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CIA vs. the Cartel, Cuban Drones, and Top 5 Conspiracy Theories With Chris Ryan
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Foreign.
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It's March 1962. You're in the Pentagon signing a document you've spent months preparing. You are Lyman Lemnitzer, 62, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America. And the document is titled Justification for US military intervention in Cuba. Three years ago, Fidel Castro and his guerrillas marched into Havana and overthrew the US backed government. They nationalized the American oil refineries, seized American sugar plantations. They aligned with the Soviet union. Cuba is 90 miles from Florida. Last April, the CIA backed Bay of Pigs invasion failed in humiliating fashion. The Joint Chiefs want Castro gone. They need a reason to invade. They have a plan. And the plan is called Operation Northwoods. Among its stage the explosion of a US ship at Guantanamo Bay. Conduct funerals for mock victims to inflame public opinion. Manufacture a communist Cuban terror campaign in Miami and Washington D.C. sink a busload of Cuban refugees on the way to the United States. Fabricate evidence that Cuban forces have shot down a civilian airliner. Conduct fake attacks on US military installations using American operatives dressed as Cuban troops. Choreograph each event for maximum public outrage, the document says to generate the political will for a full military invasion. Seven months from now, the Cuban Missile crisis will unfold. Twenty months from now, JFK will be shot dead in Dallas by a former marine and self described Marxist who had tried weeks before to travel to Cuba. 35 years from now, in November 97, the assassination records. The review board will declassify your document as part of the Post JFK records review. It will be published online. The American public will read it for the first time. 64 years from now, a US president will publicly threaten to invade Cuba. CIA reconnaissance flights will surge along the border. Post. An anonymous senior official will share classified intelligence with a reporter at Axios alleging that Cuba has acquired 300 drones and is discussing plans to attack Guantanamo Bay. This is. Wait a second. The Doom Scroll. Cuban drones and more. I am Jason Concepcion. That's Tyler Parker. We're delighted to have back with us for an all Doom scroll episode, the great Chris Ryan. Chris, how are you?
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A
What's going on? I feel terrible. Let's get it going.
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B
Let's get it. Do you want to start us off with, you know, what did you bring from the Doom scroll bag to discuss today?
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A
I think we're gonna test positive for a little hantavirus on this one man. Because what I wanted to talk about with hv. I. I'm not. I mean, we're out with hv. Yes, well, it's the Andy Stream. Yeah, yeah, you should be specific. But I think the thing that scares me most about the hantavirus story is the way in which the passengers of this ecologically minded cruise ship that was sailing in the South Atlantic, it was from Argentina and they, they, I believe stopped in St. Helena, which is a island in between South America and Africa. And like doing all this bird watching, doing all this wildlife watching is, you know, they basically the story is they were stopped at a island off of Argentina that is respectfully a landfill. But like because it's a landfill, it attracts a lot of really rare birds who hang out.
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C
Sure.
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A
And, and also seems to be a rat kingdom. Seems to be like basically a giant co op for rats. And somebody somewhere got bit. Even though they take a lot of precautions not to introduce things to like other, other environments. And they got back on the boat and very soon after that hantavirus spread through this boat. Now we've had some people disembark from the boat at various points along the way without showing symptoms and maybe before the full scope of the problem was known. And those people travel like crazy. Like, I mean this is the part that I really wanted to talk about was this one lady that they have found in a random island in the South Pacific. So she was in the South Atlantic. She apparently went, American citizen, went back through San Francisco, which let me tell you, would be by far the longest trip I. She first flew from San Francisco to Tahiti and then onwards to the isle of Mangareva. Mangareva in outer French Polynesia. From Mangareva most tourists reach Pitcairn. This is an island South Pacific. By hitching a 32 hour ride on one of the cargo ships that shuttle back and forth every few days. So this lady went to a island Pop. Guess, guess what. The population of this island is like 40. 40.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Guess who they're mostly descended from?
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B
Oh, the HMS Bounty. Mutineers. Yeah, that's correct.
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C
Okay.
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B
Yeah.
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C
What?
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B
Yeah, These are legendary population of human beings. They are, they are descendants.
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A
That's where this lady turned up like days after being on the other side of the planet and is now or was recently self isolating or quarantined on this island. And the sort of flashpoints of this, these outbreaks is happening not only in European countries but like in these remote places where like 40 people are there and no medicine. So it's alarming. But like I think also you get into how uncomfortable it is to be able to contact, trace these people as they spread across the globe. And the problem with hantavirus is that you could be a carrier for, like, I think eight weeks.
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B
Yeah. Six to eight weeks. Anywhere between four and eight weeks is like the gestation.
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A
Yeah. And so, you know, rip, to the birdwatchers who've already passed away to this, this is not a funny topic, but, you know, we just got through this. We're kind of just putting this one behind in the rearview mirror with coronavirus. And so when you watch stuff like this happen where somebod just like, I may have been on a hantavirus ship, but I think I'm going to go to a, like, random island.
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B
Well, this is one of the. We discussed this the last time we talked about hanta, which is so, like, I forget what the fatality rate for Covid was, but it was like point 10 or something like that. 0.15. Yeah. Hanta's like 38.
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A
Yeah, it's 40. It's 40%. Yeah.
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C
Yeah, it is. Lighten it up from beyond the ark.
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B
Absolutely. It's Steph Curry in the Olympics for sure. Very alarming.
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A
It's 2016 clay times, so.
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B
So the lady who to Pitcairn. I like where your head is at.
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A
Yeah. But she made a lot of stops. That's my thing.
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B
But stay there.
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A
Sure. But she went through San Francisco.
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B
You know, it is like, why are we. When people started leaving the boat, I was like, why? Yeah, you know, we. Surely we can. And as I said previously, like, my, my heart goes out to the people on the boat. Must be horrifying there. You know, there was a. One of the tourists released, like, a video from on the boat talking about how scared they are.
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A
The influencer guy who's like, I'm banging Starbucks here in Nebrask.
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C
Yeah.
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B
I felt the fear at the same time, like, we can drone drop you, like, in Pluribus, you know, water and stuff. Everybody needs to stay on that boat. Why were people coming off? That's. I still don't have. What is the answer for that?
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A
I, I. And it also sounds like they were making these moves, like, basically without alerting authorities to the fact that they had been on the hantavirus boat. Yeah. I just feel like we're probably like, I, I'm starting to take on, like, a real Ivan Drago attitude about all of it. Like, if he dies, he dies. And I mean that about me.
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C
Yeah. Yeah.
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I don't really know how worried I can really be anymore, because, no, there's no help. There's no one out there to help you. It's. It's Incredible to see the cdc, whatever's left of it, getting involved here. And I hope that we, like, this is contained. Obviously, Ebola kind of snatching the headlines from hantavirus.
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B
Ebola, very. So Ebola comes out this time of year regularly. So this is the Ebola season, and there's currently. The death toll stands at 130 currently. And this is all exacerbated by the fact that there's no USAID aid. So that was primarily for medicines for, like, supplies for these rural hospitals. Yeah, the Ebola one, that is. That's an even higher shooting percentage. You know, that's like Giannis into the paint kind of stuff. And that's the one we really can't have.
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A
We cannot have it.
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B
Cannot have going. Going airborne. That's the one.
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C
Which. Let me just take a moment here.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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C
yeah. This. This all feels like, oh, yeah, no one is coming to save us with this stuff. Like, there is no greater altruistic type of organization out there that's going to see that this happened. Be like, oh, we can't let these people off this boat. So what do we do here to make sure that. That.
