super secret. The only again, the only reason we know about this is because it was leaked by Wiki leaks, and it was just a draft version of it. And we're talking about, you know, some pretty big players, large economies, a lot of people like you said, and it's a hush hush game. Yeah. Congress members have noted that the Office of the US Trade Representative made it very difficult for them and their staff to learn more about the t p P. And you gotta think this is especially troubling when around seven hundred quote cleared advisors unquote, all of whom come from i P rights holders, have access to the entirety of the text. So there are seven hundred cleared people who get to look at this and these are like corporate lawyers right in. And one of the big problems with this is that Congress doesn't have access to this agreement, but the private sector does. And regardless of how carefully that information is handled, it seems that this to to many of the critics, it seems that this should be something Congress is allowed to know more about. Now. Don't get us wrong, there are quite a few members of Congress who support this so much so that they want to quote unquote fast track it and get it get it permanent before people really well, when I say people, I'm sorry, I just mean before the average citizen or a voter gets a chance to say something about this. Well. And they say that the secrecy is highly important because they're making these deals that are very sensitive. We're talking about I want I don't even I can't tell you the percentage change in the dollar signs and everything that would make a deal go through or not go through. I have no idea, but I have a feeling that these little bits and pieces that are traded there, it's like this Jenga game where little one pieces taken out, but then people are putting another little piece back in, and it's really sensitive if one person gets it wrong, or one party gets it completely wrong, then the whole thing is done. You know, that's not a bad comparison at all, because we do know that the following example could happen, all right, So we know that all of the states are not seeing eye to eye on the agreement. Right, There's some things that the United States really wants that no other country wants. There's some things that three other countries want that no other country wants, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Let's take this for an example. Let's say that, uh, the part of the copyrighting stuff which was a version of what was published. Let's say that this being published shows the United States aims, which are to completely uniformly regulate copyright law. Right. Intellectual property is a huge part of what we've read about the TPP. So if you're a country that disagrees with the US position and you see documents indicating that that is the biggest thing for the United States in this agreement, then you know that you can push the negotiators to cave on some other stuff because their one priority is going to be that thing. So there's a validity to that, But that is by far not the only issue people have with this agreement. You know, like we said before, there is a huge danger to Internet freedom. The Internet is something that is international. It exists across the world, is not just a one country thing. And it's the same stuff that made most of the Internet revolt against the legislation that was trying to be pushed through United the United States, the Actor and the what was the other one? The SOAPA, all that stuff. If you just have a barrage of vague enough acronyms, eventually people will stop paying attention, right, that's the idea. There's another thing here similar to this, the idea that having such active, uniform i P regulation would restrict innovation. And we have seen this happen before with software patents. Right when you patent an idea, and now there are companies that just exist as software trolls. They just own patents and sue people, whether or not the people purposely we're using that patent, or whether it's really something that you can patent. But that's a different podcasts here. One one thing that I do think is important to point out is that there's nothing really wrong with regulating internet or intellectual property. Uh, but the way that this could be done can be damaging, and here, I think is one of the more damaging things. Critics say that this could potentially remove the rights of state legal systems, of a nation's ability to enforce its own regulations, because there's a there's this idea that companies would be able to resolve disputes or like investors quote unquote, would be able to resolve disputes with an international tribune of the tribunal excuse me of the t PP. So that means that if, for instance, you are a large company that violates some sort of regulatory standard in I don't know, Uruguay, Bolivia or something like that, then under this this you would not necessarily have to go to court there. You could have this resolved in this international tribunal that I don't know that just has such a gives me such a sour taste in my mouth. It seems like the idea of internally regulating yourself inside this group, right state sovereignty, Yeah, because then what does the state do if you if you're a part of this group and you break some laws there and just take it on over. And this is interesting too, because you know, again this hasn't happened. The States don't all agree. No one has officially made the t p P happen yet as of the time we record this, but people are certainly trying, and the supporters are very wild about it. I know it seems like we're focusing exclusively on criticisms of it, but that is because that's what we're looking at with the show. We could we could do a show where we talk about global trade and into for a wave, but then we'd also need to talk about fair trade and and things like that and how real or not real fair trade is. Then this show is called stuff they don't want you to know, right, Yeah, Okay, I'm back back on that. So with this, with this corporate stuff, which does post some scary possibilities. Honestly, regardless of what you're political ideology or your religious bent is. It is strange because critics say, well, this means companies might violate um, the environment, you know, environmental regulations. It might mean that corporations become more powerful than nations. And with that tribunal system. Uh, there is Ah, there's a there's a worry about secrecy overall with this, I think, and about trades, like how trading occurs between these countries. I'm trying to get on that tribunal, you know what I mean. Yeah, I I don't know what your qualifications have to be. Probably not Internet writer, producer, podcaster, video editor. I'll tell them I'm super producer, Noel. That's I'm probably in. Yeah, okay, Now