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A
Well, regardless of how you feel about the government's reaction to coronavirus, which, you know, I. It doesn't even matter. It's just. That's in the past. And also, like, I think it's probably incredibly likely that we will never do something like that again.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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A
That they would never be able to get the collective buy in from an entire nation to be like, I'll stay home. And that's essentially what you have to do if this. If you are. If Hana virus comes around. It's like, it's manageable if people quarantine. And I'm like, so it's.
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B
Now, here's my. Here's my counter to that. Two things. Covid was like, everybody in the world was unhappy with the government regulations that were put in place in their particular corner of the world. So everybody hated it. And secondarily, like, while the death toll was immense, a million people in this country, it was also. It was also like, low enough that people could feel disconnected from it to
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A
a certain extent, I'm sure, like, in, like, places that were specifically, like, racked by it, like in New York or whatever, in la, it felt a little bit different being out here. But like. Yeah, I know what you mean.
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B
But like hantavirus, I feel like at 30%, that's like, you know, somebody who could die or will die. Yeah. And I feel like while I Agree with you that we will not do that again. If, if something with a kill rate of approaching 40% happens and goes as viral as Covid did, I think you, I think they would have to. I mean, I think we have to
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A
put like the military on the street.
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C
Yeah, I think you just go state by state. Like, I think some states wouldn't do anything. Like. Do you remember those. Remember hearing those stories about Okies back during the Dust bowl where so many of them were coming out here that, you know, they, they, they might have had agents, like, set up along the border of California, but they definitely. The. I think the police chief at the time of Los Angeles took it upon himself to have all of his people, you know, go to a lot of the main, you know, sort of entries into Los Angeles and kind of, you know, decide there if you were going to be able to get in. I think it's going to be something. If something like that did happen in the progressive states, you'd probably see something like that. And I think in the redder states, you'd probably see every man for himself.
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B
Well, knock on, Knock on wood. Hopefully we've got that one under control. It does seem like the. Who keeps saying risk is very, very low.
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A
Yeah. I just think a. More fascinated with this story, with the, the lives of people who are like. Because, like, the, A lot of the people are doing this are like in their 70s.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And they like one woman, a different woman, went to, I think Singapore to go to like an extreme travel convention knowing that, like, she had been on a boat that had been infected with hantavirus and mingled with like 150 people. And the people who are like, I will just like, fly coach for 40 hours to go look at a bird. Like, there's nothing. They're the wemby of, of spreading hantavirus.
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C
That's a love I've been waiting for the game I can't understand.
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A
Yeah.
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B
They've been waiting their whole life to see a penguin.
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C
Like, probably in a lot of cases, like these are retirees who. Their entire thing is bird watching. And so, like, that's. They have organized their life around if, you know, people who are into bird watching. That's.
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B
No, that's it. Often the thing, they've got a pair of binoculars that's worth more than your car.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And they're ready to go do it. They want to see that rare bird. And they're willing to incur any kind of risk of avian flu, hantavirus, any kind of viral outbreak if, if it Means they can see that. Why? Why did this woman stop at Pitcairn? Just to see it. Just to be like, I don't know.
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A
Honestly, there's 40 people there. It's like basically an archipelago, like, or I pronounce that correctly.
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C
Yeah, you did.
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A
Like out in the South Pacific. I was more interested in the fact that they were banging around St. Helena because, like, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the. We've talked about this dude, Oliver Harris, who's like a spy fiction writer, a contemporary spy fiction writer, and he set a novel on this island called Ascension, which they had a. They had one. A case of hantavirus on there that was linked to this boat. And Ascension is essentially like 150 people. And it, like, is still a British colony, but then there's like rumors that there's like all this advanced satellite equipment on it. And it's just like, when you get into the espionage part of it, it's very noteworthy. I don't know how they've kept this person's identity pretty secret. There's some sub stack that basically traced her somehow. And her journey is. It's both astonishing in terms of like, I fly to Philadelphia and I'm like, I gotta take a holy.
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C
Yeah.
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And she's like, I went from this South Atlantic through San Francisco to Tahiti and took a 32 hour boat ride to like a pile of rocks in the South Pacific where they have to
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ship in their water every single.
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Where there's like 40 mutineer descendants.
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C
Where is she now?
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I think she was quarantining on Picaren.
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C
Okay, so they've got her quarantining now. Is she okay?
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B
Okay, man, she's.
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A
She's at Thunder. Thunderspurs game.
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B
You see her there.
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A
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- [16:21]
B
This episode is brought to you by Brooks Running. Max softness. Max energy. Max run. Go on a run that never runs out. In the new Brooks Glycerin Max 2 dual cell DNA tuned cushion is optimized for soft landings and powerful toe offs. While a glide roll rocker helps provide more fluid step through. To help you truly tune out and max your run, shop the Glycerin Max 2@brooksrunning.com do you know we're doing a sicario in Mexico right now? Allegedly, we're doing sicario.
- [16:56]
A
Let's just assume that that's happening.
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B
Yeah. So in February, Mexican soldiers and federal officers killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel in a village in the mountains of Guadalajara. 73 died in that raid, which apparently was somehow aided by the CIA. Unclear.
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A
You don't say.
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B
In April, two CIA officers died when their vehicle rolled into a creek in Chihuahua on their way back from what was reported to be a raid on a drug lab that they should not be involved in and shouldn't even be on the ground. So unclear why they were there. And in March, a Sinaloa cartel operative on the outskirts of Mexico City was killed by an explosion on his truck. The CNN news outlet says that that was a CIA direct CIA operation. The New York Times then came out and said, no, the CIA provided planning and logistics and Mexican forces actually did the direct planting of the bomb in the cartel vehicle. You can actually, it's. It's quite macabre, but you can watch from someone's dash cam, reverse dash cam video. You can watch the car explode and then just roll into like the middle median.
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C
Jesus.
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B
And I will say it was a pretty controlled, you know, it was like something smaller than the explosion of Michael Clayton.
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A
Okay.
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C
A good explosion of Michael Clayton. Cool horses.
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B
Cool horses. It got two mid level Cartel affiliates. For our part, the US Government has denied that the CIA is directly on the ground.
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A
Yeah, they said they were like embassy workers.
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B
Embassy workers?
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A
Yeah, diplomats, basically.
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B
Sheinbaum, the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said that she's looking into it, but that the CIA don't have permission to act on the ground. What is the truth? It's pretty muddy. Historically, the CIA has been active as well as the dia. DEA has been active in that area. And in fact, the CIA has taken the lead recently. A 2025. Can't speak today, a 2025 Reuters investigation reported that the CIA has displaced the DEA as the lead agency for U.S. interdiction efforts in Mexico. This is probably because the DEA is like a law enforcement arm and the CIA can.
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C
We're going.
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A
We don't need laws.
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B
We don't need law. We could go crazy. But that's happening. We're doing that right now. We're car bombing, either directly or building the bomb and giving it to the Mexican authorities to place in the cars of cartel.
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A
Yeah. I was watching, spent. Spent some time this morning watching footage of the. The meth lab that they apparently busted up in in Chihuahua, where the Chihuahua State Police investigators found this like, massive meth lab, a super complex, basically. And then it was on the way back from this meth lab that there was like a car, a truck went into a ravine, flipped over into a ravine, and then exploded. And that was where our. Our fallen, fallen angels from the CIA.
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B
Two more. Two more stars on the wall.
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A
Yeah. I am often reminded of the scene in Sicario where Kate, the FBI agent played by Emily Blunt, asks Josh Brolin after she first talks to Alejandro. She's like, is he CIA? Are you? And he's just like, I'm a Defense Department advisor just like he's a Defense Department advisor just like me. Just do what he does, you know?
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B
So there's. To my mind, there's like, several possibilities. It might be that Sheinbaum is right and that, like, they're not supposed to be here. I know nothing about it, and this shouldn't be happening. That also could be like, plausible deniability from Sheinbaum. Past Mexican presidents have coordinated on certain raids with the US but then have denied doing that. There's a lot of corruption in the Mexican government. That's absolutely true with former presidents and former defense establishment types in Mexico being wrapped up in various ways with the cartels who the US has recently labeled terrorist groups, allowing us to like, unleash the full weight of like, our department of war on them. That said, imagine the outcry if like, I don't know, the Canadian Secret Service was like car bombing guys like in Highland park as they were driving, you know, driving on a regular highway. Like, there's people on this highway.
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A
Yeah. I think the thing that jumped out at me about this was how much I now associate the extended armed forces, the Defense Department, like the espionage, the intelligence services of this country as an extension of Trump's power. An extension of Trump, Hegseth and Rubio's like, grasp on it. Because, like, if you even go back, I think even if you went back to like Nixon and Kissinger, there would still be the more like internecine like, sure. Fighting and like, you know, differing opinions on radicals or Vietnam or all this stuff and the way things were being handled. But that's like the. The closest thing I can think of that or Iran Contra to, oh, like this is gang shit. Like, you guys just are on the. This is like, we're just doing whatever we are instructed to do. And I've seen like, I've seen suggestions that this is similar to Iran Contra and that we were in a similar situation where like, we might be like looking for money in different places and stuff like that in order to fund.
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B
In order to fund. Well, I mean, we need money.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Everywhere.
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A
$2 for a lemon today.
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B
We need money everywhere. I mean, the thing that confused me about that, I'm still like, I guess I'm not surprised that the CIA is involved somehow. What surprised me is like mid level cartel guys. Like, these aren't even like the upper echelon guys.
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A
I think that's why people are like, well, what? Why were you doing that? Yeah, kind of like, how did you guys find yourselves in the woods in Chihuahua in a Jeep? You know, like, what are you guys doing?
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C
Like, high risk, high risk, little reward.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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B
What do you got, Tyler?
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C
RFK, Mr. Health. He has pulled some tanning bed restrictions recently. There was a proposed rule that would ban minors from using tanning beds.
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B
And is it because of the sperm count? Did you see that?
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C
Yeah, I did see that. Yeah. It the is he has basically taken away this rule that would have required prospective users to sign a risk acknowledgment certification before use that notifies them of the chances of like, basically the link between UV exposure and skin cancer. He Back like two days before the election in 2024, RFK tweeted a thing saying that if Trump got elected that he was promising to end the US Food and Drug Administration's. Aggressive suppression of alternative therapies. There are a lot of alternative therapies that are listed in this tweet of his. Some of them are peptides, ivermectin, ivermect, raw milk, hydrochloroquine. He's one of the things tanning beds in it. One of the things that's in the list is sunshine. Ah, cut to now.
- [25:08]
B
Right.
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C
And yeah, he's saying, he's citing like, you know, that it should be, you know, the parents should choose whether or
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B
not young men today aren't getting enough sunshine on their testicles. And that's why the sperm counts much lower than they were. And it all. A young man in 1968 had three times the load volume of a young man Today.
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C
I wake up every morning and hold my sack to the sun.
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A
That was a thing for me.
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C
Mine isn't as good as yours.
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A
Yeah. The taint like tanning your tan. Yeah, yeah.
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B
I mean, well, I will say that he is a very tan guy himself.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah.
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C
I mean, he seems to have some skin issues, I imagine. I imagine that that's. A man has either been checked for melanomas a lot or has refused to be checked for them.
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B
Just put, put a steak on it. I had a. I had a melanoma. I had a large mole that I thought could have been cancerous. I held a New York strip st to it for 48 hours. It disappeared.
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A
The thing I I love most is pairing this tanning beds thing with the flavored vapes.
- [26:22]
B
The flavored vapes thing is great.
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A
Which is like, literally, like, get your child to smoke a flavored Ub drive Absol, which is. I mean, like, as somebody who spent a lot of time in his life smoking, like, I'm not passing any judgment on how people want to sure, ingest nicotine, but it is fudgeing crazy that that's where we've arrived in 2026. That that's something that we need to like, be like, yeah, let's get some more watermelon going here. You know, this is the.
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C
This is the Health and Human Services secretary.
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B
Right.
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C
That is going against the World Health Organization, which counts tanning beds as a Group 1 carcinogen along with cigarettes and asbestos.
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A
Do you think that is tanning beds, like, more effective than spray tans? I guess.
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C
Well, tanning beds, it's like the UV radiation is like 15 times. It's like 15 times more powerful than the sun or something like that. Let me find the exact.
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B
But you need that again. I think that rfk would probably argue this again. This is why the sperm counts are lower. You're not getting the. The appropriate amount of sunlight that kids were getting previously in the. In the earlier generations when they were outside more, they were not on their phones.
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C
Great point.
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B
Getting the blue light from the screen. You want to be getting direct sunlight to your nutsack, your lower regions. This guy is insane. He's an insane human being.
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A
I think that more people need to watch Final Destination 3. That's all I got to say about Danny. Ben, that's a great kill.
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C
Oh, yeah.
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B
Great kill.
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A
We've lost sight of the old ways. And one of the things that Final Destination did for a lot of people is just warn them off shit that they should be scared of. Roller coasters, logging trucks, you know, like, rotating restaurants. Rotating restaurants, tanning beds, Home Depot, like, all this stuff.
- [28:16]
B
Trucks with logs on.
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A
You should have a really, like, healthy amount of fear for this stuff. And we've just gotten too far away from.
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C
This is. This is the stat. The UV radiation. A tanning bed is roughly 15 times greater than that found anywhere on the surface of the planet.
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B
Anywhere.
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C
It's a. It's basically akin to it being noon on the equator.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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C
That's what it is.
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A
See, the thing is, is, like, I'm not. What do you guys think? Do you think if, like, people want to do this, they should be allowed to do it?
- [28:50]
B
Yes, but I think not. Kids.
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C
No, not kids. I like it. I mean, one of the other crazy stats is that if you have. If you use a tanning bed before the age of 35, your chances for a melanoma go up, like, 75% or something. I mean, it's like this. It's. Kids should not. I'm fine.
- [29:15]
A
I don't think kids should do it. I'm just saying, like, this seems like one of those. Like, it's not really my problem as an adult.
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B
I think. I think if you're. Listen, if you're an informed adult and you want to broil yourself. Yeah, good. Go with God.
- [29:28]
A
Yeah.
- [29:28]
B
I think when we're allowing, like, minors to go into tanning beds without being like, hey, by the way, you got
- [29:36]
A
to sign this thing.
- [29:36]
B
You got to just. Just understand that this is what you're doing. I think that's where we should. We should. It should give us pause.
- [29:43]
C
Yeah. That's how I feel. Like, yeah, do what you want, but
- [29:49]
B
it's a free country.