all I need is a letter of recommendation from Scalia. Right done? And uh so, now we go into one of my favorite parts of the show here, and I know that it might be one of your least favorite parts, Matt. Yeah, what do you think? Do you personally honestly believe if you were comfortable with saying it? I yeah, okay. So I'm a big fan of a band called Rage Against the Machine, and because of my like and short term obsession, I still am a big fan. But I was obsessed with him for a while. And I learned a lot about NAFTA actually because of that band. Yeah. They were very active in that in protesting it. They were not supporters. I learned, you know, on the I guess the negative side, the critics side a lot about it. I mean, I'm sure there are hugely positive things that came out of NAFTA. I unfortunately don't know them because that my focus was on some of the workers rights problems and a lot of the issues that came out. Um, I feel that this is representing gosh. I hate being so open about this, but I feel that this thing, the t p P, is for corporations, by corporations to make profits. It's interesting to respond to that. One thing that I often hear and you often hear too, when we hear people talking about expanding global trade networks is that their enormous benefits people take for granted. Uh, there are differing products, you know, from from foreign food to technology that we ordinarily would not be able to get or it would be tremendously prohibitively expensive. And then we also hear that, you know, this is necessary for the great snowball that is the world econ to me, to keep rolling without ever quite hitting the bottom, and just getting bigger and bigger and bigger as it goes. And one thing that got me a long time ago, I was talking to one of my professors who was an expert on this stuff, and said that, you know, most people don't understand like the function of a large scale economy. Uh. And then he said, and most people who do understand it don't understand that an economy can be booming while people are starving. And that made such an impression on me because I think that it is I think that it really depends on which perspective you see as the most worrisome, because there are quite a few people, quite a few influential and very important people in the United States who think that, um, there is a desperate moment coming where where in China, for example, would exceed United States in terms of economic influence, and that legislation like this, your trade agreements like this, while not uh perfect by any means, are step towards preserving the rest of the nation that can be saved, you know what I mean, the powers that are currently being The thing that worries me Ben right now is global climate change. Honestly, the thing right now that is worrying me the most out of anything in the world is that it beat coronal mass ejections just by a tiny, tiny sliver. Honestly, That's what I'm worried about. I was reading about the Antarctic and glacier melting ratio or what rates thane release, and yeah, I mean, and if anybody watches the Newsroom. You should watch the newsroom if you don't there. They had a great small piece on this, and then Mother Jones looked at it, and then I looked at a couple other sites that analyzed their short piece, and I'm actually pretty terrified, and I feel like none of any of these things that are happening, especially a massive trade agreement like this, where it's going to be corporations probably polluting a lot and sending ships on a higher frequency across the sea, and airplanes that are just fully loaded with things. Um. It's scaring the Heackcademy because it feels like we're just propelling ourselves into the abyss at a faster and faster rate. There's a lot of under reported conflict occurrying or brewing up in the north northern part of the world, in the North Pole as those ice caps melt and navigable passages emerge. One thing that one thing that's interesting here too as well, is that, you know, we've got quite a few listeners who think that climate change itself, the idea of global warming or whatever you wanna call it, is some word of um one world order hoax. Uh So, I you know, i'd be interested to hear both sides of it, because we've received passionate letters from people who say that humans are literally ending the world as we know it, and then we've had people who say that this whole thing is is bunk of some sort, but right to us, and let us know what you say. The last word on the t p P is that supporters say, look how great NAFTA was, as what's going to happen next, right, and detractors and critics say, look how terrible NAPTA was, So let us know what you think. We hope that we have proven that this free trade agreement stuff does matter, even if, well even though most people listening to the show never get a chance to vote on it. No, we won't and probably not a chance to read it. If Wikiliks has anything to say, hopefully we will. Well, we'll see if somebody donate something to Wicked Lis that's how they work. H But we hope in the meantime you will stay tuned for our video on this international trade agreement, the biggest one in twenty years for the United States, actually, and we hope that you will check us out on Facebook and Twitter, and we hope that you will also, Oh, wait, Matt, I forgot. We had a caption contest, all right, and the winner is for that picture of Ben and I from the Snowpocalypse video that all of you captioned so passionately. Thank you very much everyone who wrote in commented, Um, some of you are hilarious and we appreciate it very much. There were some impressive butt jokes on that one. Oh yes, but the winner is you ready for this? I'm ready, Remy Vogeler. You know I'm gonna read it. Yeah, yeah, read it, Remy says Matt. Actually we could do it as it just us. We can read it. Yeah. This is a dialogue. Yeah, it's a dialogue between us, so, Remy says, is our subscribe button voting in the middle of the office. Don't look at it. I think the government put it there. Doctor nice. So thank you so much, I mean thank you to everybody who dropped a caption for us on the on the Facebook threat. We wish we could give more than one winner, because we we actually really enjoyed reading these. Uh, and we might do this again if you are interested a little later in the future. But in the meantime, remember this show does not just belong to Matt, Noel and me. This is your show and our best topics come from you, the listener. So if you would like to help us out and give us a lead on something that you think all the other listeners to this show should hear about very soon, then send us an email. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. From more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get an touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.