- [29:50]
A
I can never figure out, like, it's like, sometimes I'm like, half of you guys want us to be like, living in Road Warrior, right? You know, where there's just like, there is no law. But then the other half of it is just like, oh, but you're not allowed to like that bunny. You know what I mean?
- [30:07]
B
I smoked a cigarette this weekend.
- [30:08]
A
Yeah, man, it was.
- [30:09]
B
It was great.
- [30:10]
A
I had one on. On, like, Saturday night.
- [30:12]
B
Yeah, I had one on Saturday night as well. And I. And I thought, this is like. I'm not saying it's good. Smoking is bad. This is the first smoked cigarette I probably smoked in 20 years or something like that. But we gotta go back to that.
- [30:26]
A
Wait, why did you have a cigarette? Did you have a cigarette because you guys beat the Sixers. Like, what was it?
- [30:29]
B
I was at a. I was at a party and they had this bowl of cigarettes.
- [30:33]
A
Everybody's smoking it.
- [30:35]
B
So I was like, let me get back. Let me just, like, have a cigarette in my hand. And I thought, you know what? This is, like, better than a. The vapes are like. When you see the vapes, I don't know. There's something so undignified about, like, a huge vape blowing these dragon, like, clouds out.
- [30:52]
C
I think you're also just thinking the whole time, like, I'm doing this, but, like, I'd rather.
- [30:57]
B
Yeah, I'd rather be smoking.
- [30:59]
C
Yeah.
- [30:59]
A
The only upside to the vapes is that your clothes don't smell as bad cigarettes, if that's something that you care about.
- [31:04]
B
Okay.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah, but otherwise, I'm like, we're gonna find out in 25 years that these things are like, they like, collapse your insides, you know, like, you're not supposed to be smoking on a USB drive.
- [31:14]
B
I watch. I watch a reality show called Below Deck on Bravo.
- [31:19]
C
And Frasier, one of Soderbergh's favorites.
- [31:21]
B
Yes. And Frasier, who is a. One of the characters on that show, stating Matt from Los Culturistas podcast had a legitimate heart attack from vaping. He's 30. He's 30 years old and had a heart attack.
- [31:40]
C
How much was he, like, weed?
- [31:43]
B
He was vaping it. Like, I don't know. He was probably hitting it, like, nine, ten times a day or some, like, some huge amount that I think is very easy to do when you vape. Yeah, but.
- [31:51]
C
But was he vaping weed or was it just.
- [31:53]
B
No, he was vaping. He was vaping nicotine.
- [31:56]
C
Got it. Okay.
- [31:56]
B
Whatever that nicotine juice is.
- [31:58]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:59]
B
And had immense chest pains and went into the hospital. They're like, you have now the heart of an 80 year old and stop doing this. And so he's stopped, but he's 30.
- [32:12]
C
Yeah.
- [32:13]
B
Be careful out there. Start smoking again. Yes, cigarettes. What do you got, Chris?
- [32:18]
A
You want to do the Maldives?
- [32:19]
B
Oh, let's do the Maldives.
- [32:21]
C
Yeah.
- [32:21]
A
Okay. So I admittedly got hooked up on this story from more of a. Like the. It wasn't necessarily a conspiracy angle, but there was a lot of loose chatter about the Maldives divers last week when they first disappeared on Thursday. So these are basically four expert Italian divers who went missing while scuba diving in caves off the Maldives. And they have since been found. Basically dozens of. Of researchers set out on a journey, but five of them went on a.5 on a highly dangerous, hazardous, in fact is, according to the, I believe the Maldives authorities, hazardous dive. This was last Thursday. The caves they were looking to explore off the Maldives were at a depth of 164ft. The usual limit for Maldives dives is at 98ft. Otherwise you need special equipment, which they had. But still on Thursday, they go down in the morning. A distress call goes out at noon that they haven't resurfaced. First body is found the same day at a depth of 196ft. Over the weekend, a bunch of like, very accomplished, literally some of the most accomplished deep sea divers in the world like trucked over there to get to basically body recovery. And one of them died in the act. I don't believe he. I think he was like a Maldives safety diver, not maybe like a Finnish world record holder guy, but he died of decompression illness. So it gets a little darker here. The New York Post, which. Which added a bit more color to the story of the New York Times. According to the New York Post, quote, the group was found inside Tinwana Kondu Cave, which is also known as Shark Cave, okay. By the squad which was assembled 48 hours afterwards. So these people were down like close to 200ft below the surface of the ocean in something called a shark cave. And there was a lot of speculation. There's criminal investigations that have been opened into what happened. Was it oxygen poisoning? You know what. How cognizant of what were they of what was going on. It's really, really sad story. It was like a mother and a daughter died during doing this. And the husband is like, she was a really good diver. She never would have. Like, this has to have been some sort of malfunction. But yeah, this one's a kind of a bummer. I mean, not that hantavirus is like an upbeat story, but this one, I was just like, shit, man, you just don't want to wind up in a shark cave 200ft below the surface of the ocean.
- [35:03]
B
Do you know about like diving euphoria, the ocean hunt? Are you aware of this? Yes. When I was in Hawaii on vacation some years ago, like they, you know, we got some scuba gear and we were going to go out in this little bay and they were like, by the way, you just need you, you should be aware about diving euphoria, which is when as you, as your oxygen depletes in your system, but you're looking at like this beautiful underwater landscape, you start to feel like basically get stoned. Yeah. This is like incredible. It's amazing. And you don't even realize that you're drowning.
- [35:32]
A
You're like, I want a cigarette.
- [35:33]
B
And it was at that moment that I gave the scuba gear back and was like, I'm good. I can look at it above and just kind of look.
- [35:41]
A
I have a funny relationship to thrill seeking because if, if, if, if the moment strikes me, I'll do reasonable roller coasters. But not like Batman where you're hanging upside down, like flying over West Virginia kind of thing.
- [35:54]
C
Oh, see, I'll do that.
- [35:55]
A
You will?
- [35:56]
C
Oh, I like, I love roller coasters.
- [35:58]
A
Okay. But would you skydive?
- [36:00]
C
That I would not do.
- [36:01]
A
And so there's a bunch of things that people do do that are like, this seems thrilling. I bet it's amazing. There is a worst case scenario here that I'm not willing to accept. And scuba diving is one of those things. I'm like, snorkeling is just fine. You know, just, just paddling around out there with your head down just is super chill and I love it. But I just don't think, I don't want to, I don't want to know. I don't want to know what's down.
- [36:27]
C
I got, I got a lot of respect for the ocean and I'm not trying to, you know, invite yourself over. I don't need, I don't need to explore too much. I understand that it is a mysterious place that wants to stay mysterious. And I respect, respect that. And I try not to look into it too much. I don't like, I love being by the ocean. I love being in shallow parts.
- [36:50]
B
Yeah, me too.
- [36:51]
C
It's like my favorite thing. But I've gone scuba diving one time and the whole time in my head I was like, I shouldn't be here.
- [36:59]
B
How deep did you go?
- [37:00]
C
I don't remember. I mean, it was what, like, what's a normal scoop? I don't know.
- [37:05]
B
I mean, 10ft or something.
- [37:07]
A
10, 20, probably 20ft.
- [37:08]
C
That's my guess. Or whatever. Like it was in. Or was it. It was in Mexico and didn't see hardly anything fun at all. Snorkeling. More fun.
- [37:21]
A
Do you go to thrill seeking?
- [37:22]
B
Do you. No, absolutely not. I will never. I'll ride a roller coaster, depending. I will. That's the. That's the end of it. I will maybe jump off a cliff if it's like in the two story directly down.
- [37:40]
A
I dig that. But I need somebody else to go first until they give me a landing zone.
- [37:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, I gotta watch that.
- [37:45]
C
I'll do that. But yeah, I don't want there to be any rocks like close to the. Close to the cliff wall. Not into it.
- [37:55]
B
And I don't wanna do one of those things where it's like, okay, you dive in and then you have to time it as the wave comes in. You let the wave carry you back onto the rock. No, I'm not doing that. I'll dive in placid water, swim around to the beach and then.
- [38:09]
A
Yeah, that's. That's basically my move. I did that once in Rhode island and this is another one of those. Like, where was my mother? But I think I was like 12 or 13. Diving off of cliffs that were just like, Just make sure you. It was like any time where you're like, you make sure you got to clear this. You're like, why am I doing this? And then when you get in, it was like, either you have to climb up a sheer rock face or swim like 300 yards back to the shore. And I was like, that's. I'm doing that.
- [38:39]
B
That's my limit. Like, I won't skydive that. Skydiving is. My brother has done it and his wife have done it upstate New York. I won't go into like hot air balloons. It's like you can't even steer the thing. Yeah, hot air balloon is like. So let me get this right. The tech is let this sandbag loose.
- [38:59]
C
Yeah.
- [38:59]
B
And then when we want to go down is like, let the hot air out. No, I'm not doing.
- [39:04]
A
You would be useful for this pod. Maybe for doom scroll when the Jackass movie comes out.
- [39:08]
C
Yeah.
- [39:08]
A
It's just go through like a hundred jackass.
- [39:11]
C
Would I, would I get part of it?
- [39:13]
A
Yeah, because I was watching. I was like, I think I'd get shot by a riot gun just to see. Like I was watching clips the other day, but there's one where bam. I think it's on his show, Bam jumps is hanging off a hot air balloon as it takes off and the first you know it's him and his boy and his boy jumps off like after 10ft and Bam just goes up like 70ft into the air and they have to like yank it down. And I was just like I there's no scenario in which I'm doing that. Zero scenario Expedia and Visit Scotland Invite you to come step into centuries of history that await in Scotland. Castles steeped in legend.
- [39:50]
B
Walk along cobblestone streets.
- [39:53]
A
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- [40:36]
C
US only exclusions apply.
- [40:37]
A
Seehomedepot.com Pricematch for details whatever your thing,
- [40:41]
B
it could be anything.
- [40:43]
C
Canva helps you make that thing a thing.
- [40:47]
B
Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things you can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks or presentations to show your thing whatever needs to be done for your thing. Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Let's talk about Cuba. Axios with a story from earlier this week stating that Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran and that they plan to launch these drones against Guantanamo Bay, US Military vessels in general, and possibly Key West. Now if you're anything like me, you thought, well that's very convenient that as we've been kind of laying siege to Cuba for the last several months after our CIA director has visited Cuba and said this authoritarian regime must fall as we are at an inflection point where it seems like we could either escalate or stay at this state of siege around this country, that all of a sudden this pretext for having a reason for military action against this country suddenly appears in the form of these 300 drones. I don't know, do they exist like it seems like? It seems like 300 is not a Lot. And also, why would Cuba do that knowing that we'd be on them, like, pretty. Pretty significantly with immense intensity, like, right away. So I don't know. I find this ludicrous. The Cuban government is also down support, says it's ludicrous and that they neither threaten nor desire war. The Axio story itself says that these drones could be used as a pretext for military action. But I found this story to be like, one of those moments where you're like, oh, this is like the Gulf of Tonkin. This is like how. This is how we do those things. Like this is happening again.
- [43:05]
A
Yeah, I. I basically take anything that involves Cuba with this current administration with a giant grain of salt. Oh, yeah, Grain of salt. The size of Cuba. You know, like, it's. I don't really believe a lot of. Of what the government tells, like, clearly, like, that was leaked by, like, somebody who's just a get ready cube is still on the hit list. And I don't know, man, there's just so much of a fog of stuff around that place.
- [43:35]
C
Rubio's obsessed and the timing feels so convenient with all this stuff. I mean, it was interesting reading the piece where one of the guys, near the end, they're interviewing one of the US officials and asking about, like, you know, fighter jets, and he's like, oh, no, we don't even think they have one.
- [44:01]
A
Are they running out of power? Like, I mean, literally, like, they don't have the energy to, like, run the country.
- [44:05]
B
I think we let one Russian oil ship through, like, as a solid to Russia for putting more oil on the market.
- [44:14]
A
Do them solid.
- [44:15]
B
Yeah, yeah, you know, like top of mind. Stabilize the gas prices for us and we'll let an oil ship through. But yes, to answer your question, it's pretty dire from what all the news coming out is, like, no power for most of the day, lack of vital supplies, including medicines and stuff.
- [44:36]
C
I feel like in this piece it talks about how they're basically the weakest they've ever been.
- [44:41]
B
And as stated, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled there last week just three days before this drone story. Basically saying, hey, Cuban government, don't engage in hostilities with America, which it doesn't. You know, like, I'm not saying they're our friend, but it also doesn't seem like they are eager to get involved in a military action with us. He urged the Cuban officials to, quote, scrap their totalitarian government. Okay. As a condition to end the US sanctions currently in place, and stated that Cuba should no longer serve as a platform for adversaries. It is true that I think China has, like, a listening post there. Russia has long had. Has long operated out of the area. But also, like, okay, I mean, we. We do the same thing as well. So I don't know what. What if you had to bet on it. Chances we go into Cuba, it seems like. Finish your meal before you start another meal type situation.
- [45:42]
A
Finish your war before you start other.
- [45:44]
B
Yeah, like, you gotta wrap the current active ones up before you invade Cuba.
- [45:50]
A
I think that in any other reality and in any other year of my life, I would have been like, there's obviously no political support or. Or will to do this. And his, like, his base is going to collapse in November. Trump's base is going to collapse with the midterms. And, like, he's going to be a sitting duck. But, like, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to, like, go by traditional ideas about how presidencies operate and how, like, whether or not a government feels like they need to have a mandate to do something. And, you know, it just. It wouldn't. I refuse to be ever surprised again.
- [46:27]
C
No, I mean, for, like, the administration that has popularized flooding the zone.
- [46:32]
A
Yeah. If you thought it was expedient, if he thought it was beneficial to him at all personally, he will do it, I think.
- [46:38]
B
I mean, hotels, you know, there used to be some beautiful hotels there and casinos.
- [46:41]
C
Yeah. Oh, I'm sure he'd love to, you know, be a player in the future. Nightlife in Havana or whatever. Yeah.
- [46:49]
B
You know. What do you got, Tyler?
- [46:53]
C
We got a couple fun insurance fraud schemes.
- [46:58]
B
I love insurance fraud.
- [46:59]
C
One of them, Luther Davis, former defensive tackle for the Alabama Crimson Tide, won a title with Bama in 2010. He and a friend entered guilty pleas in federal court in Atlanta to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. The players that they were allegedly impersonating in these zoom calls and interviews, 1 Michael Phoenix Jr. Quarterback for the Falcons, one former Cleveland Browns tight end David Njoku.
- [47:34]
A
Oh, yeah, I saw this. Yeah.
- [47:37]
C
And then one Green Bay packers safety, Xavier McKinney. None of the players obviously had authorized these guys to do that. Yeah, they used fake driver's license with photos of the players that could be found online. This is in addition to wearing disguises. So Davis and his boy are literally going into costume for this stuff. It was at least 13 fraudulent loans that they used. I mean, it was nearly 20 million bucks to buy real estate, jewelry, cars, that sort of.
- [48:13]
B
Now, it says here that part of the scheme was Defrauding investors. Who was in. What was the. What were they investing in?
- [48:23]
C
I don't know. I don't know what's going on with the investments. With the investments.
- [48:27]
B
I mean, it sounds like to me that Mr. Davis probably was like, hey, I've got a great whatever. Like, I've got some kind of sovereign fund that I run. Incredible returns. And then in reality, he was getting the money through scamming insurance and then potentially paying his investors that way.
- [48:51]
C
Oh, this part of it, I did not know.
- [48:54]
B
I mean, that's a pretty good. If that's part of it, that's pretty good.
- [48:58]
C
I mean, to me, when I thought about sort of the. Like, when does it. When is the inception? Like, when does this. When is the idea first put into place?
- [49:06]
A
Right?
- [49:06]
C
And to me, it's just Davis and his boy, like, they're watching television and, you know, they're watching the Falcons play, and Phoenix's photo pops up, and one of them's like, you know what?
- [49:20]
A
We should do an elaborate scam stealing this man's identity.
- [49:22]
C
You look like him a little bit.
- [49:25]
A
That's right. That's like.
- [49:27]
C
There's something about, like, dude, what if you didn't have any hair? Yeah, you got to look like him a little. You know, there's something about. Something with that incredible.
- [49:35]
B
What's the other. What's the other scam?
- [49:37]
C
The other one. This one is, I like a little more, to be honest with you, a little more exciting. A person in a bear suit.
- [49:46]
B
I love this one.
- [49:47]
C
Faked attacks in a Rolls Royce and two Mercedes, then submitted fraudulent insurance claims. The California Insurance Department said, this is basically three people. They used a person in a bear suit to stage fake attacks. This was in 2024. Then submitted fraudulent claims, seeking nearly $142,000 in payouts from insurance companies. The department called it. Called it Operation Bear Claw. The group was accused of providing several videos from the San Bernardino Mountains, trying to make it look like the car has been scratched on the.
- [50:29]
A
Like, the guy from the end of Midsommar.
- [50:33]
C
A California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist reviewed the footage and concluded it was, quote, clearly a human in a bear suit.
- [50:41]
A
That's just a guy in, like, a mascot outfit.
- [50:44]
C
It really feels like he just. It feels like he was.
- [50:48]
B
He's at a fucking LSU game. I mean, this is the kind of thing where I'm like, I know a lot. Slap on the wrist and let him go. You know, nice try. Is it really that big a deal?
- [51:00]
C
I admire the creativity. Like, I appreciate the hustle.
- [51:05]
A
And I want to. You know what I want to do? I want to thank Trump's Justice Department for platforming guys like this and letting us know about the dangers out there that dudes in bear suits are scamming insurance companies.
- [51:16]
C
It's very funny to think about a bear fitting in a passenger seat in the first place and then doing this. At one point in the video, it does seem like he's just reaching behind him like grab the zoo belt.
- [51:31]
A
It would be awesome if he's like checking his watch, texting.
- [51:35]
B
I feel like there needed to be some pre production you got to look at. Let's check your angles. How does the, how does the costume play on tape and then work your angles that way. I feel like this could have been thought out a little more. They did get a $50,000 payout, it seemed like. So one of the payouts, at least one of the payouts went through.
- [51:59]
A
Right.
- [51:59]
C
But I think that they, they like at least 2 of the people they are, were ordered by the court to pay restitution of $50,000. Okay, well, so it might be that, that.
- [52:09]
A
But yeah, it's so it's, it's basically they went one on one on the road.
- [52:13]
C
I mean we have to put the picture up of the costume itself because it really is just a Halloween costume.
- [52:21]
B
A listener. Scott wanted to know one. I had mentioned that I read some smaller like news outlets and wanted. So I'll name check a few of those. One is Julie K. Brown who, who broke the Epstein story. She's got a substack that is very worth your while if you're interested in that particular topic and you want to keep up on it from a very reputable source. Another one is 404 Media who if you're interested in cyber security and like mass surveillance, I think that's a really good one. Unicorn Riot, if you're interested in like right wing militias, is another good one. Scott also asked if we had read the recent Lane Brown piece in New York mag, the Feet is Fake, which I think dovetails quite nicely with our previous discussion of geese and whether or not they were psyop. In that piece. It opens with Joe Lim, who is a the former executive at a company called flutify, which operated 65,000 dummy social media accounts to drum up attention for various paying clients. Mr. Lim estimates that 90% of what you see on the Internet currently is advertising of some sort. And the article goes on to describe the process of clipping. So clipping is when amateur or independent social media users promote content like let's say. And some people with, like, kind of larger Instagram footprints might have received DMs like this, like, hey, earn up to 700 or $800 promoting the. The Odyssey.
- [54:10]
C
Sure, yeah.
- [54:11]
B
All you have to do. It's very easy. All you have to do is post about the Odyssey and you'll get a dollar for every thousand views. So that's what clipping is. And some of these large clippers.
- [54:21]
A
Yeah, you go into Discord servers and they'll be like, hey, for All Mankind, Season five. Clip it, clip it. And it's like, here's the rates. It's like a dollar for every thousand views. And sometimes I think when you see maybe a wave of, like, why is. Why is there like 80, 80 posts about shrinking in my, like, just flipping through Instagram, you'll be like, that might be a clipping exercise. But everybody does it, even if they don't admit it. So it's not like, oh, Apple, or, oh, anybody does this more than another.
- [54:50]
B
I think one of the most interesting, like, data points in this was that Justin Bieber. Justin kind of outline the details around Justin Bieber's clipping campaign in and around his Coachella sets. Justin Bieber spent an enormous amount on clipping. And you might think, well, Justin Bieber, like, huge international star. Why would he need to do that? To your point, Chris, this is just like how the game is played today. If you want to stay relevant, if you want to stay in the mix. His streaming numbers went up massively in the wake of this clipping campaign and the Coachella set. This is just how you do it. And then the other finding is basically, if you're looking for. If someone's looking to go virally organic, it might be possible, but not really. There is no way now to defeat the algorithm without gaming it somehow, mostly by hiring clippers to put out to the hundreds and dozens of social media feeds that they personally control. Clipped content based on whatever campaign you're looking to promote.
- [56:00]
C
Yeah, it references, you know, clippers that are doing this and making six figures a year.
- [56:05]
B
Like, some of the bigger ones are doing that.
- [56:06]
A
The way I like to think of it is that, like, we kind of came of age. I think we talked about this last time we were talking about geese, but, like, how we are of, like, the last generation who remember life without the Internet. Right. We remember a wild west version of social media where it was like, that's how I met Jason. That's how I found out who you were. Where it was just like, funny. Tweet. About the Knicks. Follow, like, this guy likes to tweet about the Knicks and then make a joke about something that's happening in the news every once in a while. And that Wild west thing has now turned into Westworld.
- [56:40]
B
Yeah.
- [56:40]
A
And you just have to wonder whether. So the most fascinating part of Lane's piece to me was the Bad Bunny section, which is about Bad Bunny's super bowl halftime performance. Lane came on the watch and talked about this. And I think even hearing him talk about this in more detail, I was like, this is really weird. Is essentially like the style of posts on both sides of the quote, unquote debate about Bad Bunny were written in very weirdly similar cadences and with the same tone, but just from the opposite direction of. Of. Of what would just, like, be a usual culture war battle. And it kind of does speak to, like, have you ever met someone who really cared that much who played the super bowl halftime show? Right. And I really wouldn't have thought much about that, except you made a quick mention there of the Odyssey. This is now happening with the Odyssey.
- [57:33]
B
Yeah.
- [57:34]
A
Where in directly time to the release of the trailer, there is now a culture war about whether Elliot Page is Achilles.
- [57:43]
B
Right.
- [57:44]
A
And what that means. And it's like, first of all, Paige is not playing Achilles by all accounts.
- [57:48]
B
Yeah.
- [57:49]
A
Second of all, who cares? Third of all, like, why are all. Why is everybody getting mad about this before we even see, like, the movie? The movie even comes out now. I'm not suggesting that Universal is somehow, like, operating a culture war, like, false flag event to drum up interest in what would have been the biggest movie of the year anyway. But it is kind of suspicious coming off the back of, like, that Bad Bunny kerfuffle anyway. And every six weeks there's just like, why wait? So everybody.
- [58:21]
B
The Sydney Sweeney American Eagle is another version of this that's mentioned in the piece where all of a sudden people were seeing white nationalist leanings in that particular ad campaign. Others were stridently rejecting that and saying, actually, like, so what? Like, you can't be white in love with American Eagle jeans anymore. And it did seem like kind of out of nowhere. A lot of people were really angry about either the reaction to that campaign or that people had a reaction.
- [58:57]
A
The reaction to the reaction, reaction to the reaction.
- [58:59]
B
And I think the same thing. I thought the same thing with the Odyssey. I'm like, one, why does Elon Musk care so much?
- [59:06]
A
Has Elon Musk read the Odyssey?
- [59:08]
B
Like, does he know he's being Homerhead?
- [59:10]
A
No, that's to me feels like real right wing talking points of like, you know what will distract people from thinking about $7 gas or Tesla's stock price or whatever it is that you want or the wars that are going on in this world is have them fight about a movie that hasn't come out yet that is probably gonna be enjoyed by 98% of the people who go see it.
- [59:32]
C
Totally.
- [59:33]
B
I saw one post that was like, you know, Nolan appeared on 60 Minutes talking about IMAX and how much he loves that particular medium. And the comment was like Christopher Nolan already having to do damage control about the Odyssey. It's like what the fuck are we talking about? Why are we quoting Elon Musk on the Odyssey? Like this guy doesn't have a million other to do.
- [59:56]
C
Well, it's also like all those guys, those are the, the prototype type of dudes that would say oh no, I haven't read the Odyssey. I just asked Chad GPT to like that. That's what they're doing.
- [60:05]
A
So speaking of Chat GPT, the way Lane's piece ends, not to spoil Lane's piece where I try to over you should read it. Is the same guy, Joe Lim who opens the piece talking about how much of what we see is actually shadow advertising is like kind of like don't worry about it because in two years no one's going to use social media because nobody's going to believe what they see on it. And they will just have like a AI agent distill social media for them and you'll be like, hey, give me my like diet. Like my, my basically my download of like what people were talking about today and it'll just be like all fake but like brought down into a dice.
- [60:43]
B
I know people who do that now.
- [60:44]
C
Yeah.
- [60:45]
B
Who like program Claude to be, hey Claude, read my emails, summarize all the newsletters that I get and tell me, you know, tell me what they say.
- [60:55]
A
Five things I need to know.
- [60:56]
B
Yeah, five things I need to know.
- [60:57]
C
But do you think people will do that with like their Instagram?
- [61:00]
A
Well here's what I don't think it's accounting for is the fact that we're all like helplessly addicted to scrolling and that nothing in life is like can't be interrupted to kind of quickly look at your phone.
- [61:12]
C
Well, not just dictated to strolling. Addicted to the dopamine.
- [61:15]
B
Yeah.
- [61:16]
A
So I don't really know how that that changes. Like would, would you build out like an AI like basically shadow platform of the good Instagram and be like go through my Instagram for five hours and send me the 10 best cat videos. Like, I don't know, like, the whole point of Instagram or TikTok is to disappear and disassociate for an hour while you look at it. Although I'm sure that's not what those people, like, publish is, like, their purpose, but, like, that is what happens. So I don't know. I mean, like, on one hand, I was almost like, please, robot overlords, like, take this decision out of my hands about whether to scroll anymore. But it is. It is crazy to imagine where this conversation will be in 2028.
- [62:01]
C
What did y' all think of the fact that, I mean, Lynn mentions in the piece, like, that this is illegal.
- [62:06]
B
Well, that's the other thing.
- [62:08]
A
Like, what I mean, so is, like, the CIA for sure.
- [62:11]
B
I get it.
- [62:12]
C
I get it.
- [62:13]
B
Yes, good point. Because in 2024, the Federal Trade Commission banned undisclosed paid endorsements and the use of account networks to inflate popularity. So, in other words, bot accounts controlled by a person or a entity.
- [62:29]
C
Yes.
- [62:30]
B
And the use of those accounts to deploy content that is actually advertising, which is not told to be. And the fine is something like, I Forget the number.
- [62:39]
C
50,000.
- [62:39]
B
50,000.
- [62:40]
C
Per violation.
- [62:41]
B
Per violation. So technically, you could, like Samson with your arms on the pillars, this entire industry tomorrow.
- [62:51]
A
But part of the problem is, if you've read about the Baldoni Lively case and you read about the sort of layering that happened of, like, subcontracting out companies to allegedly contribute to the online narrative and online discussion about either side, you imagine that there's, like, plausible deniability. Like, I contracted a marketing company that then subcontracted a digital strategy company that subcontracted, like, a digital operations executions company that put up ads in a Discord server that said people would be fairly compensated for, like. And that is something that was going on in the 90s where, like, college kids would get paid by record labels to put stickers up and, like, ask record stores if they've got copies of this new band and be like, well, if you don't. If you don't, like, would you like a couple. And here's a poster and all that stuff. And that just. It's just everything has become so weaponized and superpowered because of the Internet that it just feels even more fake than it used to be.
- [63:53]
B
I agree. And I think that part of the. It feels like everything got too big to failed after 2008. It's like the lesson of that crash was that, hey, if you burrow into the economy you don't want to know deep enough, right? It doesn't matter like how legal, how. How manifestly illegal the thing you're doing is. If you get in there deep enough and enough things depend on you continuing to operate illegally, then we'll figure out a way to make it legal. This is.
- [64:30]
A
That's like, so Geese is Merrill. Geese is Merrill Lynch.
- [64:35]
B
We'll figure out a way. Don't worry about it. Like, we will figure it. Like, $50,000 per incident would collapse multiple industries that are attached to this.
- [64:45]
A
And these places are just record labels anymore. And none of these places are just TV stations anymore. Like, they're inter. Like locked parts of mega corporations that can't. Aren't gonna let that stuff happen when
- [65:01]
C
it's used for music or a movie or whatever. Truly, who cares? It's more just interesting to learn about this stuff than to get mad about it for me. But they can use this stuff for manipulating stock prices and that sort of thing too.
- [65:20]
A
You must have had a conversation with somebody in the last three or four years where you're like, like, wow, this guy's like super mad about something that doesn't matter at all.
- [65:27]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [65:28]
A
You know what I mean? And you're just like, whoa. Like, it doesn't have to be like, classic red pilling.
- [65:32]
B
Yeah.
- [65:33]
A
But just when somebody's just like chemtrails and you're just like, what do you. You don't even know what you're talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about.
- [65:39]
B
I mean, the Odyssey is a perfect example. Who the is mad about this?
- [65:43]
A
Yeah.
- [65:43]
C
Yeah.
- [65:43]
A
Also, the funniest thing about it is they're like the. The thing they're most mad about, aside from Elliot Page, is that Lupita Nyong' o is playing Helen of Troy. And they're like, like, I'm like, but she is the most beautiful woman in the earth. Like that. Like, what is your problem, man? Like, just. Just say it. Just say. Say what you were saying.
- [65:59]
B
Just go ahead and say exactly what you think. And by the way, we all think you.
- [66:03]
A
You're like that anyway, dog. Just say it.
- [66:05]
B
By the way, Homer is not even a guy. Homer's like a hundred guys that nobody knows. Like, Homer did not exist. Everybody calm down. Fun email from a listener. Xavier wants to know what would be our pantheon of conspiracy theories? So, like, what are. Should we call it a top five of conspiracy theories or top in no order maybe? Or do you want to rank them? Here's my. This is what I think the top three are. And then we can figure out the five later on. Jfk, Goat. Right? Gotta be. We'll be thinking about it forever and we will continue. Yeah, I think. I think some of this is recency bias. But also it's clear that it's this generation's jfk. As Epstein, everything around it. Did he die? Who's involved? The whole thing. And the three. An oldie but a goodie. Something I don't necessarily care about, but I think a lot of people do.
- [67:03]
A
Roswell, aliens.
- [67:05]
B
Aliens in general. So I think that's the three. Does anybody have any disagreements with those?
- [67:11]
C
I don't have any disagreements with those. I have some other options for, like, if we want to add them to the list.
- [67:18]
B
Yes. So slots four and five are open right now.
- [67:21]
C
Moon landing.
- [67:23]
B
Is it fake?
- [67:23]
C
Is it fake? Jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
- [67:29]
A
9 11.
- [67:30]
B
911 is a good.
- [67:31]
A
Being an inside job or being inside job or not.
- [67:33]
C
And then the only other one like
- [67:34]
B
Elvis still being alive feels like that one kind of.
- [67:39]
C
It's not as consequential, but it does. Did feel like a gigantic thing for years and years and years.
- [67:47]
B
I think, much like Zodiac, where you're like, well, the guy'd be like, 98 now, so it doesn't matter. I think as we left, the natural limit of what Elvis's life would have been kind of faded. But I do think I would put 911 up there. I had a close family member get very deep into it, like, sit me down and be like, you have to watch this. And it was. Was Loose Change. And we sat there watching Loose Change, and I had to be like, so you think that, like, the Pentagon. The passengers on the Pentagon plane are, like, being hidden in Guantanamo. Like, that's. That was part of it. But, yeah, I think that's a good one. There's also the fact that, like, we don't know, like, the Saudi. Saudi Arabia piece is still very mysterious. Okay. So I would definitely add 911 to that. What was the other one?
- [68:39]
C
The moon landing.
- [68:40]
A
The moon landing, yeah. So this is adjacent to the moon landing. I'm gonna give my, like, personal favorite is All Things under the Umbrella of Stanley Kubrick. A, that he filmed them. He was the director of the movie. I love that one.
- [68:54]
C
Yeah.
- [68:54]
A
B, that his death was actually a murder for the director's cut of Eyes Wide Shut.
- [69:00]
B
What?
- [69:00]
A
Which was. Was, you know, apparently allegedly not really a depiction of Epstein.
- [69:06]
B
Epstein, yeah.
- [69:07]
C
Yeah. Wait, go say all that again.
- [69:10]
A
So Kubrick died shortly before the release of Eyes. Yeah, There is a legendary director's cut that, like, he was working on that has more to do with child trafficking and human trafficking and some of the stuff that has now since become part of the popular lexicon because of Epstein. And that there is a lost director's cut that some of the fringes of film, Twitter and conspiracy Reddit, like, indulge in, like, trying to reconstruct it. Say why they. They killed Stanley because he was telling the truth. God, I love that. And then this isn't really a conspiracy. It's more of, like, a deep dive. All the symbology and the shining.
- [69:51]
B
Yeah.
- [69:52]
A
And what. What it actually means, whether it's about Native American genocide or whatever.
- [69:57]
B
I'm on a Mad Men rewatch. I'm on the last season. Just watched the scene where the moon landing is happening and Sally kisses that guy as they look through the telescope. And then Don and Peggy watching the moon landing. And it did strike me, I then was like, let me watch the original footage. It is crazy to think that in 1969, people were sitting around and being like. And I think the moon landing happened. I want to be clear, but me too. Yeah, but it's like people were sitting around being like, they're beaming TV from the moon to Earth.
- [70:37]
A
But we still have chord phones, like, landing, landing.
- [70:39]
B
We still have cord phones. We're watching images being live beamed from the moon. Obviously, the events were taking place, like, 10 minutes or. Or whatever, some amount of time after they had happened, but still we're beaming images to your home from the moon. I can understand why people to exactly your point are. My remote control is connected to my television by a long cord. We're beaming live images from the moon. That's happening right now. Get out of here.
- [71:12]
C
Yeah.
- [71:12]
A
You know what it is? It's also, I think. I feel. I'm fairly certain. I'm 99% sure we went to the moon. We went to the moon. I also know that the Earth is round. But the problem with arguing these things to a certain point is neither of you or your counterpart has been to the moon. So you're just like, all right. Yeah, I guess there is a sliver of a chance that there's like. But yes, I believe that we went to the moon multiple times.
- [71:46]
B
Yeah, it is an interesting one. I don't know how you argue it with people.
- [71:50]
C
Yeah. It feels like it would be impossible. It's like, if you believe this, well, then there's nothing I can tell you.
- [71:54]
B
Yeah.
- [71:55]
C
Yeah.
- [71:55]
A
It also. That one, to me, is kind of harmless, you know? It's like, if you don't think we went to the moon for whatever reason, it's kind of fun to be like. And then they shot it on the Paramount backlot, and Kubrick did it because he, you know, had all the experience. And I was like, that's cool. Like, if you think that that's funny, I love that.
- [72:12]
B
Like, the image quality sucks. Like, why would Kubrick be the guy? Like, you could just make it look like it doesn't need to be
- [72:26]
A
here.
- [72:27]
C
Yeah.
- [72:29]
B
Chris, thank you so much for. For being here.
- [72:32]
A
Always fun. Thanks, guys. Since the dawn of time, humanity has been at war. It has shaped the world around us. And if it somehow feels like we've been here before, it's because we have. I'm David Boris. I'm a military historian, and on my new podcast, Hostile History, I take us inside history's most defining wars and rebellions, from Genghis Khan to the war in Iran. Find out how the past can explain the present. Search for and follow Hostile History on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.